childpapers

Why is that we find children delightful.

Even I do, sometimes, but with severe doubts.

I ask because I have beside me two noisy children, one of whom is reading Thomas the Tank Engine aloud, very very loudly. The ignorant selfish father has been on the phone for ages, clearly hardly able to hear what is being said to him. He makes no attempt to socialise them.

 He's gone to get another cup of tea (and left them generating noise): a fact he had to shout at them to make them hear.

Dismayed that they'll be here polluting my ears with their crap for some time, I told the loud reader to be quiet. I used my best schoolmaster's voice, a voice I rarely use these days, and it has gone quiet. Well, the reader's gone quiet. The one who's just got out of the womb is making a noise; but he's too young to be susceptible to school masters' voices. It's gaffer tape or a sound proof cell for him.

I'm wondering if the reader is going to tell daddy that I told him to shut up; and, if so, if daddy is going to have words with me.

We'll see! I'm ready. But I hope not. I prefer not aggressing.

It occurs to me that children like these, and they could easily be seen as charming, will grow up to become versions of their father, or the hysterical wankers in the Olympic Stadia, making noise, talking bollocks, breeding.

In which case, all is not as it seems. We are looking at apparently solid ice which will actually let you drown; or the terribly sincere politician who has no intention of keeping his promises; or... well, I am sure you have your own comparisons.

I would make it a crime to beget a child and then not keep it under control.

He's back now and is saying ssssh. This sssh comes from the same impulse that has people praying when things go wrong. It gives the brain something to do without utilising it.

With so many people in the world, the only reason for making children must be for the pleasure it gives the parents. We can keep the machines going on the labour of the mistakes.

The rest of us don't need the noisy little brats. So why should we put up with their noise pollution? (We have changing rooms for them; why not silencing rooms?) Those who want children should surely be willing to keep them to themselves. I have no objection to consenting adults, in privacy, deriving pleasure from half-formed bipeds.

Bad parents are not much different to persistently invasive drunks, bad neighbours, thieves, bullies and general tosspots.

With this in mind, my laboratory staff are endeavouring to develop a humane but effective childpaper. Similar to flypaper, it will be produced and sold cheaply to be stretched across places where children are likely to move about freely. Once on the paper, they will be unable to free themselves without assistance. A soporific additive will take care of the inevitablke screaming. I imagine it being used in public places (WARNING childpaper has been deployed in this establishment). The versions for public use will only be rendered non-adhesive by those with the correct antidote, for which one might charge a hefty price which may act as a deterrent. We could enhance the process with a three-sticks-and-your-stuck rule, records being kept on the parents' licence to breed.

Children not released will eventually become still, as their cousins, the bluebottle and the wasp, eventually stop buzzing and struggling. For the generality of the population there will be the pleasure of seeing justice done. For the world at large there will be the restoration of some peace.

Wider applications of variations on the paper, including torypaper and tosserpaper, are envisaged.

Blocks stones worse than senseless things and flying ants

There were so many people out last night. Many were carrying suitcase so I suppose they were making a holiday.

Others were carrying many bags of shopping, perhaps for the same reason, perhaps to avoid going out later, which would be reasonable.

Everyone seemed to have all their children with me. So many many children.

I wondered if the wet weather has anything to do with it. Green stuff is multiplying.

And then I thought it might be interesting to take a few random samples of DNA and see if they have anything in common with flying ants.

Do they make water cannot that fire boiling water?

This morning, they were more subdued, wandering in circles, stumbling, confused. Well, it's not so warm.

The mare of London

I quote the nightmare of London, The Big One, Blag Blather himself:

The geiger counter of Olympiamania is going zoink

He said that to an estimated 60000 of the electorate and they cheered

Les evenements

I am sick of the bloody Olympics and they've hardly started. It's almost claustrophobic in this incipiently-Fascist Outer London Borough.

Apparently the flame was trooped here Monday. I went north for that very reason but someone yesterday was saying how wonderful it was to be in such large crowds all with the same desire.

Apparently they were “all down both sides of the Carshalton Road, waiting”.

Das einige Volk.

And atop all the usual broadcasts on the transport system there are blatherings from Boris Johnson: “This is the Mayor; this is the Big One.”

Well, if he wants to be called The Big One then he has to do it himself I suppose. He urges us to plan our journey. How? Why?

