Not British Enough for the Daily Disaster?

One of the staff left a copy of today’s Daily Mail in range, so I flicked through it. One thing that struck me was that the dull, processional Monaco Grand Prix was won by an Aussie, the British driver Lewis Hamilton was 5th and it got a two-page colour spread. But the Indianapolis 500, which was won by Scottish driver Dario Franchitti for the 3rd time, got no mention at all.

Rhetoric vs Real World

When Nick Clegg starts banging on about social mobility, is old “Calamity” thinking about getting a 63-stone teenager moving through walls and shifted around with a gang of coppers and paramedics in attendance at a cost of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer?

It all evens out in the end?

There seems to be a strange sort of levelling process going on in Greece. People are stashing all the euros they didn’t pay in taxes under their mattresses and there’s an epidemic of burglaries as the country’s criminal community takes advantage of an opportunity and puts the cash back into circulation.

Can you tell what it is? Well, maybe.

Today’s Daily Telegraph website events include a promise of some pictures from a book published by the Cloud Appreciation Society. The book is called Clouds That Look Like Things and there’s a picture of a cloud on a mountain behind Cape Town to illustrate the point. The cloud is supposed to look like a UFO but it doesn’t exactly get you biting your legs off to see more of the same. Never mind, buy the book.

Floatation or Flotation?

The newspapers can’t agree on the description of the launch of Facebook into the world of stock markets. But they can agree that anyone who paid $38 for the shares was mugged. And let’s face it, one thing the world ain’t short of is mugs.

Believe this and you’ll believe anything

The law against people turning their front garden into a tip “will be worded to protect home-owners from over-zealous council officers patrolling the streets, looking to make money by issuing on-the-spot fines”. Doesn’t say anything about battering a sense of proportion through the skulls of jobsworth zombies, though. Which needs to be done to the police, while we’re at it.

Not Bovvered!

Should we be worried if it’s true that the world is going to Hell but Dave the Leader is doing a lot of relaxing and playing games on his computer? Not if we remember that things always get worse when politicians get meddlesome and start trying to fix things.

You really couldn’t make up something dafter

Did you hear the one about the Ministry of Defence sending a River Police boat to harass a private motorboat on the Thames because the owner’s kids had called it Bin Laden 1 and the dolts at the MoD though it was a threat to security at the Olympics?

Better Luck Next Time

Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Nothing! A big sense of disappointment for all those who gathered for the launch of the private enterprise Falcon 9 rocket, which was supposed to take supplies up to the ISS and dump tiny samples of ashes from people like Scotty of Star Trek in space. The computer aborted the launch because it didn’t like what one of the engines was doing. But the good news for SpaceX is that the rocket didn’t explode, like some of NASA’s early attempts, and they can try again in 3 days’ time.

Nice one, Big G!

I reckon God is trying to tell the new pres. of France something if M. Hollande was soaked to the skin during his triumphal parade and his plane was struck by lightning on the way to meet Kanzler Merkel of Germany.

Big-time self-loathing?

M. Hollande, the new French president, says he “dislikes rich people”. So does that include all pretend socialists who have a property empire worth well over one-million euros? Like, well, François himself?

Done up like a kipper. Again.

There’s an infinite number of ways you can be screwed. Lewis Hamilton seems to be experiencing all of them in Formula One. He set the fastest time in qualifying, he didn’t have enough fuel to get back to base and he was stuck at the back of the grid when you are dropped just 5 places for swapping out an engine. If that’s fair, I’m the king of Argentina.

So what should they have done?

Hearts are bleeding about a man with dementia being tasered by the police so he could be hauled off to hospital. But imagine the outcry if the coppers had been forced to get the job done with nothing more technical than batons ‘n’ boots ‘n’ fists.

Anyone would think their economy wasn’t in meltdown

What exactly is the point of the Spanish government kicking its toys out of the pram over a visit to Gibraltar by Prince Edward? Is their tantrum going to change anything? No. Do they have vastly more important things to worry about? Yes. But hey, you can’t expect a government to keep its mind on the job in hand, can you?

How many cheers does he expect?

And is it possible to deliver a negative number? We have been told that Tony B. Liar is busting a gut to return to British politics because he has lots more to say. One thing he hasn’t said yet is where he plans to start his next war for fun and his profit.

The Bozo Tendency is still winning

If you work at Scotland Yard, you can’t use the words “blacklist” and “whitelist” any more. You have to use “redlist” and “greenlist” instead as it’s “more appropriate language in a professional, police environment”. So if you were ever wondering why policing in Britain no longer works, it’s because they’re churning out this sort of crap instead of doing too much tracking down of criminals. Which is, like, dangerous, man and contra-indicated on 'elf 'n' safety grounds.

You can’t give up what you never had

The election results in France and Greece yesterday are being spun as oppressed people giving up on austerity and voting for lots of lovely tax and spend. But they haven’t actually had any austerity yet. Which means that spongers expect to get even more cash from the only countries which actually contribute to the EU’s coffers – us and the Germans. It’s at times like this that you wish that you had a prime monster who can summon up the courage to say Boo! to the EU monster.

They can’t do that!

No more wind-turbine Toryism to make Dave popular enough be be re-elected? Anyone would think there’s something wrong with paying lots of taxpayers’ cash to rich people with wind farms for the privilege of posturing on the world stage and waving worthless Green credentials around.

What a F.A.C-up!

The F.A. Cup has kicked off at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon since way back into the 20th century. Then along comes some over-blown tosser who decides to change the kick-off time to 5:15 p.m. in the early evening just to get himself noticed. Sheesh!

Date check okay? So what’s going on?

There it is in the Daily Disaster, Tony B. Liar has hired a spin doctor as a first step to getting himself back into British politics. Presumably, as Lord Liar of Baghdad. First thing you do, check the date at the top of the page. Surprise! It’s not April 1st. Surely the old fraud can’t be serious about having things to say to his British subjects. Especially when the only talking he should be doing is from the dock at The Hague during his trial for war-crimes against humanity.

No quite so unanimous

How amusing to note that the Labour MP who got Mr. Murdoch condemned in the Commons report has a book to plug and he’s also a former hit-man for Wee Gordie Broon, who has never forgiven Mr. Murdoch for ditching him. So all the sound and fury, as usual, signifies nothing more than self-publicity and a bitter man’s revenge.

Deja vu all over again

A bunch of MPs have decided that Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to run a major international company” and he showed “wilful blindness” to phone hacking. So should Murdoch be worried? Well, swap “Tony Blair” for “Rupert Murdoch”, “government” for “international company” and “Iraq's weapons of mass destruction” for “phone hacking”. And then remember what happened to Blair. [Clue: nothing.]