From the age of four I was told repeatedly that wet hair would kill me. Yes, kill me. Not harm me, or hurt me, but kill me. “You’ll catch a death!” were the words that really struck fear into my small mind. Wet hair beat plane crashes, car crashes and farming accidents hands down according to my parents. This was what made me terrified of having wet hair at all conscious times. Because of all that I was the only boy in our street who refused to leave the house until the water content in his hair was less than that of stone. My hair not only suffered for it, but my reputation too: relationships with females were tangled, nasty, horrendous affairs! At school, you see, my hair was the wispy, massively fine stuff of legend. That was how it remained until I was a young teenager, and playground gossip started to seep into my head: what if wet hair isn’t really a killer? I thought. What if then!?

Fortunately, the guys and girls at Enigin are about to dispel any myths you may have brought with you into adulthood.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on advertising, but I feel like I know a lot more than I did after reading this post. And it was actually fun too! Which makes a change I can tell you.

If business is your thing, then you could do far worse than to head on over to the Enigin site.

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This is a post you want to read if you find yourself moaning about the weather, yet unable to really believe that all the garbage us humans have bled in to the atmosphere in the last few hundred years is actually doing any harm.

Well, it is, of course. That goes without saying—you only need look at the glaciers for a shocking slap in the face of how bad the situation really is. But Enigin, as do most people in the energy-saving business, understand why you don’t understand, that’s the refreshing thing. They understand that it isn’t generally because you don’t want to, but rather because there are as many people in high places who think Global Warming is rubbish as there are those who believe in it.

One subject brought up at the aforementioned post is the intense fury which rages—and rages like hell-fire if you’re in the UK—whenever two centimetres of (thoroughly pathetic) snow descends on places ill equipped with salt (which is everywhere in the UK, as we all know). Yes, we all moan when we can’t drive our smog-chugging vehicles, yet at the same we are missing the bigger picture.

But who knows, maybe Us in the UK are luckier than those in New York, a place so adept in dealing with snow that life continues on as per usual with no American batting more than an eye-lid. By having to deal with terrible transport networks at least it gets us thinking: how can we stop the snow in the future? How can we start to decrease the threat of Global Warming?

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The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keith Starmer, has announced that three Labour MPs, along with a Conservative peer, are to face criminal charges under the Theft Act. Whilst this in itself is welcome news it is a drop in the ocean when compared to the systemic abuse (some might say fraud) of the expenses system.

When the story broke last year in The Telegraph the public were quite rightly shocked at the scale of the claims and the sheer number of claims that seemed to be outside of the spirit of the law if not the wording of the law (the ’flip-flopping’ of homes, for example, and ’employing’ family members as assistants). MPs were shocked as well: shocked at getting found out! Totally missing the mood of public fury (one MP was forced into resigning after saying that voters were ’jealous’ of his designer kitchen accessories), our elected representatives instead protested that they didn’t get paid enough and that it was disgraceful that this information had been leaked.

Let us get one thing straight: these invidious practices have been common for many years, decades even, and if The Telegraph, aided by their courageous whistle-blower, had not brought this matter to light then the duplicity would have continued unabated. The words of contrition from some MPs are weasel words that have been forced from them by party leaders wary of a public backlash at the impending General Election.

The scale of the abuse is staggering: 390 MPs are being forced to grudgingly pay back £1.12m that was falsely claimed. You can get an awful lot of duck houses for that money! That means that over half of our MPs were fiddling their expenses, these are the men and women that we elect to make and enforce the laws of the land! Even after being found with their hands in the till they squirm and wriggle and try to get out of it whilst repaying as little as possible!

If the average Joe in the street had been caught inflating their expenses to such a fragrant extent then they would be sacked: if they had been claiming thousands of pounds over a period of years for a mortgage that did not exist then I would not expect them to have to pay it back, I would expect them to be arrested!

This is tax payers money that has been used and abused, from the overstretched pockets of you and I. Our brave troops in the Middle East, so we are told, are being sent to fight without armour, without boots! Well, we can see clearly where some of the deficit in the defence budget has ended up!

Three MPs are rightly having their collar felt, but it seems to me that many more have had a lucky escape. They can call my comments treason, lock me up in the Tower and throw away the key if they like: just think how much I could claim in expenses for my time there!

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It’s much worse than I thought! I thought. This is truly the stuff of the worst crimes against mankind! (Looking back it probably wasn’t quite that bad.)

