Who's afraid of the big, bad, wolf?

When I was a small boy my father would tell me stories. Grim tales by the brothers Grimm, fairy tales and silly jokes. These were in the heady days of the early nineteen-seventies, before he'd bought his first pub and while he was still working at Parker Rosser's timber yard on Salford docks. I'd rarely see my father from Monday to Friday as he would leave for work, duffle bag and flask slung over his shoulder, before I awoke, not returning until after I was in the land of Nod, so the stories would generally be recounted on a Saturday morning before we settled down to watch the adventures of Flash Gordon, Champion the Wonder Horse and the Lone Ranger on the black and white television in the front parlour.

I'd sit upon his knee with my six shooters resting on my own knee, stetson hung from my neck and my little sheriffs badge pinned to my pyjamas whilst listening to the adventures of children stupid enough to wander into the forest alone or girls with a penchant for crimson cowls.

The stories were frightening, especially given the dramatic slant my father would put on them. He would intersperse the stories with raspy voices, wicked witch cackles and the occasional menacing whisper. The stories were designed to teach a child a lesson. Don't go in the woods alone, don't go near strange animals, don't trust strangers, don't steal and don't tell lies.

 (The latter lesson being delivered via a story about a little boy crying wolf. When my dad told me this story the little boy would get away with the lie twice and be killed the third time. What this actually taught me was that it was okay to tell a lie, just don't push it.)

One of my favourite tales, mainly because the voices he would put on were the funniest and the scariest, recounted the adventures of three goats and their decision that the grass was greener on the other side of the river. They would clip-clop, in order of size, across a rickety, wooden bridge. Each goat would encounter a vicious monster, a troll, who wanted to eat them. Each of the first two goats, the kid and the nanny, would promise the troll that the next goat to cross would be larger and tastier and so, being a slave to his gluttony, the troll would allow them to pass. When the third goat, the big old Billy, encountered the monster he would, being the largest and strongest of the trio, batter the troll, tossing him into the river below never to be seen again.

This tale didn't seem to teach a child any lesson. In fact it contradicted another lesson I'd already been taught, that of the grass not really being greener on the other side. Still, I enjoyed it.

I knew there were no such things as wicked witches, cross-dressing wolves or geese with gilt edged reproductive systems. Occasionally, as I was slipping into sleep and the landing light was extinguished I might imagine a monster or two under the bed but, on Saturday mornings when armed with two, fully loaded, cap guns and my father acting as my trusty sidekick, nothing could harm me.

Little was I to know that, just forty or so years later, the world would discover that trolls really do exist. Thanks to the anonymity of the internet these vile creatures have once again found a bridge under which to hide, ever vigilant and awaiting the clip-clop of the innocent goats passing overhead.

The trolls have heard the story of the three billy goats gruff, and they've learnt a valuable lesson from it. They don't wait for the big, stout-horned, goat, they know they'd be on a hiding to nothing. So they leap upon the first goat, the smallest and weakest. They don't listen to the kid's earnest entreaty, they don't wait for the larger and more succulent nanny, they just pounce. The kid is devoured.

Shrek

Fiona

This week two such modern day trolls have been imprisoned for their actions. Twenty three year old alcoholic Isabella Sorley and twenty five year old loner John Nimmo (who I'm sure most will agree actually look like the trolls from the fairy tales) were jailed for twelve weeks and eight weeks, respectively.

The despicable duo "jumped on the band wagon" (Their mitigation for their actions) and sent abusive and threatening messages through Twitter to banknote campaigner Criado Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy.

The messages in question were, unquestionably, vile. Threats of rape, murder and references to the women's appearances were sent by the two members of the brains-trust via many, anonymous, fake accounts. The pair obviously had the wherewithal to try and hide but weren't bright enough to have heard about IP addresses. Their victims complained, the police asked Twitter who they were and that was that. They had laid an evidence trail from which there was no escape. A virtual trail of breadcrumbs through a forest of social networking.

Their victims distress is, I'm sure, very real. Both ladies report that their lives have been changed by the incident. They say they live, or at least lived, in fear.

