h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...or The Joys of Dubious Journalism, perhaps.

Every week I get the same paper - well, I get a number of different ones, on different days. With this particular one, I get it on the day the job ads are in it. It's nice to have a squinty and see whether anyone's offering millions of pounds to someone willing to sit up in the hills and watch the city below him work. Not yet, not yet, but I live in hope.

At this point the wee man in my head speaks up - you know the one. He's the unfailing voice of sanity, wisdom and good advice - and as such he's invariably ignored. He tells me to stop there and get the breakfast ready. But no. My fingers keep flicking through the pages until they find the column of...Lizard MacEmer, let's call him.

Lizard MacEmer's always in the paper that day too. All good Lizards are great at spotting insects of all kinds - grey ones, blue ones, bronzy ones, black ones - but in his case he's great at spotting Reds under the Beds. He's that good at spotting them he sees them whether they're there or not, and seems to fear that the country is full of wicked trade unionists with blueprints under their floorboards for gulags.

I can't help it. I read it. And depending on what side of the bed I got out of that morning, I'm banging the table and wailing with laughter, or crumpling up the paper and playing football barefoot on the kitchen floor, while the dog looks on in bewilderment and the porridge slowly burns.

But Mr MacEmer isn't the only one. I'm a glutton for punishment. There's also Big Kev. Big Kev's a respected veteran journalist with decades under his belt. No matter which wide and varied topic he chooses, he seems to take a diametrically opposed view from me, no matter how unconnected the topics he picks. It's like he knows me and does it on purpose.

But I don't really mind big Kev. Because he can actually put a sentence together. Besides, I know he's just being a contrarian, no matter what he says.

I can't say the same for the Harris Lad. The Harris Lad isn't a great writer. He's an unhinged ex-Stalinist who's had far too much sway in the media. I'm not 100% sure that he's safe to be let out on his own. If I saw him coming down the street, I think I'd climb down a manhole and wait til he went away!

Why do I read this schtuff? I have no idea.

You read it for the same reason that some (not me!) exercise: it gets the circulation going. There's nothing I like better than a good yell at John Harrumphries of a morning.

Or a good laugh. Like yesterday on R4 they were talking about the suggestion that some families might be funded to go on holiday (we're talking a week in a caravan in Skegness off season here). As one vox pop said:

'Why should the underprivileged get everything? What about the rest of us?'

As Gary Bushell would say...

'Course I take the Grauniad and always swallow its Party Line.

"Why should the underprivileged get everything" - Why, indeed?

To tell you the truth though, I'd give my left arm for a week off work anywhere!

I heard that R4 discussion. They pointed out that it actually stimulates the tourism industry and creates more revenue than it costs. But that's not enough. The poor must be punished. I don't get it.

TRiG.

I didn't hear the programme, but I'm intrigued by the logical proposition that "the underprivileged get everything".

I think the theory says that they have to be discouraged from being poor. Go and start a business, or something.

Well...it's a theory.

But won't someone think of the children?

What about them? Handy for cleaning chimneys, so I hear!