I blame the parents. They just give the kids anything they want these days: Sony Playstations, cars, Kalashnikov AK-47 machine guns… I mean, you expect it of American high school students, but not privileged members of royalty. Ungrateful little buggers.
Still, if I were the queen, I’d be locking the gun cabinet and making sure Charles doesn’t have a key.
have egged on our glorious politicians to produce large amounts of their own speciality, namely humbug. The Rhyl Conservative candidate led with the ridiculous assertion that “This country has a long tradition of egg-throwing”. We also have a long tradition of laying one on anyone who pisses us off. Given that the Conservatives, as their name indicates, have long defended ancient traditions, such as loathing foreigners and favouring the rich at the expense of the poor, presumably their candidate won’t mind having a few eggs hurled his way, together with the odd sharp implement, in a spirit of good, old-fashioned political debate.
William Hague sternly added that “if he were in my party, I would be demanding and requiring an explanation,”; nice to know that there are limits on antisocial behaviour in the Tory party, because loudly asserting that it’s time we sent those bloody immigrants with their funny food & beliefs back home is apparently acceptable.
But the Tories are unlikely to make much capital out of the incident, or even Blair’s own confrontation with an understandably aggrieved hospital visitor in Birmingham. Being smacked by one of your elected leaders is bad enough, but it would be even worse if there were no health service left to patch you up afterwards.
I don’t agree with violence in political debate, but then throwing eggs is hardly reasoned debate either. And the guy was a hunt supporter there to whinge about the lack of support the government is giving farmers (as if billions of pounds in compensation was small change tossed into their perpetually outstretched begging bowl), so on balance one hopes Prescott doesn’t feel too sorry about it. It’s odd that his hamstrung and clumsy efforts to get a grip on transport and the environment have either been ignored or mocked, but a single deft blow to a deserving chin brings general approval. Here’s a hint, John - taking Jack Straw out into the No.10 garden for a good, hard kicking would win you lots of new friends. He’s asking for it. He’s got “egg tosser” (or at least one of those words) written all over him. Go on, sort ‘im out.
must be one of those crazed control freaks who is chronically unwilling to delegate. Not only does he run most of Italy’s media companies, he has also now chosen to run the entire country, as if no one else can quite be trusted to do it right. This is a recipe only for late nights, no sleep, too much stress and eventually, a massive heart attack.
Mr Berlusconi should take a leaf out of his rival Rupert Murdoch’s book, who skilfully delegates the running of several major countries to individuals that he carefully chooses and who he can trust to follow his wishes. This leaves him able to dedicate his entire efforts toward more important matters, such as ensuring that only the best, juiciest pairs of tits make it to page 3 of The Sun. The man from Australia, he say “Yes!” Or else.
With the election in full swing, it seems like an apt time to dedicate a song to Tony Blair [let’s see if they’re even checking their referer logs]. Should William Hague somehow become the next PM (perhaps by enlisting the military in a coup), I’m sure I can always re-dedicate it to him. You’ll note that it was written only a year after Blair came to power, in an awesome display of perspicuity.
Update: If you’re a true sadist, you can now download the above song in MP3 (2.5Mb). It’s only a demo (meaning, “please excuse any really awful bits, up to and including all of it”) and it might be REALLY LOUD so mind the office. But at least you can singalong with the Scarlet Martyrs.
As a bonus, you can also download the seminal Tractor Killer (1.3Mb), a moving ballad about the plight of farmers suffering the effects of foot and mouth, and their feelings about “eco-terrorists”. ;-)
Over at Arghh, Matt’s been baking bread, although he doesn’t say whether he wore a gingham apron for this process as is traditional. At least, my mother always thought it traditional unlike, say, gobbing in the dough while it was rising, which she was quick to reassure me was not at all part of the centuries-old breadmaking recipe.
I too tried to bake homemade bread a few weeks ago, using a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s normally reliable How to be a domestic goddess (which, if you eat everything she suggests, should really be called How to be a thirty stone barrage balloon), and it is this which prompts me to issue a warning. Do not use the tablespoon of salt that Nigella lists in the ingredients. Yes, yes, I know experienced breadmakers amongst you are muttering, “A tablespoon! That’s ridiculous. What kind of howling baboon puts that much salt in bread dough?!” It’s not my fault. I’d never made bread before. The recipe said “1 tablespoon of salt”, so I carefully measured out this mini-Everest of sodium chloride and merrily threw it in. If she’d said “Dump two sacks of raw salt from the local salt mine into a large bin and mix well”, I’d probably have done that. It didn’t help that Nigella also suggests using warm water with a spoonful of instant mash too - that’s instant mash with added salt. Yes of course, if you’re one of those pathetic wusses who reads the entire section in full before starting, thus noticing the bit about not adding so much salt if you use potato water, rather than plunging straight in while panting for the sweet but subsequently extremely salty taste of homemade bread, you would be forewarned. But life is short, particularly when you have a heart attack due to excess salt in your bloodstream.
Needless to say, the results were … well, my lips are shrinking and puckering into a tiny hole as I think about it. Suffice to say, I was able to de-ice the driveway and most of the street without the aid of a shovel, by simply running around screaming, “Get me a drink!!!!”
With a general election announcement imminent, my vote remains poised on a knife edge between the Lib Dems (who haven’t managed to say anything to offend anyone yet - or indeed anything at all) and a spoiled ballot paper. Personally, I’m inclined more towards the spoiled paper as it clearly says “I would have voted if any of you had been worth it”, as opposed to staying at home which says, “I couldn’t be arsed to get up from the TV, what civil rights?”
