Diana Watch

So do they think I am a sucker? This person was so keen to get my money that she e-mailed me twice on the same day,

 “Trust & Good Faith. I am Mrs Sara Faraj, I am 62 years old from Kuwait, I am

suffering from along time cancer of the Lungs which also affected my hearing

ability and my brain.  My husband died in a fatal motor accident. Since his

death I decided not to re-marry, I sold all my inherited belongings and

deposited all the sum of £23M GBP and Two Trunk Box (Family valuables/

Personal Jewelries) with a Private Bank & Securities. I need you to help me

carry out my charity work. Reply through my private

email:sarafarajthomas@advir.com”

 Londoners, are you devoid of all human kindness?

 We came to your quite nice city yesterday and, as is my want, I tried to make people smile on the underground. All you have to do, if you want to join in, is smile at people first, it's not very hard to do but it is pretty much imposable to win the game by getting them to smile back. You lot really don't like to smile do you?

 Yesterday, as others pushed to get onto the grubby little train before allowing those getting off to do so making the whole affair much more difficult than it needs to be, I paused to allow a lady with a pushchair time to get on without getting squashed. I would consider this normal behaviour but judging from the reaction of this lady it's not normal in the London.

 “Thank you, thank you very much. That's really kind of you, thank you.” She seemed surprised as if this had never happened to her before. So I ask again, Londoners, are you devoid of all human kindness?

 We were in London for the opening of a new shop. Significant Other is a keen knitter and is very taken with a shop in Islington called Loop. They have recently moved premises to a slightly more prominent part of the borough and they opened for the first time yesterday.

 They were offering free gift bags for the first 100 customers. Who knew that so many chubby women had such pointy elbows? Bloody hell, these people had absolutely no respect for personal space. This was a shop for the socially inept; it was like Games Workshop for these with jumper bumps.
You can read a more positive view of the visit here as Significant Other has blogged about it.

 Enough about the fun bits of my week, how about some news.

And so familiar Tory policies start to leak out. Last week we had David Willets trying to make sure that only rich people could go to the best Universities and now we have them dropping proposed Labour Government legislation that would have seen Landlords and Letting Agencies properly registered and regulated.

 The purpose of this regulation was supposed to offer some sort of protection from shoddy treatment for those of us who rent but this is not the free market way. Oh no, you and I exist to get ripped off and fucked over by already wealthy people.

 The new Housing Minister Grant Shapps said “It would be difficult to put together and expensive”. So what? I don't care! People need and deserve protection from less honourable rich sorts of people.

 I am not the only who is a little pissed of by this, Ian Potter, operations manager of the Association of Residential Lettings Agents, said: “We are extremely disappointed with the Housing Minister’s decision to scrap the previous Government’s plans for the regulation of letting agents. This move risks seriously hampering the improvement of standards in the private rented sector, [its] reputation and the ... role it plays in the wider housing market, as well as failing to protect the consumer, who has nowhere to go when there is service failure or fraud.” Even the people who represent Landlords think that this decision is poor, that's how bad it is.

 Whilst I'm having what could best be described as a moan the Government have also started a review of health and safety legislation under the guise of reducing red tape.

 Before the election campaign David Cameron had said that he wanted to do this and sighted well worn, Daily Mail type, examples of Elf and Safety gone made. One of his examples was schools making the pupils wear goggles to play conkers. If it was true that that would be a bit ridiculous but it of course it wasn't. One headmistress did it once. So when the review was announced you would have thought that they wouldn't have just gone with cheap, Daily Express-lite, examples wouldn't you. Oh no.  When interviewed by the BBC Lord Young, who has been asked to carry out the review, used this example, under current laws “firemen could say they wouldn't go to a fire because it was too dangerous”, umm, I don't think they can.

 His point was that the Emergency Services should be exempt from H&S laws because they are "paid for doing a job that involves risk", well to a certain degree I would agree with him but should they be exempt from all legislation? Of course not, that is silly.

 The real problem with area of law is not the law it's self but they why that some use it and the Government, to their credit, do want to clamp down on Ambulance chasing and some rather excessive personal injury claims. It is fear of these claims that forces councils and schools into over zealous interpretation of the rules, erring on the side of excessive caution. But again this must be watched.

 We, the small people as Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP Chairman, might describe us, (there is a man who needs to get his statements cleared by PR person before he says them. If you are in a hole, stop digging is the phrase but this really doesn't apply to BP, maybe because they think there might be oil at the bottom of that hole.) do need to have some protection from injury because someone couldn't be bothered to do their job properly.

 Health and Safety laws exist to stop us being exploited and put in danger by bad employers. If you are doing a dangerous job then the HSE is there to make sure that you are protected correctly.

 It does seem that the Government are, again, trying to make laws to aid rich people increase their profit margins at the cost of the workers, comrades!

