What you need.

I've been meaning to write this for ages, but the very reason I know what to write is the same reason I haven't got round to it. That's right: it's a list of stuff that's useful if you have a baby on the way. Half the stuff the baby magazines tell you is Absolutely Vital is in fact a big fat waste of money. Best thing to do if you're expecting is to ask any recent parents you know for their tips. But be careful of the mummy-fascists: if your "friends" start telling you that theirs is The Only Way To Raise A Baby and if you don't do what they did You Are Doing It All Wrong, politely make your excuses and never talk to them again for as long as you live. Even better, kill them and steal their child.

On that note (the ignore-the-pushy-parents note, not the murder-and-kidnapping note), the Dr Spock book really is good. So many baby books tell you the one ideal way to do it. For every topic, Spock tells you the handful of different good ways to do it, and leaves you to decide which to go for.

Anyway, here are my top tips. Take them with a pinch of salt. I know what was best by our criteria, but yours will be different.

For what it's worth, we got a Quinny Buzz pram, and I thoroughly recommend it. On the other hand, it's the only pram we ever had, so it's always possible that all the others are even better. But it certainly has one feature which the others don't (or didn't at the time): it uses hydraulics to unfold itself. This is not a gimmick; it is incredibly useful. You take the pram out of the car, you've got a baby in one arm, a bag to carry — once you have a baby, you always have a bag to carry... tapping the pram so that it unfolds itself instead of having to pull levers or whatever suddenly becomes the most important thing in your life. It also has easily detachable and reattachable wheels, so could be stowed in a very small space: we could get it and enough luggage for a holiday into the boot of an A-Class. Doesn't come cheap, though, but was definitely the single best value expensive thing we bought — or persuaded a relative to buy for us, I should say. We were also lucky enough to be buying them just as Quinny changed their range and so got a huge discount just by picking a discontinued colour — worth keeping an eye out for that sort of opportunity, as I imagine it happens a lot. Also, I would recommend (assuming you drive) going for a pram to which a car-seat can attach. When the baby's asleep, you want to leave them be, so taking the car-seat out of the car and putting it onto a wheel base — or vice versa — is good. The Maxi-Cosi car seat is dead good (it has a built-in sun-shade, which is highly useful, especially since clip-on parasols are universally crap), and attaches to loads of different makes of pram.

It's probably not worth caring about whether the pram will double as a buggy. Apart from anything else, when your toddler's ready for a buggy, it's because they're getting independent and have Views on things like how far they should be from the ground and whether they should be travelling in some conveyance that's for bloody babies. The Quinny's buggy attachment did get used a lot, but not as much as the labelling claims: in theory, Daisy could use it another year or so yet, but try telling her that. Our buggy attachment got used a lot, and we're dead glad we had it, but a simple buggy probably would have been fine. Dedicated buggies are cheaper and lighter and fold up smaller than prams. If you're looking to save some money and don't have an in-law willing to buy the thing for you, this is a good place to economise a bit. When your baby's ready for a buggy, just get one and put the pram in the attic.

The Moses basket pram attachments, though... well, it depends on your situation. And we weren't typical, of course. But Vic was in hospital for months after the birth. The basket attachment for the pram was fantastic: it meant I could bring Daisy into hospital to visit her mum and she could sleep in a proper bed there. If you find yourself in any situation like that (not necessarily ending up in hospital, but you might, for instance, be regularly visiting someone who doesn't have a basket you can use — leaving the baby with grandparents two days a week, say), then it might be worth having. And Moses baskets are insanely overpriced anyway. If you are going to splash out on one, it might be better to spend about the same money on one that attaches to your pram, just for the adaptability. Definitely not worth having one of each, unless one of you ends up so ill she can't carry the pram attachment upstairs to the bedroom. We borrowed one.

Once you do switch to a buggy, the little sleeping-bags designed to attach to buggies are overpriced but fantastic.

An electric steam steriliser is an excellent thing. And cheap. Sterilising things by boiling them on the hob or cold-sterilising using Milton's fluid are both major pains in the arse in comparison to bunging the stuff in the steriliser, turning it on, and waiting a few minutes.

