Here in the UK we are suffering from an excess of interfering busy-bodies who have pet theories about how the world should be run. All for our own good, of course, we cannot be trusted to be in charge of our own lives. No, rather we should all behave as these unelected control-freaks think we should and be damned grateful that they are saving us from ourselves. Most of these unspeakable swine work for fake charities that are really funded by the government to lobby the government on the subject of their weird ideas and distorted world views in the hope that it will result in a change of policy in line with the meddlers’ latest whim. These people are always publishing reports or appearing in the mass media in the hope that if they keep banging on and on they will eventually be taken seriously and so justify all that money that has been thrown at them by the government.

I’ll give you some recent examples. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is the perfect example of a bunch of self-satisfied pen-pushers who will take any opportunity to get themselves in the press. Some of their lunacy was reported on the BBC News website today. After the Christmas day bomber, Mr Abdulmutallab, hid explosive materials on his body and tried to blow up an aircraft heading to the USA there has been the usual knee-jerk, ‘something must be done’ reaction from the government who have committed to installing body scanners at UK airports. “That doesn’t sound so bad?” you might well be thinking.

The EHRC realised they could get themselves in the press and show that they have some point to their petty, whining existence by criticising these scanners. Apparently the devices risk breaching an individual's right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. Does that sound convincing? It sounds like a load of tosh to me. They go on to suggest that body scanners could generate illegal images of children and images of celebrities that could be leaked online. The BBC News website helpfully provides a picture of the type generated by these scanners. I’ve reproduced it to the right of this paragraph. These are characterised by the EHRC as ‘naked’ images which are are likely to have a negative impact on privacy, especially in relation to certain groups such as disabled people, the elderly, children and the transgendered community.

It is clear from the body scanner picture that they do not generate pictures of people looking as if they are naked. They are a fuzzy blur, with no real fine details about the target’s body visible. You’d have to be pretty desperate to find the opaque images from these scanners in any way a breach of someone’s privacy, they are just not detailed enough to tell much about a person’s body.

Moreover, even if body scanners produced a more defined image of someone’s body under their clothes, it still would not mean that the scans would be child porn as the EHRC suggests. Nakedness does not equate with pornography and body scanners do not automatically upload the images they scan to Flickr.

Finally, why should body scanners, with their fuzzy, indistinct images, be a particular worry for disabled people, the elderly or the transgendered community? It is just totally vacuous to suggest such groups would have any more difficulty with being scanned than anyone else. These kind of statements, which try to bring victim status to particular groups by saying they would be unfairly treated, are just a feeble attempt by the pressure group involved to make the whatever they are raving about seem a more serious, iniquitous problem and so justify the idea that ‘something must be done’. There are legitimate reasons why body scanners might not be a great idea, for example security experts have claimed that body scanners would only have a 50% chance of spotting the bomb carried by Mr Abdulmutallab, but the extremely vague possibility that a body scan may reveal that someone in a dress might have the suggestion of a penis being in their pants is not one of them.

There are more of these fake charities spewing out countless reports about how only their pet theories can improve the world and everyone else just cannot be trusted with anything important. A few days ago I discovered an excellent blog devoted to debunking the ravings on Don Shenker, chief executive of the government-funded pseudo-charity Alcohol Concern. Quite why the government should be funding this nutcase organisation is beyond me, but then the Labour government under the odious Gordon Brown is only too happy to let his ‘big government’ and the unelected special interest groups nanny us all.

The desire of the government to interfere with our drinking habits has been much on my mind of late. The recent report from the Health Select Committee (HSC) into alcohol consumption was woven from half-truths, manipulated data and unfounded assertions. These people clearly want to dictate how much we can drink, where we can drink it and how much it will cost. Most people have a perfectly healthy relationship with alcohol, I know I do, and yet all of us are being demonised by these jumped up farts who think they know better than us even if they have to publish reports which are a tissue of mendacity and duplicity to show they know best. I dropped by a good beer blog earlier and the author of the site has written a number of articles which debunk most of the claims in the HSC report. He demonstrates that alcohol adverts do not encourage under-age drinking, that cutting overall consumption of alcohol does not necessarily result in a drop in alcohol misuse, that alcohol is getting more expensive rather than cheaper as the neo-prohibitionists claim and much more. All of these blog posts of his are well worth reading; if you know how the bastards are trying to mislead you it is easier to stand up for them.

