If You Skip to the End You Can Get On With Your Life

I wasn't going to write a blog entry this evening. I didn't really have anything to talk about but on reviewing the contents of this blog I notice that this hasn't stopped me in the past. Still I'm scraping for a topic, if I write any more about my cat or television people are going to suspect that there is nothing else in my life. Besides there's nothing good on television and the cat has just been sick on the carpet. Of course I could look at world events. There have been some of those. In Britain a recent election has just proved that nobody in the country really knows what to do but all are agreed that Gordon Brown shouldn't be the man doing it. Is it too late to suggest direct monarchical rule? On an unrelated note; England, South Africa called and wants its cricket team back.

In Australia mining companies are getting hot under the collar over a proposed new tax. Don't these guys have accountants? Our previously bullet proof Prime Minister has lost all his popularity with an election to come within twelve months. Frankly I'm surprised it took that long. I voted for him and have been feeling slightly silly ever since. Our army has hotly denied claims that defence procurement is a mess and released a photo of well equipped Australian soldiers in Afghanistan to prove their case. Unfortunately a number of people have pointed out that while these soldiers were indeed well equipped their equipment was non standard. That is they had bought it at their own expense. Possibly rather than have a defence procurement system we should just give each soldier an allowance and tell them to equip themselves.

In Europe the same currency mechanism that means Greece's money is grossly overvalued also means that Germany's is greatly undervalued thus helping their economy. Germany, I expect to hear no more complaints about bailing out the Greeks, their economic fecklessness is actually benefiting you. At least up until the point when your banks want some of the money they foolishly lent the Greeks back. Meanwhile the European central bank, or whatever the hell they have, responds to the increasing disaster by adding extra noughts to the bailout package. The current price, more money than anyone could ever possibly gather if they tried for the rest of their lives.

Off the coast of Africa Somali pirates hijacked a Russian oil tanker and a Russian destroyer hijacked it right back. The name of the destroyer is the Marshal Shaposhnikov. There have been two of these in Russian history. The current one is advisor to the Russian president on aviation and space exploration. The previous one was an officer in Stalin's army but surprisingly wasn't murdered. Incidentally one of the ways you can tell that a country doesn't have a particularly prominent navy is when they name ships after soldiers rather than sailors.

Still on the topic of things Russian their gas conglomerate (amusingly called Gazprom) is planning a merger with the Ukrainian gas distribution company Naftohaz. The Ukrainian government is quietly having kittens as Naftohaz is about the only thing in their country that makes money and handing it over to Gazprom would basically make Ukraine a Russian colony. When this was mentioned Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin said "Really, I hadn't realised," and smiled a little creepily.

In Venezuela the government of Hugo Chavez has arrested a number of butchers for causing 30% inflation. Oddly the Greek government has offered to take them off his hands if they can achieve the same result in Greece. Everything is still a relentless shit storm of misery in Haiti but Angelina Jolie has left now so at least the Haitians have one blessing to count.

Corruption allegations continue to dog the Indian Premier League 20-20 cricket competition. Who would have thought that a sporting competition set up in India by a multi billionaire could have been susceptible to bribery? My faith in human nature is dented. Also from India a yogi is claiming to have lived for 70 years without food or water. Science is apparently baffled. Representatives of the world grocery industry have put a contract out on his life and are surreptitiously mailing him McHappy Meal vouchers in the hopes he takes the hint.

Mothers day came and went in Australia with a flurry of facebook entries. Exactly how did we find out things we never wanted to know about our friends before facebook? I think we were reduced to talking to them. Fortunately we have gone beyond that now.

I have now missed the first half hour of Taggart writing this blog entry but that's ok. There will be at least three more murders and I should be able to catch up with the plot in between the blood spatters. This has got to be the most pointless blog entry I have ever written. I hope when you get to the end of it you will feel as embarrassed about wasting your time reading it as I am at having written it.