Passing Comment- 'Corrie' complainers to feel the back of my hand

I would like to say that I have a lot to say about this issue, and that my first reaction to the story that cropped up on my Yahoo! news feed was eloquent, succinct and profound. Unfortunately I can't say that as it isn't true- reading the story, my first reaction was "Oh, fuck off!"

Before we go any further, for anyone who missed the soap's Monday night episode or (like me) doesn't watch Coronation Street, this is what is causing such kerfuffle. A single soap-star slap on a ten-year-old character's legs in retribution for killing the pet fish.

Heaven forfend that any teeny bit of discipline can be shown on TV now. When people are being arrested for smacking their children to tell them off, and charities are getting up in arms about every little thing- see the recent, ridiculous ridiculous leprosy-gate Aardman has had to put up with.

Without getting into this whole 'offence culture' that authorities have bred, as so many people this week have commented on that already, I will say this. How is it that we're able to be offended at anything and everything now, and can complain that something has set off our sensitivities therefore it is abhorrent and the very definition of bad, and get away with being such a pain in the side of anyone who is writing, making, saying, singing, drawing or believing anything? If these jumped up tell-tales and trolls got a good clout once in a while, and we were allowed to do it now so that parents wouldn't be scared of clipping a kid in public and therefore these people had seen it as commonplace, maybe they'd get out from their entrenched position, leave the artillery unmanned and actually do something themselves instead of complaining about everything anyone else does.

One reason we've got so many lippy kids and ASBO-bearing, truant troopers is that no one is or has given them a light licking to enforce discipline. I'm not talking beatings, bamboo in the fingernails, thumbscrews and the like, but a whack on the backside ten years ago could have stopped the eight-foot chav squaring off against the policeman in every town in the UK. Or the masses from having a go at anything, the media making that in itself a newsworthy event, and the ridiculously misnamed 'authorities' just bending and folding on everything because people have said so. Just a thought.