A Christian Government?

Yesterday's discovery of the levels of death amongst UK citizens, apparently directly related to the new UK Government Benefit Policy, left me considering what is going on in the UK. How is it in a supposedly Christian country, the UK, so many people can turn their back to nearly 1,000 deaths a week, deaths that are little different to UK Government employees putting a 9mm bullet in the back of each of these peoples' heads? There is this callous indifference to the fate of the 'non me or us'. You could see this in newspaper threads, yesterday, on the subject of the UK Supreme Court deeming parts of the flawed Benefit Regulations as illegal, it was present in the bile and mean words directed at struggling people in the UK by people who are quite comfortable, thank you very much.

The Prime Minister likes to claim he is a good solid Christian and member of the Church of England, leading a Christian Government, yet he is quite happy to ignore the impacts of his Government's policies, even when they are fatal to UK citizens, the very citizens it is his Government's duty, on oath, sworn on the Christian bible, to serve and protect.

'Suffer little children to come unto me.' but make sure they are not poor or immigrant children.

'In my father's house their are many rooms'  but not for the homeless, sick or the unemployed.

'He healed the hault and the lame' but only if they were BUPA or American Express Gold Card members.

Just how 'Christian' is Cameron's Government?

Jesus was asked to define his 'New Covenant', and according to Mark (who most authorities deem the most accurate account) it is claimed he said:

"To love The Lord, your God with all your might and all your heart and to love your neighbour as yourself."

Some of us Buddhists think this was a lift from the Buddhist Dharma, first written down 500 years previously, as you can only 'love your neighbour' if you can stop being angry with yourself as by losing self anger you lose anger towards others: true love is unconditional and only happens when people are at peace with themselves and each other. 

It was completing my training as a Methodist Lay preacher that lead me to my own epiphany; for me there is no 'God', only an excuse for being unpleasant to each other for not toeing a certain party line of belief. Especially when the party line was originally conceived and designed to work alongside the laws of the Roman Empire and be about power of the few over the many. Christianity in its current form has less and less to say to a world community where information is easy to come by. This is a threat to those who wish to control belief, it makes them frightened which in turn presents as anger and schism - not much neighbourly love there (The Westboro Baptist Church in the USA makes a rather good but clearly, very extreme example of this phenomenon). Is it any wonder in the Christian West people are turning towards Buddhism simply because at its base is the core idea of being civil to everyone, an idea thought so scary, frightening and threatening the historical figure of 'Christ' was nailed to a bit of wood for suggesting it and the churches in his name continue to metaphorically nail civil folk to bits of wood to this day because they do not believe life should be lived in the way a particular 'church' believes it must be lived.

Buddhism works for me because it does not ask me to believe but to question, to constantly question how I act towards others, is it fair, honest, civil, with out anger and in keeping with what I understand as 'best', at any particular point in time. Buddhism leads me to understand there is no 'ultimate truth' only what is observed and tested each and every time.

Everyday I look at the news across the platforms, everyday the story hidden away under the news horizon is the increasing poverty of a fair percentage of UK Citizens, increasing homelessness, increasing fuel poverty, increasing food shortages, increasing reliance on soup kitchens for hot meals while in the UK Parliament the masters of this disaster give themselves a pay rise, on top of an already decent salary and expenses, a pay rise, in itself, greater than the unemployed are expected to live on for a year. Yet the same 'public servants' whinge at the idea their heavily, publicly subsidised bars, restaurants and like perks in Westminster will have to end as a result.

It may be harder for a rich man to get into heaven; on the evidence of the current UK Government's actions they are quite happy to send as many of the poor and sick on first, as they can, while they trough on asking their accountants to prove you can get a camel through the eye of a needle.

So on the basis of my present questioning of the nature of this UK Government, the objective evidence in the media and in their actions publicly, this current UK Government has more in common with the Westboro Baptist Church in the USA than any other form of Christianity: being brash, loud, hateful, inconsistent, greedy, hypocritical, angry and offensive with a whopping great motte in its own eye as it seeks for splinters in others' eyes. In fact the very things the biblical 'Christ God' of Mark preached against, as being the ultimate in evil.

To those Christians who find this piece offensive, feel angered, wish to rain down spume, hatred and the wrath of their 'God' on me, I ask one thing - stop and look at your anger and ask yourself;

"What is it I am seeking to condemn, why do I feel hatred and fear?"

