Going Green

In these hard economic times, it is more important than ever to invest one's money wisely. Acting on the advice of my a friend of mine who advises the Conservative Party (or as I call them, the next Government of the UK) on the environment, I have begun a project to use a small piece of land which my dear lady wife inherited to host a new wind farm. The land has been useless for years. I can't make a penny out of it. Every time I try to build an airfield or a quarry on it it is, “Oh no, Sir Bingham, not in an area of outstanding natural beauty like this. One must think of the nation's heritage. Plus, an exceptionally rare species of earthworm thrives here!” I'm not even able to stick up a big fence around it and charge people to get in – thank you very much, Rambler's Association!

It turns out, though, that we are so desperate to save the planet that you can stick up a whole windfarm and not only will you not be stopped but you'll be paid for your trouble. And then you can charge more or less what you want and tell everyone who won't pay it that they are dooming our children. Classic.

We will soon boast a forest of several thousand hundred foot high windmills with an awesome generating capacity – each will produce enough electricity every day to power a small desk fan for as much as twenty or thirty minutes. So long as it is windy. And the thousands of crows, rooks, blackbirds and sparrows killed every hour will provide a cheap and nutritious pie filling for the poor, and there will be quite a lot more of those once they get their bills for their wind-generated electricity.

I also read an interesting story about the apparent discovery of a Bigfoot in Georgia. This caused a moment of confusion when I was discussing this over lunch with an American friend of mine called Charles, who is holder of the Ronald Reagan chair of International Relations at the Central Institute for Applied Strategy. “Gee, Bing,” he said, “this could be just what those Georgians need to see off the Russians! Imagine a few of those guys coming out of the forest with Kalashnikovs! It could do for the Georgians what Rambo would have done for us in Vietnam!” Imagine our embarrassment when we realized that we had the wrong Georgia! Still, it was an intriguing thought - Charles has already contacted his buddies in America to suggest that they start a development programme post-haste. Dick Cheney is said to be smiling on the idea!

The Appliance of Science

Some readers have contacted me to express surprise at my comparison between George Bush and a six year old girl who has had half her brain removed. I accept that I was probably being unfair to the little girl. However, it is true that a Bush is actually used by scientists as a standard unit of intelligence, although it is only really of use when describing the intelligence of infant children, lower primates, dogs, etc. A six year old child is roughly equivalent to 4 Bushes – although I was once introduced to a precocious little chap who had been rated at almost seven Bushes while aged just six and a half!

In fact, George is not the only person in public life who has leant his name to a scientific measurement. A Prescott is a negative measure of intelligibility. Amongst psychologists, the Clinton is now the accepted measure of shamelessness (the average adult human rates at around one twenty-fifth of a Clinton) while the Blair is used as the standard unit of sanctimoniousness, phoniness, cheesiness and hypocrisy.

It isn't just politicians who have leant their names to standard units, either. The Jackson is the accepted measurement of creepy inappropriateness while the Spears is used to denote degrees of extreme desperation.

The perils of Space Travel

There is trouble in outer space of all places. The toilet on the International Space Station is broken. Now call me old fashioned but I thought that space travel was supposed to involve shiny rockets shooting rays at each other not hanging about in a metal tube crapping in a plastic bag and blowing it out the airlock. I think I would, if you will excuse the indelicacy, hold it in until I got home.

Which takes me back to the days when the main problem we had with toilets was finding some paper – when rationing finally ended after the war I was so desperate I nearly shot myself! (it was around the same time that I discovered that I wasn't a very good speller.) Soon the country was flooded with handily packaged rolls of paper towels imported into the country, as it happens, by my father's company. What a relief! No more popping next door to ask the neighbours if they had two fives for a ten!