Saturday 11/04/09

Beastly sorry for the interlude, but I'm enjoying playing with my 10 year-old son for a few days. Will post again when I have a few minutes and Hay has sorted her Chinese photos.

On her arrival back from China I asked Hay what she wanted for dinner – she said scorpions and ducks’ tongues.

Just as something to get your teeth into while I'm absent, was listening to some director of a gold trading company talking about the benefit of gold. The interviewer asked him what, in these days of financial instruments, made gold attractive to an investor. He replied with the wonderful statement that it was the fact that it wasn't a financial instrument that made it attractive.

However, he then let himself down when asked whether his company was the No1 gold trading outfit, to which he responded that it was somewhere between the number 2 and number 3. Eh?

Thursday 09/04/09

Spent last night clearing up the booze bottles and cheese wrappers before Hay gets back this afternoon. Never want to touch another piece of cheese for at least a month.

Yesterday I got a hit from someone in South Africa who entered the blog from a website called Brand’s Eye. Now Brand’s Eye is a reputation monitoring tool used in marketing to track mentions of your band name on the web. Putting two and two together, the hit was generated either by the mention of the ANC or Jacob Zuma.

Here’s an alert for all women. The cacao swollen shoot virus (CSSV) is killing cacao trees and threatens to slash this year's spring crop by a third in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer. Additionally, a fungus called witches' broom is doing the same in Brazil. Time to bulk-buy your chocolate so as to ensure you have sufficient stocks for the year.

I heard something on the radio last night about Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds moving to the London Arena – or some arena in London. That led me to Wiki Jeff, who led me (logically) to Justin Hayward and thence The Moody Blues. Who today can name a single member of The Moody Blues (besides Justin Hayward), despite them being megastars in the late ‘60s and ‘70s and still performing today? I couldn’t even name a member (except for Justin Hayward) in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Twelve men have been arrested in the north west of England after Britain's most senior counter-terrorism police officer sparked a security alert.

Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bob Quick, has made a bit of a clanger. He accidentally revealed a secret document to photographers (see below) when he arrived for a briefing at No 10 Downing Street. It was clutched in his hand as he exited a car with the text facing outward and was clearly marked "secret". It carried an outline briefing on an ongoing counter-terrorism operation and once the gaffe was noticed a number of anti-terror raids were kicked into motion much earlier than planned.


One of the raids took place at that hotbed of terrorism and political activism, my alma mater, John Moores University in Liverpool, which I happened to snap as I went past it on Monday.

John Moores University, Liverpool

Bloody awful place – should have been bulldozed years ago or turned into council tenements. I attended the place in the late 70s when doing my 1st Mate’s Certificate of Competency (excelling in bomb making and extortion). I used to travel there on a daily basis from Southport with another student, using his DAF 66 Variomatic – an acutely embarrassing and hideously styled little Noddy car.

We went on to do Master’s together at Fleetwood, when I decided it would be faster and less embarrassing to use my MGB-GT for transport. Strangely enough I met up with him again on Monday, as he is now the Fleet Superintendent of one of the companies I visited in Liverpool. Hadn’t seen him since about ’82.

A former North Wales Police inspector, Geraint Evans (isn’t everyone in Wales called Geraint Evans?), has missed out on a really good business deal that’s totally legal; however, instead he’s been jailed for a year for illegally dumping 175,000 used tyres all over the country, leaving them in trailers. The business idea is something I spotted the Sunday Times – decorative garden mulch made from shredded tyres that are attractively stained. The mulch doesn’t bio-degrade or soak up water, keeping weeds down for years without needing to be renewed. The company selling this stuff is Easy Gardener. They can’t spell ‘distributors’ though.

Blogging for the next week will be sporadic, as I’m taking a well-earned break and my elder son is coming to stay with me.

Thought for the day 2: “Express gratitude. Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch people. Remember names. Don’t confuse flexibility with weakness. Don’t judge people by their mistakes; rather, judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remember that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will not be useful to anyone else.”

Don’t you just hate good advice that you're incapable of following?

