A Trip to Cloud Cuckoo Land

So the festive period is done and life is returning to normal but it seems most of society has decided that life is much more fluffy in cloud cuckoo land and they've decided to stay there for an extended holiday, warm weather, cheap beer and plentiful sunbeds included. The more I think about it the more I've come to the realisation that a rather large slice of the population actually live in the land of cuckoo's and only rent a small weekend holiday home here in sunny England.

I haven't written for a while and I'm sure my desire to mini-rant about the things I see has been dulled by the general goodwill to all men that abounds during the Christmas holidays, but my "how can you be so stupid" threshold has been compromised and it's definitely time to vent one's spleen.

Honesty is a great thing, but reality is something all together more powerful and practical. What people say to someone with a camera or microphone is completely different to what they really feel like because the honest truth is altogether too selfish and scary. Andy Gray ponit in question. Today lots of people have been banging on about the NHS and what they think is right and best for us. What people say is they want the best service in the world, but if you asked them to pay for it you would be met by a chorus of sucked teeth and the mechanics "well....." The fact is if you asked almost everyone what would you like more, lower taxes or a better health service you know what the answer will be and it won't be more plasters and consultants earning £150K a year.

People are just looking after themselves, it's not wrong, it's just natural. It's just the way it is, most of the population are more interested in football, beer, posh shoes and who Katie Price is divorcing this week. Not alturistic thoughts of improving things for the greater good. Some people do think of others first, they become politicians and as soon as they get some power they just feather their own nests and fail miserably like the rest of us. They can't help themselves they just have a higher selfish overload alert default overide level to most, but they nearly all crumble given enough time. Even John " The Gray" Major succumbed. He was the most boring prime minister ever and an upstanding pillar of society, but he still found time to sort out the right honourable Edwina Curry whilst still managing to run the country.

 If you lived in a shoe box in a back water northern mining ghetto as a nipper where your dad worked 27 hours a day and your only childhood toys were a bike tyre and a barbie doll with no head what do you expect will happen. You get to the Houses of Parliment on the back of your mining buddies union, full of brother comrade idiology and heart felt  principles, then you get a strong whif of crisp £20 notes and you're game for just about anything as long as it doesn't involve rectal penetration. How many poor Labour MPs are there after they have done their time in the big house, not many.

But I digress from the NHS. Look I know that the best way is to do things, for the common good, but it doesn't work, it's a shame but it just doesn't. If it did then everything would have stayed nationalised and no one would have invented money. Life is a big game and money is the way we keep score. No man wants to come last and that's the problem. The fact is if you want something done effeciently then you have to motivate the people to do it and the best way is money. If everyone got a cut of the savings you would be laughing, but that sounds way to capitalistic for anyone to agree with. As I said it's honest and practical, but no one would agree to it on TV.

Here is something my old papy said to me when I was young and it's as true today as it was then. If I want to spend £1 I can walk to the shops and get £1 worth of food for my £1 which is a good rate of return. If my government wants to spend the same £1 it needs a shed load of civil servants to decide what to buy, where to get it from and how much to pay for it. After 2 years they finally spend the £1 and get 2 penny chews and 4 cola cubes. It's just the unfortunate truth. Smaller government and less tax is better for just about everyone, but it's not very fluffy.

There is a simple cure for all this, in fact there are two of them, but unfortunately one is highly unlikely and the other is even more so. Firstly get rid of money, stop the game altogether announce a winner and give him a prize, maybe even stretch to a runners-up trophy. Get everyone to do things for that greater good I spoke about and all pull together. What a beautiful picture, but there are 2 major draw backs firstly everyone would need to agree and if you get 5 people in a room they couldn't agree on what pizza toppings to order let alone dismantling the global order and world peace. Secondly the people with all the money and the most to lose are the people with all the power, there is no way they will end the game unless they have all their hotels on Park Lane and everyone else is in jail.

