Right, in spades.

When I were a lad, folk could speak their mind, it seemed. And so they did. There were out-and-out battles - down t'mines, up t'snickets, in pubs and in parliament. Spades were called spades. It helped save a lot of confusion. But then, once the swinging sixties and the sordid seventies became history, it's as if a secret pact had been made in a dimly-lit back room, allowing a creeping social malaise to slowly spread its poison over our freedoms and the country apathetically sleepwalked into a minefield of political correctness and all its variants.

Harmless bigotry (let's be blunt) - normal, instinctive human behaviour, favouring familiars and building social tribes for millennia - became a crime and prime ministers began to apologise for events of centuries ago. Progressive be-socked, sandal-wearing, lentil-weaving liberal-minded poltroons gained a stranglehold over our nation's history and whilst not actually burning the books on pyres (much) they cheerfully expunged MY nation's history by dangling in its place their new-fangled, 'acceptable' alternatives.

Gone was General Wolfe and the heroic escapade at the Heights of Abraham. The thin red line of the Crimean campaign was banished forever and woe-betide anybody mentioning Agincourt. Slavery had suddenly become an entirely British evil - for which, read English evil - and the deeds of Empire lay forgotten and forlorn or worse, held up as further examples of  the blight that our expeditionary zeal had brought to the world. Who were we to give them roads and railways? 'Empire builders' became an insult.

And as we cringed beneath the soft-soled jackboot of uncontrolled socialist experimentation, we became ever more apologetic, ever more compliant and ever more dependent on the state. Hungry for every crumb and wanting more; Oliver Twists the lot of us. And then, it seemed, when the battle to belittle Britain was won, we turned on each other, branding basic human aversion to difference as some form of hate crime. Sexism, racism, ageism, faithism, heightism, weightism... gingerism... it even became unacceptable to call a lazy, fat, workshy, scrounging bastard a lazy, fat, workshy, scrounging bastard. Pity the criminal for he knows not what he does and society is to blame.

A lazy, fat, workshy scrounging bastard - yesterday

So, it's nice to see the tide slowly turning.  It's good to hear people beginning to tentatively proffer right-of-centre views without ending up in court. Okay the Harmanistas are still shrill, but it seems we're regaining the right to point and laugh at the juvenile, pouting idiocy of those who would stomp on our differences. (You cry "Vive la difference!" and flourish your 'diversity' card, but punish anybody daring to comment on any such differences. The left doesn't want diversity, it wants uniformity. What a strange, short-sighted bunch you are.)

And I forecast all of this about thirty-five years ago. As a teenager I could see it all going to hell in a hand-crafted handcart. In fact I have been bang-on about every single world event in which I cared to take an interest. I am a veritable oracle and I have yet to be proved wrong.

'Comprehensive' schools - incomprehensible.
Downgrading GCEs to CSEs - I dare you to say this has improved anything.
The European 'Project' - see Greece, Ireland, Italy et al, crumble.

I believe I've made my point. I know what's best for you, so listen up.

Satnavs make you lose your way.
Calculators make you innumerate
Spellcheckers make you illiterate
Computers make you stupid

In general, technology makes you useless. I want my spade back!