The Envy of the World

NHS Negligence Bill Tops £1bn a year

This is the headline in today's Independent on Sunday. A sorry financial aggregation of human unhappiness caused by the NHS, and a lamentable waste of our money.

This could be compared with other National Health Services across the world, except for some reason the rest of the world doesn't have one, despite smug conventional wisdom telling us that they all envy ours.

Unless...

Who all the pies?

Fatties are causing problems:

Figures released to the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act show that fire services were called out almost every day of the last five years to assist in lifting obese patients. In 1826 days there were 1784 call outs, and more than three quarters of the incidents involved NHS patients.

On one occasion the fire fighters were called to help move a patient from one hospital bed to another.

Fire trucks were also needed to help lift patients from their homes, from baths in which they had become stuck, and from upstairs parts of their houses.

Heh. Hehehehe. Okay, it's childish, but there's something deliciously, wickedly funny about actual fire engines being needed to assist the tubby.

In total the call outs cost fire authorities across the country £4 million over five years.

That's less funny. But luckily I have a simple solution: make the fat fuckers pay themselves. They can obviously afford industrial quantities of cake, chips and cheeseburgers so they can't be that skint.

But wait, there's a greater idiocy on its way...

Mike Penning, the shadow health minister, said: "As a former firefighter, I am concerned at these figures. They show the severe strain that the growing obesity epidemic is putting our emergency services under.

"Labour's complacent attitude to tackling obesity has meant that years have been wasted in our bid to deal with this growing problem. We urgently need action now, but unfortunately this Government's record has been one of obesity targets missed and scrapped, budgets for information campaigns being raided, and dithering over food labelling.

"It is about time that the Labour Government woke up and started to take obesity seriously."

Oh for God's sake. I hate this Government as much as anyone, but it's not their fault stupid people gorge themselves silly on chocolate bars and lard butties. It's individual responsibility - to which, incidentally, I am happy to extend to the NHS charging porkers for treating their self-inflicted condition.

And no, taxing Mars Bars won't work because you won't get a new generation of sleek beautiful people, you'll just get slightly poorer lardbuckets while the rest of us suffer.

A Pavlovian response

At the risk of sounding troublingly like a particularly hysterical Daily Mail headline, why is it that just about everything this Government announces makes one groan with baffled dismay, before expectorating a vivid "fuck you"?

Police may get more data powers

Jacqui Smith has set out plans to give the police and security services more powers to gather phone and e-mail data.

The home secretary said police risked losing the ability to fight crime and terrorism without new laws.

Reports suggest the government wants a single database to store details of every UK phone call and e-mail sent.

Ms Smith stressed the "content" of e-mails would not be stored but she said consultation would be launched in the New Year on what the new laws would be.

Plans to collect more data on people's phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits are expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill, due to be introduced in the Queen's Speech in November.

Ah, yes, this is why.

Please consider this my response to your consultation: "fuck you".

Mindlessness, but not through drink...

This absolute sack of shit appears in today's Times, and is so unbearably depressing and stupid that nothing short of an absolute kicking will suffice.

Bars are to be banned from offering free alcohol to women and free wine and beer tastings will be curbed under a new system of government restrictions to cut public drunkenness.

"banned"..."curbed"..."government"..."restrictions" - and all in the first sentence. Not a promising start, is it?

There will also be rules to limit “happy hour” offers that encourage speed drinking and soft drinks will have to be sold at the same discount during promotions. Wine in restaurants will have to be served in glasses with marked measures.

Now that's actually a vaguely sensible - or least inoffensive - idea. Many of us can probably relate the frustration of a driver discovering that his soft drinks are costlier than alcoholic alternatives. Although I'd sooner see this being encouraged rather than legislated into existence.

The proposals, drafted by the Home Office and the Department of Health, seek to transform social attitudes towards drinking by breaking the association between drink and sexual, financial and social success.

Err...what? I drink a lot, but I don't imagine that it makes me alluring to the fairer sex (at least, not much), nor does it have a demonstrably positive impact upon my finances and societal standing. Of course advertisers seek to establish this link, but then they attempt to propogate the idea that selecting a certain brand of shaving gel will have a pouting model wearing nothing but one of your own shirts simperingly stroking your newly smooth chin as a precursor to boundless sex. To the best of my recollection, this is yet to occur.

A code for the drinks industry, leaked to The Sunday Times, marks a hardening in the government’s stance after the failure of a voluntary code to curb binge drinking. Hospital admissions linked to excess alcohol have more than doubled in the past 10 years.

