Christmas is for everyone

When I was young in the mid-twentieth century, Christmas wasn’t politicised in the way that it – like almost everything else – has become today. Whether you were a Christian or not, Christmas was an uncomplicatedly happy time of the year – magical for some: a festive break in the middle of winter’s gloom, enjoyed (or ignored) by everyone in whatever way they chose, without officious priests, politicians, or journalists telling them how they ‘ought’ to be celebrating it.

To my mind, that is as it should be. But nowadays, we are ceaselessly assailed with the injunctions of the Politically Correct – ‘those who know best‘ - about what we should and should not do at Christmas. The ineffable Mr Ed Balls’ Department for Children, Schools and Families has even issued 150,000 leaflets called "Tis The Season To Be Careful", warning people to guard against (among other things) the danger of gravy exploding in microwaves! [Thanks to Ken at ‘Nanny Knows Best’ for this tit-bit.]

Even Christians are admonished not to celebrate the birth of their Saviour in a fashion which may be ‘offensive’ to those of other faiths: being ‘offensive’ is now a major crime in the eyes of the PC brigade, who ignore the obvious fact that being offended is a choice, and that sensible people for the most part choose to put up with it instead of kicking up a petulant fuss.

I am not a Christian, but I have no objection to Christians – or any one else - celebrating Christmas in whatever fashion they choose. How they do it is their business, and no-one else’s.

If that includes letting the gravy go ballistic, so be it.

'Yuk' to spicy foods is racist - official!

These days, every day is April Fools’ Day. According to today’s Telegraph, the National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year [mostly from government] , has issued a 366-page ‘guidance’ document for staff in charge of pre-school children – “Young Children and Racial Justice” – warning them to look out for, and reprobate, signs of ‘racist’ attitudes among their young charges.

These allegedly include a toddler saying ‘Yuk!’ if served with unfamiliar foreign food. So if you don’t like hot spicy dishes – I don’t: they upset my digestion – you are a ‘racist’.

What utter codswallop!

According to the Telegraph, this egregious document – which I certainly don’t have the time or inclination to read in full – advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as ‘blackie’, ‘Pakis’, ‘those people’, or ‘they smell’. But it is an unfortunate fact that some people, regardless of their ethnic background, DO smell because their standards of personal hygiene are inadequate. I know. I once had the misfortune to share an office with one such, who was indubitably white English, and it took the intervention of the staff welfare officer to resolve the problem.

The authors of this worthy [?] document apparently don’t include abusive terms such as ‘queer’ in their condemnation, presumably because homophobic abuse – which is at least as prevalent among schoolchildren as racist attitudes - doesn’t come within their terms of reference.

And the cloven hoof of this initiative is starkly revealed in their urging nurseries to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. Yet more prodnose busybodying for the mostly useless jobsworths and licensed snoopers who infest our Town Halls nowadays.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, I worked with the National Children’s Bureau when it was a responsible, balanced outfit with a realistic agenda. What a pity it’s fallen prey to the PC multiculti crowd for whom ‘racism’ [which they perceive one-sidedly, of course] is the most heinous social sin.

Hodge bombs Proms

We were informed by yesterday’s Guardian that the “the culture (!) minister, Margaret Hodge, will today criticise the Prom concerts as one of many British cultural events that fail to engender new common values or attract more than a narrow unrepresentative audience. She will make her remarks in a broad-ranging speech that examines the role culture should play in developing a stronger sense of shared British cultural identity. Hodge will also suggest that British citizenship ceremonies should be held in places such as castles, theatres, museums, art galleries and historic houses.”

I’ve heard it all now. Or wish I had. What else will these ever-meddlesome Politically Correct ministers come up with next? Compulsory multiculturalist dancing round maypoles? The busybodyishness of the likes of Margaret Hodge is almost beyond belief. The ethnic composition of Prom audiences is not an issue in the musical world. Love of classical music and enjoyment of what’s on offer is. Attendance or non-attendance at the Proms or any other musical or artistic event is purely a matter of personal choice, and none of Mrs Hodge’s business.

