Merry Victorian Christmas To All ....

Another glass of gluhwein to take away the vision of all the children's presents yet to be wrapped. And to try and lessen the bile-count induced by Madeleine Bunting's idiotic Guardian piece. Not worthy of a full fisk, but her take on the Victorians deserves a shoeing.

"The blame lies first of all with the Victorians. They pretty much invented Christmas - trees, Santa Claus, puddings, turkeys, decorations, cards, presents, family togetherness - ingeniously turning what had become a sober religious feast into a great festival requiring months of preparation. If women were to be kept at home, they had to have something to do."

It's true that many of the accoutrements of the modern Christmas have Victorian origins - indeed Christmas cards only became common in the 20th century. But families gathering to eat well (or as well as they could) together, such presents for the children as could be afforded - the heart of the secular Christmas - has been with us for much longer. "It was Christmas Eve, with its loads of holly and mistletoe ..." wrote Hardy in Tess of the D'Urvbervilles. His short story 'The Grave By The Hand-Post' is about a son returning to see his father for Christmas. And hasn't Ms Bunting read 'A Christmas Carol' ?

"But the crucial point about the Victorian Christmas, which always gets overlooked, is that it was only the middle classes who had one ..."- see above. There's a good reason why it always gets overlooked - because it isn't true.

"The Victorian rebranding was a response to industrialisation: the family was no longer the wealth-producing unit; people were swapping work at home for factories and offices; and urbanisation was disrupting the old domestic structures. Social relations needed strengthening, so the home was relaunched with rituals such as regular family meals and the Sunday lunch. Home was idealised as a sanctuary from competitive market capitalism - a place where vulnerability, innocence, and sentiment could be safely expressed. At the same time, childhood was idealised as a life-stage free of responsibility, a time of imagination, magic and enchantment. All of this came neatly together in the rituals the Victorians developed for Christmas. "

Ah yes. Victorian culture as 'rebranding', as some small group of people kicking ideas around, followed by the Victorian equivalents of posters, advertisements, handouts in schools and doctors surgeries, interviews on the Today programme. Such a metaphor betrays a complete lack of understanding, of empathy, with Victorian culture. Or she could just be pig-ignorant.

The home was 'relaunched', was it, with regular family meals ? Just where the hell do you imagine families ate in Georgian times - McDonalds ?

And the last liberal myth, continually regurgitated in true bulimic style, that "childhood was idealised as a life-stage free of responsibility, a time of imagination, magic and enchantment". I'm sorry, your forebears must have lived in a parallel universe to mine. Is this the Victorian age of the Little Match Girl ? Of Tom and Mr Grimes ? Of Shaftesbury and Barnardo ? Of a hundred weepy parlour ballads about orphans, disasters and death ? Of "Father's a Drunkard and Mother Is Dead" ?

But there's one thing we have in common with the Victorians. Our old people are still dying of cold.

Happy Christmas. And check out those old people over the road.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David,) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Comradely Solidarity

Fascinating stuff in Weekly Worker on the proposed 2004 European Social Forum. It appears the comrades of the UK Left would have trouble arranging a drinks party in a Majestic warehouse.

"During the lunch break, comrades from the autonomist tradition (the tradition formerly known as 'anarchist' - LT) unilaterally decided to turn all 200 chairs to face the middle - apparently in order to “facilitate consensus decision-making”, and because it is “anti-hierarchical”. That might well be true for meetings where participants have some common ground. In our case, it helped to turn an already tense situation into a snake pit. Emotions ran high, with people generally communicating by shouting and jumping to the front to snatch the mike from the chair."

There are problems with money, timetabling and the structure of the proposed Forum.

"Not a few left on Sunday afternoon still unsure if the ESF in Britain will actually become a reality. Besides the absence of hard cash there is certainly not enough trust between the different groups and viewpoints to ensure smooth and effective planning. And a deadline of March 1, by which we have to find a “substantial amount of money”, is looming large.

