Time to lower the humour level to orange...

Last night I went to a roller disco at a local Student's Union club. I was terrible. I fell over almost instantly, fell over again when I tried to participate, stood by the railings for about half an hour and then decided to leave, falling over in the process. I have to admit, it wasn't one of my finer moments. But, of course, I was able to spare a tiny bit of the concentration I was using to keep upright to take a cynical look at the event.

I could talk to you about the fact that people had paid around £7 just to go round and round in circles. I could share a giggle about the old woman in the middle of the floor showing people dance moves they could use. I could rage at all the know-it-alls that glided around the floor thinking they were the coolest person in the world. I could even comment on how serving alcohol, a substance that eventually makes people fall over, was a bad idea at an event where people were falling over. But no, I want to mention the fact that, before I was given the right to fall over, I had to sign a declaration that stated that if I somehow died in there, it would all be my own fault.

This generation is riddled with paranoia. To abscond themselves from being sued, the event organisers basically told everyone that if they were injured, everyone else could only stand and laugh at them. I'm sure if I had broken my arm last night, I'd be more interested in getting some kind of medical attention than demanding the company to give me a bit of loose change. But, alas, that's just the world we live in nowadays.

I blame lawyers, myself. Ever since lawyers realised their speedboat comes as part of a pair, they've been doing everything they can to swindle money off people. Using exciting buzzwords and confusing legal jargon, they can brainwash anyone they lay their hands on to part with their hard-earned cash. Is it any wonder there are so many divorces nowadays? Happy families belong in the 1950's, not today's modern times, or so must the lawyer's think, which is why they make it their business to tell any wife they see that their husband is the worst human being in the history of earth.

Injury lawyers are worse. I once saw a court case where a man sued his boss because, having slipped over at work, his knee gets colder than it used to do. He could just as easily have sued God for making cold weather, or himself for being a clumsy bastard, but he sued the one person closely related to the incident that actually had money. If you want to go up a ladder at work, try sawing it in half, covering the bottom with orange juice, laying spikes around the floor and doing the hokey cokey. You'll definitely fall off, and your lawyer will definitely manage to shift the blame to your boss.

Of course it's not just the lawyers that make the world that little bit worse. Politicians are at it too. I'm not going to turn this into a long, boring political debate, unlike my last entry, but I do want to mention one thing, and that is 'terror alerts'. As if the world wasn't paranoid enough, we now have politicians telling us just how paranoid we should be. I'll wager fifty years ago there were terrorists, and the only kind of alert system was "we're being attacked" and "we're not being attacked". Perhaps it was even just a man in a high building with a pair of binoculars who, upon seeing a bomb heading towards the city he was in, radioed in and said "we're boned".

The introduction of a terror alert system shows us that everyone is just paranoid about something that is, let's face it, bound to happen at some point. People have attacked other people since they realised there were other people. Which means we're always under threat from being attacked in some way or form, so the terror alert should always be red. The terror alert system itself signifies that we're already boned. The colours are just there to determine how boned.

Until next time, my uncivil servants...ta ra!