92 posts from 2008

I'm currently in the highlands at the in laws but am sending all the lovely people on Vox the very best for christmas, hope you all have a fabulous christmas, the turkey is delicious and no one misbehaves! Remember some simple rules:
1) If your uncle behaves inappropriately ignore him. Karma will get him in the end.
2) For god's sakes don't give the dog left over sprouts. You'll regret it for the rest of the night and quite possibly boxing day too.
3) A reindeer jumper in day-glo orange IS a good present. It is. Somewhere in the world it will be fashionable, you just have to find that place.
4) Too much port really hurts in the morning. It might seem like a good idea at the time but believe me, it's not.

Have a brilliant day, all of you, and I'll be catching up with everyone's news on here when I get home on the 27th.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

In theory it was simple. The christmas tree would be dropped off by my dad, we'd put it into the christmas tree stand then I'd go into the loft, get the decorations and put them up. Time to accomplish task entirely - approx 1 hr. Unfortunately things didn't go quite according to plan.

The first bit went fine, my dad dropped off the christmas tree. It was at this point that 'the plan' and 'the reality' parted company. This was because the bloody christmas tree had a wider stump than I had anticipated, meaning it wouldn't fit in the damned stand. "Ah", says my dad, "You'll have to saw a bit off the side of the stump so it'll fit it". Then he fucks off home, leaving me with an overly stumped christmas tree and no idea what I'm doing.

How hard can it be to saw a bit off the trunk of a christmas tree? I decide to find out. It's dark, it's cold and I can't be arsed going out to the shed to find the saw so I start with the first serrated edged item I can think of - the spare breadknife. After 15 minutes of hard work I am left with a blunt-as-buggery knife, a sore arm and a christmas tree trunk exactly the same size as when I started. I have however managed to remove a 2 inch square piece of bark. Well done me.

So I abandon the breadknife and trek out to the shed. Even getting to the shed is a challenge because I'd forgotten that I'd had the washing out a few days before and the sodding washing line is still strung across the garden. After nearly garroting myself with the line and letting rip with some choice language I reach the shed and realise I can't see anything because it's dark. This is not only a problem because it'll take forever to find the saw but also because now I can't see them, in my head the shed spiders are the size of cats and they are just waiting to jump on my head if I venture into the shed. Clearly I need a torch. So back across the garden I go, not concentrating because I'm thinking about the shed spiders. This time I miss the washing line but hit the patch of slippery moss, sliding 4 feet and then landing hard on my arse. Cue some more fruity language. I collect the torch, go back to the shed (this time without injury), find the saw and head quickly back to the house, hoping no one in the neighbourhood worked out where the swearing came from.

So I begin sawing, taking great care not to saw off my fingers. Unfortunately I'm taking such great care with the end that's near my hand that I don't bother to look what the other end is doing. By the time I think to check where the other end is I've sawed a bloody great gash into Lou's newly wrapped present which is next to the prone christmas tree. Fuckity fuck fuck, stupid DIY. I've been sawing like a demon for bloody ages and again all I've managed to do is remove another curl of bark. How is it that I managed to buy the one and only bionic christmas tree? Clearly the saw is a no go so I need another idea. I sit back to think about it and go and get a glass of wine.

After the second glass of wine I've hit on a new plan. People make sculptures out of wood don't they?  So maybe I can 'sculpt' the end of the christmas tree into the shape I want. Brilliant. So I refill the wine glass and set off to find the neccessary tools, returning with an icepick and a hammer. I work in health and safety and am VERY sensible at ALL times so I decide that this could be dangerous and I need eye protection. My work protective glasses are in my car, which is in a garage somewhere being mended after a lorry broke it so I need an alternative. Hmmmmm.....I know, I'll use my sunglasses out of the car I've borrowed. So when the husband gets home I am sitting on the floor of the living room, half pissed, wearing sunglasses, surrounded by sawdust and bark chipping, hacking away at a christmas tree truck. And it would be at that precise moment that the fucking head comes off the hammer wouldn't it? Of course it would.

