Killer Iraqis face the drop

The BBC and others report that two Iraqis accused of killing two British soldiers (in cold blood) can be tried by Iraqi authorities despite a ‘real risk’ they could face the death penalty.

Am I missing something?

You murder someone in cold blood, while filming it, in a country with the death penalty... It’s not impossible you might end up at the wrong end of a rope.

The BBC relates that Faisal Al-Saadoon and Khalaf Mufdhi are accused of murdering Staff Sgt Simon Cullingworth and Sapper Luke Allsopp and that the High Court has ruled it is lawful for them to be transferred from British custody and tried by an Iraqi court.

Lord Justice Richards said: ‘In our view they could face the real risk of the death sentence if convicted. We are seriously troubled by that conclusion. We regard the issues in the case as difficult and important.’

Phil Shiner, the solicitor representing Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi, says allowing them to stand trial in Iraq would violate both the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1998 Human Rights Act.

Good effort, Phil - these two are obviously great respecters of human rights themselves. It is like suggesting that the war criminals tried at Nuremburg had their human rights violated. In fact, maybe they did. But did anyone care? No.

Cigarette chewing dog bites the dust

So farewell, then, General Edi.

The cigarette chewing dachsund, who munched his way through half a packet of cigarettes every day since he was a puppy, is no more.

The General was killed after he was hit by a car during a walk to his favourite cigarette shop.

‘Poor Edi dashed out in the road in excitement right in front of a car. There was nothing anyone could do,’ said one neighbour in Graz, central Austria.

The dog’s owner, Wolfgang Treirler, added: ‘His old owner abandoned him and so we took him in 17 years ago, and noticed straight away that he was in the habit of eating cigarettes. He eats the tobacco and the paper, and then chews a while on the filter before spitting it out.

‘On average he eats about 10 cigarettes a day, but all of his teeth are fine.’

A local vet, Harald Mayr, said: ‘Nicotine normally leads to poisoning in dogs, but in this case the animal has obviously become addicted to it which has increased its level of tolerance.’

Dem Africans gonna get you, muddaf***er

Holy crap, I was watching Newsnight yesterday and saw the report on gang violence in Edmonton.

Edmonton, adjoining Tottenham, Walthamstow and the North Circular is a grisly place at the best of the times, but it's been made even more grim by the addition of armed gangs knifing each other left, right and centre.

Anyway, the BBC report focused on a gang called ‘Dem Africans’ - largely young chaps with origins in Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone and other places where life is a bit cheaper than it might be.

Three of their number have been killed this year - in a conflict with rival gangs.

Incredibly depressing stuff. What’s the sense in escaping a bloody awful warzone of a country to end up getting knifed in a khazi like Edmonton?

Particularly enjoyed the police chief facing the question about whether his offices worked all that hard in investigating gang deaths. He didn’t seem all that convincing in his answer ('yes we do').

Anjem Choudary’s message of goodwill to all

Anjem Choudary seems like a fun kind of guy.
Here's an upstanding lawyer kind of bloke who’s getting £25,000 worth of benefits from the UK state while he's preaching religious and racial hatred and (now this really is going too far) slagging off Christmas festivities.

Fair enough, you may think. He’s right. Christmas is a commercialised load of garbage anyway. And it was all nicked from the pagans in the first place.

Except, of course, that Choudary isn’t having a go at that aspect of it all. It’s the religious side that really gets his (halal) goat.

‘In the world today many Muslims, especially those residing in Western countries, are exposed to the evil celebration Christmas,' he yabbered on his website.

‘Many take part in the festival celebrations by having Christmas turkey dinners.

‘Decorating the house, purchasing Christmas trees or having Christmas turkey meals are completely prohibited by Allah.

‘Many still practise this corrupt celebration as a remembrance of the birth of Jesus.

‘How can a Muslim possibly approve or participate in such a practice that bases itself on the notion Allah has an offspring?

‘The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam.

‘Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas, because its observance will lead to hellfire.

'Protect your Paradise from being taken away - protect yourself and your family from Christmas.'

