New Year Irresolutions

Champagne bottles ranging in size
up to the mighty Kennedyaboam

Before I whinge, let me wish one and all a happy and prosperous New Year. Yes, slightly belated, but bugger all else happens on New Year's day so I didn't get round to a blog post either.

This is not my favourite time of year, other than its association with alcoholic excess, for a hundred and one reasons entirely unconnected with the motivations that make me spout my usual collection of poorly informed bile on this blog. These though are very personal ones going back many a year and there is still a a dormant, yet not extinct memory of writing off the dross of the year past and hoping that something good happens in the year to come.

After all, science teaches us that a violently inclined, over-excited white rhino, whose pension scheme was well and truly shafted by the last Chancellor, could spontaneously appear in the row of Commons seats immediately behind the Government front bench midday on any given Wednesday when Parliament is sitting and take its pent-up sexual frustrations on anyone who happens to be leaning over a dispatch box. It's about as likely as our current administration introducing a half decent bill in to the said chamber, true, but as long as it doesn't violate the fundamental rules we can still live in hope.

I'm the sort of person whose likely date of giving up smoking was severely retarded by Patsy Fuckwit's smoking ban, so it goes without saying that I don't really do New Year resolutions where every man, with or without a dog, can watch you fail to keep them, but I will try not to just seethe inside as much as I have done over the festive season and will get back to sharing the rage and what occasionally passes for my take on common sense, from here on in.

Slainte Mhath!

Ho Bloody Ho

Another year, another war zone

I have to admit, this is not my favourite time of year. Other than the traditional Boxing Day Leeds Rhinos fixture, a rare opportunity to go and watch the other code and escape overheating and overeating, there is little in the festive season that fills me with cheer and goodwill towards my fellow man.

In particular there comes that annual series of amateur drinking fixtures, known as the office party. Down at the Base Camp there is one such display of second rate booze handling in progress as I write this, and judging by the faces of the normally cheerful staff, even Doktor Doob, it is living down to the reputation of such events.

The main problem is the number if inexperienced players in the typical side, many of whom will doubtlessly be heading in my direction to fall off the taller bar stools shortly. All will be of perfectly legal drinking age, and few will be teetotallers, however at many of these occasions it's a bit like letting seventeen year olds drive HGVs on their provisional moped licence.

I'm too much of a libertarian to want anything in particular to be done about it; it's just bloody annoying. As it happens I was more impressed with Antony Worrall Thompson's sensible suggestions on the Daily Politics, of limited, and situationally appropriate, additional opportunities for teenagers to learn how to handle alcohol in a responsible way, rather than a big-bang, off the leash at eighteen approach. It was a thoughtful piece, that considered the mindset of the teenagers he was thinking of, but it didn't involve a crackdown or ban so I don't think anyone in Gordon's policy unit will be interested.

Bah humbug to one and all.

A Life Less Ordinary

One Final Leap into the Unknown

My news reader today brought coverage yesterday of Evel Kneivel's surprisingly low key funeral in his home town of Butte, Montana.

I must admit I never had a lot of interest in Kneivel's bizarre and often unsuccessful stunts, the heyday of which was when I was still a toddler, but nonetheless the coverage of his passing has brought on a bit of a nostalgia attack. Such was his aura, for all the failures along the line that although it was to be a couple of years before I had headed off to infant school, I do remember that the Kneivel jet cycle toy was still the first 'must have' toy for all the boys there.

The obituaries in any newspaper usually joins the select band of fashion, football, and court and social pages that I don't give the time of day to but I did enjoy the Telegraph's send off, a couple of weeks ago, for Kneivel. A couple of personal highlights:

"Thereafter Knievel worked briefly as an insurance salesman. He sold 271 policies in a single week, but left his employers when they did not immediately offer him a seat on the board.

Then he embarked on a successful career as a safe cracker, working mainly in Oregon. He also had spells as a bank robber, swindler and pickpocket."

...

"At the height of his fame in Britain, newspaper leader writers contrasted unfavourably the inability of Chancellor Denis Healey to keep interest rates up with Knievel's skill at defying gravity."

...

"He married his childhood sweetheart Linda Bork in 1959. She fell for his romantic nature after he kidnapped her three times."

Source: The Sunday Telegraph

OK, kidnapping et el. are not to be applauded, but in reading the whole article it's clear he was a man who understood that it wasn't the length of one's life that matters, but what one does with it and that's something I'll take over the puritanical tyranny of the government and their henchmen in the health and safety executive and the BMA any day.

Up in Smoke

In need of an update

Bonfire night hasn't ever had the same appeal since my father bought a dodgy batch of fireworks that fell of the back of a lorry a few years ago. Once you've seen an oversized rocket doing a mid air U-turn a couple of seconds after lift off and somehow fitting through the narrowest of re-entry windows (in this case a patio door opened only to a ventilation setting) and explode in the family lounge nothing else will quite match the excitement.

It's that whiff of gunpowder and controlled danger that I've always liked and I desperately hope the health and safety zealots fail in their annual whining for yet more draconian restrictions. They don't seem to publicise the annual injury toll on TV news outlets anymore, which is probably a sign that the numbers are becoming fairly small and un-newsworthy, but if true that would not deflect the zero risk brigade from their crusade.

There have also been the usual questions raised about the appropriateness of an annual celebration of Catholic burning from the usual suspects of political correctness as well as from more considered sources. I've got no particular views on Catholicism one way of the other, but I am inclined to believe that it is one area where perhaps we could include a little more diversity. A pub conversation last night covered some potential candidates to replace the historical Guido Fawkes, so I have now come up with my considered top 10. I've tried to stick to just a single victim from any given sphere or institution, otherwise I'd have just been able to cut and paste from a list of members of the current cabinet.

So here goes then…my top 10 for the bonfire kindled, of course with the entire print run (if that is sufficient) of The Independent, in effigy:

10 - Jonathan Davies
Davies is a fine rugby player in both codes of the codes, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of both games. That said, the Welsh accent can be a beautiful thing, but his isn't. If some digibox offers a 'mute Davies commentary' feature I will be out to buy one in a second.

9 - Jose Manuel Barroso
I was tempted to include two people from the commission so that, in EU style, it would be possible to satisfy the sensitivities of those both in Brussels and Strasbourg. In my opinion the more common hate figures of the Eurosceptic movement, such as Santer and Delors at least had a degree of honesty of what their ultimate goal was, even if they were not so open about how they were achieving it. Some may say that Barroso is just the EU village idiot and unworthy of the accolade, but I'd love to see him go up in his Napoleonic bicorn hat.

