Diana Watch

“I didn’t get into Vet School so I became a Doctor.”

Has there been a Princess Diana based front page this week? Of course there has,

but the Express also distinguished themselves on Wednesday by completely ignoring the devastation being caused to the Gulf coast of America, the animals and fish that are dying and the peoples whose livings are being destroyed such as shrimp fisherman. They even ignored the rather poor response of BP to the situation, they instead went for the incredibly selfish, self centred approach, how does it effect you pension? 

 Because BP is such a massive company and makes so much money in profit and pays such massive dividends it has a disproportionate amount invested in it by pension companies. If these people had any decency at all they would put pressure on the board of this company to sort their act out, to make safety and the environment the top priorities for BP rather than the pursuit of naked profit, after all shareholders exist to hold the board to account, in theory.

 Despite polluting the Gulf of Mexico and being landed with the enormous bill to clean it up, as they should be, which has all helped to contribute to some of the worst PR that BP has ever had they decided to compound it a bit more by paying a very large dividend to it shareholders, probably to try and keep them quiet.

 BP have made some success this week in trying to stop the oil flooding out of it's pipeline (let's try and stop saying “spill” as I spill a drink and that only makes a small amount of mess, this is a little more significant) by cutting through it and managing to fit a cap and they have started to siphon some of the oil away to ships on the surface but still not as much as is leaking into the sea.

It really hasn’t been the most cheerful of weeks in the news has it, what with Israeli forces attacking an aid convoy and the shootings in Cumbria.

 What we have learnt this week is that real people behave much better than people who work for 24hr news channels and newspapers. On the whole the members of the public that have been interviewed have behaved with dignity and respect and seem not to have a bad word to say about Derrick Bird,  meanwhile those doing the interviewing have pushed for more and more lurid details.

 The levels of speculation have also been at stratospheric levels, I have heard about 5 different reasons for why Mr Bird decided to shoot all of those people none of which seemed to be based on any facts.

 I was surprised that there seemed to be a psychologist’s viewpoint for every newspaper’s pre-existing narrative, which was nice. “Have you got a point of view that you would like reinforcing with the help of a professional? Then call Rent-a-shrink, we will say exactly what you want us to, as long as the price is right.”

 There has also been some awful commentary in pretty much all of the papers with is summed up in this nasty, pointless piece in the Telegraph titled “There's no rush, but can we all agree that Derrick Bird had no business owning guns?” No, no we can’t, hindsight isn’t a clause in the gun licences that he held.

 The thrust of this article seems to be that he wasn’t the right sort of person to be owning a gun and by that, and the fact that the “writer” of this piece felt it necessary to describe Mr Bird’s house as “a mid-terrace house in a not very rural English village”, I think he means not posh enough.

 So we have had people say that he shouldn’t have had a gun licence because he stole something in the early 90’s, everyone should have a gun and then passers-by could have shot him and now, not posh enough to own a gun. Ah the British media, home of reasoned debate.

 Oh and Richard Littlejohn managed to get Eastern European immigration, who he accused of gun smuggling (please don’t click on that link as it is to the Mail’s website and they don’t deserve the traffic), into his piece about it and be rude about the Police Officer who did the Press briefings and Chief Police Officers in general, what a man and by man I really mean uber-twat.

 I really don’t want to go on and on about Israel because someone will accuse me of being anti-Semitic which I am not, maybe a little anti-Zionist but even then I would concede that Israel has the right to exist but it does not have the right to occupy parts of other countries or murder people on aid convoys.

 The Israeli blockade of Gaza started following the Israeli show of strength that demolished a large number of buildings and infrastructure last year. This includes a sea blockade which may or may not be legal which is what the aid convoy was trying to break.

 They were attacked in international waters which many have seen as state-sponsored piracy but if the blockade is legal than they are within their rights to have boarded the ships if they thought that they were carrying weapons etc which is the now standard Israeli Government response to pretty much any situation.

 One of the things that are not being allowed into Gaza is building materials, such as cement. This does seem a little harsh as the Israeli conscription army (that, by the way, is the reason that so many Israeli Army operations go wrong, pissy teenagers with guns, although they claim that it was Marines that stormed the boats) flattened a lot of it but it may fall into the hands of terrorists. Now, if the grumpy Ambassador had pointed out on Radio 4 that Hamas regularly build tunnels for smuggling into Egypt and Israel then at least it would have been a relevant argument but he didn’t, oh no, he said, and I quote, “They could use it for weapons”. Really? Could they? How? Are cement bombs as scary as this man thinks? Probably not if I’m honest. If you wonder around your local arms fair it is unlikely that you will see many hand grenades made of cement. They would sort of look like a pebble. Oh no, wait it all makes sense now!