The second cure is what I like to call the Will Smith effect. We need some world wide catastrophy, a disaster of biblical proportion or an alien invasion. Something that kills most of us or leaves us so shit scared of what might happen that we forget about all the petty stuff, reject the need for greed and Simon Cowell and live a better life and what is left of the scorched planet. This option is a touch extreme, but slightly more likely than the first.

It's a shame, but Gordon Geeko was right

Jacknifed Reindeer on the M25

Christmas is a time of cheer and happiness and a time aimed at those on the right side of 20 rather than those of us well over 35. Most the the seasonal magic is lost on those of us that have finally decided that perhaps the fatman in the red suit isn't real and that the scarlet nosed flying wonder is about as realistic as a liberal election pledge. Christmas is a time that usually divides us into our little interest groups which invariably leads to conflict over the holiday break.

The youngest are mainly interested in the magical visit on the 25th and the sack of well earned presents that appear mysteriously at the end of their bed. They happily believe that pixie dust not only stops time to allow Santa to visit 2 billions kids in one night but also allows Santa to deliver the presents even if you don't have a chimney. All mum and dad think about is firstly how are they going to pay for all this stuff, secondly if both kids have exactly the same amount of gifts with each pile being absolutely equal in both cost and weight and thirdly if the 20lb of turkey that would usually feeds 30 people will be enough for the 8 people sitting down for lunch on Christmas day. For those in-between the break is an excuse not to work for nearly a week and the only time they use advanced mathematics all year. They have to carefully calculate exactly now many Jagerbombs they can consume allowing for a kebab chaser and maybe even a bottle of very cheap champagne substitute and still be able to make it to boxing day lunch without emptying the contents of their stomachs into uncle Barry's brussel sprouts.

This year I've experienced a couple of small events that have lead me to stick two fingers up at middle aged boredom and flash my buttocks at those who think that life is all about working hard and putting away something for a rainy day. Now these weren't moments of great joy or some kind of religious epiphany but just little moments in my week that made me smile, feel good for a few minutes and gave me a warm glow. The first was the best made of a bad situation.

Picture this, Tuesday evening, it's raining, not hard, but a constant drizzle that forces you to keep switching the wipers from on to that delayed thing that either leaves a horrible dirty streak that needs constant washing or makes that wretched scrapping noise. The M25 is crap as usual and as you enter the road works you hear on the radio that the road is blocked at your junction. Taking this bad news in your stride and rather than shouting at the lorry in front you you do something positive and text the radio station to let them know it's got worse and you are in fact stationary and have been for the last 15 minutes. Now you are happy that you've shared your pain and that would be enough, but imagine how you would feel if the lady on the traffic report actually reads out your text and tells you that you, yes just you, that the accident has been cleared and that you and only you will be home in time for your tea. I smiled like the proverbial Cheshire cat and I carried that joy all the way home. Now I know it's a little sad and almost no one knew other than me, but it was a moment of childish giddiness. I was on the radio.

My second moment was even more touching in a completely insignificant way, but it made me feel great. A different day, a different road, no road works and no break lights, but an average drive home. I'd left work a little early, the snow was coming again and as Michael McIntyre said I didn't want to get snowed "out". It was not completely dark, but it was getting that way. Everywhere was covered in snow, the fields were covered in a fair dusting and the street lights reflected off the whiteness to give that strange semi dark effect. The roads were passable but way too dangerous for school run mums in their massive 4x4s, so there were only a few cars on this stretch of road. Then on the other side of the road my attention was grabbed by a bright red lorry with it's main beam piercing the gloom. As it came close I realised it was a Coca Cola lorry, but not any old delivery lorry, but the American style Mac tractor unit with a large bright red trailer on the back, bedecked in lights on all sides and with a massive picture of Father Christmas on the side. It was the lorry from the adverts, from the tele all those years and it was here and it was magical.
It was the bollocks and it instantly turned Monday into Christmas eve.