Tony Blair tells several thousand protestors (who are legitimately concerned about a gradual corporate takeover that his government and most others are encouraging) to get lost and go home because they’re troublemakers, and then worries about voter apathy and disillusionment with politics. Geez, what’s the use of having all those advisors if none of them can knock any sense into you?
Not that anyone who still has all their own teeth and marbles is going to vote for Hague. Here’s a man who married F-f-f-Ffion and yet still goes to work with the likes of Ann Widdecombe - one of Dr Frankenstein’s earlier failures (“Igor, der monster may also be a psychotic, mindless thug with a pathological hatred of society, but at least it looks OK!”). What’s up with him? Any rational, red-blooded man would long ago have abandoned the Tory party and politics for an endless honeymoon tucked away in a remote Yorkshire cottage.
Foot and Mouth
Message from the Cumbrian Tourist Board
The Cumbrian Tourist Board, with the support of the Ministry for Agriculture, Farming and Fishing, would like to reassure the public that, despite the recent foot and mouth outbreak in Cumbria and its deleterious, carbonising effects on animal health, the wholesale fleecing and milking of outside visitors continues as normal. Visitors therefore remain welcome to visit “The English Lake District”(tm) and empty out their wallets, as most paid attractions remain open.
To assist in determining whether or not particular activities may still be safely pursued, the CTB has devised the following simple rule of thumb: > Will this activity involve forking out an extortionate amount of dosh for overpriced crap sold by a large gift shop, the climactic exhibit in a half-witted, vacuous visitor centre with breathtaking entrace fees and a huge car park next to a row of chip shops and tacky souvenir sellers?
>
> Examples:
Allowed activity: Stumbling between shite gift shops in Windermere, dressed in something that reveals entirely too much flesh for someone of your huge bulk, while stuffing one more ice cream too many in your slobbering cakehole and pausing to yell, “LEE! GERR’ERE! NOW!” at your mewling spawn, before queuing up for the overpriced chips that are slowly, mercifully choking your arteries with globs of glistening fat.
Prohibited activities: Dozing by a lake; walking up a hill; sunbathing; admiring the view from anywhere other than an official car park.
>
> Remember: the Lakes are open! In particular, foreign visitors with more money than sense, such as Americans, are warmly welcomed to flash the plastic.
Please note that due to the highly contagious, flesh-eating, deadly ravages of foot and mouth disease, all non-paying pursuits such as walking, paddling, sunbathing and admiring the scenery have regrettably been prohibited so that the National Park can concentrate on collecting parking fees and other core activities.
Would all visitors please also remember to drive slowly over the crumpled and dry disinfectant mats placed wishfully across major roads. It won’t do any good, but it will make your consciences feel better.
As I get older, I find my mind increasingly regresses to the past because it is somehow better, rosier and the days were sunnier. As far as music went, you could hear the words and the guitars. Hence, the Think Floyd gig in the heady atmosphere of Warrington Parr Hall (where spookily I last went to see Roy Harper over ten years ago) on May 10th is the event I have most eagerly anticipated in an age. I’ve been back to my old Floyd albums and found that it is still fundamentally good music - which is more than can be said for the later, post-split material that was the main focus when I was a student.
Sadly, it is now quite clear that Floyd might as well be regarded as an ex-band, and sadder still, this seems preferable to another album like The Division Bell or, gawdhelpus, A Momentary Lapse of Finance and another tour in which the stragglers “plaster on a fake smile and plough through the same old shit one more time”. The same could be said of Genesis and, if they were actually releasing anything, probably the Sisters of Mercy (nice to see Andrius Sytas making a formal complaint about the inactivity though). That’s three of the main bands I liked in my formative years. Sigh.
Kids need heroes. That’s why we Floyd fans tried to convince ourselves that the break-up was a good thing, leading to our heroes producing twice as much material. But sober analysis by a thirty year old man who no longer believes in heroes proves that AMLOR and Radio KAOS were weak, unsatisfactory albums. Of course, we knew that at the time too, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to accept it. The evidence was clear on every page of Floyd fanzine “The Amazing Pudding” (was I ever that much of a trainspotter??). But that meant writing the band off, and then who would we believe in?
Roger Waters was right - the post-1985 Floyd was a clever, ersatz fake that denigrated the overall legacy. The live videos illustrate that what we thought was a spectacular tour was really an extravagant CD player. Dave Gilmour was right - Roger Waters needs someone to edit the crap. If the guy really believes Amused To Death, a CD I’m scared to put next to my Floyd albums in case cross-contamination occurs, was an all time Great, overlooked Album, he’s clearly not arrived back on earth yet. And his latest release, a live retread of his past, lacks the fire and glory of proper Floyd.
Genesis completely lost their way, bleating that “it’s harder to write short songs than long ones, you know”, while neglecting to point out that the results didn’t usually justify the extra effort. Their single-minded pursuit of the popular pound, with Phil Collins at the controls like Captain Kirk with suicidal dementia, went straight up a blind alley, and the only bright spot was that Collins was as stuck as they were, even after jumping ship. Hence his half-hearted apologies for denigrating their glorious past, and endless reunion teasers (because we want to believe, we really do, that those guys could still make Foxtrot 2).
So no, I don’t need heroes anymore, but I do appreciate something to hold on to - albums I bought fifteen years ago that will remain classics despite the outrages committed since.
When you’re sitting on the floor with your PC opened up and the boards in pieces all around you, and then the cat, fur crackling with thousands of volts of static electricity, pads over to say hello while languidly rubbing herself against every object in your vicinity, with the “pop” of exploding chips almost audible beneath the screams of “NO, GOD, NOOOOOOO!!!”