Peter Hitchens used the pages of the Mail on Sunday to grind a favourite old axe: the dangers of political correctness. The law is meant to guard against discrimination on the grounds of race, sex and class. "But the rules on discrimination have been skewed to suit the leftwing extremists who now run most of this country." Their latest piece of bigotry was to reward universities for discriminating against private school pupils. The prime minister may pretend he is against it, but the government is hell-bent on implementing a policy that works "against the middle class", and "against those with traditional values".
Michael McMahon disagreed in the Independent on Sunday. The problem is that we used to have grammar schools that would offer educational opportunities to bright kids from humble backgrounds. Now those same kids are having to wait until the end of secondary education to be "filtered in... and in order to do that, some of those who have done well, but were privileged, have to be filtered out... But you can see how those who have religiously observed the mainstream educational diet felt just a tad dyspeptic when they are told that their achievements count for less because they were fed with a silver spoon. It's an expensive way to learn an important lesson: life ain't always fair".
Matters of political correctness were also on the mind of India Knight, in the Sunday Times. Knight considered the case of the Australian politician banned from breast feeding her baby in a state parliament last week. "Something's not right here. Breast feeding is natural and good for both mother and child... Whatever your views on breastfeeding, it would be absurd to deny women the right to feed their children in public." The problem is that too many men view breasts as sexual objects. "I find this strange and incredibly irritating. If men can't differentiate between bosoms doing their thing and bosoms bursting alluringly out of a bra on a billboard - well, it's about time they tried harder and time we stopped indulging them."
The way Derbyshire police this week let it be known that Stephen Downing is still their only suspect in the murder, almost 30 years ago, of Wendy Sewell, outraged Christa Ackroyd in the Sunday Express. "If Derbyshire police had done their job properly we would have had more chance of uncovering the facts. Until we are certain I, for one, am not prepared to listen to any more thinly disguised innuendo."
