The final taboo?

Well hello to you all and welcome to another instalment of this fine blog, well I don’t have a right to call it fine I suppose but I enjoy it so I shall declare it as fine. Hope you are all well and superb and enjoying this unseasonably nice weather of late, a rather welcome change from the deluge of wind of rain we have been enduring.

Anywho to important matters, the subject of this weeks blog I have been thinking very hard about what exactly should be my next subject, do I continue my diatribe against the train companies or manners in general being in decline, do I rant vitriolically about the fact that Max Clifford was shown on my tv screen at 10am yesterday morning without any prior warning? Or perhaps an article about everything that’s wrong with the phrase “Britain’s got talent” alas all of these were shoved into insignificance by an article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about one of my comedic blogging idols the wonderful Sandi Toksvig.

Now those who are regulars visitors to my bloggy-space (Which sounds a good deal cruder than I intended it to!) will know a few months back I wrote a piece about why the BBC should not be giving in to small-minded middle England bigots who, from what I can tell, sit around watching TV desperate to find something to complain about. In this particular instance the MOS front page (Need I remind you that at the moment people are catching E-Coli across Central Europe from diseased beansprouts and a volcano is going off in South America) carried a banner headline referring to a joke Ms Toksvig made on The News Quiz in October 2010 about “It’s the Tories who put the N in cuts”. Now I am not opposed to salacious tittle-tattle, far from it whenever I have been away from the office almost my first request on getting back is not “How are you?” but “Give me the gossip!”, I often think my life would be meaningless without gossip and bitchiness but it just staggers me that such a non-story that is comprised almost entirely of a tissue of lies was deemed worthy to go on the front page of Britain’s best selling Sunday newspaper.

The joke itself received the grand total of 1 complaint but it transpires that this complaint was from a Daily Mail reader who felt compelled to share this with the paper who genuinely felt this story had legs. So much so that not only was its front page devoted to the unfortunate Ms Toksvig but also a total of 7 pages within the newspaper all aimed at the BBC for rejecting (quite correctly) this complaint. What I find most interesting, however, is their grounds for rejection, the complaint was not turned away on the grounds, as I would have, of the complainant clearly being a mad Middle-Englander who’d eaten too much tweed, but because the word (Which let us not forget was not mentioned, Ms Toksvig could have just as simply meant “Nuts” by her joke) is deemed to no longer cause as much offense as once it did. Now this to me is a very interesting idea, after all the majority of the swearers lexicon now seems positively commonplace, I was at the football a few weeks back and one gentleman on the terraces I’m fairly certain failed to use any adjective other than f***, f***** & f****** all match and at no point was he chastised. For some reason the “c word” seems to have special status as being the final taboo, the word that must never be uttered, and quite right it’s a horrible word but honestly I don’t think I’m offended by it, and genuinely I don’t see what there is to be offended in by a word.

If we bear in mind one of the biggest TV hits of this year has been Danish serial “The Killing” on BBC4 which has done the world of good for Danish TV and jumpers from The Faroe Islands. Now this show is all based around the brutal rape and murder of a 19 year old Scandinavian girl and the subsequent investigation, it’s undoubtedly brilliant but if you’re telling me people will sit and watch and enjoy this but be offended by coarse language in this day and age I’m afraid I don’t understand it. There are plenty of words I dislike like “fistula” or “scabies” but they aren’t offensive I just avoid them in my lexicon because I hate the way they sound. The English language is a beautiful thing and we are so lucky to have it, so lets stand up against these Daily Mail reading luddites and accept that words cannot offend, context can offend and little rocks thrown at you can offend but words should not, after all they’re just a collection of letters. And should any MOS journalist stumble across my words here, go away and work on a proper piece of reporting, make a change from the ridiculous lies and half-truths you usually publish!

This week Matt:

· Started making final preparations for his holiday, packed the straw donkey and the sombrero!

· Went for an “Interesting” meal for Mark’s birthday with sex-mad Japanese chefs.

· Spent Friday teaching Tim to play Cluedo……. and failing.

It is better to travel well than to arrive - Buddha

Well good day all and welcome once again to the land that is my blog, I can tell you’ve all been missing it terribly, I’ve just been very busy for the past few weeks and to drain my spleen for your delectation is a trying process and it’s very difficult to be in the right mind to do this.

