Question Time

Hello and welcome to Gardeners Question Time, this week we are live from Islington Town Hall with a lively audience of plants and we are ready to answer specially selected questions so as to make sure you are provided with all the right answers as we reach a critical time of the gardening year. Your host is me, Bob Flowerdew and with me on the panel please welcome Pippa Greenwood, Bryan Hedges and Miranda Bush. [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE] Can we take our first question from the audience?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello bob, yes, I’ve been having trouble controlling a rather bushy plant which seems to be all over the place. I have brought a cutting; perhaps the panel can identify it?

BOB: Ah yes, the Jeremiah. The Latin name is Jeremimus Corbynistus and it can be a bit of handful, thriving in many positions even contradictory ones, but it does best when placed hard to the left. In fact you can’t place it too far left. Have you tried talking to it?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I tried that, but it really made no sense. I have it planted next to my sturdy thickius two-plankus abutting the shed and the two seem to get on well together, but it’s not a good look, I have to say. The thickius casts such a dark shadow and the contrast with the Jeremiah’s grey hairs ought to work, but it just looks dull and depressing.

BOB: Well, we hope you can learn to live with it because, from your expression, it seems you are resigned to it for a long time to come. Let’s hope, next season you can see an alternative but I think we are stuck with it for now. Let’s now take a question from correspondence. Pippa?

PIPPA: Yes, I have a letter here from a Mr Livingstone who seems to have a problem cultivating a prickly pear of the variety sadiqium. He says he has it on an east wall but it just looks, in his words, angry and annoying. Well, Mr L, you may have misread the planting instructions because this particular thorny exotic needs to be on an east facing wall, where it will ‘mecca’ great impression. Although it can be difficult to control or predict, it will provide regular explosions of colour, all year round, as part and parcel of living in a multi-horticultural landscape. [APPLAUSE]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, I have a question about my Johnny-come-Lately plant. It doesn’t really seem to want to do what I want. I’ve tried to train it but it always ends up taking over unless I keep it cut firmly back. It gets out of control very quickly and I’m wondering, would I be better off getting rid of it altogether?

BRYAN: Ah yes, Johhny-come-lately, often referred to as McDonnell’s Glory. It can be quite colourful but it is a very aggressive strain and quickly attacks all around it. It is best planted deep in a bed of its own – six feet being the ideal - because it doesn’t really play well with others. Try that and if it doesn’t behave as you want you might indeed want to get rid of it. You can try at least, but be careful, it bears some rather nasty thorns and has a habit of biting back.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, Bryan, I’ll try that. And should I treat my Thornberry the same? It seems to be quite a vicious thing and apt to shade out the others.

BRYAN: Oh, I wouldn’t give the Thornberry houseroom I’m afraid. I find it is nothing but trouble. I’d get rid of it altogether. [APPLAUSE]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello Panel. [PANEL HELLOES] I have a photograph here, I hope you can all see it. A few years ago this gay little thing self-seeded in my herbaceous border and since then it has proliferated so, as you can see, it now crops up everywhere. At first I thought it was quite sweet but if I’m honest I’m getting a bit fed up of it. It’s just the same thing repeated over and over. What can I do?

MIRANDA: Can I take this one? Yes, this is narcissus fortitudinous and it does, as you say, keep popping up all over the place. At first it seems quite fresh and jolly, but you’re right, it is a sickly little weed and best ignored. The common name – and it really is quite common - is Owenia, which is almost onomatopoeic, sounding like the noise you make when you see it, yet again. But there really is no getting rid of it; it is almost as if the others invite it in. As I say I should just ignore it and hope it goes away.

Jeremiah, Johnny and their little weed...

BOB: Well, some interesting little problems there, but our time is almost up. I’d like to just pick up this story that is in the news right now. We are getting regular emails and letters from listeners who are asking about the Mayflower epidemic. This is being seen in garden centres, allotments, village greens, all over the place right now. It’s an insistent little thing, but with no variety; wherever it blooms it is exactly the same, repeating the same old sequence. It comes with an entourage of useless and not very decorative foliage and offers so much promise, but with so little delivery. My advice? I’d suggest you compost the lot.

Starving

Tom Watson is reported to be on hunger strike to express solidarity with prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. But maybe he's secretly hoping to just to shed a few pounds before Christmas, or get back to his beach body weight? I wonder if he recognises that doing something from which he may directly benefit is hardly a sacrifice. I wonder also if he has fully thought it through. It’s one thing for somebody under extreme stress to be capable of denying themselves sustenance, but for somebody living a comfortable life and obviously fond of pudding this might prove an impossible challenge.

What if nobody notices? Or worse, what if he openly flaunts this fast but gorges himself nightly like a muslim in ramadan? If the weight doesn’t fall off him in an appallingly unhealthy manner questions will be asked in the house. On the other hand it may start a trend; who wouldn’t like to see John Prescott or Eric Pickles stepping away from the pies? Of course, Tom Watson may be made of sterner stuff and he isn’t the only parliamentarian to have tried this.

The British Isles' most famous hunger-striker and one who carried right through to the end was Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh, better known as Bobby Sands, who led the 1981 protest in the infamous Maze prison. The strike was in protest against the removal of Special Category Status for IRA political prisoners, treating them merely as criminals. During this period he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate. His subsequent death in prison was a clarion call to the faithful and caused a spike in both recruitment to the cause and renewed terrorist activity. Be careful what you wish for, Tom.

Actually, 1981 wasn’t the first time for Bobby Sands. While he was in prison in Long Kesh in the early 1970s he tried to do something similar. During his three years under lock and key he announced his decision to go on hunger strike, alone this first time, to protest against his treatment. But this attempt only lasted a few days before he broke the fast. As everybody expects Tom Watson to buckle early, perhaps this is the model he intends to follow, rather than the ten-in-the-Maze example.

Tom - no more pies - Watson, on hunger strike yesterday

Records have now been released from that period, including the testimony of the guard who persuaded Sands to give up on his mission. It seems they had become close – as far as prisoner and jailer can become – and many conversations were had while he was refusing to eat. He was recently interviewed for a Panorama programme about the period and directly asked about how he had managed to get Sands to give up. “Well in the end it was quite easy,” Said the prison guard, “actually, it was a piece of cake.”

Mistaken Identity

Identity politics; it’s barmy, isn’t it? I mean, it’s hard enough some days to get through the day without having to worry about whether you’re using the correct pronouns when addressing others. And will you unintentionally offend strangers by appropriating their culture, whatever form that takes? Do Americans get miffed when they see people of other nations wearing tee-shirts and baseball caps?

