WASHED AND READY TO EAT

Emergency call from Mrs W this morning. In the process of rescuing a lost cat she'd seen advertised on local posters, she'd managed to get her beautiful white top covered in muddy paw prints. I had to race down to the local station with a spare t-shirt, designed to save her embarrassment at work. What had happened to the captured feline? Mrs W took it into the local newsagent near the station and was told that it had already been found. Which does beg the question: what's the difference between a cat who's lost and a cat who's been found? Lost cats roam the streets aimlessly looking for prey and getting into scraps. Their distraught owners don't know where they've got to and fear they've been catnapped or run over by a car. When the little moggy is found, the first thing the owners do is let them out to wander the streets aimlessly looking for prey and getting into scraps. Clearly we need posters announcing the successful recapture of any missi...

Difficult to know whether to laugh or cry over the proposal from the Taliban for a joint commission with NATO to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Would this be the same Taliban which recently stoned a couple to death for alleged adultery? The same bunch of fundamentalist extremists who deny education to girls, stop people listening to music and who previously acted as minders for Osama bin Laden? Unbelievably, The Guardian reports that the cynical propaganda ploy is actually being taken seriously by the western military forces in the region. What a pathetic and contemptible concession. Perhaps we should have teamed up with the Nazis in World War II to see whether we'd bombed some of their cities a little bit too hard? When will we ever learn? We get nowhere by appeasing people who have a complete disregard for human rights. If we don't think we can beat the Taliban and want to concede defeat, by all means let's bring our troops home. But let's not shame ours...