A Tale of Two Titties

AS the country wonders how Gordon Brown will use the swine flu outbreak as an excuse to put up taxes, Italy’s leader Silvio Berlusconi has other pre-occupations. Blonde, big breasted pre-occupations.
Brown is in the news for a) messing up the economy b) messing up the country.
Berlusconi is in the news for a) going to a blonde’s 18th birthday b)being fascinated by young women, as his wife, Veronica Lario, rather touchingly put it in an email to Italy's national news agency, Ansa. Which then found its way onto the front pages of most of Italy’s nationals a couple of days ago.
Ms Lario said old Silvio, who is more gaffe-prone than Prince Philip but always good value with it, was damaging the credibility of all Italian women with his wandering eye.
Which got me thinking, which would I rather have as a leader: a charmless, miserable Scot who breeds doom and gloom every time he opens his mouth, or a man who employs a former topless model as his equal opportunities minister (Mara Carfagna, pictured here)? (Let's face it, it doesn't make him a bad man).
It’s not a hard choice. As the world economy goes down the tubes and we’re all going to die of pig flu anyway, we might as well have a laugh while we can.

Victims of dog poo should cry foul

I have fallen victim to the menace of modern suburbia. Not burglary, car theft or the intense competition of making sure your lawn’s as neat and tidy as next door’s. But dog poo.
There’s loads of it. Everywhere. You can’t walk down the road without having to swerve your bike/feet/pushchair to avoid getting covered in the stuff.
There were 7.3 million dogs in Britain last year and the worrying this is the number is growing day by day. They crap, apparently, an estimated 1,000 tonnes of mess a day.
I am writing to my local councillors about it. But they’re liberal democrats so I won’t hold my breath (which is more than I can say when stepping out on to the street). They probably won’t want to offend the cuddly pooches. But I do. With a syringe and a nice bed time story.
The owners of these offending beasts are supposed to get an instant fine for not clearing up their beloved’s public mess but I’ll be staggered if anyone has actually ever been caught.
Let’s face it, it’s impossible to police because all the owner has to do, even in the face if an eye witness, is deny responsiblity for said turd and presto, we’re into expensive court hearings, solicitors etc which no authority has the desire, or spare cash, to persue.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve not seen a council poo inspector round my way and now the pavements are laden with the stuff.
There is a vaguely serious point here. If young kids pick up and eat dog faces they could die or go blind. There’s a thing called toxocariasis. It’s foul.
But that’s not important enough for self-regarding dog owners who have such scant regard for anyone else’s health or happiness they can’t bothered carrying a plastic bag around with them, is it?
Councils are doing their best. They have at least banned dogs from the local play areas and such and can’t be blamed for people’s abdication of responsibility.
But it's time for those who suffer in silence to make themselves heard and hit back.
I have, in my more wilder dreams, hatched a plan.
For the woman who walks around our way blindly letting her dogs do their business wherever they want without a pooper scooper in sight, I follow her home. And shit on her front door step.
I suggest those of you who are fed up being knee deep in dog mess do the same.
We may be fined. We may end up with a crimimal record.
But we’ll feel a whole lot better, in more ways than one.

To write or not to write: Experts doubt whether William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays

EVERYONE knows who wrote Hamlet, The Tempest and Twelfth Night, right? Well, it turns out we might all be wrong.
Exactly 393 years after his death, leading Shakespeare experts are calling for a definitive investigation to prove once and for all whether the Bard wrote his works.
Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, and the actor Sir Derek Jacobi, are among 1,535 people who have so far signed a “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” saying they believe others may have been responsible for penning Shakespeare’s most famous plays – potentially sending hundreds of years of literature teaching up in smoke and sending shockwaves through established academia.
Academics are split over the real authors of the plays, particularly Titus Andronicus, Henry VIII and Henry VI. Leading candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.
Those arguing against Shakespeare say that his lack of education and worldly experience would make it impossible for him to have the knowledge and vocabulary required for such extensive and detailed works.
Conspiracy theories as to whether Shakespeare wrote his most famous works are nothing new and have been rumbling around for centuries. Past doubters include Charlie Chaplin and Charles Dickens.
Now though attempts are now being made to clarify exactly who wrote what.
Mr Rylance, chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, voiced his doubts at a debate at Brunel University in London on Wednesday.
He said: “The simple way to put this is that I think you can be born with a genius in a certain area, be that writing, or music or painting, but you can't be born with the book learning or the life experience, you can't be born having travelled to Italy, or read books in all of the classical languages.
"You leave a trail in your life from where and how you pick these things up.
"With the man from Stratford we don't know how he gathered the life experience and book learning that's very, very apparent in the work attributed to him."
Mr Rylance and others who have signed the declaration are basing their evidence on testimony in the First Folio, a collection published in 1623 containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays. It included previously unpublished works such as The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Macbeth.
“I subscribe to the group theory. I don't think anybody could do it on their own," Sir Derek Jacobi, who recently won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance as Malvolio in Twelfth Night, said.
The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, home of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt, said the point of it was the “legitimize the issue in academia so students, teachers and professors can feel free to pursue” what is widely viwed in academia as a taboo subject.
Dr William Leahy, head who runs the world’s only MA in Shakespeare authorship studies at Brunel, told me that academics were becoming ever more sceptical about the authenticity of Stratford-Upon-Avon’s favourite son.
He said: “Mainstream academics are constantly chipping away at the edifice that one man could have written all those plays.”
Shakespeare’s works have been run through sophisticated databases checking phraseology and word sequence and there is plenty there that doesn’t match up, he said, adding the caveat: “It doesn’t prove anything other than making a case to be sceptical.
“If one person wrote all those plays they would have to be familiar with five different languages and a detailed knowledge of the classics. Given his background it is unlikely Shakespeare was in that position.
“He had a limited education and didn’t go to university so it’s all very unlikely.”
After all these years it would be extraordinary if Britain's most beloved playwright turned out to be a fraud.

Own goal by Burnham puts Hillsborough inquiry into the spotlight

IT was hard to know whether to laugh or cry as Andy Burnham took to the Anfield stage at the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough disaster on Wednesday.
A thoroughly moving occasion until then, the arrival of the Culture and Sport Secretary saw the mood switch from tearful remembrance to bitterness and anger.
If Burnham thought he would be welcomed with open arms just because he’s a Scouser and Everton fan then he was sorely mistaken.
A greater misjudgement was to think that he could hijack the occasion with politics; that Liverpool, being a safe Labour area, would be on side.
How it backfired. The first platitude on behalf of Prime Minister Gordon Brown sparked murmurings of discontent, which led like a fast approaching storm to 30,000 on their feet chanting at him “Justice for the 96.”



This was in reference to the families of the 96 victims for a full, frank and open inquiry into their loved ones’ deaths.
Despite a plethora of reports, investigations and an inquest, no-one has ever been held responsible for the catastrophic decisions made by the police on that sunny April day in 1989.

The Taylor report into the tragedy laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the South Yorkshire force, which faced with thousands of late arrivals causing a crush outside the stadium, not only opened the exit gate, allowing thousands of Liverpool fans to flood in, but then compounded their catastrophic error by channelling the human tidal wave straight into two pens of terracing that were already full to bursting.
The result: hundreds crushed, maimed and killed.
A single inquest on behalf of all victims returned a verdict of accidental death rather than unlawful killing, thus blocking attempts by the families to carry out a private prosecution.
A coroner’s hotly contested ruling that all the victims were dead by 3.15pm meant that no evidence after that time could be heard, meaning the police’s response to the unfolding disaster could not be fully investigated.
For 20 years the families had worked tirelessly in the face of Government opposition for a full inquiry into the day’s events.
They want answers. Why was the exit gate opened? Why were supporters channelled into pens already full rather than empty ones at each side? Did the police cover up evidence of their errors by altering their statements? Why were the 40 or so ambulances on stand-by outside not allowed in? What about a multitude of evidence suggesting many of the dead were still alive up to an hour after the game was stopped?
They want someone to be held responsible.

So when Burnham pitched up – when there was no reason for him to do so - there was only one thing he could say, which was to announce an inquiry; a proclamation that would have raised the roof.
There was a heightened sense that something might be said because he wasn’t even on the list to speak, but was a “last minute addition” to proceedings.
But he said nothing other than to dish out some bland niceties which meant nothing to anybody – and he was duly rounded on.
It wasn’t a personal attack on Burnham per se – successive Tory and Labour governments have refused to budge on the issue – but if he wasn’t there to make that announcement then what was he there for?
Ironically he has achieved exactly what he didn’t want to, and has done all his detractors a huge favour.
By sparking the barracking and protest (which wouldn’t have happened to anyone else), it bought sharply into focus the desire for an inquiry that his Government doesn’t want to hold.
He opened his mouth, the jeers started and the next days’ headlines were written.
As own goals go, it was a mighty fine effort.