GRANTHAM NEW TOWN

Who Was That Masked Man? aka Wat's Da Big Idea?

2009-10-15T20:04:00.012Z

I've always said I view this Blog as a literary equivalent of the shouting of the little boy in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. Well, even the little boy had to stop shouting at some point - I mean, the lad had a life to lead!

Either people are going to listen or they aren't. There's nowt I can do to affect that outcome. Junior, as it happened, got a result and everyone realised that the emperor was actually stark bollock naked and everything he had been saying was bullshit. Truthfully, I never expected the Great British Blog-reading public to realise the State and those in power were proverbially in the all-together, dispensing crap with the enthusiasm of a mushroom grower, while the nation as a whole swallowed the detritus with glee and lived on, naked, raw fungi themselves, in the cold and dark. The shouting was merely for my sanity. "For evil to triumph.........." and all that.

So, it's time for this little boy to leave the crowd behind and go and find something interesting and worthwhile to do. There may be other crowds he needs to join and make his voice heard but, for now, his larynx needs a rest. Yes, it's GOODBYE AT LAST TO GRANTHAM NEW TOWN!

There have to be parting words, however. I imagine the little boy in the fairytale merely said something like "told you so" and disappeared over the horizon, scratching his balls and whistling as he went. For me to do the same would be a little too easy and ultimately render these years of ranting pointless. Conclusions are what's needed. Without them, all the words that have gone before are like the splods of shit which land on your shoulder as the seagulls above circle around, squawking madly, before heading off to the landfill site which is the future.

The first conclusion is obvious. What to do with Grantham New Town, now it's been created. The question is rhetorical. NUKE THE FUCKING PLACE!!! In one simple and mindless act of destruction, gone would be Thatcher and Thatcherism, Blair and Blairism, browsing hours at supermarkets, binmen who insist the handles face the road, Piers Morgan, "chat" and "gossip" magazines, banks and bankers, Rupert Murdoch, Jim Davidson, Timmy Mallet and the Nazi Party. George W Bush, that woman from my post office, Snickers bars, Baby-on-Board stickers and Virgin Rail would all become disassociated atoms once more, scattered to the furthest flung reaches of the universe. No more doctors' receptionists, bye-bye individually wrapped fruit pies, adios to DJs. Imagine? Wouldn't all of the above make more poignant, heartfelt and meaningful lyrics than Lennon's "no possessions", penned in the back of his Rolls Royce on the way back to his multi-million-dollar New York home?

Trouble is, sending the bastards back to the Stone Age doesn't cure the underlying problem. Research has shown that in an Einsteinian universe, given sufficient provision of heat, pressure, water and carbon atoms, a new Paul Daniels would eventually be created over the eons. Darwin himself hinted in his unpublished masterpiece I'm Warning You Madge that the venom-spitting, slime maggot of the Indus would eventually evolve into Peter Mandelson, given a few breaks in the mutation stakes. No, there is really only one way of helping to ensure another Nick Griffin does not emerge from the primeval swamp (assuming the original one managed it in the first place) and that is...............REVOLUTION.

"Fuck me, Reg! It's taken you three years to come to that conclusion? Give us a break!" No, wait, there's more to it. By "revolution", I don't mean we should be grabbing Armalites and going round executing every right-winger or person who has phoned in to The Wright Stuff to offer their views on "Gravy - Do They Make It Like They Used To?" No, I think the Army should be doing that. By "revolution" I mean "a revolution", a very specific, bloodless, organised and legal revolution.

To know what sort of revolution we need we need to know what is wrong with things as they are. Well, in short, the system of political governance in this country is fucked. It is deeply, deeply flawed but deliberately flawed so as to allow those least worthy of power and influence to achieve just that and suppress the majority. Since Thatcher, and thanks to Blair, the electorate has had two choices - vote right-wing Tory under the guise of Conservatism or vote right-wing Tory under the guise of New Labour. Anything else, we are told, would be a wasted vote. It has, indeed, been engineered through the absence of proportional representation and boundary re-jigging.

So, how do we get the far wider range of political viewpoints held by the populace represented in government? Well, the people have to be offered an alternative - not just an alternative to global capitalism but to the democratic system as it stands. Others with brains will come up with far better ideas but just a simpleton like me has a few basic ideas. They could surely go in the melting pot?

How about, for one, we start by asking the electorate if they are satisfied by and feel represented by the current system of government in this country? How do we do this? Well, how about we lobby for a national advertising campaign ahead of the General Election which proposes adding another box to all ballot papers going out for the big day. Below the boxes marked "Labour", "Conservative", "Liberal Democrat", "Green" and "British National Party" etc, a box would be available, accompanied by the words "NONE OF THE ABOVE".

If voters are truly happy with what they've got they will say so. I suspect, however, that being offered an alternative for the first time in 30 years would prompt a record turnout and an overwhelming call for a change.

What then? Well, how about we install an emergency, coalition Government with a remit to handle the affairs of the country for a set period - say three years - during which petitions of a certain size for public referenda on given issues be acceded to?

During this time, a national commission should be established in which non-party members from constituencies, backed by support from a sprinkling of academics and legal experts, examine and gauge the extent of feeling and policy differences at large in the country on key issues, such as education, social welfare, defence, healthcare, the environment, industry, finance etc. The aim of the commission should be to identify political groupings which could best encapsulate the majority views of different groupings of people - i.e. new political parties. There should be no fewer than four and an upper limit should be set, dependant on the commission's findings, of, say, six.

Public taxes (i.e the Government) should then pay to establish these parties, publicise them and outline on television and in newspapers their manifestos. Essential to the working of this would be side issues which would require legislation from the interim Government, such as "one newspaper, one owner", "one commercial television or radio station, one independent company", the outlawing of political lobbying companies etc.

A fresh General Election would be called at the end of the commission's work and rules for proportional representation in the new Government be devised. Yes, it would be a coalition Government - but it would prevent extremism.

Ok, a lot of the above is shite! I thought it up in about ten minutes. There are so many holes and problems it is probably impossible - BUT IT IS AN IDEA!!!! WE NEED MORE IDEAS, AND NOT FROM THOSE ALREADY IN POWER. THINK!!!! FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, JUST THINK!!!!!!!!!

Then again, who gives a shit? Evolution more or less dictates that we will destroy ourselves. Greed and war will turn us against ourselves. Hell, they say the dinosaurs were thick as pigshit but it took a fucking big asteroid to get rid of them. They were, at least, smart enough not to wipe themselves out!!!!

Well, that's about it, really. The end of an error. I know no-one will read this, or those that do will not have got this far, so I am talking to myself. Maybe, after all, I am metaphorically wandering away, mumbling "I told you so" and scratching my bollocks, like the little boy in the fairytale?

So it's goodbye from me, Reg, and it's goodbye from Grantham New Town. I may well pop up somewhere else, but in a different guise. Then again, I may just bugger off somewhere and raise wolves in the wild. Who knows?

Thank you for reading. Take care of yourselves. XXXXX

It Stinks!

2009-07-19T08:40:00.003Z

What is it with the morons in advertising and plugging bog products?

"Muuuuuuum, I want to-do a-pooooh!"

"All right, darling, come on then."

"No, I want to-do-a-pooh in Paul's bathroom!"

Cue smiles of endearment all round and the brat with the splat is next pictured pulling his pants up in an unidentified lavatory.

What, in the holy name of fuck, is going on here? This is just wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, that's not quite how the conversation would go round at Pither Towers if my imaginary child approached me with that twining "Muuuuuuum" bullshit.

"Muuuuuum! I want to-do a-pooooh!"

"Father, Adolph, father. Mum's the one with the beard. Anyway, whaddya want?"

"I want to-do a-poooh!"

"Well, knock yourself out, kid. Just relax that sphincter, open the bomb doors and let it go."

"But I want to-do-a-pooh in Paul's bathroom!"

"You fucking what!!!!? Are you sick or something, you little bastard! Daddy didn't, if you'll excuse the pun, splash out £10,000 on a new bathroom just so you can Charlie Chaplin it round to the neighbour's to drop your load. Anyway, just how do you think Paul is going to react to you going over there just so you can shit in his house? Hmmmm?"

Secondly, do I really need some little turd emphasising his status in life by twining the word "pooh" at me in my living room? I am familiar with the concept that shit stinks. I am also familiar with the existence of air freshners. I don't need some colon-stuffed kid talking me through the finer details.

This comes on the back of that other slice of advertising genius which was a previous advert for air freshner in which a kid was filmed sitting on the bog, just post-evacuation, and shouting "Pooh! It stinks!"

It's all because kiddies are cute, apparently, and so anything they do generates the exclamation "Aaaaaah!" from those around. Well, I haven't been blessed with children but even if I had been I would not find ANYTHING endearing about my spawn having a shit! Come to that, I find NOTHING endearing in ANYONE having a shit - even Bettany Hughes (all praise and peace be upon her).

There's nothing wrong or shameful about bodily functions, Pither! No, indeed there isn't. What is objectionable is sharing them with the whole fucking world, especially by using kiddies in the belief that they make them cute and not stomach-churning. To me, the imagery of a five-year-old having a shit is no more pleasant than that of Bernard Manning relieving himself of a flock of sparrows on the pan. Maybe I'm getting it all wrong? Maybe I'm just too sensitive? Maybe I should welcome equally basic adverts featuring adults?

Tissues, for instance? "Mum!! I've just jacked off and the bucket's full!!" - Thank God for Kleenex.

Toothpaste? "Oh darling, I wish you'd told me before I did that to you." Yes, Colgate dissolves even clotted blood and bits of uterus to give you fresh breath again.

Get the picture? I could go on but I think I would be defeating my own argument if I did.

Advertising, kids and methane have already gone to Grantham - I just want to make sure they stay there.

How It Works.

2009-07-06T20:18:00.009Z

"'Ello, pretty lady", I dribbled, chatting up the beautiful blonde, sales-type woman during a fag break in the rain at work today.

"So, you is advertise, yes? I buy you? You come home, love me long time, five dollar?"

"Oh, hello. You're Reg, aren't you. I've been told about you," she winced, trying to back into a corner.

"Yes, me Reg. So, what is this that you do to advertise," I continued, undaunted, rubbing my crotch and staring wildly.

"I'm the advertising supervisor."

"Oh", retorted Pither, with a limited grasp of command structures. "So, you're a top sow? A boss hog? Your immediate boss is the advertising bloke in the red braces and the striped shirt?"

"Pete?" she asked, somewhat shocked. "Oh no, he's the corporate sales director."

"Oh," retorted Pither, somewhat bemused. "So, who is your.....what do they call it these days?...........line manager?"

"That's Nicole, the advertising area manager."

"That would be the skinny broad with no tits and hair like a failed electrician?"

"That's her."

"So, she answers to Pete?"

"Oh no! Her boss is Lydia, the advertising regional manager."

"The Amazonian thing with a pierced nose? This is a joke, isn't it? Is her boss Pete?"

"'Fraid not. She answers to Debbie, the group advertising manager."

"The one who was sectioned last year? Go on, I'm intrigued."

"Her boss is Amanda - you know, the one with the plastic boobs?"

"I think I had noticed her."

"Well, Amanda's the group advertising chief executive."

"...and she answers to Pete?"

"No, obviously not. Amanda answers to Sarah, the group sales director. It's Sarah who answers to Pete as he's the corporate sales director."

"How stupid of me."

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, two reasons. Firstly, it's my job m'aam, being a reporting monkey and that. Secondly, I couldn't help but notice but there are just nine of you over there in Hairspray Corner. My maths isn't brilliant, you understand, but that makes seven chiefs and only two Indians?"

"Yup."

"Does the system work."

"Of course it bloody doesn't! The problem we've got is there aren't enough people to sell the ads"

"I think I've spotted a flaw in the system, if it would help?"

"Soz, babe. Gotta get back. Ciao."

"Will you have sex with me - just by way of taking pity on an old man?"

"I haven't got a window - sorry."

"I'm prepared to do it indoors!"

"Don't go changing. Miss you already."

Ooh, I Say!

2009-07-05T16:12:00.008Z

Life is good - life is fine. I am, in fact, rantless. Why? Because of the USA, Switzerland, cat gut (sic) and SW19.

I am currently watching the Wimbledon tennis final and it is reminding me that not all in the world is gloom, cynicism, corruption and injustice. In a country run by corrupt, self-centred, greedy, socially and morally bankrupt little jerks, it is heart warming to see something which represents all that people and the world in general should be.

It's raining where I am, but it's glorious summer sunshine down in south west London. On court are two of the finest examples of sport and all that is good about humankind - Roger Federer (he who has not the decency to even sweat!) and Andy Roddick.

Federer is a genius. He is arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, although the magnificent Rod Laver, who was in the crowd today, can claim to have achieved more. It is awe-inspiring to watch him on a court. The man is cool, calm, precise, powerful, tactically aware and almost machine-like in his clinical stroke play.

Facing him across the net is Roddick, at 26, a man who is playing the tennis of his life. He brushed aside Andy Murray, our brave British hopeful before the semi-final, a fucking useless Scotsman by the end of it. Roddick not only took on Murray, he took on the whole of the UK in that match and beat them hollow - then he went and topped it all by being about as graceful and magnanimous in victory as it was humanly possible to be. Hell's teeth, the man even apologised to the crowd for knocking out their man!

Both men are consummate professionals. Neither of them gripe, whinge or cuss on court - compare that to footballers. Neither of them spend their time arguing with the umpire, blaming their rackets or smashing said equipment to pieces when they feel the world is against them. Neither of them, strangely enough, resort to eye-gouging in an effort to win.

I have become used to watching once great, sporting finals, particularly over here, in which I couldn't give a rat's ass who won. e.g. Manchester United v Chelsea. I have watched tournaments in which my hopes were pinned on good ole Blighty - Come on England!! The media has bombarded me with wall-to-wall coverage of entirely talentless, childish, no-marks whose lack of any ability whatsoever has somehow won them the public attention they crave and the money they simply do not deserve. e.g. Britain's Got The Ice Dancing Factor or whatever.

Today, thankfully, NONE of that was in evidence. There were just two superbly talented, hard working, professional craftsmen whose handiwork was a joy to behold. One was an American, the other Swiss. Who cares? Today they belonged to all of us. They were beyond the petty bounds of nationalism. Also, for the first time in many, many years, I didn't want either of the finalists to lose. They both deserved to win!

It is now, incredibly, 13-12 in the final set. To say they are evenly matched is an understatement. I shall no doubt have more to say come the end, if, indeed this fantastic match ever does end, but I just wanted to get this down while it is on my mind. Grantham shall NOT have Federer, Roddick or the 2009 Wimbledon final!!!

Postscript: It's over, it's now history - and history-making. Six Wimbledon titles for the man, 15 Grand Slams to beat Pistol Pete's record and a fantastic victory. Andy Roddick lost by a hair's breadth - but he will be back, and he WILL win. Now?.........back to the world of dreams.

Too Young To Die - Too Mad To Live

2009-07-04T06:44:00.007Z

Well, he's dead! - that Michael Johnson (as my mother said over the phone the other day).

The world is in mourning, we're told. A memorial concert is going to be held in Americaland somewhere and just 20,000 tickets are available - fingers crossed, eh? Even in Small Town, some turd burglar calling himself "Ste" is arranging a mass pop-in to celebrate the life of Whacko Saddo BabyDanglo Whiteo NoNoseo Paedo Jacko.

"Ste" (the "v" and the "e" were obviously bridges too far for his doubtless cerebrally challenged parents at the Christening) says in a bowel-moving message to all and sundry on Facebook: "Sadly, one of the greatest entertainers ever has passed away - the King of Pop, Michael Jackson." (I am punctuating this for him and correcting his spelling as I go along, by the way).

With no feeling whatsoever for overstatement, he masturbates on: "The world has come to a standstill since the news. This is our time for all the fans, friends and loved ones to join together for Michael Jackson and share the history and memories of what we all hold in our heart." ("we" only have one "heart", apparently. Ed)

Still with me? There's more: "Let us dance and sing to those number one hits, love and smile. Enjoy this day together as our remembrance day for the King, Michael Jackson."

"White emulsion paint, brushes, false noses, complimentary companion monkeys and sexually vulnerable children will be available at the door." Actually, to be fair, that bit's not in it. I made that bit up.

The message does, however, conclude (and this section is my particular fave): "Bring friends, family, yourself and your love."

Please excuse me while I phone up my 82-year-old, blind, deaf and partially disabled mother and tell her to drive up here from Devon PDQ to join in the fun - and to make sure that she brings her love with her.

Let's face it, this is WORSE than when Diana, Queen of Farts, had that fleeting dalliance with a Parisian central tunnel support after being driven home by a pissed-up, drug-addled, dwarf frog in the pay of a bent Arab (Oh, how we laughed). At least the former Princess of Wails (sic) only ever fucked people who had at least sat an 11-Plus exam (although most, if not all, did not pass it, it has to be said). Come to that, and in her defence again, she only really cavorted with members of the same fucking phylum!

Jacko, on the other hand? Well, he was a slightly different cup of nematode worms. To recap, who/what was he? Well, being positive (a little electric chair joke used by warders, I'm told) he was a formerly cute-looking kid with a good singing voice who could cut a decent rug. Talking of cutting, he also cut a few popular music discs which were generally well received, notably by the deaf and people with behavioural disorders. That's about it for the positives, really.

On t'other side of coin, well...........HE FUCKED CHILDREN!!! No, he didn't think he was Peter Pan and so wanted to share the magical world of children and give them peace and joy and love - HE WANTED TO PUT HIS PENIS IN THEIR BOTTOMS!!! Name the last fucking paedophile for which the world went into mourning?

In addition, he didn't want to be black and so apparently bathed in bleach every day in an effort to turn white. Are those the actions of a king? King of the Loonies, maybe. Add to that, he didn't like his nose - or his eyes, or his mouth, or his chin, or his cheeks, or his ears, or his neck, or.........Come on, be honest, someone who can fall out with parts of their body is the sort of person you pray won't sit next to you on the bus!

Because he had the money, however, and he lived in a land where looks are available over the counter, he was able to swap the body parts he didn't like for ones that he did - I believe there's a catalogue you can look through. Never seen it in Argos, though. Sadly, he felt the same way about noses as the rest of us feel about strawberries - once you've had one you've just got to have another...and another. The end result was the limited amount of cartilage available onto which new hooters could be nailed was gradually eroded, so much so that he was just left with a gaping hole in the middle of his face which could only be covered by something akin to an almost-flesh-coloured, thin matchbox. He did achieve his aim of getting a new face - sadly, it was the face of someone who died in 1949.

Also, his best friend was a fucking chimpanzee!..............I mean, do I really have to expand on this point? Hmmm? Ok, I have some pretty under-developed friends who eat bananas, have to shave four times-a-day, like tea parties, show their arses in public and regard a tyre suspended from a tree by a piece of rope as a leisure centre but they are at least capable of walking upright (before 11pm) and have opposable thumbs! Seeking out comfort from apes is surely only for those who like going clubbing in South Shields on a Friday night?

There were other slightly disturbing aspects to his life - like he lived in a fucking fairground, liked dangling babies out of third-floor windows, pretended to be Jesus at music awards and walked round in a mask - but to mention them would just be nit-picking, I think.

So, for whom has the world apparently come to a standstill? A bleached paedophile with a plastic nose who hangs around with monkeys! It's not exactly like the death of Nelson, be honest.

There are those who say Jacko has gone to heaven, others say he is in Hell. Well, sorry to disappoint you all - I've sent him to Grantham.

Aaaaarrgghh!!!!

2009-05-01T22:30:00.004Z

Oh, lorks a lordy! It's been so long. Where to start?

How about the Tenna pads advert I've just this second witnessed? "Now I'm mature, should I let bladder weakness let me down?" Well, quite frankly love, YES!!!!! You may have the face of an angel but if the dank smell of stale piss is going to fill the air in the Bernie Inn while we're having our soup-in-the-basket then I'd rather you just stayed at home with your urinary tract complications and let me get on with my personal Hell, odour-free.

Swine flu? We're all going to die, apparently. Flee for the hills, the end of the world is nigh. Well, not having had sexual relations with chickens for more than 10 years, let alone Chinese chickens, I managed to escape "bird flu". That was going to kill us all, wasn't it? My last sexual encounter with a pig was in the early '70s when I was going through a difficult phase. I've left them alone since then. Hell, they never phone afterwards and they're basically just self-centred gits with their snouts in the trough. Am I really going to bow out with a big oik-choo? I bloody doubt it! Having read all the leaflets, you are only really at risk if you kiss a pig (I bet Vanessa Feltz's ex-husband is breathing a sigh of relief) or go out with Sally Weston - it's a long story and I don't want to go into it.

MPs expenses? Sorry, but I thought the word "expenses" meant things you had paid for to do your job and so wanted to recoup from your employer. Bath plugs? Porn? Get receipts for the stuff, you bastards!! Gunna look a bit silly in Spearmint Rhino asking Chantelle for a chit as she rubs her sweating muff in your face!

Then there's David Blunkett howling about the plight of "Labour" and that fat, abject twat Charles Clarke saying that last week's shenanigans had left him feeling "ashamed" to be a Labour MP. Number one, wankface Blunkett will do ANYTHING to get back into a position of power (even gas his labrador) and so insists on saying ANYTHING he thinks the Press will latch onto to put him in the papers again. Secondly, Clarke is "ashamed" to be a Labour MP.........NOW!!! He wasn't fucking ashamed when he was bleedin' Home Secretary with an agenda with made Pinochet "ashamed" to be a member of the same phylum!!!

Kids should be encouraged to talk? No, that's not me, that's some education expert!!! It's the conclusion of the latest report on "what's wrong with our (Thatcherite) youth" (the clue is in the adjective). Jesus, how things have changed! When I was alive, the mantra was "children should be seen and not heard". Nowadays, the little bastards are so socially introverted and desensitised to the real world that some overpaid, doubtless asexual, bearded, elbow patch-wearing cunt has concluded that we need to teach them to speak! You think!!!! Aaaaarrrrgghhh.

So, we've withdrawn from Iraq, have we? Well, that's all right then. Glad to know we've left everything so neat and tidy. Ok, under the beast Saddam, maybe they were oppressed and feared to speak out about their lives - but at least they could get home and put the kettle on, have a cuppa, cook something and not get all their reading done before 7pm when the fucking lights went out!!! Going to be fine in the future? Oh yes!! Now we've trained the bent Iraqi police how to properly torture people and extort money from them, everything is going to be all right.

And another thing..................oh, I give up. This is like not having sex for years. You go off like a pop bottle cork when the day comes. I'm going to bed.

One of Those Days.

2009-03-22T07:51:00.003Z

Saturday, March 21.

PITHER: "Hello, building society crone."
CRONE: "Hello, Mr Pither."
PITHER: "Might I withdraw £300 of my earth pounds."
CRONE: "No. Your cheque doesn't clear until Monday."
PITHER: "But I paid it in last weekend!"
CRONE: "Takes six working days."
PITHER: "Tara."

Pither walks next door to the newsagent's.

PITHER: "Twenty Embassy Filter, please."
SPOTTY WORK EXPERIENCE YOUTH: "Soz, got no Filter."
PITHER: "Au revoir."

Pither returns home after his successful outing and decides to phone the man who installed his now broken fishpond pump.

AQUATIC CON ARTIST: "What model is it, Piths?"
PITHER: "Uuurm, uuurm, uuurm, oh, hang on, it says TX1900 on the side."
AQUATIC CON ARTIST: (Sharp intake of breath) "Tsh. They don't make them no more."
PITHER: "Well, can you repair it?"
AQUATIC CON ARTIST: "It'll cost a shedload. Best buy another one, eh?"
PITHER: "Thanks for your back-up sales and customer service."
AQUATIC CON ARTIST: "It's a living."

Pither phones electrician about cooker, bottom oven of which is bust, along with the digital clock.

BRIGHT SPARK: "What model is it?"
PITHER: "Anticipating your query, I have the manual which came with it here. It says it is an SK400X."
BRIGHT SPARK: "Yer what?"
PITHER: "It does exist, I promise you. It's over there, against the wall, as sure as I'm sitting in this bucket of piranha sperm."
BRIGHT SPARK: "What make?"
PITHER: "Sarena."
BRIGHT SPARK: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."
PITHER: "I am truly delighted you are having such a fun day, but do I detect some sort of problem."
BRIGHT SPARK: "They'm manufactured in Prague, assembled in Madagascar and distributed by the Wops. You've got no chance. Is the clock working?"
PITHER: "No."
BRIGHT SPARK: "That'll be it. Once the clock's fucked, the whole thing is fucked."
PITHER: "How much is a new clock?"
BRIGHT SPARK: "'Bout £150. Might as well get a new cooker."
PITHER: "But I've looked them up and they cost £550."
BRIGHT SPARK: "Yeah, bummer, ain't it."

Undeterred, Pither phones a local kitchen appliance centre which sells spares.

PITHER: "Hello, I'd like a digital clock/timer for a Sarena SK400X.
FUCKWIT WOMAN: "Sorry, we're closed."
PITHER: "Forgive me pointing out this slight contradiction, but you're there. I know that because you've answered the phone and I'm speaking to you."
FUCKWIT WOMAN: "Kitchen sales, me. Parts closed at 1pm.
PITHER: "But it's only 12.55pm!"
FUCKWIT WOMAN: "S'not. One now."
PITHER: "Well it is NOW!!! That's because we've been chatting for five minutes."
FUCKWIT WOMAN: "They've all gone home."
PITHER: "Bye, take care. Oh, and please don't die in a hideous car crash on your way home."

Pither decides to walk dogs and is amazed when none of them die or contract green monkey disease or get abducted by aliens. He returns to do his washing and ironing and then watch a big of rugby. At 5pm, the phone rings.

MUTANT MATE: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Forest lost. 1-0 to Wolves. WOLVES. Ha, ha, ha, ha. You're gunna get some serious gip from everyone when you come out next."
PITHER: "Thanks for the call. I've enjoyed it."

Having no money, Pither is forced to opt out of an evening at the pub and opts in for a snooze on the settee.

9pm: Pither awakes..........and smells trouble. He discovers the alsatian has crapped in the hall and the collie-cross has peed up against his briefcase. He decides to go to bed. It must surely be safer there.

9.20pm: "Pither climbs into bed, surrounded by dogs, and switches on the bedside lamp so as to read himself to sleep.............Ping! The bulb in the bedside lamp blows. Pither drifts off into unconsciousness. Please Lord, take me now, I'm ready.

Saturday, March 21, 2009 can go to Grantham.

Bye, Bye Mal.

2009-03-08T12:11:00.001Z

Vene, vidi, bevevi!.............He came, he saw, he drank.

Guess Who Just Got Back Today?

2009-03-07T07:57:00.007Z

(Pither and the Pig Farmer - pictured at a Biggles Is Best reunion, prior to PF's northern exile.)

Here sooey, sooey, sooey, pig, pig, pig! The whole of Small Town is on high alert. Tongues are wagging, curtains are twitching - the Pig Farmer is coming!

Yes, my little chum Mal Baby, he of the Marge Simpson hair and the Lena Zavaroni legs, is on his way south as I write.

The boy, known to cyberworld as The Edge of Nowhere, has texted to say that he's well on his way. He set off last night with his faithful team of huskies bound for You'llnobefromround'ere, the main settlement on the Orkney island of Westray where he lives. From there it was an arduous coracle journey to the main island where he joined an Innuit caravan of canoes for the crossing to the mainland.

Sherpas then led him to the nearest village with electricity, from where it was an eight-hour mule ride to the Duke of Cumberland Memorial Iron Horse Station. He's currently on the train, passing the time during the 800-mile journey by looking weirdly at other passengers and building a whickerman out of used straws from the buffet car.

