We suppose it's nice to know that pointless bullying is not confined to the authorities in this country.
In France a mother has been banned from wearing a three-piece "burkhini" outfit at several local swimming pools. The 35-year-old Muslim convert was told it was 'inappropriate on hygiene grounds', but she is insisting the ban is racial discrimination. It follows French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently attacking Muslim burkhas as a 'sign of subservience' for women and saying they should be banned.
The woman said: 'It would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing off my body, which is what Islam recommends'. She approached a number of swimming pools before one manager said he'd allow it. She has made a formal complaint to police.
Yannick Decompois, swimming pools director for the Marne-la-Vallie area, said: 'This isn't anything to do with discrimination, but simply a hygiene problem. We also ban people wearing shorts in pools - it's the same thing.'
French pools routinely bar any clothes that can also be worn outside, where they can pick up dirt and contamination, though of course the same could be said of ordinary swimming-trunks and bikinis.
France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, an estimated 5million. But in 2004 it passed a law banning the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, sparking fierce debate at home and abroad.
Now we have nothing to say in support of Muslim sensibilities. Muslim people who want to live in Western countries should be adopt the public habits of those countries, just as they would expect of Westerners visiting the Middle East. The PC Brigade's determination to champion Muslim beliefs at the expense of the rest of society is damaging to us all.
But the claim that this ban is for purposes of hygiene is plainly ridiculous, and represents just another facet of PC "we know what's best for you" mentality. If a pair of swimming trunks is hygienic, so is a t-shirt or a pair of pyjamas. Any clothing is hygienic if it's clean when it goes in the pool. In fact we'd be willing to bet that this lady's costume is a damn sight more salubrious than the average Frenchman's crotch.
Still, when one lot of PC prejudice comes into conflict with another lot of PC prejudice, that may well be a good thing. Perhaps while the PC Nazis are fighting each other they'll leave the rest of us alone for a bit.
Meanwhile closer to home - in Liverpool, in fact - children under 18 will be banned from watching films that depict characters smoking under plans being considered by council 'thought police'. Under the proposals, both the original 1960's cartoon and the 1996 movie version of 101 Dalmations could face a ban due to Cruella de Ville's trademark cigarette holder.
An 18 certificate - usually reserved for movies with violent and sexual content - will be slapped on any film featuring smokers that fails to explain cigarettes are bad for you.
The ban will target new releases, but could also affect older films such as Disney's Peter Pan, the Little Mermaid and Pinocchio if they are reissued and reclassified. Casablanca, Titanic and Lord of the Rings would also be restricted to adults under the plans proposed for Liverpool.
One exception to the new rules will be movies which feature major historical characters who are known to be smokers. So any films with Winston Churchill brandishing his trademark cigar would not be affected. Well, that's big of them. But the only others to get the green light from Liverpool City Council will be those which provide a 'clear and unambiguous portrayal of the dangers of smoking, other tobacco use, or second-hand smoke', the council said.
The proposal has been made to the authority's licensing and gambling committee by Liverpool Primary Care Trust, which demanded the changes on the grounds that 29 per cent of Liverpudlians smoke - 7 per cent higher than the national average - and 3,300 children in the city take up smoking every year. The plans are now part of a consultation with residents being run by Liverpool's Liberal Democrat council.
Yesterday, Tory local government spokesman Bob Neill said: 'This is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is not the role of town halls to act as puritanical thought police, banning children from watching films like Lord of the Rings, 101 Dalmatians or Casablanca because they offend politically correct sensibilities. Parents are most concerned about knife crime and violence being glamorised. Councils would be better focusing on tackling the supermarkets and newsagents which peddle alcohol and cigarettes to teenagers and kids.'
There is no truth in the rumour currently circulating in the city that in future the 29% of residents who smoke will be compelled, on pain of a fixed-penalty fine imposed by council smoking wardens, to wear at all times a placard saying "Yes, I smoke but it's bad for you and I'm a very evil person".
This idea that the PC Nazi message must be embedded in every facet of life has already taken deep root on the BBC, where no environmental, nature, wild-life or travel programme is ever screened without some observation about the alleged global warming or the alleged damage man is doing to every tiny bit of the planet or the fact that practically every species of plant, animal, insect, bird, fish or invertebrate is about to die out and it's all our fault.
What puzzles us is how these people decide which bit of PC lunacy to target. How long will it be before every war film is screened with a health warning about the dangers of violent conflict between nations? When will TV cooks like Rick Stein include brief messages about the dangers of kitchen knives? Can we look forward to the day when no films will be awarded a certificate of any kind if they portray fat people in either (a) a negative light because that's discriminatory against fatties, or (b) a positive light because that may encourage children to pig out on chips and burgers?
Mind you, a fifty-foot high health warning in flashing lights at the door of every McDonald's might not be a bad thing.
Speaking of warning signs, recently a 10-year-old boy was swept to his death after playing in a notorious stretch of river where there were none. Tom Haile believed the River Severn to be shallow enough to walk in but shifting sands hid a sudden 12ft drop. His body was found the following day on a mud bank after a 13-hour search by police, fire and coastal rescue services in Arlingham, Gloucestershire.
His 16-year-old cousin and 24-year-old uncle who were with him in the water had battled in vain to save his life, an inquest heard today. One said 'We started walking through the water. I thought it was going to be safe enough and that we wouldn't be out of our depth. The next thing I saw was Tom being swept under. I jumped in to grab him. I couldn't hold him as the current was too strong. It took him out of my arms. He was too heavy as he was struggling as well. All I could think about was keeping his head above the water. I could just about kick my legs to keep him afloat.'
