Looking forward

It must be that time again. The previously optimistic tendencies and assumptions that it’ll all be alright have been replaced by statements that within 12 months we’ll all be living on the street, or forced to scavenge in our neighbours toilet bowls for dinner. Everyone who was remotely famous for something that pre-dates things I can remember has spontaneously died, people are spending hours lining up to buy spare parts for things they didn’t want in the first place, and you’ve just said goodbye to a house full of people you don’t like. Yes, it’s the end of the year!

So, a review then? Well, no. Mainly because another end of year review would be about as enjoyable as stapling my eyes open, staring into the sun, and listening to Mariah Carey’s greatest hits on repeat. Also because I seem to remember doing one last year, getting bored half way through and never finishing it. Which incidentally is probably a summary of 2009 for most of us as well. Ho-ho-hoo-oooh fuck it that should have been funnier.

A look ahead then? Well, no. Because quite frankly that would mean reducing myself to the same level of the rest of the doom mongers out there who seem to have devoted their existence to making previously rational types jump off buildings and shoot their children. The thing is, while we might all be royally screwed through no fault of our own (discounting the armies of window licker's who find the notion of having to pay back their debts as something of a shock), if we spend the whole time thinking about how screwed we are, then it’s going to do us no good at all. So get up, get on with it, and just try and live your own damn lives. Next time Fiona Bruce tells you that you might want to get your spare organs valued, or Trevor McDonald mentions that your house is now worth less than a Scottish man’s underpants, tell them to sod off, stick on a copy of Die Hard 4 and yippee Kay-aye yourself into delusions that you could save the world single handed. In short, yes it is shit, but it’ll be a whole lot better if you worry about getting on with it rather than spend the next 12 months working out the earning potential of your 14 year old daughter for one night in Soho.

Targeted advertising

Intelligent advertising. Now there’s an idea that got marketing departments across the land so excited that they had to employ people to follow them around with a mop. It’s just got one teeny tiny problem, it’s shite.

Facebook, that pillar of social ineptitude that neither myself or anyone with eyes can seem to tear themselves away from, seem’s to have taken this proverbial bull by the horns and upped the irrelevance factor so high that I now find myself talking to the elderly to make any kind of sense out of it.

Now when I log onto Facebook and I discover that because my status is anything other than married I’m immediately being told that I could have spent last Friday with the ‘Famous 5’ some terrifying collection of blonde orange women whose summary intellect can be surmised by the fact that they had to use the number rather than the word when devising their clever moniker. Quite frankly an evening discussing renovation ideas with Josef Fritzel would probably have been more pleasurable.

Then if that wasn’t enough free thought chocking fun, Facebook then decided it knew enough about me to dictate who I might like to be friends with. So now I’m apparently so devoid of a social life that I should be messaging all the dredges of the gene pool based purely on the fact that we both live in London. Good to know they’ve got that nailed then.

Don't damn me

It’s a strange experience arguing security logic with the police. Particularly in the lifts at work. The real problem isn’t with the debate, it’s with the discovery that the person you’re debating it with is less intelligent than the chair I’m sitting in, and the fact that if you make them look too bad they’ll probably decide to cuff you and ship you to Cuba, anyway........

Let me set the scene, I work in the same building as a police training centre London. The security here is dire, and the security barriers can just be walked through by anyone over the height of about 6’4”. They’re also un-responsive and generally crap, so a lot of the time I just walk through them. I shouldn’t, but I do. The few people who notice me do this tend to laugh. Not once have I ever been told off for doing so, and I’ve been doing it for months. Until today. Today one of the police women from the training centre decided to have a go at me for “ruining the security of the entire building”. Fair enough to have a go at me, I’d been wondering how long it might take, but what followed was one of the most earth shattering failures to understand the basic concept of security that you’ve ever seen, and it went, a little something, like this (my thoughts in italics kids):

PW: “Did you just bust through that security barrier?”

Me: “Well, I walked through it yeah, I often don’t use my card because I don’t need to and the barriers are painfully slow to respond after people go through them.”

PW: “Can I see you pass then, I don’t believe you’ve got one.”