He is due at Pither Towers at around 6pm and, after disarming him, I will be taking him out for a meeting with a select team of Mutant pals - oh, what japes we shall have!

The results will no doubt be documented here, and perhaps the boy himself will get a word in. Watch this space.

Geoffrey Boycott

2009-03-02T19:23:00.006Z

I'm not one to generalise, as absolutely everyone will tell you, but aren't Yorkshiremen arses! (rhetorical).

I have been listening over the last few days to Test Match Special on the wireless. It has been a delightful experience, regardless of the results on the pitch, with one notable exception - Sir(?) Geoffrey Boycott.

Like most of his Yorkshire breed I have come across, he suffers from two main delusions, namely that:

1. Anything he says is anywhere near correct, remotely relevant or justifiable by any evidence.
2. Anyone wants to hear it!

Apropos absolutely nothing, I paid off Lloyds TSB Bank today! Thirty years of banking with these loan sharks has finally come to an end! Lloyds TSB is out of my life forever. I hope, to use a bastardised Holy Grail reference, it burns down and sinks into the swamp of fiscal obscurity (once it has paid back the extortionate charges it has levied on me over the years)!

Lloyds is already there - Boycott can join it in Grantham.

Grantham Newsflash!

2009-02-27T13:35:00.010Z

The Government was today breathing a collective sigh of relief after the surprise appointment of Sir Reg Pither who single handedly brought the Sir Fred Goodwin affair to an end.

Gordon Brown had been coming under increasing pressure as he continued to dither, fart about and generally shy away from facing the problem posed by Sir Fred who ran up debts of £86 krillion at the Royal Bank of Scotland by buying up loans to fairies at the bottom of his garden and then knobbing off into retirement at the age of 50 with a pension pot of £650,000-a-year - almost all paid for by the taxpayer.

Sir Reg ended the sorry affair once and for all today by taking a slightly firmer line during a 13 second meeting with the former bank boss.
Grantham News has obtained a leaked transcript of that meeting this morning and it is as follows:

Sir Fred: "You wanted to see me? Your letter said something about me being an 'abject twat' and it mentioned something to the effect 'not as long as there's a hole in my arse'."
Sir Reg: "Yes. I've got a chihuahua called Frank who has got more fiscal acumen than you! You ain't having a £650,000 pension. In fact, you ain't even getting a state fucking pension until you pay back all the money you've pissed up the wall. Now fuck off, you greedy, incompetent wanker!"
Sir Fred: "That's breach of contract! I'll sue!"
Sir Reg: "Then I'll get MI5 to kill you."
Sir Fred: "Ok, fair enough."
Sir Reg: "Close the door behind you."

This afternoon Sir Reg was reported to be in the Gaza Strip for talks with Hamas leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert having taken with him only half a dozen sets of genital clamps.

Mwa, Mwa!!

2009-02-23T08:06:00.006Z

"Just shut up twining and show us yer Globes!"

What is an actor? Come on! Tell me! What is an actor? I'll tell you what an actor is. It's a person who dresses up, puts on makeup and pretends to be someone else. When five-year-old girls do this with their mum's shoes, clothes and lippy in front of the dressing table mirror it is quite rightly regarded as cute, charming and a wholly acceptable ritual on the path to maturity. How then should we regard this behaviour when it is exhibited by an adult? FUCKING DISTURBING, that's how!!

Be honest, if your other half came down to breakfast dressed as Lord Cardigan and started bellowing about cannons to the right and cannons to the left would you toss a bouquet in their direction and shout "Encore! Encore!! Magnificent, darling. A tour de force! Such a brave and inspirational performance"? No you fucking wouldn't! You'd pick up the phone pretty damn sharpish and tell the receptionist at the local loony bin that your Kevin had thrown one again and to get to blokes in white coats round asap!

What else do these retards do? Well, they learn, parrot-fashion, words written by someone talented and then, at a given cue, spew them back. For this "act" of genius they are hailed as gods! THEY don't write the words. THEY don't craft the story. THEY don't conjure up the comedy. THEY don't carve out the tragedy and melodrama - and yet THEY are the ones praised and hailed as superheroes. This is the only trade in the world where this happens. I mean, when Albert Einstein first wrote down E = MC-squared, was it the bloke who sharpened his fucking pencil who was credited with discovering the link between mass and energy, so ushering in the nuclear age? No! That bloke went on sharpening fucking pencils for the rest of his miserable, pathetic, fruitless fucking life until he died a sad, lonely and unmarked death. Quite right too!

Anyway, whatever happened to the good old days? In days of yore, when thesps and jesters were summoned to entertain the king, what happened if their performances went down like a pork pie in a synagogue? Did they get an ascerbic review in The Times? Did The Stage carry a piece criticising their commitment? No! They got fucking executed, that's what! Hang some sense into them, that's what I say!

All this brings me to last night's ferago - The Oscars. Film makers, directors and technical bods were rewarded for their efforts. Ok, at least they have a modicum of talent. I might not insist on them being tethered to posts in the middle of a field as the firing squad takes aim come the glorious revolution.......but the actors? To hear Kate fucking Winslet accept her textured golden dildo you'd think she'd discovered bastard penicillin!! Jesus H Christ!! Get a fucking grip, woman!! Someone's given you a tacky, fucking ornament for pretending to be someone else!! Get this in perspective, girl!

Acting is a trade, nothing more, nothing less, and not a particularly skilled one at that, so why, oh why, is so much fucking fuss made over the insecure, self-obsessed congealed masses of sputum who practise it? Look at it another way. If we're going to make this much fuss over the annual trade awards to thesps, then why don't we have similarly elaborate spectaculars for other trades?........................

MC: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Adelphi Baths, Maccelesfield, for the 2008 Gas Fitting and Plumbing Supplies Awards!!
"Yes, this is the one you've all been waiting for - who will take away one of those famous and coveted pewter Plunger awards tonight....................?
"And the winner of the Intermediate Apprentice-Level S-Joint and Extruded Pipe Extension Mold Installation Award is............Kevin Sidebotham!!!!"

TV Commentary: "And here he comes, wearing a stunning boiler suit and rubber boot-combo, making his way up the famous red lino to the trestle table in front of the stage, pausing only for a quick snap in front of the photographer from the East Cheshire and District Pipe Benders Gazette."

Kevin: "Oh God! Well....oh dear, what can I say? I just SO wasn't expecting this. Oh no! I can't believe it. Thank you SOOOO much!! To think, when I was a little boy, dreaming of getting a start in the world of domestic plumbing supplies, I would stare into the bathroom mirror and rehearse this acceptance speech, using a shampoo bottle in place of a pewter Plunger. Well, it's not a shampoo bottle anymore! This is it!!!"

MC: "Fuck off, Kev. The buffet's open." etc, etc, etc, etc.

Actors? Scum of the earth. They can all fuck off to Grantham.

Pigs In Space!!!!!!!

2009-02-20T13:23:00.005Z

Beware the one that calls itself Harman - it is not a Labour Party loyalist at all but a Krinod from the Planet Fuck!

As a Fuckoid, the beast Harman is intent on "Fucking Up" everything on Planet Earth and particularly in that already crumbling outpost known as the UK.

Remember when her fellow Fuckoid Blair first materialised? Obviously, prior to his
teleportation across the universe, no-one had ever heard of him here on Earth. Moments after his particulate reassembly, however, he was leader of the Labour Party - or the New Fucking Labour Party, as he restyled it.

The warning signs were there for all to see. When the former Labour Leader John Smith went and rolled a seven - something this nation has lived to regret ever since - his fellow party members went into mourning, but not Fuckoid Blair. No, he started secretly manoeuvring and doing deals behind the scenes while everyone else was attending memorial services and giving heartfelt tributes to Smith to the media. Hey presto! When the black veils were lifted, there he was, a virtual shoe-in for the leadership.

Beware those warning signs again, I say! Blair's half-wit, half-brother Brown - he who struck a deal with the alien Devil and enabled the complete Fucking Up of the country - is now in his death throws. More than that, he is a dead man walking. While fellow Labourites rally round to keep him on life support, the Fuckoid Harman has begun a pathetically ill-disguised campaign behind the scenes to take over.

She has already arranged a Fucking Women's Conference to coincide with the next G20 economic summit so as to grab headlines. She has also been speaking out against bonuses paid out to the Krinadian Fuckoid hardcore who run our banking system. Laughably, the media brand her a Left-winger for this. Ha! Left-winger? She's so Fucking Left-wing she's gone round the bend and met herself coming back!

This creature has only one thing on her agenda - herself! Her shady husband found that out to his cost. The moment her career was threatened with a dent, out the window he had to go!

I'm sure her policies of putting a tax on penises, outlawing the Y chromosome in built up areas and instigating compulsory sperm bank donations with a view to phasing out men by 2015 will prove popular among some comfortably-shoed members of society but beware!! Harman will Fuck Up this country more than Blair and Brown ever managed. She is the Queen of Fuck Up!!

She has already been sent to Grantham. I now propose building a 30ft-high wall around Grantham specifically to ensure she does not get out.

Home From Home

2009-02-18T21:22:00.008Z

Our MPs - their dedication, honesty and tireless work for the country is already well documented, but I ask you to spare a special thought for the massive sacrifices made by our Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Imagine what she has given up to serve the nation. Before Mrs Smith became an MP, their she and her family were, living quite happily in the back bedroom of Mrs Smith's sister's house in Nunhead, south east London. Mrs Smith had the bottom bunk, Mr Smith took the top. Their four children - Vlad, Lucretia, Adolph and Saddam - each had their own draw in the chest in the corner in which to snuggle down at night while Mrs Smith's mother slept standing up in the wardrobe - she had a back condition and lying down proved painful so the orthopaedic wardrobe was a Godsend.

The family's four golden retrievers had the run of the 6ft by 8ft room so they were happy and Lucretia's pet pony, Hermann, was stabled on top of the dressing table and had a vase of tasty daffodils to munch on during the day.

Then Mrs Smith was catapulted into the House of Commons and, owing to an outbreak of bubonic plague among New Labour's ranks, she was appointed Home Secretary. The family's home in London was obviously no longer convenient for her getting to and from work. She was forced to seek a second home closer to Parliament where she could lay her head during the week before returning at weekends to the bosom of her family. All the taxpayers would give her to get this second home was a measly £116,000 and so, having studied her Acme school map of Britain and tightened her belt for all our sakes, she plumped for a £400,000, nine-bedroom, six-bathroom, detached home with a billiard room, function suite, gatehouse and lodge set in 200 acres of land 150 miles from London - in Redditch, Worcestershire. Such was the pokiness of this squalid pied de terre that it was bursting at the seams with her meagre collection of worldly goods. There was so little space that her cellar of champagne had to go in the centrally heated stable block, there was just one outdoor swimming pool for her bathing costume and her collection of tropical plants had to go in the indoor poolroom and jacuzzi with effect-waterfall and hydro pool.

What happened then? Not content with Mrs Smith having put herself out to this massive extent just so she could serve us all, the scum, gutter press had a go at her, claiming that her house in Redditch might actually be her first home while her sister's boxroom was in fact her second home, and not the other way around as she obviously said to get the extra accommodation allowance. In addition, the hacks also had the nerve to make the ludicrous allegation that not only was the London base her second home, £116,000 was rather steep rent for a one-room residence during weekdays.

There is a real danger here that if we continue to snipe at and criticise over things like this we will lose leaders of the dedication and calibre of Mrs Smith and they will go elsewhere to serve - you know, like we almost lost to America those genius bankers and financiers who spent billions of pounds of our money buying up loans to vagrants before they all had to be written off.

..............................................................................

Back in the real world, bear in mind this is not some grubby little backbencher we are talking about. This is the FUCKING HOME SECRETARY - the third most important and lofty office in the land behind the PM and Chancellor. If she's pulling this stunt, just think what the other fuckers are doing, given the fact that their chances of discovery are so much less likely as they are not in the limelight. As my pal BGT pointed out - THIS IS JUST TAKING THE FUCKING PISS!!!!!

And what is Mrs Smith's defence? I'll tell you what her fucking defence is. It's the same defence offered up by all these fuckers when they're caught out. It's the same defence used by those bankers and financiers mentioned earlier who creamed off millions to line their own pockets as a reward for bringing about the near collapse of the financial system - "it's in the rules"!

Listen, pal-o-mine, hanging in public used to be "in the rules". So did bear-bating, witch-ducking and the burning of Catholics. Hitler dictated that the annihilation of six million Jews was "in the rules". IT'S THE FUCKING RULES WHICH ARE WRONG - AND WHO MAKES THE RULES? THE FUCKING MPs!!!!!

Until we reintroduce public floggings - only for MPs - there will never be any progress. Up the revolution!!

Banking - A Fairytale?

2009-02-11T08:21:00.030Z

Once upon a time there was a beautiful garden tended by a devoted and caring gardener.

In the middle of the garden stood a huge oak tree which had been there for as long as anyone could remember. The tall oak was the life of the garden and it attracted many red squirrels who made their homes in its leafy branches.

Each Spring the oak tree would soak up the sun and, nourished by the warm rain and rich soil in the garden, it would grow and then by the summer time produce a bountiful crop of acorns.

The squirrels fed on the acorns and, each autumn when the tree shed all its acorns as it preprared to shed its leaves
and shut down for the winter, the squirrels worked feverishly to gather up all the nuts which fell to the ground to make sure they had enough to tide them over the barren months to come.

One day a gang of fat cats got into the garden and they quickly climbed the tree to take a look round at what was going on. They saw all the squirrels working tirelessly to gather nuts and they sniggered at their antics. The cats were far too fat and lazy to work but came up with a wizard plan to ensure they could eat well throughout the year.

They called all the squirrels to a meeting and told them: "Listen, if you give us some of your nuts to look after we will put them into a magic nut machine we have and it will make them grow bigger. The magic machine will make every nut you give us grow three per cent larger."

"Goody!" shrieked the squirrels, and they agreed. What they didn't know was that there was no magic nut machine. What the fat cats did instead was to take all the nuts they had been given down to the furthest corner of the garden where there was a compost heap crawling with mice. Here they challenged the mice to games of hide and seek, using the nuts they had brought to bet on the results. Now the cats, being cats, almost always caught the mice and so they almost always came away with large winnings which they insisted were paid in freshly caught salmon and gallons of double cream.

The squirrels continued to work away every day, oblivious to what the fat cats were doing. Even if they had known, they wouldn't have been able to join in because they didn't have enough nuts left to gamble with - they had handed over all their surplus to the fat cats.

The fat cats' scheme worked so well for them that they soon amassed stockpiles of salmon and cream and still had some of the nuts given to them by the squirrels left over. That gave them another idea and so they called another meeting with the squirrells and said to them: "Listen, instead of just getting by over winter, why don't we lend you some nuts so you can eat a little better? For every nut we lend you, however, we will want a seven per cent bigger nut back."

Now the squirrels liked the idea of having a comfier Christmas and thought they would just have to work harder to come up with the bigger nuts demanded. It never occurred to them that all they would be doing would be borrowing their own nuts from the fat cats and paying for the privilege! Finally worn down by persistent pressure from the fat cats they agreed to the idea and started borrowing.

Now all the frantic exchanging of nuts and the gambling down at the compost heap attracted the attention of some rats in the neighbouring garden. They saw what a good scam the fat cats were running and wanted to join in but the gardener knew they were trouble and he determined to keep them out. He put poison down for the rats and chased them off whenever they appeared. But sadly, one dark and rainy day, the gardener died.

It was indeed tragic for the beautiful garden because, with the gardener dead, only his pets were left to look after it. Chief among these was the gardener's evil
cat, Moggie, and it was she who decided to take charge. Now Moggie was an arrogant, stupid and selfish cat who believed that the garden could look after itself. She would not listen to anyone, believing that only she could be right, and so, when the birds who lived in the garden tried to patrol it themselves and keep it safe, she chased them away.

Sure enough, soon after Moggie took over, the rats invaded the garden and she did nothing to stop them - "market garden forces!" she would bellow from the comfort of the gardener's palatial house. Once in the garden, the rats began copying the fat cats, lending nuts to the squirrels, gambling and generaly getting fat themselves on the profits. Meanwhile, Moggie spent her days looking down on the rapidly deteriorating garden, all the while smiling a self-satisfied smile and thinking that she was right and the garden could look after itself.

Eventually, Moggie grew so old and so senile that the birds and the squirrels were able to chase her away and she went to live in a bigger house down the road. Of the other pets left behind, a devious young rabbit who no-one had ever taken notice of before started jumping up and down all of a sudden and saying that he would do all that the birds and the squirrels wanted if he were to take charge, for he claimed to be one of them. He said he was on their side and so he was allowed the tend the garden - he was Blair Rabbit.

Sadly, what the birds and the squirrels didn't know was that Blair Rabbit was a liar. All he wanted was to be in charge and he didn't care two hoots about the birds and the squirrels. In fact, not only was he not one of them he was, in reality, a great admirer of Moggie and so, once at the helm, not only did he not stop the lending and the gambling he said there should be much more of it. He told the squirrels: "Why just get by over winter? Why just get by at any time? Why not have as much as you want, if not more, all the time? Borrow more nuts and then you can gorge yourself all year round!" Then he told the fat cats that not only could they play hide and seek with the mice, they could gamble on any games they wanted to.

And so the squirrels began borrowing more and more nuts from the fat cats, guzzling them all year round. "This is the life," they thought. "Why didn't we think of this before? We can have as much as we want and more, just by borrowing from the fat cats. Prudence and financial management are for the birds!!" The fat cats, meanwhile, started challenging the mice to swimming and shouting competitions, as well as to their usual games of hide and seek, and, as before, they bet on the outcomes.

Then, one day, a pack of dogs moved into the garden and they made their home down by the compost heap. They chased away all the mice and when the fat cats and the rats came calling to play they were waiting. The dogs said they would also gamble with them on the games but as they were bigger, faster and more ferocious than the fat cats and rats they would agree to pay out much, much more to them if they lost. The fat cats and the rats began drooling at the thought of how much more salmon and cream and other goodeis they could get and, even though they already had more food than they could ever eat in a lifetime, they accepted the wagers - and for the first time they bagan to lose!

The dogs were far too quick and cunning and could easily win swimming and shouting contests, let alone games of hide and seek - something which should have been obvious from the start - but still the fat cats and rats kept on betting........and losing.

They lost so much that eventually they only had enough food left to tide them through the coming winter. Admittedly, it was enough to ensure each of them enjoyed a banquet every day, but that was not enough for the fat cats and rats who were by now used to the high life so they decided to ask all the squirrels for the nuts back they had lent them. Of course, many of the squirrels had borrowed so much that they couldn't repay the fat cats and the rats. Many of them had to give the fat cats and the rats their homes in lieu of payment while others just starved to death once they had given back all they had.

Soon the garden was littered with the bodies of dead squirrels and empty dreys which no-one could afford to buy. Eventually, things became so bad that even the fat cats and the rats ate through their stockpiles and they too were faced with starvation.

Now just before all this happenend Blair Rabbit had left the garden and been put in charge of looking after all the carrots in a neighbouring farmer's fields. The fat cats passed food over the fence to him and at nights they let him sleep in their luxurious beds in return for the help he had given them.
In his place, his brother had taken over - Brown Bunny. Now Brown Bunny had a huge job ahead of him, trying to stop the rot and bring life back into the garden. The birds told him he had to stop the fat cats and rats gambling with the dogs. They told him he had to make the fat cats and the rats live more frugally and not stockpile salmon and cream. Some even told him that the starving fat cats and rats should be left to die as they had caused the famine in the first place. There were even those who said that the fat cats and rats should be punished, or at least banished from the garden.

Brown Bunny, however, like Blair Rabbit and Moggie before him, believed that the garden could not survive without fat cats. He thought that if they went, all the squirrels would die. Besides, he thought, he had to stay well in with the fat cats or else there would be no-one to feed him and offer him a bed for the night once he retired?

So Brown Bunny came up with his plan to save the garden. He decided to bring all the fat cats and rats into the gardener's house. He also ordered that the squirrels should all donate a proportion of the nuts they planned to eat each day to the fat cats so that they could be well fed. That way, he thought, the fat cats and the rats could go out and gamble in the garden and loan money to the squirrels but if anything ever went wrong again and they lost they could always come back to the house and be looked after.

And they all lived happily ever after...........well, the fat cats and the rats did!

The moral of this story is clear:

BE BLOODY CAREFUL WHEN FAT CATS GET THEIR PAWS ON YOUR FUCKING NUTS!!!

P.S. The first person to say cats don't eat nuts gets it!!

Things Can Only Get Better - This Time?

2009-01-20T18:38:00.018Z

I wasn’t going to make mention of it but I suppose it IS an historic day and so should not go by without comment.

America swore in its first black president today and I honestly believe that the world will now be a happier place, at least for the next few years - and NOT because of the colour of the new man's skin!

I am a realist, some say a cynic, and I don’t get swept up by mass hysteria.

When the Princess of Wales died I did not cry or travel to London to lay flowers and hug total strangers. I did not believe England had lost its “Rose”. I did not think a poor, innocent, saintly standard bearer for the ordinary men and women of this country had been cruelly taken from us. She was as manipulative as the firm she married into. She was as cunning as the media who followed her – and whom she courted. It was not the worst thing that had ever happened to this country. What was sad was that two young children had been left without their mother, a mother who died aged just 36. Nothing more.

When Blair was elected, contrary to the carefully spun hysteria among so-called Labour supporters, I was convinced we were in for a rabid continuation of the Thatcher years, that the man was a liar, a fraud and a dangerous individual as far as Britain’s future was concerned. I could see “New Labour” was an invention designed to cater for Daily Mail readers who wanted to say at their dinner parties that they had a social conscience. There was no “third way”. If there was, would it really have been likely that an obnoxious, grasping, greedy, insincere wannbe with a messianic complex would have been the first person in the last two hundred years to have discovered it? For the first time in my voting life I had not put my cross in the Labour box. I obviously couldn’t vote for the Tories or Lib Dems and so I spoiled my ballot paper. I have done that ever since – it IS a vote! And lo, it came to pass……………………..

Hype now surrounds Barak Obama. The media has gone absolutely barking mad over his election. To hear some of the reports, those with a religious bent could be forgiven for thinking he is The Second Coming. No, he’s just a man. He’s done nothing yet. He hasn’t made history. The colour of his skin does not and will not ever make him a better or worse president. It's the people of America who have made history. For the first time, a majority of voters have shouted down the WASPS and the ignorant. That majority has voted in a non-white, knowing, as they do, that skin has nothing to do with a person's character and ability.

Why, then, do I think things will be different? Well, firstly, all my instincts and what I have gathered so far lead me to believe Obama is an honest, sincere, honourable and very intelligent man. Compare all those character traits with those of his predecessor! I think he does want to change things, and change them for the better. As someone obviously interested in the USA's foreign policy, I think he does realise there is a world out there and it is not his nation's divine mission to subjugate those with different beliefs and impose its values on everyone else.

Secondly, things HAVE to get better now – logic dictates it. Why? Because the neo-Nazi, corrupt, war mongering, morally bankrupt, insane, radical Christian fanatics and members of the Texas Brotherhood have gone! ANYTHING has to be an improvement on that sinister and highly dangerous regime, headed by an illiterate idiot who was foisted on the American public by elections rigged by the multi-millionaires pulling his strings behind the scenes.

For once, that bloody awful song which Blair chose to herald his own arrival – a song which could not have been more inappropriate – is at last pertinent………Things Can Only Get Better.

Hell, who knows, maybe they USA will now even abolish the death penalty and quit the tiny list of backward, uncivilised countries which believe Lex Talionis should underpin their judicial systems?

Here endeth the lesson.

Black Power

2009-01-20T15:13:00.005Z

Simply Irresistible!

Advertising is a corrupt and morally bankrupt industry. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Often, it’s not so much what they say that is sickening, it’s what’s left unsaid that deceives.

Take for instance the new Just For Men advert on telly. So sweet, you’re supposed to think. So heart-warming.

TWINING KID 1: “Dad, it’s time.”
TWINING KID 2: “Yeah, you’d be a really good catch for someone.”

Cut to the day after and dad decides to act on his precocious spawns’ advice. He buffs up his luxuriant barnet, paints out his grey hairs with Just For Men and instantly pulls some bleedin’ supermodel who just happened to be hanging about with no queue of men behind her desperate to get into her knickers. A wand is waved and, Hey Presto! Instant happy family again. All thanks to hair colourant.

Not quite how it was, I think. What about all that film on the cutting room floor? What film? This film?

TK1: “Dad, it’s time.”
DAD: “Oh shit, are they open?”
TK2: “No, not the pub. You’d be a really good catch for someone.”
DAD: “Yerwhat?”
TK1: “Yeah, if you had jet black hair instead of hair with bits of grey in it you’d be able to pull some deep, intelligent, discerning bird who was in no way superficial.”
DAD: “Fuck off, will you, and pass me that can.”
TK2: “Go on dad, it IS time. I mean, you’ve been lying on that settee, masturbating and watching Trisha ever since mummy fucked off.”
DAD: “Callous bitch! And she still hasn’t told me who your real fathers are.”
TK1: “You were boning that woman from the florist’s, be honest. Anyway, mummy didn’t like anal sex and you knew that. Still, she’s out of hospital now.”
DAD: “Frigid cow!"
TK2: “Well, it’s time. You’re probation is up. That ban on making contact with any women aged between 17 and 105 within a 200 mile radius of home is lifted now.
TK1: “Yeah, get out there, shagmonster! You’ve got a knob like a babby’s arm holding an orange!! You’d make a really good catch for someone.”
TK2: “We’ve got the number of a high class prostitute in Chelsea – we found it in grandad’s wallet.”
TK1: “If you remortgage the house and sell us for medical experimentation you could have a hell of a night out with her.”
DAD: “Go on then. Pass me my hat – and my pants.”
TK2: “Don’t forget to colour you hair first, though. I mean, I think women will find your history of wife battering, chronic flatulence, alcoholism, bankruptcy, animal abuse and indecent exposure in public places really endearing – but grey hair? Get real.”

I think Just For Men had better go.

The Slippery Slope

2009-01-17T12:37:00.013Z

The Imminently Ex-Mrs Pither is expected round at The Towers this weekend having just returned from holiday. She’s been skiing in France.

I wasn’t allowed to know the exact location in case I phoned up where she was staying, pretended to be from “the clinic” and left a message to say that her vaginal wart cream was ready for collection. She didn’t laugh the last time I did it. No, the location was kept a secret from me – but I surmised that it was somewhere hilly, maybe even mountainous, and probably cold.

Pither can’t afford skiing holidays. Besides, Pither is allergic to mittens, reflective sunglasses and people with toothpaste advert smiles. To tell the truth, skiing strikes him as a bit…..a bit…..well…..well……..wanky. All those wannabes and trendies talking about their shoes, their handbags or how they’ve adjusted the overhead torque on their new baby so that she’s now purring like a kitten. “Mwa, mwa!! Miss you already!”

Quite what the appeal is of sliding down a hill on two sawn-off floorboards while freezing your tits off only to be dragged back up to the top so you can slide down again remains a mystery to me. It’s sort of the Alpine equivalent of a dog chasing its tail.

I can’t really see that IEMP would have slid seamlessly into that set either, let alone down a frozen incline which does not lead directly to a bar. It’s just not her – or at least it wasn’t. She went, however, with her new man. Perhaps that was the attraction? Skiing certainly fits with what I know of him. He works in computers, you see, and so the concept of sliding must seem mind-blowingly exciting to him. This is the man, dear readers, who, when asked by Pither, some years ago now, who his comedy heroes were, replied “I don’t like old comedy”. If it’s trendy, it’s for him.

"If you’ve never been skiing then how can you comment?" I hear you ask. Well, smartarses, I did go once! It was the obligatory, cut-price, school skiing trip. I was 17 and saved up out of my holiday job, pumping gas at a petrol station, to split the cost with my mother.

