Another Ten Things That Are Just Wrong!!!

I warned you earlier in March! More exclamation marks coming!!! More BOLD CAPS and TEN MORE things that are just so wrong!!!!

Oooops!

1) WIND FARMS: On the face of it, wind farms seem so right. Renewable energy that goes on for ever with a small capital outlay at the beginning to build and site the turbines. So much better than fossil fuels and just as eco-friendly as hydro power, surely? Not so, it seems. I'm not so bothered about how they look or, if you're close to them, how they swish or how many birds might get mashed but I know a lot of people get upset by these downsides. What's really worrying is the ongoing funding to site owners in perpetuity, along with the poor records on efficiency of power production against those costs. The arguments against this spiralling (pun intended) industry are as powerful as a wind turbine isn't, on a still day. Like with CAP, landowners are raking it in. Sure, there are lots of jobs in the UK installing and maintaining the farms but have a look at the suppliers. The top six wind turbine manufacturers that supply the UK market are: Vestas (Denmark) with 12%, Sinovel (China) 9%, Goldwind (China) 9%, Ganesa (Spain) 8%, Enercon (Germany) 8% and GE (USA) 8%...get the picture? The backstories make interesting reading, some of which can be found here . If only that nice Professor, Brian Cox, and his mates could get the fission thing worked out we could all be safely nuclear. In the meantime, it's up to a few latter-day Don Quixotes to tilt at the windmills. I used to think that wind power was right but it looks like I was WRONG!

2) BRITISH MEDIA'S IGNORANCE OF WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL RUGBY: Who won the Grand Slam in the Six Nations this year? Wales? No...they were fourth. England won by scoring over 160 points and slaughtering everyone else. And Scotland now have two wooden spoons with which to serve the salad of misery, if you include their failure in the men's game. Go to the BBC Sport website (recently revamped and annoyingly yellow) and look for a link to Women's Rugby. Find one? No, neither did I. In fact, search for Six Nations Women and you're more likely to get a picture of Gabby-bleeding-Logan than any entry to a site bearing information on this fantastic victory or the previous grand slam or the one before that...year on year. And of course we all watched the Women's RFU Six Nations live on the telly, didn't we? No...because it wasn't there. Sure, the boys did well, for a new(ish) squad, and it was entertaining fare all round (unless you're from Scotland...again). How about celebrating this fantastic achievement by England's Women? Check it out here . Screw the bloody Olympic Games...England's Women's RFU success is superb, and to ignore it is WRONG!

Those were the days...

3) COST OF POSTAGE STAMPS: What! 50p to send a letter! Just an ordinary letter or card, too. 50p! That's up by a third. It's 60p for "First Class" but it makes not an iota of difference between that and its supposed inferior, second class service anyway. What's going on? It's OK, though. I mean, who sends letters these days anyway? And cards? Well everyone can have a bloody Moonpig thing from me from now on because I'm not giving any more money to what remains of the Royal Mail, a once great British institution slaughtered on the altar of privatisation and profiteering (and a little bit of silliness from the communications workers union here and there). WRONG! (But almost inevitable?)

4) VAT: What a completely bollocks, complicated tax that probably costs more to collect and inspect than it adds to the exchequer. Worse still, the rules are almost unfathomable without a masters in applied mathematics. The loonies charged with making up these rules are quite obviously psychopaths whose mission in life is to make every small businessperson insane or broke (or both). The latest confusion is over the temperature of bread. Really, it is! Food becomes the subject of VAT if one or more of the following stupid circumstances apply: 1) It's brought to you on a plate or served over a counter by some poor sap on the minimum wage. 2) It's food for 'fun', rather than to stay alive. 3) It's 'hot'. So bread, baked on the premises by a baker, comes out of the oven hot, and begins to cool down. At some point in the cooling cycle, a customer asks to buy it. Is it 'hot' enough to attract VAT? Possibly. Cue the bananas situation where the customer and the baker have a conversation for as long it takes for the bread to cool sufficiently to cost 20% less. This rule is so thick it was probably invented by a Belgian technocrat. WRONG!

Ugh!

5) DOG SHIT: When I was a kid, there was dog shit everywhere. Well, obviously not really everywhere, but almost on every street. It was not considered bad form to let your dog take a dump on the street or in the park and dog-owners rarely allowed their mutt to crap in their own back yard. I mean, you'd have to clear that up yourself instead of letting it fester in the sun and allow bully-boys to rub your face in it (bad memories, there...). These days, if you take your dog outside for a shit, you have to take a little plastic bag with you too and then wipe the mess up, take it home, or put it in a publicly-funded receptacle designed for the purpose. It's not the dog's fault. Most dog-owners now are very responsible and do what is required. But there remain so many that couldn't give a shit about shit. And they are WRONG!

6) WATER (Lack Of): Do you like potatoes and carrots? Do you want to buy these from supermarkets that have had to source them from overseas? If the answer is no, then why don't you lobby DEFRA to allow UK farmers to take just 5% of the water used by energy companies in Britain and thus double their access to abstraction? Forcing our farmers to reduce their output by restricting abstraction is WRONG! 

7) STREAMING SPORT ON COMMERCIALLY DRIVEN TELEVISION: You want to watch a sport event on ITV...well, you don't want to, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Take this week's  FA Cup sixth round replay tie between Sunderland and Everton. OK, my lot were crap and we probably deserved to lose it but isn't it a bit odd that the streaming link keeps getting cut out and you have to re-load, which means you have to watch more adverts for shite that you have no intention of buying before you can go back to the live action? This is a stream that spookily wasn't interrupted on the other things I was streaming at the time (just because I couldn't bear to watch the ignominious defeat unfurling its psychological destruction on the screen). Are they manipulating me with their dastardly technology? If they are, that's WRONG!

