The First Dalek.....?

The First Dalek?
It is ironic that the reappearance of trans galactic villains The Daleks in the new series of Dr. Who, an episode subtitled The Last Dalek should coincide with the announcement of a new robot designed for use in hospitals to enable Doctors to make bedside visits while still cocooned in the safety of their office. Maybe the designers of the robot have a particularly cruel sense of humour because the first thing everybody noticed about the creation was its Dalek like appearance. Now the last thing anybody in hospital would want to see is an interstellar sociopath gliding up to the bedside, particularly as the Daleks are remembered for their catchphrase "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE."

But will the mechanised uber control - freaks be able to work alongside the human control freaks who manage hospitals?
The Daleks first appeared in 1963, long before political correctness had been invented and so their fascistic society gleefully set about annihilating ancient and beautiful cultures in distant galaxies without a thought for the possibility that the poor kiddiewinks watching might be traumatised. The kiddiwinks loved it of course though many grown - ups were traumatised by the constant sound of little boys running around yelling "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE" in robotic voices. No hoodies in those days but I helped my little brothers button overcoats to the neck and then put them on over the head so they could run around with one arm protruding from the gap between the buttons. We soon had little old ladies banging on the door complaining that they had been chased by headless overcoats.

Meanwhile the fictional Daleks on TV were behaving not much differently to the way the Bush administration deals with third world countries with rich and ancient cultures.

In the end Dr. Who had to destroy the Daleks after they had exterminated the race of Time Lords that inhabited the Doctor's home planet. Inevitably, a Dalek escaped, skipped to a different dimension as intergalactic evildoers are inclined to do - Osama Bin Laden for example is actually hiding out in President Bush's Oval office but in a different time - space continuum, and turned up as the possession of an American megalomaniac billionaire who keeps a menagerie of creatures from different dimensions in a giant underground complex of large, featureless rooms and long, bleak corridors. Come to think of it, that could have been any surface community in Utah. The Megalomaniac Billionaire wanted to learn the Dalek's secret so that he could recreate the ethos of ruthless race in his corporate hierarchy and use it to help him achieve world domination - megalomaniac billionaires are so predictable - and had broken the creature through torture and sarcasm.

By this point I was thinking "yes, the Daleks do bear a more than passing resemblance to hospital managers.
While the doctor is trying to convince the billionaire to destroy the Dalek however, it is befriended by time fellow - traveller played by the orchidaceous Billie Piper. Even the flinty heart of the semi automaton is melted by those beestung lips and bambi eyes and in the end the Dalek displays some human qualities.
At that point the whole mass of jokes about the new medical assistant Dalek collapse. Suspension of disbelief is one thing but who could ever get their head round the idea of a hospital manager showing human qualities?

Official Doctor Who website
Doctor Who - home of the cult
Doctor Who press archive
Hospital Service Robot
News Story

Sun, Sand and The Sweaty Feet Inspector

The Dalmatian coast of Croatia is a wonderful place to take a holiday, its sandy beaches are lapped by the azure waters of the Adriatic sea, its towns and villages are picturesque and imposing mountains rise steeply from the shore line. Visitors can enjoy reasonably priced food and absorb the rich local culture or they make just prefer to head for the beach and chill out while having their feet sniffed by a government inspector.

In a gobsmacking example of bureaucrats' ability to shoot themselves in the foot the Croatian tourist ministry, having noticed that the holiday trade is at last recovering from the hostilities in the area over the past fifteen years, decided to unveil a set of regulations aimed at ensuring "appropriate behaviour." This latest manifestation of the Balkan appetite for self - destruction, had it become law would have made the area a hotspot for serious foot fetishists but driven almost everybody else away.

Displaying authoritarian zeal bordering on Nazism the ministry has gone against the trend in other nations around the Mediterranean by attempting to instil a sense of decorum through stringently policed rules and regulations. Some of these even go beyond the standards required in prudish America. As well as the official foot sniffers the government would have appointed teams of babies nappy inspectors to check for adequate seals around the legs, banned from beaches women exposing their breasts or wearing thongs or "revealing sundresses", men in shorts, ice cream and cold drink vendors, picnics and make it a criminal offence to urinate in the sea (how did they plan to police that one? scuba divers?)

Now to say dress code is optional in European resorts is understatement. In more and more places dress is optional anywhere near the beach. We in Europe pride ourselves on having a healthy attitude to naked flesh. It is not a criminal offence for women to have nipples nor is it unknown for men to have hairy legs. So what has gone wrong in Croatia, a nation previously known for its tolerant attitude to untidy pubic hair, crooked willies and saggy boobs. Laws requiring elderly Germans and Swedes to cover up may have won popular acclaim but when those rules are extended to Beyonce Knowles lookalikes that is just bureaucratic intransigence at work. So what gives?