Now I have been asked if I will return to my safer raging ground of Britain’s train services and indeed given the last week’s debacle in my train journeying this would be a very tempting prospect. For those unaware I was visiting my Alma Mater the lovely Aberystwyth over the weekend and it was a very much last minute decision which meant that not only would I have to travel on a Saturday (which I genuinely try and avoid because of all the screaming infants) but also that it cost more because I had the temerity to choose to buy my ticket and to travel on the same day, what other division of society would this be allowed in? Would you get a letter demanding an increase in your road tax because you’d used your car without first alerting the highways agency which roads you planned to use? No you would not so how can these leeching train operators get away with charging you more simply for buying a ticket on the day you’re travelling?

Also if you’re going to get a reserved seat for gods sake use the thing! Okay I appreciate it doesn’t take much for someone to get on a train and look at the ticket in the back of the headrest and realise that the person who is supposed to be using it either has some terrible wasting disease and is now invisible to the human eye or they haven’t taken their seat but that’s not the point, you reserved that seat so you can damn well sit in it, the types that reserve are often the first to demand you give up their seat when they want it even though there are ample numbers of other perfectly usable seats available so why should they then have the right to chose not to sit there? If I had my way we’d shackle them into said seats and just say “if you wanted that particular seat so badly you can enjoy it all journey whiles imprisoned in it!”. Now as you may have guessed I am not the kind of person who usually books a seat but if I get on a train and see that my reserved seat is being used as long as I can find another seat I would usually just say live and let live. It is all rather like my beloved local arthouse cinema, now those who know me well will know that the kinds of films I enjoy seeing are very rarely mainstream blockbuster types, they are generally arty, emotional and usually subtitled so there is usually ample space in the auditorium for every person who has chosen to see the film to probably have an aisle to themselves if they chose so can someone explain to me why people feel the need to sit in the exact seat their ticket says? I normally just go in and find the first seat that’s in the area I like and sit there but you can guarantee I will have sat in a seat that will be given to somebody else who will then either come in, see me in “their”: seat and sigh loudly before sitting elsewhere or ask me to move, now this never ceases to really anger me, for gods sake we’re here to see a French film about Algerian monks, you and I are probably going to be the only ones here why do you feel the need to sit in the seat the cinema has allocated you, there are hundreds of other seats what is about this one that I have chosen that means you have to sit here and disturb me?

Anyway back to the train debacle, having made it from Merseyside to sunny Shropshire we were informed that all services to Aber were off until Tuesday and a replacement bus service would be provided instead, from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth. That would be 3 hours by coach, no honestly I’m not sure what it is about coaches that is so different to trains but it just is. For all my complaints I do love to travel by train, there’s some kind of inherent romance in it, you look at all the great love stories that have happened in the confines of the station and the train; Trevor Johnson and Celia Howard in Brief Encounter, Eva-Marie Saint and Cary Grant in North By Northwest there is a true sense of romance within. To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever set a romantic liaison within the setting of a rail replacement coach, it just doesn’t carry the same clout. There’s something about getting down from the guardplate of a train onto a platform and imagining the hot girl from the train waiting for me to finally declare she’s been feeling the same way as me for months, okay it never happens and generally I just shuffle away to a hotel for a weekend of sexual frustration but nevertheless the romantic overtones are there. With the coach it will pull into the station and everyone will just suddenly charge lie demented cattle at the exit, some old lady will drag a suitcase from an overhead rack and thwack you round the head with it and generally when you get off you just feel in massive need of a large gin and tonic to make you feel human again.

I suppose ultimately for all my complaints about them I do love the trains and generally my complaints are limited to the selfish people who just have no care for their fellow passengers, the kind of person who, on a rail replacement coach, will recline their seat and crush your patella simply because they wish to maximise their own comfort and genuinely never think that might in some way impact on yours. No as Cary Grant says in North By Northwest “it sure beats flying doesn’t it” and for all its faults, rail travel truly is the best and most romantic way to get around.

This week Matt:

• Had a week off which he spent reading about Henry II and Eleanor Of Aquitaine - quite the bitch it must be said!
• Went to watch Submarine at the pictures, seriously so funny I almost herniated laughing!

• Won tickets to a meet & greet with Clare Balding, absolutely can't wait!

The complaining classes

Well good evening all and welcome to another year of bitching and general grumpiness that pervades my life like a relentless dementor. I hope we all had a suitably refreshing New Year (well except anyone who spent New Years where I did of course, anything but peaceful!) but to the rest of youhere’s hoping it was a good one.

