Bonkers Conkers

I reported some time ago about schools banning the game of Musical Chairs for being too violent. (go here for that Outrage!)

Well, I can proudly tell you that that has now been beaten hands down for stupidity.

Keele University has undertaken a study of Primary Schools in Britain which shows that some have banned the age-old game of Conkers for fear of being sued by the parents of injured children.

Furthermore, some schools have banned playground football for it's anti-social tendencies (like teamwork, cooperation and organisation, not to mention exercise, coordination and dexterity...), and one was even reported as having outlawed skipping after, and I quote, "some girls fell down".

It's An Outrage!!

Conkers and skipping are games that every child should have the opportunity to play. Conkers is like golf, in that it evens the playing field - all you need is a good conker and you're a winner - even if you're small and weedy and have asthma. It pays no heed to the size of player - it's all about your skill, and how hard your conker is (oo-er!).

Also, I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but our national football team is completely pants - though I'm sure stopping kids playing it at school is just how France, Italy and Brazil go about nurturing their talent. The FA must be so proud...

And as for banning skipping because "some girls fell down" - isn't that what childhood is all about? Falling down, getting scrapes, grazes and bruises?? Perhaps we should make all skipping surfaces out of feathers in future, or insist on some sort of protective padding for the skippers.

Or perhaps we could all just get a grip. Don't schools have better things to do than this - like teach children stuff? Sums, writing, joined up speaking - that sort of thing.

Or are we supposed to find it reassuring that whilst our future generations will grow up illiterate, enumerate, lacking in social skills, fat, lazy and introverted, at least their knees will never have known the cruel sting of cold Germolene or the harsh tear of Elastoplast??

Somehow, that just doesn't do it for me...

Bad Drivers & Bad Pedestrians

I'm surprised it's taken me this long to post an entry on this subject, given that I drive about 70 miles a day, but my feelings of outrage at these particular types of people have only just formed and clarified over the last few weeks.

I wouldn't be as arrogant or foolish enough to say "I'm a better driver than most everybody else", although I did pass my Advanced Driving test at the first attempt a few years ago. Then again, I've been driving 12 years and had 3 accidents, so maybe that balances things up?

Anyway, I see a lot of gimps on the road who clearly shouldn't be in charge of a teapot, never mind tonnes of steel and glass and highly combustible fuel.

My particular hates are as follows, in no particular order and with no particular reason either;

DRIVERS WHO;

• use front and/or rear fog lights in the rain/day/1000 yard visibility (they're called FOG lights for a fecking reason!)
  

• hog the middle lane on the motorway because there's a lorry in the inside lane 3 miles up ahead (the tarmac on the inside lane is just as good quality as the other two, and did you ever learn an overtaking maneuver?)
  
• and following from that, don't pull in from the middle of the lane when I want to overtake
  
• don't indicate on roundabouts
  
• don't indicate EVER
  
• in 10,000 space car parks have to get the first one they come across, even if it's less than two feet from the entrance and it means holding everyone else up whilst they back into it seven or eight times
  
• pull out in front of me from a side road with a screech of tyres, then drive ten miles an hour slower than me, only to turn left 10 yards down the road
  
• park badly, so the space next to/in front of/behind them is just too small for me to get in
  
• sit so close to the wheel they can't possibly steer properly
  
• could slow down slightly to let me turn across the flow of traffic, but just don't
  
• could slow down slightly to let me turn into the flow of traffic, but just don't

PEDESTRIANS WHO;

• try to cross the road within sight of a zebra crossing
  

• can't make their minds up whether they're going to cross or not, and bob on and off the kerb
  
• walk behind me in car parks, through the space I'm reversing into
  
• press the button on pelican crossings, then nip across the road, leaving the lights to turn red and hold up the traffic with no-one waiting to cross

So, basically what I'm saying is that everybody should get out of my way or better still stay at home and leave the roads to me. After all, I'm a better driver than the rest of you...

By the way - I'm driving the white Rover with the blood stains on it.

