History, but not as we know it, Jim

The Great Escape is dragged out of its box again and described as a fact-based classic. Which just ignores the fact that there were no Yanks in the PoW camp in question . . .

And another

Not one porkie in blunkett consumed over Xmas.

Bullet dodged

One of the advantages of not having seen any of the original words of the US TV series Sex & the City is that I don’t have to waste any time watching the 20 years on version.

Don’t give up the day job!

One look at the picture of Dua the Diva in Monday’s Daily Mail told me why she has no future as a fashionista or a lifestyle guru. What a mess!

Unknown Celebs

Today’s TV, I noticed, includes Pointless Celebrities. Trades Description Act time. I haven’t heard of any of the three contestants.

Something good on TV

How excellently Gak! the film Mars Attacks! is. It’s ages since I last saw it. Great fun. Even if the Martians sound like extras from a Cadbury’s Smash TV advert.

A bucket of bogus

The Windsor Castle intruder was arrested ‘just 500 yards from the Queen’s apartments’.
    Gulp!
    On the wrong side of a fucking big castle wall with lots of security.
    Not so Gulp!

Weird lot

Things they don’t tell you on this side of the pond No. 12,497: the phrase “Let’s go, Brandon” now means: “FK Joe Biden”. The president himself seems not to be aware of this, which is probably for the best.

Ça didn’t change

The Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact was on last night. How true the observations on the dire state of justice administered by the legal trade remain some 40 years on.

One rule for them . . .

Strange that Israel sees a nuclear weapons programme in Iran, a rogue state run by religious extremists, as an existential threat to another rogue state with actual nuclear weapons.

Tell ’em anything . . .

Something else amusing; the Chinese claiming there was no democracy in Hong Kong until they took over in 1997. Well, there sure as hell ain’t none there now that they’ve arrested everyone who doesn’t agree with the party line from Peking. Just as amusing as that Putin bloke claiming he’s got his army parked on the border with Ukraine to stop them invading him.

Confidence Expiring

“Tomorrow begins today,” says the NatWest bank in a TV advert. But tomorrow, as any fule kno, can’t start until today is over and done with.
    How can you trust a bank that doesn’t know something so obvious?

Some sense, maybe

Nice to see the idiots in charge of the police getting a kick up the bum from the courts over this nonsense of keeping vast lists of non-criminal spurious hate crimes. Irrational, lacking common sense, and not what the police are paid to do.

Legal sense totally absent

I read that the nutty teen who was busted at Windsor Castle was done ‘on suspicion’ of being in possession of a lethal weapon. Why? In case some legal spiv persuaded a judge that his crossbow wasn’t lethal? Or he wasn’t actually in possession of it, even though he was holding it?
    The loonies really are in charge of the asylum.

Now pointless fillers

The thing that struck me about the rediscovered Morecambe & Wise episode from 1971 was the musical numbers, which were shoved in as breaks as part of a formula.
    I knew who Kenny Ball was but the lady doing the operatic version of a Beatles (?) dirge – I kept waiting for Eric to charge in to do a wind-up.
    And the bloke doing My Way – I had no idea he was the bloke wot wrote it.

Plastic people

Who counts as a real celeb? You have to wonder when you read a list of the names of people who are involved in some worthy venture and you know the first three names but after them, nothing!

Sounds convincing!

It seems there is no truth to the internet rumour that the Rule of Six in Wales means that you have to collect up five other people if you want to go anywhere or risk a fine of 60 quid.

Who the hell cares?

Some nerd has calculated that the average Brit eats four sandwiches made from leftovers between Xmas and New Year’s Day. Talk about make-work for the useless.

One point five cheers

Another winner for AEW wrestling with a lengthy comedy match at the start of this week’s offering. Nothing the WW can match. Except for the swindle finish and the drek we got in the next hour, of course.

More amusing reading

The leaders of the French fishermen, who want to hoover British waters clean out of fish, were mightily upset because their members refused to do a Chrismas blockade to upset us because they wanted to get on with their own Christmas holiday.

One up the kilt for the Greens

Someone inspecting a shipment of bricks from Pakistan found himself dodging one of the deadliest snakes in the world, I read.
    Which leaves me wondering, in these days of extreme greenwash, what we’re doing importing bricks all the way from Pakistan.
    Don’t they make them anywhere nearer?

Nice dodge

I was amused to read that The Queen cancelled her usual Xmas do at Sandringham to make sure Prince Harry and his awful missus didn’t sneak in to do some more moaning.
    Or was it to give the nutter with the crossbow a shot at him if he dared to show himself at Windsor?

Sage without onions

How depressing to know that ‘the science’ which the government claims to follow is just a concoction of what the official scientists think Boris & Co. want to hear.
    But that does explain why it has so little touch with reality at times.

Bogus in Blankets

What is all this garbage about pigs in blankets being Xmas necessities? I don’t remember hearing word one about them before this year.

Should have left well alone

How enterprising of Michael Caine to get another pay day out of the remake of Get Carter. How surprising no one popped a couple of pills into the back of the head of Stallone’s thug after his first brush with the zillionaire.
    Not in touch with real life at all.

More misses than hits

How many of the allleged Best Xmas Films of All Time have I seen? One out of 20. Which one? Die Hard. Is that an Xmas film? It’s so long since I last saw it that I can’t recall.
    I suspect it’s set at Chrismas time but it’s probably about as Xmassy as The Great Escape. Or The Heroes of Telemark.

Nanny stateism

Could it be that a lot of Best Before dates are a load of rubbish? We’re still scoffing the last few Romney’s After Dinner Mints – chocolate-coated Kendal Mintcake – and they taste as good as they did before they expired.
    How did we end up with a box at the BB date exceeded? It was parked and overlooked for several months. Something we’ll be watching out for in the future.

Illusion shattered

Watchmen (2009) is a film about former super-heroes investigating the murder of one of their number? Falls over in amazement. Super-heros retire? And they can be done in? I thought being super, they went on forever.

Info overload

We’re trying out some dates from our local fruit & veg shop with the labelling information ‘600g -100g’. Does that mean the dates contain 100 grammes of stones and the edible content is 500 grammes? If so, it’s remarkably accurate information.
    p.s. The dates are from Iran, where they’re likely to chop your hand off for mislabelling! I hope they’re not exploding dates as a stealth weapon against enemies further west.

Good idea

I like this idea of Vaccine Equality Rights if it means that people who have taken the trouble to get themselves vaccinated don’t have to associate with people who haven’t because of some tripe they’ve picked up from the internet.

Soggy upper lip

A dignified silence from people who lost friends & relatives to the Chinese plague would have been more . . . dignified . . . than joining in the artificial row over leaked photos of people having a glass of wine & cheesy snacks.
    We’re better than that.

Nul Points? Negative Points from me

What exactly is so bloody Christmassy about World War II films? It’s just lazy programming.

There’s lots of better TV elsewhere

Top TV Shows of the Year, 10.
    Watched By Me, 1
    Draw your own conclusion on the topness.

Brilliant idea

That’s a stroke of genius. If nightclubs and pubs can’t open for business due to the Chinese plague, turn them into vaccination centres so that they can help the drive back to something like normality.

Bullet-holed feet

Are we seriously expected to believe that it was only the Tories who had meetings disguised as parties during lock-down last year?
    All the alleged news outlets which are pretending that this is so are doing themselves no favours, credibilitywise.

Nothing new

Not a lot of people know this but Formula One was down-graded to the ‘sports entertainment’ classification in 2008 after a shamefully inept swindle in that season’s Belgian Grand Prix robbed Lewis Hamilton of a win.
    Which means that F1's downgrade after this year’s inept swindle will have to be to the ‘entertainment’ category.
    Where will it go after the next downgrade? Depends whether the TV describers create a new lowest category named ‘bollocks’ or ‘tripe’.

Too weak to survive?

Is it really beyond modern snowflake kids to wield a ballpoint pen for however long it takes to do an exam? You have to wonder about the sanity of a headmaster who claims that it is. And also question that of the Welsh geniuses, who decided to take the sex out of school sex education and substitute wokery garbage.

Sense quotient zero

One of my neighbours was complaining that he’d found it impossible to make an appointment to get his meters swapped online because the company’s website didn’t want to know anyone who doesn’t have a pocket phone.
    Logically, a landline number is better because if someone answers the call, that means there is someone on the spot to let the engineer in.
    But since when did good sense have anything to do with the energy market?

Someone else can do it for me

Will I be spending 7½ hours messing about on the internet on Xmas Day, as a broadband company predicts for the average Brit? Joke.

Tough guys!

An hour-long match to start AEW Dynamite? Not something the WW snowflakes could ever manage. No surprise that the 60-minute time limit ran out to avoid declaring a winner. Then it was back to business as usual.

Cool with it

Do I feel deprived because I never have anything to eat containing sriracha, which turns out to be just hot chilli sauce, and the umpteen other features of flashy recipes? Nope. Real food for me every time.

Time distortion

Black as the Hole of Calcutta outside. I check my watch. Is that really the time? Compare it with one of the electric wall clocks. Yes, is really is only half-past four in the afternoon and the full Moon is rising.

Worth a look

Dr. Who & the Daleks (1965) has been lovingly remade as a digital version. A triumph of the conservator’s art. Even if the story is rather daft.

Just gratuitous

What is the point of a newspaper publishing a picture of Prince Charles struggling with a face mask? New normal nasty bastardism?
    How effin wonderful!

Who falls for it any more?

You’d have to be a real innocent to thinks some bloke with an  Indian accent who rings you up out of the blue about ‘your life insurance’ is from a reputable company. But I suppose there must be enough suckers around to make it worth the effort.

How very dare they?

It was absolutely gobsmacking to learn that India, allegedly the world’s largest democracy, is sending people to gaol for sedition if they dare to congratulate Pakistan for winning a cricket match. But there it was, on the BBC news.
    If ever a regime deserved cancellation as much as the one in Russia, it’s the one currently in charge of India.

When in doubt, make something up

Conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts, Sky TV reckons as far as its documentary series are concerned.
    That’s facts, but not as we know them, Jim.
    Convenient ‘truths’, to be Al Goreish about it.

Protesting to much

“If I died tonight,” Inspector Rebus thought, “what would I bequeath to the world?”
    The answer, provided by the author of the collection of Rebus short stories, Ian Rankin, was “nothing” and that scared Rebus. But why?
    Why would a world with a population of around 8 billion have any need of a contribution from one battered copper?

The modern world, eh?

I was surprised to read that London Transport has banned people from taking their electric scooters on Tube trains because the gadgets are liable to burst into flames due to a faulty battery. Who needs exploding Islamists when consumer goods do just as good a job of spreading alarm?

