ARCHIVES OF THE BITCH.

Well darlings,

Bah! Humbug! It's that time of year again - it's Christmas! This is the time when it seems everybody must spread their cheer. As we fight our way through the throngs of shoppers pushing, shoving, standing on each other's toes and fighting tooth and nail for the very last item on the shelf to the strains of Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody, a sound amplified to distortion as it attempts to squeeze out of the store's 'not made for this' speakers for the umpteenth time, and we thrust forward our hot and now positively drooping credit cards in an attempt to secure yet another present that should we not get it the world would end - we are reminded by Datamonitor that Britons are the most indebted consumers in Europe.

We are not up to our eyes in debt - we've long passed that stage for now apparently we cannot even see that our recent outstanding unsecured debt has, on average, soared by a staggering 41%. Where people in Italy, again on average, owe just £742 each we lead the field at a massive £3,034 each - and that's according to figures that were calculated before this annual big spend - but do we care? You bet your life we don't! Have another one! Merry Xmas!

And what of the revelations by the man from the Pru? One in five of our pensioners is anxious or depressed by their lack of finances, with 2% of them admitting to having considered suicide as an answer to their problems. Nearly one in five of every wrinkly you may pass in the street is having to scrape by on less than £5,000 a year, with 60% of them admitting that they've had to curb their spending during the past six months and "do without". Of the retired, 17% have returned to work - with 30% of these proud people claiming it was "because they enjoyed it", but with 23% perhaps being more honest in saying that they needed the additional income. This is Britain in the twenty-first century. These are our society's values - but do we care? You bet your life we don't! Have another one! Merry Xmas!

A report by the Australian Conservation Foundation entitled "The Hidden Cost of Christmas" has calculated the environmental impact of spending on books, clothes, alcohol, electrical appliances and sweets for them during the festive season. It is undoubtedly even more relevant here. Gifts like DVD players and coffee makers generated 780,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution last year - even before they were unwrapped. A third of that was down to fuel consumption during production. Fuel - remember, that stuff that's becoming scarce?

Last Christmas the Australians spent A$1.5 billion (£634 million) on clothes. Clothes, the report tells us, which required more than half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) of land to produce, and for every A$30 (£10) box of chocolates or sweets that the Australians bought there were 20kg (44 pounds) of natural materials and 940 litres (207 gallons) of water consumed in its production. And they used even more water, enough to fill 42,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, in the production of their Christmas drinks last December. Water, the stuff over which it has been predicted the next World War will one day be fought. All those valuable resources are being used up, and at such a frightening rate, by a country with only one third of the population of Britain. Our figures must surely be at least three times greater than theirs - but do we care? You bet your life we don't! Have another one! Merry Xmas!

Doctors are becoming alarmed at the increasing number of children, some as young as seven, suffering from the effects of drug or alcohol abuse. Apparently 85% said the youngsters had ready access to drugs, and 95% to alcohol. Of the 500 doctors surveyed for Channel 4's More4 News 41% reported seeing a rising number of children and teenagers with drug and drink problems. The most common age-group with problems is the 14 to16-year-olds - not good news when more than half of the doctors (56%) claimed there was not enough support available in their area to tackle the problem. Nigel Williams, the Children's Commissioner for Northern Ireland, is reported as saying: "The most important thing is that the Government start by looking at their existing response and ask why it is not working?" Christmas is undoubtedly a time when this problem is likely to escalate, and the new twenty-four-seven licensing hours will be doing nothing to help alleviate it - but do we care? You bet your life we don't! Have another one! Merry Xmas!

And in Blackpool all those people who earn their living through tourism, and from visitors to the town like those that attend the political conferences, are likely to be in for a very bleak time next year, and in the coming years. The news that the Tories have finished with their week-long conferences in Blackpool, preferring to hold two weekend mini-conferences in cities such as Newcastle and Bath in order to make it easier for young working people to attend instead of just the "fanatics" and retired people, when coupled with the knowledge that Labour now much prefer using Manchester whilst the Lib-Dems have already stated they will not return to the resort in the foreseeable future, has come as a blow to a town that thrives almost solely on the people visiting it. But, as if you thought all that wasn't bad enough, I'm afraid there's even worse news to come for the resort next year. I'm not at liberty to divulge what I know, but I'm sure the bad news must even now be spreading through the grapevines - if it's not already become common knowledge.

But for now perhaps we should only remember it's Christmas time again, it's the anniversary of the horrific tsunami that brought so much death and destruction, and which saw the start of a record-breaking year of natural disasters, all with their own mass deaths and destruction, and all around the globe. There were more earthquakes, more hurricanes, and more severe weather than ever before recorded, and 2005 has gone down as the warmest year on record (overall) for the planet with the Arctic ice forming less, and later than ever before known (more than a month later than usual) with the prospect of polar bear extinction in the near future as we're told the poor beasts will either starve or drown. And the experts are warning that this could just be the beginning of some really nasty times to come.

All in all, we in Britain have a lot to be thankful for - so far we have been spared the notable natural disasters. And so I think we perhaps should be grateful that it is Christmas time once more - a time when often we couldn't care less about anything else, a time when we will have another one - or three, or maybe more, and a time when we do wish each other A Very Merry Xmas! However, a conscience can be a terrible thing - let's all of us first look around to see if we can do anything for those who are less fortunate than we are before we let our hair down. Next year may be bad enough for us all - I'm sure none of us need the added burden of a guilty conscience.

Once done, let us all: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!"

The next "The Bitch!" column is projected for week-ending January 7th 2006 and so, whether or not you do actually celebrate the Xmas Season, I wish you all a happy, a healthy, and a peaceful time. May the New Year bring you everything that you desire.

See you all next year, folks... Have a good one!

"The Bitch!" 17/12/05.

Well darlings,

How was it for you? The holiday season, I mean. What else? If there was anything else for me then I must apologise, I don't remember it - I guess if it wasn't the drink, then I must have thought it insignificant at the time! Oh, dear! Did I just hear someone shout: "Bitch!"?

As expected Blackpool celebrated the New Year like crazy, with the extra drinking hours giving rise to some problems. However it seems we fared better here than in many other places throughout the country. We're told the police forces in Wiltshire, Surrey, Cheshire, Thames Valley, Lincolnshire, Greater Manchester and (would you believe it?) even in north Wales all reported hectic nights, whilst in London the emergency services were left reeling and wondering what had hit them. There the ambulance service reported receiving a record number of emergency calls, with thirty-five people requiring urgent treatment for stab wounds and the calls for assistance at one point coming in at three times the normal rate. Grimsby too had a bad time with 650 emergency calls and the police there describing the Saturday night as one of the worst nights of violence they had ever seen, and in Bristol the Avon and Somerset police complained that "people seemed to be out celebrating for longer than usual", as they too found their abilities were being stretched to the limit.

Strangely, and bucking the trend, the number of incidents that had to be dealt with by the Devon and Cornwall police were down by around 20%. That's the magic of pixies for you! Or could it be the beauty of cider that gives one better things to do than to partake in violence? Only ribbing folks, as Adam would say - and he liked apples too, didn't he?

Staying with the evils of alcohol, the Charles Kennedy revelations beggar belief! "I was an alcoholic," he is reported as saying, as he struggled to hang on to his position. Two points here, darlings: Firstly, there is no such being as an ex-alcoholic - alive, that is! Alcoholism is a medical condition that is, for anyone with the condition, with them for their lifetime. It can take as little as one drink, "just a wee nip to help with the pressure", to put an alcoholic back on the path to oblivion. Secondly, to not know or to acknowledge this fact is to not have correctly addressed the problem. It is ludicrous to even think that a man who leads a political party, and one who aspires to perhaps being Prime Minister of the country one day, could be an alcoholic and still be a safe person to entrust with such a position. Like being a pub manager, this is a job he should not consider.

I have little doubt that Charles is an admirable man and of good character (many alcoholics are) but he must accept his limitations. In return we must not blame him or despise him for his problem. Unlike most of the binge drinkers that we hear so much about these days, if he is an alcoholic then he is unable to change his ways - he can only fight his condition on a day to day basis. Every day that he stays "dry" is a victory for him and he should be commended for it, but in this battle of his there is every likelihood that there will be times, and they could come weeks, months or even years apart, when he will not win the day - or many days. I know, I have held the hand of one who walks the same path - and I certainly wouldn't want that finger on the big red button!

Before leaving the holiday season and the drink-related, I must thank The Alabama Showboat in Blackpool for the excellent free (and full) Xmas Show that they put on for us "VIP's" (their description of us, not ours). AstaBGay took twenty places, many of them for BAG's hotelier friends, and the event was appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed by one and all. The show, performed to a packed house, simply wallowed in professionalism with the compere / host, Leye D Johns undoubtedly on top form! When Leye is on, with a wit as sharp as a razor (and a manner as camp as Christmas!) you don't dare even move, let alone visit the loo! It was a truly spectacular night. If you get the chance to see one of the award winning shows at this venue - do! They are open to the public (it's usually best to book!) and come highly recommended! Check out their package deals which include a pre-show meal in their Kennedy Restaurant.

Now, what does "0" mean to you? Nothing? Well, it means exactly that to some in Holland, those who see the sixth of June (6/6/06) as 666 - a figure referred to in Revelations as "the number of the Beast". Oddly, there are Registry offices in Holland that are reporting they are being flooded with requests from couples who want to get married on this day. The Dutch city of Enschede claim they already have five times the normal applications for that specific date, Rotterdam claim double the usual amount, with Utrecht, Groningen and Nijmegen all claiming their numbers are up significantly too. In Amsterdam, one couple even asked to be married at 6 minutes past 6 on that morning, but it seems the officials have refused to get up that early.

