The Credit Crunch - just getting warmed up

I recall a scene from The Cruel Sea. Captain Jack Hawkins and his first officer Donald Sinden meet for a drink, reunited after having their ship blown up beneath them. They ask for gins and a jug of water. When a doddering old waiter brings the order, Hawkins complains that there is a layer of dust on the water.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ replies the waiter. ‘It’s the war.’

We like our catch-all excuses and easy explanations, don’t we? An unusual amount of cancer in area? Radio masts. Freak weather conditions? Well, it used to be ‘all them rockets they keep sending up. Now it’s climate change.

That reminds me of a conversation at the bar the other week. The barmaid served someone a coke and apologised that the pub had no more ice.

‘Bloody global warming,’ said the customer.

Currently, the ‘credit crunch’, recently upgraded to the ‘credit crash’, is the root of all our ills. Christmas turkeys will be priced out of the reach of ‘hard-working families’ and children will have to do without another flat-screen plasma TV because their parents are in negative equity. No doubt the government has emergency plans for soup kitchens.

A few months ago, pubs were closing because of the smoking ban. Before that it was supermarket offers; before that it was Wetherspoon’s; before that pubco’s. Now it’s the credit crunch, although I have it on good authority that the real culprit is Maggie Thatcher.

To be continued.

Still in the same universe

So, while I look at the spreadsheet I created to help monitor my spending and find I‘ve only got £5 left until Monday, what’s going on in the world?

There still is a world. Unless I’m writing this in a parallel universe, the big bang experiment at CERN doesn’t appear to have generated a black hole.

Actually I think we may be in a parallel universe because strange things are happening: England beat Croatia on Wednesday for a start. And after three months of trying I’ve managed to download Flashplayer. Don’t ask me how. I tried every trick recommended by bloggers and others and one of them must have worked.

On the other hand Harriet Harman is still there, continuing her campaign for the Labour leadership by regurgitating old rhetoric about the class war. And Gordon Brown is trying to buy your vote by promising to lag your roof.

And the EU continues to plot ways of bullying Ireland into rejecting its rejection of the constitution. I had to laugh when I read that some Eurocrats are blaming bloggers for the Irish vote. I’d no idea we were so powerful.

And then there’s that £5.

Big Bang Day

Wednesday 10 September. Big Bang Day. As I write the process has started, but quite when we disappear into a black hole, I don’t know.

If that does happen it will come as a surprise to a man who is the pub most days, scribbling in a small notebook. He assured me that the world will be sucked into a black hole – not one of our own making – in 2012. I forget the precise day and month, but I do remember it’s the year that my mortgage is due to be paid off.

Be that as it may, I expressed a little scepticism of his theory, but was generous enough to come and see me when it happens and I will feel very silly.

He reminds me of another pub Einstein who explained to me that our plans to colonise Mars – yes, it came as a surprise to me too – were misguided. He proposed going to Venus, ‘because it’s downhill.’ The sun’s gravity, you see. I thought Venus was too hot and gaseous, but large greenhouses will solve that problem. So now I know.

As for CERN, I don’t understand it at all. The figures for gigabytes, amps and temperatures – the boiling point of helium is 4 degrees above Absolute Zero – are beyond my comprehension.

But even less easy to grasp is how to stick to my budget of £60 a week. My first week was a complete failure. I went 50% over-budget.

It’s obvious where the money is going. Into the coffers of J D Wetherspoon. But it’s so bloody boring sitting at home drinking cheap cider and watching daytime TV.

Of course, I could become teetotal, but that’s a silly thought.

Before I go on let me draw attention to this article from The Times, which tells of a Bristol woman who managed to live on a pound a day for a year. The pound included everything except rent and utilities. So that means food, toiletries, transport; everything.

She did all the things I do anyway, but more regularly. She bought supermarkets’ own brand goods and ‘reduced to clear’ items; she got her bread for next to nothing at closing time; same thing with market vegetables and cooked chickens, reject pies, etc.

What she didn’t do was buy in bulk, something I like to do when possible, and surely a good economy even if only for a week at a time.

I’m fortunate to have friends with allotments and gardens – stuffed marrow, apple pie and rhubarb crumble on the menu this week - and one who works in a wholesale warehouse and has access to out-of-date delicacies like bacon and cheese.

No, food isn’t the problem; whatever those silly TV items would have us believe with their images of struggling families, crying onto their pizzas because the price of pot noodles has risen out of reach, it’s quite possible to eat a healthy diet on a pound a day. Smoking and drinking, unfortunately, require a fiver a day at least. Who am I kidding? Let’s call it a tenner.

Rugby Balls

A word about the rugby. England lost. But they lost fairly and with a lot of honour.

It’s easy to quibble about the try that wasn’t, but what let us down was the tactics. Kick, kick, kick. ‘Run,’ I kept yelling. ‘Remember Fiji.’ When you kick you gain territory, but lose possession, and there was no way we were going to steal their line-out.

OK, I know these were the tactics that got us took us so unexpectedly to the final, but couldn’t we see that South Africa were beating us at our own game?

The man I feel most sorry for is Jason Robinson, a player I’ve always found at least as exciting as Jonny Wilkinson. In the past, when Robinson got the ball I always leapt up with expectation. He would look around, wiggle his bottom and dart upfield like a rabbit chased by a pack of poodles.

And yet in the last few games he’s been told to kick the bloody ball away. It made this brave man look craven. A sad end, limping off early to watch Tait provide glimpses of what might have been.

