Relax: there’s nothing to it

No need to worry about anti-Semmitism in Corbyn Labour. It’s all a smear concocted by his enemies, according to one of his ladyfriends, and something that only beggars believe.

Relax: there’s nothing happening

How do we know when it’s a reassuringly no-news day? The morning paper’s front page is all about Pippa’s father-in-law. Someone whose identity does not spring readily to mind.

Incompetent government

The nasty bastards in the Cabinet Office had their heads banged together and the government had to do a U-turn to give the people who received contaminated blood products from the NHS a ration of legal aid for the coming public inquiry.
    Never would have happened if decisions of this sort were made by people with more than 1.5 brain cells.

No hardship

A ban on plastic drink strirrers? Doesn’t bother me. I never consume plastic drinks, stirred or unstirred. I’d much rather have cider with crême de cassis.

Is this what they call progress?

Someone gave me a Polo mint yesterday. Is it my imagination or are they now half the depth they used to be, top to bottom, with a hole twice the original diameter?

Much more inventive

Back in the good old days of hot metal in the newspaper industry, when casual workers could clock on under an assumed name, take a cash payment and not bother about income tax, some of them used to sign in as Mickey Mouse. Not inventive, not credible but two-fingers at the system that let them get away with it.
    In an episode of Ironside on one of the digital channels last night, I noticed that the cast included someone with the name Burr Denning. There’s imagination for you!

Justices censored

Why will you never see a selfie of a judge blind drunk in his pants with his mates? Because putting pix of any kind on FaceBuk, etc., is now a sacking offence.

New on the menu #8

Eggs MI5 – You get average service and an average meal, but at you do get to eat, even if the waiters look a bit foreign, because the owner works for the Russians and he went to school with the head of MI5.

Eggs Milosevich – If you’re not a Serb, don’t expect to make it out of the restaurant alive.

Costly hassle

The number of times a family moves house has dropped by one-half in the last decade. Maybe the fact that it’s supposed to cost ten grand in fees of one sort or another and disruption has something to do with it. Maybe people have better things to do with £10,000 than move to somewhere else.

Not the one to point a finger

Predictably, Manchester’s tinpot mayor, Burnham, had a pop at the uselessness of the local fire brigade after the Manchester Arena bombing. Maybe the Stafford Hospital Guy thinks we’ve forgotten about all the people who died of neglect there during his watch as health minister when he was a member of the Blair government.

On TV last night . . .

Disasters That Changed Britain: James Nesbitt
    With billing like that, maybe he needs a change of agent!

Status quoed!

Surprise! The original globe with the Microsoft squares is back in place of a button with Start written on it in the bottom-left corner of my Windows 7 desktop. Was it an outbreak of Windows Alzheimer’s which did the swap yesterday?

Unwanted intrusion

Why does my venerable PC’s venerable edition of Window 7 Pro have a new-format Start button today? I certainly don’t remember asking for the change or giving my permission for it to happen.

Mad or just bad?

Are politicians and civil servants mentally ill? It would appear so if they can enforce diversity one minute and then the EU’s harmony directives (the denial of diversity) the next with equal enthusiasm.
    And yet, both diversity and harmony let politicians and civil servants do what they like to do best: namely, make other people do what they don’t want to do, and say no, the others can’t do the things they want to do.
    Conclusion? Politicians and civil servants are just evil.

Wrong target

What is the point of fining NHS trusts millions of pounds because people have died as a result of the failings of the medical and administrative staff? It merely inflicts millions of pounds of misery by deprivation on the people in the areas served by the Trust. The government moving cash from one pocket to another never solves anything.

Bozo is as bozo does

That was a terribly dull finish to the Aussie GP after Vettel pulled off his legal swindle during the virtual safety car period. So why did the idiot at Sky get all shouty as the procession crossed the finish line?
    The screens, nurse, the screens.

Common sense

A couple of pages later in the Sunday Post, Mad Mandy was asking why her 80-year-old mother had to give her date of birth to get a FaceBuk page. The simple response is that she shouldn’t have. The rule is that you never, ever give real data about yourself to an online company.
    I was pleased, and also surprised, that Mandy also got there eventually. Sort of.

Medical miracle

Only female mosquitos bite humans, today’s Sunday Post told me. Which means that all we have to do is get them to identify as male and no more malaria!

Time-waster

What is the point of sticking the logos and cute cartoon clips of half a dozen production companies in front of a feature-length film? No one cares, no one takes any notice of them and  no one remembers them when they stop viewing as the credits roll.

Headlines of the future, No. 83

Russians Win Rigged World Cup Final (how much did it cost them?)

