Watch the Olympics ? “I’d sooner run a mile!”

I see that a lady with the good old German name of Mikitenko won yesterday’s London Marathon, and some old boy who is supposed to be 101 years old completed the course, although some reporters believe that he is only ninetyfour. Perhaps he was spurred on by the spears of those Masai warriors, even if the blades of these deadly weapons were sheathed for the sake of ‘elf and safety’.

I must say that I admire all those thousands of people who take part in this and other similar events to raise money for charity, although I have never been able to understand what motivates the likes of Ms. Mikitenko.

Running has always been an anathema to me ever since my schooldays, when dressed in vest and shorts, I was forced to run around the small park adjacent to my school in all kinds of weather, encouraged by the bullying shouts of some warmly dressed teacher. I was similarly attired a few years later when running through the villages and countryside near my RAF training camp. It always gave the locals a good laugh to see a bunch of sweating young men ‘pounding’ along the high street wearing baggy shorts and with heavy black hobnailed boots at the end of their skinny white legs.

Whenever I go for a walk along the seashore near my home, I am usually passed by panting people who look like they are about to drop dead from exhaustion or a heart attack at any moment, and I wonder why they torture themselves in such a way ? Pushing yourself to this sort of limit seems such a weird thing to do.

I did once know a ‘top class’ athlete, who ran for Great Britain alongside such ‘greats’ as Chris Chatterway and Roger Bannister (the 1st man to run the ‘4 minute mile’). I shared an RAF billet with this bloke, and he was seriously ‘weird’. When he wasn’t sleeping in his stinking bed he was running. He seemed to live in smelly sweat stained tracksuits, apart from when he went on leave wearing his Great Britain team blazer. He hardly ever spoke to anyone and avoided contact with us ‘lesser mortals’, who were enjoying ourselves with the then normal pursuits of smoking, drinking and chasing young women, while he was running along the muddy country lanes, stopwatch in hand, pursuing some new record or other. He was totally dedicated and totally bonkers !

I am sure that I am not in the minority in this country when I say that I couldn’t care less if one person can run faster than another, and yet it has been estimated that £20 billion could be spent on the 2012 London Olympics. Much of this money will come from the National Lottery which means that many charities will lose out. It makes me angry to think that so much money can be wasted when so much is needed by so many ‘good causes’.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just 5% of that £20 billion could be diverted to all those charities featured in the London Marathon, so that next year all those ’fun runners’ would be able to stay at home and put their feet up …

…     just like me !  
 

They’ll ban winking next.

Harriet Harman came in for a lot of ‘flak’ this week when she turned up on the streets of south London looking like she expected to be hit by the real thing as she toured the area wearing a ‘Met vest’, the standard body armour worn by officers of London’s police force service.

Now I doubt if the politically correct Ms. Harmanperson was in much physical danger from the people of Peckham, but she was in great danger of being called “love”, “dear” or “darling” if she came into contact with Peckham’s most famous resident, ‘Del Boy’ or one of his mates.

How would the poor dear have coped should she have been subjected to such “insulting language”? …  for it seems that she has decided that the days of calling women “love” and “darling” are gone, and in the case of employees, such as bar staff, who have to listen to what is described as ”sexist banter” … Well ! Yes you guessed it. They should receive … Compensation ! … which is strange as I must have been asked … “What can I get you, love?” … thousands of times by pub barmaids.

I know that foreign visitors to this country find being called “luv” or “loov” (if oop north) a bit strange, but along with “mate”, “guv” and even “cock” it’s just a friendly working class form of address, and one that I’ve used all my life without anyone ever taking offence. I suppose that it’s a bit like an American calling me “buddy” or calling a strange woman ”honey”, and black “dudes” calling each other “bro”.

I remember that Horsey Anne was once addressed as “love” by one of us ’peasants’ and retorted … “I’m not a ‘love’ … I’m Your Royal Highness”, and anyone of us who objects can do the same, so why all the fuss ?

Now our Harriet is not only the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, but also Leader of the House of Commons, Lord (shouldn’t that be Lady) Privy Seal and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but she introduced all this ’sexist banter’ cobblers in her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, which makes me wonder …  Why isn’t there a  …

…   Minister For Men And Inequalities ? 

Me and the Mahatma.

My friend .. ‘Longrider’ .. recently published his result after taking the ‘Political Compass’ .. test ..  so I thought that I would have a go.

Now I don’t usually take these sort of things too seriously as very often the questions are posed in such a way that a simple ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ cannot express one’s true opinion on some subjects.

Anyway here is the result of my test after answering six pages of questions  …

… Well how about that ?

So, would you have guessed from some of my rants and comments that this grumpy old git would find himself in such company as Gandhi, Mandela and The Dalai Lama ? …

… Now that’s what I call ‘a result’ ! 

Brats behaving badly.

We’ve recently had stories in the newspapers about children arriving at school for the first time who cannot use a knife and fork, are unable to string a few words together, and are still wearing pull-up nappies (diapers) because parents are failing to teach them the basic skills they need before they start school.

Now it seems that teachers are complaining about another group of kids whose doting parents bring them up in a culture of instant gratification and then send them to school with no sense of basic social etiquette or proper moral boundaries. In other words they are “little princes and princesses” who refuse to do work they find hard or boring, in the knowledge that ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ will leap to the aid of their spoilt offspring should anything negative happen or their right to a stress-free existence be questioned.

National Union of Teachers boss Steve Sinnott has called for more advice for parents who struggled to say “no” to their children.

“Advice” ! … “Struggle” ! .. and he’s a bloody teachers’ leader ?

