AAADD

Gareth from Hong Kong sent this over today – it made me chuckle.   I’m not there yet, but I have some of the symptoms.   You probably do too….

 

Recently, I was diagnosed with A. A. A. D. D. – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

 

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing.

 

As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

 

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

 

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

 

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

 

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

 

I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left.

 

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking.

 I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. I realize the Coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

 

As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye–they need to be watered.

 

I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I have been searching for all morning long.

 

I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers.

 

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.

 

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

 

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

 

Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

 

At the end of the day:

the driveway is flooded

the car isn’t washed,

the bills aren’t paid,

there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter,

there is still only one check in my check book,

I can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

 

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m really tired.

Don’t laugh — if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming

Oh Brother! Where art thou?

No, not the rather good film with George Clooney, but my MP. The Honorable Member for Bethal Green and Bow, George Galloway MP, to be precise.

An enigmatic and somewhat controversial figure, he won his seat for the Respect party (his) in the last election. Then, in late spring of 2005 he went to Washington, D.C., to appear before a Senate subcommittee that claimed he had enriched himself through the scandal-plagued Iraq oil-for-food program. Several British newspapers carried a similar story.

He remains a bête noir of the right-wing tabloids, attacking the current government, continuing his campaign for peace and social justice worldwide and expressing a deep longstanding commitment to Iraq, the Palestinian cause and the people and culture of the Middle East.

But he’s supposed to be my MP. Not some international peace and justice campaigner. Isn’t he?

Nope. George Galloway is certainly one of the most iconoclastic figures in public life today. He’s been threatened, smeared and branded a traitor for his stand against the war in Iraq, yet refuses to be gagged.

Terrific. And what about being an MP?

Not yet, because now he’s a TV celebrity on Big Brother. For those of you fortunate to have been spared this excruciating rubbish it is one of the en vogue ‘reality’ TV shows where a group of disfunctional ne’er do wells or in this case (minor / faded / has been / wannabe / loser) celebs live together in a house, perform certain tasks for rewards. The producers are of course looking for them all to either kill or sleep with each other because this apparently makes good TV. Now you come to mention it the former does sound quite promising… anyway I digress….

All of this is very jolly and I’m sure this relentless self publicist is having a good time. I just think he should be in the Houses of Parliament representing his constituents. The poor saps who voted for him (clearly not me) and earning his keep.

Big Brother lasts 3 weeks, unless you are one of the lucky ones who is voted out early.

Parliament is collectively holding it’s breath. Meanwhile the constituents of Bethnal Green and Bow remain unrepresented.

The Root of all Evil

In one of the most remarkable programmes I’ve ever seen, Professor Richard Dawkins presented a careful – and quite passionate – critique on the evil of religion as he sees it.

This is one of those documentaries that will clearly polarize opinion. A scientist and atheist he considers that all religions should be banned as their irrational roots nourish intolerance and breed deeply held hatred.

He considers that religious insanity is the logical outcome of deeply held belief.

He pities the poor misguided souls who flock to Lourdes to be healed. The odds are short. 80,000 sick visitors a year for nearly 100 years. 66 recorded miracle cures. And those people could have all recovered naturally – there are no re-grown limbs here. He feels facing the truth to be better than false hope.

He marvels at those who are otherwise clearly intelligent, suspend reason. That their shared delusion constitutes faith and, how untested belief turns into unshakeable truth.

And it was very frightening too.

He meets an evangelical pastor in the Bible belt of the USA. He is thrown off the property after an initially polite, but increasingly hostile debate.

He disagrees with a junior Imam in Bethlehem who comfortably justifies 9/11 and says the world will be entirely Muslim one day. And then blames Dawkins for everything from women dressing inappropriately to petty theft.

The scary summary is that Dawkins view is that good people will do good things. Evil people will do evil things. But it takes religion to make a good person do evil.

Having heard some of the believers – you can see he has a point. They are so deeply convinced they are the only ones following the righteous path, there is no room for debate or compromise. And this is worrying.

In his closing comment he says ‘We are all atheists about almost all religions on earth. Some of us just go one god further’.

The second part of the programme is next Monday at 8.00 on Channel 4. I’ll be watching.

Brother George – update

It seems I was not alone in questioning whether Big George should be in the House or in da house, so to speak.   His constituents are now up in arms…

A protester with a sign saying 'Missing MP'

Mr Galloway said it would be “good for politics” and he believed that politicians should use “every opportunity” to communicate with people.

But local residents in his Bethnal Green and Bow constituency have staged a protest outside his office in east London accusing him of abandoning his responsibilities and demanding he give back his MP’s pay for the time he is in the house.

An internet protest campaign – Get Back To Work, George – is calculating how much it costs taxpayers each day Mr Galloway stays inside the house. At 9am today it stood at £754.

On Thursday there will be a Commons debate on the £500 million Crossrail transport link which will affect the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency.

Come on George, show some respect… and pick the house to which you were elected.

Asbo – the oldest

Despite some tough competition, Christopher Muat was the star of the Channel 4 documentary Anti-Social Old Buggers, screened in June.

At 88, Muat is the oldest recipient of an order and, despite being a widower, half-deaf and half-dead, the Liverpudlian is hardly the sort of grandfather figure any of us would hope for. The terms of his order state that he is not allowed to bang on any object, film his neighbours, turn up his TV to an unreasonable volume, shout, swear, or make “sarcastic” remarks.

So if Mr Muat says “nice hat” with the wrong intonation, he could find himself behind bars for the next five years (although he has already once narrowly escaped jail after breaching the terms of the order earlier this year).

Wild Boar re-introduced to UK: hunting ban lifted!

“In order to find the truth you do need to look behind the headline”. And never was it truer than in this story from Devon.