This is the bloke who has demanded the execution of the Pope and urged Muslims to have more babies to take over the UK. Perhaps he would be best protected from the evil that is Christmas by moving to Helmand or Baghdad.

Except I doubt he’ll get 25k a year in benefits over there.

Hitler not Schalke fan. Nein, nein, nein.

The Times recently ran a list of most embarrassing football fans.

On the list was Adolf Hitler - mentioned as a Schalke 04 fan.

Quite a sensitive suggestion, one presumes - so the club duly responded... And with rather a lot of humour. Fair point, I can't imagine Gelsenkirchen being top of the Fuhrer's list of favourite places. Bayern Munich would be more his bag.

That letter in full...

Dear Editor,

Your article on 'The 50 worst famous football fans' on November 26 made interesting reading. Until then we didn’t know Adolf Hitler had a soft spot for Schalke 04 let alone was a fan of our club.

We were very curious to find out what made the well respected Times claim this as a fact. So we checked and double-checked whether the club board between 1933 and 1945 had named a stand the “Führer Stand”, for example, and we watched every episode of 'Allo 'Allo in a bid to find a clue. Nothing.

In fact, it turned out he must have been an armchair supporter because he never bothered to turn up at any of our games, even if it was a championship final right on his door step at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. Perhaps he was too occupied with his genocidal policies, or… maybe he wasn't a football fan after all.

This is at least what a scientific study commissioned by the club revealed in 2004. The authors analysed the theory that the fact that Schalke won six national championships during the Third Reich was down to the special support of the Nazis. The result was quite clear: the theory is total rubbish. At best, the Nazis tried to bask in the sun of the great popularity of a team that had ranked among the best in the land since 1927.

Hitler himself never did so for two reasons. First, the physiognomy of footballers with their bow legs and knock-knees wasn’t exactly his idea of a superior German race. Second, he did go to a football match once during the Olympic Games in 1936, but Germany lost 2-0 to Norway. Bugger!

To conclude Hitler was a fan of Schalke 04 because they won most of the titles during his regime must make Margaret Thatcher a Liverpool fan. Funnily enough she didn’t make the list.

Best regards
Gerd Voss
Head of Media & PR
Schalke 04

Cheryl Cole made Angel of the North

An artist has created an image of what Antony Gormley's Angel of the North would have looked like had it been based on Cheryl Cole.

Lee Jones says he created the image after seeing the X Factor judge and her emotional reaction to performers “realizing” she is the living embodiment of the Angel of the North.

His version has Cheryl's Angel wiping away a tear with a tissue. It also features the curve of the singer’s ample breasts - guaranteed to make motorists miss their turning - at least.

‘As an artist I feel the overwhelming warmth of the Northern people towards Cheryl Cole, and I wanted to portray this by depicting her as our very own Angel of the North,’ said Jones. ‘I see her as a new Icon of popular culture for the 21st Century, a beacon of light in these bleak times… a fine example of a Northern lass making good.’

‘Angel’ will be exhibited at The Arts Club in London’s Mayfair in February 2009, and limited edition prints will be available at 2050Sports.com

Horse sex man jailed, shock

A man has been jailed for having sex with a horse, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Leeroy Le Gallais, 46, initially used a bucket to stand behind the horse, called Calico, but made the schoolboy error of leaving his pants at the scene of the crime.

He was given a three-year probation order, but a few months later returned to have sex with the same horse at the Castel Stable in Guernsey.

Le Gallais told the court: ‘I had a few beers, I went to the stable and interfered with the horse. Maybe I had a little bit of an urge or something. I mean, like a sexual, a sexual thing, I suppose you could call it that.’

Defending, advocate Sara Mallett said her client had learning difficulties and his IQ was ‘very low’.

Mark Abell - a true Brit

British businessman Mark Abell demonstrated some of the most stoically stiff upper lipped behaviour I’ve ever heard when he was caught in the terrorist attack on Mumbai’s Oberoi hotel last week.

Having had to barricade himself in his room, with gunmen roaming the corridors looking for Westerners to kill and with hardly any food and water he spoke to BBC radio’s Today programme.