Too Much Censorship

Thanks to my brother, I've listened to and become quite a fan of the rapper Eminem.

His lyrics are often explicit and use violent phrases and images, although in just as many tracks he shows either his 'softer' side, or that his hard-core image is somewhat of a front.

Naturally, some of the words he uses are bleeped out of radio edits and on music channels like MTV and The Box, and I can understand this. Recently though, I've noticed a worrying trend to bleep out almost everything.

Take for example his latest release, Stan. It tells the story of an obsessive fan who writes repeatedly to Eminem telling how much he worships the star and how he identifies with him. As time passes and he receives no reply, he sinks deeper into madness, deluded that Eminem is ignoring him, and taking inspiration for his own actions from the rapper's music. Finally, he drives his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend tied up in the trunk, killing them all.

The irony is, Eminem did get Stan's letters but has just been too busy to reply. When he does get round to it, he's asking Stan why he's so mad, and urges his to take care of himself and his girlfriend. He warns that some people do the most horrible things, like driving cars off a bridge with their pregnant girlfriends in the trunk. It's only then that he realises it's too late for a reply...

To me this is a great song and highlights that what Eminem says and does are two very different things, and we shouldn't belive everything on his albums.

On the radio or TV, words like S**t and F**k and Bi*ch are missed out, which is quite right - they are offensive to most people, especially when used 'gratuitously'.

But what about Ass? Is that really so bad? And the line in the song that goes "I'm doing ** on the freeway", where the bleeped word is 90? Will hearing this really encourage kids to drive too fast?

Also, try this for size; "Sometimes I *** myself just to see how much I *****, like adrenaline the ***is such a sudden **** to me" (Insert Cut, Bleed, Pain and Rush). Without this, you don't understand what a looper Stan is becoming. And let's face it, depressed kids who want to *** themselves will do it anyway.

Some edits I've heard miss out the whole reference to Stan's girlfriend being in the trunk, which kind of spoils the whole premise, especially as Eminem directly refers to it in the last verse.

But it goes further - I've noticed that logos and slogans on clothes are being blurred out now, not because they're offensive (which I'd agree with), but because they are brand names. Like Ad*das and N*ke and Chi*ago Bu*ls, and damaging stuff like that. Crazy!

It's An Outrage!!

We can't - and I don't believe we should - protect everyone from everything that they may find offensive in some way, and certainly not when it comes to children.

There's a whole big bad world out there that we're keeping a secret from them. Absolutely bleep out swearing on the radio, but a logo on a shirt? How's that going to help?!

To close on this one, let me go back to Eminem. A lot of people complain that his music promotes violence towards women, because two of his album tracks depict him killing his cheating wife and her lover. Women's groups in Canada tried to get him banned from the country.

I bet they'd let Tom Jones in though, and I bet they'd sing along at the top of their lungs to his timeless hits;Pussycat, Green Green Grass of Home, and Delilah.

Hmm, Delilah.... isn't that the one about Tom's lover cheating on him and their confrontation? The one that goes "I felt the knife in my hand, and she laughed no more".....?

Though so. D'ya see the irony now?

Ridiculous Compensation Claim III

In the run up to Christmas, I've got myself a Saturday job (as well as my main week job) back at one of the WHSmith stores I used to be a manager at.

It's in order to get some extra money for a few things I want to do next year, and it's kinda fun too.

However, we got a phonecall yesterday that I was privy to, from a woman who claimed we had discriminated against her daughter, humiliating her and 'crushing her already low self-esteem'.

And how had we done this? By refusing to sell her an age-restricted video because she didn't look old enough.

Admittedly, it was a 12 certificate, and the girl was actually 16, but if she didn't look old enough, we did the right thing. Trading Standards are very keen to make a fool of High Street stores by sending in underage children to buy things the law doesn't permit, so we are always very vigilant; I've done it myself innumerable times - we even have to keep a register of what we've refused, to whom and why!

Anyway, it seems this particular girl is very short and petite, and her mother claimed we were being 'heightist', or some such nonsense.