If you're using formula, electric sterilisers can also be used for terminal sterilisation, which can save you loads of time. What you do is you mix the formula using cold water straight from the tap, then put the disk and teat on the bottle but don't tighten it fully, then put the bottle in the steriliser. Not screwing the top on fully tightly stops the bottle exploding. Then, as it cools, the disk gets sucked tight onto the top of the bottle, sealing it. Take the bottle out of the steriliser, tighten the top fully, and put it in the fridge. You now have sterilised milk that'll keep for twenty-four hours. And you can use this method to do a whole day's milk in one batch. Incredibly convenient.

Mothercare sell packs of plain muslin cloths, which are about the most useful thing you can get after nappies. Chuck them over your shoulder when burping, put them on your lap when feeding, tie them round the baby's neck as Mafia-napkin-type bibs, put two or three of them down as an impromptu changing mat, throw them over your kid's head to play peek-a-boo.... We're still using them for everything, including cleaning Daisy's new blackboard now.

And baths. The standard baths are OK unless your baby has hair. And Daisy had loads. Washing a baby's hair while supporting them properly in a bath takes three hands, minimum. We eventually solved this by getting an inflatable bath: designed for travelling, but has the added advantage that the baby cannot hurt their head if they hit the side. A friend of ours has a huge sponge with a baby-shaped indent, which leaves both your hands free and can also be used to take your baby into the shower. And another friend has just got a big plastic bath with a sort of baby-shaped moulded platform built into it. They haven't actually got a baby yet, so I can't report on how well it works, but it looks good to me.

The same friend has also got a cot where the top half detaches, turning it into a bed. We would definitely have got one of these had we known they existed. Saves you buying a bed when the child grows out of cots.

Sudocreme is good (and a friend of my mum's says it's also the best stuff available for rubbing onto horses when they've been bitten by horse-flies, so it has a handy dual purpose), but there's some even better stuff for bad nappy rash called Weleda. We buy ours when we're in Germany, but you can order it off the Web. However, sometimes what nappy rash needs is to be dried out, and none of these moisturising-type lotions are any good at that, obviously. So also get some Metanium, which is. Oh, and Kamillosan's great, too. Sudocreme, incidentally, does not come out of carpets. Not even with a Vax. So you'll want to avoid your toddler covering herself head to foot in Sudocreme and then throwing a tantrum when you try to take it off her, hurling herself to the floor and beating her Sudocreme-covered fists against the carpet. Which still isn't as bad as The Lip-Balm Incident.

Oo, a Vax or some other variety of carpet-washing device is well worth having, by the way. Or wooden floors, but carpet is obviously safer for toddlers to fall over on. Or you could always just get a tarpaulin, though it's not the most decorative accessory.

Should you need bottles, they all seem good, but Nuk bottles have one big advantage over the competition: they make non-spill teats. As soon as Daisy figured out how to hold a bottle for herself, she refused to let anyone else touch it. And, when she'd finished with it, she'd just throw it to one side. It rarely landed the right way up. Non-spill teats were what prevented her from living in a pool of fermenting milk. Again, I've not seen them in shops in the UK, but you can order them from Germany off the Web.

If you're going to travel, don't get a traditional travel cot. They're only marginally more portable than a cot made of stone with an anvil in it tied to a mammoth with no legs. Go for one of the snazzy new tent-like ones, which fold up properly small and are really light.

Don't believe the stuff in nappy adverts about some makes being better fits than others. What actually happens is that, as your baby grows, she changes shape, and will require different fits. We found that Tesco nappies would be the best fit on Daisy and then, suddenly, we'd get three disgusting leaks in a day and have to switch to Pampers. When you have a baby, you will receive loads of vouchers for free stuff, including nappies. Keep them all. Don't throw out the Huggies vouchers just because Huggies don't fit. In a couple of months, Huggies might be the best fit. When it looks like the nappies aren't fitting as well as they did just the other day, switch brands.

Asda make the best wipes, in our opinion: not too wet and not too dry and they come in an unscented version. Scented wipes, of any brand, smell Bad. Johnson's are so wet you need to dry your baby afterwards. Oh, and baby wipes can be used to clean anything. Anything. There simply is nothing they won't clean. Except Sudocreme out of carpets, obviously.

When you've got a new baby on the way, don't buy any clothes in blue or pink. This is because everyone you know and a whole bunch of people you didn't even think you did know will buy you baby clothes, and everything they buy will be blue or pink, depending on which flavour of baby you've had. If you want a bit of variety in your child's wardrobe, make sure the stuff you buy is some other colour. In fact, when buying baby clothes, don't even buy much new-born stuff, as, again, that's what everyone else will buy for you. Seriously, people are so generous and babies grow so fast that you'll end up with outfits that only get worn once, if at all. So buy some stuff for three months and up. Or ask people to get you stuff for older babies. Otherwise, your baby grows a bit and suddenly goes from having a wardrobe that makes Whitney Houston's look a bit stingy to one pair of shorts, two string vests, and a sock.