In all the years previously kids from my school had gone to Italy, France, Switzerland or Austria. They returned will tales of girls, illicit booze and snogs in the snow. I wanted a bit of that. I thought the slopes needed Pither. I thought the continent in general needed him. I needed to know if bras could be unfastened with one hand in foreign climes, just as they could be in England. Did Eurobirds kiss like English girls? Were a Snoopy doll and a poster of David Cassidy a universal currency which would grant access to “third base”? Had Britain’s entry into Europe really cemented a trading alliance to rival the USA? All these questions needed to be answered.

“Italy this year,” said the geography teacher leading the trip. That’ll do for me, I thought. I bought an Italian phrase book and desperately tried to piece together sentences such as “You have big tits for a vegetarian” and “Bet I can guess the colour of the pants you’re wearing just by licking them while blindfolded?”

I paid my deposit and then began counting the days. I couldn’t wait. I should have known, however. Nothing runs smoothly in Pither’s life. Four weeks before we were due to go there was a change of plan. “We’re not going to Italy after all,” said the geography teacher. “No, we’ve decided to have a complete change this time. We’re going instead to………………………Bulgaria!”

"Bul-Fucking-Garia?!” I enquired, with barely disguised incredulity. "Bul-Fucking-Garia?!!! You’re ‘aving a laarf, aren’t you? If God wanted to give the world an enema he'd stick the tube in Bulgaria!”

“Now, now Pither,” said the teacher. “We’re going there because it’s unspoilt.”

“There are reasons for that,” I said. “Firstly, it’s impossible to spoil it anymore than it's already been spoilt! Secondly, it’s unspoilt because no-one wants to go there on account of the fact they know it’s a shithole! Thirdly, those who do go aren’t allowed out again anyway and, finally and on a purely personal note, have you ever seen a photograph of a Bulgarian woman? They’re all like Geoff Capes with tits!”

My comments were duly noted – and ignored – and so Bulgaria was where we went.

This was 1977, bear in mind. Not only was the Berlin Wall still up, it was being re-rendered every month! The Soviet Union was still very much a massive power, the Iron Curtain showed not one iota of rust and the Eastern Bloc was about as geared up for tourism as Saturn is for a miniature golf tournament. Holland would have been a better destination for a skiing holiday.

If you were fascinated by potatoes and beetroot then Bulgaria was the get-away destination of a lifetime! Outside of root vegetables and apart from snow there was…….there was…….well, fuck all! Seemingly endless days of sliding down state-owned mountains, being dragged back up to the top and the obligatory statue of Lenin, then back down again. Hour in, hour out, day in, day out. On top of it all, I couldn’t even ski! I was shite!! I was also too logical for skiing.

“Hope you don’t mind me asking this, Sir, but why, having slid and fallen hundreds of feet down this freezing fucking mountain, would I want to get dragged back up to the top and do it again? I mean, if I was run over by a bus, would you expect me to ask the driver to hang on a sec while I got up, walked down the road and lay down so he could do it again?”

The only bright moment arrived one night, just before the end of this trip from Hell, when a woman from the kitchens at the prison camp where we were staying let herself into my room using a pass key. She then took off all her clothes and got into bed with me! Sounds like a teenage fantasy, I know, but I swear it is true. I’ve no doubt she looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp but, Hell, it was dark, any Comunist port in a snow storm and at 17 you don't look at the mantlepiece when you're poking the fire, I thought. She didn't speak a word of English either but, then again, I wasn't in the mood to discuss the merits of Dostoyevsky or CSKA Sofia's decision to switch to a conventional 4-4-2 for European games. What happened? What fucking happened?!! Just as she was about play the pink oboe there was a fucking fire drill! Honest. I know this sounds made up but it DID happen. We all had to get dressed and go outside. She disappeared into the crowd and I was left standing there, pantless and in my tracksuit bottoms, looking like an organic T-square! Not even the biting cold eased the situation. Those of you who know my real surname will no doubt be able to imagine the laughter which followed when my name was read out in the roll call and I had to answer.

She never wrote, never phoned......

No, skiing’s not for Pither. I shall still, however, listen with feigned interest to IEMP’s tales of her holiday on the piste – safe in the knowledge that I have sent Alpine sports to Grantham.

Go Out? Me? 'Ow?

2009-01-16T08:31:00.003Z

That’s it! I’m never going outside again. It’s safe here, it’s warm and only Pither’s rules apply. What a supreme irony, bearing in mind what has finally convinced me that either the world has gone mad and it’s brain-sappingly dangerous out there or it is in fact me who has gone mad and I’m not safe to be let loose on the public.

Go-Cat! Go-Fucking-Cat!! – that’s what has at last tipped me over the edge. I just don’t know where to begin on this one. I really don’t. Is it about the awesome stupidity and mind-numbing irrelevance of marketing? Perhaps it’s the terrifying depths to which the intelligence of the consumerists have sunk? Then again, perhaps it’s just the cats of today? I don’t know.

I almost dropped me chips when I heard it…………….“Go-Cat Indoors,” the advert purred.

“………………….for cats that don’t get out much.”

WHAAAAAAAT?!?!!? CATS THAT DON’T GET OUT MUCH???? AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know this country has chased the United States of America down the standards toilet, I know everything now has a price and not a value and I know nothing is allowed to just “be” anymore – it has to be “sold”, BUT SELLING A PRODUCT AIMED AT AGORAPHOBIC CATS IS FUCKING LUNACY!!!

What next?
Pedigree Chum Personality Disorder – For Dogs Who Think They are Napoleon?
Friskies Tentik Fodo – For Dyslexic Kittens?
Nazi Nibbles – For Hamsters Who Want To Annexe the Sudetenland?

They’ll come one day, you watch! I mean, if the ad men can sell Shreddies by telling the great unwashed that they are knitted by a bunch of piss-stained, crumbly old grannies crammed into a basement somewhere then everything is possible.

Go-Cat Indoors can go – outdoors……to Grantham.

The Black Dog Years

2009-01-15T08:27:00.004Z

I wish I was Kevin Arnold.

Kev? You know? The dumpy, goofy little kid in The Wonder Years?

Not only did/does Kevin not live in this shithole of a country, he’s apparently got one of those special paintings in the loft, like that Dorian Gray cove.

Due to an unexpected and, believe it or not, unwanted absence from work for a while, I have found myself filling the dark and deepening void by sitting in front of the Devil’s Lantern more than is healthy. Just as it’s inevitable that if you stand still long enough in any town or city centre some twat will come along and ask if you are interested in changing your god or gas supplier, so too it’s inevitable that if you watch the box long enough an episode of The Wonder Years will come along.

So it was this morning when I reached for the button of distraction. The last time I can recall watching the seemingly never ending saga of Kevin Arnold he had a car and was at high school. Today, thanks no doubt to that attic artwork, he was 13 again!

Schadenfreude had got me looking forward to him hitting his late teens, the show by then having been retitled The Blunder Years. You know, all those 18th birthday parties and that discovering girls stuff? The beginning of that long, painful and drip-drip-drip lesson which would have taught him, too late, that females were not only made of sugar and spice, but also oestrogen and a burning desire for shoes and strife.

What happened to the episodes when Kev hit his 20s? – The Chunder Years. When he burst on an unsuspecting world, full of hope and ambition, only to be trampled down by mile-long dole queues and the dawning realisation that, without an atom bomb, he could not change the world after all. When his diary was full of 21st birthday parties where friends got the key of the door, only to learn that it granted them admission to a world of conformity and drudge.

Then there would have been The Goes-Under Years charting the rolling by of his 30s. The struggling to find a little semi-detached castle where he imagined he could pull up the drawbridge at nights and tell the world to go away. The finding of a partner who, with fingers crossed behind her back, promised to love and honour him for the rest of his days. The “Happy Divorce” presents to buy for his pals. The aching banality of business, bills, Barmouth and badminton.

Then we would at last have come bang up to date and found Kev in his 40s. His hair gone, his teeth as complete as a row of houses in Lockerbie. He would have at last learnt how to spectacularly please a woman in bed, only to find that, like a juggler in an airing cupboard, there was no-one to whom he could show off his skills. He would have become very good at his line of work but found that experience and expertise were no longer wanted – cheapness and blind obedience were all that mattered. He would have become accustomed to regularly dressing smartly and hearing good things said about old friends before attending lavish booze-ups where reminiscences flowed as thick and fast as the beer and the wine. Shame those old friends would not be there – because he had just seen them buried.

Back to The Wonder Years? – wonder where it all went so wrong?

Still, our Kev can just press a button, or perhaps sneak up into the attic, and, hey presto! He’s back to being 13 again.

I wish I was Kevin Arnold.

Two Minutes

2008-12-22T20:34:00.003Z

Forgive the language, but I need to talk taxis.

What the fuck is it with fucking taxi companies and this two fucking minutes crap?
It doesn’t matter where the fuck you are or when you fucking order one of these licensed fucking bandits the asswipe cannot, EVER, show up on fucking time and when you phone again to politely enquire why the fucking dipshit has not fucking arrived as fucking promised you are met with the same fucking line from the fuckwit on the base time after time after fucking time.

“He’ll be there in two minutes, mate.”

Why don’t they ever say “two and a half minutes” or “one and three quarter minutes” or “three minutes 15 seconds”? How come they’re always 120 seconds away? I mean, it’s gotta be some kind of extraordinary fucking coincidence, hasn’t it, that at any given time, in any given time zone, at any place on the planet, on any day you are always going to be two fucking minutes distant from the fucking taxi you fucking ordered after you’ve fucking phoned up to say that it’s fucking late?

God forbid they should actually tell the fucking truth and say “well, bearing in mind he’s a Serbo-Albanian-Khazakstani-Georgian-Somali pirate whose only only been in the country seven hours and he’s only got one fucking map and that’s of the main road from Darlaston to fucking Mecca and he didn’t understand the fucking address we gave him in the first fucking place and he has to keep pulling over to the side of the fucking road to hide from the fucking police because he’s an illegal fucking immigrant and the 87-year-old Ford fucking Popular we gave him has only got first fucking gear and you have to keep stopping every hundred yards to let the radiator cool down and he’s gotta run some guns and cocaine for his fucking mate Abdul before he even thinks about doing the fucking job he’s actually fucking paid to do……………I should say he’ll be there just before Hell freezes over and just after Robert fucking Mugabe gets voted Humanitarian of the Year.”

Actually, that’s not fair. They’re not ALWAYS two minutes away. Often they’re “just turning into your street, mate”. Well, how fucking come I can look at the end of my fucking street and not see their Arkansas Chuggabug fucking pile of metallic crap turning fucking into it? Turning the outermost arm of the fucking Milky fucking Way, probably. Turning from a taxi driver into someone intent on fucking up my entire fucking life, maybe. Inexorably turning that last fucking screw on the lid of the fucking coffin which is my fucking life, possibly – but NOT, repeat fucking NOT, turning into my fucking street!!!!

After flogging my guts out at fucking work to earn slightly less than a seven-year-old working part-time in a fucking Bangladeshi sweatshop turning out Prada fucking handbags I really don’t need to know “We’re really busy tonight”. In that case, why tell me the fucking car will arrive at a set fucking time when you fucking know there’s about as much chance of that happening as there is of Antarctica being made of fucking icing sugar?

Oh, “There’s a lot of traffic on the roads tonight” is there? You think? Fuck me!!! How fucking irresponsible of it! I mean, traffic....on the roads? Whatever fucking next? Normally it stays on the fucking pavements, doesn’t it, so that your Mickey fucking Mouse Motors organisation can get from fucking A to fucking B?

My particular favourite, and one I’ve had on more than one occasion, is “He’s outside your house, mate, waiting for you”. “Really? Oh, how silly of me. I thought I’d phoned the Blackbeard Taxi Company and not International Invisicabs ltd!!! Tell me, does one sit in the fucking front or the back of a fucking taxi which has arrived in a different time dimension and doesn't fucking exist in our particular space-time continuum? I mean, I don’t want to look silly sitting in the fucking road on the fucking Tarmac in an imaginary fucking car going ‘brrrrmmmmm, brrrrmmmmmmm’ while all the time I’m sitting in the wrong imaginary fucking seat, do I?” There’s never even the teensiest, weensiest fucking suggestion in what passes for their fucking minds that their fucking so-called fucking drivers are all fucking compulsive fucking liars. I mean, they’re obviously going to be right, aren’t they? “Of course he’s outside my fucking house, pal. How silly I feel now. Thanks for pointing it out. Here’s me, living in this fucking place for 10 years and all the fucking time I’ve been living in the wrong house! ‘Scuse me while I run round town trying to find out which fucking house your fucking dickhead IS parked outside and then I can go in and evict the residents, telling them that they’ve been living in my house and I will be taking legal fucking action.”

I have a theory that taxis only ever pick up grey-haired people with beards. Why? BECAUSE EVERYBODY HAS GOT GREY HAIR AND A FUCKING BEARD BY THE TIME THEY SHOW UP!!!!!!!!!!

If they ever do fucking show up, you’re then faced with the fatuous list of fucking excuses for why you were 18 when you ordered the fucking car but now you’re unable to walk unaided, have an incontinence bag and are expecting a fucking telegram from the fucking Queen in a week or so. “Sorry mayat. You moved house, innit? You forgot your address, innit. You didn’t order a taxi at all, innit. Just lucky is passing, innit? Don’t worry, mayat, I do it all time, innit. You finished work? What you do?”
“I’m a taxi inspector at nights and during the day I work for immigration. Now just drive this heap of shit to the pub, try to stay off the fucking pavements, put down that mobile fucking phone, stop jabbering away in Hindustani to that cunt you deal drugs with and there’s a chance, just a slim fucking chance, that I might not fucking kill you.”

The final act of plate-registered robbery is the fucking fare! These wankers only deal in pounds. They have no fucking concept of fucking pence. Either that, or their fucking religion compels them to fucking round figures up!
“Ok, mayat, chill, yeah, innit.”
“But I gave you a fiver. You’ve given me a quid back. The meter says £3.40.” “Oh, meter no working, mayat. You always pay fiver, yeah.”
“How would you fucking know? We’ve never fucking made it before. Me always pay £3 fucking 40p! That means you 60p shy, innit?”
“It’s tip, mayat, innit.”
“You wanna tip, mayat? Always put sugar in your biscuit jar. Now fuck off!!”

God, I hate taxi drivers (don’t even get me started on bus drivers). They can go to Grantham – although they’ll be 12 hours late getting there or turn up at Gillingham.

I'm Dreading a Shite Christmas.

2008-12-21T12:47:00.004Z

So, to recap:

1. Mrs Pither has buggered off and shacked up with someone else.
2. I am in the financial doo-doos up to my armpits and it looks as though the house could soon be repossessed.
3. The Cow and Carrot has announced 120 redundancies and there are whispers that I am going to be on the list in the New Year.
4. I am 48, unhealthy and going fucking nowhere.
5. The tenative relationship I had with a lovely sex of the opposite gender has just gone bosoms up - albeit with the best spelled and punctuated Dear John text I have ever had.
6. Christmas will now be a distinctly canine affair with just me, five dogs, a bacon sandwich and Steve McQueen (assuming THAT film is on again).

If anyone knows of a wealthy, unfeasibly large-breasted, morally casual woman, who is blind, has no-sense of smell, has a fetish for overweight, balding men, lives over an off-licence and has a Nottingham Forest season ticket then could they please put her in touch with me.

Happy Christmas.

...And The Special Guest Star Is........

2008-12-16T19:39:00.000Z

I was so moved (to the bar, anyway) by my pal The Big Green Thing and his considered opinion of a small town in the West Midlands that I have allowed him the honour of being the first special guest star to appear at Grantham New Town. Only his words do his thoughts justice so, it's over to him:

"I’m tremendously proud and honoured to have been invited by Reg to be the first person to contribute a guest spot rant-by-proxy to his esteemed blog. The following is the result of a conversation I had with Reg that started with a series of text messages and continued in the pub. Well, not THE pub, actually. Another one.

"For some time now, I’ve been carefully considering my opinion of a small town by the name of Walsall that isn’t a million miles from where Reg and I reside and is somewhere we both know fairly well. When I shared some of my more recent insights with Reg, a frank exchange of ideas ensued and we found ourselves in close agreement about the character of the place. After mutually exploring different aspects of the town from a wide range of perspectives – civic governance, aesthetic appeal, amenities, infrastructure, the nature of the local residents and so forth – we found ourselves in almost total agreement. Reg therefore thought it might be both novel and appropriate for him to offer me the use of this platform in order to share our views more widely with his readership. So this is the result: my report of our joint observations on the town of Walsall.

"It’s completely fucking shit."

(Reg – will this be enough? BGT)

20 Things You Didn't Know......

2008-12-14T19:24:00.001Z

So, that de Menezes inquest result in full:

1. The British public are all vicious, vindictive and compulsive liars.
2. All officers of the Metropolitan Police always tell the truth and have no track record whatsoever stretching back 40 or more years for being lying, corrupt, deceitful bastards who would sell their grannies for a bacon sandwich.
3. It is perfectly permissible for the police to shoot dead whoever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, for whatever reason they deem fit.
4. It is a complete and utter mystery how an innocent Tube train passenger met his death after being shot seven times in the head without warning by one police officer while being restrained by another so that he could not move.
5. No-one facing the prospect of a murder or manslaughter charge being brought against them would ever lie to a court to avoid such an eventuality.
6. A jury’s duty when considering evidence brought forward by a lengthy investigation involving testimony from more than 100 witnesses at a cost of around £3 million shall be to conclude whatever the coroner was told to conclude before said investigation even started.
7. Two verdicts shall be open to British juries;
a) Members of the public put on trial for a crime can be found either not guilty or guilty.
b) Police officers put on “trial” for a “crime” can be found either not guilty or not guilty.
8. Anyone carrying a rucksack, using public transport and being foreign in a built-up area shall be deemed to have committed a crime punishable by death (on-the-spot penalty).
9. The moon is made of cheese.
10. Former England football international and club manager Peter Reid has NOT got an ugly monkey’s head.
11. From the basement of Framley’s department store in Barnsley you can see 97 continents.
12.Women really aren’t bothered how big a man’s penis is.
13. Men never think after they’d had sex with a woman “Oh God, I’ve got to hold her now and the pizza place closes in half an hour”.
14. Buying a second-hand car off Jeffrey Archer is a really good idea.
15. Timmy Mallet is NOT an abject cunt.
16. David Icke was right all along.
17. Walking into work and telling your boss he is a pathetic, fat, ugly, insecure, arse-licking, talentless tosser with a face like an anally recycled curry who you would not piss on were he on fire is both dishonest and a good career move.
18. It is a good idea to always be honest when your wife asks “Does my bum look big in this?” and say “Walk 200 yards down the street and ask me again”.
19. Staines is one of the forgotten beauty spots of England.
…………………………and finally…………………………
20. Father Christmas DOESN’T exist for members of the Metropolitan Police Force’s tactical firearms unit.

Ivor the Engine or Noggin the Nog?

2008-12-06T09:50:00.002Z

SCENE: “The” pub, 6pm, the end of the week.

ENTER: PITHER; suit grubby with fag burns, tea stains, newspaper print and dog excreta; top button undone, tie knot down by left nipple, shirt out at the back; hair akin to that of Mayor of Hiroshima shortly after “the incident”.

COLLECTION OF MUTANT PALS PROPPING UP BAR, HEADS SWIVELLING ROUND: “Whaddo, Piths. How’s it hangin’?”

PITHER: “Crap, but your concern is touching. A pint of Scruttocks Ole Dirigible please……and a bag of Scampi Fries – they’re the nearest I get to oral sex these days.

GENIAL HOST aka CHARLIE CAROLIE: “You been covering that Shannon Matthews thingy?”

PITHER: “Strangely, no. I work on the Cow and Carrot Cruncher, you see. Dewsbury’s not on us. Besides, my talents are limited to “bird found in tree” and “traffic lights change” these days.

UBIQUITOUS POMPOUS TEACHER: “How would you seek to transform the social under-class of which Shannon’s mother and so many other benefit-dependent, amoral, sink-estate chavs are a part?”

FATAL (so called, because his name’s Alan and he’s fat): “Are you going to finish those Scampi Fries?”

PITHER: “That’s a tricky one, Martin. I’ve got to admit, right now I couldn’t give a shit!”

UBIQUITOUS POMPOUS TEACHER: “I believe we will never advance as a society until we abolish the welfare state and introduce a policy of selective, forced sterilisations.”

THE TROUBLES (he’s Irish and can start a fight in a phone box): “Do I hear the distant sound of jackboots?”

PITHER: “It’s a view, certainly. Challenging, but a view. You always were a tad right of centre for a supposed Labour voter, Martin. You have always wanted to bring back hanging.”

UBIQUITOUS POMPOUS TEACHER: “Millions of people up and down the country want to bring back hanging.”

GENIAL HOST: “Not in public!”

LAMB: “What was the real name of Sid Vicious?”

ALL, AS ONE: “What??!!??”

LAMB: “Well, that Johnny Rotten cretin who’s advertising butter now was John Lydon……so who was Sid Vicious?”

FATAL: “Are you going to eat that pack of dry roast?”

PITHER: “I never really got punk. I liked the music but couldn’t get my mind round hoards of kids with purple Mohicans po-going around with bolts through their noses, all shouting ‘I want to be different!’.”

LAMB: “Did you know, there never really was a Seaman Stains in Captain Pugwash?”

THE TROUBLES: “Bollocks!”

LAMB: “S’true!! There wasn’t a Master Bates, either.”

STRANGER: “John Simon Ritchie.”

GENIAL HOST: “Pleased to meet you, John – are you going to drink or just stand there?”

STRANGER: “No, no. John Simon Ritchie – he is Sid Vicious.”

PITHER: “Not any more!”

LAMB: “You’ll never beat The Herbs. ‘I’m a very friendly lion called Parsley……..’”

Mrs LAMB: “He’s been under a lot of stress at work lately.”

PITHER: “I’m going outside for a fag.”

ASSEMBLED CAST: “Me too….and me….and me…..yeah, why not?”

MEIN HOST: “I’ll join you.”

THE TROUBLES: “Errrrr, Charlie, that’ll leave no-one behind the bar.”

MEIN HOST: “The new barmaid has started tonight. She’ll keep an eye on things. She’s thick as a yard of pig shit and got a face to match…..but she’s cheap.”

PITHER: “What’s her name?”

MEIN HOST: “Dunno.”

PITHER: “You never did get that Investors in People Award, did you?”

FATAL: “Whose are those crisps?”

LAMB: “Didn’t you used to love Airfix kits? I remember my mate and me once got all our models together in the back garden and then shot them to pieces with his brother’s air rifle.”

THE TROUBLES: “You do realise people can hear you talking?”

PITHER: “Yeah, Pete. A cracking tale……just don’t mention it when your social worker comes round.”

UBIQUITOUS POMPOUS TEACHER: “Well, I’m off. I’m going to a skittles night with my wife’s choral society.”

MEIN HOST: “Shhhhiiiiiiitttttttttttt!!! Life on the edge, no net!!!! Try not to crash on the way there.”

BLOKE WHO’S ALWAYS IN THE PUB BUT NO-ONE KNOWS HIS NAME: “I’m going back inside. I’m freezing my tits off here.”

PITHER: “Thank you, Michael Fish. Yeah, it is a bit nippy. Another pint of Scruttocks, please.”

FATAL: “Be a mate, get us a bag of Bacon Fries while you’re there.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

And so the evening went. I got home at about 10.30pm, somewhat lubricated but alive. Where else can you get conversations of this calibre? Why have I recorded it? Well, because it's all true and it's typical of the intellectual exchanges which go on there every night.

I love the pub.

Psssst!! Wanna Dog?

2008-12-03T22:51:00.000Z

I've taken in another dog - that brings the canine count up to five!!

I'm only fostering him until I can find him a permanent home - this I swear unto myself.
.
He and two others were left tethered in a back garden for two weeks after the scumbags in the house buggered off and left them. They were fed by neighbours throwing food over the fence until they were rescued. Two were found homes quickly. That leaves the lad who's with me. He's gorgeous, gentle, loving and clever - just starved of affection.

He came with the God-awful name of "Taz". That HAS to go.

In the meantime, anyone want a lovely dog? Don't worry, no harm will come to him if no-one steps forward. Pither Towers will just become that little bit more crowded!

Another Whitewash at The Oval

2008-12-03T08:18:00.003Z

The familiar dank smell of whitewash is seeping out of The Oval today. Usually it’s the Australians who are responsible for the odour, accustomed as they are to drubbing our hapless cricketers five-nil in The Ashes. This time the stench is emanating from the mouth of Sir Michael Wright QC.

Sir Michael is the coroner sitting on the jury inquest in the John Major Room at the Oval into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot seven times in the head in July 2005 on the London Underground by armed police who believed he was a suicide bomber.

The coroner ruled yesterday that the jury could not decide 27-year-old Mr de Menezes was illegally killed. He would only permit them to bring in either an open verdict or one of lawful killing.

This stinks so much I hardly know where to start! Firstly, I am not entirely sure of the legality of Wright’s ruling. I know that coroner’s can, and do, guide juries on occasions and they have been known to offer them a choice of verdicts – but not when the whole spirit of the hearing is to establish in public whether or not a person was legally or illegally killed.

An inquest IS a court hearing but the rules governing it are somewhat more lax than in the criminal courts. Nevertheless, the coroner’s role is ostensibly that of a judge. He "records" a verdict in normal instances but in particular circumstances a jury is empanelled to "return" a verdict. Like a judge, the coroner is there to decide or rule on matters of law, that’s why a coroner is invariably a qualified lawyer. The role of the jury is the same as it is in criminal cases – to decide on matters of fact. It is the jury which decides guilt or innocence in a criminal court, it should be the jury which decides on the verdicts available to them at an inquest.

Unlawful killing is an obvious verdict which the jury at the de Menezes inquest should have considered, given the circumstances, but Wright said “no”. His justification was that, to his mind, the evidence did not justify such a verdict. S’CUSE ME, YOUR QC-SHIP, SHURELY SHUM MISHTAKE?? You’re there to decide on the law, it’s the jury which decides whether there is or is not evidence to justify a particular verdict. That’s the whole fucking point of having a jury in the first place!!!

This inquest has lasted 11 weeks, heard evidence from 100 witnesses and cost around £3 million. What, pray, was the bloody point of wasting all that money, all that time and the testimony of all those people if the coroner was going to decide what the fucking verdict should be at the end of it??

No evidence to justify a verdict of unlawful killing, eh? Well, what about every single independent eyewitness at the scene disputing the testimony of the police gunmen that they gave a warning to Mr Menezes? What did those witnesses have to gain by saying he was shot without any warning? What did the police officers have to gain by claiming they did give a warning? You do the maths, as they say.

What about the confusion among officers about whether Mr de Menezes had or had not been positively identified as the terrorist target they had been on the lookout for? What about the shooting seven times to the head? One would do it, I would have thought. Two would be a belt-and-braces exercise. Three is the sign of a man intent on doing a thorough job…….but seven??!!?? I think you’re into the realms of a gun-toting, unprofessional, inadequately trained nutter on the loose in public with a loaded weapon there!

No wonder Mr de Menezes’ family walked out in both grief and disgust when Wright made his ruling. Firstly, our out-of-control coppers kill their son for absolutely no justifiable reason. Then, either they or fellow passengers on that ill-fated Tube train lie about what actually happened. Finally, a senior judicial figure overrides the principal of “twelve good men/women and true” and rules that HE will decide what happened, not unbiased fellow citizens.

It is not the role of an inquest to apportion blame to specific individuals, I know. That, however, should not mean that a verdict of unlawful killing cannot be brought in a case where the chief suspect/s are known?