Wednesday 08/04/09

Reactions to my proposal yesterday to tax consumption, rather than income, were mixed. One positive benefit of taxing consumption is that people would be incentivised to save rather than consume. I heard an item on the radio this morning that very few individuals in the UK have even as little as one month’s salary as a savings pot for a rainy day, which just goes to show how reliant people are on debt - and it’s an excessive reliance on debt that produced the financial crisis. If you were made redundant tomorrow and received no redundancy pay, would you be able to survive for a month? I would – in fact quite a bit longer than a month.

I don’t think Hay is coming back from China. She’s being treated like royalty - whisked through VIP areas of airports, using chauffeur driven limousines with black tinted glass, has three flunkies to carry her bags, etc. The hotel in Beijing is a veritable palace, which is a nice change from the sterile Joe Stalin School of Monumental Arhcitecture mausoleum she stayed in when in Nanjing. She’s visiting the Great Wall of China today, but her phone camera has packed up. She’s back home tomorrow evening – hopefully just in time to cook me a dinner (getting a bit fed up of cheese and wine).

Jacob Zuma, the President of the ANC, has been cleared of financial irregularities after charges against him were thrown out of court. He claims he was a victim of a systematic abuse of power. Goof grief – just wait till be comes into power and you’ll see what a systematic abuse of power really is, you mark my words.

International porn baroness and UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was on the radio yesterday speaking of her abuse of housing expenses. She said her use of MPs' allowances as "fair and reasonable" and that it was the "nature of the job" that MPs had to furnish and run two properties. Since when did owning one home and renting a room in your sister’s house mean furnishing and running two properties – unless she’s paying her sister’s mortgage. Are MP’s genetically incapable of owning up to their mistakes and saying sorry?

A spray (let’s see how many click on that link) developed by the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast is to help men with premature ejaculation problems, purportedly prolonging the length of time they have sex by six times. There’s not enough information in this story - either they can now attain an incredible six seconds per session, or can continue to have sex till they’re well into their 4th century. Not sure which it is.

While sorting my earwax figurine collection last night I read that Banksy, the renowned mural / graffiti artist, has had one of his ‘works’ in Bristol daubed with red paint by a group called Appropriate Media. It was done as a protest over the Stokes Croft area being gentrified. Perversely the locals are up in arms over what they see as an act of vandalism. I say perversely, as Banksy’s murals are in themselves artistic vandalism. Someone vandalizing his vandalism in order to make a social statement is something Banksy himself must surely approve of wholeheartedly – unless he’s been seduced into becoming part of the establishment. Think about it.


Thought for the day: “The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone who is capable of significant change; that sort of person exists only in our imaginations.”

Tuesday 07/04/09

Not much to write about today, as I was in Liverpool all day on a business trip and didn’t get back till late.

I forgot to wish everyone a Happy New Year yesterday. Every financial commentator on the radio yesterday was wishing everyone Happy New Year, as it was the start of the new tax year (6th April in the UK). Given the fact that the financial crisis is now running our lives, I guess it should be thus.

They’ve just brought in some newfangled personal tax allowance and National Insurance scheme here. The net result for me is a loss of taxed income. Why on earth do they bugger about with complex formulae? The simplest way of ensuring equitable taxation is to collect it through what we in the UK call Value Added Tax, or VAT – a tax on all goods and services. If luxury goods are taxed at a higher rate, then the wealthy pay more – simple and elegant. The added benefit is that no-one can avoid taxation in they want to live in the UK and the wealthy pay more by virtue of them spending more and purchasing luxury items. To aid the poor, essentials like food and heating would attract zero VAT. Is there something intrinsically misguided in my proposal?

Have you eaten a fish called Colin lately? A major supermarket chain here in the UK, Sainsbury’s, has decided to re-brand the fish Pollock as colin, which by all accounts is the French name for Pollock. They maintain that the consumption of pollock is down because people are embarrassed to ask for Pollock. Bollocks!