The British way

The Health Secretary thinks obliging people to be vaccinated is unethical but it’s okay to exclude them from pubs & eateries & theatres & clubs by being unable to show a covid passport. At least he’s not going for the Greek solution of fining them a big chunk of cash for every month they remain a risk. That would really set the anti-vaxxers howling!

Go for it

Okay, that’s the WW’s RAW cast sussed. The bigger the tosser, the brighter and more garish the outfit.
    Can you do a 3-hour recording of the Monday show in under an hour by speeding through the rubbish? Easily.

Time I could redeploy

Am I going to give up on Formula One? It certainly can’t hold a candle to MotoGP, which can provide spectacle without the Schumacher Manoeuvres, especially now that a certain Mr. Rossi, who had no problem with shunting opponents off the track, has completed his descent into eclipse.

What rot!

Crossword clue: Fossil fuel (4)
    Peat? That’s not a fossil fuel. Nothing like one, no matter what the global warming fraudsters at the United Nations claim.

Lorst and gorn

Whatever happened to following the science? The government seems to be making up its own story about the meek & mild omicron variant of the Chinese plague and trying to turn it into a terrifying serial killer.
    Presumably, so that it can deliver either an ‘I told you so’ to justify all the extra locking in or a claim that its prompt actions delivered the nation from a terrible fate if nothing terrible happens.

Any old excuse

Christmas is doomed! Why? Because there’s a major shortage of . . . cardboard for creating posh boxes for bling.

Quite cunning

Staging mock debates to provide material for Xmas TV ads is a pretty cute way of raising a bit of cash. Clearly the debating society at Oxford University is in the hands of smart bods.

Still there

The bunch of idiots who were in the Harry Potter films might have tried to cancel the author, but that didn’t stop some rich Yank paying £365,000 for a Rowling first edition. Egregious, or what!

Recycle! Recycle!

Starsky buys a pet rock from Huggy in the cop show. Sounds like something that should be revived for today’s wonks. They’re bound to fall for it.
    Same plot as the Dirty Harry film Hutch was in for the episode.

One that got away

How come the acronym COBOL for the computer language gets to keep its capitals but Nato and all the rest don't? This is a truly shameful case of discrimination.

A very small start for a panic

One person has died ‘with’ the omicron version of the Chinese plague. That’s rather than ‘of’ and probably caught whilst dying of other causes in a hospital. Don’t panic.

Equality Rules!

Good to know that the lady ref on AEW wrestling shows is as useless as the blokes when the script calls for an official blind eye while dirty work goes on.

Reality binned

There’s a ‘battle’ raging over what Norfolk’s Seahenge was used for? What utter crap. Academics are disagreeing, like they do, not holding battles with guns & bombs & air strikes. What utter garbage the confecters come up with.

Bin the excuses

“Less Bertie Woosterism and more boosterism”? What Britain needs is less hyperbole and more stoicism. Less victimhood and more getting on with it. Less triviality and more tenacity. Less looking back and more planning for the future.

Keeps on truckin’

Crumbs! There’s another Indiana Jones film, the fifth, due to come out next year. Let us hope his wheelchair is an electric one to save the planet from global warming.

‘E’ for Effort!

Camels getting botox for beauty contests in the Arab world? Enterprising, if nothing else.

Do any real people care

Was it 3 Xmas-ish parties at Downing Street for one reason or another last year, Or 4? Or 5? If they didn’t cause a major disaster, so bloody what?

Unintended consequences

President Macron thought giving rural areas better roads and the internet would buy him votes. But all he’s done is make it easier for stroppy farmers to organize protests and get their tractors to cities to park them on the streets as road blocks.

Abu Dhabi Debacle

Maybe if Mr. Hamilton had spent less time on his knees and more time focussed on the job in hand, he wouldn’t have ended up in a position where he could be swindled so easily.

Football logic

“He’s gone in there to clean up the mess”, wrote an excited Sportsmail bloke. Shudda bin “he went in” but hey!
    English grammar don’t apply to football, right? Never has, never will.

Female logic

“Why is it always the woman who carries the can?” Sarah Vine of the Mail demanded over the expired Boris aide who made the joke video. One woman, one incident makes all females victims. Fine example of inclusion, Sarah.

Meaningless or overblown nomenclature?

What is the full fibre broadband Sky was pushing? Are we supposed to think there’s half-fibre and quarter-fibre broadband?
    This sets up a Next Big Thing of going in for double-fibre broadband at an even fancier price.

Reality not included

I got a Sky broadband puff letter yesterday. Wonderfully amazingly fast, they reckon, but not a hint of an idea of the cost.
    “Use up to 60 devices online at once”
    Doing what? Sending my electricity bill into the stratosphere? There are ideas, there are damn bloody stoopid ideas and there’s this one.

Not bovvered

Is wearing a face mask an imposition? Not to those to whom it has become second nature and who never stopped wearing them in shops, etc. The plague has always been around us.

Why was it invented?

Which eating iron is most likely to end up on the floor accompanied by a loud yell of, “Fuquer!”? Always, the fork.

JBYM

I was puzzled by these initials, which are out of the same box as FYI, FOIA, etc. I had to agree when I found out what they mean.
    Just Because You’re Miserable comes with an implied: “that’s no reason why everyone else should be”.
    And there are definitely a lot of miserable buggers around at the moment, doing their best to spread their misery.

Multiple standards, or what

Can you get more racialist and undiverse than the MOBO Awards? But they’re okay, apparently, as only white people are excluded and they don’t count.

Who needs the BBC?

It’s ages since I last watched the Bruce Lee film Enter The Dragon, which was on 5Star the other night. It’s timeless despite being nearly 50 years old. Waaah! Mu tang ooo-eeer! in a roomful of mirrors.

Hidden agenda?

It seems rather strange that only the non-Moslem US and UK are doing diplomatic boycotts of the Chinese winter Olympics and the Middle East isn’t. But if the protest is about the Chinese failing to give their Moslem minority human rights, maybe that’s the key. Most of the people of the Middle East don’t have anything much in the way of the human rights and their leaders are quite happy to leave things like that. And they’re not going to rock the boat by posturing over what the Chinese are doing.

Uniform, anyway

Is it reassuring to know that the Scottish prison service has a culture of concealment for its defects, just like Police Scotland? At least they’re all operating with the same rule book.

Speedy Gonzales, but why?

Further to delivery times: I had a look at my tracking data on the UPS website and found that the parcel was scheduled for delivery on Wednesday. But it arrived on Tuesday!
    Does that mean they’re not getting as much trade as the much unloved Yodel, etc.?
    Anyway, that’s my Xmas supply of Kendal Mintcake sorted.

Condemned by denial

Mad Max claims nothing Lewis Hamilton says about him bothers him. But if he has to tell us that, the opposite is obviously true.

Artificial Alarm

If the only ‘crisis’ at Downing Street is about a jokey video made by the staff a year ago, then we have bugger all to worry about, which is great.
    There’s nothing that pushes the synthetic outrage button harder than the mere thought that someone else might have enjoyed themself. Especially the stuffed shirt currently in charge of the Labour party.

What we want for Xmas

Could we have a general election warning, please? Then the Chancellor will be able to rush through cuts in income tax and VAT to buy some insurance popularity.

Another of life’s mysteries

One has to wonder how a gaol sentence of 2 years & 9 months was considered right for circulating pictures of bodies at a crime scene rather than 2½ or 3 years.
    It looks like a peculiarly precise, and therefore suspect, guesstimate of the ex-coppers’ rehab time.

That’s life

It’s all very well to claim that the nation is shocked by the death of Little Arthur at the hands of his father but we have been here before, the boss of the council department which failed him is unrepentant, no one will be sacked and it will happen again.
    Because there will always be evil buggers and people on the public payroll with their eyes shut.

The big question

Will all the repairs made after Storm Arwen stand up to the renewed battering they’re going to get from today’s Storm Bogdanovich?

Not to be put up with

There are times when armed insurrection and stringing berks up from lamp posts is fully justified. Such as arriving home to find that your local council in Berkshire jacked you car up to paint double yellow lines under it and then let the local traffic warden stick a ticket on it for illegal parking.

Feeling excluded

How come the PM got a badge with his plague booster and I didn’t? Just made the one badge, did they?

Make an effort, get it nearly right

The refugee camp on Lesbos which the Pope visited isn’t a replacement for one that ‘burned down’. The previous one was arsonized by the inmates, which is something entirely different.

Pretty good start

The Saudi Grand Prix track looked like it had enough lights to double global warming! Looks like it’s a good place for a) overtaking and b) crashes.
    Safety car whilst bits were hoovered up, Hamilton stopped for tyres, Mad Max didn’t and took the lead. Cancel the SC, red flag instead, Mick Schumacher had demolished a barrier.
    A massive crash on the restart! Get the red flag out again. Another crash but just a VSC this time. Lots more dodgem crashes. Mad Max had to let Hamilton past so he did a Schumacher Senior brake test on him; but failed to demolish Hamilton’s front wing. They are now level on points but Mad Max has more wins.

Had to come

Amon-Ra St. Brown – what a wonderful name – was the rookie of the day yesterday for taking a catch past the dozy Viking defence for the TD that gave the Detroit Lions their first win of the season – in Week 13!

Did he lose a bet?

Is there anyone in the world with a hairstyle stoopider than that of Brock Lesnar of the WW? That tied down pony-tail sure takes the whole box of biscuits.

Give me proper food

Sunflower miso dip, said the title of the recipe. What the hell is a miso? Animal or vegetable? Fish or fowl? Mr. Internet would know but I can’t be bothered asking.
    Sorry! Searching.

Not enough paying attention going on

What’s a good way to blow a hundred million quid of our money? Leave a plastic rain cover on a stealth jet so that it gets sucked into the engine when the plane takes off, causing it to do a nose dive into the sea.
    When they find the bloke responsible, they should make him and his descendants pay for the damage. That might persuade his comrades to be a bit more careful in future.

Scare tactic?

Interesting that we are being told that e-cigarettes cause the dreaded reptile dysfunction that we hear so much about in the adverts on certain TV channels. Is this part of a strategy to make people who use them to get off proper cigarettes to give up the e-version when the job is done?

Not the real BBC

Once upon a time, the BBC was the model of correctitude. Now, the morons working there are too lazy to find out how to pronounce the Greek letter omicron. So much for keeping up standards.

Irrelevant Question

“Have we left it too late to save Earth” was spotted in a newspaper that was being recycled. Even if we have, it wouldn’t make the pathetic victimhood seekers shut the hell up.
    Let us not forget that nothing we do here in the way of pretend Earth-saving will make a scrap of difference to global emissions of greenhouse gases as long as China, India, etc. continue to let rip.

The other side of the coin

I know now why Yodel gets such low marks in satisfaction tests. A neighbour opened his front door the other day to find a case of wine dumped in the porch.
    It had been there since the previous evening. No knock on the door or ring on the bell, of course, even though it was supposed to require a signature. Just hit & run and if someone takes a fancy to it before the customer can find it, tough.

