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Well Darlings,

I think something has gone wrong with our solar system. Could we be stuck with a permanent full moon? I mean, there must be something to account for all the lunacy I've seen lately. We have nutters calling for Romeo and Juliet to no longer be a passionate play in our schools. They want the kissing taken out of it, saying a quick peck and a fleeting hug should suffice. Yeah, right! Like if that's all they mean to each other they're actually going to kill themselves? Why not just ban the play and be done with it? I'm sure it won't be long before these fools notice that half the cast are running around with rapiers. I wonder what will they make of that, when they do?

There's more steamy sessions in an episode of EastEnders than in this play, so why don't these do-gooders butt out? It's just a play for God's sake! A romantic one - not an orgy. It's acting, and it's all part and parcel of growing up to occasionally be embarrassed. What's wrong with it? And what's wrong with learning about romance? Surely it's better than the "Hey, bitch! Wanna sh*g?" society into which we have drifted, isn't it? Whoever thought up these stupid "guidelines" should pop into their nearest newsagent and pick up some of the reading material aimed at this age group. They should read some of the "Agony" columns to discover what many of those little darlings they are trying to protect by stopping the enactment of a kiss in a play actually get up to after school.

If some idiot is so concerned about the odd one in a class who is a bit shy then they should be trying to do something about that young person's peers and the world in which they all really live. Kids have to cope with all kinds of pressures today simply because in the past some of these do-gooders have deprived them of learning anything of value. Discipline we know has gone, but so too has individuality and choice of religion and sport and competitiveness and team spirit and honour and pride and all the other things needed to produce a responsible adult with decent values. When will these stupid people learn that we are all individuals? If a kid doesn't want to kiss another kid in a school play then that should be respected and someone else should be offered the part. Probably half the class would jump at it! But to try to ban a kiss in a play for everyone in case the odd person should be embarrassed is ridiculous. This is trying to even us all out down to the lowest possible common denominator. It's stealing our individuality. It's abuse!

Whatever will these do-gooders want to ban next? No, don't tell me. I think I've guessed. It won't be long before someone will make an ass of themself by finding Bottom offensive in Midsummer Night's Dream! They are idiots! Nothing Shakespeare wrote is offensive.

Offensive is invading a country and killing thousands of innocent people in order to get at one man. Yes, he might have been torturing and killing his own people - but that doesn't mean that we have the right to do it! And anyway, that wasn't the reason we were given for going to war. Offensive too is the way we were duped into it.

Offensive is trying to deprive one people of their culture whilst protecting another people's culture. If these do-gooders want to ban (as they do) Christmas and Nativity plays in case they should offend another culture then they should be wanting to ban all celebrations for all cultures - and what a sad day that would be! I would rather see everyone celebrating in their own ways as individuals and respecting, even enjoying, each other's differing cultures. There can't be a culture in the world that isn't represented in our country today. We have to learn to respect each other's differences - we can't all give up everything to become a nation of nothings. This is one common denominator we must not allow!

Offensive are our towns and cities on a weekend night. In Swindon the Salvation Army has been forced out of their town centre headquarters where they have been for years immemorial, the Citadel Church in Fleet Street, because it is now one of the only buildings in the area that is not a pub or a club. They say, "We can no longer put up with the three nights a week where the front porch of the building is used as a public toilet and becomes covered in human vomit and excrement and we can barely use the hall on a Saturday."

Now I'm not an avid Sally Bash fan, but I respect them and I acknowledge all the good (the real type of good) that they do. Their members make a promise not to drink alcohol when they join and, apart from all the other much needed services they provide, every year the organisation helps thousands of men and women across the country break their dependence on alcohol. They are an asset to any town. So, offensive were the people that allowed premises after premises around them to become alcohol dependent businesses. Offensive too is that because of their (the council's?) stupidity decent people now feel frightened to go into their own town centre in the evenings at weekends.

Those are the kind of things that are truly offensive to people - not Romeo kissing Juliet in a school play! I mean, is there any comparison? No, there isn't. If we really want to find offensive close to home we need look no farther than the little army of do-gooders who are ruining our society. Not only are they offending us, they are abusing us too. It's high time we dealt with them!

More moon madness? How about the accommodation that's being provided for our students? The luxury accommodation with en-suite bedrooms, hi-speed Internet, recreation rooms and lounges etc. Now whilst I appreciate we need to ensure there is adequate accommodation provided for students, do we really have to supply them with an environment and a lifestyle the likes of which half the country can't afford for themselves? It's lunacy. The rent for some of these places next year will be far exceeding the student grants - so where's the sense in them?