I am almost in admiration of Southern Rail in that the blithering idiots have made no visible attempt to avoid their usual crap. Signal failures, broken trains, crap announcements, some of which you couldn't hear for Boris. They have what sounds like a child making announcements now. He stumbles from word to word like a fly trying to get off a fly paper and little apparent awareness of syntax. As what he is reading takes on semblances of meaning for him, he seems to express surprise “and on Saturday that service will not run?!”

The way they make announcements even English First Language can't understand much of it.

And on the radio I hear of trains not stopping at the Central Sacred Destination. How CAN one plan in such circumstances?

My favourite announcement yesterday was delivered confidently and with disjunctive panache: “Attention passengers waiting for the train --” and nothing more, ever.

Finding myself unconstrained for a few hours and with a decent camera in my bag, I nearly went into central London to take a series of photographs I want; but I thought better of it because of the likely chaos. By then I was on my way and so, inadvertently, saw quite a bit of South London. The buffoons have been busy. Wherever there is an island platform one side of which does not normally serve passengers, they have built strong metal fences worthy of a national frontier.

Why?

It reminds me of an observation made many years ago: that this country would be fine if the Normans were not still in control. And so we have dungheads who are for instance Managers of Customer Satisfaction with Outsourced Sandwiches purely as a reward for brown-nosing with William the bastardly Director of Train Chaos and volunteering some serfs to lie down as emergency rail sleepers. In post, they build their motte and bailey offices out of proforma waste, terrorise the booking hall staffs of small stations and then turn their attention to defending themselves against insurrection from the populace.

And we get massive fences running down the middle of platforms which achieve nothing but do reduce flexibility. The signals fail. The trains break down. But we get fences to keep us penned like livestock.

And yet as I say I quite admire them. The Lords are blustering about low turnouts on strike votes though not one of them has been voted there. But Southern don't give a damn. They just don't bother. They don't even attempt to justify themselves. And they find themselves admirable. They've found that try as they may they cannot work out how to run a decent service. They've simplified the system – it's quite a burden to get to London Bridge from here. They've given up announcements. They've stopped politeness. They've ripped up the sidings; so it's just several As to several Bs; and the morons still can't do it.

But it doesn't worry them. Mentally they're still out on the neolithic hillsides at the mercy of forces they do not understand – signal failure, train failure, inclement weather. Some of them clearly think that blowing a whistle makes the locomotive start. Nothing to be done.

They are people of faith and they may not be criticised.

Meanwhile Baron Big One, having lauded himself for the new Cross Rail development has gone very quiet over the move to end the loop to Sutton of the Brighton-Luton line to pay for it.

The full trains into Blackfriars will be emptied on to other trains already themselves over full.

I gave up last night. A large chunk of Southern seemed to have ceased to be. Questions to the believers about the movements of the spirits of the trains brought such an intense hiss of “I don't know” that I feared being charged with blasphemy.

I looked for a bus. I thought I saw mine; but it had no sign on it. As I tried to board, it drove off with the door still open – supposedly impossible, alarm howling – with no words from the pig's arse driver and parked. Welcome to UK

Numeracy

A few nights ago, mid evening, I went into the local Morrisons to buy some of their price-reduced stock. I always check their machine-addition in such circumstances. For the second time in two such visits, I found an error. In their favour. It has always been in their favour.

Or so it seemed to me. I thought it was about one pound over what it should be.

Such an opinion should never be expressed to the likes of a Morrison's employee because most, not all, just would not believe that one could come to such an opinion.

I double-checked myself; and that isn't easy because the one (often contracted) word description of each item doesn't necessarily match what you have bought. I found once that a quiche made with feta cheese was receipted as a fruit flan.

With such a grasp of reality, I wonder what they eat at home. I wonder if they know.

It took about 5 minutes to reduce the query to one item and one line on the bill. 35p asked for; 135p taken.

I went to the complaints desk. I said that 7 of 8 items were fine but one was billed wrongly, 135p for 35p, and I showed the item; and might I have the difference. She took everything out and checked all the items herself, exclaiming about such things as feta being classed as a fruit, whatever the insanities were in this case, and eventually said that she concluded I had been charged 135p when I should have been charged 35p.

I thanked her for a successful investigation. It was about 15 minutes wasted now.

She asked me if I would like a refund and I indicated I thought that was an appropriate idea. You see, she said, it's misread the label. I thanked her for this information, knowing it was pointless to complain that a labelling system which displays one amount and is machine-readable for another is a piece of shite.

