Tuesday 30 December 2008

Is It Racist?

I have to start by removing the curse that I placed upon my Secret Santa on Sunday. It turns out that she was just off sick and had not forgotten to buy me anything so sorry about that Secret Santa.

So today’s discussion is about Racism. A co-worker is holding a themed fancy dress New Years Eve party. The theme is Hollywood Greats and Motown Stars. Hollywood Greats are no real problem because there are so many of them and most of them are white (have your own rasicm debate about that), no, the problems start when you try and dress as a Motown Star as nearly all of them are black, except for Kiki Dee (the first white woman to sign to Motown fact fans) and most of her friends aren’t. So are question was this, is it racist to “black up” in order to celebrate your hero’s work? If you are not racist but want to dress up as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes (not all at the same time obviously) because you love them and want to pay tribute to them do you suddenly become racist as you apply a dark brown make-up to your face? I’m pretty sure that the answer is yes because most people will receive the gesture as racist. Discuss.

The score so far, Palestinian dead 380, Israeli dead 4.

The border is closed, by both Israel and Egypt, and so it has become like shooting fish in a barrel. It is a slaughter and only America can make it stop. Israel is not trying to stop the rocket attacks as it claims. A BBC reporter today saw 4 rockets fired from Gaza in about a 45 minute period and, despite troops just over the border and planes and helicopters patrolling the airspace above, it took 10 minutes for a retaliation rocket strike at just one of the sites and the other 3 were not hit in the following ½ an hour. Instead they bomb a University. One air strike killed two sisters, the eldest aged 11, riding in a donkey cart in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said. The UN has called for an investigation into the attacks, which are causing heavy civilian casualties. It says at least 62 of the Palestinians killed so far were women and children. Richard Falk - the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories - said the international community must put more pressure on Israel to end its assault. "Israel is committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenceless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months," Mr Falk said in a BBC interview.

This last part was taken from the BBC website.

Sunday 28 December 2008

Diana Watch

I do hope that you all had a lovely Christmas. Mine was a bit sucky to be honest because I was at work and significant other was in Kent because her Dad isn’t well but she came home on Boxing Day and all became well again. And I got some good presents as well so thank you to everyone who bought me stuff but a pox on you, whoever got me in the work secret Santa and hasn’t bought me a present yet, git.
I think that I am supposed to write a review of the year but I can’t really remember most of the things that happened, news wise, this year. I could write a review of my personal year but that would be a little self indulgent, has been a good year though, I got married and also drank a lot of tea, so I won’t do that either. I would think that most of you have better things to do at this time of year than spend time with this sort of rambling nonsense so let’s keep it nice and short.
It’s not been the greatest week ever for liberal members of the Catholic Church, I’m sure there are some somewhere, if you look really, really hard, after the Pope’s motivational message to his work force and than the Christmas message in a sermon at a children’s service in Italy given by some Priest or other. The Pope decided that his Christmas letter should, rather than the usual round-robin family nonsense, “it’s been a good year for us here at the Vatican”, include some insulting remarks about homosexuality and gender reassignment. It would seem that they are as big a treat to the world as deforestation or at least saving the world from those nasty gays is as important, to him, as saving the rainforests. Now maybe it is possible that the Pope really doesn’t give a fuck about saving the rain forest and therefore he’s not really that interested in homosexuality either but I think that that is unlikely.
He feels that gender theory is blurring the distinction between Male and Female, he sounds like my Dad the first time he saw Boy George sometime in the 80’s, “ well is it a man or a woman?”, and could lead to the “self-destruction” of man-kind. I’m sorry, what? There are 6 billion people in the world and the population is still growing so I think we will be all right on the heti people still breeding thing and, as significant other pointed out, if you want to get picky about the non-breeders, let’s talk about priests shall we. A vow of chastity is it? How does that help with the proliferation of the species? Hypocrite. Oh and that outfit that the Pope insists on wearing, you know, the one that looks a bit Versace, do you think that was designed by a heterosexual man? And then Father Dino Bottino of the Sacred Heart Church of Novara in Northern Italy told the children at a children’s mass that there was no Santa and that it has nothing to do with “the Christmas story”. It has nothing to do with YOUR Christmas story. He defended himself by saying that he didn’t want the children to believe in a fairy tale. To be honest that would be too easy so I won’t bother but still, what a git.Oh yes and 5 million people shopped on-line on Christmas day this year in Britain, that’s 500,000 more than went to Church on this, most sacred day of the year. Does that mean that on-line shoppers now feel that they have some sort of moral superiority over the rest of us and that they can lecture us about how bad we all are? That if we don’t do as they say we will all end up in some sort of on-line shopping hell. You know the sort of thing, you entry your credit or debit card details and your address, you press “pay” and then you end up back at the same screen with one section highlighted in red for no reason that you can fathom. FOREVER! It is a vision of hell to brutal even for Dante to consider for his updated version of the Divine Comedy, set in New York, starring 4 middle age woman constantly discussing their sex lives, oh no that is my personnel vision of hell. Does all of their morality come from an ambiguously written very old book; say a Littlewoods catalogue from 1976. do you see what I’ve done there?
There was a nice story on the news about a goldfish that survived out of its tank for 12 hours, my, what a heart warming story, it must be a quiet news day today. Oh no, wait a minute, isn’t Israel bombing the crap out of Gaza at the moment? It is getting quite a bit of coverage at the moment but not really enough and I ask myself why? Could it be that the BBC have given up trying to explain a complicated situation to us or is it that they don’t want to explain it properly i.e., Israel is in more breaches of UN resolutions than Iran ever was, that invaded Palestine in 1967 illegally, the Israeli settlements are illegal, the US and Britain sell Israel billion dollars of weapons per year, Israel controls everything the goes into Gaza (medicine, fuel, food, people etc) and regularly stop the movement of all of these things into one of the most densely populated regions on earth. Is it any wonder the some Palestinians fire rockets at Israeli towns? That is all I’m going to say because if you criticise Israel you can be accused of being Anti-Semitic and I am not but I do have problems with Israel and America’s attitude to this country.

Not that funny this week, sorry about that, but hey, Christmas can be a depressing time of the year. Hope you have a nice new year xx

Monday 22 December 2008

Diana Watch

If eyes can be flash dance, then you have it. I have been to London and behaved like country mouse as I always do. There is nothing funnier than smiling at lots of people on the Underground. Oh what a delight travelling by tube is. In Paris there are postcards of the entrances to some of the more attractive Metro stations but strangely there aren’t any in London, very odd, they are, at least, as lovely as the ones in Paris and are not in anyway a spectacular embracement to our nation. Nine Lessons and Carols for the Godless was a very fine way of spending time and we had a really good time in London. The Mark Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern is a thing of beauty, please go and see it as these are some of the finest paintings you are likely to see.
Some news. There were two stories that made me laugh out loud this week. The first one is about hedge funds, no wait, don’t close this and go and do something less boring instead, it really is funny. A man called Bernard Madoff, which is pronounced Made Off I’m told, has been charged with massive fraud. Well he turned himself in to be honest, no actual investigating by the financial authorities. The man has a special comedy joke name and yet many people gave lots of money to a man who could only steal it. $50 billion. Yes that’s right; he has de-frauded lots of people, many of them very clever bankers, not rhyming slang, of $50 billion. In very little seriousness this was always going to happen, no oversight, massive greed, almost free credit and a man with a comedy name. Mr Madoff was a respected banker and then he started a hedge fund. He made some money so lots of people gave him lots of money, which they had borrowed at virtually no interest, so that they could make lots of money whilst doing absolutely no work whatsoever and not really checking to make sure that all is well because they were making lots and lots of money. HE HAD A COMEDY NAME, it’s your own fault.
The other thing started with my incredible disbelief and then moved on to serious laughing. The disbelief part was when the news announced that George W Bush was on a farewell tour of Iraq. He’s doing what? See how well we have rebuilt your country, ok we bombed the shit out of it first but, hey, it’s looking better now. Really? Is he that arrogant? Does he understand so little? Yes it would seem that he really doesn’t understand which made the laugh out loud part even funnier. At a press conference in Baghdad an Iraqi journalist got up, slowly removed his shoe and, whilst shouting quite poetic abuse at the still President Bush, proceeded to hurl that shoe in his general direction. Then, whilst the secret service decided whether or not to bother doing anything, after all it was only a shoe and he is only President until January the 20th and guarding the next one is going to be really hard work even compared to this douche bag, don’t we deserve a little break, the journalist removed his other shoe and throw that as well. Only then, when the shoe thrower had thrown all shoes available to him, short of wrestling the shoes off of those sat closest to him, only then did the secret service bother to wrestle him to the ground and beat the crap out of him, which could be heard through the very thin walls of the poorly reconstructed building in which the press conference was taking place. If you are going to beat a man it’s best not to do it when the worlds press can hear you, free advice there for you, think of it as a Christmas present if you like. For some inexplicable reason the news footage of this event has become really popular in the Arab world and you can see why,