Enough, already....

8) TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS: OK, this is really just a continuation of No.6 above. But that doesn't make it any less WRONG! I've tried (and been largely successful) to watch only BBC television for the whole of 2012 so far. On those odd occasions when I've felt the need to tune to a commercial station (in my defence, that'll only be Film 4 then) the bombardment of adverts is insane. If you watch a Film 4 movie - and there are some good ones shown - the production team seem to think that it's a good idea to place the ad-breaks at about 20-25 minutes in the first half of the film and then reduce that gap to around fifteen minutes in the third quarter and then break for an ad in between every fucking sentence of dialogue in the final sequences. My remote control is overworked: Mute / Un-mute / Mute / Un-mute...ad infinitum. I don't want any of these products and/or services. I don't want to see trailers for shit I'll never watch on C4, More 4, E4 or any other '4'. I know I should just go to the movies instead (or rely on my subs to the really lovely and cheap LoveFilm) but it's still WRONG! (but not as wrong as most of these other wrong things)

9) THE DAILY MAIL: On so may levels....this excuse for journalism is WRONG! That's it...if you've read it, you won't need me to explain...and if you have read it and don't agree with me, then you shouldn't be reading my blog, so piss off.

(Un)fair Trade?

10) COFFEE SHOPS: I rarely go to London. Actually, for "rarely", substitute "never" these days. However, I gather that your average coffee there at StarNeros or wherever costs about £3.50. Why? And why is a small coffee called a 'Grande'? Surely that means 'big'. Is that because people don't want to appear cheap by asking for a large thing when everyone knows that it's really a small thing?  I love coffee. I have a 'Krups' machine. It makes better coffee than I can buy anywhere in coffee shops and it costs about 25p a cup and it comes in anything other than 'styrofoam'. High Street coffee shops are complicit in rabid profiteering that is probably based on nothing short of slave labour to produce the beans in what we still assume to be the 'Third World'. WRONG!

TEN MORE THINGS THAT ARE WRONG NEXT MONTH...

Anybody Want to Buy a Government?

What a lovely time everyone has had over the last few days dissecting Giddy's plans for stabilising the UK economy. And none more than the Misters Miliballs. The 40p a unit booze decoy only worked for a few hours and then came the spectacular Tory own goal...

Brain-Farter of the Century

But to be fair to Osborne - and he's struggling to be fair to the rest of us -  he'd have been lambasted by what masquerades as a left-of-centre opposition no matter what he came up with in the budget or whatever decoys were deployed shortly afterwards. Of course, it's not him that comes up with the budget at all.  The tinkering with the economy and associated legislation that follows and ends up in the brandished red case, is actually put together by twelve-year-old policy wonks at Tory HQ. And then they have a brief meeting with the ten-year-olds at Liberal Democrat HQ to tell the latter children what they must agree to. Before that happens, though, policy headlines are dictated to the child-wonks by the people who have paid enough money to enjoy the "Come Dine With Me" experience at Number Ten. Seriously wealthy businesspeople were able (according the Sunday Times) to wave a chequebook or an envelope full of used tenners in Cruddas's direction and before you can say "PFI", the NHS is privatised over a dinner of super-rich brain-farting with Dave and Sam.

While I'm an all too rare mood to be fair to Tories, it has to be acknowledged that New Labour worked in pretty much the same way, except that the dinners were sans-Cherie, as she was usually too busy having orgasms over her off-shore bank statements...probably, and those dinners were rarely a "pie-an-a-pint" with Len McCluskey and Bob Crow a-la Wilson era. Government [policy] has ever been up for sale and levelling electioneering and party funding will not stamp that out.

Ashcroft - Regular Dinner
Companion?

The main political parties in the UK exist on private donations (or bungs) and there's millions of pounds involved. Of course, these days, with the transparency demanded by a media that used to be so "holier-than-thou" but is now more "sleazier-than-thou", we can all get access to information on how the funds are donated, by whom, and what use the money is supposedly put to. The received wisdom is that the Tories gete theirs from the "business community", Labour from the Unions and the Liberal Democrats from...well, from me and other liberal-leftie idiots that thought, foolishly as it turns out, that Nick wouldn't turn into the wimpy, Tory toad that he has. A bit further down the political food-chain, UKIP, BNP and the likes of the SWP receive survival money from people and organisations from right and left that are disenchanted with centrist ideologies.

Clearly, the Tories are going to get the most money seeing as the post-Thatcher Unions are short of membership and, if we're honest, seriously short of the political will to enable donations to support a party that appears to be unelectable right now. That said, the Tories spend more - these lavish dinners don't come cheap and then there's the junkets that donors expect as part of their spend.

Is the system worth changing? Francis Maude was at pains to point out this week that we were "so close" to getting a joint resolution of party funding back in 2007 but, conveniently for Maude & Co, Blair had become a 'lame duck' and the negotiations failed.

Who's In Charge?

Various systems are available. There's the US approach where you can only become President if you've access to the riches of Croesus (adjusted for over 2,500 years of inflation, naturally). This is inappropriate for us in the UK. Cameron and Osborne (and, latterly, Blair come to that), may be rich and privileged toffs but couldn't even get an invitation to the Romney / Santorum political funding poker table. Then there's the Kim Jong system. All disposable wealth of the population which, in the case of North Korea, is about a pound, is given direct to the state. The state then appoints a supreme leader and this supreme leadership passes down through the family to whichever son appears to be the most idiotic and 'ronery'.

Somewhere in between these ideas is something that would work for us and it would probably work best as a 'Reality TV' game show, seeing as that would engage huge swathes of the electorate that generally can't be arsed to vote and, if it was on the BBC, then the cost would be subsumed into the licence fee. But that's just bollocks.

