Enough with the world cup already

Look I know there's a footy match on round at Nelson Mandela's old gaff at the moment but does every single fucking product I use have to jump on the sodding bandwagon? I mean my cornflakes at breakfast have "A feast of football" splattered all over the packaging with some bollocks about winning a shin-pad if I send in three packet tops. If I want a few pringles to nibble on when flicking through the TV channels to find something not soccer related I now have to open a packet of "Pringoooooals" and there's world-cup themed sandwiches in the staff canteen.

Honestly I am expecting to sit down on the loo only to see Wayne Fucking Rooney's gurning fizzog leering at me as it's been printed on the bog roll.

And what's got everyone's knickers in a bunch? Well everyone who gives a shit about watching the spectacle of a bunch of overpaid tossers kicking a ball about anyway. That would be the "vuvuzela" which is the Xhosa word for "wank-trumpet" apparently. I can see how folk might be a tad irritated by said "instrument" as quite by accident I caught the last 10 minutes of Rooney and his friends being held to a one-all draw by a nation to whom footy ranks around the same level of interest as competitive scrabble or morris dancing. It took a minute to work out what was wrong with the sound as all I could hear was a swarm of angry bees doing a simultaneous B-flat fart, ah - that would be your knuckle-dragging football fan embracing the "cultural diversity of the Rainbow Nation" and honking his plastic wank-trumpet. I found I wanted to ram the bloody things flare end first up their collective arses within about 90 seconds so what the hell it must be like listening to it for 90 minutes I hate to think.

And can you imagine being in the stadium itself? I read the noise level of these things is 113dB which, to give you an idea, is the peak sound pressure of my 16" chainsaw when it's at full chat. I fully expect our wandering fans to come back from SA and walk straight into the nearest hospital to get treated for deafness.

Maybe they could pick up some retro-viral drugs to handle the HIV they picked up off the local good-time girls whilst "On tour".

Communications failure

Nearly half a million people, described by the UN as "the poorest of the poor", will soon be able to make mobile calls. As part of a UN programme to tackle poverty in rural Africa, 79 villages across 10 African countries will be hooked up to cellular networks.

"Hello? Hello? No I'm on my ox cart on the handsfree. No, on the OXCART. I can't hear you. I CANT HEAR YOU. Oh hang on we're about to go through a tunnel..."

You would have thought that access to clean water, a reliable food source and a government that didn't keep trousering the wealth of their countries would have been a priority but I'm only a dragon so what would I know.

Vultures

I see Dick Dastardly, Muttley and the gang have got themselves a new gig...


Catch that hedge fund, catch that hedge-fund

Not so much vulture squadron, more vulture fund. Awww, poor little Zambia, well not that poor as it happens, being rich in copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, coal, emeralds, gold, silver and uranium (all things that people want and will pay good money for), but a bit poorer as they have to cough up 42 million dollars to what is in effect a debt collection agency.

Look, this is very simple. Let's say that I buy a nice shiny new plasma TV on tick from Dixons to replace the last one that I breathed on when Tony Bliar came on screen but omit to pay back the loan. Now Dixons can't be bothered to chase down that loan as it's a lot of work and no guarantee they'll succeed so what they do is sell on this "distressed credit" (as it's called in the business) at a discount (which can be quite high, up to 90% in cases where there is a snowballs chance in hell of getting the money back) to a company that specialises in distressing the people who owe money. These people then would send large burly men to my lair to remonstrate with me into paying up and they may take me to court to get the money back and ultimately would probably send in the baliffs.

So that's how it works for individuals. And so why should that not apply to countries as well. Look Zambia, you borrowed all this money, why the fuck do you think you should be excempt from paying it back same as I have to. You can show us all the pictures of hungry brown children you like but it doesn't alter the fact that you borrowed a shitload of cash and now we'd like it back please. Sure I can show my bank manager a picture of a dragon who hasn't had a chicken jalfrezi in the last month but it doesn't cut any ice with them either.

"Oh but we give all this aid to these countries and it all goes to line the pockets of these rich fat cat businessmen". Yes well maybe we should stop giving out all this aid then. Or rather if our governments want to help (we'll leave the fact that I think they should be sorting out the very real and manifest problems in their own contries rather than squandering my tax money on foreign countries out of it for a while) then they should say "OK, we're sending over a bunch of policemen, forensic accountants and sundry civil servants to sort out your corruption problem and get your governments working properly." Let me tell you that would in the long term feed, clothe and educate a shitload more brown children than sending the container ship loads of cash to sub-Saharan Africa that we do at the present. But oh no, that would be "Imperialist" wouldn't it, best to let the Africans run their own country. They are doing brilliantly at it; Zambia's president, Levi Mwanamasa¹, launched an anticorruption task force in 2002, but the government has yet to make a prosecution.

Never mind, we'll just have Bono do another one of those concerts for you and send you another freight train full of cash.


¹ Remember that name, it will come in handy if you're ever playing Scrabble.