All in the name of diversity

In the good old days, there were Mr., Mrs. and Miss. In the bad news daze, we also have Mx for people who are too mixed-up to know which sex they are, Mre for those who wish to be a Mistree (mystery) and can’t spell, and Msr for those who are both Miss and Sir.
    And if that wasn’t enough, we also have Per for persons and Ind for individuals. All of which suggests that new people have far too much time on their hands and far too little to contribute to the betterment of personkind.

The ‘experts’ are at it again

Gulp! The ‘experts’ have discovered that idleness is contagious. If you’re exposed to lazy people, your herd instinct takes over and you become effortless yourself.
    Well, it’s a good story and it spares you the effort of making up a better one!

Why isn’t the government cutting the Broon Labour deficit faster?

Because telling government departments that they can’t have money the country doesn’t have goes through the political spin machines. Thus the virtue of Tory thrift, after processing by Labour, becomes The Cuts by heartless bastards who want to grind the faces of the weak and the poor into the dust for the fun of it.
    And that’s a lot of political hatred to neutralize, come election time.

Just posturing, Burney!

Do we, south of the border, care that Wee Burney Sturgeon and her Green allies have voted for another referendum on Scottish independence five minutes after the one which was supposed to settle things for a generation?
    Nope! Because we know that independence is all about fulfilling Wee Burney political ambition to be the first President of Scotland and nothing to do with what’s of any benefit for the inhabitants of that unfortunate country.

Irreparable Damage?

Sergeant Alexander Blackman’s imminent release from prison marks the end of a shameful paragraph in the history of our military, our government and our legal system. The Military Covenant is clearly dead and buried, and troops sent to fight in future wars must know that if Sergeant Blackman’s victory over the senior officers, the politicians and the lawyers sent to lie for them in court – over matters of fact and by omission – looked unlikely, then the odds against anyone else getting a fair shake are now infinitely bad.
    Why? Because there’s nothing as vindictive as a system which got it wrong and was humiliated by proof that yes, it did get things very badly wrong.

Further proof that we are surrounded by idiots

A survey by the wine merchant Laithwaite’s has come up with the surprising result that people think wine won’t keep and actually throw it away if it’s more than half a day old! The equivalent of 624,000,000 bottles go down the drain for the delight of sewer rats every year; if the research is valid.
    Apparently, an amazing number of people just don’t get that you can screw the cap back on, or re-cork a bottle, and it will remain okay and drinkable for several days at least.

Back to the Brown

Labour leader Jezzer Corbyn would appear to have a bad case of Brown’s Disease. Our sometime Chancellor was always ready to mortgage our future for cash to invest. Unfortunately, it was always in the sense of investing in a pint of beer down the pub and there was never anything to show for it when the money had been blown.
    Jezzer has just announced that he would also be a Brown Investor if the nation were ever daft enough to put him into a position of power. So there’s something to look forward to with eager anticipation.

Problem preempted

The new 3d-bit style £1 coins will have 12 blunted points because the Royal Mint was worried about being sued by people complaining that sharp points had worn holes in their pockets. The blunting will also cause less wear and tear on vending machines and the coins themselves. Ambulance-chasing compensation lawyers are up in arms over the decision.

You’re not supposed to win?

Here’s something cheerful to usher in BST: deaths on the roads zoom up 17% on the Monday after the ‘spring forward’ and deaths from heart attacks rise by 5% over following 3 weeks!
    Accidents in the home and the workplace also become more frequent due to loss of attention, and disputes of all kinds are more common due to loss of empathy.
    I won’t even mention how much worse things are for night-shift workers!
    Have A Nice Day! If you think you can.

Very undesertly

Saturday qualifying rained off in Qatar, in the desert! The start of the main event of the weekend, the MotoGP race, delayed because of some rain which left no one sure what the track was like? I suppose it’s all going to be blamed on man-made global warming. Everything else is.
    Still, the race was a cracker when it got going 3/4 of an hour late. Well done, Maverick! And fromage dur to Mr. Zarco.

More racing resumed

Not a lot of excitement in the first F1 race of the year in Australia. No wheel-to-wheel racing and excitement at the front of the pack. Vetel's first win for years came through tyre strategy rather than anything else. Still, there's MotoGP in Qatar going on right now to give fans of real racing some thrills into the evening.

