TenFoot City Magazine (Issue 24)

If you're the kind of character who loses all inhibitions after a night on the sauce and regularly makes an arse of yourself before last orders. Imagine the level of stupidity you could reach if you're pissed, sat in your pants and able to instantly message everyone you know in the blink of an eye.

You might be passionately in love with your friends partner, the boy next door or some random stranger you recently took a shine to at the chip shop, but even when you're smashed on a cocktail of powder and punch and unable to form complete sentences or stand up straight, most people will manage to reel themselves in and not reveal their inner most thoughts in public.

Facebook, conversely (and perversely) allows you to dispense of that essential social awkwardness and so you tap away on some keys and swig from a glass, happy you are finally pouring your little heart out to whoever has taken your fancy and convinced that they give a tuppenny fuck about your soggy ramblings. After messaging, you merrily click off the computer, slip into a coma and dream a sweet dream full of sunshine and lollipops. All is well with the world and everything is peachy.

But! When you wake up the next morning with a mouthful of fag-ash and a pillow soaked with drool, the first thing that hits you is the headache, but hey, that's OK. You've had a hangover before, no problem. A barrel of coffee and a fat bacon sandwich and you'll be as right as rain - but then something stirs in the back of your mind. Something you did last night maybe, but you can't quite remember what. Your brain slowly goes through the check list.


Did you leave the gas on?...No

Did you urinate through a church letterbox...No

Did you masturbate to two girls one cup...No

Did you send a message on Facebook.... oh shit….Bastard!


The horror of the situation hits you like a ten ton truck with spikes on the bumper. You stand for a minute, frozen stiff, but the mind is spewing out options. When is the next plane to China leaving? Shall I fake my own death by drowning or house fire? Is time travel technically possible and if so, where is the nearest DeLorean dealership?

Suddenly you achieve clarity and race over to the computer, open up facebook and look at your sent messages.

It's much worse than you thought. Not only did you send the message but your spelling and grammar was appalling. Now the recipient is going to think you're an illiterate psychopathic stalker, rather than just a common garden psychopathic stalker.

Oh Jesus....

You click on Google and type in 'Can I delete a message I have sent on Facebook?'

The results appear. Resounding "no's" all round and hilarious comments from people mocking the kind of chump who would get drunk and send a message they regret the next day.

You slump into a chair dejected. If you had a loaded revolver at hand, you would put the barrel to your head and pull the god damn trigger. Finally you reach the conclusion that the only option available to you is that you never leave the house again. You'll hole up, embrace the hermit lifestyle and when you are forced out of your seclusion, to go to work or get provisions, you'll adopt an elaborate disguise.

Then you glance at the screen. You have a message in your inbox, a reply to your ramble. You realise that a small part of your brain still held out hope that they had been struck blind or lost the ability to read, but no. They got it, they read it and now they have written to tell you that you're a sad lunatic and to never go within 500 yards of them again or they are calling the Police.

Or maybe not.

Maybe they appreciate your flattery, feel the same way and wondered if you fancy a dirty weekend in Morocco. Maybe they want some excitement. Maybe we all want some excitement and that the expression of feelings for someone, however brief or long lasting. Can never be a bad thing? You delete the message without reading it. Deciding it's better to dream someone said I love you, then to read someone calling you a cunt.

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 23)

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Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 21)

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
                                                                                                               Plato

So Hull's wretched application to become the UK City of culture withered and died on it's arse because the powers that be in the council decided to employ somebody who has never lived in Hull  to write the bid.

At first I thought that was a stupid idea conjured up by a bunch of overpaid sweaty middle managers in the Guildhall dungeons but after considering their reasoning more carefully. I've decided that they are in fact a bunch of evil geniuses who should all be given a pat on the back and a big fat juicy bonus.

