the slog

The Bollocks-Log of a bourgeois dissident

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October 22nd 2009

Gawd 'n' Ramsay. In southern Tenerife, the F-word man who is soooo particular about his brand has allowed his name to appear over an emporium on the Playa de las Americas main drag. It is overpriced and usually empty, the staff are awful and the food rather more Harry Ramsden than Gordon Ramsay.

But then, if your ego has resulted in unwise expansion followed by bankruptcy, I suppose one has to do this sort of thing.

The Anti-anti League. As the day progressed and Nick Biffin's hour came ever closer, I began to pick up vibes about huge crowds gathering outside Broadcasting House. Well, I say huge - two hundred at least. I tuned in (quaint old phrase) to BBCNews, and saw the usual suspects asking me to salute flags on one side and smash capitalism on the other. As I've no desire to do either (but an insatiable idea to do away with both of them) I tuned out and rang my new best friend Anna Raccoon. We both decided that there is a gaping hole in the blogosphere where reasonable, literate, bright and funny folk should get together and push all the screaming ab-dabs from pink to black out into the cold they so richly deserve.

My own feeling is that we need an Anti-anti League. It would be implacably opposed to all those against anything and everything. As such, it would be something of a task to separate it from the Apathy Society (where nobody ever turns up for meetings) but this could be done by using calm argument to deconstruct the bollocks put out by other antis apart from us, who are anti only one thing, viz, other antis.

Perhaps the best way out of our dilemma would be to call it the Antipathy Society. This would be one where everyone turns up for all the meetings, at which point organised anarchy breaks out.

A bit like blogging on Libdemvoice, really.

October 21st 2009

Island in the Sun. Earlier this week I enjoyed a second stay in Tenerife. The last time I came, the Generalissimo Franco was in power. In 1972, I stayed in the north of the Island where there were lots of clouds and bananas - and quite a lot of Nazis. Franco refused to extradite these his former friends from Spain, and so to be reasonably safe from Mossad capture most of them wound up on Tenerife, in a development called Romantika Zwei.

I had wondered beforehand why the holiday was so cheap; on realising I was the only Aryan non-Nazi in the complex, I quickly understood why. The was a lot of talk of die alte Tage and quite a few of the male Herrenvolk humming the Horst Wessel Lied absent-mindedly to themselves. Also most of the women had been secretaries to men with names I remembered well from my University thesis - which, as it happens, was about factions within the Nazi Party.

For two weeks I passed the time gently asking questions, while feeling like an extra in The Producers. ¨Der Fuhrer voss a stronk man" said one old dear. "Und diss is vot you are needink now in Englant to haff". She may have been right, but her smile as she said this had the same worrying determination one finds on Lord Mandelson´s face from time to time.

The truth is I would´ve paid double to be among these oddities, because they were real-life Odessa travellers and - once convinced I couldn´t spek any German - relaxed about talking in front of me without using a sort of verbal Enigma code.

After a few days of bananas and folks who were even more bananas, I became bored and headed south to what is still called Playa de Las Americas. Then, it was a couple of smart hotels and an enormous beach. Apart from  a strip about a hundredyards wide, the beach is no more. This (and most of the mountainsides) have been covered in hotels, apartments, supermarkets, shops, restaurants and estate agents. The collapse of the property market here has closed most of the agents down, and turned most of the Timeshare chaps into people demanding money with menaces. But despite this, the urbanicaçion of Las Americas is complete. The result is - no question about it - spectacular. But I preferred it the way it was.

Beryl the Peril.  There was a lady in our complex last week aged about 129 called Beryl. Very cut-glass traditional English, and able to speak non-stop for as long as you could go without food in order to listen. I watched Beryl carefully for five days and decided she must have gills, because she certainly wasn´t using any facial ventilation to breathe in. A game girl though, and probably indestructible. She too was a piece of rapidly disappearing history: allegedly a former stage-actress, she must´ve got eleven out of ten for voice projection while at RADA. In a skiiing resort (with the ever-present possibility of avalanche) Beryl would be downright dangerous.

Vile Bodies. ¨People these days are so ugly and indescribably fat, don´t you find?" asked Beryl on Day Two as two blobbies wobbled past. She made the observation at a volume level normally associated with House music, but the passing Big Folks were oblivious, their ears having long ago disappeared under folds of skin created by deep-fried lard. I realise we´ve been here before, but the decline in our culture can be measured in terms of the average aeroplane´s weight at take-off. We need wide-bodied jets in 2009 because almost everybody on board has a wide body. The obese products of our sofa culture have bodies that are nothing like temples; rather, they're reminsicent of enormous, modernist Catholic cathedrals.

Home

October 15th 2009

Ah - that's easy. My team would be Yashin, Byrne, Armfield, Beckenbauer, Santamaria, Edwards, Best, Greaves, Di Stefano, Pele, Ronaldo.

They're largely foreign and/or too old or dead, but they'd be terrific crack on the plane. As to who Capello can take to give him a chance of reaching anything beyond the semi-finals, I haven't the faintest idea.

We won't win anything as a national side until we start pouring money into producing, training and encouraging our own pool of talent. And that means an end to the current insanity of overpaid foreign players and an FA crawling up Uncle Rupe's backside.

Happily, I fancy that later this season (when the UK wakes up to being only about 30% through its inevitable bankruptcy process, and Eastern Europe's parlous debts come home to roost) the Premiership will find itself in a full stud of poo. And that will put Merdeschlock in a tight corner: because judging from the last set of News International accounts, without the Premiership he'd be, um, making a loss.

Cue nasty letter from Carter-Ruck

October 14th 2009

October 13th 2009

Profits before people. Market forces being what they are, there is little or nothing in the way of a mobile phone signal in Herefordshire. This is because the density of population is lowish, and also because with the hills an’ all, it’d be an expensive investment. There’s no sense among the phonecos that there might be an element of social responsibility involved in supplying phone services oooooooo no. They mustn’t think of anyone but the shareholders, you see: doing otherwise is against their principles.

So it continues to amaze me that those keen to privatise Royal Mail lack the vision to spot that this is precisely what will happen when the private boys take over – as they inevitably will. In the meantime, what we must endure is the hypocrisy of the Daily Fail saying how the Posties are ‘destroying’ Royal Mail. Drivel: decades of poor (and then greedy) management did that – and, of course, the arrival of email. I’m rarely behind any strikers these days, but posties are part of what makes life pleasant outside the urban nightmares. They believe in the ‘social weal’ of providing mail services: not crushing local communities under the wheel of mindless Mammon.

Last night the Princess of Darkness Handlebum came on the telly to do his 'I'm confused' shtick about 'why on Earth the Union is doing this, I mean I really believe they should think again'. Hmm. Perhaps as Business Minister you need to think again about Crozier's salary and pension arrangements, Mandy.

Yet again, Left and Right are irrelevant to this question: it’s another example of polemics getting in the way of good governance – and as Mandelson does grubby not governance, we'll see plenty more examples where this one came from.

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October 9th 2009

Meltdown Watch I went down to my local police station today, in search of news about the progress towards one day putting an irritating local thug and fraudster behind bars.

Answer was there none, chiefly because the office under The Blue Lamp was closed.

Not just closed for a few hours, mind: closed until 19th October. (For redecoration, in case you thought they'd all gone fishin'). This struck me as something of a Burglar's Charter - but to be fair, to one side of the office was one of those Government posters printed off to reassure us that the whole kit and caboodle isn't knackered. It said:

'Police officers patrol this area twenty-four hours a day'

It's true of course, but like most spin it is but a sliver of the reality. The total verite re this one is that our 'area' (a county half the size of all the Home Counties put together) has just the two Bobbies pounding the streets, fields, lanes and beaches of East Devon at night. I've spent an hour today working out what speed they'd have to walk at in order to cover that manor during the wee hours: the answer is between 66 and 80 miles per hour. Supercop. Robocop. Fourth Dimension Cop. Six Million Dollar Cop.

Anyway, the forces of law and order in my local town are to spend the next ten days (as PC George Dixon would've said) 'of no fixed abode'.

It beggars belief, doesn't it? Well if that doesn't, this might.

I went to the local Group Practice to pick up a prescription that hasn't changed in three years. To celebrate this, they got it wrong: for the third time in a row. In fact, I've been keeping score over time, and the running total shows that just under 40% of my prescriptions have been wrong during the period. (To compound the crime, when I go back and tell the buggers, they practically accuse me of wanting to embezzle NHS drugs).

What can I say beyond 'there is no correlation at all between Despatch Box claims and reality'? Well, how about 'They've all lost the plot?'

The Fat Earth Society. He's a big lad is Eric Pickles. Big enough in fact (given he has no declared eating disorders a la Pressgut) to suggest that his size can be mainly put down to greed and sloth. I'd be prepared to bet that if you cooked Pickers, he'd feed quite a few African villages for more than a day or two. I'm not a one to promote cannibalism, but sometimes needs must: and as the West will soon be in the position of having to sell to the East, this represents a special four-birds-with-one-stone situation.

At a stroke we could rectify the balance of payments, the balance required for the Earth to stay in its best orbit, cut obesity by 90% or more, and ensure that protein flowed at last to those who need it most.

Sorry Eric: my column isn't usually this bitter and sick: it's been a tough day.

 

October 8th 2009

In denial. I was working on a story yesterday, with the Tory Conference and BBCNews on in the background. It's a funny thing, but these days the telly is more and more like a radio....and the laptop increasingly my window on the world.

After maybe two hours of this, it dawned on me that I had heard the same phrase in various contexts three times:

'Downing Street denied the allegations'

 

October 7th 2009

A country locked in amber. What a bizarre lot we all are in Britain. Scots to the north drivelling on about how they'd be better off without the Anglash because I mean look at Bannockburn, right? The Ulster divide celebrating victories and grudges dating back to the Roundheads and William of Orange....and unable to agree on much just a year into their New Dawn. Northerners still being rude about a Southern pint that doesn't even exist any more, and Southerners repeating 'It's grim oop in t'North' but still unable to pronounce the 't' properly. Hattie Harman fighting Ayn Rand's gender battles, most of which the smart, interesting women won thirty-five years ago - including Cary Churchill. Andonandonandonandon. World Cup. Our lads, eh - 1966? Phwoar. Denis Compton, Trevor Bailey. You've never had it so good. Evenin' all. One out, all out bruvver.

We're stuck as a culture, there's no doubt about that: but in no area of life more so than Right and Left, Tory and Labour. While today's teenager inhabits a world few of us wrinklies truly understand - using gadgets, slang and even swear-words we cannot grasp - there's nothing new in that: what is different with the generation gap now is the propensity of my age group to behave like Edwardians on almost every issue. Kop a load of this balls from the Unite Union's General Secretary yesterday:

"It's clear that the Tories want to use the economic recession as a stick to beat ordinary working people".

 

October 6th 2009

Distinguishing mad bloggers from rational comment websites. An old friend (about to unsubscribe from nby in the aftermath of our concerted campaign to scrutinise the mental and physical health of Gordon Brown) quoth thus before flouncing off the stage:

"Nby is a blog not a website, because everything is written by you"

While this is an odd definition of a blog (weblog) it rang alarm bells in my head. For although I've resisted the term 'blog' in relation to nby for years, it's clear that most people think of it in those terms. The bells became deafening once the Mandelson, Cocksure & Balls pr consultancy began their campaign to create a blanket smear against the blogosphere.

Like it or not, the slur about right-wing nutters has some basis in fact: none whatsoever in relation to this site, but that's not the point. As long as there are blogs like Tartan Army and others of similarly abusive ilk, there will be more than a grain of truth in the charge.

After posting a piece in today's Guardian, I was struck by the degree to which those who don't spend much time 'out there' think everyone offering comment outside the mainstream media is (variously) biased, barmy, making everything up and peddling low-grade gossip. One reader even wrote that nby 'admitted to Channel Four news that it had no evidence'. The word this chap was in search of may well have been 'proof', but whatever: his assumption was that the whole carefully reseached and corroborated MAOI story was a fantasy from beginning to end.

Whether we like it or not, we are all judged by the company we keep. I'm beginning to wonder how those of us who wish only to be a responsible Opposition can separate our websites from the illiterate rants of both Far Right and Left. (You can read some of their least abusive efforts at the letters page of Not Born Yesterday)

For the way we live today. The UN's human development index has decided that the three best places to live in the world are Norway, Iceland and Australia. These countries are, respectively, cold, broke and replete with more animals that can kill you than anywhere else on Earth.

Britain came 21st. This is roughly the position we normally achieve in the Eurovision Song Contest: somewhere (I have no doubt) a PhD student is preparing a thesis on the correlation between naff competitions and UN league tables. This comes under my anti-news heading: stuff filling a space where there would normally be peace and quiet.

However, today the Editor asks what role UK life-quality plays in our national drinking problem.

 

October 5th 2009

Ten Years on. At about 8.00 am exactly ten years ago today, I spotted a Great Western train pulling in to a platform three across from mine at Reading. Travelling as I was on a slow service from Newbury, I pelted across and - as the last doors were closing - leapt on board.

Once settled into a seat, as was my habit I nodded off. I was awoken half an hour later by the biggest crunching bang I've ever heard in my entire life. It was the sound of our train hitting a small turbo commuter service going in the opposite direction.

It was also the sound of my mouth, jaw and nose hitting the seat in front. Two teeth had gone through the skin just below my bottom lip. A decade later, the lip is still fizzy to the touch.

Once over the trauma, the Paddington Rail crash represented the start of my concerns about free-market privatised public services. There was a long enquiry. Nobody who created the culture at Great Western suffered as a result of it. Badly injured customers got compensation, but not their looks or their limbs back. The powers that be shrugged before moving on to another ignorance.

There is a direct and obvious line between that tragedy and the banking collapse. The Establishment would have us believe that neither event could have been foreseen - but they are of course (as usual) wrong. The enduring problem among the elite running Britain today is that they are surprised by every obvious eventuality.

Do Guardian readers do footie? I wrote a blogspot for the Grauniad over the weekend which they very kindly printed today. The subeds left it pretty well alone, except when I opined that 'like the FA Cup, the internet is a great leveller'. This obviously lowered the tone too much, and was thus expunged.

It's a funny thing, but the intellectual 'political class' (so clinically identified and savaged by Peter Oborne) cannot help but unconsciously look down on those who read the sport pages.

The broader bourgeois Left as a whole suffers from the same factory-fitted elitism. They claim to represent the working class (which no longer exists in any real sense) but this is more in the way of thinking 'Poor dears, they can't speak for themselves - so erudite geniuses like us must do it for them. Sigh'. They think the same about non-Caucasian immigrants, and patronise them by bestowing eternal rectitude upon their number, while passing all sorts of dangerous Acts to 'protect' poor thick ethnics. Bright folks of every colour, creed, sexuality and nationality find these efforts laughable at best - and a means of gaining unfair advantage at worst.

In fact, some excellent writers like Ollie Wicken, Eamonn Dunphy and Nick Hornby recognise what role sport plays on the human Stage. But one somehow feels that perhaps the sport columnists at the Guardian have a separate canteen offering Dairylea & Oven Chips, plus a special room where they can smoke, read The Sun, and turn girlie wank-mags the other way up in order to examine the pudenda more closely.

If so, it is pure bigotry: Big G's sport coverage is terrific.

 

October 4th 2009

The Strategy in Buckingham. I have good news for the wealthy electors of Bucks looking for a way to buck the Bercow back out into the obscurity he so richly deserves. All you need do is cough up the cost of an election deposit and persuade the other independents to stand down. Then you all vote for yourselves.

Bercow who (as Speaker) is not allowed to vote would then get none, and you'd get one each - or the biggest deadheat in Parliamentary history. This (along with a lack of Speaker) would cause precisely the form of constitutional crisis we need so badly.

But far more important than that is the humiliation of Bumptious Bercow: to go down as a historical footnote as the Man Who Got No Votes would be the perfect end for this twerp who, one suspects seriously, fancies himself as a future Fuhrer.

Big metal things loaded onto ships. As we were embarking prior to being whisked across the Channel last week by Britney Ferries, I watched as hundreds of huge metal crates were being loaded into the freight hold.

Fifty years ago, these massive boxes revolutionised freight - and spelt the end of labour power for the dockers. Things were never the same again in Liverpool, London and Southampton: these whoppers began the process of de-Unionising Britain.

And I thought to myself, at some point the inventor must've had to pitch the idea. So he'd have described them. And then the Boardroom chaps opposite presumably asked what he was going to call them.

"Containers" he probably answered.

And all the folks opposite will have blinked, thinking 'Containers? Is that the best you could manage?'

So when people ask "What's in a name?" now you know.

