Month: November 2007

He is an unlikely revolutionary but this Christmas, Santa is a rebel with a claus. He is having the last laugh on political correctness – and it's a great big fat belly laugh. Santas across Sydney are rebelling against attempts to ban their traditional greeting of “ho, ho, ho” in favour of “ha, ha, ha”.

Recruitment firm Westaff – which supplies hundreds of Santas across the country – has told its trainees that the “ho ho ho” phrase could frighten children and could even be derogatory to women.

One would-be Santa has told The Daily Telegraph he was taught not to use “ho, ho, ho” because it was too close to the American slang for prostitute. He quit.

Source: Daily Telegraph

It is described as a cholesterol highball, a fatty delight and a fast food icon. And at 50, the concoction of french fries topped with gravy and salty cheese curds is gaining newfound respect.

It hasn't always been that way, though. Charles-Alexandre Théorêt, author of Maudite Poutine!, describes the dish to Montreal's The Gazette as being more psychological in nature:

A generous portion of shame fried gently in an inferiority complex and topped with a hint of denigration from the ROC (Rest of Canada) – and a touch of guilty pleasure. “Love it or hate it, poutine has become a strong symbol of Quebec,” says Théorêt.

The exact origin of poutine is unclear, but most stories place the date at 1957. Fernand Lachance, a restauranteur who referred to himself as the father of poutine, was asked by a customer to mix french fries and cheese curds together in the same bag.

Warwick, then replied: “Ça va te faire une maudite poutine” (“It's gonna make a hell of a mess”). The sauce was added later to keep the fries warm.

Mess or no, the “lumberjack fat food” remains popular, and being elevated to an haute-cuisine dish while showing up on menus across the U.S.

Source: National Post

It must have seemed such a simple wheeze to Gordon Brown: a motto to capture what makes Britain great. The idea ticks so many boxes on the Prime Ministers to-do list that it proved irresistible to him.

A motto would be new, but could convey tradition. Choosing it means consulting people, the kind of participatory democracy that rebuilds trust in politics. And then there is the unstated post-devolution awkwardness of having a Scot as Prime Minister. The motto can highlight Britishness, what unites rather than what divides us. How clever! How British!

However, before the wording of Mr Browns motto has even been agreed, let alone embossed on letterheads and passports, the public seems to have rumbled him.

Hundreds of suggestions have been submitted by Times Online readers, in response to an invitation by Comment Central blog. There can, surely, be few citizens juries more representative of Middle Britain. And yet they make grim reading for the Prime Minister.

A few make game efforts to enter the spirit of Mr Browns earnest endeavour to capture the spirit of Britishness in a few short words. Some are predictable, others a little lame; they wouldnt really do the trick for Mr Brown. Many more home straight in on the very question of Scotlands place in the United Kingdom that Mr Brown would rather we all skated over. Others capture a sense of decline, with a sizeable number of contributors linking this with Labours decade in power.

Other undercurrents are a fixation with alcohol, nascent hostility to the French and the Americans, and a stubborn refusal to treat the quest for a motto with the seriousness that our Prime Minister clearly thinks it deserves. Several refer to cups of tea; a couple are even devoted to dentistry.

One contributor describes modern Britain thus: Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco.

Some attempt to capture the combination of diffidence and stoicism of the British: Britain, a terribly nice place, Less stuffy than we sound, Stubborn to the point of greatness and Turned out nice again.

Some readers, a minority admittedly, take the idea seriously. Britain: my country, my home, might fit the bill for Mr Brown, at a stretch. I respect who you are could appeal to the man who, on becoming Prime Minister, quoted the motto of his old school, Kirkcaldy High: I will try my utmost.

There are the worthy, if cheesy: Great people, great country, Great Britain, Hail Great Britain! Live, develop and flower, A country so brave and true, Fairness for all and For honour and for freedom.

A touch of Victorian triumphalism is evident in some: Pride, passion, history, monarchy, exploration or Courage, reason, humanity, democracy, monarchy.