In fact I'm so inspired by these pillars of the community that I've decided to write a bid explaining why Wigan should be the city of culture. Now I've never been to Wigan and I know nothing about the place, other than the fact they have a football and rugby team, but I reckon if catch a train there, walk around for a couple of hours and speak to some of the residents I'll have sufficient information to write a convincing  multi-million pound bid. Hell I don't need even need to go to Wigan. I can just google the place and read what cultural delights it has to offer. Turns out it doesn't have any, but after a cursory flick through some websites, I've decided that if we secure the funding then what this place needs is a stripey metal pole outside of the dole office. A famous Wiganers theme-park featuring a George Formby rollercoaster  and the  Ian Mckellen Waltzers. We'll fund some local artists  to make the worlds biggest paper aeroplane out of county court judgements, hire Leona Lewis to play the JJB stadium, backed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and, if there is any cash to spare, we'll grab John Godber to direct a musical production of Schindlers list at the Wigan little theatre. Sounds easy doesn’t it?

Anyway enough of all that. It's never a surprise that the council fuck up royally when it comes to promoting our little North Eastern provincial City, because there is very little to promote and to be fair, we have far more pressing issues to consider than fire-breathing stilt-walkers and Sausage roll festivals.

I took a bus through East Hull yesterday, (something I rarely do anymore because there is no reason to travel that side of the river unless you're visiting your grandma or desperate for some crack) and the journey was quite an experience. Behind me sat an attractive girl and her acne-riddled track-suited boyfriend who in the space of 20 minutes ate three packets of crisps and loudly and proudly boasted within earshot of 15 pensioners exactly what he was going to do to this girl when he got her home. Now I'm a liberal kind of guy and I'm all for youthful experimentation, but when a man with a mouthful of monster munch proclaims his intention to " shag you in your smelly pussy" it did cause me to wince a little and I swear the old Gal sat across from me threw up a bit of sick in her hankerchief, but it could easily have been a murray mint.

A few stops down Holderness road a woman got on who looked like she'd been grafting since sunrise and had the weight of the world on her shoulders. She looked rough, bad skin and greasy hair and if I had to place her age, I'd have said mid-forties or so. She sat down across from me ,then after a few minute she tapped me on the shoulder. " Is your name Lee Cassanell?". " Yeah" I said, and it took me a few moments but I realised that the girl had been in my class in primary school and was the same age as me, thirty and a bit. Anyway I asked her how she was and she told me how she was living on Preston Road with five kids who had three different fathers, either in Prison or parts unknown. She worked shifts in a factory and did the best she could providing for them but it was difficult, and tiring and she never got time for herself. I sat and listened and said goodbye as I got off at my stop and, as I was walking towards my destination thinking about the past, I remembered that she was always the top of the class in school. Always the first with her hand up and always the one with the right answer and I wondered how such a bright girl had ended up in such a shitty situation.

I don't mean that in a patronising way. Any single woman who works her tail off providing for her children is worthy of superhero status as far as I'm concerned, but at one time she had the potential to be so such more and somehow or other it all slipped away.

Would a talking statue of William Wilberforce, have inspired her to greater things?
Would a David Hockney exhibition, a  freeform jazz concert or a Philip Larkin “poetry café” broaden her cultural horizons and change her life for the better?

Maybe. Then again maybe if Hull had won the UK city of Culture funding the cream of the cash would have been spent on those middle-class wet dreams enjoyed by a minority and most of the city’s residents would have shrugged their shoulders and gone about the business of just trying to survive for another week or so.

Until the city council is scourged of do-gooding liberals and lazy-arsed heads of service, I think I'm just going to slip into a shell suit, stick on some happy hardcore and find a nice quiet corner to sniff some lighter fluid in.

Adios.

(2010)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 20)

There's an old saying…. " There but for the grace of God go I".

The origin of the proverb is hazy and I rarely hear it uttered these day's. Maybe that’s because I don't tend to hang around churches, or maybe it's just simply fading from the collective memory and only a scattered few still keep the flame alive. You can take the phrase literally. If it wasn't for God looking out for me then I would be in the same position as that beggar, or that drunk or some other poor unfortunate who has caught my attention, and caused me to feel empathy for their plight. If you really believe your destiny is controlled by a higher power, then that would make sense, but what about the rest of  us, those who believe that we make our own destiny and that no spiritual being is guiding the way?

