Life is not always black & white

Dear Readers:

First of all, apologies to both of you for the delay in providing you with your daily rant-filled sustenance.  I can only put that down to not having written anything.

But, where to start, where to start?  Several of this week's key news stories have had a direct and profound effect upon me, largely because I was watching them at the time.

Let's start with the biggie, those naughty MP's and their expenses claims.  Now, it seems, since I last blogged you both, a select number of our Westminster masters have not exactly quit their jobs, but they have said that they will not stand for re-election whenever it is that the Prime Minister calls a General Election.  Oh, by the way, we also know that Brown is holding out until the last possible moment before calling the election (likely to be June 2010).  It was pointed out on the BBC's Question Time (May 28, 2009) that Brown is Election-phobic, citing:

• His unwillingness to call an election when he became Prime Minister, to see if the country wanted him
• His inability to fulfill a promise in the Labour Manifesto of 2005 and hold a refurrendum on the subject of Europe
• His apparent inability to grasp the concept that the country wants a General Election now.

What almost slipped under the radar was the fact that, by choosing to stand down at the next election rather than go now is that they get some sort of golden handshake deal from the constituency, something like that.  I don't quite understand it all myself but what it shows is that MP's simply cannot help themselves when it comes to sticking their grubbly little fingers into the taxpayers' pot.  It just beggars belief that, at any opportunity, these theives will take what they can for themselves whilst at the same time judging our morals and standards, filling the streets and roads with dreadful Brussels-led rules and signs, making us sweat blood and tears over the simplest of benefit-claimant forms, telling us where or when we can or cannot smoke, etc. etc.

...

The next target for my rantings is my beloved Newcastle United Football Club.  In a moment, you will see that there is actually a link between footballers and MP's, but we'll come to that.  Firstly, though, I am sure many of you, probably up to half (that's a whole person) feel absolutely gutted that, after 16 years of coming so close, the Toon finally achieved their dream and got themselves relegated.  And how many of Newcastle's high-earning, Ferrari-driving wasters can hold their hands up and say that they played a massive part in their downfall?  You guessed it, step forward Michael Owen.

When Owen signed for Newcastle United in September 2005, it was one of the brightest days in the club's history.  Sure, he had a bad injury record, but those days were all behind him, right?

Wrong.

In his four, yes four, years at the club, Owen has managed just 26 goals.  Alan Shearer, Owen's current manager, scored more than that in his first season!  In his first four seasons, Shearer scored 86.  Over three times more.  And, though not a betting man, I'll wager that Shearer was not "earning" the massive fee that Owen is.  

Here's the thing:  during the last game of this season, away to Aston Villa, Owen was brought on in the second half, as he is coming back from yet another injury.  And, to all those watching the game either in the stadium or on TV, Owen looked like he was playing for his relegation get-out clause.  No-one seems to be able to recall an occasion when he so much as touched the ball.  That is a criminal waste and Owen ought to be brought before the Premier League on a charge of fraud under the Trade Description Act.  It is, to my mind, a criminal act, it's that serious.  So we all (myself included, obviously - see above) bang on about how criminal the situation is in Westminster, but what about St. James' Park, and in other clubs with similar situations?  It's outrageous.  Of course, Owen is playing within the rules, but that does not make it morally justifiable.  He should pay back every last penny of his fraudulently-taken salary and donate it to the poor season ticket holders who, in the midst of a recession, still go to see their "heroes" "perform" in a bid to escape their own misery.  Somehow, I think the sham that is his description as a "Premiership striker" only serves to compound that misery.  

Owen, of course, will believe that somehow he has a Divine right to play in the Premiership, and, as a result of that, play as first choice striker for the England squad.  As my brother would say, "He's 'avin' a giraffe!"  Sack him from Newcastle, sack him from England, and let him play for Rushden & Diamonds or someone, on the bench.

Actually, the one good thing about the Toon's relegation is the fact that, as long as the club doesn't go into freefall, it should weed out all the overpaid, hundred-grand-a-week dead wood like your Owens and Duffs (never was a player more accurately named) and bring in some hard-working, more honest players.  Sure, they might not be as talented, but I would much rather see less talented players giving it all they've got and more than 11 supremely gifted wasters who float across the pitch, preening themselves for the cameras, wearing makeup and their own perfume, Police sunglasses or their kids' names tattooed across the back of their necks, wasting their lives and talent knowing full well that their agent will get them a good relegation clause or some sort of tax-free expensive perk that people who earned less in five years than a week of their wages could ever hope to see.

