Now One Is Taking The Piss

Our 'environmentalist' Queen (see 8th Nov. post) has now written to Santa asking for a new, more luxurious Royal Train. A snip at £30 million. My first thought was that she was getting her wish list in while Blair is still Prime Minister - a man whose oleaginous fawning to the monarchy makes Disraeli look like a republican. But it seems the train is to be funded by private money on the basis that it will be available for corporate hire. Apparently she wants a Eurostar-style train for visits to the Continent. Er....what's wrong with using Eurostar? A while back the royal PR people made much of the Queen saving money by travelling on ordinary trains using her Senior Citizen's Railcard but it seems that even that limited contact with the real world proved too stressful.

Meanwhile, the Government show once again that reality rarely invades that touchingly innocent, pre-lapsarian world thay inhabit. They propose that people should be given the mobile phone number of their local policeman. (What local policeman? My village bobby is based in a town 12 miles away). What a wonderful opportunity to send your local plod to a fictitious crime in Walnut Grove while you burgle a house in Acacia Avenue.
On the same day, it's suggested that schoolchildren should be given the home email addresses of their teachers so they can ask questions about their homework. As one of the unions has pointed out, this would provide an irresistable opportunity to send abusive messages and, in the case of more inventive children, to sign up Mr Chips for pornogaphic newsletters and dubious dating sites.