I'm going on strike

I’ve been a card-carrying member of various unions since the age of 13.

I’m a great supporter of my fellow workers. Or, as my Tory friends call me, a communist.

So today, I’m prepared to support the postal workers in their strike by refusing to deliver to my neighbours all the mail which gets erroneously posted through our letterbox – including yesterday, worryingly, a chequebook.

Maybe if they were more efficient and learned to tell one number from another they’d get more public support.

It’s just a thought comrades…

For Sale: One soul in return for a decent holiday

I'm an atheist - but I'm starting to believe in a superior being.

That would be a superior being who held grudges against non-believers. And I believe the Christian version of this deity shows suggestions of a vengeful side.

Isn't there something in the Bible, maybe in one of the letters to Corinthian Casuals - who amazingly still play in Ryman League division one south more than 2,000 years later - about 'you will believe in me or I shall come unto thee with a red-hot poker and some snakes and do some nasty stuff on you ass'... (all in a Samuel L Jackson voice I would imagine).

Anyway, I digress. I'm starting to feel I'm being singled out for somebody's sadistic amusement. Somebody out for revenge over something I've done previously ... like not believing.

I've considered other possibilities. I'm also a staunch anti-fascist, an anti-monarchist, and have sung songs about Southampton supporters scrabbling around in refuse looking for supper; but I'm not sure any of these groups wield sufficient influence as to conjure up illness at will.

I realise the Royal Family are pretty powerful, but what with having idiot sons who say bankers bonuses are "minute" I think they have more than enough problems, without concerning themselves with a fat bloke in Hampshire who thinks the £41.5m taxpayers spent on the Royals in 2008 was a tad excessive in a desperate economic climate.

No, I'm pretty sure it's one of His minions who's got it in for me and mine.

The evidence is pretty damning. In August, having saved up for a year, we were all set to go on a family holiday until I was diagnosed with cellulitis, 24 hours before we were due to fly.

Having recouped around 95 per cent of our outlay through the insurance, we decided to go away in the October half-term instead. But prices were even higher than in the summer so we settled instead for me having the week off and doing day trips out.

This time, it was our youngest, Ben, who was struck ill. With a heavy cold which completely debilitated him, he spent most of the week in bed and we spent most of the week within a short distance to make sure he was OK. And as a contingency plan, one of our cats was given an abscess just as a precaution.

Gone were the planned days out in Dorset, London and France. Instead, the furthest we went was to Portsmouth, 18 miles away, where my beloved insisted on taking me to the top of the Spinnaker Tower - a prospect which, given my fear of heights, was as welcome as an evening in the company of Nick Griffin and his close family.

The fact that, once there, I really enjoyed the experience, was one in the eye for whoever's attempting to ruin any time I have to myself.

I will not get a proper 'holiday' in 2009. And given my stance on religion I have to take it on the chin. But what about my wife and kids?

I'm not sure they're all atheists. And while Jackie (Mrs B) is definitely anti-fascist she's very pro-monarchy - which leads to some interesting 'discussions' in our house. So I think she's been a little hard done by.

So let me make this clear now. In order to ensure a decent family holiday in 2010 I am prepared to make a pact with the Devil. Or the other fella. Just as long as they promise to leave us alone in future.

Read all about it!

I'm 46 years old. No spring chicken. And until Tuesday, October 27, 2009, I'd never done a paper round.

When I was a kid I never felt the need to go out and earn pennies as my only hobby was football and my pocket money covered that. I didn't go in for designer clothes, or buy lots of albums - I taped my mates' instead - nor did I have a girlfriend until later when I found somebody who also liked football.

So why, you may ask, did I do a paper round today? And whether you asked or not I'm going to elucidate.

Our youngest, Ben, aged 14, has a paper round. He delivers the Petersfield Messenger - a free paper the sort with which I'm sure you're all familiar - to around 120 homes in our area. The Messenger carries everything you need to know about press releases issued by local community groups and the odd big news story lifted from other organs.

For carrying around half-a-ton of newspapers and walking the best part of a mile-and-a-half, young Ben brings home something around £7, give or take a few pence determined by the number of inserts included - they're the things that fall out on the mat and go in the bin first.

It's under minimum wage, given the time it takes him, but of course minimum wage doesn't apply to kids under the age of 18. They have a special Government-approved Far East Nike shoe worker rate of £3.57 per hour, which is good preparation for when they go out and get a real job and find themselves exploited by management. I'm sure it counts as a Government-backed education initiative.

Anyway, despite the fact I've got on my high horse on several occasions when Ben has returned home soaked to the skin, over the fact I believe it's hardly worth the effort and "I'd rather just give him the bloody money for cleaning my car", he insists on carrying on, bless him.

Until today that is. Today, he's not very well at all. Ben is a very athletic kid. He runs for the local athletics club and is as fit as a butcher's dog. But today he hardly had the energy to lift his spoon to his mouth over breakfast.

Knowing that one of the boys in his football team had been diagnosed with swine flu - and being a bloke who always naturally thinks a sniffle is the first sign of the onset of Asian flu - I wanted to keep close tabs on him and take him to the doctors.

