There isn’t an an End of the Day this evening because I like to stick (where possible) to some of the wisdom and appreciation I’ve learned over the 66 years I’ve been around. It hasn’t been that kind of day. It was until mid afternoon, but then the physical tiredness that always catches me unawares these days after too much hammering, sawing, weed-pulling and digging took its toll. I collapsed into sleep, awoke, had a shower and made the fatal mistake of returning to my laptop for a look at what is laughingly called the ‘real’ world. It was then that the day’s second half began.

It started with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a gent who either has a split personality problem, or is having the column ghost-written on his days off. It’s funny how those days off always produce off days: maybe AEP went for a long weekend somewhere, but it didn’t read like him this afternoon. I had to blink when I saw he had typed ‘Russia meddling in the Ukraine”, because it was such a daft thing to write given the history on this one: did the EU or did it not make a power grab the second the legally-elected Putin oligarch started to look wobbly? Is the majority of Ukraine Russian speaking, or is it not? Are US mercenaries in Eastern Ukraine or not? Is the American corporatocracy meddling everywhere in Ukraine, or not? How would Obama like it if provocateurs destabilised the elected President of Mexico? What exactly does the CIA have on William Hague that he only extracts his silly head from the American anus long enough to follow Washington’s line to the letter?

But such was not Ambrose’s mission. No, his aim was to show how Russia is on the verge of economic collapse and will face further sanctions. He didn’t bother to point out the US debt mountain, the lack of a proper manufacturing economy in the UK, and the continuing taxidermy being applied to the EU by Draghi et al. Anyway, I’ve read this sort of crap too many times before. Remember how many times Syria was just “days away” from collapse throughout 2015? IABATO! It’s all bollocks, and that’s official.

My mood didn’t improve on reading that Nick Buckles of G4S (another of those process-driven barrowboy drones who somehow get to the top and than fall to Earth with a satisfying squelch) is to receive a £400,000 a year pension for managing to cheat the taxpayer, and nearly torpedo the Olympic Games. The Conservative Party wittered on endlessly during the Blairite Years about “rewarding failure”, but they are never on hand to condemn it in the ranks of those they foolishly employ….or is it just foolishness? The aplomb with which G4S just kept on hoovering up that Government business as it bounced from one cock-up to another puts me in mind of Jeremy Hunt gobbling up increasing amounts of British Council work despite the diabolical incompetence his company Hotcourses demonstrated at the outset of its relationship with the BC. But I mustn’t mention Ezak in the same paragraph as speculation about corruption, because that might give ambulance-chasing vipers the wrong idea.

Meanwhile, over at multiply gangbang-raped Old Mother Bailey, Andy Coulson is attempting a sort of tepid version of the Oscar Pistorius defence: expressing regret and guilt feelings in order to suggest innocence. Today, Andy Pandy told the Court that his affair with Slapper Brooks “was wrong” but did not “breach professional standards”. Well it wouldn’t breach Andy’s, on account of the fact that he never had any; but what else was the guy going to say – “Yes jurors, I rogered her stupid and by God she went like a sh*thouse door phwoooaar yer know what I mean?”

Coulson had the affair with Brooks because, like Becky herself, he couldn’t give a crap about anyone else but himself. I’ve been following the Pistorius trial for weeks now, and can honestly say I’ve never been more certain of somebody’s obvious guilt since OJ’s trial for murder. Justice must of course be seen to be done, but here we are – a mere six weeks behind schedule in the Newscorp case – and the male defendant is only just taking the stand.

It’s not just that there’s one law for the vulnerable and another for the powerful in the West these days: it’s also the difference in time and numbers that strikes one. Five months to try two people still beyond the prison gates….and 37 days to bang up 3,000 defendants in Croydon. I’m as against looting as the next man. My problem is, however, that I’m unwilling to look at the North Face of the Eiger and and think yup, that’s a level playing field if ever I saw one. But in the meantime, here’s some breaking news from Australia:

Anyway, talking of giant rats, I must confess to having laughed at first when I read the Daily Mail’s headline about ‘rats the size of cats’. It seemed to me entirely likely that Dacre the Mad had been at the LSD again, but no – fair game, fair game, long story short – these rats are indeed the size of, well, I’d say a hare rather than a cat. But even so, they are big mothers.

In fact, it was all going rather well until the Mail introduced one of its standard ‘fact panels’ which offered the reader all “the main reasons” why these giant rats exist. Near to the top of the list was the decision to decrease refuse collections from weekly to fortnightly. What can I say? On every dimension from evolutionary science to comparative social measurement, it was obvious drivel. But in it went…paving the way, perhaps, for a Sun headline tomorrow, ‘LABOUR COUNCILS CAUSE RAT NIGHTMARE’.

“We’re feeding them too much,” said An Expert….apparently because we’re too careless about how we throw food packaging away. Look folks: ineffective refuse collection and fat lardarses chucking McDonalds chips away as they wobble along the pavements of our Septic Isle are blindingly obvious reasons why rats, mice, crows, foxes and other foraging life-forms are increasing in number. But they have around 97% of nothing to do with why a genus of giant rats has emerged.

I mean, if these were nothing more than obese rats – the alarming new strain rodenti rochdaleus cyrilsmitham –  then they’d look (let’s not beat about the bush here) like the late and entirely unlamented Bob Maxwell. But if you examine the photos, what the buggers look like to me is super-fit, perfectly honed killers. I confess to being fascinated as to why they have evolved in this manner. I just doubt very much whether the tabloid press is ever likely to provide even the glimmer of a clue about that.

So at the end of this day, it is hard to avoid the conclusion from these examples that, when it comes to the mainstream media, almost none of them print what’s going on here. What they publish is an injudicious melange of political agenda, proprietor obsession, hack idleness, sovereign spin, big tits tittle-tattle, sensationalised claptrap, and celebrity bromides.

Nothing new to see ‘ere ladies an’ gentulmen, move along please Ithangyoo.

Earlier at The Slog: Samaras, Osborne & Tepco vie for coveted Liar of the Year Award