Then come the less comfortable, captured thus: Promoting ahistorical unity myths since 1066. Others are more pointed: West Lothian was my undoing, Britain will always be England or Britain is dead. Long live England.

Just as unwelcome to the Prime Minister are mottos with a broader political flavour: Once Great: Britain, Once mighty empire, slightly used, Your nation, ruined by Labour, and Going down with Brown.

Americans who missed the boat, another contribution hinting at a lack of national pride, is offset by At least were not France.

There were signs in Whitehall yesterday that Mr Brown may be going cool on the idea. Last month Michael Wills, a Constitutional Affairs Minister, told MPs that he welcomed suggestions for a national motto. But his department said yesterday: The Ministry of Justice is working on a statement of values. If proposals for a motto come from that, obviously we would look at them.

Returning to the drawing board would chime with several ideas from Times Online readers. One proposes: Britain is great without a motto.

Original Times Entry:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/11/i-want-comment-.html

Some of my favourites:

• At Least We're Not American
• Dead Heroes And Live Morons
• Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco
• Drinking Continues Till Morale Improves
• I'll Put The Kettle On.
• Land Of 'Health and Safety'
• Once 'Great', Now Not So
• Sex, Drink, Death and Taxes.
• Someday This Too Shall Pass
• Til Death Doth Us Tax…
• We Apologise For The Inconvenience
• We Strive For Valliant Defeat
• Yeah, But No, But, Yeah.
• Impossible To Not Be Cynical
• Sorry, Is This The Queue?
• The Government Should Do Something

[Note: Emphasis mine]

The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantand Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris – or even the Yukon – becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands – or so he says – that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoovers policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bushs presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of Americas being displaced from its position as the worlds richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Remember the Surplus?

The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clintons second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how hed ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nations debt was fully paid off.

This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the presidents Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, Im all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money – and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top – a benchmark worth celebrating.

By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure – all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit. Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend Americas anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.

But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000 – more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.

The administration crows that the economy grew – by some 16 percent – during its first six years, but the growth helped mainly people who had no need of any help, and failed to help those who need plenty. A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. Americas class structure may not have arrived there yet, but its heading in the direction of Brazils and Mexicos.

The Bankruptcy Boom

In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II.

Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. Tax expenditures – the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code – increased more than a quarter. Tax breaks for the presidents friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasnt helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq. Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery – weapons that dont work, for enemies we dont have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure – be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.

Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades – the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors. To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldnt opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world.

Youll still hear some – and, loudly, the president himself – argue that the administrations tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck – the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit – was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bushs own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007. “Qualified at birth” became the drunken slogan of the Bush era. American households took advantage of the low interest rates, signed up for new mortgages with “teaser” initial rates, and went to town on the proceeds.

All of this spending made the economy look better for a while; the president could (and did) boast about the economic statistics. But the consequences for many families would become apparent within a few years, when interest rates rose and mortgages proved impossible to repay. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.

Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more than 60 percent. As families went into bankruptcy, more and more of them came to understand who had won and who had lost as a result of the presidents 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for individuals to discharge their debts in a reasonable way. The lenders that had pressed for “reform” had been the clear winners, gaining added leverage and protections for themselves; people facing financial distress got the shaft.

And Then Theres Iraq

The war in Iraq (along with, to a lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan) has cost the country dearly in blood and treasure. The loss in lives can never be quantified. As for the treasure, its worth calling to mind that the administration, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, was reluctant to venture an estimate of what the war would cost (and publicly humiliated a White House aide who suggested that it might run as much as $200 billion). When pressed to give a number, the administration suggested $50 billion – what the United States is actually spending every few months. Today, government figures officially acknowledge that more than half a trillion dollars total has been spent by the U.S. “in theater.” But in fact the overall cost of the conflict could be quadruple that amount – as a study I did with Linda Bilmes of Harvard has pointed out – even as the Congressional Budget Office now concedes that total expenditures are likely to be more than double the spending on operations. The official numbers do not include, for instance, other relevant expenditures hidden in the defense budget, such as the soaring costs of recruitment, with re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $100,000. They do not include the lifetime of disability and health-care benefits that will be required by tens of thousands of wounded veterans, as many as 20 percent of whom have suffered devastating brain and spinal injuries. Astonishingly, they do not include much of the cost of the equipment that has been used in the war, and that will have to be replaced. If you also take into account the costs to the economy from higher oil prices and the knock-on effects of the war – for instance, the depressing domino effect that war-fueled uncertainty has on investment, and the difficulties U.S. firms face overseas because America is the most disliked country in the world – the total costs of the Iraq war mount, even by a conservative estimate, to at least $2 trillion. To which one needs to add these words: so far.