Me: “Sure.” Deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt over the fact that she just that second watched me use it to access the lift.

PW: “Do you realise you’re putting us all at risk by walking through the security barriers?”

Me: “I don’t really consider them security barriers if you can just walk through them, surely that somewhat defeats the point of having the barriers in the first place”

PW “I don’t care about that, you’ve just put us all in danger.”

Me: “Surely the fact that I ‘can’ do that is what puts us in danger, not the fact that I ‘did’ do that.”

PW:”I don’t care if you can do it, by not following security procedures we’re all at risk”

So, had I just used my pass like a good little automaton we’d all be dandy, and you’d be blissfully ignorant, but by pointing out a fundamental flaw in the process I’ve now endangered you? Oh I do beg to differ.....

Me, somewhat stunned by the logic: “I’ve done this hundreds of times...”

PW: “I don’t care how many times you’ve done it security procedures are there for a reason!”

WHAT! You just decided to complain to me about doing so and you’ve no interest in how many times I’ve done it. You’re talking about building security, and you’ve no interest what so ever in the fact that for several months I’ve been walking through security barriers completely unchecked, and the in all that time you’re the only person to EVER mention it?

You really have to worry. Ultimately she was right to have a go at me. But I’m a little more concerned that the Met’s finest decided that rather than flag their concerns with the security of the entire building, she decided that it was actually a personal issue entirely involving me. That’s not security, that’s idiocy.

Chichester, home of the politicaly correct, genderless world.

A few months back, in a fit of political correctness gone mad, we all awoke one morning to discover that referring to anyone as ‘love’ was derogatory, insulting, and even, dare I mention it, degrading. Managers were swiftly informed that any customers or staff found using such vulgarity were to be kicked out or disciplined, and the entire population of northern England was swiftly rounded up and shot.

Today we learn that while the rampant fascism that permeates through the English language continues unabated, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that the knights in shining armour that are Chichester District Council have come thundering to our collective aid. In a crushing blow for all that is right in the world, they’ve acted to ban the use of the terms: “Manning the switchboard”, and the ever alarming “Man in the street”. The latter, and presumably the former, being terrifyingly used to depict a society where female roles are all but non-existent, that the world is solely a male realm and the role of women is completely invisible. Blimey. If only someone had mentioned to Hitler that you can eliminate an entire sex, regardless of any other sub-classification, by a simple stroke of a pen, perhaps we could have avoided all that nasty World War 2 business entirely.

Worryingly Chichester Council appears to make no comment on the future of the human race, nor what we might be expected to call women from now on, but I sit here in eager anticipation of the announcement of my new species, and welcome with open arms the announcement of an entirely new gender.

Hug a hoodie, just mind the knife

Apparently we’re not allowed to use the word ‘Chav’ as, according to a bunch of cotton wool, bubble wrapped Guardian readers, it’s offensive to those people described by it.

No shit Sherlock. Did we all wake up and have a bowl of stupid for breakfast this morning? Now, I hate to ruin your little bleeding heart peace and love parade; but that my friends, is what is referred to as “The Point”. Yes, Chav is an offensive word. It’s an offensive word because the people it’s attributed to are little more than an excuse to poor gallon after gallon of chlorine into the gene pool. The only problem any reasonable person should have with the word ‘Chav’, is that it’s just not offensive enough. Hence why I’ll generally suffix it with the additional word ‘Scum’. Thus giving myself the double-whammy of leftist baiting horror that is “Chav-Scum”. This, as anyone who wasn’t educated by a naturist tree-hugger will tell you, pretty much covers it nicely. Now if you could all go back to your vegetarian support groups and leave the rest of us to try and get home without getting stabbed we’d all be grateful

Quitting can be hell

I just discovered something even more annoying than smokers. And that's smokers who've quit. As if devoting unfeasibly large periods of time to polluting the atmosphere, turning yellow, and stinking like a Bolivian garbage can wasn’t annoying enough, they then quit. Now before you all start waving your keyboards around in the air and baying for my hypocritical blood, allow me, gentle reader (emphasis on the ‘gentle’ in a life preservation kind of way), to explain.

