Would you like to super-size your wafer meal?

In Dudley (a town about five miles south of Wolverhampton, geography fans, and possibly home to that hideously unfunny Dawn French show), the town council has told the local church that putting up a cross outside the church would incur a charge of £75, because the cross is an advertisement for the church, a logo, if you will, same as McDonald's golden arches or Nike's swoosh. Obviously I'm delighted to see religion being treated as just another service or lifestyle choice, but I can't help wonder what Abdul Rahman thinks about it.

Rahman, in case you don't know, is a 41-year-old Afghan who is to be prosecuted under Afghanistan's shariah laws for converting from Islam to Christianity (he converted 16 years ago while working with a Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan). His judge in Kabul said that while "we are not against any particular religion in the world ... in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law". The prosecutor in the case was a little more upfront: "We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty."

I imagine that even as devout a Christian as Rahman must be wishing for the secularism of Dudley right now.

PS: From George W Bush, liberator of Afghanistan:
'There are all these conspiracy theories that Dick runs the country, or Karl runs the country. Why aren't there any conspiracy theories that I run the country?'

Put the message in the box

'Put the message in the box, put the box into a car, put the car into first geeeaarrrrrrr...'

How has Brian Kennedy fallen from such heights to the Eurovision? Anyway, Red Ken's Green Parade was great craic, even though I was still on the tube for Red Ken's speech. He had Martin McGuinness up with him too, continuing the old adage of 'When your back's against the wall, offend the Daily Hate even more'.

And lads, what was with all the Mayo jerseys? Or just all the GAA jerseys in general? Oh, that's right, we're a contrary, tribal bunch, and no synthesised national celebration is going to make us forget our inter-county rivalries. One poor girl was wearing an Armagh jersey and waving a Clare flag. 'A loser in both codes, girl,' I said to her. But she was English and so didn't get it.

Tomorrow is proper St Paddy's Day. Saturday is a toss-up between the annual anti-war march and the hair of the dog in front of the Ireland/England rugby match. Decisions, decisions...

Pandemonium on the buses

Every now and then, even in the most mundane situations, you get a perfect storm (for those of you who haven't seen the film, this is where several circumstances which would cause an incident occur simultaneously to create a super-incident. Either that or it's a storm that pays off your overdraft, wins you a promotion, tidies the house and buys your girlfriend flowers.). Today's bus journey combined: traffic delays; an inexperienced driver; a gang of loud girls with a baby in tow.

Traffic delays mean waiting numbers build up at each stop, with their patience wearing thin. You know you're a Londoner when a fellow Londoner can turn to you and tut or raise their eyes and you know exactly what they mean. This tut conveys many things, all at once: 'Aren't the most trivial things annoying? Still, can't complain, the good old Blitz spirit. Isn't London great and rotten at the same time? If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it? I'd love a cup of tea. Isn't the weather awful/wonderful for this time of year?' All in one tut.

The inexperienced busdriver, when he finally gets to a bus stop, doesn't have the knowhow or authoritative voice to stop too many people getting on the bus. This causes a) a longer wait for the people at the next stop, and b) a crush on the bus. (When I got on, it had yet to become too crowded, and was able to maneouver past the one short, dumpy idiot who always stands in the middle, causing a bottleneck, with a gentle shove and a muttered 'If you get out of the way, Frodo, the rest of the fucking Fellowship can get on the bus'.)

The crush, which always seems to primarily consist of umbrellas, shopping bags and elbows, then startles the baby, who starts screaming, particularly when the inexperienced bus driver jolts and swerves (there is an underappreciated skill, I think, to driving a bus smoothly), thus throwing the crush all over the place. The baby's crying, in turn, upsets his mother/sister/auntie/friend of the above or whoever else is carrying him. The charmer in this particular incident, stood up to yell at the crush: 'If any of you breaks my fucking buggy, there ain't no-one getting off this bus until you gives me the money for a new one.' The friends show their support, yelling at the crush, the driver, any poor innocent who tuts or looks askance at them. The panicked bus driver swerves and lurches even more, randomly opening doors in the middle of traffic. It makes you wish for the non-contact sport of tube-travelling.

Moving on, yesterday I witnessed what I consider to be a unique metrological event. The rain was falling exactly vertically. Not a degree of variation to left, right, back, forwards, north, south, east or west. Hitting the pavement at exactly 90 degrees. Which meant there was no shelter from it anywhere, not under the bus huddle, not in the lee of buildings, nothing. One drop in particular fell with mathmatical presicion between my collar and the nape of my neck, travelling at such speed, I'm surprised I don't now leak.

Today, bus perfect storms aside, started out a lovely spring day. By the time I emerged from t'Underground at the end of my journey, thunder was rolling. March, eh? Still, I've a week and a half off work, starting in, ooh, half an hour, during which I should probably experience weather from seven different seasons.

Red and Green

Spring sunshine me hole. It's dull and cold, and a grey drizzle inveigles its way into everything. Just like home, then, and, since it looks like it's setting in for the month, perfect weather for Red Ken's Paddy's Day parade, which is being held this Sunday.

