Due to the complete absence of news today (I'm sorry but I don't consider Winona Ryder's (sp?) court case to be worthy of interest)...or rather, due to the complete absence of real news being reported by the media...(okay...that's not strictly true either...some banker who spent three months down a hole has escaped or something and Paul Burrell has been ranting about the Spencers and there are rail strikes etc...but I've got a cold and I can't be arsed posting anything substantial) there now follows a repeat classic Rant of the Week from 2001:

I've been far too cynical for far too long. Even Uncle Tony has been complaining about the cynics in Blighty and how much damage we're doing.

So from now it's "God Bless Britain the Greatest Country in the World!"

God bless the Queen and her unearned millions. God bless our glorious crime-riddled council estates, our risible unemployment rate, our xenophobic foreign policy and our underfunded NHS. God bless our aristocrats and the great job they're doing at widening the cultural, financial and educational gap. God bless our corporate heads and their insider knowledge and power-crazed missions. God bless our homeless, our starving artists and our ignored writers, our wonderful class divisions and the Watford gap.

God bless this stinking hole with its plutonium recycling plants, its massive cancer rates, its bulging prisons and its unclean streets. God bless the high-rise, so-called temporary housing blocks, the drugs cartels, the killing of Afghan peasants and the sumptuously fat neck of Gordon Brown. God bless John Prescott who can swing a mean punch and complain about people who use their cars too often whilst driving a big fat Jaguar himself.

God bless Jack Straw for keeping cannabis out of the hands of those in pain. God bless the Church of England for its weapons trade, for its hypocrisy and its men in frocks. God bless the drunks who piss up my wall, Thatcherism and self-indulgence at the expense of those less fortunate.

God bless the building regulations that consider antiquity more important than the needs of the disabled. And God bless those same regulations that consider new homes for planning committee executives to be more important than the aforementioned antiquity.

God bless Jonathon King for having a stroke...or two. And God bless those masons who can have as many strokes as they like without fear of reprisals. God bless our inherent racism, our crowded motorways, our dwindling pensions and our overworked teachers.

God bless this septic Isle, from the tip of the Queen's nose to the arse of the lowliest homeless wino. It makes me proud to be a part of it all! I AM BRITISH! GOD BLESS US ONE AND ALL!

Amen!

(Union Jacks now on sale in the foyer. £5.99 each. Support Patriotism and don't forget the St George matching underpants and thong set. All proceeds go directly to the Royal Family.)

...which just goes to show how little things change...including the standard of my jokes.