Today's guff

I had occasion to visit Argos yesterday. I bought a portable DVD player as my old one had burnt out due to excessive Smallville watching and a brown cushion, to sit on. Last night I watched Tron: Legacy. It was essentially a remake of the original only fancier and they were able to put some strumpets in tight body suits. But this is all incidental. What I'd like to discuss with you is Argos' selection of jewellery.

They sell engagement rings at Argos. Who buys them? Who are their target market? You have found your soul-mate, the one person you feel incomplete without, and you express this endless love by offering them a £59.99 ring possibly made out of recycled spoons.

I personally have no respect for the institute of marriage. I don't find it at all romantic and consequently such a gaudy trinket to me seems an entirely appropriate symbol of an inevitably miserable union, but I fancy these things are not usually purchased with the same ironic motives.


It is of course a funny old world and there's no percentage in trying to work people out anymore. People are mental. I stopped trying to work people out when Ant and Dec rose to fame. And thank the Lord our God and father of the baby Jesus I did, because if I didn't I'd be spending this weekend with a pencil and paper and calculator trying to figure out why anyone bothered voting yesterday. I'd not get a wink of sleep.

The most disgusting people in this country, the most contemptible people other than Tottenham supporters, are people who vote and claim to be 'informed' on the strength of reading the Guardian or the Telegraph and watching Question Time.

These things exist precisely to keep people from being genuinely informed. If these cretinous wine drinkers really knew where the bear sits in this country there would be rioting in the streets. It would be every man for himself. People would be sprinting aimlessly through towns with their hair on fire shouting WE'RE DOOMED.

Politicians would not be able to leave their bunkers. It wouldn't be safe. Pensioners would gun them down. 'We didn't defeat Hitler only to be forced fed German sausages for tea,' they'd shout.

We all like to have a good old laugh at Greece. Some people even think it's the Lord our God and the father of the baby Jesus' revenge for them inventing homosexuality.

The truth is we're as fucked. Just because we don't spend our days shouting at each other and wearing curly shoes, let us not assume everything is really OK and we'll be fine in the end. We won't. If we don't sell Scotland to the Arabs before they win Independence expect the same civil unrest we're seeing in Greece and are about to see in Portugal and Spain, here.

Of course the last people out on the streets to raise the Houses of Parliament to the ground and tie up all the politicians with piano wire to be gunned down will be those 'informed' people who squabbled about the merits of AV and the dangers of "the cuts". People like Eddie Izzard who needs to be exiled to Wick immediately.

These people are so ignorant, when the time comes they'll ignore the fact that their town is on fire and the nation has become a lawless burnt out badlands like something from Mad Max where the only food left in the super-market is Liquorish All-Sorts and people scavenge for petrol wearing American football pads and cricket helmets, because there was nothing about it in the papers.



Still, you've got to laugh. Sport now and I'm going to have a bet today on something. I fancy Everton to lose quite heavily to Manchester City if the truth be told. I also felt in my bones that Seville might give Real Madrid a stuffing.

I'm also hearing in my ear piece that Borussia Dortmund will triumph over lowly Werder Bremen. Speaking of Dortmund, apparently you can apply at the Post-Office now if you want to change teams.

I popped into the Post-Office in Witney, but they were out of forms. I assume Paulie Two Thumbs had had them all away, but the intention is to ditch Arsenal in favour of Borussia Dortmund.

I like their funny yellow kits and how they're top of their league and can't mathematically not be Champions. They say their players don't cry either when everything gets a bit tricky.