8 - The Poison Dwarf
Ok, a bit parochial. Those outside the Village will just have to trust me when I say that never before in the field of pub bores has so little knowledge been expounded so long and inaccurately to so many.

7 - Kate Moss
OK, it wouldn't add much to the blaze, but the Kate Moss effigy is there as a symbolic representation of British Tabloid culture at its worst. The mention of her name in the broadcast media used to be a cue that all the serious news had come to an end and you could switch off and go and do something else, now it's likely to somewhere up in the top three stories at some point in any given week.

6 - Quentin Davies MP
We have far too large a legislature for a country of our size so the back benchers must take their share of the cuts as well as the cabinet. Not only would Davies' oily bulk make up for Moss, but as people at least since the days of Dante have known, there is a special circle in hell reserved for traitorous scum. I suspect there are still plenty of his newfound colleagues that would help me drag his heavy effigy to the top of the bonfire.

5 - Richard Corbett MEP
The smug grin that the deputy leader of the Labour MEPs has worn since his wish to have the desires of the British People extinguished seems to have been granted is truly revolting. The stupefying dishonesty of his attempts to justify the most politically dishonest act of my lifetime are offensive in the extreme. His fervent hope that the gradual stripping away of real democratic control from the general public will continue is reason enough to give him a portent of what generally happens when self selecting elites scorn the people, in seeing his effigy meet the same kind of sticky end that ultimately befell many of his political forebears.

4 - Robert Mugabe
It's a rare person who can unite a vast swathe of the political spectrum in universal loathing. There are others whose leadership has turned their country into a complete mess, but so often it can be attributed to an obsession with failed and discredited ideologies. With Mugabe I'm not sure I could even credit a plea of insanity; I believe he knows what he is doing is wrong and where he is leading his nation but these issues are small beer to him in comparison to his desire for unfettered power and wealth for his friends and himself.

3 - Lord "I'll never accept a peerage" Kinnock
Kinnock becomes the peer for the pyre on many counts. At least seeing the Kinnock effigy burn would be a more upbeat experience than some of the others where the frustration that in a civilised society we cannot really burn the person depicted would be a bit of dampener. Just as traditional bonfire festivities celebrate, to an extent, an event that never came to pass, so too would the roasting of this trough pig's effigy be a celebration that he never actually became Prime Minister.

2 - Sir Ian Blair
Had this particular Blair done a job that had inspired confidence in anybody outside left wing political circles then I would have been defending him to the hilt over the recent ridiculous Health and Safety conviction for the Met. In truth though he has being doing an important job badly for several years now with an astonishing disregard to the damage he is doing to the image of his forceservice.

1 - Gordon Brown
Well, it had to be, didn't it? If I'm only going to burn one member of the cabinet in effigy it has to be the top man. I understand he has another in his series of books on courage about to hit the shelves. It's the only way he will ever see his name on the cover of a book on that subject. Utterly worthless.

I know there are so many other worthy candidates but it's a start and we do have to consider our carbon footprint.

Non-Story of the Week

The Telegraph today reports what would have once been called a 'dog bites man' story, but I'm inclined to call an 'England pulls off unlikely victory leaving all true Englishmen with bad hangover' story, with the truly astonishing news that, in their own words: "'Depressing Irish saga' wins the Booker Prize".

Apparantly it was expected to be a fight between Ian McEwan and a little known New Zealand author Lloyd Jones, according to the bookies. This seems to have been lapse of judgement by the bookmakers. I'm more or less functionally literate, and enjoy McEwan's books, and from the Telegraph precis, Jones' offering about the civil war in Papua New Guinea sounds like something that might be worth reading. It's amazing that such material even made the shortlist.

The winner, having sold 2901 copies in the UK since May (as opposed to McEwan's populist 130,000+), by Irish author Anne Enright is:

"A desperately bleak Irish family saga featuring a suicide and sexual abuse"

...

Robert Harris, the bestselling author of novels such as Fatherland and Enigma, said in an interview that authors were being forced by agents to write 'Booker-winning' novels that were “grim and unreadable and utterly off-putting for many readers”.

Source: The Telegraph

No surprises there then. It just fuels the suspicion, and I make no accusation against Enright, not having read, nor intending to read her offering, that the intrinsic literary value of a book counts little in comparison to ensuring that it meets, as Harris implies, the arts community's definition of award-friendly subject matter.

I guess the real question is why these awards, so divorced as they are, as the latest Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates, from the realities of day-to-day literarty interests for the majority of us, still justify so many column inches.

The unremitting misery of so much 'quality' fiction is as unreal to a huge segment of society as the superficial glitz and glamour of Tinseltown, as drooled over in tabloidland.

Who does this particular 'middle England' look to, to recognise fine authors bring to light less well known gems?

End of Season Review

All over, including the shouting...for now

I've been working at home quite a lot recently so I've had the dubious pleasure of being able to catch a lot of the conference season. It's not that that I'm that much of a political anorak, but when the other option was the "make me rich from crap in the attic with cooking stars in their own eyes" stuff that passes as 'quality' daytime broadcasting on the main channels, there really was no contest.

Probably the last time I caught anything other than news highlights of the conferences was when I was a student, so I have to be honest and say the style of all of the major party conferences was quite a surprise, albeit, in general a pleasant one, when my abiding memory was still one of cliff-face platforms with the seating positions of dour-faced front-benchers in their massed ranks at the cliff top being the main subject of debate amongst the commentators.

I'm not really going to be able to avoid a personal bias entirely, but for me these were the highlights and lowlights, the hero's and villains of the few weeks:

Best Moment (Liberal Democrat)
The succession of speakers from the floor, setting out principled arguments against the surveillance society and the ridiculous 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' arguments from those who would give away their entire liberty and they grandparents too for a little illusory safety.

Best Moment (Labour)
Dennis Skinner chuntering away to himself during Quentin Davies speech inviting other Conservatives to abandon their principles for a little personal gain and join him in the Supreme Leader's big tent of all the talentless. I must learn to lip read before next year.

A nicer one? There is something about Harriet Harman's delivery that I can't help liking even though much of what she says drives me up the wall.

Best Moment (Conservative)
This is a tough call for me with so many good front bench performances. For me Liam Fox just about edged his boss, Duncan-Smith, Hague and Letwin. I still think he would have been a pretty disastrous leader for the party, but the passion on a subject that he clearly cares so much shone through and I actually found myself warming to him for the first time.

Leaders Keynote Speeches

Cameron - 8/10
Very solid and impressive delivery. I'm not sure about winding up on the National Citizen Service, as I still can't quite envisage sixteen year olds buying into the concept. Perhaps I was hoping for a bit more of a barnstorming performance towards the end, but the personal note played pretty well.

