Bernard Dineen: Official bullies who target children and religion

When the angry mother goes to the school, the headmaster tells her that another mother had reported the boy after hearing him using "homophobic language". It emerged that the child had no idea what "gay" meant: he thought it meant silly. No matter. In future, every such incident must be recorded and kept on a database until the child leaves secondary school.

What kind of lunatic country are we becoming when this type of injustice can be officially sanctioned? When fanatics like Ed Balls and Harriet Harman are empowered to impose their values on the rest of the population. Harman talks about "building a new social order" in terms worthy of the East German Stasi.

As the head of the charity Kidscape says: "Children are being criminalised and singled out from an early age when they don't know what they are doing."

Headteachers were first told to keep records of "racist incidents" eight years ago. Tens of thousands of youngsters have found themselves listed as racist, homophobic and the rest. Now they will be labelled on a nationwide network.

Real bullying, which must always be condemned, is being replaced by official bullying. The same is happening in the field of religious tradition. A Catholic adoption agency in Yorkshire is having to consider closing because it will not place children with gay couples, since it goes against their spiritual teaching.

Some Catholic agencies have reluctantly complied with the new diktat but some have refused and the children who have been given new lives will lose their dedicated service. As a gay journalist says, why would gay people hoping to adopt go to a Catholic agency? They don't need to. These days gay couples have first place in the queue for an adopted child from state-run agencies. The only purpose of this policy is to bully religious people.

ONE thing David Cameron cannot complain about is a lack of advice. From all sides, he is told exactly what to do in order to gain power.

He should promise to halt immigration, sack public servants, get tough with the unions, decimate the welfare system, leave the EU and so on. That's what Margaret Thatcher did to win the election, they say. The advice has one thing in common – it all comes from people who don't have to persuade others to vote for them.

Firstly, Margaret Thatcher did nothing of the kind in her quest for power. There were no lurid threats to the unions, no pledges to slash immigration or benefits. Her approach was low-key. The tough measures came after she had won.

I was in a busy supermarket recently on the fringes of a district largely multi-ethnic with a high quota of benefit claimants. To promise a gung-ho, get-tough future here would be madness.

The voters are not fools. They can guess what the Tories will do if they win. They don't need to be told that taxation will be lower and that there will be tighter control of immigration. They take that for granted without being preached at. The Tories must keep their nerve and refuse to be forced into panic measures and lavish pledges. As for the opinion polls, they should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Ignore them and look instead at what the bookmakers say, particularly those which specialise in politics. They are in no doubt about a Tory victory: the prospect of winning or losing money tends to concentrate the mind.

THE Tories should stop going on about Gordon Brown's bullying. It wouldn't matter tuppence about his shouting at civil servants if he hadn't reduced Britain to near bankruptcy. The trouble isn't that he is a bully, but that he is a disaster as Prime Minister.

This was no surprise to anyone who read the brilliant biography of Brown published in 2004. Tom Bower began writing it with no preconceptions about Brown's character.

Bower said: "The political world was unaware of his duplicity; how

his rise to power depended on saying one thing but doing the exact opposite. I unearthed stark evidence by following the credo 'Find the victims'. Decent people in Scotland and Westminster and even Brown's ex-girlfriends, related startling descriptions of his behaviour."

Bower's book was criticised at the time as being too harsh. If anything, it was understated. Behind the sanctimonious exterior is a deeply disturbed individual.

THE pro-Labour bias of the breakfast-time GMTV programme has long been obvious, reaching its height with the former presenter Fiona Phillips. Astonishingly, Gordon Brown offered her a seat in the House of Lords and a place in the Government as a reward for her behaviour.

Now we see GMTV's political correspondent, Gloria de Piero, who has suddenly left to stand for Labour in a safe seat vacated by Geoff Hoon. She is expected to get the nomination in an all-women shortlist, to the annoyance of local Labour activists.

Whatever happened to the notion that broadcasting should be politically neutral? You can imagine the uproar if a station had a pro-Tory bias.