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The general election campaign limps to its close on Thursday. Essentially the only highlights have been Nick Clegg’s emergence as a serious contender and Gordie Broon’s hysteria at being forced to confront an English pensioner. Personally I think both were entirely predictable. Clegg is no fool, brushes up well and had the perfect winning line to deliver: ‘a plague on both your houses.’ As for Broon, everyone knew that exposing him to human beings was going to be problematic.  Many accuse him of having petty and irrational dislikes and being anti-English. This is unfair, Gordon is a complete misanthrope; he hates everybody not just little old ladies in Rochdale. What is my prediction as to the result? Well I do not buy the hung Parliament story. I think that the voters will do what they did in 1997: kick the incumbent party firmly in the gonads. Expect Labour’s vote to fall off the proverbial cliff.

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If the ‘door Broon’ does have to hand back the seals of office on Friday morning he will join an interesting club: those Prime Ministers since the post took on its modern trappings in 1908 who never managed to win a general election. I reckon there are four so far; Broon will be the fifth.

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To be volcanoed: a new verb describing the act of having one’s travel plans totally screwed up by so called experts warning that a volcanic eruption in Iceland poses a threat to aircraft taking off hundreds of miles away in London. Whilst there is anecdotal evidence that flying jet engined aircraft through thick volcanic ash is not a good idea it was gathered in situations where the aircraft flew through the worst of the eruption. Not, as here, where the volcano is virtually in a different continent. As my old chum Jimmy the Jock remarked; these ‘experts’ in the UK Met Office, are like the old 1 British Corps NBC Warning and Reporting Cell back in the good old days of British Army on the Rhine. Staffed by NBC obsessives, who were normally locked away where they could only bore each other to death, on major exercises they were let loose to inflict abject misery on us all. They plotted the downwind hazard of exercise NBC strikes. Any troops in the danger zone had to mask up, sometimes for hours on end, an excruciating experience. I detect the same malicious delight in messing people about in the Met Office’s silly pronouncements. Somebody should take a stand.

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I see that scientists are making an in depth study of an Indian Fakir who claims not to have eaten for 80 years. They hope that if he is telling the truth then he may hold the key to Special Forces being able to survive behind enemy lines without any resupply. An added advantage is that, with not eating, he also does not need to go for a poo. I must say that if this chap is for real why retain his secrets just for the military? Everyone moans about the carbon miles expended by our Supermarkets in keeping their shelves fully stocked. There is also the problem of pollution from human waste. If we can simply stop eating and crapping then environmental problems will surely be a thing of the past but, even better, bloody Tesco will go out of business. I await developments with interest.

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Apparently a fundamentalist Christian archaeological team have discovered the remains of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. Can we now look forward to finding the foundations of the Tower of Babel, Goliath’s grave and Samson’s hair clippings?

However, I am conscious that this is not a good time to be either complacent or resigned. Hope must not be abandoned because the alternative is total despair. I am, after all, entering my 55^th year. I once read somewhere that one minute past midnight on a man’s 55^th birthday is akin to Zero Hour on the Somme battlefield back in 1916.

The hapless Birthday Boy is effectively clambering out of the security of the trenches of youth to face the horror of a multiplicity of dangers in a sort of health no-man’s land that is late middle age. Stroke, cancer, heart disease, diabetes even suicide come winging towards him like tracer bullets and he must trudge forward, teeth gritted, as best he can.

If he makes it to 60 he stands a good chance of carrying on to record his threescore years and ten. Otherwise he falls to litter the ground with the bodies of his miserable contemporaries. A sad and desolate scene livened only by the cackling of the widows as they drink a toast to death in service e benefit!

So, faced with this cheerful prospect I have made a positive start. I have bought myself an exercise bike which is now in my study and from which I now regularly watch television or listen to the radio whilst pedalling away. To enhance the cardio-vascular benefit of the exercise I have developed a sort of crude interval training system. It seems to be working so I might be on to something. Maybe I could start a whole new system of TV watching fitness; a sort of couch potato callisthenics.

