I'm quitting the Christian Club.

I don't care much for Christmas customs -- the event just doesn't mean a lot to me.
"That's sad", many people might say.
"It's just your Christian frame of reference that makes you say said", I will reply. Why's that?

I have never been a big believer, but until about a few years ago, I would reply when asked about my religion: I'm Christian.

That has changed for a variety of reasons. One of them: the increasingly visible fundamentalism. To me, fundamentalism is equally connected to the Christian religion as it is nowadays attributed to and exemplified with Islam. The crusades of the middle ages, the genocides in various regions of the world (e.g. Australia), the imperialism of new-born Christians in America: while all these things may take place against the 'true' spirit of Christian beliefs, they are carried out by Christians, and the Christian belief of the originators does not keep them from their deeds.

Now, I'm not saying, Christianity is bad per se. Islamic fundamentalists are expressively implerialistic, and you'll find orthodox Jews full off hatred against their neighbors.

The point I'm trying to make here is that empirically, that is, looking at what's happened in the history of mankind, the big world religions have not turned us humans into a better species overall. Religion has never helped us understand to be better people.

Instead, religion has done something else.

The religious framework conditions us to follow rules and think within a predefined, authoritarian framework. This is the system we learn to live in, for better or worse. Follow the authorities, follow the ones you admire. I believe that Prussian thinking is one of the factors in society that ultimately get teenagers to bring machine guns into high schools, palestineans to leave hidden bombs in plastic bags on a crowded bus, millions to march for Hitler or to vote for administrations that spread fear and establish the Orwellian state.

Again: it's not the Christian or any other religion that makes people commit terrible crimes. But religion trains people to use a system of rules to make decisions. Religion gets people to turn of rational thinking in order to follow rules that don't make sense in today's world anymore. Don't eat pork! Don't sleep with your girl/boyfriend! But if you do, don't use condoms! Eat fish on fridays! Be nice to the cow! Wear a headscarf.

Of course, a disclaimer is warranted. There are quite a few smart, courageous and outspoken religious thinkers. But what most liturgies convey, what the Bible and the Quran teach and what the Church dictates and the common people on the street believe couldn't be further from the philosophical debate among the intellectual elite.

So, we have established that I'm not part of that Christian club anymore. In the western world, that's a pretty difficult thing to communicate. Consider a Jew who turns up at a Christian wedding. He'll be well respected. Or, they don't give you a

hard time when you don't eat pork on the plane because you're a Muslim.

But saying: hey, I'm agnostic, or atheist is what gets you sad looks. You're the lonely infidel. Maybe I should find a good term for someone like me. Until then, I'll keep ticking this little checkbox in web forms for your profile. The one that's labelled "spiritual, but not religious".

Television again

As I cast a cursory eye over the Christmas TV listings a few days ago I wondered why we bother with TV at all. To be fair I suppose there was the odd chink of light in an otherwise televisual wasteland of chaff and repeats. For me the highlight of Christmas day would have been the Birmingham Royal Ballet's production of Cindarella, but we had visitors. More in hope than expectation I suggested we switched on the TV and tried to "big up" the ballet, all I got for my efforts was one of Mrs Rackhams looks! However a few minutes later the TV was indeed switched on, yes salvation at last, alas my euphoria was short lived. The TV was switched on because the children wanted to watch that giant of festive classics, The Grinch! I consoled myself with the port and a tin of Quality Street chocs. 

Supermarkets Revisited

Just got back to my desk following an incident in a major supermarket (I wont name them as I intend to write to the manager and this chain should know better).

A young woman had fitted and fallen unconscious in an isle.  I got there a few seconds later and her friends had done everything correctly providing padding during the fit and putting her in the recovery position.  I introduced myself as a  first aider and was told she should be fine as this had happened before

Given her friends knew the drill, for the moment she was fine in the recovery position (not her first fit ever, hadn't reached 10 mins unconscious so no immediate ambulance requirement).  When someone does come round and is postictal, it's better they have someone they know nearby and are not crowded than having an unknown first aider with no uniform on (and of the opposite sex) keeping an eye on them.

Why I Don’t Attend Office Parties

As you face up to the inevitable office party this year, think about the following:

Does this image look familiar?

A company that will spend fifty pounds a head to take you to a tax deductible party but wouldn’t give you fifty pounds a year as a pay rise isn’t really interested in you. Right ? You will get to “enjoy” the company of people that you already spent most of your life around. Most of the people that you work with are not people that you really like. Lets face it, you didn’t fucking choose them, life chose them for you. You get to talk about work. (There’s a great idea.) You have to be careful what you say. Office Politics and all that.

Look, before you call me a grinch, I like working and love my job. Networking is an amazing career choice, full of options, interesting work and good people. Some of them I would even class as friends. But I’m not convinced that going to a party is a good life choice.

Another Rant Before Christmas

We’re nearly there!  Little Johnny almost shitting himself with excitement, the dog/cat is already saving up his innards ready to crap in your Aunts shoes during the Christmas meal, and general madness has taken the nation!

I still blame the Christmas music, of course.  I have songs that I absolutely fucking LOVE that I haven’t heard as many times as some of those bastard songs.

I’m actually sat writing this at work and sniggering because the CD player is skipping like Dale Winton on amphetamines.  It’s just a matter of time until someone turns it off… or I put my earplug back in and put my own Christmas music back on.

Spell Chek

I got google chrome not to long ago after firefox blew up with how much music I was downloading. It was screaming and on fire telling me just to uninstall it, but I didn’t and watched it in pain as I could hear the program straining to open fucking facebook. Then firefox just uninstalled itself, which is by the way the closest thing you can get to program suicide. 