Now, I have every sympathy for the girl, as I have always looked much younger than I actually am (product of a stress-free life...!). Up until the age of about 25 I was still sometimes refused entry into clubs, or service at a bar. This year, at age 29, I was even refused service by a barman in Las Vegas, where the drinking age is 21. Half of me was flattered, but half of me was annoyed.

But at the end of the day, he was doing his job. I showed him my passport, and he served me.

The irate mother demanded an apology, which she got from the store manager (who also offered to apologise personally to the girl if she came back in), but this wasn't enough. She was 'looking for some sort of compensation, like a few free videos.'; what she got was a polite refusal and the Head Office address.

It's An Outrage!!

Once again, a lazy person seizing any opportunity to get something for nothing.
Would a few free videos stop it happening again? NO!
Would it be a good idea to carry around some sort of proof of age? YES!!

If she already has low-esteem over this, I suggest it isn't the first time it's happened. Wake up, see the pattern, take a bit of self-responsibility and stop being another blame-culture parasite.

She probably eats at Harry Ramsden's, where crap parent's perpetuate this attitude...

Want to know what the other Ridiculous Compensation Claims were?
Click here for I, and here for II

Where's Our Flood Aid?

Rainfall above twice the normal average and no let up in sight, 52 severe flood warnings in force, hundreds of householders evacuated from their homes, billions of pounds worth of damage done to livestock, property and buildings, livelihoods ruined.

India? South America? Eastern Europe?

Nope, this is Britain.

We're a country under a watery deluge at the moment, and things could get much worse.

But hang on a minute...where's our relief aid money? You know, the stuff we shovel over to just about every other country in the world by the bucketload the moment they hold out their begging cups.

Well, now we're in a spot of bother, and we'd like some of it back please - a bloody lot of it actually, if you don't mind!

Hmm, I can't actually hear anyone asking for it, let alone see anyone digging deep and coughing it up.

Am I being cynical? Are we a soft touch nation? Does anyone even give a toss about us unless they want something?

It's An Outrage!!

It's beginning to feel like we're the parents to a world full of teenagers; throwing good money after bad here, there and everywhere but getting nothing in return.

It's about time we started withholding privileges and smacking arses then...!!

Fuel Stockpilers Should be Shot

I didn't have much to say about the fuel crisis that hit Britain during September (mostly because I was working from home due to a broken ankle, and it all sort of passed me by...), though I was Outraged that no-one seemed to be able to see the futility of the protests.

The current Government is committed to improving the national infrastructure, and as such will use high taxation to raise the necessary funds.
If the tax on fuel is lowered, tax on something else will be raised to compensate. That's simple math's, and I for one would rather be taxed on a commodity that I have a choice about using, rather than on my basic income where I have no options.

Anyway, we're now approaching the protestor's deadline for when fuel tax had to be lowered or they'd be out blockading fuel depots again, and those tax cuts have not been made (though try asking yourself how Shell made earnings of £2.24bn in the last three months, yet the blame is still with our Government...).

So what do the general public do? Panic, and start stockpiling fuel in case there's a shortage later this month. But hang on; if everyone buys twice as much fuel as they normally do, won't this in itself start the shortage? And then, seeing the start of a shortage, won't everyone go out and stockpile more fuel just in case a shortage becomes a drought??

Ever hear of a vicious circle?!

It's An Outrage!!

An emergency law should be passed for filling stations to be policed by the Army, who should be on the lookout for;

• anyone with their tank already more than one quarter full
  

• anyone filling up any sort of container

and upon catching either of these two types of people, would be legally obliged to take them behind a wall and shoot them in the face.

These people are morons, soft-brained sheep, who read the tabloid press and believe everything they see with a terrifying gullibility. They bring about misery and discomfort for the rest of us who are rational, and should be removed from society at the very first opportunity.

The Fuel Crisis - nature's way of suggesting we thin out the crowd.

NTL's Shocking Customer Service

I'm a customer of NTL, taking cable TV, telephone and internet services from them.

