‘Come in and sit down, Mr Britain,’ the doctor said sympathetically. ‘What can I do for you today?’

‘Well…’ Mr Britain began and proceeded to list his ailments.

It’s true what they say, the doctor thought as he listened, getting old is a cruel and miserable business. He had many elderly patients, but whenever one of them sadly admonished him with ‘don’t ever get old, doctor’, it would never fail to chill his heart by another degree of disquiet.

Just look at old Mr Britain, for example. He was a small, still dapper man, despite the air of a slight threadbareness about him. He’d been a prize fighter in his day, punching above his weight, and there was hardly anywhere in the world he hadn’t visited. He’d done it all. But now the trophies were long dusty and the memories sepia.

‘…and then there’s sex, doctor,’ said the old man.

‘I’m sorry?’ said the doctor, startled from his thoughts.

‘You know,’ said Mr Britain, without a hint of embarrassment. ‘Fucking.’

Here we go again, the doctor thought. The only way to deal with Mr Britain when he was in this mood was to be as equally brazen.

‘Fucking,’ replied the doctor, evenly. ‘We’ve been through this before, haven’t we, Mr Britain. You might have given that German woman a good seeing to but that was a long time ago now, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yes…’ said the old man, his voice trailing off. He knew what was coming next.

‘The only other woman I can recall you expressing an interest in fucking was that Russian lady and the last time you mentioned her was in about 1989. And then it was all about some bizarre threesome with your American friend. I seem to recall the poor Russian woman had some kind of breakdown. Fell to pieces, you could say.’

‘But this Trident you have me on,’ said Britain, ‘it’s helped my performance up until now but I’m not sure it’s working any more. Haven’t you got anything else?’

‘Well, there is a new version in development. Mr Britain. But to be frank with you, if I were to prescribe it to you, who do you have to fuck with? And please don’t say those Middle Eastern ladies you say you’ve been chasing all over the place.’

‘Well, you never know when you might meet somebody,’ Mr Britain said hopefully.

‘I’m very sorry, Mr Britain.’ said the doctor, ‘Don’t you think your Casanova days are behind you? And you have other conditions that require more urgent treatment. What about your violent mood swings and your terrible diet?’

Mr Britain clenched his fists and closed his eyes.

Elsewhere, the sun was setting.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing. Go and subscribe, it’s really good.)

Again, on the big issues it is necessary to quote Bill Hicks and for that we make no apology. Speaking about the first Gulf War in 1992, Hicks said, ‘I was in the unenviable position of being for the war, but against the troops’.

Yes, Iraq needed to be freed from Saddam. It’s just that expecting Tony and George to make a decent fist of it was like asking Jonathan King to run a youth outreach programme. They’re all the wrong men for the job.

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Couple of reviews of The Blog Digest from February. One from Brighton’s Rocks magazine, and one from the Times Literary Supplement penned by our very own J. Clive Matthews.

It was reported on Wednesday that Gordon Brown had root canal work done without anaesthetic last week so he could give a speech afterwards - about citizenship training for immigrants - without a frozen mouth.

Keen a few months ago to parade his emotional pain over his baby daughter’s death in his bid for popularity, Gordon’s now keen to show us how much physical pain he’s willing to endure in order to make us like him.

‘Mr Brown did not flinch or grimace at any stage,’ said Mervyn Druian, the cosmetic dentist who did the drilling and who, according to his website, can help you create ‘your perfect smile’. No mention if he takes NHS patients though. Doubtless the famously financially prudent Chancellor of the Exchequer got a good deal.

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This week saw the screening of BBC3’s ‘Kill It, Cook It, Eat It‘. Over three nights an invited audience - and the viewer - witnessed the slaughter, butchery and cooking of a cow, a sheep and a pig at a real abattoir. The audience were then able to taste the meat of the animal they had just seen dispatched.

It was graphic stuff. Stuck pigs really do bleed like stuck pigs. The programmes allowed people to ‘reconnect with the source of the meat they eat’ as the earnest host, food journalist Richard Johnson, put it. That we should try to eat meat that has been humanely reared and slaughtered seems to have been the only, rather obvious, point that came out of the spectacle. A happy animal tastes better than an unhappy one and we feel better about eating it.

