The Vorty Meme.
1. Which politician would you gut-shoot and watch for hours as they flopped around on the floor?
Erm, none. I don’t think it would help. Which one would I get temporarily paralysed and thus forced to listen to me lecture on interminably about the state of the UK whilst they flop around on the floor: well, it’d have to be Blair, wouldn’t it. Oooh, no, no, Patricia Hewitt! And THEN I’d gut-shoot her and watch her for hours as she flopped about on the floor.

2. . . . and what would you whisper in their ear just before they bled out?
What a shame your demolishing and privatising of the NHS means that the ambulance is STILL on its way.

3. Name a TV "personality" you would like tortured on prime-time.
Ant and Dec. Or Richard and Judy. Or that fat twit they always have commenting on Richard and Judy. Just round them all up in a studio.

4. And the method, please?
Non-stop James Blunt-ing.

5. One new law of your choice, enforceable by public beating.
I would outlaw exhibitionist masochism.

6. One act of petty (yet enjoyable) malevolence you have performed.
When I was at physio school, Aileen used to label all her food. So one night I took one bite out of everything she’s labelled.

7. Your worst boss is sitting gaffer-taped to a chair in a soundproofed room in front of you (and won't be missed for days). What happens next?
I play ‘stuck in the Middle with You’ and then let him go. David White will CRY!

8. Assuming you will never be caught, what act of parting revenge will/would you inflict on your current/past employer?
I have just named and shamed him in my blog. HA! There’s retribution for you!

9. Life now comes with a personal "rewind-erase" feature (and stuff the paradox implications). Would you use it? What would you change?
I wouldn’t use it. It was all necessary.

10. One other question you would like to include.
Whose pet would you most like to squash?

I just cannot resist commenting on David Cameron looking so very English in his horrible Bermuda shorts. The reason for running the story is apparently that he has shaved his chest. WHY? Hairless men are fine until they hit their mid-thirties, and then, especially if they have a bit of a tum, they start to look like oversized toddlers.

He needs someone to take care of him and put him in decent beachwear. I'm thinking thong. In my bedroom only, obviously.

Only managed two that I can remember this month - one was a long one though.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon: The Shadow of the Wind
This is a brilliant book to take on holiday. It is literary enough that you don't feel braindead reading it, but it reads like a thriller and is a real pageturner. You may well see the ending coming a mile off, but it's still interesting getting there, and there's little chance that you'll work out the entire denoument. The plotting may be a little too neat for some, but it's forgivable in the context. This book had a lot of hype, and on the whole it lives up to it. The translator has done a really good job too.
(84/100)

Nicci French: The Red Room
This is a brilliant book to take on holiday if you don't mind feeling braindead for reading it. Nicci French always does really good thrillers, and this is another one. You know what you're getting, and even if the first few pages always read better than the rest of the book, and if the heroines are always the same person with different names, the stories keep you hooked. Great for hangovers.
(65/100)

I don't get the way Blair and Bush look at this. I don't get the way Margaret Beckett can go against her principles for the sake of her job. I don't get how people are blaming 'Islam' and 'Axes of Evil' and all that kind of manipulative stuff. I don't get how these politicians can look at the pictures of dead babies and not give Israel a bloody good bollocking.

I'd like to think it is because they are working softly, softly behind the scenes to persuade Israel that it's acting totally unacceptably. Really I think they don't give a damn. They don't have brown babies, so they don't care.

I've surprised myself how angry I've been about Israel on this, and I know that it began when I saw the picture of the little boy with a bandaged head screaming. He looks just like Little 'Un (because I had the effrontery to marry a 'wop dago bastard' as Husband was once so memorably described).

I suppose in a world where it is ok for the US to invade and wreck two countries in response to terrorism (and when it is ok for Blair to have Owd Blokes arrested for heckling under the Terrorism Act), then it is equally fine for Israel to blow the arses off another country's innocent civilians in response to the kidnap of a couple of soldiers.

Except that's just the excuse they were waiting for.

Then all the way through it's presented as though this is an insoluble problem: that here's two sets of folk who both want the same land and ho hum, what can you do? Hezbollah is supposed to recognise Israel's right to exist - but why should it? Why is there no question about Isael's right to exist? Israel exists because it was created out of land that belonged to other people. If a new nation state was declared for Muslims in Texas, would Bush be happy about it? So why can't he understand the anger of those who were evicted? Why can't Israel?

Instead, we are presented with this view that Israel is the last barricade between the West and Big Fat Scary Islam, and that we have to support Israel or prepare for subjugation.

Israel isn't the solution, it's the problem. I'd instinctively felt it for ages, had always sympathised with the Palestinians, but made myself be even-handed because I told myself I was being anti-semitic and that I was too ignorant to have a view. I finally sussed that Zionism isn't Judaism and that Bush is more ignorant than me, and he has no such qualms.

Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism
True Torah Jews Against Zionism

But as usual, I'm open to persuasion....