Human Rights and Wrongs.

"Ickle baby-waby want potty-wotty time - or the rest of kindergarten gets it!!"


Today is indeed a black day in the history of education. The erosion of civil liberties in this country, so frequently highlighted in this blog, has spread to the classroom now with the coming into force of a neo-Stalinist power granted henceforth to teachers......to search any of their little charges they suspect of carrying a knife!
Prior to this, teachers, quite rightly, had to call in two police officers, a social worker, two child psychiatrists, a counsellor and any available members of Take That to carry out a search if they suspected Wilkinson Minor of 4B of concealing a thermo-nuclear device under his dufflecoat.

"Snetteron!! Come here! Are you sure this is just a bottle-opener?"

All that has gone now, thanks to the trendy, pinko, Commie, lefty, Guardian-reading types down at the DFES. It is ridiculous. How have we got to the state where the flower of our youth is no longer allowed to turn up for geography with a concealed hand grenade or garrote without the indignity of being frisked and then having their weapon - something it no doubt took the proceeds of four street muggings and a couple of playground heroin scores to buy - taken from them? It's political correctness gone mad.
What is wrong with the teachers of today? Are they so Lily livered as to think it is unacceptable to stand in front of pre-pubescent hordes who are armed to the teeth while possessing the reasoning power of a rhino on acid? When will this merciless persecution of our little loved ones end?
We had come so far along the path of educational enlightenment before taking this U-turn. Just before I started primary school they abolished capital punishment for handing in your homework late - truly a landmark piece of legislation. After I left secondary school they also scrapped corporal punishment. In those intervening years, children of my generation were, would you believe, not only strip-searched if they were suspected of carrying so much as a catapult or a spud gun but also actually physically punished for exercising our God-given right to be an arsehole? Not only was it frowned upon to drive your own tank around the playing fields, the macheteing to death of any member of staff was actively discouraged!!
Thankfully, those days are long gone. The marvellous European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into English law in 1998, at last gave all miscreants legal protection to behave any way they wanted. It is their right, after all, to do whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want. Don't oppress them, you bastards. Those trendy, pinko, Commie, lefty, Guardian-reading types actually wanted to introduce a Human Responsibilities Act to sit alongside this legislation but, fortunately and thanks to the new rights offered, they were gunned down in the street.
Yes, we have come a long way since those dark days of the '60s when some Trotskyite lunatic in the United States said: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
He too was gunned down in the street but, without the backing of human rights law, those who disagreed with his views and so had him shot were actually deemed to have broken the law!
Television adverts in this country which promote ambulance-chasing lawyers - sorry, personal injury solicitors - also highlight how far we have come. Would you believe that in the bad old days, if some bloated tart who wasn't looking where she was fucking going slipped on a floor then everyone said "Dozy, fat cow!" and not "You can sue 'em for that"? If some bloke was installing an alarm system and fell and injured himself because he "had been given the wrong ladder" ('I wanted one on which the steps went up, not down'?) then his mates would gather round his prone body, laughing and saying "Frank, you really are a fucking twat" and not "Call Vultures R Us and they'll screw some cash out of the company for you". Things really were that bad in those days.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Human Rights Act - essential though it is but all too easily abused without the counter balance of a Human Responsibilities Act - can go to Grantham, along with the "nothing is ever your fault" society.

A Health Policy Made From Girders

Thank God for the Scots! I never thought I'd write those words but our Pictish brothers and sisters have shone a laser beam through the hitherto impenetrable blackness created by those old chums of mine, the health Nazis.
The control freakery which is New Labour has dictated that each of our northern cousins, like us southern types, has to be constantly surrounded by four Whitehall civil servants at any one time (yes, I fear there are four of them for every one of us) who should follow them around all day, yelling in their ears "Do this! Stop that! Drink this! Stub that out! Jog, damn you, jog! Don't eat that! That's bad for you. Don't enjoy yourself!"
Well, in the land of the fried Mars bar, one jolly Scots cove is proverbially sticking two fingers up to the Department of Health - the department with the entirely appropriate acronmym Doh!! - by producing and marketing......Irn-Bru sausages!! Hurrah!! Good for him, I say.
This should be the start of a trend, I think. Chocolate Ryvitas? Whisky-laced muesli? Guinness yogurt? Nicotine-saturated Highland Spring Water? Monosodium glutamate-packed fruit?
I would take this a step further and have all these pioneering comestibles researched, produced and marketed by a new Government quango, a sort of McDepartment - The Foundation for the Unfettered Choice to Kill Ourselves For Fun, perhaps? Otherwise known as FUCKOFF!!

I, for one, shall be stocking up on Irn-Bru sausages, if only to help make them a success and proverbially ram one up the sphincter of the maniacal mandarins.
Health foods can go to Grantham.

A Tale Of Two Blairs

Eric Arthur Blair, better know to the world as George Orwell, may have been an ostensibly rich kid on the block who desperately wished that he had been born working class but that didn't stop him knocking out a spiffingly brilliant political satire.
His predictions in 1984 are, however, getting closer and closer to reality with every passing day of his namesake's administration. The latest number to be run up the flagpole to await salutes comes from his pals, the police, who want the power to stop and search ANYONE without reason. They are currently restrained by the draconian condition that they have to actually SUSPECT someone of being up to no good before they can let them walk into doors or fall down the police station steps. Well, that's not enough, apparently, what with "the war on terror" allegedly reaching a crescendo and the threat from Johnny Jihad growing by the day.
I heard some Tory clown on the wireless the other day saying that "THEY posed a huge threat" and so "THEY should expect to have their civil liberties withdrawn". Well, if the coppers already know who "THEY" are then there isn't a problem, is there? The fuzz can just calmly walk up to them in the street, say "you're nicked and will be in court on Tuesday" and the threat is averted. Trouble is, our "shoot-him-seven-times-in-the-head-just-to-make-sure-because-he's-a-darkie-with-a-rucksack" crusaders don't seem to have a fucking clue who "THEY" are and so want the power to be able to throw US ALL against the wall and tazar our tits and testicles.
Our brave boys and girls in blue wouldn't surely abuse such a Pinochet-inspired power, would they? I mean, they wouldn't actually use it to round up anyone with dark skin or long hair or sunglasses or an old car or a take-away curry or carrying a copy of The Guardian, would they? Too fucking right they would!!
I live in a region where the coppers were notorious for framing people, making up evidence, forging witness statements and beating innocent people senseless until they were prepared to confess to starting World War II! Many of those law enforcement gentlemen have since died but I remember they all had to be buried with the aid of corkscrew!
Giving the police in this country the power to arrest anyone they like for absolutely no reason is Orwellian, to say the least.

Then we've got the control freakery of TB coupled with the demands of those snapping dogs at his heels, the health Nazis. Not content with sanctioning the shooting on site of anyone who so much as reaches for a Number 6 outside the confines of a lead-lined bunker under their own home, they are now having a go at anyone who enjoys a slight tincture to ease the stress of working 18-hour days to keep him and his kind in wages, chauffeured Daimlers and research grants. They now want their "safe" alcohol unit's-per-week dictate to be emblazoned on every bottle of booze. Bearing in mind that these wankers spend their lives in hermetically sealed bags breathing pure oxygen while knitting their own yogurt and growing their own denim, their "safe" level equates to half a dry sherry and a sniff of the wine counter in Tesco's every four years!! Does anybody on God's earth actually stick to, let alone get under, the weekly guideline alcohol intake? Fuck me, I've used mine up before pulling on my pants on a Monday morning!
Then they say they've changed their minds and there is, after all, no "safe" level of alcohol for pregnant women. They also want to garrot people who don't ingest a skipful of fruit at work every day, to castrate those who don't drink 4.3 gallons of Evian during daylight hours, to laser out the eyeballs of anyone foolish enough not to cycle from their homes in Brighton to their jobs in Arbroath every day and to sandpaper the piles of anyone more than 1.2lbs heavier than Karen Carpenter! Fuck off! Just fuck off, will you!!!!
Why do these gits insist on trying to tell us how to run our lives every minute of the sodding day? Look after your own griefholes, you arseholes. If you are so obsessed with health then why do you adopt an attitude which makes everyone else want to kill you?
Here endeth the lesson. Health Nazis and the police can go to Grantham.

