Wibble

Bark Dimshitz

I've never really known anyone with a really silly name; the reason I say this is because the wife went to school with a kid called Russell Sprout; my old gang used to know someone called Genghis Bucket, there was a kid I met recently called Beavis and there is a Chilean artist called Pongle Lizchitz. A French footballer called Ormonde Crotsville and a with the exception of the foreign bizarre names anyone calling their kid by a name that is going to come back and haunt them should be fucking prosecuted by Social Services.


Purgatory

I mentioned recently that I believed that we're actually all dead and this is just one of the hells we're going to suffer for eternity; either that or we'll just relive this one over and over again and never know. Well, I believe this because of the general feeling of 'even-if-something-is-good-it-will-eventually-become-really-bad-and-piss-me-off-and-make-me-think-that-my-life-is-shit-and-we're-all-going-to-die' I have running through my body like a low level electric shock. That sense of ennui you get from life in general.


Bums

I toyed with the idea of creating a new bogus Facebook account the other day, as an old acquaintance of mine once said, 'you can't have too many sock puppets'. I went through the usual bollocks of setting up a Yahoo account and came up with a weird name (see above) that I believed would be completely unique. I invented an email account (or I nearly did) for a person called Mitsy Banu. Yahoo said mitsybanu@yahoo.co.uk is taken; but mitsybanu175@yahoo.co.uk is available or banumitsy1962 is available. I tried mitsybanu1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and so on and so forth and every single one of them was taken or unavailable. How does that work then? You do a search for Mitsy Banu on Google and the closest you get is Misty or Banu Banu, but Yahoo already have 174 Mitsy Banus all with email accounts.


Interstellar Artois

I have finally spent a large amount of time in the garden and provided we don't get too much rain down this week, I think it might be repairing itself nicely. There are even a couple of crocuses up and some things are beginning to show signs of springing into life; but it still just looks more like a tundra out there than Britain in the 'spring'.


Bad Films

Don't be tempted into thinking that Film4 is a mark of approval. Three films have been watched in the last week that have all come from the once hallmark of quality that Film4 once was and a little under 6 hours of my life that I will not be able to spend doing something stimulating and enjoyable. Do not be tempted by Berberian Sound Studio because it isn't anything it says on the tin; don't believe for a second there might be an interesting story in Hyde Park on Hudson because there isn't and anyone who said that Sightseers was a) about serial killers is lying - it is barely and then only by accident; and b) good - it's odd and strangely watchable, but 'good'? Jury's out on that.


Spoilers

In the end they decided not to bother following the source material which begs the question why did they use the source material in the first place, why didn't they just come up with their own idea based on a similar thing?


Cocky Swagger

Remember Max Headroom? Yeah, so do I.


Effercio et Ineptias

• We now have an olive tree. It was symbolic. 
• I was accused of being paranoid last week and then the person who accused me did nothing at all to assuage the paranoia that he successfully only managed to introduce and then enhance.
• One can't help thinking that Christians are fucking evil and Bedford is the kind of place that could really do with nuking. 
• I'd still like to find a use for bindweed.
• God is an Astronaut has been my 'new jam' all week.
• I still believe Kubrick ruined The Shining.
• 27 applications and counting.
• One million, three hundred and forty one thousand, nine hundred and fifty.
• I have written and scheduled a blog to be published on April 19, 2062 - that would be my 100th birthday.

Very Dutty

I know it's all going to end soon, but after two cold but strangely warm days, I got out of bed this morning to flurries of snow (I almost wrote slurries of flow), overcast skies and a wind chill back in the minuses. I've always been a sunshine kind of person  and I'm wondering if this prolonged shit weather coupled with my unemployment has led me down the depression path. The reason I say this is because I was looking at one of those things people post on Facebook about depression and I appear to tick most of the boxes at the moment (but saying that, I tick half of the boxes when I think I'm happy, so who knows?).

So, when life feels like a big bucket of stinky shit, the best thing to do is go to Sainsbury's. I figured if it really annoyed me it would take my mind off how bloody despairing I'm feeling at the moment.

For those with little or no time to read this here is an abridged version: drive, horror, police, Sainsbury's, history repeating itself, having the trolley stolen. See you next time.

Right, here's what happened in some detail:

I got in the car. We both hate the Zafira. Not only is it common it's also about as distinct as someone wearing Burberry on King's Heath (substitute this place with any place where you live that has the same) and it's totally practical, serves its purpose, but it's just so bloody ubiquitous and some of the people who own them can't drive for toffee. Anyhow, I'm driving to Duston with a black Zafira stuck up my arse, so I deliberately dropped my speed to 27mph. I actually think he got close enough to lick my number plate. So I slowed down to 25mph and he overtook me on a road that wasn't wide enough for two cars let alone an overtaking manoeuvre. My first thought was he was a gormless twat, then I thought that maybe his wife was being rushed to hospital or one of his kids was dying - so I swerved out to cut him up.... no, I didn't do that because he realised he couldn't overtake me so slipped back behind me to resume his relationship with my exhaust pipe.