So when you are feeling a touch on the old side, when you feel that your life has passed you by just find any reason to enjoy yourself. Children smile five times as much as adults because they are having more fun. Take some time to roll back the clock and do something for shits and giggles, not because you have to or need to just do it for the pleasure of being able to smile. Come on people all the crap we get wrapped up in is exactly that, crap. You live this life just once, it's about the journey not the destination and you might as well smile all the way there.

John Paul Mohammed III

In the beginning there were the gods and the humans marvelled at their majesty, trembled at their power and shat their pants when something unexpected happened. When we couldn’t explain something we blamed it on the god of this or the goddess of that. The early gods were simple primeval beings the sun, the earth, the moon and alike. Later on we gave them areas of responsibility, nice names and even made up little stories about their parents and how they seduced fit looking mortals. It was a loose relationship which seemed to suit everyone involved.

The root of all evil is of course money and the humans burgeoning desire for wealth and power was a real turning point for religion. When mere subsistence was the be all and end all, the ways of the gods seemed far removed from your every day goat herder or dung eater. The regional wandering vagabond zealot had very little to offer the man in the street. When the amount of gold in your cellar became important suddenly the god troopers had something for sale, the salvation of your mortal soul. This was a sweet operation; no stock issues nothing to go mouldy, nothing for anyone to nick and everyone needed it. For the right price a holy man could guarantee you entrance to heaven and the killer was no one could prove otherwise.

At about the same time people decided to start writing things down and this was really good news for your religious types. Once things were on papyrus people had something to reference and if it looked old enough and official enough then it became the truth. It even got mistaken for factual history from time to time and if you’re a Looney Alaskan governor/ soccer mum it still does.  When it got really old it took on a mystical property and it became the word of god. The god squad now had a winning combo. No one could do anything without god’s say so and only the priests could give you access, but it would cost you. Usually a shed full of cash, posh frocks, somewhere nice to live with a constant flow of hot totty to keep you warm on cold starlight nights.

As life became more complicated so did the religions. They took all their little stories and put them into great big books. These books then became the corner stone of the religions. Now you would have thought that this would help make things more stable. Everyone would know the rules and following them would be a piece of cake. No such luck, there was no way this kind of power could be given to the masses so the priests pulled out their trump card “interpretation.” Only the religious big knobs could understand and interpret the word of god. Only those that were divinely blessed or who knew someone who knew someone were bequeathed with this gift. The scam was stronger than ever.

At this point in the story I think we need to clarify a few things. Faith is a beautiful thing, for someone to have absolute confidence that someone or something is looking out for them, be it a god, a friend or public body with no facts or evidence to base a reasonable decision on is both amazing and humbling. Religion demands that of its followers, but it’s run by human beings that more often than not fail the faith test with monotonous regularity. Power corrupts and absolute power is like having 12 blind men try to cross the M25 in thick fog. Impending chaos with wanton death and destruction thrown in for good measure. Science, while not a religion per say has all the characteristics of one. Flashy books, mantras and dogma, very impressive people saying complicated things that you don’t understand and a personal aversion to sexiness. The two sections of society that seem to repel the opposite sex the most are definitely priests and geeks. Science is an anti-religion but that Dawkins bloke (Not the one in the chair) is frankly the biggest plum ever. He doesn’t believe in anything unless he can prove it in an experiment. Get a life and live a little mate.

Back to the story, for the next two thousand years the world’s religions held the whip hand, wars were fought and people died on the back of warring faiths and hateful despotic leaders. Wars in general are fought for two reasons, gold and religion, both are the power to control others, the power to live in a big house and have people do stuff for you so you can get fat and get sexually gratified by whom ever and what ever you want.

The control of your mortal soul was supremely important and the religious leaders would go to any lengths to keep that power. Religions split and splintered as different factions grabbed as much power as they could. More Christians have been killed by their fellow Christians over the centuries than anyone else. The Muslims are the same, they have different factions and in Iraq and Afghanistan they spend much more time blowing up each other rather than the infidel crusaders. Why is this then? Simple - it’s all complete bollocks.