So I opened internet explorer which is collecting dust in my computer and was so excited that someone wanted to open it, it crashed so I had to re-open it and I downloaded chrome. Well back to the back of my computer internet explorer, so you my grow old and die alone. O, getting dark here, anyways chrome has spell check which is so monumentally fucking amazing that I shit my pants when I saw the little squiggly red line show up underneath a mistyped “Massachusetts” . I thought that my computer was possessed by an evil grammar demon, so I immediately closed the internet and threw holy water on my computer.

 I thought it was blasphemy (I mistyped that word and chrome just spell checked it for me!) This whole functionality is like it was created by Einstein…from the future…who is also a robot! Fuck it, its sick. I can go on facebook attempt to make a status that is memorable or at least funny(which is no small task) and I don’t have to have some douche bag who comments in 20 seconds saying the correct word with an * next to it. 

Like people who correct what your saying while your fucking talking. “me and Jake…” “JAKE AND I!!!!” “I will tear your fucking tongue out.” “HA, I totally just called you on that, hehe continue” “I will slap you with your own uterus…Phill” Pisses me off.

Christmas 2

Is there another war being declared, of which I am not privy?  Has the government voted to take up arms against another enemy who threatens our very existence?  Who is attacking us?  Where are they from?  Why do we need an enemy to make us whole?  We’ve pretty much declared war on everyone else on the globe, so who are we going after now?  Oh yea…Christmas.

Someone needs to explain to my why, every year, Christian Conservatives and BBC news get their panties in a bunch and declare there is a war on Christmas.  What war?  Who are the Christmas haters out there who have taken on the Grinch banner and decided that we must demolish the holiday?  These people are obviously anti-Christian.  I mean…they hate Christmas trees, and presents, and Shopping.  Very Un-British!  They’re Pagans!  How dare they hinder the purchase of my new Xbox 360 to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Christmas

It's time for the "Merry Christmas" vs "Happy Holidays" fight to come back into focus. The cry of "I'm taking Christmas back" rings louder that the bell of the Salvation Army Santa and brings a bigger response.  What is it with all you people and your determination to make Christmas last as long as fucking possible?! For Fucks sake were in early November!

When I was a kid in the 70s, Christmas was about being with family and eating a goose, coming home for the holidays and getting pissed on dads brown ale.

Nowadays, it's all about stupid TV commercials and hearing bastardizations of "Jingle Bells" with the lyrics changed to variations of "Buy shit you don't need, for people you don't love... All your hard earned money, give it all to us...blah, blah, blah" OH FUCK OFF

And this starts BEFORE WE HAVE EVEN HAD HALLOWEEN! FUCK!!!

My missus listens to the radio all day long on the station that plays Christmas songs all fucking day long.

It almost makes me want to blow up a shopping center and feed every last one of those cheesy, smiling "whore/actor/models" into a industrial meat mincer feet first so I can hear how they sing while they're being ground into cheesy, smiling Christmas whore paste.

Seriously, now i've pissed over your yule log, all that's left to say is fuck Christmas! 

Fireworks

If you live in the UK you’ll know that the 5th of November is bonfire night, a night where something gets set on fire and then fireworks go off to celebrate a failed terrorist attack on parliament. While to most people this seems like fun, I personally FUCKING HATE it!

I hate fireworks for one because they are a huge waste of money; most people don’t understand this because the council pay for large fireworks shows, but they use tax money and I personally think that the money used for fireworks in one night could be used for something more long-term instead. The trouble is, it isn't just 1 noght now is it? you can buy the fucking things all year round. The Neighbors from hell have been setting the bloody things off for days now, which in turn sets off their fucking dogs yapping all the more

What is there to gain from fireworks anyway? You just look at pretty colours in the sky for ten minutes and then go home; they don’t excite me or make me happy in any way. I would like it if there was some kind of explanation about how they worked just so I could gain from the experience.

Strangely I don’t even like standing on a cold, muddy field with hundreds of other people getting pushed, shoved and crammed into a tight space just to see lights in the sky, I’d rather go and see a film at the cinema, that way I pay for a nice comfy seat, two hours of entertainment and I gain knowledge from it. I bet the majority of people couldn’t tell me what the last firework looked like.

If there was live music, some decent food stands and less people/a better venue I would probably love it, or better yet a big screen with video of fireworks projected onto it, some seats and then a showing of Star Wars, just add some bacon to the mix and it is a perfect night out for me!

Can someone please tell me why they like fireworks without using the words “pretty”, “colours”, “bang” and “sky”!?

While fireworks themselves don’t appeal to me I must say I like seeing my friends and getting food afterwards (this year it was Subway!) and I would love to go to the fireworks show if there were no fireworks… or a show.

Anyway enough ranting about fireworks, tell me your opinion on fireworks in the comments below or tell me about an event you think is pointless and stupid.

Dustmen

Getting woken up to this

OK, I do not have anything against refuse collectors. They work differently from county to county, some are fortnightly some are weekly.

The ‘green bins’ here are fortnightly and not emptied until 1pm sometimes much later! The bottles on the other hand are every 4 weeks! By the time they come each month the bottles are over flowing! But why the fuck do they come so early to empty them?

Why cant they come and empty the other stuff first? It don’t make as much noise!  I shot out of bed at 7:15am to the almighty racket of the bottles being emptied into the truck, realising mine were not out at the road side yet as the month before they come at 8:30am. So, I ran out with the bottles as quick as lightening just to see the truck rounding the corner! Now I have to drive to the bottle bank and use my petrol to empty them myself! So, I have written a little reminder to myself…..“work out on the calender when they are next back…and put the bottles out the night before! and hope that they dont come so unexpectedly” and early next time!

Cant kids be kids anymore

Read the newspaper article here

Conkers replaced by Iphones

I have to write a quick rant about the fact that schools seem to be going way over the top with health and safety fears by banning conkers (FEARS OF NUT ALLERGIES?), leapfrog and even marbles in the school playgrounds!  What about the handstands against the walls? I scraped my hand once doing that and had to see the school nurse! I loved playing marbles and conkers etc…

Who are these so called researchers? They all must sit around discussing how our children should behave and play, they forget that life in the beginning is all a learning curve.

