Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Has the UK’s sense of humour been sold to the French? It all started when 3 people complained about Russell Brand’s radio show on the 19th October.

Next, a reporter does some shit stirring, telling Andrew Sach’s agent of the content of a Radio 2 programme. “Well, Jonathan Ross said Brand fucked your daughter but its okay he used a condom, and now everyone knows as it went out on the radio. Are you offended? Yeah?”

So obviously Sach’s gets pissed off when he hears the answer machine message, the joke falls a bit flat, even though its funny and the gag with the follow up messages ‘making things worse!’ is actually quite clever and self-depreciating.

Suddenly a tidal wave of news spreads of a ‘horrific assault’ on Andrew Sach’s and all those who rightfully remember him from a great classic sitcom start getting all irate without even having heard the programme or understood the humour, or that this was a comedy show on the radio, and that no kittens were murdered.

Georgina Baillie’s image has been smeared, say the outraged old ladies. Erm… she slept with Russell Brand and tours Europe in a gothic erotic strip group called the Satanic Sluts, poll dancing her way from Paris to Berlin. Do you think she’s so thin skinned as to get upset by a prank on the radio recorded on her dad’s answer machine message? Her mock disgust is laughable.

She’s milking it for every last newspaper exclusive she can garner!

(I’ve even seen her Bebo page and viewed her half-naked MySpace photos as ‘research’ for this blog).  

Her highly respected dad meanwhile, judging from interviews where he’s pressed against a wall outside his house and forced to spout opinions is mystified by the whole circus. It’s as if he’s playing Manuel in an episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil Fawlty hits him over the head with a frying pan. Suddenly the police break in through the window and arrest Basil, whilst the BBC suddenly end the show and put the scrolling credits across the screen whilst everyone stands around looking at the cameras stunned.

It should be better understood against the backdrop that Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross are nice people, not a pair of evil child murders. Yes they can be lewd, but it’s comedy. If they can’t understand that then they’re not going to come close to getting the context in which this whole thing occurred.

This hysterical idiocy not only inflicts comedy performers but for normal people as well. People get too upset about words. The creeping tide of confused morals and politically correct gesturing is making it harder and harder to have an opinion on something at work, to joke about something in a bar, to say anything, let alone to have a debate or argument without being castrated by do-gooders, humourlessly bland ‘polite’ people or moral lecturers.

The needless drivel spouted in the aftermath is an affront to common sense and I am ashamed to be a member of the British public.

If you look at how much has been written and said since about Brand, Ross & the BBC, the sheer amount of British people opening their mouths to blabber (myself included) and the food burnt to power the yapping mouths of the nation, you could have fed a starving African village for 85 years. Why are people so ignorant and hysterical?

Meanwhile Russell Brand and the controller of Radio 2, unfortunately, has resigned while Jonathan Ross has been suspended, which in painful ‘real’ terms means no Friday Night with Jonathan Ross with The Killers, no BBC Radio 2 show on Saturday morning, and no Film 2008 the following week. Millions of viewers were not asked about their opinion. We’ve all been censored and made to feel naughty. But we shut up about it. There are more important problems like world poverty.

Brand and Ross are too talented comic performers doing their jobs, it may not be to everyone’s taste but show me a comedian who is. Its about time we decided what public broadcasting, both TV and radio should be. If it’s to be a role model with high standards then dress everyone in a black suit and return it to the 1960’s.

I don’t think it’d suit comedy much if they couldn’t say or do anything controversial, just chuckle about chickens crossing the road whilst wearing a funeral wake suit.

How does all this happen? 

Well the irony is the TV News could actually benefit with having that treatment, it’s all gone too ethnic and smiley when it should be serious and identifiable from an English viewpoint not a pick & mix of nationalities and compromises.

OUTRAGE. Racist Andrew says news is too ‘ethnic’ and not English enough!

Do you see why things like this occur? People misread, people mishear, people don’t communicate clearly enough what their intentions are when they say something.

I will now hold a press conference to explain my remarks about the TV News:

“The news should be like a member of the ship’s crew perched atop the sale, looking out for danger and announcing it to the deck when it crops up, whilst seagulls follow the boat. I don’t want the news to show how wonderfully diverse we are and have it employ people because of the colour of their skin or on the basis of how incredibly bland and politically correct they are.”

The headline the next day would be: “Reid says seagulls follow the trawler, ethnic people should be thrown overboard” 

I want the news to be ‘the news’. But instead this week the news has been the shit stirrer.

It shit stirs not only about matters which would have been best dealt with in private below deck, but also matters that should stay within prison walls. I hear one of the teen murders of Sophie Lancaster (who was beaten to death purely for being a Goth in a park by savage chav animals) has had his sentence cut by 9 months. That he has an 18 year sentence in the first place raises the fact that those 9 months don’t make a great deal of difference, nor should they have been cut because of the message it gives out to the victim’s family and the upset it causes. But there, it’s happened and it’s all over the news, and it pisses people off, and it adds insult to injury.

Yet the Brand & Ross controversy is above that in the agenda! Not only should neither story be newsworthy, they’re in the wrong order of importance. The mind boggles.