They ran up the other day whilst I was out, spoke to my partner and asked if we'd like a second phone line installed for free.

As my partner doesn't pay the bill, but knows we'd use this service, she suggested they call back later when I was in.

The call never came, but two days later I did get a letter thanking me for choosing a second line, and giving the date when an engineer would be arriving to install it .

Somewhat annoyed by this, I called their customer services number, and was put on hold for 45 minutes, at which point I was cut off.

I tried again the next morning at 08:30, but again went into a queue for 30 minutes before I had to hang up and do some work.

I tried emailing the person who sent me the letter, but NTL's standard email format is firstname.lastname@ntl.com; unfortunately, the person who wrote to me had signed his name as S.Masters - so no help there then.

Now, I know someone who is connected in some way to NTL, and he suggests that far from this being a case of under-staffing or high demand for their services, the massive waiting times are in fact a deliberate attempt to reduce NTL's complaint rate statistics.

It's An Outrage!!

By allegedly not answering calls quickly, they hope most callers will give in and hang up, thereby not registering their complaints, thereby reducing NTL's complaint rate and workload.

This is also what they do for people wanting to cancel or reduce the number of TV channels they are subscribed to.

If this is true, it's an absolute crime. But of course, this is currently just hearsay; unless you know differently...

Donor Card Fiasco

There is much debate at the moment about how to run a more successful Donor Card scheme.

People awaiting transplants are missing out on potentially life-saving operations due to a shortage of organs.

Hospitals have for many years been telling us that, during the trauma of a bereavement, many families either don't know the wishes of the deceased, or just over-rule those wishes, which is apparently legal.

And because in most cases, no-one actually carries their donor card with them, it can be hard to determine their wishes anyway.

To me it's simple; make organ donation work on a 'presumed consent' basis, unless you are carrying an opt-out card.

Although only 30% of us have donor cards, over 57% of the public shared this sentiment in a recent survey carried out, so why don't we just do it??

It's An Outrage!!

Public apathy is a blight on the face on many campaigns designed for our benefit; recycling, voting, energy conservation, driving slower - the list goes on.

Requiring a mandatory expression of your preference NOT to donate organs would make things much easier for the Health Service, and families of both the deceased AND those in need of transplants.

How can helping to save a life be a bad thing?

BBC's Watchdog Twists The Facts

On the whole, I like the concept of the BBC programme, "Watchdog". It does a good job of exposing scams, shams and flim-flams, and fighting for better customer service. But every now and again it seems to me that they are just looking for a target to frag.

Take Friday October 13th's edition, and the story on the Airtours Travel company.

It would seem that earlier in the week their Chief Executive had said that he wanted to rid his company of "... the whinging customers.".

What he meant was that small minority without genuine complaints who are just out to get something for nothing, and enjoy complaining. Having worked with customers for the last 13 years, I know what he means!!

However, Watchdog went to town on them, using their regular bag of stats, which showed that 47% of complaints received by the programme about Airtours were to do with accommodation or resort issues. And that sounds a lot, doesn't it boys and girls?

Hang on though... Airtours ferried approximately 3 million people on holidays last year, yet Watchdog had received just under 500 complaints in total.
Even if we're generous and estimate that only a quarter of disgruntled holidaymakers chose to write in, that gives us 2000 people.

Against 3 million, that's 0.07%, meaning that Watchdog's accommodation complaints amounted to just 0.035% of the people Airtours dealt with last year. Which doesn't sound a lot anymore, does it boys and girls??

It's An Outrage!!

Now I'll admit that 2000 unhappy customers is nothing to be proud of, but the way Watchdog presented it, you'd think that Airtours were packing everybody into galleys, using whips and a fat man on drums to make them row across the Med, only to give them a two week stay in a Turkish Gulag, before parceling them in crates and posting them home by camel-mail.

Get a grip Watchdog, and deal with the real threats to consumer society. Like the EU for a start...

