A quiet week

David Cameron and Boris Johnson at the Bullingdon Club

Hola. Hope you are well.

So anything happen last week?

Oh yeah there were the riots up and down the country, I don’t know if you saw it mentioned anywhere. Where I live there wasn’t much trouble, the electrical store at the end of the road had its windows smashed in and the 2 supermarkets closed early on Tues. Luckily for occasions like this, where I live is mainly populated by takeaways, so unless the rioters suddenly get the urge for jerk chicken, I should be ok.

Just for the record, should anyone be holding a public enquiry into the events, can I say that Dave and Boris coming home early from their holidays didn’t make the streets of London appear any safer. Something tells me the people out looting wouldn’t be intimidated by the two former Bullingdon club members.

For the first few days of the riots I was smugly able to say there was no trouble in Manchester, that soon changed. The troubles in Manchester did however come after the police announced they would be moving some of the M’cr police force to help in London and then what do you know there’s trouble in M’cr. I’m no police expert but if you are going to do something like this don’t announce it, just do it.

There was however no trouble in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Of course if there was trouble in Edinburgh, with the festival currently running, the rioters would either get arrested or a 4 star review in the Guardian.

There’s been plenty of talk as to what should happen if this kind of thing happens again? Some people are big fans of introducing water cannons onto the streets and Cameron mentioned that they were on standby at 24hours notice. Does anyone see a problem in this strategy? What are they going to do to entertain the rioters whilst they are waiting for the water cannons to turn up? Ideas on a postcard, and send to 10 Downing St.

I do think that the riots are all part of the strange times we are living in, where MPs are unsure which house they live in when it comes to claiming expenses, journalists listen into the voicemails of missing teenage girls and the police turn a blind eye to it, where financiers bring down banks for personal gain, high-powered business men and businesses exploit loopholes to avoid paying taxes, top footballers  are accused of paying £2000 a night to sleep with prostitutes and Swagger Jagger by Cher LLoyd, officially one of the worst songs in the history of songs managed to get to number 1 in the hit parade.

There’s been a lot of losers due to the riots, but I’m an optimist so I like to look at the positives and I would say the big winner of the troubles is Blackberry. As someone who has a third hand, old phone to communicate with, I can be described as being behind the times when it comes to technology, but even I now know that Blackberry messenger is the rioters choice of communicating because the police can’t view the messages. So should it kick off again expect to see more of the rioters using Blackberrys and as it happens there should be quite a few more flying around after the recent looting of phone shops.

And in other news, I think my boiler may have been fixed at about the 5th attempt (fingers crossed). In the last 6 weeks I’ve had more handymen round to the flat than the average 70’s female porn star, purely to fix the boiler. Each gas man has looked at it done what they needed to do, got it working and then not long after it would break down. So when this guy came round even I thought he was just going to say it was knackered and we needed a new one, which would be in their interests, but to be fair to him he stayed for around 2 and a half hours and identified the problem was the gas valve, which none of the others had mentioned. It just goes to show on some occasions it’s good to get a 6th opinion. The good news now I can trust the hot water is working, is that I can now use marigolds to wash up, which will only be of benefit to my hands.

And Finally… I’ve been having a little passport trouble. I’m currently in the process of getting a new passport although things are not going smoothly (do they ever?) because the pics I got from a booth guaranteeing passport standard pics have been rejected by the passport people for being out of focus. To me the pics are fine and look like me, but maybe I have a face that is naturally out of focus.

Til next week, stay safe!