Leftover lamb.

Recommended reading on the whole Marcus the Hotpot / Andrea Charman thing - Rod Liddle writes:

The cyber-fascists slaughtering a decent teacher.

Subtlety in the kiloton range, I just love it.

Marcus, as a rather yummy (and fashionable) salt-marsh Romney lamb, was hand-reared by the staff and children of Lydd primary school, on Romney Marsh to show the kids where our food comes from. There was a survey out recently which showed that 10% of schoolchildren think we get cheese from rats.

Marcus was hand-fed and then there came the day when he was looking especially plump and juicy and the headmistress, Andrea Charman, decided it was time to electrocute him down at the abattoir and divide him into chops. That, after all, was the point of Marcus. To be served lightly grilled, pink inside, with asparagus spears and Jersey Royals and mint. But then all hell broke loose, even before someone — maybe mice, who knows? — had made the gravy.

The kids’ parents — or some of them — demanded that Marcus should be allowed to live, because he was a nice sheepy. Rightly, Charman refused, saying: look, this is precisely what we need the children to learn; this is how the world is, especially here on Romney Marsh. Sheep are food. So Marcus was zapped and quartered, as sheep are.

It was at this point that the endlessly hyperactive, bone-headed online fascists got involved and last week, Charman, who had been handpicked to turn round this hitherto failing school, felt forced to resign from her job for “personal reasons”. Some 2,500 cretins started an online petition calling for the beleaguered head teacher to be sacked. It is entirely possible that none of them whatsoever had any connection to Lydd primary school. However, the campaign of vilification and vituperation had begun.

Another Facebook site was set up by 650 similarly sad, lifeless, drongoes, demanding not merely that Charman be sacked but — and I quote — to Ban Andrea Charman From Teaching Anywhere. Can you imagine the sort of people who would associate themselves with such a cause?

Thick, bitter, utterly convinced of their own rectitude, though they constitute about 0.001% of the population. Convinced enough to make this woman’s life a total misery. The new electronic media might make the world a better-informed and more democratic place, but it also allows the splenetically dunderheaded to impose their will upon others, in a spectacularly uninformed and undemocratic manner.

Go read the whole thing - it's gold. I don't agree with everything Rod Liddle's ever said but here I think every word is pretty much spot on. And he might take over at the Independent? I think there's going to be a few righteous headpops if/when that happens, which is something else we'll have to give Liddle credit for.