Badgering the badgers

There are many things in this life which conjure up the most bizarre images, William Hague’s recent Parliamentary reference to Gordon Brown in his Speedos being one of the more unpalatable ones.
But the announcement that the Government is to tackle the spread of bovine TB by inoculating badgers is just a scream.
Presumably officials will retrieve, from a data base they have not yet lost, the names and addresses of every badger in the country and send each one of them a letter giving them a day, time and place for an appointment.
The badgers will then form a long, cute black and white stripy queue to see the nurse, who will ask them to roll up the fur on a front leg so she can administer the injection.
Ah, I hear you cry, but what about that hard core who ignore the letters, eschew the idea that they are carriers, or may have moved house?
The Government has a Plan B. They will set traps for these unwary types and give them a jab in the bum (flaws, there are a few, but then again, too many to mention).
And for those who shy away from needles or swoon at the very thought?
Why, Plan C, of course. Oral vaccination. Ha! Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
So if you go down to the woods today and come across discarded syringes or little plastic cups scattered around, think not ill of our younger generation but rather smile knowingly and remember that we are paying these goons to dream up this garbage.
And if you meet a cow with TB, tell her it’s her own fault.

WARNING: Do not read this

This blog may be short. It may even never appear. In fact, I may well have wasted my time writing it.
In another fact, if you cannot see or read this, let me know at once and I shall alert some technical type.
Yep, as you may have guessed, its new software (or something) time at Chronicle Towers, although we were assured that it was only a minor upgrade.
There is a word to describe “minor upgrade” but because children under 12 may be reading this I am apparently not allowed to say “bo**ocks” so I’ll have to stick with cobblers. (That could become a slogan for saving shoemakers: Stick With Cobblers: Make Them Last – last, geddit? Not to worry).
So, minor upgrade. That’s minor as in everything you used to do has been abolished and nobody is telling you how to do it the new way.
But are we downhearted? Are we depressed? Bloody right we are.
That’s why I’m swanning off to Cornwall for me hols (times are hard).
No doubt it will all be fixed and sorted by the time I get back.

That just takes the biscuit

They just don’t get it, do they? Amateurs who dunk are like ladies who lunch – superfluous to the real world.
The tough dog-eat-dog biscuit world of professional dunking was rocked this week by the news that some geek of a professor has concluded that the chocolate digestive is the best biscuit for dunking because the melting chocolate helps to bind the biscuit together for longer.
No, no, no no!
Fools! Idiots! Incompetents (OK, that’s quite enough exclamation marks for one blog!).
Does this bloke not realise that the Society Of Dunkers’ Institute of Technology (SODIT), which runs all competitive dunking, from local leagues to the biennial World Championships, banned chocolate coverings from all dunking years ago because it gave an artificial and unfair advantage.
Why, it was only five years ago that the Greek dunker Theo Slopadopollop was thrown out of the competition for coating his little dunkee in a thin film of almost invisible white chocolate which enabled him to set what, briefly, was a new world record in the Morning Coffee event of 23 seconds before break-up.
As this was 20 seconds longer than the previous record it was regarded with some suspicion. As Slopadopollop had promptly eaten the evidence he seemed to be in the clear but a sliver of dunkee was found in his saucer and subsequent lab tests led to his downfall.
Now we get some boffin praising choccy coverings without any thought for the ramifications (I love that word – might use it again in a minute) for the sport.
Simply encouraging youngsters to dunk choccy bikkies could rob the whole dunking world of its youth policy, with no promising youngsters coming through the ranks for the Ginger Nut Tremble, Rich Tea Shake or Plain Digestive Wobble.
Ramifications.
There, I feel better for that.
(By the way, a recent survey said McVitie’s chocolate digestive was the most popular dunkee among the hoi-polloi. I wonder which biscuit brand commissioned the survey? Answers on a postcard to the Do They Really Think We Are That Stupid Department).

Forever in our debt

Now stay with me on this ’cos although it sounds complicated it will, in fact, solve the nation’s credit crunch problems at a stroke. Well, two strokes.

It started when some bloke on the radio called in to suggest that instead of bunging the banks cash to sit on and pay fat pensions from, the Government should pay off everyone’s mortgages.

Brilliant. Paying off mortgages would mean the banks getting rid of most of their debts and they could start again. And it would leave every householder in the country with a large dollop of disposable cash to throw about – thus reviving the economy in an instant.

It’s sheer genius!

Of course, there then followed some sour, grumpy City suit saying it wasn’t possible, too expensive blah blah blah.

Oh, and £1.5 trillion added to the national debt for bail-outs isn’t, then?

My guess is that £1.5 trillion (don’t worry about it, it’s just a load of noughts, and the money isn’t real anyway) would clear the mortgages of most of England (sod the Scots and Welsh, they have their own governments) quite comfortably, certainly all up to about £150,000. (Populist, me?).

And if we then chuck another £200 billion (like a trillion, but not as many noughts) at car owners – that’s, say, 20 million of us getting ten grand apiece – we could all buy new less polluting cars that are standing about at Avonmouth docks and some disused airport in Gloucestershire.