Oh, yes, we believe you II

Vlad the Putin would have us believe that the Russians are not up to their election-hacking tricks to move the coming French elections in the direction of the FN and Marine Le Pen. Which is as clear confirmation that it's happening as you could hope to get.

Oh, yes, we believe you

The accountants at PwC are pushing the robot story; it’s 10 million jobs which will be taken over by robots in the next 15 years rather than the 15 million, which the discredited BoE gov. M. Carney was pushing a while ago. But recalling some of the absolute disasters in the world of finance which PwC failed to spot over the last 15 years, what to they know?

As much weather as we need

Heavy snow in the Yorkshire Dales to start spring. In my part of the world, however, it has been a bit wet, a bit windy, a bit chilly when you’re out in the wind and fairly sunny. So quite survivable.

Death notices

No doubt all the political giants who were so fulsome in their praise for dead terrorist leader M. McGuinness are composing similar messages for the dead jihadi, leaving a space for his name, of course, when it becomes known to everyone other than MI5. Which is a pretty good reason for giving the news a miss for a while.

Pointless nit-picking

One does question the need for all the relentless forensicking going on at the crime scene in London; the fingertip search in the area where the terrorist was shot especially. The killer is known, there’s no doubt about what he did and he’s dead so there isn’t going to be a trial. So what is the point of wasting a lot of time and money, which the Metropolitan police farce assures us is in very short supply, on doing things which will be just filed and never used?

Hate competition

Socal Islamic State (what the BBC calls it) hates us; we know that. And it would appear that there are rabid Scots Nats who hate us even more. Why else would R. Cunningham, the SNP environment sec., hurl her toys out of her pram when another independence debate in the Scottish parliament was suspended? The toy-hurling took place well over an hour after the news came through from London and some of the MSPs had already walked out, feeling no longer able to concentrate on Wee Burney Sturgeon’s personal agenda.

In a bubble

We’re supposed to live in an age of instant communications but it is still possible to drop out of touch completely. I watched the lunchtime TV news yesterday, then I got busy with my own life, and I didn’t become aware of the mad jihadi’s assault on the public in London, which took place a couple of hours after the lunchtime news ended yesterday, until I looked at the front page of today’s Daily Mail at about 11:30 this morning.

Limited threat potential?

We’re getting all sorts of scare stories to the effect that currently non-existent bobbies on the beat are about to be replaced by drones. But let’s consider a few facts. A typical police drone can fly at about 40 mph and its battery will last for about 20 minutes. How much spying is going to be achieved in such a limited window? It’s about long enough to find the odd female sunbather au naturel and take a couple of snaps.

Not a good example!

Our first Republican president was born right here in Kentucky, President Trump told us last night, on the first day of spring, from Louisville. Yeah, sure, Donald, but look what happened to Mr. Lincoln!

Unintended consequences

Not giving your TV your full attention when the adverts are on; i.e. doing something else whilst watching episodically; can leave you with some interesting messages. One I got last night, episodically, was: “The Microsoft Cloud will turn information into intrusion. You have been warned!”
    Which has to be a lot more pertinent and meaningful than whatever guff the separate ads were offering.

Necessary weapons

The blessed Mary Berry is being mocked for revealing that she eats pizza with a knife and fork, but maybe her pizzas portions are like mine – not a small slice of baked dough with a few smears of stuff on it but one-third of a whole pizza, which can’t be picked up without causing the generous layers of topping to fall off. Hence the need for a knife ‘n’ forque.

The dog ate it

The Wiltshire police farce is to close down Operation Conifer, its attempt to sleaze the memory of the late Sir E. Heath, but the results will remain confidential to avoid revealing exactly how flimsy the 120% evidence was and exactly who was responsible for the shambles. Protecting police careers and pensions is behind the secrecy.

Multiple madness

First, there was Two-Sheds Jackson, then Two-Jags Prescott. Now, we have Six-Jobs Osborne. Which has persuaded the Commons standards committee to think about banning extra jobs for MPs. And not before time. Not that anyone expects the toothless ‘watchdog’ to do anything much.

Good news, America and the world!

We don’t have to worry about Donald Trump any more. Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise has baldly gone to the United States, where he plans to take on board US citizenship in order to take on The Donald. He is believed to have received a generous leave of absence from Star Fleet for the duration of his mission.

Drink coffee and you’ll die!

