The Guild of Grumpy Blokes - Reborn

Goodbye Freedom

2011-11-18T18:41:00.000Z

Well it's sort of goodbye freedom. In the loose sense that we have any real freedom these days. I refer of course to yet another piece of arse-gravy nanny state-ism emanating from the increasingly dictatorial and lunatic BMA. They want to ban smoking in cars. yes, that's you, the person who likes a quick puff on your way to work. The person who doesn't want to stand outside work for a fag but will sit in their own car, their private property for a smoke.

It's all to protect the children apparently. Yes, that's right, the children who's parents have stopped letting them walk 500 yards to school, the parents who fill their lunchboxes with Mars bars and Cheesestrings, the parents who give them money for 'chips with everything' school dinners. The parents who use Nintendo Wii/PS3/X-Box360's as babyminders. The parents who drink a couple of bottles of red in the evening as an example of how to drink responsibly.

It's intrusive. It's the nanny state working overtime. It's health fascism. It's plain wrong. Lock the BMA twats up in a room and let as many smokers as possible breathe into that room. We really need to stop listening to fucking unelected know it all preaching intellectuals telling us what to do, and influencing an already too powerful government into legislating for laws no-one needs or asked for.

Later Mugs, GJ

Destroy FIFA!!!!

2011-11-05T20:22:00.000Z

This is a place for me to avoid sport in general. If I have something to moan about regarding my sporting obsessions there's plenty of other sites for me to go.

But this.......

FIFA Bans England from wearing the Poppy

has made the GJ blood boil.

I respect the right for anyone NOT to wear the poppy, that's the beauty of freedom of choice but no-one has the right to prevent others wearing it. The Poppy is not a religious or political symbol, anymore than the breast cancer ribbon. It's a symbol of remembrance simple as that.

FIFA is a corrupt, vile, obnoxious organisation headed ny a corrupt despot. And yet our FA and countless governments endorse it by appeasing it. They should hang their heads.

Wear the shirts, to hell with FIFA, donate the fine to the poppy fund. Damn them all and show them for the amoral organisation they are.

And then leave it. Quit. Walk away. Watch the others follow, Germany, Spain, Italy and most of the major European footballing nations would do the same. And then Brazil, Argentina, USA and others. FIFA would crumble and a new organisation could follow, one based on democratic and meritocratic principles.

Plus ca change, vive le revolution!!

Later you mugs, GJ

2011-11-02T21:30:00.000Z

I had a dream that I was at Eton and had asked my mate, Little Georgie Osbourne (as we knew him at Eton) if he fancied making me pay more tax, work more hours, take home less pay, pay more duty on alcohol and cigars, pay extra VAT, donate more to bankers bonuses, up the price of gas and electricity, throw some of my mates on the dole, decimate the police, dismantle the NHS, reduce the armed forces capability, whack up student fees, stick his nose into the Euro despite us not being in it, cut the BBC, stop the schools rebuilding programme, engineer a continuing housing slump and increase the retirement age to stop me drawing a pension I've been paying into for 33 years. I asked if he could do all that in 18 months.

He just laughed and said 'Impossible....no party could do all that'.................oh hang on.....

Later you Mugs, GJ

Pain and more pain

2011-11-01T16:45:00.000Z

See that picture? It's by James Gillray depicting gout (the Gout) as he calls it. It's from 1799, back in the days when Ibuprofen and Voltarol would have sounded like Russian city names. It feels just as it looks, a devil driving its teeth direct into the bone. And completely latched on to you. It hurts more than when I dislocated and fractured my hip in a motorbike accident in 1992. I've never given birth but I reckon this comes close to that pain.

Its ruined my new cycling exercise regime. I can't sleep. Yeah it's pushing 8 on the Grumpometer. And the worst thing today? Just making it to the toilet only to find there's barely any loo roll left. There's a roll upstairs. But I just manage on 4 sheets used sparingly. Indignity and pain? It's a double bonus day!

The GoutDevil is snoozng now, driven down by my inactivity and the Voltarol. When it's finally gone i will then set about finding it's nest and wiping it out completely*

Later Mugs, GJ

*Apparently finding the trigger will be pure luck. Well the more I hunt, the luckier I get.

It's simple

2011-10-30T11:34:00.000Z

I like a moan, in fact I like it a lot. It keeps me happy. But sometimes it does my head in. Especially those who's life is a constant moan. And they want tgo tell you about it all the time. It's the cornerstone of their conversation. i'm a moaning knobber, but these people have PHDs in Moaning. Doctor Fuckwits, all of them.

Later Mugs GJ

Gout. Why?

2011-10-30T11:04:00.000Z

3 weeks and no gout and then today I wake up and can't walk. Well I can but I'm hobbling. Which of course means I look like a knob. Or a lead swinger. Maybe I need a plaster cast to get any sympathy. Either way the grumpometer is now at 7 on the scale of 10.

Aaah, the grumpometer I hear you ask. This is a new high tech method of measuring grumpiness. Ratings of 1-3 are mere tetchiness. 4-6 is sarcastic mumbling, 7-9 is wishing the world would just fuck the fuck off and moody silence. 10 then brings in the Angerometer scale where ranting, shouting and violence to inanimate objects kicks in. This scale is exponential and therefore has decimal points from 0.1 to 10. I have never reached 20 but all I'm saying is that probably involves custodial sentences and psychiatric treatment in Europe. Maybe in the US it might mean 20 years in a small apartment on Death Row.

But for now, the gout means its just a miserable day of pain. Good job we still have the light and it's not raining....oh hang on....

Later Mugs, GJ

2011-01-06T17:05:00.004Z

OK, so I had just about worn out the role at work, basically buggering about with Smart phones and the like. So I thought to myself....'If I know things are getting a bit thin work wise, then how long before the decision makers and beancounters know that?.

I've done nearly 17 years there but Plan A is to remain there until I'm 60 (yes, just 10 fucking short years away) ...well 10 and a bit...and then if The Company, and more importantly The Government allow me I'd rather like to retire. I do seem to be stuck in the generation that will never be allowed to retire (another subject for another day) or for whom retirement will be seen as a scourge as loads of saddo's continue to work past 65/67/69 (..pick an age..any age) and society makes it a norm to work until you die rather than enjoy a few years of lay ins and golf or whatever.

(Thats enough ranting...Ed)

So, when SirYesSir sent out the email saying that a colleague was moving on, I decided to grab the bull by the horns. I asked him into a vacant office and for the first time in my life I said 'Gissa job'...well more or less... 'more like 'Gissdat job'.

And he looked at me with snipers eyes, deep into the soul, smiled and said OK.

Now, call me old fashioned but this was very daring for me, someone from a generation where if you wanted a job you waited for it to be advertised then applied for it. Very quaint and honourable. Today's 'go getter' attitude is very different. Push, cajole, annoy, ask, demand is the new way. I expected of course to have a month to transition into the role, to hand off my old stuff and to gently bed in to the new. I asked on the 23rd December.........

......and I started on the 4th January. Lumped straight into meetings with humourless German directors, vacuous wannabees, Anne Widdecombe-like spinsters, puppy dog careerists and utter arseholes. There has to be someone nice coming along.

Feet and floor barely know each other. Arse barely made contact with any seat for more than 15 minutes.

I asked............and I certainly got.

Later GJ

2010-11-26T17:19:00.001Z

OK, the re-launch has been slow, but it will happen, honest!

Cuts deep

2010-10-22T15:52:00.002+01:00

Brief and to the point, so everyone will feel the affect of the cuts....cuts caused in part by the banking crisis and subsequent recession, and by an incompetent City-arse licking government led by Gordon Brown who's fiscal policies had already decimated pensions.

However, International Aid remains set at £7.7bn raising to £11.5bn. Just explain to me why we're prepared to give away money to corrupt governments, such as Pakistan, which is also harbouring people sworn to terrorise the people of this country, or India...which can afford a Space program whilst cutting back vital public services?

And there's me thinking charity starts at home.

Still, a Tory government in every way, despite what the now discredited Lib Dems might say, always comes along and dismantles the very structure and fabric of society whilst favouring the rich. It's their way.

The BBC, the NHS, the armed services...what next ....the Open University?

Later, GJ

2010-10-06T17:04:00.004+01:00

Oooh, that felt good.

Good to tap on the keys.....

Good to feel the cognitive gears whirring again........

So, here's the score. If you know me then cool, but keep my identity quiet else I'll pick up my ball and go somewhere else to play. I will say what I like about who I like but no names will ever be mentioned, just my own childish pseudonyms for people.

So, lets finish the prep work and get some work done

Later, GJ

Well well well

2010-10-06T16:27:00.004+01:00

You can't keep a good man down. Or in my case a bad one. Ok, maybe just a slightly average, short-ish, plumpish, ageing rocker like me. I toyed with a new blog, with anonymity running through it. A place to comment on the general shite-ness of life, things that don't work, people that don't work, the battles of an ageing man in a society that doesn't care, in a house full of women.

Perhaps I could just called the blog 'Marginalised'

Anyway, pip pip, back soon, watch this space, see you anon and any number of other hackneyed geezer cliches.

Later, GJ

So farewell then Jack

2009-12-03T14:13:00.004Z

And so it ends.

After 5 years or so of trying to express to others, the the ups and downs of my life, the things I've liked, loved and hated, the things that have angered, frustrated and inspired me and the various characters who play a part in my life, I'm off.

It all started through the boredom of a job I hated and the wasting affect it had on my annoying, questioning, challenging mind. And it was anonymous. The mistake I made was letting those close to me in on the secret, and that immediately closed down an avenue of writing as I could no longer truly write what I thought of people, despite keeping them anonymous. As word grew it became obvious to the the readers who knew me who others were and it just took the sting away a bit. If I ever do this again, it will remain my secret and that's that.

Now I'm in a job which is a crossroads point for me, the fun has worn off and I'm battling to move the team forward and the choice for me is coast through life moaning but accepting my lot, or keep bashing away annoying the fuck out of Billyboy, The Tub Thumper (now my boss again) and all of the rest of the Ivory Tower inhabitants it is my misfortune to have to work for. I can't write about that forever though.

I keep busy writing occasional articles for Chelseablog, and am looking now at how to sate the creative aspects of my life as technology changes. Podcasts fascinate me and there's a Chelsea fans one I might try and gatecrash.

The social media and networking phenomenon is fast rendering blogs as less and less relevant and it's no coincidence that the blogs people want to read are now focused on specific topics, be that sex, football, politics, media or whatever. When I started , blogging was new and exciting but the blogosphere has become so huge and so full of similarity and mediocrity it's hard not to get ground down. I find myself rather enjoying the challenges of middle age and Facebook and Twitter. Facebook I've cracked, Twitter is still to be proven to me as a useful way of communicating or keeping in touch.

I still want to write, but am serious about drafting a novel, or a play....or even scripts, but for me the blogging adventure is over...not dead....just asleep and who knows when or if Grocerjack will ever wake up. All good things must end and right now it feels like that to me. The site will remain for as long as allowed without being updated and well...never say never....but as far as I can tell, this is it.

As The Dragons would say, "I'm out"

Thanks to everyone who's ever read or commented. It was fun.

Au revoir mes amis, GJ

Way to go Sting

2009-11-13T09:44:00.002Z

I like The Police.

I don't much like Sting's solo stuff.

I did quite like Fields of Gold mind. And the one about the nuclear bomb.

His rain-forest posturing and general liberal wet arty farty ways are a bit annoying as well.

But he's absolutely dead right in his criticism of The X-Factor.

It is a Karaoke competition and nothing else. It is about generating cash for Cowell Corporation. It is factory pop of the worst kind since....oh.....a few years back when Stock, Aitken and Waterman ruled the airwaves. It has fuck all to do with proper real music. I don't deny that Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, JLS et al.... have technically near perfect voices. That's all they do have though. Music and song is much much more than just showing off your vocal power and range everytime a microphone is shoved in your face. It's more than dance routines and sparkly outfits. It's more than being a performing seal.

It's about soul, passion, spirit, individuality and creativity and that little something that sets you aside. Good music and good 'pop' music have something intangible that works. Talented artists really do have an X factor. That special ingredient that emanates from them and what they perform that gets into the soul of the those , like me, who love music. It's the same for painters, sculptors and writers.

Look carefully at the X Factor and ask yourself how many of the following artists would have survived to win the alleged competition. Rod Stewart? Sinead O' Connor? Randy Crawford? Kate Bush? Would the current George Michael or Elton John versions get past Cowells critical eye? What about Engelbert Humperdinck with his crooning ballads? If Sting turned up with his guitar, would he make it? Come to think of it would Michael Jackson have got very far? Kirsty Maccoll perhaps? Nah, not pretty enough. John Lennon.....Freddie Mercury......John Lydon........the list goes on. None of them would meet the pre-packed, pre-moulded, sanitized production line pop criteria needed to be a 'star' through the X Factor route.

If it's all the same to you, I'll stick to Jools Holland's Later and the Beeb's Glasto coverage for my TV music.

A plague on the X-Factor house and all it's occupants!

Later, GJ

Why I love the 80's.........and the 60's and 70's...and bits of the 90's

2009-11-09T15:17:00.001Z

This is weird. What started off as a retrospective 'weren't the 80's actually rather good' spiel turns into 'aren't I lucky to have lived through music's most golden ages' piece.

It started a few weeks back during the enforced absence when I was wading through weeks of recorded programmes catching up on all the 'must see' stuff I'd recorded in a delusionally desperate attempt to prove the value of the new TV . The truth is most of this 'must see' stuff ends up being deleted through boredom/lack of time/better things to do. But when you're immobile there is very little that's better than lying flat, propped into a comfy position with fluffy pillows, surrounded by remote controls, medicines, an iPod, mobile phones and bags of Minstrels and Midget Gems. Not the most active or healthy of lifestyles I grant that, but something everyone should do occasionally just for the good of the soul. A break from the strife of normality one might say.

One of the recorded programmes was called Synth Britannia, yet another excellent piece of contemporary cultural history from the rather good BBC4 stable. I started to watch this thinking it might be worthy but dull, but instead revelled in a nostalgia-fest of the birth, flourishing, maturation and eventual record industry homogenisation of electronic music.

Setting aside that bands like Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream etc had dallied with electronic sounds for some years, the programme gave a wonderful overview of the emergence into the charts from the late 70's in the shape of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), through the fringe elements of bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and the transition of The Human League from failing electronic/synth geeks into pop-tastic leaders of synth dance music so synonymous with the 80's. Of course the nostalgia was where it worked the most, and it set me reflecting on my own almost covert love of this stuff, the fashions and the post punk evolution of music through arguably its last truly avant-garde era of mixing the independent with mainstream appeal. Until Stock, Aitken and Waterman came along and strangled it with their ruthlessly efficent factory model producing electro-pap instead of electro-pop.

For 2 glorious hours I lay on the sofa revelling in clips from Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Pet shop Boys, Human League, Heaven 17, OMD and even some Kraftwerk lobbed in for good measure. From some BBC treasure vault they included video clips from clubs and concerts showing the transition from punk fashions including the goth eye make-up and quasi-bondage outfits into the refined versions so prevalent at the time and which in turn heavily influenced the whole New Romantic fashions seen at the time. Men wearing make-up then was outrageous, but who really bats an eyelid these days? For me it was covert because of the image I'd woven for myself at the time, the jean-jacketed long haired pseudo Motorhead look was my way. But although a dyed in the wool rocker, underneath it all beat the heart of a wedge haircut, make-up wearing, be-suited Spandau Ballet fan. I envied the guys in my local pub off to the clubs wearing this immaculate outrageous gear, spangly, sparkling women adorning their arms. It was circa 1983 when the hair finally got cut and the wedge appeared. I had two ear piercings but was never brave enough to don the make-up despite being just about the only one in that group. We all fancied the Human league girls, and some even fancied Alison Moyet (I've never been a weight fascist). Watching the programme reminded me of the prime of youth I guess, those years between about 17 and 25, prior to any really serious relationships or marriages, when a fuck or a fight at the end of an evening was a result (the fight obviously being the lesser prize), an age when school was done and you had very little in the way of responsibility. And as usual a time of our lives that we were too young to appreciate fully.

As I sat down to write this I realised that being born in 1961 has meant that I am so fortunate because I have lived through the best decades humanity has known. I got a taste of the 60's, like a young boy's first taste of Dad's beer. You pretend to like it but can't be sure because you're too young. But you know you'll love it when you grow up. The 1970's, a much maligned decade politically, culturally, artistically and musically, were in retrospect like the first few seconds of the Big Bang, where the Big Bang was the 60's (the decade that spat on post-war austerity, where the teenager was finally acknowledged by society). The 1970's gave us colour TV, FM radio, vcr's, glam rock, Queen, disco, new wave, punk, David Bowie, Dame Elton John. Rod Stewart, The Clash, T Rex, Sweet, Slade....the list is just too big, but suffice to say the 80's needed the 70's fashions and influence and they succeeded just as spectacularly. As the 90's came along the inevitable ageing process removes you from the cult of youth and you lose that touch with what's 'in' and what's relevant to the incoming generations.

And so it should be. What my generation, with all it's inherent grumpiness' has managed to do a million times better than our parents and grandparents generations is to accept what our kids like whilst reserving the right to dismissing it as rubbish either in jest or for real. We do not seem to embrace outrage or resistance to cultural change as they did in the 50's and 60's. And with any luck the next set of 40-something parents will be even better this, accepting the gap and encouraging the kids to do their own thing, to dress their own way, to listen to and like their own music. But I'll say this, boy have they got their work cut out in doing better than us. Something tells me that kids of today might not be looking back quite as nostalgically at Jedward, Rhydian, Mika, Acon and the stuff around today. Although Lady Gaga might make the cut!

Sound like a parent don't I?

Later, GJ

Heartbreaking inspiration

2009-10-30T18:23:00.002Z

I'm heading into the last few days of sick leave after the operation, now confident of a return to work next week. A month off, just the sort of break required for a bit of thinking as well as switching off. Wednesday was Tarantino day with back to back showings of Quentin Tarantino's finest movies. Then yesterday I treated myself to a day of Shakespeare Retold, the marvellous series shown 3 years ago by the BBC. I followed this up with yet another minor masterpiece in the form of the directors cut of Blade Runner, the first time I've seen this format. On the big TV in full cinema sound it really was quite spectacular.

I decided on this because I needed cheering up. I had a few pieces of news yesterday that made me feel a bit down. Not Grumpy Bloke down, but just a little sad. A friend at work has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She's 29 for fucks sake. And it's the worst kind apparently.

Some God huh?

Following that came the news that the trial of a friend I worked with who was killed last year had ended. The killer got manslaughter and 9 years. For 30 stab wounds and an attempt at sawing her head off. In front of her kids.

Some justice huh?

After the film finished I flicked through the channels and came to rest on Channel 4 +1 - the electronic guide simply stated a title of Katie: My Beautiful Face. I immediately assumed it was yet another sycophantic celebrity obsessed programme about Katie Price aka Jordan.

I couldn't have been more wrong. This was simply the most heartbreaking, tragic and yet ultimately warm and inspiring thing I've seen on TV. And I probably mean ever. Maybe it's having Kid and Pie, two lovely teenage daughters but this fantastic documentary seems to have had a major effect on me.

Katie Piper was attacked in March 2008 by an accomplice of her boyfriend. Not just an attack, a vicious and unbelievably cruel attack. He threw industrial strength sulphuric acid straight into her face. She was on the phone to her so called boyfriend at the time who was able to tell his friend what she was wearing to ensure he got the right person. It was all captured on CCTV, which was included in the documentary. It made me cry. As did the photo's taken after the event, as did the video of her in her hospital bed after being woken from her induced coma.

Katie Piper was attractive in a typically 21st century way. Blonde hair, petite figure, flashing white teeth. The sort of person I'd normally label as vacuous, self-centred and dull, and I would have based that judgement purely on her look. Look in any lads mag, or celebrity magazine and you'll see so many like her. Walk though any shopping mall and you'll see the same. Behind this attractive face was a bright young chirpy woman trying to make a name in TV presenting and modelling, as yet seemingly unsullied by the sleazier side of both industries. No doubt this was down to a decent upbringing from her wonderfully grounded parents and younger sister.

The film showed how this girl.....no sorry.....young woman has had to learn to live with terrible disfigurement, through 30 operations, being fed through a tube, being scared to answer the door, barely sleeping through the night without nightmares, having to wear a mask at night on top of the perspex mask she wears for 23 hours a day, with various anti-scar treatments being applied 4 times daily by her parents, having to constantly apply drops into her eyes every few hours and to try and walk down the road and ignore the stares and leers from the Great British Public, She lives this life every day and is still very much on the road to recovery. She has lauded the talents of her NHS doctor, Mr Jawad, who has used pioneering techniques on her to try and reconstruct a face that was literally dissolved of her skull. It was so bad it destroyed all 4 skin layers in places and just left the fat layer that sits over the bone. It dissolved some of her throat and part of her chest and shoulder as well as her wrist. It was truly utterly shocking, At one point when she was at a specialist treatment centre only available in France (a trip funded by a charity) when her Dad called to break the news that the scumbag who'd done this had been found guilty. The consequent filmed breakdown as she collapsed into mixed tears of pain and happiness was utterly heartbreaking. I defy anyone to watch the film and not find themselves gaining a sense of real perspective.

Katie Piper. You are a truly remarkable and brave young woman. The film showed me what real beauty is all about, and disfigured or not, yours shone through. I found myself inspired by your personality, attitude and a level of courage that I'm not sure I could ever reach. I hope you find someone good and kind to hold your hand through life, to support you and make sure the rest of your life is both long, rich and fulfilled. I doff my virtual Guild of Grumpy Blokes cap in your direction.

Later, GJ

Things I have liked.....and things I haven't

2009-10-27T21:26:00.002Z

Sitting around for 2 weeks now has meant loads of time to watch TV and try to learn French through new technologies. I've watched near enough everything on my V+ box plus quite a few DVD's and it's been good to catch up on some of the latest stuff.

Some Good stuff:

Cloverfield. Rather excellent 'monster ravages New York' movie with interesting perspective, being as it is shown from the perspective of someone witnessing events through a video camera. Only downside is it yet again centres around teenagers with virtually nobody over 20 in it. I know the makers have a target demographic, but really, would it have hurt to include a few adults?

The Dark Knight: The best Batman film by some distance. As far from the cartoon-like versions seen before, and yes that does include the Tim Burton ones.

Ironman: Superb super hero film laced with humour and menace. How could anything that plays in with Back in Black by ACDC, with the best US actor ever, Jeff Bridges, and the rejuvenated Robert Downey Junior be anything but good?

Holby City: OK, I'm coming out here. This is my guilty secret. I hate soaps and so for me this can't ber classed as a soap, but it just draws me in with the characters, the plots and arcs and its recent transformation to a filmic quality makes it eminently watchable.

Hancock: Drunken waster superhero film with Will Smith. Surprisingly enjoyable as I find his films a little rubbish. He's similar to Jim Carrey in that he irritates me in most films, but maybe this has started to redeem him in my eyes. Carrey did it with The Truman Show, but since then it's all been the usual crap.

Facebook games: Easy ways to while away the hours.

Quake Live: Yes, Quake, the game, online and free! Great fun for an hour or so.

The Wright Stuff: Yes, thats right, the daily Matthew Wright vehicle. He can be smug and arrogant, but to be fair its his show, but this is always striking the right balance between fun and serious, with interesting guests always willing to contribute.

BBC Breakfast: Well, why woud I be surprised. The BBC doing a great job of keeping me up to date. Plus it has Suzanne Reid and Sian Williams so whats not too like?

Not so good stuff:

Loose women. Great idea. Shite execution. Shite guests. Trivial trite bollocks.

This Morning: Competition TV with the odd human interest slot.

Jeremy Kyle. Seriously, if he's good enough for TV then why am I not doing my own programme.

Gold adverts/Loan shark adverts: Need I say more?

Childrens TV: Dear God, patronizing, simplistic, safe, bland rubbish. Yes, I know its not for me , but my memory is good enough to remember that it was never so bad in my day.

And thats it. 3 weeks condensed into good and bad. What a fucking saddo!

Later, GJ

*PS....coming next, why I love the 80's

Offensive....moi?

2009-10-26T10:14:00.002Z

I am offended by many things.

Nick Griffin for example. His attempt to put a veneer of respect on a political party based in violence, repression, bigotry and viciousness is an affront to everything I believe in.

Bankers offend me for taking huge bonuses whilst others lose their houses and jobs, if not their lives.

The government offends me for fiddling expenses, allowing the banks and financial institutions to ruin the country and then telling me, the taxpayer that after bailing them out, my taxes must rise to pay for all of this.

Gordon Brown offends me for his bumbling attempts at leadership and his constant need to try and gain credibility by spouting soundbites based on the success of British artists or sportsmen.

Jeremy Kyle offends me for his bear baiting nasty programme exposing the domestic problems of the more vulnerable and ill-educated of society.

The X Factor offends me for being a platform for rich and famous people to mock misguided wannabees. Yes, I know Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke are very good singers but how many were humiliated in order to get to those two?

Ditto Big Brother, Britain's Got Talent and all the other reality shows designed to emulate the Victorian freak show mentality.

The point is everyone gets offended every day. Some people seem to have taken it to the point whereby any opinion that differs from their own is offensive. We now live in a culture where the slightest criticism of anyone is deemed offensive, where anything funny that's said about anyone is seen as offensive and in extreme cases, bullying.

So, the fuss of the Jimmy Carr story fits in with yet another probable witch hunt headed up by an indignant and angry press on our behalf. The truth of this is of course Carr's humour is well known by those who pay to see him. It is adult humour that steps very close to boundaries of good taste and undoubtedly in some cases oversteps the mark for some people. But you get what you pay for. Even if he did offend me I wouldn't feel the need to complain about it. Why extend the feeling of being offended by making even more of a fuss. Do people who complain feel they are protecting someone? In this case it seems pretty clear that the soldiers feel he might have nicked the joke from them anyway. Plus anyone who has ever met a soldier will know that dark humour is very much part and parcel of soldiering life. It keeps them grounded. Plus, there is a subtext to the joke as well which praises the types of people that soldiers are that the loss of limbs is no obstacle to them achieving great things in their lives.

And the irony of a potential campaign of injured feelings from the Daily Mail after the Jan Moir article on Steven Gately isn't lost on me either.

Similarly those people who tried to stop Nick Griffin last week, and have slated the BBC since then, have no right to be offended on my behalf. I'll make my own mind up thanks very much. In all of this, the one fact remains that you can't extol the virtues of democracy and free speech and then try to block certain views and thoughts no matter how heinous they are, nor can you stop people making bad taste jokes or overstepping boundaries of decency. What is funny is like music or art.....they are too subjective to put boundaries around them.

