In Norway, the mentally ill are taken away by men in white shirts.

Instead, I will share this little gem from the Daily Telegraph that attempts to explain why this piece is so great.

The Scream is one of the world’s most iconic artworks. It inspired tributes from other artists, including Andy Warhol. And it gave rise to the Scream series of horror films in which the murderer wears a mask depicting the screaming face.

So, endorsed by a strange, pale-faced individual who was an expert with a photocopier, bold colours and self-publicity, and immortalised by a series of crap American B-movies. Time for me to start saving my pennies I think.

Inspired – hmm, maybe that’s not quite the right word here – by a friend’s photographs of the hideous Michael Lee-Chin Crystal in Toronto, my mind was transported to another monstrous Daniel Libeskind carbuncle – erm, creation – the so-called “Wedge” that slices through the beautiful Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum) in Dresden.

Beauty sliced open: the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr

As is usual with such incongruous constructions, there is usually some parroted nonsense that accompanies it and serves to justify the harebrained idea behind its creation – the sort of nonsense that finds a natural home in the Sophistry Corner. I have no idea who wrote this piece I found on Wikipedia, but I can smell a whiff of oriental herbs…

Certainly a symbolic addition, the wedge rises as a testament to democratic freedom against the unyielding power of Germany’s past reign. The wedge also cuts directly through the exhibits that focus on WWI and WWII, breaking the chronological progression and allowing space for thematic exhibitions focusing on the societal forces and human impulses that foster human violence. In a Nation that is criticized for brushing their history ‘under the rug’, the new addition personifies the gaping void left by oppressive regimes like the Third Reich, facilitating the much needed attention and discussion.

Er, right. Someone needs to be gently walked in the direction of the nearest the mental hospital.

Not all of the cubicles were actually occupied, so you curious readers must be wondering what the hell I am going on about – well, here we go.

Walk out, first floor. The first cubicle is occupied – fair enough – and the second appears to be available. I turn the corner, and the merest look is enough is send me scuttling out at breakneck speed. Clearly overstuffed with paper, the pan is on the brink of letting its lurid yellow contents flood over the edge. No, no, no.

Up to the second floor, where both cubicles appear to be unoccupied. The first has no toilet paper. Right. Onto the second, which would be fine were it not for the fact that HMS Nautilus has not been given the order to dive and is sitting there, a floating vision of the darkest, foulest horror. I pull the flush handle out of little more than obligation and quickly make my way out, if just to escape what is something of an olfactory nightmare.

Increasingly desperate and annoyed I make my way to the third floor, where I find the first trap occupied. I turn towards the second, only to see someone standing inside with the door wide open. The urinals just to the right are all available, and I cannot understand why someone would choose to stand inside the cubicle and not close the door behind them. The bathrooms themselves are very cramped for space and it is impossible to see the occupant until the very last moment, and surely the person inside knows this: it is as if they are setting themselves up to be cottaged.

One more flight of stairs to the fourth floor. At last. A cubicle that is available, clean, stocked with toilet paper – and free of some clown waiting for George Michael to turn up behind him wearing a comedy policeman’s uniform.

Actually today I’d consider myself lucky – on other days I have encountered anything between a broken seat and a floor covered in loo paper. Or worse still a seat spattered in human (or should that be subhuman, given the sort of person who would leave such a mess) waste. I really don’t get it, but at the same time I don’t think I really have any desire to understand why anyone would want to leave things in such a state.

Words not needed...

This is not unique of course, as many workplaces across the country have had to enforce rules on toilet abuse, whether this be stuffing the pan full of rubbish, spraying like some myopic tom cat all over the floor or even standing on the seat.

Yes, you read that correctly – standing on the seat. I wouldn’t have believed that people would – or could – do such a thing, until the one time I had actually seen footprints where they clearly had no right to be…

My point here concerns yet more journalistic misinformation, and with it the manufacturing of needlessly lurid headlines. Below is a photograph of Breivik as he entered the courtroom, offering a salute to what he believes is his audience – a salute that many of us might have seen before.

