Wednesday 29 February 2012

Life on Earth

Out there - go on, look - OUT THERE, in the wild, it's dog eat dog eat cat eat rat eat bat get fat and survive. Eat, fight, fuck - that's about your lot as far as the basic purpose of the animal kingdom is concerned. Eat to live, live to fuck, fight for the right to do either. Then die. We all die in the end.

Survival of the species depends on lots of things, principally the survival of viable breeding individuals. Some animals are ferocious predators and have small litters which they rear and defend until they can set about the fighting and eating of rivals and prey. Other animals breed copiously and rely on the numbers game to counteract the high attrition rate due to predators- think mice.

If there's not enough space, shelter or food to go around then, predator or prey, numbers decrease to manageable levels. In nature the numbers balance because they have to. You don't get many big fish in small ponds.

But you humans have to bugger about with all this, don't you? Because of your sensitive, touchy-feely ways you like to upset the natural balance and try and grow all your sacrificial eggs into big fish and because maths ain't your strong point it always fails. Which is why this latest social-engineering atrocity is doomed to failure

Really, lefties? Fucking really? Did you not learn from your 50% graduate target that no matter how hard you school a thickie they will never become right-proper-clever? They will never grow up to understand the numbers game of life and you will commit them to a moribund existence of dependency on the skewed politics of envy, coupled with a crippling sense of entitlement. In other words, they will get nowhere and then they will moan on and on about it.

By not telling people the truth (some of you will be eaten, many will not get to breed and deservedly so) you are messing with the very structure of nature. And what's the betting the cossetted results of your experimentation grow up to be the sort of idiot occutards who have just been uprooted from St Paul's?

Some smelly hippies - yesterday

David Attenborough would be ashamed of you.

Monday 27 February 2012

I should be so lucky

People ask me how I've survived to this grand old age (I'm not telling - a gentleman never reveals such personal statistics) and I fix them with a gimlet eye and exclaim, "Pah! You don't know the half of it!" And then I send them on their way with a stiff clip around the ear for their impertinence.

I've roamed this world from age to age and met many a companionable chum, all of whom benefited greatly from my sage advice. I was an early confidant of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and although modesty restrains me from taking the shine off the great man, it was my suggestion that he name that ship Great Britain, rather than Saucy Sue, the name he favoured after a short and embarrassing dalliance with one of the old Queen's ladies-in-waiting.

I've no doubt young Marconi would have eventually got around to sorting out radio communication, but when I met him he was still dabbling with tin cans and string. I doubt very much that Vodafone would be the force it is today without my timely intervention, for which I ask and will accept no thanks. As I always say, modesty is a prince among the virtues and rare indeed.

I have been prescient, also, in influencing the outcome of many diverse encounters that have moulded the world in which we live. I warned my old pal Neville Chamberlain about consorting with that shady cove, Mr Hitler, but would he listen? It is only thanks to my wizard idea to get America involved that we're not all "speaka-de-Nazi" to this day. As to Maggie and the miners, well, I hesitate to take the credit while the dear lady is still alive but, as they say, if the cap fits, what? And do you believe Christopher Plummer would have been given that Oscar had I not had a word with the award committee? No, I think not.

So, all in all, it's been a pretty busy life all round, forsaking personal gratification for the greater good, but I merely seek to serve. I've travelled the globe, shaping world events spanning three centuries and apart from that nasty business in seventy-four, I've pretty much kept myself out of trouble. My friends call me Lucky.

No sex please, we're busy.

I've always felt I was different from the common herd. Better, for one thing; more balanced, less volatile and with a far more catholic (small c) outlook on life than most. But, as generally understanding as I am of humanity's failings, I've often been perplexed by 'your' preoccupation with sex. That, more than practically any other weakness, informs my view that if there ever was a god, he had a rotten sense of humour.

If I believed in him/her/it I'd thank him/her/it for my ability to rise above 'it'. Don't get me wrong, I'm partial to a bit of 'the other', I just don't let it - I've never let it - rule my life. Unlike mere humans, who let their base lusts drive their every waking moment, I recognise that sex is okay, just not quite as good as the real thing. And being free of constant controlling, debilitating urges has allowed me to develop into the erudite genius I demonstrably am today. It's also probably responsible for my modesty. (I'm the most modest man in the world!)

I have, however, wondered if it was just me. So I was quite pleased to find this report into the lifestyles of the asexuals. I'm not like them, of course - I'm not a freak! - but I can very easily empathise with them. Undistracted by the demands of those unreasonable hormones, we should easily be capable of outwitting the animalistic masses and should they turn nasty, we ought to be able to outrun them, unencumbered by bulging ballsacks bursting with unspent population paste.

Too many unthinking acts of wanton sexuality, churning out too many unwanted, unplanned, pointless people whose only fulfilment in life is achieving the few seconds of indescribable sensation which is pitifully inadequate reward for all the effort that goes into it, yet somehow reinforces primal urges to do it all again. How utterly tiresome.



I have no desire to procreate; the world isn't ready for another one of me. Besides, I tried it once and I can take it or leave it. Give me a good book any day.

Saturday 25 February 2012

Right, in spades.

When I were a lad, folk could speak their mind, it seemed. And so they did. There were out-and-out battles - down t'mines, up t'snickets, in pubs and in parliament. Spades were called spades. It helped save a lot of confusion. But then, once the swinging sixties and the sordid seventies became history, it's as if a secret pact had been made in a dimly-lit back room, allowing a creeping social malaise to slowly spread its poison over our freedoms and the country apathetically sleepwalked into a minefield of political correctness and all its variants.

Harmless bigotry (let's be blunt) - normal, instinctive human behaviour, favouring familiars and building social tribes for millennia - became a crime and prime ministers began to apologise for events of centuries ago. Progressive be-socked, sandal-wearing, lentil-weaving liberal-minded poltroons gained a stranglehold over our nation's history and whilst not actually burning the books on pyres (much) they cheerfully expunged MY nation's history by dangling in its place their new-fangled, 'acceptable' alternatives.

Gone was General Wolfe and the heroic escapade at the Heights of Abraham. The thin red line of the Crimean campaign was banished forever and woe-betide anybody mentioning Agincourt. Slavery had suddenly become an entirely British evil - for which, read English evil - and the deeds of Empire lay forgotten and forlorn or worse, held up as further examples of  the blight that our expeditionary zeal had brought to the world. Who were we to give them roads and railways? 'Empire builders' became an insult.

And as we cringed beneath the soft-soled jackboot of uncontrolled socialist experimentation, we became ever more apologetic, ever more compliant and ever more dependent on the state. Hungry for every crumb and wanting more; Oliver Twists the lot of us. And then, it seemed, when the battle to belittle Britain was won, we turned on each other, branding basic human aversion to difference as some form of hate crime. Sexism, racism, ageism, faithism, heightism, weightism... gingerism... it even became unacceptable to call a lazy, fat, workshy, scrounging bastard a lazy, fat, workshy, scrounging bastard. Pity the criminal for he knows not what he does and society is to blame.

