Agricultural shows - a bastion of political incorrectness

TWO ministers fall out and the Prime Minister gives them a telling- off. That's all, folks. If you want a perfect example of a Westminster-village story, an issue which gets political correspondents ridiculously excited but means nothing to anybody else, the Gove/May spat is it. Meltdown? Bloodbath? Don't be daft. The silly season must have started early.

AS for the "Trojan horse" allegations of Islamic extremists targeting Birmingham schools, what did anyone expect? Most religions preach that their faith is the ultimate truth, their prophet is the real thing, his followers are the chosen ones and unbelievers are not. The moment you allow a holier-than-thou mindset loose in education, you risk turning state schools into hate schools. Britain's schools should be for education, not indoctrination. "Faith school" is a contradiction in terms.

I WONDERED idly last week how much of the new £148-a-week state pension will go back into the state's coffers. The depressing answer is about 44 per cent. That's the percentage of the gross domestic product of the UK which, despite endless promises about "smaller government" over the past 30 years, is still spent on government.

AND off to our local agricultural show, a jolly rural bastion of political incorrectness where, if you are fortunate enough to have the right combination of limbs, dogs, sheep and cattle, it is still possible to win a prize for a British Blonde, Best Six Legs and Prettiest Bitch.

THERE was also an advert for a one-stop semen shop. Townies find that sort of thing rather disturbing.

THE heavens opened in the middle of the bull judging and it was whispered among the crowd that brown stains had been spotted running into one bull's coat. There was talk of artificial colourings, of Grecian hair dye, or even Bisto. I have a mental image of a bull detecting the whiff of Bisto rising from its steaming flanks and thinking: "Ahhh! That smells good. I wonder what it is?"

"VETERANS and military enthusiasts gathered on the D-Day beaches," begins one report from Normandy. Is there some way we can avoid mentioning these two groups in the same breath? Veterans were soldiers and deserve our respect. Military enthusiasts dress up like soldiers and tear around the battlefields and cemeteries of northern France, bathing in the reflected glory of real soldiers, and are a bit of an embarrassment.

YOU could get the impression that the D-Day troops stormed up the beaches and won the war in a single day. In fact, June 6 1944 was Day One in a 77-day campaign and the hardest fighting was yet to come. Unless you know a little about bloodbaths such as Epson, Goodwood, Hill 112 and the Falaise Gap, you don't understand the Normandy Campaign at all. I can recommend Eversley Belfield and Hubert Essame's 1965 book The Battle for Normandy. Back then , D-Day didn't have the iconic status it has now. The authors summed up June 6 in ten words: "The events of D-Day went fairly well according to plan," before moving briskly on to D-Day+1.

MARVELLOUS , wasn't it, seeing the French so obviously in love with our Queen? They cheered. They waved their union jacks. They even named a flower market after Her Majesty. But with 1,000 years of distrust between us, all this Queen-adoring raises one unavoidable question about our Gallic cousins: What do you think they're up to?

MEANWHILE, back at the one-stop semen shop. Wham, bang, thank you, ram.