"Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense"; that's me fucked, then

Someone in this nice, recently expensively refurbished building took the time out to patronise me. I feel honoured, of course.

It would appear that the Correspondence Officer of The Direct Communications Unit at 10, Downing Street, SW1A 2AA did, indeed, forward my letter to Mr. David Call-Me-Dave "to the relevant Government department so that they may reply to you, in detail, on the matters you raise", because on Friday last I received a letter from the Ministry of Justice's Sentencing Policy and Penalties Unit, replying to me, in detail, on the matter I raised with Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, in which they also had the good manners to take a little time to patronise me as well.

A Mr. Nick Pointz (an invention of a name surely? I thought that what what Mrs. Chris Huhne did on behalf of her estranged husband?) wrote to me on the matter: I have reproduced his text in italics below, with my interpretation of the text, my "reading between the lines" if you will, in the standard font (and within parentheses):

Dear Mr. Tampon

Thank you for your letter of 17 August to the Prime Minister, in which you raise a number of issues about sentencing. (Actually, it was just one; to whit, what did he think a appropriate tariff should be for multiple breaches of the Data Protection Act, corruption of serving police officers, perverting the course of justice and obstructing police officers in the course of their duties). 

I hope you will understand that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet receive a high volume of correspondence (usually in the form of invitations to non-executive directors of lobbying firms, investment banks and arms companies, I should imagine), and unfortunately it is not possible for them to reply personally to every letter they receive (because they cannot be arsed, unless you are the CEO of Barclays Capital).  

Your letter has been transferred to the Sentencing Policy and Penalties Unit in the Ministry of Justice (possibly the least taxed Civil Service department serving HM Government). I apologise that it has taken so long for you to receive a reply (irony, or perhaps sarcasm, at work here, one feels).

Government Ministers and their officials cannot comment on individual sentences (unless, of course, there is a reporter nearby willing to capture the "soundbite"). This is not through lack of concern on interest, but because sentencing decisions are made by the courts alone, which are independent from Government (a fact which successive Home Secretaries have seen fit to ignore when political expediency is at stake, but we shall let that one pass).

As a result, I cannot comment on what the appropriate tariff would be for the offences you mention (indeed, as that was not what I wanted; I asked the organ grinder, not the monkey). However, I can set out the maximum penalties available in law for these offences:

• Data protection offences. There are a number of offences under the Data Protection Act, each with their own maximum penalties. For example the offence of unlawfully obtaining personal data has a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine.
• Corruption of police officers. There is a series of offences that might cover this, including bribery (with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment) and fraud (also with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment).
• Perverting the course of justice. This carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
• Obstructing a police investigation. Obstruction of a police constable in the execution of their duty carries a maximum penalty of 1 month's imprisonment.

Within these maximum penalties, courts will consider the culpability of the offender (if he is found guilty of the offence, sure he is 100% "culpable"?) and the harm the offence caused. Courts will have regard to these two elements, together with other aggravating or mitigating factors, when determining the appropriate sentence.

Yours sincerely (etc.),

So, according to my new best friend Mr. Pointz (perhaps, given his outlining of sentencing policy as above, I should call him "Bullet"?), the Prime Minister's former best friend Mr. Andrew Coulson shall be looking down the barrel at life imprisonment when his role in the interference in the investigation into the murder of Miss Milly Dowler is tested in court. I wonder if Mr. David Call-Me-Dave shall comment that "it is good that the courts feel able to give out these sentences" if Mr. Coulson does indeed feel the full force of the sword of the judiciary?

Do others feel. however,  that the mooted reply "fuck off, Tampon" may have been nearer to the eventual outcome?

In einem anderen Leben, ich schoss der Hoff

Aww, bless.

Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, named Jens (pictured above at about 13 years of age, I imagine). Jens lives in the south-eastern corner of Germany, in the quiet, sleepy Mittelsachen town in which he was born, and just gets on with life in a modest, unassuming manner. However, had a couple of high-ranking decisions gone in a different direction, young Jens could now be immortal, the most popular man in Europe, yet simultaneously the most unpopular man in Germany.

If this seems somehow mutually exclusive, I shall explain.

Jens lived and worked, until quite recently, in London. We were regular football players, and it was from there that our friendship developed. One evening, during a post-match drinking session, the subject of the fall of Communism was discussed. As you may have discerned from the detail in the corner of the above photograph, young Jens was born in the Eastern side of the divided Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. I was interested in knowing how the rapidly unfolding turn of events in late 1989 was perceived in the East, given the propaganda campaign waged between the so-called "free" West and the Soviet Bloc since the end of the Second World War.

