Private Dick

Speaking to my father last night, I now realise that my comment yesterday about no mud currently sticking to Gordon Brown is in fact not true. There is the issue of over payment of tax credits, yet again. That's several more million in tax payers' money lost forever. There is an excellent comment in today's Telegraph by Boris Johnson that everyone should read about the current state of the Labour party, click here.

Typical that Abby managed to find a baby owner's guide before I could write one myself. I had the idea completely independently. I think I might do it anyway. Abby, how would you like to proof read for me?

We had a mediocre night last night with the baby. I fed him at 1 am, and the dragon fed him again at 4 I think. After that he decided he just didn't want to sleep. I did manage to get a burp from him that could have filled a Zepplin at about 5 am which did improve things, but I still didn't have much in the way of sleep last night.

I need a steady job closer to home and I was thinking maybe I might see if any of the local private detective agencies might want to hire me. I like the thought of tailing people and peeping through net curtains. I don't think the pay is very good, but who knows. It's worth a try isn't it.

John Prescott it seems may be investigated about his affair with his secterary. The talk is all about whether he breach ministerial codes of conduct because the affair was with a civil servant. Why hasn't blackmail been mentioned? When Profumo had an affair he lost his job because he was considered to have compromised security because he left himself open for blackmail. Hasn't Prescott done exactly that? Didn't Blunkett do the same? Why is no one except me worried about it?

Recap

I didn't get around to mentioning yesterday about Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, accidentally letting out over 1,000 prisoners instead of deporting them. Well that was careless wasn't it. Apparently all but about 120 of these prisoners, which include murderers, rapists, paedophiles, and drug dealers, are now missing somewhere in the UK. I know what you're thinking, I made this up right? Nope, click here.

So lets have a recap of Labour cabinet ministers currently in the smeg shall we:

Charles Clarke is already fielding calls for his resignation after accidentally freeing over 1,000 convicts by mistake instead of deporting them, see above.

Tessa Jowell is currently in all sorts of trouble over her lawyer husband's very dodgy looking business deals. Jowell was actually implicated in these dodgy deals when she agreed to remortgage their home in a move to launder/move/hide huge payments that may or may not have been a bribe from the former Italian PM, currently being investigated for fraud/corruption himself, allegedly. Her defence, "I didn't know what I was signing". That's reasuring from a cabinet minister isn't it.

Patricia Hewitt is frantically trying to recover from the ridiculous comments she made this week about the health service enjoying its "best ever year" despite a deficit of millions, thousands of proposed job cuts, and threatened industrial action.

Oh, just about everyone, including the PM has been implicated in the cash for peerages row that just won't go away.

John Prescot, deputy Prime Minister, has just been caught with his hand up his secretary's skirt. Madam, what on earth were you thinking?

Margaret Beckett, environment secretary is being urged to resign over the issue of overdue subsidy payments to farmers who may not receive them in time. I don't even understand this one myself.

Ruth Kelly, Education secretary is at the heart of a row going on about MPs claiming huge expenses on second homes in their constituencies. I have a feeling someone else was implicated in this one but I can't remember who it was.

It makes you wonder just how many clean cabinet ministers we actually have. If Charles Clarke has to go, how many Home Secretaries will that be? It's getting to look like the Defence Against the Dark Arts job. I can't think of any mud sticking to Gordon Brown currently. I guess he's being extra careful since he's next in line to the throne.

User manual

Many things about fatherhood are depressing. I'm down to my last pair of trousers. All my others have been vomitted over. Last night the Dragon broke the kettle. She switched it on to warm up a bottle for the baby, but there was no water in it. It's not her fault, she's walking around like a zombie. But it meant I had to drive over to Sainsbury's for a replacement late into the night. Thank God for 24 hour supermarkets. I really thought that we'd turned a corner on Monday night. He only got us up once in the night. He's learning when to sleep, I thought. My hopes were dashed last night however when he decided that the hours of darkness were for singing and dancing. So this morning I rose after almost no sleep, burnt my hand on the oven attempting to warm up croissants, and drove to work on auto-pilot. Even the coffee was sub-standard because I didn't grind any beans last night and I had to use the scrapings at the bottom of the jar.

I'm thinking I should write a user manual for babies. I write user manuals for a living, and the idea of a baby book written in the same style amuses me. I'm going to think about that.

