Red Leader: Enemy activity has been slight

Great. Now I love Lenin. Can this year GET any worse?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:36:26 +0100

I've recently acquired a pamphlet published in 1949 by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which gives a precis of the words and thoughts of Vladimir Lenin.

Utterly destroyed by civil war, economic collapse and, later, Western Capitalism, his ideals are now abandoned by all but the most brutal and atavistic lunatic Third World states, and even they have a Marxist version of it.

I thought I'd copy out a few selected quotes from pages and pages of Lenin ideology long forgotten by almost everyone in the UK, and probably the developed weeerld...

"The oppressing classes constantly hounded the [revolutionaries] and received their theories with the utmost savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander."

"In reality, the Trades Unions did not develop in absolute freedom but in absolute Capitalist slavery."

"The point at issue is [not] political struggle in general, but Revolution. Revolution consists in the proletariat DESTROYING the 'adminstrative apparatus' and the WHOLE state machine and replacing it by a new one"

Dunno about you, but it sounded good to me.

That all the ideology ended in The Red Terror, civil war, ruin and eventually Stalin's purges killing more people than the Nazis is a reminder that there's always an ever-madder bunch of lunatics who will always fuck it up for you.

Comments

We shall crackdown on these blogging maniacs

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:10:52 +0100

They just don't get it, do they?

The Press Complaints Commission is now running with the idea that it should be granted power over blogs.

Peta Buscombe, the chairman of the PCC, has revealed her thoroughly shocking ambition to regulate blogging.

She's quoted on MediaGuardian as saying: "Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated. Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it's news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It's a very interesting area and quite challenging."

Now I'm sure her vaunting ambition won't extend to feeble little blogs such as my own.

I think she is setting her sights far higher up the food chain to draw a bead on Guido Fawkes and his ilk.

Well, good luck with that, Peta.

I hope you have a very thick skin to protect you from the diatribes Guido and Mr Holy Moly and the rest are likely to unleash upon you if and when you start to veer from theory to practice.

People with a bit of power under their belt seem to be unable to abide the idea of not being in control the internet and its blogs - even though in the UK they are governed by the same laws of libel and defamation that newspapers and any other media are subject to.

Well I fear that "they" will not be happy until every UK blogger is registered on some sort of weird government database and that everyone will have to abide by "The Rules" or face some form of retribution.

Probably not the same "The Rules" though that have allowed our law-making MPs to dodge capital gains tax and claim for mortgages they've already paid off.

But I can easily see a future where yer average blogger has to come clean about their real identity and provide details such as email addys etc, which will have to be checked and approved before allowing us access.

And if the Tories get in, their shadow media toff Jeremy Hunt is already promising a "big bang" approach to abolishing legislation presently prohibiting monopoly regional newspaper ownership.

So it's hard to imagine him putting up much resistance to a call to have troublesome bloggers cowering under the yoke of the Establishment.

Knowledge is power.

Information is power.

Controlling it can be an act of tyranny.

Someone famous said that, or something like it.

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So much for Objective Journalism

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:38:46 +0100

My writing hero is Hunter S Thompson.

Like many other people who scratch a living out of writing, I admired his total balls-out devotion to telling the truth. At least the truth that he saw. Not many people dare to do it.

He wrote this:

"The only other important thing to be said about Fear & Loathing is that it was fun to write, and that's rare — for me, at least, because I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work.

I suspect it's a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs.

Old whores don't do much giggling.

Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again — or else you'll be evicted, and that gets old.

So it's a rare goddamn trip for a locked-in, rent-paying writer to get into a gig that, even in retrospect, was a kinghell, highlife fuck-all from start to finish... and then to actually get paid for writing this kind of manic gibberish seems genuinely weird.

So maybe there's hope. Or maybe I'm going mad..."

Yeah, and maybe there IS hope.

Although not fit to clean the dust from his hash-pipe, I agree with him and too often I find writing a ball-aching chore.

But I enjoy immensely writing this blog.

There is so much angst at present about BCUK and its strange band of followers, among whom I am proud to number myself.

But really it's a hopeless target to attack the medium.

Hunter would have relished, did relish, the instant response to his words.

If you can go to the bother - and have the belief - that people might be interested in something you have written and published on the internet, then I think you at least should have the courage of your convictions to defend it if called upon to do so.

Otherwise "publish" it in a diary at home and let it remain forever unsullied by anyone else's opinion or criticism.

Having said that, trolls and snarlers are one thing; geeks who have the fiendish ability to clone your blog and masquerade as you are something else and should be dragged across the town and beaten with whipchains.

And

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like sport scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."

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'Tis the season to be made redundant

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:10:33 +0100

So this is Christmas.

Well it self-evidently is not, but my generous employers can't help themselves and are falling over each other to be the first to dish out the P45s.

Yes.

It's the Annual Merry Yuletide Redundancy spree.

This time last year, or rather, in few weeks' time this time last year, I was made redundant and had to re-apply for my own job.

Naturally, this created a good deal of seasonal angst and more than a touch of tinseled turmoil in my already exploding head, and it wasn't until Christmas Eve that I learned I was "safe."

Many colleagues weren't so fortunate and got the axe, and my own small part of the Evil Empire was decimated.

Now we're approaching the year-end, and off we go again.

Time to cash-in on a few quick job losses and get the headcount savings into this year's P&L ledger.

The London head office "benchmarking exercise" again is in full flow and we're being softened up by the executive class for their trite weasel words of how losing a few editors will "Bring-Our-Newspapers-Closer-To-The-Communities-We-Serve."

Arrant nonsense of course; cut and pasted from the dead lexicon of Management-Speak that's handed out to them along with the company BMW and BUPA health plan upon taking office.

Clipboard holders, Blackberry botherers and thrusting young corridor walkers of every stripe have a renewed spring in their step this month.

They perch, Meerkat-like, on the fifth floor, nostrils wide and twitching, their slitty eyes darting hither and yon for the next cost-saving scalp they can offer up to the chairman in the hope that, if they can prove themselves ruthless enough, they'll be invited along to the company summer golf weekend at La Manga, where they will serve the drinks and tug their forelocks to the board's best friends.

I KNEW it would happen again. I KNEW I should have flicked them the Vees and got out.

But...

Tag THAT.

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It just NEVER occurred to him...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:46:33 +0100

Drugs and schools. A marriage made in heaven.

I was left wide-eyed in wonderment last night watching the TV news to first see some Greasy Government Suit moaning on that he'd lost all confidence in the nation's principal scientific advisor on drugs.

Yes.

He felt he could no longer trust the scientist to kiss his arse on his view that All Drugs Are Bad. So he sacked him.

Strange? I thought so.

But then the next item was an even Greasier Government Suit moaning on that he'd lost all confidence in the nation's parents.

Yes.

Because they LIE and CHEAT to get their children into a half-decent primary school.

And now he was going to fix it that anyone caught LYING and CHEATING again would have their collar felt and could well spend time at Her Majesty's Pleasure if they dared defy him.

And they ran some VT of a REALLY BIG room in Hackney Council stuffed to the rafters with spotty-faced, smirking snoopers, all paid from the public purse, whose sole job it is is to track down criminal parents hoping to get an education for their kids.

And instead of being embarrassed by this to the point of suiciding, the Greasier Suit was instead puffed up with pride at how fooking NAILS it made him look.

It had obviously never occurred to him, not for even a second, to consider why parents might LIE and CHEAT to this end.

Never occurred to him that instead of employing a thousand gobshites to pry and poke into the backgrounds of families, it might be a better idea to actually put a few bob into improving primary schools and thus - in a single bound - end the need for all the LYING and CHEATING which has so disgusted him.

And it also never occurred to this Suit-full-of-bugger-all that the nation's parents had by now lost all confidence in HIM.

Which, when you think about it, is really the point.

It was a tableau of pure Kafka and will stay with me for a long, long time.

Or at least until next May.

Comments

A Winter's tale

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:05:12 +0100

There was a time and it was not so very long ago when I would really look forward to the winter.

I loved the long dark nights and the long dark overcoats.

To me, it always resonated with something deep inside.

Not sinister, necessarily, just enjoyably melancholy and perhaps even a touch romantic.

It's a great time for viewing your life as if you were in a film, when, being young, you have the luxury of being so self-possessed.

