Why the Blessed Margaret is to blame for absolutely everything

IT IS entirely appropriate that on the 80th anniversary of the General Strike, we should remind ourselves that Class Warfare is alive and well and living in Farringdon Road, London EC1.

That, of course, is the headquarters of The Guardian, nominally the spiritual home of the nation’s leather-elbowed, lentil-eating, Liberal tendency, but also the hiding place of a dangerous cell of hardline, bile-spewing, Marxist nutters (none of whom seems hardline enough to turn down the generous salaries on offer there).

Now it’s long been known that The Guardian plans to hold a celebratory ball to mark the occasion of the sad but inevitable death of Lady Thatcher. Lefties from all over the country will flock to London to sip organic turnip juice and dandelion wine before traipsing off across town to dance on the poor woman’s grave.

Such bitterness is impressive, and goes a long way towards explaining how they manage to find a way to blame the Blessed Margaret for every calamity from the Asian tsunami to the cancellation last Tuesday of the 08.32 from Penge West to Purley.

The dear lady’s latest crime against humanity – if you believe the hate-mongers – is to have cost England any chance of winning next month’s World Cup in Germany. How can this be, you ask? Has she been called in to advise on tactics? Surely she hasn’t been distracting the tumescent Sven from his duties?

No, according to the Trots with Typewriters, Lady Thatcher is to blame for our imminent embarrassment because, while Secretary of State for Education way back in 1970, she ended the daily supply of free milk to secondary school pupils.

This apparently led in turn to generations of children suffering from calcium deficiency and a gradual weakening of the bones, finally reaching its natural conclusion on a football pitch in London at just after 2pm on Saturday, April 29, 2006, when Wayne Rooney suffered multiple fractures to his right metatarsal.

So there you have it: 36 years of festering and they’re still laying disaster at her door. Sheer, bloody-minded genius.

IT HAS to be said that if the boy Wayne had been wearing proper football boots, rather than the skimpy slippers currently fashionable, we might still be on course for a repeat of 1966.

My first boots were the kind you see Sir Stanley Matthews wearing in black and white newsreels – round-toed, leather-studded, ankle-high, and made out of leather from very old cows with very thick skins. You had to treat them with liberal applications of a mysterious potion called “dubbin” before you could even get them on.

But they were a necessary evil when one had to deal with the leather medicine ball known as “the casey”, an often immoveable object when you’re five years old and it’s raining.

(My last pair of boots, abandoned with the rest of my kit after a disastrous Sunday League outing against a 17-year-old winger 10 years ago, reside in a sports bag at the back of the garage. I’m genuinely frightened to open it having seen the Quatermass Experiment as a child.)

OUR CHANCES of World Cup success in 2010 don’t seem any brighter either now that the Powers That Be have finally got round to banning children from playing football in the street.

Police in Blackpool - a town with rampant binge-drinking, twice the national average of violent crime and a high incidence of sexual assaults – have sent letters to residents in the South Shore area warning that street football is an offence under the 1980 Highways Act and that offenders are liable to prosecution and a £50 fine.

As well as seeming a little heavy-handed, the police action has infuriated parents who would prefer their children to be playing outside in the street where they can keep an eye on them, rather than having them cooped up in a darkened bedroom attacking imaginary prostitutes with chain saws in the latest video game.

(And remind me, isn’t the government spending millions on tackling the appalling rate of child obesity?)

When I were a lad, we played football in the street from dawn until dusk, with a goal painted on the gable end of the last house in the terrace. Now I admit that the constant, repetitive thudding of ball against brick might have proved irritating for the resident of the house but the council, obviously recognising its obligations to our national sport, seemed to have a policy of housing deaf old ladies in gable end houses to minimise complaints. They used to come and take them away in an ambulance eventually, so no harm done.

If we stop kids from playing football where and when they want, we’re killing off the development of skills that earlier generations so valued. The Battle of Waterloo might have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the 1966 World Cup was won on the cobbled streets of Northern cities. Just ask Nobby Stiles.

I AM confused about the supposed difficulty of tracking down all these dangerous foreign criminals that the government has kindly released onto our streets. It can’t be that hard.

Surely all PC Plod has to do is stake out the nation’s benefits offices, where every single one of the fugitives will turn up for their regular State handout before long?

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 who can't wait for Big Brother to start on Thursday, of anyone who really believes that cheese strings are made out of cheese, or of anyone complaining that this nonsense was posted late again this week. When you pay, you can moan. Until then, button it.