Bald bed-wetters and a candle in the wind

JUST AS we’ve seen the Health Police move their attention from smoking to drinking to eating – with fat people now being left to die by the NHS – so the Thought Police have to keep shifting their sights.

With simple racism allegedly nailed – although it was never the widespread problem they made it out to be in the first place – they tried to argue that poking fun at the Welsh was just as bad. Prosecutions were even threatened against people who dared to suggest that many of the swarthy, short-arsed, cottage-burning thieves were less than likeable. Or were taking the poor bloody English taxpayer for a mug with their gold-plated Assembly building and their bilingual road signs for people who can’t even speak Welsh.

Luckily that scam has been seen as largely risible, but the monster that is the publicly-funded Turkey Army marches on. Work – or something that resembles it - must be found for those legions of lefties who have to vote Labour if they want to keep their non-jobs. So some bright spark invented “Gingerism”, i.e. the persecution of people with red hair.

So they must have been absolutely delighted when newspapers reported the tale of Kevin and Barbara Chapman, who claimed that anti-ginger prejudice had forced them and their four children to live like fugitives in their home town of Newcastle. The Chapmans, themselves flame-haired, and their four ginger-nutted kids, say they have had to move three times in the past three years after their council house windows had been smashed, graffiti had been sprayed on their walls and the children, aged between 10 and 13, were physically attacked.

(What particularly exercised the holier-than-thou newspapers was that Mr Chapman further claimed that the council had suggested he should dye his family’s hair to avoid further problems. Why this should upset anyone is beyond me. It seems like a perfectly sensible solution.)

Of course, as with any ginger-headed family on a council estate, these claims of persecution deserve closer examination. And it doesn’t take long before someone blows the gaff. It appears that the behaviour of the Chapmans and their brood might have, shall we say, “irritated” the local populace, so resulting in the alleged persecution. However, no matter.

We must listen to the whingeing. According to journalist Sharon Jaffa (auburn, verging on titian): “Attacking someone on the basis of their hair colour can be every bit as damaging as persecuting someone for their race or religion, and therefore, in some cases, needs to be taken just as seriously.” What utter tosh.

Now forgive me if I find this unfortunate affliction less than life-threatening. What’s the worst that’s going to happen to your average carrot top? True, they’re going to get bullied at school (being held down while someone plays join-the-dots on their face with a felt pen is about as bad as it gets), they’re not going to be able to go out in the sun without burning to a crisp in five minutes flat (the real reason why Prince Harry wasn’t sent to Iraq – spontaneous combustion), and there’s a very real danger that people might think that they’re Scotch, but that, really, is about it.

So to equate this to racism is both ridiculous and demeaning to the real victims of proper racism (if there is such a phrase). I don’t know of any slave trade involving gingers being shipped by Liverpool merchants from West Africa to the Caribbean (probably due to that spontaneous combustion thing). I’ve never seen a sign on a B&B door saying “No Dogs or Gingers”. I’ve yet to come across anyone denied a job just because their hair was a shade redder than strawberry blond, although I don’t suppose there’s much call for copper-topped catwalk models.

Gingers have also reached the top of their chosen professions despite this alleged discrimination. Take Henry VIII for instance. Or Mick Hucknall. Even Hitler was a ginge, although liberal use of Cherry Blossom boot polish, smuggled out of England by Rudolph Hess, helped disguise the aberration.

So can we have less of this nonsense please. Gingerness is nothing more than a simple genetic malfunction – to be precise, caused by a mutated MC1R gene. As such, it’s the same as baldness, or having a weak bladder.

Coming next week in The Guardian: How hundreds of thousands of bald men with damp underpants were sold into slavery on cotton plantations.

IS THERE such a thing as negative karma? If so, I think this might be an example.

“A blaze which gutted a pensioner's home was caused by a candle she had lit for missing tot Madeleine McCann. Over 20 firefighters battled the blaze after the candle set light to curtains at the fourth-floor flat in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Owner Mary Luckham was rushed to safety by neighbours and escaped uninjured.”

And I’m saying no more about it.

FURTHER to last week’s comments regarding the persecution of drivers, smokers and drinkers: if the government is going to let shoplifters, drunks and vandals off with just a warning if they promise not to do it again, is there any chance that this leniency might be extended to those who accidentally travel at 5mph over the speed limit?

No, thought not.

THE FAMILY of an 11-year-old cancer victim complain bitterly that they can’t get insurance to cover them for travelling to Florida so the child can swim with the bloody dolphins.

Her father says, without any trace of irony, “There’s no way we could go without insurance. If we needed hospital treatment it could run into hundreds and thousands of pounds.”
Exactly. Insurance is all about risk. It’s not there to subsidise freeloaders, however tragic.