Soz God.

Today is a landmark day in the brief history of Grantham New Town. I am about to take the unprecedented step of bringing someone back from the town having sent them there, as it turns out, mistakenly.
Regular readers of this blog (morning Cyril, by the way) will recall that on Friday night I sent God to Grantham. The following day I came home from work to find that my beloved pet lobster, Reg, had curled up his claws and rolled a seven. Having spent the night in mourning, I awoke the day after that to discover that my friendly, neighbourhood heron/herons had all but cleaned me out of fish in my pond.
Well, that was yesterday.

Not going anywhere (see background)....

I had had work to do during the morning so today marks the first day of a week's holiday for me. After a couple of weeks of sunshine and warm weather things have finally broken and I awoke to find that, not only had it evidently tipped it down in the night, it was pouring with rain and the outlook was for more of the same to come in the week ahead.

Going....

Never mind, I thought, I can at least relax. I read the papers, fed the menagerie and then settled down in the kitchen to sup a lovely cuppa, have a nice smoke and look out at the birds and other selected wildlife in the back garden. As I was doing so, to my astonishment, Nigella, my already unstable, giant fir tree, began keeling over sideways, an inch-at-a-time, until she came to rest on my neighbour's fence! Right in front of my very eyes!!

Gone!!

So, that's Reg, my koi carp and pond fish and now Nigella, all in the space of about 60 hours, a time span which mysteriously began the moment I shoved God off to Grantham!! Ever get the feeling someone's trying to tell you something?
Now Pither is a man of principles, someone who has views on many issues and a firm standpoint on each. I am, for instance, a devout atheist. That, however, may have to change. I am bringing God back from Grantham - sorry mate, it was only a joke - and I am, in future, going to spend my Sunday mornings playing the tambourine while knocking on people's doors asking them if I can interest them in the heavenly father.
Ok God, I'm on-message. Now leave me alone - please?

Heron Scare 'Em

Fucking Hell!!! I don't sodding well believe it!!! Talk about it never rains, only pours!!!!
I spent last night mourning the passing of Reg, my lobster, and I woke up this morning to find that the fucking, bastard, wanky, shit-for-brains, twat heron has gone and eaten half the fish in my pond!!!
I seem to vaguely recall sending God to Grantham last night so, no doubt, The Vengeful One decided to point his giant index finger out of the clouds and down at Pither Towers at dawn today. Bollocks to you, do you hear? I'm still going, I'm still alive....................but give me a fucking break, eh?

That fucking heron has had it away with four koi carp, each one not only dearly loved but also weighing in at an obscene £30, and a ruck of hefty comets and shebunkins I nurtured for years in an indoor tank before giving them their freedom. Even worse than that, I can't find head nor tail of either Doug or Dinsdale, my two sturgeons. Admittedly, they weren't the sharpest tools in the box and made me look hyperactive but, being bottom dwellers, I thought they would of least have had the sense to lie low while that greedy, murdering monster was dipping its beak! I hope the bastard bird is so fucking stuffed it can no longer fly and spends a miserable day shitting itself into Hades!
I've tried everything possible to keep these fucking herons away from my lads. First off, I bought a net to throw over the surface. Not only did it look awful, one of my dogs decided to have a dip one day and almost drowned after getting tangled up in the mesh.
Plan B was to buy a plastic heron and put it pondside.
The theory was that herons are territorial and so, if they see another heron at a potential feeding site, they think to themselves "Come away Harry, it's not worth it. I don't need the hassle at my age. I'll just flap on somewhere else." What happened? Turns out that theory is an utter loads of bollocks! Instead of avoiding any competition, the sodding things were looking down and saying "Fuck me! One of our lads is down at that ramshackled old place. Must be some grub in there. 'Scuse me mate, mind if I join you?" I had herons coming from all over the fucking place to dine. My beautiful water feature became the Feathered Marco Pierre White's of Small Town.
Plan C was the one in use until this morning. I rigged up little struts all around the edge of the pond and strung two lengths of wire around them, one just three inches off the ground, the other about 10 inches. The theory behind this bit of handiwork was that herons, if they can't fly directly onto and land on the water, wade in from the edge. They will not step over an obstacle, particularly one 10 inches high, and cannot get under anything just three inches off the ground. Well, looks like I've either been raided by the Sergei Bubka of the heron world or a fucking limbo dancing gannet!!
Right, this time things are going to be different. The tripwire can go in the greenhouse and I'm moving on to Plan D - but this is going to cause ructions among some inhabitants of The Towers. I'm going to leave the conservatory door open all night and get the dogs to sleep in there. If anything so much as flutters down for a nosey they'll 'ave it!
There are, however, two downsides to this masterplan. Firstly, I have let the dogs have the run of the garden on hot, summer nights in the past and they spent their time killing mice and bringing them indoors. I happen to like mice and don't want to inflict my crew on them, but needs must. Also, three of the dogs usually sleep on/in the bed with me while the big lad, Pad, has his "special place" half-way up the stairs. They won't take kindly to being ejected from the Comfydown Majorette and associated quilt and pillows or from their "special place" but tough titty, they'll get used to it.!!
Fancy having a go now, Harry? What with six stone of alsatian on the loose with three of his mates, all with serious attitude problems when it comes to trespassers?
In the meantime, herons can go to Grantham.

Regicide

Isn't life shit sometimes? Death's a pretty tricky number as well.......Reg is dead!
My beloved pet lobster evidently decided that he'd had enough and, when I came home from work tonight, there he was - motionless, glassy-eyed and no longer of this world.
Those with religion will say "God hath taken him unto himself" but I say "Bollocks, God! I hadn't fucking finished with him! Anyway, haven't you got enough on your plate already, what with Iraq, Palestine and the play-off final on Monday, without tucking in to my little lad?"

Those were the days, my friend.

I am finding it more than a little difficult to think of something funny to write about the passing of my lovely lobster and can honestly say that it has really upset me. Ok, on a scale of 1 - 10, with the disappearance of Madelaine McCann coming in as a 10, it doesn't really register, I know, but I'm still down about Reg's death.
This is going to be a little controversial, maybe, but I have decided to send God to Grantham. If he doesn't exist then there's no harm done. If he does then the townsfolk need his unique and challenging kind of help a damn site more than I do. Tattybye.

