Panen et Circenses

So Prince William and Kate Middleton have seen finally informed those who care that they are getting married.Good on them I say.Two people who are in love and are willing to make the commitment should always be applauded.

My problem isn't with William & Kate (Gawd Bless em)but more with how the government will no no doubt pull out the stops to take our minds off what is going on in the country and how much they will spend of our money doing it.A specialist commitee has already been formed by the coalition.

When I first heard the announcement of the impending wedding ,my first thought was what on earth will the Daily Mail have left to speculate upon now?,but this was soon replaced by the theory that the Roman poet Juvenal was not really that far wrong when he mentioned the phrase "Bread and Circuses" way back in 100 AD.

It's a phrase now used to deplore a population so distracted with entertainment and personal pleasures (sometimes by design of those in power) that they no longer value the civic virtues and bow to civil authority with unquestioned obedience.

Never mind the fact the country is rapidly going down the 'latrina' ,tax and debt is rapidly approaching near epidemic levels and the gap between the plebs and the patricians is getting chasm like.Lets have a jolly old public event to take peoples mind of it.

Back then The Roman public flocked in their thousands to the stadia to pour praise and scorn on the popular gladiators that were in fashion.No doubt every attendee of the arena saw fit to voice their opinion of the fight and say how much better they would have done things.We have football.

While the Romans enjoy the spectacle of throwing Christians to the lions, we watch aghast as minor celebs devour such appetizing concoctions as Pureed Centipede a la Mode or Black Pepper Grilled Scorpion with Grubs and Live Ants on the side.

Excess,greed,gluttony and indulgence in all things was celebrated and desired by those that had money,whilst those that have nothing were then , and are now , seen as a commodity to be exploited and used as the elite see fit.

I'm a celebrity (or not)

As there was nothing else on the tv and all my household chores had been completed,I decided to finally take a look at the global phenomenon that is twitter. I signed up and waited for my world to be fulfilled by the learned notes of the technorati and the observations of folks that provide the media with their countless tabloid filler.

What a surprise and letdown I was in for.

Within minutes of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here starting,the many vacuous celebs crowded onto the bandwagon slagging off a certain Gillian McKeith.

Whilst reading their twitterings,I definitely got more than a whiff of sour grapes.
Carol Vordermann, for example, expressing her distaste on the programme.This is the woman who you would have thought by her out pourings of grief was actually married to Richard Whitely,and who's whole career is based on the fact that she can do sums whilst looking like a glamorous supply teacher. Don't even get me started on her supposed internet safety campaign..

Richard Littlejohn speaking of Stacey having to eat a p@nis in the bush tucker trial..Is this the first time that a cock has spoken about a cock eating a cock....

Ryanair UK PLC

Eventually this useless Coalition that we have now will sell itself off and the country will be run by Ryanair. You'll will probably think I'm off my head until you listen to one of their favourite thinkers, Mark Littlewood, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which describes itself as a "free-market think-tank."

Yesterday he suggested stopping libraries from receiving public funding, because he doesn't use them, so "why should I pay?" And that is a legitimate economic argument which raises valid social as well as monetary concerns for anyone who's a miserable, wretched, anti-social, smug, selfish bastard.

Because it's a sign of an advanced society that we can stroll into a public library, see pensioners enthusing about books they couldn't afford to buy, and schoolchildren using computers beyond their families' private means, and think: "How much is this costing ME? It's NOT FAIR. I can't afford my own safari park, I don't go borrowing a free one off the council."

The libraries should be allowed to stay open, their spokesman said yesterday, as long as they're prepared to charge a rate for borrowing each book, so they could be run for a profit. But then it wouldn't be a library, just like Blockbuster Videos isn't a library. He might as well have said: "I have no objection to libraries remaining open, if they clear out all the books and replace them with a waitress service bar, and instead of a reference section and librarians they install some poles and employ young women to swivel round them and wriggle on men'slaps. That's the sort of modernisation that can make the library service fresh and relevant for the 21st century."

