Quarterly Summary 2

“That’s what life is. Just a bunch of moments. Most of them are lousy, but once in a while you get a good one.”
- Molly (Lesley Ann Warren), Life Stinks

The second quarter of 2009 has not been so maniacally twisted as the first. However it has still been punctuated by some moments of excellence and absurdity.

1) Publication
The writing has been flowing as of late, and ideas have come to me in abundance. Flash Fire 500, who previously published my story Dead Chinese Girls, also accepted The Hit from me. Check it out, along with a host of other flash fiction pieces, at flashfire500.blogspot.com. After this acceptance I then uploaded the cringeworthy tale Most Embarrassing Moment to Badhap.com, a site dedicated to the reciting of the most uncomfortable moments of life. It was the longest story they had ever accepted, and the administrators had to reconfigure their site to fit the whole thing on. After this, I sent a piece to writers-bloc.net, a website featuring writing about writing. The article- How Not to Win a Writing Competition- was accepted but, for some reason, has not been uploaded yet… Following this, I wrote Human Nature- my first foray into political blogging- in an insomnia-laiden frenzy, and it was very quickly accepted into the Manchester Evening News letters page. The blog, about how the Government could take inspiration from the Catholic Church, went down a treat- although they for some reason cut out the part where I compared PM Gordon Brown to the sex-crazed lunatic ancient emperor, Caligula. But I can’t complain.

2) Wisdom Teeth
I now don’t have any. During the first extraction, my dentist made an incision into the gum at the base of the tooth and levered it straight out. It was two-thirds the diameter of a fifty-pence coin. It’s in a bank bag in my drawer. I would advise you to get the operation as soon as you feel discomfort, before the tooth grows. Then the rest of your teeth don’t get slammed together over time, as mine seem to have. The second tooth was not as easy to remove, and the dentist had to drill the shit out of the tooth and the back of the jawbone in order to extract it. I didn’t get a souvenir that time.

3) Beer Walk

The Saddleworth Round Table Beer Walk is held annually in Oldham in early summer. The walk is a fundraising event where punters can sample beer from all over the world, supplied by a variety of pubs all over Saddleworth. On this, my third Beer Walk, I joined 4 other mates in dressing as soldiers and Toby came down from Salford as Robin Hood.

Whilst steadily drinking our way round the route we bumped into various nurses, female airline pilots (although they could have been flight attendants- their outfits were a bit vague) plus policewomen, Pinhead from Hellraiser, two people dressed as giant ears raising money for Deaf Awareness, pretty much the entire cast of the Mr. Men, various cross dressers, Indiana Jones, a gang of Scousers in tracksuits and outrageous afros, a woman dressed a giant bell (who was just asking to have penis jokes hurled at her) and- while absolutely steaming- I bumped into some of my colleagues impersonating pirates. I have no recollection of what I said to them, but they seemed kind of bemused by my prattle. The Matt Tuckey Award for Best Outfit, however, went to the two men dressed in padded fat-suits with tweed jackets, constantly munching on a seemingly endless supply of cakes from their rucksacks. One man, his combover shedding immense amounts of fake dandruff, carried a doll under his arm. Ontop of a hill I found him shaving the plastic off the doll’s head with a cutthroat razor.

Later on during the walk I realised that the giant plastic machine gun I’d bought- complete with vibration and firing sound effects- came with a laser sighting. I found something so (now inexplicably) funny about all this that I laughed until I vomited all over a nearby wall.

I would advise that people do not drink alcohol to the extent that I did. A drink in each of the many pubs along the way didn’t help, and I would have been more out of it if I hadn’t dropped a half-empty bottle of brandy, smashing it all over a footbridge. The more I drank, the less accessible I found the pockets to be. This much alcohol is particularly ill-advised if, like me, you are still recovering from two dental operations resulting in a gaping wound at the back of your mouth. This will only result in pain.

4) Whisky tasting
My first experience of a whisky-tasting event was in Lees Labour club in Oldham. Sponsored by Stanley Ogden Butchers, who supplied some damned good steak sandwiches, the night was an opportunity to sample six fine whiskies from the world-famous distillery regions of Scotland. Headed up by a very knowledgeable old geezer in a kilt, the event began with a single malt called Dufton. During the drinking, Geezer described the history of whisky- starting with how the Irish discovered the techniques for distilling alcohol (or ‘alco-wol’, as Geezer pronounced it, causing us to stifle a laughing fit). The Scottish bagpipes, he said, was also an originally Irish invention.