Of Hamsters and Men

Here's one. Scientists - I know chums of mine are not keen on this breed - have apparently worked out that Viagra could be a cure for jet-lag!
How have they come to this startling conclusion? By experimenting on hamsters!!!
I am reliably informed that boffins, somewhere in the good old U S of A, injected a bunch of these unsuspecting, fluffy rodents with the "woody wonder" and the lads proceeded to run frantically in their little wheels.
How the fuck this demonstrates that THEY, let alone us, are cured of jet-lag by a little encouragement in the todger department was not adequately explained. Had the "guinea pig" hamsters just trundled off a plane from Guatemala when they were given a jab and put in a rodental theme park? We were not told.
I, for one, don't give a shit if hamsters suffer from jet-lag. Fuck 'em. The bastards are only about four inches long and take up an entire seat on a flight while I am invariably squashed up against some mindless oaf from Essex who keeps banging on about how the BNP should be running the country. Let the rodental bastards (not the ones from Essex) trudge back to their cages red-eyed, I say. No, what gets me is that "scientists" always assume that what they have tested on lower mammals - particularly hamsters and mice - directly relates to us higher primates.
I mean, just because they inject a mouse with, say for instance, shampoo and it goes off to form a socialist republic in The Malvdives does not necessarily mean that us humans would be compelled to bring the works of Marx to archipelagos off the coast of India just because we'd had a snort of Head and Shoulders!
Remember that they once grafted an ear onto a mouse's back and then told us how clever they had been? They never said that the mouse could hear while it's back was turned, nor did they claim that having an ear half-way up your back was a social advantage. What with your vest, shirt and jacket it would be almost fucking useless, I would think.
No, I'm sorry, jet-lagged mice and hamsters can bugger off to Grantham, along with scientists with nothing better to do than fly rodents to exotic places!

Stress, Gay Flamingoes and Political Prats.

There were several things which really "bought my eye" today but, unfortunately, I can't find a common thread...............so it's ramble time!
There was a report in one of the newspapers today which said that record numbers of kiddywinkies are seeing psychologists and counsellors because of the stress brought on by exams. What next? The boys all get psychotherapy because they have just discovered they get a hard-on every time the wind changes direction and the girls have to queue up for analysis because their bras aren't as loose as they once were? Does, perhaps, the mental torment of becoming milk monitor signal the need for a two-month stay in The Priory? Should a team of specialist advisers be on hand at the Martin Bormann Comprehensive every time the "goody stars" are stuck on the exercise books at the end of the week?

I didn't have fucking counselling! I don't remember Sigmund Freud knocking on the bleedin' door when I was sat in the front room trying to drill it into my head that a mammal was a "bilaterally symmetrical, metamerically segmented, triploblastic metazoan"! I used to cope with the stress by playing with my Slinky (not a euphemism) or listening to The Tremeloes!
It's not the little cherubs I blame. It's the wankers who say "Do you need counselling?" and not "Why don't you just fucking DEAL with it? Life gets so much more shit, believe me. If you're having problems coping with the stress of exams in which 90 per cent of the work can be done by your fucking mum and dad on the internet and the rest involves questions as taxing as 'Which came first, World War I or World War II?' then I suggest you are going to have a totally and utterly miserable life!!!!"
The next story of burning import which proverbially kicked me in the nuts today was that two "gay flamingoes" at a wildlife park somewhere down south had been given a chick to adopt. Fuck me!! Things really have got out of hand.
How do they know this pair are gay, anyway? It can't be the obvious clue involving bottoms and penises, can it? Ever thought that they might just be mates? Maybe they don't want to be lumbered with a little one and would just rather be left alone to go out on the lash, however flamingoes do that? Is it just that they are both pink? Why choose them ahead of straight flamingoes? Will the chick grow up gay or straight? What happens when the little bird goes out into the wide world and has to cope with the taunts which will no doubt follow references to "my daddy and my daddy"? These are issues which need discussing.
Finally, spare a thought for the constituents of Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross. They voted him in thinking that he would combat global poverty, restore the National Health Service to excellence, end the war in Iraq, radically improve our current Third World education system and irrigate the Sahara and make vast new areas cultivatable (to borrow a line from some famous people). No! Instead of that, what does this evident waste of oxygen do? He tables an early day motion in the Commons, backed, would you believe, by fellow Liberal Democrat Colin Breed and Labour MPs John Robertson and David Drew, calling for the voting system in the Eurovision Song Contest to be changed!!!!!

Seriously!!! Dick (if ever a nickname was warranted) believes that the current system is "harmful to the relationship between the peoples of Europe". He has come to the earth shattering conclusion that countries voted for their neighbours rather than for the best songs!!!! Where is his fucking constituency, exactly? Outer Mongolia? A cave in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest? It's taken him this fucking long to work that out!!! What's more, he's fucking bothered about it!!!
Lordy, lordy, Christ's kittens! The world is getting madder.
Right, to summarise. A bus is leaving for Grantham and I want "counsellors", "bent flamingoes" and Richard Younger-Ross to be on it. Tatty bye, everyone, tatty bye!!

The Woman From The Post Office

Returning to the fundamentals of this blog, I forgot to mention someone I encountered on Saturday who is extremely worthy of extradition to Grantham - the woman from the Post Office.
I have met this woman on many other occasions in the past but, for some reason, I never before thought to send her packing to Lincolnshire. Her fine performance yesterday - one of her finest to date - has left me with no alternative, however.
I wobbled in to tax my car and was hoping Bespectacled-Friendly-Post-Master would be behind the counter, but no. It was Myra Hindley's step-sister, again! She obviously did her customer service training in the SS and is about as good with people as is a pit bull terrier.
I handed over the requisite documents and all I got back was a "S'wrong!"
"What's wrong?" I enquired.
"Yer licence application form - s'wrong."
"It was the one they sent me."
"S'wrong."
"Could you please add a little detail before one of us dies."
"S'th'old form. Yer need a new 'un."
"Do you, per chance, have a new one?"
"Doe bother. D'yow want six months or a full year?"
"As it said on the form you have just put in the bin, six months, please."
"Yow doe wanna full year, then?"
"Are you sure you want to be a nightclub comic?"
"Yer what!?"
"Just the half-year premium, if you'd be so very kind."
"Is it yower car youm taxing?"
"No, it's a bloke's I met on the bus earlier. After that I shall be taxing the cars of selected residents of the village."
"Uh!!"
"Sorry, just a jape. Yes, it's my car."
"There's a gap."
"Between your ears?"
"Between when the tax ran out and now."
"I know. I forgot. Those nice boys and girls at the DVLA have fined me £60 for the memory lapse."
"You get fined for not taxing it, yer know?"
"Hello! Earth calling Post Office assistant."
"How d'ya wanna pay?"
"Begrudgingly?"
"Will it be cash or a card?"
"A card, please. Have I put it the right way up in the machine?"
"Yow cor use that!"
"Why?"
"It's a credit card."
"You said I could use a card."
"Not a credit card you can't. Yow can only use a debit card."
"Isn't language a wonderful thing. I haven't got one with me."
"Next!"
".....but I do happen to have the cash on me."
"That'll be £99."
"Is there a discount for cheery bon homie?"
"Only discount is when yer pay for a full year."
"Regardless of demeanour?"
"That's a powund change."
"Could you slide it a little nearer to the gap under the screen. I can't reach it."
"Tsk!"
"I've enjoyed this."
Thing is, this harpie isn't a 20-something, acne-riddled youth. She has to be in her 50s! Why the Hell apply for a job which brings you into constant contact with the public when you evidently hate everyone who moves? More than that, who gave her the fucking job in the first place? What, exactly, did she do to impress the Post Master? The mind boggles but inevitably drifts to thoughts of amazing oral sex and skilled used of an index finger.
No, the woman from the Post Office has to go, and go now!

Four Legs Good, Third Way Bad

Who will rid me of these turbulent beasts? Blair is going, Brown is coming and I look from pig to man and man to pig and cannot tell the difference.
So, Blair fucks off to Iraq on a secret visit to see "our brave lads" while, back in the leak-riddled SS Great Britain, Brown lets slip that policy on the war is about to take the teeniest U-turn and they could all be home by Christmas.