As he talked he displayed incredible calm under fire. It was as if he had come out of a different epoch - the Indian Mutiny, for example. He must have been terrified, but sounded less nervous than a Labour minister discussing the economy.

‘We were too close for comfort’ and ‘it was very grim’ were two classics of understatement. It was an exceptional display of sang froid and great news that he got out of the Oberoi in one piece.

BBC survivors - who’s gone missing?

I’ve watched the first two episodes of the BBC’s Survivors series and what a revelation it’s been.

I’m not talking about the strange continuity episodes - cars abandoned all over towns and cities but not a single one abandoned on the motorways... where you might find yourself if trying to escape something.

No - it’s the composition of the survivors. It’s all very politically correct; a mosque-going muslim, a black, female health minister, a lapsed muslim, a strong, mysterious black bloke, a female doctor with (I think) an eastern European name, the working class scouser with a dodgy past who will probably come good in the end (but maybe not)...

But no berths for the white middle class blokes (WMCB), it seems.

Not strictly true, actually - they do make an appearance, as the shotgun-wielding Dexter (strange name) - a Daily Mail reader if ever there was one; as the Claret-buried supermarket manager; as the government press officers telling huge porkies to the public; and, of course, as the sinister bloke who’s obviously up to something nasty in the lab.

The only vaguely positive WMCB is an outdoor activities centre manager who (briefly) makes the grade because he’s got good green credentials. And he, like John Prescott, is probably working class in origin...

The great pension scandal

Great to see Channel 4 news getting the bit between its teeth about one of the biggest scandals in Britain today.

I'm (and they’re) talking public sector pensions – especially at a time when many workers are looking at cutting any pension contributions they may have to make ends meet.

A whopping 90 per cent of state employees will enjoy a final salary pension. If you’re in the private sector, then that figure is just 15 per cent (and falling).

It used to be that a generous pension was seen as recompense for years of average salaries. That’s not true now, though, with many public sector workers doing very well thank you very much - and probably not for working all that hard, either.

Bigger public sector wages equal a bigger bill for public sector pensions. Who’s paying for that? The good old taxpayer - who cannot afford to put money into their own pensions because they are paying so much tax to finance the pen pushers of the town hall.

And... while the rest of us are being encouraged to work to 65 and beyond, the public sector brigade all get to call it a day at 60.

Betting on airlines

With the doom and gloom still as thick as a 1950s London smog, it is at least one thing that no more airlines have gone bust in recent weeks.

Paddy Power ran a book on which one would be next (now closed).

Sky Europe topped the at risk list at 5-2 with Alitalia in contention at 4-1. Both Spanair and Click looked worthy of a fiver at 10-1 the pair.

Pigeons in the guano

The Telegraph reports that a number of pigeons have been arrested for spying on Iran’s nuclear sites... (and quite right too, the filthy infidel flying rats).

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the Etemad Melli newspaper reported. It said that some metal rings and "invisible" strings were attached to the bird, suggesting that it might have been somehow communicating what it had seen with the equipment it was carrying.

"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," a source told the newspaper.

The source gave no further description of the pigeons, nor what their fate might be.

Natanz is home to Iran's heavily-bunkered underground uranium enrichment plant, which is also not far from Kashan.
The activity at Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility is the focus of Iran's five-year standoff with the West, which fears it aims to develop nuclear weapons. The Tehran government insists its programme is intended to generate power for civilian use only.

Last year, Iran issued a formal protest over the use of espionage by the United States to produce a key intelligence report on the country's controversial nuclear programme.

It is also highly suspicious of Israel, whose extensive intelligence activities are not known to include the use of pigeons.

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down...

This site is genius...

www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com

Fantastic biscuit reviews. Might I recommend the analysis of how the Club biscuit has changed (and not for the better) and how the Lincoln is now only available in Ireland.

Ah, the Lincoln. That green packet, as I recall – Lincoln green, perhaps? A reference to Robin Hood and his Merry Men? Robbing the rich to give to the poor?

Doesn't seem more than a few months since I saw a packet of Lincoln, but I gather they went West some time ago.

