The middle of nowhere

Did you get the Bounty question? The answer is Pitcairn Island, so we are clearly sailing west.

As for this one, I'd be amazed if you guessed it as I had never heard of the place. Although it's clearly where Gordon has disappeared to lately. Here he is looking relaxed, tanned and playing his ukelele...

Cryptic puzzle

No prizes for guessing that the last one was Easter Island.

A bit of lateral thinking required for this one though...

Have you guessed where I am yet?

OK - the last one was Santiago in Chile.

Shagged out after a considerable flight via Madrid which is not an airport you want to spend a three hour changeover in. But then what airport is?

This one should be a little easier! No, this isn't a photograph of Gordon Brown's cabinet. If it was, the country would probably be in a much better state...

The Quango Song (What a Waste!)

Look - just 'cos I'm out flying somewhere over the ocean doesn't mean that I can't just interject the odd nugget...

Here's a song I did with my favourite backing group, the Blockheads, to commemorate, hopefully, burning (or in this case drowning) all those quangos - although I'll believe it when I see it

Sod it! I'm off to...

I'm off on holiday for a few weeks - 5 to be exact. So I've left you a little quiz to keep you occupied while I'm away.

 Can you guess where I am yet? Answer in the next (but one) post...

Smokey drinkey...

I don't usually get involved in the arguments about smoking and drinking other than to say it's up to the individual how he treats his own body, but I thought this piece might just cheer up my old friends the Filthy Engineer and Leg Iron.

This is Arthur Langran. Last month, Arthur celebrated his 100th birthday. Congratulations, Arthur.

Arthur was asked to what he attributed the secret of his long and active life. He told us that he had smoked al least 10 ciggies every day since the age of 20 and religiously drinks a glass of Macallum single malt scotch every night before going to bed.

So that's over 300,000 cigarettes and few hundred crates of scotch. Oh, and he also smokes a pipe. So how has this effected him?

His son, who fortuitously for Arthur's scotch habit owns a pub, says "His doctor has said it's not worth telling him to give up the cigarettes. He's still in good health and gets up stairs whenever he wants."

So take heart - there are lies, damn lies and statistics...

Lying Eyes (The Miliband mix)

This one was, frankly, too obvious to miss so I just had to do it!

Here's a version of the Eagles' classic "Lyin' Eyes" suitably adapted to take account of Red Ed's piercing stare...

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+++ UPDATE +++
This video was also available on YouTube, but the humourless bastards have blocked the audio due to copyright infringement - despite the fact that the music track is NOT the Eagles original and that the LYRICs are originals.

So fuck 'em - watch it on EyeTube instead!

Get ready for the winter of discontent

Apparently, Ed Miliband thinks it is OK for his party to support strikes to defend against the forthcoming budget cuts and privatisations.

Well that's fine, Ed. Except that it's easy to talk bollocks when you're in opposition.

Let's look at the one inalienable fact that no-one seems to be able to understand in your new Old Labour party : It is cheaper to outsource services than it is for local councils to do it themselves. Otherwise, they would not be doing it.

On the face of it, this is patent nonsense. How can it be cheaper to employ companies who build in profit margins? Surely, if the council uses it's own resources on a non profit making basis then it must be cheaper? But it isn't...

So why is this? Well, the simple fact is that council services are very inefficient because they are tied down by the restrictive practices that your marvellous Trade Union movement has saddled on local government.

So when you are standing out on the picket line protesting, remember - you brought it on yourselves...

Dear National Grid...

Recently on the BBC, I was impressed to listen to a report about a music festival in Scandinavia that was only running on renewable energy.

Apparently, the site was next to a hydro electric plant and the festival was powered by plugging into their equivalent of the National Grid. Now, I thought that by plugging into the Grid for their power, they were taking a mixture of energy sources connected to the grid at that time, not just the one next door.

But the BBC cannot possibly be talking bollocks. It's the BBC.

So please can you arrange for my house to only recieve power from green, renewable energy sources in the future rather than all these sources that pollute the planet. I'm not sure how you do this, but if the BBC says it can be done, then I am sure you know the answer.

Looking forward to being able to push the big green power button,

Yours sincerely,

Ivor Bigbottie,
Green Acres,
Lower Carbon,
NE1 4T.

Bastard!