So, I say this to Griffin, Brown, Cowell, Tatchell, Wenger, Ferguson, Kyle, Cameron, Carr, Ross, Brand, Thatcher, Du Beke, Osborne, Miliband, Benitez and anyone else who says or thinks things that I find offensive, carry on. Carry on with doing those very things that offend me because I'd much rather live in a society that allows you to do that, and implicitly that includes my views as well, than one that bans it and consequently suppresses the people.

And yes, I did read 1984 on holiday, and yes I can see exactly what Orwell was forecasting for the future. With political correctness and suppression of protest and freedom of speech, just how far are we from having a Ministry of Truth dealing in lies, A Ministry of Peace dealing in war, a Ministry of Plenty dealing in hardship and a Ministry of Love dealing in the propaganda of hate?

Later, GJ

How to under-estimate .....Part II

2009-10-19T16:08:00.003+01:00

Along came the cheerful nurse. Yep, a nurse who seemed genuinely cheerful and unburdened by the job, pay and conditions they work under.

She was young.

She must have been new.

So she walked me down to the ........hmmmm.......reception area seems strong, but basically the place where you wait before being taken into the theatre. By this time I had a tag attached, presumably telling them who I was and what I was having done. I didn't look at it. By this time I was shaking in my sock-less trainers as it finally dawned on me I was about to have an operation whilst awake.

Then came the walk into the theatre. It seems an odd name really. Why not garage? Or workshop? Then you realise that there is a lead actor (the surgeon) , a supporting actor (the other surgeon) supporting cast (the nurses and anaesthetist) and then the audience (you, the patient). Of course a lot of the time the audience is asleep which presumably guarantees there'll be no calls of 'Encore!'. It also means there'll be no heckling, which must be a plus point for the 'cast'. Mind you it would be a peculiar audience /patient to shout at the surgeon 'Oi, its rubbish mate' or 'Get another job' wouldn't it.

So I was one of those who would be a proper audience, awake, alert, aware but not actually able to see what was going on. Just as well really, the thought of seeing my stomach opened up holds about as much appeal as seeing Anne Widdecombe in a see through negligee wearing stockings and suspenders.

I apologise now for planting that last image in your minds.

Anyway, as I laid down on the bed, I took the deep breaths I was convinced would help me through something I had now upgraded from a doddle to an ordeal. Dr Evil started the 'act' with some barked orders at the nurses. A greeting for me, in much the same way as the villain in a Bond film greets 007.

"Good Morning Mr Bond, we meet again" .........yep just like "Good Morning Mr Jack...we meet again' . And this villain would have knives and cutters and needles and all sorts of weapons of evil with which to maim and injure me with.

Yes...I know he was a doctor there to help me, but at this point I was starting to reel mentally. Why does the mind do this? Even as I stared up at the smiling nurses the image of Laurence Olivier standing over Dustin Hoffman in the Marathon Man famous chilling scene sprang to the forefront of my thoughts.

At first it seemed chaotic, the team not knowing where anything was, the surgeon barking orders at them. It was like the first 5 minutes of any Chelsea match. Trust me, they appeared like strangers.The needles went into the back of the hand after some 'encouragement' , my torso painted with iodine and then the words "You'll feel the needles entering as I administer the local, sorry but this will hurt."

He was so right. But being the macho, bravado ridden type I decided I'd had worse so this was merely greeted by a nod and some tightening of the knuckles as I gripped the side of the bed even harder. It would pale against what was to come. The next words I remember other than the Colour Sergeant Major barkings of Dr Evil. Then I saw the smoke.

Yep, smoke.

Smoke from me.

From my flesh.

And what did Dr Evil say? Only this ...." I'm cutting in now and using something to stop the bleeding as I do it. You'll see some smoke and steam rising and you might smell something like barbecue pork chop. That's you that is"

And that's where the decline started. After this I could feel the tugging, pulling and the odd minor twinge. Nothing bad, but still the psyche works in funny ways and every horror movie involving the slicing open of the captive victim was now in the mind. Then the first of the pain. Something was snipped or cut and the pain reverberated through every nerve ending in my body. I have never felt anything like this before and I hope I never do again. The reaction from me was a sudden rigidity which must have looked to the 'team' like instantaneous rigor mortis. Dr Evil asked if that hurt and through near tears I muttered a muffled "Yes".

"No points for bravery" he said "You have to tell me if it hurts so we can administer more local"

So in went more. 10 minutes later, the same happened again. Within minutes of that I felt the sweat pour, the breathing labour and the pulse treble in speed. I was going to pass out. Weedily, I managed to speak the words " I think I'm going to pass out" and within seconds a kindly nurse put the oxygen mask on. During all of this Dr Evil barked questions at his team.

"What is a hernia?", "What is the cause", "What is the alternative to surgery?" etc , and each of the team stumbled over an answer. Unsurprising really given the nature of his questioning. It seems he does it to keep everybody on their toes and to concentrate on the operation.

After 55 minutes he closed me up. 55 of the longest minutes of my life. Despite the nice nurses talking to me the sense of relief was massive. The tugging, the pulling, the tension and the flashing blades were all over. They took me down to post op, the nice Nurse chatted away to me, laughing at how Dr Evil made her feel, and that even if he asked the names of her kids she'd freeze up. Little Sis greeted me and after Hello, her first words were "You look like you've had a bit of a shock".

She was so, so very right. Some tea, toast and a visit to the loo confirming bladder function and I was off home. Feeling like I'd had my guts removed and replaced with a medicine ball with spikes on the outside.

2 weeks later and I'm able to walk and nothing else. No driving, no lifting, no cycling and no swimming. Dr Finlay and his Casebook, my GP, checked today and said it was looking good despite the continuing pain. Apparently age slows the recovery down and a 100cm cut is similar to what women get on a Cesarean, and its often 6 weeks for full recovery.

And there was me thinking the op would be 15 minutes, I'd be home in an hour and back at work in 2 days.

That's the art of under-estimation, executed with skill of the highest order.

Later, GJ

*PS - in hindsight Dr Evil was more like Dr Efficient. Maybe Dr Blase. Or Dr Routine. I'm sure that he's done a good job and maybe we should expect these people to be like they are. After all, there's nothing wrong with being arrogant if you're right.

How to under estimate ........

2009-10-15T21:30:00.003+01:00

I've never been good at guesswork, or estimating. Hence my aversion to gambling, not on morality grounds but merely on grounds of my own utter fuckwittery when it comes to guessing scores, or winners or losers come to that. And ultimately, no matter what others say, gambling is guesswork!

So, about 18 months ago I went to see the doctor about something trivial....so trivial I can't remember what it was.

However he spotted a lump just below my belly button. Immediately worried he sent me to the hospital suspecting a hernia and of course worrying that this could lead to complications if it twisted and got strangulated. He actually referred me to his 'good friend' who for reasons of anonymity we'll dub Dr Evil.

In fact he ticked all of the Holby City stereotypical consultant boxes. Brash, yes. Arrogant, yes. Confident, yes. Blase, yes. Contemptuous of patient, yes. Subject matter expert, of course. Able to feign interest in patient, absolutely. Strangely likeable, weirdly yes. Anyway he said it was umbilical and therefore no threat and besides they don't like doing them in adults because of the reasonable recurrence rate and the chance of infection. Apparently the belly button is an unhygienic area full of germs and bacteria. Think of nthat the next time you engage in a bit of oral foreplay with your partners cute navel. Apparently its a warm hive of filth and disease carrying mega bugs.

As the year went by and I lost some weight it didn't get any better and after cycling or swimming it was arguably worse, and when ot protruded it bloody hurt which can't be right. So I went back. This time he said that as it hadn't settled down it would be a good thing to repair it. He also stated that this was routine and so a local anaesthetic would be sufficient.

So, a couple of Tuesdays ago I went for the op. I'd been MRSA tested in July and all was Ok there and the appointment letter simply stated it would be done under a local and that I was to keep to an ordinary light diet. Fine by me. On the morning of the op I was a tad subdued based on an underlying morbid fear of hospitals and the premature death of 2 friends in 2 years both with 'routine' ailments. So, wearing some 'comfort' clothing of tracksuit bottoms and footie shirt off we trekked. W|e arrived nice and early and so were the second to check in. As we waited I noticed everyone turning up had a bag with them, mostly supermarket carrier bags but the odd sports bag as well. My first thought was that I was in some sort of Chav Central and that these people were off to the local shops right after their treatment. Then this happened.....

Nurse Ratched: Grocerjack?
GJ: Yes, that'd be me.
Nurse Ratched: Oh. Haven't you got a bag?
GJ: Errr...no...why?
NR: So you have no dressing gown?
GJ: Errr....no...why...do I need one?
NR: Well what do you expect to wear to the theatre?
GJ: Theatre? I was expecting a quick procedure in a bed in a clinic.
NR: (Laughing)....you do know what you're having done?
GJ: A hernia op.
NR: Exactly, an operation. You should have read the letter which would have told you to bring a few bits.
GJ: (hands over letter which stated NONE of the stuff she had mentioned)...
NR: So you'll need a sick note then.
GJ: Huh? I'm going back to work on Thursday, so no thanks.
NR: (Laughing harder)...ooh no, its a MINIMUM of 2 weeks recovery and up to 6 weeks depending on age and fitness etc.
GJ: (gulps)...what?
NR: So you'd also better warn your partner you'll be about 2 hours in post op and about an hour in theatre...
GJ (the sound of a large penny dropping)...so this is a proper operation then?
NR: Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.

If she'd cackled at this point it wouldn't have been amiss in the midst of the day surgery ward reminiscent of every mental hospital drama you've ever seen. Spartan beds in a room of spartan walls, with grumpy nurses growling at patients and mad looking and sounding porters chatting away about the most inane bollocks in the world.

To me and you, a completely alien and intimidating environment. To them, just another day in the office.

Anyway, I had to undress...completely and wear a gown and another one backwards to ensure no-one saw my arse. Yep, how very dignified.

NR: When did you last eat?
GJ: Last night
NR:..and drink?
GJ: A glass of orange juice this morning.
NR: Oh dear, You're not supposed to have anything other than water before an operation...
GJ: What? It's only a local anaesthetic!
NR: What? A local? For something like this? Blimey, you're brave
GJ: (gulping) .......am I?

Anyway, convinced at this point that certain death was looming because they'd leave a blade inside me, or my cholesterol laden blood would clot instantly on the arteries and veins exposed, I sat listening to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here album whilst waiting for Dr Evil to show up. Typically, as I listened to the title track, he arrived. He barked a few things at me about nmy holiday without listening to the answer. Then made me sign the disclaimer form. Then he looked at me and said

DE: Oh, you've opted for a local then?
GJ: Opted? I wasn't given the choice.
DE: Oh well never mind, too,late too change it now. You're first on the list. See you in 15 minutes......

And off he strode. The word 'shit' just kept coming back to me..................

to be continued..........

Later, GJ

Cashsploitation

2009-10-15T20:33:00.004+01:00

Unbelievable.

Amongst all the ads from shark dressed men (sic) begging for our old gold was another one for a company doing 'pay day' loans. The idea presumably is that if you need what we used to call a sub until payday they will lend you the dosh and then you pay them back on payday.

Yep, I used to sub off my first employer, maybe a tenner here or a fiver there......I was taking home £25 a week back then. But he never charged me extra for this and it wasn't something I used that often.

Anyway, Quickquid as they're called, are now advertising on TV, during the bleak landscape of daytime TV, presumably aiming at the unemployed, low paid, debt stricken amongst us. Sounds innocent enough until you read the not-so-small print on the advert that shows the equivalent APR. That would be the one that had me and Little Sis pondering if a decimal point was missing from the displayed figure. A good hard stare unveiled the fact that no, we weren't hallucinating. Nor was it a misprint, Nor has the TV pixellated the picture causing distortion. Nope, the figure was there, large as life on the screen.

An APR of .........2356%. Yep, check that, but I can assure you it is no misprint.

2356%.

Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Jesus would weep if he were alive. I recall the halcyon days of Thats Life which used to regularly expose loan sharking like this. It used to be considered a bad thing once upon a time....but now........hey let's advertise on TV! I'm sure its all above board and legal.I'm sure the ads are legal and honest. On that basis I look forward to ads for the BNP, Al-Qaeeda, Opus Dei, or for Dignitas (had enough of life, fancy a trip to the mountains of Switzerland?). Maybe you could sell your gold to pay for the trip to Dignitas, you stupid debt ridden old person....go on......leave all your finance and health problems behind...... Blimey, the convergence of these could be a big business opportunity.

As for Quickquid, I'm sure you'll never have windows broken on non-payment. I'm sure there won't be thugs at the door threatening your various limbs with some sort of impact injury. Nope, but you can bet there'll be tons of phone calls, letters and knocks on the door as they try to get their cash back with interst of course. These days the pressure is psychological rather than physical. Letters contain veiled threats, phone calls come at 7 in the morning or 10 at night. Its much more subtle these days but equally invasive and equally pressurising.

And equally vile.

Of course, just like the gold sharks, these modern day loan sharks are targetting the most vulnerable and gullible in society. These are people at their most desperate and weakest, and yet apparently they are legally targetted without any apparent protection other than the woefully inadequate Consumer Credit Act. Its all within the law of course, but this must be stretching the law spirit or boundaries of the law in some way.

It's a disgrace, and as a society we sit back in our non interfering spineless way and allow all this crap to go on. Is it any wonder the Poles are all going home? Is it any wonder more and more retired people are leaving these shores. Its a bit early for the 'hell in a handcart' speech yet, but with an election looming and the choice being between a 'dying on its arse' Labour Party and the camoflaged New Tory party amounting to nothing more than a blue rinse Daily Mail reader wearing a blonde wig, heavy make up and using Botox, flaunting enhanced tits at the Great British Public. Underneath its still a big fat rich bastard who cares about no-one but himself.

It is damned hard to see a bright future, or a society where the immoral exploitation of the poorest is no longer allowed and encouraged through the medium of TV.

Later GJ

Footnote - I have no problem with what Dignitas do, in fact I support the choice of people to use their services if proven to be terminally ill. But I would oppose them being able to advertise on daytime TV........can you imagine how that would be received in retirement homes?

Cash for gold?

2009-10-15T11:10:00.010+01:00

I'm in the throes of recovering from a hernia operation which has meant I've been immobile for a couple of weeks. This has meant I've been able to sample the delights of daytime TV. Using the word 'delights' loosely of course. Still, it also gave me the chance to catch up on all the stuff I've got on the V+ box. More of which is to follow.......

One thing that has struck me is the plethora of adverts that are being shown asking us to sell them our gold. That's right, apparently we can swap our 'unwanted' gold for heaps of lovely cash. Cue an endless stream of actors playing ordinary folk giving testimonials as to how great the service was and how good the feel of cash is.....one of them even got enough cash for an 'away game in Europe'. As I type this on comes an advert showing a tiny handful of gold jewelery in one hand, and a wad of notes in the other and a voice over extolling the virtues of using the cash for a trip abroad.

Is it just me or does this appear to be a final sign that the recession is biting hard? These sort of adverts seem to me to prey on the more vulnerable and desperate in society. I mean it will be the most desperate and vulnerable people who will respond to this. A field day for burglars one imagines as well, after all whats to stop this being nothing more than legalised fencing. You break in, or con someone out of their jewelery, go home, send it off and webuyanygold.com or whoever hands you a wad of cash, whilst conveniently melting down the swag to turn into nice bullion bars or reshaped trinkets. I just have to sit and wonder how this is being legally advertised.

I'd say its money for old rope, but in these cases it's money for old bling.

Later, GJ

Sick and tired....

2009-09-17T12:14:00.001+01:00

Sick of politicians at all levels

Sick of indecision

Sick of celebrity culture

Sick of big business

Sick of banks and bankers

Sick of rampant ungoverned Capitalism

Sick of retrospective apologies for things we had nothing to do with

Sick of the wolves at the door sensing blood and growing in size

Sick of the law that crushes honest people and rewards the rich and ruthless

Sick of insurance companies using loopholes to avoid moral duty

Sick of utility companies jacking up prices

Sick of statistics used to define policies that affect our lives

Sick of studies used to smother us in a blanket of fear

Sick of a society where everyone tries to avoid accountability

Sick of blame culture

Sick of fear culture

Sick of the buck passing mentality that has invaded every aspect of our lives

Sick of technology that fails to deliver

Sick of being overlooked

Sick of living under veiled threats of job security

Sick of a future painted in shades of dark grey and black

Sick of being hounded.

Sick of being the victim

It's time to revisit the plan and change this life.

Later, GJ

Lazy bastard

2009-07-10T16:30:00.003+01:00

That'd be me then.

I'm at the point where work is very much heading towards the same sort of state it was when this blog first started. Maybe that'll inspire me to write more about the mundane, the gobbledygook, the corporarte bollocks and the mind numbing shite I put up with every day. Isn't it often the case that the best songs are writen from pain? Maybe the best articles are written from frustration, anger, incredulityand boredom. So, on that bright note I'll look again at the blog and whether it's something I can pursue with fresh eyes rather than just regurgitating more moans and groans about the inequities of life. I'm getting rather used to other Web 2.0 (yawn) phenomena like Twitter and Facebook so maybe there's some links there as well. Plus the idea of writing a book grows stronger each day....but then I look at the market and think that every one is doing the same...so why would anything I do be special enough to be successful? If you're not a 'celeb' then being successful in writing books, plays or screenplays seems an increasingly unlikely route to inner satisfaction that pays enough to live on.

Oh, and I have a new gadget, the HTC Magic or G2 Googlephone or something similar. It's changed the way I look at a mobile phone in much the same way as those with iphones probably think. Thats why I've included a picture. A review might follow.

If I can be arsed.

Later GJ

Not long now......

2009-06-04T09:24:00.001+01:00

Another week passes and GJ is too busy to write.....still with the football season now over perhaps there'll be less Chelsea stuff to write about on the Chelseablog to which I frequently contribute.

Giving me more time here!

So, we head into week number whatever of MP's expenses and maybe it's just me, but it seems the story has been milked to death. If I didn't know better I'd even suggest that press had a vested interest in keeping it going in order to avoid any scandal in their own back yard being uncovered. I mean surely no hack has ever fiddled their expenses.....or been known to frequent toilets with a mate called Charlie....have they?

It also seems to me that despite the morality issues being spouted the continuous reporting is detracting from the scandal of worldwide global mismanagement on behalf of the banks and financial institutions which has contributed to a global recession which has lost people their jobs and houses. In terms of priorities it all appears a bit out of kilter. However it has spurred me into looking at alternatives to the current system and the current parties.

And I don't mean the BNP. In fact the best thing I've read this week is the article in last Sunday's Observer which was one of the best hatchet jobs I've ever seen on the BNP.

I've become quite enamoured by Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems, who slowly, quietly but surely do seem to be setting themselves up as a genuine alternative to Gordon Brown's crumbling alleged Labour government. The trouble is until we get some sort of Proportional Representation system they have no chance of influencing the government. The Tories looked quite hopeful under Cameron's youthful and vigourous re-branding, but I can't be doing with their entrenched Euro-scepticism and desire (from the grass roots) to remove us from the EU, which of course most sensible people know would result in the utter collapse of this countries economy. Why? Because quite simply as China and India continue to grow as economic powerhouses, with the US sure to also remain a major player, and Russia's resurgence due to it's plentiful supply of natural resources the only weay the Uk could compete with these , as with any of the other European countries, is through the united trading block that is the EU. We're just too small and insignificant to operate successfully on our own. Others point to Sweden or Switzerland as examples of countries who have done it on their own....but be real...their economies don't come close to ours, and the Swiss economy is utterly dependent on sharp banking practices and dubious funding. So, no Tories for me thanks.

The Greens under Caroline Bellamy have some great principles, a really liberating drugs policy but for me fall down on their reluctance to embrace nuclear power. The french have been huge nuclear operators for years now without any major incidents and the cheapest electricity in Europe. I'm afraid the Greens arguments against nuclear just don't add up for me. it's a shame because like all of the progressive parties, they also support PR or some form of alternative to the patronising 'first past the post' system we use in this the UK. A system which means that around 60% of all votes cast in general elections are useless. Is it any wonder turnouts are down and people are disengaging from politics?

So, I'll continue to scour for a party to vote for, fundamentally socialist, with the will to reform and modernise parliament and the constitution, to change the voting system and to transform the tax system. A party that will genuinely try and tackle crime with stiff sentences for knife and gun carriers, whilst reforming drugs policy into something workable that doesn't put the proceeds into organised crime and terrorism. A party that embraces multi-culturalism but also understands the need for reasonable immigration controls like Australia has done. A party that wants students to be educated without being landed with huge debts. A party that genuinely wants to revolutionise public transport with huge railway funding programmes, that uses the road tax for roads and encourages home working through new technologies. A progressive party that is prepared for press and media backlashes against change that is necessary to bring the UK into the 21st century.

Looks like a revamp for the Liberation manifesto!

Later, GJ

Crock

2009-05-20T09:09:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, The Company announced a worldwide profit of £4.2bn. On the same day, Marks and Spencers announced a profit of £604m. Both companies saw a significant downturn in profits from previous years. However, what seems to have passed the financial press and city wankers........sorry cunts........sorry analysts....sorry both the previous descriptions were more apt, is the fact that there is a GLOBAL RECESSION. Yep, in big fuck off letters that even the most apathetic person could understand. Money is in short supply, jobs are being discarded like toilet paper after a bad curry, people are tightening belts and companies are cutting costs.

The world economy is at the moment royally fucked.

Let me put that into perspective.

£4,200,000,000 profit for The Company. Another way of putting this is £479,452 per hour.

£604,000,000 profit for Marks and Spencer. That’s £68,950 per hour.

However, reading the financial press, and listening to the baying mob of so called financial experts being wheeled out across the world of TV and Radio, one might be foriven for thinking that this was nothing short of a catastrophe. I'll put that down to sloppy bandwagon jumping reportage provided by people with the sole intention of furthering their journalistic careers in the pay of the very proprietors who support the systems that caused this economic downfall. As for the so called impartial BBC, like the egotistical Jeff Randall and his ilk, they are all hoping for the big payday offer from Rupert Murdoch or similar to work for them and continue the propaganda machine's muck spreading of the slurry of New Capitalism.

Am I on a different planet? We get told there's no pay rise, and we stick £4.2bn in the bank? Marks and Spencer turn in handsome profit in the cut throat world of high street retailing and the shareholders wring their hands in dismay at the thought of poorer returns? The institutional shareholders at M&S then have the gall to start calling for the head of the man (Stuart Rose) who lest it be forgotten, rescued them from going under or being bought out and asset stripped and then returned this profit when shopping malls and high streets are emptier than Sir Fred Goodwin’s sense of morality?

How in anyones name can these results be construed as bad news? Yet due to the greed of the city gamblers, some pension funds will be affected, as their analysis and comment drives down the share price. Great results still lead to huge share price falls and all we can do, the honest saver or small time shareholder or employee or pensioner can do is watch as scumbag gamblers in the city act as judge and jury on how well a company has done.

All driven by how much they're likely to make.

And therein lies the problem. The word 'capitalise'. As in Capitalism, or rather the twisted excessive greed driven version allowed to run riot by cowardly left wing governments or power craven parasitic right wing governments. Spineless Chief execs, quaking in their designer shoes, unwilling or unable to tell these city parasites to fuck off for fear of losing their jobs are as guilty as well.

Capitalism, the nouveau ultra greed ridden version is far from dead.

Political change of the radical type is required. Our weedy, ineffective, inefficient and morally corrupt version of democracy will never change anything. Proportional representation might help as every vote counts in forming the final 'colour' of the government. Hell, I'd even accept 10 years of dictatorship if that’s what it took to change things and put the power back in the hands of the people.

How shit must things be to even entertain that idea?!

Later, GJ

2009-05-19T13:49:00.003+01:00

Every day, in every way something happens to make me feel older. And not necessarily older in a good way. Usually it's some piece of nostalgia drifting into my consciousness via a song on the radio, a TV programme or an inadvertent reference to something from a bygone era. You know the sort of thing, when someone drops into a conversation the fact that the nearest phone box typically was out of action because someone had shoved a bent 2 pence piece in.

But yesterday was a real low in feeling old.

Kid had her first driving lesson. Yep, that scruffy urchin, that sweet natured little girl, that typically dozy teenager who now attends college, has a 20 year old boyfriend, comes in after I've gone to bed is now learning to drive.

The penultimate nail in the coffin of parental dependency is being rammed home.

I saw her pull the car up outside the house at the end and the feeling of pride was punctured by the feeling of wrongness and resignation that it's just a matter of time now before she flies the nest.

Oh dear.

Later, GJ

2009-05-13T11:14:00.000+01:00

MP's expenses seem to be taxing (no pun intended) a lot of people lately. However, I'm not particularly one of them. Whilst I do see the ridiculousness of being able to claim for such items as horse manure, dog food, lawnmower repairs (the sit in type of lawnmower, not the kind that most of us have to use) it does seem odd to me that we, the taxpayers, seem to think that being an MP is something that should be done as some sort of altruistic vocation. There does seem to be this view that an MP should really serve the country because of a devotion to duty and love of the people he or she represents. And they should do it for free.

That of course is utter fallacy. The majority of MP's still come through the public school and higher education routes. The majority of MP's view the role as a job much like an airline pilot or Tesco employee does. It pays, they get some measure of enjoyment from it, and whenever there's a chance to loaf or make some extra cash, they're in just like anyone else. It appears that morality is the issue at hand here, not legality. No-one seems to have fiddled any expenses. The rules are in place and all they have done is exploited them to the max. Lets be honest here...who wouldn't? It's human nature to feather ones own nest first. Call it part of the survival instinct. There is no such thing as true altruism, MP's like the rest of us operate in a mutual back scratching society whereby the do gooders often benefit themselves. And I've no problem with that. if a band wants to appear at a Geldof charity gig and their performance makes a few quid for the charity, BUT they get increased album sales or a career boost then that's fine for me.They scratch the charities back, and the public re-scratch their backs. That's our society.

So, the only way I see of resolving the expenses issues for MP's is to pay them a salary commensurate with the position. The salary is £64, 766. I appreciate that's not a bad wedge but I think a lot of MP's are hardworking people who not only attend Parliament, but run surgeries, attend Party gatherings and much more. many independent reviews have recommended a much higher salary for what in essence could be judged to be in the group of jobs containing Judges, Doctors, Barristers etc. I would quite happily accept MP's being on £200,000 per year (so they get to pay the 50% tax) and from that they fund researchers and second homes. Cabinet Ministers and The Prime Minister could earn say £100k a year above that to reflect seniority and additional responsibility. They can then, like most organizations allow, claim for legitimate business/travel mileage, reasonable hospitality to a limited cost, but would be restricted to a maximum expenses claims pot per year according to the average allowed by the top 25 FTSE companies....all who most likely, if The Company are anything to go by, have very stringent limits on what can be claimed and how much. The taxpayer knows the exact cost per year and everyone is in the same boat.

