Andy Murray - for the last time, honest

Andy Murray was predictably beaten in the final of the Australian Open, by Roger Federer, I was pleased to see, and I'm not the only one pleased.

I think it was John Lloyd I heard on 5LIve, at some early stage in the tournament that, "Murray, like all great players, wins the big points."

Great player? I think, of current players, you could safely call Roger Federer "a great player" but Andy Murray? I didn't see him win many of the big points in the final and, after the Australian Open, Murray still has the same number of Grand Slams as me.

I seem to hear statements like the one from John Lloyd all the time from the British media.

If you check the headlines on the BBC whenever Murray's playing in a tournament, they go something like: "Murray storms through", "Easy win for Murray", "Murray triumphant", "Murray supreme" and then the inevitable, "Disappointment for Murray."

Listening to the BBC commentators talk about Andy Murray, you'd think he was the finished article. He's not. He's a competitive player with a formidable range of shots, but one who repeatedly fails to win key points, and therefore matches, against the best players in major tournaments. You won't hear that discussed on the BBC, anymore than you ever heard much in the way of criticism about the leaden Tim Henman, when he was still playing.

I always felt that the BBC, in particular, were wary of upsetting Henman because it was so obvious he would end up working as a commentator for them, which, of course, he now does. Perhaps they're employing a similar tactic with Murray?

The lack of criticism isn't Murray's fault and isn't the reason he's disliked, although it doesn't help. Neither does his manner, which seems ungracious and surly. So what, you might think, but his miserable demeanour doesn't endear him to people. Nor does his habit of developing injuries at critical moments in games, usually when the game appears to be slipping away. If anyone can tell me of a match where Murray was leading comfortably and withdrew because of injury, I'd like to hear about it.

Nor does his tendency to indulge in embarrassing and ridiculous posturing during matches, such as his habit of kissing his biceps and nor does his horrible bellowing, nor his tiresome nationalism. Nor its recantation, for that matter.

And nor does the fact that, the more nonsense is written about Andy Murray by the British Media and the more his ability is exaggerated, the more it seems (to a paranoid cynic like me), that as long as we have a player such as Murray knocking around the top ten World rankings, no-one's expected to mind very much that the pathetic Lawn Tennis Association has mismanaged the game of tennis in the UK so appallingly, or that a game that could be played and enjoyed by so many is just indulged in by insecure little snobs in snooty clubs.

When I see the hopeless under-achievers who run the LTA properly held accountable for the game in this country and when I see ALL children given a chance to play it, not just those with pushy middle-class parents, I might feel differently. And that may not be Andrew Murray's fault either but it certainly doesn't help.

Murray: apparently, I "should"

like him, because he's British

The general reaction in the UK to Federer's victory seems to be resentful and grudging. The view seems to be, it's hard luck on Murray that he happens to be playing at the same time as Roger Federer. It's not a view I've heard expressed by fans of del Potro or Safin and, especially, not by fans of Rafael Nadal. In fact, I was under the impression it was considered a good thing that Nadal and Federer are playing at the same time because, like other great players in the past, they produce great matches!

I suppose Murray's fans are probably blaming Roger Federer that Sunday's final was such a poor game.

Mel Gibson - Spinning Piece of Dirt

Mel Gibson's horrible, cross face is everywhere at the moment because of his new film, Edge of Darkness.

Well, not quite everywhere, but on the sides of buses and bus shelters, and, because it's him, it feels like everywhere. If the title seems familiar, it is. It's just a film version of a TV series, and we really needed that made into a film, didn't we? That was worth him waiting seven years for, wasn't it?

Mel Gibson or Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson to give this ridiculous man his full, ridiculous, name seems to me to be the most unpleasant, boorish and repellent individual in the entire film industry.

His opinions are vile, as we all know. He's a "traditionalist" Catholic, apparently. As though there's a radical, progressive Catholic, and he ticks all the right boxes for people holding that faith...he's full of hatred towards Jews and gay people, of course. They're so boringly unoriginal, aren't they? He opposes stem-cell research, who'd have thought that, eh? And he's anti-feminist and, inevitably, a liar and a cheat. He's also a benchmark hypocrite: he cheats on his wife (she's just a friend) and then complains when his wife starts dating. He has seven children with the poor woman and one with his mistress. Only seven, note. His father, Hutton Gibson, had eleven. I imagine (the soon-to-be former) Mrs Gibson had some say in that. You really don't envy the women in the Gibson family, do you?

Gibson: hotly tipped to win an Oscar

for "Widest and Silliest Side-parting

on a Middle-aged Man"

To promote his pointless new film, Mel was interviewed by Jeanne Wolf in Parade and comes across, throughout the interview, like an intermittently incoherent and sentimental drunk.

He claims that he's just trying "to leave something to my progeny so maybe they can do a better job than I did on this crazy spinning piece of dirt we call Earth."

Shouldn't be too hard. They could start by not being racist, drunken twats, I suppose.

There is one comment in the interview that is amusing, though unintentionally, of course. Gibson complains that the action scenes are getting harder, and that being jammed into walls by a 25-year-old guy wreaks havoc, even though it's just "pretend fighting".

Perhaps it is. Then again, who knows? Which of us, faced with an opportunity of pushing this repulsive anti-semitic, homophobic, racist moron into a wall, wouldn't really go for it?

Let's hope there's some long-lasting damage.

A Proud Day

It's a proud day for me. I have the "Worst rated" comment on the Daily Mail's website or, to be precise, the first and second "Worst rated" since it's been printed twice, including the typo.

I commented on a report in the Mail that "Children as young as 7 are to be taught about homophobic and sexist-bullying." The tone of the article, of course, is that this is a bad thing, possibly because bullying is a good thing in the eyes of Daily Mail readers.

The report refers to guidelines set out by the Government to try and reduce the high level of teenage pregnancy in the UK, by teaching children about, as they get older, the names for parts of the body, the differences between male and female bodies, types of relationships, safe sex and so on.

I wonder if anyone who has actually READ the guidelines really does object to any of them? They are entirely reasonable.

But the article isn't really about that, is it? It's about pretending the Government is trying to make everyone gay or something and destroy the family and therefore we should all vote for Mr Cameron or, even more depressingly, the BNP, as many of the people leaving comments on the website, urge others to do. Which says a lot about some Daily Mail readers.

One voiced raise in opposition to the guidelines is the unutterably ridiculous Norman Wells, of "Family and Youth Concern," an organisation that seems to exist solely for the purpose of giving bigoted comments to the press. Google him. You won't see any pictures, but you'll see lots of nasty and silly comments. He says, amongst other things:

'The vast majority of parents don't want their children's schools to present positive images of homosexuality under the guide of combating homophobic bullying.

'Nor do they want teachers to deny the differences between men and women in the name of addressing sexist bullying.'

I suppose they mean "under the guise" so that's one typo each. Although I imagine I was busier yesterday morning when I typed in my comment, having got the children ready for school, showered, shaved and dressed for work myself, washed up the breakfast stuff, cleaned the litter tray and left food down for the cats and still been out the door by 8.30. Not that I'm bitter...

Well, I'm a parent and can only speak for myself rather than "the vast majority" Norman seems to think he speaks for, but some children "as young as seven" can be pretty horrible to each other, and, generally, if they're bullying each other, calling each other names, then they've probably picked up those attitudes up from their homes. If schools can help to stop that sort of thing, and reduce teenage pregnancies (because that's what the report is really about, no matter what irrelevant nonsense Norman tries to bring in) then that's something that should be encouraged.

Anyway, a proud day. And, at the risk of being accused of trolling, one I hope to repeat.

Carlos Tevez

I've always liked Carlos Tevez. He seems to be one of those rare footballers who, in addition to being extremely talented are also extremely hard-working. He has the knack, as well, of scoring goals that count, rather than the fourth one in a 5-1 victory, which is all some players only ever seem to manage.

I've admired him too for refusing to have cosmetic surgery on his neck to hide the skin burns he suffered as a small child, for the dignified way he handled the transfer to Manchester City and for being a member of the shantytown cumbia band, Piola vago. He also appears to be on a one-man mission to piss off Alex Ferguson, never a difficult thing to achieve though, admittedly.

And, if all of that wasn't enough, the immortal Sir Diego Maradona, has called him "the Argentine prophet for the 21st century."

Could he become any greater?

Well, yes, because Carlos recently called Gary Neville a tarado, a demotic Latin American word translated into a variety of different ways in the English media.

Carlos was annoyed that Gary Neville had said that Tevez "wasn't worth £25 million," in fact, that Neville had only made the statement to suck up to his manager, Alex Ferguson. A fair point, of course, because Neville wouldn't have said anything of the sort if Manchester United had ended up signing him. I wonder what Neville thought he was worth? More or less than the £16 million paid for Antonio Valencia? Time will tell, as always.

Carlos Tevez:
Good judge of character

I think Maradona was right, though. If a prophet is a visionary or representative, then I'm very happy to be represented by someone who mages to get Gary Neville described as an idiot, a cretin, a boot-licker, a sock-sucker, butt-kisser, suck-up, creep, sycophant and moron throughout the worldwide media, just by using one simple word.

Genius!

Islamic Solidarity Games 2010

The BBC reports today that the Islamic Solidarity Games, due to be held in Iran in April, have been called off because of a dispute with Arab countries over what to call the Gulf.

That's "the Gulf", by the way, rather than "the golf", which isn't one of the featured sports. Saudi Arabia and some of the other countries planning to participate, prefer to call it "the Gulf" or "the Arabian Gulf" whereas Iran prefers to call it the Persian Gulf.

The Wikipedia entry as of 22.30 on the 18th January 2010 (we have to be precise because I suspect it's about to be changed) states:

"On 17 January 2010, the governing body of the ISG reported that the event had been canceled due to the tension between Arab states and Iran over the name of the body of water.

But the right name is Persian gulf and will always remain Persian."

Important stuff, then, clearly. So good luck to all the Islamic countries showing their solidarity with each other in this mature, inclusive and reasonable way.

Perhaps, if the arguments become too intractable, they could ask for advice from the League of Arab States.

Iris Robinson

It isn't often I find myself agreeing with Edwina Currie. In fact, it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable, but her comments on Iris Robinson MP, the wife of Northern Ireland's First Minister. Peter Robinson, were spot on.

Iris has been doing the things expected of a family-loving, gay-hating, God-fearing, Church-going politician; certainly the things expected of them by me.

Apart from arranging loans for the son of a family friend to enable him to start up a business and demanding a kickback for herself, she was also shagging him, much to her husband's embarrassment, and their children's, presumably. It's going to be particularly tough for them, but luckily they're a very close family. After all, their eldest son is Iris's Office Manager and their other two children work as Private Secretary and Parliamentary Assistant for Peter.

Iris has been in the news a couple of times before, once for complaining about investigations into MPs expenses (which she considered a "witch hunt") and, in the week a gay man was beaten up in Northern Ireland, for saying that homosexuality is "an abomination." The wonderful Peter Tatchell has reacted to the news of Iris's misfortunes here.

Now, of course, she's expecting sympathy because she's suffering from depression, although that seemed to coincide with the BBC's Spotlight programme into her affairs, oddly enough.

Iris with Peter; She's depressed you know

Edwina Currie said: 'If you go on and on about God's commandments and keep flinging the tablets of stone at other people, sooner of later someone is going to pick up a bit and chuck it at you.

'Mrs Robinson has made stupid and ignorant remarks about homosexuals while she was busy betraying her husband and seeking love somewhere else.

'If the Robinsons learn to be more tolerant of other people's failings because of this - having found so many in themselves - that has got to be a good thing.'

Well, yes, but I don't suppose they will. She doesn't seem quite the type to learn anything.

I'm sure that won't bother her unduly. At least their Pastor, James McConnell from the Whitewell Tabernacle Church where the couple "worship", doesn't think any less of them.

Which doesn't surprise me half as much as finding myself agreeing with Edwina Currie does.

Rainbows

Another entry about the weather, how British is that? This time, because of something that was said to my 8 year old son in school quite recently.

A rainbow, I'd always understood, was an arched effect in the sky in which the colours of the spectrum are shown as a result of the sun's rays being refracted and reflected through moisture in the atmosphere.

My son, though, was told, by his head teacher, no less, that a rainbow was "God's way of saying sorry for flooding."

I suppose it's an improvement on the view that flooding was a punishment for something, but it didn't impress the boy who thought it made "God" sound "pretty random," which I suppose is a nice way of putting it. I'd have just said it was twaddle or something along those lines.

It's interesting how often unpleasant weather patterns are attributable to some sort of divine displeasure, but never the other way around. Old Godfrey never seems to give people a nice warm spell for behaving themselves or for building churches.

According to the Bible, the rainbow is a promise that life will never again be destroyed by flooding. It's in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 9, verses 13 to 17, if you want to check:

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and...every living creature...the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy...and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth...

I've left out some of the usual Biblical tautology. The chap does repeat himself a lot and switches between first and third person in the manner expected of egotists everywhere, but you'd have to say: it's a bit of a broken promise, isn't it?

Tsunamis alone over the years have proved that, along with mudslides and so on. So, clearly not the sort of supreme being we can rely upon. Who can you trust, eh?

It's depressing to think that we're actually indirectly employing this man (the head teacher, rather than Godfrey) to lie to children in this pathetic and ridiculous way and, in some ways it's worse, because he's actually responsible for the management of their teachers. Wouldn't it be so much better for everyone to just use the scientific explanation?

Possibly that's considered too complicated an idea to explain to young children, although I think we should try. Even very complicated ideas can be explained by simple methods.

Until they're old enough to grasp them, though, I have a solution. Why not say, until they're old enough to understand refraction and other ideas, that rainbows are God's way of saying he likes gay people? At least it's a nice thing to tell them.

A rainbow: proof that God's cool about bum

love and girl on girl

It's been snowing...

...in Bristol and most of the country, by the look of it. Here's a photo of my garden taken this morning before me and my children played in it:

Some people think the snow looks rather nice, but I'm not so sure. I wonder if everything was painted white, whether they would like this as well? I prefer my views and landscapes to be multi-coloured.

Complaining about the snow seems to mark you as curmudgeonly in some people's eyes, although there seem to be some pretty good reasons for not liking it, certainly if you have to go anywhere; to work, for instance, or for a Hospital appointment, never mind the fact that it's freezing bloody cold.

I have my own reasons, though, for disliking the snow.

The first is the inevitable comment that somebody always has to make about how "this is nothing" and in Canada or Russia or Finland or some other country, everything carries on as normal. It's generally Canada these days, I've noticed.

This is one of those "aren't we rubbish" arguments usually put forward by the sort of people who think everything's terrible, apart from themselves, but would doubtless be the first to complain if their council tax was increased by 5p to pay for extra gritters. The point, surely, is that these other countries get lots of snow and the UK doesn't?

We get lots of rain, which is why we cope with it so well. In Russia, they don't know what to do when it rains, everything comes to a complete standstill, everyone stays indoors and drinks themselves insensible with vodka. Yet, we just carry on as if nothing's happened. As for Finland, well, just look how cheap umbrellas are in this country compared to Finland. You can't have it all, you know. We're equipped for rain and they're equipped for snow. It's what we do.

The second thing is panic buying. I went to my local supermarket yesterday evening to get a few things and the shelves were almost empty. It looked like the place was going out of business. The only stuff left were the sort of things that never sell out - jars of sandwich paste, long life milk and tins of pie-filling.

The only bread left were naans, pittas and those part-baked baguettes that everybody buys once, although we all seem to enjoy them when we do. I did notice there was as much as milk there as usual, though.

As for vegetables, there was nothing left. It was quite strange. No potatoes that I could see, no parsnips, swede, carrots, onions. Perhaps everyone was planning to cook a winter stew or something. I should've checked the dumpling mix and seen if that was missing too. I must go outside later and see if the whole of Downend smells of simmering vegetables.

The third reason, and the main one for dreading those first snowfalls, however, is the conversation we always seem to have in work about the word "pitching." Somebody will look out of the window and say that the snow is "pitching" meaning LANDING ON THINGS AND NOT IMMEDIATELY MELTING and someone will have to pretend they don't know what it means because it's some sort of dialect word and they're international jet-setters or something.

Now, it wouldn't be so bad if, say, they'd just moved to Bristol from another part of the country and hadn't heard the usage before. Not the word itself, of course, since everyone says "pitching a tent" after all, but specifically the meaning of LANDING ON THINGS AND NOT IMMEDIATELY MELTING. But they haven't. They've lived here for years and know what pitching means, as they did last year and the year before that and the year before that and so on.

It really is a struggle sometimes, along almost Columbine lines.

This year, Ill think I'll take it easy and just pummel them into submission, write "I know what pitching means" in tippex on their faces and then chuck them outside in it.

Just as soon as it warms up a bit.

Castle Drogo

A castle in Devon, which needs £10,000,000 to stop it leaking according to this report from BBC news.

It's not a particularly interesting or historical castle. It was built for a vain and silly grocer called Julius Drewe and, in fact, was only finished in the 1930s. It's suffered for years from problems with damp, apparently, which have been "made worse by the castle's exposed position."

I don't know where the ten million quid figure came from but, as the property is now owned by the National Trust, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at should a ludicrous figure. Ten million for a damp course might seem a bit extortionate, but for an organisation that charges four quid for a slice of cake and nearly as much for a cup of tea, you might think you'd got off lightly with just ten million rather than, say, forty-seven billion.

The National Trust's Claire Bolitho is quoted as saying that "It is quite ironic that castles were built to be impenetrable from invaders and yet Drogo is under attack from the rain."

Well, no, it's not very ironic at all, is it? Because castles were built to be impenetrable from the rain as well. That's why many of them are still standing after nearly a thousand years. And, isn't it one of the distinctive things about castles, that they're generally exposed?

Castle Drogo wasn't built to be impenetrable from anything, which is why it shouldn't be given any money at all, when there are so many other buildings worthier of preservation.

If the castle attracts visitors because of its views of Dartmoor, then it would be so much easier, cheaper and morally preferable, to just demolish it and build something else in its place. Something for everyone and something that might actually last.

Olive Jones

A part-time home Maths tutor who has been asked to attend a meeting with her employer, North Somerset Council, after a complaint from a pupil's parent that she was using the lessons to talk about her Christian faith.

So, what do you think she did? Attend the meeting like any other employee would to discuss the issue and resolve it? Or ignore her employers, contact the pathetic Christian Legal Centre with a view to stirring up more trouble and then getting the story all over the papers about how Christians are being persecuted, aren't allowed to express their faith, how she's been made to feel like a criminal and so on and so tediously on.

And if you think that question's biased, look at the report in the Bristol Evening Post, which shows her with her son, James, who has served with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan. The relevance of this being what exactly?

The story is headlined "PRAYING FOR A CHILD COST ME MY JOB" which is clearly untrue as she still has her job. She has just been asked to attend a meeting which she's been unable to do, apparently, although she's presumably had a few with the Christian Legal Centre.

Jones claims that teaching was her dream since she was 16 although she doesn't appear to have started it until she was 34. You may wonder what she was doing in the previous 18 years?

I thought she may have been bringing up her children but they're both in their early twenties.

Perhaps her Maths isn't very good. Perhaps she's been too busy praying to learn simple addition.

Gareth Thomas

A rugby player who has announced in an interview with the Daily Mail that he's gay.

An odd platform to choose you might think, considering the sort of newspaper the Daily Mail is, and the sort of views it represents, and the comments left on its website are full of gems such as this one, from "Bonsai" in Ashtead, Surrey:

Am I the only one who is becoming tired of celebrity and sportsmen announcing to the world 'I'm gay'... It's just self indulgent and getting very boring.

Yes, you probably are. The BBC reported the story this way:

Former Wales and Lions captain Gareth Thomas has broken one of the major taboos that surround sport by revealing that he is gay.

The 35-year-old joins starts like basketball's John Amaechi and hurling's Donal Og Cusack who have come out.

Stars "like" John Amaechi and Donal Og Cusack and how many others exactly? How many 'star' footballers or boxers or cyclists or runners or golfers or jockeys or motor racing drivers are gay?

Even as someone who watches sport, reads about it, follows it fairly closely, is generally retentive about trivia and so on, I can't think of any.

John Amaechi and Donal Og Cusack aren't exactly household names either are they? I'd never heard of them until they were in the news for coming out as gay, and they're probably now known more for that, than their sporting careers, at least for the time being. I have heard of Gareth Thomas, though.

It's always struck me as ironic that sports like football and rugby in which men watch other men run around in shorts, grappling and mauling each other, are (or pretend to be) the most anti-gay.

I suppose it's going to change within the next twenty years or so and then it won't be an issue at all, any more than it is in the world of business or the theatre or in education. It just needs a few arrests of some gay-hating shouters, the realisation by media companies that there's money in it for them, whatever happens, and that should be that.

