14th March 2021

 Mothers Day here. One woman who’ll never be a mother is Sarah Everard, murdered by a serving policeman this week in London. In the past after such atrocities, posters everywhere would urge women to stay home, and not to wear provocative dress etc. All too easy for the police to target innocent victims when really the curfew should be for testosterone-driven men, the perpetrators. So what can be done? Mass castration’s hardly an option, its result anyway the end of society. Certainly there’s too much internet porn available. Page 3 girls may have disappeared from the tabloids, but society’s still awash with females feeling the need to ‘attract’ men in ever more alluring ways. Schools could help by teaching boys how to treat girls but I’ve another idea. 25 years ago, the BBC’s Today programme asked for suggestions to be turned into law. My entry was a finalist:  “mandatory pre-natal classes for all new parents-to-be on how to rear their children, including respect for others and good citizenship, a certificate to be awarded on successfully passing the course, which would then need to be presented to obtain child benefit.” Women could then have gone out at night in safety. Pity it didn’t win.