Well the announcement of the proposed laws to the travel industry attracted media attention all around Europe and now the Croatian bureaucrats are playing that other favourite game of bureaucrats, blame shifting.

Tourist minister Dragan Primorac, cowering under a barrage of ridicule said that none of the proposals were his idea and that he was not a control freak. Mr Primorac blamed his staff who he said used a facsimile of his signature to give authority to the proposals. So far no ministry workers have admitted to being closet foot sniffers.

Dubrovnik - jewel of the Dalmatian Coast

Foot Sniffing holidays in Croatia

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Prosecuting One's Suit

Image source

Prosecuting one's suit or pressing one's suit. How archaic these phrases now seem in describing the process of courting a lady's favour. How quaint the word courting itself seems. So why do I not just talk about "copping off?" Well…
A flyer circulating in London's legal district advertises a special speed dating event for lawyers looking for love. Call me an old cynic if you like but "lawyer" and "love" are not words I can easily associate. Surely people whose entire life is spent examining evidence in forensic detail in the hope of closing loopholes, tying up loose ends, eliminating ambiguity and negotiating compromises can have little room in their souls for anything so indefinable, so unpredictable, so illogical as love? And speed dating?
Anybody who has had the experience of dealing with legal matters will know that "lawyer" and "speed" do not belong in the same sentence, or even the same article. (unless the article refers to the case of a lawyer being disbarred for substance abuse.) Layers are people to whom "due diligence" means sitting on their arse doing nothing for long periods while us poor punters pay them by the hour. When dealing with lawyers things happen "in the fullness of time" rather than now or PDQ.
All things considered then, both de fact and de juris, I must conclude that the entrepreneur who has invested his hard - earned in this venture has behaved in a reckless and foolhardy, but not criminal manner.
What little I know of speed - dating is that people have three minutes in each other's company after which they must decide if they are up for a casual shag with the person opposite. The idea of a lawyer doing anything in three minutes stretches the credulity of even the most credulous. It would take the speediest lawyer two and a half minutes to shuffle their papers and clear their throat before saying "My Lord, Members of the Jury…" The whole mystique of the legal profession is built on longwindedness, their speeches are full of notwithstandings and heretofores and are peppered with Latin phrases ordinary mortals cannot understand, pro bono ego. Lawyers are not equipped to formulate or respond to questions like :
"Veal or Pasta?"
"Nissan or Jaguar?"
"J-lo or Mariah?"
"Missionary or Spoons?"
but are more likely to begin "bearing in mind that you are still under oath could you tell me, in your own words and without regard to anything you may have read in the press, would Chinese or Italian be preferable for a first dinner date?" and jump on the response like so "You say Chinese, but if you cast your mind back to your divorce, did you or did you not claim that your partner's obsession with Thai food, which I think you will agree is similar to Chinese, had bored the pants off you?"
Assuming some kind of date is eventually agreed, that would only be the start of the trouble. Imagine negotiating a pre-date contract.
"It shall be understood by both parties that the party of the first part will, on the first date, pay for dinner in full, including wine and tips without prejudice to the party of the second part's right to withhold the reciprocal sexual favours should the party of the second part deem the party of the first part to be minging, unhygienic or in any way pervy."
The party of the first part will then be advised that should the party of the second part exercise the withholding of sexual favours clause pending further perusal of the party of the first part's social and sexual acceptability the party of the first part must have the right to demand that the bill be split down the middle.
Such a love affair would be certain to end in tears of course. Or lawsuits.

Positive Reinforcement As A Tool For Behaviour Change, An Assessment

Think positive - next year
by fatsally

Image: clipartpanda.com

When I worked in education the prevailing ideology was positive reinforcement, i.e. not telling the kids that anything was not good enough, not up to scratch, less than their capabilities or god forbid, wrong! but searching out the good things and praising them for these.
So when the kid who has spent all lesson texting under the desk on his mobile and consequently hasn't got a clue how to set out his addition sums in columns, hundreds, tens and units; instead of explaining to the child that he needs to listen otherwise he is never going to understand anything, teacher has to look for something good to say e.g.
"Well, it's good that you have started writing today at the front of the book:"

or "You've written your nines beautifully!"

or "This is a really good sentence, you've used a capital letter! We were doing maths, sorry!!!! numeracy, but I have to say that is a really good sentence."

And of course this positive reinforcement applies particularly to behavioural issues. So the kids who come along to school, hang their coats up, put their lunchboxes in the proper place, come into the classroom and settle down relatively quickly get a word of praise from the teacher.