We could change the words but still retain the meaning. We can say there but for a stroke of luck, a quirk of fate or the positive influence of another, go I. Those alternatives don't sound as pretty as the original but the meaning remains intact and it is the meaning that is important. The words are simply a device used to communicate the meaning and words, along with languages, God's and civilisations, all rise, fall and eventually fade from memory.


Throughout history religions have claimed meaning as though they conjured certain ideas or moral values from the ether and it belongs to them. Usually a priesthood, a king or an elite collection of scholars held the keys to this meaning. They (and they alone) could interpret signs, symbols and scripture and the rest of the plebs had to accept their version or fear the wrath of God, or in truth, the state wearing the mask of God.

Knowledge is power and so the powerful few use it to control, to pacify and to occasionally incite the swarming masses. Once upon a time we were issued with information during our weekly trips to the Church, the Mosque or the Synagogue. We were told to do this, do that and don't do the other and any failure to obey these commands would result in spiritual repercussions. Hell, damnation, our souls burning for eternity in a flaming pit. We believed this was possible, we trusted that our leaders had our best interest at heart and so we obeyed. Not because we wanted to, of course, but because we were scared not to. We lived in fear of death and in fear of the unknown “inevitable.”

There are millions, if not billions, in this world, who still live with that same old fear today.

What about the others though? The flock that strayed from the altar and looked for their meanings in philosophy and psychology, in science and evolution? They don't fear the devils pitchfork, they don't believe what they what are told. They seek answers themselves and interpret their own meaning without the aid of a spiritual advisor.

So. How do you control a person who no longer fears Death? The answer is simple. You make them fear life instead. 

Murderers, Paedophiles, Swine flu, Terrorists, Nuclear Weapons, Disease. You need your government, your state, to protect you from all of these bogeymen don’t you? You need to give a portion of your money to your government in order to enable them to keep these monsters from your door. They should issue a poster of an Arabic-looking gent holding a syringe and a detonator, coughing all over a naked six year old just to remind us of why we need to put our faith in the state and the system……. and unfortunately the majority of us are still believers. How else do you explain the fact that we elect the same parties into office even though they have a long history of robbing us blind and working for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the poor? Sure they throw us a bone every so often and give us certain “rights, the right to vote, the right to an education and the right to drink ourselves into a stupor, but it seems for every right they give us, they take a few away. Just the little ones mind, the ones that seem insignificant until you add up them all up and realise that every small piece of a jigsaw makes a larger picture.

We are still issued with information through the church, only now it’s a broad church and in high definition. We are still told what to believe, what to hate, what to care about and what to fear but our priests and leaders have replaced the cassocks and crowns with pin stripe suits and diamond cufflinks. In order to hold onto the reigns of power you have to adapt and move with the times or you’ll lose your grip and they know that they can’t frighten us with mythological tales anymore. They know that many of us have read the holy books and drawn our own conclusions and they know (that we know) that the fear of Hell is just a waning method of social control.

But they are also aware that the majority of us do not want to die. Some of us live in houses and some live in huts but we would much rather be alive than dead. Sure, it would be perfect if we all drifted off in our sleep at a ripe old age but only the lucky ones are bestowed with that honour.

The rest of us succumb to the ravages of decay, disease and terminal illness. There will be pain, there will be misery and there will be tears and although we may want to deny it, that is just the way the human body rolls and all the wishing or praying in the world will not change that.

We all know this of course, we always have It’s just not something we like to admit. It’s a giant negative, the elephant in the room and it’s difficult to live your life your life dwelling in such darkness. Still, knowing what we know, and being powerless to stop it, surely means that none of us should ever live in fear? Why fucking worry about it?

