The Mayor Of Rabbit Hash Is A Bitch

The good folk of Hartlepool are known as 'monkey hangers' here due them once finding a monkey on a shipwrecked French ship during the Napoleonic war, holding a trial and hanging the animal as a spy as it refused to answer their questions.
Obviously, the people of the Northern town are stupid which is why in 2002 they voted a man in a monkey suit running on a platform of free bananas for schoolchildren, as Mayor of the place and despite failing in his one promise of free bananas, he has been voted back into office twice.
Voting a man inside a monkey suit to run the affairs of the town may sound strange to us but the people of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky won't be very impressed as they have been voting actual animals into office since 1998.
The first elected non-human official was a dog named Goofy who was elected Mayor and replaced in 2004 by another dog named Junior who run things until his death in 2008 when a new election was called and contested by ten dogs, a cat, an opossum, a jackass, and one human being but was finally won by a border collie called Lucy Lou (slogan: A bitch you can count on) who beat Travis the cat in a narrow victory.
Mad i agree but the back story is that the Town almost went under in the late 70s and is maintained by the Historical Preservation Society but it does have a rather naff website where you can read about the 2008 elections and the prospective candidates and be transported to a Huckleberry Finn World where the message on the Gift Shop section of the website advises visitors to 'Please check back cuz we're fixin' to get some more stuff soon!'
I think after losing out on the election the Jackass went back to his former job as the Towns webmaster.

Quitting Smoking With E-Cigarettes

I began smoking aged 14 and as i'm 43 now, and if my crude finger counting is correct, that makes it 29 years that i have been sucking goodness knows what chemicals into my body.
Like almost everyone who starts smoking at a young age, i only began because i thought it looked cool and there was an element of danger about it as we posted a younger kid to act as a look-out as we stood behind the school art block. Getting caught would mean a caning from the headmaster and a letter home but i managed to avoid that fate but those few puffs around the back with the cool kids led onto a 20 a day habit that has stuck with me since.
I have tried giving up a few times, even managed it for 7 weeks once with a stopping smoking group where i got given a 'I've Quit' mug which came in handy in the morning for my coffee and cigarette when i started up again.
I have used patches, throat spray, lozenges, chewing gum and almost every type of quitting aid there is but deep down inside i never wanted to quit because i enjoyed the cigarette breaks at work. A chance to get away for 10 minutes every few hours, a reason to stand outside on your own and have a few minutes peace. So i knew i wouldn't quit but it made me feel good that i was trying, however half-arsed and fruitless i knew it was.
Things seemed to have changed with the e-cigarette though and i see more and more people stood around puffing on the things with the brightly coloured LED light and blowing out plumes of smoke, or vapour.
I made a few enquires but everybody had different ones and some that were dismissed as rubbish were raved about by other people and i admit the disposable 10 motives one i tried from TESCO was great for about 10 puffs and then i may as well have been puffing on a lolly stick as much use it was but i am reliably informed the cheap, shop bought ones are all the same and i needed to buy a proper kit so much reviewing of websites and forums later and i have ordered one.
There are much better reasons for stopping and if you ask anyone they will state they are doing it for their health, the expense or the smell it leaves behind on clothes and it is the craving that keeps them smoking.
For me it is the fag-breaks that keep me hooked so e-cigarettes could be the key for me to carry on slipping away outside for 10 minutes every few hours and blow smoke about.
How cool they look i don't know yet and looking cool is important because if it wasn't, most smokers wouldn't have started in the first place if they are being honest.

Are Green Day Punk?

As George said to Captain Blackadder, 'I'm as excited as a very excitable person who has a special reason to be excited' and it's all because Green Day have an album coming out in a few days but with each Green Day release, we get the inevitable question 'Are Green Day Punk?'
It's not easy to define Punk music, mostly guitar wailing, fast, hard-edged 3 minute songs that often have angry political or anti-establishment lyrics and Green Day, the early stuff anyway, fit comfortably into that description.
To those who were around in the early days of punk, Green Day are a million miles away from the original punk bands they listened to such as The Damned, The Ramones, Sex Pistols and The Clash, but isn't that the point?
The genre of 1977 should have evolved and spurned new sub-genres of punk almost 40 years later so we go from The Damned to bands like Green Day and Offspring today who in 2012 shouldn't be sounding like a 1970's band and how boring it would be if they did.
Kurt Cobain always considered Nirvana a punk band and Grunge should be considered as one of the styles of music to have come from, and be inspired by, the original punk which brings us back to Green Day.
Obviously their music is inspired by the early punk bands and there is a very clear line from those first bands through the decades to them today so you can call them pop-punk as most seem to, but are they punk?
The biggest argument against them is that they are mainstream and have sold something like 70 million records, have a play on Broadway and are all millionaires so how can they be punks but couldn't that be because they are a decent band singing songs people like to listen to?
You don't sell that many records or become that successful by being bad and singing songs people don't like, if you hit upon a sound that is liked by millions then only a fool would refuse all the rewards that came with that.
So is the Green Day sound punk? Yes, definitely inspired and in the tradition of punk music so to me they are punk, just the 2012 version of it as Nirvana were the 1991 and the Sex Pistols were the 1977 versions.

