Suspect Paki

Stu Redneck is temporarily frozen. The sirens are getting louder. His pockets bulging with the jewels he has just lifted from the home of his bound and gagged victim, Abu Ghareeb. Abu Ghareeb wonders if maybe this time, his assailant and thief will be caught and brought to justice.

Just when Redneck thinks all is lost, a plan flashes into his foggy head. The authorities finally gain entry to the home of Abu Ghareeb and they find a curious sight.

“What’s going on here?”

“Look! Look at that Iraqi’s pockets!” screams Stu, hysterically.

The officer leading the emergency call-out shines his torch into the eyes of the bound and gagged Abu Ghareeb. The bound man is bruised, bloody and most certainly bowed. The torch scans its way towards Abu Ghareeb’s pockets, which are bulging with the jewels that Stu had moments before stuffed there.

“See? He robbed himself! I tied hm up so that he wouldn’t commit this heinous crime again! Arrest him! You’ve got your man”

The authorities comply with Stu Redneck. Redneck is always right.

From the BBC today:

US demands Iraq protect prisoners
Iraqi security forces have faced repeated allegations of abuse
The US says it will not hand over detainees to the Iraqi authorities until they raise levels of care.
After the discovery of hundreds of neglected prisoners held by Iraq’s interior ministry, an official said Iraq still had to meet US standards.

“We will not pass on facilities or detainees until they meet the standards we define and that we are using today,” Major General John Gardner said.

He added the US had “come a long way” since the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Yes, the US certainly has come a long way. What about putting all the scum responsible on death row for starters? No? Didn’t think so. Redneck is always right.

Today I turn 40.

40 is a big number. It is unimaginably bigger than 39. I have no idea why this should be so. The quantum step from yesterday to the 21st of December 2005 should have no more meaning than any other daily increment. Yet it does. At 39, there is room for childishness, for youthful exuberance, for folly. At 40, such behavioural latitude disappears.

Life doesn’t begin at 40 as such. However, 40 feels like this is the age I spent all my life preparing for. This is the decade in which I make my life mean something. This is the age where I stop smoking, swearing and generally goofing off.

You’re waiting for me to say “sod that” or the equivalent. I can’t. There must come a time when we leave behind childish things and become men. 40 is that age. There must come a time when we heed consequence. We don’t become crippled by indecision though - on the contrary, we must begin to act very decisively, very often, for that time when we could pontificate and prevaricate has gone. Now there is no time for that. Time is a luxury that is not just in short supply, it has vanished in the four decades I just shrugged off.

Now is when all that I learned must be put to some use. For the benefit of others, for the benefit of myself.

It certainly isn’t a time to party, but fun needs to be applied to one’s life like a scalpel. Surgically, precisely and in measured, controlled cuts. Applied joy.

Since life is so fleeting (I’m not beckoning the grave, there was a time I thought as I went in and out of hospital endlessly that I would not live to see this day) the time has come to enjoy and savour every moment. It’s all a bonus now. I’ve experienced more than I ever thought I had the capacity to understand, bear or enjoy. I’ve been around the world, over and over, in every swanky hotel, in every fancy restaurant, in every major city and I’m happiest in London.

My mum is still around, bless her. Strong, unbelievably so. She has a strength that Maggie Thatcher herself would envy. I am sure I will hear from her.

I wish my wonderful, strong, patient, caring, loving, wise and inspiring father had been alive this day. Then again, when I look in the mirror, I wonder if he still is. I hope I can live up to your hopes and dreams Papa. You were the best dad I could ever have asked for. I hope I can make you proud of me. I hope I can be happy so that you can be at rest. If you can read blogs wherever you are, I want you to know that I love you very much.

Now that I have become a man, how do I be one?

From the original in the Guardian

Pointing her mobile phone at Mr Morley the teenage girl, known by her graffiti tag of Zobbs, said, “We’re doing a documentary on happy slapping. Pose for the camera.”

That cue began an assault so violent that Mr Morley was left with 44 impact injuries and a ruptured spleen.

His friend, Alastair Whitehead, watched the girl land the final kicks to his head. “She kicked him like you would kick a football or rugby ball, just swinging her right foot back and kicking him really hard in the head,” he said.

“She did that two or three times, maybe more. The image of it will stay with me for ever.”

My regulars know my feelings on this kind of thing. The inhumanity, the injustice, the violence upsets me to the core. A life wasted and cruelly, sadistically, unrepentantly ended. Many more shattered. When I realise that more and more children are doing this, and in fact, more and more girls, it brings tears to my eyes.

Anyone with any illusions that this country is civilised need look no further than what is happening on a more frequent basis in our secondary schools between girls. Anyone who wants to see just how vulgar city life is, need only visit a town centre at night and hear the odious and disgraceful sound of lecherous and utterly drunk women shouting obscenities, vying to outdo the foulest of men in their own portrayal of girl power. Yeah - girl power - you slappers really rank up there with Mother Theresa don’t you?

