Review of the Year 2011 (Part 5)

October

The Greeks started off the month nicely with star brinksmanship over repaying their debts which was to get even better later. Meanwhile at the other end of the EU, the French were starting off their campaign to cripple the City of London with a transaction tax.

Liam Fox resigned on account of him being a silly bugger while Steve Jobs disproved the theories of 'an apple a day...'

Whipping was the activity of the month. The Jockey Club didn't like it all but Cameron thought it was wonderful!

Jimmy Saville died - and so did Gaddafi making me the proud winner of 'The Dead Cunt Pool'

I wasn't too bothered about it all really as I was languishing on the Amalfi coast in a rather nice old Palazzo and listening to some opera, although I did get a bit hot under the collar at being told I should downsize my house and make room for people wh need the space more than I did!

November

The month started with news that the UK population is approaching 70 million and the government is tinkering with child benefit reforms. A bit like fiddling while Rome burns......or should that be Athens?

Meanwhile, we're havig a protest camp outside St Pauls. Why? It's acheiving bugger all - but the Kaflics love it.

And just to prove that troughing is still an art form, news that the bosses giving themselves 49% pay rises while the rest of us are getting bugger all. Nothing new there.

And the charity season gets into swing with Children in Need. My God, how I detest that particular fundraiser. It makes people do the stupidest things...

And, of course, there were the public sector strikes - or more correctly a day off for the easily duped amongst us.

Still, mortgage problems may be a thng of the past as the government may decide to underwrite your mortgage. Play your cards right, you might even get your house for free!

December

News from the EU that 'German bullying is getting deeply unpleasant' - there's a surprise. Now Cameron has told them to stuff their fiscal union, no doubt it will get worse. I gather Cleggy's a bit miffed though.

Perhaps it would be better if we just left it to Thomas the Tank Engine to sort it all out?

And just when I had gotten over Children In Need, ITV decide to jump on the Christmas charity season bandwagon with their own brand of shite.


Anyhow, I hoped you've enjoyed this little wander down memory lane and that I have managed to entertain you as well as make you think over the past 12 months. I appreciate your support and look forward to carrying on in my own irreverent way in 2012.......

Review of the Year 2011 (Part 4)

August

Ah, those hot August nights! Hotter in some places than others and looting and arson were rife on the streets. We interviewed a 'rioter' in Tottenham to get his reasons. The perhaps as a result of the feelings on the streets, the hanging debate rose its head again.

And for those of you that get hypertension every time the phrase 'human rights', good news that the EHRC has been identified as a worthless crock of shite at last.

We're not getting our EU referendum either. The PM says so!

It was all too much for me, I'm afraid so I buggered off to the Arctic at the end of the month to check out the bollocks they are talking about global warming...

...and while I was there, the Libyans finally overran Gaddafi. I though perhaps he could apply for the CEO job at Suffolk as his style would fit right in.

September

Good news for lazy bastards! You are not alone! There are 370,000 households in the UK where no-one has ever worked.

A huge turd was sighted floating in the River Thames.

The BBC came under fire for sowing scenes from the Libyan war that were 'too realistic'. For once, I'm with the Beeb.

My musical friend sent me a nice piece of inverted punk rock as a reaction to the so called 'riots' which kinda summed the whole sorry thing up in a nutshell, while I started to wonder what exactly they were continuing to piss about at down at Dale Farm!

And I got even more confused when the 'Total Politics' blog awards branded me as a Ring Wing Non-aligned Libertarian. Who says you can't please all of the people all of the time?

And the cultural event of the year? A new play in which Hindu god, Ganesh goes head to head with Adolf Hitler over who has the rights to use the swastika. Unfortunately it was in Australia, so I missed it. Shame.

We'll round off the year tomorrow...

Review of the Year 2011 (Part 3)

June

Well, some of already thought the EU was barking mad - but introducing legislation to protect endangered cyclists? That's nearly as daft as suggesting that we should all throw away cash and pay for everything with a mobile phone! As if internet banking wasn't already bad enough...

The new expenses scandal broke - bottomless credit cards to enable serial troughers to charge things directly to the government. Mind you, I thought they aready had this - it's called 'taxation'.

After sticking his nose into politics yet again, I suggested that the Archdruid Williams should shut up or bugger off. Prophetic words as it turns out - he's doing the latter next year.

And my award for the most over the top completely ridiculous piece of software of the year goes to Tesco for in store SatNav.

The highlight certainly of the month and perhaps of the whole year goes to Peter Smedley, an immensely brave and principalled man who allowed himself to filmed dying in a documentary on assisted death. In my view it should be compulsory viewing for everyone - but, of course, the Kaflics were up in arms!

My piss boiler of the month was that Sharon Shoesmith - the bitch at the centre of the Baby P scandal - was to get over £1 million in damages in compensation for Ed Balls doing something right for a change and summarily sacking her.

