The Hoody Menace

Yesterday, even as it �emerged� that his government has created 1,018 new criminal offences since 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair found time � while outlining a 'bold' legislative programme for reform and renewal of public services in his third term in office � to join the war on the 'hoody' gangs which are terrorising the public.

According to the Daily Mail, he said people were 'rightly fed up' with yobbish behaviour and backed the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent which has banned youths wearing hooded tracksuit tops from its premises.



The menace is real. I remember that nice Anakin Skywalker as a kind, selfless child. How can he have grown into the hoody clad ruffian pictured above? If this can happen to child born of prophecy, possibly conceived by the will of the Force itself, how are our children to be saved?

We�ve ignored warning about youth, garments and respect before and paid a terrible price. It�s just over 40 years since the national newspapers reported that, on the 9th April 1965, the headmaster, Mr. E. H. Roberts, of the 1,000 pupil Grove Park Grammar School at Wrexham attacked those parents who allowed their children to wear Rolling Stones 'corduroy' trousers. 'It was a disservice to the young if adults interpreted freedom as a complete disregard for the rules' he said.

As we all now know, Mr. Roberts� brave call to action was ignored. An entire generation � personified perhaps by the eleven year old Master A. Blair � was lost to taste and tailoring. The result is plain in the photo below which was taken in 1975 of the then 21 year old lead singer of Ugly Rumours. It is as a horrible warning from history. It must never happen again.



More seriously, this "policy" is utterly witless and vacuous pandering. I think I will get a hoody tomorrow in protest and I buy clothes so seldom that I often wonder why I am not nude. I agree with Tom Paine, the "Me generation", which is surely the most pampered, spoiled, self important, and selfish in British history is aging in an ugly way "increasingly afraid of its youth (most of whom are perfectly decent people) and far too inclined to repress superficial and irrelevant behaviours".

I wonder if I can get Hugh MacLoed to bring out hoody versions of his t-shirts.

A company called Indigo can produce custom hoodies for us, but we have to buy at least 8. Anyone got any ideas?