OK, just cover them all in bubble wrap and roll them around the grounds for a while during their breaks…. or maybe not, they could be allergic to bubbles or get motion sickness. So heaven forbid if one eats a conker!

Cant kids be kids anymore?

The couch potato kids

Read the newspaper article here

Again, I find myself having a little ‘mini-rant’.  In the news today, yet again a ‘pick on the parents’ day!

This time, how too many children who are couch potatoes “They found on average, children spent 1.9 hours per day watching TV or playing on their computer and only 36 minutes doing physical activity.“ according to the ‘survey’. Which leads to heart problems and high blood pressure!

Once there was more than three channels on TV for me I was watching TV far more often as a child… now there are hundreds if you have satellite or cable TV. If I remember rightly, I was spending double the 1.9hrs they have quoted!  And for the record, I was not an over weight child!

Sorry, not in service!

I have come to wonder why in this so called computer age is it, that because most things are done on the pc in the comfort of your warm home, the in-store  old fashioned way of buying things really have become a thing of a unhappy time. Its in your face to BUY BUY BUY! Trying to rip us off at every opportunity.

However, the sloppy service for the in-store customer is non-existent , you’ll be lucky if you have a person come up to you and say good morning  etc.. They just stand there waiting  to pounce  like a cat on a dirty mouse to be toyed with. With their smug faces trying to fob you off with insurance that cost half as much as the item. Then you have to wait weeks for the damn thing to be delivered! Furniture 10 weeks! Kitchen appliances 2 weeks if your lucky. Then when you get them they fail to work or live up to the ‘shop window’ standards, forget trying to get a human being on the phone to take care of you problems.

Benefit fraud!

Read news article here  

I know times are hard, but yet again I read the usual story of someone who has easily fooled the government into thinking they deserve a hand out each year to help their family who are supposedly disabled. These people make me sick. They obviously have a major problem mentally, this woman has managed to fool the stupid government into thinking she has 4 kids all with epilepsy and learning disabilities when only one of them in fact had it, also a husband with gout . She managed to get £120,000. I’m sure I can hear the feint sound of “good on her” from some moron who has the same mentality! How come they didn’t realise she was already convicted for benefit fraud in 2000?- *Investigators discovered that she had been convicted for family credit and income support fraud in 2000 when she was given a seven-year suspended sentence for four fraud offences and 127 others.

So, I’ve come to think that when there is a new application from a fraudster, to milk all the hand-outs possible, the DW&P don’t seem to act on scrutinising the evidence of the said disabilities, how about doctors/hospital evidence?  Easy money! I quote from the on-form declaration-  “I understand that the Department for Work and Pensions may use the information which it has now or may get in the future to decide whether I am entitled to: • the benefit I am claiming • any other benefit I have claimed • any other benefit I may claim in the future.” This is my claim for Disability Living Allowance.  -sign here-

MAY use the information? Hmmm USE IT? For what, wipe their ass on? Well these people are milking the government and we are paying it all back in one way or another. Drives me crazy! With all the disability allowance she received, you would think she could have got her teeth done for free on the NHS!  The government really are slow and need to pull thier fingers out of their A-holes and start to wake people up at the DWP!

Modern Day Slavery - Royalty – London Olympics

Enjoy life!  Taste every moment of it, hardly possible in the frenzied way that modern society forces us to do it.

Unfortunately, the majority of the earth’s drones and clones have been brain washed into thinking this is normality, to be couped up in their shitty little cublicles for the majority of the working week or manufacturing widgets in a factory covered in shit

.

Most of us drones just plod along working our butts off all day, 30 mins to 1 hours for lunch if you are lucky, then have a couple of hours to ourselves in the evenings (eat, watch telly, then bed), and hooray!!! do it all over again the next day, and then again, and again, then suddenly, Friday! yay!!!  two days off from slavery!!!

This bullshit just doesn’t wash with me.  I have worked for the last 15 years of my life since graduating from university in all kinds of different jobs, and realised what an insane amount of precious time we waste at work.  Precious time we could spend with our loved ones or enjoying some leisure time. Who invented this 9 to 5 bullshit?

Yes, we need to slave away to put food on the table, mortgage slaves and renters need to keep a roof over their heads and more importantly buy the latest cars, TV’s, gadgets and other shit we don’t need (like buying a new phone or tablet, because our old one doesn’t flash in the millions of colours the latest one does).

Choose life.

Choose Life.

Choose a dead end job.

Choose a worthless career.

Choose not working altogether because you can’t find anything better than a McJob and decide to live off state benefits.

Choose buying shit you can’t afford like a big fucking television, designer kitchens, gas guzzling cars, iphones, ipads, ipods, three piece suits in a range of fucking fabrics on credit and fuck it, worry about the cost and the financial hardship tomorrow.

Choose not buying shit and getting it for free instead by looting and setting shit on fire, after all, young people dont know the meaning of respect and have lost perspective of what reality is.

Choose living in a country devoid of sunshine and work your arse off all year to spend two weeks holiday in beautiful weather in another country and then feel suicidal when you come back home to permanent grey skies, shit weather and long faces.

holidays airport stresses

Yes Its holiday time again, I can already hear in the distance the shouting couples over where they want to go as the prices have hit a very high peek..obviously because the kids will be on the their summer school break too, and the holiday companies want to screw you for every penny you got so you can get 1 or 2 weeks of sunshine, something we seem to lack in the UK.

Once your finally at the airport after a getting stuck in traffic on the motorway for 3 hours and your 4 year old has thrown up over her new clothes, you arrive stressed, late and hungry but with the common delays of Easyjet your ok for time, but the rip-off prices at the eateries make you wish you brought sandwiches! Then you have the sudden worry of whether or not you remembered to lock the back door. Moaning kids bored and tired making you see a red mist apear from within.  Finally, your  led through the cattle-like queueing system at security to the lounge after your tin of Vaseline and 2 mouthfuls of drink has been confiscated. which, by the way can be bought again as its cheaper than buying a clear bag for 2 pounds.