A lazy, fat, workshy scrounging bastard - yesterday


So, it's nice to see the tide slowly turning.  It's good to hear people beginning to tentatively proffer right-of-centre views without ending up in court. Okay the Harmanistas are still shrill, but it seems we're regaining the right to point and laugh at the juvenile, pouting idiocy of those who would stomp on our differences. (You cry "Vive la difference!" and flourish your 'diversity' card, but punish anybody daring to comment on any such differences. The left doesn't want diversity, it wants uniformity. What a strange, short-sighted bunch you are.)

And I forecast all of this about thirty-five years ago. As a teenager I could see it all going to hell in a hand-crafted handcart. In fact I have been bang-on about every single world event in which I cared to take an interest. I am a veritable oracle and I have yet to be proved wrong.

'Comprehensive' schools - incomprehensible.
Downgrading GCEs to CSEs - I dare you to say this has improved anything.
The European 'Project' - see Greece, Ireland, Italy et al, crumble.

I believe I've made my point. I know what's best for you, so listen up.

Satnavs make you lose your way.
Calculators make you innumerate
Spellcheckers make you illiterate
Computers make you stupid

In general, technology makes you useless. I want my spade back!

Thursday 23 February 2012

Jeffrey Bernard is unwell...

Those of a certain age will recognise the The Spectator's regular euphemistic apology for the alcohol-induced, non-appearance of Jeffrey's column.


Well, although not unwell, I have been too busy and too tired to be arsed, frankly, today.

So,  why not have a break from me and browse a few of my favourite blogs?

Spread the love, I say.





Have a nice day!

If it looks like a duck...

They say you can't judge a book by its cover. No? Maybe not - some books do indeed have deceptively anonymous covers and it would clearly be unfair. But when they say that, they're not really talking about books, they're talking about people, aren't they? And then the whole thing breaks down because not only can you judge by appearance, you invariably do judge by appearance. And so you should; first impressions are powerful, long-lasting and mostly pretty accurate.

Have a look at these and see if you can work out which is the whiny slapper, which is the rascally druggy bloke and which one is the thieving, burgling, violent scumbag who tried to use the Human Rights Act to avoid jail but then blew it by re-offending within a month of playing his get-out-of-jail card.


Easy, wasn't it? Gollum-a-like Wayne Bishop is today commencing an eight month sentence, which should have been enforced a year ago.

But, hang on. He was originally given an eight month sentence for burglary. This was suspended on appeal because of his 'human right' not to be jailed because he didn't fancy it. But now he's been convicted of another offence (he's been in court seventeen times, by the way) and yet he's still only facing eight months inside. What is wrong with our criminal justice system?

Outside the court some vague relative made the usual nauseating statement about how it wasn't really his fault at all: 

"Perhaps if as children we'd have had the right upbringing and guidance instead of our father being in and out of jail all our childhood life, Wayne would have been able to think before his actions..." 

Bollocks. If his father had been prevented from breeding at the earliest possible opportunity we'd all have been spared the misery and time and trouble and cost of tolerating such worthless, idle, parasitic ingrates. So, forget three-strikes-and-you're-out, when I'm king we'll have a three-strikes-and-they're-off system. This way, feckless twats like Wayne would be bollock-free before they hit puberty and society would be saved forever the ad-nauseum pandering to the "it's my upbringing" brigade.

You know it makes sense.

Wednesday 22 February 2012

Have you got a minute...?

So, I arrived home last night to find a sorry-I-missed-you card: Something called the "Active People Survey".


It says, "Active People Survey is a nationwide survey for a government agency sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is about people's leisure and recreational activities and the results will help shape local services in the future."

A bit of digging - I Googled it - and I discover that, far from being an isolated, flash-in-the-pan piece of idiocy, this has been going on for some time. It is in fact the sixth annual Active People Survey and it has been spending my money to fuck-knows-what end since two-thousand-and-bastard-five!

Here are the highlights (highlights!) from APS 5:

Highlights from Active People Survey 5:
  • During the period October 2010 to October 2011, 6.927 million adults (aged 16 and over) participated in sport three times a week for 30 minutes at moderate intensity;
  • 14.759 million adults (aged 16 and over) participated in sport at least once a week for 30 minutes at moderate intensity during the period October 2010 to October 2011;
  • Comparison of the 2007/8 (Active People Survey 2) and the latest results to October 2011 (Active People Survey 5), shows four sports (athletics, boxing, table tennis and mountaineering) have seen a statistically significant increase in participation rates.

OMG. Who gives a flying fuck? And they want to waste MY valuable, personal time asking me what I do with MY valuable, personal time, when I'm not working my butt off trying not to become another tragic penniless retirement statistic? It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the government. Any government. And why has funding for an utterly pointless initiative which began under the failed Labour lunatics been continued by the current administration? Mr Osborne? Hey, Gideon George? You've missed a few million quids-worth here. Small change, I know, but this could be just the tip of the iceberg. What other socialist data-gathering horrors lurk beneath the lapping waves?

  • SOWS - Staring out of the window survey. To assign a number to the time spent, er... sitting.
  • IPS - Inactive people survey - how many people could not be arsed to fill in the APS questionnaire.
  • IRS - Inappropriate response survey - counting the proportion of people who greeted our interviewers with a cheery "fuck-off" and a coating of egg.
  • OIYA - Oh, it's you again - a sub-survey investigating the degree of hostility proffered when a subject inadvertently answered the door thinking it was the postman, bringing them something they wanted.
  • TNHS - There's nobody home survey - an investigation into how many people no longer answer their door because of the possibility it could be a survey-goon, armed with a questionnaire.
  • ITYTFO - I told you to fuck off go away already - measuring hostility towards survey interviewers.
  • F&HS - Fear and Hate Survey - an attempt to measure the degree to which violence in our society has increased in line with government's insistence on measuring things rather than actually doing things.

Of course, it's entirely possible I'm misjudging the public mood here and that people actually like to be approached by uninvited strangers, probing their personal behaviour and taking up their time. So, in order that I may best judge the way forward, vis-a-vis your preferences regarding the utilisation of time which might otherwise be spent in active leisure pursuits, I have a short questionnaire here. It won't take long... do you mind if I come in? Tea, please... two sugars.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

The First Cuckoo?

Squatting takes an upwardly mobile trajectory in this story from the newspaper most likely to carry it and yet the DM's stance is, contrary to expectation, almost pro the squatters.

