BARDINESS

EHIC - the European Health Insurance Card

I arrived in Italy with tooth-ache.

The next morning I figured that I needed some attention by a doctor or dentist, so I asked my tour guide to book me an appointment, and  she got one with a dentist for 4.30pm the same day. (She was an ex-pat local resident).

At lunch time whilst walking around Sorrento I figured that it was too long to wait, and took a chance at a pharmacy and bought a five day course of Erythromycin - that's all I wanted - a short antibiotic. I'm allergic to penicillin so I was particular with my request.

And the rich shall inherit the Earth......

An abandoned missile silo in Kansas is being decked out to be a Doomsday Shelter in the event of Apocalypse.

Larry Hall, an enterprising chap, bought the silo for $300,000 and is selling the concept of luxury underground condos to the paranoid who fear the imminent end of the world and want to be prepared.

Commonly known as Doomsday Preppers they are a growing movement of people (mainly Americans), who are stocking up (preparing) to face a world where life as we know it will cease to exist.

This is all very well, but with a fee of $2m per condo, it means that the only people left on the planet will be a bunch of wealthy idiots. The future looks grim indeed.

Pasties and Petrol - The Famous Five

I was beginning to miss the last UK Labour Government, not because I liked them, but because they could always be counted on to provide great blog fodder.

I think 25% of my posts since I began this blog three years ago were fuelled by the Tony Blair's, Gordon Brown's and John Prescott's of this world. Not only by the individuals but by the sheer stupidity of their policies.

But in the last few days I find that the new Tory-Lib-Dem coalition government are equally as idiotic.

Indeed, if there is a secret biological clone guaranteed to ensure that all politicians either look and behave alike, this last week has reinforced the conspiracy theory.

If you put the DNA of Tony Blair, David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and David Milliband in the same petri dish, mix them all up, blast them with an agent to agitate the mix, and place it under a microscope, it will be an undisputed fact that the end result will produce carbon copies of the original ingredients.

I suppose that is what cloning is all about.

The Great North Korean Wind-Up (part 2)

Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of North Korea.

The son of the late lamented and glorious previous supreme leader Kim Jong-il.

He looks like a startled Beatrix Potter rabbit fresh out of short trousers and caught in the headlamps of a juggernaught.

Unfortunately he also has a podgy finger on a missile destined to be launched very soon.

The neighbours are nervous. Especially the immediate ones.

South Korea's rich businessmen are nervous because wherever they are in the world, they must be ready to return and do their bit.

They're nervous because they may have to drop their golf clubs, pay up the caddy, settle their bills at the five star hotels in Manila, cancel their contracts with top class escort agencies and go and fight for the mother country.

Though how an army of over-weight, over-fed, over-indulged, beer-bellied sedentary sloth-induced, sexually deviant (allegedly) middle-aged executives are likely to make a difference against a precision military machine beggars belief.

But there's no need to worry. The Yanks are around, and so are the Chinese, and neither one will allow little Kim (cheeky Kim judging by the picture) to do anything more than make a flap.

They'll let him play with his rockets, huff and puff, and everything will return to normal.

The Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo executives can relax, return to the fairways and continue to play with their little balls.