The next time I looked in my rear view mirror I had a black Mercedes behind me, so it was either some kind of Transformer or he'd stopped as there was no road to turn into on that stretch. From that point until I got to Mill Lane it was uneventful, which considering it's about 1 mile is good. Then I saw something that deeply troubled me. It troubled me so much I pulled over and called the police. Oddly enough, when I finally spoke to someone in Control, I was the fourth person who had called in the last 5 minutes. Two lads and their two dogs were in a field of horses - next to the aforementioned King's Heath - they were wearing Burberry and their dogs were from Keale or maybe Cannock. Let's put it this way, I don't think the horses were terribly thrilled by the visit and when I returned that way an hour later, there was much activity in the field and it looked like the police had done their job. It should make me happy, but the vile little cunts should never have been using dogs to torture horses, they should have been drowned at birth to prevent the Daily fucking Mail from tarring every poor or disenfranchised person with the same brush because these two little pricks have as much brain as a sea urchin, but less ability to stick to anything.

Obviously, I got to Sainsbury's in such a good mood that I was already playing out confrontational scenarios in my head. But, I'd come here on a Thursday, so there was less chance of the place being over run by pensioners with nothing better to do than treat a few hours at the supermarket like we would have treated a trip to the seaside when we were kids. Ha! I'm having a larf; I must be. Pensioners come out every day, they have nothing better to do than clutter up the world when all they should be doing is sitting at home complaining about the fucking weather!!!

Anyhow, the shopping was pretty uneventful as well. I realised pretty quickly that there were almost as many pensioners as usual so I got my head down and got on with it. Now, as regular readers and friends of mine can attest, one of my bugbears is people who start putting their shopping on the conveyor belt before you've finished putting yours on. Last week's woman was horrendous, and as there were barely any queues anywhere, I figured I would not get a repeat of previous trips. Seriously, I have to stop being optimistic, I only get let down repeatedly... I'm not even a third of the way through my transfer of goods from trolley to belt when a pound of minced beef appeared in front of me followed by a lot of other things I didn't pick up. I turned and there was two old people; so old you might have believed them to be pillars of salt with animatronic features. Using my left forearm, I swept all of her shopping back up the conveyor belt and do you know what she did? She stood there and continued to put stuff on. Before I could say anything, the nice woman on the till said, "Excuse me love, could you stop putting your shopping on please, there is someone in front of you!" But she carried on and the old boy who was with her had started to drift away from her and took up residence about two feet from my right shoulder. I ignored him and  walked up to the old biddy and pointed out what she was doing, nicely.

"Oh," she says, "I thought you'd stopped." Now, in the mood I was in, I kind of felt like screaming at her that she was the THIRD person who THOUGHT I had finished unpacking in the last 3 weeks and yet all she had to do was OPEN HER FUCKING EYES AND SHE WOULD HAVE SEEN A HALF FULL TROLLEY!!! But I didn't, I smiled and heard myself say, "It's easily done."

I'm packing my shopping. The lady on the till is chatting away. The old man is still standing about 8 feet from his wife and about 18 inches from me. I can smell him. It gets to payment time and I think the lady on the till realised that this old fella's close proximity to me was slightly unsettling. No shit! It was as weird as fuck, that's what it was. All I needed was for him to start making noises and I may well have been on the news tonight and on the cover of the Mail tomorrow. I get my card out to pay totally aware he's behind me when the lady says to him, "Excuse me sir, would you like to move away while the gentleman puts in his PIN number?" I think he had something wrong with him because he just stood there slack jawed looking at us both, which prompted me to suggest to the lady on the till that the two of them had that strung out heroin addict look. She was still giggling about that when I was walking out.

Then possibly the most bizarre thing of the morning happened. We have a shopping trolley; you know the kind that old woman have, quite ironically I think you'll agree. This hooks onto the back of a supermarket trolley and we use it instead of using plastic bags; we're greener than youse, see. I'm struggling to put this in the back of the Zafira, while three shopping bags full of goods sit in the supermarket trolley. This woman, about 60, walks from round the corner and just starts to wheel my trolley away. I was slightly incredulous for a split second before the double take came in and I said, "OY! What are you doing?" The woman didn't stop and I ran after her. "Excuse me!" I almost shouted and she turned and looked at me. "My shopping?" I said pointing at the three BRIGHT ORANGE bags in the trolley. Her reaction was worth being born; she looked at my shopping, looked at the trolley and pushed the trolley away from her in the way someone would if you put a turd in their hand or suggested they French kiss their sister. It wasn't so much a push as a recoil; like my trolley was made from radioactive shit. She looked at me, didn't apologise and walked towards Sainsbury's and the trolley park. I stood there looking at her. She obviously thought it was empty and abandoned, at least I hope that's what she thought, otherwise she was on some kind of scam; if it was an accident I just don't understand why she didn't say sorry or something.

On the journey home I saw at least three more examples of the distinct possibility that people bribe Test Examiners, because I don't know how they got driving licenses and it started to snow again.

I am now procrastinating again. I have two projects on the go. 6 job applications to fill in. 4 days of Jobs Today pages to go through and I have zero motivation. I have other things I need to do; the garden is only about an eighth finished to how I want it; I need to go and buy some seed potatoes but... My get up and go has fucked off to somewhere warm and left me with my miserable self.

Yeah, I'm probably a wee bit depressed. We need some prolonged sunshine. Some warmth. Some proper job opportunities.