Listen to your real answer, it is in the quiet voice behind the condemnation, anger, fear and hatred, and maybe, as I did 25 years ago, you will hear something unexpected, different, challenging or maybe not.

In the meantime I will continue to ask questions of a most inhumane UK Government.

Then they came for me ....

Time to think carefully about what sort of country you wish to live in and what the UK really means:

• DWP figures - 10,600 people died within six weeks of having benefits sanctioned under the new regulations. (FOI request for 2011-12)
• Charities estimate 24,000 UK senior citizens will die, unnecessarily, this winter of hypothermia related conditions
• Shelter say homelessness is expected to increase by 50% courtesy of the Excess Bedroom Penalty rules (aka Bedroom tax)
• Of the all children living below the poverty line, half will be in inadequately heated homes

The DWP figures, alone, indicate an equivalent, unnecessary death rate related to IDS reworking of the 1934 Nuremburg Laws of around 1,000 UK citizens being put up against a wall and shot each week.

Maybe it is time to stop hand wringing, hiding behind the sofa, muttering 'Quhit can ye dae?' and start telling this Government and its Nu Blu Labour pals in Westminster - no more, not in our name, where ever you live in the UK.

First,they came for the unemployed;
I did not speak out,
I was not unemployed 

They came for the OAP's;
I did not speak out,
I was not an OAP.

They came for the homeless;
I did not speak out,
I was not homeless.

They came for the sick and disabled;
I did not speak out,
I was not sick or disabled.

Then they came for me -
There was no one left to speak for me.

(Apologies to Martin Niemoller)

Silence .....

It is late, the house is quiet, the cat on the sofa has his paw across his eyes, twitching cat dreams of mice or voles he has near missed or caught. I can hear the occasional burst of humming from the fridge while on the distant A75 a truck rumbles by on its way to or from Ireland.  In my head I am conscious of the tinnitus which is always there on the edge of my hearing hissing and whistling its white sound.

I do not want to go to bed and face the unseen dreams that haunt me at this time of year, so I stall, writing a stream of consciousness piece to while away another 30 or 40 minutes, make yet another cup of tea and hope something will come up to avoid the dread tread of stairs to my bed.

In my mind, as I write, I see the mass grave behind the Ajax Bay surrounded by 2 Para as they bury their dead from Goose Green, in the same grave we had already placed a friend's body bag after his helicopter was brought down by enemy fire.  As 2 Para move away, I hear a Sea King helicopter coming in to Casevac the lucky living. I tip out the remnants of a cup of now cold tea and wander back to start another trick in triage, hoping it will be quiet, for a change, during my watch. The Medical Tech Chief comes up swathed in a newly acquired, inside out, fur coat. He sidles up to me and mock whispers like some old fashioned spiv or the Monty Python character 'Nudge, nudge, wink, wink - know what I mean?', "Nice line in warm 'O' neg or Heamocel, no decent offers rebutted, sir, fancy a pint?" as he flashes the inside of the fur coat which has blood and fluid bags pinned to it to help keep them at body temperature. I smile and ask where did he 'rabbit' the fur coat from. "Got the wife to send it out along with half a dozen pairs of extra large tights. She never wears it now."

I put the cup down on the 'rest room' table and move through to the receiving area as the Sea King headed off to the hospital ship, SS Uganda. The shout goes up - 'Air raid warning red'. The LMA and me stand at the door to the processing plant as we watch A4's and Puccaras skim over the ships in the bay, watching the bomb splashes from near misses, waiting for expected customers from any hits. We see a Puccara smoking from its starboard engine and watch as the totally misnamed 'Sea Cat' anti aircraft missile staggers slothfully after it, struggling to get close enough to try and pounce. As the Puccara goes behind a ridge there is a blossom of flame - maybe the Sea Cat caught up but more likely the low flying Puccara ran out of air, on the latter case, we both agree. The A4s and Puccaras only ever make one pass, they learned, early on, a second pass was always fatal.

Sitting here in my home I can feel the cold wind blowing around me, just as it did as we looked out the door, squinting into the low sun, waiting for the next shout, my hands unofficer like in pockets, slightly hunched against the chill breeze, watching as the Wessex Fives and Jungly Sea Kings restarted their logistic ballet between the ships and shore while the RM Landing craft ushered 5 Brigade to land near San Carlos, where they moved into the bunkers and slit trenches recently vacated by 40 and 45 Commando. The Commandos, meanwhile, had trudged off towards Teal Inlet laden with kit there was no longer transport for, just like the Legionaries of ancient Rome - modern day Marius' Mules.

