America's Most Trusted

So Tom Hanks is America's most trusted celebrity according to Forbes magazine. Who cares? Where is the questionnaire regarding America's most untrustworthy celebrity? That's the result we the people want to see!

I Am Not Underground Arse Pervert

I had no choice but to take a packed tube on my way home tonight, and like my fellow passengers, I just had to grin and bear it in trying to keep my dignity in difficult circumstances.

However, the stupid cow next to me kept bending over to attend to something in her bag, which resulted in her sticking her fat arse into me, then looking around at me with disdain as though I was trying it on!

What was she expecting? Did she think I could evaporate? Anyway, technically it wasn't even ME she was crashing into, as I strategically kept my bag between me and her huge arse to AVOID making contact. Urggh!

My advice: don't bend over on the tube at rush hour if you have a big arse, as NO-ONE wants to make contact with it.

Equestrian Drug Busters!

This morning, on awakening, I misheard the news as the BBC were reporting that police had launched raids on the nation's cannabis farmers using twenty forces.

I heard it as "twenty horses", and subsequently conjured up images of the skunk growers of Britain having their precious harvest trampled in this novel, if unorthodox, method of law enforcement.

clipclopclipclopClipClopClipClopCLIPCLOPCLIPCLOP: CRASH!!!TRAMPLE!!!STAMP!!!NEIGH!!HIGHHOSILVER!!!

"Oh Maaan! Me weed's bin totally wasted by them horse cats man!

Fanciful, I know, as anyone who ever been near a horse will know that our hoofed friends would be far more likely to shuffle about eating the illicit crop, before standing around asleep for the next 23 hours.

I wonder if they sent in surveillance sniffer spaniels beforehand? They could have posed as strays, hanging around the bins whilst casing the joint. ("dammit Rover, take that collar off for God's sake, this is undercover work! Quick, they're coming out; Start Scratching!").

Beware: Drumming

Spent the weekend in Liverpool, where the afternoon was marred by the ever-presence of a group of drummers—some sort of Brazilian Tinitus collective—who were maurading around the Albert Dock pounding incesantly for hour on end.

Any crap busker can be forgotten with yards once they're out of earshot, but a drummers are impossible to shake off due to the acoustic menace that they create, with the tedius rhythm penetrating the thickest walls. This qualifies as cruel and inhuman treatment to my mind and should be stopped now.

If Liverpool thinks its going to have visitors when they become the City of Culture in 2008, they're going to have to get this lot out of town.

Anyway, nice to see the guy shuffling past my mum's old home on his way to the shop in his pyjamas. Class.

Stop This High Street Freak Show NOW!

An Expert Writes

I was in the bookshop by the University today, eruditely checking the latest titles, when I happened to notice the new influx of undergraduates, pert with their slim young limbs, enjoying the prolonged good weather in their scanty summer clothes.

Oh how I envy them, what with all their life ahead of them, full of youthful optimism, making new friends, discovering new places and opening up to new experiences—possibly with a older man they've met in a bookstore—and enjoying the beautiful things in life.

Anyway, I was enjoying this vista of nubility, when my gaze shuddered to a halt at the sight of an obese ginger-haired woman wearing....No, I can't bring myself to describe the scene. Anyway this optical assault was no less than visual pollution to someone gifted with such a discerning eye.

And yet this sideshow exhibit was not alone: you would not BELIEVE some of the people I saw walking about today. Some were even unaccompanied and in full view! I saw one man with a balding head that was too large for his body. Wearing cheap spectacles. Carrying his belongings in a carrier bag.

Now whenever I raise this subject people throw up their hands with opprobrium, and start raving on about human rights, diversity and the right to life, etc, so before you JUMP to conclusions, hear me out!

Obviously, I'm not talking about licensing for ugly/unusual people, don't get me wrong. Well actually, yes I am, but it would be purely consensual.

Basically, a local government officer would interview those put forward and discuss why they had been referred (the office would be equipped with a choice of mirrors, and weighing scales as an aid to this process), and the plugs/weirdos, would be persuaded to do the socially decent thing, and accept a generous set of conditions dictating the hours which they would be recommended to be out. Obviously, there would be no right to appeal, as some may be too stupid to know what's good for them, and we don't want to waste tax-payers' money in the courts.

It's not like they don't know why they've been referred, and most of them, when alone at night, probably pray for someone to do something about it. (Like that werewolf chap who insists on being locked in the room). Take that ginger lard-arse lady for example: what is her appearance in public other than a cry for help?