I am much intrigued by claims that a pay per view broadcast successfully contcated John Lennon via a psychic yesterday. I would quite like to see the show, but nothing on earth would coax me to pay $10 to watch something that is so obviously a scam. My interest is only in seeing how convincing it was. According to the BBC, contact was made using EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). Miraculously, while filming the show, the psychic's voice feed went dead. When the recording of the feed was played back, John Lennon's voice was heard giving his message. Predictably the message was "peace". What a load of old crap! Apparently Lennon's widow did not approve of the show. If I'd been in her position I'd have told them that I'd endorse the show only if, when they contacted John, he could answer a question that no one else would know the answer to.

David Baline's next stunt seems to be staying under water for a week. That doesnt strike me as very spectacular. He has breathing aparatus and food, what's the problem? I'm becomming tired of David Blaine. His street magic show was amazing, and he has done a few cool stunts, but sitting in a fish tank for a week? I think I could do that. He is going to attempt to hold his breath for more than 8 minutes and 58 seconds at the end, but I'm not sure I'll believe it if he does it. It was recently pointed out to me that his Frozen in Time stunt wasn't all that clever either. He spent 62 hours in a block of ice. That's just like living in an igloo isn't it? The hardest thing is the standing up. I thought his next stunt was going to be jumping out of a helicopter into the water.

Boring and political

A lot of fuss has been made over the last few days about an opinion poll conducted by the Telegraph newspaper seeming to show that the BNP are gaining ground in certain areas. I loath and detest the BNP with a passion, I always have, but speaking as someone with an Asian wife and a mixed race child, I have to say they actually scare me too. The BNP seeks to create a white, Anglo Saxon Britain, and the manifesto, which I have actually read, is full of promises to send non-British poeple back to their countries of origin. A truely frightening philosophy.

Saturday's Telegraph included a number of letters on the subject, some of which were interesting. One that caught my eye simply said something like, "Until the major political parties form policies to sort out the problem of uncontrolled immigration, the BNP will continue to gain ground". This is very true. Most British people have no problem with immigration as long as it is under control. What no one wants is a situation where anyone can come to Britain, claim asylum, and live off the state. In many people's eyes, that is what is happening now. Also, no one wants to see a situation where non native cultures become so ubiquitous, that native culture is swamped. The current obsession with political correctness has succeeded in exactly this.

Ex Tory MP Norman Tebbit made a strange comment last week claiming that he had read the BNP manifesto and found nothing particularly "right wing" in there. I'm not sure what Tebbit was intending by this remark. He could have been attempting to distance the BNP from the traditionally right wing image of his old party (Tebbit is a right winger himself). Or he could have been trying to paint the BNP in a more acceptable light. His comment prompted a number of comments on the Telegraph letters page including one that pointed out that BNP policies could easliy be compared to the right wing policies of Hitler's NAZI party. I agree that the policies are comparible, but I would disagree that the NAZI party was right wing. Perhaps this was what Tebbit was trying to get across. The NAZI party was a socialist party with more in common with contempary Chinese administrations than what I would consider today's right wing capitalist parties.

I worked for many years as an immigrant in a foreign country. For more than two years I worked in a translation house with people from every continent on the planet. I used to sit next to a Hindu from Bombay on one side, and a Christian from Madras on the other. Both these people remain very good friends of mine. My project manager was invariably Bhuddist and oriental, my boss was a white American agnostic. I worked with Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, European, Australian, and African people. And at the end of the week we used to go out to the pub together, hit a few golf balls, or eat at one of the local restaurants, and I never once remember a cross word between any of us about religion, race, culture, or even politics, despite the enormous range of views and backgrounds. This was possible because there was no evil trouble-maker like Nick Griffin trying to stir things up. That office was badly managed, the pay was low, the stress was high, and the hours were bad. Despite all that, it was the happiest office in which I have ever worked, and I will go to my grave with happy memories of it.

The Home Office is launching a new agency to tackle the problem of internet child pornography. On the face of it this would seem to be a worthwhile idea. If children have been abused to produce material that appears on the internet, then that material should be removed and the abusers should be dealt with. Few would disagree with that. This new agency, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), however is to offer quite a number of services of which I most certainly do not approve.

Among the many functions of the CEOP, a 24-hour hotline for people to report suspicious behaviour is perhaps the most disturbing. Already the search for paedophiles has become a witch hunt; so much so that I believe innocent lives are being ruined by simply finger pointing already. The last thing we need is a new method of acusing people anonymously. CEOP staff are also planning to pose as children in chat rooms in an effort to discover groomers. I can't see how this would have any purpose. I'm quite sure no conviction could be brought upon people that have been entrapped in this way. I'm not sure how one would go about trying to convict anyone even if they actaully had chatted inappropriately to a child, unless it went further and they arranged a meeting or something. They are also intending to set up fake web sites hoping to lure the perverts into giving credit card details so that they can be traced. Again, this sounds like entrapment to me and I can't see that a conviction would be possible.