If you don't have a spare CD player for the nursery, get a cheap one from a supermarket. Music is amazing stuff. Former Lover by Saint Etienne was a guaranteed way to get Daisy to settle and to sleep for over a year. (Not to sleep for over a year. You know what I mean.) She was also a big Madeleine Peyroux fan. Don't know what she's into these days.

Places like Mothercare have their set prices (which are often quite good), but, if your town's anything like ours, it contains an independent baby-stuff emporium. And, if it's anything like ours — the quite fantastic McCullough's of Bangor — they're open to a bit of bartering and they like to reward good customers to keep them out of Mothercare. If you can afford to buy a lot of your baby stuff in one go, go to one of these places and see if you can get some money off.

This sounds like a huge list, but, really, it's not. Magazines and mummy-fascists will tell you you need hundreds and hundreds of things just to get by. You really don't. Being a parent is not as expensive as some would have you believe. You're going to need a pram and a car-seat and a bath and, pretty soon, a cot. They're big one-off expenses, but, once they're out of the way, it settles down to nappies and wipes, nappies and wipes, more nappies, more wipes, and then jars of baby-food. It's all pretty cheap. And think of all the money you'll save by never going out ever again.

Above all, don't fall into the trap of believing you need a truck-full of gear just to leave the house. You don't. You need a little bag with a changing mat, some nappies, some wipes, and a spare baby-grow in it, plus a sterile bottle if you're using bottles and a carton or two of ready-mixed formula if you're using formula. And scissors to open the carton. Keep such a bag ready at all times, and it'll only take you a couple more minutes to go out than it would without a child.

Oh, one last thing: caffeine. Vital.


Update:

Some helpful additions are appearing in the comments to this post, including something from Cleanthes that I can't believe I forgot to mention: Spoons! The effect of a teaspoon on a baby — preferably a metal one — is a thing of wonder. They just absolutely love the things to bits. Just handing the kid a spoon does an unbelievable job of calming them down and keeping them entranced for a good long time. Best baby-toy ever.

The only downside is that you get home to discover you have inadvertently stolen from cafes.


And another update:

Can't believe I forgot to mention this. It's very important. Poppers versus buttons.

You will see a lot of baby clothes that look dead nice but are in fact hell. The reason they are hell is that they have buttons instead of poppers. A lot of little girls' clothes go even further and have cutesy flower-shaped or heart-shaped buttons. No matter how nice the garment may seem, avoid these like the plague. When the time comes to either put them on or take them off, especially in a hurry, even more especially when your baby gets a bit older and starts struggling, you will rue the day you bought them. Poppers can be undone quickly with one hand. As a general rule, once you're a parent, you always want the fewest-hands-using option in everything you do.

On a similar note, bibs with nice laces for tying behind your baby's neck are pure stupid. Bibs should fasten with a popper, ideally at the side of the head, not behind it. Even better, some bibs don't fasten at all and simply have an elasticated hole to pop over your baby's head. If you see them, get them: they're ace.

If you're about to become a parent, you'll be amazed at the number of things that you could have sworn were two-handed jobs — or even two-person jobs — which you can in fact manage perfectly well with one hand while using your other arm to fight a struggling toddler.

Breasts and idiots.

Here's a good post from my friend Gary about the way that the promotion of breastfeeding has turned into a rather distasteful moral crusade in which those who do not comply are given a good solid kicking. Much like every other aspect of modern life, then. Gary gives this example of, amazingly, one of the more reasonable and less OTT objections, by Morgan Gallagher:

But when I see a media image of a baby bottle...

...I see death.

I see all the the real maggots crawling in all the real bottles.

I see the tiny white bundles being put in the shallow shallow graves.

I see corporate greed and profiteering, being put before baby’s lives.

Of this, Gary, says:

It’s a bit dramatic for my taste, but she does have a point.

And I find this puzzling, because, as far as I can see, it's very much the sort of crap Gary is quite rightly complaining about. Thing is, Morgan also says this:

Fighting for informed, equal choices in infant feeding.

....

