Momentous days here at The Sleaze, if we still ran the old numbered issue system, we’d now be on our hundredth issue. Which means, logically, that this must be the hundredth editorial. A sobering thought – this is the hundredth time I’ve cobbled together a collection of my angry, incoherent rantings and tried to pass it off as some kind of editorial comment. You know, I think I’ve got away with it up to now. I’d like to be able to refer you to the very first editorial we published, so that you can compare and contrast. Sadly, the earliest editorials were lost during one the site’s many transitions over the years – I probably still have copies, but I think that they are locked up on the hard drive of a now defunct PC. But don’t worry – you haven’t really missed anything: just select a few editorials at random from the existing archive and you’ll get the idea. I don’t think my various obsessions, psychoses, whinges and rants have changed much over the years. In fact, I’ll give you a quick digest: Tory bastards, Google is evil, shoot the rich, up the revolution, end management bullshit, death to capitalism. I think that about covers it.

But here we are in this historic hundredth editorial – what shall we talk about this time? It isn’t as if we’re short of pressing issues, is it? I mean, there are those allegations (from the electoral commission, no less) of massive election expenses fraud by the Tories in last year’s general election, (something the BBC and the rest of the media, except Channel Four, seem remarkably reluctant to cover), then there’s the whole anti-Semitism storm the right are trying to whip up around Corbyn and the Labour Party. Oh, and some of us haven’t forgotten the whole Panama Papers business and Cameron’s tax affairs. Also, who could forget the antics of Culture Secretary John Whittingdale? The man who thinks that it isn’t OK for you to watch Strictly Come Dancing if it’s getting better viewing figures than whatever’s on ITV at the same time, (isn’t that called ‘competition’, which the Tories and private sector are supposed to be in favour of?), but that it is OK for a minister to date a sex worker. Of course he didn’t realise that she was a sex worker – he presumably thinks that it is normal to pay any woman he goes to bed with for sex and, doubtless, all those years at boarding school left him thinking all the dominatrix stuff was just regular foreplay. Apparently, he met her through a ‘dating site’. Or, as I like to call it, a telephone kiosk in Soho where you can browse through the various cards left by the local ‘talent’. But hey, having his balls tied up and whipped whilst he’s spread eagled on an iron bed frame wearing a leather gimp mask is clearly an intellectually stimulating experience, judging by the brilliant ideas Whittingdale’s been coming up with of late.

On top of all that we’ve also got the EU referendum, hundreds of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, the Syrian conflict, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, to name but a few of the world’s current crises. So, seeing as we’re spoilt for choice, subject matter wise, I thought that I’d ignore them all and instead rant about some stuff closer to home which has really annoyed me of late. One thing which got me ranting was an overheard conversation in Sainsburys whilst I was shopping. A mother was telling her daughter that she couldn’t have some chocolate bar or other for her lunchbox, because chocolate wasn’t allowed in school! For fuck’s sake, what sort of world are we living in when children can’t eat chocolate in school? Really, have we become a nation of killjoys? Now, this chocolate ban could be for supposed ‘health’ reasons, whereby the food Nazis decree that children must be forced to have only ‘healthy’ things in their lunch boxes, a concept I object to on principle. It is an appalling restriction of children’s freedom of individual choice: if they want to eat fatty foods and drink sugary drinks, that’s up to them. Besides, fads in what is and isn’t ‘healthy’ to eat and drink seems to come and go on a weekly basis. Not only that, but anything that twat Jamie Oliver champions can’t be any good.

Alternatively, the chocolate ban could be down to one of those ‘food allergies’ which seem to proliferate these days. I seem to recall that there was a school in Wales which banned chocolate because one student had a ‘chocolate allergy’ which was activated by the mere presence of chocolate, even in its unopened wrapper, anywhere on school premises. Oh do fuck off! I’ve never heard such bollocks in my entire life! Stop trying to spoil children’s fun with your made up attention seeking ‘allergies’! You can guarantee that some pushy middle class mother is behind this cobblers. Doubtless running around wailing ‘Won’t somebody think of the children’ whilst demanding that Easter be cancelled unless chocolate eggs are replaced with painted hard boiled eggs, so as to ensure her child is protected, but every other child is ensured a miserable Easter.

That’s the trouble these day:, middle class parents – they’re so determined to make their children ‘special’ that they virtually insist that they have some kind of ‘condition’, be it dyslexia or made up allergies. In my day, kids had real, potentially life threatening allergies and ailments, like allergic reactions to bee stings, or asthma. And while I’m still in rant mode, I still see an inordinate number of men wandering around Crapchester sporting those bloody awful, unkempt ‘hipster’ beards, clearly thinking that they look incredibly ‘cool’ are making some kind of important ‘statement’ by having the facial hair of a tramp. Let’s be honest here, ‘hipster’ beards devalue all beards. Because this awful facial hair is sported exclusively by twats, there is a temptation to assume that all men with beards are twats. Which is grossly unfair. Sure, you can’t help but feel that guys with neatly trimmed goatees are likely to be pretentious and/or narcissistic, but, on the whole, you really can’t make such generalisations. Except when it comes to ‘hipster’ beards. I mean, what kind of person would want to wear such an abomination? Of all the facial hair you could sport – neat goatee, manly nautical ‘full set’, maverick cop style close cut advanced stubble beard, for instance – why would you want to have your face covered by a mess of wild untrimmed, unstyled hair? All it says is that you thought it would be cool to grow a beard, but are too lazy to be bothered actually maintaining it. Which isn’t to say that you can’t get away with a wild beard, but only if you are Brian Blessed or ‘Grizzly’ Adams. However, if I see some scrawny would be ‘hipster’ wandering around with a mass of hairy foliage covering their face, I feel an immediate urge to assault their facial hair with a razor. Or a pair of shears.

Well, thank God I’ve got that lot off of my chest! I feel so much better! Plus, I’ve maintained a long established Sleaze tradition by filling out this hundredth editorial with material adapted from Sleaze Diary, (which, of course, I originally set up to capture editorial-type thoughts between regular editorials, so that I didn’t forget it. So, until the hundredth and first editorial – keep it Sleazy!

Doc Sleaze