* * *

And what now for South Africa? It seems that their government has decided that that their rugby team should descend to the level of Azerbaijan. Incredibly, just as their team becomes the best in the world, they wish to throw away the concept of selection on merit – is there ever any other concept of selection? – and choose the team to ‘reflect the make-up of the nation’.

So, what’s that mean? Ten blacks and five whites? What about ‘coloureds’? Asians; Jews. What about the division of ‘blacks’ into Xhosa and Zulu, not to mention all the other groupings? In any case, rugby is a class thing, isn’t it? Maybe you should be denied selection if you’ve got a degree. And why exclude women, children, OAPs, disabled people. You won't win anything, but what could beat that lovely warm feeling of sanctimony.

What a load of balls!

* * *

Talking about balls, there’s been a lot more in the news this week.

For some reason thinking about rugby reminds me of fat people. I know it’s not the case anymore that the game is characterised by beer-bellied boozers, but I can’t help the way my mind works.

‘Obese’ is the word these days for what were once called ‘fat bastards’. ‘Obesity’ is not the result of greed and sloth and stupidity, but a condition, we were informed this week by the Chief Medical Officer himself, caused by ‘the failure of human biology to keep pace with changes in society’.

I remember one of the would-be strippers in The Full Monty, sitting in his garden shed, his belly strapped with cling-film and eating Mars Bars, all the while bemoaning his weight problem.

‘The wife’s got anti-ageing cream and anti-wrinkle cream,’ he says. ‘What I need is some anti-fat-bastard cream.’

No use. It’s evolution’s fault. Now that theory raises some interesting possibilities. We need to do some selective breeding, mating people who seem to cope better with today’s lifestyle and diet. As it’s a matter of urgency – Education Secretary Alan Johnson thinks the problem is on a par with global warming – I would like the powers that be to know that I myself have a high metabolic rate and am at the nation’s disposal.

Now I’m talking a load of balls!

* * *

What else is annoying me at the moment? All right, I’m a grumpy old man, but these things must be said.

There were those kids who stoned an old bloke to death, more or less, and were tried at the Old Bailey. My complaint is not that they only got a year in some sort of detention – although it’s a travesty – nor that their parents, assuming they’ve got any, weren’t in the dock with them. No, it’s that we’ve been subjected since to the bleating of bleeding hearts that have crawled out from under those rocks called university social studies departments to tell us that these little bastards are too young to be held accountable for their contemptible actions.

The same characters are fretting about the desire of prison officers to use batons on violent young offenders. Give them water cannon, if not machine guns, I say.

They make me so cross that I mixed my metaphors back there. And for that I can never forgive them.

Of course these ‘children’ – funny how they’re called children sometimes and ‘young adults’ at others – know the difference between ‘right and wrong’. If a gang of middle class liberals were to get drunk and throw stones at a ten-year-old caught reading The Daily Telegraph, the little offender would soon start bawling, ‘It ain’t fair, mistuh’. Ergo, they know what’s wrong. In that silly little scenario is the essence of social morality.

Even Jesus Christ would agree with that, not that he’s much of an authority. In fact he talked rather a lot of bollocks himself. I’ll come back to that another day.

* * *

What else? Is there no end to the insanity of Britain today?

Oh yes. Apparently there’s an epidemic of ‘middle-class drinking’. Now this is not ‘binge-drinking’. That is the privilege of children or young adults or whatever they’re called in this case. Middle class people, whoever they are, indulge in ‘hazardous drinking’. Forgive me, by the way, for using inverted commas so much, but how else do I convey my contempt for the silly journalistic phrases taken up and parroted from newspaper to TV and back again.

It seems that professional people are going home after a day’s work and drinking a bottle of wine. Every day. Shock horror! What is the point, I ask, of aspiring to a middle class income, if not to be able to afford a decent bottle of wine on a daily basis?

Dawn Primarola, a health minister with impeccable Stalinist credentials, has warned that ‘this must stop.’ God help us.

Personally, I wish I could afford it. But I’m not complaining. What with the reasonable rates at Wetherspoon’s pubs and ASDA I’m at this very moment finishing my week’s government-allocated quota of alcohol.

Not bad, considering I started yesterday morning.

What the hell. Do you live and put up with all this balls forever?

Sorry to be so boring

IT IS PETTY and perverse of me, I admit, to look around my local pub and observe with complacent satisfaction the empty chairs, the bored staff, and the increasingly desperate special offers.

I read in the local press that pub trade has reduced by 10 per cent since the smoking ban and backstreet boozers with no opportunity to provide outside facilities are facing a harsh commercial winter.

I got up from my table the other day, where there was a smug conversation going on about the administrative cock-up that is ‘Smoke-on-Trent’ to order another drink. I noticed a sign on the bar offering a steak at half price. ‘Vegetables of your choice,’ it promised. ‘Just ask our friendly staff.’

‘Are you one of the friendly ones?’ I asked Molly, the barmaid. ‘I’m never quite sure?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it says here, ‘’Ask our friendly staff.’’ I don’t want to ask any one unfriendly by mistake.’

She expressed doubts about my grip on reality and advised me to absent myself forthwith. Except she didn’t bother with the circumlocution.

Now that’s the thing about the English language. It’s so gloriously imprecise in some ways. In other ways it’s quite the opposite, because it’s got twice the number of words as, say, German. It’s a great mongrel of a language – and my father always told me to avoid pedigree dogs – unlike French, which even has an Academy to maintain its incestuous decline.