I indulged myself as a mysterious character treading softly as the screenplay slowly evolved around me, either in the deserted streets of a silent city or in the depths of a barren and bleak countryside.

My happiest times have been experienced in the misty gloom of winter nights.

The thrill of winter: When I was in my 20s, it was walking through unknown avenues in Bologna, Milan or New York or, more prosaically, Liverpool and London, throwing long shadows, running and laughing with friends to shelter from squally rain and hail.

To me, it was just wonderful.

Such a different and unalloyed joy as opposed to the moany way I can easily feel now about being rained on.

A little bit later in life, it was huddling under an abandoned fisherman's shelter on the River Dee, the river flowing thick and dark as ink in deepest Wales. I was with my wife and young family on New Year's Eve, miles away from anyone and everything, and I was stunned by the absolute stillness.

A massive silence observed under a massive sky that you won't ever find in any city, town or village.

It was mystical and I'm sure had something of the old Celtic magic about it.

I felt that I was experiencing something - was even part of something - very old and important yet now totally forgotten.

Well, the more remote stretches of the River Dee at dusk on New Year's Eve can do that to a man.

I listened and watched spellbound as snow fell in sheets on the fields all around us.

It was so quiet, so intense that, eventually, if you tuned in, you could actually hear the snowflakes landing nearby and above on the rickety shelter roof.

After a while, when the sun had disappeared behind the hills and it was becoming pitch black, we trudged back through the snowfield, the only guiding light the rosy glow from the windows of "our" ancient and much-loved cottage.

As we got closer, we could see our hearth-fire was still burning, as always, doing its steadfast duty and twisting peaty-coal smoke up through its hopeless chimney and warming the house...

Now another dark winter lies ahead as yet untouched, and I'm struggling to feel the spell.

I've spent a while analysing why this should be and I've not reached any reliable answers.

It's possibly to do with being pushed further and further into the corporate machine which, at my age, feels infinitely agonising.

Each dragging day teaches me that anyone with a touch of independent thought, let alone a touch of the wanderlust, is drawing down the kiss of death.

Still.

The snow will soon be falling again over the Dee at dusk and it will be mostly unnoticed by anyone.

And even if I won't be there to feel it any more, or see it any more, just knowing that it's happening and that my family's footprints once upon a time were the first and only ones to be there at the approaching dawn of a new year...well...that's fine.

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John the Kangaroo is gonna mess with Sue

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:17:09 +0100

Well, now I just feel STUPID.

For quite a few years, I played slide in a blues duo and every gig we did, we did Muddy Waters' Hoochie Coochie Man.

And every time we did it, I always thought the words in the second verse ominously warned the listener: "I've got John The Kangaroo and we're gonna mess with Sue."

I admit I was puzzled as to why a Mississippi Bluesman, credited as the Father of Chicago Blues, would own a kangaroo, much less one called John, and also how he and his sinister and mysterious marsupial would "mess" with this poor girl Susan.

Bit odd, but then the whole song is a "bit odd" anyway, and I thought no more about it.

So imagine my surprise when, today, almost ten years later, I googled the lyrics and found the actual words were: "I've got John the Conqueror root, I'm gonna mess with you."

None the wiser, I googled again and discovered: "John the Conqueror root is one of the staples of African-American folk magic. Its use in mojo hands is as ubiquitous as its qualities are varied, and its very name signifies power and prosperity to many."

So there we are.

A lesson in Blues voodoo and a kangaroo illusion shattered.

Never a dull moment.

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Gone a bit gray, Redleader

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:34:01 +0200

Had a quite surreal experience this evening while getting cash out the ATM at the local Strangebury's.

Silhouetted against orange sodium lights of the high street, I saw the unmistakable outline of my ex-mother-in-law.

She was with her husband and, from the hazy view I had, what appeared to be a young girl.

As the apparitions drew closer shouting Hullos into the glare of the supermarket windows, I was convinced that the svelte youngster had to be one of their granddaughters. Maybe a 17-year-old college student.

But it wasn't. It was one of my ex-wife's sisters. She has to be 47 if she's a day, but she was so slim and trim and UNAGED I was actually taken aback.

Even though it's a bit cold, she had on a crop-top, tiny leather jacket and skinny jeans.

