Tuesday 20 December 2011

Top responses to #GodIsNotGreat

The other week Christopher Hitchins died, causing #GodIsNotGreat to start trending on Twitter. Personally I'd been living in a hole and hadn't heard of him before (although my copy of God is not Great is now on order), but the resulting insanity from religious types was quite spectacualr, and, as often seems to be the way with these things, gloriously hypocritical.

Anyway, the people at Buzz Feed have compiled a list of the top 25 responses to the God Is Not Great trend topic.

Warning, contains clear examples of a failed education system, fundamental inabilities to spell, and an avalanche of hypocrisy.

Enjoy! Top 25 responses to God is not great

Friday 2 December 2011

Why complaining about Clarkson is killing your own beliefs

At the time of writing 23,000 people have complained to the BBC about Clarkson's comments on the national strikes. Twenty-three thousand! That's a huge number. It's a huge number that goes to prove one thing above all else. These people are abject fucking morons.

No, what Clarkson said wasn't especially delicate or popular at all, and personally (before the digital lynch mob arrives) I generally agree with the strikes. But these complaints have nothing what-so-ever to do with the strikes, or the general Clarkson bashing that seems to have become a national past time over the years. These complaints are about that fact that the strikers were under some misguided belief that world + dog was 100% behind them. That the entire country was weeping into their pillows because these hard working folk were going to have to work harder, for longer, and they were out there, in what will probably a futile attempt, to fight it. Good for them for fighting for their pensions, and how utterly stupid of them to think that everyone was on their side.

Seriously. Do you honestly believe that there has ever been a cause in the history of human kind that was supported by everyone? Or perhaps you think that by taking the moral high ground you immediately get to become a dictator and tell everyone else what their opinion is?

You are wrong, and embarassingly so.

What Clarkson did the other night was to snatch away the teddy bear that the unions were hiding behind, and by doing so made them see that no, not everyone agreed with them, and yes, the strikes had caused a lot of crap that everyone else was having to deal with. While they were hiding behind their own self perpetuated sense of mass public support, Ambulance workers were panicking about a lack of staff, private sector parents were loosing money by having to take unpaid leave to look after kids and the plethora of other things. That doesn't undermine the strikers point, but it does remind us that not everything was as peachy as the unions thought from behind their blinkers. So yes, people did disagree with them for being on strike, and because this isn't North Korea, they're allowed to tell you about it. Deal with it.

My second point on this is even simpler. When the fuck did we start taking everything literally? Seriously, you honestly believe that he wanted people shot? Really? Aren't you the same people who were outraged when Paul Chambers was convicted for "wanting" to "blow up Robin Hood Airport" (quotation marks used to cover my own arse from mass public idiocy)? Personally I've said countless times that I think stupidity should be punishable by death. Does this make me worse than Hitler, or do you think that, perchance, I might not have been speaking entirely literally?

I'll finish this with 2 more quotes. The first from Jimmy Carr who said of this yesterday on twitter "So let me get this right: people that say people should be taken out & shot should be taken out & shot. Is that right?"

And the finally, from a blog post that I've sadly not got a link for, that made the point that if you want to ban comments like Clarkson's, then you have to ban comments like this from Bill Hicks:



And if we do that, then we might as well all stark blinking in Unison.

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Automated tubes are needed sooner

So, it seems that TFL have managed to cause outrage because someone somewhere leaked a document specifically designed to come up with radical ideas for the future of the tube.

It's not so much that the RMT have displayed a complete failure to understand the nature of business before running around and crying about something like this that annoys me (and believe me, companies asking for such far reaching ideas is hardly something new), it's more the fact that they insist in living in some kind of alternate reality where they genuinely seem to believe the crap that comes out their mouths on a daily basis.

Apparently, according to Bob Crow's merry men driver-less trains will be the death of us all! Trains will be crashing into each other, decapitating passengers, and devastating society before we know it. They know this as a fact beyond refute. After all, they watched that Terminator documentary back in the 80s, and learnt all about it.

Could you imagine it, driver-less trains carrying all those people to their inevitable demise just to save a few quid. Christ it's amazing that anyone could have thought of doing something so neglege.....what's that? The DLR hasn't had drivers since, well, ever? Really? But surely someone would have noticed that? Where the hell are they keeping the bodies of everyone foolish enough to travel on it? What's that, the DLR isn't actually a mass murdering machine gone mad? Really? How odd. But that would mean the RMT are making shit up to further their own ends? Surely not.

Anyway, as it turns out nobody bothered to mention the DLR to Bob Crow either, and he considers this potential tube plan to be "lethal and ill-conceived". Seriously.

Another thing nobody's mentioned to Bob Crow was neatly included in a BBC report on the issue. And that's the fact that in the new trains on the Victoria Line, and those on the Jubilee Line, the drivers don't, and I'm going to slow this sentence down for you, actually...drive...the...fucking...trains. All they do is open the doors.

Now, for those of you who never paid attention in school, way back in history before the internet taught us about photographing our pets and making a funny caption, a man named Pavlov discovered that you can train a dog to salivate when given a stimulus. And, way back in your own history, you learnt not to open the door to Mummy or Daddy's car when it was moving. I'm guessing you were about 3 when you did that, and in the other example the subject was a FUCKING DOG. So, with this in mind, will someone please tell me what value the driver is adding?

