Posts (page 2)

Sometimes someone really remarkable crosses your radar and today is one of those days. Courtesy of The Sun, which for some reason Vox won't let me link to today, I found the story below, about a man who gets the horn from cowshit. on the weird scale that rates as 'absolutely outstanding'.

 

 

A PERVERT who gets sexual thrills from manure was jailed after being caught pleasuring himself in a muck-spreader.

Weird David Truscott, 40, broke into a farm and covered himself in animal waste.

He then climbed into the spreader vehicle - and was found wearing rubber gloves and playing in the slurry for "sexual reasons". Truscott, of Camborne, Cornwall, was jailed for 16 weeks after admitting harassment.

Truro Magistrates' Court heard he was convicted of a previous offence at the same farm in Camborne in 2004.

At that time, the farmer came across a trough filled with dung and tissues scattered around. He then saw two hand prints and a "bottom print" where manure had been. Police who searched Truscott's home found 360 pairs of women's knickers and containers of liquid sludge and hard mud.

He was jailed for three years for burglary and arson after causing a blaze at the farm which killed a cow when he couldn't find manure to pleasure himself in.

He would walk into the farm to roll in manure and perform sex acts on himself before washing in a cattle trough. Once he entered a milking parlour to use a roll of industrial toilet tissue. He had stripped to his pants and climbed into a manure vat.

Police caught him carrying a bag full of underwear, women's trousers and firelighters. The farmer's wife and two children said they were "terrified".

The 2004 blaze caused damage costing £3,300. His lawyers said he was a "sad, isolated, peculiar man with peculiar habits" who "needed help".

 

"Sad, isolated, peculiar man with peculiar habits"? No shit. Smirk.

Today, the New York Daily News ran an editorial about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Which to be honest wouldn't usually rock my world because this story has been rumbling on for a while now and I've not got the longest attention span but the difference is that this particular editorial is not just taking a swipe at the weasels in charge, no, this one points the grenade squarely at the entire populace of Britain. And that's not on. So, why do I have a problem with this article? Let's take a look shall we?

It was Winston Churchill who asked in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, "What kind of people do they think we are?" And it is Gordon Brown who has given grounds to believe that today's British are a cowardly, unprincipled, amoral and duplicitous lot. Because he is all those.

Well that's a ridiculous statement for a start. The US President is black and was born in Hawaii. Does that mean all US citizens are black and were born in Hawaii? No, it doesn't. The US president believes that healthcare reform is needed. Do all Americans believe this? No, they do not. The British are like every other nation on earth, a populace made up of individuals, not a homogenous mass with a single set of characteristics and beliefs. To call the British cowardly, and unprincipled is not only inaccurate, it is also a shameless way to get a badly written and poorly researched editorial into the public eye.

Can he remain in power having been revealed as at least complicit in an atrocious miscarriage of justice and breach of faith. That will be up to the Brits, but on this side of the Atlantic Ocean it is inconceivable that an elected official would have a snowball's chance after sanctioning an oil-for-terrorist deal.

Brown has remained in power despite presiding over a massive recession and the running up of the biggest government debt since the second world war. I'm pretty sure that the release of a dying man under controversial circumstances, a decision that on the face of it wasn't his anyway, isn't going to have him out before the next election. While we're here, let's make something clear shall we? The Scottish Judiciary is not a UK wide entity, it deals solely with Scottish legal issues and it's decisions come from Holyrood not Gordon Brown. The decision was made by the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill and until any conclusive evidence comes out that proves otherwise perhaps we should accept Mr MacAskill's assertion that this was his decision. Ironically, this kind of blustering attack on the UK is the greatest favour that the author of the editorial could have done Gordon Brown. He's really very unpopular here but if there's one thing we don't like in the UK it's being told what to do by someone else. What makes a journalist think he has the right to tell the UK Prime Minister how to act? It's the very height of arrogance. As for the assertion that no official who has done anything dodgy in the name of oil would stand a chance of re-election in the US, I have one word for him - Bush.

Surely Brown can hardly survive the revalation that his government assured Libya that the Prime Minister did not want the Lockerbie bomber to die in prison, a message duly passed on to the Scottish official who released Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on "compassionate grounds".   