There was a silence then as well, broken only by the whop of rotor blades as a Sea King, with an under slung load, passed near us as it shifted a 105mm gun, forward. 

"Fancy a wet, sir?" I nodded in assent so we turned and went inside where a naptha block soon had our hands wrapped round a warming mug of Oxo, as the winter sun headed ever closer to the horizon while casting beams of reddish light through the holes in the rusted corrugated iron skin of the processing plant and the mottes danced.

Tonight it will be a mug of tea, clean pyjama's and a warm duvet and not mostly clothed, boots at my feet, in a sleeping bag, on a mat on a concrete floor - maybe tonight the ghosts will stay away or at least I will lose the chill I am now feeling. 

Armistice Day remains a long way off.

The United Kingdom of London

I saw an interesting graph yesterday showing wholesale gas prices are not much, if any, higher than a year ago while the unit price to the consumer over the same period has been hiked by 18% (including the recently announced rises). Austerity has seen a wage increase of around 1% for the energy companies, factory gate inflation is around 3% (caused, ironically, by the same energy cost hikes) and remember Centrica alone made in excess of £66 billion profit before tax in 2011-12 from its energy business.

So why are the useless, toothless, sybaritic, oanistic Westminster plutocrats sitting on their hands, saying deaths from hypothermia should not happen while, in the real world, people in their own country, a first world country, die from a preventable cause?

A bunch of plutocrats whose solution to the problem is to 'put an extra jumper' on. This will be on top of the two vests, T-shirt, shirt, two pullovers, scarf, gloves and a fleece which is already being worn.

A preventable cause made worse by the 1934 Nuremburg Law mimicking benefit reforms the same morons passed with out a whimper of opposition. Benefit changes in themselves which are estimated to be causing, directly and indirectly, in the region of 1,000 deaths a month - even before it gets 'cold'.

Got terminal cancer? You are fit for work; so we are stopping all your benefits. 

Have MS? You do not need a spare room for your husband to sleep in, you are married for F**k's sake take an excess bedroom penalty, tough if you end up being evicted. 

Sick in England, can't see a doctor, end up with an intractable condition because of the delays - tough you should have signed up with BUPA, bloody cheap skate that you are, to avoid the failings of all the lazy doctors and nurses the NHS in England employs.

So be good underlings, die quietly in your hovels and do not attract the attention of the press while thinking of England (damn, I meant Britain - same thing really), you know it is what you have to do for the good of us all (well the people who really count which is not you in any way, shape or form).

The United Kingdom of London - we make the mess, we rob the tax payer blind, we suck in massive indirect and direct UK Government subsidies, we buy off the politicians and you plebs have to die to save our embarrassment, because it is always your fault when our debt fueled house of cards comes crashing down about our ears.




Caring Conservatism at its best.

Thanks for the memories ...

It is 02:45. I took my sleeping pills and painkillers at 23:00 went to bed at 23:45 and have tossed and turned ever since.

The problem with memories is not all of them are ones you want to give thanks for, in fact many of my ingrained memories are ones I would rather not remember. As we head for the UK Armistice season it is hard not to remember friends who never saw their thirtieth birthday or others who, as a result of what we saw and went through, have since decided living with their memories was just not worth the effort and strain. Nor does it take much to start 'seeing'  all those situations you would rather never have seen either during your service or when on active service when you are being bombarded in the media about the run up to Armistice Sunday and have a UK Government looking to 'celebrate' the beginning of a war epitomised by the industrial scale of ordinary folk's deaths and injuries.

So you start trying to think about other things, if you can its is usually a good trick to get off the negative train of thought. Unfortunately, tonight I thought I had found a subject to kill the waking nightmare in its track and started thinking about the Sharp series of books. Tonight my id was smarter than me and got me thinking of the forensic damage Sharp's personal weapon - a two and a half pound, straight edged heavy cavalry sword - would actually cause, rather than Mr Cornwell's side stepping of the actual damage to his foe which our hero avoids by just using the tip for a killing thrust. Usually this weapon has only one cutting blade as it was designed to be used cutting downwards from the saddle on retreating infantry but our hero has the back blade razor sharp for about a third of its length from the tip.