 As you know, the reason for Jews demanding their own state is because God gave them that land in the Bible and they believe the Bible to be literally true, well the bits that suit them anyway. Also in the Bible is a story where David (tiny little boy who, for the purposes of this metaphor, or is it an allegory, will be representing Gaza) defeated the massively overpowering Goliath (for this metaphor/allegory Israel) using only……..wait for it……… a pebble! As this definitely happened (the Bible is literally true remember) then it seems that the Ambassador may have had a point. They could fashion little bits of the cement into to “pebbles” and use them as weapons!

The Award for Best Direct Action Against Direct Action,

A couple of weeks ago I told you about a protest in a Dorset village that wanted a by-pass. They were using the pedestrian crossing constantly to back up the traffic. Genius way to make a point I thought but it seems that someone else didn’t.

 Superglue has been placed around the button for the crossing so that the villagers can't use it.

  Now that is a little rude as it is not just these protesters who use the crossing it is the whole village on a very busy rude but not to worry, it will be replaced and the protests will continue.

 

 The Award for Being a Really Great Car (although the Beetle is my Favourite)

VW Camper van is 60 years old. I love this car/van, I don't know why.

 My brother and I stayed in one once that we had borrowed of off a friend of mine and we went to the Reading Festival. Coming back from the festival at 6 o'clock on a Bank Holiday Monday morning on a roundabout on the outskirts of Reading and the clutch went. We pulled up into a B&Q car park and made a cup of tea on the stove. There are worse ways of spending time.

 I will own one, one day. Maybe.

The Award for Fake Outrage of the Week,

The Daily Mail does like to be offended by many, many things. It also has certain woman that it is obsessed with, usually because they are successful and they don't approve of that sort of thing. If you combine these to things you have....... Lady Gaga doing her normal stage show.

 On the same night as the Cumbrian shootings she was playing in Manchester. Part of the show involves the character she plays throughout the performance being killed. There does seem to be quite a bit of blood. Oh the outrage! Is this the sickest show ever? Does she not know that even Corrie postponed an episode?

 Well to be honest she probably didn't know that. I think that it is a little unlikely that Lady (oh yes, first name terms you know) spends her time lying on her hotel room bed, dressing gown on, coke cans in her hair, watching News 24.

 And why pick on her anyway? Did they complain about every cinema in the country that showed movies with gun violence in them that night? Like arse did they. Did they complain about the 14 episode of CSI that channel 5 showed that night? Of course they didn't. They only did it so that they could have more pictures of Gaga in their stupid paper.

The Award for Making Excuses and Forgetting That Everyone Playing in the Tournament is Disadvantaged, If At All, In The Same Way,

I am pretty sure that at the last World Cup we had exactly the same story as this. Some people are complaining that the newly designed ball that they are going to be using at the World Cup. It's too light and moves about in the air too much, we did have this complaint at the last competition didn't we?

 The new ball is made from 8 panels of synthetic material that is glued together and is, supposedly, a perfect sphere and this is, apparently, very good.

  To be honest I just want some good games, oh and while we are talking about the World Cup a brief mention for Theo Walcott. He was taken to the last one for some reason, maybe children flew for free on BA, but he didn't get a game and now that he has come of age, if you will, has he been picked? Has he bollocks.

 I hope that you have a good week.