Paddy's Day on the 12th? Madness, I know, but that's Red Ken for you. Red Ken, for those who don't know, is Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, loved by some Londoners, loathed by others. As head of the Greater London Council in the 1980s, he pissed off Margaret Thatcher so much (one ruse was to place a giant 'unemployment ticker' outside his office, clearly visible from the House of Commons), the Iron Vampire abolished the whole GLC in 1986 (after which, he became MP for Brent East, my constituency). A proper love-him-or-hate-him kinda guy (as is George Galloway - Saddam's succubus, Castro's biographer, Big Brother contestant), he's the kind of politician you just don't get in Ireland, where everyone's just too comfortable with the status quo and the odd faux pas.

When Tony Blair reinstated the mayorship (as the Greater London Authority) in 2000, he decided Red Ken was too loose a cannon to put forward as a candidate. Ken duly left the Labour Party and, as an independent, wiped the floor with the other candidates. He was re-elected in 2004, this time as a Labour candidate.

Among other things, Red Ken has:

• Invited Gerry Adams, at a time when Sinn Fein were denied entry to Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, to visit the GLC, and said that Britain's treatment of the Irish over the last 800 years had been worse than Hitler's treatment of the Jews,
  
• Written an autobigraphy called 'If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It',
  
• Appeared on a track on Blur's The Great Escape,
  
• Called Ariel Sharon a war criminal,
  
• Campaigned for a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square as an anti-racism monument,
  
• Called George W Bush 'the greatest threat to life on this planet' and held a civic reception for 'anyone who isn't George Bush',
  
• Imposed the congestion charge, a toll on private vehicles driving through the centre of London; traffic congestion has falled 15% and the average speed of traffic in the centre has risen 10km.
  

Of course, you don't win my admiration without making a few enemies. The Sun called him 'the most odious man in Britain'. The Evening Standard, a vituperrious, racist, right-wing rag and sister-paper to the Daily Mail, the election-rigging, fascist-supporting voice of little Middle England, once accused Red Ken of throwing a man down a stairs and hitting his pregnant partner in a drunken rage - all allegations found untrue by the Standards Commission.

Ken's latest scandal came in February 2005, when, on leaving a gay community event, he compared a pestering Evening Standard reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard, who was merely following out the orders of his superiors, and so could not be considered morally accountable. The reporter, Oliver Finegold, happened to be Jewish. The Daily Wail group sunk its hypocritical teeth in as hard as it could; our hero responded with this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4287171.stm statement, highlights of which, in case you're too lazy to read it, are: 'No-one in Britain is less qualified than they [the Daily Mail group] to complain about anti-Semitism', and 'after a decade of pandering to racism against our citizens of black and Irish origin they have moved on and now describe asylum seekers and Muslims in similar terms'. He repeated this latter sentiment at last year's Paddy's Day London parade.

However, Red Ken's appearance at this year's parade is in doubt. On February 24th this year, the Adjudication Panel of England found him guilty of bringing his office into disrepute in the Finegold incident, and suspended him for four weeks. True to form, though, Red Ken is going down fighting. His suspension has been frozen by the High Court pending an appeal so he might make it after all. And if he does, I'll be there in my 'Free the Red Ken One' t-shirt, burning copies of the Mail and the Standard. He may be an attention-seeking polemicist, but he's my attention-seeking polemicist. He can hold Paddy's Day whenever he wants. I wonder if I can get him to move it to clash with Elizabeth Windsor's birthday party?

So, anyways, the parade. Good old Red Ken, he's closing off Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, posh old Park Lane, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street and Whitehall for us. Having it a week before actual Paddy's Day means that we don't lose out on top performers like Brian Kennedy (lads, it's the Eurovision, stop messing), the Hothouse Flowers and the Tallaght Youth Band, as well as the Kilburn Gaels Hurling Club, the Southwark Irish Pensioners Project and the London Cork Association (there's one for every county it seems, and two for Offaly...). I'm particularly looking forward to the Pompey Diamond Twirlers, they sound excellent. All in all, I guess it does beat following a 'trailerload of Irish dancers down a drizzly MacCurtain St'. For sheer half-cocked, well-meaning, cringe-making enthusiasm, you can't bate a Paddy's Day parade abroad. Begorragh.

Spring

Finally, spring is in the air. Admittedly, that hoor of a north wind is still blowing, and there are cold, clear skies at night, but during the day there's proper sunshine - not that low-cal sunshine-lite rubbish you get in January - blue, skies and big, multi-storey, fluffy white clouds that look like they were drawn by a six-year-old.

Add to that Ireland's glorious, heady, youthful win last night (England buggered up a perfect football night by equalising and then taking the lead against Uruguay), and the arrival of the Special One's younger and boundfully-enthusuastic sister, the Baby-Faced Assassin (showing a neophyte around London is always refreshing), and it looks like being a very spring-ful March. The one downside is that I won't make it back home for Paddy's Week, but, all things considered, maybe this is a good thing.