OH FUCK OFF MORRISEY!

The panda is probably the most irrepressibly suicidal animal on the planet. I cannot think off hand (and outside of my myopic anti-panda agenda) of another animal quite so intent on wiping its own species from the face of the Earth.

The newborn panda is functionally useless – a fucking idiot. It takes a panda roughly six weeks to bother to open its eyes and can take up to eighteen months before it begins stumbling towards self-dependence. All this can be something of a nightmare when panda-maw has all the maternal instincts and energy of Rosemary West on ketamine.

For those ‘fortunate’ pandas who miraculously survive their mothers unintentional predilection towards infanticide, adulthood offers nothing in the way of a reprieve. For the panda has evolved into two things – an omnivorous lazy bastard.

‘Where’s the fucking bamboo?’ I hear it ask. ‘Over there?’ it returns exasperated. ‘But I sit here not over there’ it reasons. ‘I guess I’ll just have to fucking DIE then!’ it offers unreasonably before keeling over to complete a cruel but deserved self-fulfilling prophecy.

For those pandas fortunate enough to have registered their fat lazy arse in an area of ASDA Superstore-like bamboo leaf abundance, the opportunity to have sex is likely to present itself. Unfortunately, most pandas have no idea how to indulge in the old game. In Chengdu here in China, panda conservationists have resorted to showing the pandas pornography in order to encourage them to have sex. Even after that, they still don't seem that arsed. Maybe its because they know that centuries of in-breeding means they might well be doing their cousin and find that... frankly... a bit weird.

In case your wondering – panda porn, not human…

So the panda goes quite far out of its way to make the survival of its ruthlessly localised in-bred species highly unlikely. In fact, probably the only animal more stupid and hell bent on destroying itself is… Morrissey.

Recently, prior to performing his track ‘Meat Is Murder’ Morrissey chided the recent mass slaughter in Norway as being nothing compared to the brutal impact of industrial farming on the bun-bound animals required by fast food outlets KFC and MacDonalds.

Now, in the unlikely event anyone actually reads this I should point out that this is only my opinion but in making this statement Morrissey achieves nothing more than sounding like an exceptional prick. Sorry mate you might have a point to make about the cruelty of mass farming but even the worlds worst PR man (i.e. anyone who would advise clients to go on Celebrity Bargain Hunt or Celebrity Racist Bingo starring John Macrirrick With His Nipples Out) would advise not to do it before the bodies of the dead in a disaster that happened LAST WEEK have even been fully accounted for.

Perhaps Morrissey will wake up this morning and think ‘I could murder a soy-bean daiquiri. Maybe he’ll think of having a bean burger. Either way, I hope he’ll not be a self-gratifying twat and spare a thought for the millions of animals, insects and birds whose habitats have been wiped out by incessant human demand for farmable land. For vast swathes of Argentina’s vibrant natural heartlands are being savaged annually to meet the global demand for soybean products. Mountainous piles of unwanted mushrooms are sent to landfill as by-products of tofu production. For anyone who gives a shit about human cost and isn’t a prick, there’s also a fairly high human cosy also.

So as Morrissey tucks into his soybean daiquiri I hope he spares a thought for the countless species that surrendered to the inevitable and died out so land could be cleared to meet his angelic dietary preferences; then I hope he applies the alcoholic confidence afforded by his ill-gotten beverage and apologises for his insensitivity.

P.S. This is not an anti-vegetarian rant. I’m essentially vegetarian now because I know the quality of meat where I live is beyond appalling. However, I at least recognise the effects of my dietary choices…

To The Aztec... Shit! Rosie Pick Up Your Teeth!

When I was a child, I was simply ravenous with desire to appear on the Crystal Maze. I’d go sleepless nights dreaming about squinting uncomfortably as relentless studio lighting bounced and danced from Richard O’Brien’s impeccably bald head. I’d imagine wearing the ‘all-weather’ tracksuit and running at speed to keep up with Richard as we moved seamlessly but chaotically between challenges. Sometimes, I just sat agog wondering how someone of such thespian heritage became so good at navigating labyrinths.

Of course, there was only really one part of the show in which I wished to participate. I’d tolerate hopping through the sun-drenched Aztec zone or the sci-fi discomfort of the Futuristic Zone. Sure, I’d run around with Greg the accountant from Bromley or Sue the copywriter from Stevenage who has four teeth all vying to lodge permanently in her bottom lip, but I’d only be hanging in for the final challenge.

For those of you who have not seen the show it works a little like this. Everyone gets dressed in North Korean shell suits and casts off the shackles of their boring existence to complete physical and mental tasks and win highly coveted Swarovski crystals. Naturally, you are guided around the complex maze of challenge rooms to that final challenge by that curiously competent alopecian – Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Ultimately, Riff-Raff leads you to the final challenge where you exchange your crystals (rather than steal them which makes a lot of economic sense) for five seconds of time spent jumping around like an attention-deficit dwarf in a crystal-shaped wind tunnel trying to catch little paper tokens. But there’s a catch and it is this…

Gold tokens good… Silver tokens bad!

Now of course, when you are hopping around like a donkey on amphetamines and have the guts off a hovercraft engine firing jets of compressed air at your genitals, it’s pretty difficult to be discriminative. Unless you are some kind of mechatron or eunuch you just have to close your eyes, take the pain and grab every little shiny piece of paper you see.

