Talk is cheap – and vacant

There’s a hell of a lot of BS flying around in TV ads for banks. Like: We’ll be there for you; online (no one there to read messages), on the phone (no one there to take calls) and in branch (they’re all closed).
    Helpful, but not as we know it, Jim.

Rough & Crumble

I just happened to catch the back page of a newspaper and read about Chelsea FC’s goalkeeper, who has been branded a flop at the ripe old age of 25. Chelski paid £72 million for him a couple of years ago. Now, the club boss is trying to unload him for a mere £50 million. Not much of an incentive to any potential buyer.

Distorted perspective

The PM is being twitted by the looney left for his history of writing pairs of articles, pro and con, on topics of import, such as Brexit. Which is only to be expected. Someone like Boris Johnson considers all the options before making a choice. The loonies just jerk a knee mindlessly.

You might be saving The Universe; or not

There has to be a world record for the number of cuddas and maybes in a TV charity ad. The one for the so-called Covid Generation has to be a strong contender for the biscuit with every single bloody verb a conditional. All these kids could die. You could save some of them (or not). Not something that inspires confidence in me.

WW crapola indeed

This week’s RAW plumbed new depths of garbage. Blokes in suits in the ring ain’t a wrestling show. Good job you can fast-forward a recording and do a 3-hour event in under one.

Honesty in advertising

“No ibuprofen has been proven to be better than this one”. Translation: other pain-killing pills which work just as well are available much cheaper.

Not Great Enough

Three weeks ago (7th July), I wrote a piece in praise of the new tops for handwash bottles. Got that wrong. The staff at the Mansion are using them as refills for old bottles with a pump mechanism because the new ones need two hands to operate. One hand to hold the bottle and squeeze out a shot of liquid soap, the other to flip up the cap and receive the soap.
    The old system is preferred because it can be operated one-handed; push down the pump with the thumb and receive a squirt of soap into the palm of the same hand. Meanwhile, the other hand is turning on a tap for the washing operation.
    Sometimes, the technology is right first time.

No sale

You know the anti-vaxxers have lost the argument, not to mention the plot, when they start claiming that Bill Gates is supporting research into a vaccine for the Chinese plague because he wants to sneak tracking chips into doses of it.
    Like the mighty and ubiquitous MicroSoft doesn’t know exactly where these loonies are at all times already!

Faux Facts

There are two sorts of biscuits, I was assured yesterday. I’s and B’s. If you’re on a diet, I’s or Intacts are the ones you count but B’s or Brokens don’t count.
    Which probably explains how 80% of the population got to be obese.

When in doubt, print the legend

Despite plastering it all over the place, the Daily Mail is still pretending that Princess Beatrice’s wedding was a secret. Double think lives!

Lotsa jerked knees

Is the NFL team’s management going for the Washington Lilylivers to replace Redskins or the full-blown Washington Chickenshits? No, they’re just called The Washington Football Team at present. Shee!

It was a job, I suppose

Just out of (masochistic) curiosity, I watched the remake of Get Carter with Sylvester Stallone as Carter instead of Michael Caine; who was in the film! He must have been really desperate for the money and really desperate to get rained on in Seattle if he added this turkey to his CV.

Some enlightenment

Surprise! The punk rubber song is part of a package intended to make TV viewers think buying a MINI electric is a good idea. It’s clearly aimed at people with less than a couple of functioning brain cells.

Magic, or what

Cat walks across keyboard. All windows vanish and I’m left looking at the desktop picture. How does she do it?

Tail wagging dog

It’s rather confusing to hear the BT Sport bods going on about round 2 of the championship when the other formulae have had 3 outings. No Marc Marquez, too damaged, in the MotoGP race, track temperature 60 deg.C.
    There was a crash at turn 1 of lap 1 and bikes were either crashing out or croaking, including Bagnaia’s which deprived him of a certain 2nd place with the end in sight. Cal Crutchlow was the lanterne rouge; 13th on a sick bike.

Rap still crap

The ‘punk rubber’ song was on again last night but I was in the next room both times and never found out what it’s selling. The real tag line seems to be ‘the punk’s so rubber’, which fits the rhythm rather better.

Cruel & unusual

Do we really need a string of images of fat people wobbling about when the BBC TV news mentions the government’s campaign against obesity? It’s not as if we have no idea of what it’s all about.