I've always liked Holland - especially Amsterdam - and I know they freely do a lot of things there that some over here see as being a little "naughty", but I've never seen it in an evil light before. Apparently there's been no such rush to tie the knot on this date in the UK - so what's with Holland? Am I missing something here? It's certainly a hell of a date to get hitched, isn't it? Although, I guess, some will tell you that any day you get hitched is a hell of a day! By the way, the sixth of June falls on a Tuesday. It's been predicted the world will end on a Tuesday - I just thought I'd throw that one in!

But if you think these Dutch 666 chasers are idiots, think again. When it comes to idiots, here in the UK we seem to number them at 5 million. According to a survey that's the count for adults across Britain that have been fooled into responding to scams. Scams like having to dial a premium rate telephone number to claim a worthless, if not fictional, prize, or other scams like sending money in order to "release" some (fictitious) winnings - commonly from an international lottery that hadn't even been entered! In one case somebody sent them £75,000! How daft is that on the idiot scale?

So, I won't criticise those comparatively few people in Holland who have this beastly 666 number addiction. Instead I'll merely give them a few words of advice: Skip the reception, darlings. Go to bed directly after the ceremony and get straight on down to it - you never know, it might just turn out to be THAT Tuesday! I mean, you wouldn't want to miss out, would you?

See you all next week...

"The Bitch!" 6/1/06.

Well darlings,

The Respect Action Plan aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour, and recently outlined by Tony Blair, is not without its critics. A 50 minute Newsnight Special from Swindon seemed to conclude it was merely more of the same, and the same wasn't working well enough. The Prime Minister, looking a little flustered at times at being unable to convince his audience, kept referring to "other parts of the country" (without being too specific) where, he claimed, the initiatives were already working well.

Along with the well attended meeting we were treated to the film crew's experiences on the streets of Swindon. Youths could plainly be seen throwing stones at them as they conducted their interviews with some business people who were telling them that the Dispersal Orders in force there at the local Shopping Parade had become nothing more than a game for the yobs who would disappear each time the police attended, only to return minutes later. And when Mr Blair was informed that ASBOs, major factors in his assault on anti-social behaviour, far from being a deterrent were actually being seen as badges of honour by the local youths who were eagerly buying up false ASBO papers on the Internet to earn more "street-cred" (the proof is on e-bay), he was momentarily lost for words and could only grin.

Now it's not often I feel sorry for our Tony, but the way in which he seemed so lost for credible answers and could sometimes be seen to be positively squirming (forget the grin - look in the eyes!) as the audience were finding fault after fault with, or appeared to have already had a failed experience of, most of his suggestions, I found that I had to feel pity for him. Although he seemed to be getting nowhere, here was a man who was at least trying.

It seems that some of Tony's supporters have complained to Newsnight that the programme was biased, and was little more than a "get Blair" exercise, but I'm afraid I can't see it that way. The man bravely put himself up to be confronted and to answer the people's questions - the fact that some of the time he couldn't, and that many of his answers didn't stand up to scrutiny, is not the fault of the programme or of those people asking the questions. To complain or, as I thought the local paper in Swindon did the next day, to refuse to see the cruel facts and to play it "upbeat" does nothing towards helping to rectify the obvious and serious problems that we have in society today.

The problems we have are becoming worse as each year passes, and it's no good denying that fact. These problems have nothing at all to do with the modern-day easy living nor the wizardry of the mobile phones, computers, iPods or any of the luxuries that we didn't have years ago and now take for granted. Neither do they have anything to do with all the extra disposable income that many youngsters enjoy today. The problems stem from a change in our society; a change in the way that children were being "brought up". They start in infancy, and it is only from there that we can ever hope to address them successfully.

If there is to be any future for us other than anarchy it will have to one day be accepted that teaching right from wrong by arguing the case with an infant doesn't work anything like as well (and for some, not at all) as a bit of good old-fashioned discipline. It's the animal way, and it needs to be remembered that civilised or not we are still a part of the animal kingdom. It's why we have senses - we learn faster from our senses than we do from our reasoning. No matter how hard anyone might try to explain to an infant the merits of a rose they can never fully understand a rose until they have experienced it with their senses. Unless they use their senses of sight, touch and smell they will never truly know a rose.
Our senses are there to be used, and to experience the good and the bad - the loving hug and the disapproving smack. When teaching right from wrong, for children's senses to only be stimulated by reward and to not know the penalties isn't working and we are depriving them of a basic right - a basic right that every other animal has and uses - the right to be able to learn. Have you seen some of the youths that go through the legal system these days? Some of them can't understand why they are there - they think society is persecuting them. They don't know that they have done something that is unacceptable and that can't be tolerated, so they can never have remorse - don't look for it. To them life has become a battlefield where they believe everyone is against them. This, folks, is the generation from parents who weren't allowed to chastise and of schoolteachers who weren't even allowed to send a kid to stand in the corner! This is our inheritance from "the do-gooders"!
We really must stop listening to these few people, and I believe they are very few, who try to put themselves above the rules of - and you can call it whatever you like - nature, evolution, or even God, for the proof is out there in abundance that they are so very, very wrong.

Now I'm not suggesting that children should be beaten to within inches of death, merely that they should be given the proper corrective training that they need, both at home and at school. When we are young we need to learn respect; when we are older we need to earn respect. A smack doesn't make the child fear the parent or the schoolmaster as some will try to have you believe, but it does instil respect - and there's a subtle difference!
Fear is what motivates the yobs - it's what they use as a tool - and they use it because they have not learned respect! But today even the slightest suggestion that we should re-instate corporal punishment has that small army of misguided "do-gooders" writing in to complain to the newspapers and the television programmes - as I see they have since Tony Blair admitted in that Newsnight programme that he had smacked his children in the past. There are so many similarities that I'm beginning to suspect this small army is made up of the very same, and some might say: "sick", people that insist on (and try to impose on us all) their political correctness.

When, on January 10th, I visited the Sky News poll asking: "Is political correctness bad for Britain?" I found a substantial number of people (7,220) had already voted. Those that had said: "yes", and who felt it was bad, consisted of the overwhelming majority: 92.07% (6,648) - so I'm left to wonder: If so many people feel that way, why the hell do we still allow these people to dictate to us? We should be most politically incorrect and we should all stick two fingers up at them! Darlings, I'm okay with all that's going for fairness or for equality, but when it comes to what's just plain screwball then you can count me out!

It needs to be remembered that whatever we do to address the unruly behaviour that is so common today, in reality it is likely to take more than a generation before we see any substantial improvement - so we really do need to get it right. I believe there is little point in looking for "another way", yet another alternative, when we have already had experience of a system that worked, and worked well. The small number of people that have complained (whinged?) over the years that the system of discipline they were raised with affected them adversely, even if it were to be true, shrinks into total insignificance when it is compared to the massive number of people who today are suffering simply because we chose to abandon that system.
How can we equate the hurt pride of a child with all the costs of the the anti-social behaviour, the pain, the suffering and yes, even the deaths that we see today? How about the twin brothers recently found guilty of sneaking out of their 18th birthday party to rob and kill their step-grandmother? Does she count for nothing? Do we really want to live like this? There are too many youths today that have no respect for anything - least of all a person's life. Thirty-five stabbings in London on New year's Eve - a time when people should be happy and celebrating. Did none of those assailants consider they might be ending someone's life? Didn't it matter to them? Or were they happy to do it? We cannot afford the cost of listening to these "holier than thou" do-gooders any longer!
I do wish some people would stop trying to fix that which isn't broken. They tried it by changing the way in which reading was taught in schools, and for forty years the children suffered as different methods were tried out on them. Now, and only now - but at last! - the "experts" have had to admit defeat. In forty years they have been unable to find a method that is anywhere near as as good as the one that we had, let alone an improvement on it, and for all that time the standard of education in this country fell year on year. If a child can't read then they will have difficulty in understanding most of the other subjects that they take - it stands to reason. Before we were persuaded by some misguided individuals to abandon a system of reading that worked and served us well this country was at the forefront in education - but look where it stands now. I see those forty years as forty years of child abuse - a crime for which those "experts" should be made to pay. But when will we learn? We've done it with reading, we've done it with discipline, we've done it with so many things! We really must stop listening to those who would have us tamper with that which isn't broken, for all we will do is break it for real.

Before I leave this completely, there is one idea that is undoubtedly welcome in Tony's Respect Action Plan and that is the "people's courts" where the police can be called to account for failing to tackle the yobs. At these regular face-to-face public meetings with local residents, meetings that must be open to the local media and must be attended by Town Hall officials and by anyone else directly involved in the battle against anti-social behaviour, pressure can be put on the police to address anti-social behaviour issues in areas where it may be considered that they are failing, or are neglecting. This, in a very short while, should put paid to the idea that the police don't turn up to some incidents in order to make their crime figures look better. If you remember, it was exposed last year that the crime figures we are fed are based on the number of incidents that the police attend - so the fewer that they attend, for whatever reason - and it could just be a lack of manpower, the more they appear (on paper) to be getting to grips with the problems - whilst in truth the harsh reality may prove to be entirely different. To give praise where it's due - this idea is a good one, Tony!

Moving on: I see that, according to the financial information group Defaqto and the product comparison website MoneyExpert.com, last year one in five people paid penalty fees or charges on financial products to the average sum of £70.70 each - with more than a fifth of this total paying out in excess of £100 each for falling foul of the actual terms and conditions of the products.

