(0)

Today I did something I do not normally do, but ought to do more often. I bought the latest issue of Viz, which looks like this:

What a fine British institution this is! Dirty jokes. Merciless send-ups of political and any other sort of correctness, attacks on the high and mighty (especially God), and lurking under its lewd surface is a fiercely freedom-loving political agenda, not unlike that pushed in a similarly subversive manner by the creators of South Park.

I have been feasting in particular on the wonderful Viz letters pages, where, in this issue, there is to be found a thoughtful exchange of views on the nature of the terrorist menace, and the concomitant threat to civil liberties posed by the various state measures that are allegedly being taken to curb it.

T. Harris of Leeds starts the ball rolling:

So the Home Secretary plans to force us to carry identity cards with our iris patterns encoded onto them. That's rich. How dare David Blunkett judge people on their eyes when his don't even work. It would be like the head of the DVLC not having a number plate on his car.

Les Barnsley of Barnsley pursues the theme of iris patterns:

Could the Home Secretary explain to me how biometric checks on iris patterns and fingerprints are going to help keep tabs on muslim cleric Abu Hamsa.

Good points both, I think we would all here agree.

Londoner Charles Nylon has this reflection to offer concerning the nature of terrorism:

These suicide bombers really get my goat. What an evil way to kill innocent people, running screaming into a crowded place like madmen, blowing themselves and everyone else to bits. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned gentlemen terrorists like the IRA, who'd quietly pop a nail bomb under a pub table and leave without making a song and dance about it.

But Bamber Ross of Ross ripostes:

Mr Nylon (above letter) does not know what he is talking about. Gentlemen terrorists, indeed. When you get stang off a wasp, it just flies off to sting again and again in the style of the IRA bombers that Mr Nylon so admires. However, when a bee stings, it pulls its arse inside out and, like a suicide bomber, dies. And I think we' all agree that bees are much nicer than wasps.

But Prof. J. Shiels of the Dept of Entomology, Maudling College, Oxford, rejects this bee/wasp metaphor in no uncertain terms:

I'm afraid Mr Ross's insect/terrorist analogy (above letter) doesn't hold water. The reason that we agree that bees are nicer than wasps is nothing at all to do with their stringing ability. It is because bees are furry, like little black and orange flying teddy bears that make jam. Wasps on the other hand are all hard and have them Darth Vader faces. And they chase you when you run off.

Good to see the academic classes contributing to the debate there.

And the profundities just keep coming. Says Tracey Cusick of Cumbria:

The NSPCC keeps going on TV and saying that unless I send them three quid a month, a baby called William won't be so lucky next time. I suggest that we don't give in to these extortionists and blackmailers, or they'll be back with a threat to top him if we don't send them a fiver.

Wise words indeed.

Viz. Gentlemen intellectual terrorists. At all good newsagents now. And I have not even mentioned the Fat Slags.