Noisy neighbours and their dogs

Neighbors barking bastard dogs

Ahhh, how I miss being young and ignorant of just how hard even the most basic things in life can be, such as just living in your own place without fantasizing about murdering your neighbours (and their yapping fucking mutts).

I consider myself fortunate to live in a quaint little town in England, the kind of small town where the population is generally nice, you actually see people smile, hoodies and chavs are a rarity and you won’t get your head kicked in at any of the pubs, very quaint.

Me and my partner and our 2 boys moved into a nice little house nearly seven years ago and we were happy, it is a terraced house and the neighbours on each side kept themselves to themselves, typically British, polite, acknowledged your presence if you bumped into them outside, said hello and the usual BS.

This all changed about a year ago, when our old neighbours sold up and the most annoying retarded fuck wits unfortunately moved in next door, they are not violent or throw shit into your garden, but they are noisy as hell, they consist of a mother (early 50′s) and her two ignorant shit faced offsprings (late 20′s).

Stupid fucking people

Reading the newspaper today, The Independent. I came across some articles that really pissed me off. To start with, there was an article on Morrissey (ex singer of The Smiths). I admire his work and love many of his songs and he is of course famous for being a severe misery with his genuine observations of everyday life. He is also a very staunch campaigner against animal rights. Fine. But… This is the giant turd that came out of his mouth during a recent concert in Warsaw:

"We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried shit every day.

Television Adverts 3

The final installment of my gripes with Television adverts for now features MOST ANNOYING FUCKING ADVERT IN HISTORY

AOL Advert most
annoying in History 

What is the most annoying advert in history? An advert so bad that you remember it long after it has ceased being shown. My candidate has to be the AOL adverts. At this time the Internet was still a novelty and most people used a dial-up connection to get online.

To some people even connecting to the internet was a techie thing to do. AOL decided that they would guide people with a computerised Mary Poppins character called Connie that would appear, uninvited, in your house and take control of your computer. Much like the annoying bastard paperclip, ‘Clippy’ that used to appear when you began to type anything in Word except with an annoying bob haircut and whiny voice.

Television Adverts 2

Im sticking to the subject of Television Adverts for a few more posts as I find them to be the most odorous of subjects. Why I pay my fucking tv lisence ill never know

One series of adverts that is rapidly starting to get on my nerves are the Halifax adverts. It seems I am not alone. Congratulations on pushing back the boundaries of advertising tyranny.  First we had Howard, bottle lensed bespecticled bank manager, singing about their latest banking products to popular show tunes or something like that. I cannot remember exactly as my mind has repressed those memories.

Now we have a load of retarded,  obese bankers packed into radio studio presenting a show with the inane stupidity that only Radio One can muster. You will get £5 a month if you pay in a thousand pounds every month. Sound like a good deal?  Not so fast. I don’t think this is anything for customers to be raving about as this is an interest rate of 0.5% only on  the first £1000.

Television Adverts

Fuck me, i'd eat this in a roll myself

Today's focus of attention is television adverts. Don't you just find them incredibly fucking senseless and irritating? Take that Cesar dog food advert for example.

People love their pets, especially in the UK. We are a nation of animal lovers but this advert is just taking the piss. It shows an attractive, unexplainably single woman, that devotes what seems to be her entire waking life pandering to the perceived whims of a White West Highland Terrier, all with a loving smile on her face like the dog is her baby.

question one – why hasn’t this apparently successful woman got anything better to do with her life than spend all her time looking after a little white yappy dog?

Funerals

So I go to a lot of funerals. Not because my friends are dying, but because I enjoy hearing the story of a person’s life followed by finger sandwiches.

And lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: funerals are no longer formal affairs. Instead of suit & ties for guys and nice dresses for women, it’s now come as you are. A friend  recently told me, “I can mourn you in any way I want.” 

NO YOU FUCKING CANT!

You WILL mourn me, and mourn me long and hard, the way I say. Heading to the beach to stare at the setting sun and pondering the circle of life is NOT how I will be mourned. So before my number comes up and I’m called to eternal glory where I’ll be greeted by throngs of trumpeting angels, thunderous applause from across the galaxies, and a high five from Patrick Swayze I want to lay down 5 rules for my own funeral.

Chocolate

A while ago I was at work and it was my birthday, My place of work buys cake for the lucky birthday person. I ordered a nice vegan chocolate cake as there is a few of my colleagues sre vegan. When it arrived my work colleagues irritatingly sang that stupid fucking song at me and then we ate. A comment was made that made me breathe a humph of irritation. The comment was “That’s not real chocolate”. I replied back it was real chocolate then asked “Do you know what the main ingredient of chocolate is?” I didn’t get a response instead I got “Real chocolate has milk in it”. Well that’s milk chocolate not chocolate.

I continued to ask this ignoramus what the main ingredient of chocolate was.

This dickhead didn’t answer me and just looked more stupid. The moron  didn’t know that it comes from the cocoa bean. So I enligtened him to  the origins of chocolate and the cocoa bean. But still I got “But it’s not real chocolate”. I didn’t bother with this anymore.

Olympics

I hate to sound pessimistic, but…

I’m happy about the Olympics happening here – I really am. I’ve been a cheerleader for it ever since we won the bid, countering doom-mongering arguments with Keanu-Reeves-in-the-Matrix-like nimbleness.

But over the last couple of months a few niggling doubts have grown and grown into big old belligerent beasts, and I can’t hold it in any more. There are some things about “the greatest Olympics on earth” that are absolutely terrifying me. And even more things that are seriously, desperately, wall-punchingly-irritatingly narking me right off.

Londoners, we are a nation of moaners. So let the moaning be unleashed, and join me in an unrelenting ululation of woe. (Then hopefully we can get back to being positive again. Maybe.)