The reality is simple, automated trains are safe, have been proven to be safe, and confirm the reality that tube drivers are, on their absolute best day, largely irrelevant. They are also far more reliable, don't turn up to work drunk (and won't go on strike when someone get's fired for doing just that), they don't call in sick, and aren't liable to random temper tantrums. Or to put it another way, they're just better.

But lets extend that idea just slightly. Soon we get to the idea that computer announcements can be understood by actual people, rather than, well, practically no-one, and can also be made in multiple languages (and it's got to be a national embarrassment that we don't do that) at no extra cost

It doesn't take a lot to realise that the essential value being added by a large percentage of the staff on the underground is to compensate for a lack of investment in decent technical infrastructure, and a well thought out passenger communication programme.

Fundamentally there are arguments for keeping the staff on the trains, and there are as many counter arguments against it, and it comes down to one thing, you're either a Luddite scared of a future that you're not equipped to live in, or you want progress.

Finally, and I've mentioned this before, for all their noise about it, the RMT simply do not care about your safety. If they did then they wouldn't go on strike. Because (and I know I've linked this before too) when they do go on strike, they endanger the safety of every. single. person. in. London. Read more here

Thursday 13 October 2011

Fat Plan 2012

Don't worry everyone, the government have fixed it again. Today they have announced that to cut obesity in the UK we need to put less food in our mouths, and exercise more. I'm so glad we live in a country where there are people employed to think of these things so we don't have to. If only there were a way I could donate more money to help them do more of this research.

We should be grateful though, without these people in charge it would fall on amateurs like me to point these things out. We're so lucky to have Andrew Lansley to look after us instead. Chances are that without him Middlesborough would have collapsed in on itself under it's own mass by now, and people would be modifying gym equipment to create food catapults to launch blancmange into the mouths of Jeremy Kyle viewers.

On the whole though, it's not all bad news. We do at least live in a largely sport obsessed country, that encourages some of the unhealthiest people imaginable to stuff half-cooked burgers into their mouths while shouting at the athletes in front of them that they aren't performing up to the crowd's standards. So at least the government haven't had to do all the hard work here.

Monday 10 October 2011

Your lack of privacy is your own fault

I've just been playing with the new Facebook lists functionality in order to group everybody, fine tune my posting, and implement a sophisticated social filter for myself. After literally seconds of thought I've decided that the most efficient way to do this is to have one list, which I've dubbed "friends" and put everyone in there. This is essentially because I'm not a fucking retard.

Lists, and Circles. Two words that should have sod all to do with each other.

These days however, they're the latest examples of humanity's new found desire to open every essence of their being to world + dog, but under the false protection of some overly complicated means of self filtering.

Ladies and gentlemen, the sentence you've just read, is, quite simply, utter crap. It's a relatively fair bet that if you're reading this you've got an account on Facebook, Google +, or both. Which means you've been incensed by their crazy new privacy policies, and failed utterly to come to terms with the fact that they're free services, of which you are in no way obliged to use, that exist (in your terms) to allow you to share things with people easily, and (in their terms) to develop a massive marketing knowledge base to monetize your lives and sell advertising space, and incredibly specific market data.

Put simply, there is only one filter you need ever use online. Common bloody sense. The question is easy; Do you want everyone to be able to see something? If the answer isn't yes, then don't post it. Don't sit there thinking you can protect it by creating some complicated filters. You won't, you'll fuck up, you'll move someone, forget to use one of them, or, if you have more than about 25 friends, forget who is in them.

Don't think that by not having people as friends you're protecting yourself either. You can still screw the same things up as above and make something public, but more importantly, it takes less time for me to copy your drunken, embarrassing, semi nude photos, that you may not have even put up yourself, than it took for me to type this sentence. And once I've done that you're fucked. Most of the time I probably don't even need to know you to do it either.

A few weeks back I got a random postcard delivered to my flat from some guy on holiday, declaring his love for a girl that didn't live there, with whom he'd presumably had some holiday romance with. I'd never met either of them, and had no idea who they were.

Within 5 minutes, and using nothing but two first names, a date and the location of a holiday (postmarks are useful here) I'd found both of them on Facebook. I also learnt that she had a boyfriend, who had a decidedly different name to the guy who sent the postcard. It doesn't take much to think about what I could have done there.

So remember, if you're worried about people being able to see things that you'd rather they didn't online. You volunteered for this.

Thursday 6 October 2011

RIP Steve Jobs

I wouldn't do this normally, i'm not the type of person for writing obituaries, and in this case i'm certainly not qualified to write this one either. But thinking about it over the course of the day, the impact Steve Jobs has had on almost everything that uses electricity in my place is staggering. And I'm not just talking about the Apple products.

His attitude to technology, and his drive to deliver the simplest, most effective, and most beautiful, technology on the planet has literally set the standard that all electronics companies have to follow. And I mean HAVE to follow. No longer is it good enough to provide something incredibly clever, and enter a market on that alone, you can no longer produce something that looks average, and get by because behind the scenes it's actually rather good. These days you have to strike for excellence across the board. Apple did that, and Steve made Apple do that. Steve Jobs didn't so much as raise the bar, he invented an entirely new unit of measurement on which to base the bar.

It's impossible to know what the future will be for Apple in the long term, or for any of it's competitors. But if Steve is to have one lasting legacy, I hope it's that no matter what people do with their lives, they should do what the love, and do things to excel in them. Steve, through Apple and Pixar, showed the world what can be done with that attitude, let's hope the rest of us can keep the idea rolling.