Campbell - 7/10
As I explained in another post I still think Ming could have done better, but solid nonetheless.

Brown - 4*/10
Average and not especially inspiring even before it emerged that the good bits were the work of somebody else.

* Brown deducted two points for plagiarism

Slickest Presentation
I have to go for the Liberal Democrats for this one. The other parties made impressive efforts but they pulled off a couple of cock-ups to blot their copybook. Labour needed someone better qualified to operate a 'kill' switch for the microphone at times and the amount of procedural nonsense that seemed only to be able to be dealt with from the chair was excessive. The Conservatives had widely reported sound problems of the opposite variety to kick off proceedings and didn't always segue always that well between a series of start acts.

Best Non-Party Contribution
This is probably the least fair call of all as timing-wise I missed, I understand, the best efforts at the Lib Dems' and Labour conferences. I was though impressed (and ashamed not to be able to remember his name) by the bloke at the Conservative's conference who ran some kind of mentoring project in Liverpool. His delivery might have woken a few elderly delegates from their slumbers, but it was full of passion, personal commitment and common sense, and it says much for what Cameron has done that his Conservative party can engage with people like this.

Feel Good Moment
I might have enjoyed Liam Fox's speech more but the enthusiastic reception acclaim for Iain Duncan-Smith's performance represented a well deserved rehabilitation of a decent man in the eyes of a once harshly judgmental party. In some ways his contribution may actually have been of greater value at a party level as he was preaching to the not uniformly converted.

Best Blog Coverage
No individual awards here, but I'll go for some the main Labour Bloggers overall, though I will also admit that it may be because of some of those less comfortable with the party line.

The Lib Dem contributions were well written, but just a bit too loyal and predictable for my taste.

The Conservative bloggers, Guido apart, were entertaining, but perhaps a bit too much tittle-tattle focused at times. This isn't much of a criticism as I know I'd be exactly the same if I ever went to an event like that. Iain Dale did much better from the platform, with quite a moving speech on Rwanda, even if it will be better remembered for his introduction as a 'foremost political blagger'.

Winners and Losers
Probably for me it has to be Ming, as the consequences of a bad performance could have been very swift and very serious. I actually think David Cameron had a better speech and his party a better conference, but I was never convinced that the immediate threat to him was as bad as some of the press made it out to be, and the chance of a sub-par performance causing fallout was much lower.

Gordon Brown for all his opinion poll lead has to be the loser of the conference season looked at in microcosm, especially after he compounded his problems over his speech with a political stunt that seems to have left a bad taste in the mouths of friend and foe alike.

I'm sure Brown wants to beat Blair in every respect, but I think he would rather that the fact that this includes outdoing him in spin and dishonesty is something he would prefer was kept a little more quiet.

Restoring the Balance

Day of the Jackal

Having been a bit critical of the BBC recently, it's only fair to mention I did get a bit of pleasure out of the corporation last night even if it has caused me not to be feeling especially sharp this morning. I was already pretty tired when I got home last night, but flicking on the box I saw the opening of the original Day of the Jackal film adaptation on the BBC. I'm afraid it's one of those films I just can't switch off.

I'm not a particular fan of classic films, but this is one of those where the only ways in which it has dated actually add a little extra to the film. The locations, general style of the the time, and even the cars inspire a kind of nostalgia for a time that was largely before my birth and certainly beyond my memories. The political situation that underpinned the plot has also drifted out of public consciousness, but in this it acts at least as a reminder, if not necessarily a history lesson. The shadowy OAS (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète) did indeed exist and plotted over 30 serious attempts to assassinate General De Gaulle, before French intelligence proved its case against a number of its leaders, who were executed.

There was a great multinational cast and production team, which certainly adds to the films atmosphere, especially in the style of the cinematography, which was very much in the French style. The plot shows British and French police and secret services operating in very different ways, but in both cases very effectively and co-operating fully to a common purpose.

It's odd that the original author is now so commonly vilified as a swivel eyed little-Englander xenophobe by supporters of the EU, for his simple crime of not believing that the EU provides the only model for cooperation in Europe. But of course Fredrick Forsyth is not a little Englander or xenophobe, no more than the late Sir James Goldsmith was; the terms are just a mindless smears from those on the other side of a debate whose reluctance to engage properly in that debate is the real scandal. It's a tactic we have see again in the last few days in the increasingly desperate attempts of the left to attach the label of racist to Boris Johnson, seeing it as Ken's best chance of a third term. Fortunately their attempts seem to be backfiring somewhat, as the puerile Compass group report seems to be being treated with the contempt it deserves.

Another interesting link to more current affairs appeared when I was looking a web page on the film, who linked to an old article on the BBC website, where Mr Forsyth suggested a simple, low-cost approach to making the type of identity theft featured in his novel very much more difficult. Very presciently though Mr Forsyth observes in the article:

"Of course, bureaucrats would think of some expensive way of solving the problem."

Source: BBC News

He was of course, we now know, entirely correct, though I'm not sure even he could have anticipated the full extent of the expense, or the liberty crushing nature of the ID Card and National Identity Register scheme.

As a final observation, writing this post has made me recall a time when daytime TV, which my work schedule sometime makes me end up watching, I seem to remember often featured some classic films in the morning slots, like the old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes adaptations.

As I said up front, I'm not really a fan of many of these classic films, but that said they are head and shoulders above the diet of 'crap in the attic', 'crap at car boot sales', and 'watch me buy or redecorate my house' shows we face these days. I suspect there's some mindless 'original content' target in play somewhere down the line; if so it is not money well spent. Licence fee payers money shouldn't go on this kind of rubbish that is available in any quantity on commercial channels.

If that means filling up the gaps in the schedule with material from the archives - so be it; it is, in effect, tax payers money, and as such should only be spent as and when it is really necessary to fund the type of programming that the market would not otherwise offer.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a prize for tying the most disparate topics to a single apparently unrelated headline post.

Silly Season Reaches Peak

Health and Safety
on the case?

There has been much talk on some other blogs about the arrival of 'Silly Season' where the summers absence of the usual more serious fare for the media to get their teeth into, especially in the field of politics, promotes second rate stories to unwarranted prominence, or forces them to make a feast from the few scraps their more regular sources still offer up. This year silly season seems to have been somewhat abridged by the floods and the reemergence of Foot and Mouth disease, but with these having left the front page silly season seems to have got underway with a vengeance. I therefore offer up my favourite couple of stories from the mainstream media yesterday, both of which would have appeared anyway, but seemed to have a bit more prominence on the respective websites than would have otherwise been the case.