July

The month got off to a flying start with the excellent news that Suffolk County Council had finally rid itself of its overpaid CEO, Andrea Hill. It cost a packet to pay her off, but it was worth every penny!

Having awarded my useless software award to Tesco last month, the award for pointless hardware of the year is awarded to Google's Chromebook and despite being told I don;t know what I'm talking about, the sales figures seem to have proven me right - so there! And for firmware that's useless, look no further than Old Jug Ears...

And whilst it is still rumbling on, this was the month that the News of the World closed, thinking rather naively that that would be the end of the phone hacking scandal. What a bumper closing issue too!

And when is a 10% rise in your Electricity bill actually 37%? Answer : when you get it from Scottish Power, although to be fair all the utility companies were taking the piss with their price rises. Hello, government! It's called price ringing and it's illegal! Get a grip!!

And it's only a year to go until the 2012 Olympics. It's going to be embarrassing and expensive. Rememer I told you so.

And then there was Bob Crow's outrageous plans for the comensation of his members when Network Rail opens its new signalling centres. Any chance of a job, Bob?

More outrageous stuff tomorrow...

Review of the Year 2011 (part 2)

March

March opened with my wide jawed disbelief at the billion that Cameron is giving to countries better off than this in the name of 'foreign aid'. Charity begins at home, Dave. More taxes for us, but at least we're not giving it to the Welsh whose assembly bottled it when it came to voting for tax raising powers...

My jaw dropped again when a survey revealed that more Asians than whites believe that immigration to this country must be stemmed and yet again when I found myself actually agreeing with Ed Miliband about AV - not that it came to anything at the end of the day!

And the budget was coming so it was time for Ed to talk Balls again, this time excelling himself by suggesting that the Japanese sunami might be a good excuse to downgrading the economy. Bad taste even by his standards. Nearly as bad as some of the jokes on Red Nose Day.

Red Ed of course had his own views on the budget and we were subjected to first in a long line of cockups on Olympic tickets.

The month ended with International Climate Week - but unfortunately, nobody noticed! However the best bit for me was one of my favourite pieces of ChasC's music about life in a small town. Spot on!

April

"April showers come they may, they bring out dick heads to vote in May" or something like that...

Anyway, Dave decided that we should arm the Libyans and then decided that there would no mission creep in Libya - that is until we went in and bombed the crap out of the place.

Easter was coming - which of course means the Pope's traditional message and, amazingly, the only week of the year that seems not to be a charity event.

And there was the Royal Wedding to look forward to. Let's hope Wills makes a better job of it than his dad...

May

It was all going to be too much for me, so I buggered off on my yacht around the Aegean for a couple of weeks, only to return to the great Blogger disaster on, you guessed it , Friday 13th. You couldn't make it up.

Semms thought that my humble little publication has quite an influence on US policy, because when I suggested they should stick Bin Laden's body in a bin bag and dump it - they did just that!

Things were also hotting u for the most hated council chief in the country as Suffolk's Andrea Hill went on gardening leave after one of her staff was 'alledgedly' bullied to the point of suicide. She was never to return to her post. Good riddance to bad rubbish...

And I also take credit for publishing the world's most depressing song.

More stuff tomorrow...

Review of the Year 2011 (Part 1)

It's that time of the year when we look back over the events of the last twelve months and reflect on what has happened and the missed opportunites that passed us by...

...or to put it another way, I have buggered off to Cyprus to see the New Year in with a bit of sunshine on my back and news is pretty slow anyway because everybody's sitting on their arses or out getting pissed.

January

January set the scene for the rest of the year eclesiastically speaking with the Archdruid of Cunterbury, Rowan Williams, determined to see out what is hopefully his last year by poking his nose into all sorts of things that are bugger all to do with him! This time round it was telling us to share our ill gotten gains to the less well off because of the budget cuts. The Lord best helps those who help themselves!

Seems he was on the right track though as the banks were suggesting introducing ATMs that only let you withdraw your own money if you paid a fee to charity. Yes, autochugger has arrived...

Not that we've have any money to give after our fuckwit government had given £825 million to India, a nation better off than us FFS.

Then there was the rows over votes for prisoners and the rewriting of classic childrens literature to make it more politically correct. Enid Blyton was turning in her grave.

On the good news front, it was great to know that the late Pope John-Paul had officially performed his first miracle on his fast track to sainthood. Unfortunately bad news that Miiband had appointed as his shadw chancellor the very man who heled Gordon Brown get us in the shit in the first place - none other than Ed 'i-Talk' Balls.

Saddest news of the month was perhaps the death of Pete Postlethwaite, possible our best actor never to win an Oscar.

February

The month opened with a big row over the complicity of Westminster in the release of the Lockerbie bomber on health grounds. Ironic, considering the events that were to unfold in Libya later in the year. Even more ironically, as I write this the bugger is still on his death bed.

The Daily Express delivered a petition with 373,000 signatures on it demanding a referendum on Europe. We were to get a vote, but yet again the politicians shafted us by not keeping their promiss for a vote...