...

Right:  Jeremy Kyle next.  I'll be the first to confess that I am a big fan of the show.  Like most of the other two million or so people who watch the show every weekday, there is a certain guilty pleasure to be had in getting a small window into people's lives, so long as they are willing to parade themselves on national television.  People are always willing to do that, this country is full of them, that's up to them, and to some degree Kyle and this show exploit that.  He often ends up shouting at them that (for example) if they can't be parents for whatever reason - they are too young or on drugs or alcoholics - they should have thought of that before they had unprotected sex.  But if they did that, of course, Kyle wouldn't have a show and therefore not have a vehicle for venting his particular view of British society.  Mind you, I can't help agreeing with what he says, and if only he were to go into politics....

...which brings me on to this:  two things have struck me about Jeremy Kyle today (Friday 29th May).  The first occurred to me during his show.  Much of Kyle's modus opperandi reminds me of the charismatic preacher, whom many will associate here as the American-style TV evangelist.  You know the type, that "Thunk-ya Jayyyyyysusssssss!" variety.  Sky TV has about a dozen Christian-related free channels, and tune in to any one of them and it won't be long before one of these evangelists appears on the screen.  And Kyle works in the same way.  Charismatic, neatly dressed and presented, Kyle likes to RAISE HIS VOICE AND SHOUT at his guests before suddenly becoming calm and paternal, reducing many of his guests to blubbering wrecks (the women too).  "I understand you've had a tough life BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU HAD UNPROTECTED SEX WITH THREE MEN IN THE SPACE OF ONE NIGHT although I know it must have been hard when your boyfriend walked out and took the kids..."  Kyle clearly is employing every tactic in the Preacher's Handbook to make sure that he keeps his audience's attiontion.

The second thing that occurred to me about Jeremy Kyle occurred during a rare interview with him on ITV's This Morning during which he was promoting his new book.  Kyle sat there, the interviewee on this occasion, with one leg crossed over the other, arms nonchalantly leaning on the back of his chair, and he looked like he owned the place.  It was also notable how Kyle used certain words and phrases, hooks or catchphrases if you like, from his show in his interview, like "thanks, guys," or "if I'm being honest," etc.  In answering one of the questions put to him, he said that that he would not rule out entering into politics...  And then it all became clear:  Kyle is not only a potential political candidate, MARK MY WORDS - he is a potential Prime Ministerial candidate.  I guarantee you one day he will be going for the top job.  I'm not suggesting he'll get it, but he has all the credentials already in place:  he has admitted to his mistakes, he talks about his family alot and some (though not all) of the unsavoury parts of his life a lot, he is highly opinionated and, crucially, likes to remind people constantly that he is highly opinionated.  He is charismatic, looks people in the eye, raises one eyebrow a lot, uses what I call the Preaching Technique (see above), is smart, neat and tidy.  The man wants to run the country, his way.  And I guarantee you he will try.

With that, folk, I will leave you for now.  There is much more about which to rant, but I will spare you for now.  Thank you for reading, both of you.   

Out Like a Light

Sorry for the lack of action these past few days, dear reader.  I have been trialling a new drug, Mirtazapene, designed as a supplemental anti-depressant, but which also acts as a muscle-relaxant, I believe, and it has sent me to sleep for most of the day today.  

Thus, in my unconscious state, I have not been keeping up with the news and I find that, on examining the BBC News web site today, that the latest on the MPs expenses has been relegated to some of the minor stories.  This is a sad yet predictable reflection of media interest in such affairs.  Indignation and then ignorance.  And this was after the Mail on Sunday, and one or two other Sunday publications, gave us hope by reporting the fact that the Queen was said to be "unhappy" with Gordon Brown over his handling of the affair.  

I repeat:  The Queen should dissolve Parliament now.  If you wait for the politicians to do it themselves, you wait for at least a year, or until they themselves feel that it is politically convenient for them to do so.

