All Governments are Coalition Governments

The title pretty well says all I want to say. There seems to be so much fear that a Lib-Con or Lib-Lab-Green-SDLP-SNP-Acronym alliance will be in some way inferior to single-party rule.

Think about it though - the Labour party is composed of many feuding groups and contains characters like Frank Field and Dennis Skinner whose views bear little or no resemblance to Peter Mandelson's. On the Tory side, anyone who spots a similarity between David Davis and Zak Goldsmith deserves a prize.

The point is that they put their differences aside when they have to and co-operate where they can. Sounds very much like a coalition government to me.

Vote Stan.

Better the Doofus you Know

The hero of Stephen Fry's book "Making History" sends a male contraceptive pill back in time and makes Adolf Hitler's dad infertile. The theory was that by making sure Adolf Hitler never existed, millions of people would be spared the mayhem of war and holocaust that he caused.

What then happened though was that a different, less mad, more able man led the Nazis to victory in Europe in the 1940's and on to a lasting world domination that changed our hero's past and present very much for the worse.

I was reminded of this when I read about the government banning the organisation Islam4UK.

I actually wish they hadn't done this - Islam4UK's actions and opinions are monstrous, but they are almost comically incompetent and impotent. They have zero PR ability and are led by a failed medical student who supports his family on State Benefits. The man is so dim that he fails to see the contradiction involved in taking money from a State that he doesn't want anything to do with.

Can you imagine a situation where instead of this bunch of stroppy mammy's boys, an extreme Islamic organisation was formed that was led by someone of more substance. Imagine a man (not a woman, infidel) who was filled with something more than just lazy hatred and ambition. Imagine someone capable of building an organisation that was intelligent, well-funded, coherent and media-savvy.

Scary.

Society's best defence is actually the incompetence of its enemies. For example, Glasgow Airport was only saved because the car bomber didn't realise his jeep was too big to ever fit through the door. And the BNP will never prosper with a voter-repellent like Nick Griffin in charge.

Organisations like Islam4UK are never going to change anything and we shouldn't indulge Mr Choudary's ego by banning it.Being a member of a banned organisation is actually a little bit cool and there's a danger of making it more attractive to disaffected youth.

Better instead to charge them whenever they break the law (which they did) and to take any spare opportunity to look them in the eye, point at them and laugh.

Ha ha. Silly name "Islam4UK" anyway. Don't they realise there isn't anything more decadent and Western that using textspeak.

LOL ROFL etc.

Swearing can Big and it can be Clever

I thought there was a good chance that the recent kerfuffle about comedy on the BBC would be used by some people as a weapon to push home a prissy conservative agenda.

I figured it would the Undead Concerned Christian Tory Viewers Society or similar; but now it seems that the push is coming from tabloid newspapers which have made good livings from sex scandals and pictures of bethonged celebrities' girlfriends.

I'm against gratuitous swearing - but no swearing at all ?

Scott Adams, the creator of the "Dilbert" cartoons once extracted the basic elements of comedy :-

• Clever
• Cute
• Bizarre
• Cruel
• Naughty
• Recognizable

His theory is that only by combining a number of elements can anything be truly funny. Taking the example of the phone-message from Brand and Ross, this only ticked the box marked "Cruel" and that's why it was it wasn't at all funny.

The usually excellent Emily Maitlis on the usually excellent "Newsnight" programme took one of my favourite jokes of the last year and used it to beat up on a BBC representative as an example of how offensive comedy on the BBC had become.

I would contend on the contrary that this particular joke should be handed down through generations of comedians to show them what a well-constructed joke looks like. It should be ruthlessly compared and contrasted with the inarticulate dung-chucking in which Brand and Ross indulged. I'm disappointed that Emily Maitlis would pretend not to understand the difference.

Frankie Boyle's joke was on "Mock the Week" and if you missed it, it is currently available on YouTube here.

Here are the points I would make about it (no, I'm not going to repeat it):-

• He said "Pussy" and not one of the more usual stronger, meaner words for the same thing, and that made it all the funnier.
• He said it was "haunted" which is a bizarre notion and infinitely preferable to any other descriptions involving death, decay and dessication.
• It was a clever, bizarre, admittedly cruel, naughty joke delivered by a cheeky chappie at the height of his powers.
• It absolutely slayed the audience and his fellow comedians and me at home. You can forgive a lot when a joke just "works".
  

