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.
Saturday, 22 November 2008
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.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Waste - what a load of rubbish
5 September 2008.
A US team has said that global sea levels are unlikely to rise by more than 2m by 2100. Perhaps this will stop the endless whinging about climate change and the environment.
As those living in East Anglia who will probably be submerged twenty years from now will tell you, people who rebuff the presence of global warming are about as disillusioned as those who deny the holocaust ever took place. But changes in global temperature and effects on our environment have always occurred. There was nothing humans could do to stave off the last ice age a few thousand years ago so why would changing to low energy lightbulbs make a difference now?
Instead of wasting money on all these stupid studies which pointlessly attempt to quantify the extent of the change, use the money to make a difference. Recent reports have identified that the methane produced by grazing cattle is contributing a vast proportion of greenhouse gas methane, leading to calls for cattle to be moved indoors or for “greener” farming methods.
These animals have been grazing for longer than a round of applause at a Nazi convention but no-one’s house was falling off a cliff owing to erosion from rising sea levels before. Yet the insinuation is that cattle with uncontrollable flatulence are the root of all evil. Instead of detailing the human effects it is a case of documenting any excuse which deflects the blame away from humans and, in particular, those producing the studies in their energy-guzzling hot tubs. French female armpits and political hot air must generate more greenhouse gases than poorly fed cattle. And I’m sure most people could point you in the direction of someone they have recently come in to contact with who produces more wind than Hurricane Gustav.
Britain has always been a stalling nation, however. Just look at the construction industry, where equivalent developments are finished everywhere else in the world by the time Usain Bolt’s run 100m, while British builders are so busy wolf-whistling the project ends up more overdue than Cliff Richard’s retirement. And elsewhere you get twice the quality for half the price.
Much like pregnancy seems to be the only instigator of a change in approach to promiscuity amongst teenagers, only war seems to stimulate a knee-jerk reaction in this country. With rising sea levels that scenario could well eventuate as a growing population has to battle over an ever-decreasing amount of land.
Of course, being Britain we wait for that eventuality to arise rather than staving it off in advance (the cure rather than prevention approach once again – see 2 September entry) as we arrogantly assume our tiny island’s military is more amply equipped than Jordan to overcome any attack – except now other countries have had decades to develop nuclear weapons while we disarm ours.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is now telling us that there is to be no winter fuel payment to help the suffering masses pay their rocketing bills because he doesn’t believe in short-term gimmicks, and that to ensure environmental sustainability a long-term approach to energy consumption is needed. What were the one year stamp duty holiday and the temporary 10% tax band u-turn? Indeed, the need for the latter was created by a gimmick of Tamagotchi or Pog proportions in the form of an imposition of a cut in the basic rate of income tax by 2% at his last budget just oh so conveniently before the general election which saw his elevation to Number 10.
Instead of offering help for the most environmentally friendly individuals, Gordon Brown has purely penalised the polluting, for instance through tax hikes for the most polluting vehicles, under the guise of helping the environment. These taxes are a bigger rip-off than Amy Winehouse’s hairdresser.
The reality is all these green taxes are due to the fall in Treasury revenue because of companies posting vast losses, unemployment, falling house prices, no-one being able to move house, and spending falling because of a reduction in disposable income as inflation rises.
Corporation tax, income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, stamp duty and VAT taken by the exchequer have all plummeted as a result, all directly correlated with the scuppering of our economy over the duration of the Labour administration.
Those of you now bemoaning tuition fees can all give yourself a pat on the back for enthusiastically voting this party into power eleven years ago (student loans and tuition fees were in their pre-1997 manifesto so for the endless batch of idiots who voted for Tony Blair because he was better looking than John Major or because you listened to the media and Labour spin doctors publishing their propaganda rather than looking at what might actually happen that affects you when a particular party gains political power you’ve only got yourselves to blame).
If he wanted to help the environment he would have considered better ways than to tax those using it left, right and centre:
1. Lewis Hamilton and friends should lead the way in F1. Ferrari have the money to pioneer new environmentally friendly cars, we don’t. If those with the money bothered to invest it in something worthwhile then those with smaller pockets can copy the new technology and roll it out universally. Indeed, the technology is there already to some degree but there is no temptation to adopt it for car manufacturers because it will hit their purse strings. An outright ban on petrol-powered vehicles by 2011 would certainly shake things up more violently than a tsunami in Indonesia, and ensure some changes ensue.
2. TV shows like Big Brother where notable challenges this series included forcing the contestants to eat virtually their bodyweight in brussel sprouts, spaghetti and a baguette need to set a better example. The participants never had a chance of completing it, therefore the task was merely a way of generating waste in return for some low-brow viewing for sadism lovers. What impetus do we have to use less and recycle more if our efforts are being undermined more blatantly than Kevin Keegan upon the appointment of Dennis Wise as Director of Football right in front of our eyes?
3. Convert the gym equipment used by our imprisoned degenerates into a generator for renewable electricity. At the very least it would generate enough energy such that the prison becomes self-sustaining so the taxpayer does not fund its power. If efficient enough, the criminals could generate enough to sell to energy companies, increasing supply, enabling cost reductions amongst the rest of us and reducing the UK’s carbon footprint. The criminals are then actually giving back to society, something unheard of at present (see 2 September entry).
4. Invest the money generated by these “green” taxes in green projects rather than in purchasing further military fleet. At the very least the revenue could be spent on improving the rail network or providing free bicycles where relevant so we would finally be left with a viable alternative to cars. Indeed, the very least the politicians responsible could do is stop hypocritically getting driven around in Jaguars themselves. Take the Olympics, for example, where the Government pondered how it could celebrate Britain’s success in Beijing. Of all the options available it opted for polluting open-topped bus tours.
At least David Cameron got on his bike so to speak – until it got stolen by a juvenile delinquent at the local supermarket. Instead of spending millions redeveloping St Pancras, relay track that was ripped apart a few decades ago more ruthlessly than African women’s genitalia and extend existing lines so that real coverage is available. People in places with no rail links are hardly asking for glamorous stations or 37 trains an hour – anything would be a start, and could also ultimately negate the need for buses if effectively managed.
A US team has said that global sea levels are unlikely to rise by more than 2m by 2100. Perhaps this will stop the endless whinging about climate change and the environment.
As those living in East Anglia who will probably be submerged twenty years from now will tell you, people who rebuff the presence of global warming are about as disillusioned as those who deny the holocaust ever took place. But changes in global temperature and effects on our environment have always occurred. There was nothing humans could do to stave off the last ice age a few thousand years ago so why would changing to low energy lightbulbs make a difference now?
Instead of wasting money on all these stupid studies which pointlessly attempt to quantify the extent of the change, use the money to make a difference. Recent reports have identified that the methane produced by grazing cattle is contributing a vast proportion of greenhouse gas methane, leading to calls for cattle to be moved indoors or for “greener” farming methods.
These animals have been grazing for longer than a round of applause at a Nazi convention but no-one’s house was falling off a cliff owing to erosion from rising sea levels before. Yet the insinuation is that cattle with uncontrollable flatulence are the root of all evil. Instead of detailing the human effects it is a case of documenting any excuse which deflects the blame away from humans and, in particular, those producing the studies in their energy-guzzling hot tubs. French female armpits and political hot air must generate more greenhouse gases than poorly fed cattle. And I’m sure most people could point you in the direction of someone they have recently come in to contact with who produces more wind than Hurricane Gustav.
Britain has always been a stalling nation, however. Just look at the construction industry, where equivalent developments are finished everywhere else in the world by the time Usain Bolt’s run 100m, while British builders are so busy wolf-whistling the project ends up more overdue than Cliff Richard’s retirement. And elsewhere you get twice the quality for half the price.
Much like pregnancy seems to be the only instigator of a change in approach to promiscuity amongst teenagers, only war seems to stimulate a knee-jerk reaction in this country. With rising sea levels that scenario could well eventuate as a growing population has to battle over an ever-decreasing amount of land.
Of course, being Britain we wait for that eventuality to arise rather than staving it off in advance (the cure rather than prevention approach once again – see 2 September entry) as we arrogantly assume our tiny island’s military is more amply equipped than Jordan to overcome any attack – except now other countries have had decades to develop nuclear weapons while we disarm ours.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is now telling us that there is to be no winter fuel payment to help the suffering masses pay their rocketing bills because he doesn’t believe in short-term gimmicks, and that to ensure environmental sustainability a long-term approach to energy consumption is needed. What were the one year stamp duty holiday and the temporary 10% tax band u-turn? Indeed, the need for the latter was created by a gimmick of Tamagotchi or Pog proportions in the form of an imposition of a cut in the basic rate of income tax by 2% at his last budget just oh so conveniently before the general election which saw his elevation to Number 10.
Instead of offering help for the most environmentally friendly individuals, Gordon Brown has purely penalised the polluting, for instance through tax hikes for the most polluting vehicles, under the guise of helping the environment. These taxes are a bigger rip-off than Amy Winehouse’s hairdresser.
