En Vacances

It's been very hectic this week and I haven't had the opportunity to tell you all the exciting things I'd intended to.
It's been so hectic, in fact, I feel like I need another holiday, so I'm off to Provence today (ooh, lah-de-dah).

I'll tell you all about my misadventures when I'm back.

Dirty Sanchez

Never mind that it's a rubbish, Welsh version of Jackass.

After the Brighton escapade, we kipped at all-round good guys Alex & Sylvia's house. Not only did we express our gratitude for their hospitality by emptying their drinks cabinet, they also, gracious hosts as ever, informed me what Dirty Sanchez actually means.

Brighton Cock

Pease Pottage Service Station. Sounds like one of those places where Morrissey would have quit because Newport Pagnell was more enticing.

More to the point, that's where we started off on the London to Brighton Lancia run on the Sunday before last.


Rob grabs an 8am power-nap at a car-wash.

But Pease Pottage isn't as awful as it sounds. According to one online encyclopedia, "it also has a shop, pub, and some small industrial units". All the attraction of a tiny Milton Keynes. Nice.

More importantly, it meets the A23, so we (Rob, Chris & I) had a rather jolly day out, touring the Sussex countryside.



I'm not a fan of cars except in the sense that they appeal to my disregard for exercise, so I was apprehensive there'd just be a load of petrolheads, wanking over turbo chips.
Nah- everyone (except the knob who turned up in a Ferrari) was sound- Lancia owners don't need to show off, just like Skyline owners don't need to. They know they've got great cars, so they don't need to prove anything.

Ferrari owners are clearly either (a) going through a textbook version mid-life crisis, (b) a professional footballer with no financial advisor, or (c) delusional that they're driving a fanny magnet.

Having tailed this arse in his prancing horse for a couple of miles, it was obvious that the only people that were impressed by his motor were chavs. Money well spent, then.

Staying Focused

Can't see the wood for the trees



Well, I was going to come out with some more political rants today, but I'll spare you for a little while.

Instead, here's a picture I took a few days ago, just before dawn, from
outside my appartment. I doubt that David Hockney's losing any sleep
over it.

I've actually played around with it on Paint Shop Pro to get rid of a
lot of noise from some sodium lights. I'd also tried playing about with
the saturation, but inevitably it looked like a photograph of a
chemical disaster.

I'm off to Brighton at a stupidly early time in the morning.
Erstwhile buddies Chris & Rob both own Lancia Deltas, so we're off
to a London to Brighton run. Hopefully I'll make it back in one piece, along with a couple more photos.
 
Then I'm off to Amsterdam for a few days, so I might not be posting for a little while.

Feeling Irie!

Laura Bush is apparently a big fan of countercultural music, and has encouraged the Bush kids to listen to Bob Dylan.

Under-age-drinker Jenna Bush says her mom's "record collection is awesome. She's got Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. When we have parties at the ranch, we play them and all our friends love them".

Tory MP Sir Teddy Taylor is also a big Bob Marley fan, and apparently tries to incorporate Bob's lyrics in his political messages wherever possible.

Fix up, raasclaat!

[sources: Washington Post, The Sunday Times]

Breaking News! Pope Is Catholic!

The British National Party are confirmed to be a bunch of ignorant fascist thugs.
Next week: The shocking revelations about bears defecating in forests...

What The Butler Stalled....

Shock & awe in British politics today when (as widely predicted) Robin Butler's "investigation" into the intelligence community and Blair's ludicrous WMD claims revealed nothing that wasn't already in the public domain.

Why would it? Butler is the man who declared disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton innocent, despite the dodgy cash bribes he received in plain brown envelopes from Mo Al-Fayed.

Butler also declared Johnathan Aitken innocent in another whitewash. Aitken, another disgraced Tory MP, was subsequently jailed for perjury, following revelations about more arms dealing, this time connected with the Saudis.

During the Scott inquiry (into covert British arms sales to our one-time best buddy...Saddam Hussein), it was Butler who said it was proper conduct for MPs to be "selective about the facts" and give "an answer that is not the whole truth".

More recently, Butler himself signed the Orders in Council that allowed party political appointess to give orders to civil servants. Hence it was he who allowed Alaistair Campbell (Blair's press secretary) & Johnathan Powell (Blair's chief of staff) to interfere with the provided intelligence (forcing the inclusion of the "45 minutes" nonsense).

Blair was his usual self in the Commons this afternoon. Instead of apologising, he argued, in mimicry of Bush's "for-us-or-against-us" hyperbole, that if you were against the invasion of Iraq, you must be a supporter of Saddam Hussein...