And what about what’s written on that tee-shirt? Dressing your five-year old in a pink tee with ‘Princess’ in sparkly sequins might upset a minor royal; you never know. It will certainly enrage a feminazi, but then pretty much anything does. Mind you, this is fine because it is always hilarious to see a grown woman having a rant about somebody else’s innocent child and being utterly serious about it.

Talking of funny, one of the ironically wry things about identity issues is how ridiculous you look and sound sometimes when you both assume your identity and defend it. Whatever happened to ‘anything goes’? I mean, nowadays, in some societies a glimpse of stocking is looked on as something shocking; heaven knows! But some identities are more equal than others and one of those seems to be to have no recognisable individual identity at all.

There is a big debate in the west about the wearing of the burka; something that seems to be far less popular in many all-out muslim countries. Quite apart from the alien nature of this practice, which is seen as a deliberate provocation to many, hiding your face is not something we are comfortable with, here in the civilised world; although there are a fair few prominent feminists who we could bear to see a lot less of.

When you hide your identity, especially as a means of asserting it, it can arouse passionate opposition. What are you hiding? Why? And who are you, behind the veil, anyway? On one occasion recently, matters got a little out of hand. A man walked out of a city centre pub after a long, liquid lunch and on hitting the fresh air became a little dazed and confused. When he noticed a burka-clad figure walking ahead of him he rushed up and grabbed the figure in a bear hug.

As the burkee struggled the drunk clung on all the harder and started to laugh. Underneath the burka, legs were kicking and the head was jerking from side to side as the captive struggled, ineffectually, to break free. Eventually the man let go, still laughing and the burka-clad figure stumbled to the ground, gasping for breath. The man looked down and said “Not so tough now, are we, Batman?”

Always look on the bright side

David Davis is in bullish mood, as befits his Brexit Bulldog persona portrayed on Radio 4’s Dead Ringers. Meanwhile the malcontents of Remain spin yarns of endless protracted ‘transition deals’ which sound like nothing so much as the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House, whereby the lawyers effectively spend all there was to be inherited. It’s as if some would prefer to see the country punished; brought to its knees in chains before the high and mighty EU and becoming a burden, rather than running free and becoming richer, to the benefit of all.

But this is the great human dichotomy, the contrast between optimism and pessimism played out every day on both the national stage and at the kitchen sink. Glass half full, glass half empty – for every positive outlook there is a Newtonian opposite reaction to dampen the mood. In every cloud, some find the silver lining; and while the optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds, the pessimist fears this is true.

Take the climate debate, for instance: None can know the future but just as preachers prophecy the end of days and the heavenly hereafter, the climatists claim to see the fireball of hell that awaits us – global warming – and set to appeasing Gaia by using yet more of her resources to build massive altars on which to sacrifice the nation’s wealth. Christopher Brooker’s excellent article is a must-read for those who see the futility at the heart of every shame-driven green project.

Where are the cheery bright-side observers? We need more men like Joe; the eternal optimist. At every bad situation he would always say “It could have been worse.”. The Somerset Levels floods? According to Joe it was a mere blip. The great financial crash? A simple correction. “It could have been worse” he blithely recited, with a grin, “It didn’t affect me at all, because I had no investments and nothing to lose.”

His three best friends hated this cheery acceptance of every ill wind as bringing sub-optimal gloom, so they came up with a story they thought not even Joe could find a worse scenario for. The next Saturday, only two of his friends showed up for their regular tee time. When Joe arrived’ slightly late, he looked at his watch and asked “Where's Geoff?”

One of the others said ”Didn't you hear? Yesterday, Geoff found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, and then turned the gun on himself.” Joe looked shocked, but then shook his head and declared “That’s terrible... but it could have been worse.” His friends were aghast and one asked, “How the hell could it have been worse? Your best friend just killed himself, his wife and her lover!” And Joe replied, “Yes, but if it had happened two days ago, it would have been me!”

Snake in the Grass

Voltaire said, ‘If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.’ He said a lot of things that people quote all the time today; free speech, civil liberties, the tyranny of the unaccountable and so on. But this particular truism relates to the apparent needs of humans to look up to a higher power; the more intangible, the more untouchable the more, well, divine, the better. The Labour Party is rediscovering its religious fervour:

In the beginning was the word and the word was Corbyn. And lo, Jeremy looked upon his work and he saw that it was good and thus began the lord to dictate to his minions upon Earth the new manifesto creed. As his holy voice boomed down from the heavens, the scribe dutifully reproduced it verbatim; by this do we know that his gospel is true, for what proof dost thou need when the word is divine? Trust, have faith, that this is the path to goodness and everlasting light.

The creed:

‘That the illegal shall be made legal and that he who doth behead a man shall stand as high as he doth not, for the sin of inequality is met with the hardest of stares.

Bring me thy misfits, thy deformed and twisted souls that we may drink from their bitter bile and taste the sweet fluids of self-loathing; for all that is white is unpure and all that is brown shall be rewarded in heaven. Or at least found a good safe seat.

That thine living be bountiful thou must bring forth ever more voters; for only by increasing the population twelve-fold canst thou avert the catastrophe of overcrowding and strain on public services.

That thou shalt have no other god save me... and the NHS.’

On hearing the word the evil economic Philistines demanded to know more:

But, oh Jeremy, they asked wherewith shall come all the money for thy good works? To which the almighty Corbyn replied that as you seek, so should you find.

Puzzled, they asked again, from whence would come the money foretold in the prophecies that his children should prosper and grow fat? Patience, the lord entreated, the McDonnell of heaven shall maketh a plan.

And the Lord God all-Corbyn sent forth into the wilderness the angel John who endured for forty days and forty nights the deprivation of humankind, for to better understand their desires. And upon his return to heaven he announced that he had a fully-costed plan to save the world. This plan would bring riches on earth, build hospitals and schools and banish forever the inequity of poverty. All that the flock need do is have faith in the Lord.

Jeremy's Corbyn soldiers...

And Jeremy returned to the stump to give forth the good news. And he spake to the economists and the naysayers and the brutal Tory serpents who crawled on the ground and whispered poisons. Begone, he sayeth, thou art banished and forever more humankind shall dwell in heaven upon earth. Manna, in all its forms, shall be plentiful. But one doubting Thomas, one snake in the grass demanded to know more. “From whence shall come the money?” he shouted, at which the heavenly host fixed him with a beady eye and replied, “Hast thou never heard of PrayPal?”

You know nothing!

Jon Snow was at Glastonbury. While he was there, among his kind of people, he joined in with the chant “Fuck the Tories!” Nobody with half an eye on his sleeve, where he wears his heart, pumping blood red with Corbynism, believes otherwise. Snow says he has no recollection of that, but of course he would say that. Blame it on the adrenalin, blame it on the hallucinogens, blame it on the booze; he hasn’t denied it. Did it happen, did it not - it doesn’t matter; we’ve all already made up our minds.

