Category Archives: madness

Through the looking glass.

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I’d been on holiday recently, as you’ll see from recent posts. You’ll also notice that I’d been to the USA. I find myself wondering if something happened on the return flight. We got back very quickly indeed. It was a very bumpy flight, and very, very fast. I’d put it down to catching a tropical storm off the eastern seaboard, but I wonder now if perhaps we hadn’t entered a portal to another universe.

I’m really struggling to get to grips with what has been going on this last week or so.

I shrugged when I saw that the DG of the BBC had gone last night. I don’t think it will make much difference to be honest, this is an organisation that has been pilloried for not going to air with a story about one of its biggest stars engaging in the rape and sexual assault of children (let’s drop this twee ‘child abuse’ term shall we? Let’s call it what it is; rape) when it had very credible evidence to back the story up, and then taking the surreal step of pretty much identifying an individual who is, as far as I can make out, utterly blameless in all of this in a report that hadn’t been subjected to even the simplest research and critical analysis.

This is journalism, is it? I’ve never been a huge fan of the BBC, but I’ve never considered that they were consciously biased, I’ve always thought its been a more organic, genetic bias. Sure their sources of material for their output on the EU and climate change were wrong, and like all news outlets they angle stories to best reflect their sympathies, but they’d at least do some research, even it was flawed, even if they stopped when they found something that suited them. But this? Jesus H Tapdancing Christ on a purple tricycle. . .

Then we have the frankly bizarre moment when Philip Schofield, seemingly channeling the spirit of Robin Day (albeit with severe radio static and interference) decided to try to hand a list of names from the fucking intermong to the PM. Quite what the gopher botherer thought he was doing I’ll never know, and quite why the PM had decided to go on what amounts to little more than Heat magazine with moving pictures would, I thought, remain a mystery to me.

Then it struck me, he was on the show to stick the knife into Mad Nadine. Perhaps his spads thought it was important to get to the ‘I Think I’m Important So Give Me Airtime and a Big Bag of Money’ audience first? Few people who watch This Morning and Irma Sleb will know who Nadine Dorries is, even fewer will care. She’s not even D list enough for Irma Sleb, she wasn’t in that soap, didn’t sing in that band and didn’t screw that footballer. There’s a divide in this country; if you or I see Irma Sleb, Nadine will be one of the two about whom we will not ask ‘who the bloody hell are they?’ For the majority of viewers she’s the one whom that question is being asked of.

Nadine has shown herself to be an attention whore, well there’s a big surprise. So it would appear that when she’s been rebelling against the government she’s been doing it not out of principal, but just to get her fizz pasted across the media. If she thinks that eating kangaroo bollocks in Australia is going to raise her profile in any credible, meaningful or lasting fashion then she’s madder than mad can be. I’m hoping that in order to follow their bias that the BBC cut the line from Farage where he stated that she wouldn’t be welcome in UKIP when the question was put to him on HIGNFY. They need her like a kick in the face.

Then we come to the bloke who has won the election. No, not that one. The election to wear Canterbury’s silliest hat. Justin Welby, who sounds like a bloke who does the reporting on Soccer Saturday, has demanded that people who had a little flutter on him getting the big hat, funny stick and psychedelic raincoat donate their winnings to parish churches.

How about piss off? He hasn’t even kissed the fish, or whatever bonkers initiation ceremony his sky pixie club of hate requires, and he’s already as annoying as the nuts one with the beard. I’m stumped as to why it is so important, he may as well be President of the Tommy Trinder fanclub for all the importance it has to most people in the country.

So people have been acting in a very odd fashion indeed.

So have countries. Inexplicably the citizens of the US looked at both candidates for the Presidential election and still turned out and voted for them. Beats me, I wouldn’t give either of them the time of day.

