At last, someone sees me for what I am

I don't know what gremlin has wormed its way into my computer, but for the last two months I have suddenly started getting invitations to download porn again.

For several years I had not received any - either the spam catchers had swept them out of my life together with all those invitations to try V**g** and extend the length of my feeble apparatus or the Great Pornographer in the Sky had decided I was just too damn old and worn out to be interested.

But now they're back with a vengeance.

The subject line that has amused and impressed me most gets straight to the point. "Drayton you are moron" it states bluntly.

There's no getting away from it. These people may not be subtle, but they are pretty damn perceptive.

Apryl’s uncovenanted sex-change

I don’t know how many of you read the comments on these pieces, but what a surprise Apryl Parcher must have had when John Walters decided in his comment that she must be a man.

Mind you, that’s understandable; A.Parcher could be any sex. I am quite often written to as Mr/Ms/Mrs by people who can’t make up what sex Drayton is. However, Apryl is unquestionably female.

But the exchange between the two reminded me of Bertrand Russell’s observation: “What men seek is not knowledge, but certainty.”

In these discussions it always seems to be a matter of either/or, rather than “both” or “any combination that makes sense”. Either we should have a state-funded pensions system, or a private one, and there is no compromise.

Frankly, I agree thoroughly with H.L. Mencken’s feeling that the older he got the more he appreciated plain old-fashioned competence.

And in the matter of pensions funding – in this country anyhow - what we have seen is plain old-fashioned shiftiness by politicians.

The money that we paid and do pay to fund pensions has been taken and put to other purposes.

This is also true of the taxes we pay to fund better roads, which are used for whatever strikes the government’s fancy.

And a pretty odd fancy it is. The other day Gordon Brown, generous as ever with other people's money when the economy is in deep shit (thanks again, Gordon) decided to offer a few million in aid to Nigeria - perhaps the most corrupt nation on earth. You really do have to wonder whether the man is not clinically deranged.

More to the point, between the time we hand over the money and the time whatever is left goes into pensions, or roads, or Nigerian thieves' overseas bank accounts, a mighty swarm of locusts in public service has been paid - again by us - to manage the process. And again, the government here is pushing forward legislation to prevent local people determining what is built in their neighbourhoods. Who will decide? Bureaucrats we pay.

Who can tell whether private rapacity eats up more than public incompetence? But in this country I suspect I would rather trust people bent on profit than put faith in someone who thought it wise to sell off our Gold Reserves precisely when gold reached its lowest price. Another coup by Gordon “I know better then you what’s good for you” Brown.

I must say, though, going back to the comparison made by John Walters with ancient Rome, that what brought Rome to its knees had nothing to with pensions, and Rome - bearing in mind how many centuries her empire lasted – was surely a damn sight better managed than any state before or since.

What I seriously object to is that our masters today who determine these matters really don’t give a hoot, as their pensions are always inflation-proof. Good leaders share the sufferings of their troops. We have no good leaders.

Lastly, and nothing to do with all this, thank you, John W, for having a go, unasked, at putting my 51 helpful marketing ideas into book form.

What you did was stronger visually than something I had done in my office, and I think maybe I should publish.I was also pretty amazed at what they add up to; a small book! And I get some amazingly flattering comments from people.

As Harold Ross of The New Yorker used to lugubriously remark: "I am encouraged to go on". Come to think of it, I already have, as I think there are now 82.

Andy gets excited - but the cupboard is bare

My friend Andy Owen is an excellent copywriter and speaker.

One reason he is good is that he gets excited - he cares.

Here's something he just sent me.

"A political consensus was reached by the EU Nations at the Laeken Summit
in 2001, that each member state would attempt to attain a basic pension of
40% of its average wage by 2007 and then work towards 60%.

The UK's basic pension is 17% of the national average wage. Staggeringly,
most European pensioners receive a basic pension of at least 60% of their
country's average wage.

The UK provides the worst basic pension by far.

Only Estonia (33%), Ireland (31%), Holland (30%) and the UK (17%) pay a
basic pension of under 40% of average wage.

