The silly season is here; Thomas the Tank Engine sexist.

"Sexist" tank engine.

When correctly viewed,

Everything is lewd,

I can tell you things about Peter Pan,

And the Wizzard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man …

- Smut, Tom Lehrer.

Well in this case not lewd, much worse, politically incorrect, in fact, sexist.

A researcher has blown the whistle on Thomas the Tank Engine, saying the classic series is pushing "conservative political ideology" onto kids. This claim was made by Political scientist Shauna Wilton, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at University of Alberta's Augustana Campus, who it appears doesn’t have a lot to occupy her tiny mind.

Dr Wilton said the show conveyed a number of positive political values such as tolerance, listening, communicating with others and contributing to the community.

"It also represents a conservative political ideology that punishes individual initiative, opposes critique and change, and relegates females to supportive roles," she said.

Dr Wilton analyzed 23 episodes of the model train-based series, which is shown in 130 countries. She said there were storylines in several episodes that divided the characters into different social classes and punished those who tried to gain individual power.

"Any change is seen as disrupting the natural order of things," she said.

It sometimes seems that there are people out there who are just looking for something new to dislike. They are generally seen as neurotics, sometimes as academics.