Insulting without trying

24 February 2018, 21:07 | Updated: 24 February 2018, 21:11

In this parallel, through-the-looking-glass universe of weirdness that we are apparently living in now, what someone says on the internet is news and the reaction of others to that original message is also news.

In the interests of going with the flow, here's a good one:

A Conservative association has reportedly been “slammed” over a tweet suggesting that families unable to live off £10 a week were 'indolent or dysfunctional'.

Saying they've been slammed sounds like some livid bug-eyed giant picked the whole place up and smashed it in to the ground – and I suppose that's just what happened.

The bug-eyed giant being the combined force of the incensed on Twitter, which seems to be the repository of all that is raging and screaming and furious.

A post from the Bath Conservative Association addressed food poverty among the less well off in the area and cited the food campaigner Jack Monroe's blog about struggling to feed her child.

It read: 'The reality may be indolent or dysfunctional parents or more likely parents who simply don't know how to feed their children well. If absolutely-not-a-Tory Jack Monroe could feed herself & her child for £10 a week - not easily, but adequately - most people can.'

That message, posted on the official Twitter feed of the Bath Conservative Association was immediately disowned by...the Bath Conservative Association.

They said, what...who us? We love poor people...we think they're quaint.

Or something like that.

But why distance themselves? Why would anyone think that it was outrageous that the Tory party would be dismissive and arrogant about the desperate poor?

I thought that was their thing.

You know...Labour are all about the workers down t'pit and the Tories are for the evil landowner in the big house at the top of the hill.

Just look at that cartoon top-hatted toff Jacob Rees-Mogg – would you be entirely surprised if his afternoon tea was made from orphan's tears?

The Tories are so comically moustache twirlingly nasty that they even have to keep denying that they are the nasty party.

The Greens do not have to keep denying how nasty they are and neither do the Lib Dems or the Monster Raving Loony Party, despite the fact that they have the words “monster” and “raving” right there in their name.

So who could be remotely surprised that a Conservative association would think insulting things about those less fortunate than them, saying that those mothers who cannot feed themselves and their child on £10 a week are indolent or dysfunctional?

I thought that's what the Tories believed, but I may have that wrong.

They may be the nice party and I am mixing them up with someone else.

The best part was their apology – and I am not making this up - they apologised for what they said was: “a single thoughtless tweet on food poverty, not intended to insult”!

Calling poor people indolent and dysfunctional was not meant to insult them?

That's about the most thick-headed thing I've ever heard – and if they are upset that I would say that, then I'm sorry, I didn't mean “think headed” to be insulting.