Gay Penguins and Severed Monkey Heads

You know that song that Robert Shaw sings in Jaws:

Farewell and Adieu to you fair Spanish Ladies
Farewell and Adieu to you ladies of Spain

I just discovered that it's a nod to Herman Melville's Moby Dick. That very same song is sung by "sailors and harpooneers" just after they discover their captain is howling mad and that his only goal in life is to kill the great white whale that ate his leg. So there you go. That's your cultural lesson of the day. Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure Mr Punk and Abby have already read Moby Dick and know this, so I apologise if I appear ignorant.

I'm finding Moby Dick hard work by the way. Trousers is always spelt wrong, "trowsers". Must be some reason for it.

Oh, in case anyone is worried about me, the axe fell in my office, but it missed me. I'm told five people were lost, though no one seems to be able to identify them, and certainly no one I know. So, the house is not likely to be repossessed this month.

OK, lets talk about gay penguins. Apparently it's been discovered that gay penguins are attempting to abduct eggs from straight couples and replace them with stones in an attempt to become parents. This all sounds a bit far fetched to me, but the observations were seemingly made at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China. Gay penguins are easily recognised as they tend to know all the words to the songs from the Sound of Music and they use 3-in-1 hair products. Oh shut up, I'm joking.

Customs officials at Munich Airport were much taken aback when they opened a package to discover a decmposing monkey head within, complete with live maggots. Apparently they became suspicious of the parcel when they noticed the strange and vociferous odour which accompanied it. This raises questions for me. Over and above the obvious ones like, what the hell would anyone want with a severed monkey head, I wonder why the sender didn't realise that decay during transit was a distinct possibility.

Goats and Reindeer

Great start to the week. It looks like my company is going to be laying people off. I'm not confident about my future. So I've been slinging my CV about already. I've been expecting it. I work in an industry which sells to banks. And lets face it, banks are not looking healthy right now. So, if you don't hear from me for a while, its because the house has been repossessed or something.

On an altogether far more positive note, we went to Devon for the weekend and we saw reindeer, real ones. I thought they'd be bigger, like a moose or something, but they're small. I rather liked them. They eat special reindeer moss from Norway. The boy fed them. There were goats too, and the children were allowed in the pen. He really seemed to enjoy himself. He fed the goats too.



If I lose my job, maybe I could be a reindeer farmer.

On a related note, here's how the conversation in my cubicle went this morning:

me: "I saw real reindeer this weekend."
George: "What, in the wild?"
me: Yes George, I've been to Lapland."



VAT is down to 15% for a year apparently. Well that will make me want to rush out and buy luxury goods. A whole 2.5%!

I hate when that happens

I woke this morning thinking it was Friday, only to find of course that it is Thursday. I hate when that happens. It was a bad start to the day.

As promised yesterday, I bring you news of Hitler's testicles. In fact, it would seem that Hitler didn't have testicles. He only had one, the other having been shot off during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Who'd have thought it. That rude song that school children I assume still sing today was right all along.

Who is John Sergeant exactly? I sort of recognise the guy. He appears to have quit Strictly Come Dancing, which I'm happy to say I have never watched, and he's on the front page of nearly every national daily as a result. What is the issue? From the clips I've seen he does appear to be a supremely awful dancer.

And that is as far as I got today. I'll write a proper entry at some point.

Prostitutiona nd Fascist Pond Scum

The number of weird stories in the news today is quite astounding. I'm going to start with prostitution.

The Home Secretary has today announced plans to change legislation governing prostitution in England and Wales. Currently the law is complicated. Buying and selling of sex is not illegal, but brothels and pimping are. So is kerb crawling and standing on street corners soliciting sex. As far as I can tell, the new legislation won't really change any of that. It will become illegal to buy sex from someone controlled by a pimp (like you can prove that). Kerb crawlers are likely to be prosecuted for a first offence (this doesn't require a change in the law since it's already illegal). And most astoundingly, anyone who knowingly pays illegally trafficked women for sex could face rape charges. Rape is a completely different offence. How the hell is that going to work?

This appears to me to be a completely unworkable set of measures. To secure a conviction you have to prove that someone is pimping, that a person was actively looking for a prostitute while driving, or that a punter "knowingly" paid for sex with a trafficked person. All of these things would be ridiculously difficult to prove in court.

The new proposals also include a suggestion that kerb crawlers will be "named and shamed". It's not clear how this will be achieved, but in real terms I suppose it means that the names of people caught kerb crawling will be published somewhere. This bothers me enormously because the potential for getting it wrong is so huge.

