Protecting the masses
: While Michael Powell is trying to wash our media mouths out with soap — he wants to multiply by 10 the fines charged for dirty words on the air — Britain has its own nanny trying to protect their tender sensibilities.
Clare Short, disloyal opposition to Tony Blair, wants to ban breasts:
Ms Short criticised the Sun at a Westminster lunch yesterday, where she said she wanted to “take the pornography out of our press”.
“I’d love to ban it. It degrades women and our country,” she said.
“A survey of Sun readers’ wives and daughters showed they believed it degraded them. We need to push back the tide of nakedness. You can’t take it out of the whole of society but I think you can take it out of the mainstream,” she added.
And The Sun hit back. The paper sent a bevvy of Page 3 girls to Short’s house so they could put a picture of them at her door with the caption, “Door knockers” (no distance is too far to go for a punchline), and so they could quote one of them saying:
