9 January 2009.
An early contender for pointless murder of the year has just come to fruition when the botched armed robbery of a post office in Worcestershire resulted in the shooting dead of the shopkeeper.
It is a terrible indictment of British society when criminals have to target the minimal rural amenities in existence for the minutiae of resources they have on offer. Now I think we all know the banks are carrying nothing in their vaults so there is clearly no point in holding the local branch of Barclays up, and the credit crunch means 99.9% of us are probably able to carry no more than a fiver on our belongings, but what happened to siphoning £50m off the back of a Securicor van?
Even mugging the few remaining bankers still earning over the odds departing their jobs each rush hour in Canary Wharf would yield greater rewards than the cash earned from selling stamps at the local post office.
The idiots, meanwhile, probably didn’t have the foresight to realise that their actions would mean there would be no child benefit for them to collect this week either. Having said that God help us if the triumvirate have ever conceived any children – on this basis their children would set light to the only school in a 36 mile radius leaving them, as well as everyone else, to pay extra on transporting them to the next nearest educational institution.
The computer geeks stealing everybody’s identities must be laughing their noggins off at these British amateurs. Ronnie Biggs will be tearing his hair out and mafia bosses must be shaking their heads in astonishment. It makes me wonder what, if anything, the Brits do with any kind of style or decorum anymore?
Aside from Prince William landing the taxpayer-funded royal helicopter in Kate Middleton’s back yard (no that’s not a euphemism), nothing notable springs to mind. Even the Olympic handover presentation at the end of the Beijing games last year stank of pretentious mediocrity.
Take the Ashes: In 2005, England regained the Ashes by the most miniscule of margins, winning one of the tests by 2 runs. The powers that be talk about that series as though it was an incredible performance (well seeing the Aussies beaten by England probably will be a once-in-a-lifetime achievement I suppose), despite the fact that Michael Vaughan employed about eight substitutes with superior fielding skills to claim the wickets his first eleven could not every time one of the original selection allegedly needed a piddle.
Yet, just two years later and England are comprehensively whitewashed by the same team and little is made of it. When England won a tight series, they over-celebrated an overdue success, while the Aussies took the defeat as a kick up the backside and worked harder than ever to extinguish the loss from their memories. When the boys from down under won, they did it in complete style, while England carried on with the same old boys’ club and policies and have picked up uninspiring results ever since.
It is the same as the brigade of commentators who continue to promulgate the England football world cup success of 1966 when questions about the English game are raised, even though 42 years of dismal underachievement has followed.
People in this country need to realise that Britain has become the joke of Europe: The Napoli football club president Aurelio De Laurentiis this week warned his players against coming to England because “the English live badly, eat badly and their women do not wash their genitalia. To them, a bidet is a mystery.” The only things this country excels at are leading the league tables for teenage pregnancies, STDs and the budget deficit.
Prince Harry’s well-documented night on the tiles in 2005 was newsworthy only owing to his donning of a Swastika-laden jacket (presumably to remind himself of the nation of his ancestry, although who knows what that actually is if his mother spent as much time on her back as she does now, as Paul Burrell and Mohamed Al Fayed would have you believe). Monaco’s former playboy prince must be turning in his grave.
But the debacle surrounding the England cricket leadership this week must top it all off. How is it that someone who is appointed to lead a team is allowed to issue an ultimatum to his own employers? The same inept bosses then decide after approximately 36 hours of discussions that they will regretfully have to let the coach go and persuade the captain to agree to his offer of a resignation. ECB chief Hugh Morris might as well pull his pants down and bend over the discussion tables for KP.
Such weak management would never be tolerated in America. Whether or not you agree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or not, there is no denying that the approach of the United States was at least decisive. If the attacks of September 11 2001 had been on this country, Gordon and his cronies would still be sat pondering over some brandy today whether to retaliate. After all, it’s taken them years to decide whether or not to lay down another piece of cement at Heathrow or not.
So come on England, do something with style at least – send out a coordinated multi-force effort and bring these pension-stealing fleabags to justice (which in this country means being up for and subsequently granted parole in 18 months).
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Saturday, 22 November 2008
Driving us mad
20 November 2008.
Today it was announced there are proposals to impose penalties of 6 licence points for people caught driving at over 20mph over the statutory speed limit. When are these speeding limit fanatics who have almost certainly never had to actually drive a car going to realise speed is one of a plethora of factors contributing to the number of accidents and deaths on the roads?
Maybe one of these intellectually-constipated toe-rags will wake up one day and comprehend that in the real world the average Joe who doesn’t have fifteen of their own personal helicopters to choose from spends more time in gridlock on the UK’s road network each day than Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter spends on her back as it is without slowing them down further. Or perhaps the hapless campaigners are actually plonkers who have lost their licences in the past and consequentially have nothing better to consume their days with now because they can’t go anywhere.
In reality, most people involved in accidents are hopeless drivers who only passed their test by virtue of pulling out the shortest skirt in their wardrobe or by slipping the examiner a monkey. It’s pretty obvious that if people are actually able to drive at 100mph on dual carriageway it’s because there is nothing in front of them to crash into.
This makes them a hell of a lot less of a threat to the nation than people who slam on the breaks on single-track or two-way roads when leaving a 60mph zone for a 30mph area. Or those:
1. who use their rear-view mirror more to apply make-up and check their hair in the morning than to identify potential hazards situated in their vicinity. Frankly, if the issue is that desperate that you’re forced to apply make-up in the car you’re looks are probably so far beyond reprieve that a dab of blusher’s going to make as much difference as Josef Fritzl donating a tenner Rape Victim Support;
2. with at most one hand on the steering wheel as they busily text message or telephone someone which cannot wait five minutes until their journey is over because the recipient is in fact a £1.50 per minute/text sex worker or toy boy the illicit relationship with they don’t want the other half to discover;
3. watching on their portable DVD player material which is doubtless of a questionable nature requiring their hands to be otherwise engaged down their undercrackers if it is that important that it can’t be watched at home in the evening with the wife;
4. too dependent on their errant satellite navigation system such that they follow it the wrong way down a one-way street, onto a railway line or into a river, who would therefore presumably volunteer to put their noggin down a toilet if persuaded it would be a good idea to do so.
The only reason drivers doing 100mph are in accidents is because some half-wit coincidentally doing 69mph pulls out right in front of them or is needlessly sat in the overtaking lane because they still don’t comprehend the concept of mirror, signal, manoeuvre and the outside lane being for overtaking only and not general consumption.
For those still in doubt about this consider someone I met whilst at university who confessed to being in a total of thirteen separate car accidents by the time we graduated. Given the age of university students, a simple calculation means that at best she was involved in on average more than three accidents per annum depending on at what age she passed her test.
Someone involved in so many incidents is simply a hopeless driver. The proliferation is completely unrelated to speed. This young lady drove a Cinquecento after all which does 0-60mph in around 35 minutes. The fact that this girl was tall, slim, blond-haired and an owner of ample twin airbags proves there is more of a correlation between that and passing a driving test than actual driving ability.
This ridiculous obsession of trying to slow the nation down because road campaign groups wrongly insist speed is the sole reason for the UK’s 3,000 road deaths last year has to stop. I sympathise greatly for the sad loss of all you campaign group members’ relatives but frankly you need to look to those who simply can’t drive, those under the influence of various substances and ultimately the UK’s diabolical road system if you want somewhere to shift the blame.
There cannot fail to be a link between these deaths and the prevalence of UK’s underage joy-riders and (minimum of) 500,000 uninsured drivers who have not even been educated about driving either. Or, in the majority of cases, look to yourself because their death probably owes a great deal to the inheritance of your lack of hand-eye coordination skills and flagrant inability to comprehend the concept of common sense.
If there is to be a speed limit it should be a universal flat rate so that there is no sudden change in speed that might surprise drivers behind and cause them to shunt into the car in front or veer off the carriageway. And while you’re at it let’s rip up the abundance of traffic lights which now have a population density of roughly one set per twenty metres across the UK which often serve to have the same brake-slamming effect.
This should sit well with the environmentalists who endlessly tell us that driving at a constant speed is better for emissions, and the saving of electricity from reduced traffic signalling.