Rickshaw bombers peddle death

What a charming eastern touch to the whole thing. Had the bombs gone off, they'd have been stuck in traffic about 20 metres away.



Two terrorists caught rickshaws to escape the scene after leaving car bombs parked in London's busy West End, a court heard.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, and Kafeel Ahmed, 28, stationed one of the vehicles outside a packed nightclub and the other in front of a bustling bus stop, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

The cars, packed with gas canisters, petrol and nails, were left in the capital on June 29 last year but failed to explode because the initiation devices did not work properly, the jury heard.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw QC said the two men were captured on CCTV leaving the area in the early hours of that morning.

Ahmed was seen dumping into a bin an umbrella he had apparently been carrying to shield his face from cameras.

At 1.39am he boarded a rickshaw in Piccadilly Circus and Abdulla also adopted the same mode of transport to get away from the area.

The two men met up in Edgware Road at 2.05am, just 30 minutes after they had left the bomb-rigged cars, the court heard.

Ahmed died in hospital after a second attempted terrorist attack, on Glasgow Airport, the following day.

Abdulla is standing trial with Mohammed Asha, 28, accused of conspiring to murder and to cause explosions likely to endanger life.

Abdulla, of Houston, Glasgow, and Asha, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, are both doctors who have worked in NHS hospitals around the country. They both deny the charges.

Story of the day

(Thanks to ITV news)


Police are investigating after a cook was found dead in a freezer at the primary school where she worked.

Officers said the body of Linda Gent, 53, was discovered at South Benfleet Primary School in Benfleet, Essex, late on a Saturday.

She had been reported missing 15 hours earlier.

Sources said detectives are not treating the incident as murder, but a report was being prepared for a coroner.

Police said a post-mortem examination had failed to reveal a cause of death and further tests were being carried out.

A source close to the inquiry added: "Her body was found in a freezer at the school."

Sources said one possibility being considered was that Mrs Gent, who lived in Benfleet, had killed herself.

Mrs Gent had worked at the school since the late 1980s and staff and children were said to be "devastated".

"Everyone connected with South Benfleet Primary School has been devastated by the sudden death of Linda Gent, our school cook," said head Dominic Carver.

"Mrs Gent was a hugely popular and highly-valued member of our catering team. Her positive contribution of about 20 years at the school has been magnificent."

Tumbril for Mr Fuld

If anyone deserves to be chopped up and fed to rabid alligators it is Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld.

In March, this money-grabbing vermin was awarded a $22 million bonus for 2007. His bank duly went under and marked the beginning of the world's current financial woes.

That amount of money is staggering. Whatever happens in the world economy Mr Fuld is going to be fine - as are all those other financial wizards who are responsible for the world economy going into a tailspin.

Set up a guillotine in Canary Wharf and dispatch the lot of them. Mr Fuld could be first.

Great Irishman crops up at Compton Verney

Jack Yeats, brother of the poet William Butler Yeats, was arguably the best-known Irish painter of the 20th century, but exhibitions of his work are rare outside his homeland.

That makes English gallery Compton Verney’s new show, Masquerade and Spectacle: The Circus and the Travelling Fair, all the more welcome – especially as it is paired with a selection of works on a broadly similar theme by Yeats’ friend, the Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokoschka.

Yeats, born in 1871, was fascinated by circuses from an early age, when he would visit them when they came to his hometown of Sligo. Later, his family moved to London’s Earls Court, close to where Buffalo’s Bill Great Realistic Exhibition of Western Novelties was on show.

Yeats’ paintings capture an element of Irish society that was both pivotal but also on the wane – as cinema began to gain sway as a form of entertainment. His paintings show fairground characters such as the Barrel Man – half-in, half-out of a barrel, dodging out of the way of the sticks that are being hurled at him – and the Two Jockeys, hurtling around the ring balanced on a horse’s rump a white-faced clown at their side.

Yeats was also aware of the politics of the time. His 1910 picture An Occupation features a green-clad man carrying a heavy bucket of meat towards a bear’s cage while the animal pokes its nose through the bars in anticipation. The title refers to the man’s unglamorous, backstage job, but is thought also to tip its hat to the fact that Ireland was at the time ‘occupied’ by the British.

