“And so the native hue of Resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought...

I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s Resolution in my life. In 1995 (I think) I knocked off the booze until January 19th, and in my childhood, having fallen into the habit of using a mildly racist insult I had picked up from schoolmates, I resolved to eschew the word, only for it to slip out in a moment of vexation on 27th December.

Of course we know it’s pointless, but the effort has to be made. Without the occasional well-prepared thrust of abnormal will-power, no alterations to one’s course along the primrose path which leads to the everlasting bonfire will ever be made, and enterprises of great pith and moment in this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action, which is certainly what happens to all of mine. One needs a peg to hang these things on, otherwise they won't happen, and the New Year fills the bill. Otherwise, life turns into a slow and drawn-out suicide, in the sense that one is likely to have as little to show for the next twenty years as if one were to top oneself tonight.

So here goes once more for Cipriano’s 2008 rezzos. Not normally given to either self-hatred or schizophrenia, but I will wage a bitter and ruthless war of extermination against roughly one-sixth of myself. I will more than decimate myself. I will wipe the useless and parasitic minority of human cells colonising my waistline off the face of the earth. The pathetic remnants which survive will be strictly confined within the bonds of a 38 inch trouser waist, with a 36 held in reserve as a terrible warning.

And the second is linked to it; I will take action to raise the siege of my poor beleaguered liver. It will get an extended cease-fire from the massed artillery of alcohol, to allow for regeneration. Besides, that’s the only way I can think of to achieve objective 1. I’ve tried everything else, even exercise.

Then there is the usual list of books to write, money to be made, one divorce to digest, another to avoid, just like last year and most of the last forty; nothing new, though one or two things are coming into sharper focus.

For instance, I will spend this year doing more of the things I enjoy doing, and less of the ones I don't. Sounds sorta obvious, until one looks at it. We spend far too much time doing unenjoyable things because we've accepted that we've got to without properly examining the evidence for this belief, or because we can't get our arse in gear to make the necessary plans to do enjoyable stuff instead. No more of that. No doubt 2008 will have its share of unpleasant duties, but each duty will have to declare itself and prove its case against a shit-hot advocatus diaboli before it is accepted as such. And fun will become the default setting. Believe me, that will be more difficult than laying off the booze. Or tell me I'm a liar.

Nobody’s fault my arse

And so another small child has been killed by the family rottweiler. How many does that make this year exactly?

Of course we are told the family pet had never shown the slightest degree of aggression before. "This wasn't expected, it's nobody's fault," said the detective superintendent in charge of the case.

Well, I give him credit for not wanting to stick the boot in to a family already suffering deeply from the consequences of a catastrophic misjudgement, but hang on a minute. The dog was a rottweiler, for heaven’s sake. I know very little about dogs, but I do know - and so does everybody else - that rottweilers are prone to turn extremely dangerous at the slightest provocation, such as an ignorant and uncoordinated baby sticking its fingers everywhere. “Wasn’t expected”? Senior police officers should be sensitive, but shouldn’t be allowed to talk complete bollocks.

Yes, you get experts on the TV saying that the breed is not intrinsically dangerous – it’s not banned by the Dangerous Dogs Act – and is perfectly harmless if handled properly. Banning more breeds would be wrong because it would apply to everybody, even the sensible dog-handlers. But not banning breeds applies to everybody too, including the sort of family which sprouts fatherless babies like this one, whose mother was 17. And the police and press aren’t allowed to ask questions like “Whose idea was it to introduce a rottweiler into this family, and why?” We all know it’s likely to have been some spotty herbert with a suet dumpling for a brain who thought it might boost his credibility as a bit of a hard man. Well, it wasn’t nobody’s fault, it was his. What we need is not so much a Dangerous Dogs Act – it’s no good blaming them – but a Dangerous Chavs Act.

Big Brother ain’t half watching you

Bizarre occurrence this morning. Having woken up at a normalish time for once, I decided to go out for a brisk walk in the Trough of Bowland, as part of my no-doubt-doomed attempt to lose a bit of weight. I drove a fairly complicated route to the village of Quernmore, about six miles away, and stopped the car outside the village post office. As I got out in order to tramp up the hill, a man who had stopped behind me got out of his car and addressed me. Though not aware of having given any cause for road rage, I braced myself for it. But the man addressed me with perfect courtesy, saying “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Mera” – how the hell could anyone in Quernmore, where I’d never been before, know my name? “but I have to give you this.” Of course, it was a set of legal papers served on me at the behest of the Bitch. You have to hand it to these process servers, they are bloody assiduous. He had clearly arrived at my home just in time to see me driving off, and followed me. It would have been a bit of a laugh if I had driven 160 miles without stopping to my mother’s, as I had done a couple of days before. Anyway, he got his man. Ironically, the papers were just copies of papers I’d already received through the post, so it hadn’t actually been necessary to follow me out into the Trough of Bowland to serve them. But heigh-ho, I’m not paying for it. I wonder how much all this overkill is costing her, and she still hasn’t been told that one of the documents was illegally obtained and could lay her open to criminal prosecution.

English football goes Italian

No, I have nothing whatsoever to say about Fabio Capello, beyond wishing him all the best with the bunch of dumb-arsed infantilised wankers at his disposal. It’s more sinister than that. A year or so ago, when it was discovered that Italian football was riddled with corruption, we no doubt first composed the odd bon mot about the Pope’s faith and the sanitary habits of bears, and then reflected that that sort of thing wouldn’t happen here. I’m not so sure.

