SCAPE MY GOAT

Time is a majority verdict. If a thousand clocks struck twelve it would be a bold watch which insisted it was 3 pm. It was not always thus. Differentvillages used to operate on different times. The coming of the railways united time since one could hardly have the Flying Scotsman arriving in Edinburgh before it left Crewe.Very much the same can be said of events. They vary by the position in which one views them.
This startling thought came to me in, of all places, that little gem of aGreek temple, the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight on Merseyside. The gallery boasts a collection of the paintings by Holman Hunt including one of the saddest images in the whole history of art. It is the "Scapegoat", a rather sorry looking animal which has the woebegone look much worn by our luckless Prime Minister in these difficult times. It depicts the goat that on the Day of Judgement is goaded and beaten and driven from the Temple carrying all the sins of the congregation. How similar, I thought, to the political life of our own dear Mr Brown.I am apolitical but I cannot see that Mr Brown is any worse than many of his predecessors. I except Mrs Thatcher. The only thing I have against her is that, in a drunken evening at the British Embassy in Paris, she agreed to the creation of the Channel Tunnel. Her apart, they have been a sorry lot.Callaghan, Wilson, Major, Blair. As grey a bunch of second-raters as you could shake a stick at.
I cannot for the life of me see what Brown has done wrong apart from selling our gold. Of course he wouldn't call an election he was pretty well bound to lose. Who can blame him?He had just got the job he had been lusting after for ten long years.
He was the only leader who had a plan to prevent the world from going bankrupt. He handled the last foot and mouth crisis with despatch and I believe he is trying to disentangle us in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which he is sending a token force rather than the massed battalions the Americans sought.He has been blamed for Labour's defeat in recent elections. The turn out in European and Local Government elections is always low and in this election there has been a reaction from rural areas for all the punishing laws in which country folk are drowning. And a reaction against the pettifogging new laws which every three quarters of an hour pour forth from Brussels.
Above all there has been the glaring evidence from the European andWestminster communities that our MPs are every bit as idle, as corrupt andas incompetent as the rest of us. Their sin is that they are blocking our way to the trough.So out into the desert limps this woebegone Presbyterian Scotsman, goaded by a congregation anxious to escape .blame.
I think, like the late lamented Douglas Home, the main reason we don't likehim is that he does not look good on TV. The Media is the other can attached to the goat's tail. The daily attempts to whip up a story are a pathetic attempt to match exclusives that have been pouring out ofthe Daily Telegraph in recent weeks.
Let me make it clear. I am not a fan of Brown. I cannot respect anyone who would bring to his cabinet Hain, Sugar or Lady Kinnock.and who longs for thecompany of Balls.

THOSE WHO CAN

I was angry to hear the phrase "carry the can" used in connection with the parliamentary shenanigans. "Carry the can" is the property of my family,coined by my Great Uncle Jeremy, for thirty years the Earl of Dudley's principal mining engineer, and the phrase may only be exported under licence.
Uncle Jeremy was called to give evidence in a court case at Stourbridge,Worcestershire. A lady was prosecuted for selling beer without a licence after a boy was seen carrying beer away from her premises. Her defence was that she brewed it for her son, the charter-master at a neighbouring pit who gave a daily allowance of beer to his men. Uncle Jeremy confirmed the boy was carrying cans of beer because it was the practice of employers to give every miner in South Staffordshire a quart of beer a day.It was usually the youngest boy who had the job of "carrying the can".Older boys ambushed them and drank from the cans which resulted in can boys getting their ears cuffed by the miners who got short measure. "Carrying the can" became synonymous with punishment.
The Birmingham Post of 9 November 1889 poured scorn on the notion of pit beer:"Are we to believe," it demanded, "that day after day, at the same hour, the spirit of loving kindness swells the breast of every coalmaster and contractor in the district and fills him with the same spontaneous desire to give a quart of beer to every man he employs? Preposterous."

From the sixteenth century onwards there were so many Skidmores round Stourbridge they were identified in the Welsh way. Prurient friends might envy my ancestor Ben Skidmore o' the Bonk. Unnecessary. In this case bonk was the dialect form of bank.
Indeed,so many Skidmores were there that they became the stuff of legend.
It was said the devil started out with a big bag of Skidmores intending to drop one here and there as he jogged along. St Kenelm saw him and pursued him with a bottle of holy water. When he saw the saint was gaining, the devil dropped his bag near Stourbridge and all the Skidmores wriggled out. Nice to be so well thought of by one's neighbours.

Another ancestor invented the phrase "Scotch Mist." but more of that anon.

