And There Goes September. Grumpy's Alternative News.

Another daft month. So what's new! Where do we start.
Animals are always interesting.
I read that you are more likely to see a fox in an urban garden than in the country.(Almost 40 per cent as against 23.)I'm not really surprised, we have no guns in the town.Well, not many!
I see the villagers in Carhampton, Somerset are fed up because pigs keep digging up the graveyard.Lucky pigs, certainly luckier than Ben, a labrador from Beaumaris who weighed seventy kilos. Rescued by the RSPCA, he has already lost four and a half kilos. Equally fortunate Clyde the cat that travelled 2000 miles from his home in Tasmania to Cloncurry in the Outback.(Including 185 miles across the Bass Strait.)
I often think animals are preferable to humans. Certainly not as stupid. I can forgive the lady in Wythenshawe who took a hand grenade she found in her loft to the police station, causing it to be evacuated. For the ladies are often not as cowardly as we men. But the fugitive in Kansas who took two hostages was not the brightest. He dozed off after they gave him a pillow and blankets. And did the man growing cannabis on the central reservation of the Athens-Salonika motorway really expect to get away with it? They were nearly six feet tall prior to harvesting. Plus Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the freed Lockerbie bomber had his first visitors in hospital. a delegation of 150 African MP's. It is said he looked very ill. No wonder, I know how I felt when three came at once to see me in The Derby Royal Infirmary.
I see The Prince of Wale's organic biscuits are to be marketed by Waitrose as 'Duchy Originals from Waitrose'. (General opinion, expensive and rather naff.) The Right Reverend Stephen Cottrell announced to the nation that if Jesus were alive today he would shop at Asda or Aldi. Though Neil Stanfield, the boss of Onefood-the One, also called Swaddles Organic, suppliers of so called organic food to the likes of Fortnum and Mason might not agree. He bought his produce, non organic from Waitrose and Tesco and repackaged it. Simple when you know how!
I have, like many of you no doubt a complete mistrust of those in power at all levels. Not surprising when a government decides that people who walk other people's children to school need police checks.(The government will no doubt drop such nannying interference in the light of public disbelief and mirth.)
Is it any wonder when the Scout Association in its infinite wisdom decrees that Boy Scouts must no longer take a penknife to their scout camp. Give people power, put them on a committee and sense seems to vanish.
McDonalds spend millions fighting a Malayan restaurant because they dared to call their establishment McCurry. Despite their size and mighty lawyers, McDonald's lost.Power seems for some to suggest importance and immunity from good sense.
The Forest of Dean Council falsifies photographs as evidence in a parking dispute. They are caught out but no one loses their job. Rochdale Council in its wisdom allows five minutes 'lift time' as a 'perk', amounting to twenty hours a year for some in high rise offices.
Now to confess a personal interest in the 'power and authority' stakes. In the summer we, my wife and I received a parking ticket on a car park in Wales. My appeals have been, in my opinion, dealt with in an arrogant, dismissive manner. (More later, I am now in the hands of the Welsh Ombudsman.)
One final comment on stupid misuse of power, funny but pathetic. A certain authority, concerned that children's reaction in their canteens to that evergreen favourite 'Spotted Dick' was not acceptable (they're children for goodness sake) has solemnly declared that hence forth the dish will now be known as, wait for it, 'Spotted Richard'. You couldn't make it up! It was, of course a Welsh authority. (Lest anyone think I have it in for the Welsh, the people not in authority were kindness personified.)
One last titbit from the month of September that I couldn't resist. Please excuse the bad taste.
A Turkish woman accused of cutting off her lover's penis must wait eighteen months for verdict and sentence until a court determines whether the reattached organ still functions.
The mind boggles. They're lucky not to be at the mercy of petty British officials.

Comments welcome, please keep them clean!