Martin Kettle's sick and twisted worldview

See if you can spot the odd one out among this list -

* Engaging with Europe.

* Being tolerant of immigrants.

* Wasting billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction, the sole purpose of which is to indiscriminately mass-murder hundreds of millions of innocent civilians in other countries.

No, you're wrong, actually.  According to The Guardian's Martin Kettle, there is no odd one out.  All three are equally necessary to prevent Britain becoming "isolationist", or a country that "pulls the duvet over its head".

So now I know where I've been going wrong all these years - the constant threat of genocide is, it seems, a prerequisite to being considered "sociable".  Silly old me.

Plaid Cymru's Dafydd Wigley was quite right in what he said the other day, of course - if Trident was ever used, it would kill far more people within the space of one hour than the 1.5 million who are estimated to have perished at Auschwitz over a period of years.  The fact that it was taken as read that Wigley had to apologise for his comment, even by many who oppose nuclear weapons, illustrates how we like to emotionally distance ourselves from the full horror of the thing we're opposing.  Understandable, but unhealthy.

*  *  *

Equally bonkers (albeit marginally less offensive) is a comment on Political Betting from the "senior figure in the Thatcher/Major government" who goes by the pseudonym of JackW, and who constantly delights the Tory regulars with his "hilarious" claims to be 107 years old and a Jacobite.  When taken to task today on the embarrassing predictions that the No campaign would win the referendum by a margin of 20%, he brazenly claimed that they hadn't been particularly inaccurate...

"However the final outcome was not in doubt - Somewhat like positing a rugby victory of 20:0 and eventually winning 10:0 where the opposition were damn lucky to get nil."

So a two-horse election in which the losing side got 45% of the vote, having been ahead in two public polls within the last two weeks of the campaign (plus at least one private poll), is the equivalent of a rugby match in which the loser is "damn lucky to get nil".

Oh-kaaaay. I'll have some of whatever he's having.