INVITE THE QUEEN TO WATERLOO

Three centuries separate me from my aristocratic ancestors. From the 17h century my forbears have been determinedly working class and yeomen. Farmers, miners, glassblowers. Lay preachers, land agents policemen and soldiers. The French may have snubbed us over the D Day celebrations So be it. I have a special reason for celebrating the Battle of Waterloo next Thursday and I will ask the Queen to join in the festivities.
Three members of my working class family won the Waterloo medal. William, a trooper in Captain Clayton's Company of the Royal Horse Guards, John, a private in Lt Col the Hon H.P.Townshend's Company of the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and George, a private in Lt Col West's Company of the 2nd Grenadiers. (Insert;Picture of the 1815 "reunion" of the Black Watch (RHR)with the French at Quatre Bras)
As a family we have never been pro-French. Two Skidmores were killed at Trafalgar: Joseph, who was press ganged on HMS Arab, and a Royal Marine George on HMS Mars. I had a great uncle who rode with the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry in the Boer War as a gentleman trooper. Troopers had to supply their own horses and his was bought for him by his father, a grocer. (A rather special variety of grocer. On his marriage certificate he described himself as a "gentleman", even though his father was a coachman) My father, grandfather and uncle all served in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Scots in World War One with nary a stripe between them. A second uncle served in the Dandy 9th Royal Scots but he was killed in the Gretna Green train disaster on his way to France. I did achieve the dizzy rank of Local Acting Sergeant but lost all three stripes in separate courts martial over a six week period, as I have recounted here.
But it's a long way from James who fought at Agincourt "...as a man of arms with vj. [6] archer sin his company, all on horsbak and wele chosen men, and likely personnes wele and suffisantly armed, horsed and arrayed ev'ry man after his degree; that is to say, that the seid James Skidmore have hernis complete wt basnet or salade, with viser, spere, axe, swerd and dagger; And that all the seid archers specially to have good jakks of defence, salades, swerds and sheves of xl. [40] arwes atte least."
Forbye, my working class pedigree is beyond question, I am heavily disguised because I have always married above myself. My future widow is the step-daughter of a Clan Chieftain and her uncle was knighted. So I know not to wear a kilt south of the River Tay, never to drink soup at lunchtime and at dinner parties to talk to the lady on my left during the first course, the lady on my right during the second and to the table at large over pudding. My tie never matches my breast pocket handkerchief and I would not dream of wearing a handkerchief at all in my breast pocket in a city suit. Nor, whatever the fashion of the peasant Beckham, would I wear brown boots with a dark suit. I have become used to my wife's insistence on a napkin at every meal but what I once thought a charming middle class frivolity is now a grim necessity. My napkin is better fed than I am.
The napkin is like much else in my life. I used to long to be old enough to wear a monocle and walk with a stick, dressed in an alpaca jacket. The monocle is out. Such is the state of my rheumy eyes I would need to wear two; but the stick and the alpaca jacket are old friends.
Only one thing betrays me. True, I now take more than one bath a week but it is a 'bath' not a 'barth' and I cannot keep peas on a fork. Why no one has ever made proper the habit of scooping them up with a teaspoon I will never know. I do know that crowding them and crushing them on the back of a knife, rather like the conductors did in double decker buses in the rush hour, does not work with peas. They leap to freedom like so many captured air crew fleeing from Colditz. I am sure if you examined them you would find cunningly forged passports. When more than one pea foregathers the first thing they do is appoint an escape committee. To invert the form and use the fork like a slotted spoon is unsporting and against some secret rule. I have never seen anyone do it but neither has anyone labelled it as ill-bred. Alternatively, one could use the fork as a spear, poniarding a pea on each prong, though that would make a career out of dinner.
There are potato and apple peelers, de-corkers, slicers, choppers, machines for darning socks. I know that is true because the father of my first wife invented one. I used sell them to miners' wives on Doncaster market. I would demonstrate what I laughingly called my ability to darn a sock and they sold like hot cakes. As one rock faced lady explained, “ If tha' can do it, any bugger can.”
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Oh, that this too, too solid flesh, which I have been seeing in excess in recent weeks, would melt.
After a course of cancer, I emerged fully fit and two stones lighter. Now it has come rushing back from exile with many a glad cry, except from the wife who puts it down to the drink. My doctor, bless him, says, “Eat, drink and be merry.”
The trouble with being stout is that one is made merry of by the ill-disposed. We are an odd race.
It gets one laughed at in some circles. Did you see ”The Full Monty” and wonder, like me, at a society that can make a comedy out of the humiliation of the long-term unemployed? Can someone tell me what perversity in the human race decrees that nothing should excite it more than the exposure of the body’s waste disposal outlets?
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am deeply in favour of God but have some doubts of his ability as a design engineer. Now that I carry all my plumbing in my “bay window”, I realise I have lost any authority as an architectural critic. I will merely say the body would not look well on His celestial CV.
If He can create a world in six days, built-in contact lenses should not have been beyond him.
Take limbs. When the Good Lord attached those extraordinary dangling bits to each corner of the body you would have thought, would you not, that He would have given a thought to how we were going to dispose of them at night? Did it not occur to Him that wherever you turn to lay your weary head, your limbs will always get there first?
I think He relied too much on the ball and socket. Excellent in its place, I grant you, but a screw thread would have been better. Then, when we got into bed at night, we could unscrew them and rest them against the wall ready for morning.
Hands, those curious fringe-like objects, can get you into terrible trouble. I keep a file of cuttings of improbable newspaper stories. One tells how a man was gaoled for giving a judge a two-fingered salute. Recalled later to purge his contempt, he apologised profusely. He said he had mistaken the judge for the Mayor of Teeside. The apology was accepted and he was released.