Diana Watch

Your wife’s brain is sort of umm……. Shrunken. Good day to you all, I say all, last week it was 20, so I could probably greet you all individually and still only take up 2 lines. Hope you have had a good week, if not here is a thought to lighten the load, as I type this there are only 9 days left. 9 sleeps until still President Bush is ex President Bush and a collective sigh of relief so large that it will alter the course of most shipping is let out by 4.6 billion people, oh the joy. And if that doesn’t help it’s the 50th anniversary of Motown and every other BBC program is dedicated to this and playing many fantastic tunes, listen to them and your life will be good. Quickly back to the subject of George W Bush leaving, or more importantly Barack Obama taking over, lets be honest, this is probably the worst job in the world right now. World wide economic meltdown, yet more war in the Middle East, some of which his country didn’t start, and expectation so high that if he isn’t the first President to actually fly like David Copperfield, or indeed actually fly (my lawyers would like me to point out that David Copperfield can actually fly and that joke had no basis in fact), then America is going to be one very disappointed country. The rest of us don’t really mind what he does too much because he isn’t called Bush. The President elect has this week been outlining his plans for stimulating the recession hit economy that he will inherit. His plan is his own version of FDR’s New Deal, a new New Deal if you like and it mostly comes down to this, what FDR’s New Deal built, we will repair as no one has paid the slightest bit of attention to it since, why do you think the levees broke so easily in New Orleans? As we have discussed before the New Deal didn’t really lift the American economy out of the depression, that was the beginning of the 2nd World War and the massive increase in arms spending by Britain, but it did give people jobs and, combined with a new, reassuring President, it created confidence. FDR’s decision to re-open the banks would have ruined the country if the people hadn’t had the confidence to take their money back to them and reinvest. In faltering economies confidence is the key and this is what Obama will bring most to the U.S., oh and a shit load of spending, really, really big spending, which will be nice.
Of course the change of President and, probably, foreign policy does limit the time that Israel has to continue systematically destroying Gaza and the people within. The UN Security Council voted this week to call upon Israel and Hamas to declare a ceasefire, the vote passed and the call was ignored by both sides, but what was interesting were the numbers. Of the 15 members of the council 14 of them voted for the ceasefire motion, only one of them abstained, can you guess which one it was? Yes, that’s right it was Israel’s great friend and weapons based shopping centre, America. So the slaughter of hundreds in a pointless war is not enough for you to consider it a waste of time and a bad idea then Mr Bush, oh now, wait, you have previous for this sort of thing. Lets us all hope that the Obama Administration are a little more pro peace and sorting things out in a civilized way and a little less turning a blind eye.
It has been another bad week to be in Gaza, although I can’t think of many good weeks to be in Gaza recently and by recently I mean since about 1967, but the lowlight, if you will, was when Israel bombed a school, a UN school, with many children sheltering inside. On the BBC’s Today program on Radio 4 the Israeli Ambassador to Britain said that they had Drone (an unmanned spy plane) footage of Hamas Militants firing rockets from the roof of the school only hours earlier. The BBC then phoned the Israeli Embassy for clarification on this and were told that he had got it wrong. The footage that he had referred too was in fact taken during 2007. Oh and it was of a different school. The UN has also called for an investigation into what it describes as a “War Crime” by Israel in its treatment of injured Palestinians. In international humanitarian law soldiers are supposed to help and treat the injured, no matter whose side they are on and the UN claims that it has proof that Israeli soldiers have not been doing this.
I do know that this does sound very one sided and anti-Israel so let me add that rockets have still been fired into Israel from Gaza but also from Lebanon which really, really doesn’t help, unless the point was to remind everyone that Israel has a history of invading other countries in order to stop militant groups firing rockets at it and failing to do so. If that was what they were trying to do then goal achieved and well done, if not then sit down and shut up at the back you are not helping. I do agree with every Israeli spokesman that appears on any media outlet or their Youtube channel, ah, footage of the death of innocent people and funny animal clips, that’s what the internet is there for, that their country has the right to live peacefully within it’s borders with it’s neighbours without the fear of rockets raining down on them but maybe they should listen to their own words.

I’m sure you are asking yourselves, “Why are so many big companies going bankrupt?” ok, so you might not be but I’m using this as a narrative device so that I can crowbar my point in. Well it has very little to do with consumer spending, which is in fact slightly up on this time last year according to the ONS, and far more to do with the business practices of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Stupid as it may seem to you and I, it was the business mantra of the time. Cash in the bank bad, debt on and off the books, very good indeed. Now to most normal people this seems like a very poor idea that is fraught with danger, “what if the banks stop lending to me to cover this debt, my business will go under” but to those that ran, see how I used the past tense there, large companies this was not seen as a problem. By investing in very complicated financial products, that they borrowed lots of money for in the hope that they would make more money to cover that debt, they could move those debts off of their books so it looked like their situation was much better than it was. So when the banks stopped lending to one another and then to businesses, such as Woolworths, and then wanted their money back (this is the credit crunch not a drop in retail spending as the TV news seem to think it is) the companies in question were sunk, landed with huge debts that they couldn’t pay. So please don’t believe the bleating of the shops, you are spending enough money. Hey, maybe you should consider saving a little or paying off some of your own debt and if you do have a little to spend, do so in a small local shop like “Down to Earth” in my road. With all the space appearing in the high street this could be the chance for the local shops to take back some ground.
We are living in a very odd and confusing time as those who we thought were arch capitalists, politicians and business leaders etc, now seem to be some sort of socialists, encouraging us to nationalise things. Well sort of. They want us to nationalise their debts but leave the profits for them. Given their old ways you would have thought that an empty shop unit was a wank fantasy for them as it should that the “Market” was working and the strongest were surveying and the weakest going under, but no, they want help all of a sudden. Years of taking our money in return for shoddy products and bad service and now they want our help. There are some who have a terrible dystopian nightmare were meglo-companies straddle borders, employing hundreds of thousands of people, making singular decisions that effect stock markets and making trillions of pounds in profits until they don’t. A couple of bad investments and those years of profit are wiped out. These companies are too big to fail. Just one of them going down could ruin a country so various Governments are asked to step in to save them. “We’re sorry. We’ve really messed up and all our investments are worthless” “What about all those Profits you made over the last 25 years?” “No, that wasn’t us, you must be thinking of some other Bank.” “Ok, here’s billions of pounds” “thank you xx” What’s to stop these companies from continually doing this? Holding whole countries to ransom, pay up or we ruin you. Gordon Brown hinted at this “moral hazard” problem at the beginning of the credit crunch but has done nothing to deal with the problem which has lead to money going into the banks but not coming out again.