With the news being as inept and depressing as this we need cutting edge comedy all the more. Comedy which is liberal and free and says what it fucking well likes, whilst dressed in tshirts and skinny jeans, not black suits and ties.

So I drastically propose that the BBC be split in two. The public responsibility half, and the creative half. The public responsibility half would lecture us on morals, show Children in Need every Friday and set an example to our young people, whilst the young people would watch the creative half where anything goes.

Kids have seen everything on YouTube anyway. Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross larking about on Radio 2 is nothing compared to teenagers pissing on a tramp and setting fire to his corpse. This isn’t right. This is a cause for concern, not Brand offending someone and then apologising.

He just tries to make people laugh, he succeeds, and then the joyless idiots who run the newspapers and the government shut him down. 

Jackass on MTV features grown men wanking into socks under water and then electrocuting themselves or running naked down the street running into passing cars. Not exactly quality output.

While the Prime Minister has a moan about Radio 2 he doesn’t even know what exists elsewhere in the commercial mainstream. The only vague hint occurs when some MTV trailer park trash leaks onto a morning chat show which old people watch and find Kerry Katona pilled up to her eyelashes and slurring her words like she’s just had a stroke. Sometimes a rock star leaks out of MTV and swears on Channel 4. Whilst people aren’t allowed to swear before 9pm, by 7pm your son is probably upstairs wanking to hardcore porn.

But you couldn’t get any more mainstream than the BBC, because the public pay for it’s funding. As soon as it does something that 5 people find a bit offensive, it gets fined a million pounds and bulldozed into next week, discussed by the government, censored and lynched of all it’s talent.

They have the wrong target. The moralisers and complainers should all shut up and leave it for people to watch what they like and then use their basic human instincts to see whether what they witness it’s right or wrong.

If you’re a teenager who enjoys kicking tramps to death, in real life, or look up to Kerry Katona as your role model then your human instincts are fucked and no matter what Russell Brand does on his radio show you’re probably always going to be an idiot.

I feel ambivalence toward whether any kind of extreme TV / porn / computer game or violence can turn a nice person into one of these idiots. But it’s the idiots themselves who should be the FIRST target of Mr & Mrs Outraged of Essex, not the material or a comedian who doesn’t do any harm to the nation whatsoever.

If only Mr & Mrs Outraged had the energy and foresight to get worked up about something that matters, then maybe they’d actually do something useful with their retirement.

Louie Walsh, one of the X-Factor judges, has also spouted off about how awful Russell Brand is. Yet the hypocracy is stunning. Here is a guy on a fake talent show, proclaiming that the vain and selfish bland bimbos they parade and celebrate every weekend are what every impressionable young person should aspire to be like.

Give me a Russell Brand for every idiot, and the UK would be a better place, with a better sense of humour.

Ahh. 

Fishy Findings 

Tagging technology has helped scientists reveal the journey of salmon in the Rockies.

In the Autumn season salmon are known for travelling huge distances, from the north of the United States through Canada and eventually to Alaska. The salmon travel by river.

The tag comprised of a steel enclosed GPS radio, gyroscope and gold plated compass. Also enclosed was a lead capsule containing paintings and drawings from school children at The Seattle School of Art. Those children were also to be invited to accompany scientists in Alaska when the fish reached their destination. However, the results of the electronic tagging has surprised the team.

When scientists returned to base shortly after releasing the tagged fish they found that their GPS reading was displaying the fish at roughly the same spot as the left them. The gyroscope readings were also odd.

Dr Barker has told News Hound his team are disappointed with the results. “We are not sure yet what happened but we suspect it must be an instrument failure of some kind”, he said.

Alien Addition

Excitement mounted today across planet Zooroper. The planet’s largest country have announced a mission to return to the ‘Earth’. Their last visit 4 billion years ago ended in controversy when Agent Adam accidentally dropped a test tube of Zooroper micro-organisms in a swamp.

The agent blamed the blunder on Agent Eve who had tripped coming down the stairs from the space capsule and knocked Agent Adam in the back of his legs. “It was a silly blunder. But I forgave her after 70 million years.”

Speaking outside the space agency’s headquarters, Chief Commander Jesus Basket met gathering reporters to explain the reasons for a return to Earth. ”Our investigations during our last mission [there] detected large quantities of gold and oil.”

When asked why the decision to return to Earth took 4 billion years, Mr Basket blamed spending cuts.

“We are eager to get this mission back on track”

There then followed a Q&A session, where Mr Basket was asked if the dropped micro organisms 4 billion years ago would have any unforeseen consequences for Earth.

“No” Mr Jones laughed. “That’s a ridiculous suggestion” 

After 8 years it looks like America finally gets it.

With just over a week to the next election, Barack Obama is way ahead in the polls. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty.

First of all there are campaigns across the country, urging lazy people to wake up and go out and vote. “Don’t sit at home” they urge. “Go and lodge your vote!”.