Over the last century science has gone from strength to strength and now all bets are off when it comes to religious control. Okay science has invented ways to kill millions in a single press of the button, but we at least we don’t go to war because some bloke in Rome with the silly hat on had a bad dream and he says so.

Gods were in place to explain the unexplainable, the need for us to feel we were part of something bigger and better, to reinforce our need to be the centre of the universe and to give us something to look forward to when we die. Science has replaced or dispelled a lot of this and religion is becoming more and more marginalised.

Religion is just the god system that got out of hand crossed with the human desire to get rich and lazy as fast as possible. I admit that sometimes good people got entangled in this mess. They try to do selfless generous things but they are swamped by the mire of complete tripe and rubbish. Also contrary to what they tell you godless people are just as good as anyone else. They are two completely separate concepts and being holy doesn’t make you a nice person. Religion just complicates things. If you believe in a god and an afterlife then treat others as you would want to be treated, look after the weak, help others when you can.  Do that and I reckon you should be all right.

Hercules you're going to hell for that

December marches on and everyone is focused on the best holiday of the year, you know presents in excess, drinking to excess, food to excess followed by more cold meat and pickle than you can shake a stick at. With the odd hang over and family fight thrown in for good measure obviously. The original reason for this frivolity, back in the day, was to celebrate the winter solstice, a pagan ritual; basically a bit of a party to say thank god we survived till now and any chance we could make it to spring please? Then along came Christianity and before you can say turkey and cranberry sandwiches they’d nicked it, moved it a week and got 3 clever blokes with posh presents involved. They started banging on about mangers, angels and shepherds with not a single flake of snow in sight.

All this because of the one true god rather than some plank of wood that looks like a crow, but why do we have gods, what purpose do they play? It really is much more straight forward than we make it today and I’d like to share it with you. I call it my practical guide to mythology, theology and gobbledygook.

In the beginning we were mere monkeys who picked our bums and the bugs off the backs of anyone that would have sex with us. Life was simple then; contentment was derived from blissful ignorance born of massages, cheap nookie and an abundance of fruit.  Then one day evolution brought three ingredients together that would change things forever. Opposable thumbs, a big brain and a single word, WHY? (Not sure about the question mark, but you get the idea) From that day forward everything we did was driven by the need to know, the need to understand, explain and control. This is when the gods slipped quietly onto the scene and took control.

For your average caveman who could just about fashion crude flint tools knowledge was fleeting and without any kind of language or means of communication any inspirational leap in understanding or thought was lost when the hide clad genius was either eaten by a roving beast or when he drowned in the nearby lake. There were a lot of whys then and very few answers and to bridge that chasm of unknowing, people basically made it up, blaming everything on a strange magical higher power that controlled everything. The sun was a good start and it was worshipped and feared in equal measure.

For the next few millennia people all round the world started to learn some stuff, rudimentary cooking, looking after sheep and what berries not to eat, but they didn’t amount to that much. They continued to ask lots of whys. So we continued to make shit up and why not. Hey presto the gods took major control and religious dogma was just around the corner. We started to write bits and bobs down so we didn’t forget it, but if some bloke (women weren’t trusted) who looked vaguely clever, think Charlton Heston in a beard, said something that kind of sounded right people believed it to be so. If something else happened then it was blamed on the gods. Things often went badly and death and famine stalked the land like two large stalking things (yes, I know it's Blackadder but it’s a classic). So the gods were very busy. The unclean lived in fear and would do just about anything to stay in their local god’s good books and the more bizarre the better. Nothing like sacrificing a virgin or eating cow dung just in case.

Then in areas around the world pockets of clever people appeared, in China, India, Greece and Central America to name a few. On top of asking why people started to prove why. The people in charge didn’t like being questioned and they tried to stop people asking why. This simply didn’t work because some people would still ask why even if the devil was going to stick sharp objects in their butt for eternity. Sometimes this proof was embraced and sometimes it was seen as upsetting the gods, but it often turned out particularly nasty for someone in the piece, usually the so called non believer.

