First, an apology. Last night I seem to have sent some comments to trash by accident. I managed to track them down and think I have replied to all of them, but I can’t get them back onto the main site. I hope you have all had replies, but if you haven’t let me know. If you have been ignored it’s down to stupidity rather than bad manners.

Earlier today I was watching Walker, Texas Ranger. It comes on after Perry Mason, which follows Matlock. With the best will in the world, it isn’t a particularly demanding schedule. However, whilst watching Walker, I did pay some attention to the plot, if you can call it that.

The villain was a violent criminal and fraudster who had started his own church after purchasing his ordination certificate online, or possibly some sort of forerunner of the internet.

Now, what you may not know about me was that I once planned a career as a fraudster, having formed the idea for a postal business college. In those days it was legal to offer meaningless qualifications through the post and you could get £1,000 for a PhD – all the candidate needed to was send a cheque and write an essay, which was a lot easier than taking a proper PhD. I had it all ready to launch, including the name Carlton Business College, when the government changed the law and out a stop to it. Fortunately I had not incurred any financial costs so all I lost was my time and my dreams.

Before you ask, no, I didn’t have any qualms about it. I had just done a post-graduate diploma course as a mature student, and had learned several interesting things about “proper” academic institutions. One was that several of the overseas students on the course were intending to sell copies of their certificates on completion of the course. The second was that not everyone on the course had to go through the same selection process.

I, having applied for the course without having a degree, had to undergo a stringent interview and written test. Some of the overseas students, who paid many times the fees we were paying, had managed to get on the course without qualifications, without a written test and without the ability to write intelligible English.

Julia, who is much more intellectually accomplished than I am, noted the same when she did her Master’s degree.

So there you are, even today “proper” universities are allowed to peddle substandard qualifications to overseas students in return for cash, but I am not.

Anyway, enough of my lack of morals, and back to today. It seems, when I checked up, that you can become an ordained minister for $29. It is priced in dollars, because the “church” is American. I’m fascinated by the American marriage laws, where a$29 dollar minister is allowed to conduct legally binding marriages in 48 states.

Then I wandered onto this site, and wasted more of my day.

By the time I write my next post I may well be the Reverend Quercus. Julia says we have enough trouble without me attracting any Divine Wrath, but I’m seriously thinking of it. Well, it’s not like I’m doing anything else for the next three weeks, is it?

When I searched the free photo library for “dog collar” this wasn’t actually what I was hoping for.