Once again, The Met will get off scott free. I just hope Mr de Menezes’ family brings a civil case against the officers and their commanders and then there is a chance they might actually get some closure. However, if the jury now brings in a lawful killing verdict then the current slim chance of any criminal prosecution will disappear altogether.

Sir Michael Wright QC can go to Grantham - Pither's ruling!

Shitty Chitty No Show.

2008-12-03T07:19:00.001Z

Theatrical bus queue?

Thanks to The Farmer for spotting this gem in our local newspaper, the Distress & Stir.
I’m not sure if it says more about the paucity of good theatrical productions or the lack of any brains or news sense among kids on papers these days.
The article reads:

“Big-name musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will be flying into Wolverhampton next summer, it was announced today.
“The stage version of the classic tale will take to the Grand Theatre stage between July 29 and August 15 with a 100-strong cast, including 10 dogs and extravagant sets.
"It is not yet known whether it will feature the famous flying car."

What does the autumn schedule at the Grand hold, I wonder? Four Brides for Three Brothers? Jack and the Small Legume? Lawrence of Altringham? The Sound of Humming?

All billing suggestions welcomed.

The Which Blair Project?

2008-11-30T01:18:00.002Z

To me, fashion is a dirty word. Something to be despised. Something for the brainless.

It is ephemeral, superficial and a tool the empty and inadequate believe gives them substance. Because of these things, it attracts the empty and inadequate into herds for supposed protection from the crushing reality that its members have nothing to offer as individuals.

Fashion, like the Devil, comes in many forms – “my name is legion, for we are many”. Talking of names, they are as much subject to the fleeting whims of fashion as are sideboards, the length of skirts, flares and tattoos. I was reminded of this the other day chatting to a good friend who is a swimming instructor at our local swimming baths (N.B. Our principal aquatic leisure facility is, thank God, still officially called “Small Town Baths”, and not “Crystal Glade Leisure Centre” or “Blue Lagoon Heaven”). Anyway, said pal told me about a little lad of seven or eight who impressed her and made her laugh, his personality shining through during a learn-to-swim session. His name? He was called Albert. What a great name! Particularly for a little lad.

How refreshing to come across a kid not called Brad, River, Drew or Angelina. Fashion waxes and wanes like the moon. Sometimes, some names are in, sometimes, some names are out. I mean, when was the last time you came across a little lad called Adolph? It’s just not as popular as it used to be about 70 years ago. Likewise, Hermann, Heinrich, Jack The, Vlad The and Marquis de – all gone.

Christian names are not the only ones subject to the tides of fashion. Thanks, I’m sure, to deed pole, surnames seem to go in cycles. For instance, there seems to have been a rise in the number of Blairs about these days, and they seem to have one thing in common.
Can you guess what it is? Firstly, there was the Middle East war-starting Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair. He was the man who oversaw the “miracle economy” built on debt which the whole of Britain is paying for now. He was the illegitimate heir to Thatcher who ushered in raving right policies not even that mad, old bitch dared to.

Last week we said goodbye (fingers crossed!) to the grinning oilbag’s namesake, Sir Ian Blair, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Yes, the top bitch, the boss hog, the big cheese in our nation’s police forces. This was the man who, when his underlings shot a Brazilian seven times in the head as a way of finding out whether or not he was a Moslem terrorist, then bullshitted out a defence and was somewhat unclear about what he did and did not know about the incident. He was also the driving force behind making Britain what it is today – a police state.

It is not widely known, but before Blair was shown the door, he had drawn up proposals to increase the strength of the police force in the country to 42 million. That would have paved the way for his masterplan which was to have every man, woman and child in Britain permanently surrounded by three cops, wherever they went.

He was also a big proponent of locking people up for 18 years without charge to give our thick coppers time to forge documents, intimidate witnesses and practice lying in court so that a case could be brought against them and so boost the conviction figures.

His plan for lavatory bowl spy cams to be compulsory in every home were only narrowly defeated and his eviction from office has seen his “Hang Some Sense Into Them” amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill put on the back burner.

Only at the very end of his career did he actually start behaving as we would have wanted him to. His newly introduced policy of arresting and locking up Tory frontbench politicians was, I think, a real vote-winner but no doubt it will be revoked now he has gone.

Like his lying namesake, he also had a less than firm handle on the concept of irony. In his valedictory address, he hinted that he had been a victim of politics. Hah! That’s a laugh. He was the most political cop we’ve ever seen!

I hope they have a leaving do for him – and I hope it involves him and all the other boys and girls at the Met having to run through a tube station carrying a backpack.

Sir Ian Blair can follow the fashion by following Tony Blair to Grantham.

Oh Darling, What Have You Done?

2008-11-24T21:18:00.003Z

Once again, we’re all wrong and they’re right!

New Labour’s fiscal fuckwit Captain Darling got up on his cloven hooves in The House today to announce a wizard wheeze he said would get us all out of the clart. I haven’t consulted Hansard yet, but I understand his speech went something like this:

Darling: “Ok, chums, me and the chaps at old Treasury Towers have had a little think and the way we see it is like this. All the proles out there are up to their tits in debt. Am I right or am I right?”

The House, as one: “You’re not wrong, Darling!”

Darling: “Well, if we borrow loads of the jingly and folding stuff to loan to them, they’ll have the necessary to go out and start buying enamel toastracks, Z Boxes, Cliff Richard LPs and all the sort of tat those guttersnipes love and that will get Johnny economy bim-bang-buzzing again.”

The House, somewhat slurred now, but still as one: “Hurrah!”

Darling: “Then everybody who sells things will have oodles of moolah again.”

The House, most of whom are by now swinging from the chandeliers and throwing cans at each other: “Double hurrah!! And who are they who sell things, Darling?”

Darling: “Well……uurrmmmm…..well, all our mates.”

Last member standing: “And thrice hurrah!!!”

Darling: “We’re also going to bring back mortgage tax relief so the proles will start buying houses again.”

Last member kneeling: “You’re a genius, Al. What will happen when loads of them have bought houses?”

Darling: “Well, we’ll scrap the relief again so they'll all be in the clart again. And we’ll also get them to pay back all that money we borrowed for them.”

Last member’s last words: “Won’t that put them even deeper in the clart?"

Darling: “Of course it will, numbskull, but who cares? We probably won’t be around then. If we’re not, the boys and girls in blue over there will have to deal with it. If by some miracle we are still here, we’ll just tell ‘em what we told ‘em when we closed the Post Offices and sold everything off and all that kind of doings.”

Mr Speaker: “What was that? Remind me.”

Darling: “Tough titty fishfaces. We’re in power now so what ya gunna do about it?”

Away from Lalaland, two of the principal problems as I see it are that businesses are having to pull in their horns because the banks won’t lend to them, despite having been given billions by taxpayers to oil the wheels of commerce.

Also, everyone is being crippled by ridiculous and exorbitant energy bills and fuel bills, despite the fact that the price of oil has just fallen to an all-time low. Jesus, a bunch of Somali blokes managed to get a whole tanker-full of the stuff for nothing the other week! Businesses have to pay the rip-off energy charges and so, to survive, they have to pass them onto their customers who are already paying for them at home.

Here’s an idea. Why doesn’t this pathetic regime FORCE the banks to lend? Hell, in most cases it’s OUR money they will be lending to US!!!. Also, why doesn’t it cap energy costs and FORCE the greedy energy companies to reimburse customers for the money they creamed off between the peak in oil prices and its current nadir?

It wouldn't be the answer to everything but, Hell, it would be a start.

I Hate You Butler! (No, Really, I Do!!)

2008-11-16T18:59:00.005Z

Next stop the crematorium?

I have just learnt that a truly great Briton died today. He was reported to have passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Budleigh Salterton in Devon at the age of 92. His name?..............Reg Varney.

So just why was Varney such a giant?
Well, believe it or not, it was not because he opened the world’s first ATM cash dispenser at Barclay’s Bank in Church Street, Enfield, north London, on June 27, 1969 – strange, but true.

No, Reg’s fame stems from the fact that he achieved a feat no-one else in the world of dramatic art ever did or is likely to do. You see, he starred in and was largely responsible for THE THREE MOST MEMORABLE FILMS EVER MADE!!

Orson Welles came close with Citizen Kane but his follow-ups never quite cut the mustard – sorry Orson, close but no cigar this time. Olivier’s celluloid version of Henry V and Rebecca got rave reviews, but he never managed the illusive trio. David Lean’s fantastic Lawrence of Arabia was brilliant but he just couldn’t turn his hand to a worthy number two and three. No, our Reg was the only person in the history of cinematography to capture the top three spots and hold onto them.

The run-up to Varney’s leap into the record books began in 1969 when he started honing his real skills in a television series which was billed as “comedy”, although to all people of any sensitivity whatsoever it was up there alongside anything Stephen King ever produced. It was called On the Buses and, ostensibly, followed the hilarious (sic) antics of London Transport bus driver Stan Butler, his workmates and family.

One recurring feature in the series was for the audience to be informed that a naked baby sitting on the kitchen table or draining board at Stan’s home had either farted, pissed all over the place or shat itself. Indeed, bodily functions played a big part in the show’s format.

Another tool for the creation of side-splitting situations was the projection of Stan as some sort of international babe magnet whom women would willingly date. To further this image, the producers gave Stan a partner in crime who was, if anything, even more irresistible to the gentler sex. He was Jack Harper, played by Bob Grant. Now the suspension of disbelief is central to many programmes but with Stan and Jack it was simply not possible.
Stan was a 5ft 2ins part-time dwarf with a Brylcreemed ‘50s barnet and the face of a parrot looking through a glass-bottomed tankard. Repellent though he was, his genetic misfortune paled into insignificance alongside that of Jack.
Jack had the teeth of a Grand National winner, the hair of Catweazle, a nose which could open beer bottles, the pallor of an anaemic Eskimo, the body of Charles Hawtry and the personality of the bastard child of Peter Stringfellow and Eva Braun. These two were not only the sort of men women tend not to throw themselves at, they were the sort of men women emigrate to avoid.

Alongside these central characters there was Stan’s sister, Olive (Anna Karen), who was quite simply the most revolting lump of lard which has ever squeezed itself into a floral print tent-dress, her curmudgeonly husband “Arfur” (Michael Robbins) and then the inspector at the bus garage, Blakey.
Blakey, played by Stephen Lewis, ostensibly had two lines during all seven series. They were “Get that bus outta ‘ere” and the nerve-janglingly, guffaw-inducing “I ‘ate yooo Batler!” which became the show’s catchline.

It was bad – it was very, very, very bad, but then, in 1971, Reginald stepped up a number of gears and undertook a project which was to catapult him to the very top of the hall of film fame.
He starred in the movie version of On the Buses!! Oh, dear God in heaven, it was terrible – simply unendurable. TW – THE worst - or so we thought. Quite definitely the most appalling film ever made….EVER.

I had only just crawled out from behind the settee when, a year later, Reg showed the world that it had been premature in its ranking of On the Buses and he starred in Mutiny on the Buses.
This was even worse! It seemed impossible but someone had managed to produce a new world-beater. It was the Medusa of the cinema – to look at it turned one to stone. People would rather gnaw off their own feet than watch it.

No one person had been responsible for THE two worst films ever made and so Varney was already a legend……………………..but then he only went and did it again.

1973 was a landmark year. I was just 13 and tiptoeing my way through puberty, Britain was busy entering the then EEC, Nixon announced a ceasefire in North Vietnam, councillors in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, were surcharged in an unprecedented move, George Foreman beat Joe Frazier to take the heavyweight championship of the world and Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon. All of these events paled into insignificance, however, alongside something that happened in cinemas across the land. Yes, the stomach-churning Holiday on the Buses was released.

HOLIDAY ON THE BUSES IS, UNARGUABLY, THE MOST APPALLINGLY REVOLTING AND ATROCIOUS FILM OF ALL TIME!!!!! I’m sorry, but I find mere words inadequate to describe just how truly bad that film is. I believe the original version was set in concrete and buried somewhere in the Marianas trench, almost seven miles down in the north Pacific. It is shown to convicted serial killers as a substitute for the gas chamber. It………..Oh God, I can’t go on.

As I said, to clock up the two worst films of all time is a monumental achievement. To top that and produce a film which gives you the top three is unheard of.

God bless you, Reg. You have left us a legacy which shall never be forgotten. On top of that, you helped launch the career of one of my comedy heroes. You were the comedian in a double act in your early days and your partner, the straight man, was –the fabulous Benny Hill.

Grantham shall not have you, although the undertakers will.

Taking The Wii-Wii

2008-11-16T09:10:00.005Z

I know I’m old. I know I’m trapped in the 1960s and ‘70s. I know I’m a bit of a technophobe………………………..but what the buggery banana plants is this Wii business about?

The boffins can make carbon copies of mice and sheep, they found a way of travelling under the English Channel without getting wet, they’ve put men on the moon, they can beam information around the world in a millisecond, they even found a way of making George W Bush electable! With this kind of genius at humankind’s disposal, what has been its next giant leap

Well, a series of ads is currently running on TV which plugs this technological marvel.
It’s called Wii. Turns out that is not pronounced the same as a Geordie greeting but as “wee” – as in piss (as in piss-poor).

My favourite of these adverts has a group of four trendy, beautiful, metrosexual types in a lounge somewhere illustrating one particular use for this pisstoric invention. Yes, all those krillions of pounds, dollars and yen, all those years of development, all those brains, all those tears, all that heartache, all those discoveries, all that hard work has resulted in…………………a machine that lets you play air-guitar!

Gee, thanks! Forgive me while I marvel at what they can do these days. Fuck me! Air-bloody-guitar? For £40!! And £40 for a remote!! “

Ok, so you can play air-piano and air-drums and air-saxophone and probably air-comb-and-tissue but………..well……….so what!!?? The advert brilliantly illustrates the exact scale of the so-whattishness of the idea as it shows these four alleged adults standing in total silence, occasionally grinning inanely at each other while they watch a group of cheap, Jappo cartoon characters on the box playing a stylophone version of.....wait for it.......Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go!!! How fucking appropriate is that? If these dickheads invited me round for a party and I found it involved standing around in silence, pretending to play musical instruments, they’d definitely have to wake me up before I went home home in a taxi because I would have drunk myself unconscious unconscious on the settee.

I’ve said it before, and I have always thought I should have chosen it as the title of this Blog, but it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again. Once again, I’m that little boy in the crowd shouting “this is all bollocks, you know?” while the masses rave about something they just shouldn’t rave about.

Wii can piss off to Grantham.

Remember

2008-11-11T21:46:00.001Z

I came across two firms today which would not let all their staff join the two minutes' silence in memory of the war dead because it would have meant either a loss of money or their poxy computer systems would have taken a few hours to re-boot...........I shall remember them! The sacrifice of a few hours of corporate greed is too much for some, way too much for the sake of remembering the insane slaughterhouse which was World War One.

Here's to Harry Patch and the millions of men who didn't make it. The grandsons and grand-daughters of those deranged, mad bastards who sent you out to die are still with us.

Andy Donkersley

2008-11-10T21:17:00.002Z

I lost an old friend last week.

Andy Donkersley was found dead at his home last Wednesday. He was only about 54 – I never knew his real age because he would never tell me!

Andy – aka "Donkersley", “skinny” or “hippy” (see photo) - was born in Huddersfield and took to journalism on leaving school, doing stints on both the Huddersfield Daily Examiner and later the Blackpool Gazette to my knowledge. There may have been more ports of call up north, I don’t know. Andy’s past is somewhat shrouded in mystery.

We first came across each other when he headed south and started work on the Express & Star newspaper in Wolverhampton at around the same time as I did back in 1985. Initially, he wouldn’t talk to me. You see, I had been to college and got a degree. That was bar humbug to Andy. “Bloody college kids! They know nowt. Come over ‘ere with their poncey ways and la de bloody da pieces of paper! School of life, me! That’s the only bloody qualification tha’ needs, ‘appen.”

I drink alcohol, however – and so did Andy. It was the medium destined to bring us together. He began to warm to me when he discovered that I didn’t walk around with a college scarf, my name wasn’t Tarquin or Gerald, that I would always be there at closing time with him, that I loved Monty Python and football, that I mistrusted authority, that I hated brown nosers and that I thought friends were important and work was not.

After that, the only way I can think of describing Andy is that he was akin to a spaniel – totally loyal, defensive of me in public, willing to do anything for me and always up for my company. I grew to feel much the same about him. Andy was a special individual. Special for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Andy was quite simply the best damn journalist I have ever met! He was bloody brilliant and yet completely modest about his abilities. To him it was just what he did. He was regarded as the best by everyone I knew whose opinion was worth listening to.

Secondly, Andy had a fantastic sense of humour! We found the same things funny and both loved to laugh over more than a few beers after work. That was important – careers were not. We would sum it all up by quoting Mr Dainty, the fantastic, if a little perverted, coach of Barnstoneworth United at every available opportunity: “Shorts don’t matter!”

Thirdly, once Andy had your approval, he was an incredibly warm person and he cared about his friends.

Fourthly, and I am going to curtail this list to avoid devaluing any of the above, he was an intelligent bloke who had rock solid values and beliefs, all of them greatly relished by me and those who knew him.

Andy left the Express & Star in 2006 after a sustained campaign of abuse and bullying by mini-managers who knew and still know absolutely nothing about either journalism or people and he became more ill, spending the last two years of his life in a self-imposed isolation. Myself and many others lost contact with him, despite repeated attempts to look after him – Andy had just had enough. We, I am not ashamed to say, gave up because, when someone just wants to be left alone, they should be. You can't do anything about it anyway, no matter how hard you try.

I make no denials that I was angry about Andy's surrender. It was such a waste and was hurtful to those who loved him. Then, when the inevitable happened, all the anger drained away and I just wanted to remember the guy I knew.

It was such a sad end for such a truly lovely man. We will all be gathering in the coming weeks for his funeral and we are going to remember all those good times, all the times he made us laugh, the times he astounded people with his work, the anecdotes, the scrapes, the fun.

Goodbye, Andy old mate. I am so glad I knew you. We will all miss the real Andy Donkersley very much.

Easy Come, Easy Go.....Whatever.

2008-11-09T03:10:00.002Z

.....And this is the morning after. Is he worried? Is he scared? Is he ashamed? Is he Hell! Good old Adam. What a man!

If anyone deserves a job in journalism - or anywhere - and to be a roaring success, it's him. Steve Dyson is a wanker - Adam Smith is a star!!!!

Good for you, mate.

This Is The Best Thing.........EVER!!!!!

2008-11-08T13:08:00.011Z

I have given up trying to load this soddin' video so here is the link. Just click to look at it - I promise, it's well worth it.

Adam is our hero, Adam is our hero!!!

I still laugh long and hard at this, every time I see it! I used to work with young Adam and, although our stays on the Bimringham Mial only overlapped by about six months, I quickly sussed him out as a kindred spirit and a top bloke. Like me, he just couldn't give a rat's ass about office politics, he couldn't stand arse-lickers and, like me, he thought that authority and respect had to be earnt and were not just granted automatically to anyone given a hat with "In Charge" written on it. We had a mutual loathing for the fat, talentless, brown-nosing, cunt of an editor and Adam was always too good to stay at that sad little paper. Here is his own fantastic resignation video. God bless Adam - my hero. He did exactly what I would have done - only I wouldn't have volunteered to write something for those idiots back in Brum while on my holidays!

Below is the story from Times Online to accompany the video - could I load the page and video? Could I bollards!

"Sometimes, you wake up following a drunken night out and realise you have sent an inappropriate text to an ex-girlfriend or your boss.

And sometimes you realise you have drunkenly admitted to plagiarism to camera, and spectacularly resigned from your job, shouting "F**k you' to your boss.

This is what happened to Birmingham Mail reporter Adam Smith on Wednesday morning, as footage appeared on YouTube of him writing a report on the US election, slumped on a Miami pavement, and barely able to speak.

Mr Smith, who also calls himself Steve Zacharanda in the hit video which was viewed almost 20,000 times in 48 hours, had taken a week's holiday to go to Miami to volunteer for the Barack Obama election campaign.

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After the victory, and very much the worse for wear and drink, Smith was caught flopped against a set of railings, a laptop on his lap, filing an article about Mr Obama's victory for the Mail.

The maker of the video, a Dutch amateur journalist from Couscous Global, had stumbled across Smith by the roadside, and asked him what he was doing.

"I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign," Mr Smith explained in a strong, if rather slurred, Brummie accent. "As an ill-advised promise, I've decided to say to my paper back home that I'd write about the American election.

"I wanted to be here because I'm here for history. The trouble is, the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history. And I'm just a little bit pissed..."

With a laugh and a clap of the hands, he added: "And thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, oh, baby!"

Not wanting to seem too unprofessional, he added: "I'm a proper news journalist."

To pile further misery on his ignominy, Mr Smith ended the video by announcing: "My name is Adam Smith, also known as Steve Zacharanda, who has just resigned from the Birmingham Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, to set up my own magazine…F**k you, I'm doing what I want."

Mr Smith's employment status remains unclear today within a company which is undergoing significant restructuring.

Steve Dyson, editor of the Birmingham Mail, said: "This is an internal matter, so we cannot discuss it."

Asked about the company's attitude towards plagarism, he added: "Whilst we cannot discuss internal matters, plagarism will not be tolerated in any form by BTM Media Limited - although we do not believe that any has been taking place."

In a further comment left the next morning by Mr Smith on the YouTube page, he appeared to have sobered up significantly.

"Right, the thing is, right I've just woke up. And seen this video, which I don't really remember. I've been told to phone the Birmingham Mail because I am in trouble.

"I was off duty, I am on official holiday working at the South Beach Miami Barack Obama campaign where I had just done a 18-hour shift trying to make the world a better place. Please check every BBC News outlet and see if I have cut and pasted anything. I have not, it was a joke and should be taken in the spirit it was said."

In a follow-up video, filmed in the Obama campaign office, a more sober Mr Smith said he did not have a job anymore, and was "scared to speak to work" after phrases like "outrageous" and "bringing the company into disrepute" had been banded about.

He said: "The Birmingham Mail is a fantastic organisation, staffed by people who really care."

That Was Then and This is Now

2008-11-04T21:28:00.002Z

Further to my shamelessly self-centred dog-blog earlier, I thought I would continue the canine theme having obtained a special photograph.

Dave, pictured previously, is, like his pals, a rescue dog. I have had him about three months. Prior to that he had been plucked from the streets of a provincial town where he had collapsed because he was near death, weighing as he did just 19 kg (half his proper weight) and being so infested with mange that he had chewed off large parts of his coat.

His rescue warranted a story in the Carrot and Cow and, as no-one else was in a rush to take him on, Pither took him into The Towers to join the pack.

Below is the photo used in the story about his rescue and one of those photos I told you about which were taken a few days ago. Quite a difference, eh?
(Incidentally, and for Ginni, that's not Pither with him - it's a lad from the rescue centre)

Dogs on the Catwalk

2008-10-30T22:16:00.001Z

There’s an exhibition of pet portraits taking place soon at a somewhat infamous place not too far away from Pither Towers and so the Very-Soon-To-Be Ex-Mrs-Pither decided that the pack should feature.

As a result, a good friend of ours who is an extremely good photographer came round today and took a series of pics of said hounds. They are pretty damned good!

Anyway, I have chosen one of each pooch. What do you think?

Henry (the boss).

Tilly.

Dave.

Caty.

Sad, really, what makes me happy and what makes me proud these days!

In Which Pither Prepares For Yet Another Slingshot or Arrow To Land.

2008-10-26T02:23:00.002Z

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. How remiss of me. Looks like I’m going to be made redundant again!

The Carrot and Cow Herder announced major cutbacks yesterday which, we were assured, will spread right across the board. The C&CH is one of two evening papers in the group and the directors on each will have to downsize their cars from Bentleys to Mercedes. Their expense accounts will be limited to £5,000-a-week each, their golf leave is to be reduced to 34 weeks per year and they will, in future, only be allowed to lean out of the windows of the board room on the fourth floor and urinate on the workers below twice a week.

When this news was broken to us work drones I wondered how it was going to achieve the necessary savings we were told had to be made. The announcer, after droning on and on about “guaranteed journalistic integrity”, “leaner and tighter operations”, “efficiency for the 21st Century” and “belt tightening all round”, let slip right at the end the area where the money would be found……………………………….”Oh, and there will have to be 126 redundancies,” he said.

Yes, we are, indeed, all in it together – although some of us are in it more than others.

Having only been with the company for around six months I am not entitled to redundancy. I am, however, one of the most experienced hacks and so am paid more than most. Put those two facts together and what do you think the bean counters are going to conclude when they look at the payroll? If it’s not “Hmmm, if he goes we cut a decent wedge off the wage bill and don’t have to pay anything out in compensation” then I’ll eat my cat.

Is this all down to the credit crunch, I don’t hear anyone ask? No, is the simple answer. It’s down to the simple fact that people don’t read papers anymore. “Why is that, Reg?” the non-present questioners don’t persist. Well, there are basically four reasons:

1. Thanks to Blair’s dogged pursuit of “ejukashin, edgycageon, et tu Casian?", 90 per cent of the UK population can’t read.

2. The invention of cat litter.

3. A dramatic fall in the sale of budgies.

4. The widespread use of purpose-manufactured toilet paper.

Ho hum. That’s life. You win a few, you lose a couple of million. Still, life goes on and the sun will still come up tomorrow. Readers may find this hard to believe but age HAS definitely mellowed me. In the grand scheme of things, it don’t amount to a whole hill of beans!

Hurrah for life, laughter, dogs, the countryside and women with big breasts! Grantham shall not have them.

The Time Machines.

2008-10-26T00:49:00.008Z

If ever I was reminded of just what a pathetic, grasping materialist I am it was last night, when I put the clocks back an hour for winter time.

Ok, strictly speaking the clocks weren't due to change until something like 4am today but I am an anally retentive Virgoan and I alter them earlier and earlier each year – it’s a disease with me.

I pout and pour scorn on the age of materialism regularly on this Blog and decry the consumer society and those who adhere to it. Then, when I come to alter the clocks, I realise just what a hypocrite I am.

Gone are the days when father used to ceremoniously open the glass face on the grandfather clock in the hall and then move the minute hand clockwise or anti-clockwise a full rotation before closing the case and climbing the stairs, candle in hand, nightcap on head, ready for six months in a new time zone.

Pither, the shallow hoarder of meaningless consumer trinkets, yesterday evening had to alter:

….His watch.
The clock in the kitchen.
The oven clock.
The clock on the microwave oven.
The clock on the TV in the kitchen.
The central heating timer.
The timer on the hall light.
The time on the phone/answermachine.
The timer in the garage on the fish pond lights.
The timer in the garage on the back security light.
The clock in the car.
The clock in the study.
The alarm clock in my bedroom.
The back-up alarm clock in my bedroom.
The TV in my bedroom.
The TV in the spare bedroom.
The timer on the fish tank in the spare bedroom.
The alarm clock in the spare bedroom.
The video recorder in the lounge.
The DVD/video tape converter in the lounge.
The timer on the fish tank in the lounge.
The time on my mobile phone.
This computer’s clock.

The irony of the whole situation is that, doing a job which involves me keeping my eye on the time every second of every minute of every hour in order to meet recurring deadlines, the last thing I want to be reminded of away from the office is the time!! My hatred of “knowing the time” has led me in the last few years to abandon my watch the moment I get home and not put it back on until I have to go back to work. If I’m on holiday that can be two weeks without a watch and without any care of what time it is. I find the sun and the moon give me sufficient information.

How many of these non-biodegradable pieces of soon-to-be landfill cluttering up my home and charting my inexorable march towards the grave do I actually need, I ask myself?

Like every dumb clutz across the nation, however, I still work up this morning, looked at the clock and thought……..”Ah! I’ve got another hour in bed.”

They're The Wrong Questions, Gromit!