I have not much else to report at this time.  My brain is so slow at the moment, I swear I just saw the rest of my body overtake me.  I suffered from what they call the "fibro-fog" before; now it is positively a "fibro-pea-souper."  Today I watched an absolutely brilliant episode of Scrubs called "My Musical," about a patient who wakes up and everything that she sees takes the form of a Broadway musical.  Utterly fantastic, and I take my hat off to the genius that wrote it.  I only wish that I had that level of creativity in me.

Speaking of levels of creativity - did any of you (singular) see the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday?  The only surprise is how high the United Kingdom entry finished, given that the song ranks as one of the poorest songs that Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever had the audacity to foist upon the unsuspecting public, and that's saying something.  Overall, the attempt by the organisers to re-vamp the competition worked, and, one or two offensive entries aside, the standard was much higher than usual and voting was more or less song, rather than political, based.  Which makes Lloyd Webber's "song" rank as one of the worst on the night.  

Even on the night, when interviewed, Lloyd Webber seemed barely able to disguise his contempt for the competition, though his singer, Jade Ewen, did display some of the star quality that could promise her a future in "the business."  But the song is completely, totally and utterly dreadful and in that respect sits nicely with Lloyd Webber's entire output since 1987.  Fair play to him, he did write four or five half-decent musicals back in the day, but The Phantom of the Opera really did it for him, as it dawned on him that he could write any old crap in his sleep and turn it out as a musical.  There were so many great songs in Phantom that he seems to have used up his whole entitlement in one show.  

In spite of his best efforts to cripple our chances, Jade finished fifth, our highest placing since 2002, apparently.  

Well, I must now go and lie down, I appear to have worn myself out with that particular rant.  See you on the other side.

You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up

Hello dear reader, today has been a pretty difficult day for so many reasons, maybe partly due to our beloved British weather, which has turned to poopy virtually overnight.  That awful misty, drizzly rain has begun to rear its ugly head again.  One bonus, however, when driving through the Forest of Dean, is that the forestry itself becomes very green and lush.  It looks lovely and my wife and I went for a drive through it today, remarking that it reminded us of the time we drove through the forestry of the South Island of New Zealand.  That was beautiful and so is this - easily the most lovely part of England.

When the bad weather strikes, so does what Churchill describes as "The Black Dog."  My body aches still more, headache, foggy head, extreme fatigue.  The pain of moving is like the pain of pulling a very large truck behind me with my teeth.  It's not only down to the weather, I can feel like this on sunny days too, but certainly it appears to have been set off today by the arrival of this horrid weather.  

Both my wife and I have been stressed today.  Sadly I am unable to venture into the reasons for it here, but stress never helps matters.  I am very proud, however, to call this woman my wife.  Next month, we celebrate 21 years since our first date, and at the end of July will be our 18th wedding anniversary.  Still every day the feeling of marriage to her gets better and I love her very much indeed.  Corny though it may sound, she is the rock on which I lean and she is, in many ways, the reason I am as sane and well as I am, even though it is still not good.

Any road, back to the shenanigans at Westminster.  Today, former minister Elliot Morley was "outed" as having claimed £16,000 on a mortgage that had already been paid off.  This worked out at £800 a month for 20 months!  Then, of course, when this was discovered and threatened with publication by the Daily Telegraph, he claimed that this had been an error, he had paid the money back, and he felt terrible about it!  Yeah, sure, mate, you didn't realise that the mortage had already been paid off a year and a half earlier!  Anybody, and everybody I have ever met, literally counts down the days until the end of their mortgage and for him to say that he had discovered the mistake 2 weeks ago (when this whole stink was surely already in the air), paid it back and already begun the process of feeling terrible about it is taking the insult to our intelligence to a whole new level.  WHO DO THEY THINK WE ARE?  DO THEY IMAGINE WE CAME DOWN IN THE LAST SHOWER?  This is utterly dreadful - these are the people who tell us how to live our lives in this NANNY STATE - they tell us what benefits we can and cannot claim and put measures in place to stop benefit fraud including making disabled people fill out 60 page forms for the sake of a few quied a week.  Is it any wonder that not only is our trust in these people destroyed, but in actual fact these people should be sacked and hauled through the courts.

One gentleman whom I believe has been stitched up by the Telegraph outings has been Conervative MP John Maples who used a private members' club as his residence while he waited to move into another property.  The difference here is that he cleared this with Westminster officials at the time, and they agreed it at the time.  Maples even produced all of this correspondence for the benefit of the Daily Telegraph.  They ignored it.