Alcoholism has risen during New Labour's time in power? Really? Fuck me...

Threats by the government over the past four years to crack down on irresponsible behaviour by the drinks industry have foundered under the onslaught of aggressive discounting and promotions.

I like drinking. Alcohol producers like me drinking. And I haven't heard the Government complaining about the extorniate amount of tax they steal from me as a consequence.

The mandatory code of practice has alarmed the drinks industry with an elaborate series of rules including:

— Cigarette-style health warnings will have to be displayed wherever alcoholic drinks are sold. This would include shops, bars and, according to the industry, could force restaurants to place an official “sensible drinking message” on every table.

Oh dear God. A "sensible drinking message on every table" - aye, that's really going to cut down. I'd love to hear how this is going to be worded. "Dear drinker, please don't drink so much, love and kisses, Gordon Brown", perhaps? These people clearly don't know how pub culture works. Can they seriously envisage anyone saying "sorry lads, I'll sit this round out, this sensible drinking message has reminder me about the terrible damage that can be caused by excessive drinking"?

— A curb on promotional free wine, whisky and beer tastings. No samples may exceed 125ml and “care must be taken to ensure that customers do not return for further tastings and run the risk of becoming intoxicated”.

It is already illegal to serve to the intoxicated, so the second part of that is superfluous; and I fail to see what business it is of the government if people want to give away free stuff.

— A ban on drinking games, such as downing a glass in one, and “drink all you like” offers for those paying an entry fee will be abolished.

How the FUCK are they going to legislate on drinking games? Is some clipboard-wielding twat from the Department For Ruining Everyone's Fun going to lurk in every alehouse, looking out for people possibly enjoying themselves with drinking games?

— Wine in restaurants will have to be served in glasses with measures marked on the side.

Groan.

The government intervention represents a belated acknowledgment that hopes that Britain would adopt a civilised “cafe culture” with the introduction of 24-hour drinking have failed.

It uses disdainful language to describe the attitudes spread by Britain’s bar culture, which it blames for equating heavy drinking with personal success.

Britain doesn't have a café culture because on the whole, British people aren't terribly interested in that kind of thing. You can't impose a culture on people, however much these illiberal morons may think to the contrary.

And among my drinking companions, I know of none - NONE - who equate drinking with personal success. It is instead a way of relaxing after a day at work, or a means of increasing the enjoyment of a day at the football, or simply done for the obvious social benefits.

It warns that drinks should not be promoted as a means of boosting one’s “social, sexual, physical, mental, financial or sporting performance”.

The practice of selling cocktails called Sex on the Beach, or more sexually graphic names, will also be scrapped.

Oh for crying out loud. Will the aforementioned government nerd, doubtless sporting a little pencil moustache, also be on the look-out for vulgar drink names? And how the cunting hell can you actually design legislation for such an obviously grey area? Leaving aside the "why" - "HOW?!"

The safe drinking signs will have to include a statement from chief medical officers about safe daily drinking limits; a graphic showing the number of alcohol units contained within each glass or bottle and the address for a website offering information on drinking moderately.

I doubt there is a drinker in the land who doesn't know any of these things. A moderate, responsible drinker will roll his eyes in such pointless nannying; a serious problem drinker will not care. This rubbish has no obvious target.

Casual bar staff may be forced out by the proposed mandatory code, which will require all bar employees to undergo accredited training.

...raising costs for an industry struggling in the present climate. Clever.

It could become an offence to fail to ensure that staff have been trained in checking a customer’s age, turning away underage customers, refusing to serve customers who have overindulged and preventing drunken disorder.

It's already illegal to serve the underage or the drunk, and licencees are already compelled to ensure good behaviour on their premises. I'm not entirely sure what the aim of the above is.

Alcohol Concern has been calling for staff training in preventing excessive and underage drinking to be a requirement of a pub gaining its licence.

The mandatory code, which would be enforced by Trading Standards, was this weekend welcomed by health experts. Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “The voluntary partnerships of the drinks industry are clearly not working. Mandatory codes at this stage are essential.

Any organisation calling itself "Alcohol Concern" is going to have an obvious and partial agenda, so we can view its utterances through this skewed prism. That's not to wholly dismiss its intentions, merely we require the other side of the argument. Though one supposes the a Government with a mania for imposing rules on us is unlikely to listen anyway.

“I think the next step will be to tackle the heavy discounting through a minimum price for a unit of alcohol.”