The cuts are sold as essential to reduce the deficit, but when you hear these people they appear as part of an ideology that understands almost all public funding as morally wrong. They almost dribble with pleasure as they tell us their recommendation that the onus will be on kidney patients to get sponsorship for their dialysis machine, which will free them from reliance on the local health trust. Or they ask: "Why should the taxpayer provide funding for guide dogs for the blind? After all, I can't climb trees, yet nobody provides me with a gibbon."

It's the philosophy of Ryanair, to pay for exactly what you use and nothing, not even the toilet, is communal. So as they've got the experience, we should let them run our services. They can put toll gates in every park, and charge for each conker a child picks up, with a "performance fee" added on if it does well, like the clause attached to footballers. At night there can be a lamp-post toll on every street so those who use the light pay for the lighting, but so as not to hurt the least well-off, anyone without sufficient funds will be entitled to drive with a bin liner over their head. The fire brigade will become Pay-per-Gasp because why should I pay for someone else to be carried down the stairs when I'm not alight?

Ryanair can adapt its current machines so that each week we'll check in our rubbish, paying for exactly what we've got, and we can do the same for human waste. Instead of the unfair system where we all pay the same towards sewage regardless of how much we use, we'll take our own down, weigh it and if it's above the standard rate, the clerk will say: "I'm afraid there's a bit of excess to pay on that." And this way the resident who keeps his urine in bottles and stacks them in the attic is rewarded for being frugal.

The Coalition's pet think tank was formed in 1955 and has been coming out with stuff like this ever since, so the size of the public debt is just an excuse for insisting it all has to be done now. It's as if the Pope said on his visit: "Given the unprecedented level of debt we must all throw away our condoms, as they're all borrowing a thousand pounds every second."

But if they get their way, soon we'll have a society we can be proud of, where neighbours will once again gladly let you pop in for a friendly chat, so they can charge you four quid for a cup of rancid tea and a pound to use their toilet.

I'm saving for a nervous breakdown..but I can't afford it...

Where do they get these idiots who come on the radio and television to tell us how to prepare for our pensions? Every day one of them pops up to say we should change our culture to save more for old age rather than spending now, as if most people have a choice, and have fifteen hundred quid spare every month they can't think what to do with. But we're so used to state pensions that instead of using this to provide for later life, we get to 65 and think: "I wish I'd put that two hundred thousand pounds away for an adequate pension, instead of spending it on hiring Beyoncé to clean my kitchen."
They might as well come on daytime TV and say: "To ensure we're comfortable in old age, once we get to around 35 we should give up cocaine for a few years and invest the money we save in an ISA. Or if that doesn't provide a sufficient return, why not play up front for Manchester United for a couple of seasons to top up your funds, or sell off one of your less profitable chains of high-street stores. Maybe you've got a stately home you could open to the public. Or some viewers may be pirates, in which case you could put every fifth chest of treasure into government bonds that offer generous rates of tax relief, cut down on the rum for now but feel the benefit once you hang up the sword for a well-earned retirement."
None of them grasps that the main reason people don't put money aside for a pension is they don't have any spare. Even then the advice in these money columns would be: "If your outgoings seem to revolve around food and housing, you could remove this expenditure from your budget by spending a few years living naked in the forest while your children are raised by wolves.
As long as you continue working through this period your contributions will tot up nicely, though some schemes do require special life insurance in case the pack becomes jealous and mauls you when you try to retrieve your offspring, so it does pay to shop around."
The trouble is, they all tell us, we're living so much longer, so a think-tank will suggest we set up a scheme to pool pensions, where you join together with three people the same age, then at 65 you all draw lots and the loser is sent to Dignitas. Then their pension is shared amongst the survivors, minus the train fare to Switzerland.
The issue on which these experts seem to agree is that we can no longer organise the bulk of pensions collectively, so we must provide for ourselves instead. And this is part of a general message, that if you can't manage it's your own fault.
For example, Iain Duncan Smith's advice to the unemployed of Merthyr Tydfil was that they should "get on a bus to Cardiff". So, that's what makes unemployment go up and down is it? If he was asked an exam question on the subject he'd say: "In the 1920s buses were new and shiny, so lazy people got on them. But by 1931 they seemed boring so no one got on them any more and that's what caused the Great Depression. Luckily, in 1939 comfy new seats were put in the 68b to Cardiff and that sorted it out."
There are more people unemployed in Merthyr than in the rest of Wales so even if they all packed every single bus all day it wouldn't make any difference. But he'd say: "Then they should do what the Vikings did. Instead of complaining, they got on longboats, found some land and raped and pillaged the local population, leading to long-term sustainable growth across northern Europe in the 10th century."
But thankfully a few people manage to make the system work. So Fred Goodwin, the lovable old former head of Royal Bank of Scotland, managed to get a pension worth £345,000 a year, with a £2.8m lump sum on top.
And he deserves it, because he listened to the advice of the money experts, that if you haven't got enough money to put by for a decent pension, swipe everyone else's and put that by instead.

