Category Archives: Politics

We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Posted on by
6

Captain Quint: “Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief… Just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. … Very first light, chief, sharks came cruising, so we formed ourselves into tight groups… you know, kind of like old squares in a battle like you see in a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and then you start pounding and hollering and screaming. Sometimes the shark goes, sometimes he wouldn’t go away… I don’t know how many sharks. Maybe a thousand, I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist…Noon the fifth day…a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low… and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down, starts to pick us up…
So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out and the sharks took the rest, June 29th 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
Robert Shaw, Jaws

When the Good Ship Printjournalism was torpedoed just off the coast of Profitability thousands of journalists went into the water and huddled together in tight groups, clinging to the lifeboats of the online editions. Not too long after first light the sharks came cruising. The guys on the outside pounded and hollered and screamed and sometimes the sharks would go away…sometimes they didn’t. One by one journos were picked off and sank to a watery grave. There just wasn’t room for everyone in the lifeboats.

Steady as she goes, Number 1

Steady as she goes, Number 1

Similar stories of carnage are commonplace across hundreds of professions—shops and stores are shut down while the company continues trading online with a fraction of the staff. Tens of thousands of workers in small factories, dispatch depts, counting houses, accounts offices and production lines have been let go as technical advances in web transactions and processing speeds have left many redundant. Business and Commerce have caught a cold before, but this is a pandemic.

We can’t walk around with hammers like 21st Century Luddites; We can’t uninvent the wheel or even the web—not that anyone wants to—we just need Baldrick’s Cunning Plan and the nouse to navigate the way ahead. The way we work and live is changing so fast that those of us still shooting film and playing 45s are often taken by surprise by the mp3 generation, but we can (and do) sit, watch and marvel at the little bits of the New World we manage to understand. I know how to work an ipod, for example, and I’m aware of Google (and who he plays for). If it wasn’t for Tim Berners-Lee‘s pretty smart idea you wouldn’t be reading this. The web can also be entertaining.

But there’s plenty of collateral damage in this Guerre du Gigabyte. Those once-merry stokers belowdecks on HMS Old Media are having to rethink and retrain as the ship is holed below the water line and the lifeboats are manned by a new breed of young whizz-kids and tech-heads. Some of the old seadogs are lucky enough to have been thrown an oar and asked to keep rowing— trouble is there used to be three-times the men manning the rollocks. Some are asked to row, steer and chart a course all at the same time. Shore leave gets cancelled or reduced as the Admiralty hasn’t left itself a full ship’s compliment. The few who are left keep schtum (on the whole) for fear of being tossed overboard. Many of the others already in the water were hit by the Credit Crunch Tsunami before they had a chance to get their Mae Wests on. Many a bloated and battered body of an ex-journo has been washed up on the shores of the world’s job centres.

Having spent too long in the water, survivors emerge bloated and wrinkly

Having spent too long in the water, survivors emerge bloated and wrinkly

Newspaper and magazine publishers invest more and more cash into their online vessels while barely pumping the bilges of their old, ailing craft. They tell us that one day soon the advertisers will change tack, buy some ads (online or in print—we don’t mind) cruise over in their big, fat PBY and fish us out of the shark-infested waters of recession, but I see no ships. Til then we’re surrounded by friends and colleagues bobbing up and down in the water, having been bitten in half below the waist by an HR missive, or a redundancy notice. Sooner or later someone will realise they can’t leave the tiller in the hands of the Unable Seamen and Very Petty Officers, the green and the graceless. But I fear by the time that it dawns on them all the old hands will be enjoying their grog in Davey Jones’ Lock-in.

Thankfully there are still some Captains willing to hand out commissions but there are not nearly enough lifejackets to go round. The Fleet has been scuppered after nearly 300 years of ruling the waves while across the journalism’s seven seas newspaper after newspaper takes a hit and goes under with all souls lost. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

Farewell and adieu unto you Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain;
For it’s we’ve received orders for to sail for old England,
But we hope very soon we shall see you again.

Winter, spring, summer or fall….

Posted on by
2

Van Gogh didn’t cut off his own ear. According to German art historians, he made up the story to protect his friend Paul Gauguin who cut it off with a sword during a fight.