Anders Behring Breivik offering a "right-wing" salute... Really?

This hand gesture has been described by both the Telegraph and the Guardian – yes, even a bridge between these two can be manufactured through the use of journalistic stupidity and manipulation – as a “far-right” salute, when any observer knows full well that it is anything but.

A “far-right” salute, if one could describe such a thing, would be the flat-palmed Roman salute or a slightly more modern variant with just the thumb, index and middle fingers extended. Neo-Nazis sometimes stretch out the three fingers to make a “W” – representing Widerstand, or “resistance”. In Germany this salute is called the Widerstandsgruss* or Kühnengruss after the late neo-Nazi leader Michael Kühnen, whereas the standard salute is known as the Hitlergruss – no translation needed here.

The clenched-fist salute on the other hand is has long been associated with those on the other side of the political divide. From the British Socialist Workers Party and the likes of Che Guevara through to the International Brigade, Black Power movement and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, the clenched or raised fist has been a significant gesture.

Known "far-right" activist Nelson Mandela

Maybe the unhinged Mr. Breivik thinks he is Nelson Mandela? Perhaps he believes himself to be a modern-day reincarnation of Che? He has made it clear in his manifesto that he has no time for the Nazis or Hitler: who knows what is going on in his addled and confused little brain?

* The Widerstandsgruss is also known as the “three beers” salute, in that extending the thumb, and index and middle fingers is the usual way to signal to a waiter that you want to order three beers. You would be best advised to call the waiter over and order verbally if (a) you have a close-cropped haircut and/or (b) you happen to be in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district…

The growth of online journalism has seen a massive increase in the number of articles out there, and with it the number of journalists, commentators and contributors. Some of it is excellent, some of it utterly pointless – for this, just check out the Daily Mail’s infamous sidebar of shame – and some of it downright awful. But no matter what one thinks of a writer’s style or political persuasion, there is one thing that should always be carried out properly – research. A lazy writing style or a couple of typos here and there is one thing, but poor research really does get up my nose. Lazy quotes. Foreign names being butchered. Not checking “facts” that can be easily verified elsewhere on the Internet.

Oh, and picking out random photographs from available stock to illustrate an article.

This interesting little story covers a growing row between Austria and Slovenia about the production of the Krainer or Kranjska klobasa, a delicious, cheese-infused sausage one can find in many bars, bistros and vans in the region. Yep, while other countries are concerning themselves with human rights issues or trying to launch rockets – or not, as the case may be – this quiet and rather attractive corner of Mitteleuropa is witnessing a struggle over the naming of a sausage. I am tempted to try and shoehorn Wurst into a sentence, but will refrain.

My main gripe however is the image used to illustrate the article, which is not a Krainer but a Currywurst – a Berlin* speciality where a regular grilled Bratwurst is chopped up, drizzled/coated/smothered in a spicy tomato sauce and sprinkled in curry powder. Perfect with a chilled Berliner Kindl or a Spezi. I wouldn’t want to get too heavily involved in the debate itself, but what I can say is that I have had a couple of delicious Käsekrainers in Klagenfurt, a city more famous perhaps for its patronage of the late Jörg Haider.

Here is a Krainer...

Clearly the Telegraph writer/researcher was asked to provide an image of a sausage, and found what he or she thought was a rather tasty-looking one and left it at that. Online journalistic research at its Wurst.

Ach, scheisse. I’ve done it now.

*or Hamburg

I had considered filling up the small plastic container, but then thought that a full tank should be able to keep me going for at least a couple of weeks – when with luck this silly brouhaha should have ironed itself out. If not, I’ll consider stocking up on tinned goods and getting the Mauser down from the top of the bookshelf. It’s deactivated, but what the hell – I’ll just get out the combat fatigues and heavy ankle-length boots to complete the look.

