Syrian president, Bashar Assad, after arriving in Britain yesterday, warned Tony Blair against war with Iraq.

"War with Saddam Hussein would create "fertile soil for terrorism" across the Middle East," he said...and he should know. According to reports Assad has a great many links to terrorism himself, has invaded his neighbouring country in the same fashion as Saddam, has a dreadful human rights record, torturing and killing his own people, and also sports a big bushy moustache.

He is currently in talks with Tony Blair (who desperately needs the use of Assad's concentration camps to launch British jet fighters into Iraq in January) and they are deciding which of the oil wells the Syrian president will inherit if he shuts his gob currently forging a workable peace plan.

Assad is due to meet the Queen tomorrow as the Royal Family are now running low on gifts for their butlers to sell.

Some helpful tips on how to survive the festive season.

1) Parents: Don't have any more children. The ones you've already got are expensive, ungrateful little bastards. Save your money and enjoy your freedom instead. Remember, no matter how much joy you might experience when your child casts aside the toy that you've spent six months saving up for and concentrates instead on the empty box, it doesn't beat a damned good bonk on Christmas Day.

2) Kids: If you're going to try carol singing outside my front door then at least join a group and learn a few songs instead of singing, "Good King Wen Cess last looked out on the dah dah dum dah..." If you're part of a trained choir I'll still ignore you, but at least you won't get a bucket of cold water over your heads.

3) Adults: Don't invite your relatives over for Christmas Day. They hate having to turn up and look enthusiastic when they'd much rather be at home watching James Bond. And you will have a heart attack due to the stress. It isn't worth it, trust me! Just be honest with them for a change. Or, alternatively, tell them you've got smallpox.

4) Kids: Father Christmas doesn't exist. He was invented by Coca-Cola as a method for tired parents to apply psychological pressure to unruly children by threatening to withhold your Christmas presents. It's a stark truth I know...but if you're mature enough to be reading this site, then you're mature enough to know better.

5) Adults: Baby Jesus doesn't exist. He was invented by politicians as a method for tired dictators to apply psychological pressure to unruly voters by threatening to withhold your eternal-life. It's a stark truth I know...but it you're mature enough to be able to read then you're mature enough to know better.

6) Vicars: Stop telling everyone that they've forgotten the true meaning of Christmas! Christmas, originally, was the pagan mid-winter festival in which fatted calves were slaughtered and their entrails hung from the trees for decorations. The church attempted to disguise the festival with its own bullshit but copious amounts of the original fertility symbols, such as holly wreaths, mistletoe, chocolate logs and such, survived. In the future Coca-Cola plan to hijack the current Christian version of this ancient mid-winter shag-fest for commercial purposes. Also, please try and be chronological with your nonsense. If Christ was born on Christmas Day then how come we don't celebrate New Year until a week later? Seriously, if you're going to try and stomp out pagan activities with your own inventions then at least be consistent.

7) Gamblers: Don't go to the bookies and bet on it being a white Christmas. It won't be! It hasn't snowed on Christmas Day since 1892 and it's far more likely to be raining instead. That's why the bookies are usually shut on Christmas Day because nobody has any winnings to collect.

8) Cubs scouts in Iceland stores who wait at the counters and pack your bags expecting shoppers to give them charity money: Piss off.

Uncle Brian...hoping to reduce Christmas to exactly what it is...two days when the television is filled with fucking awful Disney films and all the shops are shut so you can't buy batteries for all your new toys.

THE VIEW FROM AMERICA

Tonight's Topic: "Collateral Damage - So What"

NEW ITEM: Brian Hughes watches a television program and now he wants to save the world.

Hey Hughes - get down from your anti-American horse and take a closer look at the facts. Innocent people have to die. Collateral damage is unavoidable as we rid the world of cretins like Sadamm Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Granted we wiped out a few unsuspecting Afghans during our purging of the Taliban, but hey, it could have been much worse. Look at the bright side -- our aim is a hell of a lot better today than it has ever been. Close to 40 million civilians (that's million, not thousands) were killed during World War II (talk about bad aim). Mr Hughes - not wanting to harm innocent men, women and children - what would you have done to stop Hitler? As a pacifist I'm sure you would have constructed a few anti-war signs (complete with a Scrag Ends promotional cartoon, no doubt) and picketed the streets of Blighty -- or possibly (likely) just complained about perceived injustices to a few of your equally intoxicated pseudo-buddies. Yes, you and your pacifist friends would have been doing this while Hitler was prancing through Europe -- while millions of Jews were being exterminated in death camps. 40 million civilians had to die during World War II to make the world right. Yes, had to die ... just like a few hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children will have to die to ensure that terrorism is held in check.

Editor's note: Actually I'd have given Germany more financial support following the First World War instead of trying to keep them as the underdogs. Then inflation wouldn't have spiralled out of control leading to the rise of fascism in the first place, the election of Hitler and the loss of millions of lives. Just so long as Douglas Adams would have agreed in principle.

JOIN THE ANTI-WAR CAMPAIGN!

I've just been watching a programme on Channel 4 (by far the best channel on British telly, even if some of their programmes are a bit crap from time to time) entitled: "21st Century War. The Good Guys!"

The title was meant to be ironic. The programme itself detailed some of the effects that American bombing has had on the lives of innocent, ordinary people around the world in such places as Afghanistan, Somalia and the Sudan (to name but three). In fact America, whilst claiming to use military force only in self-defence, has attacked without provocation over 70 countries since the end of the Second World War, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives, ruining economies and devastating thousands more lives belonging to those left behind to pick up the pieces.

