A Full Life

And after a while – with my mother tearing out the hair I’m surprised didn’t fall of its own accord years ago, and my auntie and I playing good cop / bad cop to the duty Doctor’s idea of palliative care – my Nan is finally on morphine.

If it wasn’t for the wonderfully compassionate carers at the home, I’m pretty sure we’d be utterly lost.

There’s little point in ranting on here (he said, before ranting on.) We treat dying animals better than we do dying people. I haven’t yet met a person of faith to convince me that any of their holy books are worth the paper I wipe my arse with, but it seems that as wonderful as science is, technology is torture without morality.

I’m not talking about the morals some guy brings down a mountain, or whatever, but of the ideas and ideals we must take a firm hold of and shake when medicine prolongs the body, but not the mind. Continue reading “A Full Life” →

February 24, 2012 4

Exclusive: Cleveland Police Ill-Prepared for Apocalypse

I don’t want to alarm anyone living in Middlesbrough any more than they already will be – having woken up and, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, remembered that they live in Middlesbrough – but far from ‘Putting People First’, Cleveland Police doesn’t have your back; in fact it would appear that they are perfectly content for you and your loved ones to burn in the fires of prophecy.

I put in a Freedom of Information request last month to their HQ; I found a popular template, which helped make me sound smart, and added my query, which didn’t: Continue reading “Exclusive: Cleveland Police Ill-Prepared for Apocalypse” →

February 11, 2012 8

Magnetic Gandhi

I read an interesting article the other day in which Stewart Lee raises a terrifying argument about Scottish Independence; a point summed up succinctly in the sub heading: The loss of 5.5 million Scots would mean 5.5 million fewer voices to say no to Cameron’s cronies. As you may know, there are more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs.

Now I was living in Glasgow last year and I voted for Alex Salmond’s SNP, thinking it a good thing as I’d recently walked up the Wallace Monument and had rekindled a healthy sense of colonial guilt; instead, it turns out I was shooting myself and every other red-blooded English liberal in the foot. Continue reading “Magnetic Gandhi” →

February 9, 2012 3

Me, Talking

These next two tracks were exercises both in writing for broadcast and recording. I can only hope that the subjects were made up, but even so, pieces of a baby found flushed down a toilet? Really? I didn’t realise Bret Easton Ellis was writing NCTJ exams.

I think these examples of my effete lisp are proof positive that should this journalism malarky go to the dogs, there’s always work for me in pre-war Hampshire commentating lawn bowls.

On an almost unrelated note, would any Teesside based single ladies over the age of thirty that could imagine this voice, tinged with impatience, slurring suggestions of a sexual nature through their letterbox at 3am please get in contact. Please. Continue reading “Me, Talking” →

February 8, 2012 6