October 3rd 2009

 

September 30th 2009

I would alert all readers to these points without insulting their intelligence:

Would you like some mash on those pills, Mr Brown? Thanks are due to nby's Most Secret Pumpy Mole Jon Allen for this hilarious piece of top-notch satire:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/brown-really-should-be-on-prescription-painkillers%2c-says-britain-200909282094/

And while we're at the Funny switch, take a squint at this week's star hate-mail over at the all-new unrecycled rough trade Letters Page . (Foul play is suspected)

September 28th 2009

Ask a silly question, get another answer...and other nasty tactics. I'll go into what a surreal helter-skelter-upside-down-backwards day today has been anon. In the meantime, I'll make a few points about the way this disgusting mob called 'New Labour' (or the Cameroons for that matter) work:

1. On CBS news in the US, Brown is asked about his eyesight. He says "I'm very fit, I run every day".

2. On Marr, he is asked do you take pills. He says "I've had my eyesight tested, and it's fine - it's not declining at all".

3. Peter Manglesum is asked for a comment on the rumours about Brown's health. He says "This is all the work of ultra right-wing bloggers smearing Gordon Brown for their own political ends".

4. Suddenly (again) the blogosphere is alive with slurs about me being 'a right wing nutter thrown out by the Conservative Party'. They (the real spinners) know perfectly well that person is Councillor John M Ward in Kent, not me.

5. On Radio 4, Mary Ann Siegart defends my stance on the right to know; the Tory MP hoffles and woffles about 'Ooo good gracious me how awful' etc etc. Mind you, he would - his very own Anthony Eden conducted the whole 1956 Suez shambles on amphetamines.

Let us be clear about this....as the Minister in a corner always says: I am neither right-wing nor right-on: I just want more people in public life to do what's right.

I really, really hope that this time the spine-free Thompson pillock and his Governors do not harbour any silly Neville Chamberlain-style ideas about throwing Andrew Marr to the wolves: he has done us all a service, and I for one salute him.

Others needing medication thanks to Government dereliction. The tragedy of this obsession with a clearly unfit PM is that nby's lead story today went largely unnoticed in the 'old' media. You can catch up with this at HarmanBalls , where there are ample facts about New Labour the 'do-nothing Party'.

It was however widely picked up on the blogospace, or whatever they're calling it this week. I'm reassured about this - and to all the thirty new subscribers today, I say 'Welcome - and there's plenty more where that came from'.

September 27th 2009

Why did he ask about bloody painkillers? Every journalist in Britain remains terrified of the a-d word. This morning (while interviewing the Paralympic Pentathlon Champion Gordon Brown-Trousers) Marr joined those ranks....and the comment threads both on the Beeb and in the nationals were dominated by the question, 'Painkillers? What the fuck's he on about?'

Anyway, at least the subject of pills is out. The Sunday Times had the brazen nerve to refer to 'false claims circulating on the internet' about strong anti-depressants, minus only the evidence to back up the 'false' part. But online there was a rapid change of Times tune, and kick-bollock-rejig-page once Marr asked the question everyone in Westminster's been boffing on about for three years.

"I think it is a sign of our times" said Brown, "that such questions have entered the lexicon of politics".

What a bloody steaming great hypocrite: who expanded that lexicon then, Gordy? Not you by any chance - with your disgusting below-the-belt slurs and leaks which were enough to stop anyone else standing against you? Surely not.

I have sympathy for the man's illness; but the live by the sword and die by it rule applies here - in spades.

 

September 26th 2009

Hello Mum, I'm on the telly. As the G20s posed for their closing photograph last Saturday, there was a priceless moment when our Marathon & Weightlifting Olympian Prime Minister was told to watch the birdy along with all the others. He did that smile. And then nothing happened. Unsure whether to keep on smiling, or return to his suspicious scowl, his face took on a rictus quality.

Eric Morecambe used to play a bloke in a grubby mac and flat-cap walking past behind an outside-broadcast camera. He used to force a smile in precisely the same wondering, gormless manner. Back at the G20 snap, I fully expected Brown to give a little wave at any moment. Come to think of it, they all looked as if they might. I think (with the exception of Obama, Sarkozy and Gadhaffi) this is what typifies all our 'world leaders' now: they're all Jim Hackers, astonished that they've made it to where they are. Gadhaffi's known he was God since the age of three, Sarkozy is a pushy little arriviste who expects to arrive early everywhere anyway, and Obama simply says to himself "I'm the President of the United States of America".

Gordon of course mutters to himself that he is the saviour of the World, but it doesn't help his self-belief: the bloke simply looks awkward....rather like the gardening correspondent who suddenly finds himself in a war zone in Waugh's wonderful novel Scoop! And yet oddly, GB does deserve to be there - and for one very good reason: he is a scheming, leaking, lying, ruthless bully. Just like the rest of them.

HP Baked Beans, they're the Beans for Me. Before Heinz finally became the generic baked beans brand (thanks to some great creative work from Young & Rubican) the brand slugging it out with them in the UK was HP. Somebody came up with a jingle in 1963, and a visual involving long lines of kids singing it: 'HP Baked Beans, they're the beans for me'.

A kid I was at Grammar school with used to lampoon this rather naff campaign very well. He was a tall bloke with an unfeasible blonde quiff called Dave Boyes, and last week he stumbled across nby and then emailed me. It was a joy to hear from him, particularly as he recalled an incident I'd completely forgotten.

I used to have a nervous tic of sucking the plastic top of Bic biros when I was eleven. One day - somehow - I got the in-out breathing action wrong. Dave writes:

'My first memory of Johnnie Ward was a little kid sticking his hand up and saying 'Please sir, I think I've swallowed my pen-top'.' The unfortunate teacher was a Welsh maths master called Hannaby. He just looked at me and said in a strong Cardiff accent "'ow can you think you've swallowed one, boy - you either 'ave or you 'aven't".

Family Courts and social care abuses. If you haven't read Episode One of this yet, please do so - it's at Fishy goings on in Staffordshire. The opening piece is simply a Private Eye style taster offering a pen picture of one of the local MPs involved in the story, Mark Fisher. But as the week progresses you'll see it develop into something of much greater significance. Believe it or not, there are Star Court judicial procedures in 2009 Britain and referrals therefrom to care homes where unspeakable abuses occur.

Yet oddly, when marital violence and abuse in general get reduced to the tabloid level, the whole thing comes out like some sort of half-baked afternoon telly Rikki Lake tableau. Put advertisers in the mix as well, and the most appalling gaffes can occur. I am grateful for nby ground-floor supporter Sandy for sending in this:

I wonder if by any chance there is a misogynist prankster at Asda's agency? (And £5 for Rocky Balboa seems astonishingly cheap, by the way)

'Pound grave: more bulletins...er...' Whatever you do when in a room with Salvador Darling and Gormless Frown, don't mention the P word. Actually, you'll struggle to get this surreal double-act into any room, because they can barely stand the sight of each other any more: Darling is the worm that turned....but into what is unclear. The wood surrounding the worm, perhaps.

Pop along to Down the Road and you'll see that - yet again (yawn) nby has proved right in condemning Sterling to its current disgraceful state at a value of just 1.09 Euros. The EU's tin-pot currency kicked off nine years ago at 1.65 - so no amount of Number 11 drivel can change the reality of, effectively, a 34% cut in the Pound's value over that time.

We have a number of people to thank for this: Brown mainly, thick bankers to a large extent too - and dumbo Ministers Like Patricia Undoit and Jessie Towels who blew all the money that was left over. International traders, you see, don't have any faith in the Pound: which is why I advised readers to get out of it last January - and several times thereafter.

But if you live in Britain and have no choice, fear not: I strongly suspect that in 2010 the £ will strengthen, for two reasons. First, the markets expect a Tory Government which, at the very least, will do the sensible thing and rein in our insane levels of National Debt. And second - yawn again - the Euro (given the shit stored up in the EU's outer colonies) is ridiculously over-valued.

What I'm doing is waiting for 1.06, at which point to buy some Pounds. And then buying Euros at some point in the New Year once the Quid rises - in roughly the March/April period.

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September 25th 2009

Keeping it light. It's been a jolly serious week here at Yesterday Manor, and so for this next chunk it wouldn't do any harm to get back to the funny side.

Just as North Sea Oil bailed out Harold Wilson in 1965, so Anglo-Saxon gold looks set to do the same for the One-Eyed Trouser Snake in 2009. Gordon has, I hear, ordered 10,000 metal detectors - and most of the Devon & Cornwall Police are now on 24/7 gold exploration duties. Perhaps this could explain why they never solve any crime, but sweeping this niggardly observation to one side, a senior Downing Street source told nby last night that if successful the operation will go national within the month. Gold bullion fell $11 on the news.

With Jack the Hattie surging forward in the bid to finally capture New Labour for the Gypsies (GIPCs - Gender Insanity & Political Correctness) psychotherapists have discovered a new and increasingly widespread condition, Madharman's Disease by Foxy Syndromey. The main symptoms appear to be a belief that banning fox-smacking and putting a woman on every male shoulder by 2020 are bigger issues than paedophile cover-ups and secret Court abuses. (More on this - of a more serious nature - will follow at some point in the next six days). Suffice to say that Jack Dromey appears to have his own condition: Gender Alienation Syndrome, or GAS. Apparently it's much worse after a fair trade vegan curry down the local Tamil Tiger Balti Emporium. Meanwhile, the Number Ten press office moved swiftly to distribute the story that Harriet Harman is in fact a new species, Homo Preying Mantis Rapiens. Ms Harman's Coven denied the account, saying "Hattie can't be one of those because she already had sex with Jack twice and didn't eat him".

You read it here first: the Tories are on the verge of launching their lead Manifesto pledge: a solid, cast-iron, no trimming and watch-my-back cross my fingers and hope to die promise that they will raise crime by 40%. The pledge - leaked to nby by senior Shadowy Cabinets - expands the vote-winner thus: 'It is abundantly clear thanks to the tireless research undertaken by Not Born Yesterday that the only reason crime has fallen by 40% under New Labour is because the police hardly ever catch anyone, and the CPS never prosecute the ones they do. Under a Conservative government, the crime statistics will go sky high and thus back where they belong'. Amen to that.

And finally, on returning to the UK last night, Gordon Brown asked to see his bank manager, but had to make do with the senior customer liaison executive, Tracey Airfix. Number Ten hailed the Brown/Airfix summit as 'a sure sign that Gordon has never been closer to the branch manager of Lloyds Omnivore plc than he is right now'.

 

September 24th 2009

Any old irony. Our atheism correspondent Mr Jon Rumple-Stilton writes:

'Surely Brown's upbringing as a church minister's son would prevent him from peddling massive untruths in the light of all the available counter evidence? Ah, yes, I see what may have happened...'

We need more of this kind of hugely cynical thinking on the subject of organised religions, for example New Labour.

This is a cheap joke, chiefly because we can't afford expensive ones.

Do It Yourself. A recurring theme in the coming weeks will be the sick joke via which the Westminster Idiot Tendency pronounce on the nature of our behaviour - and then charge us taxes in the hope of getting us to enforce the aformentioned behaviour ourselves. The punch-line comes when it's made clear that the legal thing and the forcing thing are completely ineffectual and therefore more taxes will be required in order to pass ever more Draconian laws.

The bottom line in Cruel Britannia is that - following years of pc and the £940 billion Bankers' Benevolent Fund - all the institutions involved in this childish joke are melting down (no cash) having beforehand lost the plot entirely (worrying about parental smacking while opening the doors of every care-home to paedophiles).

In short, today we must all do things for ourselves, or sidestep the dribble of dispatch-box diaorrhea.

Some things I've had to do since early 2008 rather than wait for some highly-paid clown to notice what's going on:

* Invest in gold

* Switch all our liquid funds from Sterling to Euros

* Withdraw all our funds from High interest accounts

* Find a way to live on 0% interest

* Pay for private health consultations

* Change my car

* Bring civil cases for retrieval of stolen goods

* Point out rogue traders to Trading Standards Officers (Err....)

* Send hundreds of emails to ISPs and software manufacturers...in vain

* Point out to local newspapers that they're giving advertorial to criminals

* Collect evidence for the local CID, and present it on a silber platter

*etc etc etc....we could be here for a week.

 

September 21st 2009

Glut default swaps. We're now on the fifth and final glut, walnuts. As we got just the two figs on our young tree this year, it hardly counts as something the EU needs to dump somewhere; but the walnuts are falling in daily showers, and they're clearly overwhelming our resident pair of squirrels.

I thought we'd got rid of most of the jam made to date - and also some of the quinces to Madame la Fermiere, who is very fond of Quince jelly. But she turned up this morning with an enormous jar of the stuff to say thank you. So it's back to square one.

Down here, once the fruit and veg have begun bursting out of every plant, tree and bush, everyone shares their glut with others. While this may sound like Utopia, the reality is that most of us have the same glut - or get new gluts in exchange for old. I've come to realise over the last decade that the reason why most people have outbuildings down here is so they can have somewhere to store all those 43,500 jars of blackberry jam, chutney, apple puree, prunes, elderberry wine and fig marmalade.

Walnuts are less of a nuisance: preserved in honey as the Romans used to, they last forever - and are a genuine treat on a winter's afternoon. They're also versatile - good for oil, soup (taste squash, walnut and blue cheese before you die) or of course just for cracking open and adding to green salads. Last night I made a salad of fig, smoked ham, pear, tomato, lettuce and walnuts. Wonderful.

Home

September 19th 2009

Some feminists are on our side. On 2nd April this year, this piece appeared in a Dallas newspaper:

A bill in the Texas Legislature would ban the words "retarded," "disabled" and "handicapped" from all state statutes and resolutions -- past and present. Senate Bill 1395, by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), would require what it calls more "person first respectful" language. The ARC of Texas, an advocacy group representing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, supports the bill because it says words like "retarded" are now used as slurs.

Retard is indeed a slur. But 'disabled'? 'Handicapped'? And while we're at it, hands up all those who want to play Person First Respectful.

I've checked this extract out by the way, and it's real enough. Over to our side of the Pond, here's something else from April foolery which is even more discouraging:

September 18th 2009

RSS Feeding frenzy. A new recruit (well, several of them actually) asked me over the last two weeks why nby doesn't have an RSS feed. The answer is simple, in that I didn't know how they work or indeed, what they might achieve. So I Googled them.

As is the norm with Garble, I first of all had to get past RSS Mauritenia (tonnage of) and the Royal Society Of Shithouses before at last getting to a relevant answer. There were then eight pages of selling. This ranged from the hit-and-miss porno-medical stuff ('Get bigger RSS feed today') and right through 'Best RSS software now upgrade to version 64,207(b)' up to 'RSS feeds - do they have a future?' This unnerved me: I felt that what used to be the surfing superhighway - and in these days is of course the digital space - was telling me that my future aspirations were already yesterday while I was stuck in the Now.

Einstein reckoned all time was relative, and he was right: as you get older, everything does go more quickly. But in 2009 I know 25-year-olds getting left behind. In my fatherhood days of yore, it was Rubik's Cube the kids could do. Now the buggers can reconfigure dangerous meteorites. Nevertheless, the RSS how-to thing is not being terribly well explained - at this moment in time, going forward. No - make that careering forward with nobody at the wheel.

I did now what I usually do at this point: go to Wikipedia and get down to the communication level of shiny-twirly-dangly things hanging over cots. Typing in 'help I am a prisoner in 2008, what is an RSS feed?' Wacky-wiki came up with ten straight articles about it. I couldn't understand any of them beyond the vague realisation that it was automated updates without the email dimension - sorry, space. So back at Gargle, I tried 'RSS feeds for dummies'.

You have no idea how many websites there are about dummies. Baby's dummies, shop-window dummies, crash-test dummies, films about dummies called Dumb and Dumber, the pros and cons of using dummies on babies, millions of sites called allpoliticiansaredummies.something, and why nobody uses dummies for folks falling off buildings in movies any more. (We must only hope that the rates for stuntmen are improving)

But there is as yet only one book called RSS Feeds for Dummies by Ellen Finkelstein, and another called RSS For Dummies by Stanislav Sykora. Unusually for me, those names are genuine - but somehow they didn't inspire confidence. Also they are on sale at Amazon, and I try to avoid the amazons. They're odd people, sort of Moonies Lite. I knew a Nerd when I was still working in an office, and he told me back in '98 that Amazon was the future; he said this with such a druggy look on his face, I've lived in fear of them ever since.

Then a braintsunami hit me: Google analytics! I use them already for Heaven's sake! They'll tell me what to do! Yes we can!!

No, they couldn't. The Googlies told me how great it'd be to have one, how I could work out which bits of my site sucked more than others, how to install a Google tracking code, how to share my Google analytics data with site-users and just so much more, golly-gee. But as to the request 'How do I install RSS on my site?', there was but white space and silence. Or rather, silence in the white space.

So I went to Feedburner, because everyone knows Feedburner and has told me a hundred times how easy it is to sign up. It wasn't, and isn't. In the Feedburner space too there is a surfeit of promise, but zero Page One.

And you know why it isn't easy to sign up any more? Because they just went and got themselves bought by Google.