To me, one in five people seems an unusually high number and I'm wondering: were there any, and if so how many, scams involved? There's an old saying: Wherever there's money, there's a fiddle. Well, one that I met some years ago turned out to be all too common at that time, but may not be now - nevertheless I'll still mention it in case it should be. This scam came with the then new idea of "pay nothing now and have so many years of free credit". Tempted by the advertising I decided to buy some goods from a large national company under this financial scheme where I wouldn't incur any extra costs through taking out one year of free credit providing that I paid the amount in full before the first anniversary of the sale. Like many people then I thought it sounded like a good idea. The rather large amount that the item cost would still be earning interest if it remained in my bank for that year and, what with inflation, the following year it probably wouldn't seem to be costing me quite so much money anyway.

But the devil was in the detail. I was, as expected, required to pay the finance company the money, not the store where I had purchased the product. But here's the catch as I discovered it on wanting to pay off my debt in full some eleven months later: I had signed up for one year of free credit and so the finance house couldn't and wouldn't issue me with a bill until the money actually became due - and it only became due AFTER the year had expired. Without a bill they could not accept my money, and as I would by the time that the bill arrived have exceeded the agreed year they would then be penalising me by adding the percentage interest rate on the full cost of the goods for every single month of the year - the full amount, of course, because unlike in a normal finance agreement the amount owing hadn't decreased at all.

Far from being free credit this could have been exceptionally expensive credit - but, needless to say, I didn't pay it. Honeybuns, I don't write under the name of "The Bitch!" without reason. Armed with a reporter friend and a cameraman I turned up at the finance company's head office and, along with all the relevant paperwork, I slapped the readies on the counter and demanded to be able to pay off my debt. A few inter-office phone calls by the embarrassed staff, and a few nosey heads peering around doors, and the deed was done.

I was pleased to see, some time later, the finance company were prosecuted by the Office of Fair Trading for the way in which they operated their interest free scheme. On being found guilty they were fined and subsequently had to re-word their finance contracts. It turned out my reporter friend had seen my case as a kitten might see a loose end in a woollen jumper - it was something that just had to be explored further!

There are several companies today that advertise free credit offers, and for varying lengths of time. So, whilst I have no reasons to doubt the integrity of any of them, or would wish to cast any aspersions at all on them or on the finance companies that they use, in my mind, if you are tempted to use this method of purchasing goods it would still be prudent to thoroughly check out exactly when, where, and how easily you will be allowed to pay off the debt before signing anything - just in case that scam has been resurrected by some unscrupulous person.

See you all next week...

"The Bitch!" 14/1/06.

Well Darlings,

The big news here in Blackpool is the much delayed opening of the new Flying Handbag on Friday 20th January. Along with some local dignitaries, and people from many other businesses including numerous BAG's gay hoteliers, AstaBGay was invited to the early evening pre-opening look around where we were plied with a seemingly endless supply of free drinks.
We had hardly got the "thrust under our noses on entering" lovely-jubbly down our necks before we were attacked by the continuously circulating angel and an (it has to be said) extremely handsome lad dressed as a devil who both presented us with their laden trays of even more free drinks. Already impressed, it was then that I knew this was going to be one hell of a night and I strove to lighten this adorable devil lad's load as much and as often as possible - all the time wishing I could lighten it more! Shut-up! I can dream, can't I?

Basil Newby does nothing by halves, and the new Flying Handbag is no exception. It is everything we have come to expect from him, and more. Sizeable, it has a large squared-off horseshoe shaped bar that provides easy access in all areas to your next drink. We started the night on the left (as we entered) where there was ample room to stand around and mingle, whilst some comfortable seating at tables had been provided for those who wished it. Three large video screens behind the well-stocked bar provided entertainment for those between friends and further along other entertainment was provided by a pool table, and all the time through the large windows and glass doors we could look outside onto the tempting heated patio complete with its stairs up to yet another patio, a balcony from which I'm sure through time many a young prissy queen will do a Marlena Dietrich impression, although perhaps never having known of the great lady. Regrettably the inclement weather had decided for us that this was no night for any such an endeavour.

Later we investigated the other side of the bar, the area in front of you as you enter. Again it is spacious, with plenty of mingling room accompanied by a few tables, some seating and raised areas at the perimeter. From here we were able to watch our most competent drag deejay for the evening "doing her thing" next to the nicely proportioned and professionally equipped stage. A stage that we immediately realised the staff wouldn't be attempting to push to one side towards the end of the night, as they had been required to do so many, many times before at the old venue.
There was a welcoming speech from Basil, a marvellous and well-received (as always) Shirley Bassey rendition performed by the internationally acclaimed drag artiste: Roxy Hart (who, if you didn't already know, is the resident host of Blackpool's much-loved "Roxy's" further along Queen Street - another ITP venue), and some time later, I guess it must have been around eleven-thirty or so, it was time for more cabaret and a chance to say: "Hello, Sailor!" to the singer: Jane McDonald, who readers will remember sprang to fame in 1995/96 when she was asked to perform as top of the bill on the cruise ship: “The Galaxy” whilst BBC1 were on board filming their programme: "The Cruise". Not only the nation's favourite, she soon became a gay favourite too - which makes me wonder: How did her name come to be incorrectly spelt on the Flying Handbag's promotional material? Whoops, darlings! Never mind, she was thoroughly loved and appreciated on the night, and I feel sure she will forgive the mistake.

As you might have expected from us, AstaBGay had the help of many friends who were circulating to find out what others actually thought of the new venue. Did they like it? Had they found any faults? Were they more happy with it than the old one? We're pleased to be able to report that overwhelmingly the new Flying Handbag has been given the "thumbs up". The only minor criticisms we discovered concerned the stage area. Some felt the stage was too low and as from only a few rows back little could be seen of the performers this encouraged people to chatter throughout the acts. One person felt that "strippers" appearing there would need to do hand-stands in order to be seen. There was also talk of difficulty in getting to and from the loos as it was necessary to push through people standing in front of the stage who, naturally not wanting to lose their advantageous position, were reluctant to allow passage.
It was thought by some that the stage area would have been better positioned at the other end of the venue where it wouldn't hinder those on the loo visiting task, or anybody attempting to enter or leave the premises whose efforts in doing so would undoubtedly be annoying to both the performers and to those in the audience. Oh, and the way in which the stage seemed to be "controlled" from a deejay box that by its very positioning excluded easy viewing of it was not so much criticised by a few as found to be an hilarity, and a subject that promoted some equally hilarious "armchair" remedies ranging from the use of CCTV to, in one case, a complex system of mirrors! Yes, by then the lubrication was quite obviously working!

In fairness it has to said that the venue was absolutely heaving on this important opening night, packed wall to wall, and so it will probably only be at such similar times that any of the criticisms found might be justified. However as this started as a "blank canvas" there were a couple of people who thought these anomalies should have been foreseen and avoided. Which brought up another topic that did the rounds - I think this one came from Peter, the Chairman of BAG's - and that was: Can you name any other purpose-built-from-scratch gay venue in the UK? Or anywhere? None of us could. Can you?

The AstaBGay view? The new Flying Handbag is more than a worthy successor to the old one. It has everything that was on offer before, and a whole lot more, in a far superior, comfortable and state-of-the-art building with outside areas that will be a boon on those hot, sticky summer nights. All the criticisms we've seen so far could be made of many other venues too and certainly applied as equally to the old premises where they never stopped that from becoming one of Blackpool's best-loved and most successful gay venues. We feel sure they won't have any adverse affect here either. With the opening of the new Flamingo Club in just a few days (27th January) within the adjacent Funny Girls complex this second successor will complete a major part of Blackpool's gay scene sitting squarely on the doorstep of "gay hotel land" and will truly cement the term "gay village" to the area.

Already we are hearing that if we thought the new Flying Handbag was good, then we should wait to see what the new Flamingo has to offer. Apparently, "We ain't seen nothin' yet!" And from what I've already heard coming down the grapevine, I can well believe it. These two latest and massive ventures by Basil will ensure the crown of: "Gay Capital of the North" stays sitting firmly and securely on the head of Blackpool. Where else can gay people and their friends literally in their thousands fall out of the safety of a gay hotel and into the commercial gay scene within a mere matter of minutes? And: Oh Boy! What a Scene!
Once more Blackpool is indebted to Basil Newby, and I'm not only talking on behalf of gay people here - these latest and magnificent venues will help to keep the whole of Blackpool alive and on everybody's map. Whilst other businesses and ventures may be deserting our town - to date no summer show has been booked for the Opera House or for the Piers (and probably won't be this year), and some well known straight nightclubs have chosen to shut their doors - it needs to be remembered that Basil continues to actively invest heavily in the future of Blackpool.

Thanks, once again, Basil!

"The Bitch!" 21/01/06.

Well Darlings,

The new Flamingo has opened here in Blackpool - and what can I say? For someone who makes money from using words, they almost fail me. As a privileged and grateful VIP guest on the opening night I can tell you that it's like stepping into another world - you can hardly believe you are still in Blackpool and you must be forgiven if suddenly Dorothy springs into your mind: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"

At the closing of the old Flamingo (on Monday 23rd January) Basil Newby was moved to tears on stage, twice breaking down as he found difficulty in saying his epitaph to the nightclub that meant so much to him and to gay people the world over who had come to visit it throughout its lifetime of more than twenty-five years. This was not just a gay venue that was closing that night; this was the end of something that had become a shrine - a monument to Gay. There can be few places on the planet where a gay person if asked what they knew about Blackpool would not first mention the Flamingo before thinking of the Tower.