Round 3

I’ve got out of the habit of looking for MotoGP and I’m playing catch-up this week. Moto3 had an unusually well-mannered start. No one off until lap 8/22. Arenas, winner of the first 2 races, went out with 7 to go. McPhee (GB) 2nd.
    There were a couple of crashes early on in Moto2 and the high track temperature was blamed for the casualty rate. Very strung out at the front. Lowes (GB) was 4th.

Strength of 10 required

You know you’re old and past it if you have to use both hands to break the seal on the plastic cap on a 1-litre pack of supermarket orange juice.

Credibility shot at once

What’s a postman doing delivering letters in Midsomer in the middle of the night? No wonder someone killed him and DCI Tom Barnaby had another hissy git to pursue; this one as totally hissy a whack job as you’d never hope to meet.

Friday only?

Those who ventured out of the Mansion yesterday reported seeing people without face masks in shops. Maybe they thought it was just a one-day event on Friday, like Xmas, and it’s all over now.

Last Mars bar ever

I found one left over from when they were four for a pound instead of three, as they are now. Mars is now in the rip-off file. Just say no to exploitation and being swindled.

The medium ain’t the message

“Check it out now! The street is so punk rubber.” I didn’t notice what the TV advert was selling, I was too busy wondering what planet it has been made on. It’s true, rap really is crap.

Justice system fails again

Is it too much to expect the three thieves who killed PC Andrew Harper to get justice and be hurled into a deep, dark hole forever? Apparently.

The simple life

A mate has brought me up to speed on face masks. There’s no need to pay anywhere between fifty and thirteen quid for 50 of them. All you really need is one mask. And if you get a black one, you don’t even have to bother getting it washed!

Damaged goods

One thing you can be sure of is that there will be no state funeral for Lord Hutton, who perpetrated a defective drenching of New Labour whitewash on the circumstances around the death/murder of Iraq weapons expert Dr. David Kelly at the behest of the discredited Blair government.

Eyes on her

Where’s the latest CCTV camera? Trained on the interior door mat at the back door, where the cat has started parking for a period of contemplation before making up her mind to go out.
    No cat on the monitor and someone can press the button to close and lock the door. Ah, the wonders of modern technology!

Worst possible taste

Footballers who stick their tongue out to prove how clever they are should be fined heavily. And so should newspaper editors who choose to print pictures of them doing it.

Pavlov would be proud

One of my least fave things is being told to ‘search’ by a TV ad. In fact, when I hear that word, before the person doing the voice-over can progress to the exhortation, I’ve already gone past the f-word and I’m well into ‘in the direction of off’ as a conditioned reflex. And reaching for the mute button.

On borrowed time?

Crumb! Is it really over 20 years since I last watched Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery on my TV? I remain amazed that it hasn’t been cancelled for offending the delicate sensibilities of some brand of woke wonks.
    Still, it’s delightfully dotty; even if the cat slept all the way through it. She looks positively furry compared to Dr. Evil’s unfortunate frozen and thawed moggy.
    Will it still be uncancelled in 2040, though.

Don’t you just Hate . . .

TV stations that don’t finish a programme at the advertised time so that you miss the first couple of minutes of a subsequent show on another channel.
    Channels which start programmes before the advertised time so that you miss the first couple of minutes by switching on at the ‘right’ time.
    Should be a law agin it. And massive fines for doing it.

Total garbage

Catching up with Saturday’s papers here in lockdown, I was confronted with a claim that Princess Bea was married in secret. Which has to be just sour grapes from the usual suspects, who weren’t invited to stick their noses in the trough at a very select gathering with this plague going on.

The equivalent of ring rust?

A bloke off @ turn 1 in Moto2. Lots more of the same to follow; these guys haven’t had enough practice! The British bloke didn’t win this one either.
    Cal, the British bloke, wasn’t even in the MotoGP race after a crash. A big boob by Marquez sent him in to the gravel from the lead and right to the back of the field. He carved his way up to 3rd but crashed violently off with 4 laps to go. The end for him. And will he make the next race?

They’re never going to get it

The big disadvantage of belonging to a culture based on the other side of the planet, like the Chinese culture, is that you don't have all the advantages of access to our Western wisdom. Like the saying: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”.
    As a result, the Chinese government is going to make more and more bloodcurdling threats against the UK and the US, and be totally baffled by our failure to bend a knee to them.