This was the sign of things to come and ever since science has battled religion for the hearts and minds of the masses. Reason versus faith, proof versus dogma. In the early days religion had the upper hand, but as the science improved so the need for faith has reduced. The gods had a big head start and it took a long time for common sense to catch up. The problem was the people running the religions usually ended up with all the money and so the power because people who were about to pop their clogs would do just about anything to get into heaven. Strangely enough no matter how many peasants you had slaughtered giving all your money to a church turned out to be the sure fire way. No surprise there, but what a great scam, no one came back to disprove you and the science lot couldn’t prove anything either. So faced with three options either, A) never ending agony with the devil roasting your wedding tackle over the fires of hell. B) Rotting in a box in the ground or C) eternal bliss with your every wanton desire serviced by half naked goddess' guess what people chose.

Gods were invented to help us explain the unexplainable, to slate the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the give us something to look forward to when we die. Nothing more than that, but like all good ideas it got completely out of hand because humans by nature are greedy, selfish and self-absorbed. These are basic animal instincts that should have been overcome by our civilisation, but I fear we have a ways to go yet

Next Religion ……

Physics, Kola Bears and Beer Goggles

November is over and as with every December thoughts turn to Christmas, you know that religious holiday, the one that worships at the altar of the great god consumerism. It’s supposedly a time of joy and good will to all men, but if that’s the case then when is the time for us to be unholy arses and horrible to a bunch of women. The universe has to have balance, there has to be a counterweight to everything, it’s the way of the world. For every good a bad and a couple of uglies thrown in for good measure.

Everything we do is based on balance, good v evil, day v night, east v west. It’s the struggle that keeps us from flying off into oblivion. They say that opposites attract and nothing could be more true. Without Darth there would be no Luke, without ying there would be no yang, without the devil there is no god, without a hole there would be no polo and without zig zag would just be another line like all the rest. Balance is so important, especially for tight rope walkers and garden Jenga players and I see this equilibrium everywhere I look.

Newton’s first law of motion states that a body will travel in a straight line and at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Which is all about balance, positive and negative, this is important for many circus acts especially those with high falls. The positive being if the tightrope walker stands still he won’t fall off unless something pushes him off, the negative being if he does fall off then gravity will ensure it hurts when he hits the ground.

Take Australia as a perfect example, the country has the best weather, it has great outdoor sports, the beaches are great, it has stunning natural beauty, the standard of living is good and people are warm and friendly. What could be better? But which country has six of the ten deadliest spiders? Some that even live in your toilet! You can’t go swimming in the lakes because the crocodiles eat you, you can’t go swimming in the sea because the sharks eat you. If you don’t get eaten by a great white then be careful as they have 2 types of jelly fish that kill you and not even pissing on yourself helps. If you decide that swimming is too dangerous and you just want to paddle in the shallow water you would think you would be safe, but no, they have a fish that looks like a stone and if you tread on it you’ll be dead in 2 hours. If the stone fish doesn’t kill you then the blue ring octopus will, it's small and quite pretty, but when it bites you all your muscles stop working and you’re toast. Get this - they have a killer shell fish that shoots you with poisoned darts.   The snakes kill you, 1 is aptly named the Death Adder, the spiders kill you, the scorpions kill you and if you annoy a kangaroo it can kill you with one kick. There is a good reason god stuck it at the bottom of world around the back. It’s where he put all his maddest creations he just gave them nice weather to make up for the awful company.

Look at Saudi Arabia, it's a large sand dune of a country that doesn’t have a single river to help sustain life. It’s unbelievably hot during the day and freezing cold in the night. In fact it’s so hot during the day that most of the animals live under ground and their snakes have devised some strange wiggling crawl thing because the sand is so hot. You can’t drink beer and if you touch a woman in public they get to give you a proper whipping for the pleasure.  Not very nice at all but to ensure balance is maintained they’ve got a stack load of oil that they sell to the rest of us to support their camel and Bentley addictions.