As I explained above, Brown has no power in this case, the Scottish Judiciary could have taken his opinion, that he didn't want Megrahi to die in a foreign prison and stuck two fingers up at him, deciding to keep him incarcerated and send him back in a box when it was all over. But they didn't. And since when was showing compassion to a dying man a sackable offence? Surely it shows a level of humanity that the bomber himself was lacking and places the compassionate individual on a higher moral plane than the man he is judging?

As for the 'special relationship' between the US and Britain, the storied alliance built on the resolve of World War II and carried on through Thatcher and Blair, through Iraq and Afghanistan: It is, in a word, gone. 

Yes, the special relationship survived the Thatcher years, when the IRA was mainly funded from the US, when millions of US dollars went into allowing terrorists to commit atrocities on British soil against British military personnel, political figures and innocent citizens. We in the UK knew that although the money was coming from donors in America, the average US citizen wouldn't support the blowing up of men, women and children in the UK and so the special relationship continued. It survived UK soldiers being dragged by our government into Iraq and Afghanistan because we were allies of the US and would fight alongside them. Yes, it survived all that but now we've gone and done something utterly reprehensible, something so unforgivable that the 70 year old relationship is in tatters - we didn't do what we were told. So, according to the journalist who wrote this article, the 'special relationship' is entirely based on the UK doing what the US wants rather than making it's own decisions. I don't believe for a moment that is what it's all about but if the guy is right and that's all it takes to end it then it wasn't a very strong or healthy relationship in the first place, was it?

Brown's maneuverings to get into the good graces of Libyan mass murderer Moammar Khadafy broke the bond between America and the Blessed Plot beyond his ability to repair it. That work will fall to someone else, someone who values human life more than commercial expediency, someone who is stalwart rather than a sneak, someone true to his pronouncements.

I can't begin to offer comment on any of this because quite what the 'blessed plot' is is a mystery to me. The only plot related issue I can seem to see here is that the author has quite clearly relinquished his grip on whichever one he once had and has entered the realms of bile-filled rambling by this point.

The US and the UK committed to imprisoning Megrahi in Scotland after the Libyan spy was convicted of blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the air over that country in 1998. The atrocity was a direct precursor of 9/11 and no one could have imagine that Brown - leader of a nation that too has been terror's target - would trash the pledge.

Leaving aside the fact that the article is so poorly copy edited that no one has picked up the fact Pan Am flight 103 actually got blown out of the air in 1988 not 1998, the author is right, they couldn't have predicted that Brown would trash the pledge at the time. This is because in 1988 he was some political junior whose party wasn't even in power and also because he didn't trash the pledge (assuming that by pledge he means the sentence Megrahi was given), the Scottish Justice Secretary did. The atrocity was 13 years before 9/11, which hardly makes it a direct precursor of 9/11 merely because the terrorists in both cases shared the same religion. Something that he might have picked up on if he'd bothered to check what year the Lockerbie bombing actually happened.

But Brown did trash the pledge and in the most revolting terms, letting it be know, it bears repeating, that he did not want Megrahi, author of of 270 murders, to die in prison. 

One more time for the procedurally challenged - BROWN DIDN'T TRASH ANYTHING. He just expressed his opinion and the Scottish Judiciary did the rest. It has been reported here that Brown did not say he didn't want Megrahi to die in prison, the opinion he actually expressed is that he didn't want him to die in a strange prison, i.e. a foreign prison. Which shows a compassion that to be honest, I didn't think he had in him. Megrahi's conviction was about to be appealed, it was shaky to say the least and under those circumstances I would have shared his opinion, not out of any disrespect for our American friends, some of whom I have chatted to through this blog and have found to be a diverse and intelligent bunch with a host of opinions and beliefs, but because I believe that we should be more compassionate than the terrorists we condemn. Otherwise we're no better. 

So Megrahi has returned to Libya a hero, perhaps dying of prostate cancer, perhaps not. Brown got his way and he will never outlive the stain.