Like all brilliant ideas the concept is quite simple. Take, as an example, ‘University Challenge’. This is a half hour programme which is an ideal period during which to exercise. When Jeremy Paxman asks the teams a starter for ten you put on the clutch and commence a period of maximum effort and stress. Keep this going until the next starter for ten when you can ease off and start a period of light effort. Keep alternating until the gong goes. You’ll be amazed at how impatient you become at slow answers!

‘Just a Minute’ and ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’on the radio also lend themselves to this treatment. However, I have yet to work out a system for ‘the Archers.’ Perhaps some of you could make some suggestions. One that immediately comes to mind is to alternate between each occasion that you feel like reaching through the ether to give Pat Archer and her insufferable drab of a daughter Helen a good slapping; but as that happens so often it might not give you enough time on either effort level to do any good.

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All in all it is enough to drive anybody to drink but then we hear that those tedious interfering prigs who we have put in charge of us are trying to impose a minimum price on alcohol. This is, to put it mildly, bloody outrageous. In support of this tedious campaign these thin lipped, desiccated miseries point to the costs to the National Health Service of all those with drink related illnesses and injuries and the trouble in town centres from drunken revellers fighting and brawling. Added to this is a generous helping of mean spirited puritanism.

But this is an absurd argument. The National Health Service is also heavily involved in repairing the carnage that takes place on our roads. Many lives are ruined by the stupidity of idiotic drivers. Do we hear of a minimum price on cars? No, instead efforts are directed to improve the standard of driving. If efforts were directed to improve the standards of behaviour amongst our populace the problem of excessive drinking will soon end.

If young men and women are allowed to go out looking like tarts; if they are allowed to drink out of bottles; to shout obscenities and behave boorishly then they will not develop the sort of self control that is essential if one is to drink responsibly.

Now, before you crash my broadband connection with cries of ‘hypocrite!’ ‘fraud!’ and ‘imposter’ let me make two points. Firstly I make no excuses about hypocrisy. Regular readers will be aware that I am entirely in favour of it. The relevance or value of a message is not affected by the bearer’s own human frailty and failure to live up to the demands.

Secondly whilst, when it comes to alcohol abuse, there is little over the years that I have left unexplored I did, at least, have the decency to be ashamed of my activities and resolve never to act in that way again. That, sadly, no longer seems to apply and youngsters who have performed quite outrageous activities seems to just shrug it off and start again and we, more fool us, just let them.

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I am conscious that I recently dedicated this medium to happy stories so I had better lighten the mood. This may seem difficult in these times of financial recession, global warming and the threat of world wide Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. Well, let me tell you that looking back as I am now able to do these things are actually pretty small beer compared to what we used to be threatened with on a daily basis.

We talk glibly these days of crisis. There is the Credit Crisis, the Environmental Crisis, the Food Crisis, the Iran Crisis. Well as crises go I can assure you that they are in the weeny league. I can recall the Cuban missile crisis. Now, there was a good reason to be scared shitless. At any moment the entire civilised world could have been immolated in a nuclear holocaust. Indeed that threat was a constant companion during much of my youth and is now, mercifully, almost completely gone.

So polar bears with sun stroke might be an unfortunate possibility but I prefer it to Mutually Assured Destruction any day.

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I see that the strange case of the shrieking lovers is about to enter the regime of the Courts. For those unfamiliar with this bizarre story it involves a married couple: Steve and Caroline Cartwright, who live in Washington in Northumberland. For years now these two have been tormenting their neighbours by indulging in extremely noisy lovemaking.

Eventually, as a result of numerous complaints, their screams were actually recorded by Environmental Health officials. At their height they reached a maximum level of 47 decibels: the equivalent of having it happen in the same room. They were accordingly served with a noise abatement order which they have so far failed to comply with.

The next step will be recourse to the Courts. Mrs Cartwright complains that she has tried to minimise the noise but finds it impossible. I have an idea that might help. If the noise is as loud as being in the same room with them why not have a crowd of neighbours come into the bedroom to watch. I have a feeling that might quieten them down a bit.

Certainly the initial signs are encouraging. For a lawyer, one of the more obvious signs of vibrancy in one’s career is to get a call from a legal head hunter. For cultural reasons law firms have never been very good at recruiting staff. This has led to the rise of the legal recruiter. These enterprising souls either act on instructions from firms who know what they want or simply ring up senior partners on the off chance to try and dazzle them with their stable of talented lawyers.

