Positive aggression is half the battle

Having assumed that Reader’s Digest must have closed down years ago, I am proved wrong – apparently there are still enough readers out there to appreciate Memories of Immortal Jim Reeves, and How To Clean Just About Anything (“Did you know, for example, that deep heat rub can remove chewing gum from floors?”). I would previously have made a joke about Radio 2 listeners at this point, but unfortunately a plurality of my generation fall into this category nowadays, so it’s no longer funny.

These fine digesters of reading have also published a list of the best and worst places to bring up your children, which the idiotic winning yokels in East Dunbartonshire (I had to look it up on the map, too) are terribly excited about.

Now it may be that I am bitter that despite having an almost Third World (sorry, “Global South”) birth rate, and a dangerously high concentration of buggy workout and pilates practitioners (Mrs Chimp scores double points by combining the two, don't ask me how), my own fair Wandsworth comes in at a distinctly pedestrian 355th best out of 408, but is it maybe better to live in a somewhat “edgy” urban environment (Tooting, perhaps), than an suffocating middle class suburb where every middle manager reads the Reader’s Digest?

Has anyone else seen the ‘Free Alan Johnson’ hoardings that have been put up around London? It’s part of a campaign to “show support” and to exert pressure on “everyone with influence” over the unfortunate guy’s captors, which includes an online petition, and the ability to put a little Alan Johnson button on your blog.

Now, I totally share the concern and hopes expressed by the blog-buttoners, but my question is this: how on earth will this have any influence whatsoever on the hostage-takers? Will the guys crouched with their RPGs and Kalashnikovs in a Gaza basement by any chance be surfing through blogs in their idle moments and have a prick of conscience? And what of the assorted London couriers, cabbies, commuters on cycles riding past these billboards – what are they supposed to do? Or is this perhaps an example of well-meaning people adopting the doctrine that it is better to do something utterly pointless than to do nothing at all?

Better cheer up before sign off, so here’s a new game, called ‘ASBO name bingo’ (dedicated to one Carole Olva, who having cursed her daughter with the cast-iron ASBO name of “Serenza”, has recently been busted for goading her children to fight on video).

See how many names (girls or boys, it doesn’t matter which) you can spot which practically guarantee that its owner will at some point be slapped with an ASBO. My opening bets are Leah, Scarlett, Courtney, Dylan, Reece, and Jayden.

Finally, check out this piece of Jack Bauer-type technology. Big Brother just got bigger