On the comment card supplied by the organisers, I described Dufton as ‘nice’ and ‘warm’. Geezer described it as a ‘singleton’. Following it was Auckentoshan (which I considered ‘delicate’), Laphroig (Geezer’s assumption: ‘unpopular’, mine: ‘fierce’), The Glenlivet (‘rich, sharp and oaken’ came to my mind), Glen Farclas (Geezer described this as a ‘session malt’- the night certainly ended up as a session) and the night came to a close with something called ‘Mortglag’, or something. I must have spelled this wrong as Google doesn’t recognise it as a whisky- it only offered me the Roman Economic Journal, which was all in Latin. It gets weirder still. On the comment card, next to this unpronounceable and seemingly untraceable whisky, I wrote: ‘Duff town. Strong as piss.’ As to what any of this means, your guess is as good as mine.

5) Manic Scribbling
Anyone who has got on my bus recently and looked over my shoulder may have had an unnerving bus ride. There has been a flurry of ideas running through my mind, resulting in a lot of scrawling into a blank 2008 diary in a form of block caps that only I can read, followed by some fiction and a lot of time sat at this Goddamn desk. So this summary will be short. Did I even need to include this point? Regardless, I often find that my brain works a lot faster than my hand and as a result, everything I write looks like a spider has ran through a puddle of ink and sprinted haphazardly across my notebook. These scrawlings eventually emerge in HTML form right here. I have also recently dug up a few ideas I concocted when I was sixteen.

6) Achievements
To conclude, let’s look back at the last Quarterly Summary blog . At the end of the last quarter I set myself the following tasks:
Find a decent woman (I know a few…)
Go to more house music clubs (I saw Robin S perform Show Me Love live in Tokyo Project, if that counts…)
Get published again (tick)
Become a more skilled martial artist (getting there, so yes I have)
Take over (I’m not Tony Montana just yet, but I am moving to the Civic Centre, Oldham Council’s headquarters building. So who knows what possibilities lie ahead.)

Here’s to more of life’s moments. I’m planning on making most of them decent, and avoiding- as best I can- the lousy ones.

Psycho Magnet

Julie Benz: How do you write women so well?

Jack Nicholson: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.

-As Good As It Gets, 1997

I have recently dated a few very nice girls. I have also dated some who needed to have a word with themselves. Perhaps it's because I'm a bit too nice myself, and they say opposites attract. Hence- crazy women, unstable sociopaths, scallies, and nazis- they LOVE me. I can’t say the feelings are regularly reciprocated. I started to wonder whether it was normal for women to cut you off half way through answering their question, thereby changing the subject completely. I felt it regular behaviour for an otherwise attractive girl to spend hours detailing mass brawls she’d been involved in- regardless of whether she’d be reminiscing about secondary school or the previous weekend.

I wanted a change from this. A few months ago I had a go on Loopylove.com- a dating website that I'd seen a pretty good review of. I was hoping this site might open out to a few new opportunities, and dating outside of Oldham might have been a good start- I wanted to throw the net a little further. However, the two emails I received from "Jacqueline" proved I was still stuck in the cycle...

Hello Matt,
Thanks for the email okay,well i am Jacqueline Cole by name and i was born in Glossop Derbyshire UK ,i studied Fashion And Art while i was still in school but i was not able to graduate because i lost my dad at a gasly motor accident and i decided to quit school at that time and we later relocated to Nigeria where my mum came from,So now i am a unemployed and have no work in hand.And i also lost my mum in some few months back,She died of Heart Prbs cos of my dad's death and now what i am looking for on this loopylove is to look for a soulmate that can be of the same flesh to flesh with me and also be of the bone to bone with me,The person which can clean away all my sorrowful parts and take good care of me and also be a caring man to me.I hope to hear from you also,
Bye for now
Jacqueline xxxxxx

It was after reading this that I realised Ms Cole would not be girlfriend material. But then, only the top 10% of the women I’ve dated were. And life is about experiences. So I figured… Everyone deserves a second chance. I messaged back something simple, asking if she was actually in the UK at the moment. That would have been a start. This was her reply.