An age ago

It’s mind-boggling to be told that the last round of the MotoGP bikers was on March 8th!! But it was back to form in Spain with riders flying off from the first lap onward in Moto3 – situation normal. Dirt right next to the race track is NOT a bright idea. More green stuff is needed or someone could get killed; which came perilously close to happening.

Blade Crawler – a curate’s egg

That Blade Runner 2049 film was a hard slog. Three bloody hours with ads (which I was able to skip, having recorded it). Maybe if they’d edited it to 90 minutes, it would have been worth the effort.
    Excessively over-indulgent, has to be the verdict. Although a number of the music and image sequences were excellent combinations.

Good 4 U

What was good about the Channel 4 coverage of the Hungarian GP? They’d binned the shouty bloke and there was an intelligent conversation between David Coulthard and the replacement. More!
    I see, from my TV catch-up collection, that the MotoGP mob were also at it in Spain. Life is returning to something approximating to normal. Safely spaced, of course.

Ideal home for old men

A new Crocodile Dundee film starring John Cleese as well as Paul Hogan (the other Aussie who isn’t Mel Gibson)? Sounds like it should be set in the mildly jungly garden of the Sunset Old Folks’ Home.

Junk food choice

Have a burger at an appropriate joint, save 50p on the VAT. Don’t have a burger, save 4 quid. Sounds like a great deal to me!

Just posturing

Just read in the Sunday Post, Scotland’s favourite newspaper, that the Education Secretary there plans to make a racial awareness module a compulsory part of all education degrees.
    One thing that you can be sure of, among the lamentations about Scotland’s part in the slave trade centuries ago, is that the customers won’t be told that black people sold other black people to white people and everyone made money out of the business. Apart from the slaves, of course.
    And the same goes on right now with people of all skin colours.

Work of fiction

The death toll from the Chinese plague has become a variable feast for the statisticians. The official total is a nonsense because it doesn’t include people who died of the virus but weren’t tested and does include people who died of another cause but tested positive for the virus anything up to a couple of months earlier.

Dead easy

How do you spot a spiv in the financial market? It’s the bloke (or woman) who is dead eager to ‘start a conversation’ with you.

Okay, makes sense

It seems ‘not a cat in Hell’s chance’ is a shortened version of ‘no more chance than a cat in Hell without claws’. Which stands up. After all, how much chance does anything have in Hell, with or without claws?

Crime against humanity

What was that bloody naff version of the Steppenwolf classic Born to be wild on TV last night? A bloody ad for Volvo. Pre-bloody-thetic. That song is all about the excitement of being out on the open road. That useless version sends you to sleep.

All change

No more Redskins in Washingtons? No more Chiefs in Kansas City? No more Eskimos in Edmonton? Where will it all end? Probably not until the last ray-cist has been locked up in a deep, dark dungeon.

Lack of common ground

Doesn’t look like Mr. Hamilton will be going to Ferrari anytime soon. The Italians are all about winning races, he’s all HUTAgonian and all about himself now.

Next!

“One in two people will get cancer in their lifetime”, we are casually told in a TV ad inviting cash donations. 50%? If that’s true, the human race is clearly not fit for purpose and evolution should get its finger out and create something better as a matter of urgency.

Oh, mores!

Who’d have thought that the day would come when you can’t go in to a bank or Post Office unless you’re masked up and look like you’re fixing to rob the joint?

Deal with it

People complain that it’s dead hot inside a face mask, but when you think about it, the time to worry is when it’s not hot. You’re exhaling air at 37 deg.C into what is supposed to be a barrier against nasties in the air outside.
    So if the mask is doing its job, it’s bound to heat up. And the only time it won’t heat up will be if you’re not breathing out hot air; in other words, dead!

Red wave wages

Has anyone worked out how much China has spent on recruiting useful idiots like most of the former government ministers you’ve heard of? Because it sounds like the sort of thing that obsessive bean-counters do.

Under the radar

I see the cancellers have failed to get the J.K. Rowling serial Strike cancelled from the Alibi channel. Still, they’re probably making the pointless gesture of not watching it and feeling unbearably smug.
    That was real dedication to his craft, the lead actor having his leg chopped off to play Mr. Strike, P.I. No surprise that the character played by M. Shaw is . . . tediously smug.

