You say tomayto...

WITH SUMMER approaching, one of the delights of the dog-shit picnic (i.e. one on the local park) is the soggy tomato sandwich. This delicacy, which sets out from your home full of firm, plump hope first thing in the morning, disintegrates into a damp mush by lunchtime and, in my view, is all the better for it.

Talk to any chef and they'll bang on about flavour and texture. Well, a soft tomato sandwich coupled with the harsh bite of a packet of cheese and onion crisps is just a marriage made in taste heaven. The warm wet, the salty snap ... Heston Blumenthal, eat your heart out. (And he probably will.)

Sadly, there seems to be nothing in this life that can't be 'improved' by some interfering bastard or another. Now Tesco claim to have developed the world's first non-soggy tomatoes and expect to have them on sale by the end of the week at 99p for four.

"Tomatoes can be tricky to chop and a squirt of juice can easily end up on the kitchen wall or over your shirt," says a Tesco spokesweasel. "The non-leaking variety will stop that problem but without the tomato losing any of its taste."

Have you ever heard such crap in your life? How many times has your day been ruined by a squirting tomato? Never, right?

This is just genetic and social engineering. It's pathetic. Leave my soggy sandwiches alone, you fruit Nazis.

Piling into the decrepit crush

I HAVE kept you informed before about my travails in supermarkets, Tesco being the worst culprits when it comes to upsetting the equilibrium. Now those posh buggers at Waitrose have come up with yet another way to enrage the passing shopper.

When you now pay your bill (and after the headmistress behind the till has frowned at you for asking for plastic bags as if you were about to drown a polar bear in the car park), they give you a little green tiddleywink. And, on the way out, you have a choice of three boxes, all representing a charity, in which to deposit your token. I presume, although I haven’t checked, that Waitrose then gives some part of its massive profits to the charity with the most tokens.

The problem with this is that it gives old people yet another reason to get in the way of the modern, younger, time-pressed shopper. Not content with forgetting that they have to pay until all their shopping has gone through the checkout and has been laboriously packed, and then taking an age to find their purse, and paying the correct amount in cash down to the painstakingly counted-our coppers, and pausing to discuss the weather and that hairy woman on Britain’s Got Talent with the Nazi on the till, they now pitch up at the box in the exit where they have to vote with their tiddleywink.

And they stop, and they fumble for their glasses, and they read the short description of each charity carefully, then they have to go for a wee, then they’ve forgotten what they read, so have to read it all again. And they still can’t make up their minds about who to vote for. And suddenly there’s dozens of them milling about in your path.

And meanwhile normal people pile their brimming trolleys into this decrepit crush like pissed-up Scousers at Hillsborough. (Have you noticed that when the media asks Liverpool fans where they were on the fateful day, not one of them admits to being “at the back of the Leppings Lane End, pushing”?)

It’s carnage: another stupid complication in what should be a stress-free experience. The only consolation for me is that out of the three charities nominated (some homeless handout nonsense, a cat charity, and the Army Benevolent Fund), our brave boys were winning by a mile … even if I did have to tread on some 90-year-old corns to cast my vote.

The Metropolitan Police: Another apology

THANKS TO the Daily Mail, we now know all we need to know about Nicky Fisher, the woman hit by a TSG Sergeant at the G20 demonstrations.

She was apparently "shouting and swearing at the sergeant", has "faced shoplifting allegations in the past", is now "negotiating a lucrative newspaper deal through her agent Max Clifford" and "wants £50,000 for her story".

She lives with her dog Poppy and her boyfriend "in a rundown basement flat of a Victorian house facing a council estate in Brighton", of which "the front door is adorned with an anti-fur slogan and a 2003 Glastonbury Festival sticker". Furthermore, her boyfriend is "an overweight young man in an England football shirt".

Finally, while she has lived in the flat for around ten years, "she did not appear to have a full-time job".

Now we know all this, and we chuck in the fact that she's probably a vegetarian as well, I think we can all agree that she got what was coming to her.

Good evening, all.

Breaker, breaker. Put the hammer down ...

I’M QUITE confident that I have been advancing the argument that lorry drivers were responsible for 99 per cent of the murders of young women in this country long before Jeremy Clarkson got himself into trouble for suggesting the same on an edition of Top Gear.

It is therefore encouraging to learn that I was right all along. Right, that is, if we accept the American model.

According to the FBI, they have a remarkable 200 truck drivers listed as probable murderers, many of them being suspected serial killers, and that truck driving is by far and away the profession of choice for men who enjoy killing women as a hobby.

Altogether now: “Kill a whore, change gear, kill a whore, wield ball-pein hammer, change gear, kill a whore, wear upside down V-neck jumper as underwear, change gear, kill a whore …”

The Metropolitan Police: An apology

IT HAS come to my attention that Mr Ian Tomlinson, the citizen described as an “innocent bystander” in a previous post on this message board, was actually nothing of the sort.

According to the forces of law and order, and their willing servants in the national press, he was in fact a shiftless alcoholic who had been living apart from his “loving” family for the past nine years. He was homeless, eking out an existence in sheltered housing and shop doorways, regularly took drugs, was obviously a paedophile and probably a terrorist.

He therefore obviously deserved to die. Keep calm and carry on.