Disney Travels In Time

Disney Channel in the UK (available through your local cable or satellite provider...) has just launched it's new package, containing three new channels, AT NO EXTRA COST !!

One of these is called "Disney+1", and is exactly the same as the main Disney channel, but running one hour later...

This, apparently, is in case you missed your favourite Disney programme first time round but still want to see it. And don't forget, it's FREE!!

It's An Outrage!!

What kind of chumps do Disney think we are?? Showing the same programmes one hour later does NOT constitute a new channel, and it damn well ought to be free - so no incentive there then!

But what concerns me is, what happens if you miss your programme on Disney+1? There seems to be no provision for this, such as Disney+1+1 (or is that +2?), surely a massive error on their part?

And what about really busy people who just can't wait for their favourite programme on Disney? Where is the Disney-1 channel? I mean that'd be a real time-saver; you need to see Sabrina The Teenage Witch, but also have a hot date to get to. No problem - just tune in to the channel that screens the main channel's shows one hour ahead of time!!

Or could you achieve the same effect by treating Disney+1 as Disney, therefore making Disney into Disney-1...??? Where's the Doctor when you need him?

The other two alternatives of course are;

1. get a video recorder
   

2. get a life...

(The BBC have been doing this for years of course, except in their case it's called BBC+20years, it runs on the same channel as their main programming, and costs £104 a year whether you want it or not.....)

Ridiculous Compensation Claim II

An unemployed Los Angeles man has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against pop group Duran Duran for endangering his life, after his telephone number was allegedly listed by them on the Internet by mistake.

Cornell Zachary, 57, claims the number was given out as being the one to call for tour details, tickets and souvenirs, and that as a result calls were coming in on a 24-hour basis from all over the world.

Zachary said his number was posted on the internet in July 1999, and although it was removed a few weeks later, he says that by that time he had already received "millions" of calls and was still being pestered.

In the action, he claims to have suffered "life-threatening high blood pressure episodes", together with nerve damage, sleep disturbance and permanent health problems. "They had me to the point where my doctor told me I could have a stroke." he is quoted as saying.

Interestingly though, despite being supposedly besieged day and night by the calls, Zachary insisted he never considered changing his number, saying;

"I didn't make the mistake. I had already had the number over a year. They have never even given me a sorry card, you know?"

Hmm... an unemployed 57 year old, who didn't consider changing his number, launches a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Can we all see a connection here??

Could it just be that Mr Zachary is just an over-the-hill, lay-about degenerate, who has seen the opportunity to make a quick buck on the back of someone else?

Could it be that, in the true spirit of the American litigious culture, he has glimpsed the prospect of getting rich without raising a single porky finger?

Should we have sympathy for him? NO!! Should he have unplugged his phone until the problem was sorted out? YES!! Is he a patient of Dr Nick Riviera the famous Springfield MD? Seems that way!!

Many people around the world have jobs, lives or problems that could be called dangerous to their health, and in most cases there isn't a single thing they can do about it. Having a constantly ringing phone isn't one of them.

If I were Duran Duran, I'd be tempted to settle this claim in nickels, and shove them one by one...

Want to know what the first Ridiculous Compensation claim was? Click here...

Want to hear how a pair of crap parents perpetuated this attitude? Click here...

Nike Advert Withdrawn

A barrage of complaints has forced American television network NBC to drop a Nike advert featuring a female Olympic athlete being chased by a hooded man with a chainsaw.

The advert, for Nike sports shoes, features the American 1500m runner, Suzy Favor Hamilton, spotting a man in a hockey mask about to attack her with a chainsaw. However, she runs off and maintains such a strong pace that the attacker collapses wheezing with exhaustion.

A caption at the end of the ad says: "Why sport? You'll live longer."

And yet this has been decried by a bunch of namby-pambies who seem to believe that this will compel men to dress up as 80's horror icons and chase women with excessively large and/or sharp garden tools.

NBC says it has received "adverse audience reaction" and has therefore dropped the advert.

It's An Outrage!!