But French can’t be accused of being imprecise. I wouldn’t have been able to make my joking remark about ‘friendly staff’ in that language. Because French allows you to put an adjective before or after a noun, depending on the sense. Take ‘green grass’, for example. If you want to distinguish the green grass from grass of another colour, you would place ‘verte’ after ‘l’herbe’. If on the other hand you were just using green as a standard description of grass – all grass is by default green – it would go in front. This was the purpose of ‘friendly staff’, I presume.

I LEFT MY PINT on the table and strolled along the outside of the pub, to smoke a cigarette. I paused to light it and realised I was by an open window. What, I thought, if my smoke were to waft inside the pub? Would that count as ‘smoking inside a confined public space’? This thought took me back to my Latin lessons. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

I had to ask myself if ‘confined space’ is in the ablative case or the accusative. If the former, ‘smoking in the pub’ would have the sense of ‘inside the pub’. If, on the other hand, ‘in’ is followed by the accusative case of the noun, it would mean ‘into the pub’. I would therefore be on the wrong side of the law (except in Stoke, that is).

Surprisingly, for such a language as English, flexible if you like, vague if you prefer, people will insist on being pedantic about it. Lynne Truss famously, and very profitably, wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a combination of diatribe against poor punctuation and manual of correct practice.

Interestingly, if the New York Times is typical, the Americans were not impressed. This article not only disagrees with her rules of punctuation, but criticises her prose style, her grammar and her syntax.

I REMEMBER the fuss when the Ministry of Transport had a campaign about the dangers of falling asleep at the wheel of the car. ‘Don’t Drive Tired’ was the slogan.

‘Tired’ is an adjective. A verb must be modified by an adverb, must it not? What kind of message does it send when a government department propagates bad English? Etc . . . etc..

The criticism was misplaced, of course. The slogan may not be very elegant, but it’s more elegant, and certainly more effective, than ‘Don’t Drive Tiredly’, or ‘Don’t Drive While Fatigued’.

If I wanted to get into syntactic analysis, I could prove that the adjective, ‘tired’, is qualifying the understood ‘you’, part of the understood phrase, ‘while you are’. And in any case, if Dylan Thomas could write ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, why can’t we say ‘Don’t drive tired’?

(Should that question mark come before the quotation mark, I wonder? After all, Sir Roger Casement was hanged on a comma.)

The imprecision of English leads to inadvertent humour – ‘I see chickens are going cheap in Asda;’ bawdy humour – ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to introduce me to your wife;’ and poetry – ‘Now does he feel his secret murders sticking to his hands.’ Is any other language so prone to punning?

A LITTLE LATER, once again outside indulging the pleasures of the flesh, I stopped to read the notice warning against smoking in the pub. What a contemptible little scrap of card, and what execrable English. What a perfect feast for lawyers, so perfect an example of imprecise English it is.

‘These are no smoking premises. It is an offence to smoke or knowingly to permit smoking in these premises.

‘If you observe someone smoking here, a complaint may be made to the manager.’

‘These are no smoking premises.’ That could mean that ‘these premises don’t smoke.’ And if you’re not going to say ‘NON- smoking premises’, shouldn’t you at least put the hyphen after ‘no’.

‘Knowingly to permit . . .’ Well, at least the writer didn’t split the infinitive. But does this mean that other customers are obliged by law to prevent smoking? Are citizen’s arrests permitted?

‘A complaint may be made.’ Does this mean that there is a possibility of complaint or that you have permission to complain? Or could it mean that a complaint may be made about you observing smoking?

You see what nicotine deprivation does to people.

And if you’ve reached the end of this blog, you’re a sadder man that I am.

England's Smoking Ban

July 1st, 2007, a date that will live in infamy, the day when that coalition of puritans and pursed-lipped killjoys, of do-gooders, nannies and busybodies, control freaks, know-alls, health fascists and interfuckingfering bastards finally got their wish and banned smoking in ‘enclosed public places’. In other words my pub.

Who are these people, who talk of saving lives, but don’t know the first thing about living the short life we have? They’re not saving lives. At best they’re prolonging its misery until something other than cancer else gets us or rots our brains into not caring who or where we are.

Who are they? They’re teetotallers, vegetarians, feminists, calorie-counters, joggers, bureaucrats, censors. Eunuchs. How dare they tell me what to do, how to live? The same people who would have cockerels banned from the countryside and then pollute it with their four-by-fours; who fret about battery chickens and the fate of foxes, but are happy to pay for their daughter’s abortion; preen themselves over their catalytic converter and wonder why the police have nothing better to do than stop them speeding.

Listen to them with their hypocritical cant. How their heart bleeds for me and my health. How they lie awake at night crying over the poor barmaids breathing in all that smoke. Well, don’t weep for me, I do enough of that for myself; and if the barmaids don’t like it, let them work somewhere else. If other customers don’t like it, let them go and clutter up another bar with their requests for café latté and drinking chocolate.

Have we lost faith in the market? What’s wrong with a little smoking apartheid? Even God is supposed to have allowed us freedom of choice.

These people don’t like smokers because smokers don’t labour under the illusion that life is serious. Smokers are atheistic, amoral, adulterous, alcoholic, anarchistic – and, OK, on occasion absolute arseholes.

But they’re also gregarious, friendly, talkative, laid back and plain interesting. Non-smokers are attracted to them because they’re sick of the other nicotinophobes with their suburban gardens and their car-washing Sundays and their 2.4 children - who may be spoiled, fat and stupid, but at least they’re ‘not exposed to smoking’ – and their little wives with their little jobs and their sensible hairstyles and comfy flip-flops and their holiday videos and their sanctimonious pension schemes.

I know them. I’ve met hundreds of them. Frightened little people, envious pigmy-souled, joyless-hearted Lilliputians, striving to pin down free-spirited giants with a thousand restrictive threads.

