From 13 November – 20 November, I shall be in Gran Canaria on holiday. I can’t wait. I shall probably take my computer and thus blog from the poolside. Escape from my rantings is not that easy.

I’ve just found out that BBC Children in Need is Friday 17 November. This means that I shall miss the annual spectacle of:

• People behind the counter in building societies dressing unconvincingly as a teddy bear
• TV newsreaders doing a “hilarious” can can dance routine
• Weathergirls doing “Singing in the rain” (or some other such pun)…again
• Having a can waved under my nose with money demanded with menaces.

You will have gathered that there is little about Children in Need night that I don’t thoroughly loathe. I loathe the forced, false, embarrassing hilarity. I deeply resent the implication that if I don’t give generously, I’m a total bastard and most probably a child molester. I deeply disapprove of TV newsreaders becoming celebrities in any case and watching them do “wacky” things is as inappropriate as it’s embarrassing. In general, anything that tends to be described as “wacky” is hard to bear.

Perhaps above all, I deeply think that we shouldn’t live in a society where children can be in genuine need and get government off the hook by contributing to charity. If there’s need there, it’s the job of government to tax me to fix the need. This means that it’s almost certainly not need, but want. Very often, the “need” is actually disability. So it’s just one big conscience assuaging exercise in pity, allowing people to then spend the next 12 months pretending real social need isn’t there. The whole thing is as bogus as hell and I’m so glad to be missing it. Don’t give them any money; it only encourages it.