Security shambles – it’s even worse than you think!

Aside from the fact that G4S completely ballsed up the security contract by not having enough people, as recently as last Sunday it still hadn’t told temporary security staff what days, where or even if they’d be working at the Games. Yup, I had that straight from one of the temporary worker’s mouths a measly 12 days before the Games begin. Bodes well for the general organisational state of Games security, doesn’t it?

Travel Armageddon, as mismanaged by “a bunch of Soho media twats”

A senior army bod told me over an indiscrete pint of Pimms recently that travel during the Olympics will be a “fucking nightmare” because it was “being organised by a bunch of Soho media twats”, who chose 20 people for a brainstorm over one manager to make a call on anything.

The same senior army bod said he and his military colleagues had several times raised questions such as: How exactly are you going to accommodate the one million extra people expected in London on the tube and buses? Are there going to be lots of extra tubes and buses running? Have you employed extra drivers for these tasks? And extra staff to manage the extra people moving in and around the stations?

All of which the Soho media twats would invariably reply: “They’ll walk.”

“Really? Really?” Mused senior army bod and I. You really think one million extra people, VISITORS to London, with potentially no familiarity with the city whatsoever, are going to opt to navigate its more than 600 square miles by foot? Like he said: Soho media tw*ts.

To make matters worse, TfL has plastered over all the usual tube signage that London residents use on a daily basis with big pink stickers pointing you in the direction of things like “Hyde Park” or “Pall Mall”, even though such locations might be a mile or two away. A couple of days after they did this, I happened to come up from the underground at Victoria and was looking for my exit. Except I couldn’t see the sign thanks to bloody pink stickers right over the top of it. Fellow travellers were clearly experiencing the same issue. Cue a mass of bunching of London residents stopping immediately after going through ticket barriers to try to figure out whether Pall Mall is in the same direction as their office.

And I’ve heard from more than one semi-authoritative source that we can expect two-hour plus queues at change-over stations like London Bridge.

All these extra crushes on transport make me even more worried about…

Terrorist threats

Heaped on top of our shambolic security situation is my personal concern about all these extra people on the tube. It’s bad enough on normal days’ peak hours when your face is squished like warm Silly Putty against the glass windows of Northern Line carriages. Or at Victoria when you have to queue for 20 minutes to get in and out of the underground on a Friday evening.

Now imagine those situations plus even MORE people. And then plus a bomb threat or fire. It doesn’t even bear thinking about how on earth all those passengers would be safely evacuated on time.

Ticketing shambles

So part of the reason I can’t wait for the Olympics to start (despite all these gripes) is that I have tickets. Hurrah! Only cheap ones, mind – or at least that’s what I thought originally. Two tickets, £40 in total. Oh, except I moved house last summer, a few months after buying the tickets. Lo and behold, you can’t update your address on your Olympic ticketing account. Instead, the on-site Q&A tells you that you MUST set up a Royal Mail redirect if you’ve moved house. Two trips to my local Post Office with two charming 20-minute waits each time and another £20 later, I had set up the redirect.

Except my tickets got sent to my old address anyway. How helpful! Numerous phonecalls later, I managed to get my tickets sent to my new address’ local Delivery Office. Then hit a most welcome 10-minute queue there to pick up the tickets which should have been delivered direct to my front door in the first place. Great!

Ticketholders face two-hour waits to get into events

This one has come straight from LOCOG: an email providing “critical information” about my event. This email advised ticketholders to arrive TWO HOURS before the start of the event to accommodate the security checks for attendees, which would be akin to “taking an international flight”.

So after spending three hours on the tube to get anywhere you then have to queue for another two hours before you’ve even got into an arena. By which time you’ll be so thirsty you’ll have to bankrupt yourself by buying sponsor-brand-only refreshments which will no doubt be edging towards the £300 mark per 100ml.

Which reminds me of another thing…

Ruining the fun for small businesses

By now you will have heard or read about cases like the family-run butchers in remote countryside locations told to remove Olympic-ring-style sausages from their window displays, or the village high-street sports shops told to take down the Olympic logo hula-hoop shop windows. Because naturally local residents would otherwise have assumed that these three-people local businesses were Olympic sponsors who had paid multiple dozens of millions of pounds for the privilege. And that wouldn’t be fair on Coca-Cola, McDonalds and co, would it?

Meanwhile, small food carts and stands within the Olympic Park have been given the once-in-a lifetime opportunity to sell their products to visitors from every country on earth. A fantastic chance for small UK caterers to expand their brands, no? Actually, no. Because all non-sponsor food carts, despite serving their own food and drink, are banned from using their own company name or branding while doing business at the Olympics.

(Side note: I know that sponsors’ rights have to be protected – when they’re paying that much money, of course they’re going to ask for some brand protection. I get it. And I know they’re also doing lots of truly fantastic things for British businesses and suppliers, and launching community programmes, and being innovative – all of which I warmly and wholeheartedly applaud, I really do.

But it seems the ODA and LOCOG are being so paranoid about the whole thing that they’ve taken all sponsor rights issues to a ludicrous extreme – and I find that very sad.)

Ruining the fun for locals, while also disrupting their lives

The Olympic sailing is taking place in Weymouth. Of course, this will cause huge disruption for the Weymouthians, as their roads are blocked, their town overloaded with Olympics-type visitors, and their restaurants booked out by corporate hospitality packages. But it’s okay, because at least they’ll get to watch the sailing, right? Or even just gaze out onto the open ocean to calm themselves among the throngs of unwanted visitors?

Of course not. Because there will be a giant wall blocking them from glimpsing even the white blustery whisper of a sailing boat going past. Those in Dorking face a similar circumstance. Residents will see main roads barricaded from 4am on Saturday 28 July, causing them not inconsiderable inconvenience. But rather than LOCOG thinking that actually quite a nice compensation for this might be to let them watch the cycling go past, they will instead be charged for tickets to see anything, or else blocked from viewing the event, just like in Weymouth.

