With my own two hands

I finished fixing the recycled cot last night. It stood up on it's own legs, two of which I made with my own hands. The cot was free since we stole it from the recycling centre. Two legs and all the fixings were missing. I paid £2.99 for the piece of wood to make the new legs, and around £4 for the nuts and bolts. So that's a whole cot for £7. The dragon is going to paint it, so that will be another £5, depending on what she wants in the way of paint. Call it £12 altogether. That's less than half price. It's not the money saving aspect however, it's the fact that I recycled it myself. I don't know why it was left at the recycling center actually. It's really only for glass, aluminium, old clothes, and paper.

We fed him at 10.30, 2.30, and then 5.30 again last night. He's getting there. He managed all his injections OK yesterday too. And he'd gone back to sleep by the time I left for work at 6.30 this morning.

The home office has admitted that there are now almost 50,000 DNA profiles on the national database taken from people under 18 who were not convicted of a crime. I can't find words to describe just how much this disgusts me. The Home Office has defended the situation. This must be against the European Human Rights act. It just has to be.

The new Airbus A380 has visited Heathrow for the first time. Apparently they are going to start flying commercially at the end of this year. I really want to fly in one. There are lots of critics moaning about polution and cramming too many people on board. I think it looks good. It's apparently quieter and more fuel efficient per passenger than a 747, and I'm all for that.

I've come to the conclusion that television is the worst possible thing that could have happened to news reporting. I was watching one of the news channels on tv at lunchtime. They were showing coverage of 5 soldiers killed in Iraq being returned to Britain. Each coffin was unloaded fromthe plane, hoisted upon the shoulders of 6 bearers and marched to a waiting car. Each coffin's journey from plane to car must have taken about 10 minutes. Thus the coverage was 50 minutes of coffins moving slowly across an airfield. It was newsworthy, and it needed reporting. It didn't need 50 minutes. On the radio it would have been a 5 minute report from "our man on the scene".

The worst type of news reporting on tv is disaster area coverage. Traditionally it begins with a picture of an African village with smoke rising from wrecked houses, and ends with a broken toy lying in the mud. And you just know it was put there by the crew to make things more dramatic. I also hate those reporters who go to the home of someone who has lost a relative in some frightful disaster, and interview them as they flick through a family photo album. There's a lot to be said for scrapping tv news altogether and just putting it on the radio I think.