I don't understand why governments try to regulate prostitution when they know it's simply not going to work. In the real world, the very best you can hope for is to keep it out of residential areas and separate it from the drug associated crimes that tend to follow it around. Every form of regulation just results in more victims.

In other news, the BNP is having a terrible day. Some high-ranking, disgruntled member of the fascist gang has leaked a complete membership list to the internet. Nearly 13,000 members are listed, complete with telephone numbers, addresses, email details, and other personal information. I downloaded my copy early this morning before the site was shut down. I can't find any members in my street. I did notice that Nick Griffin (party chairman, convicted racist, bastard) is listed. His address is Y Gribin, Llanerfyl,Y Trallwng, Welshpool, Powys, SY21 0JQ (it's Welsh), and his phone number is +44 (0)1938 820560. In case you feel like sending dog dirt to someone or calling him at 4 am.

I don't care at all that personal details of 13,000 fascist scum have been leaked all over the internet. But over and above the obvious Schadenfreude I feel, there is another interesting point here. Whoever leaked this document almost certainly broke the law to do it. The BNP took out an injunction to prevent publication in advance of the leak. So, that just goes to illustrate that all the legislation in the world isn't going to stop disgruntled people giving away sensitive data. And it just takes one disgruntled key-to-disk monkey working on the id card database to release personal data of every registered person in the country. And once it's gone, you can't get it back.

And some late news, the BNP member list is now on line in the form of a proximity search, so you can just enter your postcode and see how close you live to fascist pond-scum. Thanks for that link Dickie.

There is more, but it's late, I'm tired, more tomorrow, including news of Hitler's testicles.

I smell of fish

I took fish and rice to work for lunch today, and Curious George accused me of smelling. It was probably a fair comment. But Curious George upsets people every day, so I don't feel too guilty. I quite like the guy, but he has a filter missing or something, doesn't know when he's offending people, or doesn't care. It's also the boss' birthday, so I had to eat cake, and now I feel like a sea cow.

Here's an interesting story. A bunch of loonies in Wales decided to canoe 100m down the spillway at Llyn Brianne reservoir. I didn't know what a spillway was, but the pictures tell you all you need to know, and there is some video footage. These people should by rights be dead of course.

OK, beauty contests, why are they called "pageants" these days? Anyhow, I'm somehow drawn by the concept of these contests. I don't like them, but I'm drawn to them in the same way that I am to Big Brother. It's the freak show element. It was this freak show element that was aroused this morning when I saw the headline, "Teenage beauty queen stripped of title over village row". To be honest, I got less interested after I realised the headline extended further than, "Teenage beauty queen stripped", but I read the story anyway.

It would seem that a 17-year-old girl won a beauty contest, was presented with the prize, had her photograph taken, and was minutes later stripped of her crown when mothers of other contestants kicked off and it was discovered that she lived one mile outside the designated catchment area and was not eligible to enter. She had to watch the 14-year-old, second place contestant take the honour. See what I mean, freak show element. I don't know who the biggest freaks are here. I can sort of understand the young girls wanting to compete. The pushy stage school mothers who waited until the child had won before kicking off are pretty foul, and then there are the organisers who allowed the child to be crowned and then publicly humiliated. Mercury drinkers the lot of them.

I want to have go at making soap. Apparently the thing is to make it from vegetable oils and caustic soda. Caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) is apparently really nasty stuff, sometimes used as a drain cleaner. Doesn't sound like it should go into soap does it. Anyway, I have sourced some of the stuff and I'm intending to proceed with soap experiments in the near future. I'm sure it will all be documented here. It looks fun, and slightly dangerous.

I've been thinking; if there is some killer virus breakout and 98% of the world's human population dies in two weeks, and I'm left, could I look after my family? This is where the idea for making my own soap came from you see. Soap has to one of the more difficult things to get hold of when society crumbles. I've got a plan, just in case the worst happens. I'm going to move into a watermill I know of in North Devon, killing the current occupants if necessary, and hook up a generator to the wheel. I need to get guns from somewhere to defend the place. It's currently a trout farm, so it's a good source of fresh protein too if I can keep the fish alive. Also it's right in the middle of the countryside so I can catch rabbits and deer too. Anyway, don't tell anyone, I don't want competition.

