Ex Squeeze Me, Baking Powder?

Went for a quick drink with a pal the other night, it was to a pub that I hadn’t been to for a while.

He wasn’t there, so as is my usual habit I went to the bar and ordered a pint of the black stuff.

The pint was poured correctly and placed lovingly in front of me.

And then came the shock.

“Three Pounds Eighty please” sayeth the Bar Tender

At first I believe I was so stunned, it just didn’t compute, so I handed over £3.10 in coins thinking he had said £3.08, a bit pricey I thought but we are in an upmarket area.

But no.

“Sorry” he spake again “ It’s Three Pounds Eighty” enunciating more clearly, with particular emphasis on the ‘Eighty’  proffering back to me the 3 pound coins and 10 pence piece I had so recently placed in his palm. 

To which in a haze, I meekly removed the 10 pence piece in his hand and replaced it with a mumbled “Sorry” and another pound coin. I was rewarded momentarily with 20 pence in change.

I stumbled away from the bar (careful not to spill a drop of the precious, precious liquid).

My chum showed up soon after and made his way to the bar, I practically threw myself in his path to stop him before he did something his wallet would regret.

“We’re not staying” said I

And we didn’t.

So a word of advice, if you intend to have a beer in The Bulls Head, Chislehurst  take a bank loan.

Never in my drinking life have I paid that for a pint of beer, not even in the West End.

They say that the most expensive liquid in the world is now Ink-Jet Printer Ink, I think the Guinness at The Bulls Head could soon give it a run for it’s money

How the pint should have appeared for that price

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Public Service Announcement

Back Up, Back Up, Back Up

My external hard drive died yesterday, where in I keep all my photo’s since I joined the digital age, plus other stuff ; CV’s, letter, application forms, programs that I’ve purchased etc.

I’ve tried my best (and I do know about these things honest) but without some additional hardware and software it’s pretty much irrecoverable.

Why? do you ask, do I keep my photo’s on an external drive, well I had a computer crash a few years back that could only be recovered by a complete new install that wiped the whole hard drive and all the pictures and so forth.

Luckily I have a mild case of OCD and they were all saved to CD-R’s  and easily restored (but time consuming to reload)

So ever since  then everything is saved to an external hard drive, which is in itself  backed up to another external hard drive on a regular basis.

This other hard drive is kept in a secret Disaster Recovery location (my brothers house), well away from the original and only brought together on back up days*

This is in case of fire, flood theft, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arriving.

A bit long winded and a bit of a dull post .  But at least if disaster does occur, I only lose about a months worth of files at most, normally less. Rather than 10 years worth.

So, Back Up, Back Up, Back Up

 

*If you think that’s a bit extreme, when I lived in the Land of the Rising Sun, my concern over tsunamis or earthquakes and subsequent fire etc was such that I used to do a monthly back up burn to CD-R’s and post them back to the UK for safe keeping.

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Meddlesome Ratbag

 

I have no idea what incident they are alluding to, honest

Click for full size

From Viz, sometimes still as funny as it used to be

Hope they don’t mind the reproduction, I’ll take it down on request

Poets Day (38)

Grey dawn on the sand-hills–the night wind has drifted
All night from the rollers a scent of the sea;
With the dawn the grey fog his battalions has lifted,
At the call of the morning they scatter and flee.

Like mariners calling the roll of their number
The sea-fowl put out to the infinite deep.
And far over-head–sinking softly to slumber–
Worn out by their watching, the stars fall asleep.

To eastward, where resteth the dome of the skies on
The sea-line, stirs softly the curtain of night;
And far from behind the enshrouded horizon
Comes the voice of a God saying “Let there be light.”

And lo, there is light! Evanescent and tender,
It glows ruby-red where ’twas now ashen-grey;
And purple and scarlet and gold in its splendour–
Behold, ’tis that marvel, the birth of a day!

Sunrise On The Coast – Banjo Patterson

Sunrise Over The Red Sea
(click for larger)

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I Was Angry This Morning

I got up and read the headlines in the MSM online whilst watching the Labour mouthpiece BBC while they were spouting ASH lies and more from all sorts of bansturbating QUANGO’s.