I suppose logically though there is only one thing I can really talk of that has truly got me foaming around the chops this past week and that is the furore over the cynical Eastenders plot twist for new year that saw the blonde one who used to be Samantha Janus and looks like her face has been chiselled out of someone much more attractive switching her stillborn baby with that of Kat Slater the modern day Bet Lynch. Now at last count there were, as far as I can recall over 8,000 complaints lodged with the BBC aout this incident, why????? Do these people not comprehend the idea of fiction? This has not actually happened people there’s a handy hint at the end of an episode when a list of people scrolls along the screen not one of whom shares their name with the character they’re playing! Seems to me that if the storyline has engrossed you enough that you actally believe all this is real then you should be commending the BBC for hiring such good quality actors as to make you suspend your disbelief enough to genuinely think all this has happened.

Okay maybe it could be seen as a cynical and exploitative storyline but is that not what these writers are paid for? Would these people prefer Eastenders was more like Lark Rise To Candleford or something “Oh Peggy what’s Phil up to?” “I don’t know Pat but he’s doing it wearing riding breeches, but his stovepipe hat is all askew!” “Oh my we must inform the church elders immediately!” OH COME ON!!!! The only reason any of us watch dramas is pure escapism we know it’s not true you don’t get people watching Spooks going “Hmmm well I’m not certain blowing up London for the 14^th time this series is all that appropriate” because that’s what you have come to expect from that show and the same should be true of Eastenders. If you want to watch it all power to you but we all know that soaps and reality shows are the big ticket numbers in terms of viewers hence the writers have to come up with more and more outlandish plot lines, after all this Christmas must be the first one in years without a death in Albert Square and even then it ended up with Janine knifing herself in the gut then limping to the pub and out again (Then again if I got to the pub and found Pat doing karaoke I might be inclined to crawl back onto the street to die as well!).

Perhaps though what is even more cringeing in the BBC response to he pathetic whiners, if we do some (admittedly very unscientific) maths the Eastenders Christmas special was watched by just over 11,000,000 people this year and 8,000 have complained over this storyline, that means that less than 1 in every thousand people who watched Eastenders saw fit to complain and yet the BBC feels the need to pander to these over-zealous middle-Englanders, why? So they won’t watch next year and you’ll have to make to with 10,992,000 viewers instead (Will still beat ITV’s rubbish by a country mile) or, as is more likely, these trogladytes will be busy complaining but still be sure to join in for the conclusion of the storyline, why does the beeb bend over backwards to these psychopaths who have nothing better to do that sit around the breakfast table reading the Daily Mail with their faces turning various shades of puce as they spout bigotry towards their tweed-coated wives and children.

Lets look at some of the other examples of “complaints” the BBC has seen fit to apoloise for. Songs Of Praise being pre-recorded for Easter and Christmas, why? Did it make a difference? Okay if the Easter Sunday service got broadcast on the final Sunday of Advent then I can judge grounds for mild complaint but just because the producers chose to get the big services right we feel this divine need to launch a vitriolic campaign of complaint?

Another complaint (which I loved) was when an emotional episode of Dr Who (I know it’s an oxymoron) came to a close ad BBC ran a trail for the next programme underneath and people felt the need to complain about this? By all means tsk to the person next to about how awful it is but what kind of person reacts to this mildest piece of provocation by writing to the BBC to complain? It’s not like the beeb was broadcasting hardcore pornography across the bottom of the screen it was just a reminder of what was on next, get a grip people!

I suppose what I am ultimately getting at is that if you, as a consumer, feel that a programme has deeply offended you then by all means use the legitimate means of protest but if your complaint is that something you knew full well would be happening (after all this storyline had been in all the papers beforehand) then the only person you can blame is yourself. Look at the most infamous example of all the “Brandgate” affair. After that show was broadcast there were 2 complaints and even of those 2 only 1 actually referred to the now infamous answerphone messages. By the time the hoo-haa had finally abated there were over 30,000 registered complaints now seriously I ask you should we apologise to these people? These are evidently people who became offended after the event as such they either failed to listen to the broadcast and were just somehow “offended by proxy” or, as is more likely, chose to listen again to be offended. If you do this we should not be pandering to you. If I was to walk into your house and beat myself about the head with you rolling pin there would be no justification in me complaining to you that you had left the rolling pin in so easy-to-reach a place, no you placed the offending object there but I went into the event knowing full well what I was doing, if I get hurt then it’s my own damn fault and it’s the same with these moaners.