Strong sense of futility

We’ll find out who failed baby Arthur (murdered by his parents), says the PM. But no social workers & police will be sacked and the same will happen again, as it has in the past, because bad people will continue to be in charge of small kids.

Credibility gap

If it really is My5 for Channel 5 repeats, how come other people get to watch it without my permission?

Dredging

Is it a crime for Prince Andrew to have had a ride of J. Epstein’s plane? Of course, it isn’t. And pretending it is just makes the outrage confecter look stoopid.

Worked for me

What do you do if your TV is kaput, apart from Beeb 1 & 2, ITV 1 and Channel 4, because Virgin Media has dropped to bits? Watch your recording of the film Scanners and look out for the exploding head about a quarter of an hour in is an option.

Monumental sulk

The lady who wrote to my morning paper to observe that the French were happy to see British troops on their beaches in 1944 should have gone on to add that they still haven’t forgiven us for liberating them (with a little help from the US) because they were too useless to do it themselves.

Overworn excuse

No surprise that the Chinese plague is getting the blame for all the neglect of the country’s roads and a doubling of pot-hole damage. There’s always some excuse for people in the public sector not doing the job they’re paid to do.

Sack the lot of them

The Boris Road Bridge between Scotland & Northern Ireland was originally costed at £20 billion. But the morons in the government’s service have managed to inflate it to over £300 billion. Okay, the project is just a fantasy, but does the taxpayer really deserve to have to pay morons to rig the price upwards like this?

Right for the job

That Open Goaal system featuring a goal with a huge wall of netting behind it for misses – especially for posh kids with a huge garden – should be endorsed by Mr. Rashford or one of the other England football team’s penalty missers when it counted.

It’s always all about the dosh

The people lining up in the freezing cold from 5 a.m. to get into the Ghislane Maxwell trial are ‘observers’? Not a bunch of scandal-mongers with no jobs to go to? Right.
    Her defence lawyer is on pretty solid ground when she says Ms Maxwell is being done over by the people who did nothing about the J. Savile clone J. Epstein and the case against her client is all about their guilt plus memory manipulation and money. Especially money.

Pony up the dosh anyway

“Which could arrive in time for Xmas,” says the cheery voice in the TV ad.
    Or not.
    How weasel can your words get, mate!

Delivery rating

Further to Royal Mail getting a satisfaction rating of 50%. We had the hit & run packet bandit today. Knock, then a card through the door and away before anyone could get near it.

Channelling LBJ?

Something suggested for yelling at the French President:
“Hey, Hey, Macrony, How many dead aujourd’hui?”

Against the odds

I was rather surprised to read that Yodel and Hermes can manage only about 30% customer satisfaction for their deliveries on a good day. Our local Hermes lady seems very efficient. Maybe we’re just lucky.

Half a point for trying

I gather the WHO had reached mu in its list of variants of the Chinese plague, most of them vanishing quickly. The official explanation for why they jumped two letters in the Greek alphabet to omicron is that nu sounds too much like new and there are lots of people around called Xi. Including the President of China.
    Flimsy, at best.

They’ll tell you anything on TV

Ebby Scrooge has a Pelington bike? How daft can you get! No doubt Charles Dickens is spinning in his grave.

No force used

It’s all very well, former rugby stars trying to put 100% of the blame for their dementia on the sports authorities. But no one forced them to racket around on a rugby field, and if some of them thought it was doing them harm, they could have quit. 50% of the responsibility at most.

Perfect for the part

Watching some of the Queen stuff on Beeb 2 the other night, I was struck by the realization that Freddie Mercury had the looks to play a convincing screen vampire in a film.
    He’d have given Nosferatu a good modern outing, should he have been feeling well enough to try it.

Not sold

60 unmissable Xmas shows, yells the TV magazine puff. The first 27 are completely missable, I decided as I gave up on the piece. Still, I suppose it helped to space out the adverts.

Nail-Biting!

Isn’t it annoying, not knowing how much we should be panicking over the Botswana variant of the Chinese plague? There’s nothing more upsetting than a sloppy crisis.
    Especially with the South African doctor who knows about it saying she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, the cases she has seen are mild.

He’s still junk

How much to they pay the AEW crowd of wrestling fans to be so enthusiastic about C.M. Punk? Or is it just stuff broadcast over the speaker system and a few strategically placed stooges?

Cliché Continuum

Where would we be without the evil counterpart in sciffy series from Star Trek to Quantum Leap? Forced to do something original, is the obvious answer.

Atomically yours

Crossword clue: type of bomb or clock (6) v. original!
    Although elephant’s teeth (5) is highly dodgy if the answer is supposed to be tusks. Current elephants don’t do that much chewing with them.

Sneaky, or what!

The BBC News channel comes from Singapore @ 11 p.m. Presumably, to avoid paying studio staff here the union night-shift rates?

The relentless march of the health/wealth industry

Something else for us to worry about – our body’s inflamation age. It’s supposed to be the ultimate index of health and a test for it will be available in the near future. At a suitable price, of course.

Politeness a thing of the past?

“We just want to live where you live,” says a potential illegal immigrant.
    “And when did you ask us if we want you in our country?” is the question which is never asked of these rude pests.
    Everyone who wants to come here should have to pay all the bureaucratic and legal costs of applying, not us. That’s only fair.

On up his kilt

That was a deft clip round the ear our PM dealt to President Macron of France. If he can’t police his northern beaches to stop migrants drowning in the Channel, he should give the job to someone who can – the Brexited British!

Yatter, yatter

Miami has just been saved from being wiped out, the credits are rolling and some continuity bloke starts wittering about something else on another day. Does anyone listen? Unlikely.
    So why do they do it?
    Custom & practice, I suppose, not anything sensible.

No chance of something better

As someone who isn’t bothered about cricket, I won’t be too distressed if it comes to a dead stop because everyone involved has been tarred with the racialism brush. But knowing our luck, something else equally tedious will be on TV instead. Probably baseball.

Choices, choices

Do you do your Xmas shopping now to avoid all the shortages of delivery drivers and stock, or do you leave it to the last minute, as usual, to see what bargains shops are desperate to get rid of before they face the new year?

Now what?

I was not surprised to read that the Milwaukee SUV killer is a violent criminal who was out on bail. Will they put him away for good after killing half a dozen people? You never know in the USA if what we see of their justice system in TV shows is anything to go by.
    Is President Biden going to go in to bat for him? That’s something you can’t rule out.

Dreadful prospect

Anyone who likes proper food is advised to stock up the freezer. Only algaeburgers will be on offer in the 2030s.

Shame, really

The idea of putting the Parole Board in gaol until it learns some sense is doomed to failure. The buggers will only let themselves out right away.

Even harder

Same desperation in moaning about a cricketer blacking up as his fave rapper for a music themed party a decade ago. Bring back the pillory and a handy heap of rotting fruit & veg for the racialism confecters.

Try harder

You have to be really desperate for a whinge if you start claiming that Prince Charles using diesel generators to power some of his Xmas light show is causing climate change.

More remote spying

The police are in line for a gadget which will tell them if a phone is being used in a nearby car. Which means that gangs of them will be causing vast amounts of global warming as they trawl the nation’s roads for £200 fine clients.

Necessary accessory

Full face masks are going to be needed in a few years, when a bunch of scientists in Israel perfect their gadget, which will let them scan someone’s face, in person or on video, and tell with unerring accuracy that they’re lying. Especially for politicos.

No spikka?

There are TV adverts for a firm called Bosch full of garbage about their stuff preventing climate change. They must be foreigners if they don’t know that bosh is another word for tosh in English.

Bad choice

If you’re not looking for a Julie Andrews lookalike, you’re not going to M&S for your Xmas stuff. And they actually paid good money for a TV advert that limits their custom like that?

Not much doubt

“My wife and I have been looking at how to cut our carbon footprint”, writes a newspaper doctor. Does that make him wonderful and virtuous? Or just a blockhead who doesn't realize that there is nothing he and his wife can do to save the planet from global warming because they are not causing the problem?

Who changed the rules?

How come Tampa Bay didn’t get a delay of game flag when their defence played canoes in the New York end zone after making an interception on Monday Nite?

Who’s going to listen to him?

It’s all very well for former PM Gordon Brown to set himself up as an expert on global warming. But there are too many people around who remember that he wrecked the private pension system here, he let all the banks go bust on his watch and all the rest of his Roll of Shame. Including a previous gas and electricity crisis 14 years ago.
    Put him in charge of saving the planet and anyone who can’t get to Mars and join Mr. Musk’s colony there has had it for sure.

Disconnected thinking

The longer your hair, the more power you have, according to a TV advert for hair goo. This is the sort of thinking that gives BS a bad name. Although, it would be rather a hoot if the Leader of HM Opposition grew his hair down to his waist to see if it made him Boss of The Universe.

Alien Concept

Will Labour get their heads around levelling up means getting everyone to pay the same price for the same service? No chance.

Just not credible

How can deliberately driving an SUV into children doing an Xmas parade not be an act of terrorism? Terrorists can be other than exploding Islamists.

No one is impressed

Big boooo! for all the stooges kneeling down in Qatar in the dead of night. What happened to the new normality of a crash on lap 1 of a Grand Prix?
    Vroom, vroom, quite a lot of overtaking down the field but no drama. Just a paddle in the park to a win for Hamilton?
Lots of sparks from Bottas on lap 37 when a tyre failed. Same for Russell on lap 51 and Latifi a lap later. No worries at the front, Alonso back from the dead to finish 3rd behind Mad Max.

One way to do it

Apparently, the Bank of England has a strategy for inflation going up to 5% when its target it 2%. Ignore it and hope it goes away. Well, might just work.

No fear of missing out

Half an hour of crap to speed through at the start of the recording of WW SmackDown. Same old, same old and not a reason to watch their pay-per-view. Oh, no, I can’t. It’s been on.

Pull the other one, Percy

Recycling some old newspapers, I came across a headline from a month ago yelling about a major turkey crisis at Xmas. Which has now gone away. Which explains why it’s difficult to be excited or impressed by newspaper hysterics.

It takes all sorts

A bit further on in the paper, I came across someone claiming Russia won World War II for us by beating Germany. Entirely unaided by the UK and the US? Well, of course.

Passing thought

Is it a matter of profound shame for the England football team that they only put 10 goals past lowly San Marino in a World Cup qualifier? They were obviously not trying.

Include me in

Drinking a glass of rosé wine with a bacon sandwich, I turned the page of the morning paper and found myself confronted with an article telling me that all the cognoscenti are drinking it now. So that’s me categorized!

Goes around

Nothing gets wasted, apparently. All the apostrophes which Twitter is killing off are being recycled, I read. They are coming back as multiple exclamation marks!!!