Whatever happened to the good old days when this word meant something completely different ?

bastard [ˈbɑːstəd ˈbæs-], noun
"a person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate baby, child, or adult"

Straightforward stuff. Some bloke knocked up an unmarried woman. Legal consequences followed. The overseers for the poor of the parish hunted down the father and made him support the child. Often this involved putting considerable 'pressure' on the woman to reveal who he was. Stigma was attached to the dastardly deed.

Some of us might even be old enough to remember when women were bundled off by their parents to live with relatives far away while they had their bastard baby. After the birth it was unceremoniously adopted so the mother could return home with her reputation unblemished.

Now I'm not advocating that we should return to these draconian times, but I do think we should regard unwanted pregnancies in unmarried women as just a little more than a minor inconvenience.

OK, so it has become socially acceptable to not bother with even civil marriage. However, when you bring a child into the world it carries certain obligations. If you are working on the basis that marriage is not for you because you regard your relationship as transitory, then why are you having children?

Our new Labour (no pun intended!) party leader claims to escew family values and wants to support the family through the welfare system, and yet he has one bastard child already and is in the process of producing another.

Children are being born today with no hope of ever tracing their roots because either the mother doesn't know who the father is or because the father - as in Miliband's case - is so disinterested he doesn't even bother to get his name on the birth certificate.

If this is you, then you are a selfish bastard - in the other sense of the word...

Solving the University crisis

If you have been unsucessful in getting a place at University this year, then here's an idea for the coalition government which could solve the problem for future generations at a stroke...

A friend of mine has a Bsc(Hons) in Therapeutic Radiography. To get that, her acadamic year was 48 weeks - not 30 like you lot!

Here's the bright idea. We should increase the academic year from 30 weeks to 45. This still leaves students and tutors with 7 weeks off every year - which is a damn site more than the working population gets.

By doing this we could reduce the length of a degree course from three years to two, hence at a stroke increasing the number of places available at univerity by a third. It would also make students more aware of the conditions they will be working to when they get out into the big, bad job world. It would also save money through economies of scale.

And thinking about it, teachers are underworked anyway. I'd kill for their holidays...

A song for global warming day

Today is 10:10:10 and is being marked by a day of action to force people to make a commitment to reduce their emissions by 10%.

I use the word 'force' advisedly due to a recent appalling bad taste 'mini-movie' - that's a propaganda video to you and me - which shows people being blown up if they don't agree with the eco-loonies at 10:10UK.

Anyway, here is an original song by me which I am submitting as my contribution to 10:10:10 day :

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Incidentally, the biggest contribution to greenhouse gasses is the carbon dioxide produced by people when they breathe out, so if we could get some of these prats to stop breathing...

Thomas and the Shadow Cabinet

See the Fat Controller, Red Ed Miliband, select his team from the engines at Tidworth Sheds.

It's nearly as ridiculous as the real thing...

The Ratshitter Rap

As I seem to be on a roll this week taking the piss out of the catholic church - and let's face it, it ain't difficult - here's something for the weekend...

Pope Benedict XVI does 'The Ratshitter Rap'

+ + + + + STOP PRESS + + + + +

My good friend, Old Nick tells me that I have just been nominated for burning at the stake for this little piece of 'heresy'...

Fuck off, Benny [2]

Benny Ratshitter has struck again!

Now you have probably worked out by now that I do not exactly have a lot of time for the conclave of hypocritical bastards that comprise the catholic church. Well, this occasion is no exception.

Robert Edwards is the genius that gave the world IVF, as a result of which some 4.5 million infertile mothers have been granted the gift of motherhood. But does the catholic church think that as a result of this he deserves to be awarded the Nobel prize for medicine? Like fuck they do!...

Ignazio Carrasco de Paula, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the award was 'entirely misplaced' and went on to say that 'Without Edwards there would be no market for human eggs; without Edwards there would not be freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred to a uterus, or, more likely, used for research or left to die, abandoned and forgotten by all.'

He also blamed Professor Edwards for the 'current state of confusion of assisted procreation, children with four or five parents, babies born from their grandmothers.'

Well let's be honest : Firstly we would really expect the catholic church to get it's facts right would we? Secondly, if you don't play the game, then don't try and make the rules - unless of course you are prepared to admit that a priest's vow of celibacy is nothing more than a sham!

I know the pope is officially infallible, but you can fuck off on this one, Ratshitter...

1010 new TV advertisement

Those PR geniuses at 1010 have just released a new 20 second TV advertisement. See what you think...