The squatters, for their part, insist they don't claim benefits, working as necessary to fund their lifestyle and somehow managing to connect to services without, apparently, paying for them. A simple living need not cost a fortune and the needs of the young and fit appear to be fulfilled by various forms of noble scavenging. Apart from the bit about free utilities, I'm sort of with them, but they justify their occupancy as 'caretaking', which is simple bullshit.

Living for free or nearly free? I applaud that too. Thrift is a diminishing virtue and should be soundly commended. Freeloading off other people's endeavours, though? Oh, shit, it's back to the entitlement thing, isn't it? Why should the owner have the use of this nice big house? It was just sitting there empty. If the BBC don't come and get their licence fee, why should I volunteer it? No one has been to read the gas or electricity meter, so it must be free gas and 'leccie, right?

This isn't just squatting in a house, it's sort of squatting in the economy. Nothing is free. Nothing. And something for nothing is, effectively theft. Stores employ store detectives and businesses employ debt recovery agencies because, despite the egalitarian cries of the naive, people are not uniformly honest. Every time somebody takes something not freely given, somebody else suffers a loss. We all pay higher taxes because some people don't pay any. We all pay higher insurance premiums because some like to fiddle their claims. And somewhere along the line the resources not being paid for by the squatters are being paid for by the blameless, honest majority.

A squatter, yesterday

It's hardly the squatters' fault; this is a phenomenon well known in nature and they are merely following their instincts. The cuckoo, for all that its cry is hailed as a harbinger of spring, is in fact a monstrous, murderous interloper, disposing of its unwitting adopted siblings and taking everything for itself. But while cuckoos can't outgrow their disposition, it's amazing how quickly humans do. Once they buy a house of their own.

So, to the amiable young rascals occupying Clifton Wood House, good luck to you. Enjoy your time there. But when the bailiffs eventually turf you out please have the grace to go without a fuss and recognise there is nothing noble about cuckoos.

Monday 20 February 2012

No Healthy State

The NHS employs "more than 1.7 million people". Hang on a minute, I'm going to fetch a calculator. The UK population in mid 2010 was 62.3 million, so that's... erm... 3.88 percent of the population. If that is true, roughly one in twenty-six people work for the NHS! (Their figures - see the link)

The NHS website goes on to say, "Only the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Wal-Mart supermarket chain and the Indian Railways directly employ more people."

What? That's insane! That is utter, dangling bollockey bollocks! And that's 3.88% of the total population. As a proportion of income-tax payers it works out closer to one in fourteen! And yet I don't know a single one of them. Which means that, statistically, somebody has to make up for my ignorance and only know people who work for the NHS. Wow, I bet that makes for some morbid dinner-party conversations.

Now I know some people are chronically sick and need almost 24-7 care, but they must surely be a teeny-tiny minority. And some others seem to be accident/injury/sickness prone, but they are the exception and some of them are just taking the piss.

But, presumably, the rest are more like me. I have had actual influenza once in my life. I broke a collarbone in 1979 and an ankle in 2008. I had quite severe tonsillitis in Brazil in 1995 and I get a sore throat or a sniffly cough about once a year (although I'd never dream of going to a doctor for it). Oh yes, and I put my back way out in 2004, so I took it easy for a few days then phased myself back into work. Actual medical attention in those 33 years - about a day's worth if you include waiting, which makes one day in 12045 (not including leap years) or 0.008% of my time.

Now, if I apply some judiciously clever, agenda-driven, left-wing-style mathematics and statistical analysis to these  I can prove something important, probably.

Here goes. If I need medical treatment for only 0.008% of my life and yet 3.88% of the of the entire population works in public healthcare that must surely mean that the average citizen consumes 3.88 ÷ 0.008 = 485 times more medical resources than me. Factoring in the provision for private healthcare we have statistical proof, if proof were needed, that I am around 500 times 'better' than the rest of you!


This is why I should be king. I believe I can rest my case.

Sunday 19 February 2012

A day with Mr Ed

Ed Balls has been calling for cutting taxation, funded by more borrowing. I nearly coughed up my cornflakes, but narrowly avoided apoplexy by writing this...

One day, Mr Ed was woken up early and looked out of the window to see what the commotion was. It was the English Defence League, holding one of their silly protests. "Hmmm" said Mr Ed, "They are quite nasty, aren't they? I know what we can do. We can let in lots more people they don't like, to outnumber them. That should do the trick" And so Mr Ed and all his friends opened up the borders so the EDL would have something to keep them busy and out of trouble.

Mr Ed ate so many eggs for breakfast that he began to feel too full and little bit sick. To cure his tummy ache he decided that what he needed was pancakes. Lots and lots of pancakes. But poor Mr Ed had run out of batter ingredients, so he had to go to the shops. Only there weren't any shops nearby; they had all closed because Mr Ed's friends' solution to local communities was to provide every poor family with a car, or taxi money, so they could get to the supermarkets instead. Mr Silly!

Suddenly, Mr Ed saw a small fire behind the kebab shop. He quickly rushed to the petrol station and bought a gallon of petrol to put it out. Oh dear, Mr Ed, that just made it worse, didn't it? Quick, run away and blame it on BP for selling petrol. Phew, that was a close escape, but I think you got away with it. Didn't you know that  petrol would only make it worse? We should call you Mr Topsy-Turvy!

While Mr Ed was wondering how to get his pancakes - because even with all the excitement he could only hold one thought at a time - along came Little Miss Ditzy in her big company car. "Gosh! How did you get such a big car, Miss Ditzy?" asked Mr Ed. "Don't call me 'Miss'," she said, "My name is Harriet and I got this car because I deserve it. I saw that all the companies that made all the money were run by horrid men and I decided that, to make them even better, I would replace all the men with women!" Mr Ed was too terrified to reply, so he just jumped in the car and off they went.


On the way to the supermarket, Mr Ed and Little Miss Ditzy passed rows of empty houses and boarded-up shops. They noticed that the only businesses that remained were betting shops, charity shops and 'exotic' fast-food vendors. This made them both sad and they decided they needed a plan to put Britain all back together again.

"This is because of those nasty Tories," declared Ditzy. "Yes it is!" agreed Mr Ed, "When we were in charge we borrowed lots and lots of money and spent it on lots and lots of presents and everybody was happy everywhere, all of the time!" He continued, "This government is cutting too far, too fast and it isn't working!"

And this is how Mr Ed and all his friends decided that all the trouble in the world could be solved, quite simply, by borrowing as much money as they possibly could and giving it all away. Yay! Good old Mr Ed!

Saturday 18 February 2012

Here Comes Rhymin', er...