It transpired that at the time, Jens was in the midst of his compulsory military service in the East German army, stationed near Leipzig (I think). As the trickle of movement from East to West through the hastily (and inadvertently) opened crossings in the Berlin Wall became a torrent, the appratchiks of the East German government panicked, and ordered the infantry (Jens included) to shoulder arms, mount the flatbed trucks, and be ready to travel to Berlin in order to put down the uprising, by force if necessary. 

This fascinated me; this could have been a game-changing event, with far-reaching repercussions across the world. I asked him why the mobilization was not followed through with; Jens stated, blandly, that "the Generals simply told the Government that it was all over, that they were not prepared to go through with it". Thus, the Berlin Wall did tumble, but not before Mr. David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff had his little stab at immortality.

Which gave me cause to ponder... "what if"? What if the mobilization had, in fact, taken place, just at the moment that Mr. Hoff was reaching a crescendo atop Die Wende? Instead of  almost  being hit by a firecracker by an over-excited reveller, Mr. Hoff could well have been picked off, with clinical precision, by my good friend Jens and his trusty 7.62mm AK-47 assault rifle. 

This should surely have made Jens about as popular with the Western half of Germany as a ginger stepson; however, the act would almost certainly have been applauded right across the rest of Western Europe, and most certainly within the United Kingdom, where we should have been spared the Baywatch buffoon's inane exhibitions on such televisual strands as "Britain's Got Talent". The footage of the incident would surely be the most-watched item, by some distance, ever, on the "YouTube".

We should also have been shared the shocking spectacle of Mr. Hoff making a complete and utter arse of himself whilst snacking on a cheeseburger. Which, to be honest, is actually terribly amusing.

However, back in the real world, Herr Krenz and his camp followers submitted to the will of the generals; the wall came down, Germany was reunified, and the nation became one big happy family again. And The Hoff lived to drink another day. And another. And another. Ad infinitum.

As for Jens... well, he put away his rifle and his uniform, and immersed himself in that "decadent Western culture" that the self-appointed guardians of DDR society had warned him about. See below.

Nice headwear, sir.

Do others feel that the imposition of The Berlin Wall would have been a small price to pay for the untimely demise of The Hoff, live and direct on ZDF?

Mr. Dave Call-Me-Dave responds... sort of

The Official Communique from 10, Downing Street.

On August 17, I wrote to the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, apropos his thoughts on what should be an appropriate custodial tariff for an individual who had indulged in multiple, wilful breaches of privacy laws and the Data Protection act, the corruption of serving police officers, the perverting the course of justice and the obstruction the police in the course of their duties by hampering a murder investigation. This missive was prompted by Mr. Call-Me-Dave's tacit endorsement of the sentence of four years apiece for two young gentlemen who had had the temerity to say "let's have a riot" on the "Facebook" social networking strand. A riot which, lest we forget, did not actually take place.

Having promised to keep such denizens of the internet who can be bothered to inhabit this corner of cyberspace appraised as to any response from Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, I am pleased to say that the dynamic, no-nonsense office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury has seen fit to reply thus, just an month and a half after my initial enquiry:

10 DOWNING STREET

LONDON SW1A 1AA

I am writing to acknowledge your recent correspondence.

The Prime Minister appreciates you taking the time to write.

Your correspondence has been forwarded to the relevant Government department so that they may reply to you, in detail, on the matters you raise.

Kind regards

Correspondence Officer

The Direct Communications Unit

The communication came in the form of a stiff card, rather than the letter which I was expecting; when it arrived, I at first mistook it for an invitation to one of Mr. Call-Me-Dave's ripping garden party soirees, in order for him to explain his stance personally, in his wonderfully, erm, "erudite" manner, over a large Gordon's and Tonic and some canapes. Sadly not. Obviously the austerity measures are hitting hard, and we really are "all in it together". Ahem.

I find it interesting that Mr. David Call-Me-Dave requires a "relevant Government department" to delegate his personal opinions to, as I had initially requested his personal opinion on the matter (underlined by the closing phrase, "What do you think?"). Perhaps if he is committed to cutting expensive, unwarranted bureaucracy in Government, he should start by speaking for himself rather than have some junior Whitehall flunky speak for him.

I do hope said flunky responds with such words of wisdom as "fuck off, Tampon". I should feel cheated otherwise.

Do others concur?

Life-alteringly wonderful

I first happened upon this performance in 1985, some 18 years after it was first broadcast. Twenty-six long years later, and forty-four years after the event, it remains as spine-tingling as ever. The fact that the show was transmitted in monochrome makes it, for me at least, even more atmospheric and special.