Is this too much? Let's face it, it's their well-being that I'm thinking of. It can't be easy going through life being pointed-at and making milk go sour, when all they probably want to do is a twelve hour shift at a call centre. And with 24hr shopping there's no reason they can't gather with their own kind overnight, which is probably the way they like it. They're certainly more likely to find their own kind on the tills at that hour anyway.

Obviously, I'm not going to address the issue of sterilisation because that belongs to a whole other debate, but I think it worth putting in the public debate.

Look, life has been cruel enough to these people, who are we to prolong the misery. Write to your MP today, and make them see sense.

If that doesn't work, we'll burn cars, invade the TV studios and declare parliament void until we get our way.

Dust Off The Barricades

Congratulations to Hungary and Thailand for ignoring the trends of history, and taking a definately retro approach to politics.
It's like the millenium never happened.
I'm going to avoid the coverage on the rolling news, and rely on dispatches sent by telegraph. That is if those pesky rebels haven't cut the wires!
Hmm, nostalgia.

Philip Morris: The Environmental Cortez

As a smoker, I always had the problem of rationalising my choice to smoke, against my conscience that otherwise led me to the moral choice when providing consumer support to the forces of evil.

I wouldn't buy apartheid flavoured Outspan oranges, or Pinochet's Chilean wine, or use supermarkets that were bank-rolling the Thatcher government. So why should I give my money to the bastards in the tobacco industry who were beyond contempt?

Did I crave tobacco THAT much?

It seems that I'd underestimated the tobacco bastards. They're responsible for more than the average wrong-doing as environmentalist George Monbiot's Guardian article explains.

Want to know where those "scientific" refutations of global warming/climate change originated? Step forward Philip Morris, who shoved the whole tanker of doubt away from the quayside and out into the ocean of disinformation. Much of the unqualified lies perpetuated are still being cited as genuine research contradicting evidence of environmental decay.

It seems Philip Morris and Exxon were made for each other, and it's the Oil/Tobacco alliance that may win the political debate, at the cost of the earth.

I think the old analogy of cigarettes and coffin nails is a little bit more real after this.

Jean Charles De Menezes

Not surprisingly the Metropolitan Police are unwilling to take responsibility for the slaughter of Jean Charles De Menezes last July. I was appalled to hear the police defence, which runs along the lines of:

(I have to paraphrase as I can't find it in text)

"The police did not set out on that day to kill Jean Charles De Menezes, they set out to protect the citizens of London"

Dear Metropolitan Police, Jean Charles De Menezes did not set out that day to get shot in the head seven times, or, for all we know, to commit any crime that would lead him to be shot in the head seven times. Jean Charles De Menezes was a citizen of London who should have been protected by the individuals who shot him seven times in the head.

This is not the time to take the "policing's a difficult job" approach. Someone cocked up and an innocent man died. That someone must take responsibility for their actions, or we cannot trust those paid to defend us.

Infallible or Infidel?

Well, I'm getting a bit sick of all this religion crap, and it's distressing that the World Political Climate—which isn't ALL the west's fault—continues to be dominated by it.

The Pope was doing nothing different from all the other Popes, identifying heresy, only we live in an age of instant communication where there are enough opportunists in the islamic world who have enough time on their hands to sit around waiting to get angry at "anti-islamic" sentiments, before telling the guys out in the street who have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO to go burn flags.

And the longer we obsess about it (ie: the fear of the Fatwa; the inability to balance the right of freedom of speech, with the right of the fundamentalists to threaten death on their critics), then the less able we will be to concentrate on what really counts down here on Earth, things like Poverty, Human Rights, Environmental Decay, Universal Education etc.

Let's start by winding down any belief in al-Qaeda.
If it ever did exist, it probably perished with Bin-Laden, who probably pegged it some time ago around the time the access to his money ran out. Let's face it, all we're left with is al-Zawahiri with a video camera.
Admittedly, those fellow Saudis that perpetrated 9/11 were almost certainly bank-rolled by Bin-Laden, but that was about it. That was the big one, the place in history, but it's downhill after that. Think big night out with the stolen credit card.

The idea that all muslim fundamentalism is part of a monolithic structure with Bin-Laden at its head is erroneous and owes too much to the Dr Evil school of thought favoured by the Bush administration because a) it's easier to imagine for anyone who has been to the movies, and b) it's easier to frighten people with.

Fundamentalism, popular with young men with messianic fantasies, has many shades, coloured by national, cultural and ethnic origins. And even if some of these kids have trained in Pakistani training camps in Afghanistan, they owe their leanings to the Mujahideen concept of the Jihad, not Bin-Laden, however much they may admire him.
Yes, al-Qaeda gets cited by the new wave of subversives, but only like a form of branding, like a global franchise. They want to be associated with the 9/11 phenomena, they like the fear that the brand evokes. It's a shortcut to notoriety.