2008-10-23T21:57:00.003Z

The extent to which I am veering further and further away from supposed mainstream thought (or it is veering away from me) has been well illustrated in the last few days.

1. A huge row has erupted over whether or not Shadow Chancellor George Osborne solicited a donation to the Tory Party from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska while the guest of supertoff Nathaniel Rothschild in Corfu.

I take the point to be that, had the approach been made and had Loadsamoneyski agreed to it, Russia would have had some say in the conduct of politics in this country.

Ok, that would not be ideal, I grant you, but would it be unprecedented? Considering the French Government already owns and controls our power supplies, Indian companies control our steel industry, Japanese companies control information technology in our local government, Germans run our automotive industry, American companies run our education system and New Labour is, and has been for some time now, desperate to flog the Post Office off abroad (the Krauts being first in the queue of potential buyers)…I think not.

Even football, that cornerstone of British society, is owned by other nations. An Aussie/Yank megalomaniac dictates how it is played, where and when, while the clubs themselves are owned by everyone from dodgy Russians and incompetent Yanks to criminal Malaysians. When England fans chant “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming, football’s coming home” where exactly do they suppose “home” is these days?

No, Thatcher started it and New Labour speeded everything up. UK Ltd was sold off fucking years ago. The only things left on the metaphorical national sideboard are the recently acquired banks and they still do exactly as they want and not what we want them to.

The question journalists should be asking over the Osborne affair is “Isn’t it just a teensy bit of a coincidence that this nasty, gossipy, nah-nah-na-nah-naah bit of dirt was dredged up just after that consummate New Labour arsehole Mandelson came back into the Government fold?”

It’s just the sort of spinning for which he is infamous but the now completely untrained, useless and largely illiterate media take the bait and run with it without ever delving deeper – “Ooh, someone might have said it, everyone else is carrying it, let’s talk about it.”

Fucking Mandelson has also enjoyed the hospitality of Rothschild. You telling me he hasn’t tried to sponge cash for the cause off either him or any other millionaires he comes into contact with? He gets nowhere and so feeds titbits to the media and they run with it and are too thick and too immoral to avoid being used.

2. Next, Mohamed Taranissi, who runs London's Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre, is free to carry on in practice despite having faced charges relating to his treatment of two women.

I quote from the BBC: “He had denied the accusations of failing to keep proper medical records, carrying out inappropriate tests and acting in an insensitive manner.
“The General Medical Council decided after several weeks of sitting there was insufficient evidence to continue.”

The news was full of this today, almost pillorying the women who had made the complaints and upholding Mr Taranissi as some kind of saint.

The question that was not asked was: “Isn’t it about time the GMC was abolished and doctors were policed by a truly independent body? That way, no-one could argue that doctors, like coppers, just look after their own.” Fuck me, it took the GMC 10 day – yes, 10 DAYS – to suspend – yes, SUSPEND – Dr Harold Shipman after he was convicted of murdering 15 or his patients and suspected of topping hundreds more. Technically, he was free to practice when he was sent to prison. It took a further day for them to decide that slaughtering your patients constituted “gross professional misconduct”.

3. The media is obsessed with asking the same question over and over again: “Would Cameron and the Tories govern Britain better than Brown and New Labour?” Surely the question which should be asked is: “If you chopped up Brown and Cameron and put them each in separate microwave ovens, which one would explode in a gelatinous mass of blood and partly cooked tissue first? Then, to settle the argument once and for all, we could put it to the test on Ready, Steady Cook or something similar. It's just an idea, no more.

In Which Reg Just Talks To Himself - Again!

2008-10-19T09:42:00.002Z

So, we’re all Socialists now, are we? Well, not exactly.

You see, there has indeed been a revolution – but it was a silent one. It sneaked in through the side door. It slithered in on its belly while our attentions were elsewhere. Who would make it through to the next round of Wannabe Chavsing Cryalot On Ice? Would the DNA test show that professional statistic Dwayne was indeed the father of teenage, mother-of-nine Michellesuit’s latest vaginal extrusion? These were the only things of importance, surely? What time was there for anything else?

To the amoral, uneducated, grasping and instant gratification-obsessed legions of Thatcher’s children the slight matter of a radical change in the way our whole economy operated was not only incomprehensible but also of absolutely no importance. Hell, if Jordan didn’t have anything to say about it in Chat Magazine then how could it be of any value to anyone?

The trouble with Jordan is that she sometimes takes her eye off the ball, politically speaking. When you dedicate your life to having your tits either blown up or deflated you can’t be expected to follow every slight socio-economic policy shift.

The revolution which sadly bypassed ole’ rubberknockers was the acceptance by government’s around the Western world that pure, unadulterated capitalism and the market system did not work! The huge lurch to the right and the ensuing idolisation of “the market” began in this country 30 years ago (under guess who?). America had always been that way inclined but Thatcher, by tapping a rich vein of greed in the middle classes, allied Britain to Wall Street and espoused GLOBAL Capitalism. Similarly blinded and greedy administrations around the world followed suit and eventually we had one, worldwide economy, heavily interlinked and heavily dependent on what happened in the home of rabid Capitalism, the USA. If anything goes wrong in the good 'ole U S of A then EVERYONE suffers.

This wunder system was not only amoral, it had obvious, fatal flaws. It involved the super-rich playing a glorified board game, initially with stocks and shares, creaming off billions for themselves in good times and making millions redundant to ensure the continuation of their massive payouts in bad times. It was a win-win game for the players. Once they realised they could get away with it, they expanded the game and took it well and truly into the realms of virtual reality. They began betting on imaginary scenarios and “won” unimaginably huge amounts of dosh on imaginary outcomes. They bet on what would happen in the future and sold their bets on to one another to cream off yet more money, well before, and invariably always, before those futures had materialised.

The game became gradually more and more complicated, with more ways of betting introduced, all of them based on imaginary scenarios. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of market playing – I don’t think anyone does – but a classic example was the sub-prime loans game of which we are now only too well aware. Basically, you get ANYONE to sign up to a loan, completely regardless of any assets they have or of their ability to pay. When you have got thousands of these obviously bad debts you sell them on, packaged as “good loans”. You take a massive profit from the sale and you take it now – well before it becomes evident that the loans cannot be repaid. The person you sold them to, in turn, sells them on, and so on and so on. It’s basically a game of economic pass-the-parcel. All the players took their turn with the parcel and none of them thought that the music would ever stop. Well it did – it has.

Now the whole rotten system has come crashing down, as it always had to. Governments around the world were then faced with two choices. One, they could let all the greedy banks go bust. Sadly, that was the mistake made in 1929 and we are all well aware of the consequences. So, to avoid that happening again, the governments are taking the only other option open to them – to nationalise the banks and guarantee a pool of money – liquidity – to them so they can carry on loaning money.

The nationalisation of banks is a cornerstone of Socialism – and I am a big believer in it. Banks, like public utilities, SHOULD be nationalised. The problem we have now is that the Capitalists have decided to have their cake and eat it. In short, true nationalisation of banks would see taxpayers provide the banks with money to loan out and then one of two outcomes is possible:

1. If the banks incur bad debts then the taxpayers will make good the losses to keep the banks in business.

2. If the banks make profits then those profits are shared out among its backers, namely the taxpayers.

Guess which scenario will hold true under the brave new world into which we are entering? Guess which one will not apply?

Also, if you are the major investor in a bank then you would expect to have a major say in how it is run, wouldn’t you. Is that going to happen from now on? In short, no.

Will there be strong regulation of the banks? The politicians say there will be – but the politicians lie. Of course there won’t be. If there had been ANY regulation, if the Financial Services Authority had actually done what it was supposed to do, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.

So, by bailing out the banks we have bowed to the inevitable. But are economists and sociologists saying that Capitalism is dead, just as they said Socialism was dead when the USSR dissolved? Nope!

By bailing out the banks we have adopted a fundamental principle of Socialism. So, are we now Socialist? Nope!

The Capitalists have got round this tricky conundrum by finally abandoning all attempts at pretence. Whereas before they ripped off everyone, playing their stupid boardgame, and told us Capitalism was not perfect but it was the only way, now that have been forced to admit it doesn’t work – but they don’t care. It is good for them and so they will carry on with it, thanks to “Socialism for Capitalists”. Fuck the rest of us. For the first time in more than a hundred years we are being screwed and those doing the screwing openly admit what they are doing. “Whatcha gunna do about it, little man?” We pay, they take.

What has happened in the last few months marks a new low in life in this country. We have at last proved Capitalism only benefits a few – but those few will continue with it because they have the power and the rest of us can go fuck.

Rule Britannia.

Payback time

2008-10-12T09:44:00.000Z

I got a letter from the bank yesterday. Apparently, I owe them some money and they want me to owe them less money. Hah! That’s a laugh!! I’ve just lent them £55 billion but do I keep sending them letters – at £10-a-throw???!!!!

Pay me back what YOU owe ME, dipshit, then we’ll see about my poxy overdraft!!!!!

Finland, Finland, Finland.........!

2008-10-10T18:16:00.003Z

I’ve just seen Finland’s ambassador to the UK on the TV news. He was wobbling on about his countryman Marti Ahtisaari who was today awarded the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m ashamed to say that my eyes glazed over because, excellent though Mr Ahtisaari’s efforts have been over the years in resolving international conflicts, the ins and outs of professional diplomacy do not really get my pulse racing. Also, bearing in mind the mindless dickhead who is Al Gore won the same honour last year, I think the Nobel Peace Prize ain't what it used to be.

No, as my eyelids fell heavy and my mind began to wander, my thoughts turned to the ambassador – one Pekka Lintu. Finland’s ambassador to the UK, eh? How cushy a number is that? I mean, what dealings do we have with Finland, exactly? I’m sure Fins flee the perpetual dark of their homeland in their thousands each year and wash up in Blighty on their hols but I don’t recall any of them hitting the headlines or sparking international incidents. Doubtless there must have been the odd cove who lost his Tube ticket and there must have been a couple who moaned about the absence of smoked herring in Basingstoke but apart from that? What exactly did the ambassador have to do?

All the visa applications are dealt with by a team of work drones. Someone in the embassy has been appointed to tell callers the opening times of Madame Tussaud’s. There is also a dedicated enquiries desk to explain why all the trains are late or cancelled and the supermarket staff are surly and on drugs. What is left for old Pekka to do? Well, there are a lot of gala luncheons, state dinners and dates at the Palace to attend and then there’s all that being driven around in a large car and looking important.

Anyway, what if there was a major incident which threatened Britain’s relationships with Finland? Oh no!! Diplomatic relations would be severed and then……oh God, no!.....trade would cease. Where the Hell would we get all our pickled herring from? Who else could supply us with……with……with…...Finnish tourists! I can't imagine any scenario which would keep Pekka up (at night, that is). I imagine his response to even the most serious diplomatic incident would be: "Yeah, well, whatcha gunna do?"

Such is Pekka’s high profile in the world of international diplomacy that I have been unable to find a clear photo of him ANYWHERE!

Anyway, here’s to Pekka and all the other people out there with brilliant jobs. Can I have one, please?

Petitions

2008-10-09T14:20:00.000Z

I'd like to dedicate the following to BGT, for it was he who inspired me to put my thoughts on the subject down in writing.

The Big Green Thing was asked to sign a petition calling for the closure-threatened Walsall to Wolverhampton rail link to be kept open. He replied, somewhat ardently, that he was not a fan of petitions and forwarded his views to me.

I replied thus:

Dearest BGT,

I have to admit to being much on your side in this debate. Historically, petitions have proved ineffectual, to say the least (witness the ill-fated Stop Being a Naughty Adolph protest handed to the German embassy in London in 1939).

One flaw in petitions lies in their invariably insipid preambles. Words or phrases such as “we the under-signed”, “consider”, “sincerely” and “possibility” ensure that the documents never make it past even the most inattentive and unskilled correspondence secretaries to evil despots. Should they, by chance, overcome these hurdles they are unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of the recipients – no-one ever went into hiding and sought the skills of a plastic surgeon having been “urged” to do something.

The overriding drawback to petitions, however, is that they are gathered by people for whom the targets of their ire have no respect. The wrong-doers reason that if someone is so fair minded and reasonable as to favour this form of protest and also has the time and patience to go around getting others to sign their names on a piece of paper then they will be fair minded and reasonable enough to understand that no-one gives a fuck what they think and they will also have the time and patience to sit around being crapped on by them until Hell freezes over.

If one has no alternative but to write to express angst then I have found that, in dealings with Eon, Lloyds TSB Bank and Nottingham Forest Football Club, “testicles”, “clamp” and “urethral scrape” carry more gravitas and invariably at least result in a response from someone in authority, even if it’s only a police officer, which it has been for me on four occasions thus far.

No, the only path to direct action lies in…..well……direct action. Mr A. Hun did not expand his holiday timeshare business across Asia and Europe by penning a strongly worded letter to The Times. Mr N. Bonaparte did not increase the sales of garlic and sautéed amphibian propulsion systems in Prussia, Spain, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire by writing to the chairmen of various policy and resources committees.

To this end, might I suggest that a determined and sustained bombing campaign to cultivate terror and widespread panic be instigated across the wider Midlands region until those evil, baby-eating, devil-worshipping monsters in charge of regional integrated transport strategic planning are brought to their bloodied and broken knees and forced to maintain the Wolverhampton to Walsall light rail commuter link.

While I’m on the subject, if anyone has any old Semtex or unused pipe bombs lying in their attic or garage or knows of around a dozen people willing to blow themselves up for charity then I have a few ideas as to how we might get the litter bin reinstated outside the Somerfield supermarket in my village and also fund an Al Qaeda training cell on the village green into the bargain.

Yours in a tight jacket with straps at the back,

Reg.

A Dog's Life.

2008-10-05T10:17:00.002Z

I look forward to Sundays and the chance of a long, luxurious lie-in.

Some of us like to lie in longer than others, however.

The chance of a bracing walk to work off breakfast is always welcomed enthusiastically.

..for a short while.

Grantham shall not have them.

Define Bloody Happy, Darling!!

2008-10-03T16:21:00.006Z

There are people in this world who INSIST on looking on the bright side. The dictionary calls them optimists. Business gurus call them positive thinkers. The only mildly critical call them Pollyannas.

This group includes among its number such sufferers of reality blindness as Bobby McFerrin, the man who told us all “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” after pointing out in some detail how entirely shite our lives were.

Whoever wrote “Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam” is in there, along with anyone who ever sings it, and then somewhere near the middle of the crowd is Little Orphan Annie and her ridiculous belief that the sun will come out “Too-marr-how”.

These are people who say that Hitler might have been naughty at times but he was nice to his dog, that the Nazis had some challenging policies but always looked smart and that Peter Sutcliffe did wonders for the sale of hammers in Bradford.

They are people who trill “When one door closes, another one opens”. Oh yeah? Try telling that to the Princes in the Tower! They say that every cloud has a silver lining. I’m sure villagers in Bangladesh have that in mind as they are carried along at 100mph by a torrent of flood water as they cling desperately to the remnants of what was once their homes.

Anyway, the point of this rant (there is one, honest) is that these stupid people now have a board of directors in charge of them. The board is made up of the lounge lizards behind the latest Always Ultra advert.

Their mind boggling slogan for these menstrual pads is………Have a Happy Period - Always.

Now I don’t have periods. No, it’s not because of my advanced years, it’s because I’m a boy, you see, and only girls have periods (says ‘ere). However, I have lived with girls and, consequently, have witnessed first hand just how “happy” these bleedin’ lunar events can be. Now I’m not going to launch into a sexist rant about women and periods. I can fully appreciate the pain – “like little men with razors” one lady once said – and the hormonal/mood disruption they bring about. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind getting a brand new, replacement sexual organ every month, but that’s just me being trite. No, periods are bad. Bad for women and, thanks to misery displacement, bad for men.

How, then, could any adiot (Def:One who works in advertising) believe that any product could bring about “a happy period”? What next? A range of greetings cards with “Happy Period to You, Happy Period to You, Happy Period to Yoo-hoo, Happy Period to You” emblazoned across the front? Jesus, if they can get away with the latest Always advert they could get away with that. Hell, they could then branch out. Why not some more cards:

“Congratulations on Your Cancer Diagnosis.”

“Sorry You’re Leaving – From All On Death Row.”

“You’ve Lost the Key of the Door! – Good Luck With Your Alzheimer’s.”

“Wishing You A Happy Murder Trial.”

“All the Best in Your New Home – You’ve Been Sectioned.”

“Happy Anniversary – 10 Years Since You Were Widowed.”

Actually, the more I look at those, the more I think there is a market for them. Then again, being a committed realist (N.B. Realist – NOT pessimist), something would go wrong.

Always has always been too long for me so it can go to Grantham.

Imagine

2008-10-02T19:13:00.003Z

I could imagine Virgin Rail running an efficient and inexpensive rail service.
I could imagine the Pope coming out onto his balcony on Easter morning and telling everyone gathered in St Peter's Square to “fuck off!”
I could imagine not getting any pleasure from shooting Michael Winner in the head.
I could imagine landing on Mars next week and opening a small pottery shop.
I could imagine believing Jeffrey Archer.
I could imagine watching Katie Derham read the news without wondering once what colour her bush is.
I could imagine chatting to Nigella Lawson without staring at her tits.
I could imagine thinking footballers aren’t paid enough.
I could EVEN imagine the Queen having a shit!!

BUT………..America………going Socialist………under Bush?????????????

Trouble is, I don’t think there’s an unadulterated Clause 4 in this startling new brand of Socialism. Now, call me cynical if you like, but I’ve got a feeling that instead of the workers truly controlling the means of production – in this case, the production of absolutely NOTHING except obscene profits – I think the workers are having to make good losses brought about by the abject greed of a few so that same few can go on making obscene profits, safe in the knowledge that if they should fuck up again then the workers will pay their debts.

It’s a bit like playing Russian roulette and getting your brother to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger while you bet on the outcome with his money.

Is it really a form of Socialism? On the face of it, yes. The Government – i.e. the common people – takes control of an industry and guarantees its losses to ensure all in it remain gainfully employed and in business.

Look a little deeper, however, and it is, in fact, the zenith (or should that be nadir) of Capitalism. Capitalists – true, 100 per cent, unashamed Capitalists - produce nothing. They just gamble on man-made gaming systems and make piles of cash unimaginable to the likes of you and me. The trouble with gambling is that you can lose, as well as win. So how do these greedy pigs remove this slight insect from the balm? They persuade the Government – i.e. the common people – to back them and make good any losses they make. Sadly, the deal does not involve the common people sharing out their winnings. No, the pigs keep those!! It is the perfect form of gambling – gambling with other people’s money and keeping the winnings while offloading the losses.

It’s a belter!

Actually, I don’t think it’s going to work. I still think everything is going to go tits up and you and me will be turfed out of our homes and reduced to servitude. Will the men and women who brought all this about suffer likewise? Well, to answer that, here are two little facts for you:

1. Bradford and Bingley Bank has gone tits up and so we have had to wade in to save it. That has left every man and woman in this country having to GUARANTEE £35,000 in payouts to each of its investors should it fail again.

2. The man who brought about this monumental fuck up by greed and blithering incompetence is Richard Pym. He is the boss of the bank and he is GUARANTEED a half-yearly bonus of £375,000.

Only Fools and Small Courses

2008-10-02T18:42:00.004Z

Janssen? Jason? - Let's call the whole thing off!

Be honest, have you ever asked David Jason for his recipe for Italian risotto? I know I haven’t! Then again, I’m not one of his friends and it is they, he tells us in the first in a new series of adverts for M&S “fud”, who often tell him he “must” break his wall of silence and reveal the secrets of the culinary creation.

Do you want to know what I think? I think either Dave is a liar or he is a desperately unhappy and harassed man, badgered, pestered, harangued - day in, day out, week in, week out - by those supposedly closest to him, pleading, begging, cajoling, demanding, ringing him in the wee small hours, knocking on his door the moment they see his car pull up on the drive, accosting him in the post office, cornering him at Variety Club lunches, relentlessly pursuing him, hounding him, tracking him to the ends of the earth, all on a God-sent quest…..to get the recipe for his risotto!

Turns out, as it happens, Dave doesn’t knock up this gelatinous, noduled gloop himself anyway. No, he buys it ready-made from Marks & Spencer’s!!! I s’pose that’s the point of the adverts. Still, I can’t help wondering why he endures all that stress, all that diving into doorways to avoid his next door neighbours, that ducking down below the bar so as not to catch the eyes of his golfing pals, the continual change of routes into work, the bills run up at the Acme joke disguises shops......all that, and for what?

Why doesn’t Dave just tell them? More significantly, as far as I am concerned, why don’t his dumfuck friends clock that it might not be his own creation. There are clues, let’s face it. Firstly, the same fucking meal is on sale in Marks & Spencer! Secondly, and for those who don’t shop in M&S, surely they should be suspicious when Dave dishes out a portion of Italian risotto which would be insufficient to sustain Karen fucking Carpenter for half an hour?

No, I think M&S Italian risotto can go to Grantham – and Dave had better go as well.

....And Another Thing!

2008-09-21T08:03:00.008Z

About 2,400 years ago, when I was alive, I bought my first house and on the advice/recommendation of some suited lizard at the Halifax Building Society (as it then was) I took out an endowment policy to cover the mortgage (no, don't laugh).
I was told that the policy would not only pay off my mortgage at the end of the term but it would also give me a bonus of up to 30 per cent of the total. In hindsight, I should have smelt a rat at the time because the bloke also told me there were fairies at the bottom of his garden and if we both clicked our heels and wished, and wished, and wished, we could go and meet The Wizard.
Well, times moved on and I no longer needed the policy to pay off the mortgage, fortunately, but I kept up the payments until last year when it reached maturity. Guess what? Not only did I not get a bonus pay out of up to 30 per cent, the surrender value did not cover the original mortgage amount. Not only did it not cover the original amount, IT DIDN'T COME FUCKING CLOSE!!! It was actually worth......wait for it.......50 per cent of the mortgage amount. Yes, FUCKING HALF!!!! The said policy was with Standard Life. You know, the tossers whose slogan is "Standard Life - For All of Your Life". Shouldn't that be "Standard Life - For Half of Your Life and Then Fuck Off and Die In Abject Poverty You Wankers"? Not as catchy, I'll grant you, but at least it's honest.
Anyway, I was offered £2,000 by way of compensation - a bit like offering the burning Joan of Arc a throat lozenge! Turns out, this spectacular shortfall was the result of the bean counters getting their sums and market predictions slightly wrong - you know, in much the same way as Robert Falcon Scott and his pals got their gap year camping plans slightly wrong.
The result of this monumental fuck-up by parties third was that Pither's Stock Market value plummeted. I became somewhat "sub-prime", to say the least. Now, bearing in mind that Bush and Brown believe in fully recompensing the banks and insurance companies for THEIR financial fuck-ups, am I to be similarly recompensed for the fuck-ups of their mates? Huh? Huh? Am I? Hmmm? YOU BET YOUR DANGLY PRIVATE PART I'M NOT!!! How's that work, then?
You gotta hand it to these bastards, however. I mean, their after-sales service is excellent. After Standard Life had given me a financial enema, they only fucking wrote to me inviting me to their AGM and enclosed a gushing statement from the chief executive who had the buggery brass bollocks to say the company had "enjoyed another successful year"!!! Too fucking right they had - with my fucking money! Taking the piss? Noooooo! It's only like the Nazis sending gas bills to synagogues!

And another thing. One day there is a bank called Lloyds TSB, with assets of about one trillion quid. On that very same day, in the very same space-time continuum, there is another bank called HBOS, with assets of about a billion quid. Then, poof!! As if by magic, the very next day there is just one bank, called
HBLloydsBOSTSBWANKFART, or something. They merged, you see. Over-fucking-night! In a matter of minutes, possibly seconds. One day, they were two separate entities, the
next day they were as one. Now, how fucking complicated must that merger have been? I mean, there must have been people in a room somewhere saying "Now, that's your money in that pile by the croissants, and this is our money over here, by the mineral water. Roger, you act as banker and when we've counted it all out, you take the lot along and pay it in, will you? Then we've got to change the letterheads. Then we've got to change all the signs. Then there's new uniforms for the boys and girls. Then there's...."
Pretty involved, I would have thought, and yet they managed to do it all overnight - in seconds!! So how fucking come, when I pay a cheque for £40 into my bank (Lloyds TSB, by the way), it takes four fucking days to clear???? I don't want the letterheads changed to reflect my investment. I don't want all the livery changed. I don't want all the money the bank has transferred into a new fund where it can be mixed up with dosh from another bank. I JUST WANT THE FUCKING, POXY, PALTRY SUM I'VE PAID IN.....STRAIGHT AWAY!!!!!!!! It is MINE, after all. If these two avaricious bastards can pay in £3,458,876,982,715,489,994,437,200,856,873 and get it fucking cleared overnight, what's the problem with my forty bastard quid?

And another thing. As Private Eye pointed out, Lehman Brothers Ex-Bank ran up losses of $6.6 billion this year, up to and including the point when it went tits up. Do you know how much the bank paid out to staff in 2006 in bonuses - in BONUSES???? They paid $8.7 billion!!!! They employed 5,000 people - you do the maths. Here's an
idea. If you didn't want to be flushed down the financial pan, like some fiscal turd on the porcelain slope of capitalism......why didn't you ask some of those cunts who took the money and ran at the time to hand back their Ferrari's and Lear jets! How on God's earth can you feel sorry for any of those glycongenic gits we saw trooping out last week, weeping into their Gucci Filofaxes having just been told they were surplus to requirements? It was their selling short, cashing in quick expertise which put us all teetering on the edge of the economic pooh pond in the first place. I mean, just how fucking bright do you have to be to succeed in getting a homeless bloke you find sleeping in a shop doorway and shooting up to sign for a £1 million fucking loan? Jesus H Christ, if molluscs could sign their names they would have flogged them fucking loans as well!!.........and these wankers got bonuses for that kind of thing!!!!!!!! The only bonus I've ever had came in 1987 when the receptionist at the office I was working in came to work not wearing a bra! All I did was start rubbing myself and moaning and I got the fucking sack for that!! It's political correctness gone mad and it's just not fair.

And another thing. The Trades Union Congress has called for an extra day's public holiday for us. Hurrah! The Good Ship Britain currently has fewer public holidays than any other place on earth, with the exception of Siberia and Guantanamo Bay. We also work longer hours than anyone else and there's no chance of that ever changing since the Tories and New Labour are adamantly opposed to the EU Working Time Directive. Why? Well, that would mean people couldn't be exploited, wouldn't it? Where's the fun in that?
Any road up, how does the TUC go about calling for this extra day? Does it call on workers to man barricades and go toe-to-toe with the greedy corporate bosses and those golfing cunts at the Confederation of British Industry in a bloody civil war until they agree to give us work drones in Sectors 1-9 one more poxy day off? Does it organise a march from Jarrow to London and provide free cloth caps for the walkers? Does it call for a General Strike? Does it - and heaven for fend I should advocate this in any way - kidnap Brown, Cameron, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson et al and string them up by their scrotal sacks until they give in? No! No it doesn't. What it does is say that an extra day's holiday will boost spending and increase revenue for companies!! WHO GIVES A FUCKING SHIT ABOUT WHAT IT WILL DO FOR THE CORPORATE BLOOD-SUCKERS!!! FUCK 'EM!! It's about hard-pressed employees, the vast majority of the country, not management. It just shows you what a sad state of affairs we have reached when trades union bosses start sucking up to big business and metaphorically fisting them off while claiming to act for its members. NAIL SOME SENSE INTO THEM, I SAY! HANG 'EM HIGH!!! BRING ON THE REVOLUTION!!!!!