It's been nearly 8 months since I packed up smoking (Saturday), but the last few days I keep looking at the Cuban cigar that One El brought me back from, um, Cuba and thinking I could do with a massive nicotine splurge; but, you know, I know that will be a little like giving an alcoholic a shot of something 70% proof and then dropping him outside a pub with a pocket full of beer vouchers...

... And breathe.

Under No Illusions

Here is a far-fetched theory (try saying that when you're pissed). It is probably massively far from the truth is based on nothing but some romantic notion that I understand world politics, but, I dunno, I can almost sort of see this happening.

When Kim Jong-un took over from his father Kim Jong-il, many world politics commentators wondered just what we were going to get - a reformer or another bonkers dangerous fuckwit (which incidentally I think is just the image they like to give). North Korea started to do things that South Korea and the west didn't like and which had China back-peddling like a cyclist from another dimension, putting a Yangtze sized distance between Pyongyang and Beijing.

Just recently things have been getting a little scary; North Korea has started verbally abusing the USA and giving its sister country a hard time; nuclear reactors have been un-mothballed and more importantly the industrial estate between the borders of the two countries is now out of bounds to anyone who doesn't kneel to the supreme leader (more of this in a moment). It has declared a state of war between itself and its neighbour and is squaring up to the USA like a mouse to a polar bear and all can think is this is about as genuine a threat as Team America the film by the South Park creators.

Let me hit you with a theory... Kim Jong-il was barking mad or so everyone thought, but once he knew he was dying he made sure that it was Jong-un and none of his other, older, sons who would replace him. What the world knew of un was that he was a little on the young side and had been educated away from North Korea, so must have had some exposure to the outside world. North Korea has 1.25million soldiers, but it is also one of the poorest countries in the world, in fact, estimates suggest as much as 70% of the population are under-nourished and living well below the poverty threshold. The country is, to use a technical term, fucked and there's not an awful lot Kim Jong-un can do. He can't be seen going cap in hand to anyone because he's fucking North Korean, isn't he and that's weakness and they have to keep face. But if he has a war and they get their arses handed to them on a plate - look what happens to countries that lose wars!!!

Also, North Korea appears to be conducting this action based on whatever the news channels are reporting. CNN suggest they might reopen some reactors, they reopen some reactors. The BBC say that you can tell there isn't a problem because the industrial park the two countries share is still open; the next day they shut it. It's almost like they're doing this by numbers. North Koreans are firing flaming sheep at South Korean bystanders - tomorrow... Oh the carnage...

I can just picture it. A secret plane flies into some west coast airbase, on it Kim Jong-un and a translator and a few of his trusted aides and Barack Obama and a few of his. "Mr President, my country is fucked. My people are all going to starve to death and despite what people think, I know that we're pretty much the laughing stock of the world and only Mugabe has less respect. I'd like to declare war on your country so that I can beg for help without losing face. You get to be seen as the president who beat North Korea. I can have a Prius in a couple of years. My people need to eat and a few of them would like to see their family again before they die. What do you say?"

"It's a deal; but we've got to make it look convincing and also make sure there are enough 'experts' out there to make it sound far worse than it is. You need to round up at least a thousand troops that are still strong enough to hold rifles for the PR shoot. We might need to have a few casualties and you might get indicted for war crimes (but we have Grenada to help with that). Leave it to me and my CIA, everything will be fine."

Job done.

You watch. 

And if I'm right, I'll become the Psychic Weather and War Forecaster and you can have both forecasts for $5 and get a signed photograph (of someone) as long as you pay the postage.

Did I ever mention before that Google Street View doesn't let you go to parts of South Korea, almost like even they don't want you to see things. However, during my Google Maps Tourism breaks (I like to visit somewhere new at least once a month and spend ten minutes looking at the streets etc and I know how sad that sounds but I do need a job you know...) recently I found my way to Northern Norway and the Nordland area - that's the jutty-out bit north-east of Iceland that is probably inside the Arctic Circle but still several hundred miles south of Svalbard. It is a very isolated but considering where it is quite well populated part of the country (south-west of Tromso). It is, quite possibly, one of the most spectacular parts of any country I've ever seen and despite the street view shots being taken in June there was still a lot of snow on the ground. You need to find the peninsula, look for the E10, which is the road, and a village called Sørvågen. (Wiki says this about it: Sørvågen is a fishing village on the island of Moskenesøya in the Lofoten archipelago. It is located in the municipality of Moskenes in Nordland county, Norway.) You will only be able to zoom in so far before you get the standard Google message about not having any closer images, when this happens grab your street view man and drop him on the the E10. You can actually drop him at the very start of the road, which is a car park in the middle of presumably the first/last hospitable place. There is a sign pointing toward the wilderness saying camping and you get the impression that this is going to be a pretty inhospitable place for a good part of the year.

Just follow the road. Give yourself an hour because a lot of it you are just going to want to investigate as best you can and you see some strange things on the journey, almost from the word go. You should also marvel at the brilliance of putting this road where they have and how uninterrupted it is. Someone will remind me that Norway isn't in the EU next.

Anyhow, that's how bored I am at times.

500

Any mistakes in this I'm blaming on the boogie that is going on in my head this morning...

I realised about two months ago that I was nearing a landmark. The reality is that I've probably written closer to 1000 blog entries; but the actuality is this is the 500th under the Farkynell2 banner.