Both options require them to assemble a beauty parade of willing candidates and this means many hours on the telephone assembling their list. If you get it right the rewards are very lucrative. Typical fees are 20% of the successful candidate’s starting salary. Clearly the more demand there is for lawyers the more these bottom feeders of the legal industry have to fight over the available pool of talent. This means that in times of high employment, such as occurred during the late Nineties and most of the Noughties, one could expect to receive at least one call a week from a recruiter especially from those who had acted for you in the past.

Like many lawyers I have built up a coterie of such contacts from my own career moves. They become a sort of therapy. In order to persuade you to become a candidate these people lay on the charm and the flattery. They assure you that they have received glowing reports of your competence, energy and enthusiasm and believe that you would be the perfect fit for this truly wonderful opportunity they are instructed upon. If you feel a bit down you ring one up and they are immediately suggesting all sorts of wonderful opportunities.

Of course, wonderful is a matter of opinion. For every potential partnership position with a leading London firm there are many less attractive berths such as assistant probate clerk in Scunthorpe. Anyway, the fact is that after an Eighteen month absence they have started to ring me again. So, things must be beginning to move. Scunthorpe here I come!

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If anybody had any doubts that the European Union is an expensive irrelevance then the appointment of two complete non-entities to the posts of President and High Representative must surely have blown them away. There may still be a number of foolish and misguided people who think that the Union is a sincere attempt at political and social integration in Europe but if so let me assure them that this is not what it is for; not now, not ever.

No, the real raison d’etre for the European Union is something much more obscure, fundamental and, frankly, spiritual. It is no more and no less than an attempt to recreate the old Holy Roman Empire. Despite the millennium that has passed since its decline and fall the ‘folk memory’ of the Empire and a desire to recreate the feelings of  safety and security that arose from having a common language, law and religion is still a very powerful and fundamental impulse. Once one realises that then the whole silly argument about political union and the creation of a central European authority become an irrelevance. There can only be one head of the European Union, one symbol of pan-European unity, one fountainhead of a central continental culture. Ladies and Gentleman and fellow Europeans I give you His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

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My stubborn yet entirely hypocritical adherence to Roman Catholicism and my confident prediction of a counter reformation in England have long been a source of amusement to my friends. A number of the more intellectual ones have teased me by remarking how sad it is that compared with France and Italy it is a great pity that the English Catholic Church never built any decent churches over here. However, it seems that I might be about to have the last laugh. In a rather odd piece of seemingly open gamesmanship the Pope has extended an invitation to join the Roman Church to any Anglo-Catholic clergy who wish to leave the Anglican communion over the issue of female Bishops.

As an aside this has given rise to a verb that is entirely new to me. Apparently the act of defection by an Anglican clergyman from Anglicanism back to Rome is known as: ‘to pope’. How many will actually pope remains to be seen but it may well mean a number of English churches, built before the reformation, will once more conduct worship according to the Roman rite. Theoretically it could include the Bishop and Chapter of one of England’s great Cathedrals. Imagine solemn Latin mass once more being celebrated in the splendour of Salisbury or Lincoln or, joy of joys, Durham Cathedral?

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I have decided to try and devote future blogs to humour and satire rather than invective. Ranting middle age is becoming a bit passé. Jeremy Clarkson seems to have cornered most of the popular market and anyone wanting something a bit more high brow can read Simon Heffer.  To be honest moaning at the modern world is a bit like spearing fish in a barrel. Simply open the Daily Mail at the comment page, get a Thesaurus and you have an instant 500 word harangue. The fact is that ultimately such work is entirely selfish. The author may get a happy feeling of catharsis but nobody else does. The aim is to outrage and inflame; either in support or opposition of the writers’ stance with little in the way of constructive advice. Satire, however, employs ridicule. This makes it very difficult for anyone to try and take its targets seriously again. For example, it is a brave director who stages a crucifiction scene and braves comparison with ‘The Life of Brian’ or a politician who tries to invoke memories of footballing idols. So out goes the rant and in comes the barb. I would welcome your views on respective merits.