Obviously “we wuz robbed” is the classic response of anyone who loses a football match, but I surely can’t be the first person to have noted the run of refereeing decisions which have pulled Chelsea out of the mire at various junctures this season. As a Liverpool fan I naturally called the referee all manner of opprobrious names when Chelsea equalised at Anfield from a completely fictitious penalty at the very beginning of the season (he actually apologised afterwards); but my saner self reflected that these things happen, and that referees aren’t bent and it usually evens itself out in time. But now? In the week after Christmas we saw a very dodgy penalty and sending off after a Covent-Garden-worthy dive by Micky Bollocks when Chelsea were 2-0 down, and then a last-minute Chelsea winner against Newcastle scored by Salomon Kalou when he was about half a mile offside. A pattern is emerging. Generally we have sensibly rejected any such suggestions, knowing that fair football is likely to bring in much more money in the long term than fixed stuff, and that Englishmen realise this, but these chaps aren’t English, are they? Not being racist here, just culturalist. Russians possess neither the most rudimentary sense of morality nor any tendency to take the long view – money is best grabbed quickly because the future is uncertain. I say Roman Abramovich and his cronies are bribing Premiership referees. At the very least let’s tax the non-doms out of London.

Quite Staggering Christmas Ill-will

I hold no brief for Tony Blair. I voted for him twice and couldn’t stomach doing so a third time. I left his party entirely because of his leadership. I could go on for some time about the man’s failings. But I don’t think I could have worked up quite such gouts of bile as the right wing of the Catholic Church has , following his reception into the Roman Church a couple of days ago. It made me feel that Blair must be quite a saintly man. I’m sure that, even were I not inclined to do so anyway, I would have told Uncle Joe Ratzinger where he could stick his magisterium after this treatment.

There is a blog where these graceless ultramontanes congregate. I read it because it’s interesting and about interesting subjects, and even contribute to it when feeling confident enough not to mind being told I’m going to Hell. The general line – there are exceptions, but they risk fierce execration – is that it is an utter scandal that Blair has been allowed to join the church without giving public recantations of his position on abortion (natch), homosexuality, and anything else that what I call the Khartoum faction demands a recantation on. The fact that Blair has (one assumes) never performed or been responsible for an abortion or (again presumably) engaged in homosexual relations is neither here nor there. Nor has he been personally responsible for widening access to abortion – what he is being blamed for is not narrowing it, and not actually ensuring that women are put in jail for doing it. A doctrinal paper drawn up by none other than one J. Ratzinger, in a previous job, states that only politicians who persistently vote for increased abortion should be condemned by the Church. I don’t know why Blair didn’t vote for a reduction in the time limit on abortions (I mean, the man has four children – hasn’t he ever seen an ultrasound scan?) but, presumably, if he had, he’d still have voted for some legal abortions, and the ultramontanes would still have condemned him.

You'd think Catholics would be glad to have Tony Blair; not because he's an international celeb, but in the spirit of welcoming a lost sheep back to the fold. Jesus didn't go round demanding public recantations; he just said "Go and sin no more" - no doubt more in hope than confidence, the Man wasn't stupid.

It is obvious that these people simply do not like Tony Blair, which I can understand. But the main reason they don’t like him is that he is a left-of-centre politician; the same blog carries attacks on US bishops who are indulgent to the Kennedys. It would seem the only politicians with whom the Church hierarchy ought to be hobnobbing are the likes of Generals Franco and Pinochet, who got off notably lightly. Generally speaking the Catholic Church has always believed in making its accommodations with secular power, in support of its own claims to temporal as well as spiritual authority. It just prefers torturers and rapists to people who are liberal on poor women who see no alternative to abortion. What’s more, I suspect that some of these people do not actually believe in the substance of the Christian faith: the fundamentalist wing are merely a useful tool to mobilise Catholics in support of political objectives, these objectives being inimical to liberal democracy and having a stronger connection to a political philosophy beginning with F. Titus Oates, where are you now that we need you?

I know the original Cipriano Mera rejected all religion: partly because the only one on offer where he was was the utterly corrupt, decayed and politicised Spanish Catholic Church, which deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth. But I do not think I am departing much from his spirit when I say that Britain must remain, not a wholly secular country, but a Christian (C of E) country. A secular country would have to give equal status to all its religions: no. We have an established religion which places liberal tolerance very high in its list of values. It deserves to be placed higher than the homophobic abortion-fetishists; higher than the gynocidal sharia-boppers, and higher than all those who use their religion to enforce cultural norms on the unwilling. No, C of E for ever: the absurdity of the supremacy of the woolly and über-tolerant is precisely the point. Let’s hear it once more for Antidisestablishmentarianism.

Been away from the blogosphere for a few days – largely because I was away visiting the city of X (sorry to sound like a 19th century novel, but I have to protect privacy) seeing two of my dearest friends. Two hugely different men moving in profoundly different circles (though they themselves are good friends) and providing two very different but equally valuable takes on life. Let’s call them Q and Z, to be very slightly original.

Q is a prosperously proportioned professional gentleman who appears outwardly to epitomise the comfortable bourgeoisie, but manages not to have internalised any of the attendant bullshit. He has a standard-size family, with two children who have real personalities and are awesomely bright, but have equally clearly not been brought up to compete with the neighbours, get into Eton or end up in an investment bank; they have simply grown up with parents who have a lot of interests and take the trouble to draw the kids into them. (I think I can modestly claim to have done the same with my own.) At Q’s house one gets a warm welcome, loads of booze and massively diverse conversation, but no sense of having to mind a preconceived set of Ps and Qs. At my age shittiness is so all-pervasive that its absence is immediately and powerfully noticeable, like the sensation of stopping banging your head against a wall.

