In novels of older times, there were drunks, fat people, neurotics, nasty men, grumpy people, bigots, racists, narcissists, philanderers, cruel people with thick fingers. I'm told Dickens was good.

Often a lot of these characteristics were in the same person.

After the great lefty PC revolution has been successful, I wonder what the novels of the future will look like.

Once everyone has been re-educated, to never joke at another's expense, to be nice to animals, to eat a nutritional diet, to share their feelings, to be a good role model, to live humbly; un-'trapped' by 'consumer culture', to have short showers, to recycle, to say no to drugs, to drive safely, to be vegetarian, to worship women, what will the 'characters' of novels be like?

What will they do that is in any way interesting? Human? What kind of petty complaints and 'knowing' cynicism will fill the letters pages of the Herald?

Any tips on the future inhabitants once the do-gooders have re-educated every citizen who was speeding through traffic talking dirty to his mistress while chewing on a grain fed meat fast food product while swearing racist abuse at other drivers as grease dripped onto his beer gut and pornographic magazine on his lap?

And if you don't see my problem, you just don't understand. You don't know how you are enslaved, and how 'growth' is unsustainable and how the big corporations are duping everyone and how the rodent was mean and tricky and how....

if only people could just see!

And be more like me!

They say.

But why would anyone want that. If you're constantly on about wanting to eradicate every little idiosyncrasy that makes people... people, do you not therefore just hate people?

Is the biggest fear that they can actually 'see', they just don't agree? Or they don't care? Or they have different values?

Maybe the guilt you feel for being human needn't be purged by preaching to others.

Maybe they see you quietly at home after your sneaky 2 (and a half!) minute shower, still not clean, still wanting what you haven't got.

Listening to the radio news now or reading the waffle that gets published by the Yahoo!7 news that they force onto us everytime we check our email has become such a comedy act thesedays. Hardly any need to get sloshed and wasted to see the funny side ... but it helps soothe the pain.

The political bias in so many articles' terminology where 'woman arrested for drug-trafficking' is now replaced with 'mother of nn detained by evil foreign customs predators on holiday' and anyone who gets charged with jaywalking gets their full name and photograph published even before the verdict is decided are just a couple of random examples.

Let's hope that fiction never has to become as strange as 'the truth' has. Twain's and Orwell's works will always be around at the book exchange to help us get back to reality at night when we switch off the electronics and head for the bed, hopefully.

Dear Houellie,

What will be "left?"

Stories that are marvellous, humourous, powerful,
disturbing, illuminating, everything one might
want in a good read - will always exist

Will we miss puerile, emotionally challenged ar*e holes .....I doubt it.
Sadly there will be individuals who relish circling the toilet bowl.

What's your point Houlley?

You are doing exactly what you disdain. Giving a point of view. If we all thought the same or delivered our message in a way just to satisfy you how boring and bland would we all be? The very antithesis of your message.

We all preach, we are all opinionated and we are all hypocritical some times. That is being human.

Nothing has changed through the ages - except thankfully kids don't have to plough through five pages of Dickens describing a fire place or a window dressing.

Victimology was worse in the olde times. Think 'Tess of the Dubervilles'. In fact in modern literature there is much more a positive empowerment (another modern term) of people as they demonstrate some independence and strength of character.

I might not like the free trade and unsustainable growth fanatics and I think they are wrong otherwise my opinion would be different. Get the dilemma. You can either voice a contrary opinion or not - it is your choice - but accept that not all people think the same and everyone thinks they are right.

Ideology doesn't matter, Left or Right we are all flawed and imperfect. We are all manipulated even if we don't always see it.

Perhaps these opposing and contrary views help maintain some sort of imperfect muddled balance for the most part that occasionally throughout history might see the pendulum swing slightly more one way or the other depending on current trends.

As for political correctness, give us some credit. We may not have the absurdity of characters as in a Dickens, a Shakespeare or a Chaucer but we do have many a politically incorrect media to choose from - The Chaser, The IT Crowd and Hungry Beast.

Even Dan Brown gave the Catholic Church a politically incorrect run for their money via the Da Vinci Code.

There is plenty of individuality and free speech remaining it just depends what we choose to see. The left think the media is right wing and the right think it left wing - something gives huh?

All this "politically correct" stuff is just manufactured and misguided nonsense.

It's probably a way of imposing social restrictions and self-censorship on society for reasons unknown.

Where did it come from? Who started it and where has it ever been legislated as law?

Show me somebody who has ever been jailed, arrested or even charged for saying something deemed to be Politically Incorrect.

Anybody been scandalised or been sued by any "victims"?

I am entirely free to call a "visually impaired" person blind or refer to somebody in a wheelchair as being crippled. It's a mere statement of fact and not an attack on anybody.

If it's deemed tasteless then it probably says more about me than about them but it's certainly not illegal.

Politely incorrect maybe, but politically incorrect - no.

To give this phoney notion any more credence than it deserves is taking the "politically correct" option.