Being the good citizen that I am I have completed my census return, and surprisingly it was not as complicated as I thought it would be, so I don’t expect a visit from the “census police” anytime soon.

I took the completed form in it’s envelope along to the small postbox on the corner of my street, only to find that it was too large to fit through the slot. It’s quite a thick document (32 pages) so bending it didn’t help.

I had to visit my local post office to post a packet, so I took the census form along with me, only to find that a notice had been taped to the large postbox outside the building requesting that these official documents be handed to members of staff inside, so presumably they don’t fit into that box either.

Considering that hundreds of millions have been spent on this exercise, wouldn’t you think that someone amongst the Office for National Statistics’ army of bureaucratic prats would have noticed the problem ?

Oh! .. and by the way .. thousands of householders were unable to complete the census on line (as we had been urged to do) because the new website logged them off before they had finished answering all the questions.

… Un -BLOODY – believable !

I see that the majority of people in the UK now consider themselves to be “middle class”, so I suppose that, as I always had a ‘white collar’ job I will have to join them, although I have always considered myself to be “working class”, as I have, like my parents, always ‘worked’ for a living.

Most people today will tell you that the old British class system is long gone. I don’t believe them. Just take a look in the gentlemen’s clubs of St. James’, the playing fields of Eton and now ‘Mahiki’ and the other haunts of the ‘Sloane Rangers’.

So if the new ‘middle class’ has replaced the old ‘working class’ what has taken it’s place ?

Well, I’m sad to say that it is the “under class”. In other words those who don’t ‘work’ for a living and live off state benefits.

Now I know that many of these people are deserving cases, and would much prefer to join the ranks of the employed and provide for themselves and their families, but there are a bloody lot more who much prefer to sit on their arses all day and ‘play the system’ for all they can get. They have never worked and have no intention of ever doing so. I prefer to call this bunch … the ‘scum scrounger class’.

So we now have four classes … ‘Upper’ … ‘Middle’ … ‘Under’ .. and ..  ‘Scrounger’ ..  or do we ?

What about the .. ‘Celeb class’ ? .. You must know them, the newspapers are full of them.  They even have whole glossy magazines devoted to them, and TV shows built around them. There are brain dead bimbos .. sporting heroes neanderthals .. airhead wanabees .. and those who are famous just for being famous. So called ‘reality TV’ is overflowing with them. They are easy to spot by their fake tans, their ‘bling’, their wigs, their ridiculous shoes, their tattoos, their inability to speak the ‘Queen’s English’, and the fact that none of them has a proper job. Ummm …

OK ! … So I’ll settle for four classes.

I’ve just been watching Nickle-Arse Sarkozy on the TV news telling us how the “cheese eating surrender monkies”, the Yanks, us Brits and .. Oh yes ! .. a few Arabs are going to kick Gaddafi’s arse defend the civilian population of Libya.

I just hope that this time some clever bastard has thought up a way to extract ourselves from the shit that we will inevitably find ourselves in, otherwise it will be “Eye-Rack” all over again.

I must say that I am surprised that no one has mentioned “weapons of mass destruction” this time.

Mind you no one has mentioned   …

…   OIL !  either.

Recently I read about an ex-RAF pilot, who had served in World War II, going into a store where the young lady assistant noticed the veteran’s pin in his jacket lapel.

“What’s that badge ?” … she asked.

“Oh, it commemorates my service during the ‘Battle of Britain’ ” … replied the old boy.

“What battle of Britain was that then ?” asked the girl !

I know that it sounds like incredible ignorance, but then we’ve all read of the surveys where people think that Hitler was the German football (soccer) coach and that Churchill is the dog on TV that sells insurance.

So it comes as no shock to learn that so many children now drop history as a GCSE subject at the age of thirteen: and it seems that we are the only country in Europe that allows children to do this.

In the recent report inspectors raised concerns that, in primary schools, many pupils lacked chronological knowledge of historical events, partly because of the fashionable move towards teaching in ‘themes’. The report identified one primary school that skipped from the Romans and Ancient Egypt to the Tudors and then the Victorians. Sounds a bit like flicking from one channel to another with the TV remote.

I just hope that the lessons on the Tudors don’t use scenes from the TV series of the same name, as it’s a bit light on facts, but makes up for it in scenes of royal ‘rumpy-pumpy’. Perhaps they could introduce a sex education and history ‘theme’.

I must confess that I am a bit of a history nut, so I find it sad that so many young people know little or nothing about the exhilarating, inspiring and sometimes not so glorious history of this country, which of course teaches us so much about …

… our place in the world today.