Evidence
In May 2013, in a primary school classroom, a six year old boy told a class mate that his trainers were gay. The school took this 'thought crime' most seriously. The headteacher sent for a representative from Stonewall to address the whole school on this most serious of matters - obviously, it could get out of hand.
Get out of hand, that's what we call the use of idiom, meaning to become out of control, perhaps to run riot; imagine, children throughout the land might start using gay to mean rubbish, not good, not cool. Now, we can't have that, the word gay belongs to the homosexual community. The fact that children hijacked it two decades ago is neither here nor there - the word gay belongs to homosexuals and they don't want children using it to mean something bad because being a homosexual is not bad, its normal and natural and children need to understand this.
Well, clearly children don't give a toss about the sensibilities of the gay community and why should they. You can take yourself as serious as you like but there's no reason in the world why anyone should agree with you.
And most importantly, let's remind ourselves that the so-called gay community hijacked the word gay from happy people but it's probably not occurred to the man from Stonewall that gays are a bunch of thieving scoundrels. Homosexual activists do not realise the damage they have done. Heterosexuals can no longer describe the happiness of their temper, like the poets of old, as gay because everyone in the office will think that they have decided to 'come out'.
The little episode outlined above provides ample enough evidence that we are living through a time of absurdity.
Beyond gaiety to the language of hate
A couple of years ago a young chap was arrested for calling a policeman's horse gay. What the offender failed to appreciate was that the PC had been primed for action, via homophobic and racial awareness workshops to actively police the language of hate.
The thought police have already had substantial success, e.g. the words nigger and paki may longer be used in public. This banning is claimed to be a mark of progress towards a more tolerant society but it has also made discussion of the use of these words absurd. Commentators in the media have to make reference to these words by saying 'the n word' and 'the p word' and latterly, instead of saying yid, they have started saying 'the y word'. How long will it be before we see a ban on the use of the letters n, p and y in media discussions?
Hitting a Stonewall
Stonewall came into being in 1989 as a part of the struggle, (that's how Stonewall itself describes its starting point) to combat Section 28 of the Local Government Act.
The Act was introduced to prevent the promotion of homosexuality in schools; but the strugglers thought that it stigmatised gay people and it galvanised the gay community into action.
The rest is history, Section 28 disappeared and Stonewall grew and grew, taking on the remit to campaign/lobby on all matters related to gay rights - they also make school visits.
Kids is also a banned word
We have already seen the word 'kids' banned in schools and the word pupil is frowned on in school reports. Several years back teachers were encouraged to refer to all school children as students, whether they were studious or not.
The Masters of Diversity
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, (EHRC), is a statutory body (quango) and has the responsibility to protect, enforce and promote equality across the seven 'protected' grounds - age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. They do this protecting in a place called Equality Land - a kind of Tolkien middle-earth.
The Commission had 14 apostles at the end of 2010, who were asked to re-apply for their jobs, five have now left the sanctuary of the cathedral to wander abroad in sackcloth and ashes. Their high priest, Trevor Phillips got his job back automatically - as did his deputy. New Labour decided to slim down the number of apostles to 11 hence, apostle re-selection has now left the Commission two short, which means that some of those protected grounds will be left without cover.
Leaning to think right
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, came into being in 2007, think of it as a mega-quango, it was set up to correct citizen behaviour and distort the language so that citizens 'think-right'. Unlike the majority of quangos, that just exist to carry out government bidding and deflect criticism, the EHRC has legal powers to intervene and to issue compliance orders to ensure that public bodies keep a framework document on every bookshelf and run diversity workshops.
The Human Rights Commission has spawned a thousand agencies with tentacles that spread virus like into the private lives of citizens, resulting in a crisis of confidence and uncertainty. Did anyone ask small people if they wanted the Brighton dwarf throwing competition banned?
Franz Kafka would have recognised this place, where anonymous button pushers pursue, with Jesuit zeal, the defence of diversity, and nobody appears to know how we arrived in this land of absurdity - where a university lecturer, Brett Mills, is telling us that animals have a right to their privacy - Sir David Attenborough should take note.
Apparently, TV wildlife documentary makers are the worse offenders, prying on animals in their most intimate moments.
Brett told us:
"Many of these activities, in the human realm, are considered deeply private, but with other species we don't recognise that,"
The BBC took Brett's criticism seriously enough to take on a defensive posture and felt the need to explain that its prying activities were all in aid of scientific enquiry and the preservation of ecosystems - nothing to do then with all the money the BBC makes worldwide with its wildlife programmes.
We can only wonder how long it will be before Mr Mills will be campaigning for a Bill of Animal Rights and then those nasty bird watchers had better watch out.
Mass Hysteria: Another mouth to feed....
In Britain we live with the absurdity of the citizenry genuflecting and forelock tugging in the direction of the Windsor family. For republicans it's an embarrassing spectacle bordering on insanity.
Although you prepare yourself for the spectacle, although you know that the peasants are about to start dancing again, you will always be astounded. Idiotic media types shove microphones under the noses of the dancers, perchance to gather an unpolished gem of inspired reflection on the wonderment of the occasion. It's marvellous, it's wonderful and they relate how pleased and full of joy they are, and how they have travelled miles to stand outside a private hospital to stare at the doors or stand outside Buckingham Palace to stare at a piece of paper announcing a new arrival.
Kate Middleton, who married into the Windsor family and metamorphosed into the Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to a son. An otherwise quite unremarkable event, given that over 2000 other children were born in Britain on the same day, except that this one is inexplicably special.
News flash: the peasants and world's media have now moved on to stare at Kensington Palace. How long they will maintain their staring vigil is unknown but be assured that the BBC will be interviewing an expert later.
Kapoors Tower, just one large mocking piss take
"Up close the steel tubes that have been bolted together to create Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond's homage to the architecture of dreams are not merely red, as they appear from a distance. They are deeply, organically, warmly and carnally red, a red of freshly exposed arteries and organs...."
Well that's the Guardian's view, here's another view, it's a pile of junk, a waste of £22 million, (even if most of the money came from steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal).
And they charged Olympic visitors £15 per adult and £7 per child to compound the injury....
Michael Gove goes all gay
Education Secretary, Michael Gove, declared war, whilst addressing a Stonewall gathering, on the ‘utterly outrageous and medieval’ use of the word ‘gay’ as an insult.
Mr Gove's declaration serves to illustrate that his grasp of history is wanting, the word gay was never used as an insult in the medieval period. Be reminded that this is the man who has been strident in his determination to reshape the school history curriculum, twice a year at least. And yet he hasn't a clue about the historical usage of the word 'gay' as an insult.
Why does he mention the word medieval in his outburst, this could lead those with no grasp of history to believe that the medieval period was a time of anarchic menace, when children described the things they disliked as gay.
How can a minister of the British state, responsible for education, be so foolish that he cannot recognise the irony of railing against the pejorative use of the word gay and failing to recognise his own pejorative use of the word medieval.
The medieval period laid the foundations for all the privileges that he and all his short-trousered chums enjoy today. Gove uses the term medieval to mean primitive and unenlightened, adding further distortion to the historical record that he insists that our children imbibe.
Absurdists went looking for symbols of black denigration and they found the Golly, he had to go. Children used to collect the labels from the marmalade jars to gain their Golly badge, they read the Beano and Dandy, they didn't read Umberto Eco and Ferdinand de Saussure on the wonders of semiotics. The children didn't realise they were being brainwashed by James Robertson and Sons.