If I Could Have Your Attention

Jack Prat

2009-04-14T14:54:00.013Z

Fresh from early release from prison after smashing a child's face in with a golf club, rehabilitated celebrity widower Jack Tweed is heading for an immediate return to bird for threatening to stab and proceeding to strangle a taxi driver while he was escorting Tweed to his destination. Before we all run to Jack Straw to beg that he once more intervene to assist the poor misguided lad, we should take a moment to applaud his defence. As a barrister even I have to admire the originality. The Beeb reports:

Tweed told police he had been drinking all day before going to a club where he
drank 10 vodka and Red Bull drinks plus a "couple of shots". He said he had
no memory of the taxi journey but doubted that he would have behaved in the way [the taxi driver] described.

Thus Tweed's plea of not guilty was apparently constructed on the grounds not that he didn't do it, nor that the alcohol negated the intent necessary for the mens rea of the offence to be proven by the prosecution. No, his defence was a glorious, candid shrug of "Dunno, can't remember to be honest. It might have been me. But it doesn't sound like something I'd do."

Tea towels and aerosols

2009-04-12T19:02:00.007Z

Gordon Brown today announced a "compulsory volunteer scheme" for under 19s aimed at thrusting today's youth into the community while they're still pimpled and idealistic.

Anything that makes the lives of schoolyoungsters more stressful and unhappy than was mine is fine by me, notwithstanding the seemingly straightfaced Orwellianism of compulsory volunteering or the fact that the blueprint for the idea bears the carbon smudges of a Tory idea dismissed by the lesser-spotted Miliband as "hugely expensive". In fact the notion takes me back to the time my own alma mater enforced a similarly inspired "community service" on my peers as 16 year olds, the upshot of which saw me spend every Wednesday afternoon in a church-cum-museum cafe wringing out dishcloths and politely laughing at the bawdy banter of middle-aged dinner ladies. The finer points of HRT went over my head, but I did learn from an email posted on the kitchen wall that deodorants cause armpit cancer. Or antiperspirants. As a result I went home and promptly binned my entire Lynx collection. This was shortly before Lynx embarked on its strategy of silently discontinuing low-selling scents (Java, Indigo) and re-releasing them six months later under a new name (Mystico, Ramraid). Had I not been conned into throwing away my old sprays I would now be in a position to prove this cheap marketing scam and blackmail Lynx for every penny they have. I hope Gordon Brown thinks very carefully before subjecting future generations to this sort of financial detriment.

To be continued

2009-04-12T18:43:00.002Z

I've decided to resume this blog. In truth I have decided to resume it several times over the past 18 months, but this time, having spent an unseasonable portion of time unlocking my account and made the considerable effort to translate this intent into HTML, I am confident things are different. This is the start of something new. Something brilliant, I dare say. Or at least something new. So hold onto your hats, oh large baying readership mob. Your appetite for musings will soon be sated. Starting tomorrow. Or the day after.

NEWSFLASH

2007-04-05T13:12:00.000Z

Hot off the press: Sir Michael Lyons, the new chairman of the BBC, has “pledged quality” at his inaugural news conference. Well that’s a relief. You never know how these things are going to go. It's always a worry that these new BBC appointees will go a bit funny and pledge to “take the channel down the shitter through the 24-hour broadcasting of footage of me and my loved ones sitting at home in our underwear and replacing the idents of the little fellas playing basketball in wheelchairs between Eastenders and Holby City with highlights packages from the Darfuri genocide.” Big respect to Mr Lyons for not falling into that age-old pledge trap. And kudos to the BBC for the scoop. A weight off my mind.

The thin end of the wedge

2007-04-05T12:30:00.000Z

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Love to hate

2007-01-11T14:29:00.000Z

Something worth pondering today is the BBC report on the former UKIP MEP who has joined a "far right European Parliament bloc" consisting of nationalist and anti-immigration fringe groups from France, Austria, Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy. Now call me Sally, but is there not something understatedly beautiful in the notion of a far-right alliance of mutual hatred? A group united by the sole fact that they can't bear the thought of being united. I'd pay my last doubloon to know which crew-cutted bright spark first came up with the idea of the self-styled Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty Group:

"What we need, chaps, is a pact. A union, nay a guild, where we all join together to say with one voice how little we can stand each other, how we despise the idea of anyone in our ranks cooperating with one another, and how any person or organisation who dares to try and make us get along will feel the full force of our collective wrath. It mus be our ultimate aim to achieve the break-up of this association as soon as is feasibly possible. Now who's taking minutes?"

The ITSG are also vehemently against enlargement of the EU, and, by logical extension, we can only suppose the enlargement of their organisation:

"We hate each other so G-darn much that no-one else can possibly join our society of mutual antipathy. Agreed?"
"But these people over here are different from us. Ergo we hate them too. In fact we must hate them. It's in our constitution."
"Really?"
"Yes, look here. They believe they're better than us, that their sacrosanct customs and traditions should be shielded from the corrosive effects of immigration and that a mono-ethnic state of them and them alone is a preferable state of statehood. They tick all the boxes of a foreign, far-right group. Therefore we must hate them, and let them join us."
"Gosh, you're right. Well now I'm conflicted. Ok, let them in. But make sure you press home to them the importance of us all continuing to hate each other and the imperative of disbanding this group as soon as possible. And redraft that bit about statehood."

We're lucky this lot aren't organised. They could be quite a handful with this kind of intellectual firepower.

My Blog

2007-01-11T13:29:00.000Z

Gosh I'm bored. Really, really bored. This is, in itself, nothing particularly new. I've been bored before, of course. But never like this. This is boredom on an entirely new plateau. Boredom so intense, so unwavering in its ambition to numb the last semblances of sentience that I have, in this cataleptic state of semi-being, foolishly identified my last bastion against self-harm as this single, desperate act of egoism: I've started a blog.

That probably didn't need saying. In fact it almost definitely didn't. Very few of the very few people who will have started (and God help them continued) to read this will need informing that this is a blog. They will have most likely stumbled upon this fact when searching for blogs on this blogsite. The more eagle-eyed may even have spied a clue in the title of this post, "My Blog". But for those still uncertain as to the form and style of this quasi-literate stream of consciousness, I can categorically assert that this is a blog. Or an attempt at something resembling one.I was hoping this would be interesting. I have lots of interesting thoughts. Often I try and share them with people but they don't have enough time to listen or have very important places to get to and walk off. Occasionally I'll email them after the event to expand on our previous conversation with follow-up questions and observations, but I'm guessing they don't check their emails or aren't connected to the Internet that often as responses are few and far between.

Someone, it may have been Robert Walpole, once said that writing a blog is the electronic equivalent of standing in the desert whispering for water and expecting a Mr Whippy van to sidle up alongside you. I'd beg to differ. I'd then punch Mr Walpole in the fibula for the inexcusable tautology in writing "sidle up alongside", and almost immediately apologise as I have most likely wrongly fingered him seeing as he's dead. And by fingered I mean accused. Obviously.

I don't know why anyone would read this. I most certainly wouldn't. However it is most probably cathartic to have an outpost for my thoughts, hopes and dreams without impinging on the freedoms of my nearest and dearest. In the name of battling ennui and preserving the few friendships I have left, thoughts of the day, insightful commentary on popular culture and cogent political analysis will be offered up like virgins to the gods for willing readers to judge as they please. Smite me if you will. It's for my own good.