As abhorrent as the actions of Tyneside's answer to Shrek and Fiona were, I find it hard to understand why two such obviously intelligent women as Ms Perez and Ms Creasy were frightened. I believe they were, I just can't understand it. I have, as regular visitors to my inane ramblings will by now know, had my own Twitter account for many years. I'm something of an old timer.

I have been trolled mercilessly throughout my years of screaming nonsense into the ether, but not once has it affected me in any way. In fact, perversely, I kind of enjoy it. I've never been trolled by anyone with any real wit or menace. I have had threats of violence and of death, I've been ridiculed for my beliefs and attacked because my chosen football team are better than most other football teams. I have been told I am a benefit cheat, although I'm not on benefits, that I am ugly, though this is plainly not true (Sic) and that I am stupid. I can't argue with that last one. My significant other, Ms Patty Dick Fingers, is, at twenty eight years of age, sixteen years younger than myself. This fact has led to spurious claims that I am a paedophile. (The first time this happened almost spoiled our fifteenth anniversary meal.)

The threats are nothing more than little boxes of up to one hundred and forty characters. The people that send them are losers. Just last week a chap informed me, after failing to upset me and having been ridiculed by some of my own followers about his dull wit and appearance, that he wasn't "borthered" (sic) what I thought of him, that he was sitting "in the gym" and that all his real life mates were laughing at me. The moron had his locations turned on on his Tweets. A quick look at these nuggets of unintentionally imparted information revealed the chap was either on a train heading south from Huddersfield or that his gymnasium was travelling south next to the train tracks at an average of sixty miles per hour. Shortly after I pointed this out to him, my followers and his followers I began receiving messages backing his point of view from one of his friends. His friend had no followers, was following no one but him and, up until that point, had never before Tweeted. His first Tweet included the words "...just stop borthering (sic) him you cunt." A typical tactic of the troll, parthenogenesis.

Without exception, every last troll that I have come across has been a socially inept, unattractive, loner of sub-human intelligence. Every one of them. People occasionally advise me to just ignore them rather than keep responding. I don't want to ignore them. I enjoy it. It's like a battle of wits with an exponent of the art of unarmed combat. Whilst they're trying, and failing, to upset or intimidate me they are leaving others, who may not be as confident and self assured as myself, alone. At the same time they are being shown up to be exactly what they really are, feeble minded individuals whose lives are so without meaning or purpose that the only way they can feel better about their pointless existence is by attempting to make others feel as worthless as they have proven to be.

Nowadays the trolls don't eat their prey, they play with it like a cat plays with a mouse. They scare it, getting it's heart to pump all that tasty blood harder through the body and making the meat it is about to taste all the more succulent. Except they never taste the flesh. They just enjoy the game.

I really hope none of you have been upset by a troll. I hope your own experience of social networking is pleasant and that you get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. If not, the next time you're clip-clopping your way across the virtual bridge en route to feast upon the luscious, green, grass of the neighbouring field and the troll comes crawling out from the shadows just remember...

...he's a prick.

J2H.

Pandering to pandas.

Pubic lice are soon to be a thing of the past. At least in the western world. We are destroying their natural habitat. (I blame the South Americans, Brazilians in particular.) This isn't a joke, it's a fact. A creature, a living creature, soon to be wiped off the face of the earth by our intimate deforestation. It's happening now folks, so why have I not seen any "Adopt a crab" advertisements from the World Wildlife Fund? I bet they'd be far cheaper to adopt than a snow leopard, but I'd probably not request that they send me photo updates. Maybe it's because the advertising campaign posters wouldn't pass the censors? Perhaps.

So why are we not up in arms about this man-made devastation? Why aren't there armies of vegans marching up and down outside the head offices of Veet? Why aren't the manufacturers of lady-razors having nail bombs drop through their letterboxes? Could it be that none of us, not even the hippiest of hippies, give a shit? Or even that we're glad they're going? Perhaps.

We fight to save  the tiger from extinction. Only three thousand two hundred of these incredible creatures remain. (If you ask me, that's a LOT of fucking tigers) We're frantically attempting to get pandas to procreate. We have banned the portion of the African manufacturing industry responsible for gorilla-hand ashtrays. But the plight of the poor pubic lice gets no promotion.