When I first lived in London in the early 1950s, I was a frequent attender at the Albert Hall Promenade concerts, which under the benevolent sponsorship of the BBC were the highlight of the capital’s musical year. A veritable feast of wonderful music was provided by world-class celebrities and international orchestras, who obviously enjoyed performing at the Proms as much as their mostly youthful audience enjoyed hearing them. Several weeks of nightly musical pleasure was yours for a season ticket price of only 35 shillings [less than £2!] if you were prepared to stand, either in the arena or up aloft in the gallery. I chose the latter, and we stalwart regulars vied to be early in the queue so that we could run quickly up the stairs and bag our favourite vantage point.

There was a camaraderie among the ‘prommers’, and I met some very pleasant people at the Albert Hall. I really can’t remember whether any, or how many, of them were darker skinned than me, because it wouldn’t have mattered. Although friendly, that young audience – containing many music students from the various London and provincial schools of music who knew the scores as well as, if not better than, some of the conductors – was never rowdy in those pre-television days, and when the music began you could have heard a pin drop in the huge packed auditorium. At the end, the applause was usually warm – except on the rare occasion of a poor performance – and sometimes enthusiastic to the point of being ecstatic. One especially memorable occasion was the London debut of the exquisitely rich-voiced Spanish soprano the late Victoria de los Angeles, who was cheered to the echo as the prommers took her to their hearts [where she remained for the rest of her long singing career].

But the rot set in with television, and all the visual gimmickry which modern producers mistakenly deem essential to make any programme interesting. The cameras were a gift to the at first small but now too large clique of exhibitionists who fondly imagine that funny clothes, banner and balloon waving, and graceless clowning enhance the home-watching audience’s enjoyment – especially on the traditional ‘last night of the Proms’ [a quintessentially English occasion, whatever La Hodge and her minions may say]. Formerly, this was a good-humoured event with a jolly audience singalong of “Rule Britannia”, “Land of Hope and Glory”, and other patriotic ballads skilfully steered by experienced conductors like Sir Malcolm Sargent. Now, watching the stereotyped ‘last night’ has become a pain, so I usually don’t.

As for the Minister’s contention that the Proms don’t cater for today’s ‘common values’, and that Prom audiences are “ a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease being a part of this”, it seems to have escaped her notice that Prom audiences – like theatre, cinema, football, cricket, and race track audiences – are a self-selected group. Is she proposing compulsory attendance, in order to make such events more ‘representative’? Roll on Big Sister’s Brave New World!

And I am less than enthused by her naff idea of holding ‘British citizenship ceremonies’ in castles, theatres, museums, art galleries and historic houses. Presumably these worthy events are designed to foster a synthetic patriotic consciousness, like young citizens of the USA saluting the flag. If so, there are many other places where they could be held, such as Tyburn and Tower Hill, where criminals and State prisoners were executed – and, of course, the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall where King Charles I met his grisly end at the hands of the self-appointed Politically Correct national nannies of his day. No doubt a 17^th century Mistress Hodge was among the eager bloodthirsty throng that witnessed the historic regicide.

As for celebrating next year’s 500^th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession and the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, all well and good. But is having government-sponsored national debates about the legacy and significance of such historic figures the best way to foster a sense of British identity? In both these instances, and in many others, it is more than likely to spark off renewed dissension.

The reason for this fatuous initiative by Mrs Hodge – who is, not inappropriately, MP for Barking - is, it seems, a belated awareness on the part of the government that ‘multiculturalism’ [code word for downplaying traditional Britishness in the supposed interests of social harmony] is a dead duck; and that a new strategy for promoting greater cohesiveness among the increasingly diverse populations of the United Kingdom has to be employed. They have suddenly awoken to the fact that the great majority of peaceable people of good will who constitute what Mrs Hodge recognises with uncustomary astuteness as being “the all-important centre ground of politics”, and who simply want to get on with their own lives without hassle from extremist political or religious factions, are becoming increasingly dismayed by the failure of PC ‘multiculturalism’ to gell. Indeed, it seems to be having the opposite effect to that intended, and is actually encouraging the flaunting of difference in an antagonistic manner by those who consider their religious and cultural traditions to be superior to those of the majority British population, an increasing number of whom are confronted with a wilfully alien presence in their midst.