And while contemplating whether a degree is worth all those fees, there was news of Liverpool University issuing its first masters degree in ....the Beatles.

And just when you thought it coudn't get any dafter, a woman in Essex was prosecuted for helping herself from bin bags of food that were thrown away outside Tesco. Freegans beware!

And just to beat last year's record of April, a friend of mine sent me a copy of his first Christmas advertisement. I doubt we'll beat that - although Park are advertising for Christmas 2012 already but that doesn't really count, does it? Unless, of course, you know better ?...

On the religious front, Jesus Christ made his first appearance on the front cover of Playboy and the Vatican brought out a confession app for the iPhone.

The non-event that was the AV campaign hotted up with some pretty unsavoury negative campaigning from the 'No' vote side and 'The Kings Speech' swept the board at the Oscars - proving that we are still pretty good at something.

All this, and it's still only February. More tomorrow...

The Day After Christmas

It's the day after Christmas

Thank God it's all over!

I've got seven new ties

And a bright green pullover

I wanted and iPad

But I got a jigsaw

And a pair of cheap trainers

I don't want any more

It's the day after Christmas

And I'm going out to eat

Just avoiding the turkey

Will be a real treat!

The shops are all heaving

With sales in full swing

We're all looking for bargains

Or just any old thing

It's the day after Christmas

And the sales are now on

I can cash in the refunds

And have me some fun!

I don't need any money

I'll give the plastic a dent

I'll buy what I wanted

That Santa hasn't sent

Something to do on Christmas morning...

Just click on the picture below to be whisked away to this magical site that embraces the true spirit of this magical day...

It'll give you something to do while you're waiting for the family to invade and destroy the tranquility of Christmas morning, or perhaps something to play with the kids after you've all stuffed your faces over lunch.

There's even a Lady Gaga version if you're feeling trendy!

Happy Winterval!

Santa's on his way...

It's Christmas Eve, that magical time of year when millions of little children hang their stockings up and await the clatter of Santa's reindeer on the roof.

This is what it's really like these days...

Well, it is Christmas week...

This priceless billboard was erected in the centre of Auckland, New Zealand apparently in attempt to catch the eye of non-believers.

However, Lyndsay Freer, spokesman for the Auckland Catholic Diocese, said for a church to put up a poster which implied the Virgin Mary and Joseph had just had sex was inappropriate. 'This is disrespectful and offensive to all Christians,’ she said. 'It's over the top.

‘Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph. Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful.'

Of course, the faithful of Auckland have respectfully defaced the poster by painting over the faces of Mary and Joseph in outrage.

But the vicar of the St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, was unrepentant. He pointed out that his form of progressive Christianity is distinctive and 'is one of robust engagement’.

Way to go, Rev...

"YouTube if you want to..."

YouTube really get right up my nose on occasions!

A while back, I posted a jolly little tune by Eric Bogle entitled "I Hate Wogs" which YouTube decided, after 6 months, was racially offensive so they banned it.

Now if you listen to this little ditty, it about stupid narrow minded hypocrites slagging off foreigners for doing exactly what they do themselves. Hello! It's an ANTI-RACISM song!!!

I appealed. YouTube ignored me so I appealed again. They sent me this reply :

Dear Dioclese,

Thank you for submitting your video appeal to YouTube.
After further review of the content, we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding.
Yours sincerely,
– The YouTube Team

You fucking what!!!! You 'appreciate my understanding'!!!! You insufferable, patronising, condescending, pompous, supercilious, arrogant little pricks!!!!

So here's my reply to them :

I think that covers it.

Thank God for EyeTube where you can still watch videos like this without censorship...

Di Gospel according tu Gad...

News on the BBC this Sunday that clergy are up in arms at the translation of the King James Bible into Jamaican patois...

Well not really news because this has actually been raging on since 2008, but this week the first part of the project - The Luke gospel - has finally been published. "And what's all the fuss about?" I say.

Proponents of the Jamaica Bible Society patois version argue that since many islanders have difficulty understanding standard English, it is wrong to have the holy book in a ‘foreign’ tongue. They have a point - and what's more the people who oppose this version seem to have forgotten that the King James version itself was a translation into English in the first place. Then English was the 'foreign tongue'...

Here's a sample : In the depiction of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, the New King James Bible’s version of Luke reads: ‘And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favoured one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women".'

In the patois version, it becomes: ‘Di ienjel go tu Mieri an se tu ar se, “Mieri, mi av nyuuz we a go mek yu wel api. Gad riili riili bles yu an im a waak wid yu aal di taim.”’

Personally, I find it all rather lyrical.

We should remember that Patois is a 400 old language and I feel that the English are being rather arrogant in suggesting that only their language is rich enough to convey the true meaning of the Bible. I am sure adherents of the French, Italian, German and many other versions would agree with me.

But then haven't the English always believed that God was an Englishman?...