The present system doesn't work because we have a "political class". Forget the royals, the upper, middle and lower brackets and, indeed the Unions, for a moment. The country is run by a new class altogether; a group of people that is so divorced from the reality of how the rest of us live that it is like a parallel universe. Almost all of our senior politicians in both the coalition and in opposition have never had a proper job and the wonks that sit behind them have no fucking idea either. We can pretend all we like that we live in a democracy from the point of view that our electoral system seems, on the face of it, to be fair(ish), but the more important issue is that of just who it is we are democratically electing to government (as opposed to the many excellent, back-bench constituency MPs in parliament who try hard to make a difference but usually fail as a result of their respective party regimes - but at least many of them have had proper jobs).

So Dave and Ed will be wearing temporary hair-shirts while they admit to whom they have been entertaining. Nick doesn't have to because he's so unpopular he can't find anyone to have dinner with him. Even Miriam. He dines alone on humble pie filled with broken promises. And then everything will go on as before. Plus ca change.

For a truly hilarious view on our political system in the UK however - check out Henning Wehn

Boozing, Bingeing, Broken Britain?

Theresa May has announced that there will be minimum pricing for alcohol. Booze duty wasn't a big feature of the Coalition's budget this week so this is a vignette from the Home Secretary which, if nothing else, will divert headlines away from the hyperbole over Osborne "stealing money from pensioners" to give to his rich buddies. The focus of the proposed legislation appears to be upon that section of society that was once described as 'feral youth'. Apparently, what happens is this:

(In)Decorous Ladies
Out On The Town

Boys and girls aged between twelve and twenty-ish, mostly NEETs from sink estates of course, cannot afford to pay for alcoholic drinks in clubs and pubs. However, they like to go to pubs and clubs to socialise; i.e. argue, cry, show off, swear, fight, shag, cry again, vomit, piss themselves (or all over buidlings), collapse, injure themselves and others, abuse passers-by and cabbies, and then get arrested. In order to achieve all of these laudable ambitions in one nightly session, they need to be completely shit-faced. This state is achieved by drinking alcohol somewhere other than a pub or club. Thanks to the drinks industry being very efficient and existing in an extremely competitive market, shit-facedness can be reached quickly and cheaply these days.

A two-litre bottle of "white" cider, with an alcohol content of around 7.5% can cost as little as £4 from supermarkets. There are 15 units of alcohol in the bottle. Compare that to a 330ml bottle of Stella (containing 1.5 units), which is available for purchase over the bar in your local club for anything upwards of £3 and the economics of getting pissed before going out start to make a lot of sense, as opposed to the actuality of the venture. Ten bottles of Stella will therefore cost £30 for the same alcohol hit as a £4 bottle of White Lightning. Not only that, but by necking the cider quickly at home with your mates, you can all get shit-faced much more quickly and at the same rate as one another. This provides a level playing field with all the other fighting, shagging, vomiting youths that have been through the same process at their homes. Brilliant!

About as far from synthetic,
Apple-Free Cider as you can get...
...Those were the days, eh?

If May's proposal comes in at, say 40p per unit, then the drinkers that just buy the Stella at the club will be unaffected. The others, the White Lightning consumers, are in for a terrible shock. Instead of the club prices being over seven times that of the supermarket, the 40p per unit will reduce this to only five times!! (15 units @ 40p = £6). The poor ferals will only be able to get ten units of alcohol for their £4 but, if consumed within the hour, shit-facedness will be acheived anyway. The societal benefit will perhaps be ten per cent less fighting and a similar reduction in the vomit and piss distribution as the subset of drinkers that are already too hardened to booze might not quite get to the totally wrecked state to which they were aspiring.

There must be better legislation than the Home Secretary's frankly timid response on alcohol pricing. Unfortunately, the justice system isn't really in a position to help, except with dealing with crimes that are fuelled by alcohol, which itself remains a legal consumable. Besides, the prisons are full and and community service doesn't work and ASBOs remain a 'badge of honour' in some communities, along with the fact that our current Justice Secretary isn't exactly a role-model for sobriety. Nope, in Dave's Britain, it's actually OK to get off your skull on cheap booze.

But This Isn't The Worst Of It!!! Oh! No!

Town centres have become 'no-go areas' for decent, law-abiding folk and their families as a result of the pissed-up, fighting, vomiting yobs' behaviour and this has led, inexoribly, to the middle classes - Oh Yes! Tory voters among them! - to take to drinking at home! Soon, these booze-addled bank managers, accountants and estate agents will be so soused that they may even forget to LOVE DAVE [TM] and not even vote next time around.

Home-Drinking Quite Clearly
Leads to Lewd, Naked, Behaviour
Among the Middle Classes

As the poor, sink-estated scumbags descend into the cheap alcohol hell that their fecklessness deserves, a pattern is emerging among the better off of "serious alcohol abuse" - behind closed doors! A lovely bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape will set you back £12.50 at Mr Tesco's shop and contains between six and ten units of alcohol depending on which government department statistic you wish to believe (don't get me started...). Let's say eight units then, just for argument's sake. To get to the White Lightning state will cost about £24 then, significantly less than than the club Stella route. A Pavillion Rouge Chateau Margaux is £125 so...oh, do the maths yourself. However, this comparison should be approached on the basis of affordability through disposable income. Even after Osborne has robbed the 'squeezed middle' of child benefit and made them pay almost £1.50 a litre to fill up a Chelsea Tractor, your average professional will have several hundred pounds to fritter away on booze at home compared to a feral scumbag who will have only a few quid after having spent their benefits on crack a couple of hours after cashing the giro. So as a percentage of disposable cash, the White Lightning and Chateauneuf are probably on comparable ratios.