The reality is all these green taxes are due to the fall in Treasury revenue because of companies posting vast losses, unemployment, falling house prices, no-one being able to move house, and spending falling because of a reduction in disposable income as inflation rises.
Corporation tax, income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, stamp duty and VAT taken by the exchequer have all plummeted as a result, all directly correlated with the scuppering of our economy over the duration of the Labour administration.
Those of you now bemoaning tuition fees can all give yourself a pat on the back for enthusiastically voting this party into power eleven years ago (student loans and tuition fees were in their pre-1997 manifesto so for the endless batch of idiots who voted for Tony Blair because he was better looking than John Major or because you listened to the media and Labour spin doctors publishing their propaganda rather than looking at what might actually happen that affects you when a particular party gains political power you’ve only got yourselves to blame).
If he wanted to help the environment he would have considered better ways than to tax those using it left, right and centre:
1. Lewis Hamilton and friends should lead the way in F1. Ferrari have the money to pioneer new environmentally friendly cars, we don’t. If those with the money bothered to invest it in something worthwhile then those with smaller pockets can copy the new technology and roll it out universally. Indeed, the technology is there already to some degree but there is no temptation to adopt it for car manufacturers because it will hit their purse strings. An outright ban on petrol-powered vehicles by 2011 would certainly shake things up more violently than a tsunami in Indonesia, and ensure some changes ensue.
2. TV shows like Big Brother where notable challenges this series included forcing the contestants to eat virtually their bodyweight in brussel sprouts, spaghetti and a baguette need to set a better example. The participants never had a chance of completing it, therefore the task was merely a way of generating waste in return for some low-brow viewing for sadism lovers. What impetus do we have to use less and recycle more if our efforts are being undermined more blatantly than Kevin Keegan upon the appointment of Dennis Wise as Director of Football right in front of our eyes?
3. Convert the gym equipment used by our imprisoned degenerates into a generator for renewable electricity. At the very least it would generate enough energy such that the prison becomes self-sustaining so the taxpayer does not fund its power. If efficient enough, the criminals could generate enough to sell to energy companies, increasing supply, enabling cost reductions amongst the rest of us and reducing the UK’s carbon footprint. The criminals are then actually giving back to society, something unheard of at present (see 2 September entry).
4. Invest the money generated by these “green” taxes in green projects rather than in purchasing further military fleet. At the very least the revenue could be spent on improving the rail network or providing free bicycles where relevant so we would finally be left with a viable alternative to cars. Indeed, the very least the politicians responsible could do is stop hypocritically getting driven around in Jaguars themselves. Take the Olympics, for example, where the Government pondered how it could celebrate Britain’s success in Beijing. Of all the options available it opted for polluting open-topped bus tours.
At least David Cameron got on his bike so to speak – until it got stolen by a juvenile delinquent at the local supermarket. Instead of spending millions redeveloping St Pancras, relay track that was ripped apart a few decades ago more ruthlessly than African women’s genitalia and extend existing lines so that real coverage is available. People in places with no rail links are hardly asking for glamorous stations or 37 trains an hour – anything would be a start, and could also ultimately negate the need for buses if effectively managed.
Equal shites
4 September 2008.
A report has found women are still struggling for equality in the workplace. The latest in an endless line of surveys shows a fall in the number of females reaching the top of their profession. What a surprise it is to see that this survey came from the eternal irritant that is the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Dissecting the bigger picture, firstly the state pension age for women is lower than for men so at any one time there cannot possibly be the same number of women at the top as men. If this commission wants equality, enforce an equal pension age. Indeed, since women live an average of a year or two longer than men, the state pension age could arguably be higher for females. Of course trying to push that legislation through would be about as successful as Kevin Federline’s music career.
Next, since when were men and women supposed to be equally good at all jobs? There are undoubtedly some jobs women are far superior at and any struggle to reach the top of these professions should be greeted with more concern than a hurricane approaching New Orleans. But for those where men are clearly likely to perform better there should be no scrutiny as to why women are not present in the top echelons here.
Furthermore, statistics like these are ravaged with over-simplicity. There are always exceptions to the rule, such that some unusual women will excel at disciplines they are not expected to. Attempts to group humans with infinite differences in intelligence, emotion and physique into just two categories is as futile as demanding Alistair Darling trims his eyebrows.
Moreover, it is often the creative areas where women excel. These disciplines, however, tend to be devoid of male-created bureaucratic hierarchical structures which have the benefit of clear career ladder progression opportunities.
Although there has been extensive investment in fertility, and recently a “man” gave birth, either we stop having children and rely on more immigration to prevent the population floundering or we continue to let women take time off work to bring up their offspring.
And unless we magically develop a way to let men breastfeed then the mother has to be the one who nurtures the child through the early months too. Endless studies have shown the benefits of consumption of breast milk rather than alternatives. But hey if you want your kids to grow up as misfits, back the EHRC.
Once the initial months have elapsed there can be flexibility. I bet I could find a million of men who would quite readily stay at home in front of the telly with one eye on the children, and let the wife be the breadwinner. Somehow I can’t see that being promoted by the ECHR, however, because that doesn’t ensure that all women are in all the top jobs earning all the money as our “equality” friends would like.
What the commission has the cheek to discuss is the discrimination going on which is halting women’s progress. Since when was half the front line in Afghanistan filled with female soldiers? When will half of all dustmen (amazing how that is one profession where you do not have to say dustperson yet you do chairperson – wonder why that is) collecting my refuse each week be women? What a surprise it is, then, that the survey focuses on only the top end of the glamour professions such as law and not the jobs more horrific than spending the night with Ann Widdecombe.
When the government stops its policy of positive discrimination towards women in the public sector, and when it introduces legislation granting equal paternity and maternity leave, and when we remove the process of women sleeping their way up the ladder ahead of more qualified male counterparts, then maybe we can start to consider listening to the ECHR, a body which as done about as much for human rights as China.
The fact that it is insinuated that women do not make it to the top simply because men in charge do not think they are up to the job is a complete fallacy. Of course there will always be one or two misogynistic idiots who think women are incapable of even getting out of bed in the morning without breaking a nail, but to suggest the majority of males believe women are inferior is wildly inaccurate.
In fact, since allegedly men think about sex every 6 seconds or whatever the latest figure is, if a male manager is given the choice of two equally eligible candidates of which one is male and one is an attractive female, who do you think he is going to choose? Boardrooms in many professions need a balance of skills, qualities which often only women possess.
Perhaps the ECHR will shut up if:
1. Working from home is more readily available. So many jobs now involve nothing but sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen, all of which can be done at home. Introduce teleworking wherever possible and then you can bring up the children and have a job. This will alleviate the reliance on nurseries and nannies which often leads to attention deficit disorder. Also, heaven forbid in this day and age but you could actually have both parents at home to raise a child.
Watch the fall in gang crime as children no longer have to deal with a lack of father figure at home. Indeed, both parents together raising a child may limit the number of couples getting divorced and their children having to deal with broken homes and the negative consequences that are known to abound from that. Meetings wouldn’t be a problem either, as there cannot be so little flexibility that both parents would have to be in meetings at exactly the same time such that the child is neglected. In any case, the increasing prevalence of conference calls has rendered most meetings needless.
2. More employers introduced nurseries at the workplace. Plenty of offices and warehouses are large enough to warrant a segment being allocated for a nursery. Parents can then pop and see their child on cigarette and lunch breaks, and there is no issue with a child being left if the parent works late.
3. Human resource departments (often littered with women and men with an equal measure of oestrogen floating around inside them) did more to recognise the talents of its workforce. Too often promotion is left to those at the top who are too busy to view the skills of its staff. When someone leaves and a post becomes available, it is often left to traditional mechanisms such as sex or simply who the boss has spent most time with to decide who fills the vacated slot (in more ways than one). If HR allocated more of their time to continually identifying qualities in the existing talent pool then such issues would not arise during staff turnover.
4. Women started more of their own businesses. This concept of a glass ceiling is a common reason for female entrepreneurship but still the number of male-owned start-ups is much higher than female-directed. Women are automatically at the top, therefore, and can employ and promote as many women as they see fit, as well as gearing work around issues such as raising the children. In reality, entrepreneurs are usually risk takers, given the knowledge that the majority of start-ups are doomed to failure. But most women are more risk averse than their male equivalents thus perhaps the ECHR should do something useful and try to overcome this aversion.
A report has found women are still struggling for equality in the workplace. The latest in an endless line of surveys shows a fall in the number of females reaching the top of their profession. What a surprise it is to see that this survey came from the eternal irritant that is the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Dissecting the bigger picture, firstly the state pension age for women is lower than for men so at any one time there cannot possibly be the same number of women at the top as men. If this commission wants equality, enforce an equal pension age. Indeed, since women live an average of a year or two longer than men, the state pension age could arguably be higher for females. Of course trying to push that legislation through would be about as successful as Kevin Federline’s music career.