( You can read more about this story here )

The ultimate crap Christmas present

Some things just beggar belief. This is one of them...

When the Fourth Reich is going through a bit of a crisis with it's universal currency, Greeece and Italy are going bankrupt and certain leaders are at each others' throats, it's great to see that Herman Von Rumpey-Pumpey can come up with something to spread a little cheer about at Christmas time.

Herman has sent each of the European leaders the ultimate crap Christmas present - a collection of essays on happiness. The World Book of Happiness is a collection of short essays by happiness experts from 50 different nations.

Rumpey-Pumpey says: 'My request to you as world leaders is to make people’s happiness and wellbeing our political priority for 2012. Positive thinking is no longer for drifters, dreamers and the perpetually naive.

'People who think positively see more opportunities, perform better, take more often correct and sound decisions, have more self-confidence, maintain better relations and have more trust placed in them.

'Cynics will dismiss these proposals as naive, but they are not.'

I agree with him. Insulting, condescending, patronising and two-faced would be better descriptions.

The bloke's a cunt...

The Great Olympic Ticket Fiasco (3)

Here we go again...

The other day the Olympic sized twat, Seb Coe, and his merry men annouced the latest round in this long running and seemingly never ending joke.

When you get a load of tickets that you don't want, you are going to be allowed to put them up on 2012's web site so that other people can buy them off you. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say...

Well, yes there is. There's not going to be any sort of queuing system on the site. I would have written this so that people with tickets to dispose of could add them to a list of available tickets. I would than have another list of people buying tickets and would then match them together in order of listing.

Apparently, this is not the way it will work. If you want to sell tickets then they will, indeed, be listed. But if you are buying, then you will be live on line. This means that buyers have to keep enquiring in case the tickets they want become available as sellers add them. They could be offered after your last enquiry and snapped up by someone else before you look again.

This system is, I believe, known as 'pot luck'. But it's OK because you, as a buyer, will never actually know you missed out.

But the ramifications of this go much further. Because of the limitted window, millions of hits will be recorded on the site by people sitting in offices continually enquiring after tickets. This will have two major implications :

(1) Millions of man hours will be lost to employers while their employees sit on the web trying to buy tickets, and

(2) The site will crash. I guarantee it. It won't handle the volume of traffic.

Remember, you heard it here first...

The Dioclese 2011 Christmas Song

Now I know you've all been waiting for this with baited breath - so wait no more...

Here's the Dioclese offering for the Christmas number 1 this year. It's a little rendition called 'Santa Go Home' with thanks once again to the performance and song writing talents(?) of my old mate ChasC.

Oh, and if this little number if not enough, he's posted another one of his own this morning called 'Why are my neighbours all dicks?' so I guess he won't be asking them over for drinks on Christmas morning...

Save me from this wicked Christian!

Bible thumpers and human rights have always been two subjects guaranteed to make my blood boil, so I was delighted when I came across this story in the Sun...

An atheist rapist complained that his human rights were breached by having to share a prison cell with a Christian lag.

Barman Steven Relf was jailed indefinitely after admitting raping two women he targeted when he served them drinks in a pub.

Police branded him a "sexual predator" and said he could have had as many as 40 victims.

In a letter to an inmates' magazine, Relf wrote: "I recently had the displeasure of sharing a cell with a Bible-thumping believer."

A source said Relf was "furious" at having to share at Manchester Prison with the Christian convict and wanted him to be "evicted".

He said: "He moaned about how the guy wouldn't shut up about God. He said he wanted to speak to a lawyer about his rights so he could be moved cells."

The other inmate was later transferred.

Onions and Christmas Trees

A family is at the dinner table. The son asks his father, "Dad, how many kinds of boobs are there?"

The father, surprised, answers, "Well, son, there are three kinds of boobs: In her 20's, a woman's are like melons, round and firm. In her 30's to 40's, they are like pears, still nice but hanging a bit. After 50, they are like onions."

"Onions?"

"Yes, you see them and they make you cry."

This infuriated his wife and daughter so the daughter said, "Mum, how many kinds of 'willies' are there?"

The mother, surprised, smiles and answers, "Well dear, a man goes through three phases. In his 20's, his willy is like an oak tree, mighty and hard. In his 30's and 40's, it is like a birch, flexible but reliable. After his 50's, it is like a Christmas Tree."

"A Christmas tree?"

"Yes - the tree is dead and the balls are just for decoration."

Rotten Boroughs : Essex County Council

Expenses. Always a touchy subject with politicians...

Essex County Councillor and former chairman of the Essex Police Authority, Robert Chambers, has been asked to pay back £10,000 in overclaimed mileage allowances.

He claims - no pun intended - that he made a 'genuine mistake' in that the Authority only pays the first 5,000 miles and that this was not explained to him.

Cllr Chambers case was referred to the Metropolitan Police to investigate and they have concluded that there is no case for a prosecution. Obviously, this decision has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was on the Essex Police Authority for 8 years, during which time he was the Chairman for 3 years. It also categorically has nothing to do with the fact that he stood down in order to campaign as an elected police and crime commissioner.