Seeing as the Government likes to tell us that green issues are a massive priority of its, the flat rate limit should therefore be around 65mph seeing as emissions are at their lowest in top gear at around this speed. Crawling along at 29mph because of a speed limit is worse for the environment.
The 30mph urban speed limits were only imposed to ensure that the density of pedestrians would not be killed if a car should hit them. Frankly, if a child is hit they’re going to kick the bucket whether it’s at 29mph or 99mph. They might just survive at 5mph – which coincidentally is about the average prevailing speed on most of the nation’s roads during rush hour – but other than that it’s curtains.
For adult pedestrians, if you’re getting hit by a car then there’s blatantly something seriously wrong with you. The rest of us have managed to steer clear of cars as a pedestrian by putting into practice the magic notion of opening our eyes before crossing the road. If this is a concept too complicated for you to understand then really you deserve to be six feet under.
And as for the overhead traffic information signs which tell us to lower our speed because of an accident or congestion to e.g. 40mph on a motorway, go pour petrol on your genitals and set them on fire. If the message has appeared we’ve already been sat in first gear for the last half hour and would give our right arm to go at the speed you’re ‘limiting’ us to for the purpose of ‘protecting’ us.
Meanwhile, the Government also wants to do something about the drink- and drug-driving thresholds. Apparently there is currently no test for driving under the influence of drugs but the Government wants to introduce a limit. With a limit which cannot be policed the test is going to involve a policeman making a driver walk in a straight line and take the stoner’s word for it.
Seeing as people who take the most drugs tend to be those most tolerant to their affects, this approach could also encourage drug-users to up their intake in order to increase their tolerance so they can drive under the influence yet escape getting caught.
In any case, I could be wrong but I thought that there were tests out there for drugs. Some chap by the name of Dwain Chambers, half of all cyclists and the majority of the Russian 2008 Olympic squad spring to mind. What’s the name of that test they do on sportsman? Oh yes, a urine test (or failing that a blood test). State-of-the-art, ultra-expensive, time-consuming and environmentally-harmful? No, it’s a piss-take.
Furthermore, what no-one seems to realise is that the whole problem with the drink-drive limit is that it’s very existence is impracticable. All we hear from health campaigners is that alcohol affects people in different ways, for instance a young, slim woman will be less tolerant to alcohol than an older, stockier male.
In light of this, having a single limit for all discriminates against the less tolerant. In fact, you could interpret this as an invitation to become obese if you want to drink and drive without getting caught. And, believe it or not, rumour has it that there’s a tiny concern that there’s a problem which needs to be addressed and not compounded in respect of one or two people in the UK starting to get a little chubbier.
As it is, I couldn’t even reel off the legal limits if asked to so I’m assuming that is also true of many other people. Is a large glass of wine enough to put people over the legal limit? If it is, there are plenty of people who should not be allowed to take hold of a karaoke microphone after having one (although that also applies after having none in many cases) let alone get in a car.
But there are also many people whose glass of wine would have as much effect on them as Russell Brand’s lewd telephone calls until a few complaints get reported by the media three days later. Imposing the same limit on everyone is therefore ridiculous.
All of these aspects point to the fact that the limit should be nil, but seeing as there is no viable alternative to driving in most parts of the country – because of astronomical taxi costs or a non-existent rail or tram network – this is also impractical.
It seems to me the simplest answer on all these grounds is to electrify the road system. Stay with me on this: The Government purports to support the production of electric cars but is barely enticing manufacturers to do so to keep them turning a healthy profit or to introduce more places to charge the car up.
If the Government were truly committed to lowering emissions, it would look at a much grander scheme in the form of putting electricity lines all along the centre of the roads and fitting each car with a conductor such that the road network becomes one massive but personal tram system.
The environmental improvement is incomprehensible but it can also improve road safety since the electricity-controlled network could be governed by computers such that there is no real need for human involvement at all. Each car could have a box into which an individual inputs their destination upon embarkation.
The computer system then guides the car along the electrically-controlled network to the destination, with the ability to avoid other cars by virtue of the system containing complete knowledge of each and every car’s complete journey.
A speed limit becomes pointless as the computer takes the human error – and by error that means for some of today’s drivers the complete inability to wipe their own backside let alone judge the dynamism of the road system – factor, and subsequently collisions, out of the equation.
This may be radical in the extreme but it would make a change for improvement to be linked with these words rather than terrorism. It is the future.
Today it was announced there are proposals to impose penalties of 6 licence points for people caught driving at over 20mph over the statutory speed limit. When are these speeding limit fanatics who have almost certainly never had to actually drive a car going to realise speed is one of a plethora of factors contributing to the number of accidents and deaths on the roads?
Maybe one of these intellectually-constipated toe-rags will wake up one day and comprehend that in the real world the average Joe who doesn’t have fifteen of their own personal helicopters to choose from spends more time in gridlock on the UK’s road network each day than Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter spends on her back as it is without slowing them down further. Or perhaps the hapless campaigners are actually plonkers who have lost their licences in the past and consequentially have nothing better to consume their days with now because they can’t go anywhere.
In reality, most people involved in accidents are hopeless drivers who only passed their test by virtue of pulling out the shortest skirt in their wardrobe or by slipping the examiner a monkey. It’s pretty obvious that if people are actually able to drive at 100mph on dual carriageway it’s because there is nothing in front of them to crash into.
This makes them a hell of a lot less of a threat to the nation than people who slam on the breaks on single-track or two-way roads when leaving a 60mph zone for a 30mph area. Or those:
1. who use their rear-view mirror more to apply make-up and check their hair in the morning than to identify potential hazards situated in their vicinity. Frankly, if the issue is that desperate that you’re forced to apply make-up in the car you’re looks are probably so far beyond reprieve that a dab of blusher’s going to make as much difference as Josef Fritzl donating a tenner Rape Victim Support;
2. with at most one hand on the steering wheel as they busily text message or telephone someone which cannot wait five minutes until their journey is over because the recipient is in fact a £1.50 per minute/text sex worker or toy boy the illicit relationship with they don’t want the other half to discover;
3. watching on their portable DVD player material which is doubtless of a questionable nature requiring their hands to be otherwise engaged down their undercrackers if it is that important that it can’t be watched at home in the evening with the wife;
4. too dependent on their errant satellite navigation system such that they follow it the wrong way down a one-way street, onto a railway line or into a river, who would therefore presumably volunteer to put their noggin down a toilet if persuaded it would be a good idea to do so.
The only reason drivers doing 100mph are in accidents is because some half-wit coincidentally doing 69mph pulls out right in front of them or is needlessly sat in the overtaking lane because they still don’t comprehend the concept of mirror, signal, manoeuvre and the outside lane being for overtaking only and not general consumption.
For those still in doubt about this consider someone I met whilst at university who confessed to being in a total of thirteen separate car accidents by the time we graduated. Given the age of university students, a simple calculation means that at best she was involved in on average more than three accidents per annum depending on at what age she passed her test.
Someone involved in so many incidents is simply a hopeless driver. The proliferation is completely unrelated to speed. This young lady drove a Cinquecento after all which does 0-60mph in around 35 minutes. The fact that this girl was tall, slim, blond-haired and an owner of ample twin airbags proves there is more of a correlation between that and passing a driving test than actual driving ability.
This ridiculous obsession of trying to slow the nation down because road campaign groups wrongly insist speed is the sole reason for the UK’s 3,000 road deaths last year has to stop. I sympathise greatly for the sad loss of all you campaign group members’ relatives but frankly you need to look to those who simply can’t drive, those under the influence of various substances and ultimately the UK’s diabolical road system if you want somewhere to shift the blame.
There cannot fail to be a link between these deaths and the prevalence of UK’s underage joy-riders and (minimum of) 500,000 uninsured drivers who have not even been educated about driving either. Or, in the majority of cases, look to yourself because their death probably owes a great deal to the inheritance of your lack of hand-eye coordination skills and flagrant inability to comprehend the concept of common sense.
If there is to be a speed limit it should be a universal flat rate so that there is no sudden change in speed that might surprise drivers behind and cause them to shunt into the car in front or veer off the carriageway. And while you’re at it let’s rip up the abundance of traffic lights which now have a population density of roughly one set per twenty metres across the UK which often serve to have the same brake-slamming effect.
This should sit well with the environmentalists who endlessly tell us that driving at a constant speed is better for emissions, and the saving of electricity from reduced traffic signalling.
Seeing as the Government likes to tell us that green issues are a massive priority of its, the flat rate limit should therefore be around 65mph seeing as emissions are at their lowest in top gear at around this speed. Crawling along at 29mph because of a speed limit is worse for the environment.
The 30mph urban speed limits were only imposed to ensure that the density of pedestrians would not be killed if a car should hit them. Frankly, if a child is hit they’re going to kick the bucket whether it’s at 29mph or 99mph. They might just survive at 5mph – which coincidentally is about the average prevailing speed on most of the nation’s roads during rush hour – but other than that it’s curtains.
For adult pedestrians, if you’re getting hit by a car then there’s blatantly something seriously wrong with you. The rest of us have managed to steer clear of cars as a pedestrian by putting into practice the magic notion of opening our eyes before crossing the road. If this is a concept too complicated for you to understand then really you deserve to be six feet under.
And as for the overhead traffic information signs which tell us to lower our speed because of an accident or congestion to e.g. 40mph on a motorway, go pour petrol on your genitals and set them on fire. If the message has appeared we’ve already been sat in first gear for the last half hour and would give our right arm to go at the speed you’re ‘limiting’ us to for the purpose of ‘protecting’ us.
Meanwhile, the Government also wants to do something about the drink- and drug-driving thresholds. Apparently there is currently no test for driving under the influence of drugs but the Government wants to introduce a limit. With a limit which cannot be policed the test is going to involve a policeman making a driver walk in a straight line and take the stoner’s word for it.
Seeing as people who take the most drugs tend to be those most tolerant to their affects, this approach could also encourage drug-users to up their intake in order to increase their tolerance so they can drive under the influence yet escape getting caught.
In any case, I could be wrong but I thought that there were tests out there for drugs. Some chap by the name of Dwain Chambers, half of all cyclists and the majority of the Russian 2008 Olympic squad spring to mind. What’s the name of that test they do on sportsman? Oh yes, a urine test (or failing that a blood test). State-of-the-art, ultra-expensive, time-consuming and environmentally-harmful? No, it’s a piss-take.
Furthermore, what no-one seems to realise is that the whole problem with the drink-drive limit is that it’s very existence is impracticable. All we hear from health campaigners is that alcohol affects people in different ways, for instance a young, slim woman will be less tolerant to alcohol than an older, stockier male.
In light of this, having a single limit for all discriminates against the less tolerant. In fact, you could interpret this as an invitation to become obese if you want to drink and drive without getting caught. And, believe it or not, rumour has it that there’s a tiny concern that there’s a problem which needs to be addressed and not compounded in respect of one or two people in the UK starting to get a little chubbier.
As it is, I couldn’t even reel off the legal limits if asked to so I’m assuming that is also true of many other people. Is a large glass of wine enough to put people over the legal limit? If it is, there are plenty of people who should not be allowed to take hold of a karaoke microphone after having one (although that also applies after having none in many cases) let alone get in a car.
But there are also many people whose glass of wine would have as much effect on them as Russell Brand’s lewd telephone calls until a few complaints get reported by the media three days later. Imposing the same limit on everyone is therefore ridiculous.
All of these aspects point to the fact that the limit should be nil, but seeing as there is no viable alternative to driving in most parts of the country – because of astronomical taxi costs or a non-existent rail or tram network – this is also impractical.
It seems to me the simplest answer on all these grounds is to electrify the road system. Stay with me on this: The Government purports to support the production of electric cars but is barely enticing manufacturers to do so to keep them turning a healthy profit or to introduce more places to charge the car up.
If the Government were truly committed to lowering emissions, it would look at a much grander scheme in the form of putting electricity lines all along the centre of the roads and fitting each car with a conductor such that the road network becomes one massive but personal tram system.
The environmental improvement is incomprehensible but it can also improve road safety since the electricity-controlled network could be governed by computers such that there is no real need for human involvement at all. Each car could have a box into which an individual inputs their destination upon embarkation.
The computer system then guides the car along the electrically-controlled network to the destination, with the ability to avoid other cars by virtue of the system containing complete knowledge of each and every car’s complete journey.
A speed limit becomes pointless as the computer takes the human error – and by error that means for some of today’s drivers the complete inability to wipe their own backside let alone judge the dynamism of the road system – factor, and subsequently collisions, out of the equation.
This may be radical in the extreme but it would make a change for improvement to be linked with these words rather than terrorism. It is the future.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Let's not talk about sex
24 October 2008.
Sex education for five year olds? What a bloody great idea. Let’s try and explain to children about Action Man putting his pee-pee into Barbie’s wibble-wobble. Do our retched policy makers still not realise instructing inept teachers to advise on the birds and the bees only make things worse?
This idea seems to be backed by as much common sense as the Leeds City Council traffic marking subcontractors who decided to paint double yellow lines around a parked car into the middle of the road instead of waiting for the car to move before completing the job (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7687600.stm).
The system is diabolical enough as it is. Don’t go around giving out condoms and illustrating how to put them on; that’s equivalent to arriving at a year 9’s first slumber party, handing out hypodermic needles and demonstrating how to inject oneself. This has the opposite effect to that desired so when we find out teenage pregnancy and STD rates are soaring it’s about as surprising as hearing investment in your area has been cut because council budgets have been run dry paying benefits to sixteen year old girls pregnant with their umpteenth child.
There is no reason why sex education currently given to teenagers shouldn’t suffice. We just need to spice it up a bit that’s all. Tell the boys that if they ever even try and put their finger on a girl’s arm they’ll catch HIV and never be able to walk again. Explain to the girls that if they try and kiss a guy their tongue will fall off and they’ll be resigned to a life of non-stop menstruation.
Ok maybe some teenagers in the less deprived areas of the UK might not believe this but if we’re going to introduce sex education for children fresh out of nurseries then surely this approach needs to be taken for them. Why can’t we just lie to the little nippers like we do elsewhere?
We tell children Santa Claus is real instead of explaining the man sat in the shopping centre dressed in a red suit each Christmas is actually a local paedophile who comes off benefits for one month a year so he can rub his boner up against them for his own sexual gratification when they sit on his “knee”.
He’ll unload his sack for them and have a package for them alright, and they certainly won’t forget it, but if we actually told our kids the best present they can get off him is to avoid being the one he waits for at the school gates one day, we wouldn’t need to break the bank each year just to fund the overpriced purchase of a worthless toy from the manufacturer with the largest marketing budget.
Go tell them actually this year there’s going to be no chimney action not just because there’s no little Saint Nick to come down it but because you can’t afford to heat your home because you injudiciously took out eighteen credit cards when the banks weren’t being scrutinised and busted their limit because you’re too dim to realise that some day you’ll actually have to pay them off. See where that gets you.
Think about all the children that have been sadistically convinced to avidly brush their teeth solely by instilling fear of the dentist’s wrath for non-compliance into the child’s impressionable minds. We need to tell our primary school pupils that even touching a person of the other sex will result in a lifetime of incessant bedwetting or that pregnancy should be avoided at all costs unless they never want to consume sweets again.
Failing that, a bit of discipline has to be the answer. While I’m by no means promoting extreme violence, the drug dealer appearing in court today for shooting a man in the leg and cutting part of a woman’s ear off because of non-payment of £380 and £10 debts respectively (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7687555.stm) has the semblances of a sensible approach.
The fact that this same woman was a few years ago the first to be imprisoned for her daughter’s truancy exemplifies the fact that words and light punishments don’t have the desired effect. Recurrent clouting of people with a frying pan in their formative years every time they show any interest in a member of the opposing sex will undoubtedly serve to delay their sexual curiosity, however.
For teachers, meanwhile, this simply means bring back the cane. Or, to show a more contemporary approach, insert some form of tranquilising device by the bicycle sheds which, when two pupils become affectionately involved there and are spotted on school CCTV, is activated at the press of the CCTV operative’s button.
It’s simple really.
Sex education for five year olds? What a bloody great idea. Let’s try and explain to children about Action Man putting his pee-pee into Barbie’s wibble-wobble. Do our retched policy makers still not realise instructing inept teachers to advise on the birds and the bees only make things worse?
This idea seems to be backed by as much common sense as the Leeds City Council traffic marking subcontractors who decided to paint double yellow lines around a parked car into the middle of the road instead of waiting for the car to move before completing the job (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7687600.stm).
The system is diabolical enough as it is. Don’t go around giving out condoms and illustrating how to put them on; that’s equivalent to arriving at a year 9’s first slumber party, handing out hypodermic needles and demonstrating how to inject oneself. This has the opposite effect to that desired so when we find out teenage pregnancy and STD rates are soaring it’s about as surprising as hearing investment in your area has been cut because council budgets have been run dry paying benefits to sixteen year old girls pregnant with their umpteenth child.
There is no reason why sex education currently given to teenagers shouldn’t suffice. We just need to spice it up a bit that’s all. Tell the boys that if they ever even try and put their finger on a girl’s arm they’ll catch HIV and never be able to walk again. Explain to the girls that if they try and kiss a guy their tongue will fall off and they’ll be resigned to a life of non-stop menstruation.
Ok maybe some teenagers in the less deprived areas of the UK might not believe this but if we’re going to introduce sex education for children fresh out of nurseries then surely this approach needs to be taken for them. Why can’t we just lie to the little nippers like we do elsewhere?
We tell children Santa Claus is real instead of explaining the man sat in the shopping centre dressed in a red suit each Christmas is actually a local paedophile who comes off benefits for one month a year so he can rub his boner up against them for his own sexual gratification when they sit on his “knee”.
He’ll unload his sack for them and have a package for them alright, and they certainly won’t forget it, but if we actually told our kids the best present they can get off him is to avoid being the one he waits for at the school gates one day, we wouldn’t need to break the bank each year just to fund the overpriced purchase of a worthless toy from the manufacturer with the largest marketing budget.
Go tell them actually this year there’s going to be no chimney action not just because there’s no little Saint Nick to come down it but because you can’t afford to heat your home because you injudiciously took out eighteen credit cards when the banks weren’t being scrutinised and busted their limit because you’re too dim to realise that some day you’ll actually have to pay them off. See where that gets you.
Think about all the children that have been sadistically convinced to avidly brush their teeth solely by instilling fear of the dentist’s wrath for non-compliance into the child’s impressionable minds. We need to tell our primary school pupils that even touching a person of the other sex will result in a lifetime of incessant bedwetting or that pregnancy should be avoided at all costs unless they never want to consume sweets again.
Failing that, a bit of discipline has to be the answer. While I’m by no means promoting extreme violence, the drug dealer appearing in court today for shooting a man in the leg and cutting part of a woman’s ear off because of non-payment of £380 and £10 debts respectively (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7687555.stm) has the semblances of a sensible approach.
The fact that this same woman was a few years ago the first to be imprisoned for her daughter’s truancy exemplifies the fact that words and light punishments don’t have the desired effect. Recurrent clouting of people with a frying pan in their formative years every time they show any interest in a member of the opposing sex will undoubtedly serve to delay their sexual curiosity, however.
For teachers, meanwhile, this simply means bring back the cane. Or, to show a more contemporary approach, insert some form of tranquilising device by the bicycle sheds which, when two pupils become affectionately involved there and are spotted on school CCTV, is activated at the press of the CCTV operative’s button.
It’s simple really.
Banged up abroad
17 October 2008.
So the two Brits caught copulating on a Dubai beach have been banged up. Whatever the Sharia law sentence applied, having seen pictures of the pair the most criminal element in all this seems to be that the couple were allowed to engage in coitus at all. The human race will eventually evolve into a repulsive species if people the world over who look like that are bumping uglies.
This incident highlights the problem with the rise of the chav. Although the Brits holidaying in Dubai were staying in five star accommodation, back home council estate inhabitants are replicating their behaviour: Here the estate’s allotment is the beach, and a bottle of White Lightning represents the Dubai couple’s champagne.
The key difference is that over here the equivalent people seem to be either too impoverished or too stupid to strap it up before they slap it up. The fact these same amorous antics are being undertaken by people half the Dubai holidaymakers’ age means at least two generations of chavs are being churned out in the time the rest of the UK’s baby-delaying population create one.
It does not take a genius to realise that at this Dawn of the Dead-esque zombie-breeding rate, chavs will form the majority of this country’s population before too long. Are these the people you want attending the same nursery as your children, voting on issues that affect you, working for you and sitting next to you on public transport?
Or, if you’re struggling to comprehend that question, substitute “Are these the people” for “Is Josef Fritzl the person” and ask yourself again. Clearly the answer is about as much as Dot Cotton giving a lap dance hence if you answered in the affirmative, abandon this bi-annual internet café visit, go back to your council estate and for once in your life invest our taxes aka your benefits in something useful like shampoo, spot cream, a lifetime supply of contraceptives or a barricade so you cannot ever get out of your front door again – not another B-wise shell-suit.
Apart from someone touring the country’s council estates with a van full of equipment to undertake mass vasectomies and hysterectomies, or holding them all at gunpoint until they’ve all severed off their own genitals with the blades they like displaying on CCTV, it seems there is little that can be done to stop these acne-laden misfits taking over.
Short of sending the winner of the inaugural winner of Mr Gay UK round to cook up a feast, perhaps the only option is to lock all the facially-loathsome and intellectually-deprived up like our United Arab Emirates friends have done, although that will never happen in a country like the UK where a proposal for legislation restricting the ability to smack children is being debated, when actually the reverse – i.e. universal use of the cane – should be enforced.
The reprobates probably can’t afford an abortion for one. Then there’s the issue that they’re most likely too stupid to realise that they’re even pregnant, given that most chavs seem to spend as much time in school as Ledley King spends on a football field.
Not in education, the basis for their aggregate intelligence stems from things like Radio 1, where an entire show’s team were unable between them this week to explain how the moon affects tides, and, previously, why the Government should not purely print more money to overcome the current financial crisis.
This, mind you, is against a backdrop of a fellow show’s idea this week for a segment being to entice its entire audience to text message in any song that he would play three of after counting down the submission time limit. Another song could have been squeezed in the time it took to explain the segment, and Seve Ballesteros could have come up with that idea anaesthetised during his brain tumour ops.
Indeed, the message cost charged in doing so is more criminal than the phone competitions scam, although those idiotic enough to actually submit a song are clearly about as smart as a bowl of pig swill. Whether that’s more shocking than the BBC using the licence fee to record its abysmal jingles at the £10,000 an hour Abbey Road studios is up for you to fathom.
Worse still, the overall theme of the show this week is to simply tour a few of the nation’s university student digs, inspecting the undergraduate’s consumption habits and facilities. Wow. That’s about as entertaining as stuffing a hedgehog inside your rectum, and as imaginative as eating turkey at Christmas. I’d rather stare at a map of the world’s best public toilets.
If the Beeb is that stuck for ideas to fill its presenters’ six-figure-salaried shows, why not just play music and employ no presenter? Or are the brainless chavs now diffusing into other sectors of society and slowly taking over such that the rest of us are already condemned to their inferior acumen?
So the two Brits caught copulating on a Dubai beach have been banged up. Whatever the Sharia law sentence applied, having seen pictures of the pair the most criminal element in all this seems to be that the couple were allowed to engage in coitus at all. The human race will eventually evolve into a repulsive species if people the world over who look like that are bumping uglies.
This incident highlights the problem with the rise of the chav. Although the Brits holidaying in Dubai were staying in five star accommodation, back home council estate inhabitants are replicating their behaviour: Here the estate’s allotment is the beach, and a bottle of White Lightning represents the Dubai couple’s champagne.
The key difference is that over here the equivalent people seem to be either too impoverished or too stupid to strap it up before they slap it up. The fact these same amorous antics are being undertaken by people half the Dubai holidaymakers’ age means at least two generations of chavs are being churned out in the time the rest of the UK’s baby-delaying population create one.
It does not take a genius to realise that at this Dawn of the Dead-esque zombie-breeding rate, chavs will form the majority of this country’s population before too long. Are these the people you want attending the same nursery as your children, voting on issues that affect you, working for you and sitting next to you on public transport?
