Boys will be ... confused!

THE FRIDAY THING: MOST of us can remember the time when children were either boys or girls.

What they became when they grew up was up to them and their surgeon, but as youngsters in school, some went into the girls’ lavs and some braved the boys’.

Gender, at least pre-puberty, was clearly defined.

In this enlightened age we have a couple who have decided not to declare the gender of their child until he/she is five when, presumably, he/she is to be given some say in the matter.

And never mind the confusion at nursery, play school and school; it’s all PC and edgy, trendy stuff.

Then we have a “man” giving birth to a baby. I am no biologist and my knowledge of the internal workings of the human body goes no further than the very basic basics, but no “man” can ever give birth to a baby, no matter how cutting edge and epoch-making it might appear.

To have a baby there has to be a womb and wombs are (thank heavens, I say) only given to women.

So, at one time, this mumdad must have been a woman and still be in possession of working womanly parts.

Now we have five-year-old Zach Avery (born a boy) who apparently, after watching a TV cartoon, told his mum he wanted to be a girl like the cartoon character, wear pink clothes and play with dolls.

Zach’s parents, instead of going along with their child’s wishes and waiting for him to grow out of his fantasy phase, took him to a clinic where was diagnosed as having Gender Identity Disorder (and no, I’ve never heard of GID either but initials are never good news for youngsters in the health field).

The sting in the tail (no gender reference intended) of this particular story is that Zach’s parents are selling the story of their son’s pink phase to a national newspaper for a reported five-figure sum, which perhaps might just tell us something. Folk used to say “boys will be boys” but not any longer it seems. At least while there’s money on the table.



IN more ways than one, the eyes clearly don’t have it at Manchester airport. Iris (not a trolley dolly, sadly, but a recognition system) has closed rather than merely blinked a mere five years after it was shown to work in only half of those whose eyes it scanned.

For those who control our borders, five years is probably pretty good going, but then their own eyes have hardly been at X-ray level, allowing 500,000 people to enter Britain unchecked and effectively declaring an open house to terrorists, crooks, fraudsters and illegal benefit claimants.

It isn’t so much that the airport staff blinked but presumably went through the day with their eyes closed on at least 15,000 occasions during the past five years.

With the Queen’s diamond jubilee and the Olympic Games coming up this year, isn’t it comforting to know that Britain will have so many new and possibly dangerous faces on our streets to join in the celebrations.


FINAL WORD: Two budgets this week. The Lib-Dems pushed localism to its limits, leader Howard Sykes viewing a new leisure facility in Shaw as his top priority with holes in the road and introducing two (yes, two) neighbourhood enforcement officers to the borough’s streets.
Co-operative Jim McMahon, the council leader, in contrast has borough wide plans to get 1,200 new homes built, introduce a new mortgage scheme in partnership with banks and estate agents and looks to boost training and inward investment in the borough.

It would be good to think that he could also bring new stores into Spindles/Town Square, open up Oldham’s crater and barrier-clogged roads, stop benefit fiddles, reduce crime and guarantee a good summer, but he will be busy so might have to leave some of that to next year.

It looks as though it will be quite a while before the Lib-Dems are back in control.