Really shoving the envelope

On the Comedy Central TV channel the other day: Final Destination 2 (2003) – a horror sequel!!

Not enthusiastic

Do we need a Grand Prix in London? Only if they can guarantee that it will be something more than another boring procession.

Boots of clay

Oh, dear, halo in pieces, that Yorkshire cricketing bloke is as guilty as all the people he’s pointing a finger at for racialism. No surprise, though. Seems he indulged in a spot of routine anti-Semitism. Years ago, but that’s not any sort of excuse he can get away with.

Just another repeat

I had my attention drawn to a news website and its content from about 15 years ago. Back then, the New Labour government was selling peerages to donors but no one was to blame. And its members were doing second jobs and no one was to blame.
    And, of course, no one was still to blame for starting a war in Iraq on the basis of some ‘evidence’ concocted by the prime minister’s spin doctors.

Not paying attention

The lazy buggers of Glasgow have been getting into trouble by letting down the tyres of SUVs. Unfortunately, they ones they have had a go at are quite modest ones rather than mega-polluters, but it’s obviously expecting too much of the lout tendency to know what they’re doing.

Yawn yet again

Do we still need to be told about the Hunt for the Top Nazis in a TV programme? Seems like something that’s been done to death over the last 8 decades and a refuge for people who lack the initiative to offer anything new and original.

Rethink needed?

Maybe we need to take a look at the definition of deprived if the ‘deprived’ areas of the country are producing so many obese people.

Domination of a heap of wreckage?

Is there anywhere Russia has neglected to attack? It seems to be having a go at everywhere in the West on the planet. Next thing you know, it’s shooting missiles at the International Space Station. Probably something to do with relieving global warming.

Total Stupidity

You have to start wondering whose side the government is on if Boris & Co. think going carbon-neutral in 2045 instead of 2050 will encourage the Chinese to do it earlier than their stated 2060. All that will happen is that our goods & services will become excessively expensive and the Chinese will step in and take over our markets.

Shooting from the fingertip

Labour’s health mouthpiece, I read, was forced to apologize after offering his condolences to the Liverpool hospital bomber’s family by mistake.
    Where do they get characters like that, who feel obliged to poke their noses in uninformed instead of taking the trouble to find out that the casualty was the mad bomber, not a valued member of the community?
    I suppose it’s the new normal. People are able to express an opinion instantly online and they don’t feel obliged to make sure it’s worthwhile before they hit the send button.

The Select Few

I was surprised to read that just 4% of the population can still get through their day without massing about with a mobile phone. I went through a phone phase myself but I found I was wasting far too much time on trivialities, assisted by lots of enthusiastic helpers. Which is why I’m one of the 4% now.

What was his game?

I was baffled to hear that this bloke who’s making a new career out of claiming he had a rotten time at Yorkshire Cricket Club went back there for a second helping.
    On the face of it, that sounds like a rather severe case of masochism. And we don’t seem to be hearing anything about his character, which means we don’t know if he’s unpleasant and made himself unloved.

Sucks to bossyboots

The remote control’s mute button is an essential these days. Which is why I have a big red sticker on mine for instant location. Whenever I’m a bit slow using it, there’s usually some bugger telling me to search something or other on the internet. An order sans ‘Please’, which evokes my standard reply of “F in the direction of off”.

Damned Forever

Is the Daily Wail ever going to forgive that woman who has the temerity to wear M&S pyjamas (instead of a cocktail dress?) when she stabbed her husband to death? Seems unlikely.

Completely Useless

All the people who are moaning about the zillionare MP and former attorney general G. Cox taking loans and exploiting the Parliamentary rules are just making fools of themselves.
    If they don’t like what’s going on, it’s up to them to get the rules changed. Simple as that. Moaning about something that is entirely allowed is pointless. Same with the antics of the members of All-Party Parliamentary Groups.

Long overdue

Is it not time that the news meeja started to make a distinction between money that is earned and cash which is paid to usual suspects with no regard for Value For Money?

What another relief

A few years from now, the world will be safe from current glitter products, if the boffins at Cambridge University get their way and start producing biodegradable vegan glitter that’s irridescent!

The Cleese Card

It was rather amazing to realize that the students union at Cambridge actually got that it wouldn’t have any speakers if they started cancelling them left, right and centre. What are they going to do when they no longer have the likes of John Cleese to poke them in the eye when they do something daft?

Back ahead

The Brazilian Grand Prix started off with Red Bulls at the front and Hamilton having to do lots of overtaking. He was 3rd when the safety car bunched the field early on.
    Hamilton made 2nd, which did him no good, championship wise. If you’re called Mad Max, it’s okay to force your opponent off the track. It didn’t work on lap 59 and Hamilton was past him in a faster car! And off to win again. But he’s still not the points leader.

What a relief

Well, that’s the planet saved by the jamboree in Glasgow. Shame some unpleasant people had to point out that the final deal is totally useless and just another political farce, but that’s the way of the world.

No malice, just confection

How can President Biden describing a deceased baseball star as a negro be considered racist? It was a factual description of his racial group and nothing more than that. Anyone who was offended was just looking for an excuse to have a moan and deserves to be cancelled.

Verbal challenge

Yank-speak has inflicted “I was like . . .” on the yoof of everywhere else. But does it ever occur to them to use the direct opposite in applicable situations? “I was unlike . . .”
    Probably not.

Tedious Tosh

I’ve heard that E.on Previous was quite sparing with its emails. E.on Next showers them out like confetti and they are full of BS about ‘saving the planet’, which is totally dishonest.
    We are not the problem and nothing we do will make a scrap of difference to the global climate. China, India, Russia, the US and the other big consumers of fossil fuels are the ‘problem’. And cute crap from E.on Next is just that.

Ducati’s Day

Martin was on pole for the MotoGP and Quateraro was secure as champion. Rins crashed out of 3rd with 17/27 laps to go. The comms were talking up Bagnaia, 2nd, as a potential winner. He was in the lead with 12 to go. Would Miller try something daft to get past Martin for 2nd? Nope. An all Ducati podium at the finish.

Bad people do bad things? Yup!

Switching on early for the next programme, I keep seeing the end of episodes of Lor ‘n’ Order. That Prosecutor McCoy! He’s a prize piece of work. About 10x more crooked than anyone in the dock. No wonder lots of people think all lawyers are crooks.

Not going nowhere!

Four crashes and a red flag on lap 1/25 of the Moto2 race. Just a 16 lap sprint when they got back to the grind with the pole man out with a technical.
    Fernandez had to win without Gardner scoring points to be champion. Series leader Gardner stayed out of trouble. DiGi led for a while but Fernandez was not to be denied an 8th win of the season. 10th place was enough to give Gardner the title. Sam Lowes was 7th.

Over and Out

The last Moto3 race @ Valencia had front-runners still with lots to prove, the comms reckoned. Crash @ turn 4 of lap1/25 and Basher Binder gone.
    Champion Acosta led from pole; for a lap. Foggia blew hopes of a win with too many trips onto the green stuff? He was back to 5th towards the end after his long lap penalty, and in the lead with 4 laps to go. Acosta was hopeful of a win but he was crashed out by Foggia on the last lap.

Cute slogan, shame it’s tripe

Spotted on the back of the helmets of Miami Dolphins during the Thursday Night Football match: “It takes all of us”.
    But if you think about it, the inclusivity notion contains the implication: “Without me, the rest of you guys are going nowhere”. Not quite the intended message!

Seen it all before, only on an epic scale

Government sleaze is the current sensation? Chapter 18 of Rogue Shooter by Jon A. Gored contains lots of complaints about New Labour sleaze in the 20-Noughties. And I’m sure there are lots more to come as the initial chapters contain a generous sprinkling of them.
    Plus ça change . . .

Government sense?

Care home staff have to be vaccinated against the Chinese plague right now. NHS frontline staff have until next April to do it or lose their job. And that’s supposed to make sense?

That will help

The individual being paid to keep the police up to standard is planning to bin their macho culture. And do what? Turn them into a bunch of wimps who wouldn’t say boo to a burglar?
    Not that it would make an awful lot of difference if modern police forces don’t bother with burglaries any more.

Just a thought

Are all the people yelling that Oxford colleges should repay the millions donated by the Moseley family feeling ashamed that they didn’t cough up enough cash to make the Moseley donations unnecessary?
    Probably not. Looking for something to gripe about never seems to include suggesting a fix or offering one.

Brilliant idea!

 

 

We could be saved?

Someone on TV last night came up with an interesting solution to global warming. Stop the likes of David Attenborough swanning round the world to make TV progs and ground Prince Hairy and his ilk, and that will get us into carbon balance and let the rest of us carry on as normal.

Not a friendly way to do it

“An experienced caver who was trapped underground has been named”, the TV newsreader told us in the same manner as naming and shaming a really nasty criminal. A highly unfortunate choice of words to be sure. And will the name mean anything to people who aren’t into caving? Probably not.
    Which means that all the effort that went into tracking down this bloke to his hospital bed was a waste of licence-payers’ money. But hey, there’s lots of that.

Trying to make Virtues of Defects . . .

. . . and failing miserably. It says ‘Rapid Start’ with a picture of a sprinter leaping out of starting blocks on the CFL box. But getting 60% of the output in 5-30 seconds is definitely not rapid as we know it, Jim.
    Made in China, it says on the box in tiny print. Maybe that’s their interpretation of rapid, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
    Also, the output is described as ‘warm white’. Something redder and inferior to the pure white you get from an incandescent bulb. And don’t even mention the mercury in it to get the fluorescent gases excited.

Definitely Inferior

They put the most blatant lies on the packaging for CFL bulbs. I’ve just had to replace one in a reading lamp that croaked after just a couple of months rather than the lying bastard 10 years of life claimed on the box.
    I’d feel narked if I’d paid a couple of quid for it rather than 10p in the local supermarket when the government was trying to seduce everyone away from fluorescent light bulbs which give much better illumination.

Saviours of the Nation

Everyone with working coal fires is feeling really virtuous now because they reckon they’re doing their bit to relieve the gas shortage by using an alternative fuel to heat some rooms. Which is hard to argue with.

Plot Spoiler

Rule Number One for sci-fi films never observe: when some clown starts quoting the Bible, shoot him in the head. It will save a whole lot of bother later on.

Otherwise engaged

I didn’t watch the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven on TV. I’ve seen the original and I don't see the point of watching other people do the same story.

1/10 for trying

There was a video on the TV news the other night with a CGI dinosaur telling the UN that extinction is a bad thing. Not for mammals, it wasn't. A category which includes human beings, let us not forget. Cute message, load of bollocks if you have your brain switched on.

Who comes up with these things?