I'm a firm believer that this is a time in the lives of those who will one day be the captains of society for them to learn some humility. A time for them to live basically and to learn and appreciate all that, for the most of them, they will probably never experience again in their lifetimes, but will forevermore remember and hopefully consider. Mollycoddling our students, and in doing so giving them even greater debts with which to contend, is not helping them one iota. Some of them are going to be in for an awful shock when they finish their education and hit the real world. En-suites, indeed! In my day we never knew what a cold seat was in the mornings!

Moving on: I have a suspicion the Liberal Democrat Lord Carlile and his inquiry team have been taking too much of the moonlight too. Whilst the death of the fifteen-year-old boy, Gareth Myatt, in April 2004 whilst in custody was a sad and terrible tragedy, and one that should never have happened, to start talking about these young offenders as if they were angelic children is more lunacy. Few of them are children in the terms that we might think of children. For many of them they are thugs who wouldn't think twice about sticking someone with a knife. Some will be in these places for that very reason; some for more horrifying reasons.

The fact that physical force has to be used so frequently, with injuries to both staff and children not being uncommon, tells me this is not the time to go soft. Yes, there may be some wardens who are over-zealous, and perhaps a few who do relish baiting the offenders, and those need to be sought out and re-trained or dealt with as they deserve, but to suggest that wardens should not carry out strip searches without evidence or use force or even handcuffs to restrain some of the thugs when they become threatening is inviting trouble - very big trouble. Of course, in the outside world if we were to use some of the tactics on normal children that have been employed in these secure units it would be seen as child abuse - but these are not normal children. If they were they wouldn't be locked up.

I suggest Lord Carlile, with some of the people from his inquiry team up to the number of wardens normally on duty at one of these units, should take over a wing in one these places for a week to see how far they get with their soft attitude. If they all came out unscathed, I'd be very surprised. Many years ago I had the misfortune to visit three such places (as a visitor - I hasten to add!) and as rough as they were then, by all accounts they are even more so today. To start a media frenzy and to give our army of do-gooders a cause to relish with all this talk of: "they're still children," is irresponsible. Before we know it they will insist on giving the juvenile offenders luxury apartments with en-suite bedrooms, hi-speed Internet, recreation rooms, lounges with plasma wide-screen televisions, and breakfast in bed. What ten-year-old isn't going to want to beat the next granny over the head if he's got all that to look forward to?

And for yet even more moon madness we have the head teacher in Suffolk who has banned hot cross buns in case they offend the small minority of her pupils who are Jehovah's Witnesses. "We decided to have the cross removed in respect of their beliefs," she is reported saying. Well, what about the respect for the majority - the conventional Christians? Don't they count for anything? Quite obviously this woman, as most of these people are, is on such a political correctness mission in her life that she is blinded to common sense. Could she not have counted the few in number non-Christians in her school and ordered just that amount without crosses? Is that too hard? If it goes deeper than that with her, and it's the actual sight of the cross that's bothering her, then how long before she demands that we tear down all our churches "in case they should offend someone"? I find it shameful that we allow someone like this teach kids!

Other looney stories include the seven police who were operating a speed check all piling into a police van to give chase to a council employee in a council lorry who had tooted and given a thumbs up sign as he drove past them. Merely noting the number of the council lorry was a bit too easy, I suppose. Then there was the cannabis smoker who complained to police that he was sold bad weed. They arrested him. The weed was not the only dope to that story, I guess. The scientist who has spent God knows what in coming to the conclusion that the heart on a Valentine card is inspired by a woman's bottom as seen from the rear. Somehow that doesn't do it for me, how about you? The Italian Prime Minister who, the day after he had compared himself to Napoleon, has compared himself to Jesus. If I lived in Italy, I think I'd be a little worried right now. The man who stuck a pencil down his penis to keep it erect - and then had to have surgery to remove it. I've heard talk about putting lead in your pencil, but that's ridiculous! The seventeen prisoners who cut their wrists after wardens told them a television programme had been rescheduled and they would no longer be able to watch it. With that mentality is prison really the right place for these people? The boy who tumble-dried his little brother. He was the cool kid. And finally, although there were many, many more strange stories this week, another study. A barking mad one commissioned by Disney to mark the DVD release of Lady and the Tramp which, following a panel of experts listening to phone calls of recordings of barking dogs from all over the country, has concluded that dogs have regional accents. I'm guessing they had to be recordings - at the time all the dogs would have been out howling at the moon!

To finish with, in case you missed it, I'll leave you with the harrowing news that a twelve-year-old Florida schoolgirl has won the top prize with her science project that proves the toilet water is cleaner than the ice in fast food restaurants. Somehow, I really didn't want to know that!

"Ice with that, sir?"

"No, thanks. I'll just go and flush it a little!"

See you all next week, cherubs - unless that pesky moon should land on us!

"The Bitch!" 17/02/06.