I literally couldn't believe how little she'd aged in the past 18 years, how she'd not put on a POUND of weight, and how her face was utterly unblemished by the harrowing experience of growing older and all the shit that goes with it.

Mind you, her husband is LOADED and in a powerful position in the London judiciary at a ridiculously young age. One of the youngest briefs to take silk in the city, so I was told.

Yeah, the kids are Alpine skiing with their "nanny" and we're still in the same part of town. Well, Richmond. Moved a bit nearer the park now.

But...You've gone a bit gray, Redleader, since I last saw you.

Oh, haven't I just.

And I've felt a bit shit since, to be honest.

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Well. That's another 60 quid down the toilet

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:53:23 +0200

Woe, woe and thrice freaking WOE!

Just handed over 60 hard-earned pounds to the local "computer shop" to pay them to kill off a Windows-attacking virus that no amount of AVG scrubbing would clean.

WEEKS pass...

Eventually. Plug in, switch on and...

Pop-up message appears from "WINDOWS POLICE PRO" (Utterly Bogus Department).

"Your computer is infected with extreme virtual bubonic plague etc etc etc.

"Click here to let us totally destroy your hard-drive and laugh in your trusting face."

Why, God?

WHY?

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Clever people writing for stupid people

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:42:26 +0200

I think I wish I had as much energy as almost everyone else on the internet to ACTUALLY care about Jan Moir, and, locally, about the hot fuss about the peculiar "Blogger's Oath."

But then I also think I wish I did not.

In fact, I think that all the moaners and screamers and shouters should consider themselves fortunate that there is no one left of the calibre of Hunter S Thomson to rip them to shreds anymore.

It's so easy for the followers to jump upon the bandwagon. It always has been.

I don't have the wit or the words to do justice to it.

Hunter would have.

He would have been able to describe perfectly what's wrong about the cynicism of clever people writing polemical outrage for stupid people to get over-excited about.

But he's gone.

And all that's left is for us to nod our bovine heads in agreement with the rest of the herd and jump on the next digital bandwagon that rolls past.

And as to the Blogger's Oath, he would have taken it to the extreme and would have hunted the signatories down like a rat across the tundra.

And you know it.

Yeah you do.

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The Will to Lose, posh schools and poor boys' perverts

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:01:55 +0200

I've got to stop following the England cricket team on the telly.

I find it a uniquely dispiriting experience.

Watching the same players make the same mistakes over and over (ha) again is really depressing.

As I write they are being battered and humiliated by Australia and look certain to be rolled over and knocked out.

What is it about England players that makes them capitulate so easily when the prize is so near? Ashes aside.

I think I know.

I think they must have some sort of Englishness DNA in them that makes trying "too" hard to win trigger a genetic response of making them feel unsporting and a little bit embarrassed.

Well most cricketers - BUT NOT ALL *sigh* - I suppose come from a bit of a posho background.

Private schools and privilege.

Yet you might think that the uber-competitive grounding of pushy, aspiring parents, a school governing board made up largely of the local Tory party and roughneck but rich self-made businessmen, would see the WIN-at-all-costs brainwashing become second-nature.

Well they must do, be posh and that, cos I never so much as even laid eyes on a cricket bat at school for the entire time I was there.

It was bloody football or nothing.

Which, on reflection, suited our pervy gym teacher who used to "test" our bodies for "wetness" with a stroke of his hand from neck to bum as we came out of the showers.

He got away with it by the hilarious pretence that it was the only way of checking we'd been under the water jets. I imagine that in 2009, as opposed to 1974, he'd be looking at a couple of years in chokey quicker than you could say "sicko".

But back then, well. You know what boys are like.

They'd rather sit at their desks caked in mud, blood and sweat than ever take a shower. It was important, do you see, that he checked.

But what the hell? EVERYONE'S sports teacher was a perv in those days.

Anyway, as usual, I digress appallingly and the sad old bastard is long dead.

Where were we? Oh yeah.

The point I was trying to get to was that, perhaps the Will to Lose demonstrated by our toothless cricketers is a latent reaction to all the horror of being pressed and bullied and mentally fucked-over in their early years?

Glib?

Oh yeah.

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The day my pad went mad

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:46:54 +0200

My home seems to have turned into an irresistible magnet for malevolent technology gremlins.