I urge them NOT to vote. I’ve nothing against lazy people and of course there is nothing wrong with being uninterested in politics. It is after all, a very uninteresting subject for those who’s hobbies include incest. But if you’re disallusioned and uninterested in either party, please don’t vote. You won’t be qualified to vote the right way.

This will cause Bush II to get in for another 8 years (and it really will be the end of the world next time).

Voting is important. If you’re voting because John McCain looks like a teddy bear, you should not be allowed to leave your house on polling day. You should be forcefully tied to your sofa with a packet of pretzels to keep you happy.

Voting is a valuable right. For example women tried for years to get the right to vote against great injustice. Rightly their voices are now heard. But I don’t see why all men and all women should have it.

If you’re an idiot, you should not have the right to vote.

Why should an idiot have something so powerful? If you can’t be trusted to operate a mop handle why should you be entrusted to help choose the president? There are entire towns of racist rednecks who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a black music concert never mind a polling station in an election featuring a black presidential candidate.

Then there is the problem with democracy. It’s not enough of a balance between mediocrity and dictatorship. If anything it’s too far over to a mediocrity of idiots. In some country’s it isn’t even a democracy at all. In France a sizeable majority of people got conned into voting for a president called Sarkozy thinking they’d get a man of the people when shortly after winning he took off his mask to reveal that he was in fact a egocentric megalomaniac bastard.

This cannot be allowed to happen again.

Presidents should have a trial period of 6 months whereby the public invent a made up crisis that they pass off to the president as being real. It would be a refreshing turn around.

If the trial president was seen chinking champaign glasses with supermodels on a boat rather than deal with The Great Potato shortage, the public would vote differently come the real election in 5 months time.

Of course, some trial presidents would be a bit hard done by. For example you might get one named Brown who was very good at economics but shit at everything else. He’d cope with The Great Banana Famine very poorly and be sacked by Joe The Public. However shortly afterwards the world would plunge into a very real crisis, where all the banks go out of business and the pain of not dealing with the imaginary Banana Crisis would pale into insignificance against the pain now experienced due to having presidents named Bush and Sarkozy trying to reform the banking world.

That would be like getting the black kettle to reform the black teapot by having a fight with scolding water and sugar (and about as effective at solving the world financial crisis).

And yes to return to my original topic, after 8 years America finally gets it.

America is like any other country, but on a more magnified scale. Think of your town or city. Your shadowy back-streets are magnified into Brooklyn. That small village which has a few idiots is magnified into a city suburb. The workplace bully is magnified into a president. The local take away is magnified into a global franchise.

But also your population of intelligent, good humoured professionals are magnified. And Barack Obama is a magnification of all that is great in a human being. In a country so magnified, I still find it incredible how some of it’s inhabitants need a magnifying glass to see this. 

Fern is so lovely on This Morning.

When Kerry Katona turned up fucked out of her head on medication, she came over all motherly and Philip came over all fatherly. Well, I think Philip should go back to doing Gordon The Gopher.

As for Fern, she was awfully worried about the pig faced pill head. “We are just concerned for you because you’re bubbly, you’re funny, you’re beautiful, you’re quick-witted - all of those things!” she squarked.

Quick witted? I’ve seen quicker witted cattle.

Apparently Kerry has a loving husband, a giant house (which was burgurled a bit ago - it’s in Cheshire) and a glittering career as an ex pop star (in, erm, Atomic Kitten). When Kerry Katona isn’t flogging frozen junkfood to families on the poverty line she’s generally off puffing around in a Porsche and her expensive clothes.

You may also add to that the fact she has depression and needs medication for it.

Mental illness is not something you can cure through money (quite the opposite!). It’s no laughing matter either.

However the problem with Kerry Katona is that even before the onset of mental illness she was still fundementally a pillock.

Her every reaction is idiotic. Her general chavvy personality teeth grindingly pathetic. As a role model to young people or star of the Iceland ads she is utterly reprehensible. I’d rather have Josef Fritzel warbling “Dads go to the cellar fridge!”. (Fritzel is also a bit of a mental case, but nobody has any sympathy for him - yet he’s only ruined 4 impressionable young lives in the privacy of his own home. Our Kerry however is an omnipresent menance in ALL our living rooms).

Don’t get me wrong, I hate her. Look gal just because you’re a spastic doesn’t mean you can act like a reprobate all the time and then expect us to pat you on the head and say ‘poor Kat, she has such hardship in her life’.

Families who have to shop at Iceland because they can only afford one frozen fish finger a month - those are the people who should warrant our sympathies. Not spoilt chavs dressed in Prada whom even though they have everything, they still seem to make a complete fuck up of everything.

After her slurred bad tempered interview on This Morning was over, Fern spoke about the aftermath, saying she thought somebody had been awfully irresponsible toward poor old Kerry. “She should never have been brought to the studio!” she squarked. Awful publicity for her career, I’m sure. “muuuums, gooooo toooo Icelaaaaand”

Who could that evil irresponsible person be wondered Fern aloud?

