Public Service Announcement

Brought to you direct from the front page of the Daily Express, today I'm using this esteemed and widely respected blog to try and achieve something truly good.

As you will probably know, little Madeleine McCann disappeared from her parents' holiday apartment six months ago. Since then, there have been several sightings of little girls who match Madeleine's description, a number of them from Morocco.

Sadly, the quality of these pictures has not been of the highest and determining details has been problematic. This is where you -- the readers of this blog -- can help.

Please, scrutinize this picture of a marketplace in Morocco and help to identify Madeleine:

Are you struggling to do this? Yes?

Then perhaps you might want to check out this version for a clearer image.

Perhaps that's unfair. After all, it's been six months, and a child can change a lot in that time.

We've commissioned an artist's impression of how Madeleine looks now, which you can see here.

I mean. Please. Seriously. How fucking stupid do you think I am?

Snatched by a passing paedophile? How about gypsies, then? The Child Catcher? Are we living in a world where Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is real?

This story is a complete fabrication with the active encouragement, perhaps even at the instigation of the British tabloid press, and it's a fucking disgrace.

These people build their financial success on engendering a state of fear for us all to live in, a world where predatory paedophiles roam every street, lying in wait outside the school gates ready to pounce upon the children unless Mummy and Daddy run them to the school gates in their petrol-guzzling SUVs.

You bunch of scare-mongering bastards. Do you know what you've done?

You've ruined childhood. You've terrified the nation's parents to the point where they won't let their kids out of their sight. They won't let them play any more. Keep 'em at home, upstairs in their bedroom, bashing away at the buttons on their XBox controller ...

OK, so they won't develop any imagination, they won't develop social skills through interacting with other kids, but at least they'll be safe, right? Safe from a threat that only exists in the minds of the headline writers of tabloid papers. Seriously.

Any parent should know that their child is in more danger of being impaled by an icicle of frozen urine that has fallen from a passing plane than of being snatched from the street by a randomly passing kiddy-fiddler.

Lighten up. Let the poor little bastards be kids for once.

Forgive The Link

I don't normally post links to other people's content, but ...

This really cheered me up ...

I say: "Bring on the Zombie apocalypse!"

The Great British Public

The Great British Public? Bunch of fucking cunts. I don't know which is worse, your stupidity, your greed, or your clear sense of entirely unwarranted entitlement.

For obvious reasons, I can't divulge too much information so let's just say this — I work for a company with a national High Street retail presence and one of my responsibilities involves incoming customer contact.

Here is a selection of the efforts to give me an aneurysm that the general populace have made this week alone.

Number One:

"I'm sorry, madam, but we have no transaction record of supplying you with that insurance policy. Clearly, it's not impossible that our records are in error, so all you need to do is provide the documentation for the policy and we will be happy to honour it and repair or replace your product free of charge."

"I've lost the paperwork."

"I see. So what you're asking us to do is honour an insurance policy that we have no record of selling to you, and you have no evidence of actually possessing?"

"No. That's not what I'm saying."

"I'm sorry, madam, but that is exactly what you're saying."

"Well, I don't like it when you put it like that. It sounds like I want something for nothing."

"Given that you're asking us to supply replacement product at no charge, without providing any evidence that you actually possess the policy you're asking us to honour, how, precisely would you put it?"

Number Two:

"I'm sorry. I've checked with our Accounts Department and that refund cheque has definitely been posted to you."

"Well, I haven't got it."

"Yes, I'm genuinely sorry about that, madam, but there has been a national postal strike and all the mail is currently subject to a backlog."

"But when am I going to get the cheque?"

"I'm afraid that I can't speak for the Royal Mail."

"Will I get it on Friday?"

"I'm afraid that I can't speak for the Royal Mail."

"What about Saturday?"

"I'm afraid that I can't speak for the Royal Mail."

"Well, when am I going to get it?"

"What part of 'I can't speak for the Royal Mail' are you not understanding?"

Number Three:

"No, I'm sorry, I can definitely confirm that this product has been posted out to you. The Royal Mail is clearing the backlog and you should have the product in the next few days."

"Well, I want to cancel the order and get a refund."

"I understand that, and we will be pleased to honour your refund as soon as you return the goods to us."

"I haven't got the goods."

"I understand that. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the goods to arrive, and then you can return them in favour of a refund."

"But I want the refund now."

"Yes, I understand that, but surely you understand that if we give your refund without you returning the goods, then we are just giving you the fucking goods?"

Number Four:

"Yes, sir, I understand that you want us to make a written declaration of our findings to enable you to pursue an entirely frivolous law suit against a completely different retailer. However, I hope you can appreciate that since we have no documentation of the supposed findings, and you are now unable to supply the allegedly defective goods in order for us to do a new inspection, our hands are somewhat tied."

"That's not good enough. I wanted those findings recording."

"I understand that, sir. However, given that they weren't, and that I am lacking a time machine or magic wand to enable me undo events that have occurred in the past, my options to help are somewhat limited."

"Well, I don't see why you can't write a letter for my solicitor, anyway."

"I'm sorry, sir, but can you not see that if we supplied you with a written statement that your solicitor used as basis for beginning legal proceedings against another retailer, the very first thing that other retailer would do is instruct their solicitor to find out what evidence we have based our statement? Evidence that we have already established does not exist?"

"Yeah. But why can't you just write the letter?"

"Because that would be dishonest, sir. We would be making a written declaration of 'facts' that we cannot prove are true."

"Yeah, but I know it's true, so why can't you write the letter?"

"Because you're attempting to find grounds for legal action, sir, and what you know is irrelevant. All that matters is what can be proved."