The problem with all of these hideous gits clamouring for their own ideas to be adopted as government policy is that, even if their most extreme ideas are not implemented, the propagation of the view that there are problems and ‘something must be done’ will result in legislation creep. Bit by bit our freedom will be eroded until it will be impossible to do anything without the government’s express permission. The suggestion floated recently that adults should have ‘entitlement cards’ that have to be produced when buying alcohol and act as ration books to control the amount we purchase shows that this is the aim of some of these nutcases. They want to control us, and unless we stand up for ourselves and our rights the filthy swine will get their way.

I thought this view of that git Gordon Brown (our illustrious leader) was hilarious. The line ‘Hugo, Hugo Chav-ez’ is what is known in Germany as an ‘ear worm’, in this house we refer to them as ‘audio viruses’, a little repetitive bit of a song that just infects your mind and you cannot shake it.

This story makes me want to point out, that actually having read it, the Koran is a fascist book.

It also makes me want to point out the incredible erosion of civil liberties that have happened in this country, largely under the Labour government. We used to be a freedom-loving country who valued things like free speech, now it seems we all have to cow-tow to the evil religious extremists and we are not allowed to point out they are bastards because it might offend their oh so valuable religious beliefs. I'm appalled.

You have to worry about our leaders. On one hand they say that people are smarter and better educated than ever before. On the other hand they say we are too stupid to use words that have been part of English for over a thousand years. The marvellous thing about the English language unlike, for example, French is that we can embrace words from other languages and make them our own.

The argument that people for who English is not a first language may fail to understand terms as simple as 'via' or 'vice versa' is clearly total drivel; people for who English is not a first language will fail to understand many words in English, no matter what the origin of the words may be. This is another pointless piece of drivel from the hard of thinking; sadly these cretins are our leaders. I worry about about my country when things like this happen.

It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralysing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can't get laughs out of all that, you can't get them out of anything. - Pat Condell, Time Out

I cannot stand Gordon Brown, he is a control-freak loony. The tax system is now more complex than ever before thanks to his fart-arsing around. His latest scandalous action is to re-classify cannabis as a class-B drug. Now, since I have paranoid schizophrenia you might think I'd be in favour of this, as there is much shouted about the (to quote Gordon) 'lethal' new types of cannabis that can cause schizophrenia. However, I used to be a scientist, and a damned good one at that, and the evidence linking the two is mere correlation. There are stronger correlations between the onset of schizophrenia with drinking and smoking, and it is only nutters (in the worst sense) who wish these to be banned because of their effects on mental health. Gordon completely ignored the balanced and reasonable scientific advice that it should remain a class-C drug, because he cannot help but interfere with people's lives. Since three million people in the UK regularly smoke cannabis he is not going to help prison populations by giving these people a maximum of a five-year sentence just for possession.

If you want to read some more of the evidence that that bastard Gordon ignored there is an excellent article on The Register and even that member of the great and good scientific community Colin Blakemore has spoken out against his action in The Guardian.

I've just read the weekly National Secular Society email; they are a great organisation and I hope you click on the link and join up. I don't always read the email as it usually leaves me steaming with rage; it did this week.

The first thing that got on my tits was that three catholic ministers are planning to vote against government legislation because the head of the catholic church in England is against it. Why should an unelected, unrepresentative, anachronistic loon be able to de-rail government flagship legislation? Bugger all people attend the catholic church in the UK, and the church is usually viewed as a bunch of over-privileged time wasters. Their hypocrisy was recently confirmed when they recently said that excessive wealth should be a sin. Pretty rich coming from as organisation with so much money it would make Croesus weep. The undue influence that these opinionated nutters* have is quite appalling and I hope if those ministers do vote against the government they lose their jobs.