We are all in the same boat and we are all going to end up in the same ground so It’s not so much “ There but for the Grace of God go I”, but “There but for the grace of God goes us”

Or even better, as quoted by Death in that epic morality tale of our time (otherwise known as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey)………

“You may be a king or a little street-sweeper, but sooner or later you will dance with the reaper!”

Amen.

(2010)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 30)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 29)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 28)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 27)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 26)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 25)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 15)

Anyone capable of rational thought should be fully aware in this age of information that the bible is a work of lunacy which has been used for the last two thousand years to enslave our minds and persuade us to kill anyone who who isn't sucking on a crucifix. However let's be honest. The world is full of thick people who can't be bothered to make an informed choice based on their own research so for the benefit of those poor thumbless unfortunates here is a list of quotes taken directly from the good book itself.

Of course the Christians will prattle on about the Old testament being a metaphor, a story within a story and if you read it backwards in front of a mirror in the middle of the night with one eye slightly closed the hidden message will reveal itself and Jesus will fly in through the window, sprinkle you with fairy dust and whisk you off to Neverland....but you know, Christians are ridiculous people and should be ignored at the best of times so read the quotes and brace yourself for impact.

Anyone who claims to talk with spirits must be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:27).

Any spirit except God that is, and lest we forget Jesus.

Anyone who does not worship God must be put to death (2 Chronicles 15:13).

Ah, power through fear. How very Christian.

Any woman who has had premarital sex must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:21).

Sensible rules for the modern woman. It's like Sex in the City was never made.

If a man has sex with a menstruating women, both are to be exiled (Leviticus 20:18).

No wonder anal sex is so popular.

A man who marries a mother and daughter must burn in a fire (Leviticus 20:14).

A man who marries a mother and daughter should receive some kind of award in my book.

If two men have sexual relations, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:13).

You don’t get many Gay Christians do you? Actually, you do!

If a mother and son have sexual relations, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:11).

The entire population of Grimsby must be quaking in their sandals

Anyone who commits murder must be put to death (Leviticus 24:17).

Except if they happen to be murdering Muslims, or anyone who worships other God's, and Gay people, rebellious slaves and people who don't use Coasters,

Anyone who commits adultery must be put to death (Deuteronomy 22:22).

3/4 of Hull council would be instantly wiped out

Anyone who disobeys a judge or priest must be put to death (Deuteronomy 17:12).

What if the judge or priest is corrupt? Ah, it doesn’t matter does it. You’re a peasant and should respect authority without question. It’s all so clear to me now.

Anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death (Exodus 35:2).

That’s Sainsbury’s staff fucked then.

Any prophet who tries to turn you against God must be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:5).

Kill anyone who doesn’t agree with you. Magic.

A stubborn and rebellious son must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).

Look, you either let me molest you, or I’m inviting the neighbours round to throw bricks at your head.

Anyone who curses or blasphemes must be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:14-16).

Jesus Fucking Christ!

God will kill men, have their children smashed, and have their wives raped (Isaiah 13:15-16).

What a nice guy

God will lay waste to entire cities and make the lands desolate (Jeremiah 4:7).

He’s a real charmer isn’t he?

God will set people, animals, and even plants on fire because of his anger (Jeremiah 7:20).

Even Plants! I always wondered why I never saw any trees putting coins in the collection plate.

God will send so much evil that people would rather be dead than suffer (Jeremiah 8:3).

And the songs of Snow Patrol are a testament to just that.

God will cause everyone to become drunk so father and son will kill one another (Jeremiah 13:14).

If Gods buying, Ill have a double JD and coke with plenty of ice.

God will make people hungry enough to eat their own children and friends (Jeremiah 19:9).

That’s why I keep the company of Fat people.

God will burn entire cities with the inhabitants still inside (Jeremiah 50:32).

Someone really should take away this guys matches.

God will break peoples bones and knock their teeth out with stones (Lamentations 3:1-16).

He’s a poet and he didn’t even know it!

God will be comforted by killing everyone with pestilence, plagues, and swords (Ezekiel 5:12-13).