Bitter? You bet I’m bitter. This is war, you petty-minded tyrants. And I’m going to enjoy it.

Now, where did I put my fags?

Available for Comment

I see that Tony Blair, obviously de-mob happy, has launched an assault on the media, calling them a pack of feral animals, or some such. The fact that he was guiltier than most of news management and the curse of the sound-bite does not alter the fact that he’s damned right. If politicians had any guts they would not give a fig for the newspapers, because no-one with any intelligence takes any notice of them. (Aye, there’s the rub).

I have often criticised the media, both TV and newspapers, but the comedy show Broken News did it best. They hardly needed to exaggerate to lampoon the relentless trivialisation and sensationalism that we have to suffer when all we want is a briefing on the day’s important events.

It’s a salutary lesson to satirists, unfortunately, that such programmes have no effect. Producers, presenters and reporters continue blithely churning out superficial material, mixing news and comment, begging questions and constantly taking the adolescent attitude that the only way to show independence is criticism and carping.

Why does TV news have to have two presenters, pronouncing one sentence each, the authoritative elder man and the adoring bimbo – look at camera, look at partner, look at notes, speak . . . and again.

Why did something happen ‘back’ in 2006. Why is the Gordon Brown ‘down’ in Devon today or ‘up’ in Scotland, and if I want more information, why is it ‘over’ on BBC2, or obtainable by pressing ‘that’ red button. We don’t have mothers; we have ‘mums’, whose babies ‘weigh in’ at ‘just’ five pounds. Snooker players ‘crash out’ of the World Championship or win it at the ‘first time of asking’. And so on.

But what has been amused irritation became such anger yesterday that I stormed out the house and slammed the door.

I was watching ITV’s Six O’clock News. I should have known better. Even Mark Austin’s ill-fitting suits annoy me and why the hell can’t Mary Nightingale stop walking about? The lead story was, as it should be, the murder of PC John Terry. A simple statement of the facts would have been adequate, but instead we ‘go over to our reporter in Luton,’ who delivers a clutch of clichés designed to end in the words ‘a broken family’, so that – bang – they can appear on the screen as a title: A BROKEN FAMILY. And then there are ten minutes of flowers and widow’s tears. Who advised that poor woman to appear at a press conference just hours after her husband’s death? To these media ghouls, it’s just another story, for all their cant about human interest and the public’s right to know.

Bugger the public.

'Educational Apartheid?'

MY CURRENT READING matter for bus journeys is Violet Bonham Carter’s memoir of Winston Churchill. Lady Violet was a friend of Churchill and, as the daughter of Prime Minister Asquith, knew just about everybody who was anybody at the time.

Apart from having an insider’s view, she brings a good understanding of the issues and intrigues of what were turbulent political times. And she writes extremely well too. In those days people who did write, always wrote well.

I’ve reached the point where Churchill has left the Conservatives and thrown in his lot with the Liberals. His reward after a couple of years is a Cabinet post, namely President of the Board of Trade.

Lady Violet quotes extensively from a speech Churchill always considered one of his best. I particularly like this passage:

‘Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty [I guess Toryism just wanted things to stay the same]. Socialism would destroy private interest; Liberalism would preserve them . . . by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue it from the trammels of privilege. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual . . . Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man . . .’

THESE WORDS CHIMED with my reaction to an item on the increasingly tabloid Today Programme. The presenter talked of ‘educational apartheid’ in relation to a recent report by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Now, there’s a name that evokes navigation, but whether the CLS knows where it’s going is a moot point.

It has come up with the startling fact that children from ‘disadvantaged’ families get off to a worse educational start then those from ‘privileged’ backgrounds. It seems a bit vague on detail when defining ‘disadvantaged’, which can mean having ill-educated parents, or ‘poor’ parents, whatever that means.

It’s just the way these things are reported that irritates me. For example, this stark division between disadvantaged and privileged – ‘apartheid – as if there’s no gradation between the two. And no mention of the many exceptions, the father who wants his child to do well at school and not spend his life in a routine job; the mother who works to pay for piano lessons. And what about the families which are poor despite being well-educated?

What I dislike most of all, though, is the use of this word ‘privileged’. It’s a loaded word. We are conditioned to believe that privilege is unfair, as indeed it is in so many cases. But it is hardly unfair that one’s parents don’t have a lot of money. Unlucky maybe, but not unfair.

The expression ‘middle-class’ is bandied about more often these days, it seems to me, with all its negative connotations. I’ve never really understood why being middle-class is so despised. In fact, I’ve never really understood exactly what is meant by it. Is it money? So an illiterate plumber on a hundred grand a year qualifies but an unemployed graduate doesn’t? The type of job? So a librarian is in and a Premiership footballer isn’t? Education? Moral standards? Does believing in marital fidelity and opposing divorce make a Roman Catholic bricklayer middle-class? Does the fact that he is a Maoist make a brain surgeon working-class?

IT'S ALL NONSENSE. And so is the insidious campaign to make people feel guilty because they want to improve themselves and the lot of their families. The real division is not between those parents who are privileged and disadvantaged, but between those who care and those who don’t give a damn. People shouldn’t feel bad because they talk to their children as if they are intelligent beings, instead of telling the ‘little ****s to shut the **** up. They shouldn’t be seen as villains because they tell their children that porridge comes from oats or that Paris is the capital of France.

The guilt is on the heads of those who abuse their children with lack of discipline, lack of encouragement, and lack of ambition. Those are the sins which are visited on the children even to the seventh generation. And there’s not a thing the government can do about it.