Z is equally widely knowledgeable and diverse in his interests, but his life has taken a completely different path. Debarred from the bourgeoisie by a complete inability to fit in with its rules and practices, he moves among those who have similarly fallen off the edge, though keeping quite a tight rein on his own life; his acquaintance teaches him, after all, what awful fate attends those who let go. Our pub-crawl took us to places frequented by people who have served time for anything up to and including murder (Z, who is no sort of hard man, is known and loved there and thus as safe as if attended by an SAS phalanx) and it ended in the company of a friend of Z’s who was excellent company, but with whom I was rather glad to have been vouched for, as it were. Z’s friend had just returned from the wake of another of Z’s extended acquaintance, and was far from sober, exhorting the virtues of Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin as heroes of the 20th century.

We were joined by two ladies in early middle age who were mourning the death of yet another friend – funerals and wakes play a devastatingly large part in the lives of people in their forties in this milieu – and who were drunk, weepy and utterly charming. One of them came on to me to an extent that might have caused difficulties, especially as she evoked powerful memories of a princesse lointaine of thirty years back. In the end the ladies simply swept out in an alcoholic haze, and considerable firmness was necessary to escape from Z’s friend’s demand for a continuation of the symposium.

It was all very Irvine Welsh, and I mean that without a trace of disrespect. C S Lewis said, admiringly, of an unsuccessful friend of his that “he despised nobody”, and that is true of Z (actually it isn’t – he despises himself, with no good reason that I can see, but at least that fact prevents him from despising anybody else) and, I rather patronisingly hope, of myself.

Finally, a rather wonderful link, for which I must credit my friend The Exile (see Links): here

Yes! Victory in Sight....

You know that feeling you get, in sport, politics or whatever, when you see your opponent make a mistake that leaves the goal open, the wicket undefended, the queen en prise etc.? Well, I've just come across one in my court battle with the Queen Bitch over all my money. Among the documents that she's presenting to the court in support of her case is one which I know to have been obtained illegally (i.e. stolen) - and (oh joy!) I can prove it. Silly cow - no connection with rationality at all. I rather pity her lawyers who've been told a lot of lies which will stand up in court about as well as me with a bottle of scotch inside me. Still, they're getting paid, and since when have lawyers worried about getting paid for talking a lot of shite?

No Job or Non-Job?

You know how you sometimes get these strange ideas? Well, I'm perfectly happy not having a job - saves a lot of time and hassle - but it occurred to me yesterday to think about applying for one. I'd just been reading one of Richard Littlejohn's rants about all the lucrative public sector jobs offered in the Guardian, and it occurred to me to look to see if there might be a nice fat wodge of council-tax-payer's money with my name on it somewhere.

I struck lucky at once. I found a local government job which might be perfect for me, in a field I sort of know a bit about (not sure how important that is). Rather a tasty salary, too. They'd also submitted a list of the qualities they were looking for in a successful applicant. It was written, of course, in management-speak, which consists of an endless daisy-chain of abstract nouns:

"Proven success in leadership and team management and participation in the formulation of corporate objectives, policies and strategies within a large multi-disciplined organisation.

Success in giving policy and professional advice to and building effective and productive working relationships with senior managers.

Demonstrable success in the management of change, planning and organisation across a diverse range of services.

Success in building effective working relationships with a variety of communities, partner organisations, private sector providers, public agencies and statutory authorities.

Substantial experience of establishing effective performance measures and evaluating service quality through the involvement of users.

Able to provide visible and supportive leadership, empowering, enabling, motivating and developing the Council’s employees and fostering a positive organisational culture."

As far as I can see, no kind of objective meaning can be attached to any of this. Depending on interpretation, it could cover Wayne Rooney or Osama bin Laden. Seems to me what they are looking for is a consummate bullshit artist.

I must apply. I should be a shoo-in.

Coincidentally, the Iron Buddha is watching a programme on Chinese TV on recruitment to local government jobs over there. In one case it was mentioned that female applicants for some low-level clerical job "will be expected to have perfectly symmetrical breasts". Well, makes as much sense as "empowering, enabling, motivating and fostering a positive organisational culture." But I prefer the British version; after all, a year ago or so I had a minor hormone imbalance problem (no doubt down to a booze-battered liver) which left one of my moobs a bit bigger than the other. I can, however, string abstract nouns together as well as anybody.

A Fucking Merry Christmas and a Happy Fucking New Year!

Well, here we are again. 'Tis the season to be jolly, if such a thing exists. If Liverpool hadn't got beaten by Man United this afternoon joy would be unconfined. Well, not quite unconfined, as last night I had dinner with the brother-in-law who grew up in India and cooks up a serious cuzza, with all the alcoholic trimmings. My hangovers don't actually give me a headache - just a catatonic paralysis which keeps me in bed for most of the day. Still, did a late-night walk, to and from the pub.....

And anyone who wishes to take the adjective beginning with F in its literal sense has my full effing blessing.

Serious Lancashire

Manic day. We bipolar types know full well that this is just the flip side of something very nasty indeed, but we know equally that you must enjoy it while you've got it. For the first time for ages slept in something like a proper configuration - 2-10 a.m. Woke up feeling like death and damnation, but medication soon fixed that. Then drove out into the Trough of Bowland for a proper walk - planned, of course, to end up at a pub. Of course the Ordnance Survey maps can still leave one utterly scunnered - but if you get off the proper path and into someone's farm, they don't yell "Get off my land!" - indeed, that would not work, as in this phrase the word "off" is normally pronounced "orf" and they don't do that in Lancashire - but ask you where you're trying to get to and give you sensible directions, while politely suggesting that one ought to be wearing heavy-duty wellingtons, which I knew already, but there was nothing patronising about the comment. And looking puzzled while contemplating a map in a Lancashire village will get you a friendly enquiry as to whether or not one is lost, rather than a triumphalist splash from a gutter puddle. Why the flying fuck anyone wants to live in London is a mystery to me, except for those who seem to think it is compulsory. Listen, ladies and gents. It is possible to get laid outside the Congestion Charge zone. It really is. I know

The £64,000 question...