Gareth Thomas: joins the very short list of gay sports people

Gareth Thomas said, in the interview, that "just because you're gay, it doesn't mean you fancy every man who walks the planet."

An obvious point you might think, but still one that appears to need to be made to knuckle-draggers everywhere, particularly the sort of pot-bellied, purple-faced, spindly-armed blokes who, having bored their wives to distraction, think that if they shout "queer!" to another man, particularly one who is younger, healthier and more attractive than they are, no-one is going to realise that it's anything other than a desperate cry for help.

Gareth and Jemma Thomas: Blagley's Sports Personalities of the Year

Stephen Venner

The Right Reverend Stephen Venner, recently appointed Bishop to the Forces.

He's made a good start in his new job. Well, a good start if you're looking for confirmation that the average bishop is an archaically out-of-touch and cretinously deluded figure. He's said in an interview that:

"The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other."

That quote has upset a few people, hardly surprisingly, given his new role. You couldn't imagine Muhammed Omar, for instance, saying how British and American troops can perhaps be admired for their acceptance of sexual equality and celebration of homosexuality, could you? But that's not really the point.

The point is that he meant it. He meant it when he said it and he means it now. He does admire the Taliban for "their conviction to their faith". That's why he said it.

Unsurprisingly, for a public figure in the church, though, he's back-tracked and apologised for causing offence. The quote was taken "out of context." It was a "very long interview" and so on.

Taking a comment out of context can certainly distort meaning, but this was explicitly stated and, as for the length of the interview, how can that change the meaning of what was said?

The real proof that he means it, though, is the apology itself, because he claims; "we have to distinguish between the militant Taleban and those...who are fighting because they have been coerced into doing so and who fear for their lives if they do not."

So, which of these two groups would have the "conviction" that he so admires? Clearly not the conscripts, they fight because they're forced to fight. So it must be the militant Taleban that the Right Reverend so admires for their "conviction to their faith."

That's worth bearing in mind, the next time an IED explodes and kills a British soldier or a member of the Taleban murders a female teacher because she handed out books to young girls.

The Bishop to the Forces thinks they can perhaps be admired because of their "faith."

Mumsnet

A website set up in January 2000 by Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton to give "mothers...advice on parenting and family issues."

Justine Roberts is described in a profile I've read as a sports journalist, and, rather pitifully, as "the husband of the Guardian's deputy editor" and Carrie Longton as a TV producer. Her husband's occupation is not mentioned, possibly because he doesn't have one; possibly because she doesn't have one and possibly because nobody cares.

I'm not sure what programmes Carrie Longton has produced, though, because if you Google the name "Carrie Longton" you're assumed to be looking up Tim Longton and his sheepdog, Carrie, so we're clearly not talking about a household name here.

Looking at the two founders griling away in this photo, it's hard not to be struck by their similarity to each other. They look, essentially, like one and the same person, and, in a way, they are, but they're also, I suppose, because they're middle class, endlessly competing with each other.

The founders: joined at the upper arm and signalling
something or other with their hands

I've only heard about this website because both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have managed to offend someone or other who uses it, which doesn't altogether surprise me.

Both Brown and Cameron were probably instructed to speak to Mumsnet by their advisors because Mumsnet users represent the key voters in the next election or some such twaddle and the mistake Brown and Cameron made was to pander to them in the first place.

It would be a depressing thought, if it was true, that the key voters in next year's General Election are superficial, smug, middle class media bullies but, fortunately, it's not.

Because we're all key voters. The founders of Mumsnet, Gordon, David, Nick, Nick and Malcolm only have one vote each, and so do I, and so do you. Let's use it wisely.

Michael Pearce

A man from Somerset whose funeral was delayed because he was too heavy to be carried on the usual trolley.

Mr Pearce, who died from a heart attack at the age of 61, weighed over 40 stone so it’s hardly surprising that his body was considered too heavy; it would be like carrying 3 or 4 people on the trolley at the same time.

His son, Ed, complains, though: “They were using the excuse that the trolley wasn’t suitable for my father...”

It wasn’t an excuse. It was a fact. The trolley wasn’t designed for people who weigh that much.

Mr Pearce’s family are quoted as saying they believe that “the funeral industry needs to take account of a population that is getting heavier” although Co-operative Funeralcare appear to have already done that, by providing a stronger trolley for Mr Pearce’s coffin, enabling the funeral to take place.

I suppose that won't be enough, though, since if more people choose to live like Mr Pearce, there is clearly going to be a greater need for undertakers to invest in quite a few more of the stronger trolleys used to carry his coffin, as well as some reinforced hearses.

They'll need to think about ordering a few 7.5 tonne lorries as well. And some pallet trucks and industrial cranes, while they’re about it.

The Old Firm

Rangers have finished their involvement in the Champions League bottom of their group, I see, in a group that contained the teams finishing third in the Spanish and German leagues along with the champions of Romania. The other great giant of Scottish football failed to even make it to the group stage.

This seems to be the latest piece of evidence that the Scottish league is poor quality, but I suppose there will be plenty to say that, in fact, it's further proof that Rangers and Celtic should join the English Premier League.

The reasoning behind this odd view is that, because Celtic and Rangers are too "big" for Scottish football; that they're held back by not enough competitive matches, a failure to recruit better players, receive more revenue and so on, their failure in Europe will only be overcome by playing in the English Premier League, because then they'll be playing better supported clubs more often. It's basically two fingers to the other clubs in Scotland and would be just as true, of course, of any other club in Scotland: Hibs or Hearts, for instance or Albion Rovers, and, for that matter, any in the rest of Europe.

Because, by the same logic, their failure in Europe (in which they regularly qualify and compete) must be attributable to the absence of some sort of global competition, shouldn't it?

Which, if it existed, they would also win, of course, and if they didn't, then that would be because they weren't allowed to compete in an intergalactic one and so on.


Rangers and Celtic: they love each other really

This year I've read views from both clubs that are laughable in their self-delusion.

Current Rangers manager, Walter Smith, believes the two sides are not welcome in the Premier League because some of the English clubs would feel threatened, conveniently overlooking the fact that the initiative is supported by many of the English clubs and even came from Bolton chairman, Phil Gartside, and Bolton was certainly in England the last time I looked, unless they've moved it.

Celtic chief executive, Peter Lawwell expressed the view recently that his club should join the English Premier League because "we don't have a regular platform to tell the Celtic story from." Now, you'd think if you were made chief executive of a football team, you'd either know or take the trouble to find out, what competitions your team takes part in.

There's the UEFA Champions League, for instance, which his team actually enters. It's only the most watched football club competition in the world and it takes place every year!

Isn't that enough of a "a regular platform to tell the Celtic story from"?

They just have to do this: win their League (the one they're too good for, remember), then win a few matches against some of the other teams that don't have the advantage of playing in the English Premier League, and possibly some of the teams that do (the ones that are scared of having to play Celtic and Rangers in the first place, of course) and they'll have the biggest platform imaginable.

So what's stopping them?

Bankers Bonuses

Miles Templeman is Director General of the Institute of Directors and was talking this morning on BBC Radio 5 Live about the Treasury's proposals for a windfall tax on some UK-based bankers.

His response was predictable enough. "All the evidence is that it doesn't work." he claimed, although without actually providing any evidence that I heard. He also said what somebody always has to say, every time there are any proposed increases in taxation or some legislation to check corporate greed; that it will "drive business abroad."



Miles: 11 out of 10
for smugness

This always reminds me of the old joke people used to use about their banks: If they won't give me the loan, I'll take my overdraft elsewhere.

Angela Knight, former Conservative MP and now Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association, has said the taxes are "populist, political and penal" perhaps aware of some taxes known only to herself that aren't political or penal. As for populist, since when was this a bad thing?



Angela: enjoying a meal with friends

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Since the banks themselves are now a byword for self-rewarding greed and irresponsibility, we should expect the same sort of thinking from their apologists, including the slimy Miles Templeman and the equally loathsome Angela Knight.

Just as well neither work in the NHS. They'd probably oppose operations because they save lives or ease pain.

Grant Smith

According to today's Guardian, Grant Smith is "one of the country's leading architectural photographers...who has 25 years experience documenting buildings by Richard Rogers and Norman Foster" and was "apprehended by City of London Police under terrorism laws today while photographing the 300-year old spire of Sir Christopher Wren's Christ Church for a personal project."

He was stopped by "a squad of seven officers who pulled up in three cars and a riot van and searched his belongings under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allows police to stop and search anyone without need for suspicion in a designated area.

"Three of them descended on me and said they were here because of reports of an aggressive male," Smith said. "They demanded to know who I was and what I was doing. I refused, saying that I didn't have to tell them, but they said if I didn't they would take me off and physically search me."

The report continues: Smith's trouble began when he refused to provide his name and explain what he was doing to a security guard from a nearby Bank of America office. He said he was astonished by the police response, not least the expense of dispatching four vehicles and seven officers.

I know it's obvious that the Guardian's article is only written because the editorial line of the paper is opposed to section 44, and I'm not sure what the Police should've done in this situation, so far as Mr Smith or the Guardian are concerned, but doesn't the expense of dispatching four vehicles and seven officers rather lie with Grant?

If he'd just told the chap from the Bank of America his name in the first place, it needn't have cost a penny.

Besides, I'm not sure he really is "one of the country's leading architectural photographers" since the "Press" section of his website just shows a few photos in the magazine Digital Photography and a cover of a French magazine called A Vivre, which looks like a dodgy imitation of Vivre.

In fact, thinking about it, I'm not sure that, as a result of his explanation that he was "a freelance photographer", no further action was taken, is very reassuring.

The thought of pretentious Australians wandering around London, completely unregulated and unlicenced, randomly photographing bits of old buildings, uploading them to websites and then adding words like "iconic" is one I find deeply disturbing.

Grant Smith; but, remember, he doesn't have to give you his name.

Roger Day

A man who marched in a Remembrance Day parade with a variety of medals, including some awarded for World War One and the Falklands, and others awarded to officers and privates, including the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross and the Meritorious Service Medal.

Other marchers became suspicious at the range and quantity of his medals (and probably his tie, as well) and, after some investigation, he has now been identified as Mr Roger Day.


Roger Day: a pathetic fraudulent man trying to look
big and failing, epically

I suppose we could feel sorry for the bloke who would appear to suffer from some complex or other, but it's hardly surprising that the other marchers were irked by his presence, particularly considering what they had to go through for their medals.

But, looking at the photograph of Mr Day reminded me of another chap who is often seen wearing a wide variety of medals, presumably with the intention of looking heroic:


As above, only without 'Roger' or 'Day' in his name

Of course Prince Charles doesn't wear the DSO or any of the other medals that Mr Day awarded himself. Even this pathetic little adulterous coward wouldn't get away with that. But, looking at him, you'd think he must be a veteran of dozens of campaigns.

What he actually wears, though, are his Mummy's medals - the Queen's Coronation Medal, the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal, to name just three. I bet he risked his life for that last one!

So, it's obvious what Roger needs to do next year if he wants to join in with the marchers: make up a load of awards for himself and then stick them on his jacket. Or ask his Mummy to do it for him.

The PBWWTLB or Pathetic Bloke Who Wants To Look Big Medal, for example.

Quirky

A word that can be traced back to 16th Century English and generally refers to an individual peculiarity or unexpected twist.

It's not particularly obscure. In fact, it's not obscure at all, so quite why an office building in Colston Street, Bristol, currently advertised to let, is described as OPEN PLAN 'QUIRKY' OFFICES is something known only to the agents, Burston Cook.

It's ironic that estate agents with their long and proud linguistic history of talking complete bollocks should suddenly come over all coy at a word like quirky.

Bricks and Phones

Every time there's a discussion about mobile phones and the sort of phones people used to have, you can always guarantee some twerp is going to use the word "brick" to describe the size of phones from ten or so years ago. I've never seen a mobile phone the size of a brick, I must admit, although if you're unlucky enough to watch American films from the mid 80's on a regular basis, you may occasionally see cordless phones that sort of size.

By the time mobile phones were widely marketed in the late 90's, they were pretty much the same size as they are now. In fact, compared to iPhones, Blackberries and so on, probably, on average, actually smaller then than they are now. My wife had a fairly early phone and it was no bigger than the one I currently own; a Nokia 6301, although slightly deeper.

The smaller they are, the smaller the keys, the smaller the screen, the easier to get lost etc, so they're hardly going to end up credit card sized, despite the risible predictions of some people.

No-one at the time was laughing at the size of their phones. They were either using them just to communicate or using them to show off. Pretty much like today.

Bank Charges

The BBC reports today that the Supreme Court has overturned earlier rulings that allowed the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the fairness of charges for unauthorised overdrafts.

This is being reported as a "win" for the banks and a "blow" to consumer groups, which it is, and the repulsive Stephen Hester has predictably welcomed the judgement, saying that there is "no such thing as a free lunch" whilst probably thinking about what to have for his own.

The arguments on the radio, on message boards and so on, seem to completely miss the point, as does Stephen Hester, because the original complaints were brought as a reaction to excessive charges, not the charges themselves, or having no charges or even "free banking." The amount of the penalty charges is the subject that still needs to be investigated by OFT, though now through other channels.

Unless you're lucky enough to have a surplus income which you can blithely leave in your bank account each month, you can quite easily go over your limit and, if you go overdrawn, or over an agreed limit, by just a couple of pounds (or even pence) you're liable to be charged something like £25 or £30 and incur interest charges on that amount. And then interest and charges on that. And on that. And on that. And so on. That's extortion. That is exactly how loan sharks operate. And that is how British banks operate.

If your salary or benefit isn't paid in for two weeks or so, you're likely to find yourself owing the bank well over £30 with the interest accumulating all the time, for possibly just a few pounds borrowed. And yet it hasn't cost them anything like that, has it?

It only costs them the price of an automated letter and automated letters, like the millions they send out every month, offering loans and credit cards and insurance, cost pennies. Which is a lot less, in fact, that the interest they make on your money when you're in credit.

If you're living on a tight income, £30 could be your food budget for a week. For Stephen Hester, a decent lunch. Perhaps he could go hungry for a week to see what's it's like.

Catherine Masters

Catherine Masters is a 110-year old woman, from Stanford-in-the-vale, Oxfordshire, who's in the news because, having complained in a letter to the Queen, after her 109th birthday, that she was tired of seeing the same picture on the birthday cards sent her every year, and being visited by Prince William to personally apologise, she has now received a card with a different picture on the front.

In the photograph on the front of the card, the Queen is wearing a typically revolting blue check outfit, rather than the equally typically revolting yellow outfit the previous photograph was showing and, apparently, everyone's happy!

Apart from being astonished at the thought of an old person complaining about something, I'm intrigued as to how people will respond to this story.

I suppose if you're the sort of cretinous toady that actually admits to admiring the "royal family," then you'll be trundling out some tedious rubbish about, how, with an increasing number of centenarians, it isn't always possible to produce a new photo and so on, as though she doesn't get thousands taken every year.

If you're a media cynic, you might see the whole thing as being a rather lame PR stunt by Buckingham Palace, who may have missed out in May when Prince William's visit was only recorded by a couple of still photos, and are possibly intrigued that someone's licence fee actually paid for the petrol, phone calls and so on, that enabled the BBC to be waiting for the post to arrive, and are wondering who approved this?

And, if you're me, you'd probably wonder why anyone would even want a card from someone they don't even know, have never met, and wonder at what point people will catch up with Katie Masters and realise the cynical contempt with which they're held by the "royal family" and also wonder, while they're about it, what sort of person would send the same card every year to someone? Particularly someone over a hundred?

And also wonder, because, as Xymox sang, you should never stop wondering, what sort of disgusting egotist sends cards with pictures of themselves on the front? Happy Birthday! But this is still about me! Look at me!

Politicians do, of course. Look at Kim Jong-il, for instance, who, in her official portraits, the Queen is increasingly beginning to resemble.

Pub Bores

James Fergusson, writing in the Independent last week, begins an article on Afghanistan:

"It has become a pub bore's cliché to argue that we will never prevail in Afghanistan because no foreign power ever has; not even the Russians..." and then goes on to explain how we will never prevail in Afghanistan because, like the Russians etc etc, thus proving himself to be, by his own definition, something of a pub bore.

I don't like the phrase "pub bore" because like "football hooligan" or "cyber bully" it has a whiff of the puritan about it, and seems to try to be avoiding blaming the cause of a problem.

I like pubs, generally, and the conversations you often get in them and a pub is probably no more prone to opinionated bores than a garage, estate agency or newspaper office. In fact, probably less, if anything.

I suppose it's a snob thing as well. There are plenty of overbearing types in wine bars and more punch-ups in nightclubs than at football matches, but when have you ever heard of a "wine bar bore" or a "nightclub hooligan"?

St James' Park

St James' Park, or, if you're not a Newcastle fan, sportsdirect dot com at St James' Park is the temporary (possibly until the end of the season) name of Newcastle United's football ground, a re-naming which has left fans, according to the Times' North East football correspondent, George Caulkin, "incandescent."

I'm not sure anyone's actually used that word to him ("How do you feel about the new name of St James' Park?" "I'm incandescent, me." ) but Caulkin is clearly an unreliable guide to the club. He wrote an article in April of this year, explaining that Alan Shearer was there "for the long haul" basing his opinion partly, it would appear, on Shearer's "consummate" performance at a press conference.

His article on the stadium re-naming, contains this passage:

"The passing years and the legendary players who graced its turf burnished the old name into something more than a stadium: the title spoke of a proud history, of 1950s’ cup victories, of Alan Shearer scoring, of Sir Bobby Robson pacing the touchline, of Kevin Keegan urging his team forward".

Fairly recent memories, then. And, of course, that's the same Bobby Robson who was sacked in 2004, the same Kevin Keegan, who was "constructively dismissed" in 2008 and the one and only Alan Shearer who ensured their relegation, after being completely useless as a manager, this year. Fancy his name being chosen out of all the "legendary players" as well in the club's history. That's a bit of a shock, in itself.

As for "1950s' cup victories," what is George Caulkin referring to, exactly?

Newcastle United did win the FA Cup three times in the 1950s: 1951, 1952 and 1955 but which of the matches were seen as St James' Park?

Not the finals, because they were all held at Wembley, which, you'd like to think, he'd know.

And not the semi-finals, either. They were played: at Leeds Rd in 1951 after a draw at Hillsborough, Elland Rd in 1952, after a draw at Hillsborough and Roker Park in 1955 after, guess what, a draw at Hillsborough.

An earlier round, perhaps? A quarter-final or, as it used to be known, sixth round match? At least these would've actually been played at St James' Park, and they did play Bristol Rovers there in the 1950/51 competition. But it was a draw. The replay was in Bristol, at Eastville. The following season, the same round was won at Fratton Park.

But! On 16th March 1955, they beat Huddersfield Town 2-0. Admittedly, this was after a replay. The first match, at Leeds Road, had finished 1-1 but still, it was a cup victory and it was at St James' Park.

So, there you have it: a quarter-final FA Cup win against Huddersfield Town.

A proud history, indeed.

Nitty-gritty, Picnic, Blackboard

The term "nitty-gritty", generally used in phrases such as "getting down to the nitty-gritty" means to get to the basic facts of a subject.

Its first recorded usage is mid 20th Century and its etymology unknown. The most probable explanation of its origin is that it's an invented rhyming compound, based around the word grit, along similar lines as raggle-taggle or hurly-burly.

I heard someone today say "it shouldn't be used" because it was "racially offensive."

They didn't know why it was racially offensive, of course, just that it was, which was unsurprising because it isn't. It just means "the core or details of something" and there is no recorded usage prior to the mid 1950s.

It's possible that the idea of it being a term offensive to black people began around the same time as the one suggesting the word 'picnic' was also racially sensitive. This, it transpired, turned out to have originated with an e-mail that was widely circulated, supposedly explaining how the word was a contraction of pick-a-nic, where nic is another form of the N word.

Of course, it was all tosh. Picnic is from the French pique-nique, usage of which can be traced back to the 17th Century.

Nitty-gritty, with its pseudo-historical references to slave ships and so on, may turn out to have a similar background.

I still hear people say that the term "blackboard" is offensive, and not always jokingly. You'll probably find as many people who'll tell you that blackboard is offensive as you will those who'll say that "political correctness has gone too far" or something tediously similar, but you'd probably struggle to find anyone who's actually offended at calling a board that is black, a black-board, because nobody possibly could be.

I suppose these sort of rumours, false etymologies and so on, reveal some sort of deep-seated longing in certain kinds of people, Daily Mail readers and such like, to feel persecuted.

Jamie Janes

A British soldier from Brighton in East Sussex who was killed by an explosion in Helmand, Afghanistan in October 2009.

He's not been all over the news because of that fact, although perhaps he should've been, but because, in a letter to his mother, the Prime Minister misspelt his name.