He quickly ascertains that my efforts have been largely fruitless and I'm now getting pissed off so decides to bring out the big guns. Apparently upstairs we have a small angle grinder. Who knew? Fortunately not me because even I know that dry Muscat and an angle grinder don't mix well. Sadly we don't have a blade that cuts wood but maybe one of the other blades will work. He fixes one on and gives it a go. There's a hideous screeching noise, a lot of smoke, the dog shoots under the table and after a minute or so he shuts it off. No, it won't work. So now not only is the christmas tree STILL too big for the stand but the dog is having a nervous breakdown and the house smells of burning. Marvellous.

So what else can we do? It's my dad who finally comes up with the only sensible idea yet to emerge, cut the bottom foot off the tree because it tapers and a foot up it will be thinner. So the husband duly cuts the bottom off the tree and hey presto - it fits. 2 hours and 3 glasses of wine achieves bugger all but 5 minutes of sawing straight across gets the job done, even if I do now have a 5 foot tree instead of a 6 foot one. And this is why I'm not a carpenter. Take my advice - if you need something practical doing, don't ask me to do it.   

I pinched this from Spidermonky, I like these funny little thingies, they give me something to do that isn't writing my shitty essay.

Where is your cell phone? Desk
Where is your significant other? Unknown
Your hair colour? Brunette
Your mother? Generous
Your father? Eccentric
Your favorite thing? Sleep
Your dream last night? Forgotten
Your goal? Patience
The room you're in? Carnage
Your hobby? Bitching
Your fear? Spiders
Where do you want to be in six years? Writing
Where were you last night? Home
What you're not? Tolerant
One of your wish-list items? Conservatory
Where you grew up? Manchester
The last thing you did? Essay
What are you wearing? Knickers
Your TV? Elsewhere
Your pet? Geoffrey
Your computer? Functioning
Your mood? Nuclear
Missing someone? Nope
Your car? Broken
Something you're not wearing? Codpiece
Favorite store? Boots
Your summer? Sneezy
Love someone? Indeed
Your favorite color? Green
When is the last time you laughed? Today
Last time you cried? Saturday

Tomorrow I have to remember to write abouth the fiasco that was the christmas tree. What fun that was. 

I'm driving down the road and I'm in the middle lane but I need to be in the right hand lane. There's a space in front of a lorry so I indicate right and start to pull across. So what does he do? He leans on his horn, shoots forward as fast as he can and destroys the electric mirror on the driver side. Utter and complete wanker. Because he couldn't possibly let a car in could he? I mean if he did that then the world would stop turning, Armageddon would begin and the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse will come through his front wall and commandeer the remote control for his telly. Or, more likely, he's some cocky wanker with a power complex who thinks he's Johnny Big Spuds because he's driving a truck. Badly. And did he stop and acknowledge that he'd broken my car? No, he fucked off down the road at 60mph, nearly carving up some poor cow in a Nissan Micra who happened to be occupying the space on the road that he wanted to be in at the time he wanted to be in it. So now I'm sat here waiting for someone called Bill from to call me from their insurance company and if Bill doesn't come up with a solution that involves them paying for the replacement wing mirror and its fitting then I am going to get cataclysmically angry. I hope the truck driving tosspiece gets a proper strip torn off him by his superiors for being a wanker and that he is made to pay for my wing mirror out of his own money.

There aren't words to describe how much I loathe and detest the vile stretch of tarmac-covered purgatory that is the M60 motorway. I could go through my entire repertoire of obscene and descriptive insults and it still wouldn't come close to expressing the level of loathing that I have for the M60 motorway. Chris Rea once wrote a song called "Road to Hell". You can tell he wasn't writing about the M60 because the title mentions a destination, something that visitors to the M60 can only dream longingly about while listening repeatedly to the traffic reports telling you that the motorway is stationary along all the junctions to the place you'll never ever reach. Fucking hideous.

