blog archive 4

27.10.08

I thought I’d start off with some topical items from today’s news. Today being a particularly good day for some great raring to go news items! Some could only happen here in laugh-a-minute Britain!

You might want to visit www.seety.co.uk for an online view of any street in London. It’s certainly cheaper than the open-top tourist buses! You can also look at the homes of famous people in London for instance Kylie Minogue’s pad! How Coo ool is that!!! If Danny Minogue has a London pad, please let me know!!!

Next is the Forestry Commission’s blatant act in defiance of rights enshrined in the Magna Carta, allowing foraging rights in woods for dead wood for fires. I can only hope legal action can be taken. The Forestry Commission claim they are acting for health and safety reasons – absolute piffle!!!! They are our woods, not theirs, and people have been paying for a 30 day license to get wood for the winter. Now they say only businesses with machinery may forage for wood. If someone twists an ankle in a rabbit hole, I can’t see how the Forestry Commission could get sued, and I’m sure they wouldn’t payout, whatever. Perhaps the gas and electricity moguls have been leaning on the Forestry Commission?!?!

Next, some idiot of a local council (Bath) won’t allow an outdoor icerink as they say it would attract (as in be a magnet) for paedophiles. Either they’ve got their poles sorely crossed, or frozen bathwater isn’t considered much of an advert for Bath. Bath really needs to get its (ice) skates on and forget political correctness and allow kids to enjoy themselves. As for pervs, we can send them packing as fast as Bath Council! They’re probably more concerned about the cost of council policing!!!!

Talking about pervs, can’t Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand get their act together for more than one minute at a time, let alone harassing an old time favourite from Fawlty Towers.

BP today declared £6.4 BILLION profits, basically from record prices at the pumps. Between their fuel watered down with additives, the £ at a 5 year low against the US dollar, and record high taxation of fuel, it’s no wonder we drive as little as possible! I notice that very often I only get about ¾ of the amount metered at the pump. No doubt the ‘missing’ fuel is lining executives (mostly) and shareholders (sometimes occasionally) pockets!!

Next no doubt will be record profits from gas companies diluting the gas, probably with hot air!!!!

Talking about hot air, McEnroe has been proved RIGHT!!!! About 4/5 line calls of out, by tennis umpires have been shown to be wrong! Visual perception is to blame. Our eyes can’t react fast enough so our brain projects an image of where it thinks the ball will land. As our perception works on straight line motion , it doesn’t predict the arc the ball actually travels through!

I thought I saw a P***Y cat sees innocent tunes censored by Itunes Music Store. No it’s not over political correctness, just a hem, database error – if you believe the statement by Apple!!!

Should we have the staid and highly intelligent Obama as president or the wildcat ex-para military Mcain with his featherless goose (in jeans) of a sidekick (or is that gooseless feather with $150,000 wardrobe?!) ? I guess I’d vote for Obama – no contest!!!

Headline - Camilla a big hit in Japan. Charles to apply as next Japanese Emperor!!!!

First artificial heart ready in 2 ½ years time. No - Gordon Brown’s been trialling one since 1994!!!!

Poor Gordon says other countries should have listened to him. Didn’t we ALL stop listening to him some (long!) time ago!!!

Once again our senior civil servants leave top secret documents in a train ( car/ aeroplane/ ship/ bus/ bicycle / public bench etc….) Is this to get reporters’ attention? Are they secure if sent by taxi, moped, motor bike/ new supersonic passenger plane?

Immigrants since Labour come to power:- nearly 2 million from outside EU, only 374.000 from within EU. More UK nationals have emigrated eg France, Spain, Australia, any where else in the world . . . .

Don’t drop your mobile phone down an onboard loo on a French train at least, took the fire service to rescue them when their arm got stuck trying to retrieve phone! Don’t Loo k now!!!

And a school in Colchester has banned children from bringing in broomsticks for Halloween in case they get hurt. In fairness, they were only following official advice on the NHS website:

'Be careful with witches' brooms made from sticks. If the sticks get dislodged, they are a choking hazard. These brooms should be labelled 'For Adult Use Only.'

So there we have it, no fairies by open-air icerink, no elves gathering wood down in the woods today, and strictly no witches hazel-twig broomsticks . . . or wizard's wands . . . ?

1.11.08

Tony Blair has earned about £20 million since leaving office but guess what, as a Middle East peace envoy it’s all tax-free?