Ridiculously now the BBC is planning to “end the storyline early” how’s that going to work put the (fictional) baby into a shoebox, hurl it into the canal and move on? People should realise the danger of what complaining does, it stifles the creativity of scriptwriters and maybe Lark Rise To Walford won’t be so very far away and Christmas “explosive” storylines involving Dot going to church without a bonnet and Ian Beale’s exciting new ironmongery business will be the norm!

This week Matt:

• Returned to his desk after the Xmas break to find nothing had changed..... as ever.

• Began planning his 2011 social calendar - so many cultural highlights to look forward to.

• Began to make sense of New Years Eve - Eastenders has nothing on us!

Next year will be the perfect year

Well there greetings hello and welcome to this my bloggerific world, I trust you all had a pleasant and bountiful Christmas, well if you didn’t at least you’ll now have a full 12 months of bitching about Auntie Ethel stealing the last mince pie or Granny ending up comatose on the fumes from the cooking sherry. Anywho it is customary at this time of year to be looking back over the past 12 months and what exactly you’ve learned, has the past year made us a wiser individual or just more depressed and determined to get out of our rut and try something new. Well whatever it may be I have decided to use this weeks blogging space to review what happened to me in 2010, the highs, the lows, the wibbly bits in the middle, and what were my personal highlights. So without further ado I introduce to you….. 2010:

Book of the year

Well I thought I’d start with the biggy, as you may well know I do spend a rather disproportionate amount of my time reading various books and that’s what makes this category in particular so difficult. I have read a number of brilliant books this year (Honourable mention must go to the wonderful Norwegian author Jo Nesbo and his hard drinking detective Harry Hole which has brought me innumerable hours of pleasure this year) but I would say without doubt the best book of this year has to be “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas. The premise is a very interesting one – at a suburban Australian barbeque a bratty child is dismissed at cricket and refuses to leave and starts waving the bat around, a father steps in to protect his son from this bat-wielding brat and slaps the child, is it ever morally justifiable to slap somebody else’s child? Now while this initial brilliant idea is never fully explored it does offer a quite brilliant insight into modern suburban Australian life and the quite horrific institutional racism that prevails. It never, like Lionel Shriver’s superb “We need to talk about Kevin”, leads an ambiguous situation for the reader to decide for themselves, the characters one on side of the divide are so utterly repellent you are left in no doubt on which side you are supposed to be, but as a character study it is very moving, if a little too sexually graphic in places than I felt it needed to be. Well worth reading though.

Movie of the year (Mainstream)

Anyone who has ever been to the cinema with me will know that I am very difficult to please when it comes to movies, if it doesn’t have subtitles chances are I won’t be enjoying it. There have, however, been a few movies this year that I really have enjoyed and worth my hard earned time and money. The one that everyone has raved about and will (In my opinion) quite rightly take the best picture Oscar is “Inception” but for me the film of the year was actually Leonardo Di Caprio’s other offering “Shutter Island”. While Inception had all the graphics and the clever plot twists and whatnot it was Shutter Island that, for me at least, lived longer in the memory. Those who have read the book all say that the ending is far less ambiguous than the film version but I enjoyed the ambiguity of the film and it was one of those rare things a film where you genuinely afterwards wanted to sit down and discuss it rather than just admire the pretty explosions.

Movie of the year (Arthouse)

Again as those who know me well will be aware I spend a lot more of my time watching independent foreign or arthouse films than I do the major blockbusters, generally I just tend to feel that if they’ve made it to another country in a foreign language there must be something special about them, and that is certainly true of the quite brilliant “Of Gods And Men”. It’s a French film set in Algeria in the mid 90’s and tells the true story of 10 French monks living in an Algerian community during the conflict there and how eventually they are taking hostage by Islamic militants who demand a hostage trade for the monks and the monks are eventually found beheaded (Though there is some debate still about who actually murdered them). The film is quite frankly an incredible piece of cinema and makes you question the entire basis of organised religion, how can any truly loving god allow ten people who have spent their lives praising him and helping others die in such horrific circumstances. For an atheist like myself it was an incredible vindication of my own beliefs but also just an incredibly emotional two-hours because you see these peaceful monks helping others but you know how it has to end. Well worth seeing if you do enjoy a good think.