So I tried Yahoo. Fourteen pages in, I realised that none of the suggested sites were actually about how I, as a bigmouth, get into lots of people using RSS out there; everything was about how they could all get to me. Listen RSS guys, I have news for you: this isn't my problem: it's the getting of the regular hits without bashing out 63 mailing list emails 2-3 times a week....that's the problem. Oh - and another thing: the meaning of RSS....'really simple syndication'. The name doesn't work for me: it's still just as hard to get syndicated, and it isn't easy to find out how I do it. My recommendation is you change it to SSR, which stands for "Simple syndication? Really?".

So now I'm going to talk to Damo, because he does this shit and understands. I shall keep you informed.

But now Google has Eric Schmidt.....so their worries must be over. Let me tell you something about Eric Schmidt: he is the son I never wanted. Eric is an international analyst being paid squillions by Gumboot, and this is what he told BBCNews this morning:

"Funnamenally, Great Britain is an innovadive nation. It juss needs to, yer know - d'vur'sfah oudda fynansheeeal servsuzz".

Not for nothing is the motto on nby's crest 'IABATO' - It's all Bollocks and that's Official. I mean come on - the bloke got on Europe's favourite news channel at the nearest thing it has to peak just so he could tell us this?

I have news for you Eric, and it isn't BBCNews: most of us have known this for years. It's just Gordo and Salvador and 22,000 bankers who don't get it. And here's some breaking news, Ecker: yes, it's just coming in....some of us on this side of the Pond can tell Schmidt from putty.

Popeye the Soldier-man. A few minutes later on the same channel, there was a piece on the problems of Eye-rack. This as you know is where the Americans piled in with shock and awe a few short years ago, while we strayed into Eer-ark. Behind us (in this mysterious binominal land from which we just exited in less than orderly fashion) is left every which way kind of legacy, including detention camps for people who like yellow trousers. There's one helluva lot of people who like yellow trousers in Iraq.

Cut to Iraqi lady demurely dressed and asking why these thousands of detainees haven't had a trial as such. "I mean" she said, "Would you allow this in your country?" Well Chuck, Jacqui Smith would but the rest of us probably wouldn't. However my dear, I am also forced to point out that every Arab leader of whom I'm aware would undoubtedly allow this to happen - especially our new ballot-box stuffing friend President Unfairly-Elect Khazi of Afghaniban.

But two wrongs do not make a right; the lady had a universally valid point. So, cut again to four senior members of the US military picking up this point: if these men have not been tried and found guilty, why are they still at the yellow-trousers stage? What followed was surreal.

All four men were in field garb and sported those haircuts where the bulging necks beneath look as if they're trying to escape. Man at Far End answered the question with enthusiasm and clarity. Eyes sticking out like two chapel hat-pegs, he declared:

"Jerrss let me tell yo sumpin here, sah. There's men in those camps we jerrss know are danjrurrs. Ah mean, WE KNOW FO'FAYECT THEY DANJRURRS"

Before he could be led away to somewhere less public, we were all of us left in no doubt as to just how fuckin' danjrurrs Man at Far End could be, given the opportunity and the wrong medication. But most of the open mouths (of those in the audience or tuning in) were caused by the USA - Obama's USA - allowing military top brass to explain why they know better than any proper judicial process what is a fayect and who is danjrurrs.

I outline this anecdote purely as a means of demonstrating how those of good heart wish a plague upon all houses involved in the Middle East; and how - right from the start of the Saddam Hussien Weapons of Mass Distraction drivel - it became obvious that both US and British forces would fail to introduce liberty into a culture with no taste for democracy.

We all need to get real - us every bit as much as the Americans. If the Arabs had no oil, had no gateway to Russia, and had no sovereign wealth, we'd happily let them carry on firing bullets at clouds, or killing each other forever about who owns the well. In the end, it would all wind up being the Israelis' fault anyway - and beyond the New York Jewish lobby, none of us would lift a finger to help.

Globalglobbleglobble. Staying with world affairs, it was intriguing to follow Gumboil analytics during the Brown sauce saga. Because for a man who demonstrates his turkey credentials most effectively by going globalglobbleglobble all the time, Gordon is of remarkably little interest out there on the wider globe.

In France, for example, 382 folks rushed to the site - further evidence of just how much our neighbours enjoy a silly British scandal involving a prominent berk. But in China, just seven bothered. In Russia, nine were interested in the alleged mood swings of the Scotski Trotsky. So Gordon may yet turn out to be the only anonymous World Saviour in history. (Given events in The Political Wing, this seems increasingly unlikely)

Away from Boogy-wooglie, a quick survey of the sites running nby's scoop showed that in his Caledonian homeland, vitriol at the expense of the Monocular One far outstripped anything on show south of the Border. At the end of this whole sorry process of meltdown, the poor sod may find himself a stateless person.

Talking of scoops, nby is preparing a new and rather startling dossier on Hattie Harmaman. You can catch the story so far at Jack the Hattie, but this impish piece merely scratches the surface of what looks increasingly like a very nasty old piece of dry turd. As we know, Harriet remains the unswervable defender of the inalienable right of women everywhere to run everything and yet somehow still blame men. However, with power comes responsibility - which, in Cruel Britannia, has increasingly come to mean blame....so watch out Hatters. (See Postmortem without a body)

A harmless gag. A father asked his 10-year old son if he knew about the birds and the bees.

'I don't want to know,' the child said, bursting into tears.  'Promise me you won't tell me.' 

Confused, the father asked what was wrong.

The boy sobbed, 'When I was six, I got the 'There's no Easter Bunny' speech. 
At seven, I got the 'There's no Tooth Fairy' speech. 
When I was eight, you hit me with the 'There's no Santa' speech. 
If you're going to tell me that grown-ups don't really shag, I'll have nothing left to live for.'

Home

September 16th 2009

Creative Talking. In the last two years, fairly obvious cases of dangerous conspiracy have been dismissed as 'creative writing'. In this latest case of two schoolkids fantasising about mass murder, I doubt very much if these two deeply ordinary kids would have had either the bottle or intelligence to organise the conspiracy of which they slouched accused. As their rather louche defence lawyer observed, 'this was just two kids mucking about'.

What tickled me, however, was the couple's school teachers calling them 'high-achieving' kids. Now it could well be that blowing the school sky-high is one form of high achievement, but for those of us who feared soldiers during the 1960s, one of the acquitted accused saying he hoped 'this case won't harm my chances of joining the army' didn't merit a place up there with Nelson Mandela's desire to free his people. (I've these days every admiration for those in the Armed Forces: but research shows there is no Nobel Prize for Killing)

As if to dive into my elephant trap, the school's Deputy Head pointed at the 'celebrated pupils' plaque behind him, and bragged that one kid in the last twenty years had become a weightlifting champion. "Make no mistake" he said, "We have high-achieving children in this school". Nice one, Dep: but how about all the explosives amateurs and squaddies in your midst?

Up, down, black, white bollocks. Crime has fallen by 35%, but the prisons are overflowing. Share prices are soaring, but unemployment continues to rise. The Taliban is losing, but allied deaths are rising. Educational standards are rising, but literacy is falling. Alcohol prices are soaring, but so too are NHS casualty alcohol-related injuries. New Labour poll scores are collapsing, but Tory scores are not booming.

Latest score:

Spin 0 : Reality 6

September 15th 2009

The trouble with Africa. For some five years now, I've been the Vice-President of our local commune's Charity Committee, Pour le Mali. Basically, we've adopted a village there. Long-suffering nbyers will know that the meetings are very serious while being unintentionally very funny: Clochemerle, eat your heart out.

The last one was, however, the sort of stuff to make one very angry indeed.

After hundreds of local people here have worked heir backsides off picking walnuts, blagging pressers to produce the oil free, tilling fields where all the crop income goes to Mali - and organising everything from vide greniers to commune meals in aid of it - early next year one of our number will go down to the village concerned (Sokassi) to take all the money and free equipment that's been donated.

We have to do this, because if we sent the stuff plus a cheque to Mali Govt Inc it would quickly disappear into a Swiss bank account. But we all accept that now, don't we? I'm not sure why really, but let's leave that one for another day.

Unfortunately, between the Mediterranean coast and Mali lie Morocco and Mauretania. They tend to play games on a regular basis, and the best one is called Here Comes Whitey Let's Grab Some Money. Morocco's scam this time is 'we've changed the visa system for this sort of equipment and it will now cost you 3000 Euros to traffic it through our country, Ithangyoo'.

So the last meeting we spent an hour or two going round and round on this subject - and as is often the case with circles, getting nowhere. (We haven't even asked Mauretania yet, but when we do similar administrative changes will doubtless have been introduced there too)

Then yesterday I read this on the Expatica website:

New family legislation giving more rights to Mali's women which was passed by parliament has caused an outcry among Muslim conservatives and forced President Amadou Toumani Toure to order a review. Toure sent the legislation back to parliament after some 50,000 people rallied at a football stadium in the capital Bamako recently, backing the view of the country's High Islamic Council that the proposed law was an "insult to Islam"."Western Civilization is a Sin!" said banners held aloft in the crowd.

Here we go again, there you have it etc etc: in a few short paragraphs, the problems of Africa summarised. And for those who are hard of reading, these are (1) The place is full of Islamists (2) It's a tribal culture and every chief wants his cut and (3) It's all Bwana's fault anyway, so the bastards should carry on paying in perpetuity.

As long as the West gets involved in the serial basket-case that is Africa, they will never start to solve any of their cultural and socio-economic dilemmas. And if the East carries on upping its involvement, they'll all be slaves within thirty years anyway. Or dead from Aids which, as we know from South Africa's pisshead Minister of Health, can be avoided by washing your willy afterwards.

So I'm going to resign from Le Comite Pour Le Mali. Africans will be far less free but much better off under the Chinese, who do not suffer from misplaced guilt or idiotic western bourgeois pc. The sooner the rest of us realise that, the better.

Cue flood of hate-mail.

 

One helluva lady. Although only scoring 37 runs from 107 balls may be a slow innings in cricket, in life and marriage it's the stuff of standing ovations and awe-struck admiration.

As Wook (above, aged 107) thinks her new husband (aged 37) has gone off her, she's started casting round for number 38. Given she's a Muslim, one begins to appreciate the lady's cojones re this one. Just don't commit adultery Wook, or you might not see 108.

Health & Safety, UK-style. I've finally managed to compile the 2009 UK Featherbed Safety League sponsored by Lloyds Bank, and now reveal key extracts exclusively for nby readers:

1. Gordon Brown's job 2. Anyone committing a crime that isn't about homophobia 3. People who wander about getting pissed and thumping other people 4. The 93% of senior bankers still precisely where they were a year ago 4. Civil Service pensions 5. MPs' perks 6. Tory seats 7......etc etc

.....down to 98. The Chelsea manager's job 99. Labour seats 100. You and me.

More software, surveillance and covert censorship bollocks. Yesterday, as I was in the middle of sending an email, Firefox loaded an update onto my laptop without asking. I lost the email, and in so doing the Burning Vermin rendered my printer incompatible.

In an unrelated development, an hour later my inbox contained this undeliverable notice:

'The MessageLabs Email Security System has identified a file attachment in an e-mail sent by you that has been deemed to be potentially unacceptable by either your Domain Administrator or the Recipient's Domain Administrator'

The attachment was a short resume of the evidence concerning Gordon Brown's mad&blind state of health. The recipient was somebody in a Quango. You get the same response to anything naughty going into Government Ministries and EU offices. So if you've ever wondered why the silo gargoyles haven't got a fucking clue what's going on, now you know. I think there's a chap called Winston Smith behind it. Works in the Ministry of Truth I understand.

How to lose friends and influence people. The famous and unique American adman Bill Bernbach used to say, 'a principle isn't a principle until it costs you money'. My own version is 'until it costs you a friend'.

I prefer this latter version because (1) it's mine (2) there's far more to life than money and (3) it's a jolly good way of separating the wheat from the chaff. (Although I think Bernbach one of the finest men who ever lived)

In the six years of bashing out nby, the cost has been five 'friends'. They were the kind of friends who laugh out loud, say 'how drole' and shout 'encore' very loudly....as long as you agree with them.

Three of them couldn't stomach my lambast of London's outbreak of shameless jingoism following the July 2005 bombings. One went because (bizarrely) he could no longer stand my condemnation of banks. (To be fair, it was before most people knew quite what an unmitigated arse Freddie Badloss is)

This week I lost another one, convinced that the reports about Gordon Brown's health are a right-wing press plot to unseat a Great Man who deserves to be as depressed and blind as he likes while trying to run the world and knife everyone around him. And when I offered a polite reply, I waa abruptly informed that I have morphed into 'a pompous megalomaniac'. I must say, I object to the pompous bit very much indeed.

Thankfully, I still have many, many true friends with whom I disagree across an enormous range of subjects. They are English, French, American, German, Irish, Dutch, men, women, old, young, and of all faiths or no faith. During a difficult week when I was the subject of threats from local thugs and national control freaks, they wrote in droves to variously ask how I was and offer considerate warnings about what I might be letting myself in for.

So to all of those friends, I offer heartfelt thanks.

Home

15th August 2009

***** Amazingly, this is the rating my latest Youtube venture is getting at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ssXcTe-ac So be there or be, um, square or something.

Shoes. We've got female family plus two teenage girls staying with us at the moment. Harry and myself represent the sole testosterone content in the grounds. The hallway looks like a shrine to Imelda Marcos.

There are various reasons for this. Two pairs are mine (one for garden, one for pool), holidays are multifunctional anyway, and women have this thing about shoes. I know this is very, very old news - no doubt Ugg on Salisbury Plain once moaned to Amb about Uggette's need for house shoes, hunting shoes and Solstice sacrifice shoes - but far more interesting is why women have to approach the shoes issue as if they were centipedes.

If you're a bloke looking for a new suit, the assistant has to tell you at the end of the process that you're going to need new shoes as well. The bloke looks astonished; 'Why ?' he thinks - I've got three pairs of prefectly serviceable Grensons at home, and they're only twenty-three years old. But the woman already knows there will be shoe purchasing for the new wedding rig-out - she doesn't need any impertinent assistant to tell her. In fact, far from being the afterthought, shoes will be the foundation of the whole banana. The thinking goes 'buy three pairs of shoes which are equally terrific, and then the decision about what goes above the ankles will be even more fascinating'. Also, much longer. And far more expensive.

My own hypothesis is that shoes have become the woman's symbol for prosperity in our culture. In Asia, it used to be the size of stomach. In ancient Arabia, the number of children. In 2009 Drool Britannia, for the daughters of Blair it's a pair of Jimmy Choos.

This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. A great many traditional descriptions of poverty - sans culottes, ragged-trousered, threadbare, down-at-heel, pieds noirs - surround clothing, or lack of it. Some time before the current bonkers epoch draws to a close, women will find a saying about shoes and naff that goes beyond down at heel. 'Faux Manolo Blanik' perhaps, or 'Not quite the leather Louboutin'. "She's a bit Bally" might become the shorthand for 'going frumpy'.

Now most chaps reading this won't know the first two of those brand names, because we chaps don't do shoes; for us, it's cars. This is because we're more logical: why dither endlessly about footwear when most of the time it'll be hidden inside a Cherokee Jeep? I mean, when buying a house are we really that worried about the carpets? Of course we aren't....we know the girlies will rip them all out anyway. Along with the kitchen and all three bathrooms. No, something you're going to spend much of the day cruising around in is infinitely more vital than the leather round your toes when you slam on the brakes, having just failed to miss the policeman on the crossing.

And of course, cars really are the great forty-years-of-barely-interrupted-boom determinant of one's position on the male social tree. "He drives a what?" is a commonly heard expostulation down the pub of an evening - usually in relation to a Kia. It has to be like this you see, because if we were all obsessed with shoes, men would get shoe-rage, a condition I'd imagine to be very violent. Also Jeremy Clarkson would have to talk about sole build quality and heel torque for an hour each week.

Graded corpses make higher pyres. Probably only adfolk over forty will get that reference but hey - get over it: this isn't fucking Twitter you know, with Stephen silly-billy Fry wittering on about not very much. This is the cutting-edge frontline of agitprop bourgeois radicalism. Which is why it includes bits like this. The WHO (World Health Organisation) issues an endless stream of statistics about everything. I was after some mortality rates for a piece I'm doing ( or rather, giving up on) about alcohol. Anyway, I was intrigued by this heading to one of WHO's charts:

'Rates per 100,000 of acute mortality by country'

At first I thought it might be a misprint, but then I scrolled down to another chart further on. It heralded:

'Rates per 100,000 of chronic mortality by country.

So what's it to be for those thinking of clog-popping - would you like the acute version ma'am, or perhaps the chronic one? I'm sure the WHO mean something by this novel gradation, but when I was at school, dead meant dead. This parrot is etc etc. So if they do have something useful to say on the subject, it'd be nice to have a footnote allowing is to share it.

Course, yer WHO right, they was never the same after Mooney kopped for it.

Allied Carpets loses 850 jobs (BBCNews website yesterday). How disgracefully careless of them. As if things weren't bad enough without wankers like these losing the few bloody jobs we've got left in the UK. They may try to sweep this under the carpet, but I think they should be carpeted. They're just carpet-baggers, hoping to get away scot-free on a magic carpet.