Next, since when were men and women supposed to be equally good at all jobs? There are undoubtedly some jobs women are far superior at and any struggle to reach the top of these professions should be greeted with more concern than a hurricane approaching New Orleans. But for those where men are clearly likely to perform better there should be no scrutiny as to why women are not present in the top echelons here.
Furthermore, statistics like these are ravaged with over-simplicity. There are always exceptions to the rule, such that some unusual women will excel at disciplines they are not expected to. Attempts to group humans with infinite differences in intelligence, emotion and physique into just two categories is as futile as demanding Alistair Darling trims his eyebrows.
Moreover, it is often the creative areas where women excel. These disciplines, however, tend to be devoid of male-created bureaucratic hierarchical structures which have the benefit of clear career ladder progression opportunities.
Although there has been extensive investment in fertility, and recently a “man” gave birth, either we stop having children and rely on more immigration to prevent the population floundering or we continue to let women take time off work to bring up their offspring.
And unless we magically develop a way to let men breastfeed then the mother has to be the one who nurtures the child through the early months too. Endless studies have shown the benefits of consumption of breast milk rather than alternatives. But hey if you want your kids to grow up as misfits, back the EHRC.
Once the initial months have elapsed there can be flexibility. I bet I could find a million of men who would quite readily stay at home in front of the telly with one eye on the children, and let the wife be the breadwinner. Somehow I can’t see that being promoted by the ECHR, however, because that doesn’t ensure that all women are in all the top jobs earning all the money as our “equality” friends would like.
What the commission has the cheek to discuss is the discrimination going on which is halting women’s progress. Since when was half the front line in Afghanistan filled with female soldiers? When will half of all dustmen (amazing how that is one profession where you do not have to say dustperson yet you do chairperson – wonder why that is) collecting my refuse each week be women? What a surprise it is, then, that the survey focuses on only the top end of the glamour professions such as law and not the jobs more horrific than spending the night with Ann Widdecombe.
When the government stops its policy of positive discrimination towards women in the public sector, and when it introduces legislation granting equal paternity and maternity leave, and when we remove the process of women sleeping their way up the ladder ahead of more qualified male counterparts, then maybe we can start to consider listening to the ECHR, a body which as done about as much for human rights as China.
The fact that it is insinuated that women do not make it to the top simply because men in charge do not think they are up to the job is a complete fallacy. Of course there will always be one or two misogynistic idiots who think women are incapable of even getting out of bed in the morning without breaking a nail, but to suggest the majority of males believe women are inferior is wildly inaccurate.
In fact, since allegedly men think about sex every 6 seconds or whatever the latest figure is, if a male manager is given the choice of two equally eligible candidates of which one is male and one is an attractive female, who do you think he is going to choose? Boardrooms in many professions need a balance of skills, qualities which often only women possess.
Perhaps the ECHR will shut up if:
1. Working from home is more readily available. So many jobs now involve nothing but sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen, all of which can be done at home. Introduce teleworking wherever possible and then you can bring up the children and have a job. This will alleviate the reliance on nurseries and nannies which often leads to attention deficit disorder. Also, heaven forbid in this day and age but you could actually have both parents at home to raise a child.
Watch the fall in gang crime as children no longer have to deal with a lack of father figure at home. Indeed, both parents together raising a child may limit the number of couples getting divorced and their children having to deal with broken homes and the negative consequences that are known to abound from that. Meetings wouldn’t be a problem either, as there cannot be so little flexibility that both parents would have to be in meetings at exactly the same time such that the child is neglected. In any case, the increasing prevalence of conference calls has rendered most meetings needless.
2. More employers introduced nurseries at the workplace. Plenty of offices and warehouses are large enough to warrant a segment being allocated for a nursery. Parents can then pop and see their child on cigarette and lunch breaks, and there is no issue with a child being left if the parent works late.
3. Human resource departments (often littered with women and men with an equal measure of oestrogen floating around inside them) did more to recognise the talents of its workforce. Too often promotion is left to those at the top who are too busy to view the skills of its staff. When someone leaves and a post becomes available, it is often left to traditional mechanisms such as sex or simply who the boss has spent most time with to decide who fills the vacated slot (in more ways than one). If HR allocated more of their time to continually identifying qualities in the existing talent pool then such issues would not arise during staff turnover.
4. Women started more of their own businesses. This concept of a glass ceiling is a common reason for female entrepreneurship but still the number of male-owned start-ups is much higher than female-directed. Women are automatically at the top, therefore, and can employ and promote as many women as they see fit, as well as gearing work around issues such as raising the children. In reality, entrepreneurs are usually risk takers, given the knowledge that the majority of start-ups are doomed to failure. But most women are more risk averse than their male equivalents thus perhaps the ECHR should do something useful and try to overcome this aversion.
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Read all about sh*t
3 September 2008.
Will people finally heed my advice and stop buying newspapers? The fact that the status quo at Newcastle United has been maintained with the board repeating their desire for progress with Kevin Keegan at the helm proves the saga of the last 24 hours is simply not a story to report on.
It has had top billing across all media, however, which will probably now lead to Kevin Keegan’s position becoming untenable. Meanwhile, an eyelid was barely batted at Alan Curbishley’s actual departure for the same reasons blamed on the Messiah’s alleged exodus.
Of course look back almost exactly one year and the treatment given, which is as about as fair as that experienced by Asian police officers, mirrors that exacted upon Martin Jol just a few games into the 2006/7 season. As with Martin Jol, the fans have enjoyed the news of the prospective departure of Kevin Keegan about as much as inserting their faces into a bowl overflowing with Hepatitis C-filled hypodermic needles.
This talking up of rifts in the media almost inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning good people are disposed of quicker than a Staffordshire mansion. As history has shown, any replacement will be employed for around five months and then fired for not living up to the standards of the previously-abused predecessor.
It has almost become a competition between the tabloids as to which can curtail a contract quickest, much like the other contemporary fashionable wrong of something being more positive than 100% – first you could give 100%, then someone stated they had just given 101%, next the figure 110% became commonplace, 120% was bounded around occasionally, next 500% was mentioned, then Louis Walsh affirmed 1,000,000% that an X Factor contestant should continue in the competition, before Cheryl Cole usurped this scornfully with 2,000,000% as if a mere 1,000,000% was pitiful.
The worst consequence of proving a tale to be erroneous is that the newspaper is fined some loose change in a court battle two years later, the publicising of which generates more attention of the negative plight of a notable C-lister and grants free advertising to the newspaper being fined.
Quite frankly I can’t understand the obsession with tabloids: If you enjoy the articles, go buy a fiction novel as you’ll be rewarded with greater imagery, writing and probably more realistic scenarios. If you enjoy the page three nudity why not subscribe to adult TV channels or the internet’s most notable side effect that is porn sites? Or just get a girlfriend. If you like the cartoons then go watch re-runs of Tom & Jerry. Or maybe the tabloids are simply a diluted or conveniently combined version for chavs of these evidently prohibitively expensive premium equivalents.
The only solution to being fed the constant barrage of fallacious rubbish that spuriously flows from the tabloids is to boycott them, or at least to introduce a regulator. These newspapers rely on sales to pay the printing costs and wages of the snakes that hiss this garbage. Switching to broadsheets may have an effect, although a blanket ban would be preferable.
But an attempt to boycott newspapers would be comparable to the futile campaign doing the rounds on certain social networking websites which encourages drivers to avoid only the “big” fuel providers such that these would have no choice but to drop their prices with the rest of the producers then following suit. Whoever constructed that campaign clearly failed to recognise that there are only big fuel providers, and that all fuel, supermarket “own-brand” included, is provided by the few entities that exist in the oligopoly.
In any case, with the price of running a car today do you not think people would have gone without petrol by now if they could? The campaign instigator clearly lives in London or works from home if they believe millions can suddenly deprive themselves of their means to get to work. Next they’ll be telling us to boycott Tesco in order to stave off food price inflation.
The question has to be posited, moreover, as to why there is a need for newspapers at all, bar keeping the homeless warm at night. Think of the benefit to the environment of not printing all that paper. The occasional email from the environmental officer at your company reminding you not to print unless there is a real need is undone more quickly than Calum Best’s flies upon introduction to the latest Zoo cover girl by the millions of newspapers printed each day.
Besides, the internet, radio and television all co-exist to provide us with free news (for those pointing to the television licence, most television can now be viewed on the internet instead), eliminating any need for newspapers. The real reason for pushing the purveyors of more crap than Phat B*stard is the political bias they can instigate in return for favours from political parties.
This proliferation of media has now led to us being fed a binge diet of American “news” too. How does finding out John McCain’s unknown running mate’s seventeen year old daughter’s got a bun in the oven constitute the top story over here? The relentless coverage of the American elections will have been going for over a year come results day (or results month if last time is anything to go by).
Unlike the UK system’s five, elections in the US must be every four years. If we spend a year reporting on something that occurs every four, a quarter of all the UK’s top news items will be to do with the US. Yet despite the recent revelations over cancer and bankruptcy, I bet they know as much about Jade Goody or Kerry Katona are as the BNP do about tolerance and multiculturalism.
