Wuthering Heights

In the background I can hear the evening news droning on. And the headline is "William to marry Kate". Our beloved PM comes out of No 10 to say how wonderful this news is; a real boast to the nation and we're all delighted.

 Certainly the media is, we are going to be deluged, covered with sloppiness, cod journalism and sickening triteness.

Watch out for homilies, personal reflections and grand meanings about the wedding.

It's almost as if royal weddings were designed to take place when the nation is at its lowest ebb. The Queen's at a time of rationing and deprivation in 1947, Princess Anne's in the gloom and doom of November 1973 and Di and Charlie in the middle of the Thatcher retrenchment.

More worryingly the darling couple announced their wedding plans on the same day that Kenneth Clarke announced the Government's out of court settlement for the UK Guantanamo prisoners. I can't believe that was coincidence.

Even more worrying is the story carried in today's Independent "Toy pig pulled on religious grounds". Apparently "A mother who bought the Early Learning Centre's (ELC) HappyLand Goosefeather Farm for her daughter's first birthday contacted the store after finding that the pig was missing. The £25 set contained a model of a cow, sheep, chicken, horse and dog but no pig, despite there being a sty and a button which generated an "oink". ELC state they removed the pig because of customer feedback and religious grounds. 

Again some are blaming Muslims (and Jews?) for this. OK, some in Muslim countries may have objected to a pig in their farmyard, but that didn't mean the company had to erase the pig from all its markets. They were frankly pretty stupid. Did they imagine people who were expecting to see a pig, wouldn't notice or mind that the little porker was missing?

The company's crassness has stumped even the Daily Mail and the Sun, whose readers almost to a man think ELC are bonkers.

I can't say I've seen a pig in any Nativity scene, but if there was one no one would be offended, would they?