Having a couple of hours to spare whilst waiting for a friend who was coming to dinner, I went onto the YouTube site to watch a few funny videos. What I eventually found was not funny; in fact I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I found some Government TV adverts about catching benefit cheats.

Something rather odd about them struck me. All the actors (at least I assume they were actors) were white and obviously British. I couldn’t find one that showed a coloured person.

I don’t have a television because I feel that the licence fee is too much to pay to watch the crap that now passes for entertainment, so I don’t see these biassed adverts.

I could list all the links to the adverts on YouTube, but quite frankly I am disgusted with the Governments racist attitude that all benefit cheats are white, so I wont bother. If you want to see them type “benefit cheat advert” into the YouTube search box, or click onto the thumbnail pictures that appear when the video finishes.

Can someone out there please explain to me why the immigrant population are classed as “white than white” (as the saying goes) and not regarded as benefit cheats? I know that there are white benefit cheats because some of the local “ne’er-do-wells” seem to have loads of money to chuck around on beer every night in my local pub. Is it a fact that the coloured population just don’t cheat the system, or are the Government just being politically correct?

I resent the implication that only my ethnic group are regarded as criminals by our own Govt!

This post is not about the stupid, mindnumbingly boring reality show on TV, but about the more serious matter of the ever growing number of CCTV cameras sprouting up everywhere in the public domain.

I always holiday in France where the food, climate and quality of life is so much better than England. The towns, villages and the countryside so much safer; so there is very little need for cameras on every street corner, but as soon as I drive off the ferry at Dover I am immediately struck by the number of CCTV cameras monitoring my every move until I drive out of the docks onto the main road, and even then there are cameras along the route. If I stop at a pub on my way home I am being watched on cctv. Practically every pub now have cameras in all the rooms watching what and how much you drink. OK, so they say they are for security and to watch for any anti-social behaviour, but what if the landlord sees on the monitor that you drank three pints of beer, and then phones the bobbies and tells them that you have just driven off the carpark?

Yet while CCTV cameras proliferate, now numbering 4.4m in the UK – that’s more than there are Welsh people – latest figures back show what everyone has long suspected – that the bloody things don’t actually stop crime!

Driving through our little town of Earl Shilton, from when you enter to when you leave you are never out of sight of a police camera. On every road into the town there are cameras that read your registration number and instantaneously check with the DVLA computers that your car is taxed, insured, your MOT certificate is up-to-date and that you are wearing your seatbelt (cameras using using high image lenses)!

There are cameras in Wood Street Park monitoring the childrens play area to watch out for child-molesters and paedophiles, of which the authorities seem to think that Earl Shilton is infested with. Fair enough, I suppose that is one place where cameras make sense.

One place where they don’t work is the Wood Street Carpark where a car was vandalised recently, and despite the fact that there are two cameras the vandals they were not seen. Since my post about that incident another car has been vandalised, but to date I don’t know if there were any arrests made.

Nearly all the local shops, Post Office and Supermarket are bristling with cameras. I never feel lonely when shopping in the town, knowing that numerous nameless people are looking out for me.

Private snoopers are being paid to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras from home via the Internet. Their job is to try to spot criminal behaviour on live feeds from cameras in stores and streets. If, for example, they see a shoplifter they send a text message warning the owner of the firm. It reminds me a bit of Nazi germany when the youngsters in the Hitler Youth movement were encouraged to report any anti-Nazi behaviour by their parents, friends and neighbours.

Finally: (and you couldn’t make this up!) Cameras are being turned on the people paid to watch CCTV streams, to note which bits of surveillance footage they didn’t see. The system developed in Turkey uses webcams to track a person’s eye movements and can then produce an edited reel of footage that they didn’t see at the end of their shift.

I read that waiting-room toys are soon to be banned from doctors and dentists surgeries because the health and safety zealots claim they could spread infection among children. Another case of bureau­cracy gone mad.

