No fuel like an alien reptile fuel: Sin bin schools: Grounded old farts: Gas bags: The last glass eye maker: and The Vulgar Tongue dictionary.

Warmish and more than wettish at the Castle this morn, the fallic glu is still hanging on-I have this urge to buy a Gite and start brewing moonshine, the butler is enjoying the lack of fat teenager insertions into the furnace, and his Maj has discovered the joy of ambush from the kitchen windowsill.

And I popped dahn to a local plant place to replace the mock orange, parking was bit iffy...

As we look forward to next month’s budget

Alien reptile in disguise George (I need hearing aids in both ears) Osborne has allegedly decided that he won’t cut fuel duty.

Diesel prices hit 143.5p this week and a planned rise in fuel duty in the forthcoming budget has led to calls for protests at Westminster next month.

The Chancellor is set to raise fuel duty by 3p in August, after having deferred the rise from January. But his aides have said that the rise must go ahead as planned, in order to fund business tax cuts demanded by many in the Conservative Party. "Petrol prices have remained within a 5p range for some time," an aide to Knob head Osborne told the Financial Times.

"The price is a lot lower than it would have otherwise been if we had not intervened. We have no plans to change what we said at the autumn statement."

I would like to point out that I didn’t vote this load of shirt lifting tosspots into power-then again nor did anyone else...

And the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition

Has come up with yet another spiffing plan-Disruptive children are to be educated in “sin bin” schools that will concentrate on basic skills with longer teaching days.

Ministers will this week announce that the schools, to be known as pupil referral units, will be able to become academies with the power to set their own timetables, curriculum and staff wages.

They are designed to tackle what ministers have branded the “educational underclass”.

Head teachers have already been given powers to make it easier to expel unruly children. It is hoped that the disruptive pupils can be moved more quickly to the special units.

Bet there won’t be a stampede to move to those catchment areas....

Still in age related Blighty

The British Civil Aviation Authority said a LOT Polish Airlines flight from London to Warsaw was grounded when both pilots were found to be over 60.

The agency said inspectors had the flight grounded at London's Heathrow airport and passengers had to wait 5 hours for a reserve pilot to be flown in from Poland after inspectors discovered both pilots were over the age of 60, a violation of international air regulations, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

In 2006 the International Civil Aviation Authority required pilots over the age of 60 to be paired with pilots under 60 after it extended the maximum age to 65.

They could always get jobs as plumbers....

East to the land of wooden cutlery

At an oil/gas well near the west end of Huanghe 12th street in Binzhou, Shandong Province, oodles of villagers were using large plastic bags to carry natural gas.

On the morning of the 20th, when reporters first arrived, the oil extraction machinery was operating normally; a gas canister and large gas furnace were beside the machine with no people standing guard. At 10 am, a middle aged woman brought a large plastic bag to the machine. The woman skilfully opened the valve to the gas and connected it to the bag she was carrying; the plastic bag quickly rose and grew to be a 6 meter long, 1 meter wide balloon. After about 4 minutes the bag was full.

According to reports, there is more than one oil well in Binzhou; many other villages near oil/gas wells also had cases of villages self-filling gas. “Some villages directly connect the oil pipe to the village and divide it among the household. Once there was a power outage to the pipeline, uninformed villages continue to use gas to burn stoves, by the time the pipeline came back on, the rush of gas ignited the fires causing an explosion,” recalled an oil worker at Shengli Oil Field in Binzhou.

 

No wonder my gas bill is so bleedin high….

Back in Blighty where the one eyed man is king

In a tiny room in a north London suburb, Jost Haas makes a glass eye.

He holds a glass tube over a Bunsen burner, twirling it constantly, blows through the molten glass, and turns it into a sphere.

Haas uses coloured glass sticks to match the colour of the eye - not just the pattern of the iris, but the red veins of the sclera.

He also has to make the glass eye fit the shape of Dan's bad eye, and there is only one chance to get it right.

A glass eye is not a large solid marble. It is a hollow half sphere, a thin shell that fits over the non-working eye, if it is still there. Otherwise it goes over a ball that has been surgically implanted into the eye socket and attached to the eye muscles.

