Stupid Girl?

Laurie Penny attracted a lot of indignant comment in June with her joyless feminist rant "Why I despise the World Cup" in which she argued that the British left should ignore the manufactured "English pride" of the World Cup for the sake of women and the cause of anti-fascism.

There is something suspect about a people's sport that violently excludes more than half the people, and boozy, borderline misogynist pseudo-nationalism is the last thing Britain needs to help foster a badly needed sense of community. George Orwell observed in 1941 that "in England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the 'Rule Britannia' stuff, is done by small minorities . . . The patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious."

Of course, not everyone who displays an England flag is a fascist, but a few of the flags in circulation will undoubtedly be reused at the upcoming EDL rally in east London, which plans to process through the same streets where Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts marched in 1936.

This week she's back with "Britain’s summer of angst" in which she lazily, stupidly or possibly deliberately, conflates England and Britain.

Our culpability in the Deepwater oil disaster, our role in the financial crash of 2008, even our miserable performance at the world cup have disturbed the popular impression of Britain as a country which “punches above its weight”. If 2009 was the "summer of rage", then 2010 is surely the summer of angst. After the rash of "Will you be supporting Britain?" articles during a certain international kickball competition, Britain’s dismal result – being knocked out before the quarter-finals by Germany, of all humiliations – was an own goal for the weary mythology of "two world wars and one World Cup".

Garbage.

Is she deliberately conflating England and Britain to lend credence to the hypothesis behind a piss-poor article; or is she deliberately conflating England and Britain in a petty attempt to wind up those of us who identify ourselves as English, Scottish or Welsh, or; is she just a stupid girl?

It's a tough call. I doubt that she is stupid but I'd put her in the 'professional idiot' category along with the likes of Rod Liddle. Professional idiots deliberately write borderline offensive dribble in order to court controversy and push their readership figures up, they like to think they're being 'provocative' and 'edgy' when in fact they're just tedious and annoying.