I do write a lot of bollocks at times and I still need an editor, big time (and a time machine - for oh so many reasons). 

So, what's my 500th entry going to be about? Something special? Something that will attract more people to my erratic writing than ever before? Maybe just write about what I'm happiest with. Who can say for sure, because this is all I'm going to write tonight. I'm going to bed in a minute. In the morning I might feel completely refreshed and inspired. I might indeed.

That was written during the week. Today is Good Friday. From the size of my hangover and the fact my arse wants to spend the day in the loo while I want to do other things is proof that there is little Good about it at the moment. To make matters worse, the wife is full of cold and there is still far too much snow on view for the end of March for my liking. Some warmth really wouldn't go amiss at the moment.

My hangover is the result of going to a beer festival and drinking pints of good ale. My hangover isn't actually as bad as it could have been, but thanks to a largely unwanted shot of tequila it is worse than it perhaps should have been. The fact I'm 50 and 5½ pints of beer and a shot fucks me up worse than you could imagine is nothing more than a testament to ageing and the fact that I should have at least been sensible.

Last night was a bit of a hoot on many levels. Roger and I haven't been to a beer festival, with the intention of getting drunk for nearly two years, and oddly enough that day the weather was also horrendous and Roger buggered his knee up because I don't walk as fast as him even if it is chucking it down like a Bangalore Monsoon! Last night, it was just cold and I had no intention of walking home.

The pub quiz winnings has been the subject of much amazement in recent weeks. We've had a meal for 5, a night out on the booze for free and we're still well into 3 figures and if we keep winning £60 jackpots week in and week out, soon we could, technically, never have to spend any of our own money again, just so long as we keep winning regularly (but I'm getting paranoid about winning the quiz so regularly). This Wednesday, because the wife is off work, I drove so she could have a cider or three. I had also decided that I wanted to do the Lamplighter's beer festival, so Roger and I did that instead of our usual Thursday night out at the Adelaide (and that we would pay for a taxi home using quiz winnings). 

We walked into the Lamplighter and immediately I felt like I could drink for England, so instead of halves, we opted for pints straight off. Hop Back Spring Zing was okay and frankly if it had been one of the beers on a usual night we would have drunk it all night long, but the shadow of Oakham Citra and Dark Star APA loomed over us. The Citra, coming straight out of a very fresh barrel was one of best tasting beers ever and after one pint of that I needed another and then another and as Roger said, "It's going down too fast," which of course, as you will find out, could have been the mantra of some one else in the pub we were yet to meet.

After 3 pints each we were both feeling a little woozy, so what better way of ridding ourselves of this unwanted wooziness than by drinking more beer! So we both had our third pint of Citra each and Roger (not being a wuss at all) reckoned that should be our lot. So when we finished that we had a half each - he stuck with the Oakham and I needed to try the 4.7 APA, just to satisfy my curiosity. Then Zoe arrived...

We had positioned ourselves at the bar and had only been saying how, in bygone years, we would have been cursing the old gits at the bar for taking up all the room and that was essentially how the conversation with Zoe started. I think we both expected her to get drinks then bugger off with her mates, but she stayed and started to talk to us; ages were discussed and she thought Roger was younger than me and worse still she thought I looked like Rik Mayall, which as anybody who knows me will testify that he isn't something I'm keen on being compared to. But, because of this and that Roger is 'younger' than me, it was becoming all too obvious, even to us old duffers, that Zoe seemed quite interested in him. However, like me, the idea of being chatted up by girls in a pub while a massive ego boost is also quite scary, so Roger disappeared off to the loo, for ages, and left the girl with me and her attention or the object of her affection changed.

Now, she had already bought us tequila shots for being 'gentlemen' and she was as pissed as a fart, but why she should latch onto us was the biggest puzzle (or perhaps I'm just being down on us oldsters). Anyhow, I ordered another half each, just for the journey home and because, you know I was pissed and I wanted to see exactly what this girl's intentions were before I ran away and hid. Roger wasn't as adventurous and started to pretend he was taking phonecalls from B. Unfortunately, no one was paying any attention to him. Zoe was introducing me to her very large arse and I know how that sounds, but we were in a busy pub - she was just showing me how fat she was; literally. That's how weird this night was becoming...

Various different things happened, including her telling us in French what she'd like to do. Roger had some idea of what she was talking about, I was oblivious. Then the two halves turned up and they were pints and Zoe insisted she paid for them and Roger looked as though he was going to die and I think I ended up drinking most of both of them. Then she asked me if I'd like to take her home and I looked at Roger and he literally dragged me out of the pub and Zoe turned her attention to someone else at the bar. Lovely girl, very friendly, but if I was her dad (who was 44 or 48 depending on who she told) I'd lock her in a cellar.

And I was terribly terribly drunk at the time...

I'm really not used to drinking so much and at 7am this morning I had to piss like a horse while standing up with a head that was pounding. It was cold, the birds were screaming and I struggle to sleep when I'm hungover. I did manage it though and the next thing I noticed it was 10am.