1. Her PR? Max Clifford was apparently too busy chasing more celebrity pussy to even notice that his client was on national television.
2. Her husband? That’s like blaming a monkey for driving a Porsche having been trained to do so.
3. Phillip and Fern? No, apparently they were too rushed to even speak to their guest before plonking her on the sofa in front of a live TV camera. That’s professionalism for you!
4. HERSELF?

Bingo!

When I was a young impressionable 14 year old I used to look up at certain heros. Aryton Senna. Damon Hill. David Bowie. Bernie Ecclestone. Gordon The Gopher. I could imagine now how horrible and innocence shattering it would be if one day Damon Hill stumbled into an FIA press conference pilled up to the eyeballs with anti-depressants or Gordon The Gopher slurred his squeaks and fell off the sofa into a bucket of his own vomit.

I just wish Kerry Katona - HERSELF - would have thought early on in her career about what effect it would have on young people should she ever decide not to notice what an idiot she is and become a famous pop star regardless.

With this kind of amazing powers of perception maybe she’d also notice that she was pilled up to the eyeballs before choosing to go on live TV.

Watch the video here, the bit where it says WATCH VIDEO HERE!! before going on to read a statement from her publicist about how awfully hurtful and damaging it all was  

Oh and apparently Kerry Katona: Whole Again is on MTV One Sunday October 26 at 9PM which explains it all really.

Recently there was a £2000 reward on offer in London after a wax work of Paul McCartney’s head was left on a train. The head was being transported to an auction house to be sold by it’s forgetful owner (apparently not Sir Paul himself).

The head was later found by a homeless tramp rummaging through some bins.

After hearing this story a few questions poked their head out from deep within the bin of my consciousness.

First of all: how do you forget you’re travelling besides the head of Paul McCartney on a train seat?

Secondly, thirdly and lastly forthly, all my next questions concern the homeless guy. What did he think he’d found when he saw Paul McCartney’s head in a bin whilst rummaging for food, staring upward at him? How did he hear about the award? And what did he do with the head in the mean time? Sing ‘Yesterday’ through it?

So you’re penniless and starving and you find Paul McCartney’s head in a wheely bin. Do you go back to your cardboard enclosure and do some research on the internet to see if there’s a reward out for the safe return of Paul McCartney’s head? Maybe you just use it as a pillow? Maybe you see an ad in a newspaper and give the thankful owner of Paul McCartney’s head a quick ring on your Blackberry mobile? Or maybe you don’t have a Blackberry and a copy of The Times in your hand and you just wonder around at night holding Paul McCartney’s head in a daze whilst avoiding the worried and panicked glances of frightened onlookers.

To me, nothing about this story makes any sense.

It all smacks of story-hungry press feeding guilably on pure fiction tossed out by a desperate man who has a useless wax work head of Paul McCartney up for auction.

The headless corpse of Ringo Starr could have hatched a better publicity lie. What was he thinking? “Hmmm. How about I left it on a train or lost it and it got put in a bin or some homeless guy found it and wore it as a mask. Hey - no, let’s combine them all into one madcap headline grabbing idea! Well, maybe not the mask bit.” 

If the story is indeed true it paints an even more worrying picture. How did Paul McCartney’s head get from trundling along on a train seat staring at the groins of fellow passengers, to a bin somewhere in the middle of the city? You’re making the daily commute back from work at night when suddenly, oh look it’s Paul McCartney’s head sat opposite. “Why, I think I’ll just pick it up, take it home and pop it in the bin.”

Or maybe the train staff found it? And put it in the bin.

After all, it wouldn’t surprise me that our public ’servants’ would be capable of such a culturally ignorant deed. They’re already very capable of eagerly eradicating all traces of Banksy’a graffiti art from the UK. An act of cultural vandalism so great it makes putting the great Beatle’s head in a bin seem trivial.

I’ve recently been in Berlin, a city which was once also ruled by the Nazi party.

However the powers that be have had a change of heart since the cold war and subsequent WALL.

They see graffiti as a human expression of freedom, and in many cases a beautiful form of modern art. It’s done by the people, for the people, anywhere on the city walls - the city has a sense of being owned by it’s inhabitants rather than faceless government shadows. Whether the wall is someone’s new apartment building or an office doesn’t seem to matter. Best of all, it makes the city look a bit nicer.

Of course in London, the people are a mere hassle for the public servants who seek to protect us all from ourselves.

The London transport network controllers treat humans as ‘liquid’ in live computer simulations apparently, all the better for cramming as many drops of sentinent beings into tubes and stairwells as humanly possible. The goverment meanwhile just see us as an inconvinence except for when it needs to borrow £40 billion to bail out the banks.

And so on a bland magnolia towerblock wall in a featureless West London borough one of the greatest artistic statement’s of our generation will be painted over by pikeys working for the council, in whatever colour Dulux they find in the back cupboard, therefore the wall (and general atmosphere of the borough) will be even shitter than before and all those pesky humans will be back under control.

And somewhere in a rubbish bin is the head of John Lennon, weeping. 

A Russian critic of their then President Putin, was poisoned with a slow burning form of radioactivity. By the time he was dead, the trail had gone cold. His name was Alexander Litvinenko.

