A Healthy Diet...

...the aforementioned Ian McCartney is, we are told, now to leave office for 'health reasons.'

Champagne diet you see. Catches up with you in the end.

"Let Them Eat Fibre..."

...how very handy. The NHS in Bristol has taken their time and our money to print leaflets advising the recently unemployed not to become despondent, but to eat plenty of fruit and veg and get a good night's sleep.

Alcoholic abstinence is urged, whilst brisk walks are advised - though not presumably to the pub - to stimulate the endorphins and 'make you feel energised and positive.'

"Taking care of yourself," we are wisely informed, "will help you to stay in good shape so you are able to cope well with life's difficulties. It will also prepare you for your return back to work when a job opportunity comes up."

Perfectly sound advice of course, bleeding obvious naturally. Play well with people about to lose their homes, whose lives are in meltdown? Possibly not.

Let them eat fibre indeed!

Signs and Portents...

This from the Beeb today. (Official health warning yet to arrive from Diocesan HQ. Bit odd, when you consider how swift them Elven Safety folk ordinarily are to act.)

Dog collar clergy 'risk attack'

Members of the UK clergy are being advised to take off their dog collars when they are on their own, to reduce the risk of being attacked.

National Churchwatch, which provides personal safety advice, says vicars are attacked more often than professions such as GPs and probation officers. The organisation's Nick Tolson said all clergy should consider the advice, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The group also produces security advice for churches and churchworkers. Mr Tolson said: "When they are on their own, and when they are off duty - for example when they are doing their shopping in Tesco on their own - there is no need for them to wear their dog collars.

"All that does is to attract people who see the dog collars, and if they are motivated towards violence, it puts them [clergy] in a very difficult situation."


...not sure the Bearded Bard (Arch of C.) himself ever ventures into Tesco as such for the week's shopping. See him more as a farmer's market sort of green cove if and when attending to his own domestics.

Leaving though that aside, the advice is probably sound in as far as it goes - which is not very far indeed. Forsooth, it's hard enough encouraging chaps and chappesses to wear the badge of trade in the place of work itself - Church, Chapel or how so you - so anything that further tends to advocate mufti is not that welcome.

Are we really to beat the retreat for fear of a sound beating? I hope not, though owning that clerical assault is rare not rife in The Wolds.

But then again, were one blind or sight impaired - as one now says - one wouldn't here not carry a white stick for fear of it drawing down violence.

And could that be, you ask, anywhere? Well, sadly yes. Two young feral thugs have just been sentenced for murdering a disabled man. They beat and kicked him to death. (Hardly news anymore - and how wretched is the world become that one can say that?)

The victim, who was partially sighted, was asked by one who came to help him after the attack that was the next day to be the cause of his death from brain injury, why he didn't carry a white stick.

'Tried that,' he said. 'But had to stop because people took it as a signal to hit me.'

No, I shall not be desisting from the dog-collar out of fear, and should someone wish to pick a fight on that basis then they will be learning hard and fast the true meaning of 'muscular Christianity'!

Vermin...

From the BBC tonight:


Man admits urinating on ill woman

A Hartlepool man is facing jail after he urinated on a disabled woman who lay dying in the street. The 27-year-old shouted "this is YouTube material" as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard.

Miss Lakinski, who suffered a number of medical conditions, died from natural causes, an inquest found.

Anthony Anderson, of Raby Road, who admitted outraging public decency, will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court.

Hartlepool magistrates heard how, on 27 July, Miss Lakinski was making her way home with a box of laminate flooring when she fell ill and stumbled into a doorway.

Anderson had smoked a cannabis joint and been drinking when he and two friends spotted her.

He tried to rouse her by throwing a bucket of water over her, before urinating on her and covering her with shaving foam. The incident was filmed on a mobile phone.

She was later declared dead at the scene, the cause of death being given as pancreatic failure.

Lynne Dalton, prosecuting, said: "Although his actions did not contribute to her death it was appalling behaviour that robbed her of any dignity in the last hours of her life."

She urged magistrates to transfer the case to crown court for sentencing, claiming their maximum powers were insufficient.

Anderson's solicitor did not oppose the application and his client will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court on 22 October.

After Wednesday's hearing, Miss Lakinski's brother, Mark, said: "We will await the outcome and just hope he gets what he deserves."

...What he deserves indeed. It does make me think of those wonderful medieval Doom paintings in Churches, vividly reminding sinners what eternity of vile punishment they would face in Hell if they did not repent.