Funny that the same sweaty, fat, boring, Jock oaf had the audacity in the week to snipe at the anti-Blairites (i.e. ALL the rest of the fucking grass roots Labour Party) by saying "the Left hand doesn't know what the extreme Left hand is doing!" Oh really? Seems to me that the extreme right hand doesn't know what Attila the Hun's right hand is doing either!
On the subject of the war in Iraq, I'm no military tactical genius, as you may know, but it seems to me that there are only two reasons for withdrawing all your troops from a war zone. Firstly, you could be forgiven for doing it when the war is over and you have achieved what you set out to do. I know this is true because my dad (God rest his soul) would still be out in Italy if it were not. So, have the Western forces achieved whatever it was they set out to do in Iraq? Is the war over? Just turn on the telly or the radio news to answer that one. The second reason for a wholesale withdrawal is that you have completely fucked up and lost! If you didn't start the war then you just have to accept defeat and lick your wounds. If you DID, however, start it you have some apologising and explaining to do. Has Blair apologised? Has he fuck! He just bleated: "I did what I thought was right". Well, thank fuck for that! We kinda expect our leaders NOT to do what they think is wrong. Will Brown apologise? Will he bollocks! He will just say, if ever pushed hard enough, "well, it wasn't me, it was him". Fuck off, the pair of you!
The optimists out there - those who said it would all be different after Labour got into power in '97 - are once again playing Pollyanna and saying that Brown, unlike his Tweedle Dumber oppo, is at least of Labour stock and so "things can only get better". Bollocks! Wake up, for fuck's sake! He's just the fucking same!! There is no such fucking thing as "New Labour"! In the political system we are lumbered with, there is Labour, there is Liberal Democrat, there is Tory and there is Re-branded Tory!
There is no fucking "third way"!!! Do those shiny-suited fucking lawyers who form the bedrock of Blair's administration seriously expect us to believe that, since the formation of the Labour Party back in 1900 (or 1906 for the pedants), they are the only people who have come along of sufficient ingenuity, conviction and brain power to have discovered this supposedly hitherto hidden way of approaching things political? Well, actually, yes, I think they do. That is another reason they are all a bunch of female genitals.
There are no divisions between management and workforce anymore, they chant. Under the "third way" which the rest of us were all too thick to spot, we are all in it together, pulling for the common cause. Yeah, right! It's just that, while the rest of us are reduced to half-hour "breaks" instead of lunches and work comparable hours to Japanese prisoners of war to actually DO something practical to pull the country along, the directors and CEOs of this world are pulling in their Jags and Mercs, weighed down not by the burden of debt and exhaustion but by the ballast of £100,000-£1,000,000 salaries dished out because they possess the genius to cut costs and bolster share dividends - by sacking loads of their workforce!!!! Never forget, as well, that if we don't pay them Premiership Football-size wages they will go abroad! Well, fuck off abroad then, says I! We can do without that kind of genius, thank you very much.
It's time this country woke up and saw the smoke and mirrors trick which is New Labour for exactly what it is. It has already started to take us along a very, very, very dangerous path in which all the other power-hungry, self-obsessed politicians out there think to themselves "Hey, people are falling for this New Labour bollocks. Let's do it ourselves. That way WE can have the chauffeurs, expense accounts and apartments in Marble Arch." Yes, the fucking Tories are now copying New Labour and pretending to be green and worried about poverty. Pig to man and man to pig-time again. There could come a time in the not too distant future when we OFFICIALLY just have one, all encompassing political party for which to vote. Oh, irony of ironies. While Blair and the Tories bang on about "the Left" and the danger they pose to society they are busy building a Stalinist state! "Vote for us or die!!"

No, there is only one way the will of the people will ever be satisfied at a General Election. That is when "they" do what they fear doing most in the world - and put a "None of the above" box on the ballot papers. That would, I am certain, bring the whole, crooked, rigged system crashing down and it would be time to think again and have a complete overhaul of the political system.
I feel better for having said all that. I think I shall now go and have a quick rub down with the Morning Star and set myself up for the rest of the day.
Oh, and Grantham? Brown can fuck off there to meet up with Blair. Remember where you heard it first!

Of Kennedys and Death

I fear the worst. The soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither stayed at a girlyfriend's place last night but, caring soul that she is, she phoned to leave a message on our answermachine.
The thoughtfulness of the action was somewhat negated by the timing - the message was left at 2am!!! Then, on hearing it this morning, I have begun to believe that "caring" had nothing whatever to do with the recording.
The message, bellowed out down the phone, was simply: "Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill The Poor!!!"
My soon-to-be ex-wife more usually leaves messages of a domestic nature - you know, "Put the washing in", "Put the bin out" or "Don't forget to lance the dog's piles" etc. This latest offering, therefore, marks a dramatic shift in direction.
Having rung around a few of my mutant chums, I am led to believe that my soon-to-be ex-wife's apparent Thatcherite instruction is, in fact, a song by a once-popular music combo. Said combo was also, apparently, responsible for the timeless and haunting melody (which would have wowed any Eurovision judges) "Too Drunk To Fuck!". This is all very interesting........but what am I to make of it?
Was the transient Mrs Pither wishing me well? Was she insulting me? Does she want me to put the bin out? Does she want me to put the poor out? I am a tad confused. If anyone has any theories, I am all ears (with a big nose and little hair).

Great Mysteries of the Universe - No. 2.

Further to my post about "The M6 - What, exactly, is it?", I have a fresh question to baffle the thinking people out there.
"What, exactly, is an IT Helpdesk?" I have had the misfortune to be in regular contact over the last couple of days with the creatures which man this so-called "service" for the company I work for and I am a tad bemused as to what they are really there for.
I could waste time going into detail but I think it is suffice to roughly summarise the telephone conversation I had with one of these coves today. It went something like this:
Pither: Hello, is that the IT Helpdesk?
Brainiac: Yeah.
Pither: Who am I talking to?
Brainiac: Jason.
Pither: Ah! You're the guy I spoke to yesterday?
Brainiac: Don't think so. We're all called Jason here (Thinks....Jason is actually on a week's holiday so we all say we're Jason so he gets all the shit from us being about as useful as a tap on a canoe today).
Pither: I've got a problem with my computer.
Brainiac: What sort of problem?
Pither: I don't know the precise technical term but, I think I would say, it's fucked!
Brainiac: What do you mean by 'fucked'?
Pither: It doesn't work. I mean that, when I switch it on and try to get it to do something, it won't co-operate.
Brainiac: Is it plugged in to the wall?
Pither: (having dealt with these animals before) Jesus H Christ!! You mean I have to stick the three-pronged plastic bit at the end of the wire into the hole in the partition between us and the mental health unit?
Brainiac: Yes.
Pither. Yup. Managed that.
Brainiac. Have you switched it on?
Pither: Do you mean have I flicked the little moveable up-and-down switchy thing on the wall socket down so that some red shows?
Brainiac: Yup.
Pither: Yup.
Brainiac: Is it working now?
Pither: Like I told you, no!
Brainiac: Have you tried rebooting?
Pither: As in going out to buy a change of footwear?
Brainiac: No, I mean have you turned off the computer and switched it back on again?
Pither: Yup. Done that.
Brainiac: Is it working?
Pither: Nope!
Brainiac: Can you ring back after 5pm?
Pither: Why?
Brainiac: I finish at 5pm.
Pither: I kinda hoped you could help me now, seeing as I've got loads to do and it needs to be in by yesterday.
Brainiac. Are you on a PC or a Mac?
Pither: A PC.
Brainiac: That explains it.
Pither: What does?
Brainiac: PCs are shite!
Pither: Well, I'm kinda stuck with this. Can you help me at all?
Brainiac: Do you like Star Trek?
Pither: Is this relevant?
Brainiac: I love it. I've got all 2,456 episodes going back to when Spock was an Arturian Mingecreature, before he moved to..............
Pither: I'm still here, you know.
Brainiac: Isn't Dr Who fab?
Pither: I get up earlier so I can hate it longer.
Brainiac: Patrick Troughton was the best.
Pither: Have you ever heard 'The Cheese Shop' sketch by Monty Python?
Brainiac: Is it on an MP3 format or do you have to cross-interface it with a 8X2000 module and then upload it on the Q system?
Pither: Do you remember me and my computer?
Brainiac: What time is it?
Pither: It's now almost 5pm. It was 2pm when we began this journey into the unbelievable.
Brainiac: Oh goodo! I'm going to see the uncut version of Tron with my flatmate tonight. We've got to be there just after 6pm.
Pither: Is your flatmate a girl?
Brainiac: No.
Pither: Thought not. Will you do me one favour before you go?
Brainiac: I'm here to help.
Pither: Would you try to die horribly in a car accident on the way to the cinema?
Brainiac: I've got a moped.
Pither: AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhh.