It is very funny.

There was some serious news this week but we won’t linger on it to long it is Christmas after all and I’m sure you have more important things to be doing. In Scotland a man, or an NHS Doctor as he was referred to in most newspapers and on TV news leading to a great many clichés, “he pledged to do no harm but decided to kill” etc, was found guilty on a series of terrorism charges. Fair enough, he got out of a burning jeep that had just crashed into Glasgow Airport’s front door and was filled with petrol and nails, when searched his house contained a bomb making “factory” and he had made a martyrdom tape, so I think that he may have done it. The part that ruined my week was that a second man, Mohammed Asha, stood in court with him and was charged with aiding Terrorism. The evidence seemed only to consist of the fact that he knew the first man and was a bit brown, which as we know is now a crime in Britain. Martin Amis can write from the point of view of terrorist and all is well, a young Muslim woman does the same thing and is in court. Any way, was found guilty of all charges. He had no case to answer. He could now go back to his career as a doctor which he seems to have excelled at. Well, no. he was immediately re-arrested and told that he was to be deported because his presence "is not conducive to the public good" . It makes you proud, doesn’t it? A man comes up against British justice which works well, weighs the evidence and finds him innocent, and then the Government decides that, despite doing nothing wrong but knowing someone who turned out to be bad, he should be removed. As his statement said "I am an innocent man. The use of the Home Office notice is disingenuous and appears to be sour grapes on the part of the Government."

Some shopping numbers now and the Office of National Statistics has released figures that show sales to be up 0.3% on last year in November and, as we discussed before, it was a record year for sales last year, so good news I think you would agree. Mean while the British Chamber of Commerce released some numbers to show that sales were down and that if we didn’t go out right now and spend all the money that we have there would be no shops left at all in the New Year. Now the ONS is an independent civil service group that collates all available statistics, the BCC is a lobby group for shops that only surveys about 60% of them, which do you believe?

Christmas awards now,


The Christmas Award for most expensive car to drive in the congestion charge zone,

This goes to this stretched hummer that we saw on Friday evening,
Photobucket

If they get 1 mile to the gallon I would be surprised.


The Awards for Products of the Year,

Various products were in the running for this, they include,

Photobucket

I wouldn’t buy it, and the Daily Mail mug,

Photobucket

But the winner is, The Palm Pistol, go to http://www.palmpistol.com/,


Photobucket

the developer says that it is seeking to obtain medical equipment coding from the centre for Medicare and Medicaid services for the pistol. If successful, it is possible the medically prescribed purchase of the gun could be reimbursed by Medicare or private health insurance companies. It describes the medical purpose of the gun as extension of life expectancy and “prevention of sudden onset death.” Thank you to the BMJ for that one.