This seems to be dawning on Mrs Hodge, although the obvious reason for it escapes her. “Over and over again”, she witters, politicians are failing to be seen on the side of those worried by loss of identity [theirs, of course]. “The cracks in the community turn to gaps. And those gaps, those voids, are always exploited mercilessly and cruelly by the extreme right”. [Is it any wonder, when official policies are driven by crackpots?] “The mainstream parties”, Mrs Hodge moans, “in their determination to capture and maintain power,” [she’s got it right there, at least!] ”have perhaps allowed a blurring of their ideological value base….In doing this they inadvertently create a value vacuum which is then filled by fundamentalists in religion and extremists in politics.” In established poor communities where choice is least, “people can be left with the feeling of imposed change or being subject to forces beyond their control”. Abstract notions about Britishness mean little to “the good burghers of Barking” faced by rapid change [a euphemism for becoming inescapably aware that what they used to regard as their native heath is inexorably being taken over by another way of life].

Faced with such weasel-worded twaddle, if I were a good burgher of Barking I would be barking mad at having such a mistress of NuLabour spin as my member of parliament. It is as if Mrs Hodge and her civil servants and ‘political advisers’ had sat down together and said “Oh dear! Multiculturalism isn’t working. Those stroppy Muslims and nasty BNPers don’t buy it. What shall we do?” Suddenly some bright spark says “I know! Let’s attack the Proms as being narrow and unrepresentative of modern British values. The BBC is a soft target. It won’t bite back.”

“Brilliant idea!” says La Hodge, and is so chuffed that she can’t contain herself until her speech is delivered, but leaks it to the PC-friendly Guardian. But lo and behold! Before the words are even out of her mouth, she has been sharply slapped down by a Downing Street spokesman who says that the prime minister is a keen fan of the Proms, which are a “wonderful, democratic, and quintessentially British institution that do [sic] a fantastic job in broadening culture.”

You couldn’t make it up, could you? Obviously the left-handed Hodges of this increasingly flaky government no longer know what their right-handed prime minister is thinking. Come back, Alastair Campbell – almost all is forgiven. It would never have happened on your watch.

Weasel words

Sixty years ago George Orwell, that tough-minded scourge of mental and moral laziness and political humbug, wrote a classic essay on Politics and the English Language, lamenting how far the insidious undermining of clear thought had gone with the spreading habit of using political labels as terms of mindless insult and vulgar abuse, without any attempt at invoking their original meaning. As he pointed out in another piece, a recent survey in America had shown that ‘fascism’ meant anything from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’ to different people. In England, ‘pro-fascist’ was being indiscriminately used by the Left to denote all Conservatives, whether appeasers or anti-appeasers, and other traditional patriotic non-socialist organisations. On the other hand, defenders of old-style capitalism asserted that socialism and fascism were the same thing; while an array of right-wing thinkers refused to recognise any distinction between fascism and communism, maintaining that they both aimed at identical societies and even comprised some of the same people. Stalinist communists accused trotskyists of being crypto-fascists, in the pay of the Nazis. Outside its own ranks, the Catholic church was almost universally regarded as pro-fascist.

It would be interesting to know what Orwell would have said about political discourse today, not least on the internet. While I cannot emulate his incisiveness and unrivalled debunking powers, I can at anyrate vent my spleen at the futility and sheerly destructive nature of much that passes for informed debate, not only in the mainstream media but also in the blogosphere. The manipulative concept of ‘Political Correctness’, unheard of in Orwell’s day, is the first hurdle to be crossed. Originally put forward as a salutary antidote to much prejudiced assumption and near-unconscious bias, PC has morphed into a cudgel wielded by verbal bullies to silence any point of view they dislike or consider unacceptable. It is no longer sufficient for the PC person to register disagreement with another point of view: they proceed to assert that it is so obnoxious that it has no right to be heard, and should in fact be banned. In recent years they have even notched up some legislative scalps in the form of laws banning racial, religious and other ‘hate speech’ on the pretext that such opinions are so offensively hurtful to their targets that they must not be publicly uttered. This is the thin end of a very thick wedge indeed. Proponents of Political Correctness are no friends of free speech, and are, whether they admit it or not, in the murky business of thought control.

