If you've got nothing to hide...

I've just finished reading this book:

Readable. Not much more, but more than I've ever done, so let's not start off in too curmudgeonly a fashion. The premise is excellent: set in 1937, Mosley becomes Prime Minister after the King refuses to abdicate, Britain becomes fascist and cosies up to Hitler's Germany, and only one heroic ex-Tory MP and Great War veteran can stop him.

Sadly what doesn't follow doesn't quite do this premise justice. However, there are some neat touches. The portrait of 1930s Britain is excellently drawn - and it is this that produces the book's most arresting situation. It is when a policeman, the archetypal 1930s English constable, now plunged into the nightmare of working for a fascist madman, compels our hero to produce "his papers".

Imagine it - the friendly neighbourhood copper, helper of old ladies, scourge of local ruffians, sporter of luxurious moustache, barking out commands at the behest of a crazed fascist dictatorship. Ugly isn't it?

Which makes this Government's intention to introduce ID cards, and a colossal accompanying database, even less appealing.

• They cost a fortune - some say £18bn, at a time when the economy is in poor shape
• They failed to stop the Madrid bombings, the Conservative point out
• The giant database storing our details will be a hacker's wet dream

Those are compelling reasons to halt this idiocy now. Any vaguely intelliegent government would have done so. But I am more vexed by the fundamental alteration in the relationship between state and citizen.

This is a free country, despite the palpable hostility of numerous Home Secretaries down the years. I do not have to prove my identity to the state or any its agents. Compelling me to do so makes this a less free country. It really is a simple as that.

Perhaps the ex-Communists in the Labour Party think that's a good thing though.

Nanny knows best

"Fat reports on children to be sent to parents", claims the Telegraph's website.

Not a promising headline, is it?

The subtitle offers little further encouragement:

Parents are to get school "fat reports" detailing their children's weight as part of the fight against childhood obesity.

Actually consider that term: "fat reports". When I went to school - and yes, that hasn't happened for over ten years - we used to get school reports, broken down into subsections for recording one's prowess (or otherwise) in maths, English, history, PE and so on. Nowhere did mine contain a box for my long-suffering teachers to comment upon my tubbiness. Which would have been redundant anyway - when I was at school we had this revolutionary approach to staying in shape by not eating too much and doing some exercise. Amazing, eh? And it worked! Perhaps I should make my fortune marketing this as the latest fad diet to gullible women in the Daily Mail's FeMail section?

On with the article:

Rules to be introduced at the start of the academic year in September will see the parents of all children aged between four and five, and 10 and 11 receive the reports, after Government-commissioned research suggested the weight problem among Britain's children is worse than originally thought.

The most recent figures available show that one in 10 children aged between four and five are obese and 13 per cent are overweight, with the figures rising to 17.5 per cent and 14.2 per cent by age 11.

Children are getting fatter. Now, this is not good. There are plenty of reasons why children shouldn't be fat. This evidently vexes the Government; much more than teaching them to read or write seems to. The difference being that state education is there to impart literacy and numeracy, not engage in this creepy monitoring of pre-pubescent porkiness. Fascinating prioritisation.

The research for the Department of Health reported that despite a well-publicised campaign to tackle childhood obesity and produce a comprehensive picture of the problem, the results "may underestimate the true population prevalence of obesity and overweight at national, regional and local level".

A Department of Health spokesman last night (SUN) said: "If you do not opt out and your child is measured at school you will automatically get feedback."

I am instantly suspicious whenever some bright spark pipes up with "yes, but you can opt out". The presumption should be that you already are opted out, unless you actively choose to opt in. Not the other way around. I am not surprised to hear that the Government is totally oblivious to this.

The British Medical Association is already warning that a quarter of all children in the UK will be obese by 2020, resulting in them having a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Then perhaps those parents should, I dunno, stop feeding them so many chips and send them off to the park more often? It's called parental responsibility.

Paul Sacher, a paediatric dietician at the Childhood Nutrition Research Centre in London, said many parents needed help in identifying that their children were overweight in the first place.

"If I was a parent I would want to know if my child was overweight or obese, then I could do something about it," he said.