Also too, the perfectly proper Hebraic motto of tooth for a tooth or eye for eye: let the punishment fit the crime. Inmates of whatever prison this vermin is sent to please note.

Oh, and also the person who filmed all this on his mobile phone. Let him too suffer in the same way.

Bicycle-By Shooting...

Have you heard?

An eleven - yes eleven - year old boy playing football in a Liverpool pub car park has been shot dead by another young boy - believed to be between fourteen and sixteen - who cycled past on a BMX bike, stopped, struck a pose then shot him in the head.

God help us all.

"I Am In No Way A Violent Person..."

...said the woman just gaoled for ripping off her ex-boyfriend's left testicle with her bare hands before attempting to eat it.

She choked on it apparently, spat it out and someone else handed it back to man saying "I think this is yours". Surgeons were unable...etc.

These pacifists eh? Just can't trust 'em like you could.

Water, Water Everywhere...

...and mindless vandalism in Gloucestershire.

This in from the news: emergency water outlets have been vandalised.

I despair.

Waste of Space...

...According to Bro. George, who deals with these things, most if not all of the paper emanating from the Government is so much waste.

I blame - as does he - T. Blair in general and the Internet in particular. T. Blair for being the control freak that he is needing ceaselessly to churn out orders, instructions, advice or guidances to all and sundry about each and every aspect of our lives.

Not a local service can be trusted to function on its own, merrily attending to its tasks and purposes, but it must be deluged with an unending torrent of utter guff about how to do its business; much of it also requiring said local services to produce an equal and equally unneeded or unheeded constant stream of reports, reviews or other rubbish that no one reads.

The Internet of course has merely allowed such nonsense to expand exponentially - ease of travel simply adding to the volume of traffic. Log-jam on the information highway.

So far, so plain ordinary rant.

Today, we hear of further delusional, irrational behaviour - as if we would be surprised.

A Government document comes belting down the tube, boasting on page one that it is made of 70% recycled paper. Well hurrah. On the last page there is also a cute logo urging us all to recycle the whole document once read. (Not one assumes 'file in the usual place' - i.e. the waste bin - but some more worthy cause such as...well I can't think of any this moment, but I am confident there are some somewhere. Cat litter trays perhaps?)

What renders the whole exercise so sadly pointless is that this very last logo-bearing page is just that - a page of paper with a 'recycle this paper' logo on it. Had the logo appeared at the bottom of the text of the thing that would have been one thing, but to waste an entire page of paper telling us - needlessly of course, either we recycle or we don't thank you - not to waste paper is plain bonkers.

The great sadness of course is the rank arrogance and deep stupidity combined that both encourages and permits such behaviour. That is what so rankles - arrogant or stupid one could live with either, but put the two together in one seamless whole and one is stymied!

So what can one do? Burn these ninnies as latter day witches? Tempting prospect. (Must somewhere to be found a National Strategy for Effective Witch Resolution Options or somesuch.)

Bro. George, being a less bloodthirsty fellow than myself, is minded to post the page back to the Government department that sent it. In principle a neat, ironic gesture. Sadly though one can be assured the recipients simply wouldn't understand his simple point. They lack the simplicity to be simple.

Hoots Mon, It's The Sporran Police...

...Apologies if my Scottish accent is not up to much, but cannot resist commenting on the latest daftness and this time North of our borders.

For it would seem that from henceforth one will need an official Government licence in order lawfully to wear a sporran, to be produced - from within the thing one assumes - on demand of the Sporran Police.

One can only hope that the sight of said Polis (accent again I fear) bending to take DNA samples from law abiding sporran-wearing folk will result in proper accusations of public indecency!

As if then it needed saying - kilted persons with unlicensed sporrans especially welcome at the forthcoming Woldean Liberation Festival.

Behind You!

Another day, another rant? Does somewhat seem like it at the moment I fear.

Might be all this unseasonal rain so putting me on edge, though one is told that actually a sodden June is far more the norm than a flaming month. Perhaps then the sullen farmers habitually groaning about how their crops are drowning do have a point.

Nonetheless, whether weather-induced or no, one is perfectly entitled to be dour on this occasion. When out driving, as one frequently does, there are norms of conduct it simply assists all to observe. Not that one expects perfection on the roads more than in any other aspect of our imperfect world. Dodderers who hog middle lanes, the lightly crazed who turn right without warning, the overly-aggressive who simply cannot wait - such things one can generally take in one's stride.

