"Four"

Once upon a time there was a clever young writer. His job was to write funny jokes for a famous comedian.

But one day, the famous comedian fired him.

(People say that the famous comedian fired all his cleverest colleagues, because he wanted everyone to see that he could be funny all by himself without any help from anyone else. When he died, a few years later, some people feared that he might have taken his own life.)

The clever young writer phoned his agent, to see if he could find him a new job. And the agent said "Would you like to write stories for children's TV?" At first, the clever young writer thought that this was a bit beneath him, but then he decided that any work is better than no work at all. So he agreed. But he asked for a clause in his contract that said that he would own all his stories forever and ever and ever. And the children's TV people agreed.

So the clever young writer hammered out a TV script. It wasn't very original. It was a fairy tale about land populated by beautiful people who were good but had once been bad; and ugly people who were bad but had once been good. But it was quite a good story. And the children's TV people liked it.

They gave the script to a clever young designer, and told him to make costumes for the evil ugly monsters to wear. But he said "I am sorry, I am much too busy today." He got on a boat to a place called Hollywood where he made movies and lived happily ever after. (Years later, he made a movie about a monster with acid for blood that popped out of people's chests and said "boo". It was very, very evil and very, very ugly.)

So they gave the script to a different clever young designer. And he went away, and read the clever young writer's descriptions, and used some imagination, and made some costumes.

And they were very good. Children all over the country loved the evil ugly monsters and ran up and down the playground saying "We are evil ugly monsters! We are evil ugly monsters!" So the children's TV people went back to the clever young writer and said "Write us some more stories about the evil ugly monsters." And at first he said "That's a bit of problem, because they all died at the end of the story" and then he said "Oh, what the heck," and he wrote a new evil ugly monster story, that wasn't as good as the first one, and third one which wasn't as good as that, and then some more which were really very bad indeed. But provided they had evil ugly monsters in them, the kids didn't mind, so the clever young writer kept himself in work for the rest of his life.

One day, a toymaker, who may or may not have been celestial, came to the children's TV people and said: if I made toys that looked like the evil ugly monsters, I am sure that all the children in the world would by them, and play with them, and be happy, except for the ones who leave them in their original packaging and sell them on ebay at a fat profit in twenty years time. So the children's TV people signed a contract with the Toymaker, and he kept himself in work for the rest of his life making evil ugly monster toys. And because the clever young writer had a piece of paper that said he owned all his stories for ever and ever, every time the Toymaker sold an evil ugly monster toy, a shiny sixpence magically dropped into the clever young writer's piggy bank.

The years rolled on, and the clever young writer died of old age, and the children’s TV people stopped making the children’s TV programme. And the years rolled on some more, and the children’s TV people decided to start making it again. And they decided that the evil ugly monsters should be even eviller, and even uglier and even more monstrous than before. But the family of the clever dead writer waved their magic piece of paper at them and said "You can't redesign the ugly monsters without our permission. And if you don't let us approve the new designs, we won't let you use the ugly monsters at all." And the children's TV people thought about it, and said "Get stuffed." And then they thought about it some more and said "Oh, all right then." And a funny newspaper that was full of pictures of naked ladies claimed the credit for this, which no-one quite understood.

So the family of the the clever young writer got a say in what the evil ugly monsters looked like; and every time the Toymaker sold a toy, a shiny new sixpence dropped in their piggy banks, which were by now very fat indeed. And the clever young designer, who had decided what the evil ugly monsters looked like, sometimes wondered why silver pennies never dropped into his piggy bank. And they all lived happily ever after.

Five

For me, William Hartnell, Tom Baker and (I know I am going to get yelled at for this) Sylvester McCoy are "The Doctor". The others are just actors playing the Doctor.

I still can't bring myself to watch "Carry on Sergeant" or "Brighton Rock". Seeing "grandfather" in a different role would be too much like finding out that Father Christmas doesn't exist.

Nothing against Jon Pertwee. Jon Pertwee was the first Doctor I met. For a couple of years, he was just "the Doctor." When you said "Doctor Who", you meant "suave space traveling buccaneer with a slight undercurrent of buffoonery." It took me a while to get used to the guy in the scarf. But Pertwee, with his flashy cars and gadgets, with girls who were referred to as "assistants" (rather than "companions") and a chorus of square jawed soldier-boys... If this was "the Doctor" then none of the others were. Much as I like the UNIT episodes as episodes -- the sparring between the Doctor and the Brigadier, the wierdly respectful relationship between him and the Master -- I tend to think of it as part of a different series.

