Permit me a rant - I'm in the mood...
I'm sitting here on November 2, and fireworks are blasting the night peace, causing mayhem among animals everywhere. My dogs are going berserk - and anything that upsets my dogs upsets me.
There's Saturday and Sunday and there's Monday (the actual Bonfire Night when we expect them), but no, the morons out there can't wait and have to have them tonight as well. Louder the better, of course.
I open the papers and we're into six months of daily coverage of Madeleine. Tragic yes, but tragedy is all around us and never have the papers clung so veraciously to one instance of it.
On another page, Heather is blithering at her bad press and compares herself to Kate McCann and Princess Diana. No comparison dear.
I switch on the telly and the 24 hour news programme make the proverbial drama out of minescule news items. If they don't we'll all switch off - but I am doing anyway. God deliver us from Sky News.
Then there's the soaps - used to be a couple of times a week, and just about bearable. Now wall to wall, specially extended specials, twice a night, screeching and weeping and all outdoing each other for sensational drama. There's docusoaps on the soaps. Award nights for the soaps. Me, utterly soaped-out.
In the real world, there are unbelievable tragedies of kids (aged 7, for God's sake) being killed crossing motorways, and adults being swept away by killer seas. Absolutely terrible, but were these accidents waiting to happen. A little forethought and all that...
I drive to work, and sit for hours going nowhere in jams. I try the train and have to let two pull out because there's no room to get on.
A police chief advocating tougher penalties for motoring offences gets charged with - doing 90 in a 60 limit, his third offence. A Home Office Minister is fined for using his mobile while driving. Well, everyone else seems to - (no, I don't, I'm sure you don't either.)
The Met Police is found guilty of Health and Safety (what!!) crimes for shooting dead an innocent Brazilian. No-one takes responsibility. The Met are fined, so will have to put up their precept - money they'll demand from us - next time round. Tragedy for Jean Charles indeed, but if this had have have happened in Rio he would be just another statistic in the toll of more than 900 people shot there by police - many questionable - this year alone. Here, a police force is being brought to its knees to the glee of the usual rent-a-crowd.
I turn to the refuge of the PC Forum - but most regulars seem to have left and others are saying goodbye. A seemingly innocuous interchange with like-minded Swedish folk turns into a diplomatic incident.
What IS the world coming to?
There, feel better now - time for a drink and a bacon butty. Oh can't do that, it'll kill me...
Me, a grumpy old man, like those lambasted elsewhere on the Forum? No, I'm just practising...!!
I'm sitting here on November 2, and fireworks are blasting the night peace, causing mayhem among animals everywhere. My dogs are going berserk - and anything that upsets my dogs upsets me.
There's Saturday and Sunday and there's Monday (the actual Bonfire Night when we expect them), but no, the morons out there can't wait and have to have them tonight as well. Louder the better, of course.
I open the papers and we're into six months of daily coverage of Madeleine. Tragic yes, but tragedy is all around us and never have the papers clung so veraciously to one instance of it.
On another page, Heather is blithering at her bad press and compares herself to Kate McCann and Princess Diana. No comparison dear.
I switch on the telly and the 24 hour news programme make the proverbial drama out of minescule news items. If they don't we'll all switch off - but I am doing anyway. God deliver us from Sky News.
Then there's the soaps - used to be a couple of times a week, and just about bearable. Now wall to wall, specially extended specials, twice a night, screeching and weeping and all outdoing each other for sensational drama. There's docusoaps on the soaps. Award nights for the soaps. Me, utterly soaped-out.
In the real world, there are unbelievable tragedies of kids (aged 7, for God's sake) being killed crossing motorways, and adults being swept away by killer seas. Absolutely terrible, but were these accidents waiting to happen. A little forethought and all that...
I drive to work, and sit for hours going nowhere in jams. I try the train and have to let two pull out because there's no room to get on.
A police chief advocating tougher penalties for motoring offences gets charged with - doing 90 in a 60 limit, his third offence. A Home Office Minister is fined for using his mobile while driving. Well, everyone else seems to - (no, I don't, I'm sure you don't either.)
The Met Police is found guilty of Health and Safety (what!!) crimes for shooting dead an innocent Brazilian. No-one takes responsibility. The Met are fined, so will have to put up their precept - money they'll demand from us - next time round. Tragedy for Jean Charles indeed, but if this had have have happened in Rio he would be just another statistic in the toll of more than 900 people shot there by police - many questionable - this year alone. Here, a police force is being brought to its knees to the glee of the usual rent-a-crowd.
I turn to the refuge of the PC Forum - but most regulars seem to have left and others are saying goodbye. A seemingly innocuous interchange with like-minded Swedish folk turns into a diplomatic incident.
What IS the world coming to?
There, feel better now - time for a drink and a bacon butty. Oh can't do that, it'll kill me...
Me, a grumpy old man, like those lambasted elsewhere on the Forum? No, I'm just practising...!!
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