Or, if you’re struggling to comprehend that question, substitute “Are these the people” for “Is Josef Fritzl the person” and ask yourself again. Clearly the answer is about as much as Dot Cotton giving a lap dance hence if you answered in the affirmative, abandon this bi-annual internet café visit, go back to your council estate and for once in your life invest our taxes aka your benefits in something useful like shampoo, spot cream, a lifetime supply of contraceptives or a barricade so you cannot ever get out of your front door again – not another B-wise shell-suit.
Apart from someone touring the country’s council estates with a van full of equipment to undertake mass vasectomies and hysterectomies, or holding them all at gunpoint until they’ve all severed off their own genitals with the blades they like displaying on CCTV, it seems there is little that can be done to stop these acne-laden misfits taking over.
Short of sending the winner of the inaugural winner of Mr Gay UK round to cook up a feast, perhaps the only option is to lock all the facially-loathsome and intellectually-deprived up like our United Arab Emirates friends have done, although that will never happen in a country like the UK where a proposal for legislation restricting the ability to smack children is being debated, when actually the reverse – i.e. universal use of the cane – should be enforced.
The reprobates probably can’t afford an abortion for one. Then there’s the issue that they’re most likely too stupid to realise that they’re even pregnant, given that most chavs seem to spend as much time in school as Ledley King spends on a football field.
Not in education, the basis for their aggregate intelligence stems from things like Radio 1, where an entire show’s team were unable between them this week to explain how the moon affects tides, and, previously, why the Government should not purely print more money to overcome the current financial crisis.
This, mind you, is against a backdrop of a fellow show’s idea this week for a segment being to entice its entire audience to text message in any song that he would play three of after counting down the submission time limit. Another song could have been squeezed in the time it took to explain the segment, and Seve Ballesteros could have come up with that idea anaesthetised during his brain tumour ops.
Indeed, the message cost charged in doing so is more criminal than the phone competitions scam, although those idiotic enough to actually submit a song are clearly about as smart as a bowl of pig swill. Whether that’s more shocking than the BBC using the licence fee to record its abysmal jingles at the £10,000 an hour Abbey Road studios is up for you to fathom.
Worse still, the overall theme of the show this week is to simply tour a few of the nation’s university student digs, inspecting the undergraduate’s consumption habits and facilities. Wow. That’s about as entertaining as stuffing a hedgehog inside your rectum, and as imaginative as eating turkey at Christmas. I’d rather stare at a map of the world’s best public toilets.
If the Beeb is that stuck for ideas to fill its presenters’ six-figure-salaried shows, why not just play music and employ no presenter? Or are the brainless chavs now diffusing into other sectors of society and slowly taking over such that the rest of us are already condemned to their inferior acumen?
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Off the rails
3 October 2008.
In David Cameron’s big speech this week he confirmed that the Tories would scrap proposals for a third runway at Heathrow in favour of a high-speed rail link between London and Manchester. This is quite possibly the most underwhelming announcement since, well two weeks ago when Joe Kinnear was appointed Newcastle United manager.
Perhaps idiotic ideas are a Tory theme at the moment, however: Boris Johnson’s view on the matter was to build a new airport somewhere in the Thames estuary or, in other words, stuff the environmental impact (a new runway would have to be built there) and stuff the cost factor (millions would have to be ploughed into a new airport terminal). The worst approach on both counts but anything except increasing Heathrow’s capacity is obviously acceptable in these circles.
David Cameron’s other big election promise this week was to not increase council tax for two years. Wow, that really makes me want to dance on the rooftops. In any case, he’ll probably up it at eighteen times the rate of inflation in the third year and take in more in tax revenues overall.
And his solution to the UK’s tax system that millions are calling unfair and is pushing more people to poverty as costs rise? Increase the inheritance tax threshold. Just what the working class families struggling to eat this winter need (well I suppose it could come in handy when whole families start dying of starvation as they could be the way things are going). As long as his cronies who spend their days asleep in the House of Lords do not have to surrender any of their vast inheritances upon death, all is well in the world of David Cameron.
For the UK to retain its economic power, it is absolutely essential Heathrow’s effectiveness as the world’s leading airport is made a priority. Heathrow is already at greater than full capacity. What this country does not need is another railway line linking the country’s infrastructure-rich cities in order to relieve Heathrow of at best one-sixth of the extra passengers it needs to service.
In addition, at £27 billion and not due for completion until 2027 – by which time the UK will have faded into the economic wilderness – the plan appears to be a bigger waste of time and money than Damien Hirst’s latest “art” collection, Betamax and the Sinclair C5 put together. I’d rather play hide and seek with a komodo dragon than see my taxes allocated in this way.
Forgive my ignorance but surely a runway only requires the laying of a strip of tarmac. At worst this should cost a few million pounds and take a couple of years to complete. Give me a cement mixer and steamroller and I’ll do it for them at half the cost. The other £26.9 billion allocated for the high speed railway line can be spent instead undoing the last preposterous railways decision – the destruction of lines and stations by Beeching in the 1960s.
Restoring desperately-needed rail links will provide a real service to the millions of citizens of this country who actually need it and not those anus-bashing, Eton-schooled, Oxbridge-educated, John Lewis list-abusing idiots charged with running this country who cannot be bothered to wait an extra 45 minutes to get to Manchester for another hot air-filled bondage session to discuss how they can con more money from the public to service their lavish lifestyles.
To those that claim that cuts to the railway network were needed because some lines were cost effective, go engage in coitus with a peacock. The NHS was set up to provide this country’s people with a service badly needed but it has never been cost-effective.
Indeed, the thousands of inefficient bus services retained in this country are not still in abundance because they are cost-effective but because there is an essential requirement for them. The same principle should be applied to trains – except trains should gain preference as they do not emit noxious gases and slow road users down.
Reopening these stations and lines does not even have to be expensive. Some of the lines are still around but simply not in use. Meanwhile, why not just invest in smaller stations where fewer passengers would pass through? There is no requirement for staff to work there or even for much of a building. Just insert one computerised ticket booth on the platform at each station and have perhaps one train passing through an hour.
There is no need for full stations in population-sparse areas like the Silverlink line currently exemplifies. For these occasional, unprofitable travellers they now have their necessary service but it is not costing an arm and a leg: Income low but now cost low - job done. In fact, some of the current stops on this nation’s rail links can barely be classified as stations as it is so little would change.
In any case, the sheer size of the money allocated by David Cameron to build yet another line between London and Manchester would mean there would probably still be some left over even after building the third runway, reopening useful railway links, paying the BBC to shunt the incessant US election coverage, funding the deportation of Kerry Katona and employing DC’s personal rectum-scratcher to shut up the minority of Greenpeace activists with payments for carbon offsets or investment in other green projects.
In the meantime the Government will drag its heels and distribute taxpayers’ money into its Heathrow “inquiry” quicker than drug dealers their poorly-bred canines. The inquiry will doubtless be more drawn out than a Stephen Hawking rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody so as to delay any finding until after the next general election. The conclusion, furthermore, will probably simply state that more analysis is needed and any action delayed until that is undertaken. All the while Amsterdam’s Schipol airport will probably be adding to its five runways.
For the miniscule proportion of the population opposed to a third runway at Heathrow, i.e. the local inhabitants, their defence seems to be predicated on the fact that its creation will increase noise pollution and disruption to the area. Do these halfwits not think any chance of peace and quiet slightly went out the window when the first runway was built?
An extra runway is hardly going to make a seismic difference to these people’s apparently pointless lives. Yes, there is a need to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint but one runway is hardly going to change the face of the planet. Most traffic there would only be existing flights transferred from the current overcrowded runways.
This is where the UK’s political system falls apart – the development of the majority is constrained by a minute number of inbreeding reprobates with about as much concept of altruism as a paedophile’s toenail. If a referendum on the matter had been called when a need for a third runway was recognised, it would already have been built. The minorities which seem to cause inertia in every facet of UK life would be defeated more emphatically than a Brazilian trying to board an underground train with a rucksack.
Swiss citizens are said to be among the happiest in the world. Surely it is no coincidence that it its citizens are also involved in more referendums each year than Russell Brand gets through bottles of Herbal Essences.
After all, what proportion of Brits support the bailing out of all of its banks? While the Government bends over for the banks more often than an armless dwarf experiencing their first taste of prison, I would wager thousands on a successful referendum which asks whether the UK supports the mass execution of bankers – or just ordering repayment of their earnings to the poorest UK citizens – who made millions out of the boom years in exchange for now plummeting the masses into financial difficulty.