These are my demands:

1. That there be a general election immediately, with every single MP of every single party in Westminster getting the boot, and facing re-election to their jobs.

2. That Gordon Brown be ousted as Prime Minister.  A more weak and ineffectual leader there has not been since the one before last, a certain John Major.  Come on, Margaret Thatcher was in a better position than Brown is now when she got kicked out of Downing Street.

3. That when MPs are returned to Westminster, they receive the salary that they receive, already pretty high in my opinion, and nothing more.  Everything they do, buy, live in, eat, drive or cook their barbecues on must be paid for out of that salary.  That salary should be subject to the same rate of tax that everybody else pays.

4. Every Cabinet Minister should be forced to go on a training course before taking up their post.  And they must pass a certification before being allowed to sit round the table with whoever becomes PM in Brown's place.  This prevents young upstarts with a particular chip on their shoulder taking up 6-figure salaried jobs for which they have no experience or aptitude, simply because they all want the top job (even though they cannot say that).

5. And while we're on the subject, those who pay their new tax rate should have a say in where that money is spent.  Nobody, it is well known, would object to paying tax if it went towards improving their schools, hospitals, roads and housing, instead of fighting wars in oil-rich foreign lands or bailing out banks that got into difficulties while their CEO's took 7-figure retirement packages.

All MPs are barking on about changing the system, but they would hate it if that change involved them losing their jobs.  But that is what is needed.  Get rid of this corrupt Parliament, & change the rules from the outset.  These people should be their to serve their constituents, and not the other way around.  The Queen ought to seize the reigns [just my little pun] for once and dissolve Parliament, sending every single one of them home and calling a General Election.  

Oh well, until then, I'll just watch another episode of South Park...

What a difference a day makes...

...24 little hours.  So sang Esther Phillips back in the early 80s.  How true her prophecy is.  Just 1 day after I posted my tirade against our political embezzlers, so David Cameron took the lead in telling his party to start paying back their "expenses" claims or face the sack as a Tory MP.  A brilliant political move, it set off a wave of MPs across the two main parties waving cheques at the camera that they had just written to "the British Taxpayer."  The most hypocritical of these hypocrites was Hazel Blears, the very woman who had laid into Brown's appearance on YouTube over the "expenses" issue, who told anyone that would listen that she was paying back the capital gains tax she had fiddled when selling a property.  

I can modestly claim that all of this occurred as a direct result of my blog appearing on the internet yesterday morning.  I can only assume that Cameron must have read the blog early yesterday, thought "oh poop," and set the wheels in motion to start paying the cash back to the humble tax payer.  You are welcome Britain, it was the least I could do.

However, none of this lessens the fact that we are seeing our politicians, from all the main parties, at their most sleazy, seedy, tawdry, slimy and nasty.  Even today, as MP after MP dragged whatever unsuspecting cameraman who happened to be passing into their offices and said, "Look, I'm writing a cheque!" one just couldn't help but be hit by the hypocrisy of the whole thing.  Get them out!  Still!

On a lighter note, I have been feeling particularly rotten today.  I may have forgotten to mention yesterday in my rush to berate our political system that I have been suffering from a number of medical conditions which warrant my spending a lot of the time in a great deal of pain throughout my once lithe body.  It's called Fibromyalgia, defined as pain in the fibrous or connective tissues of the body, or something like that.  Basically hurts all over.  Imagine being out on a Friday night in Swindon town centre and having the shit kicked out of you by a pack of thirty or so drunken youths, repeatedly kicking, punching, whacking with hard wood baseball bats, and you begin to get the rough idea.  Plus I suffer from the effects of the kind of depression that makes Leonard Cohen sound like Kylie.  Keeps me up at night, it does.

Good Morning

This, folks, is my first blog and I am somewhat new to it, so please bear with me.  It is approximately 2.50 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, May 12, 2009, and I felt that, at long last, I had been bitten by the blog bug (how hard is that to say?), and wanted to begin ranting and raving about many things: things that make me happy, things that make me sad, things that make me throw junk mail at the telly, all sorts of things.  The rule is there are no rules, as someone who I can't remember once said.  