The Scots have started turning the screw and are now not only milking tax revenue out of smokers, but are also collecting the same money with menaces for a second time out of the supermarkets. Sainsbury’s have now decided that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. White McVan Man is dancing a joyful gig. The same number of people will smoke. The tax take will go down, and it will be more difficult to pay the benefits of the poor sods that lose their jobs as a result of the prohibition that isn’t. This is what a vote for independence will bring you. Vote in favour of independence, please. Perhaps all the fuckwits who think like this will gravitate to Scotland like zombies to a man with a gammy leg. We can then evacuate the sensible people from Jockland, rebuild Hadrian’s Wall and live our lives in peace. Smokers who volunteer to have their corpse sent north over the wall by trebuchet to keep the locals from trying cross will get state subsidised free smokes for life. I’ll have my name first on the list. ‘Aaaaaaargh! A dead smoker! Run away! Run away!’ It would be excellent.

Meanwhile the Danes have decided that perhaps their fat tax isn’t working. As it’s sent food prices up, and tax takes and employment figures down. See a parallel? Betcha the BBC and the smokophobes haven’t. I can see White PerVan Man smuggling butter over the border from Germany. ‘Do you have any butter in there?’ ‘No, sir, it’s all tobacco.’ ‘Carry on.’

The drones are in revolt against the EU commission. Who knows how that is going to pan out. But if the Germans and Frogs are cutting up about it, they can’t very well lob bricks in our direction. Could it be that we have uttered the truth that dare not be spoken? Will our ingrained pro-sovereignty stance save Europe, once again, and rid us of this hateful entity? I become increasingly sure that the end is nigh, one way or another. I just pray it is more Czechoslovakia than Yugoslavia when it happens.

But of course nobody would do that.

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I was fortunate enough to catch ‘highlights’ of an interview with the wonderful Nicola Sturgeon on the news yesterday where she was banging on about minimum pricing in Scotland again.

I say fortunate, I actually mean incredibly unlucky.

I say wonderful, I actually mean disgusting, hectoring, self-important busybody.

I’ve since discovered an edition of Panorama where rabid lefty Joan Bakewell spent a half hour browbeating the ‘older’ citizen about their alcohol consumption, in what as far as I could see was a promotion and endorsement of minimum alcohol pricing by the BBC.

I barely know where to start, but I’ve decided to focus initially on the SNP’s thought process. Now, either the SNP really are different to all their competitors where they really do actually care about the health of the population rather than being obsessed with doing or saying anything that will get their/keep their hands on the levers of power (which seems unlikely to me), or they are dumber than a bag of hair.

Really? You’re looking at taking the legs of the brewers and distillers out from underneath them? In Scotland? You’re looking at taking the national pastime in Scotland and making it more expensive? And you think this is a good platform for re-election?

Now I’m as far away from Scotland as you can get without wearing a beret and developing an obsession for the music of Johnny Hallyday so I may be a little off the pace as far as local politics goes north of the border, but the LibDems, Labour and Conservatives must be really, amazingly, woefully bad if the SNP can propose this and still have a sporting chance of holding onto power.

What struck me most was Sturgeon’s complete lack of self-awareness, complete detachment from reality and this truly frightening attitude that she and her ilk are on some mission to save the people of Scotland from themselves.

The weasel stats were trotted out, according to statisticians, minimum pricing of 50p a (made up, no basis in science) unit could, note could, not would, save up to 300 lives a year in Scotland. I’d love to know how they came by that number, I can see a quack in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary shouting across A&E, ‘dammit, if booze was 50p a unit we could have saved this man!’

I just don’t see how you can possibly come to such a number, how can you correlate the price of an item with the mortality rate coming from its use? Do more people die pro-rata using a cheap bic than they do a nice fountain pen? It sounds like bollocks to me.

Also I’d like to know which deaths were included, is it limited to people who have engaged in years of alcohol abuse and died in agony as a result of the choices they have made? Does it include the guy who drinks responsibly, except for that one time when he’s celebrating a mate’s promotion/engagement/wedding/baby when he’s had one too many and stumbles out in front of the bus to Paisley?

I don’t see how the numbers are reliable. Additionally, one person saved falls in the parameters of up to 300. Is that reason to penalise the thousands of perfectly responsible drinkers?

