word appears on internet

If an unsupervised child is searching for the word "fuck" on the internet, I suspect a few book titles is the least worrying thing they'll find. Still, time for a story of unimpeachable pearl-clutching from the Mail on Sunday:

Tesco and Asda were condemned last night for selling a string of books and CDs with the F-word in their titles.

The items were available on their websites, where they were easily accessible to children.

They appeared even if inoffensive words from their titles were entered into the sites' search engines, with the potential to shock and offend shoppers.

But no-one was. This is a story based on a bored and/or desperate hack entering rude words into the internet in the feeble attempt to generate another decency scandal. And we're not talking about pornography - just the use of the word "fuck" in a work's title.

This, however, is enough to entice a torrent of grand-mal stupidity from MPs who want to get their names in the papers:

Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, criticised falling standards of decency among retailers. He said: ‘In terms of magazines, CDs and DVDs, standards seem to be slipping. If the industry can’t collectively sort itself out then we must seriously look into external regulation. If they can’t regulate themselves, we may have to introduce a statutory code.’

Given that no customer has actually complained - no "concerned parent" could be found to say a single word - this would be a wildly posturing over-reaction.

But wait - there's even more blistering idiocy:

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, questioned how selling ‘adult’ material fitted in with Tesco’s image as a ‘family supermarket’.

She said: ‘Is this the beginning of Tesco’s drive to dominate the entire retail industry by abandoning all moral boundaries? Is this Tesco’s first step into the adult retail market?

Yes, Nadine. Sales of the environmentalist work "Fuck the Planet" is the first step towards selling "Backdoor Adventurers 4: The Milkman is Back." Incidentally, welcome back.

‘What kind of supermarket with a shred of moral responsibility allows such products to be sold openly on the internet, available to children, possibly without a parent’s knowledge?’

If only there was some way to stop children having unfiltered access to the internet, and the use of their own credit cards to buy books with naughty titles.. if only there were some kind of "parental" supervisory powers that could be used. Maybe Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, could introduce a statutory code.

There's the small chance that Foster and Dorries have been lured into giving quotes without knowing the full nature of the feeble evidence that the Mail has "uncovered" - in which case, their unthinking knee-jerkery is even more idiotic. The Mail might like to pose as moral guardian for the nation (while simultaneously complaining that the forces of "political correctness" are intruding into your life) but there's no excuse for MPs who add credence to such transparent hackery.