Went to visit mother in Southport yesterday as I had some spare time before a couple of business meetings in Liverpool. I’d done a recce of the meeting venue to identify car parks, and not being 100% familiar with the part of Liverpool I was in I used the satnav to direct me to Southport. It directed me along a route I was well familiar with from my college days, but then advised me to take a detour. Every fibre in my body screamed NO, but I gave in out of curiosity and ended up adding some 20 minutes to the journey.

To add insult to injury, I left mother with about half an hour to spare by the time I would arrive at my meeting venue, only to discover at the halfway point (15 miles) that I’d left my files in mother’s room at the care home. Had to race all the way back to retrieve them and was 15 minutes late for the first meeting. I don’t know about mother having dementia, I think I’m heading that way - fast.

Yesterday the government announced that everyone with a child under 16 is now legally able to request flexible working hours. The paradox is that employers do not have to accede to the request. I’m not sure what the penalty for requesting flexi hours was previously – hanging? I’ve never laughed so much since my gender reassignment. Am I missing something (and I don’t mean from the gender reassignment)?

Hay reported from her conference that the minute delegates start opening their laptops or reaching for their BlackBerries, then the Chinese organisers start scanning the conference hall to eavesdrop on the traffic. I sent her an e-mail saying TIBET. Nothing happened.

She said that the first speaker took up the whole timeslot for the three keynote speakers, but they were all too polite to cut him off, so they ended up running late by about 45 minutes. Also the Chinese answer their mobiles and have loud conversations in the lecture theatre while speakers are addressing the conference – no-one seems at all bothered. A bit chaotic, to say the least.

Here’s a photo contribution from my visit to Liverpool yesterday:


It’s the entrance to Chinatown in Liverpool.

Ever heard of a game called pub golf? It’s all the rage in Henley – a couple of miles from where I used to live. The game involves drinking nine different drinks on a ‘course’ comprising nine different pubs while dressed up as golfers. Players have a scorecard and gain maximum points by downing each drink in one. Landlords are a bit pissed off, as they don’t know whether they are the first pub on the 9 ‘hole’ course, or the last. Part of the Queen's Head was wrecked during a recent game. One participant said:” "I can't see the harm in it, you can call it binge drinking but everyone does it every weekend anyway." A rum do, if you ask me.

Monday 06/04/09

Mega internet problems - having to use my mobile to connect.

I was considering doing a special souvenir Jade Goody pull-out supplement, but it doesn’t quite work on Blogs.

Another picture from Hay – Nanjing at night:



She says that all the locals want to take pictures of her. They don’t get to see too many 6 foot blondes. It must be like that scene from the end of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, where the human enters the spacecraft and all the little aliens crown round wanting to touch him.

New Smoke got back to me to say they don’t know what happened to my free sample, as it was definitely sent. They’re sending me another.

On Sunday mornings here in the UK there’s a radio programme called Sunday Love Songs, hosted by Steve Wright. There’s a section called Lost Loves, where people send in requests for information on people they went out with millions of years ago and lost contact with. Whenever a request is read out for information on say Helen who was last heard of in Wigan in 1982 and was the love of Dave in Clayton-le-Moors, Hay shouts at the radio, “She’s happily married with 3 kids, so get over it! Why did you leave her in the first place, arsehole?”

More fun on the atheist forum yesterday (you have to admit that I do know how to have a good time). Someone was wanting to debate God-sanctioned genocide and child sacrifice – purely as an attack on the Old Testament. He asked the theists whether they would do it if asked by God. I replied that it would depend on the race and whose children, pointing out that if it were to be Richard Hilton’s kids, then bring them to the altar. He replied that a sacrifice involved giving something up and I had to admit defeat, as there would be no personal sacrifice in offering Paris Hilton up to God – it would be a pleasure, which kind of defeats the objective. Mind you, he did agree that we could commit genocide against the French, despite them not strictly being a race.

Got my letter from the Blood Transfusion Service on Saturday. I’m scheduled to give blood on April 15th. Go on – give it a go yourself; you could be saving someone’s life.

Sunday 05/04/09

Nothing remotely funny in today’s post.

Here’s a neat device for motorbike owners for opening garage doors automatically.

Was watching The League of Gentlemen yesterday afternoon – the 60s film with Jack Hawkins, not the TV series I mentioned yesterday (synchronicity?). One scene made me laugh. Jack Hawkins is going up the stairs in his house with a colleague standing at the foot. As he walks up he passes a portrait of a woman. His colleague asks, “Is that your wife?” to which Hawkins replies in the affirmative. The colleague than asks whether she’s dead, to which Hawkins responds, “No – I regret to say the bitch is still going strong.” Priceless!

Here are some photos Hay sent me yesterday of Shanghai:

The temple I mentioned yesterday.

The smog.

Hay went on a walk around the city in the evening and said it reminded her of scenes from Blade Runner – a post-Apocalyptic hell.

Today she traveled by train to Nanjing – all slums between new developments. During the whole train journey she didn't see a single patch of undeveloped land. The smog is just as bad as Shanghai. Tomorrow is Beijing. She reported that lunch was duck’s tongue with pigeon and jellyfish; not sure whether she’s having me on or not.

It seems Geoff Hoon is now guilty of not breaking the rules on MP’s expenses. I think ‘not breaking the rules’ is going to go down in history as a euphemism for being a rapacious bastard. I guess ex RBS boss, Sir Fred Goodwin (he of the £700k p.a. pension), also didn’t break the rules, yet MPs were quick to jump on his back. Pot, kettle and black? I wonder whether the 3 trillion dollars allocated to the IMF will be used to buy politicians a bigger trough?

I’m not sure about you, but as I understand it, the 3 trillion is being given to the IMF to lend to 3rd world countries whose economies are basket cases. How that’s going to help jobs and a recovery here, or anywhere except the 3rd world, is beyond my ken. Have I got it wrong?

Piggy-banks are really appropriate icons for banks, don't you think?

A couple of days ago a gunman in New York killed 13 people. Yesterday another killed 3 police officers. However, I guess the US gun lobby think must all this carnage is worth it if they can retain their right to bear arms. After all, if anyone can bear arms, then they can at least protect themselves from gunmen who go on the rampage as a result of anyone being able to get hold of a gun. The latest gunman had lost his job and was worried that Barack Obama was about to ban guns. Come on America – get your act together. It’s like the bloody wild west.

I read today that lie detectors are to be trialed for 3 years on sex offenders released from prison in parts of England as part of their probation conditions. This is similar to what happens in Texas – that paragon of forward thinking and rationality in the USA (remember the Texas Board of Education?).

I wonder what the Ministry of Justice hopes to achieve. Lie detectors, or polygraphs, are very controversial in that their success rate at detecting deception is something like 61%, which is little better than chance, and they do not enjoy general acceptance within the scientific community. What if a probationer fails a test? Would he or she (although usually a he) be sent back to prison on the basis of what amounts to the flip of a coin? I feel very uneasy about this, however, they don’t in Texas.

Have you heard the tripe that passes for music in Happy Clappy churches? Was just listening to Radio 4 and they went to some church in God-knows-where and my ears were assaulted by a repeptitive cacophony of sound, totally unhindered by tune, harmony or musical accomplishment. It's painful. Give me old fashioned hymns any day. Attempts to make worship more modern and contemporary have left it banal and vacuous.

Saturday 04/04/09

I think I have someone in the readership who is terminally depressed and simply ticks the Unfunny box as a reflex action. Must be from Bridgend.

Hay left for China yesterday afternoon. For the next week I can indulge myself with a huge variety of smelly cheeses and vast quantities of inebriating liquids. Will probably play havoc with my bum, but we artists must suffer for our art. She reports 13 degrees and acrid smog in Nanjing. All very depressing and not at all what she expected.

Remember the Nationwide story from yesterday about house prices rising 0.9% in March? The Halifax has announced that UK house prices have fallen by 1.9% compared with the previous month. The words Quod Erat Demonstrandum come to mind (that’s Latin for ‘I told you so’ – although the Latins weren’t exactly renowned for their maths, and it’s actually a Latin translation of the Greek ‘hoper edei deixai’, which means ‘I’ll regret drinking ouzo on top of this feta’).

Prompted by a comment yesterday from Kapgaf, I thought of a simple and elegant solution to a number of the world’s most pressing problems. The answer is to get half the world’s poor to eat the other half.

That simultaneously tackles:

• Over-population,
• World hunger,
• Obesity (if we get the Asian poor to eat the Western poor),
• Joblessness,
• The spiraling welfare bill,
• Climate change (less cars will be driven),
• The pension deficit, and
• Madonna adopting half of Africa.

Last night I finished reading God’s Debris by Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert cartoons. It’s a fascinating book which Adams calls a thought experiment. I commend it to you – it may alter the way you view life. The prime premise is one I have expounded myself in the past, so it came as a surprise to see it in a book by Scott Adams. You can obtain it as a free e-book download here. It contains no humour, just a deeply interesting perspective on reality. It’s only 132 pages long and you can finish it in an afternoon.


Police were called to Broughton, near Milton Keynes, after residents staged the protest accusing a passing Google Street View camera car of invading their privacy and facilitating crime. You could imagine it as a scene from the film Deliverance, can’t you? One person on the radio last night said: “We don’t want this sort of technology here.” No-one interviewed seemed able to articulate why they saw it as a problem, except that they didn’t want it. One is reminded of The League Of Gentlemen’s Royston Vasey and the local shop, run by Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup (below) who will protect their localness by any means (you’ll not understand this reference unless you’ve watched the darkly humorous programme). Villagers with pitchforks and rush torches spring to mind, all marching through the village toward Castle Frankenstein.


Perhaps I should call the blog ‘Thoughts From Royston Vasey’ and use the strapline ‘You’ll Never Leave’.

Was inspecting some of the Google searches that brought readers to Chairman Bill’s pontifications. One was, “birds that are attracted to ploughed fields”. The answer is obvious – farmers’ wives.

The favourite search string is, “That erudite, funny and charming gent, Chairman Bill”. However, I suspect that’s something to do with a search for Bill Gates. I wonder if he ever looks himself up and alights here. Do you ever do that - look yourself up on Google? Come on- admit it.

There’s an amusing story from Perranporth, Cornwall. An 87 year-old woman on a mobility scooter lost control of it while out with her husband and was later found some 5 miles away heading along the A3075 towards Newquay. Read the story in full, rather than my précis, as it’s very funny.

I’ve just been made aware of a verb I never knew existed – to recreate, as in to refresh by means of relaxation and enjoyment. I’m almost certain this is an Americanism, but would appreciate confirmation. I ran across it in the sentence, “I saw how they recreated themselves,” in reference to recreational activities.

Friday 03/04/09

My thanks to Kapgaf yesterday for stepping into the breach.

Given all the recent posts containing material regarding faith, evolution and creation, for the benefit of newcomers I though it about time I reiterated my credentials on these weighty philosophical matters.

Firstly, I’m a Reverend – in fact a Hierophant within the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic. Here’s the proof. I chose the title myself – quite shi-shi, ain’t it? The buggers wouldn’t let me become a Grand Hierophant of the Order of the Black & White Eagle.

Secondly I have an MA from the IUN (International University of Nescience). Again, here’s the proof. I had to get that before they’d ordain me as a Hierophant.

IUN Experimental Theology Laboratory

One of the many IUN Religion & Alcohol research facilities

Demonstrators have been protesting for two full days in London while the G20 summit has been taking place. I can’t understand how they get the time to protest - don’t these people have DSS offices to visit or Community Service Orders to serve? I’m not 100% sure what they’re protesting about, as they’ll still get their social security cheques from we taxpayers regardless of whether the world’s economies go into meltdown or not.

I’m violently pacifist, but when I see the way some of the protesters goaded the police, I wish I was in the police ranks with a riot shield in one paw and a truncheon in the other. Purely in self-defence, I hasten to add. I’m all for peaceful protest, but peaceful scribbling of graffiti on walls and peacefully breaking into the Royal Bank of Scotland offices in order to liberate some sterling and hopefully lynch a few bankers is taking peacefulness to extremes.

