The PC teenagers
Jake, Abbie, Tyrone and Tilly have formed a politically correct deputation to protest against Chipping Somborne’s adoption of the Royal British Legion’s steel silhouette of a Tommy to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. “He is carrying a gun. We feel this might upset families.”
Brigadier Firebrace and Major Hazard – stout members of the PCC, the Parish Council and the British Legion – are breathing brimstone. The words “you ’orrible little children” are foremost in their minds. The Brig has confided to Major Hazard that it’s typical that these young people are all progeny of “incomers”, families who’ve been in the village for two minutes, having moved out from the Smoke. This is accompanied by a snorting harrumph, implying Who Do These People Think They Are with their soft, lefty, vegetarian ways?
Major Hazard has confided to the Brig that he heard from Councillor Mrs Audrey Ratchett in the Co-op – while he was buying his Daily Telegraph – that Tilly NortonSmythe had forbidden her mother from wearing a feathered Red Indian head dress to a Cowboys and Indians fancy dress party on the grounds that it was racist and offensive. “Not a lot of Native Americans in Chipping Somborne to be offended when I last looked at the electoral roll.”
Brig Firebrace is now explaining, in the manner of one addressing mutinous squaddies, that there are no less than six Firebraces on the village War Memorial “including my grandfather and two great-uncles who died at the Somme. They did, indeed, carry guns, poor blighters, and took a good few of the Hun down with them. Grandfather was mentioned in dispatches, and without men like him you chaps wouldn’t be able to stand here protesting in our green and pleasant land”. Harrumph.
Tyrone suggests that as the British Legion also does silhouettes of nurses, stretcher bearers and Sikhs, maybe they would be more culturally appropriate? Major Hazard, playing the good cop, says this is an excellent idea, and he’s sure their parents would be prepared to stump up the readies. “But we’ll keep Tommy to honour him and our veterans.” The Snowflakes melt.
There’ll Always Be An England: Social Stereotypes from The Daily Telegraph
by Victoria Mather and Sue Macartney-snape (Constable, £12.99). Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @social_stereotypes