His mother being the nursing equivalent of Genghis Khan - I discovered that myself in the summer when I was diagnosed with an illness which necessitated the loss of our summer holiday - dismissed my fears and decided we'd do part of his paper round for him. And it wasn't the royal we. It was 'we' as in me and her. 'Me' as in the bloke who's taken a week off to spend time relaxing with wife and family.

And so it was, that on a day's holiday and after 46 years of contended idleness in the realm of newspaper delivery I this morning found myself carrying an armful of free newspapers around one of the more affluent parts of Petersfield.

Some of these houses had substantial drives and, after completing my part of my wife's deal with her youngest, I had worked up quite a sweat. It was clear to see why I had eschewed the opportunity to deliver newspapers for the best part of five decades - it takes effort.

And it wasn't without incident. At one house, where the letterbox was at the foot of the door, I bent down to insert the paper only for the door to open and for a middle-aged lady to be confronted by a 23-stone bloke blocking out what should, by rights, have been substantial amounts of autumnal sunshine.

She screamed the scream of a middle-class home owner about to find themselves coshed over the bonce by an East End rough with a broken nose and a selection of cauliflower organs. The situation was not helped by me naturally reaching out to reassure her that she had not wandered into a scene from The Ladykillers.

Realising she was not in danger, as I had neither the energy nor the inclination to cuff her with a dozen copies of the Petersfield Messenger, she soon gathered herself and started apologising to me. To me, would you believe. Here was I, standing at the top of her drive inserting what was left of a small sapling through her letterbox, uninvited, and she was apologising to ME.

So I started telling her not to apologise and started to apologise myself. While all this was going on it took all her husband's efforts not to roll around the floor with his legs flailing wildly, so much was he laughing.

I must have been stood for the best part of two minutes talking to this poor lady, and her husband said not a word. He was too busy wiping the tears from his eyes.

Fortunately I did not come into contact with another human being as I dread to think what effect it might have had on an individual of a delicate constitution.

But as I finished the act of losing my delivery virginity I stood in awe of those boys and girls around the country who deliver papers every day - I assume there are some, somewhere, like milkmen and the bloke who sharpens knives on a grinder at the front of his bike.

Having folded the newspaper into a thinner package for easy insertion (no jokes please) I was still struggling to make a clean delivery without catching on the myriad styles of letterboxes - I didn't realise there were such a variety available.

And as I failed once again and turned a copy of the Petersfield Messenger into an origami piano accordion I realised what an art delivering papers is. I can't get 16 pages and a couple of takeaway menus through a letter box - how the hell do these kids get on with the Sunday Times?

I think we should be told...

PS In theory I'm on holiday all week, so if I don't blog regularly please accept my apologies now...

Griffin-watch part two

Apparently last night's Question Time was the third most-watched programme of the day.

It came in behind BBC1’s EastEnders, which had 8.7m (39.6 per cent of the viewing public) between 7.30pm and 8pm, and ITV1’s Coronation Street, which had 8m (32.5 per cent) between 8.30pm and 9pm.

So more people were interested in learning about the progress of Killer Tony and Maria's engagement and dozens of Cockneys yelling "you slag!", than the policies of the BNP.

And we wonder why the guy got elected. This country...

I was heartened though by a guy in the QT audience who was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme this morning - although I didn't agree with his opinion that Nick Griffin should not have been allowed on.

He added that the upside to giving Griffin the oxygen of publicity was that the very people likely to vote for him were unlikely to be watching a programme of the calibre of Question Time. They were, he said, "more likely to be watching X Factor".

There's a man after my own heart.

Only in America

An early contender for news story of the day.

http://tinyurl.com/yldjpct

"A Minnesota man has been sentenced for driving his La-Z-Boy chair on a public street while drunk." You can be sure this has a happy ending... :)

Ooo, Ooo, there he is!

We live in a society in which the accusation of racism is often levelled at the police.

That's why I was disturbed by BBC's Question Time last night. Despite constant denials that the police force is 'inherently racist' thousands of constables were out in support of BNP leader Nick Griffin outside Television Centre.

Unashamedly they were still in uniform. And some even took to the skys in a helicopter to get a glimpse of Griffin. So interested were they that they hung around until well after everybody else had gone home.

Now that's far more worrying than Griffin...

Mmmm...

Just had a coronation chicken baguette.

Whose idea was it to first put sultanas with chicken? Genius? Madness? Mad genius?

What freedom?

Apparently, journalists in the UK enjoy less press freedom than those in 19 other countries including Estonia, Malta, Latvia and Lithuania, according to a survey released yesterday.

I find that bloody disgraceful and

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Give 'Nasty Nick' his platform

I wholeheartedly support the BBC’s stance on allowing the BNP’s Nick Griffin to appear on today’s Question Time.

People have voted for this man and his party and while the majority of us may find his policies abhorrent and his followers odious, in a country which is supposed to believe in free speech, there is no room for censoring politics.