So then we come to the next bleat, the cost to the NHS. Except of course that the treatment has already been paid for, both from NI contributions and the already very high tax which exists on alcohol. Let’s drop this cost thing, let’s drop this the NHS is free crap. Go price up the all-singing all-dancing BUPA care package on their website and then compare that figure with your NI deductions. Free? Bollocks. You’ve paid for it, through the nose. This attitude that the NHS can only be used if you’re not ill is rubbish.

But here’s the real nub of the matter. You see, politicians are stupid, they really are. Oh, they might have a degree in some guff from a decent Uni, but they’ve no ‘street smarts’, they’ve gone from school, to uni, to an internship, to parliament, they’ve never lived in the real world. They are imbued with this sense that people will follow them and not think creatively, because they’ve been trained to follow and not think creatively, and they are better, cleverer than the little people. They are only capable of judging the world around them on their own very limited plane and range of experiences.

This best manifests itself in their obsession with prohibition. They honestly think that if they declare something verboten, then nobody will do/have/engage in whatever it is they’ve prohibited. Problem solved.

Except of course, you and I know people aren’t like that. And so, minimum pricing will do nothing beyond cause an increase in the number of alcohol related deaths.

How so? Well as soon as you artificially inflate the price of a commodity, somebody will come in to undercut it, whether legally or not. So, by increasing the base price of alcohol on a whim, you will usher in the following chain of events:

An increase in the smuggling and theft of ‘legitimate’ alcohol. People will start using other supply lines, they won’t stop or cut back on their drinking, they’ll just get it somewhere else whether it is legit or not. Whether it is from England, Ireland, France or Belgium, huge amounts of booze will be moved across borders. Small convenience stores will sell moody booze, the man in the white van who sells the Polski fags will diversify into vodka, pinot grigio and Buckfast. When you see news reports now about people smashing in shop windows to get to the displays of fags, you’ll tomorrow see how they took the fags and the booze.

People will buy it, why? Because it is cheaper than from legit outlets. You think Angus McSporran cares about the tax take?

So this then causes a problem, the revenue is decreasing. The politician will do the only thing they know how to do in this situation, rather than relinquish the grip that caused the problem, they tighten it, they put the base price and the tax up again. Once again market economics comes into play, the sensible drinkers now get priced out of the market, so they go to Moody Ahmed’s shop and make gentle enquiries about the under counter stock, they go to the bootfair and sidle up to the white van man, they have more money, so demand pushes the non-legit stock price up.

The bottom of the market gets squeezed, but meeting their demand is still profitable, especially when you now start selling counterfeit booze, made with harpic and formaldehyde. The makers and retailers of the counterfeit stuff don’t care. You can’t trace them and summons them, Watchdog isn’t going to run an expose on them, they have no brand to protect or PR concerns. They’ll sell any old crap.

Just as dangerous, people will start to distil their own, from God knows what. You’ll get white whisky and brown vodka, you’ll get exploding stills and demolished houses, you’ll get people who have very real, very serious health problems from drinking moonshine or counterfeit booze, very quickly.

People will not stop drinking, and your minimum price plans are a charter for the reckless, the criminal and a huge increase in death, blindness, poisoning, amputations.

This is why I always bang on about the danger of the State. They simply are not equipped to do the job they want to do, they are incompetent and they are dangerous.

Really? Are you sure? Really?

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The French are really pissed off with us.

Really pissed off.

So pissed off they’ve really started to lose the plot. This is now being reduced to the level of playground insults. I am oddly proud, yet at the same time strangely frustrated that we’re not responding:

The chairman of the French central bank, Christian Noyer, has said ratings agencies should downgrade the UK before France because its economy is weaker.

Is it? Are you sure about that?

French debt: €1591bn or 86% of GDP. France is highly exposed to Italian debt, to the tune of $365 billion, and is owed large amounts from many other eurozone countries

UK debt: €1362bn or 80% of GDP.

Look, I’m not going pretend we’re in a good place, but hell, it could be worse, we could be France.

Madder than Folle Pierre Le Folle, winner of France’s maddest man competition, grasping desperately at straws.

Absolutely barking.

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Omid Djalili makes the observation that when there is a controversy regarding Islam, the media will usually wheel out a chap nominated as a representative of the Muslim community who waves his arms about while ranting and raving and behaving like a general lunatic.