Play of the year

I was expecting this category to be filled with one line “Kim Cattrall in Anthony & Cleopatra” but I’m sorry I just can’t do it. While she was superb and if there were a “Performance of the year” category she’d win it hands down but her supporting cast let her down (Also I spent the night with a large red wine stain across my shirt due to the fidgeting of my companions, you know who you are! Which dampened it a bit for me). No the play of the year has got to be Alan Bennett’s wonderful new play “The habit of art” which I caught in April. Not as sentimental as his masterpiece “The History Boys” nor as bittersweet as some of his brilliant talking heads but frankly brilliant. It tells the story of a fictional meeting between Benjamin Britten and W H Auden where Britten is writing a new opera “Death in Venice” and wants his old friend Auden to write the libretto, but the clever part of it is that the whole thing is a play within a play because what the audience is actually watching are two actors rehearsing for the play we’re about to see so as well as being an examination of two very interesting historical characters it also becomes a chance for Bennett himself to exorcise some of his own acting demons and it actually does become a very moving portrait of an actor “Fitz” played superbly by Richard Griffiths which while containing many moments of genuinely laugh-out-loud humour (One brilliant scene comes to mind where Auden meets his future biographer and mistakes him for a rent-boy) it also has scenes of great drama and hubris, an absolute triumph from our finest living playright.

Comedy performance of the year

I have seen an awful lot of comedy over the past year and have seen some truly talented comedians but the one that really stands out was Dara O’Briain at the Southport Theatre. Whether it was just because the whole night was so much fun exclusive of the gig (A genuine highlight being a restaurant owner taking our coats as collateral in case we ran off – not sure what kind of people he thought we were) or whether it was because it was a genuinely brilliant gig I’m not sure but it was one of the best nights of my year, tremendously good fun.

Gig of the year

I actually have been to see shockingly few bands live this past 12 months, though not so few that this category isn’t a bit difficult. I so want to say that the best gig was the wonderful “Kerfuffle” doing their last ever performance at a stiflingly hot tent in Shrewsbury in which I almost passed out from the heat but sadly they have been beaten by a band who must surely be one of the best live acts on the planet at this moment in time, “Bellowhead”. I’d heard a few of their tracks and hadn’t been all that impressed but I saw them live closing the Shrewsbury Folk Festival and they were impressive and then I saw them again towards the end of the year and they just blew me away, so few bands with a full brass section and they really can just get a room moving like no other band, if you get the opportunity to see them live get there, there is absolutely nothing like it, tremendous.

Moment of the year

Those who know me well (or indeed just read this blog) will know that I do tend to complain an awful lot about how terrible my life is sometimes but when I came to think about the one moment of the year I truly was at my happiest I actually was stuck for a long time thinking on it, and that is mainly thanks to all of you lot. So to anyone I have seen, spoken to or in any way communicated with this year my thanks to you, I am really privileged to have so many amazing friends, I don’t really deserve you but thanks for sticking with me. As for the moment of the year well a few come to mind, one was sat on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury just lazing around on the August Bank Holiday weekend watching a red kite in the sky and really relaxing, another was the weekend I spent away in Newcastle with work, walking across the Tyne Bridge was the culmination of a lifetimes ambition. However, without doubt the moment of the year came in April when we were sat looking over the racecourse at Aintree just after the Grand National. We had just watched Tony McCoy finally win the race and I had won a fair bit of cash and it was just in that moment we were sat there with the sun setting and a bottle of champagne shared amongst us that I actually realised that at that moment life was pretty prefect for me. Thanks so much to those who were with me that day making it so perfect and thanks again to you all for your continued support through the year. I love you all dearly and here’s to a brilliant next 12 months!

Plugging the leaks

Well guten tag mein lielinsblogees and welcome back to my too long inactive blogging world, sincere apologies for my u nforgivable absence from the world of righteous indignation but rest assured I’m back after my rest and have a whole variety of things to grouse about (People in restaurants taking large tables for two people, why????).