And nothing against Patrick Troughton. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy have both said they think he was the greatest, and considered as a performance, I think it was. Where Tom Baker waves his hands around a declaims, Patrick Troughton under-acts. You spend the first half of an episode thinking "what is supposed to be so great about this guy: all he is doing is reading out the lines". And then you suddenly realise that you believe, totally, and without question, everything this funny little man tells you. He's 400 years old, and there are Yetis in the tube. Fair enough. If you say so. But the one thing I didn't believe was that he was the same person as the white haired old buffer who kidnapped Ian and Barbara in episode one.

Maybe he wasn't. The metaphysics of regeneration have never quite been sorted out. Are we supposed to think that it's the same person, but with re-jigged cells and a slightly scrambled personality? Or has the Doctor mind slinked off into a different host body, like those slug-things in Star Trek? There is a strange undercurrent in some versions which suggest that the different Doctors are actually different people. The novelisation of "Tenth Planet" has our hero announce "I am the new Doctor" as if we were talking about someone taking over a role or position. The novel of "Five Doctors" seems to envisage the First Doctor "living out his days" in a restful garden, even though we know that he "died" at the south pole. And while it is not exactly canonical, "Dimensions in Time" has the Fourth Doctor sending out a message beginning "calling all Doctors", and thinking of his previous incarnations as other people -- "thank you, my dears."

It is harder to defend Colin Baker and Peter Davison. I rather liked what JNT was trying to do with the Davison era: three companions, instead of just one; expanding the TARDIS itself beyond a single control room; one companion in league with the bad guys; another one killed off; breaking some of the rules. But casting a young, good looking, heroic type, already know from many other roles as the Doctor was fundamentally misguided. Davison didn't stick in the role for long enough for us to get used to him. As for Colin Baker, the most that one can say is that he could deliver lines with great gusto, and it would have been interesting to see what he would have done with a decent script.

And then there was Sylvester. Sylvester McCoy started his tenure as Doctor Silly. He spent his first season being suspended over vats of boiling sugar by Bertie Bassett, and threatened by evil caretakers and their killer cleaning machines. He was stuck in an identikit "Doctor Who" costume, and JNT was still convinced that it was cute to use question marks as a motif on the Doctor's clothes. (It is regarded as an awful faux pas to refer to the Doctor as "Doctor Who", but evidently, it's okay for him have question mark umbrellas in the TARDIS wardrobe.) Yet somehow he struggled against this nonsense, and gave us a Doctor who was interestingly different from what had gone before. Darker; more manipulative; traveling the universe according to some purpose which he knew and we didn't. ("Ace tells the Doctor about her worst nightmare. So he takes her there" has got to be one of the the great Radio Time blurbs of all time.) Fans now know that the script editor, Andrew Cartmell, was engaged in the first stages of a "masterplan" which would have emerged over several seasons and put a new spin on the characters of the Doctor and the Time Lords. Some of these ideas were subsequently incorporated into the first cycle of post-TV novelisations, ("The Virgin New Adventures") and they seem pretty ghastly to me; another boring re-working of the very boring back-story to the very boring Time Lords. But what emerged in the transmitted episodes was rather wonderful; the hint that underneath the clownish exterior was Doctor as cosmic-entity who could stare down a villain by force of will. When you looked into eyes, you half-believed that he really was far more than a time-lord; that there really was a big dark secret just wating to be revealed.

The character of the Doctor is weirdly flexible; but not infinitely so. We can't define it, but we know it when we see it.

Six

Before slipping out of negative mode.

RTD has also said that he wants the stories to be about "human beings" because no-one cares what happens on the planet Zog.

This strikes me as an odd thing to say about a series originally promoted as "an Adventure in Time and Space." The whole point about the series is that there is a magic box that can take you anywhere in the universe. If you aren't going to step through your magic wardrobe and come out on strange, alien planets, then I'm not sure that there is any point in having one. The original creators of the show interpreted "anywhere in Time and Space" quite broadly: pure fantasy as well as space-opera and historical time travel. Whatever else you can say about "The Celestial Toymaker" (*) and "The Mind Robber", you couldn't really have imagine them being done in any format apart from Doctor Who.