In all penetrating weapons mass, sharpness and velocity are key to the type of damage. I estimated that Sharp would be generating around 150 kph at the tip, by mid swing, starting from level with his ear. This is a lot of energy to dissipate anywhere along the three foot blade where resistance created by clothing will be lessened by the slicing action of the sharpened weapon blade back towards Sharp. In fact if Sharp stepped inside a bayonet thrust and delivered this blow the sword would go through the opponents left collar bone and only be stopped by contact with either the sternum or spine. The pictorial records of wounds from sword blades, made after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, are rather eye watering in their severity with infantry frequently receiving traumatic amputation of arms, legs and evisceration as a result of sword blows. You can imagine the head wounds for yourself. Yet apparently our hero uses this bludgeoning weapon, typically, like a rapier with tidy thrusts.

This in a nutshell is the problem with memories, they do not go away and some times all the coping strategies in the world just do not help, especially when you have been trained to deal with the penetrating and blast wounds caused by modern weaponry, because there are somethings you are definitely never going to forget though you wish you could.

It is now 03:45 and sleep remains nowhere on the horizon ..... thanks for the memories .....

Krystalnacht - coming to an England near you

England is now, by any definition, a fascist state, run by plutocrats to ensure the wealth of oligarchs who run the business cartels in the City of London and a 'No' vote means, inevitably, Scotland will be in the same situation.

Thrown in the unemployed, sick and disabled are now to be treated as 'untermensch' by the DWP under Gaulieter Duncan-Smith with talk of work camps, special measures along with Gove's ear bending on the long discredited theory of eugenics by a SPAD and the picture is pretty clear, UKIP have won the political argument with out having to get one MP elected. Throw in the ever increasing police powers and the spooks at GCHQ listening to everything we say and just how far is the UK away from being a police state?

Clegg is now cast in the role of the folk who thought they could control Hitler and ended up being sidelined. While Cameron's press friends are hard at it turning the Scots into the scapegoats, the subsidy junkies who brought the UK down by 'B*ggering orf, f'ing selfish jock scum that they are', for the upcoming train crash when the artificial property bubble in London, underpinned by debt and laundered money, comes down around their ears or when the lights start going off all over the SE because of the systemic failure of Westminster to think much in advance of their next free lunch, let alone consider where the energy is coming from to cook it.

Rachel Reeves of Nu Blu Labour  is part of this problem and the core democratic failure of Westminster. Ordinary folk know what the problems are, geek speak is not the solution, neither is a parliament which fails to put the electorate first while busily inflicting the latest idea from the ultra right wing USA on us.

In the meantime the BBC, Guardian et al fail to inform the people of England and Scotland what will actually happen on the 19th of September 2014 on the announcement of a 'Yes' vote in the Scottish referendum to end the parliamentary union of the sovereign states of England and Scotland. Nor are they willing to discuss the constitutional impact of a 'Yes' vote which returns England's sovereign parliament ending the UK as a unitary political unit and commencing discussion between the sovereign parliaments of England and Scotland on the disentangling of joint responsibilities of Union, the share of debt and joint assets as of a 'Yes' vote on the 18th of September 2014. Goebel's would be very impressed with the London based media's manipulation of reality behind a rather thin bodyguard of lies.

If I was one of the future electorate of a sovereign English state I would be very worried about what was being done to society in my name to justify the dismembering of the universal system of welfare and health care my father, many of your grand fathers or great grand fathers fought and died for by ridding Europe of the very fascist policies now being inflicted on England by this government.

What really scares me is what is Westminster going to come up with as their 'final solution'?

Please vote Yes on the 18th of September 2014 and get us Scots out of this proto-fascist state the UK has become.
 
Note: The crowns of England and Scotland were never 'united' they are merely worn by the same head - just more propaganda from the folk who brought us 'subsidy jocks' and now are selling us 'the undeserving poor and sick'.

No Tea Party

The previous blog has clearly upset a number of Republican folk in the USA.

One pro independence FB page dropped the article because it was upsetting some of its USA supporters, easily solved - I dropped the Facebook page.

From the few comments on the original blog Ms Angry Republican did not have much to say about the issue raised - the increasingly fascist style governance of the USA and UK, outside a personal attack on me based on the issue of Obamacare. As I do not allow ad hominen attacks on my blog, it and the responses have been deleted and I have posted to explain why.

