The mother of all oxymorons?

Pakistani Intelligence.
It might well have been that Osama bin Laden was hiding behind a super-injunction, but it beggars belief that Pakistan were truly unaware of exactly where the world's most wanted terrorist was holed up.
In a neighbourhood that includes the country's top Military Academy, it would be reasonable to assume that they would at least use the excuse of borrowing a cup of sugar just to acquaint themselves with whoever might be living next door.
The fact that bin Laden's compound comprised the largest dwelling in the area with extraordinary levels of security should also have added to their curiosity.
Maybe it's time for Pakistan to consider scrapping their Intelligence Service and replacing it with a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.
Any old granny with her twitching net curtains would have sniffed bin Laden out years ago.
And another thing. Where are Wikileaks when you need them?
Or was this little nugget part of Julian Assange's plea bargain?
Now there's a conspiracy.

The News of the World may Roo the day

So Wayne Rooney's phone has been hacked.
Low and behold.
I daren't even fantasize as to what pearls his conversations must have contained and please, don't anyone tell me. I am still recovering from reading the transcript of Prince Charles' confab with Camilla where gruesome things were imagined.
All of which illustrates a very interesting point.
On the day when Kate ceased to be a commoner by virtue of marrying Prince William, it hammers home the fact that we are all the same whichever part of the so-called social divide we come from.
This morning, Kate woke up as a commoner. Tonight she will go to bed as a Royal.....and with a Royal. Is she really any different? I think not.
But anyway, that wasn't the point of my blog. I've meandered.
It transpires that documents belonging to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire - who was jailed in 2007 following the original phone hacking investigation - contained phone numbers that allegedly belonged to Wayne Rooney.
Once it was established that they were indeed Wayne's phone numbers and not the numbers on his pay slip, legal action was considered.
But rather than allow phone hacking to distract him from hacking opponents and displaying occasional glimpses of genius, Wayne has put the matter in the hands of sharper brains. For all I know, that might even include Rio Ferdinand.
It has been well documented that Wayne has pursued a somewhat colourful private life but most of those stories are 'old'.
Commenting on the phone hacking issue, Wayne's wife Coleen described it as both "desperate and disgusting".
I wonder just how often she has had occasion to use those terms?

Jarvis Cocker stole my style!

The Goat - when he was a kid!
(The Missing Link. Click on the above line.)

With a fair wind, I knew I'd make the dictionary

http://bestwhispers.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/fartillery/

AM for PM?

A super-injunction sounds to me like a grammatical term and maybe that’s where I should leave it. Anyway, I prefer the term ‘gagging order’. It is more germane in that it is invariably used to hide the fact that someone, at some time, in some place and with someone else, was gagging for it.

But Andrew Marr – I ask you?

And an even bigger question I ask you – with whom?

For years, I have watched Andrew Marr get ripped in to politicians.

He has accused them of deceitfulness, duplicity and all those other words that begin with ‘d’, not least of which is dallying.

And all the time he was hiding behind a gagging order.

In his defence, he claims he was trying to protect his wife and family.

Maybe he ought to have considered them before he sowed his wild oats, the results of which he is now reaping.

Having being exposed as a cad and a bounder, I now propose a new career in politics.

He certainly has the prerequisite qualities to make him the consummate politician.

From the lustings to the hustings.

I say AM for PM!

Who’s with me on that one?

Would someone please shoot the ascending lark

Classic FM, the radio station that has helped to bring classical music to the hoi polloi (how elitist is that?) has announced Britain's favourite piece of classical music.
And the winner is.....Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2.
Thank bloody goodness for that.
Not just because it is an awesome concerto but, year on year, I'm fed up hearing that Ralph Vaughan Williams' Lark has ascended to the top of the poll yet again.
The Lark Ascending might be an evocative piece but does it really deserve to secure top perch above Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, to name but three? You can choose almost any piece from their respective oeuvres and I'm sure that piece would get my vote.
But who am I to judge?
Well, I'm not English and I just wonder how much nationalism influences the poll.
What makes it worse is that the three composers I mention above are all German.
Alright, I concede, that is a petty, small-minded view, but if you've ever watched the Eurovision Song Contest, you will be aware of just how many petty, small-minded people there are.
And they're not all English.
Phew!

I've just read a book that was a real potboiler

Quite literally. A potboiler.
Cover to cover. From pap to pulp.
Gas mark 4.

