I watched Panorama last night. A truly hideous investigation into abuse at a private psychiatric hospital for adults with learning disabilities and challenging needs. Vulnerable people were subjected to an endless barrage of sadistic violence, humiliation, terror and brutality. The violence swung from simple violence to the hideously creative use of the victim’s neuroses and obsessions. As always seems to be the case the private company running the hospital didn’t care and the nurses supposedly leading the shift didn’t care . CQC, the social services inspectorate. Not only ignored whistle blowing allegations of abuse their inspection gave the hospital a ‘pass’.

The Government minister heading up national policy on care services declared that all services should be provided in the community.

Good answer.

Today’s Guardian had 2 articles one on a book being written on victims of “mate murder”. That is vulnerable people living in the community killed by people who befriended them. (To add insult to injury. In almost every case there are false accusations of sexual offences by the victim). The implication is that this is the tip of a particularly unpleasant iceberg.

Layers of people living independently are being targeted, bullied and exploited by these criminals. Why? Because they want friends and no one else will talk to them.

The second article was on the sharp increase in suicides by the mentally ill and learning disabled. A result of being forced to go through multiple investigations into their benefit claims. Benefits claims now uses a system. That is not only humiliating but purpose built to fail all those without the most obvious physical disabilities (and often failing them as well).

And whose fault is all of this?

It’s yours.

Sorry… but it’s true. When did we develop this idea that taking care of the vulnerable was the job of paid professionals? To be lonely and living on your own at 80 is a tragedy. To be doing that at 20 is something worse. To receive letters in the post you don’t always understand telling you you may be made destitute, and have no one to share them with to explain and help you protest.

David Cameron has with his big society emulated Thatcher in making society a dirty word. And you are the only people who can clean it.

It would help if we cared for the people in our community just a bit more. You might become a volunteer advocate and ask to see how people in your community are cared for in hospitals. Or just go down the pub. And help read letters with the lonely guy living down the road. Then this whole massive and expensive system of care would begin to shrink. It would have little purpose other than to offer training, guidance and short term support.

But as long as we say “the professionals will take care of it”. Some one with their paid salary as their only focus will do it.

Then, I’m afraid, the next scandal will be your fault.

Last night on Newsnight a chap from the English Defence League was interviewed. This was no doubt meant to be a rerun of Nick Griffin on Question Time. A big lumpen , racist, troglodyte is to be dragged blinking into the light for a proper monstering before being hurled back into the outer darkness.

The BBC rolled out it’s biggest gun, The Paxinator. His contemptuous sneer turned all the way up to 11. And then something weird happened. The little EDL guy tore him apart…mercilessly. This shouldn’t happen. It was like one of those 1940s black and white comedies where the weedy hero, finding himself in the fairground boxing ring facing the big oafish prize fighter (bowler hatted chewing a cigar), pluckily ducks his flailing blows. If I may mix my metaphors, Paxo was used to poking slow moving political bears with a stick and now he was faced with a ferret.

Surely you don’t think there is a danger of Sharia law in this country?

There are a 100 Sharia courts already.

But they don’t have legal powers. They can only adjudicate?

Isn’t that the same thing? If people accept their authority?

At which the metaphorical ferret shot up Paxo’s metaphorical trousers and bit him on the metaphoricals.

Towards the end Paxo was waving printouts from Facebook of racist statements from the EDL page. He resembled a short sighted Jehovah’s Witness attempting to convert a tree with a mangy copy of The Watch Tower.

So thank you EDL for the first time in ages putting some real debate into a news programme in these stifling times.

Poor Paxo is probably about to commit Sepuku with a sharpened copy of the Times.

Thanks for actually kicking open a debate that has been simmering for some time. The EDL claims not to hate Muslims, only fundamentalists. And this is not an entirely disingenuous point. Claims that they are racist or a new BNP founder on the fact that they have a large black, gay and Jewish caucus. All of whom angrily point out that they can not oppose Islamic anti-Semitism or homophobia in other contexts.

Sardonicus suspects that there may be more than a whiff of good old fashioned class prejudice going on. Want to know what class some one is? Easy.

Islamophobic working class, Catholicphobic middle class and Upper class? Anti-Semitic of course dear boy (and you can shove your King’s Speech where the sun don’t shine).

The treatment of Catholics in the media on the Pope’s visit was shameful. More so when you bear in mind how recently the legal persecution of Catholics ended in this country.

Doubly so when you realise how easily the liberal left has been silenced on criticising Islam out of fears for their own health. Catholics haven’t burnt any one at the stake in centuries but Danish cartoonists still live in fear for their lives.