So the private sector media takes on the BBC over Ross & Brand. Let’s face it, the private media were just out to ‘brand’ (pardon pun!) the poor Beeb. Never mind, the beeb gets to keep about £2 million in salaries! The beeb must be fuming over Ross/ Brand giving the private media a kicking horse/ stool. The Ross/ Brand issue was just a sideshow. It’s private might against the public Beeb!!!! Here we have classic political duplicity, public furore, private saving money, as with all politics!!!!

Katherine Jenkins joins the real world, but given her elevated public position, she has to apologize, no?? Hemp, ‘grass’, ’weed’ has been known for its relaxing and mood calming properties for a 100,000 years or more. The ONLY reason lawmakers/ politicians want it illegal is its usefulness in approaching a) rich and famous people such as footballers, other sportsters, film stars and pop/ rock stars, and in approaching anyone else likely to use the stuff. Being used commonly, it gives them leads to hard drug dealers. If ‘weed’ was available in the chemists, hard drug users and dealers would be very difficult to find as not very many people take hard drugs. The politicians and law-makers don’t tell us these things. They also like to have some legal means of ‘hold’ on the rich and famous and over layabouts and drop-outs. As for skunk being 3x stronger, well whisky is many times stronger than beer, and if tea or coffee are drunk 3x stronger, So What?

The politicians and law-enforcers know as well as we do that cannabis is relatively harmless. but if they admitted this, they'd lose its law-enforcement usefulness!!!!

2.11.08

Now we have councils snooping on householders putting bins out early using anti-terrorist laws. The RIPA laws (regulation of investigatory powers) were passed entirely to deal with potential terrorist threats. But we have half the councils in Britain jumping on the bandwagon and using these laws against ordinary citizens. What a legislative blunder, drafting laws so loosely that they can be used completely against the spirit they were legislated for!!!

It’s the ‘ease’ with which they bend the rules to suit themselves that worry, and the fact it happens so often. Try bending rules or laws against the council….! No such luck!!!

How often do we see adverts saying cigarette ends cause fires? Talking about litter….

It really worries me when someone is fined £75 for her baby daughter dropping a piece of a sausage roll, and it being almost immediately eaten by a seagull. Yes sure fine someone for leaving yonks of environmentally unfriendly litter or acres of chewing gum, but isn’t this a council being decidedly environmentally unfriendly to local residents, or tourists?

The point is, that under Labour governments and Labour councils, as well as providing some extra support for people who need it, they also bring in some very undemocratic rules or interpretation of rules. We all suffer when repressive acts or ‘rules’ are passed, probably in Britain, never to be repealed. Gross interference in people’s ordinary everyday lives simply can’t be accepted or tolerated.

When they pass ridiculous laws, it puts the general law-abiding situation under jeopardy. Why should we obey stupid or ludicrous laws? It can lead to a general lawlessness in society. In order for people to respect laws, law makers and the law enforcement agencies, requires people to see that the laws are necessary for a free and safe society

We know it is wrong to steal people’s jobs, but what do large corporations out to increase profits, or modernise or pass vast expansion plans do, they invent reasons to sack people? If a company follows the ‘law’ to the letter (if not the spirit!) (not even ACAS guidelines have to be followed), it can be impossible to get to an industrial tribunal, if the company employ lawyers who have done their ‘homework ‘properly.

Can we please have a legal system where certain crimes, eg crimes against the person automatically result in no bail being given. We have far too many cases of people who go on to be convicted for crimes of violence or sexual assault, released on bail under a judge’s discretion, who commit further similar crimes while out on bail. This has to stop. If someone is arrested for heinous crimes or suspicion thereof, they should never be released until or unless freed after a fair trial, or completion of (long!!!) sentence. Serious crimes against the person should NOT EVER be eligible for parole. If someone is sentenced for violently attacking someone to within an inch of their lives (except in justifiable self-defence), they should serve the whole ten/ fifteen years whatever of the sentence.

1.11.08

Tony Blair has earned about £20 million since leaving office but guess what, as a Middle East peace envoy it’s all tax-free?

The politicians and law-enforcers know as well as we do that cannabis is relatively harmless. but if they admitted this, they'd lose its law-enforcement usefulness!!!!