It all started so well ... "

Democracy was an issue. "Speaker after speaker expressed the desire for our ESF in Britain to be more democratic ..." The trouble is, how does a left-wing faction implement democracy ? Whose democracy ? If enough people join, you may find they democratically disagree with you. At which point you expel their leaders or leave yourself and found another splinter group. If everyone who voted in the last General Election joined the SWP tomorrow, and the SWP was democratic (which of these two is the most unlikely ?) the leadership might find they were being outvoted by 10 million people who wanted a conservative SWP, 12 million who wanted a Labour SWP and 7 million who preferred a Lib-Dem flavour. Which is why the SWP (which controls among other things the Stop The War Campaign) isn't democratic. They would like your money and support - but you don't really want that 'bourgeois' democracy, do you ?

Open Targets

The Archbishop of Canterbury might be better employed worrying about the physical security of his flock this Christmas than in assuaging what he perceives to be Muslim sensitivities. Church attacks are a favoured tactic of Islamic militants in the Philippines, Indonesia and the Indian subcontinent. The authorities seem convinced that some form of outrage is planned for the UK, churches offer the softest targets – and what could be more richly symbolic than a Christmas Eve bomb at, say, Canterbury or St. Paul’s ? The very diversity of the congregations at London churches means that any form of profiling would be pointless, and the entire congregation would have to be searched on entrance to provide meaningful security.

I attend Easter Mass each year at a Catholic church (in a part of London with a large ethnic minority population, gangs of whose young people stalk the High Street each Sunday. The ethnic minority in question being Korean, the gangs are usually playing guitars, singing hymns, and inviting passers-by to find Jesus at a local church. But I digress.) The congregation is incredibly mixed – English, Irish, Polish, Filipino, Chinese, Indian, Italian, African, Brazilian (yet the Mass unites every race in a shared culture. What was that about ‘Westerners’, Archbishop ?). No way could door security play ‘spot the terrorist’.

I’m not saying it’s likely, let alone a certainty. But it’s easy to do and has, from an Al-Quaeda perspective, great symbolic value. I hope the leaders of all Churches, and our security forces, haven’t overlooked this possibility.

He's At It Again

Rasputin warns of the inevitable alienation of Muslims by David Blunkett's racist, Islamophobic strategy of arresting Muslims in reponse to a campaign of terrorism explicitly carried out in the name of Allah.

“If we want to persuade moderate Muslims to sign up to toleration and pluralism of the right kind, anything that gives the impression that we are targeting Muslims is problematic. We have a lot of ground to make up.”

Of course, the Archbishop is quite right. Only about 6% of the population of Britain are Muslim. Most, including the Archbishop, are nominal Christians. It therefore follows that the majority of arrests made under anti-terrorist legislation should be Christian, and that the resources of MI5 and Special Branch should be mainly targeted on extremist religious groupings such as the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Quakers. Anything else would be 'profiling' of the most racist and bigoted kind.

Acording to the Sunday Times, Williams also believes that "westerners find it difficult to grasp that for a Muslim, being religious is not something that is done in addition to everything else: “It just is the fabric. For the Muslim everything is seen through that lens.” "

You know, Archbishop, once upon a time, even some Christians were like that - their religion was the core of their being. Obviously you were never one of those, though. And British Muslims are "Westerners" - or is that a code word ? I wonder what it could mean ?

But it looks as if religious faith, like culture, is becoming another one of those things which is OK for 'them' to have, but not for 'us'. Minette Marrin makes this point in the Sunday Times. She also quotes Mathew Arnold's 'Dover Beach', and I can't resist it either. Poets are prophets.

"The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world. "



UPDATE 27/12/2003 - The Magna Mater Melanie also gives Rasputin a good telling-off.

A Guide To Glasgow Gang Websites

By Stewart Kirkpatrick in today's Scotsman is one of the most entertaining articles about the Web I've seen for a fair while. Read it and smile. In fact his series 'The Lazy Guide to Net Culture' all seem to be worth a read - loved his link to the Victorian Web.

Imagine if the unpleasant fourteen year olds hanging around the Tesco car park at all hours had a home page ? In Glasgow they have, and Kirkpatrick takes us on a tour of the sites of the Young Toryglen Toi, the Young Posso Fleeto, the Duke Street Firm and the Young Rutherglen Scheme Team ('Scheme' = housing estate).

I think we can safely say that these sites won't win many awards, but they do have a certain rude charm. How about the apology from the Young Toryglen webmaster ?

"anno this is pish the noo but ave just f*in started so bear wae me. wanst anno how tae dae s*** on this hing it will be f*n dynamite."

