I’m not sure what to do. I have now started doing a podcast which sort of covers the things that I do here and I don’t really want there to be any duplication. So should I stop doing this every Sunday, that is the question? Or should I carry on and possibly bore those who listen to the podcast as well (that is assuming that they weren’t bored already). Oh I don’t know, if you all listened to the podcast instead of reading this (maybe some of you do both) then I could stop doing this.
In the mean time, here are some awards.
The Award for (I’m sorry but there is no other way of putting this) Massive Twat of the Week,
Some time earlier in his smartly dressed life AA Gill managed to piss off a surprisingly large number of people after he, to misquote Johnny Cash, shot a baboon in Tanzania just to watch it die.
Now however he has been rude about someone who is not going to take it. In an article about Clare Balding’s new TV show Britain by Bike, which is on BBC4 if you are interested, he called her “the Dyke on the bike”. What, pray tell, Adrian does her sexuality have to do with a TV program about cycling? The article had several more disparaging references to Ms Balding’s sexuality. She has made a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.
This is not the first time the Adrian Gill has decided to bring up the sexuality of female Television presenters whilst reviewing a program of theirs; he has done it to Sue Perkins as well. He really is a rather unpleasant man.
Before making her complaint to the PCC Clare Balding had written to the editor of the Sunday Times who reacted in a rather unhelpful way, he replied to her approach by saying “In my view some members of the Gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society.” Umm, which accepting society is that? Is that the society that thinks that it is ok to print reviews of television programs which include unpleasant remakes about the presenters sexuality because they are not heterosexual. I note that the sexuality of hetti presenters is never mentioned. If it isn't a problem for Mr Gill then he wouldn't have felt it necessary to go on about it?
As Clare herself said in her eloquent response to the knuckle scraping editor John Witherow"When the day comes that people stop resigning from high office, being disowned by their families, getting beaten up and in some instances committing suicide because of their sexuality, you may have a point.
"This is not about me putting up with having the piss taken out of me, something I have been quite able to withstand, it is about you legitimising name calling. 'Dyke' is not shouted out in school playgrounds (or as I've had it at an airport) as a compliment, believe me."
The British press’ attitude to sexuality was exposed again on Saturday when the bloke who won X-factor felt it necessary to give an interview to The Sun saying that he was gay.
The Award for British Sporting Success of the Week,
Well, we have loads to choose from this week. The European Athletics Championships have done taking place this week and it has been going really rather well for Team GB.
Highlights include the brilliant Jessica Ennis winning gold in the Heptathlon, Mo Farah wins the 5,000m and the 10km and Welsh pair Dai Greene and Rhys Williams secured a one-two finish for the British team in the men's 400m hurdles final. This leaves us 2nd in the medal table (at the time of writing).
The first cricket test against Pakistan is going very well and looks like England will wrap up a win in under 4 days and finally Shanaze Reade has won her 3rd BMX World Championship.
Who needs footballers anyway.
Yesterday we went to London again, which was nice. Significant Other went to Knit Nation and I had a day by myself.
We travelled up together on the train which can be fun but it is an experience that is shaped mostly by those with whom you share a carriage.
For most of our journey to the capital I was jealous of the absolute certainty of opinion being expressed by the 2 conversing couples sat across the aisle from us. Every dull subject, why he won’t us BT to dentistry rip offs, was being covered with Daily Express like attention to detail.
I think that this sort of thing is the reason I like going to places with high numbers of non-English speakers speaking their own language, is that I can’t understand them, a relief in it’s self, and I assume that they are discussing matters of great import and are not telling some slightly racist anecdote.
Anyway, my day was most enjoyable. I went to the Horniman (yes, it is a funny name) Museum which was great. Yes they do have an over stuffed dead Walrus (the story goes that the taxidermist had never seen a Walrus and didn’t realise that they are supposed to have many folds of skin and just kept stuffing) but it is so much more. Had lunch in Chinatown and then to the National Portrait Gallery,
Quickly back to the Museum, it now has an aquarium as well, which contains jelly fish,
I hope you all have a lovely week. I will try and decide what I'm doing about this blog in the week, in the mean time do feel free to listen to the podcast and, maybe, leave a nice review on Itunes (search for DORC in the podcasts bit) or on Podbean, thank you xx
So do they think I am a sucker? This person was so keen to get my money that she e-mailed me twice on the same day,
“Trust & Good Faith. I am Mrs Sara Faraj, I am 62 years old from Kuwait, I am
suffering from along time cancer of the Lungs which also affected my hearing
ability and my brain. My husband died in a fatal motor accident. Since his
death I decided not to re-marry, I sold all my inherited belongings and
deposited all the sum of £23M GBP and Two Trunk Box (Family valuables/
Personal Jewelries) with a Private Bank & Securities. I need you to help me
carry out my charity work. Reply through my private
email:sarafarajthomas@advir.com”
Londoners, are you devoid of all human kindness?
