I wouldn't normally plug a book on CentreRight, but I'm going to make an exception for two reasons. First, the book in question is an unusually good one that I think Centre Righters will enjoy, and second, we are only a few days away from Christmas, so I thought it might come in handy as inspiration to those still hunting for gifts. For those organised souls who have got their Christmas shopping done already - please forgive me!
It's a difficult question: what to buy for the grumpy right winger who loves to gripe? Feel good film? Nope - soppy nonsense. Gadget? Not a patch on Meccano, why don't schools teach engineering properly like they used to... Sponsor an obscure species somewhere? Cue muttering about hippies. No, you need a gift that will go with the grain and channel the fury, rather than encouraging it to spill out over the Christmas dinner table.
The answer lies in a book all about how politicians, companies, advertisers, quangos, "experts" and broadcasters lie to us, every day and in a remarkable range of ways: Complete and Utter Zebu by Simon Rose and Steve Caplin.
The title derives from a classic example of the deceit that the book skewers so well. A Zebu is a bovine South American mammal, whose meat was found being widely sold as "British Beef" in pubs and supermarkets. Zebu, then, is shorthand for trickery, lies and BS.
As the book's blurb describes it:
We are subjected to a daily barrage of deception so pervasive that we barely notice it any more. Although the big lies still make the headlines, it's the small, everyday half-truths that really drive many of us to distraction.
'Ice cream' with no cream, 'chocolate flavour' with no chocolate, 'customer service' with no service. You have won a prize . . . Your call is important to us . . .
Lies, lies and more damned lies. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
And there is no area that escapes their ire - from EU food regulations to estate agents' dubious patter, from polimen's bluster to politicians' nimble language. As well as having successfuly researched a remarkable range of examples, some of which you will have heard of but others will certainly be new to you, the authors treat the topic with just the right mixture of humour and genuine, spitting outrage.
Angry presents for angry people are a difficult thing to get right. As an example of how not to do it, a not-very-political friend of mine once bought me a Michael Moore book because of a very mistaken idea of my views. The result? In the spirit of Christmas, I tried to read it, leaving me with soaring blood pressure, a new dent in my wall and an unfinished book. Complete and Utter Zebu, though, is bang on target. It confirmed my fury at the amount of Zebu sloshing around, informed it with new evidence and left me laughing out loud.
You can buy it here - or if you'd like to read more, they run an excellent blog here, highlighting more examples of Zebu.