2.11.08

It’s the ‘ease’ with which they bend the rules to suit themselves that worry, and the fact it happens so often. Try bending rules or laws against the council….! No such luck!!!

How often do we see adverts saying cigarette ends cause fires? Talking about litter….

10.11.08

Obama I promise to change the world!!!!!!!!!........

Seriously I’m very pleased for Obama and all of us in the world!!!!

Is this the prelude to Obi-Wan Kenobi (Obidy wa(n)k nobody?) Star Wars in the Future. Mustn’t jest (Bill (Clinton) are you listening? ? Still Gordon Brown does sound very like Darth Vader, and is Alistair darling the Phantom Menace? er, oops, I've given thier game away!!! Tony Blair’s off away with all of the Middle East oil money (and all the UK’s money!) building the Death Star…. Talking about flying high....

Can’t not mention fly-high GB boy Lewis Hamilton, World F1 Motor Racing Champion 2008. Very well done Lewis, youngest World F1 Champion ! Very Well-Deserved too!

Ok from young to old. GB --Gordon Brown has deprived everyone on a private pension of £17,000 (so far) from their pension fund by taxing dividends on pension fund holdings. We all know why he did this, some firms weren’t playing fair, and used this loophole as a means of tax-free investing, by adding and removing funds by ‘creative accounting’ , but in so doing he (not unusual for GBr) clobbered everyone else as well.

Do you like fudge? Gordon Brown must do…he fudges just about everything!!

Now government ministers want anyone taking a motoring conviction eg speeding, parking or ANY motoring offence to Court to have to pay costs even if they win the case. This would prevent anyone except millionaire’s from contesting court cases over motoring. GET ON YOUR BIKE GORDON! Nuts or (nutcases?) anyone?

It would also empty many of the Court’s cases, at £1500 a time costs (peanuts for old money! Or coconut shies to those who can afford them!) allowing the wealthy to take their own cases to court more quickly….?! From a Labour government?.....

To mention not playing fair, because teachers and many other over-worked and over-stressed civil servants (some over-stressed from lack of work!!!) don’t live long past retirement age, the public sector pension fund is in major credit in some areas, notably of course for teachers. Does he reduce pension contributions by these employees or their employers, not a bit of it, more taxes/ sorry funds, for the Inland Revenue!!!

Half of state schools have fiddled rules to prevent children from poorer families attending them. One, it encourages an atmosphere of privilege at these schools and two of course provides these schools with a greater potential source of income.

Comprehensive schools were often far stronger bastions of privilege than the old grammar and secondary modern schools. They often fed poorer academically children slightly watered down academic courses (unlike the sec mods and technical schools) and it was often three or four times easier to get moved between the different sort of schools than to get moved between (often very socially exclusive) bands in the comps. Low achievers in the comps are still labelled failures and leave without any qualifications. They also have to put up with being in the same schools (if their parents aren’t from lower middle or manual classes!!) as well-to-do snobs.

Children from lower middle or manual classes are far more likely to be in so called ‘failing’ schools often (or usually) located in deprived areas. At least with the 11-plus exam, it gave children the chance to attend the top schools in the area. As the top class in larger junior schools was run academically, it also gave children from poorer backgrounds a good chance of a scholarship place at private Public schools. In my year, several children went to the top grammar school and two to private Public schools. This wasn’t unusual for the junior school concerned, located in a large council estate or two!!!! I never noticed many (as in practically none!) children from outside of a much better schools catchment area get places let alone public school scholarships in nearly 25 years of teaching pupils and students largely from deprived or poorer areas.

Bet Tony Blair’s city academies bend their intake rules!!! Trouble is, various Conservative governments had been too over-careful in not completely crushing Labour's labelling the old Grammar/ Technical/ Sec Modern system as socially divisive.

We’ve had various LABOUR governments now run systems that are actually FAR MORE socially divisive. Probably knowingly too!!!!

Talking about others knowing secrets, GB PM says he can’t guarantee safety of very private information. WHY NOT? There is a free open source program TrueCypt (also allowing additional hidden encrypted partitions) to encrypt all data held/ transferred to eg laptops, pen drives, CD’s DVD’s etc, that is very fast very efficient, and used with a suitable longer password, uncrackable over many lifetimes. ALL it takes is for everyone handling confidential data having 5 - 10 minutes training in it’s use. It’s infallible, simple and no other costs involved. Then if anyone is careless or ‘deliberately’ loses unencrypted data, they can be sentenced and locked up for divulging government secrets or confidential private data. SIMPLE AS THAT!