Matt Dear,
There are things in life that are inevitable; I am powerless to control them. The Sun will rise and set, the tide will come in and go out,the seasons will change, the birds will fly South for the winter and return in the spring, and the caterpiller will transform itself into a handsome butterfly. Somehow, I feel reassured by this because many other things in life are so transistent - so momentary. from the moment we met on personals till now , I knew that our friendship would develop into something lasting and precious, just as I am sure that the caterpiller will one day become a handsome butterfly.I believe that our love and friendship is ordained by God. It is a union of two spirits destined for everlasting happiness. Thus, you have truly become the star of my life which brings me light in this dark world, and warmth when I need it.am an honest person and am looking for someone honest as well,dont know when i will be back in the UK cos i have some prbs which when i take care of i can then be in the UK.You offer me the promise of renewal, the joy of living, the peace of mind that comes from sharing and caring, and that shoulder to lean on in times of stress. You are my Swallow from Capistrano - my precious butterfly, and I will cherish you and love you forever if you promise that you will take good care of me , well i dont stay in Adamsville anymore i thought i told you my dad is a native UK while my mom is nigerian i lost my dad some few months back and i left with my mom for nigeria unfortunately i also lost her i think life has been very harsh on me but not withstanding i must countinue to search for someone that can fill the gap i am not looking at an outward appearance i look at ur heart .
Jacqueline xxxxxx

Easy, tiger!

Jacqueline – I’m guessing – is a well-intentioned but somewhat disturbed woman. Suffice to say, I did not meet up with her in the flesh. I have no idea where Adamsville is, nor Capistrano. Her main error (other than a devastating lack of grammar possibly due to English being her second language) is a mistake quite a few women make. She has bombarded me with a shitload of very personal and quite uncomfortable information very early on in the interaction. Believe it or not, this leads to some discomfort on my behalf…

These are the realities of the dating world. If you have been fortunate not to deal with this kind of bizarre behaviour, then brace yourself and think yourself lucky.

My advice to Ms. Cole is as follows:

Imagine trying to eat a pig whole, when it is alive and squealing. It would be a culinary disaster- no preparation, no efforts for presentation. It would be messy, uncomfortable and would attract unwanted attention. It would be much better to kill the pig, cut it into more manageable pieces, prepare it, and have a nice, simple, bite-sized pork sandwich once in a while. This would go down much better (with any nearby observers, and with your own digestion).

Similarly, Ms. Cole, when dating you should remember not to stuff everything down a man’s throat all at once. He will probably find this uncomfortable. Granted, the situation with your family life may be more uncomfortable than this, to say the least. But the point of dating is not to slam all of your fear and aggravation onto an unsuspecting victim in the hope that some kind of relationship will be formed out of the man’s pity for you.

Dating is supposed to be fun. Remember that.

I have been involved in similar scenarios both in the distant past and recent times. The dating scene has dealt me a shitty hand from time to time, but there’s been the odd ace in there. You’re certainly not the only girl with issues to address- Ms. Cole, Bing Crosby once sang, ‘You got to accentuate the positive’. Never forget that. No matter how bad your hand is.

My advice to men is, just watch your back…

Saw- a Disappointment

“You must see Saw”, exclaims some cheesy tabloid on the poster of the 2004 Horror film.

Don’t take their word for it. The film Saw left me feeling kind of empty- the ending didn’t quite make sense to me- and I couldn’t face the prospect of sitting through the whole thing again to figure it out. The main reason for my passivity was that the filmmakers seemed more interested in shocking us with the violence than actually telling a story. They were more driven by the need to make us cringe rather than think- this cringing resulting from either graphic depictions of visceral dismemberment or bad acting.

Director James Wan didn’t quite pull off the infusion of moral conflict in the way that David Fincher did in Se7en- both are films in which the victims of the grizzly murders are, in some way, guilty themselves and due a punishment.

However, Se7en is not the only film that leapt to mind after watching Saw.

Towards Saw’s climax, Gordon (Carey Elwes) realises it’s not the chain that his captor wants him to cut through with the hacksaw- it’s his own ankle.

To factors suspended my disbelief at this point. The first is realism. Gordon has just blunted the hacksaw’s teeth on the chain. The chances of this tool then being used to cut through flesh and bone of ankle thickness, without the blade snapping, is nonexistent. This doesn’t matter though, as he would have passed out and probably bled to death after he cut the femoral artery in the ankle- long before he had a chance to cut himself free.