[sources: Paul Vallely in The Independent 10 July; Medialens.org 19 February]

Scotch Mist

Mull It Over

Tobermory

Here are a couple of photos (taken by my buddy Jimbo) during our recent road-trip to Scotland.
We drove up from the Midlands to Glasgow for a few days. I'd spent a while working there last year when the stockbrokers I worked for (yeah, I know...) got taken over by a multinational bank. What a great, vibrant city. So many ace bars, restaurants & art galleries. We bumbled around, doing the culture bit, and getting drunk.

Then we headed up to Oban and got a ferry to Mull, which was fantastic.

And that's despite the fact, as a Wolves fan, the only bar in Fionnphort was run by a West Brom fan. Although that nearly ruined the whole journey, it was still great. Didn't take any CDs for in-car entertainment, but I picked up some Led Zep and Johnny Cash in Tobermory, which was a result. At least it banished any lingering thoughts of "Mull Of Kintyre". McCartney, you twunt.

Next stop was Edinburgh, which had some more great galleries, bars, and restaurants, and some over-priced clubs playing appaling music. Can't have everything, I suppose. But there were lots of beautiful women there. I must also thank Simon the fireman for his hospitality there, and the use of his X-Box.

Anyway, the reason I mention it now is that I've just been fined £60 and had 3 points put on my driving licence, courtesy of Cumbria Constabulary. I was doing 84mph on the M6. If you're not familiar with Britain's motorways, there's practically no traffic after you pass Liverpool, so it's not like I was doing 14mph over the limit outside a school.

Anyway, whatever, I've bitten the bullet and paid the stealth tax.

There are plenty of websites that show that speed cameras (a) are there to make money rather than save lives, and (b) increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of accidents. See Speed Cameras Dot Org and the Association Of British Drivers, for example.

As ever in Britain, there's one rule for the powerful, and another for the us.

For example:

Head Of Middlesbrough CID, Adrian Roberts, escapes prosecution because he was uncertain who was behind the wheel when he was caught speeding. As Lord Mackenzie, former head of the Police Superintendents' Association, says, the defence would have been justified if it related to a shared, company car.

The BBC report that a journalist caught Kate Brunstrom exceeding the speed limit in Colwyn Bay by 19mph. She's the daughter of a Welsh police chief who is notoriously obsessed with speed limits. He recently described a 71-year-old as a "yob" for daring to challenge a fine.
She escaped prosecution.

Last month, Welsh MP Elfyn Llwyd was allowed to continue driving, despite accumulating the maximum 12 points on his licence. Here's a letter that was sent to a local paper, The Western Mail:

SIR - The decision to allow MP Elfyn Llwyd to carry on driving with 12 penalty points on his licence raises several questions ("MP escapes ban despite fourth offence," The Western Mail, June 3).

Firstly, on the basis of Mr Llwyd's defence that a driving ban would cause "exceptional hardship" to his constituents, does this mean that all MPs can now ignore penalty points?

Secondly, does his argument that driving is essential in his job as an MP mean that those of us whocannot drive due to disability cannot become MPs?

I wonder what fellow MP David Blunkett would have to say about that.

John Sanders
Penylan, Cardiff

And there's more...

Avon & Somerset police only prosecuted only 1 in 400 smokeys caught speeding last year. As the ABD say, it's necessary for emergency calls to be answered at speed. But, [we're] "sure the majority of those officers were driving at speed safely, but members of the public are penalised for doing the same thing".

Meanwhile, Chief Constable Steve Thomas (in charge of traffic in Greater Manchester) was recently clocked doing 104mph on the M6.
He retorted that "On the day in question, the driving and road conditions were good, and I was part of a group of around 15 cars all doing around the same speed. I considered that my manner of driving was safe".

Me too, motherfunster.

Turning The Quorner

"They fuck you at the drive-thru, okay? They fuck you at the drive-thru! They know you're gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked!".

Like a Birmingham version of Stella Street, Joe Pesci has clearly been to that godawful McDonalds drive-thru in Longbridge.
I went there the other day with my buddy Rob and his girlfriend Emma as we were all in need of an emergency Sunday afternoon hangover cure (and we were driving, hence the cure wasn't to be found in the nearest boozer).

They both recanted how this branch of McDonalds always get the orders wrong. Always. Nah, you're exaggurating, I said.

You can see where this is headed.