Now we have a Muslim chef trying to sue the Met police for having to cook pork!!!! No doubt they couldn’t refuse him employment on religious discrimination grounds. Hope the judges have the sense to avoid having to pay him a penny. He would have known when he applied that pork would be on ANY non-Muslim (or non-Jew) menu.

Mums-to-be shouldn’t drink any caffeinated drinks, including coffee. Seems it keeps the as yet unborn babies kicking for half the night!!!

Bournemouth council which has a Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas meaning Beauty and Health (shouldn’t that be old age face-lifts and wealth!!) has banned its staff, in an attempt at ethnic cleansing, of using any Latin expressions such as status quo, meaning as is, or in the present state. Blimey didn’t know Italians had upset Bournemouth council that much!! ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do’ isn’t that the saying - sorry can’t quite translate that into Latin!! Eg exempll gratia quid pro quo pro rata (example give or take in proportion!) Viz (videlecet) that is to say, namely eg , no eg or nb’s !!!! no wonder I gave up Latin after the 1^st form (sorry year 7 in modern parlance!). what about all the Bournemouth councillors with Roman noses, and/ or of Italian descent? Or did Bournemouth get rid if all the Itties after the last war?

Councils using CCTV to monitor bin putting out? Is ‘bin laden’ the link with anti-terrorist legislation?

Having lost twice daily deliveries (postal, that is!) we now face losing Saturday deliveries and collections. As well as a further 3,000 post offices if the Post Office card account system is given to private bidders. No wonder we’re all so blooming well P’d O’d (PO’d p**** o**!) No Latin in sight there!

Terribly British this one. Large interest rate cut, probably doesn’t match EXTRA credit interest people are being FORCED into paying (it’s all a big arranged set-up for rip-off Britain, with the government being the worst offenders (or worse still if you own a larger engined car under 7 years old). Then some of the big finance houses REMOVE some of the best credit deals from the market.

A terrorist from 28 years ago has been freed and is now able to live on benefits. He can’t be deported because of Human Rights legislation. Shame, as he never gave any thoughts to human rights when taking hostages at the Iranian embassy. One hostage was killed by the terrorists directly and another when the SAS had to storm the building. Still I have to accept that Iran would assassinate him the instant he stepped back on to Iranian territory, but at least then he wouldn’t be a further burden on our benefit system! Perhaps they’ll still be unhappy enough about his new life of ease to make sure he’s never quite comfortable walking down a dark alley, or looking over his shoulder again!

OAP’s in sheltered accommodation in Mottingham, S London are being threatened with removing some outside benches where 7 of them talk and chat (up to 96 years old!). The Broomleigh Housing association (new broom sweeps clean?) won’t back down as it ‘claims’ the pensioners are being too noisy. GIVE IT A REST. Noisy youngsters, yes, but pensioners REALLY. I thought the Sheriff was from Nottingham, not Mottingham.

Have they not heard about violent 5 year olds who assault adults? Perhaps teenage gangs of thugs are being frightened by the pensioners’ walking sticks?.....

We all knew foreign EU workers were bad news (except for veg and fruit picking, low paid service industry jobs and toilet cleaning) as many live in doss houses, don’t pay any taxes, and send most of their earnings home. BUT now it seems under EU law, when they lose a job here, they can return home, claim to be job-seeking in their home country, and claim UK BENEFITS - OUCH !!! They can even ‘arrange’ to lose their job here if homesick, fed up of British weather (aren’t we all!!!), return home and claim from the UK, even if they never obtained an NHI number here. Worse, they can do this on a seasonal basis, come here for the picking season (when the pickings good - sorry couldn’t resist that one/ pun), go home and claim benefit from the UK until the next year’s seasonal work.

Could we all try that with grape picking in France or Italy or Germany? Or France one year, Italy the next, Germany….

