Congratulations (a message for The Daily Mail).

Well done. You're winning. Slowly but surely, you seem to be wearing away our resistance. You are turning ordinarily decent people into turds with shitty attitudes. Your continuous pro white, hetero, christian / anti everything else agenda appears to be influencing more people than ever before. I've been witness to too many conversations between average and decent (usually) people in the last month where there has been real anger directed at the poorer end of our society (those existing on benefits and such) that the only conclusion I can draw is that you are all powerful and will eventually force us to think as you do. Your relentless highlighting of the '12-kids-never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives-living-in-a-free-mansion-and-given-£17,000-or-more-a-year-in-benefits' stories (which, even if true, are extreme exceptions to the vast majority of people existing on barely enough benefit payments to eat while desperate for a job to try to keep themselves off the street) is starting a wave of hatred towards the unfortunates in our society. You've been helped a great deal of course by our current coalition Government who, eager to protect their millions (remember more than half of the cabinet is made up of male millionaires who are in no way in this shitty existence together with the rest of us , regardless of the party line) have been frantically pointing towards the £1billion lost annually to benefit fraud to desperately turn our attention away from the fact that they are cheating us out of tax and letting banks and corporations off their tax bills at the same time to the tune of more than £6billion while hacking the state to bits to save £7billion. Thanks to the two of you working in harmony, we really do seem to be blinkered and more of us are getting angry at those less well off, believing them to be workshy injury-faking fraudsters out to steal our hard-earned money. I've said it before, but it's shocking to me that so many people think that the most anyone can achieve for themselves is to do the same job of work pointlessly day in day out for the whole of their lives, that this is somehow the fulfilment of our evolutionary destiny. To work. To type. To talk on phones. To acquire wealth. To buy useless shit. Maybe those who don't buy into this retarded backwards idea of the proper way to live are smarter than we think. Just a thought. Those obscenely rich useless fucks in charge continue to reinforce this cage we've collectively trapped ourselves in. Even the usually decent Channel 4 is in on the act with Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. The scenes of female oppression highlighted on that show are appalling, but the channel makes no attempt to point out the unlikely-hood of this being the norm for gypsies everywhere, instead allowing the show to fuel the aggression of the public and providing more ways for them to express their anger with the workshy. It's worth remembering that 'workshy' is a term that the Nazi party propaganda machine coined to describe Jewish and disabled people to fuel the German public's dislike of them. Not that it's quite as bad as that here. Yet. At least I hope not. One recent conversation had one of the (like I said, usually decent) people calmly and seriously suggesting that they should all be "lined up against a wall and shot", with not one of the others raising even the smallest of objections. So maybe we're not as far from the Nazi example as we like to think. Think about it. The people they are talking about (they made it clear that it's not the people who genuinely need help back into work or with a real disability, but how do they or anyone else make that kind of determination?) are the people choosing to live off the state instead of working. So basically lazy people. People who they think they shouldn't have to spend money on via taxes and such. People who receive barely a crumb compared to the tax-dodging millionaire politicians or corporations or banks. Not rapists, murderers or child molesters. Lazy people. Calmly and seriously advocating the murder of lazy people. I'd like to think that if there was a man standing against the wall of his free mansion while his 12 kids watch, the people in question would think twice before ending his life. That they would think hang on, maybe this is a bit much when it's only about money, only a tiny proportion of the tax I pay. Maybe this murder isn't justifiable. That they would put the gun down. I'd like to think that, but I wouldn't bet on it. It has, after all, happened before. The worst thing would be that you would be utterly horrified if this happened - if someone took it upon themselves to rid the streets of the out-of-work lazy scum, or gay people because they think they're spreading some kind of gay agenda in schools to poison the minds and hearts of children (hey there, Melanie Phillips, how would you like that?) or all the young Asian men, believing they're all part of a child prostitution ring. You would be horrified on the surface, wouldn't you Daily Mail? But underneath, I doubt you would care much, because you've been laying the framework for this kind of attitude for years now. What other possible result do you think you might have achieved? There would be one surefire way to deflect any blame, though. The loony with the gun obviously listened to too much heavy metal. It's devil's music don'tcha know. Or they must have watched Taxi Driver too many times. Nothing to do with us and our constant hate-spewing lies. No sir. Anyway, I just wanted to say well done. Whatever it is you're intending to accomplish, you're making definite progress. Cunts.

