It's the same the whole world over ain't it all a bleedin' shame? It's the rich wot gets the pleasure and the poor wot gets the blame.
The verdicts on four separate crimes-of-violence came up on the evening news tonight. There was a football star, a pop star, a barman, and an unemployed man.
Surpise surprise, the rich footballer and the rich pop star were both found not guilty, the not quite so wealthy barman and the guy with no income at all were both found guilty.
What are the odds on that then, eh?
I wasn't at the any of the trials, but I just can't help feeling that the legal team you can afford has an awful lot to do with the result that you get.
Of course, being a bloke my answer is 'Never, although it gets more unlikely the older I get', but this question is about the other sex. The one that I'm not. Now there's a lot about that particular gender that I am not privy to, but there's one exquisite little inconvenience that I do get to hear bandied about quite a lot.
It was a compo on daytime TV. Pick the right answer to this question from these three answers, 'phone it in, if you're really lucky you win the trip of a lifetime to L.A. and get to meet... David Beckham...
[The world falls silent. Someone coughs. The wind blows almost silently across the rooftops. A tumbleweed rolls across the street. Somewhere in the distance a bell rings...]
I gotta say, if I was to win a trip to L.A. I wouldn't want to waste a part of it visiting David Beckham.
I finally became redundant. A bunch of men in white suits have managed to make the masculine side of the human race unnecessary. They've made a human sperm in a laboratory without any of the... erm... sticky stuff that usually goes with it.
Naturally a whole lot of other men in white coats leapt up in defence of mankind. No no, they cried, it's impossible. Look at your experiments with mice. They all died. It's true, they did, but they lived first. In other words, the experiment worked, it just needs tweaking. Man just became a prime candidate for superfluousness.
So why did these men do it? Well, they claimed they were doing it as part of their research into the growing problem of the disappearance of man-made sperm. Yes indeedy. Aware, as I am, that as a man ages his sperm count goes down, I am nevertheless, in all probability, manufacturing more of the little tadpoles than a guy of 19, which is when men are at their peak (Women, on the other hand, reach their sexual peak at 35. Who said God has no sense of humour?). The sperm count amongst those who should be the most fertile is dropping. The future of the human race is in my hands (Or at least it will be should I ever decide to visit a sperm bank. Arf arf).
Now I may have mentioned before that I disaprove of vivisection. Reason number one is simple. It's wrong. It's really really wrong. It's so wrong that it's wronger than Mistaken Mad Jack Wrong McWrong on the day he backed a wooden horse to win at the Chelmsford dog-races. So although I don't really need a reason number two, here it is anyway.
We're nothing like animals. Animals are nothing like other animals. I don't care how much DNA we share with the rodents and insects, all that does is prove that there is more to it than DNA. When some suspected malefactor is arrested because his DNA makes him 98% the probable culprit, the authorities for reasons that they're not telling us have decided to ignore the fact that this means that a house fly could also be the culprit. That's why they look for other evidence. They're not, as everyone seems to suspect, simply bumping up their overtime to make up for the fact that they get paid a crap wage.
OK, so now that my opposition to animal experiments is established, let me go on to say that, if they've done the flaming experiments anyway despite my opposition, then the least they can do is to take note of the results. Men in white coats are very good at ignoring any results that don't come out the way they think they should. To whit:-
Many years ago, towards the end of the last century, some genius thought it would be a good idea to see what the effect of unlimited population growth would be amongst rats. Well, surprise surprise, the first thing they did was got violent with each other, they split into gangs and declared war on each other. So the men in white coats artificially pacified them. They got diseased. The white coats cured them. Eventually two things happened. Rampant homosexuality (Or the rodent equivalent) broke out, and amongst those not so cursed, the sperm count went down.
Has anyone noticed that there seem to be a whole lot more homosexuals about than there used to be?
The Jackson family believe that foul play was involved in Michael's death. They've commissioned a 2nd autopsy. His mother has applied for custody of his children. She says he left no will. His former lawyer says there is a will and produces it. His father is using interviews about him to push his own career. His doctor has received death threats. The county coroner has confiscated two bags of medication found in his home. Ticket holders for his London concerts have been offered a deal, their money back, or the ticket. Shops have been cleared of his albums, purchased by people who hadn't bought them during his lifetime. A Murdoch news outlet is claiming that the autopsies revealed he was bald, emaciated, and covered in needlemarks. His rehearsals were recorded, audio and video (in HD). They will become his final album and/or DVD.