Anything that depends on electricity to function appears to be doomed.

Their evil spell is all over everything, from the toaster to the lappy, the PS3 to the microwave. Nothing works properly anymore.

Which reminds me, about one hundred years ago, I went on tour in the support band to the utterly excellent punk-poet John Cooper-Clark.

I know.

I am OLD.

Anyway.

I don't recall much about the gigs, except for two poems he did (and how much heroin he did, but that's for another story, maybe sometime never).

One was "Chicken Town", which was frighteningly brilliant, the other was a mock-lament to George Best and it was called "The Day My Pad Went Mad."

It was about how Besty was crazy for all-mod-cons and everything in his 1970s' penthouse playboy pad was run by electricity and remote control, from his curtains to his bath taps, his "stereo" to his telly, his entrance gates to his burglar alarm, and what happened when, one day, the technology went haywire.

Well. I know how Besty must have felt now.

I might not have eleccy gates or even a burglar alarm, but EVERYTHING else refuses to work.

*joins the Amish*

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Doom work boredom grief and fainting in coils

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:31:55 +0200

I wake with a start

like a vampire at sunset

remembering I'm dead

and this stake

in my heart

may yet turn me to dust

but you never heard a single

word

i said

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Bloody peasants

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:59:47 +0200

It always astonishes me how many forelock-tugging "squire knows best" Daily Mail-reading morons there are out there.

You should see them exploding on the Mail website in over-excited fury at the Lib/Dem idea of taxing properties worth over a million quid.

It's very funny. And very scary at the same time.

Personally, I could not care less about the Lib/Dems or any of their "policies."

But my point is this - as if anyone who lives in a million quid gaff would even bother to piss on those legions of knobbers writing in feverish support of them.

Not even if they were on fire.

Which they are.

With fury.

Haha.

This is a randomly-selected reader comment about the story published today: "If a person has a million pound house, he has worked hard for the money to buy it or inherited it of (sic) his hard working parents. Both Labour and the Liberals seem to want to punnish (sic) him for doing so by taxing him more. Totally unfair."

Yes guv'nor. If you have a million-pound house you must be a very hard working gentleman, a proper toff and no mistake.

Shine your shoes, guv'nor? And Gawd Bless you, sir.

Bloody peasants.

I hate them - thick as pig shit and maniacally determined to protect their right to be downtrodden and kept in their place by their "lords and masters."

Their "betters."

The "higher-ups."

This is an unfair generalisation, but in 1914, it was THAT attitude which persuaded millions to walk slowly into a hellstorm of German machine gun fire on the orders of some cretinous toffee-nosed upper-class red-tag General git from Eton.

Don't run, chaps. Don't show the Hun you're a-feared of them. Let us fix-bayonets and off we go. Erm. Unfortunately, I just have to get back to my commandeered chateau ten miles away.

Tally-ho!

PS: I KNOW a "million-pound house" isn't necessarily a Palladian mansion set in 5,000 acres of rolling grouse moors, but it doesn't matter.

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Well that was a k-k-krazy week

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:33:59 +0200

All I can say is, I'm glad to see the back of it.

No, really.

That IS ALL I can say.

All I can manage to come up with is a tired cliche that is so familiar it's almost invisible.

For I've forgotten how to write; the working week has turned my brain into soup and the bit that used to help me string one word after the other has gone missing.

This should worry me, but it doesn't.

I welcome it, embrace it, snog it and stick my hand up its skirt.

Well. That's me done.

I've used up nearly all my words and the remaining few I have left in reserve I might need in a minute to attract the attention of the barman.

Oh dear. I see the dog has my best guitar in his mouth so, must fly.

Have a fab weekend.

I know I will.

*sobs*

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NEVER forget they are watching ME

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:27:49 +0200

Overlooked. Not in the sense of being left out or ignored.

Just - overlooked - as in, there's nowhere on this planet I can go for a single second without someone LOOKING at me, seeing me, watching me, hassling me, asking me stupid questions, or just plain being RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

Nowhere.

At work I am at the centre, for good or ill. Probably ill.

At home - HA! No chance. It's a warzone anyway so what hope of a solitary second to be, well, solitary?