The second thing that really pissed me off was another example of undue influence. Apparently the ex-archbishop of Canterbury used to be able to see the Prime Minister or any minister of his choosing within twenty-four hours if he wished to raise an issue. Once again, with the laudably poor church attendance in this country the archbish only speaks for a vanishing minority and so getting to see ministers so easily is pernicious. I hope this access has not been continued with the current waffle-merchant and drivel-monger Rowan Williams, who is quite rightly seen by all as a gaffe-prone dunderhead who not only fails to engage his brain before opening his mouth but puts his foot in it once he can negotiate its way past his facial fuzz. These people are anachronisms, and the fact that they think they should be shaping policy in a democracy is testament to the evils that are their religions and the perversions of thinking that religion causes.

Of course, there was plenty more in there to raise my ire. The weekly Newsline email is a great source of information on how those corrupters of little children are trying to pervert the world to follow their twisted ideologies. If people want to be god botherers then that is fine, but they should not have a privileged position for influencing the lives of those of us who do not wish our minds to be polluted by their dodgy thinking. Cheers, cheers for secularism!

*Speaking as an opinionated nutter I would venture that there is nothing wrong with being one, but using unfair and unreasonable influence over the hard of thinking and the misguided** to get your way, especially when your way is against the good of society, is deeply wrong.

**Obviously, most religious people are misguided because they were taught to be religious when they were children and we tend to believe things we are told when we are children. It is our fault they are misguided for letting them be corrupted by the perversity in the first place and not having mechanisms in place to resurrect their thinking from the philosophical shit-hole it was dumped in when they were young. As far as people go who have grown up with the benefit of an enlightened and decent education only to convert to religions when they were adults go, well, they are clearly hard of thinking.

The new leader of Britain's third party has said he does not believe in god. Good for him, and very refreshing to hear a British politician not feeling obliged to say he does just to pander to the minority of religious nutters in this country. It is a shame he then when on to dilute his statement by saying he has respect for religious faith. Personally, religious faith is frankly laughable and anyone who thinks there is one of the thousands of gods that have been invented over the millennia running things only deserves scorn. Theism is such a childish idea. It is hard to understand how people, who lets face it are quite smart things, can be so deluded.

I went around the neighbours last night and they had downloaded a Protect and Survive video. These are government information films about preparing for nuclear warm from the early eighties. I watched these things when I was a young child and they scared the living shit out of me. I thought we were all about to die soon and horribly. Watching that video the other night has un-nerved me somewhat.

London is completely brilliant and, in my experience, second only to New York City as a hilarious place for larks and japes. It does have a number of problems, though, one of which is the Underground.

It is not so much that the Tube is hot, over-crowded, stinking and vaguely unreliable that annoys me, rather that the bastard unions who staff it are a bunch of swine. They insist on striking for random reasons throughout the year, normally just before Christmas or when there is a patch of warm weather. There is another 72 hour strike starting on Monday.

When the Tube stops working the entire six million population of London is inconvenienced somehow. It can take hours to get home after work when the Tube is not running. Yet the Tube slackers insist on their regular strikes. Do they think they have popular support when they shag up everyone's travel for days on end? Do they think they are making any friends? I cannot help but associate their profession with the idea that they chose it because they are work-shy layabouts who are perfectly happy to severely inconvenience large numbers of people just so they get a few days off. Tube drivers are extremely well paid and have loads of perks with their jobs as well. No, they are not making any friends.

For good analysis of the Tube and the striking workers I suggest you visit Amateurtransplants.com and listen to their song 'London Underground'.

I am an atheist so have been slightly appalled that the government here is increasing the number of single faith schools around the country. Oddly, the government has just started a consultation exercise to try and find what can be done to ease divisions in society and yet the people writing the report have been forbidden to look at single faith schools. This seems odd because teaching children in single faith groups is hardly going to teach them to be more understanding of other ideologies.

So enthused with atheism am I that I am a member of the National Secular Society which has been campaigning to reduce religious privilege since the 1860s (if memory serves).

I doubt religious schools here have got this bad, but I was sickened to watch that video.

The chap who wrote this lexicon of lefty jargon got suspended by his employer. Apparently people complained about such definitions like an Islamophobe as 'anyone who objects to their transport being blown up on the way to work' and legitimate grievances as 'why we're all to blame for deranged Islamists murdering people in the developed world'. I am a bit of a lefty myself, but I was amused.