First up, Sky News. Sky is not above a succumbing to the odd bit of tabloid appeal in its coverage at the best of times, but once it has made it to the Internet it tends to be tidily filed away in a section called 'Strange News' as any newsfeed addict will know. This however made the main headline news section yesterday:

"A dwarf performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was rushed to hospital after he glued his privates to a vacuum cleaner.

Daniel Blackner performs in the Circus of Horrors as Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf"

Source: Sky News

It transpires that an 'special' attachment on Mr Blackner's vacuum cleaner had come loose and a hasty attempt to repair it with superglue went wrong. Readers will be relieved to know that after a valiant effort by nurses at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Mr Blackner and his appliance (the hoover) were finally parted.

Everyone who has been to the Edinburgh Fringe knows that genitalia based physical theatre has become a bit of a recurring theme in recent years. While I always passed on these shows when I was there, I do still value free expression and I've got a sneaking fear that some half witted Health and Safety officer's eyes will have lit up on seeing the story.

The last word must go to Mr Blackner:

"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed A&E with a vacuum attached to me.

"I wished the ground could swallow me up."

Source: Sky News

I think Mr Blackner is fortunate, he knows now that he almost certainly has faced the most embarrassing moment of his life, given how hard to top it will be; for the rest of us it could still be just around the corner.

The Guardian, much as I might dislike its editorial line, is a usually a more serious voice than Sky, and its contribution to silly season is indeed on a much more serious subject, that of an 'armed' robbery:

A robber who held up a bookmakers with his girlfriend's vibrator was jailed today.

Nicki Jex concealed the Rampant Rabbit sex toy in a carrier bag and pretended it was a gun during the raid on the Ladbrokes shop in Leicester on December 27 last year.

Source: The Guardian

This is not to take anything away from the serious nature of any armed robbery, even with simulated arms. It is still a traumatic experience for the victims, and it appears that a customer, Mr Wayne Vakani behaved very courageously, following Jex to a local pub which led to the police collecting enough evidence to link Jex to the crime.

I can't help feeling though that the the nature of the simulated weapon did manage to creep in to the story more often that it normally would, and it certainly pushed the story way up the running order yesterday. I'm at all not convinced that the sentencing phase of a trial over charges on a robbery in December last year would have headlined quite so highly if say, Mr Jex had used a realistic replica weapon, doubtlessly a more frightening experience for the victims.

It just amusing to see that some of the more serious voices in the mainstream media can succumb to the same basic instincts as the the rest of us!

Just When You Think You've Heard it All

Mark Twain
Wisdom in Ten Words

This country has produced some of the greatest wordsmiths of all time, poets, playwrights and novelists alike, but for expressing an obvious but often overlooked truth in a single sentence that will stick with you for a lifetime I think most, Wilde and Shaw possibly excepted, must still bow down to an American, specifically one Mr Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

I thought I knew all the best of his wry observations on l'état humain but it seems like I've missed a classic:

Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

It's as true today as when the ink was still wet from its first writing.

Missing in Action

Blogging will be light as real life, and a few little experiments get in the way of normal service.

Today is Pet Hate Day

Chavjuice

Or so it seems to me today. I should have seen it coming after being woken to the decidedly non-dulcet tones of Margaret Beckett spouting unconvincing drivel on the EU treaty negotiations. Usually I wake up feeling nauseous for completely different reasons. There were other irritations on the political front all day, but to avoid swamping the statistics I will count the whole of NuLab as pet hate number one.

Wheeled W**ker

Number two came along on the way to the station as I narrowly avoided a collision with a Day-Glo clad Cyclotosser careering down the pavement faster than the traffic was proceeding along the relatively empty, and perfectly safe to cycle on, high street. I went through every road safety initiative of the day at school but was never taught to look left, look right before leaving every shop doorway in case some pig-ignorant accountant on a mountain bike is claiming exclusive use of the pavement beyond. I've never been hit by a car, or hit anyone in a car; this would have been my third pavement traffic accident with a cyclist.

I was expecting the third; it was a time of day when the train was bound to be full of kids, teenagers and twenty-somethings all suffering from Lock-knee. I should not mock the afflicted whose terrible ailment forces them to sit in contorted uncomfortable positions so they can get their feet onto the seat opposite to compensate for their inability to flex their knee. Medical science seems to have no answer to this condition, which I would assume to be some relative of gout were it not for the fact that it appears either to be highly infectious amongst certain age groups. I guess an epidemiologist may be able to suggest an alternate aetiology; I do wonder about a link to Alcopop consumption, also common among Lock-Knee sufferers.

Hi-Fi, Kingston Style

It was also a racing certainty that amongst them there would be a Nokia DJ, my fourth pet hate of the day, or rather hour. I've listened to a few mobile phone MP3 players on headphones and while not quite up to the standard of a made-for-purpose player, they are not too bad at all. Played through the tinny little speaker at maximum volume it's so appalling that the urge to give the ignorant little fucker a flying head butt becomes almost unbearable. Even the fact that it stops being able to tell whether it's the usual music for the hard of thinking or not doesn't dim the primitive drive.

Changing trains at Raynes Park, almost worthy of being a pet hate in of itself, I ran straight into a row of Train Door Mannequins, who, liberated from rational thought think the quickest way for them to get on to the train is to stand dopily in front of the open door making impossible for anyone wanting to get off to get through. At least it's not as bad as at Waterloo where it can be a bit like getting through the All Black's defensive line.

That was five; the sixth took a little longer to arrive, about an hour in fact as the first connecting train was cancelled and the following one was running fifteen minutes late, which meant I had about an hour sat on the god forsaken platform. When the train finally arrived it soon became clear that South West Trains sensitivity to customer mood was up to its normal levels as they had picked this particular service to have a full ticket inspection. I always buy a ticket and don't object to the principle, however as with most such jobs the roles are filled by a collection of Brain Dead Jobsworths.

There were actually a lot of irritations at the office, but I'm far too sensible to mention them here. Let's just say the count went from six to ten. I won't mention specifics to protect the guilty, and my livelihood. Let me just throw in a few words and phrases like Change Control Officer, Accounts Payable, Marketing Having 'Good' Ideas, and People Who Stick the High Priority Flag on Every Fucking E-Mail.