Surprisingly, despite my head and my stomach feeling a wee bit fragile, I feel almost chipper today. That was my last big blow out before taking it easy and hoping to get a job. I simply can't afford that kind of debauchery at the moment. But, you know, I stood in that pub last night looking at it rocking and full to bursting and wondered just what the problem with pubs is in this country at the moment. There are several places in this town that buck the trend of pubs being a dying business, and there are several pubs in this town that could turn into monster places if they had the people who run the Lamplighter or of a similar ilk running them. I firmly believe, still, with my pub background, my energy and enthusiasm, I could do what the guys at the Lamplighter, or Paul at the Adelaide, or the guy who runs the Wig & Pen in town. I just need to be in the right place or find some rich benefactor who wouldn't mind investing in a concept that everyone tells you is dying.

The irony is that for years The Lamplighter was the preferred destination for Rog, B, the wife and me and we were regulars there for a good five or six years until the old landlord left and was replaced by someone who did his utmost to destroy a good thing. When we started to go to the Vic, the Lamp was still very much on the wrong side of good, but gradually, and presumably since the new guys took it over, it has attracted more and more of the town's artistic people and the sophisticated pub visitor and I reckon it's returned to being the best pub in town. Now it is clean, stylish, and sells exceptionally good food, they hope to have 6 or 8 real ales on at any time soon, and it has an incredibly vibrant, jolly and friendly atmosphere. You can't beat the place, really and well done the landlords. I'm a fan.

Effercio et Ineptias

• I am currently listening to: God is an Astronaut, Amplifier, David Bowie, Aesthesys, This Will Destroy You and the Sugababes. I'm lying about one of these, but all the others have not failed to impress me, which is a good thing considering how disillusioned I was becoming about music.
• Oh, and the new House of Love album - the dog's bollocks my friends - it's like 1989 all over again!
• I am about halfway through re-reading The Shining, it is still a little like reading a new book and it isn't until you get down to the nitty-gritty that you realise that Stanley Kubrick essentially took the idea of the book and a bit of the framework and did his own story. I have always struggled to really like the film and seeing the way Kubrick destroyed a perfectly good story hasn't enamoured me any more to it.
• Can someone explain to me why Jaime Murray gets work as an actor.
• Shameless US continues to be the best thing on television by a country mile.
• I recently found out that the amount of sugar we should be having, daily, is the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar a day. I have two sugars in coffee and I have, on average, 10 to 12 mugs of coffee a day. If you factor in the amount of chocolate I eat; the amount of sugar that's in a lot of the stuff I eat, no wonder I have high cholesterol and it's almost a pathetic decision to cut out peanuts from my diet. I mean, it's a bit like a smoker saying they're going to cut down from 40 to 30 a day. So I went and bought some expensive cholesterol lowering margarine/spread - that will sort it out, you watch!
• Thanks to everyone who have stuck with me for 500 blogs. Bring on the next 500 (and has anybody noticed how I haven't been talking about my health since I left my job?).

Total Wipeout

Does anyone, apart from the rich and utterly misguided, think the current government is doing anything at all to help anyone that hasn't got a 7 figure bank balance?

By now most people must realise that George Osborn and his rather dopey friend, the prime minister Dave Cameron (or Baldrick as I used to call him and can't understand why I stopped, what with his cunning plans...) are not interested in fixing the country or reducing the deficit (that's been proved by the amount of money they're still borrowing), they are just fixated on dismantling the welfare system to the point where, if we had a Tory majority or a UKIP coalition, they can either push the human rights act to the limit or abolish it completely.

You'd think that in the 21st Century, at a time when we are more aware of our humanity than ever before, the idea of a supposedly civilised government taking away our human rights so that they can inflict untold misery on the have nots would be treated in the same way as we think of North Korea or Zimbabwe. If it was reported that a government was victimising the poor and needy, we'd be sending a task force over to depose the tyrants running that country; yet because 'we're all right, Jack' we allow it to happen under our noses and only now, and mainly from women, are we beginning to say, "Hang on a minute, what this government is doing is a) wrong and b) not what any non-Tory voter voted for. There is no mandate for these massive, life-changing 'improvements' to the way our country treats the unfortunate.

Yet, do you know that if you tell the average person in the street that corporations 'swindled' the government out of £2000billion in unpaid taxes, while the entire welfare bill comes to £63billion and the so-called scroungers and fiddlers account for just £2billion; the average person in the street will say, "Yes, but, we can relate to the dole scrounger because we see them every day flaunting the system." So, by that logic, if someone, like my neighbour Fuckwit, is scamming the system EVERYBODY using the system shall be punished. Oh, I forgot, that's already actually how it is. If Starbucks don't pay their taxes, then neither do Amazon, Vodafone, etc etc., but if Fred Bloggs screws the system, then every person already struggling to live, feed themselves or exist will be punished as well. Where is the fairness in that? How is that 'we're all in this together'?

Gideon Osborne can argue till he's blue in the face that if you don't give corporations tax concessions then they will take their money to some other country, well, I kind of think that if they're not giving us any money they can take their money elsewhere, because we're not seeing it anyway!

The other thing the Tories are doing, which really is the most abhorrent and heinous thing and it beggars belief that the Libdems are so impotent around them, is implement so many expensive changes, subtle changes and bureaucratic changes that whoever gets in power next will not be able to do anything to solve the country's woes because it will be stymied by the trail of madness left by the current government. Melvyn King said in 2009, whoever gets into power at the next election faces an entire generation of not seeing power again. I think the Tories know this all too well and therefore are making sure that a) no one is electable and therefore because Tories can mobilise their core vote much better than Labour b) they have a good chance of being re-elected pretty quickly because the party that replaces them won't be able to fix things without bankrupting the country.