And another thing. Why, in that fucking advert for Rice Krispies where a bunch of
snivelling, resource-consuming, non-contributory brats are challenged by their gushing mummy (who seems singularly unconcerned by the fact that her kids are all, evidently, the same age and yet one is black and the other two are white) to count how many "snaps, crackles and pops" there are in a bowl of the dessicated mouse droppings which constitute that particular breakfast cereal, doesn't someone tell that ADHD-striken little cunt to get off the fucking table, stop eating with his hands and talking with his bastard mouth full?

And finally. Why, oh why, oh why, oh fucking why does Jane Fonda believe that she's "worth it"? "I'm 70," she twines. WE FUCKING KNOW YOU ARE, YOU RANCID OLD BAG!!! YOU'VE GOT A FUCKING KNOT OF SKIN AT THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD AND EVERY TIME YOU SMILE YOU PULL YOUR FUCKING KNICKERS UP!!! She looks like a sodding burns victim!! "Worth it"?????????? I wouldn't with yours, let alone mine!!

I'm going for a lie down.

Clause 4 Thought

2008-09-16T18:29:00.002Z

Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha-ha - now fuck off!!

Now, I may have got this wrong, but to the best of my memory...........

Nationalised industries - and by these I mean utilities and essential public services, such as post offices - were owned by the tax-payers. They kept charges to a minimum as they had no NEED to make vast profits, only to make money to reinvest in the service, and any money they did make belonged to the tax-payers anyway.
Their bosses were paid morally justifiable wages, wages which could be seen to fit at the top of a scale on which their employees were paid.
When these nationalised industries made a loss, the shortfall was made up by the tax-payer.
However, Murdoch and the Daily Mail told everyone that nationalised industries were crap and couldn't work and always made a loss. They said they were run by crap managers and the only way forward was to privatise everything and base the whole system on a share-owning "democracy" (Ha, ha, ha, ha!). Deregulation would then open up the "markets" and, with loads of different companies competing for the same business, prices to the consumer would be driven down and services would be improved. Private enterprise would attract the very best managers (aka people who produce fuck all and take all they fucking want). Also, the tax-payer would not have to fund the infrastructure or any losses.

Well, how fucking come, in this mad, massively unstable world of private enterprise, when banks and insurance companies go bust (as a result of their own sheer greed, greed not only of their chief executives but also of their think-short-term-get-big-bonuses-driven employees), Johnny Tax-payer is expected to pick up the fucking pieces?
Were we given regular wads of cash from their gigantic profits in the early days? No, we weren't. That went to the bosses, the employees and the shareholders. Were these shareholders little old Mrs Snatchbollock down the road, Mr and Mrs Wifentwokids on the new estate, Ms Canvaspants, the struggling primary school teacher and well known lone parent? Nope! You see, the vast majority of the shares in these corporations were/are owned by other coporations and mega-wealthy speculators.
Were the bosses of these obscene outfits paid salaries in some way linked to a pay scale at the companies? Nope! They were paid as much as they could fucking get away with, while the rest of us in the real world paid the price in cut services and highers charges. "Well, you've got to pay the best to get the best", said Murdoch and the Mail. Well, if they were so fucking good, how come all these banks and financial corporations are going tits up? Isn't that the fault of the managers? Wasn't it them who made ridiculously risky investments in pursuit of short-term profits?

So, who suffers? Those red-braced, stripey-shirted, Mormon-coiffured fucking avaricious young BMW-driving wankers who were only interested in making lots of money for producing absolutely nothing except numbers on a balance sheet, for a start. Five thousand of them were made redundant with the collapse of Lehmans - and I've never laughed so much to see people losing their jobs. All the other bastard banks and insurance companies are still in the firing line, however. Which will go bust next? Merril-lynch? Morgan Stanley? Goldman Sachs? HBOS? The answer is the same as to the question "If Jim Davidson, Margaret Thatcher, Liam Gallacher, Anne Diamond and Vanessa Feltz all fell off a cliff, who would hit the ground first?"..........WHO FUCKING CARES!!!!

Now AIG is on the verge of collapse. Everyone around the world will suffer if it's not rescued by the taxpayers of the good 'ole US of A, we are told. Well, my advice is, think long-term, not short-term like them. Endure a little bit of suffering - go on, forego that third holiday of the year or that fourth 4x4 - until these wankers go to the wall and they all start weeping and wailing. Fuck 'em. When will they ever fucking learn - global capitalism don't work!!

Global capitalism can go to Grantham.

But Is It Sport?

2008-08-20T19:46:00.002Z

Britain's suggested new sport for London 2012 is considered by Olympic officials - "The 100m for people who just haven't got the hang of sex".

I watched the Olympics today. Now, call me Mr Cynically Inclined Damp Squib if you like but I just can't seem to get as excited about it all as everyone else is doing in this country.

We won a medal today. I forget the colour - I was too busy throwing things at the telly. The "sport"?...........BMX racing!! Fuck me sideways!!!!! What next? "International Hanging Round The Chip Shop and Drinking Thunderbird"? "The 4x100m Being Sick Outside a Nightclub and Showing Your Pants"?

I know the whole nation is busy singing the praises of our brave athletes as they notch up record amounts of medals but let's get things in perspective a little, shall we? As far as real sport is concerned - i.e. swimming and track and field - we have had that young lass from Mansfield winning double gold in the pool. She has done brilliantly and is the one true ray of sunshine. Well done her!!! Sadly, every other event in the swimming was completely overshadowed by the Americans entering a swordfish in pair of trunks who won everything else. When you're up against a bloke who could overtake a cross-Channel ferry in a straight race you ain't got much of a chance!

On the track, however, we have won just one medal so far. That was done by a woman who "forgot" to take a drugs test three times and was banned for life from competition before she successfully appealed. I'm saying nothing more. All our other competitors have stood true to the British Olympic motto of "It's not the winning that's important, it's the coming seventh".

It is, apparently, the right of every games to introduce new sports. As Beijing is hosting it this time around, I thought we could have looked forward to "tank stopping", "mass 'disappearing'" or "dissident torturing". No such luck. Instead, what have we had? Well, this morning, "Team GB" secured a bronze in......wait for it.......windsurfing!!!! Holy Christ!!!!!!!!

Elsewhere, our other triumphs have been in:

1. Sailing. They have managed to divide this alleged sport up not only into the two, acceptable categories, namely "sailing over different distances" and "sailing in different kinds of boats", but also into "sailing with lots of people on board", "Nobby No-Mates sailing", "sailing round little markers", "sailing in a straight line", "zi-zaggy sailing", "sailing when people are watching", "sailing in the dark", and "sailing off to South America while leaving your clothes on the beach and then getting your wife to claim the life insurance (freestyle)" etc, etc. It's ridiculous. I mean, there are surely only so many ways you can divide up a discipline. At this rate, we'll have the "100m with someone on your back", "the 100m on one leg", "the 100m in fancy dress", "the 100m backwards", "the 100m for people who can only run 80m" and so on, and so on, and so on. The sailors all fall into one overall category, however, namely the "sailing when you can't tell who's doing what or going where" category. Whichever event was being screened, the image was always the same - a pond filled with about 3,000 boats, all going in different directions like a sort of Battle of Trafalgar For People With No Sense of Direction. Over this incomprehensible melee the comentators would say things like "And there is Trevor, in seventh, trying desperately to out-tack the plucky American". What?????? Fuck off!!

2. Indoor cycling. This is another example of where loads of meaningless categories have been created when basically they should just try to find out who can go fastest and longest. I was, at first, attracted to the idea of indoor cycling. I thought it offered new possibilities, like "indoor pole-vaulting" and "lounge javelin throwing" would do. It turned out to be not that exciting. No-one had to negotiate a settee or armchairs, no-one got penalised for bumping into the cooker and there was no "King of the Stairs". It was just hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of people riding round, and round, and round, and round, sometimes being chased by others, sometimes following a bloke on a moped, sometimes crawling along and then, inexplicably, going very, very fast, sometimes riding at the top of the track, sometimes trundling along at the bottom of the track, eyeing everyone else up suspiciously. Not really my idea of fun.

3. Crying. We have excelled in this. We are strongest on the podium when the national anthem is played but Paula Radcliffe, fresh from her gold medal triumph in the World Incontinence Championship, blew away the competition just as she limped over the line in the marathon in that cherished position - 23rd.

All right, there was the rowing, which I do class as a sport, and I'm sure Britain has succeeded in other areas but they must be SO obscure that they have yet to be covered by the BBC (the outfit, by the way, which has sent MORE staff to Beijing than the nation has sent athletes!!)

Well, in four years time we've got the chance to really show the rest of the world how crap we are. Not only will we have the chance to win the medals no-one else wants, we will be staging the bloody thing and so there will be a host of additional attractions, like "the 100m-straight-up for tilers finishing off the roof" and the "speed concreting ahead of the marathon runners".

Maybe by 2012 we'll introduce as one our new sports "sitting on the settee and moaning a lot"? I might enter.

Nothing for Grantham.

"Call Me Dave."

2008-08-15T21:23:00.003Z

"So, tell me, as a small dog, do you think subsidisation of the British banking system is ethically sound in the wake of the Government's total abandonment of the engineering, manufacturing, steel, shipping and motor industries in this country when they fell prey to the avaricious onslaught of capitalism?"

I had to interview David Cameron today. He called in at Daisytown as part of a whistle-stop tour (we journalists HAVE to write that - it's in our contract) of the country.

I am here to warn you...........he is a slippery customer! He had obviously been fully briefed by his spin doctors beforehand and knew just how to wriggle out of those awkward answers my questions demanded.
While other hacks were busy asking him about soaring inflation, an alleged crash in the property market and a perceived breakdown in the family unit, Pither took a different tack.

I reproduce below a transcript of my interview with him:

Pither: "Why are you such a cunt?"

Cameron: "I'd like to answer that question by first referring you to New Labour's record on education and the health service."

Pither: "Ok, so you admit you're a cunt, but why do you have to be such an oily, self-satisfied, pre-pubescent excuse for a cunt?"

Cameron: "I'm glad you asked me that because that is just what we at New Conservative are focusing on in moving forward with our drive to make Britain a place in which we will all be proud to live as part of a shared partnership with allied partners in which we are allied."

Pither: "What are the chances of you fucking off and dying in the next five minutes?"

Cameron: "I'm sorry to disappoint the dinosaurs of this country who stupidly believe in fair play, Socialism and the rich looking after the poor because I am in this for the long haul. I believe in putting the "Great" back into Great Britain and I also believe that snuurrr, flobble, grrrnchypoo, nnnnnngggggg, twimble......sorry, lost it a little there."

Pither: "...and putting the "cunt" back into "country", no doubt? No worries, Dave. Everyone knows you're a gibbering gland so they expect no less. Could I just ask you if your mother had ever heard of contraception and, if she had, why in the Holy name of fuck didn't she fucking practice it?"

Cameron: "I'm glad you've raised the issue of the breakdown in families. I strongly believe that.....that......is anyone going to eat that sausage roll?"

Pither: "Fuck off, knobcheese! I saw it first. Anyway, I have brought a gun with me so just bear with me while I put down my pen and notepad and cock the trigger. It's time to die, fuckarse, die!!!!"

Cameron: "Thank you. Will the photographer make sure to airbrush out the warts and the juvenile piss stains before you go to print?"

Bang, bang, bang.......the sound of sirens, a helicopter circling etc etc.

Ever had a shit day at work? Beat that one!!

Cameron can go to Grantham.

About a Boy.....and a Cow.

2008-08-03T11:00:00.003Z

So, Gordon Brown is on his way out.....he is, I assure you. Watch this space. The lizards who are our elected representatives are all now on their summer hols, having called in all those promises made about trips to the Bahamas, The Maldives and all places exotic in return for the dodgy deals signed behind closed doors to give the big corporations as much cash as they can eat - at our expense.

The poisonous, snapping species of said lizards - namely those obsessed by greed, ambition and the overwhelming urge to shin up the greasy pole of politics - are not, however, enjoying the company of prostitutes paid for by Saudi princes. No, they are too busy. You see, they will be almost constantly on the phone to each other, plotting to see who will support them, who they will support, who they won't support. Yes, these avaricious bastards are excitedly jostling for position ready for a new leader to emerge.

It's all too familiar, as far as I'm concerned. Remember when John Smith died and left Labour leaderless? There was possibly one of the best leaders the party had had since the war. An honourable, committed, principled man who, I am certain, would have done great things and made this country the envy of the world, had he lived. Even Gordon Brown decided it would be apposite to put aside the rat race of politics for a couple of weeks to mourn the passing of a potentially great man. Not fucking Blair, however. He was plotting, scheming and manouevering the second John slumped forward in his chair. All right, he put in a cursory appearance at the funeral - complete with his "this is very sad so I'm looking serious and sombre" face. His cheesey grin and "nothing is harder to fake than sincerity" skills soon came to the fore, though, and the rest, as they say, was a social hysterectomy for us.

There are two of the current crop of poisonous, snapping lizards to keep an eye on.

The first is David Milliband, aka Milliband the Younger. He is known as that for two
reasons. One, there is another Miliband in the rats' cage, namely Ed Miliband, and he is older.
Ed is Cabinet Office Minister. He is aged 14.
David is 13. He is known as Miliband the Younger because, apart from being the second to emerge from the womb of The Cloven-Hoofed One, he likes flying his kite, riding his bicycle, making sandcastles and Airfix models and playing with his iPod.
He is also, according to his entry in Who's Who, starting to get strange, stubbly hair growing in his genital area and becoming interested in girls. Oh, and I forgot to mention..............HE IS THE CURRENT FUCKING FOREIGN SECRETARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get your fucking mind round that!! His experience of foreign and Commonwealth affairs amounts to one school holiday skiing in Italy, an exchange trip to France and a visit to the Isle of Wight with the cubs!!!! Seriously, you just couldn't fucking make up his appointment.
Worse than being pre-pubescent, he looks like a fucking Jehovah's Witness. (Incidentally, apologies to all Jehovah's Witnesses out there. I mean, you are all just a bunch of ignorant, boring, dangerous and deluded twats who are so mentally backward and brainwashed that you think that being infused with other people's blood will really piss off God. To liken you to something as low as Master D. Miliband is possibly unfair).
Miliband the Barmitzvah Boy is one of Blair's clones. He is totally plastic, with no morals, no principles, no ideas and no sense of society. He is, in truth, a classic American politician, the way Blair likes 'em.

The second lower reptile to keep an eye on is my personal bete noir. It calls itself Harriet Harman. It is, in truth, a Zenog from the planet Thwarg and should be shunned at every available opportunity.

I FUCKING HATE HARRIET HARMAN MORE THAN ANY OTHER SENTIENT BEING IN THE UNIVERSE WITH THE OBVIOUS EXCEPTION OF THATCHER AND JIM DAVIDSON!
Like half of New Labour, this stupid bitch is a solicitor. That's enough to disbar anyone from becoming a politician in the first place, I would have thought. She is the daughter of a Harley Street physician - so is, of course, completely in touch with the needs and aspirations of the man and woman in the street!
Blair handed her the Secretariat of Social Security when New Labour got elected and, to cut a painful story short, she completely fucked it up!!
She was, at the time, dubbed Harriet Harperson because of her obsessive and ridiculous PC and feminist ranting. Hariden Harman would be nearer the mark.
Well, in true New Labour form, despite having proved to be about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike, Hariden made a return to the front bench after the 2001 election when she was made Solicitor General.
She voted for the Iraq war but later claimed she wouldn't have if she had been in possession of all the facts!! That....from the fucking Solicitor General!!! Since 2001 she has:
NOT voted on a freedom of information act.
Voted for introducing a smoking ban.
Voted for introducing ID cards.
Voted for introducing foundation hospitals.
Voted for introducing student top-up fees.
Voted for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
AND...........
Voted against investigating the Iraq war.
Way to go, girl! Fly that Labour/Socialist flag!!

To give you some inkling of this so-called woman's brain power, hackers marvellously got control of her Blog in April this year and said she had joined the Tories. Not actually that far-fetched, when you think about it, but untrue. How did they manage to hack in? Well, Hariden was forced to admit that the incident was a result of her using "Harriet" and "Harman" as her username and password. Doh!!

This bitch also unveiled the EQUALITY Bill white paper in June. It included a proposal to allow organisations to take under-representation into account when selecting between two equally qualified candidates! The Bill, therefore discriminates against white men. Yup, that's what equality is all about, dickbreath!

Not content with that, she also commissioned a report on allowing political parties to draw up all-black shortlists. A further measure extended the arrangement allowing all-women shortlists until 2030. Now that's not discrimination, you understand. No, no, no, no, noooooooh! It's "positive" discrimination. It's different..........isn't it? Uuuurm, actually, having considered the matter............IT'S NOT FUCKING DIFFERENT. THERE IS NO "POSITIVE" DISCRIMINATION AND "NEGATIVE" DISCRIMINATION!!! THERE IS JUST DISCRIMINATION - AND I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I'M AGAINST IT!!

Well, if you can swallow the bullshit and lies she is feeding into the mainstream these days, you are no doubt in support of her current invented-for-her position - Minister for Women. Fuck off!! Fuck right off!!!! I am an ardent advocate of equality. Equality does NOT involve splitting us all up along manufactured lines and then legislating separately for each fragement. There are not "women" and "men", "blacks" and "whites", "gays" and "heteros", "fat people" and "thin people", "people who like red" and "people who don't like red", "people called Harriet Harman" and "people not called Harriet Harman"..........THERE ARE JUST PEOPLE!!! FUCKING DEAL WITH IT.

Well, just sit back and wait to see which of these wankers will step forward and say "Bye, Gord. Hey, everyone. Pick me, pick me, pick me!!"

The fact is, the fucking Tories will probably get in, anyway. The Great British electorate seems to have swallowed the crap coming out of Call-Me-Dave's mouth. Will the Tories be different to New Labour? You bet your arse they won't. Another five years of ultra-right wing shite! The fact is, the herd of voters in this fucking country would even vote for Eric the Dancing Llama, so long as he promised to cut taxes. They'd then start moaning in incredulity about all the fucking services being cut - as they have been over the last 30 years. Trouble is, they all just want to be "considerably richer than yow" and have no idea that their greed comes at a price. Fuck 'em.

(Miliband and Harman hold secret talks over who should take over from Brown.)

Miliband can go to Grantham, Harman can definitely go - and she can take the vast majority of the British electorate with her!

In Which Pither Hits An All Time Low

2008-08-02T14:44:00.001Z

I've got fleas!

There, I've said it. The truth is out there.

The Almighty - not content with smoting me on a daily basis, banishing my hair from the place in which it once was, making my body as three, realigning my teeth and taking many to sit at his right hand - hath sent a new plague to test me.

Ok, so I'm not being strictly accurate, in biological terms. You see, it's actually Dave who has fleas. He didn't tell me about it and I didn't realise - until this morning.
The dog flea - or Ctenocephalides canis, if you're Italian - is host specific (if I remember things I was once taught) and so does not take up permanent residence on other species. It does, however, go on brief holidays and have days out and, as Dave sleeps on the bed with me, said flea's access to a new continent full of delights is a mere hop away.

I woke up today bitten to buggery! I thought, at first, that there had been an influx of mozzies in the night, sleeping as I do with the French windowns open. Then I noticed young Dave, contorting himself, back legs up round his ears, scratching like a queue at a clap clinic. Oh dear! Looks like my weekend is mapped out for me. Delousing will be the order of the day and a flea shampoo bath is in the offing - for both of us!

Anyway, I care not. You see, I am on holiday now for a week. Hurrah! In fact, such is my holiday mood that I popped out last night to celebrate my hols by having a couple of dry sherries at the Kebab and Calculator. I was medivacced out at 9pm and hit the hay soon afterwards.
I awoke, as usual, at 5am, and fed the dogs, fed the birds, fed the fish - and then fed myself. I found a pizza on the kitchen table. I have no recollection of ordering it - but there it was, and breakfast was sorted. Now that's a nutritionally balanced start to the day.
Trouble is, I then decided to go back to bed, being the first day of my holiday, 'n' all. I have just woken up again...............at 4pm!!!!! That has to be some sort of record. I haven't done that since I was a teenager (like a lot of things).

Part of me feels really guilty, really disgusted, really ashamed. The other part of me feels proud, contented and as though I have done exactly what I should have done. No doubt the battle of consciences will resolve itself shortly.

So, what to do? Well, I vaguely remember from last night that my pals The Farmer and Tomato Head were popping out for a livener today at around teatime and that seems a splendid plan. God, I just love holidays.

Fleas can go to Grantham, but nothing else.

You, Me and Our Aunty

2008-07-30T16:17:00.003Z

My thanks go to the BGT for pointing out this little conundrum.

The great man roared at a story which hit the headlines today and which reminded me of the great Colin Bomber Harris, the man who wrestled himself in a Monty Python skit.

So, what has occurred? Well................."Record Fine Over BBC's Phone-Ins!!" screamed the headline. "Quite right too!" belched the idiot British public. "That'll learn 'em. They won't do that again in a hurry."

The "occurrance" is that the beloved British Broadcasting Corporation (known affectionately, for my overseas reader, as "Aunty Beeb") has been fined £400,000 by media watchdog Ofcom for misleading its audiences by faking phone-ins. In short, viewers were urged to phone some premium rate competition phone lines when winners had already been selected while some shows were pre-recorded and so no-one could win competitions which were supposedly "live".
The offending shows (pun intended) included the Comic Relief, Children in Need and Sport Relief TV shows, Liz Kershaw's offerings on 6 Music and Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show.

Hmmm! Let's examine this a little more closely, shall we? So, the BBC (that is to say "us", as we are the taxpayers who fund the organisation) has been ordered by a quango set up by the Government (i.e. "us", as we elected it and the money it has is ours because we pay taxes) to pay £400,000 to state funds (otherwise known as "us", as explained previously) for the corrupt actions of a bunch of dickheads employed by "us".
Call me Mr Picky, if you like, but shouldn't the headline have read "We Order Ourselves To Pay Us £400,000 For the Fraudulent Actions Of People We Employ"? Not quite as catchy, I'll grant you, but at least it's a little more accurate.

Watchdogs, eh? Don't ya just love 'em? Here's an idea, Ofcom. Instead of these wankers trying to rip people off and then expecting us to fine ourselves and pay ourselves a lot of money so that they won't do it again, why don't you actually take punitive action against the "people" who perpetrated this scam, or at least were the faces of the shows during which it was perpetrated?
Why not publicly hang Terry fucking Wogan? Wouldn't Jonathan Ross look nicer in a chair which has straps on it and is plugged into a mains supply? Why not deport Lenny Henry to Alabama after first tattooing him on the head with a simple "I hate whitey"? Perhaps we could order Seb Coe to....to....to....to just go and fuck himself! As for Liz Kershaw and Jo Whiley, Christ knows! There is no punishment in Hades adequate for the pair of them. Perhaps they should just be ordered to listen to each other's radio show all day, every day, for the rest of their disgusting, futile, purulent, lager-stained, vomit-inducing, stinking lives!

Harsh?...........Maybe, but fair.

Ofcom can go to Grantham.

About a Boy...........and a Girl.

2008-07-27T07:29:00.001Z

Here is the news in brief.

1. Mrs Pither's status has been ugraded again. You may remember that she shifted from The Soon-To-Be Ex-Mrs Pither to the Very-Soon-To-Be last year? Well, she's now up to the Imminently Ex-Mrs Pither. In short, she has a new man. He is, of course, a self-obsessed, boring twat (grapes? Acidity?) but Hell, how on earth could she ever hope to follow Pither! No doubt he will eventually prove to be not as much of an arsehole as he is currently (I have met him and she has known him for years) but, as Jordan's publicity agent once said, you can't really polish a turd.

2. You may not believe this but............Pither has found someone else as well!!! For the cynical and suspicious out there, we got together months after Mr P announced news of her new beau. I shall write more about my lady in future but, suffice to say, she is lovely!! I just wish I had met her 20 years ago. She is beautiful, she is very intelligent, she is very funny and...........she has unfeasibly large chest furniture. Hurrah!! Sadly, she does not live over an off-licence or have a Nottingham Forest season ticket but, apart from that, she is perfect.

3. I have got a new dog! The truth is, I took the death of my beloved Pad earlier this year very hard. I suppose I am still not over it and think about him all the time.
There is a saying round at Pither Towers that I do not find rescue dogs - they find me. True to form, I did a story about another German Shepherd dog which was rescued by an animal welfare charity. The poor lad had been found collapsed in a town about 20 miles from where I work. He was so starving he weighed just 20 kilos (two thirds of what he should have done) and he had appalling mange which had left him all-but bald from the neck down. He was close to death but the rescue people nursed him back from the brink in the month they had him........and then Pither entered the frame.
I couldn't get his story out of my mind and eventually I buckled and rang the charity to ask about him. A string of phone calls followed which culminated in me and my three other dogs going over to see him last Wednesday.
They had done well with him - he had gained six kilos during his month-long stay - but he was still in a sorry state. However, he got on with my pack, was very friendly and seemed full of fun. He was back at Pither Towers the same night!!!!
When he first arrived I think you can see what a poor condition he was in. He also looked deeply troubled, understandably.

In just five days he has come on massively. He now looks happier, he is playing with the other dogs, having sorted out his place in the pecking order (like Pad, at the bottom!), he is eating like a horse and he is full of beans. He sleeps on the bed with me and makes a real fuss when I come home after work. In truth, he is fantastic and has a great life ahead of him.

I took him to the vet's yesterday for a full check-over. As a result, he is now microchipped, insured, he has undergone blood and skin tests to take his treatment forward and has been wormed.
Back home, he has a new bed, a new, leather collar, a nice nametag, a box of fluffy toys (Alsatians love soft, fluffy toys for some reason) and piles of pasta, rice and dog food whenever he wants them.

Oh, and his name. Padfoot was the only dog I had ever rescued who came without a name and so I was able to choose one. Well, the new boy, who is definitely following in Pad's pawsteps, didn't have a name either. So, I have fulfilled a lifelong ambition.........................I have called him Dave. I've always wanted a dog called Dave.

There, life is good! The corner has been turned. I'm tempted to let everyone out of Grantham today but, bearing in mind we could soon have a state funeral for Thatcher which would change my mood, I had better keep everything in there for now.

TTFN

...And At the Setting of the Sun, And in the Morning, We Shall Remember.....What an Mad Fucking Bitch She Was!

2008-07-24T17:46:00.002Z

It'll be the first and last time I ever dance with Scousers!

My thanks go to the lovely John and Theresa (well, the lovely Theresa and the warthog-faced, Mancunian cider-processing machine known as John, really) for the following link. They thought it might interest me - I can't think why.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/thatchfuneral/

Even more strangely, you might think, I will not be signing this document, however laudable its intent. You see, if there is no big, public funeral for the acid-blooded, Devilwitchqueenbitchclovenhoofedwhoreofanarseholecuntwaspslag formerly known as Margaret Roberts, then where the Hell are people like me ever again going to get the chance to mow down a few guardsmen and the odd gun carriage and smash their ageing Volvos into a Nazi flag-draped coffin containing the heart-staked remains of one of the spawn of Satan before entertaining lily-waving crowds by then pissing on said varicose-veined, whisky-sodden, blue-rinsed remains?

One Declan McManus once told us all to "Tramp the Dirt Down" - and so we must. No, bring it on, I say! I shall be there - and staying on late to make sure she doesn't rise from the grave when the moon is exhaulted.

Hurrah!!!

P.S. It's all round to my place for a few dry sherries when she finally rolls a seven, if the undead can die.

Those Who Dodge Coffins.

2008-07-23T18:59:00.002Z

Here's one. I know I've posted about this before but it's so bleedin' annoying it's worthy of another mention.

I've had the day off today and among the exciting list of chores on my agenda was a trip to the building society. Readers may recall that The Reluctant, as I call it, has been making concerted efforts over the last few years to hide from its customers. If it's not moving and failing to tell you where it has moved to it is changing its livery and pretending to be a launderette.