(Unconvincing Victor Meldrew impression) "I don't BELIEVE it!"

Got a formal letter from the Queen Bitch's solicitors this morning (or rather this afternoon, when I woke up). Not quite sure what planet the woman is on. To avoid the "stress and costs" of a court hearing, at which she is trying to make me pay £64,000 over the next three and a half years, she suggests a compromise, whereby I pay the whole £64,000 all at once, and then she will leave me alone. Great deal, eh? This isn't child support, either - the kids are both grown up and I do that anyway. It's purely to keep her in the style to which she thinks she is entitled. I rather pity her lawyers, who won't be allowed to suggest any sensible compromise - no, this lady wants it ALL. I have written back to them to say no way, José, and by the way be careful about advancing any statements she might make in court, as she is clearly away with the fairies, and nothing she says will stand up if challenged, as it will be.

If someone like Dave Cameron (or Uncle Gord, for that matter) is interested in supporting marriage, I suggest he starts by legislating to make life less easy for blood-sucking ex-wives with "lifestyles". Otherwise no man will step into the lion's den ever again.

The good guys win on all fronts....

Yes, we're winning! In Afghanistan we've whipped the Taliban's arse! In Iraq, we've done a lot to keep the head-hackers out! In Kosovo we're halfway to getting de facto independence through, against all the fascists in the world. And, nearer to home, I have the total support of my elder son in resisting the Queen Bitch in trying to grab all my money! Bastards don't win all the time! And there is no reason to support them just because one feels they might win. No, only support the good guys, chaps - you'll only feel like a bit of an arsehole later!

This Makes No Sense At All

Almost a complete night's sleep (12.30 - 7.30). But it made no difference; by 11.30 a.m., after an exhausting morning spent watching England v. Sri Lanka on the telly, I was knackered again and went back to sleep till about 5. This is clinical depression, and that is how it works.

Why the hell can't we beat the bloody Sri Lankans? No criticism of them, they're currently sporting the world's No. 1 batsman and the most successful bowler of all time, but watching an interminable 9th wicket stand in which their tail end kept us out for hours did not do much to counteract the encroaching clouds of gloom. I spent so much of my formative years watching England bowlers trundle away without even looking like getting a wicket, and it seems that, after a brief interval of being quite good, we're now back there again. Part of the trouble, of course, is people getting injured all the time. Does any other nation have to cope with quite so many bloody injuries? Fred Trueman never spent quite so much of his time being mauled by physiotherapists. Are they wearing crap kit, or are they simply playing too much cricket? Whatever the answer, I bet money is at the bottom of it. Sod the money-men, sod, sod, sod them.

De Profundis Schizosomniae

i.e. Out of the depths of a steaming sleeping disorder. Not quite insomnia, as I get around 8 hours sleep in the 24, but if those are 3-5 a.m., 10-12 a.m. and 3-7 p.m. it doesn't help a lot in getting much done. In the morning and afternoon waking sessions I'm too whacked to concentrate, and in the evening one I'm so discombobulated that alcohol is the only answer. And of course I need all my wits about me for moving house, doing all the blasted Crimbo stuff, and beating back the threat of the Queen Bitch to steal all my money with judicial help.

Anyway, can't argue with today. My late father's 76th birthday; an utter bugger that he isn't here to enjoy it. A Christmas carol concert this evening, with self on first tenor. And returning to find Liverpool have thrashed Marseilles (yes, that is how you spell it in English, and it's pronounced Mar-sails) 4-0 and made the Champions League knock-out stages. Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. It always maddens me to see this translated "Peace on earth, goodwill to all men". Bollocks. It's "Peace on earth to all men (and women) of good will". And, one is surely allowed to infer, ceaseless war on men and women of the other sort.

Meanwhile the Iron Buddha has started calling me "Albert", on the grounds that my increasingly uncontrollable hair, though not necessarily what lies under it, reminds her of the great Einstein.

After Two Jags, we have Seven Houses

Just discovered that would-be Lib Dim leader Chris Huhne, he who twenty-five years ago was caught on camera demonstrating with wild hair in Oxford, was forced to admit in a recent interview that he owns seven houses. "We have two that we use" (?? I personally find it difficult to be in two places as once, but then I'm not a Lib Dim superstar) "and five that I let out. It is perfectly compatible to strive for success and be ambitious and also want to help the poor, the sick, the chronically ill and the unemployed." Not normally it isn't. It is more usually compatible with thinking that the poor should just be a bit more ambitious and a bit more subservient and should pull their fucking fingers out.

"We shouldn't vilify people for being successful." Yes we fucking should, if being "successful" meant working in the City and taking a cut of every bit of honest business done and gambling with other people's money, all the while living on guaranteed salaries and bonuses, i.e. earning money for turning up. We can't vilify them enough.

It'll be "Seven Houses" Huhne for evermore. At least I hope so.

Tory hypocrisy (next: al fresco ursine defecation)

Takes a lot to stagger me, but the story in today's press, relating that the Tories are asking that we be told whether the four former British residents about to be released from Guantanamo are "dangerous" or not before we accept them, makes a pretty good attempt. The very same Tories are protesting that keeping Islamic terrorist suspects - always people with a good deal of form and who have been followed for some time - in custody for more than 28 days, while the filth try to work out what they were intending to blow up, is a scandalous invasion of our (our???) civil liberties. And yet people who've been in an American military slammer without charge, for five years and more, had better convince us that they're safe before we dare let them out. Where's the logic? Well, we don't give a toss about security or terrorism, we're just looking for a stick to beat the Government with! No, Brown is not great (as Christopher Hitchens might have said) but who the hell would let the other lot run a bleeding whelk stall?

