Encore Une Fois Je Suis Etudiant

It's started, it's official and I've got the student card to prove it. Student discount here we come. Only five years (with a following wind and a dollop of inspiration) and you might have to start calling me Dr Roberts. Loving it already - I've got my beloved on line library access back which means hours of fun making obscure searches on Jstor and EEBO.

But, but, but, there's still a few things bugging me despite my happy student outlook. Ed Miliband - just what the hell is he for? David Cameron - given that his principal opponent is so gobsmackingly inept, why doesn't he take the opportunity to actually do something interesting/radical/not crap? France - how on earth can they have the gall (yes that is deliberate) to tell the hapless Greeks how to behave? For the Germans such behaviour is perhaps understandable if ultimately indefensible, but the French, give me a bloody break.

Loads of money

Fat cats. Actually some middle sized cats as well. In my old days as a jobbing commercial lawyer I evidently enjoyed the luck of the draw because the number of inexcusable capitalist gobshites I met was quite limited. Yes there were some but more often I encountered people who worked hard, played harder and had the humility to admit to some good fortune in doing well for themselves, even in one notable case (the utterly peerless Alan Robert Murrall) where no such modesty was required. Yet now the evidence of guileless, gutless greed lies all about us, deep and crisp and even. As I have said before, my generation has blown it and all I can say in my defence is that it wasn't me guv. But still it irks me, nibbles away at my nether regions that perhaps I have been wrong all along. Damn you fat cats, you have made me doubt myself and if I'm wrong then what on earth will become of the world?

But hey ho, there'll always be Shakespeare and Bagehot and bad jokes with good friends. And more, much more than that, there will be Sharon. The boy Roberts done good.