By Heck As Like!

I read a news story this morning about the search for 'crazed gunman' Raoul Moat, in which the police, described Mr Moat as having "a Northern accent".

Now, I'm only an ignorant southerner, whose attempts at accents from Cheshire to Sunderland all come out as 'generic Northern', but surely this identification advice from the police is next to useless.

First of all, if a wild-eyed, crazy man jumps out and points a gun at you, I think the best tactic would be to duck, run or pray. You're not going to say "hold on, old chap, can you just say something so I can ascertain your geographical origins".

Secondly, if Moat is elsewhere in the country, trying to blend in (maybe he's wearing a wig, or a Groucho moustache) and he asks you directions, you're not going to know whether it's him or not, are you? "Northern accent"? That's too vague. OK, I guess from the news footage that the guy might be a Geordie. And those in the know can probably discern a Newcastle accent from a Sunderland or Durham or Darlington twang. But for all we know, he lives in the north-east, but was actually brought up in Manchester, or Liverpool, or the Lake District.

Thinking about it, from where I live, a rural Berkshire accent (yes, there is one) counts as "northern".

So - be careful Northerners. Because of the police's slapdash advice, you might be fingered as a crazed gunman at any second. I expect to read reports of Stuart Maconie, Ian MacMillan, David 'Bumble' Lloyd and the Big Brother voice-over man being hauled in for questioning...

PS - Raoul is a funny name for a gunman, isn't it? "Raoul". It brings to mind a camp maitre'd in a Californian restaurant rather than a burly, homicidal maniac. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course!

Science in Buckets

Here's a story from NASA about discovering water on the moon:

In it, there is this quote:

One researcher described this as the equivalent of "a dozen two-gallon buckets" of water.

So, that's 24 gallons then, is it? Now, to me, that's not very helpful. For a start, who imagines quantities of water in terms of two-gallon buckets? Not me. I've no idea of the capacity of any of the buckets in our household. Even if I did, the chances are that they would be measure in Imperial gallons (~4.5 litres) as that's what we use in the UK. American buckets (as used by NASA when carrying rocket fuel to the space shuttle) are measured in US gallons, which at around 3.8 litres are around 15% smaller.

I would have thought that it would have been sensible to have released these figures using an internationally recognised and agreed scale of measurements. If only there was one which the scientific community had agreed on which NASA could have used...

CSI Kindergarten

Pupils from Marwood Infant School's top forensic science class comb the area for evidence after Pudsey Bear met a tragic end, having plunged from the gymnasium roof.

Mr Pudsey's body was taken away for examination by the headmaster, Quincy M.E., and his crack team of junior medical examiners from Year 3. The post-mortem results are expected after music & movement (period 7), but before storytime (period 9). The autopsy findings will be posted on the Fimbles notice-board, next to the tuck shop.

ReTARDIS

Hmmm... Russell Brand resigns from Radio 2 on the same day that David Tennant announces he's stepping down as Doctor Who. No coincidence there, surely! I reckon that in 2010 the skinny, shock-haired Doctor will be shagging all the pretty lady daleks and then phoning Davros to boast about it.

Pour Me Another

Home Secretary Jackie Smith (wasn't she one of the original Charlie's Angels?) has been spouting off like an ignorant tabloid-reading, middle-England, red-faced ranter in today's Guardian:

But Smith also warned parents that they had a responsibility, saying that nearly half of the alcohol obtained by young people appeared to come from the family home: "The idea that you can hand your kids a six-pack of lager and tell them to disappear off for the evening - with no thought to consequences -is frankly baffling to me," she said, urging the police to make greater use of parenting contracts in the most persistent cases.

Now, I know that there is an underage drinking problem in this country. I don't know exactly how bad it is - probably not as bad as the newspapers make out. But you would expect politicians not to contribute to the wailing and caterwauling that we get from the media, wouldn't you?

What does the survey actually report? Well, we don't really know because the results aren't due to be published until "later this month", but if the Guardian story is accurate it will show that "more than half of 13-year olds have drunk alcohol" [my emphasis].

