So much rant-fodder to choose from...

Well, I've been absent from the blog-iverse for a few days, partly down to having spent a couple of days in the Lake District, and partly because of technological malfunction...and whilst my absence may have left blog followers fearing the worst (or the best, depending upon your bent), the return to the blog after even just this short period of no-blogginess has highlighted to me what an absolute wealth of riches exist in this wonderfully mad and vibrant world of ours on which to comment, about which to moan, or from which to merciless take the proverbial piss.
For instance, we have:

• the first Ashes test and the fact that, for four days, the Australians somehow managed to smuggle a Marais Erasmus lookalike (allegedly from a small town just north of Wollongong) into the third umpire's seat (whereupon he missed a glaring stumping of the Australian wonder-kid named after a type of laboratory jelly and then gave Trotty out even though he couldn't actually check whether he'd hit the ball or not...which is pretty fundamental, methinks) whilst the real Marais Erasmus (who only returned in time to give the last Australian batsman out) was held hostage in a small bungalow on the outskirts of Nottingham, not far from the M1;
• the news that the BBC have spent my licence-fee money (and that of a shed-load of other people as well) on three investigations into why nobody at the BBC spotted that Jimmy Savile was a paedo;
• and still on the BBC, news on severance packages which make me hope (in vain, I suspect) that my current employers would be as generous as the BBC Board in calculating any payout I will get should my services no longer be required;
• and, of course, there's the ongoing nonsense of the European Convention on Human Rights and the fact that, according to the idiot judges in Brussels, we in Britain are not even now within our rights to tell psychotic murderers that they are going to die in prison, because that is seen as 'inhumane' (though not, I suggest, as inhumane as the way Jeremy Bamber butchered five members of his own family...but, then again, the law doesn't really give a toss about the victims of crime, does it...only the perpetrators).

And that's just a few of the things that I could easily rant on about!

There was, however, one story that I thought worthy of a bit of vitriol today, and that's the fact that the government has (at long, fucking last) put a cap on the amount of benefits that non-working families are entitled to...shame it's still so ridiculously high at £26,000 (and remember, that's £26,000 tax-free).
There is talk of getting it down to £20,000 (only talk, mind you), but I maintain that until it is lower than the minimum amount of money that a working family are able to bring home (after tax), sponging off the State will still be seen as a positive career choice for an awful lot of feckless individuals who bizarrely believe they have some God-given right to sit on their arses watching (and dreaming about appearing on) Jeremy Kyle whilst the rest of us have to get up everyday and go and do an honest day's labour (even though we might prefer to spend that day lounging in the garden!).
Even in the most benevolent of societies, the benefits system should be nothing more than a safety net to ensure that those without work, or those genuinely unable to work, are kept healthy, sheltered and fed...but nothing more. It should not, must not, provide them with holidays or Playstations or 70" plasma TVs...such things should be the material rewards for those with the motivation and determination to get a fucking job!

There, rant over...and, by Jove, it did feel good...