They should be grateful!

The Russians should be thanking the Ukrainians for the on/off death of Putin enemy Arkady Babchenko. His decision to co-operate with the Ukrainian version of MI5 to catch a couple of stooges sent to kill him gave the Kremlin’s apologists some much needed exercise. But, sadly, they failed to produce anything convincing in their latest shower of ‘not me, Govs’.

Death with no possible alternative

Preferably a slow and painful one. That’s the only possible sentence for the scumbag(s) who came up with the V.I. Poo TV ad campaign.

Relax! Nothing to worry about

We can assume nothing bad is happening in the world if the main issue is whether some footballer should have his leg amputated after getting a tattoo of an American assault rifle on it. How unpatriotic can you get!

Blame the politicians

Yet another poll has confirmed that people think life was better in the past. Which just confirms that when politicians start forcing change, usually from disreputable motives (EU membership, Iraq war, open migration), they always make things worse in the long run.

Bonehead ‘science’

One of the Daily Mail’s correspondents yesterday was beefing about counting 12 vapour trails in the sky over Gatwick airport and asking if this is compatible with the new clean-air revolution.
    If the spivs in government, and the beefer, manage to get atmospheric water vapour (including clouds?) Made illegal, we’re all doomed!!

Not here, mate!

We’re supposed to have had the Saddam Hussein of all thunderstorms yesterday. But whilst it got a bit cloudy at the end of the afternoon over the Mansion, no rain, no nothing here. But my ‘here’ isn’t somewhere allegedly important, like London.

The excitement of Monaco

Things were so processional at the Monaco Grand Prix yesterday that shouty bloke on Sky was reduced to getting wildly excited when Verstappen made a pass at the back of the field, to which he had been relegated after crashing his car too badly for it to be fixed in time for Saturday’s qualifying sessions.

Jobsworths?

Retired (forcibly) Hollywood mogul Harvey WeinStein’s lawyer is confident that he will end up exonerated at the end of the legal process. Which raises the question of why the cops are harassing the guy. Probably because they’re trying to look busy before they bung in a pay claim.

Brightens the day up

Nothing like a shot at the Sunday Post for cheering you up. Today’s big story is that bottles of Irn Bru might have a wonky cap, which can come flying off like the cork from a champagne bottle, which should liven things up a bit north of the border.

Zero Data Storage

Just in case anyone is wondering, I don’t seek personal data from anyone who reads this stuff, nor do I retain personal/tracking data on readers. And I have no access to anything that Google collects.

Reporter? Schmeporter!

My attention was deflected by very sloppy reporting from a story about a theory that flying birds became extinct after the meteor strike @ Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula for a very simple reason. The theorists think that forests became extinct and flying birds died out for a lack of places to perch whilst ground-dwelling birds were unaffected, and the present flying birds evolved from them when the forests regrew.
    What deflected me was the idiot reporter telling me “as forests burned around the world”. Really? A meteor hitting Mexico would set fire to all the trees in all the rest of the world? Pur-lease!

Vain hope

One day, Berko, the Squeaker of the Commons, might identify as a decent human being.
    But not just yet.

In the back of the net!!

President Trump has won the nuclear football cup. Kim Jong-whoever was still winding up to calling off their talks when Trump left him standing with a letter telling him to forget it until he can be serious about it.
    Nice one, Donald!

He really did try!

One of the staff has pointed out that the much later Isaac Asimov, SF author and science writer, reckoned he had produced 300 books, which sounds very hard-core!

Not really trying

The just late Philip Roth is hailed as ‘producing more than 30 books’ in an obituary article. “A mere dabbler,” a writer of my acquaintance said when I mentioned the word-bite.
    The walls of his writing room play host to a pair of banner posters featuring reduced versions of the front covers of the books which he has produced. As his total is 135 (and counting), I am inclined to agree with his observation.

