READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!!

Confusion reigned this morning in the Shaw household. Not only did we have an Friday off (unheard off in the world of shops) but on being asked what paper she required, Wor Lass replied with confidence “the Sunday Sun”. Not exactly side splittingly funny, but a good indicator that today is going to be dominated with that great British past time, the “Sunday Attitude”; pots of coffee, tea, piles of papers, forty winks and a grand dinner. Hopefully squeezed in somewhere between all of this will be a glass of red or a pint of cask ale.

This rather upbeat beginning has been slightly dented by the contents of our stack of papers. The Guardian carries the fall out of yesterday’s deaths in Basra, with the British paying the price this time. A full coloured front page picture shows jubilant Iraqis holding high the remains of a Warrior tank together with a British army helmet. I’ve never been one to support censorship, but if my son or daughter had been killed in this tragedy, to think that this may have been their equipment would be crippling. Such celebration is also an indicator to Blair and Co that our military personnel in the country are no longer wanted. For the sake of the families and friends of the bereaved at home, perhaps this picture should have been held back for 24 hours. When pictures are used of natural disasters it is always in our minds that casualties are a result of actions outside of our control; here they are the result of people who we are supposed to be helping, but in reality, despise our presence.

“Modern Art” is something which has always confused me, but a feature in the Guardians National section on Art caused me to fall of my chair (spot the pun later). Doris Salcedo, a Columbian artist, is to take on the Unilever commission in the Tate Modern’s vast central arena. The pending results unfortunately, don’t bode well. Her previous “sculptures” include filling a vacant building lot in Istanbul with 1550 chairs to signify the migrant element of the global economy. Not content with this escapade, she has lowered 280 chairs down the façade of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá to commemorate those who died in a failed military coup. A Tate Modern director describes her work as such:

“There is a consistency of quality and attention to detail: at the same time every work is very much its own thing”

STOP!STOP!STOP! Somebody please tell the truth. This isn’t art, its complete rubbish, and I mean that in the strictest sense. The pictures outlined in the article look like a rubbish dump. My advice to South Tyneside is to open up Middlefield’s as an art gallery; with skips brimming over with other peoples tat it qualifies to the letter as “modern art”.

Still on the subject of rubbish, my local newsagent slipped some trash between my Guardian today, the “Daily Express”. Not being one to suffer fools gladly, I happily passed this on to “Wor Lass”, slipped in tightly between the centre pages of her “Journal”. This was the outcome.

WOR LASS SAYS:

After feeding the Clan and tidying the house etc I sneaked a peek at the Daily Express. One of the articles is about the new job titles being bandied about:

Education Centre Nourishment Production Assistant = DINNER LADY

Technical Horticultural Maintenance Officer = GARDINER

Crockery Cleansing Operative = WASHER UP

Etc,etc.

Therefore, I wish to be referred to as:

Crockery Cleansing, Environment Improving, Technical Horticultural Maintaining, Nourishment Producing, Knowledge Navigating, Domestic Engineering, Head of Verbal Communications = WOR LASS!!

Talking of management speak, the BBC’s new head, Sir Michael Lyons, has got off to a great start. When asked about his viewing tastes he replied “I probably at the moment sample rather more radio than TV because of other demands”. What other demands, surely not being in charge of the nations TV programmes? It’s nice to know that the corporation, financed and bankrolled by public contributions, is in the hands of a man who doesn’t watch its output. I predict that Mr Lyons, whose picture in the Express bears an uncanny likeness to the late and great Richard Whitley, will oversee the BBC’s “countdown” to obscurity.

Frederick Forsyth, not one to mince his words, has had a dig at Gordon Brown over the pension’s fiasco and so he should. Covering ground that most other papers have walked on, he does throws a name into the pot that some have missed, Ed Balls. Now a junior minister, Ed Balls (an anagram of Ed Balls) played a leading part in this debacle and has been lucky to escape public ridicule as his name perfectly covers what happened at Number 11 when pensions were being discussed (put it this way, I am not referring to the Ed part of his name). More seriously, Ed is earmarked for greater things when Brown takes over from Tony. Well, that’s our money safe then!

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