This picture isn’t about the pros and cons of Scottish independence, but the cons of Alex Salmond as the politically correct, EU-loving future leader of a Scotland which has ‘independence within Europe’: an oxymoron, as even those two wee eejits in the lower right could tell you.

1. Enforcement: These ladies agree: we should worry about those crazy people who don’t want to pay vast amounts of tax so that the EU can afford to orchestrate all our lives.

2.  Animal Rights: “The bats in the roof are protected, so we were unable to fix the hole and the rain came in.” [This one probably is a regulation already.]

3. Enforcement: An EU inspector rides into town incognito.

4. Animal Welfare: Poultry are forbidden from smoking.

5. Child Welfare: The moment an obese parent has to say goodbye to his child. The girl will be returned if he manages to lose 15 stone.

6. Animal Rights: Bears are reintroduced into Scotland, and as they are a protected species you have to let them eat you.

7. Health & Safety: Skeletons on bicycles must wear top hats and be accompanied by another cyclist at all times.

8. Environment: Children must dress up as penguins once a month to drill into them the need to pay lots of green taxes to stop global warming or all the real penguins will die of sunstroke.

9. Animal Welfare/ Health & Safety: When approaching a panda, it is best to do so wearing a Newcastle United strip as it will think you are also a panda and not be alarmed. [Although you do have to hope the panda isn’t a Sunderland fan.]

10. Enforcement: Masked EU Enforcers abduct this child for refusing to dress up as a penguin.

11. This picture has been removed because everyone is now complying with this particular law.

12. Animal Welfare:  If asked by poultry to help move a plank of wood, you must come to their aid.

13. Eugenics: Humans will be genetically modified to grow no higher than sixteen inches, to “save the planet”.

14. Eugenics: This boy is already thirteen inches high and knows that he must not exceed the maximum of sixteen, so has started smoking as he has heard it will stunt his growth.

15. Women’s Rights: Women are encouraged to whack their husband when they talk back. This one  is really serious as she has already dressed for his funeral even before he has returned from the pub.

16. Animal Welfare:  Pigs must be kept dry while writing their Christmas cards.

17. Climate Change: This is what will happen to you if you don’t pay green taxes. Lots of them.

18. Climate Change: This is the future if you don’t pay all those green taxes to stop global warming – temperatures will soar so high that you’ll need to take off all your clothes – then all your skin.

19. This EU directive is no longer necessary. Those who disobeyed it have all now been dealt with.

20. Equality & Diversity: A blind person may now shoot deer, but must have two people shouting “woo-hoo” so he knows where to fire. [NB There is a serious conflict of equality vs health & safety here. Commissioners are working on a solution and need more money to help them think.]

21. Eugenics: People will be allowed to keep wild animals as pets as a method of population control.

22. Eugenics: This girl is 17 inches tall and must be shot. She smiles and willingly accepts her fate – as a blood sacrifice to Mother Earth. She will be awarded the EU Medal of Honour (posthumously).

23. Climate Change: Climate experts studying data believe that 105% of the body’s heat is lost through the top of the head. The combination of a helmet and kitten reduce this heat loss by a staggering 134% and may help stop global warming. Experts believe trousers may help too.

24. Health & Safety: Very tall people are not allowed to carry children in their arms due to new height restrictions. This law will be rescinded once nobody exceeds 16 inches tall.

25. Science: “There is nothing to fear from genetically modified humans,” said Kenneth, who looks like a raven.

26. Roads: Bob knew that once the EU had changed all the road signs into Latin the chances were high that he would become lost.

27. Animal Welfare:  Alcoholics Anonymous for dogs was set up despite the failure of a similar scheme for newts.

28. Power Hungry Nazis: Ladies love the EU Commissioners. The fact that they are dead from the neck up doesn’t seem to bother this woman.

29. Animal Welfare: While old people were laid out on trolleys in the hospital corridors coughing up blood, Glenda made sure that the goats were contented.

30. Eugenics: Although less than 16 inches tall, the little Chinese man is the eldest.

31. Health & Safety: Smoking causes wrinkling of the skin and turns you into a dolphin with long pointy fingers.

32. Health & Safety: After the banning of beards, those who refuse to shave have to wear deep sea diving helmets to keep in the bacteria.

