There Actually is News!

I sat at my computer today with the intention of writing about how people have traces of faeces on their mobiles. Then I found out Colonel Gaddafi was dead.

This knocked me back a bit. I imagined it was going to be the standard nutjob disposal: months and months of nothing followed by a dishevelled man being found in a cave sans dignity. Only, we've ended up with some actual news.

Whether you want to or not, you're going to be subjected to some pretty grisly pictures. I don't know why that's become acceptable in recent years. Back in July 2003, pictures were released of the dead faces of two of Saddam Hussain's sons. I remember them being accompanied by a warning, and there still being outrage at the sight of them.

Today, anybody logging on to any news website will be greeted by one or other picture of Colonel Gaddafi's corpse. It doesn't take a futurologist to guess that it'll be all over the front pages tomorrow.

So, Gaddafi is dead. What does that mean for us?

Not a lot, it would seem. On the one hand, David Cameron has been commended for the role Britain took in the NATO intervention in Libya. I may be cynical, but it may have a little to do with the victims of Gaddafi we are supposed to remember today: the Lockerbie victims, WPC Yvonne Fletcher and all those who died when Libya suppllied explosives to the IRA.

The National Transitional Council, though, is not likely to give us what we want, which is, by the way, Al Megrahi's head on a silver platter. Extraditing some criminal we shouldn't have given away in the first place is a bad political move. What the people of Libya will want right now is a government that acts in their interests, not ours.

Still. We ought to expect some gratitude in the form of a little slice of Libya's natural resources. Which are... what are they? What do Libya have a lot of? It couldn't be... yes it is. Oil and gas. Funny, that.

Let's not be silly, though. We're not going to be whinging when the price of petrol drops by half a penny a litre.

So, let's not be dismissive when it comes to being "friendly" towards nations with stuff we want. It's not really about Lockerbie, otherwise we wouldn't have given Al Megrahi back in the first place. It's about making life a  little bit easier for ourselves.

When we first made friends at school, we picked the people who had colouring pencils to borrow. We picked the people who would swap us their sandwiches. Our mums wanted us to play with the people who would grass us up if we didn't eat our fruit.

Friendships, between countries as well as between children, are about making the most of things. Let's not complain.

Also, wash your hands thoroughly.

There Is No Money

"There is no money." The semi-famous line written by one Chief Secretary to the Treasury to the next. When that piece of news came out in May of last year, it was funny. The thing is, we're starting to realise that it's true.

The economy is, quite simply, buggered. This morning, the Bank of England announced that pitiful interest rates of 0.5% percent are here to stay, and that if this hole we're in gets any deeper, they may have to start just printing money for the hell of it.

The housing market, too, is suffering. Nobody can sell a house, because nobody's buying. Nobody's buying, because the houses are too expensive. Even if you found one cheap enough, the chances are the bank won't give you a mortgage. So people are turning to rentals. You may not know, but I'm working for a lettings agency at the moment. The picture's not all that pretty there, either.

As people are forced out of the buyers' market, demand for rental properties is going up- and so are prices. The only thing is, housing benefits aren't going up in line with these increases. Furthermore, councils aren't willing to pay deposits for housing benefit applicants. Now, I know it's not characteristic of me to feel sorry for the terminally unemployed, but there aren't enough jobs to go around, and some people are going to miss out.

Now why, when perfectly decent Swindonians can't afford a place to live, can people without UK citizenship apply for council homes in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea - and get them? There is no suitable council housing in Kensington and Chelsea, for a simple reason- it's an affluent area. Yet, the way housing is allocated means that, should someone register themselves homeless in the borough, they could be sleeping in a £2m mansion by next week.

This has been seized upon by opportunists and criminals (some have been convicted of housing-related offences elsewhere) as a way of living it up. One source told of a Somali family who invited tens of friends and relatives to share their council-funded mansion in the borough. Few of them even work, and the property is slowly being destroyed from the inside.

The BBC also broke news of a Swedish couple who both applied separately for council housing in the borough, as well as back home in Sweden. Again, this couple did not work in the UK- they made their money sub-letting the properties they conned the country out of.

What's more, due to a supposed dearth of council homes in Kensington and Chelsea, landlords are being forced by the council to rent out their properties to people they never would have allowed in the first place.