And finally, I'm incensed! I was before, of course, but now I'm well and truly pissed off!

This has got to stop. And you know it's got to stop.

There's no point in saying any longer, "I don't have a political opinion so I'm keeping out of all this!" To coin an old phrase, "If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem."

Thirty-five per cent of the British population (and steadily growing) believes that the up and coming war with Iraq is a good idea.

A staggering Seventy-five per cent of the American population believe the same.

It's time to change a few ideas, a lot of minds and the course of future history!

For every visitor to this site who has their own site and who believes that killing innocent people is wrong, please join the campaign now! Speak out against the impending war on your sites! Speak out about the government lies and the media manipulation. Feel free to use whatever you like from this site and/or my Scrag Ends site for your own purposes.

But don't ignore the problem.

Any visitors who don't have their own sites....it's time to get one! Try Compucan.com or 50 Megs.com (I'm sure Mr Sedgwick will furnish this posting with a couple more)

... Tenshun! Yessir!
http://members.freewebs.com/
http://www.sphosting.com/
http://www.0catch.com/
http://free.prohosting.com/
and A BIG LIST HERE
(some on this list may be dead, but the 4 above are alive and well ... considering probably none of them make any money ... unless of course they are members of the bellico$e Bu$h tribe.)

...they're completely free and there's no excuse! So sign up for one and stand up for human rights! Then tell us about it and we'll give you a link!

Make a lot of noise folks! Organise rallies! Tell your friends! Complain to the papers! Get on the radio or telly or Internet messageboards. But sway the balance of public opinion. Otherwise the blood of thousands more innocent women, children and starving peasants will be on your own hands!

Time to get political folks! Together we can put a stop to this Bush/Blair bullshit once and for all!

Purchase an Anti-War Shirt (or other Anti-War Products) by clicking on the picture above...or...

Feel free to display this banner on your site. The address to collect the picture from is:

http://www.btinternet.com/~scragends/bio/antiwar.jpg

Just copy and paste this into your site and let everyone know that the more intelligent members of the so-called Free World are sick and tired of all the crap!

Bizarre plot to test Prince Harry's DNA

16dec02

AN extraordinary plot to obtain a sample of Prince Harry's DNA, to try to prove he is not Prince Charles' son, has been uncovered.

Scotland Yard, alerted by Prince Charles' closest advisers, were investigating the conspiracy under a veil of secrecy.
The bizarre plan involved employees of a private security firm, who aimed to get a strand of the 18-year-old prince's hair and sell it to a foreign newspaper, according to the Mail on Sunday

The prince's DNA could then be extracted to prove – or disprove – the rumour that Harry is the result of the late Princess Diana's five-year affair with former army officer James Hewitt.

The plot centred on using a pretty girl to befriend Harry in a "honey trap".

She could then get close enough to run her fingers through his hair and pluck one out, which would then be tested in a laboratory.


I, Peggy Farcus, wish right here and now to deny the rumours sweeping the tabloids that I was the pretty girl set to befriend Harry in a "honey trap". (The last time I was engaged to run my fingers through someone"s hair was at Willy Haig's coming of age party.) I was offered this gig by Pete Foster, but due to running over time on the previous scam assignment arranged by Foss (the video starring my good self and a father in law not a million miles away from Number 10 is set for release in February) I was forced to decline.

Edinburgh council (God bless their little cotton socks) have banned parents and family members from videoing and photographing their kids at school nativity plays this year in case the images end up in the hands of paedophiles. Perhaps next year the schools in Edinburgh will go back to the traditional plays instead of the all-nude 'Oh Emmanuelle' versions. Edinburgh council are not the first to employ such a ban this year. A spokesperson on Channel 4 news tonight said, "...we are only reacting to some parents' wishes." These wouldn't be the same fat, ugly council estate bastards who beat the crap out of a pediatrician a few years ago and burnt her house down because they didn't know what she actually did for a living, would they? And does this mean that the video-tape of my two nephews in their roles as shephards that I keep in my cupboard is now classified as hard-core child pornography? Having said that, I'm actually all for the idea. Furthermore I reckon we should ban children from being seen in public altogether in case paedophiles get turned on by the sight of 'real' kids playing. Life would be so much better without the little bastards playing cricket outside my house!

Other news, and apparently there are plans afoot for a sequel to the hit movie Gladiator. Er...how exactly? Not to give the game away to anybody who hasn't seen this historically innaccurate pile of old trash, but Ceaser dies at the end. As does Russel Crowe (hurrah). So what's the follow up? Gladiator 2: Trouble in the Elysian Fields? The Emperor Strikes Back? Another load of old made up bollocks following the usual plot-line of 'Innocent man witnesses family being killed and then seeks revenge on the powerful tyrant who killed them'? I wonder what Douglas Adams would have to say about it? No doubt it'd be a lot less confusing than my take on it, whatever it was.

A Review of Hobson & Co (Paranormal Investigators) as posted at Amazon Co Uk.

Douglas Adams did it before, and better, 7 August, 2002

Reviewer: A reader from Dublin Ireland

An interesting story but not very well written, and very confusingly introduces major characters every few pages, without any reference or link to previous characters. Also a big feature of the novel is commentary by the omnipotent author; this is better suited to television or at least to a more organised writer than Mr Hughes. If you're looking for a detective story of the paranormal I'd recommend Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels - the writing is better, and the author's efforts to amuse are not as obvious!

Looks like Dublin's off my next book-signing tour then.