In turn, we would have to hand our current cars to recycling centres (green stuff, y’see – it’s bloody infallible, I tell you) thus giving that industry a major boost.

Now some misguided souls may point out that those without a mortgage and those with no car would dip out in all this and thus it is unfair.

Yep, it is. And so is life – get used to it.

Yes sir, that's my baby

It must be a generation thing – or some pathetic quest for 15 minutes of fame – for otherwise why would young lads queue up to claim paternity of a teenage girl’s baby?

Why on Earth would they want to be lumbered with changing nappies, walking the sprog or making child support payments out of their pocket money when there is property to damage, old ladies to mug, passers-by to abuse or stab, and booze and drugs to take?

It’s not that long ago that if a young girl found she was pregnant and Teenage Boy A was the prime suspect, you wouldn’t see his a**e for dust if Teenage Boys B, C, D and E put themselves in the frame in the paternity stakes.

Boy A certainly wouldn’t be hiring Max Clifford or demanding DNA tests – just in case he got the answer he didn’t want.

All this talk about dumbing down GCSEs and A-levels so that morons can succeed is one thing, but dumbing down in the getting-away-with-it game – now that really is dumb.

But the reality, I suspect, is that not only do they wish to brighten up their dull little lives with a bit of entertaining speculation in the tabloids, but also that they know there will be no punishment, just like there is no painful or even meaningful punishment for any of the other misdemeanours they casually commit.

(Can you feel a “bring back the birch then hang ’em anyway” rant building up here?)

What we need here is some radical thinking. With feral cats we either neuter them or have them put down, so why not do the same with feral kids?

It won’t infringe their human rights because to have those, you are required to prove you are human, and that lot haven’t really got much hope on that score.

One thing that does spring to mind, though, is that these so-called dads should join Fathers4Justice - at least they will still have the Spiderman outfits.

Ode to by Balantide

Roaded are red,
Bylets are blue,
I’b all bunged up
So why aren’t you?


Yed, I’b vine, thaggs for ass-ging. Jus’ a bit ob a code id bi dode.

Ad I egspegted to be ibbune abter habbing de flu diab.

Dough sujj lugg, ad dats why I’b souding blocked ubb - while by catarrh dently weebs.

Avgorredake, add well, und ebri bode id by body aches.

Bud do I gedd eddy symbaffi ? Dot a bit – dobody seebs to doh wod I’b goin fru. Add dobody cares, iver. Woe is bee.

Bud de most addoying bart ob all is dot knowing wurr id all comes frob. I’b blown by dose sebenty-dide tibes dis borning und the bloody stuff dust keebs cubbing.

But one codsullashun, I’b rediscobered Tudes. Doh, Tudes, you doh, de ones dat elp you breed more eedily. Doh, stubid, Tudes – bud dow id a liddle box and wib doh wrappers on dem. Don’t doh wod de world’s cubbing too. Obal Froods will be dext, bark by words.

But Beddylind und Sdrebsils are dow bart ob by stable diet und I hobe to be OK dext week.


P.S. Send only used 20s in de ged well cards, byda way.

Your lubbing cat,
Jim
xxx

All white on the night

Now that’s what I call winter. None of that namby-pamby big southern Jessie drizzle and fog stuff for weeks on end but a good couple of days of blizzards wafted gently in by an Arctic blast of Siberian wind.
It transported me back a few decades, to our humble wooden hovel atop the Pennines, where we would be snowed in from August Bank Holiday until early June, fearing to venture out in case we were attacked and eaten by marauding packs of starving Yorkshiremen who had roamed over the moors from Halifax in search of sustenance.
Why do you think there are no trees and very little wildlife up there?
We would shiver in a dark corner as dad tried to light a fire by rubbing Granny Arkwright’s wooden legs together (she lost her real legs in the Great Tripe Mine Collapse of 1908 while trying to rescue a large slice of thick seam which, sadly, was lost).
Then we would huddle round the light and warmth created by burning the council rent man, who had accidentally died while arguing with dad, who at the time was putting his point across in true Lancashire philosopher style by using his clogs.
Ah, happy days.
So to the present and the daily grind of traipsing back and forth to Bath through an icy, snowy and unpredictable Chew Valley,
But was a few inches of white stuff going to stop a weather-hardened Lanky from getting through?
Yep.
So as I write this from a cosy, centrally-heated spare bedroom office back home, having given up the unequal struggle against Mother Nature, I am indebted to BBC West Ceefax for this gem that appeared midst Friday morning’s carnage. The last paragraph of a report of trouble in Wiltshire stated:
“Problems have been compounded by low salt levels, which have meant that only main toads were being gritted.”
Picture the scene, all the local toads queuing up to be gritted by the council’s Amphibian Salination Application Executive, salt cellar in hand, who suddenly spots a frog trying to sneak through.
“Oi, you, frog thing. What d’you think you’re doing? Toads only, mate. More than my job’s worth to grit you. ’Oppit.”

* We would like to make it clear that no amphibians were harmed in the creation of this missive.
And apologies to Mike Harding for blatantly pinching one of his jokes, circa. 1974, but we do keep being told to recycle.