Shrinking population

Half of the UK’s adults will be obese by 2045, the experts are shrieking. Which leaves the rest of us unimpressed as the last we heard from these same experts is that 60% of the population is obese right now!

Invent your own

The visible part of the headline on the folded newspaper was ‘In Ermine’. Vermin in Ermine? I thought. Turned out to be Dinosaurs (talking about the House of Frauds). I like my version better.

Ouija News?

A looney left Labour MP is getting some stick after claiming that she knows for a fact that Princess Di wouldn’t have approved of the recent Royal/celeb wedding jamboree. But seen in the context of a pathetic cry of: “Notice me, pur-leeeese!”, it certainly seems to have worked.

The real me? Like as if!

The latest piece of earth-shattering social research has found that women tend to use dating websites as a check on their dateability rather than as a means for finding a temporary BF.
    Just knowing that they can create a profile which attracts some interest is enough to make them feel good.

Good grief!

I watched the daftest sciffy film of all time last night. It’s called Asteroid: Final Impact and it came out in 2015. President O’Bummer has cancelled an infrared satellite project, which means that a dark asteroid is about to wipe out life on the Earth.
    Steve, our boffin hero, reckons that shooting 3 lbs of hydrochloric acid at the killer rock using a rocket his kid built will save the world. The rock is about half a mile away when the rocket goes up. Blooch! No more death-rock. It just vanishes. Yeah, right.

High flier

The sporting event of today has to be the sight of Kornfeil hitting the fallen Bastianini’s bike in the Moto3 race at Le Mans and leaping up into the air and over it to a safe landing instead of becoming involved in the crash. And he went on to finish 6th.

Cup Finals of contrasts

That Chelski guy should change his name to Flabbergast. What fun the commentators would have telling us that opponents had been Flabbergasted. The vast army of Man.U. haters enjoyed watching Grumpy Jose get grumpier and there was an element of suspense to the English Cup Final as Chelsea, unlike Celtic in Scotland, didn’t feel the need for an insurance goal after their first.

Lucky day for sport fans

Two Cup Finals! Wow! What have we done to deserve this?

Spit and image

If they ever remake Minder, they should put Hugh Grant in the cast. Got up like Jeremy Thorpe, he looks just like Arthur Daley in a really grumpy mood.

Just put them away

Does anyone really care that Judy Murray has wobbly arms? Apart from her, of course. Honestly! The things celeb-ettes will say to stay noticed.

Defence mechanism

Here’s a great idea: people who aren’t addicted to mobile phones should be issued with one of those air-powered foghorn gadgets to blast phone-obsessed idiots who stroll along crowded pavements, not looking where they are going.

Scrape, scrape

How desperate can you get? The diggers have found that Mhegan Mherkel has an 8th cousin who is the great, great, great grandson of an executed murderer, who was in London when Jack the Ripper was active.

Doubtful definition

Beggars at Windsor for the Royal Weeding are earning £100 or more per day? What a strange world we live in when badgering people for cash is put on a parallel with useful employment.

Meaningless slogan

“Up to 13 hours hold” is claimed by FixRodent, the dental plate sticky stuff. But if your plate starts to wobble after a couple of seconds, they haven’t told you a lie. Note that they would never dream of telling you: “at least x hours hold”.

Aghast academic

A professor, who was trying to tie himself in to the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has come up with the coy conclusion that the monster was ‘probably’ equipped with 'the machinery of manhood'. But he fails to provide a reason why Frankenstein would have hacked bits off the creature, which he was trying to animate. Especially a necessary external piece of equipment for the monster to have a pee.

What goes around . . .

If he wasn’t using taxpayers’ cash to do it, you’d have to laugh at the cheek of Commons Squeaker Berko, who’s bulling his staff into helping his pals spread the fake news that he’s not a bully.

What’s to choose between them?

a) D. Milipede, the midwife of hard Bremoan and giving lots of cash to the EU in return for . . . nothing much.
b) E. Milipede, the midwife of hard censorship to prevent the criminal and disreputable actions of Labour donors from being exposed to the gaze of the Great Unwashed.

