Festive feline adventure

From a former colleague of mine who works for (in fact, is,) the Didcot Herald. Chris Buratta, a man who really knows how to write a Christmas story

Trip to see Santa Claws is so close to cat-astrophe

A GINGER cat from Didcot can expect a special gift this Christmas - after he was run over by Santa's sleigh.
Like most youngsters, eight-month-old Barney the cat was eager to meet Father Christmas.
But his yuletide excitement ended up costing him one of his nine lives.
Barney, who lives with his owners in Fleet Meadow, joined the thousands at the town's Christmas Street Fair to enjoy the festive fun.
He took up a prime position to watch the floats and performers make their way up Broadway.
But he got too close to the action and the festive feline adventure was cut short when Barney was hit by Santa's sleigh.
Luckily for Barney, an anonymous Good Samaritan, full of the spirit of Christmas, scooped him up and took him to Abivale Veterinary Group at Abingdon.
Because he had been microchipped, the vets were able to quickly trace his owner, but the identity of the woman who rescued him remains a mystery.
Barney's owner, Naomi Hart, said she wanted to thank the woman who saved her pet.
She said: "The lady must have seen it happen, scooped him up and taken him to the vet. He has a paralysed tail and a bit of a limp, but apart from that, he is OK. If someone hadn't taken him to the vets, then I don't know what would have happened."
She added: "We just wanted to say thank you to the person who picked him up. We wanted to thank them personally, but we don't know who it was."
Mrs Hart said it was not the first time Barney had got into a fix.
"He is that sort of cat. When he was five months old, he ended up in Blackbird Leys at Oxford. He had walked to the train station shop and someone who worked there took him home to look after him," she said. "He has gone through a few of his nine lives. This scrape must have taken at least a couple."
Santa, tracked down to his workshop, said he did not see Barney in the road, but was very pleased to hear he was all right.
"He obviously wanted to join in the festivities - perhaps he could come and help the reindeers sometime," he suggested.

They were begging for it

The Mail's own Judge Pickles, Richard Littlejohn, on the Ipswich prostitute murders

"It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of 'work', death by strangulation is an occupational hazard.
That doesn't make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.
They weren't going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur. The only kind of missionary position they undertook was in the back seat of a car. "

As is traditional for the homosexual-obsessed Littlejohn, he also expresses surprise that Lembit Opik didn't run off with a man. The Express has a double-page spread on the weekend's cheeky news which I'm saving for my bus ride home

hafod errr..?

A new visitor centre is being built on the top of Snowdon, replacing the concrete bunker-style building notoriously castigated by architecture expert and renaissance man, Prince Charles. The old building was, reportedly, generally referred to as "the caff". For the smoked glass and slate extravaganza that will take its place, Snowdonia National Park Authority wanted something more auspicious. The new name also had to reflect the heritage of the area and it had to be a memorable and easy for visitors to pronounce.
And they came up with: "Hafod Eryri". Not just practically impossible for anyone but Welsh speakers to say, but also very difficult to translate. Three months well spent.

Pinochet-- not such a bad chap

More from columnist extraordinaire, Frederick Forsyth. Today, he puzzles at why the recently departed General is such a hate figure for those on "the Left":

"To give credit where it is due, Pinochet did three good things. He restored a shattered economy and Chile remains prosperous to this day. He also restored democracy.
But in the Falklands War he did Britain favours that saved hundreds of British lives. A lot of it is still secret but basically we had secret radar scanners set up on his mountain peaks overlooking the Argentine bases."