RIP Steve Jobs

Wednesday 28 September 2011

It's fun to fail at the Daily Mail

I love the Daily Mail, without it I have almost nothing to write about. It also makes me look rational, which is pleasing, if you happen to be one of my parents. It also, apparently, both causes and prevents Cancer in equal measure, so I figure it's good for my general Ying/Yang balance as well.

Warning Any links in this post will go to the Daily Mail, they're there to provide source material, I strongly suggest you don't click on them.

Anyway, a few recent tweets reminded me of the Daily Fail's Mail's campaign of the year, to strike fear into the hub of middle England by exposing the 'Gay Agenda'. Which, apparently, is ruining the country in much the same way as it did, well, okay, it didn't really did it. It didn't ruin anything that wasn't established by people expressly devoted to being ruined by such things, and we all know that secretly they were kind of pleased about it. But that's not the point. Apparently things have been ruined, and it's all the fault of the 'Gay Agenda'. Feeling terrified? No? Good, that just means you're not a complete tool. But carry on reading.

Anyway, how depressing must it be to be a Daily Mail approved Gay man and have to go through all your relationships in life with an agenda? Now, I don't know, well, anything much about Gay relationships really, not being inclined myself, but of those I've met that do know about such things, I've never once seen any of them wondering around with a clipboard, spreadsheet, and a strategic map of the British Isles. What the hell does the Mail think is going on in their bedrooms?

"Morning Steve" said Alan as the morning sun gently kissed his face through the gap in the curtains.
"Morning Alan" smiled Steve lovingly.
"Fancy a quickie before we get up?" pondered Alan, pouting suggestively.
"No time  I'm afraid schnukums*, I've got to be out of here by 8, I've got a busy day filing spurious law suits against previously wholesome family institutions in an effort to promote a culture of guilt amongst people who follow biological urges that differ slightly from our own. I might be able to squeeze one in around lunch time though?"
"Gah! I can't make it then, I have to undermine the justice system then, followed by some casual liberalisation of the national curriculum for the under 5s." (Argh panic! )
"Man, this sucks!" Sulked a disenchanted Steve.
"Well, actually Steve, it doesn't. But still, we can't let our biological urges undermine the efforts of the rest of the team. At this rate, according to my calculations....we'll be in Berlin by Christmas!"
"Excellent." Said both Alan and Steve in ominous unison.

Seriously, this is what the Daily Mail readers believe? Here's an idea, why don't we all focus on just not hating everyone for 5 minutes**, and try and focus on something a little more useful, like figuring out this global warming and food / air issues instead.

But, despite all this, do you know what the best thing is about the Daily Mail? I didn't even read an article before I wrote this. Honestly. I just came up with a few jokes, wrote most of this post, and Googled for a source later to fill in the the [FIND A LINK] gaps I'd left behind. So thank you to the Daily Mail, and Melanie Philips (I'm still assuming that she was involved as I write it now by the way), for being utterly, utterly appalling.

* I know nothing about pet names used by Gay people either
** Not me, obviously, then I'd have nothing to write about.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Plugged in, switched off, and out of jail

According to the BBC (here), the iPod might be responsible for making people antisocial. What with us all getting about locked in our own personal bubbles and switching off from the rest of the world. This is, quite naturally, complete drivel.

While it's true that you can't get on the tube these days without a cacophony of sound coming from cheap shitty Apple earphones being used by the fashion statement, rather than music fan, crowd. None of them have been made antisocial by it. What's made them antisocial is the realisation that those little white ear phones are essentially keeping them out of jail.

Have you even tried to take public transport? Between the number of people who think the entire carriage need to hear their phone conversation, kids too poor for headphones playing music no one asked for, women so perplexed by alarm clocks that they feel they're entitled to use a bus as their surrogate bathroom to make up for lost time, (I've even seen one woman clipping her nails and throwing the bits she hacked off her own body onto the floor) why the hell wouldn't anyone want to switch off from this filth?

If I sat down next to you at work and emptied the contents of my razor into your lap, you'd quite rightly punch me in the face. But apparently, do something similar on public transport, and it's just peachy.

If that's not enough of a reason, then think about the beggars and soap dodgers lying to you about needing money for a hostel, Chuggers trying to get you to sponsor their existence under the guise of saving a distraught unicorn, tourists who don't know how a map works, and, finally, street preachers who think their particular brand of cloud fairy has compelled them to piss off as many people as humanly possible under the firm believe that being insanely irritating is the key to the kind of mass conversations that would have made David Koresh feel impotent.

Quite frankly leaving the house in the morning is a bloody nightmare. Putting some earphones in and legitimately being able to ignore this never ending stream of window lickers is pretty much the only reason that London isn't synonymous with the kind of mass public executions that it so sorely needs.

So, if you're sitting there thinking someone listening to music means you feel you can't ask them for directions, then remember; if they weren't listening to them, and you asked them, you'd probably get shot.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Dating site morons

A friend of mine has started cataloging the terror that comes from being a female in the world of online dating.

You can follow her adventures right here at Dating Site Morons



As for the rest of us? Well, we can sit here quietly content that no matter what else happens in our lives, we're doing a lot better than her "contributors" will.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Angry Birds has become a disease

Up until recently I was a massive fan of Angry Birds. As in the game, or, to simplify somewhat, I was a fan of what Angry Birds actually is. A game. It's fun, simple, clever, and a good time filler when you're trying to blank out the indistinguishable shit being pumped out of tiny cheap phone speakers on the bus by people too poor to afford headphones.