All of them advertising themselves to justify their public cash bukkake party and proposing more restrictions to our liberty and freedom of choice at the behest of their political masters and their own twisted world view, including, but not limited to

Ban smoking in all vehicles, doctors demand
to
Raising the minimum price of alcohol 'benefits all'

With no rebuttal or counterargument as usual.

I tried to compose a post, but I just finished up mashing the keyboard with my fists and shouting “Caaaahnt” at the screen. (I am from Sarf Lahdan don’t y’know)

Imagine my surprise when I returned this evening (I cannot access either blogs or Google reader at work) to find that Al-Jahom had said exactly what I wanted to say.

And so with a major incline of the chapeau, I reproduce it in full. (I have added the ‘Boldness’ to their job titles)

National Fuck You Day

A very special and heart-felt fuck you to the following puritan cunts:

Professor Ian Gilmore
Cunt, Royal College of Physicians of London

Professor Andy Adam
Cunt, Royal College of Radiologists

Professor Steve Field
Cunt, Royal College of General Practitioners

Professor Alan Maryon Davis
Cunt, UK Faculty of Public Health

Dr Peter Nightingale
Cunt, Royal College of Anaesthetists

Professor Arulkumaran Sabaratnam
Cunt, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Professor Terence Stephenson
Cunt, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

Mr Ian W. R. Anderson
Cunt, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

Professor Dinesh Bhugra
Cunt, Royal College of Psychiatrists

Dr John Donohoe
Cunt, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

Dr Neil Dewhurst
Cunt, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

Professor Sir Neil Douglas
Fuckwit, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Professor Peter Furness
Cunt, Royal College of Pathologists

Mr John Heyworth
Cunt, The College of Emergency Medicine

Professor Frank B. V. Keane
Cunt, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Mr John Lee
Cunt, Royal College of Ophthalmologists

Professor Adrian Newland
Deputy Cunt, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Dr Richard Tiner
Cunt, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine

Professor David Tolley
Cunt of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (signing in a personal capacity)

Professor Derrick Willmot
Dick, Faculty of Dental Surgery

Yes. Fuck each and everyone of you, with an enriched uranium rod, and an Embassy No.1.

Sick and tired of these motherfuckers trying to dictate how I should live.

AJ

Thanks Al

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Mein Herr Your Wiener Schnitzel Has Arrived

although it’s probably a bit fresher than you’d like

Armed police had to gun down a wild boar that broke into the offices in Hamburg when a herd of the animals went on the rampage in the city's centre.

NOTE: If you click through one of the pictures is a bit ‘bloody’

It does seem a concerted and planned attack though if you read through the story

One of 12 boars smashed through a window to enter the building.

One of twelve! What about the rest?

Seven other boar headed for the city's Volksdorf underground station.

Concerted attack on the city's transport network

One was hit by a train though fortunately it did not derail any carriages as happened two months ago

“It did not derail any carriages as happened two months ago” WTF, how did this escape my keen eyed gaze, or was it hushed up, what else aren’t we being told.

The remaining six roamed freely before escaping back into the night.

Mission accomplished, city centre disrupted, panic caused, response times measured.

Hold on, that only makes eight, where’s the other four?

Three others were not so fortunate. Despite fire-fighters' attempt to rescue them they drowned after breaking through thin ice when crossing a lake in Volkersdorf.

Yes but what’s on the other side that they were trying to get to; Arms Dump, Electrical sub station?

Which leaves one unaccounted for and is probably now in deep cover as a sleeper agent posing as an Audi salesman from Dortmund,

I’ll say no more for now, only to add that if you look at the last picture in the series, you know the copper on the far right is thinking “Sausages”

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Kangaroos Prefer Single Combat

 

Unlike cowardly cows where it takes an entire herd to take out some elderly walker.

It seems that the marsupial denizens of The Lucky Land  prefer to go one on one and at least take on opponents that may have a chance of fighting back.

Wild 'boxing kangaroo knocks Australian jogger unconscious after assault'

The 25 year-old was out running when he was attacked by the rogue animal on Thursday.
The Australian Rules football player, from Canberra, the country’s capital, was then knocked unconscious after it punched him in the face and remembers little about the unprovoked attack.