When is a holocaust film not a holocaust film?

When it is Life is Beautiful. It was recently Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). Firstly, it's staggering to me that such a day is even required, that such a blot on our collective memory would ever be in danger of being forgotten. Unfortunately, people and groups of all nations, races and colours prove that it most certainly is required, and they prove it every day - from Dick Griffin (copyright for that joke: that lad on Question Time that once) denying it even happened, to jihad-launching fucktards who would quite happily wipe out an entire group of people for one lame-ass reason or another.

A friend of mine (@kevupnorth, for those on Twitter) is a staunch supporter and spreader-of-the-word regarding HMD, and his talk of it this year reminded me of a conversation on a Facebook thread about HMD last year, where I revealed my dislike for Roberto Benigni's crock of whimsical shite. @kevupnorth wondered if I disliked holocaust films. Well, no, although perhaps 'like' is the wrong word. Life is Beautiful isn't a holocaust film I replied, but before I could explain myself fully, someone else on the thread appeared to be quite offended by my apparent lack of respect for holocaust victims, as seemingly evidenced by my criticism of the film. I came close to both apologising and arguing on the thread, but in the end I stopped commenting and complained about her on Twitter. Not the most mature reaction, but then I'm not the most mature person (see use of the not real word 'fucktards' above). She may have had a point about the thread being about HMD and that perhaps it wasn't the place for this type of conversation, but I think she assumed a lack of respect for the dead on my part because I dared criticise a film supposedly beyond criticism. She wasn't alone in disagreeing - everyone else on the thread loved it, but she was the one who got offended by a simple opinion. I looked like a dick on that thread forever more, not being able to explain my 'not a holocaust film' comment. Well no more.

Life is Beautiful is average at best. The writing is average, the plot is whimsical wish-fulfilment hogwash and the cinematography and use of light and colour is uninspired. It is mistaken for a holocaust film because it is set during the holocaust, and for that reason it fooled the Academy (not a hard thing to do) and is held up as untouchable, because to criticise it, as I found, is to show disrespect. Bullshit. The holocaust is a setting that is completely interchangeable - it could have been set during any number of historical or imagined tragedies and just as easily told the same story. The holocaust was chosen as the setting because it is the most readily identifiable worst period of our recent history and is more likely to garner an emotional response from the viewer, which, I would argue, shows Benigni being slightly disrespectful as opposed to his critics.

There is an argument (and quite a strong one, granted) that Benigni's father being a prisoner of the Nazis qualified the director to set his story during this particular time of hardship. However, the film is not about the holocaust and I still think the setting was chosen to heighten the emotional impact of the story, rather than starting with the setting and then weaving the plot around it. I could be (hell, I probably am) all kinds of wrong, but hey, that's what blogs are for - for people who are wrong to continue to drone on as if they are right. Just ask James Delingpole.

Consider in contrast an actual holocaust film (the holocaust film), Schindler's List. This is a portrayal of the events (although there is certainly some artistic license taken) that took place during the period. It could not have been set during any other historical period. In this case the holocaust is the event that is shown using the story as the backdrop, rather than placing a fictional story within that setting. That is the crucial difference and that is why Life is Beautiful has no business parading itself as a holocaust film. It attempts to convince you of the true beauty of the human spirit, to give you a happy ending and to convince you that life really is beautiful; none of these things have a place in a holocaust film. Life during the holocaust was not beautiful. It could have and should have been set against an entirely imaginary time and place. Schindler's List is unrelenting in its purpose, which is to force you to witness the events as they were and, like HMD, to ensure you never forget by indelibly burning into your memory the horror of humanity at its ugliest. Never has a brief flash of colour (the red coat) been so utterly wrenching to see, and his ability to break your heart so completely with such a simple device is why Schindler's List will forever remain Spielberg's masterpiece and it's also why he's a better director than Scorsese, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Kubrick or any other director you care to name.

So, if you ever find yourself trying to convince someone of the scale of the atrocity perpetrated during the holocaust, don't show them Life is Beautiful, show them Schindler's List. One attempts to convince you it's all OK and to make you happy. The other is unflinchingly honest and will make sure you never forget, which is the whole point of HMD.