But whether true courtesy can be expected from all, what is plain mandatory is to make way for an ambulance racing with lights and horns on to the aid of some sick or injured person. Rear view mirrors can be urgent aids to spotting one such coming up from behind. At once one pulls across to let the speeding vehicle through. Of course one does. Is there an alternative?

Well, apparently there is. For having today executed one such manoeuvre for one such purpose at a crowded set of traffic lights, what did I find but that five cars having pulled over the sixth decides to jump the queue that has parted like the proverbial Red Sea and plonk himself smack bang in front of the lights and the ambulance, blocking all traffic.

Hapless, helpless fool. A cacophony of horns from we five plus the ambulance was at last sufficient to shift the dolt. What though was he thinking of and about? I cannot fathom, though I can and do rant at the feckless nonsense served up by too many of my fellow men.

The one saving grace - and it is not small - the chap was not from our village. I think I'd resign the incumbency had that been so!

Bird In The Hand...

...Completing - one so fervently hopes - the tale of the rental car I must first once more give vent.

Whilst away three phone calls received from 'Rara Avis'.

The first to ask whether I should be wanting the vehicle for more than the two courtesy days. A reasonable question except that that one had already been asked and fully and twice answered. A third bite at the same matter was as ineffectual as irksome. This point was soundly made.

Ah then, in which case a credit card number would be needed to secure payment. That too perfectly acceptable had not such a number already been provided to the chap who delivered the first and defective car. [See as ever previous.] That point was made with a certain greater vigour.

Second phone call was from another wing of the company demanding to know why I had returned a defective vehicle less than two hours after taking charge of it. What! A complete misreading of their own paper work and I'm now suddenly seen as the villain of the piece.

Some singularly trenchant verbal admonition had to ensue. Apologies offered by them for their misunderstanding and none by myself for the rant.

Then we arrive home having confirmed by a third phone call that the car would be picked up on the Saturday morning. "What time would suit you Sir?" they properly asked. Ten of the morning was my reply. So naturally by the half past ten and no sign of the arrival of men needed to retrieve the thing I was on the blower once more.

No reply to first call. Second attempt and one did get through. "Oh well," they said. "We can't be sure when we're going to be coming, except to say it won't be today!"

More rant. Loud, long and rather ripping.

Just leave the key under a stone or something, no need to be there in person I was informed. Well yes there was, not least to confirm no damage to vehicle whilst under my care and that it was being returned with contractual full tank of fuel.

And if it were stolen? Oh that would not be Sir's liability. Why? Because I'm telling you so. (This coming from a company whose word to date has been as trustworthy as snake oil!)

Two hours later call comes through they are on their way. They come. Car - duly inspected - goes.

Two entire levels of being here. One, the fantasy world that managers about the place believe to be occurring because that's what should be happening. Two, the real world of actual delivery of service bearing no more resemblance to the theory than Tony Blair to a decent human being.

And on that last point, had Father Joshua over for supper last week. A kindly man and a welcome visitor, despite - or perhaps because - of his being of the Papish persuasion. "If that lying bastard Blair becomes a Catholic then I'm going to demand of the Vatican that I'm excommunicated forthwith!" I doubt the theology is sound or the adherence to canon law precise in word or spirit, but one does so take his point.

(H pops in to say that preparations for the End of Blair party are in full swing and did we want a brass band playing for the stroke of midnight? Excellent notion as ever from the beloved!)

Rara Avis...

...not sure how good your Latin is, but allow me a cautionary tale about a certain well-known car rental company.

Replacement vehicle booked on the Saturday to arrive before [note the clear, unambiguous prepositional use!] 10 ack emma today. Most important as am due for a meeting in the frozen North this afternoon.

As a third party [the AA] had made the booking I took it advisable to confirm with the car hire people yesterday that all was in order with the order.

Most assuredly it was and car would be arriving before [note again] the appointed hour today.

Soon after nine the manager of the hire branch telephones to enquire whether I shall be needing the car for more than the free two days. Indeed I shall. Home collection on the Saturday. All sorted. "Car will be arriving shortly," he says.

Fifteen minutes past the hour of ten and no car. A further ten minutes and one phones to ask what, where, when and why, etc. Yet another ten pass before they can call back with some news. And not very good news at that!