FIND THE LADY

I blame Io, the daughter of Inachos, the King of of Argos. If she had not been putting it about on the beach in Helas a few thousand years ago, she would never have been kidnapped by Phoenician traders and the long war between East and West, which we are about to lose, would never have happened.
The Father of History ,Herodotus, who could have walked onto a job on the Daily Mirror, reckoned it was all a put up job. He reckoned she was pregnant by a Phoenician ship's captain and daren't tell her father. A generation later, a bunch of Greeks on a booze cruise used the kidnapping as an excuse and kidnapped Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre. When they got away with this, some other Greeks took a ship of war to Ae, a city of Colchis, where they carried off Medea, another king's daughter.
In the view of the Asians, this business of the ship of war was over reaction and that is when the brown stuff hit the fan. Up to this, according to Herodotus, the Asiatics weren't all that bothered about the loss of kings' daughters. They were, after all, only women and in Asia the glass ceiling was about ankle high. As Herodotus puts it: “To make a stir about the carrying off, argued a man was a fool. Men of sense make nothing of such things since it is plain that without their own consent they (women) would never be forced away.”
When Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, thought he would like a slice of Helen, why not? The Asians had not made a fuss when the Greeks stole their princesses. When the Greeks got so upset at the hijacking of Helen and raised an army and destroyed the kingdom of Troy, the Asians took a very dim view and things have never been right since.
Nevertheless, things were pretty quiet until the West demonstrated the truth of Machiavelli's tutorial “The Prince”, in which he said the best way to unite people behind you is to invent an enemy. A device which Bush and Blair were to use to great effect.
Faced with a warring ASBO aristocracy, in 1095 Pope Urban II invented an enemy they could fight to their hearts' content, the Saracens. . The Crusades were quite unnecessary. The Arabs had never prevented Christian pilgrims from visiting the Holy Land. They being very big in the tourist trade. In Western eyes, it was, nevertheless, an opportunity not to be missed for rapine and slaughter.
By the 19th century when Palmerston ruled out invading the Ottoman Empire because it was a buffer between Russia and India; and thanks to a number of eccentric English men and women Arabists, the stock of Englishmen was never higher in Arab lands.
Then Lloyd George and his merry men cheated the Arabs at the Versailles Congress of Peace that Passeth All Understanding. Compounding the evil done by handing their cousins, the Jews, the poisoned chalice and condemning them to a perpetual war with resentful neighbours. It was a shrewd move by Lloyd George, whose family legal firm's most lucrative clients were the Christian Zionists. From that day on it has been off at all meetings, as the bookies say.
If you lied to a neighbour and stole his back garden, your chances of a Christmas card from him would be limited. So everyone loses.
EXES MARK THE SPOT
In the face of considerable competition from his colleagues, the most unpopular MP in Britain is the man who boasted his large house was often taken for Balmoral. A boast which would only impress those who have not seen Balmoral in all the tawdry glory of its Haberdashers' Gothic, where the curtains and the carpets are made from matching tartan. Thus demonstrating the deep inherited vulgarity of our monarchy, even greater than that on show in the stately homes of the aristocracy.
But I do have a small niggle over the Long Mea Culpa. As the tiresome litany of parliamentary greed unfolded, it struck me that journalists are the last people to criticise expenses fiddles.
Indeed, I wonder how many of us outraged Holier than Thous, given a Lewis's list and urged to use it, would not rush to the counters and come home laden with bulging shopping bags. I was often told in my newspaper days that I could not be given a further rise but I could make up my income on expenses. Indeed, on the Mirror News Desk we had charge of a “Lolly Box” filled with bank notes, ostensibly to provide funds in emergency. Actually it provided ready cash to go to the pub with; and the size of one's expenses was determined by the amount of money one had borrowed. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our MPs, but in ourselves.
In Roman times the people enjoyed the humiliation of gladiators and the prospect of Christians being torn apart by lions. I wonder how many of the half a million new readers of the Daily Telegraph bought the paper to enjoy the humiliation of our venal tribunes? It is significant that the TV show which should be called “Britain Has No Talent” claims so many viewers. Never mind the truly dreadful acts. Watch the excitement of the audience at the public humiliation of those luckless entertainers. An MP turned the tables on an BBC interviewer when he asked how much SHE earned. The girl told him £92,000 a year. Which is not much less than I made in five years broadcasting three times a week to 26 million listeners worldwide.. Listeners to Feedback on Friday were not slow to point out that the BBC is also funded, as he was, by the taxpayer. Ought not some paper publish the salaries and expenses of broadcasters, they asked.
Nevertheless, I will be voting UKIP in the European elections. Not because I believe in them but because they are the only party that will even try to get us out of Europe. I will not be voting at all in the General Election. I have suggested that everyone fiddles their expenses if they think they can get away with it, but our MPs are something else. An idle bunch of greedy gossips; and three quarters of the legislation that is enslaving us comes straight from Brussels without a hint of protest.
Another reason I will not be giving my name to this charade is because they allowed the Iraq and Afghan debacles to happen, and I have just watched a You Tube tribute to the Scottish soldiers who gave their lives to boost politicians' vanity.
OUTING OF THE FRY-ing pan
Readers have wondered why last week I was so rude about the nation's favourite, Stephen Fry. I object to the way he uses knowledge as a bicycle to demonstrate how well he rides. Listen to Libby Purves, who is humble from a position of superiority. Or Melvin Bragg. Andrew Marr on his R4 programme is another who interviews knowledgeably over a wide range of subjects from science, to literature, to politics, to philosophy. By unobtrusive questioning, they all demonstrate a wide knowledge without drawing attention to their undoubted cleverness.