The hardline Jewish reps tend to be a little more palatable for Western consumption. Whilst they are just as hateful and hardline as their Islamic counterparts, they aren’t so manifestly bonkers. Or are they?

A Jewish rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a stray dog it feared was the reincarnation of a lawyer who insulted its judges, reports say.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

The dog entered the Jerusalem financial court several weeks ago and would not leave, reports Israeli website Ynet.

It reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20 years ago, when judges bid his spirit to enter the body of a dog.

These are important people in their community. This man, a judge, a person who is supposed to deal in fact, thinks it is the reincarnation of a lawayer who said a bad thing, probably something along the lines of ‘you’re all nuts, you lot.’

One of the judges at the court in the city’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood had reportedly asked local children to carry out the sentence.

One of the judges what? Are you telling me that a community leader set up a bunch of kids to stone a dog to death because he thought it was the reincarnation of a lawyer?

What chance do these kids have?

Another demonstration of why religion is still a dark age practice where people demand that others live their lives by someone else’s interpretation of a superstition and should be pointed and laughed at at every opportunity, and why I’m convinced that the best way to deal with both sets of nutters on this landmass is to starve them of cash and supplies and just let them get on with it.

There’s no reasoning with people like this, none at all.

Schnell! Kerzen kaufen!

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So, the Euro, then. Those on the fringes are starting to drop like flies, this increases the strain on the bigger member states who are going to have to paddle like stink to prevent the ship from going under.

Not since the 1950′s has German industry been so important, and not just to Germany now, who are going to have to ensure they have the financial clout to prop the currency up, but also to the others who are relying on that clout to ensure they don’t end up eating out of dustbins.

Thankfully, German industry is one of the most efficient industrial programmes in the world, a real powerhouse, the envy of the rest of Europe.

Obviously, doing anything to damage that industry would be madness.

Wouldn’t it?

Well, the German government has announced it is embarking on the biggest programme of industrial sabotage the world has ever seen.

Germany’s coalition government has announced a reversal of policy that will see all the country’s nuclear power plants phased out by 2022.

Riiiiiiiight.

There have been mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of March’s Fukushima crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.

Which is kinda like the residents of a small town in the middle of Australia hitting the streets in panic about a flood in Cumbria. Earthquakes and tsunamis just aren’t going to happen in Germany. But never mind, why let something simple like that get in the way of a good panic?

Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors – which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis – would never be used again. An eighth plant – the Kruemmel facility in northern Germany, which was already offline and has been plagued by technical problems, would also be shut down for good.

Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022, he said.

Of course, by doing this, Germany has ensured that it is immune from any nuclear issues at all, should something happen in France (which is almost entirely reliant on nuclear power, sensible Froggies) any fall out will stop at the border. The town of Saarbrucken will be unaffected.

There’s still a way to extract guilt money though, still a means to demand the tithe to the Great Green God.

Mr Rottgen said a tax on spent fuel rods, expected to raise 2.3bn euros (£1.9bn) a year from this year, would remain despite the shutdown.

So, you’re going to continue taxing an industry which will have no means of generating any income? Thereby costing the private investors and pension funds millions, at a time when you’ve got no cash.

Smart.

But how will they power their industry? The greens in the German coalition are going to be a bit sniffy about coal and gas fired stations, aren’t they?

“The various studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. . .”

Oh, this is going to be good.

“. . . show that renewables could deliver, basically, global electricity by 2050,” he said.

“Germany is going to be ahead of the game on that and it is going to make a lot of money, so the message to Germany’s industrial competitors is that you can base your energy policy not on nuclear, not on coal, but on renewables.”

Making a lot of money? This is the same renewable energy industry that sucks up public money like an industrial pump and then pisses it all up the wall? That renewable industry?

A tip; if you want a BMW, Mercedes or VW car, make sure you buy one in the next ten years, because they’ll not be making them in Germany before long.

Sell Euros, the currency is screwed after this, take the money and invest it in German candle sellers. They’ll make a bomb.

Don’t mention the debt!