People who write about the origins of the show often imagine a split between, say, Sidney Newman, who wanted a very historically based children's drama series, and, say, Verity Lambert who admitted bug-eyed monsters and b-movie science into it. But you could just as well see it as a tension between, say, Terry Nation, who thought in terms of alien jack-booted Nazis and scientific holocausts, and, say, David Whitiker, who saw it all as a rather wonderful fairy tale.

The question of earth-bound horror vs alien worlds is as old as the programme. The original premise precluded any stories set in the present day: Ian and Barbara are as much exiles from 1963 as the Doctor is an exile from his mysterious home planet. I rather liked that. It was easier to believe that Ian and Barbara were wandering the universe but very much hoping to get home one day, than that Sarah-Jane was hanging out with the Doctor for want of anything better to do with her time. The first adventure which actually occurred in the present-day was William Hartnell's penultimate outing. There is, on the one hand, something very scary about the moment when Susan to run an errand for the Daleks on the planet Skaro: one human, all alone on a hostile alien world. But there is also something to be said for Jon Pertwee's famous dictum that there is nothing very surprising or scary about meeting a Yeti in Tibet, but they become very alarming if you encounter one in your bathroom in Tooting. (Having lived in Tooting, I can confirm this.) Scary aliens in a normal human environment, or normal humans in a scary alien environment.

If RTD means that he wants all the stories to have human interest, then of course he is right. Which begs the question, when didn't they. I think that there were two stories which had primarily alien supporting casts: "The Sensorites" and "The Web Planet". I agree that men in giant ant suits is not the way to go for the new series. If he means Pertwee style earthboundedness, the Doctor as Agent Mulder foiling this months alien invasion, then I think he is making a great mistake. ("Wanderer" or "traveller" are two irreducible components of the Doctor's character.)

"Planet Zog" is a media code-word for "science fiction is impenetrable". When someone refers to "the planet Zog", you know that references to anoraks cannot be far away. RTD knows very well that the series, in its heyday -- the duration of the first four Doctors -- was totally mainstream: not "cult TV" but "a children's programme" or "that thing that nearly everyone watches on a Saturday night." I don't know when it got the reputation for being watched mainly by a freemasonry of dedicated fans; I don't know when, if ever, that actually became true. Perhaps it suited Michael Grade to say that Doctor Who should be cancelled because it was only watched by the kinds of people who watch Doctor Who, in the same way that Panorama should be cancelled because it is only watched by the kinds of people who watched Panorama. He wanted, after all, a BBC that was mainly watched by the kinds of people who watched Eastenders, and he largely got his way. But I think that the fanboy reputation mainly came along when the programme went off-air -- when, by definition, the Faithful were the only ones keeping its memory alive. So RTD wants to tell the audience that his new series is for everyone, not just "fans" and "anoraks". (I think that the terms "anorak" was first used in clip compilation in 1992.) If he does this by using language which panders to negative stereotypes about science fiction and its enthusiasts, then I can't say I blame him. But I very much hope that he doesn't believe it himself.

Meanwhile, Mr Ecclestone has been quoted as saying that he didn't like the programme when he was a kid because all the Doctors had posh accents, and that this implied that he, a northern lad, couldn't be a hero. This seems to be an example of two things.

1: The airbrushing of Sylvestor McCoy out of Doctor Who history. (I am sort of assuming that the Daleks-can't-go-up-stairs-meme is so prevalent, and RTD so wants to be the person who abolished this cliche, that he has wished "Remembrance of the Daleks" out of existence, and the whole of seasons 25 and 26 with it, which is a shame, because on the whole they were rather good.)

