Daily Mail Thinks About The Children

Possibly encouraged by the latest daily YouGov poll showing Labour and the Tories tied on 33%, the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has valiantly kept up its assault on Mil The Younger, with yet another thundering headline telling worried readers “SEX LESSONS AT 5 UNDER LABOUR”. The horror! The audacity! Is nothing sacred? Why won’t they think about the children? [Er, they are doing - Ed.]

And, not for the first time, the available facts are having to be twisted significantly in order to fit the headlines that the Vagina Monologue has already ordered up. We know this by contrasting the first line of the Mail article, “Children aged five will have sex education classes if Labour wins the election”, with that from the Guardian, “All new and existing teachers will be trained in tackling homophobic bullying under Labour plans to eradicate anti-gay prejudice from schools”. Spot the difference.

The Mail then finds a few talking heads who are prepared to pass severely adverse comment - that the bar is not being set too high is demonstrated by the presence of Tory MP Philip Davies - and throws in a representative of Christian Concern, because, as any fule kno, Christianity is, by definition, under attack.

Then all that is left is for Daily Mail Comment, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue, to thunder “In a display of gesture politics at its most fatuous, Labour’s education spokesman announces plans to provide sex lessons for all children from the age of five to ‘eradicate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender bullying in schools’ …Even by today’s standards of political posturing, this is surely ludicrous”.

And, just to twist the knife, readers are told “How about teaching them instead to read, write and add up?” Daily Mail readers are meant to be sufficiently stupid not to know that teaching “to read, write and add up” might be adversely affected by the problem that Hunt is looking to eradicate. Nor are they reminded that Dacre’s preferred Prime Minister, Young Dave, had a problem with answering a simple mental arithmetic question recently.

Then another thought enters: look at the photo of Tristram Hunt at the top of both the lead article, and the editorial. These are clearly exaggerated poses, and have been chosen for one reason alone: as with Miliband, his shadow cabinet has to be characterised as weird. Meanwhile, Cameron - who also made an elementary mathematical howler in yesterday’s BBC documentary on the Commons - is shown as “normal” and statesmanlike.

Then, in the background, more “business leaders” are lined up to agree that Labour is “anti-business”, while faux “historian” Dominic Sandbrook once again freely pours abuse over the memory of Ralph Miliband, who volunteered to fight for Britain despite not needing to, while Peter Dacre, father of his editor, cowered behind the shelter of a reserved occupation - a showbusiness reporter.

These are the hypocrites telling you how to vote. No change there, then.