While the well-fed British masses agonise over their steaks, chops and fillets, in another faraway abattoir, a slaughter of a different order goes on largely unobserved. Here’s a transcript of the forthcoming ‘Kill It, Cook It, Eat It’ Iraq special.

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It was announced this week that filming of the new Indiana Jones movie will start in June. In preparation, 64 year-old Harrison Ford is spending three hours a day in the gym and eating a high protein diet. The poor bastard.

Sean Connery (76), in retirement since hating every minute of making ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (he should have tried watching it), has said he will reprise his role as Indy’s father, Henry, if the script’s any good. It couldn’t be worse than the turd that dotted the full stop of his career as it currently stands, surely?

In an exclusive, here’s a glimpse of that finished script.

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Jesus, Britain’s readers are a miserable, bitter bunch. Judging by the ‘100 books you can’t live without‘ as voted for as part of World Book Day yesterday, we like our escapism full of death, grinding misery, war, death, disappointment, disfigurement and death.

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Would Gordon Brown pass the ‘barbecue test’? Would we, ordinary British voters, invite him round for a burger and a beer?

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‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is the seven signs of ageing,’ said Andie MacDowell.

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A quick something from me over at The Sharpener.

12/3: Article now reproduced after the fold.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Government announced today that Phase One of its carbon neutral interactive democracy initiative is now complete.

Government statisticians have calculated that the energy saved by 1,460,785 motorists registering their concerns about the forthcoming road charging scheme on the Downing Street e-petition website, instead of taking to the streets or roads, has saved enough energy to fuel a reasonably-priced car for an entire series of ‘Top Gear’.

Indeed, the self-satisfaction measured as being generated by those signing the petition has registered at 2.6 on the Clarkson Scale. Scientists are now looking at how to harness this abundant alternative source of energy.

‘There’s been a long history of popular movements in democracy in this country,’ said cabinet minister, Ruth Kelly. Other ministers have also welcomed this popular movement from the sofa to the PC. On the matter of road pricing, ‘the status quo is not an option,’ added Ms Kelly, herself generating 2.6 gigaclichés - enough energy to provide 13 re-runs of Richard Hammond’s high-speed car crash.

Phase Two of the initiative, announced today, sees another series of exciting innovations introduced into the United Kingdom’s democratic process. Advances in both medical procedures and technology mean that physical interaction with both the environment and the government is no longer necessary.

In a painless procedure, the electorate’s brains will be removed from their bodies and suspended in a liquid nutrient compound. They will be connected to the Downing Street e-petition website via a central information grid.

This way they will be able to register their concerns with only the minimal use of electrical energy. These concerns will then be filed in a secure facility for study by future archivists.

The resources saved by reducing wasteful human interactions, not to mention the exciting biofuel possibilities from the harvested subcutaneous fat and cholesterol, will secure energy reserves for many generations to come.

This innovation is seen as a vindication of the Prime Minister’s vision. ‘Just as science and technology has given us the evidence to measure the danger of climate change, so it can help us find safety from it,’ he said in a 2004 speech on the environment. ‘The potential for innovation, for scientific discovery and hence, of course for business investment and growth, is enormous.’

The public have no cause for concern. Emotional sustenance and entertainment will be provided by a schedule of simulated rape trials, aspirational wish-fulfilment and low-grade pornography which is fed directly into the cerebral cortex.

Please remain in your homes. You will be collected.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

You have to smile grimly at the incompetence of the American administration in Iraq that has managed to ‘lose’ $12 billion in $100 bills. The cash was flown into Iraq on military transport planes in shrink-wrapped bricks during 2003. After that, nobody’s quite sure where most of it went.

Some was given to contractors (what we used to call ‘mercenaries’). A bunch of modern day ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ lifted $740,000 from an army division’s vault. Enterprising Iraqi ministries created thousands of ‘ghost’ employees, put them on the payroll and watched the good times roll in.

Oh, and some of it might have reached the insurgency. American dollars may very well have bought the guns and ammunition that were later fired at American troops. And they say you can’t please all the people all the time. Saddam Hussein isn’t the only dead president in Iraq - the country’s awash with them.

As Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the US Congress’ committee on oversight and government reform, which is trying to get to the bottom of the spendthriftery, said this week: ‘The numbers are so large that it doesn’t seem possible that they’re true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?’