What's the harm in an adult listening to a joke like that ? None. Things get more complex when you talk about kids. Sure, there's a watershed but there's also YouTube, BBC IPlayer and Digital Recorders. There's a debate to be had here, but let's admit that it's a complex one and don't let's kill what is good with simplistic calls to ban everything.

Vote Frankie Boyle.

Land of Heroes and Poo-Throwing Monkeys

Were I ever to be in a situation where a grenade was about to go off nearby, I suspect I would in rapid order :-

a) Start crying, and
b) Soil myself

The last thing I would do is

c) Cooly throw myself on the grenade to protect my mates

Hats off to Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher of the Royal Marines who did exactly that and lived to tell the tale. His backpack ended up in orbit, but he somehow escaped to tell the tale and to pick up some bling from the queen today.

A man of his rank makes about £60 per day, and I'm guessing days like he's been through seem actually pretty blooming long.

I can't help but compare and contrast with Wrongathan Ross and Woeful Brand who (get/got/will almost certainly get in future) considerably more ... for doing what exactly ?

Monkeys throwing their own excrement around would seem nuanced by comparison.

And I certainly know who I'd rather have as a mate.

Jab

My Stanetta is back from school with a sore arm. On the bright side she's now a hundred times less likely to die from cervical cancer.

This is thanks to the German virologist Harald zur Hausen, who discovered the link between the HPV virus and many types of cervical cancer, winning him a share of this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Seems like a no-brainer to me that every parent would want to protect their girls from such a serious, avoidable risk, but the HPV innoculation jab has stirred up some controversy among a smattering of no-brainer Christian groups.

Their thinking is that by consenting to the innoculation against HPV, I am giving the green light to premarital underaged sex.

If Stanetta is reading this - no, I'm not. You can wait until after I'm dead, as previously discussed.

Seems to me that these out-there Christian groups would prevent people from wearing seat belts on the grounds that it encourages people to drive like morons.

Innoculations save lives - it tickles me that many of the groups opposed would describe themselves as "Pro Life".

Not-For-Prophet

I'm annoyed that I'm not getting the adulation and acclaim I deserve for predicting the current financial apocalypse over six months ago. I'm even more annoyed I didn't manage to make money out of it.

I don't have much to add to what I said before - except to say that many more dominoes are yet to fall, and that all governments should stop assuming that pouring more water into a bucket with a hole is going to give you anything other than wet feet.

Some good things have come of this. For example, the death of the simple-minded worship of The Markets. Nowadays, believing that unregulated Market Forces should alone decide what is Good is akin to believing in the literal truth of Norse Mythology. Especially in Iceland.

There have also been some rather excellent jokes :-

• The Isle of Dogs Building Society has collapsed. They've called in the retrievers. Meanwhile, in Japan, The Origami Bank have folded.
  
• What's the difference between Investment Bankers and London Pigeons? The Pigeons are still capable of making deposits on new BMWs
• Quote of the day (from a trader): "This is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."

The best bit is that all the sleazy people who hid their money offshore aren't covered by government guarantees and so are likely to lose the lot. Now that's real entertainment.

Fuld's Gold

There are many appealing aspects to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The sight of braying City Boys on the pavement with their potplants and putters for one. For those of us with a pinko-commie-fag-subversive leaning, it would seem that justice is being finally done.

However, there is this guy called Richard S. Fuld Jr.

Let's call him" Dick".

Dick has been CEO of Lehman Brothers since it was spun-off from Amex in 1994. Dick has had a bad year - the value of his options have dropped by some $900 million since the stock peaked last year. However, it hasn't been all bad - he has "earned" (in the loosest possible sense) $466m during his CEO tenure, including a bonus of $22m in 2007. Also, in the (very likely) event that he'll be asked to leave by the new owners, he will be due a $64m leaving package.

Dick didn't see that his company balance sheet was shot to pieces due to the effect of toxic real estate loans. He twice turned down offers of a lifebelt, first from the Koreans, then from the Chinese. Either one of these deals would have refinanced the company and saved tens of thousands of jobs.

While his company has been in meltdown this week, he has reportedly been holed-up in his plush office suite saying nothing while his underlings have tried to save the company. Presumably he's been hiding under his desk, counting his money, crying and calling for his mummy.

He has finally surfaced, and is due to appear in Washington in front of Congress to

“examine the regulatory mistakes and financial excesses that led to the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers,” and “explore the impacts of the bankruptcy on financial markets and the United States economy."