Oh, fuck you. It is absolutely NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If a retailer wishes to sell me a product at a lower price, that transaction is the concern of myself and the producers, and no-one else.

Mark Hastings, communications director of the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), said the proposed rules could prevent students doing bar work during the summer holidays and could make it impossible to recruit enough staff for big sporting events, including the 2012 Olympics.

Quite.

“Most of these proposals are disproportionate and some are just plain daft. Every restaurant table and hotel room will need to have a detailed sensible drinking sign. Every document published by a drinks company will need to carry the sensible drinking message,” he said.

Exactly. It's an insane imposition by a deranged government with a psychotic need to boss us about.

This weekend The Sunday Times found bars were continuing to flout the voluntary code. At the Envy nightclub in Notting Hill, west London, groups of women were being offered free bottles of wine as part of the Crazy Sexy Cool Party promotion on Friday night.

So fucking what? People like free stuff, and those giving it away do so in the hope of future custom. That's a surprise because...?

I long for the day these horrible little fascists are swept from power, and yearn to be allowed to live my life how I want to, and not how some awful "experts", "advisers" and assorted cuntpipes want me to live it.

I'm so angry, I think I need a drink...

That'll be sixty quid and three points sir

Been away; ill, busy at work, and, umm, stuff.

But the world contains to anger. For it seems that another one of those "little things" that make life just a bit more shit is imminent:

A new generation of speed cameras that makes it harder for motorists to avoid being caught may soon get government approval, the manufacturers have said.

Geoff Collins of Speed Check Services said approval was now in the "end game" stage and some 35 local authorities had expressed an interest in the system.

It uses a network of cameras to work out average speed over a wide area.

Pressure group the Association of British Drivers (ABA) said the plans were "completely irrelevant to safety".

The Home Office and the Department of Transport said they could not comment until approval had been given.

Nggg.

Of course, this is one of those difficult things to actually oppose. Speeding is wrong, speeding is illegal, speeding causes the horrible mangly death of ten million innocent children per year, and so on.

Except that speeding is FUN. I don't drive much - this is because drinking is even more fun, and drink-driving is most assuredly not big and not clever.

But when I drive, in a modern car on modern motorways, 70mph feels numbingly slow. Any speed you can comfortably attain with another gear remaining surely cannot be a realistic upper limit.

So maybe the Government could compromise: they can bring in their horrible little speed cameras to reinforce speeds in the areas they should be enforced (ie, built-up areas), and make the speed limit on three-lane motorways (where speed should be allowed) 90mph - and make driving tests incorporate motorway driving so that new drivers are not unprepared for it.

That sounds fair to me. Which is probably why it'll never happen.

The fantastical ravings of Gordon Brown

I'm off work ill today, so I had the dubious pleasure of watching Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference this afternoon. Quite why I thought this would improve my mood is something I cannot readily explain, but it was that or yet another sodding documentary, so I bravely opted to endure it.

It was a lumpen, dreadful speech made all the worse because despite his attempts to push his own "seriousness" there was some cringeworthy attempts at emoting. However, he's always a shocker speaker, so this 3/10 effort actually exceeds the norm.

However, as so often with Gordon Brown speeches, they don't take too long to unravel. The man is a complete moron when it comes to thinking he won't get caught out. But within a matter of hours, ConservativeHome was already on the case. Mr Brown suggested:

You know our party so often in its history has been home to the big ideas - ideas later taken for granted, but revolutionary in their time.

Just think, the vote for working men, and then for women, the NHS, legal protection from race or sex discrimination.

However...

...it was a Conservative government under Benjamin Disraeli which extended the vote to working men in 1867 - decades before the Labour Party was formed. It was also a Liberal/Conservative National Government that gave women over the age of 30 the vote in 1918 and a Conservative government under Stanley Baldwin that in 1928 established an equal voting age of 21 for men and women.

And this man is our Prime Minister. Unelected, inflicted unwanted on us by a gaggle of fuckwitted Labour MPs, but Prime Minister nonetheless. The mind boggles.

The rest of it was a depressing lurch to the left, filled with vastly expensive promises of things we'll be paying off for years to come, so no real change there. What a truly abysmal man he is.

Fuck EU

Via Mr Eugenides, I see this appeared in yesterday's Telegraph:

Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with "malicious intentions or hidden agendas".

"The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them," she said.

Mrs Mikko has proposed that bloggers should be required to identify themselves and that some popular blogs should come with a declaration of interests.