It is natural to wonder, What would this money have bought if we had spent it on other things? U.S. aid to all of Africa has been hovering around $5 billion a year, the equivalent of less than two weeks of direct Iraq-war expenditures. The president made a big deal out of the financial problems facing Social Security, but the system could have been repaired for a century with what we have bled into the sands of Iraq. Had even a fraction of that $2 trillion been spent on investments in education and technology, or improving our infrastructure, the country would be in a far better position economically to meet the challenges it faces in the future, including threats from abroad. For a sliver of that $2 trillion we could have provided guaranteed access to higher education for all qualified Americans.

The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. The issue is not whether to blame the war for this but simply how much to blame it. It seems unbelievable now to recall that Bush-administration officials before the invasion suggested not only that Iraqs oil revenues would pay for the war in its entirety – hadnt we actually turned a tidy profit from the 1991 Gulf War? – but also that war was the best way to ensure low oil prices. In retrospect, the only big winners from the war have been the oil companies, the defense contractors, and al-Qaeda. Before the war, the oil markets anticipated that the then price range of $20 to $25 a barrel would continue for the next three years or so. Market players expected to see more demand from China and India, sure, but they also anticipated that this greater demand would be met mostly by increased production in the Middle East. The war upset that calculation, not so much by curtailing oil production in Iraq, which it did, but rather by heightening the sense of insecurity everywhere in the region, suppressing future investment.

The continuing reliance on oil, regardless of price, points to one more administration legacy: the failure to diversify Americas energy resources. Leave aside the environmental reasons for weaning the world from hydrocarbons – the president has never convincingly embraced them, anyway. The economic and national-security arguments ought to have been powerful enough. Instead, the administration has pursued a policy of “drain America first” – that is, take as much oil out of America as possible, and as quickly as possible, with as little regard for the environment as one can get away with, leaving the country even more dependent on foreign oil in the future, and hope against hope that nuclear fusion or some other miracle will come to the rescue. So many gifts to the oil industry were included in the presidents 2003 energy bill that John McCain referred to it as the “No Lobbyist Left Behind” bill.

Contempt for the World

Americas budget and trade deficits have grown to record highs under President Bush. To be sure, deficits dont have to be crippling in and of themselves. If a business borrows to buy a machine, its a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America – its government, its families, the country as a whole – has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets – the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth – has been declining.

Whats the impact of all this down the road? The growth rate in Americas standard of living will almost certainly slow, and there could even be a decline. The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible, and our vulnerabilities are plain for all to see. As confidence in the American economy has plummeted, so has the value of the dollar – by 40 percent against the euro since 2001.

The disarray in our economic policies at home has parallels in our economic policies abroad. President Bush blamed the Chinese for our huge trade deficit, but an increase in the value of the yuan, which he has pushed, would simply make us buy more textiles and apparel from Bangladesh and Cambodia instead of China; our deficit would remain unchanged. The president claimed to believe in free trade but instituted measures aimed at protecting the American steel industry. The United States pushed hard for a series of bilateral trade agreements and bullied smaller countries into accepting all sorts of bitter conditions, such as extending patent protection on drugs that were desperately needed to fight aids. We pressed for open markets around the world but prevented China from buying Unocal, a small American oil company, most of whose assets lie outside the United States.

