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Britain's honours system sucks. Everybody knows that those within the Establishment are often rewarded not for any real contribution to society, but for doing as they're told: "Keep quiet over Europe, Charles, and you'll get a K."
Meanwhile politicians, desperate for the reflected glory of threadbare celebrities, give them gongs to demonstrate how "in touch" they are with the real world.
And so we have the depressing sight of a knighthood for corporate rocker Mick Jagger - awarded for his services to accountancy, perhaps.
Sir Mick postponed his day at the Palace, so it didn't clash with England rugby captain Johnny Wilkinson getting his MBE earlier this week. But then it's taken tax-exile Jagger 18 months to get around to collecting the knighthood anyway, because he's been busy with a world tour.
Arise, Sir Mick.
Geoff Hoon, the UK Defence Secretary, has unveiled plans for a "radical rebalancing" of Britain's armed forces. What this means is that there will be fewer big things that kill people - like tanks, and more smaller things that kill people, like.... um.
Well, they may not have been invented yet, because "technology will be a key driver for change," according to Mr Hoon.
That and cash, of course.
Could the British army soon be using these small, hi-tech mobile units?
J writes about the cult of personality growing up around Putin in Russia, with pix of the President everywhere from the offices of bureaucrats to bookshops. Apparently it's just like it used to be under Brezhnev.
It's weird trying to imagine a Britain with pictures of Tony Blair everywhere. Of course, he isn't our head of state (yet). But you'd struggle to find many pix of the Queen, apart from the odd golf club or weird school.
Thank God for that. It's terribly oppressive having your politicans or leaders looming over you all the time. Apart from anything else, they are invariably ugly. Putin is a case in point. Read an interview with the former British ambassador to Moscow the other day and he described Putin as a "shifty little man who never looked you in the eye." Unless he's staring down from some revolting piece of public "art," presumably.
Big Brother Putin.
These days when you ring a call centre from Britain you very rarely get through to somebody who is actually British. On the whole I think this is a good thing. I like it when some man from BT employed by a call centre in Bangalore is vaguely menacing about my unpaid bill. I like it when I book a flight and speak to a woman in Miami. Don't ask me why. I just do.
Maybe it's because the woman in Miami is good at faking interest in my flight details. Her equivalents in Doncaster or Aberdeen - good, honest toilers that they are - would make it perfectly clear that they were doing me a huge favour by booking my flight.
The whole Indian call centre thing seems to be on the news every night at the moment. Now the story's taken a slight twist, with some people in India saying the call centre jobs are treating people as "cyber-coolies" and that the industry is actually bad - not good - for the Indian economy (until now we've been told the jobs are universally welcomed.)
It's obviously horrible to lose your job, but I find it a bit silly when people in Britain complain about the job going elsewhere. This is what has been happening to British manufacturing ever since I was a (very cute) little child. We don't actually make very much here any more. And pretty much everything we used to make is now manufactured in Asia. I read somewhere the other day that 90% of all the kettles in the world are made in China. For some reason this statistic freaked me out.
Of course, nobody says anything about the relatively low wages paid to the Chinese workers who made the socks they're wearing. So I find it a bit rich when people here go on about the low wages paid to Indian call centre workers. If they're happy to work for a particular wage, what's it got to do with us? Quoting the wage on its own is pretty meaningless anyway.
But I can't help thinking these jobs are rather less than they're being made out to be. What are the career prospects for somebody working in a call centre? Sure, they could move up a grade or two and become a supervisor. Then maybe move onto a bigger and better call centre. What then?
Perhaps it doesn't matter. There are lots of jobs without any real prospects. I should know.
Hanging on the telephone.
Normally animation leaves me stone cold. But Monkey Dust, currently being shown on BBC3, is a bit different. In fact, it's as far as you can imagine getting from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It's a cartoon sketch show that manages to capture much of what's grim about Tony's Britain. To quote from some of the show's publicity: "...institutionalised murderers are released from prison and have to face a country unrecognisable from that which they remember: divorced and disillusioned fathers try to maintain relationships with their absentee children; heroin addicts shoot up in shuttered shopping centres; an inexperienced homosexual seeks gratification in a gents toilet; a lecherous and depraved old man poses as a young schoolgirl to chat online with other schoolgirls; hooded youths with knives stalk the streets."
What more could you want?
Monkey Dust.
It's not too distant from a sort of cartoon League of Gentleman, which is all the provocation I need for a gratuitous pic of Edward and Tubbs...
"You heard the man, Tubbs... Get naked."
Another milestone in the British Government's forward-thinking transport policy was unveiled today. For the first time motorists were given the chance to pay not to have to use a motorway they've already paid to use.
Instead of joining the queues on the nightmarish M6 through Birmingham, they can now pay £2 to travel along an empty M6 which was built over boring trees and fields nearby.
This is brilliant. Now we can not only pay not to use hospitals and schools that we've already paid for, but roads as well.
Soon we will hopefully be able to pay not to be governed by the government we pay to govern us.
Road to nowhere: motorists rush to travel on the exciting new M6.
President Vladmir Putin says the new voting system in Russia has been "a great success." The new system - introduced by Mr Putin for last weekend's elections - allows voters to choose their favoured candidate from a row of Matryoshka dolls.
Take your pick: a polling station in Moscow.
TV low-point of the weekend was "Terror Tourists" in which a bunch of American Christians from trouble spots like Colorado paid through the nose for a week of "counter terrorism training" in Israel.
"Operation Shiloh" is the brainchild of a couple of Israeli businessmen who are cashing in on American post-9/11 paranoia with a helping hand from the Israeli Defence Force. At one point the trainees were taken for a walk through Hebron, in the middle of a curfew (minus flak jackets, because of an administrative cock-up.)
Never mind the safety aspect of this... (more fool them, if you ask me). But can you imagine how galling it would be if you were a Palestinian living in Hebron, locked up in your home, watching the grotesque sight of a bunch of slumming Americans strolling down the street? Even the soldiers from the IDF on guard duty in the town thought the whole thing was "crazy."
So what did the "Terror Tourists" get for their $5,500, apart from the stroll through Hebron? Some unarmed combat training, a camp-out in the Judean desert, the chance to fire an Uzi and a couple of paintballing sessions.
And, of course, the chance to be the subject of a none too subtle propaganda exercise. Because at no point did they have the opportunity to meet or talk with any Palestinians. One "terror tourist" - Lisa, a dental nurse from Virginia - said this might have been a good idea because it's important "to get both sides of the story.
"But if I met a Palestinian," she went on, "I'm not sure I would trust everything they said."
Mission accomplished.
Both sides of the story: Children watch as the body of a Palestinian policeman shot by the IDF is carried through the streets of Gaza city.
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