The Future's bright, the Future's Brown

Yes, old blighty is finally replacing Teflon Tony with Golden Brown. People close to Mr Brown are desparately trying to teach him how to smile naturally before his elevation to PM later this week. At present the smile continues to appear around his mouth only, is almost instantly dropped and occassionally appears at the wrong time, when he is delivering bad news such as the poor opinion pole ratings for his predecessor. Political pundits are anticipating that he will be even funnier as PM than he was as Chancellor. Certainly, those close to him admit that they are usually in tears of laughter whenever he discusses his planned policy initiatives and they look forward to new, funnier routines as PM. It is constitutionally odd that Mr Brown, from a Scottish constituancy, will be determining the future of, for example, the Health Service in England and Wales but has no direct control over the Scottish Nationalist Party decisions in Edinburgh which will effect his own constituents' Health Servce provision. Brown is particularly unhappy that SNP is the largest political party at the Scottish Parliament and the National Government can no longer dictate Scottish domestic policy. The Westminster-SNP axis of trouble will be one to watch over the next year or so.

The health risks and antisocial nature of smoking are increasingly driving good policy initiatives in the developed world. This includes the recent completion of a now UK-wide ban on smoking in enclosed public places, given that England and Wales have now joined the rest of the UK. As part of a health awareness campaign some years ago, I wrote the following poem, which I thought would be fun to reproduce here. It's called 'Ashes to Ashes':

I like to smoke a cigarette and have nothing new to regret.
I have no legs below the knees and suffer from airways disease.
Angina I can almost bear as long as I sit in this chair.
The heart attacks were not much fun, I'll smoke and take another one.
The stroke, I'm glad, was only small but every time I walk, I fall.
The ulcer it just sat and waited, 'till the day it perforated.
And in the night as pain is easing, I wake up breathless, coughing, wheezing.
So I reach out for that box, with the warning from the Docs.
I smile and think 'but I'm alright' and set another cig alight.
But now I find that I of late have lost an awful lot of weight.
Through cancers, two, quite unrelated to ensure I am soon cremated.
The bladder tumour they took out had seeded growths all round about.
The oither speckles my phlegm red, so one thing's sure, I'll soon be dead.

Lovely.