And now I shall go to the pub and indulge in the appalling middle-class habit of drinking wine and, like a good bourgeois, do the Time crossword.

St George's Day

The late Duke of Devonshire, lord of Chatsworth House, looked very grand when clad in ermine and scarlet he attended the House of Lords for the State Opening of Parliament, but was usually to be seen shuffling about his estate in a comfortable of old cardigan and baggy-kneed corduroy trousers.

He wore his aristocracy likewise, easily, modestly and unmistakeably.

So it is with being English. And therefore, you will see few demonstrations of patriotism on the streets and in the pubs of England today. We leave that to little, nervous nations and conquered countries, like those from South America or Africa, where national days are celebrated in a desperate attempt to forget that imperialist dominion was overthrown in favour of local despotism. They are the modern equivalent of the Romans' 'bread and circuses'. Keep the mob happy and distracted.

In any case, who needs a patron 'saint'. It's a quaint (and heretical) Roman Catholic idea that some dead individual (who probably never existed) is constantly on hand in Heaven to stand up for our interests, like some kind of celestial ambassador.

England has always been a protestant country. Even when the papacy was ruling Western Europe with fire and sword, England was semi-detached and unruly. Even when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth I and called for her to be assassinated, English Catholics generally ignored him. They were English and she was Queen of England, their Queen.

England is still protestant, if not in the religious sense, and still distrusts any continental calls for unification 'in everyone's interests', be they Pope or Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin or that little man in Brussels, whatever his name is.

By the way, Happy Birthday, William.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Hot Chocolate

My reaction to the recent research into the relative ‘buzz’-inducing qualities of chocolate and kissing was at first dismissive. On reflection, though, I came to feel that such research could add to the stock of human knowledge, only if conducted more rigorously and supervised more closely. Probably by me.

Perhaps I shall return with a statement of methodology. I do have some very interesting ideas for experimentation. The fundamental flaw in the research was that the buzz-seeking scientists overlooked one basic fact, namely that a bar of chocolate is an end in itself, but a kiss is the first step on the road to a much more important destination. Put another way, a kiss is merely an hors d’oeuvre, the prelude to the entrée.

Bearing that in mind, it seems odd that anyone should waste time counting serotonins released by the brain and putting a stop-watch on the duration of raised heartbeat. It’s a clear case of comparing chalk and cheese. Who would choose a bar of chocolate in preference to a kiss and what – on a good day – it leads to.

However, being a man who suffers the liberal curse of seeing the other point of view, I’ve been pondering how an obsession with chocolate can be preferable to a sexual relationship.

The first thought that comes to mind is that there is no need to install chocolate in your home in order to enjoy it frequently. And even if you do, will you ever hear a Mars Bar complain of being neglected when you go out to the pub; or call you a pig when you come home drunk and feeling peckish? No, chocolate is readily available, and furthermore it’s cheap. Since when does a Snickers bar expect half a lager and a packet of crisps before allowing you to nibble it?

And there is such a variety of brands. Chocolate can be very dark, coffee-coloured or milky white. It may be sweet or bitter, soft-centred, crunchy or creamy. It may be flavoured with peppermint or rum or liqueurs. You can eat it ice-cold or drink it piping hot.

And I’ve noticed that no kind of chocolate ever complains when you sample another. Have you ever been nagged by a Bounty bar because you wanted a Turkish delight for a change, or a Crème Egg once a year? A Kit-Kat is not going to make you feel guilty because you couldn’t resist a Cadbury’s Caramel when you saw that sexy rabbit advertising it.

A Crunchie bar doesn’t moan if it lies there untasted because you don’t fancy it, having wolfed down a bag of Chocolate Brazils on the way home from work, or a Galaxy look at you reproachfully when you leave it half-finished. A Toblerone doesn’t demand to be eaten twice or a Malteser complain that you ate it too quickly and thought only of your own pleasure.

Oh yes. I could be persuaded. Just imagine.

All the way home he has been conscious of the hard, neat package, surprisingly heavy in his jacket pocket, bumping against his hip. He goes up the stairs quickly, two at a time, and is panting slightly as he closes the door behind him.

He’s had to steel himself against the temptation to touch it, to hold it, afraid it might melt with the heat of his hand. But now the moment has come. His heart beats faster and appetite throbs urgently in the pit of his stomach.

He longs to tear off the flimsy wrapping, drop the shreds to the floor and fall upon the chocolate with greedy, voracious teeth. But no – wait. It will be better to wait. To delay the moment of satisfaction. He tenderly places the blue-clad object of his desire in the fridge.

He pours a drink and tries to think of other things, but his mind is constantly drawn back to the waiting chocolate. Cold and hard now, but how quickly it will soften for him.

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. He always comes back to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. The others offer novelty, variety, the excitement of discovery, but Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is his one true love

The room is dark. The single lamp throws his shadow falls across the waiting, expectant bar. It seems so tiny, so helpless, so yielding.

He fetches the peppermints. Peppermints will enhance the taste, heighten his pleasure. The hot, white disc burns against the inside of his cheek, the roof of his mouth. He picks up the chocolate.

He gently eases the sleeve of paper the length of the bar and gazes at the shiny underwrapping. The foil is crisp and tight, stretched over the ridges of the individual chunks. He carefully eases the silver apart and slowly the slim, dark body is exposed. Saliva wells up under his tongue and its tip tingles with an exquisite sensation that is near to pain.

He touches it; he senses a slight stickiness on his moist fingertips. He grips firmly and the bar breaks. Again, then again. And at last he inserts the first square into his mouth and his eyes closed as it dissolves, spreads round his mouth and oozes down his throat.