Will people finally heed my advice and stop buying newspapers? The fact that the status quo at Newcastle United has been maintained with the board repeating their desire for progress with Kevin Keegan at the helm proves the saga of the last 24 hours is simply not a story to report on.
It has had top billing across all media, however, which will probably now lead to Kevin Keegan’s position becoming untenable. Meanwhile, an eyelid was barely batted at Alan Curbishley’s actual departure for the same reasons blamed on the Messiah’s alleged exodus.
Of course look back almost exactly one year and the treatment given, which is as about as fair as that experienced by Asian police officers, mirrors that exacted upon Martin Jol just a few games into the 2006/7 season. As with Martin Jol, the fans have enjoyed the news of the prospective departure of Kevin Keegan about as much as inserting their faces into a bowl overflowing with Hepatitis C-filled hypodermic needles.
This talking up of rifts in the media almost inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning good people are disposed of quicker than a Staffordshire mansion. As history has shown, any replacement will be employed for around five months and then fired for not living up to the standards of the previously-abused predecessor.
It has almost become a competition between the tabloids as to which can curtail a contract quickest, much like the other contemporary fashionable wrong of something being more positive than 100% – first you could give 100%, then someone stated they had just given 101%, next the figure 110% became commonplace, 120% was bounded around occasionally, next 500% was mentioned, then Louis Walsh affirmed 1,000,000% that an X Factor contestant should continue in the competition, before Cheryl Cole usurped this scornfully with 2,000,000% as if a mere 1,000,000% was pitiful.
The worst consequence of proving a tale to be erroneous is that the newspaper is fined some loose change in a court battle two years later, the publicising of which generates more attention of the negative plight of a notable C-lister and grants free advertising to the newspaper being fined.
Quite frankly I can’t understand the obsession with tabloids: If you enjoy the articles, go buy a fiction novel as you’ll be rewarded with greater imagery, writing and probably more realistic scenarios. If you enjoy the page three nudity why not subscribe to adult TV channels or the internet’s most notable side effect that is porn sites? Or just get a girlfriend. If you like the cartoons then go watch re-runs of Tom & Jerry. Or maybe the tabloids are simply a diluted or conveniently combined version for chavs of these evidently prohibitively expensive premium equivalents.
The only solution to being fed the constant barrage of fallacious rubbish that spuriously flows from the tabloids is to boycott them, or at least to introduce a regulator. These newspapers rely on sales to pay the printing costs and wages of the snakes that hiss this garbage. Switching to broadsheets may have an effect, although a blanket ban would be preferable.
But an attempt to boycott newspapers would be comparable to the futile campaign doing the rounds on certain social networking websites which encourages drivers to avoid only the “big” fuel providers such that these would have no choice but to drop their prices with the rest of the producers then following suit. Whoever constructed that campaign clearly failed to recognise that there are only big fuel providers, and that all fuel, supermarket “own-brand” included, is provided by the few entities that exist in the oligopoly.
In any case, with the price of running a car today do you not think people would have gone without petrol by now if they could? The campaign instigator clearly lives in London or works from home if they believe millions can suddenly deprive themselves of their means to get to work. Next they’ll be telling us to boycott Tesco in order to stave off food price inflation.
The question has to be posited, moreover, as to why there is a need for newspapers at all, bar keeping the homeless warm at night. Think of the benefit to the environment of not printing all that paper. The occasional email from the environmental officer at your company reminding you not to print unless there is a real need is undone more quickly than Calum Best’s flies upon introduction to the latest Zoo cover girl by the millions of newspapers printed each day.
Besides, the internet, radio and television all co-exist to provide us with free news (for those pointing to the television licence, most television can now be viewed on the internet instead), eliminating any need for newspapers. The real reason for pushing the purveyors of more crap than Phat B*stard is the political bias they can instigate in return for favours from political parties.
This proliferation of media has now led to us being fed a binge diet of American “news” too. How does finding out John McCain’s unknown running mate’s seventeen year old daughter’s got a bun in the oven constitute the top story over here? The relentless coverage of the American elections will have been going for over a year come results day (or results month if last time is anything to go by).
Unlike the UK system’s five, elections in the US must be every four years. If we spend a year reporting on something that occurs every four, a quarter of all the UK’s top news items will be to do with the US. Yet despite the recent revelations over cancer and bankruptcy, I bet they know as much about Jade Goody or Kerry Katona are as the BNP do about tolerance and multiculturalism.
Jailhouse cock-up
2 September 2008.
Apparently a charity is bidding to run two prisons due to open in 2010. What kind of country have we become when we allow an organisation to ask for donations so that it can dish out hard-earned law-abiding citizens’ cash to prisoners to help them find accommodation, employment and benefits upon their release (a release which is probably two-thirds sooner than they were jailed for in the first place)?
Nacro, the charity that attempts to reintegrate prisoners back in to society upon their release, must be about as successful as trying to get Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Michael Owen on a football pitch at the same time simply because none of the criminals want to leave their allegedly overcrowded havens. Apart from those guilty only of a miscarriage of justice, these people are about as deserving of help as a man who loses his wife, home and children because he gambles away the life savings betting that Alistair Darling would get a back, sack and crack at the local beauty parlour.
The money donated to Nacro could be spent purchasing water, food and basic healthcare to the millions not able to eat for the next week rather than bailing out reprobates who erroneously claim excessive benefits or resent having to work as a dustman (probably now known as a recycling generation executive these days, sorry for being so un-PC) because no other employer will have them on their departure from jail.
We already have “charitable” causes that waste half of the money raised on bureaucracy, advertising and business-class flights for the workforce. If you’ve ever watched an Oxfam advert asking for £15 a month, that advert is where the £180 a year has gone. The man in the advert that Oxfam professes will be able to feed his family for a lifetime upon the provision of some basic fishing equipment is probably still spending every daylight hour – and possibly burning the midnight oil too – scrabbling around trying to catch fish with his bare hands, only now to see charity employees fly past onboard Emirates Airlines.
It was also suggested recently that, owing to the likes of Gazza heading to rehab, a charity should be established which facilitates a smoother transition for footballers retiring from the sport back to normal life – “normal” presumably translates as a mere five homes, model wife and Swiss bank account.
I could be missing something but I thought they already have a charity, namely the Russian and Arab investors lining their gold-coated pockets with £180,000 per week until they sulk themselves to a transfer and pay rise at an even wealthier oil exporter-owned club. The rest of us have to scrimp to provide for our measly pensions so is it really too much to ask for these prima donnas to consider putting a few bob aside for this transition themselves if it’s so traumatic rather than promulgating a need for external help?
Next you’ll be hearing money from both idiotic charities has gone to Joey Barton, Marlon King, Jermaine Pennant and Lee Hughes. Giving money to these imbeciles would be more painful than a post-excretion wipe involving the surrogacy of sand paper in the absence of toilet roll and as useful as Polo manufacturing the nappies needed to survive the following week.
The very fact that the system of putting murderers, rapists and burglars behind bars is named the penal system infers criminals are being penalised. In reality they are earning money and have access to their own room, video games and endless drugs, such that people wish to break into prisons now rather than escape. Get rid of clostridium difficile in hospitals before you start purchasing Nintendo Wiis for prisoners. How many criminals contribute to their TV licence inside do you think?
There are some simple solutions to the problems with the world’s most expensive judicial system, however. The best option would be to use preventative methods rather than a cure for once – or, to put it in 13 year old council estate adolescent terms, using a condom rather than an abortion) – but here are some ideas on how to tackle key UK criminality issues and negate the need for pointless charities such as Nacro:
1. By all means let Broadmarsh’s inhabitants work to earn money, but that money should not be allowed to ever reach the criminal, instead first reimbursing the taxpayer for that misfit’s cost to the Exchequer in housing, feeding and clothing them for duration of their time in jail. Any outstanding can then be passed on to charities which do something worthwhile.
2. To avoid any shortfall left by 1), create a crime proceeds tax and cut off the problem at source. Although often difficult to establish the full amount extorted, and despite many victims never receiving their cash or belongings back following an attack, establish a tax which requires perhaps 30% of the cash value of all money and assets stolen in the crime the assailant is being prosecuted for to be paid, which can then fund their time inside.
This should be in addition to, rather than instead of full restitution of victims’ assets, and will serve as a better deterrent than simply locking them up for a few weeks, with early parole for “good behaviour” intertwined with sporadic day release so they can imminently re-offend with no real loss to themselves. It is almost a criminals’ pension scheme – you pay up front and receive the benefit while you retire in your new holiday home that is jail.
3. Bring in/back more effective forms of punishment. If you want to see the effect more severe sentences have, look at the desperate appeal to the Home Secretary from the Brit who hacked into US military computers in the hope he might be granted a reprieve from extradition to a nation where he’ll face a real punishment, presumably something akin to having 837kgs of dynamite inserted into his rectum and detonated if Guantanamo Bay torture allegations are anything to go by. If that doesn’t rehabilitate, nothing will.