33. Health & Safety: Swimming pools have been banned altogether. Major swimming events are still permitted, but take place on the athletics track with the participants inserted into barrels of water at the start. EU Commissioners feel this is a fair compromise that will satisfy everyone without ruining the sport.

34. Women’s Rights: At beauty pageants, women will be allowed to remain anonymous to preserve their dignity as they wiggle their bodies around for the pleasure of shabby little men with thick glasses.

35. Eugenics/Snitches: “Well, you look over 16 inches tall to me. Let me measure you –  make my day! And I pledge allegiance to the other flag – the one with twelve stars.”

36. Eugenics/Snitches: A 17-inch giant is marched off after a valiant and true EU citizen sneaked up behind him with a tape measure then called the snitch hotline.

37. Health & Safety: Elephants must travel in the back seat. Rhinos in the front.

38 Women’s Rights: To end the male domination of sport, women are encouraged to play rugby. To get the hang of it, office managers must help them kick marrows about the office.

39. Nutrition: Young Welsh male voice choir singers must be given access to fresh watermelons.

40. Eugenics/Snitches: “You see, my dear, this little chap is an example of the perfect EU citizen: he is very small – even smaller than you, does not have a beard and is stupid enough to believe the propaganda.”

41. Eugenics/Law & Order: Prisons in the future will be very small and most people will be in one.

42. Freedom, they mean. Freedom is slavery.

43. Health & Safety: This bearded man was caught not wearing his deep sea diver’s helmet, so as punishment, he is forced to go around for a week with a fox’s head glued to his groin.

44. Health & Safety: French horn ensembles must not play on a railway line in front of an oncoming train.

45. Health & Safety: This woman is being comforted after her companion was shot dead by the blind woman just after shouting, “Woo-hoo”.

46. Employment Law: The EU’s unemployed are being retrained as blackboards.

47. Health & Safety: Another reminder of the terrible consequences of playing the French horn in the path of an oncoming express train. Even though he has no lungs, the woman is taking no chances and has blocked up her ears with cotton wool, just in case the cat can play.

48. Public Decency: It is against the law to be in public with a bear behind.

49. Health & Safety: After an energy-saving fluorescent light bulb explodes spreading toxic mercury all over the carpet, these ladies find a couple of pillocks to act as a bridge so they can escape to safety.

50. Eugenics: This girl, terrified of the EU’s growth restrictions, is preparing to saw off her own legs so that she doesn’t need to worry about it anymore and can be free to love the EU with all her heart.

Please leave your own in the comments, but ensure they comply with every EU directive. Thank you.

I hope you are all having a nice festive season. I got a box set of 21 Laurel and Hardy DVDs for Christmas, so that’s my viewing sorted until the Spring. I’m not sure what to make of the colourised footage. At first, it seemed almost like blasphemy, but I’m not so sure now. One thing that colourised black and white films seem to have in common is the proliferation of brown suits of a most peculiar and unnatural shade. I think for this reason alone, the originals are better.

If anyone is still tuning in to this blog, please tell me what has been happening in the world!

The King of the Game Shows should have been on the checkout.

I’ve been in a lot of pain the past couple of days and thought I’d better stock up on more painkillers. It’s nothing terminal.

You know how they package them in boxes of just sixteen pills these days? Well, I picked up three packets of different painkillers in the local Morrison’s supermarket this afternoon, including one I hadn’t tried before just in case it is more effective than the ones I am used to, and was told by the young lad at the checkout that I was only allowed to buy two of them, so I had to choose which one to reject.

My protestation that I am an adult was to no avail (if the wrinkles weren’t a dead giveaway).

So, I was presented with a “make your mind up time” in which, after considering my needs, I chose to turn down the own brand ibuprofen, which is the one I haven’t tried before. I was half expecting to be asked, “Is that your final answer?”

The checkout experience started to resemble a cheap game show. I stopped short of asking if I could phone a friend or ask the audience (the people queuing behind me).

If Bob Monkhouse had been on the checkout, he would likely have said, “In Bingo lingo clickety-clicks, it’s time to take your pick of the six.”

Or in this case, perhaps, “Banning Nanny won’t leave you be, it’s time to take your pick of the three.”

It could have been worse. I might have walked away with just Dusty Bin, or BFH.

P.S. It helps if you’re a telly addict over a certain age to understand what I’m going on about.

In Oklahoma, you can be arrested for making ugly faces at a dog.

Even if the dog makes ugly faces at YOU first.