The thing that occurs to me is that this CEOP organisation is targetting the people who look at images. And while I agree that scraping the bottom of the internet barrel for pictures of naked children is fairly foul, it's not harming anyone. The people producing the images are the ones who need to be found. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, charging the people who look at the images is like trying to charge people for reading graffiti.

I've already visited the CEOP website and the first thing that struck me was the barrage of meaningless statistics. CEOP claims "More than 100,000 websites offer indecent images of children". Does "indecent" mean "illegal" here? "Almost 60% of internet users have come into contact with indecent images", does that include adults and children, tasteful nudes, naturist sites, wet t-shirt contests? "Over 10% (4.2 million) of all websites contain indecent images of adults or children. According to the Internet Systems Consortium, that figure of 4.2 million is out by a factor of about 10 unless I have misunderstood the stats.

I can't see how an organisation like this can do any good. It will just swallow up huge amounts of public money and make life more difficult for innocent poeple.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is in very deep smeg indeed this morning over National Health Service disasters which include thousands of job losses and a £600 million deficit. According to Ms Hewitt however, the NHS is having its best ever year! That sounds a bit like Dick Chaeney still claiming that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Late and half finished

This is Friday's entry. The pressures of being a father have preventewd me from posting it until now, Sunday...

Well the Queen becomes 80 today, so happy birthday maam. I don't like the monarchy system in this country and certain members of the royal family I find perfectly revolting, but the Queen rarely upsets me. She keeps her nose out of politics and seldom does anything contraversial. She could of course turn round one day and refuse to give royal ascent to some democratically agreed legislation, and it bothers me, but if we can't have a republic, I'd say the Queen was a good choice of monarch.

It's been announced this week that the Queen is unlikely to ever abdicate and this sends all sorts of thoughts rushing round my head. Is she doing it to prevent her idiot son from taking the throne? Is she doing it because she genuinely believes that only God can decide when it's time for her to move on? Does she simply enjoy being the big cheese? She could go on another 10 or even 20 years, her mother did. Charles is already at an age when most people are thinking about retiring. That must really piss him off. Every cell in his body has been aching for the chance to play king for the last 50 years.

The government is about to review British laws in this country which limit Sunday trading to 6 hours - ABOUT BLOODY TIME! For those who don't know, we have ridiculously complicated legislation that prevents large stores from opening normal hours on Sunday. Small stores (no one can explain how to differentiate between large and small stores) can stay open all day on Sunday if they want. There are also certain days of the year which seem to be exempt from this legislation like Easter Sunday for instance. This all means that supermarkets all open at 10am and close at 4pm on Sunday, which is a real pain in the arse if you discover you need something urgently, like baby formula for instance, at 3:45 on Sunday afternoon.

The "Keep Sunday Special" Nazis have managed to hold the entire country to ransome, despite the fact that fewer than 10% of us actually attend a Christian church, for years. It finally looks as though things might change. Canon Roger Harper however, is intending to picket constituancy surgeries of the Trade and Industry secretary in an effort to keep trade restricted on Sundays. I want to make it perfectly clear that I don't think anyone should be forced to work on Sundays, and I really dont care what Canon Harper does with his weekend. I do however take exception to this idiot trying to dictate how I can spend my Sunday.

Don't let the bastards out

The government has today announced tough new measures to prevent people released early from prison "on licence" from reoffending. This has been prompted by a plethora of prisoners, recently released early, who have proceded to rape and pilage as soon as they set foot out of chokey. The tough new measures mean that released prisoners are closely supervised and reoffenders get whisked straight back to chokey as soon as they put a foot out of line. Funny, I thought that was what was supposed to happen under the tough old measures. We're promised by Charles Clarke however that these tough new measures will prevent people from reoffending. I can't see how exactly since they don't really come into effect until after an offence has taken place. I've been thinking about this and come to a different conclusion. It's very simple actually. To ensure that prisoners don't reoffend for the duration of their sentence DON'T LET THE BASTARDS OUT!

World famous hypocrit George Bush has been giving Chinese president Hu JinTao the five star treatment at the Whitehouse. I've just seen his speech and he didn't even mention human rights abuses. I've just read that he was however heckled from the crowd, which is really good to hear. I look forward to seeing the footage.