"I want to speak to your superior. You're not interested in helping me."

"No, sir. No-one can help you because you're a fucking idiot."

I Told You So

Forgive me for saying this, but I did tell you so.

Emboldened by their successes against the smokers, the health nazis are coming after the drinkers.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,2191932,00.html

This is typical of the type of story that has been gathering momentum for a few months now.

No more is the villification reserved for the ASBO-draped, White Lightning-drinking, faux Burberry-wearing, car park inhabiting Chav motherfuckers so reviled for their alcohol-fuelled antisocial behaviour.

Oh, no ... the social fabric now has a new enemy: the wine swilling middle-classes. The opening salvoes in this assault have been fired, with health experts wheeled out on news programmes, declaring their wish to eliminate irresponsible drinking habits from the national character.

Let's be entirely clear on this:

If I wish to take what is left of my paltry pay packet, after the Government has deducted both tax and National Insurance (which is an 11% levy on my salary to ensure that I get NHS healthcare, amongst other things, before we forget) and spend that on wine, or vodka, or beer, and pay another massive Government levy in the form of duty ...

If I wish to be double taxed on purchasing a product that I know is bad for me, and then consume that product in my own home to the detriment of no-one but myself ...

If I wish to invite some of my friends round so that we can all sit at a table, enjoy a meal, and drink alcohol to excess, and do so without breaking any laws, have a pleasant evening and head home in taxis, presenting neither nuisance nor threat to anyone ...

Then why the fuck shouldn't I be allowed to do so? What fucking business is it of the Government what I do?

Worse yet is the positively disingenuous nature of some the arguments being put forward by the health lobby: particularly the one where it the costs of a particular unhealthy lifestyle, in this case drinking, are volunteered as a burden on society that must be eliminated.

As I have observed previously, this is dishonest in the extreme, since it assumes that if we all stopped doing things that were bad for us, we would live healthy and productive lives at no burden to the state until the happy day when we had the decency to drop dead in a tidy fashion at no expense to the system.

In truth, if the Government eliminated all drinking from society, then we could absolutely not take the number of alcohol-related deaths and simply remove from the healthcare equation. This is statistical dishonesty of the most disgraceful type.

Every single one of those people would still die of something. Some would die from cancer, some from Alzheimers, or Parkinsons, some of pneumonia, some would just get hit by buses ...

And every single one would incur a cost to the NHS. Do NOT try and tell me that you can simply eliminate drinking as a factor and then deduct the cost of that from the NHS bill. Drinkers or not, smokers or not, every single member of the general public is going to die sooner or later.

So, if I am going to take what little cash the Government allows me once they have finished with their deductions and blow it on a perfectly legal vice that generates additional revenue for the Treasury whilst significantly reducing the likelihood that I will require £1500+ per week of residential nursing care as I slide into senile decrepitude ...?

Why the fuck shouldn't I?

I didn't vote to put Puritans into Government. Trust me on this - if we don't fight them here, then they will be coming after chips, and cheeseburgers, and video games, and porn, two sugars in your tea, and not looking both ways before crossing the road, and climbing trees ...

Fuck off. I reserve the right to do shit that is bad for me because I enjoy it. If you don't like it, fine. Charge me for my healthcare at the point of delivery and give me my fucking taxes back.

Wish I HAD died before I got old

While I'm on the subject of music ...

What the fuck is going on with all this comeback shit?

Take That and the fucking Spice Girls? Don't try to tell me that we all retroactively appreciate their past efforts in a post-ironic kind of way ... that we should really now all admire their perfectly-crafted pop creations?

FUCK OFF.

Are we all so unbelievably stupid, are our memories so addled that we're going to allow this suggestion to stand?

I know it's not exactly momentous issue, but I think someone needs to stand up and say:

You were always shit. You were always a fucking joke. We could never stand you and we're not pleased to see you back.

Take your vacuous pop posturing and fuck off back to the oblivion of musical history that had, quite rightly, swallowed you and in which we had fervently hoped you would now reside until doomsday.

Your music was always fucking dreadful but you traded on the fact that you were, at least, easy on the eyes. Now ... Now you're not only shit, but you're fat and old and shit* and therefore have no redeeming features whatsoever.

Are we being punished for something?

* All right, Posh - I'll concede that you, at least, aren't fat. Instead, you look like a Belsen victim in a Gucci frock. Malnutrition is such a good lifestyle choice to be peddling to the young. You empty-headed, fame obsessed bitch.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old?

Emo?

Fucking emo? What in the name of Jesus God Bastard Christ is wrong with kids today? You pustulent little shitbags can't even rebel properly!

You've allowed the record company marketing whores to take what was (let's face it) a pretty bloody wimpy sub-culture and achieve the seemingly impossible ... they've made it even more wimpy, they've made it even wetter.

I mean, those of us who were goth kids back in the day: deep down inside we knew we just didn't have the flat-out balls to be punks, we couldn't muster the casual, testosterone-laden sexism to be metalheads and we just had too much care for personal hygiene to be crusties.

So, for us, goth it was, then. It wasn't all that much of a rebellion, but it was ours and it was enough.

But emo? What the fuck is all that about?

We'd sort of like to be goths, but we can't be bothered. We'd like to paint our bedrooms black, but it's too much like hard work. We're going to go to nightclubs and stay out all night ... well, until Dad comes and picks us up, anyway.

If you were any wetter, you'd be puddles, you dismal streaks of piss. I find myself praying for a strong wind, because it's very clear that every last one of you would blow away, you snivelling little shits.