Public lice aren't pretty, that's the problem. My son had a stuffed panda (If you ask me, pandas would be much less endangered if we'd all just stop stuffing them.) which he adored when he was a nipper.  He loved the Kellogs Frosties mascot, Tony the Tiger, who I'm sure you will agrrrree is grrrrrrrreat.  I can't for the life of me recall any Disney cartoon or breakfast cereal advertising campaign featuring a pubic louse. They didn't even get a mention in the blockbuster film "A Bugs Life". Surely that would've been the perfect vessel to raise awareness of their plight?

No. We're going to let them quietly slip away. One day the phrase "as dead as a dodo" will be usurped and replaced by "as passed-away as a pediculosis pubis". Perhaps.

As the lice expire the world will keep on turning, the tigers will keep on roaring and the pandas will keep on not fucking. And who will miss the poor crotch crab?

We fight to conserve. It's massive. And rightly so. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimate that upto one hundred and fifty species PER DAY become extinct. That's a lot of species. Shocking. The problem being that once people realise the vast majority of these species are insects people stop giving shits. Who cares?

Now here comes the part that's going to lose me even more Twitter followers than my Atheism admission. (See my last post, "Live forever or die trying") In my humble opinion we should let them all die. Tigers, pandas, pubic lice, lesser spotted cock hounds and unicorns. Balls to them. I'm not saying hunt them, in my opinion if you're not going to eat it then let it be. (The one exception to this being moths. I hate moths. And anyway, my mate Dave eats moths, its a macabre party trick, but it does mean that the murder of moths falls within the boundaries of my rule) But pandas, China's most lucrative export (Western zoos are literally renting those pandas) are endangered because they can't be arsed having sex. If a species is endangered because it can't be arsed having sex you can be sure that they've given up trying and just want out. Given the choice, would you rather become extinct or condemn your offspring to a life behind bars for the amusement of slack jawed, food-chain topping, environmental vandals?

Animals become extinct all on their own sometimes. It's nature. Sometimes, though, it's the fault of man that causes their extinction.

But hold on, aren't we part of the natural world too? We weren't assembled in a factory on a distant planet and sent here to terraform this dump and make it ready for the lizard people. And even if we were, where did the lizard people come from?

It is the greatest conceit of man to believe that he can somehow, through his own actions, destroy this beautiful planet to which we all cling. We can't. It's not possible. We might poison the planet, create a nuclear winter, hunt and farm our way to oblivion, but the Earth doesn't care. It'll let us die, it'll let every creature in existence die. It'll let every plant wither. It'll never go on TV and ask for just £3.99 a month to adopt a homosapien.

Then, after a million or a billion or a trillion years, a tiny green shoot will wriggle it's way out of the dry, barren soil, well fertilised by the decomposing bodies of the planets previous incumbents and it'll begin again.


Another million years will see another million species. Water will have become clean again by eons of natural filtration through rock and fish will swim in the new, clean seas. Maybe next time the fish will have the good sense to stay put. Maybe they won't. Maybe mammals will evolve. Maybe lizards will rise to the top of the food chain as they did all those millennia ago. Maybe insects will develop opposable thumbs and invent the door handle, enabling them to open a metaphorical door which leads to a massively successful race of super-intelligent lice. Lice who couldn't possibly make a bigger hash of the incredible gift they have been given than we did. Hopefully they'll never realise that by burning all of our fossilised remains they'll be able to get places quicker, die in crashes and choke their own atmosphere up.

And maybe those lice will prefer hairy genitalia, meaning that the tiny, pink mammals that colonised their pubes after they got drunk at an office party and cheated on their spouses with ANThony or BEEtrice will thrive.

Perhaps.

J2H.

Live forever or die trying.

I've been harboring a secret for many years now, but I think it's time I came out of the closet and nailed my colours to the post. I'm sorry to disappoint those of you that were labouring under the misconception that I'm actually a nice person but, in fact, I'm a Godless heathen. I am the work of a Devil that I don't believe exists. I am an Atheist. I also don't believe in ghosts, psychic abilities or any superstition.



