What’s going on with the car industry in America? Americans falling out of love with their ultimate symbol of freedom? They just aren’t buying American made cars any more, apparently. They want Jap cars or German cars or Swedish cars and the only British cars which make it across the pond are no longer British owned and at the luxury end of the market. Even Chrysler has been bought out by the Germans and is now called Daimler-Chrysler.
Somehow, the new world order is commercially inspired. What Hitler and Hirohito tried to accomplish in the forties has been a walk over since VE and VJ day. How can that be? What happened to the industry in the west? What happened to western technology? Is it that we were lazy or complacent or under-invested or was it just a case of pure arrogance that western manufacturers expected their customers make do. I remember in the '70s comparing a new Sony sound system with a British made system. There was no comparison. The Sony was well made, solid and good to look at. It was cheaper too. It was like comparing a race horse and a Donkey. The Japanese had clearly looked at our technology and our market demands and decided that they could build it better and make it cheaper and sexier. They were hungry! Meanwhile our manufacturers played at it and rested on their laurels.


In the late '70s I remember the launch of the Austin Metro, in fact I was at its launch. A friend of mine had a hire car business and bought a new fleet each year. They invited him to test drive the latest offering from the British motor industry on the Isle of Man and I went along for the ride. I saw its ultimate demise right then and there. Here was a car that was meant to compete with the likes of the new Golf and the Passat, the Fiat Uno, the Panda etc. It didn’t have a chance. It had for a start, an engine that was thirty years old and barely updated. It was noisy, clunky and rough. The windows and seals were crap. The suspension was lifeless. The paint finish poor.


What struck me most was that viewed from certain angles, it looked clumsy and as sexy as a huge fat arse on a milkmaid’s stool. The bodywork hung over the wheels, somehow a non-integral adornment. A flat, fat rear end and a very un-sexy wedge front that didn’t work. It was the most embarrassing piece of junk you ever saw. Parked next to a Golf, it looked ridiculous. It attracted a certain type. It attracted Middle-Englanders. You could spot them a mile away; grey hair, comfortable means, cardigans, dried flower displays, tweeds, buns, plaid, corduroy, the wives of retired brigadiers, old money, English, very very English plodders. Loyal to the brand. Then you could spot the golf owners. Smart, well off, new money, style conscious, sexy, young, thrusting, and quick. People in a hurry wanting cache.


What’s more the Golf was reliable. It started easily on cold mornings. It’s engine didn’t labour when pulling up a hill more than 1 in 50 and was smooth, nippy and went round corners level - unlike the rolling Metro. It wasn’t an embarrassment.


The Golf sounded the death nell for the British car industry. That the name Rover lasted as long as it did is a wonder and at the end, the bottom of the range of Rover cars was still the old Metro in a different incarnation whilst at the top there was a Honda designed executive Rover which probably died because once more it said “Suitable for slow, boring, middle aged Middle-Englanders and cabinet members”, and hadn’t been updated for years.

The American market has fallen foul of the same principles. They haven’t moved with the times and thought they could get away with it. Though their cars are more reliable and sexy, they have been stuck in this rut of producing the gas guzzling monsters at a time when as a nation, they have become environmentally aware – with the exception of George 'Head-up-his-Arse' Bush who has been bought by big business and thinks global warming is a fable. When he’s wrong, it’ll be too late but by then, there’ll be a new President and he’ll be doing lucrative lecture tours and business trips glad-handing the clients of his old company Haliburton.


No, what young Americans demand is better value for money. They want the Japanese cars that do 60 miles to the gallon not 6. They’ve seen the film The Day After Tomorrow and it’s made them think. We should all think. Of course it would be sad to see the disappearance of American cars. Jim Rockford would not have looked nearly so cool arriving to an investigation in a Honda Civic. And neither would Horatio Cane in CSI Miami. That Hummer looks like he means business. But there must be an adjustment and rethink within their industry if they are to survive the onslaught of the Germans, the Swedes and the Japanese, not to mention the Koreans and soon the Chinese who you can bet your life will make it faster, more reliable and a lot cheaper.


