Teenage Suicide - Don't Do It

The New New Labour method of curing the common cold by making it illegal to cough is to be applied to the internet. Ministers are urging service providers to refuse to host sites which incite suicide and are "harmful or distasteful"; harmless and tasteful sites which encourage suicide among the elderly, the unemployed and other expendables will presumably be left unmolested. Ivan Lewis, a health minister who, as Minister for Non-Outlivable Utilisability, proposed that pensioners should be used as unpaid teaching assistants, claimed to "share growing public concern at the impact of the internet on vulnerable people". In Oldspeak, of course, a minister's sharing of public concern generally translates as a healthy crack of the whip for press hysteria; it is particularly well-timed in this case as Lewis' own department has announced that the suicide rate in England has been declining steadily since the last triumph of market forces during the mid-1980s. The suicide rate among prisoners has risen by fifteen per cent on last year; but even if this were a matter of public concern, it seems unlikely that Ivan Lewis would share it.