Or one which allows the bail-out on the condition that the banks actually pass on the Government’s generosity to the taxpayers that are bailing them out in the form of cheap, minimal-deposit mortgages and abolition of bank charges and overdraft interest.
Let’s be honest if you or me went to the Government and said “Please Mr Brown, I’m going to go bankrupt unless you bail me out” how likely is it that he’ll drop his pants, get on his knees and stump up the cash to someone like us who has actually been sensible with their money?
In David Cameron’s big speech this week he confirmed that the Tories would scrap proposals for a third runway at Heathrow in favour of a high-speed rail link between London and Manchester. This is quite possibly the most underwhelming announcement since, well two weeks ago when Joe Kinnear was appointed Newcastle United manager.
Perhaps idiotic ideas are a Tory theme at the moment, however: Boris Johnson’s view on the matter was to build a new airport somewhere in the Thames estuary or, in other words, stuff the environmental impact (a new runway would have to be built there) and stuff the cost factor (millions would have to be ploughed into a new airport terminal). The worst approach on both counts but anything except increasing Heathrow’s capacity is obviously acceptable in these circles.
David Cameron’s other big election promise this week was to not increase council tax for two years. Wow, that really makes me want to dance on the rooftops. In any case, he’ll probably up it at eighteen times the rate of inflation in the third year and take in more in tax revenues overall.
And his solution to the UK’s tax system that millions are calling unfair and is pushing more people to poverty as costs rise? Increase the inheritance tax threshold. Just what the working class families struggling to eat this winter need (well I suppose it could come in handy when whole families start dying of starvation as they could be the way things are going). As long as his cronies who spend their days asleep in the House of Lords do not have to surrender any of their vast inheritances upon death, all is well in the world of David Cameron.
For the UK to retain its economic power, it is absolutely essential Heathrow’s effectiveness as the world’s leading airport is made a priority. Heathrow is already at greater than full capacity. What this country does not need is another railway line linking the country’s infrastructure-rich cities in order to relieve Heathrow of at best one-sixth of the extra passengers it needs to service.
In addition, at £27 billion and not due for completion until 2027 – by which time the UK will have faded into the economic wilderness – the plan appears to be a bigger waste of time and money than Damien Hirst’s latest “art” collection, Betamax and the Sinclair C5 put together. I’d rather play hide and seek with a komodo dragon than see my taxes allocated in this way.
Forgive my ignorance but surely a runway only requires the laying of a strip of tarmac. At worst this should cost a few million pounds and take a couple of years to complete. Give me a cement mixer and steamroller and I’ll do it for them at half the cost. The other £26.9 billion allocated for the high speed railway line can be spent instead undoing the last preposterous railways decision – the destruction of lines and stations by Beeching in the 1960s.
Restoring desperately-needed rail links will provide a real service to the millions of citizens of this country who actually need it and not those anus-bashing, Eton-schooled, Oxbridge-educated, John Lewis list-abusing idiots charged with running this country who cannot be bothered to wait an extra 45 minutes to get to Manchester for another hot air-filled bondage session to discuss how they can con more money from the public to service their lavish lifestyles.
To those that claim that cuts to the railway network were needed because some lines were cost effective, go engage in coitus with a peacock. The NHS was set up to provide this country’s people with a service badly needed but it has never been cost-effective.
Indeed, the thousands of inefficient bus services retained in this country are not still in abundance because they are cost-effective but because there is an essential requirement for them. The same principle should be applied to trains – except trains should gain preference as they do not emit noxious gases and slow road users down.
Reopening these stations and lines does not even have to be expensive. Some of the lines are still around but simply not in use. Meanwhile, why not just invest in smaller stations where fewer passengers would pass through? There is no requirement for staff to work there or even for much of a building. Just insert one computerised ticket booth on the platform at each station and have perhaps one train passing through an hour.
There is no need for full stations in population-sparse areas like the Silverlink line currently exemplifies. For these occasional, unprofitable travellers they now have their necessary service but it is not costing an arm and a leg: Income low but now cost low - job done. In fact, some of the current stops on this nation’s rail links can barely be classified as stations as it is so little would change.
In any case, the sheer size of the money allocated by David Cameron to build yet another line between London and Manchester would mean there would probably still be some left over even after building the third runway, reopening useful railway links, paying the BBC to shunt the incessant US election coverage, funding the deportation of Kerry Katona and employing DC’s personal rectum-scratcher to shut up the minority of Greenpeace activists with payments for carbon offsets or investment in other green projects.
In the meantime the Government will drag its heels and distribute taxpayers’ money into its Heathrow “inquiry” quicker than drug dealers their poorly-bred canines. The inquiry will doubtless be more drawn out than a Stephen Hawking rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody so as to delay any finding until after the next general election. The conclusion, furthermore, will probably simply state that more analysis is needed and any action delayed until that is undertaken. All the while Amsterdam’s Schipol airport will probably be adding to its five runways.
For the miniscule proportion of the population opposed to a third runway at Heathrow, i.e. the local inhabitants, their defence seems to be predicated on the fact that its creation will increase noise pollution and disruption to the area. Do these halfwits not think any chance of peace and quiet slightly went out the window when the first runway was built?
An extra runway is hardly going to make a seismic difference to these people’s apparently pointless lives. Yes, there is a need to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint but one runway is hardly going to change the face of the planet. Most traffic there would only be existing flights transferred from the current overcrowded runways.
This is where the UK’s political system falls apart – the development of the majority is constrained by a minute number of inbreeding reprobates with about as much concept of altruism as a paedophile’s toenail. If a referendum on the matter had been called when a need for a third runway was recognised, it would already have been built. The minorities which seem to cause inertia in every facet of UK life would be defeated more emphatically than a Brazilian trying to board an underground train with a rucksack.
Swiss citizens are said to be among the happiest in the world. Surely it is no coincidence that it its citizens are also involved in more referendums each year than Russell Brand gets through bottles of Herbal Essences.
After all, what proportion of Brits support the bailing out of all of its banks? While the Government bends over for the banks more often than an armless dwarf experiencing their first taste of prison, I would wager thousands on a successful referendum which asks whether the UK supports the mass execution of bankers – or just ordering repayment of their earnings to the poorest UK citizens – who made millions out of the boom years in exchange for now plummeting the masses into financial difficulty.
Or one which allows the bail-out on the condition that the banks actually pass on the Government’s generosity to the taxpayers that are bailing them out in the form of cheap, minimal-deposit mortgages and abolition of bank charges and overdraft interest.
Let’s be honest if you or me went to the Government and said “Please Mr Brown, I’m going to go bankrupt unless you bail me out” how likely is it that he’ll drop his pants, get on his knees and stump up the cash to someone like us who has actually been sensible with their money?
Saturday, 27 September 2008
The bare cheek of it
19 September 2008.
Two separate but related international stories broke today: Firstly, an Australian bar has come under scrutiny after running a “No Undie Sundie” promotion in which women receive free drinks in return for the removal of their undercrackers. In Uganda, meanwhile, the ethics minister wants a ban on mini-skirts because they are dangerous to male drivers.
Why should there be any consternation over these subjects? What right do “authorities” have in prohibiting women wearing (or not) what they want? If women are willing to rid themselves of their laderhosen then so be it – that is their human right. It is not like these women are running through Melbourne’s streets like Frank the tank, or facilitating organised naturism.
In any case, there are some fairly high profile and successful bars around the globe where the main attraction is girls wearing a lot less than simply no underwear. Indeed, these women get paid for doing so in the form of cash rather than simply alcoholic beverages, yet these rarely attract the attention witnessed today.
Or, to view the consternation from another angle, I’d happily shed my boxers if a bar was offering free pints of San Miguel in return for me freeing up the crown jewels. Unfortunately, a promotion of that nature is about as likely to eventuate as Osama Bin Laden walking out from his cave waving a white flag while singing God Save The Queen.
An Australian observer commented that a girl removing her thong in a bar is tantamount to an invitation to sexual assault. Forgive my reckless understanding of legislative terminology but if there is an invitation involved how can any act that follows constitute an assault?