Which I translate as 'apologies for the current poor design as I'm only a beginner, but once I get going it'll be much better".

Do You Sincerely Want To Kill Children ?

Without that awful judgemental media coverage ?

Move to the West Bank and become a militant, or at worst a gunman.

Could They By Any Chance Be Related ?



"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability"

Our New Religion

One of my recurring themes is that as we become less religious, and doctrines like the Fall and Original Sin become ever less relevant and more ludicrous to us, so we find these concepts turning up in the most unexpected places.

We are no longer all sinners against God, naturally inclined to evil - instead (as I blogged last week) "we are natural racists, polluters, misogynists, homophobes. We have sinned against our fellow man and our planet."

I missed this essay by Michael Crichton a month or three back.

"Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die ... "

Link via the great John Daly.

Of course, there were tensions in Christianity between the hellfire preaching strands and the more optimistic soul-savers, and these have their parallels on the modern Left.

A fifteen-year old car thief on a sink estate, terrorising his neighbours, tends to attract the soul-savers, those who see good in everyone. With a few anger-management classes, driving lessons and trips to theme parks, he can be saved - maybe to become a social worker himself.

The 'holy fool' Bob Holman is such a one - and he's also a Christian (though I note he's finally getting out of Easterhouse as he reaches pensionable age).

On the other hand, the middle-class white guy in the BMW, with wife, kids and newly built 4-bed exec detached, attracts the hellfire mob. His inbred racism, sexism and homophobia must be carefully monitored - and they must be always ready to challenge it. And as for the self-employed carpet fitter who aspires to the Beemer and house - there's almost no evil to which he might not be tempted.

Bush Bashing Corporation

The capture of Saddam has to be one of those bits of news that's wholly good.

But the BBC managed in its coverage, and with its selection of impartial commentators, to find more downsides than I would have believed.

The video of the medical was 'humiliating' and would enrage macho Arab males.

WE made Saddam (obviously I don't mean good liberals like us, I mean those evil white, Christian men like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice).

"The US will be worried about an open trial and what Saddam will say about the days when he was supported by the West" (John Simpson on R5)

"Don't forget the US supported Saddam for 25 years. Some of his associates are neing held in conditions that are too lenient - or inhumane" (Anas Al-Tikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain, unable to make his mind up on R5.)

If he's handed over to the Iraqis he'll be executed - so he should face an international court with Human Rights standards (which will mean he can't be executed).

If he's handed over to an international court it'll show that the US don't want Iraqis running their own affairs.

Are the US in breach of the Geneva conventions ?

The only item missing was on how the expense of keeping him might damage 'the already fragile US economy'. Maybe today.

Rejoice ! Rejoice !

England carve out a draw in Sri Lanka - and a nation breathes again.

Oh, and some bloke with a remarkable resemblance to Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been captured in Tikrit.


Exclusive Victorian-style photograph of Saddam Hussein seconds before he was brought before a military barber. Taken by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe

Already BBC Radio have found the downside. A commentator on R5 thought the use of the words 'We Got Him !' would offend people throughout Britain, not to mention the fabled Arab Street, in a state of permanent fury after Afghanistan, Iraq, Jenin, Gloucester and other imperialist atrocities, but seemingly as hard to find as the Mi-Go of the Himalayas.

BBC correspondents raised fears about the fairness of a possible trial, and worried about photographs and the Geneva Convention. Was Saddam in uniform ?

I believe its possible for a trial to be fair and yet the verdict to be known in advance.

The children weren't so concerned. My small daughter, who's been studying the sad fate of Guy Fawkes at her Catholic primary, wanted to know if he would be racked or have his fingernails removed. The eleven year old listened to the R5 correspondent and asked 'why don't they just shoot him ?'. I think he meant Saddam.

Over the last year we have heard a mighty chorus of voices urging that Iraq be run by the Iraqi people with no outside interference. Just watch those same people urge that Saddam not be handed over to the Iraqis.

We Want Diversity Of Everything Except Opinion ....

From the Sunday Times.

"THE government is to be challenged over its “cosy” relations with The Guardian after research revealed that almost two-thirds of public sector job advertisements are placed with the newspaper.
Most of the advertisements are run in the paper’s Society section. Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, former special adviser to Peter Mandelson, is in charge of the supplement.

