Just what the world needs - another ranty blog

Well, happy 2008 everyone.

Apologies for the silence, but well . . . I was having too damn nice a holiday to care, really. Tucked away in a cosy lodge, away from the internet, uninspired holiday television programming and hordes of screaming kids, which is usually the Christmas norm even when I’m not pretending to be Santa and telling them all I’m a fictional creation of a cynical drinks company’s marketing department.

Well either that or “See Santa’s magic helper, the Christmas purple worm” . . . one of them usually gets the screams, I can’t remember which . . .

It’s best to get over these things when you’re young, I believe.

Anyway, back to real life and quick to see we’ve got over the doe-eyed “season of goodwill” and “fresh start to the year” claptrap by some good old-fashioned mass slaughter and transport disruption. Despite all the mean-mindedness and petty squabbles, I still feel that given determination, willpower and dedication, this may be the year when the human race surpasses itself, pulls together in a big way and makes a real leap towards exterminating itself completely.

The prospect of MPs giving themselves another pay rise whilst staging everyone else’s retains a flicker of interest, as does my crystal ball prediction of yet another record-busting expenses bill from the useless bunch of selfish bastards in Parliament. For my next trick, I foresee prolonged murder and mayhem in Africa and the Middle East, punctuated by natural disasters for the rest of the world due to increased incidences of severe weather. I tell you, if Ladbrokes were taking odds on this, you wouldn’t win the steam off your piss.

Anyway, on to what I wanted to say: All good things come to an end, and so do several bad ones including, for the time being, this blog.

I’m really busy at the moment which means I only have time to update infrequently, and what’s worse, hardly any time left over to read and comment on other people’s blogs which is just plain rude of me.

I have a number of projects both work and play-related . . . one of which is the upcoming “Can You Survive?” film by Gusano for which I’m co-writing the script. The rest of my time will be spent finding another job before my soul dies.

Oh, I forgot – I sold that already. Oh well – you know how it is, once you spend more than 4 hours a day fantasizing about going postal with automatic weaponry it’s time to move on.

I’d like to thank all my blogfriends here with whom it has been a pleasure to know and chat. Thanks for listening to all the rants.

Man down.

. . . are greatly exaggerated. I've just been horribly, horribly busy.

Have come to the conclusion that Red Bull is about as effective as Mogadon in keeping one bright and alert, and the only noticeable effect is giving one surgary-flavoured burps at periodic intervals.

Perhaps this is what keeps you awake? Enquiring minds wish to know.

Anyhow, the knee is doing very well, and although still very swollen is gradually looking more knee-shaped every day and I can now get about without looking like Hugh Laurie in House. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and wished me well - appreciate it, folks.

Have been keeping an eye on the news, and marvelling at Labour's committment to recycling. In a time where the planet needs to recycle its resources, and facing increasing reticence from the rich nations to do so, Labour have been leading the way:

Every crap minister and civil servant who has made a pig's ear of their post is being recycled back into a job. Some, like Prescott and Hewitt are proving a little more difficult to re-use as, understandably, they were no fucking use in the first place, but if the man at the centre of the . . . third? . . . fourth? . . . data loss at the Home Office can "resign" and still be given a cushy job until his retirement benefits kick in, well who knows. This is the season of the miraculous, after all.

Also,so-appalling-that-you-have-to-laugh-or-you'd-kill-someone was a little statistic I cam across on a TV programme: "Fixing the NHS". A high profile private sector manager had tried to implement changes in a troubled NHS hospital, and was returning some years later to see if there had been an improvement.

Yes there had, but for all the process improvements and skyrocketing morale in the hospital, they were been utterly shafted by clueless government policies and targets which made no sense for the hospital. Increasingly, Mr Manager was getting angrier at every example of governmental waste and inefficiency the hospital were struggling against.

The NHS IT system? Wasted enough money to employ 16,000 nurses. For ten years.

Sadly, like the missing data (should have tried Amazon . . . they seem OK about posting CDs, especially at busy times of the year), this hallmark of incompetence is going to get washed over by the amnesiac short-term memory of the public. The best we can hope for is they vote for the Tories instead next time.

Talk about Hobson's choice.

15 Days in a Sudanese jail for letting some schoolkids calling a teddybear "Mohammed" and open demonstrations caling for the British teacher to be put to death.

I don't see anyone lining up to stone the children themselves for taking part in this "blasphemy", but isn't it all rather convenient to blame the West?

The Foreign Office and Government have been singularly crap in doing anyting about this, when they have the perfect negotiating tool for Sudan:

"Let her go or we stop selling you weapons".

What will they do without the means to butcher eachother? Worship of Allah might take a serious nosedive without the requisite level of gun-toting mayhem.

Perhaps if the competition had been "Name the Kalashnikov" people wouldn't have been so disgruntled.

And before we go getting all complacent, we were hanging people for shit like this only four hundred years ago . . . keep voting for people who listen to the Christian Fundmentalists and we'll be back in the Middle Ages before we know it. Science and Medicine . . . those poster boys of what we called "The Enlightenment" are already under attack.