France is another point in question and I know I’ve mentioned it before but it needs to be said. It is a great country, warm weather for the beaches in the south, skiing in the north, good farming land in the middle, great food to eat, the best wines, cheeses, fine art, culture, history (not as good as England though, calm down) and beautiful places to visit and see. Unfortunately the people are horrible to you, unless you’re French as well. They are so beyond superior that I can’t even find a word in any language to describe them, they think that the European way is basically the French way, if not then they are out on strike. Just because they’ve got their own kissing they think they are better than the rest of us.

You see this balance in the smaller things in life as well, medicine being one. The plus side is that it makes you better, but to work it has to taste nasty. This holds true for food as well. Chocolate and alike taste nice but is bad for you, food that is bad for your waistline tastes lovely and makes you feel good but makes you look like a certain French tyre advertisement. This is why vegetables taste bad; if they tasted good then no one would have invented toffee popcorn. There has to be balance so anyone who thinks vegetables are nicer than chocolate is probably nasty to puppies all the time.

I know women are complicated creatures, but they still have to live within a balanced universe, their counter balance is of course men. Women usually have a wardrobe full of shoes, men just the ones they need. Women have an outfit for every occasion; men only have shirts and ties that match because they can buy them in a set. Women buy a house because they see the potential and how it can be changed and improved. Men buy a house because they like it. Women don’t want men to ask them what they want; they want men to surprise them and do the hoovering without being prompted. Men are just confused. Men ask for what they want, women are playing some strange opposites game that men don’t know the rules to. Beer makes women more attractive and makes men less attractive. Those are the rules and who am I to say otherwise.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction Newton said and that is just the way of things. So just remember for all this happiness in December there is a cold, wet, miserable day in April when your car will breakdown in the middle of nowhere. When the battery on your phone dies and you miss the series finale of your favourite TV show just remember you were happy before and this payback means the universe doesn’t explode in a massive fireball of death and destruction. 

Snow balls and Sangria

So as I start to pen this tome I'm a little short of things to say, basically I've been stuck inside for a few days because we've had an early winter bout of snow. The media was all a buzz with stories of freak this and abnormal that, strange sights and miracle like events, the earliest snow fall since, wait for it, 1993! I mean it's not exactly a long time is it. I haven't played an LP since 1993 and come to think of it the last time I let my hair grow long was about then as well. Perhaps there is not a lot going on in the world, one of those no news days when a cat stuck in a tree in Swindon gets on the local BBC news at 6. Perhaps not, frankly there's enough  bad news around to keep Natasha Kaplinsky at her desk for hours on end. Where do you start?

 Well south Asia is on the brink of war, the Koreans have got the hump with each other, again. You ate my dog, you ate my goat, my mass synchronised dancing is better than yours, I've got high speed broadband you haven't, ner nerdie ner ner, you shelled your town, I've invited the Yanks around with there big boats to shout "My dad is harder than your dad" over the fence. Slightly more important than the average snow fall in Essex in the 90's.

The fact that the Irish economy is about to implode and if it does then the whole Euro-zone adventure is going to come crashing down around our ears is a bit more concerning than welly high snow drifts in Dover. Now I know we are not in the Euro, but we need to get a few things into perspective. The Euro-zone is our biggest export market and if the rest of Europe doesn't have any money then who's going to buy our jet engineers, sports cars and spend £10 on plastic Beefeaters outside the tower of London. If the Celtic Tiger gets mange then Britain will be awash with  Boy bands, ditch diggers and cheap labourers. What are all the Eastern Europeans going to do, there'll be riots at Nettos across the country, you'll be able to get a plumber around on the day you phone them and the cross rail project will be completed 2 years ahead of target and at a cost of £18.47. Basically chaos.

