Gimme, gimme gimme

Funny how it’s always Labour MPs who come up with the most self-serving ways to screw cash out of the taxpayer. Ancient (81) Corbynite P. Flynn would like the current system of expenses claims and scrutiny to be abolished in favour of a big pay rise for MPs based on the current average expenses claim.
    Flynn, needless to say, is one of the many MPs who have been caught in the act of swindling the taxpayer.

Not a lot of people know this now

The TV show A Town Called Eureka is made by a firm called UCP – United Cable Productions. Back in the day, before Market Street in Manchester was messed about, one of the premiere concerns at the Lewis’s end was UCP – United Cattle Products – and their main offering was . . . tripe!
    Oh, dear, what an unfortunate association with the initials UCP.

A Load of Ed Balls

How long will it be before the Balls Monster's memoirs end up in the £1 remainder bin? He used to claim that he was Gordon Brown's financial guru, who pulled the strings behind all of Broon's big decisions. But now, everything is Wee Gordie's fault, including selling off 50% of the nation's gold reserves at a Brown Bottom in the market. Maybe the Balls book belongs in the £1 fiction bin.

Staying Power

Communism in Russia & its occupied territories: 1917-1989
The Europeon Economic Community/Union: 1956-20??
    The big question is: With no army to back up its edicts (well, not yet), can the EU outlast Soviet communism’s run?

Political pillock

Labour shadow chancellor J. McDonnell thinks Richard Branson should be de-knighted for daring to expose Labour leader J. Corbyn’s dickhead stunt on a Virgin train. Apparently, holding up the lies of a Labour politician to public ridicule amounts to undermining democracy. (Sure it does!) Sounds like we need to get the official Executioner of England to don his black hood and smack McDonnell about the head to see if it will knock some sense into his thick skull.

Reporting Variations

It’s interesting to compare the news coverage of the earthquake in Italy during the week with that of a stronger earthquake in Burma on the same day. Lots and lots of coverage of a Richter 6.2 quake in nearby Italy, which claimed around 300 lives. The one in Burma was R6.8, and only three people died in a country with a repressive regime a long way away. There was just a paragraph about the quake in Burma in my newspaper the next day – tagged on to the page about the Italian earthquake – and nothing at all in the BBC’s lunchtime news, which was still full of Olympics stuff.

Well, it was different!

The Belgian GP certainly wasn’t boring, but for all the wrong reasons. Well done Lewis Hamilton for getting up to a damage limiting 3rd from dead last on the grid after collecting about 1 million penalty points. I guess Verstappen collected most of the dodgem points for tagging other cars. And there'll be a big queue behind the bike sheds of drivers wanting to thump him.

Second thoughts

The question: “Why don’t we use cash from our overseas aid budget to fill the hole in the Brazilian Paralympics’ budget?” invites the obvious reply that it would be an abuse of British taxpayers’ generosity. But hang on; isn’t that what a lot of the overseas aid spending amounts to anyway if the cash is going into the pockets of crooks and corrupt politicians?

Too bolshy for their own pockets

The Labour party looks like having to cancel its conference because the current management can’t find a private security firm it can get on with. The alternatives appear to be to get the Liverpool police in to keep the comrades in order, which will cost a bomb, or grit some teeth and sacrifice quibbles for cash.

What a funny old world we live in

The official excuse has been unveiled! Richard Branson has done so well for himself that he now lives in tax exile with his billions. Which gives all envious socialists the right to hate him for not being a heroic failure, like themselves. It also gives their leader, the blessed Jezzer Corbyn, a licence to be a dickhead on Branson’s trains.

Like Greece without the sunshine

Bad news for Wee Burney Queen of Scots; Scotland’s trade deficit of 9.5% of GDP means that the country is ineligible for membership of the EU, which has enough passengers already, and won’t be able to support another after the UK leaves. So she’s going to have to put up with living on subs from English taxpayers for a while longer.

Experts, eh?