It is, remarkably, still possible to find people who consider the EU to be a good thing. But quite why an Estonian MEP should be given direct influence over my life is something I suspect even the most witless pro-EU sort would struggle to justify.

Now, this isn't a popular blog, nor is it ever intended to be. I find that articulating my anger about the sheer shitness of certain people does wonders for my capacity to remain tranquil as their assaults upon common sense multiply. And that's why I do it.

But just in case...

Here's my identity: someone who absolutely fucking detests Mrs Mikko. That's all you need to know.
Here's my declaration of interests: I can say what I want, because this is a free country, and your frankly fascist attempts to change that will never succeed. This means calling a twat a twat, which I enjoy, and you are in desperate need of being reminded of.

"We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source," she said.

The cream rises to the top. There are lots of excellent and very popular blogs, and invariably they link to their sources, state their reasoning and if enough people like them, they remain popular. The crap ones, like this one, remain little more than a way of channelling the rage. Blogging is much more open than the mainstream media, which invariably lifts stories without accreditation, or simply fabricates them.

Chris Heaton Harris, a British Conservative Euro MP, has rejected any moves to "regulate and restrict independent media sources".

"Mrs Mikko obviously does not understand that blogs have become the life blood of a vibrant democracy," he said.

"I hope these proposals are kicked out.

Quite.

Thursday's vote in the European Parliament is not legally binding but is an indicator of growing EU concern over the influence of blogs on the internet.

A recent internal European Commission report, leaked three weeks ago, found that the EU was losing the battle for hearts and minds online.

This may be directly linked to the fact that the EU is shit, and is being exposed as such. If the EU stopped being shit (or better still, was dismantled altogether), people may stop being so horrid.

"Blog activity remains overwhelmingly negative," it said.

Stop being a set of cunts, then.

At last...

Someone who knows what he's talking about!

Okay - he looks to have troublingly extra-terrestrial origins. And the video of him miming the Welsh national anthem in 1993 is just cringeworthy. (Although I'll forgive him for not knowing the Welsh national anthem, in the same way you'd forgive someone for not being able to recite pi to a million decimal places, or something equally irrelevant). Oh, and his bids to be the Conservatives' leader were, uh, not awfully distinguished.

But he DOES know economics, and lucky for we mortals, he shares his views on a regular basis right here. It's pithy, incisive and informed, and as the global financial situation worsens, I'll most certainly be keeping an eye on it.

The Ryder Cup

I never really know what to do when the Ryder Cup comes around.

Unlike many (most?), I don't mind watching golf. It's a game of immense skill that I could spend the rest of my life trying to be good at without remotely succeeding, so I respect those people who can propel a small sphere around a gigantic course with such mind-boggling precision. Watching is easy.

Deciding who to support isn't. I'm not American - this much is obvious by the fact I can spell "colour", understand the LBW law and recognise irony as the supreme form of wit.

But then again, I'm not European either. I measure in feet and inches. My car, usually, can be found on the left side of the road. I have no dress sense. At all.

Of course, Britain is in Europe, and thus I should support Europe. Even though France is in Europe, and they suck.

But..."Europe" is the first word in "European Union", which I detest with a mildly unhinged passion.

But...Americans whoop, and holler, and like shit like NFL, and invented cheeseburger pizzas, and mangle our language in a positively Neanderthal fashion.

But...Europeans like socialism, have dodgy war records (either starting them, or dodging them) and keep beating us on penalty shoot-outs.

And so on.

So basically, I'm stuck. And watching sport as a pure neutral is a pretty sappy thing to do - you need to have someone to support. So I settled the issue in the only way I could think of: I put £50 on America at 11/8, and now I can cheer for them free of guilt.

Cheerio

Lloyds TSB taking over the stricken HBOS is good news, for two different but equally important reasons:

1. it means that Global Financial Armageddon has been averted, which is generally to be welcomed

2. Lloyds TSB would never, ever have inflicted this upon us:

Better Off Out

The Devil's Kitchen is advocating a splendid wheeze by the UKIP Blog that it'd be impolite not to doff a cap to:

Now's the time to tell the Eurocrats which if their rules we want to see abolished!

The Sun has teamed up with a German and Polish newspaper to take the pulse of the three nations. Which of the bureaucrats' barmy rules should be consigned to the dustbin of history?

Bendy bananas? Carrots are fruit? Biofuels pushing up food prices worldwide?

All worthy contenders of course but there's one much more important.

This one.

Yes, the European Communities Act 1972.

Repeal that one and we'll be free of all their crazed rules, not just one or other of them.