Compton Verney is unique among leading English galleries in that it is housed in an imposing stately home that was designed by Robert Adam in the 1760s. In 1993, in an advanced state of decay, it was bought by the Peter Moores Foundation, which spent the next 11 years (and an estimated £64m) transforming the property into a world-class art gallery, finally opening it to the public in 2004.

Compton Verney is seven miles east of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, UK.
Jack B Yeats: Masquerade & Spectacle: The Circus and the Travelling Fair is on show in conjunction with Oskar Kokoschka: Exile and New Home 1938-1980 until 14 December.

Well fancy that...

Harry Enfield has had to axe a Muslim hoodie from his new show. Incredible he ever thought that it would be a good idea for a character, really, funny as it would undoubtedly be. It would probably have ended with Enfield being fatwa’d and his effigy being burnt from Kabul to Kidderminster.

This from The Daily Telegraph.

The 47-year-old sketch show comedian was ordered by executives at production company Tiger Aspect to scrap plans to play the unnamed Muslim because it might “cause trouble”. [No, do you really think so?]

Enfield, who was recently named Loaded Legend at Loaded magazine's annual Lafta comedy awards, said that he was also warned not to play paedophile Catholic priest Father Paddy, another new character, for the same reason.
Enfield said: “I was told, ‘Don't even go there’.”

Tiger Aspect Productions said that the decision not to include the unnamed Muslim Hoodie and Father Paddy had been taken a long time before the series aired and so the ban on the characters had not affected the show's production or launch.

A spokesman said: ‘The characters never made it further than the page. This was a decision taken collectively by key members of the production team at the time of making the series almost two years ago.’

Feed the croc

Good effort by the youngster – breaks into both a zoo and the croc’s enclosure... And manages not to be gobbled up himself.


CANBERRA (Reuters) - The parents of a 7-year-old boy who broke into an Australian outback zoo and fed a string of small animals to its resident crocodile are likely to be sued after police said the boy was too young to be held responsible.

A turtle, four western blue tongue lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and a 1.8 metre (5.9ft) adult female Spencer's goanna were fed or led into the jaws of a 3 metre, 200kg (440lb) saltwater crocodile named "Terry."

Security camera footage at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre showed the smiling youngster also bludgeoning to death a small blue tongue lizard and two more thorny devils during a half-hour of breakfast-time havoc last Wednesday.

"The fact a 7-year-old can wreak so much havoc in such a short time, it's unbelievable. In my day he'd get a big boot up the backside," centre director Rex Neindorf told Reuters by phone.

"Police found him, but in the Northern Territory here he can't be accountable if he's under 10 years of age."

Neindorf said many of the animals fed to the croc were rare or mature and would be difficult to replace.

The boy was unknown at the centre and had "clammed up" when questioned by police on what sparked the rampage, he said.

Neindorf said he was now looking at suing the parents of the pint-sized terror, who could easily have been taken by Terry himself as he fed the croc from a small landing at his enclosure.

"We'll be looking at suing the parents, who were supposedly in control of him at the time," he said.

Headline of the day

Goes to the Daily Telegraph for the following:

Archbishop Peter Akinola cites sheep sex arrest as proof of Britain’s moral decline

Archbishop Peter Akinola may have a point.

Two wheels good

Heard the Tories and Labour debating who has the biggest claim to cycling on the Today programme this morning.

It was all a bit bizarre, really. David Cameron and all pedaling away like fury. Labour saying it was a working class sport. Less working class when you’re flitting about on three grand’s worth of Canondale, perhaps.

But... there are now speed gate things on the Regent’s Canal (very Labour) – presumably to make sure no cyclists mow down one of the fearsome looking dogs that stalk the banks, or the drunken and hostile anglers, or the drug dealers.

Chavs batter cops

Holy crap.

Teenage girl drops litter. Policemen tell her to pick it up. She does, but then drops it. Police not happy. Mob attempts to lynch police. Police rescued by truckloads more police.

This is absolutely bonkers. At what stage is it OK to batter the police over a bit of litter. Come to think of it, at what stage is it OK to drop litter.