Who indeed? Right minds have been in short supply in Iraq in recent years. They say if the cap fits, wear it. But if you were a milliner making caps for right minds in the American administration right now, you’d be out of business in less than a week. Has Waxman asked them if they’ve checked down the back of the sofa?

In an attempt to grasp the enormity of it, here are some quick sums.

$12,000,000,000 is 120,000,000 $100 bills. An American $100 bill is 6.1 inches by 2.6 inches. So 120,000,000 bills gives us an area of 1,923,048,000 square inches. Or 30,351 square miles.

That’s enough to paper the whole of Scotland with a single layer of $100 bills.

All the bills laid end to end would stretch for 11,630 miles. That’s almost all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole. Or twice around John Prescott. Also, by pleasing coincidence, 11,630 is the number of years it’s going to take Tony Blair to live down his role in this fiasco. Or apologise.

Clearly, once The War Against Terror is won, stupidity has got to be the next abstract noun on our list. One day we’ll all look back on all this and have a good laugh.

In about 11,630 years.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

In an exclusive, we have received a video from the mastermind behind the recent spate of parcel bombings across the country. Here is a transcript.

…

You, the British people, I talk to you today about the best way to avoid another catastrophe and about war, its reasons and its consequences.

Contrary to what Blair says and claims - that we hate freedom - let him tell us then, ‘Why did we not attack South West Trains?’

We fought with you because we are free, and we don’t put up with transgressions. We want to reclaim our nation. As you spoil our security, we will do so to you.

I wonder about you. Although we are ushering the fourth day after the DVLA, Blair is still exercising confusion and misleading you and not telling you the true reason. Therefore, the motivations are still there for what happened to be repeated.

And I will talk to you about the reason for those events, and I will be honest with you about the moments the decision was made so that you can ponder. And I tell you, Clarkson (praise be unto him) only knows, that we never had the intentions to destroy the speed cameras.

But after the injustice was so much and we saw transgressions and the coalition between Ken Livingstone and the Congestion Charge against our people in London, it occurred to my mind that we deal with the speed cameras. And these special events that directly and personally affected me go back to 1982 and what happened when a policeman gave me a ticket for doing 37 in a 30 zone. And assistance was given by the DVLA.

And as I was looking at those drivers that were fined in Britain, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same - and that we had to send fireworks to office workers so that they taste what we tasted, and they stop fining those who speed and park illegally.

Then, what happened was that Blair was impressed by the Congestion Charge and the collection regimes, and he was jealous of them, embezzling the public money without any accountability. And he moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom, and they called it the Road Charging Scheme, under the disguise of fighting motorists. And Blair, the father, found it good to install his cameras as governors.

We agreed with the poster of the parcels, to display a spectacular lack of perspective. And we never knew that the Prime Minister would leave thousands of office workers to face those events by themselves when they were in the most urgent need of their leader.

He was more interested in meeting Shilpa from Big Brother than worrying about what was happening in the DVLA post room.

Your security is not in the hands of Blair or Congestion Charges or firework-posting inadequates. Your security is in your own hands. Anybody that allows us to drive as fast as we like and park where we want will not be attacked.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

Martin Bright at the New Statesman asked me to write a guest post for his blog about the Tim Ireland/Guido Fawkes skirmish.

You can read it here.

UPDATE: The post is now reproduced below the fold.

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For Immediate Release

Recent challenges arising in the UK’s criminal justice system have prompted the Home Office to pilot a programme of community custody schemes across the country. We at Civic Comeuppance Ltd are proud to announce that we will be providing a major part of this new wave of outsourcing penal services to the private sector.

Unveiled this week, Our AdoptaCon™ scheme is inviting low income families to give up their spare rooms to the Correctional Candidates that government reformatory facilities and police station broom cupboards are currently unable to accommodate.

These new Community Warders will receive generous benefits packages, a big jangly bunch of keys and a blind eye turned to any excess of exuberance. AdoptaCon™ will issue buckets, tatty pornography and snout to all Correctional Candidates. To ensure the smooth running of the scheme, Home Office officials will not be overseeing its procedures.

Following on from the AdoptaCon™ programme will be the AdoptaNonce™ scheme. No longer will communities live in fear of the untraceable sex beasts in our midst - they will be under lock, key, and constant surveillance in our very own homes.

Powers to administer physical admonishments to these sexually differentiated Candidates will be given to Community Warders under the terms of their contracts. Specially trained AdoptaNonce™ operatives, equipped with sharpened spoons will visit once a day during ablution periods.