So, start here at The Sun.

In the first box, "European Communities Act 1972".

Second box "Because it is the reason the UK is a member of the EU" or something like that perhaps.

Third box: "If we leave the EU by repealing this Act then we are free of all their barmy bureacrats' rules, not just one." or something like that again.

Fill in the contact details and away we go!

Spread the word around, let's see if we can make our voices heard!

Heh heh heh.

Two silver linings..

Grim days. Unimaginably vast companies are up shit creek, the economy's knacked, British banks are teetering - so let's give our thanks to two moments of comedy on an otherwise unlovely day. First up, Nick "Cleggover" Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats:

"I can't tell you every step on the road for us as a party, but I can tell you where we're headed - government."

Aaaaahahahahahaahahhaaaa!

What a plucky chap. What a sweet boy. Bless his little heart. Don't you just want to ruffle his hair and tell the little scamp to take ten pence to the sweetshop and treat himself?

Now it's Labour's turn:

...a MORI poll tomorrow showing the Conservatives at 52%, Labour at 24% and the Lib Dems at 12%.

Bwwwwaaaaaaaaahhahhahahhahahhahahhahahahahaaaaaaaaa!

Just for fun (heh), let's see how this figures would play out if repeated across the country, using just these raw figures:

National Prediction: CON Majority 336

...and Labour wiped out, possibly forever. Now THAT'S funny.

Seriously, just fuck off

Even his own Ministers want him gone now:

Scotland Office minister David Cairns has resigned from the government, saying the time has come to "allow a leadership debate to run its course".

This has transcended partisan politics now. As a Tory-leaner and devout anti-socialist, there's an obvious appeal to Gordon Brown stumbling on until 2010, and leading Labour to a massacre on such a grand scale that they're kept safely out of power until the 2020s. I'd quite like to live the middle part of my life free from the threat of these stupid bastards running the country.

But no - things have got to change right now. This isn't necessarily an entreaty for Cameron and Osborne to take over, because I'm not convinced they'll be all that great, although they'd have to try their hardest to do worse. What's needed is someone, anyone, to replace this unspeakably dreadful specimen.

For policy is now being devised not for the good of the country, but with the aim of propping up a failing Brown government. The £2.7bn was spent on a doomed by-election in the North-West is the most blatant example - this is government of an unprecedentedly awful dreadful nature.

We all hate you, Gordon. It's too late. It's all over. Just quit, with however much meagre dignity you can scrape together, and stop harming the country in pursuit of your own personal ends, you absolutely fucker.

The Guardian versus America, Round 2

We all remember with affection the Guardian's sweetly naive attempt to encourage intelligent left-wing British people to educate stupid redneck Americans in Ohio about the evils of voting for George W Bush in 2004.

We also remember fondly, with a chuckle, the outcome: Bush's lead in Orange County increased. For some reason, Americans didn't take too kindly to being lectured by smarmy patronising limey liberal dickwads.

Happily, we report that the Guardian, in the insufferable guise of Jonathan Freedland, has not learned its lesson:

"The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for"

I doubt it'll mind too much, as Barack Obama is as over-rated as John McCain is over-rated - a few years of a McCain presidency (plus the chance to lust over Sarah Palin) will see us right.

And anyway, do you think the average American will give a shit? They didn't last time, and the sulking, pet-lipped whinnying of bleating Euro-lefties like Jonathan Freedland is hardly going to change their minds.

One can only hope that in the event of a McCain win, Britain's leading lefty lecturers treat us to another masterpiece like this...

The state of the nation

Today saw the commencement of perhaps the most wondrous and fascinating scientific experiment ever conducted.

It also sees us increasingly suffering the effects of a worsening economy.

The government of the day is hated.

Large parts of the country are struggling in the aftermath of appalling weather.

England's football team play a crucial World Cup qualifier tonight.

Here's how some of the British press is reacting to these weighty and interesting topics:





Further comment would be entirely superfluous.

The pub is shut, closed down, and in its doorway sleeps a man of indeterminate age and health. The building's closure does not look recent.

Further down this road, another pub sits closed, its demise appearing more recent.

Shops have shutters down not for the night, but forever. Two overweight women in their 50s huddle underneath a bus shelter, both smoking.

I continue west, reflecting on how this street used to look. Bustling - the shops were all open, with myriad trades represented, but with the city's fishing heritage proudly represented above all. It now looks heartbreakingly forlorn. It's 10pm - hardly daytime, but we're far from the witching hour, and the only places open are a pizza shop, a Chinese takeaway, a gaming centre and a giant Asda, senselessly spewing neon light into the sky.

