Q What should I do if I know that whilst my family and I are partaking of delicious ten course meal and fine wines, the poor of the town are in my garden, gnawing trees ?
A Close the curtains. Or better still, get a servant to do it. This will allow charades to continue uninterrupted and invest the lackey with a much- needed sense of job security
Q The media tells me that many of the people classified as poor are also very fat. How can this be?
A An interesting anomaly, and Dr J.C. Whimbrel, head of the P.M.S.B.T.I.I. [Please Make it Sound Better Than It Is] group, commissioned recently by Our Leader’s phenomenally successful Happiness Campaign, pulls no punches here. “Either these poor, fat wobblies’ families chose the wrong side at Bosworth, or they’re actually eating each other. “
Q I cannot help feeling guilty that I have so much whilst others have so little. I am undecided as to whether I should get Dilworth to drive me around the local Council Estate so that I might distribute small bags of cash – say £1000 each – to the poor and needy.
A This is an understandable and laudable sentiment, but you must be careful about giving things, especially money, to poor people. Many will only spend it, then come back for more. Registration number checks are easy to do, and many of the poor have squandered what little money they once had on computers. If your mind is made up, hire a vehicle and adopt a disguise. But by far the best way of salving your conscience would be to have your kitchen staff boil up the week’s food scraps, making a nourishing broth which, placed in a stout polythene[a type of plastic] bag and tossed from the hired vehicle into the shamefully neglected front gardens of the Council Estate homes should do the trick .
Q Am I alone in thinking that this whole “poor” people issue is a myth manufactured by those lying Socialists? At least twice in the last four years I have had occasion to be driven through my local town, due to roadworks on the bypass, or on one occasion a traffic accident caused by the children of the [alleged] poor rushing out of their [free] school into the path of an expensive articulated tanker without looking. I am an observant person. Not once have I seen anyone without shoes. Not once did I see starved corpses.
A Research suggests that you may well be right. Clear definitions of what “poor” is are difficult to come by. Starving to death, having no money, or succumbing to hypothermia are often put forward as pointers here, but Captain Scott perished in extreme cold, and he wasn’t short of a bob or two. And he had lots of corned beef.

We hope that this shortened version of our Q+A paper has served to allay your fears. In conclusion, and recalling the wise words of Vlad the Impaler, “Being rich is what happiness is all about. If we didn’t have poor people to compare ourselves to, how could we be happy?”

Some stuff has changed though. Personal communication options multiply. Amazing electronic pathways which allow Joe and Jo Public to tweet mind – numbing banalities abound. Mobiles take photos, have satnav, and apps which can tell us the rate at which elephants’ teeth grow. News coverage is wall-to-wall and the collapse of various middle eastern states and the emergence of revolutions wouldn’t have happened [we’re assured. Possibly by Nokia] without the ubiquitous mobile. How did the French manage in 1789 ?

Mostly though, stuff happens as its always happened.

The rich get richer and the rest of us try not to get poor. And the poor ? Well they get told, over and over, that we’re all in this together. Who tells them ? The rich, aka D Cameron, N.Clegg and smarmy G Smugborne, that’s who.

Fear not ! The repeated body blows of austerity will soon be softened. Our hearts will swell with national pride, for The Olympics cometh ! Ages ago, a little wiry chap called Coe told us that the UK wasn’t in the business of competing with China et al in the Posh Opening Ceremony Stakes, and I for one thought that commendable. Not so now. Only last week , Dave [M.P. P.M.] reversed that decision and now the opening of London 2012 will blow worldwide socks off. At enormous cost.

Why ? Well its all to do with unpopular governments needing deflectors. Mrs Thatcher had the Falklands. Dave’s had Libya. But nasty little conflicts don’t last long in the public consciousness. And Dave’s got the Olympics up his sleeve. A wonderful diversion. Weeks and weeks of athletic Strictly Come Running ,Jumping and Splashing About.

And afterwards, when the speedy types have all gone home and we’ve come third in Small Bore shooting, what happens to all the spiffy new buildings ? The Olympic Village ? Will that be turned over to the needy, the homeless ? Don’t be silly, of course it won’t. That simply wouldn’t make economic sense, because economic sense dictates that all the rich bods who’ve put money into the Olympics need to make a profit out of them, continue to be rich and, ergo, continue to order the lives of everybody else. Me ? I’m just sorry we never got jet packs.

Happy New Year !