Sorry, but IT Helpdesks and all who populate them can sod off to Grantham!

Sing When You're Losing, You Should Only Sing When You're Losing!

Well, the inquest has begun and, as with all topics of great import, the analysis was obviously led by the British leader in all that is current and hard news - The Today Programme on Wireless 4.
"It was a disaster, let's face it" was the widely shared perception. What went wrong, asked presenter Ed Sturton? Why did it go wrong? How can we prevent such a debacle ever happening again? They were the questions everyone wanted answered and wanted answered NOW! I'm sure Blair was squirming on his commode at that time in the morning. "Oh no! Not fucking Iraq again!!"
So, which leading figures at the thick of the debate on this unholy situation had been invited to discuss the thorny issue? George Galloway and Ken Livingstone, perhaps? Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Hafez Assad of Syria, maybe? Surely not the widow of former mujahideen leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Dadullah, and his likely successor, Jalaluddin Haqqani?............No. It was Russ Spencer - who? - of UK Eurovision superflop group Scooch and Paul Gambaccini!
Turns out they were discussing Eurovision and Britain's failure to strike a chord with the continental voting public. Tone's sphincter must have relaxed massively when it dawned on him that he was not to be pilloried again for being the poodle of that retarded, cowgirl's placenta Bush and jointly waging an illegal war which has cost the lives of thousands of innocents.
Wait, however. Amazing as it may seem, the two issues of Iraq and Eurovision are not that disparate. It took the genius of a fucking disc jockey to identify the link.
Gambaccini said: "Britain's votes plummeted with the invasion of Iraq and have stayed in the basement with the occupation.
"It may be the strangest reason for ending a war but if you want to win the Eurovision Song Contest again, bring the boys home!"
Ok, PG's tongue may have been firmly in his cheek but he may have inadvertently stumbled on a sure fire way of making this country great again. If we truly want to win any revived version of Jeux Sans Frontiere (aka European It's a Knockout) we should abandon capitalism, demand an increase in all farming subsidies and return to a medieval, agrarian economy in line with the French and two thirds of the rest of Europe. If our hopes of regaining The Ashes are ever to be fulfilled then we should murder the Queen and give the Aussies their freedom. How are we ever going to win the World Cup without jailing every man in this country under the age of 65 who has a passport and an interest in the beautiful game?

Russ Spencer - pictured in happier times.

I'm into this lateral-thinking-politics business. Bring it on!
For those who are still awake, Mr Spencer's comments about Scooch's performance and how "it's not the winning that's important, it's the coming second to last" were that at least they were not as shite as last year's UK entry. That's what I like. A positive thinker.
So, what or who goes to Grantham. I know not and care less.

A Night To Remember (As They Said When The Titanic Went Down).

Triumphant Serbian Marija Serifovic and "the girls" who brought us "Prayer" - as in, "let's fucking pray they don't win."

Oh............what...........a..........fucking.........MAGICAL night!!!!
The 2007 Eurovision Song Contest lived up to all expectations last night! Beamed live from the home of last year's winners, Finland, it made redefinition of the word "kitsch" essential.
For the record, this year's winners were Serbia, who were fronted by a fat woman-in-comfortable-shoes who looked like a cross between Lou Costello and Peter Lorre.
She was backed by a gaggle of under-fed, frustrated fluffies and their haunting (well, it scared the shit out of me!) ballad "I've lanced the cat's piles and put another carrot on the barbecue" wowed our continental cousins.
Anyone with half a brain and who lives in the UK knows, however, that it's not the winning that's important - it's the getting "nil points". We also want to see the very worst that is on offer abroad, to see loads of scantily clad bits of totty proving just why they are beauticians by day and not professional singers and to understand exactly why Herr A. Hitler felt the need to stamp his nation's jackboot across Europe.
Last night did all that, and more. We were, as ever, superbly appalling. Dressed as stewardesses (which is not altogether a bad thing), UK entry Scooch really put the "cunt" in "our country". No, the winners should have been either Ukraine or France, two acts whose videos are no doubt shown to asylum inmates to perk them up and let them know that their condition isn't really that bad. There was also one cove, however, who turned up in a blood-stained Harry Hill shirt. I can't remember where he was from (somewhere in the Balkans I think) but this man definitely needed a contract - well, one taken out on him, at any rate
One highlight was undoubtedly when the singing stopped (hurrah!) and Father Christmas came on stage to announce that it was time to vote. As if things hadn't been exciting enough! It was strange to see the beardy-man-in-red in fucking May - you would have thought they could have let him have his usual lie-in until his "busy period" - but I suppose the Finns do lay claim to Lapland. It was, however, more than a disappointment to learn that the REAL Santa looked like an aged Fred Scuttle but I let that pass and was on the edge of my commode when he gave everyone their marching orders with a leering "Europe! Start voting now!!"
There was even better, however, to come - the interval (double hurrah!) and the Finns' idea of entertainment. No quick number from Russ Abbott. No bloke knocking out songs from the shows on the spoons. No, this was truly unbelievable. It started with some seemingly buck-naked, baldy sausage jockey in the balloon from The Prisoner backed by half-naked, leathery/skinny bints from the Finnish National Ballet. They pranced around moodily while the boy in the bubble peered out at us menacingly until the performance turned a tad thrash metal, but with Quo wannabes. A baseball referee then proceeded to juggle a tart in a rah-rah skirt (the tart, not the juggler) and, at long last, balloon man escaped his rubbery surroundings and then shoved a flourescent tube down his throat - well, you would, wouldn't you? A trapeze artist and a guy on a suspended bike flying round the theatre were next. Still no sign of Russ or the man with the spoons, though. Then came fire jugglers while the Night of The Living Dead head-bangers, led by a Tommy Lee look-alike, bashed the fuck out of cellos in the background. Together they were called "Apocalyptica". Not 'arf! Time for a quick change of incontinence pad and then back for more fun before the results.
Backstage there was a pink fairy who interviewed everyone and thought she was funny. She was, in fact, just a fucking twat. Name me one great Finnish stand-up comic? "Do you kiss a rabbit or have some other way of ensuring luck?" she asked the fat Serbian dyke who would eventually go on to win the contest. "Our song is about prayer," she retored snottily, "so, urrm, no."
Then the true highlight - the results of the voting. Just time for a third bottle of wine and then let battle commence. Eurovision voting always makes the actions of Robert Maxwell seem genuinely straight. The organisers set out their stall early on. All the western nations were on the right of the voting board while the former Easter bloc countries were on the left - just like the good old days! The Commies stuck together like sperm in the bath while us westerners did our best to either remember old hatreds or bum up to those nearest to us - Norway for Sweden, Sweden for Norway, Sweden for Finland etc, etc (even though Sweden hadn't qualified for the final! Yes, this international wankfest featured only the BEST acts. Some had, apparently, been judged too shite even for Eurovision!)
The French and La Belge were the only tossers to give their results in French. All the others fell into line and chose the language of the one true and holy nation on earth.
"How exciting iz zis?" ejaculated (literally) the hermaphrodite presenter. About as exciting as having your ears syringed Sven, actually, but never mind. Almost half way through and we were doing well. Only us, Ireland and Latvia had the coveted "nil points". Then fucking Albania ruined it for Ireland with five bastard points and for Latvia with a poxy "deux points", all awarded by an evident child molester in Tirana.
This had to be it, surely? This time? Come on! Come, fucking, on!!!! The only nation in the whole of Eurovisionland with "nil points", zero, nothing, fuck all! We were well over half-way and still in pole position. It was nerve jangling. I almost sat upright on the settee and dropped my chips at one point.
Then, gag of the night. Jason, the Israeli points presenter, came up with the most hilarious joke since us British invented concentration camps. "Yes, good evening Helsinki. I can tell you that our votes are ready. Israel HAS pushed the button." I dived behind the settee and put a pillow over my head but he was being sarcastic, it turned out.
Not even the Square Heads ruined things for us when it was their turn. They do it at football and in the international aggression stakes so why not at Eurovision? But no, the Germans left us alone. Just 14 countries left to vote. It had to be. Yes, this time we were going to do it. It was our year................ Then it happened. Fucking Ireland! I thought we were supposed to all be friends now? The bastards went and gave us seven points!! Wankers!!!