Another favourite ploy of the uncandid debater is to damn the message because he or she dislikes the messenger. Thus, those on the virtuously self-preening Left dismiss anything said by right-wingers, even moderate ones, as obvious nonsense and not worthy of consideration. This leads to a glaring imbalance in what is nowadays deemed acceptable public debate. The Left’s self-righteous cry of “No platform for racists or fascists” is an attempt to blot out a variety of widely held strands of opinion which are self-evidently neither racist nor fascist. Whether or not today’s British National Party is – apart from its historic roots –‘ fascist’ in any meaningful sense is a moot point; whether its stance on immigration is ‘racist’ is also debateable. But these not unimportant questions never are debated in the mainstream media, and scarcely at all on the blogosphere: they are simply taken for granted by almost everyone except those on the extreme political Right, whose actual or ostensible opinions and policies therefore go virtually unscrutinised and undissected. This, in fact, makes such extremist views even more dangerous than they otherwise would be, because the large swathe of the general public whose prejudices and lack of balanced knowledge of the issues may incline them to be sympathetic to BNP-type views on ‘alien’ immigrants have their bias reinforced by a sneaking sympathy for a perceived underdog who is being unfairly silenced by the Politically Correct.

Another adverse consequence of the drive to exclude certain views from public debate is that, in the absence of strongly combative debate, political illiteracy flourishes. Genuine education occurs through exposure to a whole range of opinions – wise, daft, erudite, ignorant, tolerant, intolerant. Capable and conscientious teachers are not in the business of indoctrination; it is their business to draw out [educare] from their pupils a reflective response to the variety of human sense and idiocy they encounter in the world of the past and the present. Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. Subject to the interests of national security as defined by parliament, the only limit which should legitimately be placed on it is the prosecution of direct incitement to violence and the right of individuals to obtain redress for libellous defamation. Banning so-called ‘hate speech’ is the first lurch down an endless slippery slope towards an Orwellian ‘big brother’ regime. As John Stuart Mill pointed out long ago, when anyone’s opinion is forcefully suppressed, the whole of society is the loser. Poisonous and hate-filled views are more effectively combated out in the open, just as the first step towards healing a boil is to lance it and let the pus out.

What strikes one forcibly about the blogosphere is the irritably truculent, hostile tone of much of the discussion on sites such as the Guardian’s comically named ‘Comment is Free’ [in fact, a heavily censored PC forum] and other political blogs such as ‘Harry’s Place’. All too often there is no serious attempt to evaluate the strengths or weaknesses of the posts being commented upon; all most of the participants want is a puerile slanging march between combatants sniping at one another from entrenched positions and not in the least concerned to seek common ground, but only to ‘prove’ that their adversaries are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG [often adding that they are stupid and ugly as well and have naff hair styles]. For someone like myself, who came fresh-faced to blogging naively expecting an intelligent exchange of views between mostly sensible people, all this came as rather a shock until I realised that the underlying impulse behind a lot of this school playground bullying is fear - an emotion I share with them, because we are all living in a nightmarish world at the start of a new century which bids fair to become the most nightmarish of any yet known in human history. But this sombre fact surely makes it all the more important that everyone should do their level best to keep a cool head, and strive to find as much common ground as we can to safeguard what slim chances we have of survival.

Insult is no substitute for reasoned opposition, and the current widespread use of insult in place of sensible debate is futile and silly. In recent weeks I have been labelled by other bloggers a ‘racist’, a ‘neo-Con’, and a ‘pseudo-liberal bigot’. I don’t recognise myself as any of these – except maybe a bigot for the maximum individual and collective freedom of thought, speech and action compatible with a democratic society. In fact, I am not prepared to settle for anything less.

