RECENT events have demonstrated the fragility of democracy when political correctness can so readily translate into violent intolerance.

Like monopoly, democracy only works if people obey the rules of the game.

Smash the board and punch your opponent and you become a mega-loser. The old adage is true.

There is no-one as intolerant as an intolerant liberal.

Their legacy is a new language replete with -isms and -phobias designed to stifle all discussion on issues nobody dare mention.

The past is past. We are its product. No need to express guilt in violence.

Times were different, as were people, values and standards.

As recent as 40 years ago, I can recall being asked by exasperated parents to punish (physically) their defiant 16-year-old (all 12 stone and six feet of him).

Wisely, I declined.

But they represented the then majority view of society – which still persists.

Every heard “they should bring back the cane”. Nonsense of course, but true.

Today you can lose your job, reputation and much else on an injudicious comment.

So, do we, in retrospect, demonise teachers of that era? Some would.

Where does it stop? Perhaps Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry VIII should be burnt for sexism. Perhaps we should expunge the entire Graeco/Roman legacy of language (there wouldn’t be much left!), politics, literature and architecture on grounds of imperialism and xenophobia.

Why not go the whole hog and delete all mention of the Big Bang for starting the whole thing off in the first place. Some might.

Mike Baldasera, Darlington.