Don't give me any of that crap about subcultures evolving, about each generation finding its own voice. This emo shite isn't an evolved subculture, this isn't about like-minded individuals finding disparate bands that speak to the same unnamed, unnameable yearning, a musical expression of a shared experience.

This is about the record companies' marketing departments targeting the pasty-faced, eyeliner-wearing demographic. This is about second rate bands who are tedious corporate puppets mouthing meaningless pap; pop with alternative trappings, to tap into the alienated youth market.

Am I showing my age? Am I falling victim to the flaw of every generation as it's superseded; to the "it was better in my day" way of thinking?

So ... the unfettered, heart-rending melancholy of Joy Division? The brilliant, dazzling intelligence of Bauhaus? The black, black wit of the Sisters of Mercy? I can get that from Villi Vallo moping about in a beanie hat with his shirt off, singing about lurve, can I? That God-Bothering slapper from Effervescence duetting with Linkin Fucking Park? I can find anything on a par with the brittle, crystalline beauty of Siousxie and the Banshees?

No. I don't think I can. I looked to you, to the next generation, to surprise me. To find something new, to find something exciting, thrilling.

It's not just the emo kids, mind you ... it's all of you. You cut your hair like a punk, but you wear a Blink 182 hoodie ... you have no fucking clue. John Lydon wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, and Henry Rollins would actually snap you in half.

Take your Nirvana sweatshirts and understand this: Kurt Cobain was the moderately talented frontman of a band that mercilessly recycled other peoples' riffs and -- and this is the important bit to understand for anyone under the age of 14 who wears a Nirvana shirt -- who topped himself before you were born.

Nevermind is a pretty decent album, but Cobain ain't Jesus and you need to find some heroes who aren't dead, and weren't drugged-up fuckheads who slept with talentless slappers. Or, if you're unwaveringly set on having a hero who -is- dead- and -was- a drugged-up fuckhead who slept with talentless slappers, might I offer John Lennon or Jim Morrison as alternatives with infinitely more charm, ability and material?

We handed you the future, and said: "Go ahead, rebel" and, in return, you said "Do we have to?"

No. No, you don't fucking have to. But you don't get to moan about the world you live in if you never even tried to change it.

A Moment's Seriousness, I'm Afraid

I promised myself that the one thing I would try and avoid with this blog is politics. This isn't a political blog, but I don't believe that this is a political issue.

I want to have a word with our American cousins, citizens of that proud nation across the water. Land of the Brave, Home of the Free ... you know the place.

I'm sorry to have to break this to you: your President is a fucking lunatic.

Seriously. This isn't a political issue, it's a moral one.

Stop him. Please. Just fucking stop him. He's a maniac intent on rolling back history by 600 years and starting a new crusade.

I don’t care what you do: petition your elected representatives to reign in the power of the executive branch; impeach him; storm the fucking White House and string the demented little fucktard up from the nearest street lamp with piano wire, if that's what it takes.

I don't care, just stop him before he starts another war. Please, for the love of God, stand up and say: "Enough. You have the intellectual capacity of a sea squirt* and we realize now that you shouldn't be in charge of flipping burgers at Mickey Ds, never mind running the most powerful nation on Earth. Sorry. Our mistake. May we please have our country back?"

There is a school of thought that says you don't get to be President of the United States by being an idiot. Well ... if there's an exception that proves the rule, we're looking at him.

Case in point? How about the air of utter bemusement this intellectual pygmy radiates when confronted with the mess in Iraq? The palpable sense that he cannot understand how this abominable, clusterfuck of a crime against humanity has come about.

Newsflash, you cretin: anyone with the slightest fucking clue has known that this would be the near-inevitable outcome for over a decade. Your own fucking Dad knew, and that what was stopped him from knocking over Hussein's regime back in 1990.

How could you not have grasped that? How can it come to light in the last few weeks that Pentagon analysts have started to model scenarios for possible outcomes if the Kurds declare independence?

Started? For. Fuck's. Sake. This was one of the most blindingly obvious potential repercussions of your illegal war in the first place. A fucking standard poodle could have seen this coming. A fucking standard poodle would probably have concluded that maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

But Dubya? Ohhh, no ... he has right on his side, the Good Lord sits on his shoulder. How could things go wrong?

Take a long, hard look. I wish that you would hang your head in shame, but I don't believe for a second that you understand the enormity of what you've done.

(As an aside: I'm not a religious man, but I hope that there is a very special place reserved in Hell for Tony Blair as a result of his craven, supine capitulation to Dubya's imperialist leanings.)

No matter, though. It's done. Can't take it back, and there's probably no way of making it right, either.

Depressing as that thought is, surely he can't be allowed to do it again? Surely?

Stop him. I'm begging you. Stand up and say "Stop." Take a look at those poor, brave bastards in Burma and find your spines. Grow some balls and say: "No more."

Please. I'm begging you.

*You know: the sea squirt ... the animal that reaches adulthood, attaches itself to a rock and then, having found its place in the world, digests its own brain because it has no further use for it ....

Education, Edjukayshun, Edyerwhat?

So we've had another round of exam results come out and -- guess what? -- it's another record year! More passes, better grades, well, fuck me, that's just fantastic!

It couldn't possibly be that the exams are getting easier, could it? No ... our glorious leaders in Government have told us that they're not.

Well, I'm glad we sorted that shit out. Clearly, every year the teachers are getting better, and the kids? Gee, I guess the kids must just be getting smarter, then. That has to be the answer. No other explanation for it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't explain the problem I'm having just at the moment. You see, I'm trying to hire someone to work in my office right now. That means I'm reading CVs. Lots of CVs. From lots of bright young things with lots of A-grade GCSEs and A-levels.