Inevitably, many comment that it's an attack on mothers who formula feed, and use bottles to do so. And every time this is raised the hoary old spectre of The Women Who Can't Breastfeed is also thrown into the mix.

....

The biggest misunderstanding about all this, is that when we object to images of bottle feeding, we are objecting to women's choices to formula feed. Nothing could be further from the truth.

OK, so imagine you're a woman with a new baby and you're discovering that, for whatever reason, you can't breastfeed. It happens. My own daughter, Daisy, just refused to do it (and is absolutely fine, by the way). Now imagine you come across Morgan Gallagher's description of bottle-feeding:

when I see a media image of a baby bottle...

...I see death.

I see all the the real maggots crawling in all the real bottles.

I see the tiny white bundles being put in the shallow shallow graves.

You further see that your own situation is dismissed as a "hoary old spectre" with what certainly looks like a clear implication that Ms Gallagher doesn't really believe you. I know exactly what you'd be thinking: "Now, there's a woman who'll fight for informed, equal choices in infant feeding, has absolutely no objection to my using formula, and is in no way attacking me."

And this from a post the entire point of which is that the implications of the words and images we put out there are important. Absolutely clueless.

Obviously, having had a child, Vic & I have been exposed to a fair amount of this crap ourselves. What annoys me about all the people who insist that everything should be done naturally — no formula, no caesarians, no painkillers — is not so much that they're pushy intolerant unsympathetic self-important overbearing bastards (if only that could be avoided merely by not having kids) but that they're so profoundly and unimaginatively pig-ignorant.

Take formula. By concentrating exclusively on whether formula is better or worse than breast milk, they miss rather a huge bloody great point. In many cases, the alternative to formula isn't breast milk; it's nothing. For every other species on Earth, the baby either suckles or dies. Thanks to technology, we humans do not have that problem. It's all very well discovering that there's a slightly increased risk of SIDS among formula-fed babies compared to breast-fed, but you know what? Without even needing to do the research, I can exclusively reveal that, in the group of babies who can't or won't breastfeed, there is a massively decreased incidence of cot death among those who are fed with formula compared to those who are given fuck all.

And then there's one of my pet hates: people who reckon they believe in evolution but haven't taken in any of the implications of Darwinism. We've been saving babies who won't breastfeed for millenia now, feeding them on goat's milk or cow's milk or formula or whatever. Any baby that lacks the genetic urge to breastfeed gets to pass that lack of inheritance on, instead of dying like it's supposed to. If a few of your ancestors did this — and they might well have — chances are your kid just might not breastfeed. This is not something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, using technology to overcome certain death should be something to be proud of.

And then there's the fact that breastfeeding in primates is learned behaviour, not instinctive, so every single person, including midwives, who tells you that babies and mothers just "naturally" know how to do it actually has no idea what they're talking about. It's not true of chimps, and it's not true of us.

Back to Gary:

Most women who don’t breastfeed are ill-informed, the argument goes. Which may be true, but most is not the same as all. Not all women who choose bottle feeding are doing it because they’re uninformed ...

In this country, I'd go further and say that not a single one is. You don't give birth in the UK without going somewhere near the maternity ward of a hospital, every wall of which is plastered with posters telling you that breast is best in fifteen languages. Every single member of staff in that maternity ward will go out of their way to tell you the same thing. And there is no such thing in the UK as a carton of formula that doesn't have a label on its side telling you that it's not as good as breast-milk. This is like the anti-smoking lobby: "Some people are still smoking! They must not know that it's bad for them! It's the only explanation! Make the text bigger!"

Now, I'm not an idiot. I am aware that, as well as the mothers whose babies won't breastfeed, the adoptive mothers, the gay adoptive parents, and the widowers with small babies but no breasts, there are people who could breastfeed but don't for often entirely stupid reasons. I happen to think they've made the wrong decision. But there is simply no way that they've made that wrong decision because they genuinely hadn't heard the news that breastfeeding is better than formula. The message is ubiquitous.

There are even adverts now aimed at the stupid people who don't care what's good for their baby but might respond to some other line of reasoning. "Breastfeed and you'll get your figure back more quickly so that young men will fancy you!" Seriously.

Should formula companies be ashamed of themselves for the way they’ve marketed their products? Sure.