2: An absurd inverted snobbery. (I was about to write "political correctness" but that phrase can only be used in conjunction with the expression "gone mad, I tell you.") It does, I suppose, say something about British society circa 1963 - 87 that the Doctor, being a scientist, was conceived of as male and speaking with "received pronunciation". It certainly says something about our attitude to "science". You only needed to give William Hartnell a white coat to turn him into the personification of the "boffin". Scientists. Blokes. Old, white haired. Mad as coots. Very clever, of course, but you wouldn't want your daughter to marry one. One of the ways in which, I think, the show gradually lost its way is that, having invented the ludicrous and brilliant idea of "re-generation", they nevertheless created an established "type" for the main character. Doctor Bill, Doctor Pat and Doctor Jon were totally unlike each other. Doctors Peter, Colin, Sly and Paul were all pretty much variations on Doctor Tom. So, by all means, let's have northern Doctors. Let's have women Doctors and black Doctors. (Patrick Troughton very nearly was the first black Doctor.) But spare us this class-warrior nonsense. If Tom Baker's Shakespearian tones imply that little boys from Yorkshire can't be heroes, then Doctor Chris's dialect implies that I can't be a hero. Which is rubbish. Doctor Who is the patron saint of the middle-class, spotty-kid with specs at the back of the classroom, who'd rather play with a chemistry set or read a book than play football or have fights.


Then God, stand up for nerds!

(*) For example "The BBC wiped the tapes, so I've never seen it."

Seven

Russel T Davies has been quoted as saying that he is irritated when people complain that Disney changed the ending of The Little Mermaid. What does that matter when the cartoon made the story available to millions who hadn't read the book. He says that great characters like Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan can and should be re-invented in each generation.

Up to a point. I am one who is very keen to defend the weirder adaptations of classic fiction, and if Jonathon Miller and Svankmeyer are allowed to re-interpret Alice in Wonderland in surreal and post-modern ways, I can't really complain if Walt Disney does so in a crassly populist way. I think the work of art stands on its own terms Ultimately, I disapprove of Jackson's Gimli because he is crass and unfunny, not because he has nothing to do with Tolkien's Gimli.

People say that a re-working of a book can't violate the original, because the original still exists. This is only partly true. I think that Disney's Snow White did, as Tolkien says, vulgarise the Dwarves, to the extent that any fairy tale involving Dwarves struggles against the image of cute people singing "Hi-ho!" with American accents. If you liked the original mythology, that harmed it in some way. There's an old joke about an intellectual being a person who hears Rossini's William Tell Overture and doesn't immediately think of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Is there a person on earth who can read Mary Shelly's romantic masterpiece and not see a little picture of Boris Karloff in their head every time the name Frankenstien is mentioned? At some level, then, Karloff has violated Shelly.

I don't believe that there is such a thing as the essence of Story: that, somehow, by re-telling Tarzan or Frankenstien I am "passing on" or "evolving" a bigger entity called The Story. I don't think that a story exists over-and-above any individual version of that story. Johnny Weissmuller's jungle movies were terrific fun; I loved them as a kid; I still quite enjoy them now. But they were not "making Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan available to people who would not otherwise have known about him." They had almost no point of connection with ERB.

Certainly, an adaptation, done in a careful way, can hold a light up to the original. I adored Jeremy Brett's version of Sherlock Holmes: for the first time, I was seeing the character that I thought I remembered from the books coming to life on the screen. But, in truth, his portrayal was just as partial as anyone else's, taking the maniacal eccentricity (which I think is mainly present in the earliest stories) and making that the controlling feature of the character. If I take Conan Doyle off the shelf nowadays, I can read it as if played by Jeremy Brett and equally as if player by Basil Rathbone. But here, we are talking about people interpreting an existing story, not making up new ones. Brett took words which the author wrote and acting them, changing some emphasis, inventing details that the author left out (when did Holmes give up taking drugs? Doyle doesn't tell us; Jeremy Brett invented an answer.) But this is based on the assumption that the text say-what-they-say; and that a future actor or interpretor will be free to come and re-interpret them. That is a very different proposition to creating a new stories that will have the stamp of "canonicity" -- new adventures that aficionados will pretend "really" happened.

I agree with RTD the characters need to be re-invented, and a new version of Doctor Who that was simply a pastiche of someone's favourite period of the original show would be a catastrophe. Bringing back something which is nearly 20 years old implies a very substantial amount of re-invention and re-imagining. But if you re-invent Magic Roundabout as a quest narrative with villains and pop-culture references, then what you have isn't Magic Roundabout, even if the the thing is quite interesting in its own right, which, by all accounts, it isn't. There is a fine line between re-invention and starting again from scratch, between Ultimate Doctor Who and "this is just a totally new series which happens to have a time-traveler in it", at which point I lose interest.

