Black Knight

So, Sir Fred Goodwin  is now merely Fred the Shred again. What a relief that must be, what a burden lifted. He can trade in his morning suit and now that he no longer gets to take tea with the Queen he can don the comfy cardie and settle down into his favourite armchair with only his multi-million pound pension plan to console him.

Mind you it did, ultimately, cost £45bn to get him demoted; I'm sure we can go after some more reasonably-priced national disgraces.

• Baroness Uddin - £125,000
• Lord Hanningfield - £28,000
• Geoffrey Archer - where the hell do you start?

But now we have started, why restrict ourselves to the living? I never really liked that Lady Caroline Lamb and come to think of it, Sir Lancelot has a hell of a lot to atone for. And, woah, what about that Lady Macbeth?

Then you have to ask yourself, alive or dead, real or fiction, what does a person have to do to become a knight of the realm? Once upon a time it was something to do with damsels and dragons - or was that dandies with drag on? In days of old (when knights were bold) you had to actually DO something to gain a title, whereas nowadays, it seems, merely living long enough is, er... enough. It hardly seems to matter, the principles of enoblement are mired in inconsistency. You think not? How about the achievements of heroic Sir Winston Churchill compared to, say, the singy Sir Cliff Richard? Or the plucky Dame Ellen MacArthur versus the simply long-careered Judi Dench?

When I'm king should I knight only those who have paid me in land, perhaps, or blood, or maybe presented me the maidenhood of their daughters? Or should I also reward those who have entertained me? Or kept my accounts, or baked my bread? Oh, it's all too difficult to decide, so bollocks to the lot of them. In the United Dingdom I reckon we'll have to start again, so one of the first acts of my reign will be to strip away all undeserved titles, including fictional ones.

In my book the Lord of the Rings will be just plain Mr Precious.

Only Fools...

I thought about a piece on the potential US remake of Only Fools & Horses, but I soon became alliteratively overwhelmed by the thought of trans-Atlanticly translating Trigger

Then I turned my attention to RBS, but I soon realised everybody is blogging about Stephen Hester’s bonus and I didn't want to sound like one of those envious left-wing drones, banging on about anybody who unfairly earns more than you can get on the dole.

No, for me the best news of the weekend is the brilliant story of Labour MP David “Spanker” Lammy. blaming last summer's riots on his own party's anti-smacking laws. I only hope he's going to shove a big textbook down the back of his trousers when he goes to see Ed "Deputy Head" Balls for his corrective caning. That'll learn 'im.

So, bring back smacking – there’s your answer. If smacking can stop riots – that and rubber bullets – then the same principle can surely be applied elsewhere. The principles of cause and effect cannot, must not, be denied.

We could solve the obesity epidemic by the simple expedient of ceasing to feed children. Once children are denied food for, say three or four months, studies have shown that they do not tend to develop obesity in later life. Admittedly because they rarely tend to develop a later life, but the boffins are working on that.

Studies also show that those children who are actually made to learn things early on in school, rather than being allowed to sit in sand pits until they hit puberty, invariably go on to be able to read and write. Now there is a skill-set we could sorely use in secondary school.

Back to law and order and why stop at smacking? How about castration, for instance? I bloody well bet that once a young offender is castrated he'll never need to be castrated again. He might think twice about offending too. It's all so obvious when you think about it.

Is there not also a lesson here for the banking sector? The problem with our economy stems from poor fiscal propriety and surely the roots of thrift lie in childhood discipline in saving and strict parental monetary control over pocket money inflation. I propose that pocket money is restricted to a national maximum scale and good husbanding of those meagre resources encouraged - by smacking if necessary.

I can see it now; It's all coming together Rodders. Save up your pocket money and this time next year we'll all be millionaires.

Dogs of War

So, "Occupy" are claiming a success in their latest stunt - the chaining up of wheelchairs in Oxford Circus to highlight the plight of those on disability living allowance. Interesting that they are willing to restrain the free movement of those who really need it; perhaps in support of benefits for single mothers they could set up a streetside abortion operation? Or they could organise a sit-in to demonstrate the ardent desires of those claiming Jobseekers Allowance. Irony is clearly not their strong point, especially when you see what anagrams can be made from their Twitter account, @UKuncut.

I have a dodgy crystal ball with which to predict the eventual outcome of this latest class war; dodgy in that it only shows the past, yet curiously reliable in its efficacy. You see, there will always be underdogs and they will always be at a disadvantage, so they will always want more - that's human nature - so they will agitate until those with the means give a little, dole out a few concessions and then carry on as before. The penny never really drops for these class war-yers (as they say in the States) that once they've got what they want they de-mob and leave the struggle to other have-nots in their turn. Of course we're all in it together, but it's a bit nippy out and I'm all right, Jack.

