The Bill

Which
is all very well when this surveillance is being supervised by a force as benign
and reassuring as the cast of The Bill, but what happens when the slightly darker
cast of, say, Spooks is in control? It seems to me there’s an awful lot
of trust involved here, because it appears that all this surveillance infrastructure
is in place for nothing less than total control. I can even hear Tony Blair
singing softly from his cell in the Hague –
And I’d sell my soul for
Total control
Yeah I’d sell my soul for
Total control
Ooh I’d sell my soul for
Total control over you
Over you
Total control over you
Of course, Tony Blair isn’t in a cell anywhere, let alone the Hague –
yet. It’s just another TV fantasy (The Trial of Tony Blair),
which conjectures a not-too-fantastic scenario in which glib Tony is indicted
for war crimes.
I was thinking about Saddam Hussein on the tram the other day – travelling by
public transport can do that to you. I was thinking that, when Obama pulls out
his troops, Iraq is going to need a strong man, a strong man perhaps not unlike
Saddam, to pull his improbable country together again after years of chaos.
He might even be rather more conservative than Saddam, maybe even more of your
fundamentalist type, and he might have to be just as ruthless as the Saddam
prototype.
And then I thought about Saddam’s ‘execution’ and what a sorry
business that was. No matter what you thought of Saddam Hussein, the manner
of his death reflected more on his executioners and their sponsors..

Speaking of torture, I went to the dentist yesterday. I’d cancelled
my six-monthly check up before Christmas because of the cost of investigating
my exploding eye-ball, and so, naturally, right on cue – on Christmas
Day no less – I managed to lose the better part of a tooth and filling.
Fortunately it wasn’t painful and I got a temporary filling in the meantime,
but yesterday was my day of reckoning. My dentist is a friendly chap, and
a few years younger than I, which I find reassuring after having endured a
couple of wayward dentists past their prime. By far the worst was our family
dentist, old man McIntyre. By the time of our last encounter, his hand was
so unsteady that he’d numbed my entire head with his wavering needle
– except the crucial tooth, of course.
Thankfully, Bernie is personable as well as alert and efficient, and he plays
some interesting music as well. This time he was playing an album by a French
lass whom I couldn’t immediately identify, although she sounded vaguely
familiar.
Bernie said it was Françoise Hardy. I tried to remember a French male
counterpart from the same era, but nobody came to mind.
We were half way through the procedure and I had my mouth full of what felt
like half a building. Bernie’s assistant, Amanda, had been diligently
thrusting suction in as well, so I was well and truly the focus of attention,
but necessarily mute at the same time.
Suddenly I had a thought. Bernie and Amanda had stopped with the pneumatic
drills and suction hoses and were preparing to pour some concrete into my
mouth, so I took my opportunity and gurgled, ‘allyday’.
‘Hallyday?’ Bernie repeated uncertainly from behind his mask.
I gurgled what I hoped might’ve passed for a positive gurgle and then
started to giggle. You may have seen the (ACMA?) ad on telly which is set
in a dental surgery. The patient starts to talk about some objectionable TV
ad he’s seen as the dentist piles equipment into his gob. ‘Tell
someone who cares’ is the slogan, and it came to mind at that moment.
I was thinking of Johnny Hallyday, (the greatest rock star you’ve never
heard of), who was a contemporary of Ms Hardy’s, but, ATW*, they never
had a relationship, which is passing strange in so many ways.
There’s a popular statistic/myth that the dental profession has the
highest suicide rate. I wonder if it’s true, and then for which country
it’s true etc. I could see that a dentist with halitosis might be pushing
shit up hill, but why should it be worse to be a dentist than, say, a proctologist,
or even a plumber?
Anyway, Bernie did a fantastic job. I felt no pain, and apart from having
to hold my mouth open and dribble for thirty minutes, (a bit like an interview
really), barely any discomfort. Added to which, he said the Lomond is just
around the corner and he might even drop in on Saturday night. The man is
a legend!

*According to Wikipedia