So ... if standards are improving, if the exams aren't getting easier, then will someone please explain to me how these little bastards are getting through 12 or more years of education, are coming out with a better set of grades than I ever managed, and yet, somehow, are complete strangers to elementary grammar? Somehow, have managed to complete a decade and a half of schooling, but never learned how to spell or use the simplest of words.

One CV I've just read managed to use the words "there", "their" and "they're" and use each one incorrectly. Clearly, this well-educated youth had managed to complete his time at school without ever having it explained to him that these words are not interchangeable. Clearly, he had not the slightest concept of the difference between them or the context in which they were appropriate.

Possessive apostrophes float in and out of the text of these documents like quantum fucking phenomena. God forbid anyone actually ever manages to construct an entire sentence, containing a subject, an object and a verb.

So, why? Why are our children being churned out of school as illiterate little morons?

Why? Because the feeble, namby-pamby establishment has decreed that children can't be told that things are wrong. It might upset them. It might knock their confidence. It might stunt their emotional development.

You know what it might also do? It might mean that they FUCKING LEARNT SOMETHING.

I'm sorry to break it to the educational policy-makers of this once-proud nation, but some things are just plain fucking right and wrong.

When some friends of mine have a piece of their child's schoolwork on display proclaiming him to be a "top speller" despite this work containing the word "with" spelled "wiv", then I don't think we have to look very far to see the root of this problem, do we?

Enough.

Enough with this pussy-footing around. Teach the fucking kids. This is right. This is wrong. You got it wrong, kid. Stop fucking blubbing and get right next time. It's called learning and that's what education is for. Or so I thought.

Apparently, it's not any more. The teachers can't teach any more, they have to read a script from the curriculum, because the kids have to learn what's on the paper, so that they can pass it. No ... they're not allowed to learn anything else, because that doesn't help them pass the exams, does it? And the pass rate is what shows how successful the Government has been.

Ooh ... the poor kids are finding the exams too hard. Can't have them dragging the pass rate down. Don't make them study Physics or Maths -- let them do Media Fucking Studies and Applied Hairdressing and How To Tie Your Own Bastard Shoelaces.

If we make them do unpleasant things, like learn HOW TO FUCKING SPELL, they'll play truant, and that makes the figures look bad as well! Tell you what, why don't we let them use SMS abbreviations in their exam papers, because the kids like SMS and they all know how to spell m8 and l8r.

I've got a better idea.

How about we fucking don't. How about we worry a bit less about whether the kids are finding lessons fun and a bit more about making sure that they actually learn something. When did we, the adults, start giving a flying fuck about what the kids want? If we gave them what they wanted, then they wouldn’t go to school at all. They'd be at home on their Xbox 360s or in their chatrooms, or round at their mates' houses drinking cheap cider until they puked. They'd eat nothing but chips and watch TV until their brains turn to mush and dribbled out of their prematurely pierced ears.

For the love of Christ, they're fucking kids. We're supposed to know better than them. We're supposed to build character in the little bastards by making them thoroughly fucking miserable and teaching them stuff that they may not want to learn, but that we know they'll need in later life.

So ... how about we stop pandering to these spotty little shitbags and shake them up a bit? How about we explain to them that they're going to sit their worthless arses in school whether they fucking like it or not, and they're going to learn what we fucking well tell them to learn, because we're the adults and -- gosh! -- we know more than they do.

Or should we just sit back and let them pour out of the school gates illiterate, innumerate, but with a quite miraculous number of GCSE passes?

On A More Personal Note

Might I just interrupt the usual diatribe that fills this blog with a more personal interjection on the previously-covered topic of pubs, children and the combination thereof?

At a local hostelry there is an upright piano. I believe that it is present partly as window-dressing, and, perhaps, partly for the use of the many bands that perform there if required.

I am assuming that its purpose is not for small children to pound upon its keys repeatedly, creating a cacophonous racket and comprehensively annoying the fucking daylights out of all but the profoundly deaf.

I may be wrong on this last point.

On not one, but two occasions, my companions and I have sought refuge in said establishment with the intention of consuming a beverage or two after a particularly shitty day at work, only for the enjoyment of our (frankly, over-priced) pints to be comprehensively disrupted by the hamfisted battering of the piano keys by some snot-nosed little brat.

Don't get me wrong ... were I bursting into kindergartens and demanding that the children be prevented from having fun; were I objecting to the very presence of the kids in the pub; were in being in any way, shape or form remotely unreasonable, then fair enough.

But I'm not. I just want to sit in the pub, drink my damn pint, and be LEFT THE FUCK ALONE. This is not unreasonable. I tolerate these children running around the place, making aeroplane noises, shrieking, clattering furniture, and all the rest. I tolerate all of this despite the fact that this pub -- any pub -- is an adult environment.

So, please forgive me if I draw the line here, at your precious darlings banging away at the piano. I'm sorry. Don't whine at me, or look at me like I'm some kind of villain from a fucking Dickens novel. I just want to drink my fucking pint, OK?

Particularly, don't come over and try to have a go at me for stifling your little darling's fucking creativity.

"She only wants to play the piano for a few minutes ..."

Two key points here, madam.

One: she's not playing the fucking piano. She's making a discordant racket that's giving me a headache.

Two: she's already been doing it for several minutes. I've been waiting for you to do something about it and, now it's perfectly apparent that you have no intention of doing so, now I've complained to the bar staff. Speaking of whom, don't think I haven't twigged that in a splendid display of spinelessness, you've pointed me out to this drunken harridan and explained that it was me that complained.