We're then left with a country run by people who view it as a company that's always ripe for asset stripping. Oh, that's pretty much what its like now, eh Vince?

How many people are beginning to get fed up with the Tory stock excuse - it's Labour's fault?

You all have bad memories, don't you? However, this is well documented so I'll repeat it to remind you - in 1997, Tony Blair, inheriting a country that had teetered on the brink several times in the early 1990s, came into power and banned his MPs from blaming the previous administration, saying, quite rightly, that the people aren't really interested in who is to blame they're only interested in it being fixed. I cannot remember one single Labour MP in 1997 saying that the mess the country was in was down to those blasted Tories. The blame game does no one any favours, yet the Tories have this default setting - it's everybody else's fault but ours. Aren't you getting just a wee bit fed up with it never being anything to do with them, especially when it plainly is?

Gideon Osborne has had FOUR budgets to try and turn things around (including the infamous 'Omnishambles' Budget of 2012), yet its still Labour's fault the economy is in a mess. I kind of think even Tory voters would like to hear someone say, "actually, the whole of Europe is fucked and it isn't Labour's fault that Greece, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and several other countries are on the verge of bankruptcy." People seem to forget that for all his faults Gordon Brown was praised by both Newsweek and Time Magazine for, albeit temporarily, stopping Europe from sliding into financial oblivion. He was on the covers of both magazines being heralded as the saviour of Europe's economies. Fortunately for Brown he is never going to be as vilified as Blair.

I'd worry about this country turning into a police state, with the Old Bill dispensing Tory justice like some Judge Dredd comic, but where they were once the party for law and order, they're now the party that has royally pissed off every decent copper on the force and most of the dishonest ones too. At one of the anti-austerity marches a couple of years ago there were so many policemen there, on the actual march, that you probably didn't need all the police there 'protecting'. Everybody is paying for the mess except for Dave, Gideon and their mates. But, you have to remember - WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!

***

Of course the weather doesn't help. I'm sure I'd be talking about something else entirely if I can sit in the garden with my shirt off for a few hours without getting frostbite or freezing to death. Last week I (almost) confidently said it would be warmer by April 2; that has been reappraised by the weather sites to April 14; although there is a suggestion that on a couple of days we might just see the temperature reach about average. If you saw the 5 day forecast on Countryfile tonight you would have seen the panic in Susan Powell's eyes when she got to Good Friday and suggested that we might see 'another snow event'. That saying 'March roars in like a lion and goes out like a lamb' has been put into a canon and fired into the stratosphere. March roared in like an Arctic fox and is going out like a demented polar bear with the DTs.

I read somewhere that the BBC has been fiddling with weather forecasts; cutting them short and making the 5 day a 4 day forecast because 4 days of future misery is more tolerable than 5. Sounds feasible.

***

I have a number of projects on the go at the moment, lets just hope I can concentrate on one of them long enough to achieve anything, eh?

Sanity Test

I'm coming to the conclusion that the world is changing badly or I'm just out of step with it.

My mate Chev has been posting some stuff up on his Tumblr account - http://hugonebula.tumblr.com/ - that initially I just ignored. You know how it is, you subscribe to everyone you know and eventually a lot of the stuff you see in your FB news feed or on your Tumblr dashboard just washes over you. Then I noticed that he had posted something which appeared to be US television news coverage of the rehabilitation of a rapist. Fortunately it proved to be a spoof, but the point was that earlier in the week he had posted something to his Tumblr site that was anything but a spoof - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/17/cnn-grieves-that-guilty-verdict-ruined-promising-lives-of-steubenville-rapists/#.UUYZwiNjwvA.twitter about the tragedy of how rapists' lives have been ruined because... they committed a rape.

Apparently, in the USA, rape is still considered a 'dodgy' charge; something that is deemed an unfortunate blip on someone's life or career rather than this heinous crime against women; unless of course you're black. There are 75% more black working class rapists in US jails than white people in general. So, if you are a college student in the USA and there's a girl you really want to 'do', just do it, if you're not black or from Chicago you'll be fine as long as you have a good lawyer.

We watched Beasts of the Southern Wild the other night. We expected it be like a New Orleans version of the superbly bleak Winter's Bone but instead it was just a bit crap - a cheap and badly made film that left the viewer completely bemused and befuddled at the end (and not in an enigmatic good way either). The young girl who starred in it (how she was nominated for best supporting actress when she was on screen for almost the entire movie is confusing - she didn't support anyone) was good, but in general all the film did was prove that the USA really doesn't give a shit about its poor and deprived. That said, if you were an alien just arrived on this planet and you were told that the planet spent over $2,000billion on war in the last 12 months, but $500billion would eradicate WORLD poverty...

The BBC has been celebrating its new News studios; showing us all where a lot of our license fee has gone. I love BBC News, it is way better than any of the other news suppliers and I feel I know the people who work on the Beeb. However, I can't help thinking that even though I'm not even remotely an accountant there are things going on at the BBC that I would frown upon, big time...