I made a point of watching the BBC programme yesterday evening about Paul and Heather McCartney and their personal battle with the fur trade. I honestly couldn't care less about animals being slaughtered for fur, but I had to see what Sir Paul was bitching about. His main worry seems to be that there is now footage in existance of dogs and cats being used for fur in China. I can't see why this is any worse than using fox, mink, or anything else, and it wasn't really explained. The lack of material evidence for any of these dog or cat furs actually existing outside China was also conspicuous by its absence. Again I have to say that I was astounded by the fact that Sir Paul feels so strongly about the Chinese fur trade that he refuses to play China, but failed to even mention the apalling civil rights abuses taking place there, the occupation of Tibet, the Tiannamen Square issue, or the constant bullying of Taiwan. Dogs and cats are obviously far more important.

Talking of animal rights, someone with real balls by the name of David Taylor, has started up an on-line petition to show support for responsible use of animals in medical testing. I signed electronically this morning and there were 900 odd people already signed up. Two hours later I checked back again and the number had gone up to over 1,400. I urge everyone to go have a look and consider adding their name.

Pete Doherty has managed to avoid prison yet again today for drugs offences. God knows how, it's not a first offence and it wasn't trivial drugs we're talking about. It still annoys me that someone with so much talent and potential can throw his life away like this, but maybe I just don't understand. The fans still showed up to support him it seems.

I think the dragon has a sore throat, and I'm not sure whether I have too. Tomorrow is Friday however, and that means we can have a rest. I fed the baby at 10pm last night. He woke up again at 1, then 3 (my turn again), and finally 5am. I do hope this isn't going to go on too long. Friend Ruth says that her baby was sleeping through the night from 6 weeks. I wish mine would.

Too much chocolate

Back from the Easter break. I don't feel rested, but it wasn't a bad holiday. We went to my parents' place in Devon. The trip usually takes 2-3 hours but was substantially elongated due to the extra passenger. He's getting better at feeding and consequently the gap between feeds is becoming more bearable. Four hours is not unheard of now. I do look forward to the day when I can have a whole night's sleep again though. The parents were really pleased to see their grandson however and it was worth the trip.

Tom Cruise seems to have had a daughter called "Suri". I keep reading odd snippets suggesting that he was expecting his partner, Katie Holmes, to give birth silently. It's a scientologist thing apparently. Having been through this, I can honestly say that I don't think anything could have been done to keep my wife silent during the birth. What's the idea behind it?

I was most interested to read that Abby's initials spell a "bad word". You know this is exactly what sparked an argument between my parents and myself over the naming of their grandson. They thought that my choice of name spelt something unfortunate. In fact it only spelt the first three letters of a four letter word and I still can't see the problem with it. No one else even noticed it when I told them. It doesn't appear to have given Abby too much trouble however. She even commented on the comedy factor when filling forms in.

The dragon is almost back to her old shape now that the baby has come out. Well she still has a few extra pounds, but she looks the same as I remember her. One part of her that doesn't seem to have returned to original size however is the chest area. While I am quitre pleased about this on one level, it does mean that a new set of undergarments are required. This resulted in me waiting in Marks and Spencers with several other embarrassed looking men outside the fitting rooms for some long time yesterday. New garments have now been selected and I am charged with going back to pick them up. Apparently we have gift vouchers to use when purchasing these items. I quite like buying women's underwear. It's something that some men find incredibly embarrassing, but I take it in my stride and I think of myself as accomplished for this reason. I have the same feeling when buying feminine hygiene products.

I managed to cut the grass yesterday and plant some sunflowers out in the garden. The dragon is worried about giant sunflowers looking like people when she looks out of the window at night, so I have to arrange curtains. I'm hoping for good results. I even spread cow poo over the beds. I have some primulas to put in too, provided by my mother. I think the first white radish seedlings are showing their heads now, but still no sign of the spinach. The tomatoes are going strong and we even have a couple of flowers. The chilli trees also look good.

Friends Ryan and Helene came round yesterday with baby gifts. They are nice people and they even took the trouble of reading about traditional Taiwanese customs. They brought a red envelope for his one month anniversary. Ryan also bought me a cigar, though I don't smoke anymore so it will be largely ceremonial.

