Google has hit out at rubbish over-protective parents who demand that the world join them in their crusade to protect their precious little snowflakes. You know the type. They wrap their kids in bubble wrap in case they fall over and make them wear blindfolds in case they see something they shouldn't.

Google says that such types are behind a cunning plan to censor the internet so that Nigel does not have his childhood ruined by seeing some hardcore Russian donkey porn. Naomi Gummer, a public policy analyst at the internet giant, said it was a "myth" that laws can prevent children from viewing explicit material. Gummer, 28, the daughter of peer and Conservative Party donor Lord Chadlington, said the extent of sexual content online was exaggerated.

A quarter of kids have seen sexual images, but only 14 per cent saw them online and of them four per cent say they were upset by the images. Two per cent of those images are hard-core and violent and the rest is nudity in the same way as perhaps seen in the offline world. She said that parents should take a bit of responsibility and if they want to bring in the sort of censorship you see in Saudi Arabia they should only be allowed to do it on their own machines in their own home.

All this is playing down the fact of how many kids go out of their way to see porn anyway. In the 1970s there was a roaring black market trade in Penthouse magazines at my primary school. Most boys wanted to see porn and now the internet has come along they find it online rather than having to pay Ian McDonald your sweetie money round the back of the boys loos to see a wrinkled and much fingered copy of Playboy.