What filthy, disgusting
secrets are hidden in these?
Booze?

But the middle-classes are boozing secretly. Not for them the public show of aggression and puke with the associated opprobrium of the Dailys Express and Mail. This creeping evil of drinking at home must be stamped out! But it won't be unless the alcohol unit price minimum is raised to at least £4.00, not a paltry 40p. It's very easy too for the middle classes to obtain their alcohol without venturing to the 'offie' or being seen in the discount aisle of Lidl and Aldi (and whatever happened to Netto?). Just go online at Mr Tesco's or Mr Morrison's shops - or Mr Waitrose's after your annual bonus - and order your naughty secret booze for delivery to your door and it'll arrive in a brown cardboard box or hidden in plastic bags made to look just like ordinary groceries so that your neighbours don't know about your dirty little habit.

For once, the scumbags and the middle classes have something in common. They will all die horribly from diseased livers very soon. Recent statistics have suggested that deaths from liver disease have risen "...by 25% in less than a decade..." This is a very unhelpful stat. Less than a decade could be a few weeks, but is likely to be a few years. Also, the cause of the liver disease is assumed to be booze, seeing as this is the common understanding due to famous cases such as George Best's, but it's just as likely to be hepatitis or obesity. Nonethless, it cannot be denied that drinking too much hooch can't be good for your liver and there is a worrying trend (upwards) in the development of liver disease in the twenty to thirty age bracket that can probably be associated with binge drinking. However, the 25% increase was from just over nine thousand to eleven and a half thousand. To put that into a finer perspective, in the North East of England, liver disease accounts for 22 deaths per 100,000 population - so, .022%, then or, if one were to take the population of say, Morpeth, the lovely county town of Northumberland, then we can expect no more than three people a year to die from liver disease and, despite Morpeth being as lovely as it is, the dead are more likley to be scumbag scroungers from the shittier bits of the town. Unfair assumption? Not really, as the statistics are tending to back up this politically-incorrect generalisation.

Good and Bad
Livers - ugh!

But the tide is turning. The poorer people in Britain have always had a shorter life expectancy than the rich...well, at least since the toffs stopped sending their idiot sons to be slaughtered at the front of whichever war we were fighting. The middle classes are catching up in the race to die from booze and since it has become nigh on impossible for a better off person to go out into town for an evenings alcohol abuse at a pub, they are now killing themselves indoors.

Cameron is no Stalin (although give him time). Dave doesn't want us all to be off our heads on cheap vodka just so that we don't rise up and revolt and besides, we rarely have an excess from the potato harvest like they did in the good old USSR. Indeed, we'll be lucky to have any tatties this year if it doesn't rain soon. So the coalition will have to police this home-binge issue. This could be a gift for the new, elected police commissioners we are about to get. They could, where appropriate, set up home-drinking detective squads armed with alco-meters (and maybe guns). Anyone suspected of home binge-drinking can be subjected to evening-raids and alco-meter testing. And think how pleasant this will be for the police! OK, some of them will still have to enter the sink estates as normal, but a lot of policing will be done in the 'burbs and on 'executive' residential developments, with the added bonuses of a decent cup of coffee after the violence-free raid and nice sit down on a posh settee.

Punishment for domestic bingeing has to be Mikadoesque so that it 'fits the crime'. This can only apply to the middle classes though, as it has proved largely pointless and very costly to attempt to punish the feckless poor for minor offences. The binge-drinkers of the 'squeezed middle' will face a fair tariff of sanctions designed to discourage their behaviour...

Severe Bingeing (In excess of 100 alco-units a week): Removeal from NHS access for one year and a total ban from using supermarkets / on-line shopping for six months. Weekly test for alcohol-freedom for two months. ASBO - twelve months; reported in local press.
Moderate Bingeing (60-100 alco-units a week): Banned from on-line shopping for one year and weekly tests for alcohol-freedom for two months. ASBO - six months; reported in local press
Borderline Bingeing: (40-60 alco-units a week): ASBO - six months; reported in local press.

This will make sure that the middle classes see the error of their ways and thus return Britain to the accepted equilibrium of the better-off living longer than the poor.

So that's OK then....

Canterbury Trails...

As an atheist, I can watch amusedly from the sidelines as various men in frocks jostle for the top the job in the Church of England. In the past, the competition for the Canterbury Bishopric has been, to the casual observer, rather gentlemanly, unlike that for the Vatican job, which seems almost sinister and has a history that included the Borgias.

Williams...or Father Jack?
"Girls! Feck! Drink!"

But here we are, almost ten years on from the delightfully dotty, wierdie-beardie Rowan Williams' enthronement and there is already spin, with "camps" being established and bookies offering odds. In the end, as with the selection for the Papacy, the decision lies with God, apparently. Regardless of who wins in these battles, the churches will acknowledge that the politics and electioneering and the eventual voting in synod or college of cardinals had been directed by God. So...why doesn't God just make up his or her mind and let everyone know? Because he or she isn't really there; that's why.

There can be as many arguments as you like between say, the pope and Richard Dawkins, about the existence of God but in the end the atheist has to win because if God existed, he (I'm fed up with being PC about gender, so it's just 'he' from now on - small 'h') has so many opportunities to prove it and fails singularly to take them every time; the selection of his instruments on Earth being just one example. Many people of faith argue that their god (notice I've gone for the small 'g' now too) "moves in mysterious ways", which has the added bonus of him being able to direct our actions, when it's convenient, as in the selection of the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, even when god does make a decision that he'd like everyone to go along with, he chooses to deliver it in these mysterious ways, like appearing as a tree on fire or killing his own kid (Jesus, not a goat sacrifice). This is just wierd. It's 2012! Why not an email or a tweet? "God here. Next Arch B Cant - Sentamu LOL :-)" would do, surely?

