Is the world crazy or am I?

Apologies for the lack of witty title but I really couldn’t think of one at this point in time. I want to just make a few comments about some of the draconian government initiatives which sometimes are tantamount of fascism. I’ll start with a particularly annoying advert for drinking and driving. First of all let me just say I do not in any way condone drinking and driving, I think it’s a stupid and dangerous thing to do and I think the law should be firm on it. However what I don’t agree with in this case is the way that government adverts try to imply you will be socially outcasted and ruined financially if you do it. What’s a stronger message than saying you will die? That’s the point they should probably put across to people rather than implying that you will get caught and be marked for life. The content of this advert is as follows: The TV ad focuses on Matt, a young man out for a couple of quick drinks with some friends, as he's deciding whether or not to have a second pint ...

It has not failed to capture my attention recently that another term of Robert Mugabe’s brutal rule in Zimbabwe is about to be ushered in. The seemingly eternal president has once again managed to bully his way to the premiership by threatening supporters of his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai, and of course Tsvangirai himself. The sad thing about the whole affair is that we, the western world who have seemedly pledged to end all dictatorial injustice in the world (that’s the official line at least), are just sitting back and doing nothing, well except for strongly wagging our finger disapprovingly. Well that ought to stop him won’t it? It’s a pity that Zimbabwe isn’t oil rich otherwise we’d have been in there like a shot. Instead we seem to spend our time on economically strategic action rather than morally or humanitarian strategic types of intervention. Let’s be fair here Saddam Hussain did have a bad human rights record like Mugabe. The only difference of course was ...

As many of my countrymen will have noticed of late, there have been angry rumblings about the prices of petrol. The prices quite frankly have begun to spiral out of control, as it doesn’t seem all that long ago that the idea of paying over one pound per litre of unleaded fuel was deemed madness. However, now my local petrol station it can be seen that the price is now £1.17 and rising. In fact only about 3 months ago when I set off on my long road trip to Cardiff (which I take every now and again) I found that it cost about £1.14 at the most expensive. To think that the price is still creeping up at this rate is somewhat worrying. But why are we paying so much is what people cry. I personally find that this is down to a number of factors such as the price of oil per barrel (See! the Iraq war was not a good idea for getting more oil was it!) and government taxes etc. I don’t propose one single reason for this happening although I am suspicious of the fact that all the major oil ...

Having now returned to the leafy suburbs of Bromley and a house with Sky TV, I noticed that the children’s classic book series The Famous Five has been remade as a contemporary cartoon series on the Disney Channel. As I read these books as a child I was naturally curious how it had been approached. As many people who grew up with these books will remember, the books involved a group of 4 upper middle class children (all privately educated at boarding school of course!) and one upper middle class dog (for some reason given the status of a person in spite of not being able to talk and having fleas) going on jovial mystery solving adventures in the 1940’s countryside on their own, eating slap up lunches of cakes, sweets and lash in gs of Ginger beer. Naturally the books seemed to describe a life style which seems archaic, rather lavish and really quite charming in its way. Ginger beer was the real head scratcher for me as I tried it once or twice and thought it tasted vile; certainly...