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When I was serving in Northern Ireland it was made very clear to us that the success or failure of the campaign against sectarian terrorism depended upon the obtaining and exploitation of intelligence. This meant that all of us in the military had a responsibility to keep our eyes and ears open and to report anything, however trivial, that might give an insight into terrorist operations.  But the main intelligence priority, the one which we were constantly told be alert to was the spotting and recruitment of  informers. Due to the high level of professionalism and secrecy with which most of the terrorist groups in Northern Ireland conducted their operations it was only by obtaining inside information from touts and stool pigeons that we had any hope of pre-empting terrorist attacks. A well placed mole could save many lives and to find a good one was a great feather in one’s cap.

But we were also clearly told that we must assess potential candidates very carefully. The specially trained agents that followed up our reports were not impressed if they found they were meeting drunks, cranks or fantasists. It was, therefore, with some incredulity that I learnt that one of the top sources relied upon by British Intelligence to support the contention that Saddam Hussein not only had weapons of mass destruction but also had the ability to launch them against British assets within 45 minutes of the order to launch being given was a Baghdad Taxi driver called Abdul.

If we had suggested a Belfast cabbie called Paddy as a potential informant we would have risked a visit from someone very squat and wiry called Kev who would tell us to stop wasting his ‘effing time! It would have saved a lot of people a lot of bother if MI6 had employed the same degree of judgement.

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So, cliché or not: a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers.

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The Cern Haladron Collider has not been working for some time but it is hoped that it will be up and running again soon. However I have been intrigued to read that two eminent physicists are convinced that it will never work properly because the particle that it is attempting to locate is actively preventing it from operating by coming back from the future. They liken it to the age-old science fiction conundrum about time travel: what would happen if you were to travel back in time and kill your great grandmother? This particle, the Higgs Boson, apparently operates at a speed and frequency that means it is ahead of space time and is therefore able to prevent the Collider from locating it! This all adds to my theory that science is about to give all of us, and Atheists in particular, a very severe shock; probably within my lifetime. It will explain all about the Big Bang and, in particular, who set the bugger off.

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I read that the United States is about to follow Britain in removing all restrictions on homosexuals serving in the Armed Forces. Without being funny about it I am very ambivalent about homosexuality.  On the one hand I find their physicality stomach churning and cannot see how a love of leather posing pouches and wearing make up is a wholesome example to our male youth. However on the other hand if two men or two women want to live together who am I to condemn them or what they might want to get up to in the intimacy of their bedroom. This ambivalence seems to be shared by our two principal Christian churches. Both Roman Catholics and the Anglicans seem to regard homosexuality as essentially sinful yet their clergy are hopelessly compromised. Perhaps I can offer a solution: think of Julian Clary. One look at him is all you need to know that Mr. Clary could never be anything other than homosexual. I am sure that all of us in our lives have met persons of both sexes who are similarly marked out. This must mean that such people are a natural manifestation and therefore, from a religious point of view, God made. That means they must be accepted upon their own merits but only up to a point. They might be formed in the image of God but I am certain that buggery has no part in the Almighty’s plans. Unhappy people! We might now let them into the daylight but their activities must remain very much in the dark!

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I am increasingly convinced that the Western allies in Afghanistan are in the wrong place fighting the wrong war against the wrong enemy. I have a horrible feeling that hostilities are continuing there as a sort of proxy action designed to make everybody feel that we are doing something when the real enemy is situated in the Pakistani tribal areas and able to operate there openly without any risk of attack. Now, aroused by the violent attacks made upon them, the Pakistani security forces seem finally to be able to take the battle to Al Quaeda’s backyard and confront them on the ground where they should be fought. This is a crucial moment. If Pakistan does the job properly then there is a real chance that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism can be dealt a real blow. But will the inevitable backlash create more martyrs? Not if moderate Muslims throughout the world especially Muslim clerics can proclaim fundamentalism to be inimical to the teachings of the Koran and that properly practised Islam is as much a religion of peace and love as Christianity. What chance of that?

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I see the Conservative party have decided to adopt a new and novel approach to politics. They have decided to tell the truth! A number of commentators consider this to be unwise. That really is insulting. To be told that us voters cannot be trusted with the truth and must be fed with anodyne soundbites lest we be frightened into voting for someone ridiculous. In fact a dose of truth is long overdue and it is the cynical manipulation of truth by politicians over the years that have really contributed to their almost universal unpopularity. I recommend that they all take up telling the truth and not just over the question of their expenses.

