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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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The GOS has been wondering for several days whether to write about this issue. In some ways it's too ludicrous even for him. But that never stopped him before, so here goes …
 
The television watchdog Ofcom have instructed Turner Broadcasting to review its catalogue of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and remove the bits where toons smoke. They think that this will help make smoking less glamorous to children.
 
And why have they made this lunatic decision? Because one sad person complained.
 
That's right, one. One single solitary bigot watched a couple of Tom and Jerry cartoons and protested because the cartoon cat was smoking. He didn't complain about the fact that Jerry is a mouse - a creature most of us would go to considerable lengths to remove from our houses. Mice are vermin. They carry diseases. We put poison down for them. Yet the cartoon mouse regularly outwits the dastardly cat and emerges as the hero. Why didn't our bigot protest about glamourising vermin?
 
Nor did he mention the violence. Tom and Jerry cartoons are incredibly violent - that's why we love them. Characters are smashed with hammers, run over by cars and trains, their tails are set on fire, they fall from great heights, they get nailed to the floor - it's hilarious. Why didn't our bigot complain that Tom and Jerry encourages small children to be violent and could spawn a rash of toddlers hitting each other on the head with hammers?
 
Because it doesn't, that's why. Our local crèche has never reported one of the children setting fire to another, dropping a friend from a third-floor window or tying him to the railway tracks. Nor have they noticed any toddlers lighting up in the stationery cupboard or indulging in a spot of promiscuous mouse-fondling. This probably indicates that the average four-year-old has a good deal more sense than the aforementioned bigot - or the pundits at Ofcom.
 
This is not the first time that public bodies have acted because of a handful of complaints. In 2004, Ofcom banned an advertisement that included a play on the word "faggot" because three radio listeners were offended. They also banned another advertisement that showed people shaking uncontrollably as a car drove past, because 10 viewers said it mocked people suffering from Parkinson's Disease. I wonder why nobody's complained about those "shake your ass" Renault adverts, which presumably are highly offensive to anyone with a fat bottom? Not that the GOS would know, of course - he's got a very thin bottom. It's the rest of him that's fat.
 
And it's not just Ofcom. Recently the police told a Hampshire householder to remove a sign saying "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses" after they received one complaint. Personally I think it's rather funny - but then perhaps the Hampshire police haven't had, as I did once, a Jehovah's Witness with small daughter in tow, knocking on the door on Christmas Day! Last year a school in Swindon invited prisoners who were nearing the end of their sentences to visit the school and help with (non-compulsory) PE lessons. They had to cancel the invitation when one parent complained.
 
So, Ofcom, for being a bunch of weak-kneed, politically correct, tight-arsed anal retentives with no sense of proportion (or of the ridiculous, come to that), you are our Wankers of the Week. Congratulations.
 
As for the pea-brained bigot who's got nothing better to do during the day than watch Tom and Jerry and look for things to take offence at, he is beneath contempt. The best I can offer him is "Wanker of the Minute". I hope a mouse dashes out of the wainscot and bites him on the bum. And I hope it's a very dirty mouse, and gives him a disease.
 

 
The GOS says: I find that almost everything I've said here had already been written (better, probably) by Brendan O'Neill in "The First Post". My apologies to him. But if a thing's worth saying, it's worth saying at least twice, and there's no copyright on opinions - just because someone's already expressed a view, that doesn't mean the rest of us have to shut up about it.
 

 
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