KILLER FACT!

The Palace of Westminster has seven bars. In fact, they are not so much bars as villainous drinking dens, since none of them has a licence and they are completely illegal. The Mother of Parliaments is fundamentally a low shebeen selling bootlegged gin. That, I’m afraid, is a fact.

REUTERS EMPLOYEE SUSPENDED IN THROAT-SLITTING BROUHAHA

Charles Johnson of LGF has managed to get a Reuters employee suspended, because of a humorous email they sent him. "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut...," they joshed.

What’s the matter, can't he take a joke? I’m always sending prank emails threatening to cut people's throats. It's a bloody funny jape. Here's one I sent yesterday, to the editor of The Daily Telegraph:

Greetings, you cur.

We gonna slit your throat like a goat.
Have a great day. Love the paper.

Jeremy Al-Majnoon
The Islamic Headbanger Army
PO Box 32402
Chipping Sodbury
Gloucestershire

Technically it is illegal to cut Telegraph employees' throats, but then so are a lot of things. Anyway, LGF is based in Los Angeles; the prankster who sent the email is more than a hundred miles away, in Sweden. So I’d say they can probably afford to relax. I’m prepared to bet you a pound that nothing comes of this death threat. My Uncle Algernon used to get death threats all the time. He didn’t let it worry him. Just ignored them, and went about his day.

Mind you, they got him. Threw him in a vat of boiling cheese.

VIDEO

A naked lunatic charges into a restaurant and screams at people through a megaphone, for no very obvious reason. Like many of the best ideas it's so simple that you wonder you never thought of it yourself.



It must be the last thing you need if you’re trying to eat your dinner.

A THORNY ISSUE

"The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair."

Blowing up Blair is a thorny potato: it has its pros and cons. I see that Harry’s Place have come down very firmly on the 'Don’t blow up Blair' side of the fence –no doubt they feel the time is not ripe- but there are strong arguments to be made on both sides.

No one would seriously deny that Blair should to be put to death, but after a fair trial. You can’t just go blowing people up willy-nilly. Sorry, Abdul, but that’s not how we do things over here. You have to go through the proper channels.

But what if the trial drags on for years? What if Blair escapes to Switzerland and cheats the noose? There is always that risk. Others would argue that blowing him up will only give him the publicity he craves.

Opinion on whether we should assassinate the PM has become dangerously polarised in recent months. It is time to take a step back and consider these questions calmly and dispassionately. And let us focus on the things that unite us, not those which divide us. At the end of the day, it is a matter of individual conscience whether one assassinates the Prime Minister.

"3 million overfed zombies ruled by a deranged dynasty, surrounded by 300 million starving, loincloth-clad Muslims waiting patiently for the day when they pour out of the jungle and descend on the arrogant Chinese settlement to finish it off with their poison darts and machetes, leaving nothing but electronic road pricing equipment standing."

Description of Singapore.

ASIA-PACIFIC CRISIS

-Rival military factions in East Timor continued to engage in gun battles throughout Dili on Wednesday, after two people were killed and five injured in clashes on Tuesday.

-Vietnam struggles to deal with the aftermath of Typhoon Chanchu. Hundreds still missing.

-Australia battles to cope with the problem of tubby pets. One third of Australian cats are overweight; four in ten Australian dogs now major porkers.

                               
Timorese refugees struggle to survive.            An Australian struggles to lift an overfed cat.

LEGALISE POT, BAN PINK FLOYD

The minister for drugs said he had had "one or two puffs of marijuana" while a student but had not enjoyed the experience and decided not to repeat it.

Like a lot of Labour MPs, this guy seems to have made the transition from 1960s-style twerp to right-wing hoodlum, without at any point passing through common sense. All it takes is a haircut, apparently, and before you know it you're in favour of starting wars, golf and imprisonment without trial.

Full disclosure: when I was a student I dabbled with being Minister for Drugs, but I didn't enjoy the experience and decided not to repeat it. (I recommended that they legalise marijuana, but ban Pink Floyd. This is clearly contrary to common sense, but common sense can go and fuck itself, as far as I'm concerned.)

It's certainly true that one gets more right-wing as one grows older. When I was a kid I used to give money to the homeless. In my twenties, I would ignore them. These days I say, 'Get up, you lazy fleabag.' By the time I'm forty I expect I'll be giving them a rousing fine kick as I go past, on my way to gas some badgers.

Vote Labour, by the way.

Sorry I haven’t updated. The communists dynamited the power grid.

I came to Buenaventura last week, to start a new life as a fisherman. Since I arrived, there have been not one, not two, but eighteen bomb and grenade attacks. Why is no one ever pleased to see me?

I went out last night to try to rustle up a couple of slappers, but there was a curfew and no slappers to be had, not even for ready money. So I lay in bed, sans slappers, sweating like a hog in a sauna, trying to read Martin Chuzzlewit by candlelight. That's communism for you. I got as far as Chapter 2 'wherein certain certain persons are presented to the reader, with whom he may, if he please, become better acquainted', then threw it in the bin, and drank a litre or so of rum to obliterate consciousness.

Benidorm for me next year.