I hope you enjoy it every bit as much as I continue to.

Are others excited about this season's crop of "X-Factor" hopefuls?**








** me neither.

Happiness is a wet pussy

Move, and Kitty gets it. Hooray!

In recent years, the garden to the rear of my house became something of a giant litter tray to the neighbourhood's feline population. Not a day went by when a trip to put my bicycle into the shed for safekeeping did not involve my stepping into one of Tiddle's little warm cat eggs, pungent in their aroma and dangerous to the touch.

I perhaps have to declare an interest here, and state that I am emphatically not one of the world's millions of "cat lovers". To me, they display the same innate smugness and mendacity I associate with some of the more unpleasant members of the human race, such as Ms. Fearne Cotton, Mr. Timothy "Timmy" Mallett, and Mr. William Kenwright CBE. I fail to discern the attraction in keeping an animal as a pet which rewards your love, care and affection by shredding your soft furnishings, bringing you occasional "gifts" of mutilated sparrows which you are obliged to "finish off", urinating over your prized geraniums, and shitting in your muesli.

Perhaps as a response to the recent bouts of civil unrest in my local area, there has been an upsurge in vigilantism; now that the riotous assemblies have melted away, however, the brave Joe Publics appear to have selected other "deserving" targets for their ire. To address the problem of cats defecating in my pea gravel, I also considered the deployment of a battrey of air weapons; however, despite my intense distaste of feline excrement, I do not wish to cause any damage to the creatures on the grounds of my latent Buddhist beliefs and the fact that, unlike many of the local suburban paladins, I cannot afford the time to peer out of my back window all night with a loaded air rifle in the hope that an incursion occurs at some point. Additionally, I may incur the fearsome wrath my neighbours, cat owners both, if I were to spread the skull of one of their adorable little angels over my waney lap panelled fencing, like a tackhammer hitting a punnet of overripe strawberries.

Having discounted this option, I then took advice from others on how to deal with the problem. One well-meaning individual suggested the liberal dispensing of orange peel on the areas where cats tend to deposit their mess, on the grounds that they find the scent offensive. The cat's response to this was merely to urinate over the orange peel, do their business, scatter the pea gravel with their rear paws, sneer at me and turn away with their tails in the air, prominently displaying what appeared to be a small pink tea-towel holder.

Another suggested placing milk bottles around the garden, the theory being that the cat would cast sight of its own distorted reflection, sense a rival in the vicinity, turn tail and flee. This merely resulted in the cats posing in front of the milk bottles, admiring themselves in a manner akin to Narcissus. The only way of disengaging them from basking in their reflected beauty was to seek to deliver a hefty punt up their posteriors, but they were much too efficient in their evasive action.

The myriad sprays, plastic decoy animals and ultrasonic sound devices simply do not work, resulting only in an empty wallet and a shed filled with useless gadgetry, which may only be disposed of at so-called "car boot sales" at a hefty discount to another desperate individual with the same issues. I was at the point of purchasing two Jack Russell puppies with the intent of leaving them out to "play" in the garden all day; this would act as an obvious deterrent to any feline intruders, but would cause me the secondary problem of having to feed, inoculate and groom two stupid, yapping curs with an vicious temper and a propensity to eat the buttons off my shirts as they lie in the laundry basket. Plus, of course, they shit and piss too (in more obvious places than Tiddles and his ilk, however).

And then. Salvation arrived. In the shape of this:

This marvellous piece of apparatus combines a PIR motion sensor with a jet spray, effective to a range of ten metres. The apparatus is placed into the ground via a spike, preferably in a bank of foliage to render it invisible to even the keenest-eyed kitty. A garden hose is attached to the bottom of the unit, and the water is turned on. Then, one waits... and as Tiddles pops into the cone of fire to perform his ablutions, he is drenched by a high-powered arc of water, an event accompanied by a cacophony akin to a Mattel toy machine gun.

The unit has now been installed for two weeks. No cat's eggs have been laid in that time. The hilarity continues, however, as the unit does not discriminate between species, and the fat pigeons attempting to gorge themselves on the fruit of my elderberry trees also find themselves a target. Squirrels, too, have attempted many hilarious manoeuvres to attempt to outwit the sensor, with little or no success.