Anyway the idea of todays capsule rant has been fermenting away for a little while now and it regards one of our most major news stories that of the wikileaks scandal. Now those who festoon our newspapers and other optical and audio media with these scandalous things would claim to us that they are exercising their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press and that society as a whole has a right to expect such important things to be brought to light and those responsible taken to task. I suppose though what sits uncomfortably with me is whether or not this genuinely should class as “In the public interest” or not? The defenders of the wikileaks scandals would certainly claim so, they would presumably claim that we have a right to know about the relationships between the major heads of state and what each thinks about the other but I would exercise caution with this.

Okay if they have a wikileak that shows George W Bush and Tony Bliar Blair sitting at Camp David in canvas campaign chairs smoking massive cigars with a relief map of Afghanistan pushing crowds of soldiers of cliffs to their deaths that might be a story but I’m afraid that the fact that Kim Jong Il is not a pleasant man or that Silvio Berlusconi might have a slightly overactive libidio is not, in this minor bloggers view, news.

I suppose what it smacks of, to me at least, is the descent in “X-Factor politics” the idea that regardless of who is best for the job the media friendly star will always win out. Now this is not always a bad thing, David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s superior media image did, at least, spare us five more years of Gordon Brown steadily trundling our economy into the Irish Sea but is it a healthy precedent? These wikileaks are almost the sort of thing one might expect to see on the pages of a political version of Closer or Chat magazine, you can almost see the glossy news-stands declaring in garish colours “Angela: “What I really thinks about tiny Nick Sarkozy”” or “More Silvio!: nubile Italian temptress Yelena tells us all about Berlusconi’s infamous Bunga-Bunga parties!”

Now we may as a public have the right to know about certain decisions that impact upon us and have changed the world but that is not what these wikileaks are. These leaks are almost the equivalent of one of the tech guys in an office IT dept choosing somebody’s inbox at random and printing the sent items list and passing it around the office on the flimsy pretext that it is in the interests of the office to know what this person has said. Now I would say that anyone who has ever worked in an office can feel something of an affinity with those caught up in this wikileaks scandal because their private thoughts are now being made public, I would hazard a guess that most people at some point in their personal or professional career will have been invited to a meeting or other gathering and had a sly look at who else has been CC’d into the e-mail and seen a name and just sighed or maybe even sent a reply to another of the group saying maybe “Ogh god that awful sweaty bloke from human resources will be there” or “Christ they must be desperate they’ve invited that woman from IT who spends the day crocheting cats out of rubber bands” or some such thing. Now what right does anyone have to know what you have said in a private message? Much less what right do they have to start forming judgments and pillorying you for saying these things? Quite simply the answer is none. While it might be fun to find out what political leaders think of each other behind their backs it certainly isn’t in “the public interest” as Julian Assange and his wikileaking cronies would have us believe. By all means read the wikileaks and enjoy them but while you’re doing so just imagine what could happen if that bitchy text you’re about to send were made public and you’ll realise just why these private conversations really should have the right to remain just that.

This week Matt:

· Realised that he still hasn’t done a quite ridiculous amount of Christmas shopping.

· Tried in vain to locate his recipe for egg-nog, this may have to be a nog-less yuletide!

· Watched “Rare-Exports” a quite brilliantly subtitled Finnish film with such gems as the main characters saying “Fiddlesticks” as they stared death by naked octogenarian santa in the face!

Human Vs Cat

Well hello there my dear friends and welcome to yet another instalment of random vitriol against the world that I hate so much. To be honest given that I’m just back off holiday you might think that I have less anger than usual but don’t worry, my angerometer was sent flying off the chart lately – over a cat and a wheeliebin.

Now I know many other commentators far more erudite than myself have put forward their views on the Mary Bale vs Lola the cat debate and pointed out the rampant hypocrisy of the Great British public frothing at the mouth over this incident and yet when a serial killer wanders round Tyneside then shots himself they quickly declare him a “hero”. Clearly middle England would seem to think “I can see you looking at that there tortoise, don’t you dare put him a shoebox (except for hibernatory reasons) be a good lad and go kill the police instead!” which just seems wrong to me. Anyway I’m not going to go into the whole sorry saga of that because, as I say, there are other bloggers far wittier and more urbane than myself to do that just go and look it up, no what I wanted to reflect upon was why the public felt that putting Lola in a bin was such a crime. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating the recycling of cats in any way (given the reaction in cyberspace I wouldn’t dare) I’m just wondering what it is about that action that makes people rather than do the very British “tsk” over their cornflakes and turn the page actually go to such lengths as to post across the internet their desire to physically kill the person responsible. To quote the wonderful Don Corleone; “That is not justice, that is vengeance”.