EDIT: And meanwhile this big bastard needs sorting out (3.10 onwards).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23PGWd46MM&feature=channel_page

They might have uniforms, but they're still thugs

FROM THE sublime to the ridiculous ... the Met have been caught red-handed probably contributing to the death of an innocent passer-by during the G20 non-riots, while police in Scotland have been told that they mustn't finish the sentences of people with a stutter in case it offends them.

Other nuggets in the 140-page diversity handbook issued to the Porridge Cops include not leaning on someone's wheelchair, not chewing gum while speaking to the deaf (and even I can see the sense in that) and accepting that it's OK to "wear clothing and accessories of any gender in public as long as the genitals are covered." (I think that's what they call the Kilt Clause.)

It was a shame that newspaper-seller Ian Tomlinson wasn't stuttering or obviously deaf or wearing a kilt when he wandered into the crowds of G20 demonstrators on his way home from work last week. His only crime was to have his hands in his pockets while failing to move swiftly enough away from the police dog snapping at his heels. (Although I do suspect that he might not have been the full shilling.)

But that was no excuse for a uniformed thug to baton him across the back of his legs and then launch him face-first onto the pavement. If you didn't know by now, Mr Tomlinson died of a heart attack minutes later.

Contributing to this disgrace is the fact that the Dibble on duty had deliberately obscured their identification numbers on their uniforms. Now I quite understand why they might not want to wear name badges, but unidentifiable numbers? I'm afraid that stinks to high heaven.

Any football fan knows all too well the abuse that is meted out to ordinary people doing ordinary things by the hyped-up Bovril Brigade enjoying their Saturday overtime. We also know that the only difference between us and them is that they're allowed to wear armour and use weapons. That apart, we're all just lads up for a scrap.

This time though, they've gone too far. It can't be that hard to identify the cop responsible for this cowardly attack. I hope his eventual fate reminds his colleagues that the general public isn't just fodder for their bullying entertainment.

The prodigal returns

AMID THE driving winds and hailstones of last night, there comes a knock at the door of Beelzebub Mansions. A bedraggled figure lurks on the doorstep, clad only in a ‘Jade RIP’ T-shirt and a pair of floral, knee-length shorts. It’s only my man Whittaker, back from his self-imposed round-the-world exile.

(You may recall that he fled the country in shame shortly after the hunting ban was introduced when he turned up for his first ‘drag’ hunt wearing lipstick and high heels.)

He is somewhat sheepish. Is there, perhaps, a position still available for a Gentleman’s Gentleman?

I update him on the credit crunch, the financial crisis, and the fact that Mrs B is currently preparing a nourishing grey squirrel casserole as we speak. But my heart isn’t in it. I point him towards the stables and tell him he’s welcome to huddle down amidst the straw and the livestock.

To be honest, I’m very aware that it’s Easter weekend and the Christmas Stilton still lurks at the back of the fridge. Someone is going to have to evict the blue-veined bastard, and that someone isn't me …

Goodbye reality

AS I write, the Sky News helicopter clatters high above Jade Goody's funeral cortege as it makes its four-hour journey through London. The event is being covered live.

Chavs step out of the doorways of Pound Shops to throw flowers onto the bonnet of the hearse. Grubby tramps on their benches tip their bottles of plastic cider in respect. Someone has sent a floral display that spells out the immortal words 'East Angular'. Another is in the shape of a Marmite jar (you either love it or hate it).

I shall now light my Jade Memorial candle. I may later pop out for a kebab. With poppadoms.

She truly was the Poveratti's Princess.

The bane of the bongo-banging benefits bandits

SO WHAT was that all about then? I’m all for people being allowed to protest against the government, but I’d be happier if they actually had a sensible, single cause in mind.

The shower of soap-dodgers (and you’ll never see those words in the same sentence again) who turned up in the City of London today were such a confused bunch of lentil-eating loons that it’s hard to find any sympathy for them.

What do we want? Jobs, Justice, Climate, No to Nuclear, No to Globalisation, Republicans ‘R Us, Kill Clarkson, No to Heathrow Runway 3, Stop the War, No More Smoking Beagles, Calm Down and Carry On, Meat is Murder, Shoot the Fox-Hunters, End Capitalism … the capitalism that pays for your education and your dole money? Are you sure?

It was an endless jumble of knee-jerk, Leftie bollocks. And can you imagine the smell? It was 18 degrees in central London and the aroma of patchouli oil, skunk and hand-knotted sweaters, all tinged with a whiff of damp lurcher, must have been horrendous.

And full marks to the corkscrew-haired Tarquins and their crusty mates for trashing the Royal Bank of Scotland building. That’s the RBS which is now owned by the taxpayer. And guess who will pick up the bill for the damages? Yep, the taxpayer.

Of course, the government could easily have avoided any of this nonsense with a single stroke of the pen. Once they knew when the demo was planned for, they should have just changed the signing-on day of every unemployed, bongo-banging benefits bandit to April 1st and the problem would have been solved.

Oh for the days of proper demonstrations, like when the Countryside Alliance came to town, got truncheoned by the Met Police, but still found time to pick up their own litter and replant most of the bedding plants in Hyde Park.

And all this just because The Queen wouldn’t lower the flag on Buckingham Palace when Jade died …