Watching America

It may go on forever but we are now moving into the end game of the American Presidential race and this is the bit where it starts to get good.
The passion showed by the audience always strikes me mainly because here nobody gets passionate about their political groups, at least not to this extent.
While Romney and Obama can call on some big names in entertainment to endorse them, even if they raise eyebrows like Clint Eastwood and the empty chair bizarreness, it is hard to find any entertainer in the UK who would put their head above the parapet for one of our political parties.
Then there is the enthusiasm shown at the party conferences with the over the top jingoism, flag waving and enthusisatic hand clapping. I have seem some tears as well and the last time a British politician made anyone cry was when they shut down yet another Remploy centre.
Then there are the attack ads which are brilliant and borderline mad ranging from 'Romney is a sociopath because he forcibly cut the hair of a gay teenager in high school' to 'Obama stops kids celebrating Christmas'. Brilliantly barmy.
My favourite part is when the two of them stop off at schools and colleges across the country to do some tub thumping and hand-pick the audience that is going to stand directly behind them in camera-shot and every colour and creed of person will be represented as if Romney doesn't have an Asian student somewhere behind him he will be accused of neglecting the Chinese Americans.
Then there are the Presidents wives who get there own spot to heap praise upon their husbands as if they would tell the listening public that he is a miserable sod who she wouldn't even trust to defrost the freezer let alone run a country. The right honourable Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, tried to raise her profile off the back of her husbands job and the press did a right job on her, digging down into her private life to put her back in her place and ridiculing her belief in crystals and leading to a tearful scene on TV when her purchase of two flats with the help of a convicted fraudster was exposed.
Finally it is the way that at some point each hopeful will have to set out how they will protect and fund the protection of another country, Israel, or face the wrath of their own countrymen and that which always amuses me. I don't think any leader of any other country anywhere else in the World has to appease the public of another country in order to gain the election in his own nation.
Yes it is long and mostly boring and in truth doesn't concern us but i do like the razzmatazz and the utter madness of the American election.

Otters To The Rescue

I knew if we waited long enough science would provide the answer to the rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that drive Global Warming and the Eureka moment has arrived courtesy of the University of Santa Cruz.
The answer is set out in a paper released called Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by professors Chris Wilmers and James Estes who have been looking back at the records over 40 years and concluded that the thing that could stop global warming and save us all are otters.
Here comes the science bit.
Kelp, a form of seaweed in the Oceans, absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but sea urchins eat the kelp in large quantities but otters eat the sea urchins so in otter rich environments, the sea urchins have the good sense to stay out their way and the kelp thrives and sucks in that nasty CO2 stuff.
They found that otters 'have a strong influence' on the cycle of CO2 storage and 'comparing kelp density with otters and kelp density without otters, we found that sea otters have a positive affect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins, a kelp grazer. When otters are around, sea urchins hide in crevices and eat kelp scraps. With no otters around, sea urchins graze voraciously on living kelp. Kelp is particularly efficient at sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis'.
So forget solar panels and wind turbines, the way to save us all is to look after the otter, our new favourite furry thing but i wouldn't give one a cuddle, it will rip your face off. Cute though.

Cabinet Reshuffle

The cabinet has been shuffled and let's see who has landed where.
David Laws is in as Education Minister after an enforced absence from front-line politics after standing down as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a post he held for just 17 days, after he was exposed of a 'serious breaches of the rules' by claiming £56,000 for rent he wasn't entitled to and paid to his partner, James Lundie.
Jeremy Hunt will take over as Health Secretary from Andrew Lansley, and will now oversee the implementation of the Health and Care Act which should make for some interesting meetings considering he put his name as co-author to a book called Direct Democracy, that argued that the NHS was no longer relevant and should be dismantled. His co-author was Daniel Hannan who sparked outrage when he went onto American Television and called the NHS 'A 60 year mistake'. Hunt also tried to remove the NHS tribute from Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony so the NHS sounds in a safe pair of hands there then.
Chris Grayling has moved from Employment minister to Justice Secretary and we can expect good things from him, especially with his homophobic ranting that Christian owners of bed and breakfasts should be allowed to prevent gay couples from staying in their homes.
The new Environment Secretary is Owen Paterson who's green credentials include supporting fracking and opposing wind farms.
All the top members in the big jobs stayed the same and Gideon remains in charge of the countries finances after doing such a fine job of managing them so far.
If the Labour Party and Ed Milliband cannot make political capital with this bunch of cheats, liars and shysters sitting opposite them, then they don't deserve to take over at all.