Well, since what's prompted Gary's post is affluent Western women slagging off other affluent Western women, no, I don't think so. What those firms' marketing may be like in the Third World is immaterial here. (As an aside, I will say that the outrage against that tends to be based on the assumption that poor foreigners don't have free will or intelligence.) In the UK, there simply isn't a problem with their marketing. And neither are people as susceptible to advertising as some would have you believe. In the hospital, we were provided with free SMA for Daisy when we needed it. And I believe I may have seen a handful of SMA adverts in my time, but certainly not enough to remember. Daisy, once out of the hospital, was brought up on Aptamil, a product for which I have never seen an advert in my entire life. SMA's marketing appears not to be working too well on me. Course, I could conclude from that — as so many seem to — that this is because I'm some sort of superhuman and mere mortal plebs don't have my amazing powers of marketing-resistance. But I don't.

And, let's remember, this is a life-saving product they're making. Why the hell shouldn't they advertise it? I'll advertise it for them, right here and now.

My daughter wouldn't breastfeed. She's alive and healthy today thanks to Aptamil powdered infant milk formula stuff.

Should more effort be devoted to encouraging mums to breastfeed? Absolutely.

Again, I don't think so. As mentioned above, it's hard to see how much more effort could go into this. And, while our experience of midwives was in most respects very good, on this one issue they fall down: when it comes to breastfeeding, they are overbearingly pushy — the importance of their moral crusade overrides any thoughts of common decency. Seriously, just try having a baby in a British maternity ward and telling them you're not going to breastfeed. You'd get less hassle if you just stuck used syringes in the kid three times a day.

Furthermore, in case you're wondering who'd be doing all this encouraging, what Gary's talking about there is "the issue of whether governments should promote breastfeeding". And I don't think anyone will be particularly suprised to hear that no, I don't think they should, and they can stop promoting any other kind of feeding while they're at it. This is not what governments are for.

Should mums who can’t or won’t breastfeed be made to feel like Hitler? I’d like to think not.

Well, OK, I agree with that. What an anticlimax.


Update:

For some reason, I omitted to mention our own situation. As I said, Daisy wouldn't breastfeed. But this was only relevant for the first week of her life. After that, as long-time readers of this blog may remember, Vic was diagnosed with multiple pulmonory embolisms and put on Warfarin in order to keep her alive. Warfarin not only thins your blood but also turns your breast-milk into poison. Once you're on it, you must on no account attempt to breastfeed your baby. In this situation, formula saves the baby's life and also, by giving her the option of not breastfeeding her baby and therefore making it possible for her to take life-saving drugs, the mother's.

Blood clots are apparently quite common after births, especially caesarians, so there are quite a few new mums out there on Warfarin. I imagine there are also other conditions which necessitate other drugs which make breastfeeding impossible. I struggle to see the advantage in telling all these parents, who surely have enough on their plates as it is what with nearly dying and all, that bottles equals maggots equals shallow graves equals death.


Update to the update:

Vic has reminded me of something I'd clean forgotten: there was disagreement between doctors over this. The doctor officially responsible for her care at the time believed that Warfarin made breast-milk poisonous and said on no account should she breastfeed. The obstetricians and the haemotologist — i.e., the ones who knew what they were talking about — said this was nonsense and that Vic could breastfeed all she liked.

All of which became moot shortly afterwards, when Vic was given a CT scan. When they give you a CT scan, they inject dye into your blood. The dye gets into your breast-milk and is poison. And then, of course, Vic got put into a medical ward so full of highly infectious diseases that you can't possibly take a newborn into it.

That's the thing about that period of our lives: just considering one aspect of it inevitably leads to more and more memories of disaster. Tsk.

Hypocrisy.

This story by one Nicki Defago is just brimming with smugness, stupidity, arrogance, and self-absorption, but I think I need only quote it twice:

In the past I have snarled at self-important mothers and their oversized buggies on the Tube.

I ... am thinking of beginning a campaign to make all cafes, restaurants and cinemas dog-friendly.

There.

Organised crime.

In the comments to my post about Google Streetview, Tim Almond points out how stupid the residents of Broughton are:

Rather than images of their houses appearing on Street View (where the odds of a burglar stumbling across them was close to zero), they've instead had their village plastered across the pages of various newspapers about how they're all very affluent and scared of getting their rich houses burgled.

Well done, idiots.

In case you have no idea what we're talking about, here it is:

Village mob thwarts Google Street View car

A spate of burglaries in a Buckinghamshire village had already put residents on the alert for any suspicious vehicles. So when the Google Street View car trundled towards Broughton with a 360-degree camera on its roof, villagers sprang into action.