Sadly the responses from US Republicans merely served to add to my view of an increasingly insular and arrogant USA where it is 'OK' if they meddle in others affairs in say Libya, Somalia, Syria or Iraq and comment about all and sundry but 'Lawdy, Lawdy' it is absolutely appalling, disgraceful and undemocratic if you shine a mirror on a tiny corner of their political world, especially the 'Tea Party' Republican world view. 

There were many other issues they could have pick on, the Republican Representative from Texas who I quoted in disbelief but then I would have pointed out he is chair of the Congress Energy Committee and what sort of Texan company funds his campaigns. No, there is just something about Obamacare that gets their Republican goat, even though it is a highly diluted system of funding universal health care in comparison to most European provision, maybe it is the compulsory nature of the scheme and the impact it will have on Walmart profit margins - I do not know because Ms Angry Republican did not explain they simply 'slagged off', in turn this does not suggest there is much wrong with Obamacare except the bill is law in the USA, on the statute and the Republicans simply hate anything Obama does.

Even Fox News has had to admit 59% of folk in the USA they polled are pointing the finger at the Republican Party for the shut down and Sunday's US media blitz by Republican Congress Members has had little effect in changing this perception. Maybe the Republican's should listen because Fox News and its owner are hardly massive supporters of Obama.

Lack in the US of A

The US Government has ceased to exist in all major respects, it is broke, it can not pay its employees so all the normal  little cogs of government have ground to a halt. Currently their military will be fighting for free to save the self same US politicians', who have caused this mess, political backsides.

As I understand it the Republican's in Congress felt it more important politically to protect the profit margins of private health insurers than ensure all people in the US had access to a basic human right, health care, by right, no matter how in debt, skint or poverty stricken they are they are. Given the 15% of US citizens live below the US poverty line that is an awful lot of folk with no access to basic health care.

The Republican's lost the vote in Congress to stop Obamacare, they lost the vote in the Senate on the same issue hence Obamacare (an upgrade to Medicare to make this basic level of care truly universally accessible in the USA) became law. The Republican version of UKIP (the Tea Party) threw its toys out of the pram accompanied by a whole series of inane statements to defend their petted lips - Obama is a Muslim and therefore a terrorist threatening the safety of the people of the USA, Obamacare is anti-American as it is anti-competitive, Obama is a socialist, the inanities of the Republican make the Private Eye's Coleman Balls series seem logical by comparison.

Only today I came across this classic from a Republican Congressman, Representative Joe Barton, from Texas: "Wind is a finite resource and harnessing it will slow the winds down which would cause the temperature to go up."  This from a party which continues to state there is no such occurrence as climate change and if it is, fossil fuels are not playing any part in global warming. I have friends in the USA, they have serious University degrees - surely the average American can not believe this arrant nonsense?

In the meantime the USEPA are reporting major problems with aquifers across the US of A which are either being sucked dry by Coal Bed Methane and Shale Bed Methane Fracking's heavy demand for water or heavily polluted by the release of fracking chemicals and methane into the aquifer rock layers. Folk living around the vast US Fracking developments are being paid vast amounts to stop complaining about the leaks and the smell, compensated for the increase in sink holes in areas where fracking is occurring or damage to homes and businesses from localised earthquakes caused by stress relief in rock layers caused by fracking fluids at high pressure lubricating the fault lines.

I presume Mr Barton and his Republican friends in Congress are perfectly OK about this as long as their pals in Halliburton are making a mint from the methane extraction. The Republican's are clearly happy to subsidise Wal-Mart and MacDonald's profit margins using US Taxpayer's money to keep wages artificially low to the point people working a 45 hour week in the Us in either organisation still end up having draw food stamps to get by.

It turns out since the Republican lost twice in an open vote they are now trying to blackmail the US executive to give in over 'Obamacare' and do not give a fig about the people who actually make the US Government work. How can Republican's claim they are all for 'the land of the free' when by their actions they are deliberately creating an ever less free and more restricted, divided, violent and closed down US society lacking any opportunity to improve its condition or seek the 'American Dream'?