Not "more than half of 13-year olds are binge-drinking, hoodie wearing troublemakers". No. "have drunk alcohol" it says. So while this counts the noisy, obnoxious minority who knock back Tennants Extra in the precinct, it also counts well-behaved, nicely brought-up kids whose parents are responsibly (and perfectly legally) teaching them to appreciate and respect alcohol by giving them, for example, a very small glass of wine with a meal on special occasions. You know, just like you and I and most of the rest of us.

Of course, Ms Smith needs to get her headlines, doesn't she. Politicians can't just stick to facts nowadays, can they? Silly cow!

New Labour v. The Psychic Tory Assassin

I note that my dear old friend, school-chum and sometime conker adversary, Richard McKenzie, is taking another step up the political ladder. Currently a Labour councillor on Reading city council, he has now been selected as the Labour candidate for Henley-Upon-Thames, currently the seat of the mad-haired Boris Johnson.

Henley is a staunch Tory constituency, so I have more chance of being elected President of Burkina Faso, with Winona Ryder as my first lady, than Richard has of winning the election - whenever it happens.

That said, Boris does have distractions. He's currently running for Mayor of London. I'm not sure how a person can be the MP for one town and Mayor of somewhere completely different. I would have thought that's a HUGE amount to take on with various conflicts of interest, and one of those jobs will get neglected. So, if he does get to be Mayor, maybe Rich will get to be MP for Henley after all?

There's another secret which Boris isn't telling anyone about, though there are hints in his blog. If you read his entry from Jan 10th this year, you will see that he casually mentions Edmund Hillary. The next day, Hillary died! Obviously Boris is some sort of psychic assassin, using his blog to focus negative energy against the enemies of the Tory party. I can only imagine that Hillary, as a Kiwi, got in the way of Tory claims that Britain conquered Everest, so he had to be disposed of.

Once we can gather more evidence and get Boris incarcerated for his felonious psycho-kinetic escapades the way will be clear for the Labour party to overrun Henley. Hoorah!

NB: I am not related to Cllr McKenzie, nor am I associated with his campaign, nor with the Labour Party. All allegations above are satirical, unless proven otherwise...

Why Is This News?

Apparently a private school in Brighton is teaching pupils basic etiquette and table manners.

Which is fine. But I don't understand why it is news!

I'm pretty sure that by the time I was, oh, 5 years old I knew that the knife went on the right, the fork on the left and the spoon at the top, because we ate meals at home and we used cutlery to eat it. We didn't have servants, or tablecloths (not every day), nor grand 8-course dinners, but you don't need that to learn how to lay a table, do you?

OK, nowadays lots of people eat convenience foods and TV dinners and take-aways, but surely not so many that even in a posh school for spoiled brats whose parents are rolling in it need teaching about cutlery?

When I was at school, admittedly over 25 years ago now, Home Economics was a mandatory subject at age 12 or 13, or so. In that class we learned how to make simple cooked meals, how to wash-up, how to iron shirts, etc, etc. Just in case our families were total slobs who didn't care about bringing up their kids properly. My school was a very run-of-the-mill, suburban comprehensive, not a stuck-up school for the kids of stockbrokers and bankers, yet it appears to have provided me, free and gratis, with an education to rival that of a modern, fee-paying educational giant.

Either the parents of kids at Brighton College are being ripped-off, or the rest of the country's schools really are bloody awful if they don't bother teaching such basic skills.

God. I've just read this back and it looks like it belongs in the Daily Mail...

Pedalphile

Here's a story about a man who was "caught having sex with his bicycle".

Now, the obvious questions are WHAT? and WHY?

But I want to put those aside for one moment as I'm not exactly sure why the poor guy has been convicted of a crime.

I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that it's not an offence, per se, to have sex with a bicycle. OK, the bike is unable to give its consent, but then, as it's not a sentient being, who cares? And I would imagine that age of consent doesn't come into the equation.