We came to your quite nice city yesterday and, as is my want, I tried to make people smile on the underground. All you have to do, if you want to join in, is smile at people first, it's not very hard to do but it is pretty much imposable to win the game by getting them to smile back. You lot really don't like to smile do you?
Yesterday, as others pushed to get onto the grubby little train before allowing those getting off to do so making the whole affair much more difficult than it needs to be, I paused to allow a lady with a pushchair time to get on without getting squashed. I would consider this normal behaviour but judging from the reaction of this lady it's not normal in the London.
“Thank you, thank you very much. That's really kind of you, thank you.” She seemed surprised as if this had never happened to her before. So I ask again, Londoners, are you devoid of all human kindness?
We were in London for the opening of a new shop. Significant Other is a keen knitter and is very taken with a shop in Islington called Loop. They have recently moved premises to a slightly more prominent part of the borough and they opened for the first time yesterday.
They were offering free gift bags for the first 100 customers. Who knew that so many chubby women had such pointy elbows? Bloody hell, these people had absolutely no respect for personal space. This was a shop for the socially inept; it was like Games Workshop for these with jumper bumps. You can read a more positive view of the visit here as Significant Other has blogged about it.
Enough about the fun bits of my week, how about some news.
And so familiar Tory policies start to leak out. Last week we had David Willets trying to make sure that only rich people could go to the best Universities and now we have them dropping proposed Labour Government legislation that would have seen Landlords and Letting Agencies properly registered and regulated.
The purpose of this regulation was supposed to offer some sort of protection from shoddy treatment for those of us who rent but this is not the free market way. Oh no, you and I exist to get ripped off and fucked over by already wealthy people.
The new Housing Minister Grant Shapps said “It would be difficult to put together and expensive”. So what? I don't care! People need and deserve protection from less honourable rich sorts of people.
I am not the only who is a little pissed of by this, Ian Potter, operations manager of the Association of Residential Lettings Agents, said: “We are extremely disappointed with the Housing Minister’s decision to scrap the previous Government’s plans for the regulation of letting agents. This move risks seriously hampering the improvement of standards in the private rented sector, [its] reputation and the ... role it plays in the wider housing market, as well as failing to protect the consumer, who has nowhere to go when there is service failure or fraud.” Even the people who represent Landlords think that this decision is poor, that's how bad it is.
Whilst I'm having what could best be described as a moan the Government have also started a review of health and safety legislation under the guise of reducing red tape.
Before the election campaign David Cameron had said that he wanted to do this and sighted well worn, Daily Mail type, examples of Elf and Safety gone made. One of his examples was schools making the pupils wear goggles to play conkers. If it was true that that would be a bit ridiculous but it of course it wasn't. One headmistress did it once. So when the review was announced you would have thought that they wouldn't have just gone with cheap, Daily Express-lite, examples wouldn't you. Oh no. When interviewed by the BBC Lord Young, who has been asked to carry out the review, used this example, under current laws “firemen could say they wouldn't go to a fire because it was too dangerous”, umm, I don't think they can.
His point was that the Emergency Services should be exempt from H&S laws because they are "paid for doing a job that involves risk", well to a certain degree I would agree with him but should they be exempt from all legislation? Of course not, that is silly.
The real problem with area of law is not the law it's self but they why that some use it and the Government, to their credit, do want to clamp down on Ambulance chasing and some rather excessive personal injury claims. It is fear of these claims that forces councils and schools into over zealous interpretation of the rules, erring on the side of excessive caution. But again this must be watched.
We, the small people as Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP Chairman, might describe us, (there is a man who needs to get his statements cleared by PR person before he says them. If you are in a hole, stop digging is the phrase but this really doesn't apply to BP, maybe because they think there might be oil at the bottom of that hole.) do need to have some protection from injury because someone couldn't be bothered to do their job properly.
Health and Safety laws exist to stop us being exploited and put in danger by bad employers. If you are doing a dangerous job then the HSE is there to make sure that you are protected correctly.
It does seem that the Government are, again, trying to make laws to aid rich people increase their profit margins at the cost of the workers, comrades!
Best I join a Union I think.
It's awards time again. I have been trying to get Stephen Fry to present these but I haven't had a reply yet so you'll have to put up with me again, sorry about that.
