THE 1999 film Fight Club was a great movie and I’ll bet most people can quote a line from it about the first rule of fight club being not to talk about fight club.

But it also had another line that subsequently went on to condemn an entire generation to ridicule: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”

And so we now have Generation Snowflake.

They are the young adults of the 2010s who are said to be more prone to taking offence and are less resilient than previous generations.

They are also seen as being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own. Needless to say, the term is considered derogatory.

I wondered exactly who was responsible for these poor people. The answer, it would appear, is their parents.

According to the fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, Claire Fox in her book I Find That Offensive! argues that Generation Snowflake was created by over-protecting people when they were children. The emphasis on self-esteem in childhood has resulted in adults ‘tiptoeing around children’s sensitivities’ to avoid ‘damaging their wellbeing’.

Tom Bennett was recruited by the government to address behaviour in schools. He noted that Generation Snowflake children can be over-protected, leading to problems when they progress to university and are confronted with ‘the harsher realities of life’.

Bennett argues being sheltered from conflict as children can lead to university students who react with intolerance towards people and things that they believe may offend someone or toward people who have differing political opinions.

Claire Fox reckons members of Generation Snowflake ‘are genuinely distressed by ideas that run contrary to their world view’.

And of course, Generation Snowflake is not a silent minority.

Thanks to social media, they have any number of methods of disseminating their sensitivities and intolerance.

Of course, all of this is fine and dandy. Perhaps a little sensitivity is what we need. You could argue it is better for society in general than boorish, thoughtless, laddish behaviour.

But, and it’s a big but, I don’t want Snowflakes doing certain jobs, for example fighting in the Army.

And yet maybe I’m out of touch here. Just look at the most recent Army recruitment advertising campaign.

The £1.6 million campaign features a series of radio, television and animated adverts, all voiced by serving soldiers, with questions being asked such as ‘What if I get emotional’?

It’s fair to say I don’t have – and never had have – what it takes to be in the armed forces. But I am happy there are men and women who are brave enough to put themselves in harm’s way.

But as one Twitter user put it: ‘The new British Army advert is a joke... emotion in the army will get u killed and the people around u...they are there to project society not to be a social experiment...it’s almost offensive’.

In these troubled times, I want tough, disciplined people to defend me. I want people who can give and take orders, not someone for whom slow wi-fi constitutes a crisis.

I don’t want a Snowflake.

n Cheshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner is the gift that just keeps on giving.

I think PCC David Keane is a decent man and a good local councillor but sadly some of the decisions he has made are questionable at best.

How unfortunate then that just as he has launched a public consultation in a bid to up the amount of money the people of Cheshire pay to the police, he appears in the Rotten Boroughs section of Private Eye.

The report in the satirical magazine has shone a national spotlight on his appointment of Sareda Dirir, daughter of two of his councillor colleagues, as his £50,000 a year deputy.

This story is unlikely to go away any time soon.