Ooch! Scooch fail to fly the zero flag.


I know they traditionally vote for us and we vote for them because everyone else in the world hates us both but come on! Not last night, please! That really is awful timing. We, on the other hand, were typically British and did the decent thing - we didn't fucking vote for them! We knew they too had been in with a chance of the magic zero. Thanks a bunch, Patrick. Time for us all to dig up our weapons again, I think.
It got worse. Malta were next up, the George Cross island. They were mad enough to put us top of the pile and give us the maximum twelve points! You are fucking kidding? I actually wished at that point that the Germans had won the fucking war and COMPLETELY flattened the bastard place!
My interest completely waned after that. We were officially crap, but not spectacularly and uniquely crap, in Eurovision terms. In real terms? Well, we had only managed to come joint second from last (equal with the Frogs on 19 points - well, maybe there IS a God) and not to achieve the Holy Grail - bugger all!. The only consolation was that the bastard Irish came bottom with five.Well, that's it for another year. I'm exhausted. As I said earlier - what a night. Grantham shall not have Eurovision.

NOTE:
I started taking notes on some of the acts but then fell asleep. Here are the few critiques I managed before narcolepsy overwhelmed me;
Bosnia Herzegovena - woman in green, fluorescent, frilly lamp shade.
Spain - limp-wristed boys and girls looking forward to a sexless night, all dressed in white.
Belarus - see Spain, only this time in black (that's originality for you).
Ireland - scratch pub band.
Finland - lead singer filthy but tone deaf.
Macedonia - had apparently just woken up and rushed to the theatre.
Slovenia - did an opera/Kate Bush number. Shite!
Hungary - had hijacked Lulu for the night, backed by a bunch of hairy twats.
Lithuania - another leather job.

As R F Scott wrote in his diary, "it seems a pity, but I do not think I can write any more."

The Road To Wigans Feared

"Fuck and bollocks! I mean 'hello'. Ooh, look! A little bird."

So, you're introduced to one of your new bosses. He appears around a corner and he is a dwarf. He's not a small person, he's not even a very small person or a very, very small person - he is a genuine, 100 per cent, fully-signed-up dwarf.
He holds out his hand and introduces himself with the words "Hello Reg, I'm Steve." Pither, a little taken aback, offers his hand in return and what is the only word he can think of by way of a reciprocal salutation?................."Hi!"
Fuck and double fuck!! Like Homer Simpson, all I could hear at that moment was "Stupid brain!!"
It's known as "a Wigan", apparently. You know? When, for instance, you meet someone who has only one leg and your autonomic nervous system instantly directs your vocabulary to include every possible inappropriate phrase or comment in your chat, like "I was hopping mad", "I was legless", "not a leg to stand on" and "one foot in the grave" etc.
Wigans are becoming a big part of my life now I am back in gainful employment. You see, I work for an outfit which helps disabled people (not "the disabled", as I was told on my first day - too exclusionist). You try talking to a bloke with "mental health difficulties" and see how long it takes you to spew out the word "mad" in the course of your conversation. It took me exactly two minutes! "If legs were brains he'd be in a wheelchair" was doubly "bang out of order!" as well. My ill-advised use of the words "basket case" and "nutjob" on day two were also frowned upon and "the blind leading the blind" just had to come out, didn't it, when I spoke to a partially sighted guy? Perhaps the most cringeworthy was "harmless", which of course came out as "'armless", in a conversation with a Thalidomide victim! Oops, sorry, there I go again. No-one is a victim of anything, I have been told, nor do they "suffer" from a particular condition. They just "have" it, apparently. Learning all the time.
Pither is, deep down, a caring soul and would rather vote Lib Dem (nothing could EVER make me vote Tory!!) than cause offence unnecessarily but I am finding it hard going. Wigans apart, the language of disability is difficult to come to terms with, particularly when you are someone with the surface sensitivity of Michael Winner on a rhino in a shop selling Cape De Monte. "Mentalist" and "Spaz" had to go, I accept that, but out too have gone "retarded", "Ill", "affliction", "disease" and even "dying", believe it or not - that last one should, apparently, be "life limited", although that IS too ridiculously PC for me to ever contemplate using EVER!
No, it is a minefield but I am going along with it because, well, if you think about it in a quieter moment you will see that there is method behind the madness - sorry, mental health issue.
Still, I have yet to adopt complete idiocy in the field, unlike "Queen Jo" at my local pub. She got chatting to a black dwarf who used to pop in regularly for a pint while the pantomime was on in Small Town. My pals witnessed their first meeting. It went something like this (AND THIS IS TRUE!!):
Jo: "Hello."
Black dwarf: "Hello."
Jo: "I've not seen you in here before. What are you doing in town?"
Black dwarf: "I'm working at the theatre at the moment. It's panto season, you know?"
Jo: "Oh, really? What's your job?"
Black dwarf (thinking 'Is she real? She's not going to ask what I think she's going to ask, is she?): "I'm an actor."
Jo: "Wow! Great!! What are you performing in?"
Black dwarf (somewhat incredulous and thinking 'take a wild, fucking guess!'): "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
Jo......(I know, you can see this coming, but I swear this is true): "What part are you playing?"
Black dwarf (with just the tiniest hint of sarcasm): "Snow fucking White!!"
On that note, I shall conclude by sending Wigans (not the town, before you northerners get on to me) to Grantham.
P.S. For more on this topic I am advised by BGT you should look at this:

Thanks again, Bill.

Taste? I Think Not!

As they used to say on the News At Ten....."And finally......" I had the same drive home from work today as I had into work yesterday. This time, some dickhead lorry driver decided to try to take a mini-island at 75mph on a wet surface and, guess what? He jackknifed and blocked my route home for 90 minutes!