What?! Seriously - what? You'd want to know if your child was overweight or obese? Have you tried using your fucking eyes?

What kind of total moron cannot see that their OWN CHILDREN are overweight? What type of utter blithering idiot is incapable of assessing their own flesh and blood to see if there's a bit too much of the former flopping around? Words (nearly) fail me.

"There is a major problem with parents' perception of their children's weight. As all children are getting bigger, it is becoming more difficult for parents to work out whether their children are overweight by just looking at them and comparing them to other kids. The only way we can work out whether children are getting bigger is to weigh them all."

No it isn't. Being overweight is an absolute condition, not a relative one. If you cannot spot it by the simple process of looking for a few seconds, it's a wonder you ever had children in the first place. I, for instance, can work out that Mr Sacher is a total idiot by looking at what he says. If I placed him alongside lots of other imbeciles this wouldn't somehow cancel out his own stupidity.

The Conservatives have opposed the plan, saying it should be left to parents to regulate the weight of their children.

Quite.

And still they ponder...

There's no constitutional requirement for Labour to call a General Election if they replace Gordon Brown. We vote for MPs aligned (usually) to a political party, the largest of which then chooses a leader and Prime Minister.

When Labour decided it'd had enough of Tony Blair (General Elections won: 3) and summoned its king over the water, he was annointed without anything as troublesome as a General Election, or indeed an internal party election. He was simply foisted upon us, and we were expected to be grateful.

Some observe that a repeat of this exercise, even if garnished with a Labour leadership election, would again mean there'd be no need of a General Election. Technically this is correct. Morally? Take your pick. Practically? No chance.

In such an event, the most common refrain would surely be "look at what happened last time you lot inflicted someone on us without bothering to ask." Deposing the leader without then submitting themselves to the country may not lance the boil. If anything, it may make the eventual day of reckoning an even ghastlier as the country punishes the whole party for its arrogant refusal to consult the electorate - a heavy defeat could become near-obliteration.

Would the Parliamentary Labour Party really choose a course that could see them out of power until the 2020s, and would that be a good thing? The sensible part of me thinks that lengthy reigns by one party are inherently unhealthy for any democracy; but most of me wants the bastards out for as long as possible. Sometimes, sadistic pleasure is too just much to resist.

Gordon is a Moron (see what I did there?)

So, after the carnage of Glasgow East, Gordon Brown is finished. Or so runs the convential wisdom, which often tends not to be very wise. On balance, I fancy he'll cling on - a lifetime of scheming and plotting has gone into him becoming Prime Minister, and so obdurate an individual is unlikely to yield his position over something as inconsequential as everyone despising him.

William Hill presently offer just 8/13 on him being out by the end of 2008. I'd like to lay at that price, if only because his Cabinet and backbenchers are afflicted by excessively soggy spinal equipment and, like a gaggle of timid children whose ball has landed in the garden of the neighbourhood ogre, they're all fearfully eyeing each other and silently imploring someone else to go sort it out, please.

A pitiful spectacle - but ironic in its own darkly amusing way: to think that the infamously cowardly Gordon Brown could survive just because his colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party are even more cowardly than him should provide comic relief for future generations.

Though not, admittedly, as much as archive footage of his wobbly jaw flapping around in disbelief as the men in white coats gently prise his fingernails from the door of Number 10. will entertain them. And to think we're of the generation that'll get to enjoy it happening live - aren't we lucky!

The mandatory introductory first post

To anyone who's accidentally stumbled over this, sorry. If you direct your eyes to the top of the page, you can find an exciting array of escape mechanisms - the back button, your own homepage icon (the one you hastily click on when viewing adult material when you really shouldn't be), even the trusty X to close down this sorry page forever.

For what will follow will be a semi-regular outpouring of frustrated, impotent rage at the sheer towering stupidity of the people who take our money and then do absurd things with it; space will be reserved for shouty anger at those who presume to dictate to the rest of us; and there'll be some other random stuff that makes life bearable. I'll keep the music stuff to a minimum, because you don't need me telling you what to like and I have no taste anyway.

Enjoy.