The scandal of the killer reindeer

IN THE mean streets where I grew up, we didn’t have many reindeer.

Whippets, three-legged lurchers with a squint, foul-smelling ferrets and the occasional peregrine falcon living in someone’s airing cupboard, but no reindeer. Which must explain why we grew up so healthy.

We survived cots covered in lead paint, aspirin bottles without childproof lids, water that came out of a tap rather than a bottle, no seat belts in cars, walking home alone from school in the dark, riding bikes without wearing helmets, climbing trees and laughing at the strange man in the park when he offered to show us some puppies he had hidden in the bushes. But we were healthy.

Of course we had help. There was the polio vaccine they distributed on sugar lumps at school, the BCG injection that left a generation literally scarred and if you didn’t wear a smog mask to school you had to spend a week in an iron lung. But we were healthy. And that’s because we didn’t have reindeer.

I didn’t know this, but apparently they’re highly infectious. Look at one too closely and you’ll go blind; stroke one and your hand falls off. At least that’s opinion of health and safety officials in the town of Beverley, East Yorkshire, who are threatening to ban the traditional Christmas parade of Santa and his sleigh in case “onlookers brush against the reindeer and pick up an infection.” One possible solution is the distribution of antiseptic wipes to everyone in the crowd, just in case.

I could go on. Not a day passes without examples of blatant Scroogeisms filling our newspapers: the children who have to carry “glowsticks” instead of real candles, the town that’s afraid its Christmas lights will plummet to the ground and decimate the population, the politically-correct hand-wringers who prefer Winterval to Christmas because it’s “more inclusive” – the list expands every day.

Of course, no-one has ever been killed by an infectious reindeer, hideously burned by dripping candle wax or decapitated by a falling angel. And no-one - Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, or Jehovah’s bloody Witness – has ever complained that Christmas is too Christian.

But when you’re an H & S apparatchik happily occupying a self-perpetuating, publicly-funded job, that’s not the point. After all, if you didn’t find things to ban, people might notice that nothing actually needs banning.

I’M SURE that you, like me, were scandalised at the report that a lady called Margaret Boyle-White was pulled up by the police for breast-feeding her baby daughter on a street bench in Watton, Norfolk. Apparently a member of the public had complained about her lewd behaviour.

(Two quick points. All these double-barrelled married wimmin who are cropping up these days. Why don’t they just do the decent thing and take their husband’s name? Secondly, I’ve been to Norfolk. She’s lucky she wasn’t burned at the stake.)

Anyway, back to this outrageous scandal. Whatever happened to equality? If builders can strip to the waist while at work, why can’t a woman get her baps out whenever she wants?

And another thing. Why is it that if I’m caught looking into a naked neighbour’s bedroom with a pair of binoculars, it’s ME who gets arrested, yet if the self-same good-looking neighbour happens to be passing MY house when I’m stood naked in the bay window, it’s ME who gets arrested again? Where’s the equality in that?

Three months in the nick is no joke. Have we men got no rights at all?

THE QUESTION of whether or not the police should be armed has caused much debate in recent days. My opinion is definitely yes … as long as they’re stood in a line facing Gary Glitter.

AS WE live in a world of skewed priorities, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Ministry of Defence has spent £272,000 on works of art to decorate their Whitehall HQ while Our Boys in the Gulf and Afghanistan go short of essential equipment like body armour or even boots.

This goes to show the gulf (no pun intended) between our so-called civil servants and the people at the sharp end who they’re supposed to be serving.

Similarly, the NHS throws money around on sculptures and murals while patients can’t get the life-saving drugs they need. Now you can tell me that we’re talking about different sources of funding and different budgets, but only a moron would fail to see the message it sends out. “We matter; you don’t.”

I’M SURE those death-defying trials on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here have had you holding your breath. But don’t be fooled.

It may look as they’re dangling over a ravine or menaced by poisonous animals, but do you really think that the production company is going to let any of these “celebs” come to any serious harm? Imagine the insurance pay-outs, not to mention the end of a franchise that still brings in the viewers.

Take Jimmy Osmond trying to grab stars off the backs of kangaroos. “These animals are very dangerous, ” he was told. “They can even disembowel you.”

Well excuse me, but who carefully Velcroed the stars onto the kangaroos in the first place – a far more tricky task than simply pulling them off? Superman, perhaps?

Only Carol Thatcher seems oblivious to the situation, seemingly quite happy to set off driving a car across a rope bridge without a safety harness before she had to be restrained, but then, that’s good breeding for you.

Bushtucker Trials? It’s more dangerous stroking a reindeer.

MORE EQUALITY issues. Who amongst us would still argue that women should do the same jobs as men after two female probationer PCs turned up at a robbery in Bradford? Anyone? Thought not.

THE GAY propagandists have been at it again, committing the ultimate heresy by producing a homosexual Western called Brokeback Mountain in which two cowpokes (and I’m choosing my words carefully here) fall in love around the campfire (oops, there’s another one).

What tosh. Can you imagine Big John Wayne riding side-saddle or Clint Eastwood becoming The Man With No Name Because It’s Really Elsie? And since when did Shirley Bassey sing Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling? The mind boggles.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone stupid enough to suffer a tinsel-related injury this Christmas, of anyone who gives into their children’s pestering and buys a copy of Chico’s up-coming novelty single, or of anyone on benefits who’s already got an illuminations-size light show flashing away outside their council house. You’re dole scum. You’re not allowed to have fun.