Years ago, me and my old flatmate Mickey Flynn had a punch-up while trying to stand upright on a mattress on his bedroom floor. I was punching him on the the nose and he was smashing me round the head with a squash racket— taking turns to deliver our blows: whack, ping, whack, ping. Lots of claret about but I don’t remember any sword being involved, any more than I remember what the fight was over. I know it would have been Guinness-fueled as our off-licence didn’t sell Absynth at the time. Bloody hurt though.

gal_douglas_kirk_5
I suppose it’s the nature of friendships that sooner-or-later they involve full-blown rows. Most of us don’t reach for the Wilkinson, like Gauguin apparently did, but history is littered with mates who have fallen out: Julius Caeser and Mark Anthony; McBeth and Banquo; Mike and Bernie Winters— all friends and brothers who fell out, with varying degrees of violence.

I suppose here you’d expect me mention the jaw-dropping in-fighting within the Labour Party at the moment, with former friends and colleagues lining up to have a swing at Gordon Brown (texture like sun). Hazel Blears, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett—all chums and workmates who’ve reached for the squash racket and swung at the PM over the past few days.
Well I’m not going to mention that. Politicians, especially this lot, can never really be expected to remain loyal to anyone but themselves, and what goes around comes around—Gordon did his share of mud-slinging when his old mate Tony was dragging his feet leaving office. I have to say I did chuckle in amazement when Blunkett said Labour should avoid any more “self-inflicted” wounds. That’ll be D.Blunkett MP—the man who resigned twice over a couple of bouts of brazen naughtiness.

It doesn’t really matter, to be honest. Just a few weeks after GB‘s G20 triumph when he was set to save the world, his own little world seems to be collapsing around him in a whirlwind of bad judgement, bad luck and bad company. Half of me thinks he’ll be glad to get shot of the job and let the Party opposite pick up the pieces of the train wreck. It ain’t gonna get much better in the foreseeable future, whatever his (present) mate Darling thinks, so maybe the best thing might be to let the other mob have a go for a while, and hope they take the blame for some of it. On the other hand, dear old Gordon waited so long for his stint in the limelight he’s almost certainly reluctant to leave the stage.

Never a frown with Gordon Brown

Never a frown with Gordon Brown

There’s another chilling factor to consider. Blair won a landslide (Thing’s can only get better) because there was a huge part of the electorate who’d forgotten or never knew what a Labour administration was like. in 1997 the memory of Callaghan’s shambles was a distant memory to most, an entry in a history book to others. We’re about to witness something similar next year: There are people who will vote next year who would have been very, very young when Thatcher, Normo Tebbs, Aitken, Archer, Tarzan, Lawson et al had their snouts in the trough and led the single-most arrogant and wicked Government this country has ever seen. You think THIS lot are bad? Those Tories were Masters of Evil. Money grabbing, crooks who viewed the ordinary voter with staggering contempt and disdain. So when the landslide happens at the polling booths next year, which bar a miracle it surely will, we’ll be faced with one, two maybe three terms of that lot before the voters forget enough about Gordon and his feckless buffoons to vote Labour in again. That could be 15 years of Cameron. 15 years of Theresa May and Liam Fox. 15 years of George Osborne. Time to hand out the cutlasses

 

fbb4724d-fe15-b554-2de3-2d45daa4d49b

Just One More Question, Sir…

Posted on by
4

So I’m sitting in my garden, soaking up the rays while flicking through the papers, when I’m stopped in my tracks by an advert on page 12 of The Times. Dunno why, as I’ve always felt I don’t look at adverts. As any fule no, adverts are just there to make photos smaller in papers and magazines, or to give you something to doodle on while in morning conference. In these dark days of credit crunch and the collapse of the advertising industry, I suppose we should all thank Evans for small Murphys (some more than others) and embrace whatever adverts actually make it into print, and thus keeping us in the poverty to which we’ve so readily become accustomed, but I do fluctuate between annoyance and agnosticism when I see a dirty great Halfords or Waitrose ad where a perfectly good story, or even better, a photo should be.