I went to state school you know

"He said that he had a broad understanding of the state system. 'At Eton I was the beneficiary of a scholarship endowed by Henry VI,' he says. 'If that is not state education I don't know what it.'" Boris Johnson in the TES

The reason Sweden is so bloody great is it's only got a population of 9m people, not much more than greater London. Plus they were collaborators, nearly. Or was that somewhere else. We should send Forsyth over with a packet of bensons to teach them a lesson

Stockholm Syndrome

Discussion on the radio this morning about what the best approach to prostitution is, in light of the murders in Suffolk. Inevitably, one caller with religious leanings said compulsory bible classes and ninety foot billboards of the big J is the answer. At the other end of the spectrum, was the equally predictable lefty who came on to say "why don't we do what they do in Sweden?" (have brothels inside primary schools, or whatever). Is there no problem in the world that can't be solved by copying the example of Sweden?


Swedish foreign policy:
"[the vision is of] Britain becoming a free-floating country, as distanced from any European military alliance as from the US, and dedicated to "making the UN work" by becoming the kind of diplomatic force - like, say, Sweden - that could make itself useful as an honest broker."

Swedish fiscal policy:
"Take the example of one very successful country, Sweden. Its gross borrowing in 2004 was 18% of GDP higher than that of Britain, a year during which Swedish real GDP growth was 3.7% compared with 3.2% in Britain."

Swedish recycling policy:
"Denmark, Sweden and Belgium all impose taxes on non-recyclable products, the report reveals."

Being a woman in Sweden:
"Sweden, by contrast, is one of the wealthiest economies on earth. Its people are healthy and well-fed, its shops well-stocked, its communications excellent and its women well-educated, with virtually 100% female literacy. It is, in every way, a happier and healthier place to be a woman.

Swedish cake density:
"Of course, the wretched muffin has made its mark here, too, as has the clarty chocolate truffle cake; but at least the Swedes have the common sense to bring life to its cakey density with the use of small but piercingly sharp scarlet and purple berries."

I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do

I'm going to try this line next time I'm out on the piss. Great story if you haven't seen it or it hasn't made Le Monde, or whatever you read Daisy.

Vain? Moi?

I know it's inevitable that having a by-lined column in a national paper (even one as shoddy as the Express) is bound to have a massaging effect on the ego. But this piece from Frederick Forsyth -- where our fearless correspondent is heroically trying to give up smoking -- is still a pretty jaw-dropping piece of self-aggrandisement:

"After a second session, he stood in the door with me once again. "I suspect that when you get round the corner of the street you'll light up again, " he said. I had to concur.
"I'm not surprised, " he observed.
"I can tell the type. Only about one in 500, thank heaven. It's not about nicotine any more. It's because everyone is on at you. You simply will not be told what to do. But if ever this country was invaded and occupied, you'd be the leader of the Resistance." As I had a smoke in the car on the way home, I thought that was probably the nicest compliment I'd ever been paid.
Now you know why I can't stand Blair's Britain. Too many blasted collaborators. "

Everyone loves weather stories

In another life I'd like to have written the straplines (what are they called? supers?) for Sky; they've just put one up saying CRAZY WEATHER

hope my roof terrace hasn't been hit

the miserable life of the journalist

Some people think working for the BBC is glamorous (the truffles etc). But the cold reality of it is the below festive invite from two Tory Assembly Members, who'll remain anonymous. Why didn't I become a solicitor?


In anticipation of the Christmas celebration, festivities have extended to the Tory Party, well OK, as far as XXXX and XXXX.
To mark this occasion, you are cordially invited to join them for a glass of pop or half of something stronger, if you must (N.B. spirits and fortified wine are excluded from this offer), at the Ely Jenkins Public House, Cardiff Bay next Wednesday, 13th December.
Guests are requested to advise of their intentions to accept or otherwise and to arrive at 5:30pm or later.
Dress code : Red trousers
Please pass on to like minded people - i.e. raving Tories!!!

casualties of war

Poor old Ann Clwyd! While maggie got re-elected on the back of launching a war to save Britain's remotest sheep farm, all the thanks Anne gets for telling the world about Uday Hussein's person-shredding machine is to get the boot from her Labour party-chair gig. Unlike with the demise of her 'self-deprecating' pal, 'Rummy', it is still possible to feel a bit sorry for Anne. It was with good intentions that she supported regime change after all... By the way, does everyone wear hats like this in the Valleys?

pot, kettle, pot, kettle

When it was reported (somewhat speciously) over the weekend that MPs were demanding a significant pay rise, there was a vituperative response in the media.

