HERE are a few random thoughts for Friday. No particular order attends these jottings other than their arrival in my mind…
George Osborne’s hair: The chancellor’s hairstyle has drawn a certain amount of comment in the past year. Is it a Caligula pudding-bowl cut? Where did George get the idea? And, more importantly, given his enthusiasm for all things oily and gassy, where does he source his hair dye? Is his hair in fact dyed or is it dipped in a vat of crude oil newly squeezed from a spouting teat in Texas? Unsubstantiated reports that George sometimes licks the crude oil hair dye dripping from his Roman emperor-style barnet can be dismissed as just too disturbing for words.
David Cameron’s face: How does it turn that particular shade of pink? Are the rumours true that secretly at night the prime minister is spit-roasted above blow-holes emitting newly released gas from fissures in the fractured earth? That would certainly explain the suckling-pig cast of his physiognomy and his enthusiasm for fracking.
Amber Rudd: Please explain the point of the energy and climate change secretary, using as few swearwords as possible. Solar-powered answers will be ignored by the government-appointed adjudicator but exam papers bearing smudged fingerprints from the chancellor’s hair dye will automatically be awarded 100 per cent. Is it me or is there something contradictory in that job title? Plenty of people, proper scientists and the like, believe that the extraction of energy causes climate change. So isn’t having both in your job title a push-me-pull-me contradiction?
Amber Rudd Again: The energy at all costs secretary said this week that ministers were to be given the power to decide whether or not to approve applications for fracking if local authorities were deemed to be taking too long to process them. So, Amber, what’s too long? Two weeks, three weeks or five minutes? Perhaps local democracy is going to be spit-roasted alongside David Cameron’s face. But never mind, Amber says that fracking is a “fantastic opportunity” and that delays “don’t help the community, businesses or the country”. And if you can come up with an emptier and yet more sinister form of words than that, then you should give up your job immediately and go and join the government. Just don’t sit too close to George and his hair.
Condoms and aspirin: Man On Ledge has no need for condoms following a long-distant appointment with a surgical snipper. Twenty-one years ago a third child arrived and I was booked for a date with the doctor’s scissors. I don’t think they actually used scissors, but to be honest I wasn’t looking that closely. Anyway, the condom machine in the gents at York Station catches my eye. A selection of condoms are on offer, but this isn’t what draws my attention. No, what jumps out is the packet of aspirins in the top drawer of the dispenser. Is this a new development? Perhaps the hopeful man buys the condoms and then aspirins as well, to cover all the bases. Then when his partner says she isn’t in the mood thanks to her rotten headache, he can present her with an aspirin. It’s just another random thought.