I hope you all have a lovely Christmas xx

Oh and a special mention to my friend Kate who sent us the best Christmas card this year, thank you xx

Wednesday 17 December 2008

Things I've Seen

Things that I have seen so far this week,

1) The “Views” counter of my myspace blog pass the 5000 mark, thank you all for reading,

2) A man buying Blue Nun, no really, Blue Nun, who knew they still made it?

3) Another man packing his recently purchased shopping into a wheely suitcase in Waitrose.

Going to see 9 Lesson and Carols for the Godless on Friday, really looking forward to it, have a nice rest of week xx

Monday 15 December 2008

Diana Watch

I was 2 and a half when I was born. Can you imagine my disappointment this morning when I got up and went to the kitchen, turned on the radio and the only working channel was Planet Rock and the tune that they were playing was Bon Jovi, it wasn’t the finest start to my day if I’m honest.
I’m sorry it’s late but I was going to do it yesterday afternoon but I had a surprise work instead, it seems that most of our staff are off sick with flu. I’m told it is very unpleasant, significant other has had it for over a fortnight now and is only now starting to feel better, so far no sickness in me, annoying smug I think you’ll find.
I have decided that I am deliberately obtuse. Monday was supposed to be the busiest internet shopping day of the year so I decided not to buy anything on purpose. On the subject of Christmas shopping we have an update, I have found a Transformers Megatron for my nephew, which is nice, but I now have another problem. What on earth do you buy a 96 year old for Christmas? If you’ve lived that long the likelihood is that you have most of things that you need yet I have to think of a present for my Nana’s 97th birthday on the 20th and then a Christmas present for 5 days later, it gets harder with each pressing year. Many, many years ago (about 8 or 9 to be honest) she asked for a 5 year diary, “that’s a bit optimistic” I said to her but which of us now has egg on our face? That would be eggy faced Martyn.

There have been some news stories around this week but they are all a little dull, repetitive or depressing but this seems to be a sort of news blog entry type of thing so let’s give one or two of them a go.
Two stories from the EU were quite entertaining, the first one involves those nice people in the Republic of Ireland, that’s the bit in the south that didn’t plant bombs everywhere that does seem to have been forgotten in our “War on Terror”, who said “No” to the EU constitution in a referendum many months ago and since then the whole constitution project has been dead in the water as all member states have to ratify it but now the brilliant minds that hide somewhere within the EU have come up with a plan of such staggering genius it makes you wonder why these people are not out curing cancer or doing something else worth while. There plan is so simple, why didn’t we think of it? The plan is this; ask the Irish if they are sure. That’s right, the Irish are going to get another go at getting the answer to a very simple question, would you like an EU constitution, right. They got it wrong last time so let’s see if they’ve learnt anything. The likelihood is, of course, that in asking a second time and making themselves look a bit silly that those who support the “Yes” campaign will loose by even more because you just annoy people be saying, “are you sure?” “no, really, are you sure” “is that you’ll final answer”
The other story is not so much about the EU but more about European politics in general. The German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck criticized Gordon Brown’s plan to save the economy in an interview say that the VAT cut would make no difference and that we would have levels of government debt that would take a generation to work off. Whilst both of these things are true the funny thing was the statement from the German Government offering “Clarification”. The statement said “it is not about criticizing our British friends,” really? Because that really is what it sounded like to me. The statement went on to say, “the Finance Minister simply made very clear…….. why a limited drop in VAT is not an appropriate instrument for Germany or for the fight against the Global recession.” Uh huh. Whilst it wasn’t about criticizing you, your idea is rubbish. It must be nice to be in politics, you can say one thing and then some one in your department will issue a statement for you spelling out what you meant to say in a special form of civil service double talk, nice.