As for the manner of the Colonel’s death and subsequent international hand – wringing, well that’s got HYPOCRISY written all over it. No captured leaders ever got shot out of hand in Germany, Russia, Korea, Vietnam and any of the other conflicts “won” by the west did they ? {Ooops. Factual error. The U.S. lost in Vietnam didn’t they ?}

Meanwhile, back in Cameronland, you know, that place of golden horizons we’re all in together, greedy bankers are busy circumventing measures which might deprive them of dosh. Successfully too because [a] London is the leading world financial centre and unless we allow bankers to out-earn everybody else, they’ll all decamp to Switzerland or somewhere. Well not Switzerland because that’s full of overstuffed gnomes anyway, but you get my drift. And [b] I hear rumours that the UK’s coalition government is run by individuals not averse to the benefits of banking.

But enough of that depressing stuff. Its nearly Christmas ! Hooray ! Or not. The choice is yours. And if bits of your Christmas involve sitting around with folk you haven’t really got anything to talk to about, here’s a list of things they probably don’t know and will stimulate amusing debate.

Little Known Christmas Facts

1] 60s/70s singing ensembleThe Carpenters were named after Jesus’s Mum and Dad

2] Eskimos have no words for Christmas.

3] Couples who buy each other matching sweaters have a problem. Couples who buy each other matching woks are in even greater trouble.

4] After WW2 the names of Santa’s reindeer, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Donner, Blitzen undt Messerschmitt, were tactfully changed, with Rudolf replacing the latter. [but he was no good in a tight turn]

5] Eskimos don’t get presents

6] Consuming copious amounts of brussel sprouts, chestnut stuffing,mushy peas and Guinness can lead to family breakdown and a visit from the Fire Brigade

7] Pretending not to actually know ANYTHING will make Trivial Pursuit last half the time.

8] Instructions on how to talk with a silver spoon in your mouth appear of George Osborne’s website

9] Eskimos very rarely vote in X Factor.

10] Flopping back and saying, “Well, thank God that’s over!” is normal. You do not need counselling.

Something which HAS changed is my understanding of non-figurative images – you know, those pictures which don’t appear to be of anything REAL. Sometimes they’re called “abstracts”, but I don’t really understand what that means. What I am sure of is that an image doesn’t have to be a reproduction of reality to be valid – just as a piece of instrumental music doesn’t need words to elicit a response from the listener.

Personally, I don’t think pictures need titles. I’ve given mine titles which don’t necessarily describe what you see. They might be about music which was playing whilst they were being made – noises off, so to speak, or they might be about a vague feeling the picture gives me. Boringly, titles do make pictures easier to catalogue. I’ll be putting more pictures up just as soon as I’ve photographed them.

You can view the paintings here. Thanks for looking.

Elsewhere, in one of those far away places of which we know little but which by happy chance has oodles of oil, Colonel Gadaffi got killed. Whilst resisting arrest in a drainage pipe. Hmmmm. Along with countless innocent civilians who weren’t resisting. They merely lived in Libya.

Meanwhile Big Dave’s warded off a referendum. His lips get thinner by the hour. They’ve been set in a little hard pink line for quite a while now, especially during the recent Eurosummit where suggestions that Greece may well have told porkies to get into the Euroclub abound. And now Italy appears close to a financial snafu. At least Mr Papandreou looks solemn – even regretful. Not so Silvio Berlusconi – the chubby Italian guy who uses the same wig maker as Steven Segal. He does wonderful quotes. Here’s one from 2006. “I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim. I put up with everyone. I sacrifice myself for everyone. “ Insert your own expressions of disbelief here.

Anyway, in a bid to make myself as rich as Berlusconi and be able to afford undetectable hairpieces, I’m about to open a new “Paintings” section on this site. I say “I’m”. Of course, it won’t be me. It’ll be my long–suffering nephew Chris who has tried his damndest to enable me to do my own site – fiddling, but has reckoned without the fact that certain words like “upload” and “error” sap my will to live. The new section will display work, which like everything else on the site, is for sale.

I’ve been prompted to do this by the gallery exhibition I was promised being held back for a while, and because I’ve now got lots of paintings in quite a small house. So, they’ll all be up here soon. In the meantime, be warned, all the paintings are non-figurative, so if you don’t care for paintings where you can’t tell what it is, avoid the section at all costs. Or maybe chance a peek. You might like them. Or not. In which case you can say things like, “My dog could have done that !” Which, without thumbs, is not possible of course.