SO what would you have done? The joke that Tory MP Ann Winterton told at the rugby club dinner wasn't even funny. Just offensive. Which makes it all very odd. She is, say all the people who know her, no racist.

Maybe not. But to tell such a joke at such a time proves she must be either stupid or naive, so either way Iain Duncan Smith was right to get rid of her swiftly.

But there still remains the problem of what to do when you are with someone who makes an offensive remark.

Twenty years ago we would probably all have smiled, even if we didn't think it was funny, just because it was easier and somehow politer. Times have changed. We have become more aware, more sensitive. But there's still that typically British thing of not wanting to make a fuss.

On the other hand, a friend of mine - who, as a single mother of a coffee-coloured son, had a certain interest to declare - would challenge every possible racist remark, however slight or good humoured. It made conversation with her incredibly spiky at times. But you had to admire her principles and her courage.

Because it's incredibly tricky, especially in good company when conversation is flowing easily to suddenly stop and say: "Sorry, but that's completely out of order."

I mean, it's so embarrassing, isn't it?

Though why we should feel embarrassed when it's the other person who's making the crass remark, I don't know.

And then there's that tricky area where a lot of racist jokes are actually quite funny. When they're based on supposed national characteristics of our neighbours - the Scotsman's meanness, the Irish slowness, German efficiency and the French pursuit of passion - they are almost affectionate, a sort of family teasing on a grander scale.

And I write, remember, as someone pure-blooded Welsh, the butt of English jokes, attacks and snide remarks from Edward I to Ann Robinson.

To ban those jokes would almost certainly be counter productive, to take sensitivity to its extremes and encourage a backlash.

But when the "jokes" have no humour or affection, just hatred, the best that most of us can manage is usually a sort of embarrassed frown and half smile and a light "well that's not very politically correct, is it?"

Maybe we should try harder. Now at least, we can say that IDS wouldn't like it. And maybe we all, like Ann Winterton will in future, think a little more before we speak.

In the meantime, there was this Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman...

A SCHOOL in Oxfordshire has banned pupils from wearing flared trousers because, says the headmaster, flares are dangerous and pupils could trip over them.

Fair point. Presumably he has also banned shoes with laces - could be lethal - not to mention ties (risk of strangulation), scarves (ditto), and pencils with their nasty sharp points. And as for the zips in the boys' trousers, well, the risk there doesn't bear thinking about.

Still, in days when some schools have police permanently on the premises, how reassuring to hear of one that has so very little to worry about.

ACTUALLY, I think it's brilliant that voters have elected three BNP councillors. No, not that I have any sympathy at all with the BNP views. Far from it. But the fact that, however distasteful their policies, they were free to campaign, that people were free to vote for them and that other councillors will now have to work for them is, if you think about it, a triumph for free speech.

If they were any real threat, I trust we would see the same thing happening here as happened in France - voters stirred from their lethargy to oppose extremists. But in the meantime, three BNP councillors out of around 6,000 nationwide seems a small price to pay for democracy.

A NEW supermarket trolley could do away with the need for checkout staff. Instead of having to unload your shopping onto the conveyor belt, get it scanned by the girl at the desk and then pack it and load it again, you could leave it all in the trolley which would scan it automatically. The shopworkers' union doesn't like the idea.

"Once you take the personal touch away it changes the whole culture of shopping," says a spokesman.

Personal touch? Apart from a few notable exceptions, conversation at the checkout is usually limited to "did you notice how much this was?" and maybe on a really chatty day, "are you collecting the tokens?"

As shopping culture goes, you're probably better off talking to your trolley.

Published: ??/??/2002