No Such Thing as a Free Punch

Practitioners of the Punch and Judy show have traditionally been criticised for inciting violence, on the usual profoundly common-sense grounds that depiction equals instruction; but healthier and more British trends also appear to be re-emerging. The few professors still staging these fights on Britain's beaches are receiving salutary lessons in phlegmatic entrepreneurialism, as people watch the show and then decline to pay. Similarly, various incidences of more assertive and vociferous parsimony demonstrate that the great British attitude of identification with the underdog remains well in force, as long as the great British tradition of sullen self-pity continues to identify the underdog as oneself.