The latest gen from the foodies is that all those people who think they’ll live forever if they wash down a vitamin pill with their breakfast coffee are deluding themselves. A hot drink neutralizes the pill’s effect (if any). The same happens to ‘probiotic’ (pro-warning) bacteria, which are claimed to do consumers so much good. Porridge is also a destroyer.

A considered choice

If the Scots have another (unilateral) referendum and vote for independence the second time around, that will prove only that they can’t make their minds up. So they’ll need to have a 3rd referendum to be sure they got it right. And a 4th a couple of years later to be absolutely sure they know what they’re doing.
    And if the result of IndyRef4 doesn’t match that from IndyRef3, they’ll be in real trouble!

Snowflake time in Moscow

A zoo in Moscow is planning to sue an advertising agency for using a hired racoon in a shoot also featuring a topless model (female). The zoo’s boss is claiming: “Since the racoon filmed in the commercial cannot defend himself, we will have to do it for him.” What total bollocks! How does the idiot know that the racoon didn’t have the time of his life?

A French connection

I got a bottle of Cointreau the other day. It came in a fancy orange box printed in English and Russian. A strange combination, I thought. Or do the French assume that if you’re a boozer, you’ll speak either English or Russian?

FYI

Donald Trump’s presidency has been described as an ocheocracy. In case anyone is wondering, that’s a society in which anyone can step up to the oche and chuck some darts at the board.

Appropriate positioning

Insiders in the prison service reckon that 3-5 screws at every nick in England and Wales are so corrupt and in league with the convicts that they deserve to be . . . in gaol!

It’s just a green crap scam!

Smart meters do away with meter-readers, right? Wrong. Power companies continue to send them round to be sure that their ‘smart’ meters are reporting consumption accurately. Which kind of invalidates the stated raison d’être in favour of the hidden agenda.
    Smart meters are really a device to let power companies charge more when the wind ain’t blowing and the sun ain’t shining, and the over-subsidized ‘sometime availables’ aren’t available and the ‘always on’ gas and coal-fuelled power stations are producing much cheaper electricity at artificially inflated prices.

New in the market place

One of my friends has told me I should put some money into marketing Ready Brexit, the breakfast cereal that gets you out of the EU. Sounds like a great idea!

Internet garbage dump?

A lot of self-righteous indignation was excreted over Facebook, Google/Youtube and Twitter executives by the Commons public affairs committee. The anti-social meeja companies were accused of making no attempt to remove vile content and profiting by putting adverts next to it.
    Is anything likely to change? Customers are advised not to hold their breath. Especially as some of the explanations for retaining pages which upset the MPs were quite reasonable.

Brexit in style

Some comedians have pointed out that the £350 million/week which the EU won't be getting is going to the NHS. Not a problem. The Royal Yacht which Tony B. Liar scrapped was a converted hospital ship, so there’s a precedent for raiding the NHS budget for a new national flagship. And wouldn’t it be absolutely wonderful to have the piece of paper which uncouples us finally from the EU signed aboard the new Royal Yacht Bexitania?

Just another thought

What are we going to do with the £350 million/week which we won’t be spending on the EU? Well, why not use some of it to restore some national price, and create a useful marketplace for foreign trade, by building a new Royal Yacht Brexitania?

Let us be clear about Corbyn

Labour leader pro-tem J. Corbyn has said it would be absolutely fine for Scotland to hold another independence referendum. He has also said that he thinks independence would be an economic catastrophe for our northern neighbours. But if the Scottish Parliament votes to cut the nation’s collective throat, that’s their choice and he won’t oppose it in the Westminster Parliament.
    In other words, if the Scots choose to go to Hell in a handcart, he won’t stand in their way. Which is eminently sensible and most un-Corbynlike!

Beefriended & honey-trapped!

British troops sent to Estonia as a gesture against Russian’s imperialist ambitions are being warned about the risk of being Mata Hari’d. The Russians will be infiltrating agents, who will offer our troops a shag in return for the opportunity to bug their phone and any other devices they can lay their mitts on.

Pots & Kettles again

The Dutch, facing a general election this week, decided not to let Turkish government ministers into their country to do rabble-rousing for their president, who is trying to turn himself into a dictator with total power in small gulps.
    Predictably, President Erdogan had the cheek to call the Dutch Nazi remnants. But who is he trying to become? Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin?

Another fair question

If we believe the propaganda claims that those who voted for Brexit had no idea what they were voting for, why should we believe that those who voted for Bremain did?

