… let me count the ways.

Let me say from the outset: I really don’t like Chelsea very much. And thus I’m really enjoying the scandal surrounding the fans in Paris completely living up to the stereotypical image we have of them. Shaven-headed, ignorant, racist yobs. Fab. Job done. I’ve always had that impression of them and now the world knows its true; its been ‘proven’.

And the poster boy for this ‘proof’ is Josh Parsons. 21 years old, city trader, ex-public-schoolboy, alleged UKIP devotee and of course, Chelsea fan. On the train in Paris, identified from the pictures, so the newspapers have been taking their usual ‘neutral’ and ‘impartial’ look at the ‘evidence’ against Josh.

Who is either an active part of a horrible group of Chelsea boot-boys who extol racism and would probably revere Adolph Hitler (surely only a matter of time) or just a guy ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

And the truth is: we don’t know which. So the press, in their accustomed manner, present the ‘facts’ for us to make an ‘informed judgment’. By their usual tools of implication, innuendo and assumption.

That Josh Parsons is a public school boy. Strike 1. We fucking hate public school boys; over-privileged, spoilt, morning-suit-wearing upper-class tossers who fondle each other’s genitals over toast at tea time. For which their parents pay a fortune. Milfield School, where Josh went (never heard of it either; probably third rate sub-educational army cadet college for thick rich kids), charges £25,000 a year!! According to early reports. By this morning’s papers that had mysteriously risen to £35,000 a year!!!! So we can hate him more.

Then, the researcher’s dream. A photo of Josh with none other than Nigel Farage. Strike 2. Leader of UKIP. The party that spends approximately 92% of its political time denying accusations of racism. This photo, innocently taken outside a pub, is the most damning, incriminating, most cut-and-dry bit of chance in the history of the press. This picture is the judge, jury and gallows for both Josh and UKIP. Because both have assumptions of racism, and here they are ‘in bed together’. Its enough to make any sub-editor soil his underpants. Josh MUST be a racist because he’s UKIP and UKIP MUST now be racist because they’re with a Chelsea nazi.

If I saw Farage in a pub, I would definitely pose with him. Then punch him.

Next is the vague ‘city trader’, something in hedge funds, something sufficiently bankerish to implicate Josh in the entire financial crisis, probably for the economic and political downfall of Greece too. Strike 3. He could have been described more jobbishly; he’s a tea-boy, he’s a financial person, but no; trader, hedge-fund, banker are all far more suggestive of being bad. Rightly so.

Thus the assassination is complete. The boy is doomed. He may have just left the airport with a group of fellow travelers and was still with them when, to his horror, they abused a black man on the Metro.

But naaaaaaaaaah; where’s the headlines in that. Hang the bastard out to dry and worry about mere details like ‘the truth’ later. Can always print some vague apology on the foot of page 72, just under the obituaries.

Happy Friday, Josh, though I fear not.

A xxxx