A quick mention for assisted suicide, told one of the stories was depressing, as it came up twice this week. The first time was when the Crown Prosecution Service decided not time press charges against parents who help their 27 year old son take his life in Switzerland earlier in the year. This leaves us in an interesting legal grey area because helping someone to end their life in illegal in this country, helping them include enabling them to travel to another country where it is legal i.e. Switzerland, but, as far as I’m aware, the CPS has never pressed charges against anyone who has done this and as our legislators flatly refuse to even discuss the subject we are left with this situation were whilst it is illegal you won’t get prosecuted so it is sort of legal. Not the best way to leave this very complicated and emotive issue I think you will agree. Personally I am in favour of assisted suicide, if it was necessary I would like that option please. I would like to choose the manner and timing of my death if I was that ill. Obviously the problems would come in the legal framing of this so that people couldn’t be cajoled into doing it or people who felt that they had become a burden on their family etc but still I would like that option. You would put an animal out of its suffering, so why would you not help some one you love. Suffering is not just physical pain, it is the knowledge that at some point in your life the time is going to come all you can do is blink, you are feed by a tube, a machine breaths for you and all you can do is see this happening. The counter arguments are strong and persuasive but when they involve quality of life arguments the person best placed to make decisions on that is the person suffering.
The other mention of it was because Sky showed a documentary about it midweek. A couple’s journey was shown as they decided what they were going to do and then the final act as the man took his own life. There was shock and outrage in our papers, “how can they show a man die?” was the line taken by most of them. It’s a terrible thing, a new low, etc etc, oh and here are some pictures of it! I’m sorry? What now? Television is bad for showing it but it’s ok for you? No, fine, just so that we know where the line is. Many groups, mostly religious, were appalled that this program would be shown because it would “glorify” assisted suicide. Two points here, I am assuming that most of them hadn’t seen the film because very few people had; I don’t think they were at a press screening so they weren’t really making a well informed point and “Glorifying” assisted suicide? Glorifying death is very difficult with several thousand years of religious fundamentalism behind you. Simply showing some people making the most important decision that anyone can every make and then carrying out that decision isn’t glorifying anything, it shows how hard the choice is. It shows that these choices are not hurried, rash or flippantly made. No one was forced or persuaded. 2 rational people made a well informed decision. No more, no less. Many people just upset about a film on television showing death it’s self. I’m sorry; do you not watch the news? It is wall to wall death and suffering. Was it because it was a real, actual death and not a television entertainment death? It was not a Hollywood film or and HBO series, it was not news-atainment, it was real. It was a real person dying and that is hard to watch I can assure you.

A quick mention for the BBC’s Sport Personality of the Year, an amusing concept for me as most sportsman don’t seem to have a personality, but well done Chris Hoy, he was my choice, and well done Ben Geyser from Dorchester who won the Unsung Hero award for his work with local boxers.

And so to the awards,

The Award for Wuss of the Week,

This goes to the “comedian” Alan Carr who felt it necessary to apologise for a joke he made BACKSTAGE, not during the show, at National Comedy Awards. He said that he originally planned his Celebrity Ding Dong sketch to feature Rough Women not Fashionistas.
"It didn't work out because they couldn't cast it. I suppose it is a bit difficult to find rough women. I suppose Shannon Matthew's mum was busy," he said.
"Oh yeah, she would be my dream guest. I think she's a gay icon. People like a bit of rough don't they?"
Carr added: "I must be obsessed with her actually if you look at my Google searches. So I should dedicate this award to her."

My problem is not the joke, although it isn’t that funny, it’s the speed at which he apologised. It took him less than 24 hours because a couple of papers got a bit pissy, good, it’s his job, but clearly he doesn’t believe in the things that he said otherwise he would have stood by his remark.

The Award for Shaping My Formative Years,

This goes to Oliver Postgate, co-creator of Bagpuss, the Clangers and Ivor the Engine to name but a few who died this week. As a mini tribute here are a few little clips from some of his programs,








Bye for now.

