I have just had it pointed* out to me that hedgehogs have now been classed as an offensive weapon. This, after an altercation in which a man launched said unwitting mammal at a small boy.

Explaining the attack, in that peculiar language of policemen everywhere, the perpetrator has been charged “for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog“. Only as an adjunct to the story do we find that “It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence“.

The rest of the story – not that there is much more to tell – is here.

And because it is clearly novelty news day, soon self important wankers will be able to bray “I’m on the plane” after the EU scandalously approved the use of mobile phones on aircraft. The last bastion of the drunk and unconnected has been breached by the airlines looking to make a fast buck.

Flying is already as close to hell as any living experience can be without adding several hundred Apprentice-Wannabees shouting the odds.

My future travel plans will involve either a donkey or an underground station. Although ironically I find myself facing 2 hours of short-haul travel on Friday. Pass me that hedgehog.

* Yes, I was striving for a hedgehog related verb**

** No, I didn’t say it was going to be amusing.

Help me out here. One ISP publicly washes its’ hands of monitoring their networks for naughty people stealing music. In a move reminiscent of Pontius Pilot, TalkTalk are playing the “we’re just the conduit card and the security of your digital property is nothing to do with us” card. Okay, well I can sort of accept that especially since the music industry doesn’t seem to be coughing up the requisite greenbacks to fund an army of net-watches.

And yet here we have BT spying on all of our browsing habits in order to target us with specific advertising. That’s the same bloody thing isn’t it? Oh now I see what i missed – one of them costs money and the other one makes it. So it is fuck all to do with ethics, corporate responsibility or even the protection of people’s livelihoods. It’s about making more cash, abusing the privilege of net privacy and applying a moral code forged in the crucible of capitalism.

I would respect TalkTalk’s position more if they’d just ponyed up with “look there is no money in this for us, link it with some advertising revenue and maybe we can do a deal”. As for BT, well they’ve been fucking people over since Mercury had the temerity to target a tiny percentage of their market share. I’d trust Max Mosely over those slippery wankers*.

Loosely related is the Government’s headline splash on a technological solution to pedophiles stalking children on social networking sites. What a masterstroke because anyone who has spent five seconds in the digital age cannot, of course, create a disposable email address. It’s worse than doing nothing because it creates a false sense of security for anyone dumb enough to believe anything these attention seeking worthies put out.

And if we’re talking useless organisations today – after constant chasing – we received “We are not returning your call. The person you need is on holiday. We hope to be able to provide an update next week” from the seller’s solicitors. This is an except copy of the last time they could be bothered to reply, except the date has moved on two weeks. Fax all use frankly, so sadly it looks like Cabbage-Land will not be for us.

Frustrating is not the word. Well it is because I cannot easily convey a digital copy of the noise a head makes repeatedly smacking a keyboard. Let’s try “gfljklsgjklsfhnklhdsjihdsjhjisioas”. That’s what is tattooed on my forehead 🙁

* possibly not an ideal choice of phrase. If what is alleged turns out to be true 😉

Do you remember that homely truism that used to do the rounds on novelty mugs*. You know the one: something needs doing, someone will do it ….. lots of less than humorous play on words …. gets you to nobody doing it**

You don’t? Well let me recount a modern parable that neatly encompasses everything that is wrong with trying to buy a house. Someone wants to buy your house. You want to buy someone else’s house. This other person – allegedly – wants to sell their house. The estate agents want their money. The solicitors want to move at the speed of glacial erosion. The somebody buying your house would like to move in. The somebody selling to you is a useless knucklehead who moves at a pace that makes the solicitors look positively sprightly.

The house you want to buy has covenants, trusts, tax dodges and – for all I know – mortgage capital leveraged on little know moon-rock aggregate market. This is more of a problem because the seller could not find his arse with both hands and a copy of Gray’s anatomy. The solicitors promise little and deliver even less. No one knows what a deadline is. If they looked under an entry for “returning their clients call“, maybe they could work it out.

One person gets angry. Very, very angry. Begins laying about himself with the modern day equivalent of a bloodied spear. I speak of the weapon of mass distraction that is the humble home computer. Most people receive a shrift so short, it could apply for a vertically compromised grant. Words such as ‘useless‘, ‘incompetent‘ and ‘unprofessional’ are oft repeated, honest phrases such as ‘total fuckwits‘ narrowly miss the final edit.

Some people promise action this week. All people lie like a cheap rug. One person draws big bloody line in the sand and declares himself and his family soon to be homeless.

Nobody cares.

We are trying to give someone with something they want to sell a vast amount of money. How sodding hard can it be? We have to sell our house because the last thing we need right now, are our buyers to withdraw their offer through boredom or frustration.

And because we are not some kind of raving bloody nutters, we are making it nice and easy to buy our house. The plethora of solicitors, estate agents and general hangers on add nothing but delay and stupidity. Why can’t I just turn up with a bagful of money and a determined expression?

Apparently every other country does it better. Although, that’s not the boldest of claims when I would consider burglary and squatting a far more reasonable approach that what we’ve been through.

* Come the revolution, the mugs who do novelty shall seamlessly morph into into the screaming humans that do scorpion pits.

** I googled without success for the full text. Clearly I don’t have the mind of the kind of person who would happily hand over real money for a hand crafted RoundTuit.