Baggie-Dad Saddam Hussein, we thought it was a fun summer silly season thing to do. It was a facetious reply sent by a newspaper in a Country where shorts are national dress, in answer to a mass murdering monster who has nothing better to do than threaten his starving people with a month in jail for wearing shorts.

The 42-inch waist was significant but probably too small for a hulk of a man whose people are hungry. We know that he will never wear the shorts in any of his many palaces because they probably will not get there and if they do no-one is ever going to show them to him.

Let us say that there was absolutely no intent to give offence to any religious group and we doubt that a monster like Saddam Hussein can be seen seriously as part of, or as a representative of, any religious group. There was also no intent to give offence to the downtrodden people of Iraq who are already forced to live in terror, deprivation and hunger.

Now let us say that we have been shocked by those Bermudians who have given the appearance of being in support of Saddam Hussein. One person accused us of being "ill-mannered and thoughtless'' toward Saddam Hussein. We were asked to show sensitivity to his "culture and feelings''. Would that same person have taken us to task for criticising Hitler before the Second World War. Or Idi Amin? How do you say anything bad enough about a man who gases his own people? The English language does not extend to adjectives for such people probably because it is difficult to imagine or to create anything descriptive enough of the horrors they create.

We did have some complaints and we have been told that there were more on the radio talk shows. The people who call the talk shows are generally the same people over and over again and it appears that what they really enjoy is complaining about anything and everything. Where were they when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds? How has Bermuda failed to instil in all its people an appreciation for democracy and an abhorrence of such dictators as Saddam Hussein? Clearly we have not done well in teaching democracy because at least one caller threatened to report The Royal Gazette to "the authorities'' because it did not have permission to send the shorts to Iraq. That would have been true in Baghdad but thankfully, Hamilton is not Baghdad. Or maybe Bermuda is just such a regulated country that people think they need permission for absolutely everything.

Where is our sense of humour? It has been a long hot summer but have we really lost all our cool? For some time now it has been a matter of concern that, led by ever complaining politicians and talk show malcontents, Bermudians were turning into a group of sad faced whiners. We have little sense of humour about things Bermudian and find it difficult to laugh at ourselves but surely we can see the humour of taking the mickey out of a monster.