Swine Flu (What Recession?)

This is starting to get on my tits now. