A Daily Mail columnist has been slammed on social media after depicting Brits who are currently working from home due to the ongoing pandemic as selfish, despite the fact that he himself has worked from home at his plush Florida mansion in a gated community for decades.
Regular Daily Mail columnist, Richard Littlejohn, used his latest article to argue that British workers who now work from home are self-centred because businesses who previously relied on their custom would suffer as a result of their new working arrangements.
Littlejohn begins his piece in typically cringing fashion – casually diminishing the horrors of Nazi Germany by defacing Martin Niemöller‘s famous anti-fascist poem to summarise his own, somewhat less significant, concerns – stating:
“[…] first they came for taxi drivers and I did not speak out because I was not a taxi driver.
When they came for the sandwich makers, I did not speak out because I was not a sandwich maker.
When they came for the shop assistants, I did not speak out because I was not a shop assistant.
When they came for the publicans, I did not speak out because I was not a publican.
When they came for the dry cleaners, frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s because I was not a dry cleaner.”
The Mail columnist then vents his fury at the supposed “I’m All Right, Jack” mentality of British homeworkers, claiming that:
“You can hear them every single day on radio phone-ins, boasting smugly about their exciting new ‘work/life balance’ and the amount of money they are saving on their railway season tickets.”
He then goes on to blast the very notion that workers might be allowed a say in the matter of where they spend most of their day, before reeling off a customary anti-union rant, screeching:
“When did not having to go into the office become an entitlement, a matter of personal choice?
“Don’t the unions care about the cleaners, canteen staff, handymen and electricians who rely on busy offices to make their living?
“Do they not give a damn about the myriad service industries, from bars to barbers, who have built their business models around catering for commuters in city centres?”
However, despite Littlejohn’s clearly passionately-held belief that homeworking is selfish and immoral, and his totally authentic and definitely not entirely contrived concern that other people might lose their jobs if people continued to do it, there is one small problem that, one might think, discredits his argument a little:
Yes, Littlejohn is the very thing he supposedly hates – a homeworker.
For some reason, the Daily Mail columnist left it until the 31st paragraph of his anti-homeworking diatribe to reveal that he is himself a homeworker, meekly stating:
“In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that, like most people who write for a living, I’ve worked from home for the past 30-odd years, unless I’ve been broadcasting and needed to be in a studio.”
However, despite the fact that he had clearly destroyed his own argument with that one single sentence, Littlejohn feebly attempts to justify his clearly irreconcilable position – claiming that, actually, he is one of the responsible homeworkers because he goes into London “as often as possible, for meetings, for boozy lunches, for the sheer joy of interacting with others“.
It is an interesting claim, given that, according to the New Statesman, Littlejohn spends “much of the year writing from a gated mansion in Florida” and that “when he is in Britain, he rarely leaves the house.“
Unsurprisingly, social media was quick to call out Littlejohn’s colossal arsemongery:
Absolutely amazing chutzpah by Richard Littlejohn as he launches an attack on cowards working from home and ruining the economy… before revealing in the 25th paragraph he’s been working from home for 30 years. https://t.co/2ueOaHqCmn
— Chris Burn (@ChrisBurn_Post) August 27, 2020
TOMORROW: One presumes that Richard Littlejohn drove to the Daily Mail’s central London offices to write his article comparing home workers to Nazi sympathisers, and didn’t email it in from his gated community in Florida.#TomorrowsPapersToday #MailFrontPages pic.twitter.com/GhkBx4Y7jJ
— The DM Reporter (@DMReporter) August 27, 2020
"Get back to work!" says Richard Littlejohn, the Daily Mail columnist who has spent the last 30 years working from his beach house in Florida. pic.twitter.com/YgsQzyE7Om
— Parody Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson_MP) August 28, 2020
Richard Littlejohn working from home from another continent to try to shaft workers in the UK is ten out of ten brass neck. https://t.co/dxk7PY9Btl
— The Trashies (@TheTrashiesUK) August 27, 2020
This article is hilarious.
Richard Littlejohn slams those who are working from home, but dining on Rishi’s dishes…
…before saying, half-way through, that he’s worked at home for 30 years, but it’s okay because he like to go out dining.
And the intro is about Nazis. pic.twitter.com/cFiK4sMnHv
— Dr Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) August 27, 2020
Richard Littlejohn lives in Florida, writing columns from his beach home rallying against the decline of England https://t.co/cL08SezVCP
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) August 28, 2020
Hypocrisy in the Daily Mail? Whatever next.
