Tennis Ball Dispenser
The Bitch, Balancing Balls, Burials and Bloomers! by Michael Knell
Well Darlings,
It is something that many of us had almost given up any hope of hearing from our politicians, but this week we actually heard it: “Shut That Door!” In so many words, Larry Grayson’s famous catchphrase was said by immigration minister Liam Byrne when he announced a new points-based system for migrants entering the UK. The new system, which we’re told will come into operation in the New Year, should ensure that only the people we need – those with skills that are in demand – will be able to come and live here permanently. Home Secretary, John Reid, talked of it last year, but many of us expected it to be the usual headline grabbing exercise we associate with this government and perhaps were unconvinced it would ever materialise.
But it seems that, finally, our politicians have opened their eyes and discovered this country is not a Tardis. We do not have the unlimited room, nor the resources, to cater for everyone around the world who wishes to come and live here. It is sad that we can’t take them all in, especially when we hear of the lives some of them are burdened to suffer, but until someone invents that sonic-screwdriver, that piece of gadgetry that has saved Doctor Who so many times, it quite simply is not feasible.
Whilst many of the immigrants without those much-needed skills are still able to find employment, and some will tell you they often work harder than their British counterpart, the baggage they bring with them all too often outweighs any benefit. We are hearing of schools where, in our already struggling education system, the number of children who have English as a second language (it’s a polite way of saying they don’t speak our lingo!) has risen by 400% in the past year. These families, for it is often more than just the working man or woman who arrives here, will need housing, and with many of them coming from the poorer countries where life expectancy and the standard of health is not as good as here, they will almost immediately begin to put pressure on our flagging NHS. Many of the hard-working immigrants can only find employment at the minimum wage level, and despite all their efforts the family has to rely on our benefits system to top up their income to a sustainable level. All the spin, and the massaging of the figures, that we have suffered over the years has never managed to competently conceal this fact.
We should not be ashamed of this change of policy, it is a sensible move and one that has been adopted by many other countries around the world. This country has always tried to do its bit, more so than many others, to cater for immigrants – and I doubt that will ever change – but it is only through adopting a realistic policy on immigration that it will be able to continue to do so. Over-stretched, over-committed, over-taxed, and knowing all our children’s tomorrows have already been hocked, everything around us is beginning to fall apart and fail. Britain can be likened to a frail old circus elephant precariously balancing on a ball. It’s a marvellous act. One where a bit of weight is good for us – it flattens the ball and makes the balancing easier, but too much weight will burst the ball – and then the show is over!
Talking of weight, I see that Southeastern Railways have fitted their railway carriages with a weighing device which works out if the train is overcrowded. A spokesman is reported as saying: “It allows us to make a more accurate assessment of how full the train is. This helps us know if we need extra carriages or to run more services.”
It sounds like a good idea – until you discover they are judging each person to weigh just 11st 7lb. When was the last time you sat next to somebody that petite? It’s a 21st century technological solution (or is it?) being fed with mid-twentieth century data. Am I the only commuter to suffer the overhanging 16st 10lb mammoth sitting next to me – the one with four suitcases, several carrier bags full of foul-smelling food, and an equally over-sized family all traversing endlessly up and down the carriage whilst shouting and whining at each other? I don’t think so!
I guess some “intelligent” twat has sat behind a desk with a laptop somewhere and for some gross sum worked out that 11st 7lb is the national average weight. However this person’s intelligence has not been capable of stretching far enough to realise that weight may have little or no connection with how full a train may be. It is the mass on the train that needs to be measured, not the weight, to discover the true answer on overcrowding. When suitcases and all kinds of other baggage and personal chattels are added to the equation, much of it having to be stacked on the seats, tables, or put in the aisles because it won’t fit anywhere else, a carriage can easily become very overcrowded without exceeding the total designated weight on which they base their formula.
For the twat with the laptop: please buy a bucket and fill it with marbles. Weigh it. Now empty it and fill it with Tennis Balls. Weigh it again. Lighter, yet just as full but with far fewer things? What a surprise! Now get a life and take a train journey!
In case nobody at Southeastern Railways has noticed, the trains have those people on them we once called Guards, but are now called Train Managers. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that they would all know how to use a telephone? “Jees, Boss! It sure is packed on here today – you couldn’t squeeze a fart out!” Common sense tells you a system like that would cost a hell of a lot less money than installing weighing machines and computers to every carriage, doesn’t it? I don’t know: more money wasted – and there go the fares, up again! I’m going to have to stop harping on about “common sense”, aren’t I? It is becoming so uncommon today!