If you want to indulge your child's creative impulses, then good. Fantastic. I couldn't be happier.

Find an appropriate environment and do it there, but keep it the hell away from anywhere I want to have a drink. Are we clear?

The Truth Is Out There

You know, I think I'm onto something with this whole Matrix conspiracy theory. If it's not true, then explain the uncanny similarity between Matrix-invading-virus-on-legs Agent Smith, and Channel-4-infesting-property-improvement-whore Phil Spencer ...

You want proof? I give you:

Don't say I didn't warn you ...

Second Life? Try Getting A First Life!

Am I the only person who finds a terrifying irony in the fact that the Wachowski Brothers were so near the mark and yet so very far off with The Matrix?

Isn't it just a little bit, just the teensiest bit fucking scary that it doesn't look like it'll take an entire army of machines and the aftermath of a nuclear war to confine the human race to a virtual simulation of real life?

No, all you need to do is offer people the opportunity to buy a house there and they fucking queue up to insert themselves into the Matrix.

No need for Agent Smith, just Estate Agent Smith.

An Alarming Development ...

Put down the chalk and step away from the menu board

A short appeal to sign-writers and desktop publishers everywhere. Get a fucking clue, you intellectually crippled crapheads.

Please, please, listen very careful when I say this:

There is no apostrophe in CDs, DVDs, PCs, TVs or LCDs.

No. There isn't. There really, really, really FUCKING ISN'T. It's plural. It's not possessive. It's not a contraction, so it therefore does not require an apostrophe.

It doesn't. Are you listening to me? Then stop fucking doing it. Just stop. For the love of buggering bastard Christ will you stop putting apostrophes into every word that ends in an 'S' and then leaving the cunts out when you're supposed to use them?

Case in point, from a pub menu board in my town:

There is no apostrophe in "Sausage and Chip's" but there is one in "Todays Specials" ...
Got that? Well, fucking change it, then. Don't make me hurt you.

While I'm at it, can I make it quite clear that there is not, under any circumstances, an acceptable reason for spelling the word "fair" as "fayre". Not one. It is not charming and Olde Worlde, not least because there is not such thing as "Olde Worlde." Sticking an "E" on the end does not instantly confer an authentic air of antiquity.

Neither does writing "Ye" when you mean "The." The word was never, ever "Ye" ... The "Th" sound used to have its own letter that looked a bit like a "Y", so it's not "Ye", it's not "Olde" ad it's not a "Shoppe".

Got that? Clear? You aren't tapping into the nation's rich linguistic heritage, you're making yourself look like an illiterate twat.

Pack it in, you fucking retards.

First they came for the Smokers, then they came for the Fatties ...

... then they came for the Meat Eaters, the Drinkers, the Couch Potatoes, the Rollerbladers, the People Who Don't Look Both Ways When Crossing The Road ... in fact, anyone who ever did anything might conceivably have a negative effect on their health.

Who am I talking about? Fucking Health Nazis, that's who. Bunch of intrusive, nanny-state, unwelcome bastards. You hear me? Mind your own fucking business, you sanctimonious, self-righteous, puritanical bunch of cunts.

They picked on the smokers first, because the public health campaign had already placed them somewhere just above paedophile on the social scale, so they were the easy target. It's the fatties next, it's already started, and they're lining up the drinkers after that.

Have you seen the latest Government guidelines on alcohol? Four units of alcohol in a single sitting is now classed as binge drinking. And, in case you missed the memo, they've been busily engaged reducing the amount of alcohol that constitutes a unit over the last few years.

If you still think that the drink/drive limit is about two pints, guess again. One pint of any premium lager is defined as containing 2.3-2.5 units of alcohol. Frankly, I don't think you should be anywhere near the wheel of a fucking car if you've so much as sniffed alcohol, but in case you don't get the message: one pint of Stella will cause you to fail a breath test.

Two pints, two pints after work and then a walk home for your tea and you are now classified by the Powers That Be as a binge drinker. I don't know about you, but at two pints, I'm barely warming up.

Drinking responsibly is now being represented as basically not drinking at all; no possibility that a person can sit in a pub with his mates and drink all night then go home without causing a nuisance or committing a crime ...

Except, of course, that you are committing a crime in New Labour's Brave New fucking World, you're automatically committing an act of harm on your own body and they know better than you. You don't get to be an adult, you don't get to take responsibility for your actions, they're going to take the matches off you, and the pointy objects, and the booze, and the fatty food, and, in all likelihood, your violent video games, your action movies and your porn.

Because -- and never, ever, forget this -- these things are bad for you and you aren't grown up enough to make an informed decision about any of these things.

But the question no-one wants to answer is this: why the fuck is the Government even trying to get us all to live longer? Seriously? Why are they bothering, when they make it abundantly clear that when you get to retirement age, you're nothing but a terrible burden on society.

Frankly, they should be encouraging us to eat badly, drink and smoke. One more early death is one more lifetime of National Insurance payments the Treasury gets to pocket and shovel back into the collective pot. Frankly, I should get a fucking rebate on my NI if I smoke. I should get a bonus if I smoke around other people for shortening their lives.

In an ideal world, we'd all drop dead of nice, clean heart attacks on the day of our retirement. Work nice, productive lives, pay all our taxes. Die before we get any benefit from them.

But the thing is, Tony ... The thing is, Gordon ... I don't work my arse off day after day, hauling my thoroughly miserable carcass into a dismal office to do a job I hate, just so I can pay my over-inflated mortgage, my extortionate council tax and see the rest of my salary creamed off in PAYE and NI ... No, I work because once all of that fucking money has disappeared from my bank balance, once I've shopped for food and paid my utility bills, on all of which you've creamed another 17.5% off me in VAT, once I've done all that ...