He takes another chunk, he takes two. He can’t resist biting into them. He pushes another one in, chewing, chomping. He picks up another – wait, wait, no, to hell with it – he’s chewing faster now, his mouth is full, he’s drooling. But he can’t stop. He’s gulping, he’s groaning, he’s gasping.

Oh God, it’s all gone. He slumps back, exhausted, full, empty, sick with himself. Appetite sated, appetite for appetite lost. He could cry with frustration. A flood of despair and disgust rushes over him. He lights a cigarette.

He thinks. He remembers there’s a packet of Coco Pops in the cupboard. He’ll be able to eat them in a while.

Curry and toffees

Sitting in Wetherspoon’s yesterday afternoon I was surprised to see members of the evening shift arrive wearing cowboy hats and check shirts. The sight of one displaying a more than usual amount of cleavage induced jokes of a sort which proved that while my companions may have bad taste they certainly have good memories.

‘What’s it all in aid of?’ I asked one of the cowgirls.

‘Curry night.’

‘Curry night?’

‘Yes, the Indians provide the curry. We are the cowboys.’

I’m not making that up.

* * * * *

The murder of four more soldiers in Iraq came on the day when the 15 sailors and Marines were flown back to Britain by the Iranians.

The press, true to form, cannot see a crisis without trivialising it. The past fortnight has seen them concentrate on the one female ‘hostage’, interviewing her family, feeding them clichés and trying to capture tears on camera. Now, after talk of ‘dreams come true, answers to prayer, emotional reunions,’ etc they are about to turn and ask ‘serious’ questions.

Was the Royal Navy at fault? Was their release a victory for Britain or a propaganda triumph for Iran? What do the sailors think of their new suits?

Much as I despise the British press, I would like to hear them ask this question: should the Iran 15 be court-martialled and dishonourably discharged? I know it’s easy for me, sitting safely in front of a cosy computer, to ask that. But when Royal Marines are dying daily and every completed patrol is a dream come true and emotional reunions are months away, I feel sick when I see their comrades parroting Iranian lies in exchange for cigarettes and bags of sweets.

Words are cheap, I know, and discretion may be the better part of valour, but a little pride, a little resistance and some sheer bloody-mindedness would not have gone amiss. As for the officers, I don’t necessarily expect a performance like that of Colonel Nicholson in Bridge Over the River Kwai but to surrender first and then apologise is a poor example of leadership.

Points from the news

Home births

The government is to give pregnant women the 'right' to choose to give birth at home. This will increase the dangers of childbirth and add to costs. Instead of one midwife keeping an eye on half a dozen women while nature takes its course, she (or he) will be sitting with her feet up drinking tea in someone's front room.

If people want this choice, let them hire a private midwife and pay for it themselves.

I see the midwive's union is in favour. I'm not surprised. More midwives will be needed, more subscriptions.

The Chancellor and pensions

OK, Gordon Brown was wrong to remove tax relief from pension funds (or whatever it was he did), but what about the other issues?

He's criticised for not taking advice. Well, it's a daft person who takes every piece of advice he's offered. If I'd done that I'd have lost at least £1,000 at the races this year already.

And I'm not sure I fully agree with 'freedom of information'. Freedom of the Press, yes. 'The public's right to know' is often, I think, sanctimonious self-justification by irresponsible newspapers. People, even those in government, have a right to privacy, to argue and disagree before making a decision, without fear of mockery.

The servicemen captured by Iran

I've just deleted what I wrote. I'll make my criticisms when they are all safely back

The Curse of the Killer Yoghurts

Another example of the tabloidisation of the news was the report about the shocking wastage of food in this country.

‘One third of all food thrown in the bin shock,’ blared the headline. Whether this was one third in terms of cost, weight, volume or nutritional value was obviously too complicated to be mentioned.

The report continued with the information, the small print as it were, that one half of that third was inedible, including such things as potato peelings, egg shells, tea bags, fish bones and the fat from meat. The kind of thing that would have gone into pigswill before it was so foolishly banned.

I have a friend who was brought up to leave a little on his plate. He even leaves a few drops of beer at the bottom of his glass. It’s all very irritating to someone like me who was always told to clean his plate while thinking about the starving millions. If ever I offered to put my cabbage in an envelope and send it to India, I was rewarded for my altruism with a clip round the ear.

One sixth, of course, is not as dramatic, but never fear. They had another statistic ready. ‘It still means that 15 pence out of every pound spent goes in the bin.’ Well, that depends whether you eat eggs with your chips or caviar.

And they trotted out all the interest groups. Axes were being ground on all sides. Ready meals are the wrong size. Supermarkets are to blame for making food too cheap – yes, food is too cheap. The government is to blame for insisting on back-covering sell-by dates. Councils aren’t doing enough to recycle. The ice-caps are melting under the weight of tea bags, and the planet is being destroyed by rancid yoghurt.

All this was pushed aside the next day when suddenly we were told not to worry about teenage binge-drinkers. Now, the real problem is that of middle-aged, middle class tipplers, who knock back a bottle of wine every night. And what’s more, it’s going to get worse when smoking is banned in pubs.

I’ll finish now and have a large glass of Chateau Neuf du Pape, while searching for a recipe for potato peel wine.

Education, Education, Education

Each year my old secondary school awards a gold medal to ‘the best scholar’ of the year. Now that’s an old-fashioned concept, isn’t it? Imagine, singling one pupil out as superior. What about the losers? Scarred for life, doomed to low self-esteem, branded for life as failures.

