You may have noticed something of a phase shift in this blog recently, no, you're still a terribly disturbed pervert with a penchant for collecting other peoples socks and a habit of writing in the third person; well you must have missed the issues, which have so far been mainly about the environment. I thought I had better explain myself you see a dramatic shift has occurred in my personally philosophy which has compelled me to do, or rather wiped out my last excuse for not doing, good.

It all started when I found myself laughing at a picture of a fat woman at the beach, stuck in a deckchair, being rescued by the coastguard from the advancing tide. Oh I see, yes a powerful metaphor, mankind stuck in gluttony is powerless to escape the rising seawater, as nature reclaims the equilibrium in the flowing ebbing tide, before long all that was mankind will be grains of sand on the shore; a twenty-first century King Canute; Umm, no not exactly.

What I thought when I saw this picture was: ‘ha ha ha, look at that fat woman, she's wearing a hat and she's stuck.’

But I realised that my laughing may well have been wrong. But how could it be wrong? The picture had been forwarded around the office, lots of people were laughing, so I thought, it can't be wrong. If I were at the autopsy of a diabetic, or at a Weightwatchers meeting then it would be wrong, but I'm not so I can laugh, ha ha.

I then went on to hypothesize that humor and morality may be linked. Humor is entirely subjective to time, place and circumstance. Could right and wrong be entirely subjective to time place and circumstance too? Could I at last have the evidence I require to excuse myself from pissing on the on-fire people?

You see if right and wrong is subjective, like humor, then:

Laughing at afflicted, OK with friends, not OK with afflicted

Casual racism, OK if you’re Enid Blyton, not OK on the 171 to Peckham

If morality is subjective than I can just live in my little world and worry about the things I do, and not have to worry about anything that happens to anyone else because how do I know that these bad things are happening in places, or times, or circumstances that mean that they are actually bad?

Stoning gays, OK in Iran, not OK on the strand; and it was on the Strand that Amnesty International got two pounds out of me, a clever trick indeed!

Countries getting/having nuclear weapons, OK if you’ve got nuclear weapons, not OK if you don’t have nuclear weapons

Predictably this is were my argument came tumbling down and instead of finding proof of my moral relativity I found that it was massively flawed and that, though difficult to interpret, right is right and wrong is wrong regardless of time, place and circumstance.

I suppose this means I'm obliged to try and make the world a better place, which is ever so darned inconvenient as I’m really busy right now and I don’t know the first thing about international diplomacy, but I may be able to make you smile; look at this fat woman, she’s stuck, she’s got a funny hat on and she is proof that innate Goodness exists (as well as innate badness).

Not laughing, then try to see it as a poignant metaphor for global warming.