"Shit...bloody TalkTalk
No fucking signal again..."

However, ignoring the god decision-making thing for a bit, there will still be bishops doing battle to be "arch". And the battle lines will be drawn on the issues that are testing the Church of England right now. The main two points upon which disagreements abound appear to be the ordination of women bishops and same-sex marriages. I'm sure there are many other issues but these are the ones that make the dogmatic headlines. If I were god, I'd send a tweet ordering the appointment of a lesbian to Lambeth Palace. Problems sorted. But I can't be something that doesn't exist...or can I? Heidegger might have known.

According to Paddy Power betting, John Sentamu (Bishop of York) is the front runner at 11/8. Short odds for a man whose repsonse to the question "..are you going to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury..." was a McEnroesque, "...You can't be serious!.." Maybe he was just trying to lengthen the odds to have a bit a flutter. It was hilarious to see the The Sun backing Sentamu this week and suggesting that their support had "...nothing to do with [him] being a Sun on Sunday columnist..." Second favourite is Richard Chartres, the current Bishop of London who had a bit of a populist thing going with 'Occupy'. He's at 7/2, along with Christopher Cocksworth, the Bishop of Coventry. Both in at 6/1 are Graham James, Bishop of Norwich and Nick Baines of Bradford. Baines hasn't got a prayer (well, maybe he has, I suppose, given his job) because you just can't take a really top job and be successful if you shorten your first name...especially when it becomes 'Nick'. And James of Norwich hasn't even got his own Wikipedia page, so he can't possibly win. The Bishop of Durham is at 10/1. He's called Justin Portal Welby! Worth a punt, I'd have thought, just to see him enter the cathedral portal for his coronation and see how the fawning BBC commentators play on the word, perhaps. But is that what they do with Archbishops of Canterbury? Do they crown them? Or are they mitred, like wood joints? After that lot there's the bishops of Bristol, Sheffield, Chelmsford, Salisbury, Truro and load of also-rans (20/1 bar). There's a Bishop of Chelmsford? Well, I never!

No...I'm sorry...is it me, or
does this just look bananas?

Serious Question: Does the next Archbishop of Canterbury have to be already a bishop? Maybe there's something in canon law that says that this is the case but the Church of England is a business and would seem only fair that employment law applies. The job needs to be advertised to allcomers. OK, there will be certain things that candidates will need to demonstrate like a belief in god (possibly), some faith and maybe a degree in divinity. But let's face it, who hasn't lied on their cv? The Church of England needs a bit of a kick up the corporate arse. Falling sales, reducing customer base, asset value diminishment, poor media coverage to name but a few of their key performance indicators that need boosting. And that's not even mentioning their appaling performance on employee diversity.

What the CofE needs is a corporate-savvy saviour, not a bishop!

So here are Fourth Columnist's suggestions for a non-bishopy leader of the Church of England; someone that can put the ailing business back on track.

First of all, as all Anglicans have become used to having a wierdy-beardie in charge, then Richard Branson would be the "comfort candidate". True, his 'Virgin' brand has the smack of the enemy, Roman Catholicism, but Branson is the only one likely to be 'closer to god' soon enough, when his spaceship takes off and, hopefully, comes back. Safe pair of hands.

Next, and the man most likely to to reinvigorate the CofE brand, is Sir Terry Leahy. After sorting out Tesco, Sir Terry has the point of sale experience to add billions to the church. For 'Club Card' read 'God Card'. If you can't get to a church, then for a small fee, prayers can be delivered to/from your home! Let's have some more churches on your doorstep...God Express! Nip and out for a quick worship...you don't have to do the whole weekly sacramental thing! And you can do god online. After all..."Every little helps", doesn't it?

A long shot (seeing he's recently blown with a wife-driven wind over to Rome) but what about Tony? Master of spin, history-maker, peace envoy, christian soldier; ticks all the boxes.

Lord Sugar of Amstrad may be a bit Jewish (and quite short) but he does have a sort of beard and his ace-in-the-hole for candidacy is his ability to send people to hell (you're "fired").

Ian Hislop has completed over a quarter of a century as editor of Private Eye. Time to move on? On the face of it, Hislop is an Anglican. A famous quote of his was, "...I've tried atheism and I can't stick at it...I keep having doubts. That probably sums up my position..." Hislop also appeared at "The Gathering", a religious symposium organised by Rowan Willaims in 2009 and appeared before its audience of over one thousand acolytes. He'd probably have to give up on the Eye editorship, of course, and for that reason alone, I would campaign against his accession to Canterbury. Besides, he's a Magdelen man...

"Please, Ma'am, can I be Archbishop?"

So, without doubt, the only non-bishop, ex-corporate lion that could really have a shot at the Canterbury Bishopric is Fred Goodwin. After all, as it is said repeatedly in the bible, "...god loves a sinner..." But maybe not enough to give one his knighthood back.

When all said and done (cliches apart), the competition for the next incumbent at Lambeth Palace is largely pointless. Less than two per cent of the population of the UK can be arsed to go to a CofE church regularly and most of those will be dead in the next twenty years on the basis of the demographic distribution, regardless of the increase in human longevity in the UK. Rowan Williams' decision to step down after ten years and at the relatively young age of 61 is probably indicative of the awfulness of the job. The incumbent is on a hiding to nothing and, in the case of the present one, he does actually seem to be a decent bloke, racked with doubt about the state of the church and in taking an academic position at Cambridge as an alternative rather than simply retiring, is saying that there is more he wishes to do without the shit that goes with the Archbishopric of Canterbury. I hope he enjoys his release.