 Best I join a Union I think.

It's awards time again. I have been trying to get Stephen Fry to present these but I haven't had a reply yet so you'll have to put up with me again, sorry about that.

The Award for Really Not Understanding What the Fuck You Are Saying,

 Thursday's Daily Express confused me no end. Apparently yoghurt can help end the “misery” of hay fever. Before I carry on I do feel sorry for those with hay fever, it's horrible, now back to mocking a “newspaper” for idiots.

 The paper claimed that a new study showed that yoghurt can help stave off the effects of pollen by “boosting the immune system”. WTF?

 1, You, as long as you are in reasonable health i.e. not immunocompromised, you can not “boost” your immune system, and 2, as far as I'm aware, the reaction you get from some pollen touching your mucus membranes causing your eyes to stream and your nose to run is a massive over reaction from a really rather active immune system, if anything your immune system needs deepening down.

 The article persists with this false premise all the way through. To be fair to the researchers involved I think it was probably the Express that misinterpreted some paper or other rather than some bad research, however the only way that I can think of that yoghurt may help those who suffer from hay fever is if they completely smoother their faces in it therefore making it impossible for the pollen to get though. Effective but impractical. 

The Award for Short-Termism of the Worst Sort 2,

 Rarely do we have a repeat of an award (I think it may have only happened once before) but this week is one of those weeks.

 On Thursday the Government announced that it was going to drop or postpone about £2bn worth of  stuff announced by the last lot. Some of these cuts are perfectly reasonable I suppose if you don't have any money left but one of them stood out from the others.

 A company called Sheffield Forgemasters was promised an £80 million loan to help buy a 15,000 tonne press. Now not being versed in such things I have no idea what that is but I do know that it would have used to make specialist parts for nuclear power stations and would have provided up to 400 jobs. If fact it would have been so specialist they would have been only the second company in the world to make these parts. That's second company in the WORLD, not country but WORLD! Jesus, what are the Government thinking?

 Oh and and they seemed to have axed the rather excellent free swims program for children and the over 60's. Oh and the refurbishment plans for Libraries. 

The Award for Thing That Has Made Me Laugh More Than Anything Else This Week,

 I know it's lazy to just put YouTube videos on here but this really is very funny,

The Award for Best Radio Program About Numbers and Statistics,

Ok, so I am assuming that there isn’t a great deal of nominations for this rather specific award but I give you the winner, Radio 4's More or Less.

 If a person makes a claim using statistics or numbers and someone points it out to them, they will investigate it to find out whether it is correct or not.

 Last week Lord Digby Jones, head of the CBI, claimed on the Today programme that we should stop having a go at banks because they pay 25% of all tax that the Treasury receives. Is this true they asked? Umm, no. Their own investigations showed that if you were incredibly generous to the banks they pay about 12.5% of all the tax, still a large amount but 50% less than Sir Digby claimed. Was he available to say where he got his made up figures from? Was he bollocks!

 This week the Daily Telegraph was caught out. They published a story that claimed that we are all paying £4000 per year for public services pensions. They said that this figure came from the new Office for Budget Responsibility.

 Now, one of them, I'm not sure which one although my money is on the newspaper, got this quite wrong. The actual figure is £400 which is considerably lower. They have now changed this on they on-line edition but have not, as fair as the programme is aware, printed an apology.

 You can download past episodes from I-tunes, they really are great and not in anyway dull.

The Award for The Easiest Joke of the Week,

Outside of a church in MONROE, OHIO stands, or at least stood, a really big statue of Jesus. I mean really big, 65ft big. Some have referred to it as the “Touchdown Jesus” as his arms are held aloft in a similar pose as to that taken by an Umpire/referee in American Football just after someone scores a touchdown.

 Anyway, it cost about $250,000 to build and has stood there since 2004 offending no one, unless they were cursed with eyes.

  It seems, however, that it was not people who were offended by the oddity, oh no, because on the night of the Monday the 14^th of June there was a thunder storm and the statue was struck by lightening and burned down. A much higher force seems to have taken a dislike to this depiction of his son and decided to do something about it.

This giant erection was insured though for a cool $500,000. If you were at the insurance company you now that you would love to be the one dealing with this claim and then refuse on the grounds that the lightening strike was an “act of God”, you know you would.

The Award for Thing I Want Most This Week But May Have Difficulty Trying To Hide From Significant Other,

At London’s International Fine Arts Fair you can buy may a beautiful objet d’art but one will stand out form the others. It is significantly cooler and much, much older than everything else there. It is the fossilised skull of a Tarbosaurus bataa, which is related to a T-Rex I’m told.

 It is being sold by a bloke from down the road, well Dorset-based fossil dealer Chris Moore, for the  perfect reasonable £125,000. Now I am good for it but I was wondering if one of you could lend me it for a short period? Anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?