There is a second factor preventing my immersion in the fictional film world of Saw. As well as the seminal thriller Se7en, Saw was blatantly inspired by the climax of classic Mel Gibson movie Mad Max.

Max, after accosting road hoodlum who murdered his wife and child, chains the perpetrator’s ankle to the twisted wreck of his own car. He then places the bomb in the driver’s seat and offers the guilty man a hacksaw- similar to that featured in the movie Saw.

Max explains that the bomb will detonate before he could cut through the steel. If said hoodlum wants to live, he had better get to work on his ankle. Max assures him that dismembering himself and escaping can be done within the available time. Suffice to say, the car explodes with the perpetrator still inside.

All the creators of Saw did was to say, ‘Well, hey, let’s see him do it.’

In conclusion, do not bother watching the Saw films. If you want decent horror that is frightening, and makes sense, try Ring and Dark Water (of course, I mean the Japanese originals by the world’s scariest director, Hideo Nataka) or Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Now that is benchmark horror.

These films substitute gratuity for suggestive horror, being more discreet in their images and allowing fear to manifest in the most terrifying place of all- our own minds. More importantly, Nataka and Roeg know how to suspend our disbelief. The makers of Saw do not. This can be particularly difficult in the genre of Horror, as the issue of ghosts (as featured in Ring, Dark Water and Don’t Look Now) is less believable than the premise of some nutter torturing people to make them see the ill of their ways (Saw series, Seven etc.) But Nakata and Roeg managed it: The creators of the Saw films did not.

Arbitrary Dream

God, she looked just like this...

Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
- Hung Up, Madonna

After months of dream research, blogging, attaining feedback and hours of contemplation, the conclusion I came to is that dreams don’t mean anything. They are just random thought mutations manifesting in our uncontrolled, unconscious minds. The last two dream blogs I wrote- Weird Dream and Unnerving Dream- are ultimately doomed in their purpose of defining dreams.

All this effort…

At least I found out that “heat retention” was the main reason for slipping into REM- the deep phase of sleep where dreams occur.

However, recently a dream about someone I only met a handful of times nearly a year and a half ago is leading me to question all this, sending me round that cycle again. It is one of a few dreams she’s appeared in. It may have had something to do with the fact that the woman in this dream- Tracey- made a man out of me.

I have managed to avoid writing about sex for over a year, for numerous reasons that I don’t want to get into, seriously. But I think I have to. I’ve started so I’ll finish, as the guy in the Crème Egg advert says.

And yes, the woman I speak of changed me. In the biblical sense. I cannot stop thinking about her- whether I’m awake or not.

I have dated a barrage of women since seeing Tracey. Some have been great girls, with whom things just didn’t work out. Others have been bad matches- women blatantly incapable of raising their unplanned children properly.

Wow! Just look at that popularity meter plunge! My fan base in Oldham has just been wiped off the map. Maybe I should backspace all this…

Or not. Those who know me well will know it’s not them I refer to in the latter group. Some of them have been, and still are, fantastic mothers doing one hell of a job.

So. Back to the point- the content of your dreams are based (partly) on things you think about in your waking life. When you are asleep, these thoughts are slammed together by your unconscious, like an amateur cocktail barman inventing a new drink. And according to Macalester College in Minnesota, the act of dreaming is only ‘to keep you warm’ (Macalester.edu). In the blog Unnerving Dream, I discussed scientists’ findings that rats died of hypothermia when denied the chance to slip into REM. The content of your dream is arbitrary.

Here’s one analogy I saw while trawling the Net for research:

“An elephant in a dream can mean one thing to a zoo keeper and something quite different to a child whose favourite toy is a stuffed elephant.” (experiencefestival.com)

It is, therefore, impossible for anyone to generalise and interpret somebody else’s dream. If you don’t know what your dream is about, nobody does. It probably doesn’t mean anything.

I’m an adult. In my waking life I moved on quickly from Tracey and kept my eyes open. But nobody I have met has struck me like she did. I am more hung-up than Albert Pierrepoint’s entire clientele put together. More hung-up than the collective contents of my local Spic ’n’ Span.

Discussing this dream and its possible meanings in this candid way is giving me some concerns regarding self-image. When I first started blogging nobody really read my writing. It took a bit of pestering to get people to check out the posts on my humble MySpace page. At the time, I had no qualms: I would write blogs about anyone I wanted, describing them however I wanted, and there would be no repercussions if I defamed anyone- which would usually be myself. Now, through the power of Facebook’s Live Blog application, pretty much everyone I know is notified on my crazed musings and twisted fiction by their news feed without me nagging them to follow a link to another site. It’s alarming (albeit pleasing) how many people pay attention to it.