Nobody knows who killed Litvinenko but the fabled Polonium poison was said to be very difficult to produce. It had to come from a nuclear power plant. It had to come from a high level source. A number of ex-KGB members were therefore implicated with his murder.

Alexander was believed to have been exposed to the Polonium in a London restaurant on this day he met a former FSO officer, now a millionaire. The FSO is the modern name for the KGB. The FSO is a body which is as closely related to the Russian government as MI5 is to the British establishment.

Today Karina Moskalenko, a Russian human rights lawyer and critic of Vladimir Putin has been poisoned with mercury.

It seems like an intimidation tactic as she was due to represent yet another victim of the Russian government in court the next day. Instead she’s in hospital, exposure to mercury can cause madness (and other symptoms) but is usually non-fatal.

A bit of digging however reveals a even more sinister side to this. It seems the future of this unfortunate woman, and her children who were in the mercury laced car at the time, is rather more bleak than we think from watching the news.

I wanted to know more about mercury and so Wikipedia told me all about it. A liquid metal. I remember it from thermometers at school. Pretty harmless stuff.

But there is a second type of mercury called Dimerthlmercury and here is what Wikipedia had to say:

“It is eliminated [from the brain] very slowly, therefore it has tendency to bioaccumulate. The symptoms of poisoning may be delayed by months, possibly too late for effective treatment.”

“Dimethylmercury passes through latex, PVC, butyl, and neoprene rapidly (within seconds), and is absorbed through the skin. Therefore, most laboratory gloves do not provide adequate protection from it, and the only safe precaution is to handle dimethylmercury while wearing highly resistant laminated gloves underneath long-cuffed neoprene or other heavy-duty gloves”

I doubt that the car was laced with any old ordinary mercury. 

Sadly, both for Karina and her children, one can assume she will die in approximately a month and by then the trail would have gone cold.

The Native American looked out over the edge of the cliff. Endless sea ahead. Endless sky above. Below, an endless shore. To this young man named Jolene the mysterious expanse of water held untold stories of adventure and awe.

He sat besides his wolf, and they looked out at the edge of the world together.

Waves battered the side of the ship as the Scotsman Thomas peered out from atop the hull. “There must surely be something magnificent out here. Change. I’ve dreamt it coming. But I’ve been away so long I could give up an entire land just to look into my bonny darling’s eyes. I’d see more in her eyes than I would in the entire coast of Scotland”

A blur of movement, through the forest trees, suddenly a lot of noise. Jolene paused, his wolf stood silently, intently monitoring the distance. “But we walked on in the end. There wasn’t anything within range. Then by the time the sun was again hidden, I finally had two deer down and I carved them up and brought the meat back to our camp to feed my family. I looked at my wife, there was a look in her eyes that day. I could see her soul and whilst people could steal my prey and my wolves they could never steal our souls.”

The chinking of glasses. Thomas sits with his comrades below deck. “When they hunt in the night, that there is a great many together, they make the most hideous and frightful noise, that was ever heard.” Said Beckett, his captive audience occasionally downing a rum or seven. “The only good wolf, was a dead wolf”, he continued. Thomas interjects “Where had you seen these creatures before?” Beckett explains that he had hunted them in Scotland in an effort to protect his livelihood - his farm. “Golden eyes glistening, razor sharp white teeth, the only animal he knew which was to be feared - the only wild animal in the whole of the land capable of killing a human.”

As the Native American gathers his young family around a plot of land on his modest settlement, he feels a soft warm hand on his shoulder, it’s his wife who has woken to cook breakfast around an early morning fire. A cool wind breezes over their settlement from the beach. The sun rises in the east.

The waves lash at the ship as Thomas, his rough beard grizzled by the sea air stands on the deck. “After so much time on this vessel I have forgotten how many times I’ve stood here to witness the first light and feel the warm glow of sunrise on my skin”.

She walks across the beach creating elegant footprints in the sand. Exposed, the Native American’s wife washes naked in the sea. Suddenly a ‘black dot’ approaches on the horizon, it becomes ever larger. She is transfixed by the approaching menace, and stands still, water lapping against her waist, to her it is God like.

Now cutting closer, she sees the once constant and undisturbed sea parting around the huge vessel which was at first just an abnormality in the faint blue mist rising from the sea.

The ship docks to the shore, a man jumps off and slashes her throat.

Her footprints in the sand wash away as the tide comes in.

Becket had come to make a settlement.

A few days later, darkness, the red wolf was starving, he padded toward the chicken pen. His Native American master Jolene was still nowhere to be seen, not even senses as sharp as a wolf’s could find him now. And as he padded further toward potential food, his sharp eyes spotted the looming figure of a man standing over the pen. He stopped, he hadn’t expected this. Was it Jolene? The man began to walk toward him, maybe he was going to offer him some meat?

Now our wolf felt a knife to his lower jaw. And a hand was gripping him by the neck. Now another hand, clutching his head from behind. Another man shouted and jumped on his back, our wolf’s legs couldn’t bear the weight and his whole body was pinned to the ground, and then he began to feel the cut. It cut deeper and deeper, and he felt it in his jaw bone. The metal cut right through. He let out a howl which became a muffled scream and then nothing but a hiss and his still-razor sharp eyes looked down at the blood, and his jaw had gone.