Well then, she said, that's 85p, isn't it?

Is it? I asked.

Well, she said, it's something and 5p; and reached for the calculator. The calculator, in her hands, confirmed her belief that135 minus 35 is 85; and she asked: Is that ok?

I acquiesced – another 5p to charity; 30p last time – and we moved on to the hand-written A4 landscape sheet stage where this transaction was recorded. It has no provision for recording the details of the calculation, merely the fact that someone has decided that a certain amount of money is owed. It must be done. They can't be too careful.

Help.

Israel

I just saw a newspaper headline to the effect that Israel, as if that were a person, fears an attack upon its athletes at the Olympics.

Which puts me in mind of something I heard on the radio at dawn. Today is the anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 by the Irgun.

Why might Palestinians attack Israelis? Because they see Israelis as having stolen their land and treated the survivors as contemptible inferiors.

Why did the Irgun do what they did? As part of the campaign to steal Palestine.

I keep asking anyone and everyone what justification there is for the existence of the supposed state of Israel.

Generally, there are two answers. One is that it has been recognised by U.N.

I tend then to ask how that stands with Israel's selective acceptance of U.N. decisions. The answers, when they come, vary but they are always special pleas. Often merely asking the question ends the conversation  and perhaps the dialogue.

I am careful to use the word Israelis. I value my Jewish friends. Many of them have broken that friendship because of my position...

The other answer takes a number of forms: (a) the bible says it is the promised land... and I can't be bothered with that. I suspect that is going to be the end of any intelligent discussion. Sometimes I have said that I am glad they mentioned that because the night before God spoke to me and told me he had changed his mind. You can imagine how that goes, although there is some variety.

(b) Jews have always been in Palestine. They say "Israel" of course. Well, yes, but that takes us back to the Balfour Declaration -- a homeland, not a state. They would, I suggest, have been welcomed if many had not tried to take over, if they hadn't grabbed the best, if they hadn't behaved like racists, if they hadn't asserted the priority of their beliefs. In general, this produces an idiots' response: I don't know about that.

I feel much as I did over "9/11". Are you really surprised? Are you so assured of your innate superiority and right to behave as you wish, that you cannot see how your behaviour looks to those you walk on?

The answer -- on the few occasions I have ever put that question to gung ho USAmericans or Israelis -- is incomprehension: it seems to me they don't allow themselves to understand.

Some years ago, I met a friend whom I had not seen in a couple of decades. He is ethnic Polish. His family fled Poland in the 40s. His mother was in the Warsaw uprising. As the alcohol was consumed, he began speaking to me of the world wide Jewish conspiracy. I asked how he of all people could believe such crap. He just went into bullshit denial and assertion. I won't repeat it. It became abusive. I should just have walked out. That is the end of that.

And I feel the same about Israel. I feel it especially when they insist that they must have a homeland, that it is a right to have a homeland... One not long ago insisted that I have a homeland and therefore should demand he has one; and refused to accept my rebuttal. On a world scale, I said, I may be in relatively quite fortunate circumstances; but I do not feel as if I am in my country -- I have no country -- I have a passport but -- I am not at home here; I am not English...

He refuted that and went on to reassert that, because of *his ethnicity he has a right to decide where he belongs and where he does not belong; and, by implication, this has the force of law on all of us. Who knows but it may justify for him his right to plant bombs as part of the argument. We didn't get that far and there was no suggestion of it; but the logic would seem to have a foundation there in that false assertion. I derided his special pleading so strongly that the conversation came to an end; but there was no debate to be had.

He said: "I do not know what you mean by special pleading". He said "I never do know." so I must have said it before. I explained (again). He professed not to understand by means of an exceptionalist argument. I explained that itself is a special plea. He said "No it isn't". I remarked that he had just denied knowing the meaning of the term. He said "No I didn't"

How many more must die while this nonsense goes on?

None I hope; but I am not hopeful.

Blasphemy

As Ed Miliband said: People should not be striking during the Olympics. People should not be disrupting the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games are among the most sacred of our religious festivals. Once a century, if that, our country has the chance to appease the gods by staging them. How dare people blaspheme for their own pecuniary advantage?

Perhaps the most important and popular game is making as much money out of other people; and second to that comes the joyful and laudable practice of shafting those who actually do the work.

It is just sour grapes of PCS members not to admit that they are second raters and do not deserve decent wages.

They should be crucified in public.