howard-with-tash1

Anyway, I digress. So the offending item this time is a Samsung colour half-page ad for mobile phones. An attractive young couple grapple with each other next to insets of two mobiles, underneath the legend “Ourselves. Together” whatever that means. But something struck me about those words—they felt rather familiar. So off I popped to the wonderful web world of Wikipedia. Something in the back of my pickled mind led me to believe that Sinn Féin was a translation of just that: Ourselves Together. Was this electronics giant really a front for Irish Republicanism ? Would Chelsea soon be playing their matches in shirts emblazoned with Gerry Adams’ hairy boat ? As I should have known only too well after the week at work I’ve had, the answer was no. I was wrong. But only just.

Here’s the entry:
Sinn Féin:…The name is Irish for “ourselves” or “we ourselves”,[3][4] although it is frequently mistranslated[5] as “ourselves alone”.

Now given that around 64% of what’s on Wikipedia is a load of old cobblers, I still could be right. Wikipedia is about as reliable as a Jacqui Smith expense claim or an Ant n Dec phone-poll, so perhaps my memory has served me better than I think. Maybe not.

But where did I glean this little nugget of half-truth? Well I knew all those hours on the sofa would pay off in the end: It came to me that there’s an episode of Columbo where he investigates a murder of an Oirish (you should hear the accents in the show) republican sympathiser. The episode was full of begorrahs and to be sure, to be sures and ginger-haired young men, drinking whiskey and stout, wearing aran sweaters. The do-er is an Oirish wroiter who is undone by the fact he inscribes the inside cover of a book at a signing with Together Ourselves (I thought). There, I’ve gone and ruined the ending for you now, haven’t I? No matter— as it’s the wont of the series, you always know who the killer is during the opening credits and the fun is to be had by the in-jokes liberally sprinkled through each episode: his signature whistle of knick-knack-paddy-wack; his endearing habit of ‘just one more question, sir”; his battered Peugeot and the fact that Mrs Columbo is never ever seen on screen. Often she was mentioned in dispatches but the producers occasionally had fun with us by dangling the carrot in front of us that she was about to appear— but she never did. Mrs Columbo is one of man tv spouses who remain unseen: Dad’s Army‘s, Mrs Mainwaring; Rumpole‘s She Who Must be Obeyed; Arthur Daly‘s Er Indoors; Porrige‘s Mrs Barraclough to name a few. What a lovely way to be married— to an anonymous, faceless woman who’s never around. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong?

This old man, he played one...

This old man, he played one...

Peter Falk’s shambolic detective never carried a gun, didn’t even have a truncheon (night stick, y’all) and always showed his badge as identification. Remember those days? The Wire it weren’t. If it wasn’t for his willingness to identify himself, and his lack of violent tendencies Columbo could have joined the Met.
It’s a chilling thought that had Big Crosby not turned down the part when he was offered it, the famous mac might have been replaced by a straw trilby and a pipe, and each case would have revolved around a golf course. Falk, of course, eventually made the part his own (it had been played by 2 other actors in the 60’s) and he became tv’s highest-paid actor for a while. Like Grandpa Simpson and his MacGyver I’ve been addicted to the show for years and was stunned to see one on tv the other day which not only hadn’t I seen before but in which the killer was neither Patrick McGoohan nor Robert Vaughn. McGoohan and Falk were best mates and not only did the former star of The Prisoner win two Emmys for his roles, he also directed quite a few shows. I know there are those who are horrified that USTV has remade The Prisoner starring something called a Jim Caviezel as No.6 and Dame Serena McKellen as either No. 2 or a number 2, it’s not clear. Why do they insist on doing this ? I’m not great fan of the original, but some things surely are sacrosanct ? I’m sure somewhere in managerial meetings within HBO or ABC there’ll be plans to remake Ice Cold in Alex starring Hugh Jackman, or Casablanca with Cate Blanchett as Rick Blaine. If I get a whiff that they’re tee-ing up Owen Wilson to don a scruffy raincoat and play LAPD‘s favourite homicide detective in something called Columbo: the Party-on Years I shall invite you all to join me in a violent bout of civil unrest. Together. Ourselves.