Sunday 7 December 2008

Diana Watch

Get it out, put it in her hand and cry. So if the Bank of England interest rate continues to fall will they end up owing me money? 2% you say, do you hear that HBOS, it’s down to 2% so why isn’t my mortgage? It’s about 5%, gits. It’s time to think about moving the mortgage again I think.
That is probably the dullest intro since the last Keane single so sorry about that. I did have a better one the other day but I decided not to write it down because I thought I would remember it, I didn’t. When will I learn?
I want to start with another appeal, hopefully with more success then the “Good People” one as I have been totally under whelmed by the responses I have received i.e. none, but I asked my brother what his children might like for Christmas (always Christmas by the way, never Xmas, it’s just wrong) and the eldest one wanted a Lego thingy, no problem there, onto their website and ordered it, nice, but he also suggested a Transformers Megatron, whatever that may be, I’m old, I don’t know, for his youngest child. Can I find one? Can I bollocks. I’ve checked all of the toy websites and can’t find one. Bum bum bum bum. Oh well, it adds some excitement to the Christmas period. Oh, I did find one on the Hamleys website but it was twice the price of everywhere else, so if anyone sees one do feel free to tell me where, thank you.

To the news cave! Several positive stories this week which makes a nice change in tone as I have worried that I was becoming moany again. Let us start with a positive EU story. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK Government breached the rights of 2 men who have had their DNA retained on the Police DNA database despite not being guilty of any crime. One of the gentlemen was charged but found innocent and one was arrested but not charged. So as the rules stand at the moment they had their DNA taken and checked against any existing or outstanding crimes on the database, which is sort of fine, but their DNA is then stored on the database indefinitely. There are child on the database and about 850,000 of the 4million people on the database have been found guilty of no crime but their DNA is held on the off chance that they might and this is the part that has been deemed to breach the human rights act. Hurray! Finally someone has seen sense. Now if you listened to various police representatives on the news you would have thought that they had been banned from taking the DNA in the first place or that they couldn’t check it against any existing unsolved crimes, which they haven’t, only storing it forever. To be honest I’m against the taking of DNA before any guilt has been established because it is possible that you get to a situation when the police start arresting people on the off chance that they have committed a crime and their DNA is on a list waiting to be matched. I know it is a touch paranoid but hey, it could happen. I was going to try and link that thought to the arrest and the office searching of Damien Green, that moany Tory bloke who is beginning to sound like a grumpy teenager who has come home to find that his mother has tidied his room, “I told you not to go in my room, it’s my room, I didn’t’ give you permission to go in there, I hate you!” but I could only seem to think of links that made me sound that I thought that the police had over stepped the mark but I don’t. The police where investigating something, they believed that a crime had been committed. Ok so a warrant might have been an idea but they turned up and asked if they could come in and the Sergeant at Arms said “Yes, ok” and they did. Really, what’s wrong with that? The Tory’s did complain at the beginning of this really insignificant problem that arresting officers had used “Anti-terror legislation”. Ha! Now you know how the inappropriate interpretation of anti-terror laws feels, annoying isn’t it?

The other big story of the week is the imprisonment of Karen Matthews, the rather stupid mother of Shannon Matthews. Now whilst there is very little funny about this story it is worth pointing out that the actual crime here was the fact that the poor ugly child was denied all those days of schooling. If there was ever a child that needed as much education as is possible it’s her, not a great deal of depth in that gene pool.

Something that has been dubbed “Lapland in Dorset” has closed down this week after, what it called, “Negative Press”. That was because you attraction was shit! And really expensive. Although some people were being a little petty in their moaning, some complained that they had to queue for 3 hours in the damp and cold to see Santa. Just a couple of points here, 1) Lapland is cold so that was quite realist then, 2) they can’t really be blamed for the weather, 3) as far as I’m aware there is only one Santa, so if you all want to see him you are all going to queue a little. The other thing that people were complaining about was a thing describe on the website as “a magical tunnel of light” because it turned out that it was a gap between some trees with a few fairy lights hanging there. I’m sorry, was there not enough “magic” for you? You do realise that the concept of magic is a fiction, don’t you? Just checking.

To the awards I think,

The Award for Nice People of The Week,

We have a runner up for this award this week. In Rotherham an old lady on an electric mobility scooter broke down in a park. She was approached by 3 hooded youths who pushed her home and refused the money she offered to them. See nice young people, but the winners are Life and Dark Guardian. They are 2 young man who live in New York, dress as superheroes and help homeless people, providing warm clothing and soup etc. All I do is buy a copy of the Big Issue ever so often, feel slightly inadequate now.

