Babies make you mental.

What is it about some people that they seem to lose their minds as soon as they have children. The first thing that happens is they lose all sense of spacial awareness and are happy to smack into anyone or anything with the metre wide baby buggy, you know the one that comes with attachments for everything from feeding, changing and bathing the child to turning into a nuclear shelter, no really some do.

The next thing that seems to happen to new mothers especially is that they have to talk all the time about the child as if it was the only one ever born and as though anyone really gives a hoot how much it weighed at birth. What is that all about.

We then move onto the stage where the parents truly believe that their child can do no wrong and that no one else maters. It is perfectly acceptable for it to scream its head off in a restaurant or coffee shop or worse still plane and we all have to accept it .

The reason I am on this subject is because of an hilarious incident in Sainsburys. Imagine the scene, there is a demented woman with a young child in the shopping trolley, rather in the seat of the trolley, as far as I know you can't buy them there yet. The woman is bobbing and jigging about doing "iggiy giggy wooble do, dadad doo" noises and waving her arms and dancing as if she is possessed, I'm sure the child looked more scared than amused.

The woman leaves the baby facing away from her and walks back to the chiller cabinet maybe 6 or 7 metres away, the only thing is she is still doing the little dance waving her arms and making the noises. Fantastic!

I wish my phone video camera wasn't so difficult to work because I would have had a Youtube hit. There is no understandable reason how she could possibly think what she was doing was sane. You have to wonder what chance the child has with a mother that mental.

Still at least it brought a smile to my face, even if the child was thinking "its all right for you mate, I have to live with her".

University Fees

The government has decided that students should pay more for university courses and the usual suspect are complaining its not fair. Didn't anyone tell them life isn't fair.

But why does everyone expect to go to university, what is the point of a degree in stamp collecting, media studies, drama or some other useless topic when often all they do afterwards is stack shelves in Tesco.

A degree is only worth having if its relevant or necessary to your work and then sometimes that's debatable.

A woman on the radio was complaining that with her son at Oxford and her daughter wanting to go to Cambridge they will find it hard. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
The son, by-the-way, is 19 and studying history but doesn't know what he wants to do "when he gets his degree". So its a given that he will get the degree then is it.
But hold on he doesn't know what he wants to do so how did he decide to study history and why bother.

University is now an excuse for not finding a job when you leave school and for many the money they spend together with the money they don't earn while there will never be recouped.
For example if you have a £20k debt after uni and could have earned £36k in those 3 years that's £56k your down before you even start (I worked that out without a degree).

All moaning parents stop it, you don't have to send them to university if you cant afford it, millions of us never went and still manage to own our own homes and all the other material trappings of the 21st century.

In years to come when they are asked "which university did you go to " they can reply, "the university of life".

Cambridge university is a great place with some fantastic buildings but you only need to go for the day, not 3 years. And when you go make sure you walk on the lawns, the sight of men in bowler hats running after you shouting get off is just brilliant.
see also
http://essexblogger.blogspot.com/2007/02/take-notice.html

Red Sludge

We in the UK live in a country that is so tied up with health and safety rules that one council has pinned a notice to a conker tree warning people to beware of falling conkers. No really that's true, although as conkers fall at 9.81 m/s^2 its difficult to see how being aware of them falling will help you avoid being hit by one. Its a bit like the watch out for falling rocks road signs, useful only after you have been hit.

As is often the case I digress from the point of this entry. Spike Jones and his City Slickers may well have corrected the colour of the Danube from blue to green in the song but today a slick of another kind is turning it red.

The reason for this unscheduled colour change is the result of a country not having quite the same view of health and safety as the UK.
Hungary apparently have a manual about storing toxic sludge that goes something like this:-

1) Ensure that all sludge is stored in such a way that should a failure occur all content is released at once .

2) Ensure that the path of any release of toxic waste is directly into a populated area.

3) Ensure that there is direct access for the sludge into Europe's second longest river.

4) Ensure that failure is likely.

Its not rocket science and even I could have designed a reservoir that had fail safe built in but once more the environment suffers as the result of greed for the highest profit and the need for aluminium at the lowest price.

Points from the news.

Stop Illegal Immigration

Daily Mail (other comics are also available) readers are showing their understanding of the world this week as they band together to stop the deportations of Gamu. Presumably the same bunch of soap dodgers who last week wanted every illegal sent home have now changed their banners to "send them home, unless they can sing".

But then anyone who thinks that the X-factor is entertainment cant be trusted to be a very good judge of anything really.

Milliband Picks shadow cabinet
You might have missed the news today that Ed is set to announce his shadow cabinet. How very exciting as we see who is to sit on the front seats and pretend that what they say or think has any influence on the country.
Its not so much about the best person for the job as more who is mates of who, just like picking sides in the playground when we were 10yrs old really.

The only thing is it made a difference who you picked then.

Child Benefit - Don't get me started !

Since the general election we have found out just how brilliant at maths and book keeping the Labour government were and come to realise that they were, how shall I put it, pretty crap at it actually.

The UK is completely broke and in order to fix these problems we have a multi-millionaire telling us that we are in this together and there will be pain but he and his band of merry men are set to take from the rich and give to the poor. Or was that take from the rich and give to the very rich, I'm not sure.

Measures are being taken to cook the books for the next 4 years and the latest I have to say is one of the most sensible. People who earn over £44k a year don't get child allowance.
Yep Ill go along with that one, in fact why does anyone get child allowance anyway. The world is overpopulated so I would go as far as to say do anything possible to dissuade people from having unnecessary children. Oh and stop IVF for a start.

As expected, the same women who were ranting "how dare people without children park in the bays near the shop entrance" and who jump in their 10 plate 4x4's and people carriers to take Chavney to school 200yds away now think its unfair to stop child allowance.
Some drongo mum of who knows how many is going to start a campaign to march against it. Don't worry, when she realises there isn't anywhere to park the Discovery near Westminster it will result in a petition instead.

But my point is this, you want kids you darn well pay for them. If you cant pay for them don't have them. That's simple!

The other option is this, I rather fancy buying myself a new motorbike, its my right to have one and its my decision so I would like a government grant of £300 a week to run it please.
Now you think I'm being stupid don't you, but why is it any more stupid than thinking the state should pay for people to have children.
As a tax payer I am already paying for schools where they misbehave and play areas and parks that they smash up and litter.

There is only one problem with the plan to stop child allowance, its not happening until 2013.