The 20th century was better than this one!

Something else that couldn’t be made for TV today is The A Team with B.A. Baracas and his obsession with looking out for the welfare of little kids. He would fall foul of the ‘see evil in everything’ lobby and be branded a paedophile by Scotland Yard’s Prevert Squad when the superintendent in charge did a TV appeal for victims after staging a dawn raid, with helicopters, on the A Team’s hideout.

More guesswork

“Why does a new Hollywood film about P.T. Barnum gloss over his outrageous cruelty and racism?” a story title in yesterday’s Daily Mail demanded. Possibly because it’s a film made in Hollywood and the producers thought they’d get a bigger box-office from something entertaining than from something miserable, dull and worthy.

Just guesswork

2017 has now been demoted to the 5th warmest year ‘on record’. It was the 3rd warmest just one week ago. Which demonstrates how dodgy the judgements are when the accuracy of the measurements is considered and also when dodgy judgements are applied to results which fall well within the error limits of the measurments.

Just overblown with self-importance

When are agents of the FBI and NCIS going to realize that if everyone is pretending to be ‘special’ then no one is?

Ideas that really suck

I’m reading Eye, a collection of SF short stories by Frank Herbert, which came out in the year before he died. There’s one in which beings from some galactic civilization land on Earth and deliver an ‘or else’. Which left me thinking: like some galactic civilization would be aware of what’s happening on a planet of an insignificant star in one of the spiral arms. And like that civilization would regard humanity as any sort of threat or worthy of membership.

It’s all to do with who you know

Some rotters have been expressing doubt, when told yesterday’s joke, about whether J. Corbyn could pass through the training course for Downing Street cleaners and emerge with the necessary qualifications. But if he knows the union boss, he’ll be able to get himself appointed as the non-playing captain of a cleaning team.
    Problem solved!

More cloth-ears

Were they really advertising Nescafé Dodgy Gusto on TV last night? Everyone is sure to want a mug of that!

A pre-New Year joke

This one is doing the rounds where I live:
    Jeremy Corbyn knows he’ll be in No. 10 within a year. He’s just applied for a job as a cleaner and he’s a pal of the relevant union boss.

Buncha Beefers!

Political correctness is applied by the Jedi in the military – that’s the Joint Equality, Diversity and Inclusion unit, which distributes its BS equally to the army, navy and air force, and all their sub-divisions.

Out of his tree

Lord Tarzan would have us believe that Brexit will be worse for the country than Wolfie Corbyn as PM. Clearly, all those free lunches with free booze have clogged his brain cells.

Preservation is not verification

Let us not forget that a daft idea dreamt up by an ancient philosopher (e.g. Plato) is still daft, even if it is over 2,000 years old and still being quoted.

Not even close

What we watched on Xmas day? Nope, didn’t watch any of the alleged top ten of irresistibles.

Not so Merry

Are there enough bullets in the world to shoot all the feet at Tesco after their Xmas turkey fiasco? The lack of PR skills of some of their management suggests that the rottenness is spread further than among their products.

Time distortion

Easter eggs for Xmas? Yes, some of the big stores have stretched holiday crossover to this point. At this rate, it will soon be possible to celebrate next year's Xmas this year!

Three seasonal good cheers

Hooray for President Trump! He has abolished Happy Holidays and given Merry Xmas back to the world. What a terrific bloke he is!

Here we go again

Well, that was a nice Xmas present for Bremoaners, the sneerocracy and was-beens like Edstone Milipede. They can now sound off about the return of blue passports and pretend there’s something wrong with not being ashamed of your country and its glorious past.

Thinking ahead

No newspaper today? What to do about it? In my case, it was read the Sunday Post yesterday and save the Sunday Telegraph for today. After all, there’s no point in getting out of bed if there isn’t a paper on offer.

Who needs education?

I have just finished reading a 1973 SF novel called The Phaeton Condition by Douglas Mason. The title is rather revealing. Back in the 70s, people were still educated and they were expected to know who Phaeton was. These days, we have the internet.

Mysteries in the skies

According to the former director of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was run at the Pentagon using black ops cash, UFOs do exist. US pilots have spotted things in the sky which are objects which fly and are of unknown origin. So many unexplainable sightings have been logged that it is possible that some could have contained Little Green Men from Venus, or elsewhere, but there is no proof one way or the other.    Some might say that the cash spent on AATIP was wasted. But it did give the boss and his minions the illusion of useful employment, so it did do some good.