'Wave' goodbye to your money

Even I would struggle to come up with a blog that has a more prosaic start than this.
The whole world is in debt and no doubt you are sick fed up hearing about it.
But rather than consider the awesome scale of how much we are in hock to the future, I'm wondering if the debt really means anything at all.
After all, it is implicit in the word 'debt' that one day a score will be settled.
Not this time it ain't.
It's just too darned big.
Yet it's still out there and it manifests itself in a poorer standard of living than we would otherwise have.
But I have a scenario that might make things even worse.
Imagine, if you can, that each country's debt is akin to a financial tectonic plate.
Britain's debt is nudged up against American debt which is suffering major friction as it comes up against Japanese debt.
And so on around the world.
It is widely known that the major financial markets are already under great strain.
Something has to give and it could result in a financial tsunami that would make previous disasters seem like ripples.
So what should you do?
Spend!
Okay, it may precipitate the tsunami but if you sit back and simply wait for it to happen, you risk 'waving' goodbye to your money as it is devalued into oblivion.

Answer me this

In my arithmetic exam, I got full marks because I knew 10/10 = 1.
In English, my essay was marked 10/10.
Does that mean I got top marks or did I score only 1?
Now in my logic exam...

Guilty by proxy

It is not because it's Easter that I suggest we spare a thought for those less well off than ourselves around the world.
But, among other countries, I suggest we spare a thought for the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Libya.
After all, we've played our part.
I'm sick fed up listening to detractors in the West berating our leaders for supplying arms to these brutal regimes in the first place.
As voters in our great democratic system, are we not responsible for charging them with that very task?
We are all guilty by proxy.
Then again, maybe it's because it is Easter that I suggest that the blood on our hands is now relevant to believers and non-believers alike.

The story of the Songs of the Thrush and the Blackbird

It was the day before Easter and five in the morning when I rose from the dead.
An unearthly hour to get up, I admit, but there is nothing that sharpens my senses quite like an early morning walk.
And so, before I had second thoughts, my training shoes were on and I was on my way.
I can't imagine what Easter must be like in the Southern Hemisphere. Spring seems such a natural time for a celebration of hope.
The sights, sounds and scents of an early morning more than make up for my loss of sleep.
Yet none compares to the beauty of the songs of the thrush and the blackbird.
The song thrush perches atop the highest point, breast proudly preened, singing its little heart out. And a beautiful song it is too.
The blackbird, just as mellifluous, is more normally found a few feet below the tip of a tree.
In life, don't make the mistake of believing that those who like to be seen as well as heard are necessarily the most gifted.
You might be a blackbird and worth listening to every bit as much.

All promises are the same when they are broken

They say that there are two subjects to avoid if you want to avoid falling out with friends.
Religion and politics.
Both play a huge part in my life.
And while I like to think that religion also plays a huge part in the way that I lead my life, I hate to think, whether I like it or not, that so does politics.
So for the purpose of this blog, I'd like to put my religion to one side except for the following analogy.
Not long after Easter Sunday, we will all have a cross to bear at the ballot box.
Do you listen to politicians? Do you listen to your conscience? Or do you listen to me?
I've lost count of the number of times I've voted and pinned my hopes on politicians when it might have been better to pin a tail on a donkey. I've even sold my soul to the Devil on the promise of a better life. Oops! There's my religion sneaking back in.
But remember this, whenever a politician promises you the earth, you can be sure of one thing. You're future has already been soiled.

It's not news. The Sun has been bugging us for years.

The moment a hand of cruelty is lifted against a poor defenceless creature, animal activists everywhere appear from nowhere.
And a good thing too.
As the so-called superior race, we ought to know better.
So I ask you, where are all the dissenting voices when a camera is stuck on the back of a penguin as is the case in a recent study?
There can scarcely be a more clear-cut case of invasion of privacy.
The reason I bring it to your attention is to draw an analogy between this heinous practice and the phone hacking scandal that continues to bedevil The Sun.
Surely such precedents leave an open door for Rupert Murdoch’s defence team?
After all, the courts are there to deal with miscreants who offend against either man or beast.
How would Lord Prescott feel, for example, if we were to strap a camera to his carcase rather than merely tapping his phone line?
Let's not even dwell on what that would throw up.
And why is it okay to poke a camera lens into a bird’s nest to see how many eggs it has laid and yet refrain from probing inside Peter Stringfellow’s love nest to see precisely what he’s laid?
There has to be consistency.
If not, before you know it, we’ll be peeping at Toms, eavesdropping bats and bugging bugs.