Because this information is so readily accessible, and people are affected by what I have written (Oldham is a small town and word has got around about the people I’ve immortalised in HTML) I have to be very careful about what I detail in the blog. It’s not wise to mindlessly criticise whomever crosses me- and I think I’ve got out of the habit of exposing every negative trait I have, in full view of everyone I know.

Or maybe I’ve just stepped back into that quagmire. Who knows? After analysis, it seems that this is one of those rare dreams with a pretty obvious meaning. But hey, life goes on.

I might as well keep in theme and end with a Patrick Bateman quote. How apropos.

“This confession has meant nothing.”
-American Psycho

Have You had a Deliverance Moment?

My mum and dad have just come back from a week of kayaking down the Thames river. The Thames, most famous for flowing through the heart of London, also reaches the rural areas of southern England on its 215 mile course.

Whilst venturing down the forested regions of the river, numerous people asked them if they had had a "Deliverance Moment". Thankfully, they had not.

In the film "Deliverance", a group of city men kayak down a U.S. river in a forest in Georgia, a southern U.S. state. Ned Beatty's character is sodomized by two hillbilly mountain men. It's a fucked up scene. Not that I want to spoil it for you.

Someone else in my parent's kayaking team filled them in on the concept of the film. I'm sure glad I didn't have to, although I have previously mentioned it to them.

Suffice to say, both parents are home safe and unabused. I suggested, again, that Mum watches it (albeit not when I'm in the room) but she for some reason declined...

Unnerving Dream

-Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.
Mahatma Ghandi

The worst types of dreams are sometimes the ones that have a backdrop of regular life- with something normal happening, after which a terrible scenario ensues. Upon waking, you realise these things could and do happen.

I think it’s a weakness in my character that I don’t like not understanding things. I hate the feeling that something is beyond my knowledge and I have to deal with situations blindly- like waking up with an image of something violent and worrying (and possible) in my head. I had to continue my dream research. Why do we dream? And, king of clichés- what do they mean?

One recent dream revolved around picking up an ex-girlfriend in a dusty, gravel car park, and showing off in front of her and her mates by cranking full lock on and wheel-spinning, sending the car round like a lasso. It’s a childish, chavvish display that I would never attempt in reality.

The ex loved it though, and ran up to the car, squealing with amazement. She was apparently not the best at judging moving objects, however, and I felt a clunk as my back wheels ran her down. I’d gone full circle again, slamming the Skoda estate over her body a second time ‘til I registered- with a gut-wrenching feeling of doom- how moronic I had been, and the immense consequence of my stupidity.

The one redeeming feature about terrible dreams is the get-out-of-jail-free card that you instantly pull upon waking. I’ve lost count of the amount of horrific, twisted scenarios- far more violent and brutal than this one- that I’ve imagined when dreaming. But however bad these dreams could be, I’ve woken up and thought, thank fuck. That’s a weight off my mind! For the moment, at least- I am a free and innocent man.

For the record, I’m still on good terms with said ex girlfriend. This makes her suicide-by-Matt bid all the more weird… Why dream of doing something that you’d never want to happen?

Before going to bed and having this dream, I had indulged in an only-slightly-oversized glass of Highland Park Twelve-year-old. Of all the whiskies I’ve tried (and there have been a few) this hits the spot more than any other. Not in terms of sending me to sleep (although it does), but Goddamn, it’s a fine whisky. “The greatest all rounder in the world of malt whisky”, says The Malt Whisky Companion. I’m prepared to agree.

I was wondering whether there might be a connection between alcohol and dreams- and whether food affects these scenarios.

Medscape.com, a medical-orientated news site, shed light on how alcohol reduces healthy sleep time.

“Withdrawal symptoms (of healthy sleep) may include shallow sleep and multiple awakenings, REM rebound associated with nightmares or vivid dreams, sweating, and general activation. Therefore, although alcohol may be effective in sleep induction, it impairs sleep during the second half of the night and can lead to a reduction in overall sleep time.”

I had the feeling that alcohol might give me weird dreams. I was wrong. Everybody has weird dreams, regardless of whether or not they drink. In fact, alcohol delays the brain from entering the second, deeper phase of sleep- when REM occurs. So it seems that alcohol prevents you from dreaming in the way you should. It’s a wonder I remembered running my ex down at all.