Not all prejudice is irrational

The return trip followed much of the pattern of the outbound journey however this time it was a group of Pram pushing mothers trundling three abreast that pushed me off a different section of pavement that was to bring up number eleven. I suppose I should be grateful that the young people were still in the pram and had not yet developed into full blown Feral Toddlers running around, screaming and generally pissing everyone off to the active delight of their parents. I haven't run into any of these yet today, but the night is yet young and parents don't have the decency to get their offspring out of the way at a decent hour any more so that the grown-ups can have a bit of fun too.

The round dozen was self inflicted as I popped into Marks and Spencers for some food during a particular bad Supermarket Zombie infestation. I've never quite understood why I seem to be the only person in there who actually makes an effort not to walk blindly into everyone else or park my trolley in away to deny access to as many shelves as possible to everyone else. Perhaps on the former irritation it explains why I've never understood those statistics about how many relationships start in the supermarket aisles. Actually it does make some sort of sense, after all I did have one friend at school whose parents met when his father skateboarded into his mother and breaking her arm; maybe inconsiderate behaviour does have an up side after all.

Estate Agencies
A waste of good bar space

Unlucky thirteen is a fine shop front that I have to walk past every day that has now become an Estate Agents. I hate them, not the people, the offices. The high street is crammed with them. Even those not online tend to grab one or more of the free property pages these days to browse through at their leisure rather than gazing into the windows of an oversized office. What is the point of them hogging so much of the high street after all? It's not exactly an impulse buy.

"Honey did you get the milk?"

"Yes, oh and I popped into that nice new estate agents next door and picked up a new house while I was at it."

"That's nice dear"

I suppose it could have been worse, it could have become a Coffee Shop. I don't like those either. Some of it is a rational dislike of the way they take up every other space on the high street, and the fact, while I love the smell of coffee, I've never understood why people toss themselves off over drinking ever more elaborate concoctions of the foul tasting brew. There is a bit of an irrational side to this dislike too I must admit, partly related to the long ago trauma of seeing a favoured pub close one day and reopen the following week as one of these god forsaken outlets and the rest connected to a former colleague who was not only an Accountant but could also so say 'Starbucks' in such a Boston screech it drove me up the wall.

I reckon so far I've encountered nearly half of my pet bugbears already today, and I've still got a few hours in the Village to go tonight. The way it's going I'm have expecting to bump in to someone like Zorba, one of the last people I know that will stick to bitter all night, knocking back the Bacardi Breezers at the Mother Ship, that HQ will be hosting a Lib Dem MEP convention, and Patricia Hewitt and Caroline Flint will be promoting the upcoming smoking ban at Base Camp. I blame Blair, or rather the Blair Witch; I'm sure this run of bad luck started soon after I ended up sitting next to her in a pub I used to like until a few weeks ago.

Lessons from History

The Globe Reconstruction

I spent the whole of Tuesday night in back in the 16th century, surrounded by wattle and daub plaster, and sitting on a hard wooden bench, for which I was grateful, for otherwise I would have spent four hours standing, which I'd be reluctant to do even for a decent rugby match. Note to Saracens, or rather Watford Football Club, our landlords: the Elizabethans had a much simpler, cheaper and more importantly more comfortable approach to seating crowds than you do. Down below sundry people, dressed inappropriately for the warm weather but more appropriately for the era in which we found ourselves were acting out 'The Merchant of Venice'. I was, of course, on the South Bank, at the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe.

It's a play I've seen a few times before on stage, and on screen, but even if I had the critic's vocabulary to pass judgement on the performance I don't really feel qualified to say whether it was a great performance of what modern attitudes have made one of Shakespeare's more controversial offerings. It was the first time I've been to the Globe and all I can really say is that I enjoyed both the play and the experience. I realised it's the very first time I've seen Shakespeare performed on stage, in the original language and, insofar as the history can tell us, pretty much the way it was originally staged. There were a few minor tweaks, all outside the actual text, probably to play up to those in the audience who thought 'Shakespeare in Love' was some kind of documentary. The only major innovation was the introduction of women to play the roles of erm…women, apart of course in the penultimate act when the women who were for once playing women had play the role of men.

To add to the confusion the actress playing Portia had gone AWOL, presumably through illness, and this being a very short run there was no understudy. The show must go on, and so it did with Nerissa promoted to her mistresses' role and a new stand-in Nerissa both reading from day-glo highlight adorned scripts. Come the courtroom scene they bizarrely they interchanged roles again with the stand-in Portia reverting to being the real Nerissa, albeit in the guise of the clerk, and the stand-in Nerissa becoming the stand-in Portia playing the role of the man of law. It's ok, the director had apologised to the baying crowd in advance, and even the times there was an occasional stumble and the carried scripts were needed, it took nothing away from the experience; I suspect even Shakespeare himself would have raised a smile at the added layer of confusion. In any case the inclusion of real women didn't seem to contribute to any great increase in public immorality though I'm sure some NuLab department was monitoring the situation closely.

The night had many typical elements of a trip to see Shakespeare performed. There was the group of American students travelling the world with their script and notes on the text who, of course, dutifully laughed on every cue, but at least took an interest. There were the po-faced British theatre goers making disdainful faces at such behaviour, while their own children were either by their side looking sullen and disinterested or, I suspect, indulging in Cool Britannia's modern alternative of hanging round a bus shelter looking sullen if they were too young for binge drinking. Thankfully a traditional setting deterred most of the ArtPOLs who would, if they had two grey cells to rub together, have been there commenting on some of the more anti-capitalist sentiment in the play and the strong role played by the lead women. I guess the lack of a physically handicapped, transgendered or openly homosexual character must have been what put them off, because I think they would probably have enjoyed the Jew-bashing.

Other than the lack of leftism sufferers empathising with something or another, the other thing that was less typical was the rest of the audience. Looking down from our perch there the overdressed, ageing crowd that is a common sight at many theatrical events was conspicuous by their absence. In their place was a collection of t-shirts, football shirts and rugby shirts mixed in with outfits clearly designed for after theatre clubbing. Many, at the start, also wore slightly less than enthusiastic “oh well, I suppose even though we couldn't get into Les Mis we'd still better do the theatre on our London visit” expressions. By the end, almost all were captivated by it and there was a raucousness to the applause at the final curtain call that you'd rarely see in the West End. The loudest of it was rightly for the two stand-ins, including that from a couple of fairly heavyweight Hollywood stars I happened to spot in the audience. Removed from its often, in more ways than one, rather stuffy environment theatre had rediscovered fun.

Shylock and Jessica

Another part of the experience of the Globe is the activity that goes on outside the auditorium, where there is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of an Elizabethan night out on the tiles. Yes, it is very much a pastiche, but I'm not sure Southwark Council is allowed to grant a prostitution licence even for artistic reasons and I'm the health and safety killjoys would have prohibited more authentic and probably more appetizing fare. There was something more modern though, that was notable by its absence; the religious protest. Any attempt at a rewrite recasting the role of Shylock as a Moslem, Sikh or yes as a Christian living in a world of different religious persuasions, would, I suspect, be less fortunate.