From Dumb Britain in this week's Private Eye:

DJ Danny: Napoleon died in St Helen’s [sic] on this day 165 years ago. What did he say on his death bed?
Lisa from Doncaster: Kiss me, Hardy.
DJ Danny: You’re right!
MAGIC AM BREAKFAST SHOW, SOUTH YORKS

That's really world class. You could make a column called Dumb Norway or Thick Japan, but it wouldn't be the same.

SHE GASPED AS HIS PARLIAMENTARY MACE SPRANG LOOSE

Update! The other day I wrote that Prescott 'screwed his secretary'. I slightly regret phrasing it like that. It is possible that these two young people really love each other. You can’t knock love.

When the story broke my reaction was, “Prescott got his greens, did he? Good for him! There’s hope for us all.” I pictured him rolling in drunk after lunch one day with an obscene leer on his face, and making a boorish and ham-fisted lunge at her, after which they went at it like toads in a pond. That would have been my method.

But my mother always said that I mustn’t judge other people by my own low standards. It could be that the Deputy Prime Minister was a caring lover, who was sensitive to Tracey’s needs as a woman. We simply don’t know, until the Metropolitan Police have finished their investigation.

She had no intention of falling under his spell, but her body ached irresistibly for the touch of his cruel lips.
   'John,' she gasped, as she melted in his manly arms. 'John...'
   'Aye, lass,' whispered John. 'When tha'rt willin'!'
   'What?'
   'Get thee skates on,' he urged. She shuddered with delight as his throbbing parliamentary mace sprang loose.

I imagine the police report will say something along those lines.



"Sensitive lover" say Downing Street sources

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

Just spent an improving half hour at Google Trends. Pakistan is the country that most searches for sex on Google, it turns out. So what? All that means is that their English isn't good enough to look for anything more depraved. Or so I thought: but they also come top for nude wrestling, jism and goat sex. These are a few of my favourite things.

The French come top for cunnilingus, but who came first for oral sex? If you'd given me fifty guesses I wouldn't have got it: it was Romania. Britain, of course, can generally hold her own when it comes to producing sexual deviants; and, sure enough, we got the gold for spanking, having -ha, ha, ha- beaten the Irish into second place. Singapore comes second for caning which, as luck would have it, is the penalty over there for nude wrestling, goat sex, etc. But they come first for “canning”. Edinburgh is top for idiots; but Tampa, Florida, is still number one for morons.

Perth, Australia, gets first place for chicks with dicks. Much as I expected.

IN DEFENCE OF JOHN PRESCOTT

"Scotland Yard has confirmed it is looking into a complaint that Mr Prescott broke the law by allegedly having sex in his Whitehall office."

If I were his lawyer, I would point out that using a government office for having sex with his secretary was far less ruinous for Britain than how he might otherwise have been using it. While Prescott was harmlessly fucking his secretary, the rest of the cabinet were probably hatching schemes to make us all line up and be fingerprinted. Put it this way: would you rather he was shafting his secretary, or the nation? We got off lightly.

I would go further: I would say that screwing his secretary is his main achievement since taking office, and one of the things that sets him apart from monomaniacs and cyborgs like Blair, Brown and Straw. Blair would no more fuck his secretary than he would read a novel. Why? Because he’s a lunatic and a freak, with no more sense of proportion than a Saudi cleric. Brute that he is, Prescott is one of the few members of the establishment who is still recognisably earthling.

"I’m the one who acted stupidly," he said. What was stupid about it? It was one of the few things he has done recently of which sane people might approve. You vote to abolish Habeas Corpus and the Magna Carta, then you apologise for screwing your secretary? Seriously, what’s wrong with everyone on that island? Besides which, to describe it as "stupid" is insulting to the woman, you great oaf.

Incidentally, trivia question: how many jags does "two-jags" own? He owns one jag (second hand). If he were French or Italian he could use his ministerial car to buy milk, visit his whippets, or whatever else he does with his wretched life. But because he was scrupulous, on that occasion, about the difference between government property and private property, he got jumped on.* And the same people who call him two-jags now bitch about him getting his end away in Whitehall.

I think he comes out of these scandals rather well. I still hope to see him hang, however.

*And to carjack or hotwire his jags would be another assault on the Magna Carta: "No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent." This often gets overlooked.

KILLER FACT!

Germans have the highest IQ in Europe.




The most intelligent people in Europe. That, I'm afraid, is a fact.

SCHLONG SLANG

Blair gets his chopper out.

*Note for American readers: chopper is slang for penis or dong. The male member. Big Jim and the twins. One's Johnson. And therein lies the joke, if joke it be deemed.

If you would like to learn more about contemporary British culture, including demotic terms for cock, please contact the British Embassy in Washington, who will be happy to answer your queries: (202) 588 6500

FAILED STATES 2006

1. Sudan (3)*
2. DR Congo (2)*
3. Ivory Coast (1)*
4. Iraq (4)*
5. Zimbabwe (15)*
6. Chad (7)*
(Tie) Somalia (5)*
8. Haiti (10)*
9. Pakistan (34)*
10. Afghanistan (11)*
146. Norway

* Position in 2005 report



Via Ivan the Terrible

THESE FIGURES CONVEY VERY LITTLE TO ME

The Magistrate: "We had a drink-driver in a couple of months ago who had blown a little over five times the limit on the EBM machine."

What's that in six-packs?