Cabinet minister Peter Hain has done himself little credit when referring to other parties as ‘democratic’. This IS democracy in action, as repulsive as it may be.

Griffin is a Euro MP. People voted for him – albeit people with the IQ of a whelk. His voice should be heard. To keep him off the programme would simply give him something else to bleat about, only on this occasion his stance would not be quite so ill-informed.

Let’s hear what he has to say. Then let everybody see what a foul, bigoted, narrow-minded individual he is. Albeit a reasonably articulate foul, bigoted, narrow-minded individual.

Personally I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t thrown anything at the telly since the closing credits of X Factor went up.

Check out Newsarse’s take on Question Time here "BNP supporters to overcome fear of ’speaking picture box"

Bin and done

Parents often chastise their children when they show little work ethic with the threat that “if you don’t start getting better marks you’ll end up working as a dustman”.

This is seen as a pejorative statement for dustmen – or refuse collection executives as they are now often known – are regarded as the lowest of the low, unintelligent and low-paid. Hence when people find out that they don’t actually work for minimum wage there is an outcry about their salaries.

Well let me tell you now, dustmen are worth every penny of their salary – and more.

I have written before of the terrors of my walk to work and this morning I discovered myself gaining on a refuse lorry. This in itself is not unusual it happens every Thursday. But today I was downwind. Even at 100 yards and closing I was gagging. The smell was awful. It permeated my soul and clogged my throat. I wanted to eat an Airwick.

Fortunately the lorry turned down a side road as I got to within 50 yards and, in an effort to get to some untainted air, I increased my pace – though falling short of actually jogging of course.

If these guys can work all day with that stench in their nostrils they are better men than I and deserve all the pounds sterling they get.

Their salary should be docked only for unnecessarily loud voices – which seem also to be a prerequisite for the job – and the use of discarded cuddly toys as ineffective bull bars on the front of their vehicles. They’re not going to cushion the impact of anything.

Perhaps they’re not so bright after all.

Masterchef spin-off to hit screens over Halloween

Terry Wogan knows the popular cooking contest Masterchef by the name ‘Mastershout’.

It’s an accurate reflection, particularly of the way 45-year-old Cockney barrow-boy-turned-pillock Greg Wallace behaves.

We’d all like to be able to taste wonderful food for a living – and have a girlfriend 17 years younger come to think of it – but there’s no need to keep yelling everything in an attempt to remind us of how lucky he is.

“Cooking DOES NOT GET any tougher than this,” he bellows at the beginning of every episode.

It doesn’t get any more irritating either Greg. The chefs are hugely talented and even a culinary klutz such as your correspondent has learned something from catching the odd show while SWMBO tunes in.

But I end up just wanting to punch the guy. I’m sure his girlfriend – who is 17 years his junior by the way (wasn’t sure I made that clear earlier) – loves him dearly. But we know he’s not kind to animals because he invariably skins them and chucks them in a pot. And on that basis, I’m out.

And to make things worse we’re apparently going to see more of him as a spin-off show will hit our screens over Halloween weekend.

It’s called MasterShrek and it's designed to find the best ogre, in the same way Masterchef finds the best chef. Obviously there will be a culinary element to the show, otherwise Wallace wouldn't be involved.

Contestants must prepare their finest ogre cuisine, with such delights as eyeballs and worms being used as ingredients. That leads nicely on to the second challenge which is attempting to eat the dishes they've prepared without being ill.

It's amazing what the commissioning editors at the BBC will allow through these days. I mean, where the hell did they get that idea from...

Me, myself and some other guy

For the second time in a little over a year I have been the victim of identity theft.

Thankfully, first my bank, and, more recently, my credit-card company, have reacted swiftly to the change in purchasing habits and have nipped it in the bud.

But I am puzzled. Who the hell would want to steal my identity? I mean look at me...

Little wonder the bank were able to spot it so quickly if some guy was walking round buying designer clothes dressed as a 23-stone, middle-aged man.

It makes me soooooooo angry

X Factor apparently got a record 14.8 million viewers last night – am I the only person in the country who detests this sort of show?

I can honestly say I’ve never watched a whole episode of X Factor, Britain’s Got Chavs, Pop Idol, How Do We Solve a Problem Like Maria?, I’m a Pillock Get Me Out of Here, or Big Brother.

Nor do I watch Come Dine With Me, How Shit is your House?, Wife Swap, Holiday Showdown, Honey I Should Have Shown the Kids Some Discipline or any of the myriad ‘reality’ tv shows the current channels seem intent on shoving down our throats.

They don’t need to shove them down my throat, as they already make me vomit.

On the occasions I have been forced – generally by She Who Must Be Obeyed or one of the kids – to endure five or 10 minutes of society’s flotsam and jetsam, I’ve generally had to leave the room to prevent myself launching into a foul-mouth tirade or throwing an expensive nick-nack through the screen of a not-inexpensive television set.

Andy Warhol obviously foresaw the parlous state of tv in the 21st century when he said: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

The trouble is, people aren’t even that ambitious. They’re quite happy to be seen on tv for just fleeting moment. With numerous video recording devices, and YouTube and Facebook upon which to publish them, an appearance of just a few seconds can be preserved for ever and regurgitated whenever the individual wants to make people think “what a knob!”

