In Recess

Unfortunately for me I must engage with REAL life once more. As i am away the blog will be on hold once more, parliament has broken up for the summer anyway and as I place most of my attention onto them for this it would probably be slim pickings for content anyway... 

So... SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBER!

Please sir, can I have some more?

I wanted to analyze a debate that has fallen into an incomprehensible obscurity this week. Like all arguments that blaze for a bit too long without reaching a conclusion, Helicopter-gate is now very difficult to follow - but we shall try... With a recent surge in activity by our army in Afghanistan we have seen a lot of casualties coming from the region, bringing total deaths in the Afghan war up to a critical level and sparking questions from all about whether or not we should be there at all. Somehow, through all the numbers, statistics and points raised, the thing that has really stuck in the media and political limelight is helicopters...

It starts out as a reasonable question about whether we have enough helicopters. It continues with a reasonable response that we do have enough helicopters. Then someone who used to be in the army said they should have more helicopters. Then someone who IS in the army says they have just about enough helicopters but wouldn't mind more helicopters because they would be useful. The government says they have given 60% more helicopters which sounds like a lot, but then we find out we actually only have 10 helicopters anyway and thats not actually a lot at all...

So then the government comes out and says that we do have enough helicopters but we are going to give them more helicopters (even though we just said they have enough) and then there will be enough helicopters for sure! Now, by this point, i have heard the word HELICOPTER so many times my head is spinning faster than a set of propellers and the argument itself has become almost impossible to recall without a haunting montage of grown adults saying that one word again and again until they all start to sound like children playing with their favorite Transformer toy... 

"Mum! he has a gun and he has a missile and... and... he turns into a HEWICOPTER! but the Autobots don't have enough hewicopters to fight back! A HEWICOPTER MUMMY, A HEWICOPTER!!!!!!!"

I close the debate with the ONE statistic that really puts it into perspective; we have about 8000 troops in Afghanistan, and they have 10 helicopters. The USA have about 8000 troops in Afghanistan also, and they have 120.

This meeting sucks, Berlusconi - call the girls!

It feels like we are always having G8's or G12's or G20's. I do remember when there was maybe one a year? now it seems like we cant go five minuets without the world's leaders getting together under their self fashioned rap name. For any body not familiar with the G8\12\20 (we will just call them the G-unit shall we?) its essentially a big meeting between the richest countries where they sit around and discuss important things that smaller, crapper countries wouldn't understand.

its held in a different country every time, this weeks being in Italy hosted by playboy Berlusconi, who has very kindly taken time out from leaching over teenage glamour models and brushing off some very public divorce proceedings to accommodate our very own Gordon Brown, Jesus H. Obama and the rest of the big players. After a few photos for their face books, a bit of lunch and a nice mutual blow-job for the press' benefit the real work can begin...

Increasingly this "real work" consists of trying to feel out an agreement for how to cut carbon emissions and put a stop to climate change - as it rightly should. Luckily we are generally past all the "climate change doesn't exist" bull shit. Its unbelievable that some people took this view to be quite honest - to say we, the human race, might not cause climate change is a feeble argument but at least it makes some sense! but saying climate change doesn't exist at all! what was the Ice Age then dick heads? just a bad winter that went on a few weeks longer than normal? try a few thousand years longer.

Anyway, having established that climate change can (and does) happen we could start making progress - and we have. The G unit now fairly unanimously accept that climate change is happening and that its likely their smoky, power hungry little countries that are doing it. So maybe this summet could be the one! an agreement finally reached! years of expensive procrastination at lofty global board meetings might finally produce a positive outcome!

no.

Because, even though they all agree and know they should do something, when it comes round to actually taking action... well, it all sounds a bit too much like hard work. China and India don't want to cut emissions because their Industry dependent countries would loose income, America wont do anything unless everyone dose and once their not taking part frankly what is the point? and they all fly home in their fuel guzzling privet jets... still i hear the food was good and i'm sure Berlusconi wouldn't let an afternoon pass without a few lap dancers to keep the guys going so we'll just call it another expenses-paid holiday shall we? brilliant. 

Remember, Braveheart dies

It makes it hard to write a blog that is almost completely news-driven when you can't find the news. Alas this was the predicament upon my return from away-time because apparently britain at large had discovered tennis as it does so every year through the Wimbledon tournament. It was with my head in my hands that i consulted the listings to see the BBC news shunted up and down and side to side with all the dignity of an aging and over weight drag queen attempting "its raining men" on the carry-okie at a run down bar over looking Blackpool pleasure beach...

Yes the nation was once again trying with all their might to like Andy Murry enough to cheer him on to reach the final (which we all know Federer-er will win; and i assume has won upon your reading of this). The problem is that Scottish Tennis-Braveheart Murry forgot how the story of Braveheart actually ends... defeat and ceremonial execution after a long drawn-out torturing at the hands of some one cruel (in this case Andy Roddick).

You would think the BBC would be honest at this point and realize that the viewers for wimbledon will be likely to drop right off, with national interest still in the running, but it commits to its schedule-disrupting even as i sit and write this. Still its no great loss because even when i did catch the news it was just full of rather emotionless reporters confirming to me every hour on the hour that Michael Jackson is still dead... he's dead... still... still dead that one... his music is very popular but now he's dead... yeah, he'll be dead for quite a while... dead... WAIT HE'S ALIVE! oh no, my mistake, they're just showing a clip from the thriller video for the thousandth FUCKING TIME!

its with regret that i haven't discussed anything "important" but if i must have tennis and a still dead Michael Jackson rammed down my throat - so must you.