In South Carolina it is legal to beat your wife on the court house steps on Sundays.

It’s a long time to wait if she’s annoyed you on Monday.

In New York, the penalty for jumping off a building is: Death.

Nice to see the law of gravity being taken seriously in the Big Apple.

In Pennsylvania, it’s against the law to tie a dollar bill on a string on the ground and pull it away when someone tries to pick it up.

Use a ten dollar bill. It’ll be even funnier.

In France, it is against the law to sell an “E.T” doll. They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces.

There can’t be a doll of Nicolas Sarkozy.

In Louisiana, biting someone with your natural teeth is considered “simple assault,” but biting someone with your dentures is “aggravated assault.”

Especially when your pitbull terrier has borrowed your false teeth.

In Florida, it is illegal to fart in a public place after 6 P.M. on Thursdays.

“Officer, that man’s just farted. Can’t you smell it?”

“Whoever smelt it dealt it, buddy. I’m taking you in.”

In Samoa, it’s a crime to forget your own wife’s birthday.

The penalty is fifty lashes (of her tongue). He won’t forget next year.

In London, England it is illegal for a City cab to carry rabid dogs or corpses.

That’s what buses are for.

In England, it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

There is plenty of room outside for gallows.

In England, it is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the Queen upside down.

Isn’t it an act of treason to allow one’s realm to fall into enemy hands? Just asking.

In Indiana, it’s against the law to dress ‘Barbie’ in ‘Ken’s’ clothes.

At last, a sensible one.

In Australia, it’s illegal to name any animal you plan to eat.

Skippy goulash, anyone?

In New Jersey, answering a traffic cop who asks “Do you know why I pulled you over?” by saying,“If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you” is an automatic $300 fine.

Not famous for their sense of humour, then?

In York, it is legal to kill a Scotsman within the ancient city boundary, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

Well, that’s all right then.

In Italy, anyone considered “obese” is forbidden from wearing polyester.

Lycra it is, then.

In Montana, it’s illegal to tear a phone book in half.

Drat! I can’t perform my party piece in Montana. I’ll have to crush a grape instead.

In Michigan, it is illegal to chain an alligator to a fire hydrant.

I can see how that might be important.

In Victoria. Australia after mid day on Sunday, it’s illegal to wear pink hot pants.

So, you’d better change out of them after church.

In Connecticut, night watchmen are forbidden from drinking decaf coffee while working.

Night watchmen drink proper coffee, which is why they never fall asleep on the job.

In France, it’s illegal to name a pig Napoleon.

In Australia too, if you plan on eating the porker.

In Indonesia, the punishment for masturbation is death by decapitation.

Quite right.

In Florida having sexual intercourse with a porcupine is illegal.

But Spinewall are trying to have the law changed.

In Oklahoma, it is against the law to have a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7 PM.

Give it plenty of coffee to keep it awake. Not decaf.

In Ohio, it is against state law to get a fish drunk.

The punishment is a hefty fin.

In Chico, California, the law states that anybody who detonates a nuclear device within the city limits is liable to a fine of $500.

Tough on crime…

In Minnesota, it is against the law to hang male and female underwear together on the same washing line.

Including Barbie and Ken’s.

—————–

I would just like to thank the person who performed that Google search which made this post possible!

But I digress. I bent down to reap the brown harvest and my fingers poked through the bag. Either my digits just stopped short of the prize, or just touched it and no more. I wasn’t sure and didn’t do the obvious test, I just took out another bag and, in almost gale force winds, managed to pick up the other bag and the booty.

You might be wondering how the sore knees came about. Well, I had been standing in the gutter to pick up Muffin’s pavement art and I stood up, took a few steps and tripped on the kerb. I was felled like a great oak. Time seemed to go slower than usual. Slow enough to prepare for the inevitable crash landing by letting go of the dogs’ leads and spreading my hands to cushion my landing. It is handy how time slows down. On my way down I also had time to recite a couple of Shakespearean sonnets and say “it’s a lovely evening” to a passing stranger. My final thought before hitting the ground was that I hope my specks don’t get broken, as I hate going to the opticians.

As I lay motionless on the ground, Muffin came over to lick my face while I carried out an initial damage assessment. Knees: both sore. Hands: not bad. Glasses: intact. I was wondering if I had landed on a jobby, but on getting to my feet, I realised that I hadn’t.