And yes, at first I decided it was because I was an Auslander—foreigner—but then, stepping up my covert investigations, and gleaning information from my crack team, I found that had nothing to do with it; simply put, the thing I am talking about seems to be a direct assault on the German public–A method of implementing measured psychological anguish. Control, in other words. The government have eyes everywhere!

This is what I am referring to: every time I went through the till, no matter if I’d seen the cashier before or not, she, or he—both sexes proved to be just as bad as each other—would totally refuse to drop the change into my hand! As if I were an infected leper! I would hold my hand out and they would cleverly avert their eyes, cough, or use some other professionally practiced method to distract me, and then drop the money into a little plastic bowl in the counter! I would then feel like a right berk, having to stand there for five or six long and terrible minutes mucking about, trying to scrape the money out, during which time the cashier would shrug and sigh, along with the people waiting in line behind me!

And they think that teaching overseas is a waste of time. To be fair though, I haven’t actually had anymore luck with British cashiers being any good…

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In 1990, the BBC aired a brilliant three-part adaption of Jeanette Winterson’s, ‘Oranges are not the only Fruit’. It caused quite a who-ha at the time because it dealt with a young girl having a lesbian relationship; although, this was far from being the only controversial part of the story.

Yes, it did explore the pain and difficulty of becoming aware of gay/bi-sexual tendencies; but it also looked into religious matters and the danger of some churches. When does a faith become a cult? And when does a cult become occult? Some of the behaviour by the ‘Christians’ in this drama will make the hairs stand up on your neck. One sequence (an ‘exorcism’) shows Jess being tied up with ‘the cords of love’ as part of a bizarre ceremony before she is prayed over by several members of the congregation.

‘Oranges are not the only Fruit’ is rich with quality acting. Both of the actresses who play Jess (first young and then older) are absolutely brilliant, Jess’ mother (Geraldine McEwan) is both disturbed and disturbing, whilst the Pastor (Kenneth Cranham) is downright bloody scary.

This really was great television. It is such an excellent story and was transferred from book to screen by the very best person of all; the author. If only this was done more often. I’m sure most writers would happily work directly on an adaption of their novel rather than seeing it turned into something totally different (and often inferior).

For several years there have been rumours floating around that Jeanette Winterson’s story is semi-autobiographical. Whether or not this is true, we may never get to know. But what does it actually matter anyway?

I can’t believe it’s twenty years since this was first on television! As far as I know, the BBC has only ever repeated it on one occasion. What a shame.

I need some input from all of you on this one, I was talking to my girlfriend the other weekend and she asked me to visit this site on Smartlipo. I am under the impression she is actually thinking about getting this done. How do I undertake the subject of saying that she shouldn’t really go through with it and she should try a healthier alternative of shedding weight first

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All of Britain has been sickened by details of the ’Doncaster Devil Boys’, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8476363.stm), but as the initial revulsion subsides we all have to think long and hard about what lessons we can learn and how to prevent it happening again.

It is almost beyond belief that two brothers, two youngsters aged just 10 and 11, could carry out such a sadistic attack that saw their victims tortured and left for dead. When asked by police why they had stopped the attack they said that it was because their arms were tired! They went on to say, when they weren’t too busy blaming each other for the monstrosity, that they would have carried on and killed them if they hadn’t got tired. Apparently, their defence was that they had carried out the attacks because they were bored and ’there was nothing else to do’.

Of course the incident has horrific echoes of the Jamie Bulger case when the young child was tragically and terribly killed by two young boys. It is my opinion, horrible though it is to have to admit it, that we can expect such disgusting things to happen with increasing frequency as we continue to struggle in Broken Britain.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, gave a press conference yesterday saying that this Doncaster tragedy shows that Broken Britain needs mending. He was immediately slapped down of course by Labour politicians who twist facts to show how we are seemingly safer than ever, but whilst it could never be said that I am a natural Conservative sympathiser I am in total agreement with Cameron on this one.

I don’t care what ’official statistics’ say, I go on what I see and feel everyday and I know that this once great country is going downhill. The reason for this is the erosion of family values and basic morals over the last decade or two. This has nothing to do with a persons race, religion or social background but it has everything to do with how people interact with their fellow human beings.

It used to be important to think of others needs, now it seems to be self, self, self. We are bombarded with media images telling us all to strive for riches and power, young girls are constantly given the idea that it is better to be beautiful than iut is to be kind or intelligent.

When children routinely had two parents to look after them then there was more chance of a stabilisng influence, somebody to teach them right and wrong. Now it seems that a majority of youngsters have either one parent or four parents spread between two warring families and this is no basis on which to raise children. Many households see children being raised by a Nintendo. Parents are increasingly putting their own feelings and desires first, if they get bored in a relationship they move on and cry crocodile tears for the children they leave torn apart.