Those on the left want it to be true because it’s what they want, too. Those on the right want it to be true because it exposes him, once more, as not the neutral, dispassionate reporter he wants to appear. We all like to think we’re impartial when it comes down to things we should be impartial about, but we’re only human. Representing a news outlet there is a fanciful idea that a professional can do it without bias, but he’s only human.

Besides, this was in his spare time; this time he wasn’t being paid to be the mouthpiece of morose anit-liberal leftist opinion; he was just enjoying himself. Which is a rare thing, I’m told as grumpy old Jon Snow can be a prickly character off-camera. Let’s face it, you’d be grumpy if everywhere you went people shouted out “You know nothing, Jon Snow!” In his village he is known as a curmudgeonly old grouch but filled with like-minded killjoys, he generally rubs along.

Although there was that incident with O’Malley’s dog. O’Malley used to be a neighbour of Snow’s and when they lived next door he owned an Alsatian puppy, a great big, gangly, long-legged, sharp-toothed rascal of a thing who went through chew-toys as if they were sweets. In his early years this dog destroyed shoes, slippers, towels, blankets; you name it, he ate it... and Jon Snow took an instant dislike as the dog’s happy growling drifted across the garden fence to disturb his revery.

He peered over the fence, glared at the dog and summoned O’Malley to an impromptu conference. “Can’t you do anything about your dog?” he snapped. O’Mally replied, “Sure, he’s just a pup. He’ll grow out of it.” Snow wasn’t satisfied and said so in no uncertain terms. O’Malley was emollient but Snow was having none of it. As he raised his voice, his cheeks grew redder and he delivered a diatribe on social responsibility, the duties of a neighbour and what was and was not acceptable in polite society.

Now Jon Snow likes to sport a Panama and on this particular day a particularly expensive example crowned his grey locks. Mid rant, a gust of wind lofted the hat from his head and it floated off, into the path of the inquisitive puppy. The hat stood no chance and in seconds it was in tatters. Snow demanded recompense. O’Malley just shrugged; after all, the dog was just doing what came naturally and nobody had snatched the hat from Snow’s possession. “It was just an accident,” said O’Malley. “I don’t like your attitude” challenged Snow. O’Malley thought for a moment, then replied “I t’ink you’ll find it’s your ‘at ‘e chewed!”

Got your number!

A week and a half on from the Grenfell Tower fire (And how many unchecked variations of that name have been used across various media platforms?) and still the same old politics-as-usual. The Corbynistas have been in full flight-of-fancy mode, variously blaming the conflagration on Tory cuts, Tory councillors, Tory contractors, Tory planners, Tory specifiers Tory procurers, Tory cladding erectors and no doubt,  Tori Spelling, Tori Amos and the elusive Vic-Tory too.

As a brief respite from the opportunistically manufactured national grief, John McDonnell’s clenched-fist ‘Day of Rage’ turned out – thankfully – to be a soggy squib of an affair as a few of the unwashed persuaded themselves they would somehow ‘overthrow’ their new Thatcher hate-figure, placard by placard. Inside the chamber Jeremy Corbyn piled into the Queen’s speech, claiming it was a meagre affair, thin gruel, insufficient, on the grounds that too few radical changes were proposed. Is this, then, the duty of government, to consistently lay down law after law? Or is it rather to create an environment where individuals can flourish and people can improve their own lives?

Talking of individuals, it turns out that a further 500,000 of them were added to the population in the last year; the pace of population growth far outgrowing our ability to accommodate them, feed them and continually subsidise the lie that we need them. Actually, that figure is only what is known; the Grenfell fire has revealed that we don’t even know how many, or who, were living in the tower block, legally or otherwise; one of the challenges of the coming days is to quantify the political mileage available from the unknown unknowns.

To this end Sadiq Khan’s team have assembled a panel of experts to gather information and form a strategy for extracting the maximum embarrassment from government and the maximum funding possible from the public purse. One of the first tasks is to work out how many lives were lost, how many displaced and how much compensation could be due. Part of the process was to recruit analysts to crunch the numbers, to which end a mathematician, a statistician and an accountant were interviewed for the job of leading the task force:

At the interview the mathematician declared that with, say, 127 flats and an average occupancy of 3.4 people per flat we were dealing with a potential total number of fatalities of 431.8, minus those who had been accounted for and thus a precise figure could be arrived at for both living and dead. He was asked to take a seat in the waiting room while they interviewed the next candidate.

The statistician took a slightly different approach, based on the fact that a number of flats were thought to have been sub-let multiple times. Let us suppose, he said, that 40% of the flats had been let out to unregistered tenants and let us suppose that, typically these would be immigrant families who were on the whole the vanguard for large extended families intending to settle in London. We can take a ball park estimate, based on the probability that at any one time 50% of these apartments contained people in transit, that somewhere in the region of a 1000 people would need to be accounted for and adequately compensated.

The hiring committee was impressed with how easily the statistician had dispensed with hard facts and plucked a number from thin air which suggested they could ask for twice as much as they had originally imagined. They asked the statistician to take a seat while they interviewed the accountant. The accountant took his turn, listened carefully to the question the committee posed and answered, simply, “How many do you want it to be?”

Amateur Hour

There’s a lot said on both sides of The House about immigration. In the wider world people adversely affected – and they are many – find it hard to comprehend how their circumstances have come about, while in other areas – usually those who have known little else – they refer to vibrant diversity and all its wonders. There are valid arguments on both extremes if they could only be heard above the clamour of political correctness, typified by the image of a politician, any variety, clasping knees to chest, rocking to and fro and loudly humming so as not hear any incorrect opinions.

Last night’s ‘comedy’ spot on Radio 4 was occupied by Paul Sinha's History Revision and jolly interesting it was too... were it not for the fact that this son of immigrants was banging one particular drum and banging pretty loudly, too. The tune was, ‘nothing good would ever have happened in the world without immigration’. And he had the history to prove it. Now, I know Sinha is a clever lad and I’m sure he would make for invigorating and stimulating company, but this trope is over-wrought and fundamentally flawed.

‘We are all descended from immigrants’ is irrelevant. ‘The NHS relies on immigrants’ is irrelevant. Immigration, in and of itself, is not the source of all things good, it is merely one of several facilitators. It is the individual, inspired by place and experience, that creates; his or her ethnic origin is often incidental. Sinha’s thesis, inspired by his love of history – literally an ‘amateur’ historian – was based on an acceptance of the innate ‘goodness’ of immigration.