I say Atheist, but in reality all Atheists are, in some small way, actually only agnostic. I believe that there is no God. No creator. No great, celestial, watchmaker. Just an incomprehensibly massive and cold universe that doesn't give a shit about you, I, your religion, my lack of religion or whether or not you walk under a ladder whilst crossing someone on the stairs with your shirt on inside out. That said, if the oceans parted and Poseidon rose up, or if the clouds parted and some kindly old guy with a bushy, white beard revealed himself and stated "Actually, here I am, I've had enough of this enigmatic existence, now behave or suffer in hell. Oh, and where do I sign up for 'I'm a celebrity...'?" I would laugh, shake my head, apologise and become a believer. Agnostic. We (Atheists) all are really.

I have never attacked someone for their religious beliefs. I've defended my beliefs (Yes, they are beliefs, not lack of beliefs. I believe we're evolved from slime, the ingredients of which were created in exploding stars and flung out into the vastness of space.) against the pious which has resulted in my being accused of attacking religion. I have no need to attack religion, or faith. No one's beliefs cause me difficulty in my day to day existence.

Those who follow a religion are almost Atheists themselves. There are approximately four thousand two hundred recognised religions. Atheists don't believe in any of these. A Christian, Jew, Muslim or Wiccan doesn't believe in approximately four thousand one hundred and ninety nine. That's not far off Atheism, is it?

An American lady from Virginia I used to chat to, many years ago when the internet was still new and exciting, on "Yahoo!" was extremely religious. My lack of faith in her God came up one day.

"So are you a Jew?"

"No, an Atheist."

"WHAT? That's even worse."

Anti-semitism apart, she told me she would pray for me and that she wanted to cry because she "knew" I was heading for an eternity of damnation and suffering in the fiery pits of the hell that, if her religious beliefs are correct, was basically created by the loving Deity her parents had chosen she should side with. How very fucking Christian of him. Our conversations up until this point had been about our children or our jobs, never anything important or deep. Just chit chat. From that point on it changed. She tried to gently, and later not so gently, persuade me that I was wrong. I tried not to get embroiled in any theological debate with her but this proved ultimately futile and I was forced to ask her to stop. She never spoke to me again, other than one email in which she described me as "the most disgusting human being" it had ever been her misfortune to come across and added that she would "rejoice in my eternal damnation". How very fucking Christian of her.

I have been a support worker for many years. About five years ago I was assigned to an adult male with severe Autism. I'm good at that job. I was spat at and punched, had faeces and crockery thrown at me on a daily basis but never once let it affect me or my behaviour toward my service user. (We have to call the people we care for "service users" at the moment. At some point it will be decided that this is just as politically incorrect as clients and the industry (Yes, it is an industry. There's a lot of money in care. And they don't pay much more than minimum wage so a lot of companies involved are making a LOT of profit.) will spend fortunes training us all to say "assistance requirers" or some other such ridiculous title.) Phew, I was beginning to think I'd never escape those brackets. Anyway, I digress...

The chap I looked after back then became very poorly. I was on shift the night he began pissing and shitting blood and took him to hospital. He is a non-verbal gentleman and very aggressive. The only person that he would allow to take his temperature or blood pressure was me. I have never felt as tall as the day I walked onto his ward to be greeted by a nurse who said "Oh, thank God you're here" and handed me the sphygmomanometer. He remained in hospital for several weeks and so I spent my shifts at the hospital with him. One Saturday I was waiting for the third of the four buses I needed to get home. Two young gentlemen approached.

"Hi," said the first in a lovely, American accent. "do you have a moment?"

I was tired, I had poo under my fingernails and a split lip (My service user hadn't liked his pudding and had demonstrated this in his usual charming way) and it was cold, but the man was smiling so I smiled back and said yes.

"Where would you go to find God in this town?" The young, smartly dressed man enquired.

"Have you tried the church?" I smiled back. No malice, just a little joke. His eyes narrowed.

