Dennis the Menace a Menace no more!

Nicola Sturgeon, first in line to the throne of that other fishy sounding character, Alex Salmond, seems to have completely lost her marbles this week, having written to a court asking for leniency to be shown in the case of a convicted benefits fraudster. This guy cheated taxpayers out of £80,000 whilst living in a £400,000 home in Glasgow and earning rent for another property in Edinburgh. She must also have been aware of the fact that he’d been jailed for 4 years in 1996 for a pensions and benefits scam, yet she had the gall to tell the court that he’s in poor health and had made a “mistake”. Some mistake! Anyway, it’s made me take a note of my own MSP’s phone number, in case I get nicked in the future for flicking my cigarette ash on to the pavement.

It seems that Dennis the Menace, b.1951, and one of my boyhood heroes, has been disarmed in the comic, supposedly to match Dennis in the TV cartoon version. The politically correct brigade have managed to remove his peashooter, catapult, and water pistol; his menacing scowl has gone, replaced by a wide angelic grin, and his trusty sidekick, Gnasher the hound, has lost the right to bite the postie or the traffic warden, or indeed, anybody else who looks remotely edible. The PC lobbyists insist that children who are exposed to the old-style Dennis, Roger the Dodger, and Minnie the Minx are more liable to turn into serial thieves, murderers, or terrorists. What utter rubbish! Do the majority of us who were brought up reading those comics now go around brandishing guns, knifes, or throwing bombs into crowded places. I think not!

I think I’ve written before now regarding stupid surveys and research carried out at great expense by supposedly respectable bodies and individuals. I’ve just come across another one that has been unleashed this week, involving some research done by Dr Jane Murray of Bristol University. She has come to the conclusion that folk who own cats are quite a bit more intelligent than those who own dogs. No chance of me, then, applying for membership of Mensa, and meeting up with the Queen of figures, Carol Vorderman, at an egghheads’ convention. I’ve never had a cat, and I don’t think I will either, even if it was going to enhance the cells up top. Dr Murray has also come up with the breathtaking revelation that people with gardens are more likely to have pets than those who don’t. I’d actually suspected that was the case for a number of years now, as my pet elephant’s toilet requirements couldn’t easily be met inside the confines of the house. The research wasn’t all rubbish, of course – it also informs us that, on the whole, members of the canine and feline worlds do not get on well together. It must have taken them a long time, and the consumption of countless doggie biscuits, before they came up with that one. Not having had time to read the whole report, I’m not sure if loyalty is mentioned. I think everyone, pet owner or not, can see that cats have a “couldn’t care less” attitude, as long as they are fed, whereas dogs never tire of showing affection for their owners. Of course, it’s a known fact (no research needed) that if you were to die, your dog would lie there indefinitely beside you, whereas your cat …. well, he wouldn’t starve….

MPs, Cats, and Spiders

It’s good to be back in cyberspace after an absence of 8 weeks, due to my computer contracting some kind of virus which sadly turned out to be terminal. Fortunately, it wasn’t transmitted to the person sitting in front of the screen, so I’ve survived, and as you can see, I have set up another machine that will have to put up with my rantings for the foreseeable future.

Quite a lot has been happening over those weeks – the expenses row in Westminster surfaced again, MPs are to be banned from employing their close relatives to type out their missives and fetch their favourite biscuits, and the leader of the BNP was allowed to appear on Question Time. Shock and horror was expressed by the newspapers, trying to outdo each other in condemning John “Nick” Griffin, the BNP leader. Now, I’m certainly opposed to what that party stands for, but the scenes outside the BBC on the night in question were deplorable. We had the usual sort of mob, baying for blood, all with their own hidden, and sometimes weird, agendas. Some of those are members of the mainstream parties, whose leaders are allowed on most platforms, although their conduct leaves a lot to be desired at times. Britain, as far as I’m aware, is still supposed to be a democracy, so we should all have the right to express our opinions.

After the hype over the past couple of days over the 10 new nuclear stations that the Government says we need, there is widespread speculation as to how many of them will ever actually get off the ground. It seems that the Government is forcing potential nuclear investors, such as Centrica, EDF, EON, Scottish Power etc to take on full exposure to the risks of construction. Ongoing prices will be so volatile that they could easily cripple any of those large utility companies financially. Some of those companies are in debt anyway, and having to sell off assets such as their electricity networks to pay it off. Other governments across the world are also sanctioning new stations, and offering good subsidies, so it would seem likely that companies would prefer to do business with them, rather than with Britain.

On a lighter note, I’ve been fascinated for some time by some of the weird laws that exist in countries world wide, but it was only recently that I realized that our own country passes hundreds, nay, thousands of regulations and edicts each year, some of which are just about impossible to understand, even after having had a dictionary for breakfast. I might just mention a few of them here in the months ahead.

ASBOs (Anti-social Behavior Orders) were supposed to cure all ills in neighbourhoods, but some of them are completely absurd. Take the car thief from Manchester who received an ASBO forbidding him to walk or cycle anywhere in the city unless accompanied by his sister or mother. It did not ban him from stealing or driving cars. The poor guy – as he was banned from walking or cycling, it’s only logical that he should go out and nick the nearest available car. Then there was the woman from Kilbride who was given an ASBO denying her the right to answer the door in her underwear. It was okay, presumably, to strip everything off, and answer it in her birthday dress.

I mentioned at the beginning that my computer had been down for a while, so to pass some of the time, I enrolled in fiddle classes. It’s probably not a very bright idea at my age, but it has had a nice side effect. The classes are fine, but a lot of practice is needed at home as well. This has resulted in a lot of moaning and screeching sounds being heard in the vicinity of my humble abode, and cats of every make and model, that used to stare malevolently at me as I did my bit to save the birds, are to be seen no more. They have all fled; had enough, it seems. Likewise, my spider friends prefer to stay in their nooks and crannies, instead of taking their usual evening constitutional. The moral here seems to be simple – for those of you who are scared of the little creatures, get down to your local music shop, and invest in a fiddle.