Yesterday I invited Twitter followers (once again) to follow the excellent Police Inspector Blog, if only because of this astounding initiative. The Daily Mail, naturally, have picked up on the story today and - I leave you to draw your own conclusions - included a picture of Denise Milani herself. Anybody surprised, confused, or uncertain of my point, see me after class for a lesson in how-the-leftie-agenda-is-fucking-up-the-whole-of-the-civilised-world. Politically correct policing is a type of policing I really don't need - criminals leave their rights at the scene of the crime.


Inspector Gadget submitted a few poetic lines of his own. I invite you to follow his lead.

Me first:

The gender agenda for every offender,
Is surely destined to fail.
Cos the big-issue vendor who killed with a blender,
Is currently sitting in jail
But ‘diversity’ says we must leap to defend her
‘Cos numbers  of Brendas and Glendas and Zendas
Are over the quota and heaven forfend, her
 Supporters are starting to wail.

Your turn:

The formula

People get way too heated up about politics. There's far too much 'social' in that Socialism when what we need is a dose of common sense and an injection of 'capital' in that Capitalism. Somebody in government must surely have 'done the math' and worked out what I'm going to show you now, but for some reason they think you can't handle the truth.

The answer lies in simple numbers, presented here in spreadsheet form:



Figures made up for purposes of illustration, but probably not very far from reality

Now it must be true because it's in Excel. For any doubters out there I can easily turn it into a full-colour Power-point presentation, but even the most softened bleeding-heart nutjob out there must surely see the inevitable conclusion in those numbers. (For those hard-of-thinking, I've pointed it out.)

Nobody - not even the (Boo! Nasty!) Tory Party - has ever suggested kicking the sick out of their hospital beds or cutting back on essential front-line services. Nobody (not even the Tories) has ever suggested that there should not be a safety net for those who fall on hard times. Nobody (you got it) has ever actively promoted a divisive society. (No need to; humans will do that all by themselves anyway, whatever you do.)

But all sides have steadfastly refused to face the simple economic truth. If you have a factory making goods nobody wants to buy you shut it down. If you offer a service that nobody needs you have to do something else or go bust. And if you continue to pour money into loss-making ventures you will eventually be broke.

So, I'm going to join the dots and make the connection that no politician dare declare, yet every bloke at every bar in the land knows in his heart of hearts:

Referring to the last line of the table above:

The number of unemployable layabouts = the number of individuals surplus in every way to any properly-working form of society. And we know exactly who each and everyone of them is because they are either in prison or on the state payroll in the form of wilful benefit dependency. They are the rot at the heart of the problem (Yes, yes, the bankers, blah, blah... but bankers are actually not the problem you would really like them to be.) and unless the rot can be excised it will continue to grow.

Of course it's been tried. Their kids have been sent on safari, the parents have been sent on anger management and alcohol awareness courses. Their day-to-day crimes - theft, violence, drunken brawling, theft, smuggling, anti-social behaviour, fighting, theft... you get the picture, have been largely excused and an army of social workers has slowly become mad - proper socialist-crazy - trying to engage them in the business of becoming human. All to little avail and all at enormous expense the country can no longer afford.

When the car's beyond repair you have to get rid of the car or leave it to rust in the drive. We've been leaving it amid the weeds as a depressing reminder of our failure to tackle the problem. Maybe it's finally time to call in the scrap merchants?

Before the shrieking, hating voices of The Left wade in and accuse me of what they regard as an abhorrent principle, they might want to consider this Jonathan Freedland article in today's Guardian, about a bit of socialist history.

So, now you know the staring-you-in-the-face truth, Mr Politician, what are you actually prepared to do about it?

Friday 17 February 2012

Human Kobe

"Up you come. Time to get out of bed, now."

She grunts in protest, but helping hands gently lift her bulk to a sitting position, then swing her legs and place her feet on the floor.

"Now, come on, we're here to help you. Drink this."

She slurps noisily from the proffered bowl of flat beer as firm hands massage her shoulders and flanks. Beneath the pale, white skin, her layers of fat are gently kneaded into uniformity. Deeper still, her remaining musculature also benefits from the movement. She doesn't need muscle to get around - there are people for that - but a modicum of tone is still needed to allow her to perform her engagements.

To entice her out of bed, so her soiled straw can be removed and replaced, a tray of cigarettes and lager is laid out just beyond reach. She speaks, "Bring it here, you cow!"

The attendant helpers exchange meaningful glances and continue to massage her huge, quivering bulk. She has to do this on her own. Eventually, she lumbers to a standing position and shuffles to the tray to continue her breakfast. A small army of volunteers fusses round her, grooming, massaging and talking in soothing tones. She has to be handled carefully because, in spite of her docile mood now, she can erupt in fury if mishandled.

Slowly the stall changes around her. The straw bedding is changed and the floor swept clean. Lights are moved into place and a video camera set up. A number of photographers take up their places, crouched low, out of reach. A doctor is ushered in to examine her. He sees the heavy-lidded eyes, pupils wide as the calming drugs take effect and nods to the chief assistant, who gently places a hand on her shoulder.

The enormous beast looks up with a half smile, drool sliding from her quivering lips.

"Come on now, love. It's time for your interview."


To view the full story and vote, click HERE.

Thursday 16 February 2012

The Good Old Days

The Grauniad's stance on the news that Jobseekers are being 'encouraged' to work for their allowance is predictable. "Where will it all end?" their readers cringingly ask, not an un-wrung hand amongst them.

Yesterday, on Twitter I suggested that the word 'breadline' is bandied about as if there really was such a thing in Britain today. Well, today, I look to the future. Here, in an extract from an interview published in The Guardian 16th February 2087, you can clearly see the damage being wrought...

"Strikers threaten families like us."

Jean is a typical young mother, struggling to cope with ever-increasing demands on her income. She is a fashionably trim eighteen stone and always makes an effort to present herself well, but times are getting hard. Jean tells of a terrifying encounter in the car park at her local Asco superstore:

"So, there I was, puffing and panting, trying to get my shopping into the hover car and would anybody help me? No. And I'll tell you why - the lazy, skinny little bastards that Asco employ are only interested in one thing - prising as much of my money off me as possible. I mean, it's not like I'm wealthy is it? They just watched me struggling and I think I saw one of them laughing... or it might have been a cough - so many of them are diseased aren't they? They should just be grateful they have jobs, I mean the state just can't afford to support them; they have to pay their way, innit?

I do my bit. I try, anyway. I always buy the best cuts and I don't skimp on the trimmings... and I don't bother with that scrimping and saving that some whinge about. I'm a member of a health spa - fat lot of good that does me, as I never go, but it does help to move money round the economy doesn't it? Every little helps. I even take one of my holidays in England these days, just to help, you know? We do go abroad, yes, 'cos you have to get away from the hell of it all, don'tcha? We tried Scotland once, though. Big mistake. 'Orrible. All them beggars and slums and stuff.