Similarly, the Ugandan ethics minister stated that the women wearing mini-skirts are essentially naked. Now perhaps Uganda has a unique slant on the English language but surely someone is either naked or not. If someone has donned a mini-skirt they are not naked in my book. It equates to describing something as slightly random or partially impossible. There is no continuum with naked at one end and clothed at the other.
Or perhaps our Ugandan friend has adopted an unusual take on the classic psychological debate about whether the glass is half full or half empty. Most people would classify a lady in a mini-skirt as being half-dressed, but in Uganda they are half-naked.
Now I’m not denying that there are plenty of people in this world that should not be allowed to wear mini-skirts. The sight of such people does about as much for the health of others as a wrongly-produced MMR injection which actually contains MRSA, C-difficile and E.coli. In fact, I’d rather be forced to stare at my own scrotum for four days solid. To condemn or legislate against it, however, is disgraceful.
If there is to be legislation prohibiting the presence of mini-skirts, surely there first needs to be an act which ensures people’s eyesight is retained through the criminalisation of builder’s bum, teenage boys walking around with their hand down their pants, and botched cosmetic surgery.
Moreover, if bars want to clean up their act, they should first ban morbidly obese people after 10pm on Friday and Saturday nights. In a crowded venue, it is inevitable that, en route to the toilet, some drunken fatty brushes their sweaty bingo wings all over you. Those lucky enough to escape that fate will, upon reaching the gents, be subjected instead to some drunken idiot swaying like the audience during Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms with the result that their urine ends up on your best shirt and jeans.
The usual rubbish about the conduct being offensive to other people has been spouted. That view carries about as much weight as the excretion that flows from the mouths of the presenters of Psychic TV. Only the people that go to the Australian bar in question can have an opinion on the matter, yet there was no word of discontent from either the females who were given free drinks in this time of bare economic hardship or the males who were watching the women get plastered quicker than a wall on DIY SOS.
That may be somewhat attributable to those who frequent the bar being too sozzled to construct a simple sentence (much like Shane McGowan all day every day), but the crux of the matter is that these people had some cheap fun and that is about as common in this day and age as Kenzie turning down a part in a dreadful reality TV show.
Two separate but related international stories broke today: Firstly, an Australian bar has come under scrutiny after running a “No Undie Sundie” promotion in which women receive free drinks in return for the removal of their undercrackers. In Uganda, meanwhile, the ethics minister wants a ban on mini-skirts because they are dangerous to male drivers.
Why should there be any consternation over these subjects? What right do “authorities” have in prohibiting women wearing (or not) what they want? If women are willing to rid themselves of their laderhosen then so be it – that is their human right. It is not like these women are running through Melbourne’s streets like Frank the tank, or facilitating organised naturism.
In any case, there are some fairly high profile and successful bars around the globe where the main attraction is girls wearing a lot less than simply no underwear. Indeed, these women get paid for doing so in the form of cash rather than simply alcoholic beverages, yet these rarely attract the attention witnessed today.
Or, to view the consternation from another angle, I’d happily shed my boxers if a bar was offering free pints of San Miguel in return for me freeing up the crown jewels. Unfortunately, a promotion of that nature is about as likely to eventuate as Osama Bin Laden walking out from his cave waving a white flag while singing God Save The Queen.
An Australian observer commented that a girl removing her thong in a bar is tantamount to an invitation to sexual assault. Forgive my reckless understanding of legislative terminology but if there is an invitation involved how can any act that follows constitute an assault?
Similarly, the Ugandan ethics minister stated that the women wearing mini-skirts are essentially naked. Now perhaps Uganda has a unique slant on the English language but surely someone is either naked or not. If someone has donned a mini-skirt they are not naked in my book. It equates to describing something as slightly random or partially impossible. There is no continuum with naked at one end and clothed at the other.
Or perhaps our Ugandan friend has adopted an unusual take on the classic psychological debate about whether the glass is half full or half empty. Most people would classify a lady in a mini-skirt as being half-dressed, but in Uganda they are half-naked.
Now I’m not denying that there are plenty of people in this world that should not be allowed to wear mini-skirts. The sight of such people does about as much for the health of others as a wrongly-produced MMR injection which actually contains MRSA, C-difficile and E.coli. In fact, I’d rather be forced to stare at my own scrotum for four days solid. To condemn or legislate against it, however, is disgraceful.
If there is to be legislation prohibiting the presence of mini-skirts, surely there first needs to be an act which ensures people’s eyesight is retained through the criminalisation of builder’s bum, teenage boys walking around with their hand down their pants, and botched cosmetic surgery.
Moreover, if bars want to clean up their act, they should first ban morbidly obese people after 10pm on Friday and Saturday nights. In a crowded venue, it is inevitable that, en route to the toilet, some drunken fatty brushes their sweaty bingo wings all over you. Those lucky enough to escape that fate will, upon reaching the gents, be subjected instead to some drunken idiot swaying like the audience during Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms with the result that their urine ends up on your best shirt and jeans.
The usual rubbish about the conduct being offensive to other people has been spouted. That view carries about as much weight as the excretion that flows from the mouths of the presenters of Psychic TV. Only the people that go to the Australian bar in question can have an opinion on the matter, yet there was no word of discontent from either the females who were given free drinks in this time of bare economic hardship or the males who were watching the women get plastered quicker than a wall on DIY SOS.
That may be somewhat attributable to those who frequent the bar being too sozzled to construct a simple sentence (much like Shane McGowan all day every day), but the crux of the matter is that these people had some cheap fun and that is about as common in this day and age as Kenzie turning down a part in a dreadful reality TV show.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
As fraud as it's wrong
8 September 2008.
The plight was detailed today of a woman who died aged 83 after spending the last five years of her life forking out £50,000 to fraudsters pretending to have sizeable amounts of cash waiting for her in return for a small “administration” fee. This is a sad story indeed, and highlights a growing and seemingly uncontrollable problem of fraud in the UK.
The request for personal information every time you do anything online or over the telephone means you can barely buy a pint of milk without ubiquitous “corporate partners” being granted paid access to that same data instantaneously. Indeed, the publicising last week of a Lloyds TSB customer discovering that his password had been changed by some call centre skivvy without his knowledge is a prime exponent of the extent to which nothing is personal anymore and that our data is no longer in our own hands.
It is lucky he stayed with Lloyds TSB in the first place so if he wants to have a password which lambasts his bank then that is his prerogative and not up to some untrained peasant calling from a telephone in Bangalore. If I want my secret password which protects all of my most sensitive personal data to be Bankersarewankers or Goshagamarsupialyougreedytwats I should not need the permission of an institution which has proved capable recently only of losing billions of pounds.
But this problem with security breaches and fraud is not helped by the plethora of miscreants thicker than the walls of the steel cages they should be locked up in. These people from the Kerry Katona school of financial management, who would probably consume their own seminal fluid if told it has health benefits, make Orville look like Albert Einstein. Did you know ‘gullible’ has been removed from the dictionary? If you missed yesterday’s blog check back for instructions on how to collect the £87billion I’m giving to you in return for just a 50p postage fee.
If you have now checked back or answered in the positive to the question you will almost certainly ring an 0906 number when something arrives through your letterbox instructing you to do so to claim the £1million waiting for you. If the penny still hasn’t dropped you are more naïve than Max Mosley’s wife.
With that in mind, follow some real advice and not something printed on a shiny flier from an anonymous source and get your husband/wife/father/mother/son/daughter/third cousin twice removed to immediately close your bank account, cancel your credit card, put a blindfold on you, tie you up immovably and never let you even feed yourself again let alone be trusted with money.
A slight twinge of suspicion should resonate upon the receipt of an email which guarantees you larger breasts within two weeks of purchasing the advertised product, particularly when the recipient is male. There is a reason why penis enlargement pills are not available through the conventional channels and only over the internet at a knock-down rate – they are illegal, unapproved and, perhaps most importantly, they don’t bloody work.
Last week a study found spammers target email addresses which commence with certain letters of the alphabet. The tone of the investigation suggested an element of surprise when it unearthed that the most common letter of the alphabet S was targeted the most and letters like X and Q the least. How many Quincys and Xaviers reside in the UK to line the Abu Dhabi investor-sized pockets of these fraudsters Mr Investigator?