On that final night the huge crowd chanted "Basil, Basil, Basil" to support the man, and to honour him, as he worked hard to complete his speech. It was a night that had everything going for it with great sounds, cheap drinks, three strippers, and some fantastic cabaret until, when at 4am, it really was all over. Then Basil was not alone in being overcome with emotion; then there were many there in tears who were reluctant to leave this much-loved venue for the last time, and to thereby confirm that an era had ended.

But, as the opening of the new Flying Handbag last week has already shown us, this was not really the end - it was merely a transitional time. Now born again, the new Flamingo is a truly magnificent beast. For gay people who love Blackpool and who would probably have happily settled for anything that Basil provided for them, this new Flamingo can in no way be called an anything - this is a palace of a nightclub that would be admired and envied were it to be placed in any of the great cities of the world. It is remarkable, and some might question why so much money was spent on it when something far less grand would have been satisfactory - but then such a question could only be posed by someone who didn't know Basil.

New gay market research by Out Now 2005 Diva and Gay Times Readers Surveys has revealed that the Pink Pound is now worth over £70 billion annually in the UK. No, that's not a typo, it really is seventy-billion pounds. This is what the UK lesbian and gay community earned last year, and what we're told they appear to be spending, much of it with gay abandon. Averaged out, gay men and women's earnings outstrip straight salaries by up to £10,000 a year and, as few of them have children to spend their money on, they are a force to be reckoned with in the market place, with London, Brighton, Manchester, and Blackpool all benefiting enormously from their pink pounds. Along with the new Flying Handbag, this new Flamingo with all its excellence will go to ensure that Blackpool continues to benefit, and may even do more so in the future.

Darlings, no gay person can realistically be "on the scene" and not be able to talk about a time when they went to the Flamingo. In gay street-cred it's essential to know the Flamingo. And now there's a whole world out there who have got to do it, at least once, all over again. And few ever do it just the once!

Colourful flashing panelled dance floors, hi-tech sound and lighting systems, banks of video screens, go-go dancer's landings, glass staircases, chrome balconies, multi-levels each with their own ultra-modern bars, and everything state-of-the-art that you can imagine may also be found, to varying degrees, in many a modern nightclub these days - but it is only when you put all of this together with Basil's unbeatable formula and a large and friendly local gay scene, then shake it all up and place it at the heart of the gay village in a northern seaside resort called Blackpool, that you can ever hope to achieve the magic that is the Flamingo!
Unlike for the new Flying Handbag, for the new Flamingo I am deliberately only showing you a few small pictures of the venue. I feel that everyone should be able to come here and to have their very own gob-smacked experience first-hand. For me to deprive you of that would be wrong. The pictures, as before, come courtesy of the Highbank Guest House - a member of Blackpool Accommodation for Gays. The Flamingo website will also give you access to info on all the other ITP venues - just click the ITP button (at its top left) for the menu.

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Reluctantly moving on:

I noted the recent police statement where it was said that youngsters who flash their phones and parade their iPods are putting themselves at risk. That to me is as good as saying the youngsters are asking to be done over and have their goods taken if they use them in public. Of course, sadly we all know that this is true, but it shouldn't be.

If the use of normal everyday electronic equipment in public provokes being bludgeoned half to death for it by some unsavoury people, then the police should be doing something about it instead of telling people that they are bringing it on themselves. Are shopkeepers inviting shoplifting crimes and attacks on their person simply by doing what is expected of them - opening? Are they bringing it on themselves? Perhaps the police would prefer it if they were to stay shut. And if none of us used a car I guess there would be no car thefts either, would there? Get real! I see this statement as nothing more than an attempt to pass the buck at a time when the nation is shocked by yet another massive rise in street crime.

In London half of all street crimes committed last year involved the theft of a mobile phone. It's almost as if it has become acceptable; as if we should expect to be mugged for the likes of a mobile phone or an iPod if we're told that we shouldn't use them in public - and that's ridiculous. It should not have to be expected, and it is most definitely not acceptable. Mugging is a crime and it should be dealt with.

Every year taxpayers cough up considerable amounts of money to fund the police and the judicial system. Every year we feel cheated because it gets no better out there. And every year there seems to be at least one "new initiative" thought up that provides employment for panels of people (paid for by us) who sit around on their fat butts trying to make the results "look" better to us. All sorts of stupidity emerges from these people. We hear that there is no more crime, that it's just that more crimes are reported these days. Really? I would suggest that less crimes are reported these days as too many are now becoming accepted as "the norm", and besides the chances of getting a copper to turn up in some places are pretty damn remote. Three days later doesn't work for most people. We also hear that it's our perception of crime that's the real problem, not the actual number of crimes. In other words we're the ones at fault for having our fear of crime. Well, too damn right we live with a fear of crime! You would have to go a long way these days to find anybody who hasn't either experienced a crime for themselves or who hasn't knowledge of some other person's experience! It has become that common!

Norman Brennan, Director of the Victims of Crime Trust and a serving police officer, has apparently stated that since 1997, year after year, violent crime has increased and despite the groundbreaking initiatives that the Government had introduced, not one of them has had any effect in making the streets of Britain safer.

We're told (Source: Life Style Extra (UK) 26th January 2006) he has said: "I am ashamed to admit that in some towns across the country the police have lost control. Criminals are parading around the streets believing they are untouchable. It is not just the public or victims who are telling me that, but police officers themselves.

"If we have any chance of retaking the streets the Government should recruit 50,000 new police officers. We need to scrap unnecessary bureaucracy. Then they would have more time on the beat.

"I am also calling for the Government to build a much needed six new prisons.

"I ask the Government what is their priority: saving money or making the streets of Britain safe?"

Well, I'm asking that too - how about you? Don't you believe it's time something was really done to make things safer on our streets? Safety on our streets is an important issue for gay people. Recruiting 50,000 new police officers, no matter what the cost, sounds a better idea to me than paying for yet another panel to sit around on their butts debating just how far they can move the goal posts in their next attempt to pacify us!
I say: let's get to it! If we can find the money to go to war, then we can find the money to clean up our streets!

See you next week...

"The Bitch!" 28/01/06.

Well Darlings,

If you're reading this I guess your anti-virus software is up to date and you've not been hit by the latest virus that's been doing the rounds on the Internet. Called a variety of names: Win32/Mywife.E@mm, Nyxem, Blackdoom, Blackworm, W32.Blackmal.E@mm, Tearec and “Kama Sutra, it was programmed to mosey around your hard drive deleting some files and writing over others on February 3rd. If you've had "DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 K5]," coming up since then, you could be in trouble!

I've noticed recently that the four software packages I use for protection are updating themselves at least twice a day now, so I guess things aren't getting any better out there in Cyberspace - although a lot of it does appear to be for the (usually) less dangerous spyware bugs that check out your browsing habits. If you don't bar these blighters from entering your system uninvited, or clean them out regularly, they'll soon slow your system down to a crawl as in their hundreds they will fight to use your processing power in order to discover what you are doing. Click on a link and you can almost hear them jostling with each other and saying, "Where's he going? What's he doing?" Unlike the easily seen and discarded junk mail landing on your front doormat, these little devils often hide in order to do their work and just deleting your temporary Internet files and emptying the cookies folder doesn't always get rid of them.

Now I'm a firm believer in free speech, and one of those people happy that on the Internet all kinds of views may be aired and discussed. I would hate to see it censored as it is in China and some other countries of the world. I believe that providing nothing incites hatred or violence then people should have the right to air their views and beliefs - and just as equally others should have the right to listen to them, to agree or to repudiate them, or to simply ignore them. It should be their choice. But when someone forces something on someone by secretly putting it in their computer, a very sensitive and personal piece of equipment that can often be an extension to their brain, simply to spy on them and often to target that person with "the right" advertising, then I am one who strongly objects to it. Have they no respect for a person's privacy?

Advertising that appears in stores, on television or radio, in shop windows and on billboards I can take or leave. If it's good then it may work on me and I might buy the product or service. But I am adverse to advertising that is by its very means forcibly interactive. I am happy with the advert that appears on a page in a newspaper. It is there, I can see it, and I don't have to do anything. But I object most strongly to the great wadge of glossy advertising that is all too often inserted into newspapers and magazines these days. This to me is forced interactive advertising because, unlike those people who just shake it all out over the newsagent's floor, I feel obliged to remove it and to seek out a rubbish bin in which to dispose of it. It physically inconveniences me. The same goes for that which comes through the letter box. Instead of just sitting down to read the mail or the newspaper, these days I must first trek to the kitchen waste bin to dispose with the handfulls of junk.

Meanwhile the planet continues to suffer unnecessarily because I am not that one person in a thousand that this advertising will work on. The gullible sucker. I am one of that ever-growing number, now probably more than one in a thousand, who deliberately avoids buying anything that I've seen advertised in this way. I say: Please join us! It's free, it's fun, and it helps those businesses that do respect us and our privacy!

Even my house phone, a land-line, unless I'm near it and can see a number I recognise, I dare not answer it. I have to leave it to the answerphone to take the call. Some days I can receive in excess of thirty calls, all of them coming up as either: "number withheld" or "international". Some are plain cold call advertising but pretend they aren't, like the one I stupidly had the misfortune of answering yesterday only to be told they were calling me back about my enquiry for a mortgage. They had my name and correct address but I had made no such enquiry, and when I told the chap that I would be one of the last people on the planet who would require a mortgage and that I could probably buy his company outright should I so wish, he was not amused. Darlings, I am the expert in dealing with these people. If they lie to me, I'll lie to them.