In the street - Pfftright - some git in half-mast kecks always comes up and says something like: "You haven't responded, YOUNG MAN, to my amazingly excellent and incredibly BRILLIANT email highlighting the problem of this strange race of men in the trees that I alone have spotted. What do you have to say to THAT?"

Online: Oh Dear God. Let's not even go there.

I need a hideaway. Somewhere.

Yeah.

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Money, that's what I want

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:06:37 +0200

It seems so obvious now.

The only way out of this is MONEY.

I've never been a big fan of the pursuit of it before.

Which probably explains perfectly why I NEED IT NOW!

Any suggestions?

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Bank Holiday DOOM

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:27:58 +0200

So here we go, flying headlong into the last bank holiday before X Mass, unless I've missed something and the uniquely sinister Lord Mandelson has unilaterally declared Halloween a public holiday too.

Anyway, I thought, I don't care. I'm WELL up for this one.

Barbecue Summer 2009, here I GO!

But then I was not especially encouraged by the Met office graphics on the BBC telly weather reports all day today.

They showed the entire British Isles basking in tropical heat - with the single exception of a flashing yellow graphic cloud depicting The Apocalyptic Storms of HELL hovering precisely over my ACTUAL house. Trufax, fax lovers.

Oh well.

What can you expect when you're ME?

Happy bank holiday.

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Quote of the year in the story of the year

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:55:17 +0200

Mr Simpkins, of Pontefract, West Yorkshire, said: 'The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter."

More here.

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About time for a change...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:46:31 +0200

In so many ways.

I used to maintain this blog with an almost religious fervour - but without all the chanting, incense and Deity-ridden nonsense, obviously.

But as with so many things, I lapsed, and it has been poorly-neglected for many, many months. If not years.

But I think I've found my blogging mojo again.

I'm scraping off the lichen and chucking out the stinky tramps who've been dossing down here, cruelly abusing my lack of commitment.

So. A new look, for free off Bcuk - Ta.

A new and overwhelming drive, a new NEED to show off my brilliance like the rest of you. I'm going to try doing it all again.

This will probably not strike fear into the hearts of GuidoFawkes, Huffenstuff, Juzzzzy and their evil ilk.

But it has struck up something in me again; maybe it's as the darker nights set in and we finally, with a tear in our eyes, wave goodbye to this unforgettable barbecue summer.

Wevver.

I feel the need to get writing here again.

Cazart!

I suppose actions speak louder than words, and I could just have posted up more stuff and got on with it, keeping calm.

But this will spur me on in the many, many dark and empty-headed weeks ahead to

IT!

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And that's interesting, too

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:40:25 +0200

Barack Obama has sent me an email.

An actual, proper email - not just some crap from "The Whitehouse," on no.

It's a response to my email to him about the extradition of asperger syndrome sufferer Gary McKinnon a few posts down from here.

Cool.

Never had an email off the President before. Never written to him before either.

Ho hum. Must try more often.

Rubychoo is FURIOUS she hasn't had a reply to her letter to him.

Hehehehe!

Nice to know he bothers.

Redleader - Friend to the President.

Comments

That's interesting

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:53:16 +0200

The venomous "Crime and Justice" campaign "blog" that goads the Madeleine McCann family no longer exists.

Aw shame.

Boo-hoo.

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Strangebury's rides again

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:59:05 +0200

Well, yes...and here we go again.

Once again standing in a small queue at my Sainsbury's Local, I saw another adult humiliated by check-out staff.

This time the staff member in question had the appearance of being a 15-year-old spotty herbert not yet out of school, and his victim looked old enough to be his father.

The customer placed his purchases on the counter - some groceries and a bottle of white wine.

The geeky cashier scanned in the food, then came to the wine and asked the customer for "proof of age."

The man was taken aback, as well he might be.

He said: "I'm 29 years old. What on earth do you mean?"

The geek replied: "Well you have to be 25 now to buy wine. I'll need proof."

Exasperated, the customer angrily asked: "Like what?"

Geek: "Passport. Birth Certificate, I.D. Card."
(Excuse me? ID Card?)

Customer: "Fuck off you bloody idiot."

He then turned on his heel, walked out having bought nothing and steamed away in a very nice black Mercedes coupe, which I had admired jealously on the way in.