My main point here is, nobody needs to live in Kensington and Chelsea. The neighbouring borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, or across the river in Wandsworth, could easily house the supposed homeless of Kensington and Chelsea. Things need to change so that this is allowed.

I agree, that someone who has lived their entire life in somewhere like Leeds, whose mum is in Leeds, who's job is in Leeds, who's best friend is in Leeds- they get housed in Leeds. But someone from abroad, who has no job, no family, no friends in the country, and funnily enough doesn't want to live in Leeds but somewhere where the streets are paved with mansions- they get housed wherever there's room.

It's not racism. It's sound economic sense. Also, properties in K&C aren't just expensive, they're old and historic, they bring in the super-wealthy in a way that the weather never will. It's not about being prejudiced, it's about doing right by the country. The second we get a government who does right by this country (by the way, we've not had one since '92), I'll be happy. Until then, I'll keep grumbling on.

Not-so-good Samaritans and Waste Disposal Issues

Giving to charity has its pitfalls. It's inconvenient, you can't give to everybody, and why should you have to give up your hard-earned money? The excuses are endless. For most, chucking unwanted clothes and goods in charity collecting bags had seemed the perfect way to end the incessant guilt-trips brought on by watching endless infomercials on the plight of starving children, cancer patients and sad kittens.

Not any more. The British Heart Foundation has decided to lift the lid on the terrible things that go on after you leave that bag on your doorstep.

Only 30% of the goods in that bag will make it to a charity shop.

The majority of charity bag collections are operated by private companies. Some are known to be rather less than ethical. The BHF uncovered reports of clothing being shipped and sold abroad by these companies- in some cases, up to 80% of the goods collected. What's more, I heard of one woman who, employed to collect for charities, used to rummage through bags in order to snaffle the best things for herself. She's not the only one.

Charities make only £50-£100 per tonne of goods collected.


Because of the underhand ways of the collecting companies and their staff, along with the extortionate prices they charge charities in order to, essentially, cherry-pick the best things and sell them to impoverished people abroad, charities make virtually no money from collecting goods. So those clothes you left on the doorstep? You may as well have handed a cancer patient ten pence and told them not to spend it all at once.

Here are my tips for giving to charity:
-If you are going to give goods, deliver them yourself. This reduces costs for the charity in question.
-Give to charities you believe in. There is no point giving to a charity just because they made you feel guilty. Give to things you believe in, and you'll feel better about it long term.
-Give money. Pledging money to a charity reduces their costs massively. If you really want to help, this really does help.

Another thing that seems to be popping up in the news this week is that we seem to have a crisis on our hands- we're running out of places to go when we die. No, paradise isn't full, but burial plots in the UK are a little thin on the ground.

A number of exciting solutions have been put forward, some more sensible than others.

Resomation is one of these brand-spanking new ideas. The gist is, it's pretty much like cremation, except, when you go behind that curtain, instead of being burnt to a crisp, you are slowly (it takes hours) dissolved in water and alkali. Yes, all your fears about being burnt or buried alive just went out the window there, didn't they? Your liquid remains are returned to the water supply and your powdered bones given to your grieving relatives to cry over.

The plus side of all this is that by not getting cremated, you are helping the environment by emitting less carbon dioxide and using less gas and electricity. It also removes the mercury from the amalgam in your teeth for safe disposal. What's more, your liquid remains are safe and 100% DNA-free- imagine that on a bottle of Evian.

Another idea, promession, is over ten years old, but surprisingly, is yet to catch on. After being frozen to minus 18 celsius, you will be doused in liquid nitrogen and shaken to bits. The water is then evaporated off in a vacuum chamber. Your fillings and hip replacements are removed, and your dust poured into a biodegradable box, which is buried in the topsoil with a tree or plant to mark your grave. You will turn into compost in a matter of months and the tree will think you are absolutely delicious.

These are just the sensible ideas. The silly ones can be found here.

If anyone has any more ideas, email me at sachtastic@aol.com, or comment below.

Just a little update on the launch of Newstastic. If you hadn't guessed-it's been launched. It will provisionally be posting every Thursday. So now you know.

Newstastic is Online!

Hello, and welcome to Newstastic, an offshoot of the Sachtastic blog. This is where to find all of the weird and wonderful news stories that used to be cluttered up by tales of my private life.

Publication will be once weekly- more news to follow!