Stand up and be counted

THE FRIDAY THING: ALTHOUGH, rather scarily, no-one really knows how many people live in the UK, those we do know about because they filled in their census forms are, like slugs, bad debts and weeds, growing in ever-expanding numbers.

According to the official figures there are now 56.1 million of us living in England and Wales (I think most of them are ahead of me in the queue at the bank and the barbers) and England is the third most densely populated country in Europe (and no, it doesn’t mean we have more thick folk than anywhere else, but you do sometimes wonder). So a bronze medal for breeding in this Olympic year?

Immigration is blamed for a big chunk of the increase but nothing is said about those who, for a variety of reasons, should not be here at all and absolutely no-one knows about the estimated one in 20 who did not fill in the census form.

Did they all have something to hide or is it that they simply couldn’t be bothered in the way that lots of folk can’t be bothered to go to work or to vote? They may even be the same folk.

And what about the hundreds, possibly even thousands, who are still here only because some bonkers judges decided that they have a right to stay here despite being convicted of serious crimes like rape, sexual assault and even murder. One Iraqi hijacker who held 200 passengers at knife point will be allowed to stay here because his fellow hijackers have already been allowed to stay. Now, is that mad or not?

If we deported all of those who should be deported and should probably never have been allowed in here in the first place, and all those others — many from European countries — who have been involved in major crimes such as drug dealing (and the violence that goes with it) trafficking girls and young women for prostitution and operating rackets that make it possible for illegals from all over the world to come here, at a price.

Getting rid of that lot would not solve the population time bomb but it would make our streets and our children and grand-children safer. We should surely, if the politicians stopped making a total mess of immigration control, be able to stop undesirables from coming here and while it might not make much impact on the queues in the shops we could all sleep easier in our beds.



SOME weeks ago, I wrote an intellectual little piece about sex toys and how sales of them were booming, especially in the south.

Well in the wake of the publication of “Fifty Shades of Grey” (a dirty book for women) all sorts of devices that the upstanding readers of the Oldham Chronicle probably know nothing about, are enjoying a phenomenal boom in sales.

Painstaking research reveals that items such as Jiggle balls and Ben Wa balls, (though it doesn’t say who Ben Wa is or was) nipple clamps, riding crops, spanking paddles and fur-lined handcuffs have seen sales rise by 300 per cent in some cases, up to a staggering 653 per cent in others.

And to think, the highlight of the week used to be hanging out the washing on Mondays...



MOST parents agree that teaching children languages is a great idea but in Barnsley they have come up with a new take on the subject of languages that puts French, German and Chinese in the shade.

Pupils aged 11 at Shafton Advanced Learning Centre are given a list of mainly four-letter words including the f-word and even the dreaded c-word among several others and are asked to grade them as being always OK to use; sometimes OK, depends or never OK.

Following a not surprising angry response from parents, a school spokesman said that the swearing lesson was part of the schools social responsibility and had taught children what kind of language was appropriate.

Such totally inappropriate daftness is enough to make any parent swear.



FINAL WORD: Just when you thought this terrible summer could not possibly get any worse comes the news that because of all the rain and damp the humid conditions have helped lice to thrive, setting off nit epidemics in many schools.

Time to send for nit nurse Norah and, perhaps, to swear a little under your breath.