Meanwhile the naughty kids, sorreeeee! the kids who sometimes do naughty things, always label the action never the child: run into the cloakroom, pull somebody else's coat off the peg and put it in the boy's urinal, leave their own coat on the floor, get the fizzy drink out of their lunchbox and then proceed to hit the little girl with rampant eczema with the lunchbox, charge into the classroom and clamber over the tables to get to their place, shaking their fizzy drink as they go, start an argument with the clever but sensitive boy about the chair he is sitting on, before opening the fizzy drink so that it sprays all over the hapless child and then start shouting that the teacher hasn't called thier name out on the register, get hauled out to the front of the class, presented with an "I Did Good" sticker and told how much better they were than yesterday. At this point, objective achieved; getting a sticker, because at the end of term the kids with the most stickers get taken for a treat, the local bowling alley for instance; the child reverts to his/her normal pattern of behaviour.

In all the school's I taught in, over all those years, I only ever witnessed one child whose behaviour improved through positive reinforcement, and I first encountered him in nursery, so it could conceivably have just been an age thing or perhaps a more settled home life that caused the change from disruptive, foul mouthed little bastard to quiet, polite eight year old.

I'm sure that as they got older some children will have changed, indeed my daughter now knocks about with a young man I taught several years ago who had the most volatile temper and would kick off about almost anything but who now apparently is really nice and has learned that when he feels he is losing his temper the best thing to do is get away from other people and simmer down in private.

Well surely I can't be the only person in education who noted this, can I?

And you'd think that the powers that be would have had oodles of professional think tank people saying that the only way people change permanently is if they want to change, no amount of bribery will do it on a permanent basis if the will isn't there.

So now we have the latest Government scheme to reduce obesity. Lardarses are going to be given supermarket vouchers and gym membership to encourage them to exercise and eat healthily. Meanwhile those of us that do eat reasonably healthily, I may live in South Yorkshire but Jamie Oliver would be right at home in my kitchen, and take regular exercise will just be left to our own devices, no help with my gym club membership which I have solely for the opportunity to plough up and down the swimming pool two or three times a week without encountering dippy old bats standing in the middle having a long chinwag with the person they haven't seen for, oh, twenty minutes.

Nor will they be stumping up a proportion of the annual golf and tennis club subs.

But if I stop doing the exercise, and start having five pieces of chocolate and crisps everyday, topped off with a couple of litres of cider, then once I hit the magic 15 stone official obese line I should be quids in, literally.

There is another fatal flaw in the government's cunning plan, once the fatties start shedding the pounds the incentives will stop, as if they think well these people are discovering the joys of walking up five flights of stairs instead of taking the lift, whilst weak with hunger, so they will just carry on doing it without any incentive.

This Governmnet is bloody bonkers!

Child protection - more politically correct mayhem

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New UK 'Living Wage' Rules Making Businesses Reluctant To Hire
Concerns about a new, higher UK minimum wage (Chancellor George Osborne's 'living wage' are making UK businesses reluctant to hire new staff. Uncertainty about the 'living wage' rules is contributing to a significant slowdown in hiring via recruitment firms, according to recruitment industry sources >>>

Eight Subjects That Ought To Be Part Of The Manadtory Curriculum For Basic Education?

Should subjects like meditation and gardening be part of the school currriculum? Or as one high school in Massachusetts, USA, seems to believe, classes in analyzing conspiracy theories (if taught properly this could help students distinguish between a true conspiracy theory, a fantasy and what is legitimate questioning of official propaganda. The embedded article from Collective Evolution presents some interesting ideas.

Students censored – An Academic Community In A Crisis Of Collectivism.

Intellectual freedom in our universities is under threat from ... intellectuals. So overbearing have the left wing screechers of bourgeois politically correct leftism now become that even the universities have surrendered to the intellectual control freakery of cultural Marxism. But if universities are now dedicated to turning out dull minded conformists, what hope is there for western society?

Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

In the fouteeenth century they had the Black Death. In the seventeenth century there was The Great Plague. Periodically since them we have had Cholera, Typhoid, The Bloody Flux and Spanish Flu. Soi what will be the first plague of the twenty first century? We think we know.

Image source: cabletv.com

Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

The new "reality" TV show launched this week with the rather desperate sounding title Celebrity Love Island does not disappoint. It plumbs new depths for trash TV. The idea is that twelve Z - list celebrities (6 male, 6 female) are put on a tropical island paradise, supplied with food, booze, a pool, a Jacuzzi and a million hidden cameras and microphones. They are then left to do what health young adults do when given the chance to shrug off responsibility and live a pampered life .

The fatal flaw in the plan lies in the fact that the people involved are not healthy young adults but minor celebrities. They are people who on account of once having briefly threatened to reveal signs of talent or in some cases having briefly shagged someone who threatened to reveal signs of talent. All of them however are now intent on building a career by being famous for being famous.

One of the females who actually has genuine claims to some sort of celebrity, being a credible current affairs presenter has already broken down in tears and begged for merciful release, presumably so that she can kill her agent. The poor girl has obviously been driven to the edge by having the phrase "professional suicide" bounce around her head like a really irritating tune.

