Vacuous, intellectually bankrupt government: a case study

A silly rumour has swept the world of conservative tabloids and local newspapers that the coloured bracelets currently being worn by children signify the achievement of particular sexual activities, according to the colour. Or, as The Sun puts it, 'BRACELET which means YOUR KIDS are HAVING SEX!', which in this jurisdiction, is admissible evidence in a court of law.

Now a moment's thought should demonstrate the stupidity of such a claim. Is there a company marketing Blowjob Bands? A club? A Fellatio Federation solemnly awarding these things? Ridiculous. Even if there was once a link, it's surely broken once the bracelets are being worn on a mass scale: all cultural items are appropriated and hollowed out. The bracelets are signifiers without a signified.

Now, normally, I'd just sigh at the desperation and stupidity of the press, but now a minor government whip has got involved, calling on the government to ban the bracelets. What an utter, utter moron Mary Creagh is. Seriously, the only way to associate these bracelets with forbidden activity is to demand they be banned. They're just bits of plastic - and meaning can be transferred to any other item. Should the kids start wearing odd shoelaces to denote what they've been up to, will she demand they be banned?

This country has the highest teen pregnancy and teen STD rate in the world. Not coincidentally, we have the worst sex education (it wasn't mentioned at my schools) and most prurient media. Perhaps Creagh, a minister in the department of health, should ask herself why these facts are so, and why her government, despite trying hard, hasn't done much to improve these things.

She's out of a job in a year or so, and in any case, New Labour is obsessed with a) bashing the poor, b) grovelling to the rich, even now and c) pleasing the Daily Mail, so I'm afraid we're not likely to have a serious, considered, enlightened policy any time soon. Instead, we'll have silly, petty, headlines like this, dreamed up by a policy adviser to please an MP hooked on hits of publicity without regard for logic, rationality or simple humanity.

We expect this rubbish from the rightwing and local newspapers: they abandoned news in favour or scaremongering and conspiracy theories long ago (cheaper, more profitable): regrettably, we expect it from MPs. But ministers, even at the fag end of a failing government (and I'm a member of the Labour Party, by the way), have a higher duty, which this idiot has utterly failed to uphold. She's actually proud of her idiocy - her website features links to radio shows on which she's demonstrated her vacuity.

Her record is appalling: only moderately for open parliament, strongly in favour of new, improved, more-millions-of-child-deaths-per-warhead-nuclear-onslaught-from-above, very strongly in favour of government legislation to imprison anyone not smiling while wearing shalwar kameez (i.e.the terrorist until proven innocent bill), very strongly against an inquiry into how our Messianic leader managed to get the UK into an illegal war on faked evidence, and swings back and forth on climate change - great Zarquon, I'm stunned this puppet has the synapse coordination to blink regularly, let alone consider the great issues of the day. Poor, poor Wakefield. Still, at least she's on the case with Shag Bands. We can all rest easy.

Taxi for Mary Creagh.