I might have a 'plague on both your houses' attitude to the whole Israeli/Palestine issue, but it's hard not to respect the good humour with which the Jewish Diaspora tend to accept both jokes at their expense and more poisonous comments with their own self-deprecating humour in the first case and a calm stoicism in the latter. It's an attitude in very short supply in many of this country's minority religions and is sadly being lost at an alarming rate amongst sections of the Christian community, who are themselves starting to man the barricades and picket lines in a search for special, unequal treatment.

There have been many attempts to perform a modern post hoc reengineering on Shakespeare's attitudes to Shylock in more modern times, either pointing to the more sympathetic 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?' passage of his courtroom appearance, or more general themes of redemption.

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
Act 3, Scene I

For all the power of that one, and as far as I understand the play it is only that one, famous passage, overall it really isn't that convincing. Shakespeare tended not to create two dimensional Bond style villains, but even with the darkest of characters tended to introduce a small degree of humanity to make them more human, and thereby their depravities all the more terrible. I've always been more inclined to the line that the programme notes also followed, that yes, Shakespeare was an anti-Semite, but then, in this particular case he was not a man for all time, but very much a creature of his own time, and those times were very hostile ones in which to be a Jew.

Where is the value in suggesting that plays that contain attitudes would today be unacceptable should perhaps not be performed, as is sometimes the case? Why should we perform logical and literary gymnastics to pretend that a work carries a message that it patently does not, or worse still rewrite it to make it more acceptable to modern ears? I would suggest there is no merit in any of these approaches. If someone wants to do some rewriting, relocation or rearranging of a play, fine, do it. Do it for reasons of genuine innovation or creativity though, not because of some absurd sensitivity about the attitudes of the past. Let these stand, let them be understood even if they be reviled today. Let it be seen that even the most brilliant minds of an age can succumb to the prejudices of their time; we might even learn something about the dangers of accepting, without question, some of the prevailing wisdoms of our own.

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants

Tom McRae

OK, time to take a risk. I email into the Microblog all the time, but this will be a first. A real time, main blog entry without the benefit of a spel chicker*. So with apologies to those who spent several years trying to teach me the intricacies of my native tongue, here goes...

At the start of writing this it's coming up to 9:30PM on a Friday night, and for once I'm neither rat-arsed, nor in the Village. It's another night of culture at its best, and for once there is not a trace of sarcasm in that statement. Instead of being up in the good seats like Tuesday's trip to the Globe, I'm down in the good standing area on the ground floor of the Shepherds Bush Empire. Everyone is waiting for the arrival of one Tom McRae on stage. Not exactly a household name? No, but when you look at the success other British male singer songwriters have had it should be. He's got the talent, the voice, and even on-stage personality in spades without a trace of the tertiary twatism that so often goes hand-in-hand with it.

One tribute was the warm-up act, Steve Reynolds, who I think may have had a little more airplay of late since McRae's early impact and acclaim for his debut album, but played a great supporting role tonight, as did 'when will they stop using Brighter than Sunshine for musical highlights on the BBC' Aqualung the last time I saw McRae play live.

If you've never heard of him before I'd go have a listen, especially if he's playing live in a town near you - the studio stuff on iTunes doesn't quite do him justice, it's not overproduced or anything, just a bit sterile compared to the same songs played live, and there were a couple of great covers that didn't make the cut on the CDs I bought. His version of Oh Yeah! (On the radio) is fantastic, and La Nuit Je Mens (a cover of the Alain Bashung - I had to look him up too - song) is a classic even if I can't come up with a nice idiomatic translation of the line about trying to pull a Moray eel from the French.

Talent and superstardom are increasingly differing qualities as programmes like 'popsearchforamastericeskateronhorsebackstar', from ITV, C4 and the 'we tax you for quality's sake' BBC alike, show. I just hope he enjoys performing as much as he seems to, because its fantastic being in the audience when he plays.

*Update Saturday, 8:30PM: Following a challenge by an antipodean friend at the Base Camp I should state that this was not meant to be a dig at New Zealand English. Every idiot knows the that correct Kiwi for this software facility is 'Spill Chucker'. I can't wait to see Crus Jeck playing for Saracens next season so I've been brushing up on these matters.

Wounded in Battle

I disapprove sometimes
of what you say, but...

In an earlier posting I challenged the good certain pressure groups have done for the communities they seek to represent. That said most are driven by people whose actions are driven by a passionate belief in their cause and in many cases are prepared to take actions in pursuit of that cause that most of us simply don't have the guts or commitment to emulate.

News has come via the BBC that 'Veteran British [Australian actually but it is only the BBC] gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell' (to use the standard formulation) was assaulted and then arrested at a gay rights rally in Moscow today.

There are a few small parts of the agenda which Mr Tatchell puts forward with which I cannot agree. I'm not entirely convinced either of the merits of activists involving themselves so prominently in events like this in other parts of the world; they may be the same issues, but it is a very different country at a different stage in its development and there has to be some sensitivity to cultural differences. In the realm of the Internet he now has a role as an occasional presenter on 18 Doughty Street where he positively drools over a collection of a worse collection of ridiculous POLs (or "progressives" as he would probably prefer) in his interviews than you could imagine in your worst nightmare.

I can't even begin to justify some of his actions. Probably the invasion of the Easter Sunday service being held by the then Archbishop of Canterbury was the worst. If they wanted to expose some hypocrisy of the cleric in question, that's fine by me. I've got no time for religion of any flavour and don't think it deserves any special immunities from just criticism. That said that there was a congregation there who did believe on one of the most special days of the year for them and common courtesy dictates that their rights to celebrate their own, equally strongly held, beliefs in their own way should have been respected.

All of that said, it's clear from his Interview on 18 Doughty Street that he fights hard for things he believes in, that this has been at a significant cost to himself in many ways and could have followed a much easier course. Regardless of the wisdom of being there he was only in Moscow to put forward his arguments in a peaceful way. Nobody should be exposed to the type of thuggery, in response to simply speaking ones mind, that seems to take place in Russia on an increasingly frequent basis.

The follow up reports suggest that the assault was not at the worse end of the scale, and I'm sure its unlikely that even Putin wants the flack of serious legal action against those who have been arrested. Even so it should not have happened, it's yet another black mark against the type of country Russia is becoming. I wish Mr Tatchell well and hope he's back soon so I can fume more about of some of his wilder flights of fancy.

