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These days the health and safety fascists have taken over. School trips are getting cancelled because the teachers dont want their faces plastered all over the tabloids if there should be an accident and one of their charged is hurt. You cant get insurance to get a village or a college bonfire going, so hundreds of years of traditions goes out of the window. Actually its being extinguished.

This past monday I had to get my tooth taken out. Before then, the tooth broke. I am not kidding you. It just broke. So on monday I went to the local dentist to take it out. Everything was fine and I was on my way to london from Scotland, as I do most of the weekends. On Tuesday a weird thing happened. In the morning I woke up with pain from removed tooth and thought that I would make my way to Oxford street Borders and stop in Superdrug or Boots on the way. I asked for 'Paracetamol', which is like Tylenol in America. Its over-the-counter pain reliever. The person behind the counter held up the box and shouted 'Paracetamol' at the top of their lings. The overworked 'pointy-haired' manager behind the serving hatch at the back of the pharmacy glanced up, looked up and down for a second nodded his head. I felt weird. Satisfied, of sort. I have been deemed suitable to be allowed to purchase some over-the-counter medication for my pain.

Try to think about this moment rationally. What is the pharmacist looking for? How exactly are you qualify as someone who is allowed to purchase pain relieve medication? What does 'paracetamol' addict look like? What does suicide by tylenol look like?

They can’t even seriously be looking to see if you’ve been in recently to buy paracetamol. First, this happened in a busy pharmacy at Oxford Circus. How could they expect to remember you? Second, if you are a serious 'paracetamol' hoarder, you would go from one chemist to the next like a strung-out junkie buying everything in the store.

I felt like I asked for cocaine at Sainsburry's or for a small coffee at Starbucks. Everyone looks at you to see if you are qualified.

My point is, it may be legitimate role of the State for ensure that all of us know what is good for us and what is bad for us, but then they should back off and allow us to make up our own adult minds. Its not hard to do. Its like this:
A little alcohol is ok. Too much is bad, so stop yourself when you start seeing double. If you drink and drive you go to prison. Dope is less harmful than alcohol and it doesnt lead to harder things, like the authorities would like you to believe. But the jury is still out on that. Smoking is harmful to you. If you want to do it, do it somewhere where its not annoying anyone else. Cocaine, crack, heroin? Bad news. Dont do it. Riding a bike without a helmet? Bad idea. Driving without wearing a seatbelt - fairy straight forward. The airbags will help, but you better buckle up as well. E? Can cause problems, so take it with a friend and drink a lot of water. Scuba-diving? Dangerous stuff. Water-skiing? Broken bones galore. Sky-diving? Should I even explain?

Why not make sure we know what the danger is and leave us the hell alone.

Because I live in London alone and have no friends that I can go to dinner with every time I go out to dinner, I am faced with the reality of dining alone in a restaurant or order takeout, which is really starting to get on my nerves. When you dine alone in a restaurant, you are providing a service to the other patrons. Everyone will enjoy staring at you and whispering about what a looser you are. They will feel good about themselves, and that will release endorphins in their brains so the food tastes better.

Kidding.

In reality the other diners are thinking what a confident and self-assured person you are to be eating all alone. They're discussing what a brilliant thinker and a generous lover you must be.

Kidding.

They really think you are a looser. The best you can do is to try to confuse their accurate perceptions by pretending to prefer eating alone. The most popular method, especially for women, is to bring reading materials and never look up. If you have hair that falls in your face, that's even better. The scenario works best when you have work-related boring-looking documents, a soncerned scowl and grimacing face. That makes you look like a powerful businessperson who is a force to be reckoned with. Not a looser.

The gutsiest lone-diner move has to be making contact with normal people at the next table and to try to hijack their conversation. If they are far away, this might involve some shouting. Listen for the mention of any geographic location, product or event that sounds familiar and then interject your own anecdote as though there is nothing unusual about you joining in. When someone gets up from that table to go to the restroom, take the empty chair and start ordering expensive wine for the table. The trick is to leave before the check arrives.

I found out that to be respected in a business world, or to seem that you are respected, you must learn to speak incomprehensibly on a wide range of topics. A good way to start being incomprehensible is by memorizing some phrases and liberily sprinkling them into your conversations. They can be used to talk about any subject where you want to show that you have a command of the situation when in fact you have no clue about what is going on.