Of the rest the appropriately named Abi Titmuss, famous for having been the girlfriend of a minor league TV presenter who became famous for allegedly raping a real celebrity is the most famous. The alleged offence took place before the real celebrity was a celebrity and the minor league presenter was acquitted, but not before some sneaky lowdown bastard (or somebody's agent) had leaked to the media a porno video featuring the lovely Abi in action with some of her alleged boyfriend's friends. A career was born.

Best of the rest are a man famous for being the son of a very famous drunk, a former Future Olympic Champion and a woman who sold the story of her (alleged - by her at least) adulterous affair with a very famous soccer player and spent the cash on breast enlargement so that she could go into competition with the lovely Abi. as the world's most famous nonentity.

I have not heard of any of the rest and bear in mind these are British celebrities and I am a British news junkie. So you get the picture.

Celebrity Love Island is not about love, it is about sex. It is solely about who will get em' off and get down to it first purely for the titillation of a voyeuristic audience and without any kind of emotional attachment. It is the very lowest level of commercial sex.

The most depressing thing about Celebrity Love Island other than the fact that the only love likely to be seen is narcissism, the love that dares scream its name from the rooftops; is that it reveals the depth of humiliation these so called celebs will expose themselves to in order to stretch their allotted fifteen minutes of fame.
I have a horrible feeling the show will be a hit.


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Dog Depression

The Brown Dog confronts its Black Dog

The once fashionable and prosperous ship-building centre of Dumbarton is the centre of an apparent spate of canine “suicides” after at least five dogs are said to have jumped from a historic bridge in the past six months.

Animal behaviourists are warning owners to keep their dogs on a strong leash when crossing Overtoun bridge.Canine social worker Jock McMutt said "Crivens, its no canine depression the wee duggies're sufferin' fra.

The lads are in fine fettle inside thur heids, theyse enthusiastic an' ready tae chase anything. The problem's cause by teenagers hoyin' thur empty carry - oots over the rail. The wee doggie thinks its a game and sets off tae fetch."

Rev. Jock McHolyjoe responded "the truth is the dugs' wee brains are addled. Dug owners should keep thur pets awa' frae the Ouiske an' Buckie. Dugs are nae meant tae booze."

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Hot Stuff

The world’s strongest chilli powder is so fiery that buyers must sign a waiver absolving the maker of liability for your death or demise. The concoction, “16 Million Reserve” is pure capsaicin, the chemical that gives chillis their heat, and will be unleashed on the American market this week. At present, the strongest chilli is the red savina, from Mexico, with a strength rating of 570,000 units. The new powder is rated at 16,000,000 units. It has been compared to “having your tongue hit with a hammer.”

And if it does that to your tongue what is it going to do to the other end on the way out.

Just don't go near this stuff if you have haemerroids OK.

AND DON'T TRY FART LIGHTING!

William and Kated
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The Lazy Pupil's Examination Aid.

April 2005


In my school days, admittedly more years ago than I care to remember, trying to justify the non - delivery of homework projects with the excuse "please Sir, the dog ate it," was not exactly fresh and original but was still guaranteed to raise a ripple of laughter from classmates. Now of course it is a tired and lame excuse used as a last resort only by the terminally dull - witted. Family pets have advanced in status so much they can actually make a positive contribution to academic achievement.

But if homework cheating was primitive, cheating in examinations was positively paleolithic:

Picture source: The Daily Mail

Now with modern technology things are more sophisticated of course:

Picture source: International Business Times

But even this level of technological assistance is redundant. Exams have become so easy and our politically correct aversion to failure so intense, there is no need to actually answer the questions any more if you can stack up enough grading uplifts to compensate for physical and emotional disadvantages.

Britain's leading examination boards announced this week that results may be upgraded if it is know that the candidate has suffered an emotionally distressing experience in the run up to the exam. Qualifying experiences include death of a parent or sibling (5% upgrade) parent or sibling being diagnosed with a serious illness (5%) death of a distant relative (3%) a broken limb within 48 hours (3%) a broken limb on the mend (2%) - this throws a whole new light on the theatrical expression of encouragement "break a leg" - and so on, with the death of Fido or Tiddles weighing in at 2% if it happens within 48 hours of the exam or 1% between to days and a week prior. Monty Python fans will be emotionally distressed to learn that the death of a parrot warrants nothing.

A spokesperson for one of the examination boards responding to criticism that the scheme is politically correct mollycoddling of the young said that the maximum upgrade had been set at 5% in order to discourage abuse of the system. As she does not say whether the upgrades will be cumulative I fear the bureaucrats have once more underestimated the ingenuity of ordinary punters. Consider the possibilities in a literature examination…


QUESTION: In Shakespearean tragedy the downfall of the main character is often a result of a failure to address obvious flaws in his own character. Discuss this with particular reference to Hamlet and Macbeth.