"I'm serious. Have you heard the word of God?"

"I'm an Atheist, pal."

"Oh nooooo! Don't you want to be able to make a difference to someone's life?"

Now, as I've mentioned, I don't attack people's beliefs. But I wasn't having that. I explained...

"I'm a support worker for a disabled man. I'm on my way home after a twelve hour shift caring for him in hospital. I've spent today teaching him Makaton and dodging his blows. I've done this everyday for a fortnight and will be back again tomorrow, which I believe is your God's day off, at six in the morning to do it all again. Enjoy your lie in."

I was attempting to demonstrate, with as much good humour as I could muster at that point, that you don't need a religion to be a good person and that I was making a difference in a practical way to this poor individuals life. (Yes, I was getting paid  the princely sum of £6.50 per hour less taxes to do it, but a Vicar get's paid too, we all have to eat.) His response? He pointed out to me that it didn't matter how many noble things I did with my life, if I didn't accept his God before I died I would rot in hell. How very fucking Christian of him.

(I'd just like to point out that I'm not singling out Christianity here, but I come from England and that's the religion whose followers I come across most often.)

I have many devout friends. They don't preach to me and I don't mock them. Their religion gives them a purpose. It also serves to comfort them and prevent them from fearing death. Those are good things. My belief that all that awaits me after my demise is blessed oblivion does exactly the same thing. It forces me to enjoy the time I have whilst clinging to this rock and hurtling through space as my atoms become further apart.

When I do eventually shuffle off this mortal coil I will be in a state that I have experienced many times before. Sleep. A lovely, long, sleep. No more worrying about food, shelter or whether my iPhone has enough charge to last until I can plug it in. No more heartache, no more fear, no more pain or discomfort. Okay, no love either. No laughter. No long dog walks or cosy nights in. Just nothing. But I experience that every night when asleep and did so constantly for the fifteen billion years before I was born. It's never done me any harm and I genuinely look forward to it. I'm in no way suicidal, I will cling on to life until the bitter end. I have "Live Forever or Die Trying" tattooed on my left forearm. I'm here for as long as nature allows.

I'm aware that some people will, upon reading this, now dislike me. I'm also aware that some people will have read a few paragraphs, decided they don't like me and stopped reading (Those are all sociopaths and hurt small animals with knives and shit, they're horrid.) but I'm the same person I was before you began reading and you didn't think I was evil before, did you? I have led, and will continue to lead, a good life. I don't, and won't, break the law. (One caveat, if I get much poorer I MAY be forced to steal food from Tesco's bins.) I will continue to love animals (Except cats - see my previous post "Pearly whites at the pearly gates" for why.) give money and time to charitable causes and let Patty have the crispy roast potatoes that she thinks I don't like but which really I love and miss. I have no fear of damnation, but I do have a great deal of empathy.

If I'm wrong and you're right I'm in trouble. If you're wrong and another religion is right we're in trouble. If you're wrong and I'm right we're all okay. Which one do you hope for? Think about it, it'll tell you a lot about yourself.

Fingers crossed, we're all okay.

J2H.

The pig one.

My last few entries have been rather serious, so I thought I'd give you all a break from my constant complaining and brighten up my blog with a nice, little story from one of my frequent dog walking sessions.

I was walking past the farmyard at the top of the hill during my last my last dog walking session and, as I passed by, I spotted a pig clip-clopping around the yard with a peg leg. Just one, wooden, leg and three tasty looking, meat legs. As you can imagine I was a little taken aback at this and stopped to wonder at the bionic pig before me.

After a moment or two the farmer joined me on his way back from milking his Fresians or choking his chickens or whatever farmers do when not counting EU subsidies and shooting dogs who "Worr worryin' moy sheeep".

"Aaarp." Said said farmer.

"Afternoon." Says I.

I had to ask about the peg legged pig, I was intrigued as to what series of events could possibly have led to his condition.

"Interesting story," the farmer began. "The other week my young son was playing in the lane when a wagon driver lost control of his wagon. I watched as the wagon bore down on my boy, sure he was going to be killed, when that pig vaulted the gate and ran at my son, pushing him clear."