Apparently a list of salaries for BBC presenters has been leaked to the press. I can't believe Terry Wogan earns £800,000 a year for a 2 hour radio show. He could be back home again for morning coffee. He doesn't even need to do any research or learn any lines for it! It seems like Chris MOyles and Chris Evans also command huge salaries. Both of them are juvenile and Chris Evans must be the most obnoxious and disliked man in broadcasting. Usually I wouldn't care, but I have to pay £70 a year for the privilidge of receiving BBC stations and I don't listen to any of these people, ever. I say reduce the salaries and in turn my licence fee, and then let them go off to independent radio. It wouldn't be any great loss.

This one is philosophical

Yesterday a medical officer from the RAF was jailed for refusing to serve in Iraq. Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith claimed that he could not morally justify serving in Iraq because the British involvement in the war was "illegal". Although I am, and always have been, strongly opposed to military action in Iraq, when I first read this story I found I couldn't support the man. A paid soldier has a duty to go to war, even if he/she doesn't support the politics behind it. When one joins the military one must realise that it's a job like any other. All conflicts are controversial and soldiers have to agree to put personal feelings aside when they take on the job. Then I heard a discussion about this on the radio as I drove home yesterday.

Both sides of the argument were discussed. One senior military official said much the same as me, that personnel in the military have to obey orders even if they don't like them. The counter argument was given by an ex soldier who also objected to the war on moral grounds. He said something that made me think. He pointed out that people on trial for war crimes are not likely to be shown any leniency if they claim they had to do something because they were following orders. Would Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremburg have been found not guilty of their crimes if they had been able to prove that someone ordered them to carry them out? No, of course not, these people would have been expected to refuse to commit these obvious war crimes. If they had refused to carry out the orders however, they would have been tried by their own side, and apparently found guilty if this case is anything to go by.

The moral of this story, you can do anything you like if you pick the winning side, you may find yourself with no options if you bet on a looser.

There is a story today on the Telegraph web site that interested me. It seems that three gay men living together in North Carolina are accused of castrating 6 other men and recording the procedures on video. It gets stranger however. Apparently the six castrated men gave their consent for the operation. Now why on earth would anyone agree to that? Human testicles were discovered in a tin in the freezer. What the hell are they keeping them for, soup? Prosthetic testicles were also discovered at the house. What do men who have agreed to have their goolies cut off want with prosthetic replacements? The three have been charged with castration without malice, maiming without malice, and practising medicine without a licence.

Practicing medicine without a licence I can understand. To an extent I can even understand that North Carolina has a specific law that makes "maiming without malice" illegal, though it does seem strange. However, I cannot for the life of me imagine the set of circumstances that led to the passing of a law making "castration without malice" illegal. I mean, how often does this go on in Morth Carolina? Is there a separate law making "castration with malice illegal", and if so, does it carry a greater penalty? If convicted, the men face 12-15 years in prison.

I don't have much time for the profits of doom masquerading as climate scientists as you know. I've said time and again that these people are more interested in getting research grants from governments than in good science. Consequently, they concentrate on telling the government what it wants to hear. I don't really need to make fun of these people, they do it perfectly well themselves. The most ridiculous report from a climate scientist I have read in ages appeared today however, and I can't let it go.

The government's chief scientist (alarm bells are already ringing) Professor David King, claims that global warming is going to raise temperatures a massive 3C or more. Reading this report however, I can't see any timescale. If global warming is actually happening, it's obviously going to rise by 3C eventually isn't it? I could have made that prediction. Other predictions in the report include:

A drop worldwide of between 20 and 400 million tonnes in cereal crops. That's quite a big margin of error you've given yourself there, factor of 20!

About 400 million more people at risk of hunger. Hey where has that margin of error gone? Isn't it related to the cereal crop problem?

Between 1.2bn and 3bn more people at risk of water stress. What the hell is water stress? And that's another 150% margin of error there you notice.

Not one of these apocolyptic predictions actually includes any timescale as far as I can see. I'd love to see this guy's working. How did he get to be the government's "top scientist"? It seems all you have to do is pull big numbers out of your arse.

And the Hypocrite of the week award goes to Lib Dem leader, Menzies Campbell. In today's press Campbell is quoted as saying that the Tory party was "unpleasant" to its core. This from the party who's former leader was recently forced out of office when it was discovered he had a secret drink problem after months of denial. The same party which saw Mark Oaten withdraw from the leadership election after it was discovered he was secretly paying rent boys for sex. And the same leadership election which saw Simon Hughes admit he'd been lying to his electorate about his sexuality for years. Well that sounds like a wholesome party.

What's funny?

