How Copper Wire Invented

Today I heard a man who runs an NHS Trust, a man responsible for millions of pounds of tax payers money use the phrase service user rather than simply saying patient. Come on who are you going to offend by using the word patient, or is he afraid that by using the word patient he makes the person sound like a victim. It's not an admission of guilt its what we call people who go to hospital when they aren't well. Everyone is too busy worrying about who they are going to offend or who is going to not like them because they said something bad. How much energy do we waste dreaming up weird and wonderful ways to remain completely magnolia with a hint of beige.

Look I'm not saying its alright to publicly humiliate a quadriplegic whilst wearing a turban and face paint then goose stepping your way across the local Jewish cemetery. That's not on, but surely some friendly banter should be okay and everyone should be a bit more sensible about things. The classic for this is the old and much maligned stereotype. Whilst being a complete caricature of the real thing they do have a little hint of the truth in them, that's why they can be funny. Although if there is anyone out there that actually thinks all Irishman dig ditches, lay tarmac and enjoy nightly get togethers involving formation dancing and pipe bombs then the joke is on them. They are slightly less dense than a neutron star but slightly thicker than a whale omelette (Blackadder I think).

Everyone doesn't hate the English, but until the Americans came along and we started giving everyone their countries back, with better schools and public services I might add, the fact is we weren't the most popular people around the world. I'm sure the Romans and the Mongols had the same popularity issues, but if you spend a couple of centuries nicking people's land and taking all their money you're not going to be top of their Christmas card list. The Americans have taken this hate thing to a whole new level, it took us 300 years to be that hated they've managed it in a matter of months.

Now I was born in Scotland and the Scots do have one very obvious national characteristic that revolves around the collection and more importantly the retention of their fiscal amassing. Thankfully I'm not blessed with this genetic marker, but I would be lying if I denied the fact that a larger than expected proportion of my countryman seem to display this frugal tendency. It's the reason why the Scots are renowned for their scientists, engineers and boffins. All kids in Scotland are taught their times tables up to 43, this allows them to split any dinner bill into the right individual contributions whilst factoring in children, desert eaters, the person who had the extra After Eight and allowing for the usual 3.725% tip. Not all of us are tight, but if you wore a skirt all the way through a Scottish winter and didn't own a pair of pants you would naturally find yourself becoming tighter.

Are the French all good lovers? I'm guessing not, but if you are the English's arc enemies then that is going to make you more popular with zero effort. My enemie's enemy is a friend of mine and all that. We all know that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but quickest way to a woman's knickers is through Champagne and we all know where that comes from. That sounds like the pub landlord but I'm sure it's not.

Now the Aussies I've mentioned before, maybe more than once but I feel it's still worth mentioning again. Our Antipodean brothers have a reputation for all being blond, tanned, happy go lucky bar stewards (people who work in a pub, please I do have standards). The reason for this is three fold. One, if you lived in a country where it's sunny all year long then you are going to be blond and more tanned than the average Brit. Two, if I'd escaped from a country where the spiders, crocodiles, kangaroos, sharks, jellyfish, snakes, scorpions, fish and rays kill you I'd be relieved as well and lastly they are all descendants of cheeky cockney criminals who everyone knows are genetically prone to bouts of inane grinning and saucy joke telling.

So let's talk Americans shall we, now I was lucky enough to live in America and Canada, or America Lite as I referred to it in 1988 many years before Al Murray. The Yanks are renowned for being loud, crude, Gung-Ho, 'in your face' airheads. How I'm not saying that they are not, what I will say is at home they are less so than they are when they are away from the land of our fathers. The reason for this reputation is quite simple. Up until the invention of mass transportation by air there were only two possible types of Americans to be found in England. The first was the filthy rich who could afford to come here on a posh cruise ship. Now very rich people the world over, regardless of where they come from are so far up their own arses that they would naturally exhibit many of the suggested American's national virtues. The second Uncle Sam type on general display in good old blighty would have been the American GI, usual around the time they were bailing us out of some ghastly war and to be honest if I was looking to fill an army with able bodied soldiers guess what I'd be looking for in my grunts. If you guessed, sensitive, well spoken, demure, sophisticated gentlemen then you would be talking about the Italian army in error.

We all know that the Welsh aren't all ginger and still follow the national pastime of sheep shagging, the Italian aren't all greasy lazy mummie's boys, I'm sure the Top Gear boys got it wrong about the Mexicans and I'm pretty certain that the Germans can tell a good joke and make the odd bad car from time to time. Lets stop taking everything so seriously, lets stop worrying about upsetting each other from time to time and enjoy life a whole lot more. Laugh at yourself, laugh at others, laugh at babies eating ice cream too quickly, but most of all laugh at men when they get hit in the balls.