I ploughed on with dream research. Macalester College, in Minnesota, has a detailed psychology website describing the effects of sleep depravation on rats.

“Ultimately, REM deprivation in rats is fatal. One of the main symptoms during this time was hypothermia, despite observable effects to increase heat production (e.g., by eating). This has led to the hypothesis that the function of REM is to prevent heat loss.”

-macalester.edu

So. This is the missing conclusive point to my previous dream blog, “Weird Dream”, in which I tried to nail down what dreams are in the first place. Dreams are the byproduct of your brain keeping your body warm while you sleep.

Doctors sometimes advise people that- even though while you are asleep your body congeals food into fat- getting more sleep can usually be an effective factor in the task of losing weight.

Also, we can conclude that the doctor in Fight Club was wrong. You can die from insomnia. It would take a very long time, we can presume, although psychologytoday.com reports that there are “no recorded human fatalities.”

“The most notable finding from REM deprivation studies in humans is that the number of attempts that a person makes to go into REM while asleep greatly increases. After the deprivation is complete, the deprived person will experience a REM rebound, which is a significant increase in the percentage of time spent in REM over normal levels. This REM rebound can last for several nights.”

-Macalaster.edu

So dreams act like sleep itself- if you deprive yourself of it, you’ll have REM rebound: a backlog of dreaming to experience later.

“Often nightmares are caused by stress, traumatic experiences, emotional difficulties, drugs or medication, or illness. However, some people have frequent nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking lives. Recent studies suggest that these people tend to be more open, sensitive, trusting, and emotional than average.”

- asdreams.org, the International Association for the Study of Dreams

Well. As a blogger I think I’ve spent enough time discussing my weaknesses. But this seems to correlate, to a degree. I have actually had less warped, disturbed dreams than I used to, which I guess is a good sign.

So it’s off to the land of nod again soon, after I’ve finished this glass of Glayva liqueur. I’ll tell you what happens. Night, all.

Human Nature

HUMAN NATURE

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
-Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) Wall Street

So… it has been revealed by The Daily Telegraph that our Members of Parliament claimed every penny they could on their expenses- down to paperclips and a one-pence phone bill.

Oh, we’re all so angry. Am I? Yes, of course I am. As a struggling administrator with learning difficulties, who’s just had his Working Tax Credits inexplicably revoked, I am more than disgusted at the government’s collective behaviour.

But then, I always have been. It occurs to me, however, that the behaviour displayed by our MPs is all that can be expected from the authorities.

If somebody offers you money or gifts, it takes a strong will to decline them. Especially when “the rules” dictate that there is nothing wrong with taking them.

Our MPs say that even though they admitted to claiming these expenses, they still acted “within the rules”. What a massive insult this is to the Great British public. They are Members of Parliament! They make the rules!

In 37AD, Roman Emperor Caligula went mad, made his horse a senator, sentenced several other “untrustworthy” human senators to death (their guilt heavily doubted by the Roman public), committed incest with his sisters and caused starvation by wasting money on opulent, unneeded architectural structures.

Those of you familiar with the Millennium Dome in London or Manchester’s decaying B of the Bang sculpture can imagine the public’s disgust with Caligula. It could be argued that it is only a matter of time before our ridiculous government plumbs the depths as far as he did.

The point that I am making is that those in charge are foolish to say they are acting “within the rules”. This statement bears little relevance when they made those rules themselves. Hazel Blears, Labour MP for Salford for instance, claimed £13,000 worth of expenses and has now stepped down from her Communities Secretary post. This is despite her belief that she has done nothing wrong. Her following proposal to pay back that money shed further doubt on her innocence.

It may be too late to stop this dark chapter of British politics from unfolding, but here’s my proposed solution: we should take inspiration from the Catholic Church. Many people cringe at the thought of slamming politics and religion together. In today’s world with numerous faiths being practiced within the same countries and growing atheism, religion becomes a veritable minefield for those in power. Who can forget George W Bush’s cringe worthy claim that his invasion of Afghanistan was “A mission from God”? Hopefully, however, my suggestion won’t result in as many heads in hands.