More diversity

Someone else who’s trying to fix things is Harridan Harperson, who wants to ensure that the next Labour party leader is a woman so that they can neutralize some of the Tories’ bragging rights. She wants to do it with an all-female candidate list. But to be PC, it would have to include any blokes who choose to pretend to be female for as long as the election process lasts. That would be fun to watch!

Easy meat for Louis?

Not enough diversity in Formula One, Lewis Hamilton reckons. Translation: he’s getting old and slow, and he wants to win more championships against inexperienced drivers from around the world by playing the diversity card. Ever thought of going into politics, Lewis?

Smarter than the average dictator

Putin the Poisoner is less intelligent than Adolf Hitler was, a professor at Aberdeen U. has concluded. Hitler, the prof. maintains, would never have thought it a good idea to poison someone in London a few months before the German Olympics in 1936.

Odd concept

De La Rue thinks it can sue the government for failing to award it the contract for making the carcases of the new, blue passports. Whilst they do have a point; other governments do the same; we’re still entitled to ask ‘on what grounds?’ That De La Rue has a divine right to set aside the standard EU blind tendering process?
    “Competitive tendering, but not as we know it, Jim.”

Spot the difference

What’s the difference between Putin’s World Cup and Hitler’s Olympic Games? Russia doesn’t have a Leni Riefenstahl.

He’s your Nazi

If the ‘Russian people’ are feeling insulted by those who are comparing the World Cup which their president bought to Adolf Hitler’s Olympic Games as a propaganda tool, then they have only themselves to blame for voting for Putin the Poisoner.

How stoopid do they think we are?

Does anyone buy all these touchy-feely TV ads the banks are putting out? The two Nationwide girls with the electric piano, the backwards Barclays kid and the Post-It on the foreheads for Lloyds Bank? On our side? There for us? The organizations which went bust spectacularly, with Gordon F. Broon’s help, back in 2008 and had to be propped up by the taxpayer or dodgy foreigners? The outfits which inflicted upon us PPI scams and GKW else? Yeah, right!

Yet more kettles

The outraged Africans are still at it: the ones who come here, enjoy the benefits of a British education and life here, then start jumping up and down and moaning about the slave trade to get themselves noticed. I think we’re entitled to ask just who they are.
    If they’re from Africa, they’re the descendants of Africans who rounded up members of other tribes (or their own) and sold them to the highest bidder. Which means that exploitation is in the genes of the moaners.
    And if they’re from Africa, they have enjoyed the benefits of all the cash which went to the Dark Continent to pay for the slaves; which their ancestors sold, they didn’t give them away for nothing. And also the benefits (and drawbacks) of contact with more advanced civilizations.
    Maybe the people at whom they’re pointing blood-stained fingers should stand up and remind them that no one likes a hypocrite.

Is this for real??!!

The story of the woman killed in Arizona by an Uber car, which was being driven by its computer, is getting seriously weird. The non-playing, unsafety driver is an armed robber, who did time in gaol and who is now ‘identifying’ as a woman. And the case for the defence is that the dead woman leapt out in front of the car and she’s a homeless junkie, so she doesn’t count.

A name but no pack-drill

I was reflecting yesterday on the perils, or lack of them, associated with naming a TV character after the central character. Taggart rattled on for many seasons after the actor who played D.I. Taggart was called to the Great Green Room in the Sky. And elsewhere in digital heaven (on the Alibi channel), Dangerfield is there without the man himself.

“Safety, but not as we know it, Jim.”

A woman was killed in Arizona by a driverless car, despite the presence of a ‘safety driver’ behind the wheel. The words ‘teapot’ and ‘chocolate’ come to mind.

Royal Slush

That’s the editor of the Daily Mail permanently off the honours list for doing what looks like a thorough sleazing of Prince Chuck. I say ‘looks like’ because, like most Mail readers, I glanced at the over-excited headlines and didn’t bother with the morass. But it looks like they haven’t done him any favours.
    BTW, Anton Dec also got a good going over in the Mail, but I guess any publicity is publicity.

Well-lunched looney lefties

Why does everyone think old Corbyn is a Kremlin stooge? Not because of the constant pro-Putin the Poisoner whines but because the BBC used an image of him wearing a black lumberjack hat in Red Square. And although there are lots of other pictures around of him wearing the same hat, the Labour apologists are claiming that the BBC superimposed the hat on a picture of Corbyn. Sounds like they had about 10 pints too many in the pub before they came up with that line of BS!

Don’t bother

The experts are getting excited over a new male Pill. But why? The old one makes the men who take it fat and gives them acne. What more effective contraceptive could there be than this combination?