Not quite mint condition

Spitfire NH341 was shot down over France in July 1944, whilst the Allies were invading Europe. It has now been restored at a cost of £3 million. Which leaves me wondering just how much of the original aircraft is left after all that rebuilding, given that just a badly damaged fuselage was the starting point.
    Shades of the antique axe which has had 2 new heads and 3 new handles?

Pull the other one

The probate Death Tax increase is needed, the MoJ seems to be saying, to provide legal aid to rich criminals who have bamboozled gullible civil servants into thinking they’re broke. That’s the government’s best official excuse, apparently. No danger of hiring civil servants with 2 brain-cells to rub together, then?

It’s not news, dear

Why are TV news programmes bothering to tell us that ex-president Park of South Korea is saying she’s done nothing wrong and she’s not corrupt? That’s what they all say. It would be news only if some politician actually admitted being corrupt!

What’s going on?

Why is the House of Lords busting a gut to secure a right of residence for foreigners living here when the governments of the EU countries from which the foreigners migrated are showing no sign at all of concern? And why is the House of Lords so indifferent to the rights of British citizens living in EU countries?
    Could it just be the House of Frauds playing Bremoaner politics and being a tail trying to wag the UK dog?

Rolling the pitch 2

The budget and its stealth taxes, and all the manifesto pledge-busting, suggests that there’s something fundamental going on in British politics. Theresa May can see that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party is unelectable and she seems to be trying to level the playing field by doing the same to the Tory party. Which leaves those who feel inclined to vote Tory, but who are having doubts now, asking why? What is she getting out of it?

We don’t need more Broon Stealth Taxes

93% of those consulted about the government’s new Death Tax; taking £1.5 billion from estates instead of the present probate profit of £45 million/year; were against the tax. The government is going ahead, though, even though it is breaking a connection between the cost of providing a grant of probate and the amount of actual work done, which is pretty much the same, from the court’s point of view, no matter what the size of the estate.
    The flat fee has been replaced by a ‘progressive’ fee. And as we all know, the use of a word beginning with ‘pro’, in a government context, always heralds a swindle.

Rolling the pitch 1

Figures released by the Home Office show that the police are attempting to obtain ethnic balancing of terror suspects. White people are being arrested more often for trivial offences, and these arrests are receiving more publicity, and arrests of those of ‘Asian ethnic appearance’ are down.

One in the eye for Spreadsheet Phil

The PM has been forced to delay the Chancellor’s manifest-busting NI tax rise for the self-employed at least until the autumn following a rebellion in the ranks of her MPs. They’re not happy about the way Spreadsheet Phil (or Spreadshit Phil, as he was dubbed by the BBC’s Labour-lover Pottymouth Robinson) cast aside a clear manifesto pledge with a transparently bogus quibble about the small print.
    Another reason for unhappiness is that the PM described the NI tax change as ‘progressive’ which, as any seasoned watcher of politicians knows, is a code word indicating that there is a swindle on the way.

How very New Labour

The IPCC picked Budget Day to release a report on the Metropolitan Police Farce’s Operation Midland into hysterical child sex abuse. Clearly, The Complaints was embarrassed by the amount  of whitewash splashed on to the senior coppers who accepted silly stories from serial fantasist ‘Nick’ at face value and wasted millions before he was blown out of the water.

Daft and persistent

Sky keeps going on about ‘buy and keep’ in its TV adverts for box sets, but I’ve still not found an example of anyone offering them on a ‘buy and not keep’ basis.

Who sez the CIA doesn’t have 2 brain-cells to rub together?

Doing hacking and leaving behind the fingerprints of other hackers, as mooted by WikiLeaks, is an inspired idea. And it certainly explains how the CIA knows so much about the alleged Russian hacking in the United States in order to influence the outcome of the presidential election just gone.

Kim Jong Out-of-ammo?

We were treated to pictures of the N. Korean gang boss, Kim J-u, laughing his head off as his fireworks company shot off 4 missiles in the general direction of Japan on Monday; in defiance of orders from the toothless UNO, of course.
    But was that wise? What’s he going to do to top his quadruple launch? The next time will have to be at least 6 rockets, and how is he going to be able to keep up the progression? His best option would appear to be to hope for assassination, like his brother Nam, before he reaches a humiliating missile shortage.