Most prosthetic eyes will have a degree of movement.

Haas is from Germany, which has always made the finest glass eyes. He came here in the 1960s. But now he is close to retirement, and when he switches off his Bunsen burner for good there will be no more glass eye makers in Britain.

Thank him/her upstairs for acrylics then...

And finally: 

Somewhere on the interweb

When it was published in 1811 by soldier Francis Grose the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was a hit but now it is getting tongues wagging again after being published online.

It was first available when Britain was under threat from Napoleon but it has now been re-published for free at the Project Gutenberg online digital library.

The book includes gems such as 'ace of spades' for a widow, 'all-a-mort' to be struck dumb, and 'angling for farthings', which means to beg out of a prison window with a cap or box.

Or:

ABBESS: Mistress of a brothel.

BABES IN THE WOOD: Criminals in stocks or pillory.

BLIND CUPID: Backside.

BOB TAIL: Lewd woman. Also an impotent man or a eunuch.

BREAD AND BUTTER FASHION: One upon the other. "John and his maid were caught lying bread and butter fashion."

COLD PIG: Punishment inflicted on "sluggards" who lie too long in bed — pulling off all the bedclothes and throwing cold water on them.

COW-HEARTED: Fearful.

DOCK: Lie with a woman.

DUGS: Woman's breasts.

ELBOW SHAKER: A dice player.

FLASH THE HASH: Vomit.

GLAZIER: Someone who breaks windows to steal goods for sale.

GOSPEL SHOP: Church.

HEMPEN WIDOW: One whose husband was hanged.

HOYDON: Romping girl.

INEXPRESSIBLES: Breeches.

JOLLY: The head.

KING'S PICTURES: Coin, money.

LEFT-HANDED WIFE: Concubine. Based on an ancient German custom where, when a man married his concubine or a woman greatly his inferior, he gave her his left hand.

NOISY DOG RACKET: Stealing brass knockers from doors.

OVEN: Great mouth.

PIECE: Wench. A girl who is more or less active and skilful in the amorous congress.

POISONED: Big with child.

QUEER PLUNGERS: Cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea.

RESURRECTION MEN: Persons employed by the students in anatomy to steal dead bodies out of churchyards.

RUM DOXY: Fine wench.

SHOOT THE CAT: Vomit from excess of liquor.

SHY COCK: One who keeps within doors for fear of bailiffs.

SNOOZING KEN: Brothel.

STRIP ME NAKED: Gin.

TIT: Horse or smart little girl.

TWIDDLE-DIDDLES: Testicles.

TWIDDLE POOP: Effeminate-looking fellow.

UNLICKED CUB: Rude, uncouth young fellow.

VAMPER: Stockings.

WINDOW PEEPER: Collector of window tax.

XANTIPPE: Socrates’ wife, a shrew or scolding wife.

YELLOW BOYS: Guineas.

ZEDLAND: Great part of the West Country where the letter Z is substituted for S.

My favourite is TWIDDLE POOP- a perfect description of U-Turn Cam, What’s his name Glegg and Alien reptile in disguise- George (I’ve lost my handbag) Osborne.

That’s it: I’m orf to get a TV filter.

And today’s thought:

Should have gorn to Specsavers.

Angus

Gassing up: Gassing down: Money talks: NIMBY Owen Jones: Ferrari box: Biting the bullet: and Iglu-Dorf.

Even colder at the Castle this morn, the butler has stoked the furnace to the brim with drunk, fat teenagers and the ground is so hard that I have had to issue his Maj with a pick so that he can do his business.

Le Lurgy is still hanging around and I have this strange urge to wear a beret and built up shoes.

Over in Eastern Europe things are getting hot

According to “officials” the freezing weather sweeping across Europe has led to a shortage of vital Russian gas supplies to several countries.

Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Italy are allegedly seeing gas supplies decrease.

Gazprom, the Russian gas export monopoly, said on Friday it was supplying as much gas as it could spare.

"We are doing everything possible... all the systems are working in a stable manner," spokesman Sergey Komlev said.

Time to get the “Snuggly” out....

