for the love of God

I wonder if it would be wrong of me to permit myself a brief chortle of glee at the High Court's throwing out of Lydia Playfoot's case against her school for preventing her wearing her so-called "purity ring" to school in contravention of its dress and jewellery code. Well, bugger it, I'm going to do it anyway. (It's probably wrong that the phrase "purity ring" makes me come over all Finbarr Saunders, as well. I was hoping to have the text "Lydia Playfoot's ring, yesterday" pop up when you hovered your mouse over the image, but I don't have the l33t skillz, or indeed the inclination, to work it out. Postscript: it works in IE, but not Firefox. I'll leave it now.)

Perhaps it would also be wrong of me to compare the deeply sinister Silver Ring Thing organisation (and their UK chapter with whom Lydia Playfoot is associated) with the Hitler Youth? It's the whole wholesome apple-cheeked Strength Through Joy jollity of it all, I think. And the intense humming of evil that emanates from them both.

Bottling stuff up, including perfectly natural and normal stuff, is always counterproductive - insert your own champagne bottle/dam burst/Cliff Richard's testicles metaphors here. There's plenty of anecdotal and more rigorous scientific evidence that in the area of sex education in particular what kids need is just information, delivered in a timely and non-judgmental way, ideally without any reference to the big magic pixie in the sky who'll be watching you and be really angry, for no rationally explicable reason, if you and that cute little redhead from your sailing group sneak off for a quick hand-job behind the boathouse.

In the light of all that, and observing that Lydia Playfoot looks quite young for her 16 years, it would probably still be very wrong of me to speculate that once the hormones kick in in a big way she'll be ravenously fellating the entire school first XI behind the science block.

Oops.