It really is time for a rethink, don’t you think?

The news that Silvio Berlesconi is to abstain from sex until the Italians have had their election would come as little surprise to the Chinese, "Surely an election is essential when indulging in sex." However it threw me right off my stride. Until that moment I had never pictured the robust little Italian Premier in anything less than a dark suit. Now I am stuck with the mental image of Il Pomadoro naked, doing the Mussolini shuffle with some ravishing raven haired temptress... or even his wife. Let's face it the guy isn't Brad Pitt. He isn't even Ken Barlowe. He's more your slimmed down John Precott, only more articulate.... and better dressed, and more cultured and.... you know what, he's nothing like John Precott either. However, he doesn't come across - to me at least - as a sexual athlete which is as it should be. A Keen observer perhaps or a student of the pornographic arts perhaps but Conan the Horny, I think not.
That having been said, he is rich. He's got boodles of money and that of course makes him attractive to women who otherwise would stand at a distance saying things like, "...you've got to be kidding... with that?"

Now I can see this guy dressed in loose fitting pants with just a vest and a fag hanging from his bottom lip, sitting on a stool sipping red wine in a shaded bar in a Sicilian town like Corleone. I just don't want to picture him in the nip, his pimpled Italian butt, all hairy rising and falling with the rythm of a Texas nodding donkey. That body fluids would come from him, could come from him just makes me want to run for the nearest bucket. It makes you realise that... politicians screw. (Well they've been doing it to the people I guess so why not at home) But the fact is I don't want to know they do it. I just don't want to go to bed, turn the light off and be stuck with a mental image of Anne Widecombe in flagrante. I don't want the nightmare of John Prescott's groin negotiating his wife's hairdo for a blowjob. The idea that Tony and Cherie put it together is too appalling to think of and the notion that Gordon Brown didn't use artificial insemination to get his wife pregnant.... again.... just makes me want to put my fingers in my ears and mouthe incoherent nonsense to numb the pain. So please, politicians everywhere, if you're going to do anything involving sex... please do it in private and leave those of us who aren't getting any to our more exciting fantasies... please!

"WHO WANTS A BABY?" - Reality TV, REALLY?
Yeah so it was just a scam, or an exercise to see how low TV execs would sink to get ratings but they damn near pulled it off. The response from buyers for the show was astounding and people were queuing for a chance to lay and get layed by a complete stranger and ipso facto, make a baby.

No its a true story, check it out for yourselves at the BBC News site. Just how gross will people be in the pursuit of the two things on offer here:
1. The money

2. The fame
Just how base is the desire to have someone come up and ask for your autograph. To think that at the Cannes TV sales fair the BBC producers who had no intention of going through with the idea were almost swept off their feet by the enthusiasm of other networks eager to sign it up. Bizarre! I mean at the end of all this there's a baby, a child, a person. Just what would they tell him or her when they were old enough. Yes kid you were the apple of our eye and hey, it made us famous, now shut up and stop annoying us! So just what will they come up with next in the reality scramble for ratings.


What about "Check Out My Dump!" contestants compete to see who has the best formed excrement over a period of two weeks. First one with constipation or diarrhoea is expelled from the latrine. They could have a house shaped like an intestine and fart, wee and poo gags would keep us in fits for hours. They could discuss the merits of their diets and what diet produces the best formed turds. They could freeze dry them and sell them in the gift shop direct to the adoring public hovering outside (where do they find all those idiots who do that on Big Brother, renta-a-clot?).

You just gotta brace yourselves because for sure it will have to something gross as the public are getting used to the now very dry boring sameness of the Big Brother house. I know! What about a house full of second rate, over the hill, shop soiled politicians (no shortage of them) where they have to train as gladiators and one by one kill each other until there is only one left. Yeah, I like the sound of that. "I'm Spartacus..." "No I farted first..." Whatever!