I have mentioned in the past that the Beeb must spend enormous amounts of money shipping out their A list reporters to cover stories that their bog standard reporters have been doing an admirable job on. Take the Pope for instance - all through the day, every day, the new Pope's adventures have been covered by the lovely (and probably Italian) Luisa Baldini; that is until the BBC1 News when suddenly Jon Sopel or some other heavyweight reporter is wheeled on to tell us everything Baldini is more than capable of. Do the BBC think that having someone they think we'll recognise better doing the link makes it easier for fuckwits to understand or is it just an excuse to ship the likes of George Alaghia, Fiona Bruce and Sophie Raworth out to these places because they can?

Or how about the fact that the BBC moves to Salford, but the entire news department refuses to move, so what we have is Breakfast from Salford and all the sports reports, but all the news, etc coming from London. Plus, they're shutting Television Centre in Wood Lane and have moved to a place in the city - at a huge cost compared to the previous place. Progress means having to spend lots of our money, doncha know.

It's this kind of comedy use of money designed to make programmes with, which makes me far more angry than some executive's decision to pull a Jimmy Savile story...

And then there's politics. Really, I can understand why UKIP are growing in popularity, because they'll say anything that will make people agree with them; the problem is if they ever got a sniff of power you'd see that they have ideas but no money to do them with - which is a good thing in many ways because a lot of their ideas are so right wing they'd make Mussolini baulk. Can you imagine a UK that is run by the Tories and UKIP as a coalition? You'd have nothing left. You'd walk the streets full of homeless, starving and ill people and the country would be fascist in all but name. Thatcher had this idea when she won a third term and that was to hold a referendum on whether or not she should stay as prime minister in perpetuity, because the people had given her a mandate three times on the trot, so they must want her permanently. Fortunately some people saw that she was quickly becoming a megalomaniac and John Major was drafted in to ground everything again. If we had a Tory/UKIP coalition there wouldn't be anything left for a Labour, Liberal or Green party to repair without completely bankrupting the country - because that's kinda what the Tories are doing now - they're making it very very difficult for whoever gets in at the next election to fix (even if they get in, but even then it doesn't matter because they'll be all right, even if you're not).

I just wish people would think about fairness when they think about voting. We should be trying to make this country a fairer place not allow the rich to get richer and the bigots to set the agenda.

I don't know if I'd want to be in this country any longer if we don't get a government who puts its people first...

That said, what are Labour doing to make me think they're any better. Nothing at all; but what they are doing is this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/19/labour-rush-benefit-rebates-poundland and Liam Byrne, who I actually thought had some integrity, proves that all politicians are essentially cunts.

The weathermen are tentatively talking about a 'snow event' later this week. The weird thing is that Pete Gibbs sort of suggested as much as long as a week ago, saying that winter was by no means even close to ending. It appears that parts of Scotland are experiencing piss poor weather with inches of snow on the floor and just about everywhere is suffering from well below average temperatures and it's going to get really bad before it gets better. They don't quite know how much snow will fall or where exactly, just that there's an Atlantic low hitting the cold, blocking, air that has sat over us for best part of the last 4 months and every time that has happened so far this winter we've had lots of snow. Apparently it might be the last blow out of a winter that really has lasted best part of 6 months, but if you scour the long range weather forecasts (hey, I've got nothing better to do), you see nothing that makes you want to break out the spring wardrobe.

Accuweather - who have the longest long range forecasts but do seem to be closer, even more accurate, don't have us even experiencing double figures until April 2 at the earliest and even then 13 degrees is the high and it gets colder and wetter as we head towards my 51st. The Weather Channel's 10 day forecast has a maximum of 9 and lots of cloud, rain, sleet and winds from the wrong direction, the BBC just hedge their bets and have ranges of temperatures that can be as wide as 15 degrees, such is the Met Office's complete reluctance to make any kind of forecast beyond 5 days now. The Weather-Forecast page suggests we'll see spring for a few hours on Saturday before it all goes tits up again. In fact, the general consensus appears to be we shouldn't expect anything of note until the end or middle of April, which you could argue is pretty much par for the course, but, you know, in winter and early spring there's always a few nice sunny and mild days that reaffirm your belief that the world isn't just hell...

I'd like to get out in the garden and dig the borders over and prepare my veg patch for the inevitable waterlogging and rot that will be prevalent in July and even though the sun has just peaked out from behind the wall-to-wall cloud, the temperature on the patio - the warmest place in the garden - is still only 6 degrees - that's 5 degrees colder than the average for March 19.

You know I have a Facebook alias? Well, Bill has become very useful recently for me to discover that you're being conned by Mr Zuckerberg's retirement fund again. If you get tagged in a photo or something and you want that tag removing it is a simple click, click and gone. Yes? No. Yes it's removed from your Timeline and you won't be tagged in it as far as you're concerned, but it doesn't take the tag away from everywhere else. I play Bill at Bejewelled Blitz; it's sad, I know, but it helps wile away the hours, plus when I play other people I have no control over what they put up, but with Bill I do. Every time me or Bill wins or achieves something in the game it posts automatically - you have to have this option or you can't have the game - and I'm very quick to delete the post and un-tag myself from it. But if I go to Bill's Facebook page, I see that its only gone from my view and not from 'his'. The thing I hid is still there; so I asked someone else who I play if my posts with Bill appear in her feed and they do, despite me taking untagging my name. Facebook tells me: "Your tag has been removed. Remember: This content still appears in news feed, search and other places on Facebook"; so in other words, it hides this information from you and no one else. So you can't see it, so out of sight should be out of mind. What a crock of really stinky shit. You cannot avoid Facebook or affiliates using you even if you think you can. What appears in your Timeline isn't what appears in others, obviously, but what you think people can see about you isn't what they see at all.