Dick will no doubt blame "short sellers" (as did the Bear Stearns guy before him) and then head off for a very comfortable retirement - he has after all done nothing illegal, and "stupidity" is unlikely to be a valid reason for his new bosses to kick him out of his job without a bean.

Tell me where the justice is in this case ? To me it's another indictment of Free Market theory where the assumption is that "Market Forces" will reward the good and punish the bad.

Buy shares in any company selling Red Tape - governments will soon be putting in panic bulk orders to help regulate their unregulated markets to avoid this happening again.

Oh, and vote Stan.

Get Your Torches and Pitchforks

According to their website, The Metro Hotel in Woking "is a highly successful budget hotel that has been open for 4 years and can boast a year round occupancy in excess of 85%".

I have a feeling that they will have less to boast about next year after they refused entry to an injured British Army Corporal visiting an injured colleague (and didn't get away with it).

I'd love to have been a fly-on-the-wall today as the management tarred-and-feathered the receptionist concerned and begged for mercy under an onslaught of hate mail, cancelled bookings, abusive phone calls, tabloid snappers and purple-faced politicians. For a good and rather amusing cross-section of reaction, see the unreliably brilliant ARRS (ARmy Rumour Service).

I hope this incident will convince workers in the leisure industry that discriminating against soldiers is a career-limiting decision.

Corporal Stringer is now back in Helmand Province doing a nasty job that I'm SO glad I'm not doing. I wonder how much the Receptionist would fancy a spell of facing-off to the Taliban ?

Next time the Corporal comes home, here's hoping the country will have changed ever so slightly for the better and he won't be in any danger of having to spend the night in his car.

Update 1 - later that day : The hotel are being flamed to a crisp on blogs and news sites across the planet. The Armed Forces and Defence ministers have written stiffly worded letters. The owners of the hotel, American Amusements, are not answering their phones and are hopefully cowering behind the reception desk wanting their collective mummies. Every conceivable travel agency website has acquired several unflattering reviews of the hotel today. The Sun are pestering Michael Appleton, a director, "at his £2million home".

Update 2 - the morning after : I didn't believe that a jobsworth receptionist would just make up such a policy on the spot. They hadn't - here's the BBC coverage of a the response received to letter written by the soldier's mum's MP, Hywel Williams :-

A manager in the letter said the hotel had in recent months "experienced some rather serious incidents" resulting from the stay of personnel from a local barracks and staff had been requested to be "cautious" in taking future bookings from the armed forces.

Managers were asked to assess cases.

"In almost every case the booking is accepted. This process does not appear to have happened in this case, for which I sincerely apologise. We also fully recognise and appreciate the tremendous courage and sacrifices made by member of our armed services".

Just how much damage did they think one tired squaddie with a broken wrist was going to do to their hotel ? I still want heads on sticks.

Update 3 : The evening after : a couple of hundred people visited Radio Free Stan thanks to the above article - wish I had something to sell to all these good people.

It's interesting to see on other blogs how in their versions of the story, Corporal Stringer was going to a funeral. According to all the sources I trust, the mate he was visiting was alive but recovering from wounds (extent unknown). I guess somewhere along the way, someone sexed the story up for additional impact. Shame : it's a strong enough story without turning it into an urban myth.

Another common trick I saw in other blogs was to imply that the hotel "hated the military". I really can't see the evidence for this. There is definitely evidence of stupidity, lack of tact and casual discrimination - but hate seems unlikely.

And I don't condone the threats that have been made against the hotel staff - I think this battle has already been won - it's not good form to bayonet the survivors.

Ranger Justin James Cupples died in an explosion near Sangin in Helmand Province while this hotel nonsense was going on bringing the total of British casualties in Afghanistan to 117. Soldiers have given so much - it's surely not out of line to treat them well when they get home ?

English Clearances

Tim Leunig (pronounced "Looney") works for the shadowy organisation Policy Exchange (motto : "Death to the North") who are said to be David Cameron's favoured Think Tankers. He has on their behalf excreted a policy document "Cities Unlimited - making urban regeneration work".

If you feel like reading the full excretion, click here, although on second thoughts, please don't - you'll just encourage them.

In summary, what they suggest is that Northern English (mainly coastal) cities like Liverpool, Blackpool and Sunderland have had it and the inhabitants should quit moaning and move to Oxford and Cambridge so they can live on an overpopulated flood plain and be less of a strain on the country.

I'm sure the inhabitants of Oxford and Cambridge wouldn't relish a sudden influx of a million Scousers, Mackems and Blackpudlians and I'm damn sure the above would already have decamped south were they so inclined.