The success of the unit is such that even the urban foxes, which would often venture into the garden under cover of darkness in order to rip open my refuse sacks, or mark their territory in their atrocious-smelling vulpine piss, or indulge in group sex on my lawn, have not returned for quite some time. However, this may also potentially be attributed to the lingering scent of the festering carcass of one of their number which I captured, dispatched in the "halal" manner, divested of its skin, and hung from one of the branches of the tree at the rear of the shed. The sparrows seem to like it. They liked the eyes, especially.

Do others applaud this marvel of space-age motion-sensing technology?

Compare and contrast, part two

"Och Harry, ah'm skint, cannae get any bawbies ootae Bill, any tips fae wheeler-dealin'?"

"Fack orf, I'm a fackin' football manager!"

On  May 10, 2005, in the Liverpool Daily Post, the manager of the Everton Football Club Company Limited, Mr. David Moyes, had this to say, regarding his expectations for the future of the football club:

"I don't mind if people expect a lot from us, not one bit. That has always been one of my objectives - to raise expectations here. This season we had no expectation but I wouldn't want that to be the norm. I want people, the fans, whoever to expect Everton to be challenging for things. Otherwise, I am not doing my job." 

Five and a half years later, and Mr. Moyes now opines thus on the same subject:

"I think we have to be careful in what we believe Everton are capable of achieving"

Oh, dear. Five and a half years, and Mr. David Moyes has gone from ambitions of scaling the lofty heights of the English Premier League to paving the way for the club's better players to be sold to appease the bank. However, despite the seemingly endless adversity, much of which has been engendered by the antics of the club's chairman and board of directors, Mr. Moyes hangs on in there. Many have marvelled at his tenaciousness and loyalty as the ship sails towards the iceberg, and remark on the evident closeness between him and his chairman. I, personally, never cease to be surprised at just what loyalty can be garnered by the simple application of a small stipend of £3,000,000 per annum.

So, what, one wonders, would tempt Mr. Moyes away from the indulgent, ingenuous,  avuncular, ever-popular man of the people, Mr. William Kenwright CBE? Well, it has been mooted on several occasions that Mr. Moyes would succeed the manager of The Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club Company Limited, Mr. Henry J. Redknapp, on the occasion of the latter man's "inevitable" gravitation towards being the General Manager of "Team England", following the departure of Sgr. Fabio Capello.

However, this has given me cause to ponder... What, if anything, disbarrs Mr. Moyes from applying for the position of manager of "Team England" himself?

It would be a marvellous appointment by the Football Association mandarins; a manager with a good track record, performing miracles on scant resources to produce teams who perform above the level expected by the sum of the parts, a man who has displayed unquestioning loyalty to his employers in the most trying of circumstances, and (perhaps best of all for the Football Association) without a whiff of salacious scandal around him, unlike some spivs we could mention.

For Mr. Moyes, too, it should be a lucrative move; a salary way in excess of even his current one, without the worry of having to sell off his better players to balance the books. Plus, idiotic though the Football Association's committee are, he has surely dealt with worse individuals for the past 12 years.

The obvious stumbling block is the fact that Mr. Moyes is a "proud Scot"; but, as he has recently demonstrated, such principles come cheap. Parity with the £5,000,000-plus annual stipend currently awarded to Sgr. Fabio Capello should quash any such unease, and then some, one should have thought. And at least he is reasonably proficient in English, and will not blame the Football Association for the inevitable failings of  "Team England".

I feel that his case is compelling, and that he should "clinic" his Curriculum Vitae in readiness for the call from Sir Trevor Brookin', or somebody of that ilk.

What do others think?

Relationship Maintainence Clinic; The Lost Art Of Lashing Your Dinner

The best picture of a man casting his repast across the room that I could muster at short notice.

Picture this little domestic vignette. A hard-working, well-meaning family man arrives back at his domicile after a hard day on the building site, or directing traffic in a busy city centre, or perhaps earning his crust by destabilising the currency of a developing nation or two. He is tired, he is jaded from the stresses and strains of his chosen profession, but most of all, he is ravenous. His stomach is labouring under the misapprehension that his throat has been cut, such is the depth of his hunger.

On entry, he finds that the repast cooked by his significant other is imprisoned behind the oven door, slowly drying out with the oven set to 85°C, whilst his partner attends to the bedtime routine of their misbehaving, giddy children. He rescues the burnt offerings from their arid tomb, pops the hot plate onto a tray, runs cold water over his scalded and blistered hands, grabs some cutlery, douses the indiscernable, steaming mass in salt and pepper to taste, sits down in the armchair endowed with the gentle patina of five years straining under his arse, turns on the television set, and settles down to gratefully devour the product of his partner's domestic science education whilst watching yet another repeat of the "QI" televisual strand on "Dave".

