Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. We had that rhyme drummed into us from an early age.

It was designed to teach generations of children to ignore name-calling in the playground.

Actually, it’s not strictly true. Verbal abuse can be hurtful. Learning to cope with it is part of growing up.

There’s a world of difference between a stern ticking off and the kind of obsessive policing of speech and behaviour imposed on children as young as five today (file image)

Kids have teased each other, often cruelly, since time immemorial. When I was a boy, I had friends who answered to Spot (acne), Lank (tallest in the class), Torch (red hair), Pig (flat nose, flared nostrils) and Mole (swot, bottle-top National Health specs).

Nicknames have always been common currency. But whenever teasing and taunting escalated into outright bullying, you could rely on parents or teachers to intervene and have a quiet word. Or, in the case of my old headmaster, a rather loud word.

The Government has just issued official guidelines to schools on how to deal with suspected racist and sexist language (file image)

But there’s a world of difference between a stern ticking off and the kind of obsessive policing of speech and behaviour imposed on children as young as five today. They’re even being told they mustn’t use words like ‘cissy’.

These days, calling a boy a ‘big girl’s blouse’ is tantamount to ‘hate crime’.

The Government has just issued official guidelines to schools on how to deal with suspected racist and sexist language.

Fair enough, no one should be discriminated against on the grounds of their skin colour or ethnic background. But the new rules go much further, introducing a regime worthy of the old East German Stasi.

Children are being trained to spy on each other and report any fellow pupil they consider guilty of ‘inappropriate’ language.

The guidelines are based on a pilot scheme at the Fairfield High School in Bristol, where deputy headmistress Janice Callow boasts that a group of volunteer girls have been assembled to spot sexist language.

She said: ‘We have always had clear policies on racist language, but now we are making it clear that any kind of sexist language is not acceptable.

‘We used to say “Man up, Cupcake”. We’ve stopped that. Saying “Don’t be a girl” to a boy if they are being a bit wet is also unacceptable.’

What? We used to say ‘Man up, Cupcake’? Who did?

I’ve never said, nor can recall anyone else saying: ‘Man up, Cupcake.’

Cupcake — and man up, for that matter — is a relatively recent introduction from America. On this side of the pond, we’ve always called them ‘fairy cakes’, though anyone using that expression now would be accused of ‘homophobia’.

The guidelines are based on a pilot scheme at the Fairfield High School in Bristol, where deputy headmistress Janice Callow boasts that a group of volunteer girls have been assembled to spot sexist language (file image)

Which bit of ‘Man up, Cupcake’ is considered offensive — Man up or Cupcake? I’m presuming it’s the Man up, given that the emphasis is on sexism. But how can telling a boy to ‘Man up’ be considered sexist?

Your guess is as good as mine. Mind you, we’re not infected with the warped mindset and Guardian-ista group-think which dominates the public sector. As the Mail asked yesterday: with our schools slipping to 20th in the world performance table, hasn’t the Government got anything better to do?

The justification for this madness is that it will challenge gender stereotyping in education.

Dame Barbara Stocking (a wonderful name for an academic), president of the female-only Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, said: ‘Girls who take physics are sometimes described as lesbians, and boys who take languages are called cissy.’

Are they? Are they really? Where’s the evidence?

Dame Blue-Stocking says gender stereotypes are ‘deeply ingrained in the British psyche’. Consequently, fewer girls study engineering here than in Europe or China. So what?

Girls are racing ahead in just about every other area, outstripping their male counterparts in university entrance and professions such as law and medicine — not to mention teaching.

Yet these self-pitying modern feminists wrap themselves in the cloak of discrimination and victimhood. I wonder what the original suffragettes would make of their constant whining.

The most sinister aspect of all this is the idea of pupils being encouraged to spy and sneak on each other. It is part of a disturbing trend towards politicising the playground.

What will happen to any child reported for calling someone a ‘cissy’? Will it go on his record, a black mark which will follow him throughout his education? Could it eventually harm his career prospects?

Every year tens of thousands of children, some as young as three, are branded bigots and put on a register for having committed hate crime simply because they called a fellow pupil ‘gay’ or some other epithet which has the Guardian-istas recoiling in mock outrage like a Victorian maiden aunt.

