Jim O'Neill said Kylie Minogue, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears were a bad influence. He criticised the soap opera Emmerdale for a storyline about a lesbian relationship. He thinks David Beckham isn't much good either.
So far, so predictable. And relatively harmless. If a retired headteacher wants to make a fool of himself tut-tutting about the modern generation, that's his business. It's his self-respect and if he wants to chuck it away in public, who's to stop him?
Yet there was something slightly strange and sinister in what he said.
It was not just the old chap's misplaced obsession with what young girls are wearing. Far worse was the idea he floated that Margaret Hodge, the minister for young people, should force television stations to stop showing programmes with sex and bad language in the early evening. That, he told his union's conference, should be the minister's first job.
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