Do you let children play with all comers or do you select carefully based on dubious criteria? Katie Hopkins likes to select her children’s friends on the basis of names!
Watch this for the best snob interview ever!
Katie may remind readers of Persuasion‘s Very-Very-Important-and-Vain-Sir Walter Elliot or even Born-to- Rule-Elizabeth Elliot. When Virtuous-but-Undervalued-Anne Elliot, the heroine, chooses to visit her friend rather than dump her in favour of her father’s visit to a society doyen, her father waxes lyrical about Anne’s choices:
“Westgate Buildings!” said he, “and who is Miss Anne Elliot to be visiting in Westgate Buildings? A Mrs Smith. A widow Mrs Smith; and who was her husband? One of five thousand Mr Smiths whose names are to be met with everywhere. And what is her attraction? That she is old and sickly. Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste! Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you.
Sometimes we think we have advanced and then on other days we realise that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Austen's Guide to Happiness 
My daughter saw Katie Hopkins being interviewed on morning TV and vaguely admired her for coming out and saying what a lot of us think. Then just this moment I finished having a conversation with a fellow worker (teacher) who thought that being a teacher ruined a number of names for her when deciding what to call her children (she has seven!!). In a perfect world it wouldn’t matter what each of us was called, but our world isn’t perfect is it?
There is that old adage that says ‘It takes all kinds to make a world.’ Of course if we were all the same, the world would be a boring place, and we wouldn’t have the observant and astute commentary of people and their vagaries as Jane Austen gives us. Imagine Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion if every character was the same, and which character would that be, Nightmare-wife Mrs Bennet or Virtuous-but-Undervalued-Anne Elliot. Myself, I prefer a balance of characters in my books, as it allows me to be challenged, entertained or even occasionally romanced. However, in my real life, I definitely prefer not to have the Katie Hopkins of this world with their extreme and most often unfounded prejudices to butt up against me. Katie Hopkins is entitled to her opinion, as we all are, but I certainly wouldn’t be adding her to the list of people that I would want to have dinner with.
Very astute. I just love the new technologies that bring such gems to light!