 Have a good week my freinds, I am hoping to make jam tomorrow.

Diana Watch

Unbelievable, he stole my idea. Well there was a little passing credit to me but mostly, he stole idea!


This week I have invented (is that the right word?) a new law of Physics/journalism. We shall, from now on, refer it as Martyn's Law ( I thought about Norris' Law but there are too many S’s at the end.) The law states that, in right wing newspapers, the actual number of facts contained within a columnists polemic IS inversely proportioned to the number of times they use the phrase "in fact" or "the fact is" i.e. the more they use those phrases, the less facts are actually in their piece.


The great thing about the internet is if you think something might be so you can have a quick look at the odd website (always use more than one) and you'll find out if you are correct of not. I believe that it is called fact checking. If, for instance, I thought that Richard Littlejohn was a bit of a Xenophobic, slightly racist misogynist, who thinks that it’s ok to torture terrorism suspects then all I would have to do was to click on to the Daily Mail's website and have a look at his awful, awful column and there it would be in black and white. My facts would have been checked.

It does seem, however, that this is a little bit too much effort for Mr. Littlejohn (or which ever poor sap writes the column for him) and he does get rather a lot of things wrong.

For instance, he routinely calls the National Black Police Association a racist organization. When the BNP were told that they had to amend their constitution because it was illegal as it said no blacks, no dogs, no Irish, he retorted with “But the NBPA don't let in white people, it says Black in their title, they are as racist as the BNP”. Examples here and here. It is a repeated mantra of his awful diatribe but is it true? Has he bothered to check their website? Well if he has he has ignored what he found. On the front page it says this “The NBPA is open to all in policing on application and there is no bar to membership based on colour”. Well that’s sorted that out then.

What he is doing is lying to his readers because he knows that this is what they want to hear and none of them can be bothered to check out whether it is true or not.

He is not the only journalist to do this, Rod Liddle does it a lot and Jan Moir will write anything for money, as she did this week.

She wrote an article which went on about how much she hated “poncey food” but she was found out in the Guardian by Jay Rayner. You see, she used to work as the Restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph (the first mention for them today) but left/was fired over the subject of pay. She hated poncey food so much that she set up her own website that continues, to this day, giving glowing reviews to places that serve poncey food.

She wrote what she was paid too, not what she really thinks.

My favorite bit from Mr Rayners article was this, "Moir's is the authentic voice of backward-looking, navel-gazing, circle-the-wagons, middle England. It is the worst kind of petty, snivelling, bloated, myopic rantery. She clearly understands her market perfectly." I my get that on a T-shirt or maybe a tattoo.


RIP Alexander McQueen.

How did the papers deal with his death? Did they treat it like they did Britney Murphy or Steven Gately? Did they speculate on to what might have killed him? Did they make stuff up? Did Sky News send it helicopter to film his body being taken from his home to the mortuary? The answers to those questions are a no, no and yes.

Most papers where reasonably respectful but couldn't help themselves in mentioning the fact that he was gay but they all managed to behave a little better than the Mail did following the death of heiress Casey Johnson, heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune. The headline was "Lesbian socialite Casey Johnson lay dead for three days in flat after taking suspected drug overdose" What has her sexuality got to do with anything? And, to be fair to Mail readers (not a phrase I use often) they asked that to in the comments section.

This article was genius Mail writing as it later said, "Friends believe Miss Johnson's death is similar to that of Hollywood star Brittany Murphy, who died shortly before Christmas at the age of 32.”

Oh nice work, link it to someone else’s death that you thought was suspicious.

They then continued “More than a dozen prescription drugs were found at the home the Clueless actress shared with her British screenwriter husband, Simon Monjack."

The article goes on and on about drug taking and prescription pills but then says "A Los Angeles police spokesman said there were no signs of foul play and that Miss Johnson had died of natural causes."

For the record , Britney Murphey died of Pneumonia and Casey Johnson from Diabetic ketoacidosis.

There seems to be a new, distasteful trend in British newspapers. It is the unpleasant and unnecessary article that criticizes the person who has just died. The Mail is usually the paper that gets in there first, I refer you to the stories mentioned above, but with the death of Alexender McQueen they backed off and it was left to the Telegraph (there’s your second mention) who got Toby Young to write an article questioning his genius.

I don't mind the article questioning this, although hipster jeans that were barely covering many ladies bottom a few years ago, that was McQueens idea (oh and he worked as an apprentice in Savile Row before going to St Martins, so he knew about tailoring. He knew about cutting fabric and sewing, he had talent), but Mr McQueen seems to have killed himself following the death of his mother. His death was announced on Thursday, her funeral was on Friday, the day that this tasteless piece of self-promotion was published.