I'm glad I'm too thick to go to Uni

How are they allowed to suggest this mad scheme where they charge £36,000 for student fees? If you've got three kids heading towards university age it's like hearing on the news there's a report recommending that for the good of the nation your family is bankrupted for three generations. Or that the government is considering easing the pressure on higher-education spending, by forcing all parents of students to spend a year on the game.
And then the pundits and politicians sit around discussing it, saying, "For a place at an average university, such as Leicester or Bristol, if a parent turns two tricks a night with maybe some extra on a weekend, the revenue raised could cover 80 per cent of the costs so some ministers are very keen on this approach. However some backbenchers have pointed out that for more prestigious places such as Edinburgh or Oxford the amount of action required could result in a good deal of physical pain, with high rates of infection, and that may lose support with some middle-income voters."
From now on parents will check whether their kids are revising, and if they are they'll scream, "Stop that for Christ's sake! If you get any better than an F and you're offered a place somewhere I'm stuffed!"
And yet the justification for these cuts, we're told again and again, is that we can't leave the next generation "saddled with debt". So the only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to saddle them with debt.
This will be fair, apparently, because getting a degree makes it likely you'll earn more afterwards. But that assumes that the only point of education is to increase your earnings, and not that someone might learn a language, or learn about art or history or philosophy because these are brilliant things to learn about, and society will benefit from that.
Instead, learning equals money. If these ministers have toddlers, they must ask if they'd like a bedtime story, then say, "No darling, we're not reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Instead we're going to do today's Hang Seng Index. Now repeat after me cherub, Balfour Beatty up three at closing."
One advantage of the increased fees, said Lord Browne when he made these recommendations, is this will allow for "new providers". He probably means the universities will be free to seek funding by getting lectures sponsored, so philosophy students will be told: "Plato argued that no earthly body could be more than an imperfect copy of a perfect heavenly model. But that's because he'd never had a new orange-flavoured Crunchie. It's as crisp and fizzy as ever on the inside, but with a new orange meltiness on the outside. Hmm, it's not just confection, it's metaphysical perfection."
And astro-physics classes will be asked: "Do you know of a star that's suffered a catastrophic collapse in the past 12 months? Then call 0800 632 8989 NOW to see if your star is entitled to compensation."
Supporters of these fees try to find all sorts of ways to suggest they won't make much difference to those who pay them, because the payments won't start until the graduate is working and the interest rates will be low and so on. But however you calculate it, the family will have to find tens of thousands of pounds extra. It's like a protection racket saying they're willing to talk things over and when times are hard, they'll let you wait until next week and pay double, and they'll only burn your house down if you don't cough up for a whole month, so you'll hardly notice them really.
And this has all been recommended by Lord Browne, who's in an ideal place to understand the financial pressures on a typical family as he was the chief executive of BP. As he was making his report it was also announced that this years' bankers' bonuses are likely to exceed £7.3bn which, even at the highest rates suggested, would pay for a three-year-course for 200,000 students.
He also may have spotted that the Liberal Democrats now poised to pass this into law all signed a pledge to oppose any such rise in university fees. So the answer to this problem is to copy them. Every student should take out the loan, sign an agreement to pay it off, then never give them a bloody penny.