Inventure Place, in Akron Ohio, is referred to as the American Inventors’ Hall of Fame and its exhibitive niches are mostly occupied by immigrants who came to The New World, did good and invented stuff; the USA is proud to adopt them as great American inventors. But there’s a bit of a chicken and egg game going on here – did the immigrants make it happen, or did America provide the means and opportunities? Or did they do their inventing elsewhere and bring the goods over on the Mayflower’s successors? Beware the easy conclusions wrought from a non sequitur.

Anyway, we’ve always had movement of people. One traditional mode of casual migration was the regular cycles of itinerant traders, slavers, tinkers and circus folk, the inspiration for many a running-away-from-home. A friend of mine disappeared one day, some years ago and much gossip ensued. But a decade later, when the circus came to town, there he was, in full carney slap, parading round the ring, an array of ironmongery hanging from a specially designed belt.

As the crowd watched he took from his belt a small hammer, such as are used by piano tuners, which he swallowed whole. The watchers gasped. Next, a toffee hammer disappeared down his gullet, quickly followed by a veneer hammer, a small ball pein and a much larger claw hammer. The applause rippled around the big top but then we were quelled to silence as the lights dimmed; for the finale he took up a six-pound sledgehammer and after some business twirling it around, tossing and catching it he struck a pose and then, with his head tilted far back, he slowly swallowed the hickory shaft until only the steel hammer head remained visible. With a gulp, this too was gone; the audience went wild!

The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd!

After the show, I caught up with him as he signed autographs and congratulated him on his remarkable achievements. He told me of his life and the wonderful people he had met, from all over the world. I remarked on his unconventional performance and asked if he had ever tried to swallow a sword, a much more familiar act. He shook his head. “No,” he said “that’s a job for the professionals... I’m strictly an ‘ammer-chewer.”

Nobody here but us chickens

So Donald Trump has pulled out of Paris; the climate change agreement, not Ms Hilton, although, you know, he has form. According to some the world will soon, literally, be engulfed in flames. The EU has stopped just short of branding the USA a pariah nation and imposing sanctions, but you can bet that has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with continuing trade. Trump’s decision is, of course, also to do with money and while the world condemns him, governments are all going to watch keenly for signs of economic upturns at which point expect others to follow suit, if in less dramatic fashion.

You can guarantee, however, that grass roots protest will ensue with hippies making Washington DC look untidy, anti-frackers churning up rural areas as they hold ‘peace vigils’ and the like and in an echo of the self-destructive instincts of some of Britain’s high profile Remainers, signed-up climate change scientists will take to the skies to fly to fragile exotic ecosystems where they will generate enough hot air to melt the ice caps, just to show how wrong Trump is and how much they care.

And in the background, of course, conspiracy theorists will abound. Look out for increased chemtrail hysteria activity, every drop of rain, or lack of it, being claimed as a direct result of yesterday’s announcement, rapidly rising sea levels to be widely broadcast... only for those reports to be retracted as the tide goes back out again. And the Sun headline ‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ to be put on standby for every edition. The world will go mad for a while and then everybody will calm down and forget about it.

Of course, the largest stakes to play for are the vested interests of the numerous committees, councils, research grantees and paid consultants in what has become a global industry. Not so much save the planet as save the jobs of the professionally concerned. Many children are betting their future on being able to continue playing make-believe long into adulthood as they convince themselves and each other of the spiralling dangers in a positive feedback loop which makes survival-fear a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom. There is a serious danger of climate ‘scientist’ over-supply in the near future and some may be questioning the long-term viability of being a Climate Cassandra.

Fortunately, forecasting disaster and then profiting from advising how to avoid it is a transferable skill these days; every industry is looking for the silver bullet to fix everything and will carry on paying for quack cures long after all reason has left the building. You can find the quackery of expert consultants in every walk of life. Too many low-paid migrant workers? Open the borders! Too much bureaucracy? Convene a select committee! Too many laws? Legislate! But what about the chicken problem, I hear you ask?

Farmer Brown’s chickens began to quarrel, Cooped up because of avian flu, they started to peck and wound each other, much like the uneasy internecine hostilities of the crazy coalition of the left. Many of them were dying, so the upset farmer hurried to a consultant, and asked for a solution to his problem. “Add baking-powder to their food,” said the consultant, “It will calm them down.”

After a week Farmer Brown was once more at the consultant’s office,explaining that nothing had changed and was there another way? The consultant said “Add apple juice to their drinking water. The attacks will stop, for sure.” But of course, no such change came about and a week later the farmer, now distraught, was back once again. “My chickens are still quarrelling. Do you have some more advice?” The consultant sat him down and answered “Of course I can give you as much advice as you can pay for, but the real question is whether you still have any chickens left to save.”

Call me

The war on terror has once more been visited on our shores and feelings have been running high as the touchy-feely, rainbow coalition of appeaseratchiks hug each other and form protective rings around mosques while the stinking, racist, lower-class lynch mobs eschew candlelit vigils for their own, more direct kind of vigilantism. The police are so busy controlling rampant islamophobia there isn’t a cell free within a hundred miles radius of Manchester.

But other security forces have been busy on our behalf, rounding up random jihadis in dawn raids and swooping on those well-known hotbeds of seething hatred for the hand that feeds them; university campuses, madrassas, back bedrooms in seedy suburbs and kebab shops. By all accounts the tally of arrests and detentions is growing and secret enhanced interrogation suites are being quietly commissioned to deal with the business of ‘intelligence gathering’. Fortunately, those charged with defence of the realm have never bought into the simple lie that torture never yields truth, so widely promulgated by our social justice peaceniks.

I always fancied one of those waterboarding holidays, but it seems that even there the early ISIS bird gets the preferential booking treatment worm, with each potential suicide bomber getting peaceful, solitary, individual accommodation free, at the expense of the UK taxpayer. Some have given up the goodies at the first sight of a dental pick but other soldiers of allah have been harder nuts to crack, so the story goes.

“You filthy infidel pig!” spits Abdul at his interlocutor, as the current is once again applied. “I will never betray my brothers in jihad!” Out comes the wet towel and Abdul splutters as a cascade of cold water persuades his brain that he is drowning. Still no spilling of the beans. As they work on through the night, he taunts them; he seems to even be enjoying the pain. “I long to die for my faith! You will never break me. You will have to kill me, then I will take my reward in heaven. 72 virgins await me.” He pauses to spit blood then grins up at his captors, “Blonde virgins,” he says, “blonde and white and all of them fifteen... like your daughters!”

