The Dave Test

I used to have an informal test for absurd right-wing fogeyishness. If my interlocutor insisted on calling me Finkelshhhtein, they passed the test, and could duly be regarded as right-wing fogeys.

This however restricts those who could be tested to people whom I knew. So now I have replaced it with my all new Dave test.

Columnists who, when attacking David Cameron, attempt to belittle him by calling him Dave pass the test.

Congratulations to my good friend Stephen Pollard who, after many years of trying, has finally qualified.

Comments

[Peter]

We do it all the time.

[Matthew]

And yet you have no problem with your friend calling Gordon Brown 'Gordie', or George Monbiat, 'Moonbat', or even Cameron supporters, 'Cameroons', all of which are on his home page?

[Gabor Kovacs]

And what does that make me, Dan?

[Chris Gillibrand]

"Cameron" will do. Dave indicates overfamiliarity, even if it is not affectionate.

[Joel]

A Cameron by any other name is still an appeasing Neville Chamberlain.

[Vladimir Pnin]

"Finkelshtayn" simply is the correct German pronunciation. Ask Bernard Wasserstein.

[Derrick Hill]

Dear me, Mr Finkelstein, you really must have too much time on your hands if you're worrying about columnists "belittling" David Cameron, by calling him "Dave". Your implied rebuke seems feeble -- or just disingenuous -- in the extreme, and, deliberately or not, misses the obvious point. I don't think the current Tory leader ever refers to himself as a "shallow, phoney twerp", either. But that is what he reveals himself to be every time he opens his mouth. And that his critics refer to him as "Dave" is merely a short hand way of indicating their justified contempt for his grotesque, misguided and patronising attempt at matiness. Whether others find this strange or not is my informal test for identifying absurd Liberal-Democrats retreads who couldn't recognise real conservativism if it jumped up and bit them on the bottom.