"We've had problems with drivers this morning. Expect car by 11.00"

Well we rant don't we.

"Ah, but the manager phoned to let you know it would be late."

Liar, liar, pants on fire he did. That really annoys the heck out of my annoyed heck. Being late is bad enough, being told total porkies is quite another matter.

Hertz for me next time.

Mappa Mundi...

...Geography and I have never been close. As an academic discipline to be studied at school, well quite frankly I could not see the point.

One knew where France began, one had a generalised sense of Europe sufficient for the purpose and as for the rest it was all pretty plain sailing: Japan somewhere above Australia, Russia fast behind the Iron Curtain with all its allied satellites, China where she was - very east, India quite obvious on any map, Canada the home of cousins, Africa below Europe, America due west and South America well south. That sort of thing. Should the time come one needed more precise information then a good guide book would do the necessary trick.

All the natural features of these foreign places were of course terribly relevant to those who lived there, but not of great interest to oneself from any purely physical perspective. Mountains, lakes, rivers, plains - terrific stuff in their own right, but really only in any way of significance for locals.

A narrow perspective one might argue, but a reasonably pragmatic one one might riposte. Arts and science had clearly universal application, but the precise make-up of the sub-Saharan climate, for example, was not to a schoolboy with no great yearning for foreign adventure desperately a matter of particular relevance.

So it came thus that Geography was never a subject taken to examination level at school, and if I have suffered from not having that 'ology' it has never knowingly affected or afflicted me. When later in life - and I admit it has been rare - I have ventured east of Dover a stout Blue Guide has kept me completely well informed.

E too is more or less of that same persuasion - blessedly wise child - and would not have been taking Geography at all as a GCSE subject had her school not forsaken her preferred option of Sociology (a true - the true - 'ology'!). I did warn her not to expect any factual information to be forthcoming, merely endless slanted guff about 'global warming'.

I was not wrong. Two years of indoctrination on how beastly men [mostly] have been to dear Planet Earth and how we all need to hug a dolphin if we are to be redeemed from our sin of very existence. Two largely wasted years it must be said, as one can lead a teenage daughter to political correctness but this one will wrinkle her pretty nose at anything that is not about glamour, fashion or - in her special case - concerning horses.

Well, cometh the hour cometh the examination. Not being a studied or a star pupil at this one subject - no shame or her for that perhaps quite the contrary - she is entered into the 'foundation' examination. Simple questions for easy minds.

But even I could not, in my darkest - and they can be very dark - hours of despair at the corruption of the modern educational system (all of course the fell workings of that shithead T. Blair and associated cronies) and the downgrading of examination standards in order to prove - as only George Orwell could have predicted - that things not only can but are getting better all the time - have dreamt of the bathetic, puerile drivel that constitutes a test of geographic knowledge in this country in this year of Our Lord 2007.

Believe this if you are able:

Question 1: Does 'conservation' mean a) helping to protect species that are in danger of extinction or b) talking to a friend?

Question 2: When somewhere is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest does that mean that a) it is an important natural habitat worth preserving for the future or b) it's a place to be careful of lest you might fall into a swamp?

If Christ - and he did - wept for Jerusalem, then I in turn weep for my country and my people. The only geography lesson I ever needed and never wanted.

World Going Mad...

...some will say even - and who am I to argue - that it is more gone than going mad this world of ours. But ever hopeful, as befits a clerk in holy orders, I will merely opine we are on our way to lunacy, rather than that we have arrived finally and irrevocably at the doors of that particular asylum.

One does though rather steam - and perhaps resistance is a healthier sign of struggle against the tide than abject acceptance - whenever one comes across an example of worldly - often political or corporate - insanity.

Shaking one's head in disbelief is hardly a sufficient response; sucking one's teeth in annoyance doing poor justice to the rank insult to sense or intelligence. Barking rage achieves nothing for resolution or repose; cackling laughter - though oft mooted - risks incarceration in the very place one seeks to avoid, white coated men arriving on the instant.

Announcing, therefore, the creation of an intended self-therapeutic series of 'WGM' posts with exigent examples given, as found, of the type of implausible yet rampant nonsense we all suffer.

I begin with not the worst, but one merely to hand today courtesy of Our Tel [World's Greatest Living Irishman] writing in The Sunday Telegraph. This may serve as a marker of what is to come. Readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now.