Good things to be doing:

See the big picture,
Line up all the ducks
Have sidebar
Get on the same page
Move goal posts
Put it on the back burner
Touch base
Dip your toes in the water
Table it for later
Get a handle on it
Get more bang for your buck
Take it and run with it
Make a no brainer decision
Set aggressive but achievable goals
Keep ahead of the game
Shorten launch curves
Manage from top down
Think outside the box
Embrace change
Manage expectations
Swing for the fence
Do a sanity check
View it from thirty thousand feet
Press the flesh
Get back to basics
Put it to bed
Reach out
See what’s coming down the pike
Take a rain check
Throw the dead cat in someone else’s backyard
Make sure the left hand knows what the right one is doing
Stretch the envelope
Sing from the same hymn sheet
Hit the ground running
Drill down the into the data

Things you don’t want to be caught doing:

Reinvent the wheel
Find yourself on a slippery slope
Miss the window of opportunity
Raise a red flag
Shuffle the deck chairs
Have a scope creep
Jump on the grenade
Make a career limiting move
Fall on the sword
Get lost in the woods

Feel free to use it in your next meeting….

I can take no more! Enough already, James Blunt! Its time to get a grip! Come on, man. Stop being so indescribably wet. If she is so beautiful, stop standing there in your t-shirt and floppy fringe and hush your hopeless falsetto crooning. Go out and get her already.

And if James Blunt seems drippy next to the rock stars of the good old days, he is positively macho by comparison with Keiser Chiefs. These are weeds from Leeds whose hit single was ‘I predict a riot’, a tale about the bourgeois apprehension of a guy who tries to get a taxi on a Saturday night in the centre of town.
‘Watching the people get lairy/Its not very pretty I tell thee/Walking through the town is quite scary/And not very sensible either’ sing these epic softies. Then the guy meets another person in a tracksuit, who looks though he might offer violence, but doesn’t, and that’s about it. It’s pathetic!

When I was young it was standard practice for a rock star to start the evening by biting the head off a pigeon and throwing the television out of the hotel window before electrocuting his girlfriend in the bath and almost drowning in a cocktail of whisky, heroin and his own vomit. The self respecting rockers didn’t get up on stage and start whimpering how they predict a riot. They incited them.

Let’s face it – the rock star role models of yesteryear were far more thuggish, brutal and in-your-face than the rock stars of today, most of whom are almost embarrassing in their niceness. Grow some balls already.

London's Stansted airport has released a list of "dangerous" and "safe" foods -- dangerous foods are prohibited on planes. As you might expect, the list is a cross between funny and infuriating

http://www.stanstedairport.com/assets/B2CPortal/Static%20Files/Permitted_and_not_permitted_items.txt

The following items are NOT PERMITTED in your cabin baggage:

Drinks
• Any drinks in cans, bottles, plastic containers, cardboard cartons, etc

Cosmetics and toiletries
• All consumable cosmetics and toiletries (solids and liquids), eg:
- Soaps
- Creams
- Lipsticks or lip balms
- Mascara
- Toothpaste
- Talcum powder
- Hairspray and other aerosol items
- Deodorants
- Sun tanning products
- Bottles of contact lens solution

Food
• Any liquid-based food products in packets, tubes, plastic or tin containers
• Pasta or any other foodstuffs in sauces, gravies or other liquids
• Jams and syrups
• Sauces
• Pastes
• Yoghurts
• Soups (carton or otherwise)
• Stews
• Curry

Writing implements
• Spare cartridges for fountain pens

Smoking materials
• Cigarette lighters
• Non safety matches

The following items ARE PERMITTED in your cabin baggage:

Drinks
• Empty containers such as flasks and mugs

Cosmetics and toiletries
• Sanitary towels and tampons
• Non-consumable cosmetics and toiletries, eg:
- Combs
- Cotton Wool
- Fully disposable razors/razor cartridges
- Toothbrushes
- Disposable contact lenses in sealed packaging, sufficient for flight (ie one or two pairs)
- Non-disposable contact lenses in carrier with small amount of solution (but not bottles of solution)

Food
• Sandwiches
• Crisps
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Other solid foods

Writing implements
• Biros, rollerball pens, gel pens
• Fountain pens with single, open cartridge in use (but no refills)
• Pencils

Baby milk/baby food
• Empty containers such as empty bottles beakers or flasks
• Baby milk (if tasted by the passenger)
• Sterilised baby water (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby juice (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby food in liquid, gel or paste form (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby food powder (need not be tasted)

Smoking materials
• Cigarettes
• Cigars
• Rolling tobacco
• Cigarette papers
• A single book or box of safety matches

We are sorry for the inconvenience this will cause you

Are you?