What is your achievement? Drinking more than ever? Fighting more than ever? Killing more than ever? Being more vulgar than ever? If the spirit of a nation is to be found in the strength of its women, then Iran is way ahead of the UK now. As is every Muslim country. Ahead of the US too. Will your heroine Lyndie England (ha) please stand up? Because I want her killed slowly and mercilessly. Will the Women’s Institute please stand up? So that you can take back the beautiful womanhood this country once boasted?

As for this most recent attack, these scum are being done for manslaughter. What? Is our education so in tatters that the execrable lowlife that perpetrated this brutal murder never learned that a kick to the head is often fatal? And that several kicks to the head will do a person in surer than a bullet in the midriff?

Here’s what I would do. And I’ll tell you why later.

I would have the ringleading bitch, Zobbo the Yobbo, punched and kicked coldly and savagely to death by a gang of four clowns. There would be none of the long, drawn out wait of the US legal system. Once they were found guilty (and as guilty as sin in this case, their own mobile footage saw to that) the sentence would be carried out within the week. It would be done publicly. It would all be captured on mobile phones and webcams and shown to every child and grown-up in the country. Of course, the rest of the gang would have already been done in similar manner, and the shitstainzobbcunt would have had to watch each of them dying on her own mobile phone.

And in reading the following, you will understand why we need to punch the mouth that keeps biting the hand that feeds it.

“Dear children. Don’t attack innocent people. If you do, you will get caught and you will suffer really badly. Watch these final kicks to this cunt’s head. Go on. Watch carefully. We have recorded them in ultra-slow-mo so that you can see the little violent whore’s face caving in. She doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it with all that mucous and blood and tears flowing freely all over her face, does she? So children, please remember. It’s not just all about you. There are other people in society too. And you must respect them and their right to liberty and safety from aggression. If you don’t, society is no longer tolerant of your behaviour. Good night children. Sleep well.”

I feel weak and cold and miserable and I hate that fucking landlord and my ex they are both fat cunts who sweat and talk shit and look shit and sound shit and lie and lie and lie. Lies and lies and lies. Lies and lies. Lies and lies and lies and lies.

I went to my eldests’ parents’ evening at 4p.m. I was there early. Her mum was there late. The teachers kept going on about the Internet and I kept looking over at the stupid, short-sighted liar who had denied them the Internet even though I’ve had a perfectly good PC for them for years and she never has their flat in any state to keep a PC anywhere except on the kids’ bed. For years I’ve had a PC ready for them. For years I’ve offered to pay for the Internet for them, no matter how broke I was. She has denied them. Denied, lied, denied, lied, divide, cried, denied.

When I dropped the girls off on Saturday, late, after Streetcar and Roohi’s and Narnia - huge - I gave fatfuck £50 (I’d promised money for cab from/to edie’s party the week before when my time was abbreviated to a lousy 6 hours out of 24 because the troll was church street late and had ryan/michelle’s party the night before.) They’d seen Harry Potter and weren’t allowed to tell me about it. For weeks. Four weeks.

I’d given R**** £50 and A**** £20. I don’t want money. I want peace.

I don’t write much personal stuff anymore. This is personal and oddly not, what have I got? What have I not?

My chest feels utterly shit and my bones are cold and the Internet is slow and the flat is fucking freezing and that fucking landlord fat fuck cunt of a cunting landlord who I just can’t understand because of his fat fucking Irish accent keeps lying and lying about when he will do anything and I’m getting colder and older and more and more unwell. My chest is burning and all I think of is having a cigarette and google leads me to early lung cancer warning symptoms and I think I can’t have that - that can’t be me and I quickly close the page and try to be positive because let’s face it - cancer only comes when we invite it - and smoking is an invitation and I shouldn’t encourage it really, should I? My dad died of cancer and that won’t be me - so I spark one up - always sparking, never igniting. Always inviting, never fighting.

This is a miserable fucking country now. Everybody is fucking miserable. We’re taxed up to the fucking arse and it’s fucking shit in every way. Travel is shit. Doctors are shit. Hospital is shit. TV is shit. Everything’s shit. We get fucked by the corps and the cabs and we become a corpse without anyone seeing - what a 3rd rate, 3rd world fuckhole we now live in. Want me to go back, don’t you? To Middlesex Hospital in the West End you pig-fucking miserable racist cunts? Fuck you all, fucking pathetic Nazis. My shit has more brain cells than all of you put together. You fucking hate that I know your language better than you, your history better than you, your religion better than you, your fucking lousy mothers better than you. Racist cunts.

No manners anywhere, all hatred, all east european voices on buses and feet on seats and bunking fares on bendy buses. Routemasters gone. Jumping on and off buses no more. Jumping into the country and staying illegally a permanent feature. Where is London? It’s fucking Romania, Poland, Fuckvia, Shituania, and nobody understands a word of English.

Shite. Racists? Shite. Shite shite fuckers keep sending me shite shite hate mail. I keep deleting it. One day they’ll find me buried under the Internet, covered in a pile of dirty bits of hate and anger. And when they fish me out, they won’t be able to tell the difference between what I was and what I was buried under.

Time at a premium, this entry snatched before the utterly torrid dash to work on the stupidly crowded London Underground.

Today marks the start of my second week at Sony. I will give you all a proper update tonight. I’m settling in nicely!