Put with the crazed fashion for stabbings, this shows just how insanely out of control is chav culture.

All that surveillance. All that bleating about ID cards. All that hammering of folk over parking fines and whatnot... And the real deal is that a good chunk of the population is feral.

What we need to solve it are some committees and targets, I reckon. That’ll take care of it. And some more citizenship lessons. 

Sweater girl research

On reflection, I think the chap mentioned in my last post was confusing Lana Turner with Betty Grable.

Easy mistake to make.

The picture clearly shows a sweater and dates to 1939, apparently.

Uxbridge earwig

Was up at Uxbridge this afternoon to see Middlesex v the touring South Africans. Not a particularly interesting day’s cricket as the visitors plundered a weak Middlesex attack.

Overheard three older chaps talking. I couldn’t help but listen after I heard this…

‘Of course, Bridgitte Bardot was a sex kitten... And just look at her now.’

[general agreement]

‘And Dorris Day…’

[more assent]

At this point the second chap chimed in...

‘Of course, you’re a little bit older than us. Do you remember Betty Grable?’

‘Oh yes. The girl in the sweater?’

‘No. The legs, the legs.’

The conversation progressed to tales of National Service days. The Betty Grable questioner was recounting an episode that had brought him into contact with a colonel in the Home Guard, whose brown boots he remembered vividly.

‘He hadn’t served in the Second World War. He hadn’t served in the First World War. He’d served in the Boer War…’

You wan’ skunk?

On my way home I tend to pass through Camden on the Regent’s Canal. On the towpath of the Regent’s Canal, to be exact.

For years, this has been a place that is positively heaving with drug dealers and it has been rare to see a police officer in the vicinity. 

In recent weeks, I think this has changed. Not sure if that is to do with the new Mayor of London or not. Tonight there were four PCOs and four fully fledge Met officers down there. Admittedly, they were grilling a pair of hagard-looking, ageing Camden druggies and there wasn’t a dealer in sight, but it seem as if at least a point was being made.

Won’t be so good, of course, when the dealers decamp to outside Defiant Towers.

Sir’s shirt, sir

I’ve been more busy than a busy thing and I’ve rather let the Defiant slip. Nobody likes a slipped Defiant.

Still, I did buy a couple of shirts from TM Lewin today. I noticed recently that they didn’t have a sale on. That came as a surprise, because I thought they always had a sale on. Suffice to say, the sale is now back on so it’s £25 for what seems to me a perfectly decent, smartish shirt that can be worn in the orifice.

Noticed that the folks working there put on airs and graces à la Jeeves or Bunter. I always find that quite endearing in a cut-price shirt emporium where there are a plate of boiled sweets amid the silken knots and other bits ’n’ bobs.

Helped myself to a Murray Mint – seemed only appropriate given our boy was about to go into battle against the unfeasibly muscular Nadal. It was rather good (the mint, not the tennis). Don’t think I’ve had one since 1984.

BOA constrictors

I’ve noticed a plague of acronyms on work-based emails. LOL, OMG and the rest.

Well, I’ve got one of my own.

BOA - short for Bunch of Arse.

Incidentally, that is how I would describe MEPs decision to mask their dodgy expenses by keeping an auditors’ report secret.

By God, they frighten me

AP reports that the US Army and Marines is recruiting more people with felony convictions than last year. 

The number of soldiers admitted with convictions was 511 in 2007 compared to 249 in 2006. The number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350. Included in the list are some with sex crime convictions and others with manslaughter and gun offences. 

They all sound perfect.

Believe the Duke of Wellington said something about his troops being ‘the scum of the earth’ during the Napoleonic Wars. Not suggesting that’s true of the US military’s new recruits, of course, but it shows how difficult it is proving to get significant numbers of volunteers to fight a war on several fronts.

The USAF did not admit anyone with any felonies, but then they’re generally not getting shot at in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or less dramatically, anyway.

Gordon Brown - an apology

I may not normally be a fan of Gordon Brown and I haven’t forgotten how smug he looked when reviewing all those Red Guards in China.