More than a century ago that astringent [not to say cynical] American observer of his contemporary scene, Ambrose Bierce, compiled his Devil’s Dictionary – aptly named, as it shows how people play the very devil with words. Bierce’s definition of politics was “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage”. And he said that “as compared with the statesman, the politician suffers the disadvantage of being alive.” A Conservative, Bierce said, was a politician “who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others”.

His example emboldens me to end with a list of fashionable political boo-words, and their assumed meanings. Continuing first with American politics, it is clear that differing uses of political labels on opposite sides of the Atlantic are a rich source of European/American misunderstanding. To an American, a Conservative is a patriot whose allegiance centres upon preserving the near-sacred tenets of the Constitution. To the European, conservatives are right-wing adherents to traditional values, especially those of Christianity. This is less clearly so in Britain, where conservatism since Mrs Thatcher is still searching for a platform which will renew its public appeal.

Americans – conservative ones at any rate – use ‘liberal’ to denote someone whose ideas on social policy are even mildly In favour of state intervention and increased public spending. Such people are considered dangerous, because they threaten the unlimited freedom of private enterprise, and are also believed to be less patriotic over foreign policy insofar as they might be prepared to concede in some instances that American perspectives may require questioning. American ‘liberals’ are also seen as the Trojan horse for socialism which, to most Americans, is synonymous with Stalinist communism and tyranny. European liberals are, by contrast, regarded even by their opponents as staunch upholders of an open society and pluralism. The European tradition of democratic socialism seems to have passed America by almost entirely, with the consequence that Americans quite wrongly equate the Left in Western Europe as unwitting stooges for totalitarian infiltration, either by militant Islam or authoritarian Russia. The confusion is compounded in America by the recent addition of the prefix ‘neo’ to the traditional terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’. Neo-conservatives and neo-liberals are entirely distinct animals to their predecessors – and to some still surviving traditionalists, who repudiate them.

In Britain, the most shaming political boo-word tossed around by the PC brigade is ‘racist’. This term is used indiscriminately by the totalitarian left groupuscules to vilify and, they hope, to silence, anyone who questions the viability of extremist religious creeds and imported tribalist cultural practices some of which strike indigenous British people as abhorrently primitive. As I have indicated earlier, this is a debate in which it is imperative to engage if we are to work out a way of living peaceably together in an open, tolerant society with our immigrant population and their British-born descendants.

Words, as Humpty Dumpty pointed out to Alice, are slippery things. ‘Democracy’ itself was purloined by the Stalinist communists in the post-war mid-20^th century to misdescribe their East European satellite puppet states and to throw dust into Western eyes. Today, ‘Fascist’ is still being flung around as recklessly as it was in Orwell’s day, closely followed by ‘bigot’. ‘Fundamentalist’ is a term of abuse for religious people who are so misguided as to take the teachings of their chosen faith seriously. ‘Moderate’ is usually – though not always – intended as a compliment, but often with an undertone of condescension because ‘moderates’ don’t brandish their political banners around as fervently as the committed armchair warriors. We are indeed now living in the era which W.B. Yeats forecast in ‘The Second Coming’, where

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Phony Phobias

After a Christmas and New Year break I am resuming occasional postings here, although not with the frequency of last year. For a start, I shall continue resurrecting pieces I wrote in my earlier blogging days which still seem to me to have topical relevance. Here is one of them:

Never having been a fan of ‘political correctness’ – a euphemism for stifling free expression of honestly held, however misguided or obnoxious, opinions – I am becoming increasingly sceptical of the legitimacy of importing pseudo-medical terms into political and social debate.

It is almost unthinkingly common practice nowadays to accuse those whose views are considered abhorrent or prejudiced of being ‘phobic’ – in other words, mentally ill. A phobia is defined [Oxford Concise Dictionary] as a morbid fear or aversion: In other words, a mental or psychological glitch requiring treatment. To assert that your critics are phobic is a power-play intended to rule their views out of order, and if possible to deny them a hearing.