He said " I have said I will pay back the money – I have a cheque sitting here ready and waiting. But, I want a written assurance from them [EPA] that that’s the end of it.”

That strikes me as a strange condition to be stipulating if, as Cllr Chamber says, he made an honest mistake.

But, of course, I am not suggesting for a moment that he has done anything wrong - although you do wonder how the finance officer of Uttesford District Council could make such a fundamental accounting error.

I suppose these things just happen...

Thomas and the EU Summit

Big Dave and Little Willy leave Sodall to meet with the other train companies on the mainland, but Eva and Napolean aren't having any - and Cleggy, the Twat Controller, is not pleased....

Arab Summer, Red Winter, Euro Spring?

You can always rely on one fact when it comes to human beings : they never learn!

The picture above was taken in Moscow last week and shows protestors marching to show their distrust of the latest election results.

Not so long ago, the Arab world was up in arms - literally - because the rulers of their country were corrupt and power hungry dictators who showed little or no regard for their people and were only interested in lining their own pockets and slapping down any opposition with a fist of iron.

Surprisingly - to me at least - they actually succeeded! Syria is still clinging on desperately but even there the rulers' days are numbered. But now we have moved on to Russia...

As in the Arab countries, protestors are ignoring bans on marches and are making their voices heard against Vladimir Putin whilst the regime responds with gangs of loyalist 'supporters' and police with batons and tear gas. Protesters chanted slogans against the ruling party as the Putin loyalists beat drums and chanted "Putin, Russia".

Police arrested at least 250 protesters, including veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov.

This is not going to go away. Putin's Russia is riddled with corruption. Even his supporters in the media have been censored. His support in the elections dropped sharply, but he is still determined to orchestrate a return to power in the forthcoming Presidential Election which, if the protestors are to be believed, will be just as rigged as this one.

So am I saying that the Russians never learn? Yes, but this is not my point. No-one ever learns.

We have had the Arab summer and now we have the Russian winter. Last week we witnessed a summit meeting in Brussels aimed at regime change in more Eurozone countries - a snatching of economic and fiscal powers by Paris and Berlin. This I believe is at least an attempt to start the end game of the 1944 Red House Agreement - the ultimate takeover by the Fourth Reich of the nations of Europe through economic warfare.

We have seen protests in Athens and Rome quashed and the leaders of these nations replaced by puppets obedient to the cause. In these countries at least, the penny is beginning to drop. The master plan may stall a little this time around, but it will not stop. In it's own way, the EU is just as undemocratic and corrupt as Russia and the Arab world. The mechanisms may be different, but the principals are the same.

So take a good hard look at what is happening now in Russia. It could well be happening soon in a street near you...

How to be invisible

Take a look at this innocuous looking spot on the nose. Doesn't look much does it? Perhaps you've got one just like it?

Well it might not look much, but this is a skin cancer. If you have something that looks like this, then go to your doctor. Better safe than sorry.

If you're lucky, they may be able to freeze it with liquid nitrogen and get rid of it. If not then they will need to cut it out. Depending on where it is and how big it is, you may need a skin graft. And if you get through all that and you get even luckier, it might not be malignant.

Mrs D had one pretty much where the one is in the above picture. They cut a hole about the size of a 1p piece in her nose and put in a full thickness graft taken from behind her ear to plug the hole. For a week she had a humungous dressing stitched onto her nose. This is known by the nursing staff as a 'bee' because it's black and yellow from a mixture of ointment and dried blood. It was a great relief when it was removed.

The resulting wound is healing, but initially could be accurately described as a bloody mess. We smeared it with greasy antibacterial ointment twice a day for ten days or so and are now slowly backing this off.

How well all this turns out is mainly up to a mixture of luck and the skill of your plastic surgeon. I'd advise you to get the best you can. It's very upsetting. I would hazard a guess that it's even more upsetting for a woman than a man because of the cosmetic implications. It's really not nice at all.

But the most interesting thing about this whole experience is that after hiding away for a couple of weeks, Mrs D plucked up the courage to go out in public and face people she knows. I admire her greatly for this as however we dress it up, it's a large, unsightly open wound right in the middle of her face. It can't have been easy.

But what really upset her was that in a room full of people the majority of whom we are on at least speaking terms with, not one of them could see the wound or had the decency to ask her what had happened or how she was. One woman whom we know very well even did a double take when she saw her, and still the wound was invisible...

...and we both think that's appalling!

Thomas and the Gold Plated Pension

Down at the engine sheds, Thomas and Percy are talking about taking strike action in support of the proposed cuts to their public service pensions...

..and is the Fat Controller really a Tory sympathiser in disguise?

Why Christmas has had it's day

Now don't get me wrong - I actually like Christmas! No, really. I do!