Some Awards now,

The Award for Tosser of the Week,

This goes to Tory Party activist Matthew Lewis who went to a New Years Eve party dressed as Madeleine McCann. Now, the question here is not why would you do that, tasteless prank, lack of moral judgement, a Tory, who’d of thought, it is, how would you do that? Did he wear a small girl’s frock? Get himself a funny eye or his family a publicist? Was he poorly investigated by Portuguese Police or did he just mysteriously not turn up?

The Award for Not Really a Great Surprise,

This goes to Prince Harry for using a racist term. This is the man, let us not forget, who went to a fancy dress party in a Nazi Uniform. What is it with the over privileged and fancy dress parties?

The Award for Odd Media Obsession of the Week,

This does not go to the wind turbine somewhere up North that got damaged and a blade fell off. Oooh, there were strange lights in the sky, twas a UFO you know. Was it? Was it really? Oh no, a much stranger obsession crept in this week, it was light bulbs. I have heard an article on radio news, seen an article on BBC television news and it’s all over the papers. This is because the EU wants to stop the production of the old fashion, not overly efficient, 100 watt tungsten light bulbs. I’m told that there has been panic buying of them despite the fact that it’s not going to happen for at least 2 years and that our government announced it ages ago. BBC news had a little voxpox piece asking idiots why they were panic buying. Several answers were given, my favourite being, “I don’t like the light that they give off”. I’m sorry? What now? The light that they give off? IT’S LIGHT! THAT’S THE COLOUR AND SPEED THAT IT COMES IN! One of the other answers was that the price of energy efficient bulbs was too high so I went to my local bulb emporium and found that the energy saving bulbs with equivalent candle power output of the old 100 watt tungsten bulbs start from 75p. If people won’t spend 75p to save the planet then we are all doomed. Although I got some free from my electricity supplier and from Waitrose. Only after I’d already bought a load for my house, so if you want some I do have some spares. Then the Daily Mail decided that this was an “it was all better in my day” issue and couldn’t help themselves but join in and start giving away 100 watt light bulbs. Would they also be happier if we repealed the “clean air” act and London went back to having fogs that could kill? Who would have thought that the only sane voice in this madness would come from the Sun who decided to give away some Energy saving light bulbs? I can’t believe that I am actually going to type the next few words but, well done the Sun.

Have a nice week. Go on, spend 75p and start helping to change the world.

Diana Watch

On the same day that I was asked to join Yes I got a call from David Bowie asking me to formThe Spiders from Mars with Mick Ronson. I have spent most of this weekend decorating my hall. Have I ever expressed to you how much I hate decorating? I really hate decorating. Well, I hate the painting of the walls, glossing is alright. A rather surprising thing has happened whilst doing the decorating though, I have put up a new coat rack/shelving thing and nothing has gone wrong. Not a thing. Putting it together was easy, all the parts were present, the drilling of holes in my wall was no problem, wall plugs slid in, screws went in, tightened up nicely and the unit it’s self fitted perfectly. This is very odd indeed. I don’t have the greatest history with DIY and shelf putting up more significantly, just ask significant other about her cherished glassware that was in our dining room, but this all seems to have gone scarily well. It won’t last. At least I can now do karate now after all that painting.
There hasn’t been a great deal of news this week due to the fact that no one has been watching the news because there have been many showings of Wallace and Gromit on the BBC (if news is reported and no one is watching, has it happened?) but what there has been has mostly been about Gaza and the destruction there of. Israel is like a badly behaved child. Since they were born they have been behaving badly, not playing well with other children in the neighbourhood, but their parents (America) has turned a bit of a blind eye. There has been the odd telling off and various empty threats to take the toys away but still they have been allowed to play with their cowboy outfit, the parent is secretly proud of the strong, independent child that they have bought up, every so often defending its behaviour with the “difficult/traumatic birth and childhood” excuse. What Israel needs is some sort of UN sanctioned Super Nanny to make it sit on the international naughty step for a while whilst it considers what it has done and why it might upset the other children to have their Lego knocked down. The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has said that Israel’s bombing of Gaza will lead to the radicalization of Palestinians against Israel yet when asked the same question about us bombing Iraq he denied that this phenomenon would take place, how odd.

