Fruit Bats

Had a bit of a crappy weekend. I came home from work early on Friday due to feeling like I was dying. I didn't die of course, but the weekend wasn't very active. The dragon hasn't been very good either. She reckons it's pig flew. The boy seems to have got off lightly. He's got a gravelly voice, and he's coughing, he also had a high temperature for a couple of days, but apart from that he seems to have escaped nasty symptoms.

Is anyone watching Flash Forward? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!? Is Tracy alive or dead?

I actually found myself feeling sorry for Gordon Brown this week after he was attacked by the media for his, admittedly appalling, letter of condolence to the mother of a soldier who died in Afghanistan. The letter was appalling only because he has the worst handwriting in the known world and apparently he can't spell. He really should have had someone check it before it went out, and if I had handwriting that awful, I'd either type it, or simply make a phone call or visit. The situation has been hijacked for political purposes however and I have some sympathy.

A follow-up phone call by Brown to the mother, clearly designed to put tings right, just turned into an ambush. The call was recored and today appears in the Sun. The PM comes across as defensive and detached. I suspect the mother was coached by someone from the Sun over what to say. Somehow the argument morphed from the issue of the letter to lack of resources for troops in the Middle East and problems with helicopters.

There was a drama documentary thing on Channel 4 last night. It was set in an imaginary Britain where the death penalty has been reinstated for paedophiles. It told the story of Gary Glitter. In real life Glitter spent some time in a British jail after being caught with child porn. When he was released, he moved to Asia and eventually managed to get himself thrown into jail there for sex with an under-age girl. He was eventually released from a Vietnamese jail and deported back to the UK.

The drama was actually quite difficult to watch. It did make you think about the ramifications of execution. But it didn't really work very well. They chose to focus on the wrong guy. Glitter may well be a sleazy scum bag who takes advantage of under-age girls, but he isn't an evil psychopath like Ian Huntley, or Ian Brady for instance. He never used violence as far as I am aware. It made the whole thing rather unbelievable. If the death penalty ever did return to Britain, there would be a queue of people well ahead of Gary Glitter at the gallows. And that's another thing; the method of execution used in the programme was hanging. I can't imagine hanging ever coming back. Surely the only real option in this day and age would be lethal injection. Anyway, interesting idea, didn't really work.

A British company, Maclaren, which makes push chairs, has issued a warning to American owners of their products to stop using them because there have been 12 cases of children chopping off fingers in hinges as the chairs were folded. Owners are being sent kits to modify and make the buggies safe. Astonishingly, owners of exactly the same products in Europe have been issued with new guidance on how to use the products, but have not been told to stop using them or been issued with the kits to modify them. I find this astounding. Maclaren say that accidents in Europe have been far fewer and after consulting the Trading Standards Authority, they elected not to take the same action as they did in US.

Not surprisingly, a row has ensued. They surely can't be suggesting that the same product is less dangerous in Europe than it is in America? How could that be? Are they thinking that Americans are more careless? Surely not. This is going to turn into the worst marketing disaster in history. No parent is going to buy a Maclaren product ever again. I won't be. And as soon as some unfortunate European child does get hurt in one of these chairs, Maclaren is going to get sued so fast they won't even see it coming.

In other news, it seems that fruit bats like oral sex.