What? Just read that crap again and see what the journalist's trying to imply here. Because of burglaries, the residents were looking out for suspicious vehicles — perhaps vans with "SWAG" written on the side. And then they spotted a car with a huge bloody great camera mounted on a tripod on top of it and "Google" written on the side — just like a burglar would drive!

Forming a human chain to stop it, they harangued the driver about the “invasion of privacy”, adding that the images that Google planned to put online could be used by burglars.

Then, for good measure, to make absolutely sure they got no more unwanted attention from outsiders, they talked to the national press about it.

As police made their way to the stand-off, the Google car yielded to the villagers. For now, Broughton remains off the internet search engine’s mapping service.

It was Paul Jacobs who provided the first line of resistance. “I was upstairs when I spotted the camera car driving down the lane,” he said. “My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.”

He then ran round the village knocking on doors to rouse fellow residents.

Notice the missing bit there, at the start of that last paragraph? The detail that has to be there for it to follow on sensibly from the previous sentence? "Because the driver ignored him for some reason..."

While the police were called, the villagers stood in the road, not allowing the car to pass. The driver eventually did a U-turn and left.

I like that "eventually". I've seen a few reports of this incident, and reckon that, much as the media would like to portray it as some sort of grand stand-off, perhaps with Google's driver aggressively revving his engine and trying to force his way through the crowd, he probably turned round after about twenty seconds. I just doubt, somehow, that his Googlebosses ordered him "Get Broughton! We've got to get Broughton. That village is key to our plans! Key!" I suspect that photos of whatever the next village down the road is were just fine.

Mr Jacobs said: “This is an affluent area.

Because he's stupid.

We’ve already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks.

What? Without being on Google Streetview? How on Earth could that even be possible?

I love the way that Mr Jacobs clearly thinks that telling the world about burglaries that were demonstrably not in any way caused by Google in some way backs up his case.

If our houses are plastered all over Google it’s an invitation for more criminals to strike.

Because that's what burglars do. Your typical burglar isn't sure where to find actual houses and has no idea where wealthy people live, often mistakenly breaking into hovels full of shit and making off with hauls consisting of little more than toenails and cheese, so will travel thousands of miles if he sees evidence of that Holy Grail, a house with some decent stuff in it. Burglars are very rarely local.

I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.”

And I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the police, who are so reluctant these days to deal with minor crimes such as gunmen killing innocent people in cold blood, for turning up to the scene of this particular atrocity so promptly.

Tim has now been proven even more spectacularly right than he already was:

But not only has the village now become the focus of national attention, it has raised the ire of Internet users, who are now campaigning for Street View enthusiasts from across the UK to descend on the village to snap their own perfectly legal photographs.

....

They have already begun posting pictures of the village online and used the photographs to post tongue-in-cheek 'masterplans' on how to plot robberies, by climbing on red phoneboxes and swinging off tree branches.

Ah, you've got to love the Web.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say before I went on a bit was this. Burglars, broadly, come in two varieties: the everyday, petty-crime, semi-inept ones the police know all about, and the ones who plan meticulously and commit perfect crimes and very rarely get caught. And I've been trying to work out what use Streetview might be to either.

Firstly, you've got the amateurish ones. These are your common-or-garden local crims who get caught when the webcam on top of the PC they're nicking automatically uploads their photos to the Web while they're at it. They don't generally stake out their targets all that thoroughly. They're opportunists, as a rule.

And then there are the Danny Ocean types. Just imagine one of these highly organised gangs. They're planning a big burglary. Every detail has to be just right. The boss tells one of his men to go photograph the target property thoroughly — every angle, every detail. The minion comes back a couple of hours later, saying, "Hey, look, I didn't need to go out with the camera in the end — got these photos off of Google. And they're only eight months old!" Do you think this minion would still be a member of the gang the next morning?

A nice bit of ambiguity.

That being said, I have to go and buy a hat and then take it off to the BBC for this bit of headline genius:

PM challenges Pakistan on terror

There are so many ways to sum up that story, and some genius of a sub-editor has chosen probably the only one that could be misinterpreted as Gordon Brown saying to Pakistan, "Call those terrorists? Ha! You couldn't blow up an orange! Once again, Britain leads the world. You want carnage of innocents, you come to us."

Which, under the circumstances —

"Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."

— would be rather apt.

Between the lines.