It’s obviously a grammar school. And here’s another oddity. A year or two ago, it was won by a girl. Now, it’s not odd because girls are intellectually inferior, but because this school is single-sex, apart from the sixth form, where a few females are allowed in.

Moreover, two years before, her brother had won the prize.

What’s not odd is that they are Asians. Because – and I realise I am generalising here – Asians tend to take Tony Blair’s mantra ‘Education, education, education’ seriously. While Tony thinks government intervention can solve everything with targets, league tables, ‘parental choice’ and adding yet another subject to the curriculum every time there’s a press headline, Asians know that it all begins at home.

I mentioned this to a friend, who came up with an anecdote of his own. He told me about a family of Ugandan Asians, friends of his, who had been expelled by Amin and arrived in Britain penniless. They opened the stereotypical corner shop and worked long hours. The children helped out. But they also studied. They never missed school because their parents wanted to take advantage of a cheap-flight holiday; they wouldn’t have dared play truant; they were given set hours to do homework and this was enforced and supervised.

They grew up polite, well-educated, successful and integrated.

The Prime Minister-designate grew up in a home like that. But no doubt he will continue the current system, a muddle of bright ideas, wishful thinking and cock-eyed optimism.

Brighton's School Lottery

Sitting in the pub yesterday I noticed the silent TV indicate ‘Breaking News’. That title is so over-used nowadays that I no longer anticipate World War III or a reduction in tobacco tax. And sure enough this item was only about the lottery. There was the obligatory thumbs-up sign and then six numbers in differently coloured balls.

Then it moved on to an item about schools. You could tell it was about schools because there was film of two girls with satchels walking through some gates bearing a sign saying ‘School.’ (Obviously they’d found film of a black girl and white girl together).

Then it moved back to the lottery, then schools again. What the hell was going on? I discovered later that it was one item about the ballot system Brighton plans to use to allocate over-subscribed places in its schools.

The issue perfectly illustrates any number of my betes noires. I’ve already indicated one – the trivialisation of important issues with idiotic, superficial reporting.

Then there’s spin, as for example with the use of the word ‘lottery’. The press uses it because it relates the issue to something all us poor simpletons can understand; opponents use it because it demonstrates a lack of seriousness; which is why those proposing the idea like to use the word ‘ballot’. It is obviously not a ballot, by the way, because a ballot is concerned with choice.

Moreover, in the arguments I’ve heard about this system, people find it difficult to stick to the point. I heard some Tory fulminating about it, who was unable to avoid banging on about how comprehensive education was a mistake. And his Labour opposite number segueing in one sentence from defending a crude but practical way of allocating children to limited school places to ‘breaking the cycle of deprivation.’

Next are all the unsubstantiated generalisations. ‘Rich, middle class parents are buying houses near to the best schools.’ ‘Good schools will suffer from an influx of disruptive pupils.’

And then you get the special interest groups. Estate agents – for God’s sake! – warn of falling house prices. And environmentalists are worried that more car travel might be created.

What about all the questions left begging? Why are the ‘best schools’ in more affluent areas in the first place? If it is true that children from ‘poorer’ backgrounds are more likely to be ‘disruptive’, then why is that so?

So, what do I think?

Ø I am in favour of selective education, and the right of parents to choose independent education. The former is a dead duck and the latter out of the question for most people. So ignore this point.

Ø If this is simply a question of allocating children to schools, children should go to their nearest school. This criterion is absolute and not a matter for parental choice. If this means a school is over-subscribed, then it’s the next nearest. Only if there is space after the distance factor has been used, should parents be able to send their children further afield.

Ø Allow for other factors – special needs, special talents, etc.

Ø If parents wish to move into an area to be near a ‘good’ school (whatever that means), good for them.

Ø If this whole argument is about variations in educational standards, we should be a bit more hard-headed

Ø I do not believe there is such a gulf between ‘rich’ and ‘deprived’. That is just left-wing scaremongering and sociological over-simplification.

Ø People are not created by their environment. It is people who create their environment. Any other philosophy is degrading to human beings, and absolves them of responsibility.

Ø Responsible individuals should not suffer because others are irresponsible. In other words, if there are parents out there who don’t give a damn about the future of their children and who bring them up to share that attitude, then others should not see their own children thrown into the same bear-pit.

Ø If you think my thinking is reactionary and that all children are equally capable of being modelled into honours graduates, then let teachers prove it, without half-baked, starry-eyed experiments in social engineering.

PS This blog is good fun:

http://overheardlines.blogspot.com/index.html

Update

The pro-hunting lobby won the Today law repeal competition. And what are people saying? They're saying it isn't fair but because the hunters were organised. Well, good for them. It's a pity the anti-EU brigade, myself included, didn't get our act together. We could have 'sent a message' to the government, couldn't we?

Has anyone else noticed that politicians and other spokesmen are always asking what kind of message a proposed course of action will send. No-one seems bothered about whether anything is right or wrong, just how it will be perceived.

It reminds me of all that fuss about those cartoons of Muhammad. By the way, why do Muslims always add something like 'Blessings upon him', when they mention the prophet's name, while God' is just 'God'. What kind of message does that send?

Anyway, when the storm broke, all the liberals came scurrying out of the woodwork to condemn the cartoons. Now normally liberals are very keen on free speech, but they're not too keen on challenges to their pet hobby horses, like feminism, race, rape, smoking, abortion, animal rights and, most of all, the need to keep their heads attached to their bodies.

So what was the justification offered by these champions of democracy for censorship in this case? The cartoons, they said, were not funny.