They let him go. He staggered to his feet. The pain was crippling. He staggered forward and shook his head, blood flew in all directions and he ran. He ran into the forest and all he could hear were his paws pounding against dirt and all he could feel was the sheer pain of his wound. So he kept running until he could hardly breath for the blood choking in his throat and his paws flattened against the ground and his knees bent forward and he crashed into the dirt and then he curled up because of the unspeakable pain.

The night passed and now extreme starvation was vying with pain for his attention. And our wolf pressed his wreaked mouth into sticks, dirt and mud.

“Press forward. Muzzle the forest floor with nose. Search for the scent of food. Must keep going. Muzzle the dirt. Smell the dead leaves. Curl up some more. Block out the cold. I am losing the feelings of pain, I am losing my sight. Where is my master?”

And with that the wolf died, and the men had won. The new men would build a new America.

The seasons come and go, the clouds scud over mountains, the trees turn red and brown, eventually to be felled by men, the settlements become towns and towns became cities, cities great cities. The few red wolves which are left now breed with coyote and the red wolf species slowly disappears.

The settlements had won out.

The sun rises over the sea once more. A sanctuary. Inside some conservationists are attempting to breed the few remaining pairs of red wolves. They are no longer in danger, no longer hunted like rivals. Within the boundaries of the huge sanctuary a scientist walks through a deserted forest and suddenly comes to a cliff edge.

A wolf joins her to look out to the edge of the world together.

A brilliant blue sky blends into the sea as a seagull glides down through the milky haze. She comes to perch on the warm grey metal of a ship’s hull. The huge vessel drifts over the gentle waves. With a robotic jerk the gull’s head looks downwards at the deck to view a female prisoner, she is pissing, her legs bent at the knees, a trickle of gold runs from under her and off the edge of the deck. Lines of fright are etched on her face in stark contrast to the relaxed blue sky behind her stretching out into infinity. Suddenly like the buzz of a wasp in a vacuum a helicopter appears on the horizon.

With a sudden explosion the ship roars with pain and it begins to buckle and capsize, destined for the deep. The helicopter is now above the ship and out onto the deck runs a mad man towards a rope ladder, armed to the teeth and intent on making his escape. It’s the captain. He’s lifted up skywards from the chaos he created with his own hands whilst onboard: one hand on the deck, one hand on a detonator. He fends off opportunistic last gasp attacks from prisoners - for the escape road is only his. The helicopter is not interested in anybody else.

SUNRISE, MANCHESTER.

The new world of 2108 when compared to the past is a little like the difference between man and dog. 90% of the same DNA but worlds apart.

The mankind of previous generations had been replaced with a new breed of selfish mongrels who’d made a new life for themselves in Manchester and across the world.

Soft bronze skin bathed in the early morning light, perfect soft features, a perfect averaging out of all the individuality which used to exist from one race to another across the globe.

They chatter on their way to work places, speaking in a combination of New English and Old Spanish, with a smattering of French words. But their accents - which were once proud national accents - were no longer identifiable as coming from behind the old boundaries and country borders. They spoke in a bland international drawl. Self satisfied smug bastards.

As the new world scene kids looked out of their train window during the daily commute to work, they saw a distinct underclass of vermin.

By now the world had seperated into two distinct races. An underclass of anti-social pests, living from stolen food like the rats did in ancient London, and the huge dominate mass of people who were no different from one person to the next. Individual only by their belief in themselves.

It began in 2015, the people were mobilised by way of their popular culture like never before and wrestled back control. They began to tell the people in positions of power exactly what they wanted from life. And they got it. In 2039 the members of this populist ’scene’ began to control the world - businesses followed the whims of the self regarding popularity seeking fashionistas. Throughout the last century Poverty stricken East Asian workers were enslaved in boot camps to create fashion for the scene and to provide food.

The scene dwellers had a mantra: “I am unique, I am special. I am part of the scene”. They didn’t see the contradiction in their mantra. In the great march of popular culture, all throughout the 21st century they kept expressing their belief in themselves over and over to overcompensate for the awful truth. Imperfection, humility, vulnerability and character were ironed out over time and through rampart interracial breeding and domestication. Humanity had become genetically globalised, like a global village of inbred idiots.

But the split-linage of pests were an omnipresent drag on the scene. It was the scene versus the vermin and something had to be done.

In 2080 a government bill was passed in central Brazil where once was rain forest. To bring back capital punishment. Nobody really took notice at first. But the practice spread from San Paulo up through Mexico and into America. One by one dominate leaders of large city ’scenes’ from New York to Moscow began to execute their hardened criminals and the high security jails began to empty. Most city dwellers praised the execution of hardened criminals but it still made no difference to the lives of those having to deal with the petty criminals, the vermin on the streets. Many of the underclass vermins were still on the street, going about their dirty wares within a stones throw from the scene. Ungracious and unintelligent, lazy and ugly. The vermin were a nuisance and also an embarrassment to visitors. Eventually the plan all came together. The vermin would be sunk in the Atlantic on huge vessels loaded with explosives. Off land, they could be exterminated out of sight and out of mind.