In the event of problems the latest panic button technology will summon the nearest neighbourhood vigilante team who are equipped with the requisite placards and incendiary devices and are on standby 24 hours a day.

Chairman of Civic Comeuppance Ltd, the recently ennobled Lord Hyde Malone, explaining the new schemes says ‘Designed to be arresting, this “experiential” approach increases reform and rehabilitation’s relevance within consumer’s lives.’

Commenting on the new initiatives, Home Secretary John Reid said, ‘My staff and I spent an entire Friday afternoon drawing up this policy. This is the opportunity for members of the community to stop moaning and take action.’

…

Notes to editors:

1. The Community Warders will be blogging their experiences at intheshowers.blogspot.com

2. A new BBC TV series about the ups and downs of life as a Community Warder, presented by Fiona Bruce and Nick Knowles, will air in the Spring.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

As if we needed another, it looks like BBC2’s new ‘political’ ‘drama’, ‘Party Animals’, is one more harbinger of the new Dark Age that’s poised to flatten all in its path in a tsunami of twattery. With Chris Moyles riding at the forefront like a doughnut-stuffed horseman of the apocalypse, obviously.

Making its debut this week, the show performed the singular feat of simultaneously being an allegory for the old Dark Age that swept through Europe in the early Middle Ages *and* being symptomatic of the cultural cretinism that’s giving birth to the new one.

For those that missed it (which was most of you, it only garnering 1.3 million viewers), ‘Party Animals’, as the title suggests, follows the daily lives of a bunch of young Westminster insiders as they shag, snog and snort their way across the 21st century’s political landscape.

Just as Europe in the Middle Ages was dominated, to its detriment, by young, uneducated princelings, ‘Party Animals’ sees virtue in the country’s political machine being run by twenty-somethings who seemingly know next to nothing. So much so, one of the characters, who is 31 and deemed past it, is killed off in a bloody road accident.

All the elements you’d expect are present and correct: the two cocky work-hard/play-hard lobbyists who, when not subsisting on a nocturnal diet of coke and Jack Daniels in order to clinch their deals, are coming up fresh as daisies the next morning to throw a football to each other in the office; the gorgeous but hard-bitten female reporter; the ball-breaking woman MP with the heart of gold; and the token ethnic character, a female researcher who, naturally, is shagging her married Tory MP boss.

The piéce de resistance, however, and the character we’re supposed to identify with the most, is Danny, the quietly-spoken, slightly clumsy but driven and caring researcher for aforementioned cold-but-gold MP. He’s poorly dressed with greasy hair, geeky specs, drawls in flat Naarthern vaarls, and he moons over the office intern. Like Jarvis Cocker without the machismo.

The thing is, without the portraits of politicians that line the corridors the characters are always striding down (the one of David Cameron looks like he’s being obscenely inflated), you could easily forget the show revolves around politics. The ‘Good Behaviour Bond’, a reward for ASBO kids going straight, that Danny and his MP try to get through Parliament is what Alfred Hitchcock called the ‘macguffin’ - a hook on which to hang what passes for the plot. For all its relevance, they could have been sweating over the Arc of the Covenant, a recipe for egg salad or, considering the dramatic tension that was stirred up, a sodding Mars Bar.

In an age where nobody, except for the show’s writers apparently, thinks taking cocaine or swigging tequila from the bottle is particularly ‘edgy’ any more, the whole premise could have been set in a provincial village Rotary Club and had the same impact. Or on a pig farm in 9th century Saxony.

Christ, it was shit.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

On the matter of national pride we must turn, once again, to the Testament of Bill (Hicks). From the book of Rant In E-Minor, chapter 14:

‘I was over in Australia, and got asked, “Are you proud to be an American?”

‘I dunno, I didn’t have a lot to do with it. My parents fucked there, that’s about all. I was in the spirit realm at that time, trying to tell them, “Fuck in Paris! Fuck in Paris!” but they couldn’t hear me, ’cause I didn’t have a mouth. They fucked here.’

The ‘crisis’ of ‘national identity’ that manifested itself again this week - in calls for ‘British values’ to be taught in schools - is not one of Britishness but one of Englishness. The Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, after all, seem pretty sure of their identities: the Scots in hating the English, the Welsh in being hated by the English and the Irish in being invaded by the English.