It's your fault, mate

It's all very well for Donald MacLeod to rant about Tory cuts and austerity in the Sunday Post, but let us not forget how we got here. It was New Labour, led by Tony B. Liar (Scottish) and Gordon Brown (Scottish) who spent the country into an enormous mountain of debt and left nothing to show for all the wasted cash. And it was left-wingers like MacLeod (Scottish) who voted them in to office.
    Consequently, unless MacLeod is prepared to be a man and stand up and admit his share of responsibility for the need for austerity, and accept that he is to blame for any misery about which he rants, the rest of us will continue to make noises about pots, kettles and empty barrels.

More 'believe it or what?'

According to another of these surveys (this one by an appliance retailer), 42% of the population has experienced an appliance failure at Xmas and 35% of the failures were of cookers. Is this proof that the Universe really does hate us? Not unless surveys in countries where other holidays are celebrated produces a parallel result.

It's cloth-eyes again!

Who is the patron saint of . . . I saw 'chi' and assumed it was 'chickens'. In fact, it was 'children' but it set me wondering. Do chickens have a patron saint (specific rather than generic St. Francis) and if not, why not?

Saving the world: the hard choices

The only way to clean up the planet is to use less of its resources, which means reducing the population; not gradually by natural wastage as populations go up, not down, but quickly and by billions. But who will decide who is to be killed and who will survive? And will those picked for slaughter understand that no usual suspects can be culled because they are too vital to be lost?

No perspective

We might be a bit impressed by claims that 2016 was the warmest year on record, and 2017 was the third warmest, if that record went back 2,017 years rather than just a small fraction of that span of time.

New word in search of a meaning!

How easy it is to read ‘inadequate’ as ‘madequate’! All we need now is a definition for this new addition to the language – ‘infuriatingly okay’, for instance, or ‘insanely bog standard’?

Reality Bite

We’ve all been dreaming of a white Xmas? There’s another misleading inclusive. Wet, grey and warmish will suit most of people, thank you very much, no matter what newspaper cliché-mongers would have us believe.

“We don’t care too!”

The Foundation which hosts Wikipedia leaves decisions on what goes on the site to its editors; a “washed-hands” policy which ensures that hijackings by tiny gangs of nasties are inevitable. Which is something to remember when ‘facts’ on the interweb encyclopaedia don’t seem terribly factual.

“We also don’t care!”

The Europeon Court of Justice, home to some very dodgy characters, has ruled that Uber is a taxi firm not an internet service. US-based Uber sez: “Whatever!”

“We don’t care!”

That’s a refreshingly tough attitude President Trump is taking toward the aid junkies who condemn his plan to move the US embassy in Palestine to Jerusalem. If they won’t back him, they won’t get American cash.

Big deal? No, very small, actually.

The French parliament has voted to end all oil and gas production on French soil (that’s France and occupied territories abroad) by 2040. Wow! Amazing! Well, not really. The annual oil production by the French is about what Saudi Arabia produces in its lunchbreak on one single day. Which means that the impact on the planet is not going to be huge.

Bodies get busy at this time of year

Leicestershire county council has approved the appointment of an Xmas Sprout Controller to ensure that no resident consumes more than 6 festive Brussels sprouts on Xmas Day.
    A large team of Reallocation Prevention Agents will have to be appointed to ensure that people who do not like sprouts do not hand over their rejected vegetables to a sproutoholic and cause the recipient to exceed the Six-Per-Person Rule.

A weird notion of justice

The former girlfriend of Scottish Labour’s former deputy leader is bent out of shape as the party has declined to investigate a complaint, which she made about him. The reason for dropping the investigation is that she refused to let the accused know what she was accusing him of!
    It comes as something of a surprise, but it’s nice to know that some vestige of justice and fair play remains in pockets of Corby’s Labour; possibly only because Scotland is a long way from his centre of power in London.

The world is saved

The Clash of Titans has been averted. The Royal Weeding will take place during the morning of a Cup Final played at stupid o’clock in the evening [5:30 pm instead of 3 p.m.]. So no clash.

“It doesn’t MATTER what you think, Jabroni!”

Can you imagine the consternation if America’s leader were to tell the above to the Big Boss of the Russians or Chinese? It’s something which could well happen if the 2024 US election gives us another President Johnson. That's Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, who has political ambitions and a desire to be another actor turned leader of the Western World, like Ronald Reagan.

Brown smiles, anyone?

What is the fad for drinking cider vinegar going to do to the teeth of the idiots who have fallen for this latest dotty diet craze? As any fule kno, vinegar contains acetic acid and acids eat teeth.

The Meerkat Plot

It would make a great script idea for an update of the 1960s version of Batman: the bumbling EC president J-C Druncker under threat of assassination by the sinister German Angular Meerkat, who is about to be dumped out of power in her own country, and who is looking for a comfortable and secure billet at the home for failed politicians. Maybe the estate of Robert Ludlum could be persuaded to commission a book?