But when I say this I mean the actual day itself. It's nice to have one day a year to reflect on the true values of life like family and loved ones. It's nice to get together with friends - real friends not Facebook virtual friends. It's nice to have one day a year when everything stops and life settles down to a relaxing pace and gives you time to take stock of your life...

Unfortunately, Christmas is not like that.

Christmas starts in September - although this year I spotted my first advertisement in February! The lead up is always the same :

Retailers start bombarding you with advertising to remind you that people will think you tight fisted unless you buy them a one must have present

Charities start flooding your TV screen with appeals, banging on your door asking you to sign direct debit forms - and don't even start me on Children in Need. This year even ITV are jumping on the bandwagon with Text Santa FFS!

Then there's the panto. It usually starts in November and runs through until mid January. And thoughts of serious theatre are banished for eight weeks!

And don't go down the shops unless you are prepared for the endless droning on of Christmas muzak. Honestly, if I hear the Ronnettes singing 'Frosty the Fucking Snowman' one more time, I swear I will scream!

Oh, and the endless round of books, CDs and DVDs launched especially to catch your Christmas gift list. I wouldn't mind but the CDs in particular are stuffed full of old back catalogue shite loosely compiled around any old theme. It's aimed squarely at the 'what shall we by our parents for Christmas' market.

Did I say 'market'? Well of course now we are being hit with the latest import - the dreaded Christmas market selling any old Christmas tat at vastly inflated prices. Or, of course, you can take a trip to the continent for a proper Christmas Market. Shame shit, different country...

And don't expect to get any sleep because you're forgetting the noisy neighbours' kids parties - the banging of endless car doors under your bedroom window at three in the morning, the drunks rolling home yelling and screaming and throwing up on your front garden...

Yes, Christmas has had it's day. Let's just give in and rename it the 'Winter Retail Fest" because any sense of the true meaning of Christmas has been well and truly kicked out of you well before 25th December...

The Turnip Prize 2011

Congratulations go to Jim Drew for winning the 12th annual Turnip Prize, the art world's answer to the even more ludicrous Turner Prize.

This prize winning piece is entitled "Jamming with Muddy Waters".

The Turnip Prize seeks to recognise and reward deliberately bad modern art. It was started mainly as a joke in 1999, but has gained national media attention and inspired other similar prizes.

Credit is given for entries that have bad puns as titles, display "lack of effort" and pass the crucial test of "is it shit?"; conversely, entries which show "too much effort" or are "not shit enough" are disqualified. The first prize is a turnip nailed to a block of wood

Jim Drews 2011 winner comprises a jar containing some jam and dirty water. It was singled out for requiring practically no effort whatsoever, rather like Tracey Emin's better known Turner winner "My bed".

Here's a list of the past winners :

1999 - "Alfred The Grate" (two burned rolls on a fire grate)
2000 - "Minstrel Cycle" (a bicycle constructed of sweets, cocktail sticks and Tampons)
2003 - "Take a Leaf out of my Chook" (A raw chicken stuffed with leaves)
2005 - "Birds Flew" (An empty birds' nest with a box of flu remedy)
2006 - "Torn Beef" (empty corned beef can)
2007 - "Tea P" (Used tea bags in the shape of a P)
2008 - "Fleeced" - A piece of sheeps wool depicting John Sargeant
2009 - “Manhole Cover” - A pair of large white Y fronts
2010 - “Chilli n’Minors” - One large chilli and three smaller chilli’s

Notable runners up include "Bitter and Twisted" (a piece of grapefruit peel), "Jonny Wilkinson" (a condom and a razor blade), "Surf In The Net" (a box of washing powder in a net) and the highly commended "Mints Meet" (A mincemeat jar containing a polo mint and an extra strong mint).

In 2007, a piece of artwork with the title "By the Banksea" was entered bearing a striking resemblance to the work of the famous Bristol graffiti artist Banksy. It portrays a seaside Aunt Sally in the form of a stencil of the Mona Lisa, but in true Banksy-style, the Mona Lisa is holding a rocket launcher, firing a turnip over the wreckage of a seaside pier and an emergency exit sign.

The piece was disqualified for "too much effort and not shit enough."

Britain stands alone...

Well, I never thought I would see the day that David Cameron grew a set and stood up for Britain against the the hoards of the Fourth Reich!

This column has been critical of Cameron in the past. I have applied to him the most damning word in the English language : 'disappointing'. I have criticised his actions in denying the people of this country the EU referendum that he promissed in his manifesto. I have so far been unimpressed.

But in refusing to sign away British sovereignty and the right to set our own tax rates and budgets, Cameron has taken the right decision. The city of London provides more than 50% of the financial services in the EU. Agreeing to a financial transaction tax wold have neutered the city and 58% of our economy. It is a vicious economic attack. There is no way he should ever have agreed to this and he didn't.