The scientific study of hard substances such as gold & iron, was the crossword clue. Gold, a hard substance? What rot. Imagine a dentist trying to hammer something hard into a tooth cavity rather than maleable dental gold film.

Definitely NOT Arrakis

The film Planet Dune is a con job. The sand worms in it wouldn’t make a between-meals snack for Shai Hulud on the real Dune. Especially if they can be blasted with an ordinary hand-held zapper.

SF cliché No. 1

When you run out of inspiration, hurl your spaceship into a completely unexpected asteroid field. Cue some fancy flying and a few moments of drama.

Pause for thought

How do you excuse the conduct of police officers who put pictures of bodies at a crime scene on the internet? The best one I’ve heard is that dealing constantly with the criminal dregs of society has a dehumanizing effect, and therefore society is to blame.

Bogus, bogus, bogus

E.on Next claims to be a brilliant shade of Green in all its doings. Which is garbage, one of my contacts has found. Its website treats customers as non-persons if they don’t have a mobile phone number to offer.

Too cold a turkey

People who have a 30-second cold shower are healthier than people who don’t, I read. Not something I feel inclined to verify from personal experience.

There’s always next year

Mexican mayhem and a safety car on lap 1 on Sunday. Then the shouty bloke was reduced to getting excited about back-markers getting stuck in ’coz nothing was happening @ the front. Hamilton was about 10 minutes behind Mad Max at the end and watching his title hopes go down the plug-hole.

An “I” for Imagination

A 30-0 lead, like the one the Broncos had at one stage of their match with the Cowboys, is a Thirtyburger. How long was someone saving that one up?

One in the eye for the commentators

Moto2 is normally quite civilized but there were a few early crashes. Sam Lowes did well, rising to 4th from 8th on the grid, and finished on the podium in 3rd.
    Gardner & Fernandez battled for the championship at the front of the race and Gardner is now 23 points ahead of Fernandez, who was expected to win today, with one race to go.

Miracle in Print

‘supery-’ was at the end of the line in the newspaper. My mind went into brain-fade. What on Earth could be at the start of the next line?
    It turned out to be ‘acht’, which is the German for eight, someone with an O-Level in it knows.
    How in the name of all that’s unholy did the paper’s computer decide to put the hyphen there? Unless the editing program was written by a comedian.

Short-changed!

No Marc Marquez in the MotoGP race; he’s concussed. Brother Alex claimed 4th place early on behind Bagnaia and Mir. Quateraro, the newly crowned champion, crashed out with 5 laps to go, his first DNF of the season.
    A 2-bike crash was bad enough for red flags on lap 24; over 75% distance; and the result was declared on positions at the end of lap 23, which put Miller on the podium in 3rd.

Making the world safe?

One minute, the idiot protesters in Glasgow are claiming they’re going to sabotage the climate junket, which is supposed to be about fixing the things they’re moaning about.
    The next, they’re claiming ‘You can’t breathe money’. Which is true but so what? It’s not as if climate change is going to make the planet airless.

One for the record books

Nobody cared about the guy who went off at turn 1 of lap1/21 in the Portuguese Moto3. Foggia was the early leader and rookie Acosta had a shot at bagging the title. McPhee bit the dust with 16 laps to go.
    Foggia was mugged by Acosta’s team-mate, who did the same to his principal! Acosta went backwards, Foggia retook the lead. Acosta to the lead on lap 19. Foggia on lap 20. Acosta on lap 21 just before Foggia was crashed out behind him. Acosta won the race and he’s the champ.

Come on!

If you’re going to make up a story about a celeb, rule number one is that it has to be credible. Ringo Starr drinking 16 bottles of wine a day? Right.

Not exactly top of the list

How on Earth did some American parents come up with the name Nyheim for their son? Who scored the first touchdown for the Colts on Thursday night’s fumble-fest.
    The Jets got hammered but they still scored 30 points, so no prizes for the Colts’ defence.

Doctor-Mister Syndrome

On the rare occasions when I have had dealings with the medical profession, they have always seemed quite decent human beings.
    Which makes it all the more baffling why the leaders of their union, the BMA, hate us so much.

Weird Country

Still on Scotland, if the head of Glasgow city council thinks it’s the new normal to have rats and rubbish in all the streets, maybe we’d be a lot better off to let Wee Burney have her independence and make her rattle her begging bowl at the IMF instead of the Treasury in London.

Burney Rot

“The eyes of the world are on Scotland”, claims the SNP boss Sturgeon. Which is complete garbage. But when did you ever get the truth and good sense out of a professional politician on the make?
    And Greenhouse Grotter f-ing & blinding all over the place to get herself noticed. Desperation time, obviously.

Cute, real cute!

That was a brilliant idea, playing bagpipes right next to some mug who was stuck to a roadway. Squirting the buggers with ink, especially an indelible sort, also rocks.

Sigh of Relief

That’s Black History Month over. Let us hope we don’t get bombarded with something similar this month. If we want to be educated, we’ll go to night school or read a good book. We don’t need endless trailers for stuff we’re not going to watch on TV.

Business pragmatism

Apparently, it’s a lot cheaper for water companies to pay a fine for dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea than it is to do what they’re paid to do, i.e. clean it up. No danger of the government reversing that, of course.

Man for the Job

Something else amusing was the view that the whole climate thing should be turned over to those sages Prince Hairy and his missus as they are the most important people in the world and they can do anything and everything.

PR Spaghetti

I was amused to read that the legend of the jamboree in Glasgow has been shuffled about so much that no one will ever be able to tell if it was a wonderful success or a total flop. Which spares Boris the fleeting embarrassment of the latter.

Klee-shay, Klee-shay!

It seems to be a rule that US crime series have to chuck in a character obsessing about the bad end of a sibling (Unforgettable), a parent (Castle), etc. Series 7 of NCIS has the whole gang obsessing about the disappearance of Agent David instead of doing their jobs. But not for the rest of the series, apparently.

Some things endure

The Nebula Winners 16 volume contains an essay on contemporary films. Most get a thumbs down. No mention of the music that goes with the scoffed at Flash Gordon, but Flash is still cleaning up the impossible 40 years later. And putting cash into the pockets of the members of Queen and their heirs; if they haven’t flogged off the rights.
    Mad Max was also sniffed at.

Other things to do

Would I pay 150 quid for an XXL book by Taschen about James Bond, even if it is magnificent? The book is the complete story of all 25 Bond films in 648 pages. But am I really desperate to know every last factette? Naaaah.

Eyes Averted

The current version of All Creatures Great And Small is hardly an original Channel 5 drama if it has been done on TV before. But does OfTV care about such blatantly false advertising? Obviously not.
    Recycled rather than original?

Logical Approach

If nations becoming developed have caused a climate crisis, we should be clamping down on developing countries to prevent them from adding to the problem.
    Doing anything else makes no sense.

Buzzzz Word

Everything is about power, these days, whether it’s pretending a particular shampoo will give it to you, or young optimists thinking they have the power to control the planet’s climate and that what China does is somehow irrelevant.

Weird World

What strange messages you get from newspapers – such as it’s okay to murder your husband but somehow a crime against the whole of humanity to do it wearing M&S pyjamas.

Empty Boast

‘US vows to safeguard atomic bomb’, I read in the Sunday Post as a reprint of a front page from 75 years ago. Didn’t do much of a job of keeping it out of Russian hands, did they?

The enduring persistence of ignorance

They still don’t get it, whoever compiles the Daily Mail Quick Crossword. Treacle (6,5) is not the same as golden syrup. No matter how often they claim it is.

Journalistic Junk?

‘Barca are broke, broken and beaten’, I read. But if Barcelona United are 9th in a league of 20 football clubs, as shown in the table offered with the story, they must be doing something right.

Systems Failure

The new normal for TV ads is becoming a terribly sincere voice, usually female, telling us what a wonderful contribution to saving the planet what’s on offer makes – as well as boosting the profits of the manufacturer.
    My default reaction now is to put them on my personal black list along with everything French. If you’re still allowed to have a black list with a welter of wokista wibblers slopping around our ankles.

The same tripe every weekday

NCIS – The naval team that’s cracking the cases that fall within their remit, not ‘cases which no one else can’, as a continuity bloke tells us.
    No one else gets a shot at the cases because NCIS bags everything naval. Not that you’d expect the people running the 5USA channel to get that. Not that you’d expect them ever to have seen an episode of something which has been going . . . forever. 19 or 20 series.

Mighty fallen, etc.

I’ve just started reading the Nebula Winners 16 collection in the UK hardback edition published in 1983, having completed another trip through Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
    My latest book is a library copy originally sold @ £8.95. It was retired and sold off for a mere 20p!! despite looking in new condition; apart from the library retirement stamp.

Wallets to be emptied even more

Oh, dear. Install a heat pump to save the planet and your energy bill will soar because it runs on heavily taxed electricity rather than the cheaper gas used in a gas boiler. Cue another swindle of the taxpayer by the government.

Almighty offended

Has California done something to upset God? They start moaning about an extended drought and water shortages. The next thing you know, the state is battered to bits and flooded by the mother of all bomb cyclones!

Desperation time

You have to wonder about the mental health of a bus driver who thought a court would believe he thought he was driving a single-decker when he smashed a double-decker bus into a low bridge.

Whose side are the sods on?

You have to wonder how many brain cells the current stock of chief constables of police forces have if they think it’s a good idea to erase vast numbers of criminal records from the PNC, which will result in much shorter sentences for hardened criminals. Has the police union been given a bung by the criminals’ union? That’s an obvious conclusion. It certainly explains the facts on offer.

Great idea

There seems to be an international campaign for Meaty Mondays to counter the veggies’ claim that Meat-Free Mondays with save the planet from global warming. I know which side I’m on!

Bright idea

Maybe we can have a revolution, bin Boris and go for the Saudi solution to zero carbon. Just keep on going as we are and promise to use yet-to-be invented technology to remove our carbon from the atmosphere 40 years from now.

Don’t buy it, no way

The 2016 Ghostbusters remake with female leads stars Kristen Wiig, says the Daily Mail TV guide? Who? Melissa McCarthy is the lead we’ve heard of.
    I liked the way you get a title in passing and all the rest of the credits are put on at the end. And Ms Weeeeeg does a good job as Erin the theoretical particle physicist, which sounds like a great job. If the particles are all theoretical, no one can prove your opinions about them are wrong!
    Someone weird did the subtitles. There was a £ pound sign to indicate musical lyrics instead of the US pound sign #. Must have been added by someone with a case of literalitis.

Really or just professionally

Is Prof. Brian Cox really worried that we’re all there is in the way of semi-intelligent life in the galaxy because we haven’t been visited by (conquering) aliens?
    Or is it just something that goes with the job as a tactic for being noticed? Or having something to say in front of the cameras.

Not me, Gov!