Brown has power over a lot of things but not the reception that Megrahi received when he returned to Libya. Unlike certain journalists he does not appear to presume to tell the Libyans how they should behave. To claim that Megrahi doens't have prostate cancer is not only potentially libellous, it's also childish and utterly without basis. Megrahi has been examined by a number of doctors, some of whom have gone on the record to say that his cancer is terminal. What sort of mainstream newspaper allows it's journalists to go around spouting whatever they like without any proof just to try and score a pathetic point off a politician? Their editor ought to be ashamed. Brown did not 'get his way', he merely expressed an opinion and frankly, in this country the stain on his reputation caused by this comment is minor league compared to those caused by the economy, ill advised cabinet appointments, the expenses scandal and the rise of the nanny state.

Now I understand that opinions in the US are running high about Megrahi, some agree with it the decision, many don't but I would like to point out two very important issues to the author of this editorial, issues which may help him in his future career:

1) British legal and political decisions are taken by British politicians NOT foreign journalists. These politicians will consult experts in the field, their colleagues and very occasionally the British public. They will not consult a junior who writes poor editorials for a paper.

2) Research is key. If you are going to be outraged at the release of a terrorist then firstly check what year the atrocity occured in and secondly the process by which he was released, making a careful note of who was responsible. Otherwise you run the risk of merely making yourself look like a rabid fool who is writing tabloid trash insulting other nations in a bid to make get your own name into the spotlight. And for the record I think you're wrong, I believe that the relationship between the US and the UK will continue, perhaps slightly differently, perhaps on altered terms but as for it being broken? I don't think so.

If anyone wants to see the article it and related comments it can be found at http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/09/02/2009-09-02_brown_the_betrayer_britains_sellout_prime_minister_has_broken_faith_and_ties_wit.html  and in case someone realises that they've cocked up what year the bombing happened and alters it, I'd like to state that on 3rd Sep at 1.30pm it very definately said 1998, not 1988. 

Anyone who has ever driven in the UK or is unfortunate enough to have to commute in this country will have no doubt noticed that there are several different categories of people who drive over here and they can usually be identified by their car. So, let's have a look a few of them shall we?

 

 

Mrs Fearful

You'll notice her because she's only sat two inches from the windscreen, she's sweating slightly, she's driving at 21mph and she looks like she's been left in control of an angry stallion. Which is ironic really considering her car has virtually no horsepower at all. She's gripping the steering wheel like a lifebelt with both hands because she knows full well that these small cars are tricky little devils and that if you break concentration for a moment, or remove one hand to change the radio station, the malevolent vehicle will spin round 90 degrees to the right and plant you into a tree. If Mrs Fearful is on the motorway, she will be in the middle lane driving at 55mph and being undertaken by 18 wheelers. There may well be a collection of cuddly toys on the parcel shelf which jars a bit because no woman in her 50s has any place playing with cuddly toys. After 20 minutes stuck behind her on a B road you'll be ready to drag her out of her car and strangle her with the seatbelt.

She will be driving: A Toyota Yaris or a Nissan Micra.

 

 

 

Chav-Boy

You'll hear this idiot coming a good few minutes before you see him, thanks to the fact that the boot cavity is filled with sub woofers and so everyone in a 4 mile radius is being treated to the aural delight that is his happy hardcore collection. When the car eventually comes into view you'll be surprised by the fact that Ford didn't realise that what their Focus was missing was an exhaust the size of an industrial drainage pipe and the kind of bodykit that's going to leave him stranded on the top of all but the tiniest speed hump like a dachshund on a log. There's no way round it, he drives like a twat, most probably because he is a twat. Red lights are no object to Chav-boy, he's not bothered if he gets three points on his licence because he hasn't got a licence. Or insurance. Or ownership papers for the car. Your best survival techique when around Chav-boy in the car is to let him do his dangerous overtaking move because frankly he's a fuck sight safer where you can see the gormless little tit.

He will be driving: something smallish that he's tried to make look like a Suburu by removing all the badges and adding a ridiculous spoiler and huge exhaust. As if the general public can't recognise a Corsa when they see one, even if it has been pimped to within an inch of its life.