So God gets his kicks out of people killing each other. It all makes sense now!

God will turn daughters into whores and wives into adulterers (Hosea 4:13).

Hey, I’m kind of growing to like him.

God will tear people apart and devour them like a lion (Hosea 13:8).

He should really eat more vegetables; too much human flesh is bad for the colon.

God will kill children and unborn foetuses because their parents worship other gods (Hosea 13:16).

What a rotter

God will kill inhabitants of entire cities if they have a corrupt government (Micah 3:9-12).

Show me a government that isn’t corrupt and I’ll show you a three eyed midget with ten tits

God will consume every living thing from the face of the earth (Zephaniah 1:2-3).

He should really consider a diet

God will send plagues on people and animals to rot away tongues and eyes (Zechariah 14:12-15)

Now he’s just being silly

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 )

................I think that will do.

(2007)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 14)

Imagine if you will.

Your Mother has buried you in the ground, she's wept tears and worn black and now, as she's clearing your house of it's contents, your old lady opens a bedroom draw and discovers a 16 inch petrol-powered dildo and an envelope full of lurid Polaroids of you, your partner and that couple you met on holiday in Corfu.

Sure it was a great night. Everyone was high on wine and willing to experiment. It's not something you'd advertise, nor is it something you regret, and yet, as you stare down at your nearest and dearest wiping off suspicious flakes from the "Black Mamba 2000" and burning the sex photos in the kitchen sink you realise that one thing is gospel and true.

Nobody really knows anybody.

Everyone has secrets. Embarrassing desires and illicit thoughts.

Some, the brave, shameless and the mentally-insane have few things to hide. They it let all hang out and do not fear the consequences of their actions and it must be a very nice way to live. You can say anything, feel anything and want anything and not have to worry what other people think of you. Ok, you might get punched in the face occasionally, you might even get arrested, but at least you’re not keeping it all in.

If you ask the average person what they really want, they give you the pre-recorded common responses; I want love, I want money, I want peace. I want my husband, my wife, my kids.'

All pretty standard stuff and all fine choices, but dig a little bit deeper. Pause, roll a cigarette and think about it. Pretend that nobody's listening and nobody cares and that if you didn't admit the absolute truth and sing it from the rooftops, somewhere in Neverland, a fairy will die. 

It's a dangerous exercise.

Some will want to shag their next door neighbour, tell their best friend they love them or tell their lover they no longer do. Others will want to walk out the door and leave everything behind; the kids, the wife, the trinkets of life. Sure there are those who would want nothing more than a Giant Toblerone and a blow job and all I can say to those people is, lucky you! If your imagination doesn't stretch beyond oral sex and confectionary then you're probably very good in bed.

Still, do not fear that your desires are destined to be caged. Just because something isn’t socially acceptable or morally-sound today, doesn’t mean it won’t be tomorrow. Imagine those long cold years of homosexual repression, generations of men and women who had to hide their want, only for the state to one day turnaround and declare it all to be legally acceptable.

Personally, if I was gay, I would have been buggering my butch lover up the gates of Downing street in spite of the law. I barely pay attention to what I say, myself, never mind what nonsense the state, or law, spouts.

It’s in their best interest to encourage you to suppress your thoughts because, once you start thinking, Lord knows where it might lead.

I was highly tempted to concentrate on the whole government expenses business, this issue, but it’s rather a boring subject. The only thing I find amusing about it, is the fact that people are crying that their money is being spent on moat-cleaners and women’s underwear….. well here’s a news flash ladies and gentlemen:

Your tax dollars are also being spent on bullets, bombs and nuclear missiles but I assume you knew that already and you are ok with it, otherwise I’m sure you would taken to the streets in moral protest by now. (Wouldn’t you?)

It’s all pretty fucked really, and perhaps it always was, and in the end the very best that we can hope for is that when we breathe our last breath, and leave this rock for good, a good friend of ours will find our Dildo, laugh their arse off and chuck it in the outside bin. At least….. I hope they’d chuck it in the bin. There is nothing more disconcerting than the sight of a second-hand sex toy for sale on e-bay.