That was a brilliant idea by the boss of Facebook. If the cash machine becomes mired in scandal, change the name.

Oven-ready religion

A comedian in Ireland claims that an Xmas turkey will sustain us for a couple of meals but the birth of J.H. Christ will sustain us 365 days a year. Good luck with making that convincing when hunger pangs strike his family!
    p.s. We’re being threatened with polish chicken for Christmas – Kiwi or Cherry Blossom?

No more-pressing problems?

You’d think everything was fine and people need to look around for things to do. That’s the impression the people trying to arrange cosmetic pardons for the long dead create.

“It should be about ME!”

Is there a sense of entitlement bigger than that of the aptly named Greenhouse Grotter? She is outraged that the climatefest in Glasgow hasn’t been made all about her and she isn’t No. 1 on the guest list. Or even on it at all to give the views of a teenager with a severe persecution complex.

Stay at home!

The climate plague-spreading hoo-haa in Glasgow seems to have put the kybosh on travelling around the city. The roads are closed and the trains will be on strike. Worse, some of the ‘delegates’ are getting accommodation in parked cruise ships, which have been described as an ideal place to get a dose of the plague if a carrier is staying near you.

Needs the money?

Dustbin Rhodes can still go a bit, if slowly, on AEW despite being about 150 years old. Same with good old J.R., who has to be a lot older.

Fall-Gal

I was amused to read that the rest of the EU is blaming Angela Merkel, the outgoing boss of Germany, for the shambles the organization has become. All the fault of the German steerswoman and nothing to do with all the rest for letting her make all the decisions.

Dodgy is as dodgy does

The Daily Mail seems to think it has some sort of duty to spy on the personal life of no longer a government minister Matt Hancock. How does that serve the public interest?

The inner cynic emerges

The finish of the US Grand Prix was described as a thriller. But only by a journalist pretending to be thrilled – a newspaper version of the shouty bloke commentator.

Official foul, ref!

Coaches should challenge personal foul penalties on their players when it’s retaliation and the replay shows blatant provocation was unflagged, especially if it’s done by the swindler Squawks. The flag-chucker should also get a black mark on his record for negligence or partiality if he missed the provocation. The Squawks gone on 4th & 28 at the end? Justice of a sort for New Orleans.

Indulgence defined

Letting the cat get away with parking on the TV box and making you move a drooping foot out of the way when you want to use the remote control.

Why, oh, why?

If you park a red Bic ballpoint upright with the point down, every time you use it, it will start with a black smudge before any redness is delivered. Store it flat and this doesn’t happen. Weird.

Never opted in

The list of the Top Ten Greatest TV Shows of the 21st century thus far includes nothing that I was tempted to watch. Thank goodness for Digital Heaven and the 20th century.

Descend to a yawn

That was officially a mental start to the US Grand Prix with Hamilton taking no crappen from Verstappen. But Surprise!! Mad bugger Max got the strategy right and won.

Viewed on fast fast-forward

That was a really poorsized (rather than supersized) episode of Friday Nite SmackDown with Brack Lessssnar kicking asses for 40 minutes with chat. Then a joke ‘match’ between Sami the Scarcrow and the Scottish sword-swallower.
    Then a King Xavier pantomime with chat and half an hour of fillers.
    “We’ve bin to Saudia Arabia, you know. Yesterday.”
    Yes, and it really showed.

Optimism Defined

Down 3-27, the Kansas City Chiefs going for a 4th & 18 in the 4th quarter – and getting their underperforming QB dinged. Or should that be ‘Desperation Defined’?

Somewhat off-target

It was rather amusing to watch the film Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and read the preliminary blurb telling viewers what things would be like in the second decade of the 21st century and being able to tell yourself, in 2021, “Nope, nothing like that happened. Guess again.”

More dust bitten!

Quateraro, 15th on the MotoGP grid, had a shot at being the champ. There was a Ducati & Honda charge at the front. Miller crashed out of 2nd early on, putting Marc Marquez behind leader Bagnaia.
    A high number of crashes was blamed on the lack of dry practice laps. Gulp! Bagnaia joined them with 4 to go, letting Marquez go on to his second win in a row and making Quateraro, who finished 4th, the World Champion of the World @ MotoGP!!

Yay, Sam!

Sam Lowes (GB) was on pole for Moto2 but he went backwards to 3rd in the early laps of 25. Back to the lead when the two ahead boobed.
    Championship hopeful Fernandez crashed out with 10 laps to go. Canet took over the lead. Lowes got it back and stayed there!

No Go zone

The Insulate bunch don’t need to do Glasgow. The council there has closed roads in and around the city for 3 weeks before and after the global warming jamboree. Further good news for travellers – the trains are on strike.

Not done yet

Moto3 @ Misano was a dry race after every other session was wet on a cold track with damp patches to make everyone a bit careful. Acosta had to win and Foggia had to crash for him to be the youngest ever champ.
    Acosta took the lead with 12/23 laps to go with Foggia 7th. Britain’s John McPhee, with flu, had crashed. Suddenly, Acosta & Foggia were 4th & 5th. Foggia took the lead and stayed there. Acosta went backwards but recovered to 3rd.

Not me, though

Someone has done one of these studies and found that wasting just two lousy minutes on the tripe on internet social media sites can ruin your day. Makes me glad to belong to a generation with better things to do.

Big new thing

For pop bands, it’s having kinetic flooring at their shows so that they can pretend fans jumping up and down on it are creating the energy to power everything.

Something to look forward to

The Insulate yobs are just taking a week off to let their bruises heal before they’re back for more, showing up the police, Highways England & the Home Office as chocolate teapots.

Right NOT to know

“Why did Palace cover up truth on Queen?” the Daily Wail wails about her hospital visit. Because the likes of you would have done an 8-page spread on her funeral plan otherwise and spread as much alarm and despondency as you could confect.
    Especially a couple of days after a big moan asking if H.M. is doing too much.

Right to know!

Has C.M. Punk kidnapped AEW’s granny? We seem to be getting a disproportionate amount of his posturing on the shows.

Got me baffled

Crossword clue: ‘one with northodox views’. Something to do with professional Northerners? The answer turned out to be ‘maverick’ and it came the next day with no apology for the ‘u’ missing from in front of ‘northodox’.

Not convinced

Why is it taking the 5USA TV channel forever to fix its broken subtitle service? If they really were ‘working hard’, they’d have got the job done ages ago.

Yeah, right!

Some musicians are complaining that the world should make streaming services pay them a fair rate for using their music because not doing it is forcing them to go on tour to make a living and causing all the global warming.

Brilliant idea

It an actor plays the captain of a spaceship, it’s only logical that he should do a cosmetic flight up to the edge of space. If you have a twisted sense of logic, of course.
    William Schatner also played a cop: T.J. Hooker. Is it logical that he should go along on a raid by real police and be allowed to bag a bad guy? Sounds fair enough.

The perils of piracy

The Russian Sputnik vaccine, based one theft from Astra-Zeneca, works but Russia is enjoying a surge in plague cases because the people think anything Russian has to be rubbish and they’re not lining up for it.

One-note samba

According to the EU bosses, all our problems, including the Chinese plague, are down to Brexit. Which saves the poor dears from having to think and engage with the real world, I suppose.

Par for the course

No fireworks in London at New Year because the useless mayor has blown the budget on something pointless? So it goes.

I’m the King!

Someone else who has blown a fuse is Paul McCartney, who can’t forgive the Strolling Bones (some of them) for still being able to perform when he’s sidelined.

He’s lost it

The Prime Minister is ready for the looney bin if he thinks his plan to blow one trillion quid on cancelling the UK’s 1% of total global greenhouse emissions is worthwhile.
    We’re not the problem, Boris. China and India and the other big emitters are. But Carrie won’t let you see that? Poor old hen-pecked bloke?

Journalistic tripe

Are we really expected to believe that Newcastle United fans could believe that they would suddenly become world beaters days after the Saudi takeover of the club? If it still has the same gang of players & managers in place?

Yellow duster shower

How many flags can you have in a Monday Nite football match? The Bills & the Titans seemed to be trying for a new world record! Amazing there wasn’t one during the 76-yard TD run by Henry.

Licence abuse?

I see the blessed Judy Murray in the Sunday Post and Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail don’t (or won’t) get that Prince Chuck runs his Aston on waste products from making wine & cheese, not the actual final products. But hey, what do facts have to do with creating a good knocking job?

How it should be done

What a relief that the lady lance-jack who did our anthem @ Spurs on Sunday didn’t do the daft twiddly bits perpetrated by some performers. And a straight version from the bloke doing the US anthem; even if they were suspicions that he was trying to sound like Paul Robeson.

Acrosy? Who needs it?

One of the daftest things said about Billy Shatner’s rocket jaunt is that he reached orbit. Given that he was up in space for just a few minutes, and at a height that no orbiting space vehicle would ever use; too much atmospheric drag; and he didn’t actually travel that far sideways, we have a significant relationship deficit between deed and description.

The crowd went wild

T.J. Swatt and the Steelers grotted all over the Squawks in the Sunday late match. Yay!

Design appropriation

Why are the Bears trying to look like the Bengals with their new helmet design? Weird.

Time Warp

I’m glad not to be living in Brighton. The Green council has upset the binmen there and sent the place back to the 1970s with the streets full of uncollected garbage. Good news for the local rats and foxes, though.

The Not Functioning League?

Brilliant start from Sky Sport Mix – first, the NFL Red Zone show with no sound then sound with no pix! Visions of a bloke sitting on the satellite holding half a dozen bits of wire together to get everything across the Atlantic.

A Good Afternoon

Triffic match at Spurs FC. The Miami Dolphins and the Jacksonville Jaguars put on a great show. Nice to see the Jags get a win at last.

Or maybe not

Prince Hairy has a real job on because snowflakes think that everything they believe has to be 100% factual and the truth and if anyone disagrees with them, they are up to no good.

Way to go!

Prince Hairy is going to save the world, which means the rest of us don’t have to bother. Well, that’s a relief.

The Invisible Man

Some Daily Mail readers seem to expect some guy called Bradley Walsh to be on TV all the time. Can’t say I’d recognize him if we bumped trolleys in the supermarket.

Trying, but not hard enough

Supersized WW SmackDown – what’s that all about? Another half hour of chat rather than a rush of extra ring action. And all the repeats, of course. Although, the ladies did put about five times more effort into their Big Match than usual.

How dare they?

Rumblings @ the Mansion! B bloody useless T Sport is failing to deliver a full quota of this weekend’s Canadian football. It seems there are too many repeats to be shown to allow original material to get air-time.

Was he, wasn’t he?

I still haven’t worked out whether David Hockney wore that weird suit at his exhibition in Paris to win a bet or because he lost one.

On the nose

I have to agree with the observation that despite all the propaganda we’re getting about black history, it’s still of as little interest to most people as cricket.