Let's begin by telling you a little about me.  My name is Stephen Butler, and I am currently 42 years old, although I don't intend to remain that age much beyond my 43rd birthday (which is in September).  I am married, sorry girls, to my wife Jane, and have been since 1991.  We have no children, and we once had two cats who have both now sadly passed away.  I have two brothers whom I shall not currently name lest they should be forced to hang their heads in shame amongst their local communities.  My mother still lives and breathes, and I live near the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.  If you haven't been, I recommend a visit as soon as is convenient for you, as it is, in my humble opinion, just about the most beautiful spot in England.

Right, that's the introduction over with, I would like to begin ranting, if you don't mind.  The subject of my first rant is our beloved Members of Parliament and their "expenses claims."  This might not surprise you, as of course there has been much made in the media (how hard is that to say?) of how they "acted within the rules."  Did they frig.

Check this out.  One MP whom shall remain nameless (because I can't remember who it was) actually charged the British Taxpayer £100 to have 25 lightbulbs changed in his house.  These, remember, are people who force us to pay tax out of our hard-earned money, telling us that it is going to pay for our schools, hospitals, roads, anti-terrorist bombing campaigns, whilst neglecting to mention that it is also going to pay for these greedy embezzlers' paint, tampons (true, eh, Phil Woolas?), food, cars, dogs, cats, cleaning -  you name it, they charged us for it.  

Imagine the audacity that it must take, even in the theatre of politics, to actively look for ways to get things for free from those who put them there, while at the same time preaching and pontificating that people should respect law and order, and have, as Gordon Brown so often tells us, a "moral compass."  Hypocrite.  I truly believe that, at the very least, it is time for a General Election to get these thieves out of parliament.  At worst it is time for revolution.  I think it was the Daily Express who put it best the other day when they said that if the Queen were to dissolve Parliament right now it would be the best and greatest act of her entire 57-year long reign.  

Unfortunately, Government ministers in particular, continue right up to this moment to try to bluster their way through it and hope that the storm will soon die down, as so many other scandals have in the past.  But this one should stay right in the face of Gordon Brown until this unelected clown is kicked out of Downing Street so fast he won't even have time to say "fiscal stimulus."

Of course, this particular controversy affects politicians across all parties, but it is Gordon Brown who rightly took the flak for it and finally apologised on behalf of every political persuasion.  But this vote-licking apology has basically only come after they all got found out.  Now they're all running around saying that they acted within the rules, but of course it has been pointed out that these rules were created by parliament and are self-regulating.  And there is no moral high ground in changing first homes to second homes so that they can get the tax payer to pay for everything and then change it back again.  And as for those MPs charging us for homes that they own within, let's say, the M25 corridor is unspeakable...

Keith Vaz owns a flat in Westminster, and a "second home" in Stanmore.  He also owns a home in Leicestershire, but the fact that he charges us for the Westminster pad which he justifies by saying that he doesn't feel he should have to travel from Stanmore to work is outrageous.  Why not?  What about the millions who are expected to pay for their own "transport" to and from work, and be there on time in spite of the pitiful nature of the aforementioned transport?  It's no wonder that MPs don't care a toss about the appalling standard of our rails and roads because they've got loopholes to make sure they don't have to use it.   Self-serving, hypocritical, insensitive, money-grabbing and out of touch, that goes for every single Member of Parliament, whether they make use of these "rules" or not, because if they didn't do it, they knew it went on, and didn't speak out about it sooner.  They got found out, and this makes the whole thing appear even more sordid than it already is.  

In the 22 years since I was first eligible to vote, I don't remember anything quite this sleazy from our seat of democracy.  Sure, bad things have happened - didn't Jeffrey Archer get banged up for some financial crime or other, yet what makes that worse than what's going on now?  

It's still worse that, now that they have been found out, they are not falling over each other to apologise or pay the money back, they are falling over each other because they are afraid that they will lose our vote.  Some think they will do that by repeating the "acting within the rules" mantra, others by saying "yeah, it was wrong," but only Gordon Brown, even though he will have been forced to do it, has actually said sorry, so I have to give him credit for that.  But as I said earlier the apology now simply rings hollow.  

But Gordon Brown must go.  New Labour must go.  Exactly what can replace them that has any higher moral standard, I don't know.  Answers on a postcard, please.