Still, maybe it is better if all of our skeletons fall out of the closet.

Why be embarrassed for being a human being?


P.S. I’d like to big up the Hull Truck Theatre which has finally opened it’s doors. They’ve managed to retain the charm and accessibility of the old building, everything looks pretty and new and I, for one, am impressed from my boots to my bonnet. Hull finally has an artistic base it can celebrate and be proud of and I cannot applaud the driving forces behind the project hard enough. A job well done indeed and if I could take them all out for an evening of scotch and strippers, I would gladly do so.

The opening play might have been the single greatest atrocity in Hull’s theatre history but I’m sure we will be blessed with many great shows and productions in the future.

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 13)

Welcome to Hull’s credit crunch Christmas. People are being laid off, everyone is skint and up to their eyeballs in visa-card repayments and little Tommy is destined to be bawling his eyes out when he discovers that Santa has delivered him an I.O.U and a handful of walnuts instead of a new bike and a Playstation 3.

Pub Landlords are committing ritual suicide up and down the city because everyone’s puffing fags at home to avoid catching chronic hypothermia in whatever half-arsed smoking area they have managed to cobble together. Grandmas are keeling over in their armchairs frozen to the bone due to spiralling central heating costs and with their last gargling breath cursing the Gods for not keeping them alive long enough to find out the outcome of Strictly come dancing.

Alcoholics are mixing cocktails of old-spice and ethanol as they can no longer afford their daily bucket of white cider and, somewhere in the depths of a council estate, a young boy is thinking about sniffing a can of Mr Sheen through his mothers best towel because he can no longer scrape the money together for a fiver deal of cellotape-riddled cannabis resin.

It's an 80’s revival! We've regressed 25 years in the space of 6 months and all we need to do now in order to cement our step back in time is to call for the Housemartins to reform and elect a conservative government into power to sing about. I’d say we are heading for another winter of discontent but the weak trade unions are too hung over on champagne socialism to strike.

We’ve become a nation of nodding dogs drunk on the superficial life of materialism. We've furnished our cages with Ikea furniture and set-top-boxes and forgotten about the bars underneath them. We've rewarded fame rather than talent, chased after dreams of Celebrity stardom and magical lottery wins. We’ve been fooled, duped and made to look stupid but sod it….it’s happened. We can’t change what has been but we can learn from our mistakes and ensure that this cycle of boom and bullshit finally comes to an end.

It’s time to experiment . To take risks. We have to start thinking for ourselves and not be swayed by media spin and the false promises of politicians. We need straight answers to straight questions and total government transparency. If something is broke we need to be told and maybe we can fix it. Not for self interest, company interest or financial reward but because it needs fixing for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

People need to get together and get talking. Form groups and philosophize. We need fresh ideas and new approaches to the problems however radical they may be. Maybe capitalism has had it’s day, maybe democracy is a sham. Maybe Celebrity culture has gone too far, maybe our kids aspirations are being warped and education is a farce and maybe we are on the brink of environmental meltdown.


All these issues need to be discussed but not in the corridors and board rooms of power. They need to be discussed in the living rooms and around the kitchen tables. The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people, so let’s show them some will, some desire, some fight or we will forever been known as the wasted generation of history. The generation who could have saved the world but instead just let it all slip away because of their selfish apathy and inability to collaborate with others of like mind.

It’s time we turned off our televisions for at least one night a week and devoted that time to something more pro-active.

A man who sits on his arse in a comfortable chair eating pasties, drinking beer and watching The Bill isn’t a man he’s like the pet rabbit whose name you never remember and then one day he’ll keel over and die in his hutch with a mouthful of food and someone will stick him in a shoe box and bury him in the garden. He never had a positive impact on society, he never fought for freedom, advocated any change, campaigned for the rights of all the other rabbits. He was quite content to live and die as long as someone provided him with carrots, water and straw for a bed.