Still never mind because the president of the NASUWT Amanda Haehner has advised their annual conference that she has got it worked out, for apparently it’s all due to … 

“A materialistic society which so readily promotes a culture of immediacy through new media and technology makes the concept of deferred gratification inherent in education anathema to many.”

She went on to warn that the problem was fuelled by the testing culture in schools which risked producing a … ”Dickensian education system”.

Ah ! ‘Dickensian’ .. Now there’s an idea ! … If only Mr Wackford Squeers …

…    could chair the next meeting. 

No swearing please. We’re …

Amongst all the old cobblers about ‘Britishness’ recently ’spouted’ by Lord Goldsmith and his mates, is the un-British suggestion that young people should swear some kind of oath of allegiance. 

Now as someone who would never take any sort of oath to ‘er Maj or swear on any kind of holy book, I have to say that there is something ’sinister’ about this idea of taking oaths in general.

Oath taking always reminds me of secret societies, creepy ceremonies at midnight, men dressed in white sheets and ‘wiseguys’ getting ‘made’.

However, I’m sure that Lord Goldsmith envisages some American style ‘hand on heart’ oath with words like …

“I promise to do my duty in love and loyalty to the Queen and our flag.”

OK, so lets ignore the fact that half the little buggers leaving school wouldn’t know who the Queen is, let alone know where to place their hand, and assume that they were able to mumble the above oath without adding “yer know wha’ I mean?”. Well that wouldn’t be too ’sinister’ would it ?

Perhaps not, but that same oath was once taken by another group of young people, except that oath included the word ..  ’Führer‘ .. instead of the word ‘Queen’. It was, in fact, the oath of allegiance of  .. ‘The Hitler Youth’, and we all know … 

…  what good citizens many of them became. 

It’s time for them all to come home.

Well it looks like a PR coup for the old Saxe-Coburg-Gotha clan with the ‘ginger spare’ being portrayed as the ‘hero of the hour’ for getting himself posted to Afghanistan.

Now that the media is free of it’s voluntary news ‘blackout’ after colluding with the Ministry of Defence, it is blaming those who leaked the news for putting the lives of Harry and his men in danger; when surely the only person who did that was Harry himself, when he threatened to resign his commission following the decision not to send him to Iraq, and when his special role in Afghanistan was dreamed up in an attempt to placate him.

It would seem from all the reports in the press that our warrior prince has been performing the important task of directing air strikes on Taliban positions. A very responsible job which Cornet Wales (his military rank and name) seems to have performed to his credit. So why all those carefully edited photos of him in armoured vehicles, ‘armed to the teeth’, patrolling on foot, firing a machine gun etc. etc. ?

Well it seems that as a reward for keeping silent, the press were promised loads of pictures once the news broke that Harry was in Helmand Province, which must have put him in greater danger as the Taliban now only had to look for a soldier surrounded by photographers and TV camera crews.

OK, so he has ‘done his bit’ for his grandma and his country, but so have many other young men who, unlike Harry, have to go on risking their lives for far longer than a few weeks, while he is now on his way back to a world of … 

…    polo, piss-ups, paparazzi and privilege .  

‘Gravy train’ Tony.

Well, that’s a surprise ! … Members of the European Parliament are said to have fiddled over £100 million in expenses in just over a year according to British MEP Chris Davies, who has seen a secret report.

Blimey! No wonder our Tony is so keen to get his ’snout in the trough’, alongside his old mate Peter Mandelson.

Not content with a £5 million book deal and part time jobs with J.P.Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, which combined with fees for speaking engagements could net him another £10 million per year, this greedy lying hypocrite now fancies trousering El Presidente’s share of those Brussel’s Euros.

Now despite early support from Angela Merkel, it seems that Germany could say “Nein” to ’Tone’ becoming Europe’s first long term President, with sources close to Frau Merkel saying that Herr Blair  … “made a lot of fine speeches about Europe but, essentially, stood on the sidelines when it came to concrete steps forward” .. and .. “There is unease about a Briton at the top in that job …  (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein ? …  ). And then personally with Blair, there’s the Iraq thing”.

“Yes, that .. “Iraq thing” .. is in itself enough to make me want to sign this … 

    HOW ABOUT YOU ? 

  

‘Patriot’ .. isn’t that the name of a missile ?

Earlier this week the press was getting it’s knickers in a twist about a town in Germany which wants to name a school after Klaus Riedel, a scientist who was involved in the development of the V2 rockets which rained down on Britain towards the end of World War II.

It seems that Riedel was not a Nazi, but a scientist and engineer of exceptional talent, and although his work led to the deaths of thousands of people, I suppose that it could be said that he was just doing his ‘patriotic duty’.

What I find strange is that in this country few people protest about the hundreds of streets, buildings, schools etc. which are named after some of the biggest mass killers in history, along with the statues and monuments which glorify the the kings, generals, field marshals and assorted adventurers who slaughtered millions on the battlefields of Europe and during the process of building and defending the British Empire. I suppose that they were also just doing their ‘patriotic duty’.

One of Riedel’s wartime colleagues who became a bit of a ‘hero’ in the USA, being awarded the National Medal of Science, was ex-Nazi Party member and SS Sturmbannfüehrer Wernher von Braun, who having admitted to using slave labour to build his ‘terror weapons’, was snapped up by the Americans and whisked off to the United States to continue his research into rockets that could now be used to kill Russians should the ‘Cold War’ ever hot up. He later became an American citizen and a very ‘big shot’ in the NASA space programme: and guess what ? … those ‘good ole’ boys’ down in Huntsville, Alabama  named a multipurpose indoor arena after him … Sounds like a good place to hold one of those …

…   old time ‘patriotic’ rallies.