Saturday 14 February 2009

Saturday 14/02/09

Anyone notice the deliberate mistake yesterday? Didn’t have a Friday the 13th. For some inexplicable and subliminal reason I listed it as Friday 12/02/09.

Valentine’s Day! Hay received a bottle of Piper Heidsieck and a card, while I got a dressing gown and a bar of Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate, plus an ear-bashing for spending 20 quid on her. Never again! You simply can’t win with women. You’re damned if you don’t and you’re damned if you do - it’s a paradox of life.

Went to the doctor again with the results of my blood pressure log. She put me on a diuretic to help take the BP down a 20 or so points. While waiting to have the prescription made up at the chemist, I espied something on the shelves called a ‘breast inspection glove’. Why the hell would a woman need a glove to inspect her own breasts? Answers on a postcard. Is there a testicular glove?

This Geert Wilders thing is getting a bit out of hand. He wants to ban the Qur’an due to fanatical Islamists taking excerpts from it to justify their terrorist sidelines. Well, on that basis he should also campaign for the Bible to be banned – well, certainly the Old Testament.

If you’re going to campaign for a book to be banned because certain extracts can be used to justify some antisocial act, then you’d have to ban just about every book in existence. Even Rupert The Bear annuals could be considered subversive due to manner in which animals are cruelly dressed up in clothes. Stoats get a very bad press in Wind In The Willows and I’m sure that at this very minute there is a cell of fanatic stoats somewhere in the UK waving copies of WITW above their heads, plotting to hack a badger’s head off and create havoc by blowing themselves up in mole borrows.

When all’s said and done, the Qur’an and the Bible are primarily works of poetic fiction on par with Homer. As such they can be no more legitimately used as justification for extremism than Mein Kampf, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao or the Conservative Party Manifesto.

On the other hand, why are we becoming increasingly offended by everything? There’s no such thing as a right to not be offended.

Professor Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has apologised for criticising the new Diplomas as "schizophrenic" and saying the government should first aim to get GCSEs and A-levels right. He said: "If you ask a lot of scientists, chemists and engineers what turned them on in the first place, I am afraid it was things like making bombs. We need more explosions in schools." Mmm – we’ve obviously got to ban chemistry books, but I do like his sentiments.

1 comment:

Jeanne Estridge said...

We're more and more easily offended because we're afraid and we think that if we can just outlaw enough stuff we can be safe. But rules don't really cure being chicken-shit.