You'd think if you had a surname like Janes, you may've become accustomed to people misspelling it as James, but it isn't really about that either, is it?

The Sun newspaper interviewed his mother and she's called the handwritten letter "a hastily scrawled insult".

I suppose they have to be hasty considering how many he has to write and I suppose if they were typed, someone would complain that they were "impersonal" or something.

Predictably enough, the usual apologists for Gordon Brown are falling over each other to get to the microphone to explain that his handwriting is terrible etc. And, even more predictably, that this is as a result of his rugby injury. Is there any mistake that this man makes that isn't explained by someone to be "as a result of a childhood rugby accident"?

There are plenty of soldiers who have been flown home from Afghanistan who'd think they'd got off lightly, if they just suffered losing their sight in one eye.

To some people, the fact that Jamie Janes was killed by a bomb has become less important than the fact that his name was misspelt, and that is truly sickening. The Sun wants to attack the Labour Government, particularly Gordon Brown, and uses the grief of Jacqui Janes to do so. The Sun never opposed the presence of British troops in Afghanistan and neither does the party that they'll be supporting at the next election, yet they've seen this an opportunity to exploit public opinion against the war.

Those people who believe British soldiers should not be in Afghanistan are often told that such views "undermine" or "threaten" the soldiers themselves. I doubt it very much. In fact, I suspect that the soldiers, when they get the chance, when they're not busy trying to keep themselves and each other alive and intact, probably say it more than the rest of us.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH USING CAPITAL LETTERS

Typing e-mails and so on in capital letters is like "shouting," apparently, according to some dimwits.

I don't know when or how this tedious idea first gained favour but I regularly hear it from people who must have heard it themselves somewhere else and liked it because it gives them an opportunity to put on airs.

It's not like shouting at all because you're READING it. Capitals are used for emphasis (and always were) although there are some people who, for whatever reason, lack the typing skills to punctuate (which, of course, is the real reason people who say "it's like shouting" decry the habit of writing in capitals) and there are some who just can't be bothered, and that's up to them, surely?

There's a sign in my GP's surgery explaining that, because a new computer system is being introduced, there may be some delay and asks for people to be patient. All very informative and polite, but, guess what? Every word is in capital letters. Keep it down!

Writing in capitals may be suggestive of many things, but it's no more like "shouting" than typing in a small font is like whispering or typing in italics is like having someone lean over to talk to you.

Usually Always

This phrase means 'nearly always' or 'not-quite-always', of course.

In other words, it means something that usually happens, but doesn't happen on absolutely every occasion. That ought to be simple enough to understand and, to most people, it is. The exception are the tedious word-fascists and pedants who think language is something that has to be prescribed and restricted rather than something that's fluid and changes to suit our needs, moods and so on.

Their arguments are generally prefaced with "you can't say that" or "you shouldn't say that" like some bossy Edwardian nanny. You can say that and should, if it's what you want to say, and it helps to make you understood. The tedious bores who object to phrases like "usually always" generally object because "either it always happens or it usually happens" which is true on a simplistic level, but misses the point about how language is actually used.

The phrase "Manchester United usually win their home matches" is understandable and true. The phrase "Manchester United always win their home matches" is understandable, but not true. The phrase "Manchester United usually always win their home matches" is not only understandable and true, it adds an extra nuance of meaning to the sentence. It suggests that they win nearly all of their home matches, but there is a slight possibility of them not winning. It also, in this example, evokes a sort of wistfulness or boastfulness depending on your opinion of Manchester United.

Another example would be "What Alan Shearer has to say is usually always boring" which, although also true, suggests that he may eventually say something that isn't boring. In this example, there's clearly a hint of desperation, but the fact is: it means something very different from "What Alan Shearer has to say is usually boring" and "What Alan Shearer has to say is always boring" because although all 3 statements are true, they all mean something slightly different.





Alan: Nearly usually always has
something uninteresting to say.
And, oddly enough, is actually
paid by the BBC to say it.

Alan Turing - An Apology for An Apology

Dear Alan,

Sorry for the rubbish apology you were given by the Prime Minister last month. It took a campaign to get even that, believe it or not. He said that you "deserved so much better" (than being given a choice of imprisonment or chemical castration). Well, yes. Hard to argue with that one, isn't it?

Futile gestures and apologies are really popular with politicians nowadays, you won't be surprised to hear, and I'm not sure whether the Prime Minister was apologising because of the way you were persecuted as a gay man or because you were let down by your country. Perhaps he didn't know either.

The thing is that, nothing's really changed since your death.

You can still be persecuted and you can still be let down. Deepcut is proof of the first and the condition of many Armed Forces' housing is proof of the second. And, for both, consider the irony that British soldiers are currently fighting (and being maimed and killed) in a country where it's illegal to be gay.

It would've been fitting if the apology carried with it something more tangible - a refusal to trade with countries that persecute gay men, perhaps? Some real improvements in the accommodation given to service personnel and their families? An increase in compensation for those injured?

But it didn't. Too expensive, old boy, too awkward, eh what?

Nothing's changed. You're still better off by looking out for yourself and lining your own pockets than giving like you did. You only have to compare our politicians with our soldiers to see that.

And the fact that we haven't managed to do something to change that in the 55 years since your death is something we can all be sorry about. I know I am. Perhaps we could start now as a tribute to you?

Nice jackets, by the way.

Your Sincerely.

Caravan Park Ghettoes and Darren Millar

Caravan parks are in the news, with a number of people now living in some of them along the North Wales coast all year round, thus avoiding council tax payments and so on, thanks to some park owners obligingly offering 12-month occupancies.

If anyone is willing to live in a caravan for a year or so, good luck to them. I used to have a caravan in Cornwall and even in a place as wonderful as that, I'd generally find three or four days in it quite enough, thanks.

I don't imagine these caravans in Conwy use much in the way of local services, anyway, or that the people living in them have chosen to do so as an alternative to living in a four-story seafront house in Llandudno, for instance. They're probably living in them because they're poor.

But, because they've managed to find the sort of loophole that only the wealthy can usually exploit, some people, such as Darren Millar, Conservative Member of National Assembly for Wales in Clwyd West, want to pick on them. He's quoted as saying: "I'm very, very concerned that this is heralding the start of the development of trailer park ghettoes along the north Wales coast."

"Trailer park ghettoes?" Why is it that, whenever there's a story in the media about people living in caravans or caravan parks, they suddenly become "trailers" and "trailer parks"?

I've driven past hundreds of caravan and camping parks in this country, but I've never seen one with the word trailer in it: "Happy Meadows Trailer Park" or "Sunny Glades Camping and Trailer Park" just don't sound the same somehow.

It's used because of its associations with low-income families in America, of course, and that's why Darren Millar uses it, because he's a snob and a bully and, like so many others, tries to hide behind words in the hope that no-one will notice. He's not trying to find alternative affordable housing or anything useful, he's just picking on poor people.

But, from someone who joined the Welsh Conservative party at the age of 15 and calls himself "a committed Christian" what else would you expect?

I wonder if there's anyone in North Wales sleeping rough in a stable he can pick on next?

The Maldives (again)

The government of the Maldives is in the news, rather surprisingly, although only for a silly stunt, which I suppose is rather less surprising.

They've held a meeting underwater to "highlight the threat of global warming." That's useful, then, isn't it? Because global warming is a subject we never get to hear much about, is it? Virtually a taboo subject, in fact.

Their President, Mohamed Nasheed, was in the news last month as well, after saying he would only attend the international summit on global warming in Copenhagen this December, which is intended to put a new agreement in place to supersede the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, if someone offers to pay for the trip. It must be a struggle.

He's also claimed that the Maldives are at the "front line" in environmental terms and likens the situation to Poland in the 1930's. What a sickeningly insulting parallel to make. The Maldives may be in a front line. The one that shows the greatest hypocrisy about environmental damage, perhaps.

This is the island of Malé, capital of the Maldives:



Maldives: idyllic and not at all hypocritical

Is there any more obvious example of the tedious hypocrisy about environmental damage than this ridiculous country?

Nasheed has pledged to make the Maldives carbon neutral by moving to solar and wind power. Perhaps he's going to build solar powered planes, as well, then, for the hundreds of thousands of tourists who fly their every year, for the privilege of lying around doing nothing all day, because if he doesn't, it won't really matter how many eco-beach huts, green initiatives or silly stunts he stages, will it?

Perhaps next time his government wants to draw attention to something, they could arrange a meeting with some gay men to "highlight" the fact that homosexuality is illegal in the Republic of the Maldives, which considering their President is a former "human rights campaigner" tells you everything you need to know about this horrible and pathetic government.

Trescothick in India Tour Shock

This was a headline in today's Bristol Evening Post, referring to the Somerset cricketer, Marcus Trescothick.

I was expecting the accompanying article to explain how much he was enjoying himself on tour with Somerset in India, bonding with the rest of his team mates and so on, but instead it said that he'd flown home because of "a recurrence of his stress-related illness" which, I have to say, wasn't my idea of a shock.

The article even mentions the last time Trescothick flew home from a cricket tour abroad, with England in Australia in 2006, and his last attempt at an overseas trip, to Dubai in March 2008, where he got as far as Heathrow. It doesn't mention his returning from a tour to India in 2006, but it could've done.

As usual, there are no details about Trescothick's stress-related illness, as it's always called. Anxiety? Depression? Panic attacks? All of the above? No idea, because the club, in the form of Director of Cricket, Brian Rose, "can't go into particular detail." I'm never sure whether that sort of comment is intended to elicit sympathy or not, but we'll probably be hearing over the next few days about how "brave" he was to fly out in the first place (with his wife, incidentally).

We don't know what Marcus Trescothick's stress related-illness is but, for someone who plays cricket for a living, is married with two children, has a home in Somerset, and owns property in Barbados, it must be pretty serious.

I wonder what bombshells the Evening Post have for us next?

"Alex Ferguson in Ref Complaint Shock?" "Emile Heskey Fails to Score Shock?" "Alan Shearer wears Horrible Shirt and is Very Boring Shock?"

I'm getting anxious myself now and would fly home as well, if I could only afford to fly somewhere else in the first place.

Amazing Light Night

This is described on the website for Christ Church, Downend and on promotional flyers given to children attending the local school as "a great alternative to Halloween."

Children are asked to "come and join in the fun" to wear costumes "as bright and cheerful as possible" and even to bring their own "happy faced pumpkins." Imagine how terrifying they're going to look!

There actually is an alternative to Halloween, of course, if they hadn't actually noticed, as there is to Christmas, Diwali, Yom Kippur or watching the cup final. It's called: not taking part.

The reason Christ Church, Downend feels the need to provide an alternative festival to this festival, though, is instructive.

Halloween, because of its long associations with paganism (its origins seem to be with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain) is seen as some sort of 'threat', so it tries to usurp it, replace it with a pseudo-tradition, particularly one aimed at children and then pretend that everybody else is ruining their festival and distorting their message etc.

Pretty much like it's done with Easter and Christmas, then?

Nobel Peace Prize

Who's the odd one out from the following list:

Henry Kissinger
Yasser Arafat
Mahatma Gandhi
Menachem Begin
Mother Teresa

Of course, it's Gandhi. The only one never to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It's a pity he did so little for peace, compared to the others on the list, who obviously did so much. As did, for that matter, Dag Hammarskjöld or Kofi Annan, two other winners. Both of these two chaps, incidentally, were also Secretary-Generals of the United Nations. Remarkable, that. What are the odds, eh?

There's a long history with these pathetic awards of giving them to heads of state, American presidents, particularly, so it's no surprise at all that the latest recipient is Barack Obama.Not quite sure how this squares with the instructions of the award's originator, Alfred Nobel, who wanted the prize to be given to the person who "during the preceding year...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Still, since when did Nobel prize committees care about his instructions?

One of the reasons I've heard given for the nomination of Obama was the 'promise' of better international relations and, while admittedly, anything he did was going to lead to improved international relations than existed under his moronic predecessor, it does seem a tad premature. Perhaps next year it could be given to one of President Obama's daughters? They must have even more promise.

This award has been devalued enough before by cheap publicity stunts (giving it to the Dalai Lama or Lech Walesa, for instance) for anyone to be really surprised by this latest example and it's well in keeping with the ludicrous list of winners of other Nobel Prizes, literature in particular.

Based on past experience, I suppose we can expect that prize next year to go to the ridiculous Al Gore for "Our Choice."

North Korea - (Another) Rare Glimpse

There's a chance to see a bit of North Korea on the BBC News website. It's an "editor's choice", so it must be good. It's entitled : A rare glimpse inside North Korea.

I don't know how many "rare glimpses" inside this "secretive" country I've been offered over the years, but quite enough for the time being, thanks very much.

I know all I need to know about Pyongyang, what the traffic police look like, the North Korean army, I know Kim Jong-il's family tree, what people are and aren't allowed to do (and where), how the schools operate, I've seen the view across the border to South Korea hundreds of times, more even than the view from the South, and been shown enough synchronised gymnastics to last me years.

I even know a bit about the music there, thanks to an Andy Kershaw report from years ago. If you Google the words "a rare glimpse inside North Korea" you'll get (or I did today) 19,200 results. "A rare glimpse inside Turkmenistan" produces 4,600 results, "...inside Bhutan 4,070," "...inside Brunei" 3,500 and "...inside Guinea-Bissau" 2,050.

I got tired of thinking of obscure countries after that, but I'm sure there must be others that would return even lower numbers. Apart from knowing that Brunei is ruled by a Sultan who was possibly the world's richest man, at least before the days of Microsoft, I know absolutely nothing about any of these countries. But I don't expect the BBC will be telling me much soon.

Give it another year, and I'm sure I'll be offered instead another "fascinating" glimpse into the "hidden" country that is North Korea. In other words, a bit of footage inside a kindergarten, a shot of a female Police Officer directing traffic, a chap in a hat cycling past a large portrait of Kim Il-sung and a sombre-looking soldier patrolling the 38th parallel.

Perhaps the BBC could give us a rare glimpse into Saudi Arabia instead? Now, there's a secretive society and one a lot more dangerous and worrying than North Korea.

But they probably won't.

Take a Break vs Rockstar Games

Take a Break is a magazine which features true stories, recipes and puzzles. Rockstar Games is a computer publishing company that produces Grand Theft Auto and Man Hunt, amongst others.

Take a Break believes these games "glorify drug use, drug dealing and violence against women." In fact, that women are "treated like pieces of meat."

In the Take a Break issue of October 8 2009, there's an article which refers to an online Guardian poll for the 101 most powerful people in the media today. The magazine scored higher than Rockstar Games. In fact, as they put it, they "wiped the floor with the opposition." That's a fairly unpleasant figure of speech, but somehow appropriate considering the general hypocrisy of the magazine itself.

Take a Break complains that the games treat women as "objects" but in every issue of this magazine, you'll see articles on make-overs, plastic surgery, mascara, lipstick, beauty tips...as though all that does something else.

Take a Break complains that these games should be censored. But they already are. They're restricted by an age rating, as are violent or sexually explicit films.

Take a Break complains at the way these games depict women. You could say the same for the way men are depicted in their magazine. Almost every article portrays men in a bad way: they're rapists, child-abusers, sexual predators, adulterers, con-artists, liars, fools. Only small boys who have illnesses are immune from their sexist, male-hating attitude. And men who die, of course. Then they become "guardian angels" or something equally sentimental.

Grand Theft Auto is a game about organised crime so yes, the characters are often horrible to women in the game, but they're horrible to men, too. Violent criminals usually are.

Hundreds of millions of people have played these games and it shouldn't really need saying that they're quite capable of distinguishing between moving pixels around on a screen and real life drug-dealing or that they're no more likely to start killing each other after playing it, than they're going to start buying hotels after playing Monopoly or cutting bits out of each other after a game of Operation, but, because of the man-haters at Take a Break, it apparently does.

Teethism

Prejudice against someone because of the colour, shape or quantity of their teeth.

Come on, we have sexism, racism, ageism, heightism and so on - all of which are prejudices against things people can do nothing about, the same could as easily apply to teeth.

Americans, for example, are often horribly teethist particularly against the British.

Dental care in America is the same as health care in America - OK if you can afford it, and there are just as many gappy Americans as there are Brits, but I suppose it got a laugh once and, as British people are routinely depicted as villainous, ugly, sinister, effete and so on, in American mainstream culture, I don't suppose it matters much if they add "and have horrible teeth" to the list of things we can't be bothered to complain about.

I find American teeth quite funny, though. Particularly on older people who look like they've either had them artificially whitened or shipped over from Taiwan. They look ridiculous, of course, because teeth should be teeth-coloured i.e. a sort of ivory-white rather than the kind of dazzling white that's chemically engineered.

Big Brother

In the entire history of this TV programme, I don't suppose I've watched more than a couple of minutes, generally flicking between channels. But I don't mind it, and I've certainly found the couple of seconds of the programme here and there I have occasionally seen, a lot less boring than people telling me how boring it all is.

Why is it that the people who slate Big Brother and its viewers: "I don't know why anyone watches it" are always the same people who say things like "there's nothing I like more than sitting down with a coffee and people watching."

As though staring at people on TV, from your sofa, makes you some sort of voyeuristic freak, but that furtively looking at complete strangers in the street, somehow doesn't.

Internet Man

You might have thought this was a nickname for somebody like Tim Berners-Lee or one of the early pioneers of computer networking, but actually it's the name the BBC have given to James Grenfell.

Mr Grenfell, who is 22 and from Braintree in Essex, has been awarded this great honour, not for technological breakthroughs in computing but because he's apparently eloped with a 13 year old girl from Torquay called Teagan Feakins. The BBC headline the report: Girl missing with internet man.

I'm sure they'll turn up at a Police Station (or a Newspaper office) when they've run out of money for their Bed & Breakfast, probably before I've even posted this. That's what usually happens and girls of her age have been running off with men of his age for years and, like it or not, always will.

I'm not sure if it's oversensitivity on my part but I always feel with these sort of stories that there's some kind of blame attached to the internet itself.

That they met via the internet, as many people do, is mentioned several times, as is the fact that he arrived using, and they are believed to be travelling around by, public transport.

But it's not "Girl missing with bus station man" is it?

Thirty years ago, unless he had a car (Girl missing with Hillman Imp man) I suppose it would've been Girl Missing with Man, which is really all it should be now, perhaps?

Pretirement

Premature retirement.

The habit certain sports people have of announcing their retirement, often as a petulant reaction to not being selected or to losing, only to discover that nobody's particularly bothered and then, realising that they've acted prematurely, announcing their "return."

Come on, there are injuries that last longer than some player's "retirements."

Latest joining the list is Belgian tennis player, Justine Henin, formerly known as Justine Henin-Hardenne and, before that, Justine Henin. She retired in May 2008 because she'd "lost her passion for tennis" and had a break from the game by...opening up her own tennis academy.

Apparently, the ending of Henin's pretirement is not related to the successful return of Kim Clijsters, although she admits that
"subconsciously, it might have had an impact."

Stacey Allaster, chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour says that she, along with millions of fans around the world are thrilled by Henin's return, because: "Justine is that rare athlete who decided to step away from the game at the height of her powers."

And that slightly less rare athlete who comes back again.

Therese de Lisieux

Or Saint Therese of the Infant Jesus and the Holy Face is the name of a Carmelite nun, Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin, the daughter of a rejected monk and a rejected nun, born in Alencon, France in 1873 and rewarded for her lifetime's devotion to God by contracting tuberculosis; dying in 1897 at the age of 24.

Her mother died when she was just 4 years old and her short and rather sad life seems to have been dominated by her overbearing sisters, "Mother" Agnes and Sister Marie. Her "spiritual memoir" was even effectively written by Agnes and partly addressed to Marie.

Today, September 23rd 2009, bits of her skeleton are on display in a Filton church, as part of a national tour. The remains are routinely carried around and displayed because they're believed to have miraculous powers. You can't actually touch (or even see) the bones themselves, but you can touch the perspex that covers the casket the bones are in.

Some people believe this is a disgustingly and cynical exercise by the Catholic Church, but that's probably being unfair to disgustingly cynical exercises.

Therese de Lisieux, incidentally, is the patron saint of AIDS; not those affected by AIDS, of course, but AIDS itself. It's a great honour to be the patron saint of AIDS, since it's a cause very dear to those at the top of the Catholic Church, and its spread something they have done much to promote.

William Shawcross

Author of the recently published Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: the Official Biography.

It's a big book. 943 pages to be exact but, as you'd expect from a writer authorised by the Royal family, about as factual and interesting as a farming report from a 1950's Pravda.

I always found the popular image of the Queen's mother as "the nation's favourite grandmother" a difficult one to accept, as I do the idea of her being witty. Some proof would be welcome. Examples of royal wit generally fall into two categories: rudeness or stating the obvious.

