Imagine that our municipal swimming pools had evenings set aside for white people only. There are some members of the white community who — unaccountably perhaps — feel uncomfortable sharing the same stretch of water as Asian people, despite the purifying effects of the chlorine. Partly it is a question of raw proximity, the fear that one might pick up a particularly virulent verruca, say. Or simply be forced to look at them, doing their strange Asian breaststroke, up and down the pool. Or worse in such damp and intimate surroundings, having them look at you, peering lasciviously from behind a pair of aqua goggles.

Of course this proposal would not be put forward in a racist manner, heaven forefend. In a way, it’s anti-racist. It’s a case of ensuring that every British community, no matter how insular and distraught, should have access to public facilities, without having to worry too much about members of the public who don’t look like them. Or you can think of it as a health and safety issue: there are white people who simply cannot bear to be alongside Asian people — and whether you like it or not, they need to learn to swim too. It is no use suggesting to them that their revulsion at being forced to mix with “foreigners” might be misplaced. So for one evening each week, get the Asians out of the pool. And the blacks too, for that matter. And the disabled. Better safe than sorry.

Two of our more enlightened councils, Wolverhampton and Croydon, are showing the way forward. They have instituted Asian-only swimming nights, where people from the sub-continent who feel uncomfortable swimming within the gaze of their white fellow citizens, can happily retreat into their own pristine, watery, laager. No whites allowed within spitting distance; not even white pool staff. There are already women-only nights at most municipal swimming pools, so that women can swim up and down in a forlorn attempt to get rid of that thickening around the waist, without having to breathe in the same microbes which have been recently exhaled by men. This new initiative goes beyond even this.

Some locals in Wolverhampton have complained, of course. They turn up at the pool with their towel and their swimsuit and are told, “Sod off, whitey; sorry, but it’s not your night.” And they fail to grasp that this is not really a restrictive measure at all, but a powerful, affirmative statement.

The next logical step is the one I have suggested above. Otherwise one is effectively saying that people who cannot abide co-mingling with neighbours of a different race (or religion) should forgo their swimming practice and thus, if they are unlucky enough to fall into a river, or are brusquely pushed, should be left to drown quietly.

And who could possibly agree with that?

Final proof that they’re all barking

It is a noble old British tradition in some quarters to get up early on both Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, put on strange pink clothes and venture into the countryside on horseback to rip the throat out of the first fox you see. Maiming and murdering our wild mammal population is now illegal — but still the hunters were out in record numbers. They had a terrific time. They were once again able to wear their clothes and trot about braying to one another, condescending to the lower orders. Sure, they were deprived of the pleasure of actually killing an animal and, subsequently therefore, smearing the blood on the face of some infant out on his first “kill”. But overall they pronounced the hunts an enormous success. So what’s the problem, gentlemen?

Banning fox hunting, we were told (by the Countryside Alliance, the toffs and their genuflecting peasant followers) would wreak havoc on the rural economy. Where, exactly, is this havoc? How many jobs have been lost? How many hunts disbanded? How many rural villages condemned to poverty and decay? It was all rubbish — and the rather cheering thing is that we knew it was rubbish at the time. So, you lot, when you’re out tomorrow morning, remember: Foxes 1, Hunters 0. And a Happy New Year.

• Do they know it’s Christmas time at all? Yes they do — I can prove it. I’ve just received a Christmas card from the people of Ethiopia — which is bloody decent of them. A bit embarrassing since I missed them off my list. Maybe we should have them round for drinks. But in late January — we’ve got Belarus and Uganda coming next week. The card is signed by the Ethiopian ambassador, Berhanu Kebede, and his missus and bestows upon me “best wishes of the season”.

  I’ve never been to Ethiopia and I’ve never met or even spoken to Berhanu, or his wife. The card sits proudly on top of the piano, along with all the other cards from people I’ve never met or heard of — politicians, campaigning organisations, multinationals, charities and so on, some of which have scribbled messages like “Have a great one in 2007, Rod! luv from Roz, Dan and the whole press office xx!”. These cards easily outnumber those I received from people I do know. I assume it’s an attempt to curry favour, though given my utter insignificance it seems scarcely worth the cost of a stamp. It also implies I’m biddable. The arrival of a card bearing a wearily ironic cartoon Santa and a “funny” caption might make me more kindly disposed towards, say, rights for disabled people, or Waitrose.

  Anyway; happy Christmas, Ethiopia; have a good one in 2007, hope you win in Somalia, luv Rod xx.

  Now Dave digs Nye, you wonder what’s left

  Nosing around for political heroes, the Conservative party has alighted upon the redoubtable figure of Aneurin Bevan. Having informed us last month that Polly Toynbee was a brave champion of social justice whose values were those from which the Tories could learn a thing or two — rather than a hand-wringing, humourless old trout — it was almost inevitable that the Tories should take the process one stage further and beatify the most left-wing individual ever to hold prominent political office in Britain.

  Still, Nye shared at least one belief with the current Conservative leadership: a pathological hatred of the Conservative party and all that it stands for. “No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin,” he once announced. One suspects that David Cameron feels likewise.

  You wonder where all this will lead, the right-wing eulogising of Toynbee and Bevan. How long it will be before some munchkin in the shadow cabinet announces that British conservative thinkers have been unnecessarily unkind to Guy Fawkes, Wat Tyler and Gerry Adams. And that maybe we judged the Baader-Meinhof gang a little too hastily.

  It’s strange, isn’t it, how all these people from the pages of our papers seem to know one another? The one thing they have in common is that they are not us. We ordinary little monkeys simply don’t understand the terrible pressures imposed by vast wealth and public attention . . .

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