HUMAN rights is a ligature affecting our lives. Infused with the incoherence of political correctness, it transforms to a cocktail impinging upon proved traditional values and freedom embodying logic, free speech and coercive action against rabid corrupti

HUMAN rights is a ligature affecting our lives. Infused with the incoherence of political correctness, it transforms to a cocktail impinging upon proved traditional values and freedom embodying logic, free speech and coercive action against rabid corruption and crime of a most serious nature.

We live at a time of optimum stupidity and drown in a mire of deceit and gross invasiveness quite the opposite of what it used to be.

How are we expected to grapple with PC purists who reason that 'black' in Baa Baa Black Sheep should be replaced with 'rainbow'?

I doubt that an ounce of logic exists in the collective craniums of elected and un-elected bureaucrats comfortably ensconced in Britain and Brussels. And to think that the EU is considering a rule that teachers should brainwash the minds of five and six year olds with the good merits of Brussels. Good?

Crazed idealists are at the heart of Europe. Their aim is to turn the continent into a totalitarian camp. Some EU advocates in Britain and the judiciary among them are becoming unhinged.

I give the EU a little longer. The weight of member countries and unaccountability will destroy it.

The net of bureaucratic authority stretching from Brussels to Whitehall and thence to town halls strangles the balance of credulity between a tangled, incompetent mess of governance and the confused legions of ordinary working people.

Where is the discipline of old? No society can exist without it. Like white hot lava, incompetence creeps into every nook and cranny of decency, goodwill and respect. It has been doing so for years.

Last year I wrote that 2006 would be a definitive year. All things considered I was not far wrong and we've hardly started yet.

The government added fuel to the fire of discontent when it abolished competitive trading enabling local authorities to invite commercial bids for the running of key services. Competitive trading engenders market reality in a society familiar with contractual bidding. Unions despise such logic on the grounds it undermines their power. The local effect on neglected services underlines the point.

We are subjected to the old producer-led mentality that places the self-serving interests of its own work force before the needs of the public it is supposed to serve.

Administrative legislation and time-consuming committee work involving umpteen meetings have become a honeypot for some and a bed of coals for others. Brussels and the national government and local government love it.

Burgeoning bureaucracy drains public funds. It's a bit like water reservoirs with leaking pipes. Nothing is ever done because it would deny the cream destined for fat cats and shareholders.

At least it is being recognised that the NHS, for instance, is burdened with overpaid management and that, in general, front line services are diminishing while national numbers on the lists of corporate functions have increased by 17 per cent.

Management salary increases completely outweigh production. It cannot go on.

The country suffers from neurosis diversity, a surfeit of managers subservient to blinkered principles of bureaucratic departments indoctrinated in human rights, political correctness and a never-ending deluge of EU directives.

It was never like that in the old days and then there was such a thing as efficiency and open discouragement of expediency rather than right or just.

We are at the point where the nation needs a modern-day Cromwell to cleanse Parliament (for a second time) and focus minds away from sleaze and corruption and, as an after-thought, a modified Judge Jeffries to introduce a firm measure of justice with keener penalties.

Never has this country that gave so much to the world been seen in the process of being ruined as it is now.

TREVOR BEVIS, St Peter's Road, March