I'm bored at work. There seems to be nothing to do. I don't know why they extended this contract really. I should be grateful for the money I suppose. It's tough pretending to do work though.

I managed to find the train station at Newport yesterday and pick up friend Eugenie. It's good that she is staying for a couple of days. It will be nice for the dragon to have a friend there. Sadly I have to come to work tomorrow, but then I get 4 days off and I can take over baby feeding duties for a while.

I planted a few sunflower seeds in seed trays in the conservatory last week. I was not optimistic about the chances of them coming up because it has been cold again, but they look good. I need some manure or something before I plant them in the garden. I was hoping I can get them up to 6 foot. I wonder if baby poo would make good fertilizer as I have access to quite a bit of that currently.

The tomatoes are doing well too. I managed to kill three of them in a grow bag. I watered them with a can I found in the garage. I'd left the can there before I let the house. I hadn't allowed for the fact that the can might have been used for unusual purposes by the tennants. I don't know what they did use it for, but I'd watered three plants before I realised that the water was in fact pink. I'm guessing it was brake fluid, but I could be wrong. I pulled out the three dead plants and replaced them with healthy ones but the bag may be contaminated, who knows.

I've also managed to grow three pretty healthy looking chilli plants. I might take some pictures of all these. The spinach and white radish seeds I sowed in the garden have not come up yet, but it has been cold. I do hope it gets warmer soon.

I got excited today about a news story that someone had been arrested for selling honours. I was excited because I thought it was bound to be one of Blair's henchmen. It wasn't however. It wasn't even new news. It was a headmaster who was working for the government to find sponsers for it's education programme. Apparently he indicated that sponsers might get OBEs or CBEs in return for sponsership. Anyway, he's been arrested. It won't look good for the government, but people seem to have got used to the fact that this administration is the most corrupt in living memory and I suspect that it's not very significant.

A three year old girl has been glued to a lavatory seat by pranksters at a bowling alley. I can only assume that since the child was a girl, it must have been a female lavatory and thus a female prankster. Though the story does mention it was a disabled facility, so it could be unisex. I suppose it's funny from a distance, but it must have been quite nasty for the child and her mother. It's a funny world we live in isn't it. What makes people play pranks on total strangers? Why should we find it funny to embarrass or inconvienience strangers? I'm not taking the moral high ground here. I've been known to chuckle to myself when I see a broken down BMW. I just wonder where that feeling comes from.

Fake

I registered the birth of our son last week. It's a fairly simple process. One goes to the registry office, gives the registra all the required information, and leaves with a birth certificate. It costs nothing, unless a full birth certificate is required, in which case, it costs £3.50. When you have the birth certificate, you can claim family allowance. That's about £17 a week. You also get £250 to invest for the child.

I was actually surprised at just how simple this process was. There were no awkward questions. No proof of identification was required. I was asked my name and address, where I was born, what my occupation is, marital status, wife's name, date of birth etc. I had to give basic information about the child, place of birth, date of birth, and of course the name we chose. But I wasn't asked to prove anything. I wasn't asked for a marriage certificate, proof of my address, or any id. I didn't have to bring my wife or child with me, and both the short and full birth certificates were printed and given to me right there.

As far as I can tell, anyone can walk into a registry office and register a fictional child on demand.

In itself, a birth certificate for a child that doesn't exist is not terribly useful. It can be used however to get family allowance of £17 a week and a £250 lump sum for investment. But, to get family allowance, you do have to provide a National Insurance number, an address, and a bank account into which the money can be payed. It's not straight forward to fake these things, but I'm sure I could do it. And if I think about it for long enough, I'm sure I could come up with more uses for a fake birth certificate.

I just heard from the dragon that our little boy now has a Chinese name. Because he is half Taiwanese, the task of giving him a Chinese name falls upon the most senior member of his family. That would be his great grandfather. Apparently great grandfather has chosen a name today and it means something like "don't forget ancestors". This is an effort to ensure that he doesn't forget his Taiwanese roots even if he lives in Britain I think. I don't know how to write it, but I'll try and learn tonight.

The big news today is that Chantelle, who shot to fame on the Celebrity Big Brother show, is to marry Preston, who also appeared on the show. I feel dirty watching Big Brother, but that particular show, which also included George Galloway, Michael Barrymore, Dennis Rodman, and Tracy Bingham, was strangely compelling. It beats me why anyone would want to subject themselves to that kind of torture. The producers go out of their way to make things uncomfortable for the house mates, to the point of half starving them in this case. In a strange twist of fate, Chantelle, who went into the house as the only non celebrity, won the show and gained so much publicity from it that she is now probably more famous than Preston, who has had some chart success with his band.