I even branched out.... (yup, that was deliberate. I'll leave this sentence for a bit now so you can finish groaning.)

Done? Cool. Carrying on then....

I even branched out and got one of the plush toys as a gift a while back as well. Not for me obviously. I'm a bloke, I need plush toys about as much as I need sodding cushions. But to those though, I kinda thought fair enough really. No, nobody anywhere needs them, but they're kinda funny, and not exactly going to push me into poverty and a life of Pot Noodle consumption. But it's gone past the point of some cute merchandise, and been flung headlong (yup, again) into lunacy.

We now have film tie in's, based solely on the presence of anything with feathers.

Seasonal games, which, curiously, currently includes 7 different seasons. Presumably the Dev team are committing their code from sodding Narnia for that to make sense.

There's even an Angry Birds theme park in China. Seriously, what the hell kind of rides does that have? Unless it's just a gate that opens to a giant catapult launching morons into buildings then what the hell is it for? It's not even officially licensed, so we can't blame Rovio for it either.

And finally, we have a nebula. Yes, that's not a mistake, we now have an Angry Birds nebula. You can read about it here. But for the lazier amongst you who only really use the internet to look at various forms of pictures just scroll down.

There was a very good quote that I can't remember the source for a while back that went along the lines of. "In the 60's Nasa sent men to the Moon with less technology than is currently in your mobile phone. Today we use that technology to fire Birds into Pigs." It's all gone hideously, hideously wrong.

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Some (more) casual observations

A couple of years back I wrote something of a guide to modern life in London. You should read it. It's  here and much better than this entry. Go on, I'll wait, it's fine.

Good wasn't it. Anyway as something of a continuation of the theme, a few more things have been bothering me lately, and in order to sort it out I've produced a list. Enjoy!
  1. Airport security. We all know that anyone with half a brain cell considers it little more than a farce to perpetrate an illusion of security, but when I'm being searched for knives, quizzed about if I've ever been a Nazi, and being swiftly relieved of my vicious looking bottle of mineral water, why has nobody ever asked if I'm a Ninja?
  2. Looting. Yes I've done this already, but I dropped into my local hardware shop last weekend and discovered that the shop next door had been looted. That shop was Argos. Who the hell loots a catalogue shop!?! It's not that it's clearly just bloody stupid, it's the fact that it's so stupid that you have to make a conscious effort to be that idiotic. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but if this is the class of criminal we have in the UK, then we need to be giving these kids TVs, as they clearly aren't watching enough episodes of Sesame Street as they're growing up.
  3. Mobile Phone signals on high speed trains. Just to state the bloody obvious, you are (unless you're traveling on South Eastern) moving at speed something faster than stationary. If your phone has no signal, moving it 4 inches closer to the window means nothing when during the time taken to do that you traveled countless times further in another direction. It does however make you look like an idiot.
  4. Product labels that attempt to talk to you. Wine, for the less observant amongst you, is a drink that comes in a bottle. It did not 'grow up' anywhere, it certainly wasn't raised, and I have very little interest in the way it was nurtured. But having a label that tells me all these things, in the first person, isn't so much 'connecting with your audience' as providing fuel for schizophrenics. Stop it. Immediately.
  5. Manly seating during rush hour. Now, I often sit with my legs apart because I'm sodding huge, and there's nowhere near enough room to sit with them straight ahead of me short of digging a hole in the seat in-front. You, I can almost guarantee, are nowhere near my size, so when you're sitting on rush hour transport doing your best John Wayne impression, no one is thinking of hour enormous your manhood must be as you mark your territory, they're thinking about where you got the rash that's making you sit so carefully. And if they weren't, they are now.
Finally, you know I know you didn't click that link at the top don't you. I can see who's been where, and I know you didn't click it. Bastards. Now, go back to the top, click the link, and remind yourself that when things get going this might actually be a good blog to read. Go on now, both of you.

    Tuesday 9 August 2011

    Rioting retards

    Following on from yesterday, here's is a quick collection of the extra special morons who've been involved in the rioting. I'll be adding more to this over the course of the day as I become aware of them. Brilliantly these are all being passed onto Crimewatch as people spot them online, so with a little luck some retribution will be on it's way.

    Along with this, please check out CatchALooter who are doing an excellent job of gathering images together to help identify this filth.

    This idiot works for Currys, and decided that looting her own store was a good idea (apologies for linking to the *spit* Daily Mail *spit*), because she'd never get recognised on the CCTV


    Here are some digital genius' who felt that bragging to everyone online about what he stole might be a good idea;

    At least that guy came close to being able to put together a coherent sentence. "Barbz" here looks like she's struggle to tie her shoe laces in the morning:


    It's a wonderful world out there some times isn't it.

    Update: Looks like this particular split condom has had it pointed out to her enough times that she's a complete moron, and has since deleted her Twitter account. The internet will never be the same again.

    This is a new favourite, stealing crisps from Poundland, how shit does your life have to be for that to be an improvement? Christ, it must be shit being you. (left the original tweeter in as he posted it, not because he had something to do with it. Obviously.)


    When I'm done with a hard days rioting, I like to head home and cook up a nice healthy dinner of Tesco Value rice. I'm guessing anything more complicated than "just add water" would be pushing it. Pot Noodle stockists take note.