I'm bored of this gag now.

Seen in French pharmacy last week

Wuhey....Mam'selle....ponce....bar...nudge, nudge....say n'more.

 

Home

14th August 2009

Hello again. This popped into my inbox today:

'Expatica.com UPDATE - Toddlers drowned by their mother plus our latest news features'

Well Expatica, I think your sub-eds need some sensitivity retraining re that one. 'Titanic sinks plus latest on that new Scott Joplin recording' did not, as far as I know, ever appear. Nor did 'Nazis trash Jewish shops plus City beat Portsmouth in FA Cup Final yawn'.

Talking of soccer, how about this - courtesy of wiredonline. Researchers asked two sets of soccer refs to judge game clips. One group watched the footage on mute; the other with sound. The refs who heard the fans called 15.5 percent fewer fouls against the home team.

S'a game o' two 'alves, innit?

During a normal week in which Lord Meddlesome described himself as 'a kindly pussycat' (See more on this in The Doghouse and The Political Wing) you'd expect such a fantastic idea to top everything. But other things took precedence. There was Michael Jackson's corpse, so sliced up by the endless requests of narcotics agencies and family members that they might just as well have sold it to the kosher butcher as chopped liver. Japanese website Akihabara News was advertising its sponsorship of Asian Babe Fight of the Week. And US website Obesity Week took the pc barminess gong by announcing that obesity was caused by

'A variety of factors....Individual behaviors, environmental factors, and genetics all may have an effect'

Uh-huh. Not stuffing your face then? Not 'failing to give the doggy bag contents to the dogs' as such? Or perhaps spending too much time in front of a pc screen tweeting....

 

Digging Deep. Having taken the tough decision to charge us all for online access to his newspapers (highest reading age 14) the Merdeschlock got to work straight away, livening things up last Sunday on the Times site:

'Man kills boat as friends crash at Regatta'

One shouldn't laugh at tragedy (not even the one facing poor Rupe) but the opportunity to see how men kill boats would've definitely had me shelling out a shilling. However, it turned out to be simply a case of the World's Greatest Sino-American Australian saving money by employing dyslexic subs. Charge away if you like Mr M, but nobody's going to bother with it until you hire some decent hacks.

I am thrilled by the Murdcock development, because this is the first time in his long and grubby history that the great Cobber has been forced to do something against his better judgement. My view is that it'll backfire (when did you last read a scoop/something interesting/an insight or anything well written at TimesOnline aside from Simon Jenkins?) and this time around, he can't buy exclusive rights to the news - much as he'd like to. There's no barmy FA or ECCB to take his millions. Just a lot of other papers with better writers - and better sites.

Meanwhile, within six weeks, nby's last media prediction ('two major titles will fail before the year-end') is almost fulfilled: the Observer is being dumped by Guardian newspapers, and the Independent is about to go down for the third time.

In other areas too, the inevitable is beginning to unfold. Nby having run a long essay three years ago on Brown's crafty PFI 'off balance sheet' debt mountain, this popped up on the Sunday Telegraph's site at the weekend:

'hospitals cut services to meet £60b pfi bill'

Not only did Our Greatest Ever Chancellor waste an enormous amount of public money paying private builders to put up jerry-built hospitals, he also hid the consequences (for this is his way). Now the first round of patient care cuts are on the way. To this must also be added the £21 billion IT fiasco....and of course, a bank bailout that cost in the region of 31 NHS budgets.

Thus we can expect, in the end, to realise another nby prediction: that the NHS is doomed.

11th August 2009

Russian signals strangely dyslexic. It could be that the BBC too is preparing to sell its website content, because from what I can see there seems to be a growing determination to keep us all guessing. Under the heading 'Russian economy gives mixed signals' it posted the following piece:

'Russia's economy shrank at an annualised pace of 10.9% in the three months to 30 June, Federal State Statistics figures have shown.

The fall was greater than forecast and more than the 9.8% contraction seen in the first quarter.

But compared with that first quarter, the Russian economy expanded 7.5% between April and June.'

Confused? I am. Try reading it again. I did. Several times. This is my conclusion:

If the Q2 fall was greater than the contraction of Q1, how could Q2 have been a 7.5% expansion on Q1? Is this Bobby Peston hedging his bets again?

And nope, the answer does not lie in the 'annualised' thing: we're either comparing apples with apples here, or we're not. Let's take Q1 contraction as x, and Q2 contraction as y; I mean, we might as well complicate things even further. Then according the the BBCNews site

x - y = -1.1 = y + x = +7.5

So yes, the Russian economy is giving mixed signals. As is the Beeb

Carla the culcha vulcha. All in all, it's been a helluva week for media gaffes and unintentionally funny pieces. A new English language monthly (The French Paper) launched over here, and led its 'insight' section with a piece suggesting that Narkozy doesn't so much as fart without Carla telling him the necessary code number. A good article on the whole, marred only by this quote 'from an Elysee insider':

'Carla introduced him to a world of culture he'd never known before'

Blimey. So what's he reading now - Hello? Even worse....what was he reading before? Les bandes dessinees?

Exclusive (above): Leaked Sarkozy foreign policy briefing paper

I mean c'mon, I know Carla-bashing is a national sport and all that, but this is one lady who thoroughly deserves it. If you saw her execrable performance at the recent US folk-rock festival (with el Presidente screaming for more from the fifth row) you'll know from whereabouts I am arriving re this one. Some say she's an airhead, but I think it's more a matter of too much coke in her diet. Sarkozy, of course, ingests only diet coke...being a teetotaller. Oops, did I say something out of turn?

10th August 2009

The strange world of police injuries. Something of a scoop on this, our first day back from the Silly Season holiday. A source has handed to me details of the 'injuries' sustained by policemen while controlling G20 protesters in London earlier this year. They make fascinating reading: bee sting, upset stomach and chipped nail representing three of the more serious cases.

Well, spin is here to stay until somebody decides that a culture based on truth, reality and facing responsibilities would be preferable. But even so, obviously hyped injuries of this nature are nothing more or less than State propaganda.

Another of those odd little coincidences. There is a bloke called Anthony Ray who runs Stingray research, and a barmy feminist called The Yorkshire Gob. I had a brief email exchange with each of them about a year ago. Four weeks back I joined Linkedin, a business-Facebook which is actually very useful if you just want to get back in touch with work colleagues whose company was welcome over lunch in the good old days.

On my home page there last Thursday was one of those 'do you know?' prods one gets. One was Anthony Ray, and the other was The Yorkshire Gob.

Yes, yes, yes - I know we've been down this boulevard before. However, try to see it as a building body of evidence rather than just an old bloke blathering on: this is now the fifth glaring example I've found on the internet of my mail being monitored, and the content routinely read, for commercial gain. Why isn't something being done about it? (See numerous nbys passim)

 

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29th July 2009

28th July 2009

 

27th July 2009

Up the bottom of the banks. People called Darling who spend much of their lives talking to straight (in every sense) blokes would do well not to talk about getting to their bottoms, but our Chancellor managed this feat today. He wants, apparently, to get to the bottom of bankers' lending practices, and tried to explain why as follows:

"I am concerned to make sure banks don't change any more than is absolutely necessary"

No, you didn't misread that, he said 'change' not 'charge'. Charge would've been a far preferable (and infinitely more relevant) term, but this isn't really my point. In fact I have two points, and don't get me started or I'll have four in no time.

First, Darling and Brown have been through so many stages with the banks now, I'd imagine everyone in the country must be an oxymoronic combination of highly amused and thoroughly bored. Batman & Robin have been helping the banks, lending to the banks, bailing out the banks, buying the banks, looking sternly upon the bonuses of the banks, investigating the lending practices of the banks, encouraging the banks, cajoling the banks - in fact everything with the banks except getting some fucking blood out of the stone that is the banks. If the latest terminology means this new phase involves anally raping the banks, then personally I'm all for it. But most people are still left asking: why has it taken fifteen months? Hold that thought.

Second - and to be honest, much more galling - is the idea that Darling is concerned to make sure he doesn't asky liddle banky wankies to changy ikkle bittle too much cos diddum bankies might get upset, aah bless ikkle banky wankies. Were this truly the case, then I would be more convinced than ever that Alistair is the sort of twerp who'd get on a 1961 Raleigh bike and ask if it was wireless. But that 'make absolutely sure' shtick is pure New Labour for WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AAAAAARRRGH. Having held the first thought, hold that one too. Most of you are younger than me, so I'm sure you can manage it.

The fifteen months of stalling - and the 'let's be certain' rubbish - are an elaborate but entirely unconvincing smokescreen designed to hide what insiders have known for six months: the banks don't have any money to lend.

Don't get me wrong here: Brown and Darling are and always will be incalculably stupid naifs, but they are also incalculably calculating, cynical politicians trying to get re-elected - or, as this is increasingly becoming, intent on leaving a big mess and then saying 'Me? Nooononono, didn't come out of my bottom mummy. Not on my watch, officer. Nasty Tories: all their fault'.

More specifically, I can interpret 'big mess' for readers as the Double Whammy: 67% of toxic debt as yet unaccounted for, and the quite enormous amount of taxpayers' dosh that zoomed straight into the front door the minute Freddie Badloss started whingeing in late 2007, and shot even more quickly out the back to mid-Eastern and Asian sovereign funds. It did this because the big, smart money had already sussed that UK Banking plc was a busted flush.

This is THE big difference between us, the rest of the World in general, and the US in particular: British financial services Sherman McCoy insanity took us to the top floor....at which point, the cable* broke and we've been plummeting ever since. But hey - try jumping in the air at the right moment; you never know.

Third - and I told you there'd be more once you got me started - do not for a second imagine that anyone in government (this lot, the next lot or any old lot frankly) have the slightest intention of changing anything in the banking system that the bankers might have an epi about. As has already been established beyond reasonable doubt (see nbys passim), the mutual interdependence of banks and government in the contemporary world is a given.

To those who think this bit belongs in Down the Road Apiece, I would point out that said column is for investors: this one is for everyone who thinks our Establishment might not be the full ticket.

* This cable is not be confused with Mr Vincent Cable MP of the parish of Westminster, a chap whose centralist instincts do not chime with mine, but who is blessed with honest foresight - a condition that insists we should support him in all his works.

 

'Immigration Officers vote to hold two-day strike' (Politicshome website) Will anyone notice the difference, we ask ourselves.

 

Ahmadinnejhad and the Hardliners. You have to worry, do you not, when articles appear saying Mahmoud is under pressure from folks more hardline than him. That has to be one helluva hardline, right? A kind of hard-wired, hard-case, hard-hearted hardline.

Still, the news generally looks good, because the nutters seem to be eating each other. Ahmadinnejhad is so completely off his noddle now that he's firing everyone, and then realising he'll be at the wrong end of a jehad, and thus reinstating them. Plus Ayatollah Khameini - the supreme one who is above the supreme President - has rejected Mahmoud's vice-presidential nominee, and the Tehran Gazette has told Big M to 'control his nerves'. All we need now is a third member of this menage, and The Supremes will have reformed.

As the piccie below demonstrates, the Iranian President is increasingly modelling himself on Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver:

"Hey - are you tarkina me? Huh, punk? Are you tarkina me?"

 

The column will be back in a fortnight

25th July 2009

ID theft and the forces of law and order. Last night, Sky News proudly broke the news of rogue pc repair retailers stealing email addresses and other vital information while conducting their 'repairs'.

Two years ago, I uncovered what seemed to me a blatant case of email address theft in relation to my own laptop, and posted the story on nby. The response of the police was non-existent - as was that of the local Council, the local Trading Standards, and the local media - who didn't want to know because, I suspect, the perpetrator was a major advertiser with them. Local MP Hugo Swine ignored my email.

On my mailing list were Lord Steel, OliverLetwin, Jonathan Ross, Alan Rusbridger, Joan Bakewell and a host of other great and good folks. The lowlife concerned - a man I am now allowed at last to name as one Les Kinch of The PC-Pro - was cited by many people I interviewed as a cheat and bully whose history went back many years. He had been cautioned twice by our local police station for threatening behaviour, and was a serial bankrupt.

Five months ago he assaulted a next-door retailer but no charges were pressed. Since then, his three retail outlets have all closed. The retail neighbour is still on anti-depressants. While this was going on, the local paper ran a laudatory piece explaining to their readers how Kinch was a fine upstanding member of the community.

This is how cultures turn to shit: because money, targets and apathy combine to allow the emergence of slugs from beneath stones undetected and unpunished.

But here's the final irony: Kinch was undone by two young blokes he'd cheated out of their wages. They opened up in competition and drove him out of business. Much as I am a critic of the lunatic mantra The Market Must Decide, it is my duty to record the score on this one as:

Two young blokes who refused to lie down 3 Police, Quangos and local government 0

My apologies to veteran nbyers who have read much of this before.

 

Behind the white door. For we of the distressed gentlefolk generation, there is a saddo's programme anchored by Lord Frost called Through the Keyhole. It is classic daytime telly in that the sets are made of cardboard, the jurists unknown to all but the most committed Hello readers, and the mystery guests about as celebrated as the Chinese New Year in Iran.

This is the idea: irritable vowel owner Loyd Grossman opens the front door of a 'celeb' home, offers a few clues to identity, and then hands back to Frost, whose unknown panellists in turn try to work out that the house is owned by former Olympic horsewoman Amanda Brunt-Bourne.

It's a tedious show, but could easily have its interest level raised by being relaunched as In the Fridge. First off, this is far more Loyd's bag in that fridges usually contain food, except in our house where one contains wine. (The other one is full of beer). But second - and much more appealing in these days of cruelty media - fridges can very easily be The White Goods of Shame. And that's what we want now: name, shame and feel the Heat.

Now like the classic This is Your Life, the concept won't work unless the victims sorry stars don't know in advance, otherwise they'd fill the fridge to the brim with chickpeas, boiled fish and organic naturally low-fat Fair Trade carbohydrate-free water. So my plan is first, to tap their phones and thus assess the degree of slut/slob dimension involved, and then break in to secretly film the chilled contents of their diet.

You shouldn't balk at this approach: after all Rupert I mean the public has a right to know, and this excuses all forms of media oink behaviour. Besides, having made the investment in phone-tapping software, Murdoch (having been caught out, albeit not charged with anything as such) will be looking for some kind of quasi-legal return on his investment. I reckon provided every home we raid has his newspapers casually thrown upon every surface in close-up, Rupe the Dupe would sponsor the concept in a flash. Job done squire.

Imagine the fun to be had, darlings: Cherie Blair's fridge full of raw meat*, Lord Handlebum's chiller tray simply awash with jello, Victoria Beckham's entirely empty, Gordon's crammed with deep-fried Mars bars....the possibilities are endless. Especially with Grossperson mouthing, "Narroo, wote karrnd of persone owns a fridge like theese?" It's impossible to do Loyd, innit? I'm good at impressions, but you can't imitate a bloke who's from Zimbabwe one minute and Boston the next.

* This is an up-its-arse cleverdick filmic reference to Rosemary's Baby, John Cassavetes' finest hour. From the moment I clapped eyes on her, it was obvious to me that Cherie is Rosemary's Baby.

 

Why hacks don't work very hard any more.

The four links above relate to some of the more normal stories on - of all places - the BBCNews website yesterday. (The list as shown above is completely undoctored).

The last one in particular is the stuff of which Curio Corners used to be made in the old days of newspapers and sane behaviour. I well remember laughing for much of a student Sunday in 1968 having seen a piece in Harry Evans'* wonderful Sunday Times headed 'Man rode into soccer stadium and shot referee after penalty award'. I think it took place in Uruguay but that's not important right now: the key thing here is that shit like that went down once a year if you were lucky - now it's once an hour.

The result of all this is that the scriveners of the Fourth Estate need never so much as twitch a buttock until 12.45 and the de rigueur lunch: combined catalysts called internet access and species misbehaviour ensure a surfeit of the shock, drama, horror and romp Private Eye has been pastiching for the last forty years.

But there is a further outcome, and it is self-perpetuating. This is the ability of media publishers in all shapes and sizes to employ thick and idle journalists without either the ambition or intellect to do anything beyond regurgitate press releases and barmy stories.

That suits Rupert Murdoch down to the ground his belly occupies, because he can save money and tell the monkeys what to write. It also suits our governments who want nothing more than the Media Pack to swallow the media pack hook, line and sinker. Above all, it means that the investigative reporting turned into a fine craft by Evans' Insight team is potentially a severely threatened species.

The media landscape is changing out of all recognition. My very strong insight is that the oxygen-providing trees of knowledge will be missing unless something is done to reverse the trend very soon.

* Astonishingly, Sir Harry is still kicking at 81. He is married to Tina Brown the Beast of Daily. One wonders what on earth he makes of it all.

Postman Al, Postman Al.....Postman Al is a bit Doolal:

'Mr Johnson said he was “very worried” by new figures showing that knife deaths had gone up in areas targeted by an anti-knife scheme, but insisted that there were encouraging signs in the overall figures.' (Sky website)

Later, the letterman added:

"The fact stabbings turn into the deaths is not about the perpetrator of the crime... it's the health service and what they can do to respond quickly," he said.'