The next customer, a middle-aged woman, then sheepishly approached Attila the Check-Out Geek, who said how very sorry he was for the "bad language."

He added for good measure: "That might not even be his car.

"And there's never any need to swear."

I beg to differ.

I think if these fools persist with their demented fetish of demanding to be told the age of almost every grown up who wants to buy wine, fags or even MATCHES off them, then the need for swearing has never been greater.

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Free speech? Don't make me laugh

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:53:06 +0200

http://crimeandjustice.blog.co.uk/

Anyone else read this piece of poison on this site?

The post at the top of the queue looks like the site is a defence of the Madeleine McCann family. As you read on, you'll find it serves a far more sinister purpose.

I have always believed the right to free speech should be jealously guarded - but up to a point.

And that point has often been described as being where someone maliciously shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.

Then other issues have to be factored in. Such as causing harm and distress to innocent people.

That's where the right to uninhibited freedom of expression ends and a very different debate begins.

I can closely empathise with the McCann couple. I think you'd have to be callous in the extreme not to.

And, personally, if I was Gerry McCann, it would take all my charity not to round up a posse and hunt down the "Crime and Justice" site owner and her fellow travellers like a rat across the tundra.

Still. I guess he has more pressing things to think about.

But whatever my, or anybody else's, personal view might be, it does not give carte blanche to anonymously launch a venomous platform deliberately designed to rub salt into the wounds.

This "Crime and Justice" site isn't a blog.

It's a campaign, a mission, an agenda.

None of it appears to be based on anything other than a crankish obsession and spiteful innuendo.

The sad and increasingly obvious single fact of this whole story is that a small child has disappeared and is very likely now dead.

The circumstances surrounding her disappearance, and the involvement or otherwise of her parents, have been investigated more thoroughly and at greater length than almost any other case in recent European criminal history.

Yet despite this microscopic analysis, this ceaseless and unyielding searchlight, they have been found guilty of NOTHING.

None of this of course deters the site owner.

No small spark of human compassion will be allowed to blind her and her followers from their demented conviction that the couple are as guilty as sin, and this they believe is reason enough to carry on twisting their knives as deeply and as painfully as possible.

The comments (surprise, surprise) have to be pre-approved by the site owner. Trawling through page after page of conspiracy-theory bile, I can see none have.

Let's see if she's a true advocate of "free speech" - the corrupted concept of which she will no doubt use as an excuse as to why bcuk shouldn't sack her off immediately - and put a few up.

NB: I've read many things on bcuk over the years that I have utterly disagreed with but, to date, I've always adopted a laissez faire, live-and-let-live approach.

But sometimes I suppose you have to make a stand in the spirit of hope no matter how forlorn.

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Dear Mr President...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:03:07 +0200

I wrote this letter to the White House last week and so far, my mate Barack ain't replied.

RE: Extradition of Gary McKinnon.

I am the father of an Asperger's Syndrome son.

Bringing him up in this very harsh and unforgiving world is extremely difficult.

I think perhaps, with respect, you may not be entirely aware of the problems this condition visits upon its sufferers.

In my experience, they have little, or NO, understanding of the consequences of their actions.

Even as adults, they maintain a childlike fixation about things.

And their immature obsessions can, and often do, lead them into unexpected scenarios which their mums and dads are always called upon to "sort out."

To me, this seems a classic - if not historic - case of that.

I am aware that cyber assaults on US military, intelligence and government networks have become a massive problem for you.

But I cannot imagine that an Asperger person would ever present a serious threat to US security.

In the spirit of this, I beg you to reconsider the decision to extradite Mr McKinnon.

The idea of putting an Asperger sufferer through such a painful and mentally destabalising process seems inhumane in the extreme.

Thank you for your time.

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BANNED - from buying a box of matches

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:49:56 +0200

Standing in the small queue at my local Strangebury's tonight, I saw something happen that was a defining moment for me as to how ludicrous "things" have become.

There was a man right in front of me, smartly dressed in a not-inexpensive suit, who was putting his purchases on the check-out counter.

He had a pizza, a bottle of Pepsi and half-a-pound of Cheddar.