Well, Pither walked in to join the queue and ahead of me were the same fucking dickheads who always seem to be ahead of me when I'm in a hurry. They were, ostensibly, all coffin-dodging pensioners, clutching mountains of paperwork.

I believe that when anyone else goes in the people ahead of them do not smell of piss and talk about the war. They just walk up to the counter, say "May I withdraw £20 please?", are handed the dosh, their passbook is stamped and they leave. Total time, approximately two minutes. Not fucking me! The crumbly international financiers I'm landed with never just want fucking cash or something simple, oh no! They want to launch a hostile take-over of some global corporation or convert their fucking life savings of 23.6 million farthings into almighty Yankee Dollars then withdraw it cent by fucking cent or they want to set up a cross-indexed tracker hedge fund with their bastard pension payments or discuss the range of mortgage options on offer to people within gnat's nadger of the grave or...........or...........or to just fucking talk!!!

"Ooh, isn't it hot today? My grand-daughter gets hot, you know? Do you want to see a picture of her. This is her on holiday at the caravan - and this is her at the side of the caravan - and this is her in front of the caravan - and here's the inside of the caravan......." JUST FUCK OFF WILL YOU!! FUCK RIGHT FUCKING OFF YOU DRIBBLING, INCONTINENT WANKER!!!"

A whole bloody hour I was in there this morning, in 90 degrees of humidity and sweating like a fucking Kosovan at immigration. Sod 'em!

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

From the Cradle to the Grave.

2008-07-22T05:46:00.004Z

It's 6.45am and I'm about to leave for another tour of duty on the C&C. I'm at an inquest at 8.30am, then I've got to door knock a woman whose husband was beaten to death outside their home yesterday............It's the glamour I go for, and the uplifting work (NB, shed no tears for the battered one - he was a scumbag who had a record as long as a Ghurka's cock for robberies, GBH and assaults).
As death is all that seems to await me, I am in a downbeat mood and so might not be as chirpy, optimistic, and Pollyannaish as I normally am (it's called sarcasm) but I just had to put on record one little thought in the wake of the news.

New Labour is about to undertake "the biggest shake-up of the benefits system since Beveridge". In short, they are going to get yet more private companies in and this time, instead of fucking up the railways, making our hospitals as clean as a mud wrestler's arse and losing our kids' SATs tests, they want them to run the benefits system.
How will that work, you ask (and if you don't you should)? Well, the huge wad of cash we - Joe and Josephine Taxpayer - pay for benefits to the less fortunate is given directly to these companies. The outgoings of these companies are the benefits payments. Companies HAVE to make big profits (Thatcher's Law of Greed), so, to make profits they have to dish out less in benefits payments than we give them money for. It doesn't take a genius to work that baby out, does it? If the companies stop giving loads of people benefits then they will be quids in.
But Reg, there ARE scroungers on the system who just scam benefit because they can't be arsed to work (I'm talking to myself again). Yes, there most certainly are - I know of a few myself. But does not the phrase involving the words "baby" and "bathwater" come to mind? These Nazi outfits won't give a sod who is deserving and who is not. They will have targets to meet and so it will be a case of "Sorry Mrs Johnson, I realise you are a blind paraplegic with terminal cancer and no ears but we think it's time you started fending for yourself - keerrching! Oh, Adam, our bonuses will take us to Colorado for the skiing this year!"
New Labour says it is "helping people back into work". Yeah, right. In the same way that Nazi camp guards used to "help people into the showers".
Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all!!

Beveridge foresaw the system as taking care of everyone "from the cradle to the grave". God, if only he knew how prophetic the last part of that anthem was to be.

I've sent New Labour in and out of Grantham more times than....than....than....more times than a thing which goes in and out a lot (make up your own gags) but they've got to go again.

Have a lovely day. I won't.

The Cow and Coffee Morning

2008-07-20T06:13:00.006Z

......Hang on a second...... Just bare with me....... Be with you in a mo. I'm just filling in my entry form.

I mean, let's face it, this is a chance not to be missed. After all, here is Pither, in desperate need of a costly dental revamp, crying out for expensive hair implants, longing for a gastric clamp to reduce his rotundity, with a house which needs thousands spending on it so it will at last be distinguishable from No. 73, Baghdad High Street, Iraq, but he would obviously tear up that wish list if he could just have................a year's supply of ketchup!

What a wank-wankety-wank-wank offer!! Who in the Holy name of Christ would want a fucking year's supply of ketchup? Besides anything else, in my case it would constitute ONE bottle. For the lardarses out there, where the fuck would you put it all?

Why are you banging on about ketchup, Reg, I don't hear anyone ask? Well, it's by way of explaining where I've been for the last few months. Confused? Bare with me again and let me explain.

In short, I have been working my mammary glands off at a new job - I think I mentioned I had finally swapped self-employment for PAYE again? Anyway, the job is with a daily paper. So far so good. They are a jolly nice bunch. Hurrah! The only drawback is the paper covers an area of the country which makes Siberia look heavily industrialised. It is what you might call........rural. Pither is used to the smoke and grime of the conurbations. He's used to murder, rape, explosions, death and darts. Where there's muck there's much to write about for a journo. My latest posting is, however, forcing me to lower my sights somewhat. I shall, henceforth, refer to the paper as The Cow and Coffee Morning.

Surprisingly, covering fuck all involves an awful lot of time and effort. I mean, those "bird found in tree" and "Women's Institute tea cup drama" stories don't write themselves. Consequently, I found myself working yet again yesterday and picking up the evening edition I realised just how silly my life has become.

The once in a lifetime, fabulous ketchup offer was trumpeted in a hamper on last night's front page, alongside the masthead. I was so tired and disillusioned I decided to actually read the bloody thing for once - (in reply to a previous editor who once asked "Pither, don't you ever read your own paper?" I replied "Of course I bloody don't! Do you?") - and so I present a few snippets to let you know just how near the cutting edge of journalism I am these days.

How about this? This, would you believe, is an entry on the letters page. It is my particular favourite. Does this give you any idea just how much there is to do on the patch and the calibre of reader?

This little item was a review. I think it not only says a lot about what a night in reading the paper is all about, it also says a bit about the standards of journalism around. If you read a review you want to get an overall impression, yeah? How are you supposed to come down one way or the other with this? Fence-sitting seems to be the order of the day.

Then there's this. I think it illustrates quite well that things are not done on a grand scale "round these 'ere paaarts". Hyperstore it ain't!

I include this merely to give you an idea about what the average reader looks like. I believe one of these two has won a dog show - sadly, the caption does not make clear which.
And finally, this was the strap along the bottom of yesterday's front page. Doesn't it just make the ketchup offer pale into insignificance? I can't wait.

So, there you have it. I shall keep you posted - literally - from now on. In the meantime, many thanks to all those kind types out there who have asked after me during my absence - notably BW, Ginni and Brad. Thanks again.
Nothing is more deserving of a trip to Grantham than this newspaper but, then again, if I send it I will be out of a job. It will have to stay out but......well, you know.

Brilliant Ideas of the 21st Century - Number 2,358.

2008-06-17T20:11:00.002Z

I just love market economics - don't you? No? Oh! Well go and watch the Italians kicking lumps out of the French in Euro 2008, then.

Those of you left - Pity little Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England. He's been forced to write a naughtiness note to Chancellor Alistair Darling explaining why inflation is up to 3.3 per cent.

When it was at 2 per cent old Merv didn't have to put pen to paper because that was the Government's target. Even when it rose to 3 per cent The Swervester left the Basildon Bond alone. No, only when it rose that extra 0.3 of a percent did he have to get scribbling.

The rules dictate that if inflation rises by MORE than a single percentage point above Number 11's target then Merv has to put the Naughty Hat on and explain what the fuck is going on.

Now, Merv is paid about two hundred squillion quid to monitor the economy and come up with Baldrickesque cunning plans to keep everything in check. So, what does he do? Well, he sits in detention in BoE Towers and writes to Alistair (yes, he who appears as a negative on film) and says that inflation has gone up too much because the cost of things is rising a lot. What, is it anticipated, will be his solution to this jolly poor state of affairs? He's going to put up interest rates, that's what. Yes, he's going make the cost of things rise a lot to stop the cost of things rising a lot. It's a belter!!

Hearing this on Radio Old Folks this morning Pither, of course, began screaming at his wireless, saying such things as "If petrol is going up so much, why don't you thieving bastards cut the fuel duty a bit to take the sting out of the economy?" No-one replied. My "If the cost of meat has gone up, why don't those greedy, grasping wankers in charge of supermarkets take the rise on the chin and turn in profits of £4 hundred million instead of £ 4 billion each year?" Strangely, that fell on deaf ears as well (Merv had apparently gone for a lie down after his strokes of the pen and his stroke of genius).

Meanwhile, at the House of Fun, the Government showed an astonishing degree of connection with the mood in the real world by proposing that MPs not only do not take a pay rise this year but also no longer vote their own into being in subsequent years! You think???? Well, howdy fucking doody!! You'd think that to fuck things up as royally as they have done they would actually be paying us, but no. These cunts actually get PAID for what they do. Not only that, they have, until now, decided how much they should be paid. Jesus, I wish I had that deal with my employers.

Still, shed no tears for our hard-pressed members (look that fucking word up in the dictionary and there is ONE definition which fits exactly), they still have their exes to rely on. You know, the exes which pay to put their kids through university, pay to employ nannies to look after their spawn, pay those niggling lap-dancing bills, cover that heroin addiction, pay to keep them in hot and cold running rent boys while the rest of us flog our bollocks off keeping them in a style to which they should never have become accustomed.

Oh, happy days.

Merv, although educated in my home town's grammar school, can fuck off to Grantham, along with every MP, excepting of course the 3.3 per cent of them who actually do what they are paid for without trying to rip the rest of us off.

What a Relief!

2008-06-13T06:49:00.004Z

The pressure of work and a teensy domestic upheaval have kept me away from the keyboard for a while but, having worked a succession of night jobs, along with the days, and done a couple of weekends, I have actually got a day off today. Coupled with the fact that I am now on my own and have no running about to do for others, I have time to write.

There has been so much happening news-wise over the last few weeks that it would take too much time to recap and so I shall pick out THE one item which I believe to have been the most interesting.

Ever tried to get a plumber out to your place? Course you have! It's the same rigmarole every time and the same exorbitant bill - "...and there's a £70 call-out fee, don't forget", "Strewth, who fitted this? It's a right mess", "Naah, you just can't get the parts", "I'd get a re-con but they're like gold dust, mate", "Well, I've got a job to do at Number 56 so I'll nip there and call back tomorrow", "Sorry mate, I'm just snowed under and the parts still haven't arrived", "Is two weeks on Thursday any good to you?"

Well, spare a thought for Sergev Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff. The lads, who live together (no, none of them make their own dresses), found themselves in a spot of bother when their bog bust.

Number 2s were still all systems go but, due to the complexity of their lavvy, Number 1s just wouldn't flush and things were getting pretty damp round at Chateau Chaps. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that they couldn't all just nip out to stay at a mate's house for the duration. You see, they are the occupants of the International Space Station!

Cue a phone call to the American-based plumber. "It'll be two weeks at the earliest, ladski. You just can't get the parts. Oh, and did I mention, there's a call-out fee - it's £987,569,300.27, not including VAT."

Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go, so the boys had a bit of a whip round and sat, no doubt with legs crossed, waiting for the plumber.

Said tradesperson did indeed take 14 days to call round and the lads, being starved of female company, were delighted to find it was a girly - one Mary Kelly.

"Strewth, who fitted this?" she asked. "They've made a right botch of it. You see, what you've got here is the Gravvyfree Shitnwee 670X. Cost £38 million to design, you know. You see, the solid waste system is operating properly but the liquid system, which uses air flow to direct urine and store it in a receptacle, is malfunctioning. You need a new pump. Lucky, but I've got one on the van. It'll cost, mind. They're £2.2 million each!"

"Fuckin' 'ell!" opined the lads. "Ain't there anything cheaper that'd do the job - or jobbies?"

At this point, Mary put her boss on the blower - Kirk Shireman, head of the station programme. He said, and I quote: "The alternate methods of waste disposal, including plastic bags with adhesive and bactericide - known as “Apollo bags” because they were used by early astronauts - are not particularly pleasant.

"They are, however, tried and true devices for their intended purposes.”

Well, would you? Hmm? Be honest. Does the idea of crapping and pissing into sticky food bags and then putting them in a cupboard for the next 18 years appeal? No, thought not.

The upshot was the boys opted for the replacement pump, emptied the little money jar they had been keeping for a rainy day (no-one had bothered to explain the likelihood of precipitation in space to our trio) and paid off Ms Kelly and Florida Pangalactic Plumbing Repairs.

They are now totally skint, 230,000 miles away from the nearest pub, with nothing to do all day but evacuate their bowels and bladders. I think I know how they feel.

Plumbers can go to Grantham but the chaps aboard the space station must stay with us.

Live! From Norwich!!

2008-06-04T23:05:00.000Z

By way of a response to BGT and Fiwa who fear I might have died, here is a Blog post.

Yes, it's the quiz of the week.

What/who/which do you prefer?:

Aids or cancer?
Hitler or Stalin?
Drowning or burning?
Paedophilia or rape?
Jeffrey Archer or President Mugabe?
Martin McGuinness or Vlad the Impaler?
Liver failure or heart failure?
Jim Davidson or Pol Pot?
Kilroy-Silk or Peter Sutcliffe?
..................................................
And finally...............................
Gordon Brown or David Cameron?

Answers on a postcard please.

Nice Weather........

2008-05-16T12:16:00.009Z

We had three visitors to Pither Towers this afternoon who were most welcome and I hope will become regulars.

Ok, so the Towers don't really resemble the Serengeti and I don't anticipate the World Wildlife Fund declaring my back garden a world natural heritage site but the arrival of a brace of mallard ducks amid the torrential rain certainly brightened up the old homestead.

I say "brace" because two was all I spotted at first - a female and a rather nervous and watchful male. The reason for his wariness became apparent when, after a short while,
another male came waddling down the lawn towards the happy couple's pond refuge. Ah, nature in action! A duckage-a-trois.

The scene was further improved when, at one point, the three ducks were joined by the pair of blackbirds who are nesting by my back window. They took a dip to get cleaned up in the top pond while two squirrels chased each other across the lawn, three dunnocks hopped around under the bird feeders and a couple of collared doves sat on the greenhouse. Not a bad show for one moment in time in an urban garden.

Anyway, the girlie duck all-but cleaned me out of pondweed and young plants before
taking off after a couple of hours with both her suitors in tow - but the three of them returned shortly afterwards. The love-struck pair appear to have settled in for the night and are fast asleep on the lawn. The would-be cuckold er is busy pacing around, no doubt biding his time and waiting to steal the girl away.

Then the phone rang late this afternoon. The vet said Henry had come through his operation well, despite evidence of a serious heart murmur which at one point looked like making surgery impossible, and three hours later he was back home, being fussed and pampered like an Arabian Sheikh. The results of the histology carried out on the lump removed are expected through by the middle of next week.

Not a bad day in all. Where is Grantham, anyway?

It Never Rains........

2008-05-16T06:55:00.003Z

I took Henry to the vet's yesterday because he has.........a lump.

My three-legged mate has had this lump virtually ever since we first teamed up together about seven years ago but it always used to be fairly small, soft and pliable.

That led all who checked him over to conclude that it was just harmless, fatty tissue but over the last fortnight said lump has grown considerably, become hard and now resembles a submerged golf ball. The vet took one look at it yesterday, noted the change and said Hen would have to have it cut out.

As a result, the little man and I are going back to the vet's this morning to check him in for the operation. Once the nastiness is carved out it will be sent away for tests and we will see where we go from there.

It could just be benign. It could be some kind of blocked duct. Then again, it could be.....................No! Best not to even think about it. Having lost my beloved Padfoot in February to the Big C I dare not ponder what might be in store.

So, fingers and paws crossed everyone. I'll keep you posted.

On SATS.

2008-05-15T22:33:00.000Z

I've just watched Question Time and heard one young, spotty woman in the audience tell the world how she took her Key Stage 2 SATS (??? Is that right?) test years ago at the age of 11 and found it crippling.

Tough titty fish face, is what I say.

It took me back to when I was alive and we had what was known as the 11-Plus. If you passed it you got the chance to go to grammar school and apparently make something of yourself and rise above the herd.

I took the 11-Plus and passed, as it happens. Trouble was, I never went on to grammar school. I've no idea why. I think it was my dismount.

As to stress and crippling worry during the exam? All I can remember is that it was summer and outside there was the sound of sports pitches being mown, birds singing and people having fun. Inside the examination room, I was sitting next to Sian Fellows, my first ever girlfriend, and I spent more time than I should have done trying to look up her skirt as it rode up her thighs as she fidgeted in her seat.

Sian went on to become a shipping lawyer earning obscene amounts of money - and I'm stuck here with three dogs and the body of a 90-year-old man. Ah, happy days!!!

On Doctors' Waiting Rooms

2008-05-15T18:07:00.002Z

I had to go to the doctor's this morning for some routine tests - apparently, my blood pressure is high enough to power a small central heating system and if my cholesterol goes two points higher they will be able to stick a wick in my head use me as a candle!

The visit started off on an almost surreal note as I walked in to find Dave Hill from Slade sitting there. I did the old hand-over-one-eye look around test and no, I wasn't hallucinating. There he was.

Dave (I like to think we are mates now) was accompanied by a simply beautiful woman
who was evidently no more than 30 which, bearing in mind he is about 85, wizened, balding and with the complexion of a lizard, I suppose is one of the almost cliched perks of being a rock star, past or present. Still, he really cheered me up. Pither is not in good shape and has never been a style god, it's true, but not only was Dave much, much worse, his clothes outdated mine by about 15 years.

Anyway, I had not been to see my doc (a fantastic bloke) for quite a while and I had almost forgotten what his and, I assume, all other doctors' waiting rooms are like.

The first thing of note is the magazines. Ninety five per cent of them are down-market women's magazines of the Chat or Me genre.
For the blokes there are just two offerings - one on caravans and the other on boating! Finally, there are Bibles. Together, I think they say a lot about the health mandarins' view of us plebs. They assume we are all either brain dead, too boring to care or cramming for our finals and so not in need of any life-saving help.

Secondly, doctor's waiting rooms make you acutely aware of just how ill society is. The bloody place was packed!

Next, if you manage to avoid the temptation to gen up on Posh Spice's latest vaginal lift or the genius which is the SaniFlush 950 chemical toilet for caravaners, there is only one thing left to do - play the "what's the matter with them" game.

Some patients spoil the game, like the little lad sitting there with a saucepan stuck on his head, the woman with her leg in plaster and the dribbling coffin dodgers. The work shy malingerers who pretend to whistle and spend their time nervously glancing out of the window and looking guilty as they wait patiently for their sick notes are also a bit of a give-away. Others are more fun. The jolly looking chap who tries to engage others in conversation and is apparently fit as a flea, for instance. Does that surface happiness hide a cripplingly embarrassing bowel condition, perhaps? The very good looking and snappily dressed young woman who looks around serenely at the notices on the walls. A barely suppressed bunny boiler doped up to her tits, maybe? Then there's the bank manager-type, immaculately dressed, not overweight or with evident signs of injury. Is he just one personal performance review away from going on a gun-toting rampage down his leafy cul-de-sac?

Finally, there is the "which one of these bastards is immediately ahead of me in the queue and how long will they take" game. I never win that one. I was desperately trying to catch of glimpse of the numbered little plaques everyone was holding to work out who was seeing my doc and who had Number 13 - I had 14. No joy. So I sat, and I waited, and I sat, and I waited. Eventually, the little illuminated number board on the wall buzzed and started flashing 13.
Then, to my horror, a great big fat piece in a spray-on tent stood up with the help of a walking stick and shambled towards the door. Shit!! It would take about half an hour to get her up on the ramps alone, I thought, let alone start diagnosing what was wrong with her!!! I was praying that she was a member of Exit and had decided to throw in the towel and just be put down - but no such luck. She was in there for ages, and ages, and ages, and ages. The whole bloody waiting room emptied as patients were called to see the other doctors and I was left sitting there until five minutes before the surgery was due to close for staff training. Eventually, Lavinia Lardarse waddled out with a clutch of prescriptions like Chamberlain returning from Munich.

I was only in with my doc for about five minutes and it was the usual. "Your blood pressure is ridiculously high, you're overweight and you smoke too much," he told me. "Get a grip, Reg. You'll be on the slab in six months if you don't," he added chirpily. So the diet has begun and I'm going to a smoking cessation clinic. Hurrah!

Doctors' waiting rooms can actually be quite entertaining so there's nothing for Grantham.

Take Me To Your Leader - Your Council Leader

2008-05-14T07:41:00.002Z

A few days ago strange lights in the sky led me to believe that the Martians had landed. I was disabused of the notion by a kindly weatherman...........but now I'm not so sure.

Further evidence has come to the fore which does indeed lead me to believe that
aliens HAVE landed - and they have taken up residence at Oldham Town Hall. What leads me to this conclusion? Well, only some form of inhuman life form could have dreamt up "individual care" budgets!

What are they? Well, in days of yore, when councils were there to provide services to residents, if you were disabled in any way or had special needs you used to contact social services and ask for help. The council would then set about assessing your needs and provide services accordingly - eg. home helps for the elderly, transport for the disabled, nurses to bath you or help you use the toilet if you were incapacitated etc. The system involved residents paying their council tax and the council then allocating some of that money to provide the services to the less fortunate.

Not any more! No, the newly-installed Martians running Oldham (and no doubt others
have followed suit but I have not heard about them) now assess their social services users/disabled residents and then hand each person a wad of money for the year. It is then up to the person involved to ring round service providers, arrange a contract and then pay for what they want themselves. In Blairspeak it's called "empowerment". Strangely enough, this new system saves the council millions of pounds each year. Get away! You think? Of course it fucking does!!!

The poor recipients of this latest Blairite bung have to sort out Criminal Records Bureau checks themselves on anyone they need to employ, sort out the PAYE arrangements and arrange insurance cover while the council just sits there, scratching its corporate arse and counting the cash. It's the Blair way. There are no longer "people", there are just glycogenic, mini-businesses. Everyone and everything HAS to be a business.

There's just one tiny snag, however, with this new wundersystem. Like, how in the holy name of Fuck can a blind person, a paraplegic or a
severely physically disabled pensioner be expected to sort out all this paperwork and make all these arrangements? That's right - THEY CAN'T! This really is Blairism gone fucking mad!

Councils are there to provide services! If they no longer provide them of course they save shedloads of fucking cash. What is the fucking point of a council which exists merely to receive your council tax payment and then give it back to you with a note attached saying "sort it out yourself"?

Well, two can play at that fucking game. I have no kids, right? I do not use social services, right? I do not rely on the council for housing, right? So, I'm going to draw up an "individual council tax budget". I shall assess what proportion of my council tax is taken up by contributions towards education, social services and housing. I shall then deduct that from what I pay and give the council the paltry balance to keep the libraries and parks and open spaces going - oh, and to get my bins emptied and the street lights kept on in the dark.

Think of all the administrative costs it will save the council. Ok, the whole system will cave in but it is the Blair way.

Trouble is, I happen to believe I should pay for services to help others, regardless of whether I use those services myself. You see, I am not just in this thing called life for ME.

Fuck 'em. The Martians at Oldham City Council can go to Grantham.

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

2008-05-12T21:34:00.003Z

In response to some drivel written by Vicus, and for those who didn't manage to stay awake over the weekend during the climax to the English football Premiership, here is how it all turned out:

1. Manchester United - annual turnover £245 million.
2. Chelsea - annual turnover £200 million.
3. Arsenal - annual turnover £190 million.
4. Liverpool - annual turnover £122.4 million.

18. (Relegated) Birmingham City - annual turnover £25 million.
19. (Relegated) Reading - annual turnover £17.6 million.
20. (Relegated) Derby County - annual turnover £50 million.

(N.B. Following an investigation by the Audit Commission into why Derby County was relegated when it was richer than some teams not relegated (against Premiership rules), it was discovered that Derby had, in fact, resigned itself to relegation early in the year and so decided to spend its parachute payment THIS YEAR, hence boosting its turnover disproportionately.)

Accountants at Deloitte are now hard at work pouring over balance sheets and are confident they will be able to announce the result of the 2008/2009 season before the season kicks off this autumn.
Will it be United again? Will it be Chelsea? Will it be Arsenal? Which one of the three? Who knows. I can't wait! Exciting stuff!!

On The Saving Of Bacon

2008-05-10T07:32:00.005Z

I've finally got a job! I've finally got a full-time, permanent job and my house is safe!! Hurrah!!!

With just two weeks to go before the building society said it would repossess Pither Towers, I have at last found someone who is prepared to employ a "47-YEAR-OLD", who is "A MAN", "WHITE", "ABLE-BODIED" (sort of) and "NOT EASILY BULLIED"! Double hurrah!

Who, I don't hear you ask, has taken this leap of faith and decided that there is life in the old dog yet? Well, it's no-one in the sexist, vacuous, ageist, immoral, talentless, back-stabbing, chip-on-the-shoulder world of PR, that's for sure. I have battled valiantly for two years to make ends meet in that stupid, corporate world and, try as I might, I realised the time had come when I just couldn't overcome the obstacles to employment (glass security doors, I think they are called) - hence my last two months of inactivity.

That's when it dawned on me. Over this last fortnight I redoubled my efforts to find ANY kind of work, ANYWHERE and a wise old owl said to me:

"What is it you actually do, Pither?"

"Well, I was a journalist," said I. "Now I don't really know what I am."

"I don't think you can really stop being a journalist," said he. "It's like stopping being a serial killer. It's kinda in your blood."

"Nice analogy, but I take your point."

So, realising that I should carry on doing what it is that I always used to do, I put in a few phone calls and - da, daaa! - the second daily paper I made contact with said "Come on in Piths, we'd be glad to have you aboard."

I start a week on Monday and will be a newsdesk assistant and head office senior responsible for taking the baby Biro brandishers under my wing. Hurrah! The money isn't brill - that's journalism for you - but I'm back on the pension trail again, working in a lovely part of the country, for a non-Nazi organisation and........well.......doing what I do.

The feeling is good. The feeling is very good. It's almost as good as that feeling you get inside when you see the stony face of some grasping, geriatric, Home Counties type when they are told the chest of drawers they have taken along to the Antiques Roadshow is just tat and only worth about £10.

Grantham shall not have journalism. The people will just have to make do with BBC Breakfast, The Sun and the Daily Mail.

P.S. I am so heartened by this news I shall post a gratuitous, sexist photo, just to cheer me up (and because I can, and because I'm old, and because I still have dreams) - and to remind me about my ultimate career goal and the publication at which I think all of my talents will finally be fully utilised.

In Which Pither Contacts the Met. Office.

2008-05-09T21:50:00.002Z

Who says there's nothing to do round here of a night? Not me, that's for sure!

I was treated to some random and intense excitement this evening after the Very Soon To Be Ex-Mrs Pither wandered in from the garden, tab on and empty wine bottle in hand, and said: "Something's flashing."

She promptly jettisoned her bottle, reached for a fresh one from the fridge, switched on the telly and sat down to watch Newsnight. Not another word.

That turned out to be a typical example of Mrs P's lack of enthusiasm/total indifference over matters I consider to be of burning import - like the day I asked her to marry me. We were on a paddle steamer going down the Nile. It was sunset and we were alone on the top deck. I had ordered champagne. I popped the bottle......and then the question. "Will you marry me?" I asked, staring deep into her bloodshot eyes. She squinted, trying hard to focus on me, took a swig of her fizz, considered the enormity of the situation and replied................"S'pose". Ah, the passion, the magic, the romance! Celia Johnson, wring yer knickers out!!