Bottom of the Class

World Class
Political Apathy

Among the things that popped up in my news feeds this bank holiday weekend was this from MSNBC, a story that also appeared in the New York Times. Cambridge City Council as elected the first ever transgendered Mayor. It wasn't a particularly interesting story really, the Mayor will do a crap job not because she is transgendered, but because she is a Liberal Democrat. It was unusual though to see Cambridge pop up in political news, especially from overseas sources, because other than the tenure of Michael Howard as Conservative party leader both the town and university have had a very low political profile.

It doesn't surprise me really. When I was at the university, political apathy was the order of the day. I don't know about the other student bodies, but the Conservative Association always felt more like a social club than anything else, despite the number of high profile guests. One year it did manage to have a local NUS president elected on a Conservative ticket, at the time a unique achievement. The only problem was she looked like a stereotypical POL and sure enough soon defected to the University Left; nobody really cared. The Left seemed little better, amounting to one tiny stall near the Guildhall on a Saturday, it it was sunny enough, to exhort us to drink, or not drink (I can never remember which) Nicaraguan coffee.

The only time things got exciting at a college level was when a ballot was held over disaffiliation of the college-level student union, the JCR, from the University and National Level NUS. The rallying cry was that the danegeld paid to these suspect organisations could be better spent 'supporting social activities at a college level' - in other words subsidising the bar prices. A few posters went up, there was a poorly attended hustings held in an unusually deserted bar, and the pro-disaffiliation lobby carried the vote. Predictably, apathy dictated that the vote fell well short of the required quorum for any change to be made.

I don't know if things have changed, so I took a moment to check out the academic institutions that have educated today's party leaders. I looked at all parties that achieved a national vote of over 100,000 at the 2005 General Election and included a factor from the recent Scottish and Welsh votes to give some weight to their relatively increased importance in the political scene above and beyond their Westminster representation.

So here it is, the league table of political influence of higher education bodies by number of alumni in party leadership positions, ties broken by 2005 national vote, with 2007 regional vote factored in.

• 3 - Cowley Poly: Tony Blair (Labour), David Cameron (Conservatives), Siân Berry (Green)


• 2 - Queen's University of Belfast: Reg Empey (Ulster Unionist), Mark Durkan (SDLP)


• 2 - None: Nigel Farage (UKIP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Féin)


• 1 - Edinburgh University: Gordon Brown (Labour)


• 1 - Glasgow University: Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats)


• 1 - St Andrews University: Alex Salmond (SNP)


• 1 - Barry School of Evangelism: Ian Paisley (DUP)


• 1 - Liverpool Polytechnic College: Ieuan Wyn Jones (Plaid Cymru)

...and propping up the table...

• 1 - Cambridge University: Nick Griffin (BNP)

Hmmm...not the greatest cause for pride there, perhaps I need to change the entry criteria so I can get Dr Richard Taylor (Clare, Cambridge), leader of the mighty Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern party, into the list. B******, that would just push the revolting Griffin in to a more prominent position so perhaps I won't.

Paradise is...

A Much Needed Shearing

...on the clinging, humid heat of days like these, a haircut like yesterday's where I feel like by body temperature has dropped by about ten degrees. A proper haircut done in in a barber shop, not at some poncy hairdressers. I'm from a part of the country where men don't really do hairdressers; boys do, but only when they are forced to go with their mothers and sisters for reasons of practicality, and even then very rarely and under sufferance. I always preferred the quick trip to the barbers with dad, if only because there was compensation of a bag of monkey nuts as compensation for the trauma the trip caused.

It doesn’t change much in adult life. For the ninety percent of men who stick to variants of the usual half dozen basic themes it’s just simpler. All you have to do is quote a number, rather than deliver an hour long verbal design brief, it only takes twenty minutes, there will be change from a tenner and you don’t even need to tip.

To be fair the occasional trip to my mother’s rather upmarket salon did have benefits. These extended beyond the ranks of rather pretty girls who worked there, maybe saving me from some of the more negative stereotypical northern attitudes.

I always had my hair cut there by a guy called Paul, who was rather cool other than being a bit of a Goth albeit in an understated way. He'd always talk about the then undulating, rather than nose-diving, fortunes of Leeds United and when he saw he was getting no traction on that he would segue effortlessly into the Leeds (now Rhinos) rugby league season.

It was only when he started commenting on how much nicer my hair was than my infinitely more attractive sister's that I realised that behind most stereotypes there is an element of truth, but also that the first openly gay person I'd encountered was still pretty cool. To anyone who might want to criticise this reinforcement of a stereotype I'd simply have to say sorry, I've never met a male hairdresser, outside an old style gents barbers, who isn't very entertaining, but nor have I met a straight one.

I think a lot of prejudices are rooted in early encounters. If the first gay man I had met was one of the more outré than out guys, who formed the backbone of the amateur dramatics groups that one on my former girlfriends was involved with, then I could too have been a typical northern homophobe.

An Anniversary Present

These guys made Little Britain’s Daffyd seem straight as a die, having little conversation outside theatre matters apart from just how gay they were. Even so I could get on fine with them, even if did sometimes need me to thrust (non-literally) my heterosexuality in their face in a mocking, ironic way to get them to move on to another topic. I had a bit of a spew at one who grabbed me somewhere I really would rather he hadn't, which he deserved - it was out of order in any context, but genuinely laughed when another bought me back a cock ring from a gay pride rally to celebrate my then girlfriend and I’s first anniversary.

I think the same principles work on a broader stage too. I’ve always had my doubts about some of the many pressure groups claiming to represent one minority group or another, regardless of the fact than in many cases their ultimate goals are laudable and their grievances against bigotry and ignorance are fair and reasonable. Too often though their approach is too focussed on the faults of those whose minds they wish to change, too obsessed with whipping up indignation within their own communities and those whose instinct is to support them, and all too often loses sight of the boundary between equal and preferential treatment.

A number of well-loved actors and even MPs who are at ease with their sexuality have done more for gay rights than Outrage ever will. Successful Muslim business men do more to offset any negative images of Islam than the MCB has ever done. Monty Panesar does more to promote a positive image of multiculturalism in the celebration of a single wicket than any sermon of the part of the CRE.

These organisations claim that they were needed to allow these positive role models to prosper, but I think they overstate their own importance. I think most people with some of these prejudices actually know they are wrong, but their attitudes become entrenched when lectured by the pressure groups. What they need is to want to change, not to be battered into it. There are honourable exceptions of course, but too many such groups seek to constrain behaviour through the law and if that doesn’t work they will seek to limit speech or even thought. It’s not to say that there are not certain egregious examples where the law needs to intervene, but when it does is should only do so after the greatest consideration, as it can actually make the battle for hearts and minds harder to win.