 

 

Chav-Girl

Chav-girl's car is instantly recognisable, not only because it's bright pink but also because it's the one driving down both lanes of the road, as chav-girl's lane discipline isn't quite what it might be. Chav-girl for some reason best known to herself, thinks the Playboy bunny is the coolest logo in town and so her car has a big, pink playboy bunny on the bonnet and a 'playgirl on board' sticker in the back window. Why anyone wants to emulate a group of bimbos whose claim to fame is that they pose in the buff and aspire to sleeping with a man who makes your grandfather look like a spring chicken is anyone's guess but Chav-girl does. That's why she has the matching Playgirl handbag and watch too. Her steering wheel and seats have pink furry covers on and the overwhelming cloud of knock off perfume and air freshener combined within the interior would be enough to render a less hardy individual unconscious. It's certainly enough to put off any would-be car thief who hadn't been put off by the fact that the vehicle is a fucking awful colour. Your best survival technique would be to give Chav-girl a wide berth because she isn't actually watching the road or the other traffic, she's putting more lipgloss on in the rear view mirror and trying to find her Rihanna CD on the floor.

She will be driving: A Nissan Micra or Ford Ka, custom sprayed to a level of pink that makes your eyes bleed.

 

 

 

 

Mr Arsehole

Make no mistake, this is the biggest wanker you're going to meet on the road. Or anywhere else for that matter. He's in something corporate and in his head, he's the greatest thing ever to walk the earth. He's in a big car and as we all know, the highway code states that anyone in a big car can do whatever the fuck they like, including parking in disabled parking spaces and tailgating smaller vehicles. At least that's how Mr Arsehole remembers it anyway. If you're expecting him to indicate then you're in for a disppointment - it isn't his job to let you know what he's going to do, it's your job to just get the fuck out of the way, he is, after all, on his way to somewhere far more important than you, obviously. If the road is blocked by parked cars and there's only one lane available, don't expect him to give way to you, if you expect this to happen and move forward then your car is going to be spending the next month having the wing rebuilt. He gives way to no man and certainly no woman. Mr Arsehole is married but is sleeping with his PA. He thinks he's the greatest lover ever to grace a seedy hotel but secretly she wonders whether it might not be less miserable to just save up and buy Louboutin heels and matching handbags herself. His wife is just grateful that she doesn't have to do this particular chore any more and chuckles quietly to herself at his mistaken belief he's being discreet while enjoying the spectacle of the sad prat making a tit of himself. Again. You'll recognise Mr Arsehole on the motorway because if you're in the fast lane he'll be the cockgoblin parked on your bumper, flashing his lights and waving his arms. Much fun can be had on roads by waiting till he does this and then slowing right down to 20mph while watching what shade of red his head goes in your rear-view mirror.

He will be driving: A large BMW or a Range Rover Sport which is about as likely to ever do anything off-road as I am to walk up Everest in a bikini and a pair of Jimmy Choos.  

 

We have got Sky. The idea of Sky had been broached by Mr Vicola but I believed I had made my belief that Sky is the TV viewing option of Satan perfectly clear. Apparently not, because it was installed in the house when I arrived at home after work. We are now the proud possessors of 15 squillion channels of mindless, pixellated entertainment. If I really felt the urge, I could watch a whole day of sci-fi weirdness or soppy Mills and Boon style romance. Currently Mr Vicola is engrossed by a man who is talking about who built the Sphinx, happy days. I am slightly concerned that Mr Vicola may lose the ability to speak altogether after having Sky for a few months and I'm fairly sure that there's some sort of evil message being beamed into the subconscious of Sky subscribers by the Dark Lord Murdoch. I don't know what his plan is yet but  it could well have something to do with taking over the world. I'm onto him though and I refuse to be suckered in by 24 hour availability of murder mysteries...

In other nonsense, today has been spent lamenting the gross stupidity of the halfwitted muppets in the Debenhams warehouse. My grandmother bought us some lovely glasses from Debenhams as a wedding present. That was three years ago and being the clumsy pair of oafs that we are, we've managed to break some of them over that time so I decided to go onto the Debenhams website and order some more tumblers and some more wine glasses. The tumblers arrived without a problem but the wineglasses are proving more problematic. Now I don't know about you but I wouldn't have thought that taking a box of fragile wine glasses, putting them in a plastic bag then slinging them in a sack with a load of other stuff with delivery was the way forwards. Apparently the same thought didn't occur to whichever partially trained monkey was dealing with my order because the glasses arrived, in their plastic bag, in many tiny little shards. So I sent them back with the courier and rang Debenhams to inform them of this unfortunate incident. They were very apologetic and assured me that this shouldn't have happened and another pack of glasses woudl be sent out immediately, in a more glass-friendly package. Little did I know that by 'glass friendly package' they actually meant  new plastic bag' because the new pack of glasses arrived today, in exactly the same packaging and even more pieces than the last one. Good work Debenhams. So that's £40 of glasses plus delivery costs on 2 packages that they have wasted because someone in their warehouse is too stupid to work out that if thin glass is flung round the back of a van without adequate padding, it will break. Honestly, how hard is it to work out really? I'mthinking that perhaps the warehouse requires a new packaging policy, preferably not one drawn up by someone with more toes than functioning brain cells. Perhaps I'll just do a trawl round the stores instead.