The BBC have reported this exciting story — or, at least, it would be exciting if the BBC's reporters weren't so bloody boring. Honestly, what's wrong with journalists these days? They seem to think it's their job to believe people's versions of events or something.

Look, journalist people, you're supposed to report The Truth. Not "facts" — whatever they are. The Truth.

Here's the BBC's version, in all it's gloriously workmanlike nonentitiness:

Runaway scooter carries off woman

An 87-year-old Cornish woman was rescued by police five miles from home when her mobility scooter sped off out of control.

Eileen Bishop, from Perranporth, and her husband Anthony were on their way to church when, he said, she "disappeared off the radar".

Officers later found her heading along the A3075 towards Newquay.

A police community support officer (PCSO) rode the scooter back and said it appeared to be working correctly.

'Full tilt'

Mr Bishop said the incident began when he and his wife set off for St Michael's church.

He said the scooter, which "hadn't been going that well", was set to three-quarters speed.

"Suddenly she passed me at full tilt," Mr Bishop said.

"I shouted after her but she is a bit deaf. I couldn't chase her as I've had a triple heart bypass.

"She just disappeared off the radar."

Mr Bishop said he and a neighbour searched for his wife and then went to the police station to report her missing.

"I was just about in tears," he said.

Officers found Mrs Bishop after a motorist reported a mobility scooter "swerving" across the road near Pendown Cross, five miles away.

Mrs Bishop said she was not sure how she got separated from her husband.

"I just lost him. I was half asleep to tell you the truth," she explained.

It took PCSO Michael Ginnelly an hour to drive the scooter back to Perranporth.

"I think Mrs Bishop just gripped the controls and went too fast and held on for dear life," he told BBC News.

Now, what a proper reporter would do with this is to spot the vital keyword: "Cornish". They're all crazy down there, you know. In a nice way. Understand that, and The Truth just appears, like a snake in a loo:

Runaway pensioner makes off on scooter

An 87-year-old Cornish woman was captured by police five miles from home after she sped off on her mobility scooter like a gin-crazed polecat.

Eileen Bishop, from Perranporth, and her husband Anthony were on their way to church when, he said, she "disappeared off the radar". Mr Bishop had purchased the small portable radar "after last time."

Officers later found her heading along the A3075 towards the Mecca Bingo in Newquay.

A fake policeman (PCSO) rode the scooter back and said it appeared to be working correctly, as if he were some kind of scooter expert.

'Full tilt'

Mr Bishop said the incident began when he and his wife set off for St Michael's church.

He said the scooter, which "frankly, I should never have bought her", was set to three-quarters speed "after last time."

"Suddenly she passed me at full tilt," Mr Bishop said. "She must have figured out how to turn the speed-limiter off."

"I shouted after her but she was in one of her moods and pretended to be deaf. I couldn't chase her as I've had a triple heart bypass, after last time.

"She just disappeared off the radar."

Mr Bishop said he and a neighbour hunted his wife with dogs and then went to the police station to report her escaped.

"I was just about in tears," he said. "And so were the police."

Officers found Mrs Bishop after a motorist reported a mobility scooter "swerving exuberantly" across the road near Pendown Cross, five miles away.

Mrs Bishop fooled no-one when she said she was not sure how she got separated from her husband.

"I just lost him. I was half asleep to tell you the truth," she claimed, unconvincingly.

It took PCSO Michael Ginnelly an hour to drive the scooter back to Perranporth, as Mrs Bishop had turned its limiter back on again.

"I think Mrs Bishop is just bored of church," he told BBC News.

There.

Can I work for The Sun now?

A message for Lexmark.

Dear Lexmark people,

Nice printer. Really. It, you know, prints. And scans. Great. But I would just like to mention this one little issue with your software — which, apparently, the printer can't do without.

400MB? Four hundred meg? Four! Hundred! Meg! Are you completely deranged? I've got operating systems smaller than that. Just how bloody egotistical must your programmers be to assume that I'm willing to give up that much of my hard drive just so's I can print the occasional document? You utter, utter bastards.

Love & kisses,

Squander Two

In which I continue to resist the Iphone.

I would just like to say that I have got one of these Nokia N810 Internet Tablets. And it is a superb piece of kit. One of my colleagues immediately spotted the potential for a good portmanteau word: "Wablet". And so that's what I've been calling it.

I also got a collapsible Bluetooth keyboard to go with it. It is also excellent.