And talking of hot air

The new Energy secretary Ed Davey has pledged to tackle soaring power bills in the first few weeks of his new job.

He will set out new plans that will allow homeowners to group together to buy cheap gas and electricity at knock-down rates. Bills have soared over the past five years.

The plans are based on the principles of the ‘Groupon’ website, which features discounted gift certificates for members that can to buy expensive products cheaply.

That’ll help-not....

Meanwhile over in the street where the millionaires live

A Freedom of Information Act request has disclosed that in the year after the general election, £32,651 was spent on refurbishing the Chancellor’s traditional residence and the flat at No 10 where reptilian alien in disguise George (my wallet is so full I have to use a van to move it about) Osborne actually lives.

David Cameron was previously forced to publish details of a £64,000 makeover of the flat in 11 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister and his family live.

Allegedly £32,651 was spent on “maintenance works” at the state rooms, offices and the No 10 flat.

Work carried out specifically on shit faced Osborne’s flat in 10 Downing Street included “electrical works and plumbing, structural improvements, general maintenance and restoration and flooring”.

A Treasury spokesman said last night: “No. 11 Downing Street is a Grade I-listed building and as such the Government is obliged to ensure that it is maintained to an appropriate standard.

 

Ah... the old if it’s old throw money at it excuse-unless you are a pensioner....

Dahn to the land of lurgy

The former head of cosmetics giant L'Oreal, Lindsay Owen-Jones, has asked a court in France to shut down a chip stand near his apartment in the ski resort of Val d'Isere.

Owen-Jones, a British citizen who led L'Oreal from 1988 to 2006, filed a complaint along with three neighbours in October asking a court in nearby Albertville to order the chip stand closed as a neighbourhood nuisance.

The complaint said the stand was a visual, auditory and olfactory nuisance and was violating local planning by-laws. The plaintiffs are also demanding compensation for a decrease in their property values.

 

Because he is worth it.....

Right a whimsy to the land of red F 0.5 motors

Ferrari unveiled their ‘Scuderia Ferrari 2012 single-seater’ on the team’s website after snow disrupted plans to launch in front of a selected audience on Thursday.

However, although Ferrari’s driver Felipe Massa described the new car as ‘aggressive’ looking, F1 enthusiasts flooded social networks and message boards with criticism over the ugly 'boxer's nose' design.

‘Ferrari F2012 is not a looker. Back to ugly noses like the shovel experiments of the 70's,’ said one Twitter user.

‘Ferrari F2012 is one ugly F1 car. Is it the ugliest car to ever wear the Ferrari badge?’ asked another.

Drivers Massa and Fernando Alonso were on hand at the unveiling to chip in with their less than overwhelming take on the new design.

‘We still need to get used to his new nose which is very strange, but apart from the nose the car is very aggressive, very nice, and hope we are going to see a very competitive car from beginning to end,’ said Massa.

While Alonso said: ‘With the new car the first feeling has been very good from the beginning.

'I like the creative shape that we see in this new car and I think when a car surprises you from the first look it is usually a positive thing. I quite like the car, I hope it is fast.'

Designed by BMW?

East to the land of whatever

A 74-year-old man died when he swallowed his dentures during a sex session with a prostitute.

The pensioner collapsed at the end of a 30-minute session with the 62-year-old hooker.

Paramedics rushed to the scene but the man, known as Chen, was pronounced dead by the time he arrived at hospital.

Medical staff later found his dentures stuck in his throat, following the incident in New Taipei City, Taiwan.

The prostitute told authorities: "He fell back onto the bed. His eyes were open but he was not moving although I shook his body and tried to wake him up."

At least he went with a smile in his neck....

And finally: 

Back to the cold bit of Europe

Iglu-Dorf- a concept hotel that offers igloo villages in seven locations in Andorra, Switzerland and Austrian which are rebuilt every year, using 3,000 tons of snow from the Pyrenees and the Alps.

At first, the igloos were built block by block, the old Inuit way, but that took a team of five people two weeks to build just one 8-foot-wide and 8-foot-tall igloo, and they could only open the resorts at the end of January. They had to come up with a faster way, and found balloons were the best option. They filled up these big balloons, covered them up with snow and waited until it hardened, then simply deflate the balloons and voila, perfect igloos.