My expertise stems from those days in the eighties when every few months the double glazing and central heating firms would descend on our town and hire people to drag the streets cold calling. Very often they were sweet young things, in which case they would be invited in and I'd have an enjoyable time. Sometimes I'd phone a nearby friend or two inviting them for coffee, and the lad would get excited thinking he might have the chance of some more sales. We'd have the coffee and chat a bit whilst we waited for the boss, my wife, to come home. When he finally arrived, coming in through the door to kiss me before looking over his shoulder, tossing his head backwards and pursing his lips in a Larry Grayson style, remarking: "Mmm... Looks like a nice boy," you could see the sweat absolutely pouring off the poor unsuspecting and embarrassed young things as they hurriedly made their excuses to leave amidst our peals of laughter. Well, mostly that is. There were a couple who stayed... but that's another story!

Worse than cold calling are the scams. At the end of the day my answerphone can seem like a parrot on speed as it tells me time after time that I've won this holiday of a lifetime in Florida, but I will need to ring a certain number to claim it. Then there are the cars and the cruises, have you met them too? If you are at a loose end and have the time the way to deal with these is to answer them and then simply place the receiver next to the phone whilst you go off and do something else. Unfortunately the open ended line doesn't stay connected for hours anymore. That came to an end because of the taxi drivers who, when dropping somebody off out in the wilds, would find an isolated telephone box and call a rival company before leaving the handset dangling. Nowadays the line will normally disconnect within ten minutes - but if everybody were to employ the same strategy, wouldn't it really peeve those callers? Waste my time, and I'll waste theirs!

I believe the time has come for all advertising that imposes unwelcome interaction to be banned. The same goes for the scams. Whether it is that which is placed in the newspapers and magazines, the mountains that come through the letter box, the ones that get you out the bath to tell you a load of nonsense, or even the uninvited pop-ups that you are forced to deal with on the Internet by installing software that usually only works to a certain extent - I say they are all as equally unwelcome. This is not advertising; neither is it good business - this is a plain and simple assault on one's privacy. An intrusion. A lack of respect. Were someone to stop you as you walked down the street and to forcibly go through your pockets, leaving you stuffed full of advertising material, then they would be liable for arrest. It would be classed as an assault. And I say so is all this imposed interactive advertising an assault - it is forcing something on people against their wishes; something they do not want. If anyone should want to receive such junk then they should be free to opt in for it. Opt-out schemes don't seem to work very well, do they?

It's all a matter of respect. Those who inflict computer viruses on others, on decent people in their millions, and those who intrude on our privacy with their advertising and their scams, again affecting millions, these people can have little respect for anything. Lack of respect is at the root of a lot of evils these days. It's a simple word, one that once everybody understood. Aretha Franklin had a number one hit with the song Respect in 1967; a song written by Otis Redding. And who could ever forget Erasure's 1992 hit with the song A Little Respect? The title was emblazoned all across the front of the London Gay Pride stage either that or the following year. But today few people understand respect. Some of the older generation do, and I believe on the whole gay people do, but few others.

Gay people respect straight people who use "their" pubs and clubs. They are sociable with them and they respect the affection that two straight people may show to each other. But could you expect the same respect to be given to an affectionate gay couple in a straight venue? Sadly, even after all the progress we've made, I fear not often enough.

Respect is something you can't legislate for - it is aside; far removed from laws and rights. The recent storm over the cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb on his head is a prime example. The newspapers were perfectly entitled to publish it - but in doing so they showed a complete lack of respect. The fact that we enjoy certain rights does not mean that they have to be exercised at all costs. It should be enough to just have them, and to use them with respect for others. We may not be in accord with many of the Islamic faith at the moment, and we most certainly have a right to be able to criticise them, to argue with them, and to even hate some of them - but to mock their faith is a bit below the belt.

Not much is being made about this side of it, but my sources tell me the offensive cartoon we are hearing so much about was only one of a series of twelve published in recent months by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in a battle over the newspaper's freedom to publish provocative speech. I've seen the cartoons and to me they don't appear very provocative - but then I'm not a Muslim. And whilst a cartoon ridiculing the Christian faith I might perceive as funny, I would never publish one - not out of fear, but out of respect to those to whom their religion is a serious matter. So, even if we do accept that this newspaper has a right to be provocative - and I don't necessarily - do they really have to exercise that right? What does it prove?

I feel that being provocative should not be high on any newspaper's "must do" list. Instead of making the news, I would much prefer newspapers to report it and to perhaps pass an opinion or provide argument. Provocation, if we are to have it, should be left to the politicians. And God only knows, haven't we seen enough results of the provocative finger wagging someone did around the world recently? The day that our newspapers start acting similarly will be a sad day indeed.

Some are trying to pour oil on troubled waters; others to set fire to the oil!

Bah! Having now mentioned oil, I must just pass comment on the news that oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has announced record profits for a UK company of £12.93 billion - a record for the second year running and up by nearly a third on last year. Now whilst it's nice to see a UK company doing well, in a year of fuel shortages, queuing for the pumps, and price hikes, isn't £12.93 billion a little obscene? It's a profit of almost £1.5 million an hour. And now you know that it will be sure to spring into your mind when you are again queuing up for an hour at the next fuel shortage. Go on, say it - Bitch!

See you all next week...

"The Bitch!" 4/02/06.

Well Darlings,

The day started strangely. It was the morning after the night before, as my head so kindly reminded me on trying to wake. There were words rattling around in my brain as it was attempting, with little success, to stack them somewhere for later reference. It was as if they were important, so I tried to manage a couple, all the time wondering from whence they came. Slowly, as I turned over to face the world, or more accurately reached out for the first cigarette of the day - the one that would enable me to make it all the way to the kitchen and the salvation of coffee, it dawned on me that the words had come from the still on television.

The 24 hour News channel, the electronic parrot that once having learnt something repeats it constantly for hours on end, was blaring at me. I can remember thinking the neighbours would be well informed on current affairs this morning as I fought with the remote to quieten the beast, my eyes still closed, when a few of those not very efficiently stacked up words fell into place. There was: "royal" and: "male" and a little gem that always demands attention: "interfered with".

Realising that that which wakes up first was feeling exceptionally youthful this morning, its own brain fully awake before mine and having heard the news was already pleasingly playing imaginations to my mind behind my closed eyes, the naked pictures of a giggling youth-some two-some suddenly exploded with the force of a thousand megatons into the unholy sight of the enormous backside of some woman bent over in a postal sorting office when I finally I forced my eyes to open.

At my age such a shock could be fatal, so I reached out and lit a cigarette - and then tried to ignore the already lit one in the ashtray as I dragged myself out to greet my distant cup. The kettle was annoying, it was as if it knew my state. Does it really take that much sound to heat water? I glared menacingly at it, but it chose to ignore me. It does that.

By the second cup I had reached the computer. Sitting in front of it, holding my head in my hands, I prayed for an easy day as the start-up screens flashed by and three of my protection software packages fought with each other to tell me they were updating. I knew better than to interfere with their progress and waited another full minute before asking ePrompter what mail had arrived overnight. Oh, God! Seventy-six on that one, thirty-seven on that one, a ten and a pleasing four. No, I wouldn't try to add them up I thought, as I plumped for the four first.

An hour later, and several more cups of coffee, I feverishly started looking through the news feeds, searching for something to write about. I knew it would be painful. Answering the e-mails had been hell. The "h" and the "a" on the keyboard had been playing up for sometime, requiring seven bells knocked out of their keys before they'd emerge onto the screen, but now the "Enter" key required more pressure too, more than I had at that time of the morning and I was forced to use the one on the numerical pad. As I struggled with the repetitive disasters of missing it and hitting "page down" or "delete" I swore that today I would go out and purchase a new keyboard, as I have been swearing it daily for the past month. I will still be swearing it tomorrow, as yet again I haven't bought one.

It's not the cost of a keyboard. They are cheap enough, even the good ones. No, it's the effort required to stick its end into the little hole around the back of the beast of many wires. I know if I pull this one out and then try to reach around to insert the new one the hole will have moved. I will be like some teenager on his first and longed for invitation, fumbling around aimlessly with no idea of what is where. I will be forced to dismantle everything. That's no mean task with the beast linked up to the computer next to it, the DVD player, the television, the VCR, and it seems everything else in the house bar that damn kettle. The effort involved will be immense, and you can't buy an effort anywhere, can you?

But I shall have to do it soon. I am loath to at the moment because everything else is working so well, and from past experiences I know it hates being interfered with. And now I have written "interfered with" too many times not to mention its true and original context today.

It has been announced the Royal Mail is to be fined £11.7 million over serious breaches of its licence because of the amount of post which is lost, stolen, damaged, or - here it comes again - interfered with. The number of items we are talking about here is 14.6 million in a year. That is some number, isn't it? An incredible number.

We're told the Royal Mail's procedures were not being applied across the business, with their most significant weakness being the "poor management" of the recruitment and training of their agency staff. Always a good one that: blame the temps! But if it's correct, and I have no reason to doubt their findings, I'm left to wonder what good the £11.7 million fine will do to improve matters? The fault is at such a low level of employee that fining the Royal Mail "company" an amount that is only 2% of its operating profit seems quite meaningless. I'm guessing it's only a token gesture to make us feel happy that something is being done about the faults. But are we happy? I'm not. Just like on the railways, where the companies are fined for late and cancelled trains, whatever a company is fined seems to be merely passed on to the consumer. What is the point?