He never will be missed

Just watched the last episode of Inspector George Gently after I remembered I’d recorded it to skip the adverts. Nice touch, some scumbag filling him full of lead as the bloke had become unbearably smug. Like Judge John Deed.

Unwanted record

We’re in for the Biggest Recession in 300 years. That goes back to when Scotland went bust over its Darien adventure and had to bailed out by the English.

I can believe this

The reason why the nation is being urged to return to office jobs isn’t that people are doing less work at home with no one watching them, it’s because the sandwich-shop, pub and café trade all want office-worker business.

Finance Formula

A very modest bill for bashed cars after the second Austrian Grand Prix. Could it be that the team bosses read the Riot Act to their drivers during the week and told them, “You break it, you’ve bought it!”?

What a letdown

You really have to feel for the bloke who thought he’s shattered Usain Bolt’s world record for the 200 metre; only to find his starting blocks were in the wrong place and he’d done only 185 metres.

My cup runneth over?

How wonderful to get an email telling me this:

Attention.
    This is to inform you that exceptional COVID-19 Social Relief distress grant of 1,500,000.00EURO have been awarded to you by World Health Organization.
    You are therefore advised to send the following information to the W.H.O Trust Fund to process your claim
[ worldhealth.organization54@gmail.com ]
    Full Name, Country, Gender, Contact Address, Mobile Number, Occupation, Marital Status, Age, Country of Residence.

I’m surprised they didn’t want my bank login details and the password to complete the list.

Cultural misappropriation

How typical of the nasty bastards of the BLAME cult to try to stop Morris Dancers blacking their faces; a traditional method of disguise that goes back centuries. Long before people of colour were invented.

The other side of the coin

Wealthy athlete Bianca Williams might be feeling aggrieved by being stopped by the police but she doesn’t seem to have anything to say about the members of her ethnic group who have made her lifestyle characteristic of criminals.

Who knows?

Is Ghislaine Maxwell the worst person in the world? With so many dodgy customers trying to sleaze her for their own sordid purposes, it’s impossible to tell.

Pointless, so why do it?

Strikes me there’s something fundamentally dishonest about claiming that potato crisps are gluten-free. Spuds don’t contain it, so of course they bloody are. Gluten comes from grains.

Include me out

I think I’ll give Sky a miss from now on. All their greasing up to the BLAME gang is really nauseating. Haven’t they realized that if they help to abolish capitalism, no one will be able to afford Sky TV?

Just Bamboozling

Xmas and a bank-robbing Santa in Major Crimes last night. Then it was Xmas in A Town Called Eureka. How very disorienting for people used to lockdown and not having much idea what’s going on in the rest of the world.

Last person standing?

The actor who played Claud Erskine-Brown in Crumpled of the Bailey is no more, a caption before this week’s episode informed us. Is any of the leads left? Apart from Miz Liz Probert? I suppose Philly is a good bet.

What’s on elsewhere?

It’s really quite impossible to get even slightly excited about all the shenannygoats rippling out from the demise in a New York gaol of Mr. Epstein. Not when you realize that most of it is about shoving cash into the pockets of lawyers and building up the rep. of prosecutors.

Slogans don’t have Universality

Black Lives Matter carries the subtext that only black lives matter.
    All Lives Matter just ain’t true.
Some Lives Matter is self-evident and therefore redundant.
    White Lives Also Matter upsets non-white racialists and the Usual Suspects.
Slogan’s Don’t Have Universality upsets attention-seekers.
    Maybe there’s more to life than simplistic slogans.

Well deluded

Looking through the papers in search of anything I’d missed first time round I came across a set of photos of ladies who’d had their hair done after a gap of 3 months due to the plague.
    Was there anything terribly different about before and after? Only in the mind of the lady concerned in most cases.

Fair question

It’s impossible to take a firm that call itself Boohoo seriously, even if it’s accused of taking garments from Leicester’s sweat shops, where slave wages are paid. Could this be a tactic?

Keep going

There seems to be a contest going on to spot when the Chinese plague actually transferred from animals to humans. The current record-holder is a claim that it began in a mine which was heavily contaminated by bat droppings back in April 2012. More to come? Bound to be!

Next move?

The Turkish government is trying 20 Saudis in absentia for the murder of the journalist Jamal Kashogghi. Which raises the interesting question of what will happen if they’re found guilty? Apart from nothing at all, of course.

Getting at Aussies?

