Oilseed Rape

Before anybody gets the wrong end of my stick – you know what crappy readers we breed in the UK – let me state that rape is wrong. So put away your instinctive repulsion and hatred and read on. Louise Mensch is quite right. But so (dons armour) is George Galloway. They’re both right. A bit.

Where do babies come from? I think you get them free if you grow up on certain estates – they have helpful local facilitators who will readily get you pregnant if you can’t manage it on your own. The deposit is a few bottles of counterfeit booze, a few happy pills and a bit of peer pressure and the balance is taken care of by the state. 

If you watch any wildlife programme you will see the familiar routines. The males circle the grazing herd, often in small marauding packs, waiting their chance to pick off the weaker members. Sex is often peremptory and frequently violent, but is shrugged off as part of the circle of life. Consent is a given unless firmly and physically revoked. It's the same on the wildlife programmes.

We like to think, as civilised humans, that we dance to a more choreographed and sensitive etiquette but, at heart, we are little different and some of you owe your existence to an act that in some interpretations might be described as rape. Retrospective withdrawal of consent, otherwise known as sobering up, has had devastating consequences for all involved, especially the men.

Louise Mensch refers to ‘had it coming’ rape, as if there was no such thing. She should spend more time watching the city streets on Friday night, or David Attenborough documentaries – same thing. To expect that drunken, loutish youths, high on various substances and flouting every other behavioural convention will restrain themselves once encouraged is a triumph of hopeful thinking over human nature. In young, ill-educated male culture, rape is part of the language; they even listen to rape music. 

Before you think I’m somehow sticking up for George Galloway (as a man I do realise I’m not allowed any actual opinion on this subject) I should point out that my contempt for the odious little worm has no bounds. Yet in his annoying and repulsive loathsome manner he was stating the nature of reality, as opposed to the way we wish it were.  So what's it to be, Galloway or Mensch; G or M? Or maybe both => GM.

Be careful what you wish for...

Because help is at hand. Professor Julian Savulescu thinks we can genetically engineer for a brighter, more intelligent and less violent future. If he is right then the foul spectre of rape will disappear from our vocabulary, along with the dwindling population; then Louise Mensch and George Galloway can hold forth about eugenics instead.

Famous for... Wait, gimme a second...

Scanning the online newspapers - the ones that most people read as opposed to the proper ones people pretend to read - for inspiration to care about something enough to write about it, in a very short space of time I learned the following:

• X-Factor reject Cher Lloyd had piss thrown at her during the V Festival in Chelmsford.
• One Direction (I still have no idea what they are) were mobbed at the same festival.
• Apparently there's yet another 'Celebrity' Big Brother on at the moment.
• Courtney Stodden is still only seventeen, or is that her IQ? Who knows?
• People I've never heard of are flaunting bare flesh on beaches.
• A picture of a cat has been downloaded more times in a second than all of Leonardo's works in a lifetime
• Kim Kardashian's arse is opening a restaurant or something.

It strikes me our politicians are on a winner. Given the amount of shit and derision people will wade through for the most minuscule scrap of fame is it any wonder they don't generally regard the economic health of the nation, or its sovereignty as subjects worthy of discussion? People in pubs don't really talk about politics in any meaningful way - all they care about is whether they are in receipt of a living, waged or unwaged.

Julian Assange, quantitative easing, the Eurozone, HS2, etc. These issues matter not a jot to most of the population. Even the mention of bankers and bonuses only elicits a low growl of confused anger and not the howl of rage the revolutionaries want to invoke. And it's all because nobody knows anything any more. In fact nobody even wants to know anything any more.

Why strive to become good at anything when the world will contrive to make that accomplishment obsolete? Why become skilled when the skill can be acquired by others who will perform it for a lower wage? And even in the pursuit of fame it's more important that you have a gut-wrenching back-story than any shred of talent.

When middle-aged S&M porn instantly outsells the world's most renowned authors; when the reporting of a selfless act of sacrifice is read by a tenth of those who click on pictures of anthropomorphic kittens (Aaww look! He's writing a book with his little paws! So cyooooot!) when hard graft yields nothing in comparison with lucky chance, what do we expect?

So in place of any thoughtful words today, in my incessant bid for talent-free blogging celebrity, I bring you a taste of the future from an Old Miaowster.

Miaow-na Lisa