Clash of Titans

Am I bothered that Prince Harry is marrying Mrs. Merkel’s little girl on Cup Final Day? As I already have my Cup Final day out booked, not really.

He cannot be serious!

If the Archbish of Canterbury marries Prince Harry AND Meghan Merkel, isn’t that bigamy? [Or trigamy, if his Archbishness is already married?]

Entity: Or is there a ‘non’ involved?

This guy Kevin who does the EE ads on TV – is he a real person we’re supposed to have heard of? On an imaginary person, like the Oxo Mum? It’s difficult to tell and looking him up on Mr. Internet would be too much trouble.

Just one glass, please

Britain is become a nation of drunks thanks to a sinister plot by the people who run wine bars and pubs. Wine glasses have doubled in size over the last 30 years such that the standard glass now holds about 3/4 of a pint; but there are real whoppers around with the capacity to hold a full 750 ml bottle of wine with room to let it breathe.

Reshaping the world

TV adverts featuring mothers who can cook and run a household, and ads featuring fathers who are miserable incompetents, are to be banned in the name of banning gender stereotypes.
    In future, all mothers will be shown as drunken slags, for whom wine o’clock comes at breakfast time and fathers will be portrayed as high-powered executives with staff to attend to menial parental duties.

Cowboy accounting

People can’t get cash in lightly populated areas because banks have closed branches but there are still ATMs in shops. Which prompted local councils to come up with the bright idea of shoving an extra £5,000 on their business rates.
    Of course, the result with be even fewer cash machines and no extra cash for the councils. But practical considerations have never ever stood in the way of thoroughly boneheaded ideas in the public sector.

Rattling cages

Brexit Secretary D. Davis has got the spivs in Brussels really rattled if they are reduced to cheap gibes about behaving like a gangster. The more upset he makes the Eurocraps, the better job our Mr. Davis is doing!

Another of life’s mysteries

Why does Virgin Media think I’ll be impressed by getting a “value statement for July-September 2017" . . . in December 2017?

Compulsory bending?

There’s a firm called Land’s End which keeps sending me catalogues and special offers for frocks and female clothing. I have told them a number of times that they’re wasting their time and postage on a bloke who isn’t a cross-dresser, but they take no notice.
    Could it be that they’re softening me up for some future Labour government making cross-dressing compulsory on a couple of days per week to placate the trans lobby?

S’not Sunday

The weather bods on TV were going crazy about Snow Sunday. Here, we got a token few flakes in the late afternoon but nothing that stuck. Not that anyone is complaining, mind!

S’no problem here

I was somewhat agog when viewing the pix of snowbound areas on the lunchtime TV news. It’s bloody cold here but we had a sprinkling of snow yesterday, which melted on a warmer day, and we had no more overnight and there has been none so far today. I guess we just live in the right part of the country!

No Contest!

There’s a veritable industry involved in generating complaints about BBC repeats, especially over Xmas. But seriously, if you had the choice, wouldn’t you rather watch a repeat of the A Team on Forces TV than tripe like BBC 1's Come Dancing on a Saturday night?

Out of sight . . .

The Chinese have decided to stop taking our low-grade plastic and cardboard waste any more as their 4th World approach to ‘recycling’ has been busted embarrassingly by nosy investigators. But there is no need to panic.
    Britain has lots of holes in the ground and one permitted solution to disposal is ‘temporary storage’. All we have to do is get creative with our definition of ‘temporary’ and have the courage to tell creeps who try to argue with it to get lost.

Freedom from police harassment

Motorbike bandits can get away with it by taking their helmets off to avoid police pursuit. Muggers on foot can escape the forces of law ‘n’ order by running across boggy ground because coppers hate getting their designer footwear muddy. As the Blesséd Little John says: “You couldn’t make it up!”

No excuses for traitors

The Defence Sec. has really upset Labour and the Libertines by making British-born jihadis valid and necessary targets for the armed forces. Why are Lab and Lib upset? Because anyone who hates British values has to be a natural supporter of one or the other of them against the Tories. And they don’t want their voters wiped out abroad when they could be voting Lab or Lib here (when they’re not murdering people).

The power of self-interest

We don’t have real wide-spread poverty of that sort that was about between the wars any more. What we have is the usual suspects making too good a living out of government anti-poverty schemes to get an honest job.

Trigger words

‘Subtle’ and ‘subtlety’ in an EU context are coded warnings that an Establishment stitch-up is in progress to the benefit of the Druncker class, and taxpayers are about to be swindled.

Wot Cuts?

If the Vice-Chancellor of Bath Spa (?) University is paid £808 million pounds as her annual salary, imagine what the boss of the university, the Chancellor, gets!