Between January and September this year The Guardian was given 26,175 of the 42,914 public sector jobs advertised in national newspapers, according to data from Nielsen Media Research.

The number of public sector adverts in The Guardian dwarfs those in other newspapers. The second highest recipient is the Sunday Herald in Scotland with 7,586 and third is The Voice, an ethnic minority paper, with 2,719. The Times is fourth with 1,269 adverts, The Times Educational Supplement fifth with 1,255, and The Sunday Times seventh with 802. "


The 'quality' newspaper market in the UK is split as follows - Telegraph 36% (circulation 1m), Times (700K) 25%, FT (475K) 17%, Guardian (400K) 14%, Indie (225K) 8%. The Sunday Herald has a circulation of 59,000 - and gets more adverts than the Times.

And the Voice ? Dunno mate - they don't subject their sales figures to audit, as the Guardian explains. But we do get a teensy flavourette of the reason why they get more than 6% of Government advertising.

"The Voice's early sales were poor, but it was buoyed by job adverts from the newly aware London boroughs, which were willing to pour in money to satisfy their consciences, regardless of the response. "

An Eye For An Eye ...

Though I believe that justice should have an element of retribution, I'm not sure about this ....

UPDATE 29/12/2003 - Barbara Amiel is less squeamish ...

Don't Mention the C-word

The mighty Littlejohn on Tessa Jowell's new PC 'Seasonal' card, with its mosques, Hindu dancers and total absence of baby in manger.

"She certainly doesn’t give a stuff about offending devout Christians by sending them Muslim and Hindu symbols on a card to mark a holiday celebrating the birth of Christ.

You don’t have to be a born-again Godbotherer to find that “inappropriate.”

Would she send out an Eid card with a cross on the front and “Seasons Greetings” inside?

No, she’d probably turn up at her local mosque in a burka as a mark of respect, just as the Wicked Witch gets herself togged up like Mrs Gandhi whenever Blair goes rattling the collection tin around the wealthy Asian business community."

Even in India they're raising eyebrows - New Kerala News asks "Can you send a Christmas greeting card without mentioning the word 'Christmas'? In these politically correct times in Britain, this is possible.

Cards sent by the department of culture feature Hindu dancers, drawings of mosques and the word 'Goal' but there is no sign whatsoever of Jesus, Mary or even Santa Claus."

Left Wing Anti-Semitism II

Well, we've had the child-eating Jew courtesy of the Independent, the Jesus-killing Jew from the Episcopalians of Edinburgh - now may I present the Jew as Satan, courtesy of the American 'anti-war' movement.

Reported by Frontpage.



The cloven feet are hidden, but the horns are well in view. We really are revisiting those mediaeval glories. How long before we hear about poisoning the water ? And where are the flagellants ?

They Haven't Gone Away, You Know

This seems as good a time as any to blog about the BNP. They've lost a few council seats and have pretty much fallen off the political radar since they gained 17 (or thereabouts) council seats in May, accompanied by many Guardian articles and much soul-searching by decent sorts like Harry.

But no-one in the media commented upon July's staggering revelation that the BNP site had risen in eighteen months from pretty much nowhere to become the most popular site of any UK political party, according to Alexa.

I knew little about Alexa at the time. It's an Amazon subsidiary offering a free browser toolbar which blocks popups and also gives information about the site you're browsing. Of course to get the info, it has to tell Alexa which sites you're visiting, giving the company a tremendous analytical tool. Several million people have downloaded the toolbar so they have a fair sample of Web users, thugh probably US and Euro-biased.

Using the information, Alexa can rank the website and can extrapolate (comparing the number of toolbar users online with the total number of Web users online) to give a rough idea of what they call the reach - the number of people per million surfers who will visit the site in a given day.

The BNP site was ranked at 40,000-odd in August, compared to Labour's 80,000 and the BBC's 25th, Guardian 350th, Telegraph 750th, Spectator 15,000th. So it's the 40,000th most popular site among Alexa users.

The last 3 months have been quiet ones with little media coverage. Yet the site has risen by 10,000 places and is now ranked at 30,000 over the last 3 months. That doesn't sound like a party that's peaked. 'Reach' is 50 people per million. I tried to translate this into visits, using as a template a site I ran for a couple of years which had a reach of 0.15. This equates to about 20,000 unique sessions a year from the site's stats. Scale up for a reach of 50 (approx 300 times 0.15) and you're looking at maybe 600,000 hits a year. That's not a small number.

