Its election time in Britain and the "turn back the clock brigade have as usual crawled out of the woodwork to demand a return to "old fashioned values"

Back to Basics

By

Sir Hector Gobbitt - Broadsides MP (Conservative, Rawtenborough)

Gobbitt - Broadsides has been the Member of Parliament for the town of Rawtenborough since 1832 making him the longest serving member ever. He is known for a deep committment to traditional values and opposition to progress of any kind. Also said to favour the return of the death penalty for single mothers and also as part of his solution to social issues like teenage delinquency,  drug abuse, unemployment and non payment of parking fines. After a long period in the wilderness occupied only by the reactionary right Broadsides has recently re- emerged as an influential potitical thinker.

My colleagues on the Conservative benches in Parliament and I sincerely believe that education is a good thing. So much so in fact that we aim to bring about its return, in a limited way of course, in state schools. Not touchy - feely stuff however; I say most emphatically not this touch - feely stuff that passes for education nowadays. There is quite enough touchy feely stuff going on in the exclusive private schools favoured by the wealthy, and quite right too. Boys will be boys but let us remember that moral turpitude is only for those who can afford it. The poor must work hard, be thrifty and concentrate their energy on the redemption of their immortal souls I say. Taxpayers are footing the bill and they have a right to expect value for money. Victorian values in education, that's what we need. Remedial beatings and ritual humiliation for dullards. The problem with modern education is that it teaches aspirations don't y'see. And aspirations are no good to people who have no hope of getting anywhere. I'm always hearing from my constituents that the young have no respect. That, I put it to you, can only be a result of not being taught their place. Forget all this social science gobbledegook, empowerment, equality and such, the class system is very simple really. The function of the upper class is to remind us all of our place. They get drunk, take drugs, catch syphilis, gamble away the family fortune, have homosexual love affairs with men and women, and go hunting. And we all respect them because they are upper class and therefore the rules do not apply to them. The middle class work as managers or in the professions and are respectable because if they start trying to have a good time the whole system collapses. How do the middle class know they are respectable? Well, because the upper class and the working class aren't of course. Now the working class, there's a rum bunch for you. They got along quite well, working long hours for starvation pay, living in vile conditions, catching diseases that left them twisted and mis-shappen, breeding like rabbits, being miserable and dying until all this socialism and free thinking came along. The thing was, in my Grandfather's day, and that isn't so long ago - the Old Queen, God bless her, was born before Grandpapa had pubic hair, as I was saying, in my Grandfather's day the working class knew their place and were grateful. They knew who they had to thank for misery, ricketts, consumption, malnutrition, cholera and all the rest and they were properly grateful. They also knew they had no business being ambitious or wanting equality. And as for education, what business of theirs was it that Newton invented gravity hmm? If they were hit on the head by an apple it was because they were poor and so deserved the pain. Then the socialists started saying there should be equal opportunities and before you can say Tuberculosis they are wanting equal education and public health care, demanding social justice, better housing, paid holidays, a ninety - five hour working week and more. And where has it got them eh? Into therapy, thats where. They're all dysfunctional. How about that hmm? Should have remained grateful for misery and malnutrition which is rightfuilly their lot in life. They'd have been a lot happier don't y' know.. Never heard of anybody being dysfunctional when they had ricketts and cholera to think about did you? Lack of gratitude, that's what makes them dysfunctional. So how do we propose to build a better world? Flogging and ritual humiliation that's how. Teach 'em the 3 'R's, Reading, Respect and Retribution. First lesson every morning in the New Educational Order will be grovelling, forelock tugging and cap doffing with punishments for those who don't come up to scratch. More than one mistake and they will be stripped naked and made to stand on one leg in the schoolyard all day. And anybody who is absent or late for register without a note from a doctor, police officer or magistrate will have his legs cut off. How's that for education hmm? That will teach them to know their place and be grateful. Our policies will soon have the country back on its feet.

Hector Gobbit - Broadsides M.P.