The Daddy of all SI Units

The International System of Units, more commonly abbreviated to SI, is devised around seven base units.
But none is more base than the newly introduced eighth.
Self-Interest (SI).
Unlike other SI units which have the convenience of the number ten, this one has the inconvenience of being linked to politicians.
The inconvenience is theirs.
As the world’s most widely used system of measurement, it recognises the fact that, whether from the Outer Hebrides or Outer Mongolia, all politicians are slimeballs.
Ask your local MP what his SI value is.
If yours is lower, you're a banker.
And for once, that is not rhyming slang.

President Trump to save the Newspaper Industry

The headlines are already out there. Donald Trump has designs on the White House.
At this stage, like me, you might be tempted to ask "why doesn't he just buy the whole bloody lot?" Then I remembered that's how every President gets in, so it's back to a level playing field.
Or is it?
Name another candidate.
You can't!
Donald Trump is not only a man of the media, he is media-savvy.
He stands head and shoulders above all others. (He doesn't really, but his hair gets him there.) For a man who made billions from iconic buildings such as Trump Towers where the storeys reach to the sky, it seems somewhat fitting that Donald sticks with his two-storey hairdo.
The problem for Donald, however, is that the hairdo doesn't always stick with him.
But despair not.
From such adversity, great leaders are forged.
Would Napoleon have been the same with the use of both eyes?
Or would Admiral Nelson have regarded two arms as a handicap?
How would Hitler have juggled with two balls?
With two storeys, President Trump might not be in control of his hairline, but he certainly makes a good headline.
Look out Gaddafi. You're about to be trumped by two-storey Donald.

All in the best possible taste

Today’s Daily Mail has a story to die for about the latest innovation from America.
It’s a drive-thru mortuary.
You know it makes sense.
The Robert L. Adams Mortuary in California is offering the opportunity to have your dead relative exhibited in an open casket behind a drive-thru window display.
That way, you can pay your last respects without having to pay for parking.
And maybe the idea is not as bizarre as you may think. After all, every time you go to a drive-thru McDonald's, there's very little on display other than dead meat.
At the mortuary, however, there are no French fries and maybe that’s not a bad thing either. Do you really want to hear the Grim Reaper telling you that “You’ve had your chips”?
But I’ve an idea that I think goes one better.
Motorised coffins.
At a difficult time when you might prefer to stay at home, your dead relative can be placed in a glass-sided, motorised coffin. With modern technology cloned from cruise missiles and sat navs, the coffin can then be set off on a tour of family and friends.
Details of its journey can be sent out in advance so that those wishing to say goodbye don’t even need to leave the comfort of their own living room.
And there’s more.
Mortuaries can be smaller as, at any one time, half the corpses could be touring the country.
Car journeys to the mortuary will be reduced, thus helping to save the planet.
Traffic congestion will be eased - as well as the attendant risk of death on the roads. Ironically, by putting death on the road!
And any corpses that are starting to smell will surely benefit from being out in the open air.
Finally, if a coffin is involved in a smash, for at least for one party, there will be no risk of death or injury.
Trial runs are scheduled to begin soon.
So if you see one passing through your neighbourhood, doff your cap, be grateful that it's not you and let RIP with those immortal words:
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in."

I went to Cliché for my holidays

At the end of the day, it was just another meaningless place.

What do you do if Google doesn't know the answer?

Search me.

Defecate no more. It's time to defect.

I ask you.
What kind of crazy world are we living in?
On the one hand, we hound Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, like the mad dog that he is.
On the other hand, we let Moussa Koussa slip in and out of Britain in the most slimy manner possible.
For years, Moussa Koussa was a cohort of that original Mad Dog, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
He was part of the regime that sat (I've left the 'h' out deliberately) on its poor subjugated people.
It is the same regime that is implicated in the cold-blooded murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London.
Again, it's the regime that is fingered as being behind the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie and the murder of another 270 innocent people.
You get the picture.
Libya was getting a bit too hot for Moussa Koussa.
So he fled to Britain.
So why did we let him go?
Well, he had 'secret knowledge'.
Is that not what Julian Assange had?

Yes.

And the moral of my story?
Knowledge alone is not power. It's how you use it.

Let's slap all masochists in prison

But only if they're good.