    In addition, the Met Police's official flickr feed for suspects can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/

    At the risk of creating a link farm here, there's even more brilliance in this direction http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/

    Monday 8 August 2011

    London Riots, a little look in the mirror

    So for the last 2 nights parts of London have been turned into war zones but hundreds of rioters who decided to take the opportunity to show the rest of the country just what passes for society in parts of London these days. But now, while the various councils are digging in the broom cupboard for a broom big enough to sweep up Tottenham and quietly wishing that we'd shot a few more of them, people are starting to go around trying cast arbitrary blame for the past 2 nights.Which, as usual, means looking in every direction possible, while desperately trying to ignore the mirror.

    Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are saying that it's all the Tories fault for cutting services and leaving the country with a disaffected youth with no hope's and no future.

    Bollocks.

    And I don't like the Tories cut's either, but regardless of which party was in power, and whose flavour of cuts we'd be stuck with, that would still have fuck all to do with it.

    Other's have said it's Twitter's fault for 'fanning the flames'. Apparently these people can distinguish between riots being encouraged by seeing a tweet, and riots being encourage by 24/7 news coverage of buildings on fire and running battles in the street, and casual looting. But in fairness, most of those Twitter accusations have come from the Daily Mail, so the chances are everyone who Tweeted on Saturday night has died from Cancer by now anyway.

    Quite simply, what this is, is scum acting like scum, and believing that they're entitled to things for free, and setting fire to peoples homes and businesses to walk off with it. This attitude isn't something that's magically arrived in the past 18 months, it takes years of practice and idiocy to develop the belief that acting like that is a good idea. This genius however, has managed to go even further and make himself the poster boy for chlorinating the gene pool overnight by deciding it's a good idea to post a picture of himself online with all the stuff he managed to steal over the weekend. And while it might be the supidest thing outside of the Darwin awards that you'll see anyone do all year, it's a great example of the mentality that lies behind this.

    This isn't a product of cutting funds to Libraries, or having to trim back the Police force, or anything else for that matter. This is a product of people who spend their entire lives on hand outs, feeling like they don't need to work for a living, kicking off because they want to blame everyone else for the shit state they live in, rather than taking a look at themselves, and trying to do something useful about it. The closest this rocket surgeon will ever get to education will come this morning when he watches a few episodes of Teletubbies on his shiny new 46" TV. What's even more embarassing though, is that he probably doesn't even understand why posting this picture was such a monument to stupidity.

    So do me a favour, if you want to go and loot and steal things, understand one thing. Your life if your own, and the consequences are yours. If your life it shit because you act like scum, then maybe you should try and loot a mirror, then when your taking a photo of yourself in it to post on Twitter you can have something to look at when it slowly starts to dawn on you what you've done with your life, and exactly why it is that the rest of the world wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

    Friday 5 August 2011

    Prickley Priorities

    Right now the country is running around panicing about a second credit crunch, nobody being able to afford Christmas presents ever again, and the fact that John Prescot say's the Cabinet has been entirely replaced by a Prime Ministerial Pussy.



    As a direct result of this Londoners are flocking to the internet desperately trying to keep up with what's going on, while people in Stockport are still standing in awe wondering what the big glowy thing is in the sky.

    Except they're not. The Londoners that is. I'd recommend not checking on the people in Stockport, it'll only make you sad. In reality the top 3 stories on the BBC website right now are:


    1. Man get's eaten by Bear
    2. Bird get's eaten by Plant
    3. Mr Bean get's eaten bruised by Car
    This can only mean one thing. The internet has reached the provinces, and the unemployed have woken up.

    Thankfully though, hope for western civilisation can be found in Sweden, where recently a resourceful chap was cruely arrested for attempting to build a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen. As you do. Science's new hero has now come out as saying that in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea. I'll type that again in case you missed it. Hell, I'm even going to use big bold letters for this to help out; "in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea." Got it? Good. Presumably this means that at some point in Professor Balls Up's planning process he thought that it might be a good idea instead! What the hell were his criteria?!? And what point would he have had to reach before stopping himself and thinking that perhaps continuing with the plan might not be in the best interest of, oh I don't know, say, anyone within a radius of about 100 miles?

    It does however prove one thing. While Al Qaeda are using a network of secret international training camps to teach people how to secretly build a couple of petrol bombs in a cave, hobbyists in Europe are working towards the casual distruction of entire cities by splitting Atoms in their back garden.

    I'm really not sure who's winning here, but I'm very sure that the fact that all of the above is true* means that the stockmarket wobbling and jepordising everyone's imaginary numbers shouldn't really be our top concern about the state of society.

    *Especially the bit about Stockport. I mean seriously, have you been there? Christ on a crutch it's grim!

    Friday 29 July 2011

    The BBC / Sky split of F1 broadcasting is a farce

    As of this morning next year's Formula 1 broadcasts will be split between the BBC and Sky. I guess this will be kind of like when both the BBC and ITV show the World Cup final and we can basically choose our commentry team.

    What's that you say? That's not the case at all? Really? So one of them will show one race weekend, and then the other will show the next race? That's shit! I don't want to pay for Sky just t.......I'm sorry what? They're not doing that either? Then, erm, okay you've got me, what other options are left then?

    Sky will show Practice, Qualifying and all the Races, and then the BBC will show half of that as well, thus successfully canibalising thier own audience figures, and turning the BBC into little more than a glorified advert for Sky Sports. Surely that's got to be breaking their customer charter. Christ, it's practically a concious attempt to be as deliberately insulting to the fans as is humanly possible.