I can not argue that McQueen was or wasn't a genius in the fashion world, I don't know enough about it, but those that do say he was and that is good enough for me. I wouldn't dream of having a go at someone from an area of culture that I don't understand in order to make myself look big and clever. Toby Young, however, is an arse. He has written a book about what an incredible arse he is, it's called "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People". He went to America, behaved like an arse and no one liked him. He then tried to make it into knowingly, self aware, ironic book about how funny it was that no one liked him. No. Knowingly being an arse makes you an even bigger arse. Oh and he likes Rod Liddle, known Racist and misogynist.


Winter Olympics are here!

Firstly, my condolences to the family and team mates of Nodar Kumaritashvili who was killed yesterday whilst training for the Luge.

I know that there are problems with the Olympic movement, it's more about money than sport etc, but I love the winter Olympics for a number of reasons. One of these is that Great Britain (with a few exceptions) is pretty poor at all of the sports and therefore I can just enjoy them as sports. No national pride is at stake. I also love to see (in a non-patronizing way) countries that have no snow taking part. Watching highlights of the opening ceremony bought a lump to my throat, although that might have been cancer, not to self, make Dr’s appointment for lump in throat.

I also like most sports carried out on ice and snow because it’s slippery and therefore hilarity is only seconds away. They could fall over at any moment!

I can’t ski or skate so I am impressed with anyone else who can. I have quite a poor sense of balance so, to be honest, walking is a little bit hard. I’m also not brave enough for many of the sports. A quick look at the schedule will show you good list of life-shortening activities. Ski jumping, planks strapped to the feet of Northern European men who ski off cliffs. Ice Hockey, men with no teeth and anger management issues (my personal favourite). Skeleton Bob, (team GB’s only medal last time out by the way) headfirst down a bobsleigh run on a tin tray. It’s very, very dangerous and, therefore, very entertaining.

I think I have said this before but this sort of multi-sport event makes me love digital television. Who doesn’t get excited by the phrase “press your red button for more snowboarding”?

The only thing I don’t like is the ice skating. It is clever and skillful but it is mind numbingly boring. The only thing that is funny about it is the stony faces of the scary look eastern European woman who have trained the skaters as they don’t get their marks that they quite obviously should do.

This does lead to a few issues in our house as it is Significant Others favourite event. I’m told that spandex clad, sequin enriched men skating around on one foot is much more exciting than Snowboard Cross or Bobsleigh Heats. It isn’t.


So, some awards then,

The Award for Being Pointlessly Offended by Something of No Consequence,

It’s another blow to Britain's beleaguered manufacturing industry as some badges that are going to be sold at the olympic games in London are going to be made in China.

Well, it’s really important if you work for the Daily Express. So important that it is worth putting on the front page.



Badges? Really? You have to be trying really hard to be offended if badges are the things that get you. And, like their story earlier in the week about Salt shortages (in the article it pointed out later that there was 6000 tonnes of salt in Kent, so not running out then), it was a bit of a misrepresentation of the situation.

The company who won the contract have set up a British arm of their company, so jobs there, and, as one of the commenters pointed out (and he should know as he runs one of the distribution company), there are jobs for people who work in importing and distribution. And really, how many jobs are there in a badge making factory? It's not like they are hand crafted by highly trained badge artisans working only by candle light, long into the night.

The Express wheeled out it’s usual suspects of people to be offended, a Tory MP and someone from The Tax Payers Alliance (one of their members got offended when I put on Twitter how much I hated them.) and tried to bury the statement from a spokesperson for London 2012 which included the line “In all 98 per cent of Olympic contracts, totaling around £5billion have gone to UK-based firms.” That’s quite a lot isn’t it?


The Award For I Didn’t Know That Someone Was Credited With Inventing It,


This goes to Walter Frederick Morrison who has died this week at the rather excellent age of 90. It seems that he invented (or is at least credited with inventing) the Frisbee.

I have discovered many interesting things reading the article on the BBC website such as, there is such a thing as a Frisbee historian (he’s called Phil Kennedy if you are interested) and there is an official Frisbee website. Oh and it used to be called the Pluto Platter before it was called the Frisbee.

Don’t say that you never learn anything reading this, if that comes up on your pub quiz how happy will you be that you lent me 5 minutes of your time.



After I complained that I rambled on a bit in this blog (today being noooo exception) Significant Other suggested that I try and do it in Haiku. I may try this one day but a quick Google search has shot down my idea of Haiku news, a blog with news stories all in that ancient Japanese poetry style. Several already exist. I will leave you with these (they nearly work),



Muslim Man treated badly,
Secret Service not involved, much,
Littlejohn says ok.


Toyota cars go,
Some too fast, most seem to stop,
But many others don’t.

I hope you have/had a nice Valentines Day unless you are single and then I agree with you, it's all just a cynical marketing tool. Have a good week.