You know you're getting old when.....

...the once subversive songs of your youth are now played out as muzak in pub restaurants.

Working at the Southern Manufacturing & Electronics show this week, I stayed in a rather overpriced but ok pub/hotel. Whilst enjoying an overpriced but ok meal in the restaurant, I was shocked to hear The Stanglers' "Peaches" playing in the background. Not the sanitised radio version mind, but the full unexpurgated X-rated version that once caused my mum to go pale and drop her cup of tea.

For anyone who was young during the Punk era, lyrical profanity was the essence of the Punk zeitgeist - shocking, exciting and very cool. Hugh Cornwall's rasping vocal really took me back to that afternoon many years ago when my mum strolled into my bedroom just as Hugh roared the phrase "Oh Shit, there goes the charabang." To say she was unimpressed was an understatement. Sitting in this nondescript pub restaurant, I wondered if such coarse outbursts still had the power to shock in an age of gangsta rap and M&M, when the idea seems to be to fill the entire song with beeps and blank spaces. I observed a family group of granny, mum & dad and assorted children seated across the restaurant; I waited for Hugh's frank discourse upon the anatomical peculiarities of an observed bathing beauty to arrive, with all the decorum of a massive and unexpected fart; But alas, there was not the slightest flicker of reaction. call me old-fashioned, but the word "clitoris" is not one I would normally expect to make an appearance over dinner with granny. Or maybe it is, and I'm more old-fashioned than I thought.

A sad state of affairs

In the latest shocking screw-up by the NHS, a young Philipino mother (actually a healthcare professional herself) was killed by some idiot nurse administering an epidural intravenously. The interesting thing in this case is that it is actually the NHS that has been found guilty of unlawful killing, as opposed to the nurse. This is the first time this kind of judgement has been made and is surely a landmark in Labour's scandalous destruction of the NHS.

What has made this story even worse is the news that the poor girl's husband - also Philipino - now is due to be deported thanks to the insane immigration laws in this country. So, just to recap: This young professional family comes to the UK in the hope of a better life and to raise a family; the young mother is killed by an incompetant and ill-qualified NHS nurse, and her husband is subsequently thrown out of the country. Wonderful. Makes you wonder if we can even call oursleves a civilised society anymore.

Is this what they mean by a just society?

I heard on the news this weekend that Rose Gibb, the former CEO of the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is to get a £75,000 pay-off after being forced to resign her post. The reason for her resignation is the small matter of the deaths of 90 people through contracting infections from poorly cleaned hospitals, the responsibility for which of course rests with the organsation that Gibb oversaw. You can read all about it on the excellent Burning Our Money blog here

There are several things that really upset me about this story. Firstly, the fact that public money should be used to reward Gibb for such monumental incompetance is nothing short of disgusting. She should actually be in prison for criminal negligence. Secondly, the fact that Gibb has the affrontery to claim money from the public purse in this way reveals just what a living shit of a human being she actually is. Thirdly, while I can scarcely imagine the torment that the families of those people that died must be feeling, I can all-too-easily envisage the fight they'll have on their hands to receive a pittance in compensation. It really depresses me that such injustice can be wrought on innocent people - destroying lives, while the guilty are free to swan off clearly remorse-free and with a considerable sum of our money.

Don't shout...We're doing our best....

Today has been one of those kicked-backed, reflective sort of days where you wake up with nothing planned, no objectives and no agenda. After a late start and an even more leisurely breakfast, me and the wife drifted into town for a mooch around the shops and a trip to the library before meandering into a restaurant for an extended lunch. Over lunch we talked a lot about the state of the country ( a favourite topic) and in the process, I was reminded of something I had seen on our walk into town.

Passing the main bus station, I saw a bus bearing the slogan "Working towards safer communities". I stopped to ponder this statement. Naturally, we have all become very familiar with this kind of Blair-speak mission statement over the last 10 years: "Building a safe, just and tolerant society", "Re-building Britain's Railways", "NHS, your health, your choices" being just some of the more nauseating ones. But how many times do we stop to really scratch beneath the superficial gloss to think about what these catch phrases really reveal about the state of our society.