Although it is interesting to see how little left wing commentators speak of the prodemocracy demonstrations in Egypt. Is it because they approved of the Cairo papers calling for Boycotting Israel? At a conference sponsored by the incumbent Egyptian government? A government who no doubt was pulling fingernails from prodemocracy down the road from their impassioned left wing debate.

Of course Paxo your biggest sin was that you didn’t do your research. Go on the EDL site and you’ll find sinister documents with dubious statistics on Muslim crime rates. You’ll find chilling discussions on just how well they plan to disrupt peaceful Muslim demos and keep just inside the law. They have a very great capacity for danger.

The real shame is unlike the BNP, our moral cowardice has handed these people a massive propaganda coup. We need to take it back. Opposing the practices of some Muslims who do things in the name of their faith is absolutely not to hate all Muslims.

So thank you EDL, thanks for a bit of light and a bit of zesty debate on Newsnight.

But now they’ve pointed out the Emperor’s winkle it’s time for us to tell him to put on his metaphorical pants on. And the little metaphorical boy to go to school and learn to play nice.

The Grinch who blew up Xmas

Mohammed Osman Mahoud was arrested for attempting to blow up a Xmas tree lighting in the States about a month ago.
A veritable Grinch who planned to explode Xmas.
Hooray for the forces of law and order keeping us safe.
 Except there’s more to it than that.
 Mohammed was no Bin Laden no Nidal. He was dicking around on the internet looking up stuff on jihad. The FBI provided a dumb kid with a fake terrorist organisation. Then indoctrinated said dumb kid into thinking he was blowing up a fake van full of explosives. He will now spend decades in prison being properly indoctrinated and being a wonderful recruiting mascot for real Jihadists.
This is unconscionably stupid.
 Shouldn’t the FBI be trying to catch real terrorists rather than inventing them?
 Well except this was a fund raiser. A sad attempt to raise their profile.
 One can picture a group of FBI image consultants sitting around.
“can we make him use a German accent like in Diehard.”
“Coke’s willing to sponsor us if he’s caught with a can of Pepsi”
“How about he says Asta La Vista Baby?”

In a related story Craig Monteleih had a restraining order put out against him by his Mosque in New York. They were scared he was a terrorist and trying to recruit young people. 
It’s a damn shame they didn’t report him to the FBI.
 Because he was an agent provocateur supposedly trying to recruit recruits for Al Quaeda but actually working for the FBI.

Oh dear. Spot a pattern.

Simply put, it’s easier to create and capture pretend terrorists then go after the real ones.

And in the UK a case against a enviromental group has collapsed after the police officer who was recruited to spy on it. Joined the other side horrified at being used as an agnet provocateur. Were such similar officers used in the recent student fees riots? (nb to the poor unfortunate about to serve 32 months for hijinxs, sign up for an open university degree and be a rare graduate without debts)

And it’s our fault. We need too much reassurance.

Terrorism exists. It’s a very real threat. It means for the foreseeable future that if you want to fly, leering minimum wage security staff will ogle xrays of your naughty bits, or laugh and compare them to Tesco value grade 3 fruit products. It means the cheery policeman on the London streets will have a machinegun to accompany his whistle.

But these should be viewed like fire extinguishers and seatbelts. Necessary safety measures.

Otherwise the fire brigade will set fire to model villages and put them out.
Rentokill will start a new gruffalloe service.

All so that we can feel safe from those pretend enemies. And not have to accept that the world isn’t quite as safe as we’d like it to be.

About 10 years ago one of Sardonicus’s very best friends died.
He was a young, guy, it was tragic.
So Sardonicus travelled upto see his dad (who was also Sardonicus’s friend) and who hadn’t been able to return to the flat he had shared with his son.
Sardonicus the dad and some friends gathered that evening to remember a friend, son and all round decent guy. And they laughed all nights.
The one joke Sardonicus remembers was, that his dad said he’d promised to pour a can of Worthington’s on the grave. Someone suggested didn’t it make more sense to drink it and piss on the grave.
The next Sardonicus went back to the flat. And I think at some point they cried.
Some things are just too important to take seriously.

There is a place for the very darkest jokes on the most awful subject.

Dark jokes have many purposes. Sometimes when we’re scared or sad a sharp spark of humour can burn off those feelings like poisonous gases boiling up in a mine. Sardonicus still wonders if comics had made more jokes around 9/11 would people have stopped and thought? Maybe just a little…

Maybe if someone said this is ridiculous…the worlds mightiest nation brought to it’s knees? By half a dozen guys who thought kamikazing buildings was the best way to get laid…in heaven?

Would a few guilty laughs been better than 2 wars?