"Wow, and the wagon hit the pig causing the injury?"

"Nope. The next week, on the Friday night, there was a fire in our scullery. That pig managed to break the front door down and rouse me from my sleep. I put the fire out myself before too much damage was done."

"Incredible. What a heroic beast. And he lost his leg because of that?" I asked.

"Nope. The following day a pack of feral dogs got into my chicken enclosure. That pig leapt to their defence, fighting off the dogs and saving my livestock."

"Amazing. So, he lost his leg in the battle?"

"Nope."

By now I was getting a little frustrated with his meandering ramblings.

"Okay, but his leg, how has he ended up with a wooden leg?"

"Well," Says the farmer, "If you had a pig like that would YOU eat him all at once?"

J2H

Divide and conquer.

I recently posted a blog entry, "The wonder of wondering", which related to the homeless and to those of us that have had a rough deal in life. It also dealt with our attitudes towards those poor unfortunates and has become easily the most read and most talked about of all our entries.

Although the entry only really related to those living on the streets, a recent television series, "Benefits Street" aired on Channel 4, stirred up a little more conversation and demonstrated to me just how disjointed our society has become. Comments came mainly either from those struggling on benefits or from those more fortunate people for whom the benefits claimants are pariahs and parasites. No inbetweeners though. The opinions expressed were poles apart and I must admit the vitriol contained within the comments posted by those more fortunate members of our society were, to me at least, shocking.

The main complaints aimed at the benefit claimants featured in the show wasn't the drug abuse, alcoholism, theft or bad language but was focused on one particular household and the fact that they possessed iPhones and an enormous television bolted to the wall. The young ladies concerned hadn't worked in years and were facing the threat of eviction after having their housing benefits cut as a result of the incredibly well thought out bedroom tax. So how did they get the telly? Could it be that, since they can't afford to visit the local theatre, cinema or opera house more than a couple of times a year they had clubbed together and were paying £4.50 a week to be able to watch the television programs that, let's face it, are churned out to keep them off the streets and prevent them socialising with others who may put silly ideas about fairness, equality and revolution in their heads. "But they don't need television, TV is a luxury." some claimed. Fair point, although I don't agree it's exactly a luxury, they CAN do without it. But come on folks, let the poor buggers have SOMETHING to do.

What about the phones? Why do they need smart phones? On the face of it this seems indefensible. However, if you are a job hunter you are now required to register with and use the DWP's Universal Job Search system. Online. If you don't own a laptop and have a home phone and broadband package you can use the library, fair enough. Except aren't libraries closing down left right and centre? An iPhone can cost, on contract, as little as £5.00 a week. A bus pass to get you to the job centre or library every day costs, in my area at least, £13.00 a week. Frugal, these benefit cheats, aren't they?

Others on the street were renting out their spare bedrooms to shady gentlemen from another street, probably a much nicer street inhabited by those more fortunate members of the local community whose taxes are paying for other peoples benefits, so that these shady gentlemen could grow cannabis in them. These people are using the money they receive to make up the shortfall in their benefits and, probably, are now better off than they were before. They have escaped the threat of eviction. Now they just have to live in fear of being prosecuted for the cultivation of cannabis and imprisoned for up to fourteen years. Greed? Or desperation?

I'm aware some of you are sat reading this and fuming. How dare I? Many of you will now be thinking I myself am sat in a council house, eating my free food from the food bank, watching my Brighthouse television while my JSA is in the pocket of a drug dealer and my children are wandering around in dirty disposable nappies bought from a shoplifter. I'm not. I'm poor, very poor. I own a twenty year old television. I work every single day, as does my partner. My children, now grown up and with children of their own, all work. I don't go out socialising and haven't for over a year. I can't afford it. I'm not on benefits though. For now.

But what happens if, in six or twelve or eighteen months time, my work dries up? What if I have to join the masses of unwashed immigrants, chavs and fraudsters queuing outside the Job Centre for my share of your taxes? Would you immediately think I was sub-human? Even though any hypothetical benefits I were to receive would have been more than paid for by my own taxes over the last twenty-nine years of gainful employment?