We live in an age of Information Technology. Surely something like this could be easily implemented.

Later, GJ

Its Bike time

2009-05-06T16:06:00.003+01:00

You may recall the shock of me finding out that apparently despite .....

a.) alternating between doing 45 minutes on the exercise bike and swimming for 70 lengths between Monday and Friday

b.) taking 2 lots of blood pressure control tablets

c.) and taking a nightly Statin and ......

d.) a daily high dosage tablet of Fish Oil, one with Garlic and another with Glucosamine

e.) eating mainly salads and fruit with white meat or fish (bar weekends)

e.) and being only 47.......

........I am an unhealthy lardy lump with blood so laden down with cholesterol that you could tar a road with it. According to the nurse when i went to my 'well man' check I'm lucky my heart can pump it around my body and that frankly even a Jumbo Jet engine might struggle to push the blood through my veins.

Well - 6 months on and some weight has been shed. But a shit luck would have it, its all gone from the wrong places. Arms and legs are nicely toned. Not much of a double chin in existence. When I swim, I have to remove the wedding ring lest it drops off in the water, showing that even my fingers have lost weight, But despite all this, what has been lost from the tummy? Thats right. just about Sweet Fuck All. I now burn around 700-800 calsories a day in exercise. Heck, even a round of golf burns 550 odd calories according to my pedometer. But do I look slim? What do you reckon? Further proof that there is no God. I mean why would he/she design a body so that despite the best efforts and reasonable exercise, not one fucking piece of tummy fat disappears. Oh, I've lost it off the actual waist...I mean all my trousers and jeans can be removed without actually undoing the buttons. And I'm at the last belt notch........but of course the tummy overhangs the waist doesn't it. Short of doing 3 hours exercise a day and eating rabbit food like some crazed American fitness psycho body fascist its hard to see what can be done.

Life is inherently unfair on a number of fronts but it does seem inevitable that as you age, the pounds stay on firmer and longer until of course some form of vile intestinal disease takes hold, or some sort of terminal illness takes over. Even then I suspect such people are walking around with stick thin arms, legs, slender buttocks and refined necklines but with a bloody great in built comfort pillow of fat billowing around the midriff. Perhaps the next life will offer the opportunity to reverse this and actually reward us for eating and drinking with superslim fit bodies.

Anyway - its the time of the year when the fairweather cyclist can come out of his hiding place, can cover the exercise bike with a sheet and take to the road. Starting last night.

And boy was it tough. I live in a rual area with loads of fantastic cycling routes through bridlepaths, across country parks and farms. I live within minutes of the Southdowns Way and these routres take you to fantastic parts of the countryside that you could ONLY see if walking or on a bike. hence there is virtually nothing in the way of flat routes. You're either cycling uphill or downhill. Thats about it. And so, on my first real outing of the year I got barely halfway along the first path when i decided my legs had failed to work. Now being the determined type who competes with himself regularly I did of course carry on. But the difference between a punishing 45 minute exercise bike ride, including an alleged uphill program, and a real cycle ride on real terrain, with the weight of a real bike and your own real weight to drag around is like the difference between walking to the front door and climbing a tower block with a fridge on your back. I did 8.5 miles in the end, which many would scoff at, but in my view this 8.5 miles across hill and dale equates to 20 miles on flat smooth roads. I'd prove it if there were any 20 mile smooth flat road routes anywhere near here.

Despite this , it was bloody good fun and I defy anyone not to shout '"wheeee" when going down a track at 20mph dodging the rocks and deep puddles. A quick and simple reversion to childhood and good exercise. Just what the doctor ordered...although the nurse will still moan like fuck next time I go in.

Later, GJ

Long waits

2009-05-06T16:04:00.001+01:00

When you've booked a holiday, no matter how close the time is, why does it always seem like an eternity away?

Later, GJ

2009-05-05T15:00:00.003+01:00

Well well. A flying visit from Jack. It's the usual excuse of lack of time that prevents me from regularly posting. I think I need to get away from the idea that I MUST post something daily and maybe just learn to do 2 or 3 per week. I also want to move away from it just being a whinge, despite the whole thing being about Grumpiness, Oldness and Blokeness and the seemingly unbreakable bonds between those 3 states.

So, let start by applauding the man who appears at the head of the blog as the type of bloke many of us aspire to be. Someone hard and tough, uncompromising, torn between what's fair and what's right and above all a proper bloke. Not a namby-pamby, sandal wearing, in touch with his femininity, caring, sharing New Man. Yep, the welcome return of Gene Hunt. The new Ashes to Ashes series is well in its stride and is hitting all the right buttons and delivering a hefty dose of nostalgia. It's such a refreshing change from the normal 'costume drama' we see. And doesn't Keeley Hawes as DI Alex Drake look utterly gorgeous, or should I say in a completely non-politically correct way....shaggable?

Not that New Man is essentially all bad of course. It's just that many of us disguise our 'New Man-ness' under a similar gruff exterior guise to that displayed by Gene Hunt.

Moving on and a celebration to tell you about. In the last 3 or 4 months young Pie has managed to get herself 3 GCSE's - at the tender age of 14 and some 2 years ahead of schedule. She got 2 C grades in Science (Physics and Chemistry) and her first stab at the Maths returned a B grade. Despite my own misgivings I went along with the schools view that she should retake the Maths to see if she could get the original projected A grade. And do you know what? She only went and got an A grade! I'd like to say it runs in the family but for me Maths was always a struggle, at least until I did the Open University's Maths foundation course, which merely proved my own theory that my failure in Maths at school was down to bad teaching and 70's Comprehensive School teacher apathy. They weren't always nice
people back in them days.

Last Friday saw the arrival of my own graduation ceremony at The Barbican to pick up my own hard earned BA degree. For once I was a bag of nerves, not having ever experienced such a day as a student or guest. Receiving it was even more rewarding than attaining it. The whole day was a really superb experience and made even more meaningful by the attendance of The Grand Master, Audrey Roberts, Kid, Pie, Hells Bells and Little Sis, who deserves a special mention for kicking me up the arse 3 months before the exam when I was thinking of chucking
it all in.

The day itself started with the registration to let them know that I was there, plus to actually receive the official certificate of achievement. After that came the robing bit where all the graduates collected their robes and are ....ahem....dressed by the company's staff. All very Mr Humphries. I don't do pomp and ceremony, nor am I comfortable with being in the spotlight when I've done something OK. But as the robes were being fitted, and i looked at the growing
number of people doing the same thing, a kind of individual and collective pride started to permeate around the venue. The girls took some photo's in the robes, and then we moved to the official photography site. By now, in the London Spring heat I had started to moisten a bit and by the time we'd got to the actual studio I was sweating from the head rather profusely. The good thing about women is they always have a stack of tissues in their bags, and this was no exception. I'm sure the photo's will look great, especially having removed the waterfall falling from my head.

The ceremony itself started with a 30 minutes musical performance from Westminster Brass which set the tone for the presentation section. The procession of the dignitaries followed the music, with several senior Academics from the OU and other Universities overseeing the event, and followed in by The Chancellor, Lord (David) Puttnam and the ceremonial OU mace. All very ceremonial and very ........formal. He then proceeded to make a lovely speech about recognising the achievements of the graduates and postgraduates. The only real bit I remember was Lord Puttnam saying that he expected to hear nothing less than 'thunderous applause' for each recipient, a tall ask for those watching a couple of hundred students walk across the stage one at a time.

Then it started in earnest for real, PhD's first, then Masters, then the honorary degree plus associated speech, and then us, the Bachelors.......a fantastically proud moment in my life, and a rousing cheer/scream hybrid from Kid, Pie and I believe all the others there to watch me. Lord Puttnam congratulated me on my degree and on my family! It's a moment that will live long inside me, and if the truth be told the whole event has inspired me to get the Honours attachment and maybe even look to the Masters degree further down the line. They had very attractive robes

The final moment, and the one that had me welling up, was in his closing speech, Lord Puttnam spoke of breaking pre-conceptions, using Susan Boyle from modern day freak show Britain's Got talent as an example of how people can always surprise others and themselves. It was very apt and very powerful, but what really capped it off was when he asked all the OU graduates to stand and then invited the audience to salute the achievement's in time honoured fashion. For 2 or 3 minutes we all stood around gazing up to the stalls, across the floor we were on, to the stage where we were raucously applauded and cheered. I can honestly say it was almost like a film, played in slow motion, students gazing open mouthed
and soaking up the noise from the watching audience. Just thinking about it has given me goosebumps.

After the closure of the event the procession lead the way out of the auditorium and all of the students joined in. Again, the applause was overwhelming.

To think that when the exam result popped in my email box, when I accidentally saw the mail notifier pop-up on screen with the words 'Your Exam results are ready' followed immediately by the same thing starting with 'Congratulations on your award...'I was prepared to just let them shove the certificate in the post and not do a ceremony. It was a good job that some common sense advice was proffered to me on the wisdom and enjoyment of attending, advice that prevailed and was of course absolutely right. I want more, simple as. And to anyone thinking that the award ceremony is not important or enjoyable, then my advice would be to seriously think again.

Days like this in life are few and far between. Enjoy them when they come. I know I did and hopefully will again.

Later, GJ

Are we living in a Police state?

2009-04-20T14:16:00.000+01:00

Why ask the question? I am guessing that since Sir Robert Peel first put our 'Bobbies' on the beat we've had various strains of civil rights campaigners asking whether we live in a police state, and with varying degrees the answer will veer between a vague 'yes, possibly' to a vehement 'yes, definitely'. I'm not really a libertarian in ther sense of being the hair shirted, sandal wearing vegetarian types who live in a pseudo-Buddhist fantasy world of man loving his fellow man, and people never being nasty to each other, but I've always been more than a tad wary of the police and the powers vested in them, and specifically how they use them. I consider myself a healthily objective sceptic. Who wasn't really scared by them.

Until now.

It is now apparent that there are clever people advising the police on how they might interpret new powers resulting from changes to anti-terrorism laws. What is also apparent though is just how willingly the police distort these powers and abuse them. We now have the spectacle of demonstrations being prevented on the grounds of cost to the police for overtime, of demonstrators being arrested prior to any actual march on the dubious grounds of 'tip off's' or hearsay as it used to be called. We have the downright abuse of individual freedom of movement arriving as a consequence of 'kettling' with people being kept in a single place for hours upon end and not being allowed to go home. Surely this is false imprisonment?

We also see the practice of police officers covering up their identification numbers and wearing full face balaclava's in order to hide their identity. Can someone explain reasonably why this is allowed? Why are their commanding officers allwoing these practices to take place? We are also seeing the confiscation of cameras when police are filmed or photographed, which is a civil liberty restriction too far when our lives are tracked almost constantly by CCTV.

Most worrying of the these new 'powers' being abused is the apparent acceptance of casual violence used against people who may be spouting virulent views in an aggressive manner, but who haven't actually carried out any violent act on anyone nearby or on a police officer. The Ian Tomlinson example being of course a prime example but also the girl being slapped and then hit across the legs with a baton for apparently not moving back quickly enough. Now what I saw in her case was aan obviously agitated policeman momentarily losing it. In the Ian Tomlinson case I saw an officer assaulting a man presumably because he wouldn't walk quicker and was prepared to argue his case. Totally and utterly unacceptable. In each case the officers should be suspended from their posts, and in the case of the cowardly balalcava wearing, badge covered copper who pushed Ian Tomlinson should be sacked immediately.

It all shows some of the claims in the past from football fans through to miners of unnecessary police brutality in a new light doesn't it? The laws on photographing and filming police officers should be repealed, and if not repealed then ignored by all of us. If we have to live on camera then they should expect the very same back.

I hope we're not moving inexporably towards a police state, but fear that their own actions are losing them the groundswell of the basic support from the law abiding public that they will need to survive. Serious actions and serious changes to policies will be needed and must be seen to be done if the 'summer of rage' is to be prevented.

Later, GJ

New media strikes home

2009-03-27T16:03:00.005Z

Well well, the promise of more posts didn't quite come to fruition this week. Never mind, there's always next week. As it happens one can but wonder if traditional blogging is dying out to be replaced by other entities such as Facebook and Twitter.

On that point I am now on Facebook and on Twitter.......I joined Facebook last year when we went through a raft of redundancies as it seemed a quick and simple method of keeping in touch with people. At first iIreally didn't get it ...possibly like most ...ahem...40-somethings......probably due to the fact that like most of these new Web 2.0 technologies they're not aimed at my age group. They seem strictly designed for teenage and 20-something serial texters and people of a certain youthful age who seem more at home communicating through electronic or internet mediums than face to face. Let's be honest teenagers will text people they're sitting next to rather than speak to them. But is that so different from the email culture? I work in an office where people will email the person next to them to ask them if they want to go for a coffee. If you'd have explained that to someone even 10 years ago that would have sounded ludicrous.

But with hindsight, this is exactly the reaction from my generation with regard to Facebook and Twitter and having now signed up to and used both, i wonder why we're so reticent and dismissive. Stephen Fry, a hero of mine (first on the fantasy dinner party list) is a fervent Twitterer and to date has about 390,000 'followers'. Why is this? Is it another example of our celebrity obsessed society? Well, Stephen Fry is hardly the usual celebrity fodder, in fact he's a normal 50-something bloke with a bloke-ish passion for technology and gadgets. I would surmise that having a large number of followers is more akin to the fact that he is genuinely interesting (more than Quite Interesting) and amusing.

Like most things it also takes the 40-something generation to adopt something for it to really take off. We write better stuff, we eventually see the benefit and then we make it work better. And the younger generations, as is their wont, flitter off to pastures new. It just begs the question why these bright ideas are always aimed primarily at 'yoof' culture rather than tapping into the vast experience of us oldies who rally know how to exploit the technologies.

'Tis the way of the new world I guess.

Some crap Friday jokes.......

Here's my nomination for 'Protester of the Year' Award....outside my local school there is a lady who every weekday morning and afternoon protesting. She dresses in bright yellow and holds up a small placard that says 'Stop Children'. That's real dedication to the cause and she deserves recognition.

Christianity; One woman's lie about having an affair that got seriously out of hand?

Apparently clumsy people are more likely to be obese. That's because they keep walking into things. Like MacDonalds.

Is Welsh a language that was invented by someone who was just shit at Scrabble?

Later, GJ

A librarian says......

2009-03-20T16:01:00.001Z

My my, the posts are getting a bit infrequent, but hey, it's because I'm doing other things like...errr.........hmmmmm......well stuff!

In the past I have written vaguely about the injustice of health and the genetic package left to me.

You know...... the lovely little pre-disposition to high blood pressure and high cholesterol that has now come to fruition despite trying to live a balanced healthy lifestyle. Well I thought I'd write a few lines on how the changes have taken and what, if any difference they've made.Well I kept to my word and instigated a programme of exercise designed to reduce my weight and increase my fitness levels. I didn't set any target dates, rather I set a target weight and have logged all the exercise details on spreadsheets to track progress. I also decided that a slow sustained exercise programme gradually building up strength and stamina would be the best way rather than trying to do too much too soon. I also decided that rather than get pulled in by the usual exercise obsession that envelopes a lot of people I would cap any exercise period at an hour per day maximum. The only exceptions to this would be when out on the real bike on a nice day.

So I chose a light gym programme of resistance exercises, along with swimming and cycling as the cornerstones of the move back to fitness. The first thing was to start swimming again. Swimming is one of the few things I consider myself to be proficient at. Back in October I slowly re-introduced myself to the pool and started at 22 lengths. At 25m per length that's 550m Despite neck and shoulder problems from my dalliance with Monsieur Fuckwit that has now risen to 70 lengths, which works out at 1750m. I've even calculated the number of calories burnt per length. On the gym front, this was going well until they either lost, or someone stole my record card. Both seem improbable to me, but hey, I have a new card which will remain with me from now on. As for the cycling...well it is on an exercise bike until the weather and additional evening light kicks in, but that has gone from 15 minutes on a low resistance setting to 45 minutes on a 'fat burn' programme which means I cover about 16.5km per session and burn around 650 calories.

And the how has this affected my weight? I don't have any scales but the fact that I'm on the last belt notch tells me something is happening. My watch now slides up and down my arm, and when swimming I have to put my wedding ring in the holdall as it has started to fall off with each stroke.

One mystery though.........why can't I lose anything from the gut area? Why doesn't the body burn and lose the fat evenly all over? My waist size has dropped but the gut remains firmly in position. At best it's only lost a bit of its size. Surely that can't be genetic as well. Surely the laws of burning more calories than eating has to kick in on that at some point?

Otherwise, whats the fucking point?

Some Friday jokes and a half arsed promised to write a bit more next week.

A man walks into a library and says 'Have you got any books on suicide?'
The librarian replies 'Fuck off , you won't bring it back'

A woman walks into a library and just before she speaks
The librarian says' Fuck off, the supermarkets over the road'

A Scouser walks into a library and says 'I want to read a book'
The librarian replies 'Are you sure? There's a whore round the corner giving free blow jobs'
The Scouser replies 'Whoa, Are you joking?'
The librarian replies 'Well you fucking started it'

I walked into library the other day and before I could speak the librarian cut the bottom 3 inches of my trousers off and put them on a shelf.
I thought 'Fuck me, that's a turn up for the books'

Later, GJ

For the last time!!!!!

2009-03-11T14:20:00.002Z

It's not

'....should of.....'

it's

'....should HAVE....'

It's not

'....could of....'

it's

'....could HAVE....'

It's NOT fucking

'....would of....'

For fucks sake it's

'....would HAVE....'

Now go back to bloody school and learn English.

Later, GJ

It can't be that far away can it?

2009-03-04T19:15:00.003Z

Having flown once with this lot and reading about the plans to charge for the toilet.......well how long before this becomes real?

Later GJ

Moronic advertisers

2009-03-04T10:09:00.002Z

Can someone answer me simple question? When did 5 year olds become the target for car advertisers? I'm just asking because the latest round of car adverts seems to consist of ads aimed at kids in their first year of school. Is it a subliminal effort to get kids putting pressure on Mums and Dads doing the school run to buy these cars? I'll give 3 examples, 2 of which are blatantly stupid adverts with background tunes you'd be lucky to hear in a modern day nursery school. The Audi Q5 advert with its irritating and baby-ish 'gonna go riding in the car car' tune The Land Rover Ad with some sort of Scat jazz shite in the background filmed in stop/start motion. The Ford Kuga advert, where the town is covered in paper and the earworm 'bong, bong' tune echoes in the foreground. And some idiot got paid to come up with this stuff. What did the agencies do.....recruit some kids in their playtime by wrenching them away from their Dairylea Dunker lunches with bags of Jelly Babies and ask them to draw some pictures and sing a song for the TV? Did the kids actually film the the Land Rover ad on a school video camera?

Please tell me if there any other ads as TV destroyingly irritating as these? I'm hoping that writing this is cathartic in some way but I fear I'm just giving myself 3 earworms for the day. They make me long for the days when cars were advertised by driving at high speeds on non-existent empty roads surrounded by mountains and lakes (actually go to Skye...they do exist there). Anything but these please!!!!

Apparently they call the ad designers 'creatives' in the industry. I have several other names for the twats who thought these ads were in any way relevant, innovative or attractive.

Mentals.
Fuckwits.
Morons....

...immediately spring to mind.

Later, GJ

Executioner or Undertaker?

2009-02-25T16:27:00.004Z

Yesterday was one of the single worst days at work I can remember. Hatchet Tuesday saw 500 people lose their jobs, some immediately, some through the torturous uncertainty of 3 months in 'risk pools' . I actually think the instant redundancy option , although seemingly brutal, at least gives the 'victim' the chance to grieve quickly and then get their life going again quickly. For the others it's just 3 months of apathy, fear and inertia...after all why put any real effort in if your number is going to be held up anyway?

Yesterday, one of my team was made redundant. I knew about it but her meeting wasn't until 10. She came in, fresh from a weekend in Germany with her new boyfriend to find the email waiting. Everyone knew on Monday what that meant, but she's only been in the Company for 13 months and naivety meant that she was unsure what the ramifications were. The email is worded ambiguously to 'discuss your future in the new organisation' and one poor soul even took this to mean he'd been promoted, consequently replying with an enthusiastic email about how he was looking forward to the role and the challenges it would bring. he crumbled badly in the meeting by all accounts, spirit and hope crushed and worsened by his own optimistic misinterpretation.

In my team members case, the penny dropped at about 9:30 when the UK CEO sent a blanket email confirming the job losses - a bit insensitive in my view seeing that many people weren't scheduled until later that day. She put her coat on at 9:55 picked up her bag, logged her laptop off and went downstairs. Just prior to this I had been approached by a Member of the 'leadership team' to confirm I wouldn't be handing out the letter and that my boss would do this. This guy was merely the chaperone to escort the unlucky ones off site or to their desk to collect personal belongings. I had planned to wait near the commandeered meeting room wing so she saw something resembling a friendly face, but Chaperone said it wouldn't be necessary. To be fair to him he did indicate he was offering the chosen ones the chance to have a friend or their line manager do the last bit. As she went through the door to go to the meeting I called the team together to explain the situation and to ask them for some sensitivity should she come back up. My team are quite special and their reaction was both compassionate and sympathetic. When she came back Chaperone (a former boss of mine) told me she'd asked if i could help her clear her desk and copy personal stuff from the laptop. And this is the point where the title question comes into play.

Although I didn't hand out the envelope, I did have to 'rate' my team in descending order from top to bottom, and supply commentary on each one of them in terms of delivery and performance. She came bottom. In all truth she is a bright girl but stuck in a student mentality. Immaturity was at the root of all her inconsistency when compared to the rest of the team, but in my defence every manager was asked to do the same. At no point did we ever conclude that redundancy might be the result. I did help her out in a private room set aside for those impacted. A sort of ante-chamber for those being marched to their fate. The shock was palpable and she tearfully tried to copy her stuff, but was in such a state that she couldn't even do that. I completed the job for her, talked to her to try and help her through that short period. In the end I had to be careful not to patronize her, but to try and give some encouragement and help clear her thoughts. It seemed to work and as I walked her to the car the tears had stopped and a small but visible change had taken place.

Either way I felt part executioner, part undertaker. Billyboy, the head of the department came and spoke to me to thank me for the compassion....like I was going to behave any other way! I'm glad she asked me to see her off because it means I didn't just shirk my responsibility for the part I played in her being selected to leave. That said, it was emotional and stressful so fuck knows how it felt for her and the others that left.

My close friend also went, but she did play a delightful game in the meeting she had. She actually opened the document and read through the whole thing in awkward silence. her boss and the HR person were squirming nicely and telling her she could do that outside. But she refused, using the full allocated time of the meeting to read everything carefully and question certain parts. She then got her spreadsheet out to check against her calculations, cross checked them all on her calculator and then 29 minutes into a 30 minute meeting. She thanked them very much, told them where her laptop and building pass was, got up and walked out.

Smiling.

She had style.

I'll miss her.

So, I'm safe, at least for a few weeks when the merger with our Ireland operation kicks in. What that means is a closely guarded secret but things like that rarely bring good news. I suppose they could relocate us to Dublin........a bitch for getting to Stamford Bridge, but OK for Guinness fuelling.........watch this space.

Later, GJ

Hatchet Day (update)

2009-02-23T19:05:00.003Z

It would appear that I'm safe. It's around 600 that will be departing tomorrow. There will be two types of envelope handed out to those selected tomorrow.

I am likely to be handing out one such envelope.

The first basically says you've underperformed and so The Company doesn't want you any more. The pay off will be minimal if not zilch, zero, fuck all. And you leave right there and then. Escorted off the premises with some monkey security guards on each arm. You collect your personal stuff but you can't get your files off the PC.

The second envelope will say that The Company is now moving to the next level and that they don't see you as being the sort of person who can help them get there. These will also be walked off site there and then. These people will be given a compromise agreement, but no-one knows if the packages match what has been dished out before. It would be a real blow if they've cut those severance payments.

The Company locks Dignity in a cupboard on days like tomorrow.

The first option as I've said in the previous post does seem fair, especially if the people affected know they been under-performing, and haven't done anything about it. The second sounds like weasel words to me to get rid of people they see as disruptive, but who are good at their job. The message this seems to give is don't question the management, don't challenge poor managers and don't complain.

It's the culture of fear that was last seen in Thatchers heyday. In fact it's been there ever since, but in recent boom times, losing a job in our industry wasn't the blow it could be as it was quite likely that you'd get another job quite quickly. But times they are-a-changing and for some people this will dramatically alter their lives.

I have one close friend who is seemingly on her way out. She's bright, clever, fun, sharp and yes, opinionated, but always diplomatically so. She's just about the only person at work I consider a real friend.....the sort I'd happily go for a drink with. The sort of person you can talk to about things that aren't work related. And after tomorrow she's gone. She's my 'coffee-buddy' at work and now that's going to be taken as well.

It really is a huge shit sandwich we'll be biting tomorrow, even for those who remain behind, but are expected to continue as normal. The Stepford Managers will deploy the Party Whips to force us to give out positive messages.....to keep the troops spirits up so to speak. The patronizing cunts.

My boss is excluded from that because he knows my thoughts on this stuff, and he knows to leave me well alone so I can discuss it with my team. In my own inimitable Jack way, with compassion and honesty. It's time to slip the Emotion Cloaking Mask on and grit my teeth for the whole day.

Later, GJ

Hatchet Day (reprised)

2009-02-23T09:27:00.003Z

The weekend has gone, the kebabs eaten (I only had one in the end), the beer drunk, the golf played and life returns to normal. Here's a mystery......I swim twice weekly (around 60 lengths of the pool each time), I cycle twice weekly (about 15km each time) and I go to the gym periodically. So how can 2 games of golf in 2 days make every single muscle and joint ache? Last night I was hobbling around the house like an 80 year old. Anyway, I played some good stuff so it's worth it. I think my golfing Mojo has been re-discovered.

On Friday at work it became clear that something was brewing. The Company has not reacted to the current financial crisis by jumping on the job shedding bandwagon, but neither has any of its competitors. But, I've always sensed that it was just a matter of time. The new Global Big Cheese is an accountant renowned for cost cutting via job losses. The blades are being sharpened for announcements tomorrow. Meeting rooms have been commandeered in our building and across the company's other sites.

Tomorrow, if the rumours are right, will be Hatchet Tuesday. No-one rreally knows how it'll work this time, with rumours going from 2.5% of the UK workforce to a whopping (and unlikely) 25%. To put this into actual figures, 2.5% is around 325 jobs, whereas 25% is around 3,500.