I know I’ve posted the below before, but I think it’s worth posting again, if only to remind myself how close I came to almost certain death.

It still send shivers down my spine.

 

Mr Pavlov’s Cat Meets Potential Death Dealing Roo

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Sunday Steinman

 
Inspired by the broken winged Julia M 

Jim Steinman possibly the music equivalent of bacon

 

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Poets Day (37)

How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breathes his native air,
In his own grounds.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope

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Beggorah

Feeling rough as a badgers arse.

I hope St Patrick appreciates the effort that went in last night celebrating his Saints Day.

I must now answer the siren call of a double bacon sandwich and about a litre of ice cold Coca-Cola (full fat of course) .

Laters

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And The Award For Most Tenuous Irish Link On St Patrick’s Day Goes To……..

Still here’s a lovely colleen for you

Click all images for larger

If you’d like to see some more photo’s from the Tokyo, St Patrick's Day Parade from a couple of years back.

I’ve put a gallery up of a few pictures.

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Old Jokes Home (cont,)

 

Aeroflot crashed, killing dozens, 'because pilot was drunk'

Reminds of this from the 80’s

“For British Airways pilots it’s 8 Hours between bottle and throttle.

With Aeroflot pilots it’s 8 feet”

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Can We Stop With All The Giant Animals Please?

It’s only storing up trouble for later,

We’ve got Giant Horses, plans to bring back Giant Cows, Giant Owls rampaging across the countryside

And now Giant Sheeps

Is this the world's largest lamb? 'Mustang' Sally weighs in at a mammoth 23lb

Weighing a massive 23lb she doesn't so much gambol as stride across the pasture. The stocky-legged bruiser is three times the size of a normal lamb.

It’s madness I tell you, madness.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you when a bunny the size of a Volkswagen bites your legs off.

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A Reminder To Sub Editors

Spell check only works if the incorrectly spelt word is not an actual correctly spelt word. Just because it doesn’t have a wavy red line under it, doesn’t make it correct.

That’s why you should always proof read or get someone who can actually read to do it for you, you ignorant bell-ends.

And as for the pithy short headline, that’s just gibberish.

H/t The Daily Telegraph

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A British Labour Politician And Thief

 

I just had to take a screen shot before it’s changed back

click for larger

 

Hat Tip to Constantly Furious

Sunday Folk

Now I have to admit I’m not a big fan of English folk music, (some may say that I haven’t listened to enough, but that’s your opinion and at the present moment in time, I have no desire to test that hypothesis, considering what I have already heard)

And yet, I enjoy Irish folk (Both old and new, I have a full set of Clannad albums don’t you know) and even some Scottish folk, as such I even admit that in the right time and place the playing of the pipes brings tears to my eyes.

But English folk to me always conjures up images of bearded men in smocks, clutching pewter tankards filled with ‘Sluttocks Old Dirigible’* with a finger in one ear, atonally chanting something about farm girls, harvests and smocks.

However, apparently if you know the ‘secret code’ they were all about oppression by ‘The Man’ or contained more veiled references to the sexual act or private parts than ‘The Two Ronnie's’ and Benny Hill put together.

But someone leant me a copy of Mumford & Son’s -- ‘Sigh No More’ and told me to check it out.

And I have to say I really liked it.

I could be wrong on this, but to me there is enough that I recognise as a bit Celtic to stir the Gael heritage hidden away in my genes (Irish father, if you have to know).

So anyway below is Winter Winds, I hope you like it , i do. (video is cheesy don’t judge them by that)

*Now with extra twigs and airship

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Shaking The Money Tree

 

A win double for a certain group of researchers, they have managed to combine anti-fatty and anti alcohol into the same report.

Obese drinkers face liver 'double whammy'

Two studies of more than a million UK men and women suggest excess weight and alcohol act together to raise the risk of cirrhosis and other liver diseases.

That’s me Donald Ducked then.

But what are they going to do about it?

The authors of the research said "safe" alcohol limits for the overweight may need to be redefined.