Hmm. Say Al, didn't you used to be in charge of that?

Phewertaventurrwa. The demmed heat is ghastly here at the moment. It's that kind of hot-wind blast coming straight from the Sahara at 15 miles an hour, such that it's actually cooler to leave the windows shut. It seeps through clumps of dark cloud and invades every sweaty part of the body. It squeezes perspiration out of one's head hair, loins, underarms and top lip.

Anyway, a chum wrote to say he's off to his house in Fuertaventura (where he lives a life of ascetic carbon neutrality and finds ever-new ways to conserve water) and it reminded me (a) how much the weather here is like Fuerta's this week, and (b) I once knew a bit of an Essex bloke who was dead keen on Phewertaventurrwa, which was the nearest he could get to the pronunciation.

The name means fiery wind and is as good a description of the island as you'll find. I came back feeling as if I'd been sand-blasted clean, and with the abiding memory of all the water being electrically pumped up from artesian whatnots below the surface. Every time one uses the loo, the electric pump overrides the very Spanish electricity and causes the lights to flash on and off. So if you're shy about that sort of thing, don't go to Phewertaventurrwa.

This Essex bloke was actually a true Eastender. I asked him why he liked Fuerta so much, and he said "They make the best chips in the world". It does take all sorts, but given the choice I'm not sure I'd have some of them included on the manifest.

Home

 

20th July 2009

As good as it gets. The sun came up just before six this morning; so I was up and off down to move some pine chippings from the interesting place the tree surgeons left it (slap in the middle of the fruit trees) to various strategic places around the property. An extension to the veg patch will use some up to help keep the weeds away from aubergines and peppers, while the tree saplings we're nurturing will also need to be surrounded by chip-covered free ground if they're to thrive. And the slope at the end of our land needs deweeding and then covering in this versatile bark in order to give various seeded trees a reasonable chance of survival.

Everything gets recycleded and used here. This has nothing to do with earnest green living, and everything to do with my current fascination with what I term added-value recycling. We have plastic bottles - so they will be reused to protect young seedlings, and wrapped around maturing trees to keep the deer and rabbits from biting into the bark. Before we leave at the end of September, these in turn will be clothed in bubble-wrap to ensure the olive tree survives our harsh entre deux mers winter.

We have rain, we have well water: these will be collected and raised to give a much-needed drink to everything that's still too small to look after itself. Windfall apples are frozen for pie fillings and added to cinnamon and other ingredients to make preserves. The local farmer's wild plum hedge is scrumped (with his permission) to make yet more jam. I'll give him a jar of it. He in turn will bring radishes for us. I'll invite his wife to pick some of our excess quince fruit. She will bring us a jar of quince jelly to go with cold meats. And so it goes on.

Having adjusted the stone-size yet again on the well-bucket, I'm now happy that I have the ideal combination of water per filling and a weight I can manage to lift. The wheel lifting device has been abandoned, and the search goes on for a carbon-neutral way to pump the water up more efficiently. (Or to be more precise, a way to let my biceps atrophy in favour of an easy life)

In the late morning I lit a fire at the boundary to burn windfall branches resulting from last week's storm. Onto this small conflagration went old grass and knackered wooden roof tiles from the patch and make do roof we have: pretty, but impractical. The problem of how to replace it remains, as ever, in the Too Difficult to Solve File.

Later still I got an email from the media accepting my article on Green confusion, and the need for a climate change ready reckoner. It asked for sensible changes, so I made them. Fifty quid isn't much, but it all adds up. (Read it at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/ )

Before lunch I went for a swim, grabbed another courgette straight off the plant, and munched it raw while cooking a chicken breast and some onions. By this time it was too hot to think straight; I downed a Kronenbourg with the food, and then collapsed into a shaded hammock.

Since then I've written this piece, made contact via Linkedin with two old friends, and continued my research into why our agricultural Quangos seem to know nothing about anything. You can catch up with this nonsense at The Foresight Saga, still the best place on the site to keep abreast of how our elite Establishment are not abreast with anything very much.

It's now dark and warm and ready for a thunderstorm to water everything.....thus saving me the trouble. Days don't get any better than this.

Something brewing

 

19th July 2009

How brain-death and spinal atrophy will ensure Islam wins. An amazing day today for the War in Afghanistan - and bizarrely, a lifeline for Brown's Helicopter Vision. I turned on Andrew Marr's show (still, despite his bit-too-nice style, the best comment programme on telly) and discovered the following:

1. Labour Baroness Kennedy told viewers Afghanistan is 'a war we cannot win'. Very Old Labour, if I may say so.

2. Sun, Hello, and Sunday Times superstairhead Jane Moore said we had wound up negotiating with the IRA, and we would with the Taliban too. There is no comparison between a nationalist organisation with an established grievance, and an organisation dedicated to enslaving women and forcing heretics to convert to Islam - or be shot.

3. Afghani president Hamai Karzi pulled the rug out from under the West by saying we should negotiate with the Taliban....and the Saudis are coming round to this too. So we can assume that Pakistan will also buckle quite soon as well.

4. 62% of Brits want us to pull out.

5. Matthew Parris thinks we should pull out, because 'the security situation has worsened....we are exposing our soldiers unnecessarily'.

One wonders where this leaves President Obama.

I debated for over an hour whether to put this issue into The Foresight Saga or The Slog. It's here because (a) far more of you read it than Foresight and (b) TFS is already bursting at the seams with incredible barminess as it is. (It's a shame more of you don't read it by the way, because it's not all politics and it does paint a frighteningly real view of blindness and incompetence in our Establishment culture)

We can now be sure that we will be out of Afghanistan by 2011 at the latest, and the Tory excuse will be 'no money thanks to Labour incompetence'. The whingers have betrayed those who want to resist Islam, and those military chiefs who quite rightly had the Government on the rack about weapons and transport issues.

All those mentioned at 1-5 above are wrong. Here's why:

a. Giving up against the nutters on the ground means the nuclear response becomes the only option. This plays right into Iran's hands, and leaves Israel between a rock and a hard place.

b. 'Negotiation is possible with everybody' is a myth. There is no negotiating with the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans, or the Taliban, Al Queida, and Islamists in general. Because the domino theory proved invalid (I always thought it would) it doesn't mean that the Kim Il Sungs, the killing fields and the Ahmadinnejhads will go away, and we shall play in gardens with pretty maids all in a row ever after.

c. As a culture, we are sending yet another 'decadent cowardice' signal to the dumbos recruited by the cynics leading the Islamist charge.

I would also add (because I am of course a perfectly ghastly old stoneheart) that this country no longer has a spine: it has only people covered in spines - people who want to yell at us every time we tell a harmless joke or suggest they might be less than perfect.

Britain has lost its bottle, and exchanged it for a new one full of wine. RIP Mr Percy Verence.

 

17th July 2009

Yesterday's mad people. Have you ever looked at old family photographs - or just old shots of anyone during TV documentaries or in junk shops - and wondered if everyone before 1910 might well have been deranged or inbred?

That's just fine by me, girls

What did the photographer say to her? Watch the Tderodactyl?

"Gign't rearn ter berv gah lips yut"

Most of the ones in my family look as if they were about to be taken out and shot: as indeed, four years later, nearly all of them were:

It was this guy's wedding day. Seriously.

Others still look as if their eyebrows have grown too long to see through any more....

This is Charles Darwin. Most Victorians thought he was nuts. I'm with the Victorians.

"That's right Mr Higgins sir, keep those brows high - I can just see your eyes now"

....or had been given some heart-stopping news:

"You're the fucking what?"

But before those with no sense of humour start on the 'they weren't at home in the medium' shtick, I have news - indeed, photographic evidence - that quite a few nineteenth century folks had nothing at home at all, and not too many slates on the roof either. How, for example, do you imagine they got these two twin babies to pose like this:

And the answer is, because they were dead. I mean, that's not normal is it? Well it was then: they called it post mortem photography - which while an accurate description, doesn't even start to explain the kind of mind which would want such a thing. Here's a corker:

"Some people prefer an urn, but we think this is much nicer"

Somehow, the Victorians built empires, tamed continents, audited every species on the planet and started the process of eradicating disease. But the camera doesn't lie: lots of them were barking.

Today's mad people. There's a big internet brand (Google I think) which has this place where you can give feedback on the site. Wow you think, that's a breakthrough: offering to listen. And the name they've given it - Hendrix - is quite witty in a self-consciously smart-arsed sort of way. But for the guys in the silo, there's still some way to go before they get it. This is what it says on-screen after you post your feedback:

Hendrix gives no expectation of a response to this feedback but if you wish to provide one you must BCC (not CC) the sender for them to see it.

Where to start, eh? OK, there are two points here. Number one guys, people give you feedback in the hope that you'll read it and, you know, maybe think hey that's a neat idea and have the manners to write back. And two, you need some tips on the right order of words in sentences from here on in. If you are going to come up slowly from the Underworld, then lots of sentences are longer than 'post comment' or 'contact us'. So you need to get some training in on that.

To explain in more detail, if you tell me I have little chance of a response, why would I want to respond to myself? Just because you're obviously not going to doesn't mean I'm like you know gonna start writing to myself and stuff. So if I'm not about to do that, I'm almost as unlikely to bcc myself so I can see what I already saw on account of I wrote it myself. Finally, I'm me, right? I'm the sender. Who are these 'they' guys?

Ah, right....I see: they're the other poor mothers reading the stuff I send to you, who maybe think I have a point and so you want them to write to me with their support, but not to you. Is that it? Ah, right. So me and these other gonks with nothing better to do than scrawl stuff on your eight-mile thick walls will make each other feel better by whingeing to ourselves, not you. Ah, right.

Maybe you need to stay behind and I'll explain feedback some more.

'Oldest World War I casualty dies aged 113' (Daily Mail) . My God, but he took a long time to die from his wounds.

 

Home

 

16th July 2009

It's not dead, it's just resting. Although I did meet John Cleese once, he is a forbidding person when working and thus I never plucked up the courage to ask him what the 'point' of the famous Parrot Sketch was.

I've always thought, however, that it was an exceedingly prescient dig at Orwellian denial of reality in contemporary life; for bear in mind, the sketch was written forty years ago. It may have been about the daft 'if it feels good, do it' tripe we all used to swallow and then regurgitate back then. Indeed, a person thirty years younger did ask me a month ago why it wasn't obvious at the time that everyone shagging everyone else was a silly and irresponsible way to behave.

It should've been of course, but when sex has been a fantasy since the age of eleven and you too weren't doing it, the sudden availability after around 1966 was, frankly, too good to miss. Today, I oppose everything to do with that era (apart from some of the more civilised legislation) and I quite understandably get called grumpy and hypocritical for wanting to close the door after myself.

But there's far more to it than that. For the last forty years we have been playing out the Parrot sketch in every walk of life on a daily basis, and as the years roll on it really does become a clear case of "He's only standing upright because you've nailed 'is bleeding claws to the perch, you cloth-eared, swivel-eyed git". Britain is not broken says Labour; but they would say that, having at least half the responsibility for the breakage. Britain is broken says Cameron, and for once he is right on the money. An awful lot of people who should know agree with Dave about this, and tonight BBC2 is doing a documentary about it. Unfortunately, it starts at 11.30 pm BST (doubtless due to pressure from Lord Meddlesome) so I won't be up at that hour in France. But if you get the chance, it sounds absolutely ripper. Or if you like your words on paper, the Beeb has a brilliant article introducing it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/22/hi/uk_news/8150271.stm

 

15th July 2009

Rural stuff. I'm getting tomatoes, I'm getting aubergines, I'm getting peppers. And no, I'm not turning into Jilly Goulden: it's just that hot on the heels of fresh lettuce every day, other forms of herbivorous food are rapidly taking shape.

But things are less successful on the well-water front. I shall have to abandon the Maori wheel in favour of hand-lifted pales of water, while going back to the drawing board. What I shall draw upon it is anyone's guess. A pump, perhaps.

Having landed in the mire last week, Tommy the Green Beast (our tractor mower) died the next day. The man from Delpeuch he ask why eez eet coovaired een sheet, and I told him the story (see earlier postings). He took it away and now it's back, newly serviced and considerably less smelly. He too gave me an odd look as he left. No doubt he's busy telling all his mates that the English have taken to mowing cowshit. C'est la folie.

Gordondammerung. I know I've used that gag a few times before, but does anyone apart from me wonder what the Autistic One will be like in defeat? I mean, can you imagine the bloke on the back benches, in the wilderness, or even worse, the House of Lords?

It was bad enough with Ted 'Hello Sailor' Heath. At least with his sailing, cottaging* and orchestral interests he could keep himself amused on a diet of what the lovely George Melly called rum, bum and concertina. But Brown as a brooding presence? It's just not going to happen.

In the gradually maturing and increasingly funny News Forecast column (which I urge you to sample) I've put Brown in the Priory, mainly on the grounds that Labour will need to know where he is at all times, and half-seriously in the belief that he is probably mad. He will not, I'm sure, stay in the Commons, for although he shares the Heath problem with interpersonal skills, Gordon lacks the guts that Ted did so obviously have. Anyway, his inflated self-image will demand a peerage at least. Personally, I'd agree with enormous pleasure to a State Funeral for this ghastly fraud, on the condition that he would fulfil the first necessity of getting one - ie, being dead - immediately.

He won't go into business ('For Hire - Enormous Millstone') but for once he might be telling the truth when he talks about going back into academia. He should never have left Edinburgh's frowning statues and gloomy buildings in the first place: his mood and his arrogantly implausible ingenue ideas were made for such a life in such a city.

However, as a last resort he could become one of the statues while he was alive. I doubt if any casual passer-by would spot he was still extant - even when moving or speaking he looks like a clumsy lump of bauxite - and he could brood forever over the surrounding hills and valleys. The air would turn him sooty, global warming would render him crispy, and the birds could ensure that - as in politics - he was (a) usually very shitty and (b) shat upon from a great height.

* Heath was arrested three times in the late 1950s for undertaking George Michael activities in various public lavatories. Each time, the rising star got off with the help of his powerful friends in the Tory Cottage. Britain was an odd country at the time, displaying both disgraceful intolerance in arresting him in the first place, and completely illegal favouritism in covering the whole thing up. However, while the subjects have changed, the Establishment Club is still alive and well....and ensuring on a daily basis that Anthony Blair QC never comes to trial.

 

14th July 2009

Kytee fort it was fowevva. The reptile Piers Morgan was on ITV2 tonight interviewing Katie Price, the exhibitionist formerly known as Jordan. "I am the most biggest drinker when I'm out clubbin' an' that" she explained, "An' whenever I 'ave a drink I wanna take me cloves off but I ain't no slapper when I'm sober 'cos I'm a lovin' mum an' yer know what, de trouble wiv Pet was dat 'e didnenunt trust me an that an' it did me 'ead in".

Well, Pete and Katie are no more, but her ability to measure 'love' in terms of weeks (even days) sort of tells you why the world of Jordan is doomed to produce lots of feral kids who - even worse than being in poverty - are rich, and thus unable ever to figure out where they might go and what they might do to rid themselves of this nightmare upbringing.

People ask me why I'm such a misery. Here's why: "I was losin' the baby an' that but I ran a marafon an' I was bleedin' an' I lost it an' then Pete dumped me", Katie blurted out.

Morgan, of course, kept on asking impertinent questions until Jordan broke down, and dramatic pauses were lengthened as she went painfully (for all of us viewers) through the gross detail of foetus death. How did you feel, what was going through your mind, why haven't you revealed this before....on and on went Piers. And God help me, I heard myself think 'Thank Heavens it died'.

Katie Price thought she and Pete would be forever, but a week is a long time in Celebrityland. Sadly, eighty years or more is a long time for the progeny of all this bollocks to try and work out what the Hell her creators were on.

NB: the ad break featured a pregnancy test able to tell the sex of the foetus. Is this what we call media aperture?

 

13th July 2009

A man-free world. I know I'm a bit behind the music on this one, but other stuff intervened. Suffice to say that the very minute I read sperm could now be produced from stem cells, I immediately thought 'Harriet Harman gag'. An' yer know what? So did 99% of all Brits.

I cannot think of another 21st century public figure who would be so readily associated with madness in general and gender obsession as Ms H. She is the only perpetual nby demon apart from Meddlesome who gets no supportive mail when I go on about her. And yet there she is, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

Anyway: now she doesn't need men at all, what will Hattie do? Nothing probably - but it does beg the question does it not: when there are so many leads one could be following with stem cell research - as in, every progessive spinal condition known to Man er sorry Hat, Person - and the world with four billion too many folks as it is, why produce sperm artificially when we're awash with the stuff already?

I do occasionally get green-ink rants from those whose sensible shoes stumble upon nby, on the nature of my alleged sexism and eugenic tendencies. But to make the position clear on the latter area (the former charge being beneath contempt) I'm all for medicine that relieves and one day eradicates those with a life of appalling suffering. But I'm damned if I can understand the logic of research into increasing fertility and longevity when these are the two biggest problems we face as it is.