The Company is still very profitable, seemingly like Tesco's, MacDonalds and the utility companies it looks like we may be recession 'resistant' as opposed to recession proof. This leads me to belive the upper figure would be ridiculous. There appears to be two trains of thought on how this might be done. The normal re-organisation and loss of role method, or the the performance based method. Several of the worlds largest companies remove their bottom 5-10% of performers every year. Call me old fashioned, but surely that is THE fairest way of cutting staff. Why keep the duffers and let the good ones go? If you need specific savings then by all means offer some of the good people redundancy on generous terms but I've never understood how I've watched good people leave The Company whilst the morons remained behind.

This year, all of our annual appraisals have been bought forward to this month. I will have done all mine by the end of this week. Being a cynic , of course, I would link the new completion dates for annual appraisals as part of the plan to remove the bottom 5% or so of The Company. I assume that as long as this meets the target cost reduction then this is the way they will go. They may also decide to cull a few of those at the top end of their pay bands..........ooops......that's would put me in the line of fire then.

I have concluded that there is fuck all point in worrying though. If I am to get the chop, then I'm just going where better people than me have gone before. I have a plan in progress and hopefully this will help. If, yet again, the bullet with my name on it hasn't been manufactured then the plan will always be useful should this happen again. And lets face it, this will be a regular feature of UK life won't it? Employers can shed workers so much more easily here, than in any other EU country. It's our flexible work force culture isn't it? Or should I call it exploitable work force? We really did sell ourselves down the river when we let Thatcherism destroy basic working rights. But that's another subject.

For now, its squeaky bum time.

Can I hear someone shouting 'Timber' in the distance?

Later, GJ.

Result

2009-02-18T14:02:00.003Z

Hellsbells is away for the weekend at The Grand Master and Queen Bee's place. So what are my plans I hear you (not) ask? Well, for any bloke who lives in a house full of women weekends like this are like little mini-breaks.

Bloke-time mini-breaks. Hmm......the seeds of a business idea for the Plan?

To be fair to Hellsbells, she rarely goes away and leaves lengthy lists of stuff to be done by the time she gets home. In true female logic style she saves those lists for the days when I elect to work from home.

These little breaks are just perfect for us Dad's to have some 'bloke time' and do all the stuff we used to do as singles and discover it isn't as good as you remembered, because just as the house seems too quiet they arrive home and normal service is resumed.

Of course, 10 minutes after that arrival and with incessant 'Then we did this, then we did that...isn't such and such a cute kid, look what I bought...' chatter one starts to miss the little break very quickly. In fact like all holidays, you seem to think you've had a decent break, but then within 5 minutes of stepping through the door of work that holiday then seems a very dim and distant memory.

There is a small difference this time as well. Kid isn't going. At nearly 17 and seemingly attached to her boyfriend, Marine Boy, she has decided that trips to 'Grandma' are no longer her thing. So, the mini-break now has a possible interloper skulking around the house. Plus as Hellsbells will be away it means some mug has to drag his sorry arse out of bed Saturday morning after a night at the local hostelry to take her to work. And it won't be Marine Boy.

But hey, that's just a minor infringement on the mini-break.

And so, with this in mind, here's the schedule. Starting Friday after work.

Kebab
Pre-pub DVD on Home Cinema system (Zeppelin or Floyd)
Pub
Sleep
Taxi service for Kid
Pre-golf sleep
Golf
Post golf beer
Kebab
Mindless TV and newspaper catch up
Match of the Day (only if Chelsea win or earn honourable draw)
Sleep
Bacon or sausage sandwich
Sunday papers (pt1)
Golf
Post golf beer
Welcome them home
Football (TV)
Sunday papers (pt2)
Sleep.

Not paradise, but not far off.

Later , GJ

Pond Life

2009-02-16T16:15:00.004Z

You may all be aware of the fact that I have a pretty low opinion on the city of Liverpool. Not the actual physical city itself, which I imagine is just like any other dock city, but because of the hypocrisy that emanates from the people who occupy it.

I had already thought the nationwide stereotype of them being scallies and hub cap thieves was a bi-product of grim TV dramas such Boys from the Blackstuff and Brookside, but the antics of their football fans from the red side at the Heysel stadium was a key factor in my own reinforced poor image of the people.

Highly unfair I'm sure, but then the Rhys Jones murder happened and whilst I heard local Archbishops and Bishops praise the sense of community from the city, like many others all I was aware of was a wall of silence from those who knew the killers and were protecting them. And so it transpires that the mother of the killer Sean Mercer, Janette Mercer, did in fact lie to the Police in order to throw them off the scent of her son. Similarly the parents of his main accomplice and the supplier of the gun, James Yates, did a similar thing.

In Janette Mercers case she even tried to claim off the insurance for the mountain bike her son rode as he pulled the trigger. It defies belief doesn't it? Is it any wonder our society is going down the pan when parents believe that getting their son or daughter off a crime is more important than seeing the grief stricken family of the victim see justice done? Whilst the family of Rhys Jones have been in the most unspeakable pain and under the most unimaginable pressure, these parents were only concerned that their children, their murdering children were protected from justice. Presumably they could then get on with their lives as 'happy' families whilst the Jones family continued to grieve and in all probability would not be able to move on because without any justice there would be no closure.

How very moral of them. In fact I'm sure there are people out across the country who might even probably do the same, such is the love they have for their children. But it's wrong and misguided. and indeed very sad that they put themselves first. Janette Mercer and Francis and Marie Yates are nothing more than Pond Life with no moral compasses. They are indicative of the cowardice and moral vacuum the people of Liverpool projected during that time. And yes, I know its only a few, but those few who were protecting these murdering shitbags knew other people, who knew other people - the web was potentially huge but no-one wanted to say anything. The fear of the gang no doubt featured in this, but the parents must have also known. The police could have protected people. The silence from the people of Liverpool whilst shedding their crocodile tears to the rest of us was truly shocking. The parents deserve nothing less than custodial sentences for their part in the cover up and lies that prevented justice being done.

5 years wouldn't be too long now, would it?

Later, GJ

Something for the weekend

2009-02-13T16:27:00.001Z

Here it comes. Our weekly ration of days off in the marvellous 5:2 work/life balance ration, although I suspect as more and more companies jump on the 'excuse to cut jobs' bandwagon, more and more people are having a 0:7 work/life balance.

Rumours are rife within The Company of impending job cut doom as the end of the financial year hove’s into view. It’s hard to walk past a Director or Head of Department without hearing the sound of knife sharpening steel. The 'redundancy plan' continues to be built slowly but surely with a highly eclectic..........no ................insane list of options being added day by day, rather reflecting the random twisted mind of the writer. The latest flight of fancy for the plan is for The Company to lay off my whole team, we pool the redundancy money and we offer what we do to other small and medium sized companies who might be interested in what we offer. Knowledge is power after all. Yep, a bonkers idea, but aren't they often the ones that take off the best?

Of course all rumours are based on tissues of information bonded together to produce bigger and better rumours, and of course they also produce little side rumours that act as offspring to the main rumour. From the "there will be cuts" rumour comes the “it’s 15% of the workforce rumour" (how could anyone possibly know that?) to the 'they're halving the redundancy payments' rumour. This last one, despite my ability to apply reasoning most of the time, is the most worrying for me. The last lot of redundancies on my pay band and below was paid at a whopping 4 weeks pay for each year of service, capped at a years salary. Additionally for those over 40 they got 6 weeks for each year of their age over 40. Hence with 15 years service at 47 years old (fuck!) I would get 5 lots of 4 weeks salary, and 7 months of 6 weeks salary.

Not bad, not bad at all and something that would sweeten the bitter pill of rejection that accompanies redundancy. Apparently though the rumour is that this will be halved! Which makes an almighty difference, because on the first formula there’s a good chance debts can be paid off, or that it’s enough working capital to get a bank to support a new business (although that’s the very cause of the whole problem isn’t it?).

Being an Unlucky Alf type of character this just the sort of shit luck that would happen to me. Avoid redundancy when the big payouts are in vogue, but cop an unfortunate one when they’ve been slashed.

“Bugger” as Alf would say.

Still it hasn’t happened yet and this rumour could well have come from Utter Bullshit Factory for all I know.

And so it’s also Valentine’s Day this weekend. Oh Joy.

Yet another excuse for the flowers and greeting cards industry to stripe loads of sad souls and convince people that you only really love someone if you send them a card/buy them flowers/take them for a meal/go away for a break. Now, here’s the Jack view.

What a crock of utter shite! Why the fuck do we need a special day in order to profess our love (or lust) for someone? Shouldn’t that be something we do anyway, whenever it suits us? Are we so full of guilt that we think that spending money on overpriced flowers or going for a special (i.e. more expensive than normal) meal is the true mark of how we feel? We really are a sad, fucked up society if that is the case. I kind of understand the principle at 14 years old of secretly letting someone you fancy know about it semi-anonymously (admit it, you always left some clue), but when you’re married…….in your …ahem…40’s?

I told Hellsbells I loved her on our Wedding Day. What more is needed?

Of course I bought some flowers……..my life would be hell otherwise

*puts tin hat back on and waves white flag in air*.

Its worth mentioning that Pie cooked dinner last night. Monkfish Nicoise. Monkfish with peppers, onions, and sun-dried tomato’s with Wild Mushroom rice and a lemon, white wine and garlic sauce. She’s 13 for fucks sake! And it was simply one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I’m so proud of her it almost brings a tear to the cynical old eye. I did Parents evening the other night and saw 6 of her teachers. In the end the gushing praise was embarrassing.

I still maintain I would like to know when it was that teachers became nice people. Humans in fact. Because they weren’t like that in my schooldays.

Some poor Friday jokes (an occasional series when I can be arsed)

I see Supermarkets are offering bags for life.
I don’t see the fuss.
Churches have always offered this through marriage

A young man is walking along a pier when he sees an old man with his shoes off, trouser legs rolled up, legs dangling in the sea and fishing with an imaginary rod.
Puzzled, the young man asks “What are you doing”
The old man replies “Fishing for cunts”
“Sounds good, can I join you?”
“Of course you can, pull up a pew son”
The young man sits down and casts an imaginary rod out, turns to the old man and says
“So how many cunts have you caught today?”
The old man replies
“You’re the third this morning”

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarves aren’t happy.

And finally….I was in Tesco the other day when I saw a guy off Crimewatch who is wanted for sevral rapes. I tackled him to the ground and punched him unconscious. The police arrived and arrested me.

Apparently they use actors on the show.

I thank you.

Later , GJ

Toilet Crime

2009-02-12T10:27:00.004Z

I've seen the odd weird notice in my time, and in fact there's a whole raft of them here

But we have one in trap 2 of the Gents on the floor where I work.

It simply says two things.

.) Please flush the toilet after use.

Fair enough because lets face it there are some dirty bastards who seem happy to leave all sorts of the digestive horrors behind in the pan. Whether this is laziness or just utter pride because their crap is such a work of art they can't bear to flush it away is a moot point. I can't ever understand why people don't flush. Is it how they're bought up? Did Mummy and Daddy actively say 'Never mind son, just leave it there .......someone else will get rid of it' ? .

Worse still are the ones where the deposit is in the pan, but there isn't any paper? What's that about? Are there really people out there who lay some cable, get up and think to themselves 'Fuck it, why wipe.....I'll let it dry and I'll chip the remnants off later'?

The next little part of the sign defies belief though. It simply says this

2.) Please lift the lid before use

WTF?

As if the non-flushers aren't bad enough, do we really have people working for The Company who can't be bothered to lift the lid of the toilet before using it? And do they discriminate between lifting it for a piss and taking a dump? Or do they do not lift it for either. Does someone really walk into the loo and just piss aimlessly over the closed lid toilet happily watching the golden shower wash over the pan and falling to the floor like some sort of Ornamental Yellow Fountain but happily opens the lid if their on number two duty? And as for what happens if they're the type who pisses into the pan with the lid happily open but then decides to 'lay some cable' ....do they just shut the lid, drop the old trolleys, park themselves a decent distance above the closed seat, open the bomb bay doors and squeeze away? Are they turd sculptors? And what do they do about the wiping process? I'm trying hard not to picture someone walking into the loo and crapping ON the seat and then topping it off with a nice paper hat and coat, semi blended into their masterpiece.

Of course the last bit won't apply to the serial toilet criminal, the ones who neither flush nor lift the lid. The serial toilet criminal is also the sort of person who picks their nose and thinks the inside of the door is a viable storage facility for their nasal detritus. I'd accuse them of being the sort of prick who uses the last piece of paper so that the next unfortunate victim (we've all been there) desperate to eject the main body in bowel clinching desperation then suddenly finds they're stuck with nothing to wipe up the left overs, except as serial toilet felons or just non flushers, lack of paper isn't much of an issue in their lives.

That's why hankies and underpants are useful.

Better to sacrifice one or both than suffer the discomfort of the soiled ringpiece.

You see the sort of dilemmas that run through my mind every day. Some say life is simple, but when you see little signs such as this you know that just isn't true and that even the simplest apparent things have so many different permutations when simple protocols and rules get ignored.

Something tells me this never happens in women's toilets though.

Later, GJ

BasketCase FC

2009-02-11T14:06:00.002Z

Scolari is sacked and in my view as an obsessed Chelsea fan for 37 years or so it didn't come a moment too soon. The weekends display at home to Hull completely fucked my weekend up, which as any real fan knows is exactly how it should be.

If losing (or in this case drawing) doesn't fuck the weekend or at least the evening up then you ain't a proper football fan.

Since he took over the decline has been marked and if I performed in my job like that, taking a good, high performing team over and taking them into decline whilst driving morale down, then I'd expect my boss to be kicking my arse.

Nice bloke, but I don't want nice. I want my beloved Chelsea to be an snarling, spitting, arse-kicking, obnoxious, enfant terrible of the Premier League. Because we'd be winning again and in the end nice guys don't win.

But it could be worse.......I could be a Newcastle fan on Safari............have a look at the picture (click to enlarge).

Surely a load of bollocks....but bloody funny.

Later, GJ

Aaah the new week starts

2009-02-09T13:33:00.005Z

I am, of course still very much after the idiot who decided the ratio of 5 days working to 2 days off was the best one for a good work/life balance. I've said it before but the weekend starts and you blink and Monday morning its back to work. And it may just be me, but the older I get the harder Monday mornings become. In fact the older I get the harder every morning becomes. Alarms are ignored much more easily and the idea of rising in the dark and coming home in the dark seems more daunting with each passing year. I'm a sun-child. I like daylight. I like bright sunny warm daylight. And all of that seems a very long way away.

I am quite fortunate in that The Company does make provision for remote working so that on mornings such as last Monday, when we had a rare coating of snow, I was able to follow the heed of The Authorities and not make the unnecessary journey into work but to log on from the comfort of my study. We can video conference with each other or conference call meetings. We use MSN to chat online and of course it is a mobile phone company so we can use that to keep in contact.

All very civilised. Plus you get to work in your PJ's which can't be a bad thing.

Blimey, I had something nice to say about The Company.

Is that another sign of ageing?

Today it transpires that my stupidity in oversleeping due to forgetting to set the alarm (another sign of aging?) was ultimately fortuitous as the main route along the A34 has been shut in both directions since the early hours due to an overturned lorry. Just what is it with lorry drivers that there lorries just seem to flip over periodically? The so called 'professionals' of the road seem to live under some other law of the road which allows them to pull out as they see fit or to engage in the perennially annoying game of driving side by side refusing to overtake each other and creating huge tailbacks behind them. I didn't have much time for lorry drivers before our accident, let alone afterwards. And on that note....guess what? It now transpires that because luck of the good variety rarely plays a big part in my life, Monsieur Fuckwit, the numpty lorry driver from hell was probably uninsured.

Yep, that's right - uninsured.

Somehow or another he was allowed to drive a 44 tonne juggernaut in this country without insurance. Staggering huh? Now everything has to go through something called the Motor Insurers Bureau. Apparently they MAY pay some compensation provided we have reported the incident to the police. In fact they want the name of the attending officer and the reference number. Which of course we don't have because despite calling 999 and requesting the police and an ambulance to check we were OK, it now transpires that the police only care if someone is seriously injured or dead! The Highways Agency Incident Support Unit attended at the time and closed the motorway for 10 minutes whilst they sorted things out. Despite being very helpful they only gave us a piece of paper with Monsieur Fuckwits details on them and ours. No names, no references, fuck all. I have told the solicitors dealing with our case that very simply, we did what was required and called 999. The accident was logged by an officer of HM Government and as far as I'm concerned the police didn't give a toss. We fulfilled our obligation by dialling 999 and requesting the two emergency services. The Highways Agency must have a record of attendance as must the Surrey Ambulance Service.

I've also told them this....if he was uninsured then the company operating the lorry must be liable as what were they doing allowing an uninsured driver to operate that lorry in a foreign country without ensuring he had the relevant documents? If they didn't authorise it, then he must have stolen the lorry in which case why wasn't it reported and why hasn't he been nicked?

But doesn't all of this just seem to be heading in the direction of someone getting away with it whilst we live with the consequences?

Later, GJ

Clutter

2009-02-06T14:11:00.005Z

How life changes. And not necessarily for the better.

It must be a teenage thing, or a girl thing.

Or a teenage girl thing.

Kid is now almost 17, Pie is now almost 14 and both seem to have simultaneously entered a phase of their lives whereby they believe that an invisible army of worker drones is following behind them clearing up their mess and making sure there is food for them, hot water for them to shower or bath in and that anything in the house is fully available for them to use without asking.

In Pie's case, she's always been a scruffy urchin type of child. But now she's a trendy and well dressed scruffy urchin of a kid. A year or so ago I decided she'd be better off in a larger bedroom. The basis for this was that in the smaller room she possibly didn't have enough space and hence her bedroom would always be cluttered with toys and clothes. Sound male logic I think you would agree. Of course even with my experience I hadn't catered for the tender aged blooming of female logic that had already gripped her. In this case its quite simple. There would never be enough space, even if her bedroom was the size of Wembley Stadium, Women don't do minimalism when it comes to clothes, make up and perfume. Hence at any one time the bedroom floor and double bed we bought her is covered in school uniform, books, magazines, clothes, underwear, make up , handbags, perfume and all sorts of sundry 'girl' related items.

In Kids case, although never an urchin, she was gripped with a similar ailment from the age of 2, helped nicely along with huge amounts of presents on birthdays, at Christmas, after peoples holidays etc lavished on her by kindly, well meaning grandparents, Uncles, Aunts and friends. Oh and at least one of her parents for whom the phrase 'cutting back' comes out of the female logic shredder as 'buy more'.......So, Kid's bedroom, of similar size to Pie's is also a sea of clutter. As she's a tad older there are other things included here such as DVD's and college stuff. But in essence both bedrooms are the sorts of places that would give the Health and Safety Gestapo a huge panic attack. Followed by taping the room off and placing a sign saying 'Unfit for human habitation' on the door.

Of course the clutter levels in rooms also means that, according to their freshly formed female logic, the upstairs landing, the main bathroom, the downstairs hallway, the study, the living room table and even my bedside cupboard and anywhere else is a viable 'overflow' clutter park. Despite various warnings from me and from Hellsbells (who displays the same characteristics but at least has a tipping point for clutter driving her mad) that whatever we find on the floor will be binned, they just happily carry on, seemingly accepting this as just a normal hazard and that anyway, Dad will never carry it out.

Sadly they seem right. I have become ground down by this over the years. It's almost as if I've been institutionalised into accepting that this is how women live their lives.

One other aspect though that I cannot and will not accept, is the female trait of simply borrowing from anything and anyone around them. Or in some cases not borrowing, just using, taking or consuming stuff. In my case they will use my shower gel (a specific type that doesn't irritate my skin), my shampoo, my towels, my socks (thick warm ones and tiny training ones), my skin moisturiser, my headache pills and in Kid's case even my bloody razor blades. I've lost count of how many times I've got up at the ungodly hour of 6am and hobbled to the shower only to get halfway through before realising there's no shower gel or shampoo, and then on completion finding there's no towel. The carpet is stained with footprints from where I've had to leave the shower to find gel or shampoo AND then again to find a towel, usually lying in a heap somewhere on the landing. If I buy myself a treat and leave it in full view it's a guarantee they will help themselves to it. Kid will drain the filtered water from the container in the fridge and replace it ...EMPTY. Prior to being put on Statins I could safely buy grapefruit juice for my morning drink safe in the knowledge that only me and Hellsbells liked it, but now I can't have that anymore and can only drink orange juice. If we buy 5 cartons the girls will drink it as a soft drink, not just for breakfast, but at anytime. They'll pour it for their friends as well, so that when I go to the fridge bleary eyed early in the morning I can expect to find it all gone, or worse still and EMPTY carton put back in the fridge. And on the drinks front..........they will pour a diet coke or glass of squash, drink half, disappear out and leave the drink where they were. They'll even pour themselves another and leave that somewhere half full. I spend my life picking up half drunk glasses of soft drinks, usually with a tell tale sweet wrapper next to it. In their world I genuinely think they believe the fairies clear everything away. We've reached the point in the house whereby for the girls there is an invisible force field around the dishwasher which prevents them from putting their dirty plates inside it. Apparently only me and Hellsbells have the right forcefield breaking powers to open the door and load stuff in. The bin, according to their logic, and I include Hellsbells in this, has unlimited capacity. Never mind that its overflowing with rubbish, just keep on ramming stuff in because somehow the bin mysteriously manges to empty itself to the main household dustbin.

Such is this now moving beyond a mere irritation I have now started to buy stuff suffixed with 'For Men', warning them that their skin will flake off if they use it. I now hide my razor blades and keep a record of how many I have left. I even bought some Chelsea FC branded training socks to use for golf and cycling explaining that this meant they were mine, only to find a pair in Kid's room within a week. I buy Orange juice with bits because they don't like it. Any sweets or treats have to be hidden way lest they decide that as its in the house it must be fair game. Just on Tuesday this week, they went to the local shop and bought THEMSELVES a pot of Ben and Jerry's each. No thought of the poor parents in any of this. My muesli was commandeered to make a cheesecake mix with the promise of full replenishment.......guess what? Yep, never happened and never will. Next will the acquisition of some towels, maybe Chelsea ones that will be MINE and MINE only. And Hellsbells moans about me spending money.....she needs to understand why. I need to buy my own stuff to stop the girls from using/eating/drinking/wearing and borrowing it.

Ultimately it may come down to having a cupboard with a combination lock that only I know. A system so high tech it would be easier to steal The Crown Jewels.

Either that or I move into the shed.

Later, GJ

PC Bollocks is back on the beat

2009-02-05T09:22:00.003Z

And so I see my old friend PC Bollocks has been at work again in two incidents outlining the moronic and insidious nature of political correctness when taken to its extremes. Just when will the human race fucking grow up and learn the concept of CONTEXT. Words, phrases and gestures are not offensive, but HOW they are imparted can be offensive. I'll admit there are times when the recipient might misconstrue what was said and take offence. This often happens when our judgement filters are clouded by alcohol, hence the not infrequent disputes between friends over casual throw away comments.

But we now seem to have reached the point of such utter stupidity and fear being spread around by PC Bollocks and his brigade of hair shirted, sandal wearing, vegan, bleeding heart, wet liberal softie twats that anyone can be accused of racism, homophobism, sexism and any other 'ism' you care to think of because of well meant and well used phrases.

The two cases I'm thinking of are someone called Miley Cyrus (nope haven't a clue) being accused of racism by by some anal outfit called the Office of Chinese Americans. It sounds a bit jumped up anyway doesn't it? But whoever heads this pedantic group has decided he can get his name in lights, feel some of that celebrity sparkle, have his 15 minutes of fame by making out this girl is in some way oppressing Chinese people. Here’s what she did. She posed in a photograph with some friends, one or more who were 'Chinese -American' or Chinese as we usually call them. None of the group complained, after all they are friends, but some jumped up do-goody tossbag with the wit and wisdom of a dog turd decided this was unacceptable and that this girl (aged 16 for fucks sake) had grievously offended every Chinese/Chinese American....Chink around the world.

Oh...Jack....you used the word Chink........you're a racist!

Stone Jack, hang him, bang him up for life......Whatever.... you fucking morons.

Should I now apologise to morons?

I am regularly referred to as a 'Brit' in the press (well not me individually) ...should I take offence at that? Should all 'Brits' make a stand against having our nationality shortened? I'm 5' 6" tall...or short whichever way you look at it. All my life I've had the piss taken out of my height, and still people make jokes about it...."Oi Jack, does Snow White and the other 6 know you're here?" .....but you know what...I don't get offended, I don't think they're out to put me down or oppress me. I don't cry out about being 'offended' by these 'height fascists'. I laugh about it and get on with life. I see it from the positive view that at least I'm noticed by people.

Are the Irish (and I am half Irish) really worried about being called Paddy? If they are, then I've yet to meet one. I still refer to a shop in the village as a 'Paki' shop. Do I mean it offensively? No, it’s just a shortened term based on nationality. If anything it’s almost a term of endearment because genuine racists wouldn't even consider spending their money there.

The other PC Bollocks incident is the Carol Thatcher one for likening a tennis player to a Golliwog. I'm presuming he or she was black. Well, a golliwog was a toy when I was young. Just like a Teddy bear in fact. A toy that a lot of children were very attached to. A Golliwog appeared on the Robertson’s Marmalade jars for decades until someone decided it might be offensive. Why is it offensive to have a black doll? If this is the case shouldn't white people be equally offended by the caricatures of Cabbage Patch dolls? Shouldn't men be offended by the oddly lacking in genitals Action Man figures? Don't they equally stereotype and help enforce prejudices against those groups? I actually think Carol Thatcher is a rubbish TV presenter, but she was merely using the term Golliwog as a descriptive term. What should she have said? "Such and such reminds me of a black faced, wide smiled, red jacket wearing child's doll I used to have...' Is that acceptable?

I'm more worried about the person who overheard the comments and then like some East German Stasi thought police nark decided to go and tell someone. What a fucking society we're breeding here.... a society of thought police eagerly listening out for people to speak out of turn and use what they deem an inappropriate phrase. All so that they can either look good, or make themselves feel better. What utter wankers. What about the word 'cunt'? When I’m at football people often refer to each other as 'you daft cunt' or 'you stupid old cunt'...usually in a bar and usually between friends. Yet surely this word is the most offensive word in the English speaking language? The difference is the people saying and receiving it have understood the context. Some PC Bollocks thought police spy would undoubtedly interpret it as something far more sinister. And then tell a copper or something. There’s a big difference between ' get me a beer you tight fisted cunt' and ''you shagged my wife you cunt' ...don't you think?

So, all you PC Bollocks fans, and all you minority groups, be you black, brown, yellow, white, wheelchair bound, short, fat, tall, ugly, thick, clever, awkward, clumsy, short sighted, long sighted, deaf, blind, mute, here’s my message.

Learn the concept of context.

Walk out of the school playground.

Stop looking for things to offend you and for fucks sake grow up.