Man phones the Premium Bond people to inform them that he has moved address. (Well you would wouldn't you lest that precious life-changing cheque never reach you?)

He is, however, at once smartly told that 'for security reasons' [note that] said PB people cannot take such sensitive information over the telephone, but must do so using only the correctly sent and returned written form.

"But I have moved, that's the whole point. So how can you send me the form if you don't know my new address?" says the man. "Fair point well made," admits the PB person. "So will you tell me then your new address in order that I can send you the correct form?" (Thud! - a sound oft heard in this series - of head striking the desk in studied disbelief.)

More, much more, to come. It will make me feel better, I know it will.

**** and Bull!

Yes it is 'political correctness' gone mad, or rather perhaps simply that the whole world is now irremediably insane.

One may not, it seems, on the RSPB website refer to a male bird as a 'cock'. One cannot rather in a literal sense, for any attempted use of the word is at once replaced with "****". Mustn't frighten the horses apparently, so the software hacks it out automatically. (Presumably a ****erel is a complete avis non grata!)

We also read that the firemen of Greater Manchester are to be disciplined for choosing not to rest on health and safety approved chairs that they find uncomfortable, preferring a sleeping bag on the non-risk-assessed floor!

Children - there is no escape at any age - have been banned from playing in a quiet cul-de-sac in Leicestershire because...well, because they have by the Council.

One cannot work, rest or play without the fell hand of officialdom bearing down upon one. That - never forgetting Iraq - is T. Blair's 'legacy' to an ungrateful and increasingly unhappy nation.

(You will be, no doubt, delighted and reassured to learn that I have, today, been approved as a Fellow of the Society of Great Grumps.)

Oh and, by the way, one may talk of 'tits' though not ****s when speaking of birds say the RSPB. Discrimination upon absurdity!

Fuming...

...This just in from 'Command and Control Centre' (aka Bishop Tom's Secretariat).

It would seem that by the first day of July in the year of our Lord 2007 (or 2011 if we are to be bullied by scriptural scholars) I must, on pain of most dire punishment, desecrate our lovely village Church.

An odd thing you would think for the very defender of the local faith to be thus instructed. For do we not have sufficient of said desecrating forces at work in society, without it being a commandment that I should be forced to swell their numbers? Are there not already enough of the yobs to smash windows, pee in the cemetery, scrawl graffiti in the sanctuary?

It seems not, for I am told that by said date I must install a large 'No Smoking' sign outside the West door, giving full details of the unlawfulness of lighting up inside together with assembled judicial penalties for any who dare so do.

Now many things sacred and secular have happened within those holy walls down the centuries: fights and frights of many types. Fornication has even been rumoured in recent times - and, for myself, I would have no trouble in believing that to be so. Not approving, just accepting it has probably occurred.

But in all the years of service I have yet to encounter a person so stupid - or to preach a sermon so boring - that sees someone reaching for their Silk Cut Light. (Colonel X did once put his empty pipe in his mouth in some absent moment during an extended Easter Vigil, but one sensed that even that was merely an unconscious need for a comfort dummy rather than any preparatory move to fill the choir with the reek of rough cut.)

This missive, therefore, has me fuming literally and metaphorically. I stand within my den puffing away and raging at the inanity on nanny state - and, it would seem, nanny state religion.

This order - I determine - shall be resisted to the last. No such monstrous sign will deface my place of worship, whilst there is breath in the Rector's body.

With luck I shall be the first cleric in the land to be arrested for failure to comply with such nonsense. E will cringe naturally and I'm not sure that H will give the move her entire support.

But if lonely martyrdom is required then lonely martyrdom it shall be!

Our Fiends In The North...

...More from the madness that is North Wales.

Not the place or even the people of course, but the doings of the North Wales Police, who now have fined two teenage girls for drawing hearts and rainbows on pavements using nothing more lethal than pavement chalks!

The police rationale was that the nearby - not so nearby in fact - University had been suffering from gross graffiti vandalism and that, therefore, anyone doing anything remotely proximate in either place or deed must be punished with the full force of the law.

Total tosh of course.

There are two things that lie behind this. One is the revelation that police across the lands have been handing out fines all over the shop for non-events simply to boost their 'detection' rates. Not real crimes of course, but who cares when your performance related pay depends on your detection rate?

The other factor of course is the leadership of the force. The person who sets the direction and action of his or her police officers. And who do we have in North Wales? None other than Barking Brunstrom of course.

Nick, nick!