They live in your community. They attend your children's schools. They could be your co-worker, your friend, or even – yes – your spouse. To the casual observer they seem assimilated, quietly going about their business just like you or I. But ask yourself this question: how much do you really know about them? How much do you really know about the gingers in your midst?

I ask the question today as a concerned citizen. There are many positive things gingers contribute to British society; I am sure. Without them we would have no one to compare our tans against. But after this week's events, in which more than 100 complaints were made to the BBC over an off-the-cuff remark made in the Christmas Doctor Who special, it is clear that gingerism is on the verge of running out of control.

The remark, uttered by actor Matt Smith at the moment of his transmogrification into a Gallifrean Timelord ran as follows: "I'm still not ginger". It is expressed in a tone of frustrated regret, in the manner of someone who all their life has dreamt of being a ballet dancer and still finds themselves doing PAs at Po Na Na. Somehow, the ginger fringe has interpreted this as a slur.

We may well come to look back on this moment as a turning point. The moment when ginger stopped being just a ridiculous hair colour and became an ideology. When the gingers' thin skin (both to criticism and ultraviolet radiation) changed from an unfortunate quirk into a badge of identity. Soon they will start calling for the withdrawal of ginger nuts from supermarket shelves or forming mobs and extracting violent revenge for being called a copperknob. Within 10 years they could have a bloody army.

The instinctive response to the growing ginger threat will be to try and block it out. To pretend it isn't there. To think "flipping heck, people get prickly about such trivial points of difference nowadays – what next the Baldie Liberation Front?" But that response would be to ignore a very real threat.

I propose today that we counter this ginger fringe before it has a chance to wrap its pallid fingers around our throat. I suggest stop and search for all suspicious carrot tops (including inspections both above and below). A compulsory strand of hair to be submitted to the national DNA database (and kept very separate from normal hair, in case of contamination). I had also thought about making gingers wear identifying markings when in public, but instead simply propose confiscating all their hats.

Each and every one of these measures would help to bolster stability in our nation and allow normal citizens to go about their business without worrying what a ginger might do to them. I appeal to fellow right-minded Britons to support these measures, perhaps by starting a petition on the Downing St website or something.

[Disclaimer: the author would like to rebut recent internet allegations that he is himself a ginger. He insists that any red tinge to his hair is merely a trick of the light and his short temper the result of being a bit tired. His actual hair colour is auburn.]