The Award for Really Not Understanding What the Fuck You Are Saying,
Thursday's Daily Express confused me no end. Apparently yoghurt can help end the “misery” of hay fever. Before I carry on I do feel sorry for those with hay fever, it's horrible, now back to mocking a “newspaper” for idiots.
The paper claimed that a new study showed that yoghurt can help stave off the effects of pollen by “boosting the immune system”. WTF?
1, You, as long as you are in reasonable health i.e. not immunocompromised, you can not “boost” your immune system, and 2, as far as I'm aware, the reaction you get from some pollen touching your mucus membranes causing your eyes to stream and your nose to run is a massive over reaction from a really rather active immune system, if anything your immune system needs deepening down.
The article persists with this false premise all the way through. To be fair to the researchers involved I think it was probably the Express that misinterpreted some paper or other rather than some bad research, however the only way that I can think of that yoghurt may help those who suffer from hay fever is if they completely smoother their faces in it therefore making it impossible for the pollen to get though. Effective but impractical.
The Award for Short-Termism of the Worst Sort 2,
Rarely do we have a repeat of an award (I think it may have only happened once before) but this week is one of those weeks.
On Thursday the Government announced that it was going to drop or postpone about £2bn worth of stuff announced by the last lot. Some of these cuts are perfectly reasonable I suppose if you don't have any money left but one of them stood out from the others.
A company called Sheffield Forgemasters was promised an £80 million loan to help buy a 15,000 tonne press. Now not being versed in such things I have no idea what that is but I do know that it would have used to make specialist parts for nuclear power stations and would have provided up to 400 jobs. If fact it would have been so specialist they would have been only the second company in the world to make these parts. That's second company in the WORLD, not country but WORLD! Jesus, what are the Government thinking?
Oh and and they seemed to have axed the rather excellent free swims program for children and the over 60's. Oh and the refurbishment plans for Libraries.
The Award for Thing That Has Made Me Laugh More Than Anything Else This Week,
I know it's lazy to just put YouTube videos on here but this really is very funny,
The Award for Best Radio Program About Numbers and Statistics,
Ok, so I am assuming that there isn’t a great deal of nominations for this rather specific award but I give you the winner, Radio 4's More or Less.
If a person makes a claim using statistics or numbers and someone points it out to them, they will investigate it to find out whether it is correct or not.
Last week Lord Digby Jones, head of the CBI, claimed on the Today programme that we should stop having a go at banks because they pay 25% of all tax that the Treasury receives. Is this true they asked? Umm, no. Their own investigations showed that if you were incredibly generous to the banks they pay about 12.5% of all the tax, still a large amount but 50% less than Sir Digby claimed. Was he available to say where he got his made up figures from? Was he bollocks!
This week the Daily Telegraph was caught out. They published a story that claimed that we are all paying £4000 per year for public services pensions. They said that this figure came from the new Office for Budget Responsibility.
Now, one of them, I'm not sure which one although my money is on the newspaper, got this quite wrong. The actual figure is £400 which is considerably lower. They have now changed this on they on-line edition but have not, as fair as the programme is aware, printed an apology.
You can download past episodes from I-tunes, they really are great and not in anyway dull.
The Award for The Easiest Joke of the Week,
Outside of a church in MONROE, OHIO stands, or at least stood, a really big statue of Jesus. I mean really big, 65ft big. Some have referred to it as the “Touchdown Jesus” as his arms are held aloft in a similar pose as to that taken by an Umpire/referee in American Football just after someone scores a touchdown.
Anyway, it cost about $250,000 to build and has stood there since 2004 offending no one, unless they were cursed with eyes.
It seems, however, that it was not people who were offended by the oddity, oh no, because on the night of the Monday the 14th of June there was a thunder storm and the statue was struck by lightening and burned down. A much higher force seems to have taken a dislike to this depiction of his son and decided to do something about it.
This giant erection was insured though for a cool $500,000. If you were at the insurance company you now that you would love to be the one dealing with this claim and then refuse on the grounds that the lightening strike was an “act of God”, you know you would.
The Award for Thing I Want Most This Week But May Have Difficulty Trying To Hide From Significant Other,
At London’s International Fine Arts Fair you can buy may a beautiful objet d’art but one will stand out form the others. It is significantly cooler and much, much older than everything else there. It is the fossilised skull of a Tarbosaurus bataa, which is related to a T-Rex I’m told.
It is being sold by a bloke from down the road, well Dorset-based fossil dealer Chris Moore, for the perfect reasonable £125,000. Now I am good for it but I was wondering if one of you could lend me it for a short period? Anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?
Have a good week my freinds, I am hoping to make jam tomorrow.
