I'm always sceptical of survey results without being privilege to the survey from which the 'results' were lifted in the first instance. (Fucking Hell...that was a mouthful. However, I'm the editor round here so it stays!)
A recent poll (...who pays for these things and why? And how come these arseholes have money to waste like this when there are people starving in the world? Choose from the options below...) suggested that one of the most annoying things ever for gardeners were domesticated cats. This prompted a supposedly 'serious' discussion on one of the national news programmes. (Also begging the question, what's happened to real news these days?)
"It doesn't surprise me. I've hated the ignorant bastards for years ever since one of them sat on my grandmother's face and almost suffocated her. Cats kill wildlife," reeled off some anti-feline witness for the prosecution. "There ought to be a curfew set on the bastards."
I'm not exactly sure how this would help seeing as birds tend to nest at night, with the exception of owls which could probably batter cats to within inches of their lives anyway, but, of course, I'm not the self-proclaimed expert on these matters.
"As the natural areas of Britain decrease more and more wildlife is being forced into urban areas where evil, thoughtless cats pick them off one by one," the spokesman for the Campaign For Shooting Cats With Air Rifles Without Getting Fined continued.
No mention was made during the course of this fascinating conversation regarding humans being responsible for the wholesale destruction of the wild habitats of the birds and the shrews in the first place. Cats have been cats for thousands of years and, curfew or not, will continue to hunt mice, crap in flower beds and show you their arseholes once they get bored. But the continued building of roads and housing estates for the mindless and grim is the new element here which needs to be added fundamentally to the equation to make it work. (Mental note: Social commentary...it's been a long time since I did any of that. Hopefully it'll be even longer next time.)
The trouble with polls is this:
List the following people in order from 'Favourite' to 'Least Favourite'.
Angus Deayton
Adolf Hitler
Ghengis Khan
Davros out of Dr Who
Tomorrow's attention grabbing headline on the BBC News:
In a recent survey Hitler came in at number five in a poll to find the nation's favourite historical character, only just being beaten by the Queen Mum! Full discussion and distortion of the facts by Hugh Edwards and the audience-desperate wankers who run the BBC at ten o'clock.