On Dec 22 about 100 boar broke for freedom in the countryside, around the villages of East and West Anstey, after a wire fence was cut by animal activists at a boar farm.

Forty animals were recovered but the rest remain on the loose. Wild so to speak.

So what to do? Only one thing for it. A wild boar hunt. With dogs. Against the law, but permission was granted…..after complaints from local residents that they were scared of going outdoors and from farmers who said the boars were destroying crops and disrupting livestock.

I just can’t help chuckling at the irony. Animal rights muppets let loose wild animals who promptly disappear onto Dartmoor, effectively reintroducing them to the UK. They pose a threat to locals and farmers if they are cornered, so a hunt (recently made illegal due to pressure from the same animal rights protestors) is organized to try and capture them.

This is why they have hunts in the countryside! Wake up and smell the Blue Mountain folks!

Prescott Pressed into Paying Personally

The Deputy Prime Minister or Johnny Two Jags to you and I was in the news again last week – for all the wrong reasons.   Seems he forgot to pay his council tax… A heinous crime for which others have been jailed.

The leader of the Is It Fair? campaign, which wants the tax abolished, suggested that the Deputy Prime Minister, whose department oversees local government, should either go to jail – as pensioners have done for failing to pay – or lose his job.

Sorry, but I can’t agree.   Just what would we do without him?   We wouldn’t have the chance to publish pictures like this:

Take that you voter!

According to his office, Mr Prescott owed Westminster City Council £3,830.52.

Is It Fair? supported Alfred Ridley, a retired vicar who spent 28 days in jail for refusing to pay above-inflation rises on his council tax, and Sylvia Hardy, who served less than 48 hours of a seven-day sentence, also for refusing to pay in full.

Mrs Hardy said: “I can’t understand how it was allowed to have got to such a high amount when I got my first demand letter after I owed the council here £14.”

Mr Prescott’s aides yesterday admitted that he was not amused to issue an apology for what was described as a “classic case of left-hand, right-hand” on the part of what must now be some very chastened civil servants.

Hmmm.   Ignorance is not usually a defence accepted in a court.   Oh, but of course, it never got that far…because in the case of Johnny Two Rules, it’s one for him.   And one for us.

 

Asbo – the real Vicky Pollard

In May, a 19-year-old Northumberland woman briefly achieved national celebrity because of an unflattering resemblance to Vicky Pollard, the socially excluded, inarticulate teenager from the television programme Little Britain. The “real Vicky Pollard”, as the press labelled Kerry McLaughlin of North Tyneside, shared the television character’s tracksuit, lack of erudition and “Romford facelift” (a hairstyle so called because the ponytail is pulled back so tight).

McLaughlin had inspired 111 complaints from neighbours, and entertained police on 25 occasions, for alleged offences that ranged from tying a naked teenager to a lamppost, to making threats with a hammer. At the McLaughlin house, children as young as 10 were said to have drunk the night away, with parties often followed by moped races outside. Miss McLaughlin’s punishment was an order that banned her from ever returning home, causing a nuisance to neighbours or “intimidating people who may be called as witnesses about her behaviour”.

AA own goal

I do like these corporate own goal stories – they provide a balance to the marketing spiel we are so used to hearing. In this particular story the AA’s breakdown service refused to respond after a driver collapsed at the wheel because his death meant his membership had lapsed.

An operator told relatives of David Barker they could only provide roadside assistance if one of them agreed to join.

Mr Barker, 58, a widower, was on his way to a football match in his Renault Scenic when he died three miles from home in Sheffield.

His family had to remove the car after he was taken by ambulance to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

When Mr Barker’s brother-in-law Leonard Douglas tried to start the engine the battery was flat and he noticed Mr Barker’s AA membership card in the glove compartment.

“I rang to see if they would come out and start the car,” said Mr Douglas, “but they told me we would have to rejoin as David had died. Then the operator said she would speak to a manager and hung up.

An AA spokesman said: “The AA was wrong to refuse service and did not show the compassion and sensitivity we expect in what was clearly an emotional situation.”

Just in case, the RAC websiste is www.rac.co.uk Thought it might be useful.

Happy New Year

I did have some vague notion about publishing a few new year resolutions – on the basis that if I’ve published them then I really need to stick to them. Well, on the same basis, if I don’t let on what they may be, then I can’t be hauled over the coals for not sticking to them. So I’ll keep them to myself.

I was going to try and be a bit less critical of politicians and the woeful state of affairs in the UK this year – but then I thought of all the wonderful material I’d be denied sharing with you. Like this for example.

Our PM, Mr Blair, in yet another rather nauseating attempt to ingratiate himself with an increasingly dissaffected public has had a short film made of a typical day. His official website carries an “Exclusive insight into the PM’s working life” during which he confides “nothing prepares you for the difficulty of being Prime Minister”.

In the briefest of glimpses – three minutes and 30 seconds – Mr Blair is at his desk taking a break during a “typically busy day”, confiding his thoughts as scenes of “typical” engagements flash on screen. Brief it may be, but not so brief that he cannot find time to take a sideswipe at his Tory opponent.

“Being leader of the Opposition does not prepare you quite adequately for the difficulty of doing the Prime Minister’s job, just because it’s completely a different order of stress, challenge, pressure.

“The hours are very. . . [pause for emphasis]. . . long.” Cue shot of dust blowing through a deserted Downing Street with only the Prime Minister’s lights still shining late into a moonless night.

Perhaps few will bother viewing the website following the results announced on Monday of the Today programme listeners’ vote for the most “powerful person in Britain”.

They put Mr Blair seventh, behind the European Commission president Jose Manual Barroso, Rupert Murdoch, the Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy, Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, Parliament and “the British people”.

Here’s hoping 2006 will be a bumper year for us all.