"Something's flashing" could have meant anything. Some vagrant in the garden exposing himself by the fish pond? A scale model of the Hindenburg tethering up by the rockery, perhaps? I had to go out to investigate and, plonking myself down on the rotting garden furniture, I waited to see what or who was flashing.
Just then, half of the sky lit up momentarily. It was so fleeting that I thought my eyes had deceived me but, a minute or so later, there it was again. A dull flash, admittedly, but definitely there, far, far away, low down and stretching across the horizon. Then another, and another, and another, each about three or four minutes apart. Totally silent but menacing all the same.

What the Hell was happening? I stood up and was about to feverishly share my excitement and incredulity with STB EW when, glancing through the patio window, I noticed she was trying to build a pyramid out of used fag packets and had reached a critical point so it was best not to disturb her.

I ran instead to my computer, Googled "Meteorological Office/Contact Us" and was on the phone quicker than you could say "I'm not a loony but I think the Martians are landing". It was a bit ambitious, I thought, expecting some weather drone to be at the office night and day, but to my surprise a little man took the call. In truth, I have no idea how tall he was. I use the word "little" in a condescending way, not an empirical one. "Hello, can I help," came the voice. I instantly pictured my little man sitting on top of the Met Office roof, surrounded by jam jars half full of rain water, home-made, knitted windsocks and piles of charts detailing average precipitation across Britain since the Crimean War.

"Hello, I'm not a loony but I think the Martians are landing," I said.

"Oh yes. And why would that be?"

"Well, there's these lights," I explained breathlessly. "They're right across the sky and they keep flashing."

"Well, they would, wouldn't they," he said mysteriously.

"Come again."

"There is a severe weather situation across South Wales at the moment. There are intense lightning storms and that's what you can see."

"Oh," I said, somewhat disappointed. "So, no landings then?"

"Sorry."

"...or global nuclear conflict?"

"Nope."

"...or time-to-build-a-boat-style atmospheric conflagration?"

"Not according to the currently available data, no."

"Oh. Well, just thought I'd ask. Nice talking to you. What's your name by the way."

"I'm not allowed to give out sensitive, personal information over the phone. Goodbye."

Phew! Well it was fun while it lasted. Ok, turns out we're not all doomed - everyone outside South Wales at any rate - but it got the old ticker racing, I can tell you.
Who says there's nothing for kids to do these days? I woke Mrs Pither from her slumbers in the armchair and put her mind at rest before retiring for the evening. She seemed relieved.

In Me 'Ead, Son!

2008-05-05T05:09:00.012Z

I don't think I'm very well. I need help. It's dawn and I'm writing this while it is fresh in my mind in the hope that one of you amateur psychiatrists out there can offer an explanation. You see, and I might just be sharing a little too much here, last night I dreamt about Mick Channon! What the fuck's that all about?

I was down at Mick's stables just outside Southampton - I've no bleedin' idea where his stables really are, but last night they were there - and I was riding shotgun for the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither. She had been called in by the grinning, cheeky former Southampton and England striker-turned top horse racing trainer to tie up the loose ends over a deal to buy some thoroughbreds. Quite why STB EW should have been asked for help in matters equine is a mystery to me - the only horse she has any knowledge of is me (fnaar, fnaar!)

Anyway, Mrs P disappeared immediately to do her thang which left me seemingly alone in Channon Towers, wandering around like a spare part until I bumped into Mick. Despite this being "in the now" (whatever that is in dreams) he did not look as he does these days but instead was exactly as I remember him at the height of his playing career in the '70s. Not surprisingly, Mick asked what the fuck I was doing in his house and, once I had explained, I followed him on a long walk out into the countryside to see some of his horses. Along the way we passed a herd of sheep (these definitely weren't in a flock, but a herd), all of which had been spray-painted with some sort of colourful Cubist designs, which Mick simply dismissed with the words "cute, ain't they?"

His horses - about a dozen of them - were kept in a hole dug in the side of a hill on the South Hams and they were all about the size of Labrador dogs. When I queried whether they might not be too small to ride, even given the diminutive stature of normal jockeys, young Michael merely laughed and looked knowingly at another bloke who had mysteriously appeared from somewhere.

Suddenly - that happens in dreams - I was back at Channon Towers, all alone. I was desperate to take a leak and while searching for the toilet I saw Mrs Channon coming out of a room, to the sound of a cistern flushing. "Ah, a toilet! Thank God," I thought and duly went into the room to discover about 25 different appliances, all of which looked vaguely like toilets - only weren't! I wandered (I did a lot of wandering last night) through this maze of bogus bogs until I found one that looked more like a loo than the others and, as I unzipped and prepared to pull the beast from its lair, I caught sight of a well dressed woman out of the corner of my eye.

She hadn't seen me, so my blushes were saved, and I decided to ask her where the loo was but as I walked towards her I realised she was some sort of sales assistant. Then, looking around again, I realised I was, in fact, in a large and very plush department store!

The next thing I knew a small dog was licking my face. That turned out not to be part of the dream. A small dog REALLY WAS licking my face. It was my Tilly, asking to be let out, strangely enough so she could go for a pee (spooky).

I am, unsurprisingly, somewhat perturbed by last night's visions and so would welcome any possible interpretations.

Yours,

Confused,

Outside Grantham.

L'armee Rouge!

2008-05-03T16:37:00.007Z

Life is good! Life is, in fact, excellent. Why? Well, examine the evidence:

I am totally skint - booh!

I have beeen without a contract for two months now - booh!

The building society has threatened to repossess Pither Towers at the end of next month if I do not land a contract by then - booh!

My marriage has gone down the toilet - booh!

I am 47, almost completely spherical and in danger of losing all my hair and teeth - booh!

I last had sex (with another sentient being) in the year 3BC (and then with a frog) - booh!

............BUT............

Even though I am, at heart, a rugby union fan I can't get all those years of football completely
out of my blood and my beloved Nottingham Forest this afternoon won automatic promotion to The Championship - HURRAH! DOUBLE HURRAH!! THRICE HURRAH!!! Couple with that the bonuses that the despised Derby County (as in "We 'ate Derby 'n' we 'ate Derby, we 'ate Derby 'n' we 'ate Derby, we 'ate Derby 'n' we 'ate Derby, we are the Derby...'aters!") have been relegated and the loathed Leicester City (as in - to the tune of the Addams Family - "Your father is your brother, your sister is your mother, you all fuck one another, the Leicester family") are in danger of being relegated as well.

Right now, nothing else seems to matter. My boys in red (cherry variety) shall not go to Grantham.

P.S. Football quote of the day:
Birmingham City manager Alex McLeish, desperately attempting to explain away the lacklustre performance of some of his key players today as they lost 2-0 to Fulham and now look favourites for relegation:

"Well, James McFadden's wife has just given birth to a baby and that kind of trauma gets to a player."

Obviously considerably more traumatic than having your fanny stretched from the size of a small glove to that of an Arctic explorer's rucksack in an effort to bring McFadden Jnr into the world!

A Dissertation On Politics (Yawn!!). Best Read Someone Else's Blog - I've Got One On Me!

2008-05-03T04:17:00.015Z

Make your mind up you dick!!

We get the politicians we deserve, it is said. Well, Thursday's local council elections did nothing to disabuse us of that notion.

When I was alive - about 25 years ago - politics used to be a matter of principle.
Politicians stood for something. Ok, they were still largely the same bunch of greedy, fornicating, self-obsessed wankers who would sell their grannies (interestingly enough, in 1978 I bought Norman Tebbit's grandma at a car boot sale and had her knocked down and turned into a car park) but at least they stood in line under certain principles.

The vast majority of them used to stand in one of three queues, as I recall. Those
who lined up in the Labour queue (the one on the Left) did so because they BELIEVED IN public ownership of utilities, such as gas, water and electricity, and of major industries and public services, such as coal mining, steel making, health, the Post Office and the railways.
They also BELIEVED IN the principle that the rich should help to support the poor and so endeavoured to redistribute wealth through the tax system. They also BELIEVED IN public services and, because they cost money, invariably increased everyone's taxes to pay for them. They also BELIEVED IN the National Health Service dreamed up by Bevan and in the welfare state.
They BELIEVED IN equality of opportunity and hence state education, they BELIEVED IN trade unions and the rights of workers (it WAS the unions which formed the Party after all) and they BELIEVED IN nuclear disarmament and the rule of the United Nations.
There was much more they BELIEVED IN but those were their very core principles.

Then you had the Conservatives (the queue on the Right).
I find it very hard to be balanced and objective about the Tories but basically they disagreed with all of the above. They believed in the privatisation of industries and services, arguing that "the market" was the most efficient regulator of the system and so would bring maximum benefit to all. They BELIEVED that everyone was born with an equal chance in life, be they from a Glasgow slum or the Home Counties, and so hard work would be its own reward (I told you I find it difficult to be objective). They BELIEVED, as a result, that people should keep as much of their money as possible and not be forced to help others, hence low taxes and no redistribution of wealth. They BELIEVED that people should look after themselves and that only a handful were incapable of doing so, hence they BELIEVED that the welfare state should only be an updated version of the Workhouse.
They BELIEVED in spending heavily on the military and on nuclear weapons because that would deter other powers from attacking Britain, the underlying principle being that the then Soviet Union would invade nations which did not have The Bomb and would invade them a lot if they did not have lots of Bombs. They also BELIEVED IN the United States. The United States was, and still is, the wealthiest nation on earth (despite owing more money than all the other nations on earth put together) and so it HAD to be right. They also BELIEVED that the United States was the champion of freedom and democracy and so Washington was best placed to decide how other nations should be run.

The middle queue was made up of Liberals (or Liberal Democrats, as they restyled themselves). These people basically BELIEVED IN some of the Labour principles and some of the Tory principles and were sufficiently unallied to either Party to deserve their own queue.

Of no value to this system, thank God, was a small minority of what were, and still are, known euphemistically as "floating voters". These were basically people who had no fucking principles at all other than "what's in it for me?", little intelligence and so voted for whomever they thought looked nicest. I shall return to these wankers later.

Anyway, got it so far? Phew! Thank God for that! So, what happened and where are we today? Well, to cut a very long and complicated story short, Thatcher happened, that's what!
She came to power in 1979 and began a dramatic haul of all that Britain had been over to the Right/Far-Right. The unions had got out of hand but she seized the opportunity to crack a nut with a sledgehammer and all-but demolished them. She then fostered and tapped into that rich vein of greed which underlies every nation and suddenly it was a free for all. Grab what you can! Fuck off! This is mine!! She sold off everything in the nation's metaphorical China cabinet, telling voters that it was their chance to join the "share-owning democracy". In the stampede to snap up Gas, Telecom, electricity and water shares etc, greed blinded the herd to the fact not only that they already owned the fucking industries and were merely buying them off themselves but also that, amazingly, not everyone was in a position to afford the luxury of buying something they already owned. All the live-for-today, unprincipled greed merchants wanted was to flog off their 200 or something shares immediately after and make a quick £100, or whatever. While they were busy spending this windfall, a windfall they had ostensibly scammed of people who couldn't afford to buy the shares they had previously owned, big business - largely in the form of major insurance firms and global "players" - moved in to buy their quick sell-offs and so seize control of what were public utilities.

The "greed is good" and "there is no such thing as society" ideals were steamrollered out across Britain and the police and military were drafted in to quell resistance (witness the poll tax riots, the Toxteth riots, the miners' dispute etc, etc).

Eventually, and cutting a curtailed story even shorter, Britain became a Right-wing nation and the notion that people used to support each other was forgotten. That's when the politicians really woke up.
Labour, under Blair, took a monumental decision. Blair decided that the only thing that mattered was power, no matter how you got it. If people wanted greed and Right-wing policies then they could have them. He consequently aped Thatcher and set about converting Labour into a more extreme version of the Tories, paving the way by getting the abolition of Clause 4 through Conference. "Ah, but once he gets into power he'll revert to Labour principles," the naive Party faithful whispered, no matter that such an approach was immoral. Well, when he inevitably got into power, did he revert to tradition and begin steering the country back to the centre/Left-of-centre? You bet your arse he didn't! He hijacked more and more Right-wing policies which Thatcher's regime had dreamed up but dared not introduce and the lurch to the Right went on at an unrelenting pace. Blair's only nod to decency and morals was when, no doubt fearing prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act, he changed the name of the Party from "Labour" to "New Labour". Job done!

When Britain was politically on a par with the United States and the "what's in it for me?" doctrine was made not only acceptable but de rigeur, Blair then decided to adopt US campaigning methods to match. Politics was not and would no longer be about principles. There were, after all, no principles left, other than those of the Right and far-Right. When there are no opposing doctrines the word "principle" is redundant as it implies that it is just one of many ways. It is replaced instead by the phrase "THE way". Anyone who still believed in anything else was branded "a dinosaur" so as to belittle and ostracise them. History was also rewritten to prove that Old Labourites belonged to the land that time forgot and make it seem as if New Labour had always been right. Notably, the phrase most associated with the welfare state, namely "from cradle to grave", was reinterpreted to read "nanny state". Seeing as how politicians became indistinguishable in their beliefs, politics became about style, presentation, who looked best in a suit, who had nice hair, who did the best "photo opportunities" (goddamn, I fucking HATE that phrase), who loved God, who drank beer for the cameras, who kissed the most babies, who was seen with the most actors/actresses/yob musicians etc, etc.

Can you see it coming? You must be able to? Well, this state of affairs is tailored precisely to fit the "floating voter" mentioned earlier. As principles were crushed, floating voters increased in number, more and more people began ignoring others, the screams of "what's in it for me?" grew louder and so we got to the position we are in today where they form the majority in most areas.

So, cut to last Thursday and what did it illustrate? Well, we saw final proof that the vicious circle has completed yet another revolution and the Tories have adopted Blair's American-inspired smoke-and-mirrors/spin doctored substitute for principles to snare the mindless floating voters. The Tories have a new cunt in charge - David Cameron.
No-one knows where the fuck he came from, no-one knows where the fuck he wants to go, apart from to Number 10 Downing Street. There is a simple explanation for this. It's because, like Blair/Brown/New Labour, he doesn't BELIEVE in fucking anything, only in seizing power. He will say and has said absolutely ANYTHING he thinks will get him elected - and that's ANYTHING. I mean, what exactly are his policies? He hasn't fucking got any and yet the spin system and a Right-wing media have conned a gullible public into thinking that he is the man to lead this country. How? By relentlessly publicising his attacks on New Labour. Does he ever offer alternative policies. No!

The floaters (an apposite name), being thick, swallowed everything hook, line and sinker and so swapped their Labour votes for ticks in the Tory boxes. National politics should have little bearing on local council elections (as an ardent Socialist I have to admit that four of the six best local councillors I have ever met/worked with were Tories. They were the best because they worked hardest for their constituents) but if the floaters can be spun into believing that the now aborted abolition of the 10p tax band was an outrageous, new Brown policy - it was announced at a previous fucking budget but only hit the headlines when the media machine began working for Cameron - then they can be spun into thinking that Cameron will be personally emptying their bins on Monday if they vote Conservative. (N.B. As an aside, the extent to which we have disappeared down the political toilet is illustrated vividly by the fact that it took Tory pressure to overturn a Labour plan - yes, that's right, A LABOUR PLAN - to abolish tax help for the poorest in our society!!!)

Labour had not vowed immediately prior to Thursday's election to have children under the age of 12 sold into slavery. The Tories had not promised to give everyone £1 million if they voted for them. No-one had vowed to do anything - that would have constitued having a policy - yet the floating voters spoke again and Labour suffered its biggest local council losses for 40 years. More than that, affable and, dare I say, lovable Tory idiot Boris Johnson ousted Labour man Ken Livingstone to become London Mayor. Not because of policies, God knows not because of principles, but simply because the media had said Cameron was good, Labour was bad and that was all the floaters needed to hear.

What then does the future hold? Will the Conservatives go on to win the General Election? Well, the last time things were this bad for Labour at the locals Blair actually went on to win nationally. The floaters spoke then, having been intellecutally wowed by him subsequently playing the guitar and kicking a football, and they will speak again in the months to come. Brown might confess that he has been battling pancreatic mange for five years and hearts will go out to him, along with votes. The Cameron machine, on the other hand, might give their man a new hairdo and that will wow Middle England. Who knows? You see, politics is now, and has been for the last 20 years, in the hands of those people who do not deserve a vote. No, I'm not talking about Milwall fans, I'm talking about the unprincipled floating voters. They're the people who brought about unprincipled politicians. I hope they're all happy together. Fuck 'em.

Floating voters can go to Grantham.

A Treatise On the Viability of the Blogger System

2008-05-02T12:02:00.002Z

I've just spent a fucking hour writing a fucking piece about the fucking elections and fucking Blogger has just fucking chewed the fucking lot up and fucking digested it and so I've fucking wasted my fucking time on this fucking machine!!!!!!!!!!!!

It doesn't matter if you keep fucking saving it as you fucking go on, the fucking save button at the bottom doesn't fucking work anyway and there is no fucking way of retrieving what you've fucking written once it decides that it's fucking had enough. This is fucking happening more and fucking more and I hope that everyone involved in devising the fucking system dies a horrible, lonely and painful fucking death.

I FUCKING HATE FUCKING BLOGGER!!!

Blogger can fuck off to fucking Grantham!!!!!

Calling All Birdwatcher Watchers

2008-04-30T14:43:00.000Z

Where has Birdwatcher gone? He last posted on April 18.

I know he was getting excited about the curlews coming back but he can't still be up on the Goyt, trousers round his ankles and twitchers notebook in hand (euphemism).

Any sightings of him welcomed. Better still, come on BW, stop accounting, stop chasing birds and come back to us.

Humph

2008-04-26T07:01:00.019Z

When I die I will not, to adapt a phrase from cricket, trouble the typesetters. "Reg Pither has died," the obituary will simply read.
Humphrey Lyttleton, on the other hand, has given printers the length and breadth of this land more of a workout. You see, Humph rolled a seven last night. "Trumpeter, bandleader, calligrapher, cartoonist, writer, journalist, witticist and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttleton has died aged 86," was the intro in just one report today.

My most illustrious relative was my paternal grandfather who was mayor of Mansfield. Impressed, huh? I didn't think so. Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttleton, on the other hand, was a cousin of the 10th Viscount Cobham and a great-nephew of the politician and sportsman Alfred Lyttleton - the first man to represent England at both football and cricket.
Humph was schooled at Eton where, inspired by Louis Armstrong (not a fellow pupil), he developed his love for jazz and the trumpet in particular. His first job was surprisingly in a steel works in Port Talbot, Wales, which, despite his aristocratic roots, no doubt had the greatest influence on his character, which he described as "romantic Socialist" - a lovely phrase which, with the insertion of the words "angry" and "comedic", I would like to think sums me up. He saw action in the Second World War at Salerno in Italy with, predictably enough bearing in mind his upbringing, the Grenadier Guards and went on to be a cartoonist with the Daily Mail before establishing his reputation as an excellent jazz musician and band leader.

Jazz will no doubt today account for the bulk of the obituaries but I have to say I am not a devotee of the genre. Jazz to me is much like a nuclear weapon. I can admire and fully appreciate the complexity, immense skill and hard work involved in its creation - I'm just not a big fan of the end product.

No, my love of Humph, like millions of you out there, was fostered by his chairmanship of the Radio 4 comedy panel game "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue".
I began listening to it as a 12-year-old when he first hosted it back in 1972 - and I have been a huge fan ever since. I have no doubt the show will continue with someone else in the chair but it just won't be the same so I shall refer to it from now on in the past tense. Like my other radio favourite Round The Horne, the comedy on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was as good as it gets. Not only was it often exceedingly clever, despite being ad-lib and on-the-spot, it was also sprinkled liberally with those kingpins of lots of great British comedy - double entendres, puns and sarcasm. The Carry On films and almost everything involving Kenneth Williams were built around much the same but neither of them was as intelligent or came as near to the knuckle as Humph. His double entendres particularly, when simply decoded, were positively obscene! Those little asides about the mythical Samantha, the show's supposed scorer, used to truly make me blush in front of my mother while listening to the radio on a Sunday.

"Samantha has to nip out again to see an elderly lord who regularly complains to Radio 4 about their parliamentary coverage. She says she thinks he's even going to start getting a little hard on Today In Parliament." (N.B. For non-British readers, Today is a news and current affairs programme aired each morning on Radio 4.)

"Samantha has to nip off to the National Opera where she's been giving private tuition to the singers. Having seen what she did to the baritone, the director is keen to see what she might do for a tenor."

"Samantha tells me that she has to nip off to a special Welsh Conservative Association dinner for their most senior MP, whose name is said to be almost impossible to pronounce. She's certainly found the longest standing Welsh member a bit of a mouthful."

"Samantha tells me she has to pop out now as she does a few chores for an elderly gentleman who lives nearby. She shows him how to use the washing machine and then goes out to prune his fruit trees. Later he'll be hanging out his pyjamas as he watches her beaver away up the ladder."

"After tasting the meat pies, Samantha said she liked Mr Dewhurst’s beef in ale, although she preferred his tongue in cider."

"Samantha has to go now as she’s off to meet her Italian gentleman friend who’s taking her out for an ice-cream. She says she likes to spend the evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan."

Etc, etc, etc.

There was also ardent letter writer "Mrs Trellis, of North Wales":

"A Mrs Trellis of North Wales has written in to complain that the show has 'an enormous fistful of rampant innuendo rammed into every crack', but only a truly filthy-minded person would think such a thing."

"Dear Mr Titchmarsh, This morning I went out to dig up some dandelions and a giant hogweed on my lawn. The filthy beast! Yours faithfully, Mrs Trellis."

"Dear Mrs McCartney, My, what a terrible mess. You must be kicking yourself."

"Dear Rolf, They say a dog isn't just for Christmas. How true. You can use it for sandwiches all through January."

Etc, etc, etc.

Then, of course, there was the regular game "Mornington Crescent". Trying to explain this - and why it is funny - to anyone outside Britain would be impossible, so I won't. Just cut and paste the following (sorry, I can't do links): www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjH70FeZoPQ&feature=related

To save wasting more minutes of our lives, why not also try the following clips?

If you're American, then why not start with this example of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue for Colonials"? www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRFzVdvNQXo&feature=related

Then move on to:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV0BxHqS48Y&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NNiJBmjL3E

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uzbOgsP-VM&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-A7sEYi8A&feature=related

God bless Humph. Grantham shall not have him.

She

2008-04-25T06:53:00.004Z

Way to go girl! Sisters are doing it for themselves!!

Not exclamations you often hear from Pither, I'll grant you, but I have at last found a holder of XX chromosomes to whom the adulation applies.

This future for personkind is the 11-year-old daughter of a really good friend of mine and she is destined for greatness. I know this having heard a story about her which came my way yesterday.

She - as in She Who Must Be Obeyed - has a nine-year-old brother who is almost a cartoon kid! He is Dennis the Menace, The Incredible Hulk and The Joker rolled into one and would, ordinarily, make any other sister's life a misery. His latest stunt, which saw him rushed to casualty, was to spend an hour in the bathroom shaving his whole body with his mum's razor! Not having a single bodily hair because of his tender years, all he succeeded in doing was flaying himself alive and the blood, I am told, took hours to clean away. When asked by his mum why he decided to shave himself he just barked: "Well, you do it!!"

Anyway, a few weeks ago this mini-monster, true to form, decided that he wanted a tattoo! Not a little tattoo, mind. No. A bloody big one, a la Beckham! Having made that mistake he then went and made a second one - he asked his sister to draw one on him.

Supergirl was only too happy to oblige and, feltpen in hand, she began drawing what he thought was a weird and "cool" design on his back and his chest. Said daughter, having stepped back and admired her handiwork, calmly walked downstairs to sit with her mum leaving terrorkid to find a mirror and check out his new look. That's when the first screams started, followed quickly by wails and floods of tears. The lad ran downstairs in a terrible state and bawled to his mum:

"Mum, mum, mum, look what she's done. She's drawn a bra on me!!"

Now that is class!! It took two baths and a lot of scrubbing by mum to get the artwork off him. Grantham shall not have her.

For You, Herr Banker, Zee Whoring Is Over!

2008-04-23T05:53:00.000Z

"Blenkinsop, Johnson, Snodworthy!! Get in here!!! Are you sure this woman was Holland's Minister for Overseas Development?"

New boy at the school of "You Couldn't Make This Up" is a report on how deep the what-the-fuck-did-you-think-was-going-to-happen? credit crunch is biting.

While the rest of us are busy battling to save our homes and stay out of debtors prison, it is comforting to know that those poor boys and girls in The City who helped to bring about the whole crisis in the first place are suffering as well.

The alarm bells have begun ringing in Deutsche Bank where a memo has gone round to staff ordering them to tighten their belts. The memo gives a fascinating insight into the current looseness of belts in the capital's financial heart.

Does this shock memo warn of mass redundancies? Nope! Perhaps a three-day week is on the cards? Nope! The closure of the final salary pension scheme, surely? No, the swingeing cuts at Deutsche are being made in employees' expenses.

If you think you've got it tough, how about this? The memo - THIS IS TRUE - insists that:

1. Staff should no longer charge the use of prostitutes and brothels to exes.
2. Nights spent at lap dancing or strip clubs are no longer on the company.
3. Deutsche Bank will say "nein" to claims for time spent on wrist exercise, tissue in hand, watching the porn channel in hotel rooms.
3. Staff should only travel second class on journeys of under two hours.
4. The cost of lunch be no more than £52-per-person - that's FIFTY TWO POUNDS - unless by prior arrangement.
5. Staff arriving in another country on an early morning flight should shower and shave at the airport and not claim expensive "You're Better Than Everyone Else" check-in facilities.
6. Cross-London travel should be by Tube and not taxi, unless by prior arrangement.

I think this is utterly disgraceful. As the CBI, fat cats and successive governments have repeatedly warned, unless we pay the proper rate to people who spend their time whoring, masturbating and gorging themselves while being ferried around the country in the lap of luxury then we face the prospect of losing them to companies abroad.

Wake up Britain!

Greed Is Good

2008-04-22T19:07:00.005Z

Further to the last post about Britain's fat, fickle and fornicating former Deputy Prime Minister and his claims that he suffered/still suffers? from bulimia, I am forced to put digits to keyboard again on the subject after Prescott did that at which he is best - he put some flesh on the bones.

We now hear that the lardarse lapsed Labourite was bulimic because he ate so much at a sitting that even his voluminous gut couldn't take it so he was sick shortly afterwards. THAT'S NOT FUCKING BULIMIA! THAT IS BEING A REVOLTING, GREEDY BASTARD!!

Bulimia is a mental disorder. It is a "fingers-down-the-throat-to-make-one-vomit" condition. The sufferer takes a conscious decision to evacuate the contents of his or her stomach so that none of it will end up being laid down as fat. Stuffing yourself so much that your system is unable to cope with the vast amount ingested so that it chucks it back up is not a mental disorder - it is a sociological one.

This bullshit from Prescott illustrates vividly two recurrent themes on this Blog:
1. The New Labour cuckoos are INCAPABLE of telling the truth and even come to believe their own lies so assume the public will do likewise.
2. No-one is responsible for their actions. Everything anti-social or objectionable is down to some spurious medical condition which absolves the perpetrator from all blame.

It's little-boy-and-emperor's-new-clothes time again. Sadly, while this little boy continues to shout from the sidelines, our mindless, touchy-feely, women's magazine-obsessed broadcasters actually PRAISE Prescott for what they see as a "brave admission". Result? The fat, lumbering, turncoat, greedy oaf who is Prescott is suddenly held up as some paragon of virtue.

Greed is good? Thatcher implied it, Gordon Gekko said it, now it is a reality in this upside down country.

Greed can go to Grantham.