If you're going to call someone witty, you really need more to back it up with than saying "that's mine" to somebody because they've mistakenly picked up your glass of wine. That falls very much into the second category, the sycophantic laughter of bystanders notwithstanding.

Shawcross has performed the role of Stalinist toady with this book, judging by the reviews I've read, leaving out anything that would make the book worth reading.

In his 943 pages, he avoids any mention of her vindictive attitude towards the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, itself clearly motivated by jealousy of Wallis Simpson.

He omits to discuss her callousness towards her younger daughter, who was given no support or help over her proposed marriage to Peter Townsend.

He doesn't quite find the space to discuss her hypocrisy over mental illness, either. She was patron of the charity Mencap, which campaigns for the acceptance of people with mental impairment into society, but never quite had the time to visit or even mention her own nieces, Nerissa and Katherine, who were both confined to a hospital because of their own mental impairment, preferring the official lie that they were both dead.

There's no mention of her spiteful behaviour towards her nephew, Timothy, Earl of Strathmore or his wife, the Countess of Strathmore.

And, most remarkably of all, he doesn't even mention her reaction to the death of the Princess of Wales. Which means that the official biographer of the Queen's mother doesn't even manage to squeeze into a book of nearly a thousand pages a single mention of her reaction to the most newsworthy and commented-on event in modern British royal history.

Perhaps he forgot.


The Queen's Mother:
Teeth "whiter than Britney
Spears" according to William
(when am I going to get my
knighthood?) Shawcross

Not the Tallest...

"He's not the tallest player on the pitch" is a phrase I often hear, most recently on Wednesday, during commentary on Liverpool and Debrecen. I don't know which player was being referred to, it could have been any of twenty-one, really, couldn't it?

I suppose it's a polite way of saying someone looks a bit short, without actually saying it. The idea of footballers being given physique-relevant nicknames like Shorty or Fatty seems fairly unlikely, but the temptation to compare and comment, particularly if you have 22 people in the same area, is clearly a hard one to resist.

Shay Given has probably been the best goalkeeper in the Premiership over the last decade or so, but he'll probably have the words "Not the tallest in the world" on his headstone.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is the longest-running situation comedy, cartoon and even, apparently, the longest-running "prime time entertainment series" in American TV history.

And doesn't it show?

I don't know when I stopped enjoying the Simpsons, and whether or not that pre-dated watching Family Guy. I only know I did. It's like watching an old friend doing a trick that used to make you laugh and now makes you cringe. I've tried watching episodes lately and rarely last the distance. The jokes work but aren't actually funny and the actors sound tired, almost resentful.

The biggest problem I have with the programme, though, is how every episode clumsily shifts from comedy to a sort of maudlin soap-opera. Possibly Marge doesn't say "we need to re-assess our marriage, Homie" in every episode, to the accompaniment of sad strings from the orchestra, but it feels like she does. It's a comedy, so why can't it just be that?

The tender stuff used to work - look at the penalty shot scene in the episode "Lisa on Ice," but now it just feels contrived. Perhaps the jokes have become harder to write and the corny relationship stuff is preferable because it's so easy to write; it's a few more minutes of airtime sorted.

Watching the episode "Mom and Pop Art" on TV a few days after I'd watched a similarly-themed episode of Family Guy, "A Picture is Worth A 1000 Bucks," only confirmed how stale the Simpsons now seems. Family Guy is funny in a way the Simpsons can never be, because it isn't trying to please advertisers or not offend or be pro-family or anything, it's just making jokes.

I wonder whether the endless marriage guidance and counselling sessions in the Simpsons are some sort of coded cry for help, or a subconscious longing to end it all, from the programme's makers?

In match play, 4-1 to the Griffins

The Bermuda Triangle

BBC News announces: "Two of the so-called Bermuda Triangle's most mysterious disappearances in the late 1940s may have been solved."

The report explains that:

Scores of ships and planes are said to have vanished without trace over the decades in a vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary apexes in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico.

But a new examination for a BBC series provides plausible explanations for the disappearance of two British commercial planes in the area, with the loss of 51 passengers and crew.

One plane probably suffered from catastrophic technical failure as a result of poor design, while the other is likely to have run out of fuel.

Yes, they both sound plausible. It's news to me that there's any mystery still attached to the Bermuda Triangle, but they are advertising a new series, after all.

I thought calling this sort of thing mysterious had died out back in the mid-seventies. Well, 1975, to be precise, with the publication of Larry Kusche's book, "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved."

I suppose it's always worth mentioning it every so often, though, just in case there are people who still think there's any sort of mystery associated with this area. But those who want to believe in paranormal explanations won't be revising their opinions whatever they hear, will they?

If you're the sort of person who believes it's more likely that a ship's crew was abducted by extra-terrestrials rather than sinking during a storm or that a plane could be diverted into another dimension rather than running out of fuel and crashing into the sea, you're not going to be persuaded to change your mind by aviation experts, are you?

In fact, you're probably going to be even more inclined to believe the paranormal explanation and see reasoned arguments of navigational misjudgement or equipment failure as evidence for some sort of cover up conspiracy.

Because you're an idiot.

Atop

This simple word means "on top of" and has a history traceable back to the mid Seventeenth Century. It isn't a hard word to understand but Clive Tyldesley, the football commentator, who has been broadcasting for over 30 years, doesn't know what it means.

Or perhaps has to pretend he doesn't know what it means to make a tedious point.

Clive, during his commentary of England's World Cup qualifier against Croatia, referred to a report of an LA Galaxy match he'd read, which mentioned David Beckham's winning goal being scored from "atop the penalty area...whatever atop the penalty area means."

Well, I would imagine it means what Tyldesley would call 'on the edge of the penalty area' whatever the edge of the penalty area means, eh? Which edge? Which side of the edge? etc

It isn't a difficult phrase to understand, it's just not a phrase that Clive would use and, because it's an American writing about a game in America, he's already predisposed to sneer. He objects in that narrow-minded way of people who, despite droning on about how football is a world game, become parochial as soon as their hear Americans talking about it.

The same bores who think that calling it soccer is "wrong" (despite it being the name widely used by Stanley Matthews and many others) and think they're being scathingly satirical by saying "saccer."

There's always been a laughable discrepancy between the way most supporters talk about the game and the pretentious way many commentators do, especially in England, and it doesn't matter if it's called football or soccer or calcio or bóng đá, as long as what's being said is understood.

Saying a shot was fired from atop the penalty area is a lot less ridiculous than the sort of pseudo-Churchillian guff that Clive uses and a lot easier to understand.

Cara Hobday

Oddly anonymous author of cookery books and introduced on BBC radio as "an expert on lunchboxes."

In a feature discussing the sort of foods parents should put in their children's lunchboxes, Hobday betrayed herself as a bully in a couple of telling phrases.

The item began with reporter (and eminently typical parent) Sarah Ransome discussing what she had in her kitchen to give to her two children for their school lunches, and moved on to an interview with Cara Hobday, which became a fine example of middle-class hypocrisy and bullying.

Sarah Ransome gave a commentary as she looked around her kitchen, mentioned the preferences of her children and said that she was going to put a packet of crisps in each of the lunches, because the children hadn't had them all week and, presumably, also because they liked them.

Cara Hobday, introduced as the author of "Kids' Healthy Lunchbox" said that she personally would "omit" the crisps because they were "empty calories" and, in fact, that crisps should only be given in what she called "a dream pack lunch" at the end of term.

The phrase "empty calories" is meaningless, of course, but remains popular with the sort of people who like to bully others and hope that if they use vaguely technical-sounding terms, they won't be questioned too closely

The hypocrisy showed itself when she spoke of "empowering the children" and "getting them involved in the lunchbox planning" because she means nothing of the sort, of course. If her children planned their own lunches and decided they wanted a packet of Monster Munch, a couple of Penguins and a carton of Ribena, they'd find themselves very quickly disempowered,

What Cara Hobday wants to do is tell her children what they should and shouldn't eat but pretend that, somehow, they're making the decisions for themselves. They're not, of course. And the fact that she began her interview by saying that parents need "to take charge of the lunchbox" rather underlines that.

Andy Murray - the Norway of Tennis

According to the ATP World Tour rankings, Andy Murray is the second greatest tennis player in the world. This may surprise you, considering he has never won a Grand Slam event and has only ever reached one final, losing in straight sets.

The greatest female player is Dinara Safina. You may have thought it would've been Venus or Serena Williams, with 18 Grand Slam wins between them, rather than Safina, who has none.

The ATP tennis rankings are about as useful and about as credible as the FIFA rankings used to be for international football teams, prior to their numerous revisions.

By the old rankings system, in the summer of 1995, the second greatest team in the world was Norway. Better than Argentina, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and France. A system which routinely placed Mexico and the USA as high as fourth, clearly needed to be overhauled and was. The current rankings are hard to argue with; Brazil, Spain, Netherlands, Italy and Germany are the current top five.

It might be an idea if the ATP rankings system was given a similar revision, because if Andy Murray's a better tennis player than Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic or Andy Roddick, then Judy Murray is better looking than Veronika Zemanova:



Veronika: lovely girl but probably not as good looking
as Andy Murray's mum, if the ATP were to rank them.

Ahmed Abdullah Ali

Or Abdullah Ahmed Ali as he is also called (and possibly Ali Abdullah Ahmed and Ahmed Ali Abdullah, as well) is the leader of an Islamic group, convicted of plotting to detonate liquid explosives on trans-Atlantic aeroplanes.

Mr Ali (or Abdullah) recorded one of those martyrdom videos that are almost as boringly familiar on You Tube as those of American teenage girls with too much eye make-up telling everybody how "random" they are. His is particularly rubbishy and incoherent.

He has a couple of predictable habits, such as rubbing his nose in the way associated with lying, as well as the kind of finger-pointing associated with rappers, and the young children who admire them, which look slightly tragic in a bloke who's nearly thirty.

I've never made a martyrdom video myself and wouldn't want to put myself up as an expert but don't you think he could have remembered what he wanted to say or even written it down?

"So yes, taste. That. Which you have...made us taste for a long time...and now you have. Build a fruits that you have sown."

Part of his message is that the intention is to "punish and humiliate the kuffar" and "to teach them a lesson that will never forget" as though it's the lesson that won't forget.

Perhaps he can be remembered as the man who stopped people taking bottles of fizz or perfume in their hand luggage?

I don't feel particularly punished or humiliated by that, and I suppose if he'd said "I want the kuffar to have to queue up to waste expensive bottled drinks and put sauce sachets into little plastic bags" it wouldn't have sounded quite as terrifying, but it's all he's really achieved.

Although, he'd have probably messed that up as well and said it the wrong way around. What a moron.

Anti-fascist campaigners

This is taken from the Independent's website today:

Hundreds of people clashed in Birmingham city centre yesterday as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A demo by the English Defence League ended in violence.

This is the same confrontation, as described by the BBC:

Ninety people were arrested following clashes between right-wing protesters and anti-fascist campaigners in Birmingham on Saturday.
A group called the English Defence League, which said it was protesting against Islamic extremism, was met with a counter demonstration

Apart from sighing at the tedious predictability of it all and vaguely wishing that they could all have their heads bashed together, when are labels like "anti-fascist" actually going to be updated from the meaning they acquired in the 1930s?

To be anti-fascist then meant to oppose fascism, naturally, and fascism was defined then (and now) as "an ideology...with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure...fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism."

Which makes me definitely anti-fascist. I'm all in favour of democracy and liberalism. And, so, according to the BBC and the Independent are these people:



Anti-fascist campaigners, campaigning really hard
for the rights of Lesbians, Gays, Trades Unionists
and Jewish people. Honest.

Sorry, but throwing bottles at the English Defence League or A Group Called the English Defence League, as the BBC pointedly puts it, doesn't make you anti-fascist. If anything, it probably means you are a fascist. It actually takes a bit more than that.

In fact, I don't think there were any anti-fascists demonstrating in Birmingham yesterday at all, just two groups of opposing bigots.

Squib

Kate Bassett, theatre critic of the Independent referred to the Walpurgis Night scene in a recent production of Faust as "a huge damp squib."

A squib is a firework, which hisses and then explodes, which of course, wouldn't happen if it was damp, so this obviously means it was disappointingly anti-climatic but I've never actually heard the word squib used by itself. "The PTA are organising a squib night." "There are going to be squibs later." It's always damp.

Anyway, the question for Kate Bassett, is this: is a huge damp squib better or worse than a small damp squib?

Garth Crooks

Football pundit and Dr Kananga soundalike, renowned for his pompous, finger-pointing approach.

Garth talkssoquickly and getssocarried away with himself when he is talking that he frequently forgets to finish off his senten. And then starts a new one withsuchenthusiasm that he also forgets what it was that he wanted to say before he begun to say what it was he was saying before he. And. Then. Speaks. Like. This. Beforerememberingwhatitwashewassaying.

So, of course, the BBC employ him as a broadcaster.

Miyuki Hatoyama

Wife of Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, who is described as a lifestyle consultant, or “life composer”, and the author of several books, including Welcome to the Hatoyama Restaurant, Welcome to the Hatoyama Home, Miyuki Hatoyama’s Spiritual Food and Miyuki Hatoyama’s Have a Nice Time.

She has also travelled on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus, which she remembers as "extremely beautiful and very green.” She also "eats" the sun each morning by closing her eyes and biting chunks out of it. “Yum, yum, yum. I get energy from it. My husband also does this.”

I don't think we need worry too much about any of that. I'm sure lots of people remember travelling to Venus in the 1970's and there's nothing wrong with a bit of sun for breakfast, but what does worry me about this woman is that she claims to be a friend of Tom Cruise. Now that's disturbing.

Paramedics and Daily Mail Readers

This was taken from the online Daily Mail, today:

"A pub manager has demanded disciplinary action against a paramedic she claims would not help save a customer's life.

Melissa Procter-Blain, 32, died after suffering a heart attack at The Crown in Spondon, Derbyshire.

East Midlands Ambulance Service had logged the incident as category A - potentially immediately life-threatening - and sent a fast-response vehicle, which arrived within six minutes, and an ambulance, which arrived within ten minutes...

A spokesman said the solo responder paramedic took the life-saving kit from her vehicle into the pub but had described the atmosphere as tense and intimidating...and was not authorised to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on her own."

Apart from wondering when paramedics became answerable to pub managers, this sad story (Melissa Procter-Blain was the mother of 3 young children) is even more depressing in the way it's used by the Daily Mail and its readers to attack their usual targets: the Government, Health & Safety Legislation and, of course, "political correctness" with varying degrees of coherence.

It's ironic that Daily Mail readers who complain most about the removal of personal responsibility are so quick to complain at someone who has taken personal responsibility. Which is it to be? Taking personal responsibility as long as they approve of the outcome, presumably.

In contrast, this is taken from the Bristol Evening Post website Wednesday, November 19, 2008:

"A mob of 30 people attacked an ambulance crew as they were answering a 999 call in Bristol.

One of the two women paramedics had to be treated in hospital after she was assaulted while attempting to treat a patient who had suffered a heart attack.

Its crew, who have not been named, were confronted by a crowd of about 30 "drunk and intimidating" people when they arrived to help another female paramedic attend an incident at Tasties cafe on Saturday morning."

In the same article, it's reported that "there had been 23 physical assaults on ambulance staff in the Bristol area over the year to the end of March.

Among the incidents reported was one in which a brick was thrown at a female paramedic, who had to take refuge in an ambulance while the windows were smashed."

You can be sure that when a paramedic is killed, the same Daily Mail readers, so quick to attack this paramedic's concern for her own safety, will be the first to publish their nauseating eulogies and exploit even that to make the same stupid points they make at every other opportunity.

A lack of funding? A lack of training? A shortage of resources?

Not to people like Kenneth Mortimer, it's the fault of "political correctness". What an utterly pathetic mind he must have.

Mediawatch

Mediawatch-uk, according to its website, "campaigns for socially responsible broadcasting and against content that is offensive and harmful, for example violence, swearing and pornography."

And against capital letters as well, apparently.

The pressure group was formerly known as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association and was founded by Mary Whitehouse in 1965. Its current director is John Bayer, who is due to retire at the end of September, so will probably be gobbing off a lot before then, to justify his salary and pension. He's just had a pop at Jimmy Carr.

Mediawatch-uk "believes in freedom of expression and that broadcasters should exercise this with responsibility. We are working to champion the rights of viewers!"

Of course, they don't believe in freedom of expression at all, certainly not if they consider the expression offensive i.e. if it's sexual or violent or pro-gay or anti-religious and so on, but they can't say that, can they? You can see how they try to get around it at their website:

http://www.mediawatchuk.org.uk/

Much more interesting and certainly more entertaining, though, is this satirical version:

http://www.mediawatch.org.uk/home.php

You'd think an organisation which so closely scrutinises the media might have thought of registering domains so similar to their own!

Also recommended, is Mediawatchwatch, which monitors the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy of Mediawatch-uk, amongst others, here:

http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/home.php

Perhaps someone needs to set up Mediawatchwatchwatch to make sure they're behaving as well.

Express Newspapers

This is from the online Daily Express:

OUTCRY AS CARR LETS FLY WITH A 4-LETTER TIRADE

Comedian Jimmy Carr is in trouble with TV watchdogs for swearing once every 60 seconds in his 90-minute stand-up show. He used the F word 36 times and the C word four times in the first hour of the Channel 4 show, which is available to children via 4 On Demand and other internet sites.

Jimmy Carr In Concert was broadcast an hour after the 9pm watershed on August 22 and caused further outrage by containing jokes about the Paralympics, incest and homosexuality. The studio audience included a boy of 14.

A spokesman for the watchdog group Mediawatch-UK said: “This is a disgrace. It is typical of Channel 4 not to take any notice of guidance surrounding bad language.”

That's enough. You can read the whole article on their website, if you can be bothered. It's depressing stuff, though. The whole website is full of prurient items about celebrities, yet others expressing indignation at intrusions into people's lives. It has articles about the deaths of babies which finish with Play Online Poker NOW and win a fortune!

TV watchdogs? That's Ofcom, surely? The group Mediawatch-uk is a self-appointed organisation that used to be know as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, and was founded by Mary Whitehouse in 1965, campaigning against swearing on TV ever since.

Is its "spokesman" going to find Jimmy Carr funny? I doubt it very much. The puzzling thing would be why he was even watching. Programmes like this are on so late, and are given introductory warnings, because they contain swearing, so it's hardly true that Channel 4 ignore guidance about "bad language." If anyone is ignoring guidance, it's the "spokesman" from Mediawatch-UK.

But, of course, it's not puzzling at all. He was only watching it in order to complain. I wouldn't call that an "outcry."

As for the programme being available via Channel 4's on demand. It isn't.

Whatever she wants to be...

On the Family Announcements page of the Bristol Evening Post, there's a section called "The birth of..." which gives details about a (presumably) randomly selected baby, lists the baby's weight, gives some information about the parents, has Mum's Story, Dad's Story, asks "Who does she look like?" and "What will she be when she grows up?"

All nice innocent stuff, a bit unoriginal since almost everybody calls it "amazing" but one reply this week raised an eyebrow. The answer given to the question "What will she be when she grows up?" was "Whatever she wants to be."

Are they quite sure about that? It might be the sort of gooey thought you have when you first hold your baby but it comes across as a sort of self-congratulatory aren't-we-wonderful-people comment.

She can no more be "whatever she wants to be" than she can eat whatever she wants to eat or go wherever she wants to go and, like the sort of bourgeois parents who make a big show about how un-class conscious they are, and how supportive and tolerant they are to their children, the tolerance and understanding will only last as long as the parents approve.

The whole thing dissolves the minute the children show any signs of slipping off the middle-class radar. They just have to pretend otherwise.

Tim Lovejoy & Spoony

Radio broadcasters who both like to remind listeners to 6-0-6 that they support Chelsea and Arsenal, respectively. Even callers phoning in to discuss, say, Portsmouth or Leicester.

Lovejoy has to tell listeners after almost every call that he's a Chelsea fan, as though it was a matter of any interest. I've been listening to Alan Green for years and still don't know which club he supports. Possibly because he tries to make the programme about the callers and Lovejoy and Spoony want to make it about themselves.

Spoony is currently featured on a trailer for 6-0-6 stating that he doesn't mind if his team (Arsenal, by the way) don't win the Champions League, as long as it's not Real Madrid, because that would be a victory for money. A victory for Chelsea or Manchester United or Milan, presumably meaning a victory for grass roots football and hard graft.

For the definitive word on Tim, though, have a look at this review of his book, "Lovejoy on Football." It's by Taylor Parkes of When Saturday Comes and is something to savour:

http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/145/29/

UEFA Champions League

The UEFA draw has been made for 2009/2010 with predictably uninteresting results.

