Infamous Suggestions

The Minister of British Jobs for British Workers, Phil Woolas, has been removed from the panel on tonight's Question Time, because the Government wants to talk about the economy instead, and not at all because of any gaffes he may have committed. Oh, good heavens, no. Like his fellow clown Ivan Lewis, and no doubt just as inadvertently, Woolas made the cardinal error of saying something with which a left-of-centre, twenty-first-century government might agree. In an interview with the Murdoch Times, Woolas said regarding disestablishment of the Church of England: "I think it will happen because it's the way things are going ... It will probably take 50 years, but a modern society is multifaith." The Ministry of Incarceration and Deportation promptly dispatched a spokesbeing to reaffirm New New Labour's commitment to monarchy, misogyny, homophobia and religious discrimination: "The Church of England is by law established as the Church in England and the monarch is its supreme governor. The government remains committed to this position and values the establishment of the Church of England".

Supposedly, Woolas also suggested that there should be a cap on the country's population - a sensible enough notion, given that the British Isles, like British banks for British taxpayers, are a finite resource and cannot accommodate infinite numbers. This was apparently less of a gaffe than the one about the Church of England, because he didn't really say it, or if he did say it he didn't mean it that way, or if he did mean it that way he only meant to suggest that we should cap those increases which arise from immigration. Certainly nobody would wish to suggest that he meant we should make some attempt to limit the number of unwanted children being born; let alone that he meant we should do anything to ensure that breeding rights are confined to those actually capable of bringing up their offspring. Oh, good heavens, no.