The result was that I did not get in sight of Pither Towers until just after 8pm and so stopped off at the pub at the end of my road (not my "local", believe it or not) for something to steady my nerves.
On walking in I was greeted by the following.............

Has the world gone completely mad? Wine tasting! In a fucking pub!!! At first glance I thought a conjuror had set up stall in the corner and was going to perform that lifting-the-bottle-to-reveal-yet-more-bottles-underneath trick, but no. It WAS actually a fucking wine tasting!!!

The idea, apparently, was for people to decide which of the three disguised wines they preferred so it could be shipped in by the tankerful. Fucking marketing wankers!! Don't you just loathe them?
The people who actually bothered to go up and have a taste were all people who were drunk to start with (no, not me) and who were desperately trying to dip out of their rounds. I overheard one twat say: "I don't know about the others, but I know my Montaigne Sauvignons!" This, from a pillock who had three pints of Grolsch still on his table and had a stain which demonstrated all-too openly that he had pissed himself! The only other people I saw have a go at the taste test were two old broilers who were half-cut and just wanted more vino as their dole cheques had run out.
Sorry. Marketing? Fuck off! - to Grantham.

* For those of you who are interested, the answers to the blind taste test pictured above were:
A. A Sauvignon blanc.
B. A Merlot.
C. A French farmer's pile dipped in a bucket of battery acid.

Ooh!! Crash, Bang Wallop What A Let Down.

Talking of people who haven't got hand grenades stuck up their bottoms but should have, our Tone was on peak form yesterday and today.
Blair sparked frantic speculation yesterday when he announced to ALL ministers and cabinet colleagues that they should keep their diaries free today. This is it, everyone thought. This is the time. He's going to do it. The narcissus of Downing Street is at last going to tell them (and us) precisely when he is going to turn into a real rat and desert the sinking ship.
Tension was in the air this morning. Finally, FINALLY, it would all be over and we could all get back to living our own lives and not being told what to do and when by Saint Tony.
Uh oh!! Yes, I'm afraid it turned out to be Tellytubby Time again. The reason he had asked the most powerful men and women in the country to stop trying to sort out the bloodbath which is Iraq, to come away from trying to put proverbial plasters on our deeply wounded National Health Service, to put trying to teach our children to walk upright on the back burner and to give sorting out the mayhem and death on our streets a miss for the day was...................so they could have their picture taken with him on the Downing Street lawn!! SERIOUSLY!!!
Do the words "the plot", "lost" and "finally" mean anything to anyone?

Hail The Brave Botty Bomb Boy

Where to start? There is so much which captured my imagination today.
Well, how about the best story in the news? Police/guard-types in San Salvador have revealed that they caught a chap trying to smuggle a hand grenade into a prison - concealed up his arse!! (The hand grenade, that is, not the prison - that WOULD smart a bit!)
Now, there's dedication for you. Not only that, it's a demonstration of real bravery. I mean, apart from the essential qualification that you've got to have a sphincter the size of Michael Barrymore's swimming pool, you've got to be ultra confident in the state of your pants! Just one loose thread, a peeling waistband, a slight tear and that pin could snag! Pin come out, bottom blow off - literally!
This is the kind of chap this country should be head-hunting (his relatives would have been doing that if the grenade had exploded) to replace Blair and lead our nation into the much-promised-over-the-last-ten-years land.
The San Salvadorians also revealed that 16 other coves had been stopped trying to smuggle mobile phones into the same jail using the same rectal cover. It must be like a Liberal convention round at that lock-up! What's the motto over there? "If in doubt, shove it up your arse?"
Spare a second to think about Hand Grenade Man and his suitability for high office, though. If we had leaders who DID have hand mini-bombs up their chocolate highways then how easy would it be to tell them that their time had come and they had to quit? A quick goose and: "You're fired!! BANG!!!!!!!"
No, I shall henceforth banish all the nation's leaders who do not get into office with an explosive device up their bottoms to Grantham.

The Road To Friggin' Beer! (And Other Ways Of Dulling The Pain).

I'm baffled. Could someone out there kindly tell me what the M6 is? Ok, ok, I know, it's supposedly "a motorway" - I phrased the question poorly. What I mean is, what is the M6 "for", exactly?
Before anyone pipes up, it sure as sugar isn't a means of getting from A to B! I hit on the theory some months ago that it was, in fact, an undesignated car park. I have, however, dismissed that idea as there are no shops or other amenities nearby which would render it useful as a place to leave your motor.
Is it, perhaps, an elephants' graveyard for motorists? I'm sure people die on it in their thousands, not in accidents but of depression and boredom waiting to fucking move so much as an inch!
I have to traverse a good stretch of this asphalted piece of smegma every day to get to and from work but this morning the journey notched up a British, Commonwealth and Empire record for Pither. I have to travel 43 miles to work and the run normally takes 90 minutes, the motorway being about as useful as a long stretch of used bog roll. This morning I set off extra early (6.45am) and it was two fucking hours before I got to the wordface. Half of that time - yes, one whole fucking hour - was taken up crawling along a half-mile stretch of dual carriageway which leads onto the M6!!
Why the "extra" delay? - it normally only takes 30 minutes to cover the same massive distance (that, for the non-mathematically-minded, works out at a Donald Cambellesque one-mile-an-hour ON A GOOD DAY!!!) A fucking, bastard, pigging, bloody, wanky, shitty, arse-faced twat of a lorry had broken down on the motorway and so the traffic cops - look in the dictionary and it says "see C for cunts" - closed off one lane of the "superhighway" to cope with this apocalypse! The result? A complete, fucking logjam as far as the eye could see.

If ANYTHING whatsoever happens on a motorway those dickhead traffic cops always solve it by closing down lanes. It's their sodding answer to anything and everything! Can't they shift the offending article to the side of the road and carry out a controlled explosion? Why not shunt the bloody thing off an elevated section? That'd do it! Don't these people carry guns? A pistol up the nostril of some half-arsed trucker would soon get things moving.
What happens when you get to the scene of this supposed breakdown catastrophe? Is there anything there? Is there bollocks! It's like motorway roadworks which cause gridlock. They cone off two of the three lanes and when you get to the actual scene of the "bridge strengthening" or "essential maintenance" work you find some fucking Paddy leaning on a shovel, scratching his bollocks beside a wheelbarrow, sipping tea - and nothing else!!
There is a solution, of course. Create 7-lane superhighways like the Americans have done. So, you have to knock down a few hospitals and care homes for the elderly to make room. Everything has a price.
What is the alternative to this mayhem? Well, we're all, apparently, supposed to think green and use public transport. That's a laugh! In my job I have to go here, there and everywhere. Getting to work alone would take one train and two buses, all of which I would have to pay for myself - yeah, I really want to pay about £8-a-day to go to work and the same to come back to the relative sanity of Pither Towers. I don't live in London so public transport is not an option! Travelling around the country could only be accomplished in sufficient time to meet deadlines by hiring a Learjet! Somehow, I don't think my exes will run to it. Integrated public transport? You're 'avin' a giraffe!
So, thanks to the enigma which is the M6, I finally arrived at work knackered and in the mood the kill someone. Not a good frame of mind when you've got HR breathing down your neck on the next desk - they mark you down on your personal assessment for office gun rampages, you know.
So, I hereby confine the Acme-Joke, road-to-Hell known as the M6 to Grantham - see how they like crawling around on it.

The Good Old Days

So it's May Day. Happy holiday to everyone but............well...........it's just not as much fun as it used to be.

Ale And Hearty.