Although Iglu-Dorf does offer heated rooms with a stove, most of the snow igloos are only equipped with sleeping bags to keep you warm, but there is the cheese fondue fountain, or you can jump into the hot-tub built right in the snow.

Prices start at €99 per night, and go all the way up to €439, on New Year’s Eve.

Think I’ll stay in the Castle…

That’s it: I’m orf to plug the laptop into my rear exit 

And today’s thought:

Angus

Tired of living-can’t afford to die: Up your Gas: Germany Invaded by Columbia: Criminal Veg: French Tweets: Monkey medics: and a bit more of Pippa.

‘Orrible at the Castle this morn, damp, cold, and breezy, yesterday turned out ‘Orrible as well until 6 of the pm, the bollards are still missing and his Maj has discovered a new way to come and go.

Apparently the C of E is planning to increase the cost of funerals by nearly 50 per cent to bring consistent pricing across its parishes and raise extra revenue at a time of continued economic hardship.

In a proposal set to be discussed today at the church's General Synod in York, the price of a funeral will rise from £102 to £150 while weddings will go up from £284 to £425.

Church leaders stress that the move is an attempt to streamline the way churches charge for their services by bringing in a standard fee in response complaints that parishes often had different pricing lists. But many will feel hit hard by the price increases which have been replicated elsewhere.

Last year, a survey by the National Association of Funeral Directors found that, across the country, charges by local authorities for cremation and burial had risen by up to 48 per cent since 2007. The fees charged by funeral directors for a typical funeral reached an average of £1,515, up 3.25 per cent since 2007.

I wish; it cost me over £3,000 back in 2005 for “M”s do.

And that gracious, caring company British Gas has decided to hike the cost of gas by 18pc next month, some customers face a 24 per cent rise in their gas costs, depending on where they live and how they are charged. An additional 16 per cent average rise in electricity bills will add £190 to the typical yearly dual fuel bill.

British Gas warned customers there may be little point in attempting to change supplier as the move looks set to be repeated throughout the industry, due to wholesale prices having risen by almost a third since the winter.

This latest rise, which comes on top of a 7 per cent increase in December, was announced only two days after a study by uSwitch.com showed that 6.3 million households in the UK are classed as being in fuel poverty, for spending at least 10 per cent of their income on energy bills.

Consumer Focus condemned the rise, saying that consumer bills were now at a historical high despite wholesale prices still being a third lower than the peak they hit in 2008.  

So who is telling porkies?

 Right a smidge to the land of leather trousers and invasions

Experts in the western German town of Bexbach are still searching a supermarket for a spider that jumped out of a Colombian fruit crate on Friday. The eight-legged escape artist is thought to be a highly venomous banana spider.

A spokesman for the grocery store told German news agency DAPD that the supermarket remained closed to ensure customer safety.

He said experts were "frantically" working to track down the creature, though there had still been no trace of it.

Staff from the zoo in Neunkirchen are at the scene, and zoo director Norbert Fritsch said the risk is not to be underestimated if the arachnid in question was, indeed, a banana spider.

He said the spider's bites can be life-threatening, even for a healthy adult. Banana spiders can grow to be 13 centimetres in size. The term refers to two genera of spiders, one of which is large but relatively harmless, and another highly venomous species.

 Still, you could use a rolled up copy of the defunct NOTW for defence if you go shopping there.

 Over to the very ex-colonies

After a warning, a ticket and now a misdemeanour charge, an Oak Park, Mich., woman faces up to 93 days in jail for refusing to remove a vegetable crop from her front lawn.

Julie Bass says that she thought it would be "really cool" for the neighbours and kids to see a front yard garden, but some community members don't appreciate the vegetable plot.

According to a local ABC affiliate, city code states that "all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material."

Posing the question: Are cabbages, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers "suitable" for the front lawn?

"If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers," Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski told MyFoxDetroit.

Nevertheless, Bass has refused to comply with the city's requests to remove the plants or place them in her backyard.

"It's definitely live. It's definitely plant. It's definitely material. We think it's suitable," Bass said.