Naturally the hard-done-by can always rely on the support of their preferred political party, because there's no way any labour politician, a Miliband, say, would try and avoid paying his dues; that would be hypocritical. And you'd never ever see a die-hard trades unionist, a Prescott for example, ditching his comrades, taking ermine and sitting in the House of Lords. Soli-fucking-darity, brothers!

Class war is natural, it's a human instinct to do better, but therein lies the contradiction. It is never 'class' war, but merely the short-term, opportunistic banding together of the under-trodden until they get a bit of improvement. With few exceptions, those who move upwards also leave the field of battle. Thanks to Andy Mort for reminding me this morning of a quote from George Orwell's North and South: "You cannot have an effective trade union of middle-class workers, because in times of strikes almost every middle-class wife would be egging her husband on to blackleg and get the other fellow’s job."

And you should thank goodness that it is this way because a true class war would always be won by the right-wing, the 'haves'. Sure, the left may have the 'moral high ground' and maybe even the weight of troops on the ground. But the right will be able to afford tanks.

Have a lovely Sunday.

The Only Way?

One of the less often heard but always pleasing joys of being English is listening to an American ‘doing’ an English accent - cue much hilarity over the never-gets-old “Murry Parpns” debacle. Dear old Dick Van Dyke; a true icon of Anglo-American linguistics.

More recently there have been some interesting and far more successful trans-Atlantic crossings, but you mean to tell me there wasn’t a single American actor who could have played House? Or a Brit who could have turned his hand to Jack Sparrow? Wow, really?

But, hey, I’m not knocking the ‘septic tanks’ today. To our ear the whole of the USA only has about four accents anyway – East, West, South and middle, but, tuned in as we are to the nuances of English dialect you only have to move a mile and there’s a whole different way of speaking to deal with.

Having said that, the ‘yoof’ of this country is doing its damnedest to emulate just one and in the interest of egalité has opted for one of the least literate and expressive versions of Shamaican. It doesn’t really matter; nobody is going to employ them anyway and they have nothing worthwhile to say, so who cares?

Once upon a time there was a notion of correct English speech known as Received Pronunciation. If you wanted to be taken seriously, RP was the only game in town. It gave us an international identity as well as a certain gravitas. Then along came the bloody sixties. Ta very much, Tommy Steele. All of a sudden, Cock-er-ney and its variations exploded in our ears and the rot set in. Before long the BBC was copying the commercial meeja and a regional accent became a prerequisite for any announcer.

But all accents carry baggage, some more than others. Hear a Scouser and it’s your own baggage you’ll be keeping a closer eye on. Encounter a Brummie and you involuntarily speak more slowly, avoiding long words. A Geordie twang makes you nod your head vigorously, ‘as if’ you understand, while a greeting in Mancunian immediately triggers a response to defend yourself.

Recently, one particular accent has gained more prominence and garnered greater prejudice than most, notably for the demonstrable horrors that are perpetrated by its practitioners. I don’t believe I could bear to watch a single episode (is that the right word? What is it, exactly? A documentary? A soap-opera?) and yet wherever I look I can’t escape the international diplomacy car crash that is TOWIE. Please tell me that isn't how we are perceived as a nation today? Oh.

So it’s a relief to hear that an Essex school is shoring up the breach and attempting a bit of pre-emptive damage control: Primary school elocution lessons.

I hope it succeeds. Can you imagine what it would be like if by simply doing nothing, Essex became the new RP? If you can’t see what an issue that would be, just imagine national treasure, dear old Jeremy Clarkson, announcing that the new Bugatti Veyron was the fastest production car… “In ve wewd”!

Dixon of Blackberry Green

News, if it were indeed  news, that once again an unthinking investment in technology erodes critical functioning. Calculators made your kids innumerate, so the education system followed up with comprehensive systems such as interactive white boards which prevent, in most cases, teachers from teaching and children from learning, yada, yada, yada.

Well now, surprise surprise, technology prevents coppers from, er, 'coppering'.

What were they thinking? If you're going to arm the police with anything you should surely make it potentially lethal? You'd never have all this bother with a simple truncheon, some tear gas and a set of knuckle dusters.

"Hello 'ello, 'ello, what's all this 'ere then? I'm going to ask you all to calm down or else I'll be forced to use my Blackberry to DM the sergeant... Hang on a minute... How do you spell 'affray'...a-f-f-a-i-r... a-f-a-r-c-e...? Damned auto-correct..."

The crowd disperses, realising that - as Plod engages in the unequal combat between sausage-fingers and tiny keys - there is truly nothing to see here. Belatedly, PC PC attempts one last linguistic sally before stuffing the out-of-signal phone into an expensive leather pouch: "Well, let that be a lesson to you..." 

Exit, stage left, whistling the theme from 'The Bill'.