 

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11th July 2009

New research shows more swines in Britain shock. Britain now has the third largest incidence of swine-flu victims in the world. And I have further news for you: our position in the population league is way, way further down that that.

I refer you to The Slog from a month ago (June 11th 2009) and offer this extract for further consideration:

'...in the UK we have by far the most cases of any EU nation - why? Is it because we got to Mexico more? In which case, why has Spain only got half as many as us? And why do viral experts working outside the various health agencies insist that these latter are woefully understating the problem?

World-leading flu expert Michael Osterholme quoth thus last week on the subject of UK control measures:

“It’s like trying to maintain the integrity of a submarine with screen doors.”

And this is what he's driving at: unbelievably, Britain is testing people with flu-like symptoms only if they have been in Mexico and the US in the previous week, or in contact with a “probable or confirmed case” of the disease.

For an epidemic to become a pandemic, that is precisely the daft assumption we need.

And how about this? The World Health Organisation last week changed its rules in order to avoid declaring that the flu has become a pandemic after pleas from governments, led by Britain....'

9th July 2009

La vie en merde. The impressive arrival to our house here is spoilt slightly by the enormously long, wide and smelly mound of cowshit my neighbour Ange dumps there every year. He's not trying to make an anti-British point here: Ange uses it to spread on the maize field in order to enrich the soil for next year's crop.

Dairy farming in France is an odd business. You fatten up the cows in the winter on last year's hay from fallow land, topped up with the maize from a field of roughly twenty hectares. The cows shit a lot, and this is then put back on the soil so more maize can be grown next year....to liven up the diet of hay which came from the acres and acres of fallow land. The cows provide milk and calves, and when their number comes up, red meat to add a tad more cholesterol to that human diet of gloopy milk.

The whole process produces its own personal ozone hole, and about twenty thousand heart attacks a year. And the Government subsidises it at every stage - with money from the Common Agricultural policy. It is indeed a regime of plenty; but mainly, plenty of shit.

From time to time I mow our verges, which grow like wildfire thanks to the grande bouffe of nutriment provided by Ange's liquid stinky-poo leaching into the soil and under the grass. Yesterday I misjudged a turn, and found myself atop a tractor-mower sinking into a quicksand of dung.

In our grange we have enough planks of half-used, old and stored wood to build a ski chalet, and now at last it seemed like they might come in useful. For when one's vehicle is doing a passable Titanic impression into 40,000 tons of cowshit, planks should provide a solid base upon which the wheels can grip, and an escape effected.

The use of the conditional tense there is no accident, as we shall see. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm not technical by nature: I'm more your visionary mid-field general than the bloke who manufactures the turnstiles. So after a few minutes of shoving planks under the wheels at every conceivable angle, I still couldn't work out what to do for the best. Wherever I placed the planks, the Green Beast's rear wheels spun round, spraying my teeshirt with light-browny-yellow ordure. And wherever my feet were placed in order to position the planks, they too sunk up to knee-level in cow-muck.

Rear-wheel drive is not recommended when sinking into shit. Also knowing what you're doing helps. At this point, the mower looked like an obese porcupine: all around it were tongue and groove spines at crazy angles. The sun was very hot. The air was blue. My mood was low. My wife was out. In the car. With which I could've pulled the mower out in twenty seconds. So that was it: it was all my wife's fault.

But around the corner came another neighbour to feed his cows. He had a tractor and trailer that lent an air of utter insignificance to my gently settling vehicle. He waved and stopped, and then looked at the wood-and-steel sculpture by the chemin. You could see his mind playing with the various possible explanations. Had a passing transport plane dropped it from a great height onto the planks? Was I reclaiming it (so it was very nearly out) or dumping it (in which case it was very nearly in)? Why was this idiot fucking about with a grass-cutter in a shit-heap?

But he decided against any probing questions: after all, I might be dangerous - and anyway, he was obviously busy. A Rosbif playing silly buggers in the cow dung was obviously more irritating than fascinating. The farmer slowly removed each bit of wood, smiling and shaking his head as he did so. And when I gave him a length of rope, he took it off me tentatively, like the brave cop taking the cornered baddy's gun. With a 'slluuurrpgoop', the mower emerged. I thanked him, and he left.

It was a normal sort of day.

This is really weird, guys. Most of you will recognise this line as hippy Neil's catchphrase in the 1980s classic telly series The Young Ones. A producer on the show once told me that each character represented a decade from the 1950s onwards, but for me the most memorable was Neil because he had the personality type off pat. These Neilesque people would cook anything down to a tasteless bean stew, never get anything done apart from scoring some grass, and always be full of conspiracy theories, or bonkers New Age beliefs about levitating St Paul's Cathedral or keeping the Russians at bay by going 'ohm' a lot.

They're still around, by the way. Most of them live in Stoke Newington, where they potter about with their grandchildren in bamboo baby-buggies, offering them cardboard toys with which to play - and oddly, as ever, the kids like the cardboard. They still sit in cafes (called New Macrobiotic and The Saffron Garden) convinced that the truth about UFOs is being kept from us by a Pentagon elite which has done a deal with the Zoggians to put toxic contraceptives in the water supply. They're the folks who played the Beatles White Album final track backwards and heard the words 'Paul is dead'.

In fact - as the internet has proved - the thirst for conspiracy bollocks is unquenchable. Every week I get emails (most of which are fascinating) offering a series of events as cast-iron evidence that Forces We Do Not Understand are At Work. You've probably seen the one about coincidences between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. There's another about folding a dollar bill forty-six times to produce a face unannily like Osama Bin Laden.

Folding things and backwards things are crucial for conspiracy theories, because without doing that or standing on your head to look at something from another angle, none of it makes any sense at all - and that which does is hardly remarkable: in an Einsteinian Universe, infinite coincidence is not only possible, it is a mathematical certainty.

My favourite loopy-loo was an American draft-dodger called Jeff. He'd light up an enormous joint, and then ask "Have you ever noticed that Dog is God backwards John?" He also thought Haile Selassie was going to live forever, and that the Space programme was faked from start to finish. I'd be willing to bet that today, he's working hard on sifting the evidence for 9/11 having been an inside job, or that Princess Diana is alive and living on Richard Branson's island following plastic surgery.

So to prove that you can render any and all events spooky, here are a couple of mine.

Have you ever noticed that 'focused' - if you add 'n' (the maths sign for infinity) - is an anagram of confused? How about that?

And no British tennis player without an U or S in his or her name has ever progressed past the semis at Wimbledon since the war? And the last man who did had both letters in his name? Wow.

But if you're into conspiracy theories, then the tennis one at Why We never win Wimbledon will be right up your Rue Morgue.

 

8th July 2009

Education Tweak No 13,855: The Tory Montessori gambit. I'm all for the idea of rounded schooling. My kids had a Froebel education which promotes similar ideas, the difference being I had to pay for it. As a former grammar school success, I bitterly resented paying, but I'm glad I did. However, can somebody answer me one simple question:

Why are we providing new names, methods, standards and packaging every other year for education, when the answer - a return to selective grammar and technical schools - is both more socially fair and meets the trade/technology skill demands our country so obviously lacks?

To answer my own question, I think (1) Old Labour's public school elite guilt got rid of Grammar schools from sheer spite in the 1960s; and (2) the same Oxbridge/Eton Tory wallies are in denial about the need for its return.
Promising a simple, wholesale switch to targeted, selective education would add two million votes to Cameron's thus far derisory Poll performance against the most inept, arrogant and controlling government in our history.

But as it happens, I'm not a Tory. I'm a lower middle-class bloke who made good thanks to the greatest positive force for social mobility in our history: not the politicians or the Establishment or the Oxbridge Silk elite - but the Grammar and Technical Schools which emerged from the 1944 Butler education act. (And piffle to the 11-Plus hysteria: my elder brother failed it and did even better via Technical School and Sandwich Degree).

 

6th July 2009

The role of the Underdog. What a final. Phew. 28-game last set, and amazing guts shown by both competitors. 4 hours and 17 minutes. And the determination of the loser: considering she's been dead for a year or two, Anita Roddick put on an amazing display. Hoho. And the last stages of the Championship were entirely grunt-free; for further surreal observations on this, turn to a discussion of theTennis Grunt . It offers the key to Murray's future success. In the meantime, five cheers for Andy Roddick, who accepted yet another defeat with the dignity of a true gentleman: he was - in every way - the best loser in Wimbledon history. "Show me a good loser" said Arsene Wenger two seasons ago, "And I will show you a loser". Well Arse, you should know....so it's odd that you're wrong on that one.

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July 5th 2009

Harvest time already....

August in July. Our nearest neighbour cropped her wheat yesterday, causing Tiggy to bark at the combine harvester for over an hour. After that she was hoarse and went to sleep for the rest of the day, which was a blessing for all of us. (Tiggy, not the neighbour) A few weeks of having all the cushions pulled off all the sofas and all the bum-mats pulled off all the seats can steadily chip at the novelty of this ritual. Anyway, Jan bought her a plastic sausage last week and so she's largely engaged in savaging that.

The roses are almost finished now, and both grass and hedges have stopped growing given the largely dry weather. So attention has reverted to the veg patch and its adjacent well.

As everything I know about growing veg and herbs could be comfortably contained on the back of a small stamp, it's all a bit make-it-up at the minute, especially as I'm insisting that Jan lets me make my own mistakes. This has meant lots of wry smiles, and me cheerfully planting lovage in a space big enough for the smaller varieties of parsley. (Lovage grows to six feet.) However, the tomatoes are flowering, as are the courgette and aubergine plants. And the lettuces - having looked like little bits of limp garbage three weeks ago - now look like, um, lettuces.

It's also trial and error on the well in terms of correct weight of bucket versus difficulty of raising the weight of water involved. So far the score is Trial 4 Error 4. Extra time is being played, and in the meantime I'm using the mains hose again.

A little bit of Farrow & Balls. For the first time this year, I took out the paintbrushes again to create a bit of wall-cover. One room, two coats, half a day is more my level as an artist. I only produce abstract paintings, for the simple reason that I can't draw very well. But as we've got loads of Farrow & Ball left over from the repainting of our upper floor some years back, if one works in the garden it's possible to do a bit of a Rolf Harris, minus only the skill.

I do have a reasonable eye for colour and composition, which produced the 'study' now adorning a dark corner below.

It's kind of Mondrian meets organic soaps as executed by a person with no limbs, but I like it. To be honest, messing with techniques is much more satisfying than the end result - which, in my case, usually consists of painting over the canvas and starting again.

Now take my wife, vot a painter....Jan is a more than competent draughtsman/crafter, and likes using watercolours. Then she hides the results before I can secretly frame them. Shy people are illogical.

It's the software, I've come to do your brains. Free life membership of nby for any reader who knows the gag which is being referenced in that sub-head. In the meantime, imagine a life in which every day a well-dressed but entirely crooked salesman knocks on your door and says "Brushes, chamois leathers, loo-cleaners and stuff. Buy a brush today". Imagine a life in which the Corona man, the milkman, the Pru man and pretty much Everyman is tapping away at your door in this manner.

Now think how pissed off you'd be if (a) you'd been telling this low-life to fuck off for six months, and (b) when not tapping on your door while muttering darkly, you discovered they'd been reading your mailbox down the hall as well.

Now focus on what you'd do if, as a result of reading your mail, they'd given your address to 4,276 other door-to-door nuisances, who proceeded to hammer your door down 24/7.

And finally, think on the level of outrage you could generate on hearing that they'd done a deal with the company which owned the apartment building; and they were going to evict you unless you started answering the door and buying stuff.

This allegorical 'what if' is meant as the answer to one reader who emailed nby last week asking 'why you've got it in for ISPs'.

 

July 3rd 2009

The League of Psychos. Alerted by a largely favourable online review, I tuned into Beeb2 last night to watch the new Shearsmith/Pemberton vehicle Psychoville. I watched ten minutes of the League of Gentlemen a couple of years back, then five minutes of a repeat later. I thought it original, but taking 'bizarre' to that region where I personally feel uneasy rather amused.

This latest effort is, on the strength of seeing Episode 3, far less original but much funnier. If you're a movie gonk like me, the filmic references will give you that smug feeling of spotting something others wouldn't. And although the major story thread concerns a mother/son serial-killer partnership, it isn't actually as gross as it sounds. I think this is because the script is sharper than that of LOG, and some of the guest stars (notably Dawn French as a bonkers nurse and Christopher Biggins as an unlikely Prince Charming) drag it back towards mainstream potty as opposed to disturbingly mad.

Also this time around, there is a vaguely sane thriller element. Itself reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, the barminess of the whole thing doesn't put one off wanting to know what's going on. Or at least, it didn't put me off - but its 11pm French time kick-off is a tad anti-social for me these days.

And now, those show-off filmic inspirations in full: The Hand that rocks the Cradle, 10 Rillington Place, Dead of Night, Batman and - most hilariously during the Clown fight - Fatal Attraction.

 

July 2nd 2009

Taking personal liberties. US anti-Microsoft website Windows Secrets notes that:

'....several Windows Secrets readers and editors had experienced a disturbing problem involving Automatic Updates (AU). Users who had configured AU to prompt them before downloading or installing updates found that Windows installed updates at the next shutdown without notification, review, or approval.

The day after the story appeared, the Microsoft Update blog tacitly acknowledged the problem in a blog post. The comment said the company was "investigating the reports and trying to clarify with the community exactly what people are experiencing."'

Rush to your windows now and look for pigs flying by. If sites like this didn't exist, Microsoft wouldn't be 'investigating' anything - or indeed lying through their teeth on tame blogs. Those of a nervous disposition look away now, there is a rant coming.

Although we have come some way on bombing the silos beneath the Call Centres since I and millions of others first started boffing on about it some four years ago, we still badly need a few Barnes Wallis inventions to penetrate the mile-thick concrete properly. But as I keep on insisting, the internet is the best way to do this, because it is the only (thus far) uncontrolled medium they fear - and doesn't require lots of pilots to fly three feet above a lake in order to play skim-the-bomb.

There are a number of obvious slimy stones in the internet provider community, every last one just waiting to be turned over in order to reveal the slumbering slugs underneath. The list is almost literally endless, but here are some of the more insidious piss-takes:

* Giving users a square inch of email to complain after an hour-long circular trail round the site

* Not providing email or phone numbers on the site

* Misuse of the words free, upgrade, we will never sell your address, we wanna hear from you! etc etc

* Threats of expulsion against those who do complain

* Collusion in the arrival of spam in one's inbox

* Upgrading at night after one clicks the 'switch off' option (see above)

* Ignoring every first complaint, and then stonewalling over those which follow

* Blatant monitoring of private email traffic

One of the few downsides of the Brits finally catching on to the crooked, lying artists formerly known as bankers and politicians is that it has distracted attention from those more ghastly and efficient androids who can remove our liberty: the truly dangerous folks inside GCHQ, the Home Office, MI6. Rupert Murdoch, the shower of shit in Brussels perverting the course of everything from justice and expenses to fair international trade development....and the ISPs who alone hold the key to these bastards getting their way. They are already helping the Beijing gargoyles establish the control they crave. They are already cooperating with GCHQ. And for the last bloody time, forget all this drivel about GCHQ 'testing' their monitoring: they already have the thirteen billion quid, and they are already actively engaged in spending it.

This isn't paranoia: these guys do bad shit. They represent the most unholy alliance since the Church of Rome merged with Madrid Torture Instruments Incorporated to produce The Men in Red. I rarely sound truly angry these days, but Trevor Griffiths is right on the money: we are sleepwalking towards serfdom. For God's sake everyone, wake the fuck up.

This too is somewhat different response to the 'why have you got it in for ISPs' berk mentioned in the later posting above.

Pussy N'more. Mollie Sugden has finally gone the way of Grace Brothers, and while many might question the importance of this event to The Slog, what you don't know just yet but I'll tell you if you'll only let me get a word in Sybil is that my Auntie Myra was Mollie Sugden's clone. Or estranged twin, one of the two.

Sugden personified all those Northern Aunties about whom Alan Bennett writes so wonderfully, but her resemblance in terms of manner, accent, pretension and bulk was Our Myra to the life. (For southern readers, I should point out that the first person plural is the only acceptable pronoun to be applied when describing family members in t'grim North.)

Myra should've been on the Stage, because she lived life as a performance. And while this meant that her grip on reality was at best feeble, it made for no nanosecond ever being dull when she was around. Over the seventy-five years of her life, she advanced the following completely baseless theories: that her mother was a famous concert pianist once shagged by Edward VII, her husband was a millionaire, she had ridden with Mexican Pete and his Black Hand Gang, her Dad had been shot by the White Russians as a spy, she controlled every train in the Birmingham area, and she had special skin which could resist even a burning cigarette.