As close as any mortal

All last week I was typing little bits that never got published. Reading them back, the only bit I want to keep is the following, written on 14 November:

Ponce Charles is 60 today. The Daily Telegraph has a piece on the front page proclaiming that more people want Charles to become king than William. A poll in the Guardian is saying exactly the opposite I noticed. Charles has of course always been somewhat controversial. He's divorced of course, though he clearly prefers to be thought of as a widower. I don't think the public care much that he is divorced, though it is hard to forgive him for the way he treated his wife. He's also married to a divorced woman. I think the public would be willing to ignore the issue of his wife being a divorcee also, if it wasn't for the fact that she looks like a horse. I feel slightly sorry for Camilla. Diana was a hard act to follow, and she was nothing like a horse, quite beautiful in fact.

Charles is also famous for saying and doing stupid and controversial things. He is rumoured to sow crops according to the phases of the moon, and once recommended a coffee enema for cancer sufferers. He's an advocate of homoeopathy, which has been so often debunked it's becoming embarrassing, and he makes frequent and prolonged private visits to a weird Greek Orthodox monastery which doesn't allow women or even female animals to enter.

In addition to the fact that he is simply controversial, he is now 60, and people are asking if he's too old to become king.

***

OK, on to something different. I made roast beef yesterday with Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes. I was particularly proud of the Yorkshire puddings which rose from the muffin tin as if reaching for heaven itself, and when the tin was overturned, they fell gracefully to the waiting plate with no hint of cohesion. Of course, making Yorkshire pudding is a black art, and perfection is unattainable, but I came as close as any mortal can hope to come yesterday evening.



I've borrowed Moby Dick from the library. I've never read it before, and I feel I should. There has been no proper library in Swindon in all the time I have lived there. But last week, a new building opened and it's completely impressive. Everything is automated. Machines eat your book when you return them. Lasers read your card when take books out. There are no real people, just robots. I'll keep you updated on Moby Dick.

Finally, and this is either hysterical or frightening, I can't decide which, the Chancellor Alistair Darling has accused the Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne of "talking down the pound". This is all because George Osbourne said that borrowing huge amounts of money and promising tax cuts could cause a run on sterling. A couple of points to think about:

1. Sterling has been in free-fall for the past month. It lost 25% against the US$ before Osbourne opened his mouth.

2. Mr. Darling, are you honestly suggesting that the world markets are hanging on the Shadow Chancellor's every word to gauge the health of sterling? If so, why are they listening to him and not you?

One that didn't come out right

Well the weekend was fine, until about 9pm on Sunday, at which point we were suddenly knee deep in vomit. The little man seems to have picked up some tummy bug and was blowing chunks constantly throughout the night. I worked from home on Monday to allow me to take him to see the doctor. They gave him some medicine and told us to bring him back in a couple of days if he isn't better. He did seem better yesterday. He slept well, though he still seems tired, and he had some breakfast. This morning he was grumpy.

The EU has decided to drop legislation that governs the size and shape of 26 types of fruit and vegetables that can be sold within the union. It is estimated that currently some 20% of produce from Europe is discarded because it does not comply with marketing standards laid down by the commission. In some cases this is thought to raise the price of produce by as much as 40%.

So, the European taxpayer has paid for the legislators to come up with the regulations in the first place, and are now paying again for them to remove it. They have also had to pay increased prices for produce in the shops as a direct result of the legislation, and they pay once again for the disposal of produce that can't be sold. I'd like some comment here from people outside the EU. Read this article from the Telegraph. It reads like a spoof April Fool piece, but it's quite genuine. Really, I'd like to know what Americans and Australians think, and anyone else from outside the EU.

There are two big stories in the news today that I want to compare. The first is the story of 13-year-old Hannah Jones. Hannah is terminally ill. Her heart was damaged when she was treated for childhood leukaemia. Apparently only a heart transplant would prolong her life, but she has decided that she doesn't want to have the operation. Instead she wants to spend the rest of her life with her family. Hannah's decision to refuse treatment resulted in the authorities initiating legal action. That action has since been dropped.

The second story concerns the death of "baby B", who died at the age of 17 months after sustained abuse at the hands of his mother, her lover, and a lodger at their home in London. The local authorities made 60 visits to the home of baby B, and the child was even taken into care for a short while. Eventually the child died from multiple injuries including a broken spine, broken limbs, broken ribs, severed fingertip, and much more. Read about it here.

As I said, I want to compare these stories. In the case of Hannah Jones, it seems very clear to me that the authorities meddled in a situation which simply didn't concern them. It's worth mentioning that in fact it was a doctor that first alerted the child protection services to the issue. It did appear at one point as though Hannah would be taken from her family and put into care if her family failed to bring her to the hospital for treatment. I can't see how the authorities can justify their involvement. Their argument is that they believed the parents were preventing the child from having treatment against her will. I'd still suggest that the authorities were less qualified than the parents of the child to make the decision.