How utterly miserly of LOCOG, and how entirely inconsiderate.

A couple of final gripes

If you bring a product that rivals a sponsors’ into Olympic venues, you could be arrested.

A lot of Olympic work that seemingly went to UK companies actually got outsourced overseas.

The greatest sporting event on earth is being sponsored by two of the most obesity-inducing, health-ruinous, diabetes-peddling, Child-Catcher-like multinationals on this planet. It’s just wrong!

Great Britain? Hmm. We’ll see.

Lazy parents who cant walk 20 feet!

You know the ones, they live 5 fucking minutes walk from the school but they insist on driving to school to get their kids – now it’s understandable in bad weather but just plain bloody lazy in good weather. But it’s not all of them specifically that i am talking about. No – it is the one’s among them who insist on parking directly alongside the school despite a car park directly across the road. To give a direct example i will use my son’s school. Recently there was a parked car incident where a nursery child almost got run over because of the parked cars. So the obviously the school asked the parents to have the common sense not to park in front of the school and also handed out a letter.

Now obviously some of those parents are still so fucking lazy that they still park in front of the school. I confronted one of them today and his reply was – it’s only the late morning session nursery kids coming out – “i wouldn’t do it during the main times such as when all kids come to school and the afternoon school finish”. Now i don’t give a fuck how many kids are coming out at what time of the day – if their is so much as one kid coming out – don’t fucking park in front of the school. Especially when there is a car park 20 fucking feet away. How lazy can you possibly be!

What this guy and the others who still do it based on the same reasoning are suggesting is that rules should only apply at certain times. It’s not a fucking bus lane – it doesn’t have a time rule schedule.

Dog Owners

Mr. Cranky has really stepped in it this time. Not bike lanes or old buildings or racial politics. I am talking about dog shit, and I don't mean s***, doo-doo, poop, excrement, or mess. The right word matters sometimes.

The scene of the crime was the Lees Park playing field, which has over the years become an unofficial dog park. I was walking toward home when I got distracted by — what else? — a dog running toward me, stepped carelessly, and, bingo.

This is not the crime of the century. That would be when your dog shits in my yard and you don't clean it up. And I admit I once owned large dogs that ran free when they escaped or I let them off the leash.

But times change. We used to have unprotected sex with strangers, smoke unfiltered Camels in indoor public places, drive without seatbelts, and double-size our fries.

Free crap versus loyalty in the newspaper world

Newspapers have really stepped up their promotional schedule in the last few weeks. But is anything that they have given away worth having?

Last week the Mail on Sunday gave away DVD of a new unreleased film that probably would have done no business at the cinema. Therefore the distributors probably gambled that they would make more money from what the Mail paid them and the marketing they put behind it. Ultimately a crap film is still a crap film even when it is free! Did anyone watch it and if they did did they finish it?

The Times this week were giving away a real first, free REM iTunes tracks to help promote their new live album. The only problem with this is that half the tracks are some of their best music and any self respecting music fan would already have them. Who wants a live album anyway, they’re rarely as good as the original versions and REM have had better days. Nice idea but where’s the value apart from for REM’s record company’s marketing department?

The Mail on Sunday have given away a best of Robbie Williams CD this week, again to support the release of his new album. But again if you wanted his best music wouldn’t you already have it by now? So the Mail are happily being the main platform of the record company’s marketing campaign and 95% of the CD’s will never get played. How does the consumer benefit?

For all the instant sales that these promotions may gain the promiscuous readers that take these up will jump paper for the next freebie next week so where’s the marketing value?

The way forward for newspaper promotions and partnerships surely has to be The Times’ new loyalty scheme Times+. This imaginative scheme rewards loyal readers on a long term basis with exclusive content, offers, prizes and money can’t buy events like meeting The Times’ journalists. This is surely the way that all newspapers should be approaching promotions in the future, no free crap, no free marketing for fallen pop stars or terrible films but actually thinking about what a loyal reader wants and rewarding them.

Tesco

I do my shopping on-line. Its quicker, easier and cheaper than trapsing around a store, and is has the added bonus of not mingling with the generaql population whom i detest.

Anyway, I ordered my shopping yesterday afternoon to be delivered today with Tesco,  between the hours of 7 and 9. It is now 9.55, and i am still waiting for my fucking delivery

I rang up the customer service desk to enquire as to where my shopping is, and after spelling my name out SIX FUCKING TIMES to a daft welsh twat, I was informed they would ring the driver and get back to me ASAP. This was over half an hour ago.

If there is one thing i hate, it is being kept waiting. I've shopped online plenty of times and online encountered such a wait once before, but this takes the fucking biscuit.

VAT and Delivery prices

The biggest culprits for the type of misleading bullshit are internet based companies although there are a few bricks and mortar companies who also do this. I am of course talking about the “wow what a great price” factor when you are browsing products in an online shop.

You know the ones – you find a product you wanted at a fantastic price and begin the checkout process only to discover that the price you were so pleased with is pre-VAT and delivery charges. Of course the worst part of it is that in most cases the delivery charge is so high that you will end up paying as much or even more than the regular shops you looked at first. This is particularly a common factor on Amazon.

Dominos

I just ordered a pizza on my mobile from Domino’s.  According to my fancy virtual “Order Tracker,” some pizza pusher named Derek put it in the oven at 9:12.  Oh, wait a minute.  That crazy bastard Derek then checked my pizza for deliciousness at 9:18.  The deliciousness checks are now complete.  But I don’t know if that means he stuck his finger or his dick in it.

How is the fuck is the  Internet keeping track of the progress of my pizza?  I can’t believe it can be cooked this quick with him continually updating its Pizzafacebook status so regularly.