ANSWER: Both Hamlet and Macbeth are…Oh GOD! WHAT IS THE POINT? Why should I sit this exam when with a bare bodkin I could my quietus make. Who cares about qualifications and careers. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Shakespeare's tragedies? Are there not enough tragedies in the real world. To write or not to write that is the question, when all our yesterdays have lit the way of fools to dusty death.

Only yesterday my beloved Labrador Bonzo shuffled off this mortal coil when a car, driven by my uncle Jim, mowed him down. Jim did try to avoid Bonzo but lost control of the car and perished himself when he hit a wall.
I felt guilty about having let Bonzo off the leash and rushed to cradle the poor dogs noble head as he breathed his last. When the paramedics led me away I noticed my hands were covered in blood. "Will all Neptune's great ocean wash clean the blood from this my hand I cried out.
Just then my mobile phone rang. It was my mother calling from the hospital to tell me she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and within six months would be heading for that unexplored country from in whose bourne no traveller returns.

In a perfect world I would be able to turn for comfort to my Dad, a virtuous man, but as it says in Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2 "Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes and Dad has been paralysed these three years.

I asked my sister, a Goth to let me have some of her downers. Each man is but a poor player who frets and struts his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more I said.

"But in that sleep of death what dreams may come, she quipped rather wittily in the circumstances, for a Goth I thought, just before she fell downstairs and broke her leg.

Then I heard a terrible sound coming from the kitchen and rushed in just in time to see poor Tiddles choke to death on a furball.

I tried to sleep last night, for after all, we are such stuff as dreams are made of, our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

But what will it avail me if I pass this examination. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy Mr. Examination Marker.

And if you add it all up that should be worth a pass.

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Greenteeth

GreenteethMM.com:

Jenny Greenteeth: Water spirit and CEO (Chief Ectoplasmic Officer) of the Boggart Blog series and Greenteeth multi media.

My choice of name for a new multi media web project has caused some amusement among American friends. "Why are you building a web site dedicated to the shortcomings of British dentistry," they ask. The first time I noticed this particular vein of American humour was during the run up to the recent Presidential election. A U.K. newspaper and a U>S> media group arranged an e-mail tie up to get some interaction between Brits and Americans on issues of mutual concern; Iraq, Globalisation, the environment etc. While the British expressed dismay at the prospect of another Bush victory the Americans involved, mostly from industrial communities in the mid - west assailed us with advice about how we should stop trying to interfere in American politics and instead concentrate on getting our "lousy teeth" fixed.

The lousy teeth jokes don't work of course; they're not funny and not true. And in case anyone is tempted to attack the lovely Miss Greenteeth (above) we should warn you people who venture too close to her algae encrusted gnashers are seldom ever seen again (you'll have to look up the legend to understand that)

The Kelpi by herbert James Draper, depicting Jenny Greenteeth when she was a pre - Christian Nymph who lured lusty knights to a watery death

The obvious knee - jerk response to "lousy British teeth" is to first as the taunter if they re just angry because they did not qualify for a part in Deliverance, and then retort "we will get our teeth fixed when you guys get your fat arses fixed so you don't have to complain about doors in British Hotels being too narrow".

A slightly more reasoned response would be to point out that Austin Powers is a movie and Homer Simpson is a cartoon character. Name calling and insult hurling is good fun of course and now that such activities have been ousted from domestic politics it is nice to see them flourishing in the international arena. The simple minded do tend to take it literally however and are soon on the slippery slope towards more addictive forms of racism and xenophobia.

So what about British teeth. Well in Europe generally we have not yet succumbed to the ideal of outward physical perfection. If they ain't broke don't fix it is our attitude, especially to noses and in Britain particularly the perfect, even smile is viewed with some suspicion for very good reasons. Thanks to our nation's pioneering the concept of state funded health care the brilliant white, even toothed smile, so essential in the U.S.A for anybody planning to leave the house, here became a sexual turn - off.

The Osmond grin possessed by far more Britons than Americans in the 1950 and 60s was not an indicator of our concern for dental health but the result of obsessive bureaucratic meddling in our lives. At the first sign of a cavity in a fully grown adult dentists would be paid by the state to pull out entire sets of perfectly good gnashers with years of chomping left in them.

Doubting twenty - one year olds who complained through bloody gums "mutt I yiked my deeth" were told by representatives of the nanny state. "It is for the best, you will get a free set of dentures and will have no more trouble for the rest of your life," Those old fashioned removable false teeth gave lots of trouble of course, they were painful and had a terrible habit of slipping out just when the owner was trying to impress somebody. And kissing with tongues was a very high risk adventure.