My personal tactic would be to sacrifice the less athletic candidates (essentially the rotund, portly and those who enjoy a somewhat strained relationship with aero-dynamism) and have them lie on the floor obstructing the jets of air. Then, it’s simply a matter of picking the tokens up from their trampled beaten corpses and posting them through the ever so civil letterbox which has now become the sole source of oxygenated air for the entire crystal.

Of course, such a tactic would allow you to be more selective of your token choices and increases the likelihood of you picking up those coveted gold tokens. To win the game, your team had to post 100 gold tokens through the said letterbox and ensure each one was not cancelled out by posting those dastardly silver tokens. Somewhat cheaply in keeping with the fantasy of the show, the gold tokens were simply silver tokens that had been sprayed gold pre-production. The impossible task of collecting these phony gold tokens was then made all the more difficult as the turbulent airstreams stripped the gold tokens of their colour and returned them to a silvery shine.

‘Fix!’ I hear you cry…

I guess though, that simply made it all the more meaningful when a group actually won the game. Teams were rewarded with ‘the adventure holiday of a lifetime’ and more often than not it was. Of course you felt sorry for Keith from Blackburn who shook with fear when rewarded for his aptitude at solving lexical challenges with the cave-diving tiger fighting road trip from hell. You felt equally sorry for 79 year old Betty whose best Inca-trekking days were surely behind her even if she could win crystals in 20-seconds for solving four thousand letter anagrams using only a spoon and geriatric sensibility.

Primarily, you probably felt a little bit sorry for yourself knowing that you’d never got to be part of that winning team. First, you’d imagine Nigel from Lincolnshire having the time of his life while wrestling whales on the moon. Then you’d imagine little Naomi from Trowbridge battling to keep her huge teeth in her head as she hurtles parachute first into a vat of your childhood dreams in Disneyland. Then you’d run upstairs – weeping probably - and draw pictures of yourself in stylish Pyongyang coveralls darting around the Industrial Zone with your teammates – and friends – Dennis Bergkamp and a young Isla Fisher from Home & Away.

But then, times were simpler then…

Is anyone else a little dismayed with British politics lately?...

(Disclaimer: I'm a layman - I accept this...)

You know, I can remember the fond old days when it was only the United States of America who insisted on involving itself in messy protracted civil wars in places where their political and social ideologies were somewhat alien to those they were fighting to ‘free’. However, as their international bitch, it seems the United Kingdom now sees fit to dive headlong into a military operation which even from the outset seems likely to be a protracted and bloody affair.

Thank goodness we chose to invade Libya. I mean it wouldn’t do for us to be running headlong into Yemen or Bahrain where barbarism and cruelty are similarly employed by the ruling regimes to neutralise the threat of revolt amongst their subjects. No… The truth is we quite like the people who are running Yemen and Bahrain or at least our very powerful friends do anyway.

And of course, it wouldn’t do for the US and UK to simply follow the terms of the UN mandate. It now seems that the legal tenets of the document have been stretched to such a point that it now covers killing civilians, shelling indiscriminately in cities and now it appears – exterminating Gaddafi.

Thank goodness for the spring budget. An opportunity for the government to provide the big society with a dose of that fairness they have been offering. And yes they have indeed unburdened motorists at long last with a 1p reduction in the price of a litre of fuel. Thank fuck I hear you all cry given that they’ve also increased the VAT on fuel by 3p a litre thus ensuring you now only pay an extra two pence at the pumps.

And lo, the government has also decided to freeze council tax this year for all householders in England and Wales which aligns with the current tendency to freeze council tax in Scotland. This same council tax freeze has led most local authorities in Scotland to scythe frontline public services and seek ‘efficiency savings’ by trimming away at support services for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Imagine the scenario… You used to attend a very popular and accommodating social group run by caring and vocational individuals. Sure you’ve got autism and a tendency towards violent mood swings by they seem to understand the problems and are always there for you no matter what happens. Hell now you think about it you’ve been waiting all week to attend the club and its little things like this that make you feel so much better about yourself now you’re no longer living in that horrible hospital.

And then… Oh!... The Efficiency Savings Director has decided that people like you don’t actually require these vocational services and could probably manage fine without them. That’s right! Lump it!

Freezing council tax is all very well and looks good for the government. But I can guarantee you it provides a blank mandate to councils who can now trot out the trodden national government line that cuts are essential because there simply won’t be the money to pay for services anymore. And the first people to get it in the neck will be the ones who always get it in the neck – those with recognised conditions who in themselves too battered and worn out from their trials with the system to even put up a fight any more.

It seems this government is so near sighted towards the interests of business and is therefore content to spit out the occasional nugget to win big fonts in the tabloids. So near sighted in fact they’d probably consider resolving the above issue by offering everyone with a recognised condition (of any type) a 1p VAT reduction on wheelchair purchases.

I’m sure they’d even be loathe to do that. I read recently that Westminster council is working towards making it illegal to provide food to homeless individuals and also make ‘begging’ illegal. This is the big society at work people. Well at least we are allowed to be ‘the big society’ until we take the whole thing too literally and start providing food to our most vulnerable members. That aside, the presiding conservative council and the national minister ultimately suggest that these measures will encourage homeless people to seek placements, tenancies and ya-de-ya-de-yas which – sadly – are dropping out of existence due to the efficiency savings we discussed earlier.

At my most conspiratorial, I’d hazard a guess that the plan is to get all homeless people and all other vulnerable individuals off the support rosters and into the care of the NHS. It’s already happening in Scotland where efficiency savings are pushing many people back into the bosom of the health service where previously they’d been getting along fine with a little helping hand.

But it seems to me that in alarm clock Britain if you cannot help yourself then you’re pretty much fucked!