Upon quitting smoking the average smoker will immediately go through some kind of metamorphosis whereby they no longer consider themselves to be the unhealthy sucker of Beelzebub’s tar that they once were. Oh no. They’ve quit now, which, if you give them so much as the slightest chance to explain, is akin to growing wings, ascending to the heavens, and giving the late J.C a run for his money when it comes to saintliness! Did I miss another meeting? The worst thing is though, once you’ve been suckered into this conversational purgatory, you’ll be engulfed with tales of new and interesting things they’re sticking to themselves, what strange and indescribable things they’re sucking on instead (stop laughing at the back!), and just how much money they’re saving by doing so! Which, interestingly, seems to bear little or no relation to your own values for ‘money never wasted on years killing yourself in the first place’. Strange that.

And then you get the jewel of their new found crown. You ask that one final, inevitable, question...

“So, how long’s it been since your last one then?”

“About a day and a half.”

That’s not quitting smoking! That’s just not going to the fucking shop!

Guide to modern life in London

No doubt this is going to be one of those things that grows over time, but for now...

Consider this a cut out and keep guide. Feel free to add your own rules.

1. You shall never, under any circumstances take a giant wheely bag onto any form of rush hour transport. Anyone caught doing this will have their bags kicked over and their possessions trampled on. There are no exceptions. There are no excuses. And at no point will you have a legitimate reason to be annoyed when it happens to you.
2. Discounting the blind, it might be wise to notice that the other 7.5 million people in London have figured out that you’re supposed to stand on the right of the escalator. Not being able to grasp this concept is up there with offering tap dancing lessons in a suspiciously empty field in Cambodia, and should be punishable by death.
3. Never, EVER, stop dead in the middle of a train, tube, or bus station, on Oxford Street, or anywhere else with more than 5 people around. I will be moving faster than you, and I won’t be stopping to compensate for the fact that putting one foot in front of the other and getting out of everyone’s way is a concept too complicated for you to grasp.
4. Cyclists. If you want to cycle in London fine. Just understand one thing, owning a bike does not make you Jesus, although apparently it might make you blind. You do have to stop at traffic lights, you don’t get to cut corners, and if you get hit by a bus I can guarantee you that you won’t be coming back to life 3 days later! I also won’t care. Think of it as natural selection.
5. Chuggers; have some free advice. Get a proper job, donate everything you earn over your chugging pay to a charity, keep that warm fuzzy feeling that you get inside by working for the greater good, and watch as your popularity skyrockets with the knowledge that the rest of London no longer wants to see you flayed alive and fed to the Queens Corgi’s!
6. Beggars. There’s no such thing as a homelessness hostel in the entirety of the UK that you have to pay for. Fact. Just admit that you want the money for drink/drugs or, on a rare occasion, food. I’m still not going to give you any, but at least I’ll think better of you for it.
7. Tube workers. The only people in London who make cyclists appear popular. 35 days holiday, 4 day working weeks, 300 strike days a year, and the combined intellect of a brain damaged Chihuahua. Incompetence isn’t a competitive sport, but thanks for trying!
8. Train/tube passengers. You bought one ticket, ergo you get one seat. It doesn’t mean you can dump your bags, lunch, Taiwanese mail order bride, or your fat over lapping arse on the seat next to you as well! And while I’m at it click here . Get it?
9. Chav’s playing music on their mobile phones. Do you honestly think that playing anything out of cheap shitty speakers into your crotch is going to sound good? You’re already wearing a baseball cap over your hoodie, in the summer, with your trousers down by your ankles. We can tell you’re a cunt by looking at you, you really don’t need to advertise it any more.
10. Street Preachers. On average, how many people do you think are converted to any religion via the medium of irritation?

“You’re going to hell”

“No I’m not”

“Convert to [insert obscure, probably child molesting, branch of otherwise generic religion here] and be saved”

“No”

“Heretics will suffer for all eternity”

“No they won’t”

“Yes they will!”

“Crikey. Where do I sign?”

NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

And while I’m here which bastard keeps selling you those damned megaphones?

Abusing your illusion

Last year the Institute for Irrelevant Survey’s got together with the Center for Pointless Expenditure and established the shocking news that 43% of parents don’t understand the video game rating system, and will happily go and buy little Johnny pretty much whatever he wants for his birthday, just so long as he shuts up about it for 5 minutes so they can get some peace.

Essentially what this means is that when a games publisher creates something called “Killzone” and slaps a great big shiny “18” on the box, that Mummy and Daddy will blissfully sit there completely unaware that 4 year old Johnny might have been punching above his weight when he wrote to his birthday list. Yet strangely, if you slap an equally big and just as shiny “18” onto the box of something called “Deep Throat”, tell them it’s a DVD rather than a game, and all of a sudden Mummy and Daddy know exactly what it is, and little Johnny doesn’t get any desert for a week.

So, while this survey also proudly stated that 75% of parents are concerned about a games contents, it also tells us that the afore mentioned 43% of them are probably too stupid to do anything about it anyway. That however, isn’t really the problem. You see that comes in when you take into account that these are the same 43% of people who will then happily go running about telling everyone within earshot that the only reason people keep killing each other is because ID Software released Doom back in the early 90’s, and as a direct result you can no longer leave the house without the fear of someone jumping out from behind a barrel and unloading a 12 bore into your chest. Up until then of course the most dangerous thing you were likely to encounter in the great wide world was particularly enthusiastic Jehovah’s witness armed with a bag full of cheaply produced bible extracts.

Equally significant however, is how rapidly this argument seems to get forgotten when applied the other way round. While we might spend hours debating if Grand Theft Auto is to blame for someone deciding that walking down a street shooting passers by is an acceptable Sunday morning activity, I can’t help but feel that somewhat less time seems to be devoted into establishing if the Lake District’s natural beauty has been decimated by city types turning up every weekend and breaking into impromptu renditions of the Sound of Music.

I could go on.

So I will.

You see the thing with this, like so many other monoliths of illogic that we seem intent on parading around is simple. It only work’s when you look at bottom end of the spectrum (for the geeks out there, yes, that was deliberate for the rest of you, move along, there’s nothing to worry you here). No sooner does something bad happen than everyone’s mother has gone rushing into their teenager’s bedroom seeking to establish what the latest craze is, so they can drag it kicking and screaming into the limelight and hold it responsible for the demise of western civilization. Christ, I’ve heard people saying that the reason kids are fat these days is because they spend so much time gliding around on Heeley’s that they’ve forgotten how to walk for crying out loud. To hell with the never ending stream of complete junk the parent’s are pouring down their throats on a daily basis, let’s blame the footwear! After all, if we all start to look at ourselves instead then we start to run a significant risk of finding an actual tangible cause for something, and then it’d only be a matter of time before every therapist in the land was under siege from newly awoken Daily Mail readers banging down their door. You see, we can keep doing it boy’s and girl’s, and God alone knows that there’s a lot of money invested in it, but one day the illusion’s going to shatter, and it’s going to take a lot more than the kings men to put that one back together agai

You have mail

This morning, among the plethora of e-mails offering to ‘enlarge my tool’, ‘make her bEg (sic)’ and something I didn’t quite understand, but seemed to make fascinating use of the word ‘pounding’, was an e-mail from my ever popular estate agent, who, continuing my theme of naming and shaming, happen to be Lauristons of Balham.

This time they wanted to sell me a flat, which was quite nice of them really, especially seeing as they haven’t deemed it necessary to fix the problems with the current one since we moved in, so we’re pretty much prime candidates for wanting to move out. Anyway I wasn’t interested and deleted it. Then they sent me another one about an hour later. For the same flat. Which I deleted, literally minutes before receiving another e-mail. For the same flat. A couple more e-mails, and a newly found hatred for Chiswick, later and I decided it was time to reply.....

