Flying on the wings of a prayer?

THE FRIDAY THING

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: NO lesser person than the Pope has entered the debate on airport body scanners, perhaps because he has an empathy with those who wear full-body garments and don’t want people to know what, or who, goes on underneath it.

At the same time that the Pontiff was pontificating against full-body scans for all (it’s all right for him, we mere mortals can’t buy his friends in high places with our holiday insurance) the Americans were ordering thousands of the scanners for every airport in the States.

They clearly have more faith in the power of security than the power of the saints; less wing and a prayer, more watchful and a pistol.

Most of us in this country share the American philosophy; if protecting ourselves from being blown out of the sky and meeting our maker — or the other fellow — earlier than planned means causing some embarrassment, well, tough cookies.

Travelling by plane should, like everything else in this nanny state of ours, have its rules and top of the list for all travellers (including the Pope) should be no scan, no flight.

It will certainly cut down on the air miles and help to save the planet. And those who can’t fly to hotter climes for holidays or family visits, can always have a week in a tent at Dovestone.


SO, it’s the so-called Lads Mags — the slightly raunchy glossies with pictures of the scantily clad female stars of the day — that are to blame for turning teenagers into seekers after sexual pleasure?
What about parents who put daughters barely old enough to go to school in earrings, makeup, lipstick and hardly-there designer dresses? Isn’t that the sexualisation of youngsters?

At the very least it is telling young girls — and young boys who sit next to them in nursery class — that life is about how you look, what you wear and how much you show what you’ve got.

The next thing you know they are taking pictures of themselves with no tops on — or in extreme cases with nothing on at all — and posting them on the internet for the delight of the paedophiles and pervs of the world.

A few years on and the femme fetale launches herself on the town, unsteadily in too-high high heels and wearing not much more than she was born in because everyone knows the only thing that matters is to be hot and sexy, a body more than brains.


FINAL WORD: The council has decided to fight the Miller-case court costs. If they lose we’ll have to pay the costs of the court case costs and the costs of the costs case challenge and that will cost a lot. Either way it will cost us.