Excuse me?

So if I have understood this correctly, 35,000 delegates have travelled, mostly in 'planes, to an out-of-the-way city in Northern Europe to discuss climate change? Am I missing the point?

Hollywood directors - I know where London is, thank you.

It's more worrying than entertaining to watch someone on YouTube, when presented with a world map and asked where Iraq is, confidently planting their finger in the middle of Australia. How does anyone know anything these days? Hollywood seems to have replaced good old-fashioned reading and talking to people who have seen things as the way to learn about the world around you, particularly history. Using the movies of the postwar era as your reference library, you would be forgiven for now believing all kinds of historical lies and revisionisms. Not all of Hollywood is bad, it's only entertainment after all. I’d say the best Hollywood can offer is the best the world can experience. However, if you accept that the Hollywood version of events might sometimes stray from the actuality just a little, it means that there are two kinds of people responsible for actually making and financing movies: those that believe the viewing public is sophisticated enough to enjoy their films, knowing them to be fictions and keeping their disbelief willingly suspended in order to be entertained; and those who really don't give a fuck what lasting impression moviegoers leave the cinema with as long as they have left their money behind.

So, movies are often well-intentioned and entertaining lies. Within those lies there are often truths buried, facts so incontrovertible they add a gloss of realism to your viewing experience. One of these facts, for instance, is that London is in England. I know this to be the case because I have seen it captioned so in movies. London, England. Usually over an establishing shot of the Houses of Parliament being passed by a red Routemaster bus full of men wearing bowler hats, or guardsmen standing to attention outside Buckingham palace in the rain. What I want to know is this – for whom is this caption instructional? Can there be any doubt that the action has not moved from Paris, France to London, Ohio but to the capital of the United Kingdom, one of the world's major cities?

It makes me wonder how many Americans have ever been abroad. One mitigating factor is that the United States of America is so vast, it has to reference its own cities by citing which state they are in. Hence New York, New York. There is an entire episode of Friends in which the characters struggle to name all fifty states. Lest this turn into us laughing behind our hands at the silly Americans, I doubt many of my work colleagues could point out Spalding, Lincolnshire on a map of Great Britain. But they don't make international blockbusting films in Spalding and they do in Hollywood. It's in Hollywood that it is deemed acceptable to issue films to be watched in London, England where the audience is told explicitly that London is in England. Hollywood directors – leave the captions out. We know where Prague is. More to the point, even if we didn't, it wouldn't matter. We don't hand over our £5 for a geography lesson.

I have a radical proposal that would not only make the movie-viewing experience less stressful for me personally, but might, eventually, bring harmony to the troubled regions of the world. Developed nations – don't send your armed forces to sort out the world's conflicts. Send tourists. For the same money as maintaining huge mechanised armies far from home, you could send millions of regular folk to Kabul, Basra and Jerusalem. And not just camera-toting pensioners of independent means. Send everyone at least twice. That way, when Jason Bourne is running through Alexanderplatz, Berlin, Germany, they can say "oh, that's where we had a Currywurst, right there under the tower" and enjoy the action sequence just a little bit more. OK, less work for the industry's caption writers but that's an egg I'd be willing to break to make the omelette. A spin-off from this mass travel would be a better informed populace when it came to voting. What's the alternative? One of these days we're going to find ourselves in the middle of a war with Australia because somebody advising the President got lucky with their day job. Think I'm kidding? One small change to the American Constitution and Arnie is President. Hasta la vista, baby.

A message from you, Rudi

I'm delighted to share, word for word, a text message from a very good friend - a German - who is currently working in a local school:

'Quotes from the English teacher: "Take out the work you done last week" and "where is Justin and Colin?" :) '

Spend, spend, spend

I don't intend to spend, spend, spend my way to financial security. I'm no economist but I do know that anything you don't need is not a bargain at any price. Here are things we DO need, in no particular order, that might have benefited from the injection of some billions of pounds:

• fixing crumbling schools and restoring free milk for primary kids;
• revitalising our bloated and bureaucratic health service;
• a proper re-nationalised public transport and utilities infrastructure;
• an end to fuel poverty;
• proper equipment so that if we have to fight wars we don't want, at least we have the tools to do it;
• £400 million into each of the above; or
  
• £33 for every citizen. It would end up in the banks or in the shops anyway AND it would keep circulating.

Just an idea.

To die for

Anyone who says a piece of cake is 'to die for' is an idiot. Think about that. There isn't a food in the world that is so delicious that it's 'to die for'. The safety of your family, high ideals of freedom from oppression - these are things to die for. Has our language become so devalued that we need to seek greater and greater superlatives to express straightforward sentiments? Next time the thought even flits across your brain that something edible is 'to die for', consider these excellent alternatives: tasty, appetizing, delectable, luscious, delicious, or exquisite.

Shoes are not 'to die for', boy- or girlfriends are not 'to die for'. If you offered a dying man the choice of a cure for his illness or a piece of delectable cake, which do YOU think he would choose?

Don't even start me on people who say "awesome ..."

It can't only be me ...

I used to think that shouting at the TV was something for old people to enjoy. I'm not old. I shout at the TV. I can't hear the words 'nourish your hair' on a TV advertisement without shrieking "your hair is dead! You can't nourish it!". Made-up science to sell beauty products gets me going more than anything else. Apart from made up product names to give a pseudo-scientific glitz to some greasy stuff to smear on your face, that is. Revitalift. That's one. Andi McDowell smears something on her face, because she's worth it, and in the closing shot of the ad, her hair is a rich chestnut colour when it was nearly black before. Well, if it's what makes you happy, do it. If you want a face that looks as if it has never experienced sorrow or laughter, fall for it.

If you ask 200 women a question and 166 of them agree with you, it does not mean that 83% of women agree with you by the way. It means 83% of the tiny sample you asked, having been given free stuff, agreed with a vague, generic question. It also means that 17% of those asked did not agree. That's about one in six. Put that into a jury and you'd probably have reasonable doubt, the one stubborn juror who doesn't believe. Give that juror time. I believe there is a film about this :-)