In fact, taking the pension as a percentage of each country's average wage,
you will note that pensioners in Greece, Luxembourg, Spain and Italy receive
over 5 times our basic pension.

Those in Portugal, Malta, Hungary and France receive over 4 times as much
and those in Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Finland and Sweden receive
3 times as much.

Slovakia, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania and Belgium receive over double. Whilst finally, Estonia Ireland and Holland have almost twice our basic pension.

If you ask me, it's a bloody disgrace...

Let's tell these buffoons in government what skinflints we feel they are.

They are quite simply laughing at us - the very people that have contributed all
their working lives. And they are doing it to such an extent, that we all get a
basic pension that is much less than people in poorer countries throughout Europe are getting.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/pensionpo...cd8cf0e.001e1c"


Now you - if you are British - may ask why we are getting less.

The answer is twofold.

1. An incompetent government which has managed with surefooted skill to focus on all the wrong things at the expense of the right ones.

2. All European countries have aging populations and most of them are going to find it increasingly hard, if not impossible, to fund those pensions.

One of the few, the very,very few, things successive British governments did get right in the last 50 years was to set aside enough money to fund pensions. Or such was the case until the Great Bliar and Can't Count Brown, the Acclaimed (by the experts but nobody living in the real world) Financial Genius took over.

Now all that carefully set aside money - and hundreds of billions more has been pissed away on hiring nearly a million public service drones, foolish and tragic foreign entanglements, diversity training, failed attempts to improve hospitals, schools and other assorted bollocks.

Who says you can't get the worst of both worlds? Only someone who hasn't been in this country for the last four decades.

Who the hell are you ...?

If you had to establish which professional groups cause most damage as a result of their bloated, unjustified, overweening, fatuous self-importance, politicians would only be matched by show-business people.

This occurred to me when I read in the papers that Gordon Brown and Bob Geldof are to tell the world's richest nations, the greedy G8, to stop reneging on their pledges to double aid to Africa by 2010.

There are three interesting points here.

The first is, why the hell should people from rich, relatively successful nations want to be lectured by the grotesquely incompetent and mendacious Brown? What gives him the right? He clearly couldn't run a brothel on a troop train.

The second is, why does making a couple of hit records qualify you as an expert on how to solve mankind's problems?

Bob Geldof is clearly a very nice man - certainly compared with Bono, who combines his world-saving lecturing with a deep dislike of paying tax like the rest of us, the bloody hypocrite. But - and here is my third and most important point - there is absolutely no proof that giving aid to the third world does any good except for the who steal it (cf Zimbabwe, Burma and God knows how many other places run by murderous kleptocrats) and a lot to suggest it encourages all the wrong attitudes.

The real and disgraceful problem is that the rich countries make it impossible for the poor ones to export their products by creating tariff barriers, which in turn force all of us to subsidise inefficient European and U.S. farmers.

Which brings us back to the European Union and its manifold stupidities. How pleased we should be that the Poles and Czechs look like turning down the phony constitution I was moaning about last week.

Please, please, please, stop empowering me

I don't know how many of these wretched social things I've got embroiled with, but in a weak moment I must have signed up for something that calls itself Naymz - Empowering Reputable Professionals.

I feel deeply ashamed - and also more than a little irritated, because what they're actually doing is extracting money from weak-minded professionals by that old con of "someone has visited your profile" - but you won't know who it is till you pay us some money. But there are other benefits. For example, I can "enhance my online reputation and Naymz experience" at the same time.

On balance I would prefer to be disreputable and unempowered. And I don't give a tuppenny damn about my online reputation. I refuse to take people who talk such cliche-ridden tripe seriously.

Empowering is one of those puke-making words used by slimy corporate twats in meetings - the sort of people who are always cutting edge, proactive, state of the art and full of shit.

So I was glad to see in my London free paper that someone helpful has made a short list of other expressions that should be kicked into touch. The most odious is probably product evangelist for salesman, though a holistic cradle-to-grave approach is a good runner up.

How I hate the people who come up with this drivel. Perhaps you could cascade that down to your people.