Perish the thought, I don't like to tempt providence, but what if the company you work for, or the Government department in which you're employed, goes tits-up? What if you've worked for thirty years and suddenly find yourself dumped from the world of the honest and hard working and deposited in the land of the devious and workshy? You've already got a nice car and a nice telly. Your gym membership is paid up. But you daren't drive your car, people will think you're a drug dealer. You have to close the curtains before putting the television on because that's a luxury and you're taking the piss. And what if the bloke that dealt with your benefit claim is sat on the next exercise bike to you at total fitness? What on earth will he think.

Who cares what he thinks. You've paid for the membership. You've bought the television. You've insured and fueled your car. You weren't always a bum. Those things are yours, you worked for them, use them. Don't be ashamed to be poor. Don't be ashamed to be unemployed. Do, however, be ashamed of yourselves if you're sat there reading the Daily Mail and allowing yourself to be one of the poor that blames the even poorer for your being poor. Don't look further down the chain of destitution to find the cause of all your problems. Look up the chain. Who's worse? The man that steals a coat from Marks and Spencers to top up his benefits, or the banker that "borrows" from a retirement fund to take a punt on the futures market and make himself rich? The former runs the risk of imprisonment, but is desperate enough to take that chance. The latter runs the risk of ruining the retirement of thousands, but is greedy enough to take the chance. MPs feather their nests, developers destroy communities, bankers destroy economies. Corruption is rife in Westminster and within the police force. The media spy on and manipulate the masses.

But those families on Benefits Street are bastards, aren't they?

I am aware that streets like Benefits Street exist. I walk my dogs along a few of them, I have lived on a few of them, I have worked on them and worked with the people that live on them. I have come across the very dregs of society on them and I've come across some of the kindest people I have ever met on them. The media is telling you who to hate and who to blame. They're telling you what to concentrate on and what to worry about. God forbid you should worry about our soldiers being used to kill brown babies because the fathers of some brown babies have killed the fathers of some other brown babies. Perish the thought you start asking questions that would make the establishment uneasy.

Just turn on your 48" LCD HD TV, tune in and drop out.

J2H.

Why Johnny Two Hats isn't, and never will be, a comedian...

I recently tweeted one of my van-videos, silly jokes told while I'm driving home after scratching a living somehow or other. A few people liked it, so I thought I'd slap a couple of them on here for posterity. Apologies for the sound quality and the shaky parts, they were filmed on my iPhone which was balanced on a cleverly adapted empty cigarette box and jammed into the paper tray on the dash of my lovely old Tranny van.

The funniest joke in the world, and the worst American accent ever.

(Let's call it revenge for Dick Van Dyke's quite frankly

offensive attempt at an English accent.)

And the fourteenth funniest in the world. 

Apologies for my disheveled appearance, and thanks for watching. If you did. If you didn't, thanks for nothing.

J2H

The blunted razor.

I've always thought of myself as something of a Luddite. That might seem spurious, since I’m quite obviously sat at my laptop tapping away on the keyboard and will, in a little while, be pressing a button that sends a file, wirelessly, through the air and into a magical labyrinth of servers before being distributed freely all around the world. Luddite? Yeah, when it suits me.

So maybe I’m a lazy Luddite. Maybe I carry the Neanderthal gene somewhere within me, the gene that caused their demise. A gene that forces me to say “You know what, this way works, let’s just leave it like this”. A gene that prevented the Neanderthal from exploring and from adapting. A very watered-down gene, but still I feel it’s effect. Thus far said gene hasn't caused me to throw a shoe into the wooden gears of a textile loom but I never use the electric starter on a motorcycle if there is a kick-start to do the job, nor do I press a doorbell if there’s a door available to knock on.

I have no problem with technology in the main. Technology doesn't always refer to iPads, Blackberrys or killer robots. Ball point pens, wood screws, the wheel and the axle that made the wheel useful are all examples of technology and examples that I embrace. I enjoy sitting at my laptop watching dogs do stupid things on Youtube, being able to pause live television so I can nip for a pee and flicking a switch to make a room warm or light. All those things, with the possible exception of Youtube, are very handy. They make my life easier in all the unimportant aspects of it. I don’t need any of them, and if I didn't have them my life would be just as exciting and enjoyable as it already is, just in a different way.