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Let us suppose that after paying your national insurance, income tax, council tax, fuel tax, tax on that tax, insurance premium tax, road tax, value added tax and any other tax you can think of, that you’ve got a few quid left over that hasn’t been swallowed up.

Let us suppose for a minute that you decide to invest that money somewhere.

Let us suppose for a moment longer that you’ve spent the last two years living under a log, delivering diversity training to a family of woodlice, and haven’t really been paying attention to what’s been going on.

So you scrape your few quid together and you seek the advice of someone who, you hope, has a decent idea of what he’s talking about, what’s hot and what’s not. You rock up at his office and state that you’d been thinking of investing the cash into government bonds. Greek government bonds.

Assuming your chap isn’t a complete mouth breathing simpleton, you’d expect him to say something along the lines of ‘that’s probably not a great idea, interest rates are through the roof on Bubble Bonds at the moment, it represents a great return if those bonds are honoured, but I’m concerned that the Greek government will default. It’s a high risk investment, and I’d advise against it.’

You’d hope, wouldn’t you?

However, it would seem that if your man does this, he’s going to find himself in a spot of hot water. . .

The Greek authorities have asked Interpol to question a London trader over an email he sent which talked of the high chance of a Greek default.

The email, published in a Greek newspaper, refers to “increased noise” over a Greek debt restructuring as early as Easter.

Greece is highly sensitive to allegations it may not stick to strict repayment terms on its recent bail-out.

Sensitive? It is one bottle of ouzo away from not being able to cover the bonds. We’re talking serious bankruptcy here. We’re talking taking a hammer to the piggy bank and finding a button, an old washer and an escudo which is worth only slightly more than a drachma. When it goes down, they’re going be broker than the brokest thing you can think of, and we’re going to have to pay for it. They’re sensitive? Well excuse me, I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings. Hang on, my chequebook’s here, how much do you want?

The finance ministry says the incident amounts to “possible criminal conduct”.

Really? Under what law? The we must never upset the broke bubbles act? Jesus H Christ on a little purple tricycle with a bell and hi-viz jacket.

Greece’s Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou insisted on Wednesday that Greece could deal with its debt mountain. 

Oh well, that’s fine then. What was I concerned about?

Tell the truth and say that you’re concerned about someone not paying a debt, in an email, and Interpol get called in? They really are madder than Mad Stavros Theopopodopoloopyous, winner of Greece’s maddest man competition.

Ramblings of a madman.

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It is too easy to throw brickbats and not hand out credit where it is due. I try to redress that balance wherever possible. So this afternoon I doff my cap to Vince Cable, who has proven himself to be even more deluded than Gordon Brown, and that, dear reader, is no mean feat.

It has been a funny few weeks for Vinnie, first there were his frankly bizarre attempts to block the election of Andrew Withers as the leader of the Libertarian Party. Quite why he thought that a cabinet member gets to rubber stamp the appointment of officials to a party he is not a member of will probably remain a mystery.

Then this morning, the Torygraph broke the story of Vinnie’s even more bizarre claims to a couple of undercover reporters that he could bring down the government. Alone. Hubris which conjures up images of Ron Burgundy in my mind. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing Vinnie could bring down is himself.

Well, true to form Vinnie has moved from tittle-tattle territory into barking at the moon, batshit mental. Quite why the Telegraph held this portion back, I don’t know, but Vince has also declared war on Rupert Murdoch, this is jaw droppingly bizarre, given that the EU, an organisation he probably thinks about whilst masturbating furiously in bed, has given Murdoch’s take over of BSkyB the green light.

He really does think he is the law. Although this seems to be the mark of the big 3 (plus the Greens and the BNP); the rule of law is vital, up until such time as it becomes inconvenient.

I’ll bet the Tories are delighted.

He thinks he can win. I think he’s a mentalist.

All the fears about the Lib Dems are being realised, to see the fall of Neil Clark (or whatever his name is) and Vinnie C from national treasures to national pariahs in the space of a couple of weeks is remarkable. The pair have overseen the total destruction of their party, and as the Tories are hopelessly, helplessly wedded to them, I find the whole scenario sweeter than honey.