Half the time, kids don’t even know what they’re saying. When they are unnecessarily cruel, they can be corrected by a gentle admonishment. They shouldn’t be put on some kind of official blacklist.

Girls are racing ahead in just about every other area, outstripping their male counterparts in university entrance and professions such as law and medicine — not to mention teaching (file image)

And what about false accusations? Any girl who would volunteer to spy on her classmates is precisely the type capable of making up an allegation against someone she disliked — or, more likely, of whom she was jealous.

Whenever the Dame Barbara Stockings and Janice Callows of this world are tempted to scream ‘sexism’ at schoolchildren, they should remember that old nursery rhyme.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Or, to put it another way:

Man up, Cupcake.

Sorry, pet, the ends don't justify the means

Andrew Neil turned his latest This Week politics show into a special Back To The Future edition. It wasn’t just the appearance of Eighties pop star Mick Hucknall from Simply Red.

The guest who grabbed my attention was the leathery old Marxist Bea Campbell, drafted in to defend the indefensible — the disgraceful conduct of Nonce Finder General Tom Watson towards Leon Brittan and his family.

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, who 'brought the issue of child sex abuse into the public arena'

Twenty-five years ago, Campbell — a holder of the Here We Go Looby Loo Lifetime Achievement Award — was at the centre of another hysterical paedophilia scare. She claimed that thousands of children in Britain were victims of ritual satanic sex abuse.

In the ensuing panic, dozens of working-class families from Rochdale to the Orkneys were raided by police and had their children taken into care.

Lives were ruined without any justification.

Eventually, the charges were thrown out and a subsequent government inquiry concluded there was no evidence whatsoever to support the ‘myth of satanic abuse’.

There are echoes of this insanity in the current Paedos In High Places witch-hunt. Campbell insisted that Watson had nothing to apologise for because he had brought the issue of child sex abuse into the public arena. That was all that mattered.

She refused Michael Portillo’s invitation to condemn Watson’s unwarranted smearing of Leon Brittan. Apparently, this argument went on well after the show finished.

There was never any chance of her agreeing with him, just as Watson will never apologise either. As far as they are concerned, Brittan was ‘Tory scum’ and, therefore, not entitled to either justice or common decency. If his family have also suffered, tough.

Campbell’s appearance on This Week reminded us once again that old Marxists never change. The ends always justify the means, no matter who gets hurt.

On Saturday afternoon, I looked out of the window to see a woman walking down our drive carrying a dead fox, which she proceeded to dump on the door-step.

What the hell was going on? I know I’ve upset a few people over the years, but no one’s ever sent me a dead animal before.

Turns out the woman was from the RSPCA and she was trying to catch a distressed, diseased fox which had become disorientated and had been circling our street for the past 24 hours.

On Saturday afternoon, I looked out of the window to see a woman walking down our drive carrying a dead fox, which she proceeded to dump on the door-step

She explained the corpse was a decoy to attract the fox so she could trap it with a noose on the end of a pole, which she did in due course.

Having transferred it to a cage in the back of her van, she then produced an envelope and invited us to make a donation.

How could I resist? And, anyway, I was worried that if I didn’t slip her a few quid she might leave the dead fox on my doorstep.

I’m not a fan of the RSPCA politically, but she did a great job. She’d been called out by my neighbour, Mem, and arrived within half an hour.

Just as well Mem called the RSPCA.

If I’d have known about it earlier, I would have rung the Berkeley Hunt.

The sandal-wearing Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, tries to shame us into accepting tens of thousands more migrants. But he says he won’t be opening his own six-bedroom home to a refugee family for ‘cultural’ reasons.

Typical hypocrisy. And they wonder why the Church of England is dying on its feet. Still no word, either, on when Pixie Balls-Cooper will be keeping her promise to welcome a Syrian family into her home.

Maybe hubby Ed is still trying to assemble the new Ikea bedroom furniture.

I know I live a sheltered life, but the antics of some people never cease to amaze me. Take that couple who have just been to court over a sado-masochism session which turned nasty. Whatever gets you through the night.

But even if you had sustained injuries during a bout of over-enthusiastic whipping, why would you tell anyone, let alone press charges?

The man now complains that he’s a laughing stock. What the hell did he expect? Still, it added hugely to the gaiety of the nation.