I'm sure that most people would agree that the fact that the country owes around £1 trillion is a touch more vexing then black ice in Basildon. The numbers are so big as to make no sense what so ever. If you counted to 1 million and you counted 1 number every second it would take you 11.5 days to finish. To count to 1 trillion would take 32,000 years. The government has cut £80 billion from the budget and this is just to claw back what we overspent this year. We've maxed out our Barclaycard, got one of those MBNA ones as well and done that one too. We've had a knock on the door from the bailiffs and if we don't pay up now they're going to take our Wide screen TV, X Box, IPod and the BMW.

Apparently 24 FIFA officials pocketing $100M is less important than comedy snowmen in Scotland. A bunch of corrupt officials that hold the key to around £3 Billion of profit and just because Mr Blatter wants it to go to Russia then it will. The fact that if you win the bid you have to agree to not levy any tax what so ever on FIFA, FIFA's mates and their related football businesses. Plus you have to suspend any workers rights including the minimum wage. They are so bent they can see round corners, if you can get Jack Warner to agree to your bid then you get his two mates as well. I wonder how much they charge.

Now I know weather is a national obsession but come on we have snow every year and we arse it up every year, the roads will jam, the trains will run but no one will be able to get to the stations, the airports will be slightly put out, people will panic and buy loads of bread and milk but lets get it into context, we had a bit of snow in November big deal.

Also what happened to global warming? I thought I was set to enjoy Mediterranean type sunshine, eating dinner on the decking sipping Chianti, eating olives, having long afternoon naps and having my sons chase forgein skirt around the local nightclubs till 4am every night. Guess they'll need to rethink that won't they. Oh that's right they did, after things didn't warm up overnight and the evidence didn't add up, the so called experts decided that global warming didn't mean it would actually get warmer, but we would just get more extreme weather phenomenons. Not so bloody expert after all.

Just like the ever so intelligent astrophysicists who told us the universe started with a big bang (I've seen the proof and it's as flimsy as a hookers underwear) and that this happened 13.7 billion years ago. Now they are happy to tell us that nothing can travel faster than  the speed of light so how do they explain the fact that they found a star system over 20 billion light years away. Easy, they make up some new theory that things did expand faster at the beginning of time in some strange bullshit made up expanding hot air bollocks event due to stupidity and ego theory.

So in summary
The Koreans are having a tiff and that makes us all nervous because one has nuclear bombs,
Ireland has spent all its pocket money and has asked it's parents to buy it more chocolate,
Britain has maxed out its credit card and now can't buy a new sofa every month,
FIFA is a bunch of self righteous thieves and the world cup is going to Russia, Blatter said so,
People have no real idea about global warming they are basically guessing,
Space geeks aren't quite as clever as they thought they were and girls like muscle better,
And snow is fun but not quite as important as the other stuff.

Christmas Carols in Moscow

Christmas is now on the horizon and it's time for us all to focus on the ritual of present transfer. Now being of a certain age, i.e. over 40 (but only just mind you) and I'm getting to the point where I find myself saying stupid things that show just how old and untrendy I've become.  The classic old personism is “When I were a lad!” you even get to affect a rather crappy northern accent as if you actually delivered Hovis bread at 5am every morning.

 It’s one of those slightly patronising things you fall into when you have kids, things you promised yourself you wouldn’t do or say because they sounded so stupid when you were on the receiving end of them.  Some of the things you heard were more inane than others, my all time favourite being “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” or “I’ll wipe that smile off your face.” The mental imagery for those two are just exquisite. I’m happy to say that I have managed to resist most, but while my two boys are under 10 there is still a wonderfully innocent look of amazed incredulity when you tell them that there were no such things as playstations back in the day and phones were very immobile if you had one at all. When you tell them that the nearest you got to a curry was a boil in the bag Vesta meal for 2. Which was basically 4 lumps of chicken in a yellow sauce that resembled nothing else on earth I can think of other than cat bile. They just stand there slack mouthed like fish in a tank.

