Anthony Butcher

Tony Bennett

Anthony Butcher wrote, quoting a summary of Andrew Marr's book:

"...the war against homosexuals..."

REPLY: Que? When did that start? Has it finished. If so, who won?

http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?s...ry_school_kids

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Smidgey

The war against homosexuals ended when they (quite rightly) stopped imprisoning people such as Wilde and Turing.

Now we are just stuck in a strange PC society where beliefs trump property (and not just on this issue, but on many issues).

Roland

You know the biggest problem with these gay friendly children's books is that it is yet another example of how social idealist have not thought things through. For one young children who do not understand attraction may well not be able to distinguish friendship with a member of their own sex for something more another point it may lead to children admitting to being gay at a young age and spending the whole of their school life being bullied.
Children do not buy political correctness they know what is normal and what is not to a child it's this simple if most people are one way then thats fine if some people are another way then they are weird and trying to force feed them this rubbish will not change that.

blank_frackis

Aside from any debates about homosexuality, I thought the book was a good overview of postwar Britain. The only thing I'd say about it is that some people might be anticipating a largely political history and a great deal of it is concerned with more general aspects of British life - theatre, architecture, the construction of Britan's transport network amongst other things. If you just want to read about Suez, In Place of Strife, the Winter of Discontent and so on, you'd probably find it a little slow paced and meandering.

Smidgey

If children are so enlightened I'm sure you would be happy to hold them completely responsible for all acts that they do? Should a child who takes a sweet be imprisoned or given a police caution?

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How vain is man, who boasts in fight the valour of gigantic might!

-Georg Friedrich Händel

david H

The book I would unhesitatingly recommend is "The Collapse of British Power" by Correlli Barnett. One cannot understand our decline into sentimentality and weakness without study of this masterpiece. He finds the origins in Methodism of the early 18c and follows it through to appeasement.
Some important pointsa are how Thomas rnold turned the public school system into a place where rulers were imersed in unreality instead of a practical understanding of how the world really goes on.
The war writers and their effiminate pining about the conditions in the trenches when two thirds of the Working Classes lived their everyday lives in such conditions and how "The Lost Generation" applied only to a small ruling class and that Germany lost many more. The weakness is that he does not consider the invidious effect of the French Revolution. This infected people who needed accurate judgement of others and a practical wisdom with abstract ideas. In fact the anti-British attitude of the whole political, cultura, intellectrual and corporate elites had its origins in the pro and anti-Britisah attitudes of Charles James Fox and his circle and radicals like Whitbread.

Roland

Think you might have got me a little wrong the point i was trying to make is that
having had a fair few mates that were batting for the wrong team all of them have said they could never had admitted they were gay at school as they would have thrown them selves to the wolves.
The idea that if you read kids stories that promote homosexuality as normal in the hope that they will not be bios against people of that sexual persuasion is foolish kids will not by it.
As for the child who steels a sweet i think a caution would do the job but not sure if the zero tolerance police state will agree.

Mikeuk

The shirtlifters walked it.