This week's National Secular Society email had a great quote in it:

It seems that the majority of countries have become hypersensitive to Islam and willing to limit, at least in part, the freedom of the press to appease Islamic beliefs. And maybe these newspapers and governments are doing this out of fear. Maybe they’re doing it in an effort to stop rioting and death threats. But if that is why they are doing it, they are bowing to terrorism. The very definition of terrorism is to use fear for coercion. We cannot be afraid to criticize any government or any religion. We cannot be afraid of what we print in our newspapers. To do so would negate the liberties that we enjoy in this country and in others. But if those governments truly wish to build a stronger relationship with the Muslim community, or have a deeper understanding for Islam, let them do so, but not at the expense of freedom of the press.

- Alicia Wotring, The Liberty Champion

I could not agree more. It has always struck me that religion uses threats to coerce, be it through violent protest, death threats, or even threatening people with eternal damnation.

After a particularly irritating conversation with someone earlier I am reproducing an entry from a year ago. Hopefully venting this spleen will make me feel a bit better.

Several times over the past few days I have found myself witnessing, and far too often getting drawn into, the conversation of which an early line is, "I do not wear nappies outside in case someone notices." I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

1. Who goes around examining people's underwear terribly closely? Ignoring the fact that modern disposables are so discreet one would have to wear a spandex jumpsuit and walk around on one's hands for people to notice a nappy, how many streets have you walked down and heard strangers passing casual comments to each other on their underwear? Honestly.
2. The stunning arrogance of these people. Given the virtual impossibility of detecting a nappy under clothes some people seem to assume that they have some special place at the centre of the community/universe and so are under constant surveillance with all their activities posted in the newspaper and discussed by the populace at large. Should it be noticed by the cameras in the black vans that they are wearing underwear most commonly associated with a medical problem they will be openly ridiculed in the street leading to the collapse of society.

Perhaps they are worthy of ridicule, but because of their failure to engage their brains rather than because they like to wear nappies.

Then we reach the people who say thing along the lines of, "Well, I am happy just to be a baby in my own home. Of course, if anyone visits I hide all of my stuff and spend the evening sweating with terror in case I open the wrong cupboard or let something slip." This is certainly a mode of operation, but by adopting it one is doing a dis-service to several groups of people:

1. Themselves. By hiding all of their stuff the re-enforce the view that they are doing something wrong and shameful. If you are a normal person, with a job, friends, a collection of good jokes about bananas and so on, you do not really do yourself many favours by twisting yourself up with existential angst in case someone sees the teddy bear in your bed. Not good strategy for long-term mental well-being.
2. Their guests. It does not matter if it is your mother or the gas-man these are generally ordinary people, much as we are all generally ordinary people. Ordinary people are pretty much aware that other ordinary people do a variety of things and, whilst they may be initially surprised to discover that you are a bit more of a rich and interesting ordinary person than they initially thought, you are still and ordinary person with whom they can interact in ways they normally would. Simply demonstrating another facet to your ordinary life, if worthy of any value-judgement at all, is an act of enlightenment for others demonstrating a new way that ordinary people pass the time.
3. Other babies of enhanced magnitude. This pretty much follows on from the above. Since most large babies are just ordinary people, demonstrating that large babies are ordinary people is only going to help other babies realise that they are ordinary people too. If the only postmen one sees paint their faces purple and spray lemon juice in your eyes when delivering letters you are going to assume that postmen are a pretty weird bunch. Since most postmen just get on with their jobs like normal people (ie. in a half-arsed, feckless sort of way, perhaps this is just how people do jobs in Britain) one has the view that they are normal people.

This last point is demonstrated very clearly by the little boy next door's website. A few people have linked to his site with such comments as "Look at this person, he is a bit weird." I would concur, compared to most of the people that make such links he is a bit weird in that he has a successful relationship, lots of friends, can spell, has a sense of humour and earns huge amounts of money. His website demonstrates very clearly that nice, ordinary, successful people can show a variety of behaviours and there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, if these people met my friend in real life they would not dare say he was a bit weird to his face. This is an example of the internet lemma: Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Rude, appalling, scumbag