It is not the spammers who have the intelligence of my left scrotum. Let’s be honest if we had the skills to hack or be paid to find email addresses to send junk to we would probably all give up our day job. Next time investigate the myriad imbeciles with less going on upstairs than an impotent 93 year old leper to discover what it is that makes these plonkers disclose their complete bank details in response to the email from a random Nigerian offering a newly-discovered £93million inheritance.
What is worrying is how this problem seems to be so concentrated in the UK. It is hardly irrational to assume this vast practice must be continuing globally, but the endless reports which detail the extent of fraud seem to highlight a trait unique to the UK. Of course it is unreasonable to assume developing countries are likely to be targeted because, apart from the lack of computers, telephones and banking sector prevailing in these regions, the inhabitants of these nations are unlikely to be able to afford even the “modest” fee charged by the bogus operators.
But recent research has also suggested fraud victims are likely to reach a peak during the current economic downturn owing to financial desperation. This suggests it is in fact the poorest people that fall foul of financial fraud. Why, therefore, is Britain so culpable of being ripped off when it is richer than the majority of its associates? Is Britain the global gullible hub?
For those less astute with money, or who have been off with the fairies more than George Michael on Hampstead Heath, here are some tips on how to limit the potential for being stung worse than by a queen bee on Prozac:
1. If a form asks you for data, only fill in those boxes which are actually requisite. Just because the form has already asked you for your name, postcode and a contact telephone number does not mean you need to then enter your star sign, bra size, favourite sexual position, Weight Watchers membership number and most erotic fantasy.
2. If someone rings you up claiming to be calling on behalf of your mobile telephone provider tell them to take a hike and hang up the phone quicker than Mike Ashley consumes a pint. Do not stay on the line and tell them how your hubby took you for a Valentine’s Day medieval banquet or how you bought a great sex toy online at the weekend. You will then be barraged with further telephone calls, emails and post from associated companies enquiring whether you would like to purchase the latest multi-functional 27 inch dildo since it has recently become clear to them you have a large penchant for outlandish sex toys.
3. If an email arrives informing you that if you reply with your bank details a bank security breach will be alleviated or $83million will immediately be paid into your account, do not bash out more enthusiastically than a sex-starved man your name, address, telephone number, bank account number and sort code. Instead, consider why someone you’ve never heard of from a country you’ve probably never even heard of is offering you an incomprehensibly large sum of money in the wrong currency for free. Next, go outside, get in your car, hold down the accelerator and drive directly into the nearest lamppost for even opening the email from evg4aml377@xx4r4rgrr.com in the first place.
4. If an email is sent to your inbox with an attachment but no name or subject, do not open it faster than Lindsay Lohan does her legs. Instead, stop and think of all the people in your Outlook address book – and all the people in their contact lists, and so on – who you will be passing on the virus to quicker than an STD around a Glasgow council estate.
The plight was detailed today of a woman who died aged 83 after spending the last five years of her life forking out £50,000 to fraudsters pretending to have sizeable amounts of cash waiting for her in return for a small “administration” fee. This is a sad story indeed, and highlights a growing and seemingly uncontrollable problem of fraud in the UK.
The request for personal information every time you do anything online or over the telephone means you can barely buy a pint of milk without ubiquitous “corporate partners” being granted paid access to that same data instantaneously. Indeed, the publicising last week of a Lloyds TSB customer discovering that his password had been changed by some call centre skivvy without his knowledge is a prime exponent of the extent to which nothing is personal anymore and that our data is no longer in our own hands.
It is lucky he stayed with Lloyds TSB in the first place so if he wants to have a password which lambasts his bank then that is his prerogative and not up to some untrained peasant calling from a telephone in Bangalore. If I want my secret password which protects all of my most sensitive personal data to be Bankersarewankers or Goshagamarsupialyougreedytwats I should not need the permission of an institution which has proved capable recently only of losing billions of pounds.
But this problem with security breaches and fraud is not helped by the plethora of miscreants thicker than the walls of the steel cages they should be locked up in. These people from the Kerry Katona school of financial management, who would probably consume their own seminal fluid if told it has health benefits, make Orville look like Albert Einstein. Did you know ‘gullible’ has been removed from the dictionary? If you missed yesterday’s blog check back for instructions on how to collect the £87billion I’m giving to you in return for just a 50p postage fee.
If you have now checked back or answered in the positive to the question you will almost certainly ring an 0906 number when something arrives through your letterbox instructing you to do so to claim the £1million waiting for you. If the penny still hasn’t dropped you are more naïve than Max Mosley’s wife.
With that in mind, follow some real advice and not something printed on a shiny flier from an anonymous source and get your husband/wife/father/mother/son/daughter/third cousin twice removed to immediately close your bank account, cancel your credit card, put a blindfold on you, tie you up immovably and never let you even feed yourself again let alone be trusted with money.
A slight twinge of suspicion should resonate upon the receipt of an email which guarantees you larger breasts within two weeks of purchasing the advertised product, particularly when the recipient is male. There is a reason why penis enlargement pills are not available through the conventional channels and only over the internet at a knock-down rate – they are illegal, unapproved and, perhaps most importantly, they don’t bloody work.
Last week a study found spammers target email addresses which commence with certain letters of the alphabet. The tone of the investigation suggested an element of surprise when it unearthed that the most common letter of the alphabet S was targeted the most and letters like X and Q the least. How many Quincys and Xaviers reside in the UK to line the Abu Dhabi investor-sized pockets of these fraudsters Mr Investigator?
It is not the spammers who have the intelligence of my left scrotum. Let’s be honest if we had the skills to hack or be paid to find email addresses to send junk to we would probably all give up our day job. Next time investigate the myriad imbeciles with less going on upstairs than an impotent 93 year old leper to discover what it is that makes these plonkers disclose their complete bank details in response to the email from a random Nigerian offering a newly-discovered £93million inheritance.
What is worrying is how this problem seems to be so concentrated in the UK. It is hardly irrational to assume this vast practice must be continuing globally, but the endless reports which detail the extent of fraud seem to highlight a trait unique to the UK. Of course it is unreasonable to assume developing countries are likely to be targeted because, apart from the lack of computers, telephones and banking sector prevailing in these regions, the inhabitants of these nations are unlikely to be able to afford even the “modest” fee charged by the bogus operators.
But recent research has also suggested fraud victims are likely to reach a peak during the current economic downturn owing to financial desperation. This suggests it is in fact the poorest people that fall foul of financial fraud. Why, therefore, is Britain so culpable of being ripped off when it is richer than the majority of its associates? Is Britain the global gullible hub?
For those less astute with money, or who have been off with the fairies more than George Michael on Hampstead Heath, here are some tips on how to limit the potential for being stung worse than by a queen bee on Prozac:
1. If a form asks you for data, only fill in those boxes which are actually requisite. Just because the form has already asked you for your name, postcode and a contact telephone number does not mean you need to then enter your star sign, bra size, favourite sexual position, Weight Watchers membership number and most erotic fantasy.
2. If someone rings you up claiming to be calling on behalf of your mobile telephone provider tell them to take a hike and hang up the phone quicker than Mike Ashley consumes a pint. Do not stay on the line and tell them how your hubby took you for a Valentine’s Day medieval banquet or how you bought a great sex toy online at the weekend. You will then be barraged with further telephone calls, emails and post from associated companies enquiring whether you would like to purchase the latest multi-functional 27 inch dildo since it has recently become clear to them you have a large penchant for outlandish sex toys.
3. If an email arrives informing you that if you reply with your bank details a bank security breach will be alleviated or $83million will immediately be paid into your account, do not bash out more enthusiastically than a sex-starved man your name, address, telephone number, bank account number and sort code. Instead, consider why someone you’ve never heard of from a country you’ve probably never even heard of is offering you an incomprehensibly large sum of money in the wrong currency for free. Next, go outside, get in your car, hold down the accelerator and drive directly into the nearest lamppost for even opening the email from evg4aml377@xx4r4rgrr.com in the first place.
4. If an email is sent to your inbox with an attachment but no name or subject, do not open it faster than Lindsay Lohan does her legs. Instead, stop and think of all the people in your Outlook address book – and all the people in their contact lists, and so on – who you will be passing on the virus to quicker than an STD around a Glasgow council estate.
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