For England, for home, and for the prize! ....

Every once in a while we small children of the internet try to further our pitiful cause by joining some site enhancing directory or listing, and those of us unfortunate to live the dark side of "the pond" have to face a rather unpalateable truth when filling in our details....... Country.

Those we know as "Americans" only have to click the default choice, we "Brits", or to haul up the colours (sorry about the "U") have to scroll down an interminal list of fledgling countries trying to guess what we are going to be today.

I consider myself English; I speak English, I live in England and England is my country. But as I pause momentarily on the "E"s.... I realise that will not do.

Neither will the "G"s.
Great Britain? Nul points for that one! Ok so we haven't been great since the industrial revolution - and most of the things we invented are now done a thousand times better by other nations - but don't some people call us that?

No.
Apparently we are the United Kingdom!
mmm?

No matter that the Scots hate us and if they didn't already rule England, have their own parliament and beat us at every sport we can scrape a team for, would no doubt be setting fire to things, demanding independence and generally behaving beastly.

Ditto the Irish
and the Welsh (both of them)
and the Cornish
Most of the island north of Watford
Brixton
The Channel Islands,

And not forgetting Mr Smith of Tunbridge Wells who protested against being dragged through the "Imperialist English courts" for non-payment of council tax by declaring unilateral independence. (Despite a late night sitting of the House of Commons his efforts were ultimately quashed by a combined services assault force, and after a brief, and relatively blood free "liberation" his insurrection was "neutralised")

Alright, admitedlly it has taken me until today to write this. I forgot all about St George's day (still recovering from St Patrick's day..) But isn't it about time we... ENGLISH! - re-established our superiorty over these upstarts, former colonies and fifth columnists, not forgetting Mr Smith of Tunbridge, and painted the world Red again!

Torch the Burns units!
Welsh on our bets!
Let the Irish Stew!
Smash the Cornish Pastie!
and charge that nasty Mr Smith his council tax!

..... or have I got a chip on my shoulder?

BROWN KNOWS...

Who our friends are?

Barrack Obama, Hilary Clinton and some other bloke looked slightly bewildered yesterday when confronted by the wobbly jawed, glass eyed, would-be-British president Gordon Brown, visiting Washington as part of a Labour party " What's this democracy thing all about then?" fact finding mission.

Gordon looked cheerfully dapper, despite having spent the night in a cupboard after being smuggled in within range of his idols by cleaning staff. The three contenders bandied world power small-talk genially with the ex-chancellor before he was whisked away by security.

BALLOTS TO DEMOCRACY!

That incorrigible old rogue Mugabe

is still as keen to govern Zimbabwe

as the day he took power.

So an elections gone sour?

Oh sod it! just call in the army

APRIL FOOLS DAY

Well here I am staring at a computer screen; bored.

The funniest day of the year. The day when even the BBC manages a jolly jape at the expense of its licence paying victims.

Oh BUGGER.

I suppose though, the whole of the Internet is in fact one big April's fool joke, really..

I mean here we all are pouring out the minutiae of our sorry little brains for any Tom, Dick or Harry to click on and derive five seconds of dubious enjoyment.

And for what?

SOD IT!... the CIA could close the whole thing down if it wanted. (MI5 have been trying to for years, but even if they had the budget for a computer and I doubt they could find the right buttons ).

For all you lot know I could be a 12 year old one legged Ethiopian girl sitting in an Internet cafe getting my own back on the bastards who blew my leg off...

Or a bored teenager from the planet G?%jk^ hacking into your primitive Internet as a school project! In fact I have long been of the theory the whole Earth thing is a intergalactic school project. That would explain God, Darwin and Douglas Adams etc . May have to follow up that delayed train of though later

But nevertheless here I am, scraping the dregs from the bottom of the creativity barrel; It's pithy, acerbic, topical comment my public want; and they shall have it!... in abundance!

Later though...

Meanwhile if someone kind soul could make a token visit to my woefully execrable (a retired journalist?) website http://www.badtrackrecords.co.uk/ ?

it would make all this worthwhile.

Possibly not.

Anyway must go. I've just had an email from a world famous fashion photographer who is flying in to Addis Ababa to do a Vogue cover shoot - must update my facebook profile.....

Have fun!

TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE

So here we go again; the twice yearly farce of waking up to find nobody knows what time it is.

We are now officially in British Summer Time (BST) which of course being an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) coincides with Central European Time (CET) or Western European Summer Time (WET+1) until they decide to move their clocks around too. As everyone is fully aware GMT has been replaced now by UTC which is Coordinated Universal Time or UT for short. Originally UTC was Coordinated Universal National Time which nobody could think of an abreviations for. Perversely the military call GMT "Zulu time" for reasons that presumably are a question of national security. The Navy would still be lost without "solar time".

GMT was adopted across Britain by the railways in 1847 although in 1858 a court case upheld "local mean time" as the official time. By 1880 GMT or "railway time" was adopted nationwide. This is not to be confused with British Rail Time which meant anything they bloody well wanted it to.

During the darkest days of the Second World War Britain was effectively on "British Double Summer Time" (BDST); The British Double Summer Mean (BDSM) was abandoned as an official name as it sent the "wrong signals" to the Germans.

The clocks were not advanced for the summer of 1945 and were reverted to GMT at the end of the summer of 1946. In 1947 the clocks were advanced by one hour twice during the spring and put back twice during the autumn so that Britain was on BDST during the height of the summer.

Safety campaigners, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), have made recommendations that British Summer Time be maintained during the winter months, and that a "double summertime" be applied to the current British Summer Time period, putting the UK two hours ahead of GMT during summer.

The British Standard Time (BST) scheme was trialled between 1968 and 1971, when Britain remained on GMT+1 all year.

In 2005, Lord Tanlaw introduced the Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill into the House of Lords, which would advance winter and summer time by one hour for a three-year trial period at the discretion of "devolved bodies", allowing Scotland and Northern Ireland the option not to take part. The Local Government Association has called for a three-year trial of the Single/Double Summer Time (SDST).

During all this "time" Greenwich has actually moved; the prime meridian is now 5.31" E.

As Shakespeare so aptly put it:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."