The clearance of the vermin off the face of the earth had begun, but sure enough they still had a lot of vermin in Manchester.

Chall was one such rat. By night he’d roam the richer neighbourhoods of administrators and rob them of food and electrical goods. It became his routine, a routine just like that of the administrators. But where the administrators constantly tidied and ordered, Chall would bring chaos.

11.59pm

He laughs to himself in his streetwise North London accent as he slings a rucksack over his back and sets off to the neighbourhoods up on the hill. “Here come more rich pickings…”

A knock on the door. “Honey, will you get it?”. Honey is bothered about the time. “It’s 11.59 who could it be at this…”. Honey is interrupted by a bang as his front door is knocked down, splinters of wood flying through the hallway.

“Oh good God!”, screams the wife. “Well well well, what ‘av we here?” laughs Chall, who is filming proceedings through a video camera attached to his belt. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a knife.

12.23, rich pickings and job done, and so he goes to the next street.

12.59am and the sound of smashing glass alerts 80 year old Mr Coteham that all is not as it should be. It doesn’t matter though because before he relises the horror of what is going on he’s had 80% of his blood let from his neck.

Job done, and so Chall makes off with another bag of valuables.

01.59am. Yet again the sound of splintering wood being hacked down and kicked to the purple shag-pile reverberates around a hallway. Nobody appears to be in this flat and Chall collects his goods in relative silence, when suddenly:

“I want to join you”

Chall turns to see a tall man standing in the doorway of the lounge. Chall thumbs his pocket for his knife but it’s gone. The tall man reveals it, holding it in his left hand. He drops it to the floor whilst revealing his right hand from behind his back which holds a meat cleaver 10 times larger than Chall’s ‘tiny stabber’.

“Let’s visit the neighbours”

Chall looks astonished, as he exits the flat with the tall man. In a side street, a young couple are walking by a row of energy saving street lamps, the faint yellow glow illuminating their winter jackets. Just around the corner the tall man and Chall climb on top of some industrial sized waste bins and wait for their prey to approach, chattering as they get nearer and nearer. Chall is also having a pointless dialogue: “If you’re up to something, you’ve ‘ad it” says Chall, distrustful of his new, more powerful partner. “I bare no ill will to you Chall, in actual fact I rather like the change from my usual job…” says the tall man before Chall pipes up, interrupting: “You’re a posh bastard aren’t ya”, he laughs. “Why do ya need more?”

“It’s not about the fancy food Chall, this is a choice I’ve made. A unit of two is stronger than a unit of one”.

“I don’t know what ya mean”, interrupts Chall again. Chall is thick and dense, his feeble mind only capable of maiming and stealing.

Crisis

Four years ago, fearful of a possible banking crisis, Mr Robert Mug, then CEO of the Royal Bonk of Sidcup decided to sell his house and buy gold. Now News Hound has caught up with Mr Mug in an exclusive interview. “Back in 2004 I saw it coming. We were getting into a right old state! I knew that in a few years my house would also end up being as worthless as my bank. So I sold my house and bought gold. Now the price of gold is very stable. In fact I’m glad I did it because everything else is now worthless. Oh by the way did I tell you I’ve doubled my money on the gold in fact…”

Interrupting, we asked Mr Mug if he intends to buy a house again once the crisis is over: “Well, I cannot answer that because I don’t know when or if the crisis will ever end because of all those idiots out there mismanaging the banks. The gold’s in a secure vault and I’m really quite happy that they don’t let people in to look at it or fondle it. That said, I have stroked the computer screen when I’ve seen the price go up.”

There was one burning question News Hound had to ask Mr Mug before our phone conversation ended. Where was he living if he had no house? “The Golden Dome 6 star hotel in the United Arab Emirates is my haunt for now I’m afraid. Sometimes we have to take the short term pain for long term gain and my very own golden dome will make sure I’ll come out of this in the end…ha ha ha!”

Bailout Bill Passed

The general public is to pay £2000 each to bailout failed rich people, it has been revealed. “The rich people are in a pickle and we needed to do something about it” said George Bush yesterday. However his plans hit the rocks when the US Senate voted against his proposed $700 bailout plan. So George Bush took a day out of his holidays and rewrote the bailout plan. Now members of the senate will get free chocolate buns. “I am extremely proud of my revised bailout bill” said George Bush on the eve of the crucial second vote. “It took Hank Paulson and I all day to come up with it but I think this time the new totally different $700 bailout will be digesterised a little better. Ha ha ha!”.

Today the senate passed the new bill with a majority of 169. Senate member John McCain, known for deregulating the banks so they could be free to create this mess in the first place, was the first to spill his chocolate bun all over the senate floor. Meanwhile Republican representative Hanky Panky had this to say: “In it’s original form the bill would just have been too risky for the American tax payer. Now we understand that there is chocolate buns included, so I personally voted ‘yes’ this time, to the bill which will still cost the tax payer $700 billion. But hey - chocolate!”