The problem we now have is that the Labour Party are making a merry song and dance about this whole thing, when instead they should be applying a little common sense. Rather than getting into a flap and serving up mealy-mouthed and meaningless responses, the opposition should be trying its utmost to rein in the unions – the force that are motivating this planned strike. No, they’d rather things just take their happy course while the country grinds itself to a halt. At least with a full tank of petrol – panic bought or not – we can carefully budget our usage without the fear of being caught short.

The political mud-slinging would take a slightly different twist when it emerged that a forty-six year-old woman had ended up with forty per cent burns after – according to Labour peer Lord Harris – “following the Government minister’s advice”:

Labour peer Lord Harris called for Francis Maude to resign after the woman, named locally as Diane Hill, suffered 40 per cent burns when she tried to pour petrol into a jug in her kitchen after her daughter’s car needed refuelling. The gas cooker was on and the petrol caught fire.

Ah, right. So the gas cooker was on. Nothing to do with petrol in a jerrycan combusting for no good reason, nothing to do with government warnings, and everything to do with the fact that the woman was – quite simply – a fucking cretin. Though not as big a cretin as Lord Harris, who took it upon himself to offer his own words of advice to Mr. Maude on Twitter as a result of being unable to appreciate the oh-so-subtle difference between “storing petrol in a jerrycan in the garage” and decanting it next to a lit stove in the kitchen.

As for the fire brigade wading in, perhaps they too should consider the fact that petrol doesn’t explode without good reason – if it did, we’d need to have authorised personnel man the pumps at petrol stations. One cannot legislate for every act of idiocy, and it is about time that we stopped spreading the oily – and, let’s be completely honest, worthless – sympathy and instead dished out the hard nuggets of reality.

Gas cooker + petrol = recipe for disaster.

It’s not too difficult an equation, even more for those among us whose mental faculties don’t go that far beyond the basic instinct to breed. Oh, and Labour Party peers.

Many commentators have been prattling on ad nauseum about the “horrible” Assad and his murderous campaign against his own citizens. Safe in their comfortable ivory towers in Islington, Primrose Hill and Notting Hill, these masters of the art of media spin would have us believe that the Syrian government are out there eating babies – much as the Germans were accused of doing during the First World War. So far, however, no tales of removing said babies from their incubators for the evening pot roast.

Western leaders have been quick to stand up and suggest that Assad should step down. To be replaced by who or what, one might dare to ask. Some sweaty student? Some pro-American oligarch? Some Islamist headcase? A dog called Benny? Who knows. This “revolution” – if one can call it that – is not a genuine peoples’ revolt, but an insurrection that has been largely instigated by people secretly armed by agencies who have more than a close connection with those shifty fellows in Washington. There is far more to this than meets the eye.

One has to wonder how our own Government here in the UK would react if people came out on the street not only throwing stones and Molotov Cocktails, but armed with weapons supplied by some foreign power. Would they stand back and do nothing? I doubt it. Of course I don’t need to ask what might happen if a similarly armed crowd took to the streets in the United States, a country where an innocent woman and child were murdered on their own property by state operatives pursuing some shady agenda, and where a number of unarmed people were massacred in an operation that might well have taken place in Iraq or Afghanistan given the amount of military hardware on show.

Simple fact: if a large armed crowd appeared on the streets of Washington, New York or Chicago, they’d be warned first, and then shot. The leaders would be sent off to some secret cell in Guantanamo, houses and offices would be bugged, and sympathisers of this “rebel movement” would be tracked and watched. Some – ooh – may even end up in a cell for a spot of friendly waterboarding.

Yet somehow when the Syrian leader has decided to protect his country’s – and of course his own – interests by cracking down on this so-called uprising, he is portrayed as the “Devil Incarnate”, a “mass murderer”, a “torturer” or worse. Cheeky beggar! How dare he! It’s hypocrisy of the highest order, moreso when one considers that the United States pumps billions of pounds into a country like Saudi Arabia, the homeland of modern-day mediaeval barbarism. Iraq, Libya and now Syria – it’s as if Washington wants to fuck up these stable, secular countries and turn them into economic shitholes, Islamic basket cases, or both.

Meanwhile, Barack and Dave have been photographed munching on hot dogs.

