You would be forgiven for thinking you were reading a copy of The Onion, or something like that, when you read that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took precious time out of his obviously busy and hectic schedule to denounce Paul the Octopus – the very same inky cephalopod that correctly predicted the outcome of all of Germany’s seven World Cup games this year – as a symbol of all that is wrong with the West. The wacky West-hater went as far as to accuse Paul of spreading ‘western propaganda and superstition’.

As a scientist, I think Ahmadinejad has a point buried somewhere deep beneath all that shit he chats. As modern, scientific and progressive nations we shouldn’t be advertising the belief that a sea creature can predict the future. That’s an absurd conclusion to come to. I think what the Iranian president was trying to say is that our belief in luck and believing that we can predict the future is totally unfounded. Yeah, that’s what he was trying to say.

Instead, we obviously should be punishing rape victims, segregating the population by gender because of those insatiable females who can’t control themselves and whom try to corrupt the men. We should be spending money on ‘nuclear power’, or another word is defiance, rather than letting girls learn to read and write and we should definitely be helping out those poor, poor terrorists because they’re just misunderstood and only need a few more missiles to get people to come around to their way of thinking. It all makes sense really.

Mahmoud, to put it in the politest possible words, you are a pillock. You say you and your country aspire to ‘human perfection’ and that we couldn’t possibly do the same because we cheer on a slimy sea creature because it, by chance, happens to choose to eat from one box which we happen to assign to a football team. We know it can’t predict the future. If you want to heckle and denounce something worth your while, and do something honestly decent with your power, stature and your precious time why not speak out against the belief in witchcraft in some African nations that harms children? Or work to help abolish the death penalty in Saudi Arabia for the ludicrous crime of sorcery, for which there is no legal definition.

Why? Simple, you’re a stroppy teenager rebelling against his parents, doing the things they tell you you’re not allowed to do. Pillock.