I would just like to ask all the nice Voxers out there to keep their fingers and toes crossed for Father of Vicola who is today having surgery on blocked arteries in an attempt to restore the blood supply to his foot and allow him to walk further than 10 paces again. Thank you for your assistance!!

This week has brought us a proliferation of wankers, from the family in Scotland who are so fat that the council are paying minders to stop them from eating blocks of lard to the latest bonkers offering from the harpy formally known as 'Lady Mills-McCartney'. However beating them all by a country mile is the charming Anjem Choudary, everyone's favourite fanatical jihadist.

 

 

Before we get into what Choudary has done this week to bring him the honour of 'wanker of the week', let's have a little look at his previous actions, many of which are also worthy of mention.

Choudary is an extremist who seems to believe that his calling in life is to wage holy war against the infidel and bring us all global Islamic Jihad. Lucky us eh? He claims that "People here are living in anarchy. There's a rape every minute. Islam has the answer to everything". Well indeed, because we all know that there are no rapes at all in Islamic countries, ever. And if there's 1 every minute here then that makes a grand total of 524160 per year. In my 29 years that's a whopping great 15,200,640 rapes so clearly either I should go out less because in the next 5 years my number is going to come up or he's plucked a random figure out of thin air because he's got no fucking idea how many rapes there are in this country. I'd lay a fiver that it's less than in Saudi Arabia but unlike Choudary I'm not going to state that as a fact because I don't know for sure.

Choudary has been recruiting soldiers for his lovely Jihadist war on the streets of London (because obviously his contribution to Jihad is best done in the comfort of the centrally heated office, rather than from a scratty, flea-ridden tent in the shit-hills of Afghanistan. After all, Jihad may be important but a man needs his creature comforts doesn't he?). One of his recruits was interviewed about his meeting with Choudary and his conversion to Islam by the Daily Mail and had this to say for himself, "I'd already gone off pork and I had my last drink on holiday in Cyprus last year, just one pint. Michael Jackson's death to me was a sign". So as you can see, we should really be alarmed because Choudary clearly targets the brightest and best to play Jihad Joe, the ones with robust mental health and a true sense of what's important. This little chap goes on to say that sharia law would bring fear into the UK and this would be a good thing because "If there is no fear, people just act on their whims, drinking alcohol and taking drugs and having sex". Imagine that, people having a drink and having sex, it's like a party in Satan's front room over here, it really is. No one in countries ruled by Sharia law ever has sex, it would seem. I'll be honest, I'm not convinced Jihad Joe has really thought this through. But then I suppose those recruited by Choudary and his like aren't meant to think are they? They're just supposed to do as they're told.

Choudary's recruits don't believe in letting work get in the way of Jihad, or for that matter, Loose Women and re-runs of Diagnosis Murder. Choudary himself is living off benefits, despite being a fully qualified lawyer and his recruits are taught that is is their Muslim duty to claim benefits and make no contribution to the 'enemy' British state. Perhaps the rules on claiming benefits in the UK are mentioned in the bit of the Koran that I skipped. Now again, I'm not convinced this has been thought through. Leaving aside the fact that everytime they buy anything they are paying VAT which goes straight to the Treasury and the 'enemy' British state, their aim is to bring in radical Islam and stop women from being educated and taking jobs. Since approximately 70% of British women work either full or part time in paid employment this would automatically reduce the amount of tax being paid to the treasury by a vast amount and mean that the welfare state would no longer be sustainable. So Choudary and his beardy-weirdy followers would have to actually get up off the sofa and get a proper job. That is assuming that the UK hadn't already descended into a piss-pot backwater like Afghanistan. Hard-liners know a lot about Jihad and what benefits they are entitled to but don't seem to be that hot on running a national economy. Plus they don't seem like working. Obviously there aren't any Jihad rules about sitting on your arse all day watching daytime telly.