If the fines were to be imposed on the company directors and the upper management you could bet your life things would improve - and almost overnight! But they are not, and some of those in the top positions continue to enjoy massive payments for their efforts - the efforts that you and I might interpret as almost socialising and leisure, for there is often little or no sweat involved for many of them unless you count the golf course on a hot day. And worse than that, it seems that no matter what a disaster they may be to a company they still get a golden handshake when they move on. In the end it is us who are left to pay for their failures - not them. To my mind that is wrong. As much as the lad on the shop floor needs an incentive to do the best he can for the company, so do the directors. They should be paid according to their results, and they should only receive a golden handshake if when they leave they are considered to have done a good job.

Moving on - but not far because this is about the railways I have just mentioned. Did you think their troubles were over? I mean we've suffered a couple of years or so of the tracks being updated, haven't we? Surely things are better now? Hmm...

Being at a loose end - No! Now, now, behave! Shut it! - I considered having a weekend back in Swindon. Searching through the online ticket and timetable services I was amazed to find that if I wanted to come back on the Sunday evening, as I did, I would be bussed from Swindon to Bristol Templemeads where I could pick up the train for Preston only to be bussed again as there were no trains into Blackpool. No trains to or from this major tourist resort is becoming the norm, isn't it? But worse than that, to travel at the time I required I would have needed to change at Wigan and be bussed yet again to somewhere else to pick up a Preston train. Would someone remind me what year we are living in? I chose not to go.

Having experienced that, I was not surprised to learn that Swindon passengers are angry that they suffer on average around 1.8 trains a day being cancelled. Last year First Great Western axed 643 of their trains. Trains that have an average age of 25 years. Now, that 1.8 average obviously means that mostly 2 trains a day were cancelled with a few good days when only 1 was cancelled, and I thought that wasn't good news for the poor Swindonians - until I saw the other figures. Central Trains cancelled on average 45 services a day in 2005, whilst Northern Trains, again on average, cancelled 35 a day. I'm left to wonder for how many people it has been a lottery as to whether or not they would get home on some days last year? And just how many didn't? I'll bet there were some!

If you work all this out, and somebody kindly has for me, on Britain's railways a train was cancelled every 5 minutes last year! The 104,342 services that were axed add up to the equivalent of scrapping the entire national timetable for more than 5 days. Not exactly a record to be proud of, is it? What were the slogans they used? "We're getting there"? And: "This is the age of the train"? Yeah, right! I've a better one: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux - except our railways!"

What an age we live in. I'm quite depressed. We have a postal service that can't train people to keep track of the mail, and a railway network run by a male that can't keep a train on the track!

With just the missing "h"s and "a"s to seek out now before this goes to bed, I think it's time for a drink.

Toodle pip, darlings. See you next week - unless of course I wake up tomorrow to the news that a royal male...

"The Bitch!" 11/02/06.

Well Darlings,

I think something has gone wrong with our solar system. Could we be stuck with a permanent full moon? I mean, there must be something to account for all the lunacy I've seen lately. We have nutters calling for Romeo and Juliet to no longer be a passionate play in our schools. They want the kissing taken out of it, saying a quick peck and a fleeting hug should suffice. Yeah, right! Like if that's all they mean to each other they're actually going to kill themselves? Why not just ban the play and be done with it? I'm sure it won't be long before these fools notice that half the cast are running around with rapiers. I wonder what will they make of that, when they do?

There's more steamy sessions in an episode of EastEnders than in this play, so why don't these do-gooders butt out? It's just a play for God's sake! A romantic one - not an orgy. It's acting, and it's all part and parcel of growing up to occasionally be embarrassed. What's wrong with it? And what's wrong with learning about romance? Surely it's better than the "Hey, bitch! Wanna sh*g?" society into which we have drifted, isn't it? Whoever thought up these stupid "guidelines" should pop into their nearest newsagent and pick up some of the reading material aimed at this age group. They should read some of the "Agony" columns to discover what many of those little darlings they are trying to protect by stopping the enactment of a kiss in a play actually get up to after school.

If some idiot is so concerned about the odd one in a class who is a bit shy then they should be trying to do something about that young person's peers and the world in which they all really live. Kids have to cope with all kinds of pressures today simply because in the past some of these do-gooders have deprived them of learning anything of value. Discipline we know has gone, but so too has individuality and choice of religion and sport and competitiveness and team spirit and honour and pride and all the other things needed to produce a responsible adult with decent values. When will these stupid people learn that we are all individuals? If a kid doesn't want to kiss another kid in a school play then that should be respected and someone else should be offered the part. Probably half the class would jump at it! But to try to ban a kiss in a play for everyone in case the odd person should be embarrassed is ridiculous. This is trying to even us all out down to the lowest possible common denominator. It's stealing our individuality. It's abuse!

Whatever will these do-gooders want to ban next? No, don't tell me. I think I've guessed. It won't be long before someone will make an ass of themself by finding Bottom offensive in Midsummer Night's Dream! They are idiots! Nothing Shakespeare wrote is offensive.

Offensive is invading a country and killing thousands of innocent people in order to get at one man. Yes, he might have been torturing and killing his own people - but that doesn't mean that we have the right to do it! And anyway, that wasn't the reason we were given for going to war. Offensive too is the way we were duped into it.

Offensive is trying to deprive one people of their culture whilst protecting another people's culture. If these do-gooders want to ban (as they do) Christmas and Nativity plays in case they should offend another culture then they should be wanting to ban all celebrations for all cultures - and what a sad day that would be! I would rather see everyone celebrating in their own ways as individuals and respecting, even enjoying, each other's differing cultures. There can't be a culture in the world that isn't represented in our country today. We have to learn to respect each other's differences - we can't all give up everything to become a nation of nothings. This is one common denominator we must not allow!

Offensive are our towns and cities on a weekend night. In Swindon the Salvation Army has been forced out of their town centre headquarters where they have been for years immemorial, the Citadel Church in Fleet Street, because it is now one of the only buildings in the area that is not a pub or a club. They say, "We can no longer put up with the three nights a week where the front porch of the building is used as a public toilet and becomes covered in human vomit and excrement and we can barely use the hall on a Saturday."

Now I'm not an avid Sally Bash fan, but I respect them and I acknowledge all the good (the real type of good) that they do. Their members make a promise not to drink alcohol when they join and, apart from all the other much needed services they provide, every year the organisation helps thousands of men and women across the country break their dependence on alcohol. They are an asset to any town. So, offensive were the people that allowed premises after premises around them to become alcohol dependent businesses. Offensive too is that because of their (the council's?) stupidity decent people now feel frightened to go into their own town centre in the evenings at weekends.

Those are the kind of things that are truly offensive to people - not Romeo kissing Juliet in a school play! I mean, is there any comparison? No, there isn't. If we really want to find offensive close to home we need look no farther than the little army of do-gooders who are ruining our society. Not only are they offending us, they are abusing us too. It's high time we dealt with them!

More moon madness? How about the accommodation that's being provided for our students? The luxury accommodation with en-suite bedrooms, hi-speed Internet, recreation rooms and lounges etc. Now whilst I appreciate we need to ensure there is adequate accommodation provided for students, do we really have to supply them with an environment and a lifestyle the likes of which half the country can't afford for themselves? It's lunacy. The rent for some of these places next year will be far exceeding the student grants - so where's the sense in them?

I'm a firm believer that this is a time in the lives of those who will one day be the captains of society for them to learn some humility. A time for them to live basically and to learn and appreciate all that, for the most of them, they will probably never experience again in their lifetimes, but will forevermore remember and hopefully consider. Mollycoddling our students, and in doing so giving them even greater debts with which to contend, is not helping them one iota. Some of them are going to be in for an awful shock when they finish their education and hit the real world. En-suites, indeed! In my day we never knew what a cold seat was in the mornings!

Moving on: I have a suspicion the Liberal Democrat Lord Carlile and his inquiry team have been taking too much of the moonlight too. Whilst the death of the fifteen-year-old boy, Gareth Myatt, in April 2004 whilst in custody was a sad and terrible tragedy, and one that should never have happened, to start talking about these young offenders as if they were angelic children is more lunacy. Few of them are children in the terms that we might think of children. For many of them they are thugs who wouldn't think twice about sticking someone with a knife. Some will be in these places for that very reason; some for more horrifying reasons.

The fact that physical force has to be used so frequently, with injuries to both staff and children not being uncommon, tells me this is not the time to go soft. Yes, there may be some wardens who are over-zealous, and perhaps a few who do relish baiting the offenders, and those need to be sought out and re-trained or dealt with as they deserve, but to suggest that wardens should not carry out strip searches without evidence or use force or even handcuffs to restrain some of the thugs when they become threatening is inviting trouble - very big trouble. Of course, in the outside world if we were to use some of the tactics on normal children that have been employed in these secure units it would be seen as child abuse - but these are not normal children. If they were they wouldn't be locked up.

I suggest Lord Carlile, with some of the people from his inquiry team up to the number of wardens normally on duty at one of these units, should take over a wing in one these places for a week to see how far they get with their soft attitude. If they all came out unscathed, I'd be very surprised. Many years ago I had the misfortune to visit three such places (as a visitor - I hasten to add!) and as rough as they were then, by all accounts they are even more so today. To start a media frenzy and to give our army of do-gooders a cause to relish with all this talk of: "they're still children," is irresponsible. Before we know it they will insist on giving the juvenile offenders luxury apartments with en-suite bedrooms, hi-speed Internet, recreation rooms, lounges with plasma wide-screen televisions, and breakfast in bed. What ten-year-old isn't going to want to beat the next granny over the head if he's got all that to look forward to?