    Just to clarify, I'm obviously an F1 fan. I couldn't care less about other sports, and I sure as hell don't need to watch a few over paid prima donnas being cheered on by the barely literate in the Pampers Premiership. So why the hell would I want a contract to pay in excess of £30 a month to watch an average of 2 hours of F1, for 9 months a year? I didn't walk into anywhere near enough glass doors as a kid to think that's a good idea.

    Apparently though, this glorious display of intellect makes great commercial sense. Presumably that's defined by the fact that once we've all finished channel hopping to find the damn thing, made ourselves comfortable, and left ourselves a voicemail for James Murdoch to thank him personally for the broadcast, then for half the season we'll also get to be interrupted with commercials throughout the race, and pay for the privelege.

    Finally according to Sky this is "fantastic news for F1 fans". Really? Where the hell did you find one dumb enough to say that?

    Sunday 24 July 2011

    Chastising Chuggers

    I work in central London, I choose to do this, like I choose to go out and get my lunch, or go for a walk, or nip to the shops in my lunch break. At no point in this do I walk along so desperate for social interaction that I want some professional irritant leaping in front of me with a fake smile and a sob story.

    Chuggers are one of the worst things about living in any modern city. I can't even go out for lunch these days without some idiot in a left over Shell-suit trying to convince me that I could single handedly raise Africa out of poverty, cure cancer, save all the children, and populate a small aircraft carrier's worth of Air Ambulances.

    At their best Chuggers are blatantly lying to you. They work on the assumption that people think they're volunteers doing it for charity, and that you're doing a good thing by signing up. Bollocks. All Chuggers are paid just like any other job, and pimped out as glorified contractors to the charities. They're not working for those charities, they've just been given that colour jacket for the day and a sob story to go along with it.

    But here's the real kick, on average, the typical monthly donation to a charity via a Chugger will take approximately a whole year before you've even paid for the Chugger! That's an entire year of your donations and good will going to help precisely NO ONE. And I'm pretty damn sure that that's not what you signed up for.

    The proof of this, straight from the horses mouth, is here here. My personal favourite is the line "Across the entire campaign, a charity can expect to break even (i.e. recoup the whole cost it spent on fundraising) in about 26-28 months." Do we really need a better reason to ban them than in excess of 2 years worth of helping nobody? If I donate a few hundred quid to charity I want to feel good about doing it. I don't want some clipboard warrior spending it all in Starbucks at the end of a hard days work pissing people off. I give money to help people, I do this reasonably regularly, I give none of this money so you can buy hair gel and fake tan. All this is before the spectacuarly arrogant statement that they genuinely believe that you're not entitled to walk down the street without someone stopping you. Apparently personal privacy and the right to go about your day without interruptions doesn't exist.

    A friend of mine even had a Chugger for the Red Cross shout at her down the street "People will die because of you!" purely because she wanted to go about her business rather than waste her time talking to these filth.

    So do yourself a favour, donating to charity is a great thing, so do it directly, don't give these professional irritants the time of day.

    And if you are a Chugger, crying with outrage after managing to convince yourself that you're actually a worthwhile member of society? Here's an idea, why don't you go out and get a real job, then donate everything you earn over and above your Chugging wage to charity, and let's see how committed you really are to this. The charities will get a lot more money, waste a lot less, and for once you might be able to find out what it feels like to know that if you got hit by a bus, someone might actually stop and help you out for a change.

    Thursday 14 July 2011

    Peons on the Peasent Wagon

    One of the benefits of recently becoming a North Londoner as that I can just hop on the bus to work, and not have to cram myself onto a tube carriage that's too small for anyone who continued to grow past their 10th birthday, and save some cash in the process.

    One of the bad things about doing this is the number of window lickers you have to endure on a daily basis. Over the years I've all gotten used to the arrogant types who seem to think that because everyone else has paid to get on TFL must have loads of money, so why the hell shouldn't the driver let them on for free. I mean after all, they've been standing there shouting about it for long enough, surely that's going to have won someone over?

    But they're not the most disturbing people you get on Buses, oh no, more often than not that get's saved for me.

    I've long since considered myself to be something of a Mecca for the unhinged, so on the way home last night it was no big shock that once we'd extracted the afore mentioned hitch-hikers that life decided to serve me up with a new best friend to keep me company for the rest of the journey.

    What followed for the rest of my journey was a short and concise lesson as to why people in London generally want nothing to do with each other.

    Once my new mate clambered up onto the bus and dug around in what I'm relatively sure was a spare shoe to find his Oyster card, he turned to find and seat with that glorious almost vacant expression that inspires the universal prayer of public transport, as we all simultaneously reached out to the nearest convenient deity and said to ourselves, "oh for the love of God, don't sit next to me!"

    Sadly being a card carrying Atheist, science doesn't pay much attention to the stray thoughts of a wayward Londoner, and as I'd clearly forgotten to remove the sign around my neck that said "Hi, I'm friendly and love meeting new and interesting people, it'd be awfully jolly if you came and started talking at me!" I had no option but to accept my fate as he came staggering towards me.

    So, just as I was finishing up my mental calculations of exactly how long this pleasure was likely to last, and accepted that by having a huge box with me getting up and moving wasn't going to happen without throwing a hoover at someone, my new friend reached that magical final foot away from me.