Things took a turn for the worse when the squawkbox operator (the same one, presumably, that randomly decides what meal they'll allocate you) tells me that they don't do the Veggie Deluxe anymore. They do...Quorn burgers.

Don't get me wrong- I never liked the McShit veggie burger. It was lardy and somehow tasteless, yet vile, at the same time. It must take a lot of R&D to come up with something like that. But the reason I ate them was that they were warm (sometimes) and convenient. They were never cheap, though. I guess that's the "Deluxe" bit. And they never used to serve them before 10:30 am. So what the hell else was I suposed to eat?

Anyway, it's reasonable to assume that vegetarians aren't McShit's number-one target market. Fine. But to withdraw the veggie burger and replace it with an Astra-Zeneca synthetic burger? A burger for people that hate eating meat, but that has exactly the same taste & texture as processed chicken?

So after this affront to decency, we eventually get served after having to go and park for ten minutes whilst the meals we didn't order are being prepared. Fast food, my arse.
And then we have to actually go inside the "restaurant" to get them to give us the food we did order, and the correct change.

I'm going to complain to the big boss man. He's clearly a clown...

It's Bicycle Repair Man!

Check out Quixotic Crap for their marvellous and fantastic pictures from a recent Superman convention.

So that's what happened to The Brown Bottle...

Ooh! 'Ark At 'Er!!

George Michael closes his forums on his website because his fans all slagging him off...
The Sindie covers this story with the humour and irreverence it deserves.

What an arrogant, old, bitter, fat, lazy, talentless bitch.

That's the kind of thing they probably wrote.

Is it just me, or is he starting to look like George Lucas?

Looney Tunes

At last we'll get to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in the UK in a couple of days. To while away the time until then, I thought I'd share some quotes about Iraq. They're originally quoted in John Pilger's "The New Rulers Of The World", which I dug out and re-read the other night.

"We do not seek the destruction of Iraq. Nor do we seek to punish the Iraqi people for the decisions and policies of their leaders"
George Bush Senior

"We think the price is worth it..."
US Ambassador Madeline Albright
[when asked if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were a price worth paying for sanctions]

"They know we own their country...we dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need".
Brigadier-General William Looney, USAF, director of Gulf War bombing of Iraq

But surely America have just handed power back to the Iraqis? Er...no. They've handed over responsibility, not power.
Have a look at this article by Robert Fisk.

Anacreon In Heaven

The Star-Spangled Banner was an 18th century English song about boozing, until Francis Scott Key "liberated" it in 1812, according to CNN.

Spicerworld

Here's an article by Naomi Klein looking at how the US State Department has been misappropriating funds that should have been used to help reconstruct Iraq. The article mentions Tim Spicer and his company, Aegis. The current issue (#1109) of Private Eye clarifies his role in Papua New Guinea:

"Astonishingly, Aegis was not even on the...state department's list of recommended security companies in Iraq- the company has only been in existence for a year or so. Even more surprisingly, the company's chief executive is former British army officer turned soldier of fortune, Tim Spicer.

Spicer is best known for his role in the Sandline affair, when a company he founded shipped 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of a UN arms embargo.
Spicer later told the press that the British government had encouraged his operation.

The Pentagon must be hoping there isn't a re-run of the farcical situation in 1997 when Spicer received a $36m contract from the government of Papua New Guinea to put down an insurgency.

Unfortunately for both the government and Spicer, the PNG army was so furious to learn that "the Colonel" was filling his pockets while ordinary soldiers couldn't fill their bellies that it- rather than the rebels- toppled the government and slapped Spicer in jail".

The Madness Of "King" George

Here's a fun, fact-filled quiz at ZNet, where you can test yourself on Bush. See how his policies measure up to the original US Declaration of Independence.

The Wrong Side Of The Tracks

Oh boy. Saturday's choo-choo extravaganza was messy. Very messy.

We started drinking at 10:45am and finished round about 03:00am today. I won't bore you to tears with alcoholic bravado, but we're not talking pints, we're talking gallons.
But I digress.

The 1940's weekend at the Severn Valley Railway consisted of people milling around dressed up in military & civvie period costumes, a fair few military vehicles and gun emplacements, and stalls ranging from decent army surplus to tat.

I daresay that any German tourists might've taken execption to the people dressed as Stormtroopers, but after five pints of Bathams, I relaised that one of the troopers was actually a woman.

A really attractive woman. In a Nazi outfit.

It's like watching Monkey! as a kid and you kind of fancy Tripitaka and you know (s)he's supposed to be male, but you know he's really a lovely she. Maybe that's another story.