No Mr. Nice Guy

Hamas vs Israel – North Korea vs . . . North Korea with nukes.

The only line rather than the bottom one

Is everything money-grubbing these days? Whenever some event comes to one of our cities, we have to be told how many millions it will bring into the local economy. As if that’s the only reason for hosting the event.

There has to be a reason for it!

The experts reckon 81% of women are too stressed to function in the modern world. Which explains why blokes are running just about everything.

Competition on the way

Look out, Jessica Fletcher. The wife of the current DCI Barnaby of Midsomer has decided that she’s going to be a writer of murder mysteries.

Can’t wait for the next one

That’s the next Grand Prix; but for all the wrong reasons. The ‘can’t wait’ applies to what the bloke who does the shouty bits to pretend something exciting is happening will say about the Spanish GP. Okay, the British guy won and it was a Mercedes 1-2 finish and the German guy bogged up his strategy and finished 4th. But after the lap 1 crash, it was read the paper time until Hamilton crossed the line safely. But, not doubt, the shouty bloke, will be telling us it was one of the greatest of all time during the warm-up for the usual procession in Mona-yawn-co.

True words spoken unwittingly

“Be still my heart!” quoth one of the WWE commentators. But if his heart did stop still, he’d drop dead and we’d be rid of an annoying creep. Be still, indeed!

Not even faint praise

A writer of my acquaintance reckons if you want a good quote to go on a book cover, write it yourself. A couple of examples from my current reading material make the point:
    “The good news is that Laidlaw is back” invites speculation about what the bad news is. That the story is crap, maybe?
    “The Laidlaw books are not just great crime novels, they are important ones” Books about a demented Glasgow copper are important? Really?

Let us give you loot

An official-looking brown envelope with a window arrived in the morning mail. Bad news from the taxman or the council? Nope, it was addressed to ‘the occupier’.
    The letter turned out to be some outfit offering free PPI checks and trawling for personal information.
    Bad luck, chaps. You reached the only person in the country who never had PP insurance.

Philosophy for life revisited

That bit about lying bastards becomes even more true when you consider the role of Jack Straw, then Home Sec., and also Mysterious Mark, the guy in charge of MI6, when an Islamist enemy of Colonel Gaddaffy was kidnapped by the CIA with British government help as part of Tony B. Liar and George W. Bush’s strategy for getting Gaddaffy on-side against the Islamists.

Seen in passing

Spotted in the credits of an ancient episode of Dragnet; one without Colonel Potter of M*A*S*H as Friday’s sidekick: Feild Gray as one of the two art directors.
    I bet spellcheckers have a feild day with his name.

Philosophy for life

If you take as a default position, the assumption that politicans, by and large, are a bunch of gutless lying bastards, you’ll never go far wrong.

Hard to swallow

The insurance industry is promising to turn over a new leaf and be decent and honest and not to swindle existing customers in the future. But it’s going to take a lot more than some PR tripe to persuade people that loyalty counts.

Just plain silly

10M WATER RESISTANT
    The hands on my watch were up at the top, well away from this slogan at the bottom of the face, which strikes me as an expression of the truly pointless. There is no chance of my watch ever being immersed in 10 metres of water, and I would venture to suggest that the same applies to every other watch like it. And it’s only ‘resistant’, not ‘proof’.
    I really do hope that whoever came up with the idea that this slogan would play a part in a decision to buy a particular watch ended up where he belonged; in a padded cell.

Not entirely their fault every time

Whingeing Millennials are under fire over a think tank’s notion that every 25-year-old should get £10K as a present from the nation. To be fair to the snoflakes, who do deserve most of the flak, some of it is generated, as in this case, by oldies (usually discredited and/or redundant politicians) trying to buy their votes or, as in this case, curry their admiration with other people’s money.