Everything's going to hell in a handcart (Cipriano argues for higher taxes on "hard-working families")

Now that all capitalism’s chickens seem to be coming home to roost, and the Government is collectively cowering in the face of a shitstorm, it’s interesting to see where the blame is being laid. Of course for the Tories it’s all the Government and Brown’s “imprudence”; actually there is something in that, in that it was indeed imprudent of him not to rein the banks in. It is entirely their fault, although to say so is our equivalent of dissing Uncle Mo in Sudan.

Northern Rock obviously; it must now be nationalised pour encourager les autres. The £1.3 trillion of personal debt – all thrust at vulnerable and relatively impoverished people by the bloodsuckers. The horrors of London, with BANKERS AND LAWYERS ONLY signs going up around all the nice bits. Having told us for years that essential financial expertise would be driven away if taxes were raised above 40%, we are now being told that essential expertise like private equity sharks and the Russian mafia will be driven away if they have to pay tax at all. Tax them to buggery, I say, and reclaim the West End.

And don’t stop there. What’s with the canard that all monies subject to taxation have been earned by “hard-working families”? What’s a hard-working family when it’s at home? I am sure there are yuppie families in North London who collectively give off enough kinetic energy to power a small city, so on-the-go are all their members with swimming, violin practice, running the voluntary sector etc. But these, gentle reader, are a minority. To comment from knowledge I will have to go back five years or so, to when I was part of a normal, mum-dad-two-kids nuclear family.

I had a job in government service; quite a senior job, and so subject to occasional periods of serious pressure, but on the whole I couldn’t really complain if you were to add “’Nuff said.” My ex-wife was self-employed, which I do admit takes some doing, as there, unlike in most of the public and private sectors, no-one pays you a regular salary just for turning up. But, as her income wasn’t absolutely essential for our survival, she worked only when she wanted to and spent about four months a year on holiday. As for our then teenage sons, only in a context of sledgehammer irony could the term “hard-working” be contemplated. But for the Tories and the Daily Mail we were, I suppose, a “hard-working family”. The real family income at that time, like that of most other middle-class families, came from the appreciation in the price of our house.

No doubt it makes political sense to champion the people who “earn” money by turning up to work and otherwise watching their house prices explode, as there are an awful lot of them, enough to turn an election. But in actual economic terms they are a deadweight. It wouldn’t harm the economy to tax them off the face of the earth. And then maybe we could all afford somewhere to live.

The Just War Theory

Well, it's said among those less bellicose than Cipriano that one must only wage war in self-defence. I don't always agree with that - and nor did Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas - but on this occasion I'll go along with it. I just got a set of legal papers from The Queen Bitch (i.e. my ex-wife) saying that I owe her a lot of money and that Sue, Grabbit and Runne are about to choke it out of me. The fact that she earns about £40k and I earn sod all, and that both our kids are over 18 and I support them, is neither here nor there. She wants money to keep her in a certain lifestyle, and of course her boyfriend, a well-known and well-off Viennese so-and-so, can't possibly be expected to provide that; it's clearly my call.

Well, one or two tricks still up the old sleeve; she's got an academic post with a bogus doctorate, for instance. How do I know this? Well, I wrote the thesis. And if I get slammed by the courts I can at least have a go at getting reimbursed by the Austrian tabloids.....

A tad churlish....

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

How much leather and cork would a Sri Lankan off-spinner chuck if the race-crazed International Cricket Council persisted in letting him get away with it?

No, but seriously - well done Murali, you pop-eyed little bastard. And big up to baldy-bonce Jayasuriya on his retirement - probably did more to make cricket fun than anyone else in the last 15 years.

Puwar tu tha Piupla!

One of the less striking aspects of the blasphemous-teddy-bear story was the extent to which the must-respect-the-nutters dhimmitude of the British people has extended even into the realm of transliteration.

In the letter which Gillian Gibbons wrote to her pupils' parents about the class teddy bear, its name was given as Mohamed. This is the normal way the name is spelt in North Africa, where Sudan happens to be. It is spelt in many different ways, partly because the Arabic-speaking world is large and varied in its speech. I am no Arabist, but I have been told by those that are that there are great differences between Gulf Arabic and that spoken in the Maghreb region. When I was younger the name was always spelt in English as Mohammed.

However, during my lifetime an edict seems to have gone out that the "proper" transliteration is Muhammad. Likewise, the followers of the desert death-cult were once always described as Moslems; now it must be Muslims. Anyone my age knows their holy book as the Koran, but it is now the height of insensitivity not to write Qu'ran. (I don't know whether that apostrophe is in the right place; but, like the greengrocer, I know there has to be one somewhere.) Basically you can now only use three vowels in Arabic transliterations; o and e are banned. The Foreign Office camel corps tries to make diplomats write Usama bin Ladin. Does that make Arabic words any easier to read for non-Arabists? No, I would say, or possibly Nu.

I believe that this is an attempt - made not by Arabs themselves, but by the PC crew in Britain - to homogenise Arabic around the sort spoken in Saudi, i.e. by unpleasant gynocidal nutcases. Certain newspapers insisted, no doubt enforcing mindless "house style" edicts, that Ms Gibbons' class had named the bear "Muhammad". They hadn't. They'd called it Mohamed. And it is Moslems, not Muslims, who can feck off out of this country if they want to live under Sharia law; and Mohammed, not Muhammad, about whom Sir Salman Rushdie can write anything he damn well likes.