Aside from the fact that a little dose of the cane in schools rather than production of an ASBO might sort out anti-social behaviour in children, a few cracks of a whip rather than a short prison spell would free up prison cells. Frankly, letting a criminal sit in a cell no bigger than my left toe with no light and nothing but a bag of brussel sprouts for a week seems like it would have the desired effect to me but the human rights activists would probably manage to throw any such advocate in there with them the UK is so overrun with farcical legislation.
Community service projects are useful, but up the hours. This would alleviate further council tax hikes as issues such as the recent story which revealed a council ordered its worker to wash off only the most offensive graffiti on a wall would be a thing of the past since criminals would be washing it off for free until it was all gone.
4. Let victims exact some revenge. Far from helping recovery, the recent proposal to encourage criminals to visit victims at their hospital bedside is barbaric. The opposite action may help, though: Those that regain the testicular fortitude to come face-to-face with their attacker should be allowed to visit the assailant in a special locked room, close the door and do, within reason, whatever they choose to the criminal. If it helps the victim only then does it constitute real justice.
Letting a murderer out on parole after five years to prowl the streets for further victims is about as beneficial as the hospital nurse passing you a mirror to examine the third degree burns gained as a result of arson burning your uninsured flat to the floor which have rendered your face disfigured and genitalia ineffective for the rest of your life.
Apparently a charity is bidding to run two prisons due to open in 2010. What kind of country have we become when we allow an organisation to ask for donations so that it can dish out hard-earned law-abiding citizens’ cash to prisoners to help them find accommodation, employment and benefits upon their release (a release which is probably two-thirds sooner than they were jailed for in the first place)?
Nacro, the charity that attempts to reintegrate prisoners back in to society upon their release, must be about as successful as trying to get Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Michael Owen on a football pitch at the same time simply because none of the criminals want to leave their allegedly overcrowded havens. Apart from those guilty only of a miscarriage of justice, these people are about as deserving of help as a man who loses his wife, home and children because he gambles away the life savings betting that Alistair Darling would get a back, sack and crack at the local beauty parlour.
The money donated to Nacro could be spent purchasing water, food and basic healthcare to the millions not able to eat for the next week rather than bailing out reprobates who erroneously claim excessive benefits or resent having to work as a dustman (probably now known as a recycling generation executive these days, sorry for being so un-PC) because no other employer will have them on their departure from jail.
We already have “charitable” causes that waste half of the money raised on bureaucracy, advertising and business-class flights for the workforce. If you’ve ever watched an Oxfam advert asking for £15 a month, that advert is where the £180 a year has gone. The man in the advert that Oxfam professes will be able to feed his family for a lifetime upon the provision of some basic fishing equipment is probably still spending every daylight hour – and possibly burning the midnight oil too – scrabbling around trying to catch fish with his bare hands, only now to see charity employees fly past onboard Emirates Airlines.
It was also suggested recently that, owing to the likes of Gazza heading to rehab, a charity should be established which facilitates a smoother transition for footballers retiring from the sport back to normal life – “normal” presumably translates as a mere five homes, model wife and Swiss bank account.
I could be missing something but I thought they already have a charity, namely the Russian and Arab investors lining their gold-coated pockets with £180,000 per week until they sulk themselves to a transfer and pay rise at an even wealthier oil exporter-owned club. The rest of us have to scrimp to provide for our measly pensions so is it really too much to ask for these prima donnas to consider putting a few bob aside for this transition themselves if it’s so traumatic rather than promulgating a need for external help?
Next you’ll be hearing money from both idiotic charities has gone to Joey Barton, Marlon King, Jermaine Pennant and Lee Hughes. Giving money to these imbeciles would be more painful than a post-excretion wipe involving the surrogacy of sand paper in the absence of toilet roll and as useful as Polo manufacturing the nappies needed to survive the following week.
The very fact that the system of putting murderers, rapists and burglars behind bars is named the penal system infers criminals are being penalised. In reality they are earning money and have access to their own room, video games and endless drugs, such that people wish to break into prisons now rather than escape. Get rid of clostridium difficile in hospitals before you start purchasing Nintendo Wiis for prisoners. How many criminals contribute to their TV licence inside do you think?
There are some simple solutions to the problems with the world’s most expensive judicial system, however. The best option would be to use preventative methods rather than a cure for once – or, to put it in 13 year old council estate adolescent terms, using a condom rather than an abortion) – but here are some ideas on how to tackle key UK criminality issues and negate the need for pointless charities such as Nacro:
1. By all means let Broadmarsh’s inhabitants work to earn money, but that money should not be allowed to ever reach the criminal, instead first reimbursing the taxpayer for that misfit’s cost to the Exchequer in housing, feeding and clothing them for duration of their time in jail. Any outstanding can then be passed on to charities which do something worthwhile.
2. To avoid any shortfall left by 1), create a crime proceeds tax and cut off the problem at source. Although often difficult to establish the full amount extorted, and despite many victims never receiving their cash or belongings back following an attack, establish a tax which requires perhaps 30% of the cash value of all money and assets stolen in the crime the assailant is being prosecuted for to be paid, which can then fund their time inside.
This should be in addition to, rather than instead of full restitution of victims’ assets, and will serve as a better deterrent than simply locking them up for a few weeks, with early parole for “good behaviour” intertwined with sporadic day release so they can imminently re-offend with no real loss to themselves. It is almost a criminals’ pension scheme – you pay up front and receive the benefit while you retire in your new holiday home that is jail.
3. Bring in/back more effective forms of punishment. If you want to see the effect more severe sentences have, look at the desperate appeal to the Home Secretary from the Brit who hacked into US military computers in the hope he might be granted a reprieve from extradition to a nation where he’ll face a real punishment, presumably something akin to having 837kgs of dynamite inserted into his rectum and detonated if Guantanamo Bay torture allegations are anything to go by. If that doesn’t rehabilitate, nothing will.
Aside from the fact that a little dose of the cane in schools rather than production of an ASBO might sort out anti-social behaviour in children, a few cracks of a whip rather than a short prison spell would free up prison cells. Frankly, letting a criminal sit in a cell no bigger than my left toe with no light and nothing but a bag of brussel sprouts for a week seems like it would have the desired effect to me but the human rights activists would probably manage to throw any such advocate in there with them the UK is so overrun with farcical legislation.
Community service projects are useful, but up the hours. This would alleviate further council tax hikes as issues such as the recent story which revealed a council ordered its worker to wash off only the most offensive graffiti on a wall would be a thing of the past since criminals would be washing it off for free until it was all gone.
4. Let victims exact some revenge. Far from helping recovery, the recent proposal to encourage criminals to visit victims at their hospital bedside is barbaric. The opposite action may help, though: Those that regain the testicular fortitude to come face-to-face with their attacker should be allowed to visit the assailant in a special locked room, close the door and do, within reason, whatever they choose to the criminal. If it helps the victim only then does it constitute real justice.
Letting a murderer out on parole after five years to prowl the streets for further victims is about as beneficial as the hospital nurse passing you a mirror to examine the third degree burns gained as a result of arson burning your uninsured flat to the floor which have rendered your face disfigured and genitalia ineffective for the rest of your life.
Friday, 29 August 2008
Another air-brained scheme
29 August 2008.
Amongst the hysteria surrounding the collapse of Zoom, another aviation story usurped the Zoom demise on my radar: Apparently an elderly woman followed her bag onto the check-in conveyor belt at an airport in Sweden.
A spokesperson for the baggage handling firm responsible stated “Luckily it wasn’t a long ride – only a couple of metres”. Well that’s ok then, if she’d travelled for half a mile on the conveyor belt now that would be serious. Don’t worry Mrs Spokesperson you can go back to your gold-coated ivory tower with its crystal chandeliers, diamond-encrusted Jacuzzi and emerald-covered toilet seats and brush this incident under the sixteenth-century Persian carpet.
This hideous incompetence barely gets noticed while the revealing that yet more former Eastenders with too little acting prowess to find other work are practicing their passa dobles for the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing gets front page billing.
More troublesome still is the terminology “ride” used, as if this elderly woman was seeking white-knuckle thrills from the latest addition to Alton Towers (possibly a new bus crash rollercoaster if recent events are anything to go by). Now this may have been the first time this woman laid down and felt the earth move for years, but I think the notion that this was not an unpleasant experience for her is about as believable as the smile you give a relative at Christmas after they’ve ignored your wish-list and bought something from Debenham’s that they’re sure is so far superior you’re miniscule brain couldn’t even comprehend to position it on the list in the first place.
Mind you, our senior Scandinavian presumably permeated passport control and conquered customs quicker than her fellow fliers. Certainly, this highlights some issues which could be addressed at airports by letting everyone go on the conveyor belt with their suitcase:
1. If both are on the conveyor belt together, the combined weight of traveller and baggage could be used when calculating fines for excess baggage. Surely everyone has now sat on a flight so squashed by the morbidly obese passenger next to them that they have considered jumping out of the nearest emergency exit. This would ensure these porkers have to purchase two seats and stop innocent holidaymakers being ripped off for taking presents home for their nearest and dearest.