 

l-r: Hanks, Aniston, Jackman and Ferrell

l-r: Hanks, Aniston, Jackman and Ferrell

.

Quick nurse, the screens: It’s happened again

Posted on by
Reply

3444583681_6f0d9f17b4_b1

I think I’ll go for a curry tonight. Not ground-breaking, Pulitzer-winning, hold-the-front-page stuff, I grant you, but I thought I’d celebrate the Gurkha’s latest victory, this time in the House of Commons. I like showing solidarity with other nations’ or peoples’ celebrations. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Back in the days of yore at The Telegraph we would religiously celebrate Beaujolais Day by getting a crate into the office. Anzac Day didn’t go unrecognized either as pallets of Fosters and XXXX would turn up to be supped through the days work. Paddy’s Day (as mentioned here earlier) was celebrated every day BUT the official one, and there was often some sub-editor or late-stop asleep at his desk having mistakenly celebrated Burns night in mid-July.
Of the five (and counting) curry houses in Blackheath three are Nepalese so there’ll be plenty of happy lads to serve my taka dahl and garlic chilli chicken this evening. Goody! I could eat a scabby horse. Before Khans restaurant changed hands the staff would serve in Gurkha regimental ties. You didn’t get many run-outs from there, I can tell you. They used to do a Chicken Gurkhali which I drunkenly and foolishly ordered one evening. “It’s what the Gurka’s eat, Sir” I was told. Ignoring their warning I tucked in. The effects were devastating, trousers ruined and the coastguard alerted.
Around the corner at the Sopna (which became Everest, now called Saffron) they used to do a Terry Waite Special, in honour of the local devil dodger/CIA stooge who spent all that time attached to that radiator in the Lebanon, and was allegedly what he ordered when he came home. If memory serves it’s a whole chicken stuffed with keema mince , topped with cheese and roasted. The dish on the menu is meant for 2-3 hungry people (give him his due, Waite is a big unit and hadn’t eaten a proper meal for 4 years) but I sat and watched a good pal of mine devour it on his own in minutes. I cannot mention his name here, but suffice to say he hadn’t eaten since the Sunday Mirror canteen had closed two hours earlier.

Four fried chickens and a coke

Four fried chickens and a coke

The third these is the Mountain View which was a Barclays Bank, then a bar —Flame (still full of Barclays Bankers)— and has all the atmosphere of Harry Ramsdens, Heathrow Airport. The fat, smiley guvnor is ok if a bit overpowering, and they do a line in the world’s sweetest cake and will sing (terribly) happy birthday to any of your party who happens to be celebrating. It doesn’t matter if it IS actually your birthday—could be your anniversary , new job or decree nisi—they’ll sing Happy Birthday anyway, it’s excruciating. I can only imagine their songs have been passed on, father-to-son by generations of political prisoners in Kathmandu to remind their successors of the terrible pain meted out on them by the ruling classes. Where they must have shoved their kukris is anyone’s guess. But the food’s good and they serve Gurka Beer (brewed in Horsham) to take your mind off the singing.
So it’s to one of the above I shall repair to this evening, in the hope that they’re still feeling particularly chipper after their commons victory and that there’ll be the odd free poppadum or dry sherry on offer. I’m still hanging out for Argentina to re-take the Malvinas—there’s a great Argentinian steakhouse in the village. But there’s no point in Turkey becoming an EU member—we don’t have a kebab house.
os010511

 

William Elliot Whitmore

Posted on by
2

Watch this. You’ll like this.

This fella was on Later with Jools this week. A fine, fine voice and his heart seems to be in the right place. On his website some of his influences and heroes are listed as: Shane MacGowan, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. There’s more than a whiff of Johnny Cash about him too.

And if you like that and get the chance, check out his album Animals in the Dark, especially the song Johnny Law. Superb lyrics.