The Prime Minister has come under considerable pressure from the Reich to sign up, and he refused. He was 100% right to do so. President Sarkozy called this 'unacceptable' - but to whom? To the Reich maybe, but certainly not to the people whom he represents. It takes true bulldog spirit to say 'No!' under this sort of pressure, and despite my doubts Cameron seems to have what it took.

There have been comments this morning that this excludes Britain from the mainstream of Europe. That there is now an inner core and that the EU is a two speed institution. I don't believe the former and would point out that even if the latter is true, one should not assume that the Eurozone core is necessarily the fast track whilst we are in the slow lane.

There is already a two track EU - those in the single currency and those outside it. This has not changed. Cameron says that there will be no need to put any of this to a referendum because there has been no alteration to the existing treaties. He is quite right. I also suspect he knows that if he had betrayed our national interests and signed up for this new treaty, the British people would be unforgiving. Had he been forced to sign up, then the choice was simple - wreck our already fragile economy or quit Europe. The only real choice would surely have been the latter.

This has been a considerable coup for the Reich. As in 1940, Britain risks being seen as a lone voice in the wilderness. Churchill experienced this, and he was right. I believe that history will prove that Cameron is also right.

In 1940, Churchill was named Time magazine's man of the year. The citation read "He gave his countrymen exactly what he promissed them." Last night David Cameron did exactly the same.

How refreshing...

Text Santa FFS

Oh, FFS, I only just got over the purile load of unentertaining, unfunny drivel that was served up for 'Cheeeeldren in Need' and now I find that ITV are going to jump on the Charity - sorry, I meant Christmas - bandwagon...

Announcing 'Text Santa', Peter Fincham, ITV Director of Television said: “This is a superb opportunity for us to throw the weight of the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster behind a brand new charity initiative and event.  And it's incredibly cheap to produce 'cos it's for charity and everybody appearing does it for nothing .

Text Santa will be a fantastic entertainment centrepiece to the ITV1 Christmas schedule, but more importantly we also get to fill four hours of our otherwise overstretched schedule which would otherwise  be showing repeats - sorry, I mean classic episodes - of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Coronation Street or old black and white films.”

The first show kicks off on 11^th December with a live, one-hour special hosted by Phillip Snowfield  and Christine Blankly, co-hosted by Ant and Dec who have promissed to end the show by doing something that their viewers have always wanted them to do. I'd like to suggest perhaps jumping naked from an airplane over the Atlantic without a parachute!

The second show is on Christmas Eve. With further victims to be announced, both shows will combine unbelievably untalented attempts at entertainment with seriously unfunny attempts at comedy in order to exploit the spirit of Christmas in a cynical attempt to seperate you from your hard earned money.

Enough! Please! I'm all charitied out...

Too Damn Late!

I have been duly chastised by my musical friend for not making any videos for him lately, so when he sent me a nice rowdy punk protest song, I thought this was the ideal opportunity to put the situation to rights!

Crank up the volume and take 4 minutes out of your life enjoy this condemnation of the sorry state of our nation...

I'll believe it when I see it!

I watched incredulously on Saturday morning when the BBC announced that there were plans afoot at Lloyds Banking Group to claw back half of the £1,450,000 bonus it handed to its former chief executive Eric Daniels earlier this year.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the part-nationalised lender have informed Mr Daniels and senior executives at the bank that it plans to "claw back' parts of their bonuses. It is believed to be the first time a high street bank has used the so-called clawback clause in a director's contract.

The move is linked to the problems the bank has been having over misselling of PPI. A spokesman announced "As part of an ongoing process the implications on compensation are being considered by the Remuneration Committee and will be determined by the Board in due course, in line with the FSA code on compensation."

Lloyds is of course part owned by the taxpayer, but I suspect that detecting the hand of Vince Cable behind the scenes of the move are perhaps a little fanciful. More likely it is to do with the resignation of Chief Exec Antonio Horta-Osorio who has stepped down after weathering a profit warning at the group due to "extreme fatigue". Ah bless! I could put up with a bit of fatigue for what these buggers get paid...

I suspect that the clawback is really to help fund the rumoured £6,000,000 "golden hello" to release RSA chief financial officer, George Culmer, from his 12-month notice period at the insurer so he can join the bank.

Banks getting tough with their executives' pay and bonuses? Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it. Remember Fred Goodwin?...

( You can read more about this in the Daily Telegraph )

Rotton Boroughs : Gosport Borough Council

Now this column has been known to suggest in the past that the behaviour of some of our elected officials leaves a little to be desired, but this story really is a cracker!

Independent Cllr Dave Smith and Liberal Democrat Cllr Peter Chegwyn, who both sit on Gosport Borough Council, made complaints about each other to the council’s standards committee who have referred them on to Standards for England.

It comes after Cllr Smith was cautioned by police in September for assaulting Cllr Chegwyn after a council meeting. Both councillors have made complaints about each other’s behaviour and they have both faced the standards board before.

Cllr Smith said: ‘Our altercation was private and personal and nothing to do with council business. The police dealt with that and I apologised to him publicly. After taking legal advice and advice from others I decided to put in a written complaint.’