And for yet even more moon madness we have the head teacher in Suffolk who has banned hot cross buns in case they offend the small minority of her pupils who are Jehovah's Witnesses. "We decided to have the cross removed in respect of their beliefs," she is reported saying. Well, what about the respect for the majority - the conventional Christians? Don't they count for anything? Quite obviously this woman, as most of these people are, is on such a political correctness mission in her life that she is blinded to common sense. Could she not have counted the few in number non-Christians in her school and ordered just that amount without crosses? Is that too hard? If it goes deeper than that with her, and it's the actual sight of the cross that's bothering her, then how long before she demands that we tear down all our churches "in case they should offend someone"? I find it shameful that we allow someone like this teach kids!

Other looney stories include the seven police who were operating a speed check all piling into a police van to give chase to a council employee in a council lorry who had tooted and given a thumbs up sign as he drove past them. Merely noting the number of the council lorry was a bit too easy, I suppose. Then there was the cannabis smoker who complained to police that he was sold bad weed. They arrested him. The weed was not the only dope to that story, I guess. The scientist who has spent God knows what in coming to the conclusion that the heart on a Valentine card is inspired by a woman's bottom as seen from the rear. Somehow that doesn't do it for me, how about you? The Italian Prime Minister who, the day after he had compared himself to Napoleon, has compared himself to Jesus. If I lived in Italy, I think I'd be a little worried right now. The man who stuck a pencil down his penis to keep it erect - and then had to have surgery to remove it. I've heard talk about putting lead in your pencil, but that's ridiculous! The seventeen prisoners who cut their wrists after wardens told them a television programme had been rescheduled and they would no longer be able to watch it. With that mentality is prison really the right place for these people? The boy who tumble-dried his little brother. He was the cool kid. And finally, although there were many, many more strange stories this week, another study. A barking mad one commissioned by Disney to mark the DVD release of Lady and the Tramp which, following a panel of experts listening to phone calls of recordings of barking dogs from all over the country, has concluded that dogs have regional accents. I'm guessing they had to be recordings - at the time all the dogs would have been out howling at the moon!

To finish with, in case you missed it, I'll leave you with the harrowing news that a twelve-year-old Florida schoolgirl has won the top prize with her science project that proves the toilet water is cleaner than the ice in fast food restaurants. Somehow, I really didn't want to know that!

"Ice with that, sir?"

"No, thanks. I'll just go and flush it a little!"

See you all next week, cherubs - unless that pesky moon should land on us!

"The Bitch!" 17/02/06.

Well Darlings,

Here I am bashing away at the keyboard again, so you know it's not me that's got that £50,000,000. As I write this the police have just issued the first e-fit of one of the suspects. I haven't seen it yet, but I can imagine the grin stretches from ear to ear. Which won't be the case for any elderly people finding themselves in a residential care home or a community hospital right now - that is unless it's one for the bewildered. A group of medical "experts" have concluded that care homes should be able to "opt out" of trying to save the lives of elderly patients because of "the likely low chance of success". You can probably hear the scramble right now for opting out - most of them will do anything to save a few bob!

Every year hotel and guest house owners are forced by law to spend untold amounts of money to ensure their premises are up to the very latest safety specifications in an attempt to save (we're told) thirty lives a year. It's a figure that, search as I may, I can't find substantiated anywhere, but I won't argue with it except to say that if it is correct it accounts for an infinitesimally small percentage of all hotel users. Of course, that is no reason to be complacent; it is something that does need addressing. But my point here is that whilst hoteliers are forced by law to spend money in an attempt to save just thirty lives, these medical "experts" are calling for money to be saved on the elderly that will likely result in many more than thirty people a year dying simply because "the odds" of saving them are low.

But where do odds come into it? Once every single life was precious, and we fought to save it. If we are going to evaluate life on odds then the odds of a fatal accident happening to someone in a hotel are too infinitesimally small to consider - unlike the odds of successfully resuscitating more than thirty elderly people in care which must be far, far greater. So if we are working on odds - where does common sense tell you the money should be spent?

Not all elderly people are wishing to be out of it and would welcome death - most enjoy their lives enough to wish to hold on to it for as long as possible. Nevertheless these "experts" consider that an attempt to save elderly people in care is wasting money. I find that disgusting, and only one short step away from suggesting that people should be disposed of, perhaps given a lethal injection, when they become old and in need of care. I mean, just look how much money that would save!

With few exceptions, the care provided for our elderly in this country is appalling! We take away their homes, their life-savings, their rights, and their dignity - and now, having got all that, there are some who are calling to take away their right to life! It makes one ashamed to be British!

Here, in the UK, the latest figures show the number of deaths attributable to the so-called hospital super-bug, MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), has increased by nearly a quarter. It is now six times more likely to be a factor in the deaths of people in NHS hospitals than anywhere else. Source: The Office for National Statistics. Perhaps our medical "experts" would be better employed trying to kill this bug, rather than our old folk!

And when it comes to our hospitals, the British Medical Association reports that the chances of someone developing a potentially fatal illness simply through checking into a hospital ward are amongst the highest in the world. Folks, think Third World here! Some facts out there today: up to one in 10 patients catches an infection in a British hospital (In England alone, 300,000 patients annually pick up an infection in hospital, resulting in anything from pain and severe chronic illness to permanent disability, or death); around 5,000 patients die each year from the infections they acquired in hospital; up to 34,000 patients a year may die because of a medical mistake; and there are now almost one million incidents and lapses each year in hospital care. Not good reading, is it?

I wonder if some of those same medical "experts" I mentioned earlier, their odds, or their money-saving ideas had anything to do with the switching off of the life-saving equipment for Brian Paolo from Handforth, near Wilmslow, in Cheshire? Full marks to Brian who, after the idiot "experts" turned off the life-support machine and took the tubes out of his neck to let him die, made a full recovery and within ten days was discharged from hospital and giving his daughter away at her wedding.

There are few things more worrying in this world than "experts", are there? They seem to be at the root of most of life's disasters!

And whilst our NHS is penny-pinching here to the extent of wanting to allow people to die unnecessarily, it seems in Germany they must have money to spare. A free clinic has been set up at the Schwabing Hospital in the Bavarian capital with "experts" on hand to advise people on how to cope with a broken heart, and with being single. Apparently it is being aimed primarily at love-sick teenagers. Well, from all the broken-hearted dramas I've seen in my lifetime, if these "experts" aren't expert now, then they soon will be! When it comes to spilling the beans after a break-up, there's nothing to beat teenagers. They'll do it anywhere and everywhere they can. This clinic is going to be extremely busy!

Finally, before I go I must just mention Edinburgh. This is the latest of a whole line of towns and cities to be actively promoting their gay side. The Scottish capital was the centre of Scotland's lesbian and gay fight for equality, and now to commemorate that a historical walk has been launched that will guide visitors around the city pinpointing where the key events took place by taking in the sites of the first Pride rallies, the demonstrations and the protests, and the areas where gay and lesbian people were attacked. The walks are soon to be followed by an exhibition dedicated to the fight for equality and gay rights. Scotland's gay scene enjoys being advertised by the UK and Scottish tourist board, Visit Scotland and Visit Britain.

Ellen Galford has reportedly told the BBC, "Edinburgh itself - once a byword for a particularly narrow and hard-hearted puritanism - has undergone an incredible transformation into a vibrant, cosmopolitan, civilised city that LGBT people actively want to live in or to visit.”

For anyone who doesn't know Ellen, she was born in the States and, following a very short marriage, moved to the UK in 1971. She came out as a lesbian in the mid-1970s, and since moving here has lived in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. A prolific author of world renown, her book: The Dyke and the Dybbuk won the Lambda Literary Award in 1993.

See you all next week, Cherubs. Meanwhile do remember: if you are visiting someone in hospital don't take fruit or a flowers.

Love is... A bottle of Dettol!

"The Bitch!" 24/02/06.

Well Darlings,

I see a new style of restaurant has opened in Clerkenwell, London. It's called: Dans Le Noir - if you took French, you're ahead of me. Based on a similar successful one in Paris, it leaves you very much in the dark about what you are eating - literally. You dine in total darkness. The food and wine is served by partially-sighted or blind waiters who guide you to your table, serve you, and even take you to the loo. Anything that might help you to cheat the system, like the display from a mobile phone or even a lit cigarette, is prohibited. The Frenchman behind the £800,000 venture, Edouard De Broglie, claims that the darkness awakens your senses and you appreciate the real taste of the food. He also says that by sitting alongside people you don't know or can see makes you talk to them more.

It's definitely not for me, that's for sure, but I guess it's crazy enough to make money, although how someone like Egon Ronay would ever manage to mark a meal out of ten for presentation, beats me. I should think complaints are rare there too. "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." How would you know? Oh, yuk! And I have to wonder: what do the people find to talk about in the dark?

"Excuse me, what did you order? And what did you get?" or, "Sorry, I seem to have lost my escargot. Do be careful if you've ordered the profiteroles, won't you?" or, "Waiter! I need to be taken to the loo. Are you the cute one?"

Just when you thought you'd seen it all!

Moving on: I have to give full marks to Virgin Trains who have spent £45,000 on 1,500 atomic watches and presented them to their drivers, station staff, guards and controllers. No more will we have to ask them, "Do you realise how late this train is?" Now they will know!