The age limit for joining Facebook is thirteen. Thirteen. Quite simple I’d have thought, so long as you have an ability to count on your hands and feet. If you are ten years old, you have no business being on there. If you are twelve years and three-hundred and sixty-four days old, likewise.

If you are twelve years old, sign up to Facebook and post suspect comments about your school, you should be taken to one side and placed on the silly step. Not in America though, where you can end up suing for breach of your infantile privacy. No doubt the school will end up suing the child’s parents, who will in turn choose to sue Facebook for intruding on their silly daughter’s life.

To be one of those ever-smiling “helpful people” at big events like this, I have always believed that you need a handful of basic attributes. Patience, politeness, a grasp of the spoken word and a decent dose of goold old common sense. Not too demanding really, as such people are easy to find if you know where to look for them.

But no, it seems that this is not enough – for now all of those who wish to be an Olympic volunteer have to complete a “diversity and inclusion” questionnaire. “Diversity”. “Inclusion”. Two words that make me want to reach for the sick bucket, along with “multiculturalism” – whatever that may mean from one week to the next.

There are a few examples of the sort of questions being posed here, and the “correct” – or should I say politically correct – answers. I am not going to comment on each one: firstly I would end up sitting here for far too long, and secondly the Sophistry Corner is meant just to contain a short snippet of silliness.

What I like best though is the subtitle “would you pass the Olympic ‘diversity and inclusion’ questionnaire?” – to which I would simply counter “would you want to?”

There has been intervention in Libya that has seen the end of a long-established dictator and an emergence of what could best be described as a wobby political blamange, proposed meddling in Syria, constant wittering about Iran, and while there is clearly no hope of things going any further than the talking table, ceaseless bleating about Vladimir Putin’s recent election victory in Russia.

I have said it before and will say it again: some countries are just not suited to democracy. Whether this is a simple case of civic maturity – in the case of many Islamic countries – or a historical and cultural attraction to dictatorial leaders – as in the case of Russia. One can hope that these countries will one day mirror the West, but to demand it of them is bordering on cheek. To try and enforce it on them by “liberating” them – oh, the irony – is bordering on the criminal.

The biggest problem of course is that those making these decisions – decisions that ultimately affect us ordinary people living in Western countries – are continually unable to see beyond their own noses, let alone their rhetoric. Western politicians are happy to welcome foreign political leaders into their own homes one week and brand them as “tyrants” the next, and someone who might have been a happy dinner guest is suddenly persona non grata and a “major obstacle to freedom and democracy”.

I would simple ask this: what makes someone seen as acceptable one day a “tyrant” the next? Are the bellicose bleatings of some discontented student “rebel” activist on Twitter too much to resist, or is it the simple result of a sycophantic desire to seemingly “do the right thing” in between long spells of navel-gazing? Further, there is little thought of what might happen next.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein may not have been the world’s most pleasant place, but now the country is a hell-hole with almost daily car-bombings and outrages perpetrated by Islamic extremists that hate the West far more than Saddam ever did.

Libya under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at least offered us some comedy moments, but now the country is being led by people nobody really knows anything about. Tribalists, gangsters, separatists, Islamists… OK, there may be some genuine democracts floating about, but these are voices that will no doubt disappear as the country inevitable starts to stifle in its own offal.

Surely the democracy-mongers considered these things beforehand… Or was the tempting lure of the black gold just too much? In Saddam’s Iraq, your ordinary Iraqi could go to school and get a decent secular education. While in our friendly ally (for the moment) Saudi Arabia women are flogged for getting behind the wheel of a car, in pre-invasion Iraq they could get an education and reach the highest levels of political office. But not now.

The same could be said of Libya of course; while under Gaddafi things were kept in order – from Islamic extremists through to the armies of sub-Saharan Africans wanting to make their way across the Mediterranean in search of the gold-paved streets of Western Europe – the place has now turned into a veritable free-for-all. Gaddafi’s graphic and brutal death has done little to pave the way to democracy; instead it has allowed a new disease to take hold, one that results in the destruction and desecration of wartime British cemeteries that had been lovingly maintained for decades by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with the helpful cooperation of the previous the oh-so-awfully-terrible ancient régime.