I suppose really what it comes down to is that it was a cat that was being attacked – though it would help to point out at this juncture that supposedly the only reason the couple had the CCTV camera installed was because people had tried to hurt Lola previously so it sounds to me like it was just a bloody unpleasant cat and maybe we should pity Mrs Bale a bit in this whole thing. But, if the coverage showed Mrs Bale walking down the road and seeing a badger sitting on the wall or a swan (To quote Adrian Mole; “I’ve heard they can break a mans arm with one blow”) and she had flung that into the bin I think a lot of people would probably be saying “damn right they’re ferocious buggers, now pass us that shovel so we can finish it off!” and yet because it’s a cute cat everyone has suddenly had a funny turn and started getting all Old Testament on Mrs Bale.

However lets just look at a few stark ideas, if that cat had attacked Mrs Bale who’d have won? I tell you the cat would win every time humans just aren’t designed to fight any more. Case-in-point I’ve just spent my weekend in Shropshire and yesterday morning I was taking a bit of a hike and decided to stop for my lunch on a nice hill looking over the River Severn. Now while I was sat there I noticed a bird was circling overhead and anyone who’s ever seen a bird of prey in the wild you can tell right away by the movement that it’s some kind of bird-of-prey but I just watched it for half an hour so circling over me fascinated before it flew off. It was only later I started to reflect on what I’d done, I had just assumed I’m far too large for it to prey on it only wants voles and mice and things, but if it had chosen to attack me what would I have done? I had a pretty substantial novel I was reading that I could perhaps have tried to club it with or maybe jabbed it in the eye with the biro I had been using to do that mornings Sudoku puzzle but more than likely I’d just have screamed and fled for my life into the bushes and hoped it left me alone. I mean if you go round any zoo in the country you can guarantee any animal in there (with the possible exception of the giant African land snail) could take a human in a fight easily, we have become complacent with our place at the top of the food chain. Now obviously should all the buzzards in the world decide to unite en-masse and try and take over from the humans we as a united species could beat them but that’s no use to me when I’ve lying scattered about the Shrewsbury hillside as the human form of tagliatelle!

I suppose what I’m getting at is that Mrs Bale is just an animal like all of us and we all have animal instincts to bully weaker animals, and while putting a cat in a bin is not a particularly nice thing to do perhaps on a basic level it’s a reaction in all of us to protect ourselves as a species, and god help us if one day the cats rise up and decide to take us on – you’d be bloody glad of a wheeliebin then I can tell you!

This week Matt:

• Had a cracking time in Shrewsbury with the folkies, though has a sore head from all the low tudor beams.

• Discovered a passion for walnut and honey ice cream - literally I'm addicted!

• Tried and failed to find anywhere that can sell me a bradawl, does nobody do light carpentry anymore?

Young people today......

Well bonjour mes amis and welcome once again to my world of bloggy fun, after our last outing in which I got a bit heavy about mortality and creationism I thought an altogether lighter tone would be appropriate this week.

As we all know I tend to use this blogging space to talk about fairly abstract concepts and don’t tend to discuss specifics of much, however with the return of one of my absolute favourite TV shows last night, “Young, dumb and living off mum” last night I just couldn’t help myself from writing about it!

For anyone not familiar with the show it essentially takes 8 very spoiled kids in their late teens or early twenties who have absolutely no concept of what life is actually like and makes them work for their money and look after themselves in a house in London, think sort of supernanny but with adults and you will sort of get the idea. It’s also narrated by a suitably sarcastic Robert Webb who performs his role with good spirit but you can’t help but think it would be improved with a few lessons from that doyenne of sarcastic narration Dave Lamb off Come Dine With Me.

Anyway yesterday saw the curtain being raised on the second series of this show which generally just acts as a way to get your blood nicely raging before bed on a Sunday evening. This years contestants seem all to be pretty nondescript this year with a few exceptions such as the bizarre Levi who has a hairstyle that makes him look like a black Edd-The-Duck, Harri a strange young woman who appears to have flounced to bed depressed just so she could entice ladies man Marc to come and share a bed with her despite telling the world she has a boyfriend (though I’m guessing not for much longer after this airs) and my personal favourite Chloe who was sort of like a pitbull on haribo getting bizarrely angry at Harri and Marc for sharing a bed without ever really explaining why or, to be honest, what it had to do with her.