If proof were ever needed that people are becoming more massive, undertakers are now more and more having to use “super-size” 40 inch-wide caskets to accommodate the bigger bodies – they simply can’t squeeze them into the 22-26 inches that were once the standard. It’s not without some other repercussions either: many crematoria are unable to accommodate such sizes, and whilst plans are hurriedly being made to update them, some corpses have to travel many miles before finding one that will take them. Do they still charge for a corpse to cross each parish boundary? I know they used to. If they still do, for some fatties it might be an expensive send-off!
Last week an Australian scientist, Professor Roger Short, called for an end to cremation, saying the practice contributed to global warming. Instead, he suggests people should choose to help the environment after death by being buried in a cardboard box beneath a tree. Their decomposing body would provide the tree with many nutrients, and the healthy tree would then go on to convert the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into life-giving oxygen for decades to come.
Short claims it is a far better solution to disposing of bodies than cremation, which involves the body being heated to 850° Celsius (1,562° Fahrenheit) for about 90 minutes. It’s an exercise that produces more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of carbon dioxide – and that’s without taking into account the carbon cost of all the fuel required, or the production and the burning of the coffin.
So this professor has come up with a good idea, albeit not a very well thought through one. Quite obviously Professor Short is not a gardener. Anyone who has ever tried to dig under a tree will know what a problem the roots can be. There would never be enough space under a tree free enough of roots to accommodate a box the size of a coffin – and if it is your intention to benefit the tree you can hardly go hacking away at those roots, can you? This idea would best work with the tree planted as a sapling over or alongside the buried body. We could do that now in every cemetery, except for the fact that councils more and more are demanding that there must be nothing put there that would hinder the madman on the motorised grass cutter. Strangely, councils often call this guy a gardener.
Why strangely? Ask the people of Malmesbury. They laboriously planted hundreds of snake’s head fritillary bulbs in a designated wild flower area alongside a picnic site and spent seven months tending them. These flowers are so rare in Britain that if someone spots one growing wild the area gets cordoned off and some people will travel hundreds of miles just to look at it. Apparently these tended flowers were in full bloom, and within a marked area, when the council “gardeners” turned up and thinking they were weeds mowed them down. The Deputy Mayor, a nature lover, is said to be livid! I guess the Deputy Mayor is really a gardener, and the “council gardeners” are really no more than ***** stupid mares!
North Wiltshire council has apologised, but said they didn’t know the wild flower area existed. What? They didn’t know? Aren’t they paid to know things like this? Do you ever get the idea that councils these days, like the gardeners they employ, just don’t have a clue about much at all? If it doesn’t have a meter, need licensing, or can make money through some kind of a penalty, then don’t expect anyone at your council to have the slightest idea of what you are talking about!
We have similar disasters here in Blackpool – council “gardeners” who apparently don’t know which plants grow readily in our northern maritime climate and, it is so easy to imagine, a gullible council that some sharpster has sold a job lot of those horrendous great concrete pot things we used to see outside the enormous tower blocks of the sixties – you know the type: they look like what has been left over after a new main sewer pipe has been laid. Put the two disasters together and place the resulting catastrophe in the streets and you will upset anyone with just the slightest inclination of good taste. The planted pots are deplorable! An absolute eyesore! The only things that appear to grow in them successfully are the piles of rubbish. The people use them as litter bins – and that is about their worth!
Yes, they did look good for a time in the sixties. Mostly they had geraniums in them, didn’t they? But then they were a novel idea – today they are simply ugly, and representative of less affluent days gone by – not exactly the image Blackpool should be promoting, I would have thought!
The beauty of just one hanging basket stocked with the correct plants by a competent gardener – thereby ensuring magnificent colourful blooms for many months – would surpass anything anyone today could ever see in all of those disliked, dispensable, distressing, disheartening, dispiriting, disagreeable, disappointing, desperate, despondent, dejecting, destitute, depressing, demoralising, disjunctive, desecrating, demented, dilettantish, disesteeming, dead, dying, dishevelled, devaluating, dangerous, detrimental, dagger-like, deciduous, dippy, daft, demonic, drab, dreary, dispassionate, dysfunctional, disarming, disconcerting, discommoding, detractive, desultory, disgraceful, deplorable, debilitating, disfigurements devoid of distinction and worth diddlysquat, sewer pipes put together – and it would be our money better spent!
What’s that? A hanging basket on every street lamp? Oh, come on now! This is Blackpool – we couldn’t possibly go that upmarket! Could we?
See you next week…
“The Bitch!” 20/04/07.
About the Author
“The Bitch!”, a weekly UK News Review column, is hosted by the author and columnist Michael Knell. These articles appear on the Blackpool Gay Directory website, but are not specifically gay in content. More information on the author: http://www.michaelknell.com and on the directory: http://www.astabgay.com.
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