Surely the VERY OBVIOUS point of the advert is that, by taking part in sport (as long as you have the appropriate footwear of course...) you can pretty much beat anything. Shouldn't that be congratulated for championing the cause of women? Or is that something that dullards just can't see??

We do not need to be protected from every image we see, as most of us have brains enough to tell the difference between a humourous advert aimed at selling fancy pumps and a rallying cry to maim another human being.

Nike's complimentary advert showing an Olympic cyclist, Lance Armstrong, resuscitating a collapsed circus elephant, along with the slogan: "Why sport? Healthy lungs." is still running.

Look out - here come the animal rights loonies to change all that!!

Schools Ban 'Too Violent' Musical Chairs

What is the cause of violence in society today? This is a question that has vexed ministers, scientists and theologians for years, and has produced some interesting answers. The lack of National Service, a decline in moral values, abolition of corporal punishment, the rise of single parent families, Hollywood trends. All have been suggested as caused, and each has it's merits.

But now a new Government-backed booklet, entitled Towards A Non-violent Society, has lain the blame squarely at the door of Musical Chairs. Yes, the party game.

It would seem that a group of charities formed after the James Bulger murder have concluded that violence in children can be linked to the teaching of strongly competitive games. As such, it is recommending that schools do not use the game, lest we breed a generation of maniacs (okay, that last bit isn't in there, but it might as well have been!).

They say that in Musical Chairs, the strongest and biggest children always win, and thus shows that violence is a favourable trait.

I don't know what rules are being used today, but I seem to remember it was always the quickest or sneakiest children that won, not the big lumbering farmers' sons I played it with.

What concerns me more is that we are seeing a gradual removal of all competitiveness in schools, it being replaced with the ethos of 'everyone can win'. And I'm afraid this just isn't true.

In the big real world of adults, full of careers, bosses, love, sex and money (sometimes all rolled into one convenient package!), there are clearly winners and losers. Just look at your own friends and colleagues. Are there not some of these that are better and more successful than others, yourself included?

It's An Outrage!!

What we need to teach children is that competition is a natural part of life and should be embraced. We need to help them find their own particular field of success, and then support them in it. Not everyone will be a sprinter, or a mathematician, or a solicitor or a jet pilot, but we will all be something. Ad we need to be the best we can at it.

Look at America, where the divide between success and failure is more pronounced than it ever will be here, and what are they concerned with? Winning.

If we remove the concept of winning and losing from children's early development, they are going to have a hell of a tough time coping with it when it jumps up and bites them on the ass for the first time. Plus, we'll all still be crap at sports that we invented.

Musical Chairs has as much to do with breeding a violent society as doing exams - leave it be.

David Beckham - Master Chef

This is David Beckham as pictured in a recent copy of OK Magazine. He is portrayed as a master chef, standing in his expansive kitchen holding out to the camera the latest in a long line of his exquisite creations. He seems very proud of this dish - just look at the confidently cocky raising of his eyebrow.

But wait - let's take a closer look at this gastronomic delight; why, it's just pasta, with a tin of tomatoes on top.
No cheese, no herbs, no vegetables, no meat, no sauce. Just pasta... and tinned tomatoes.

Now, I don't have anything against young Dave, I think he has a fantastic footballing talent and is right to make the most of it. But I do think that allowing yourself to be photographed like this (however much money you're being paid) leaves him open to the question of how much sense he has. A chimp could put pasta in a bowl and pour tomatoes over it, and that's the sort of thing most people will think when they see this.

I don't particularly feel the need to leap to Becks' defence (better to imagine him groaning when he sees it on the news-stand.), but I'm afraid the whole OK Magazine thing in general outrages me. Celebrities queue up for this sort of treatment, and then wonder why we're laughing at them.

OK Magazine print vacuous interviews ("Were you good looking as a boy?") alongside meticulously posed 'natural' photos (David making a cup of squash), and half the population ooh and aah as though it has some actual value!!

We don't know these people, we never will, and what does it matter how many pair of shoes a 3rd rate TV presenter has? Are we really all that boring that the only way we can spice up or lives (pun intended) is to peer into someone else's?