Maybe, just maybe

Maybe we need a Citizens’ Militia, which will step in and take charge when the police stand idly by and watch idiots glue themselves to a motorway.
    A Militia with the power to arrest coppers for dereliction of duty would shake things up nicely. Especially if it could bust senior officers and members of the Can’t Prosecute Service and the judiciary for the same crime.

Practicality wins

Richard Littlejohn, sage of the Daily Mail, appears to be aghast at the NHS using live maggots to eat dead tissue around wounds that refuse to heal. He thinks it’s too old & mediaeval for the modern world. But if it works, who the hell cares?

Change, but not for the better

“At this moment in time” seems to have a rival – “At this moment in life”. Even with a new T-shirt, a cliché remains just that.

Small spot of good news

As the current shortages of everything to do with Xmas do not include supplies of tins of tuna in spring water, the Mansion cat’s Xmas treat remains assured.

We’re the good guys!

Fireplaces @ the Mansion have been checked and approved for use. Chimneys swept. And we’ve had a delivery of smoke-free coal. We are now looking forward to doing out bit to relieve the gas shortage via our Alternative Energy Option.

A bit impressive but not a big bit

Is the 90-year-old T.J. Hooker actor Wm. Shatner an astronaut after spending 3 minutes floating around in zero gravity? There must be more to it than that. But I suppose we’re supposed to be impressed by an old codger being able to withstand the G-forces of a rocket launch.

Selfish is the only way

Why does Paxperson the Pundit think all people of 70 are stooped and watery-eyed, like himself. None of the over-70s of my acquaintance is. But that’s a meeja person for you. It’s always all about them.

Inventive wildlife

Them foxes! They don’t care how much havoc they wreak. Luckily, the ones locally don’t seem to have cottoned on to the trick of chewing through brake lines to get a drink of the sweet-tasting juice inside.

Always gonna happen

In fact, there is no real point in applying hindsight to what the government failed to do when the Chinese plague arrived because when some similar catastrophe occurs, the same sort of useless sods will be in charge of dealing with it; experts, politicians and civil servants alike; and there will just be another huge and deadly shambles.

Do it louder!

Good for the Hungarian football fans who booed England for doing the knee of shame in support of abolishing the police and giving criminals a free ride.
    And an extra boooo! for any of the England players who complained about it.

Why always us?

Is it really our responsibility to take in Afghan judges who sent Taliban thugs to gaol and who are now hiding from the packs of thuggish murderers? Are there no nearer, enlightened countries in the area?

Total unconcern

Having given the matter two full seconds of deep thought, I have decided that not having pigs in blankets as Xmas morn nibbles will not bother me in the slightest.

Clearly passing off

The ignorance lobby has removed spelling and a knowledge of English grammar from the basic requirements for getting a degree. Which means they really are no longer worth the paper they’re printed on. If they haven’t become PDFs.

Creepily Cosmetic

Are adverts voiced over by some bloke with a male nanny voice really going to make idiot gamblers lose only what they can afford to? Really?

Deathwish?

Some 7.35% of the population is not bothering to get vaccinated against the Chinese plague, I read. Which will create quite a lot of space for migrants if significant numbers of them croak of the plague they think they’re immune from.

Two-faced & Shameless

A pop star claims to be embarrassed that her marriage fell apart so fast. But does that stop her splashing it all over the meeja to promote a new album? One guess.

Off Target

The concept of the Guitar Heroes series on TV tends to fall apart when using old BBC footage of a band that concentrates on the lead singer and makes the guy playing the guitar just an occasional.

Weird Sunday

There was definitely something very strange going on yesterday with normally reliable NFL kickers missing field goal tries and extra points all over the place.
    Let us hope the East Division CFL teams are unaffected for their pair of Thanksgiving Monday matches this evening.

All change for paler blues

I note that Fox’s Glacier Mints now have light blue wrappers instead of dark blue, and they’re in a light blue packet. If the price of the packet stays the same after a design change now, that’s usually a sign that the amount in the packet has shrunk.
    And the mints themselves are a bit cloudy rather than clear. Messing with the recipe, too?

The way forward

Whatever happened to the fencing on a long table like wot they used to do in films back in the good old daze? That is something definitely in need of revival to put some life into the next and tediously politically correct Bond film.

Not much difference

The wet conditions were supposed to make the Turkish Grand Prix unpredictable, but they did a favour for Hamilton, who started 11th after an engine change. No one seemed unduly distressed by the state of the track; apart from Alonso, who played silly buggers @ turn 1 of lap 1. Bottas had an easy 10th GP win and Hamilton managed 5th.

Wine Words

A bottle of wine begs to be shared, a US intellectual would have us believe. All a bottle of wine has ever given me is an invitation to fill up a glass four times.
    Which only goes to show that the allegedly sage pronouncements of intellectuals can be as big a waste of time as stuff from lesser mortals.

Yawning again, again

The list of 25 greatest poems of all time starts off seriously before descending into the ludicrous with some shameful omissions. Which just confirms what a waste of time these lists are.

Devaluation

Inflation strikes again. You need to have killed 5 people to be a proper serial killer, but psychos with only 4 victims to their credit are getting the tag now.
    How soon before it’s down to 2 and some hysteric is trying to claim that a killer who accounted for just one person is a SK?

Dubai Spy? Aaaagh!

Do I really want to plough through 8 pages of over-excited journalism about an Arab sheikh hacking the phone of his estranged wife?
    Is life long enough to surrender that much time?

Dumbing Down

No surprise that the geniuses on the Radio 4 News Quiz don’t know the difference between a company that actually supplies energy and one which just issues bills.

Small bit of help

Nice to see the French police getting tough with north coast boat bandits. Rubber bullets clearly work. So well, in fact, that the useless Frogs will stop using them.

The me-me-me cult

I suppose it’s typical of a Labourite like Nick Robinson to make the story all about himself when he was graciously permitted an interview with the PM @ the Tory conference.

No one to blame

It seems that the Butterfly Theory is what is behind the current severe shortage of lorry drivers everywhere, not the refusal of haulage companies to give jobs to new drivers with no experience, who can only get the experience they need behind the wheel of an HGV.
    So don’t expect things to improve, ever, is the message.

Fruitless speculation

What does it actually achieve to declare that someone might have survived a terrible catastrophe if other people had behaved differently at the time? Not a whole lot.

That’s me educated

It’s amazing how educational reading old books can be. My current reading material is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne and during a description of the novelties on the Nautilus, it registered on me that plata is Spanish for silver and that means that the River Plate in South America is the Silver River.
    This is not something new; millions of people must know it; but I didn’t until I read the book and experienced the joy of making a connection like that.

They never learn

It would have been a good idea for the scripters of Whiskey Cavalier to kill off the bad guy Ollerman as they have a habit of becoming excruciatingly tedious very quickly, as he has done. And also has the Mystery Woman in Deception.
    Terminate, terminate, terminate!

Draft? Daft, more like

Is there any point to the WW draft? Shuffling the deck chairs is just another excuse to do chat instead of in-ring entertainment, which is what is supposed to be on offer.
    20 minutes of it at the start of RAW, and lots more to follow. Lots of work for the minion operating the fast-forward button on the remote control.

Everyone relax

The Crisis to End All Crises is over. Benign boffins have found that fungi can be used to hoover all the surplus carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and we can go back to a way of life that works all the time.

What jolly fun!

‘At least 999 police officers & staff have been reported . . . for misusing social media’. Is this a journalist being cute instead of using the nice, round number of 1,000? And would it have been 911 misusers in the United States?

Turn the wick up to full

John Wick must be bloody strong to carry all the bullets that he shot off at bad guys in the third epic about him. Maybe he should have saved some for the wiseguy Jap skinhead at the end.

Sheer Bafflement

“Tomola glaffa klaaaa . . .”
    “Tomola glaffa klaaaa . . .”
“Tomola glaffa klaaaa . . .”
    Writing a ‘music’ score for an action film is a doddle if you don’t need the vocals to make sense.

Good Point

I was amused to read that Sir Starmer’s main objection to PM Boris being a showman is really that it makes him look terminally boring in comparison.

Activity deficit

The failure of Facebook and its satellites to be available from the afternoon to late evening is reported to have resulted in lots of people wandering around aimlessly, looking totally lost. Shame they don’t have something useful to do with themselves.

Curious Concept

Why does a TV ad offer just music from the 70s, 80s & 90s? Is it because people who remember the music of the 60s are supposed to be dead or gaga now?

Medical Crossover

After reading an article telling him it’s safe to have injections of flu and plague booster vaccines in separate arms in the same session, a friend recalled that last year, he ended up with an ache in the arm that didn’t get the flu jab. He’s now wondering if people will start blaming the plague booster for giving them a sore arm.

Yawn again

Pouring crap onto Jeremy Clarkson’s car is an Anton Dec prank and a real hoot?
    Sounds like one of the reasons I’ve never watched them.

Shock-Horror

The Big Surprise of the NFL weekend was how much of a struggle Brady and the Buccaneers had to scrape a win over the reconstructed Patriots. V. encouraging for the Pats.

A good way to sell a programme

Would be to include an on-screen announcement before it’s shown that reptile dysfunction ads are NOT included. I’d buy that for a dollar.

Blitzenfritz!

Lightning delay in L.A. Are we going to see the whole of Monday Nite Football on our recroding? Points were hard to come by; blurt & squirt.
    The Raiders were in a hole 3 TDs deep @ half time. It was only one deep after Q3. A missed FG didn’t help. 14-28 final and we saw the lot.

Killing the Planet?

Monday: “Cheers: your order has been delivered!”
    I know, I know, it arrived on Saturday. How much damage to the Planet is being done by companies sending out pointless emails several days late?
    Maybe banning them would save the world for mankind.
    Or maybe not.

Still not impressed

Why, oh why, did LV insurance update the dom diddy bloke’s singing on its TV advert. The original was crap and the update is just as crap.

Back where he belongs

93 Marquez swept into the early lead of the MotoGP race. The commentators had a lot to say about Miller on a Ducati but it was Marc Marquez on a Honda by a mile at the finish. Miller was only 8th.

Harmless fun

The thing about turning down the sound and eating something while the TV adverts are on is that when you look at the screen, you’re never quite sure whether it’s the same ad or another one. Which can lead to some rather entertaining apparent links.

How it should be done

Moto2 got off just 10 minutes late. Fernandez went off the front and ended up with a 3rd win in a row during his rookie season. Gardner went out on lap 13/18 – with his championship hopes blown? Sam Lowes was nowhere and his bike croaked at half-way.