However, if you put all these groups in one place for a week and they'd develop enough animosity on national, cultural and ethnic grounds to forget the infidel and start killing each other. And that's before they start on their religious differences.

Obviously, the al-Qaeda concept is attractive because it carries the hope of a cure. America kills the bad guys at the top and the little people at the bottom run like cowards into the shadows.
But it isn't like that. Islamic fundamentalist terror is amorphous and with us for a generation. Individuals will conspire to make big statements with atrocities, as that will bring them greater glory than a lifetime of political struggle and human endevour. What the rest of us have to do is learn to live with it without it undermining our values, or sense of perspective, whilst doing everything we can to undermine the folly that is religious fervour.

Religion won't get us out of this, any more than armies will.

BMW Bargain

Yes, a Red BMW for only £350!
Up on the A10 on the way to Edmonton, on the left by the abandoned shops next to the bus stop.
I reckon you could probably haggle him down to £320.
Imagine the envy of your friends.

Control

I forgot to mention the woman in Starbucks (don't judge me) a couple of weeks ago who handed back her cappuccino and insisted on "more froth", despite the queue behind her.
I can't imagine a more perfect specimen of a naked gesture.

The Freedom Loving Killing Machine

Those freedom hating lefties at the Guardian have produced some statistics regarding the "War On Terror".

Apparently, since 9/11, globally there have been 4,319 deaths at the hands of terrorists, and 92,469 deaths at the hands of the freedom loving "allies". Imagine, 92,469 terrorists! How many more could there possibly be?
I make that Terrorists 1, Freedom 23, so we're doing pretty good.

Sadly, 9/11, America's second "Day of Infamy" has been followed by a war that has now taken longer than the war that followed the first back in 1942.

America saw off the Japanese within four years, although they took the short cut in the end (and 215,000 civilian lives) with those atom bombs. Now the war in Afghanistan is approaching five years old, and still those pesky Talibans haven't got the message. What is it about free trade that they don't understand?

And isn't it about time Osama stopped delegating to his No. 2 and started doing some real work? And I mean videos, not those crappy cassette efforts. What's the point of being a world villain if you're not going to go for vainglory?

Where is Ian Fleming when we need him?

Man Weds Goat

Check out this human interest story from the BBC.

Why I Hate The Tories

Reluctant to turn this post into a long list of grievances, I'll concentrate on the point at hand, which was highlighted by this story about the perilous state of British wildlife at the hands of the landowning rich.

Now I appreciate that ornithology may not be the grooviest topic on the agenda, but I think that the plight of the hen harrier is a pertinent reminder of how vulnerable the environment is in Tory hands; and most of it in this country is.

The rural landowners are constantly bleating about how they should be just left alone to run the countryside without urban interference, and how their diligent care of the land over the centuries has produced England's peerless landscape. Yet in practice, they prove to be narrow-minded and cash-grabbing, in their constant striving for short-term gain.

Grouse are raised in their thousands to be killed by those rich-enough to attend a shoot. Thus the event serves both purposes of the Tory life-style: a profit is made and it perpetuates an elitist ritual. The hen-harrier is therefore a nuisance, and may nibble into their profits, therefore it has to be eradicated.

When the landowners pledge their love of the countryside, they merely mean their love of living commodities, that which exists to create profit. Their love fails to extend beyond this, and converts very quickly to hatred when faced with the non-commodity that is the rest of nature: ie; the vast majority of the environment, which the Tories believe to be in direct competition with them, setting out to deprive them of their heritage, like some chaotic saboteur.

The Tory landowning class will never rest until every un-commodifiable animal and plant is extinguished, even if it meant that their own future was doomed. Money in the bank now and the social status that that brings, that's what counts, not some scraggy wild vermin and weeds favoured by the communist Townies. And the rest of us can only sit by and watch our world shrink as a result.

Ten years ago, around the time of the Frankenstein-like BSE crisis, the farmers of Dorset seemed to be united against the EC (who were reluctant to contaminate Europe with British Beef) and everywhere one looked there were large hand-made signs disparaging Brussels. The basic message was "hands of the British countryside". In one picture-book village, there was a classic 17th century pub, displaying its loyalty with a "keep Britain British" sign at the gate to the beer-garden.
I say picture-book village, but it wasn't quite, as the verdant beauty of the surrounding countryside was marred by the horror that was that pub's beer-garden, decked out as it was by a sea of gaudy scarlet sunshades advertising Coca-Cola.

Nationalise the land NOW!

Evening Standard: Jamie Oliver Attacks Parents

Well, if he's the result of their efforts, Mr & Mrs Oliver were probably asking for it.

