Scratching the surface

Even the name - Herman van Rompuy - sound a little too much Harry Potter to garner respect.

The BBC`s profile tells us the new EU President is a camera shy man, catapulted from obscurity. He has made it clear he will fulfill the role of chairman who`s tasks include liaising with EU leaders and arranging the EU`s annual summits. It is little wonder Tony Blair dropped out of the race as the job appears to be little more than a European party planner.

Basically he is an unknown, with no international credibility or ambitions and probably perfect for the EU. Did we really want Blair running the show, stirring up stuff, trying to change things, hogging the limelight, talking to people, leading?

No of course not, we want a quiet Belgian to sit in the office, live in the grace and favour house, enjoy the very fat salary and to make sure there is a very public, once a year, get together.

Dig a little deeper though and this man might surprise.

This is a man who`s Christian beliefs have found their way into his policies. In 2004 in response to a question on Turkey joining the EU he is quoted as saying "Turkey is not Europe and will never be Europe" He continued "But its a matter of fact that the universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also the fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of large Islamic country such as Turkey"

In short, Christian Europe = good. Christian / Islamic Europe = not so good.

Who knows - perhaps Tony Blair might have been a quieter option after all?

Baby Games

Drop the dummy ©

Two participants are needed for this game.

Yourself and a person who is utterly in love with you, someone who thinks on you as the most precious thing in the world. The person(s) who protects you, keeps you warm, feeds you, rocks you to sleep, the one who is there at your every waking moment. For the purpose of this we will simply call this person the opponent.

The game should take place at approximately 3am.

The rules:
1. The opponent will put a soothing dummy into your mouth. At first do as you normally do: start to suckle on it and softly close your eyes.

2. As the opponent turns away, or even better, tries to sit down you need to quickly and forcefully spit the dummy out, preferably aiming for under a cupboard or bed.

3. The opponent will then place you down somewhere safe and retrieve the dummy. As soon as you are placed down you need to shriek, cry or wail as loudly as possible. Note - you will win extra points if you are able to fill your nappy at that moment.

4. Act as alert as you were the moment you woke 4 hours previously and wait 10mins before starting the game all over again.

Thats it, nice and simple but always guaranteed to create a laughter filled household – no one can resist the fun of Drop the Dummy © .

After about 3 months of drop the dummy, its probably best to move up to game two.

Next edition – Game two: Fake Choking.

1978

I remember as a small boy exiting a cinema in Aberdeen.

It was a few weeks before Christmas and we were visiting the big city for our annual present buying trip. Where I grew up, even more so back then, Aberdeen was the closest thing we had to bright lights & big city.

Aged 8, I wasn’t interested in what it took to make Christmas work, only that it did. My father would always take me and my sister out of my mother’s hair on these shopping trips and this invariably meant an afternoon spent in the cinema. The year was 1978 - a particularly good year for cinema. It was the year Mr Lucas introduced us to Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker and the year that John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John got it on, in a musical sense that is.

I exited the cinema that December day, one hand firmly gripping my fathers, the other clutching a plastic, already bent, light saber. I remember clearly the contrast between the universe of Mr Lucas`s, and now my, imagination and the cold, wet and windy Union Street we were trudging up to rendezvous with my mother.

It is my first memory of cinema escapism and if I could have articulated it back then, I would have probably said “that was a f**king great movie dad”. Instead I gripped my plastic Jedi sword and spent the remaining weeks until Christmas hoping the force would swoop down and deliver me from my normal existence into a lifetime of space adventure and 70s hairstyles.

Great movies do not come along that often.

The three decades which have passed since that day is littered, in my humble opinion, with cinematic disappointments. If I was to list them all here I would probably exceed the upload allowance per blog but suffice it to say, for every Pulp Fiction I would estimate there are 300+ Independence Days. My great movie list is a pretty short list.

You will understand how happy I was then when the other day I sat down to watch Moon. A low budget, Sci-fi movie which owes a lot to the early science fiction, films such as Silent Running or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a slow mover, with more fiction, than science. Sam Rockwell is excellent, the effects are appropriate, no more, the key twist is predictable but the ending still leaves you wondering.

In short it's a very good movie, one which I thoroughly enjoyed and one which appears on the face of it to be at odds with the current drivel coming out of that plastic town in California.
This leads me to conclude it will probably also be a financial failure.

Film makers make films that the majority want to watch. This is simply because the majority pay more than the minority and the only way to change this is to have a BBC for films. A great big pot which we all pay into and one which funds more interesting films.

A great big pot to make films and to satisfy a minority made up of one: me.

Bah Humbug

To urinate on a war memorial is wrong - I think we can all agree with his statement.

To be photographed doing so the same week yet another group of young men were killed in Afghanistan is both wrong and particularly bad timing. Philip Laing the young man in the middle of this week’s outrage must now expected some form of custodial sentence.

It is so wrong on so many fronts it’s hard to see how he can avoid spending some time in jail.

His defense: he was drunk.
"No excuse" we all shout back at him in unison.
His lawyer has publically stated that "it's difficult to articulate just how embarrassed and ashamed this young man is".
"I bet he is" we all agree shaking our heads, safe in the knowledge it’s someone else.

I can understand the public outrage. I too feel outraged when I see a picture of a man, the same age as the men dying halfway around the world, pissing over the poppy wreath.

But I also feel sympathy, a sort of cringing sympathy, but sympathy nonetheless. The sort of sympathy where I can easily imagine myself in such a shameful position. Like watching someone being bullied and knowing it could very easily be me.

Who amongst us can honestly say they have not done something outrageous drunk? We don’t need to discuss the details but do we really believe that Philip is any different to the vast majority of people? I would like to add at this juncture, I have never pissed over a war memorial. A phonebox or two perhaps, a few hundred bushes definitely, the sea now and again and once ingeniously into a coke bottle on the late night bus, but no, never a war memorial.

No, Mr Laing had the serious misfortune to be photographed and he became well and truly fucked when the photograph found its way into a national newspaper.

I do not for one second believe that he feels such disregard for the fallen men and women that he is moved to piss on their memorial. He was drunk, did something very stupid and is now paying a heavy price for his stupidity.

Personally I would like to see the legal time & expense being directed at the organisations which are promoting such hedonistic binge drinking.

Student life is about drinking, partying, having fun, growing up and also, I have been lead to believe, education. This is a fact, but also all the students I know are very adept at drinking and partying, very cheaply. Allowing organisations like “Carnage” to promote their cheap, binges across our campuses is akin like giving rabbits IVF, welcome by the recipients, but clearly not necessary.

Surely allowing such organisations unfettered access to the student population is unnecessary and something which can be easily rectified, I cannot believe that banning them would take a serious amount of legislation.

Instead we simply hear well meaning people complaining and doing absolutely nothing about it.

How hard can it be, really?