What will these people do with these clips? Will they really sit their grandchildren down on their knee in 50 years time and say “look at this Kylie, this is Grandad on Britain’s Got Talent; wasn’t I a complete ****?”

Yes Grandad. Yes you were. And there are thousands like you; and millions more who perpetuate the myth that it’s good to be a **** by watching you and laughing at your lack of intelligence.

One can only hope there is an afterlife and that when we arrive there St Peter tops up the number of such shows we have watched during our lifetime, calculates the hours of precious life we have wasted and punches us in the face once for every hour needlessly lost.

And I hope he’s got an arm like Mike Tyson’s…

I just wouldn't let it lie...

Football fans have today been reeling in shock after Spurs manager Harry Redknapp displayed some humility during a press conference.

The inappropriately named ‘Appy ‘Arry, who has previously attempted to rewrite history by claiming to have discovered penicillin and been the first man on the moon, this week claimed to have been the best manager in the history of Portsmouth Football Club.

Though neither his wife Sandra nor son Jamie have publicly derided the family’s patriarch for his dubious claim, privately they are believed to be ‘ROTFL’ according to a text message sent to one of Redknapp’s tame Fleet Street sycophants.

A family source confirmed: “Everybody is starting to believe Harry may be down to the bare bones mentally. Some of the stuff he’s coming out with is ridiculous. Bob Jackson, of course, took Pompey to two back-to-back league titles without the aid of a sugar daddy pumping millions into the club.

“And Jack Tinn managed Pompey to a cup final victory in 1939 against the best team in England – not the second-best team in Wales.”

Redknapp has also this week claimed to have tried to save crisis club Portsmouth by introducing rich friends – believed to be stationery magnates; suggested he went to Spurs merely so Portsmouth could claim compensation from the White Hart Lane club; blamed the south-coast club’s demise on its former owner Sacha Gaydamak; and that he expects a warm reception from Pompey fans.

However, in a remarkable turnaround apparently inspired by watching an old episode of the Lone Ranger, in which a native American claimed that “white man speak with forked tongue” Redknapp* chose to come clean in this morning’s press conference.

“Actually I deserve all the abuse they will heap on me,” said an unusually coy Redknapp.

“I promised them I wouldn’t go to Southampton – then I did. I then said I was ‘Pompey till I died’ – then a week later went to Tottenham. And then I said I wouldn’t go back to Fratton Park for any of their players because that would be ungracious – and then I signed Defoe, Crouch and Krancjar.

“Basically I’m the most duplicitous man in English football and that’s quite an achievement ferrshure. After all I once claimed Yoshi Kawaguchi had the best distribution I’d ever seen when he signed for Portsmouth and then, after he was a huge flop, denied ever having seen him play and claimed no knowledge of him before his signing.

“I even tried to blame poor old Sacha Gaydamak for Pompey’s financial plight when it was me what spent all the money including giving £50k-a-week contracts to players what didn’t even play more than a dozen times for the club.

“But that’s me all over…”

Redknapp, whose face appeared more paper cut-out mask than normal, was then bundled off the stage by large minders to be replaced by a twitching lookalike.

Responding to a question about one of his back-room staff, the new Redknapp said: “Kevin who? Kevin Bond? Never ‘eard of ‘im mate. You must be confusing me wiv somebody else. Anyway, did I ever tell you how I mediated in the Cuban Missile Crisis…”

*A man wearing a paper Harry Redknapp mask has been arrested by police and will be charged with flagrant honesty. Around 50,000 Portsmouth residents are believed to be prepared to stand bail

Is it me?

When I was a youngster programmes like Dr Who, Star Trek and Lost in Space convinced impressionable youngsters that we would be invaded by an army of alien machines who would colonise earth by use of mind-control devices.

Forty years later, and travelling to London on a commuter special - the 7.45am Petersfield to London Waterloo - yesterday I realised that day had come to pass.

Everybody, other than your correspondent, was being fed mind-control instructions from a hand-held device called a Blackberry. It really was like a scene out of a cheap 60s' sci-fi drama.

It appeared to me that nobody in the carriage was resorting to the traditional commuter-travel standby of a national newspaper, or the latest pot-boiler from Jackie Collins. Admittedly I had on my MP3 player, listening to Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent - after all it wouldn't do to engage in conversation with other species - but at least I was aware there were other people around.

For everybody else the entire world was contained in a small metallic box only slightly larger than the average wallet and subsequently the panacea for all ills was displayed on a LCD screen smaller than a credit card.

Thousands of years of evolution - all for this. What are these people doing? Twittering? Blogging even? Are they labouring under the illusion there are people out there who really give a toss about what they think? Who'd be stupid enough to believe that...?

My incredulity was only heightened when I alighted at Waterloo and took the Northern Line to Leicester Square and then the Picadilly Line to King's Cross St Pancras - I'm nothing if not thorough when it comes to setting a scene.