Whomsoever is selected for this poisoned chalice will then have to have their position agreed to by the queen (small 'q'), who, for some anachronistic reason, seems to be in charge of the Church of England...oh, hang on, sorry, I forgot...the UK monarch has also been appointed by god, but not by text, email or tweet, seeing as they hadn't been invented at the time of the successive line several centuries ago. No, god just decided that it would be OK for a very small number of people to have inherited privileges..for ever..apparently. So the queen, as god's monarchic vassal on Earth (which is clearly just the British bit) has the veto. She also has the constitutional veto on everything else as far as the government of this country is concerned and when she dies, this affrontery to justice will be handed on to His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, PC, ADC, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. The only letters missing from this list of titles are V, X and Z.  Anybody else out there that can claim more than twenty-three letters in their 'name'?

I know there isn't one...but, for fuck's sake...god help us!

LOVE DAVE!

Steve Hilton has gone to California to spend more time with his wife's money.

This leaves David Cameron in a bit of a spot, as he is unable to think shit up on his own and has relied upon the likes of 'Hilto' to come up with 'game-changing' policies and ideas to perpetuate belief in the ailing coalition. Great ideas like "The Big Society"; surely something that is talked about by everyone and something that everyone wants to be part of - or maybe not.

No More Silly
Tree Logos!
This is Tory Future!

Although Dave has not yet advertised the vacancy for "Head of Blue-Sky Thinking", it would be wise to prepare an application now. My c.v. will easily get me onto the short-list so the next step is to put together my list of blue-sky ideas to take the Tories into the next general election with a sure-fire guarantee of success! I'll let the rest of the policy-wonks deal the boring stuff like managing the country's debt burden, pulling back from Lansley's lunatic reforms of the NHS and how to avoid war in Iran / Pakistan / Argentina / Syria (delete as appropriate). No, I see my new job as key to making the electorate love Dave. In fact, that might just be the strap-line to take us forward. "LOVE DAVE" [(c) Fourth Columnist Politico-Trash (Bahamas) Inc.]

Under the LOVE DAVE[TM] platform, my initiatives will propel the Conservative Party into a mainstream political future! Hilto will be but a memory and, by comparison to me, a pretty unpleasant one, too. Big Soc, my arse.

Here goes, then. Ten brilliant ideas to make sure that Dave (Ah! Love Him!) takes us into a golden future...

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#1:

Now that the Police Service is to be privatised, it's impossible to believe that forward-looking, IT-savvy corporates will want to carry on with old fuddy-duddy mounted policemen, now will they? So, step (or trot) forward, Dave's Police Horses! Everyone gets a chance to hack with Dave and, if they're lucky, Rebekah too, on the leafy Oxfordshire bridle paths!

Everyone Loves Sam!
Let's Accessorise!

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#2

Nobody trusts the press anymore. So here comes the "Daily Dave"!  the newspaper for modern Britain. No sniping at the Government here; just great stories about how Dave is delivering a great future for everone in Dave's Britain (except in Scotland). And no smut here, either. No! On Page three every day there'll be a lovely pic of SamCam in a pretty dress with some of her new accesories that everyone can aspire to afford now that Dave's got that silly thing with economy all sorted out. Plus, sports pages packed with retropsectives on how well Team GB did - getting our brilliant bronze medal in the Olympics (synchronised mud-snorkling) and how Manchester United failed to win anything at all, largely because their manager is Scottish. The 'Daily Dave' will not be available in Scotland, where they'll all be reading the Daily Glum and wiping their poverty-stricken Scottish bums with it in their independent outside toilets (or fields, as we know them here in Dave's Beautiful Britain).

Goodbye Banksy!

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#3

Do you remember "Keep Britain Tidy" in the 70s? Dave doesn't, because he's so youthful, but kind old Mr Clarke has told him all about it and that it was not a daft idea at all. But as we'll all be very busy keeping Dave's Britain working, we'll need an army of "tidiers", won't we? Dave's 'Scumbag Scrubbers' are the answer. On the dole? On Jobseeker's Allowance? Fed up with being forced to work for Mr Tesco for no wages? Join the 'Scumbag Scrubbers' and make a difference to Britain (but not in Scotland). Clean up that Banksy graffiti! Scrub away the chewing gum! Make Dave's Britain lovely (just like Dave)!

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#4

It's a sad fact that, even in Dave's Britain where (almost) all of us LOVE DAVE [TM] , there are still some people that just don't get it. And I don't mean only the people in Scotland, either. No, there are some English folk who just don't play the game. Mostly bankers, of course, and others who think it's a good idea to avoid paying taxes. Well Dave has news for you! You like trading in stocks and bonds? Well Dave has bonds to tie you into some stocks! If you don't pay your taxes or if you award yourself a huge bonus for trading in the misery of the less well-off (there are no 'poor' people in Dave's Britain), then off you go to the stocks (permission pending from the European Court of Human Rights).

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#5

Now that all those nasty bankers are busy having rotten fruit (imported from Scotland, where they have no use for healthy foodstuffs) thrown at them, the people of Dave's Britain will need a new bank! OK, every decent citizen that pays their taxes owns a share of some of the 'bad old banks' but they're not going to see any of that money because it's all being frittered away on silly loans that Mr Cable has insisted they dole out to businesses that are probably foreign! 'Dave's Pay-Day Bank' is the answer. Why borrow money from these sharks that charge twenty million per cent when you can get it from Dave at significantly less. (Terms and conditions apply. Your loan may be recalled at any time and could result in the loss of limbs or major organs if it all goes horribly wrong and you lose you job thus making it impossible to repay on your next pay-day - as there won't be one. On the other hand, Dave stills loves you, unless you're Scottish, and you could join the Scumbag Scrubbers to make up for your default).