An Aussie terror expert thinks that yelling Allahu Akbar whilst stabbing someone over and over is not always a sign of a terror attack. Well, prof., it’s not something a normal, self-respecting murderer would say, is it? In fact, the only people who go on about their mate Akbar tend to be faux Islamists, who are using their weird beliefs as an excuse for murder.

And another thing . . .

Where was Corbyn’s wife whilst all the shenanigans were going on? Why didn’t he find her a bit of train floor to sit on if, as he claims, he was looking for somewhere they could sit together?
    The man is clearly a self-obsessed scumbag and a bounder of the worst sort.

The current leader of the Labour party, a man who claims to be an honest, straight-talker, had himself filmed sitting on the floor of a Virgin train, claiming it was full up. So Virgin released CCTV showing him walking past empty, unreserved seat as he looked for somewhere to pull his stunt. 15 minutes later, he was filmed by the CCTV system sitting in one of those seats.
    How can someone of his advanced years not know that if you’re going to tell a lie, it’s always a good idea to tell one that people will believe? And why didn’t the leader of one of the country’s main political parties get one of his minions to book adjacent seats for himself and his wife? Or do all the minions hate him so much that they just draw their pay but do nothing for him?

Let's have a referendum on it!

The flag of the EU is officially described as 12 gold mullets set in a circle as a symbol of completeness and perfection. Which raises the question of whether one should be removed to mark the departure of the UK and the loss of a huge amount of that perfection.
    We joined the EU on January 1st 1973 with Denmark and Ireland, at which point the original six members became nine. So it would be logical to remove the mullet at 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock when we bale out.

    "Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?"

In yer dreams!

The Junckers of the Europeon Parliament are claiming that Europe “won” the Olympic games in Rio because the 28 EU nations won the most medals. Strange that there was no flag there for Team EU.

You live and learn!

How do you pronounce the surname of Scott Bakula, who played Captain Archer in the Star Trek prequel Enterprise? I assumed it would be Ba-coo-la to rhyme with Dracula. But, apparently, it’s Ba-coo-la. Nothing earth shattering, but news to me.

Looney Compromise

Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith has suggested negotiating with the ISIS terrorists. No doubt he’s planning to offer to let them destroy only one-half of Western civilization in return for some peace and quiet.

Was it worth it?

The most interesting set of Olympics-related poll results came from this question:
    Are you inspired to get active?
        Yes: 12%
        No: 88%.
Get out of that.

Not the whole story

Experts believe two factors were key in the UK’s Olympic success; lottery funding to make the athletes into professionals and team spirit. Which kind of ignores the lack of drug-taking Russians . . .

It’s the way politics works

Why doesn’t London’s mayor want a parade for Britain’s Olympians? One theory is that it’s because he’s Labour and he represents only downtrodden masses trodden down by the Tories, and putting on a show of successful people gets in the way of his message of doom and oppression.

Boooor-ing!

The same old adverts. Day after day. No wonder people reach for the mute button when they come on. Or make a mockery of them, like one of the Sky Cinema ads:
    “I am the greatest bottomist on this planet,” one of the characters might be saying.
    “Pity you can’t get your head out of your own bottom, then,” the audience yells back at him.

The right question

You see lots of stuff in the newspapers which assumes knowledge of a context I just don’t have. F’rinstance: is a “bunny boiler” someone who makes rabbit stew for a living?

The wrong question

Now that the terrorists’ friend A. Choudary has been sent to gaol, the “experts” have been asking why Moslems didn’t stand up to him. The answer is obvious: they were either too scared of being beaten up, or even killed, to say anything, or they just weren’t bovvered.
    Maybe the “experts” should move on to finding out whether it was fear or indifference that let Chowdary flourish. And why the multiculturalists, the diversifyers and the Establishment cut him so much slack and shoved so much taxpayers’ cash into his pockets.

Selfish? Not really, just practical

The baby-boomers born after the War (between 1947 and 1964) have been accused of threatening their kids with poverty in old age because they’re spending their cash instead of saving it for the next generation to enjoy after they’re gone.
    But the way the government has been increasing death duties means that the kids would never get the cash anyway. So the parents might as well get the benefit of it while they can.