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN....................
From the Irish Independent
By SHANE HICKEY, SENAN MOLONY and AINE KERR
THE architect of a deal which will result in the taxpayer being hit with a bill of over €1bn for the compensation of child abuse victims last night said he had no regrets over the controversial arrangement.
Former Education Minister Dr Michael Woods said he did not believe that the Government could, or should, seek a renegotiation of the deal which allows the Catholic Church to escape 90pc of the cost of compensating victims.
The Government said that it will not seek renegotiation of the deal. Instead the taxpayer will be hit with the bill for compensation for the thousands of victims of systematic cruelty and abuse inflicted by members of religious orders.
The contribution of religious orders was capped at a once-off payment of €128m under an indemnity agreement overseen by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2002.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen expressed doubts about the Church contributing a greater sum.
A total of 32,000 people had been though the institutions, and "they weren't all abused, let's be frank about it," he added.
Meanwhile, Minister for Children Barry Andrews refused to agree that the Catholic Church should be told by the Government that it had a moral obligation to pay more.
Obligations
He said the best legal advice available to the Government in 2002 was that they had no power to coerce the congregations to pay.
"If there is a moral obligation, then that is something that should be discharged by themselves," he argued.
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A STICKLER'S BOAST

Although I am within a pontoon hand of my century, my family has sent me, a small, furry grenade, hurtling into the white technological heat of the twenty-first century.

For my eightieth birthday, a grandson, to whom I have shown nothing but kindness, signed me up as a Twitter, making me one with the loathsome Fry whose supercilious ubiquity nauseates. I have tried to join that merry throng but cannot think of a single tweet. The family clubbed together to buy me a Sony E-Book, with a collection of a hundred key books, thus making redundant the library of around two thousand books for which I built a garden library. It is having a terrible effect on me. It is getting so that I prefer Doctor Who to The Archers.

I feel as Richard Burton must have felt when Elizabeth Taylor bought him, one Christmas, the entire output of the Everyman Library housed in oaken bookshelves.

Though I am still frightened of it, the E-book has the fascination of a Black Mamba waiting to strike. I cannot believe that between its covers crowd Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Bronte, Homer, Machiavelli and a host of other classical authors who have escaped the bonds of copyright.

Apart from a voucher for a foot massage from an aroma therapist (who is going to enjoy a whole cornucopia of aromas when she explores my toes from which the twinkle has long gone), I relished the unchallenged joy of a bespoke hickory walking stick, lovingly crafted by Smith's of New Oxford Street, the Saville Row of stick-makers. Such a stick. A stick that could go out on its own and not an eyebrow would be lifted. A stick with magical powers that confers dignity on that which it supports. A swagger stick, a stick that will never be in the mud. A stick of consequence who will stick at nothing. Notice the 'who'. No 'which' describes this stick. This is no dry stick. This is a stick through which noble blood courses. This stick could walk unaided along any given boulevard with an independent air. A stick capable of breaking any available bank at Monte Carlo. A stick one would not dare to shake a stick at.

It was of just such sticks that Mr Jogglebury Crowdey dreamed. It is inconceivable that there can be anyone who has not heard of Mr Crowdey, the comic creation of the Geordie squire R. S Surtees whose unsurpassed comic novels, “Mr Facey Romford's Hounds”, “Mr Sponge's Sporting Tours” and “Mr Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities”, were the inspiration of a young reporter called Charles Dickens.

Mr Crowdey was, said Surtees, “a long headed, short necked, large girthed, dumpling legged little fellow who like most fat men made himself dangerous by compressing a most unreasonable stomach into a circumscribed coat, each particular button of which looked as if it was ready to burst off and knock out the eye of anyone who had the temerity to ride besides him. He was a pouffy, wheezy, sententious little fellow, who accompanied his parable with a snort into a finely pleated shirt-frill, reaching nearly up to his nose.”