Apart from the phoney surprise and expectation voiced at the thought of Barcelona getting drawn with Inter Milan. Mouthwatering. And AC Milan being in the same group as Real Madrid. I can't wait, because they've never met before, have they?

I mean, just how exciting is this draw? It's the same teams every year. I'm not an expert - I don't have an orange face or expensive enough shirts - but I could predict the last 16 and bet I'd be correct about at least a dozen of them.

There are 3 sides in the 36 I don't think I've ever heard of, though, which makes a pleasant change: Debrecen, Rubin Kazan and Unirea Urziceni.

Too much of that sort of thing, though, and I suppose we'll see the rules being changed back again.

Stephen Hester

Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland who thinks we should all be optimistic about the future of RBS because, once the recovery and restructuring have taken place, this will allow the taxpayer to "sell at a profit."

That's going to take some doing if my understanding of the word profit is right, since the taxpayer has already invested something like £20,000,000,000 in RBS.

But Stephen Hester is described as "brilliant" in the profiles I've read and, as he's a graduate of Oxford University and the son of a Professor, he must know what he's talking about.

I wouldn't want to be too cynical about his claims, but he did say in early 2007, eight months before his then employer, British Land (and others) lost money in the property slump: "I don't believe we are about to see a market decline" and for a man so brilliant, I'd like to hear phrases more original than "it's a marathon not a sprint" or "people are tightening their belts" and, let's be honest, if your hobbies were tennis, running and skiing (as he claims his are) wouldn't you have a slightly more athletic physique than Stephen does?


Stephen Hester, he lists 'running'
as a hobby but probably forgot
to add to the chip shop

Still, what do I know? I'm bankrupt, after all. But I am a taxpayer and have been for thirty years, so I'm thrilled by his promise. I don't know how much we can each expect, but Stephen earns £9.6 million himself so, if that's what he earns, in this age of belt-tightening, there's bound to be loads left for the rest of us.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to spend my share on my wife and children. We haven't had a holiday this year and my wife spends less on clothing than any woman I know so they all deserve a few treats.

Just as soon as Stephen sends me my share of the profits.

Thought Police

The following is a quote from Anthony Bush, a former evangelical preacher and owner of Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, based in Wraxall, near Bristol:

"There's a lot of people who believe in Genesis who don't want to come out of the woodwork...they don't want to come out of the closet because of the thought police."

His zoo is in the news because the British Humanist Association's education officer, Paul Pettinger, who visited it in July, believes it undermines the teaching of science, by promoting a Biblical and creationist argument for the natural world.

He seems to have a point since signs at the zoo explain that animals hunt and kill for food because man "rebelled against god", suggest that Darwinism is "flawed" and ask visitors to pray for the animals.

But, whether you agree with the BHA or not, who are the "thought police" that Mr Bush refers to exactly? Who is actually keeping these Genesis-believers in the woodwork (or the closet)?

Is there some sort of law that prohibits people from doubting the accuracy of the Bible?

Or is Anthony Bush talking piffle?

Peter Hatter

Former landlord of the Bell Inn and Luckwell Hotel in Bedminster and my uncle, who has died of cancer at the age of 73

My dad's younger brother was estranged from his family, or estranged himself, and was missed (at least by me) for his pungent views and sardonic humour. He was very droll when he was sober. Which wasn't very often.

Mercenary

The word mercenary, although generally used to describe a paid soldier who is not part of a regular army, originates from the Latin word, merces, which means money paid or wages.

From a linguistic point of view, then, most of us are mercenaries and the Archbishop of Westminster, Vince Nichols, believes this is a terrible thing and bravely singles out...which group of people for criticism? Politicians? Newspaper editors? Investment traders? The devil? Steady on!

Vince criticises footballers. The archbishop said there was a loss of loyalty in society that was typified by the attitude of some footballers. "Football spectators appreciate a bit of loyalty and we're seeing that less and less. There are echelons of football, as in society, where some players are clearly mercenaries."

Why is it always footballers? Never singers or actors, who surely earn more for less?

Players move between clubs for a number of reasons, some are work-related, some are for family reasons, homesickness, personality clashes and sometimes for more money. They often stay at clubs because they're comfortable and can't be bothered. Exactly the same reasons the rest of us have for changing (or not changing) jobs.

Considering the personal vilification experienced by some players (and their families) when they move between rival clubs, it could be argued that it takes courage to make the move.

So, don't bother looking to Vince for support, though, if a player's wife is spat at in the supermarket or his children are picked on in school, he'll be there sticking the knife in.

I don't suppose Vince ever considered the money when he was promoted to Archbishop of Westminster, doubtless in his case, he was simply answering the call from some higher power. He probably even considered turning it down out of loyalty to the people of Birmingham.

Or not.

Ian Stafford

Former mayor of Preesall in Lancashire who has been accused of breaking into homes and stealing women's underwear.

Mr Stafford, 58, resigned as mayor of Preesall after his arrest in June, and has now been charged with three counts of burglary.

I find something almost poignant about this and feel oddly reassured that this sort of old-fashioned British perviness is still around. It seems somehow redolent of the 1960's.

But, what do you think when you look at Mr Stafford? Residents described themselves as "stunned" on hearing of his arrest. Perhaps they hadn't seen him before. I don't think I've ever met any underwear-thieves but if I had to picture one, I think he would look just like Ian Stafford.

As soon as I saw the photo, I even found myself singing Arnold Layne.

Death Threats

What is it with death threats?

I've never felt the need of them myself, at least not yet, but I wonder, as a percentage, how many of them are inspired by religion? 50%? 75%? 90%?

Apart from the occasional random oddball who develops an ad hoc hatred towards a neighbour, an ex-boss, the Inland Revenue or someone who once gave them a parking ticket, I would think pretty much all of them.

It does seem a cliched and slightly overwrought response, but I suppose it's symptomatic of a way of thinking that doesn't really tolerate contradiction.

But wouldn't it make a pleasant change to hear someone who has been deeply offended because their holy book or holy leader or holy animal has been insulted demand that their offender sits down and listens to them for 5 minutes?

Scottish Parliament

The following headline appeared on the Guardian website today:

Scottish parliament to hold emergency debate over decision to free Lockerbie bomber

Considering the man in question is sipping mint tea in one of Colonel Qaddafi's tents somewhere in the Libyan desert, just how much of an emergency is this?

Shouldn't the debate perhaps have taken place before the decision was taken to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi?

Recalling the Scottish parliament has happened twice before, on both occasions following somebody's death. Donald Dewar's in 2002 and then the Queen mother's in 2002. I wonder what those sessions achieved?

Perhaps they could, at some stage, debate something while it's happening or even before?

Malcolm Stacey

Radio 4 listener & pedant.

Fi Glover recently interviewed Professor Anthony Hollander for Saturday Live and Malcolm was listening. He even wrote in to complain. Not about the funding for stem cell research or the ethics of it all or anything, but the pronunciation of the word research.

According to Malcolm, both Fi Glover and Professor Hollander were wrong because pronouncing it ree-search is "American" and ru-search is "correct."

I've never quite understood why American pronunciations are considered incorrect. There are 300,000,000 of them and 60,000,000 of us, after all. Perhaps Malcolm agrees with Ibsen, though, that a majority is always wrong. I'm not so sure. If Americans decide tomorrow that the word rutabaga is pronounced chicken, and they all start saying it, then there's not much we can do about it.

Popular usage is how language evolves and there's no such thing as a "correct" pronunciation. Meanings and words change as people use them. It's always happened and always will and not even writing in to BBC Radio 4 will change that.

Assisted suicide

Helping a terminally-ill person to die is supported by between 70% and 88% of the UK population, depending on the poll.

It's certainly supported by me, my wife, my parents, all of my friends, colleagues and anyone else who has ever spoken to me about it.

The only voices I have ever heard speaking against assisting a terminally-ill person to die are the religious. The argument put forward by the cretinous Vince Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, is that it "leads to the idea that people who require a lot of care ought to be moved even further off the scene. Once the principle is set that a human life is disposable by age or illness, then it won't be the sick person who is making the decision, it will be somebody else who makes it for them."

So, who, exactly should make the decision, then? Vince's answer, of course, is no-one. No-one can be trusted with that sort of decision, because we cannot be trusted with our own lives or the lives of people we love.

In Vince's world, married couples can't help each other out of agonising illnesses, compassionate doctors can't accede to the wishes of their patients, a once fit young man now facing a lifetime of paralysis can't be helped to do the one thing he wants, not even by his loving parents because, in Vince's world, people can't be trusted.

That is Vince's real argument against it: People can't be trusted. He doesn't trust you and he doesn't trust me.

Why not?

Ulysses

James Joyce's novel.

This great book will, from 2012, no longer be protected by copyright and, to ensure the Joyce estate will make as much money as it can before that date, Stephen Joyce, the writer's grandson, has authorised a bargain edition to be issued next January with British publisher, Wordsworth Editions. They also hope to cover the market with good quality editions of the book prior to the expiration of the copyright agreement.

The estate will receive a one-off payment instead of royalties and have only stipulated that the book published uses the 1932 text rather than incorporating any of the later, disputed corrections.

What an excellent piece of business and what an achievement for Helen Trayler, managing director of Wordsworth Editions and Stephen Joyce himself, who has managed his grandfather's estate with admirable loyalty.

I hope the edition is a good one and at £1.99 or €2.99, it's certainly going to be a good value one.

After 2012, Ulysses will then join a long list of other works of fiction that are no longer copyright-protected - Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tristram Shandy, and the Bible, for example.

Decimated

To be bored to death by someone's tedious pedantry.

I suppose the reason the origin of this word is so often cited in protest against its current usage is that it's one of the few the people who protest about this sort of thing actually know.

I imagine they're only repeating something they've read. It's unlikely they've discovered the history of the word for themselves, since anyone with more than a passing interest in etymology would find a word changing its meaning a source of continuing fascination rather than a cause for complaint.

I know I do. If this word was to only retain its original meaning (killing every tenth man yawn in a Roman legion double yawn) it would be all but redundant. The fact that it now means "completely destroy" is because that's the meaning the word has suggested to a number of people simultaneously.

So that's what it's going to carry on meaning and that's how language evolves, no matter how many letters puce-faced pedants write to Radio 4 or the Daily Telegraph.

I think their blood-bursting indignation is a happy by-product of the ever-changing pronunciations and meanings of words.

Katkins

A Katkins is a name or word made from somebody's initial letter and surname.

The word may or may not already exist but, by the Katkins principle, the combination of letter and surname together must be pronounceable as a word.

Surnames beginning with vowels are generally the most likely to produce Katkins names but exceptions include musician Charlie Hunter, author Shere Hite and comedian Chris Rock.

Cyber-bullying

The BBC reports that "a teenager has been detained for three months in a young offenders institution for harassing a woman on social networking website Facebook.

Keeley Houghton swore at and threatened Emily Moore in person and on the internet in July, Worcester Magistrates' Court heard.

The 18-year-old of Elgar Avenue, in Malvern, Worcestershire, admitted a charge of harassment on 31 July. She was also given a five-year restraining order.

Houghton is prohibited from contacting Ms Moore, or commenting about her on any social networking system or website during that time."

Notice something there? The headline refers to the sentence being given because of the harassment on Facebook but she also swore at and threatened Emily Moore IN PERSON. What would that be called then? Street-bullying? Face-bullying? Retro-bullying? Nothing of the sort, apparently. That's just bullying.

But as soon as the name-calling and so on is typed up on a website or put in a text, it's got to be given a special name, as though it's anything to do with the technology itself, so it's called cyber-bullying.

If it was on a bus would it be called bus-bullying? I doubt it. But that's probably, in some ways, even nastier and certainly harder to avoid.

Emma-Jane Cross of the charity Beatbullying believes that "...sites like Facebook, along with the Government and charities like Beatbullying, must work together to tackle the real root of the problem - the bullying itself."

The real root of the problem, of course, is the bully who, in this example is Keeley Houghton. So how exactly can Facebook or Bebo or MySpace or YouTube or MSN Messenger tackle her?

They can't, as Emma-Jane Cross surely knows, but, rather than acknowledge that these companies already do block users and suspend accounts, which is all they really can do, she'd rather pretend that the site providers are in some ways themselves culpable.

I would suggest that the sort of services these companies provide probably do more good than harm, particularly when it comes to being a friend for lonely or picked-on children.

The way to stop bullying is to stop bullies and the only way to do that, is to ensure all children are brought up with the same sort of standards, to ensure that they have a good sense of self-worth, that they're sympathetic and understanding towards each other at all times, and that this behaviour is still applied during periods of stress, especially after the break-down of relationships.

And not judge each other by looks or clothes or because of their names or their weight or their facial features or anything else that marks them out as different. And to see adults doing the same to each other at all times, as well, of course.

No wonder Emma-Jane Cross prefers to look around for an easier target.

Faith Schools

"Sectarianism could be defused if more Catholic and Protestant children attend mixed-religion schools", according to a nine-year study by psychologists from the University of Ulster, funded by the European Union Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation.

Children who attend mixed-religion schools have "much more contact with members of other religious groups, both at schools and out of school, than children who attended segregated schools."

Sorry, but that's taken nine years of research? Faith schools: not perhaps the best idea in the world if you want children to mix together. I think most of us would be able to work that out in about 10 seconds.

Probably Maurice Stringer, Psychology Professor at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, who led the study, did as well and has spent the remaining 8 years 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes and 50 seconds fishing or on his allotment?

A Levels

A Level results for 2009 have been announced today with predictable coverage in the press.

The Telegraph begins its report: "More than a quarter of A-levels were graded an A today, with some 26.7 per cent of papers awarded the top mark".

Which means that just under 3/4 or 73.3% didn't get the top mark, then, so is there any point they're making here? How many passes at Grade A should there be exactly?

People who complain that A levels were so much harder 20 years ago (i.e. when they did them) seem to be saying that because the pass rate goes up each year, this somehow proves that they had to work harder and are more intelligent than everyone else.

I wonder if the people who think this, would concede that their A Levels, therefore, must have been much easier than those from 30 years ago, then? Probably not.

Because, of course, if the pass rate today had been lower, the very same people would be using that to make the same point i.e it would also prove that they had to work harder and are more intelligent than everyone else.

In other words; they 're better, whatever the statistics say. Or think they were.

I don't. As far as a I can see, A Levels require an incredible amount of hard work (look at the number who drop out after the AS year) and that's never changed, even a C pass is admirable enough, so well done to everyone who's passed, especially my son Nick who managed a Grade A pass in Maths, A in Computing and a B in Physics.

Do better than that and you can have a pop at A Level standards.

Otherwise, belt up.

Grotesque

A Japanese horror film which has been refused an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification because of its graphic torture scenes.

David Cooke, director of the Board, stated that Grotesque showed "little more than an unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism" and that "the chief pleasure on offer seems to be in the spectacle of sadism (including sexual sadism) for its own sake."

Apparently, it also had "minimal narrative" and lacked "character development."

They must have recently raised the standards at the BBFC, then, since I had no idea films were refused viewing certificates because of minimal narrative or insufficient character development. I thought they were requirements for Hollywood films.

It's obvious what the film makers need to do, then, for the film to be given a certificate.

They just to need to add a domestic scene near the start so the viewers can establish that the woman pouring out the orange juice for the small child is a good person and therefore torturing her later on is a bad thing, which should take care of the narrative.

Also, add a bit of witless dialogue, preferably with lots of four-letter words in which one of the characters gets a bit annoyed, having previously been unconvincingly jovial. So, there's the character development sorted out.

A couple of simple additions and they can fill their boots on the old torture scenes.

It'll probably be called "terrifyingly unmissable" and "ground-breaking" by Empire.

RSPB and the Police

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have called for a review into the investigation and prosecution of wildlife crimes, claiming that a lack of "specialist" police and the low priority given to the crimes mean prosecutions are unlikely.

Ian West, head of investigations at the RSPB, said: "Because it is a low priority area of crime it doesn't get the resources or funding and there isn't necessarily the understanding in middle or senior police management of how much resource is needed to be put in to make sure it's successful."

Mr West does acknowledge, though, that there are "many competing demands on our police", which is nice of him, but still complains that "wildlife crime is all too often pushed to the back of the queue."

That's a new one, isn't it? Someone having a pop at the Police for not doing enough about something.

You don't have to think hard about other things the Police are routinely accused of not doing enough about, do you? Street robbery, knife crime, rape, burglary, vandalism, gun crime...I suppose they would form part of the "queue" that Ian West is complaining about.

Well, at the risk of being called "uncivilised" by the RSPB, I think I'd prefer to let the Police carry on trying to deal with these sort of offences, rather than trampling over the countryside checking to see if any birds' nests have been tampered with.

Neil Warnock

Football manager and former player.

As a player, for Chesterfield, Rotherham United, Hartlepool United, Scunthorpe United, Aldershot, Barnsley, York City and Crewe Alexandra. As a manager for Gainsborough Trinity, Burton Albion, Scarborough, Notts County, Torquay United, Huddersfield Town, Plymouth Argyle, Oldham Athletic, Bury, Sheffield United and, currently, Crystal Palace.

Warnock is currently in the news because of a disallowed goal in his team's recent match with Bristol City. Well, more accurately, because of his reaction to the fact that the goal was disallowed. And, to be even more accurate, because of his expected reaction.

Although, clearly being bear-baited to react, he never fails to respond as in this clip from The Football League Show in which Manish Bhasin and Steve Claridge's initial smiles are replaced by a sort of professional embarrassment.

The one thing that strikes me about Warnock, apart from the fact that he performs a role previously performed by Ron Atkinson, as a sort of broadsheet jester, is the fact that he's played at eight clubs, managed eleven and never returned to any of them.

Now, what does that tell you?

Tony Blair Faith Foundation

According to its Mission Statement, the "Tony Blair Faith Foundation aims to promote respect and understanding about the world's major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world" although it adds that "religious faith can also be used to divide. We have seen throughout history and today we still see how it can be distorted to fan the flames of hatred and extremism."

We certainly can. In daily reports from around the world, in fact, most recently in Gojra, Pakistan where Muslims attacked Christians, killing eight people, including a child.

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, deplores this, in a statement published on its website two days ago, saying: "the perpetrators of this attack have committed a crime not only against Christians but against Pakistan and beyond even that, against the honor and dignity of Islam."
I wonder if the irony of this comment occurred to its author, since it was an attack against the dignity and honour of Islam that led to the riots in the first place. It often is, I've noticed.

I suppose as long as the Tony Blair Faith Foundation sticks to the sort of noncommittal phrases that can be applied to any religion, there won't be an issue but as soon the talk gets down to the level of what real people are or aren't allowed to do, it's a very different picture.

As a result, I shan't be giving anything to Registered Charity Number 1123243 just yet because I wouldn't like to think of my money being wasted, which I'm afraid it might be. I'd need to see something a bit more tangible first.

Such as Tony popping over to Mecca to explain to the Saudi Arabians the need for Muslims to accept equal rights for women, flying over to Beijing and insisting the Chinese government stops its persecution of Falun Gong followers and, on the way back, arranging a quiet chat with the Pope to explain why he's wrong about homosexuality for a start.

Body Language

Authors Allan and Barbara Pease in "The Definitive Book of Body Language" claim that something like 75% of communication is non-verbal.

They've spent a great deal of time studying body language and developed a lucrative business running courses and publishing books on the subject, so you'd think they'd know.

Allan Pease even calls himself a "body language expert" which suggests he might be capable of all sorts of gymnastic contortions if he has something particularly abstruse to communicate.

But I'd be curious to know how they arrive at this figure. My own opinion is that they're talking absolute bo

Bag for Life

My local supermarket now proclaims that: "A bag is for life - not just one shopping trip."

Now, I don't want to come across as one of those global-warming-is-a-myth bores and I might be accused of being a rancid old cynic, but don't you think the idea of a carrier bag lasting a lifetime is slightly over-optimistic?

Life expectancy in the UK is currently 82 years for women and 77 for men and I would think even NASA would struggle to make a bag that durable.

I was given a free "bag for life" from one supermarket that didn't last as long as the walk to my car before the handle snapped.

Perhaps, "Try and re-use your carrier bags" would be a slightly more appropriate slogan and certainly less delusional.

British Chambers of Commerce

The "national body for a powerful and influential Network of Accredited Chambers of Commerce across the UK" according to its website.

The BCC publishes what it calls a 'Burdens Barometer' and this year has claimed that the cost of business regulations introduced over the last 10 years is £76.81 billion. The list includes workplace safety regulations concerning chemicals, asbestos, biocides and working at height, as well as the corporate manslaughter act.

Their Director General has said:

“Businesses are facing the toughest economic environment for a generation. Company cash flow is being squeezed and unemployment is growing as a result.

“The EU needs to get serious about reducing the massive burden of regulation on business. Cutting unnecessary burdens and announcing a moratorium on new employment law would be an effective way of providing instant and inexpensive help to British firms.”