This doesn't mean that we should be manning the barricades yet. The BNP will only become a credible political force when self-proclaimed nationalist bands are in the charts and the hippest rebels in school identify with them. I see no signs at all of such a culture change (and think it likely that such a change would not be pleasant).

But it does mean that the sky is darkening and occasional clucking is audible as a few more liberal chickens come home to roost. Interesting times.

UPDATE 14/12/03 - Great maths - 300 times 20,000 equates to 6 million hits per year, not 600,000. That does sound improbable I admit ... but the site has since risen another couple of thousand places ... and a Calderdale councillor has defected from the Tories. Mind you, the Socialist Party won a council seat a week or two back - but that doesn't get the publicity that a BNP win does. The BBC and Guardian devote attention to the BNP for the same reason people watch horror films or read crime novels - that little liberal frisson of vicarious contact with unknown evil. They'll live to regret it, I tell you ...

Targeted Recruitment ?

London's police are worried about black gun crime.



Advert for the MOD Police in The Voice, 'Britain's Best Black Newpaper'.

Just The Thing For Christmas



Hat-tip to strategypage, the site for all armchair generals.

What Is It

With Welsh Labour MPs ? First Ron 'Badger' Davies, now this. "I will not myself be distracted from standing up for the people of the Rhondda." Could you rephrase that ?

Are such incidents the real reason why red-blooded Paul Marsden left Labour for the party of Lloyd George - a Welshman who knew one end of a woman from the other ?

At least George Thomas was discreet.

Left-Wing Anti-Semitism

The suppressed EU Report on anti-semitism is now available online, and it contains a couple of fascinating asides in the section devoted to the UK. Apparently "assaults on Jews since October 2000 “have often been sustained beating leading to hospitalisation, compared with the `roughing up` by neo-Nazis that more typically occurred before. The data of the CST show that an increasing number of incidents are “caused by Muslims or Palestinian sympathisers, whether or not they are Muslims”"

I certainly hadn't heard before about the Edinburgh Church with the mural depicting Roman and Israeli soldiers around the dead Christ. They killed Jesus ! Along with the Independent cartoon featuring a baby-eating Sharon, it looks as if the arguments against Jewry which were so convincing to our 12th-century forebears are back.

"Many British Jews are of the opinion that the press reporting on Israeli policy is spiced with a tone of animosity, “as to smell of anti-Semitism” as The Economist put it. In their opinion this is above all the case with the two quality papers, the Guardian and the Independent. "

"The Economist spoke of a “steady shift of sympathy away from Israel, especially on the left”."

Why, Oh Why ? I'm old enough to remember when a few months on a kibbutz was almost compulsory for a young leftie. And during the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars the jokes in England were, fairly or not, all at the expense of the Arabs ('five reverse gears and one forward in case of attack from behind'). What's happened ?

Now what follows is painted with a pretty broad brush, and takes no account of the many valid criticisms that can be made of the State of Israel. I'm looking not so much at the rights and wrongs as at motivations - and motivations differ. Once, some wanted to build strong unions and help their comrades - others - on the same political side - wanted to despoil plutocrats. Some wanted to build socialism - some wanted to kick fascists. Some love animals - others hate fox-hunters. Some support the rights of the Afghans and Iraqis to sovereignty, be that sovereignty manifested in a theocracy or dictatorship - others (a lot more) simply hate George Bush.

Those who hate the existing order will find allies where they can, and if those who personify the existing order dislike your new allies, so much more do you have in common.

Way back in homogenous 20s and 30s England, when the exotic (but relatively tiny) immigrant quarters of London, with their Jews, Russians, Letts and seafaring communities provided colour for a generation of crime and adventure writers, from Dorothy L Sayers to Dornford Yates, the Jews were about the most exotic 'other' that existed. And there was a fair amount of anti-semitism in the ruling class. It was natural for those opposed to the existing order to make common cause with them - and of course at that time Israel was only a dream. The Jews of Germany had literally nowhere to go - Baldwin's refugee appeal poster 'Get Them Out Before It Is Too Late' was tragically prophetic. Nigel Balchin's middlebrow novel 'The Fall Of the Sparrow' gives a picture of middle-class anti-Fascist action on the streets of 30s London.

A few things have happened since those days.

The Jews, for the first time in millennia, have a homeland.

White liberal guilt and self-loathing, belief in political Original Sin, has increased in inverse relation to belief in religious Original Sin. We are natural racists, polluters, misogynists, homophobes. We have sinned against our fellow man and our planet. And the greatest sinners are straight white males, subject to inspection and criticism of a sort which would be intolerable if applied to any other minority. The obverse of this is that members of other races are cut a good deal more slack than Whitey is. I chanted outside South Africa House with 25,000 others eighteen years ago. Where are the mobs waiting to sack the Zimbabwe Embassy ?

And now England has much more interesting 'others' - like the British Muslims. For those who hate 'stupid white men', use phrases like 'hideously white' to describe an organisation, or complain, as a recent Guardian piece did, that Poland is an unbelievably dull place due to its all-white population, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses few dilemmas.

On one side, dark-skinned people with a strange religion, who blow things up and are very angry. On the other, white-skinned (they don't know what a Sephardic Jew is, never mind a Falasha), educated, Westernised people who read the Bible and have the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. No argument, really, is it ?

For what passes for the Left in the post-Soviet world, the Jews have outlived their usefulness.

I Have A Vision Of The Future, Chum

It used to be said that California was our future - that whatever was hot there would inevitably come to pass in our own land. This has been pretty accurate as far as the last half-century's concerned - from sex/drugs/r'n'r to counselling, fitness centres and the rise of the me generation, California led the way.

I like to think though that Scotland is a model of England's future. The politics of the country is dominated by the Central Belt from Glasgow to Edinburgh, where the majority of the population live. Labour have controlled things for a century, with the usual mix of idealism alongside corruption.

But of course, despite having its own legal and education system, arguably both superior to the English one. the country was part of the UK, subject to the laws of Westminster. No more (in many though of course not all areas), since the Scottish Parliament came into existence.

Now the left in Scotland is in a most happy situation. Total control of the legislative body, a massive budget to spend, a host of quangos to subsidise and appoint your friends to - and the whole thing heavily subsidised by the oppressor across the Border !

So we can expect to see in Scotland the agenda which the left would like to see in England.

Massively increased NHS spending, up to European averages. Done. Oh dear - Scotland has the worst health in the UK.

Abolish hunting. Done.

Republicanism, anti-Americanism and integration into an EU superstate. Can't be done. Such constitutional matters haven't been devolved. Otherwise Blair would have had to fight Iraq without Scottish regiments, Britain's submarines would have left Faslane, Lossiemouth and Kinloss would be empty of aircraft. And what would happen to the 'secret' US base in Kintyre ?

Make it illegal for a parent to smack their child. Half way. When French tourists are banged up for disciplining their child in a restaurant, or a teacher is sacked for smacking a daughter who plays up in the dentist's waiting room, the message gets useful reinforcement. Thank God we spend our holidays in the (socially conservative though politically radical) Highlands and Islands (Though children rarely seem to misbehave carving down ski-slopes or wandering Arran's beaches).

Of course, once you've completed this, you're well on the way to the nationalisation of children, to that happy state described by Polly Toynbee where the state is 'the best possible nanny to all babies'.

Strange that as this progressive movement increases its influence, so increases the background noise from teachers and others bemoaning the rise in badly-behaved children.

But it's the (relatively) smaller politically correct things that make a culture. Fancy a job on this quango ?

"Transsexuals will be given new birth certificates and will have the right to marry if they can satisfy a gender recognition panel that they have changed sex."

What a job. Coming soon, the gender recognition consultant ? Professor of Gender Recognition at the University of South-West Scotland, formerly Annan Working Men's Club ? The Institute Of Gender Recognition ? And just imagine the appeal procedures.

Or the NHS hospital that amputates the legs of otherwise healthy people with "Body Dysmorphic Disorder" - a condition in which people are dissatisfied with their bodies as they are, and wish they were different. Which means 95% of the population and 100% of women suffer from it.

You couldn't make up the fact that the amputee 'now feels like a complete person' or surgeon Robert Smith's remark that for the patient, having both legs was a 'quite seriously disabling condition'.