So, as I sit here now with slightly sore knees, I think about how much worse it could have been. Even now, I could have been crawling home with broken bones, squinting through cracked glasses and covered in poo.

Life could be a lot worse, so don’t let it get you down.

On the face of it, these differences would seem impossible to reconcile, but fortunately for the hideous-looking beast, the conservative side wasn’t conservative and the liberal part wasn’t liberal.

But whatever was to happen, the ConDem would surely be an improvement on the Brown Gorgon.

Or would it?

The beast soon fell passionately in love with the giant bloodsucking leech called EU. This came as no surprise, despite ConDem’s dad pretending to play hard to get before the election. The Dave part of this pushmi-pullyu clone soon forgot about his cast-iron guarantee and the Clegg head had always loved the idea of being dominated.

“Four legs good, two legs bad!”

Or as the first of the “Seven Commandments” in Animal Farm says: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.”

That sounds like a good summary of ConDem’s policy.

A llama in la-la land.

Oil slick concerns

Dramatic and astounding news is emerging that Lord Lucan has finally been found. The peer disappeared on 8th November 1974 following the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny. The 36-year search finally ended when he was discovered living in a mansion in a suburb of Edinburgh. The decision had already been made that, rather than capture him to stand trial, he would be shot in the face until dead, then flown to a ship in the North Sea. DNA was taken from the body and within half an hour, the lab confirmed that it was indeed Lucan. Just as well, seeing as he had already been shot dead. The body was flown by helicopter to HMS Cadaver, where it was given a Mafia-style despatch – it was fitted with cement shoes and thrown overboard to “sleep with the fishes”.

No pictures of Lord Lucan’s demise have been released for fear of upsetting people, but photographs of the bloody bodies of the three butlers also killed in the raid were given to all the newspapers and television newsrooms.

Conspiracy theories were quick to follow the announcement, with some crazy bloggers suggesting that there was no actual proof that Lucan was dead.

But the great and good have been quick to heap praise on the brave men who carried out the attack on Lord Lucan’s lair. President Obama immediately started handing out medals and will travel to Ground Zero tomorrow for a photo opportunity.

Prince Charles congratulated the men responsible and said of Lord Lucan, “He wasn’t really one of us anyway”. Charles ended his statement on a concerned note by suggesting that dumping such a tall man in the sea could be bad for the environment, especially as he used a lot of Brylcreem.

Cry freedom!

AV defeated. Next: EU kicked out.

…mocks the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, with whom Christ is able to communicate only during epileptic seizures. Christ is depicted as a former alcoholic who — in between His hyperbolic sermons about peace — smokes dope and engages in sexual relationships with males and females. The novel features detailed descriptions of “tantric sex scenes and vegetarian love-ins.”

It is how liberal loonies would like Christ to be, so they can feel justified in doing these things. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it is complete rubbish. For a start, The Lord said he will return in glory and judgment and secondly, God is unchanging, so what was sinful 2,000 years ago is sinful still.

A reviewer writes,

But Frey is the product of a culture with a short memory and a skewed moral sense. He’s also less a writer than a professional celebrity, which means that he can count on being rewarded for behaving badly.

Isn’t this a problem in the arts and entertainment industries today? Those who don’t have the ability to succeed go for the shock factor instead as the only way they can sell their substandard wares. By being avant garde artists get away with chucking bricks in a pile on the floor or encasing dead animals in formaldehyde and calling it “art.” These days it seems that being avant garde is the best way to win a major gong, like the Turner Prize.

The Royal Academy in London has just finished celebrating British sculpture in the 20th Century by displaying various pieces which prove that we don’t “do” sculpture in this country.

Here are some of the exhibits. This one is called Let’s Eat Outdoors Today and is a Damien Hirst from twenty years ago.

This IS art, you Philistines!!

Basically, it’s a plastic box containing a garden table and chairs, half-eaten steaks and thousands of flies. I presume the box is well sealed, as those flies are probably worth a thousand pounds each! I don’t know if Mr Hirst has thought of collecting the dead ones and encasing them in acrylic for selling at an exorbitant price. He could set them in Red Arrows-type display formations. That’d be pretty cool! Got to be worth twenty grand a go.

This next one fills a whole hall:

Plastic fantastic?

It’s called An Exhibit and was made by Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton in 1957. Presumably they called this “An Exhibit” because they couldn’t think of a proper title due to the fact that it doesn’t actually look like anything. “Plastic sheets hanging from ceiling” doesn’t have much of a ring to it.