2. There is no need to check-in three hours before departure because you can hitch a ride directly from check-in to the airplane. Planes are also, therefore, not left waiting to taxi for take-off because of some reprobate who overslept or couldn’t make sense of the signs directing them to the departure gate.
3. Nobody’s luggage is left behind only to finally arrive at their destination the day before they return. The owner witnesses it heading onto the plane so there is no need for a repeat of the scenes at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in April with everyone not going to Milan’s luggage being sent to, yes, you guessed it, Milan to be sorted.
4. There is no waiting at the security gates for people to take off all their jewellery and footwear. Either you take it off early during transportation on the conveyor belt ready for the mid-travel scan or you set the alarm off, get pulled off as roughly as someone pulling off their suitcase at the arrival baggage claim not sure if it’s theirs or not, and miss the flight.
As for Zoom going bust it’s about as surprising as the finding of the latest pitiful study (see yesterday’s entry for four more) today entitled “Fly’s Brain Senses Swat Threat”. Did alarm bells not sound for the idiots purchasing tickets with Zoom when Oasis, famed for its £65 fares to Hong Kong, Silverjet and others went broke?
It costs about £65 to get from Gatwick to the nearest Chinese takeaway by car these days so why would a company requiring the endless gallons of aviation fuel to fly thousands of miles across the world be able to stay afloat. It’s about as likely as Russia not invading Ukraine and Moldova.
People need to realise that there is no such thing as a bargain in this world. The only thing you get for free in this life is the clap or a bunch of fives to the temple. For those that are struggling to understand this concept, if a DFS advert telling you its sofas now have 75% off, think about why that might be.
Companies are about as likely to do something out of the kindness of their heart as a heroin addict scrabbling around for their next fix. The very statement that they have a heart is more erroneous than the philosophy that opening up the hard shoulder to motorists will reduce traffic jams. The only motivation is maximisation of shareholder value. If it is perceived a consumer good is cheap, therefore, it is either damaged, out of fashion or season, the seller is about to hit the wall, or, most likely, was never its claimed 100% price in the first place. You get what you pay for.
And the fact that retailers can get away with charging that 99p should be investigated by the industry regulator, too, although the people that believe they’re picking up a good deal because the price is £499.99 rather than £500 and thereby are only paying for something beginning with a 4 rather than a 5 so they must be getting a good deal are really the type of individuals that society should not be permitting to have a bank account from the outset.
They're the same degenerates that expect their non-existent love lives to suddenly spark into life by logging on to Match.com because its latest television advertisement claims there are too many women on the site. Once they've wasted the majority of their benefits money on dating websites and on grounded Zoom aircraft, perhaps they can think about spurning the remainder on the latest flop-to-be that is Celebair - the latest gathering of Z-list reality TV rejects who, like the audience, are unable to find real employment. Perhaps Kenzie and Chico can form a duet to provide on-board entertainment while the Gate Gourmet meals are dispersed called It's ChicKen Time.
Apart from the most established – Ryanair and Easyjet in the airline industry – low-cost producers always hit the wall in harsh economic conditions. People need to realise that it is only because the going is good these companies are able to charge their apparently fantastic prices. If more people realised this the economic turmoil currently being experienced wouldn’t eventuate.
Just look at how the global economic downturn started – people being offered money by banks and credit card companies and accepting it more readily than a dog its kibble, perceiving it to be free and in infinite supply. Then when the banks call in the debts owed to them, people whinge as if they had a divine right to the money that came their way.
Those people need to ask themselves how they would react in a comparable scenario, i.e. if they were burgled, would they deem it unreasonable to expect the return of their money from the robber once caught?
Amongst the hysteria surrounding the collapse of Zoom, another aviation story usurped the Zoom demise on my radar: Apparently an elderly woman followed her bag onto the check-in conveyor belt at an airport in Sweden.
A spokesperson for the baggage handling firm responsible stated “Luckily it wasn’t a long ride – only a couple of metres”. Well that’s ok then, if she’d travelled for half a mile on the conveyor belt now that would be serious. Don’t worry Mrs Spokesperson you can go back to your gold-coated ivory tower with its crystal chandeliers, diamond-encrusted Jacuzzi and emerald-covered toilet seats and brush this incident under the sixteenth-century Persian carpet.
This hideous incompetence barely gets noticed while the revealing that yet more former Eastenders with too little acting prowess to find other work are practicing their passa dobles for the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing gets front page billing.
More troublesome still is the terminology “ride” used, as if this elderly woman was seeking white-knuckle thrills from the latest addition to Alton Towers (possibly a new bus crash rollercoaster if recent events are anything to go by). Now this may have been the first time this woman laid down and felt the earth move for years, but I think the notion that this was not an unpleasant experience for her is about as believable as the smile you give a relative at Christmas after they’ve ignored your wish-list and bought something from Debenham’s that they’re sure is so far superior you’re miniscule brain couldn’t even comprehend to position it on the list in the first place.
Mind you, our senior Scandinavian presumably permeated passport control and conquered customs quicker than her fellow fliers. Certainly, this highlights some issues which could be addressed at airports by letting everyone go on the conveyor belt with their suitcase:
1. If both are on the conveyor belt together, the combined weight of traveller and baggage could be used when calculating fines for excess baggage. Surely everyone has now sat on a flight so squashed by the morbidly obese passenger next to them that they have considered jumping out of the nearest emergency exit. This would ensure these porkers have to purchase two seats and stop innocent holidaymakers being ripped off for taking presents home for their nearest and dearest.
2. There is no need to check-in three hours before departure because you can hitch a ride directly from check-in to the airplane. Planes are also, therefore, not left waiting to taxi for take-off because of some reprobate who overslept or couldn’t make sense of the signs directing them to the departure gate.
3. Nobody’s luggage is left behind only to finally arrive at their destination the day before they return. The owner witnesses it heading onto the plane so there is no need for a repeat of the scenes at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in April with everyone not going to Milan’s luggage being sent to, yes, you guessed it, Milan to be sorted.
4. There is no waiting at the security gates for people to take off all their jewellery and footwear. Either you take it off early during transportation on the conveyor belt ready for the mid-travel scan or you set the alarm off, get pulled off as roughly as someone pulling off their suitcase at the arrival baggage claim not sure if it’s theirs or not, and miss the flight.
As for Zoom going bust it’s about as surprising as the finding of the latest pitiful study (see yesterday’s entry for four more) today entitled “Fly’s Brain Senses Swat Threat”. Did alarm bells not sound for the idiots purchasing tickets with Zoom when Oasis, famed for its £65 fares to Hong Kong, Silverjet and others went broke?
It costs about £65 to get from Gatwick to the nearest Chinese takeaway by car these days so why would a company requiring the endless gallons of aviation fuel to fly thousands of miles across the world be able to stay afloat. It’s about as likely as Russia not invading Ukraine and Moldova.
People need to realise that there is no such thing as a bargain in this world. The only thing you get for free in this life is the clap or a bunch of fives to the temple. For those that are struggling to understand this concept, if a DFS advert telling you its sofas now have 75% off, think about why that might be.
Companies are about as likely to do something out of the kindness of their heart as a heroin addict scrabbling around for their next fix. The very statement that they have a heart is more erroneous than the philosophy that opening up the hard shoulder to motorists will reduce traffic jams. The only motivation is maximisation of shareholder value. If it is perceived a consumer good is cheap, therefore, it is either damaged, out of fashion or season, the seller is about to hit the wall, or, most likely, was never its claimed 100% price in the first place. You get what you pay for.
And the fact that retailers can get away with charging that 99p should be investigated by the industry regulator, too, although the people that believe they’re picking up a good deal because the price is £499.99 rather than £500 and thereby are only paying for something beginning with a 4 rather than a 5 so they must be getting a good deal are really the type of individuals that society should not be permitting to have a bank account from the outset.
They're the same degenerates that expect their non-existent love lives to suddenly spark into life by logging on to Match.com because its latest television advertisement claims there are too many women on the site. Once they've wasted the majority of their benefits money on dating websites and on grounded Zoom aircraft, perhaps they can think about spurning the remainder on the latest flop-to-be that is Celebair - the latest gathering of Z-list reality TV rejects who, like the audience, are unable to find real employment. Perhaps Kenzie and Chico can form a duet to provide on-board entertainment while the Gate Gourmet meals are dispersed called It's ChicKen Time.
Apart from the most established – Ryanair and Easyjet in the airline industry – low-cost producers always hit the wall in harsh economic conditions. People need to realise that it is only because the going is good these companies are able to charge their apparently fantastic prices. If more people realised this the economic turmoil currently being experienced wouldn’t eventuate.
Just look at how the global economic downturn started – people being offered money by banks and credit card companies and accepting it more readily than a dog its kibble, perceiving it to be free and in infinite supply. Then when the banks call in the debts owed to them, people whinge as if they had a divine right to the money that came their way.