All our man wants is to satiate his hunger and empty his mind of anything resembling thought; he craves nothing more than peace, quiet, and a full tummy.

His partner, however, has other designs. She "wants to talk". Beneath the veneer of her faded, weather-beaten allure lies a bubbling, critical mass of hormonally-driven ire. Her darling children have got on her sagging tits all day, the one day off a week she has from her dreadful non-job in Customer Services at Marks and Spencer. The door of the washing machine does not close properly. The bathroom is full of dirty laundry. The ceiling in the hall needs painting. There is a mass of bric-a-brac which must be taken to the local recycling centre. Her "friends" all have well-paid, rewarding careers, and their conversations made her feel inadequate when they met up in "Ask" earlier that day. One of her friends has a pretty new dress that flattered her figure beautifully. Nobody gives her a second glance in the street anymore. Her face is increasingly lined, her arse looks like a vanilla blancmange in tights, she "has the painters in" in three days time. Everybody else's life seems so... perfect. Whilst hers is shit.

All of this stoked-up tension is looking for an outlet. And our man is the unwitting victim.

She enters the sitting room. Our man grunts, through a mouth laden with chicken, mashed potato and spinach, in order to acknowledge her presence. She is filled with nothing but contempt for this slighty overweight, seemingly uncaring troglodyte in the armchair. An exploratory verbal sortie begins; an inquiry about the hall ceiling is met with a curt "yur, I'll do it at the weekend", as is the news that the washing machine door has malfunctioned. 

Après ceci, le déluge. All bets are off at this point; our man is swamped with the full force of the hormonal, emotional tsunami, as he is blamed for everything from the fact that she can't get into her jeans to the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict by this screaming, combustive harridan. His dreams of peace and quiet lie in tatters; he must now carefully choose his response. He can put his meal to one side, sit next to his partner, place his loving, manly arms around her, and try to calm her down in tactile fashion whilst listening to her litany of complaints, offering tender words of reassurance and understanding. But fuck that for a game of soldiers, he's knackered and she has chosen to push all the wrong buttons.

Alternatively, he can simply stand up and land a massive swing right onto the point of her jaw, sending her sprawling across the settee. However, our man (though angry) is not of such neandrethal stock that he would choose to counter a verbal beating with a physical one. After all, they have been through a lot together, and he still remains fond of her, despite her increasing disquiet about the miserable state of her existence. Besides, he could find himself serving a custodial sentence. And, when all is said and done, things could be worse; she could be Ms. Sinead O'Connor.

But wait. There is another option, a "third way", if you will, one which is oft overlooked in this age of equality and the "new man"... and our man takes it. Without saying a word, he stands up, takes the dish in his right hand, and lashes it against the far wall, before grabbing his coat and stomping out of the house to visit his local pub for a pint. This emphatic demonstration, on the face of it, seems to be the ultimate in childish futility; he has messed up his nest, he has allowed his emotions to get the better of him, and his dinner is now in the dog (and all over the chocolate brown, faux suede drapes). However, this simple, puerile act strikes to the very core of the female psyche; the rejection of the fruit of her loving domestic endeavours by the hunter-gatherer is such a viscerally profound gesture that it brings her up short. It conveys the irrefutable, insistent message that the delicate threads that serve to bind their relationship together, though complex, are fundamentally fragile; akin to cobwebs, as it were, and just as easily swept away.

Sobbing, as she cleans up food remants and broken crockery, she takes stock of her actions; by the time she has finishing rubbing the "1001 Dry Foam" into their oatmeal Wilton in a semi-circular, anti-clockwise motion against the weft of the pile, she has realised that all of her issues are mere trifles, and she has resolved to be a nicer person as well as a more sympathetic partner to her hard-working, much-maligned protector.  Sure, her partner has made a bit of a mess in the lounge, but in doing so he was merely reasserting his position of dominance at the head of the household, and she secretly harbours erotic fantasies in which he assumes an ultra-assertive demeanour. She might even let him have a bunk-up when she pulls the plug out next week on the strength of that.

Our man, having consumed six pints of Guinness on an unline stomach and endured a drab Champions League encounter between Bate Borisov and Viktoria Plzen on the television in his local hostelry, is also in reflective and conciliatory mood; she is not such a bad old stick after all, and this inspires him to demonstrate his love, affection and appreciation for her efforts in keeping the household together via the gift of "The Kebab of Peace". But that gift, dear friends, is quite another story.

Have others found that lashing their dinner has proved to be the unlikely salvation of their relationship?