Even the Salvation Army sent an expeditionary force to the demonstrations. I’m sure I saw a number of people in the crowds wearing balaclavas and combat jackets – must be from SACU, the Salvation Army Commando Unit.

The Stop The War Coalition was also there, but I’m sure I saw some scuffles between a couple of the factions that comprise the coalition.

There was even a contingent from the British Muslim Initiative. Have a look at their website and you’ll see load of stuff about protesting for the cessation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, but hardly a word of condemnation of recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Iraq or India. Where terrorism is mentioned, it’s used in order to justify wallowing in victimhood. Utterly incomprehensible (or is it?).

There’s a group calling themselves G20 Meltdown. Their aims are to persuade governments to:

1. Oust bankers from power
2. Get rid of corrupt politicians
3. Guarantee of job, home, future for everyone
4. Become patriots of the planet, not countries
5. Stop climate chaos
6. Make capitalism history

Looks suspiciously like a communist manifesto to me, but even communism didn’t get rid of corrupt politicians and communism is incompatible with stopping climate chaos. Communism certainly provides a job and a home for everyone, but not a future, unless you happen to be a corrupt politician. However, serried ranks of grey and featureless broom cupboards shared with 3 or 4 other families generally tend to be woefully lacking in privacy – and you want a bit of privacy before you trudge off through the smog to your wonderful job in the local tractor factory collective to build shoddy shite that no bugger in his right mind would ever want to buy and get paid in bags of potatoes.

Could this G20 thing be an April Fool joke?

Here’s a story about statistics. According to the Nationwide Building Society House prices rose in March for the first time since October 2007. Property prices apparently increased by 0.9% compared with the previous month. Now when you can’t get rid of a house for love nor money, even if you throw your wife and kids in with the deal, and when it’s easier to get your MP to declare his expenses than get yourself a mortgage, the sample from which the statistics are taken obviously falls to a mere fraction of the pre-slump cohort. When you get a very small cohort, small variations tend to produce massive and unrepresentative statistical effects, which is what I suspect is happening here. All you need is some footballer to sell his palace to another footballer (who can’t even add 2+2) for a few million more than he would have gotten last month and suddenly the media reports that the housing market is overheating. Methinks it’s actually the kind of bounce you get on the very top step when you roll a rubber ball down a staircase.

This is a bit of an old story, but Labour MP, Ann Cryer, had been criticised for calling for a public debate on the genetic risks of first-cousin marriages among British people of Pakistani origin. Why should she be criticized when we all know of the harm of inbreeding? You only have to look at the hideous deformities and rampant levels of psychotic behaviour within the British and European royal families to see that marrying your cousin is not something to be considered lightly.

London mayor and illegitimate descendant of George II, Boris Johnson, walked out of a House of Commons Transport Select Committee inquiry after criticism of the travel chaos which followed heavy snowfall on the 2nd of February. MPs are now looking to blame Boris and his policies for Jade Goody’s death, the recent Taliban attack on a police training centre in Lahore, the 1,000 redundancies at Bombardier in Northern Ireland and the global financial crisis. I’m sure, if they try really hard, they could also blame him for the wobble in the Earth’s orbit.

Breaking news: Martha Carney, reporting for Woman’s Hour, has learned that the G20 summit has announced that they will abolish money as part of a radical plan to combat the global financial crisis. In future, we’ll all have to use cars as a medium of exchange.

A trillion dollars! Which trillion though? I learned my numbers before 1974. I'll bet Cameron is spitting feathers now that Gordon Brown has saved the universe.

Hay had a go at me last night for not flossing between my teeth. Told her it’s pointless when you can fit a toothbrush between the few remaining teeth.

I found out yesterday that while you can divert calls to another mobile, you can’t divert text messages. Inexplicable. I always though that diverting data calls diverted texts, but obviously texts are not data. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive, but if texts are not data, then what the hell are they?