Trivial but Fun

Found two beautiful quotes in this week's Spectator:

Lord Canning, 19th century Foreign Secretary: "French governments have but two rules of action; to thwart us whenever they know our object, and when they know it not, to imagine one for us, and set about to thwarting that." Diplomatic Service 1986-2006: no change at all.

Most bizarre argument for the death penalty: New York Senator James Donovan, 1975. "Where would Christianity be if Jesus had got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behaviour?"

After dinner this evening the Iron Buddha challenged me to scissors-paper-stone for who was going to do the washing up. Fair enough, I thought. I won. Best of three, she said. OK, I agreed out of pure love, if only of domestic harmony. I won again. Come on, one more try. Give me one more chance. OK, call me a pussy-whipped wimp, I agreed. I won again. All right, she said, I'll do the washing up, but let's try once more. I won. Just once more. I really think I'll get the better of you this time. She didn't. I won five times in a row. This is the most effective kind of wife-beating I have ever come across, and my entire and justified confidence in my ability to outwit her will no doubt reinforce firmly my control of my domestic environment. And all legally, and morally, unexceptionable.

Two Big Wins

Two victories today which I had predicted with great confidence: Liverpool beat Bolton Wanderers 4-0, and Vladimir "Poisoner" Putin won a landslide victory in the Russian elections. Liverpool had, of course, ensured that the referee and linesmen were firmly on the payroll, had sent emissaries to place polonium-210 in the tea-urn at the Reebok Stadium, and had let the Bolton back four know in no uncertain terms that Rafa Benitez' database held full information on where they lived, where their children went to school, etc. etc. Putin's United Russia party, however, though containing most of the high-profile political operators, knew that they would simply have to rely on standing up on the day, focusing on the concentration, playing for the team, giving 100 percent, doing it for the fans, concentrating on the focus, and getting a little bit of the rub of the green, Brian. Congratulations to both.

She Whose Name Cannot Be Mentioned...

A highly amusing page on the Times website this morning. On Thursday one Charles Bremner ran a piece about a 41-year-old Chinese singer called Namu, who has appealed to French President Sarkozy to marry her, on the occasion of his recent visit to China. Among the comments received on the piece was one suggesting that she was only doing this to obtain a visa, a practice not unknown among Chinese women. The piece's author then pointed out that she had no need of this; she was already an American citizen, thanks to an earlier marriage. The commentator replied:

"As for Namu, she has apparently gone the typical route, i.e. get your permanent US visa by marrying an American, play the game for the requisite period time, then move on to bigger and better things. Namu should certainly get a prize for grandest ambition by a female Chinese 'gold digger.' Don't EVER say these folks don't think BIG."

Now a little light-bulb switched on in my mind. Didn't I once hear of an even more worthy recipient of the prize, who had thought even BIGGER; someone else who had married an American, dumped him when the citizenship came through, and married someone a great deal richer than President Sarkozy? But they'd hardly publish that particular name on the website of a Murdoch paper.

I was, of course, behind the game. From all sides vats of opprobrium were poured from a great height on the would-be Madame la Présidente. She was described by different commentators as a prostitute, a disgrace to Asia, and a disgrace to self-respecting prostitutes. I found it odd that publicity stunt by a previously unknown Chinese lady would come in for quite such heavy criticism, until I realised that she is standing proxy for a certain other person. Delightful. I keep checking to see whether anyone at News Corp. has twigged and taken the page down, but it hasn't happened yet.

At this point in my blogging the Iron Buddha got out of bed. Thinking it might amuse her, I told her the story. Not my brightest idea. An unquenchable tempest of vilification ensued, aimed not at me but at this woman Namu. I should have remembered that all 650 million Chinese women hate each other with passion, and that it is never safe to mention the name of one to another, but it wasn't just that. Poor old Namu finds herself standing proxy for two hate figures at once. The lady looks rather similar to, comes from the same part of China as, is in the same media/ entertainment biz as, and is in all probability a friend of, a certain execrated ex of mine, any reminder of the existence of whom can cause the ambient temperature chez nous to drop by an instantaneous twenty degrees.

So do give yourselves a laugh and look on the Times website (here) before someone catches on or, better still, Rupert finds out. Meanwhile I shall continue to secure domestic harmony by elaborating, somewhat disingenuously, on how clock-stoppingly hideous Madame Namu is.

Islamophobia - count me in

Blimey. An Islamophobe’s dream/nightmare these past few days. Personally I don’t like going round feeling quite so angry all the time. But I think we Islamophobes are gradually being absolved of the need to apologise for ourselves. Perhaps it’s time to come out of the closet.

Sudan is an utter disaster. It was from the start – what might have worked as an imperial territory, with nasty white imperialists at least treating the various ethnic groups equally patronisingly, became not so much a nation state as a state of institutionalised civil war. And it ought now be possible to say, not out of racial prejudice but out of simple observation, that you can’t safely put Muslim Arabs in charge of anything. And yes, that does include Palestine. Bye-bye, Palestinian state. Just go and get yourselves assimilated among those so-called Arab brothers who’ve done fuck all for you in the past. If it had been possible to say to the poor woman “Look, there are dozens of countries where you can do some good for poor kids. Just don’t go to Arab Muslim ones, because no-one is safe." Well, now I hope it is.

What’s really irritating have been unsympathetic commentators who’ve said things like “Well, it’s their country and she broke the laws”. Broke the laws? There aren’t any laws, just what some mad fascist cleric decides on a whim. Had she behaved differently and insisted that the name be changed, I can imagine a row breaking out along the lines of “Kufr Western Bitch prevents our kids from honouring our Prophet” and pointing out that a mere woman has no right overruling males, even if they’re seven. “It’s their country and she broke the law” would then be equally appropriate. Shari’a Law is a meaningless concept. It’s just the whim of whoever’s holding the gun or the whip. My slogan for the next confrontation: SHARI’A IS SH’ITE. Just don’t go there. People who go and work in Arab countries for money are henceforth to be called Rent Boys.