Masters of None

Posted on by
Reply

DV490084The weather forecasters got it wrong again. They told me it’s warming up, yet all I keep seeing are photos of Policemen in balaclavas—must have been freezing at that g20 demonstration. Silvermans must be doing a roaring trade in wooly headgear for Constable Savage, poor love obviously feels the cold. They also sell duct tape for covering-up those annoying shiny lapel numbers. It’s nice to see there are some retailers who have inadvertently benefited from the financial collapse. I shall wait to purchase my cold weather gear til the bitter gales off the Thames rip around the Valley of Lost Dreams and nibble about me vitals. It’ll be sad enough watching a season involving the likes of Yeovil and Hartlepool, let along enduring a north-easterly unprotected. I’m sure that nice Bobby behind the goal will lend me his if I ask him.
It’s 1981 since we were in the 3rd tier of the english league and, to be brutally honest, it’s no more than we deserve. Playing against the best was great while it lasted but let’s get back to what we know best: pub football, where the only use of ‘wonder-goal’ is when someone wonders if we’ll ever score a goal again and the rotation-system is the one used by fans queuing for the urinals, not by the manager for the squad. There are many upsides to third division football, one of which being you’ll always get in, another is there’s plenty of room to stretch out, and if you get to the ground early enough you get a game.

A packed Valley awaits the teams

A packed Valley awaits the teams

If only the Charlton back four obeyed orders as well as the boys-in-blue did on April 1st. Someone (could it have been Daisy Boo of they Yard?) gave the ‘balaclavas on’ order, the bugle played “Tape-Up”, then came the ’99 call’ and a beautifully choreographed sortie began into the massed ranks of 3rd Battalion Swampy. I’m sure there were a lot lot of herberts there, spoiling for a punch-up in the demo that day—there usually are—I just, as yet, haven’t seen footage of a copper getting a pasting. As in all conflicts there were civilian casualties as a policeman with a truncheon and a riot shield has never been a precision weapon of war. If the end hadn’t been so tragic it’d be almost laughable that a large number of these acts of brutality were caught on CCTV — the very same ones that so many have called an invasion of privacy, and those that the Old Bill use as part of their own daily life. I’m sure there’s absolutely no connection between the Hendon Brigade trying to mask their id numbers and faces and the fact they knew that they’d be on camera. Charlton have been on tv camera for years and they’ve never been as devastating in attack as Her Majesty’s Finest were on that fateful day.
I notice that in a last ditch-effort to recover whatever credibility she has left, Jacqui Smith has released the Hillsborough disaster “secret files” ten years earlier than is necessary. Quite why they weren’t released immediately, and why the South Yorkshire Police will still have control of the documents (and not an independent inquiry) is beyond me. They’ll show that Liverpool fans were originally investigated for what happened that day, following the knee-jerk accusations of crowd trouble and football violence that spread like wildfire that day and over the following days. What they won’t show by the time any independent body gets its hands on the files is who in the SYP was to blame, what conversations and interviews took place between officers, and which were hushed-up. Will this new info allow for prosecutions for 96 deaths? Have the police really changed in 20 years since Hillsborogh (twelve of which under a supposedly socialist government) ?
Let’s hope the family of the G20 victim Ian Tomlinson won’t have to wait 20 years til they get their answers. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Ernie was Only 52, He didn’t Wanna Die

Posted on by
4

A poll (why??) released today lists the nation’s favourite ‘pop’ songs played at funerals. Seems to me, if you discount the No1, that my funeral would be the perfect time to play these to me, as I would be unlikely to get up and kick the buggery out of the sound system:

1 My Way – Frank Sinatra/Shirley Bassey
2 Wind Beneath My Wings – Bette Midler/Celine Dion
3 Time To Say Goodbye – Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli
4 Angels – Robbie Williams
5 Over The Rainbow – Eva Cassidy
6 You Raise Me Up – Westlife/Boyzone/Josh Grobin
7 My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion
8 I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston
9 You’ll Never Walk Alone – Gerry and the Pacemakers
10 Unforgettable – Nat King Cole

In his will Peter Sellars famously requested the Glen Miller‘s In the Mood be played at his funeral. The tune was loathed by Sellars and sent Milligan, Secombe et al into fits of laughter, knowing that it was the one time it would be played when he couldn’t hear it. Like most of us, I’ve often mused about what tunes I’d like not to hear at the celebration of my termination. Elvis’s Old Shep is right up there, Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun too (“Goodbye papa, it’s hard to die” has always been a fave line of mine). terry_jacks1 Neither of these are on my list cos I don’t want to hear them ever again, just cos they’re so bad it may encourage a few of those gathered to join me in my box. I may prematurely throw a seven if I have to listen to the Scouse tones of You’ll Never Walk Alone ever again. I suspect it won’t be too long before the Bish of Liv dusts off his cassock in remembrance of the fallen. I wish Gerry’s Pacemaker would go on the Fritz.