To David Cameron's credit, he is treating the document like a dead plague rat - after all this isn't the sort of stuff you bring up BEFORE you get elected.

The North is not all bad and the South is not all good (hint: Croydon). People are not relocatable economic units and there is definitely such a thing as Society. You do however suspect there are some undercover Thatcherites who still believe otherwise.

They got it spot-on for Blackpool though - the sooner they move everyone out, demolish the place and start again, the better.

Olympus Moans

As per usual, I'm in total agreement with that fine American publication, The Onion.

Specifically, the article "Nation to leave Olympics on in the Background" sums up my personal mood of apathy towards the whole $40 billion boondoggle. Do I care about rowing ? No. Does anything exciting happen in swimming, apart from one winning and seven losing ? No. Is there any difference between Archery and Lawn Darts? No. Do I want to spend all day watching toned young boys in speedos jumping into the water together? Strangely, I don't. Personally my favourite event of the Olympics so far was the torch relay through London, and no medals were presented for that. The Beach Volleyball can't come soon enough I say.

$40 billion is a whole load of money. I mean, China's health budget is only about $10 billion. London 2012 is going to look pretty weedy and low-budget by comparison. And I'm paying for that. It looks increasingly like the cost will be something of the order of £10 billion, and a chunk of that is my tax money. I'm also losing out on £10 billion worth of stuff the government won't be able to do because they're building a sports pitch for London. All for something that will look like an inferior copy of the Beijing event.

And just like the Onion suggests, all that money will be spent, and the World will be almost but not quite watching.

Whatever would Gene Hunt say

I know it's a serious issue, but I couldn't help being amused (if slightly alarmed) by the article in The Times ("Police told to take deep breaths and eat healthily").

Alarmed mostly by the comment about that they should "step away from stressful situations". Personally I think that it's almost a definition of a Police Officer - someone who steps into stressful situations. The very best it seems to me almost relish the prospect - and I think eating fried food is a part of their culture that isn't going away soon. In fact it's good for them to spend time in kebab houses and chip shops - there is more violence there than in vegan sandwich shops and the opening hours are more convenient.

It's my lawn mower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want.

I've had problems with getting petrol mowers to start and I've had some bad days, but I've never reacted like the guy in Wisconsin who took a sawn-off shotgun to his recalcitrant garden appliance. It reminded me of the bit in "Fawlty Towers" where John Cleese laid into his car with a branch because it wouldn't start. Apparently if he were in America, he would simply have shot it.

Mr Angry of Milwaukee is in line for a fine of up to $11,000 and a maximum prison sentence of six-and-a-half years if convicted - I'm guessing the penalty for beating it with a branch would have be much less. Maybe he should try that next time. Or counting to ten. Or not drinking like a loon before heading out into the garden.

I hope if he does do some time for this that someone will at least cut his grass for him while he's away.

Bonfire of the Banalities

Usually, when you bring the Nazis into any argument you're getting lazy and are probably well on the way to losing the argument.

This is a well-documented feature of post-war rhetoric : e.g

* Godwin's Law states that "As a (Usenet) discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one"
and also
* "Reductio Ad Hitlerum" states that "Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad". It has the corollary "Hitler (or the Nazis) were against X, therefore X must be good".

As far as I can remember I've kept Nazi references out of this blog, except where Darfur is concerned and I still say that's totally justified.

A less justified example is the owner of a Lap Dancing Club in West Sussex that burned down under suspicious circumstances last week. Now, I certainly would love it if all Lap Dancing establishments were to vanish, however setting them on fire is a step too far. I almost started to feel for the owner but then I read the following quote:

"Personally I think they did it because they are anti-lapdancing. With some people it runs to a high passion. I compare it to the book burning in Berlin in 1939."

Where to start with a comment like that !

For starters there weren't many books left to burn in 1939 - the major burnings were in 1933. But more importantly, isn't there a difference between the freedom to pay £500 for a bottle of naff champagne and a bump 'n' grind and the freedom to read Hemmingway, Freud and Brecht?!

Cretin.

Anti-Depression

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

A depression is when you lose your job.

The above is an example of Economist humour. Ha ha.

Before the 1930s Great Depression, every period of "negative growth" was referred to as a "depression" but after that the term "recession" was coined to distinguish between a mere ill wind and a hurricane.

There's no currently agreed definition of an economic depression, but the definition I like best is where the country's GDP (Gross Domestic product = the sum of everything "made" by the country) declines by more than 10%. Between 1929 and 1933 the US economy declined by 33%.

