This gave me a laugh before I shook with rage

I don’t know whether you noticed, but almost every time in people are asked in those dopey quizzes what they find most attractive in other people, a sense of humour comes top.

So Marc Howells, head of Barclaycard in Europe must have been getting a lot more than his fair share. A while ago he reported quarterly figures in a staff meeting by saying: "The results were like Muslims - some were good, some were Shiite".

This admirable man, who genuinely deserves to have sex objects clambering all over him all day was reported to the Obergruppenfuhrer in charge of bollocks by some odious creep who probably hasn’t been laid in ten years - and sacked, when he should have been promoted six layers at least.

Then another sexually disadvantaged buffoon at Barclaycard said, "We have a robust approach to equality and diversity and do not tolerate discrimination." Sad twat.

I found this at an excellent website – The Chap Magazine. Go to http://www.thechap.net/content/section_news/pcworld.html for more bizarre examples of PC stupidity, and a hysterical comparison of Mugabe with A. Hitler on hirsute grounds.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

That is from Edmund Burke who was, like many great British men, Irish. (Many were also Scottish; shame we got the fag end in the last few years).

It is hard to believe that if the people suffering in Zimbabwe were not either black or old and white with no money, the powers would not have sent a task force in by now. Mind you, when the US did that in Somalia, what a mess they made. Someone did make a profitable film of it, though. Unreality rules, O.K.?

Of course the other thing required for evil to triumph is that bad men pretend it isn't happening and even encourage it; and if you can think of a good man ruling any African country save Botswana and perhaps Ghana, give me a shout. It will cheer me up no end.

You IDIOT, Drayton

As you may have noticed, I'm an appalling typist.

I misspelt Keith Hann's address. It's www.keithhann.com.

Sorry! But however you spell it, I still think he's funny. Mind you, it's probably laugh or freeze up there.

Never mind me; this man is really funny

Here are two quotes from someone I've never met or even heard of till today.

"I've yearned for years to have the sort of body that would enable me to walk boldly onto a beach and hear beautiful women sighing ‘Phwoar’ rather than ‘Ugh’. Yearned, but never quite enough to do much about it, at least since I came to the conclusion about 20 years ago that I actually preferred a good dinner and a bottle of fine wine to a night of passion. Mainly because the head chef and sommelier don’t expect you to stay awake for a couple of hours after the meal, listening to them describe their neuroses and hopes for the future.

8 August 2006

Instead of the Government issuing edicts to every airline, why not allow a little consumer choice into the equation? WhatTheHell airlines could be set up with the unique selling proposition that you could take whatever you liked on board as hand luggage, with the downside that you stood a greater risk of being blown to smithereens mid-flight. It would be interesting to see how it fared.

22 August 2006

His name is Keith Hann. He's at Keith Han.com - and a few other places including www.blokeinthenorth.com..

I think he is hilarious. He should be named a British National Treasure. And we're not secret lovers; I really have never met him; he's not a relative. The man is nothing to me. It's not one of those cunning social marketing ploys.

I just think anyone who doesn't like his pragmatic and thoughtful approach to life needs treatment. Here is some more, from part of his description of his career on his company website:

Keith finally got round to taking his gap year in 1986-87. After a thorough cost-benefit analysis, he decided to abandon his initial idea of a global tour majoring on drink, drugs and casual sex, in favour of living in a remote cottage in Northumberland and writing the definitive, unpublished comic novel about the pre-Big Bang City. He does not rank this among his better decisions. .

And this is how he describes a member of his loyal staff on his company website. The member in question happens to be a dog. A late dog, actually.

Arthur Boardman-Hann was born in Rochester, Northumberland on 17 March 1991, which made him about 115 in dog years at the time of his sad death on 14 September 2007. Unfortunately his idea of saving had been burying old bones at the bottom of the garden rather than investing sensibly with Equitable Life, so he was never able to afford to retire. He was proud to the end of his formal police caution for biting a postman’s testicles. In his final years Arthur became increasingly deaf, blind and bad-tempered, confirming that dogs really do take after their masters. His principal interests were sleeping, eating and taking very short walks. But mainly sleeping.

Star sign: Pisces
Key words: drowsy, somnolent, dead to the world.

Go and look him up. I have yet to find anything he writes less than very funny. The last time I recall being so pleased to find a writer was when Dave Barry started writing for The Miami Herald

Surrounded by piffle on all sides - a lot of it fatal. Why?

We’re all emotional, but I’m emotional about what you may consider some very odd things.

Quotations, for instance. Here is one from Aristotle:

“We have a duty to know. That is what humans are for, and it alone leads to happiness and is the nearest we can come to immortality.”

I use it sometimes in seminars, and I confess that almost every time I do, I get a lump in my throat. Odd? Perhaps. I just believe in it very deeply.

Anyhow, it came to mind when I read of all things a review of a jazz concert in which a writer referred to the late Bill Evans as “the most influential pianist of the 20th century”.

Not just jazz pianist – any pianist.

That man is talking straight through his hat.

Let’s take jazz. Bill Evans was a nice melodic pianist – but does he compare for an instant with Art Tatum, widely acknowledged by jazz pianists themselves as the greatest jazz pianist of all time? I remember one telling me that every time he heard Tatum he felt like giving up. Did he have more influence than Scott Joplin, James P. Johnson or Duke Ellington? Or Erroll Garner, not to mention Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell? Or even Oscar Peterson?

That’s just jazz pianists. But since he was a jazz pianist with a dash of the classical, can he possibly even compare with the highest-paid concert pianist ever – Paderewski? Or Rachmaninov – not only a great pianist but a great composer - also true of Bartok and Prokoviev. What about Horowitz, Rubinstein, Gilels, Gould, Arrau?

No doubt someone even more ignorant than him will believe this man and repeat his piffle.

We live with the depressing consequences of ignorance every day.

Men, women and children die in agony every day because Blair, Bush and their henchmen never studied what has always happened to invaders of Afghanistan; or in Iraq’s case never looked at what the Allies did at the end of World War 2 to make sure Germany didn’t collapse in chaos.

And now we’re all going to be coughing up for a few years because bankers and politicians never studied previous collapses - all with similar patterns going back to the 17th century.