Hurrah! I'm not sure what the opposite of schadenfreude is, if there even is a literary opposite, but I am feeling it.
Last night my beloved local pub was named Small City's Pub of The Year at a glitzy awards ceremony. Double hurrah!
Some of the mutant regulars texted me in the early hours to tell me of the triumph - they had all gone, monkey-suited, to the thrash to support the landlord, but I had been too well to attend.
The gaffer is a fantastic little chap - a smidgen too Northern Irish, possibly, and with some challenging views on Loyalism, but a lovely bloke who deserves a few breaks (no paramilitary knee-capping pun intended).
So, here's to you, Gavin, and all the hard work you've put in to give the likes of Pither sanctuary from the 21st Century. Cheers!

Remember When A Johnnie Was Something Else?

I am regressing. Not only do I spend my new-found single life trying to get back into the kind of orifice from whence I came, my mind and my actions keep dribbling back to the days of my youth.
I went to a barbecue at the home of a couple of big pals of mine on Saturday and started off behaving like an adult.
"New Labour didn't take the battering we were all expecting, I know, but wait until the General. Their massive lurch towards the right will be their downfall, hopefully, but what will plug the gap? Oh, yes please, another glass of wine would be lovely."
Informed, analytical, topical, sober and respectfully polite. I was on form.....but, later, and as it always does, the sun began to set. "I can't see the Wolves doing it 'cos they always fuck up at the end of the season and The Baggies continually ram it up 'em. Yeah, fill it up. I know it's a pint mug but that's how I like my wine." Still topical, still analytical, a tad loud, perhaps, not quite as erudite, admittedly, and a little squiffy.
"Fucking Andrew Neil is a wanker! I hate that twat! Fucking Shredded Wheat-headed letch! A fat, neo-Nazi, Murdoch apologist who spends his spare time chasing little blond girls. I hope he dies in a car crash!"
Controversial, certainly, forthright, yes, not particularly eloquent, a tad harsh, maybe, and possibly the mad ravings of a drunken buffoon.
"When I wuz 16 I 'ad a nipple 'air which wuz 8 fucking inches long!!! Top that!! Look, I still got loads of pigging 'air on 'em now. Bloody great! Nah! Do' bother. I got this bottle 'ere and I day wanna glass." No longer any attempt at topicality. Informed, yes, but of no interest to anyone outside the field of psychiatry. Beyond drunkenness now. More into the realms of a near-death experience and something for the Guinness Book of World Records.
As people began to drift away from the party (I wonder why?) I lost the power of any intelligible speech altogether and began "playing" with the host, who was as inebriated as I was.
We tottered into the lounge and he produced, from a cupboard, his model SPV from Captain Scarlet and I, of course, knew where the button was to make the doors open and the fact that the caterpillar tracks at the back could be pulled down. Then I had a "brrrrrmmmmmm, brrrrrmmmmm!" around the carpet with his James Bond 007 Aston Martin, again knowing exactly how to make the machine guns pop out at the front and how to operate the ejector seat.
The soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither found the pair of us lying on the carpet, playing cars, and thought it might be better if I went back outside and sat at the table with the grown up people. I was led back, like a naughty boy, but then the host appeared with...................his Johnny Seven!!!! Girlies, you needn't read on anymore because you won't have a clue what I am on about but boys out there over the age of 40 will know that I am talking here about the most iconic symbol of our childhoods. I could never afford one as a lad and nor, it turned out, could my host but his wife had bought him one off e-Bay for a recent birthday. Wow! How brill is that?
We instantly fell to dismantling this prince among toy guns to reveal the hidden pistol and the like and I taught him how to fire the grenade launcher. "Can I have one, can I, can I, can I, huh?" We were too far gone to run around playing soldiers so we concentrated our efforts on trying to shoot the heads off daisies in the garden with the plastic bullets. All this, from a 46-year-old kid and his year younger chum.
The inevitable Stage Z followed, in which the host began hugging and kissing me, telling me that we should have been brothers, and then he started punching me because, apparently, I am big and look "punchable".

Kissable AND punchable - there is no higher compliment!

The soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither agreed wholeheartedly with half of the description at least but resisted the temptation to join in the punching - at least until we got home. Little boy, you had a busy day.
Now, that's a full day's entertainment! I'm not sure, however, what I have learned from this and what to send to Grantham. I think I shall send people who refuse to refuse to grow up (untangle the double negative in that lot!)

The King's New Clothes.....Again!!!

"Pardon me, Sire, but ones knob is on show."

While I'm in the mood.................that buffoon-in-a-dress which is Harriot Harman was on Any Questions on the wireless today trying her little best to defend Tithead Blair in the face of one or two teeny criticisms the rest of us have been uninformed and stupid enough to level at him.
Firstly, as regards the recent Islamic terrorists trial which revealed that MI5 had, in fact, come across the future London bombers but failed to do anything about them, she repeated Blair's reasoning as to why there should not be a public inquiry into the affair. "As the Prime Minister has said," Harriot whined, "an inquiry would not reveal anything new."
'Scuse me! I know I am probably being an idiot and, as ever, Tone is right and I am wrong, but don't you learn what an inquiry reveals AFTER you have conducted it, not BEFORE? Isn't that kinda the purpose of them? If it is conducted openly and without being rigged, how the fuck do you know what it will reveal? Having said that, in Blairworld I am obviously being naive. Look at the Acme-Joke Hutton Inquiry. It is now apparent that TB only ordered the inquiry once he had fixed the remit and the idiot conducting it to ensure that nothing would come out which was in the least bit critical of him and his cohorts. That's lawyers for you. Never ask a question to which you do not already know the answer.
Our Harriot was not done, though. While everyone else on the programme said Blair's legacy was basically that he has been a cunt, she said: "Ten years ago, who would have thought that you could have growth, social justice AND first class public services?" This is another Blair mantra. I'll leave the growth thing to the more economically educated but first class public services? Which fucking public services? Him and Thatcher sold them all!!
Gas? - fucked and call-centred.
Water? - fucked and running out of water all the time.
Steel? - fucked and with the turnover of the average village sweet shop.
Railways? - oh ho, ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha. Fucked!
Coal? - fucked off so that it doesn't exist at all anymore.
The police? - they're all too busy filling out fucking forms to go out and catch villains and now we have a crime problem to match that of Guatemala!
The Post Office - not yet completely fucked but soon to be sold.......to the fucking Germans!! Gunna get better? Je ne pense pas!
That just about leaves our precious "safe in their hands" National Health Service. It's almost bloody bankrupt! Nine out of ten trusts are reporting heavy losses. They're paying consultants MORE to do LESS! They have shedloads of "managers" to analyse the figures and cook the books to meet Blair's targets but are understaffed in frontline services. People are getting told in some instances that the hospital would love to treat them but, sadly, the drug needed to save their life is too expensive and would mess up the profit and loss account!
New Labour keeps chanting these lines in the belief that the more you say something, the more it becomes true.
As to "social justice", that takes too long to go into here. Suffice to say that the gap between rich and poor is growing ever larger, the power of corporations is exploding and banks are now out of control while the rest of us just have to like it or lump it!
The most laughable part of Any Questions was when it was revealed what has been lined up for Blair when he finally packs up his pasta-making machine and Chablis stocks and fucks off out of Downing Street. Wait for this, you'll love it. He's going to become...........I kid you not, this is true..........a peace envoy for George Bush in the Middle East!!!!!!! That's like Vlad the Impaler becoming chief executive of the Blood Transfusion Service or Attila the Hun becoming a fucking social worker!!! Do me a favour.
I have already sent Blair to Grantham - twice, in fact, as I recall - but his clones and apologists can all go as well, particularly Harriot Harman.