This evening I was supposed to be going riding, at 6pm in Plumley, Cheshire. This is a journey along the M60 to the M56 and then along an A road to the stables. In light traffic it takes 30 minutes, in rush hour traffic, about 50 minutes. Today however, things were working a little bit differently. Unbeknown to me, on the M62 a half witted bint, an utterly fuck-witted, useless, hairy arsed, horse-faced, horn-toed trollop had managed to drive her lorry across the central reservation onto the opposite carriageway and over someone's car, killing them. This meant that the M62 was closed in both directions. It also meant that everything that usually travelled along the M62 to the M6 both North and South, plus the usual rush hour M60 traffic was now pouring down the one motorway, the M60. And yes, by pouring I do mean sitting there with the engine idling wondering whether dehydration or lack of will to live would be the one to take them. This situation was not helped by the fact that both Manchester City and Manchester United are both playing tonight and the motorway was also crammed full of people who have more chance of impregnating the Queen than getting to the match for kick off. After 2 and bit hours on the M60 I managed to reach the turn off for the M56. Which also turned out to be stationary, As was the M56 itself. By this time I was dying for a piss which was just adding to my joy and my delight at being on the road with so many of my fellow human beings. So I decided to head for home and carried on, with the intention of doing a full lap of the circular M60 and getting back before I reached retirement age. At which I point I discovered via the medium of local radio, that the queue was now so long that it had backed up right past my home junction up, coincidentally, where I was now. And yep, there it is, the fucking queue again. I've managed to end up back at the end of it again. Oh happy days, that's just fucking perfect.

By the time I got home I had been out for over three hours and nothing to show for it but a noticable lack of petrol, a foul temper and a bladder that was quite possibly holding more water than the Hoover Dam. I loathe the M60. I loathe queues but most of all I loathe lorry drivers who are too fucking incompetant to keep their truck on the correct side of the road. And I am not alone in my loathing of her, there are thousands upon thousands of other motorists out there feeling the same, most of them still in their cars. If there is any such thing as karma she will be reincarnated as a dung beetle, destined to spend her miserable existence pushing balls of elephant turd across the African Plains and getting pissed on by hyenas.

Manchester is currently in the process of holding a referendum to decide whether the city should embark upon the world's largest congestion charge. I say referendum, that would imply some variety of democratically sound canvassing of uninfluenced public opinion which is about as close to what has gone on as chocolate is to dog turd. There have been quite literally millions of publicly funded pounds pumped into the 'Yes' campaign, involving newspaper ads, tv ads, glossy leaflets and brochures while the 'no' campaign has had to rely on donations from the public and businesses who can envisage their livlihoods heading down the proverbial gurgler should this scheme go ahead.

Today my ballot pack arrived. I was expecting a paper and an envelope to deliver it back to them. Which I got. What I wasn't expecting was for my 'democratic' ballot paper pack to contain another fucking promotional leaflet for the shagging scheme we're meant to be voting on! Imagine my surprise, swiftly followed by my anger as I read through it and absorbed some of the details that I hadn't taken in before. Here are a few of the bits that REALLY ground my gears:

Buses : More services would operate at the weekends - Really? Well this is a referendum on weektime congestion charges isn't it? So that's not fucking relevant is it? And if it isn''t relevant then it's just propaganda which to my mind has aboslutely no place in a bloody ballot paper pack.

A new coach station adjacent to Piccadilly train station in the city centre - Would that be in addition to the existing coach station for the people who can't be arsed to walk the 600 yards from Piccadilly Station to Chorlton Street or will they flatten the perfectly good and recently refurbished coach station in order to build a new one?

Tramlines to new destinations...funds are also available to connect Metrolink to Trafford Park and the Trafford Centre - What the fuck does this mean? Since it isn't included in the list of 'new' tram stops to be created but is listed seperately as 'funds are available' then does that mean that funds are available but won't be used? Or, is it, as I suspect, that the govt haven't stumped up the cash for a station there. Just write what you mean you mendacious twats and stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We might be Northern but that does not make us a collection of utter retards, no matter what London-centric policy makers may think.

