We’ll never get next Mozart if the average infant can’t even wipe its own requiem ass

THE history books are littered with stories about child geniuses. Kids who could beat chess grand masters or invent new languages or calculate the distance between the planets using nothing but their thumbs and a packet of crayons.

We know, for example, that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could play the piano by the age of four and that, just a year later, he was writing symphonies.

A new report that a significant proportion of the current crop of four-year-old kids don't know what a toilet is forCredit: ©2014-2020 Tomasz Skoczen

It seems, however, that today’s four-year-olds are a bit different, because a report out this week suggests that in 90 per cent of reception classes there are one or two that have no concept of what a toilet is.

Yup. They are four years old but they just sit there and do whatever’s necessary in their pants.

And there’s more. When presented with a book, there’s usually one kid who tries to swipe it with their fingers, like it’s some kind of papery iPad.

I find this extraordinary.

When I was four, I was a pupil at a school in a mining village near Doncaster.

We are emphatically NOT talking here about kids from privileged backgrounds. This was not Eton. Most of their dads worked as farm labourers or down the pit. Most of their mums didn’t work at all.

And I don’t remember any of them ever crapping themselves in the classroom.

Instead, we all spent our days learning how to count to ten and how to arrange letters to form a word.

And we did finger painting and went on nature rambles so that we could learn about catkins. And on none of these walks did anyone have a brown river running down their legs like a marabou stork.

This is because our parents had self-respect. They wanted their kids to know they had to sit up straight and not talk with their mouths full and not smell of sewage BEFORE they started school.

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It would be different now, though. Incredibly, half of the parents questioned in the survey said they didn’t think it was their job to toilet train their kids. They thought it was up to teachers to do that.

Meanwhile, only 16 per cent think it is their job to teach their kids to read a book. But teachers are saying they are no longer able to do much teaching because they have to spend so much time wiping bottoms.

I think, however, I have a solution. So, teachers, pay attention. If a child in your class craps itself, simply carry on teaching. Wear a scented scarf or nose plugs if the smell’s too bad, but don’t pay the kid any attention at all.

Then, at the end of the day, simply send it home.

Because after a parent has had to spend a few evenings chiselling day-old excrement from between little Johnnie’s butt crack, it won’t take them long to realise that some toilet training at home might be a good idea.

Sometimes actual silence is best, girls

Ukrainian soldiers dancing in the snowy wasteland to an upbeat version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound Of SilenceCredit: tiktok/@ghostjjz

However, some of the younger people who populate TikTok missed the point and thought it was just a new dance craze

EARLIER in the week, my TikTok feed was suddenly carpet-bombed with Ukrainian soldiers dancing in the snowy wasteland to an upbeat version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound Of Silence.

It was a clever use of social media. Because as America and most of Europe begins to cut off the supply of bullets and guns, Ukraine desperately needed to show us that morale is good and that they’re still in the fight.

However, the next day, I couldn’t help noticing that some of the younger people who populate this platform thought it was just a new dance craze.

And as a result, they were to be found in their bikinis and gym clothes doing the same sort of dances to the same tune. It was a shoulder-sagging moment as I realised that there are an awful lot of a people out there who are very stupid.

Fears? Afraid it's not

Lee Anderson's actions has seen Jeremy reaching for the dictionary, leading to a discovery that he is StarmerphobicCredit: Alamy

THIS week, I have mostly been reading a dictionary, trying to work out the true meaning of the word “phobic”.

I always thought it meant that you were frightened of something. That something made you fearful. So if you are “claustrophobic”, you have a fear of confined spaces and if you are “arachnophobic”, you have a fear of spiders.

So when former Tory MP Lee Anderson was described as “Islamophobic” this week, you’d assume people were saying he has a fear of Islam.

Apparently not. I’ve checked, and for some reason it’s been decided that, actually, “Islamophobic” means a “dislike” of Muslims.

On that basis, I’m Starmerphobic. I’m not frightened or fearful of him. I just dislike him. Which is why I’m also electric carphobic, butter beanphobic and, increasingly, badgerphobic.

Twitt wishes Id Dai

A troll has taken to social media hinting that he wants Jeremy dead - but not the badgers that kill his cowsCredit: Alamy

AN animal enthusiast this week took to Twitter, or whatever it’s called these days, to describe me as: “One of the most repulsive, ugly, repugnant scum-filled scrotum lookalikes ever to have poisoned our planet’s atmosphere.”

He then signed off by saying:“Would be so satisfying to see this vile, perverted creep take up the residence he’s most suited to . . . ”

And at this point he used a coffin emoji.

So he wants me dead. But not the badgers that kill my cows. He should get a job in the Welsh government.

Making a meal of it

This week has seen Welsh Labour MP Mike Hedges seem a little confused about where food comes fromCredit: Wikipedia

For Mike's benefit, Food comes from farmers. Every grain of rice, every lentil, bean, oyster, biscuit, steak, egg sandwich, lamb chop and every ingredient in the nation’s new favourite dish, spaghetti bologneseCredit: Cris Cantón

A LABOURITE Welsh MP called Mike Hedges this week said he couldn’t understand why people think that “putting money in the pockets of farmers is more important than feeding poor children”.

Hmmm. This interests me because here we have a man who is able to dress himself. And yet, plainly, he doesn’t know his a**e from his elbow.

These “poor children”, Mike? You’re quite right. They need food, but where’s the food going to come from? The chip shop? The supermarket? The pantry?

Food comes from farmers. Every grain of rice, every lentil, bean, oyster, biscuit, steak, egg sandwich, lamb chop and every ingredient in the nation’s new favourite dish, spaghetti bolognese. All of it.

And farmers cannot produce any of this stuff at the sort of prices that people can afford without government help. I know. I’ve tried.

So if you really want to feed poor children, Mike, you have only two choices. Help the farmers do it. Or buy yourself a trawler and go and catch them a cod.

Actor Ray Winstone has been talking about voting at the next election, and Jeremy shares his painCredit: 2023 Dave Benett

l I SEE Ray Winstone doesn’t fancy the idea of voting for anyone in the forth-coming general election. I feel your pain, mate.

Because the only difference is that the Tories are useless by accident and Labour are useless on purpose.

And that’s no kind of difference at all, because ultimately, it means they are both useless.

WHEN I saw that someone had projected the message “From the river to the sea . . . ” on the side of the tower that houses Big Ben, I cheered.

Like the police, who stood around doing nothing, I thought it was a message from the nation’s anglers, complaining about the amount of sewage in the nearby Thames.