He then asked the check-out person (a woman, late-50s, I'd guess) for a packet of Wriggley's and a box of matches.

She turned around, got the chewies and the matches then, as she placed them in the carrier bag, suddenly froze.

"How old are you?" she demanded.

Obviously taken aback, the customer informed her that he was nineteen.

She then lunged forward into his carrier bag, retrieved the box of matches and, clutching them to her chest, exclaimed triumphantly: "You're not allowed to buy matches then! You have to be 21."

Stunned and embarrassed, the fellow spluttered: "Excuse me? I'm a manager in a design agency. You see that new Astra out there...*points through shop window to parked car*...That's mine."

The cashier was unmoved: "It doesn't matter. We're not allowed to sell you matches. It's...THE LAW!"

The guy shook his head, paid his bill and left - probably, if he has any sense, NEVER to return to Sainsbury again as long as he lives.

I have to say I was equally stunned by all this.

I thought, just how twisted and paranoid has the country become when it won't allow a 19-year-old man to buy a bloody box of matches?

Then I thought, perhaps it's nanny Sainsbury well overstepping the mark again, as it does with alcohol sales by not letting anyone "appearing to be" under the age of 25 buy beer.

And it also crossed my mind that maybe the more logical explanation was that the cashier was simply another Sainsbury Local nut job, who are legion, as anyone who has the misfortune to ever go there will know.

Whatever the reason, the episode left me angry and a bit depressed.

I don't know if the piffling, mundane, everyday indignities we all suffer in one form or another have anything to do with the deadly, creeping paranoia of Westminster or not.

But something very bad indeed is seeping into the English psyche and corrupting the country's spirit at the moment - and where it will end, I really don't like to think.

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All right now

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:19:29 +0200

I love Hendrix and this is the best guitar sound in the world, but utterly unachievable by any one like me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85zp1zVVDAQ

Then I I thought this was the nearest to a perfect guitar sound I could hope for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_CHbmZIRXE

But then I realised I was wrong, and it was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZQ6Df3lXw was it

Now I understand I was completely miles away on all fronts and the perfect sound is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVOoVnQlcwQ

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Massive relief for the redleader clan

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:16:50 +0200

Returned from hospital earlier this evening after having met consultant re Deaf Star son's brain scans from the dreaded MRI machine.

The latest test results show that the unexplained "white matter" lesions on his brain, which can be an indicator of MS, or any number of other lethal ailments, have not progressed or worsened from the first test ten weeks ago.

We are told that this is very, very good news and Rubychoo and I are tonight massively relieved.

No explanation of his sudden total deafness, although we'll meet a neuro-surgeon at the end of summer who might shed some light. Seems that the nerve receptors have just sort of, erm, burned out.

So.

From within our world, where experience has taught us to nearly always expect the worst, it's onwards and upwards to new beginnings.

Cool.

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Leave me alone

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:45:49 +0200

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X6gaYqZFKE

Geddit?

Leave me alone, please leave me alone, GOD! leave me alone, just leave me alone, won't you leave me alone, please leave me alone, just leave me alone, yes - LEAVE ME! LEAVE ME!

Phew.

Marilyn Manson should cover this.

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Wild nights in Liverpool 25 years ago

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:39:31 +0200

Last Friday I dived over the water to the Big City to see an exhibition of photographs taken in the early 80s by a dear friend of mine, and staged at The National Conservation Centre in Liverpool.

The photographer is an Italian fella by the name of Francesco Mellina.

He used to manage a band I was in (Hambi and the Dance) and also Dead or Alive, who treated him very shabbily after they got their first hit away.

Anyway.

His exhibition features pictures of bands and fans from the Eric's Club days and is truly astonishing.

I'd not seen him for the best part of 25 years. We'd not fallen out or anything, just drifted the way you do.

It was amazing to catch up after such a ridiculously long time.

And it's a cliche, but, after his press officer had disappeared and we were left to chat, it was just like the years faded away and we were right back in the day.

His show is incredible. Such wonderful pictures, such memories, such times, such clothes, such haircuts.

If you get a chance, try to pop along and wallow in the hedonism and innocence of the k-k-krazy days of Liverpool life and pop culture before the corporate money men came along and ruined it all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/image_galleries/erics_music_gallery.shtml

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