Putin forever!

Old age pensioner V. Putin has warned the Russian peasants that he intends to do a Mugabe on them and remain their president for another 30 years. Having ‘acquired’ an estimated $235 BILLION from the pockets of those Russians who pay taxes already, he is extremely well placed to buy as many election victories as he needs.

Trump Unites the World!!

One thing that Donald Trump can never be accused of is a lack of the means to make an impact. Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel rather than Palestine is a classic example of how he can bring together all the nations of the world. Even if it’s to condemn him and call him a nutter.

Victim, boo-hoo, sob!

The rest of the world is ganging up on poor old Russia! Isn’t it dreadful that they’ve been banned from the next Winter Olympics just for institutional doping? How dare the rest of the world hold a bit of cheating (well, a lot, actually) against Mother Russia!

A wealth of experience

The BBC, a notorious purveyor of fake news, is going to train children how to spot it? Shirley a case not of poacher turned gamekeeper but poacher expanding operations.

Dark Daze Ahead (possibly)

Labour councils are being advised to hide their vast reserves abroad in case Corbyn Labour wins the next election and wrecks the British economy, like Labour does. But will the councils be sensible enough to do it?

Standard Operating Procedure

Is anyone surprised to learn that the people shovelling Britain’s aid cash down black holes are dumping it into the pockets of terrorists as well as spivs in their desperation to make it disappear? Of course not. That’s what they do.

The Unwholly Grail

The EU and the Irish were all set to stitch up Mrs. May, and their meeja machine was burbling at full blast, when . . . splat! The wheels came off. The details of the stitch-up reached the boss lady of the DUP and it was a case of once more, “Ulster says NO!!”.
    Nice to know that there’s one politician in the UK prepared to stick to her guns and stand up for what she thinks is right in the face of an EU swindle.

Forlorn hope?

The Police Service of Northern Ireland, which prosecutes British troops but not IRA terrorists, thinks that bumping into someone under the mistletoe constitutes rape. And even posted a warning for the twits on Twitter.
    We could be reassured to know that the police over the water are just as crap as those on the mainland. But we would be enormously more reassured if we had police who weren’t crap.

Hypocrite to the last

What do you call leaping out of the job you got by being Nick Clegg’s mate just after you’ve been told your contract won’t be renewed, and doing so in a bomb-burst of fake self-righteousness? Doing a Milburn.

Everything of clay

It’s not really surprising that the Millennials of GO magazine, who had bought the Corbyn promos, found the man himself underwhelming when confronted with reality and that he was ‘not fantastic with detail’.
    Now they know why J.C. is kept in a box and wheeled out only under carefully stage-managed conditions; some PR which the current Old Labourites learned from the failed New Labour Experiment.

The usual result

Peter Oborne asked in yesterday’s Daily Mail: How would Americans react to a British PM who stirred up racial division in the US by praising the KKK? 99.8% wouldn’t hear about it or give a rat’s ass, 0.1% would applaud and 0.1% would get their knickers in a twist. In other words, just the same as for any other politics-based question.

Uncut truth

It’s high time the Trade Descriptions Act was applied to Labourites who go on about ‘Tory austerity’. They should be required by law to state the full truth, namely: ‘Tory austerity to repair the nation’s finances after Labour wrecked them’.

Clingon Rossi

We’re not getting rid of motorbike champion Valentino Rossi anytime soon. He’s always zooming off somewhere, which makes a steady relationship with another human bean so difficult that he reckons that he is: “happily married to his motorbike, which reciprocates his love, if not always.” Which explains September’s broken leg, which put him out of competition for all of three weeks.

Alibi/Abuse

Baby boomers, born between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, are to blame. They went out to work, 10% of them went to university first, and they bought houses and raised families and saved for their old age; unless they were low-level Labourites, of course. [Posh Labourites did the buying and saving thing too.]
    Millennial snowflakes, born from the 1980s on, need an excuse and theirs is that the baby boomers left nothing for them, and they should definitely not have to make any sort of effort on their own behalf because of it.

It’s all completely self-consistent, really. Honest!

Snowflakes hate old people for voting for Brexit. Snowflakes worship Saint Jeremy. But the elderly J. Corbyn has been a long-term opponent of the concept of the EU and he’s happy to see us on the way out (despite politics-based posturing to the contrary). But who says anything to do with politics and young people has to make sense?

Blighted perception

Sky News was describing the fall in net immigration as “the worst on record”. The highest, maybe, but how did they get to worst? Unless Sky thinks that the New Labour policy of trawling the world for migrants to upset the Tories was a good idea.
    On a note of accuracy, the rate of immigration is still higher than it was five years ago.