Anyway, what was that? The gym thing? Oh yeah, the government decided that with my condition it would help me lead a better life, but it wouldn't be no good, really.  I have a low metabolism. My homoeopath told me and she don't come cheap, so she must be right, right? And that's just one more expense, I mean, what with the aromatherapy and the acupuncture as well, it all adds up. I'm no stranger to cutting back, I can tell you - I had to cancel my daily personalised horoscope subscription. I cried that day; just like it said.

I like, blame Mrs Thatcher. My great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather told me. Well, it was all her fault, really, the breakdown in society. I mean, it stands to sense doesn't it? Before she come along, everyone was happy doing their bit for The Unions, gawd bless them. (Jean crosses herself) But she started that war, you know, with the young people - the minors - and then all hell broke loose. It was never the same afterwards and it wa'n't worth it anymore.

I mean, back then,you worked for the unions and they promised to pay you what you were worth, whether you were worth it or not. A fair deal. They even made the government employ twice as many people as they needed sometimes, but she ruined all that. And look where it's come to! It's come to this! (By this, Jean means the bustling activity of the supermarket.)

I mean I can hardly bear to look at them, they're like, like... insects! I can hardly say their name - those 'workers' - ungrateful bastards. They make my flesh crawl. Last time we needed to put up taxes to keep the country fed they threatened to go out on strike. Strike! It's always "me, me, me" with them. They only threatened, mind, because they know the police are allowed to shoot on sight at civil disorders. Can you believe the cheek of it? If I had to work, I'm sure I wouldn't begrudge 80% of my wages to help us poor people, struggling to get by on benefits."

Our interview closes with a last word from the beleaguered Jean:

"I have to get off. I have an aerobics class I'm not going to go to."

------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes I'm accused of being out of touch with the thoughts of upright, decent, socialist members of society. It's good to know that, on Twitter, I can find as many right-thinking friends as I like! Here's what one Tweeter posted this morning - follow her and be saved!

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Half term

It's half term and time to take stock while Westminster is deserted. 

The Daily Mail today reports on children being unprepared for school, but the parallels with Westminster are striking. This shocking report reveals all: 

"They wear nappies, drink and don't know how to open a book. One whip’s terrifying insight into 50-year-olds failed by their parents" 

England is failing its members of parliament ‘on a grand scale’ when it comes to achieving basic levels of social and emotional development. Experts have warned that general ineptitude is leaving two in every five MPs unable to perform simple life skills. 

Here, one whip describes a day in the life of the House of Commons. What she says will shock you…

“Glancing at the clock, I realise it’s time for me to change Nicky’s nappy. Past experience tells me he will make a fuss, so I doubt it will be a smooth operation. Of course, most babies dislike having their nappies changed, but that’s the problem: Nicky isn’t a baby, he is forty-five years old. Nicky isn’t the only child in the house who still wears nappies and, of course, accidents do happen, but almost every day I have to clear up after MPs who have soiled themselves. 

Parents seem to believe that giving their MPs fundamental life skills isn’t their responsibility; they think that it’s the job of Parliament. I have been a whip for eight years, and over the past few years I’ve witnessed a shocking decline in MP’s basic skills. Their grasp of simple economics is well below what I would expect of a five-year old and few of them come to the house trained in basic decency. At times it is all one can do to be heard above the shouting. Discipline is a real problem because nobody has ever told them, ‘No’. 

When MPs have absolutely no concept of numbers, it’s simply impossible to agree on a National Curriculum, which sets out very basic attainment targets — for example, being able to count from one to ten. Many of the ones I handle have trouble grasping the most basic of concepts. When I mentioned that the economy should be growing, several MPs looked puzzled and asked me what the word ‘growing’ meant. And they have such short concentration spans that after the first hesitant stroke of crayon on paper, they are off, running up and down the chamber." 

MPs playing at dressing up, just before their nap

"As for bedtime, many of the members simply don’t have one. Some of them arrive at Westminster so exhausted from playing on their computers until the early hours of the morning that I regularly have to put them down for a nap in the afternoon. 

It is very difficult to work with MPs when their parents seem to work against you. Whips who try to instil boundaries and a sense of right and wrong often end up castigated— and, sadly, the senior management can’t always be relied upon to stand up for us. 

There was one boy, Eddie, in my division, who was quite a handful and was constantly spitting at other children. He seemed to especially dislike another little boy, David, calling him horrible names and hitting him. Taking Eddie’s mum, Harriet, aside one afternoon when she came to pick him up, I asked if we could have a quiet word. ‘Would you mind backing me up on what I’ve told Eddie, that he can’t spit at other MPs?’ I asked her, smiling. 

Her response left me flabbergasted. ‘You’re picking on my boy. How dare you tell me how to bring him up!’ she fumed. She then made a formal complaint against me to the speaker, and to my amazement, he demanded an official enquiry. 

I love my job, and I love seeing MPs grow, learn and flourish. What is so distressing is witnessing the way so many have simply abdicated responsibility over the past decade. Some members seem to think that their job is to give their constituents whatever they want. Tragically, many of the members in the Commons have experienced a horribly stunted childhood where they have never wanted for anything. They are painfully aware of adult concepts like binge-drinking, insider trading and deviant sex, yet can’t name a single proper job. 

I shudder to think what the future holds for us.”

(It's frightening how few changes I had to make to the original article!)

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Spanish Fly?

It's always nice to wake up to good news. So, while Greece is making a Drachma out of a crisis it was heartening to read this story about a Spanish village, albeit desperately, reinstating the Peseta. We could learn a thing or two there - get out your old white fivers and 'thrupenny bits' (That's not rhyming slang, ladies!). Bring back £sd - beatify the bob, salute the sixpence and flaunt the florin. And far better, confuse the bejasus out of Johnny Foreigner by reverting to a dual number base currency.

But today, on Valentine's day, spare a thought for bewildered lovers Ed & Ed Miliballs as they, equally desperately, try to disparage the coalition's mission to pay down our deficit and react to a report which essentially says we need to keep on track, by insisting we go into reverse. Poor loves, they're missing their pocket money which they used to spend on the multicultural, diverse yet inclusive sweets, otherwise known as electoral bribes. That their opposition is restricted to prescribing more of the same is telling; Labour would rather adopt a treasonous policy of bankrupting the country than admit they were ever wrong.

But, what am I thinking? D'oh! The Spanish solution would never work, would it? After all those years of culti-multural successes dumbing-down we'd have no chance with our proper old currency. The kids could hardly be expected to handle fractions - half-crowns, farthings - when they've never seen one. And as for counting up to twelve... (Oh, don't you miss proper money?) I would give three guineas, twelve shillings and sixpence ha'penny to see them trying.



