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Two items merited attention on the NBC Nightly News tonight, due entirely to the contrast between them. The first was a last ditch attempt by that wealthy scumbag presently occupying the White House, at salvaging something of his presidential legacy by offering a financial carrot worth around $17.5 billion to a terminally sick donkey, long abused and starved of sustenance by its masters to the point it will soon require euthanasia, and masquerading as the US motor industry.

American vehicles have long been viewed as tat by the rest of the world. Outdated, cheaply-made, prone to failure, and totally out of their league among the more sophisticated European and Japanese vehicles available, one only has to hear the experts’ opinions on products from the US motor industry to realize how grossly left behind by the rest of the planet this industry has become over the last twenty years.

Had the senior management of Chrysler and GM bothered to look beyond their own borders during the eighties and nineties they would have seen the R&D being pumped into Volkswagon, Toyota, Honda, Citroen, and other manufacturers. Instead, they sat on their buttocks and filled their pockets with cash that might have been better used funding similar technologies, rather than supporting the private jets and high-flying lifestyles of top executives.

Does George W Bush seriously believe $17.5 billion will save this dinosaur industry? Possibly, he’s stupid and arrogant enough to imagine himself saving GM at its last gasp, like some aging North American Saint George rescuing the damsel from the jaws of the dragon. Unfortunately, in this case the damsel’s already been eaten and the bones regurgitated.

The British motor industry suffered a similar fate twenty years ago after the government of the day poured billions of pounds into British Leyland in a vain attempt to keep it afloat. It’s demise was due to exactly similar circumstances as that of Chrysler and GM today – a senior management team that couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, let alone run a major industry. Ironically, British Leyland lost out to the more advanced Ford and Vauxhall (GM produced) vehicles of the day.

The biggest stink, and the one most motivating to British politicians of the time, concerned the thousands of BL production staff who would be thrown out of work if the industry was allowed to die. It did die, and they were left jobless, but government retraining schemes meant most found work in other sectors. That’s what must happen in the US today. As green technologies gain ground in the marketplace, ex-carworkers can be trained to fill the many jobs created by these new industries.

To use life-support on a patient already dead reveals the stupidity of a president who insists that throwing money at an extinct dinosaur in the hope of making it breathe again is the ‘responsible’ thing to do. Of course, it has nothing at all to do with responsibility, but a great deal to do with one man’s over-inflated ego.

The second item from NBC Nightly News was more heartrending. It revealed some of the letters received by the US post office during its annual ‘Dear Santa’ campaign, and by so doing laid bare the heart of American poverty. When tiny kids ask Santa for clothes to keep them warm, and anguished mothers beg money to provide a meal for their child at Christmas, it not only tugs at the heartstrings, but exposes the true hypocrisy of that great marketing ploy, the ‘American Dream’.

Maybe there was a time when the ‘American Dream’ was more than hype, though delving through history fails to unearth it, but the last eight years has seen such a decline in this nation’s fortunes that the legacy of George W Bush will never be saved by postponing the demise of the car industry. His is a legacy of economic catastrophe, of millions thrown into poverty both at home and abroad; his is a legacy of five million orphans in Iraq and countless numbers of children brought to suffering in America.

George W Bush was happy to dip into this nation’s coffers to the tune of $700 billion for the purpose of saving his buddies in the banking industry, and now at Chrysler and GM. He was happy to spend a trillion dollars destroying a Middle Eastern nation, and unnecessarily slaughtering over four thousand Americans in the process.

If there’s one thing George W Bush can do well it’s spend money. Unfortunately, what he chose to spend it on has been highly detrimental to those people he was supposed to represent. What a different, and better, country this would be if he’d chosen to spend it ensuring American kids had warm clothes in the winter, and American mothers could afford at least one meal for their child at Christmas.

Filed under: Political scumbags

Have you ever thought about dying? No, really, it’s not that I don’t like you, but we do tend to shy away from dwelling on the inevitable, ignoring the fact that it’s practical to make early arrangements for when one’s demise eventually transpires, and much easier for our loved ones to cope with.

Of course, if our relatives do make any mistakes with the funeral arrangements, they can always give us a call afterward to sort it out.

