the rising price of food by John Palmer at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, where these is also a dose of Dianabilge and a good Steve Bell cartoon of George Bush as a chimp lying face down in the water. Dead.
For some reason the BBC News front page thinks this non event worth seven slots on its News front page: Prince Harry in Tribute to Diana (not news, it would be news if he slagged her off), in pictures: remembering Diana, Diana: have your say (posted twice, once with a pic just in case we’d forgotten who she was, once without), a magazine piece, ‘Did Diana’s death change us?’ (no, you clot, if that’s the best you can come up with, please go and do something useful and noble in your life: empty bins, become a carer), and two lots of video clips: the service live (with two BBC News heavies presenting) and a second video news clip ‘Princes attend Diana service’.
3652 days ago today a pissed-up chauffer caused the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Although Princess of Wails would have more appropriate for the promiscuous national grief-fest that followed it. A worrying percentage of the British ran mad. People who didn’t know her wept on the shoulders of strangers, in front of cameras, offered stuffed toys at shrines and florists bought Tuscan farms on the proceeds of the ‘floral tributes’ that it suddenly became obligatory to lay. As a nation we suddenly projected and displaced all kinds of personal and societal fears onto her, lost our collective stuff upper lips and found emotion in a tabloid, Hollywood screenplay kind of a way.
A tragedy for her family. Following her split from Woo-fond Charlie (our next king, from which the fates defend us), she was hoofed out of the Royal family, as dysfunctional a bunch as never attracted the attentions of social services. A stuffy lot, many with the presence and wit of shop dummies the Royals and their sycophants at court could not cope with this attractive (according to the objectifying buzz and the ‘geist) loose cannonette who embarked on a round of scene-stealing society appearances, obvious romantic liaisons and media interviews ruinous to the Winsdors.
It was car-crash reality royalty, played out before a salivating public and whipped up by a media, some of whom payed a shameful role in this human tragedy I hope they die in great spiritual anguish, their bowels clawed out by demons. Which would make for a bit of physical anguish, too I suppose. All to the good.
Ten years? So what? 3652 days, twice that number of tides, give or take. She might have been called Diana but she was no godess and was dragged into the ruinous orbit of the Royals because she was a virgin. Let the woman rest in peace, and get on with your lives because as she and her unfortunate companions discovered 10 years ago today, today could be all you have.
Blog Dianology:
Here (taking the piss out of the Daily Express, and deservedly so, Cicero speaks here (short and not sweet). A late entry I like: the Whiskey Priest weighs in with Diana, still dead, and with both style and substance, Stephen Tall gives his own respective.
in the UK are mostly built in the wrong place. I’m sure a few scientists and engineers might have noticed, maybe written a memo to the minister who was approving the wind turbine subsidies to the big foreign owned privatized energy companies. Words to the effect that it was a stupid idea to put big, expensive turbines in a place where the wind don’t blow. He or she was clearly ignored. By a stupid man or woman who will probably leave government and seamlessly sleaze into a lucrative consultancy in the energy sector.
the story is here. Energy giant which operates in an even less principled way than most in a country with hurt pride and a ruthless ex-KGB boss for a leader (get the moobs lipo’d though Vlad)…private armies, global instability, looming energy crunch. This mix doesn’t take much to get your suspicion glands secreting overtime.
is not being sued after all. A gentleman called Peter Irons gave PZ’s - er - tormentor Pivar (offended at being called a crackpot) a thorough legal gralloching here. Blake Stacey summarizes and links up the fun here.
If Mr Pivar had gone to school where I did, he’d have spent a lot of playtime running to Miss complaining about called such names. (And just as much time when Miss wasn’t looking face down in the muddy bit of the football pitch, with a few of us sitting on his back.)
Wanker.
And you know the truth about men. There are two kinds: wankers and liars.
is the Guardian’s blog opinion page and it is mostly farting through trumpets. There are rare good articles such as this one by defence journalist Robert Fox, but far too many are shrills saying why Government ‘must’ do something about something or that Christians and Muslims are good people really and should cuggle* up, not blow one another up, and that God and Science can/can’t be friends (delete according to zeitgeist of the day) that one’s guaranteed to get the trolls and frothers out in comments.
It’s worth reading to:
1. get your daily Irish up, and
2. for the peerless Steve Bell cartoons (scroll down, today’s is so very unkind to George Bush).
* cuddle
‘carbon neutral’.
This mean burp of a phrase from the language that gave us, ‘Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium…’
And Shakespeare: ‘rough winds do shake the darling buds of may and summer’s lease hath all too short a date’.
Except now it’s the darling buds of January, because we’re not carbon neutral.
I love BBC news but to watch its current descent into celebrity obsessed magazine style trivia hurts to a boy weaned on Radio 4. This is their idea of the lead item on the usually excellent Radio 5 Live news bulletins, and has been all day. Singer has drug problem, family upset is not news.
for bacteria, worms, and those lice that live in your eyelashes. Respect the slugs and the spiders: it’s not George Bush and his polyps in Europe that rule the world, nor the Arabs and Persians with their oil, all their bloody sand and their AK47s and their ullulating calls to prayer, not the Pope in his silly dresses and santa hat, it’s the invertebrates and the bacteria. And don’t you forget it, because 90% of the cells in your body are bacteria.
A spate of vandalism hit our village recently. You can’t piss crooked hereabouts without it being known, and everyone knew the perp - a late teens cocky git of a lad. We told the police. Nothing. Inform the council, they said. Get him an ASBO. He wants an ASBO (anti social behaviour order), you dicks. It’s a badge of pride.
So we started a rumour (it wasn’t difficult). If perp carried on like this one night a few men would jump him, bag him, tie him and lob him in a truck. After being driven around in the dark for a while, a few bumps, a few sharp bends, he’d be dumped outside the village, somewhere wet, distant and unnervingly dark, a goodly walk home on a road where a lift would be unlikely.
The vandalism has strangely ceased. Thanks for nothing, Police.
I was all for the Roman method, hurling him in the river tied up in a sack with a rooster, a dog and a cat, but John at the garage said the RSPCA might object.