So, what to do? Short of turning the clocks back to Groats, Reales, Escudos and pieces of eight and taking to the high seas, I guess we must muddle along with what we've got. So, in view of peace and harmony I wrote a valentine's poem:

Roses are red
Violets are blue-ish
Ed Balls is brilliant
And the Pope is still Jewish.

Monday 13 February 2012

Once upon a time...

Today's top escapist story amid all the Greeking and Witneying and football racism-ing, is this uplifting report about scary fairy stories in the Daily Mail. It seems today's children are too lily-livered for the robust shut-up-and-go-to-sleep tales of yesteryear, Wimps!

So here's a lovely traditional fairy tale:

Once upon a time there was a poor little straw-haired beggar girl whose bestest friend was a fairy. They played happily all day in the magic grove where the pixies came to sell their dreams and they were as gay as gay can be.

The old woman who lived in a shoe had so many children she didn’t know what to do, although she had found the time to have them colour-coded. But it was alright because the pixies cared for each and every one of them.

The pixies encouraged all the children to play together and let them eat cake. This was no ordinary cake; it was a magic cake because you could eat and eat and eat and at teatime there would still be plenty of cake to go around! The children ate and ate and grew and grew and the old woman was moved into a bigger shoe in a nicer part of the magic grove. What lovely pixies they are, the children cried!

And the children played and the children laughed because all the while, outside the magic grove, they knew that bad people were being punished for not believing in magic pixies.

The bad people had a kind of game called ‘work’. Rumpelstiltskin told riddles and took bets and Rapunzel had to sit in a high-rise sweat shop and grow hair. Then there were the three little pigs, who spent their life building houses only for Mr Wolf to huff and puff and blow them all down again. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker; all of them lived a life beyond the pale, spending their hard lives making things that other people consumed, meaning they had to keep on working to make more things. It sounded horrid!

The children knew about the unhappy people outside because the old woman told tales of when everybody was like that, before the pixies came along and sowed their magic beans in the grove. The magic beans grew qualifications from thin air, which meant that the children would never work again.

One day, despite all the grave warnings, overcome by curiosity and bored of playing all the time, the little golden-locked beggar girl wandered outside the magic grove and found herself in the forest. Soon it started to get dark. The bushes scratched at her legs and the trees tried to snag her hair and she was afraid of the noises in the night, so she pulled up her red riding hood against the cold and hurried on to find shelter.

Little red Goldilocks eventually found a cosy wee cottage with a light on and a fire in the grate. There was nobody home so she slipped inside, looking for food. There were three bowls of porridge on the table; a little one, a big one and a middle-sized one. She scoffed the lot and went looking for a bed. First she tried the little one, but it broke! Then she tried the middle-sized one, but it was too small. Only the biggest one was big enough for her cake-fattened arse.

In the cold hard light of day she was confronted by three bare landlords demanding money for bed and board. When she told them how the magic pixies took care of all that they laughed and set her to work in the kitchen. “But I have qualifications!” she protested. The cook thought for a moment, then gently took away the knife she’d given Goldilocks and replaced it with a broom…


Goldilocks woke up screaming. Outside, the chubby children played around the big taxpayer-funded shoe and ate more cake and the sunshine streamed in through a lace-hole. “No more bedtime stories for me,” thought Goldilocks and waddled out into the sunshine, gay as you like, to live happily ever after

Saturday 11 February 2012

Austerity of Imagination

In the nineteen-forties and fifties, my maternal grandmother spent most of her week cooking, washing and cleaning for eleven kids and an ungrateful husband in a house whose only source of heat was a coal fire with a back boiler. The 'washing machine' was gran, a copper and a mangle. Around the corner, in the nineteen sixties, on the same council estate, my mother used a top-loading, electric washing machine, filled and emptied by hand.

There were two cars in the street, we dreamed of having a telephone and a refrigerator and it never occurred to any of us that Aristotle Onassis didn't deserve his yacht.

'The rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer' is a fallacy. What happens is everybody gets richer, some get proportionately more rich and the majority get ideas above their station. Due to decades of creeping socialism we even have a class of people in this country who do sweet fuck-all yet complain at the prospect of what is being touted as 'austerity'.

I was intending to write about how I'd set about curing poverty, but when I looked at the patient I realised the diagnosis was wrong. There is no such thing as poverty in the UK. With the exception of a few perverse cases of hardship being wrought by person on person or person on self, either directly or by neglect, nobody actually starves to death, or is worked into the grave.

In fact, life in the UK is pretty bloody rosy all round. My parents were brought up during war and post-war rationing. Actual rationing of practically everything. My gran might think she'd gone to heaven. What would she make of near- universal car ownership, mobile phones and the Internet? How would she imagine people would occupy all their free time? By bitching and moaning, she'd have to conclude, because that seems to be all I ever hear.

Oh my, austerity is upon us. Austerity will bring us to our knees. The bodies will pile up in the streets because of all this austerity. Everywhere you look, all you see is austerity. Woe is us, whinge, cringe, wring hands... And yet, as soon as Fabio Tagliatelle quits as England manager all attention turns to seeking out a replacement.

Austerity my arse! That is NOT the preoccupation of a nation on its knees. If you think having fewer self-esteem therapists on the NHS is austere, you need a good kick up the backside. If you think not being able to afford Sky+ is austere you need a slap. And if you think not being able to go on holiday this year is austere you need a few weeks down the salt mines.

And this is not due to 'nasty' Tory policies, in fact it is Socialism and its doctrine of equalising ever-downwards that has robbed you of personal perspective, denied you the joy of self-determination and stripped you of your independence. Open your privileged, "don't-know you're-born" eyes and have a look at what happens in countries whose governments really don't care. Take a peek at Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and all the others on the usual list, which never changes and then tell me we're living in austerity.

Friday 10 February 2012

Batsby's NHS Reform Bill

Let's sort out the health service once and for all.

It's got to be pretty easy, when you think of it. If you need stitches, or bones gluing back together, or bits taken out, or put back in, or wheels attached, or drugs you can't be trusted to buy and administer yourself, etc, then the NHS will sort that out for you, free of charge, gratis and all that. In, out, bish-bosh, fixed up and back to work like a good 'un.


While in hospital, you'll do as you're told, take the drugs, phys the physio and be nice to the nurses. If you come in pissed-up and fighting, matron will be armed and have carte blanche to take you out. It's okay, they have all the facilities for properly disposing of human waste.

Should you graze your knee, get your head stuck in a saucepan (c.f. The Beano) or have a bit of a headache you can go down the chemist/B&Q and sort yourself out. And if you're feeling a bit 'psychological' that's tough, but normal and you can just pull your socks up and get on with it. Like in the old days.

I think that's everything, isn't it? I don't see what all the fuss was about. Reform Bill? Give me a nifty-fifty (million) and we'll call it quits. Now, I must dash - I have an economy and some foreign affairs to deal with this afternoon.