Laughs

In a meeting with the press today, News Hound was present to see Gordon Brown smile. The smile came at exactly 2.38pm and was totally unexpected according to onlookers. However, some observers were concerned to see what appeared to be a mincing of the lips for 10 consecutive minutes following his smile.

What provoked the smile? Opinion is divided amongst the hacks present, but News Hound believes Mr Brown cracked a joke just seconds before which may have triggered the smile. Our correspondent Jasper Caper witnessed what was said: “My mobile phone went off with a loud beep and Gordon, joker that he is, suggested that here was news coming through of another bank falling! We all had a jolly good laugh and then Gordon suggested that we should be thankful he’s not giving any more financial advice today. But by this point I think the stress of the smile had really got to him and his mouth didn’t know how to get back into a frown. His lips were moving in a way reminiscent of a goldfish at feeding time. We all felt sorry for him.”

Click here to see the video of Gordon Brown’s smile

The world apparently is in a financial melt down. There is a US election coming up. And Gordon Brown has survived a good stabbing in the back by the Labour party because “…the party has come together. In times of crisis, you don’t change your leader.” Where have I heard that before?

George Bush must be rubbing his hands in glee. If I was to be crueler I’d even suggest he engineered the whole crisis but that would be a little too close to the dreaded ‘conspiricy’ word for my liking. No, George Bush couldn’t engineer toothpick. He ballsed up the world; And come the end of his 8 years in power this is simply what you get. In 2004 he had a war on. In 2008 he hasn’t got any money left. So yet again we’re supposed to stick together with our leaders and vote for more of the same. Pah!

Let me now point my Arrow of Blame at the bankers and share dealers. Don’t get me wrong, not all bankers are selfish bastard morons. Some are even not morons. Yes, the trading floor on Wall Street maybe no place for poets…what with all that testosterone and risk taking going on, but give the bankers a break. Some are even not bastards.

Now the Arrow of Blame does a full 360 and ends up pointing back at the ’system’. Yes, the system does appear to be broken. Maybe Gordon Brown and The Pope are right when they say the system needs to have an inbuilt system of morals and the system of morals needs to have an inbuilt system of control, with some systems of regulation in there for good measure and a bit of government fiddling with the system to get it all working in ‘unison’ and ‘going forward’. I say no that’s not whats needed. Why not just throw $700 billion at it and see what happens?

Now imagine if you will, the Dow Jones index not reflecting the trading floor of Wall Street but instead several birds in a nest. Let’s call it the Mother Duck index. Mother duck feeds her chicks on a daily basis. But one day, bad news arrived in the form of no worms. The day after there were still no worms and the chicks were demanding answers. They squawked a lot. The Mother Duck index fell dramatically. So Mother Duck had to go out and find some fucking worms, or else they’d be trouble. When Mother Duck returned the next day with 700 worms, she found that her beloved skinny chicks had been bought by a local farmer at a low price and he was now rearing them on his farm, fattening them up before selling them to the butcher at a profit. Mother Duck and her 700 worms sat there crying next to her empty nest.

Mother Duck is you and I, bailing out our beloved ducks only for them to be bought by a fat old MacDonald.

The FTSE index in England for example, decided to fall soon after the banks got their hands on $700 billion of our money. Mother Duck then also made a new nest, reassured the chicks that everything would be alright and even guaranteed their Bradford & Bingley savings. And yet trillions are wiped off the value of large companies around the world, plunging the world into yet more banking problems

Then suddenly the next day, investors all took a look at the share prices and gushed: “Gosh charlie, I say! HSBC are awfully cheap this morning. You know what - I may take a punt Charlie!”

And so by the end of the day the economic indexes rise a bit. The day after, Roger is at it again. “Oh gosh charlie! Look at how much my shares gained yesterday. This won’t be sustainable, not with the economic downturn the way it is. I better get shot Charlie.” And so he presses ‘collect’ on the slot machine and drives back home in his Bentley with a cool $10 million in his back pocket.

They say this is a free market, the basic functioning of supply & demand, glorious capitalism creating wealth for all.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s selfish profiteering, and fiddling the system for short term gain. Capitalism is controlled by a wealthy few and we are all at the mercy of their daily whims and greed.

It’s time a new system was put in place - one that has a support structure of banks and trading in place (necessary for the functioning of modern civilisation) but yet generates wealth for everyone, not just a select few.

Their risks have now become our risks. It’s time to reverse the playing field and let our risks become theirs. If the new system doesn’t work and the economic support beams tumble down around our heads then so be it. It’ll be worth the short term struggle if it leads to a long term correction in our financial system.

My words to Charlie would be: “Gosh Charlie. You need your job sorting out big style, before it fucks us all up even more”.

I suppose Charlie would sneer a reply to the effect of “Without me risking my life savings on buying half of Barclays, there wouldn’t be a Barclays.”

Well…’no Barclays’ is a risk I’m willing to take for the time being.

In the words of Natwest. “There is another way…”