Broken Britain

Pity the poor family who lost their home to Gypsy squatters over the Christmas holidays.

The police were more interested in accusing them of being racists than they were in helping them get back their home.

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending.  The Gypsies have now gone home — to a house 100 yards down the road — to “stay with relatives”.

Is the term racist losing its meaning through overuse, I wonder?  A bit like the term terrorist which is now used to describe anything from a tourist photographing a building within the M25 to an octogenarian heckling at a Labour party conference.

Either way, thank you to our reader, Lisa, for reporting this one.

As the reports roll in of thousands of schools shut around the country, have a thought for the South Korean children who are training at a winter military camp in Ansan.

Whilst Surrey grinds to a halt buried beneath a whole four inches of snow, these children are being taught to “train through the pain”.

British children, on their diet of reality television, ipods and health-and-safety-diminished lifestyles will not know what’s hit them when they join the ranks of the global workforce.