Because the absence of humour does not create seriousness and gravitas. It creates terror and panic. It’s rushed through laws and Nick Ferrari suggesting we parachute mentally ill Brits into Islamic countries to blow themselves up.

But if dark humour has it’s place. It is more frequently abused. The sneering racist gag or the off colour chat up line.

How does one tell the difference?
Well that’s easy.

It’s intent not content.

It’s why you’re making the joke in the very first place.

So when Frankie Boyle off handedly uses a pejorative term for Asians on his show in a clever gag on media eurocentrism. Maybe he’s making a clever ironic point.

When it follows jokes about Maddy, fat kids with disabilities and endless dreary ruminating on the size of Africans penises.

Then he can piss off.

You see the very first joke we learn, we learn as infants. And it’s a shock joke. It’s the peekaboo game.

Where’s mummy gone? Oh there she is! What a shock, I think I poohed my nappy.

Jokes with cancer, paedophilia and racist terms, they are an adult version, fun, necessary in small amounts.

But Frankie if adult peekaboo is all you have to offer. Then sorry but I think we all know who’s full of shit. And who needs to grow up.

“Dear diary,
The worstest thing in the world ever has happened! That nerdy kid in the back of the class has stolen you and published you on the school bulletin board. Now everyone thinks I’m a total cowbag and no one’s talking to me! Bummer. I hate that Wikileaks.”
Yes indeed a few nerds with computers have managed to reduce the world’s last superpower to Molly Ringwald in a 1980s John Hughes comedy. Or, for you younger types, the US has been cyber bullied.
Lets get one thing out of the way. The way the US has been caught is frankly hilarious. They created what was essentially a second internet just for their secret services, embassies, military etc. The stuck all their secrets on it’s servers and gave 3,000,000 people access. Then got surprised when one of them used a USB stick to record about a million salacious bits of tittle tattle.
In terms of foolishness, this is akin to building a trampoline testing site in the middle of a minefield.
But what has come out of all of this? The answers as ever are shockingly banal.
Saudi Arabia wants America to bomb Iran. That’s a fundamentalist, Islamo-fascist dictatorship with a history of funding terrorism asking the US to bomb an Islamo-fascist dictatorship with a history of funding terrorism.
Prince Andrew was rude about the press and foreign people and is a bit of a prat.
China couldn’t give a stuff what happens to the 2 Koreas providing it gets to sell shitty tellys and imitation Routemasters to whats left. Oh and it doesn’t get any refugees.
Whatever next? Russian’s have an unusual affection for vodka, Belgium is not taken seriously by rest of EU, Anne Widdecombe is to win strictly despite comically not being able to dance?
About the only funny interesting bits have been how everyone else responded. Ahamdinejad’s statement that “he has good relations with all his neighbouring Arab states,” (despite them all surreptitiously asking the US to give Iran a good Iraqing)
It smacks of the school wally wandering the school sadly saying to all the other kids “you like me don’t you?”
as the facebook page “school wally is a paedo, pizza face and must die.” hits 13,000,123 likes.
The Guardian has formed a hilarious committee to assess it’s reporting on the wikileaks to ensure they don’t compromise any ongoing US military operations. The CIA is carrying out a counter investigation to see who other than Dr Sardonicus and Michael Foot read the Guardian, and Foot’s dead).
Do we really need wikileaks to tell us the war in Afghanistan is going badly? When the news shows us soldiers burning Afghani heroin one week and then marching through fields of poppies the next?
Please don’t get outraged when the bleedin’ obvious is leaked.
One doesn’t need a vet to tell us the parrot is most assuredly dead.

