James Cleverly is right to recoil at council's absurd move get a flaming grip!

The bitter stench of moral indignation brings bile to the throat as surely as a filthy lavatory or a maggot-infested meat pie. Sir James Cleverly knows the smell. The Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government recoiled this week when alerted to Basildon Borough Councils latest harebrained scheme, teaching its staff about the menopause using the names of Snow Whites Seven Dwarfs. Were talking the 1937 Walt Disney adaptation of the 1812 Brothers Grimm fairytale, since in the original the dwarfs, should that be dwarves, went unnamed.

In the animated version they are called Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Dopey and Doc. In the Essex town, where apparently doctors are not experts and women are embarrassed to speak to them imagine inclusivity lessons billed as Lets Talk Menopause rename the miniature diamond miners after classic symptoms of the change: Bloated, Bitchy, Itchy, Sweaty, Sleepy, Forgetful and Psycho. Only one, Sleepy, survives the pointless and wholly inappropriate update.

The councils diversity and inclusion staff training courses are, you guessed, costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds. A theme tune sprang to mind, one by Essex boy bred if not born, the late Ian Dury, who in 1978 released What a Waste. I could be a teacher in a classroom full of scholars? Well, exactly. Wouldnt Basildon have been better-off.

Hardworking taxpayers expect value for money, foamed Cleverly, denouncing the absurd nonsense. A whole industry has grown up promoting unscientific rubbish like this, and councils should not be wasting money on it.

Reluctant to play the plagiarism card, oh go on then, I am squealing to share that Basildons idiocy is not even original. In 2011 a satirical lifestyle article entitled Snow White and the Seven Hormonal Dwarves appeared in Bozeman magazine.

It reimagined the beloved men as Itchy, Bitchy, Flashy, Drysey, Binge-y, Bluesy and Chubby. A year later the very monikers deployed by Basildon a dozen years beyond (see above) made it onto the web in the A Singaporean Talkbox blog.

And in 2015, menopausalmom.com author Marcia Kester Doyle milked midlife mayhem, ditched Itchy and Bitchy, abbreviated Bloated to Bloaty and killer-blowed with Dried Up. Its not even funny.

But this is. My firstborn was once interviewed for a place at a Chelsea school. Her baby brother came too. What a darling chap! gushed the be-pearled, velvety head. What do you call him? He has loads of names, after his terrible habits, Here we go. And what might those be? Like the Seven Dwarfs, sniggered Mia. Fatty, Stinky, Farty, Burpy, Pukey, Porky and Wailer.

She really didnt want to go to that school. Wake up, councillors blinded by ridiculousness at our immense expense. A), do your job. B), stop stealing ideas off the internet, and C), get a flaming grip. The least you could do is think responsibly.