Sticky Wicket.

Let's Call a Spade a Spade, Shall We? is proud to team up with Don't Shoot the Messenger to bring you a souvenir edition to mark England's defeat to Sarth Efrica by several thousand runs.

Potential future employers may not wish to look away now, but I'd rather you did.

What is this garbage?

It's an advertisement in this Sunday's papers for NatWest Bank, presumably attempting to cash in - which is what banks do - on its sponsorship of cricket, that greatest of all team games, although it is modest about saying so.

It ticks just about every box in the politically-correct yet sell-your grandmother lexicon of big business today:

Firstly, you may notice something that is becoming the norm: the main photograph studiously features a person of indeterminate ethnic origin. (We've "moved on" from the odd black or Asian face: far too challenging; why, people may actually form opinions! We did try but unfortunately we all ended up hating each other, or would have done had we not been blessed with white European immigrants whom we're permitted to hate instead without being called "racist". Wiser by far to picture someone who, to paraphrase Theresa May, could be anyone - and ends up being comfortably no-one.)

Then, having laid this mushy, swampy foundation, down to patriotic business with a mawkish appeal to an admittedly rather apt shame-faced patriotism ... "This game is different. Just like the country it comes from. Our island of individuality." Yeah, RIGHT: where we all - individually, of course - are proud to follow liars, dissemblers and, NatWest clearly hopes, the shining example of international banking! ... "Where we ... champion the lucky and defend the underdog." That underdog being ourselves, of course, as we are inexplicably and unreasonably bullied by horrid, backward Europeans. It must be us: we certainly don't seem to give a cuss for anyone else.

Yet there's still time for a Goebbelesque, straight-up lobotomising beamer of a lie ("Not a country of small minds ...") followed by that limp but eternal excuse for philistinism ("... but of big hearts.") - the kind of phrase often heard at international football tournaments as England crash out to one of the United Nations' newer members who nonetheless seem to play another game we invented more intelligently than we do.

And how about this for bottom-of-the-pond relativism: "And, even if you're the odd one out, you can still be in." To which the absolute (relatively speaking) clincher is added: "Or out." Precisely. Relatively speaking.

As for "Cricket has no boundaries." Well, yes it does, actually. Two of which are: how you hold the bat and your stance at the crease. So cut the crap and have a word about technique with that poor young lady of who-knows-where, whom you've either roped in to your squalid little game or exploited by buying her off a picture agency.

Sickening stuff. But, as NatWest tell us, we are what we do.

Time for my annual joust with the Automobile Association.

Ten minutes listening to Chris de Burgh, then ...
“Good afternoon. How can I help?”
Me: “Good afternoon. I’d like to make my annual enquiry why my car insurance has gone up by nearly 20% and over £120.”
Her: “Well, the Government has put up Insurance Premium Tax by ...”
Me: “... 2.5%. I know. What about the other hundred quid of mine you're after?”
Her: “Average premiums across the insurance sector have gone up 16% this year. They’ve been paying out a lot of money.”
Me: “I can well imagine. But just now I’ll avoid asking why yours are even higher as that’s not really my point.”
Her: “So you’re not happy with the price?”
Me: “Let me think ... no, it says on this card that I suspect I may not be.”
Her: “Well Sir, you do have a healthy No-Claims Bonus so I may just be able to see if I can find you a better price.”
Me: “Look, nothing personal but we have this conversation every single year: the AA sends me a vastly inflated insurance price, I ring you up and spend half an hour on the phone and then you discount it back down to about what I paid last year. May I suggest that you give me your best price in the first place and then I don’t have to make this ritual phone-call? This would have the added bonus that I won’t think the AA is running a squalid little scam.”
Her: “I think you’ll find we’re not the only company who ...”
Me: “Then I apologise and stand corrected: a squalid BIG scam. Again: since there is clearly a better offer out there, why don’t you tell me in the first place?”
Her: “You have to ring us up first.”
Me: “Why?”
Her: “It’s company policy.”
Me: “It’s a SCAM! Your company well knows that a goodly number of customers will nod your inflated price through. It also knows that there are much better prices that it could have offered them. Again, nothing personal, but your company is trying to rip me off. If I thought that some of it would reach your wage-slip I might just let it past but the trouble is, I don't like people who are already rich getting even richer on account of it, see.”
Her: “Would you like me to see if there’s a better price?”
Me: “Not really, but since we’re already on the phone to each other, perhaps you would? Can I have some more Chris de Burgh while I wait please?”
After a while ...
Her: “I have managed to find a price of £xxx.xx.”
Me: “Goodness, allowing for the Government’s tax hike, that’s just a few quid higher than last year and a Saving Of Nearly A Hundred Pounds On the Price I Just Got Through The Post! Again. You AA guys really are AMAZING!”
Her: “Would you like me to renew at that price, Sir!”
Me: “Oh go on, twist my arm!”
Her: “Right you are, that’s all gone through.
Me: “Thank you! Begob, here’s me bus – must dash! Speak to you next year! I trust the kids is doing well and the mother’s little problem is all sorted?”
Her: “Yes, it’s all tickety-boo chez nous! So long!”
Me: “Hey, that rhymed! Cheery-bye!”

Buzz off, Trump.

https://www.facebook.com/boredpanda/videos/10155541171404252/

Phooey!

Buzz Aldrin was never much of an astronaut anyway. He was even worse than Meryl Streep. Lousy also-ran. Not like that Neil Armstrong. He was the first man on the Moon. No prizes for second, Aldrin! And remember that Neil - who's a friend of mine: a great guy, terrific guy, high net worth - had to GET THERE too.

Ooh what's this? A tweet from The Man In The Moon himself! What's that? "Aldrin, you LOSER!"? Sure I'll tell him!

I could stand on the Moon better than Buzz Aldrin. It's easy. And anyway, I'm going to the Moon. Next week. It's made of cheese, you know. Like my brain. And my hair.