The counter-arguments normally raised against such rationality take a variety of forms. Far too often one encounters people who cannot be bothered to read a few paragraphs and think about them. Many times I have been accused of demanding that all large babies run down their high-streets wearing only nappies and hitting people with their teddy bears. I most certainly do not demand such behaviour, I think that people should be left to get on with their lives as they see fit as long as they are not hurting anyone. I think getting hit with a teddy bear might well inconvenience someone, whereas the only inconvenience caused by me walking down the high-street in nappies under my baby clothes is if I do not change regularly and get rash. Certainly, when I have been working in jobs that require me to sound professional whilst taking blood samples from people I tend to wear a shirt and tie. Equally well, when my employment has had me shut in an office/lab with a limited bunch of other people then baby clothes seem an ideal way of dressing in order to assist with my relaxation and so perform my job frighteningly well.

The only very slightly more sophisticated version of this objection is that by wearing baby clothes one might be subject to verbal abuse, violence and arrest. Certainly, there will always be a microscopic proportion of people who feel it within their remit to shout incoherently at passers-by. We call these 'pitiable, angry, sad lunatics' and ignore them. I admit the amount of abuse I have received is so little that drawing a statistically valid conclusion is probably premature, but it does appear that I get more abuse walking through dodgy parts of London whilst in a spiffy suit than when wearing baby clothes. I suppose a large chap in a suit is more intimidating to the dregs of society than a large toddler. Much the same is true of violence, only it is vanishingly less likely to occur. Fear of arrest is quite odd, because I am not sure how wearing shortalls and a nursery-printed shirt breaks any laws. Perhaps in other countries, Iran possibly? Not here. If someone did set the rozzers on me claiming some mystic intelligence had told them I had child porn I'd welcome them into my home, make them tea, gladly assist them going through my computer, then bid them good day.

Then we come to the people who claim that wearing nappies is not a political issue for them. This does show a poor understanding of the words they use (see the title of this entry). However, much as it pains me to admit it, I am in many ways a New Labour toddler. I think that social responsibility is a good thing. If you cannot be bothered to stand up for those in your community, be they people in your neighbourhood watch group or other large babies, then you are letting the side down somewhat.

Finally, there are those people who do not want to feel like the normal, ordinary people they so clearly are; they like the guilt and get a cheap thrill from thinking they are shameful, bad and weird. The sad truth is that unless you are under a court order to wear nappies and baby clothes constantly you must be doing so because you want to and so because it is part of your personality; as it is the part of many ordinary people's personalities. If you want to feel guilty about doing a harmless activity that is a fundamental part of who you are you may as well feel embarrassed about buying food. True, I get a slight guilty pang when I buy double cream with the sole aim of pouring it on my breakfast cereal but I am well aware this is a silly feeling engendered by getting repeatedly smacked on the head with a bit of wood by the teachers at school when pouring too much evaporated milk on my dessert. They may have planted the seed of the idea that a tiny bit too much cream is bad, but I am well aware that it is a laughable idea. It certainly does not turn me on.

So, dear reader (Mrs. Trellis), should you ever feel doubt before heading down the boozer in a nappy, or when looking at the stack of nappy-boxes in the corner of your flat before your mother arrives, think for a moment. Realise that you are an enlightened, but above all normal person who has no reason to feel ashamed.

Understandably, I am quite perturbed that some scumbags have decided to organise a series of cowardly attacks in London this morning. Not attacks on a government, nor an army, but on people going to earn their day's wage. Not only an attack today, but clearly they've shafted the transport network for a long time. Erm.... Well done, chaps, you must feel really good about yourselves.

But, no scumbags beat Londoners! No one. Not the Nazis, not the IRA and certainly not these as-yet-unknown filth. As soon as transport is working and things have been cleaned up a bit I am off to Russell Square to a boozer I know just near the British Medical Association building. Currently that building is splattered with blood, presumably from the bomb that ruined a bus and probably some lives just outside it.

The recent election here has provided little in the way of anecdote-worthy tales, but with today's high blood-pressure fest that is the National Secular Society's weekly news email I was pleased to see a snippet of information that made the smallest of smiles flicker across my rancid visage. May I present, Mrs Trellis, the number of votes cast in the constituency of Northampton South:

Conservative Party- 23818
Labour Party- 19399
Liberal Democrat Party - 8327
UK Independence Party - 1032
Veritas - 508
Save Our Schools - 437
Monster Raving Looney Party - 354
Independent - 346
Christian People's Alliance - 260

Of course, one needs to get 5% of the vote in a constituency not to lose the five hundred pound deposit needed to register as a prospective MP. Shame the Monster Raving Loonies lost their money despite doing so well.

