Megastar
Thu, Nov 3, 2005
The Daily Express - you've gotta love it.
No, sorry, let's backpedal a second. You don't.
Making a change - although not a refreshing one - from dreary Diana exposes and the bleedin' weather, the Sexpress is set to be off on one for the foreseeable with yarns about PC loonies "banning Christmas".
Again today, bang on cue, we give you
"Banned: Christmas gifts for children".
This time, the over-sensitive enemy of the state upsetting the sensibilities of ordinary, hard-working, middle-class, married folk is, er, the taxman.
You! Yes, you, there, in the bowler hat holding a clipboard! You grasping swine!
"Revenue bosses have banned a charity collection," tub-thumps the rag, "because it might offend non-Christians".
Apparently, "an attempt by staff at the Inland Revenue to take part" in Operation Christmas Child, a charity offering gifts to poor kids in eastern and central Europe, "has been slapped down, because it offends the Government's 'diversity' policy".
This story comes tepid on the heels of yesterday's Express' table-banging fulmination about barmy Lambeth council's decision to rename Xmas lights as "winter" lights. Which, as you can imagine, went down a bundle.
In fact, the Express is gloomily viewing these latest bureaucratic assaults on UK culture as portents of the death of Britishness. Cheers and that.
Never fear, though. The paper hasn't completely forgotten about blinking Diana.
The late princess' memorial fountain - for so long the scourge of skiddy kiddies in London's Hyde Park - has been dissed as a "muddy bog" or, at best, "an open drain".
It's what she would have wanted.