Job opportunities in the Middle East

Watching the MotoGP event in Qatar this afternoon, the fans were pleased to see that there were still grid girls holding umbrellas over the competitors. Looks like the HUTAgonians of Formula One haven't noticed them yet. They’re bound to kick up a stink when they do!

Resign, you git!

Transport Minister H. Yousaf is alleged to have visited Dumfries and Galloway. But ‘no one would have seen him under the burka’, quipped Labour councillor J. Dempster, which is genuinely funny.
    Yousaf responded with a hissy fit and called the remark outrageous and indefensible, and demanded Cllr. Dempsey’s resignation. But if anyone should resign, it’s Yousaf for being a HUTAgonian prick with no sense of humour.
    Extreme stupidity at this level is usually the province of the Labour lot. Someone should have a quiet word with Yousaf and let him know that people expect Tories to be grown-ups.

Bloody hell, mans!

You don’t half hear a load of tripe in TV adverts, but ‘sustainable tomatoes’? As heard in a Hellman’s ad. Is there any other sort?

Novelty, please

What we really need are some new weather clichés. How about ‘tarantual rain’? When it’s coming down like big, hairy spiders?

Singleton events

Something captured by me this morning whilst passing someone else, who was watching a recording of a WW event which was on TV yesterday: “Nasty collision of both superstars”.
    Can you have a one-person collision? If you can have the sound of one hand clapping, I suppose you can.

Call me the Snow Man

I had to go out this morning. The sun was shinking and there was a derisory bit of snow blowing around when I left the Mansion. I returned in the teeth of a blizzard driven by an east wind, which was gusting at gale force. Of course, the blizzard stopped minutes after I was safely indoors and the sun came out again.
    A neighbour’s cat strolled in to be nosy when I went out. She missed the blizzard completely. The sun was shining and the snow was off when she left to continue her rounds. Maybe they should let cats do weather forecasts.

New on the menu #7

Eggs KGB – There is a bug in your meal but you’re too scared to mention it.

Eggs Mafia – If you don’t like Italian food, don’t expect to make it out of the restaurant alive.

A Question of Whine

Who’s the bigger whinger, Putin the Poisoner, who doesn’t like being outed for the Salisbury job, or Corbyn the Apologist, who doesn’t like people noticing that he never has a bad word to say about Putin the Poisoner?

Understanding the world of PR, No. 31

“We are unable to comment as legal proceedings are ongoing.”
    Translation: “We’re crap and we know it, but we’re not going to change.”

One in, one out

As far as the ONS additions to the basket of goods which it uses to make a guess at inflation go: I buy just one of the new ten: raspberries (frozen, by the way). This is almost balanced by the one item I buy from the list of nine items which got the bullet: individual pork pies.

New on the menu #6

Eggs Saddam Hussein – The entire staff of the only restaurant for miles is executed for living in the same city as a failed assassin and the place is shut down, so you go hungry.

Eggs Karl Marx – You are arrested for exploiting the masses and sent to Siberia before your meal arrives.

Inflation-booster

The Chancellor is trying to give inflation a boost with an action replay of the not-so-great decimalization scam. He wants to abolish copper coins; 1p and 2p coins. Which means that every price which doesn’t end with 5p or 0p will be rounded UP to the next 5 or zero instead of down. And we’ll have to put up with inflation of 6% instead of 3%.
    Someone needs to give Hammond the sack forthwith. Or at least a Special Agent Gibbs of NCIS slap around the back of his head.

Tax turkey

On hearing that Ken Dodd is no longer with us, I remembered that the Inland Revenue had hauled him into court. But what I’d forgotten was the detail, namely that he was in the habit of keeping his earnings in cash around the house, and the taxpersons wanted tax which they would have had if he had invested the money. And it cost Doddy a small fortune to get a court to agree that if there is no investment income, no tax is due.

Cob the clot

Corbyn, the useful idiot, was quick to accuse the Tories of taking bungs from Putin the Poisoner. No mention of all the Red Gold handed to Labour and the trade unions by Britain’s enemies. But a balanced, or even sane, opinion is not something you expect of the Commons.

Words for Today

Transaggressor – vexatious member of an insignificant but pushy minority.

Unfit person

If MPs do get their inquiry into 40 years of child abuse in Telford, they’d better make damn sure that Margaret Hodge, who did a sterling job of ignoring child abuse when leader of Islington council, is kept well away from it. She may be pretending to be a grand old dame now, but she is fatally damaged goods.

No guts. End of story

Can you imagine old Putin having the courage and decency to fly up to an alien ship in orbit to zap the blood-suckers who were after our planet? As the lady President of the USA did in Independents’ Day, which was on the Syfy channel last night?
    Thought not.