Eventually Abdul is released after questioning. He wasn’t really tortured at all – this is just the story he intends to tell all his friends once he gets back to his study bedroom in college. But deep inside he believes himself to be a fierce lion of islam, scourge of the west, which has given him everything he has ever known. But Abdul’s reverie is cut short as his life is ended, appropriately enough, by the speeding truck, in front of which he has just stepped. He seems to close his eyes for a second...

Going vestal on yo' ass...

When he opens them again his first sensation is of a bright light and a feeling of peace and contentment. He looks around and sees that he is indeed in heaven and before him stand, as promised, the 72 fifteen-year old virgins, all of them white, all of them naked and all of them with hair the colour of bleached straw. They smile as they walk towards him and surround him. Abdul stares, open mouthed as one of them takes his hand. “Welcome Abdul. We are here for your eternal pleasure... you can call me Larry.”

Castles in the Air

I met a man on a train. He had travelled far and wide, crossed the oceans, roamed the lands and he had spoken to its peoples. His eyes, set in a deep-lined visage which nevertheless shone with youth, burned with a fierce intelligence. Slight, almost frail in appearance, his firm grip belied the slender frame as he clasped my hands in his and besought me to listen. “Hear my words, friend, that you may be cured of your woeful cynicism. I have seen many things on my travels. Such wonders have I to impart.” And he told me his story.

“Once were thieves, forty strong in the land of the sea of sands, where they roamed and robbed and amassed a great fortune. I happened upon them on a dusty trail leading through a deep wadi and hid in the meagre thorn scrub as they approached. They dismounted their horses not twenty feet from where I was concealed and I was sore afraid they would find me and kill me. But their leader made a mystical pass at a blank wall of rock. He spake some words and the rock opened to reveal a vast cave within. Filled, it was, with gold and jewels beyond imagination!

"I returned after dark and filled my pockets with treasures, making a map so that I may return and take the rest. But, so as not arouse suspicion I took only what would not be missed, then covered my tracks and boarded a steamer. Presently we came alongside in a land of wonders, a land where I was, quite literally, a giant! The natives were tiny by comparison, so small that a fully-grown man might have ridden in my pocket, as if a mere mouse! Such sights I have seen, my friend.

"And then, I found myself in a land where I was but the mouse, wherein a giant inhabited a lonely castle of grey granite, accompanied only by a goose; a goose which laid golden eggs which the giant guarded day and night. I fell in with a lad named Jack who told me how he had reached this castle in the clouds by climbing a giant beanstalk, grown from magic beans. Jack and I hatched a plot to separate the giant from his eggs of gold and duly whisked them from his grasp, goose and all.”

I tried to get a word in, but the little old man just carried on, telling tales of castles and princesses and treasures; treasures beyond imagining, riches to end all the suffering in the world, the wherewithal to cure disease, end war and bring plenty for all. “But, who are you?” I asked

Grimm... up north

“I am ancient, I am wise beyond philosophy, I am counsel to kings, advisor to administrators and I keep the secrets of the aristocracy. Rulers come to me when they seek knowledge and power and the learned sages of the epoch bow before me as I spin gold from the humble straw of mortal discourse. I make the ordinary extraordinary, I am the kingmaker, the power behind the throne, I...”

“Oh, wait,” I said, “I know who you are. You are Rumpelstiltskin... and you are Jeremy Corbyn’s speechwriter.”

If at first...

Yesterday I was savagely torn into... okay, I was mildly gummed by a toothless class warrior armed with what are commonly, if generally incorrectly, referred to as memes. Of course memes ain’t what they used to be but accused as I was of confirmation bias, a condition I freely admit (unlike those who believe that memetic argument is the thing) I nevertheless had a look at what they had to offer. The same old tired aphorisms posing as truth; no good to anybody with an actual engagement with the living world, but useful, I guess to those whose life view has been shared almost entirely by the meme-makers guild, whose important works include:

•  A picture of a gurning Noam Chomsky captioned with “If we didn’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise we don’t believe in it at all.” Posted by somebody who has been telling you all day to shut up.
• The sainted Margaret alongside “If they attack you personally it means they have not a single political argument left.” By one who started out questioning your legitimacy, but is singularly unimpressed by ‘creative’ vocabulary and the fact that he had to look up half of your invective.
• The claim that Churchill said “Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” By somebody outraged that you dared challenge their views.
• And any number of mangled statistics presented as fact to prove a point nobody cares about, superimposed on an old photograph of somebody nobody remembers.

Memes can be funny – who hasn’t laughed at Batman slapping Robin? – but they are hardly the definitive way to win an argument. The way you come out on top of an argument is firstly by not getting into one, secondly by having impeccable facts at your disposal and the wit to wield them and thirdly, being able to point and laugh at the ridiculous posturing of the other side. (It drives them bandy!) Which brings us neatly on to Caroline Lucas who, having decided to continue public self-harming, has demanded (again) a second referendum so that those of us who knew exactly what we were voting for last year can demonstrate that yes, leaving the EU completely, along with all its institutions, is... exactly what we voted for.

Of course she won’t be happy with the inevitable outcome of the general election, itself touted as a second referendum, so her proposed next vote would effectively be a third referendum. It reminds me of when, faced with a diary clash she had to decide whether to support a rally to lobby for equal vegan rights for environmentally sensitive gay tigers or attend a routine vote in the House of Commons.

By the time she made it on to the stand to deliver a rousing speech at the tiger rally people were already beginning to disperse. “Why are you so late?” she was asked. She explained that she had to make a choice; attend parliament and do her duty by her constituents, or be here, fighting for gay tigers. “I tossed a coin” she explained. “But that couldn’t have taken so long” protested the inquirer. Caroline replied, “I had to toss it 37 times.”

Bullish

Angela Merkel has once again waded into the Brexit business with what she imagines are hope-dashing remarks designed to wound, to intimidate, to threaten and generally to weaken Britain’s resolve to leave the EU. All around her, the fawning sycophants, the unter-nations, simper and occasionally click their heels together, reflexively muttering ‘Mein Führer’ as they feel they must; the instincts of the Teutons and their quislings are never far from the surface. Did you hear about the new German-Chinese restaurant? The food is great, but an hour later, you're hungry for power.

Anyway, Frau Merkel is no stranger to holding power over others. As a leading light in the Free German Youth, the junior wing of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party a young Angela Kasner quickly grew to learn what it felt like to be in charge. In those straitened times, back during the cold war, rationing was a fact of daily life and only the party faithful were guaranteed easy access to education, the arts and even sausages.

One cold morning in the party canteen the absence of sausages for breakfast caused some consternation and so Angela rallied her cohort to scour the town for the emblematic meat stuff of the glorious German Democratic Republic. In pairs they toured the butcher’s shops in search of snorkers. To her annoyance, Angela’s party found a disgracefully locked door at one shop and hammered on it with her fists, demanding the owner come out. “Go away!” came a voice from the other side as a sleep-worn face appeared at the window. Angela, undeterred, thrust her party membership card at the face.