Hundreds of years ago, the Church had a system for declaring people as “saints”. If a person wanted to be canonised, i.e. recognised by the Church as a saint, they (or their representatives) would put forward a case proving the candidate’s worthiness of sainthood. In order for the church to offer a balanced case, however, it was necessary to have a person in the system to act as opposition. This person would stop every Tom, Dick and Harry (and most Matthews, Marks, Lukes and Johns) from waltzing in and acquiring sainthood. This person was referred to as the Devil’s Advocate, and his job was to find fault in people.

Currently at Westminster, laws proposed by the party in power (Labour) can be challenged by opposing parties (usually the Conservatives) if it is felt that new laws and motions are inappropriate or problematic.

I may be rambling about something I know nothing about here, but consider this plan:

The government hires someone not previously involved in politics. They would ideally live in a modest home and receive a modest, steady wage. A levelheaded, respectable individual, they would have enough common sense to tell right from wrong (something most politicians lack, given the current state of affairs). Perhaps a courtroom judge could be a good candidate for the post. Using this common sense, their job is to act as a modern-day “Devil’s Advocate” for the Houses of Parliament. Among other things, they stop inappropriate expenditure and deny questionable expenses claims - like we are currently seeing on MPs’ expense sheets at the moment.

The Telegraph’s latest findings show MPs have claimed for flapjack, a ten-grand office refurbishment, bleach, DVDs, face cream, a toilet brush, the removal of a wasp’s nest, lamps in the shape of elephants, horse manure, jellied eels, a hedge-trimming job around a helipad (go on, rub it in), Chicken and Turkey Dog food, something being referred to as “the mother of all wigs” (your guess is as good as mine), three TVs and three shredders (all six claimed by one MP simultaneously) and – here’s the best one- a £47 claim by Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne for two DVDs of HIS OWN speech. It gets better: the speech was on “Value for Taxpayer’s Money”!

Only in Britain, hey?

The political “Devil’s Advocate” technique I described would prevent a part of human nature from damaging the political system in Britain. That damaging natural trait is greed.

People criticise our politicians for being greedy. However, I do not. I criticise the system for allowing our MPs’ greed to affect their jobs, inadvertently pushing them into the spotlight.

No doubt somebody will suggest that the opposition I describe is already in place, in effect, in the Houses of Parliament. New laws are created in this Westminster building: they are bounced between the House of Commons and the House of Lords before being finalised and implemented, but this method of law laying clearly isn’t working.

If Caligula’s political techniques seem old-fashioned, and mine seem impractical, maybe we should take a leaf out of Croatia’s book.

Bizarre news site Ananova.com reports: ‘Josko Risa was voted in as mayor in Prolozac with a landslide victory using the slogan: "All for me - nothing for you."… A local commented- “We're going to get ripped off no matter who takes over. At least he's being honest and up front about it. And he has said that if things get better for him then they will get better for us."’

The Croatian public perhaps didn’t realise that his explanation didn’t match up with his slogan. Perhaps it really is impossible to be honest and well intentioned in politics.

Croatia may be irreversibly broken, like many countries in the world, but there is hope for Britain in all of this. In a government full of plastic smiles, greed and empty promises, comes a shining light… in the form of an Amstrad logo.

Computer pioneer and Apprentice headman Sir Alan Sugar, possibly the meanest man ever to receive a knighthood, is soon to be made a Lord for the Labour party.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t particularly like the guy. But I admire Sir Alan for his fearless attitude and his skills as a businessman, achieving things that I just plain couldn’t. I only hope his no-nonsense attitude rubs off on other politicians.

Oh, and by the way- the guy’s a multimillionaire. In 2007 he sold AMSTRAD for £125 Million. He then sold a further £22 Million’s worth of shares in football club Tottenham Hotspurs. The chances of him claiming back expenses in politics are possible, but not likely by any means. I can’t imagine him having the time to take the pen out of his pocket. I also doubt he’d be corrupted by any major power trip that could develop in a career in high-level politics. He’s had enough of that power coursing through his veins since his twenties.

If Sir Alan were made Prime Minister I would trust him to drag us, kicking and screaming, through the gauntlet of today’s economic difficulties. I would also trust him to put a leash on his MPs, thus preventing them from attaining benefits and claims that they could quite comfortably afford from their salaries.

With a stranglehold on the greed that we all feel regardless of how much or how little we make- the greed that is part of human nature- the government (with Sir Alan at it’s helm) could set an example of how best to handle money. And handling money, I thought, was what politics was all about.