The Famous Five become candidates for a book burning as EU sheilas run amok

Yep – this could finish up on the EU book-ban list. .

If Alf were a Pom, he would be an ardent campaigner for Britain’s withdrawal from that sad-sack shambles known as the European Union.

His campaigning would be given a huge lift by a just-published report.

This report is obviously the disgraceful product of an over-dose of European political correctness and female hormones.

It also demonstrates a shameful readiness to sanction censorship.

But what would be censored?

Pornography and depravity?

Nah.

UK Minister calls for a cover-up – she wants papers like The Sun to stop publishing pix of topless sheilas

Dunno what Lynne Featherstone would make of New Zealand.

But it’s fair to say she would have some difficulty explaining her theories about the causes of domestic violence in this country.

It’s also fair to say – as you will learn from this post – that we can expect to hear much more about her campaign.

That’s because her job is to rid the world of domestic violence, and the world included New Zealand last time Alf checked his globe.

This Lynne Featherstone sheila happens to be a Lib Dem minister in Britain.

As a Lib Dem, of course, she should be viewed with profound suspicion from the outset, your basic Lib Dem being apt to lean much too much to the left from Alf’s staunchly held position on political matters.

She has to be viewed with great suspicion, furthermore, because she harbours some curious ideas about the effect of looking at pictures of topless bints in newspapers.

Actually, she wants to slap a ban on the publication of such pictures which – when you think about it – is a very unliberal thing to do, and may well be undem, too.

The Clayton Weatherston wipe-out: a Sunday rag’s role in a shabby case of biblioclasm

Book burning in Berlin, May 1933.

Alf was about to express his astonishment at a major newspaper championing censorship.

But no. In fact he is by no means astonished. The populist press will do anything to curry favour with its readers, and if that means forgetting about guiding principles – aw shucks, why not?

One of the principles typically promoted by newspapers is entrenched in the phrase “the public has a right to know”, or some variance of it.

The buggers will often delve into people’s private lives, shrieking – if thwarted – about a denial of the public’s right to know.

When it comes to private lives the public only sometimes has a right to know, but it does have a huge appetite for gossip.

So when we come to shaping public attitudes to book burnings, what role should we expect a newspaper to play?

Quel horreur – Hulot without his pipe

Strict anti-smoking laws in France have led to the iconic M. Hulot being stripped of his trademark pipe from a series of transit ads promoting a Jacques Tati exposition in Paris’ Cinematheque française.

The pipe has been censored in 2,000 Metrobus posters, the advertising arm of the authority which oversees Paris’ transit system.

It has been replaced with a preposterous pinwheel.

Across the channel, British newspapers are delighting in the absurdity of it.

Keeping abreast of those special days

Alf is grateful to Women’s Affairs Minister Pansy Wong for triggering the online research that steered him to this publicly displayed poster and to news of a triumph for the women of Belgium.

According to Digital Journal the breasts belong to Dutch Playmate 2007 Meike Schulte.

They advertise a pollster’s website analysing voters’ sentiment ahead of the June 7 parliamentary elections in Belgium.