But before I am planted six-foot Down Down, Deeper and Down, I’d like to draw your attention to the very sad demise of Clement Freud: Cook, Liberal MP, Dog-Food Advertiser, Bon Viveur, Wit and All-Round Good Egg. The grandson of the great shrink, brother of a bohemian artist. Funny as Fuck. Those of you (photographers, probably) who never listened to him on Radio 4 missed a real treat, and it is for that type I relate just one of Clement’s stories, as re-told by Stephen Fry this morning, of his MPs junket to China a while ago, on which he travelled with Winston Churchill (the Tory MP of the 1980’s—not the war leader). In China, apparently, one is rewarded for politeness and kind acts as well as revered for achievement. When Freud noticed that his hotel room was rather smaller Winstons, he asked if it was because Churchill’s party was in power in the UK and the Liberals were not? The answer came “No, No! It is because he has a famous Grandfather”. Freud noted that it was the only time he’d ever been out-grandfathered.
PD*1475525

Bob be Nimble, Bob be Quick

Posted on by
Reply

Did you know that the managing director of Aintree racecourse is called Julian Thick ? No? Terrible, innit? You’d change that name, wouldn’t you? I certainly would. I was about to write to him and suggest some alternatives he might wanna change to, but I see this morning that one of those has already been taken. Step forward Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick of the Met Police. He was apparently the third most senior officer in London’s finest, and the head of counter-terrorism, but entered the doghouse after giving the press a sneak peek at his top secret counter-terrorist plans (looked like a to-do-list to me). Not very Quick-witted, you might say, even for a copper, and capping a great 10 days for Plod in general (see past rants). But, almost at once, he announced his resignation. That’d be within 24 hours. Now that was quick! Shows there’s still some semblance of duty and honour around:” I fucked up, I put my hands up, I will fall on my sword.” It’s a pity our home Secretary isn’t called Jacqui Imaliarandacheatandimorf, then she might take good heed of her name and act on it, once she’s taken the videos back, of course. Where’s Malcolm Tucker when you need him?

Where are you calling from? Nigeria! Ah yes, my credit card details are...

Where are you calling from? Nigeria! Ah yes, my credit card details are...

Sometimes fate sells you a pup which turns round and bites you on the arse. There’s not much you can do if your surname happens to be rather daft, embarrassing or inappropriate (and no, I’m not gonna talk about Neville Neville). There was a contract photographer in London called Denzil McNeelance and yes, you’ve guessed it, he was known as McNeelance the Freelance (and maybe still is). What a great moniker. Family names are family names and we’re pretty much stuck with them.
But sometimes your mum and dad down 3 litres of cheap vodka come up with a first name for you that beggars belief. Jamie Oliver‘s wife Jools has given birth to a baby girl and named her Petal Blossom Rainbow. The couple already have two daughters with floral-themed names – Poppy Honey and Daisy Boo. I don’t really know what to say. When they grow up, I do hope one of their daughters inserts a large kitchen utensil into her dad for being such an arse. Would you ever take orders from your boss if she was named Poppy Honey? Can you forsee a time when there’s likely to be a Prime Minister Petal Blossom Rainbow ? I suppose the UN job’s still open to them (Boutros Boutros Ghali Ghali, U Thant etc).
Given that the public appetite (geddit) for this lisping mockney will surely fade (let’s all hold hands and pray for that day to come soon) one can only hope he’s made enough cash out of Sainsburys that those girls need never go out to look for work. Though the way the Met are losing high-flying officers, there would doubtless be a vacancy for them, they’d just have to wait a couple of weeks for one to come along. It would scare the bejeezus out of Bin Laden (cos they still won’t have caught him by then) if Daisy Boo of the Yard was on his case.