Later, GJ

Stop Press: Apparently the shop at Sandringham Royal estate has decided after 1 year to withdraw its sale of Golliwog dolls. Why? Based on that principle shouldn’t every mannequin be removed from shop windows lest they offend white people, or women? Is that the end for Barbie in case blonde women are offended? Frankly I’m now offended by all this PC Bollocks………but who do I complain to?

2009-02-02T12:49:00.003Z

I've just about calmed down after Bloody Bastard Blogger decided to lose last Mondays hard grafted piece of blogging. From now on it'll be typed in good old Wordpad, saved and then published with fuck all editing being done in Blogger.

So, what happened over the week? Well first off was some physio for my neck and shoulders - yep, from the accident back in September. Against my initial judgement I decided to go ahead with a compensation claim aginst Monsieur Fuckwit, the French idiot who decided to try and kill a family of four by not bothering to check mirrors and blind spots. Since then my neck and shoulders and sides have got progressively more and more painful. Whether any money is forthcoming or not is a long way off but its a no win/no fee arrangement so I think the solicitors must be confident of getting their costs back otherwise they wouldn't have taken the case on.

The rest of the week was spent exiled to the spare bedroom as the cough was so bad. I haven't slept properly for over a week now and since the accident getting any quality sleep has been a problem anyway. Which makes me even grumpier than normal.Obviously I couldn't go to work when feeling so utterly shite, and my boss confirmed that he didn't want me in whilst I was that ill - his exact words were "if you come in and infect all the others then I'll have to punch you" which being as he's a bigger bloke than me was good enough reason to stay at home.

I went to football on Wednesday and sat there wrapped up in multi-layers of clothing, coughing, unable to shout or even converse, nose running and throat hurting. We won 2-0 but I can't say it was a wise move to go when feeling so rough. But I needed to get out of the house as I was on the brink of going stir crazy. Yes, it may well have been just a man-cold but the problem is as a man I was still fucking ill! I'm an asthmatic as well, so any chest infection suddenly ramps itself up to be a bit more serious just on that basis alone.

Mind you I did catch up on all my recorded TV programmes, including the excellent Being Human series just started on BBC Three - the premise being a vampire, werewolf and ghost sharing a house and simply trying to be normal. Funny and dark in equal amounts this has all the hallmarks of being a real cult series. I've also finally managed to watch the whole of Green Wing Series 1 and all but 2 of Series 2 - how the hell did I miss this the first time around? A truly inspired bit of hospital comedy and Dr Alan Statham is a comedy character to rival the likes of Basil Fawlty and David Brent - I can only imagine it didn't get the same level of publicity because it was tucked away on Channel 4 instead of the Beeb.

So, Thursday and Friday were days when I didn't move anywhere. Stuck under a quilt on the settee with medicine, cough sweets and hot drinks. It would have been bliss had I not been so rough.

But rest was the order of the day, so rest I did and it was needed if I was to get through the Saturday night beano we had to honour the 65th Birthday of The Grand Master. I hadn't had any alcohol for over a week and had planned to go easy on Saturday night, but we all know what happens to the best laid plans..... To be fair it was a bloody good do and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and after a few Guinness fresheners I even began to feel semi-human. Sunday mornings hangover combined with the cough bought me back down to earth with a shuddering crash. Back to the settee with duvet and pillows all day. I also sat through the debacle that is the current Chelsea squad as they once again succumbed to one of our nearest rivals. 1 point from 15 in all games against the other 3 members of the big 4 is utter shite and yesterday, in muted frustration, I watched our slim hopes of being Champions get flushed down the toilet by a referee who I wouldn't trust to run a bath (unless there was a live toaster balanced on the edge of it whilst he was in it), apathetic poseur footballers on hideously inflated wages (Drogba, Deco and the pile of festering dog turd that is Florent Malouda) and a tactically clueless manager who is currently making former Chelsea fuckwit Claudio Ranieri look like Albert Einstein.

And today we have snow.

Proper, cold snow.

The normal thrum from the A3 is virtually silent as people finally seem to have listened to the authorities about staying at home unless absolutely necessary. People have been seen walking to the local park with sledges. Snow is a very rare beast down here on the South Coast and settled snow even rarer. Apparently we have more to come and even as I look out of the window I can see big chunky flakes falling to earth. Pretty, yes. Disruptive? Not to me..I can work from home!

I'm off to hunt the news sites for something to moan about.

Later, GJ

Awake

2009-01-26T08:46:00.003Z

My apologies for the extended Jack slumber, but the usual post Christmas lethargy has taken time to shake off this year and it does appear that my motivation levels for doing anything have dropped off.

It must be an age thing.

Anyway, to kick off the new Jack 'season' here are some thoughts....

1.) I have had a rotten rasping dry cough for a week now. Despite chucking every over the counter medicine down my throat I am still exiled to the spare room to prevent sleepless nights for Hellsbells. Pie has slipped into my place. Its the sort of cough that like a vindictive evil spirit taunts you during the day and then night decides to play havoc. Every time the eyes twitch as sleep approaches, in comes this vicious evil spirit and sets off a coughing bout that would be a great advert for not smoking. I sound like an 80 a day Woodbines person. At what point do you decide to go to the Doctors these days? It seems I'm there every 3 weeks at the moment what with various aches and pains, blood pressure checks, asthma checks, flu jabs and crap illnesses like this damn cough. Which I might add is ripping my throat apart as well. At what point does my Doctor start to think I'm stalking him?

2.) BBC's refusal to show an appeal for Gaza victims...........I tend to agree with them on this, but it does apepar they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. With the multiple guns of the press pointing at them all the time looking for any type of controversy is it any wonder they're playing it safe?

3.) I got the TV! It's a beauty - a 46" Samsung monster. It took a lot of work to persaude Hellsbells of the virtues but I think deep down even she sees the adavntage of it. I watched the Indiana Jones latest the other night on it and combined with the Home Cinema system it was as close to being at the cinema as possible. The sound was awesome, but the picture was so good I'd swear it was almost 3D at times. Oh, the joy of being able to watch without wearing my glasses........

I had written so much more but fucking Blogger has fucking lost it. Fucking pile of shite..........

GJ

Xmas greetings and Felicitations

2008-12-23T16:44:00.005Z

Here we go then, heading into the final part of the year and ready to embrace the New year with renewed zeal and vigour. Allegedly. Its been a weird old year for me, with rushes of inspiration to write and then complete apathy to follow on. I promise to try harder next year as I need the practice if I'm ever going to be at a level to pen that first novel, that first play, that first TV series ro that first football match report for a Fleet Street organ. Or maybe my first blogs after becoming the breakfast show presenter on Planet Rock. Or launching my own radio station.

One can but dream. Don't laugh, every one of those features on the plan. Which will be a masterpiece when completed. Lets hope I don't need it. Or that if I do it does what I hope it will do.

So, how to sum up this year in Grocerjacks life? Odd might be a good word. Eventful would be another. Peaceful and tranquil however, do not fit the bill.

I suppose the first big thing to affect me was tearing an intercostal muscle in a coughing fit one night. I have never known such excruciating pain ....a pain that has still not fully gone. I, being a good drama queen, thought it was a heart attack but was soon bought back down to earth by Hellsbells. No golf for nearly 3 months due to the incapacitating nature of the injury meant that for a while even my notorious grumpiness which lets me be President of the GoGB was pushed to the point of permanent rage. Then we had the interminable madness within The Company of re-orgs gone wrong, good people thrown out, monkey brained clowns promoted and me with a tub thumping bible bashing boss. Me, an atheist and all. But despite our theological differences she was very good and very kind. Religious nut, maybe, but she made me feel good again after the trauma of watching friends get walked off site. I actually gained strength from her, which doesn't fit easily but maybne her faith in me rubbed off. Next was the bombshell news that Hellsbells had found a lump. Yep, that sort of lump. A visit to the Doctors confirmed that even he thought it was not a good lump. Hellsbells had to wait two months for a visit to the hospital for all the relevant tests, which happily came out as negative and the lump was something else altogether and totally harmless. During that time tensions rose and she battled on stoically with just the odd lapse into crumpled heap. I was in Spain when she got the good news. We partied as hard on the Iberian coast that night as they did on the sunny South Coast of Britain.It's weird how everyone automatically assumes the worst case scenario. Maybe its human nature or maybe these days we just like to know what we're up against and as such we opt for the path of pessimism to prepare ourselves for the worst.

In August, after 2 long years I finally had the orthodontic appliances that I had fitted top and bottom removed. two long years of humiliation and physical pain had come to an end. No more mouth ulcers or wire lacerations. No more headaches as jawbones and teeth were pulled under mechanical force into new unfamiliar positions. No more smiling through closed lips and no more wondering what people thought when they saw an array of metal lining the teeth like a row of metallic robot guards. The result was damn near perfect and despite the slight flossing obsession I seem to have gained it was £4000 well spent. I smile more these days, despite what people might think. What was interesting was just how many people I know who never noticed. Hellsbells took 2 hours or more to notice, not even seeing the broad grin when collecting me at Montpellier Airport. Pie never noticed until the same time as Hellsbells, and then claimed we was still so young she couldn't remember me without braces before. She's 13 and a half the cheeky cow. Kid had to be told eventually but hey, no-one does archetypal insular teenager quite so well. And to be fair she was rather anxiously anticipating her GCSE results. She passed all 9. MiddleSis, whose transformation using cosmetic laminates was my inspiration, noticed after 15 seconds. I guess people with new teeth notice others new teeth far more quickly. LittleSis new up front as she was taking me to the orthodontists. Lucky, who works in my team also noticed immediately, but then she had 2 years of the same thing when she was younger. No-one else in the team noticed. So, the lesson is no-one really takes that much notice of how you look, no matter how paranoid you are.

After a glorious relaxing holiday at The Money Pit it was back to work in September and the brush with death we had with Monsieur French Fuckwit Lorry Driver. To this day I can honestly say it was the most terrifiyng event of my life. Far more terrifying than my motorbike crash in 1992 which gave me a 5 week stay in a state run hotel. Or hospitals as they're called. This time no hospital was needed but I still wonder how the least likely outcome became the actual outcome. If I wasn't an atheist then I'd think it was a test of my ......faith?

In October another week at The Money Pit on my own got off to a bad start with a 6 hour delay on the ferry crossing, foul sailing and driving weather and a 657 mile journey the length of France on my own in a right hand drive car with a broken rear view mirror! All this to revise for an (important) exam. and to close the Money Pit down for the winter. The revision spolied the week away for me but a rare game of golf was enjoyed but underlining that all was not well from the accident. Luckily I had been persuaded into a compensation claim but my neck, shoulders, lower back and left ankle have defiinitely suffered due to the impact and forces at play during the accident. The weather was good and all I wanted to do was laze about and sightsee, but I had to stick my head into books to revise all the stale stuff I'd read already.It was hateful and the more I read the more I resented this waste of a holiday.

Was it worth it? On December the 9th, my email notifier popped up with the title 'Open University - Exam results for AA308 now available" in the title bar. Fear struck at me like a 30amp shock from the mains. If this was a pass then I had finally got the degree. I would be a BA...or a BSc. Either way it meant the work would either be worthwhile or a monumental fuck up and misjudgement of my own capability. It would be akin to Paul McCartney thinking Heather Mills was a good choice of wife, or thinking he could ever write a good song again. I decided I couldn't face looking at the result,. After all they'd contact me with any re-sit details wouldn't they? And besides I'd made my mind up that I couldn't go through all that revision bollocks again. Fuck 'em. Fuck the OU, fuck the tutors, fuck the examiners and fuck all the idiots who write the course materials. They'd all conspired against me, the bastards. They didn't want me to pass....they didn't want a Chelsea supporting, Guinness drinking, Comprehensive School educated oik like me to be remotely academic, to be part of the 'Alumni'. See how easily the paranoia and conspiracy theorem takes control?

So I went to get a cup of tea. I returned 10 minutes later to see yet another OU email pop into the inbox. But.........this time the header said "Award of BA degree". Blimey they must have it wrong I thought, but this time I followed the link to the results page. There it was - 60% exam score, overall course score 75%. A pass. Not a distinction. Not a grade 1 pass. But a fucking pass all the same! I am now Grocerjack BA (Open). Of course I am considering the Honours extension by doing a couple of Creative Writing courses. but that's just garnish in my eyes. Am I chuffed? You bet your fucking arse I am.

And thus far that is it. I head into a different Christmas this year. One where I'm thankful to be alive. Thankful that my family is alive and well. A Christmas where despite everything I hit 2 big targets, straight teeth and a degree. Even if the golf deteriorated to a 26 handicap its been worth it. And maybe that handicap is something to improve next year. Its a Christmas day with dinner at the pub with the extended family and not worrying about seating 16 people. No worries about frictions in the kitchen about what order to serve the food in or who has what. Dinner with nobody having to attend anyone else whilst we try to eat, with adults unable to speak or settle down lest a child needs to be waited on hand and foot against the backdrop of a kitchen looking like some sort of modern day apocalyptic post-Hiroshima nightmare. A Christmas Day topped by the Christmas Night party (something I just don't get) but this time at LittleSis's Ranch in the evening where I can kick back and have a glass of wine and cuban cigar safe in the knowledge that for the first time in many years I'm not suffering from a blood pressure attack from the cacophony of noise from presents and toys competing with TV and music, whilst watching kids and adults unwittingly trash my house. I could actually enjoy this one! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Later, GJ

Politicians and Idiots - Any diffrence?

2008-12-04T13:48:00.001Z

Idiot MP's are complaining about the recent arrest of Damien green and the search of his parliamentary office by Police, presumably looking for evidence. Most of the complaints do seem to be coming from the Tories, which may be unsurprising considering Green himself is a Tory MP.

My issues with this complaining are........

a.) Do the disgruntled MP's think that they are above the law?
b.) Do they think that the police should need explicit permission from the Home Secretary to search an office?
c.) If the answer to b.) is yes, then shouldn't that apply to searches on company offices or even private homes?
d.) If a shadow MP receives information of a sensitive or classified nature from a civil servant, shouldn't he/she, as a matter of duty, then report that rather than just talk to the press?
e.) I didn't hear much complaining when people were being arrested in the 'cash for honours' scandal - from whcih of course not a single person was charged.

As I say, idiot MP's, a title that suits them all.

Another little gripe as well. Sir Michael Wright, the coroner in the Jean Charles de Menezes inquest has ruled out 'unlawful killing' as a verdict that the jury can return. So, the family have walked out in apparent protest. Hmmm....does this mean they would only accept one verdict as being right? That of 'unlawful killing' seems to be the only acceptable option to them. Which renders an inquest a bit pointless doesn't it?

Weeks , if not months have been spent on this in order to analyse the evidence. If only one verdict was right or possible then why bother with the cost and trauma of a very public inquest. I'm no judge, or even very au fait with the law but it seems on reading the coroners statement that he has based his summing up on a solid understanding and explanation of UK law rather than any emotional criteria that might come into play. Isn't that the right basis for any decision the jury may reach?

Later, GJ

Conspiracy of technology

2008-12-03T10:27:00.007Z

Another gap between postings! I'm afraid time seems to conspire against me more and more these days so as much as I'd like to post daily, the reality is its going to be more sporadic than that.

A little progress has been made with 'The Plan' in that the mind map is halfway completed. It strikes me that mind mapping software is amongst the best and most useful stuff ever invented for putting thoughts down and making sense of them. Last week saw another one of those periods where technology was going to fail or conspire to make the week a little more challenging.

Item number 1 to bring on the the cold sweat of technology failure horror happened on realising that the 'sync checked items only' option in iTunes would remove all the songs that didn't have the check box marked. I was trying to sync the damn thing with 4 new tunes I'd added to the library. Hence selecting this option gave me 4 songs on the iPod and removed the other 5419! Not a disaster you might think as the songs are on the PC hard disk, but the fact is that it took an overnight sync of around 8 hours to get it back to where it was. Could I live without the iPod? Possibly, but I can't help feeling a small wave of panic if I go anywhere without it, similar to the mobile phone, the watch and trousers! These software designers have a very long way to go to make things foolproof, especially if someone as technology savvy as me can get it so wrong.

Item number 2 on the list of things to make life a little shittier happened on Wednesday when LittleSis called me to let me know that the hot water tank had sprung a leak. At first she couldn't be sure it was the tank as the water appeared to be running through the airing cupboard ceiling. Note, not trickling, or dripping, but running! This however turned out to be condensation. Credit where its due, she didn't panic after Kid and Pie had called her to come and help. Hellsbells was at work and couldn't leave, and I was in the same boat. LittleSis covered all the right things, switching off the water, turning off the immersion and the controller for the heating and water. My tamed plumber came out and diagnosed the issue as a fucked up immersion heater element that had decided to leak through the top where the electrics are housed. Doesn't sound very safe to me that such a thing could happen, but 5 hours and £70 later the situation had been fixed by The Tame Plumber - all that work for £70 including parts, he's a fucking marvel and a pretty well kept secret for me. He did, however question why we had an immersion on, when the boiler is working perfectly. He may as well have questioned next doors cat such is the paucity of my plumbing knowledge, capability and interest. Plumbings a black art isn't it?

Item number 3 on the list of things to make you scream a little was the failure of a one week old external hard drive I bought for the main home PC. Yep, halfway through moving some data across the power supply decided that it couldn't be arsed to carry out its 'raison d'etre' and did the electro-mechanical equivalent of topping itself. Ok, so the data that is critical was only copied to it, and I did have a month old back on a networked machine I have, but there was still around 80Gb of data lost where its alluring alleged capability and reliability had tempted me to move the data instead of copy it. Fortunately it happened when I was workiong from home so after a mercy dash to the suppliers, it was returned and new one purchased. But yet more hours lost in the pursuit of repairing or rectifying something I've come to rely on.

It wouldn't be so bad if one of the damn things I want to fail decided to pack up. Like the TV for example.......then I could justify a nice big 46" flat screen system with associated Blu-Ray Home Cinema system to replace it. Hellsbells won't let me even consider this and although the idea of sabotage has crept in, I don't think I'd pull it off after the last cunning ploy* I used to buy the current TV.

*Tell Kid aged 9 that you've bought new TV and tell her its a secret from Mummy, knowing the first thing she'll do is tell her. Make sure this happens on sunny friday when Mummy is in the pub having an evening drink. Do it at a time when Mummy has had more than one or two so she's all happy and smily. Let Mummy moan a little but accept it was necessary. Go home and order the TV!

I'm working on another plan to get a new all singing all dancing fuck off HD TV, but if anyone has any sneaky ideas then all offers are gratefully appreciated.

Later, GJ

Guitars, drums, volume....tune!

2008-11-21T15:20:00.002Z

Well, the development of the plan has stalled slightly due to work suddenly becoming busier, but rest assured I'll get back to it next week. In the meantime this is all about music. As is often the case during times of angst or uncertainty, people turn to different crutches - some will drink, some will eat, some will turn to exercise and some will turn in on themselves or become depressed. Me, I turn to music, gorging on the likes of Pink Floyd or specifically the king of Miserabilism, Roger Waters, and this usually kicks starts the positive driving influences in me after a suitable period of self indulgent internal reflection and gloom. However, as I'm not particularly angst ridden or depressed, just a little grumpier as the years go by, I do seem to have had a massive resurgence in my love of Rock music.

I've always loved music, ever since my childhood and have always viewed those who are apathetic about music with bemusement and suspicion. But during the last few years my ability to sit and just listen to music has declined. This seems to be a result of work and generally lack of time. The last year has seen almost every bit of spare time studying and you simply can't study with music either in the background or foreground. If the music's great then your distracted, if its bad then why would you even have it on?

Anyway, I digress. In the last few weeks I have been turned back on to my favourite form of music, Rock. Not that I ever really went off it, but I just haven't made much of an effort to listen to much and have tended to listen to music radio incidentally, say when driving home from work. The Pure Highway gadget certainly acted as a catalyst for this re-energised passion for Rock. After all, I've waited for 40 plus years for the pitiful radio in the UK to get even close to my taste, whereas in America, niche radio is rife, be it Rap, Religion, Garage, Country or Rock etc. The UK of course had the pathetic Radio Authority, subsequently replaced by OFCOM, another government QUANGO, but both obsessed with public taste and decency. So whilst Classical Music got a nationwide independent station in Classic FM, Rock was ignored. With a blase, arrogant and contemptuous swipe of its authoritarian, puritanical hand the Radio Authority/OFCOM stated that the interests of Pop and Rock music lovers was already well served by local independent radio. Which is bit like saying that the needs of a blind man are well served by dark glasses. Frankly UK radio is shite, double shite and arse gravy. For the past few years I've been stuck with the admirable 5 Live and small bits of Radio 2. Now, thanks to the Pure Highway and the internet, and DAB radio in general I can fulfil my radio needs at the press of a button.

The other influence has of course been Planet Rock, quite simply the best radio station in the UK. They play all the music that hits my buttons and some of the new and the new (but old) stuff I've recently discovered has had a huge affecton the re-kindling of my love affair with all things long haired, denim and leather clad and guitar based. It's the little things like NOT censoring lyrics and playing the full tracks with no chit chat over intro's or endings, plus a diverse play list and comparatively few ads that make the difference. I have a letter written which outlines why I think I should be a presenter on the station - I mean how hard can it be to play great music all day long and have a laugh as well? That would be very high on my list of perfect jobs. The alternative is to start my own radio station. You can laugh, but surely they all start somewhere and I find the idea of being a 'radio pirate' quite appealing. It would be my own way of saying 'Fuck the System', whilst doing something I genuinely love. Plus I can talk for England, so no dead air!

To head off into the weekend I thought I'd share some of the recent discoveries/re-discoveries, songs and performers, which have been my equivalent of finding a diamond in a bag of rubies. All of which just goes to prove that no-one has heard everything and indeed unless someone plays this stuff to you, such as a radio station, then you may never discover it.

Sloe Gin by Joe Bonamassa
Stargazer by Rainbow
Magic Bus (studio and live) by The Who
The Faith Healer by Sensational Alex Harvey Band
A Great Day for Freedom by David Gilmour from the Live in Gdansk album which I hadn't even heard of but will own for Christmas
Good to be Bad - the whole album by Whitesnake released this year
Sheer Heart Attack - Queen (from News of the World)
Crime of the Century - Supertramp
Tusk - Fleetwood Mac
Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith
Heaven and Hell - Black Sabbath (with Dio not Ozzy)
Baba O'Riley - The Who
Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard
Boogie with Stu - Led Zeppelin
Carouselambra - Led Zeppelin
Highway Star - Deep purple - the live version from Made In Japan
The Unforgiven - Metallica

And finally the rather magnificent...

Like a Hurricane by Neil Young

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Later, GJ

A cunning plan?

2008-11-18T14:33:00.004Z

In this advancing world of uncertainty over my job, I have decided it would be prudent to start to plan for what might be

a.) inevitable and not my choice
b.) the biggest and bravest move I've ever made
c.) The nuclear fall out - that is, a plan that is ready but you hope never to use

Of course that plan then becomes structured into various headings and thats when the complexity starts to build.

a.) What can I do that I know I can do?

b.) What do I think I can do?

c.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do or have never tried?

d.) What can't I do and could never realistically do?

On top of this we have to add another layer of complexity

a.) What can I do that I know I can do, but do enjoy doing?

b.) What can I do that I know I can do, but don't enjoy doing?

b.) What do I think I can do, but would enjoy doing?

d.) What do I think I can do, but wouldn't enjoy doing?

e.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably enjoy doing?

f.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably not enjoy doing and can subsequently rule out?

g.) What can't I do and could never realistically do?

Of course that then becomes even harder....

a.) What can I do that I know I can do, and enjoy doing that will earn me enough money to continue as I am?

b.) What can I do that I know I can do, but don't enjoy doing that will earn me enough money to continue as I am?

c.) What do I think I can do, but would enjoy doing that will earn me enough money to continue as I am?

d.) What do I think I can do, but wouldn't enjoy doing that will earn me enough money to continue as I am?

e.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably enjoy doing that will earn me enough money to continue as I am?

f.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably not enjoy doing and can subsequently rule out?

g.) What can't I do and could never realistically do?

And then............

a.) What can I do that I know I can do, and enjoy doing, that will make me rich?

b.) What can I do that I know I can do, but don't enjoy doing, that will make me rich?

c.) What do I think I can do, and would enjoy doing, that will make me rich?

d.) What do I think I can do, but wouldn't enjoy doing, that will make me rich?

e.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably enjoy doing, that will make me rich?

f.) What can I do but as yet don't know I can do, or have never tried, but would probably not enjoy doing and can subsequently rule out, unless its likely to make me very rich?

g.) What can't I do and could never realistically do despite the chance it would me me very rich and hence might be worth a punt if desperate?

And finally....

All of the previous, but with the added question of what I am morally prepared to do. I'm not even unemployed but I do wonder if my principles of fairness and decency to people would be something I could just discard in order to get to the end result. Is my current moral compass stuck merely because I live in the comfort zone of wage slave? Could I be a ruthless bastard willing to use the phrase 'It isn't personal' to justify hard business/self preservation/get rich decisions?

Yes, I think I could.

Anyway, to get this plan under construction I will need a mind map, a spreadsheet, probably a process flow diagram, some swim lanes diagrams, an Ishikawa/Fishbone diagram, a Gannt chart and finally some sort of tabular display with a final list of options, each with a relative success likelihood indicator score, in turn linked to a set of sub plans for each consequence outlining an approach, an action plan and a final result.

Looking at that last paragraph, a job in the legal proffession or with a local authority seems to beckon. Have I really turned into Captain Darling?

Later, GJ

The Creativity Gap

2008-11-17T09:57:00.004Z

Creativity suffers under the warm caress of contentment. One only has to look at how the best songs are those written from the pain of angst and suffering....or drugs I suppose.

So, sometimes the creative juices don't always flow as freely. But a seething and bubbling mood of discontent is never far from the surface as the constant barrage of bad news continues to smash into us on a daily basis. It is now becoming more and more obvious that that contentment in my life goes as far as family. Kid is now happily studying at college and in tow with a seeming sensible boyfriend on the verge of joining the Marines, and Pie having just completed her first GCSE at the tender age of 13. Hellsbells and I battle on with the daily grind like all good parents do. On the boyfriend front, my adaptability amazes me. For Mini-Me I was able to act the gruff misery who could be friendly when it suited him, but if this kid is joining the Marines then expect me to pull out the doddery, friendly old Dad act. No point in riling him is there?

