A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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Bum, willy, poo, tit, todger. Sorry, just doing my homework. You see, schools in Cornwall are teaching children swear words in an attempt to stop them… err… swearing.

Apparently this is all part of a Personal, Social and Health Education module to be taught in all schools from September. (What is a module, anyway? We had lessons, not bloody modules. Oops, done it again.)

From dim and distant memory, I would suggest that 11-year-olds don’t need to be taught to swear. Or smoke, or drink or play doctors and nurses behind the bike sheds. They’re more than capable of behaving badly of their own volition without being supplied with extra ammunition by trendy teachers.

Do we want our playgrounds populated by foul-mouthed morons with limited vocabularies? I think not. Still, Cornwall won’t be short of people ideally equipped to be newspaper editors in 20 years time.

What is it about postmen? In the USA, “going postal” is now an accepted term for someone who cracks up and wipes out their work colleagues with a machine gun, such is the frequency with which postmen do it.

And even here, whenever you read about football hooligans being arrested, there’s always a postman or two on the list. Is it something they put in the glue on stamps? Is it all those early starts? Is it too much exposure to daytime television after knocking off for the day at 2pm?

Even in Mr Blah’s Cool Britannia, there’s always a sorting office somewhere in the country that’s closed because the inmates have gone on strike, not least here in Bristol. The latest industrial dispute is in Hampshire, where a strike is threatened after two union reps were ticked off for wearing their shirts outside their trousers.

A strike? Over dress sense? Are they serious? The Royal Mail, or “Consignia” as it’s known after the red-socked folks from marketing were called in, is a mess. The concept of next-day delivery is a bad joke and if your letter does get through, it’s only after it’s been “checked” for any cash or postal orders that may lurk within. No wonder many people now rely entirely on e-mail.

The unions, of course, fail to see this. They’re too busy getting locked in an embittered dispute over whether or not their shirts should be tucked into their trousers. What next? Mrs Scoggins reporting Postman Pat for sexual harassment? It’s enough to make a cat laugh. A black and white one.

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