Late afternoon bikers

Moto3 of the Americas was on a shambles of a track, very civilized and soon became well strung out. Two long laps for a jump start? Crumbs! McPhee was up to 3rd and he’d done a fastest lap on lap with 11/17 to go when a crash stopped the race with a red flag.
    A 5-lap dash was to follow. McPhee was leading at half-way when a Gangbusters!! crash with flying bikes brought out another red flag. Through sheer good luck, no one was killed and the 3 involved were walking about within minutes.
    The result was declared on the basis of the first 7 laps, which put McPhee 3rd. Full points awarded? That shouldn’t have happened. The winner was a kid who was throwing a tantrum in his garage because his bike croaked during the 2nd stint!

Really not impressed

Did Braaaak Lesnar of the WW lose a bet and that’s why he has that stoopid apology for a pigtail? It’s as crap as the last show was.

Who needs the real world?

Die Hard 4 (2007) has to have some sort of record for totally daft stunts. Especially Mr. Willis shooting down a helicopter with a car. Not to mention playing silly buggers with a jet fighter.

Us in our place

How do you know that you live somewhere completely unimportant? No queue at either of the nearby petrol stations.

Whinge

-10 out of 10 to the Syfy Channel for putting the same film on in the 9 p.m. slot two days in a row.

Sinful? Who says?

Why is it wrong for protesters at the Labour conference to have been organized? Such as getting their red cards at a discount to wave at their boring leader? Unless we assume that only the lone fanatic counts and organized resistance is futile in Labour’s world.

Moreover

Talking about crap, I see the current Labour leader, Sir Starmer who’s ashamed of the K, is an admirer of the corrupt and warmongering Tony Blair. Or Tony B. Liar as he became better know. So if we want another dose of new labour, vote for him. Useful to know, I suppose.

Mish-mash

Any publicity is publicity. Which is just a well, as the new Bond film – the last with a bloke in the role? – is getting praised to the rooftops and condemned as a stinker.
    Oh, well, it will be on TV eventually and we’ll have the opportunity to watch it on fast-forward if it’s crap.

Wasted gesture

Apparently, a newspaper picture showing Kate Moss’ kid doing a modelling job includes her wearing an insulin pump. Two responses to that. 1. I glanced at the picture in passing and didn’t notice the gadget. 2. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what it is and that it’s not part of the outfit.

Useful at last

The much reviled Cressida Dick, the busted flush in charge of the Metropolitan police, has now become a universal scapegoat. Everything is her fault. Including not spotting coppers who turn out to be homicidal maniacs.
    Oh, well. She did cling on to the job.

Excitement level zero?

If the new Bond film has a 12 rating from the censors, that must mean the human to human violence has been extracted as well as the sex. Sounds like it will all be done by computers in the next one.

Collector’s Items

I’ve been advised to hang on to my rather vast collection of fountains pens, ballpoints and miscellaneous pencils as they could become valuable in the future. Apparently, the kids of today don’t write anything, they type it into a tablet or a phone, and the firms that make writing materials are heading for the scrap heap.

Will it last?

I see dairy products are back on the list of things that are good for you. But will they stay there long enough for me to put double cream on my Christmas helping of Fruit Paradise? Always assuming Xmas isn’t cancelled due to one crisis or another.

Backward Progress

The nation had a 3-day week back in the 1970s when the trade union wreckers were out of control. Looks like that’s what doctors are head for. They don’t work at weekends. Lots of them are giving up Fridays. And you can’t really expect them to work on a Monday.

Well left behind

Cor blimey, mate! Windows is up to version 11 and I’m still using version 7 on an ancient PC, which has all the software I use regularly installed on it – and runs it all quite happily. Not something that could happen with a much later version, which is why I’m letting the march of progress pass me by.

Brain disengaged

How do you ‘catch up on demand’ with a TV series which is ‘coming up soon’ and hasn’t yet arrived so you haven’t missed any of it? Totally illogical.

Sold on the spot

Swap to ALDI and you won’t back your car through the closed garage door? That’s definitely a must-have, gimme-gimme deal!

SNAFU

It’s newspaper heaven. They’re lurching from one crisis to the next on a daily basis, happy as Larry at having something to write hyperbolic headlines about.

Much better job

AEW Dynamite, unlike the WW, still knows how to put on a decent show. Such as Daniel Danielson vs K. Omaygaaaa, which went on for the full 20 minutes allotted.
    Follow that with some bozos ranting aimlessly? Nope, we got some routine hissy bozos and the rants were saved for later.

Not that impressed

We are invited by the people who made it to believe that the film Operation Mincemeat is about a relatively unknown episode in World War II.
    Sounds like whoever wrote the book on which the new film is based, and the bunch who made the film, never saw the 1956 film The Man Who Never Was, which was based on the 1953 book of the same name by Ewen Montagu, the bloke who came up with the idea in 1943.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one . . .

“Ten days to save Xmas”. The old cliché of so many days to save something was bound to be dragged out of its box and recycled. On this occasion, it’s the British Retail Consortium setting a bogus deadline over the lorry driver shortage.

What have they got against me?

A storm in New York during an episode of Unforgettable takes out police communications there – and the TV picture here freezes solid. How weird is that? The Alibi channel came back during the adverts, bloody typical.
    When I tried to switch over to the Pick channel to try to watch an episode of Deep Space 9, all I got was a black screen, but the channels on either side were still there, leaving me feeling distinctly got at!

How strange

Try to search the BBC website for results for the this month’s elections to the Russian parliament and there’s . . . bugger all. But it’s all on Wikipedia. What is the Beeb up to?

Fair Question

“Illegal hands to the face”—is there such a thing as legal hands to the face?

Guessing Game

You play American football and your first name is Olamide? I’m going to guess that your mother is a chemistry teacher from the ‘amide’ bit. But what does Saquon’s mother do?

Plumbing Pragmatism

What do you do about a dripping tap? A friend of mine, who knows about these things, reckons the first thing to do is not be bothered by it. If the bugger wants to drip, let it!

Well overdue for sorting out

The Roman Rains (on the parade) character has become a real embarrassment to the WW. No wonder they cloned Batman to bash him about a bit.

 

Unwelcome turn of events

EXPO 2020 DUBAI spotted on a sign over the track @ the 2021 Russian Grand Prix. The Russians are obviously more behind the times than we thought.
    Normally, we’re praying for a spot of rain to roll the bones and make things interesting in a Grand Prix. But it was a bad thing yesterday. A first win for Mr. Norris would have been a better outcome.

Too much help

The Sunday Post, Scotland’s favourite newspaper, is having terrible trouble with its quiz questions. Last week, we were asked ‘What is the colour of the yellow star on the flag of Vietnam?’
    This week, the Arrow Word puzzle had a question reading: ‘— Balding, TV presenter (pictured)’
    Small snag: no picture, just a box containing the words CLARE BALDING. Helpful but not v. challenging.

Not that much fun, surely

I’m still weighing up whether it’s worth blowing a couple of hundred million bucks on a launch by SpaceX to spend three whole days orbiting the Earth in a tiny capsule with 3 other people.
    Sounds like a rather extreme form of exhibitionist masochism to me.

Tell us another

You’d think his minions would have warned the prime minister that claiming that the planet is at an imaginary tipping point due to deliberate man-made global warming and everyone has to do what he tells them to do is an open invitation to derision.
    But then again, there is no telling some people.

Don’t tell us what to do!

Despite all the warnings, our local motorists seem determined to create a local fuel shortage. There are steady queues backing down the main road at both petrol stations.

Costly cosmetic

Counting the number of near misses at hospitals might give some bean-counter the illusion of doing useful work but it doesn’t actually do anything to help the customers who are not getting the full service.

Not convinced

Boris & Biden in historic White House summit is just hype & BS. There is nothing historic about a British PM meeting an US president. It has been going on for decades as a matter of routine since cross-Atlantic travel became safe, quick and convenient.

Best story of the week

The volcano which is creating havoc on the Spanish Island of La Palma is doing a grand job as all the stuff it’s hurling into the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and cooling the world.

Aaaagh!

There’s now a TV channel called Great! Movies Xmas, I noticed, and it’s only September. How much Xmas spirit will be left by the end of December?

Weird choice

“I’ve got three kids and no money, what do I do?” is the clip that’s supposed to sell viewers on watching a TV series.
    “Get an effin’ job,” is the obvious advice to offer.

Not shaken

It was all very dramatic when the car blew up but we the viewers just knew that Annika’s team would have got her out of the boot in time. Or they’d have had to redo the programme’s titles with someone else’s name.
    And remake all the cute promos.
    And there’s another episode on next week called Annika.

Strictly non-persons

The headline was about a Brit Award winner ‘you may never have heard of’. Which is hardly definitive enough. I probably haven’t heard of most of them.

Still useful, still a good idea

One of my neighbours still has grates for coal fires and he is looking forward to being warm and smug when the gas runs out and everyone else is left to freeze during the winter!

Two and a half cheers

Just how many complaints did the BBC get last week about the dreadful sound quality of its programme NFL This Week? The sound was clear and consistent all the way through this week. Just shows that they can get it right if they bother to make the effort.

Not nearly good enough

Hit the fast-fast-forward if the best WW RAW can do is pretend that crude thuggery is sport or entertainment. Just as well they had Alexa to offer a bit of amusement.

Vested interest

How odd that an intervention by the PM is ‘powerful’ only when it’s what the newspaper concerned has been agitating for.

“This is awful!”

How true that wrestling crowd chant was for the alleged battle between Mox (the former Dean Ambrose) and the ancient Jap on AEW Dynamite.

More Yawn

Does anyone in the real world care how many kids the prime minister has? No? Thought so.

Sound & Fury but no Action?

We seem to be getting a lot of noise from the Home Office about preventing looneys from blocking motorways but it’s doubtful if anything will happen until a few senior coppers are sacked for letting it happen.

Still recognizable

The AEW name game goes on. Daniel Bryan is Bryan Danielson there now that he has been restored to health. And was that Ruby Riot now trading as Ruby Soho with bright red hair instead of shocking green hair?
    Strange that C.M. (Chunky Munky?) Punk is still trading under the same name. It’s not as if it’s all that brilliant.

Barely recognizable

The ancient Dustin Rhodes looked a lot slimmer and fitter than he was during his official career when he was doing his bit on AEW.

Great Minds

It’s interesting to count up how many people have had the Hammer film response; a march of villagers bearing fiery torches towards his residence; to Lord Deben’s notion of switching off street lights to make people grope around in the dark if they can’t afford an electric torch.

Go, Titans!

Great rejoicing among the NFL fans at the Mansion that the Titans held on for an overtime win against the deeply unpopular Seasquawks on Sunday night.

Never going to happen

PM Boris’ fantasy project to build a bridge from Scotland or Norther Ireland, or dig a tunnel, was always never going to happen. It’s the sort of daft idea that politicians come up with in idle moments when they’re thinking about their legacy.
    Something that always gets torpedoed when the next crisis comes along.