poliphilo

According to The Star, we Brits want the 70s back. Britain is no longer the country we knew and loved. We lament the disappearance of great British traditions like red post boxes, Sunday closing, Tango...

Tango? What? You mean that fizzy, orange-flavoured, aspartame-sweetened drink with the silly adverts? Oh, I see- the makers of Tango (Britvic plc) are the ones who commissioned the survey. It's a marketing ploy to position the fizzy, orange-flavoured , aspartame-sweetened drink with the silly adverts as an Great British tradition that's in danger of being- oh, I don't know what- replaced by the smoothie. There's even a website to go with the story, featuring a dancing man and a petition. Save our Tango. Oh purleeese!

Still, Gordon Brown will be happy. Great British traditions- we can't have enough of them!

So how come I'm reading the Star? Well, the car needed to go in for repairs; something to do with the gearbox. There was a copy of the Star sitting on the table in the waiting area of the repair centre and I find it hard to resist newsprint. The lead story was all about Britney wearing fishnet tights.

It wasn't really the day to be taking the car anywhere. Last night's snow had frozen and I had to chisel it off the windows. The scraper broke after a couple of gouges. Our road hadn't been gritted and neither had the approach road (I nearly wrote reproach road) to the repair centre. We came home with a courtesy car- a red, sporty Corsa. Wheeee!

Talking about Gordon Brown (I was, really, about six paragraphs back) I see (not from The Star) that his government is proposing to use lie detectors on benefit claimants. The next thing will be rubber coshes or maybe electrodes- or hell, why worry about leaving a mark? Since the whole point is to reduce the population to whimpering subservience they might just as well pull fingernails out and be done with it.