So you would have thought that the (far more realistic) prospect of a similar improvement in conditions for Assembly Members would have been leapt upon by Wales' paper of record, the Western Mail. Instead, today's editorial says:

"It is easy to make a populist case around the view that politicians are already paid quite sufficiently, and that all they are interested in is "feathering their own nests". We believe that the temptation to peddle this view should be resisted."

You could practically hear the complimentary tea and biscuits being dropped to the floor in surprise at the Senedd. Was this an attempt by the Western Mail to create a more mature, sophisticated and consensual relationship between politicians, the media and the public? Was it an early outbreak of seasonal goodwill?
No:

"This newspaper is relaxed about the likelihood of AMs getting a substantial pay rise - in fact, we welcome the prospect if in the longer term it means there will be an overall improvement in the calibre of our politicians...
"It is our view that a substantial number of the current AMs fall far short of the required standard. Some barely make a contribution to the Assembly's proceedings, and when they do succeed only in embarrassing themselves and those watching. The thought of some of the current AMs making a worthwhile contribution to legislative scrutiny is risible."

Ah. What superficially looked like an attempt to elevate the political discourse is in fact the latest installment in a long-running feud between the Western Mail and the Assembly Government. Highlights have include the paper spiking Culture Minister Alun Pugh's weekly column after he called the paper "a bit of a joke", and the Assembly responding by threatening to take its job adverts elsewhere.
Remind me where journalists and politicians feature in the list of most disliked and distrusted professions?

Cash-for-honours

More understated hiliarity (I think I may mean litotes) from the write-up of the Downing St morning briefing

Put by the BBC that just to be "belt and braces" about it all, if there was a period between which the Prime Minister had been contacted, and we knew that, but it was before he had been interviewed, and the question was asked by journalists if he had been interviewed, the PMOS would be able to confirm to people, the PMOS at this point hopped around in a circle, saying he was dancing on the head of a pin. He repeated that he would let everyone know when he did.

Lies!

Bit slow off the mark with this one, but I doff my cap to Mick Bates AM. He was caught giving the finger to fellow Assembly Member Rhodri Glyn Thomas, and came up with the truly magnificent "excuse" that he was: "showing Rhodri Glyn Thomas which finger he should use to operate the Assembly’s modern push-button voting system. "

This leaves my top three shameless politicians' excuses looking like this:

1) Mark Oaten - "trauma of baldness"
2) Ron Davies - "looking for badgers"
3) Mick Bates - "voting system help"

Speaking ill of the dead

217, the Ivory Towers,

1/12/2006

Dear Wheaty,

True to say that the BBC does have a tendency for the odd bit of navel-gazing. You're right about the endless coverage of Nick Clarke's death. And you could add all the items about shagging "How do you Solve a Problem like Maria?" to what would be a fairly lengthy list of stories about which the BBC lost a sense of perspective. But speaking from the vantage point of the coal-face of the corporation's news output that is BBC Radio Wales (the Sound of Today's Wales), I can say with confidence that for every one piece on something BBC-related there's twenty things about ITV/ channel four/ all the newspapers.

Big Brother, Celebrity Love Island, the future of ITV, the Times going tabloid, a new editor at the Western Mail. The list goes on. Obviously, News 24 is unlikely to cover the revamp of the South Wales Echo... but the point is the BBC as a whole serves as a huge advertising platform for organisations that are its direct rivals at national and local level in a way that no other media body does. You would never see a piece in the Mail about how great the Express is in the manner you'll regularly hear people on the BBC saying how fantastic something on ITV or channel 4 is.

You're right about the truffles, though -- but damn they're tasty.

Love,

Tom