Every cigarette shortens your life by 11 minutes, every alcoholic drink a little less and heaven knows what chocolate, beer, supporting Spurs, getting divorced, having three kids and an occasional mochaccino does to you. Now, every hour spent in front of the TV reduces your lifespan by 22 minutes they say.
If I've done the sums right, then I'll be dead by next Tuesday.
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Great sub-editing dilemmas of our times. You have to caption a picture of one of Rod Stewart's wives or daughters in something a little revealing. So do you plump for the traditional headline 'Do You Think I'm Sexy?' (or 'do ya' as some insist on saying) or do you go for something only slightly more obscure with 'You Wear It Well Rachel.' Hats off to the Mail who went, yet again, for the latter.
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Which reminds me of a sub-editor's favourite knock knock joke. Knock Knock. Who's there? To. To who? To WHOM!
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Abercrombie & Fitch, the absurd fashion brand favoured by chavs and only seem to hire thin people in their shops, have offered to pay the cast of Jersey Shore, the absurd reality TV show inhabited by chavs, NOT to wear their clothes. It's clearly a publicity wheeze and a very good one at that. But it's akin to JD Sports paying looters not to wear their trainers.
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So what makes a country 'civilised'? For me, it is down to plumbing and, in particular, whether or not you can find a clean and flushable loo in any geographical part of that country. Which makes Britain possibly the only truly civilised nation on earth. We don't have special areas by the side of motorways for travellers to do a poo like I saw in China. We don't need to provide bins for toilet paper because our pipes are crap (for which we have to thank the ancestor of the man who brought Big Brother to Britain). We don't tell people not to drink the water like most of Europe. We don't have open sewers or holes in the ground on which to go. Most of us have the capacity to get hot water when we want it. We don't have to book a two minute slot to use a shower. And we don't have poisonous spiders or snakes coming up the khazi to bite us on the bum.
But the other thing that makes us civilised is our justice system. Our crazy, hazy, mind boggling but ultimately democratic heirarchy of courts and legislature. We could be like Singapore and put people in jail for chewing gum but then they also put you in prison for criticising the government. We could be like America and execute everyone after keeping them on death row for years but if their sentencing was such a deterrent why is, approximately, one in every 130 of the population in prison.
We could be like China who charge families of murderers for the bullet used to execute them but who ban any dissent, don't have Facebook, don't allow any kind of protest - peaceful or otherwise - gag their cleverest citizens, not to mention having some of the worst toilet facilities in the world.
No, what I like about British justice is that whatever happens, loads of people think it is wrong. Take those two lads who each got four years for inciting a riot that never took place. Which is a bit like me getting four years for never doing what I would like to do to Beyonce, for instance.
Now, one of the lads wanted a riot so he posted a 'let's be having you' type message on Facebook to meet in Northwich town centre - most probably carrying pitchforks and burning lamps ready to storm Baron Frankenstein's Castle - and even turned up ready to lead the mob.
The other one got drunk and put up a joke message on Facebook to take Warrington by storm, fell asleep, woke up with a hangover and deleted the message.
Some of you will think four years is too harsh for trying to get people to do something that never happened. And some of you will think that four years is too lenient for a thug trying to start a riot while the rest of England's cities went up in flames.
My point is, that whether it is too harsh or too lenient, I'm not sure the same sentence was appropriate for both of them. In my mind, one was much more serious about 'intent' than the other. And as the guidelines seem to be that there are no guidelines, then they shouldn't have got the same punishment.
But this is what makes British justice so great and so bizarre and so crazy. First, we don't chop off their hands. Second, we have a system that allows our judges - who know the law better than our politicians - to judge each case on its merits or otherwise. Third, we sometimes make mistakes but we don't hang the wrong person or end up with one per cent of our country in prison. And fourth, we all have the right to moan about it one way or another.
Blog adjourned...Solly
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