I think this may prove to be a costly mistake. Aside from the fact that the bonfire is what Guy Fawkes’ night is really all about, it also raises another question: if there is no bonfire, why would anybody pay to go in to watch fireworks that you can see just as well from outside the park?

We probably shouldn’t be too surprised that Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the latest literary work to be hit with a ‘trigger warning’ by woke academics. Given that Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Emily Bronte’s Jane Eyre and even the kids’ book Little House on the Praire have all be targeted, it was only a matter of time.

So why does Nottingham University’s School of English see fit to warn people about the content of Chaucer’s most famous work? Could it be the sexually explicit content of The Wife of Bath or The Miller’s Tale? Or maybe the antisemitic themes which run through the Prioress’s Tale? No, they don’t get a mention. Instead, students are warned that the book features: ‘incidences of violence, mental illness and expressions of Christian faith’.

Doesn’t it speak volumes about the people in charge of our universities today that ‘expressions of Christian faith’ are seen as something that might offend readers?

I was going to say the world is going mad. But I guess that falls foul of the trigger warning too.

* * *

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds says Britain ‘needs more engagement with China’, and that Britain’s recent hardline approach had been ‘an absolute outlier’ compared with other G7 countries.

Would those be the same G7 partners – and yes, we’re talking to you, Germany – that a few years ago was seeking more ‘engagement’ with Russia? Which, of course, really meant ‘building an economy on dependent on cheap Russian gas and oil’. Which as we know, worked out terribly well.

Yes we live in an imperfect world, and sometimes have to be pragmatic in our dealings with unsavoury regimes.

But if keeping at arm’s length a government which rounds up two million of its own people on the basis of their ethnicity or religious beliefs, and imprisons them in modern-day concentration camps, I’m not sure being an outlier is such a bad thing.

* * *

And they say you can never find a copper when you need one.

The Chair art gallery in Hay-on-Wye got a visit from the boys in blue after displaying a somewhat risque painting in its window. The work, by artist Poppy Baynham, shows a naked lady spreading her… well you can probably guess the rest. Miss Baynham has accused the residents who complained of having closed minds.

I can see both sides, but I think on balance I’m with the complainants. Yes, there is a place for nudity in art, but that is probably not in a shop window in the high street, in full view of young children. A newsagent wouldn’t get away with putting a Playboy centrefold in the window, so why is this any different?

Anyhow, the Old Bill said it was too early to say if any further action would be taken. I’ll bet. Needs a bit of further examination, eh Sarge?

* * *

“Tory councillor’s wife jailed after urging rioters to ‘set fire to all the migrant hotels’ in vile rant,” ran the headlines about Lucy Connolly, jailed for 31 months at Birmingham Crown Court this week.

Actually, what she really said was somewhat less polite, but you get the gist. I doubt if many people will be losing too much sleep at the thought of her doing porridge.

But I do think the headlines somewhat miss the point. Because as well as being a councillor’s wife, Connolly is also a childminder. And it bothers me far more that somebody with these attitudes has been entrusted with the welfare of children, than it does that her husband is the vice-chairman of West Northamptonshire’s health scrutiny committee.