I’ve become a little worried about Derek.  It’s now 9:23, and he hasn’t told me what’s going on.  He hasn’t asked me to repost his deliciousness check, or if I’ve ever eaten a delicious pizza cooked by someone who’s name started with the letter D.  He hasn’t posted any video of my pizza cooking, being taken out of the oven or put in a box.  And I haven’t got any invitations to Deliveryville or Pie Wars.  I mean, he could at least send me something saying my pizza went into the oven with a whole bunch of other pizzas that are now trying to get back together after graduating from High Temp High.

Mothers!

So here I am eating lunch a few weeks back at Hut 4, (one of the worst fucking place on  earth to eat but its the only place at Bletchley Park). I sit on the patio, enjoying the gorgeous Enlish sun and probably the worst cheese sandwich I’ve had eons when two very well dressed ladies (maybe in their late 30’s, I guess) with oversized buggys arrive and take the table next to me. By their appearance, they gave the impression of bored, wealthy, Surrey housewives trying to be lower class chic and eating with the “regular folk”, but then I thought maybe I’m wrong and I shouldn’t judge.

Well my assumption was right and they spend what seems like an eternity taking turns campaigning for how “special” their precious little wonder of life is and all the accomplishments their one year old has made (considering they can’t walk or talk and constantly shit themselves.)

Plastic Bags!

Some bright spark had the very dim idea of getting once-usable plastic bags banned where I live!

To you, Mr Your Idea Everyone Else's Responsibility; Now I will have to go and buy some black bin bags the same size as fucking supermarket bags to put in my inside rubbish bin. My point being is; what have you actually achieved? Black bags take a damn site fucking longer to degrade then supermarket bags! Supermarket bags take 4/5 years to disappear (FACT) whereas black bin bags (a lot thicker), well there always seems to be one in the ground every time I do a bit of gardening! Catch my drift? Twat!

I don't mind  buying these AND the cotton bags I 'must' use now when shopping just to fulfill your Insecurity but come on mate, your just being a pain in the fucking arse! 

For the record Tim Nice But Dim, the cotton bags' carbon footprint is more then plastic bags! Though I suppose you own the cotton bag factory and there's been a big fat envelope passed over.

Why don't you do some real Eco work? Why don't you chase the big corps who have destroyed the world and encouraged societies current way of life, why don't you bang on the door of the corrupt for your insecurities and get the publicity you need? Nah, you won't be doing that will you!

Beer 'experts'

I love beer. Despite my personal obsession with wine, beer is often a more honest and satisfying beverage. It’s like Jay-Z said: “Got a project chick, that plays her part / And if it goes down y’all that’s my heart.” Parades of Burgundies and Bordeaux and Wachaus and Riojas are fine for a hot night at the club, but if the shit hits the fan, man– a Guinness, Pabst, Hite, Lagunitas IPA–well damn.

But it’s still just fucking beer.

I was at a garden party at work  a while back and overheard a dumpy white dude in a suit (who wears a suit to a fucking garden party?) telling (bragging?) to a not-quite-as-dumpy white bird in jeans and a strappy top that he was a “Certified Beer Educator.”

How easy kids have it today

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; What with walking twenty-five miles to school morning...Uphill...barefoot, Both ways....yadda, yadda, yadda....

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no fucking way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about How hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of forty six, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so fucking easy! I mean compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! and I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

Television

Yeah, I have been ranting a bit lately, but the lack of quality television, and in fact the rather putrid offerings given to viewers, has led directly to this subject.

The first object of my derision is the show Toddlers and Tiaras, on TLC.  Simply, this is child porn, a literal pedophiles paradise.  Little girls as young as five years old are made up to look like Hollywood starlets, or more aptly, Hollywood strumpets; make-up, hair extensions and all.


(One mother even claimed she used Botox on her daughter, but when the media got wind of this tidbit she denied ever doing so.)

The AA Is NOT The 4th Emergency Service!

So, I was travelling in a friend's car from Bristol to Birmingham. We broke down just the other side of Cheltenham. He had the misfortune to have breakdown cover with the AA.

The AA patrolman (no, not a very very nice man) arrived after about fifty minutes, and diagnosed the problem. He said he could not help so would get a vehicle to take us back to Bristol. He towed us to Strensham Services (in the opposite fucking direction to Bristol) and left us there.

About four hours later (that's a lot of overpriced coffee)a recovery vehicle turned up, driven by a scruffy bastard in overalls, accompanied by his girlfriend. We were crushed in the front of the cab, but they didn't set off until they had finished their sandwiches. We were then taken well off course to Gloucester, in order to drop off the girlfriend, before being driven back to Bristol.

The journey from Bristol to Strensham and back took over 8 hours. Normally it would take about an hour each way (well it does the speed I drive*).

We arrived home completely exhausted and went straight to bed.

The next day my friend's garage called him. They had inspected the vehicle and the AA's diagnosis was completely wrong. In fact, it was likely that the car could have been fixed at the roadside.

So that's my one experience of the AA. Not one I wish to repeat, and certainly not a good advert.

BUT WHAT REALLY GETS MY GOAT is this: I have friends in the police and fire service who are none too chuffed about the '4th emergency service' strapline. There are other emergency services (Air Sea Rescue, for instance) that have far more claim to that title than a car breakdown outfit. I mean, would you rather be broken down at the roadside or bobbing up and down in rough seas, in the dark, just inches from death from hypothermia? There's just no comparison, is there?

How about a different strapline: 'AA - the second-rate inconvenience service'?

Taxi Drivers Around The World

You’re tired, jaded and just want to get somewhere fast. Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking your best method to do that would be to take a taxi. Public transport may be cheaper but taxis are so much less hassle…. Or so you thought.

I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I’ve managed to get lost with a taxi driver, the amount of times I’ve been overcharged or dropped off at the wrong place. It’s apparently almost standard practice for taxi drivers to ignore their meters and instead charge exorbitant fees because we don’t know any better, oh how I love that one. Ok Mr Taxi Driver, stop being such a fucking dickhead and please follow these 5 simple fucking  rules:

1) If you don’t know where I’m asking to go, kindly and politely turn down the fare – it will save us both time and me money.