Get to fuck

Those same made up ‘safe’ limit’s that are set by the puritans of the day that no general consensus can actually agree on

So more ‘limit’s’ leading to increased lobbying, leading eventually to banning.

No wonder the Government loves it.

A Department of Health spokesperson said:

"Prevention is always better than cure and our public health campaigns on drinking and obesity reflects this."

So that’s your funding guaranteed for 2010-2011 and probably doubled.

If only you had managed to shoe-horn smoking in there, you’d be set for life, you heinous Righteous cock suckers.

Please fuck off, get a real job and leave us alone, do you realise how hated you are. I guess not, if you did, you’d probably never leave the house and just sit in a dark room sobbing silently to yourself.

I wasn't going to drink today, but now I’m going down the pub to watch the Rugby along with plenty of Guinness and cigarettes, I shall probably round off the day with a bottle of Vino Collapso and a Butchers Salad.

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Compare & Contrast Crooks Both Nobel And Common

WEST WICKHAM: 30-year-old woman jailed for two years after fraud

Deserea Massey from West Wickham pleaded guilty to defrauding Bromley Council of housing and council tax totalling £19,695 during a five-and-a-half year period.

The Wickham Chase resident also illegally claimed £14,505 in income support from the Department of Work and Pensions.

Massey failed to reveal the property she was claiming benefits for was owned by her mother, meaning she had no rent liability.

All well and good, that’s what the law says, bang to rights

and as Bromley audit committee chairman Councillor Michael Tickner said

“This sentence shows prison is where fraudsters can end up if they try to cheat the council out of public funds.”

Unless of course they are a greedy crooked troughing fuck pig Labour Peer living in London in state subsidised housing whilst claiming to live elsewhere since 2001,

Baroness to escape charges on £98,000 expenses because of loophole

A Labour baroness escaped prosecution over her expenses today because of a legal loophole that lets peers claim their “main residence” is a home they visit only once a month.

Baroness Uddin was investigated by police over allegations that she wrongly claimed £98,000 for overnight stays in London, after falsely stating that her principal home was an unoccupied flat in Maidstone.

It’s almost as if the PTB want blood in the streets so they can bring in the Civil Contingencies Act.

Fuck the lot of them.

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Poets Day (36) Really Tardy Edition

Something dangerous is beginning:
I am coming late to my own self.
I made an appointment with my thoughts-
the thoughts were snatched from me.
I made an appointment with Faulkner-
but they made me go to a banquet.
I made an appointment with history,
but a grass-widow dragged me into bed.
Worse than barbed wire
are birthday parties, mine and others',
and roasted suckling pigs hold me
like a sprig of parsley between their teeth!
Led away for good
to a life absolutely not my own,
everything that I eat, eats me,
everything that I drink, drinks me.
I made an appointment with myself,
but they invite me to feast on my own spareribs.
I am garlanded from all sides
not by strings of bagels, but by the holes of bagels,
and I look like an anthology of zeros.
Life gets broken into hundreds of lifelets,
that exhaust and execute me.
In order to get through to myself
I had to smash my body against others',
and my fragments, my smithereens,
are trampled by the roaring crowd.
I am trying to glue myself together,
but my arms are still severed.
I'd write with my left leg,
but both the left and the right
have run off, in different directions.
I don't know- where is my body?
And soul? Did it really fly off,
without a murmured 'good-bye! '?
How do I break through to a faraway namesake,
waiting for me in the cold somewhere?
I've forgotten under which clock
I am waiting for myself.
For those who don't know who they are,
time does not exist.
No one is under the clock.
On the clock there is nothing.
I am late for my appointment
with me. There is no one.
Nothing but cigarette butts.
Only one flicker-
A lonely, dying, spark...

 

Being Late -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Translated by Albert C. Todd

Free At Last, Free At Last

Great Googly Moogly, He’s Free At Last.

The happy news greeted me this evening that Political Prisoner Nick Hogan had been released from gaol and was once more ensconced happily amongst his kith and kin.

Well done once again to Anna Raccoon and Old Holborn for organising the resistance and too all those who donated.