Sounds oddly familiar.

His hobby was carving and collecting “curious handled walking sticks, of which he had accumulated a vast quantity. The garret of his house was quite full, while the rafters in the kitchen and cellars and outhouses were crowded with others...and as he cut and pouffed and wheezed he chuckled and thought how well the sticks, which he valued at thousands, would provide for his family.”

How nice to find oneself in such congenial company.

If I hear one more sanctimonious MP confess how right the public were to despise the House of Parliament, in a patronising tone, completely disassociating themselves from the fraud, I swear I will shake my stick at them, the ultimate sanction.It was the Slum House as a whole which voted itself the perks; the Disorderly House itself which voted AGAINST ending the shameful practice. The same House of Ill Fame that voted itself self- employed and eagerly joined the new Union of the Self Employed when being self-employed seemed to hold advantage. When the advantage subsequently moved to the employed, it was this House of Ill Repute that not only voted to be employed, but wrote to the fledgling, cash-strapped Self Employed Union demanding their joining fees back. A plague on all their Houses. The answer is simple. When I was making “Archives “ for R4, as the successor to John Ebdon, the BBC put me up in a family hotel in which they had reserved bookings for visiting broadcasters. It was comfortable without being lavish. The Part-time Work House should do the same having come to a financial arrangement with the hotelier. If the accommodation offered is not grand enough he the MPs should be free to make their own arrangements. It should be a job requirement for the MP to live in his constituency at his own expense.They would no doubt argue that they can be kicked out of parliament at ever election. I worked on weekly contracts with the BBC for thirty years

Fiddling while Rome Burns

Today I am eighty and only the intervention of a beautiful lady prevents this from being my last blog. Keith Waterhouse in the Mail, Paul Johnson in the Spectator, and the Guardian Wrap, a splendid digest of the news, have all sent in their papers this week. Tempted to join them.

With me it is neither intellectual exhaustion nor a diminishing of the urge to write. Rather, it is the growing belief that this is the age of Gibbon rather than Swift. Laughter is not enough. I believe that although in many ways we are living in a Golden Age it is like the last defiant flowering of a dying shrub. In the West civilisation is crumbling. The future lies with India and China, not Europe or America. Moslems are once again at the gates of Vienna. They will shortly outnumber 'white eyes' in Britain. Corruption is endemic in Parliament, the City, the Monarchy, the Law and local government. Undeterred by the costly folly of the Millennium Dome and although the country hovers on bankruptcy Our Rulers have taken on the Olympics. This week that cost the tax payer FURTHER £324 million towards the cost of the Olympic Village which wiser heads in finance have refused to finance. So far we have invested £650 million but will no doubt contribute to the £358 million still owed. Senior policeman have misused their credit cards to a mind boggling million pounds. Of the terrorists arrested, only seven per cent have been charged. In defence, the police claim that is also the percentage of serious criminals arrested and charged. Two disturbed non-criminals who might have been subdued by tranquilliser darts were shot dead by the police this week. The Chief Constables Association says it cannot uphold the law on hunting it took Parliament 48 hours to frame (that is 32 hours longer than they debated the smoking laws) Difficult to avoid the view that the police do not give value for money. To think we used to boast “Our Policemen are wonderful”.Barristers and solicitors have priced themselves well beyond their talent. I have never trusted judges since I discovered they heeded the 'advice' of the Lord Chancellor during the moratorium on the death penalty and “cooked the books” by reducing all murder charges before them to charges of unlawful killing. In consequence they must bear much of the blame for the increased number of murders since that infamous year. Moreover, neither the judges nor the Crown Prosecution Service spotted the corrupted evidence in murder trials which resulted, after the use of DNA , in pardons and compensation of many millions.If all that wasn't bad enough, the Elm has vanished, Wisteria is being attacked by foreign insects and Horse Chestnuts are dying all over Britain.

As to the House of Ill Fame and its cheerleader, the incomprehensible non-Speaker in any tongue humanity can unravel, the best suggestion, as so often happens, came from Sir Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: “My remedy is simple. Remove MPs from working for the state, laden as it is with PAYE, tax breaks, expenses fiddles and corruption. Make them self-employed, as they were before the war, paid an agreed salary but from funds supplied to and disbursed by their constituency returning officers. If they want a pied a terre in London, let the constituency own it. Let them pay VAT, fill in their own tax returns and make their peace on expenses with HMRC. This is hardly a drastic punishment, to have to behave like ordinary citizens.”

 Cromwell's view of the Rump Parliament was expressed  in terms which seem appropriate to the Current Parliament of Arseholes:

"[Cromwell] commanded the Speaker to leave the Chair, and told them they had sat long enough, unless they had done more good, crying out You are no longer a Parliament, I say you are no Parliament.” He went on: "It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. “Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? “Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”

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Eighty? I never asked to live so long and I am not sure it is a good idea. The only surprise life holds for me now is waking up and finding which limb has started to ache.

