Idiots!

Idiots!

She is sitting on the couch, a cigarette in one hand and an overflowing ashtray perched on one knee. Her stomach is huge. And in the next room we see her mother, smoking a little smack and telling reporters that she is very proud. No dear, that`s the wrong word. You`re not proud. You`re a stupid waste of the world`s resources.

And she`s not alone. In fact, I am becoming increasingly concerned with the sheer number of properly idiotic people who call Britain home.

Last year, towards the end of an all-weekend open air gig, I went to see the portable lavatories in the VIP enclosure. You know the sort. Blue water, a dead flower and lots of powder on all the shelving. Anyway, they were immaculate.
This was not the case with the toilets provided outside the VIP enclosure. They were in a total state. Urine on the floor, excrement on the on the walls, entire toilet rolls unravelled and stuffed down the pan. Now come on. How hard is it to use a lavatory? And how stupid do you have to be to get it wrong?

You see this sort of thing at motorway service stations as well. I had cause to visit one only the other day and it was extra-ordinary. Even the Polish truck drivers in there were standing, hands on hips, wondering how anyone had managed to crap on the ceiling. Not even cows do that!
These were people who had grown up under the hammer of communism. They`d had to queue for bread, knowing just a few hundred miles away in the west, people were buying loaves of bread simply to feed the birds. I wonder how they would have felt if they had known we could not go for a pi$$ without getting it in someones eye.
And here`s the thing. All these people - mothers of pregnant eleven-year old, van drivers who are confused by plumbing - are all eligible to do jury service.

I spoke yesterday to a friend who sat through the trial of a fellow who had come in from Lagos with a suitcase full of cocaine. He had told the police he had no idea what was in the bag, only that he had been asked to deliver it to a house in central London - a house that turned out to be empty when it was raided.
Plainly the man was guilty. Anyone with half a brain could see that. But unfortunately, half the jury didn`t have half a brain. Most, apparently, didn`t have a brain at all. Two couldn`t read the card saying they understood what was going on, one woman said that no matter what, she couldn`t find a fellow black person guilty of anything, and the other two said they weren`t that bothered which way the vote went, so long as they could go home. To pi$$ all over the bathroom floor, probably.
As a result, the drug smuggler walked free.
Now, as I understand it, there is certain conditions that have to be met before you can do jury service. One of them is you must have a sound mind. This was included in the rules to prevent window lickers from turning up in jock straps and army boots and making dolphin noises through-out the proceedings.
You can`t have someone decide your fate if he`s a Cylon from Battlestar Gallacticia. Fine. Good. But you can have your fate decided by someone who`s proud of her chain-smoking, pregnant, Eleven-year old daughter?
Or someone who is confused about lavatory paper?

I spoke to another guy, last week who said he didn`t like fish. What, all fish?  Fish in Batter? Fish with fries? Prawns, cod, sea bass, trout, smoked salmon? What he means is, I have never tried fish. Because my parents were too stupid to buy it.

And get this. On a local radio station the other day, a contestant was asked what happens to water at 32 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. After much umming and aahing, she said confidently, "It melts."
Now here is a woman who`s allowed to do jury service, to have a say in who runs the country, and she thinks water melts when it gets a little nippy.

We have all encountered gormless-ness on an industrial scale, people who fill up with fuel while smoking, people who drop litter, people who breath through their mouths and drag their knuckles on the ground. People who could out-Forrest, Forrest Gump. And here`s what I have been thinking. Are they as intelligent as the average dog?
You can teach a dog where and how to go to the lavatory and not to play with fire while refueling a car. What`s more I`ve never met a dog that doesn`t like fish.
So would you let a dog drive a car?
Of cause you wouldn`t. While they are bright enough to sniff out foxes, sit still for long periods of time and not smoke while pregnant, you would not ask a spaniel to pop into town for your groceries.
So why do we let stupid people have driving licences?
Seriously, if you can`t be trusted to get your faeces into a bowl that`s at least fifty times bigger than your anus, then why should you be allowed to try and steer a six-foot-wide car at 60 or 70mph, just inches away from other people?

I want you to think about this. The latest figures suggest that 18 per cent of fatalities on the roads in recent years were caused by drink driving, And that 34 per cent were caused as a result of excessive speed. This means that 58 per cent were caused by people who were stone-cold sober and traveling well within both of their limits and those of the car.

The only conclusion we can draw from this is that the drivers in question were as stupid as a field full of bees, as daft as a brush. Perhaps they couldn`t remember in the heat of the moment which pedal did what, or which way the wheel should be turned, or even that killing people is wrong. I think, then, if stupid people were removed from the road it would cut the number of accidents dramatically. Furthermore, because they would have to take their working class rust buckets with them, there will be fewer fumes, and what`s more, we will cut congestion at a stroke as well.
How much congestion will be determined by how many stupid people are identified. I favor an IQ test, which must be  passed before anyone`s allowed a learner`s permit. But where do we set the limit? Technically, anyone with a an IQ less than Fifty is an idiot, but I think 100 sounds like a nice round number.

I reckon this would probably get somewhere between 90 and 95 per cent of all cars off the road. In some ways, that`s rather depressing. In others, it`s not depressing at all!