Booing Gideon

My new favourite highlight of the Paralympics came yesterday when the crowd at the Paralympics booed Chancellor George Osborne as it was announced he was to present the winners of the men's T38 400m race with their medals.
Gideon even laughed at first but looked very uncomfortable as it continued but what a bad choice of medal presenter, the man who has been merrily cutting the benefits of the disabled and to even have the brass neck to turn up in the first place, he must have had an inkling that he wouldn't be a popular choice.
Did make me laugh though, a priceless moment.

Paralympic Viewing Figures

The 2012 Paralympics is under way and the first viewing figures for Channel 4 who are showing 500 hours of coverage, are out and according to whether you are an executive for Channel 4, they are either wonderful or show that it hasn't captured the public gaze in the same way as its sister Olympic Games.
One of the highest audiences in Channel 4's history, 11 million viewers, saw Professor Stephen Hawking at the peak of the Paralympics opening ceremony, less than half of the 27 million who watched Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, on the BBC.
On the first day of competition, the largest Paralympics audience was 3.6 million, for the wheelchair basketball match between GB and Germany, again less than half than on the Olympics' first day.
The obvious reason is that while the BBC is advert free, Channel 4 which paid £9m for the Paralympic rights, is funded by advertising and although they released a statement saying that they are showing less adverts than usual, it has still managed to squeeze in the required four advert breaks a hour in the parts i have seen which i admit is nowhere near as much as i watched the Olympics.
So if we are not watching these Paralympics in the droves that watched the Olympics, why not?
Apart from the irritating advertisement breaks, some put it down to sport fatigue after a summer of sport that included not only the Olympics but the European Cup Finals and our attention spans for sport has already peaked.
Others freely admit to feeling uneasy watching disabled athletes and some put it down to no real 'superstars' to watch which i can agree with, with the exception of Oscar Pistorius and Ellie Simmonds, I would be struggling to come up with another name before the Paralympics started but i could reel off a host of athletes pre-Olympics.
The final reason is the Channel 4 coverage who despite 'borrowing' two BBC sport presenters, has been described in unflattering terms, especially the veteran Jon Snow who was widely slated for his opening ceremony commentary and the use of 'war' facts during introductions of countries rather than information about the athletes.
The number of broadcasters showing the Paralympics around the world is significantly less than that seen for the Olympics, and many are subscription television services and the newspapers are not dedicating pages and pages to the British athletes so while the profile of the Paralympics has been raised in Britain due to its home games status, and it is great that Channel 4 are averaging 2.5 million viewers a day for their Paralympic coverage, it is not firing our imaginations for some reason and that is with Team GB currently second in the medal table.

Tutu Sticks It To Dubya & Blair

The Bush/Blair era has cast a long shadow and just as Tony Blair was hoping to rehabilitate himself back into British politics, along comes Desmond Tutu to remind us just what Blair did as the junior partner to George W Bush.
Tutu pulled out of a South African conference on leadership last week because Blair, who was paid 2m rand (£150,000) for his time, was attending. Tutu had agreed to speak without a fee and he backed up that glorious snub with a magnificent broadside against the former UK Prime Minister and US President.
Tutu said: 'The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.
On these grounds, alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in The Hague. Even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.
Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope? Blair and Bush set an appalling example. If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?'
Desmond Tutu, well said sir!

History Says President Romney

When British politicians are called upon to embarrass their parties at conferences they tend to sing or recite poetry but the Republicans drag up a film star to talk to the furniture which to anyone outside of America just about sums up Mitt Romney who it is widely perceived over here as a bit of a comedy figure who is on a hiding to nothing but history suggests we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the man waking up as President this November.
An AP-GfK poll this week showed Obama on 47% with 46% favoring Romney but in the 10 swing states where the battle is won or lost, Obama is currently leading in 9 of them, if only slightly, so it is close but Obama does not have history on his side.
No president has ever won an election with his poll rating below 50% at this time of the election cycle and the last person to win an election with unemployment above 7.8% was in 1936, US unemployment today stands at 8.3%.
Some more damning statistics for the Obama re-election is consumer confidence which is measured by the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment survey, which shows consumer confidence is below the crucial 50 threshold and the incumbent lost in each of the prior three instances where this metric touched the 50 level: in 1975, 1979 and 1991.
Good news for Romney supporters but Ladbrokes still have Obama at 2/5, and Romney at 7/4 but there is a long way to go yet and much more furniture to be spoken to.