Surprised they recognised them as vegetables..........(Clarkson would be proud of me).

 

Across to the bottom bit of Carolina

A University of South Carolina professor who encourages her students to use Twitter in French class will be getting honorary knighthood from the French government.

University spokeswoman Peggy Binette says associate professor Lara Anderson has been awarded the Order of Academic Palms for advancing the French language.

The honour was established by Napoleon Bonaparte. Binette says the award and medallion will be presented by the French consul this fall.

Anderson is the author of a book about using social networking and online study to advance foreign language instruction and has promoted new technologies for foreign language teaching techniques.

Anderson says the use of Twitter in the classroom allows students to develop conversation skills and build a sense of communal language learning in and out of the classroom.  

Yeah right, and it saves all that teaching rubbish...

 Right a huge amount of imperial units

Patients at an Indian hospital have been receiving some surprise visitors after monkeys learned how to operate its automatic doors.

Local rhesus macaque monkeys soon worked out how to use the motion-censor doors and have since been running amok in the wards, kitchens and corridors.

They have terrorised patients in the neurosurgery department and recovery rooms, stealing food, playing with medical equipment, attacking staff and generally causing chaos.

With an average of one monkey bite case in the hospital every week, authorities have taken steps to scare off the macaques.

They have hired two larger monkeys - grey langurs – to chase them away.

 Sounds like the “security” at my local butchers shop.

 And finally:

Just to wind up James

Pippa Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sports-loving sister, has joined her local golf club in Berkshire.

In recent weeks, she has been photographed running in a triathlon, taking part in the Highland Cross Challenge and cheering Andy Murray to victory in the quarter finals at Wimbledon. Now, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister is to add another sport to her CV: golf.

Pippa, 27, who is courting the former England cricketer Alex Loudon, has joined the golf club at Bradfield College, a boarding school a few miles away from the Middleton family’s home in Berkshire.

“It’s the talk of the club,” gushes one member, somewhat breathlessly. A member of staff at Bradfield College Golf Club confirms that the Middletons have been spotted on the greens. However, Nick Barton, the club secretary, declines to celebrate his glamorous recruit.

 Is that a hole in one?

That’s it: I’m orf to decode a Potato

And today’s thought: Does killing time damage eternity? 

Angus

Cooking with gas: Stumpy Numpty: Down the drain: Bugarach magic: Don’t do it yourself: and a flying sheep.

Tipping it down at the Castle this morn, just returned from Tesco after purchasing the usual-stale bread, gruel and pussy food, and I dropped into the fuel forecourt bit to buy a pint of petrol, went in to pay and I see that the recession has hit hard-Tesco is now giving just one point for every two gallons of go juice-half of the previous amount.

That should help turnover.

His majesty has discovered rolled up foil balls, he has a nice collection of  twenty or so which he hides under the wardrobes, behind the washing machine and anywhere else he can think of so that I will make another and then recovers them and puts them all in a neat pile.

I won’t mention the Microsoft word....still trying to recover my data.....

The Piss Poor Policies Coalition Millionaires Club has announced that 800,000 of the poorest pensioners will be among the first to receive the new Warm Home Discount, worth at least £120 this year.

Payments are also expected to be made to disadvantaged families, the disabled and the long-term sick.

Energy companies are to be required by law to give rebates totalling £1.1 billion over the next four years, three times as much as they provided under the previous voluntary arrangements.

The regulations introducing the new scheme are already in force, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change. The Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, said: “The Warm Home Discount will give the most vulnerable pensioners practical help to manage rising energy bills through an annual rebate. Energy companies will be required by law to provide this support.”

 

And what will the “Energy” companies do? Put up their prices to cover the loss.

Up North

For five years Sean Murphy was driven to distraction by a painful blemish that no amount of creams, ointments or doctors' appointments could cure.

So he came up with his own radical and permanent procedure to remove the stubborn wart forever - he blasted it with a 12-bore shotgun.

But not only did the blast take off almost his entire finger, it also left him facing 15 years in jail for the illegal possession of a firearm.

Yesterday, with only a stump to show for the middle of his left hand, and a suspended 16-week prison sentence, he insisted he had no regrets.