Tonight I have to pick up friend Eugenie from Newport station. She is Staying for a few days. She is currently on holiday from university near where I work. She's a Taiwan friend who just happens to be studying here. I think it will be nice for the dragon to have someone with her for a couple of days.

It seems the company I am contracting for has decided that Good Friday will not be a holiday. Instead they are closing down on Easter Monday and then Tuesday as well. This is good for me because I get bank holiday rates on Friday. I don't think they have realised that yet.

I just thought of two uses for fake birth certificates. If people were smuggling children in from other countries and wanted to hide them here as British, they might want a passport. Secondly, people who have had gender reasignment surgery aren't allowed to change their birth certificates to reflect their new gender. They might want a new birth certificate. There could even be a market for these things.

Grumpy old man

So, it looks very much like Italy has a new PM. Mr Berlusconi has apparently been ousted from his position as the longest serving Italian PM since the last war. That's not saying much come to think of it. Mr Berlusconi's defeat is a defeat for flamboyant politics in favour of men in grey suits evidently.

There is almost nothing else in the news that is interesting me today. There seems to be a lot of fuss about this swan with bird flu that was found dead in Scotland. It's now been suggested that the animnal died outside Britain and got washed up on the Scottish coast by tides. Speaking as someone that got caught up in the middle of the SARS crisis a couple of years ago, I'd say this was a lot of fuss about nothing.

I think Abby's answer to the prison question was predictable. That doesn't mean it's wrong of course. I would like to see more statistics about American prisoners. Does having no positive role model really increase one's chances of getting into trouble? I think education is a factor. What I really want to know however is, does the fact that 0.7% of the population are in jail at any one time make the country a better place.

I've been trying to get my tax situation sorted out now that I am back in Britain. You'd think it would be a simple task. I'm back and I'm paying tax again. You'd think that would give them some indication to the tax office that I was in fact resident wouldn't you. Apparently not however. I have to fill in form P86. This form was written by a 6 year old with no grasp of simple grammar. Apparently it is important to provide information about how many days I have been in the country in the last 5 years. I haven't got a clue so I made it up. I could check my passport, but I really can't be bothered. My favourite question was "what are your future intentions?" Just that, no explanation, no hint as to what sort of answer is required. I just put "I have no idea how to answer this question". I did toy with the idea of providing a more colourful answer like, "I hope to win the Nobel prize for physics and drive a Ferarri one day".

I think I am turning into a grumpy old man. Everything seems to piss me off these days.

Twice in one day!

It's been a while since I wrote here and I have a few minutes to spare (for the first time in three weeks) so I'm going to give you a second entry today. Firstly it's my brother's birthday, so happy birthday to him. He came to see his new nephew on Friday and was suitably impressed. He didn't smoke a single cigarette all the time he was there and, although he hasn't given up completely, you have to admire him for trying. He does appear to be serious about it this time.

I want to talk about prisons. I read a report yesterday about prisons in the US. It seems that 1 in 140 US people are in prison at any one time. That's a huge number of people. In fact it's over 0.7% of the population. Apart from anything else, that must represent a huge cost to the tax payer.

There seems to me to be only three reasons to put someone in prison; revenge or punisment, rehabilitation, and to keep him from offending again during the period of his imprisonment. Of those three reasons, only the last can be clearly shown to work. And while keeping someone locked up does generally prevent them from offending, even that doesn't work if the sentence allows them out of prison. In Brish prisons this seems to becomming normal practice. Lord Archer for instance, was apparently allowed to drive himself to work in his own car and even attend a dinner party whilst ostensibly in prison.

So I'm interested to hear from the Americans out there. Abby, you're a traditional christian right winger, what's your view on the enormous US prison population?

There seems to be a large fuss this morning about people being cautioned for rape. Apparently there were 40 people cautioned in 2004 for rape. This figure has apparently doubled over ten years and there is a something of a public outcry. I can see that on the surface it seems that a caution is insufficient punishment for a rapist. But 40 people a year seems like a very small number to me and I suspect that these people that were cautioned were unlikely to be convicted in court anyway. One caution for instance was given to someone who admitted raping his sister 50 years previously. I can't see that very much evidence would have survived for a court case.

