Tuesday Twaddle

Two Scottish academics, who spent two years analysing the behaviour of people who neglect both themselves and their homes, say such eccentric individuals should be allowed to live as they like so long as it does not affect anyone else. The research team, from the universities of Stirling and Dundee, estimate that as many as 100,000 people in the UK live in extreme squalor.
But rather than dismiss individuals who appear on TV programmes such as Life of Grime or How Clean is Your House as dysfunctional, the study claims many people are content to live this way. The research also found that any well-intentioned attempts to force them to clean up could do more harm than good.
Professor William Lauder, of the University of Dundee, said: "Self-neglect is a big problem - more common than elderly abuse or neglect.”These people are often portrayed as having a mental illness, but we found that in around 50 per cent of cases, people want to live like that. These days we have an obsession with cleanliness and living in a disinfected environment. We are terrified of dirt. But people should be left to live the way they choose, providing they are not harming themselves or others."
Well, bully for them say I. However, there is the question of what happens when these free-thinkers come out from their hovels and move about in the community I inhabit. Am I to sit on a bus seat recently contaminated with the crotchless tights of an incontinent and uncaring self-neglecter? I see this as just another manifestation of the modern idea that everyone has the right to determine their own standards – crime, language, dress, morals and all those other boring things that go to make up civilisation rather than culture. Maybe it is just a Scottish Thing.
I go back to the days when no tramp would be allowed into a pub or onto public transport. Action to stop them so doing was not necessary – they knew that they were out of order. No one in the bar or on the train would regard themselves as being discriminatory. Another arm of ‘modern’ thinking seems to be an urge to confess to wrong doing in events that happened many years ago. Deserters and others shot at dawn for military offences in World War 1, what we did to the Zulus, use of the cavalry at Peterloo – the list is endless. T Blair/B Liar mentions at least one a day. The events happened in tune with the time – deserters knew they were likely to be shot, Zulus knew it was kill or be killed in a military confrontation, magistrates read the Riot Act at Peterloo. Will there come a time when I will be called upon to apologise for the death of a nation by carbon pollution because I drove a two litre car?
I see the American girl Englander is now on trial for her actions at Abu Gharieb prison. Seems strange that junior ranks in the Army are being charged and given stiff sentences whilst little has happened to the senior and middle ranking officers. I see her especially as much a victim as an offender. She appears to be the sort of girl whose morals were no better than they had to be at that time and place. As such, she would be a natural for anyone who wanted to add something to their dodgy photographs. In real terms, what does it add that she is portrayed with a dog leash on one of the prisoners? It is nothing more than proof that for a very brief spell one man was humiliated in this manner – long enough for a photograph to be taken. In the context of what was doubtless going on in the establishment, it was something very minor. I am not normally a supporter of the view that taking glamour photographs of nude females is exploitation but I do see Englander as in such a situation. She’s obviously not all that bright and may not have known that what she was doing was so very wrong anyway. It will all come out in the wash anyway – she is plea-bargained up to the eyes.
My dog showed more of her brains this morning. She hunts birds in the park. They generally hop along a bit but when she gets close they fly into one or other of the big bushes that are too twiggy for her to get into. This morning, she spotted a big blackbird near to a bush. Instead of doing a point and then stalk she nipped into the bush and crept right up to the bird. She then dashed out in a very successful ambush. I will now have problems with her wanting to hive up at every bush we pass.
I was amused to read this report:
But on Saturday night, Laura Bush set a new standard. After interrupting her husband and telling him to sit down, she did a stand-up routine that included what was probably the first public joke told in earshot of a president that involved him and a horse's phallus.
Mrs. Bush called her husband Mr. Excitement for going to bed by 9 o'clock and turning her into a "desperate housewife." She said that Lynne Cheney's Secret Service code name became Dollar Bill after they both went to Chippendales Noting that Andover and Yale did not have "real strong ranching programs," she said Mr. Bush had started his ranching career by trying to milk a horse - a male horse.
Her timing had the audience howling, and the edgier lines had them gasping. Jokes about pent-up sexual frustration from a prim librarian? With her born-again husband sitting there and enjoying it? And cameras recording it for Republican preachers who are determined to get sex out of schools and off television?
I’ve been impressed by her back-up performances in the past. Even more so when set against those of that frog-mouth desperado that accompanies Blair/B Liar. From this my fractured mind went onto the election carpet-baggers. There seems to have been very little debate on what I call ‘women’s issues’. Abortion, nursery/crèche facilities, employment opportunities – where were they? Even some form of proportional representation in the government – nada. Maybe it is the almost universal boredom with the whole process that has killed off any debate. If so, seems a shame given what the Suffragette Movement went through to get them enfranchised. Death on the racecourse, forced feeding, Cat & Mouse Act, police brutality. In it’s way, as significant as the work and results of the Freedom Riders in America. Oh well girls, maybe another time eh?