Da Den Ron Ron

In a list of my pet hates, ex-Enron CEO Ken Lay, Sunday Timescolumnists Irwin Stelzer and Michael Winner, the bank NatWest and the UK regulator the Financial Services Authority are all pretty much up there in the "first up against the wall when I become world dictator" list. Now, I admit that they can't all be first, and that, in the case of Ken Lay, it would be fairly pointless, since he has died of a heart attack. And I also admit that, if I can come up with such a list just from a quick glance through the weekend's papers, there's a good chance that a few hours diligent thought would provide a list that would require a very big wall and an allocation of priorities. Some individuals, of whom I might casually say, "yeah, he would be one of the first up against the wall", might turn out, in fact, to be 838th up against the wall. If I include all of Whitehall (as I would like to), such a person might end up at more than 20,000th up against the wall, by which time I might have got fed up with the whole deal and granted a general amnesty. So, if you are on my list, there's hope for you yet.

Not that I am likely to become dictator of the world. So compiling this list is a bit like when people compile lists of songs that they would play if they were chosen to go onto Desert Island Discs, or what long-forgotten friends they would like to see if they were selected for This Is Your Life, although I admit that my list of death is perhaps a little less friendly than these. Whatever, in all these cases, nothing will come of it, so whether the list has a happy or a sad potential effect is fairly irrelevant.

There ya go Herring, I can write this shit in 10 minutes and it would make half an hour's material for you in Edinburgh, and you say that it's hard work! Jeez.

( more ramblings )