By a freak co-incidence that constituency covers part of the area once covered by the constituency of Charles Bradlaugh, the MP who founded the NSS; perhaps this might explain the disproportionate amount of support in the local media received by the CPA before the election.

Several times over the past few days I have found myself witnessing, and far too often getting drawn into, the conversation of which an early line is, "I do not wear nappies outside in case someone notices." I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

1. Who goes around examining people's underwear terribly closely? Ignoring the fact that modern disposables are so discreet one would have to wear a spandex jumpsuit and walk around on one's hands for people to notice a nappy, how many streets have you walked down and heard strangers passing casual comments to each other on their underwear? Honestly.
2. The stunning arrogance of these people. Given the virtual impossibility of detecting a nappy under clothes some people seem to assume that they have some special place at the centre of the community/universe and so are under constant surveillance with all their activities posted in the newspaper and discussed by the populace at large. Should it be noticed by the cameras in the black vans that they are wearing underwear most commonly associated with a medical problem they will be openly ridiculed in the street leading to the collapse of society.

Perhaps they are worthy of ridicule, but because of their failure to engage their brains rather than because they like to wear nappies.

Then we reach the people who say thing along the lines of, "Well, I am happy just to be a baby in my own home. Of course, if anyone visits I hide all of my stuff and spend the evening sweating with terror in case I open the wrong cupboard or let something slip." This is certainly a mode of operation, but by adopting it one is doing a dis-service to several groups of people:

1. Themselves. By hiding all of their stuff the re-enforce the view that they are doing something wrong and shameful. If you are a normal person, with a job, friends, a collection of good jokes about bananas and so on, you do not really do yourself many favours by twisting yourself up with existential angst in case someone sees the teddy bear in your bed. Not good strategy for long-term mental well-being.
2. Their guests. It does not matter if it is your mother or the gas-man these are generally ordinary people, much as we are all generally ordinary people. Ordinary people are pretty much aware that other ordinary people do a variety of things and, whilst they may be initially surprised to discover that you are a bit more of a rich and interesting ordinary person than they initially thought, you are still and ordinary person with whom they can interact in ways they normally would. Simply demonstrating another facet to your ordinary life, if worthy of any value-judgement at all, is an act of enlightenment for others demonstrating a new way that ordinary people pass the time.
3. Other babies of enhanced magnitude. This pretty much follows on from the above. Since most large babies are just ordinary people, demonstrating that large babies are ordinary people is only going to help other babies realise that they are ordinary people too. If the only postmen one sees paint their faces purple and spray lemon juice in your eyes when delivering letters you are going to assume that postmen are a pretty weird bunch. Since most postmen just get on with their jobs like normal people (ie. in a half-arsed, feckless sort of way, perhaps this is just how people do jobs in Britain) one has the view that they are normal people.

This last point is demonstrated very clearly by the little boy next door's website. A few people have linked to his site with such comments as "Look at this person, he is a bit weird." I would concur, compared to most of the people that make such links he is a bit weird in that he has a successful relationship, lots of friends, can spell, has a sense of humour and earns huge amounts of money. His website demonstrates very clearly that nice, ordinary, successful people can show a variety of behaviours and there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, if these people met my friend in real life they would not dare say he was a bit weird to his face. This is an example of the internet lemma: Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Rude, appalling, scumbag

The counter-arguments normally raised against such rationality take a variety of forms. Far too often one encounters people who cannot be bothered to read a few paragraphs and think about them. Many times I have been accused of demanding that all large babies run down their high-streets wearing only nappies and hitting people with their teddy bears. I most certainly do not demand such behaviour, I think that people should be left to get on with their lives as they see fit as long as they are not hurting anyone. I think getting hit with a teddy bear might well inconvenience someone, whereas the only inconvenience caused by me walking down the high-street in nappies under my baby clothes is if I do not change regularly and get rash. Certainly, when I have been working in jobs that require me to sound professional whilst taking blood samples from people I tend to wear a shirt and tie. Equally well, when my employment has had me shut in an office/lab with a limited bunch of other people then baby clothes seem an ideal way of dressing in order to assist with my relaxation and so perform my job frighteningly well.