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Down with the Kids

Kids are rubbish! I mean, look at this selection of so-called 'art'. For all the free-form abstraction it's hardly Kandinsky, is it?


If you look closely, the picture at bottom-right reads "Tosh". Quite. Despite the liberal use of neo-non-figurative image-quizzing and a flowing synthesis of geometry-negative interspace chromatics, it's still pretty crap, isn't it? 

Now, I'm not so naive to not realise that a goodly number of drooling parents will be cooing over these very images with expressions of uncontrolled delight. That's because, as parents, they have lost all reason and all perspective - a perspective they will suddenly be shocked back into when those self-same art prodigies turn into spitting, screaming hormonal teenagers. 

Too late, mate; you told them they were artistic! Would you have encouraged them to go into construction if their early DIY efforts were anything like these below? No. Of course not. Because then you would have been responsible for Nick Knowles and shame on you for that.



So why do so many parents engage in brainwashing and hot-housing at a time when kids are, let's be frank about this, pretty bloody useless at just about everything? Let 'em be. And let 'em be kids. This is the argument of an article by by Judith Woods in today's Telegraph, refuting the efficacy of ultra-early years education. I tend to agree.

Play until five. Then learn 'em to read, write, count, and - crucially - learn, from ages 5 to 7. After that work them like fuck until 11. Then examine them, select and stream and specialise and bingo. The ones good at art will do that and the ones good at proper stuff will get jobs and pay for them.

If you try too hard you'll only end up with socially and politically aware little monsters, too scared of making important choices and incapable of holding down a real job, who will disappoint you in more ways than you can imagine. I expect this is exactly where Mr & Mrs Miliband went wrong.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Snow Joke

At the weekend we had a bit of snow. By halfway through Monday it was gone, but still many schools felt the need to close. Heaven forfend we subject the 'ickle' children to the cold reality of winter.

Daniel Radcliffe turned his back on the LibDems and 'defected' to Labour. Naturally, the loss of this intellectual political giant will have grave consequences for fence-sitting voters everywhere. But wait, is this the same young scallywag who decided he was an alcoholic at the age of eleven or something? (I can't be bothered to do the research, but I read something about it somewhere and that's good enough.)

There's outrage in the news about another drunken eleven-year-old being encouraged by his mother, but this comes as  no surprise; with luck and encouragement he'll be capable of becoming a fully-functioning proper alcoholic and will be able to get appropriate disability benefits for life. She's doing him a favour.

In yet another child-related report, growing numbers of five-year-olds are turning up at school in nappies and needing help in basic tasks they should have already mastered.

And George Monbiot in the Guardian is starting to get a mixture of flak and favour for his gleefully childish response to a flawed survey that tells him what he wants hear. Again. (See Saturday's blog.)

From actual children to immature adults, what in hell's name is wrong with the focus of this bloody country? Does nobody realise that children are mere chattels? Moreover, they are mouldable, controllable chattels and we are missing a trick here. Ask not what you can do for your children - ask what your children should be doing for us all.

Here we are, wondering how to save the planet, while simultaneously wasting resources in catering to the urges of ungrateful offspring, who in turn squeeze out more demanding sprogs. We should be utilising this source of natural energy for the good of mankind. Children have been taking the piss for decades and it's high time this child-centric society was turned round. What else are baby and child harnesses made for?

A dozen crawling brats could easily power a domestic-scale treadmill generator. A score of pre-teens could be trained to pull carriages for public transport. With a bit of coordination and judicious use of riding crops I'm pretty sure the London Underground could be powered entirely  by child sweat. And all forms of heavy labour could easily be performed by channelling the excess energy expended in teen angst - suitably 'incentivised' of course.
Pull you little fuckers, pull!

So, to put it all this into perspective:
As a child you are treated as a Socialist in that your collective labour will be harvested for the good of society as a whole. As an adult (over thirty) you'll get to exercise a vote, be in charge (sort of) for a while and adopt the natural Conservatism that you've justly earned and when you retire you can just do whatever the fuck you want. Everybody's happy, the kids are back under the yoke and world order is restored.

Job done. Now, make me king. J

Monday 6 February 2012

The F Word

I’ll come right out and say it, so those on the left, who will simply not agree, need not bother their empty heads with reading any further. Ready? Here goes. Let’s reintroduce failure in schools.

There. Have the lefties, er, left the room? Good. Bring back the use of ‘Fail’.

Now I know what you’re thinking; you're thinking, woah there Batsby m’boy, surely schools are positively awash with failure? Well, you’re quite correct, but they haven’t called it that in a long time. The edu-nazis, their heightened, enlightened, delicate sensitivities shrivelling at the very thought, prefer to talk about ‘deferred achievement’ and so on. They may as well chuck in a few facilitations, engenderings, empowerments and ‘going forwards’ to highlight that such language is mere waffle. Because it means precisely nothing and has no useful impact on those it is designed to deceive.

I caught the last half of the BBC’s Sunday morning discussion The Big Questions yesterday and in a debate about grammar schools (Start viewing at 41:30) the loony left were out and swinging in the form of the Socialist Educational Association, an organisation which describes itself as, Labour's only educational affiliate. Oh that explains so much. (Including why they didn't employ a capitalist lacky to design a half-decent website.)

While the pro-grammar argument was intelligently presented and the message delivered in calm, measured, authoritative tones, Sheila Doré’s response was to regurgitate the dogma of her clan, not with any sort of reasoned counter-argument, just the usual clarion call to class war. Bore. In the view of the SEA, comprehensive schools are the only solution to the country’s educational needs, despite years of hard evidence that the comprehensive system just doesn’t work. Any arguments offered by the other side were utterly ignored and the doctrines chanted once again… just a bit louder.

It’s leftist lunacy at its worst and has many of the undesirable traits of religion. (Don’t get me started) A blind adherence to the belief that we are all equal is palpable nonsense. This is the thinking that prevents justice being dealt out swiftly to transgressors and generates armies of cringing pygmies crafting away to devise ever more inventive types of deprivation in order to redistribute the earnings of a diminishing working class to an ever-increasing horde of ‘deferred achievers’.

This is the politics of envy writ large and if the SEA has its way, imprinted indelibly on the impressionable minds of your children for ever more. The left simply cannot bear the thought that there is anything worthy in the principle of greater reward for greater effort or ability, preferring instead the notion of some nebulous entitlement to equality of outcome, dressed up as equality of opportunity.

That can’t work – only so much to go around – so, in the perverse logic of the left, if I can’t have a yacht, neither shall you. If I can’t win a medal, you don’t deserve one either. And if I can’t read or write I don’t see why anybody should even desire such a thing. They are doing so well with that last one that some of their supporters are not even aware of, let alone able to access, the means of their own salvation.