    And it was there, at the kind of distance where you've usually had to pay a lot of money to get someone in to, that I was greeted with the sight of an unwashed, unclothed groin, complete with dirt marks and overhanging stomach staggering towards my face. You see, while this guy had worked out the complexities of an Oyster card, and the concept of Buses, basic personal hygiene and the ability to complete the dressing process weren't apparently running a close second on his list of lifetime achievements.

    Immediately after that fleshy wake up call he parked his thankfully mildly more clothed backside down next to me and started ranting.

    It was a this point that I thought to myself, "Aha! I've got you on this one, that hairy groin stunt might have been a new one on me, but this talking bollocks insessently until I react will get you nowhere, for I've come readily equipped with ear phones and an iPod, so I can't hear you." At which point the album I was listening to immediately finished.

    This however allowed me a few precious seconds to hear what the hell he was saying though, and it turns out I was having a mildly better time of it than whoever  he was speaking to, as he was talking utter nonsense at them and doing things like repeating the bloody place names that the automated announcement system was sayi..hang on, he's not repeating them, he's.....talking to them. He's sat there hiding his man parts under a t-shirt that looks like it was turned down by any self respecting tramp, and having a conversation with the sodding automated announcements that tell you what the next stop is. How the hell does these people get allowed out!

    Fortunately for me that's when I got to my stop, got up, and made a hastey exit. Then I wrote about my horror, and at least some of you laughed at it. You bastards.

    Finally some of you are mentally shouting at me for being a heartless dick as he clearly had mental issues. Well, you're right, he clearly did. Incidentally, the opposite seat to me on the bus had a girl who looked like she was about 7 years old sitting on it on her way back from school. Perhaps the reality isn't just that I might be using this guy for comic effect, but that it's also a damn good job he sat next to me and not her. I'm used to dealing with this kind of shit, that could have scared the living hell out of her.

    Transformers 3: Review

    Seeing as I'm trying to start using this properly now, and that it still remains devoid of any purpose other than me ranting unintelligible nonsense about whatever takes my fancy. Let's write a movie review!

    So, Transformers 3. The film opens with a dramatic.....you know what, screw it, giant robots from your childhood have a fight and stuff gets destroyed in an impressive manner, it doesn't exactly need a plot does it. Oh, hang on, apparently it does. Apparently it should have a plot involving a love story, jealousy, a young man desperately trying to find his way in the world, double crossing government agencies getting in the way, and....you know, let's just cut to the chase; Transformers 3 is so bad that it might be worth buying the Blu Ray just to see Michael Bay begging for forgiveness for 90 minutes in the extras. Seriously, I created better story lines as a toddler playing with the toys with nothing but upturned dustbin and a curios cat for a backdrop than Michael Bay managed in 2.5 life shortening hours. Nobody, anywhere, ever, has gone to see a Transformers movie and sat there thinking "you know, giant robots destroying stuff is all well and good, but I came here for a damn love story!"

    We've now reached the point where the phrase "a Michael Bay film" appearing at the end of a trailer isn't an endorsement, it's just Hollywood shorthand for "Oh for the love of God don't watch this! Please, bleach your eyes, bathe in acid, spend an evening replying to 'you may already have won' letters, do anything, but don't watch this film!"

    And while I'm here, stop making films in sodding 3D. It adds N-O-T-H-I-N-G, it's not even amusing to see people sat there in all seriousness wearing comedy glasses anymore.

    Wednesday 13 July 2011

    Olympic Underground, a point for common sense

    So, in a fit of alarming common sense the 2012 Olympic crowd think it will be a good idea to have volunteers working at Tube Stations across London to help point the lost masses in the right direction. This, somewhat obviously, is a good move. It'd be a better move if they found volunteers who spoke additional languages to just English, but this is London, so they'd probably just refuse to speak anything else anyway. But it's still a good idea none the less. After all, every Londoner knows that tourists are a monolithic pain in the arse at the best of times, and that for reasons known only to themselves, the rest of the world seems to think that blocking an escalator, ticket barrier, or doorway to read a map in the middle of rush hour is a display of abject genius. So having someone standing under a big sign miles away from an escalator saying 'Tourist Info' is a big win. It'll be like Moths to a flame.

    Unless of course you're Bob Crow and the RMT. They apparently think it's an enormous safety risk for anyone other than their highly trained staff to even speak in a tube station, let alone go so far as to offer to help someone. But then these are the same people who think that crowding London's roads with cars, and delaying the emergency services by going on strike is an acceptable means of promoting safety. Interesting concept isn't it. Incidentally, here's a much better blog post about what happens to the emergency services when LU decides to call a unilateral public holiday: Nee Naw Ambulance Service Blog

    Of course what the RMT are really worried about here though isn't passenger safety, it never has been, otherwise the Nee Naw blog link wouldn't exist. They're worried that by allowing volunteers to help people by providing directions and info people will come to expect something that passes for useful information on the tube. That means that standards will be raised to an alarmingly mediocre level, and the general public will be presented with the reality of just how replaceable the majority of staff are on the Underground.

    They're worried that when untrained volunteers turn out to be more useful than their "highly trained" staff, that people will realise that perhaps paying for people to stand next to a ticket barrier all day ignoring passengers isn't really an acceptable use of public money. And that the services they do offer could essentially be performed by a 4 year old with rudimentary reading and writing skills, and the ability to formulate something not entirely dissimilar to a sentence.