Some uses of the term ‘phobic’ are more plausible than others. The most successful ‘PC’ campaign to date in this area has been the claim that those who dislike homosexuals, or consider their relationships and practices sinful, are ‘homophobic’. The term was invented, or reinvented, by American psychiatrist Dr. George Weinberg, in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual. In 2002 Dr Weinberg said: "Homophobia is just that: a phobia. A morbid and irrational dread which prompts irrational behaviour, flight, or the desire to destroy the stimulus for the phobia and anything reminiscent of it." Homophobic distaste, disgust, and aversion leads to the mistreatment of homosexuals by those who find them repulsive.

Until I was aged 40, all homosexual behaviour between men, even when fully consenting and in private, was a serious criminal offence. Many lives were wrecked, and suicides were common. There was vehement opposition from many church people and politicians to relaxing this cruel law. But I would not regard all even of the most vehement opponents of reform as being homophobic: some were, but others were simply sticking to their traditional principles over what they saw as a straightforward moral issue.

We have, thank goodness, moved a long way forward since then, and anti-gay prejudice, whether ‘homophobic’ or not, is no longer regarded as respectable. A good deal of the credit is due to those campaigners who have espoused and applied the doctrine of homophobia. But sometimes I think they have carried it too far. Is it really reasonable to brand religious people, whether Christian or Muslim, who sincerely believe their faith tells them that homosexuality is sinful, as homophobes? I am not convinced.

And I am totally unconvinced by the case that is nowadays vociferously being made, that there is a parallel phenomenon called ‘Islamophobia’ which leads to irrational dislike of Muslims, sometimes amounting to hatred and unfair discrimination against them.

There is really no plausible parallel between homosexuality, which is an innate psycho-emotional state of being, and adherence to religious beliefs which lay down certain tenets that the faithful are required to follow.

It may well be that, in the febrile atmosphere we have been living in since 9/11, there is mounting dislike and fear of Muslims, sometimes amounting to hatred. This should be of great concern to everyone, and all possible steps should be taken to deal with it. But branding all those who dislike Islam and its doctrines as ‘Islamophobic’ is totally misleading and muddies the waters. I believe there is only a tiny minority of people in the West who fear and dislike Muslims in a phobic way and who would wish to mistreat them because they find them unbearable as human beings. But hearty dislike, even amounting to revulsion, against some the teachings of Islam and practices such as sharia law punishments which strike many Europeans as primitive and barbaric, is not necessarily a ‘phobia’. It can pragmatically be based firmly on reasonable arguments, whether one agrees with them or not.

In a free society the right to express honestly held opinions and prejudices, even if these are deemed woundingly offensive by their targets, must be stoutly defended. Seeking to evade criticism by branding all your critics as 'phobic' and seeking legal curbs on 'hate speech' may seem a tempting tactical ploy, but it is not candid and is likely to prove counterproductive in the end. Muslims, gays, and other publicly controversial groups would be far better advised to show willingness to take on board the criticisms made of them, however wounding they feel these are, and to counter them on their lack of merit in reasoned debate instead of howling 'phobia!', 'phobia' at the moon.

More PC idiocy!

Thanks to Yankee Doodle for this link.

Cuckoo Corner

There are many excellent blogsites which diligently record the idiocies of 21^st century political and social life in Britain. Among the best are Nanny Knows Best and Peter Porcupine, which I visit daily. Some of their tit-bits are worth purloining for the arena, which I shall shamelessly do for this new occasional feature CUCKOO CORNER, besides adding items culled from elsewhere. So, for a start, let's take a look at current educational fashions:

1. Teacher sacked over religion row

According to BBC News on 2^nd February, Andrew McCluskey, a supply teacher, was sacked from Bayliss Court Secondary School in Slough after completing only a few days of an eight-week contract because he “upset” predominantly Muslim pupils in a religious education lesson by allegedly saying that most suicide bombers were Muslims. When pupils complained, the deputy head teacher, Ray Hinds, told Mr McCluskey to leave and not come back, saying that pupils’ welfare was the school’s first priority. When asked whether he thought Mr McCluskey might have had a point, Mr Hinds said “I don’t think it's important what I think. It’s what the children think that were in the classroom at the time.”