Those people need to ask themselves how they would react in a comparable scenario, i.e. if they were burgled, would they deem it unreasonable to expect the return of their money from the robber once caught?
Stop submitting stupid surveys
28 August 2008.
Four separate studies have come to my attention today highlighting inequalities dependent upon where in Britain the citizen hails from.
The first study revealed five of Britain’s top six obesity hotspots are in Wales. No reasons were posited for this concentration, presumably because the study wanted to class all Welsh as fat and lazy. In reality, there are obvious reasons for this trend: The Government and big business only wishes to invest in the UK’s largest cities.
Cardiff, aside, you’ll have to drive miles rather than walk to get anywhere and do anything so exercise goes out the window. There’s not even a walk to a train station or bus stop because there’s about as much ploughed into public transport in Britain’s rural areas as there is a porn star with HIV.
Furthermore, with nothing to do what incentive is there to leave the house. The most exercise some people get in these areas is lifting the television remote to find another diet programme. These programmes are destructive in themselves, instructing their audience to try Atkins and stuff itself with nothing but fatty foods and then bringing out some size zero bikini-clad model to tell you it’s your fault for not being anorexic and not being unemployed so you can spend all day in the gym.
Apologies to those sniffing a Welsh-directed pun, but to ram home the point top of the pops in the obesity chart goes to the Shetland Islands – conceivably the most remote place in Britain. I’m not particularly criticising companies for not investing here, after all they’d be as likely to turn a profit in Shetland as the woman in the latest series of The Apprentice who thought it would be a good idea to introduce a personal account manager and 24-hour hotline for an overnight underwear laundry service.
On the theme of pants, the second study sought to establish discrepancies in driving test pass rates. What a waste of time and money which shows that a higher proportion of idiots in one part of the country over another are about as safe on the roads as a myopic hedgehog. Investigating something of this nature will only serve to let more potential white van men slip through the net rather than bring down the pass rate in areas with higher pass rates.
If there is a need to investigate something driving-related, survey how many inbred buffoons hog the middle or outside lane for absolutely no reason other than being completely devoid of consideration for their peers and too busy checking their lipstick is fully applied in their rear-view mirror to use it for its correct purpose. Making it an offence to hog lanes unnecessarily would reduce congestion, making Britain more efficient, thereby rendering the sums invested in the study worthwhile.
Or perhaps fund a study of how much fuel emissions are reduced by driving at 45mph than they are at 30. The Government is quick to discuss eco-driving, involving driving at 50mph rather than 70mph but carefully avoids disclosing that a usual rush hour speed of 2mph is far worse for the environment than driving at 90mph. Raise the speed limit in 20 and 30 zones and not only can emissions be reduced but once more congestion can be alleviated. But let’s be fair when has the Government reduced any “green” or “safety” measure which does anything except fund Treasury coffers.
It is rather worrying, however, that only one in three people in Rhyl pass their driving test. When these finally don a short skirt to get their certificate you won’t want to be stuck in rush hour there. If the first study’s to be believed, though, the reason is probably because they’re all too fat to see the windscreen over their moobs.
Study three looked into the effect of social factors and genetics on ill health and life expectancy. Once more the researchers have discovered something a six year old halfwit could have told us, namely that you’re going to live twice as long if born if Japan as those born in Lesotho.
Another example given was a boy living in the Glasgow suburb of Calton is likely to live 28 years less than a boy living in nearby affluent Lenzie. Another resounding endorsement of the Government in its futile efforts tackling UK inequality. Being able to afford food, clothing and decent quality housing away from crime means you’ll live longer – state the bleeding obvious.
Did they think people aspire to live in affluent areas so they can die earlier? Tell me if I’m wrong but could there just possibly be a slight chance that if I live in a box at the foot of a twenty-seven storey council estate, clad in nothing but a charity shop thong, consuming a diet consisting solely of a KFC bargain bucket, Bacardi 151 and intravenous drugs I won’t live beyond the age of 50?
The final study revealed Britain’s “happiest” places. Powys in Wales came out on top which goes to show in light of the previous studies either the Welsh are a remarkably resilient bunch, not letting their spirits be dampened by obesity more common than Russell Brand picking up an STD and being as talented behind the wheel as Maureen from Driving School, or one or all of these studies was/were an utter waste of time.
Manchester came second, which is probably linked to its inhabitants not all being morbidly overweight because they have the facilities to do some thing about it on their doorstep. Meanwhile, Edinburgh was bottom, which if its Scottish neighbours Calton’s suburbs are anything to go by can’t be much of a surprise. Who’s likely to be happy at the prospect of dying 28 years sooner than the majority of their UK peers?
The researchers in this study said the variations were not statistically significant. Well that’s as surprising as seeing Davina McCall hosting a television show. When a fellow study concomitantly being released shows district variations there aren’t going to be significant variations in your study if you’re going to analyse things on a city-by-city average basis.
Stop commissioning studies like these that are as big a waste of money as a Big Brother weekly challenge and develop some real ones. Aside from the aforementioned effect of driving more quickly on carbon emissions, I would:
1. Examine the effect of criminalising parental teaching on coitus and banning all things which connote sexual imagery and discussion, e.g. television, the internet and other media, advertising and education, on the UK’s teenage pregnancy rate.
2. Conduct a practical study which assesses how many child molestation victims would go through with the slow removal of their attackers’ penis using a Swiss army knife in a dark room where the paedophiles are detained in solitary confinement in a strait jacket if invited to do so by police.
3. Search for a defining correlation between walking around in groups, dressed in a fake Burberry cap, hoody and tracksuit bottoms and the number of burglaries at Matalan outlets.
4. Assess whether masturbation really is bad for you using the chances of causing blindness, repetitive strain injury and the like as evidence.
5. Investigate the link between being brought up on a farm and entering a life of bestiality as an adult.
6. Establish any relationship between letting people from less privileged and impoverished backgrounds with a good IQ into Oxbridge or employing them in decent jobs and productivity and quality of work.
Four separate studies have come to my attention today highlighting inequalities dependent upon where in Britain the citizen hails from.
The first study revealed five of Britain’s top six obesity hotspots are in Wales. No reasons were posited for this concentration, presumably because the study wanted to class all Welsh as fat and lazy. In reality, there are obvious reasons for this trend: The Government and big business only wishes to invest in the UK’s largest cities.
Cardiff, aside, you’ll have to drive miles rather than walk to get anywhere and do anything so exercise goes out the window. There’s not even a walk to a train station or bus stop because there’s about as much ploughed into public transport in Britain’s rural areas as there is a porn star with HIV.
Furthermore, with nothing to do what incentive is there to leave the house. The most exercise some people get in these areas is lifting the television remote to find another diet programme. These programmes are destructive in themselves, instructing their audience to try Atkins and stuff itself with nothing but fatty foods and then bringing out some size zero bikini-clad model to tell you it’s your fault for not being anorexic and not being unemployed so you can spend all day in the gym.
Apologies to those sniffing a Welsh-directed pun, but to ram home the point top of the pops in the obesity chart goes to the Shetland Islands – conceivably the most remote place in Britain. I’m not particularly criticising companies for not investing here, after all they’d be as likely to turn a profit in Shetland as the woman in the latest series of The Apprentice who thought it would be a good idea to introduce a personal account manager and 24-hour hotline for an overnight underwear laundry service.
On the theme of pants, the second study sought to establish discrepancies in driving test pass rates. What a waste of time and money which shows that a higher proportion of idiots in one part of the country over another are about as safe on the roads as a myopic hedgehog. Investigating something of this nature will only serve to let more potential white van men slip through the net rather than bring down the pass rate in areas with higher pass rates.
If there is a need to investigate something driving-related, survey how many inbred buffoons hog the middle or outside lane for absolutely no reason other than being completely devoid of consideration for their peers and too busy checking their lipstick is fully applied in their rear-view mirror to use it for its correct purpose. Making it an offence to hog lanes unnecessarily would reduce congestion, making Britain more efficient, thereby rendering the sums invested in the study worthwhile.
Or perhaps fund a study of how much fuel emissions are reduced by driving at 45mph than they are at 30. The Government is quick to discuss eco-driving, involving driving at 50mph rather than 70mph but carefully avoids disclosing that a usual rush hour speed of 2mph is far worse for the environment than driving at 90mph. Raise the speed limit in 20 and 30 zones and not only can emissions be reduced but once more congestion can be alleviated. But let’s be fair when has the Government reduced any “green” or “safety” measure which does anything except fund Treasury coffers.
It is rather worrying, however, that only one in three people in Rhyl pass their driving test. When these finally don a short skirt to get their certificate you won’t want to be stuck in rush hour there. If the first study’s to be believed, though, the reason is probably because they’re all too fat to see the windscreen over their moobs.
Study three looked into the effect of social factors and genetics on ill health and life expectancy. Once more the researchers have discovered something a six year old halfwit could have told us, namely that you’re going to live twice as long if born if Japan as those born in Lesotho.