In other words, legislation that protects people from contracting illnesses doing their job or being killed in the workplace is "a burden."

The Executive Management of the BCC don't look as though they have much to worry about in their workplace, except possibly what to have for lunch, but this depressing article in the excellent Hazards magazine shows exactly why we need these "burdens."

I can suggest a way that businesses can save money, rather than by opposing legislation to prevent people being injured or killed at work: withdraw from the BCC. You can't think its providing value for money for them, can you?

Archbishop-baiting

A phrase coined in an article by the writer David Aaronovitch when referring to the reactions to a recent interview with the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols (as he calls himself) by the smarmy Jonathan Wynne-Jones in the Telegraph.

David Aaronovitch is a very fine writer and his recent book, Voodoo Histories, is absolutely brilliant. It puts some of the most seriously-considered conspiracy theories of the 20th Century into historical context and shows the results of such prejudicial thinking.

The phrase is amusing and Aarnovitch's article is spot-on as well, but don't you think Archbishops wouldn't be baited quite so much if they didn't so routinely spout such utter claptrap, twaddle, codswallop and tosh?

Presumably Vince (as I call him) has done enough research, though, to know that he will need a long list of ridiculous pronouncements on his CV before his eventual elevation to the College of Cardinals.

He's certainly made a good start.

3D Cinema

James Cameron's new 3D film - Avatar - due out later this year is being hyped up in all the usual places.

The Times is certainly doing its bit, of course, since its owned by the same company that's paying for the film: News Corporation:

"This is not your grandparents’ 3-D movies from the 1950s, where the audience wore coloured spectacles to see blurry images of men in rubber monster suits. Avatar is being kept under wraps until August 21 — billed as “Avatar Day” — when 15-minute trailers will begin showing in cinemas around the world.

Though the film’s premiere will not take place until Christmas, some industry executives already say that it could prove as significant as the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer, in which Al Jolson stunned audiences with sound. Others are comparing it with Jurassic Park in 1993 when Steven Spielberg wowed us with the first realistic computer-generated dinosaurs. The most enthusiastic predict that within five years 2-D blockbusters will be dismissed as quaint “flatties”.

Aside from the novelty, pretty much everyone accepts The Jazz Singer was a forgettable film and I'm sure the same claims were being made for 3D films in the fifties as we're hearing now and you will still need to wear coloured spectacles to watch Avatar, anyway.

The emphasis on the technology is the usual Hollywood ploy to distract attention from the banality of the plot which concerns "a war veteran taken to another planet inhabited by a humanoid race with their own language and culture."

That even sounds like the plot of one of those 1950s sci-fi films to me and probably was.

For an industry that has so many people working in it, you'd think Hollywood film makes could manage some new ideas rather than fighting aliens or saving the planet but they never do, they just keep churning out more remakes and more of the same old crud rehashed and repackaged.

So, I'll stick to the flatties, thanks very much, and preferably black and white ones.

Drink-Driving

Driving under the influence of alcohol, which, according to Wikipedia, is a criminal offence in "most countries."

Haven't yet been able to find a country where it is legal, which is probably just as well. You wouldn't fancy going there for a cycling holiday would you?

Nicolay Sorensen, "Director of Policy and Communications" at Alcohol Concern, was speaking on BBC Radio this week about the subject, although he didn't have any particularly interesting policies to communicate so far as I could hear.

The one subject he did mention, though, was the blood alcohol content limit in the UK, because it's higher than many other countries.

In the UK and Ireland, the blood alcohol content limit is 0.08% milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, the same as the USA and Canada. In most other European countries, it's 0.05% or lower.

He made the point that I've hard many times before in these sort of discussions, when he spoke of seeing drink-driving become "socially unacceptable."

So, could someone please tell me exactly when it was socially acceptable?

It never was in my lifetime and I'd be very surprised if it ever was in Mr Sorenson's, who is probably younger than me, anyway. I suspect he's just repeating the phrase because he's heard it so many times before.

Vince Nichols - Part 2

Vince Nichols, now the Archbishop of Westminster, who believes relationships have been weakened by the decline in face-to-face meetings, blaming websites such as Facebook and MySpace, which encourage teenagers to build "transient relationships" that can leave them traumatised and even suicidal when they collapse.

He's been speaking to the Sunday Telegraph following an inquest into the death of 15-year-old Megan Gillan, from Macclesfield, who died from - and this is a quote "a fatal overdose after being bullied on the social networking site Bebo."

Megan Gillan's story is a very sad one, certainly, but she didn't die because of technology. She was bullied because some people were horrible to her. But somehow this obvious fact escapes Nichols. Where is the responsibility attached to the girls who bullied her? He doesn't mention them. Instead he blames the websites, as though it's the fault of the people who did the coding for Bebo, that the poor girl is dead.

Nichols said the internet and mobile phones were "dehumanising" community life, and relationships had been weakened by the decline in face-to-face meetings.

Almost everything that this ridiculous man says is wrong and this is well up to his usual standard, although the apologists, the "religious affairs editors" and so on, will be falling over each other to insist he was right and how every blogger, texter or caller saying otherwise, somehow "proves" that.

Which is the sort of double-think only the religious can maintain with a straight face.

Twitter

BBC2's Newsnight last night featured a report on Twitter, including an interview with the company's CEO, Evan Williams.

Twitter seems to me to be a sort of mass-texting reception service for would-be stalkers and there are a couple of reasons to be dubious about its alleged popularity and usage. First, it isn't really interactive and therefore of little or no interest to younger users i.e. those under 25 and, if it's not popular with them, it's already dying.

Technology popular with younger users tends to be properly interactive: instant messaging, being the most obvious example. The idea of passively receiving and reading messages has a whiff of taking notes at school about it, so it's only ever going to be really enjoyed by the terminally docile.

Secondly, media outlets routinely exaggerate the use of Twitter because it's the perfect format for them (and the sort of people whose influence they most regularly exaggerate). The news can be reduced to a couple of banal headlines and lazy celebrities can summarise their activities in a couple of half-hearted sentences. And both can blithely ignore any responses. Not that many people would respond. Replying to a "tweet" is about as worthwhile as trying to talk back to a recorded message.

The programme tried to make a point by sending tweets to various celebrities, commenting that only one replied. What neither Britney Spears nor Christina Aguilera got back to them? Fancy that! The point they were making (that it's a bit of a waste of time) was belied by the words "Follow Newsnight on Twitter..." appearing on the top right corner of the screen.

The one celebrity who did reply (Jonathan Ross) said that he was away and wouldn't be sending any messages. Now, I'm no technological expert but that sounds pretty much like the sort of Out-of-Office reply you can set up for your e-mail when you're going on holiday or otherwise unavailable rather than an actual reply.

The most famous (and followed) twitter is Stephen Fry, a man I'm very fond of but even he has, apparently, never managed a tweet much more interesting than: "I am stuck in a lift...Hell's teeth. We could be here for hours. Arse, poo and widdle."

Now, if that's the best that Stephen Fry can manage, it's unlikely that Lady GaGa or Fearne Cotton, for instance, are going to have you falling off your chair anytime soon.

Spot the Difference - Women's Dress

What's the difference between Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein and Jackie Roberts?

Well, for a start, one's a reporter in Sudan who also works for the United Nations Mission and the other is an Assistant Chief Constable for Avon and Somerset Constabulary.

Also, Ms Hussein is facing 40 lashes for dressing "indecently" and Ms Roberts isn't.

Lubna al-Hussein and 12 other women were arrested for wearing trousers in a restaurant in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Some of the women pleaded guilty and accepted the punishment of 10 lashes but Ms Hussein refused and contacted her lawyer.

At her hearing, the judge told her that she could have immunity as she works for the UN, but she refused, saying that she wanted to carry on with the trial because it was her intention to try and force a change in the law.

To stand up for her right and the rights of other women in Sudan to wear trousers, at the possible cost of being repeatedly whipped, is very brave and I hope she is given worldwide support and recognition.

Considerably less brave is Jackie Roberts who, commenting on the policy of Avon and Somerset Police to issue female officers with head coverings to be used in places of worship to "improve relations with Muslim communities", said: 'It recognises and respects the cultural and religious practices of our communities. This is a very positive addition to the Avon and Somerset uniform and one which I'm sure will be a welcome item for many of our officers."

The head coverings, which have been issued to 15 officers who work closely with Muslim groups around Bristol and Somerset, can "also be used in other religious settings as a mark of respect, for instance to cover the shoulders of a non-uniformed officer in a church."

I don't think this has much to do with any church. Female Police Officers in Avon & Somerset already have hats, anyway, and wear combat trousers, shirts, jumpers and stab vests and, if they have long hair, pin it up. And I've never seen a Police Officer on duty with bare shoulders.

But, it's a remarkable difference between the two women, isn't it?

Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein is facing a sadistic and vicious assault, masquerading as a punishment, for standing up for her right to wear what she likes and Jackie Roberts believes that her officers will "welcome" on opportunity to cover themselves up by wearing headscarves.

If the dress codes for the Police are now being decided by consultation with the self-appointed leaders of the Muslim "community", then clearly this signals that Police Officers can be bullied and coerced to avoid offending people who will simply not reciprocate by respecting other people's cultural practices.

What happens if somebody insists upon arms being covered or faces? Or objects to female Police Officers entering a Mosque on a Friday? Or if they're having their period or because they're lesbian or even because they're wearing trousers?

I wonder what Lubna al-Hussein would think of it all.

Phil Spector

Record producer currently incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison and "not doing great" according to his publicist, Hal Lifson, though certainly doing a lot better than Lana Clarkson, who was killed by Spector in 2003.

The 68-year-old has complained that he has "virtually nothing to do all day" which is particularly difficult for a man who was always a "highly productive, creative person." He doesn't have even have access to a computer and only recently "got a little TV."

All this information is presumably intended to generate sympathy prior to a possible appeal in 2010. Lifson has also said that Spector was "shaken" by a recent request from fellow convict, Charles Manson, for a musical collaboration.

Manson, who is in another maximum security section of the Corcoran State Prison, contacted Spector via a note handed to a prison guard but is unlikely to get a response, since, as Lifson puts it:

"Phil Spector has been very, very alarmed and scared at the notion of Charles Manson contacting him for any reason. He is very worried that any association be made between himself and Charles Manson."

Well, of course, probably not the best sort of company to keep if you're planning an appeal. Lifson is also quoted as saying, of his client:

"He mentioned that he used to get phone calls from John Lennon and Tina Turner and now it's Charles Manson calling, so he said, 'Go figure'. It was kind of a dark humour comment."

Yes, it probably was. Now, I'm not sure when the last phone call from John Lennon was, but presumably a while ago, since Lennon's been dead for the past twenty-nine years.

He's a difficult to chap to please, though, isn't he? He complains he's got nothing to do all day and when old Charlie Manson makes the effort, he doesn't want to know! You can't win with some people, can you?

You'd think he'd jump at the chance of working with Manson, wouldn't you? After all, they do have quite a bit in common: - the same address for the forseeable future, a shared love of music, they've both been convicted of murder and neither of them have had a coherent thought since the 1960s and probably not that many then, either.

Mononym

A single-word name, historically associated with people of exceptional fame or achievement: Michelangelo, Moliere and Napoleon, for example, but which is now associated with people of exceptional self-importance or smugness: Sting, Bono and Madonna, for more recent examples. The practice is also popular with Brazilian footballers, unsurprisingly.

I've always suspected that "Sting" is one of those self-applied names, partly because the suggested origins are completely implausible (he used to wear a striped yellow and black jumper, being one of the more pathetic) and partly because he probably hated his real name of Gordon and wanted to change it. His mother and father were called Audrey and Ernest, incidentally, rather than Nectar and Buzz.

Sting, like other mononyms, clearly suffers from some sort of Napoleon complex, puffed-up with his own importance, forever dictating to others.

It's particularly ironic that we're lectured on our environment or our selfish lifestyles by these wealthy narcissists as they travel by plane from luxury villas in one continent to penthouse apartments in another.

I suppose, Madonna is at least part of her real name, unlike Bono and, it must be said, that some people are just known by a single name, for reasons of convenience. Oprah and Morrissey, for example, can't be faulted for it at all. Their mononyms are charming and suit them perfectly, partly because they're not megalomaniacs, but mainly because I like them.

Puddle Safari

Driving around after a period of heavy rain looking for puddles to drive through.

This activity started once when I was being encouraged by my children (or encouraged them to encourage me) to drive through a big puddle as fast as I reasonably could. They enjoyed the splash the tyres made and the wall of water at the side of the car.

To go on Puddle Safari is a family entertainment where we go looking for puddles after a long spell of rain. The best spots are usually around industrial estates because of the condition of the roads and the absence of pedestrians.

Extreme Puddle Safaris are the same thing but keeping the windows down.

Odd One Out - Writers

Who is the Odd One Out from the following list:

Jorge Luis Borges

James Joyce

Vladimir Nabokov

George Orwell

Winston Churchill

Yes, of course, it's Winston Churchill, he's the only one on the list to have been Prime Minister. And, if you didn't already know, the only one of them to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This prize is given for outstanding contribution in the field of literature, which doesn't explain why any of the other men listed failed to win the award but perhaps does explain why awards agreed by committee are generally worthless. The Nobel Prize for Literature is a sort of Eurovision Song Contest for the literary and literarily pretentious, where political expediency and nationalistic considerations are as tacitly relevant as literary merit. For example:

The award for "stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination" wasn't for Jorge Luis Borges, as you might've expected, although it sounds like it was written with him in mind, it was for Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The award for "novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today" wasn't for James Joyce. Clearly, the realism of his narrative and universality of his myths weren't accomplished enough for the Nobel committee, it was for William Golding.

The award given "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author" wasn't to Nabokov, it was to Rudyard Kipling.

And it wasn't Orwell who won the award "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented," because he couldn't get an idea across as well as, say, Henri Bergson, could he?

It's noticeable how the political views considered acceptable in authors have changed over the last 100 years. It would be as unlikely for someone holding Rudyard Kipling's political views to win the award in 2005 as it would have been to award it to someone sharing Harold Pinter's in 1907. The one constant is that the views of the commitee are always reactionary.

It's so obvious that the recipients must meet criteria for things other than their writing, that the wording of the citation perhaps could be amended to "an author who has produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, whose political views are acceptable to a broad spectrum of people."

It means you end up giving awards to writers like Pearl Buck rather than Tolstoy, but at least no-one's offended, at least no-one they'd want to risk offending.

Maybe they could add "and who no-one actually reads" as well.

Scott Williams

A former teacher from New Zealand who was crushed to death after climbing into a large wheelie bin and being tipped into a rubbish truck.

Mr Williams, 35, is thought to have climbed into the bin to sleep off an evening's drinking in Brighton. His remains were found at a waste recycling site in nearby Newhaven on Monday morning, soon after the lorry had emptied its load.

One worker at the depot said: 'It is horrendous, a horrible way to go. It looks like he decided to go for a lie down in a skip at some point. Then he was picked up and crushed to death. It's unthinkable.'

The GMB union has called for large wheelie bins to be checked individually before they are emptied into refuse lorries and Brighton and Hove City Council have plans to put stickers on all of its bins to remind people of the dangers.

A friend of Mr Williams said: 'He loved a drink. I just don't know what must have been going through his head to have got into a bin.'

Well, we're never going to know now what was going through his mind, but my guess would be: not a lot. And you'd struggle to convince me that stickers are going to make much of an impression on people drunk enough to climb into wheelie bins.

Perhaps we need to think of a new approach and all take responsibility? We could all check our wheelie bins every morning (especially collection day) for any New Zealanders who may be sleeping in them. We could listen out for the telltale sign of drunken snoring and stand by with the Alka Seltzer.

Even better, perhaps we could all pay for new colour bins - black with a Sliver Fern, perhaps - for any New Zealanders who need somewhere to sleep for the night?

Moon Landings

40 years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, 25% of people polled for Engineering & Technology Magazine in the UK believe the Moon Landings were faked by NASA.

I wonder how many would've believed they were faked in 1969? Hardly anyone, I suspect. I don't suppose anyone would've even thought of asking the question. I'm in the other 75% that believes Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did walk on the moon, as did the other 10 astronauts from the subsequent Apollo missions over the following 3 years.

One of the problems I have with the conspiracy theorists is that they don't really want to know because, having made up their minds, they don't want to be shown to be wrong, so they're curious, but only up to a point.

It's not hugely surprising that Bart Sibrel, one of the most vocal proponents of the moon-hoax theory is in the habit of carrying a bible around with him. He stalks Apollo astronauts, many of them now in their seventies, demanding they admit it was all a lie. Buzz Aldrin, tired of being shouted at and called a "coward" and a "liar," eventually punched him in the face. You can't really blame him, can you? And Marcus Allen has stated that even photographic evidence of debris wouldn't convince him, because it would've been placed there by robots.

When I first came across the Moon landing hoax theory, I was intrigued and questioned what I believed. It began to seem improbable that the landings had happened, looking at some of the evidence that was offered. But, on reading the arguments for and against, I think most of the reasons given for doubting have been convincingly argued against here and here.

My view was confirmed the other evening as I stood in my garden. It was a clear night and the moon seemed low and bright against the dark sky. It didn't really look all that far away at all. I checked up the distance and it's about 240,000 miles - the same as 20 trips from London to Sydney. The idea of travelling there in a rocket, landing and walking around, didn't seem unrealistic at all. In fact, perfectly normal.

But that might have been the Stella.

Business Consulting International

An investment company which, having promised investors returns of between 6% and 13%, now finds itself under investigation by the City of London Police's Fraud Squad.

BCI told clients that the money was being lent to companies in financial difficulties who would be willing to pay high interest repayments and then used other investor's money to pay returns, encouraging further investment: a typical Ponzi scheme, spread by word of mouth among family and "friends".

Police investigations are apparently being hampered by the refusal of many investors to accept they've been defrauded, still trusting the people behind the company.

One thing that always strikes me about these sort of stories, apart from puzzling over the naivety of people who always seem to have more money than I have (i.e. hardly any) is how their motives are always so noble.

No-one investing in these sort of schemes ever seems to do it for more money, do they?

It's always going to be put "in trust" for their grandchildren or to pay for some life-saving operation or for modifying a wheelchair or it was a fund to provide medication for the third world.

If you were saving for a grandchild's future, wouldn't you expect to use some sort of secure long-term plan rather than hand it over to some dodgy "friend" driving around in a brand new Lamborghini?

But, of course, it's not about the money, is it? It's the "betrayal of trust" or so they'd like us to believe.

Personally, I believe it very much is about the money.

Andrew Flintoff

English cricketer who, despite a fairly average average of just over 30 in Test and First Class matches with the ball, and a batting average in both slightly lower, is probably the most popular English cricketer since Ian Botham.

The reasons for this are, in no particular order: his inclination to hit the ball very hard and very far whenever possible, his contribution to the test series victory against Australia in 2005, his match-winning performance at Lord's this month, his ability to somersault the stumps out of the ground, his willingness to risk personal injury to take a catch and his willingness to get drunk, his determination to overcome injuries, Mrs and the little Flintoffs and the image he portrays of a sort of old school cricketer: a decent family man and all round good bloke.

You can't even blame him for the lame nickname (Freddie) and you can only sympathise that his full name is actually Concernsoverhtefitnessof Andrew Flintoff.

Andrew Ibrahim

A 20 year old Bristolian who was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years at Winchester Crown Court on July 17th for "preparing terrorist acts".

The reports of this case all have to say that he is "an ex-public schoolboy" and, as if to underline this non-point, mention the occupation of his father, Nassif Ibrahim, who is a "consultant pathologist at Frenchay Hospital."

And the significance of this is exactly? I'm not sure if there are any records kept of the social background or income brackets of terrorists or would-be terrorists, but I'd put money on Andrew Ibrahim being typical rather than exceptional: fairly well-off parents, turning away from opportunities given, becoming embittered and socially disaffected, turning his self-cultivated grievances into a general loathing of "society."

It's reported that he "admired the 7/7 London suicide bombers" and that he "told friends the 9/11 attacks on America were a justified response for Western aggression" though, looking at him, these friends may have been imaginary; all the photos of him I've seen have the distinct look of ones he's taken of himself.

He stated that Britain was a "toilet" which rather begs the question of what this pathetic tosser saw himself as? Mr Muscle, perhaps, or The Toilet Duck?

I've also read in numerous articles that Ibrahim was first reported to the Police by people who "attended the same mosque", presumably with the intention of expecting the rest of us to be grateful. Do you think that if somebody's actually expecting credit for telling the Police of somebody building explosive devices to randomly kill shoppers...toddlers in pushchairs, pregnant women, anyone unlucky enough to be walking by...then that person probably needs their moral compass re-calibrated? I certainly do.