They’re at it again

The phone rings, it’s a woman from Microsoft (allegedly) calling about my computer. Obviously about to unload a scam about malicious downloads, so I tell her I don’t have a computer, which stops her dead in her tracks.
    “Is there anyone else in the family who uses computer or laptop?”
    “Yes, but no one who lives here.”
    The call terminates, the Indian lady retires from the fray in confusion.

Forgotten when gone

“Fifty years from now, people will judge us,” said the self-flagellating veggie on today’s Any Questions on Radio Four. Wrong, mate. 50 years from now, people will know as little about what went on right now as the people right now know about what happened 50 years ago. And no one will waste even a millisecond thinking about you.

Must do better

When it comes to fictional leaders, Vlad Putin has been voted the least credible scriptwriting job of all time.

Clothears rides yet again

Did the TV ad really invite me to “discover the Fiat ‘Cheapo’ range?”
    Oh, yes. I’ll have some of that!

Excellent household advice No. 14

How do you avoid a stab wound to the hand when dealing with an avocado? Simple! Have nothing to do with them.

Trendsetting

The leaders of Britain First have been sent to gaol for using a criminal trial for political purposes. If that trend keeps up, they’ll have to build a new prison for all the Labour party members who do the same following any criminal charges arising from the Grenfell Tower fire.

Someone else’s cake – with jam on it

A bloke who’s had himself rebuilt to look like a woman behaves like a slag but is awarded a job as an advisor to Labour’s equalities person. And when the sack follows more slaggism, it’s all the fault of the news meeja for being ill-mannered enough to notice the person’s defects. Welcome to an alternative to reality.

Just bloody Vanish yourselves!

Why do we need to reduce landfill, as a TV advert for some washing product urges us? The UK is full of surplus holes in the ground, which can be filled with waste materials as a resource for future generations to exploit. The only reason for not using landfill is that if Denmark and Holland don’t have any landfill sites, then no country in the EU can have them. But we’re getting out of the EU.

‘Maybe’ become certainty arbitrarily

Sir B. Wiggins has been hung, drawn, quartered and sleazed by . . . a committee of MPs? Not exactly a lynch mob [lunch mob?] sparkling with expertise and honesty.

Putin at it again?

Another Russian double agent poisoned in Britain, with his daughter as collateral damage. In films, the assassin strikes in a way that looks like an accident or natural causes. But Vlad the Bad just has to let everyone know what he’s done.

‘Maybe’ becomes certainty arbitrarily

Sir B. Wiggins has been hung, drawn, quartered and sleazed by . . . a committee of MPs? Not exactly a hanging committee of sparkling expertise. Or are we supposed to accept that a class of people who became notorious for expenses fraud are now super-gamekeepers?

More sneakiness?

I see that Millennials are rushing to plastic surgeons to have their noses reduced so that they don‘t look huge in selfies. Apparently, the close range can make them look 30% bigger. Which got me wondering if MPs are claiming nose-reductions on their expenses as a legitimate business expense because they’re in a trade which encourages lying, which, as any fule kno, makes your nose grow.

Britain & Europe

The most sensible suggestion to date about the UK’s future relations with the EU came during today’s broadcast of The Now Show on Radio 4: off-peak membership! We hobnob with the EU only during evenings and at weekends.

Oh, dear!

Is everyone on the British side of the Brexit negotions* too polite to mention that the EU’s attempt to annex Northern Ireland has overtones of Hitler and the Sudetenland?

* going through the motions of negotiating

New on the menu #5

Eggs CIA – The service is good, the food is mass-produced and hey, if one or two customers get killed by friendly fire once in a while, what the hell?

Eggs Battlestar Galactica – You probably won’t finish your meal before the Cylons attack.

Foot-dragging

The government has decided not to implement the section of the Crime & Courts Act, which would have let luvvies bring vexatious libel actions against newspapers, knowing that the newspaper would have to pay the costs even if it won.
    What took the government so long to reach such an obvious decision?

The power of presence

I have a new work of art parked beneath the TV with a spotlight on it to give me somewhere else to look during the adverts. I became used to seeing it from about 9 feet, with the detail blended in to the overall look.
    Then the framer got round to me and I found myself examining the picture from 2-3 feet and taking in the detail again and getting a completely different impression of the picture.
    All of which leaves me wondering if I should get a print made so that both of them can be displayed together somehow to give an overall view of what the picture has to say.

Pious pillocry

“Your reputation is in tatters,” a judge tells someone who’s about to be sent to gaol.
    Maybe it’s time ritual judicial bollockings were rated for clichés with a 1% reduction in salary for 6 months as the penalty for each and every statement of the bleeding obvious, which wastes both the court’s time and taxpayers’ money.