"Working towards safer communities" is a case in point. What does that mean? On face value, it appears a perfectly admirable objective. However if you think about it a little more deeply, it does imply that the community is less safe than it should be. This is interesting, as there can surely only be two states of safeness: safe and not safe. To work towards a state of safeness means that, by definition, the present state must be that of non-safe. It's like the NHS saying, "Working towards more alive patients".

The second telling point is the phrase "working towards". Working towards is a passive, wishy-washy, whining sort of a phrase, implying earnest but ineffectual efforts towards the objective in mind. It could be paraphrased easily to "We're doing our best". Notice also that the phrase "working towards" carries no real commitment to the objective. It doesn't say, for example, "To protect and serve" or "making the streets safe". No, all it says is "We are trying to..." So, implicit in the statement of intent is the caveat that if we should fail to achieve the objective, you should not criticise because we did our best.

So to translate, "Working towards safer communities" actually means "We doing our best to make a safe community". When your house if broken into, or you're mugged on the street, you should therefore not be critical of the government that has failed to protect you because they were - no doubt pointed out with indignant huffiness - doing their best, as if this somehow abdicates them from any further responsibility.

The point is, of course, that their best is not good enough, and no amount of woolly-minded, politically correct mission statements will hide the fact. The only promises of value are those that make specific commitments. The first duty of government is to create a safe society for its citizens. Either it is, or it isn't safe: There is no such thing as nearly safe, mainly safe or mostly safe; and there is no such thing as "working towards" safe. To have failed to secure the safety of its citizens in its own society, is failure - pure and simple.

Just the job....

A bloke goes into the Job Centre in Newcastle and sees a card advertising for a Gynaecologist's Assistant.Interested he goes to learn more. "Can you give me some more details about this?" he asks the guy behind the desk.The Job Centre guy sifts through his files and replies, "Uh - yes here it is... OK, the job entails you getting patients ready for the gynaecologist.You have to help them out of their underwear, lie them down and wash their nether regions.Then apply shaving foam and shave off all their pubic hair then rub in soothing oils so they're ready for the gynaecologist's examination.There's an annual salary of £45,000 but I'm afraid you'll have to go to Oxford.""Oh why, is that where the job's based?""No - that's where the end of the queue is"

Life is a load of balls, says mum

As emailed by my mum...

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of wine... A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else He asked once more if the jar was full.The students responded with a unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two glasses of wine from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. 'Now,' said the professor, as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things; your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions; things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else; the small stuff.

If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life: If you spend all your time and energy on the small Stuff. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18 holes. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first; the Things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.' One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the wine represented. The professor smiled. 'I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of glasses of wine with a friend.'

Or you could just fill the whole jar with wine and leave the balls to somebody else!

Tulips and hamster jam

I have just returned from a hectic few days in Amsterdam, working at a large trade show at the Rai Conference Centre. This isn't the first time I've visited Amsterdam - I've been there loads of times before - however it was the first time I felt myself warming to the place a bit.

Perhaps it's because I have never been to the city as a tourist, only as a worker, that I've never really understood the attraction. To me, Amsterdam is like London - a place of faded glory; a once attractive city that has allowed itself to become mired in sleaze and grime. Sleazy and grimy it most certainly is: from the sex trade to its famous dope-puffing coffee shops, there really isn't another city like it for full-on, in-yer-face hedonism. The Amsterdam phenomenon is something I have always attributed to the Dutch character. An extention of their famous liberal nature to its logical conclusion. However now I'm not so sure.

There's one thing that a lot of the seedier places in Amsterdam have in common, and that is the fact that everything seems to be geared towards the English. From premier league football on Sky Sports, to pubs called "London Tavern" and cafes with the ubiquitous "Full English" on the menu, it would appear that catering to libatious needs of the British is big business in Amsterdam.

This realisation has led me to the conclusion that perhaps it's not the Dutch that have buggered-up a beautiful city, but the British. All the Dutch are doing is providing a means of relieving the sex-drugs-rock'n'roll craving visitors from the UK from their Euros. In turn this has made me realise that perhaps they're not so daft after all: By creating a sleaze-honeypot in the centre of town, the good people of Amsterdam benefit from the money coming into the region, while keeping all the louts in a relatively confined area, thereby limiting their impact on the more genteel areas. There's got to be a lesson the town planners of England can learn from that.