Loot
There has been much revisionist history about World War in the last few years. 6 decades on some of the heroic episodes are finally getting a more intense evaluation.
Not least of all the Blitz, where there was most definitely a real Blitz spirit. Some took advantage of war and disaster to enrich themselves. Dressed as wardens and ambulance crews they would loot the dead and bombed out shops. Often taking advantage of public spirited citizens who thought they were genuinely helping.
There is a strange epilogue to this ugly chapter of history.
We seem to have elected those looters to the highest offices of the land.
Our government smashes the windows of the NHS and picks the pocket of the DSS. All the time earnestly warning critics “don’t you know there’s a fiscal crisis on?” and “we’re all in this together, all animals are created equal.”
Oh wake up England!
How did we get conned by such a shady, glad handing sack of drivel? We waited for the Comprehensive Spending Review and clucked at how well we cope with the few big noise tweaks. We can put up with ‘a little bit of child benefit loss’ and ‘oh I think I can stand the loss of my free prescriptions’.
The real big slashes are in the background: the cuts to local council budgets. Know what the diference is between critical and substantial need? Well you’d better learn because a 25% cut in council budgets means one’s going to get funding and one won’t.
 Critical is what you or your family may end up needing after the council doesn’t fund your family member’s dementia, or learning disability or whatever. As you find yourself pleading that the inability to make a cup of tea should not deny one the support of a caring welfare state (which is substantial need).
How did we get to the state that councils in London are block booking bed and breakfasts in towns with lower rents, thanks to housing benefit cuts, where the poorly paid, the unemployed and the unfortunate can rock up and be bullied into jobs that don’t exist? Did Dave Cameron watch City of God whilst taking mescaline and now believes he’s making a Brazilian epic in London with Georgeous Goerge as Little Zee?
And what about the council jobs that are going to go, some in towns where they make up 60% of the employment base? They were the compensation for the losses when British industries fell apart in the 80s. If Thatcher slunk off after torpedoing coal and steel, Cameron seems set on machine gunning the survivors’ life rafts.
There is time still, there is time. Join a political party, and if you’re in the Lib Democrats – leave one.
And on that note it’s you Cleggers I’m looking at (oh and Cleggers, do look up Otto Quisling on Wikipedia)
Lest your final speech in Parliament be “A bigger boy did it and ran away.”

In a grimy basement half a dozen figures gather quaking in fear. There is a coded knock at the door one desperate man gets up and checks the door. A 7th figure enters he has a hat pushed over his eyes, the collar of his anonymous coat pulled up to obscure his face. Now all seven sit around a rickety table.
 And then the 7th figure speaks.
“Woody Allen’s films are really dull, he hasn’t made a good one since Bullets over Broadway.”
 Another pipes in
“Hava Nagila is a really boring tune”
 With growing excitement a 3rd pipes up
“Leonard Cohen only wrote great songs when he became a Buddhist!”
 “And Cat Stevens is loads better as Yusuf Islam”
 Every one sits in silence and then bursts into applause.
“I hate bagels.”
“Jackie Mason should write some new jokes!”
 And then the door is kicked in as a dozen heavily armed police burst in dragging the poor wretches away. The commanding officer spits in contempt
“And you thought an oath to the Jewish State was just words.”
His sergeant grabs his shoulder
 “Commander come quick there’s a Palestinian book group being rude about Philip Roth!”
 “What are they saying?”
 “They said it’s not funny and it’s all about wanking.”
“The bastards!”
If you haven’t guessed, Sardonicus is utterly disgusted at loyalty oaths for Palestinian citizens of Israel. When did Israel decide to start nicking ideas from anti-Semites?
Are you or have you ever been mildly miffed you got your homeland pinched 70 years ago? What did they expect Palestinians to say?
“Crikey I’m not signing that. I was planning on assassinating the Prime Minister. It’s a fair cop Shlomo, you’ve got me banged to rights!”
Can we have an oath for Austrians to stop locking kids in basements, raising dictators, making sentimental operas and pretty much anything else? That a State chooses to force it’s citizens (most of the affected are part of Israel due to marriage) to abnegate themselves his horrible.
Will I have to sign an English oath of loyalty to a Christian state, disappointing football and soggy fish and chips? Seriously, how humiliating would that be?
Israel, you have lost the moral argument on this one. The same one you lost when you made it illegal to support boycotts.
Because when you start making it compulsory to be loyal, then you make it illegal to be disloyal.
Then you start knocking on doors, just to be sure who’s really loyal.
I hope someone in the Knesset has a long enough memory to remember where that ends.

Dr Sardonicus has some extra comments cut from his last post due to space and pomposity buffer being filled.

1 The Royal Navy is to get enough Trident submarines to provide an atomic response to baddies for only 9 months of the year. Sardonicus is more than a little concerned that a government dogsbody will email Almajilabad
“We promise not to annihilate you in Ramadan if you lay off us at Christmas.”

2 Best bit of spam Sardonicus recieved was.
“This site is excelent but porn harbour is better.”

Can’t argue with that!

George Osbourne has drawn forth his mighty blade and sliced the very first chords on the Gordean Gordian knot of national debt (pun copyright Dr Sardonicus 2010) And the first slices are child benefit for the middle classes and a cap on total benefits for all.
Interesting. Is Mr Osborne actually a clever social satirist showing the essential heart of our society? And not a bloodless over privileged vampire playing with all our lives like some MMPORG for gits?
Because the differences are quite eye catching. The Guardian interviewed some residents of various Nappy Valleys across the UK and the answers almost had Sardonicus reaching for an AK47, beret and stick-on beard.
1 “The £6000 is my pocket money. What does the government expect me to live on?” (your husband’s stonking salary. Is Carmela Soprano on the run in Notting Hill).