Dear John,

I’m afraid I have no interest in this, or any properties you have, or will have, on your books. I quickly established this the first time you sent me this e-mail. The second e-mail confirmed this, the third I considered it a glitch in the system, however the fourth time it arrived I realised that there was something else going on. As I’ve not come across your name before, I can only presume that you must be new to the team, and thus in an effort to blend in I’m guessing that you’re attempting to join the rest of the organisation in their continuing effort to turn incompetence into a competitive sport. While I applaud your efforts on this front, and the continuing dedication of those around you, I feel I should warn you that, while you clearly lack the basic understanding required when sending e-mail, and are as such are thoroughly deserving of your position, I’m afraid your colleges have set such a staggering precedent when it comes to incompetence, failure, and fundamental idiocy, that I fear your current efforts are falling far short of the standards we have come to expect of your organisation. In the spirit of good will I can only make some suggestions that, with luck, should be of use in the future.

Firstly, at no point should you instigate communication. Communication should only be provided from yourself once contacted by the third party. After this initial contact please wait for approximately 3 more attempts to contact you to pass, ignoring all e-mails and voicemails in between times, before grudgingly replying a claiming total ignorance of the entire process.
Secondly, spelling. My surname, while relatively short, is often misspelt. On reviewing each of your e-mails you missed this relatively simple means of error on all occasions. In future I would recommend addressing this, and also advise you make further assumptions over the relationships of the individuals you contact, summarily marrying and divorcing them as you see fit.

Finally content. Your e-mail not only included a link to further information, but also a phone number one which, presumably, I might be able to contact you. All of this could actually be of practical use to the recipient, and therefore should at no point be included, accepting of course, if you were to include incorrect, or out dated information. For further examples of this please see your website, which traditionally only features unavailable property, blurred images, and absolutely no further details at all.

Simply adherence to these, and similar such rules should rapidly ensure you acceptance into the team.

In no way do I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Regards......

Aint it fun?

Institutionaly stupid

I just got a phone call.

This proves two things. Firstly that on a long enough time line, someone, somewhere WILL want to talk to me (aside from ‘that’ woman *shudder*), and secondly, well okay there was only really one thing that it proved.

Anyway, you can only begin to imagine my excitement when it was a female voice at the other end of the line! (Again, not ‘her’ *shudder*)

Slightly less interestingly however they were from Barclays fraud protection team. Or so they said. Quickly getting over my initial euphoria I started paying a little more, serious, attention. Apparently they wanted to talk about some activity on my account, but before they did that they needed to prove I was me. Fair enough, but seeing as I wasn’t born yesterday I was staying quiet until they proved to me that they were them, and not working for Stavros from Somewerestan just east of fucking nowhere.

Apparently they can’t do that.

I’ll run that one through again.

Barclays fraud team, the people who tell us not to give out personal details, to check our statements, cover our pin numbers and use 56 letter passwords so obscure that you have to write them down (but not to write them down), are calling their customers, luring them with tales of some strange bearded man with excessive sand in his shoes, may or may not be slowly whiling away their life savings. And then expect you to tell them your name, address, date of birth, and if your girlfriend prefers ribbed or feather lite. All without even so much as attempting to prove who they are!

Which fucking work experience kid did they employ to come up with that policy? And we’re supposed to trust these people? Suddenly I understand why everyone who’s ever contemplated using a blue rinse has spent the majority of the past 7 days queuing outside branches of Northern Rock and making space under the mattress.

Dear God.

Anyway, naturally I told them nothing, and instead called them back (using the number on the back of my card, rather than something starting 0891 that they’d probably have offered me). Naturally the first person knew nothing, and then 10 minutes on hold later they decided that putting the phone down on customers was the best way of tackling fraud in the 21st Century. Another phone call later and having been left on hold for 40 minutes, and still nobody will talk to me.

This really does prove two things.

Firstly, the first call was a blip, no matter how long the time line, even people who are paid to talk to me don’t want to. Secondly that I’ve actually got 40 minutes to spend listening to an automated voice tell me that my call is important to it. And now I’m telling all of you about it.
Christ what have I done with my life……..

Anyway, a quick look online and it appears that I’m not bank rolling some rucksack wearer with too many Z’s in his name, and everything is pretty much as was.

Which is nice.