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Dignity in Dying

Returning to a controversial subject for which I have been criticised before on this blog, I would like to introduce you to someone who talks a lot of sense.

The lady on the left is Dr. Ann McPherson CBE. Ann qualified as a doctor in 1968 and was a general practitioner in Oxford for 30 years until 2008.

She is a fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and Green College Oxford, and a patron of Dignity in Dying.

On Monday morning she appeared on the BBC Breakfast programme to highlight the issue of 'physician assisted death'. As I understand it, she supports the idea in principle  - for people of sound mind with limitted time left to live who find their pain insufferable.

Earlier this year, she wrote the following in the Guardian :

"I am dying of pancreatic cancer. I wish I wasn't. But dying isn't a failure on my part, it is part of life. I wish to live as long as possible, but not at the expense of enduring an undignified death. In the final days or weeks of my life, if I consider my suffering to be unbearable, I would like the choice to die at home at a time of my choosing surrounded by my loved ones."

You can read the full article by clicking >here< and I urge you to do so.

The reason for her appearance was to reopen this debate prior to the GPs conference later this week. She knows it is an important subject and wants to ensure that the debate is kept in the public eye.

I encourage you to find out more about this issue because, who knows, it may well effect you one day...

I hate wogs

After all this stuff about eco-fascists, I think we need a little light relief, so here's an interesting ditty by Eric Bogle.

Not very politically correct, but that's Australians for you!

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The €10,000 donkey

I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Eric.

Yes, I do know that Eric is a donkey. In fact he's a Greek donkey. And it's not his real name, but he looked like an Eric to me and the name kinda stuck.

Eric lives in a field behind the apartment we rented in Ithaca. He's very friendly and he gets upset if you don't talk to him. A bit like Mrs D except she lives in a house...

Anyway, the point of this is that there is a donkey crisis in Greece. Apparently, there is a shortage. Partly this is due to the number of brides demanding that they ride to church on a donkey just like the girl in Mammi Mia. Honestly.

The other side to the problem is that Greek donkey milk is highly prized. Remember, Cleopatra used to bathe in it. Its milk has been used since antiquity as a cure of ailments, a substitute for breast milk and as an anti-ageing skin salve.

So the Greek government has hatched a plan. For every donkey you keep, they will pay you €10,000 a year. That's a lot of carrots in any currency. So Eric's owners get a big fat fee for him to stand in his field and beg off the passers by.

As benefits go, even Gordon never thought of this one...

Roll yer own...

As my good friend the Grumpy Old Twat rightly points out, when a load of looney eco nutters invites you to "make your own poster here", it would be churlish to refuse.

Go on - have a go. And as we used to say in the old CB days "10 10 'til we do it again..."

The aliens are watching us

As this picture below proves beyond doubt, the aliens are amongst us !

The government has recently released classified files relating to UFO sightings, so if you have a few years to spare then you can go to the National Archives at Kew and have a good rummage.

Or I can save you the trouble :

Have you ever wondered why we have never found the missing link? Well, it's because there isn't one. Thousands of years ago, the great Galactic Empire needed to purge itself of its terrorists, dissidents and general malcontents. It sent out its starships to search the cosmos for a remote uninhabitted planet to act as a sort of interstellar Australia. It found us - or rather not us, as there was nobody here.

They did a big roundup and dumped all the crud down here on planet Earth, leaving our ancestors to fend for themselves. UFOs are simply Galactic Prison Service ships making sure that we don't get off the rock. Apollo 13 was a warning shot. The USA knows this which is why it is trying to take over the world in the hope of negotiating a release.

And if you think this is all bollocks, ask yourself why the human race is such a crock of shite...

Men are really happy people!

A friend of mine sent me this and it frankly just explains so much about the differences in the sexes :

NICKNAMES

• If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
• If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Dickhead and Shit for Brains.  

EATING OUT

• When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it's only for £32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
• When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

• A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
• A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn't need but it's in the sale!

BATHROOMS

• A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel.
• The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

• A woman has the last word in any argument
• Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE

• A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
• A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

• A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
• A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

• A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
• A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

• A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
• A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

• Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
• Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

• Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
• A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

• A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!

Gentlemen, show this to your other half if you dare. Girls, I'm only kidding...

Red Miliband - the new single !

As promissed yesterday, here is the exciting new single from Red Miliband's solo album :