The two unnamed terrors from Doncaster are undoubtedly evil to the bone but they have not been helped by their circumstances and upbringing. It is good to hear that the CPS and police are looking at charging the parents of the two boys but it is too little too late. We need to wake up and accept that some poor specimens of human beings are not capable of being parents. Men and women who routinely drink to excess and take drugs in front of their offspring, even giving drugs to their children, should lose their right to have children and the youngsters should be taken from them and never returned.

Britain is broken and lives are being shattered in thousands of homes every day. We need to mend it now: encourage parents to stick together; remove children immediately from neglectful or abusive parents; encourage children to read and learn instead of sticking them in front of computers; instill an ethos where people are encouraged to work hard rather than wait for a lottery win. The most important thing is that we need a real deterrent for the low-life types that are over running us. Sentencing needs to be stiff and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be jail! If we don’t have enough prisons let’s get people back to work and build them! I am fed up of living in Broken Britain, let’s all break the cycle of hatred and rebuild our country with love for each other!

So, as I am sure I have told you when I am not at work writing, I am revamping my digs and on that note, I have just bought the lovliest new set of shutters! They were quite a lot of money but totally worth it, not to mention the girlfriend has finally shut up about the ratty curtains.

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It is very easy to forget just how lucky we are to live in Britain. We are constantly complaining about all manner of things, but the truth is there is actually very little to be disgruntled about.

One of our biggest gripes is the weather. Okay, so we have floods sometimes but they are not quite the same as a tsunami, are they? And sometimes we may get gale force winds, but that is a little bit different to a tornado!

We do not live in a country where people are dying of starvation. In Britain, even the people who are unfortunate enough to find themselves on the streets can always get something to eat. I do not mean to sound harsh by saying that at all. No-one wants to be homeless, but there is always somewhere to go; soup kitchens, churches or special help centres. It is very different to living in a country that is ruled by famine.

Another thing we should be thankful for is the National Health Service. Yeah, I know, we all say how crap it is, but we still have it in place! Imagine how awful things would be here if we didn’t have one…

There are a great many reasons why we are so lucky to be living in Britain. It is far from ideal, but nowhere on Earth is perfect. And I haven’t even mentioned the way in which we are most fortunate of all…

In many countries you will be persecuted, tortured or even put to death merely for your beliefs. In Britain, we can not only choose to believe whatever we want, but we also have freedom of speech. Even if we want to think that the world is under the control of Google, (which sometimes it seems it is) then we can do. Freedom that allows us to speak our minds and to have our own opinions is often taken for granted.

Next time we want to have a moan about something, we should take stock of how fortunate we actually are.

By the way, how does the idea of a ski chalets online contest sound to everyone? You guys should really put your names forward, this would be such a cool way way to spend a bit of the winter!

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In February of 1972, Neil Young released his fourth solo album, ‘Harvest’. It was to be one of his greatest achievements and it has proved to be phenomenally popular even to this day.

‘Harvest’ was close to never coming about at all. Leading up to it, Young had spent months in bed with a serious back problem. He wrote many of the tracks whilst being immobilised. Even during the actual recording of the album he had to be ‘propped up’ a lot of the time whist singing and playing guitar.

Neil Young has never wanted to be a ‘star’ in the normal sense of the word and when ‘Heart of Gold’ proved to be an incredibly popular single he quickly had a rethink. He is famously quoted as saying that it; ‘put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.’

In 2007, ‘Harvest’ was named as being the ‘number one Canadian album of all time’ in Bob Mersereau’s, The Top 100 Canadian Albums. There is no denying that when Young made this record he captured something incredibly special. Most of his fans still rate it as being his greatest work and anyone who likes Folk-Rock will have it in their collection.

The tracks run through in a totally fluid way right from the lazy beat of, ‘Out on The Weekend’ to the melancholy, ‘Words’. Stand-out tracks (in a ‘I’d love to be able to play like that’ way) include; ‘Old Man’, ‘Harvest’ and ‘A Man Needs a Maid’. The other track well worth a mention is, ‘The Needle and The Damage Done’. Young wrote this about the musicians who have been lost to heroin.

Out of the forty-odd years of Neil Young’s career, ‘Harvest’ has always stood out. It is extremely atmospheric and when you listen to it you can almost smell the dust in his barn, where it was recorded.

I have just updated the design on the email marketing software page, I am kind of starting to think I should have left it. And before you say anything Lesley, yes we all know that you could have done it better…

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Thanks for understanding

Chris

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