It's not just our morals that Choudary has put in the firing line, nope, our festivals are also a no-no. Apparently our yuletide festivities are 'the pathway to hellfire'. Who knew? Ooops. He goes on to explain that "Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas because its observance will lead to hellfire. Protect your Paradise from being taken away - protect yourself and your family from Christmas". So I'll take that as a 'no' to the last slice of christmas pudding shall I?

It's possible that the delightful Mr Choudary may soon be silenced by the authorities as he's apparently being investigated by the police for demanding that gays be stoned to death (that's assuming that he doesn't get taken out by a Catholic fanatic as the Catholic brethren wasn't that amused by his call for the Pope to be executed due to his 'insults to Islam'). Still, before drifting out of the limelight and becoming just another benefit-scrounging soap-dodger, or worse, actually having to spend the day working instead of planning international jihad, Choudary has managed to pull a blinder by demanding that the Queen be tried for genocide and the extermination of a nation.  Now being a lawyer he should know that the queen is classed as sovereign and is therefore immune from prosecution but even if she weren't, I would have an issue with his assertion that she 'applauds her sons and daughters to go and massacre hundreds and thousands of innocent people'. As the Head of the Armed Forces is she not supposed to support them? I must have missed the conflict where the aim was to 'go and massacre hundreds of thousands of innocent people' but I'm sure if I asked, Mr Choudary could put me straight. As long as I was wearing a burqa, asked permission to speak first and didn't leave the kitchen.

So there we are, Anjem Choudary, benefit-scrounger, jihadist, terrorist recruiter and all round asshole. Please come and collect your 'Wanker of the Week' award - you've just about got time to get here and back to yours before 'Murder She Wrote' starts....

In a slight deviation from the usual 'Wanker of the Week', today I thought I'd venture into new territory and explore the sparkly, happy territory of the terminally optimistic, the folk who despite the fact that the waters of shit creek are up to their knees and rising fast, refuse to break out the canoe and man the oars because hey, things really aren't that bad are they?

And so I bring you:

 

Baroness Ford, the woman in charge of 'The legacy of the 2012 London Olympics', a job equal in stature and prospects as that of Gordon Brown's PR manager and Cherie Blair's wardrobe assistant. By rights she should be milking her expenses in anticipation of being unceremoniously fired when it inevitably turns out that £9bn of tax payers money has been pissed up the wall and we've been left with a fortnight's worth of boring athletics and a large yet useless stadium, a la 'Millenium Dome', however the Baroness has chosen to go down the route of blind optimism leaving me unable to decide whether she's a naturally sunny individual or a halfwit.

Apparently we were always going to be left with a 'world class stadium' but what she has done is 'opened the book around the other kind of value we can add to this stadium'. Nope. I've no idea what she's on about either.

The stadium was going to be scaled down from 80,000 to 25,000 seats after the games but the Baroness, in conjunction with Tessa Jowell (who holds the prestigious title of Olympics Minister and who is clearly depriving a village somewhere of its idiot as long as she remains in Westminster) have decided that the stadium should remain inordinately large in case 'we win the world cup bid'. Marvellous thinking ladies, I shall be stocking up on 12 ft chandeliers and butlers in case 'I win the Euromillions'. According to the Baroness 'Tessa and I agree that it is more important that we have a stadium built as an attraction'. Now leaving aside the fact that if Tessa Jowell agreed it was a good idea it's a fair sign that it's a shit idea, a stadium isn't an attraction in itself unless is is 2000 years old. People don't visit Old Trafford because they like a big round building with some seats inside, they come because they are interested in Manchester United. A concept that has gone flying past Tessa and the Baroness like an Aston Martin overtaking a Robin Reliant.

She would also like to create a permanent Olympic museum with a sporting hall of fame, an idea that is wildly optimistic given that we are absolutely shite at sport, or at the sports anyone gives a toss about anyway. We do ok in the equestrian events and the sailing, the ones that no one who doesn't ride or sail can name a single competitor in. Occasionally we have a decent swimmer but we're going to struggle to fill a whole Hall of Fame with 3 people. Oh, and I think we might be ok at cycling. Hardly a display of gargantuan sporting prowess.

