Gove Talks Nuts.

Michael Gove ,the Conservative Shadow Children's Secretary, has finally decided to tackle the burning issues of the day. No not children in care or families destroyed by unaccountable bureaucrats, he is a busy man so can only speak out on the important matters. He has denounced "lads' mags" like Nuts & Zoo, publications for teenage boys who can't summon up the nerve to buy a proper porn mag. He is blaming them for encouraging irresponsible behaviour by young men.

The Daily Telegraph and Conservative Home both seem to think that this is a good idea, as the Telegraph puts it:

Mr Gove is elaborating and extending that most elemental of Tory creeds: the belief that we should take responsibility for our actions.

Blaming your problems on the publishers of downmarket magazines is taking responsibility?

If someone did take Zoo or Nuts as a guide to how to live life it would indeed be disastrous but thankfully the vast majority of the readers simply buy Nuts or Zoo to whack off to the latest airbrushed images of glamour models and female Big Brother rejects.

Gove's approach is frivolous, having identified a real societal problem, fatherless families, he simply tries to pin the blame on something that his audience will disapprove of, tacky magazines. The emergence of 'Lads Mags' occurred long after family breakdown became widespread in this country, so quite obviously they are not to blame for it. If anything the mid 1990s arrival of Loaded and FHM appears to have coincided with a decline in divorce rates, the opposite of what you'd expect if Gove's ideas were correct.

Michael Gove is generally considered to be an intelligent man, he really should know better than to play the hack pundit's game of simply tying any negative phenomenon to something he doesn't approve of regardless of the evidence.

Update: John East isn't impressed with Gove's speech either.