“I’m happy with that,” he said outside Doncaster Magistrates’ Court, South Yorkshire.

 Pillock.....

Even further North

A businessman tore up and flushed a handful of 'fake' £20 notes down the toilet - only to later find they were real.

The man, who does not wish to be named, was among a number of businessmen led to believe their cash was counterfeit on the Western Isles of Scotland.

It happened after bank staff became suspicious of £10 and £20 notes on the Isle of Lewis and a police inquiry was launched, reports STV.

The town's banks and many local shops stopped accepting £10 and £20 notes and purchased ultra-violet scanners in a bid to catch the counterfeit notes.

But the 'fake' notes have since been scrutinised by experts from the Serious Organised Crime Agency who pronounced them all absolutely genuine.

The businessman complained: "This is a right mess and it was caused by the RBS and Bank of Scotland.

"I tore up the £20 notes returned to me by the bank as fakes and I put them down the toilet to stop them getting back into circulation.

"I thought that was my public duty. How do I prove that and who is going to compensate me?"

 Pass......

Across the bit over the Chunnel

A small French town has come under scrutiny by the official cult watchdog after droves of visitors descended on it, claiming it is the only place on Earth that will survive a 2012 apocalypse.

A report by the watchdog, Miviludes, published yesterday said the village of Bugarach near Carcassonne should be monitored in the run-up to 21 December, 2012, when the gullible say the world will end, according to a supposed Mayan prophecy.

Bugarach (population 200), has long been considered magical, partly due to what locals claim is an "upside-down mountain" where the top layers of rock are older than the lower ones.

Mr Fenech said he recently visited Bugarach, and found six settlements set up by members of the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment. Other "gurus" and messianic groups have been organising fee-paying conferences at local hotels. "This is big business," he said.


Good luck with that....

Over the whatnot to the left

Sales of suicide kits, like the do-it-yourself asphyxiation hood used by a man to kill himself late last year, could soon be outlawed in the state of Oregon.

The state's House of Representative passed the bill on Monday to ban the products. It must now be considered in the state Senate, which passed similar legislation in May.

Sponsors say the bill would in no way impinge on a landmark 1997 state law legalizing physician-assisted suicides for terminally ill individuals in Oregon.

Washington is the only other state with such a statute on the books.

The newly passed Oregon bill was sparked by notoriety surrounding an elderly California woman who sells self-asphyxiation kits through a mail-order business, and the December suicide of one of her customers from Eugene, Oregon, 29-year-old Nicholas Klonoski.

 No repeat business there then....

 And finally:

 Right a lot to Welsh Wales

Fire fighters risked life and 'lamb' to rescue a sheep - which was stuck on the roof of a house.

Residents dialled 999 after the sheep was spotted scrambling across roof tiles in the remote village of Pontycymer, South Wales.

A team from Bridgend Fire and Rescue Service took 40 minutes to bring the animal down from the terraced row using a Large Animal Rescue appliance.

A spokesman for Bridgend Fire and Rescue Service said the sheep had got onto the roof by climbing up from a garage at the rear of the terrace.

He said: "We have never had anything like that before, though we have found sheep in some difficult places. 

I am not even going to mention those boots by Wellington.

 That’s it: I’m orf to oscillate some Neutrinos.

And today’s thought: Anywhere is walking distance, if you’ve got the time.

Angus

MICRO MANAGEMENT MISSES THE BIG PICTURE

The Government sems to be obsessed with “arranging” our lives for us, telling us what to eat, what not to eat, how we should recycle, so that it can be buried in a large hole when we do bother, how we should drink less, and then allows beer to be sold for less than a pound per pint.

It tells us that we should use public transport to save the planet, and to reduce congestion, and then allows the companies that run the trains to hit us with swingeing fare increases.

It tells us that we should make our houses greener by installing double glazing and loft insulation, then allows the energy companies to continue their “profit at our expense” with crippling gas and electricity charges.

It tells us we should take out private medical and pension insurance, when it has poured £billions into the banks, and even more £billions into endless numbers of managers, and admin staff in the NHS. And £millions more on useless quangos, comittees and commissions.