We do like to be . . . here!

A poll by an online estate agent has come up with some interesting views on the 10 happiest places to live in the UK. 9 of them are in England, only one; Troon in South Ayrshire; is in Scotland, and Wales and N. Ireland don’t get a look in. Leigh-on-Sea came top of the pops.

Pizza Cops

The much reviled head of London’s Metropolitan Police Farce is blowing £1.7 million of taxpayers’ cash on a gang of coppers, who will trawl anti-social meeja for evidence of thought crimes. Having given up on real crime, by and large, the police seem to be taking the easy of option of going after notional criminals.
    This policy has the obvious advantage that if the police are the ones who decide if a comment on InYerFaceBuk is offensive for some imaginary reason, then they will be able to ensure a conviction rate of 100%. But do we really want to pay for gangs of coppers spending their day messing about on the internet, eating pizza and swigging tea instead of attempting to get to grips with real crimes?

“Trump blamed . . .”

When something goes wrong, blame Trump. It’s so easy, isn’t it? And so lazy. An Imam is murdered in New York and that’s Trump’s fault for noticing that a lot of Moslems are killing people. Even though news reports suggest the local police think the killer had a personal issue with the Imam, which was nothing to do with religion.
    What next? Serial criminals rob a bank and it’s Trump’s fault for some manufactured reason? Someone is busted for drunk driving and that’s Trump to blame again? I suppose it’s a logical extension of the victim culture fostered by the political Left; who, no doubt, blame Trump for what they themselves have done. How nice it must be to have a universal scapegoat in America, who spares the intellectually limp the obligation of thinking.

Is there enough sand for all those heads?

An anti-corruption investigation has found that political correctness by the police, local authorities and local politicians has allowed electoral fraud to flourish in Moslem areas. Intimidation, postal voting fraud and personation (pretending to be another voter) are particularly prevalent in areas of immigration from east and west Pakistan, where a culture of doing what the tribal elders order prevails.
    Incompetent policing is responsible for a failure to charge election fraudsters, even in areas like Tower Hamlets, London, where the sitting mayor had to be removed from office for blatant corruption and electoral fraud.

Sorry, we moved the goalposts

The Court of Appeal has created a 2-tone Labour party consisting of older members, who can vote in leadership elections, and newcomers, who can’t. The court upheld the right of Labour’s governing NEC to twiddle with the rules any way it sees fit, even if it involves swindling recent members, who paid their money on the understanding that they would have a say in the party’s leadership.

One small blip

Let’s face it, it’s not going to be a major catastrophe for the world if some nutcase whacks Hillary Clinton and the Democraps pin the blame on Donald Trump to drum up a sympathy vote for the repellent stooge wheeled out to replace her. In fact, the Democraps might even be considering doing it themselves to shed a presidential candidate who is universally hated and increase the chances of keeping their sticky fingers in the American taxpayer’s hip pocket.

Stuck in a time warp?

“Now, you can watch more of the latest cinema releases,” says the venerable voice of Martin Jarvis in the TV advert. Then dead David Bowie starts singing, “There’s a Starman . . .”, which goes all the way back to 1972.
    That’s what Sky Cinema thinks is “latest”?

Don’t ask questions, just believe

Mrs. Soubry, sacked from the job of business minister by incoming PM T. May, has accused the government of lying! She became suspicious about the official claim that nine out of ten households have access to superfast broadband as it is based on data from BT which is obviously sheer fantasy.
    Further proof that she’s right can be derived from the fact that as soon as she started an investigation into the “9 out of 10" claim, she got the sack.

More cloth ears . . .

“In the dark with your internet health?” the lady in the TV ad appears to say. [clue: it’s ‘intimate’, even though the lady doesn’t say that]

Oh, yeah?

Confected outrage goes from strength to strength in the USA, like the silly story that Donald Trump is trying to do the world a favour by getting the appalling Hillary Clinton done in by someone who thinks she’ll take his God-given guns away.