Debt was a major cause of that depression also - but in that case it was coupled with radical deflation (40-60%) in raw material prices that meant that businesses couldn't afford to service their debt and went bust. This led to a painfully massive 25% unemployment rate.

By contrast the bad years ahead (2008-9) are estimated in the UK to involve a 1% GROWTH in GDP and the chances of a literal economic depression after that are unlikely.

Business isn't going to be easy that's for sure, but let's get a bit of historical perspective here. It's been worse and it always gets better eventually.

Ecce Homo

I was all set for a big, long, bitchy blog about the Church of England last week and you know what happened ? They only went and did the right thing on women Bishops, which shut me up good and proper.

I suspected at the time that it wouldn't be long before something happened to upset me again.

Today the openly gay Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, was speaking at a church in West London and was heckled by a protester. His sermon was on big world problems and how tragic it was that the Anglican church concentrated so much of their energy on sexuality when there was so much more important issue they should be addressing.

I'll not get into the arguments from both sides, I just want to make one point.

26 Anglican bishops sit in the House of Lords. This means that one Christian sect is absurdly over-represented in our second House of Parliament, but I'll let that pass for now.

My point is that access to the House of Lords should not be restricted by racial, gender, sexual or other affiliation. As the Church of England is providing 26 members of the House they should, if they want to represent the population as a whole, be providing 13 women and an absolute minimum of 3 gay people.

So, if the Church of England is determined to remain a homophobic members-club, that's a matter for them. But the Lords should represent society as a whole. Homophobic members-clubs should not be given any representation there.

I do look forward to seeing the first Woman Bishop taking her seat in the Lords - I do however suspect it'll be long after I'm gone.

Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3

And yes, Ian Dury is definitely on my Great Lyricists list.

I was watching a repeat of "Location, Location, Location" in a rare idle moment this week. It was from a completely different era when property prices were booming and everything was sunny and optimistic with the economy. About 18 months ago I think.

Anyway, the couple involved were totally obnoxious, smug and annoying and I was about to switch off when I had a thought that instantly made it the most enjoyable TV show I'd seen for some time.

Basically, you need to watch the program with the benefit of hindsight. We now know that the smug and obnoxious couple are about to make the worst decision of their lives and buy a house at the top of a market that will almost instantly fall away beneath their feet. By the end I was cheering them on to take the plunge and I almost cried with joy when they did buy the house. Wonder how smug they are now that it is worth about 30% less than they paid. They are probably still pretty obnoxious though

Yes, it's probably wrong for me to gain enjoyment from bad things happening to bad people but if we're to keep smiling through the Credit Crunch we need to make the best of the situation.

For example:-

* Hundreds of Estate Agents are getting sacked and the rest are fighting each other for the few remaining scraps of business. Hurray !

* Those crashing bores who go on about how much the price of their houses have increased have shut the heck up. Funny how they don't prattle on about how much money they have lost recently.

* I love see to the faces of the 4x4 drivers at the petrol station when they see that they have spend over £100 on filling up.

* Lots of braying City Boys have been sent packing from their Financial Institutions with no transferable skills and a £500-a-day cocaine habit.

* Less traffic on the roads as people start to think about whether they need to use the car for all their journeys.

* I can usually get a seat at Starbucks these days

You are welcome to provide your own examples, and remember Schadefreude is fun and costs nothing and so is the perfect way to take your mind off how the heck you are going to pay the mortgage this month.

Selling Out

I'm not sure I have any respect for Ian Usher who has just sold his entire life for just short of £200,000 on Ebay. I am entirely sure that I have no respect for the person that bought it.

I know it's convenient to do all your shopping "under one roof", but isn't this taking things a bit far?

I imagine the purchaser to be someone who has nothing in the world apart from an Internet connection , £200,000 in the bank and a "To Do" list that reads :-

* Buy house
* Buy contents for house
* Buy car
* Buy motorbike and misc. macho sports gear
* Get crappy job selling rugs (even though I don't need the money)
* Get friends

Or maybe it's someone who was told to "get a life" and took it way too literally.

Whatever, someone will be stepping into his shoes (literally) and Mr. Usher will be exiting his house with the clothes on his back, a passport and a (well-stuffed) wallet. Good luck to him and I hope the new life he builds is one he'll want to hang onto.

The Economics of Stupidity

I love it when the experts get it wrong. It usually means that some self-evident truth maybe isn't that self-evident and maybe isn't even true any more.