What a wonderful new doctrine! Pupils Rule OK! Why bother to go to school at all if you know it all, and the teachers’ opinions are irrelevant? Instead of being dismissed, as he deserves to be if he was accurately reported, Mr Hinds may well be awarded a peerage by Tony Blair for his services to “Educashun, Educashun, Educashun”.

Mr McCluskey, on the other hand, who feels he has been treated very unjustly and ejected from his job without any opportunity to defend himself, will doubtless be frowned upon by the Politically Correct NuLab élite as a tactless boat-rocker. In the old days, the teachers’ unions would have been manning the picket lines on his behalf. But not any more, in this brave NuLab world.

2. CHILDHOOD ABOLISHED!!! [pinched from Peter Porcupine]

Children need to play. Lets just run through that startling revelation again shall we. Children need to play. Now we've got that haven't we. Anybody disagree? No, I thought not. Well, Ms Susan Tuck, the head of St John's Primary School in Lincoln does actually. This idiotic fool has banned all playground games which involve bodily contact. She is quoted as saying they are 'rough and inappropriate'. According to one concerned parent this includes 'pat-a-cake' or even putting a hand on a friend's shoulder. Offenders are humiliated, or given playtime detention as punishment. Susan Tuck reckons apparently that playtime games should be organised, peaceful and structured.

A parent reports that the rules were introduced without reference to governors or parents. With fascist tendencies such as this Ms Tuck is an obvious candidate for greater responsibility. John Reid is always on the look-out for suitable Gestapo agents. Go to it Tuck, your black leather overcoat and Walther P-38 await!

3. The fingerprints of fascism [also from PP]

The BBC is carrying a report about the fingerprinting of children in order to automate further computerised registers and library loan records. So far so bad. The government is apparently going to 'encourage' schools to seek parental permission before doing this. Translated this means that the government will be encouraging schools to intensify and promote further the universal grip on citizens' lives our totalitarian minded leaders seek.

One school has already decided that fingerprinting can be used to control what pupils eat. Brumby Engineering College - no it isn't really, it's just a comprehensive under another name - in Scunthorpe is going to use fingerprinting in order to monitor exactly what children are buying to eat in the school canteen. Computer print-outs will then be used to identify who is buying junk food. The head apparently is of the opinion that the system will stop pupils' money being spent on junk food.

So, you were wondering what ID cards could be used for? The slippery slope gets ever steeper.

4. Nanny Bans Mums [from 'Nanny Knows Best']

Nanny knows no bounds when imposing her "zero tolerance" approach on her charges.

Ever conscious that we are not all the same, Nanny seeks to ensure that those who are in her view the most "disadvantaged" have the rules bent in their favour.

Instead of seeking to help people strive to improve themselves, or face reality, Nanny seeks to wrap everyone in cotton wool.

This of course does them immense harm in the long run, as people become dependent on the state and incapable of facing life's shitty realities.

One recent example of this absurd approach to life comes in the form of Nanny's ban on Mother's Day cards.

Helen Starkey, headmistress of Primary School in Carmarthen West Wales, has banned the making of Mother's Day cards because she doesn't want to upset children without a mother.

Quote:

"More than five per cent of children here are separated from their birth mother and have either no contact or no regular contact with their mother.

This decision was not taken because of any philosophical attitude towards the celebration of Mothering Sunday, but to protect a significant number of children in our school.

In all our dealings with these children we have to exercise great sensitivity. I am not against Mother's Day but no time will be devoted to making cards in lessons."

What about the 95% of children who do have mothers?

Why can't the 5% without mothers make a card for the person who is acting as mother?

A ridiculous move, guaranteed to make the 5% feel more self conscious and less able to face life's harsh realities.

Isn't that child abuse of sorts?