And the possibility of the lash reminded us that a chap called Gavin Sherrard-Smith got 50 lashes in Qatar in 1993 for breaking the alcohol ban. (This was reported in the Mail on Sunday – exactly half the comments were sympathetic, and the other half were about how good it would be if we introduced the same punishments here for people the Mail on Sunday doesn’t like.) Qatar! Sells itself as “the acceptable face”. No, we don’t use its airline any more, do we, however cheap its flights to Thailand might be.

Rather like Dubai. A German banker friend of mine – so wholly apolitical that he hadn’t a clue of the significance of what he was saying - that he’d been involved in some big financial deal with the Maktoums, who rule Dubai. His job was to put a syndicate of banks together to raise the money for a project. When Maktoum came over he discovered that one of the banks was M. M. Warburg, and asked if the Warburgs were Jewish. This could not be denied, and he banged the table and demanded that the syndicate be reconstituted as all-Aryan. I understand, though not agreeing with, the Arab boycott of Israel, but if one is the right side of the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism one should be perfectly at ease with fully assimilated European Jews like the Warburgs. No, the Maktoums are straightforwardly anti-Semitic. Shit, if we don’t fly Emirates either, getting to Thailand might become a tad expensive.

Remember Hilaire Belloc, also, coincidentally, on the Sudan: “Whatever happens, we have got/ The Maxim gun, and they have not.” Now update it. L’audace, my friends, toujours l’audace. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And if we don’t get you, the Israelis must.

A few hundred yards from where I live in Lancaster, there stands a vast Victorian Gothic building well set back from the A588. It used to be a mental hospital, called the Royal Albert or something similarly comfortingly Victorian. It would not astonish me if it were discovered that the late Mervyn Peake had been round here and a light-bulb had switched on in his head with the word “Gormenghast” above it.

Not very long ago, somebody decided they could make quite a wad of cash if they dumped the patients and sold the whole thing off. The mantra of “care in the community” was doubtless intoned, and the mental patients returned to their “communities” of origin, to be fed by the ravens. This being Lancashire, a large number of the patients were found to have a birthplace in Manchester. One shudders at the thought of them being dropped off in Moss Side with twenty quid and a couple of local authority leaflets. But that, I’m told, is what happened.

The building, meanwhile, was sold to some Islamic organisation. Now it announces itself as Jamea Al Kauthar Islamic College. It’s a girls’ school of the strict Muslim kind, no doubt there to serve the sort of people who don’t really think girls should go to school at all but have to set up something to show to the police. I’d love to see their GCSE and A level results. Perhaps I should enquire.

Anyway, there’s usually a couple of superannuated Mercs or Volvos parked up there when one drives past, but one very rarely sees signs of human life. I have to say I was rather relieved when, driving into town today at about half past four, I passed a group of girls in niqabs waiting at the bus stop opposite the school. (Since you ask, no I didn’t drive close to the kerb so as to soak them with water. It hadn’t rained today.) So it isn’t entirely an Al-Qa’eda bomb factory. OK, so I’m a bit prejudiced. (I prefer to use the term post-judiced.) But how would you like, in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, to live virtually next door to a place that looks like Gormenghast and is covered with a blanket of silence except for the occasional appearance of a bird in a burqa?

So nothing sinister should be read into the fact that we’re moving house in the New Year. I just need a bigger place so as to get my stuff out of storage. Honest.

Pain in the Arse Revisited

The condition so unwisely advertised in the last post was not helped by some really buttock-clenching TV last night. Yes, I know I'm the sort of hypocrite who proclaims Roger Scrutonesque distaste for all TV but in practice there are a lot of exceptions. Besides, I'm married to someone from a nation which collectively doesn't realise that the telly has an "off" switch.
Anyway, one of the exceptions is Have I Got News For You, which had invited Ann Widdecombe to present it. Yes, you did read that right. It was seriously painful stuff. She was, as always, a game and unshockable old girl, but didn't come within light-years of getting the point. Trying to exert her authority by cutting off any attempt by Messrs Hislop and Merton to make jokes, which they countered very well by a lot of theatrical cringing. Obviously not up for any banter except on her own terms, i.e. reciting the prepared jokes in her script. Seriously excruciating watching.

And now we get to play Croatia again in the World Cup qualifying. Oh joy. Wonder how many potential England managers are already practising their feeble excuses.

A Pain in the Arse...

obviously means I've got colon cancer. Well, I've got a very colon-cancer-friendly diet haven't I? And every hypochondriac picks a winner in the end. Or maybe it's the chronic prostatitis that was always going to turn into cancer one day. After all my dad was hardly older than me when he got prostate cancer. No, the truth is less dramatic (although hardly less distasteful) - the bloody Chalfonts are back.

I'm reminded of a P J O'Rourke (wrong politics but great man!) piece about a guy who "wasn't quite being bored to death, but was being bored into a very bad mood. And that was worse, because there is nothing heroic about facing a bad mood with dignity." A man facing cancer with composure is admirable. A man facing (well, not exactly facing) Rockfords with anything at all is a joke.

When I got back from taking the lovely lady's books back to the library she sweetly suggested I had a nice sit down while she cooked the dinner. I gently pointed out that I preferred to stand, and that I might as well cook while I was doing so.

Achilles' heel, St. Paul's "thorn in the flesh" - I can't help thinking that these might have been euphemisms.