If you don’t tell people they've failed, how in hell can you then tell them to buck their ideas up? And as bucking up your ideas is one of the foundation stones of my great social plan, where does that leave my forthcoming reign as king?


How times have changed. Back in the day, even the Marxists at the BBC would wield the F-word with barely a flinch. See, the poor kid on the test card got an ‘F’ and I reckon if they'd just let her finish she might have even  won the game!

Sunday 5 February 2012

Amburgers Syndrome

The only reason I'm putting this up here is so I don't lose it.

And because it's brilliant.

The original is on YouTube.(link)


If you like this you should follow @davidtristram on Twitter

Saturday 4 February 2012

Right On!

A lot of truth here in a Daily Mail article – “Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views”. While both assertions are demonstrable, there is no real causal link. But wait, you’re thinking, this can’t be the Batsby that we’ve come to know and loathe on Blogger, surely? Shouldn’t he be fighting his [Boo, nasty Tory] side? Nope. There’s nowt to disagree with. In fact the study positively supports my thesis that it is human nature to be right-wing.

The majority of the world population is of relatively low intelligence on any absolute scale. That is, the mean is a long way short of the median. This is as true for the UK as it is for the planet and here in the UK, given that a large number of ordinary working people vote Labour, it is a reasonable assumption – borne out by plenty of evidence – that less intelligent people will vote against their own interests. As we shall see…

The interests of working people are broadly this: that they get to keep most of their income, that they contribute what is necessary to run programmes in the national interest – basic healthcare, education, infrastructure services, police and armed forces – and that they should not have to pay for the obsessive, ideologically driven demands and excesses of minority interest groups. In other words, most ordinary working people should naturally hold right-of-centre views and vote against Labour. The fact that many of them vote FOR oppressive state intervention in their every waking moment is proof-positive that many natural right-wingers are inherently quite stupid.

Still at the arse end of the intelligence spectrum, those who are largely unemployable are at least smart enough to know on which side their bread is buttered. Whilst still holding many of the same normal human views as their working peers they are obviously that bit ‘more cleverer’ as they vote for the side which keeps their backsides firmly glued to the sofa. Summary; the vote for unworkable socialism comprises a stupid element (the right-wing workers) and the undeniably more intelligent tactical vote from the lazy-arsed left.

As for the racist charge I think you’ll find that left or right, poorer people do tend to be racist because it’s a survival response, entirely natural and seen in every culture throughout the globe, where competition for resources rewards tribalistic cooperation.

But nonetheless we are talking about the vast majority of the population, remember, those who are below median intelligence. (Which, incidentally, is why one-man, one-vote democracy is so inherently flawed)

At the top end of the scale there are also two types of ‘intelligent’. Those on the right tend to make money, power the economy, employ people and generally get things moving. They usually have to spend many years repeatedly doing the same things correctly to become successful and frequently have to fight their corner to survive and thrive.

Those on the left tend to think more, make pretty things and spend a lot of time being highly visible; on film, in print, on TV, in galleries, on stage…. Traditionally, art and ‘higher’ culture has been supported by patronage or popularity and its practitioners opportunistically thrive on fashion and fad. While some have long-lived careers due to undeniable talent, many more make their living by dint of a remarkably small body of work of often intangible, often short-term value. Denying a banker his windfall bonus, many will happily fund their own lifestyle from the happy accident of a best-seller or a three-movie film career. Or an inheritance.

The right do not need the left, but tolerate the existence of them insofar as they make life more entertaining and less brutal. The left, however, do need the right, as without enterprise nobody gets to eat lunch. In other words, rich or poor, the right exhibits the traits of a species bent on maintaining the daily struggle to survive and occasionally prosper, while the left exhibits many of the characteristics of a parasite.

So, what is more intelligent? To work hard, keep your nose clean and make hard choices, or to indulge yourself and live off the endeavours of others?


Who occupies the fucking moral high ground now?

Friday 3 February 2012

Hair today...

This is brilliant! I don't give a flying fuck how much you hate me for this but the news that some daft bint has been poisoned by her hair extensions has made my day.



Despite my regular protestations it seems people continue to wilfully aspire to be monumentally stupid. If their idiotic pursuit of bling-before-brains results in their death it only reinforces the plain, simple, honest truth that I was right in the first place. If you are too simple to do anything than follow the herd then the only use you are to me is cannon fodder.

It makes the job of selection for elimination so easy. Tattoos, nails, hair. It's all the evidence I need to secure a conviction; a deeply held conviction that you are an utter waste of oxygen.

Thursday 2 February 2012

GCS-Eeech!

A lovely, heart-warming story of a return to our senses in this Guardian report into Non-Quals. There are currently, it informs us, a barely believable 3175 qualification titles that are nominally equivalent to a GCSE*. That they are to scrap over 3000 of them says much about their actual worth.

But wait, what... wait... I mean...wha... (Deep breath) Three. Fucking. THOUSAND? When I was at school we had maths, physics, chemistry, history, biology, art, English language, English literature, Latin, technical drawing, a few modern languages and a handful of vocationals such as woodwork, metalwork and cookery. From where, in the name of arse, did they even dream up the125 that will remain, let alone the other three-fucking-THOUSAND?

A search reveals such edifying subjects as fish-fiddling, nail-painting, hoarse whispering and tape measuring. I'm sure there's a proper list somewhere but I don't have the stomach or the lungs for it. Spewing up while simultaneously shaking fists, rending garments and raging to the heavens is far too much effort for midweek.

But obviously, an enormous percentage of kids are and will remain far too stupid and/or lazy to actually merit a real GCSE (For overseas readers, the GCSE is a vastly dumbed-down replacement for the 'elitist' [Ordinary] 'O' Levels of yesteryear, that you had to study in order to pass.) So, I guess we should have at least a handful of thicko subjects in order that they can feign achievement. We may as well make them as meaningful as we can.

Some suggestions for modern vocational O Levels:

  • Getting your fat arse out of bed in the morning
  • Keeping your gob shut until you start paying taxes
  • Knowing which side your bread is buttered
  • Holding down a shit job for years while studying hard to improve yourself
  • Working out where babies come from and how to stop it, allied with:
  • You pop 'em out - you pay for 'em
  • Paying your own way
  • Stealth Wanking - which will come in handy for time spent in prison
  • Finding somebody who gives a shit

Trust me when I tell you - yet again - that the average ability in maths and English in this country is appalling - about the level of an eleven year old at best.

With this in mind I present the latest, proven-to-work, guaranteed-results technology for primary school, to be introduced at the same time as I consign to the skip all unnecessary teaching technology toys:

The iSlate


(*GCSE = Gratuitously Counterproductive Shameful Excresence)