Rape is a strange crime in that it nearly always comes down to one person accusing someone of rape, and one person denying it. Even when DNA evidence is available, the accused can claim sex was consensual. So what do you do to increase the conviction rate without possibly convicting innocent people? I think the law should also take into account the fact that not all rapes are the same. Coming home drunk from the pub one night and one thing leading to another is completely different to being dragged at knife point into the bushes as you jog through the park.

It looks like Silvio Berlusconi is going to lose his post after the Italian elections. He has a lot of problems to contend with now, not least of which are accusations of bribery involving the husband of Tessa Jowell the British culture secretary. What exactly does the "culture" secretary do?

I expect you've been wondering where I've been

Well today I return to work after a three week break, necessitated by the birth of my son. I felt bad driving off to work this morning leaving the dragon in charge at home on her own. She'll manage perfectly well, but I'd rather I was there. It's true what they say about the birth of one's first child, nothing can prepare you. I wasn't ready for the depression, the complications, the argument with my parents. The good news however is that things appear to be getting back to normal, the negative things are begining to fade away and we can begin to enjoy being parents.

There was a complication soon after the birth. He was a little premature and feeding him was difficult. He lost a lot of weight and became dehydrated. At five days old, we had to take him back to hospital and he was kept in for three more days. I felt stupid. We should have supplimeted his feeds with formular milk from day one. But the midwives kept telling us that everything was going fine and we just had to keep trying. We could have done without the readmission to hospital, but no real damage was done, and he's gaining weight again now.

Thanks to all those people who left messages here by the way. I haven't had time to write back to any of you yet, but all the messages were appreciated both my me and the dragon. I will reply to all of you and I will put some pictures up as soon as I get a chance. Easter weekend is approaching, I might get a moment then.

The birth itself was one of the strangest spectacles I have ever witnessed. Before the birth a friend of mine told me that giving birth was horrendous and traumatic, and that it should be avoided at all costs. She has had two children and elected to have ceasarian section each time. I got fed up with her constant horror stories in the run up to our own birth and eventually told her to shut up. She turned out to be largely wrong about everything. Perhaps that wasn't so surprising since she has never been through it. One of the last things she said to me before the dragon gave birth was, "think about it, you never hear a woman who's just given birth tell you it was a great experience do you?" I'll come back to this in a moment.

I was woken on Monday 20 March at 6 am by the dragon telling me that her waters had broken. I wasn't convinced. It was almost two weeks early afterall, and first babies are always late, right? I did call the hospital however. They seemed to share my skeptisism. It was "probably just a show", they told me, "bring her in and we'll have a look". Even when I did bring her in at about 9 am, they didn't really think that anything was happening at first. By lunchtime however, they confirmed that membranes had ruptured and that labour was about to start, so they kept her in. Labour didn't start immediately however.

They kick husbands off the maternity ward at 8pm and I had to go home alone that night. I can understnd the policy, but it's tough leaving your wife behind like that. I slept with the phone by my head. The call came at 3am. She was in the delivery room. Of course I rushed back to the hospital again as fast as I could. I think I got there in about 20 minutes. There was no real need for the haste however. Nothing really happened for another 6 hours. Having a baby is a long process. They monitored the baby via sensors on the drgon's stomach. There was some worry that his heartbeat dipped at various intervals and it was suggested that maybe the cord was wrapped around his neck.

By 7am the contractions were regular and strong. The dragon had wanted to avoid using drugs if possible, but the midwife and I persuaded her to take a pethadin shot. On reflection this may have been a mistake. The pethadin seemed to have an effect on her much like half a bottle of scotch would have on me. She forgot how to speak English and now claims that the only person in the room she could see or hear was me. I don't think this was an exageration. At one point the sensor monitoring the baby became unusable and they had to connect a new sensor directly onto his head. The dragon doesn't even remember it. Neither did she remember the baby being put on her tummy.

When I showed her the baby lying on her stomach she came straight out of her drug induced trance and her first words were, "He's so cute, I want another one". Remember my friend that claimed no woman ever gave birth and then claimed it was a great experience? The hospital staff left us alone for an hour after the birth to get used to the idea of being parents I suppose. The staff were wonderful. I don't think we could have wished for better care. Mother and baby were moved to a new room by lunchtime and they kept her there for three more days.

And that was how my son came into the world. I can't say that watching it all happen first hand was enjoyable exactly. I'm glad I did it, but more because I know the dragon wanted me there than because I wanted to actually see it. But I can now say that I have done it, I've cut the cord, and held a child just a few seconds old. These things make me a bigger person. If we have another one, I'll be more ready for it.