Anyway our show started with our young miscreants have to go to a local supermarket to get their shopping in but refusing to pool their money and eventually deciding that rather than pay for food that they couldn’t afford they’d just eat it in the shop instead. That was until possibly the worlds doziest security guard caught them and made two of them pay while casually ignoring the rest of the group who were doing the same thing, top quality work there!

As much as food shopping seems to be beyond these kids household chores are undeniably funny, there was one wonderful scene where rather than doing the washing up they decided to try and wash plastic placemats in the washing machine using washing up liquid. The resulting foam that engulfed the kitchen was rather amusing but you did sort of begin to wonder how these people live not realising that putting washing up liquid in a washing machine is not the brightest thing you could do.

Following the debacle of work and chores came the worst challenge so far the idea of work. They were set a challenge of working in a florists and were told they’d need to be up at half five the next day so of course they all got an early night……. Well except they didn’t they just got hammered, and how! Now I know almost all of us will have at some point gone to work hungover but these kids were still drunk when they got to the florists having only gone to bed an hour earlier. Unfortunately the florist they were to work for didn’t really seem to realise quite what he’d let himself in for but after admonishing them for being drunk/hungover he set them to work to find him some specific flowers in the market a task that didn’t go so well with one of the girls (It may have been angry Chloe) looking stunned when she was told the red tulips she was holding weren’t lilacs for the simple reason that….. they weren’t lilac “What’s lilac then?”, clearly massively intelligent girl there! Also Marc decided to be ingenious and get his stallholders to give them a discounted rate but get them to make out their receipts for the full amount allowing him to pocket the change, his mother later called it “Clever” I just called it theft personally but this is the joy of the show it makes you hate the kids and then hate the parents even more for creating them!

Anyway having got their flowers our intrepid kids were set the task of converting them into bouquets to be delivered to paying customers. Adam (a very annoying and incredibly camp individual) decided that scheduled cigarette breaks were not for him and to take a break whenever he liked and made a bolt for freedom along with Harri and Coran this ended with a quite hilarious scene where Adam had a standoff against the florist who was looking murderous and carrying a pair of pruning shears (the temptation to stab the grinning imbecile must have been immense) after a scene reminiscent of something from a camp remake of “The good, the bad and the ugly” the miscreants were punished by being made to wash vans rather than partake of floristry except for Adam who sat on a step wailing about how not being allowed frequent breaks was a violation of his human rights, seriously get me a pair of pruning shears and I’ll stab him myself.

The remaining five kids were tasked with delivering their bouquets again with hilarious results, Iman (Whose idea it had been to use washing up liquid in the washing machine) was paired with Marc who, as usual was more interested in flirting than anything else but they did at least deliver their bouquet which got the ringing endorsement of “It’s very green” from their client who then proceeded to slag it off behind their backs. Danielle (Who’s partner Adam was presumably still crying about his fag breaks at this point) was forced to deliver her bouquet alone but for some reason seemed absolutely terrified at this prospect and delivered it with the immortal line of “Yeah it’s not very good” you sell it girl! Still she did better than final pair Levi and Chloe who got hopelessly lost before giving their bouquet which ad been destined as an 18^th birthday gift to a random Chinese herbalist, well done kids!

They were given a second challenge to help the florist decorate the royal box at the Covent Garden opera house but taking no risks the now rather flustered florist decided to set them to making decorative napkin rings while he did everything else before presenting the kids to the guests of the box rather like a workhouse owner introducing his orphans, with a certain amount of distain before flouncing off presumably to do some more schmoozing.

The best was, however, yet to come as angry Chloe walked in on Harri and Marc in bed (top & Tail I may add) and gave a wonderful “I knew it!” sounding not particularly angry and more like Jessica Fletcher off Murder She Wrote. She decided this clearly wasn’t the experiment for her and tried to make a bid for freedom not realising the producers has bolted the door which she then proceded to charge out sounding rather like that bull off the Covonia advert, actually it was genuinely terrifying!

In the end Harri left presumably fed up of insane Chloe and before her boyfriend noticed that she’d probably been copping off with Marc and Chloe was kicked out for being…..well…… mad really, hopefully she’s been safely sectioned now for all our sakes!

Either way it may sound terrible but it is compulsive viewing, nothing in the world makes you so angry, so incredulous and yet laugh so much at the same time, more please!