Golliwogs! There... I've said it!
What’s going on with all this golliwog thing? How can we find that a golliwog is offensive while a cleric ranting outside a mosque or a demonstration calling for all us Westerners to be killed is quite OK? Political correctness seems to be following the same path to ultimate ridicule that the Feminist Movement trod. Eventually the demands become so pathetic and open to ridicule that that is exactly what they get. Anyway everyone knows women have always had the upper hand. The whole movement becomes a joke to the point where no one really takes it seriously. Now that’s a shame because there is a balance to be found. Sadly, all to often the point of balance is passed and tips the other way with no one noticing the point when we had that balance. Then, as my old history teacher taught me, the pendulum swings back the other way. His belief was that this is what history is all about and what it teaches us – the pendulum swings first one way and then the other. As time passes me by, and the pendulum continues to swing, I notice how right he was.
Banning golliwogs from the Queen’s shop at Sandringham and then going to great lengths to tell us that Her Maj doesn’t actually work in the shop herself (i.e. so don’t all you offended people start protesting outside Buck Palace) is plainly taking the “offended people” thing to new heights of daft. Sacking Carol Thatcher from the One Show is, however, entirely justifiable. In fact from the few times I have been subjected to the programme the BBC could do a lot worse than sack the lot of them. They could replace the programme with a series of desperate celebrities talking into the camera and advertising their new book or fitness DVD. The end result would be same and we wouldn’t be submitted that squinting Brummie who looks like Bennie Hill pretending to pretend he’s a bumbling fool.
Oh, sorry. Can’t say that – it’s offensive to people who squint, people from Birmingham and to Bennie Hill. Although he’s dead and had a rather “colourful” life so he doesn’t count.