On the Underground there was every living cliche you could think of:

• the broad-shouldered rugby-playing ex-public schoolboy, now city trader, in his £600 suit and £300 shoes with his hair slicked back completely using enough oil to provide the annual gross domestic product for a small third world country;
• the overweight teenage mum resplendent with huge hoop earrings and complete with pushchair and small child, still stuffing her face with a family-size bag of Doritos despite the fact her leggings were screaming "enough already!" (she may have been Jewish as well...);
• the poor Asian student for whom carrying his textbooks in a rucksack automatically marked him out as a terrorist suspect to almost everybody in the carriage;
• the power-hungry, 40-something single-woman, dressed to kill and with a tongue to match - after all being rude to people is the only way to get on in a male-dominated society;
• the 'trendy young guys' who dress to give the impression they're at the cutting edge of fashion and may even be a rock star you haven't heard of, and who think they look really cool in their retro gear, whereas anybody over the age of 30 will tell you they look a 'knob!';
• the commuting banker, in three-piece Savile Row suit, with a rolled-up copy of the FT under one arm and a brolly in his other hand, despite the fact it's the warmest October day since the dinosaurs keeled over;
• the fat, long-haired, unshaven Motorhead t-shirt-wearing 30-year-old on his way to a Dungeons & Dragons convention in a dark room in Soho - this was not me by the way: I do not possess a Motorhead t-shirt;
• the knuckle-dragging, tattooed skinhead sporting a BNP badge and making snide comments about anybody "who shouldn't be in this country";
• the impeccably dressed gay, with his designer glasses and £500 man bag;
• the painter and decorator in paint-splashed overalls who takes great delight in brushing up against anybody in an expensive suit or anybody with impressive breasts;
• a middle-aged Japanese tourist who sees nothing wrong in wearing a 3/4-length denim jacket, with tracksuit trousers and a Van Heusen shirt...

I could go on, but suffice to say that's the last time I attend a public transport users action group meeting...

Credit where credit's due

Pompey chief executive Peter Storrie has come under increasing pressure recently as details of the club’s debt were made public.

The former West Ham and Notts County supremo – who, it is alleged by the Mail’s Charlie Sale began his career in football by selling bibs and cones to Harry Redknapp – earns a seven-figure salary, the largest for a chief exec in the Premiership.

And some Pompey fans are, justifiably in my view, questioning how he can be held up as a white knight over his ‘introduction’ of the new owners, when, in his role, he clearly presided over the mounting debt.

If Marks & Spencer was on the verge of administration and its chief executive Stuart Rose came out and said “Well it was what the board wanted so I went along with it – but it’s not my fault” do we really think he would be held blameless? Bloody right he wouldn’t. He’d be out on his ear before you could say “This is not just any old sacking this is a Marks & Spencer sacking”.

Surely as chief executive Storrie is culpable? After all he – we have to assume – could see the problems mounting. If he didn’t realise the problem he should be sacked. If he did see and did not approve of the policy of over-spending why did he not simply resign and blow the whistle on it? Protecting that seven-figure salary we must assume.

I would have given him far more credit if he’d quit a long time ago and at least alerted everybody to what was happening. Instead he sat back raking in the greenbacks and told us for months on end there wasn’t a problem, until one day he changed his mind and said, actually it is quite bad here…

He has to be given huge credit for one thing, however: not many chief executives in football get their club’s owners on an eight-week sale-or-return basis.

Let’s hope the same agreement is in place for the current incumbent in case he proves faulty as well.

"Marge, you're as beautiful as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda"

For the first time - no honestly - I may have to buy Playboy.

Apparently the next edition features Marge Simpson. It's not that I will get off on naked cartoon figures - that's yet to be tested and I would imagine Marge doesn't get her kit off - it's just that I am a massive Simpsons fans and the incongruity of it appeals to me.

That and I'm a sucker for anything Simpsons; I recently broke my Homer Simpson - "Mmmm...beer!" - bottle opener and I'm still distraught.

We also have a Marge wine-bottle stopper, a Homer Simpson magic 8-ball, eight DVD box sets, a Simpsons clock, Simpsons Cluedo - I can't stand the game but I love the little characters - Simpsons chess (it makes losing to a child much more fun), numerous books, wisdom of Homer socks and two cats called Marge and Lisa.

She who must be obeyed thinks I'm obsessed and 'sad', but surely it's an understandable obsession given that it is quite plainly the best television series ever - and don't just take my word for it, Time magazine said so as well.

I wonder if Matt Groening ever realised what he would spawn when he first drew Homer and Bart?

Football in disarray - Pompey hope to benefit

The future of the Football Association is today in doubt after its 'fit and proper person' test failed FIFA's 'fit and proper fit and proper persons' test.

A spokesman for FIFA said: "The Football Asscoiation's 'fit and proper person' test was found not to be fit for the purpose intended and will therefore have to be shelved until the media furore surrounding it dies down and we can quietly resurrect it without anybody noticing.

"This has serious implications for football because it's not right that people are able to point out the shortcomings of the sport's national governing bodies. It is not an easy task keeping football's elite from mixing with the smaller clubs and becoming tainted.