Day Struck Out of the Calendar

Asleep all day. Horrible. Only got out of bed when a mate called round at quarter to five. Ghastly beyond belief.

Oh What A Beautiful Morning

Sorta nice to see the Government's sorrows coming not single spies, but in battalions. Not because I believe that anything would be any better if Call Me Dave or whichever priggish w****r the Lib Dims choose were Prime Minister, but it does 'em good to have it up 'em occasionally.

That some gormless civil servant has managed to lose 25 million people's personal data will not surprise anyone with any experience of the Civil Service. Know who the busiest person in Britain is today? Not the PM, or the Chancellor, or the Head of the Revenue - particularly not him, as he's resigned. It'll be whoever is Head of Human Resources in the Revenue and Customs. No doubt a lot of people would like to know who the berk was who caused the whole fiasco. And the Head of HR will be bending all her energies to giving this sad useless git all the protection that Dr David Kelly wasn't found worthy of. This is what public sector HR departments do - rally round their own to save them from criticism. Three times in my civil service career I got carpeted for using "inappropriate language" about my colleagues. Once it was for calling one lot "a bunch of brainless jobsworths". Now, that wasn't kind or helpful, and when ordered to apologise I did so with good grace, but does anybody really think there are no brainless jobsworths in the Civil Service? But this remains the official position, and as a result the brainless jobsworths have proliferated to the extent of driving out all intelligent life in some departments.

Who's using the Home Office brain cell today?


And then Northern Rock. Who's going to get stuck with the bill? Anyone might, with the exception of the bastards who caused the whole fandango in the first place. What caused the run on the bank as people queued down the High Street to get their money out? The belief - nay, the certain knowledge - that if things really went tits up the bank's executives would grab all the remaining money for themselves and say to the depositors and shareholders "Sorry, but there's none left for you, old chap. Didn't you read the small print?"

And now a new lot of sharks are circling, offering to get the bank and the Government out of trouble, on one condition; that they make a guaranteed profit out of it and that all the risks are borne by someone else - probably the taxpayer, as the has no right to refuse the deal. All banking works on this principle. Bankers risk everybody's money but their own. They are the polar opposite of proper entrepreneurs, and the negation of the argument that people who take big risks deserve big rewards when they come off. I don't particularly want Adam Applegarth (boss of Northern Rock who resigned far too late) sent to prison - I'd begrudge him the free porridge. I want him subjected to a one-man windfall tax depriving him of all assets except a two-bedroom terrace in Newcastle, a 20th-century Skoda, and an income capped at £10,000 a year. And the same goes for all other one-way-bet specialists who land the rest of us in the poo. I have a little song, to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain":

Oh, I'd love to see a banker on a bus,
Yes, I'd love to see a banker on a bus.
Oh I'd love to see a banker,
(sorry, can't think of a rhyming fourth line - any suggestions?)
I'd love to see a banker on a bus.

We all have days like this (I hope)

Unbelievably ghastly day. The bipolar stuff leads you to this point on occasion.

Completely unable to get out of bed for sheer terror till 2 p.m. No chance of getting anything written. Supposed to be manning the soup kitchen and singing in the evening. No bloody chance.

Stuff in the papers about people on incapacity benefit being really able to work. I suspect it's all balls. For each person with made-up backache there are ten with fits of the horrors which would never let them get through a day in the modern workplace with psychopathic bosses and back-biting colleagues.

Thank God I don't have to be in anyone's bleeding office.

Gradually rolling home

Well, got a step nearer to getting new place to live. After studying the feng shui all weekend, the Iron Buddha told me she would have to ring an expert in Beijing to get the final verdict. Unfortunately, there is an 8-hour time difference between Britain and China, and by the time the IB got out of bed the expert had clocked off. At this point I banged the table. Yes, cultural sensitivity blah blah blah, but if I was going to have to wait until the dear girl got up early enough in the morning (her record doesn't inspire confidence) to get instruction from some superstitious nutter in China, we'd be stuck here for ever. So we are putting our application in for "the White House" as the IB calls it, not ever being able to remember street or district names. Not that I wish to be associated with the sort of person who gets to live in the real White House, of course....

Cranford - Never Again

Watched the adaptation of "Cranford", with all-star cast. Flawlessly done, of course; but uppermost in my mind is the little-boy-viewing-the-emperor's-new-clothes question; wasn't the whole period horrible? Attempted frustration of every charitable impulse by social convention and what-would-people-think? OK, maybe it's a bit exaggerated and it wasn't like that really; but what I do know is that we don't want anything like that ever again. Sod Victorian values. I've never been so glad to have brought my sons up to hang around all day in their pyjamas, despise conventional jobs and say "fuck" occasionally (so long as it isn't in their grandma's presence).

Reprise

OK. Start again. Realised that if I don't get started on the regular blogging trail I'm unlikely to get anything written.

Might have found a new place to live. Having decided not to pursue the crazy idea of splitting my life between Lancaster and Hamburg, we're now going to rent a bigger house here in Lancaster and get all our stuff out of storage in Germany. That is, if they haven't sold it all at auction due to not having heard from us or received any money for three months.

Shown round by a pretty blonde estate agent: "Ooh, it's freezing!" she says as she gets out of the car, dressed in standard northern-lass get-up, i.e. displaying a cleavage you could park your bike in. Not that I noticed, of course, being in the company of 'er indoors.

However, there is a delay. The Iron Buddha won't let me sign up to anything until she's spent days researching the feng-shui. First question on waking up next morning is can I remember exactly where the loo was? This is vitally important, apparently. The loo is a great source of bad karma, and there aren't a lot of places where it's allowed to be. She may have to ring China tomorrow morning before we can arrive at the final verdict.