I think however that my personal favourite comment from the Baroness would be her thoughts on the future of the Olympic park, "I think it will become a bit like Central Park in New York - beloved of New Yorkers but also a fantastic magnet for visitors to the city". Absolutely, I can see everyone in London trailing themselves to the arsehole of the East End in order to sit in a park overshadowed by a socking great stadium, which will no doubt be unused and crumbling as no one in business (the people they are hoping will take on this place when the games are finished) really requires an 80,000 seater stadium. After all, there's a reason why offices have roofs and what the hell else can you do with an 80,000 stadium other than kit it out with phones use it as an al-fresco call centre? Central Park is popular because it is, erm, Central. And it's huge. And it's the only decent sized green space in the city. It's also not managed by a British local authority which means it has facilities that work and isn't knee deep in litter, dog shit and park keepers who bollock you if you have a camera in your hand on the off chance that you might be a pervert.  

So, Baroness Ford, optimist with flair and vision or overpaid halfwit who has been put in charge of a giant white elephant because no one else was willing to pick up the poisoned chalice? You decide..... 

I've just noticed that I've been away from here for quite a while. That's because I went to Perpignan for week and was going to tell all the lucky people out there about my holiday but then this week happened and it all went out of the window. This time last week I'd just got back from holiday but it feels like about 4 million years ago. So, what went tits up this week? I'll tell you....

Swine Flu

Up until Monday our office had managed to remain swine flu free. An estimator had had a suspected case but had stayed at home and all had been well. N, my colleague who is 2 offices down from me had just got back from Spainand was on his first day back. As I walked past, he was sat at his desk coughing, looking like 17 different shades of shit and sweating like a cheese in the sunshine. As I walk past he informs me that his daughter has just got over swine flu and he thinks he might have it because he feels really ill and woke up in the night with a raging temperature. WHAT? And despite this you brought your germ ridden arse into the office to share your vile plague with the rest of us? Are you fucking nuts? Don't get me wrong, I'm as against skiving as the next person but for fuck's sakes, if you've got the goddamed plague stay at home you gormless pillock because I've no wish to get it. At 11am he decided that he had to go home and proceeded to cough all over his hands then leave the office, touching every doorrelease button and door handle on the way out. Well done that man, clearly cross-infection is a term he is not familiar with. I spent the rest of the day opening doors with my sleeve over my hand and trying not to breathe in as I walked past his office. Bloody plague-carrier. In the middle ages prats like him were responsible for wiping out entire villages and if I now get swine flu I'm going to make it my personal mission to piss on the rest of his year.

Exam

The main problem with N being off work is that I then got the urgent bits of his work to deal with, including the preparation for the massive site audit that his site had on Thursday. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem but I'd remembered at the weekend that I had an exam this morning and so had been planning to spend the week doing fuck all work, just reading the earth-shatteringly dull file on 'Environmental management' that I needed for the exam. Let's just say that my revision was minimal. So I get to this morning and start looking up bits and pieces ready for the exam that starts at noon, in the hope that the extra 3 hours of revision before the exam will get me through. Only the computer screen freezes up completely. So I get the IT department out to tel me why, expectnig it to be just  little problem,only it's not, the problem is that the hard drive is, to use a technical term, utterly fucked. And my password and login to access the exam that I now can't get at is stored in an email I now can't read. Splendid. Just what I needed. The IT guy scrabbles around for a while and eventually manages toget me the laptop that I'm typing this on, the oldest, slowest, grubbiest laptop I've ever seen. Seriously, each key is grey with dirt except for a little black bit on the top where fingers have hit them and you have to very carefully and very firmly press each key in order to make it function. The space bar only works sporadically. The M key has to be hit with the force usually used to remove the eyes of assailants in order to use it and Microsoft Explorer keeps experiencing a problem and having to close. 

On the plus side, a friend of mine has just bought the house that a little while ago me and Mr Vicola were looking at.His surveyor has come up with a couple more problems than we spotted, such as the fact that the front and back elevations need rebuilding, the roof is buggered and the granny flat/ extension breaches a covenant in the deeds and will most likely have to be flattened. As well as the fact that the most effective way of dealing with the interior would be to use napalm and then rebuild. 2 words - lucky escape. Perhaps there is someone looking out for me up there after all.... 