Talking about foreign countries, Britain has banned all people from (well-to-do?) non-EU countries from retiring here. So no extremely wealthy retired oils sheiks, extremely rich Americans, no VERY extremely wealthy non-EU pop stars, football / sports players, film stars. Good Heavens, we’d all have to pay less tax, can’t have that can we? And if David Beckham relinquished British citizenship even HE wouldn’t be able to retire here. Has the government gone BALMY (yes we all thought that many moons ago, and decided the government had gone altogether moon luny when GB was appointed PM of GB). Other trouble is, they might just well decide to retaliate abroad and stop British citizens retiring outside of the EU, eg Bahamas, USA, very expensive Islands (eg Richard Branson, ……, ……). Now there we have it, the real reason is to stop WEALTHY Britainers leaving Britain with all of their money. If we go to retire within the EU we have to learn a foreign lingo…!

We ALL might wish to emigrate if any more stupid laws are proposed and become law. £20,000 fine and several years locked up for over-feeding a pet. What if they extend this to over-feeding children or spouses, or parents? I think if any more massively horrendously stupid laws are proposed, human (as in anyone with ANYTHING to do with government) welfare, not just animal welfare will be seriously under threat!!!!

How much of our money is squandered on the STUPIDEST of ideas?

ID cards will set back each of us £60 if we’re really really daft enough to want (?????) one. £30 for the card and to add insult to injury, £30 more for the private contracted out biometric testing. (now have I heard the term privately contracted out term somewhere else before? Really scratching my head and my memory on this one!!!) Trouble is looney government dates back over 25 years or more ago from before when James Callaghan (tremendous intellect but lightweight political personality) and Michael Foot (even more tremendous intellect but goofy nerdy appearance) both goofed up British politics, by simply doing things very right but letting other politicians and the media use them as target practice…!

Since Ms Thatcher’s days government for the people has become government OF the people by the rich and wealthy. We’ve had far right Conservative governments and even more far right, and downright oppressive Labour governments. The PEOPLE are awake, we, the BRITISH people CAN give governments we don’t like the PUSH. WE CAN DO IT, WE WILL DO IT.

I present (in a large part courtesy of the Daily Mail!) ten expressions we should NEVER EVER use!!!

At the end of the day; Fairly unique; I personally; At this moment in time; With all due respect; Absolutely; Literally as opposed to figuratively; It’s a nightmare; Shouldn’t of; It’s not rocket science!

Explaining these

At the end of the day - used to mean it’s my opinion that counts, not yours

Fairly unique - unique means entirely different not even the slightest bit similar. Something or someone is either entirely unique, or not unique at all!

I personally; as in it’s my opinion that counts, not yours (again) or I one step down from God- I DON’T THINK SO!!!!

At this moment in time- how to procrastinate, not even a bit eloquently - use the word NOW or presently instead!

With all due respect - often meant (rudely) I really don’t agree with you. I totally disagree… or (yet again) it’s my opinion that really counts. I’ll let you off using this one if someone offends you and accuses you of lying or totally untrue allegations. Trouble is it’s mostly used simply to reinforce YOUR opinion.

Absolutely - yes, I couldn’t agree more, absolutely, what???? Are you even LISTENING to what I’m saying…!

It’s a nightmare- far waorse in real life. We wake up from a nightmare, but if our life/ health/ job/ relationship is wrecked by an ignorant pleb, we go on living the consequences, with no bail out or reprieve. Also often used in trivially difficult situations! AARGH I spilt some milk, what a nightmare!!!!

Shouldn’t of- grammatically completely incorrect mis-representation of shouldn’t have….Speak proper will you!!!!

It’s not rocket science - actually most things aren’t rocket science, except rocket science, that is. Used of course for something banally simple, like making a pot noodle!!! DAMN , these astronauts can’t even make a pot noodle in Outer Space!!!

DANG of course rhymes with BANG, not too many this year with lack of money (ie totally skint!!) preventing most of us experimenting with actual rocket science (Guy Fawkes night!) Lovely program on telly using cow / sheep dung and animal pee (lots of it) to make saltpetre to add to sulphur and carbon to make gunpowder to blow up the house of parliament.

It’s a nightmare Scotty, the engines just won’t make warp speed these days. At this moment in time, with the Klingons absolutely on our tails, I personally predict we are at the end of the day, in deep cow shit, with us all peeing ourselves with fright. If we keep this up, we might just be able to blow up a Klingon ship or two. With all due respect |Captain| shouldn’t we of gotten out of here sooner? We are figuratively in a fairly unique predicament Scotty, this doesn’t happen every 24/7, now give it all we’ve got with the engines and rocket science us out of here!!!