Self-inflicted

If you’re a drug dealer, it’s generally a good idea to keep a low profile. Which makes the actions of S. Pohl, a supplier to crystal methodists and pot users, all the more strange. Displaying images associated with the 1930s/40s Nazis is a hanging offence in Germany, where Mr. Pohl lives. So why on Earth did he put pix of slices of toast branded with images of A. Hitler on his InYerFacebuk page? All it got him was busted. But at least being sent back to gaol solved his homelessness problem.

Foot, yes; ball, no

A Russian MP and member of the board of the Russian Football Union is keen to pioneer a new spectator sport. He’d like to see gangs of around 20 or so unarmed football hooligans doing battle on the pitch with no ball, no rules, no nuffink.
    Mr. I. Lebedev thinks his new sport is something Russia could excel at, even without filling its athletes full of dangerous drugs. Other than alcohol, of course.

Law to order

The Sentencing Council, which is headed by Lord Chief Justice Thomas, thinks that young criminals from ethnic minorities should be given softer sentences than white young criminals because they are ‘over-represented’; i.e. proportionately more of them are criminals.
    So much for the principle of one law for everyone.

Weather to write home about

The winter of 2016/17 was one of the mildest and driest since official records began in 1910. Most winters are either cold and dry or mild and wet. The winter we’re leaving behind is unusual for being mild with only three-quarters of the average rainfall. We could do with more of the same in the future!
    How the weather in this winter went offers no clues as to what will happen in the spring to come. Remember; anyone who tries to tell you different is a scammer.

Hang on!

The paper on DFM offered by the gang at H&IU has been scrutinized by the Plain English Campaign, which branded the language and phraseology ‘preposterous’. Surely it wasn’t a wind-up?

Illegal & dangerous? Don’t matter!

Wilkinson Sword is running a TV advert in which a bloke has a wet shave whilst driving a car. How with that performance, which is worth a long driving ban, get past the Advertising Standards Authority?

Selling Scotland Short

VisitScotland is being taken to task by academics at the Highlands & Islands University. The tourism agency is being accused of failing to celebrate the full range of Scottish heritage by ignoring the contribution from such delights as the deep-fried Mars bar.
    Whisky and scenery is all very well, but the DFM has a cult following in Scotland and it has the potential to attract thousands of foreign visitors, say the H&IU boffins.

Not much substance

Whilst Supergirl was seeing off Corbyn, what was The Flash up to? Seeing off The Planet of the Apes. Clearly his scriptwriters think too much originality is bad for the audience.

World Non-Wrestling Federation

What will they come up with next on WW as an alternative to putting on a wrestling show? Well, last night, Randy Orton torched Bray (he’s a bit of a donkey, or some would say a turkey) Wyatt’s garden shed with Bray’s grandma’s rocking chair inside.
    Not quite up to the standard of The Rock trashing Steve Austin’s expensive ride (or was it the other way around?), but it was a bit different, I suppose.
    Of course, the big question is what can they do next week to top a spot of arson about? And will there be anyone still watching?

No, John, No!

Ex-PM J. Major, who presided over the Tory party’s worst general election defeat in over 100 years (at the hands of Tony B. Liar and New Labour), is even more pissed off with the electorate post-Brexit. He just doesn't seem to get that doing the opposite of what he wants is always in the country’s best interests.

Political Allegory

Anyone who’s been watching the TV series Supergirl on Sky One will be aware that there’s a super-baddie in it called Corbyn. Is this a coincidence? Or is the show in fact a reflection of current politics, in which our Prime Minister is represented by Supergirl and that’s why the Forces of Evil is called Corbyn?
    If this is true, it raises the obvious question of which character represents Donald Trump. Well, he has to be The Flash, the fastest human around, who has his own show but who drops in on Supergirl occasionally to be of help.

Why didn’t they see this one coming?

The foodie fad of turning fruit and veg into a drinkable mush is fuelling O’besity. If consumed as they are, fruit and veg release their sugars slowly. O’bliterated in a blender, the sugars are there in a big rush and can easily be over-consumed, making the trendy foodie horribly fat instead of svelt and healthy.

HUTA Warning

No, it’s not the first of April. Someone with his head up his own arse and far too much time on his hands at the Ministry of Defence wants female members of the RAF (and, in due course, all female service personnel) to be banned from wearing a skirt for ceremonial parades.
    The excuse for this daft act of diversity is that enforcing trousers only avoids offending Moslems and a very tiny number of men who have decided to be women, and it lets female servicepersons have their legs tattooed; something they can’t indulge in if they are required to wear a skirt.