Not surprisingly, protests over U.S. trade practices erupted in places such as Thailand and Morocco. But America has refused to compromise – refused, for instance, to take any decisive action to do away with our huge agricultural subsidies, which distort international markets and hurt poor farmers in developing countries. This intransigence led to the collapse of talks designed to open up international markets. As in so many other areas, President Bush worked to undermine multilateralism – the notion that countries around the world need to cooperate – and to replace it with an America-dominated system. In the end, he failed to impose American dominance – but did succeed in weakening cooperation.

The administrations basic contempt for global institutions was underscored in 2005 when it named Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense and a chief architect of the Iraq war, as president of the World Bank. Widely distrusted from the outset, and soon caught up in personal controversy, Wolfowitz became an international embarrassment and was forced to resign his position after less than two years on the job.

Globalization means that Americas economy and the rest of the world have become increasingly interwoven. Consider those bad American mortgages. As families default, the owners of the mortgages find themselves holding worthless pieces of paper. The originators of these problem mortgages had already sold them to others, who packaged them, in a non-transparent way, with other assets, and passed them on once again to unidentified others. When the problems became apparent, global financial markets faced real tremors: it was discovered that billions in bad mortgages were hidden in portfolios in Europe, China, and Australia, and even in star American investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. Indonesia and other developing countries – innocent bystanders, really – suffered as global risk premiums soared, and investors pulled money out of these emerging markets, looking for safer havens. It will take years to sort out this mess.

Meanwhile, we have become dependent on other nations for the financing of our own debt. Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American I.O.U.s. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans – if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. But there is something bizarre and troubling about the richest country in the world not being able to live even remotely within its means. Just as Guantand Abu Ghraib have eroded Americas moral authority, so the Bush administrations fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.

The Way Forward

Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting Americas economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.

The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economys metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. While such an increase would be good for the long-term health of Americas economy, the short-term consequences would be painful. Money saved is money not spent. If people dont spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly – as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market – this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse before they get better. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.

And in any case theres more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we dont have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.

When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. Finally, well be a lot better off if we work with other countries to create fair and efficient global trade and financial systems. Well have a better chance of getting others to open up their markets if we ourselves act less hypocritically – that is, if we open our own markets to their goods and stop subsidizing American agriculture.

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix – and thats assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden – even at 5 percent, thats an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

In short, theres a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? Im guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.

Anya Schiffrin and Izzet Yildiz assisted with research for this article. Joseph Stiglitz, a leading economic educator, is a professor at Columbia.

Source: Vanity Fair

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress today that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, a message that got a chilly reception from both Wall Street and politicians. On a day when stock prices swung wildly, the dollar hit another new low against the euro and further signs emerged that consumers are growing more cautious about spending, Mr. Bernanke warned that the economy is about to slow noticeably as the housing market continues to spiral downward and financial institutions tighten up on lending.

[…]

Mr. Bernanke offered a rocky outlook for the months ahead. He said that the battered housing market had yet to hit bottom, that delinquencies and foreclosures were likely to rise and that the downturn in home building was likely to intensify. He predicted that personal spending would advance more slowly, because consumers are less confident and because of tighter credit conditions. On top of all that, he said, further sharp increases in crude oil prices have put renewed upward pressure on inflation and may impose further restraint on economic activity. Oil traded above $95 a barrel today, but the price was down slightly from the day before but still near its recent record highs.

Source: NY Times

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning.

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I love the smell of fearmongering in the morning. God bless America.

Most parents like to pull out all the stops to make a child's 16th birthday as memorable as possible. But having a female stripper surprise your son in front of his teacher in class would not feature on many wish-lists. Yet that's what happened when one woman booked a special performer for her son's big day.

She stipulated that the surprise take place in drama class – and even asked the teacher to film it so the family could see the boy's reaction. But – thanks to what has been put down as a booking error – a female stripper turned up in place of the gorilla-suited man the unnamed mother had apparently asked for.

The stripper, who arrived on cue halfway through the lesson, first walked the birthday boy around the classroom on all fours. Then, gyrating to the sounds of Britney Spears, she spanked him before stripping down to her bra and knickers and insisting the “naughty” schoolboy rub cream all over her body. At that point, the teacher – who had not been told what the surprise would entail – called an immediate end to the show.