This next one was made in 1967 and is called simply Parallels:

You can do it when you B&Q it.

What can one say that hasn’t been said many times before? (Other than, “That’s brilliant.”)

A quick visit to the local timber merchants, three tins of gloss, an inch-and-a-half paint brush, et voilà, some coloured planks worth a fortune.

What could it represent? Why are there eight yellow planks, four light blue ones and six dark blue ones?

Why did I even bother to count them?

You might have noticed that none of these things so far is a sculpture. Why are they in a sculpure exhibition? It’s yet another mystery.

Here’s another chap who’s handy with a tin of gloss. This is Anthony Caro, with his 1962 work, Early One Morning.

Riveting...

This next thingy was made by Rebecca Warren in 1999 and is called Helmut Crumb.

Crumbs!

A reviewer in The Independent wrote,

Why is so much contemporary art so annoying? I refer you to Rebecca Warren, who describes her work like this: “Though [it] evolves through a process of appropriation and reference, it is non-didactic, being closer to revelation and discovery.” And what does the one-time almost-Turner Prize winner mean by that?

Well. Warren does not make sculpture but “sculpture”. At her art school – Goldsmiths, naturally – she will have received an education long on theory but short on practice. Fine arts were taught by a man best known for conceptualising a glass of water as an oak tree – a neat trick, although a little tired when compared with Duchamp’s bottle driers. Any feeling for materials was assiduously bred out of Goldsmiths students. Art was of the mind, not the hand. The hand could be invoked, but only in quotation marks, to show how stupid hands were, how very clever minds.

…what Warren’s lumpy artwork does is to define itself by affecting to be all the things it is not. Here I am, it says, a block, modernist, clay, a cube; and it is none of these. You might see the piece as anti-sculpture, or Bad Sculpture, although that would require it to engage with the traditions of art-making, if only to reject them. Actually, Warren’s work is more revolutionary than that. It isn’t Bad Sculpture or anti-sculpture but unsculpture, a thing given physical existence only to point up the valuelessness of physical existence. Cube [another of her works] is a thought whose expression required Warren to make a bronze lump on an MDF platform and wheels; although you feel she would much rather not have bothered, because the real point of her piece is the thinking behind it.

Now, conceptual art can be extraordinarily fine and moving, as witness Mark Wallinger’s The Russian Linesman, a work-cum-show whose genius is its genius. The trouble is that conceptualism’s medium – the thing it’s made out of – is the mind. As Michelangelo proved, you can get good sculpture out of bad marble. You cannot carve good concepts from bad thinking. What do Rebecca Warren’s elisions of Degas and R Crumb, her blobby-legged cephalopods and ho-hum vitrines tell us? That she has some knowledge of art history and rather more of art theory; that she believes that sculpture, in any traditional sense, is dead; that, in short, she went to Goldsmiths. To which I find myself saying, So what?

It’s the vitrines that really bug me. For all her talk of revelation and discovery, Warren’s Helmut Crumb – “iconic”, apparently – is so clearly the output of an over-taught mind that it’s hard even to be annoyed by it. Meret Oppenheim made teacups out of fur in 1936: does Helmut Crumb move us on from there? But Warren’s vitrines seem to be trying to do something more heartfelt and less glib, to engage with our eyes and hearts rather than merely with our post-postmodern brains. And they do it so badly. Denied the easy solace of irony, they fumble about, managing to be neither elegant nor naive, mired on the road from St Ives to Hoxton, hinting at stories that fall apart as soon as you look at them. See this show if you’re in the park and it’s raining; otherwise, go rowing on the Serpentine.

So, do you think that Helmut Crumb moves us on from Meret Oppenheim’s teacups made out of fur?

Well, to help you decide, here is a picture of one of her furry teacups:

I'll pass on the tea thanks...

I need to finish this post before I lose the will to live. I thought this final piece was a Henry Moore at first glance, but it’s a Barbara Hepworth from 1961 entitled Single Form (Memorial).

A Barbara Hepworth. It's worth a mint - with a hole.

At least we finally get to see a sculpture. Of sorts.

And before anyone asks me, “Well, could you do any better?” The honest answer is, yes, I think I could make something better than some of these, despite being fairly useless at art. But then, is it art at all?

Photo credits: Flies, Planks, Other sculptures