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Jensen Button is the new Formula One motor racing champion. Following Lewis Hamilton last year Britain has now produced consecutive motor racing champions both of whom drive for British-based racing teams. Formula One is owned by a Briton and the International motor racing body has been presided over by a Briton for many years. Arguably one of the most popular programmes on British television is Top Gear, a riotous and orgiastic celebration of petrol hedonism. To me it is all good fun but surely such oil-based activities are no longer viable given the threat of climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Personally I’m with Jeremy Clarkson on all this and our response is: ‘bollocks!’ This debate needs to be opened up and stripped of its socio political baggage. That the climate is changing is very clear, the question is: how much of this change is our fault and how much part of the natural climatic cycle? My view is, like Clarkson’s, that our carbon emissions have sod all to do with the melting of the polar ice caps and accordingly by reducing them we are making ourselves miserable and doing absolutely nothing for the environment. Obviously we should be as efficient as we can and pollution is an abhorrence but Carbon Dioxide is not pollution and whilst there is blood in my veins and oil in the ground I see no reason to stop burning petrol.

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The head of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, has appeared on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ programme and proclaimed, among other weird and wonderful things, that if Winston Churchill was alive today the only party he could exist in would the BNP. Mr Griffin is another person who does not know his history. Winston Churchill’s attitude to far right politics is well documented. In 1940, on his orders Mr Griffin’s predecessor on the extreme right Sir Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists were all interned without trial.

I note that a charity is calling for fake muggings to be staged in the street to try and encourage the public to assist their fellow citizens when they are attacked. I also note that some artist wants to put up a vending machine outside a school that will sell toy guns. There really is too much of this. It seems that we have to put up with any number of crackpot ideas if they are meant to highlight some perceived social ill. OK then, I will go along with this. From now on, in order to highlight the danger of silly bastards being given too much leeway, I will slap anyone coming up with a daft suggestion very hard round the head.

Ever since the MP’s expenses fiasco all politicians have become engaged in a flagrant display of self flagellation. Like medieval penitents they vie with each other to confess how sinful they have been in granting themselves such generous perks and allowances. At the moment David Cameron and the Tories have set the bench mark: ministerial salaries slashed, subsidised meals cut, no employment of family members. All complete twaddle of course. The fact is that Parliament will not be properly reformed until we eradicate the curse of the career politician. It seems incredible to me that we are entrust the solution of extremely complex problems to people whose only experience of life has been gained in party politics. Parliament developed in the way it has because it was traditionally filled by confident self made men who had experience of life, knew what was what and were quite prepared to stand up and make their views known. The ridiculous lobby fodder which now passes for our elected representatives must go if we are to be a proper representative democracy.

There is a lot that is happening these days that makes one profoundly pessimistic about the future of mankind as a civilised race of beings. However occasionally there is the odd flash which gives one hope that atavism has not completely taken hold. One of these is the news that Channel 4 will soon be axing their bestial progeny: Big Brother. Apparently even the mindless and the moronic who made up the contestants and the viewers have grown tired of this dreadful product.

I have been quite shocked at the evident relish shown by many commentators in attacking the sport of Rugby football over the ‘bloodgate’ affair. Those advocates of sports whose reputations have sunk into the mire of greed and commercialism have always looked enviously at Rugby’s shiny virtue. So when Harlequins: one of the most traditional teams and their manager Dean Richards: one of the greatest England internationals there has ever been; are found guilty of blatant cheating the schadenfreude felt by the knockers is almost exquisite. However in Soccer a theatrical clutch of the ankle and a wincing visage that even Marlon Brando would have regarded as ham acting is considered sufficient evidence for the award of a penalty or a sending off. At least in Rugby player has to show clear and visible signs of injury before such procedures can begin.

I read a rather odd report the other day that stated that the Luftwaffe had bombed innocent civilians causing considerable loss of life. What was curious about the report was that the person who made it seemed surprised and horrified by the event. Surely everyone knows that is what the Luftwaffe has been doing since it was founded?