Improvements for car drivers - Information for all drivers on local traffic conditions and incidents affecting journeys - What? Are you nuts? Do you seriously expect car drivers to vote yes to paying christ knows what for the priviledge of driving to work in return for information you can get if you are bright enough to switch on the radio? What the hell is wrong with you people?

But all this pales into insignificance when you get to the bit about how it will be collected and how much it will cost. That bit is near the end of the leaflet, possibly in the hope that readers will lose the will to live and kick the bucket before they reach the really shitty information.

 Cost - £2 to cross the outer ring road and a further £1 to cross the inner road towards the city centre in the morning then £1 to cross the inner ring road and a further £1 to cross the outer ring road out of the city in the evening - at 2007 prices for pre-registered users. - Now the price wasn't a surprise, it's what I was expecting but 'at 2007 prices'? Well it's not even 2007 now, it certainly won't be 2007 in 2013 when the scheme would come in and I think we can all guess what that means can't we? Yes, they'll offer low costs to get people to vote for the scheme then jack up the amount they charge. Utter, utter, utter wankers. And then another thing struck me. What the hell is 'pre-registered' when it's at home? So I looked it up. And that did nothing to improve my mood at all. Pre-registered is what you become if you agree to have one of their fucking tracker devices put into your car so they can direct-debit cash straight out of your bank account every time you drive past one of their beacons. So there's your choice - have a device put into your car so you can be tracked like a lab rat whenever you drive round the city or be slapped with a charge that is three times that which the lab rats are paying. Nice, very nice. You utter bastards.

So that is the choice that Manchester is making, be bullied and cajoled into voting in something that is not only going to cost your average person a fortune but will also make the city uncompetitive or stand up for citizen's rights and tell these politicians to fuck right off. If the city doesn't make the right decision I will not be impressed.

Oooh it's the capital

Yesterday I had a meeting with some people at Millbank Tower in London so I decided to make a day trip of it. I mentioned it to my mother and she decided to come too. My meeting was at 11.45am so, for the price of a small family car we book tickets for the stupid o'clock train from Manchester to London and away we go.

The trip there was uneventful, the tube journey to Pimlico was uneventful. The walk to Millbank Tower once we established that the direction I thought it was in was in fact the opposite one to where the place actually was was pretty ordinary too although it was nice to walk along by the river in the sunshine. And so in I go to my meeting.

This went ok up until the point when I realised that the pass I'd been given by reception was not in my bag. It could be in the toilet, it could be in the ombudsman's HR department or it could be in the nice waiting room with the broken water cooler and the splendid view of the city. The upshot of it was that I couldn't get out of the building and had to be escorted out by the nice chap who conducted the meeting, who sneaked me out by sending someone to distract the reception girl while he whizzed me to the door and opened it so that they didn't give me a bollocking for losing the pass. Way to make a good impression? I should think so.

After a coffee in the nearby Tate Britain art gallery and a bizarre conversation with two old ladies we set off to the House of Commons to go and have lunch with my brother.  The security to get into the House of Commons is most impressive, you have to be scanned and all your belongings x rayed then you have to have your photo taken and be issued with a photo pass. We had to wait for my brother to come down and pick us up from reception so we stood around int he lobby for a bit and it was here that I noticed the policeman patrolling the security area. He was armed with a machine gun, 2 little guns (I don't know enough about firearms to say what they were), a taser, a canister of that spray stuff that makes people go blind and a truncheon. Impressive. He kept his finger on the trigger at all times and I sincerely hoped that he didn't have a cold because one tiny little little sneeze with his finger there could wipe out the entire lobby.

