Its been a long accepted truism in the relationship we have with our former colonial cousins over on the other side of the Big Pond that of the key cultural difference between our two nations is that most Americans don’t ‘do’ irony.

There are exceptions of course, one thinks immediately of the late Bill Hicks - although even he had to the come to the UK to find a mainstream audience that would accept and even love his particular brand of humour - but, by an large, irony, especially when its deadpanned to perfection, is usually lost on Americans.

So imagine my horror on finding in the New York Times, of all places, that a small group of British doctors have published an editoral in the British Medical Journal that so staggering dumb that even the Yanks are able to take the piss - what the hell is the world coming to.

The article in question, by Drs. Emma Hern, Will Glazebrook and Mike Beckett of the West Middlesex University Hospital, notes that long pointy knives are - shock horror - dangerous and if stuck into people can cause serious injury and - da da daaaaaaaa - even death.

No shit, Sherlock.

Hey, but not to worry as our intrepid clinicians have the solution at hand…

… get knife manufacturer to make their knives less pointy by bringing in laws which only allow their sale if they have rounded tips.

What utter genius! Give these people another three-year research grant and may they’ll come up with yet another live saving measure - how about legislation to set statutory limits on fire, after all if it wasn’t quite so hot then maybe, just maybe, its wouldn’t burn things and so wouldn’t be quite so dangerous.

Best of all Dr Hern is quoted as saying:

“We came up with the idea and tossed it into the pot to get people talking about crime reduction… Whether it’s a sensible solution to this problem or not, I’m not sure.”

Big hint, Doc - NO IT FUCKING ISN’T!!!

Of course the real worry here is that you know, you just know that deep down in your bones that somewhere in a cupboard in Whitehall there’s going to be some no-personality Civil Servant sitting their pondering whether this really needs legislation or whether, perhaps, a voluntary manaufacturer’s code might be more acceptable to the cutlery industry and seem, well, a bit less nannying…

… before deciding - “What the hell, lets have a focus group and see if the idea flies”.

And in the meantime, over at the Home Office, another civil service drone is trying to figure out if there’s any possibity on having all knives stamped with the National Identity Registration Number of the purchaser in advance of next week’s press release claiming that ID cards will stamp out knife-related crime and wondering whether the law should stop just at knives or take in other pointy objects as well.

And before you know it, we’ll all be waking up to find, without even realising it, that we’ve all become citizens of the fucking Early Learning Centre under President Big Bird.

This edition of the BMJ has been brought to you by the letter I, D, the number 10 and the letter T.