Whilst I know that it is only coincidence that Nick is released today (it should have been earlier apparently but thanks to the hurdle of the UK money laundering legislation that kicks in on amounts over £10,000, it wasn’t)

It does though seem almost to be an almost divine synchronicity that it should happen on National No Smoking Day.

As Nelson Munce would say “Ha-ha”

 

UPDATE 21:33  :Both Anna and OH get a name check on the BBC website report on the story Bolton Smoking Ban Landlord Freed From Jail . Amazingly there’s also a quote allowed from FOREST.

Don’t worry though I expect a counter quote from the government cock suckers at ASH to be appended anytime now

 

I Don’t Think All The Minorities Would Be Happy

I’m sure the Hindu’s would have something to say about it.

Cow*-Towing to the Minority
click for larger 

Or d’ye think Sarah meant this

H/t The London Evening Standard

*No Cows Were Injured In The Making Of This Picture

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International Wimmin’s Day – A Counterpoint.

 

Much like Al Jahom , I can’t be arsed waiting for International Men’s Day on November 19th.

And it’s about time this has another airing

Training Days Are Here Again

 

Yet another 2 days training to go to, getting up at sparrows fart and schlepping over to Bromley.

It does seem strange that they are continuing to push all this training at me, when I am still on a Fixed Term Agreement that ends in November, and no word yet of any likely extensions.

You’d think after the basic stuff I’d just be allowed to get on with the job, where as I’ll be the best trained temp going come the end.

The other joy is I will probably have to cross a picket line. Now normally this would fill me with horror as I am a believer in the right to withhold your labour over pay and conditions, should all other negotiations fail.

On this occasion though, I shall march through with head held high, why?

1. I am contractually obliged to attend work unless excused by booked holiday or sickness.

2. I am not a member of the Union

3. The union have already stated that whilst there are people still on FTA’s in the department no matter how good they are, there can be no redundancies of deadwood.

4, Even with the changes proposed, the compensation package on offer for pensions and redundancy is still one of the best outside of MP’s and FTSE 100 CEO’s.

 

See you all later

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Political Prisoner To Be Freed Soon

and make no mistake Nick Hogan is a political prisoner by any derivation of the word*

Victim of a law made up for pure social engineering purposes and pursued by politically motivated councils and courts ‘pour encourage les autres’

So a big thank you to Old Holborn and Anna Raccoon for organising the campaign,

Well done chaps.

 

*If you don’t believe me, have a scan through your daily paper or the blogs on the right side bar. Compare and contrast the sentences handed down to people who have actually committed what I would call ‘real’ crimes, rather than those who may be depriving The State of revenue from the imposition of fines from intemperate laws that The State knows they cannot pay.

A beautiful example is highlighted by JuliaM:  Keep Death Off The Roads

Poets Day (35)

The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.

Oh grant me the ease that is granted so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,
That relish their victuals and rest on their bed
With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.

‘Additional Poems’ No. XVII* - A E Housman

*It could easily be re-titled ‘The Bloggers Lament’

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Malicious, Spiteful and Evil

are just some of the words to sum up the treatment of ex-Pub Landlord Nick Hogan

I’m not going into it in depth, others around the blogosphere have vented their spleens admirably and I have nothing more to add at this time.

Some may say I’m biased as I am a smoker and you would be right. I am biased,

But I think this goes further than just smokers having a fag in pub.

As Old Holborn throws up in his latest post about the fact that.

The Courts have also indicated that they are taking into consideration the following matters:
•  public statements made by or on behalf of the person in control:
• that they do not agree with or support the smokefree legislation;
• that they are actively campaigning against it; or
• that they do not intend to do anything more than simply inform people that they should not smoke.

How about replacing smokefree with  Anti-alcohol, Salt Free, Fat Free  etc. The Govt already has it’s quango’s lobbying for legislation in these matters.

How long before we see a burger bar manger banged up?

Couldn’t happen?

Just wait an see.

Donate to the fund at  Old Holborn

Double Entendre Of The Day

Snigger.

 

Thanks to a tip from James I have removed the © Image.

and instead provide a link to another picture of a Giant Beaver (not unfortunately inflatable)

Giant Beaver

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