Your Government wants to know what you are doing. They really, really want to know what you are doing. So much so that they have decided that asking you might end with you standing with your hands behind your back, sulkily looking at your feet, rubbing out an imaginary cigarette with one foot and mumbling under your breath “nothing”, and this won’t tell them what they won’t to know, so they are bring forward legislation that will enable them to track every phone call you make and email you send and website you visit. That won’t know the content but they will know who you are contacting. Oh and a private company is probably going to run it. Oh where to start. I don’t want the Government to know how many times I phone my mother or not in my case. Well, finding out how many times I’ve phoned my mum after a private company has left the information has been left in a kebab shop. There is also the point that if they don’t know the content of the message then what’s the point? Some one I know might be a terrorist, it could happen, my money is on my friend Kate, you know, best Christmas card of the year Kate, happy family life, pretty children, suspicious I think you’ll agree, and I could message them a lot simply because they are my friend and I could be caught up in their web of intrigue and terror because the content of my messages is not known, not that that is a reason for the Government to know everything. Why is the argument always “if you are innocent you have nothing to fear”? It is a silly argument. You do have something to fear. You have to worry about someone knowing everything about you, as it says on my shopping bag “anonymity is not a crime”.

Why do staggeringly wealthy people do adverts? Why does George Clooney advertise some piss poor coffee thing for Nescafe? Why do Bruce Willis and Alice Cooper appear in the new Norwich Union advert? And why, oh god why, does Ewan McGregor do that awful “fragrance for men” nonsense? Pierce Brosnan is worth it I’m told. Have you not got enough money? No, really, be honest, the only reason you can be sullying yourself to do them is for the money. You don’t believe the nonsense you are being told to say any more then I do. It has to be for the money but you are fantastically, don’t have to work ever again and live really well, wealthy. Why are you doing it? Why are you selling your souls and hawking crap on the rest of us? It’s because you are getting paid isn’t it? Despite the fact that you don’t need it you will do almost anything for more money. You disgust me.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m a little bile filled this week and I’m not sure why. It may be the result of the, not quite finished, decorating. Wax on, wax off. Just a couple of other things and I’ll leave you alone. It must be like answering the door and some bloke just starts shouting at you about things you don’t care that much about. A website was set up for worriers, by a worrier, and held a survey about worrying and guesses what? It found that the people on the worrying website (that’s a website about worrying, not one containing intimate pictures of Tony Blair with a Tonka toy) were worriers. Not a great surprise really but what was a surprise was to turn on BBC news and have some dimwit shouting “it’s official, we are a nation of worriers,” and then quoting from this survey as if it had something important to say or was carried out in some way that would give us some statistically significant results. Some crappy website survey is not science and it most certainly is not news.

The Awards for the week,

The Award for Oddest Music Show on the Radio of the Week,

This goes to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6Music, Sunday evenings 17.30-20.00. Where else would you hear recordings of KPM all-stars playing the theme from Countdown, Channel 4 news and the Dave Allen show recorded live at the Jazz Café?

The Award for Really Odd and Slightly Sinister Medical Research of the Week,

This goes to Doctors at the HaEmek Medical Centre, Israel, who are going to carry out clinical trials to test the value of medical clowns for patients who are about to have cataract surgery. This will involve 100 patients and half of them will be half scared to death by, sorry, exposed to a clown before their operation to assess the effect on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients undergoing surgery under local anaesthesia. I would imagine that the pulse and BP of those who have to suffer the clown torture will be sky high or am I missing the point. Another week, another story from the BMJ.

A quick mention of the new Dr Who and no real surprise to find out that it wasn’t me. It was, however, slightly funny looking Matt Smith and, whilst I’m not familiar with his work, I’m sure he will be fantastic; he has a slightly sinister look about him. I’m told that he is not as pretty as Mr Tennant, information supplied by significant other there. Decided for yourselves. Ah well, better luck next time for me then.



Happy New Year everyone xx

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.

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