blowing it
Over the years, I have to confess, I’ve wasted a bit of money on wacky therapies and gurus of one kind or another: Psychics, clairvoyants, feng shui experts, reflexologists, herbalists, and the like. I’ve even telephoned an exorcism specialist who gets rid of ghosts if she knows your postcode. (I didn’t think I actually had a ghost, but I wanted to check.) But I can’t hold a candle, or a crystal pendant, to Cherie Blair. I have no idea what she’s spent on crackpots, but it must be a lot. Remember Jack Templeton, who said he could cure her swollen ankles by swinging a pendulum and feeding her a concoction of strawberry leaves?
©KYODO/REUTERS. JUSTIN WILLIAMS/REX FEATURES
Why Cherie Blair likes a blast of liquid nitrogen Yukio Hatoyama. Hatoyama was once dubbed ‘the Alien’ by colleagues on account of his otherworldy manner and prominent eyes. It was an appropriate nickname – his wife, Miyuki, claims she was abducted by aliens while asleep one night 20 years ago, then whisked off to the final frontier. “While my body was asleep,” she says, “I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a beautiful place, and it was very green.”
As well as regaling the media with tales of interplanetary travel, says The Guardian, she Miyuki Hatoyama and Cherie Blair: Enthusiasts for New Age bunkum likes to describe another fad: Her solar breakfasts. “‘I eat the sun,’ says said: “She was absolutely lovely and Miyuki, raising her arms as if to tear what’s more she kept all our spirits up. pieces off an imaginary sun. ‘Like this: You have to keep moving or you would So it was no surprise to read in the Daily yum, yum, yum. It gives me enormous freeze and she led the singing and the Mail that she has been recovering from energy. My husband has recently been clapping as we walked around in circles the stresses and strains of her recent book doing that too.’” doing our best to cope and keep warm. I tour in China by undergoing suggested we sing Always Look On The ‘kriotherapy’ at the Champneys health I suppose there are worse things for the Bright Side Of Life, and we did. After spa in Tring, Herts, half an hour’s drive wives of our leaders to do than indulge in three minutes at minus 100°C, you do a from her new country home. New Age bunkum, but it’s not exactly 45-minute intensive gym workout. But reassuring. Or perhaps it is. We’re often before that you end up absolutely Wearing a bikini and pair of thick socks told that Gordon Brown needs to ‘lighten freezing. Even your eyebrows are frozen. to stop her toes from getting too cold, up’ a bit: If Sarah could just persuade But Cherie was wonderful. She was full she went into a room where the him to eat the sun each morning it might of life and great fun.” temperature is dropped to minus 100°C make all the difference. with liquid nitrogen. The treatment is But, wacky as she may be, even Cherie said to help with sleep problems and will have trouble competing with a recent relieve symptoms of tiredness and arrival on the world stage, the wife of the depression. Lawyer Kevin Harris-James, newly elected Japanese prime minister, who was in the ice room with Cherie,
Tabloid money… Essex police trade in fancy shades for extra bobbies ■ If you want a demonstration of how to cut waste, visit Essex, says Ross Clark in the Daily Express. In the past year Essex Constabulary has put an extra 239 officers on the beat. “How? By cutting back on waste and bureaucracy.” The force has saved £11m (R132m) through better housekeeping. Ordering officers to refuel their cars at supermarkets has saved £50,000 (R600,000). In 2008, Essex police got through 73,000 pens, some of them gel pens at £5 (R60) a time. Now they must all use 8p (R1) biros. Cutting back on laser printers has saved £80,000 (R1m), while “chopping over-generous hospitality” has saved £120,000 (R1.5m). Coffee and biscuits are no longer served in staff meetings; nor can officers buy Oakley sunglasses on expenses. The crackdown is far from finished, and recently retired Essex Chief Constable Roger Baker, who instigated the savings, reckons that if every police force in the country adopted the same measures it would save £1bn (R12bn) a year and enable 15,000 to 20,000 extra officers to be put on patrol. If only South Africa would take a leaf out of their book.
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18 September 2009
■ “Generous, kind-hearted bankers at HSBC have unveiled a mortgage with a cut-price interest rate of just 1.99%,” says Fiona Phillips in the Daily Mirror. “Er, as long as you’ve got a 40% deposit to put down. And only if you’re prepared to fork out an ‘arrangement fee’ of £1,119 (R13,500). What is an ‘arrangement fee’? I’m constantly arranging things for the whole family and I’m not paid a penny. I thought the banks were supposed to have been brought into line, so they can’t con us with charges for absolutely nothing. Can the Chancellor arrange for arrangement fees to be re-arranged? And then abolished.” ■ “No fool, Prez Obama,” says Fergus Shanahan in The Sun. “His succinct character assessment of Brown after meeting him: ‘Dour, depressing.’ His assessment of Dave Cameron: ‘Energetic, dynamic.’ Most wounding for grim Gord will be news that most Americans still think Tony Blair is PM.”