The only very slightly more sophisticated version of this objection is that by wearing baby clothes one might be subject to verbal abuse, violence and arrest. Certainly, there will always be a microscopic proportion of people who feel it within their remit to shout incoherently at passers-by. We call these 'pitiable, angry, sad lunatics' and ignore them. I admit the amount of abuse I have received is so little that drawing a statistically valid conclusion is probably premature, but it does appear that I get more abuse walking through dodgy parts of London whilst in a spiffy suit than when wearing baby clothes. I suppose a large chap in a suit is more intimidating to the dregs of society than a large toddler. Much the same is true of violence, only it is vanishingly less likely to occur. Fear of arrest is quite odd, because I am not sure how wearing shortalls and a nursery-printed shirt breaks any laws. Perhaps in other countries, Iran possibly? Not here. If someone did set the rozzers on me claiming some mystic intelligence had told them I had child porn I'd welcome them into my home, make them tea, gladly assist them going through my computer, then bid them good day.

Then we come to the people who claim that wearing nappies is not a political issue for them. This does show a poor understanding of the words they use (see the title of this entry). However, much as it pains me to admit it, I am in many ways a New Labour toddler. I think that social responsibility is a good thing. If you cannot be bothered to stand up for those in your community, be they people in your neighbourhood watch group or other large babies, then you are letting the side down somewhat.

Finally, there are those people who do not want to feel like the normal, ordinary people they so clearly are; they like the guilt and get a cheap thrill from thinking they are shameful, bad and weird. The sad truth is that unless you are under a court order to wear nappies and baby clothes constantly you must be doing so because you want to and so because it is part of your personality; as it is the part of many ordinary people's personalities. If you want to feel guilty about doing a harmless activity that is a fundamental part of who you are you may as well feel embarrassed about buying food. True, I get a slight guilty pang when I buy double cream with the sole aim of pouring it on my breakfast cereal but I am well aware this is a silly feeling engendered by getting repeatedly smacked on the head with a bit of wood by the teachers at school when pouring too much evaporated milk on my dessert. They may have planted the seed of the idea that a tiny bit too much cream is bad, but I am well aware that it is a laughable idea. It certainly does not turn me on.

So, dear reader (Mrs. Trellis), should you ever feel doubt before heading down the boozer in a nappy, or when looking at the stack of nappy-boxes in the corner of your flat before your mother arrives, think for a moment. Realise that you are an enlightened, but above all normal person who has no reason to feel ashamed.

When I trek out into my local high-street I am invariably harassed by people pushing unreadable religious tracts into my unwilling hands and screaming incoherent drivel in my face. My normal response is to point out that I am a member of the National Secular Society and so I would rather they kept their weird ideas to themselves.

In view of the ever-present menace of sloppy-thinking I am perfectly happy to give a bit of financial help a noble organisation such as the NSS, albeit a tiny bit of help on the grounds of my minuscule income. However, this does come with a cost. Having joined, I now receive their weekly media-watch newsletter by email. This reports all the latest shenanigans of those sanctimonious people of faith and so results in my Friday afternoons being times of explosive rage. To read such things such as how it is alright to break the law as long as it is connected with believing in arbitrary things makes me fume with anger.

So, should I ask the NSS to stop sending me their emails and spare my blood pressure? It seems to me that I should not. Whilst avoiding news and current affairs is a valid strategy with many historical precedents, I am afraid I have the perhaps unjustifiable view that the continued progress of humanity is helped not only by people being informed, but also by standing up against laughable ideas. Gillian Sathanandan of the Independent newspaper made the point very well:

We in Europe were once a stifled, theocratic, feudal, crusading society that not only burned books but people too, and it was blasphemy that set us free. The term "blasphemer" has been ennobled by the likes of Socrates, Galileo, Kazantzakis and Joyce. We should remember the great debt that society and democracy owe to heresy and blasphemy and implore our MPs to rid us at last from this long-outmoded blasphemy law.