Brennig Jones (and friends)

I was going to use this lunchtime to let loose a huge fucking great rant about the BBCs new ‘Youf’ experiment ‘BBC Switch’ and follow that up with an equally large bucket of bile focussed at that awful vehicle of chav news ‘BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat’ but instead…

I have had a serious expression of interest from a literary agent for my new novel.

Fingers well and truly crossed.

To fellow equestrian, my mate going back many years and occasional commenter here, Vicky, who had a fall with her horse Rupert.

Vicky has fractured her elbow and torn her liver. Rupert has bitten through his lip.

I hope you both take your time, get over it and come back when you’re both good and ready.

x

I appreciate that the whole issue of MPs expenses is a complex and somewhat intricate problem. But it seems to me that the difficulty of the problem is compounded by the continuing ‘patch up’ nature with which parliament itself has attempted to deal with the issue.

However one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to come up with a solution.

And although it would be helpful to understand the precise nature of the problem if we could all take a step back and get analytical about what, precisely, is the problem, I have one underlying rule which should be the basis rule – the fundamental rule of law – that is applied to all Members of Parliament without exception.

And here it is.

Rule 1: You must live in your constituency.
For the duration of your parliamentary service, your constituency address must be your main home. When you register as an MP to represent a constituency you must live within it. If, during your parliamentary time, you relocate your main home from outside your constituency you must resign your parliamentary seat with immediate effect.

(these go out on twitter, the results will be discussed in This Reality Podcast, episode 58 which will be recorded/released  next weekend)

Question:
Podcast poll #7: Underwear ! Embarrassing underwear tales? Ever worn underwear of the opposite sex? Why?

Comments here or mailto: thisrealitypodcast@gmail.com (anonymity guaranteed to the latter but not the former!)

It is only Saturday mid-afternoon and I feel drained.

We were up early and out of the house for an 09.00 appointment at Relate (I feel that the counsellor wanted us to explore sordid sexual details, which weren’t forthcoming. Oh no baby. We keep those things to ourselves!). As you would expect from the pair of us we were open and honest and good-natured.

Afterwards we braved the freezing gusts of blusterry galedom, walked in to the centre of Oxford and headed straight for a Latté.

What planet are people from? Those people. The girls walking around in leggings and vests with hideously large and ineffective belts slung around their waists?

Or those people, the ones in short skirts and strappy tops that show far too much cleavage when the temperature is a balmy (not!) six degrees?

I’m asking where these people come from because there were hundreds of them walking around the centre of Oxford today, all dressed as if they’d just jetted in from Bermuda. It wasn’t just the girls. Boys in shorts and t-shirts too. WTF?

Anyway, we warmed our hands and insides and cake may have been partaken.

Ahem.

Then we browsed HMV and bookshops and the shopping arcades and then we met Jaimie, a guy who wants to contribute to the podcast.

This makes two people, Jaimie and Will, who have volunteered to review, interview and record for This Reality Podcast. I’m very excited by their participation, drive and enthusiasm.

More hot drinks followed and then we said goodbye to Jaime and headed home for cuddles and snogs and a little fondling on the couch. This may have been followed by a doze on my part.

And now I have to get changed, go up to the yard and show Philippa how to drive my lorry because I said she could borrow it next weekend.

And then I shall ride the Vinster.

Then home again.

On the face of it I have done nothing today – except been out for six hours. But I am completely washed out.

We got a message on our library database system today, from another library.

The message system is generally used for shelf checks and ‘please help!’ type things, but this one simply said:

“News Flash” a book has just been returned at [name of library]. From May 1971!!!!!!!”

I’ve published the podcast’s first gig review over here.

inLight.

A truly excellent band. You will be able to listen to 1m 22s of their opening number in this week’s podcast. Which I’m about to sit down and record.

Yay!

A couple of hundred years ago I used to have a pair of flairs.

Not the namby pamby flairs that the kids of today occasionally sport. These were serious flairs. Premier League flairs. These were the Liverpool Football Club or Manchester United Football Club of flairs.

These were flairs that had been unpicked on the side seam and had extra pieces of material sewn in to make them the uber-flairs that were so stylish (way back when dinosaurs walked the face of the world).

They were grey, these flairs. And pinstriped. But denim. And jeans.

What I used to wear with my King-of-all-Flairdom jeans was a pair of tan leather boots, a little like riding boots but not quite, a white, long-sleeved cheesecloth shirt and a very long, blue, patterned waistcoat, made out of cotton. With tassels on. A bit sort of Hendrix-ish. Or so I thought.

I was so cool.

Man, the chics loved me

And so did the ducks. And the hens. But that old cockerel, he had a suspicious look in his eye whenever he caught sight of me if I was dressed in my Saturday best. Or so I thought.

But the girls?

Nah, they thought I dressed like a freak, even if I did think I was the coolest thing in the known universe.

That’ll be why I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 35*.

The reason for this period of clothing recall is because the 20-something student-type who just tried to hop up on to the bus in an athletic manner, fell flat on his face. He tripped over his flairs.

It’s a good job he wasn’t wearing a pair of uber-flairs. He might have killed himself.

* Some or all of these statements may be true. Or untrue. The management reserves the right to rearrange the facts at will, at their leisure and in a way that is solely calculated to cause the maximum of confusion to anyone who attended any of the same schools that I did at the same time as me. Thank you.

Look, I’m sorry about this but I just can’t get my head around something. I’m an analytical kind of person and my reasoning isn’t too shabby but there is a situation I don’t understand. I’m obviously failing to understand something. Can you point out to me what it is that I don’t get?

Iraq.

Years ago George W Bush and Tony Blair told us that Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq despotically. They called Iraq a rogue state.

To back up their claims of how awful Iraq was they also said that Iraq supported Al Qaeida. They lied about this, as has been widely acknowledged.

George W Bush and Tony Blair also said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed within 15 minutes notice.

They lied about this too – both of these statements.

Then George and Tony railroaded us in to an invasion of Iraq that they said was legal. They lied about this.

The invasion became a full-blown war which today has cost over one hundred thousand lives and has cost the taxpayers of the US and the UK trillions of £s or USD.

They said this war was legal and they lied about this too.

Then – while the war was still in full swing with many lives being lost on a daily basis – George W and Tony said that the war in Iraq wasn’t about Weapons of Mass Destruction anymore because they didn’t exist and they knew that now.

They said that the war in Iraq was now all about regime change. It was now all about removing a despotic, unaccountable regime who had murderous policies, a regime that oppressed its people, a regime that executed its citizens without legal transparency and with an apparent lack of full recourse to the law.

And the US and the UK put a regime in charge to replace the old despotic one, to put transparency and due process in place and to give the citizens of Iraq an administrative and a legal process that they deserved.

And the US and the UK has spent billions supporting, arming and training this regime.

And yet, today I read that the regime in Iraq – ‘our’ regime – is about to begin executing 128 prisoners, in batches of 20. And that the Iraqi government is not releasing the names of the prisoners or the details of their secret trials, just like the old ‘nasty’ regime.

So my question is…

What am I missing?

(these go out on twitter, the results will be discussed in This Reality Podcast, episode 57 which will be recorded/released this weekend)

Podcast poll #6:
Celebrity stories! Good, bad, accidental, bumping in to or just stalking. Reply here or thisrealitypodcast@gmail.com