Eventually Mike comes down and lets us in. Well I say lets us in, you have to go through a revolving glass door which only works if someone who holds a security pass keeps their pass on the scanner. He let mum go through then decided to take the pass off the scanner as I was partway through, meaning I was stuck in the revolving door. Along with the unfortunate man behind behind me who had also got caught up in my brother's dodgy sense of humour.

We went for some lunch in the restaurant which cost about £4 each for  a full meal including dessert and a drink. It's subsidised by taxpayers y' see. We might not have enough money to get decent cleaners into hospitals but we do have enough to make sure that MPs don't have to pay full price for lunch.

After an hour or so my brother had to go back to work and so off we go. Where I promptly get stuck in another fucking revolving door because I didn't realise that pushing the stupid button once on the main door out will only let one person through. My how the well liveried doorman laughed. It's always nice to make someone else's afternoon more entertaining by making yourself look like an utter twat.

We then went off to the London Eye, the National Gallery (which appears to be full of pictures of either miserable looking people or naked fat birds) before heading off to the train to go home. And it was here that I found my new pet hate: People yelling into their mobiles on trains.

Will you for the love of god shut up

We got to our seats and sat down. In front of us was a German girl who seemed to belive that despite the phone clamped to her ear, she had to talk at the sort of volume that meant she could be heard on Berlin without the thing. Do you know how much I wanted to know all about Greta's new marketing deal and the meeting she'd just had with Graham? That's right, not at all but I wasn't given a choice as the dozy bint piffled on about precisely fuck all for 20 minutes until the signal cut out a little way from Euston. Just as I thought we were now in for some peace and quiet the pillock behind me decided that now would be a perfect time to ring everyone in his address book to talk about bugger all. And he was even louder than the German girl.

"ALRIGHT MATE, 'OW WAS THE FOOTIE ON SATURDAY? YEAH? FUCKING GREAT MATE. YEAH. 'AVE YOU GOT THE 2 PLY FOR RAISING THE DISHWASHER BECAUSE THEY'VE GOT A FUNERAL ON WEDNESDAY WEEK....BLAH BLAH BLAH.."

All this is uttered at a loud bellow. He's a large bloke with that kind of booming cockney voice that you usually see on town cryers during parades or sergeants on an army parade ground. After 40 minutes of contant phone calls I'm so annoyed that my teeth are beginning to itch. Mercifully at this point he decides to have a break from calling people to have a kip. The relief is short lived as it turns out he snores. Very very loudly, it sounds like an elephant with a head cold and it's grating along every single nerve I have. I put my iPod on to distract myself. No good, no matter how loud I put it on you can still hear him. Something has to be done. I'm British so I can't just poke him the chest and inform him that that the entire carriage is on the edge of their seat waiting for the next nasal eruption, that would be rude, the only thing I can do is to wake him up by some other means and the best way is, of course, a really loud fake sneeze. I let rip with a champion one, truly impressive and happy days, it works. He sits bolt upright and looks around, but what is this? His eyes are barely open and he's reaching for the fucking mobile phone again! For the love of god, nooooooo.......

He's off. And to add to the delight of this journey the German girl in front is back on hers as well. I'm beginning to have an inkling of what trench warfare did to the nerves as the two of them battle for supremacy in the volume stakes and I sit slumped down in my seat between the two of them, trying fruitlessly to combat the effects of auditory bombardment by reading the paper. Could things get any worse? Of course they could. In a brief lull between calls the train manager comes over the intercom to announce that there has been signalling failure in the Trent valley so we are being rerouted via Birmingham and will be running an hour behind schedule. Yep, that would be a whole extra hour of listening to Helga's tedious accounts of her life and Cockney Chap's excrutiating descriptions of work projects all delivered at a volume that would shake buildings. Fuckity fuck fuck.