And if you are one of those people who relies on swanning around in your bespoke or made-to-measure tailoring to impress, you've just lost out. The latest in thing - if you'll pardon the pun - is made-to-measure condoms. A Cologne-based company Lebenslust (Lust for Life) has invented a system to make personalised condoms by using a machine which produces a 3D computer image of the customer's member. Once this is achieved the person may then choose the thickness of the condom and add any surplus details they may require.

The owner of the business, Oliver Gothe, claims, "These condoms will fit so well you will hardly notice you are wearing one. We can make them wafer thin or fist thick and 'engrave' them with your signature wrapped around the base." Interested? The service costs around £600 for an unspecified number. Which is good, if you really want to boast, because on the assumption that "the less you have, the more you get" it will mean you can tell other people you could only get a dozen for the price!

Neither snobbery nor prophylactics will ever be the same again!

Staying with the Germans, it seems they have brought a whole new meaning to a Policeman's Ball. Three of their policemen are facing disciplinary action after wearing kilts as fancy dress to a do - a party held in a brewery. Saying they were following the Scottish tradition, they wore nothing under the kilts. But a female police officer has complained that, after imbibing too much alcohol, one of the policemen stood on a table and inched his kilt up until he was showing his helmet.

Silly German policemen! Get a new dictionary! Nothing worn under a kilt means that nothing is worn-out - it's all kept in good working order! Besides, what true Scotsman would be affected enough by mere alcohol to disgrace himself in such a way? And, more to the point, what true Scotsman would ever need to stand on a table and inch his kilt up in order for his asset to be seen? Hoots Mon! He would simply have to untie it!

More seriously: I see that in Paris work has begun on converting all their self-sanitizing public toilets to work for free - and they have more than two hundred of them. They are doing it not for the tourists, who don't have a problem with paying, but for the homeless people because this is often their only chance to use a proper toilet during the day. The authorities hope to recuperate the money lost on the toilets by having to spend less on the street cleaning. By looking after the poor people spending their pennies, they may be saving themselves pounds. How sensible! I wonder where they nicked that idea from?

Now, with the rush to make gay themed films gathering pace since Brokeback Mountain has been received so well, I was surprised to see that former 007 Bond actor, Pierce Brosnan, has forced the producers to cut gay sex scenes from his new film "The Matador". He is reported as saying the gay scenes were "too much," and, "came on full tilt." Hmm. Wouldn't that have made a good movie, then? I mean, how far would Bond have got if it had only been a case of, 0h, 0h, Four-and-a-half?

And now coming towards the end of the column this week I've had to scrap the last section to make space for the breaking news that Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq after seeking guidance from God. We're told viewers of ITV's Parkinson programme on Saturday 4th March will hear the PM asked if he had sought holy intervention on the issue, to which it is reported he answers, "In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

He has blamed everything from dodgy dossiers to the wrong information as his reason for the war - so why not drag God in for his share of the blame too? If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny - but it can never be funny because so many have died, and are still dying, because of a man who heard voices, experienced divine intervention, or was "guided" in his decision!

Faith is a very personal thing. It should stay that way. No man has a right to take a nation to war because of his religious beliefs! And never more so than in a multi-racial, multi-cultural country like ours. There will be many in the world who will only see his revelation as the proof they needed that this war was the Holy War that they had always believed it to be! Tony Bair - a very silly man.

See you next week...

"The Bitch!" 3/03/06.

Well Darlings,

I see Lord Stoddart, Swindon's Labour MP from 1970 to 1983, has blown his top over the blanket ban on smoking. He has called the campaigners who succeeded in persuading MPs to back the ban: "witch-hunting bigots", and says it is a national disgrace based on "tenuous" evidence that second-hand smoke kills. In an ill-tempered debate in the House of Lords he said that the decision was "autocracy at its worse", and pointed out that no clinical evidence exists that the ban will protect public health. "The figures are simply estimates. Those figures pale into insignificance compared with the numbers of deaths from alcoholism. On the basis of actual harm, not simply of statistics, and it is actual harm, we know about the children and the wives who are beaten, and the people knifed outside pubs, it would be more sensible to ban alcohol, rather than smoking, in public places," he said.

And if you put all your prejudices to one side and study the scientific findings and the true figures, not the "mis-used" figures of the campaigners now even believed by councils, and many doctors and nurses, if you are a sensible person you can only agree with Lord Stoddart, who incidentally is a former smoker - so he has no axe to grind on that point.

Smoking is unhealthy and it kills - yes, we know that. Passive smoking kills - yes, that has been proven too, but the figures say not on the scale these campaigners would have us believe. Nothing like it, by several decimal points. Certainly nothing to warrant all this hysteria we now have over smoking. In towns and cities up and down the country that by the end of every evening are littered with bottles, cans and fast food containers there is now a deliberate movement to catch the smoker disposing of a dog-end (small and bio-degradable - unlike most street litter) and to hang him or her out to dry. Hung, drawn and quartered is only around the corner.

Fast food litter - make the vendors pay. Alcohol related social disorder - make the venues pay. Chewing gum blight - put a small charge on the packet. A dog-end dropper - screw 'em for all they've got!

It is not that I'm saying littering our streets with dog-ends is okay - it is not. But it is something that does not warrant all the attention and vindictiveness it is receiving, especially as smoking is in the decline. It is Lord Stoddart's "witch-hunting bigots" having put the knife in, now turning it. And I find that worrying.

What worries me is that what started out as a very small minority of people, those who flapped hands under noses in restaurants should somebody dare to light up, has been able to grow into a national hysteria to this degree. Not satisfied with stripping people of rights they have enjoyed for hundreds of years, or with forcing people who have put their life savings into businesses to suffer by taking away their right to run their own business as they would wish to, or with turning smokers into social outcasts one step from being criminals, they have now descended as far as the humble dog-end in their efforts to devour every last morsel attached to this bone. Well, when finally the dog-end has gone, there really will be nothing left - so watch out, it may be YOU they target next.

When are enough people in our small country going to stand up and shout: "STOP!"? Stop forcing us! We are all individuals - give us our freedom, our rights, and our choice! If adult people choose to congregate in a pub and enjoy a smoke with their pint, then they should have the freedom of choice to do so in a "smoker's pub" where the staff too are smokers, and likewise adult people who choose not to smoke should have the freedom of choice to do so in a "non-smoker's pub" where the staff are non-smokers. It is the sensible solution - but, alas, there are some who don't want sense, they only want satisfaction.

Of course, you will all have noted that, whilst none of us will be allowed to smoke in our places of work, our pubs, or even our private clubs, where your MP works and uses the bar - the Palace of Westminster - smoking will be allowed to continue, won't you? That's nice, isn't it? Do as I say, not as I do?

We are being given excuse after excuse for law after law that is taking away our freedom after freedom and our right after right at an alarming rate. One day very soon we shall look around - and be penalised for doing that!

Moving on: The difficulties of the lesbian and gay people in Poland has motivated Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad to get back together for the first time in more than a decade. If you are too young a dancing queen to know them by name they are Sweden’s biggest pop group ever: ABBA, and you must have heard of them!

Last year Warsaw Pride was banned by the then Mayor, Lech Kaczynski, who, calling lesbian and gay people perverts, then allowed a Normality Parade to take place. Today this man is Poland's President, and it is not a good time to be gay or lesbian in that country.

Stockholm's Pride organisers have approached Swedish celebrities to support their neighbour's cause, and ABBA have done just that by jointly signing memorabilia from their heyday that they will be auctioning on eBay to raise money for Warsaw Pride and Polish gay rights groups.

Mamma Mia, I'm a Dancing Queen and I go On and On and On but that's only because Knowing Me, Knowing You I Know There's Something Going On and people are saying Gimme Gimme Gimme because The Heat Is On they are Under Attack and the SOS is they need your Money Money Money, so be a Super Trouper and give The Way Old Friends Do and remember The Name Of The Game When All Is Said And Done is The Winner Takes It All - so Lay All Your Love On Me and Take A Chance On Me by trying to stop the Waterloo of gays in Poland by saying I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do support this cause and I will bid on eBay and say Thank You For The Music.

Finally, as I lift my glass this weekend to the civil partnership of Michael Cashman (I knew him once, a long time ago) and Paul Cottingham and wish them all the best that life can give them, I shall also spare a moment, as I know they will, to reflect that not all gay people in the world are as fortunate as we are in our country. It is something that perhaps we should all reflect on from time to time.

See you all next week...

"The Bitch!" 10/03/06.

Well Darlings,

It's been another strange week, and one where I learned to never believe the local yokels. It started with the forecast for snow last week. 'Snow? No, we don't get snow here. It never settles in Blackpool,' they told me. Yeah? Right! Then if that wasn't two foot of drifted snow I was shovelling away at in order to open the gate, what the hell was it? My trip into the town centre on the Sunday was fraught with danger - not only by the difficulty in keeping my head above my what's-it, but by trying to dodge the deluge of snowballs met by all those who dared to brave our street. Bah! I'm at an age now where an earful of frozen water is no longer welcomed!

Perhaps it was the weather that accounted for some strange behaviour in Thorpe. I think they had snow down there too. In what is thought to be the first ceremony of its kind, Father Michael Hereward-Rothwell, the local vicar for Thorpe Park in Surrey, blessed a roller coaster before the first test ride of the new £12 million attraction. That blessing alone would have done it for me. I know these kind of rides are supposed to frighten you, but to take off to the realms of 'Nearer My God To Thee' would have been be far too much for this white-knuckle rider!

I guess the weather has been mighty bad in Hull too. Hull City Council's West Area Team have invited a group of irate neighbours plagued by anti-social behaviour to a training course. They say they want to c