 Like my friend the painter Sir Kyffin Williams, I was born on Ascension Day. He always insisted that meant we had two birthdays. I also insist on a rehearsal. This year it took the form of lunch at my favourite restaurant, The Plate and Porter, in March. I had sausage, egg, bacon, black pudding, tomato and fried bread, with two large Pink Gins since wine no longer agrees with me. My wife generously hosted (even to buying, without her usual protest, the gins). The guests were three favourite, funny people, two much loved Jewish friends and a beloved cousin. They brought me a dashing, bespoke walking stick, a voucher for a foot massage and a CD of my young cousin singing with the York Minster choir. The Jewish friend said it was all right to shake his hand and kiss his wife. They couldn't catch Swine Flu. They were kosher.

Today most of my family will be around me at another lunch party. There will be Farmhouse Lancashire cheese, sausage rolls, Melton Mowbray pie and soused herrings. I wanted Bury black pudding and tripe and onions but that has been ruled out, as has fish and chips. My eldest daughter is making a cake. She is an authority on libelous cakes. She made one for my seventieth birthday which had seventy marzipan bottles of champagne round its perimeter.The family clubbed together to buy me an E-Book, which is a great worry. I had an MP3 Player for Christmas. It took me until Easter to work out how to use it. Finally a grandson showed me and I am making sure he is at the party so that he can explain the electric book.Taz, our long dog, bought me a bronze ballet dancer for my collection. I cannot understand why my friends call ballet 'Poufs' football'. At any one time there are up to twenty glorious girls on stage and two men. Taz has bravely defied my wife who had a busy month clearing away ornaments, giving them to Cancer Research. She can be very vocal at my obsession with bronze ballet dancers. She wanted Taz to buy me a bonsai tree but he was of the opinion that at eighty I may not have many growing seasons left. Doesn't worry me. For an octogenarian, dying is a worry only to the people he loves. As I told the surgeon when he spelled out the dangers of the operation at my age and in my condition, the act of dying is nothing. There would be no pain. I won't even know it has happened.

Of more interest are the changes that are coming over me. I do not complain about my release from the tyranny of sex and the disappearance of alcoholism, the twin wayward pilots who have controlled my enjoyable journey through life. I am sad, though, that I can no longer get angry. Writing rude letters to banks, the Inland Revenue and sundry organisations was one of life's pleasures and I always felt better after a family row. No longer. Now I seem to spend most of my time looking for charities to support. I am currently helping a charity run by my younger daughter which finances an Indian children's village; sundry African projects via John Humphrys' excellent no frills charity; the PDSA; Chinese Moon Bears; tortoises; old hacks; innumerable charity shops which, to my wife's chagrin, results in filling the house with pot teddy bears; and a variety of support groups for wounded ex-servicemen. I used to support other charities but ceased to do so when I discovered the amount that goes in administration and the production of costly magazines. The ones I have chosen are those which give all my money to the sufferers. Goodness knows what my motives are. Lord Beaverbrook in his dotage did good works in order, it has been said, to assure his place in Heaven. I have no wish to spend eternity in a sort of Celestial National Eisteddfod, surrounded by creatures in long gowns, playing the harp, where I won't know a soul. I take the fact that I have survived cancer, diabetes, alcoholism and cirrhosis as a sign that God doesn't want me. I, in return, intend to take Oscar Wilde's advice to his friend Robbie Ross:

“When the last trumpet sounds, let us turn over and pretend we do not hear it.”

If you want to give me a birthday present, be happy and enjoy life and, as Mencken suggested, “Wink at an ugly girl.”

HEAVEN HELPS US ?

THE MANAGEMENT WISHES TO

APOLOGIDE FOR BLOG 

MISBEHAVIOR

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.......... And God spoke unto Adam and He said:

“Why does it take you so long to come to the phone?”

Adam said; “Have you seen the size of this garden?

 Also I wish you would have a word with that angel you sent with a blazing sword.

 I’ve got scorch marks on the dahlias and the heat is bringing on the chrysanths

 too early........”

God said, “The angel is Security and outside my remit. 

But there has obviously been a mistake.

He shouldn’t be there till apple picking....... “

He continued: “I wanted Dobermans but Finance estimate an overall saving with flames

 that is very impressive. It’s something they picked up from the Competition. By the by,

 we are working on garden staffing levels. Research and Development were going to let

you invent the plough but then we planned electricity which I personally am very excited

 about and cannot wait to create Faraday.”

Adam said; “Talk is cheap. When do I get to invent the plough?”

God said; “It’s in the pipeline. Meanwhile R and D have come up with this new concept. 

Run it up the tree trunk and see if it flaps.”

Adam said; “God, sometimes you say things which are a mystery to me....”

God said; “Goes with the territory. But about this R and D idea - it will do the

 gardening; it’s an entertainment concept and does home nursing.