It tells us that it has sent £millions overseas to help “poor” countries when millions of people are living in poverty in his country.

It preaches at us to save for the future when thousands of people are losing their jobs and houses, then it tells us to spend to lift us out of the recession it put us into.

I really don’t think the Government has a clue what it is doing, it contradicts itself on a daily basis, it does more u-turns than a london taxi, and is unable to make its collective mind up.

Why don’t they let us run our lives the way we want to and do the job they are paid to do, which is to make decisions that benefit the people that voted them into office (apart from Gord of course) US?

“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts”-Henry Adams, 1907

Angus

ECONOMIC TERRORISM………OR JUST BLACKMAIL

This is a phrase that has started to be used with more frequency.

I suppose the Russia-Ukraine thing: pay us what we want or we will cut off your gas supplies-BBC NEWS has brought it to peoples attention.

Ukraine says they have paid, and Russia says they haven’t.

Putin says: “The era of cheap gas is coming to an end “what Firkin “era” of cheap gas? Suppliers of our gas are paying $500 or more per 1000 cubic metres, which by the way allows us customers to work out how much we SHOULD be paying the gas companies.

There are also moves afoot to form a “cartel” of gas exporting counties, but all involved of course denies this.

But where does this end? Will OPEC suddenly decide that oil is too cheap and if we don’t pay the price THEY think we should, will they stop selling oil to us?

Of course they won’t, because doing something like that will eventually destroy their economy, having all their eggs in one basket is a disadvantage to them.

The same applies to Russia, they are dependant on gas exports, and treating one “customer” in this way will only piss off the others.

Mind you the “decadent” western gas suppliers would only pass the exorbitant prices on to us, the same way they have been for years.

The price of gas which is linked to oil prices: should be determined by market forces, and an attempt by a country which is still reeling from the collapse of the Communist hierarchy to blackmail Ukraine will not endear it to the rest of the world.

“Russia's Vladimir Putin had earlier warned Ukraine not to disrupt the transit of gas to Europe.”

Err- am I being dim here but isn’t it Russia that is disrupting supplies?

Is this a form of terrorism disrupting the lives of the people, or just “my dads bigger than your dad”?

“Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.”

Seems to fit this definition.

"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear."

Alan Corenk

Got The Hump

I woke up this morning with the hump.
I don't know why, but I can't do much about it.

So pin back your lugs.

I don't usually write about "celebrities" but Ross and Brand has really pissed me off. This pair of "entertainers" carried out an abusive, childish, cowardly "prank" on Andrew Sachs.

Personally I don't like either of them, Ross just annoys me with his demeanour, and Brand (WHO) is about as funny as having a pineapple shoved up your arse.

Ross should really know better at his age (almost 50), and Brand (WHO) should take a look in the mirror if he wants someone to ridicule.

I object to my license money being used to pay people such as this, £6 Million a year for Ross and 25p for Brand (WHO).

When he comes back from his hols the DG of the BBC should sack the pair of them, I for one don't expect this kind of behaviour from a Public Service broadcaster.


One down.

The second is the two thousand odd idiots who despite being told that there were 80 mph winds and copious amounts of rain coming, still decided that they would carry on with their run.

The obvious thing happened, they all got lost. Their organisers were "advised" by the police to cancel the event, but ignored the advice.

Putting the rescuers of these idiots at risk and at a vast cost.

Some of the "runners" said that they were all experienced and had survival gear. If they were so experienced they should have realised what would happen, selfish, arrogant and tunnel visioned are the words that come to mind.

And thirdly?

I looked out the window and everything was white, yes it had snowed, after 15 minutes scraping and warming up the car I got onto the main road, and had the gritters been out? NO.

WHY?

And.

It was absolutely freezing indoors this morning, I had a choice along with millions of others, and do I put the heating on? And then I thought about it, and decided yes, I will be warm, because what is the worst that can happen, if I can't pay the bill they will cut me off, and I won't be any worse off than I am now.

And if enough people get cut off the firkin government might actually get of their collective arses and do something about it


That's all for now, but the mood I am in I may be back.


Angus Dei