2 “It’ll cost me £35,0000 over 15 years.” Be glad then that Gorgeous George isn’t taxing Bugaboos, Boden and complacency. That may have cost you the thick end of £50,000.
Then the housing benefit capping article had Sardonicus reaching for his stove pipe hat, evil moustache and stick for poking the poor. Families moaning about having to leave London’s less salubrious areas because the state won’t pay her a rate of housing benefit, higher than Sardonicus earns.
The idea that the state should underwrite every life style choice people makes is just plain nuts. There never has been a golden age of generous state. Yes there was council housing. But by and large it was pretty rotten. People lived with their parents longer, families could only afford Benson without the Hedges and a Pit without a Bull.
Somewhere along the way our view of government has been perverted into a consumerist one. We pay taxes, we get services and a little bit of our money back.
At this point scrap labour, conservatives and who ever it is that nice Nick Clegg is in charge of. Scrap them all and have supermarkets run political parties. Vote Waitrose if you want travellers moved on and government subsidies for Brian Sewell. Or Tesco for no taxes on Buckfast and Nissan Micras with UV lighting under the body. Or even vote for the Aldi party and get Robert Kilroy Silk to hit Asian shop keepers on the head with Satsuma’s and run off.
Perhaps we should start thinking that we don’t pay OUR money into taxes and expect to receive OUR services. Money is only the reflection of the wealth of the nation and then only a fraction. The far larger part is the communities and people who make it up.
If you don’t get child benefit or winter fuel allowance when your wages aren’t bad then enjoy seeing that money in new schools, hospitals and other good things government do. If a cut in benefit stops you living where you want, then make the most of the community where you are.
The alternative is of course to privatise everything. Personally Sardonicus feels that the new aircraft carrier should be sponsored by P&O. What could be better than going a cruise with a buffet, entertainment and a chance to hang a Somali pirate or two?

Dear Sir,

I would like to say the profound sadness that your review has left me with. I am the author of the offending sketch. There is no mention of bestiality in it what so ever. Sir Saffron’s term “make love” and “gentle lover,” are meant in only the purest platonic terms. Sir Saffron is infact based on a very dear, dear friend of mine who spent 2 years in a psychiatric institution in the 1950s. Partly due to his homosexuality and in part due to his radical views on nudity. This was a cry for tolerance a plea for never returning to those dark days. You’re damning critique has reduced us both to tears and Sir Saffron to the bottle.

The theatre has long been the frontier of the radical performing arts. Unlike TV or podcast one must actual buy one’s ticket and face the performers. And as such from the glory days of Shakespeare’s globe via The Roman’s in Britain, the theatre has stood for all that is brave and icconaclastic in the performing arts.

But this critic has found a new low tactic. She has brought her progeny with her to the theatre. And now every play must be judged by whether it offends and innocent? Will there be no more bisexuality in the Rocky Horror Show? No more pies in Titus Andronicus? Will Shylock settle for a nice apology. Lest some spotty neonate be inspired to commit a criminal act on the way to playing Grand Theft Auto?

Yours sincerely Mr Edd.

PS You may want to check out “Daddy’s Horse is not a Pet.” By George Willard and his wfe Pixel. In some 12 US states loving relationships between animals and humans are recognised.

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Review: Sam and Dave Comedy Sketch Show, Brewhouse Theatre
8:50am Thursday 1st July 2010

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Review, Sam and Dave Comedy Sketch Show, Brewhouse Theatre TWO words sum up the Sam and Dave Comedy Sketch Show at the Brewhouse: bad taste.
I arrived with my 11-year old step-daughter, to be informed five minutes previously the staff had learned that the show was unsuitable for children.
She duly watched the main show while I reviewed the studio performance.
I wanted to like them. Local comedians, personable, versatile actors with excellent characterisation, Sam and Dave look the part. However their claim to take the everyday and find the funny side, influenced by Morecambe and Wise, falls flat.
Only Bernard Manning and the couple of people who were still chuckling and applauding by the end would have been proud of the material.
I can laugh at innuendo, risqué sketches, some non-pc jokes. But this overstepped the mark with an obsession with sex and in particular bestiality.
Suitable for a private club at midnight after several drinks, maybe, but not a local theatre at 8pm. And there was a child in the audience, whose parent, presumably, had as I had done, checked the website to see the following: “the show’s innocence and charm….”
I appreciate that the Brewhouse does not see the material beforehand but more must be done proactively to check its appropriateness for age. And Sam and Dave have talent, but poor judgement.
By Julie O’Donnell.