Then I might just conceivably want to spend the pittance that you've left me on something I fucking enjoy, in the full and certain knowledge that that thing is bad for me, fully understanding that I'm trading a few years off the end of my life in favour an earthly vice that gives me pleasure.

I don't believe in eternal life, I don't believe in Heaven or the divine rewards of virtue so leave me THE FUCK ALONE to squander my days exactly as I see fit.

As is my right, you snivelling, interfering cocksuckers.

Nature's Little Miracle

Miracle? Miracle? Fuck off! So you managed to breed, achieved that mighty feat that seems to have been mastered by almost every living thing on the planet ... ?

And now, this apparently gives you the right to get the best parking spots at the supermarket, the right bring people's busy working day to a standstill when you bring your mewling, puking, stinky bundle of skin into the office and thrust it under their noses.

Oh, and of course, the Highway Code doesn't apply to you any more. Oh, no, your vehicle can meander across multiple lanes of traffic; turn without warning; break at a whim; and why? Because you have a "Baby On Board" sticker in the back window. How about a "Cretin Behind The Wheel" sticker?

And when you're not in your damn cars (and, for the record, you do abso-fucking-lutely not need a 4x4 to buy groceries from cocking bastard Tesco) you've got those motherfucking buggies that you wield like armoured battering rams to get you wherever you want.

Need to cross the road? Wheel the little tank into traffic and watch everyone just screech to a halt. Someone in front of you in the supermarket or the bus? Just keep ramming them in the back of the ankles until they get the message.

Oh ... and once they've learned to walk and escaped the confines of the buggy, oh, that's even better!

Now, the hyperactive little bleeders can career around on their own two legs, shrieking and whooping and generally annoying the fucking bastard daylights out of everyone while you - the bloody parents - gaze fondly on and wheedle at them: "Caaareful, Nathan. Jocasta, don't pull everything out of the nice gentleman's trolley. Oh, look, Timothy, you've wiped snot all down that lady's dress."

And yet, if I should summon a slightly irritable response as your Ritalin-deprived offspring runs past me in the pub, screaming like a diminutive banshee, suddenly I'm on the receiving end of looks that couldn't be more disapproving if I'd stabbed snot-nosed bleeder in the eye with a pastry fork.

We need to let the smokers back into the pubs, at least they kept the bloody children out.

Help the Aged!? - Part 2

Well, allrighty then, you wrinkled old bastards ... so you've proved to me that you're not truly happy until you've subjected me aneurysm-inducing levels of frustration while I'm out shopping, but you've still got some more tricks up your sleeve.

Those fucking shopping trolleys, the ones that enable you to barge into my shins or ankles and then look at me like somehow I'm the one that's done something wrong ... where in bollocking bastard hell do you actually buy those things? I have never, ever seen one on sale so where do you get them from? And who trains you to use them as an offensive weapon?

In fact, where do you get all that old person shit from? Tweed hats and trousers that with a waistband that comes up to your armpits? Clear plastic headscarves? Vests? I have never, ever seen any of that crap on sale in any shop. Is there some kind of special mail order catalogue that gets sent to you with your bus pass?

And, when I'm on public transport and I offer you my seat, how about you accept graciously rather than looking at me like I'm a piece of shit you found on your shoe. Don't think I don't know why you do that. It's because you know that everyone else who now gets on and hasn't seen me offer you my seat is looking at me and thinking "You selfish prick. How can you sit there while that poor old person has to stand?" Thanks a fucking bunch, granddad!

Of course, the excuse you all use for not ever wanting to pay full price for anything is that you're only "poor pensioners". Fuck right off, will you?

Your parents moaned about never having any money when they retired, and their parents moaned about never having any money when they retired, and you sat there as a child and an adult and listened to them fucking moan about it ...

And you STILL DIDN'T SAVE ANY MONEY FOR YOUR RETIREMENT! What? How fucking stupid are you? How much of a fucking clue did you need? Were you banking on a massive lottery win on or around your 65th birthday? Did you think that your own parents, despite doing nothing but whinge like bastards about how skint they were, secretly had a fortune that you were going to inherit? Maybe you thought that when you had to get false teeth because all your real teeth had fallen out, you were going to make a killing off the tooth fairy?

Please, please, don't tell me that you seriously thought that there was going to be a State pension worth a damn, because that dementia had certainly kicked in early if you did.

And while I'm on the subject of dementia ... just fucking pack that shit in, will you? Like it gives you carte blanche to say whatever the fuck you want, particularly whatever loathsome racist crap happens to wander across I laughingly refer to as your 'mind':

"Ooh, I'm not being funny, but he was one of them Indians and you know what they're like."

"I never eat Chinese food -- they all eat dogs and cats."

"I'm not a racist, but you know how those blacks are ..."

You haven't got fucking Tourettes, so what comes out of your mouth is your responsibility. They're not chinks, or wogs, or pakis, or any of those other disgraceful linguistic throwbacks you trot out.

And the worst of it is that you then have the audacity to look pleased with yourselves, as if you've challenged the doctrine of political correctness, or somehow claimed back some small cultural piece of the Empire for Queen fucking Victoria.

You haven't. You're pathetic and you make me want to puke.

Help the Aged?! - Part 1

Old people. What's your problem, you miserable old buggers?

Honestly. Seriously. I need to know. Out of all the sections of society, the one with the least demands upon their precious time is the retired. So why, then, are you all so fucking impatient?

