Some weeks, a flick through the newspapers seems to support the notion that we live in stupid Britain.

Take the case of Kevin Geraghty-Shewan, who was using his mobile phone to take pictures of his four-year old son Ben enjoying a ride on a toy engine at the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland. A security guard told Geraghty-Shewan he could not take pictures. Why? Because he may be a paedophile.

This was his own son, Geraghty-Shewan protested. You can't prove that, replied the Jobsworth.

Walking off in disgust, Geraghty-Shewan was stopped a few minutes later by a police officer who said he matched the description of someone who had been taking pictures. Apparently that's a crime now. The copper took his details and said police had the right to delete pictures from his phone. When Kevin got, quite understandably, heated, he was threatened with arrest for breach of the peace.

Shopping centre management acknowledged that there had been a misunderstanding but said they ask their guards to be “diligent in implementing our security measures, which includes monitoring photography in our centres”.

Police merely conceded that no offence took place.

Now take the case of the Merseytravel bus drivers who have been refusing to stop for pupils wearing the hijab to avoid “trouble”. Some of the girls wearing the veil have been subjected to racist bullying on public transport. So how do the bus drivers deal with this wrinkle in the fabric of multi-cultural Britain...they compound the racism by driving on by. Stupid.

Where next in our voyage around stupid Britain? Ah yes, to Heathrow Airport, where former Royal Marine Paul Fairclough, from the Wirral, was going through security when a female operative spotted a tattoo on his arm depicting a large knife - the insignia of his old regiment.

He was told to cover it up because there was a policy that tattoos of offensive weapons must not be on show. Now I think we all concede airport security's right to go rooting through our possessions to confiscate any nail scissors or tweezers which may be used in international terrorism. But these civil servants are not also guardians of our sensitivities. We have no right not to be offended by someone's else's choices of skin-decoration, even if that choice is to have a Kalashnikov etched across their forehead. What is more stupid – this former soldier having a foot-long dagger tattoo on his arm, or the airport functionary thinking it was any of her business?

These are, you will say, exceptions to the rule. Dog bites man is not news, but man bites dog IS news. If so, man is biting dog sufficiently frequently that any parent taking a photo of their child in a public place now feels as if they may be viewed with suspicion. And our surveillance/security culture is such that we accept we cannot walk through a shopping centre while wearing a hat, or, indeed, with a tattoo of a huge dagger on our arm.

The stupid faction of society is now so numerous that they will probably spell the end to the two centuries-old taking of a Census. The 2011 Census will probably be the last, partly because a head-count every ten years does not take proper account of a rapidly changing population, but also because we keep giving stupid answers. In 2001, almost 400,000 idiots gave their religion as “Jedi”, and 7,000 said they were witches.

Will we muster more collective common sense when it comes to a general election, or will we see a massive swing to the Official Monster Raving Loony Party?

Actually, do you want to know how stupid the politicians think we are? An interview in the Guardian with the odious Sharon Osbourne this week reveals her claim that all the major British political parties had tried to get her to endorse their election campaign. How much respect does that show us, the stupid electorate, that politicians think we may put our X in the box on the say-so of an ex-X Factor judge?

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Latest news from the cutting edge of science...promiscuity among females is good for the species.

A study published in Current Biology says that generations of strict monogamy allows a particular chromosome to flourish with the result that more and more all-female broods are born. Eventually, the male of the species dies out, hence extinction. But that rogue chromosome does not take hold if females have multiple mates.

That, at least , is what happens with fruit flies. But it is a logical leap that the vodka-fuelled femme fatales, out on the pull on a Friday night, are nobly doing their biological duty to ensure the survival of the human race.

Wednesday whinge

Tens of thousands of jobs will be shed by local authorities up and down Britain as public spending is squeezed. And many councils will say exactly what Salford council leader Coun John Merry said, which is that the council's plan to shed 400 jobs will “take out tiers of management to make us more efficient, but it will not impact on the quality of front line service”.

There are only two ways to interpret this: either the council taxpayers of Salford have been paying the wages of 400 people without whom the council could have been doing the job more efficiently, or those cuts really will impact on the quality of front line service.

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