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2004-07-21 - 9:18 a.m.

When they said Swinging Sixties, I Didn�t Think they Meant from a Rope

Yesterday, The Prime Minister of The Britishland Isles of England, Mr. Tony �Bliar� Blair, apparently claimed that the seeds of today�s dissolute crime-ridden society were sown in the liberal sixties. Or summin like tha, anyway. The Daily Mirror�s measured response to this was to present a list of 60 reasons why the 60�s were great.

I believe this was a thorough, impassioned piece of challenging journalism and in no way involved a sweaty hack with his feet on the desk gorging on Mini Cheddars while his chubby fingers languidly nudged the words �Events Important 1960�s� into Google.

The piece is here.

I wondered how far down the list they would get before they would forget that they were supposed to be doing 'Things that Made the 60�s Great' and just start doing 'Things that Happened in the 60�s' . Well, I�d say it�s around about number 55.

55. SUICIDE decriminalised in 1960.

Hurray! Let�s hear it for the 60�s! It was great!

So I take it that back in the 50�s, no sooner would the arterial blood be arcing over your winklepickers than the fuzz would be carting you off to spend time at Her Relatively Newly-Appointed Majesty�s Pleasure. Oh yes. The courts were full of silly sods who�d necked a gross of aspirin or jumped under the 4.45 to Hayward�s Heath. The law came down like a ton of bricks on anyone who�d deliberately gone under, er, a ton of bricks. If you committee suicide before 1960, you could expect a long, long spell behind bars for your pains.

But not in the free-thinking 60�s, baby. Uh-uh. Then, suicides could at last come out of the closet. No more stigma, no more prejudice. At last you could say �I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses / I deal my own deck, sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces / no, actually, always the deuces / deuces without exception / life is unfair and unbearable / that�s why I�m going to jump off this viaduct / and incidentally we called them twos, not deu-aaaaagh�

If you want my opinion they had it right in the 50�s. Yeah yeah, Call me a reactionary, tell me I�m full of prejudice and hate. But you look at the zero-tolerance approach to suicide victims before the law was changed and answer me this:

How many of them reoffended?


MOUSEMILK�S LIST OF THE DAY

Barrel-scraping reasons why the 60�s were great

1. They provided a convenient buffer between the 50�s and 70�s

2. A giant Lizard-kangaroo hybrid did not trample the Earth during the 60�s

3. Hitler was still dead

4. Um�


How am I driving?
3 pennyworths so far

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude



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