I would think telling the Police is the absolute minimum any moral person would do. But then I'm an Atheist, and, therefore, as I'm frequently told, have no morals at all.

Spot the Difference - Norwegian Literature

What's the difference between Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson?

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), is considered one of the key figures in the introduction of realism and modernism to the theatre because his plays challenged the accepted conventions of 19th society, principally by questioning the truth behind public appearances. His plays, including such masterpieces as "An Enemy of the People" and "The Wild Duck" are still widely read and performed today and, because of the psychological insights they provide, remain topical. Ibsen was also influential over the greatest literary figure of the 20th Century, James Joyce.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910), wrote the words to the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet" which translates as the less-than-inspiring: "Yes, we love this country."

Now, which one of these almost contemporary Norwegian writers was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903?

Clue: Bjørnson was a founder member of the Nobel Committee and re-elected to it in 1900.

Yes, of course, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson! He was awarded the honour for his "noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit."

Sample verse, translated:


"Norseman in house and cabin,
thank your great God!
The country he wanted to protect,
although things looked dark.
All the fights fathers have fought,
and the mothers have wept,
the Lord has quietly moved
so we won our rights."

You don't get much fresher or inspired than that, do you?

All the same, I don't think I'll be looking up any of his stuff in the library for the time being, thanks, despite (or really because of) the Nobel Prize.

Odd One Out - Oscars

Which of the following is the odd one out?

Danny Boyle
Kevin Costner
Clint Eastwood
Mel Gibson
Alfred Hitchcock

The answer is Alfred Hitchcock, because he's the only one never to have won an Academy Award for Best Director.

Now, doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about the Oscars?

The Dark Side

A phrase that usually means somebody is now doing something they weren't previously doing of which the person using the phrase disapproves.

The trouble is, that the people who say it, always seem to think they're being arch, in some way, or wittily allusive and they never are. They're just Star Wars fans who are annoyed about something.

Now, ask yourself: how annoying is something that annoys a Star Wars fan really going to be?

Stuart Urquhart

A solicitor from Westbury Park in Bristol, was was attacked by a buzzard while jogging in Cornwall.

He said: "I was jogging along a very quiet lane near the river at about 9am when I suddenly felt something on the back of my head. I thought somebody had thrown some heavy sacking or carpet at me but I couldn't see anyone. I carried on a few paces and then saw blood running down me and noticed a buzzard flying off into the trees."

Mr Urquhart suffered three gashes on his scalp from the bird's claws.

Not sure I'd be putting too much work Mr Urquhart's way in the near future. I think you have to question the judgement of a man unable to distinguish between a bird of prey's talons and a heavy carpet.

Anyway, what do you think he did next? Decide to give up jogging for the rest of his holiday, grateful that he wasn't more seriously hurt and go for a pint of Tribute and a pasty, instead? Jog somewhere else?

No, he jogged along exactly the same route, but disguised with a woolly hat. The buzzard wasn't fooled, though. It was lying in wait on a telegraph pole and, on spotting Mr Urquhart, swooped down with its talons out, in spite of the woolly hat.

"I clapped my hands and shouted at it and it flew off but my brother-in-law said it had followed him too when he had been out for a run last week."

Are they sure it was the same buzzard?

"Did yours have feathers and talons and wings and that as well?"

"Yeah, two wings. One on each side. And a beak."

"It must be the same one..."

Does this family have some sort of buzzard-attack fetish? You'd think that his brother-in-law would've mentioned it earlier.

"Wouldn't jog along that quiet lane near the river, Stu. I did and had a buzzard swoop down and have a pop."

"Oh, that doesn't worry me, I'll wear a woolly hat."

When he returned to his holiday cottage, his wife, Jenny, was horrified, thinking he'd been attacked:

"My first thought was to take a picture and then I cleaned him up."

As you do.

You'll be reassured to hear that Mrs Urquhart doesn't work in an A&E Department.

Josh Muszynski

An American, as you could probably guess from his name, who was charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 for a packet of cigarettes.

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," he said on discovering he was 23 quadrillion dollars overdrawn, or at least he did to reporters, slightly later.

More believably, after checking his bank balance, he drove back to the "petrol station" as it's so pointedly put on the BBC news website, only to find out that they "couldn't help."

He then spent two hours on the phone to his bank, the Bank of America, who, apparently, showed little understanding, although they did later correct the error, even waiving the usual $15 overdraft fee, which was nice of them.

Isn't that remarkable? The petrol station "couldn't help" and it still took him two hours on the phone to the bank to sort out the problem and he's been given no explanation. We might be over 3,000 miles apart but it's quite reassuring to see American gas stations and banks provide the same levels of customer service as British petrol stations and banks i.e. virtually none.

I'm surprised the overdraft fee is only $15, though, which must be cheaper than the equivalent fee in the UK. And, although I haven't checked the exchange rate or done any proper sums, I wouldn't be surprised to find that $23 quadrillion is probably cheaper than we pay for a packet of cigarettes as well.

Peter Tatchell

Peter Tatchell is an Australian-born British human rights activist, who began campaigning while still at school, first by supporting the rights of the indigenous Aboriginal population, and then by opposing Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

After moving to London in the early seventies, he began to fight against the discrimination experienced by gay people, from picketing anti-gay pubs and organising demonstrations to visiting East Berlin, a journey that resulted in his being attacked, arrested and then interrogated by the Stasi.

Standing as a candidate for the by-election in Bermondsey in 1983, Tatchell was continually abused, verbally and physically, during the campaign.

This brave man, who first exposed the use of child workers on British-owned tea growing plants in Malawi, and despite numerous death threats, continues to stand up for human rights and often suffers physical harm himself in the process. One demonstration he attended in Moscow, resulted in him suffering facial cuts and bruising.

Perhaps most laudably of all, he has tried several times to arrest the despicable Robert Mugabe, for human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

The first attempt, by ambushing Mugabe's car in London, and trying to perform a citizen's arrest led to Tatchell and his fellow activists being arrested, although all charges against them were later dropped.

A later attempt, in the foyer of a hotel in Brussels, ended more brutally. Tatchell was set upon by Mugabe's psychopathic and thuggish bodyguards who punched and beat the unarmed man to the floor, causing him permanent eye damage.

How typical of the courage of Peter Tatchell to even try to arrest him again.

Now that's what I call heroically reckless.

Bruno

A gay Austrian film character created by Sacha Baron Cohen, and described as almost "heroically reckless" in a review of the film by Genevieve Hassan for the BBC.

Now, I know it's an accepted phenomenon of modern media, that we can be bored by a film before we've even see it, in fact, before it's even released, but this film could win an Academy Award for the Film Causing the Most Boredom Prior to Release, because apart from the tedious stereotyping, and the fact that it's just the wrestling scene in Borat extended into an entire movie, all the situations are so safe and trite.

Of course, Bruno is described as "outrageously camp." Big yawn. Aren't we told that about every gay character? Who, precisely, is actually outraged? I'd be more outraged if someone had created a discreetly gay character, rather than one wearing exactly the same sort of stuff Julian Clary was wearing on stage 30 years ago.

This reckless heroism starts off by showing him bravely trying to sabotage a show in Milan during fashion week. He was probably lucky to get out alive from that terrifying hotbed of homophobic oppression. Imagine a gay man risking his life in Milan! During Fashion week! That must be worth a VC alone.

And, if that wasn't enough, there's a carefully managed and well-guarded tour to Jerusalem and a refugee camp in Lebanon. Then, deciding against the soft option of parading around Riyadh or Tehran in his hot pants, he bravely decides instead to go to the USA. Give him the medal now.

There's also a sort of irritating hypocrisy about the film. The clearest example being the decision to delete the scene with LaToya Jackson for fear of "causing offence". Sorry? Shouldn't that be fear of "losing money" since causing offence is surely the point?

It's just as well Paula Abdul or Ron Paul or any of the other participants don't suffer any family bereavements in the near future, otherwise those sections would also get cut out. There would be nothing left, eventually, but the sight of a 31 year old Cambridge Graduate pretending to be a 19 year old gay Austrian having simulated sex with imaginary people.

Which, you must admit, makes Baron Cohen pretty creepy and compared to, say, Peter Tatchell, not really heroic or reckless at all.

Fastest Growing Religion in the World

I came across this phrase recently in something I was reading and it made an impression on me because it was being applied to the Roman Catholic Church. When I've seen or heard it before, it was usually being claimed for Islam, which, according to some of its more deluded followers, is going to "take over the world."

A short trawl through some resaonable articles on the Internet proves that the statistics can be skewed to support any of this wishful thinking. Credible arguments can be applied for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism or Islam as "the fastest growing religion in the world." It just depends on how and what you measure.

I suspect non-belief is becoming more prevalent than any particular religion, anyway, certainly amongst young people who think for themselves. Though this may be wishful thinking on my part, of course.

It's rather childish, like many aspects of religion, I suppose, this bragging that your team has more supporters than somebody else's team, but I suppose the intention, as always, is to convince the rest of us to join up.

Unfortunately, the arguments for any religion taking over the world are undermined by the inability of its followers to take over each other, let alone the rest of us.

This particularly applies to Christians and Muslims, who are still killing each other because they can't agree on whether Abu Bakr or Ali should have succeeded Muhammed in 632 or whether you should or shouldn't have sold indulgences or church positions in 1517.

So, I won't be worrying too much, just yet, thanks, if it's all the same to you.

Baseball Bats

I've never actually seen anyone playing baseball in this country, although I have in America. I've even seen the Yankee stadium and very impressive it is, too. But in my 47 years I'm still waiting for my first glimpse of someone actually playing the game in the UK. I've seen people playing rounders, though, and even played that myself.

I used to hear the game referred to at work often enough, generally by the sort of berks who used to think saying things like "first base" made them sound sophisticated. Whenever I hear baseball bats themselves referred to, though,it's usually in a news report concerning an attack on somebody:

"He was kicked and punched and struck with a baseball bat" or something like that.

Perhaps they were, in fact, rounders bats, but that doesn't sound quite the same:

"He was kicked and punched and struck with a rounders bat."

I wonder why. Perhaps because we like to imagine violence is something alien to our country? Or maybe the people who carry out these attacks really do use baseball bats, not having time to mark out a diamond and play a proper game because they're too busy bashing each other over the head in stairwells.

So, if you work in a sports shop, be careful of anyone buying a baseball bat (or a rounders bat), in case you show them a sufficient lack of "respect" and then find yourself being confronted by them and half a dozen of their friends at your bus stop.

Alex Bogdanovic

Aлeкca Бoгдaнoвић (Alecsa Bogdanović) or Alex, as he's usually called, is the third best male tennis player in Great Britain.

Born in Serbia, Bogdanovich has the worst men's singles record at Wimbledon ever, having been beaten in the first round this year for the eighth time in succession. Bogdanovich has only been able to compete in the tournament so many times, because he's been given a wild card, although this year was possibly the last time.

Now, if there are 29.9 million men in the UK, and he's the third best, how bad at tennis must the other 29,899,997 be? Pretty bad, in my case, I admit, but what about the other 29,899,996?

To be worse than poor old Alex, they must be absolutely bloody terrible. Always assuming, of course, that they've had an opportunity to actually play the game.

Odd One Out - Tennis

How many of these people have you heard of and why?

Wilfred Baddeley, Norman Brookes, Arthur Gore, Willoughby Hamilton, Andy Murray, Gerald Patterson, Joshua Pim, Ernest Renshaw, William Renshaw and Sidney Wood?

I would guess just Andy Murray, because...well...because he's a tennis player, perhaps?

More precisely, he's the only British tennis player in the list not to have won the Men's Singles title at Wimbledon. All the rest have. But they, having won it (as most players do, in their early twenties) generally retired and took up other careers, and are all probably forgotten, except by their families or tennis statisticians.

Murray who has made a career out of not winning Wimbledon will probably be remembered for much longer. Why?

Perhaps because he fulfills the same role as Timothy Henman: a useful distraction from the fact that British tennis is so incredibly badly managed and so pathetically snobby.

Alcwyn Jenkins

A cricket umpire who was killed during a match in Swansea, as a result of being hit on the head by a ball thrown in from a fielder.

This unfortunate accident is particularly upsetting for his family, of course, but has saddened all of his friends and colleagues in Welsh cricket, especially since Mr Jenkins sounds like a thoroughly decent chap.

The questions I'd like to ask, though, are how many did the batsman actually score from the original shot and were there any overthrows?

The C Word

Meaning the four letter word that refers to the vagina rather than to cancer. I'm not going to spell it out because I try not to include any of George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" in Blagley's.

It's not prudishness. It's just that if I start using the c word or the f word, then some entries would be nothing else but...any about the Saudi royal family, Lloyds TSB, Prince Charles or the Lawn Tennis Association, for starters. It's a sort of self-censorship.

The reason I mention it, is the excuse some people give for not "liking" the word. I don't see how you can't like a word other than because it's difficult to pronounce or spell. Or even type. I'm beginning to slightly resent the word 'regards' because I always seem to type the flipping thing as regrads.

So, can we stop pretending that you can like or dislike certain words as words? It's either the THING the word refers to, or referring to it at all, that you like or dislike. I, for example, like the words beer, payday and early night and very much dislike the words syrup, overdrawn and Andy Murray.

The reason I most hear for disliking it, is that it's a "harsh" word or a "hard" word. As though it's any different from count or Kent, except for the vowel in the middle.

I've never heard anyone say "Can you not say Kent, please? Say the south east county of England, if you must mention it at all."

Cliff Richard - A Private Issue

Cliff Richard has been ordered to knock down a conservatory built at his house in Surrey because he didn't apply for planning permission, which, in the words of his publicist, Bill Latham, is a "private issue" and will "soon be resolved".

There are lots of "private issues" with Cliff Richard. Well, when it suits him, there are.

Of his relationship with his "close companion" John McElynn, Richard has said: "I am sick to death of the media's speculation about it... What business is it of anyone else's what any of us are as individuals?"

None, I suppose, but then why is it any of his if other people want to watch sex scenes in films or on TV programmes? Or watch violence? Personally, I prefer not to see people being shot (although I have absolutely no problem at all watching them do ahem other things) but I don't feel the need to demand cuts and edits to suit my personal preferences or insist that every problem in society or every crime is somehow related to things I don't like. He likes to have his say on these sort of issues, you may have noticed.

Richard seems to believe himself under-appreciated, despite his knighthood, vast personal wealth and property portfolio, which includes a vineyard in Portugal. He has also, oddly, called himself "the most radical rock star there has ever been" and complained that he is often completely overlooked by British musical historians.

He believes he is "radical" because he has not gone down the route of "sex, drugs and alcohol" as though he's the only rock star this applies to. Big yawn. Perhaps someone could remind this ridiculous and pathetically vain man that he's about 35 years too late to claim to be radical because of this.

I would personally question the tag "rock star" anyway, but the fact that he doesn't mention music at all probably gives you a better indication of why he is so often omitted from histories of British music, since his dreary, plagiaristic rubbish is about as radical as The Archers.

Who would've thought a wealthy christian Homosexual self-denier would turn out to be a hypocrite?

Eye-gouging

The pressing or tearing of the eye, which, according to the British Lions scrum half, Mike Phillips, is "not very nice."

Speaking of an incident involving Schalk Burger and Luke Fitzgerald, during the Lions match against South Africa, Phillips said afterwards, with remarkable understatement:

"Well, I don't think eye-gouging is in the rule books. When you eye-gouge someone, it's not very nice at all."

It's certainly not in the rule book for rugby and has meant an eight week ban for Burger.

But there is at least one country where it very much is in the rule book. In fact, it's a recognised and approved punishment. Guess where you'd have to be, to have that happen to you?

Saudi Arabia, you won't be surprised to hear, where it can be carried out on behalf of the state, along with beheading, cutting off hands or, for minor infringements, just being whipped over a period of several months.

Now, that's not very nice.

Stop and Search

According to Lord Carlile, the police are making unjustified searches of white members of the public to racially balance the stop-and-search statistics. This, apparently, is "an invasion of civil liberty" and "almost certainly unlawful."

They can't win, can they?

Because the police are routinely criticised for racially targeting specific groups: Asians over suspected terrorist related activities or black males because of knife crime, as topical examples, they're hardly to be blamed if they stop and search white people, as well, are they?

The police don't actually make the laws, you know. They just get slated when they don't enforce them. Well, and when they do.

John Ensign

Republican senator for Nevada, evangelical Christian and member of the Promise Keepers, an international Christian organisation that is "committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity...building strong marriages and families through love, protection and Biblical values."

Ensign has said "Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded....marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation."

He showed his commitment to such principles earlier in his career by demanding President Clinton resign over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, saying that the President was "a disgrace" and had "no credibility left."

So, what do you think he's been doing then, in between picking on gay people (he opposes same-sex marriage, of course) and going to church?

In a statement on June 16, 2009, Ensign admitted he had an extramarital affair between December 2007 and August 2008 with Cynthia Hampton, from his campaign staff. His wife, Darlene said, on the same day, "Since we found out last year we have worked through the situation and we have come to a reconciliation."

That "we" is interesting, since he presumably "found out" himself slightly earlier, surely? Like when he was actually doing it?

Unfortunately, it's not quite so easy for the Hampton family, though. Cynthia's husband, Doug, has stated, to a reporter:

"The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles", adding, opportunistically, that "I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family."

Good luck, then!

But it's always the way, isn't it? The more someone squawks about their "commitment" to their family and the "sanctity" of their marriage, the more you'd better check their phone calls and bank statements. If they boast about their church-going, as well, "There's only one person ah love more than mah wife and that's our Lord Jesus Christ" you might as well just start the divorce proceedings.

Unless, like Darlene Ensign, you prefer the doormat option.

Shakey - Neil Young's Biography

This book by Jimmy McDonough is easily the most enjoyable and entertaining biography of a musician I've read.

It's a great biography because, like all great biographies, it reflects upon the subject and, not only is Neil Young a fascinating man because of his quirky individuality and endless creativity, the other people in his life are so interesting, too. His producer, David Briggs, Elliot Roberts, Jack Nitzsche and his mother, Rassy, are all spiky and forthright, when speaking to McDonough.

This is a book full of laughs and insights into his life, his music and his relationships, perfectly weighted, perfectly paced, at times honest and very moving, and at other times sardonically dismissive. It is brilliant.

Neil Young always seems to divide opinion, perhaps wilfully so, he is considered by many people, including me, as the greatest singer and songwriter of the last 50 years, along with Dylan.

Others feel differently, such as my son, Tommy, whose view is that: "Neil Young is a stupid poo head."

Slavery

Slavery is the state or condition of being a slave, and a slave is a person "owned" by another and having no freedom of action.

Slavery has probably existed for as long as there have been disparities in human strength, power or wealth, and the subject of slavery, specifically: the financial benefits some groups have achieved at the expense of other, enslaved, groups is widely taught in schools.

All my children have studied slavery in school. They've studied it under the subject banner of 'history' rather than the more accurate one of 'current affairs', since there are more slaves in the world today than ever. This may be because modern day slavery is considered too complex a subject for children to study, or perhaps, that it doesn't so easily fit into a view of the world held by many of the people who decide the curriculum.

It shouldn't be "studied" at all, of course, except where it can explain and change people's lives today. It should really be reported on, counteracted, opposed and campaigned against at every possible opportunity.

And yet, for all the apologies, commemorative speeches, demands for reparation and dedicated museums, I have never seen a single march or demonstration against slavery.

Esther Stanford of the Society of Black Lawyers and a member of a reparations campaign, has said:

"We may have seen the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade many years ago, but Africa remains totally dependent on the former colonial powers. It still does not have self-determination."

What it still does have, though, are slaves. African slaves enslaved by African "owners."

Organisations such as Anti Slavery and Free the Slaves should be supported in their campaigns to bring the reality of modern slavery to worldwide attention and to try to end it for everyone.

Mia Farrow

American actress who recently went on hunger strike to draw attention to the expulsion of aid agencies from Darfur and then abandoned it after 12 days on the advice of her doctor, thus drawing considerably more attention to herself and virtually none to anyone living or dying in Darfur.

Hobby

"An activity pursued in spare time for pleasure or relaxation."

So, putting down "family" or "my children" as a hobby, presumably with the intention of impressing others, completely misses the point.

In fact, it's a bit creepy and tends to have the opposite effect, since, as spare time means time that isn't spent looking after your children or working and so on (things most people regard as key parts of their lives), it's what you do in the time that's left; they must either be so staggeringly uninteresting that they do absolutely nothing else at all or are trying to cover up something.

Perhaps they're horribly selfish, and are trying to convince themselves they're not, or possibly routinely adulterous and trying to cover up their guilt. Or it may just be that they have some deeply unpleasant personal habits.

I generally put 'reading', but then, I'm not hiding anything!