But no, say our overlords, it’s not Englishness (whatever that is), it’s Britishness (whatever that is) we must foster. Too strong a sense of Englishness (or Scottishness, Welshness or Irishness) leads to all kinds of terrible places like independence and English parliaments and the remaining limbs being amputated from what’s left of the Empire. And we can’t have that - some of our leaders would have to get proper jobs. No, it’s unite - rather than divide - and conquer. Except, thanks to devolution, the ‘British values’ will only be taught in English schools.

Here’s how Education Secretary Alan Johnson defined ‘Britishness’ on Radio 4 yesterday:

‘Er, well, I think first of all… it… it… er… it involves the values we hold very dear in Britain which is free speech, which is tolerance, which is respect for the rule of law.’

What could be more British than knuckle-chewing inarticulacy? Or the tolerance demonstrated by our reality television shows. Or our free speech that bans unauthorised protest around Parliament. Or our respect for the rule of law that torpedoes investigations into corrupt Saudi arms deals.

As luck would have it, copies of the proposed ‘British values’ test for school children have been leaked. See how you get on.

….

1) You are travelling on public transport. One of the passengers attacks another. Do you:

a. get off?
b. hide behind your copy of ‘Heat’ magazine?
c. get out your camera phone?

2) An old lady drops a £20 note in the street and you pick it up. Do you:

a. buy Stella Artois?
b. buy a pair of jeans that display the thong garrotting your arse?
c. buy a train ticket to Branscombe Beach?

3) A story on the evening news concerns a child who was abused and then murdered. Do you think:

a. ‘I wonder what’s happening on Hollyoaks?’
b. ‘You know, I don’t think Natasha Kaplinsky is wearing a bra.’?
c. ‘It’s not a dog or a cat so who gives a shit?’

4) Britain’s most famous export is:

a. cluster bombs
b. the Pilgrim Fathers
c. Gary Glitter

5) When I grow up I want to be:

a. a buy-to-let landlord
b. a call centre worker
c. Vernon Kay

Yep, you pass.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

‘I could never compare myself to Gandhi or those other heroes of mine,’ the Prime-Minister-in-waiting said to his Indian audience and the British press pack, ‘but I do take inspiration from the way that they dealt with the challenges they faced when I think about how I will deal with the challenges the country and the world faces, including the security challenge.’

Gordon hitched up his white loincloth. Day three of his visit to India and he was starving. He’d been taking his inspiration from Gandhi for about 45 minutes now and the fasting part was getting a bit much. He’d forgotten his sunblock as well. His shoulders and belly had rapidly gone from pink to lobster red to Alex Ferguson in the relentless Delhi sun.

He was sweating, and not just with the heat. His audience shifted restlessly in their seats. Frantically, Gordon tried to dredge up an apposite quote of the Mahatma’s with which to impress them. How about, ‘non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will’? A bit like this bloody loincloth, he thought. He’d pulled it up too far and now his bottom was itchy. He’d forgotten to put his underpants on underneath.

How about, ‘Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man’? No, not a great one in the face of the current ’security challenge’, that one, he thought. Won’t sell many fighter jets to India with that attitude.

Instead, he changed tack. ‘I think it was Churchill who said that you cannot meet the challenges of the future by simply building the present in the image of the past,’ he said. Brilliant. Gandhi and Churchill. What was it Churchill had called Gandhi? ‘A half naked fakir.’ Oh, dear. Er…

A reporter stood up. ‘The Times of India,’ he said. ‘Chancellor, how do you reconcile your taking inspiration from both the Mahatma and Sir Winston?’ Gordon’s mouth flapped. He suddenly couldn’t shake the mental image of Churchill in a loincloth, cigar in one hand and pint of brandy in the other. The Chancellor’s stomach growled. He could murder an Indian.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

We all like to fantasise about being a character in a movie, don’t we? Take the twice-disgraced corrupt cuckolder with a persecution-complex, ex-cabinet minister David Blunkett, for example. No doubt he sees himself as the tragic Rochester in ‘Jane Eyre’ after Thornfield Hall burns down: blind (obviously), brought low by a wild, uncontrollable woman, and his prospects in smoking ruins.