I’m All Right Jack, 21st century style

This month’s revelatory allegations about the conduct of the boss of taxpayer-subsidized Lloyds Bank on his “business trips” confirm what we already knew – namely that excessively rewarded banksters will screw anyone, the customers and people who aren’t their spouse included.

There are things worth buying!

I’ve just discovered what “BiC” stands for! I do lots of note-taking and I’ve been struggling with a box of Parker-clone refills for a fancy ball-point which retracts the writing tip. The refills perform okay most of the time but they can become annoyingly temperamental.
    With just one refill left in the box of 10, I decided to explore alternatives, starting with a 10-pack of BiC Cristal ballpoints from my local supermarket. And oh, the easy smoothness of the writing experience! These pens just seem to glide effortlessly and reliably across the paper compared to what I’ve become used to. Hence the realization that BiC stands for Bloody Incredible Calligraphy.

There’s Nowt as Queer as Folk!

Medical experts have come up with another category of human being: the drunkorexic. Apparently, these are weight-conscious peope, who deliberately skip meals so that they can consume the calories that they would have derived from the food in the form of alcohol.
    Some 20% of adults are doing it, according to the private health insurance company which paid for the survey.
 ■ As there are few vitamins and essential minerals in alcoholic beverages, this is a promising niche market for manufacturers of vitamin pills to develop.

More Labour liberality

S. Kahn promised during his campaign to be London’s mayor that he would reduce bureaucrazy. His way of doing it is to demand 12 more personal staff, including separate stooges to write his speeches for him, and send out pointless tweets.

Binge bonus

Jeremy Corbyn’s 10-point plan for blowing £500 BILLION, which the taxpayer doesn’t have, actually contains 11 promises. How about that for value for money!

Clothears rides again

“Get our racy roadside rescue for only twenty-nine pounds ninety-nine.” That TV advert sounded very tempting. Sadly, it was just for RAC roadside rescue.

No wonder councils are broke

Northamptonshire country council, which needs to make huge savings, is offering its customers a 3-hour course on how to wear a scarf effectively for the bargain price of £24.60/head. There’s no word on how much Council Tax the council spent on training staff and preparing the course material. BTW: it’s bring your own scarf – the fee doesn’t include one.

Something appropriate needed

We need to think of another term for the “honours” list issued by a retiring or evicted prime minister. “Sweeties for cronies”, “Gongs for services rendered”, “Back-scratchers”. Something along those lines.

No stopping them sharks!

Following on from the 4th Sharknado epic, the Syfy channel entertained us with Ice Sharks (2016) last night. Man-made global warming has turned the sluggish Greenland shark into a savvy killer, we were invited to believe. But it still stank of pee; so much for evolution. There was quite a low body count in this epic, but as there were only 7 people at the Arctic research station and only 2 survived, I suppose that’s a fairly high attrition rate. Pity they didn’t extend the global warming swindle angle to include some sort of festival on the ice, or a boatload of tourists stopping off, to give us a decent body-count.

Insomniac jobsworth?

British Olympian Lizzie Armitstead got in trouble for missing drug test, but she was tested the next day in competition and had the blot on her escutcheon wiped off. After reading the reports of the case, my reaction was: “If some clown woke me up at 6 a.m. wanting to do a drug test, I’d have two words for him, and the second would be ‘off’.”

Superscams not superfoods

Nobody can be surprised to learn that a study of fashionable superfoods, which are claimed to offer miraculous health benefits, has found that they are just grass and grains and vegetables and berries. Super for extracting cash from the pockets of the gullible maybe, not the key to life enternal.

Tell the whole truth

An item in the Sunday Post about the RSPB getting four offshore wind farms cancelled because of defects in the Scottish government’s approval of them ended with a routine puff paragraph saying the 4 farms “were capable” of generating enough power for 1.4 million homes.
    Maybe the Post should have been required to add by law: if the wind were blowing at the right speed to achieve maximum output from the turbines, which rarely happens.