Cllr Chegwyn said: ‘I’m not fussed about it because I know I have done nothing wrong. It’s just tit-for-tat. He got arrested and cautioned and I didn’t. I have no love for the standards board regime but it was the only course of action open to me.’

Both councillors have been referred to the standards board before.

Cllr Chegwyn was reported after he voted to block a motion on his Stokes Bay Festival from being discussed. This resulted in a two-year disqualification which was later reduced at the High Court to a two-month suspension in 2009.

And Cllr Smith finished a 12-month suspension earlier this year for calling council officers corrupt.

Good to know that our expectations of Councillors' behaviour are never disappointed, isn't it?

Last Supper made of pocket lint

I've seen Jesus turn up in a lot of unexpected places, but never before has he been so fuzzy...

A Michigan woman has recreated the last supper -- savior and all -- out of laundry lint.

No, it's not some weird new spin (cycle) on the Da Vinci code... but a massive painting 14 feet long and 4 feet high -- and it took Laura Bell about 200 hours to make it (not to mention nearly 800 hours of laundry loads).

And now, it's a proud new addition to the Ripley's Believe It or Not! collection in the States.

Ripley's spokesman Tim O'Brien says the painting is everything they like in a piece of art.

"We have smaller lint art pieces in our collection, but what hit us about this one is its immense size," he said. "That combined with the amazing color she was able to get from natural lint to the details of the characters make this one great piece of art, albeit a very non-mainstream piece artistic endeavor."

Its' amazing what some people will do to praise the Lord...

Lookalikes

Barber                                         Mitchell

Has anyone noticed the remarkable resemblance between this week's 'man of the moment' TUC leader Brendan Barber and lovable, whisky swigging, Eastenders hard man Phil Mitchell?

Their heavy handed tactics certainly seem the same.

Are they perhaps related? I think we should be told...

Inaction heroes...

A handful of true stories about life in the Civil Service gleaned from personal experience in a particular government agency...

1.  I sat a couple of desks from this bloke who didn't seem to do a lot. One night I bumped into him on the Park and Ride bus on the way home. I asked him what he did.
   
   "I'm a civil servant", he replied.
   
   "I know that", I replied, "but what do you do?"
   
   Baffled, he replied "I've been a civil servant for thirty years!" I never got past the loop, so next day I asked my guv'nor what he did. He told me that he didn't do anything. They didn't have anything for him to do...
   
   ...but he was three years away from getting his gold plated pension and it was cheaper to pay him to sit there than it was to make him redundant.
   
   
2. Down the other end of the office, was a senior manager. He didn't seem to be there a lot. I asked my boss what he did because he seemed to be in and out of the office quite a bit so I assumed he must be dashing about for work.
   
   "Oh," he replied, "he's just waiting for them to find him a new post."
   
   "But he's hardly ever here" I said. "No" he replied. "He takes most days off pretending to work at home or going to meetings but it suits us not to ask where he is because then we'd have to find him something to do and frankly he's not much use."
   
   
3. A contractor I worked with once before was in our office. I was surprised to see him as he was a contractor not a 'permie'. Apparently he was on a one year contract because he couldn't find a contract at the time.
   
   "It's a no brainer" he told me. "They give me £45k a year and a laptop, so I spend most of my day on the internet. I'm here to do whatever they give me, but to be honest I only do about one day of work a week."
   
   He told me he was counting the days until the contract ended because he was bored out of his skull, so I was surprised to see him on a bus one evening six months later as Mrs D and I were coming home from a shopping trip to town.
   
   "Well, yeah," he said, "it's true I was counting the days but then they offered me a pay rise to sign on for another year and I thought - well, it's easy money so why not?"

Only 710,000 public sector employees surplus to requirements, George? You're not trying...

Two world wars and one world cup...

...and the Fourth Reich is still trying it on!

Take a look at the picture above. This is German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble. Dr Schauble is a man despised even in his own nation, ridiculed as 'Doctor Strangelove' because he is confined to a wheelchair after being shot in an assassination attempt in 1990.

The good Doctor last week predicted that the UK would eventually be forced to come on side and join the Euro.“It will happen perhaps faster than some in the British Isles currently believe,” he said.

His warning followed the emergence of a secret German plan to build a powerful new economic government for the eurozone and block an EU referendum in Britain. A leaked German foreign ministry memo detailed plans for a new European Monetary Fund. It also claimed the EU’s treaty could be altered to centralise more power without triggering a vote.

And this, of course, comes on top of the German push to introduce a financial transaction tax to cripple the City of London.

It's about time Cameron grew some balls and stood up to the Germans. This country didn't fight two world wars just to lose a third one being fought with economic weapons instead of guns. It's also about time the French remembered who dug them out from under the German yoke last time around.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage summed it up nicely when he said last week : “This German bullying is deeply unpleasant and the sooner we leave the EU the better.”

I couldn't agree more...