He added 'I know how strong the current is and always treated it with respect. Danny had lived there all his life and I believe he treated the river the same.'
And what's the inevitable conclusion? Yes, you've guessed it - a call for warning signs. "Danger, water - may be wet", and "Warning: you cannot breathe water".
We sympathise with the parents who have lost a playful and adventurous child, but for the mother to say 'I'm concerned there are no warning signs down there. They have now put up a lifebelt, but that's way up the bank,' and for the Daily Mail to call for action over signs, is absurd. Water's dangerous, mum. You knew that. We ALL know that. What are you saying, that you and your son and his cousin and uncle are so stupid that you need written signs to remind you? You can't be all that stupid or you wouldn't be able to read the signs.
The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, which is a relief. There are probably those out there who would have preferred a verdict of murder by the local council who should, supposedly, have prevented the tragedy. Why is it that these days we are unable to admit that accidents do happen, that people do make mistakes, and everything doesn't have to be someone's fault?? If this accident was anyone's fault, it was the fault of the people who went into the water and their family who allowed it. To call for warning signs is just shirking their own responsibilities.
This wimpish attitude in the British press and certain (rather large) sections of the populace is all-pervasive and shameful. It's not often we can find it possible to applaud the utterances of any government spokesman, but we were pleased to hear this week that Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth had said publicly that the British public's 'defeatist' attitude is letting down troops in Afghanistan.
He claimed that troops in Afghanistan were not receiving the proper backing from the ‘home front’ as they carry out their mission to defeat the Taliban. He was, of course, trying to shift the blame away from his government who are themselves failing to support the troops by giving them the weapons and equipment they need. But that doesn't alter the fact that every time another soldier's body comes home there are media-encouraged, very public displays of grief that would have been unthinkable thirty or forty years ago. We have all become so used to the heart-on-sleeve advertising of every tiny emotion on Big Brother, to the absurd tantrums of celebrities, to the constant whining of contestants on talent shows about how much they want this, that we all seem to think that twitching about in the gutter in floods of tears is the right and normal way to behave when anything goes wrong.
It isn't. If the British nation have any distinguishing characteristic, it used to be a fair measure of phlegm, a bloody-minded obstinacy in the face of foreigners - in other words, we used to have balls. If we are to retain any shred of national pride, we need to address this decline. It doesn't matter why we are in Afghanistan, it doesn't really matter whether going there in the first place was a good decision or not, we did it, and we should see it through. If we decide to turn tail and run from a bunch of ignorant, lunatic Arab peasants, we might as well abdicate and accept our rôle as a new third-world country.
This week we were shown the way by an immigrant.
Shop assistant Amevi Kouassi didn't think twice about tackling a burly yob he saw attack an old woman. 'I had to help,' he said. 'The way I was brought up in my home country of Togo, if you hear someone call for help, you have to go to their aid. It's what we are taught as children. If someone is in trouble you need to help them. It is wrong to ignore them and walk away.'
After hearing the 70-year-old pensioner's screams he grabbed the man who had just mugged her in Sheffield city centre, wrestled him to the ground and locked him in a nearby church hall office while he waited for police to arrive. The mugger, Marc Smith, 37, escaped out of a fire exit, but the description given to police and CCTV evidence led to his swift arrest and conviction.
And what was the onlooker's response to Amevi's bravery? Cries of adulation? Did they offer to buy him a drink? Did they start a campaign to win him permanent British citizenship?
Well, no, not exactly. As one bystander told him, "The man might have had a knife!"
See what we mean? No balls.
Sadly this good citizen's determined action was not matched by that of the police (you remember the police? The so-called "force" that we pay to protect us?) in Cambridgeshire this week. When two student nurses dialled 999 and said that a gang of men had broken into their block of flats and were threatening to rape them, when one of them then phoned her dad who is an ex-magistrate and he started repeatedly ringing the police as well, what was their response?
An hour later the nurses were told they were classed as a ' secondary emergency' because they had barricaded themselves in behind a locked door. Police actually arrived a full four hours later, by which time, luckily, the gang had given up and run off.
The Chief Constable has apologised. That'll make them feel a lot better, we're sure.
That's another thing - apologies. We're obsessed with apologies these days. We want politicians to apologise, we demand fulsome apologies from erring bankers, whenever anyone in public life does or says anything they might be a little bit ashamed of the newspapers demand an apology and usually get it. When David Cameron made a gaffe the other week he couldn't apologise quick enough. Actually we thought he was quite witty. He said words to the effect that he didn't partake in Twitter because "several twits make a twat". He also used the expression "pissed off". I mean, the rest of us never say that, do we? And what of the people who complained? How did they know that in some parts of the country the word "twat" is used to mean the female genitals? I mean, you'd have to be a bit of a potty-mouth yourself even to know that, wouldn't you?
What earthly good does an apology do? Does it make the apologiser a better person? Does it have any effect on them at all, apart from forcing them to abase themselves publicly? Does it make the person who is apologised to feel any better? Does it remove the original offense?
No, on all counts. We don't want apologies. What we want is (a) a bit of common sense so things don't go wrong in the first place, (b) a bit of action when it's required from the people who are paid to take that action, and (c) a bit of what our ancestors used to call "bottom" - by which they meant BALLS!
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