Nut Cutlets From Beyond The Grave

On the 12^th of September 1962 John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered a speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He said We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

The reason it is so memorable, other than the fact that he bedded Marilyn Monroe, was way too good looking for a Politician and 2 years later he had his brains splatted all over the back of his presidential Limo just down the road in Dallas, is because he set out to do what humans rarely try to do, what is hard. Please no penis innuendos.  We just love an easy option.

Although the pinko leftie liberals might tell you otherwise, we are basically animals and we live by our animal instincts. Every animal in the wild only worries about the 3 basics in life, food, shelter and horizontal gymnastics. In the pursuit of these needs animals will almost always take the easy option. It’s natural and it’s normal, it aids survival. Picture a giant panda taking an afternoon nap in his favourite bamboo forest, the warmth of the late afternoon sun begins to pierce the tree canopy. As the beams of light begin to slowly flicker across his face, Yang Yang leisurely stirs. Slowly rolling onto his side the master of all he surveys begins to consider the day ahead. “Food, me want food” or whatever that is in panda talk. What does he do now? He farts, scratches his nuts and reaches for the closest bamboo shoot to eat. He doesn’t consider the days to come and possible changes in the seasons, walk 2 minutes away to eat something else and he doesn’t create a Ven diagram to work out the best plant to eat based on distance, colour and mineral content. He does what’s easy. He uses the least amount of energy possible to get by because that’s what keeps him alive and gets him to his next shag.

In life we nearly always do what’s easy rather than what we know is right. Our instincts tell us what to do and this conflicts with all the other bullshit we have dreamt, stuff that just complicates things. Look at what we eat and look at how many fat, yes I said fat not horizontally challenged or chubby, or cuddly people there are. Why is that? It’s not because we don’t know what we are doing to our bodies, we do, even the thickest, sorry mentally challenged moron knows that eating burgers, cream cakes and pies all day while drinking coke, beer and Bacardi Breezers all night is going to kill you or at least make you look like Jabba the Hutt’s fat brother. So you’re a touch on the rotund side and you’re feeling a bit peckish, you’ve just put down the letter from the doctor saying your arse is bigger than your 50” TV, what do you do?  We do what is easy and ignore that rocket and garden vegetable salad in the fridge because we can’t be bothered to cook the succulent skinless chicken breast that beautifully compliments the salad in both taste and texture and order that 47” meat feast pizza from Dominos, especially when you get free wedges and a 2lt bottle of Pepsi cola with every order over £93 this week. Pass me the phone, they deliver.

Food is energy, its just fuel nothing more. What we should do is eat enough food to fill full up, the right food that our body needs and wants and then stop eating. We wouldn’t do to our car what we do to our bodies. With your motor you drive around and after a while the car tells you its hungry and needs dinner so you go to the petrol station. Now if your car is an omnivore car you give it omnivore food you don’t think, no today I’m going to feed it nuts and berries because if you do that you get a big fat bill from the garage and all your mates take the piss and rightly so. You’ve decided to give it the right fuel, even veggies like bacon, in goes the nozzle and you squeeze the trigger. The numbers on the dial go around and around at an alarming speed until you get that clicking that says the stomach can take no more. What do you do now? Do you a. continue pulling the trigger so the petrol pisses all over your shoes, wasting another £20 and a perfectly good pair of trainers or b. stop filling, pay the bill and drive home?  We all know the answer is c. Fill the car then before paying the bill, pick up a super size snicker, a bottle of something fizzy and a Thinsulate hat and glove combo that at £2.99 is too good to pass up.

We just over complicate things we eat because it makes us feel good, then feel bad when we eat too much, then feel bad when we put on weight, so we eat and feel better, but then feel bad because our arse doesn’t fit in our new jeans that you couldn’t afford anyway, but put on your credit card because shopping makes you feel better. Now that is completely stupid, which for the most intelligent species on the planet seems like a bit of a waste of 4 billion years of evolution.

Life would be so much more fun if we just kept it simple, removed all the crap and enjoyed ourselves a bit more. Don’t listen to those high and mighty plonkers you see a TV. If god wanted you to be a vegetarian he would have made cows run really fast, never have invented brussel sprouts and made bacon taste like sweaty football socks. If people could predict your future by just using your star sign then surely they might have thought to do something important with this skill, like stop all the bad bombers in the world. Why is it that people who say they have lived other lives are always the reincarnation of someone famous? They are never the village idiot from Great Wakering circa 1746.

And last but absolutely least if people can speak to the dead then why do they always speak to someone completely pointless, who has nothing to say, but makes someone in the audience cry and pay £40 a week for the next 2 years for more of the same shit, rather than dragging up someone really important who could tell us who really shot JFK, where did they put the Lost Ark that the raiders are looking for and who nicked my bike from the golf course in 1986? Wankers