The Progressive Causes Quadrant Diagram

I was watching "8 Out of 10 Cats" last night. A fascinating programme. The tone of the programme seems to come from sneering at things - or "satire", as I suppose you could call it - and from a generally left-wing direction. Personally I watch it because I find Sean Lock and Jimmy Carr very funny, whatever you may think of Carr's deliberately-odious personality. I've a theory that a lot of Jimmy Carr's persona is put on - in the same way that I suspect all of Ricky Gervais's personas actually to be Ricky Gervais.

Last night's programme spent a fair amount of time taking the rise out of the Church of England, on the grounds of the response to the consultation on same-sex marriage. That they didn't understand what the Church's response had been, and assumed that the "greatest threat in 500 years" quote was from the church and not from a journalist, probably wasn't surprising on a programme where the main intellectual analysis of the subject was that provided by a woman off The Only Way is Essex. And I'm sure that the view that, since most members of the Church of England are over 50 its views can be ignored, will be a great comfort to Sean Lock when he turns 50 next year.

But it did make me think. I've had Burton do some analysis (I've locked the Counting Shed from the outside, so he's got little else to do until he's finished his cash-flow forecasts), and we've established that there are four groups into which we can categorise the way people respond to "progressive" issues.

I've been careful with the use of the word "progressive". I think we all know what I mean. And I think we all know that not all "progressive" things are good. Some diseases are "progressive". If you're waiting at a level crossing when a train goes across, to be "progressive" would be foolish. But some progressive things - equal voting rights, abolition of slavery, universal education - are clearly good. I'm not making any judgements on which modern-day progressive issues are right or wrong here. But if we break people down into how much they care about "progressive" issues, and then by whether they are for or against them, we reach the following groups:

So clearly if you care a lot about things, but you are not in favour of change, you are going to write a letter to the Telegraph. As a contrast, to show your aggressively modern attitude to life, you will go on Twitter and hope your scathing 140-character epistles will get endlessly retweeted. Committed conservative people will, on the whole, not go on Twitter as they just end up getting ink on the screen of their newfangled monochrome 380Z monitors - while terribly progressive people won't write to the Telegraph as, overcome with loathing at the photographs of 18-year-old middle-class girls getting their A-level results, they ever get past the front page. 

Clearly if you are in favour of progressive causes but can't be bothered to get off your backside, you'll watch 8 out of 10 Cats. But who is dedicatedly against all change but can't be bothered to do anything about it? I've a suggestion, and it's based on the approac of the Wellingborough MP, Peter Bone. Who, despite his otherwise impeccably right-wing credentials, launched an intolerant attempt to force cyclists to wear helmets - where a more progressive approach would have been to impose five-year penalties on "SMIDSY" drivers.

Now I know people in Wellingborough who drink in pubs, and they assure me that they've never encountered Peter Bone in any of them. They suspect he may actually go down the pub in Rushden, which may explain the odd views he encounters. But whenever I hear Peter Bone on the radio - as it may be explaining that the Lib Dems should be horse-whipped, or we should invade France, or the Euro should be replaced with Flanian Pobble Beads - he always precedes his comments with "the people I meet down the pub..."

So we have a pub full of people with the most remarkable right-wing views, who don't really care too much. Instead of marching through London to demand the revocation of the Human Rights Act, they go down the pub. Seeing the latest example of Political Correctness Gone Mad, they go down the pub, and hang around hoping Peter Bone turns up. It's gonna be an odd pub, that.