"Kick Me"

A terrible story from Jackie Danicki about being abused and assaulted on the Tube. But this marvellous woman has a clear as a bell picture of her assailant. And here it is. So this POS now has the blogsphere equivalent of the old playground "Kick Me" sign on his back.

I look forward to hearing that the Met have successfully concluded their investigations and the CPS are busy bees preparing a cracking case for incarceration. This one is going to be SO public and there will be no room for error here.

Yes Massa Minister

Another ghastly exchange on the Today programme this morning.. Some shrill, ignorant, money-grabbing, harpy was bleating on about reparations for Africa and how she wants me (via my government) to pay money (to who?) in some sort of apology for the slave trade. It was not the re-hashing of this ludicrous nonsense...

In Africa, the 2nd self appointed World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission was convened in Ghana in 2000. Its deliberations concluded with a Petition being served in the International Court at the Hague for US$777 trillion (more than ten times the annual world GDP, equivalent to about 250 years' worth of the current U.S. federal budget) against the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom for "unlawful removal and destruction of Petitioners' mineral and human resources from the African continent" between 1503 up to the end of the colonialism era in the late 1950s and 1960s.

..that really annoyed me but the contribution from David Lammy, the Minister dragged out to comment. It was his spineless, pathetic, careful and considered, toe-the-party-line, limp dick response that just makes me despair of politicians in this country. They are so lobotomised by the desperate need not to 'offend' anyone that they are incapable of saying something like "Do you realise how daft it is to suggest that the poor bloody taxpayers in 2006 should hand over their money to you and your fellow crooks for something done by people long long dead. I for one am glad that we won't be doing anything of the sort and will do everything in my power as a minister to prevent this idiocy - so you can just forget it!"

While my guitar

For those who haven't seen this I find it truly amazing. Probably the best version of While my Guitar Gently Weeps played on a ukelele!
While My Guitar Gently Weeps on Transbuddha
Enjoy!

Tagged!

A moment of panic as I wonder what being 'tagged' is, until I de-geek and realise we're playing the playground game and I'm "it".. So on with the game

Ten things I would never do:

1. Let an uninvited official over the threshold of my property
2. Stop standing up for the rights of smokers (especially having recently stopped myself)
3. Allow membership of any organisation/party to suppress my ability to criticise it
4. Buy a horse
5. Pray
6. Give a rat's arse about so-called global warming/cooling/ooh isn't it chilly out
7. Breed
8. Live in a climate without seasons (or California)
9. Let the pursuit of money exclude the appreciation of things that can't be bought
10. Be depressed again

How far back do you have to go to make sure you're not back-tracking? Fuck it - I tag Theo Spark

Ready, Aim...

Oh, I just loved this from The Reactionarysnob

Greg Clark, who is overhauling the party's approach to poverty at the Tory leader's request, will urge Conservatives to look to the Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee rather than the wartime leader.

Join the Labour Party then chumkins. Why would anyone other than a firing squad have a decent reason to look to Polly Toynbee?

Sometimes it's so demoralising trying to blog when others do it so bloody well!

Shuffling deckchairs

The Tories are trying to pull the wool over our eyes with their document of drivel about immigration. The points they are making (and they repeat these a couple of times in case you missed them the first time) are:

• Asylum policy should be separated from policy on economic migration
• Britain benefits economically from immigration, but not all or any immigration

I'm OK with the first one. I am so tired of trying to discuss economic immigration and being countered with points about asylum.

Actually the second one is sound too. Not rocket surgery, but true.

Where the Tories are being arseholes is that they are trying to pretend that the policies that they are proposing do anything to benefit the economy and the reason for this is that they refuse to make clear that we are not allowed by the EU to restrict immigration from other EU countries. Given that there is (of course) a limit on the total number of people that we are capable of absorbing, and we don't know how many EU citizens will turn up, we will be forced to prevent some non-EU citizens from entering the country - without assessing whether they would have been of more benefit to us than the EU dross we are forced to take.

It's a fiasco and the only way out is to leave the EU. Duh!

Nice but Dim

I'm sure all the people who paid money to this Christmas Hamper outfit which recently went bust are lovely people. However, what they certainly aren't is bright. Let's see which of the following strategies is more likely to bring Christmas cheer...

1. Put aside some money every week in a savings account with a regulated bank or building society (and earn a little interest bonus on said savings), or even under the fucking mattress. Withdraw your money a week before Christmas and make your purchases.

2. Give some money every week to a bunch of strangers, who can do what they like with your money and who are not regulated the way a bank is. Wait and see whether they still have any of your money left when you want it back.

And these people expect someone, anyone, (me perhaps with the taxed portion of my hard-earned money?), to reward them for their stupidity.

Fuck Off!

And another thing...

HBOS have been criticised for ensuring that they got their money first. As opposed to what exactly? The directors of the bank have a responsibility to their shareholders to safeguard the Bank's lending and were presumably acting in the shareholders' interests. Any other course of action (such as considering the customers of an outfit that was heavily in debt to the bank before the Bank's own shareholders) would possibly lay them open to prosecution. Banks are businesses too, not bloody charities. It makes me sick.

Rant over

The welcome signs of Winter

What a wonderful phrase from The Englishman in his castle! Another lucky soul who doesn't face the onset of this season with the dread that so many seem too. It's all to do with our country sports of course. Opening Meet this Saturday (which I'll miss as I'll be on our second shoot day) is a wonderful re-establishement of connections neglected since the season ended in March. It's also when our social convention of moving Sunday lunch to 5pm kicks in so that everyone can make best use of the daylight hours to do the stuff that needs it and then down tools and gather for traditional roasts and stodgy puddings.

Shoot days that start in the dark with heating of soup for flasks and loading of coats, hats, gloves, gunslip, cartridges and other paraphanalia and stretch on to post-shoot drinks in pubs with log fires or hot baths and whisky at home. When arriving at the office on a Monday morning with tanned face I've often been asked where I've been. I reply "Outdoors".