So here you have the explanation of why us Brits are so attached to our crooked, uneven, slightly off - white smiles. These imperfections show that we have the teeth we were programmed to grow from the moment of conception, which is a great comfort to prospective sexual partners. You see when one has been charmed by a perfect smile and managed to get lucky with the person behind it, there is nothing more horrific than to awake the following morning and see that same smile grinning out from a glass of water at the bedside.

NOTE: Ian wishes it to be known that at age fifty six he still has all his teeth (except for the one he broke biting the cap off a beer bottle years ago) and that they are not the chalky white of soft teeth that will crumble if they are shown sugar, but the waxy white of teeth that will still be around if he lives another fifty six years.

TAKING A BREAK, NOW I HAVE SOME CONTENT ENTERED ITS TIME TO START PROMOTING THIS BLOG. I WILL BE BACK BEFORE THE END OF THE WEEK (I wasn't back for eight years as things worked out).

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Love For Sale (with Air Miles)

Picture source: jounalisticalabria.it

An interesting news item tells us that prostitutes could soon be touting for business in shopping centres in Budapest. Hungary's Interior Ministry is thinking of allowing some malls where prostitutes could strike deals for sex, as long as they move to a place of their own to enact the transaction. A government letter says there is "nothing intrinsically wrong" with an entertainment centre without gratification."

If this is correct then the former communist state could be leading the way to a new area of commercial activity that our traditional Western capitalists have failed to appreciate the potential of. Free Enterprise in Britain and America has in my opinion always been to ready to acquiesce to the moral strictures of extreme religion. How can any red - blooded capitalist be against commercial sex. OK I know it degrades women, it is exploitative, can lead to abuse and some insist it subverts the values of Christian society (I don't recall Jesus ever condemning a hooker though.) Let's stop being mealy mouthed, hell, we are talking about capitalists here, the people who are happy to profit from making bombs, land - mines and napalm and selling them to third world tyrants, people who are prepared to manipulate the financial markets and consign millions of honest, average citizens to an impoverished old age in order to line their own pockets. We are talking about the morality of the rat - pack.

If we lived in an honest world, Wal-Mart would be into the brothel business like a ferret into a rabbit hole. British mega - retailer Tesco would not be far behind and both would face stiff competition from German cut - price chain Aldi offering shoddy but heavily discounted goods from Eastern Europe. And that is just the low end of the market (I was going to say "bottom end" but that would be open to misunderstanding.) What about demand from the high class shopper. Posh people's chain Harvey Nicholls would do well offering refined young ladies from "old money" families, a thousand pounds up front and then you fund her drug habit for six months. Nieman Marcus on the other hand could specialise in the exotic, a Russian Princess maybe (only a few left in the world), a critically acclaimed writer whose dreary feminist tomes do not sell, a fashion model who grew breasts while in rehab. Retiring to private place to "enact the transaction" would not be a problem either. Most malls could install travel - lodge style accommodation on a mezzanine floor without inconveniencing shoppers who merely wanted a few essential food items.

It could all be very discreet and properly organised just like buying any other goods or services. Without the fear of being arrested in a police sting or mugged by the accomplice of a woman posing as a respectable working girl the customer experience would be enhanced.

And of course the embarrassment of paying a lady of negotiable affection for her services would be lessened if you knew she was going to say "thank you sir, and do you have a loyalty card?"

Ian Thorpe, May 6, 2005.

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A Good Place to Die?

The hospital block, Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire - things are in a bad way with the UK National Heath Service right now

The world is already close to overflowing with Bean Counters and is getting fuller by the minute. Armies of serious wee people equipped with clipboards swarm around us asking stupid questions, observing, counting and documenting every area of human activity. Did you know the average person farts thirteen times each day? Yes somebody has counted. QED.

Once the information gathering is done, the data is passed to managers whose task is to collate and present the information. Now these people revel in job titles that include the word "manager" but collating and presenting information is the traditional skill of the clerk. And a clerk by any other name etc.

Nowhere are the Bean Counters more apparent than in hospitals where although there are several fewer processes to count than in a commercial operation they need more people to count that which is countable.

Perhaps this is just a warped perception because one does not expect to encounter Bean Counter in hospitals. In a commercial enterprise where profit is the goal, counting things many times is an essential act, as is (or was before the advent of computers) the copying of numbers from one piece of paper to another. Nobody ever looked at any of these pieces of paper of course, a thing cannot be of the slightest importance if somebody has time to write it down on a piece of paper. But the fact that there were lots of pieces of paper with numbers on made investors feel safe and comfortable. After all without pieces of paper to keep them in line the R & D geeks would spend all the revenue on gadgets, pizza and acne treatments.

Hospitals have a different culture however (or lots of different cultures if you look in the laboratory.) Bacteria do not follow any business process, road accidents have no regard for budgetary constraints.

