Uninteresting Times

A bored and (to be honest) uninteresting look at the news of the day.




There are so many little bitty stories today and so little to really get ones teeth into. Obviously there are certain things that catch the eye as there always is. And I can always trust the Tory party to get me out of a jam when it comes to thinking about what to write; Alan Clark wrote in his diaries before the fall of Thatcher that he thought the Conservatives might be about to have one of it's "periodic bouts of epilepsy". That was over 10 years ago, and I think we can now safely say that the Tories have now been thrown into the bath and we can now put our washing in, such is the violence of their thrashing.

Of course, it's not all bad news for the poor dears. No, not a bit of it; Anne Widdecombe has announced (with customary bad grace and bitterness) that she will not stand for the leadership of the Conservatives. The announcement was greeted with expressions of regret from the right wing, a certain satisfaction from the left, whilst a troupe of munchkins were seen dancing through Lambeth singing "Hey-ho the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!" So it would appear that the contest for the job will be exclusively between people who are almost certainly human beings (although it is a shame as they have a tradition of including aliens in their leadership battles; John Redwood was obviously a relation of Mr. Spock and I suppose it is possible that Iain Duncan-Smith could be one of the mysterious Sith alluded to in The Phantom Menace...time will tell I suppose).

But even that bloated old whore of a party can only provide so much entertainment in one day, and so in barely 2 paragraphs, I once more find myself desperately in search of something vaguely interesting happening in the world. Surely it can't be too difficult? We live in a world where wars (both civil and international) mar every continent, where famine is rife as food rots uncollected in European grain mountains, and new diseases cause the unlucky to expire in spectacular and uncomfortable looking ways. The history books of tomorrow are being filled with all manner of events that will be regarding as interesting times by those who read them. And what is the best that I can do?

A mildly amusing item on a 35 year male old teacher (Paul Tramontini) who faces charges of abducting a 15 year old female pupil (Katherine Baillie) and spending the last year living on the run with her in Italy. I despair, I really do...but on with the story! Okay then, thoughts on this one. Well, firstly the happy couple are from Portsmouth. Well...at least it wasn't her Dad. What!?! My only experience of people from Portsmouth has given me the impression that they really need to expand their gene pool before the whole city becomes nothing more than a collection of mutants who play the banjo really well and where a white water canoeing trip would be perilous in the extreme. Surely we should rejoice that any child born of their union may have the correct number of limbs, digits, and (in the worst area's of the city) eyes.

Okay then, secondly the gentleman in question is a maths teacher. Well, at least he's gone some way to dispelling the stereotype of the boring maths teacher who still lives with their mother. For far too long now the market on unstable and rebellious teachers has been cornered by English and Games teachers and it's about time that a blow for equality was struck. Admittedly I'd imagine the blow experienced by Mr. Tramontini was of a different sort altogether, but the principle remains solid (as did he whilst receiving the blow I'd imagine...).

And finally we have Miss Baillie herself. She was 15 when she left the country with Mr. Tramontini and is now 16 and sporting a new blonde hairdo and "mature" attitude. Thoughts on her...well, if I was going to endanger my career and my personal liberty...well, don't take this wrong now but...you'd think he would have picked someone a little better looking. I mean, having seen some of the photo's of her, it's not even if she's one of the new breed of 15 year old schoolgirls whose sole purpose seems to be to make men think thoughts that they really shouldn't if they want to be regarded as decent members of society. She looked (and still looks) like a gangly young teenage girl; no bust and no bum, and certainly not womanly looking. One assumes that the only reason they returned was because she had started looking a little old for his tastes...

If only more teachers would take it upon themselves to behave disreputably for my own personal amusement then surely the world would be a happier place. Alas, such is the plight of the education system that most teachers just can't seem to find the time to behave in as stupid a manner as I require to get a cheap laugh. Unlike everybody's favourite good ole' boy Dubya who seems to be basing his entire domestic and foreign policies solely on what will make me laugh the hardest in a mix of glee and horror.

After all of the ballyhoo and biscuitbrained media madness of the Tim McVeigh execution last week, Juan Raul Garza will become the second federal prisoner to be executed by Dubya. Bearing in mind that until he came along, America's federal government had managed to avoid executing anyone since 1963, 2 within a month sets a pretty impressive (and yet faintly scary) precedent. One cannot but help feeling a little sorry for poor JRG; he was initially sentenced to death in Texas so his penultimate right of appeal ultimately lay within the state before he appealed to the President. Alas for him, throughout the time he was awaiting execution Dubya was the governor of Texas. And so when faced with numerous calls for clemency as President, he's not exactly in a hurry to stop an execution he endorsed (along with 151 others in his time as governor).

Anyway, they represent pretty much all of the vaguely interesting news that is kicking around today. Strange how they all seem to involve someone else’s misfortune isn't it? I mentioned interesting times earlier on, and there is a curse that any readers of Terry Pratchett will be familiar with along the same lines. "May you live in interesting times", meaning of course that anything that seems interesting from an outside point of view is uniformly unpleasant for those who are actually experiencing it. In news terms, today is rather slow and boring. In real terms few people have died, there have been no major disasters, and in general everything is running smoothly. So why do I feel so cheated? Ah well, there's always tomorrow...