But everyday I now find my job becoming more and more meaningless. Don't get me wrong I love the team, really enjoy leading them and seeing each and every one of them flourish. But I now seem to be almost irrelevant in its success and maybe its time to think about moving on. Maybe I've found my Kevin Keegan moment and realised I've taken them as far as I can. My new boss, who replaced The Tub Thumper (TTT), has been asked to restructure his department, now called Service Management and we have tentatively discussed anew role within that structure which may pique my interest again. My new boss, lets call him Squadron Leader as he is ex-RAF, is as far removed from the fluffy faux people friendly world of TTT as possible, who despite her wacky fundamental Christian beliefs, over sincere caring attitude and crap jokes I must admit to liking. Squadron Leader doesn't do fluffy and doesn't do communicating much. He's very much like Captain Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek Next Generation fame. He seems determined to surround himself with strong personalities who'll deal with the crew of the good ship Service Management, the customers and the rest of the business whilst he does the strategic stuff with The Federation.

Thats fine by me and I've shown a degree of enthusiasm for his plans, but deep inside I can't help wondering whether its what I want. I'm a person who thrives in smaller departments, a bigger fish in a smaller pond if you like, When I first moved into The Customer Facing Operations Bit of High Tech Pipes, Tubes and Strings it was about 150 people strong, now its 500 people strong and the intimacy and friendliness has evaporated. It's full of over-promoted engineers managing people by box ticking and numbers. The fun has gone, summed up by the cancellation of the Christmas Party in favour of smaller more localised team based events. Heaven forbid that people might want to mix outside of their local team circle huh?

And hence its time to start making plans. Plans to take a grip on my life and try something different for the inevitable day when the big push arrives. Believe me its going to happen, another round of job losses to follow the bollocks of earlier this year. A recession is all that major corporations need in order to to decide that they are 'overweight' and need to be become 'lean and agile' - despite their own recruitment policies being the very cause of this during the apparent good times. The Company will be no different, despite my desire for the CEO to stand up to the greedy City idiots who've caused this recession and tell them to keep their noses out of how he runs The Company and to assure the staff that they will still be in place for when the economic upturn hapens. I foresee some 10,000 jobs going similar to the number BT have decided to lay off. I've never been unemployed since the day I left school way back in 1978 and have never been through redundancy. So, if it does happen this time it will be a new experience for me, and no doubt one which will fuel the creative flames.

Unless , of course I'm still coated in redundancy teflon and slip nhrough the net again.

Later, GJ.

Mental?

2008-11-14T13:02:00.002Z

Sorry people, slacking again.

I know the internet has opened up new ways of communication for countless millions around the world. Internet dating remains phenomenally popular for those who don't want to traipse about in clubs and pubs in some sort of human equivalent of a cattle market. Great and very liberating I imagine.

But this story has to be the most mental thing I've ever read in The Guardian.

Have a read and tell me different.

Back next week.

Later GJ

A Star Spangled Future?

2008-11-06T14:43:00.004Z

Well, that was exciting wasn't it. After months of build up America has finally made its collective mind up and elected Barack Obama as the new President.

I've been a bit ambivalent to the whole political scene whether here or abroad, fed up by politicians everywhere seemingly hell bent on ignoring the very populace that elected them and I doubt Obama will be much different. it isn't by choice of course, like most that ascend the political ladder they start with honourable intentions of doing good things, but invariably get ground down in the end by the harsh realities of political dogma, press campaigns, military pressure, religious influence and big business interests. How very disillusioning that must be to find out that you are but a piece in the overall theatre of power.

I remember the feeling well when Britain turned out in droves to sweep a fresh faced Tony Blair into power in 1997. Life promised much and Blair seemed so in touch with real people. The hope was that this was truly a new dawn for this country in terms of being a modern, civilised, balanced and progressive society. No longer. it seemed, would class play a part in how priveleged your education might be, and consequently what profession you might choose. Age, whether old or young would be no barrier to your voice being heard. The same applied to colour, race or creed. Socialism with a glass of champagne, rewarding those who deserved it, rather than the Marxist dogma of everyone bar an elite being the same. Any right minded society will reward Doctors, nurses and teachers etc on an equal basis to those working in banks gambling our money away. After all, they have the biggest and most valuable responsibility, far outweighing that of cash.Our lives and our futures.

As the years went by though it became obvious Blair was crumbling under the pressure of his faith, the myriad of 'Sir Humphrey's' throwing civil service bureaucracy in the way, the secret services and the good old US of A, choking the poodles leash to ensure we did what America wanted. A crying shame to see such bright eyed idealism extinguished like Elton's candle. I hope the same fate doesn't befall Barack Obama because if ever a nation needed re-inventing more than this one, then it's America. It's hard to imagine, after 8 years of Bush, an America that has a friendly face for the world. An America that doesn't take a default stance of mistrust. An America that takes a world view on conflict resolution and doesn't deem invasion or threat as the only methods of dealing with international unrest. An America that doesn't think 'oil first' but looks at ways of pushing new fuel technologies and uses these to help the western civilised world become independent of Middle East oil. An America that smiles at the world, helps those in need, internally and externally and becomes a force for progress around the globe. A tall order of course, but a worthy target.

If the new President can survive for a second term, politically and physically (America has a disturbing tendency to assassinate progressive thinkers) then it can once again be a role model for others to adopt. I'd start by adopting their 'no more than 2 terms' stance for all PM's and party leaders. Later, GJ

The perfect summing up

2008-11-03T17:17:00.002Z

If I had this blokes gift I'd be the happiest man on Earth

Click here and have a read of the ever brilliant Charlie Brooker for one of the funniest and most sensible views on the Brand/Ross non-story and one that I wholeheartedly agree with.

Mr Brooker, you're a comedy genius.

God only knows

2008-10-30T10:51:00.003Z

About a year or so ago, my 33 year conversion from maternally indoctrinated Catholicism through Agnosticism to Atheism was completed. Thanks be to Richard Dawkins for 'The God Delusion' and its televisual translation 'The Root of all Evil?'.

At the age of 14 I started to challenge my Mum on why God would insist on me going to Church every Sunday instead of letting me play football with my mates. If God really loved me then wouldn't he give that love unconditionally? Isn't that the very essence of the emotion called Love? Why would he be so cruel as to stop me doing something I enjoyed that was also healthy, in favour of sitting through 90 minutes of full Catholic Mass in glorious mumbo-jumbo latin? Even when the church decided that as English speaking people we might be better served with Mass taking place in our own language all this did was shave about 5 minutes off the service. A 14 year old football mad kid is made to go to Church, whilst his laughing mates take the mickey and go off to the fields to practice the art of the volley, the feint, the dribble and argue over the foibles of the offside rule. You can see why this might be a catalyst for some alternative ideas to form in a malleable mind.

From this confusion on why God would expect such worship as a condition of alleged love and where I'd end up when its all over and the insistence on such worship taking place in direct competition with a young boy's passion for football there came a greater set of questions. Why does God put conditions on our existence. Why did God seemingly have no issues with the taking of life displayed in his treatment of Sodom and Gomorrah? Why so willing to lay plague, pestilence and flood on the world to teach us a lesson? Why allow people in his name to oppress others with such vicious cruelty? Why allow people to be born with extraordinarily cruel disabilities? Why insist that every newborn child be born with Original Sin when they have no concept of any human conditions such as justice, good, evil, love and hate amongst others? The more I questioned, the more I was rebuffed with answers derived from Faith. Non-answers I called them - the equivalent of replying to a child's innocent question with 'Because I said so' or 'Because that's the way it is'.

Nothing filled me with more anger than and confusion than the 'God moves in mysterious ways' maxim. I will never understand the solace people derive from turning to a God that has allowed their son or daughter, mother or father to be brutally murdered, or die from some horrendous disease. A God that not only allowed the person to suffer, but also those closest to that person as well. it all seems so vindictive and spiteful. An apparently all seeing, all encompassing, omnipotent being sat on his arse and allowed Madeline McCann to be abducted, Sarah Payne to be murdered, Jamie Bulger to be killed...the list goes on. And here's the thing, if we saw these acts taking place and did nothing, then according to the Bible we would be classed as sinners for turning the other cheek. Apparently Gods own law doesn't apply to him though. He can sit back and allow such acts or inflict disease with complete impunity. Some will blame another mythical figure for such evils, that of Satan, but by definition of omnipotence shouldn't God have rooted Satan out by now and done away with him? Shouldn't God forgive all those moving into the afterlife rather than further condemning them to an eternity of Fire and Brimstone? If the essence of Christianity is peace and forgiveness then does this also exclude him when he judges our lives?

So many questions remain unanswered and philosophically I just can't see any religious argument standing up. But why this tirade? Well last week I went to a funeral for my Uncle. He was also my Godfather, a title bestowed as part of his and my family's Catholicism. He was a decent chap, lived a good life and made 83 years of age, despite being so seriously ill 25 years ago he was given the last rites. This event was just one in a series of thought challenging ones that have happened in the last year, all of which would test anyone's beliefs. There was Hellsbells breast cancer scare. There was the redundancies at work, not once but twice and now prospectively a third time. The loss of friends and colleagues wasn't on a parallel with death, but it still hit home. During this time I shielded the team from a lot of the crap because in my old fashioned way that's what I believe a good manager should do. My eldest daughter, Kid, was in final year GCSE mode and the associated exams combined with the big moment of leaving school and watching adulthood bloom is another pressure. Pie's transformation from sweet little Daddy's girl into feisty teenagehood and development into a young woman was another change you can never be prepared for. The debilitating intercostal muscle tear, blood pressure and high cholesterol issues added another layer. The studying for the degree and the pressure of the exam piled up. The car accident which should have left us dead happened, but we walked away relatively unharmed. The death of a favourite uncle. The reason I'm writing this is to highlight the battering my new suit of Atheist armour seems to have taken in one year.

Its almost as if God had decided to put me through a series of tests in order to regain my Faith. It hasn't worked. Everything still has a logical explanation. Gods hand did not hold my car and prevent it from being squashed or flipped. The Atheism was always 99% with just a little bit of room for doubt as the truth is, despite there being no evidence to prove God's existence, there is also nothing to conclusively disprove it. If God does exist and he wants me back in the fold then there's an easy way to do that.

Meet me for a pint, prove your existence and explain yourself.

Later , GJ

Can I have a refund?

2008-10-29T10:55:00.005Z

Slow news week?

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross are everywhere across the broadcast and press media thanks to a phone prank which at best was ill advised but is hardly the stuff to be headlining the news is it? Driving home yesterday the normally excellent Drive programme on 5 Live spoke of more or less nothing else.

So whilst people are losing jobs and homes, companies are being laid to waste, a banking and financial system so hideously full of corrupt and crooked gamblers continues to destroy our pension hopes, soldiers continue to die fighting illegal and pointless wars and the worlds self appointed Policeman starts to choose its next leader, the UK and its' Daily Mail worshipping fuckwit moral minority screams for the heads of two popular presenters who screwed up.

I'm no fan of either, Russell Brand's type of humour leaves me cold. I'm funnier than him by a country mile. Ross is a good film reviewer but a shit chat show host. Again I'm funnier than him by a long way, but the difference with me is I would be interested in what the guest has to say, whereas Ross is all about himself. Don't get me wrong here, what they did was puerile and inappropriate. They deserve censure for sure and a warning on future behaviour. But sacking?
And for MP's and then Gordon Fuckwit to feel the need to get involved defies belief. Listen you pricks...YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR ME so stop saying you represent 'the public'. Most of the public couldn't give a shit. The 18,000 complainants are bandwagon jumping morons without a sense of proportion or reason. It's obvious now that it's not about what they did, but more about how much they earn, or whether they're liked. I'm a tub thumping socialist of the champagne variety and this smacks of snobbery, elitism, moralism and the politics of envy. They may earn a lot but someone thinks that's value and for everyone like me who doesn't rate their 'talent' there's someone who does.

It's the same for MPs or public figures who have affairs. Sacking, why? What business is it of anyone's who they screw, eat with or drink with? Do I look at these people for a moral steer? Not in a million years. George Osborne takes a freebie on a Russian Oligarchs boat. Sack him they cry. Why? Do we assume guilt? Or is innocence now the thing to be proven whilst guilt is assumed? Who wouldn't accept a freebie like that to get a few free glasses of champagne?

My point is this. Our so called Christian society, allegedly built on justice and fair play now seems to be lurching inexorably towards a 'hang 'em high' society led by intellectually challenged, moralistic, fucktards living by the politics and values of The Daily Mail. My tax money is being wasted in Parliament by discussions on trivial issues such as this raised by publicity seeking MP's with no sense of reality. I'd like my money back please because I funded that waste of time in Parliament yesterday, and I funded MP's who felt it OK to waster public time and money with soundbite TV and radio interviews on what is ultimately a non-subject. Oh and Jonathan Ross went to see Andrew Sachs personally and apologise with a hand written letter and flowers. A decent response and a display of admirable regret. Good enough for Sachs apparently, but not good enough for the bleeding heart self appointed public guardians with too much time on their hands.

Is that what we really want? If it is then I'm off to somewhere that doesn't care less.

Later, GJ

2008-10-22T14:47:00.001+01:00

The lifestyle changes are slowly moving into place. It took a day or two to turn the half empty glass into a half full one, but in inevitable Jack style it came true as ever. A couple of days mulling over the ramifications of being doomed to a high cholesterol count irrespective of diet has now led to the nightly consumption of a statin. Since Saturday I’ve alternated between a cycling session for 25 minutes on the exercise bike, swimming and a session at the gym. The cycling on the exercise bike rather than my beloved real ones is done with a view to building up enough stamina to cover a hilly 6.2 mile route (can we have Kilometres please, they’re so much easier?) without embarrassingly being overtaken by OAP’s riding town bikes…yes that has happened before!

The swimming was something I got rather proficient at but due to lack of practice the power levels have dropped alarmingly. Whereas once I could knock a 100 lengths out, nowadays it is far less unless I want 10 minutes breaks between each set of lengths. As for the gym…..well many years ago I used to go weight training (as we called it then) using free weights and loved it. It was hard but ultimately rewarding and the difference in terms of body shape and strength was frankly amazing. Nowadays of course I’m way too old to be pushing barbells and dumbbells around the place, so I told the gym instructor I wanted machines only. I don’t think he quite understood this as of the 4 (to start with) exercises he’s given me one is with dumbbells and another using a bar! Still, from acorns………..

I’ll periodically update my progress or otherwise here, but for the time being apart from the aches and pains the freedom from studying has settled in and perhaps given me the impetus to shape up. I know my target weight loss and so with baby steps I am now starting the journey to comparative fitness and better health through, admittedly, fairly minor lifestyle changes. But will it last?

That’s as positive as it gets at the moment.!

Just some observations.

I see the spineless cunts in the City are still as clueless and moronic as ever, acting in their usual cowardly like way to rumour and hearsay by trashing company values and our pensions by bringing the markets down. Is this really the only way? Why do we trust these people? They are no better than you or me, and I would argue that the knee jerk mentality of how they work would actually see most of us sacked for sheer bloody incompetence.

The M6 tragedy which killed 6 people yesterday – after what happened to us it certainly made me think again of just how lucky we were. Just what is the DVLA doing about the increased number of incidents that relate to foreign HGV drivers?

Did George Osborne actually do anything wrong? Are we now a society whereby drinks on a yacht automatically means corruption? The actual offence would be a valid news story if the Tory party had taken any money, but they didn’t and the whole story seems premised on someone overhearing an alleged request. Are we heading into thought crime territory? Must be a slow news week. Maybe even the press are sick of financial Armageddon stories.

I think my proposed political party might under a re-branding from Liberation to Reform. Hmmm…..doesn’t sound quite so positive to me, but maybe it says more about my political beliefs.

A rare thing indeed.....

2008-10-16T13:15:00.001+01:00

Amidst all the bollocks around global financial collapse, caused by greedy, spineless, loathsome, pin-strip suited cunts (apologies ........that word is only reserved for people getting the full GrocerJack wrath), and the ensuing media clamour to escalate the news to levels of Armageddon like doom, as each arm from broadcast to print tries to outdo their rivals with more and more sexy bad news, along comes an article on page 2 of a major UK national newspaper which truly gladdens the heart.

Click here to follow the link and have a read.

Now isn't that the exact sort of thing we should be spending money on instead of paying obscene amounts of money to fat cats presiding over failed business models? Or lining the pockets of even greedier shareholders? Or paying obscene bonuses to the merchant bankers as a reward for GUESSING and GAMBLING? Or underpinning corrupt banks and financial institutions with money we've paid in tax to bail out there dismal failed business logic, so that one day they can get rich again and pay their shareholders the profits of our toil, whilst charging us interest to borrow money we've already leant them?

Hats off to The Guardian as well for breaking the mould and publishing such a potentially good news story and giving it such a high profile place in their august organ.

Later GJ

Change my dear...and not a moment too soon. Part deux

2008-10-15T14:11:00.006+01:00

.........5 minutes sat there, eyes blurred, sweat forming on the brow, stomach churning, fear growing. The words of Roger Waters echoing around my mind...'And as the fear grows, the bad blood shows and turns to stone'. Then like a switch had been flicked in the central processing unit of the brain, I picked a question and thought...'fuck it ...in for a penny...' .

Is Shame a serious concern-based construal?

I could have answered this with one word. Yes! Or maybe no!But of course more, much more was expected. As I started to write the answer started to get mixed up, my arguments faltering on mixed references but eventually the ship was steadied and the words started to flow. One hour later, two packets of Dextrosol consumed, question done. Too late to change it now.

Is any version of the definition of creativity immune to counter-examples?

Not to an argumentative gobby shit like me. That's the answer I'd like to have given but of course couldn't. Two questions down and 55 minutes left.It's bladder time. Hold up hand like a schoolboy and get the disapproving nod of the invigilator, who for the day thought he was a German labour camp guard.

Does Descartes offer any good arguments for substance dualism?

Well he fucking ought to as he was the person who first championed this view. Hmm.....not really an answer either, but with 50 minutes remaining I knocked out a mind map and wrote an answer. Mission accomplished. 3 questions from 10 in 5 sections, 2 per section. Phew.

By the time we walked out, and despite my new varifocal glasses my combination of tiredness and eye strain meant everything was like looking through frosted glass. Add some right hand RSI to the thumb and forefinger after 3 hours of solid (ish) writing and the journey home was very slow and very careful. I was working from home afterwards but the truth is all i did was go through emails. By 17:00 I was fading fast and the evening was spent flitting in and out of jumpy sleep. By 22:00 I was in bed and for the first time since the bloody accident, my body gave in and slept solidly through the night.

That exam ended a sort of seminal year for me. A year of ups and downs and a near death experience that has made me re-evaluate how i live it. A year whereby my golf suffered through lack of practice due to injury (intercostal muscle), shite weather and studying. A year whereby my beloved bikes barely got a trot out because of injury, shite weather and bloody studying. A year when I worked under 3 different bosses as the breaker waves of organizational transformation battered the hull of Good Ship Jack. A year in which my orthodontic appliances or braces as we know them went from humiliating (elastic bands clamping the jaws together for fucks sake) to a stunning end result of straight teeth and the gradual realisation that i no longer had to put my hand over my mouth to smile. A year in which outgoings went up and real income dropped. A year in which I survived a car crash that even a month later defies logic with and end result of the family surviving when that is the least likely option on the pick list of outcomes after being hit by a 44 tonner.

And then today. Despite my best efforts to eat like a fucking rabbit, avoiding red meat, avoiding sweets and biscuits I go for my annual blood pressure check (fine - 134/77) , asthma check (better lung power than last year despite the off Cuban cigar) and flu jab (well, proper flu has been a stranger for a few years) only to discover cholesterol levels are as bad as they could be. Bad cholesterol is HIGH - over 5 apparently. Good cholesterol is very low - 0.58 apparently which is the Doctors worse this year. Weight - 94kg, slightly up on last year.

Despite my protests of eating well and healthily (most of the time!) it appears that my liver might just break down food that way. It wouldn't matter what I ate
if that's the way your liver functions then it'll never change - fucking genetics conspiring again. And so to add the cocktail of pills, Ramipril and Bendroflumethiazide, a daily fish oil and garlic tablet, plus the Becotide inhaler I will now also be taking something called Simvastatin until I drop dead. And that last drug means never having Grapefruit or Grapefruit juice again! Another avenue of pleasure closed down!

Great.

And so, its time to put the year behind me and start concentrating on things I want to do. So I hereby resolve to lose weight by exercising more, and so its back to the gym where Hellsbells works for yet another induction course. Its time to resume the swimming. I used to be very powerful at swimming. And the bikes have to come into use. It's winter so the bike I bought from Strings is being dusted down and bought into service as a winter road bike. I will start from 3 exercise sessions a week and build it to a daily routine, perhaps with Saturdays or Sundays off, depending on whether football is on. And golf? Well I need to find a golf partner as everyone I know only wants to play early Saturday mornings, but maybe if I stop the Friday Guinness then that won't be a problem.

Do I cut out my Friday night Guinness? Does that really make that much difference? I'll hold judgement on that. Surely life has to have some pleasures that don't involve physical exertion or rabbit food? My new year starts this week, I hope it's more fun than it sounds.

Later, GJ

Change my dear...and not a moment too soon.

2008-10-15T13:33:00.007+01:00

So, a week in the South of France to revise zoomed past and it didn't ever get to the point where I felt in anyway rested or relaxed. True, if I'd stayed at home to revise I'd have got less done in all probability but the truth is wherever I'd gone to revise I would have ended up looking for ANYTHING to distract me and take me away from the incredible dullness of revision. Is there any real way to make revision fun or even mildly interesting? I will never use another weeks holiday to do this - my holiday is for relaxing and doing what I want....resentful..........moi?

Anyway, I drove back on Sunday leaving The Money Pit at 07:20 and frankly after the nightmare of the journey down i wasn't looking forward to it. But.......it went swimmingly! It took me 9 hours and 4 minutes to cover 657 miles, averaging 74mph for the whole journey, a seriously good average including stops, and I ended up in Dunkerque 3.5 hours early for the boat. The upside of the Eastern Channel crossings is that the boats are far more frequent than from Portsmouth or Plymouth, so I was able to get the 18:00 boat instead of my one booked for 10:00. It looked like I'd be home by 21:30 which is a good 2-3 hours earlier than I'd expected or planned. That is of course until I get to the poxy M25 whereby I immediately hit an hours delay due to an earlier accident. Bummer.

I got in the house at 22:00, shattered and increasingly panicked by the thought of the exam. I desperately tried to do some on the bloody boat even, and after I got in and was (warm;y?) welcomed by HellsBells, Kid and Pie I tried to get another hour or so in. My head hurt the instant i tried to assimilate more information. Is it possible that the brain has a finite storage limit? That's a cognitive architecture argument against the Computational Theory of Mind and a feeble attempt at Philosophical humour.

Guess how much sleep I got? Despite being .........I think the best phrase is fucked...........yep....about an hour because every time I dropped off all my mind kept doing was running exam scenarios through it. Ironic really when the exam was 'Philosophy of the Mind', but an irony lost on me at this point.

09:30 Monday, 30 minutes before the exam. I am sitting in the Hampshire Rose Bowl. All around me are OU students each to a person huddled over last minute scribbled notes cramming in as much last minute knowledge as possible. They ALL look far more intelligent than me. My demeanour masks a physically shattered bodily form, aching joints and muscles combining with overwhelming tiredness to make my inner self a shadow of the outer self. Descartes would have loved the dualistic analogy. But, I'd not given up, merely decided that if I didn't know enough by the time I left my house then I never would. I still think it's intimidating to see loads of people cheerfully revising away and smilingly walking into the exam room. Also intimidating is the fucking bright spark who asks for another answer booklet less than an hour into the exam when you've written about 4 sides at best! Why allow that? Why not just pile a load of answer booklets on each desk and tell students that's their lot?

10:00, Turn your papers over now.................oh shit......

Later, GJ

Same old, same old

2008-10-09T10:27:00.008+01:00

Click to enlarge the piccie.

With thanks to a like minded friend,Au Revoir, GJ

Une lettre de la France

2008-10-08T16:39:00.005+01:00

Halfway through my early winter break at The Money Pit and I've finally relaxed. To call the outward journey a bit challenging might be understating things a bit. Leaving home at 5 in the evening on Saturday I had been warned that the weather might be a bit ....shall we say.......blowy? Arriving at Dover in good time as planned at 8 I was then duly informed that the boat was delayed by 90 minutes.

Hmmm...not a good start as the idea of getting there at 8, some 2 hours before departure was to make sure I was on nice and early and picking the best spot in the lounge to get a couple of hours shut eye in before the long haul down the length of France through the night. This news meant 3.5 hours in the embarkation area, which didn't sound like fun.

It wasn't - especially in light of the fact that the cafe area was pretty rank and by this time the wind was at 50mph and the rain pretty much horizontal. Miserable in other words. Living near Portsmouth I usually go from there to Le Havre but Dover to Dunkerque was half the price and as I was travelling 'sans famille' I decided to try a different way.

Never again. It's 127 miles to Dover from Chez Jack, so you've done over 2 hours on the road before getting on the boat. From Dunkerque to The Money Pit is 657 miles and the older you get the harder it is to do that in one go. Bones and joints complain. Eyes play tricks. Muscles cramp up. At Dover I seriously thought about turning round and going back home, but as I was effectively transporting half of Argos and B&Q down to The Money Pit, I had to persevere.

In the end the boat was delayed by 4.5 hours! Which meant I'd been sat there for 6.5 hours in a steamed up car unable to get a decent radio signal or lay down and get some kip due to the load. Oh, and by the way, Norfolkline did not give us one single update during that time. SeaFrance on the other hand carried on merrily sailing away, as did P&O.

Ever had the feeling that things are against you? Well, in Dover I tried to lay across the driver and passenger front seats, hoping for some solace in sleep until someone decided whether or not we sailed. Whilst doing this I sat on my brand new 12v socket doubler allowing me simultaneous use of Sat nav and Dab Radio. Not anymore. Then at the first Peage, instead of doing as I'd planned and getting out of the car and walking round to pay I decided to stay dry and as I moved back into the drivers seat my shoulder hit the rear view mirror and it popped out of its socket. 600 miles with no rear view mirror was not the best experience of my life! The weather in Northern France was as bad if not worse, and the rain so bad I couldn't see the white lines in the road. From 05:30 until 07:30 (sunrise) my top speed was 40mph. i really wanted to go home at this point. I was driving the yellow Leon which saved our lives a few weeks back - so being a typical bloke had decided to be 13 years old and pretend I was test piloting a new aircraft. Well, it kept me going! Shortly after the mirror debacle a yellow warning light appeared on the dash. Apparently I have tyre pressure indicators! I decided after a cursory look, like any good pilot, that the error was a fault in the warning light and not the tyre. I carried on regardless.

Off the boat at 05:30, arrived at The Money Pit at 16:30! 11 of the hardest hours driving I've ever done and barring the journey home, not a trip I'll repeat, not on my own at least.