At least I wasn't the only oddball there. Some guy collared me as I was bumbling along and got me to take a photo of him with the German soldiers.
He then slips on an old RAF hat that he'd got in his coat pocket. "I want you to take a photo of me being arrested by these guards", he explains.

Er, right. So these three soldiers assume the pose with him. I'm pretty sure I managed to take a blurred picture, but I think that captures the sense of occasion rather well. I daresay it'll look a publicity still from the long-lost Dad's Army acid-fuelled gonzo Christmas special.

Cut scene- more drinking around Shropshire and back to Chris's.
Suddenly it's 04:00am and Chris decided we should go for a walk. There's a place with a fantastic view to watch the sunrise, and it's only ten minutes away, he assured us.

Sounded good to me- always good to catch the sun's first rays, and it was some small concession to our no-doubt distended livers to get a bit of fresh air.

Ten minutes, my arse. We ended up doing three miles of pitch-black, steeply ascending, drunken rambling.
It was indeed a good call- it was a fantastic view, high up over the river Severn, hills rolling for as far as the eye could see. It was more of a transition from darkness to light rather than a sunrise. Which was fine, but then we get to see that we're right on the edge of a ravine.

Just us and thin air and a bloodstream full of booze and devoid of sleep.
I'd have expected an adrenaline rush, but we all ended up just having a half-hour kip, slumped on the edge of this abyss.

Then it's another three miles back, at least downhill now, and then sitting outside the local Esso garage until it opens for business.

Like tramps outside a Wetherspoons.

Ginsters cheese & onion pasties have never tasted so good.

Off The Rails

One of my pals Chris is celebrating his birthday today- we're off to the Severn Valley Railway for what amounts to an all-day drinking sesh.

I see the SVR are having a 1940's weekend, and their website promises World War 2 re-enactments.
Great. So what delights will that include? Firing nuclear devices at Japanese tourists? A mini Holocaust? I'll let you know.

The Perils Of Cocaine Abuse

Two recent political leaders allegedly had this nefarious habit.

Both came to power after dubious elections, by non-electorial and irregular methods.

Both nations immediately experienced attacks on famous public buildings.

Both blamed an ethnic minority before forensics had any evidence.

Both led "witch-hunts" against the accused minority.

Both suspended civil liberties "temporarily."

Both put the citizenry under surveillance.

Both maintained secret and clandestine governments.

Both launched wars against most of the world.

One had a funny mustache. Can you name the other one?



...that little gem is from Robert Anton Wilson's website, which is always worth checking out, as he's an illuminating writer.
Remember- "thinking outside the box" is a mindset, not a corporate platitude.

Weapons Of Mass Concussion

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe, according to New Scientist.

Sounds like we're all going to be getting a dose of "freedom", as early as next year.

I'm Not An Atheist, But...

[in the voice of a gruff comic doing the rounds in northern working mens clubs]: There's a Muslim, a Christian, and an Atheist... no, but seriously ladies & gents, but seriously...

Anyway, this isn't a joke. One of my pals Stu, an atheist, works for a multinational bank. He sits between a Christian and a Muslim. From an atheist perspective, it's clear that Islam, Christianity & Judaism are all broadly based on the same teachings.

The devil's in the detail.

Inevitably the guys get into a religious debate to liven up the tedious workload. The Christian and the Muslim are splitting hairs about the finer points of their theologies (Unfortunately, this tale was recanted to me after seven pints of Stella and half a bottle of whisky, so I can't remember the Christian guy's name. I know the Muslim fella was called Mohammed. For the sake of it, let's call the Christian fella Brian).

Stu intervenes in the debate, and says that there is no god. Of course, this goes down like the Pope dropping the kids off at Ian Paisley's pool.

So what enlightened and persuasive reasoning does Mohammed proffer?

...And before I tell you, I'll just add a reminder for those of you who skived school. Islamic culture was way ahead of western culture in terms of logic, mathematics, and science, until the Greeks got wind of it.

Anyway, Mo's killer riposte was...

"But if there's no god, who holds the sky up?"

Glastonbury Mud, Or The Downfall Of Western Civilisation

Oh, for the love of God!

Some joker (or shrewd entrepeneur) has listed some mud, apparently from this year's festival, on Ebay.

Some other jokers (or capitalist pigs, presumably) have been bidding funny money for it.

At least the seller is now giving some of the money to charity. Oh, the guilty conscience.

Currently the highest bid is £430. Oh yes. You've got just under 11 hours if you want a piece....