When my brother and I were kids, this was as good as adults ever got, but by the time she topped sixty and was still telling whoppers all the time, we began to wonder about Our Myra. My mum would say simply "She's daft as a brush and there's an end to it" and as every ridiculous exaggeration departed her lips, long-suffering hubby Harry Towle would say "Now, Myra, give over" and suck on another Players Medium in protest.

Like Sugden, she was capable of startling vulgarity, raising her glass every Christmas Day afternoon and giggling "Merry Kiss-me-arse everyone!". And like Mrs Slocombe, her main delusions were reserved for a supposed grandeur. "We're related to the Windsors you know" she'd assert, adding of my Mum, "Look at our Mildred - she looks just like the Queen". My mum actually looked like Thora Hird, who was a great actress but could never have credibly played the Queen in a million years.

It would be nice to think that in the somewhere else we're all going to, Mollie and Myra have teamed up and are as I write double-entendring away on the subject of pussies and Christmarse. If so, Sugden will be wrinkling her nose and saying, "Oooo, y're that common yoo are".

 

July 1st 2009

 

Warning: Roasting is bad for you. Anything is news these days: such is the natural result of a decade of 24/7 news stations and forty years of mad Nannyism. Britain gets a three-day heatwave, and the screens, newspapers and radios of our country are dominated by predictions, warnings, health advice and comparisons with 1391. 'Those temperature figures in full', 'Is there worse to come - have your say', 'Man collapses in street', 'Tennis stars in danger from UV', 'What to do if you have hay fever', 'How to breathe' etc etc.

Here in France the powers that wannabe are even worse, plastering every weather site hourly with warnings about heavy rain and temperatures over thirty degrees. Unlike Britain, however, they instituted a canicule law some years back which triggers money to allow emergency services to ring or visit and check that vulnerable people are OK. This at least is useful: all we get from our lot is yet more visions and critical paths and consultation documents.

Is it hotter than 1959? I don't know because I was only eleven at the time, and I don't bloody care. Weather isn't news unless people drown or fall into huge cracks. End of, as I'm told they say in Essex.

On the meaning of words. I have to confess that - for perhaps only the third time in my life - I'm confused about the meaning of words like 'nought', 'cut', 'smear' and 'Adonis'. You can keep up with this (even if politics bores you shitless - as indeed it should) in irreverent and hopefully rib-tickling detail at ( The Political Wing)

In the meantime, if you're now back from channel-hopping, I thought I'd indulge myself by recounting the other two occasions.

The first was in 1966, when Harold Wilson told me that the Pound in my pocket had not lost any value in my pocket by being, as it were, devalued. I should point out that this was not a private audience, as the forty million others tuning in to the Labour PPB were told precisely the same thing - and from all accounts they harboured very similar doubts.

It seemed to me that this all depended on where my pocket was. Later that year I was in Paris, and I am here to tell you that in Paris my quid was worth around 14% less than it had been worth in Berlin the previous summer. It was the beginning of a long and entirely undistinguished history of Doublethink in British politics.

The second was in 1982, when a French advertising account executive told me that his client's new campaign was very creative. At the time, I was just eighteen months out of the best ad agency Britain ever produced (CDP) and so - even as a somewhat peripheral strategist in the much greater scheme of CDP things - I felt reasonably qualified to judge (a) what an idea was (b) if it was any good (c) if it had what we used to call 'legs' before the nation's attention span fell to a 0.7 of a second, and (d) whether it had ever been done before. Thus I felt confident enough to tell the bloke in half-broken French that his brand's advertising idea (in that it consisted of running the poster headline from bottom left to top right) was creative in the sense that Stalin's 1936 Four Year Tractor Plan had been. And it also had about the same chance of success. (The French for that, by the way, isn't that hard: Le planification pendant quatre ans des tracteurs Sovyets)

Shortly after this second example, I was interviewed by the Evening Standard (these were heady days) and offered up a soundbite about society's persuaders increasingly trying to sell a dog turd as a dream ticket. The hack - a snotty young chap with conspicuously dirty fingernails - sneered that that was a bit rich coming from a Hidden Persuader. I enjoyed taking him apart on the simple principle of advertising being regulated whereas newspapers aren't (describing myself proudly as a flagrant persuader) but of course he didn't print that bit.

But the bloke did - albeit unknowingly - have a very good point: once the half-baked appreciation of advertising ideas mated with politicians devoid of ideas, it could only end in tears - and so it has proved.

Having said all that, I need to lighten up. This afternoon, Ken Clarke told Beebnooz that the Government is now paralysed by indecision. It put me in mind of a Music Hall act as follows:

Farrow: I say I say I say....are you paralysed by indecision?

Ball: I don't know, I'm paralysed by indecision.

 

A choice of evils. Stepford android Kay Burley was on Sky News last night, interviewing AEGLive CEO Randy Phillips. Unless you've been in solitary confinement on the isle of Elba over the last week, it won't be necessary to point out that the subject of their discussion was the untimely death of Randy's client Michael Jackson. It was like watching Ribbentrop and Molotov signing the Nazi-Soviet pact: you hated both of them, and wondered what on earth sort of good might emerge from the encounter.

The answer was nothing, save for the reminder that both smarmy US showbiz agents and sociopathic Sky reporters look and sound increasingly obscene as the Age of Reality dawns. Ms Burley vied with Mr Phillips for the title of Most Insincere Person on the Planet, she saying to him through sympathetic teeth "You seem truly upset", he lying through his to her "Hey listen - the O2 thing right? It wasn't about the money - I just lost my closest friend".

We've caught Burley out at this lark so many times, it seems barely worth repeating the obvious. But as a context, I offer these extracts from a Daily Telegraph interview with Randy Phillips from March this year:

'This precise, organisational mastermind has kicked up a global ticketing storm just four months after a high-pitched "yes" was uttered from Jackson's pinched lips.....He estimates Jackson will make $50m-$100m from theLondon dates. This could rise to $500m if he does a world tour.....Phillips insists any risk will be worth it. "If Mike gets too nervous to go on, I'll throw him over my shoulder and carry him on stage. He's light enough"....In recent days, there has been furious speculation about Jackson's health, which Phillips dismisses. "Making up rumours about Michael Jackson is a cottage industry," he exclaims...."Now we have the biggest artist in the world at the best arena in the best city," Phillips declares, digesting the news that 750,000 tickets have sold out in five hours. He has the satisfied look of a man who has just pulled off an inconceivably ambitious plan.'

June 30th 2009

 

More media bollocks. Last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph devoted much of the property section to ‘The Au Revoir Gang’ - this much scribbled-about horde of Brits returning to the UK, their dreams of the good life in France shattered. The piece dealt almost entirely with top end properties (‘Les Parrets is on the market with Savills for £7.17 million’) and offered not a single statistic from start to finish.

This is not untypical of articles about Le Grand Retour. At times it seems like editors know their readers find the schadenfreude of other people’s disappearing dreams very comforting. But only anecdotal evidence supports the trend’s existence; hard numbers suggest it simply isn’t happening.

Saying ‘Brits in France’ is like saying ‘British Muslims’. There are 200,000 expats living full-time in France. Another 300,000 do so on an ‘unofficial’ basis. In turn about 180,000 own property there, but retain a genuine main residence in the UK. That’s three very different tr ibes, and within these are numerous sub-groups: anti-Callaghan (arrived 1974-8), anti-Thatcher (arrived 1980-88), anti-Blair/pc (arrived after 2000), Franco phile enthusiasts, workers looking for a better life and career, scroungers looking for an easy life preying on expats, folks with French spouses, and retirees made marginally well-off by Britain’s various house-price bonanzas.

Thus, it seems highly unlikely that a brief fall in currency and interest rates would cause a mass exodus. In my experience, only the last group mentioned above have left in the wake of this double-whammy: but enough Samples of One – what do the statistics suggest?

Disillusioned returnees from the Good Life are nothing new. In 2005, an EU census showed that for every five UK citizens who give France a try, one comes back within two years. This ‘churn’ number matches the number given to website entrée.com by international removals companies recently for 2008. Over half of those interviewed did say that in 2009 thus far, the ratio had changed to 60:40. Others in different sectors said it hadn’t.

Is this a flood of returning rovers? Well, not really. First of all, we are still looking at a net outflow per annum of quite big numbers. Britain’s Office of National Statistics declares that 42,000 UK residents moved to France ‘on a long-term basis’ in the two years 2006/7. Although these are the latest data, we know also from the French estate agents’ association (the FNAIM) that the total French property market fell just 1.3% in 2008 - although the fall was higher in the UK buyer sector. But already in 2009, the FNAIM notes, ‘of 260 estate agents, 61% said they had noticed an increase in prospective ( UK) buyers in the first quarter of 2009 when compared with the latter quarter of 2008’.

In short, medium-term British interest in French property has grown, but the rate of increase has recently declined. Even at a 60:40 churn rate (and nowhere near all removals companies recorded this) that’s a net annual outflow to France of over 22,000. Many up–to-the minute signs are that the decline is a blip: the £ is rising and interest rate led investors can look forward to higher returns soon.

The current situation is precisely what one would expect. Who buys what and why among Britons with French property depends on motivation: investment, retirement, life-balance, local culture and so forth. The well-prepared are here for the long haul, and the dreamers often leave quite quickly. The torrent of returnees is nothing more than an extra dribble of the trickle.

This piece first appeared in The First Post on 24th June

 

June 29th 2009

Chimps' tea Party. Hot on the heels of DfH boffins telling us to drink water not tea, the EU offers a slightly different view. Research laid out in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition challenges the belief that tea dehydrates. This research is not, however, foreign muck. This from the Beebnooz website:

'Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found'.

It is a mere eight months since the few remaining state-owned care homes were all instructed to switch from tea to water for the old folks. And now this.

My profound wish (expressed both here and elsewhere) is that the medical profession should shut up until they're absolutely certain about something. Which means, effectively, we'd never hear another one of their silly and contradictory warnings ever again. Hurrah.

Ch-Ch-Changes. Spring here is now officially over. The cherries are finished, the initial growth spurt in the garden has slowed down, and the unseasonally high temperatures have stopped the grass in its tracks. Last month the pool was covered in Mayflies, now as the farmers reap the fields, rodents making their escape fill it with an entirely different type of detritus. Next week when the field nearest to us is cut, the pool will be full of straw. As the prevailing wind becomes south-easterly, it'll pickup bits of the Sahara, and the pool will have a sandy bottom.

Ecological disasters happen every year for one species or another. Normally by this time we are plagued by shield-bugs, little green things which get everywhere and smell awful when swatted. This year there are none at all: somebody or something has wiped them out. Instead, we have millions of butterflies fighting for every flower in the garden. Why that particular glut has appeared I've no idea, but right now Hitchcock's The Birds could be remade as The Butterflies.

At the markets too, the veggie saplings have all been sold and the Gariguette strawberry season is over. There are still strawberries around, but they lack the bright colour and sharply delicious flavour of Gariguettes. So next the deciduous fruit will start to come through - and thanks to the amazing warm, dry Spring we already have several apples turning rosey. For the first time ever, our hazelnut tree is covered in fruit; and the old plum trees we painstakingly pruned last year are also doing well. There's a gag in there about pruning prunes, but I can't be bothered.

As for my newly instated vegetable and herb plot, it's going gangbusters; but it's a good job I reopened the old well, otherwise we'd have spent a fortune on water. For some reason, the rabbits don't seem interested in them (the little beggars are so slow, it looks as if they may have mixamatosis) and now it's dry the slugs have slithered off to wherever garden molluscs slither off to.

Mr Mole too is staying deep down in the cool, where he is safe from both the heat and my urine depth charges. So it's a relatively quiet period: the normal non-stop slaughter has come to a halt. It's too hot for any of that nonsense.

 

25th May 2009

A climate of change. The age of expenses is dead, long live the age of reform. But there's more than enough chatter about all that as it is (for more, see The Political Wing); what I'm referring to is life in Lot et Garonne.

The truly marvellous thing about our petit coin here is the constant change. Townies tend to view rural communities through rose-coloured binoculars, but the truth is that far more real things change here than in the centres of power and privilege. Just thirty years ago, the dominant crop was tobacco - but the wind of socio-medical change blew that one away, so now the big money-earner is prunes, followed closely by hazelnuts. I don't know if you can think of any change bigger than that in our cities over the last thirty years, but I can't. "Ah but - the internet" you say. Yup - and we have it too. Marmande's tomatoes are marketed worldwide using remote internet Bourses. The city grows thirty-seven varieties today - only fifteen years ago it grew six.

My opening point is this: Deputes in Paris may swan arrogantly about with unfeasibly thin model wives and talk of enacting change, but the agricultural community is nearly always the one forced to adapt. For example, it can only be a matter of time before maize grown for cattle (bad for ecology) and grains grown for biofuel (bad for Third World food supplies) result in new laws and lost subsidies. It will be up to the farmers and their local community leaders to decide what else to do with their land; but as always, the commercial farmer will grow for the biggest market and the best price. For they have not the luxury of working in the advice business: they have to do something.

No: it is values that don't change in small communities like ours. What the locals do changes markedly with every generation.

The climate too is incredibly varied. The skies here never become boring as those in Spain and Southern Portugal. We can go within twelve hours from gentle sun and still, muggy air to strong winds and tempest, and the next day to fresh dilute-blue sky with the odd scudding cloud. I moan endlessly about the Meteo's inability to get it right, but you can see their problem: this is an entre deux mers climate. It makes me giggle when their wind direction charts just show a circle with an arrow (you can't really go wrong with that as a forecast) but then when one looks at the Meteox live satellite picture, that is precisely what's happening.

For dilletantes like me - l'ecrivain anglais - every day offers a kaleidoscpe of things to do. This is not true of winter (winters in rural France are deadly dull) but from March onwards I can perm any four or more from the following twenty-two activities:

Write - decorate - paint - play guitar - plant annuals - prune trees - cut hedges - mow grass - bottle fruit - plant vegetables - de-weed the rockery - gather walnuts - trail the Ash hedge - go to markets - cook for friends and go to theirs - compose music - visit garden centres - go to lunch for a local menu formule - transplant tree saplings - make jam - plan newly reclaimed garden areas - try the odd local dinner-floor show thing (in moderation) - and listen to Radio Culture - the one station where they speak very slowly and I can thus both understand and be interested in everything they discuss.

The most important thing of all is to learn something new every day. At my age, such novel information may well be forgotten within a fortnight, but on the gushing tap and hole in bucket principle, a form of stasis may yet be possible.

A la recherche des Taupes perdus. I quite like this pun, so perhaps it needs explanation. A la recherche du temps perdu was the definitive novel by Marcel Proust. I must fess up here and say that I gave up after the first two parts, if only because I really could not identify with the self-pitying and rather wet hero. In French, a taupe is a mole. I am now that man in search of lost moles whom I had thought dead, but clearly they are still very much extant.

You can see here just how much damage the little buggers do if left to their own devices. Give them an inch, and they will create a perfect rendition in miniature of Welsh coalmining areas. I like the valleys as much as any man, just not directly outside the kitchen door of my French house.

I'd imagine that most of the old wives since 1789 have been churning out tales about how to get rid of moles - given there are so many of them. But the only two things I've ever found effective are human pee down their holes (it doesn't kill them, but it does suggest that moving house would be in order) and sticking sharp brambles down into their main underground intersections. This does kill them, and thus remains my weapon of last resort.

23rd May 2009

The private parts of a depracated Beta feature. Google analytics wrote to me to say that deprecated private beta features were to be removed. Does any reader anywhere have the faintest fucking idea what they're on about? At first I thought they were referring to nby, but closer examination revealed....nothing.

We have to do something about these people. For many years I thought there was every chance they'd disappear up their own arses in time, but this hasn't happened. Google's Nick wrote to tell me that 'the Google Analytics Data Export API will remove support for the following functionality we deprecated after leaving our private beta phase' but there was nothing following his avowed intent.

 

Deaf loudmouths on the Superhighway. You know, it's a funny thing about the online world, but it is full of people who can't hear and can't stop shouting.Perhaps the first is related to the second: I don't know, and I don't care. What I'm sure about is that most large companies marketing online are in a deep silo, atop which is a giant megaphone.

Here are a few interesting realities upon which to ponder.

You can add Windows emails to 'blocked senders', but they will keep coming.

Orange can stop me writing rude things to them via email, but not stop 8,000 spam pornographers from writing very rude things to me.

If Microsoft want to ask you some questions, there is no way at all to cancel their little questionnaire: it will keep on coming until you fill it in.

If Nokia want you to update their phones, the same applies.

BUT

You can't write an open email to any of these people. Nor can you phone them without going through the Call Centre fiasco. And even to do that, with most of these silo-dwellers, you'll have to pay.

Orange never reply to specific email problems at all (in my experience)

Microsoft has no email or telephone number anywhere on any of its websites

To get in touch with Setanta (this is a cracker) you have to send them a registered letter. It's also well-nigh impossible to unsubscribe from their 'service'.

The whole thing is a sick joke. But rather more disturbingly, although it must be obvious to even these deadbeats we have in actual or potential government above us, not one of them is remotely interested in bringing these gargoyles to book.