Another example given was a boy living in the Glasgow suburb of Calton is likely to live 28 years less than a boy living in nearby affluent Lenzie. Another resounding endorsement of the Government in its futile efforts tackling UK inequality. Being able to afford food, clothing and decent quality housing away from crime means you’ll live longer – state the bleeding obvious.
Did they think people aspire to live in affluent areas so they can die earlier? Tell me if I’m wrong but could there just possibly be a slight chance that if I live in a box at the foot of a twenty-seven storey council estate, clad in nothing but a charity shop thong, consuming a diet consisting solely of a KFC bargain bucket, Bacardi 151 and intravenous drugs I won’t live beyond the age of 50?
The final study revealed Britain’s “happiest” places. Powys in Wales came out on top which goes to show in light of the previous studies either the Welsh are a remarkably resilient bunch, not letting their spirits be dampened by obesity more common than Russell Brand picking up an STD and being as talented behind the wheel as Maureen from Driving School, or one or all of these studies was/were an utter waste of time.
Manchester came second, which is probably linked to its inhabitants not all being morbidly overweight because they have the facilities to do some thing about it on their doorstep. Meanwhile, Edinburgh was bottom, which if its Scottish neighbours Calton’s suburbs are anything to go by can’t be much of a surprise. Who’s likely to be happy at the prospect of dying 28 years sooner than the majority of their UK peers?
The researchers in this study said the variations were not statistically significant. Well that’s as surprising as seeing Davina McCall hosting a television show. When a fellow study concomitantly being released shows district variations there aren’t going to be significant variations in your study if you’re going to analyse things on a city-by-city average basis.
Stop commissioning studies like these that are as big a waste of money as a Big Brother weekly challenge and develop some real ones. Aside from the aforementioned effect of driving more quickly on carbon emissions, I would:
1. Examine the effect of criminalising parental teaching on coitus and banning all things which connote sexual imagery and discussion, e.g. television, the internet and other media, advertising and education, on the UK’s teenage pregnancy rate.
2. Conduct a practical study which assesses how many child molestation victims would go through with the slow removal of their attackers’ penis using a Swiss army knife in a dark room where the paedophiles are detained in solitary confinement in a strait jacket if invited to do so by police.
3. Search for a defining correlation between walking around in groups, dressed in a fake Burberry cap, hoody and tracksuit bottoms and the number of burglaries at Matalan outlets.
4. Assess whether masturbation really is bad for you using the chances of causing blindness, repetitive strain injury and the like as evidence.
5. Investigate the link between being brought up on a farm and entering a life of bestiality as an adult.
6. Establish any relationship between letting people from less privileged and impoverished backgrounds with a good IQ into Oxbridge or employing them in decent jobs and productivity and quality of work.
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Xcruciating
26 August 2008.
Well hold me down and slap me with a kipper. Someone on X Factor made up their sob story in a pathetic attempt to get through the first audition. Even Mikey off Big Brother 9 could have seen that one coming, do we really need it as headline news that broadcast media has been faked?
Now I’m not someone who gets the chance to watch daytime television but even I can remember watching an early episode of Vanessa Feltz’s chat show (yes in the days before she married Phats and started appearing on every reality TV show going) and wondering exactly which council estate the actors had been drafted from and had a bottle of White Lightning dangled in their faces as remuneration, or how far off camera the ITV acting coach was whispering to each of them their lines. Similarly, anyone with the slightest sense that Jerry Springer isn't faked should think about why the show has bouncers. There's not going to be a fight for the 1800th show in a row is there?
Then there’s the farce that is the phone-in competitions. Anyone that is stupid enough to try and enter some of them deserves to be fined as much as the terrestrial stations responsible. For those that were never witness to one of these, a rough guide is ring in if you can tell me a four-letter word beginning with the letter A and you could win. An hour and thousands of £7.50 per second calls later, no-one’s guessed the word the show is looking for and they move on to the letter B. In some cases, they won’t even reveal this mysterious word they were looking for.
This is what those free scratchcards sent in the mail which say “You’re a winner. Dial xxx to discover your prize” have been doing for years. They're all about as believable as one of the girls found on Sky channels 900+ telling you that they want really want to get dirty with you.
All that any observer could possibly comment as a result of this and the Blue Peter scenario (producers giving the prize to a family member) is why didn’t I think of this first? Let’s be honest, you’re not hosting a competition out of the goodness of your heart, so why not rig the result to increase your margins. Why not make up a nauseating soliloquy to ensure passage ahead of your more talented peers on the X Factor? There's so many gullible invalids around there's a fortune to be had.
It’s irritating enough that half the acts appearing on the Xtraordinarily-bad Factor have to spill their miserable life stories just to make “good” TV. Why are these people any more deserving of a place in the next round than anyone else? I thought it was a talent contest with the best singers getting through, not a competition about who can produce the most tears and make up the most ridiculous tale about their torrid lives.
It was only a week prior that one featured lady reached the next stage after horrifying us all with her tale of getting on her back for the first time at the age of 13 (well getting her first bun in the oven - given her track record she probably opened her legs aged 9) and 4 pregnancies, more drugs than Balco, time in jail and three social services confiscations later she's decided to turn things around by singing to Louis Walsh. It's a sad society we live in when doing a short rendition of your favourite song is tantamount to a bribe for social services to return your nippers from their care.
Maybe if I audition and told Dermot “find me a show and I’ll be on it” O’Leary that I’d been sexually abused by one of the wolves I’d had my feral upbringing with because I was unable to defend myself due to being a Down’s syndrome-suffering midget who lost both arms and legs in a freak masturbating accident I’d be straight through to mentoring at Cheryl Cole’s house.
Apparently our young faker who wasn't actually brought up in a foster home after all merely wanted to show his real parents he "wasn't a waste of space". Go on ITV and cry your eyes out to the man with the highest waistband in television, yes that's a great way of proving it.
Well hold me down and slap me with a kipper. Someone on X Factor made up their sob story in a pathetic attempt to get through the first audition. Even Mikey off Big Brother 9 could have seen that one coming, do we really need it as headline news that broadcast media has been faked?
Now I’m not someone who gets the chance to watch daytime television but even I can remember watching an early episode of Vanessa Feltz’s chat show (yes in the days before she married Phats and started appearing on every reality TV show going) and wondering exactly which council estate the actors had been drafted from and had a bottle of White Lightning dangled in their faces as remuneration, or how far off camera the ITV acting coach was whispering to each of them their lines. Similarly, anyone with the slightest sense that Jerry Springer isn't faked should think about why the show has bouncers. There's not going to be a fight for the 1800th show in a row is there?
Then there’s the farce that is the phone-in competitions. Anyone that is stupid enough to try and enter some of them deserves to be fined as much as the terrestrial stations responsible. For those that were never witness to one of these, a rough guide is ring in if you can tell me a four-letter word beginning with the letter A and you could win. An hour and thousands of £7.50 per second calls later, no-one’s guessed the word the show is looking for and they move on to the letter B. In some cases, they won’t even reveal this mysterious word they were looking for.
This is what those free scratchcards sent in the mail which say “You’re a winner. Dial xxx to discover your prize” have been doing for years. They're all about as believable as one of the girls found on Sky channels 900+ telling you that they want really want to get dirty with you.
All that any observer could possibly comment as a result of this and the Blue Peter scenario (producers giving the prize to a family member) is why didn’t I think of this first? Let’s be honest, you’re not hosting a competition out of the goodness of your heart, so why not rig the result to increase your margins. Why not make up a nauseating soliloquy to ensure passage ahead of your more talented peers on the X Factor? There's so many gullible invalids around there's a fortune to be had.
It’s irritating enough that half the acts appearing on the Xtraordinarily-bad Factor have to spill their miserable life stories just to make “good” TV. Why are these people any more deserving of a place in the next round than anyone else? I thought it was a talent contest with the best singers getting through, not a competition about who can produce the most tears and make up the most ridiculous tale about their torrid lives.
It was only a week prior that one featured lady reached the next stage after horrifying us all with her tale of getting on her back for the first time at the age of 13 (well getting her first bun in the oven - given her track record she probably opened her legs aged 9) and 4 pregnancies, more drugs than Balco, time in jail and three social services confiscations later she's decided to turn things around by singing to Louis Walsh. It's a sad society we live in when doing a short rendition of your favourite song is tantamount to a bribe for social services to return your nippers from their care.
Maybe if I audition and told Dermot “find me a show and I’ll be on it” O’Leary that I’d been sexually abused by one of the wolves I’d had my feral upbringing with because I was unable to defend myself due to being a Down’s syndrome-suffering midget who lost both arms and legs in a freak masturbating accident I’d be straight through to mentoring at Cheryl Cole’s house.
Apparently our young faker who wasn't actually brought up in a foster home after all merely wanted to show his real parents he "wasn't a waste of space". Go on ITV and cry your eyes out to the man with the highest waistband in television, yes that's a great way of proving it.
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