I'm hoping that Davies faith in the mystical integrity of Story doesn't mean that he thinks he has crossed it.

There's an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman...

My MP sent me a card to tell me that she was proud of Britain.

Which is nice.

It has a picture of a row of seven kids, in those absurd blazers that the headmasters of comprehensives still think make their schools look posh. Five out of the seven are statistically white, but it is a statistically correct black girl who is at the center of the picture, looking into camera. She is both literally and metaphorically waving a Union Jack. At risk of over-interpreting, the black girl with the flag has what looks like a prefect’s badge, but the white girl just behind her has a prefect’s badge and a head girl badge. I think the message is. “Ethnic Britons. In the minority, but at the center. Successful, but not too succesful.”

There is logo in the top right hand corner, depicting half a Union Jack, with the words “Proud of Britain” underneath it. What this means, who can say. Half the country is proud of Britain all the time; or all the country is proud of Britain half the time; or all the country is proud of Britain but only as far down as Newcastle.

This drivel was sent out, not by the BNP or even the Tories, but by the "Labour" party. On the reverse is a little questionnaire asking “Why are you proud of Britain?” and allowing space for three lines of very small handwriting. You can go to a website and read some of the answers that other punters have sent in. It’s an absolute hoot. It turns out that I should be proud of Britain because "Bus drivers are far more considerate than in other areas" and "Independent research shows that the tax burden in Britain is lower than France, Germany and Italy." ‘Mary from Lancashire’ explains that she is a pensioner and "this winter I am going to be warmer than before", before concluding "I'm proud to be British under Labour." Note how imperceptibly we slide from “Proud of Britain” to “Proud to be British”. I imagine the perpetrators of the leaflet were fully aware of this sinister double meaning. (See under “pigs, flying” and “plausible denial.”)

Why am I proud of Britain? I don’t understand the question, any more than if you had asked me why I am proud of my street, or my borough, or my city. I’m not particularly “proud”, it’s just where I happen to live. Now, if you had asked me “Why do you like being English,” I could have come up with some possible answers.

I like being English because the world's best playwright wrote in English.

I like being English because we invented a game with such complicated rules as cricket, taught it to everyone else in the world, and still can’t beat them at it.

I like being English because our national dishes are stodgy comfort foods like Yorkshire Pud and fish and chips.

I like being English because of Morcombe and Wise, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond.

And the Beatles, obviously.

Oh, and Radio 4.

I like being English because of King Arthur and Robin Hood.

I like being English because there are still a few real ale pubs

I like being English because there is a street in York called Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate.

I am certainly not in any sense proud of England. I don’t think that we are better than the Scots because we brew the best beer and they brew the best whiskey. But it probably isn’t a coincidence that I’m a real-ale man. There is a sort of agreed symbolism around “Englishness” and “Ale”. I bet if I’d grown up in Dublin, I’d prefer Guinness.

I don’t know how I would go about being proud of Britain. I mean, what would I be proud of? I’m not proud of the geographical feature called “the British Isles”. I am hardly going to feel proud because Ben Nevis is, in real terms, taller than any French mountains of similar height. I’m not proud of British culture. There isn’t any. There’s English culture and Scots culture and the cultures of the various immigrant communities. When politicians try to talk about the subject, they often find themselves saying that the essence of Britishness is multi-culturalism and diversity. Which is, being interpreted, “We don’t have a culture of our own, but we are very good at putting up with other peoples.” And (it goes without saying) I am not proud of the fact that I am descended from one of the original, native inhabitants of these islands, because that is (a): Utter cods-wallop and (b): racist.

The only thing which I can understand “Britain” to mean is “The British State” or “The British Constitution” or “The British System of Law” -- the collection of civil servants, rules, flags and aging aristocrats which act as a sort of administrative umbrella over the countries of England, Scotland, Wales and the north of Ireland. The wages of politicians and civil servants are paid by the British State, so it is not very surprising that they, unlike normal people, think a lot about British-ness and would like everybody to be Proud of Britain. In a similar way, the only person who believes in the existence of the Commonwealth is the Queen, who owns it; and the only people who thought that the Student Union had the slightest significance were the six hacks who ran it.