The broken benefits of the Libyan "regime change"...

So much for Britain being one of those countries that threw its weight behind the campaign to oust Gaddafi: at least we now have a slightly clearer picture of the cave-dwelling creatures that have benefited most from this pointless regime change. The less that is said about the lack of a firm official response to this outrage, the better; as is always the case, this politically correct posturing is often accompanied by a peculiar brand of spinelessness. Nobody wants to piss off the Qu’ran-botherers now, do they – and I’m guessing nobody is going to bat an eyelid when armies of Libyan refugees start lining up for free housing in Kensington and Chelsea.

Next on the list is Syria – a potential powderkeg that has been kept in check for decades first by Hafez al-Assad and now by his son, the British-educated opthalmologist Bashar. Like every other country in the region democracy in Syria is an alien concept, and also like every other country in the region there are reports of human rights abuses. In the wider scheme of things however, things have not been that bad – well at least they haven’t for the ordinary Syrian citizen who has been willing to bite his tongue and get on with things. Despite not being a major exporter Syria has remained fairly stable both politically and economically – and remains one of the few countries in the region where fundamental rights are recognised, such as those for women and religious minorities.

As the old adage goes, you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

The problem now of course is that the disease of revolution – facilitated by foolish Western politicians and fanned by the self-serving Western media – that started in North Africa has made its way to the Levant, and all manner of ne’er-do-wells and uneducated religious basket cases are waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum should Assad be forced out of power. If I was a woman or a Christian in Syria right now, I would be very, very worried indeed.

Then there is Russia and the matter of the recent presidential election, which has got Western commentators hopping about frantically. “Fraud!” they shout, and “thief!” is the current mantra levelled against Vladimir Putin, who made the most of the assistance of the state media and some supposedly irregular voting behaviour to sweep back into power. Erm, no shit Sherlockski – this is Russia, the home of the fraudster, the criminal, the gangster and the thief. A country ruled by oligarchs – for this, read crooks – and a president who has a list of dodgy friends as long as my arm. Nothing new here, move along.

So yes, Putin won another term through manipulation and skullduggery – but who would the Western media want instead? The man who finished a distant second, Communist Gennady Zyuganov? At least we know Putin, and while he may be Russian – he can’t help that, after all – he is at least not a raving lunatic.

To put things in perspective, let’s have a look at the four other presidential candidates:

Gennady Zyuganov. The Communist Party candidate, and a former apparatchik in the party’s propaganda department. Enough said.

Mikhail Prokhorov. Standing as an independent, Prokhorov is one of Russia’s many oligarchs. Again, enough said.

Sergei Mironov, standing for the promising-sounding A Just Russia. Until one hears that he once said “we all want Vladimir Putin to be the next president” during a previous campaign. One might as well have just voted for Putin anyway.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, standing for the curiously named Liberal Democratic Party, which may just about be a party but is neither liberal nor democratic. Apart from this, Zhirinovsky is a pan-Russian fundamentalist with serious mental and anger management issues.

So there we have it. A communist, a crook, a puppet, and a mentalist. It goes without saying that anyone with a brain would have voted for Russia’s most famous balding, piano-playing Karate Kid, glitzy television campaigns or not.

That said, it might have been something had Zyuganov done the impossible and won the election. We would have seen Russia embrace the lovely Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, and prepare the ground for the return of the Cold War. To think what fun we’d have… We’d have a new Rambo film, Iron Eagle XVIII and a remake of Rocky IV. The armies of dodgy Russian shysters and their horrifically peroxide wives would be sent on the first Aeroflot flight out of Heathrow, and Chelsea would find itself thrown into the third division.

Oh, and I could go back to studying Russian aircraft as I did back in the 1980s (yes, I was one of those sad geeks who could tell his Foxbats from his Fishbeds and this Flogger-Bs from his Flogger-Ds).