A moment later the door opened and a suitably shamefaced butcher allowed them access. “You are allowed two sausages each” he said, at which Angela set her face and asked “Do you realise who you are talking to?” The man slumped, opened up his cold store and watched in misery as the youngsters took as many as they wanted. As they left Angela said “Thank you, comrade, the party will reimburse you directly.” They both knew this was a lie.

Next, eggs. Once again the raiding party set out and found a grocer’s store just opening for the day. Under the threadbare awning a few boxes, meagrely stocked with wilting cabbages and flaccid turnips bespoke hard times. “We want a dozen eggs!” demanded the troop at which the shopkeeper protested he had but four and indicated said number nestled in a large straw-lined box. Once again, out came the card and out came the hoarded eggs. Breakfast was looking more assured by the minute.

“But wait,” said a young acolyte as they were headed back to barracks, “have we milk for our coffee?” They turned and strode out to the edge of town where the dairy farm was situated. The farmer was repairing a fence, his rosy wind-battered cheeks glowing in the brisk morning air. “Good morning, comrade” Angela declared, we have come for milk. With that she opened the gate to the farmer’s protestation “You can’t go in there!” he yelled. “Oh no?” said Angela “do you see this card?” The card was waved in his face at which the farmer gave in, shrugged and waved her on.

A few minutes later a scream was heard, along with a blood-curdling bellow. In the middle of the field a frantic Angela was running as fast as her legs would carry her, closely pursued by a large, angry bull. The other cadets gasped and froze in fright and impotence, but the farmer ran over to the fence and waved his arms to attract her attention. Then he cupped his hand to his mouth and yelled “Your card! Show him your card!”

Snap!

The snap general election is a thing of true political beauty and a joy, if not forever at least until June the eighth. Tim Farron is going to lose his seat to Mr Fish Finger, for sure. Dawn Butler had the most car-crashiest of interviews about Labour’s policy-free manifesto. And from his hiding-place behind Diane Abbott’s voluminous skirts, Chuka Ummuna (who?) has clearly been at the strong stuff, declaring that calling an election is a perversion of democracy. (In Newspeak democracy is the new anti-democracy in much the same way anti-fascism is the new fascism. I’m expecting them to announce a promise to increase the chocolate ration any day now.) You couldn’t make it up.

But the prize in the competition to see who has become most unhinged since the announcement has to go to the Supreme Leader and Hypocrite-in-Chief, JC himself who seems to have succumbed to a bout of the Milibands. His ranting, ‘firebrand’ speech to launch the Labour bid for annihilation was a rambling, rabble rousing rant against common sense. In his very own version of the matrix ordinary people are bonded in slavery by the evil empire of wealth creation and only Labour can red-pill them to fight against the rigged system. His rhetoric oozed conspiracy nutjob in every fevered sentence. Hell, yes, he’s ‘tuss enough’!

He also clearly inhabits an irony-free zone as he simultaneously raged against privilege – even invoking the holy Labour name of Keir Hardie - yet his son, the authentically working-class-monickered Sebastian, Queen Elizabeth’s School & Cambridge-educated and currently John McDonnell’s chief of staff, is widely tipped to be parachuted into a Labour safe seat. I can’t work out which of Labour’s shadow cabinet are the most deluded but I’m not sure they can claim to have any safe seats by now.

But Jeremy needs to act fast, he’s no spring chicken and at 67-years old senility beckons. To which end he held a closed-door meeting yesterday with two grizzled class warriors and men of the people, Lords Kinnock and Prescott, both fast approaching their own dotage. It was a good old beer and sandwiches session, although Prezzer favours sun-dried tomatoes on focaccia, drizzled in the finest extra-virgin olive oil and washed down with a 2012 Saint-Péray these days and Lord Windbag sent out for pizza and Pinot. Inevitably the focus of the meeting blurred as age intervened.

Policies? ... Anybody?

Two jags sighed and admitted “Sometimes I catch myself with a jar of mayonnaise in my hand, while standing in front of the refrigerator, and I can't remember whether I need to put it away, or start making a sandwich.” This brought a wry chuckle from multi-millionaire Baron Kinnock who contributed the private insight that “Yes, sometimes I find myself on the landing of the stairs and I honestly can't remember whether I was going up or going down.” Jeremy briskly brought the meeting back to order and declared “Well, I'm glad I don't have that problem. Touch wood.” He rapped his knuckles smartly on the desk, fixed them with a beady eye, stood up, walked toward the door and said. “That’ll be the pizza.”

Da Bomb!

While Trump’s troops drop the mother of all bombs on ISIS caves in Afghanistan another bombshell lands closer to home. Yes, McVities have come out and declared that their chocolate biscuits, notably Hobnobs, are coated on... the bottom. You heard it right, Like a bizarre cold war spy code-phrase ‘the chocolate is not on top of the biscuit’. Cue readers’ letters, tea-light vigils and wildcat strikes in sympathy.

If that weren’t enough, in an audacious display of post-Brexit effrontery, foodie Jay Rayner dared to criticise Paris restaurant LeCinq in a scathing review. As somebody who is alarmed at the principle of paying an entire week’s shopping bill to eat faffy food, over-prepared by zealots and served by condescending mouth breathers in an atmosphere overwhelmed by a misplaced sense of occasion. I entirely agree that forking over €600 for a lunch you didn’t enjoy is truly ridiculous.

I haven’t enjoyed eating out ever since my last foray to the Ivy where I was astonished to see one fellow diner attempting to eat peas from his knife. So astonished was I that I almost dropped my handful of artisan mash. But for Jay it was a job and he is made of sterner stuff than I. But to judge from the reaction of the French it was as if opening shots has been fired in a new Napoleonic war: “Ze British only ondairstand feesh and cheeps and rice pooding! Zut, ‘ow do zey expect to appreciate our superior gastronomie?” they whined.

Jay, of course, shrugged off the reaction. After all he is the son of the formidable Claire Rayner and was raised in a household where issues were aired and problems discussed and solutions found by forthright discourse. A little know fact is that when they were quite young the Rayner children’s favourite story was Goldilocks and the Three Bear and much hilarity was had around the family’s kitchen table...

One sunny morning at Chez Rayner baby bear Jay came down, sat at the table and stared glumly into the empty bowl in front of his usual chair. “Who's been eating my porridge?” he demanded in a high pitched voice. His father Desmond – Daddy Bear – appeared, took his place and found his own bowl utterly unsullied by food. “Who's been eating my porridge?" he roared and struck his fist on the table. Mummy Bear, Claire, left the stove where she had been labouring, rolled her eyes, crossed her arms and stood between them at the head of the table.