No crowd at a cricket Test match and microphones following the players everywhere is going to put an end to sledging, the experts reckon; the sport at which Australians excel. Which will just make a dull match even duller.

Okay, that was okay

Can’t remember the last time I watched anything on BBC 2, but last night’s Horizon programme on the New Horizons missions to Pluto showed that it’s not a completely lost cause.

No end to the daftness

The racialism loonies are so busy trying to push everyone else around by getting words and phrases banned that they’ve given up listening to themselves and doing an absurdity check. That’s the only explanation for why they’re trying to make estate agents who are gullible enough to ban the term master bedroom because of slavery links.

Great idea

I really approve of the new tops for handwash bottles. Instead of that pump mechanism, just a screw-on cap with a built in nozzle and a flip top. Sheer design genius.

Finger on the wrong button?

Channel 4 is weird, offering a continuity announcement at the end of yesterday’s film The Great Wall @ 10:47 p.m. to tell viewers that the hilites of the Austrian grand prix were on at 6:30 p.m. What’s that all about!!

Yeccch!

Is there anything more disgusting that watching people celebrate US independence day on the news by stuffing hot dogs down their necks?
    You start to wish those aliens from the film would park their huge spaceships over the cities involved and put a stop to it.

History repeated or forgotten

You’d have to be really desperate for something to watch to go to ITV 4 for a rerun of the 2018 Tour de France, was my first reaction.
    But on the other hand, who remembers what happened? It’s probably just like watching the event the first time around.

It’s all gone sideways!

The announcer for an earthquake film on the Syfy Channel reckoned that California is the US state that gets the most aggro from Hollywood. But I reckon New York, particularly New York City, could give him a good argument.

Even further out

I thought about getting a Toy-ota, then I started wondering if there is a Real-Thing-ota for people who want something more grown up.

Something else on the way out?

Can people still be ‘beyond the pale’? That has to be too colourist or shadist for today’s thought police.

Not much better

Surprise! Catholics, apparently, are cool with slavery. Or they were in 1963, when the saintly Cardinal Newman was around.

Primate? Some sort of monkey?

“Justin Welby is not having a good war”, I read. Who he? I asked myself. Some high-up virtue flagger in the Church of England, I discovered. Not a terribly relevant person, then.

It’s the way I read them

“Al Ibi – that’s that, some Arabic thing?”
    “Not all words that begin with ‘al’ are Arabic, mate.”
“Like Al Capone? Al Imony? Al Imentary, Watson?”

I’d watch it

The Borg vs McEnrow? That film has to be a really weird blend of tennis and sci-fi.

Good Effort

Another of the infinite supply of Steven Seagal films was on last night. One from 2004. He looks a much more convincing tough guy without the beard. The haircut was a good idea.

Where nature got it wrong again

If you have a fever, I also read, you don’t feel hot, you feel cold and shivery. Spit the bones out of that!

Something doesn’t add up

Fatter people have a higher average body temperature, I read the other day. Viruses die at a body temperature above 38 deg.C, hence fevers. So why are we being told obese people are especially at risk from the corona virus?

Lockdown Proverb No. 1

There’s nothing like pants on fire over all the lies you’ve told for keeping you warm on a cold day.

Still learning!

Something I’ve only just discovered is that glass milk bottles of the sort delivered by a dairy to places like the Mansion have a series of dots down near the base of the bottle. Braille for milk!

No Escape

It’s Xmas somewhere all the time in digital heaven. Last night, A Town Called Eureka was having an attack of the festering season and it was 85 deg.F because the EM barrier was toast.

Cutting or blunt?

We’ve been having a discussion about whether the insult “You want to get out more” has been devalued by lockdown because people can’t do it, or sharpened by highlighting the uninformed person’s state of stuckness.
    We probably won’t have reached a definitive conclusion by the time lockdown ends and we’re stuck with some other social imposition.

Still trucking

Today, we celebrate, if that’s the right word, our 100th day of lockdown here in Britain. And, much to the disappointment of the experts who put their money on it, we haven’t all gone stir-crazy.
    Place your bets for the next 100 days.

Making do

“What’s ‘rewing’ coffee? Sounds like something special.”
    “Actually,” my friend told me, “it’s ‘brewing coffee’ typed on a keyboard with a dodgy ‘b’ key.”
    Life is full of little let-downs.