"It has therefore become necessary to ensure clubs deemed 'unsuitable' for inclusion in the top leagues are forced to endure humilation at the hands of 'unfit' owners. This is the reason Sulaiman al Fahim was allowed to take over at Portsmouth and presumably why Ken Bates is still allowed anywhere near the game.

"This at least explains why the FA's 'fit and proper person' test is the worthless piece of s**t it is, but we can not stand by and allow somebody to leak it to the press for all to see."

The remarkable admission by the sport's governing body comes after the official FA Fit and Proper Person Test document was leaked to a small homeless boy rooting around in bins in Soho Square.

You can now see for yourself just how poor the document is as we have reproduced the form in its entirety below:

How would you describe yourself?


 Rich


 Super-rich


 Mega-rich


 Walter Mitty


Are you now or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation or worn a France shirt with the name Platini on the back?

 Yes


 No


 Who’s Platini?


Have you ever invited Sepp Blatter to dinner?

 Yes


 No


 Who?


Do you have a big luxury yacht on to which you could invite Lord Triesman and his fellow FA members?

 Yes


 No


 Who?


Are you now or have you ever been Michael Knighton?

 Yes


 No


 Who?


Do you promise to raise fans’expectations up to fever pitch before letting them down with a lack of funds / business acumen / intelligence? (Do not delete which not applicable as they all are)

 Yes


 No


 What’s acumen…?


Who will you appoint as manager?

 A messiah loved by the fans but with no managerial experience


 A big-name manager who’s in it only for the cash


 A big-name player to whom this will be a first managerial position


 A good young manager from the lower divisions about whom nobody knows anything and will be sacked before he gets a chance to turn things around


 The cheap option


 Harry Redknapp

I (the undersigned) appreciate that all the information given above is completely irrelevant providing I promise to maintain the status quo within the Premiership ( or the EPL as it is known in corporate circles), promise never to speak out of turn and to ensure small clubs are never given the opportunity to establish themselves at the top level.

Art for art's sake

It’s National Poetry Day today and without wishing to get myself labelled a complete heathen I have to say I’ve never really ‘got’ poetry.

I’m not a literary ignoramus; I’ve read a lot of books and some of them didn’t have many pictures.

But I just didn’t see the point of poetry at school and I struggle to be more enthusiastic about it 30 years later. Admittedly in the intervening years I have taken quite a liking to the works of Sir John Betjeman - largely because of the inclusion of steam trains - but I’m still firmly in the camp of ‘if you wanna write a story, write a story…’

It may be puerile but the only poetry I genuinely enjoy is of the limerick variety. My young colleague Henry has been on the receiving end of a couple of crackers from another young colleague, Lee, who has a wicked sense of humour.

Only this week, having returned from a holiday in Sri Lanka, Henry was greeted with Lee’s ‘There was a man back from Sri Lanka’, and it doesn’t take much to guess the pay-off.

If anybody out there knows a book which I can read which will help me understand the fascination of poetry – Iambic Pentameter for Fat Bastards perhaps? – then please let me know.

Mention of art and fat bastards also brings me on to another topic. One thing I have grown interested in since I have got older is art. One of my favourite places on earth is the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. Not only is it a stunning building – it’s a conversion of a wonderful old railway station – but it houses many stunning works of art.

I wasn’t quite so taken with the contents of the Louvre which seemed dark and claustrophobic by comparison, but even I would draw the line at allowing a McDonald’s franchise into the museum.

Not surprisingly art lovers are up in arms – apart from the Venus de Milo, obviously.

The Louvre told the Daily Telegraph it had agreed to a "quality" McCafé - no don't laugh - and a McDonald's, which are "in line with the museum's image".

We can surely expect an adaptation of the Louvre Pyramid with a covering of sesame seeds in the style of Tracey Emin or perhaps half a Big Mac in formaldehyde courtesy of Damien Hirst.

Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t taste any worse than one you’d get over the counter.

Green, as in naive

I'm trying to be green, but like Mark Watson, in his book I finished recently, I'm crap at the environment.

In fact I'm more crap at the environment than Mark Watson.

I keep all the Jiffy bags and padded envelopes that come into the office so we can reuse them - it's only a little gesture, but every little helps.

This morning I despatched something up to the nice man at Golfblogger.co.uk in a recycled cardboard envelope, but used up about 100m of sticky tape in order to prevent the contents being spread all over a sorting office floor.

That can't be right - or green - surely?

Sisters are doin' it for themselves...

Best news story of the day?

http://tinyurl.com/ybakyhk

Now that's what I call justice...

Spitting mad...

The Conservative Party must be delighted that the seminal, rubber-puppetted satire show Spitting Image is no longer on air.

Several of the shadow cabinet would not look too good as caricatures, but shadow chancellor George Osborne would not have to worry: bizarrely, he already looks like a Spitting Image puppet.

No need for a caricature

Yesterday on the ‘world stage’ he spoke like a school prefect and during his “ovation” looked like a data entry clerk who’d suddenly found himself promoted beyond his ability… hang on a sec.