Now listen up, bears...

“Now you listen here,” she said. Daddy Bear and Baby Bear shared a look; they were going to get one of Mummy Bear’s little talks. “It was Mummy Bear who woke everybody else in the house up. It was Mummy Bear who unloaded the dishwasher from last night and put everything away. It was Mummy Bear who went out into the cold early morning air to fetch the newspaper. It was Mummy Bear who set the table. It was Mummy Bear who fed the cat, filled the cat's water bowl and then let him out.” They waited for the inevitable conclusion to this little lecture. “And every day, I get this same farce from you two. Now listen up because I'm only going to say this one more time: I haven't made the fucking porridge yet!”

Walk on

In the theatre of the absurd which is the disintegrating left, a protest group has been demanding of the New Statesman that they give 30 pages of favourable coverage over to the subject of Jeremy Corbyn. No, seriously... Now, thirty pages of coverage we can easily envisage, but thirty pages of GOOD coverage? Maybe if it was written in headline-sized font and dubiously included the Diane Abbott dalliance it could be eked out to a page or two, but beyond that... are they suggesting The Staggers lies about the man? He’s got three kids; maybe he likes them?

Oh but, maybe not. Labour’s latest wacky foray back to communism of its roots is to suggest funding school meals for state pupils by charging Value Added Tax on private school fees. Right, so, that means the people who pay all the tax and then further assist state education by not using the services they already paid for should pay even more so that other people’s offspring can be fed? Is the plan to get votes by helping poor students’ parents to buy more fags? Perhaps the Labour Party could get back to us when they have a policy, any policy, based not on coercion or threat or force, but on common sense?

Fortuitously, events have been overtaken by the USA’s bombing of Syria. Phew, lucky stroke there Labour! But once again the world goes mad. The whole of the Middle East has been a source of concern for all the years I can recall. Maybe we should close the doors on the whole region, contain it, then come back in fifty years and see if anybody is ready to talk sensibly about it all? But we just can’t help ourselves, can we? Like progressively lowering a table by sawing chunks out of each leg in turn, trying to level out that annoying wobble, everything we do seems to make things worse.

I find Middle East events tedious in the extreme. While millions were live-tweeting events, the ‘Arab Spring’ largely passed me by. If the whole of North Africa were rendered an unlivable nuclear wasteland for centuries I’d probably greet it with a disinterested shrug. I had similar reactions to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of John Lennon. I figured they had nothing to do with me, so, meh... some things just don’t move me at all.

On the other hand, human frailty fascinates me; I like watching how you mere mortals deal with the perceived threat of things you can do nothing about. Like your irrational reactions to far-away war, rich people, celebrity and the weather. As storms brew in the near east, we approach the summer thunderstorm season...

Storm's a-comin'...

One summer’s evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her young son into bed. She was about to leave when he asked with a tremor in his voice, “Mummy, will you sleep with me tonight?” She smiled and asked “But why, dear?” The boy replied “I’m frightened about what’s happening in the world; Syria, Jeremy Corbyn and all this thunder and lightning.” His mother said, gently, “I can't dear. I have to sleep in Daddy's room.” And with that she kissed him goodnight, then slowly rose and tiptoed to the door. As she turned off the light she heard, from the darkened silence “The big sissy.”

The Theory of Conspiracy

Of course there’s been only one news story this week and one which will keep running for the foreseeable future. Already the conspiracy theorists are doing what they do best; constructing imaginary pasts to support their fictitious forecast futures. I gather plagues of boils and worldwide financial meltdowns are still on the cards, as are the invisible hands of the Illuminati, the Rothschilds and George Soros. Oh what a tangled web and all that. How many conspiracy theorists does it take to screw in a light bulb? We may never know the truth...

Weird theories abound. Did you hear, for instance, that rocks are actually soft and squishy, but they tense up when we touch them? Or that The Rapture actually happened as foretold, but there were so few good people that no one noticed when they’d gone? Or maybe the world really did end at the millennium, but we haven't realized it yet because of some sneaky government cover up. I heard that the Village People were a covert operation by the US government to cheer everyone up during the recessions and oil crises of the 1970s. So what if you lost your job and have to stay at the YMCA? It's fun to stay at the YMCA!

Of course, when it comes to the history of the EU, conspiracy theories abound and Occam’s marvellous razor is tossed side as one after another competing explanation for every decision is ushered to centre stage, minutely examined, dissected then reassembled in a patchwork quilt of underhand deals, shady doings and downright madness. The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan makes regular appearances, as do frequent references to the New World Order and the Bilderberg Group.

It’s enough to turn the heads of the impressionable and who doesn’t love a good, juicy plot to entertain the crowds? It’s as if a sizeable chunk of the population, eschewing religion – itself, distinctly dodgy under cross-examination – would rather live in a nationwide soap opera than admit to the dull mundanity that characterises most people’s lives and most real events. But, if you live by the sword there’s a chance you’ll die by the sword and same applies to conspiracy theorists. There’s always going to be a reckoning and one day, they say, you will have to meet your maker.

Two conspiracy theorists died and went to heaven. As they wait at the Pearly Gates they discuss the big conspiracies of their days on Earth. God beckons them to enter and bids them sit at his feet whereupon he explains: “Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald really did shoot Jack Kennedy, acting alone. And yes, in 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. And it’s true; the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by a small group of muslim terrorists.” The conspiracy theorists looked at each other. One tapped his nose and said “I told you it goes all the way to the top.”

The Old Ones

Well, as expected, yesterday’s social media was a full-on anti-nazi fest with apologists shouting down the natural fears expressed by non-muslims everywhere. Celebrate the glories of multiculturalism, why, even the victims were diverse! Yes, get used to female genital mutilation, sharia, shitting in curries, slaughtering animals the Stone Age way and talking of stones... While we’re about it, say hi to the Notting Hill Stabbing Festival and end outmoded practices which identify as being English, such as rubbing along and making do and not randomly killing innocent bystanders. Welcome diversity and fuck you, the English.

We must come together, goes the rallying cry, apparently utterly unaware that the thin skin of ‘vibrancy’ hides a seething mass of incompatibility. But where do we start; is this the slippery slope to a, monocultural uniformity? You’d think the socialists would love all that though, wouldn’t you? Identical economic units in Mao suits with an even, grey pallor to match, breeding from an extra shallow gene pool. But we couldn’t turn the clock back even if we tried. We won’t rise up and expel the ‘other’ because, well, it just wouldn’t be British, would it.