2) If you don’t understand my attempt at your language or my English, it’s ok I can wait for the next one – don’t nod, smile and say OK. It’s not Ok, we’re gonna get lost

3) If you have a meter, use the fucking thing. It’s not a decoration for your dashboard.

4) I don’t want to go to your friends fucking suit shop, hotel, massage parlour or restaurant – honestly, and if you ask me and I tell you ‘no thanks’, save yourself the time and understand than when you ask me for the twentieth time, the answer is still ‘no thanks’.

5) I know we come from different cultures, but 20 people in one taxi is not safe, regardless of your religion mate, I’m sorry.

Spreading joy wherever I go....

Yes, I just spent the last 8 hours in the library. In a museum library. Should the opportunity ever arise for you to go sit in a museum library 4 days before you have to give an important presentation, don't. 

Let me clue you in. History students are anal-retentive fucks. Well, most of them. The rest of them, me included, have coping mechanisms that basically involve us either screwing off or pissing everyone around us off. Usually both. 

Unbelievably Crap British Film of the Week

Statement 1

I watched Red Mist on DVD yesterday.

Statement 2

I watched one of the worst horror films I’ve ever seen yesterday.

Statement 3

Statements 1 through 2 are not mutually exclusive.

It really was fucking terrible.

It’s from director Paddy Breathnach, who did the equally awful Shrooms, and it’s literally impossible to work out what on Earth everyone was thinking when they made it.

It’s even the worst Arielle Kebbel film, and she’s been in The Uninvited, John Tucker Must Die and American Pie: Band Camp.

I’ve just Windows 7 and I can’t work out how to screenshot DVDs, so I had to take photos with my camera when the boredom got too much. Excuse the quality. Here’s a woman who seems to have been cast solely because she looks like Keira Knightley’s less attractive sister:

Here’s a man who looks like a cross between Dane Cook and Mike Skinner:

And here’s the moment when Voldemort popped up for a bit

Mad.

Anyway it’s not remotely scary, logical, well acted, entertaining or original, so if you haven’t already guessed, AVOID.

The “cinema experience”

I love films, but generally speaking I hate the “cinema experience”. Every time I go I seem to add another reason to my list of why I should never go again.

1 : The price.

This is the big one. Today, I went to the cinema with a couple of friends to see the awesomely tacky Wrath of the Titans (3d) . My ticket was over ELEVEN POUNDS. OK, I had to buy the high quality, tres cool, Ray Charles style cataract glasses for a pound but the ticket alone was still over a tenner. If the cinema is worrying about attendance, the first thing it needs to look at is the cost of these tickets. For a tenner, I can buy 2 or 3 classic DVDs, treat my kids to a couple of books, or have a couple of hours at the driving range. That’s only when I go on my own too – if my missus, my kids and I all go together to the cinema, buy a bucket of the deliciously stale week-old popcorn and a bag of over-priced sweets, we are rapidly reaching the 50 pound mark. 40 pounds for 120 minutes entertainment is a fucking rip off. That kind of money would pay for a full day’s family excursion somewhere, or a full day on the golf course.

Ice-cream vans

I was cycling home from work last night and an Ice cream van overtook me at the same time started his music which made me shit my pantsand caused a wobble, then the prick cut me up and pulled in to park at his normal spot in front of me causing me to swerve out, thank god there was nothing coming the other way. In Germany the Ice cream van would have allowed me to continue first diffrent culture and Law coupled with heavy fines I know i was stationed out there for years. 

Why can't there be a solid white line 1m from the curb (1m will even allow a cyclist to miss drains etc) on ALL roads for bikes, to be kept clear at all times (no vehicles at all) even if the road is not very wide, that way in order for a vehicle to pass it will have to slow down wait untill its safe to overtake then pass. that way I wont get clipped or blown. I guess thats too much to fucking ask.

Darwin!

My Fucking God but some people have idiotic conversations right outside of my office door.

This morning three visitors bantered for fifteen minutes about how one of them hadn't brought his backpack to the museum that day. It was surreal, because if you didn't know English, then from their tones of voices you might think they were being incredibly witty, tossing clever bon mots (sp?) back and forth. But beneath that tone was a content so unclever and pedestrian, that I feel guilty associating it with run of the mill unclever pedestrianness.

It was the conversational equivalent of all of those "Scary Movie" type movies that don't really contain anything funny but mimic enough tropes associated with funny cinematic moments that the audience is fooled. How common is this kind of bullshit?

I know, I know, the content is not the point, the whole fucking point is rather some Darwinian signalling thing concerning reproduction, and in fact they could have accomplished the same by cheeping at each other.

But this is why Darwin fucking sucks. I would much prefer listening to people cheep at one another than to this shit.

Telesales

Ok, there is nothing new about cold calls, despite the fact we all hate them, despite the fact we are rude to the callers they still keep calling. It's a fact of life and that's that. What upsets me is the lack of inventiveness to the callers these days. i just got off the phone to one, you know they type:

"Helloooooo, we are doing a survey"
yeeess
"don't worry we are not selling anything"
uhhuh
"I just wanted to ask 2 simple questions"
ahhhhh


"As an incentive you may win a FREE gift voucher"
Ooooooo - ok then, go ahead
"Do you own your own home?"
Errrrrrrr - yes (It's a vanity thing, you have to admit it, don't you?)
"Great! Now, second question, if you could replace your kitchen, bathroom for FREE which would you pick..........?

Follow Directgov on Twitter!

Oh boy! I am thrilled to pieces! Tickled, ecstatic, overwhelmed! Today is the best day ever!

Why you ask?

Because I get to follow Directgov, the UK government's digital service for people in England and Wales on Twitter!

Yay! This really made my day.