The Importance of Being Idle

Great Questions In History

Its the summer-time, and that means the newspapers indulge in their traditional summer sport of embarrasing the British security services. This weeks scam involved a reporter pretending to be a cadet at Sandhurst military academy, and secretly filming Prince Harry! *gasp* More shockingly still, he was, at times, carrying a 'fake bomb'. Now, there are two things worthy of note here. Firstly, if you want to fool British security services then you all you have to do is tell a lie, and they will be completely flummoxed. I think that's largely to do with the fact that we're British and just don't go in for that sort of thing *ahem*, and damn it but we just expect the same from Johnny Foreigner. The second thing is a 'fake bomb'. This seems to come up quite a lot in what the tabloids laughingly call journalism these days, and I wonder what exactly comprises a fake bomb. I mean, how much effort has gone into it? Is it just that the journalist decides that, I dunno, his pen is suddenly a bomb and *shock horror!* nobody around him realises this? Does he have an empty cardboard box with the word B O M B written in crayon on the outside? Is it a crude construction of chicekn wire and papier mache? Or does he have an elborately constructed actual honest to god real bomb that is missing one crucial component that renders it an overly complex bookend? I have no idea, I just wonder that's all. I mean they always make such a fuss over the fact that nobody ever notices this fake bomb, but I just wonder if it has any actual qualities that'd make you think it was a bomb (like explosives, for instance, which the sniffer dogs could actually detect) or is it all just a stupid lie? My guess is stupid lie, but I'd be interested to know the truth.
The other funny item in the news these days is France picking a fight with us over the EU rebate. We've had this rebate for twenty odd years now (oddly enough we're not keen on a national level to subside French agriculture) and while the rest of Europe always looks at us funny at the big get togethers, nobody's ever done anything about it. However as Chirac has accidentally gutted the whole European project by failing to achieve a yes vote in his country's constitutional referendum, which has prompted a pretty massive Europe wide political crisis, he has wisely decided to distract everybody by going "Look! Britain gets a tax rebate!" like nobody had ever noticed that before. Its such a transparent ruse that its actually quite depressing that its working and demonising Britain throughout Europe once more. Sadly it seems this whole EU summit is going to be spent pointlessly arguing about a budget that doesn't even need to be ratified until 2007, while there are more immediate problems right in front of us in the here and now.
It's lunchtime and I haven't done a single bloody thing all morning (well, I played Call of Duty quite a bit, but that's not especially productive). That's not really a good way to start the day is it?
Blah.

posted by BadMonkey @ 12:06 PM