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#6

Life in Dave's Britain can be fantastic but it can also have its very serious side, too. Although Dave is trying hard to put an end to misery and sadness, there's a limit to his prowess. People will still die and people will still be unhappy (especially in Scotland as they look over a chilly, hilly horizon at Independence and the loss of Dave's love). This is why Dave can offer solace through the Church of Dave [TM]. Dave likes God...any god, whether it's the proper one, or Allah or Ganesh or the thousands of others. This is unlike his deputy, Nick, who has decided that their are no gods, except in the run-up to elections. So Dave has created the Church Of Lots Of United Religions, "C.O.L.O.U.R."[TM], that brings all faiths together in Dave's Britain (except in Scotland where they can all be "Sons of the Manse" if they choose and attend Brownite services or not go to Tesco on a Sunday - their choice, even it's the wrong one). The Church of Dave [TM] will stop sectarian issues being issues. Dave has listened to the secularists or, as he likes to call them, the "Daveless", and will not separate church and state, as long as the church of the state is The Church of Dave [TM].

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#7

Should have been King?
Noooo..don't think so

Dave's ascendence to power as Prime Minsiter was blessed by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second. Dave knows how much everyone loves her (except in Scotland, where they think that the throne was cruelly ripped from the grasp of the 'Bonnie Prince' back in 1745...that's the 'Bonnie Prince' that was French, btw, and possbly not dissimilar in his regicidal views from another 'Charlie' we might mention). Dave understands that there are a lot of people who are not as happy as many others with the fact that we, in Dave's lovely Britain, have an anachronistic monarchy. So Dave wants to bring the monarchy into the twenty-first century! Which is great! (Like the century, and the idea...and Dave himself!). Welcome to Dave's Open Monarchy (DOM)! Under DOM, anyone can be monarch for the day. When the queen is on holiday or just taking a break from her onerous duties, ordinary citizens can just step up and do her job; asking "Hello, where are you from?" and "Have you come far?" of other ordinary citizens and accepting small bouquets of flowers from children. Not hard work at all, and such a privilege!

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#8

Home of
'The Mayor Factor'

All of our big towns and cities need a mayor. The old way of sorting this out (elections) just isn't right any more because even in Dave's Lovely Britain, some people don't feel like voting...which is a shame but there we are. The best way to select our mayors (and possibly our police chiefs) in the future will be through the medium of television. So we're going to bring you "The Mayor Factor!" This is a truly democratic process. Every day, live on on TV, potential mayors will strut their mayoral stuff and everyone can vote by phone or text or tweets after the judges have eliminated unsuitable candidates, such as Boris and Ken. The loveable geordie dwarves, Ant and/or Dec will host the shows and the judging panel will be Gok Wan, Pippa Middleton, Lembit Opik and the famous journalist, the Archbishop of York! Winners be allocated their mayoral seats by Eric Pickles, over a nice curry afterwards. And of course, the shows will be shown on...where else...Dave! (The channel 'Dave' will be nationalised).

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#9

We got really fed up recently over MPs doing very naughty things with their expenses. So, through the medium of Dave TV, there'll be another new show - 'Second Homes Under The Hammer!'. All those unnecessary second homes will be sold off and the money used to re-build Hadrian's Wall (only this time it will not exclude Northumberland, so the people up there that are so close to Salmond's Scotland don't have to worry). Obviously, Dave won't have to give up his Oxfordshire home - that's his first home! No.10 is just where he works, where Sam keeps all of her lovely clothes and accessories and where the lovely couple entertain visiting heads of state (although I imagine Dave will ask Mr Salmond to stay in a local hotel if he wants haggis, neeps and tatties on the menu!)

LOVE DAVE [TM] IDEA#10

Dave's going to change his name! We've thought very hard about this. 'Cameron' is just a little bit scottish, isn't it? So, from now on, our beloved Prime Minister will be known as 'Kim Jong Dave'. Peace, love and blessings be upon him.

LOVE "KIM JONG" DAVE!

Romney Santorum, Quid Est Homo, Quia Magnificus Cum?

This Blog-post header sort of trips off the the tongue, like some Roman Catholic mantra, doesn't it? As well, it has the option to pronounce the Latin in such a way as to take the piss out of both of these idiotic Republicans' stances on homosexual relationships (as well as everything else they might wish to stand upon)? But why, as the phrase suggests, should the Republicans "make magnificent" these two nutters, now that the other saps have come nowhere on "Super Tuesday"?

The World Awaits....

As we have come to discover the world over these days, only those with access either to their own or someone else's mega-fortune can run for high office. Even Obama only got to the White House on the back of a multi-million chest to fund his campaign. And if it isn't money, then its vote-rigging (see Putin, allegedly), or oppression (Assad, Mugabe, Gadaffi, etc.). Democracies are rarely what they profess to be. Even in the UK, where the multi-millions, rigged ballots or oppressive tactics are generally absent, the democratic process relies on those who can be arsed to vote...usually around half of the electorate...which means that parties and politicians often come to power with a mandate offered by fewer than a quarter of the people that were eligible to cast their ballot.

Anyway, back to the Republicans...

Santorum and Romney appeal to registered Republican voters. And this is the key. It really doesn't matter what happens in these "Primary" ballots. There are a few hundred thousand American citizens that have "registered" to vote in the Primaries. These are people who are probably genuinely interested in who gets the ticket but, by default, are also those that have an axe to grind and, thankfully, are a tiny minority of the US populus that will eventually, come November, go to the Presidantial polls.

"Guess who told me to run?
No, really, I mean it.
He did, honestly!"