“R and D are working on a modem called sex which completely does away with the

 spare rib method I originally planned. It will need a User Manual. I’m thinking of 

calling it the Ten Commandments.”

Adam said; “Does this machine of R & D’s have a name?”

God said; “What’s in a name? as Shakespeare is going to say.

 We were going to call it ‘slave’ and then ‘skivvy’ but Marketing said names like that

 give off the wrong vibes, consumer-wise. So what we finally came up with was Woman. What 

takes the Woe out of Man? Woman! Neat, eh? Copywriting and Graphics reckon we could achieve a 98 per cent

 penetration of A and AB markets.”

Adam said; “I want an assurance from management that this woman machine

 will never be programmed to take executive decisions......”

And God spoke and He said; “Thursday already? I have to go. 

I have two days’ creating to do before my rest day....”

And He rang off. It was only later when Eve harvested the apples and there

 was this Leak from Head Office about relocation that Adam remembered he 

had been given no guarantees about negative parity for the woman machine.

And Adam was sore afraid.

…………………………………………………………..

I think they should change the name. Not “Rule Britannia”.

 Not anymore. “Misrule Britannia” would be more appropriate. 

In Parliament the criminals write their own laws. When I worked away from home

 I paid for my own lodgings. The wrong we have done to the Ghurkhas has still not been

 righted and now we are refusing permission for the Iraqi interpreters to take refuge 

here, even though they  live under an imminent threat of death in their own country because 

they co-operated with an invading army. 

We cannot blame our immigration policy because we don’t have one. When it suits us

 we lay down the red carpet for IRA thugs; the architect of mass murder in Africa 

has been granted refuge here. What we laughingly call Learned Judges pontificate on 

the rights of various many hued unsavoury characters to blot our landscapes. 

But Heaven help anyone who tries to help us.

MY WIFE SENT ME THIS ONE…………

First published in “Punch” on April 3, 1957, but VERY pertinent to what’s happening today!

Q: What are banks for?
A: To make money.

Q: For the customers?
A: For the banks.

Q: Why doesn’t bank advertising mention this?
A: It would not be in good taste. But it is mentioned by implication in references

 to reserves of £249,000,000,000 or thereabouts. That is the money they have made.

Q: Out of the customers?
A: I suppose so.

Q: They also mention Assets of £500,000,000,000 or thereabouts.

 Have they made that too?
A: Not exactly. That is the money they use to make money.

Q: I see. And they keep it in a safe somewhere?
A: Not at all. They lend it to customers.

Q: Then they haven’t got it?
A: No.

Q: Then how is it Assets?
A: They maintain that it would be if they got it back.

Q: But they must have some money in a safe somewhere?
A: Yes, usually £500,000,000,000 or thereabouts. 

This is called Liabilities.

Q: But if they’ve got it, how can they be liable for it?
A: Because it isn’t theirs.

Q: Then why do they have it?
A: It has been lent to them by customers.

Q: You mean customers lend banks money?
A: In effect. They put money into their accounts, 

so it is really lent to the banks.

Q: And what do the banks do with it?
A: Lend it to other customers.

Q: But you said that money they lent to other people was Assets?
A: Yes.

Q: Then Assets and Liabilities must be the same thing?
A: You can’t really say that.

Q: But you’ve just said it. If I put £100 into my account the bank is 

liable to have to pay it back, so it’s Liabilities. 

But they go and lend it to someone else, and he is liable to have to 

pay it back, so it’s Assets. It’s the same £100 isn’t it?
A: Yes, but....

Q: Then it cancels out. It means, doesn’t it, that banks haven’t 

really any money at all?
A: Theoretically......

Q: Never mind theoretically! And if they haven’t any money, where do they 

get their Reserves of £249,000,000,000 or thereabouts??
A: I told you. That is the money they have made.

Q: How?
A: Well, when they lend your £100 to someone they charge him interest.

Q: How much?
A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say five and a-half percent. That’s their 

profit.

Q: Why isn’t it my profit? Isn’t it my money?
A: It’s the theory of banking practice that.........

Q: When I lend them my £100 why don’t I charge them interest?
A: You do.

Q: You don’t say. How much?
A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say a half percent.

Q: Grasping of me, rather?
A: But that’s only if you’re not going to draw the money out again.

Q: But of course I’m going to draw the money out again! 

If I hadn’t wanted to draw it out again I could have buried it in the garden!
A: They wouldn’t like you to draw it out again.

Q: Why not? If I keep it there you say it’s a Liability. 

Wouldn’t they be glad if I reduced their Liabilities by removing it?
A: No. Because if you remove it they can’t lend it to anyone else.

Q: But if I wanted to remove it they’d have to let me?
A: Certainly.

Q: But suppose they’ve already lent it to another customer?
A: Then they’ll let you have some other customer’s money.

Q: But suppose he wants his too... and they’ve already let me have it?
A: You’re being purposely obtuse.

Q: I think I’m being acute. What if everyone wanted their money all at once?
A: It’s the theory of banking practice that they never would.