No. He was actually convicted of "a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex". Hmmm...

Now, I'm not usually one to moan about erosion of our personal freedom, but this really takes the biscuit for me. It would appear that if you do something in the privacy of your own locked room, that isn't in any way illegal, but someone walks into that room and takes offence, then you've committed a crime.

It seems to me that it's only the fact that the poor bastard was sad and desperate (and drunk) enough to be getting it on with his velocipede that was an issue. A "breach of the peace". Errr, no. He was doing what he was doing in private, without anyone's knowledge. Presumably, if he'd been entertaining a lady-friend (or Madam Palm and Her Five Daughters) the two cleaners who walked in would have just apologised and walked out without causing a fuss.

Glasgow, it seems, is intolerant of sexual kinks. It's not enough that the man has to bear the shame and ignominy of knowing that wherever he goes people will call him "saddle-shagger" behind his back.

Of course not. The Sheriff of Glasgow has ordered him to be put on the sexual offenders register. How utterly ridiculous! What purpose does this serve? Nobody needs protecting from this man. He's harmless to people. And there's no evidence that he goes around defiling the cycles of all and sundry, hanging around the bike-racks at the central railway station, is there?

What a silly, heavy-handed waste of time and money. I feel sorry for the poor sod.

Right - I'm off to fiddle with my pump and polish my helmet...

Knock on Wood

According to the BBC News “Five people have been found guilty of conspiracy to supply millions of pounds worth of counterfeit Viagra”.

Police said that the gang were not hardened criminals who hadn’t stiffed honest and non-upright men.

Thai Die Fly

Now this Thailand plane crash is an awful tragedy and it’s very sad that many people have died, but surely it could have been avoided very simply.

I’m not scared of flying at all. It really doesn’t bother me in the slightest. However, there is no way that you would get me on a plane operated by a company called “One-Two-Go”.

Most airlines have reams of strict safety procedures and checks to go through before they take-off. And when you take off, you queue up and wait your turn with all the other planes. So flying with a company whose name implies that they just want to get you into the sky as quickly as possible would unnerve me to the point of wearing adult nappies.

They might as well have called themselves “Cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best Airlines”.

Frankly, from now on I will only be flying with “Five-Hundred-point-checklist-look-both-ways-several-times-we-don’t-fly-at-night-or-in-bad-weather Airlines”.

Let Me Out

According to all the news headlines today, something momentous has happened. Yes, it's true. Princess Diana is still dead!

I'm not quite sure what all the fuss is about. When someone dies, you mourn their passing and celebrate their life with a funeral and maybe a memorial service. Then you get over it. It may be sooner or later, depending upon how close you are to the person, but "time heals all wounds" and all that.

And to keep their memory alive you visit their grave, or look at keepsakes, on important anniversaries, like their birthday, or Christmas, or the day they died.

But these memorials are private. They are to remember how this person made you feel personally. To remember the things you did together, and to pay tribute to them as a parent, child, lover or friend.

So what I don't get is, why the big public fuss over the anniversary of Diana's death? There was a big enough fuss when she died. Too big. The country became hysterical and people who normally found it impossible to get worked-up or emotional about anything were screaming, sobbing and hurling flowers onto hearses like the world was about to end.

But it didn't end. We're all still here.

I'm sure that, to her friends, Diana was a warm and lovely person. But it's also obvious that she was a very shrewd and powerful manipulator of the press. And the world media simply lapped it up. That's why, 10 years on, we've got yet another memorial service. And let's not forget there was a memorial concert a couple of months ago. So, TWO memorials in one year. Geez!. Looks like her sons may have inherited that talent for self-publicity...

[Yeah, I know, when you're an heir to the throne it's not like you have to beg for publicity, but...]

That's why today I won't be remembering Diana and I won't be celebrating all the things she did for me, because, well, she didn't do anything for me and I didn't know her.

Oh, bugger! Does posting this mean that I am now ON the bandwagon? Have I fallen for it? Damn!

