Claiming victory

Beer, Devon

I SEE Labour’s third election defeat in a row is still being hailed in some quarters as a great victory. It’s like Wolves being stuffed 12-nil at home and the fans claiming that, seeing as we got a good throw-in and two excellent corners, that’s really a win, innit?

USING the same logic. I went fishing from Beer beach last night. Although I didn’t actually catch anything, I didn’t lose any lures either. So that’s a bit like a victory, even if we didn’t have fish for tea.

CUT off from Netflix down here in Devon, we found ourselves watching yet another repeat of It Was Alright in the 70s. It’s one of a series of shows in which modern-day comedians display their politically-correct horror at the appalling sexism of TV from a bygone age. They have a point, even if their spontaneous outrage looks suspiciously well rehearsed. The casual exploitation of half-dressed young actresses in mainstream 1970s comedy such as The Goodies and the Dave Allen Show is excruciating, with 40 years of hindsight. But let’s not pretend things are much better today.

AT least in the 1970s there was a certain equality in the pop business. Men and women performers alike wore normal clothes. Today, male pop stars still wear normal clothes but women are expected to gyrate in their underwear. After 40 years of feminism, how did that become the norm?

ON the day that It Was Alright in the 70s was repeated, Melanie Sykes, now 46, announced she was to host the TV series Blind Date. For no apparent reason, this involved her appearing in her underwear and posing on the front of the weekend supplements. Back in the 1970s, the idea that a middle-aged woman would announce a career move by stripping down to her knickers would have been far from “alright.” It would have been considered deeply unbecoming.

AND how did “alright” become a word anyway? The correct form is “all right” but this is another battle the Yanks are winning.

GOOD to see the Tories are planning to drop their stupid manifesto commitment to a free vote on foxhunting. You may not have heard foxhunting mentioned on mainstream media during the campaign but it was the second issue raised by one group of students interviewed after the result was announced. This suggests it was being widely discussed online. And it was in cyberspace, unseen by oldies and beneath the radar of the pundits, that many of last week’s votes were won and lost. Hunting is a toxic issue. It has no place in the 21st century and any political party supporting it will pay the price.

ACCORDING to something called the British Nutrition Foundation, children are hopelessly confused about where their food comes from. Nearly a third of kids aged between five and seven thought cheese came from a plant and some thought fish fingers were made of chicken. I’m not sure how much this matters. Until I was seven I believed cats were female dogs. Never did me any harm.