Q: So what banks bank on, is not having to meet their commitments?
A: YOU GOT IT!
----------------

THOUGHTS OF AN M.A (paperback)

Did not have one myself so I don't understand the fuss about education. I got mine by reading Penguin paperbacks. 

There must be cheaper ways of keeping children off our backs. My darling daughter studied art so long they didn't know whether to give her a BA or a gold watch.

Why art when they are taught fashions not principles? History? Propaganda written by the winner's press agent. Geography? Abroad is just the same as here. Australian soaps and Chinese take-aways. Only difference is you can't read the adverts.

Science and law and rhetoric is what universities were invented for. The rest is jobs for the boys.

Just imagine.

It is the Middle Ages and there are these three fellers on a tram and one says:

"What line you in, then?"

"I teach law at the university."

"Teach? What is teach?"

" I stand up in front of these kids and I tell them how to be lawyers."

"Could end up with more lawyers than jobs."

"Ain't that the truth. But we solved it. The ones don't get jobs,they teach other kids to be lawyers. What's your line?"

"I write books, but the pay is lousy."

"You should teach. Three months holiday a year. All found."

"What can I teach? I just sit down and write."

" It's not what you teach. It's what you call it. Let's see. Book. In Latin Liber. Liberture? Doesn't have a ring. Lit,lit. That's it, Literature. You married?"

"On my wages?"

"So you're a bachelor. Great. Bachelor of Art."

There's this man sitting on the seat behind and he leans over and he says:

"Any chance at your place of a start for me?"

"Could be. What do you do?"

"Not a lot. I keep a diary."

"So. A record of past years. Gimme a minute to come up with something. You write down what happens to you. The story of your life. Your story. Let's run that up the flagpole and see if it waves....Too personal.

“Hang about! Teach what is in everyone else's diary. His Story, History! You'll do a bomb."

"I don't KNOW what's in everyone's diary."

"Use your imagination, everyone else did. The Romans claimed they were descended from a wolf. If the public will buy that..............And there was this Greek guy Herodotus. He invented men whose heads grew out of their chests. Never looked back."

"Well, they couldn't, could they?" said this Jewish kid who was strap-hanging and kibbitzing. "Stands to reason. Not with their heads in their chests."

"Congratulations," said the lawyer, "you just invented logic."

"I'll take two dozen," said the Jewish kid who knew a good thing.

Just at this minute along comes the conductor.

"Fares, please. Have your groats ready."

"Three to the university," says the lawyer.

The other two pay.

"Funny old job, conductor," said the lawyer.

"You should see it market days," said the conductor. "Live pigs, rack full of cockerels. And every Wednesday this guy gets it on with a krummhorn. What a racket."

"Why do it?" says the Jewish kid. Having got a corner in logic he is already seeking market opportunities.

"What can I tell you? I like to go abroad for my holidays. Fifty-one weeks a year, krummhorns. One week, Benidorm. I wish I could find some other way."

At this the Jewish kid brings a piece of parchment out of his pocket, sticks a stamp on it and hands it to the conductor.

"Sign here over the stamp,“ he says. “Ten per cent of your wages and I'll introduce you to this talent scout. Hey, lawyer. You profess to know everything. Anything for the conductor, so he can go abroad for his holidays? No krummhorns."

“The conductor? Easy. Do what everyone does. Bore people about his holidays. Show snaps. Tell 'em how often it rained. Do I have to draw graphs? Graph. THAT'S IT....Geo...Greek for earth... graph - Geography!"

The conductor was very grateful.

"You got a real faculty for this,” he said.

That is how education was born.

I will not be voting in the Common Market elections either. I watched with great joy a series about agriculture on TV, the walking stick of old intellectuals.

In the programme on cattle we watched delightful archive footing of the Thirties when I worked, a truanting schoolboy, on a local farm. In those far off days the milk yield was forty-six per cent. Since then we have boosted output with farmers' collectives, the milk marketing board, improved grass, and technological aids. Then we joined the Common Market. Our milk yield now?

Forty-six per cent.

The news that our fruit industry is nearing extinction struck a particular blow to me since an ancestor introduced the red streak apple to England. He started a thriving industry producing apples of many varieties. It was killed virtually overnight when we joined the Common Market and learned of the horrors of Golden Delicious apples and all-the-year strawberries which taste like rock.

It was also the end of our fishing industry. We were told it would mean cheaper wine and tobacco. It didn't. We are told we get enormous bags of gold from the EU. What we get is a fraction of the money we pour into its apron.

The EU exists for the membership not of its member states but of its members. Even though it loads them with cash for dubious reasons, it still cannot get its parliament to pass the bare face robbery which is its budget.

THE LETTER THE TIMES DID NOT USE

Sir,

Matthew  Paris belongs to a minority which many of us believe is silly and inconsequential. We are not allowed to say so. I am surprised you allow him to so describe the Gurkhali cause in his column to-day