I’ve talked about Metro before, and, as I said then, I really shouldn’t bother reading it. The letters page, however, continues to provide a rich source of comic material. If ever there was an illustration of the insidious right-wing obsessions of middle England, this is surely it.

In today’s edition, under the headline pregnant moaners, there’s a series of letters responding to an earlier missive on the subject of giving your seat up on the tube for pregnant women. Astoundingly, most of the correspondents writing to today’s issue seem to be of the opinion that, if you’re pregnant, you deserve everything you get, shouldn’t be travelling on the tube, and have no more right to a seat than anyone else. Here’s some quotes: “Mr Pinstripe didn’t tell you to have a baby, and it is unreasonable to expect him to be inconvenienced because you are unfit for train travel”; “Jo Collier [writer of initial letter] [wasn’t] forced to become pregnant… she probably nagged her partner for years about having a baby and now she’s got what she wanted, she needs something else to moan about.”

It’s one thing being a heartless bastard, but I’m amazed that people feel the need to write to a shabby paper to let everyone know they have no respect for other people. I look forward to next week’s editions telling me why, say, the elderly deserve everything they get (“it’s not my fault they’re old, why should I be inconvenienced?”) and will have to fight for that seat if they really want it. It’s a jungle out there, kids…