Thursday, April 06, 2006

The Blair witch project

I’m a cause without a rebel today: I have nothing to complain about, and you’d be amazed how complaint-inducing that can be. Well there is one thing: it’s about people who make T-shirts and sew scratchy labels on the inside. Are they sadists, road-testing a new torture for the CIA, or what? Or do I just have delicate skin?
I am also an impostor: blog-sitting for my son and pretending to be him. He says I’m him without the swearing. (Didn’t know I swore all that much.) But one day he will realise that, having abjured swearing in front of your kids for their first 16 or more years, it’s hard to kick the habit. But they probably know it already - I passed a junior school yesterday where a mixed-gender basketball game was going on and the language would have made an ITV scriptwriter blush.
The worrying thing about proxy-blogging is that, since son’s posts are getting shorter, I’m wondering if I should add something of my own and pretend it’s his, so people won't think they're getting short measure. (Of course I’d have to take a couple of trips on a school bus first to brush up on my profanity.) Thought of an apt one-liner I could use but there’s probably a blog-ethic about that sort of thing. And besides, if it’s picked up by Reader’s Digest or New York Times Magazine he might claim the copyright for himself.

So I thought I might discuss our prime minister – he’s always good for a rant. His wife, like me, is a scouse (since WORD does not recognise ‘scouse’, I’ll explain that it’s a person from Liverpool - as in Liverpool, England) and we scouses never pass up a freebie. Well, according to The Week magazine, Mrs Blair – that’s not her professional name, she only calls herself that when she’s on a speaking tour of the US so they’ll know she’s a prime minister’s wife and she can raise her fees to augment her substantial lawyer’s salary. Mrs B., about to leave on a recent trip to Australia, sent a government car across London to the Sunday Times offices. An important libel case, you ask? An interview with the editor, perhaps? Well no – The Sunday Times was giving its readers a special offer on Air Miles, and the PM’s wealthy scouse spouse wanted to ensure that their taxpayer-funded trip would qualify.
When I worked with a capitalist corporation, we had a rule that freebies obtained through corporate travel had to be passed back to the company.
Why didn’t I work for the government?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you didn't swear enough?

Anonymous said...

I completely agree about those scratchy labels. I now make a habit of cutting them out as soon as I buy something.... although Him Indoors claims it's not sensitive skin, just my sensitivity about the size that is printed on the label! He then also has the perfect excuse not to buy me clothing as a surprise present - because he can't check a label for my size .... the surprise would be more in the fact of him finding his way into a shop!

Anonymous said...

Yes, but don't you find that when you cut off the label it leaves a stub that's more scratchy than than label was?

Incidentally - that's the fourth time I've had that 'make extra money' thing. Please report to your spambuster.