Anyway, time to go and face more abuse over my new supposedly neo-Nazi skinhead (it isn’t), and to look forward to the bank holiday chill which will doubtlessly have me missing my thatch.

Another Hard Day on the Lash

Too depressed to blog. The poison dwarf was out in the village, yet again. As if his usual crap wasn't bad enough he went off on one one about how he prefers Speedos over shorts on holiday, so obviously I had to spend the next ten minutes on the porcelain telephone emptying my stomach.

Oh god this is now a four day bender...better shape up.

The Road to Hell...

Good Intentions

I heard so much blogworthy things today that I actually felt guilty that I bumped into a friend right off the train and went to help the Village out with its beer lake. I had built up a good head of steam when it came to (very) righteous indignation, but went out and got slaughtered instead. If I suffered from leftism, I would doubtlessly suggest a ban on having public houses being open at times when people alight from London suburban commuter trains, in order to protect me from myself. Unfortunately I am free from this especially debilitating condition, so simply have to admit it is my own weak will.

So in brief...

• Cutty Sark...very sad...sympathies to those who I know work so hard on this project and care a lot. Wait for the people happy to pump the best part of a billion into NuWembley to bitch about even spending 20p on the restoration process (imperial past? elitist? who knows which flavour of b/s they will use for this one)


• Grammar Schools...Yawn, number about 9 on my list of serious educational issues that need dealing with


• Ghengis... didn't do heros and zeros on 18DS, very disappointing, you miss his moment of rapture just before that moment when he knows he is about to offend some POLs badly
  
• Guinness...why don't they offer 'the one that won't make you s*** tarmac the following day' as well as 'cold' and 'regular'
  

For what is the first, but will probably not be the only time....I will try harder next time.

What's it All About Then?

Welcome...

I will now fail miserably to answer my own question!

I've been aware of blogs for quite a long time, but for a long time dismissed them as either dull obsessive posturing at one end and people who think what their cat ate for breakfast is interesting at the other. Along the way though I started to come across a handful that were funny, moving, or thought provoking and gradually developed a small but, to me, important 'must read' list. Before you know it you are making the odd comment on them and eventually you end up here...

I don't exactly know what's going to end up here, I guess just whatever is amusing me or pissing me off right at the moment.

I'm not going to be able to improve on any of my favourite blogs but thought it would be interesting to put my thought on some similar topics in my own words. I've managed to make a complete pigs ear of my life for the last few months, so now the domestic rugby season has finished I need some new substitution activity to stop me concentrating on more important things anyway!

I guess since it was mainly the political blogs that got me interested there'll be a fair few rants (hopefully justified) in that field. I'm not sure that in the short term that new media will have the impact on the domestic political scene that some its evangelists might hope. On the other hand, the disengagement of the general public from the political process at the moment is both frightening and, on the basis much of the behaviour of our political parties, justified. Anything that can encourage 'normal' people to think again about what kind of country we want to live in has to be encouraged. I'm not going to set out my own views upfront, I don't feel I fit into any one box so I'll let the postings do the talking on that.

The blog title comes mainly from the political side. I'm not keen to start chucking around terms like 'Police State' because it belittles what those how lived or live in real police states experienced. That said, I feel that the broad thrust of politics of all flavours in Europe for the last twenty years has been, intentionally or otherwise, to limit the political colours we can choose to a series of pretty similar looking, standardised palettes. At the same time the outcomes of political process become ever more intrusive on our lives. Perhaps it used to be most noticeable at the local and European level, but increasingly the national scene and the behaviour of our representatives is becoming more akin to the arrogant managerialism of the EU. The less people think a change can me made, the more they will either give up and disengage completely or worse still be drawn to more extreme options. We can see this happening in real time in the United Kingdom today; it disheartens me more than words can say.

As I mentioned above, the domestic rugby union season has drawn to a close and I'm trying to pretend the upcoming England tour to South Africa is not actually happening. Similarly, the overpaid prima donnas of the round ball game will be soon hanging up their boots for the summer and I don't give a fuck about their or their wives brainless tabloid antics. Cricket....snore. Given all of this I don't think there will be much of a sports section until the autumn, barring some half-witted politicking by Baron or Cardinal Richelieu-Andrews at the RFU.

I work in IT, but that is the last thing that will appear here. It's dull enough even if you don't work in it all day. On the other hand, by degree I'm a scientist and you might see something there in response to events. It might me on the substance of the debate if I actually know anything about it (I've Genetically Modified a few Organisms in my time) or the way it is being conducted if I don't (Al Gore v. Climate Change Denial).

There's probably going to be a bit of local gossip to amuse a collection of friends, but I'll try to do it in a way that stops it just being clutter to those who don't know the people involved. Names will be changed to protect the innocent, and guilty.

I don't want to be too negative, but beyond footballers, socialists and anti-democratic europhiles there will be others who will probably attract the odd bit of ire, including but not limited to:

• Climate change zealots


• Animal libber's


• Anti-GM tossers


• The BBC


• Bigotry of all kinds...


• ...Including anti- Straight/White/Male/American/Scottish etc. bigotry


• Reality TV


• Alcopop drinkers


• Religion and militant atheists


• Esperanto militants on EU websites


• Vegetarians and teetotalers


• A couple of twats who bore for England down at the local

There will be a few quotations along the way. I know it's a bit passe, qotd having been there since the birth of the Internet, but I'm always impressed by the eloquence with which some people can express the same thoughts I have. I'm one of those people who could never do the 'About Me' essay in English lessons at school, so what's at the top left of the screen is all the biography there is ever going to be. Hopefully the quotations might say something about where I'm coming from to balance up some of the worse rantings!

I don't quite know all the etiquette of the blogosphere but there are a few rules I'm going to try to stick to, apologies if I accidentally break some of them from time to time:

• No backdating of posts


• All sources acknowledged at least by a link to the source material


• Only typos and bad English will be changed after posting, everything substantive will go in as addenda/errata


• Any complaints...just let me know...I'm a reasonable enough person and I'm not out to upset anyone outside the public sphere


• There are a few home-grown bits of JavaScript, sorry for any cross browser issues but I only really know the IE DOM


• Yes I do swear, I'm a northerner, it's what we do and at least its fuck or at worst fook, not feck
  

The first three do not apply to this post.

If you've stopped by, thanks, and I hope you found something that interested or outraged you.