Worse still, this Republican Tea Party Policy is the politically fascist leaning model the current Conservatives of the left and right at Westminster are now trying to force on a UK populace. A population which is increasingly divided and splitting along political and financial lines to the point the Scots will exercise their right to end the 1706 Treaty of Union in September 2014 and put the United Kingdom, the 1706 treaty created, out of existence; returning Westminster to being solely the English Sovereign Parliament, directly ruling the English crown dependencies of Berwick upon Tweed, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland's independent parliament will reflect Scotland's long standing social democratic political leanings and function as a representative democracy where the Scottish people will be sovereign.

Note: To ensure we are talking about the same thing these are the meanings I have applied.

Socialism: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. At socialism's extreme edges there is little to separate socialism's processes and actions from fascism, as in both systems all power and control lies with a self selected elite.

Socialist:  An advocate or supporter of socialism.

Fascism: The state, through official / unofficial cartels, controls all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. The people are usually rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, unemployed, sick and disabled (aka the untermensch in the German fascist state pronouncements). A process which is utilised to reduce individual freedoms for the good of the State usually by increasing police powers to the point they are paramilitary in their actions.

Fascist:  An advocate or adherent of fascism who usually is a reactionary or dictatorial person.

Social Democracy:  a policy regime involving a universal welfare state and collective bargaining schemes within the framework of a capitalist economy.
                       

Tell Scotland I love her, Tell Scotland I care ...

I have been leading a pretty normal and quiet life, for me, since my last blog post; having taken an oath to myself to ignore the rest of the party conference season and especially this weekend's "Ein Riech, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer" fest from Manchester, especially as both my 'Screeching hypocrisy' and 'Throwing a wobbly' meters have been stuck in the red in the aftermath of the Yellow and Red Tory Glee Club meetings.

Anyhow; my sister and I were having problems with mother, a default state for both of us, and this required a fair bit of energy and patience with me, from me, to prevent me going to Fife with a GPMG and 10,000 rounds in a vain attempt to get Fife NHS and Fife Social Services to listen and act in a way that was actually in my mother's best interests rather than their own self interest. In the end I wrote to my Mum's MSP - how successful this will be is anyone's guess as my Mum's MSP is Labour, Fife Council is Labour run and it is not with out possibility most of Fife Council Social Service senior management will be Labour appointees. For those who know nothing of Labour politics in Scotland, nepotism is not a dirty word, it is just how things work in Scottish Nu Blu Labour circles - that or a brown envelope with ready cash in it.

It all went horribly wrong for me this lunch time.

I had just arrived in the club house after a nice, jolly and, more importantly, non precipitant round of golf. I was looking forward to a reviving Irn-Bru and an egg and sausage roll, musing cheerily on brown sauce or not to brown sauce, when I disastrously caught sight of the television, even worse BBC Scotland News television, who were in the midst of telling us just how super the real Tory's Conference had been in Manchester. I found this confusing as when I last looked Manchester is not in Scotland, we have more pandas than Tories in Scotland, so why was this headline news in Scotland?

This I could have survived, just. Sadly I made the mistake of looking at the screen, was trapped like a rabbit in the headlights, as there was the Fuhrer of the Real Tory Party, the proper blue one, resplendent in his bouffant hair, polished baw face, little piggy eyes, mouth which reminds me of my cat's dirty arse hole and most terrifying of all heard the word 'Scotland'. As my traitorous ears picked up every mincing, patronising and completely insincere word the Macaroon was uttering, telling me how much everyone else in the UK did not want us Scots to go, we are all such fine chums, think of all the people from across these isles my predecessors as Tory Prime Minister have sent all over the globe to die alongside you Jocks, so we few, we tiny few could get monstrously rich on the backs of all their dead bodies (and those of the natives, who do not really count because they are not one of us and are actually immigrants), please do not go Scotland, we love you, honest, even though you are a bunch of whining, subsidy junkies.  I briefly teeter tottered on the fine balance between manic hysteria (and putting a chair through the plasma screen) or despair and went for despair (it was by far the simpler and cheaper option) then headed off to flush my head down the toilet.

The questions dear reader, for you to ponder and help me find answers to are;

• Was mine a normal response to this olenaeceous, insipid, mono-synaptic and primordial slime of a man or am Independence Virus positive?
• If I am Independence Virus positive is their any hope for me or am I destined to be 'Doomed! Doomed I tell ye!' just like Alisdair the goat faced eyebrows keeps bleating on about?
• Should I continue to flush my head down the loo or go and lie down in a darkened room?

The cistern has just finished filling, must go .....