This follows on from the removal of magazines and books from our local surgeries waiting rooms. They were removed last year because of fears that Swine Flu in infected patients could be passed on via the magazines. Well we all know that the Swine flu epidemic never materialised, in fact it was not as bad as ordinary seasonal flu. So why after last years fright haven’t the books and magazines reappeared? It’s because the ‘Elf and Safety people say that the magazines can harbour other germs and therefore are not allowed.

I recently visited the dentist, not of my own free will you understand, to have a bad tooth ripped out. I sat in the waiting room, nervous about the impending torture to come, and not a magazine in sight to distract my thoughts! I remember there used to be piles of old tatty magazines, like “The Amateur Dentist”, “Tit-Bits” and “The Arc Welders Weekly” to name but a few (shame about the Titanic isn’t it?) They did take my mind off where I was to a certain degree, but now you just sit staring at the wall and listening to the whirr of the drills and the screams of agony! And thats only the dentist!

I digress. Getting back to the germ-ridden magazines.  OK, so they removed them, but did they forget that there are other dangers i.e., the door handles, the hard uncomfortable plastic chairs, the TV remote, the touch-screen on the DIY “book-yourself-in-so-that-the-receptionist-can-have-a-long-teabreak” monitor, and of course not forgetting the patients roilets. I always wash my hands, but how many dont I wonder?

Are those items cleaned and disinfected regularly? If they are then possibly within an hour some other dirty infected person will touch them and the person following can be infected with some nasty germs. The only solution is not to go to the doctors or dentists at all, and put a yellow banner across the entrance stating “Infected Area – Keep Out”.

I think the biggest germ carrier is money. Just think for a moment about the loose change in your pocket or purse. How many times has that changed hands? How many pockets has it been in next to somebodys dirty handkerchief? Then you put it in your pocket next to your handkerchief that you take out to wipe your nose or mouth with?

Gruesome isn’t it? This is why I only use tissues which I keep in a separate pocket and dispose of them as soon as possible. During the Great Plague (1666-67) when money was passed over in the shops etc the buyer would throw his groats (money) into a bowl of vinegar then vendor would retrieve it and throw the customers change in to the bowl. Even then they realised then that money carried germs and tried to sterilise it. It didn’t do any good though, because germs thrive in vinegar!

Here endeth the rant.

Yesterday I thought I had better start preparing for Christmas. The first job was to get the chimney swept ready for when Santa brings my new laptop, a Porsche and an iPad. I don’t want much; I’m not the greedy type.

I phoned the local sweep and asked if he could oblige and how much would it cost. “What!” I said “£48! Just for one chimney?”

“That’s right guv, that’s the going rate now.” (Was I talking to Dick van Dyke?) I asked tentatively, “Is there a concession rate for a poor old pensioner on the bread line?”

“Naw guv, can’t do that. Mary, her indoors, wouldn’t like it.” So I was talking to Dick van Dyke! “Forget it, I’m not paying that, it’s daylight robbery!” With that I hung up.

The last time I had my chimney swept it was £2 : 11s : 7d. Dont ask me to convert it to decimal, euros or those dollar-thingies they use in the colonies. That gives you some idea when the chimney was last done.

So off I went to the local DIY shop and bought a set of rods and a brush, total £32. I had never tackled a chimney before so I looked up the instructions on t’Internet. I got an old sheet and cut a small hole in the middle and gaffer-taped it around the fireplace and covered the fitted carpet (what daft sod thought them up?) with a large decorators sheet, put the cat in the wheelie bin to keep him out the way, and set to ramming the brush and rods up the chimney. It was a bit unnerving listening to the loud noises of the soot falling down everytime I fitted the next rod and pushed.

Two hours later I had a massive pile of soot, bird feathers, bricks and a dead something I couldn’t identify. All the horizontal surfaces in the room had a layer of soot on them and I looked as if I had just stepped of the stage of “The Black and White Minstrel Show”! It took another three hours to clean up, including the black ring around the bath, then I felt as if I had achieved something. Well, I had saved £16 by doing it myself, and I shall get more than that back when I sell the brush and rods on eBay, because I’m definitely NOT doing that again!