Either I am going mental or the world is going mental. If it’s a bit of both, then the world surely has the upper hand. The man cave is back where it belongs, in the back garden in Hull.
At least we’re here for a week, before Mrs Watson and I take our old bones across Europe to Thessaloniki where it promises to be rather hot. We’re hiring a car this time, so I told Mrs W the good news that I had generously included her on the insurance and that she too would be able to sample the delights of driving in Greece. The bad news, I told her, is that she will not be able to join me in copiously swigging free booze in BA Club Europe on the way over.
And it’s hot here too, according to some whingey professor of climatology on the BBC Radio 4 news this week. According to her, heatwaves are becoming more common and lasting longer. Yes, because the definition of a heatwave changes to suit whatever they want it to be. Solution, stop defining and reporting heatwaves.
We used to celebrate heatwaves and when I was young, I often heard a song on the telly, usually to some frenzied dancing by men and women in swimsuits which went:
We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The temperature’s rising,
It isn’t surprising,
She certainly can can-can.
The song Heat Wave – written by a woman, Ethel Merman in 1938 – is actually about a hot woman who “started a heat wave by letting her seat wave.” Methinks Ethel would be ostracised by her feminist chums these days.
Anyway, the song has been running through my head with some alternative lyrics:
We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
We’d exchange some bants
But we’re shitting our pants
‘cos we’re all gonna die.
Tackling crime
It’s good to see that our Labour government is taking crime seriously. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Unfortunately, they seem to think that the cause of a crime like shoplifting is not the fault of the scumbags (‘ello, ‘ello’, ‘ello) who do the stealing. No, it’s the shopkeepers who tempt them by putting expensive goods on display. Labour has issued the advice not to put expensive items at the front of stores.
What will the next sage advice be for the long-suffering people of Britain, where most crime goes undetected? Smash your own front windows and vandalise your own car, otherwise you are simply looking for trouble. Nothing reeks of capitulation more that making the solution to crime the problem of those who are the victims of it. Of course, we lock our cars and our doors at night – these days (we never gave this a second thought when I was young) because we don’t want to die in our beds and have someone crap on the front seat of our car. But with most shoplifting caught on CCTV, surely, it’s the job of the police to catch and charge some of the scumbags who do it.
Speaking of ‘scumbags’, apparently we must not call the scumbags who shoplift ‘scumbags’ or Mr Plod gets annoyed with us and, once again, we – not the actual scumbags – are the problem. What we should call them as an alternative has not been suggested but – in the expectation, hope even, of a visit from Humberside’s finest – I will continue to call them scumbags. Or, maybe, given the demographic changes we are witnessing, we could simply call them all ‘Muhammad’.
Parenting problems
In yet another of those excruciating pieces of evidence that woke is far from dead, yet another Labour run council – Merton in south London – has issued a document on the use of inclusive language that is full of the kind of bullshit we have come to expect. Council workers are instructed not to use the word ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ but to refer to parents (itself a dodgy word) as ‘caregivers’. Age descriptions such as ‘young’, ‘old’ or ‘mature’ are also banned to clamp down on ageism.
In response, and I could not put it better myself, Lord (Toby) Young of Acton who heads the Free Speech Union said: “I’m amazed that Merton Council has time for this nonsense. I can only assume fly-tipping and potholes aren’t a problem in Merton.” Nevertheless, every cloud. Perhaps children’s library books such as I Have Two Daddies and I Have Two Mummies will have to be retitled. I hear that the food is not too good in Hull Prison so I’ll restrain myself regarding any suggestions (but is ‘mingemunchers’ one word or two?).
In other news, Thanet District Council is pursuing its ban on foul language and a student has been charged with racism for calling a hospital worker a Welsh c**t. The article did not clarify which of those two words the person was most offended by. Overantout until the week after next.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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