Want to know where your UK taxes go?
Well it seems the government plan to give white van man lessons on how to drive. They want him to be more considerate. White hair man, Alistaire Darling (isn't he though) said it would be good for everyone. Yes darling it will, except we don't see how you're going to get the white van men that need it in to the training centres.

You'll get the drivers who don't need it without any trouble, quiet, stable older men who get on with the job and cause very little trouble. In fact men who don't need further training. As for the others, well how are you going to convince them that their dicks aren't an integral part of their engine. Macho men - usually small guys with pin heads and close cropped hair whose outlet for aggression is tailgating at 70 miles an hour and being faster than any other car on the road. Hey haven't you heard, they own the road.


Well it's a joint deal with minicab drivers and lorries. Everyone else is just an amateur with no right to be in front of them. Often they have dark glasses to make them look cool (in a white van?) yes! They think they look cool. Let them go on thinking it. It's good for a laugh. Some have put alloy wheels on their little Escort HiTops. All wear polo shirts (obligatory) carry copies of the Sun or Mirror and constantly chew gum.


Of course minicab drivers have the right not to signal, to drive in the middle of two lane highways and to ignore traffic signs. Lorry drivers of course have the right to pull out on you without consulting their mirrors when you're about to overtake them, tailgate you on motorways and block the outside lane of a two lane highway when trying to overtake another lorry going one mile an hour slower. They also, by reason of their size, have no problem nearly causing an accident by bullying their bulk at you as they know they'll always come off better, (Eddie Stobart lorries are an exception to this rule).


Well good luck darling with this scheme. Sounds like tax money well spent and if it satisfies you as we know you hate white vans and have constant run-ins with them, then its a good thing. Right!

Uh-Oh!


So the Russians reckon they have found UK diplomats listening to subversive rocks. Mmm! Sounds interesting. So what's the general idea? It goes like this: Someone - allegedly a member of a Russian NGO (non-governmental organisation) - leaves a transmitter in a fake rock on the Russian streets then a diplomat passes with his Palm top device and downloads what? Noises of feet on tarmac, Russian street cleaners farting after a night on the turnips? Snippets of chit chat Russian style "Hey Boris, I see Borscht is big news in London these days. Though here at the Kremlin they have the taste of Brown Windsor." "Da, and did you know that there are great deals at Harvey Nichols in the January sales." This of course would be some sort of highly secretive code.


Sure, it makes so much sense of course in these days of advanced technolgy, ultra high frequency microwave transmissions, mobile communications and the internet with its Trojan horses, piggy-backing and the vast number of ways of cloaking and encrypting information, that spies would resort instead to picking up their information in full public view in dark vans with tinted windows and listening devices and guys in dark glasses dressed in black talking in thick accents. "I say, it's a lovely day, let's not stay cooped up in this office gathering our information through high powered electronic devices. Let's take our Palm tops down into the street."
You can't help but wonder what Hollywood script they're working from. Any moment now you can expect to hear that Governor Schwarznegger has suddenly swept into the scene, complete with dodgy accent and his well worn acting ability, Uzi in hand to single-handedly wipe out the Kremlin, half the Russian army and battle the evil Cossack forces whilst dangling from an attack helicopter in Red Square.

Meanwhile in some Budapest Hotel, James Bond will be propping up the bar waiting for a signal from Q to get involved, chewing the unlit end of an empty cigarette holder - since he seems to have quit - whilst sipping his third Vodka and Yakult - whisked not blended - whilst checking the rubbber band on his Tony Blair approved environmentally sound catapult. I don't think so. Come on Vladimir. What's the deal here? Razzing up your people to distrust the west again it looks like? If not, well what then. Something's going on. It all smacks of KGB sledgehammer PR. Hey spies, here's an idea; Why not try putting a microdot into a news paper and using a rubbish bin as a sort of... well what should we call it... a dead letter box. "Come and get it, Burberry macs and trilbys making a come back, come and get it!..."