However, after reports came before Christmas that while Home Secretary he ’shrieked’ at the head of the Prison Service to machine gun rioting prisoners, he comes across more like Gary Oldman’s terrifyingly unhinged and unpredictable DEA agent, Norman Stansfield, from Luc Besson’s hitman masterpiece, ‘Leon’. Imagine the scene. Blunkett has just been told of the riot:

Blunkett: Bring me everyone.

Head of the Prison Service: What do you mean ‘everyone’?

Blunkett: EEEEEVVRYOOOONNE!!!!

And then, in the subsequent investigation(s) into his corruption, you can imagine him howling ‘I HAVEN’T GOT TIME FOR THIS MICKEY MOUSE BULLSHIT!’ at his tormentors.

This week saw Blunkett in a titanic team up not seen since Jean Claude Van Damme joined with Jean Claude Van Damme to battle evil in ‘Double Impact’. Making common cause with Doris Karloff herself, Ann Widdecombe, Blunkett railed against their being thwarted in dealing with the Teenage Menace:

‘…every time you or I or others have moved in that direction we’ve had the liberal media absolutely going bonkers about it.’

Blunkett’s solution to the teenage criminality that threatens to sweep the nation under the patronage of eeevil liberals is simple: put them under curfew while simultaneously bulldozing their slums. Genius. Shame machine guns didn’t get a mention, though.

The thing is, David’s missing a cinematic trick here. Building nice shiny new communities for the underclass, it’s a bit, well, liberal, isn’t it? (Don’t worry, he didn’t mention anything truly bedwetting like better education, wages and job prospects).

No, what we need to do is build high walls around these communities to keep the scum in like they do with Manhattan in dystopian thriller, ‘Escape from New York’. Wall ‘em up and let ‘em get on with it. It’s the ultimate curfew. Ann can help David pick potential escapees off the walls.

‘Left a bit, left a bit. Down a bit. Let him have it, David!’

It looks like this Mr Rochester might have found his Jane Eyre at last.

(See David in action here.)

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

Cherie shuffled away from him to the far side of the bed, hitching the chintz counterpane firmly up to her chin as she went.

‘What’s the matter, Tony? You even need George’s permission to deploy that, do you?’ she said.

Tony, now the lone, cold spoon in the centre of the bed, rolled onto his back and stared unseeingly at the ceiling.

‘Look, sorry, but I think I’ve said all I want to say on that subject,’ he chanted to the darkness. Both the room’s and his own.

‘Oh, get stuffed, Tony. It’s not fucking Nick Robinson you’re trying to fob off here, you know,’ Cherie shot back. ‘We need to have a full and frank debate about whether we need to renew your weapons system.’

‘Or replace it,’ she added darkly.

But Tony was no longer listening. Not knowing whether he was awake or dreaming, he was lost in the flickering movie his mind was projecting on the ceiling. As he watched his life unspooling, he finally realised he was now a bystander in it all just like everybody else.

He saw himself walking in step with an anti-war rally, as powerless to stop the carnage as the singing two year-old being pushed along beside him. Then, he was a small boy at a school parent’s evening. ‘Tony has been copying George’s homework again,’ intoned the teacher gravely. A group of large men in striped suits and smoking fat cigars then forced twenty pound notes into his hand and whispered lewd, menacing requests in his ear.

The scene changed. He was in the greenhouse from the movie ‘Scum’. He knew what was going to happen next. He looked over his shoulder to see who his assailants would be.

An ophidian queue of people stretched out behind him to very the ends of the Earth.

In between the legions of sightless, limbless brown people he could see familiar faces. There was Saddam and his half-brother tossing the half-brother’s severed head between them to pass the time. There was George – George! – with Peter Hain in a headlock. Gordon was gawping so fast for breath in his excitement he looked like a beached fish, gulping for life itself. And at the very end of the queue, standing slightly apart from the throng, regarded and spoken to by nobody was… himself.

His eyes snapped open. The sheets were soaked in his fear, the air still thick with slowly dissipating ghosts.

‘Help me, Cherie, help me,’ he whispered, unable to find his voice. ‘I am God’s lonely man.’

Cherie didn’t stir. She snored contentedly. If the dreams of avarice can be described as content.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

The War Against Terror officially turned five this week with the anniversary of the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay interrogation facility. As he graduates from nursery to the greater challenges of reception class, let’s see how little Warren Terror is progressing…

SOCIAL SKILLS:

His teachers worry that Warren is becoming something of a bully. His habit of getting together with other troublemakers to get what he wants is concerning. He also thinks he has the power to give detention. His locking some of the other children in the boiler room for no reasons and refusing to let them out was a shocking episode.