The rabbit existed. It didn’t live and it’s about time we all used the life that we have in order to ensure that the future is one of community, common sense and reason. Not of splintered individualism and uncontested stupidity and if anyone wants to blame someone for the state of the world, the state of the economy and the constant war and injustice, then the first blame you should cast is to blame yourself.

You are either doing nothing to improve the situation, or you are not doing enough.

Anyway, Merry Christmas… and, to one and to all, a good night.

Bugs Bunny.

(2007)

Tenfoot City Magazine (Issue 12)

It's been a while since we had a good old fashioned assassination but with an ebony gentleman poised for the American presidency surely it can't be long before some religious gun-toting racist or CIA backed hit-man fires a bullet or six in Barack Obama's direction.

He's a little bit too progressive for mainstream America with his “crazy” ideas about pro-choice, a reduction in oil corporation control and a peace-spreading foreign policy….. so any decent right-wing organisation fuelled by brown envelopes and the word of God should be working around the clock to ensure dear Baracks political revolution doesn't come to fruition.

Some might suspect it's more difficult to kill a candidate these days, what with the advent of CCTV and futuristic surveillance, but hell, those technological marvels failed to catch hardly any of the World Trade Centre action and the camera footage of the plane flying into the Pentagon has strangely not been released because it would be a “danger to national security”.

I could only speculate, in my usual innocent and non-cynical way, why showing the video evidence of a 'real' event could possibly bring down the American government, but it would be a waste of valuable breath and ink and only a handful of people would give a toss anyway.

Adolf Hitler, not the most popular of men due to his genocide tendencies and suspicious moustache, gave us three valuable and insightful quotes that pretty much sum up my thoughts on modern politics and everyone on the planet should burn these words into their brain as far as I'm concerned .

'Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it'

'By the skilful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as

hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise'.

'What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.'

Speaking of propaganda and the idiocy of the general population. Is it just me or are the television adverts for Sky Plus a scientific experiment to test just how stupid the British people really are? David Gower, Felicity Kendall and Michael Parkinson being interviewed in a documentary style and expressing their love for a set-top box, not because they are being paid to of course, but because they feel compelled to spread the word of this marvellous invention to the general public.

I've sometimes been accused of going too far in this column and expressing myself in a vile and inappropriate manner but I really must say, and with my hand on my heart, that anyone who isn't offended by those advertisements needs to do the decent thing and kill themselves. And anyone who bought Sky Plus on the strength of Kelly Brooks glowing endorsement should be rounded up, thrown into Auschwitz and gassed to kingdom come.

I mean we really have to ask ourselves, who actually won world war II?

Sure the third Reich was defeated, the Jews liberated and crazy old Adolf took a bullet to the head, but if you read the quotes above and look around the world, it seems to me that Hitler’s ideology was not destroyed by the allied forces but embraced, adapted and has been used by governments to control and fool their people for the last 63 years!

So maybe the rulers, the rich and the land owning gentry scored a victory over the Nazi's, but the average Joe who suffered through the blitz, the bombings and the blood-letting ultimately lost.

I reckon many people would disagree with that, call me out for desecrating the memory of the fallen and wiping my arse on the flag and you know, well, they would be half right.

The real tragedy, that millions upon millions of ordinary people died in that war (and the one before) is not lost on me, in fact it saddens me beyond words.

Though I do often wonder what their sacrifice ensured, other than the preservation of the power of the ruling elite.

Did they die for the union jack, for freedom, for democracy, for social equality and justice for all?. Maybe we‘re told so, maybe they believed so, but in the end all that extinction of a generation achieved, was for the people to be given a few basic human rights they should already have had anyway and, oh yeah, Ross Kemp’s grandma being able to digitally record the snooker.

Who knows for sure eh? All I know is, if I had the money to renounce my citizenship and become a travelling gypsy without a flag or country, I’d do it tomorrow.

But alas…life goes on.

(2007)