Because you see - like the banks - they're too powerful. And of course, without their cooperation, GCHQs's little £13 billion snooping operation wouldn't even get off the ground.

A study conducted two years ago listed poor pc, internet, mobile phone, ISP and software after-sales service as one of the top five frustrating aspects of contemporary life.

But look through the Party manifestos: none of the beggars even mentions it.

Too much at stake, see: too much like hard work. Which is odd, because there'd be (literally) hundreds of thousands of votes in it.

And given how votecentric our politicians are, we must reluctantly conclude that the hotly denied but well-established link between ISPs and the security services is the stumbling block.

Here's a good old-fashioned rule of thumb we should apply to all those asking questions about us but ignoring all of ours: 'Suppliers should be seen and not heard'.

This piece first appeared as a Daily Telegraph blog comment

 

 

22nd May 2009

 

 

 

Miss Tiggy meets fish. Imagine you are a terrier - a breed of dog attracted to noise, and the sight of things crawling, squealing and running away.

Now imagine that, a week after you discover rabbits, you set eyes on basking salmon on a spring day. Lots of salmon. Wriggly, shiny, noisy, squirming at high speed in all directions salmon. What is a dog to do?

Like a bouncing Barnes Wallis bomb, Tiggs belted down the slope towards this shoal of pescatarian activity, chasing every last vestige of it all over an enormous lake. Then (and only then) did our youngest dog collapse in a heap - and get dragged grudgingly back to the straight and narrow path of our walk.

I wouldn't mind, but all we have to show for this is a knackered pup. Not a freshwater salmon in sight.

21st May 2009

Gardening for England. As Spring gradually gives way to the beginnings of summer heat, it has been essential down here to get things cut, burnt and transplanted before the growth-spurt makes moving anything dangerous...and high winds following hot spells make any fire potentially lethal.

Those who doubt the speed and power of weather changes down here should harken unto this short anecdote. Many years ago when I had a house in the Gers, one winter's afternoon my late chum Norman and I raked up billions of leaves and then failed utterly to set them alight. Fed up and desirous of a pre-dinner libation, we left the pile to fizzle quietly away. Later after supper, my first wife wandered out into the garden and - on returning inside - remarked upon the ferocity of the wind. I glanced through the French windows (somewhat relaxed by several 1946 Armagnacs) and saw a cone-shaped torch blasting alarmingly large sparks into the commercial coniferous forest adjoining our land. The Chinese say that the wind cannot read - which is all very well, but it knows perfectly well how to start a fire. You have never seen two blokes move so quickly to act as pompiers.

Up at the eastern limit of our plot, I've been hacking away for three years to create an area which enjoys not only spectacular views, but also almost complete protection from the wind. The prevailing breeze is from both north west and south west, and as this isthmus pokes out from the main part of the property, even with biting November winds one can sit up there in shirtsleeves and stay comfortably relaxed. I have a long-term plan for fragrant shrubs and perhaps (if a permis de construire can be obtained) a small summer house in this little oasis. But in the meantime, there are brambles and giant creeper roots to contain, as well as hundreds of sloe saplings to thin out.

Back on the north side of the house, to the west of our walnut tree there is a steep slope upon which I built a rockery during 2007, but have so far failed to actually colonise with plant life. This year however the guilt has finally gotten to me, and so it has been deweeded and covered in the bark of two trees taken down during last winter. So far, five species have been planted, and in the next few days (when rain is forecast) we plan to shop for more nice things. Jan is as ever offering seasoned advice about how to extend the rockery's shape in order to balance the plot of tall plants she has effortlessly created on the other side of the garden steps. Effortless garden creation irritates me because I can't do it, but as my wife knows far more about this stuff than I do, I'm usually willing to go with her flow.

The main tree type in this region is Ash. So prevalent is it in fact, the locals refer to it dismissively as a mauvaise herbe - a weed. I think this rather unkind: it is an attractive tree with delicate foliage - and of course, much sought-after by cabinet makers. Even the ones we've taken down here remain as Ash hedges, weaved lovingly by me from the tree stumps - despite the wife's insistence that I'm only creating more work for myself in the long term. At my age there is no long-term: I think of this sort of thing as sculpture for future generations.

Ukraine if you want to. One must keep abreast of contemporary gags. Hazy Bleary having coined a late addition to the Mad Handbag's infamous Conference remark, it seems apposite to stick with it in the light of Ukrainian soccer side Shakhtar Doneskt's appearance in the EUFA Cup Final alongside Werder Bremen. The Unkrainian mining town side won 2-1 after extra time, proving once again that soccer is a game where twenty-two blokes kick a piece of leather around, and at the end the Germans are left exhausted and disappointed. Hurrah!

 

20th May 2009

Eurovision Songstress. Much as it pains me to admit this, I heard Jade Ewen being interviewed tonight, and blow me if she didn't have the ability to string an erudite sentence together without a single yer know or yehbutseefingizzlike.

She is also what we older chaps used to call a bit of alright. Despite yer Norwegians having enough beautiful plumage to win (predictably, the song was unspeakably repellent) Jade got 223 votes, and came third - miles ahead of an appalling French song. So well done her. The tide really is turning: MPs in disgrace, bankers loathed, economists confounded and weather forecasters confused. All we need now is Brown to be caught in flagrante with a stoat for the full set.

16th May 2009

Talk your way out of that, Orange. Long-standing (and by now, no doubt, bored rigid) Sloggers will know of my three-year marathon of threats, lousy service, lies and denial from Orange.

In a nutshell, this ISP has been restricting my recipients per email to ten during that time, without reason and indeed without the contractual right so to do. Their game (I and other UK engineers think) is to trade me up to a small-business email package, the cost of which would be anything but small. Their greed costs me twenty minutes of painstaking mail-sending each and every time I want to send to the nby mailing list. And the one complaint made to them (after milder ones had been completely ignored) earned me an EU-wide legal email saying 'any more like that chummy and you'll be banned from the airwaves forever'. My reply (copied to the great and good) shut them up, and the latest escalation - a long and often hilarious corresondence between Oliver Letwin and myself - does seem to have set a few hares running among the Conservative Opposition spokesfolks for all things electronic. Now read on.

I realise that was something of a coconutshell, but the ways of the ISP are murky, unpleasant and Top Secret - so it takes alot of unravelling and explanation. Once in a while, however, I have a go at catching them out.

Two years ago - after writing an email via Wanadoo (Orange) France to my wife in Southern Germany, I got showered for a few days with spam about Southern German and Tyolean skiing holidays. Yesterday I wrote to a friend near Angouleme (Orange France again) suggesting he might have a virus. Three minutes later, Orange sent me an email in French offering virus protection.

The extrapolation from this is obvious - and will be found by most pc users under forty to be a naive reaction to 'normal procedure'. My points remain the same as always:

1. Orange deny they do this, so they are liars.

2. They have no government contract of which I'm aware allowing them to monitor my emails.

3. They have no contract at all to use my email content for their own ends.

4. If we would all be horrified and up in arms about some swine doing this to our private snail-mail, why on earth should our email be any different?

So far since late 2007, we have had the banks, the car companies, the mobile phone co's and now our own parliamentarians exposed as cheating, scheming, greedy, tax-evading, secretly monitoring and selfish argoyles. I have been saying since 2006 that sooner or later most if not all the ISPs will be investigated, a whistle-blower will be found....and they will be caught red-handed up to everything horrid you could think of.

I have at least two reliable and highly-placed sources who insist that GCHQ and ISPs have already begun working together on completely illegal and unwarranted electronic surveillance.

This is not a grumpy old twit's rather tediously old-fashioned idea of fair play: it is a fight for our liberties and privacy, and the specific freedom to say no to ever-insistent Mammon. Get worked up about it, bombard your ISP with queries about it and write to any MP you can find who isn't too busy buying new loo-seats to care.

Do nothing, and you'll wind up in a future full of high-resolution cameras and instant internet censorship.....from which there will be no escape.

 

14th May 2009

Calling all king-size hammocks: how to get four chances to kill a person....

1. Sit in your packaging looking very pretty, thus persuading an idiot that - despite the high winds - this would be a good day to put you up.

2. Show the wrong diagram for knot-tying in the Sino-Swedish instructions, thus causing this same idiot to jump without inhibition into said hammock, and fall very hard on his coccyx, having previously paraglided via wind-powered hammock into the next county.

3. Show a picture in the instructions purporting to represent a confused customer ringing IKEA, without as such putting any phone number in the instructions, thus causing his bp to rise to abnormally dangerous levels

4. Forget to make allowance for obesity of idiots, thus causing giant poplars to bend and catapult this very same idiot into a field of maize.

 

1oth May 2009

The Kumato Search Engine experience. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, this column is like a box o' chocolates...you nev quat sherr what yoo gon' git. The Kumato is a cross between a tomato and a kumquat. Sorry, I made that bit up. It's actually derived from your Crimean Black. Beautiful plumage, yer Crimean Black. They grow a local variety here - Marmande is the tomato capital of the world, so there - and the original idea seems to have been to develop a sweeter variety kids would like. Like most human planning, the resultant dark brown colouration makes most children go 'Yuuurch', but it is indeed remarkably sweet. I tried it in a creamy pasta sauce I was knocking up last week (the way you do) and it was fabbo. Jan tried one and nearly threw up. Go figure.

All this reminds me of the famous adage, 'knowledge is understanding that the tomato is a fruit, but intelligence is knowing not to serve it with ice cream'. I think that's a corker. But talking of intelligence, I was chatting to my younger daughter a couple of months back (isn't it great when your kids get up to fifth gear?) and we both agreed that the real internet opportunity is for an intelligent search engine.

I have no doubt that the geeks at Google and Microsoft are working round the clock to produce one, but you just know don't you that it'll find everything to do with hardware innards in a flash, and take a century to deliver ten sites on the Battle of Hastings.

This last comment reflects the two twin problems currently: type in Battle of Hastings, and you'll get (a) thirteen million sites - which is good if your lifespan is 240,000 years - and (b) four million tourist board sites about Hastings and then (c) a million sites on the Battles of Alamo to Zambesi and then (d) half a million gameboy sites about Battle Plan Axe-Killer and then (e) three sites on the Battle of Hastings, two of which were written by US history students. This would be fine if the vital three came up first, as opposed to just before they lower your coffin into the ground.

Take the dark brown Tomato known as Kumato: I didn't actually know the name when I started this piece at the age of fifteen, so I typed in 'dark brown tomato France'. I got everyone in France called Brown (and trust me, Bruns are fecund - fecund fecund, in fact) then every French tomato variety (all 163 of the mothers) then dark moments in French history, sun tan cream sites, forty-thousand tomato recipes and the little-known Verdi operetta Tomato...but not the answer. This is not so much monkey and typewriter, as manic monkey yet to discover that his typewriter is still in the box, and the box is upside down.

Ultimately, if you know the exact name of the subject you seek, search engines are a breeze. But this is a bit like saying 'Maps are a cinch when you know where you're going'. What the world needs is the Satnav of search engines. Produce that, and the world will beat a path to your door....if you give it the address.

Expositions and wives. Although my main metiers are scribbling and strumming, I do occasionally have a crack at 'interesting design features'. In the past, these have ranged from fences made of cut down saplings, large colourful cloths to cover crepis plaster, abstract art as bullshit detector (visitors who like it shall not be reinvited), garden sculptures fashioned from old French wheels and tools, and just last week illustrated insulation boards to hide yet more of that bloody crepis plaster.

I think it's safe to say that my efforts in these departments are misunderstood: chiefly by my wife, but also (when one gets down to the practicalities of doing them) by me too. Jan has that intensely irritating ability of knowing (a) when something won't work (b) when it will look awful and (c) when both function and form will score minus fifty-two.

However, once in a blue moon something I intended as, say, an interesting and artistically accessible draught-excluder morphs during production into an amazing mural. Over the winter it bends out of shape and is taken down again. Its main purpose then is to bewilder French workers at our local council tip. This is the one role in which it excels.

 

7th May 2009

The double-whammy for Brits in France. Today we made our first market visit. It was a good, clear start to the day, but as usual the place (Eymet) was full of Brits: it gets more like Surrey every year. The market there is good for some things, but had Foxie not needed a haircut - and thus we had time to kill - we wouldn't have bothered. Basically, it's the same stallholders moving round from one Rosbif centre to another, their prices (especially on cheese) jacked up by 15%.

Nevertheless, the visit was instructive. We'd already noticed last week that the price of footwear here has gone up roughly 30% since last year; today we saw how food prices are far higher in the markets - as well as jeans (twenty Euros for second-hand) and drinks in a bar. The local view is that the prices inflated after the petrol crisis last year - and surprise surprise, never came back down again. Diesel is now about two-thirds the UK price, but lead-free petrol is if anything more expensive than in the UK.

To this must be added the falling Pound. We thought last year was bad enough at a 1.40 exchange rate....but now of course (even with the Quid rallying) it's down to 1.13. Had we not hoovered up all our English cash and changed it into Euros during November 2008, we would be up a tributary with zero means of locomotion by now. All told, with these two factors borne in mind the tourist is being asked to pay around 40% more year on year.

A year ago (July 2008 to be exact) I wrote 'When people go abroad on holiday, then it'll do for Brown'. This is more clear than ever - but for one simple reason: whereas the middle class Blairite voters have already had enough of the fat controller (and, being sensible, will holiday in the UK anyway) the core Labour vote demands its fortnight abroad, whether Mighty McMouse has lifted them out of poverty or not. Once it becomes clear that the Tennents Extra in Puerta Banus is three quid a pint, that's when whatever Labour vote is left should desert in droves.

But the jolly-old-pranks nature of the Tory leadership at present may well militate against this. Willy Hague for King, that's what I say.

 

6th May 2009

Letting the dog see the rabbit. After a few days of cutting out (and getting cut in return by) overgrown hawthorns, I took our younger Norfolk Tiggy for a walk into the fields near the back of our house here. The day was sublime: clear blue sky, very still, warm and yet damp with the morning dew - and everything capped by the dizzying smell of hawthorn blossom everywhere. In the next field but one (which is always fallow) there was a breathtaking display of giant daisies and wild pyramid orchids.

Tiggy of course was oblivious to everything except the long grass, Zebedeeing about in which became her new hobby pretty much from the moment we arrived here. Now, however, she has a new and altogether more serious obession. As I walked into a third field with the grass cut shorter, a full-grown rabbit sat nibbling away happily at various delicacies, completely unaware of our presence. As Tiggy's eyesight is the same as Mr Magoo's, she in turn didn't see the rabbit until we were about ten feet away - at which point she shot straight for it. The wild animal looked up, and for two seconds they stared at each other. Then the longest chase I've ever witnessed began: right round the outside of the field, into the bracken, through the hedge and on down to yet another field where the prey disappeared into the relative safety of blackberry thorns.

But safety is indeed a relative thing, and by the time I got there Tiggy had caught the little beggar and was busy savaging it. With terriers (well-trained or not) it is at this sort of moment a waste of breath to shout things like 'drop' or 'come' or indeed anything that involves an end to the carnage. Somehow the rabbit managed to get away and back out into open country; only then was I able to rugby-tackle Tiggs, pick up the dying creature by its ears and immediately put it out of its misery. Only a short leash would then get our youngest dog back to the house. She is confined to barracks for the time being while we decide what to do next.

 

2nd May 2009

1st May 2009

The S word has gone from Britain. It went the same way as comprehensible instruction manuals, record shops and incorruptible local councils. People will pull any stunt now to win: lie to the pits, accidentally skip a drugs test, sell worthless bonds to mutuals - and even say they've repaid debt when they haven't, thank you once again Mandy Fondlebum.

Mandy's written an article today: 'How British business can help the Iraqis'. Hmm. Being the world's No 2 arms exporter, I'd imagine we could.

28th April 2009

27th April 2009

Swine flu. The media made it clear this weekend that this is a Mexican killer-swine flu. Obviously there are a lot of murderous swine in Mexico, but elsewhere the killer-swine count seems to be lower, and thus the strain is not hitting many people. Of course, now it has crossed the Atlantic this will change. Most EU leaders will, one suspects, be taken out by this dangerous pandemic. Plus the bankers, Oxbridge lawyers, corporate accountants and tax advisors.

On that basis, I'm finding it hard to grasp why this flu is a bad thing. It may prove to be the answer to our economic problems. The answer is to watch Sir Freddie Goodwin's health very carefully: if he succumbs, then this pandemic is surely a gift from God.

On papote un peu en Monviel. There is more skullduggerie down at the Mairie. The tenants above the Mairie are fed up of all the wedding fetes in the salle below. They have sued the Council about this, and won. Meanwhile, Mayor Menesplier (still in office despite a 64% vote against him) is livid at being sued and losing; his revenge is to hold a noisy piss-up to celebrate the inauguration of the Mairie extension on May 2nd. This means free booze on the Government, and is thus not to be missed - especially not by us.

Your correspondent will be reporting on any gossip on the night, and any ugly confrontations which might occur during the celebrations.

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