Selectively Charitable

I got stuck in traffic briefly within eyeshot of a charity shop, which calls itself The Local Shop For Local People, which struck me as delivering a rather unfortunate message. “If you’re local, you’ve welcome to come in. If not, you can bugger off.” Needless to say, I did the latter.

Thought for the day

The big advantage of eating on your own is that you can be as messy as you like and no one else will ever know!

Do as I say, not as I do

How did Putin the poisoner manage to win the latest Russian presidential election by a mile? Simply by not letting his main rival take part in the election. Maybe our prime minister should consider doing the same to J. Corbyn next time we have a general election. After all, Labour is full of Russophiles. They could hardly object to the new democracy without criticizing their other hero.

What did he just say?

“Trucking Hell”, indeed. Who thinks up these cute titles for the shows on 5Spike? Probably a newspaper sub-editor with the necessary connections.

Home win guaranteed

President Putin has had variable results with his attempts to rig foreign elections but he seems to have no problems with rigging elections in Russia. As a result, he and his mates can continue to keep their hands in the cookie jar pretty well until the Grim Reaper calls time on Vlad.

Ignoble ignorance

Someone needs to tell Bliar crony Lord Adonis that it’s not the Home Secretary who deports people, it’s the idiots at the Home Office. And if they abuse the system, that’s because they’re idiots.

What’s in a name?

There was someone called Clotworthy in the credits of an episode of The Mental Case yesterday; the one at 5 p.m. Which set me wondering if the name causes the same reaction in the US as to someone British. Answers on a PC to the usual address.

Faint praise, indeed!

Bercow is not altogether bad as Commons Speaker in the same sense that Harvey Weinstein is not altogether a bad film mogul.
    So that’s the pipsqueak told!

Unknown Rule

Why do some men wear brown shoes with navy or black trousers? a lady asks in the Sunday Post. Probably because they don’t know there’s a law against it!

Has Been? Never Was Been!

It’s just not true that J. Corbyn is past his peak, as pundits were claiming after Labour’s disaster in the local elections. He never had a peak to be past.

Originality index zero

There’s a salvage expert who’s trying to claim that supplying drought-hit South Africa with water in the form of icebergs from Antarctica is a solution that no one else has thought of.
    That’s apart from all the other people who have had the same idea over the last 150 years.

Hazard of convenience living

Flushed wet wipes are building up huge colonies in the river Thames and could become a tourist attraction, or even a hazard to navigation, if not tackled urgently.

Why?

A man who has been fighting terrorists in Syria has been arrested here on suspicion of terrorism offences. Which explains why the police ignore real crimes, like burglaries. They’re too busy making up imaginary ones.

Another telephone scam

Hi, said the recorded voice of a lady(?) with an American accent, this is your internet service provider (no name, no pack drill). Your IP address has been compromised by attacks from foreign IP addresses but we will give you a new one for free.
    Please press ‘1' to contact our technician (and be scammed).
    The call came from the 01789 area code.

Clotheyes on the job

Mrs. May’s chief civil service Brexit negotions wallah is some character whose name, to a casual glance, looks like Oily Robbins. You’d think she’d have picked someone whose name has a bit more credibility for such an important job. Oily is rather too close to the truth.

Unwarranted obstruction

There’s a huge van called Loomis parked on the pavement. No one loading or unloading it, though. The thing is just there, in the way. “Managing cash in society” sez the stupid corporate motto on the side of the van. [Where else would you need to manage it? No society, no need for cash.] And doing so by getting in everyone’s way.

Who He?

How old is Lord Roberts if he can bring to mind memories of March 1933? Is he really in the running for job of World’s Oldest Man? More likely, he’s just another deluded HUTAgonian and a truly Trivial Democrap.

Or is it backwards?

Mr. Javid, the new Home Secretary, was born in this country but he claims he started thinking ‘it could have been me’ when he heard about the Windrush shambles. Which means he either has an over-active imagination or he’s a sympathy junkie. Not a promising start.