A serious wee person with a clipboard saying "and where is the cost benefit in treating this patient" should not be part of our experience of an organisation whose function is to preserve life and alleviate suffering; when we are ill we need to be surrounded by angels in white uniforms applying unguents to suppurating sores, mopping fevered brows, stitching gaping gashes and administering tea and sympathy (no British person would ever under estimate the therapeutic properties of a nice cup of tea.) The last thing you want to see is a bunch of suits holding a meeting to assess the feasibility of reattaching your severed arm and ensuring your "clinical incident" does not consume more than its fair share of resources.

Hospitals now are goal driven profit centres, thus the goals are short term, do a quick fix and give out some happy pills, document that the patients condition has improved and send them home before they can relapse or worse still die. "For God's sake never let anyone die, it will impact on our targets," scream the Bean Counters.

Call me old fashioned if you like but I cannot see what is wrong with dying in hospital. I am prepared to take it on trust that the doctors and nurses do their very best and genuine cases of malpractice where somebody goes in with a broken toe and ends up missing a healthy kidney are rare. That said, it is a hospitals job to take in sick people. And sick people have a very inconvenient tendency to die. Everybody dies sometime.

Doctors have given the bloody minded a stick with which to beat them of course by chirruping self - righteously "our job is to save lives." As soon as a patient dies some opportunistic relative is bound to say "you failed to do your job. I'm going to sue!"

But all reasonable people understand that preserving life is not always possible so over the entrance to any hospital there should be a health warning "entering hospitals may well result in death." Hey presto, they are covered.

Instead, a few years ago some managers decided to eliminate death and start talking instead of negative patient outcome. Well I want to make it clear, I will never willingly be a negative patient outcome. There is nothing negative about dying in fact it is our very last positive act before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
To the clipboard wielding bureaucrats of course, the ultra - conformist enforcers of conformity death ought to be the great vindication, proof that in the end even the most committed anarchist must in the end conform and do as everybody else does. This is a double edged sword maybe, because to the existentialist anarchist death is the final pointless act and proves the pointlessness of life. Bureaucrats never see the big picture though.

In the final analysis I have to say I would rather begin my journey to the "unexplored land from whose bourne no traveller returns" from a hospital bed and surrounded by caring people standing by, ready to administer pain killers, a word of comfort and a final cup of tea than wait alone in some shabby senior-citizens-dwelling-unit for a cowled figure with a scythe over its shoulder to approach and say far too cheerily, "time to go matey - boy but cheer up, look at it this way; at least you have helped some junior bean counter deliver his targets.