Death Cat For Cutie

There's this cat in Rhoda Island, USA, which can apparently predict when nursing home patients are about to die. [It lives in Providence - which is incredibly ironic, don't you think?]

"Predict"? Or are the nursing home staff just taking their eyes off the ball? I reckon 'cute' little Oscar just waits until no-one is paying attention, then curls up on the face of his latest victim, smothering them to death.

It's the purr-fect crime. Everyone's expecting the person to die anyway, so Oscar just helps the process along a little. It's a mercy kitten.

You can bet that if 25 patients died within 2 hours of being visited by a particular nurse or orderly, the local sheriff would soon be taking them into custody for questioning.

I find it ironic that Harold Shipman is in prison for killing all those old people, yet his faithful golden retriever, Kervorkian, is running free, eating his fill of Pedigree Chum and chicken-flavoured biscuits.

Edit: And now I read that another one of the wannabe-tiger scum has been caught in the act trying to steal a car! I publish his picture here so that you can turn him in to the car police if he tries to rob you too.

Good Time George

Sad news as George Melly has passed on.

When I was a teenager, I knew him as a jazz singer because my parents would often venture out to see him performing with John Chilton's Feetwarmers.

Over the years, though, he's popped up as a film and TV critic and a commentator on art whose opinions actually seemed worth hearing: he really knew his stuff - those years hanging out with the likes of Dali, Bunuel and the rest of the surrealist gang.

George was a national treasure and I'll be digging out one of his old cassettes when I get home.

Hubba

Now look at this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6662213.stm

This is disturbing on many levels: that an infant can be granted a gun license, even though "Illinois gun laws are said to be among the strictest in the US", is just the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, kudos to the kid's father for following the legal niceties and ensuring that the kid won't actaully get to play with his weapon until he's 14 [snigger!].

No. The really disturbing, nay, horrifying, fact in this story is this:

The kid is called "Bubba".

I had always assumed that "Bubba" was a nickname, endemic to a certain strata of American society, and granted only to those men who have demonstrated that they deserve the moniker.

In my mind, this is how the "Bubba test" works:

First, you have to be born in the South somewhere. My knowledge of US geography is poor, but I do know that Illinois is not famous for mint juleps, crinolene dresses and lynchings.

Next, I reckon you need to have spent at least half your childhood bunking-off school to drive around in a battered blue pickup truck, knocking over mailboxes with your baseball bat. Unless you're the driver; in which case you get to drive along with a beer in your hand, another between your legs and a third in your hat. The hat, of course, has a curly transparent straw which allows you to drink the beer like a caged hamster.

Finally, after a night spent cow-tipping you fail your high-school exams and end up as a janitor in a pool hall.

Only then have you earned the right to call yourself "Bubba".

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Perhaps it's a name with a long and distinguished history:

Abraham "Bubba" Lincoln.
Benjamin "Bubba" Franklin.
Martin Luther "Bubba" King Jr.

The truth is out there...

Bang Bang

There's a nice piece from Richard Herring talking about the lunatic NRA’s response to the recent shootings at Virginia Tech.

[It’s below the weird stuff about Natasha Beddingfield]

Yes, I’m sure the NRA are right, in this particular instance. If every student was armed, then the perp would have been shot by someone else after only killing one or two people.

SARCASM ALERT!

Of course, IF every student at a large university was armed, that’s the only reason they’d use their guns, isn’t it? We wouldn’t see people getting shot because someone had stolen someone’s girlfriend; or because they were failing their classes; or depressed; or mad.

SARCASM COMPLETE.

Those fuckwits at the NRA. Really. They are fuckwits. And if you really believe the first thing that they say it’s because you want to be a macho gun-slinging fool yourself.

Those are the only people we see whenever the NRA try to represent themselves. They put out well-meaning-sounding statements and talk about everyone’s right to have a single, appropriately-calibre'd weapon in the house “just in case”, but then you see the people who are actually IN the NRA and they all own hundreds of assault rifles and bazookas and flame-throwers.