NUMERACY:

Warren’s lack of even basic numeracy skills is a cause for concern. He will change his incorrect answers after they have been marked claiming to have been right all along. This week, for instance, he changed the number of toy soldiers he owns by 21,500 after getting his first count wrong. His failure to grasp the concept of money is also worrying. His guess that it would cost $50bn for a trip to little Saddam’s house turned out to be underestimated by a factor of ten. He also refused to count the number of toys he broke while he was there.

LITERACY:

While Warren can read perfectly well, his comprehension skills leave much to be desired. He misrepresents or contradicts the simplest facts or else claims not to understand them at all. Sometimes he will refuse point blank to answer questions. His creative writing, however, is excellent and he regularly has the class in stitches with his flights of fantasy. His improvisational skills are also impressive and he can make up the most detailed stories on the spot -­ his reasons for fighting with little Saddam in the sandpit, for example, were inspired.

SPORT:

Until recently Warren seemed to have boundless energy -­ he would run and run even if it seemed like he wasn’t really getting anywhere. Lately though he seems to be flagging and there are worries about his willingness to be a team player. His rough and often careless demeanour, not to mention his tendency to want to hog all the glory for himself, has meant many of the other children have refused to play with him any more.

ART:

Disappointingly, Warren has yet to complete a project he has started. He also makes terrible messes which he often refuses to clean up afterwards. A little more variation in his choice of colours would be welcome. He is over fond of orange (particularly in his choice of overalls) and his black imagery is not helped by the buckets of crimson he keeps spilling all over the place.

(First published in this week’s 5th birthday edition of The Friday Thing.)

The Prime Minister’s announcement this week that he wants a proper job after he leaves Number 10 was met with some approval. ‘It’s about bloody time,’ was the sane person’s response. ‘Whatever I do afterwards, it has to have real purpose to it,’ said Tony of his retirement plans. If he’d only said that all those years ago when he gave up being a lawyer to become a politician, we might not be in the mess we are now.

Meanwhile the Blair Premiership continued on its meandering, meaningless way, like an elderly, senile and incontinent tomcat looking for somewhere to pass away with a scrap of dignity. The Middle East was Tony’s destination to sprinkle the seasonal magic fairy dust of peace on earth and goodwill to all.

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Thursday, this week, was not the country’s proudest day, that much is certain. First, tens of thousands of Daily Express readers’ hearts were broken when it was announced that Diana was killed mundanely by a drunken French dickhead and not offed thrillingly by crack MI6 assassins under the orders of Prince Philip. Then we were told that our post offices - 2,500 of them - are to be culled like so many poor unfortunate badgers.

And then, despite the planet sweating like George Bush at a spelling competition, the Government announced that both Gatwick and Stansted airports are to get new runways. And then the Government announced that moody arms deals and ‘the national interest’ with Saudi Arabia trumped bribery investigations and human rights. You know, trivial stuff like that. After another body was identified in Ipswich, the announcement that Tony Blair was questioned by police as part of a corruption investigation - the first Prime Minister in history to be so - was the crowning turd on a big stinking pile of them.

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Merrick says very nice things about The Blog Digest:

There’s all you want from decent blogging; unbridled personal opinions expressed with eloquence and verve, ignored angles on big stories, entirely ignored but important stories, poignancy, stridently defended partisanship and scalp-tinglingly good swearing.

…

Half an hour browsing the book and the lifelessness of much of the mainstream media is painfully obvious to the point where I find it difficult to be arsed with it.

He also links to some of the pieces in the book so you can get an idea of what’s in there.

Let’s face it, as a nation, we’re on a bit of a downer at the minute, aren’t we? Where once Britain produced ships and steel and coal, we now produce buy-to-let landlords and website designers and call centre workers.

So, is it any wonder that Tony Blair wants to put some oomph back into the country’s spirits. Sure, our manufacturing industry is in the toilet and, thanks to the Iraq war, we’re a laughing stock on the world stage, but at least we’ll still be able to rain hot, radioactive death down on our enemies for generations to come. As if raining hot, ordinary death on our enemies hasn’t got us into enough trouble in the last few years.

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