The second story is exactly the opposite. The authorities didn't get involved when they clearly should have. A baby was suffering from horrifying abuse, and the visiting social workers clearly knew he was in danger, but didn't remove him. This mistake cost the life of the child.

My base instinct is always to argue against state interference. In the Hannah Jones case, the state had no business insisting the young woman had treatment, and some heartache could have been avoided if they had stayed away. It's not so clear cut in the case of baby B however. Could one argue that the state should have stayed out of that situation? Well they were completely ineffective. The outcome would have been the same with or without the involvement of the state.

What really sickens me is the attitude of the chairman of the Haringey Local Safeguarding Children Board:

Sharon Shoesmith insisted no one would be sacked: "This was a family that needed, and was given, extensive help and support."

"The very sad fact is that we can't stop people who are determined to kill children. I am satisfied that the action that should have been taken was taken."

Sharon Shoesmith is clearly more concerned about her job than the death of a child.

Smoking Crack

So, Michael Crichton's extinct then. I wonder if they'll clone him.

Oh shut up, I'm joking.

I was all ready to write about how Labour lost a crucial by-election in Glenrothes today. Astoundingly, I can't do that because they won. And it really is astounding, since yesterday even the Labour party were expecting to lose. I guess this means that Gordon is in better shape than anyone realised. It would be too much to hope for that a huge vote rigging scandal is now uncovered. The polls currently put Labour around nine points behind the conservatives.

Funny how yesterday the impartial, state-run BBC hardly mentioned the Glenrothes by-election when it looked like Labour would crash and burn. Today after their surprise win they seem to be headlining with it and suggesting it is a massive Labour victory. It's not a victory, they just held onto the safest labour seat in the country and they halved their majority. They also worked very hard to do it. The PM himself campaigned there and his wife, as did John Prescott.

The Ho Secretary has clearly been smoking crack or something. Apparently she's under the impression that people "can't wait for id cards". Though the comments page on the BBC website would seem to suggest otherwise. It's really quite difficult to find a comment in favour of id cards there. I've officially decided that I'm going to prison rather than register. Actually that might be a bad plan. Do they take your finger prints when you get thrown in the slammer? I may have to think of another plan. I'm not registering anyway.

I've had a note from Mr Punk about id cards. I hadn't realised that students were already having fingerprints taken on entry into the country. I assume you are here on a student visa Mr P? Although I don't see why our foreign friends should be treated like criminals, I have to concede that foreign students are something of an unknown quantity and arrive in this country without a sponsor. That can't be said about my wife.

I'll tell you something else funny. Although my wife is here quite legally, she will be fingerprinted (like a common criminal) and issued with an id card against her wishes. During the two years she's been here she has forged some links with the local Asian community. She has a few Asian friends and acquaintances who arrived here illegally, or who came illegally but then overstayed visas and are now classed as asylum seekers. These people are not going to be fingerprinted and bar-coded it seems. Funny old world isn't it?

Oh, oh, forgot tot tell you, the on-going row between Virgin Media and Sky tv appears to be over. So Sky channels will be available on Virgin and vice versa. And you know what that means - I won't have to steal episodes of Lost, series 5 with Spanish subtitles from dodgy Russian download sites in January. The dragon greeted this news with a peculiar eye-rolling expression when I told her yesterday. Not sure what it meant, but hey, I get to see Lost on the big screen downstairs instead of on the computer screen.

There has been much international speculation lately about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. Various reports suggest he has been incapacitated by a stroke, that he is paralysed, a vegetable, and even dead. The N Korean authorities have been releasing grainy pictures of the guy, which only seems to have fuelled speculation. Today however a new picture has emerged of Kim at an "artistic performance". Sounds like a euphemism for "porn show" doesn't it. Anyway, it seems that the picture shows Kim quite clearly, but with a shadow falling in a rather different direction to all the other shadows in the picture. The suggestion is that he has been Photoshopped. If I'd been doing it, I'd have had someone about Kim's size stand in the picture, then just changed his head with Photoshop, amateurs. You be the judge...



And if you're a real geek, have a look at the BBC image which seems to suggest a couple of other little issues with the image.

Dear Cow in the Home Office

I'm not going to talk about politics.

Today is "stress awareness day" apparently. I know this because I have had an email from the Human Resources manager 0informing me of it. What I want to know is who thought of putting it on firework night! I don't like being a "human resource". It's degrading. In the old days we were always "personnel". I want to be personnel.