Regressive Playground Syndrome

Regressive Playground Syndrome, or RPS, is a psychological disorder, which affects a small number of adults, causing them to behave in ways usually associated with young children.

Typically this will mean exaggerating the quality and quantity of one's personal possessions, excessive bragging over one's attributes and achievements and a tendency to form and disband friendship pacts at short notice, often over reported slights.

Although understandable in the very young, it can be quite disturbing listening to a man in his fifties telling you how much faster his car is, how much more academically gifted his children are, how much better value his holiday was or insisting that he's never going to speak to so and so again "after the way he spoke to me last time."

Medical advice is to listen politely and walk away at a suitable moment. It is not recommended to contradict or challenge what you hear, as this can lead to sulking, and many sufferers will get angry very quickly. They might even tell Miss on you.

Package Holiday

A holiday, usually arranged by a third party, which includes transportation and accommodation in the price. A brilliant and convenient idea, you might think. I certainly do.

There are some people, though, who feel obliged to sneer at them. They do this because they're snobs. There's no other reason. These people will toss on about why they "prefer to book independently" and give you a load of spurious reasons, but they're all lies. They're just feeble snobs and the giveaway is that the advantages to booking holidays this way are always the real reasons the snobs look down on them.

A couple of examples.

I like arriving at the airport and looking for the pre-arranged coach. It's so convenient. The driver knows the way to wherever you're staying. You don't have to look around for a taxi. You've already paid. Your luggage is stored underneath. Great.

But to the snobs, of course, this means they're going to be like other people. They want to believe they're different. They think they're adventurers! As though forcing a local taxi driver to find some obscure little place at the other end of the island, printed off Google Maps, makes them Mr & Mrs Marco Polo.

Also, I like the first few days by the pool, as well. I look forward to meeting people with similar backgrounds from different parts of this and other countries, all enjoying their holidays and, with any luck, similarly aged-children. It's very pleasant to have a drink in the evening with people you've met for the first time, have a chat about which restaurants you have or haven't tried, which trips are worth doing. Children certainly enjoy themselves more with other children.

But to the snobs, of course, this is all terrible! First, they can't have the total domination they want at all times over their children: "Darling, that little boy's giving Oliver some of his crisps" and again, it shatters their self-illusion of being unique when they find out they're like so many other people.

But there is a difference, of course, which is that the "other people" are friendlier and much, much happier.

Tesco - A Spokesman Says

Responding to a complaint that they were selling a book about the revolting Josef Friztl in a section of suggested presents for Fathers Day, a Tesco spokesman said:

"It's a book about a true crime and fathers and people in general are interested in things like this, books about the war, serial killers etc. It's not a vulgar or grotesque book. It's a serious book about a very serious crime. It would be touching on censorship if we removed it. Where would we draw the line? Would you like us to go through every DVD we sell removing those that some may find offensive? Tesco are comfortable selling this book. Crime fiction and non-fiction are very popular. This was a high-profile case that occurred in recent times. I wouldn't be comfortable buying it as a Father's Day gift, but I wouldn't want to tell other people not to. No-one is being forced to buy it."

Which is a very sensible and fair-minded statement, does great credit to the person who made it, and can't be improved upon. But, of course, it can't end there, can it? Not when the moral bullies are cornering you.

According to this judgemental report in the online Daily Telegraph, Tesco later changed its policy.

“It was never our intention to cause offence to any of our customers. It was placed there by mistake and has been removed," a spokesman said

Of course they didn't "intend" to cause offence. The intention was to suggest a book that someone's dad might be interested in reading.

I wonder if the pathetic woman "who asked to remain anonymous" sniffed over every book in the section to make sure all of the characters mentioned were "appropriate." Did she check that all the usual selection of spies, cricketers and motor-racing drivers were good dads? Perhaps if they're just garroting baddies or having it off with mysterious brunettes, they're OK.

Tesco won't stop selling the book, nor should they, nor will they stop selling it on Fathers Day, they'll just move it to a different section, which achieves absolutely nothing except caving in to the phoney offended feelings of people like the woman "who asked to remain anonymous."

I wonder what her dad will be getting for Fathers day? A lecture, I suppose.

Peter Grant

Scottish footballer and now coach at Celtic who has explained why Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic are not going to be playing in the English Premier League.

He's told the Daily Record: "I can tell you why they don't want the Old Firm in England. It's because two of the current top four would lose their places to them. If Celtic and Rangers were in the Premier League, they could attract anybody. They could attract the players Man United attract, there's no doubt in my mind about that, because of their fan base and their renown throughout the world. I've been down there for 13 years so I'm not talking blind about that. It's a fact."

Not quite sure how playing for Bournemouth or unsuccessfully managing Norwich helps make it a fact, but there you go. The top four English clubs don't want Celtic or Rangers because they'll be too good.

Of course. That must be why. That must also be the reason Celtic and Rangers have performed so successfully in the Champions League.

As they seem so desperate to get out of Scotland and the top English Premier league clubs are obviously terrified, perhaps they could approach La Liga or Serie A instead? Although, as that would clearly mean knocking Barcelona, Real Madrid and the Milan teams out of contention, those clubs may also object.

Failing that, perhaps they could try Norway's Premier League, the Tippeligaen? It's a bit closer, after all, and it's probably a lot easier to get to Bergen or Stavanger than London.

Stab Vest

A protective, reinforced tabard worn by Police Officers to protect them from being knifed or shot, whilst on duty.

Unfortunately it is ineffective against being stabbed in the back by promotion-chasing colleagues.

Social Networking Site

An online community of people with similar interests, if you didn't know.

But, of course, you did know, didn't you? And I know. In fact, virtually everybody knows.

The BBC and the more condescending newspapers, however, still feel compelled to write "social networking site, Facebook" or "Twitter, the social networking site" whenever they mention these websites. They might just as usefully write, "Printed Daily Newspaper The Times" or "The Daily Mirror, the Printed Daily Newspaper."

Besides, if you didn't know what Facebook or Bebo were, you're hardly likely to know what the phrase "Social Networking Site" means anyway, are you? Or care.

Digital Capital of the World

You might have thought the Digital Capital of the World would be Japan or Hong Kong, but it's Britain, apparently. Or at least it will be, according to Gordon Brown: "Britain's going to lead the world. This is us taking the next step into the future, being the digital capital of the world, making the necessary investment."

Try not to laugh. I'm puzzled why the Prime Minister feels compelled to make these statements. It's like he's talking about the country as if it was some giant branch of Curry's.

Anyway, we all know it can't happen, won't happen and doesn't even need to happen. First, nobody is going to spend the sort of money necessary. And, well...because of that, there doesn't really need to be a second.

Baby Showers

According to numerous websites, baby showers have long been a tradition in the USA, and are increasing in popularity in the UK as well.

It just so happens, however, that the sort of websites making this ridiculous claim are flogging baby stuff (fancy that, eh!) so this might be one of those statements where truth meets advertising.

In fact, they were hardly heard of anywhere (including the USA) until fairly recently, but it's one of those pseudo-traditions that some people like to pretend have always been around, so forgive yourself if you didn't know what they were. My wife and I didn't, and we have seven babies between us, nor did a number of other people I asked. But I don't suppose we'll be able to have that excuse for much longer, not now that people realise there's money to be made.

A key element, though, in fact it's the only important element, as far as I can see, is the "showering" of gifts on the mother-to-be and her baby. Some suggest playing games, such as "Guess the mother's stomach size", "How many baby items can you name?" and possibly "Which of these women would you most want to run over in the driveway?"

One website claims that "baby showers are hosted by a female friend of the family, and not by the mother-to-be herself, her own mother or mother-in-law: that would make the expectation of gifts seem greedy."

Really? Greedy? Who'd have thought that? So, expecting even more presents, and even more fuss being made of her, is not greedy if one of her friends hosts it then?

Well it is greedy, no matter who hosts it. And it isn't a tradition, so don't pretend it is, it's tosh.

Ian Jenkins

A recovering drug addict from Abbeymead, Glos, who was jailed for eight months in Bristol Crown Court this month for lending money to alcoholics and drug addicts and charging exorbitant interest rates, if the repayments weren't made.

Right. And the difference between him and Lloyds TSB or HSBC would be, exactly?

Jenkins lent them the cash to finance their habits and then took the money directly from their accounts. In one case, a drug addict who was loaned £106 had rolling daily interest of 30%, which worked out at eight million per cent annually if the debt was not settled.

According to my calculations that compares quite favourably with HSBC and is actually cheaper than Lloyds TSB.

National Trust

Although the National Trust was founded to preserve "for the benefit of the Nation...lands and buildings of beauty or historic interest", enjoys the financial benefits of charitable status and has profited from the generosity of benefactors, it has become, over the years, a textbook example of English snootiness, whilst pretending to be something else.

Considering they have the less than onerous task of preserving land in its natural state and that a large majority of the buildings they're responsible for, are ruins anyway, the running costs are minimal. But of course that can't be reflected in the prices, can it?

From charging rip-off entry charges, even to children, and running ridiculously pretentious gift shops (hand-stitched oven warmer for £25 anyone?) the intention is always to snobbily exclude poorer people, especially families.

If you fancy a drink or a snack, you'd struggle to find a mug of tea for yourself or a reasonably priced glass of squash for your children in any of these stuck-up places, or even an ice cream. Instead you'll be offered an entire pot of tea, tossy organic fruit juice (costing the same as a couple of cartons elsewhere) and some locally made elderflower and dandelion ice cream in a pot the size of a thimble. The whole lot costing half of many family's food budget for a week.

Quite how the "nation" benefits from this, is unclear. But, of course, the people who run the National Trust, don't run it for the nation at all, they run it for themselves and people like themselves: horrible little insecure self-hating snobs who are tweedy, weedy and greedy.

Middle Class Diaspora

The scattering of the middle classes, generally as a result of education or work, who seem to think that people spending all their lives in the city in which they were born are to be sneered at because of it. Why?

The only explanation I can think of is that they think, by contrast, that they're early 19th century aristocrats on some sort of Grand Tour: six months in Paris, a year in Naples, then Heidelberg studying Medieval German, followed by a bit of archeology in Egypt.

But, of course, they're not. Just because you go to University a couple of hours drive from where your parents live and stay there to work when you've finished your degree, doesn't make you Lord Byron. And thinking there's anything risible with living, working, marrying and dying, all in the same post code, reveals some deep insecurities. There really isn't.

Spite Bars

The bars put across public benches to prevent people from lying down and sleeping on them.

The benches in the middle of Broadmead Shopping Centre in Bristol have been built with spite bars, meaning someone in Bristol City Council thought this was a good thing and approved public money being spent on a design that is just simply spiteful.

This is the organisation that obsessively puts up signs warning of the terrible consequences of directing racist, sexist or homophobic abuse to its staff, as though its standing up for them, yet reveals its true nature by the construction of these benches: picking on drug addicts, alcoholics and the homeless.

In another area of Bristol, the benches were replaced by single seats that even have arm rests, looking utterly ridiculous, as though set up for a series of chat shows, just so that no-one can lie down on them.

The unfortunates who used to sleep on them, now sleep on the patches of grass nearby. I suppose, before long, Bristol City Council will be putting metal spikes in the grass.

God's Own Country

A phrase used to describe an area, considered by some of the people who live there, as being superior to other areas, where they don't live.

Really. That's it. It's that simple. In other words: the part of the world I come from is better than the part of the world you come from. A great example of Regressive Playground Syndrome.

In England, the term is most regularly used to describe Yorkshire, for reasons that have nothing to do with any "superiority" of the county itself but absolutely everything to do with the mentality of the people who use this pitiful expression.

Other areas of the United Kingdom affected with this sort of regional Chauvinism include Wales, Newcastle and most of Scotland, although, interestingly, I've never heard anyone from London or Glasgow claim that theirs is the greatest city in England or Scotland, perhaps because they believe it so self-evidently is.

Other cities and areas that feel no need to brag in this tiresome way are Manchester, the Lake District, Cornwall, Birmingham or Dorset, at least not in my experience.

Incidentally, the word Chauvinism comes from the fictitious Nicolas Chauvin, a "soldier" renowned for his slavish devotion to Napoleon, which is an interesting coincidence, since claims of greatness attributable to the non-existent, perhaps shouldn't be taken too seriously, or even taken at all.

Tony Adams

Football manager and former player. Well, former manager too, if we're being picky.

Despite a managerial career that is spectacularly undistinguished, Adams' confidence in his abilities remains high, since he recently put himself forward for the vacancy at Celtic. Whereas Celtic have stated that they want to speak to Tony Mowbray, currently manager at West Bromwich Albion, Tony Adams wants Celtic to want to speak to him, which they don't appear particularly keen to do, perhaps understandably.

Adams claimed that "at Celtic you have a 50% chance of winning something", though that would presumably depend on the manager's selection of players, tactical knowledge and motivational skills rather than just, say, turning up. So, probably a lot lower than 50% with Tony in charge.

Fortunately for the club, though not for their rivals, this appears unlikely, leaving Adams free to cultivate his other talents: laughing inexplicably in the middle of sentences, looking disturbed, and projecting the image of a man who has stopped drinking but still remembers why he started in the first place.

Door Rage

A new phenomenon where someone who is denied entry to a restricted building, generally because their identity pass (or something similar) isn't valid, reacts with an unseemly tantrum.

To most people, a situation like this, which only causes mild inconvenience, after all, would be met with wry humour. To some people, though, or, more specifically, some men, this is an excuse for furious raging and ranting.

They react like that because they take themselves so seriously and expect not only everyone else to do the same, but everything, even inanimate objects, such is their level of puffed-up self-importance. That other people don't take them seriously, of course, is precisely because they react with babyish petulance at the slightest provocation, much to the embarrassment of bystanders; all of whom are thinking the same thing at the same time, namely: Grow up, mate.

Maldives

Archipelago in the Indian Ocean and one of the benchmark holiday destinations for snobs.

What attracts them is the fact that it's a long way away and some people won't know where it is since there is absolutely nothing worth seeing or doing once you get there, apart from lying on the beach, swimming, and being waited on by underpaid people from the Indian subcontinent, all of which could be done a lot closer to home.

Almost everyone who's gone there has used some sort of package holiday but thinks that, because they've booked it on the internet (wow!) and are using a company called Trailtrekkers or something, that they're travelling independently. They're not. But they reveal so much of their snobbish little minds by thinking that way.

Yorkshireness

Michael Parkinson once said of fellow Yorkshireman, cricketer David Bairstow, that: "He personifies the best virtues of Yorkshireness - he doesn't give a toss for reputation, fights back when cornered and doesn't even contemplate defeat."

Which is odd considering the very same Michael Parkinson has threatened to sue his cousin, Malcolm Tonge, for publishing a booklet of family history, in which he describes Parkinson's father, Jack, as: "bombastic, ignorant, arrogant, interfering, grumpy, selfish and moneygrabbing."

Imagine a man from Yorkshire being any of those things!

Parkinson has been quoted as saying: 'If anything is published I will sue. As for him (Malcolm), I'm very angry. He will have a letter sent to him from me and my solicitor shortly. It's not even worth commenting on, it's so obscenely wrong. The stuff about my father was very wrong. For them to say these things about him only displays their deep and utter jealousy.'

So what happened to not giving "a toss for reputation" then?

Does that mean that Jack Parkinson wasn't from Yorkshire or that his son is a little bit hypocritical, perhaps?

For a man who so proudly proclaims his "Yorkshireness" (from his home in Berkshire) and has spent a great deal of his career squirming sycophantically before the rich and famous, I suspect it's probably the latter.

Dress Down Friday

The silly name for the silly habit of wearing suits and ties to work from Monday to Thursday, and then coming in on Friday looking like you're going on holiday.

It's so forced, like most of these contrived habits. Nobody seems sure where the trend began, but it appears to have started in several places at roughly the same time, like some sort of epidemic of bad taste.

The worst aspect of it all, of course, is the distressing sight of paunchy middle-aged men trying to look like teenagers. They're obviously trying to project an image, but an image is about more than simply the clothes you wear, and some of them haven't quite grasped that.

Perhaps Burton or Topman could start putting recommended ages for their t shirts, since a large percentage of men appear to have absolutely no idea how they look:

Suggested age range 18 - 22 / Suggested build: slim

This might help. Laughing at them might also do the trick.

Remember: there is nothing wrong with looking your age. It's what you are. Be comfortable with yourself.

Adam and Steve

"Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" is the boringly familiar phrase still heard from the mouths and placards of the chronically feeble-minded, to decry gay people.

The phrase is credited with being popularised by the revolting Jerry Falwell, so it's worth considering that using this phrase aligns people, however tenuously, with that disgusting cretin.

I often wonder whether the people who use it (recently it featured on placards held up by members of the Zion Baptist Church protesting against the appointment of an openly gay minister) believe that it's humorous? The sourness of their facial expressions suggests they possibly don't:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8065563.stm

If you punctuate the sign with a full stop after the not, as I always try to, then it seems much kinder:

ADAM AND EVE NOT.

ADAM AND STEVE

Much nicer. Also, have a look at the two pictures and ask yourself, who would you rather spend the evening with: Scott Rennie or the two women?

Imaginatively Titled

"Imaginatively titled" is always used ironically, in my experience, and usually where irony is unwarranted.

Consider: "I was reading a book about the Black Death, imaginatively titled The Black Death."

As the book is about the Black Death, which is a vivid enough term, anyway, you might think there's not much wrong with the title, even that it helps the reader understand what the book's about, rather than calling it something arch like "Buboes, Boils and Bodies" or portentous, such as: "The End Of Everything."

So...I was reading Bill Bryson's African Diary, usefully titled "African Diary"...

Brain Freezer

A brain teaser that is absolutely rubbish and which inevitably leads you to resent the time you've spent trying to work it out; generally distinguished from a good brain teaser by the absence of key pieces of information.

Because there are only a small number of these types of puzzle possible, the majority are just variations on the same theme, which inevitably means that compilers of puzzle magazines and desktop calendars, for example, run out of ideas after about mid January and therefore create their own variants, believing they're coming up with unique and original puzzles, which they're not.

A brain freezer is not the same thing as a trick question, however, since these instead are often ingeniously worded to carefully trip up the complacent, rather than just being pathetic.

Mickey Mouse

As an adjective, "Mickey Mouse" means trivial or inferior, though it's unclear why this should be.

As a logo, it's one of the most recognisable in the world, possibly the most recognisable. As a cartoon character, he's been around, in one form or another, for over eighty years and he's far less irritating than many other cartoon characters. In fact, he appears to have none of the contrived quirks and carefully studied mannerisms most of them have. So why does it mean 'trivial' or 'inferior'?

The only explanation I can think of is that he's an absolutely rubbish-looking mouse. He's got a round head for a start. Who's ever seen a mouse with a round head? They've got pointy heads. He also grins incessantly and I have never met a mouse who appears to have any sense of humour, or enormous yellow clogs.

Well. not yet , anyway.

Music

"Rhythmic, harmonic or melodic sounds created by vocal, instrumental or mechanical means."

Although music had probably existed throughout human history and been enjoyed by people of all cultures and of all ages, it was callously and tragically killed in 1982 as a result of home taping.

The brutal murder was carried out by teenagers, who recorded songs from their radios onto portable cassette players so they could "listen to them again."

To this day, none of the killers responsible for the murder have ever been brought to justice.

Gina Lollobrigida

Italian actress, now in her eighties, who recently claimed that she was "like an icon, a legend, and even now if I got to the most remote place in the world they recognise me."

Living in a house in Rome, surrounded by thousands of pictures and sculptures of herself, she dismissed claims that she feuded with other actresses: "I had no rivals because I was number one all over Europe."

Even Marilyn Monroe once told her that she couldn't sleep the night before meeting her because she was "so afraid, so in awe."

She's also been quoted as saying: "All my life, I've had too many admirers."

I know it all makes her sound like Norma Desmond, but you must admit, looking at the evidence, she's got a point:

Gina Lollobrigida

Gina

La Lolla

Lollobrigida

Luigina

You can't really be accused of vanity when you look like that, can you? If anything, I'd say she was probably overly self-critical.

Arguably

Something which can be disputed. So that means anything, then, doesn't it?

I've heard, on a Radio programme recently, that Liverpool FC are "arguably" one of the best football clubs in the country and read, in an article about some poncey furniture, that a chair which, as it can also double as a sculpture, "arguably" justifies its price tag (of over £300,000).

Well, yes and no, in these examples. It would be interesting to hear someone argue that Liverpool aren't one of the best football clubs in the country or that the chair is worth over £300,000.

Other statements I suggest that would be equally difficult to argue against convincingly:

Ringo Starr was arguably the least talented of The Beatles.

Tim Henman arguably underachieved during his tennis career.

Some MPs are arguably guilty of exploiting the rules on parliamentary expenses for personal gain.