They Think It's Moldova....

Well, I came downstairs and sat down in front of the TV, only to discover that the Macedonia v. England wasn't on!

I listened to the first half on 5Live, before setting off to the pub for the second half.

Due to the queue at the cash machine by Wood Green Tube (some stupid woman using a teddy bear to obscure her key strokes), I missed the start of the second half; which means I missed the only goal. Which I still haven't seen, as Sky failed to show it again, despite the mediocrity of the game.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of watching England games in the pub because:
a) the boorishness of the drunken English fan,
&
b) the recent trend of "face-painters" that have adopted England as one of their brands, despite their complete lack of football experience. (You know, the guys in Beckham jerseys who look around the room in confusion as England struggle against the nobodies: Why can't England display the superhero skills exhibited in the adverts? ).

But, it was actually quite interesting. Not only was there little bigotry on display— only one loudmouth Londoner to whom the game was his chance to shine as "the people's commentator" (Thanks, but no thanks)—and the face-painters were subdued (including the "Tottenham Fan" in front of me with a Rooney shirt—how does that work?) so it was actually quite bearable.

So the highlight was actually the pub's reaction to the scores elsewhere:

San Marino 0-10 Germany got a cheer, but then France 3-1 Italy got a round of applause. When it got to San Marino 0-13, the cheers contained the Whey Hey! quality that England lost years ago.

I like the current Germany squad: they have that Keegan's Newcastle quality of aspiring to overcome their shortcomings by outscoring the opposition, however many goals that takes. So when it comes to San Marino they don't know when to stop: which puts England's five against Andorra into perspective.

Remember: I qualify as a German by birth! Come on yooo krauts.

And well done Northern Ireland against the perenially overrated Spanish lightweights. Fantastic result which shows just how overrated modern footballers at the top level are.

Post-Modern Ironing

Older readers in the UK will remember those blissful days before FM radio when evenings were spent trying to listen to chart music on Radio Luxembourg, as "All The Young Dudes" would fade in and out of the wall of static that was European broadcasting. That and those Peter Stuyvesant ads. And Clearasil! Hey Kids, don't let acne get you down: have another fag!

If you do remember, you'll also recall the little fanfare identification signal from Tirana that would rise and fade morbidly in the background. A mystery to us teenagers, the signal was there to locate the Albanian National Radio Service whilst it was off the air, and to stop anyone using the wavelength in their absence.

I mention this purely because I feel that is what this post is about.

I have nothing to say tonight, but if I don't post anything people will give up looking, which would impair the moment when I DO have that shrewd insight, or inspired wit to impart, and no-one's looking.

Please keep this channel open; I'm sure SOMETHING will turn up.

And check out The Shed

What would Thatcher think?

As the tabloids warn us of the dangers of the Eastern European influx, now that we have one million Poles amongst us, I see conflicting messages.

Whilst the Daily Mail readers quake in their beds, the captains of industry they revere seem to quite like the Poles. Apparently, the Poles are industrious and good time-keepers who are willing to put the hours in. Also, the Eastern Europeans tend to share the right wing, racist instincts of those Daily Mail readers, and they are definitely a lot whiter than the previous wave of immigrants.

And anecdotal evidence tends to suggest that employers' inclination towards the Eastern Europeans is creating pressure on the employment prospects of the Black immigration that has been the back-bone of our low-paid ancillary industries.

So are this lot going to suppress the opportunity for the previous wave to climb the ladder? Are black employees going to be sidelined, and held in an employment ghetto where opportunities to advance are restricted? Could be.


In the same vein, one wonders (doesn't one?) if there are parallels in our national game, where the foreign-owned big clubs are now relying on imports in order to avoid the Tommy Atkins school of hard-work and tough-tackling football that has brought the national side fuck-all over the decades.
Who wants a bunch of criminal class piss-artists when you can pay over the odds for a dedicated athlete who has been coached in the art of looking after himself, on and off the pitch.
The reality is that the average Johnny Foreigner is only here for the ridiculous wages, and couldn't give a shit about the club; but as long as the perception amongst the club owners of overseas players as being more professional, more RELIABLE than the home-grown players, then the British product will be continually second-rate.

Not unlike a clapped out Rover, choking out blue smoke, in the wake of the Mercedes and Ferraris on the road to success.

A German Joke: What's the difference between a Jehovas Witness and a British Car?
You can always shut the door on a Jehovas Witness!

Evening Standard: Huge Car Gang Smashed

Yeh, apparently these criminal guys were driving around in this really big motor vehicle, yet on being apprehended, they proved to be quite brittle.