Really - if anyone seriously thinks that the "right" to bear arms, just in case you MIGHT be the victim of a violent crime outweighs the tens of thousands of people killed with registered, legally owned guns each year, then they've got a screw loose.

The NRA card-holder would answer that by saying; "Look at Canada, or Finland, or Switzerland. They have very high gun-ownership rates, but they don't have huge problems with gun homicide rates".

Well, that's true. But then again, it's also true to say that macho, belligerent, posturing is not a national characteristic in those countries in the same way it is in the US. [And in the UK and many other countries.]

The difference is that in the countries where people tend to be a bit "gung-ho" about their civil rights and their property, gun control already exists.

The countries with high gun-ownership and low gun-crime are like the elder children. The ones you trust to baby-sit and cook dinner for the other kids while you're out.

Unfortunately, someone left the USA home-alone with a box of matches, some petrol and a few empty milk bottles...

You Won't Get Rid Of Me That Easily...

HELLO!

I'm still here. I'm still reading YOUR blog. Thanks for posting away so diligently while I've been sat here quiet as a church moose.

[They stand in the vestibule and you hang your hats on their antlers...]

Sorry I haven't commented recently - my new job's too busy to while away as much time coming up with snide remarks to leave scattered around the blogosphere.

Sorry I haven't posted recently - see my excuse above. And we're caught in the whirlwind of moving house in (tick, tock, tick, tock: "Jack Bauer's having a bad day!") only 3 weeks time. Add the play I'm directing (rehearsals start on Sunday - "what happened to Merry Wives of Windsor?" Don't ask!) and it's all a bit mental.

Sorry we haven't spoken for so long - recently I seem to manage to catch up with a maximum of 7 friends per year. If I keep going with a strict rotation I'll be able to get around to you in, ooh, 2009?

Sorry I didn't send a birthday card - that's especially for Delmonti and Councillor Mac, whose special day it is today.

Sorry about the state of the world... Oh! That one's NOT my fault. Cool!

Tock follows tick follows tock. And the farmers wife chopped off their tails with a carving knife. Ah! Guinness!

New Jobs for Old...

Alan Pardew was sacked from his job as West Ham manager yesterday morning.

Within hours I was offered a new job!

Coincidence?

Well, yes, it was a coincidence actually.

I have bitched and moaned about my job many times before. But, in 4-6 weeks I will be leaving to "pursue interests elsewhere" as they say.

I won't tell you who I'm going to work for. Let's just say they have an interest in fruit and Mr Dawson's online identity could be a big clue!

"I Heard A Rumour"

News from earlier this week that I missed before. Apparently Bananarama have staged a coup d'etat in Fiji.

I know they haven't had a hit for quite some time, but this is not an unprecedented way to get back in the headlines.

The last lightweight 80's pop group to take-over a country was Hue & Cry. The Kane brothers' attempt to establish a unitary, presidential, directly-elected government in Burkina Faso in 1987 was ultimately successful, though their "inside man" and puppet leader, Blaise Compaore, took the credit for the coup, and indeed is still president, ruling from Ouagadougou today.

As such, Hue & Cry did not make news headlines and are now remembered more for their hit "Labour of Love", which chronicled their African excursion.

More recently, of course, Amazulu and Strawberry Switchblade joined forces to bring peace to the previously war-torn Isle of Mull. When Anne-Marie Ruddock was elected as chieftan of the island for the 5th time last year she became the longest serving female head-of-state in modern history.

I Don't Know Much About Art...

...But I Know What I Like.

And it seems that in Norway they like their art so much that they are prepared to include strippers as 100% genuine artists (as opposed to artistes, I suppose).

I'm off out to the Doublemint Hippopotamus for an evening of art appreciation. Insert your own gags about Titian or brush strokes here.

Will They Never Learn?

So, NASA are going to build a moon base.

Do they not remember what happened back in 1999 to the last moon base?

It'll all end in tears...