Vile Bodies

Posted on by
1

Hats off again to Constable Savage. That’s one less defenceless newspaper vendor we need to worry about. As reported by The Guardian this morning a copper, in a move which they call at Hendon “The Belgrano Manoeuvre”, carried out a complete surprise attack with devastating effect on a slow-moving, ageing man, peacefully walking in the opposite direction. Thank Christ England scrum-halves aren’t armed with truncheons or who knows what damage Danny Care would do on the field of play? Savage will doubtless be given the key to the tea-urn back at the station house and a free go on the Taser. Sadly the kin of the victim, Ian Tomlinson, will be more concerned with a different sort of urn. Well done the lads at The Grauniad. Doubtless there’ll be a full and frank internal police investigation.

Charing Cross, sir? Of course, sir: Down the road, second on the left.

Charing Cross, sir? Of course, sir: Down the road, second on the left.

There was a lot of bloodshed that day, most of it none-too-serious, though worrying none-the-less. But the cameras did pick up on a protester who’d had his teeth knocked out by the Police. It’s a good thing the lovely Clare Balding wasn’t commentating on the demos— she’d have told the poor guy he looked much better. The perfectly-formed Clare (perfectly-formed, that is, if you like your women to look like Colin Montgomery‘s big sister) suggested on live tv that winning jockey of last weekend’s Grand National, Liam Treadwell, could now afford to get his dodgy teeth fixed. She has since apologised saying she meant no offence. Well nor do I when I say this: Fuck off you fat, charmless, Thelwell, drag-act.

A Mrs Doubtfire Convention: Balding and Monty

A Mrs Doubtfire Convention: Balding and Monty

Now then, where was I ? Ah yes. Incidents like the above are, of course, keeping the already-stretched NHS on its toes. Imagine therefore my joy when I heard that Johnny Taxpayer is forking out 40 million quid a year to keep our hospitals staffed with chaplains. No, not silent movie actors, but priests. It’s deemed a worthy use of our cash to employ Vicars, Vergers, Rabbis etc so that, in our hour of need, we can repent/confess/convert to a man of the cloth. Wonderful. I wouldn’t want that cash to be spent on nurses or cleaners, Oh No! Let’s have a chorus of Morning Has Broken while I’m on my last legs. The Right Rev who was interviewed by the BBC stated that at his hospital they had at their disposal Catholics, Anglicans, Sikhs, Muslems and Buddah-knows-what-else in case of a religious emergency, and all on my Nat Insurance Stamp. I have in the past screamed out to the Greater Being during the more probing of examinations, but I don’t need to pay for someone to hold my hand and rattle his rosaries while its happening. I’d rather fork out for someone to knock out the doctor who’s got his finger up my arse.
dickemerybbc-998
What do these blokes do while waiting to go into action? Is there a room where they sit and wait for it to all kick-off? Do they play cards or darts together til the alarm sounds like in Thunderbirds? The eyes in a photo of Vishnu on the wall start flashing and a Hindu Holy man leaps into action, scrubs up and off to the isolation ward?
Whoyagonnacall ? DEVIL DODGERS!!

All of this leads me to news of the world’s first face-and-hand transplant—on a burns victim, as it happens. Anyone who has suffered the misery of sitting through John Travolta’s Face Off will realise not only how complicated this operation is, but also how truly awful the subsequent movie will be. Will Nick Cage ever make a decent flick again? I doubt it. But there’s something oddly enticing about a face transplant (especially if you don’t have to endure first-degree burns to qualify for one). Can you choose what, or rather who you want to look like? Now that Monty’s face has been stolen by a horse in jodhpurs (see above), and given that not all operations are a success (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s face was put on inside-out) I wonder if I could apply to look like either Hugh Grant or The Daily Lama? I’d like to hear what a South London accent coming out of their faces would be like. And while we’re at it can I get even smaller hands than I have now? There’re hidden advantages to having small hands. For starters, certain things look bigger when you hold them with small hands.

All together now:
“Pinning in the teeth…
Pinning in the teeth
We shall come rejoicing…“T-Insert Wires0567265811