What, exactly, is so pressing in your busy schedule of watching the TV with the volume turned right up and boiling cabbage (for that all-important old person smell in your sheltered accommodation) that gives you the right to barge in front of me at the supermarket deli counter? Let's be honest, the only thing looming large in your future is your imminent demise and, if that happens, it's not really going to matter whether you managed to get a quarter of haslet five minutes earlier than if you'd just stood and waited your fucking turn, is it?

In fact, why are you even in the same queue as me? Why do I have to see (and, most likely, smell) you at all? You've got five days of the week when the shops are practically empty because all the poor sods like me who work for a living are toiling away at our jobs, so why the fuck are you shopping on a Saturday morning?

And then, after you've elbowed in front of me in your pursuit of reasonably priced cold meats, you're in front of me again at the checkout. You've got twelve items. You're in the "Ten Items Or Less" queue. And now you're counting out the correct money in fucking copper coins and extracting nine separate vouchers, one at a time, from your fucking purse.

Why? In the name of everything that I hold dear: why? You knew you were going to use these bastard vouchers before you even joined the queue! Would it have fucking killed you to have got them out and unfolded them at some point before actually handing over payment?

And, to cap it all, you haven't even bagged your fucking shopping yet! Oh, no, you couldn't actually bag up the shopping as it's rung through. No, you have to stand there and watch the checkout assistant to make sure they're doing their job properly. For Christ's sake! It's just about the easiest job known to man! Stop scrutinizing the cashier just in case — God Forbid! — something rings through at tuppence more than the marked price and pack your fucking shopping up, you doddering, stinky old bat!

Actually, I know exactly why you do it: it's so you've got something to fucking moan about. It's so you can achieve your twin goals in what remains of your dismal existence — annoying the living daylights out of anyone younger than you and then moaning about how anyone younger than you doesn't have any fucking respect any more.

Well, let's get this clear, then. If you served in the Forces, 'nuff respect. Taught in school for forty years? My hat is off. Raised a family of polite, respectful kids who've all gone on to become productive members of society? Good for you.

What you absolutely fucking do not get from me is my respect simply because you're not dead yet. Are you expecting some kind of fucking medal because you're still breathing?

"Do I get a discount because I'm an OAP?"

No. No, you do fucking not get a discount. In fact, you've got no mortgage, you get free travel, you get concessions on your Council Tax and your TV License. The government gives you money towards your heating and the local council brings meals to your door. Stick your fucking discount up your arse.

Whew. It felt good to unload that one, but don't think I'm finished with you yet, you vile old stinkwads. More to follow ...

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Pants. Not the word our Merkin cousins across the water mistakenly use for trousers, but underwear.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask: what in the name of Unholy Lucifer and all his Demon Hordes is going on with men's underwear?

I was finally forced to admit defeat and accept that I was going to have buy some new pants, the old faithfuls being now in the final stages of disintegration.

There's a choice now? When the fuck did that happen? And more to the point: why?

For as long as I can remember, there have really only been two options where men's pants are concerned: boxers or briefs. Frankly, I have no idea why they even bothered making them in different colours.

Gentlemen, let's be honest. We've never cared about our pants. The only time we ever even think about the damn things is if there's a chance that a lady might see them. If you're at that stage with a woman, only two things really matter anyway: that they are a) clean and b) free of holes.

That's it.

So when did some metrosexual marketing department fuckwit decide that we needed a choice? A variety of styles? Different cuts? Fits?

What's next? Fucking frills?

Or are we now pandering to those retarded social incompetents who have concluded that the purpose of wearing trousers is not to keep your arse warm, and have decided that we are all so desperate to see their underwear that they keep their trousers at permanent half-mast, supported only by the hands that they have perpetually stuffed in their pockets?

Is that it? If so, Mr Marketing Guru, you're wasting your time because these people have the intellectual capacity of molluscs. Honestly ... for starters, they actually think that they look good.

Are you all out of your tiny, barely functional minds? You absolutely, positively do fucking not look cool.

You're also not making any statement other than: "Please mug me, because I will be unable to run after you, since my trousers will be round my ankles. Plus, of course, you know that I'm worth mugging because I'm precisely the sort of feeble-minded tosspot that thinks people are impressed by bling and a flash mobile."

So ... if that's what you're happy announcing to the world, if the statement you choose to make is "I haven't yet mastered the art of dressing myself, a feat usually accomplished by the average three year old" then please feel free to carry on.

Otherwise, look in the fucking mirror, you imbecilic cock-monkey. You look like a prize twat.

There's no helping some people.

It's Not Rocket Science

Queuing. That's pretty straightforward, isn't it?

If more than one person wishes to avail themselves of a product or service then they form themselves into a line. Each new person arriving adds themself onto the back of the queue and as each person at the front is served, the queue moves forward. In time, everyone gets served.

No. I don't like queueing. I'll be frank, I fucking hate it. Do I want to be standing in this stinking fucking line, in between the alcoholic who smells of piss and the woman with the mewling brat who's screaming because she won't let the snot-streaked little bastard have another bag of E numbers and sugar?

Of course I fucking don't. That's the point.

Do you hear me, you queue-jumping motherfuckers? I don't want to be standing in this dismal queue any more than you do, but I fucking do it anyway, because I understand that this act is one of the most basic representations of society. That this simple, fundamental demonstration of the concept of community is one of the things that separates us from the bloody animals.

So what makes you so bastard special that rules don't apply to you? You're in a hurry? You've got somewhere better to be?

