The big picture
NEWT Gingrich wants the moon to become the 51st state of the US. Okay, he didn't say it in so many words but this week in the Florida primary contest for the Republican candidacy in the presidential election later in the year, he was perfectly explicit. The moon has to be permanently colonised and it has to be an American colony. No arguments.
We outsiders get struck a bit schtum by this kind of thing. The moon has no atmosphere; it has no water; you can't grow anything there. In fact you can't even breath unless you're wearing a space suit with an oxygen supply.
The only thing the moon has going for it is that it has very little gravity, so if you feel like it you can jump over the town hall (if there were a town hall) but then somebody else would do it also and your record wouldn't stand for very long.
But obviously we don't get the big picture. The place erupted in cheering when Newt made his big announcement. He got a standing ovation, including people in the platform party.
The guy could conceivably end up as President. Should we worry? Perhaps not. If he's focused on colonising the moon, he can't do much harm anywhere else.
And if he should succeed – in winning the presidency plus colonising the moon – well then, we can look forward to future lunar primaries as presidential elections come up again.
Let's get the big picture.
Lurid stories
THE NET DRAWS in as arrests are made in London in connection with allegations of the bribing of police officers by the tabloid newspapers, an investigation that runs in parallel with another into the phone-hacking scandal.
How far back will they dig? Will they investigate how, back in the seventies, the Barking and Dagenham Advertiser (a notoriously scurrilous and sensationalist weekly rag) splashed such reports as "Chinese cook dragged into Thames trying to hold onto runaway wheelbarrow on gangplank" and "Drunken pensioners in fisticuffs in pub next door to pay-out point"?
The suggestion is that the information on which such reports were based emanated not from the official crime conferences held by the police but surreptitious encounters in a certain Barking pub with sawdust on the floor, where police officers were regularly plied with pints of ale, in return for which they told lurid stories which found their way into print.
Yes, I did spend part of my apprenticeship into hackery and scribbling on the newspaper mentioned. No, I am not prepared to comment on the insinuations of bribery and malfeasance. This extradition thing is becoming a racket.
Essex Girls
THAT NEWSPAPER covered the two Essex towns of Barking and Dagenham, part of the London overspill and habitat of the famous Essex Girls.
Barking is quite near the Isle of Dogs, though this is coincidental. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon Berkynge, which means "the place of ash trees". It's a waterfront town on the Thames estuary and full of history and character.
Sir Walter Raleigh was married in the local parish church. Captain Sir Henry Morgan, the famous pirate who became Governor of the Bahamas, is buried in the churchyard. The names of the local pubs are pure poetry: The Barge Aground, The Ship and Shovel, The Crooked Billet … Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Dagenham? Well, you've heard of the Girl Pipers. Phwoar-r-r-r!
Rigid stylists
AN ODDITY of that paper was an absolutely rigid style rule. If a report concerned a person from Barking, the two had to be linked in the introductory paragraph. The same with Dagenham.
It didn't matter much with Dagenham but it was irksome to have to write: "A Barking pensioner scored big at the dog races this week …" or "A Barking postman was severely bitten by a dachshund …". Similarly, we had Barking vicars, Barking firemen, Barking councillors, Barking policemen and Barking scoutmasters.
The management wouldn't budge on the style rule. Woof, woof! I want a transfer to the Isle of Dogs.
Ask the Bard
DRAMA poser: If you cloned Henry IV would he be Henry V or Henry IV Part II?
Tailpiece
"NURSE, how's that little boy doing; the one who swallowed all the five-cent pieces?"
"Still no change, doctor."
Last word
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
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