Now, just to add a wrinkle to this almost circular bit of 'net manipulation. I went into Bill's account and did the same thing; it claims that I, Phill Hall, put the tag on the post, even though I didn't and I know that Bill actually was responsible for the post going up because he always goes second. Also, there's this option that says - Contact #### and ask him to remove the tag from this post. So, despite having already removed the tags from anything on my Timeline, Bill needed to message me asking me to take the tags off, which of course I'd already done... This entire set-up reminds me of a Möbius Strip...

I'm going to be intrigued to see if any of these Phill v Bill posts remain on other Bejewelled Blitz players' Facebook pages because if they do, we're just being butt-fucked by these legalised identity thieves.

This might not bother you and if it doesn't that's fine; but, you know, it should. This is a company that is slowly collecting more information on you than Big Brother and will eventually use all of that info to target you with advertising, promotions and all kinds of shit. They will also sell that info to whoever wants to buy it and because of the unique way Facebook works as a social networking platform, you will struggle to even find a way to complain to them that will be seen by human eyes.

In case you forgot, we're all going to die (and then again and again in different horrible realities until we reach the complete depths of Hades...)

Reticent

So, you have no income and the dishwasher decides to go tits up; it only happens when you're down.

I hoisted a theory at Roger on Thursday. We're all dead and this is hell. Of my wilder theories this seems to be the one that has more people nodding in quiet agreement. The only real worry is if we're just on an increasingly worse kind of hell and next time we come back we all have to live in a bucket of shit and eat whelks... Obviously some people might like whelks and one of my dogs would happily live in a bucket of shit, but each to their own and all that...

So I haven't got COPD, but I have got potentially serious airways damage due to smoking things without filter tips for 30 years. I have new medication; an exercise routine and the carrot of my lungs not being shot at all and therefore with the right treatment and not starting to smoke again I might actually improve my condition even if I can't cure it completely. I've set myself the task of walking 5km a day until I get a job and then we'll see what I'm doing and what I can do.

We're coming up to the first anniversary of the (no longer in force) hosepipe ban; I wonder if it's going to rain to celebrate the fact?

I think I need to explain something to some people, whether they read this or not; I donate money to animal charities and only when I can afford it. I do not give to any other charities and that is because a) I'm a curmudgeonly old bastard, b) we shouldn't have to have things like Children in Need if governments were to do their jobs properly (that's any government), c) we donate enough overseas aid to save the NHS, therefore we shouldn't be expected to fork out extra charity money for domestic issues when the government (this or any previous) could eradicate domestic poverty by taxing the rich and the corporations, not giving millions of pounds to Brazil (which is now one place ahead of us in the world rich list) and ensuring that we have a fair country. As horrid as it might sound, charity should begin at home.

Yesterday I thought I pulled a muscle in my back stretching. When I went to the doctor's I mentioned this and she said that I might not have pulled a muscle, I might have slightly dislocated one of my ribs from my spine!!!! Then she said this was relatively normal and it will pop back in and I'll barely notice it - probably after a good night's sleep. She might have been right.

My plan, I think I mentioned, for the last week was to get some work done in the garden. I did, but nowhere near enough and next week, as soon as it stops raining, it will be Operation Buttercup, because at least two of the main borders in my gardens have been completely overrun by those bastard yellow flowers (although not yet, obviously). We've lost so many plants through the last 12 months, most of them drowning or rotting in the saturated ground - but not the weeds; the weeds could live under water without sub-aqua gear for months.

Fuckwit might be facing a dilemma in the coming months. I think I told you about him getting the local Dids to chop the tops of the leylandii trees in his garden - a seemingly pointless exercise it seemed - well, the wife pointed out this morning that the two stunted trees are looking very yellow around the edges. Now, this would suit us perfectly if they died (we might even be able to scrounge the trunks as fire wood), but I get the impression that Fuckwit would be reluctant to spend money having them removed - he can have his car valeted once a month, but I'm thinking DLA must pay that, but I'd lay odds that he wouldn't pay for the trees to be removed because of all the extra costs that would be entailed; partly because of me.

When we got the new dogs, I had to ensure they couldn't escape the garden and one of the things I did was nail two fence panels to the leylandii, with big 6" nails and lots of them. I did it partly in the hope that it would help with the killing off of these eyesores, but that was 5 years ago now and if the trees came down, it would be his responsibility to replace any fence panels that get destroyed or ripped up as a result. I don't think that man would put his hand in his pocket if it meant that one of his neighbours would benefit from it. This is a man who, as I said, has his car valeted but when I suggested to him a few months ago that we go Dutch on replacing a couple of well-dodgy fence panels down the bottom of the garden pleaded poverty. I should have asked him how he pays for his car to be valeted, really (or if he ever passed his driving test on account of him being unable to parallel park).

I might do more later in the weekend. I might not. It could be a surprise.