I am not proud of the British state or the British constitution, because I had very little input in setting it up. (I would have helped if I’d been asked, but I must have been out when William and Mary phoned.) And I am not a politician, a soldier, a civil servant or a police officer, so I can’t even claim any credit for its day to day running. But I do, on the whole, think that the British State is quite a good thing. I’m quite glad that its rules and regulations are the ones under which I live.

Maybe “proud” just means “respect, admire and approve of” or “feel cool about”. In which case, there isn’t space on the back of my little card to enumerate all the ways in which I am “proud” of Britain. A short-list might run:

I’m proud of Britain because we don’t have oaths of allegiance or citizenship ceremonies.

I’m proud of Britain because the police don’t routinely carry guns.

I'm proud of Britain because we have a system of law where every man is assumed innocent until he is proven guilty.

I’m proud of Britain because everyone has the right to a trial by jury.

I'm proud of Britain because politicians can’t interfere with the decisions of judges.

I'm proud of Britain because when the police arrest someone, they have to either charge him or release him within a very short space of time.

I'm proud of Britain because the police can't stop me unless they have good reason to believe that I am doing something wrong. They can’t, for example, stop me to make sure I am carrying my identity card.

I’m proud of Britain because no-one can be imprisoned (or put under house arrest) without a fair trial.

I’m proud of Britain because no-one can be accused of a serious crime, like, say, terrorism, without seeing the evidence and having a chance to answer it.

I'm proud of Britain because it does not torture or execute anyone.

I’m proud of Britain because if someone has been tortured in a foreign country any confessions or evidence obtained can’t be used in a British court.

I’m proud of Britain because we don’t deport people to nations where they might be executed or tortured.

The other day I heard a "Labour" spokes-person on the radio explaining that the British People could vote out the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary at a general election. But the British People can’t vote out judges. So politicians are more accountable than the judiciary. So it is a good thing that the new anti-terrorism laws will be administered by politicians rather than judges.

I am less and less proud of Britain every day.

Problem of Evil: redux

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed--might grow tired of his vile sport--might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.

Lewis "Grief Observed"

Kathy (a little girl): You know how he used to cure people? Jesus, I mean. He cured a blind man once, didn’t he.

Vicar: That’s right.

Kathy: And he could bring people back from dead, too.

Vicar: Mm Hmm. Lazarus.

Kathy: Only he must have let some people die, mustn’t he. Why did he let those people die?

Vicar: Well, uh...you see, uh, people...babies are being born all the time...and, uh...those of us who are here already have got to make room for them, haven’t we.

Kathy: Yes, sir.

Vicar: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. That’s what the Bible says, isn’t it?

Kathy: Yes, sir.

Vicar: I mean, God has got more than us to think about. Not only people dying, it’s what we’re doing to the world, that’s what worries Him. You see, we hurt God much more than He hurts us. You don’t have to go very far to see people offending God. What about when you’ve got children taking guttering and lettering and I don’t know what from the church. It’s not only the value, it’s God’s house.

Kathy: But that’s nothing to do with Jesus.

Vicar: Well, it’s going to stop. I’m going to stamp this vandalism out, I’m not having it. I’m going to take very strong measures in the future.

Kathy: Yes, sir.

Vicar: So, you pass it around.

Charlie (Kathy's younger brother): He doesn’t know, does he?

"Whistle Down the Wind"

Spot the difference

Leading Article


Arts Review

These people are silly, I don't want to live on the same planet as them any more

Some of us thought that the "islamic headwear in school" thing was about where you choose to position the slider on the "individual freedom" vs "secular state" continuum. Or possibly "freedom to worship" vs "multi-culturalism". At any rate, we thought it was to do with the kind of massive and complicated grey area which we liberal types find it very difficult to sort out.

So thank the divine entity of your choice that we have the Daily Mail to guide us through this maze of moral ambgiuity. Apparently, the current ruling (which says that girls DO have the right to wear Islamic clothes to schools) is a very bad thing because....



...it might mean the end of school uniform.

And Tony and Dave pay attention to what these people say.

I Still Haven't Stopped Laughing At This One

Yes, I know you've probably seen it before.

But even if it turns out bad, remember, it could have been so much worse....