When Elvis Presley died one jaded media pundit observed "Smart move!". I'm saying nuthin'.
Sky Saxon and Michael Jackson die on the same day.
Saxon always claimed to have started flower power. I predict people will have nothng but nice thngs to say about him.
Michael Jackson made no claims in his early years until one day he decided that he was the king of pop. I predict that anyone and everyone who saw him even remotely at the end of the street somewhere will be queueing up to sell their own personal horror story.
As far as I'm concerned two singers have died. I didn't like or dislike either of them. Just let them lie in peace.
As part of a plan to make the traffic flow more smoothly a city council is closing a pedestrian subway. To assuage the howls of protest from pedestrians who may have cause to cross the road they're replacing it with a pedestrian crossing.
A poll has revealed that as a result of the expenses scandal, voters are flooding to David Cameron and the Conservative the party. The Conservative party were responsible for most of the over-claims and Cameron himself has just handed back a thousand quid that he "Accidently" over-claimed.
The speaker of the house of commons was forced into resigning because A/ He tried to keep MPs expenses a state secret, and B/ Because he's supposed to protect MPs and he didn't...
A sunny day and we're out for trip. The original intention was to go out into the country for Sunday dinner, but the restaurant we were going to turned out to be closed on Sunday. Unusual, and good for them... but annoying for us. So we go on a trip to find somewhere else.
An hour or so later the music we're listening to is interupted by a traffic round-up. We're not overly bothered, it's an out-of-the-area radio station and anyway we're already stuck in a traffic tie-up as far as the eye can see. Suddenly the man in the radio says "And we can now confirm that the delays on the Drayton road which we mentioned in our previous bulletin are the result of an aircraft related incident." We exchange quizical glances. Maybe an airliner has landed on a country lane somewhere. I look up Drayton on the satnav.
While I'm doing that the news comes on, and it turns out that a light training aircraft has collided with a glider. The glider pilot has parachuted to safety, but both the occupants of the trainer have died.
There are some accidents that you never expect to hear about, and this is one of them...
There's a footballer with a backwards name. I think when he was being Christened the preacher had the surnames first on the card, and when he called out "Rio, Ferdinand" his mother misunderstood and said "No. The other way 'round you fool".
Whatever. The point is that with my total ignorance of anything even remotely sporty (Even Sporty Spice) I was unable to tell the difference between one imported sportsman and another. I thought he was the one who has just been sold by Manchester United to some other club for £80 million. Actually it appears it was some stupid old tarParis Hilton's new boyfriend, Cristiano Ronaldo. Still. 80 mill for one guy, whatever his name is... and I heard it on the news so it's gotta be true.
The next thing I heard on the news was that the workers at the Vauxhall and LDV motor vehicle companies shouldn't expect the government to bail them out.
You know what's coming next. If footballers are worth that much why don't we just sell Man. U? The money we'd get for the whole set would more than pay to keep what's left of Britain's manufacturing base for the duration of the depression and then some, and it's not like we actually need them. We have footie teams coming out of our earholes. They're everywhere. All we'd have to do is to shuffle all the other teams up one to fill the gap. I guarantee, no one would notice.
Then after a few polite months grace Stockport County could change their name to Manchester United, The Chapel St. School XI could become the new Stockport, and next year's input can be the new Chapel St. FC - which they would have done anyway.
And the world thinks Gordon Brown is the financial genius.
The original title of this blog was 'Jolly nazis on parade', which I really liked, but I decided that only Randy Newman fans would understand it, so here's a little treat for you so as you'll understand next time. Now while you're enjoying that, dwell upon this little irony.
On the anniversary of D-day, the day the allies launched their final assault on the nazis, the people of Britain are voting for nazis. Indeed, on the results so far it seems a bit like all Europe has been voting for the far right. I suppose we should take some comfort from this. It proves that the ballot box is mightier than the sword, which is probably why certain nations of the world resist it, but it also scares me that there are people out there who obviously think Hitler wasn't entirely wrong.
WIDGETIZE