April Fish

Due to my absence yesterday on a business trip, today's blog is a Guest Post from a regular reader and commentator - Kapgaf.

Normal service should be resumed tomorrow.

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Most of the readers of this blog know a certain number of facts about Mr Chairman (Hay, c-a-r-a-v-a-n, atheism, boats, mesh) but what you didn’t know is that he is fobbing you off with second best. This is serious. I’m blogging for him today because he says he’s too busy (yes, well, the other one plays ‘I believe’), but I think it’s important to inform you that I was not his first choice (message to the person who he did ask first : I hope you’re thinking “I’d have done it much better” and I hope that you will). Anyway, as you can probably tell I’ve said yes, but as I’m simultaneously cooking rabbit stew I will ask you to forgive any stains that might appear on the page.

Why the title? Well, it refers to yesterday because here in France they don’t say April Fool when they finally reveal that you haven’t won the lottery / had a new cheese named after you / been selected for Nouvelle Star (You’ve Got Talent or American Idol or whatever it is in your country of residence), they say April Fish.

In keeping with our Chairman’s comments on current affairs, I had a quick look at France’s three major newspapers : Le Figaro/ Telegraph, Le Monde / The Times and Libération / The Grauniad. No I didn’t look at L’Equipe, because it’s for sports lovers and I am not a sports lover.

A story in Libération caught my eye: a ban on smoking on the streets and a special brigade to enforce the ban (suggestions of the name for this brigade on a postcard please, “dog-ends” and “stubs” are already taken). I have to admit that as a non-smoker for a while now (roughly 17 months, 4 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes at the time of writing), this sounds like a good way to reduce temptation. But then I clicked and read on: special anti-cigarette brigade on roller-blades. Hmm, still plausible, they do have patrolling roller-blade policemen in Paris (if you don’t believe me, click here). However, I then learned that they would be armed with fluorescent pink or green water-pistols - and the game was up. Nice try, particularly the new slogan “Smoking damps”.

But the main news is of course the G20 and I expect that most of you are feeling pretty peeved that Nicolas Sarkozy is not on your side. After all, as he keeps telling us, he is a superhero (click here) who has single-handedly solved every problem in France (Europe, the Earth, the Solar System, the Galaxy, the Universe) including “la crise” (pronounced “creaze”, presumably to rhyme with “breeze” as in “solving it was a……..”).

The sweetest story today is that of Monsignor Twenty-Three (I kid you not, the man is called Monsignor Vingt Trois!).

He has said that, in these times when much hatred is levelled at the Pope, he would like to assure the Pope of the collective affection of the Episcopal conference. Isn’t that nice? Benoit (aka Benedict) was reported as saying: “People hate me? Was it something I said?”

Out of curiosity, I looked up the name Vingt-Trois and the story goes that it was because his great-great grandfather was abandoned. I suppose if you’ve only got the house number and not the name of the street, there’s not a lot you can do.

And I will leave you with the last piece of news to catch my eye: 150 gendarmes are being sent to Afghanistan. I thought, “Traffic must be really snarled up,” then I thought. “Well if it isn’t now, it soon will be.” But then I saw that the Head of State has said that sending more soldiers is out of the question, so obviously the gendarmes are second best - and I know how that feels so now I’m thinking, “Poor buggers.”

Wednesday 01/04/09

Yesterday’s flurry of Creationist blogging resulted in some AdSense adverts for a thing called the Atheists Riddle, which purports to prove creationist thinking. However, as I said in one of my comments on readers’ comments, if it were that simple, then why has a scientific paper not been produced, peer reviewed and published and the theory promulgated as scientific fact? I’ll tell you why, because it’s bunkum and pseudoscience which shows a paucity of intellect on par with Paris Hilton.

The favourite argument of creationists is that you can’t create something from nothing, but that’s assuming that nothing is the default. Here’s a little experiment: try thinking of something – anything. Easy, isn’t it? Now try thinking of nothing, and by that I mean nothing at all – no thing. No space, no time. You can’t, it’s beyond your comprehension. Perhaps ‘something’ is the default and not ‘nothing’. Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say.

