Koreas Advice

Almost got run over this morning. Totally my fault, wandered across the entrance to Sainsbury's car park at 7am while in another world.
So what was it that distracted me so much? Gareth Bale? Joan Holloway (she'll never be Mrs Harris to me)? How the latest Kellogg's Christmas ad makes me want to puke?
No, it was this bloody blog. I had thought of something witty and pertinent. Of course, that idea went pop when the BMW driver honked his horn. So this is what you're left with.
This blog is going to be the death of me.
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North Korea, South Korea, we're on the brink of World War III so what better place to look than the readers' comments of newspaper websites to get a proper view of what's going on.
The Telegraph's loyal following provided some detailed analysis of the situation from an historic perspective as did The Guardian, though some thoughtfully provided the link to 'I'm so ronery' from Team America (look it up on YouTube) because this is all any of us really knows about Kim Jong Il - or is it Kim Il Jong?
Naturally some at The Guardian said it wasn't totally the fault of the North and pointed an accusing finger at America while The Times was behind a paywall so I didn't bother looking.
The Mail, naturally, compared Kimbo to Tony Blair and wanted assurances that British troops wouldn't be sent in while the Express didn't have any reader comments at all when I looked - but 79 had taken part in the debate 'Should benefit scroungers be deported?'
Which is one better than The Star which didn't even have the story. The Mirror, which has by far the scruffiest and hardest-to-navigate website of any national paper (it might as well be behind a paywall to be honest) had three reader comments. Two had been blocked by the mods and one was 'under review.'
Finally The Sun. No surprise that an early comment called on the Western forces to nuke North Korea. But what was surprising was the response. A lot of readers completely slated this idea, pointing out how stupid it was to advocate killing millions of innocent people and suggested the earlier poster should go back to his PS3. It was almost refreshing.
I suggest they send in Hans Blix and see if he ends up being fed to the sharks as in Team America (again). I love that movie.
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I am occasionally called a lairy, fat, useless, Cockney wanker. And that's just by my wife. But it's not true. I'm not a Cockney. Although my infancy was spent in Stepney, an accident of birth meant I was in fact born in the glamourous sounding Tittensor in the romantic city of Stoke-on-Trent.
So I still feel a kind of loyalty to the Potteries and noticed today a criticism by some in the city that so many Victorian factories and buildings were now just rubble that the landscape looked like Helmand province.
This is, of course, an insult. To Helmand mainly. Apparently (I've never been there) but Helmand is known for its sand dunes, birdsong and bustling villages with a thriving community life.
Stoke is known for closed down pottery factories, Phil 'The Power' Taylor and Robbie 'I'm really, really heterosexual' Williams. And a football team that won the League Cup in 1972. As an 11-year-old in my gran's pub in Staffordshire, I remember the celebrations went on for weeks. And then Terry Conroy opened a shop in the village and you'd have thought the Messiah had arrived.
Stoke's decline is sad. But the point that was being made, and which I agree with, is that although the industry has gone, the industrial architecture can be quite beautiful and instead of knocking it down to build some steel and glass identikit public building, why not convert what's already there.
The pottery towns that make up Stoke have a unique skyline of kiln chimneys and ruddy brick stained by years of endeavour.
If you take the life out of the environment, what chance have you ever got of trying to revive the life of the city itself?
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I'm having my eyes lasered on Thursday. My wife thinks it's a mid-life crisis. They did explain how it all works, I absorbed the information for a while but in doing so lost all memory of Jon Pertwee piloting a hovercraft in an episode of Dr Who because that's what happens when I try and learn something remotely technical or scientific. Once I'd forgotten the science bit about the surgery, I regained my memory of children's programmes from the 1970s. Catweazle's toad was called Touchwood. See?
Now is the time to say goodbye...goodbye...Solly