Looking back things were pretty boring, so the next time you hear some old fart tell you things were so much better in the “Good old days” then you have my permission to flop out the old boy and urinate on his shoes. Ladies you can just smack em in the chops, I can’t condone any woman squatting in the street Paula Radcliffe stylee, it's not nice and any moral high ground you were about to hold has been immediately relinquished.

Things were not better in the good old days and when exactly were these so called good old days, mi ol’ china cocknee sparra. Let’s take a little look at exactly when these Utopian Edens were shall we? Let’s discount the 80’s and 70’s as I’m 40 and I lived through those times. They were basically crap, my Walkman ate both tapes and batteries for fun and the hair cuts were rubbish.

The 60’s were how shall I say it, a pretty mixed bag. The cold war was in full affect so life on the wrong side of the iron curtain was particularly rubbish, living on bread, gruel and lies. The Germans were building a great big wall through Berlin; I reckon that wasn’t too good for morale. The rest of the world were left wondering if that bloke with massive eyebrows in Moscow was going to push his big red button this week. Somewhat tense you might say! The Vietnam War was on the rise and the bay of pigs was a complete cock up as well so the Yanks weren’t too happy either, especially the black ones that weren’t even allowed to sit on the best seats on the bus. China was using its little red book to be very nasty to its poor people. The Israelis’ had a war which lasted 6 days. The Cuban’s had a missile crisis and the whole world shat its pants.  The feminist movement went into full affect in the early 60’s so by definition half the world had the hump and we all know how bad that can be. We had TV, but only 2 channels, how was that good! On the flip side, the music was good; we went to the moon, Barbie got a boyfriend (Ken), the first Lamborghini was built, there were some quality movies  - Spartacus, Jungle Book & The Dirty Dozen and things were a lot more colourful than the grey 50’s. Everyone had more fun, but you still died of some basic stuff in hospitals, a lot of people still didn’t have an inside toilet and if you lived up North there was a good chance someone you knew had died down a coal mine. That doesn’t sound much like the good old days does it?

How do the 50’s shape up? Well badly if you ask me. We still had rationing, i.e. not enough food. There was no world war, but we had a spin off war, something on the side, a cheese and biscuits war in Korea, with the Americans itching to use their H bombs again. The Russians were very grumpy and shot lots of rockets into space to annoy the Americans. We had the Mau Mau in Kenya chopping up white people, China running out of food and millions starving, that wasn’t so good. Basically everyone was skint and tired from the war. You were lucky if you lived till you were 60, no heating, no plumbing, minimal electric, everyone in the north lived on lard, the music was rubbish, the films were poor, the King died, the Ruskies were nicking countries Hitler Stylee, the French started the Vietnam war which they deftly passed to the Americans when it went a bit Pete Tong, the cars were death traps, Africa was revolting, the airplanes kept crashing, someone nicked the Suez canal, posh spies nicked all our secrets and only rich people could drink champagne. Rubbish.

The 40’s had a war and the 30’s had a depression so they were not even in the running as the good old days. The 20’s were completely screwed, the yanks banned booze, the rest of us were either having a revolution, a communist uprising, a fascist take over, a neighbourly war or a disintegrating empire. Then to top it off the world’s finances crashed and the poor couldn’t even afford lard.

So the next time someone says the young haven’t had it so good you shake their hand and tell them they are so right. Then remind them its not just the nippers, that yes we’ve had a few ups and downs but everyone has never had it so good, everyone has a massive tele, a mobile phone, heating, continuous electricity, Fridge freezers, hospitals that do amazing things, TV with 100’s of channels, knowledge on tap, books, science, music on demand, films at their finger tips, freedom of speech, the vote, a mind blowing array of foods and tastes brought to our shores by people from around the world. Holidays, travel, more food than people know what to do with, the right of ownership, emergency services, more cash in your pocket than ever before and those hand warmer things that you use at golf. If anyone tells you it was better at any other time then they are idiots.