Saturday 26 January 2008

Bring On The Pies

The British government has had a great new idea to curb the rise in obesity across the nation. They are going to pay fat people to lose weight.

Not only is this an interesting way to penalise people for being healthy and spending their money on gym membership rather than deep fried pizza, it also strikes me that the system is ripe for abuse. Especially by me.

If you need me, I'll be eating my way through a branch of McDonald's. Per day. It's OK, because the government will pay me to lose the weight again, and in the meantime the NHS will pick up the tab for any obesity related illness I develop.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Saturday 19 January 2008

If Truth Be Told

I heard a story the other day of a man who was run down by a car as he was walking home from a party. He was on the pavement and the car was reversing into a driveway.

Understandably annoyed at the driver's lack of care and attention, he kicked out at the car. Whereupon the driver leaped out of the car and punched the still-prostrate man several times in the face. Then he got back into the car and reversed over the man again, breaking the man's leg.

Not unnaturally, the man called the police.

Question: What do you think the police did when they arrived?

If you answered 'arrested the driver' or 'nothing', you get to go and stand in the corner with the dunce's hat on.

The correct answer, of course, is 'they arrested the man for being drunk and disorderly'. Well, his breath smelled of alcohol and he couldn't stand up. Plus the driver told them that the man had kicked his car.

This might sound like a highly entertaining story, but it raises an important point. If the police had listened to both sides of the story and hadn't just assumed that what they were being told by one party was right, they would surely have reacted differently. There's a lesson for us all in this tale.

Sunday 13 January 2008

The Case For Unnatural Selection

One of the big issues in the news at the moment is organ donation. Specifically, whether people should have to opt out, rather than in, of the organ donation programme.

This morning, someone contacted Sky News to suggest that, if the Government made organ donation mandatory, they should pay for the donors' funerals. He must be the only person who thinks the plan was to kill people for their organs.

Still, it is an interesting way to raise the number of donors. We can start with the idiots...

Saturday 5 January 2008

Blaming it on the baby

I had an interesting time on the Saturday before Christmas.

First, I got dinged by a speed camera. In ordinary circumstances this would be slightly unfortunate, but the camera in question is practically at the bottom of my road and I just forgot it was there.

Then, en route to darkest Shropshire, I got a slow puncture. Apparently the tyre died of old age, which means I had probably been told it would need replacing soon and had forgotten.

Between these two things, I drove out of a motorway service station with my mobile phone on the roof of my car. I last saw it bouncing under the wheels of the car behind me on the M40.

A number of my friends, upon learning of this, have said I can blame this on having become a father recently. Problem is, I didn't even have the baby in the car at the time. But if having a child is an excuse for any mistakes, I shall take him with me everywhere from now on.