Watching Star Trek Next Generation recently I was forced to think back to when we were kids and produced our own humourous sketches on an old battered reel-to-reel or cassette recorder. Later on you’ll see why!

We had a vague idea of a plot and who was going to play which character but then basically pretty much anything might happen … sometimes it was hilariously funny, very often it wasn’t. Sometimes we’d rehearse a sketch we liked to the point it lost all sense and was no longer funny (assuming it had been in the first place!).

One of these sketches was based on the original Star Trek. My friend Howard, due to his deep sonorous voice got the part of Spock and I was probably Kirk because I’d rarely play unless I was in charge (nothing much has changed there!). Anyway, we beam down to this planet and Spock comes out with these immortal lines right off the top of his head, “Captain, why is it that every planet we beam down to has the same blue sky and the same pink rocks on the ground?” There was no easy way to answer that and so Howard carried on with, “I believe this studio has limited facilities!”

So why was I reminded of this old Star Trek sketch from further back than I care to count the years to? Well, it is true that you do tend to see Klingons nowadays on Star Trek rather than just a glimps of a Bird of Prey before Kirk has it blasted to oblivion and the special effects are far better than way back then with the lower budgets and even lower technology available. But, it is is still similar in that, although the planets do look different, they all by some incredible freak of chance have an atmosphere breathable by human beings. In one case on Star Trek Next Generation there was even a planet with a breathable atmosphere and no vegetation, which is a really neat trick. I guess suspending disbelief has always been the name of the game even with the most scientific of sci-fi. The Enterprise travels millions of light years through space and encounters an alien whose conceptual framework is almost exactly like ours and his words are translated into perfectly understandable English! Mind you, the idea that the English language could be the same in a few hundred years time on a Star Trek starship is far-fetched enough (just read Shakespeare or any other old English writing). It may not be the same pink rocks on the ground but by God none of these Star Trek actors and actresses are going to have their fizog off the box for a few minutes while they bounce around wearing a space suit … but then the gravity on these planets is always identical to earth gravity so I guess they wouldn’t….

I recently had the misfortune to have to drive into Wigan. Anyone who drives through or around the centre of Wigan will immediately know why I say “misfortune”. The one-way system in Wigan is so bad it is conceivably possible to wear your tyres out before you find your way out again. The daft twists and turns all over the place down single-lane one-way minor roads means that it inevitably gets congested at almost any time of day at some point or other. In fact, there are probably a few people who’ve been going round and round in there for weeks without getting out. I did notice a few motorists with long beards …. clearly, this bizarre road system could not have been developed by any human mind. No matter how off-the-wall, twisted and misanthropic the relevant civil servant(s) might be this piece of planning is well beyond the scope of their fevered brain-cells. Mulder would certainly conclude it to be the work of aliens. No doubt “Wigan in Rush Hour” is a top rating sit-com in the Betelgeuse nebula with Mommy, Daddy and offsring waving their tentacles in delight at the mad antics of the strange human creatures going round and round in their little tin boxes. Hoots of gurgling laughter and Daddy alien falls backwards over the green sponge sofa as the earthlings in coloured boxes grind to a halt in front of another red light, then all go again, stop again, go again etc etc. Their imaginations are staggered by the fact that this happens EVERY DAY and they don’t do anything to change it! Of course, they are unaware that it is their close neighbours the Spoogels who actually designed this crazy road system. Spoogels have large strangely curling purple tubes rather than hair and this gave them the general plan for the Wigan road system. Of course, nowadays the original designers Kloondyk and Mogglitchn live of their royalties from the media shows and occasional after-slurping speeches (Spoogels only consume liquids).

The most disconcerting thing about all of this is that since Kloondyk and Mogglitchn have more or less retired, living as they do on their own private planet with their luxury Khiggits (that’s a kind of yacht) and the relevant council departments have not changed this crazy road system in all these years we can only come to the conclusion that the creatures we believe to be civil servants in our local authorities are in fact Spoogels. This of course does, in fact, explain quite a lot about Local Government in general and we can only wonder at how widespread this infiltration is. It might interest you to know that when a Spoogel smiles its mouth goes into a funny rectangular shape rather like a letterbox … which does rather bring to mind a certain wife of a certain member of parliament.

Britain and other European countries are going to build more nuclear power stations to combat climate change and growing world power shortages as the oil starts to run out. If this wasn’t such a serious issue we could laugh at the sheer absurdity of this idea. As it is, we have to think how it is that such selfish short-sighted people got to be in such positions of power where they can drive us all forwards into merry oblivion!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about then take a look at Greenpeace here

If you don’t know about the peaking of oil supplies a few years back and the real dangers ahead then take a look at this.

There is also Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers. You can read about that one here.
Not easy reading but perhaps the most essential reading of all before the idiot politicians and bigwigs turn us all into lemmings is George Monbiot’s book Heat. There is an in-depth review of it here.

With regards to building more nuclear power plants and other non-sustainable resource projects I have to say that this form of art is one that Artists UK cannot condone. Art is about creativity and creating projects that use up non-replaceable resources and creating more radiocative waste really doesn’t fit the bill.

All viable plans to transport the politicians and businessmen promoting these crazy ideas to Mars where they can happily nuke themselves silly will be seriously considered. There must be such viable plans as it is a far more sensible proposal than the plans they are putting in place here. Even the large carbon footprint of sending them there is tiny compared to the future they have in store for us.

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a Very Happy New Year from Artists UK. We hope you had a fabulously brilliant time and are ready for an excellent New Year.

I was in Germany over Christmas and I’ve always been astounded that the Germans have such a poor reputation for having a sense of humour. It has never seemed to me as if they lack one but as you’ll see from the following they have an innovative one as I doubt that we’d ever come come up with an expression like the one I just came across - “Ich muss aufpassen, sonst habe ich zwei!”

All us boring lot can say is that we’d better keep an eye on it or someone will nick it. They came up with the above, which translates as, “I’d better be careful or I’ll have two of them!” Of course, it may be limited to north Germany where there are a lot of different expressions due to the prevalence of an older dialect called Platdeutsch (they say “Moin” instead of Guten Morgen for instance .. or at any time of day in fact). The Platdeutsch is closer to Dutch and has many nouns closer to English than high German (words for door, water etc etc).

German children also have the advantage of getting their Christmas presents earlier. They get them on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas Day. They go off to their room for an hour or so while Santa does his rounds and come out to get their presents in the early evening. So now, if your children ask how Santa manages to get round all the houses in the world in one night you can tell them he distributes some presents in some countries on Christmas Eve. I’m sure there will be the inevitable rejoinder of why can’t we have ours earlier! … coz yor not German that’s why