The world is a terrifying place where danger lurks at every corner. Young people are taught to say no to drugs, say no to strangers offering sweets, lifts and a viewing of puppy dogs. Some children, bafflingly and much to their parents' disgust, have an in-built ability to say no to everything their parents say, too.

It is said that self-preservation is an instinct especially potent in the young, that is why children never eat Shredded Wheat, but why do they shy away from things that are good for them?

Getting your child to do something which may be beneficial to them in some way is one of the hardest things in the world. Anything good, wholesome, nice and they run for cover. Why?

Is it because when you are little and write stories the teacher slashes the word "nice" with a red pen? "Choose a better word than this." Nice is cursed, wishy-washy, bland.

If you describe something as being nice it kind of implies that, well, it's not that nice really. Alexander Pope, satirist and poet, once thundered: "Do not damn with faint praise", which presumably means don't call my work nice.

Criticism of the word nice as description is, I suppose, fair enough, but what about nice people? Surely we should applaud the people who do good things and are helpful.

It is common to believe that nice people never get anywhere. Look around you and you will probably see half a dozen folk who are back-stabbing, money-grabbing, two-faced hypocrites who always land on their feet while those nice people who toil away in their hard jobs, with the troubles of the world on their shoulders are invisible and get nowhere.

Leader of the Opposition William Hague was called the second most reviled man in England (after David Beckham). Why? For being meek, for being mild-mannered. So he had his sinuses removed and got mean and mad. He got fired up and delivered a blistering attack on Tony Blair and his "cronies" which made headline news and won him many admirers and revived the Tory Party from total comatose.

Perhaps we are prejudiced ourselves. It is a sad fact that such things go on, but even in these allegedly enlightened times, I would say that it is still pretty hard for someone who wears an anorak to be accepted in society. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people who choose to wear them, it is a free country, but it is true that we are not as open-minded as we like to think.

Anoraks conjure up images of Roy and Hayley from Coronation Street, people with a heart of gold, but a bit on the, er, well, drippy side. We should give these people the respect they deserve; being honest, thoughtful and considerate is good and better than making fun of people when they are in trouble.

Being nice and doing nice things should not be seen as weakness or a failing. Maybe one day we will all be judged on how nice we are - with or without anoraks.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.