" The Howard League is a membership organisation and draws its members from all parts of society - from MPs, QCs, peers and academics, to students, prisoners and legal professionals."
On a lighter note, my regular readers this week will both be pleased to learn that my diet is now approaching its triumphant conclusion. As the last remnants of the toxins typical of industrial-age food leave my body after five days of eating only raw fruit, vegetables and salad and eschewing all grains, starches and potatoes my mind has become clearer still.
It’s now plain that my belief - acquired yesterday after a mere 96 hours on 800 kCal per day - still left some room for error. In fact my annoying colleague proved not to be a Roswell Grey hiding underneath a terrestrial skin after all but was in fact a platter loaded down with scorched tuna steaks sautéed potatoes and salsa, followed by a generous serving of chocolate truffle torte and cream. I checked with Sir Rupert, King of the Pixies and the Vegetarian Society’s head of bacon, and they assured me that tuna steaks, Roswell Greys and colleagues at the Department of Hurt and Awful Nuisances are all root vegetables.
I must say that the empty desk opposite me looks rather sad and lonely with its hastily emptied and hastier-refilled drawers and all that fingerprint dust but I’m happy in the knowledge that I can recommend to you both four solid days subsisting on roots, nuts, and berries or, as it is more properly called ‘The State Retirement Pension, 2020 style, Gordon Brown Special Commemorative Edition.’
Old Sir Rupe also points out that my line manger, a lifelong Labour Party and Liverpool FC supporter is, in fact, a tuber corm or rhizome.
Thousands of protesters have voiced their anger at the bombing of Gaza in a series of rallies across the UK.
Anger which was wholly absent when rockets rained down on Israel over the past six years. On holiday were you?
The protesters - including the singer Annie Lennox and Respect MP George Galloway - marched along the Embankment in London to Trafalgar Square to call for an immediate end to the Israeli attacks.
Which, godlike, have come out of the blue, and which have no antecedents or history.
The demonstration in the capital was the biggest of at least 18 organised across the country.
Other rallies were taking place at Blytheswood Square, Glasgow; Bedford Square, Exeter; Princes Street, Edinburgh; Bristol city centre; Bold Street, Liverpool; Norwich Forum; Portsmouth's Guildhall Square; Queen Victoria Square, Hull; Tunbridge Wells town centre; Leeds Art Gallery; All Saints Park, Manchester; Grey's Monument, Newcastle; Castle Square, Swansea; St Sampson's Square, York; Morrisons, Caernarfon; Bradford city centre; and Sheffield town hall.
Wow. Must be right then. Eighteen.
The ‘thousands’ don’t seem to be that many and even the BBC mentioned the Countryside Alliance had a few more. Guess we’d better reinstate hunting to hounds and get out of the European Union, then, if the peepul have marched, right?
Former model Bianca Jagger and singer Lennox have backed the protests, calling on American president-elect Barack Obama to speak up against the bombardment.
Because if the Israelis stop, what do you think Hamas are going to do? Carry on rocketing as they did through almost all of the previous ‘ceasefires’, perhaps?
Speaking at a press conference in central London, Ms Jagger said: "I would like to make an appeal to president-elect Obama to speak up.
"People throughout the world were hopeful when he was elected and we must appeal to him to ask for the immediate cessation of the bombardment of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip."
You might consider asking Hamas to stop putting their war materiel in tightly-populated areas, and storing weapons in hospitals and mosques, but then maybe some Islamists might be mean to you, and it doesn’t do to annoy the head-hackers and daughter-baggers, does it Bianca?
Lennox spoke of her shock at watching scenes of the bombing on television.
And it’s just too much work hard for a busy has-been-borderline-hanger-on-ex-celebrity to use fast and varied reference source to look up the context.
Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone and comedian Alexei Sayle also added their support on Friday to the campaign to end the violence.
Would this be the Ken Livingstone who’s lionized and or/praised the IRA, Argentinian Junta and all kinds of Islamists throughout his varied career or the far Left? That Ken Livingstone?
Comedian Sayle said he was speaking out because it was important for Jewish voices to be heard.
Yes Alexei. You’re as Jewish as you’re Russian as I’m Welsh.
Also present at the press conference were the writer Tariq Ali, Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Mr Galloway.
Remember their names when Iran nukes Israel, or the Islamic Front (or whatever they’re going to call it) pushes the last Kibbutzim into the sea.
Why not just stick to the simple mass-flow bodily functions which are probably your only skills, and leave the moral deliberations to those who are capable of discerning the difference between attack and defence?