While the whole world heads in the direction of convergence — putting everything into the same device — Nokia, bless 'em, have spotted that there is a market for divergence. So the Wablet isn't a phone, but can seamlessly use your phone's connection when it needs it. In fact, the Wablet connects to the Net through your phone with even less effort than it takes to connect a Nokia phone to the Net directly. Go figure. Anyway, the idea is that now, instead of a huge bloody great clunky phone like what I used to have, I have a lovely sleek little phone (which is also impressivley superb, by the way) and the Wablet. This means that I have choice: I can take the Wablet when I want the computing power, or I can just take the phone by itself when I don't need all that extra stuff and am short of pockets. Having spent a few years with big phones, I'm really appreciating this.

I can't be bothered writing a full review — it would be a waste of time anyway, as there are loads to be found on the Web, and they're all pretty-much right. But I'll just say a couple of things about it.

Firstly, if you're thinking of getting a netbook because you want a really portable computer, then, if you're happy using a version of Linux instead of Windows, this thing is far far smaller and more portable than any netbook. I can put it in one pocket and the keyboard in another.

Secondly, if you have no patience for geeky tinkering, it might be an idea not to get one. If all you want to do is browse the Web and check email and listen to music and look at photos, then it works absolutely perfectly out of the box (well, after you update the firmware, anyway, which really was very easy). If you want to install other apps, well.... They all supposedly install very easily with just a couple of clicks. Some of them, however, do silly Linuxy things like telling you that they need a different library and expecting you to know what the hell to do about it.

On the other hand, because its browser is so good, any app that can run from a browser can run on the N810.

Apparently, it's possible to install the full version of Debian Linux on it and then you can run any app Linux will run, including Openoffice — which would give you a full word-processor in an incredibly small package. I might just have to give that a try.

Technical details aside, just for sheer fun, this is one of the best gadgets ever. I tried an Iphone once, and was surprised to discover, being an Apple fan, that I didn't like it. Just didn't get on with the interface for some reason. Took to the N810 like a duck to water. Some of the third-party apps for it may be a bit buggy, but the operating system itself is just lovely.

Misdirection.

One of the many things that I can't stand about modern politics is the attitude of civil rights and privacy campaigners. While they are right on many issues, they always manage to kick up the biggest stink and get the most publicity when they are completely wrong, which makes them look like weirdo lunatics, which in turn means that no-one listens to them when they're right. This is one of the many reason why we're getting that bloody ID database in the UK.

They're at it again with Google Streetview:

Privacy campaigners are to launch a legal challenge against Google's new Street View service which shows 360-degree photographs of public roads.

... campaigners claim it violates the right to privacy and could be used to plan crimes.

Yes, obviously it could be used to plan crimes. So can cars. And cameras. And telephones. And maps. And pencils. And a decent education. Let's ban them all.

As for the right to privacy, I have to say this is news to me. I always thought that I had a right to privacy when I was in, you know, private, but not so much when in public. Try masturbating in the street outside your local primary school and see whether the police will respect your right to privacy.

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said: "These images are being captured without people's permission for commercial use, and we believe that it is not legally acceptable.

"They are also putting into place a system for updating these images in the future, and for storing the images digitally where they could be misused."

Yes, the images are being captured without people's permission. But no permission is needed, as they are photos of public places. If the outside of your house was private, you wouldn't need planning permission to have it cladded in aluminium and covered in red floodlights. (I'm still fighting my council over that one.)

I wonder if Simon Davies has ever taken a photo of a building, such as the Eiffel Tower, for instance. I wonder if he's ever taken a photo, perhaps while on holiday, in which passers-by appear. I wonder if he asked permission first.

Simon Davies, Privacy International, you are idiots, and you are helping to make the world a worse place. Sod off.

Sal Brinton, Liberal Democrat and would-be MP, is also an idiot:

She said: “I was astonished when I saw the detail of the photographs held in Google's database.

“The detail is very clear.

Yes, it is. It's almost exactly as clear as a photograph. What, exactly, was Ms Brinton expecting to find when she first logged on? Charcoal sketches?

“The example that was drawn to my attention was that of one of our candidates who 'googled' her home address to find a picture of her car sat outside her home.”

Oh. My. God. I take it all back. That is shameful. I am shocked, shocked, I say....

And in a recession, too.

It is utterly irresponsible of Google to have released Streetview. It is entirely possible that no-one with a computer will ever do any actual work ever again.

Apart from the people working on the Streetview team, of course.