After the Republicans have settled upon which of the two Far-Right Neo-Cons will carry their torch, then either Romney of Santorum will have to spend the next few months convincing America that they actually do like Gays, Blacks, Atheists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, fornicators, lefties, liberals  and everyone else that they have marginalised in their campaigns to win the Republican nomination. And that will, hopefully, be their downfall. They will also have the option (and one that they will gleefully grasp) of rubbishing Obama and the Democrats. That, regrettably, might be their ace in the hole, as it will be the thrust of their campaign given that it will be very difficult for either Santorum or Romney to woo the mainstream through policy. But electorates are notoriously fickle.

I've despaired over many decades of the propensity of candidates for the top jobs in western democracies to declare their belief in some god or other. Take the UK as a prime example. Ours a constitution where the Head of State is an unelected, hereditary monarch who, as well as having this titular and constitutional role, is also the head of the Church of England and "Defender of the Faith". Successive Prime Ministers have had, more or less, no option but to toe that non-secular line in order to get the job despite governing a country where the majority of citizens can't be bothered with any organised religion of the gods on offer. The UK is also a country where the recognised state religion has less than two per cent active, regular adherents among the electorate. Sure, the ten-yearly census will throw up statistics showing an affiliation of twenty times that largely because people completing the census tend to go down the default route (or have a misguided laugh by pretending to be a Jedi). In  reality, the Church of England can barely scrape a million worshippers each Sunday. Our Deputy Prime Minister is an admitted atheist but, like his position and his politics, that doens't really matter.

"What is it, Sergeant?"
"Aaargh! Romneys Sir! Thousand of 'em"

In the US, where there is no 'accredited' national religion, as such, candidates for the presidency almost exclusively declare that they are christians. With Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), his belief borders on the evangelical. Santorum is  Roman Catholic whose dedication to his faith is fanatical and fundamentalist, using biblical dogma to underpin his opposition to everything that isn't RC, like any fanatical muslim that treats the Koran as a literal guide to how things should be. It's a toss-up as to which one is the more dangerous. Obama was brought up in a home where both the bible and the Koran were on the bookshelves. He is a borderline agnostic and during the 2008 campaign he managed to fend off the Republican Party's claims that he was a muslim and, therefore, a towel-headed terrorist bent on jihad. Worse still, according to his apponents, it was claimed that he wasn't born in the United States, this being a constitutional requirement of anyone seeking the PoTUS position, otherwise Armold Schwarzenegger would have been in the White House years ago.

Over the next few months, regardless of whether it's Santorum or Romney, the "Clusterfuck to the White House" (as Jon Stewart famously dubbed the '08 election) will be a campaign of negatives.

OMG!

For the Republicans' Campaign, some or all of the following will be included:

1) Barack HUSSEIN Obama is (probably) a muslim and was (probably) born in Africa and even if turns out he was born in Hawaii then...and let's be clear about this...those Pacific islands aren't really American, are they? They're just a military bridgehead in case the nips kick off again or if Kim Jong Un gets all uppity.

2) Obama has totally fucked the economy!!

3) Healthcare reform means that POOR PEOPLE might be able to use American hospitals instead of dying in the gutter where they belong.

4) Obama has ALLOWED our enemies to exist and some of them even have nuclear weapons. Why hasn't he invaded everywhere? COWARD!

5) Obama is just a little bit black now, isn't he? And so's his wife and family. And his dog (which is a PORTUGUESE Water Dog, not an AMERICAN Water Dog). And the dog's name is 'Bo', which sounds FOREIGN!

6) Obama's Secretary of State is a GIRL! Not only is she not in the kitchen making apple pies but she is married to a liberal, leftie fornicator, who thinks that War is Bad!

7) Obama smokes! OMG! He's killing our children by example.

8) By the way, have we mentioned that HUSSEIN Obama is probably a muslim? Actually, do you think he might look a bit Mexican? And does he believe in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour? Probably not. SINNER!

For the Democrats - should the party machine decide to fight dirty - there are plenty of open goals if either candidate gets the nomination, but let's assume it's Romney:

1) Mitt Romney is very, very rich and parks most of his money offshore, allegedly

2) Mitt Romney shoots things with guns, although he would have you believe that they're mostly "small varmints" and probably not very many atheists, mexicans, blacks etc.

3) Mitt Romney was eligible for the draft in '67 and, guess what? Like all recent Replublican presidents, he dodged it (probably)! Who's the coward now, huh?

4) There's bound to be some wierd, sexual deviancy in the background or some two-bit hooker from years ago prepared to spill the beans. We'll keep digging but, in the mean time, we'll just make some suggestions of lack of moral compass...or something

5) Mitt Romney might just be a little bit thick. He proposed legislation that suicide bombers would not be given Miranda rights. Duh! And once said, "...America is not better off than it was 1.8 trillion dollars ago

6) Mitt Romney's wife (Ann) has lost all touch with reality. On being asked what it meant to have a family wealth of c. $250 million she replied that she "...didn't feel wealthy..."

7) Romney is cruel to animals and not just the "small varmints" he executes. In 1983, he tied his Irish Setter (Seamus) to the roof of his car and drove for twelve hours to Canada...(which is abroad)

8) Oh, and by the way, his name really is "Mitt". It's not short for anything...it's actually Mitt. Willard Mitt Romney. And you thought "Barack" was odd?

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the 2012 US Presidential Election will be fought fairly and upon policies so that the American people can decide on whether to have a fanatically religious, pro-life, gay-bating, varmint-slaughtering, possibly polygamy-favouring, draft-dodging, filthy-rich Neo-Con or a thoroughly pleasant african-american who speaks in very short sentences.

Four more years! Four more years! Four more...etc. etc.

Could be worse...these are two of the ones that got away...

Sarah at the Mall...just another day's retail therapy

"Hi, Honey...I'm Ho-ome!"