On Monday the BBC reported this story about a woman who was seen tied up and naked at a Hampshire railway station. It seems that a couple driving past the station saw the woman, accompanied by a man dressed in camouflage. They called the police. Yesterday the BBC ran a further report that suggested the naked woman had come forward and admitted that it was "a prank". Sounds to me like there may have been more to it than "a prank". I love these stories that remain open ended.

Apparently from this month foreigners married to British subjects will only be eligible for marriage-based visas allowing them to live in this country if they are over 21.

Dear Cow in the Home Office

You are obviously intent on busting up multi national marriages, why don't you just pass a bloody law prohibiting marriage to foreigners? Better yet, why not round up all the foreigners in Britain, put them in a field and mow them down with automatic weapon fire?

I agree that there is a problem with immigration, but these are not the droids you're looking for. There's only a problem because you allowed hoards of illegal immigrants to stay, and allowed a huge wave of immigration from eastern Europe to wash over us. If you want to bring immigration under control, these are the people you need to focus on.

Yours etc etc

Oh, I got a two-page reply from local MP about id cards and the fact that my wife is to be fingerprinted like a common criminal. She failed to answer just about every question I asked her. I might scan and post said letter here.

OK, that's all, you may go now.

OK, this is what really happend

What about Lewis Hamilton eh? I was trying to watch the race on Sunday, but was preoccupied with things like making dinner and generally being a father. Mummy was out at the time, more on that later. Anyway, it looked like Lewis had lost the championship, but regained it in the final seconds of the last lap. The funny thing is, no one seems to know exactly what happened.

As far as I can tell, Lewis needed 5th place or better to win the title. He went into the final lap in 6th place. He'd changed to wet weather tyres because it had begun to rain. In front of him was Vettel, who had overtaken him on the previous lap, and in front of Vettel was Glock, who was the only driver still on dry tyres. Glock was 18 seconds ahead of Hamilton, the rain hadn't really happened, and it looked like Glock had the tyre advantage. However, by the time Hamilton reached the final corner, Glock had lost his 18 second advantage and Hamilton (and presumably Vettel) had sailed past him, thus giving him 5th place again and the title. That's what I reckon happened, but everyone you talk to has a different story.

I went to Devon this weekend with the boy. The Dragon stayed in Swindon because she has a friend with a sick child in the hospital. The friend is Chinese and doesn't speak terribly good English, so the dragon was acting as translator and general support. That's why I was making dinner and being a father yesterday evening. We'd returned from Devon, but the dragon was still at the hospital. Anyway, we had a pretty good time visiting Grandma in Devon. She was very pleased to see him and we went to the apple farm day in South Molton. It was good. They had a whole pig going round on a spit, tame owls, donkeys, and lots of cider and other apple products for sale. I borrowed my father's old camera and took a couple of pictures.



If you're interested in complete madness in the world of banking, here's a good story; it seems that Royal Bank of Scotland, which has just received a rescue package costing £20 billion to the British tax payer has put aside £1.79 billion for "staff costs" for the first 6 months of the year for its investment banking division. These "staff costs" include discretionary bonuses for staff. The investment banking division actually caused a £5.9bn writedown that wiped out the bank's profits for the same period. In simple terms, our PM used public money to buy a share in a bank that was about to crash and burn. The bank is now using that money to pay huge bonuses to the people that caused the problem. I'm in the wrong business.

OK, Prince Charles is off on one again about the rain forests. It's all terribly tedious but I suggest you click on the link to look at the picture of the Prince. Don't bother with the report.

OK, is that picture fixed in your mind now? Good, now click here.

It's not just me is it?

New research out today seems to show a correlation between teens who watch television sitcoms that include a high sex content (Friends, Sex in the City), and teens who get themselves pregnant by mistake. The research itself is fine. The conclusions drawn from it are all over the place. No causal link between the amount of television watched and the instances of teen pregnancies has been established. But of course, the inference is that these shows cause teen pregnancies.

It's still an interesting study. I think the most interesting point is that, of the 2,000 test subjects, 58 girls, and 33 boys were involved in a pregnancy. Unless there is some divine intervention to be factored in, each of those pregnancies requires a boy and a girl, yet there appear to be almost twice as many girls "involved in a pregnancy" than boys. Does this mean a small number of boys are fertilising a large number of girls? Is the sample skewed? Are there are large number of older men outside the sample group (12-17 years) fertilising girls under 18?