But he has shown some guts and decency in providing some condemnation of Mugabe and his merry men. Now, that may be because he wants to make some sort of historical contribution before being kicked out of power, but that’s not really the point if it does something in improving life in Zimbabwe.

On the subject of Chairman Broon... what about his teeth? They look really weird all of a sudden, as if someone has been painting them white. It must be all part of his new, smily image... but it just doesn’t look right. It doesn’t go with his grumpy, dour Scottish mug.

Well done on Zimbabwe, though.

Send in the (very) Old Guard

Following on from yesterday’s post... BBC reports that two RAF personnel have been killed in Afghanistan.

One of them was a 51-year-old reservist, SAC Gary Thompson. 51 years old... People of that age weren’t even at the sharp end at the end of World War I, when millions had already been killed.

How bad can it be that blokes of 51 (an age when any civil servant worth his final salary pension scheme has probably already got his feet up) are on the front-ish line against the Taliban?

The BBC account is enough to make you weep... Johnson had five daughters, who he said inspired him to re-join the RAF to serve against the likes of the Taliban – whose attitude to women has always been atrocious. 

Pay thine enemy

This is genius.

An Iraqi is accidently shot by a British soldier and he is awarded £2m compensation. British soldiers are immolated, paralyzed and mentally ruined in Iraq and Afghanistan and they’re lucky to get £100,000.

And they’re surprised there is a lack of volunteers for the army.

Rumour is several elderly German blokes are getting their claims for compensation ready.

Jamie and the magic flan

So free range chicken hero Jamie Oliver is soon to be teaching us how to live in tune with wartime austerity (as recession looms, food crisis hits, fuel bills rocket, home-grown Al Qaeda terrorists blow us to kingdom come and Four Horsemen of Apocalypse gallop over Hampstead Heath).

Can’t wait. Oh for the joys of dried egg, coffee from acorns (or was that only in Germany) and cabbage on cardboard.

Then we can all nip down the Anderson Shelter for a good sing-song. I’d have recommended the Tube station for this latter purpose, but that might not be such a good idea knowing our fundamentalist pals’ propensity for blowing themselves up in such places.

Dewsbury’s necktie party

Yesterday I may have made some comments about Karen Matthews, who I may have suggested was a lying, cheating cretin.

I’m not necessarily going back on that opinion, but I have started - in spite of everything - feeling ever so slightly sorry for her.

Why? Because her charming neighbours want to lynch her. And probably would if it wasn't for about two dozen police being between her and them at all times.

The scenes outside the courtroom today were, to use an over-used tabloid word, chilling. The thuggish, tracksuited, portly citizens of Dewsbury were a sight to behold.

Funny that so many were there are on a work day, come to think of it. Must have understanding bosses.

And how come they're all so fat if they're so poor? Must be the fat gene. Funny how no-one with the fat gene was ever in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

House price shock, shock

Noticed the Evening Standard's billboard today said 'House price collapse shock' or words to that effect.

Shock? Who's shocked? The media seems so keen to talk us into a recession and/or house price slump that it isn't shocking at all.

Guess you have to sell newspapers somehow. Especially when you're losing readers to freesheets which, while drivel, seem to be what people are grabbing on their way home.

On that subject - why on earth do people insist on leaving copies of Metro and whatnot all over tube stations. At Old Street, commuters constantly dump them at the bottom of the escalator - despite announcements asking them not to. What on earth is wrong with them? Why do they think that's a reasonable place to leave a discarded newspaper?

Cretins, I'm afraid.

Shameless insight into underclass

Shannon Matthews. Could it really be that her family copied a script from Shameless to fake her abduction?

Sounds too much of a tabloid dream, but this is some unbelievable family who provide a grim insight into Britain's underclass.

There's Shannon's mum, popping out seven kids with five different men in about 12 years. The 22-year-old child porn dabbling fishmonger. The weird uncle slicing himself up in prison. You couldn't make it up.

Good to know where our taxes are going - giving endless cash to this kind of scrounging, amoral, ignorant cretin. And good to know that Gudrun Broon knows how to spend our money so much better than we do.