Guess what? Me, too. So, the only way you legitimately get to be in front of me in this queue is if you were here before me. Anything else and you're just self-centred, inconsiderate twat who thinks that you're better than everyone else.

Newsflash: you aren't. You're one more part of the problem. You're one more symptom of the creeping, festering rot that gnaws away at the simple, basic day-to-day decency that makes living in a community of other human beings bearable.

You're a jumped-up piece of shit. If you don't want to act like a human being, then don't. You're a chimpanzee in a baseball cap. You're a baboon with bling, you useless cunt. Why don't you just shit on the floor while you're at it? Why should you have wait until you get to a toilet to relieve yourself? The rules don't apply to you, do they?

Get to the back of the fucking line and wait your damn turn, just like everyone else.

You don't want to do that? Then how about me, and every other poor git stood in this queue, fucking well makes you?

Like I said yesterday: it's time we collectively grow a spine.

Going the extra mile

Today, I would like to offer some congratulations. Congratulations to whichever consumer electronics R&D department first thought of beefing up the internal speakers on mobile phones to the point where music could be played out loud on them.

You bunch of total bastards. What the fuck were you thinking? Congratulations on taking the most annoying device known to man and finding a way of adding a whole new dimension of irritation to it.

I mean, for Christ's sake! Wasn't it bad enough when we had to sit in the pub, or on the bus, listening to braying idiots discussing every minute detail of their soul-destroyingly dull social lives at the top of their voices, whilst punctuating every sentence with "innit" or "knowworrimean"?

Clearly, it wasn't enough. Clearly, the mobile phone had potential to impact still further on the collective frustration levels of the public, because there's nothing we want more than to listen to tinny R&B as part of the rich collage of sound we experience on public transport, or in other public places. Screaming children and bleating teenagers not enough? No, of course not! Let's add Eminem to the mix! Yeah!

Up until this point, we all genuinely believed that the tss-tss-tss-chff-chff-chff sound of someone listening to music through headphones was probably the most annoying thing known to man.

We were wrong. The weedy, mono, bass-free screechings that emerge from a mobile phone playing back music through its speaker is actually the most annoying thing known to man. Congratulations on pushing back the frontiers, on expanding the boundaries of what is truly, teeth-grindingly, homicidal-rage-inducingly infuriating.

But ... wait! Let's also spare a thought for you, the people who are so unbelievably arrogant as to think that we, the rest of the world, actually want to hear your preferred choice of what passes for music in your narrow little view of the cultural world.

I have news for you, you socially retarded, inconsiderate fucktards. We don't.

I have impeccable taste in music, and I don't presume that anyone other than me would want to listen to it on the bus! More to the point, even if I did think that other people deserved to hear it, why in the name of buggering fuck would I think that playing back the weedy, mono, bass-free screechings that emerge from a mobile phone would be the best way of introducing people to that music?

Stop it.

You know perfectly well that you are just annoying the living shit out of everyone around you. You fucking know it. If you pathetic little bastards were actually interested in the music, you'd have it on your headphones and would be listening to it properly. You aren't interested in the music, you're only interested in making the day-to-day environment of everyone you encounter just that little bit less tolerable, just that little bit more irritating.

I hope that one day, some day soon, somebody finally snaps. Just loses it and goes flat-out, bugfuck crazy, takes that phone off one of you and shoves it so far up your self-centred arse that it makes your eyes bulge. You absolute bunch of unutterable cunts.

Failing that, how about we - the general public - show a bit of backbone? How about that? The next time we're sat in a public place and there are a whole bunch us all gritting our teeth as we're tormented by the bastard Sugababes squeaking out of some chavved up little bleeder's Motorola, how about just one of us has the balls to tell them to shut the fuck up? And, when this audacity earns the inevitable tirade of unoriginal abuse, how about just one more of us has the balls to say: "No, actually, I agree. That's really fucking annoying. Will you please turn it off?"

How about it? I'm game if you are. Remember that there really are more of us than there are of them.

Thought for the Day

So ... today's question is aimed at every bloated moron who takes their oversized offspring down to the supermarket in order to stock up on more carbohydrate, saturated fat, and sugar derivatives.

Why? Seriously. Why?

You do know that you can get this nutrition-free crap delivered to your house via the medium of the internet, don't you? Why risk burning those all-important calories that you're clearly hording against the day the fucking sun goes out, or something, by waddling and wheezing your way around the aisles?

No ... surely it's better if you leave your corpulent arses festering on the sofa and have the whole lot delivered to your door? Don't worry, you'll still get plenty of exercise hauling your blubbery frame to the door to sign for the delivery.

Of course, the real beauty of this plan is twofold:

1) You get to gorge yourself stupid on all that pizza and chocolate and fizzy fucking drink that is clearly more important to you than a long life, a pair of trousers without an elasticated waist, or the least modicum of self-respect.

2) I don't have to navigate my way around your gargantuan frames to try and get to the salad aisle, where you have clearly only paused in order to catch your breath before striking out for the grazing pastures of the chips & dips.

To be honest, I don't actually care about you, it's seeing your kids that's doing the damage to my blood pressure. The poor little bastards don't stand a chance. First of all you called them Britney, or Christina, or fucking Wayne and now you're hell-bent on shovelling so much cholosterol-laden shit down their neck that they're already bulging out of their junior fucking shell suits. These poor little bastards don't know any better; they were looking to you to feed them properly. What's your next trick? Showing them how to play with matches? Teaching them not to look before crossing the road.

You make me sick. Someone should fucking prosecute you for child abuse.

Do I come across as angry? Bitter? Good. I'm pleased. Because I am.

'Til next time.