Slight change of plan affects todays blogging

I had a wee visit to the hospital for an x-ray on my gammy shoulder. I broke my clavical/collar bone about 4 months ago now and it's been slowly but surely mending. It was quite a nasty break and there is still some loose bone fragments but the two main bits are basically fixed together and i have complete freedom of movement etc.

So i had been expecting a lift but it fell through, so i had to get the bus which meant i didn't get to drop in at Asda to buy the Independent on route. Indeed i ended up making a mad dash for the bus and had to quickly buy the first paper that came to hand to break a £10 note to get change for my bus fare. The paper i had to settle on was the Sun, the best quality writing in that paper is generally Dear Deidre so i doubt there will be much in my posts today about issues outside of what the Sun considers news for it's target demographic, people with an IQ of 70 and under. And indeed on page 3 eschewing the traditional young lady with her 'baps' out there is excellent piece of journalism about "EU meddlers want to ban pub girls' low-cut tops." Not one to miss an oppurtunity there are two young ladies in revealing tops playig at being 'bar wenches'.

However i had planned on writing about the front page headline of the sun after seeing it at the end of Newsnight Scotland. Hadn't actually been watching newsnight, i was waiting on the following programme, How to Start Your Own Country which i enjoyed quite a bit. I can't remember how much he featured in the TV series Are you Dave Gorman, but he did co write the hilarious book of that particular adventure and this seems to be silliness along the same lines and most enjoyable to. If you wish to know more about that then look here and possibly become a citizen of an as yet unnamed country.

So anyway back to the Sun headline i felt like writing about, it was"Let's put GREAT back into BRITAIN you can do your bit." I see a headline like that and i cringe. Then you read the first few paragraphs and the Sun tells us what we can all do to make Britain great again, at this point i'm trying to get eyebrows off the ceiling as i imagine what the Sun has in mind, possibly making watching the Queens speech mandatory i shiver at the very thought.

Apparantly we have a lost sense of Duty and Pride to regain. Now i'm with Bill Hicks again on this one about pride in ones country, "Are you proud of being American." "Gee i dunno my parents fucked there." Why should anyone really take pride in their country, we are all born where we born and well there you go. Sure you know every country can point to it's good point and bad but i think patriotism and excessive nationalisitc feeling is rather unhealthy. Why should i distance myself from people from other countries? Britain has an interesting history i'll give you that, invented a whole bunch of stuff, is a fairly free society still and isn't the worst place in the world to live. I don't think the history of the British Empire is anything to be proud of, it's slightly embarressing that we still have a monarchy and our recent political actions on the world stage i regard as downright criminal. So no i can't say i am proud of my country and for good reason. We are to close to the Bush administration which i regard as downright evil nevermind criminal.

So basically i don't think i'm with the Sun on this one, but i'll look at the 'advice'. Piece of advice number 5 is to write to your MP to get the Human Rights Act repealed. I'm not an expert on he minutia of Law and possibly the legislation isn't perfect but this sounds alright by me. I think we should all fight any loss of liberty to suit current political expediency. Number 1 by the way was show respect to authority figures. Well i wouldn't suggest undue harrassment but what sort of police state wet dream do these people want? Number 9 is good, make conversation on public transport and give up your seat to mums to be and the elderly. Strangers can damn well leave me in peace on public transport, and well if the mum to be is a 13 year old chav she can feck off, but otherwise that's just general decency and something most people do anyway surely? Number 10 is participate or launch a neighbourhood watch scheme, that'll be grand living somewhere where people use neighbourhood watch as an excuse to be a nosy arsehole!

These for me were the highlight suggestions, there were some that wern't total lunacy, number 3 keep an eye on your kids so you know what they are upto. There are far to many wee ned/chavs about whose parents clearly don't give a monkeys or they have just plain lost control. Number 8 was about not leaving bags unattended and starting possible security alerts. Fair enough, it does also suggest you cooperate fully with police if they are stopping and searching you, well who'd dare to after what they did to that Brazilian. The police now have a shoot to kill policy without even having to shout a warning, lovely!

In summary, i'll be buying a decent paper tomorrow!