Witness the gob-smacking rise in consumer spending recently. There is no good reason for it - the Economy is going to hell in a handcart, fuel prices are up, credit is crunched. Many reasons for it have been proposed by puzzled, slightly embarrassed economists, but none have been terrible satisfying. I believe the following force is at work :-

Slack-jawed, reptilian levels of stupidity.

I like to watch reality cop shows on TV. With the advent of Freeview digital TV and digital recorders I could (and often do) spend too much of my life watching "Police, Stop","Street Wars" "Car Wars" and (my favourite) "Police Interceptors". The reason I mention this is that on one of these shows a guy was stopped by police for speeding at 100mph + on the motorway. His excuse ?

"I was running out of petrol and wanted to get to the services quickly".

I think this is a good metaphor for the current anomalous spending boom. If you are running out of petrol, a sensible person would slow down to conserve fuel (55 mph is the most fuel efficient speed) and then turn-off anything (like the aircon) that might burn fuel. Then they'd drive more carefully than they ever had before, avoiding wasteful harsh acceleration in case they needed to brake wastefully hard.

That's a sensible person - a lot of people it seems would simply floor the accelerator and trust to luck and an ignorance of basic Physics.

In short, Economics assumes rational behaviour by large groups of people. Anyone who attends football matches knows this is something of a long shot. I think it's time for economists to realise that Consumers do not always react to bad economic news by belt-tightening but sometimes by putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU !" and heading for the shops.

Mixed Marriage

Somehow the Stan Household manages to survive being composed of an Atheist Dad, a Christian Mum and a Christian Daughter.

To listen to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, you'd think this was a rare, nay freak state of affairs. So much so, that he has felt the need to remind Christians to respect Atheists. Was the previous policy to hunt them with dogs ?

It was interesting to listen to him on Radio 4 this morning, well after Richard Dawkins did his piece. The Cardinal is not the greatest of speakers and he uses the lamest sound bites and clichés ... er ... "at the drop of a hat".

I have a few questions :-

1. What is this "deep esteem" he mentions that I should start to expect to receive from Catholics, and could I have the cash instead ?
2. What are the chances that the UK could become a "God-free zone" ? A few big-mouthed bolshie atheists against the Creator of All sounds like a mis-match to me.
   
3. Why does he always describe Atheists as "non-believers" ? Atheists believe - just not in the same thing as the Cardinal.
4. Exactly which "people are afraid to express their religious beliefs in the UK" ?
5. Exactly which "many people" are suffering from "a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience." ? And what in the name of Baal is he talking about ?

I can only think he point-blank refused to go head-to-head on the radio with Richard Dawkins, who has a once-in-a-lifetime mind and a considerable talent for aggressive iconoclasm. Or maybe he just didn't want to stay in the room with someone who would compare his God to an "Imaginary Friend". I can't help thinking he's a bit short on "Deep Esteem" for Atheists if he won't debate with them. Check out Rabbi Shmuley Boteach versus Christopher Hitchens on YouTube - I'm sure the Cardinal could pick up some pointers.

I say No to drugs, but the drugs don't listen...

We should find some sort of award for Nicky Taylor who, in making the programme "Should I Smoke Dope ?" (shown on BBC3 recently), made it a part of her job to go to Amsterdam and hang around smoking dope and eating cake.

You may remember she is also the person who made it a part of her job on previous occasions to go binge-drinking, have a tummy-tuck and fail to wash for a month. Not typical behaviour for a 40-something single mum from Kidderminster but hardly cutting-edge journalism. Managed to upset the Daily Mail though, which is usually a good sign.

If there's anyone reading this who has influence in commissioning programmes for digital TV, I urgently need to talk to you about developing some ideas where I investigate the effects of living in a big house, driving a selection of big cars and eating in fancy restaurants every night. My working title is "Could I have more money than sense (please) ?"

I'm just hellish jealous - firstly that she thought of it first, but also because she is rather good at it. She's a real character - scatty, flirtatious, clever and very funny. Can't wait to see what she does next.

Oh, and the shock answer to the question "Should I Smoke Dope?" turned out be to "Heck, No !". Even if it were legal (and it isn't) you should especially not do it regularly or you'll perforate your lungs and melt your brain. The stuff on sale in the UK is particularly not recommended because of quality issues and the fact that you're probably bankrolling organised criminals.

Stan says "Just Say No, Kids"

*****

Another excellent episode of "Mad Men" last night - but, alas, no time to do it justice here. Maybe next time.