Ken needs the posh vote

Interested analysis on politicalbetting.com about the London mayoral election.

In particular, how well Ken Livingstone did in wealthier areas of London last time out. Question is, whether he will manage to do the same this time. My feeling is that the Lee Jasper scandal plus Ken’s general attitude of behaving a bit above the law may come back to haunt.

Boris Johnson may well have more an appeal to the folks in Winchmore Hill and Hampstead than did Steve Norris. More old Etonian charm and less used car dealer blag.

Daily Mail bemoans spelling test

Interesting to see the Daily Mail blaming Britons’ inability to spell on text messaging.

Says the paper: ‘Of 2,500 surveyed, 40 per cent could not spell "questionnaire", 38 per cent were stumped by "accommodate" and 37 per cent were defeated by "definitely".

Around a third of those questioned were unable to spell "liaison", "existence" or "occurrence".

Other simple words which caused problems were "calendar", "embarrass", "library" and "receipt".

Two-thirds blamed their inability to get words right on the predictive text function on their mobile phones.’

Fair enough - but that rate of mis-spelling seems comparatively good. Only a third can’t spell liaison? In my experience it’s more than that - and among people for whom words are allegedly their living. Bit harsh to lay this all at the door of predictive text, as well. Maybe more to do with handing out ‘A’ grades in exams to all and sundry... without checking if anyone can spell.

The Mail’s list of supposedly simple words was:

1. Questionnaire 2. Accommodate 3. Definitely 4. Liaison 5. Existence 6. Occurrence 7. Referring 8. Occurred 9. Millennium 10. Embarrass 11. Calendar 12. Receive 13. Necessary 14. Separate 15. Cemetery 16. Library 17. Accidentally 18. Independent 19. Occasionally 20. Receipt

Uncontrolled immigration bad thing, shock

Well, how long before Gordon Brown has another pop at the House of Lords, then? He can’t be pleased by the Lords’ committee suggesting today that maybe unfettered immigration hasn’t been a great idea.

No kidding? Brown and his increasingly remote cohorts should come and try out the real world with the rest of us. Schools where the majority of kids don’t speak English, pressure on health service resources, shortage of housing supply. I suggest he takes a walk around Bethnal Green, or takes a bus from Victoria Coach Station, or tries to get treated in A&E in central London. He might realise that perhaps his policy of letting in all and sundry might not be such a good thing for the majority of us.

And could Broon have less charisma? His comments today on Harriet Harperson’s Peckham flak jacket had to be heard to be believed. Wooden to the point of being a table.

Al Fayed on the Duke of Edinburgh

Shades of Henry II and Thomas Beckett about Mohammed Al Fayed’s latest offering at the Diana inquest. In particular, his suggestion that the Duke of Edinburgh’s grumblings about the Princess and Dodi may have led some establishment insider or insiders to take matters into their own hands. 

‘Who will rid me of this turbulent blonde…’ 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1311227,00.html

The Defiant - much promise... bit of a flop

I grew up next to a farm in Leicestershire. Our garden was overlooked by a barn which had its manufacturer’s nameplate at the top. It was Boulton Paul (or Boulton & Paul) – I can't quite be sure. 

But I soon discovered that Boulton Paul was famous for more than just ageing barns in Midlands farmyards. A casual reading of the Airfix catalogue, probably in about 1975, revealed that Boulton Paul had produced an aircraft that had served (albeit unspectacularly) in the Battle of Britain. That kind of link between past and present was gripping to an eight-year-old.

The Defiant, as a matter of fact, had a rather glorious start to its career. It looked like a conventional fighter plane of the day, but actually had a rear gun turret. So, if you were a Luftwaffe pilot and didn't know that you would come sneaking up behind and get a blast of lead up your nose courtesy of the rear gunner.

But then, in the words of www.battleofbritain.net, ‘the Luftwaffe pilots got their measure and the glory days of the Defiant were over... They were to become death traps for their crews, incapable of dog fighting, and they became far too slow in getting away from the incoming enemy.’ 

Worse still, the Defiant was hard to get out of once it was shot up. Generally all a bit of a bad show.