The recent discovery of a terroist bomb hidden in a printer sent from The Yemen has made me think of a few things.
Among the many complex questions involving the minds of terrorists is why they would rely on a mobile phone to work properly as the detonator. All that effort, ending with a furious Jihadist snarling, "Bollocks, I can't get a signal."
Or maybe the terrorists have modernised their facilities, so instead of an instant explosion he heard a voice saying, "Welcome to the Al Qa'ida automated answering service. If you'd like to hear about our special summer range of fertiliser, nails, 3-for-the-price-of-2 gas cylinders and an exciting variety of combustible materials, press one..." So by the time it said, "Or if you'd like to detonate a Silver Mercedes press seven," he'd lost interest and hung up.
You'd think there must have been a question mark within Al Qa'ida over the standard of their operatives ever since it was revealed a few months ago they were plotting to bomb the Ministry of Sound. Keep up, boys, the dance scene is SO 1990s. Imagine the embarrassment if they'd blown the place to bits, then discovered it was empty while 3,000 people were up the road watching Arcade Fire.
It might go against their instincts, but they'd probably be better off employing a cultural officer. He could report every month on who's likely to be hot, and plan the explosions accordingly. Then the minutes of their Jihad Council would read: "Meanwhile, one unlikely tip for the top is the hi-energy folk-rock combination the Gogol-Bordellos, whose blend of infidel strings-based melodies and catchy rhythms that spew forth from the heathen cries of Satan look set to storm the UK charts, attracting crowds well worth immolating with holy vengeance."
So nothing went off, and ever since, the politicians and newsreaders have congratulated us on our British resolve. We've shown the terrorists they can't win, by displaying our heroic determination to carry on as normal, and bravely continued weeding the garden or going up the shop for biscuits, even though only 30 miles away a car was towed away. And they're all keen to point out this is British resolve, not the spineless European resolve, where people hear a bang and then all kill themselves.
Over here people say things like "I'm SO determined to carry on as normal, since the weekend I've not only kept on having a full English breakfast every morning, I've had TWO. So tell Bin Laden to stick that up his hand-held rocket launcher."
And we can be grateful that, at least in Glasgow, this time it's fairly certain the police have captured the right person - although even there you half expected them to miss him, and then make an appeal at a press conference, saying "We are looking for a man who is around 5ft 11in, whose distinguishing features include flames shooting out from the top of his head."
With all the excitement, though, everyone appears to have missed yet another explosion. It took place at the end of last week, when the Washington Post reported a "NATO and US-led assault" on the Afghan village of Hyderabad. Wali Khan, the member of the US-backed parliament for the area, was quoted as saying, "More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from here. The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government."
Out there, if they had a day like our weekend, the news reporter would say, "What a day - only two unexploded bombs and a nutcase setting himself alight at an airport - so let's go straight to sport."
Instead, everyone in the area must scream "It's no use trying to understand them, they're just crazy," and "Who let these savages into the country?"
A US army spokesman said the civilian deaths proved "insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields." So there's another lesson for Al Qa'ida. They could claim the Tiger Tiger nightclub was actually a military airfield, with a runway in the cloakroom, and civilian deaths would only have shown the British were using people who dance as human shields.
The reasons why someone erratically drives a car bomb to a nightclub or into an airport must be complex, but there's no doubt it's far more likely if you come from a region that's been mercilessly bombed by the government of the country you decide to bomb in return. That was certainly the view of the intelligence report seen by Blair before the occupation of Iraq. Maybe a combination of rage and helplessness leads some people to feel that at least blowing something up is acting rather than doing nothing, and they then seek justification for their decision by appealing to the far reaches of their religion.
Because there are obsessive people in all religions, but without an earthly motive, they don't usually resort to blowing up civilians to please their God. Most Druids are crazy, but they don't normally bother anyone. However, if Stonehenge was bombed on the Summer Solstice, and teepees set ablaze with an excuse that they were threatening us with fertility symbols of mass destruction, you'd soon see the odd one behaving strangely outside a nightclub or airport.
Luckily with this last effort, the terrorists' level of incompetence was too great. If it turns out that there was a cell of medical professionals behind it all, maybe that's what saved us. Junior doctors are so knackered after a 22-hour shift that they are almost bound to make a hash of anything.

Where has the time gone?

You've probably (I hope) been wondering where I've been and what has happened to the blog....
Well if you have two young children in the house,one who is only 6 months old,hopefully you will guess why the blog has been non existant these last few months.

I now intend to be a lot more regular in my postings/rants.


Nice to have you as a reader.