I've been cycling around my home city, and I do not like what I see.

Let me explain: I live in a comfortable suburban part of a bitterly deprived northern city, ravaged by industrial decline before I was born. The student area is my residence, and it's not so bad around here. You could nearly call it prosperous. The desperate area I cycled through was a road famous throughout the city just three miles from where I now write, and its death spiral must surely be terminal. The last time I passed through I was accosted by prostitutes, twice - now it seems even they have given up.

To the north lie the estates. No snob am I, for I was born on a notoriously difficult estate at the outset of Thatcherism. Life was hard, and while reciting hardships of the past is a tiresome enterprise, I do indeed know what it's like when you need to choose between food and clothing. Things like that have a way of staying with you.

The estates have changed, while remaining just the same. Outwardly affluent, with council-funded double glazing, large gardens front and rear, but this prosperous veneer fools no-one except those who wish to be fooled. Unemployment is rife, a benefits-sponsored existence a normal way of life. I do not regret coming from such an environment, but I am immeasurably thankful it did not extend beyond the early years of my childhood. Perhaps I am a snob after all. But I also fancy myself a realist.

I didn't visit them tonight. I don't need to, nor did I want to. I just wanted to go home.

There's no real point to this ramble, other than to exclaim dismay at how things are. It really needn't be like this. So much human potential is being wasted - wasted because schools do not teach, parents do not parent, the unimaginable evil that is the welfare state viciously traps and imprisons whole generations at a time, and no-one seems able to do anything about it.

A chill wind is blowing - both as I cycle glumly home, and figuratively as I worry about the years of gloom that await England. The signs of decline are abundant, and growing. None of our politicians have any worthwhile suggestions about how to mend this. Too many think that throwing money at a problem solves it. It doesn't, but they keep right on doing it.

But no - we'll rant about bastard politicians another day. Tonight, I feel only a sense of unease and sadness for things I can barely identify and can't begin to explain. It's not a pleasant feeling.

Is it 1979 already? II

I also hate the public sector. A lot.

And no, I'm not having any of this shite about them doing "essential, difficult" jobs, blah blah blah. My old man is a truck driver - he works seemingly thousand of hours doing a boring, tough and occasionally dangerous job, but his ilk don't get simpering tributes from the BBC and the trade unions. That too is an essential job, because the economy depends upon stuff being transported across the country.

How about fisherman? Now that looks bloody tough. And not only because I'm not quite as impervious to seasickness as I like to think. Cold, wet, dangerous, decidedly unprofitable - and that's before the evil empire get going. Also essential, because food is somewhat important, and fish is tasty.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Somehow, I doubt that most public sector workers, sat doing pointless non-jobs in comfortable offices with massive pensions (all paid by us), disproportionately rising pay, a culture that rewards skiving - and the fuckers still complain!

There are some jobs in the world I'd dearly love to do, and would take a pay cut for. Being a professional footballer would be nice; a cricketer even more so. I still haven't quite given up on being an astronaut. But how good would it be to be in charge of deciding the size and cost of the public sector?

It'd be a bloodbath. An abattoir. Across the country, lazy bastards would be turfed out of their non-jobs and told to bloody well go and get a proper job like the rest of us. Whole industries that suck gazillions of pounds of money from the productive (private) sector into the unproductive (public) sector would be closed down. The squeals of pain from the unions, the BBC, the Guardian would provoke near-orgasmic joy. I'd love it. It'd be less a job, and more a calling...

Is it 1979 already? I

I hate trade unions. A lot.

Of course, the Blessed Margaret stamped hard on these bastards a long time ago, and it seemed like the threat had largely dissipated. Not so, and perhaps we celebrated their demise a little too early, however. For just like Noel Edmonds, football hooliganism and cancer, brain-dead socialism fuckwittedness never really goes away.

For now we hear the TUC bleating on about strikes if their members are only given a 2% pay-rise, which it rather creatively termed "unfair and unjust". They're not there yet...but they will be. Trade unions are notoriously immune to reason, logic and fairness, and unless their demands are not met, they will strike.

And as in the late 1970s, a Labour government will end with the money running out, the threat of industrial action from hysterical unions parading their economic illiteracy almost as a badge of honour, and the whole country seething at socialist mismanagement. Back in June, Tory MP Michael Spicer nailed it perfectly at PMQs:

"Why are there always so many strikes at the end of a Labour Government?"