Mind you, the concept of nationhood, despite its recent resurgence, is firmly in the cross hairs of the global socialist project and the flock of frisky spring lambs know that those flying the flags have only limited years left. Memories of former glories fade with each passing year and soon enough those horrible old people will die out and take their 'divisive' beliefs in fair play, winners and losers and accountability for their actions with them. But while there’s still breath in the body, we old gits struggle on.

To that end, it’s important to keep fit and two old fellas I know were out in the park the other day. The eighty-year old was resting on a bench, half way through his morning stroll when his 87-year old friend sat beside him. He’d just finished a two-mile run. The younger man said “How do you do that? I’m out of breath just tying my shoelaces these days. It makes me tired just watching you!” The 87-year old said, "Well, I start out with stretches and breathing exercise, but I also have a secret weapon... I eat Jewish rye bread every day.”

The younger man was intrigued and listened intently as his friend carried on. “It keeps your energy levels high and you'll have great stamina with the ladies, if you see know what I mean. I’m telling you, you'll feel like 40 again!” So, on the way home the 80-year-old stopped at the bakery. As he was looking around, the assistant asked if he needed any help. "Do you have any Jewish rye bread?” he enquired.

She indicated below the counter and said “Yes, we have a new batch in, freshly baked. Would you like some?” He smiled and said, “Could I have five loaves, please.” The shop assistant looked surprised and replied “My goodness, five loaves! By the time you get to the third one, it will be hard.” The old man looked at her and blinked in astonishment. He exclaimed, “I can't believe it. Everybody knows about this shit but me!”

Are you being served?

Earlier this week it was International Women’s Day, or some such title. I don’t know really, I wasn’t paying much attention. But, apparently, some of the more ardent defenders of the supremacy of wimminkind were staging some sort of strike; a day without women. Again, I was only half listening, mea culpa. I find, as a lot of men do, that once the pretty young things start to tell you how their day went the sound goes all sort of fuzzy and... oh, look, squirrel!

Anyway, I do hope it all went well for them. And I hope they get all the things they desire because I know how acquisitive they can be. They say with men the race is won by the one who dies with the most toys, whereas women don’t stop at mere toys; they want other fripperies as well, for reasons we men have never been able to figure out. I say ‘never been able’ but really I’m not sure any of us have ever actually bothered. See, men have always been far too simple to understand the needs of womankind... or too lazy, I forget which.

Luckily, in an effort to solve the eternal problem of satisfying the fairer sex an enterprising businessman has seen a gap in the market and set up The Husband Store where the ladies can shop for their ideal mate without suffering the indignities of the dating game. Just off Piccadilly the gleaming storefront announces to all and sundry that it is open for business, women only. But there are some rules as to how the business operates. They read as follows.

‘You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products on offer increases as the shopper ascends each storey. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but cannot go back down except to exit the building.’

Seems a bit of a kerfuffle to me, but anyway, intrigued I asked a female colleague to investigate. She reported back, thus. Each floor has a large sign advertising its wares. The sign on the ground floor reads:

Ground Floor – These men Have Jobs.

She carried on upwards...

First Floor - These men Have Jobs and Love Children.
“That was nice,” she said, “but I wanted more.” Next up:

Second Floor - These men Have Jobs, Love Children, and are Handsome.

More...

Third Floor - These men Have Jobs, Love Children, are Drop-dead Gorgeous and Help With the Housework

Fourth Floor - These men Have Jobs, Love Children, are Drop-dead Gorgeous,

Help with the Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She was almost overwhelmed at the thought and was sorely tempted, but in the interests of research - as she put it - she carried on up. The next sign said:

Fifth Floor - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

The best shopping centres have a creche

To avoid any charge of gender bias and in the interests of equality the store's owner opened a New Wives Emporium just across the street with exactly the same rules. The ground floor has wives who love sex. The first floor has wives who love sex, have money and like beer. The second, third, fourth and fifth floors have never been visited.

Austerity is back

Some people are never satisfied – take the lords and their never ending bickering over whether Brexit means Brexit or not... And Gina Miller who, having subverted the whole process is now bitching because the House of Commons is unwilling to play her game. Meanwhile, over in Brussels, Jean-Claude Juncker is having his own moment of madness by trying to pretend he genuinely wants meaningful EU reform, as many millions wish, while insisting simultaneously that continuing on the same path toward further integration is the only way forward.

You’d think by now that somebody bigger might have come along to knock all their heads together, but over in USA-Land, the same kind of non-arguments are being pursued, with rumours that Barry Obama is heading up a stop-Trump coalition. And all the while the uncertainties are making the money men richer while raiding the prospects of everybody else. The world just isn’t rigged in favour of the honest little man, it never was. But the power is in the hands of all of us to make a difference.

After ten years of top-down imposed austerity (so-called) I see little evidence of belt-tightening by the Richard Bransons of this planet. But they aren’t the problem; were the wealth creators to pay no tax at all they would still be distributing billions in wages, which is what actually runs the entire economy. Labour’s ridiculous posturing over rich men’s tax affairs hides a simple truth; they have no answer and can’t face the naked truth that we have lived beyond our means for years.

Thrift, as a virtue is a concept from a world long gone, although it is still survives in a few pockets of consciousness and indeed, right here in the UK – what is left of it – is possibly the world’s foremost exemplar of the noble principle. Not for nothing has the interrogative “You’ll have had yer tea?” passed into folklore as a distillation of Scottish parsimony. Now, at a time when the Scots especially may need to consider going without, it’s a paradigm we might all do well to heed.

Al of which reminds me of an incident, not so very many years ago, when a soldier in the full ceremonial uniform of the Black Watch strode into a Glasgow chemist’s shop. He approached the counter, asked to see a male pharmacist then very carefully opened his sporran and took out a neatly folded cotton handkerchief. Inside this a smaller, silk handkerchief was revealed, which he then proceed to likewise unfold. In there lay a small square of tissue paper, inside which was a condom.

The soldier took out the condom and gently placed it for the pharmacist to inspect. The condom had a number of patches on it, which the chemist noticed immediately. He took out a magnifying glass and examined it more closely. The soldier cleared his throat and asked.

“How much to repair it?”

"Sixty pence," said the pharmacist.

“How much for a new one?”

“A poond.”

The soldier painstakingly folded the condom into the tissue, wrapped it in the silk square, then folded it carefully into the cotton handkerchief replaced it in his sporran, and marched out of the door, shoulders back, chin held high and kilt swinging. A moment or two later the pharmacist heard a great shout go up outside, followed by an even greater cheer. The soldier strode back into the shop marched up to the counter and saluted the pharmacist with a broad grin on his face.

“The regiment has taken a vote,” he said, “and we'll have a new one.”