Anyway, after 2 days of unpacking and testing new Money Pit gadgets, hanging pictures, making the beds for Hellsbells when she arrives to open up in April (more bedding and towels here than a branch of Debenhams!), the revision has started although as feared it is bloody dull. The weather until today has been warm and sunny with a little high cloud. Today it was cold and rainy until about 6 when it cleared again. Sitting outside a little bar in the village square in the balmy evening sun, watching the world go by seems to have been the clinching proof that at last I have a couple of days to read and rest.

Fingers crossed for some Gallic peace and quiet.

Au Revoir, GJ.

Later All

2008-10-03T21:18:00.002+01:00

Well, I'm off to France tomorrow in my lovley little yellow car, all refreshed and back from the car hospital. I'm back on the 13th when my exam happens and then after that I'll be back to ranting and pontificating best........free prescription charges for Northern Ireland but NOT England? Same for Scotland and Wales..........grrrrrrr. A father kills his 2 year old son and himslef to 'save his son from pain of broken familty'....WTF? the list goes on!

Back soon with new empty and open mind......

Later, GJ

Life goes on....for some

2008-09-24T14:00:00.003+01:00

Well, a few more days have passed since Monsieur Merde tried and failed to send Jack off to meet his maker. Sleep is still not coming too easily and now at last after what, 10 days, the aches and pains have subsided to a point where a daily dosage of Ibuprofen is no longer necessary. The car has also been authorised to be repaired at around £4500, which gives an indication I guess of the damage done. Lucky it was only a month old then.

One of the strange things is the way Kid and Pie have reacted to the whole thing. I’m not sure if its genetic pragmatism inherited from their Mum, the fact that neither drive or just the malleable nature of the teenage mind rendering its repair process to be quicker, but after the initial hysteria and shock dissipated, both have just got back on with their lives with minimum fuss. This makes me feel even worse, because it’s taken me so long for the shock to get to the point where normality is in sight.

Is it age and our greater sense of mortality that does this to us? Have I tripped unwittingly over yet another apparent disadvantage of ageing? Or is it an advantage, one which feeds an increasing sense of awareness around danger, perhaps even paranoia? Is this why parents fuss so much, because as we get older and ‘one day closer to death’, as Pink Floyd so memorably sang, that our appreciation of the tenuous grip we all have on life is even more acute?

On another Floyd note, I’d just like to express my own sadness at the passing of Richard Wright, a key member of my all time favourite band. Richard Wright was the quiet one of the band, happily sitting in the background and courting publicity unwittingly, and yet providing some of the best creative input, contributing to the ‘sound’ of Pink Floyd which so set them aside from anything before or since. He was 65, no age to die, and throughout all of the troubles fought publicly and privately by the band, he was the one who’s dignity and charm stood out. His death puts paid to any true reunion of this great band. Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour have bickered and prevaricated over such a reunion for years now, well now it’s too late. And that’s a shame as a lot of fans have never seen them or had the chance to bid them adieu. I’ve seen them 6 times in all, and each was utterly awesome, far more than just a rock concert, more a piece of performance art. Music sits a poorer place with Richard Wright’s loss.

Later , GJ.

PS – happier posts to come, but there’s an exam coming up (eeeek) and yet another week in France revising. Then life will hopefully be truly back to normal

Lucky indeed

2008-09-18T09:14:00.004+01:00

Hmm, why would someone park their car right in front of 44 tonne HGV you might ask? After all the picture suggests some plucky motorist making a stance against some empty headed trucker out looking for the next ordinary driver he can terrorise. Or perhaps the picture was taken in France and the driver of the yellow car has found a space in front of a lorry to park in as he goes off to the market or beach. Believe me, parking in France is often just like this.

Or, it could be this.

Driving back from The Grandmaster and Audrey's place on Saturday afternoon, bimbling along at 70 on the M25 between junctions 11 and 10, anti-clockwise I was in lane 2 overtaking a French lorry driving on the inside lane at around 65. I wasn't whizzing past him as the traffic was quite heavy and I was behind another lorry, but I was doing around 5mph more than Monsieur Merde (look it up on a french translation site). Kid and Pie were happily listening to their iPods and Hellsbells was settling back for a comfy doze. I was listening to Planet Rock on a low volume so as not to wake Hellsbells.

That's when it happened. The stretch of the M25 we were on had no hard shoulder and we were about a mile from the A3 turn off. That's when we felt the first impact. Monsieur Merde, presumably like most HGV drivers, a person who presumably believes himself a professional driver had decided to move into our lane. The flaw in his planned move was in not checking for the presence of a BRIGHT FUCKING YELLOW SEAT LEON!

The first impact hit Hellsbells door. We know this because Pie was looking out that side at the time. This knocked us at an angle to Monsiuer Merde and his 44-tonne killing machine and the second impact on Kids door swung us into a skid from which we ended up pinned to the front of his juggernaut at 65mph at a right angle to the direction of our actual travel!

The next 20 seconds, which seemed like an eternity were the most terrifying of my entire life, and undoubtedly those oh Hellsbells, Kid and Pie. We travelled like this for around 350 yards with plumes of tyre smoke all around us, the screeching noise matched only by the crunching of metal collapsing under the sheer force of his momentum and that of Hellsbells and the girls.

As far as I could see, we were dead, or at the least severely injured. The one thing I remember is looking out of the passenger side past Hellsbells and seeing nothing but the front end of a 44-tonne murder machine blocking the entire view.

Eventually we could sense that we were slowing down and Monsieur Merde, showing some degree of belated skill had eventually managed to push us into the hard shoulder, but this has to be tempered with the fact that we were PINNED TO HIS FUCKING CAB and where he went, we went.

The picture was taken around 2 minutes after we'd stopped and a sense of normality had kicked back in. The girls were, as you might imagine, hysterical and very badly shaken, but barring a few bruises from seat belts, a bit of higher blood pressure and pulse. They were fine. Hellsbells and myself held it together at the scene and called the police and ambulance as a precaution. In a typically French manner, Monsieur Merde sat in his cab and lit a cigarette.

The Highways Agency officers arrived after 10 minutes and stopped the traffic whilst I drove the car off the front off the lorry and parked it alongside the hard shoulder rather than across it. They kindly took the details and helped sort he incident out, but did you know this? Unless there is a fatality, or serious injury then the police no longer turn up at such major accidents. That's right, the fuckwit coppers who are only too happy to turn up at your side if you do 45 in a 40 zone, can't be fucking arsed to come out to a major accident where either one of the drivers might have been guilty of a crime, perhaps in Monsieur merde's case his tachograph might have shown excessive travel time, or maybe he'd just knocked an aperitif back. Irrelevant, because no-one seemed badly hurt. I can hardly wait until the time a copper pulls me up on a minor driving infringment.

Get this as well. Despite the reasonable amount of traffic, not one person stopped to offer help or witness the incident. Not one. Well, maybe one person did. A french lorry driver in an act of understandable camaraderie stopped to help his compatriot. But did anyone stop to witness for us? No. How the fuck could people have witnessed this and not stopped. How could they have known there were no serious injuries? The Great British Fuckwit, Sun reading, I'm alright Jack pull up the ladder, greedy, self obsessed society showed its' true colours on Saturday. Thatcher was right, there is no such thing as society. She killed it.

The paramedics were fucking excellent as one expects. Calm, reassuring with an attitude of nothing being too much trouble. I thanked them profusely for helping Pie and Kid, especially as Pie was close to passing out through the shock.

As for the car, well badly smashed down the passenger side, all four tyres were taken back to the metal banding. Remember this car is less than a month old and had 800 miles on the clock. That's a lot of new tyre tread to burn though. But, that car didn't flip, didn't spin, didn't buckle. It held the road superbly considering the force it was under. It saved our lives.

SEAT - your little car is a fucking miracle. Luck may have played a part, but so must the design and construction iof the car. 10 years ago, or even in our previous 'second' car the awful Vauxhall Meriva, we'd have been dead. and Grocerjack would really have been unable to 'get off his back, go to town and not let them down. Oh no.'

Later, GJ

Doomed?

2008-09-10T13:37:00.004+01:00

Hello, are you all still there? Good, so the world didn't end today, although philosophically speaking who can categorically state it ever existed? Some Cartesian philosophy is always a good thing midweek.

Apparently kids have been panicked into thinking today is the day it all ends. The subject of the Large Hadron Collider switch on today has, if nothing else, diverted us away from the never ending gloom on the weather and economy.

What I do find amusing is that the press are quick to jump on the bandwagon with lurid tales of destruction and doom which of course to the less educated or discerning immediately become fact! Others then quickly don their hair shirts and straw sandals to whine on about what a waste of money the whole thing is and wouldn't the money have been better off spent building hospitals. I've posted enough before about the do gooders who would build a world full of good causes and never would we see such technological marvels as Concorde, The Space Shuttle or the
Channel tunnel. Sometimes we have to build the follies as a way of stretching what we know.

Any good that comes from these things may be unwitting, but surely it's better than the risk averse return to caveman world the do-gooders want. I think great discoveries have often come from experiments designed to discover or theorise on something else.

Anyway, I have my own theory. The Universe was created from the Big Bang.

The Big Bang occurred after the occupants of the previous Universe switched on their Large Hadron Collider.

The late, great Douglas Adams would have been proud.

Later GJ

Back to the Gloom

2008-09-02T10:21:00.002+01:00

Well, that's the annual one over for another year. I could have been very creative and write loads whilst away, but basically couldn't be arsed. The OU stuff suffered a bit as well, so its head down for the next few weeks, meaning posts could be sparser than of late. My exam is 13th October after which I will once again be free from the shackles of seemingly interminable study.

Great holiday though, thanks for asking!

Later GJ

2008-08-07T11:29:00.005+01:00

So that's it for a while, unless I get any creative urges on holiday. I'm semi-demob happy. I have a small domestic to sort once I arrive in that Kid wants to come home a week early to 'prepare for college' but this sounds a ruse to me. It seems to me that teenage hormones are starting to simmer, no doubt for her, but also for her 'boyfriend' the now regenerated 'Mini Me'.That's regenerated as in going from 4 foot fuck all to an inch or two taller than me in 18 months. I'd still win the fight though! Anyway, me....leave a teenager in the house for a week? Alone? She has two chances, Slim and None, and Slim just rode out of town.

I had a quiet birthday though. Thanks for asking. It means a lot. A few cards and texts and a few e-cards as well. Nice to know people remember these things. I actually got my present last week the day after they all went to The Money Pit, but started using it from Friday after the new car turned up. Its a Pure Highway in car DAB radio device. It took less than 10 minutes to install, just an aerial and windscreen mount needed putting in place. As I switched it on I braced myself to expect yet another piece of worthless, junk Technology that promised loads and delivered nothing.

Just for once I was proven wrong. This fantastic little device worked immediately. It seeks out a spare unused FM frequency for you, then displays which one to tune your car radio to. When you do this, the words Pure DAB show up in the car radio display (if you have RDS) and hey presto, Planet Rock in crystal clear stereo! I drove in today for the first time in the new car and 'Planet Rocked' all the way. I can get all the DAB stations pretty well, but they all drop at one point on the route for about 30 seconds, but then this is in the middle of bloody nowhere, and with DAB coverage running at around 80% of the country it will occur from time to time. If the FM frequency becomes busy as you move around the country then a single press finds a new one and you simply retune to that. So, after a few minutes of Breakfast on 5 Live, harping on about the bloody Olympics, I decided to kick start my day with Planet Rock and was treated to the delights of Bad Company, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Metallica. Music to get the heart started!

I waited for years to hear Radio 1 in FM when the BBC was dragging its feet on rolling it out on FM. By the time it came I was too old for the station. I had hopes that the former incompetent QUANGO, The Radio Authority (now OFCOM) would give Virgin an national FM frequency so I could hear something other than Boy/Girl Bands and Dance rubbish. But no, they decided the 'adult' music market was already well served by the travesty of broadcasting that is local commercial radio. My previous posts on the state of UK radio say it all. It's Pop, Classical or Talk if you wanted national FM coverage. Well, DAB Radio does away with that, as does Internet radio. Anything that weakens OFCOM is good in my view. Radio is too safe and bland in the UK.

Anyway, take it from me, this device is a superb piece of kit and Pure deserve all the plaudits for finally putting an in-car DAB option out to market at a reasonable price (£55 on Amazon).

Anyway, that's it for now, apart from one comment about George W Bush berating China for it's record on Human Rights. Apparently he's not happy that they lock up dissidents and suppress religion.

George, two things. Guantanamo Bay and the victimization of declared Atheists in your own back yard. America, land of the Free? Not for a very long time George.

Pot....kettle anyone?

Later, GJ

Signs of Ageing, pt 2

2008-08-06T14:35:00.000+01:00

Just a few observations......

1.) Every day something else aches.

2.) Your wife and kids go away for a week and you eat sensibly and don't go to the pub every night even though you could!

3.) You get up at 7 in the morning when you're NOT working. Even after going to the pub!

4.) There are an increasing number of things that bring a tear to your eye making you look like a soppy old sod. Which of course you are!

5.) Radio 1 is a form of torture.

6.) You can no longer keep time with your air guitar or air drums.

7.) Big Brother makes you reach for the off switch.

8.) A whole night of sleep without getting up for the loo seems a distant but fond memory.

9.) You tut at people who play their music loudly in cars, despite still doing this yourself. Its their choice of music that's the issue of course.

10.) Sex scenes on TV make you leave, or want to leave the room.

11.) You buy clothes because they make you look slim, are comfortable and because you think they make you look younger.

12.) And because they're cheap. Good value. Sensible. Practical.

13.) You never go to the Doctor about just ONE thing any more.

Today is my birthday. I am 47. Fourty-bloody-seven.

Hellsbells, Kid and Pie are sunning themselves in The Money Pit whilst I go to work.

The first flecks of grey in the goatee have been spotted by me, after kidding myself they were blonde. Spartacus, the youngest in my team yesterday asked me how old I was. I'm 3 years younger than her Dad for fucks sake! She then asked me if I colour my hair and was incredulous when I told her I don't. And I genuinely don't! Its still light brown to fair depending on how sunny it is. Is this fact about my hair being 'au naturelle' going to become a surprise to everyone as I .....ahem....mature?

I'm off on Friday for my annual mega-stint at The Money Pit. We have wi-fi there now so who knows, I might get to post a thing or two.

Or maybe not.

Later, GJ

Signs of Ageing, pt1

2008-08-04T08:12:00.002+01:00

How very true!

Later, GJ

Wasteful Unwinnable War

2008-07-30T11:00:00.003+01:00

In the news today we have the stunning revelation that drugs 'swoops' have little or no effect on the amount of drugs available on the streets.

Anyone else find this news unsurprising?

I'm no great fan of drugs, but I do acknowledge that some of the worlds greatest art and music has been inspired by moods or images induced by the use of drugs. I've dabbled in a bit of dope in my time as well. I learnt that it makes you laugh uncontrollably , usually kicking in when least appropriate moment, it does give you the munchies and that it doesn't mix well with alcohol and not at all with a combination of alcohol and Distalgesic. In fact the latter (accidental) combination can be very frightening. Don't do it kids!

I do however resent millions of pounds being pumped into the administration of the 'drug problem' in the relentless 'war on drugs'. By this I specifically mean the money frittered away in the legal and judicial systems on policing the issue, arresting people and then charging them and then either banging them up or fining them. I have no issue with spending money on rehabilitating addicts if is their choice to come off the drugs, just as I don't resent taxpayers money being spent on alcoholism or smoking related diseases. Similarly other people who need NHS treatment for risky things such as sport, motor cycling, gardening or drinking a hot coffee will never find me moaning about their treatment.

I've probably ranted on this before, but I can't be arsed to look back through all my posts, but in essence drugs are all about personal choice. If you're an adult, that is over 18, and are considered old enough to drink, smoke, vote or die for your country then why not just legalise the whole lot and sell them through pharmacies. Make it illegal to use them in public, I have no issue with that but if people want to snort some Charlie, or stick a needle into themselves in their own or someone else's home then let them do it. It could be that pharmacies sell the drugs under licence as Pubs and Off Licences do for alcohol, and it wouild be a good idea to make the sale subject to photo i.d being presented irrespective of age (an argument for i.d cards?) and that every purchase is signed for, as with a prescription, with a disclaimer that absolves the vendor from any action that might come about through the injury or death of the buyer.

Just think about this. Drugs would be price controlled and set to match the 'street price' thus squeezing the illegal traffickers and dealers out of business. The drugs would be taxed. Licenses to produce them to a minimum quality standard would be issued, allowing the likes of Glaxo Smithkline Beecham and Eli Lilly to produce them in proper hygienic plants. The state could even make a profit which is then ploughed into the NHS. The user would know the risks, and accept them through the signing of the disclaimer. The state would have no culpability in the event of any accident, disease or death occurring as a consequence of taking the drugs. I am really struggling to find flaws in this.

The idea was mooted in Ben Elton's excellent book, High Society, and it's hard to see why we persist with a flawed 'war on drugs' which is as doomed to failure as the 'war on terrorism'. Would any current politician or political party be brave enough to have this on their election platform? Of course not, because the majority of them have no spines or balls. They are too scared of losing the vote of the Daily Mail brigade rather than pushing for a radical re-think in the way we treat drugs.

One thing is for sure, my Liberation TM party would adopt this policy!

Later, GJ

Set me free

2008-07-28T12:41:00.004+01:00

Do you think you live in a free country?

As a society in the UK, can we consider ourselves really free?

Is it just me, or does it appear that with every passing day under Rab C Nesbitts….sorry……. Gordon Brown's increasingly shambolic and incompetent government, which shames the Labour Party and Labour movement, that someone somewhere is trying to introduce a new piece of legislation that further diminishes our right to choose?

Is there no end to the constant stream of Nanny Government missives, diktats and arselikhan mandarins suggesting new laws, codes of practice and guidelines be introduced in order to ensure we, the ordinary people of the country do the apparent right thing?

We’ve seen the government spend our money on an independent report on the classification of Cannabis and then totally ignore the recommendations. Apparently they know better than the medical experts who were commissioned to produce the report.

Now, with the success of the smoking ban making pubs nicer places to go, increasing the number of people giving up and reducing the number of people starting from the outset, they are turning their attention to the demon drink. Barely a day goes by without some stark warning about the imminent collapse of society through drinking. Rab’s even gone as far as to commission a report on drinking hours in pubs……yeah that’s right..because pubs are so full of alcoholics aren’t they? Don’t most alcoholics drink irrespective of location? It’s the supermarkets fault if you believe one point of view because they sell booze so cheaply. Hmmm……but our booze is the dearest in Europe…..how does that work then? Supermarkets and Off Licences could ensure stricter controls on who they sell to, but there’s always someone willing to buy the stuff and then pass it to youngsters. It was the same in my day when we got our cheap alcohol thrills from a chemical nasty called Pomagne. If drinking is worse now than in the 1970’s then deal with it through education at schools, not by penalising the majority of sensible people who meet in the pub once or twice a week for a social chat.

We’re under constant attack for being fat. The word Obese has a dictionary meaning of ‘grossly overweight’ but nowadays applies to someone carrying an extra pound or two above the media view of what looks good, and some obscure Government formula for height and weight that makes every one of the England Rugby team obese. Like the word ‘gay’ has been abused by the homosexual community, so the word ‘obese’ has been kidnapped by the body fascists. Our food is apparently bad, but paradoxically we live longer, and with prices rising we’re still under daily assault to eat healthy foods which the Supermarkets charge a premium for.

Now we have a bunch of dickless, do-good, namby pamby, sandal wearing experts pushing for health warnings on food, preventing legitimate organizations like McDonalds from advertising and generally trying to make us all live off home grown lettuce and carrots. Yes, McDonalds is bad for you IF YOU EAT IT EVERY FUCKING DAY!!!!!!! But once in a while, as most people use it, isn’t harming anyone.

Another load of ‘we know better than you’ bollocks came last week in the news that Greater Manchester councils are considering imposing 18 certificates on films that display smoking. Now I might be wrong here, but smoking isn’t actually illegal except in certain places is it? On 5 Live they interviewed one of these Nanny Councillors (the intriguingly named Basil Curley) who said this move was all about ‘education’ and that youngsters took their leads from screen idols. Hmmm…..so if Christian Bale smokes, a whole bunch of 15 year olds will also go out and smoke. Anyone see the flawed logic in this? If a 15 year old hasn’t started smoking by the age of 15 I reckon there’s a fair chance he or she is not going to be starting. And aren’t they more
likely to smoke by seeing their parents smoke? We educate the kids in school and at home, do we really need Draconian bollocks like this to ram home the message?

In Friday’s Guardian, an article from yet another shitneck fucking Doctor preaching that we need to have fewer children in order to save the planet. And I thought it was the UK not China.

In essence hardly a day goes by without more useless scientific or survey information being paraded as ‘News’ associating everything to a ‘cost on society’. Every day you’ll hear of new laws being planned or implemented which further undermine our right to choose or do.

When was the last time you heard of any laws being repealed?

There has to be a tipping point. Italy looks like its lurching to the right and I reckon this will be the start of ideological shifts across Europe to either left or right. When democratically elected Governments start to dampen people’s rights and freedoms then it breeds political extremism. Even in our apathetic ‘can’t be arsed’ UK society something has to give.

Just look around you and see the society we live in, the warnings on food, on the roads, on buses, on drinks and lyric warnings on CD’s. Everywhere you turn it’s a Health and Safety warning or a Legal Notice. We’re a society living under petty bureaucracy and pompous moral high ground fuckwits obsessed with telling others how to live, what to eat, what not to eat, what to wear, what to drive, what to read, what to watch, what to listen to, what to drink, where to go, where you can’t go, where you shouldn’t go, who you should and shouldn’t talk to, how to behave, what’s right and what’s wrong.

Big Brother is watching us.

Eat less, drink less, smoke less, fuck less, sunbathe less, travel less.

Live life to the least.

Freedom? My Arse!

Later , GJ.

2008-07-25T14:36:00.003+01:00

Max Mosley is an odious and pompous autocrat. He personifies the upper class twit mentality that cripples this country. I know I couldn’t spend more than 30 seconds in his company without wanting to transform his face with a steel toecap boot. He has contributed greatly
in the transformation, and subsequent demeaning, of F1 and other motor sports from races where individual skill prevailed, to processions of technological genius where success is driven by money.

I don’t much like him.

But, I will raise my glass to him this evening over his rightful victory over the scabby rag The News of the World. If ever a victory for common sense and a person’s right to privacy was needed then now is as good a time as any. I only wish the punitive damages of £60,000 had been £6,000,000.

This rotten example of The Fourth Estate decided to follow a man into a private room and expose him to the world for some exotic sexual tastes. It makes me mad to think this grottylittle organ sits there in moral judgement on adult activities that are not illegal, whilst peddling titillation and soft porn to the nation. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me, exposingand berating the private lives of celebrities whilst showing topless pictures of 18 year old girls and actively advertising dubious ‘chatlines’ and mobile phone downloads. What next, exposing Elton John for sleeping with a man.....showing everyone that Amy Winehouse has a drink and drugs issue.....oh sorry I forgot they've already done that.

Uniform based orgies are not my bag, but if it is Max Mosley’s thing then surely that’s down to him and no-one else. The media and people in worldwide motorsport are now crying out for him to resign. I’d like him to resign as well but for reasons to do with ruining motor sport and not because some devout religious F1 fan is disgusted by his activities or other allegedly important, but more realistically powerful people are offended by his sexualproclivities.

The truth is none of them would have been any the wiser had the Screws not felt it necessary to tell everyone what a man does in his own private time with other consenting adults. They nearly got everything they deserved and should have been done - £6,000,000 is a message that would have made every tabloid think twice about propagating such utter banal and pointless crap. .

Max Mosley, I wouldn’t drink with you, but tonight I will drink to you.

Later , GJ

The Wage Slave (contd)

2008-07-22T08:43:00.003+01:00

My first 1:1 with The Tub Thumper (TTT) ....abridged

TTT: So then, Jack, how do you feel?

GJ (says): OK, a little worn out but then the last few months have been ....a tad stressful
GJ (thinks) Like you give a shit....

TTT: Why's that?

GJ (says): Well, you know, not knowing what the future holds, not knowing if I'll have a job or who I'll be working for. being promised so much and then having it all taken away
GJ (thinks): Because you're all a bunch of egotistical fuckwits sat in Ivory Towers advancing your careers at the expense of others.

TTT: Well, understandable I suppose. But hey, it's all done and dusted now, and the good news is you're working for me!

GJ (says): Well, that is some good news at last. Although I didn't want to work in Problem Control.
GJ (thinks): Whoopy-fucking-do, an evangelist for a boss who doesn't believe in Evolution and doesn't have a TV and believes the world was created in 7 days. And hey, done and dusted? For fucks sake, have you no Christian compassion?

TTT: You won't be in Problem, you'll be a new team with a new function - Service Performance and Intelligence! SPI........what do you think?

GJ (says): Wow, sounds exciting. When do we start?
GJ (thinks): Smile, look happy, look enthusiastic. How bad can this be? I think I already know.

TTT: Glad you like it. How do you think the team will take the news?

GJ (says): They'll be thrilled! Some closure on the past and something to aim for in the future. They're a hardy bunch.
GJ (thinks): Fuck me, I've got my work cut out placating them. How the fuck do I spin this positively?

TTT: We'll also need to get to work on how we develop you, get you back on track.

GJ (says): Great, it's been a nightmare stagnating in such an environment of uncertainty.
GJ (thinks): Leave me alone. I don't need or want any patronising development. I'm quite happy with my team and role.

TTT: I notice that on your annual review you put 'under review' against long term aspirations, yet The Master told me you were hoping for your F Grade.

GJ (says): Well, I am reviewing my options in light of all the redundancies. It's fair to say my trust in The Company to look after me or even care about my future career is somewhat tainted. F grade looks like a departure lounge to me. And I've got a mortgage and family to look out for.
GJ (thinks): Oh yeah, I'm REALLY gonna put my neck in the noose! Happy comparative anonymity has served me well thus far for 15 years so it might as well serve me that way for the future.

TTT: (silence and bemused look)

GJ (says): I'm Ok with where I am. I'm a bit old to carry any further ambition in The Company.
GJ (thinks): I want to do something else, but as a wage slave I'm fucking trapped. Yep, That should get the blade sharpened!

TTT: Well..I'm surprised. I thought you were a bit more confident and upbeat than that.

GJ (says): Well, 5 months of uncertainty and protecting my team from the rumours and getting them to work as normal has been hard and I'm a little jaded.
GJ (thinks): Is this it? At 46 I've got to be preached at and patronised. Are you really too dim to understand why I'm a bit down?

TTT: Never mind, you have a break coming up so you can recharge the batteries and come back ready to drive the team and yourself on.

