advertising

In the latest "amusing" story, the Catholic church have announced that they are going to advertise for new priests on posters and, for some reason, beer mats. This, one suspects, will pose something of a challenge for whichever advertising agency is lucky enough to get the account. How do they sell it? There's the unappealing - "Give up sex, become a priest"; the contraversial - "Paedophiles, need help covering your tracks? Become a priest" or just the prosaic truth - "Do you like lying to people about how the world works? Become a priest." Although they may lose out to politics in the last case. Nonetheless, it does cast some doubts on the claim that people are called to the priesthood by God. If less people are coming forward, perhaps She's just calling less people. And who are the church to query that?

Don't it make you feel good

Appreciation. That's what I like. My MP appreciates me. I know this. Before the election, she wrote to me. Which was very nice of her. What was even nicer was the opening "Dear first time voter". About 15 years too late, but nonetheless, it showed the care she takes in researching her constituents.

welcome home...

Arriving back in the country from a short holiday, I was greeted by the front page of the Sun depicting 3 children, all of whom had children of their own. The scandal here, according to Murdoch's rag, was that "we" are paying about 31,000pounds a year for these children. Hmmm. That's about 10,000pounds per child. I don't have children, and, if all my planning and precautions hold out, never will. However 10,000pounds doesn't sound like a huge amount to raise a child for a year. What does the Sun expect - that these children (the babies as well as the child mothers) should starve?
There are greater scandals here. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has been raking in huge profits, yet, thanks to imaginative accounting which is, sadly, still legal, hasn't paid tax in years. He has robbed the country of well over 1million pounds. Isn't that a bigger scandal than people claiming benefits to survive?
And what of these under-age mothers? Quite clearly they didn't understand what they were doing, and didn't appreciate the consequences. If the fathers were of a similar age, the same can be said of them. But we live in a society in which children seem to be sexualised at an early age. One of the main offenders here is the Sun newspaper - always willing to print pictures of scantily clad teenage girls to titillate their borderline-paedophile readership, who then demand blood when anyone is caught acting on this.
So what's the answer? Better sex education, better social support. Nothing easy. Nothing the Sun would like.

excitement.

It's now polling day. Midnight has been and gone.
I'm so excited, I'm sure I'll never sleep...
Mr Tony has been warning me about how if I vote for a Liberal, I'll end up with a Tory. I was under the illusion that if I voted for him, I'd end up with a Tory - an economic neo-liberal, intent on privatising everything that moves, pocketing as much cash as he can cream off and removing what civil liberties we have left. Habeas corpus is for wimps, you hear me.
I wonder exactly how many people will fall for his "I'm not quite as bad as Michael Howard" routine. And why there's no one challenging it.