Once again I find myself having to deal with the useless sacks of merde that are the DVLA. The reason is this:

My parents own a nursing home and so they had a Peugeot 307 that was a motability car for three years. At the end of this 3 years they had the option to buy the Peugeot so they did, and passed it on to me in return for me passing my Harlot Scarlet Fiesta on to my brother. Which all sounds relatively simple but of course a change of owner means dealing with the DVLA and as we all know, they don't do simple.

The tax disc on the Peugeot said disabled so after a long conversation with the DVLA monkey in Swansea, it was ascertained that I had to change the tax disc because I'm not disabled. Fair enough. So off I trundle to the Post Office with my new keepers slip (not the registration documents because they take 300 years or so to process apparently), the insurance documents and the MOT certificate. I pass them to the man in the Post Office and he looks at me blankly then asks me for an 'exemption certificate'. No idea what that is so he explains that to get a new disabled tax disc I need an exemption certificate. I explain to him that I don't want to new disabled tax disc, I want a not-disabled tax disc. He then tells me I can't do that because the new keepers slip has the car down as tax classification 'disabled' and so I can't retax it until either the new documents come in or I've been to the DVLA office in person to re-licence the car and until that point I must take it off the road. Resisting the urge to ask how the fuck I get to the DVLA office if I've had to take the car off the road I stomp out of the post office to ring the DVLA monkeys again. Who confirm that yes, I do need to come to their office to relicence the car and buy a tax disc and no, it's not a good idea to attempt to do the whole thing by post. And yes, by strange coincidence the DVLA office is only open during the exact same hours I'm meant to be in work. Fucking great, so now I have to book a half day holiday because despite the fact that we can put a man in space and can track virtually anyone on the planet wherever they may go, the DVLA is entirely incapable of operating online and still requires an office full of pen-pushers armed with biros.

So I set off to find the DVLA office. After much swearing and wrong turning I eventually find the bastard building and joy of joys, there's only 20 parking spaces which are all full apart from a tiny looking three quarter space that no one has dared attempt to enter. I decide to take the chance and begin my manoeuvre. Turns out, the car park was rather smaller and more badly designed than I had first thought because soon I'm wedged between someone else's car and some sort of rusty looking metal post. After ten minutes of desperately trying to get out of this jam I lose my temper and reverse back as hard as I can, flattening the post and denting the car bumper. Take that you bastard article. Despite the dent which I clearly don't have the money to get fixed, I feel a small sense of satisfaction looking at the post, which is now lying under my newly parked car. I smirk at it for a moment or so then head off into the office where I discover exactly why the public sector is so bloated.

The system in there is this: First you go to 'check in', where you explain your motor related issue to one of the 5 bored looking people chewing a biro behind a desk. There is quite a queue for check in because none of the staff are exactly exerting themselves and half the people in the queue don't speak any English. Once I'd spoken to a check in person who had filled in some bits of a form I was sent to a little desk with instructions to fill in my details and then take my form to the 'Preparation helpdesk' to ensure that I'd done it properly.  My issue with that is this: If you are too stupid to fill in a simple form correctly then clearly you should not be left in charge of nearly a tonne of moving metal. If however the form is so complicated that it requires a trained operative to ensure that it's filled in correctly then surely the form should be simplified because it's overly complex. Anyway, once the bored looking man with BO had checked my form was correct and that I had managed to accurately remember what my name was and fill it in, then it was off to 'check out' where a raft of people sat waiting to pay for things while 7 or 8 DVLA staff sat behind perspex screens doing fuck all and staring at the ceiling fan because they weren't allowed to actually take any payment and get people the hell out of there until the automated voice had called out a ticket number. God forbid that any of them should rebel and just get on with some work without being told exactly when to do it, democracy may crumble around our ears and the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse may arrive. Assuming they can find a parking space of course. Eventually my number is called and I am able to leave my seat and the fascination of watching the nits in the hair of the man sat next to me moving about. I pay my money, am issued with a tax disc and off I go.

Now can anyone tell me why that needs to be so god-damned complicated? Because I can't figure it out at all.