Now, if that last paragraph leaves you scratching your head in confusion you’re obviously not part of the techno-savvy generation, who are quick to ensure their cellphone is well charged and in their best suit pocket prior to the earthy sod being finally placed over them.

It’s all in an article by Diane Mapes on MSNBC.Com yesterday, entitled, “Bury me with my cell phone,” – along with a brilliant cartoon by Duane Hoffman.^[1] Apparently, more and more people are insisting on taking their cellphone with them on their final journey into the Great Beyond.

It’s not that folks still harbor the old fear of being buried alive, it’s more along the lines of the ancient Egyptians or Vikings, who had their most precious possessions buried with them. Nowadays, of course, it’s not considered seemly to demand the wife, or mistress, be interred along with hubby, and they’d probably object, so I suppose a cellphone is the next best thing.

Funeral directors are keen to point out this is only an option for burials. Cremations and cellphones don’t mix. The batteries have a habit of exploding in the furnace and, well, it can make a terrible mess. They’ll happily drop the phone into the urn, once the ashes have cooled, for a small additional fee.

There is, of course, the question of pollution to be considered. Modern electronic gadgetry is not renowned for its greenness. Phones contain all sorts of nasty chemicals and heavy metals that would wreak havoc on the environment if we all insisted on taking our iPhones on that final journey.

And who’s to say it would stop there? I’d quite like my laptop, and there’s always one idiot who’ll insist he’s just not going if he can’t take his new, fifty-two inch, Sony flat screen, with the home theater surround sound and three ‘Mighty Mountain Mover’ sub-woofers.

Frankly, I think I’d prefer the peace and quiet of a nice woodland glade, where I can lie in my Kinkara Botanica Restspa burial shroud^[2] with its delicate stripes, a posy of sweet peas over my heart, and the song of a nightingale to lull me to eternal rest.

Oh, darn, is that my phone ringing…..?

^{[1] “Bury me with my cell phone” MSNBC, December 16th 2008}

^{[2] “Kinkaraco Green Burial Products”}

Filed under: O death, where is thy ring?

Some people can prove most irritating, even when you’ve never met them. Take, as an example, the boy who delivers the local papers. I’m talking the advertising rag here, not the proper local newspaper. I don’t subscribe to that. Well, there’s no point; I don’t have any hogs and I’m not a farmer growing corn, and if you’re neither of those the local newspaper is not for you.

The price of hogs and corn is the reason the local paper exists. Often, it’s the main headline. Corn is up, or, hogs are down; it’s what consistently stares back at you from the news stands six days a week. There’s no newspaper on Sunday. The staff are all in church.

That’s the other thing you’ll find in the local paper, besides commodity prices: a list of local churches and the times of their services; plus pages devoted to who’s born, married, or recently deceased. So you see, as I have no hogs, corn, or religion, and everyone in town’s a stranger to me, I have no need whatever of the local newspaper.

Delivering newspapers was the first job I ever had. I was only twelve and very proud of my profession. I took the work seriously. My bag, wherein reposed the neatly folded broadsheets, was a prize possession. I would collect my papers from the shop in the early morning hours and cycle from door to door, popping a paper into each mailbox. It took about an hour before school, and earned me the magnificent sum of fifty-six pence per week.

In Illinois it’s very different. The delivery person drives around in a beat-up old pickup, hurling the papers out the window. Often, they land on the front lawn, or in the driveway. The first you know its there is when you back the car over it, reversing out the garage.

The last couple of weeks it’s been way too cold to get out and pick them up, so they’ve accumulated. You’d think, on seeing last week’s still lying there, they wouldn’t bother leaving another. But, no, a fresh one appears regularly, waiting to be crushed by the wheels of the car.

It snowed heavily last week, six inches or more. Mind, it didn’t last very long. Within a few days a thaw set in and it all melted. It had been no fun trying to reverse the car out over it every morning, so I was glad when it was gone.

This morning I backed out as usual, only to be jarred almost out my seat as the nearside rear wheel hit a huge lump of papier mache welded to the concrete. It took ten minutes with a garden spade to prize free the rock-hard remains of half a dozen advertising rags, chemically transformed into a model Eiger in the middle of my driveway.

Damn that delivery boy.

Some people can prove most irritating, even when you’ve never met them.

Filed under: Things that piss me off