Monday 22 August 2011

Meet the Drummer




My first ever blog post was a picture of my noble hound Piper (rip).

Here are some pics of his successor, Drummer. Picked up from Inverness-shire a month ago.
It is too early to say if he can hold a candle to his predecessor, but the signs are good.

There is no shortage of character, he is correctly put together, and will make a decent-sized hound, judging by his feet and ears.

Photo number two (not posed) suggests peg-dog quality on the shooting field is perhaps not beyond him.

A joyous addition to the Idle household.

Friday 19 August 2011

The State We Are In

Bill, it's 280 days since I last posted on here, so it has no readers except you. Here's a rant against some current pet hates:

I blame all governments since 1965 for the recent riots, especially the last Labour bunch of liars and hypocrites. If you open the borders to immigrants, don't be surprised if they take all the low-paying jobs and leave you with three million unemployed. If you pay British yoof to be unemployed drug dealers, chancers and anti-social urban scum, don't be surprised if they stay unemployed drug dealers, chancers, etc. If you offer a council flat to a 17 year old slag when she becomes pregnant, don't be surprised if she gets up the duff and embarks on the life journey of a single-parent on benefits.

This isn't rocket science.

I blame Greenspan and Brown for the economic meltdown. If you flood the world with cheap money, you know what the banks and government departments will do with it - you just don't know which wall they are going to do it against. Blaming the bankers is like blaming the syringe instead of the drug pusher. 'Sir' Mervyn King, Bernanke, Merkel and Sarkozy have proved themselves incapable of dealing with the situation and have lost the confidence of the markets. They should resign immediately.

I blame Cameron for the fact that almost all government policy is made worse by the coalition with the Liberals, who are utterly useless and are demonstrating why they have been out of power for nearly 100 years. Cameron should have walked it in 2010, but his liberal tendency and his belief in big government has resulted in a party that no longer offers a traditional Conservative policy choice. Oh, and he lied to us about an EU treaty referendum.

I blame Osbourne for, first, being such a twerp as to sign up to Brown's 2008-2011 spending plans, and second, for spending more money in each month of his first year as Chancellor than even the hapless Darling had spent the year before. Cuts? There ARE no cuts, unless you are a soldier, in which case there have been plenty. Osbourne must cut taxes and spending aggressively, starting today. Of course the 50% tax level should go, it doesn't raise any money, but people on £115,000 income in the 40% bracket are paying over 60% in direct taxation - this is madness!

The police? Probably the worst-led institution in Britain, and has been for many years. Why do we award a knighthood to people when we appoint them as Commissioner of the Met, rather than wait and see if they are any good? Ian Blair (LORD Blair now, can you believe it?) was a disaster and barely honest, and the latest one, Stevenson, nearly as bad. Neither deserves an honour. We should have given the job to the American with a good record from NY and LA. Should have been a no-brainer. And he wouldn't have demanded a knighthood.

The Olympics - a ruinously expensive exercise in narcissism by Seb Coe, who ludicrously was given a peerage for being the 'advisor' to William Hague's disastrous leadership (and judo partner, nudge nudge). Good runner, Seb (though for some reason I preferred Ovett), but completely useless at politics and now, we learn to our cost, incapable of budgetting for an Olympics and selling tickets to ordinary fans and taxpayers. Mark my words, 'Lord' Coe will never be short of a lucrative directorship from Olympic corporate sponsors, aka his cronies. He should be buried in the foundations of the Olympic Handball Arena, as an example to future enthusiastic eejits who come up with ways of spending £12bn of taxpayers' money.

The RFU chiefs? Cretins. National Rail companies? Thieves and incompetents. The BBC? Smug overpaid metropolitan champagne socialists. The Church of England? Poofs, political activists and moral cowards.

So that's the Villains. I might do a post on Heroes in a day or two, but it will be a short one.....