Tintin in the Race Row of Horror

So ‘Tintin in the Congo’ contains ‘hideous racial prejudice’ CRE? Well no shit! Thanks for spying that one out a mere 77 years since the book’s original publication. Don’t you have better things to do than calling for a ban of the ancient cub reporter? How about attacking the extreme right wing pamphlets that keep being pushed through my letterbox ‘Immigrants swamp nation’, ‘Polish HIV Horror’ etc, bloody paperboy, he knows I don’t read the Daily Mail.

It was a solicitor browsing the Tintin books in Waterstone’s, Covent Garden, that alerted the ever vigilant watchdog that is CRE to the boy detective’s dodgy colonial attitudes. Wha...? Hang on? A grown man? Reading a comic, in the kids section of a bookshop, in full view? Has he no shame? And the ‘Oh Mister Tintin you am big juju man’ bit is miles in. This pinstriped, ambulance chasing (possibly) kidult must have been stood there for bastard ages. What’s up? Read all the Harry Potters? That’s probably why Waterstone’s moved it into the adult section; their subtle way of saying “Oi you, this isn’t a lending library, sod off and read a grown-up book.”

But back to things Herge penned; well several million Congolese think that ‘Tintin in the Congo’ is racist and given their depiction in the book and their country’s past treatment at the hands of Belgium (read’ Heart of Darkness’ Mr Solicitor) I don’t blame them. However, I have a more compelling reason for letting this particular title disappear from the shelves once more. To quote my nephew ‘it’s a load of rubbish and it doesn’t make sense.’ He much prefers the later ones.

Premier League Is Rubbish Shock

I went to a rugby school, a game I have never really grown to love, or even understand, despite playing fly-half for several years. It is basically a violent ball game where only the referee knows all the rules. Football (as in soccer, my US cousins) was always my thing, though the only games I could get were scratch competitions with the local village boys, which is how I learned to play right midfield and lead with a left jab.

Yet I feel distinctly underwhelmed by the thought of a new season of Premier League Football. Now days the clubs are just businesses, the teams are just brands and the players just highly paid personnel. Transfers? You might as well ask me to get excited by Nike UK hiring a new Business Director. And you get the distinct impression that these perpetrators of ‘the greatest league in the world’ despise their fans. Players sneer at (or occasionally beat or sexually abuse) the ‘little people’ if they should happen to bump into them in some posh eatery or nightclub, and the clubs themselves put inflated prices on everything from crappy merchandise to the thin fare they usually serve up as entertainment on a – sorry I was going to say Saturday afternoon, but is now more likely to be a Thursday night at 8pm, 200+ miles from the away team’s town.

Well you know what? Stuff them. I’m going to boycott the Premier League this year and go and cheer on the brave boys of Gateshead or West Allotment. Non-league footy is where you see local lads playing for no other reason than the glory of their club and the several fans (plus pets) that have turned out on a snowy February afternoon to see them. And you top tier clubs?... You can stick your Premier League – as the rude boys I used play the beautiful game with might say – up your arse.

V for Virgin

It is said that only three people understand the UK Rail System following its privatisation. One is dead; the second is in an asylum and the third is Lord Major, and he has forgotten. It is so complicated it makes the Schleswig-Holstein Question look like 3 down in The Sun crossword.

A main player in this farrago of misery, inefficiency and outrageous expenditure is Virgin Rail. The livery of a Virgin train appears to be based on acne, red and yellow, and it has certainly been a blight on the face of travel through the centre of England. Anyone who has ever taken the 7am train from Newcastle to Bristol – six hours with no seat and only one working toilet between about 9000 passengers – has my sympathy. Foist those conditions on a bunch of captured terrorists and you’d have the Human Rights Commission on you faster than a rail porter running from a trolley full of my wife’s weekend luggage.

Now the good news, Virgin have lost the franchise! Hooray, peace is restored to the land! But wait, what is the name of our liberator? Arriva! Nooooo! As in, you will never Arriva. God help me, I never thought I would beg for this, but please, Mr Brown, bring back British Rail. I will never make a joke about their sandwiches ever again.

Here's One I Fined Earlier

Today, Ofcom - tireless defender of the UK public from the forces of televisual evil - has slapped a £50,000.00 fine on much loved sticky-back plastic bothering kids prog Blue Peter.

For those of you not familiar with the 'The Peter', as kids never called it, it is a bracing, Victorian children’s entertainment, devised by farsighted, bearded philanthropists before the advent of television itself and has been steadfastly ignored by its target audience ever since.

And what was the crime committed by this loved but faded institution? What inequity warranted a fine of £50k (or $4m by today’s exchange rates), when criminal compensation for a violent assault in this country is about £9k? A feature on bomb making? A drive by? No... They raised money for charity with a phone-in competition.

Unfortunately they could not pick a competition winner because of some IT screw up, so in a fit of initiative, a junior researcher grabbed a passing kid and it was she who was announced as the winner of the top prize; a toilet roll made up to look like the Duchess of Argyle (or something). £50k for that Ofcom? Have you been watching any other telly at all you bunch of berks? Right, if £50k is the going rate for a white lie, in the spirit of proportionality I expect the makers of The Friday Night Project to be suppressed with shellfire for fraudulently claiming to be a ‘comedy variety show’, rather than ‘utter shit’. Bastards.

Scorched Earth

So ends another weekend. A bracing turn around the countryside on the old cob, a fair result from Mr Hamilton at Silverstone (so he does make mistakes occasionally, I was starting to wonder) and I did my bit for the environment by saving lots of energy not watching Live Earth.

Dammit. I have tried manfully not to have a pop at Live Earth; only an unsporting gun draws aim on a large, slow moving target. But what was Al thinking? It was all going so well with An Inconvenient Truth – the world’s best ever PowerPoint presentation. I actually thought that he was starting to make liberal, environmental policy look not only worthy but… well… kinda sexy. Then he has to go and do the global pop party thing. Oh yes, I bet Mother Earth herself was in the mosh pit, chugging along to ‘Hey You’ shouting ‘Oh Madonna, just the power of your voice is mending my sky and filling my oceans with grateful dolphins.’ Or she would have been if she wasn’t already tripping on the zillion gallons of avgas and squillion megawatts of energy used to throw the party in her honour. May I suggest that we next have a 24-hour global pornothon to promote chastity – it’s the idea the internet was created for.

Wimbledon, Will It Ever Bastard End?

Wimbledon fortnight. Was there ever a more English phrase than that? Let’s break it down into its constituent parts and study its Englishness. 1. Wimbledon, a dull suburb of London whose only feature of note is a big field covered in dog shit and wombles. 2. Fortnight, an archaic term for two weeks, only used now by the BBC and the elderly. 3. Wimbledon Fortnight, an evocation of gray skies, boredom, class consciousness and disappointment; a sort of sporting equivalent of the plays of Harold Pinter, but with more pauses.

At about the same time, the Americans have Independence Day. For 24-hours they celebrate the liberation of their nation from the yoke of tyranny. They have fireworks and marching bands and everyone has a day off. We have Wimbledon Fortnight, a 14-day celebration, not of liberation, but of tennis, a game that we are famously rubbish at. You come home from work, switch on the box and watch two blokes you’ve never heard of talking about the match they hope to have once the rain stops. Like I said, very, very, very English.

Oh Lord Why Won't You Fry Me My Mercedes Benz?

See, this is the standard of health professional we’ve come to expect here in the good old U of K. One can only imagine the interview.

“So Mr Ahmed, I see from your CV that your hobbies are darts, salsa dancing and jihad.”
“Sorry that’s a typo, it should read darts, salsa dancing and not jihad.”
“Oh good. I’m glad that’s that cleared up. We have quite strict rules about jihad in the NHS, it is rather frowned on.”
“I had no idea.”
“Ooh yes, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Fancy.”
“Okay...(ticks something off list) And I take it as read that you can Doctor a bit.”
“Phew, yes, like you wouldn’t believe. My Doctoring is second to none, second to none. My instructor at the terrorist school said that I was the best Doctor in my suicide bomber class.”
“Excellent (ticks off something else off on list, then stops mid-tick). Sorry did you say terrorist school and suicide bomber class?”
“Yes. I mean, no. No. No no no no. No. (Laughs) Did I say that? Oh what was I thinking? No. Ppff.”
“I’m pretty certain you did.”
“No, no, I said that the Senior Consultant at my hospital thought that I was the best suicide, hmm I mean, specialist in bones and medicine and stuff in my whole bit of said hospital.”
“Phew. I wrote down terrorist and suicide bomber, look (shows candidate, laughing). Me and my ears.”
“I get the same problem. Bomb making, boom! Can’t hear a thing for weeks.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Hear what?” (Both laugh)
“Okay, when can you start?”
“Right now if you want. Hmmm, you did say that there would be a reserved parking space right by the hospital?”