By the time I got back to Manchester I was tired, hungry and my ears hurt. I am now going to write to Virgin trains and inform them that rather than having a quiet carriage where those who don't want to listen to people on the phone can go, they should have mobiles banned through the entire train apart from two 'noisy' carriages where all those inconsiderate twats that want to spend 3 hours bellowing pointless shite into phones can sit and yell over each other without annoying the rest of us. Now I remember why i don't do public transport - it's expensive, unreliable and I ALWAYS end up sat in front of, behind or next to a twat.  

Reading the news I stumbled across this little story about the government's balls. Apparently they have spent over £12000 in three years on their individually hallmarked balls. Good to know our hard earned taxes are being spent wisely eh?

Utter lying twat

It's not often that I am rendered almost speechless by the mendacious bullshit that flows daily and inexorably from the doors of Westminster but today I was directed to an article by the most entertaining Devil's Kitchen. The hatchet-faced, horn-toed witch that you see above is none other that our esteemed Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (for anyone who has been fortunate enough to miss her existence so far) and on Friday she took Labour's record for just making stuff up to a whole new level.

So, "what did the fragrant Ms Smith do that has got you so rattled?" I hear you ask. Well I'll tell you, On Friday Ms Smith announced although national ID cards are due to be rolled out in 2012, people are going to be able to pre-register for them because "I believe there is a demand, now, for cards - and as I go round the country I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long. I now want to put that to the test and find a way to allow those people who want a card sooner to be able to pre-register their interest as early as the first few months of next year."

Does she think we in this country are entirely fucking stupid? I think you'll find that the answer to this is a resounding 'yes'. The scheme is so bloody unpopular that the other 2 main parties in this country have announced they would scrap it altogether and the rumour is that the government have had to write clauses into the contracts awarded for the scheme that mean that should it all be dropped there wouldn't be punitive penalties to be paid. The fact is that the vast majority of people don't believe the scheme would work.

Those who support ID cards (all 6 of them plus the politicians who lift their policies wholesale form Orwell's '1984') argue that they will not be forgeable because they will use iris data that can't be forged. I say that's a shit argument. Does anyone know what the market value of an iris scanning device is? I don't but given that a plasma screen telly can cost you a few grand I'm willing to bet that they aren't cheap. So will your local benefits office have one? Nope. Will your bank have one? Nope. So as long as you can clone a genuine card and attach a different photo to it you'll still be able to claim benefits fradulently. So who will have the scanning devices? Police stations and airports. Fair enough but since the people who blew up London were British and the people who attempted to blow up Glasgow were in the country legally then an ID card wouldn't have prevented either of these events so I think it would be fair to say that the bastard things won't stop terrorism, at least it won't as long as people who live in this country continue to want to blow it up. Unless terrorists write 'Suicidal Jihadist Warrior' in the 'occupation' box on the form then they aren't going to get picked up via ID cards. And I'm not convinced that we have yet bred a terrorist stupid enough to do that.

So what is the point of ID cards? Your guess is as good as mine, it appears to be just another exercise in futile control-freakery from a desperate government that are gradually ramping up the measures until they are allowed to put a microchip in all our heads so that we can be traced, tracked and monitored wherever we go. The latest crackpot idea is that in order to get everybody registered for the ID cards, supermarkets will awarded contracts and will be taking details and fingerprints when you go to get your groceries so that everyone is processed in good time. No, you didn't just read that wrong. I would rather live off what I can scavenge from bins than allow a fucking supermarket to fingerprint me in return for allowing me the priviledge of spending money in their establishment.

ID cards are a horribly unpopular idea and for Ms Smith to announce that they are so popular that she will allow people to get one early because they can't wait is a blatant, obvious and frankly embarrassing attempt to save face from a Home Secretary who is on her arse politically. The public are gradually waking up to the measures the government are taking to try and control us and they aren't happy about it, especially since a number of the horrific measures have got little codicils added in that mean that they don't apply to MPs. So Jacqui, you keep telling yourself that people love your ID scheme, you've obviously got yourself fooled but don't for one nanosecond think that if you say it often enough WE will believe you. We aren't actually as fucking braindead as you think and come election time I sincerely hope we prove it.