Perhaps a collapse will force Miliband minority out into the open and actually make him act like a leader? This would be a good thing as I’m convinced he’s a trade union stooge who is desperately out of his depth, his continued silence on everything is most annoying. Once he opens his trap, Labour will be back in the shit again.

Wonderful. Do keep it up chaps. Who needs Corrie and Eastenders when real life is so riveting and amusing?

So, the Pope then.

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Amazing to see that he hasn’t been able to sell all his tickets. This is the first official visit by the head of the Catholic church ever. He hasn’t even been able to sell as many tickets as Manchester United manage once a week, and they’re as hated as this fellow.

It seems remarkable to me that in a time of cuts, that we’re spunking upwards of £10m on the visit of some former Nazi who has spent most of the last year acting as an apologist for the child abuse which has been running rampant through his organisation.

It isn’t just that we’re footing the bill, it would also appear that as well as picking up the tab, we’re also going to be giving in to demands from the deranged old bastard. Even the Queen for crying out loud. It would appear that she will be expected to wear black whilst in ‘His’ presence. I hope to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Sauce be upon Him) that she doesn’t wear a mantilla.

And then there’s the drivel that’s being spouted from the entourage the sinister eyed old Paedo lover will be bringing, or not, with him:

“When you arrive at Heathrow you think at times that you’ve landed in a Third World country.” 

Way to endear yourselves to your hosts. What on Earth did you mean by that?

Mgr Oliver Lahl, said the remark was a reference to the diverse, multi-cultural population of Britain

Fuck me, paedophilia and racism? What do you need for the full set? Is the Pope going to sit having a smoke in his new steam driven Pope mobile whilst buckfast drinking, BigMac eating Cardinals shovel barn owls covered in crude oil into the furnace?

Cardinal Kasper, [...], said that Britain was a “secular and pluralist” country in which there was a “distance from God”, noting that there was “a crisis of faith” in much of the West.

No crisis here mate. Perhaps you just haven’t quite got the message that your organisation is now an irrelevance. We’ve worked out that the Earth orbits the Sun, and that even with the latest mechanical retrieval technology there’s no way you’re going to make a handful of fish go round a dinner party of five thousand. We don’t need you any more.

In a break with tradition, the Pope is returning to Rome with Alitalia rather than Britain’s flag carrier. 

Well, that is actually good news. What if BA went on strike? We’d be stuck with him and his freeloading mates for days, and there are children about, what if they started hanging around outside Catholic primary schools, which I understand is some sort of Papal code for ‘pick-up bar’?

The Cardinal also said the Catholic Church would “never” allow the ordination of women. Asked if the Church might soften its position on women priests in 100 or 200 years, he said: “I’m not a prophet, but I don’t think so.” 

Excellent, we chalk up sexism to the list as well then. Know your place, bitch.

The Anglican Communion has allowed women to be ordained and priests to be married, but the cardinal asked: “Does it seem to you that things have gone better for them?” 

No, but that’s because they’re an irrelevance as well, it’s nothing to do with allowing the clergy to get their leg-over, even if the person is able to give legal consent, nor is it to do with vicars worrying that the cassock makes their bum look big.

A Vatican source denied that the last minute withdrawal was a blow to the Pope’s trip but said that Cardinal Kasper’s “expertise” on ecumenical dialogue would be “much missed”. 

Yeah, after all that, he’s the best they’ve got. I can imagine the dicussion between Cameron and Hague; ‘I’m sorry David, but Alf Garnett is the only person we can send to be our Ambassador to the UN.’ Good grief.

“He is quite a liberal figure who doesn’t always see eye to eye with the Pope, and he has been very friendly towards the Anglicans,” the source said. 

Tea ——> monitor. Really? Come on, tell us another one!

The Most Rev Peter Smith, Archbishop of Southwark, has warned that “crackpots and lunatics” may try to disrupt the papal visit. 

Well, he asked them along. Hmmmm? What? You mean he wasn’t referring to the entourage? There’s people more crackpot and lunatic? Really? Oh this should be good, I can’t wait to see them! There are loads of tickets for sale after all.

They’re all absolutely bonkers.