The Race for Power

Election time in Britain and we are being subjected to the usual daily menu of name calling, blame shifting, outrageous promises and lame excuses, just as our friends in America were not long ago. There is an old drinking song that goes "it’s the same the whole world over / it’s the poor what gets the blame it's the rich what gets the pleasure/ is it not a crying shame?
Apparently not according to the main political parties everywhere. The all seem to be keen on private finance initiatives in public service, cutting welfare rights and giving employers more scope to exploit the lowest paid workers. This kind of campaigning appeals to the mysterious constituency of Middle. That can be Middle, America; Middle, England; or middle anywhere else. The constituency of Middle appears on no maps and is never visited by real people, only by politicians around election time.
I am glad I do not live in Middle, England and hope my friends across the water never find themselves in Middle, America because everything I read and hear tell me that Middlers live in fear. People in Middle fear everything, they fear unemployment, they fear tax rises, they fear economic depression, they fear homosexuals, liberals, loony lefties, reformers, reds under the beds, greedy capitalists who will export their jobs to low cost labour countries and egalitarian socialists who will stop their tax breaks, they fear all things that may have a detrimental affect on property prices and they fear Johnny Foreigner; but their greatest fear is the fear that dare not speak its name. They are scared to death of THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE. The Yellow Peril, Dirty Dagos, Bogus Asylum Seekers, illegal immigrants, bearded ragheads with weapons of mass destruction, call them what you will, none of them are as white as they should be are they? (actually I must confess here to being touched with the tarbrush myself, not much but enough that when I meet people from Middle, England at election time they will always say "you're not local are you?" or "there's something not quite English about you." Well yes, just like there is something not English about The Queen or something not American about people whose forefathers were laying the nation's economic foundation in the plantations of the south when the ancestors of most Americans were revolting (if they were French) or working in the fields of Europe.
So the conservatives in Britain are not really conservatives but socially reactionary economic liberals (just as the Liberals are social democrats and the Labour Party have a tendency to mess up the economy and put millions out of work - we Brits love irony)
Well let's be honest, what is more likely to have a detrimental effect on property prices?
In the current round of electioneering the fear that dare not speak its name has been exploited in a Conservative poster campaign. Under the banner "are you thinking what we're thinking?" they ask questions like "is it time for tighter immigration controls," or "shouldn't we clamp down on asylum seekers." The real question of course is "are you afraid of THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE. This is reinforced by other questions such as " we need more police on the streets (to protect the people of Middle, England from THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE? ) and then strangely "how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" Strange because the answer is "not as hard as it would be if you sent home all the Indian, Pakistani and Caribbean auxiliary carers, domestics and porters."
(OH WELL THEY CAN STAY IF THEY MUST BUT DON'T LET THEM MOVE INTO OUR STREET)
Yes, what the conservatives are thinking is pretty much what Tony Blair's Labour Party are thinking but whereas the Blairites are using the Bearded Ragheads with Weapons of Mass Destruction to promote fear, the Conservatives are relying on THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE.
Years ago, long before Margaret Thatcher declared Britain a fun - free zone our politicians liked to lecture us on the importance of being more like our hard working, fun loving European neighbours. Those of us who made up the lunatic fringe (Mrs. Thatcher's words, not mine) pointed out that not only was the British climate against this but that Europe's more relaxed attitude to booze meant that they got bigger measures at lower prices and the bars were open longer hours.
The question was asked "if you want us to be more like Europe why not start there.?"
"Oh no," said Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives, "if people start having fun they might get used to it, we meant work harder and save more money for your old age," which did not sound very European at all. After all, once people find that life can be fun they forget to be afraid of Reds Under The Beds and all the rest.
I liked the idea of people losing their irrational fears so much that I formed my own political party, the Liberal Libations Party. Affiliating with Screaming Lord Sutch's Monster Raving Loony Party we campaigned on a "Bigger Drinks For Everyone" ticket. My campaign came very close to disaster, I almost won.
It is appropriate to tell this story because I am thinking of reviving my Liberal Libations Party with the slogan "are you drinking what we're drinking?" we could offer Better Public Services, improved education, free Middle from irrational fears and give equal opportunities to all, even THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE., free I-pods for everyone, make carrying a clipboard in the street a capital offence and relieve third world debt, kill capitalists.
Then to give us a final push for power in the last few days we could turn up the heat with a new set of even more radical policies and another slogan.
"Stop War."
"Feed Africa"
"Give Free Condoms to Catholic Priests (well we don't want them breeding.)
"Ban Religion"
"Support Guerrilla Gardening"
"Make the Hurdy Gurdy Mushroom Man President of The World….."
"ARE YOU SMOKING WHAT WE ARE SMOKING?
END
Copyright © 2005, Ian Thorpe.
http://www.authorsden.com/ianthorpe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Fear and Panic #1

FEAR AND PANIC #1
Hiding from Shadows
I heard that last week President Bush took refuge in a bomb-proof bunker under the White House , the U.S. Army was put on red alert, air force helicopters were scrambled and Vice President Dick Cheney was whisked away to an "undisclosed location" (best place for him mutter most of my readers)

Yes, our old friend Fear and Panic had returned to Washington to prove that post 9/11 paranoia is alive and well. The cause of the kerfuffle turned out to be a rather small but very dense raincloud.
Clouds are such very commonplace occurrences that one would hope even Military Intelligence personnel might have sufficient common sense to recognise them as non-threatening weather events. Apparently this is not so. The cloud of potential mass destruction in question was "moving at about the speed of a helicopter and kept appearing and disappearing on radar.

A quick call to my friend who is a software developer at British Aerospace confirmed that far from being sinister, such cloud behaviour was entirely typical.

I am not a weather expert but have flown in commercial aircraft many times and like anyone who is used to flying over Northern Europe I have some experience of clouds. I also live in a notoriously cloud-infested part of Britain an so am well aware of the less pleasant aspects of typical cloud behaviour. In fact you might say I have "looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow..." although I try to avoid looking at them from down because raindrops in the eye can be quite uncomfortable. From above however clouds can be stunningly beautiful in a Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sort of way.

The real crux of this piece is my experience of flying through clouds. The ease with which large jetliners pass through the seemingly solid mass does not leave on with the impression that any cloud would ever be substantial enough to conceal and support a gang of bearded ragheads with miniature thermo-nuclear devices up the holes in their bottoms.
There is an important lesson to be learned from the cloud of no threat whatsoever. We British learned the same lesson from thirty years of living with the very real and present threat of IRA terrorists in our midst. It is this; the terrorists most potent weapon is Fear and Panic. Mr Bush and his cohorts used Fear and Panic to unite the nation behind his administration then Osama Bin Laden turned the tables by using Bush generated Fear and Panic to disrupt the American economy. And now the President has fallen victim to his own propaganda and is running and hiding from shadows (or clouds in this case).

As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said "you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

END
Copyright © 2005, Ian R. Thorpe
http://www.authorsden.com/ianthorpe