Osborne would be prime Spitting Image material.

He is a former member of the Bullingdon Club, a notorious Oxford University dining group “‘infamous for “trashing” restaurants and other riotous behaviour’ and ‘open only to sons of aristocratic families and the super-rich’”.*

The Bullingdon Club prepared

Osborne for 'real' life

David Cameron was also a member, so at least we have two people in the shadow cabinet fully cognisant of what motivates the ASBO generation. But presumably, if you can afford to pay for the damage your vandalism causes that’s OK.

Osborne said, on more than one occasion yesterday “we are all in this together”; in the same way, presumably, that everybody was equal in Animal Farm…

The Tories aren’t the only people who should be grateful Spitting Image ceased transmission in 1996. Tony Blair’s Labour Government would have suffered hugely at the hands of Fluck and Law.

Which got me thinking… (yeah, I know – here we go)

JOHN PRESCOTT: Obviously he would be as round as he was tall, with rolls of fat falling over Union Jack silk boxing shorts. He’d wear boxing gloves and all the time he was talking he’d be either shadow boxing or stuffing his face with pies. The only other item of clothing would be an adult catch-all bib round his neck like those worn by babies.

HAZEL BLEARS: I’ve no idea why I see her like this but I imagine her as a wartime landgirl wearing a knotted, spotted headscarf. But most importantly she would have over her shoulder a step ladder so she could sit atop it during cabinet meetings.

Bleary eyed - see what I did there?

ROBIN COOK: Obviously a bearded gnome, but instead of the normal gnome get-up it would be an open-neck shirt with huge medallion and he would sidle up to people in a very slimy manner befitting a lothario of such stature. And he would constantly need sub-titles.

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS TONY BLAIR: Just a normal caricature in a smart grey or navy blue suit. But he has a halo. And as the camera pans out it is clear the halo is held in place by a stick held by Alistair Campbell. Every time Blair appears there is a heavenly flash of light and the sound of a choir; as soon as he steps forward Campbell then ushers the choir and a TV lighting crew out of shot.

Sadly Fluck and Law are no longer in the UK. One is in Australia the other in Cornwall. But if anybody is planning on bringing the show back I’d just like to say I am available for conceptual meetings, script sessions and voice-overs.

• If you’re too young to remember Spitting Image check out some of the clips here. These are mainly the songs but still worth a gander.

*Taken from Wikipedia so it must be true…

The first rule of flight club is...

I admit to being a little bemused by the final paragraph in this news story taken from Travel Daily.

Passengers on an Air India flight understandably panicked last week when a mid-air scuffle broke out between the pilots and cabin crew.

Two pilots and two flight attendants have now been grounded following the incident on a flight from Sharjah to Delhi, in which one female crew member apparently accused a pilot of sexual harassment.

Despite the cockpit being abandoned as blows were exchanged, “at no stage was safety compromised,” said Air India.

So there's nobody in the cockpit, the entire crew is engaged in fisticuffs in the aisle and “at no stage was safety compromised”?

I take issue with that: who was indicating the location of emergency exits? Who was serving cardboard sarnies? And did the passengers have to pay extra for the privilege of watching an in-flight fight?

I'm also enchanted by the idea of the auto-pilot landing a virtual left-hook...

Deja vu all over again...

So Pompey's latest Arab takeover has gone through. While the portents seem good and the guy's lawyer seems credible, I'm reserving judgment and following the lead of my mate, Steve Morgan, who simply posted this on a website when the deal was announced.

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again

With apologies to The Who.

Don't bottle it up

Weird news story of the day (well, yesterday actually)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8291828.stm

What a state we're in...

You have to feel for Tory leader David Cameron. Formulating his plans for raising the state pension age to 66, he said, was a very difficult decision for him to take.

I'm sure it was, for a man reputed to be worth more than £3m and who could retire tomorrow with no worries.

Hardly a man of the people is he? And that highlights what a sad state of affairs we have in our domestic politics currently.

Cameron is likely to be our next Prime Minister, not because he shows any degree of leadership or that he'd be good for the country, simply that he can't be as bad as the current bloke.

Heaven help us.

Doctor, will he still be able to write a cheque...?

We're all glad, I'm sure, to see Pompey owner Sulaiman al Fahim's visit to hospital was not as a result of a heart attack as first reported, but 'merely' for an operation on kidney stones.

This does provide an answer to possibly one of life's greatest unasked questions: which is cheaper to fake, a heart attack or a kidney operation?

Seriously, I'm not suggesting for one second that he was not having a genuine operation. I was just a little suspicious when I realised the barcode on his hospital wristband was actually for a two-pack of Tesco own-brand custard tarts.

And believe me, I know the barcode for a two-pack of Tesco own-brand custard tarts when I see one.

And they even left on his wristwatch...

Set fire to it and they will come...

Apparently there's been a huge blaze at an industrial estate in County Londonderry with around 50,000 tyres going up in smoke.

Police have told nearby villagers to keep their windows closed, but I feel they may be missing a trick.