Did you know that a quarter of UK colleges who want to enroll overseas students have been denied a licence by the Home Office. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said from her porn den that she would not tolerate fake applicants or "dodgy colleges that facilitate them". I’m just glad that the Old Sodbury Institute of Advanced Learning did not appear on her list, as otherwise my 3 week total-immersion PhD correspondence course in applied blogology would be worthless. It’s a relief to know that Dr. Dangerous Dave runs a reputable institute from the local greasy spoon café on Grunge Lane and it’s not some fly-by-night operation.

Hay made me go for a spirometer test yesterday to check whether my COPD had improved since I gave up the pipe and moved into vapeing. Strangely enough the nurse was not interested in the examples I brought along and instead made me blow into a small machine till my lungs practically collapsed. I had to do it three times and nearly passed out.

An example spirometer chart I took with me.

As it transpired, on the basis of my test results (which surprisingly didn’t involve coloured pens or a spirometer in any way, shape or form) the nurse said she would no longer even diagnose me as having COPD.

Seems the e-cigar is doing its job. The only negative side of vapeing is that since I started Hay has been complaining that when I go to the loo I ming like a polecat. However, I’m prepared to put up with the inconvenience, as I can’t smell it, which kind of puts paid to the ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ theory of Brownian motions.

I have a funny personal anecdote about going to the loo, but I’ll save it for another day. Suffice it to say I was a bit worried I might be incontinent, but I wasn’t.

There are reports that police have used CS spray and arrested a man after a fight in the Houses of Parliament during a Commons party hosted by Conservative chairman Eric Pickles on Monday night. One man was extremely aggressive. He was arrested and taken to a nearby police station for questioning. John Prescott vehemently denies he was anywhere near the area and was in Hull talking to poor people. Apparently he goes to Hull to do that when he’s feeling depressed and it doesn’t half cheer him up.

The US has just finished constructing the US National Ignition Facility, a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of the Sun designed to demonstrate the feasibility of safe, industrial scale nuclear fusion that can provide limitless power. It will also shed light (if you’ll forgive the pun) on the origins of the universe. Professor Mike Dunne, who leads a European venture that is also pursuing nuclear fusion with lasers said that if the NIF was successful it would be a "seismic event". Texan Creationists took heed of the cataclysmic warning and are hiding in earthquake shelters.

Gordon Brown has called for banks and financial markets to adopt "family values" as world leaders gather in London for Thursday's G20 summit. Which family would that be then? The Goodys/Tweedys? How about the Osbournes? The Windsors? Oh, can’t have the Windsors – they have to lock up two of their members every time a non-Anglo Saxon plenipotentiary calls for dinner for fear of them making offensive racist remarks or stomping up and down in Nazi costumes. Eureka! It’s just struck me that we can use Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s family values as the basis for how banks should operate. She’s under investigation for expense irregularities and her husband runs a porn video service from their home.

What’s obvious is that heretofore the values seem to have been those of the Khan family – and before anyone accuses me of racism, that’s Genghiz Khan. Today’s stupid task is for you to suggest a family or two whose values should be adopted within the banks.

The owners of Southampton docks (ABP) are to make 60 dockers compulsorily redundant at their container port terminal. To be honest, with all the productivity increases containerization has brought, I was shocked to hear they had as many as 60 workers left; I thought that by now the whole place would have been run by robots. Apparently the redundancies comprise 10% of the workforce.

It seems that the current euphemism for being sacked is now being told that you ‘no longer need to turn up for work’. Very British! No wonder English is now the international language of diplomacy – you can tell someone to piss off in 20 different ways and they still think you’re being nice and thank you for it, only realising they’ve been shafted when they get home and find their P45 in the post

I left a comment on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ page yesterday. I love reading some of the remarks – it’s the computer equivalent of the spoof radio phone-in show Down The Line. Readers were asked ‘What have British troops achieved in Iraq?’ I said, “Aqueducts?” Couldn’t resist it. Don’t know if it was published.