Well, that raises a few questions, doesn't it? By the way, note that I said 'raises', not 'begs'. (See http://begthequestion.info/ )

Such as, how do you judge funniness? I like to think I have a reasonable sense of humour and I laughed at at least one of them. Supposing they were hilarious. Do they the qualify for front-page publication in The Guardian? And what kind of message does it send? (Sorry). Is Jimmy Tarbuck to be interned in the Tower of London? Is Escort to be banned because it's not erotic enough?

How did I get here? Oh yes, the Today Repeal. I notice that the anti-EU vote was second-highest. I have yet to meet an ordinary person, as opposed to establishment figures, who is in favour of the EU. I was chatting to three of 'the blonde ladies', the ones for whom I wrote that sonnet, and their opposition came out quite naturally in conversation. If you're reading this, by the way, 'Good morning'.

One of the other short-listed 'bad laws' was the Human Rights Act. The Chief Constable of Derbyshire used it yesterday to support his decision not to publish photographs of two escaped murderers, lest it infringe their rights. He was soon slapped down by the Attorney-General, but nonetheless it shows the paranoia this law produces in otherwise intelligent people.

Apparently anorexia is considered a 'life-style choice' by some. Has the world gone crazy or is it just me?

Idiot of the day: The head of the prison service who says the Prison Service (sic) has no procedure for keeping count of escaped and recaptured prisoners. I suggest a piece of paper and a calculator.

Today's cliches (first heard at 4.45 am): Today it's the magic and the romance of the FA cup, which is a great leveller, and may produce a few giant-killers and even kick-start the season for some clubs. There are abound to be a few upsets, not to mention shocks. I advise the minnows to play their normal game and just enjoy the day. As for the big boys, they've a lot to lose and little to gain, although for some, if they avoid banana skins, it might be their only chance to salvage their season and lift some silverware.

Before I forget I want to return to my list of books for teenage boys and add Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (if they like football and girls) or High Fidelity (if they like rock music and girls).

The death of Saddam Hussein

It's odd how the mind works. Take Saddam's execution.

Reports that it was imminent yesterday sent a cold shiver through me. I wondered why. It's not that I am against the death penalty. And if it didn't exist in Iraq, I would be in favour of inventing it just for the likes of Saddam Hussein. It's not just the personal delight he, and his sons, seemed to take in cruelty and murder, it was the fact it was a cold-blooded instrument of policy.

And her is where the morality begins to get complicated. I don't suppose I'm the only one to be repelled by the hypocrisy of Tony Blair, quite prepared to sacrifice his own men and authorise the deaths of hundreds of innocent people in a good cause, again an instrument of state policy, and yet wring his hands over the execution of the one man whose elimination was the good cause in the first place (actually, it was in the second place, after WMD discovery was relegated).

It's so easy for people who can say things like 'capital punishment is immoral'. How wonderful it must be to have been granted such insight into right and wrong. To be able to say that capital punishment is wrong but abortion is OK and the killing of children in a 'just war' is acceptable. The rest of us have to balance a variety of instincts and a tangle of arguments and practical considerations before we can make a judgment.

A million people will die today, some before they were born, some in stupid accidents, some because of carelessness or poverty or murder or war, some through their own choice or the choice of 'merciful' relatives and doctors. Hardly any will deserve to die. And hardly any death will make a lasting difference.

Saddam deserves to die and his death just might make a difference. But I know when I see the inevitable scenes of jubilant Iraquis dancing in the streets and firing off their guns into the air, like lethal children with Christmas presents, I will feel sick.

The Ipswich Murders

The involvement of the press in this series of murders is nothing short of appalling.

As soon as the news broke, the media circus came to town. There's nothing they like more than a story like this. It can help fill in those long empty 24 hours every day. There's great opportunity for those irritating 'breaking news' captions. Sky even sent their top anchor man, whose name, mercifully, I forget. The character whose middle age, deep voice and dodgy haircut/piece is supposed to pass for gravitas.

I've always said, get killed on your own and nobody gives a damn; get killed in a small group and its news; get killed with a hundred others and someone, somewhere is in for some money.

What the police think of it all, God knows. They might say, through gritted teeth, how useful the press can be, how much they value their co-operation, but in fact they know the press is a damn nuisance. It presents every half-truth as fact, it publicises the ravings of psychics, it undermines the police at every turn, with greasy sanctimony.

To keep the story going, it is opened out. We hear all the usual reasons why these women are prostitutes: the drugs, the abuse (but not the idleness). Liberals are having a field day, because for the time being no-one is allowed to talk about prostitution 'blighting' an area.

I heard some feminist blaming the men (of course) and regretting that these women were being called 'girls'. I think they're past caring, dear. Why don't we just call them whores?

We've had interviews with whores who have carried on working 'because it's Christmas'. Is she expecting a bonus? With MPs, about the legal basis of prostitution. Oh, and with policemen, ostensibly to ask how the investigation is going, but in reality to snipe at them for showing no fast results and to remind them of the Yorkshire Ripper.

But the worst thing of all is the coverage of this Tom Stephens' arrest. A man is arrested on suspicion and the TV screens are filled with his picture, his life history, examples of his handwriting, interviews with his whores. One reporter said that the police have to brace themselves for the possibility of having to release this man, 'their only suspect', if they can't crack him.

How is this man, innocent until proven guilty, going to get a fair trial after all this? How can he go back to normal life after this public mauling? The press has gone too far here. Quite apart from the fact that they have provided this suspect themselves, their whole reporting strategy has perverted the course of justice.

Guess what? The press is now discussing whether the press coverage is prejudicial. Have they no shame?