They say that in life (whoever ‘they’ are?) you can, no matter your age, never stop learning and that there are new things to learn every day.

This is certainly the case with me, as I have learnt several things in the last week that were previously unknown to me. For starters, I have learnt that a puppy has no concept of the old adage that ‘you never shit on your own doorstep’. 

Well mine hasn’t anyway, laying a walnut whip on my internal doormat with tedious regularity. This comes complete with a look of utter bewilderment when he isn’t lavishly rewarded with a similar piece of chicken breast that is offered to him amid wild celebrations when he manages to take a wee outside.

When he takes a number two on the doorstep, he looks at me as if to say “Look at that, come on, surely it’s worth more than pee that just washes down the gaps in the decking?”

When I walk away as instructed in the manuals and he remains reward-less, his head tilts to one side saying “What more do you want for Christ’s sake?”

The next thing I learnt last week was that was that social media is a dream ticket for pathological liars and fantasists.

I demonstrated this by playing a little game on Facebook on Friday night, where for a bit of fun, I pretended to be somewhere I wasn’t. This came about on a birthday night out with my old pals in London.

Whilst we were in a pub called The Lamb and Flag, I did this thing where you can ‘check in’. This allows your friends who are reading your status to know what you are doing; it even allows you to say who you are with and what you are drinking (in this case for some inexplicable reason, Rum).

Anyway, I soon realised that you can ‘check in’ from anywhere you like, so I left it a few hours and checked in from Amsterdam with a brief message underneath saying, “How the fuck did we get here?”

Not in Amsterdam: Friday Facebook Update

A few people were temporarily fooled, anticipating a fantastic tale of a night that got out of control like in the film ‘The Hangover’ and I must admit, I felt a bid bad telling them that this hadn’t actually happened and I could see how tempting it would be to carry on the whole charade to avoid disappointing people.

Still, we all know some legendary bullshitters carrying grandiose job titles along with a ludicrous list of achievements and places they have visited, so this tool on Facebook must be like a dream come true as it offers the user the ability to ‘check in’ from important institutions in the worlds biggest cities and travel the globe as a tourist or an international businessman.

I bet some people actually do this sort of thing.

Todd Baxter is at -London Stock Exchange, 125 Broad St -“working late again :-(”

Tarquin Baker is chilling at -Marina bay Sands Hotel, Singapore

The list of opportunities are endless. I have tried to think up every posh place or big sporting arena in the world and they are all available to be tagged as a place you have been to or are currently at and there is absolutely nothing to prove otherwise.

Anyway…that was just the fun part of learning something new every day (if dog turds are fun?). The more sinister thing I have learnt is that politicians don’t seem to learn something everyday; in fact, it appears that they don’t learn anything ever, especially when it comes to bombing the Middle East without any strategy.

Whether you loathe him or love him, Jeremy Corbyn has some legitimate questions to ask, but it appears no-one is interested, with his own party ganging up on him and pushing things along for a cross-party agreement to blow the hell out of some hills and ancient towns for months on end in between mournfully strolling around the remnants of the latest terrorist attack that has ruined innocent families forever.

It is almost as if they enjoy the chance to be statesmanlike at memorial services, promising to keep the citizens of this great nation safe with all the sincerity of Rolf Harris just wanting to enjoy drawing cartoons with kids…nothing more. We learn something every day, yet the people who allegedly protect us from baddies portrayed in the tabloids, learn nothing from the disasters in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Anyone who challenges them gets suicided, with a full inquiry promised by 2120 and any report into the legitimacy of war is delayed until the accused is old enough to claim insanity. As a result, there is nothing to stop the madness of it all and it is us proletarians who take all the risks when we are out at the theatre, Christmas shopping or travelling on city transport.

If ISIS, IS, ISIL or whatever it is called, happened to be a nation where every baddie lived, I’d happily say go ahead and annihilate the place and we can all live happily ever after and no longer have anyone to fear. Unfortunately they are everywhere, created by the Western world and their disastrous foreign policies and in any case, we haven’t even began to understand how they operate and what their cause is.

Hang on now though, how would Western neo-cons keep control if the masses had nothing to fear? It’s a question worth asking yourself, especially if you are becoming less convinced by The Sun.

Belgium is now apparently a hotbed of jihadi maniacs, so why not blow them up…it’s only a little place after all? Of course, the problem with Belgium is that it has always been largely inoffensive and I must admit, my only ever issue with them was my failure to find a 1982 football sticker of their midfielder, Eric Gerets, as I attempted to complete my Panini World Cup book.

I was angry at the time, but not enough to start bombing them.

So whilst I am learning that those little sachets of porridge oats are not enough to feed a little bloke like me, let alone a stony faced, tartan clad Presbyterian trying to toss his caber, the politicians continue to learn nothing and carry on lambasting those who seek an alternative, using The Mail or The Sun, to destroy them.

It is desperate that the ones who govern us are the ones who will not learn. In fact it makes me want to pack my bags and get away from it all, so that that is what I am doing.

I’m off to the 5 Star Raffles Hotel in Singapore for six weeks.

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