If we do need to do that, let's at least read something meaningful.

It was once said the TV was like chewing gum for the mind. If that's the case, then OK Magazine must be like Space-Dust; a bit of sweet tasting fizzle, then it all just evaporates.

Crap Parents at Harry Ramsden's

So there I am last night, sitting outside at Harry Ramsden's (for those of you not in the know, this is possibly one of the finest fish and chip shops in the world, now with an outlet reasonably near you!) eating my fish supper (how I got there is a long story, involving broken ankles and wallpaper, and is perhaps for another time) and looking at the family at the next picnic-table over.

There's a mum and a dad and a girl aged about 13ish and a boy aged about 10ish, and I'm drawn to them for all the usual reasons. Like, dad's wearing sports gear and doesn't seem to be the type that can actually remember the last time he was out of breath; the mum is more than a little overweight and wearing shall we say inappropriately tight pedal pushers. The daughter is the same, only more overweight and wearing even tighter clothes, and the son looks pretty average considering.

Anyway, I'm getting off the point. Which is, that the kids were playing in the specially made play area with a slide, rocking horse type things on a spring, and a see-saw, when the boy comes limping back with a pouty lip and whining that he's got a splinter in his backside from the see-saw.

The dad offers to have a look, rolls down his shorts (out of the view of the other diners) and the kid starts balling his eyes out - and I mean like he was being murdered. He was screaming and jerking and wailing, and I seriously expected his leg to be hanging by a scrap of flesh judging by the noise he was making. In an attempt to placate him, his mother and sister were effectively pinning him to a bench and shouting at him to calm down; you can guess how effective that was...

After some five minutes (and the offending article presumably still lodged bone deep and close to an artery), they carry him into the main restaurant muttering things about "compensation". I could see that they were met by a man in a tie who, after being on the receiving end of some gesticulation, took them off into the depths of the building. I sat there for a good half-hour afterwards, and they hadn't emerged by the time I left, so maybe the surgeon ran into difficulties...

What outraged me were two things, the first being the ineptitude of the parents in dealing with the 'splinter' in the first place, i.e. lets get him screaming at the top of his voice from obvious discomfort, but continue to do it with no thought for his mental state.

Secondly though - and this is the biggie - is their attitude to something that 'in my day' would have been put down to 'just one of those things'. So he's managed to pick up a splinter from a wooden seesaw, and they automatically want to lay the responsibility at the door of somebody else? What kind of abdication of parental duty is that? Had the see-saw collapsed and broken his arm (or ankle, which would have been much more painful I bet...) then I could understand it, but a splinter? From a piece of wood? Get a grip!!!

We are hurtling down the liability highway to a nanny state dead end. Pretty soon everything that happens will be somebody else's fault, and they'll have to pay out for not stopping it. And where do you think this money will come from? Higher prices and less choice.

We are also creating a generation of people who can't accept that sometimes accidents happen and that there are such things as common sense and personal accountability. You've scalded your tongue on a hot pie? Hmm, perhaps you should have blown on it and tested the heat before shovelling it in. You're a fireman and want compensation because the sight of a burned body has upset you so much? What did you expect when you joined the fire brigade - that it'd all be kittens stuck up trees and ladies in bathtubs?

It's An Outrage!!

One of the reasons that Britain is so far 'behind' the US in terms of litigation is that up until recently all our Judges were old enough to have been through at least one world war and seen some real suffering. As such they were apt to treat with disdain many of the cases that came before them on the basis that the claimants needed to get a bit of a backbone, pull themselves together and get on with it.

Not so now, as a younger breed of judiciary come to the fore that have seen only the excesses of our trans-Atlantic cousins and think that this is the way to go.

It isn't. Very soon we will be wondering where all our kid's playgrounds went and why all the soup in restaurants is tepid, and why you just can't buy a beefburger from a street vendor anymore. And it'll all be the fault of that kid with the splinter in his arse...