The Award for Disappointing Thing of The Week,

This is the announcement by Terry Wogan confirming that he will no longer be commenting on the high point of my cultural year that is the Eurovision Song Contest. He has been doing it since the beginning of time and I love it but he has had enough of doing it which is fair I suppose. The other disappointing is that Graham Norton will be replacing him.

The Award for Looking Like a Bit of a Tit in His New Uniform,

That would be me that would. I have some new uniforms for work and it does seem that ladies in the linen room have cut off dress, hemmed it, and then given it to me. It has a bit of a nipped in waist and everything. Whilst getting ready to go to work this week and I apologise for this image before I even type it, but I put my new top on before I put my trousers on I looked up and saw myself in the mirror and it occurred what I looked like. I looked like a member of Girls Aloud, if they dressed up as nurses for a video obviously. Sigh.

So Toyota have pulled out of Formula 1 citing the credit crunch and global financial problems as their reason, they are lying. The reason they have pulled out is because they spend £500 million a year and are still rubbish.

A quick mention for my football team, AFC Bournemouth, who have finally gone into positive numbers in League 2, they have 3 points. They started the season on -17 because they went into administration, before the credit thingy. So well done there.

Have a nice week everyone, not much on for me this week, had a very nice evening last night, friends round to ours and we wore black tie, very smart.

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Hell In A Hand Cart

Dear The Daily Mail,
I would like to thank you for bringing this very serious matter to my attention. I can not believe that such serious things can happen is THIS country. It really is unacceptable that a man, or an actor at least, should get his penis out on a live broadcast at 10 past 8 in the evening on the BBC, for that is exactly what John Barrowman did on Sunday. Now whilst I except that this was on Radio 1 so no one could see but it was also streamed on the internet on a live webcam feed and, again, I except that no one saw anything so my anger is completely misplaced and just looks like a really bad excuse to be angry at the BBC but that does stop me form being appalled, opportunistically I grant you, but appalled neither the less. I have to agree with the your humourless readership who have posted insightful and well thought through comments on your website, people like Jennifer from Moreton, Wirral who said ”I used to like John Boarowman but he's going down rapidly in my estimation - not a good role model. All right he's gay, we all know that, but it doesn't entitle him to to do this sort of thing.”, a very good point I think you will agree because, gays are no more allowed to wave their willies around than you or me or Margaret Harrison- Marks of Gloucester who said “I wish the BBC would take that aweful loud-mouthed exhibitionist off our screens. I switch off whichever programme he appears on.”, I mean, yes, she can’t spell awful, but she makes I point I think we can all agree on. This one is so funny and erudite, David Bourke of Rochester, Kent writes “Barrowman is so full of himself that he'd have a Civil Partnership with himself if he could.” So very funny, you should give him a job, much funnier than that Littlejohn, the bitter, hate-filled, bigoted twat, sorry fell out of character for a moment there. Carol Vincent of Ventnor, England said “It makes you want to cry, will someone please realise where the world is heading, bring back the old values and save our children and their children, please!!!”, although it is possible she is not taking it as seriously as she should, she is almost quoting Rev. Lovejoy from the Simpsons wife (which I never watch because I might be offended) “won’t someone please think of the children”, hell in a hand cart people. I agree with all the people who say they will not be watching anything he is in ever again, but that is mostly because “TorchWood” is rubbish. Clearly the people who write on the comment sections of your website are very clever but can’t spell for toffee but that’s 1930’s education for you,

Yours filled with impotent rage, oh dear I’ve offended myself by using the word “impotent” before 9 o’clock, I’ll have to complain to myself,
Martyn

Ps, good work on the number of complaints your constantly going on about the Ross/Brand generated, about 40000 I believe, shame that 50000 people complained to Ofcom about the result of one of the X-Factor shows, maybe we will get a better response next time.