Regular viewers of The Simpsons will remember that their home town, Springfield, is home to the state's largest self-sustaining tyre fire which has been burning continuously since either 1966 or 1989 depending on which episode you watch. It has subsequently become one of the town's major tourist attractions.

These tourist authority people need to get their bums in gear...

Real deal or fake sheik...?

Apparently Pompey owner Sulaiman al Fahim is in hospital in Dubai with a suspected heart attack – this may explain why both he and his PR man failed to respond to an email I sent them yesterday.

Alternatively they may not have responded simply because I’m a fat pillock who is no more important than any other supporter. I would agree wholeheartedly with that assessment, but would point out that al Fahim’s PR man, John Lough, has respectfully responded to my previous emails within the hour.

Obviously we wish al Fahim a speedy recovery; but Pompey’s problems continue, with or without him. And they need to be addressed.

So if the Daily Fascist is correct – and one suspects it does have the ear of the club’s chief executive Peter Storrie – the players’ wages will be paid with a generous donation from Arab property magnates the al Faraj brothers, paving the way for a takeover one would imagine.

Al Fahim’s ‘people’ have even taken the unusual step of releasing a picture of his hospital wristband in order to dispel conspiracy theories that it’s all a stunt to reduce the pressure on him.

Conversely such an unusual attempt to quell rumours is more likely to be seen as putting out fire with gasoline, as cynics would suggest it’s easy to stunt up such a picture. Maybe it was cheaper than buying a canoe and paddling off into the sunset.

Whatever the situation it does put to rest the first rumour circulating which was that al Fahim had been rushed to hospital to have a large number of letters of credit removed from his anal passage…

Downloads aren’t on the up

A new report* shows that Britain is 31st in the world when it comes to the quality of our high-speed broadband connections.

Yes, that’s right … 31st, behind such technical luminaries as Lithuania, Romania and Latvia.

The study splits the results of its tests into five categories:

• ready for tomorrow - with super-fast connections and low latency;
• comfortably enjoying today's applications;
• meeting needs of today's applications;
• below today's applications threshold; and
• leapfrog opportunity – which is a strange one because that’s what we all used to call that moment on the school sports day when the girls’ sprint captain bent over to do some stretching exercises

The quality of the high-speed connections available here in the UK is apparently only ‘meeting the needs of today’s applications’ the report says. And I’m not even sure that’s true.

I struggle to use the BBC iplayer as I do not have ‘the necessary bandwidth’ and attempts to join the digital tv age by signing up to Virgin have been balked because we do not have the prerequisite fibre-optic cables outside our house.

And I find that particularly bizarre as the house is only about 15 years old. Houses further up the street, which are twice as old, do have access to such cables.

Maybe our end of the street just considered itself ‘too posh’ to allow working-class people in vests to dig up the road outside the houses.

I would say that’ll teach them to be so bloody short-sighted, but it hasn’t, because everybody else other than us seems to have Sky.

So subsequently, in a microcosm of Britain’s digital age, we’re probably the 31st best-connected house on our street … out of 30.

* The report was carried out by Oxford University's Said Business School and the University of Oviedo's Department of Applied Economics, and sponsored by the networking company Cisco. You can see why I didn’t mention it earlier…

Giggs takes it on the chin

Super-sub Ryan Giggs was the catalyst for Manchester United’s win at Stoke on Saturday – and he was rewarded with a starting place last night as Fergie’s men laboured to a 2-1 win over German champions Wolfsburg.

The fact that at 35 Giggs is still going strong and still able to influence matches at the top level is credit to him. When I was 35 I had the knees of a 70-year-old – and he always wanted them back at weekends.

But it’s not Giggs’ longevity I admire most about him. No the one thing I’ve always been in awe of is his five o’clock shadow. He has the most impressive and immaculate stubble this side of Don Johnson – and he’s been like that since he was about 17.

Last night he looked like Naval Action Man so superbly tidy was his facial hair. But what’s most galling was that he was probably clean shaven when he turned up at Old Trafford that afternoon.

You can see the difference in him between kick-off and the final whistle – as smooth as a baby’s bum in the warm-up, David bloody Bellamy at the post-match interview. Just how virile is the guy?

I’m sure if you locked him overnight in a small studio for an interview with Sky Sports equally hirsute front-man Richard Keys, you’d need to hack your way through hairy undergrowth to find them again next morning.

It takes a week for anything to notice on my chin. It’s just not fair.

It Asda be you...

Apparently Asda is introducing what it calls ‘democratic consumerism’.

It wants to engage the views of around 18,000 of its customers to “empower them, build their trust and earn their long-term loyalty”.

As part of this PR stunt – for it is nothing more than that – Asda plans to introduce webcams into some of its stores.

Just how sad and lonely would you have to be to log on to watch overweight chavs secrete half-bottles of own-brand whisky in their capacious handbags or Lycra leggings?

Let’s just hope they don’t come with microphones: “Oy Chelsea, get your f****** self over ‘ere and put those f****** cheese slices back; do you think I’m made o’ f****** money?”