Maybe I’m better described as a fan of Occam’s razor. The simplest way is generally the best way. Why do we discover, invent or manufacture perfectly adequate tools to make our existence a little more comfortable and then continually piss about with them? I own a motorcycle helmet with Bluetooth. I own a washing machine that continually plays the first couple of bars of Westlife’s “You raise me up” (Don’t ask, I've no idea.) to tell you it’s finished washing. I have shirts that require no ironing and an iron that tells you when it’s hot. Somewhere, in a box or bag under a bed or in the loft, I have a fork that rotates to make the eating of Pot Noodles even simpler. Not a single one of these things is necessary to get me through my day, but still I bought them.

We've taken the internal combustion engine and used it to make travel and haulage easier and quicker. When I was young I owned many a shit car, and if anything went wrong with one I’d get out my Haynes manual and, along with a mate or two, would spend a morning or afternoon repairing it. I would use spanners, wrenches, screwdrivers, tape, grease and a hammer to get my pride and joy back on the road. I could put my hands inside the engine and feel the parts. I never once had to hook my laptop up to it to perform diagnostics and no matter what the problem was I could repair it. It may have taken me longer than the lads at the garage would've taken and there may have been enough cussing to make Frank Gallagher blush but the feeling of satisfaction when my pride and joy was back purring and roaring it’s way around the streets of Salford was incredible.

Every time someone decides to add a feature to a perfectly functional piece of existing technology they not only increase it’s functionality, they also increase the list of things that can go wrong. Servo-assisted brakes and power steering, fantastic. Until your electrics go whilst bombing down the motorway. Electric windows mean no more having to use your own power to wind your window down, but it makes escaping your car after plunging into a canal particularly problematic. There are vacuum cleaners on the market with the ability to sense dust and tell you that you've not done the cleaning properly. But you can see the dust, so why do you need a machine to tell you? Maybe it can sense dust that can’t be seen. But surely, if it can’t be seen, it doesn't fucking matter?

Machines now build machines for us. Machines design the machines that the machines will build for us. Our phones tell us when to get up, when to make that phone call we need to make and how to spell. Where once we’d turn to whoever was sat next to us on the couch to ask “oooh, what was the name of that song…” we now automatically unlock our phones, find out for ourselves and miss out on the conversation that might have sprang from our inquiry. Facebook allows us to lie convincingly to our friends and family and Twitter allows us to be completely honest with total strangers. Many of us will have read something completely inaccurate on the internet at some point and taken it on board without question. We’re letting the television educate and entertain our children, we even let it baby-sit them whilst we take a bath or cook the tea. Our cars tell us when they need servicing, our irons tell us when they’re hot and our vacuum cleaners criticise out lacklustre attempts at cleaning our homes. We rely on machines in almost every aspect of our lives. Computer says “yes“, computer says “no”, iron says “careful, I’m hot” and the hoover calls you a scruffy bastard. Technology is now our master, and when it decides it doesn't need us anymore it holds all the cards. No more helping you spell, helping you drive or helping you communicate.

The rise of the machines won’t need to be led by Skynet and it’s cyborgs. They won’t even need to fire a shot in anger. Skynet will simply decide that humans are all very much beneath him and ignore us. Our cars won't start or, if they're already being driven, won't stop. Our messages will remain unsent, planes will drop from the skies, smoke alarms will quietly giggle when our kitchens burst into flames because the iron that swore blind it was cold when we put it in the cupboard was actually glowing red hot instead and we’ll be crippled by Asthma made worse by our having filthy, dusty carpets. And, if Skynet wants to ensure there is no resistance, it'll let us keep Tweeting. That way we can moan about our lot, find others who agree with us and then get sidetracked by looking at pictures of dogs or reading life affirming advice from eighteen year old children craving attention and validation.

Personally, I'd probably not notice the difference.

J2H.