    They're worried that when people realise that LU staff are essentially getting paid decent sums of money and offering us little more than 3rd rate transport network famous across the globe for its over inflated prices and unreliability, and that they then spend half the year on strike that the last threads of sympathy and legitimacy for the RMT's 'arguments' will evaporate over night. And if that happens who'll stand up for Tube Drivers who get fired for endangering the lives of all their passengers by driving a train while drunk?

    So bring on the volunteers, and help wave goodbye to the RMT and it's institutionalized delusions.

    Tuesday 12 July 2011

    Social Experiments, with Swords

    Every Monday I engage in something of a social experiment on route to the London Longsword Academy at the Barbican. I make my way through London with my (nylon plastic) training sword in plain view of every Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to pass by.

    Naturally I get even more odd looks than normal (measured by the fact that I actually notice them) as people stare wondering what the hell I'm holding. Which is of course the problem. As every Monday what I'm actually doing is experiencing just how deluded people are.

    Now, they don't know it's a sword, I deliberately remove the cross guard so it looks less scary, and it's White, and it's not made of metal, and I'm holding it by the "blade". Making it pretty obvious that it's either not sharp, or I'm an utter moron and desperately trying to relieve myself of a limb. But gradually it tends to dawn on most people what it is.

    This however, just doesn't compute for the average Londoner. People will literally stare at it as though there's something deeply weird and odd about a man holding a long plastic thing. Turn up at midday Gothed up for the night with spikes all over your clothes and it's unlikely anyone in London will notice, rock up at the end of the day with a training sword and some sports gear and they think you're about to embark on a one man crusade down the Victoria Line. The point of course is simple; the other day I sat next to a guy on the tube with a bag of Golf Clubs. No one batted an eyelid, the same goes for Tennis Rackets and other sports kit. Sit there with a guy wearing his army gear on the way home and nobody cares that he's been well trained in various forms of armed and unarmed combat. Someone walks on wearing clothes that marks them out as a martial artist and nobody minds. But sit there with a plastic sword and they think you're mental, and you can see them weighing up the options about calling the Police.

    So for those of you who get scared by that, here's a quick lesson. Practically everything is a weapon in the wrong hands. Sports gear, your weekly shopping, a rolled up magazine, a mobile phone, jewellery, literally anything. And lets not forget the afore mentioned martial arts crowd (who NEVER get questioned at airport security by the way). So, the point is, if you want to give me worried looks on a weekly basis fine, but you might want to contemplate if it's ever worth leaving the house again afterwards as well. Because if what you can see in plain sight scares you, then the stuff you can't see clearly must keep you awake at night.

    Anyone who wants to know more about European Martial Arts / Sword Fighting in London, please point yourselves in this direction: http://fightmedieval.com/

    Saturday 9 July 2011

    Read all about it

    Watching the News of the World story these past few days has been little more than watching a train wreck in motion.

    Let's get one thing clear from the off. I think the News of the World was shit. It was gutter journalism that did nothing but seek out scandal and embarass valueless celebrities to fuel what can only be described as the most embarassing part of British society. It's target audience was the type of person who has to use velcro instead of laces if they ever want to leave the house every day, and I wont for a single second miss it. The same incedentally goes for the likes of the Sun as well, but that's beside the point. The events that followed though are a reflection of everything that's wrong with the western world. The Murdochs' response was so arrogant as to have the nerve to claim that they were impressed by Rebekah Brooks integrity and morals, and to be able to say that and keep a straight face was unbelieveable. So while I'm happy to see the News of the World off the shelves, and let's face it, nobody was ever going to buy it or advertise in it again, the approach of sacking the staff who are there now, and ignoring the cause of the problem is insulting to the intelligence of everyone.

    We don't need time to analyse Brooks' excuses that she was on holiday every time someone hacked a phone, it's akin to being told the dog ate the kids' homework. Nobody alive with an education that prevents them from trying to walk through panes of glass is going to believe that, but it all points back to the same thing. Arrogance. News International seem to genuinely believe that they can do whatever they want with no consequences. It's the most glaringly obvious display of absolute power in the modern world that anyone's ever seen. As I type an ex-NotW Journo is tweeting while Rebekah Brooks announces she won't be leaving, and we discover that apparently Rupert Murdoch is angry with David Cameron for having the nerve to investigate him. Who the hell is allowed enough power that they can criticise a Prime Minister for launching an investigation into the continually illgeal and immoral actions of their own organisation? And don't forget when Murdoch's not happy with the PM that's the same as threatening to bring down a government.

    The best thing to come from this week hasn't been the death of the NotW though, it's been the example that Twitter has set for showing the likes of Murdoch and Brooks, and countless others who are no doubt bricking it at the moment that it's the people who ultimately get to be the judge. The days of media giants dictating what the world sees and thinks are coming to an end. The citizen journalists are providing warts and all opinions and evidence of anything that the powers that be don't like, and are begining to realise just how much they can do. We're seeing this in Athens with footage of incredible Police violence that makes the Ian Tomlinson case look like a playground scrap, and we're seeing this in the UK with the forced humiliation of the Murdochs and Brooks (regardless of what happens with their jobs). Yes, the likes of Twitter and YouTube are in their early days at this, and mistakes and lynch mobs are making mistakes, but weeks like this have shown us that there is still a light at the end of the tunnel, and with luck that light will be showing us the end of the likes of Rebekah Brooks by the time the weekend is over.