GJ (says): Yep, that's what I need, my holiday. I'll come back on full thrust and be ready to lead the team into new campaigns. it's really quite exciting......
GJ (thinks): Christ, she might as well have said 'never mind, have a cup of tea and everything will be fine' - You hypocrite jack, you fucking spineless hypocrite. Tell her the truth! Go on....there's a devil on my shoulder

10 seconds pass....

GJ (thinks): The Angel on the other shoulders smacks The devil in the mouth. Don't be a prick, say the right things, smile and lie through your teeth. it's not about you.....

30 minutes of banal Corporate Bullshit now ensues, relating to 'objectives and goals' and how they plan to engage with the employees to improve the Employee Engagement score.

GJ (says): Mmmmm.....yeah.....OK.......right.....and other reassuring but nonsensical words during this lecture whilst nodding head and with eyes glazing over.
GJ (thinks): Here's an idea for improving Employee Engagement. Don't treat us like fucking morons. Don't treat us like children. Don't make stupid false promises. Don't build up hopes and then dash them. Don't dress up messages in Corporate Gobbledygook Bollocks talk. Don't patronise people. Don't let people see private meeting invites. Don't feed the rumour mill. Tell everyone at the same time what's going on. Don't consult people and then totally ignore their recommendations.

TTT: It's good to have you on board. You'll be a great asset to the team and department.....

GJ (says): It's good to be on board. I'm sure it'll be a great challenge and we can deliver real value to the organisation.
GJ (thinks): Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. I feel sick.

My Hypocrititis, a disease of the mind whereby I do exactly the opposite of what I think and what I want, is back and knows no bounds.

Later, GJ

We should pay for this!

2008-07-21T09:46:00.006+01:00

It's a continuing complaint, but whoever came up with the 5 days at work, 2 days off ratio
was a dick. Time for a GJ campaign methinks, along the lines of "3 day weekends for all".....except those who work in shops, museums, golf clubs, football clubs, kebab shops,
bike shops, police stations, fire stations, ambulance stations, hospitals, chemists, pubs,
restaurants, cafe's, trains, planes, boats, leisure centres......you get my drift.

On Saturday I was up at 5:45 to drive to Skank's so we could execute Plan B to try and make up for the loss of last weekends Fairford Air Show, due to the bloody British summer of non-existence, by going to Farnborough instead. It was good day out and allowed me to put my Canon EOS-400D and it's 70-300mm telefoto lens through it's paces for the first time. It passed with flying colours. Both Skank and myself reeled off dozens of pictures, in fact for me it was close to 700, of glorious death and killing machines flying through the air at high speed and making a lot of noise. I've never understood people at Air Shows with ear defenders. Isn't the roar of the engines part of the attraction?

Air show photography is also notoriously tricky, especially for amateurs like me. On all my previous outings I've either taken an automatic camera or a digital compact camera. All you end up with though is the Viz comic's "Famous Air Show Photographs" section which is a dot in the sky! Having loaded Saturday's lot into the PC, I reckon I'll get around 100 decent ones after a bit of software re-touching to remove some issues.

I know it pisses the photo purist off, the fact that Digital photography can be easily re-touched and photo's enhanced, but for 99.999% of the worlds amateur photographers the Digital revolution which allows numpties like me to rattle off hundreds of pictures without carrying a wheelbarrow load of film around, then re-touch them via some fairly noddy software has to be a good thing doesn't it.

The Vulcan Bomber flew on Saturday, it's first flight ata major airshow for 15 years or so having been taken out of service in 1992. The picture was taken by Skank. It's cost TVOC (The Vulcan Operating Company) some£8m to get it flying again. To keep the plane flying will cost £1.6m per year. TVOC are walking around with the begging bowl on this one. After the disastrous cancellation of Fairford, depriving the Vulcan of a great chance to fly and attract sponsors. It seems crazy to me that many of our fantastic British achievements are left to rot. If an old building is likely to collapse, has the slightest most tenuous link to something historic or be knocked down, then we 'list' it and government funds are made available for it's upkeep as part of our national heritage. Very commendable.

But shouldn't this be extended to other areas as well? My hard earned tax goes on overpaid civil servants, wasteful QUANGO's and all sorts of things I don't agree with, but for some reason the British Government, irrespective of political leaning continually refuse to keep equally important parts of our heritage going. The Vulcan bomber, like the Lancaster bomber,like the Spitfire, like the original Ark Royal, like the original cross Channel Hovercraft and most of all like Concorde should all have been funded centrally from Government to allow them to continue flying or sailing at public displays. A case in point would be Concorde.

Keep one or two flying and I can guarantee they could have covered them in Sponsors logos and they'd have damn near recouped the operating costs outlay. I saw the crowd go silent when the Vulcan took off. I saw the awe and and heard the gasps when it flew past. People loved the thing. Concorde would have had the same effect. In the same way that people stop and stare at a vintage car, it reminds us of a time when we could not only think the innovations up, but still build them as well. Maybe it reminds us of a previous time when we may have had a justification for the prefix of Great.

Later GJ

The Parent Tax

2008-07-17T13:51:00.004+01:00

Teenager has just got her first pay packet in her summer job as a lifeguard/receptionist at the local leisure centre.

£450 - tax free.

Am I being unreasonable to expect some 'keep' from her?

According to Hellsbells I am. According to Teenager I am as well. In fact everyone seems to think I'm being unfair.

Except me.

When I left school and got my first pay packet I took home £20. I had to give £10 of that to my Mum for my keep. So on that principle I reckon Teenager owes me £225. I've offered a discount as she goes to college in September, and decided that 20% would be reasonable - that's £90, which would keep me in Guinness/Magners for a month probably, or let me buy bloke stuff more regularly. I could spend it at Stamford Bridge on Chelsea tops and other Chelsea merchandising, which would save me surreptitiously hitting my credit card and smuggling the goods in past Hellsbells.

As an aside, all blokes who get married have to smuggle stuff past their partners. Partners think that all spending by blokes on stuff we need is unnecessary and is therefore unauthorised. I need golf clubs, camera lenses, camera extras, Chelsea shirts, Chelsea shorts, Chelsea jackets, Chelsea mugs, Chelsea pint glasses, iPods, DVD's, golf accessories, mountain bike stuff, power tools and computer gadgets. Any man knows this type of thing is all absolutely necessary. So why do us blokes all (and we do all) accept the fact that we have to secretly buy the stuff, smuggle it in under the radar system that all women seem to have and then wait 6 months before publicly using/wearing it? Women don't have to do this of course. No need for smuggling when they know damn well us blokes couldn't give a damn what new clothes or shoes they've bought. When they show this stuff off us blokes all know the correct stock answer of

"Yes love, it looks great. It makes you look younger/thinner/sexier" (delete as appropriate) .

Maybe it's time for some GoGB Liberation to take place here. When I'm brave enough I'll start the Let Blokes Buy Stuff Campaign from here.

Back to the Parent Tax. Why can't I claim this 'parent tax' from Teenager? After all, Teenager has had 16 years of money, support, toys, DVD's, mobile phones, computers, clothes and love off of me.

Completely unconditionally of course.

Later GJ

How not to keep a workforce happy (pt2)

2008-07-17T12:41:00.003+01:00

At the time Mr Blonde was re-assuring us of our place deep in the warm and welcoming bosom
of The Company, it became clear the one thing he couldn't supply was the SM structure (remember we were in the Service Management or SM team of the larger Smoke & Mirrors or S&M Department...come on please keep up). This meant that none of us really knew who we would be working for and what the ramifications of Simple Tuesdays fallout would be.

But we were safe. Secure. Guaranteed. No more redundancies.

Of course we were.

Over the next six weeks we had several false dawns. Three times an announcement was due on
the structure of the SM team and twice mr Blonde cancelled. The third time we were called
together to tell us that nothing had progressed. In itself this set the alarm bells ringing and this turned the starting handle of the rumour mill which swung effortlessly into action. Mr Blonde was leaving, Queen Wasp was moving sideways, SM was dead in the water etc. I listened to the rumours, the chief one being that SM was being canned and that Mr Blonde was leaving by his own hand on a point of principle. This was the one I bet on, because it had been apparent that the S&M Leadership Team was far from being united. I mean, are leadership teams ever truly united? In my experience the back-biting, one-upmanship, arse-licking and political manoeuvring is worse at that level than any other. And Mr Blonde was not welcome.

In fact from day one it seemed his no-bullshit, straight talking, common touch style was at odds with the Stepford Manager, smile whilst stabbing, corporate gobbledygook bollocks speak culture of the others on the team. Queen Wasp, to be fair, was a big fan of his because she also has the common touch when required, however she is surrounded by arselikhan wannabees using their current positions as a stepping stone to further their careers. Billyboy is good, he knows his stuff and seems savvy enough to detach himself from the crap. A very astute political player I'd say. But The Rugby Player (big and ugly) is a dangerous person who went from all round good guy, to the full 'Stepford chip insertion' clone, spouting Corporate Gobbledygook Bollocks Talk at any and every opportunity. Aligned with The Drinks Waiter, a 6 foot 8 inch giant of a man from Portugal with zero personality except for brooding Latin menace and people skills to match Robert Mugabe, and Captain Darling, a man so anally obsessed with 'process' and pretty 'swim lane' diagrams and all the managerial skills of Frank Spencer one can only sit back and be amazed at how he landed his role, it's little wonder Mr Blonde was in the firing line. I reckon in any one on one situation Mr Blonde would have dwarfed these three intellectual fuckwits, but up against a combined force he stood no chance.

The last week of April came around and the rumours were at fever pitch. Mr Blonde hadn't been seen for 2 weeks. A meeting was called by Queen Wasp and we can see Billyboy on the list of invitees. This in itself was a cock up, because if nothing was changing then why did Billyboy, the head of another department, lets call it the Dirty Hands team, even need to be there?

Here's why.

At 14:00 on the last Friday in April, 2 hours before the weekend starts we trundle to another building within the Corporate Palace estate to be confronted with Queen Wasp, Billyboy and Mr Blonde. Queen Wasp sets the scene and says that the SM function was being scaled down from the original proposal and that Mr Blonde was leaving, just 4 months after starting. At his own behest! Mr Blonde, to his credit, then stood up and told us that the role and scope of what he'd been recruited for had been reduced to such a small size that he'd decided that it didn't match with what he'd been told to come and set up, so he was off to pastures new. As usual he didn't mince his words, and whilst Queen Wasp sat there, it was obvious she was not best pleased at losing Mr Blonde. When a cabinet minister resigns on a point of principle, doesn't that reflect on the PM rather badly? I was minded of Sir Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech when he left the
Thatcher cabinet.

Queen Wasp, a tad shaken recovered to tell us we would all be in Billyboy's organisation and within 2 weeks we would all know here we sat. We had , of course, only left Billyboys DirtyHands team 4 months earlier when Mr Blonde had started.

There would be no further redundancies.

Of course there wouldn't.

The 2 weeks went by once again. No meeting was called this time. However, several people were invited to 1:1's with Billyboy and someone from The SS...sorry......HR. Included in this was my old boss The Master, but also some others as well.

Guess what?

Redundant. Despite what was said they were all, bar one who actually got promoted, out from that very day. It was a smaller, less vicious version of Simple Tuesday. I may have had differences with them from time to time, but watching them clear their desk , smiling through gritted teeth and saying what an opportunity it was for them still made this a very bleak day indeed. In the case of The Master, a man who embodied every aspect of The Company and lived and breathed every ideal and value of The Company, this seemed particularly poignant. Again, it was the F band Club hit the hardest. They all got good packages circa a years salary in lieu of notice to bump the taxman, plus share deals paid up, cars given to them and preserved staff discounts/benefits for a year after leaving. Very nice. But you still have to find a job, still have to pay a mortgage, still have to feed the family and if, like The Master...and like me...you haven't been in the open job market for over 15 years then it must be daunting to face the savageries of the modern day rat hunt that is finding a new job.

Later, that very day I get the call from The Tub Thumper to tell me she's my new boss. She wants a 1:1.

Things can only get better...can't they?

Later GJ

How not to keep a workforce happy (pt1)

2008-07-16T08:43:00.005+01:00

So why was work a pile of festering shite for the last 6 months? Well, you may recall that the announcement was made last year that we would undergo a 'transformation' (or what we used to call a reorganisation) of The Company's High Tech Pipes, Tubes and Strings Department. Lets just call it the Smoke and Mirrors Department from now on because frankly it's all black fucking magic to me. Of course this abbreviates to the S&M Department, which also has some truth in it as well.

Anyway, this transformation was being done because, to quote Queen Wasp "we can do this, and we're not doing it because we have to" - My internal response at the time was "of course not love, you're doing it for us after all we'd all hate to think it was happening on the pretext of cost savings...I mean perish the thought".

I'd pitched my views into the various meetings about where my team should be and what it should be doing, kidding myself that

a.) anyone was listening
b.) anyone gave a shit
c.) I gave a shit

I am very good at faux enthusiasm. You may also recall, Mr Blonde was employed at great expense to come in and create the new Service Management department, or SM as it would have been known. Hmmm....the SM thing keeps cropping up. A theme maybe? So, in came Mr Blonde on £100000 per year to sit in the corner and basically ignore people until you spoke to him. I quite liked him for his apparent straight talking, no bullshit nature and the fact that he allegedly supported Chelsea, although this has never really played positively for me as most senior managers who claim such things are living in BillyLiarLand, using their football allegiance as some sort of link to the proletariat that work for them in order to exploit and claim credit for their talents to an even greater extent than normal.

Cynical? Moi?

Well, we were promised several 'drop dead' dates for organisational announcements which is always a tense time despite the usual 'no redundancy' bollocks coming from Queen Wasp. Then, some bright spark on the UK board decided that The Company, and not just S&M needed a trim.

Well, when I say trim, I mean the Corporate equivalent of a Brazilian.....yeah I know what you thought that link might show!

The S&M 'transformation' was firmly shoved into the bin and overtaken by the UK wide initiative called 'Simple'. That's when things got really sinister. A veil of secrecy descended over the whole company, rumours started to build and spread and many people sustained injuries caused by constant jumping to conclusions. In March, Simple Tuesday, was announced whereby the whole organisation would find out who was in and who was out.

It was a bloody cull. Good people were given envelopes a goodbye message and a severance deal, the departure being blamed on their alleged 'performance issues'. Others suddenly found their role's were 'no longer required' and also left. Most were walked off the site that day and forced to hand back laptops and phones. Email accounts were deleted that day and remote access was locked down. Every building at the Corporate Palace had the doors manned by security guards. It was corporate carnage.

Except for us. We were in the SM part of the S&M department and Mr Blonde happily told us that those of us who hadn't been thrown out that day were safe and were part of the future. This was a double edged sword for us of course because some of us had seen our friends have their lives turned upside down that day and not in a particularly dignified manner. Of course not everyone was shifted out that day, just those who were in the F Band Club (see posts passim). The mere proletariat were given notice until June 30th. Some were given gardening leave, some were told they were expected in as part of the severance deal. Stay at home and you lose it for those expected to come in.

During this period the atmosphere had gradually darkened until Simple Tuesday, when it was positively black. The worst day I can ever recall at work, ever.

But it was over and we were safe.

We had a future.

We could start to rebuild.

There was no more blood to be spilled...................surely?

Later GJ

Great?

2008-07-14T11:17:00.004+01:00

Can someone remind me of what exactly is Great about Britain please?

Our weather is shite. I mean just how much rain should we get in Summer. Shouldn't we get at least one heatwave? Can anyone remember a single run of 4-5 days this year whereby we got warm sunny weather and cloudless skies? Great Britain?

An incompetent government. Fuel prices rising, which in the case of oil I do understand is not their fault, but for electricity and gas are absolutely down to our own misguided privatisation program. The coal mine closure program added to zero investment in nuclear and green renewable technologies is another factor. This has exposed us to global markets and allowed foreign companies to buy our 'crown jewels', whilst remaining closed themselves, and for dubious foreign powers to hold us to ransom over gas supplies. Compare this to France with its expansive Nuclear electricity network reducing the French reliance on any foreign supplies. Never having had a single accident. Great Britain?

An incompetent Governement (2) - food prices rising, again because of policies which penalise the local producers and reward supermarkets with too much power. Oddly not enough power to control prices. Food fascism constantly being rammed down our throats, telling us whats good and bad to eat, whilst implying we're all fat useless unhealthy loafers who waste food. Not eating organic? Gone for the cheapest option because you're income is lower and you still need to feed the family? According to Gordon Fuckwit you're a complete heathen and the real cause of the problems. Great Britain?

Stabbings - every day, every fucking day and a Home Secretary sitting there saying the answer is to show youngsters the effects of what knife crime. FFS? Great Britain?

More taxes - yep, every day in every way Gordon Fuckwit will find yet another tax to apply under the guise of making us green. As if any of these taxes will ever be used on anything green. Or useful come to think of it. Great Britain?

House prices falling and an obsessed media determined to talk us into recession. I remember seeing Chris Morris on The Day Today in his prophetic vision of a war generated by the media. You can see it here. Great Britain?

A member of The Commonwealth, Zimbabwe, is run by a crooked, vindictive, mentally unstable dictator in Robert Mugabe, and Britain, like all the others does nothing except ask for sanctions and removes his honorary titles. Yep, that hit him where it hurts. Great Britain?

The list goes on, Wembley Stadium (late and overbudget), The Millennium Bridge (faulty and closed immediately after openeing pending repairs), The Spinnaker Tower (delivered 6 years late and missed the Millennium celebrations by some distance), The Beagle Explorer mission to Mars (assumed crashed), the Princess Diana memorial fountain (not a proper fountain and another failed design), The Millennium Dome (stood unused for 7 years). Great Britain?

Later, GJ

Contrast

2008-07-14T11:00:00.003+01:00

One minute you're planning a great big fuck off weekend at Fairford Air Show, with an early start, pole position in the grandstand, great big zoom lenses primed and loads of environmentally unfriendly and hugely noisy death and killing machinery whizzing past at 3oo mph.

The next you're nursing a hangover and sat in front of the TV all day long feeling sorry for yourself because thanks to the good old British Summer, the vast amounts of rainfall that have fallen thus far in July have waterlogged the whole Air Show site and the organisers called the whole thing off. yep, the whole of the flying displays cancelled with the a stroke of the proverbial pen.

250,000 people's planned weekend flushed down the drain unlike the water around RAF Fairford. We decamped to the pub on Friday night after finding out, the eintention being to determine if any sort of Plan B would compensate. Short of a Pink Floyd reunion with us getting a back stage pass there was nothing that even flickered us into life. Only one thing for it then.

Guinness.

Loads of Guinness.

Loads and loads of Guiness.

And a great big fat Cuban cigar, normally reserved for celebrations but in this case used to soften the fucking blow.

And soften the blow the guiness and the cigar did on the night, but at the usual price of a headache that felt like I'd been hit with a cricket bat by Kevin Pietersen. This is why there's no God. If there was then he'd have sympathised with our plight and waived the hangover fee just for one day.

I ended up gardening for fuck sake. Which in the scheme of things doesn't really come close to seeing an F22 Raptor do a vertical take off does it?

Later, GJ

Reasons

2008-07-09T14:15:00.002+01:00

Reasons to be Grumpy.......

It's pissing down with rain, but apparently the temperature is normal for July. WTF?

Global climate change is happening but the drop in polluted skies is the cause, as the clearer skies mean more of the suns rays melting the polar ice caps. Or is it the shift in the magnetic poles? Or is it Aircraft - which contribute 2% of the man made emissions globally....far less than heavy industry or the car. No-one really knows, trust me, no-one really knows.

The housing market is collapsing, repossessions are up and mortgages are being restricted.

House building is stalling and government building targets are fucked. The government and the highly paid Economic analysts didn't see this coming? WTF?

Food prices are rising globally because we want biofuels instead of food. I mean does anyone know anyone who is running their car on a biofuel? FFS?

Fuel prices are rising due to the price of oil. Apparently India and China are to blame because they want to use it as well. And the G8 couldn't see that coming? WTF?

Fascist dictator Robert Mugabe stole the Zimbabwean elections whilst the US and Europe sat there watching. No oil in Zimbabwe I guess. FFS!

18 teenage stabbings this year but according to the Governmment they are tackling crime. Presumably by getting the police nicking more speeding motorists, graffiti 'artists' andmetal thieves rather than the rapists, stabbers and murderers. WTF?

Gordon Brown and his deadhead, blundering, incompetent, lying, cheating, corrupt Government are in charge. The opposition is The Conservative party. Whoopee-fucking-do!

I have 2 teenage daughters now. Offical. OMG!

I still have my braces :-( Just how much longer can this take?

Reasons to be cheerful...

Chelsea have a new Head Coach!

36 days to the new footie season!

I'm on holiday in France soon!

Doctor Who was great!

We're going to transform our garden and grow our own! I get a Greenhouse!

I can work from home 2 days a week!

My bonus this year was good!

Hellsbells has a new shiny bike!

Our new second car arrives soon and it's bright yellow. A Mr Happy car!

Pie is doing very well at school and Teenager has left school and is working until college starts! I have yet to see how this might save me some money though!

It can only rain so much.

Later GJ

Bored bored bored

2008-07-07T19:31:00.008+01:00

Well people, the dust has settled after the reorg....sorry ...transformation and despite the best efforts of Queen Wasp (formerly Beach Babe...I will update The Players in good time of course) it became the ritual slaughter of good people we expected.

Of course her style, her apparent friendliness, the blonde hair, the certain look in her eye and an easy smile (to quote the great Roger Waters) allowed us all to be duped, but in the end good people walked and complete arseholes remained. It's all down to role, not ability or loyalty you see.

Quoting Roger again " You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you'll get the chance to put the knife in"

It's all a crock of shit and hopefully I will dedicate 20 minutes per day to writing an article here for your perusal, which over time will explain the .........bollocks of the last few months. Yes, I've been slack, but it's a combination of laziness, misery and a period of reflection on whether to decide if Jack should be woken from his self induced coma. No promises here, but I might just be full of inspiration again!

Anyway. Doctor Who? Fucking brilliant. The series goes from strength to strength and the latest series is no exception, far outstripping its predecessors for excitement, humour, fear and unbelievable beautifully written pathos just top make the girl's cry and men complain about something in their eye. The last 3 episodes finished the story arc off superbly with the iconic sight of the Tardis being piloted as it should be by 6 people for the first time ever. Awesome. As per usual the Doctor was played brilliant by David Tennant who has thankfully cut back on the gurning and grinning since Rose departed. Of course she was back for the end, but sensibly the role cut back a bit until a fitting re-union with the Doctor-Donna clone. But this brings me to the point of why the last 3 episodes and the whole series was an improvement.

Catherine Tate. Yep, after wholesale Whovian derision on the announcement of Catherine Tate as the new 'companion' by, frankly, sad idiots who can't separate her sketch show characters from her portrayal of someone by the process of acting. Something she is trained to do. She has in fact been the best of the companions to date. Instead of fawning over the Doctor like Rose did and indulging in annoying lovey-dovey dualist banter, nor adopting martha's doe-eyed approach (I love him but he hasn't noticed me) , Catherine tate played the part of the sympatehtic and critical humanist. She made The Doctor think about what he did, she bought common sense to the decisions of him and others. She cried at tragedy and showed bravery in the face of great peril. She really bought the audience into how living with someone like The Doctor could be both enlightening and frightening. She deserves a BAFTA for her performances throughout, but especially for the tragic and desperately sad ending involving the 'reset' button technique so beloved of Russell Davies for overall stories. Except this time this was for one person, whose life had been made so much better and yet she would know nothing of it.

Being Doctor Who of course, she may well return, but I have a feeling Catherine Tate will resist any attempts to bring her back. The character has closure and despite not being the happiest ending, she has her life as it always had been before she met The Doctor.

I didn't use my hankie once...honest.

A quick word as well for the superbly portayed Davros, by a guy called Julian Bleach. Wow. The best Davros by far, with a beautifully understated yet potent menace to his voice, and great mannerisms even if restricted to the right arm! His speech about "All the Stars and all the planets and all the people will become dust, and the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become nothing' was delivered in a superb whispered menace just hinting at the great victory he expected. Truly a scary and iconic villain, now firmly lodged in Whovian folklore with his creations , The Daleks.

All in all superb family TV, which Baby nearly cried at, Hells Bells stated she didn't, MiddleSis and LittleSis admitted the tears and which Teenager also succumbed to. When the series returns with a new Executive Producer in 2010 it can only go from strength to strength.

Later, GJ

2008-06-06T15:28:00.002+01:00

God, that last post looked shit didn't it? Well its deleted now so of you haven't seen it then you missed bugger all.

I'm thinking about how to continue this blog and whether I can find the time....which is ridiculous...20 minutes every couple of days shouldn't tax anyone, so maybe its just me being a lazy bastard.

Anyway, I'm not ready to kill the Grocer off just yet, so lets have a few quickie points.

Gordon Brown - God help us. Anyone see the resemblance to John Major?

The Planet is saved! - Planet Rock has been bought by a consortium of old rockers including Tony Iommi, Gary Moore and Fish. Great news and a poke in the eye to the continuing ripping out of the soul of radio we see from Corporate giants in it to make money at the expense of the listener.

Teenagers and knives - see the Liberation manifesto!

Chelsea - season over, no trophies, goodbye Uncle Avram, no new coach...I miss Stamford Bridge already.

A bright yellow new car - surely not? Unfortunately yes, outvoted by Hellsbells, Teenager 1 and Teenager 2.

Inter-costal muscle tears hurt ...a lot.

Co-codamol constipates you!

Redundancies at work, change is good (sic), change is inevitable etc and more work bollocks.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Amy Winehouse - what an abuse of talent.

Later, GrocerJack

I hope this is true!

2008-03-30T19:38:00.002+01:00

Top this for a speeding ticket. This took place about 70 km North of Leeds in UK .

Two traffic patrol officers from North Berwick were involved in an unusual incident while checking for speeding motorists on the A-1 Great North Road . One of the officers used a hand-held radar device to check the speed of a vehicle approaching over the crest of a hill, and was surprised when the speed was recorded at over 300 mph. Their radar suddenly stopped working and the officers were not able to reset it.

Just then a deafening roar over the treetops revealed that the radar had
in fact latched on to a NATO Tornado fighter jet which was engaged in a low-flying exercise over the Border district, approaching from the North Sea .

Back at police headquarters the chief constable fired off a stiff complaint to the RAF Liaison office.

Back came the reply in true laconic RAF style:

"Thank you for your message, which allows us to complete the file on this incident. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had detected the presence of, and subsequently locked onto, your hostile radar equipment and automatically sent a jamming signal back to it. Furthermore, an air-to-ground missile aboard the fully-armed aircraft had also automatically locked onto your equipment. Fortunately the pilot flying the Tornado recognized the situation for what it was, quickly responded to the missile systems alert status, and was able to override the automated defence system before the missile was launched and your hostile radar installation was destroyed."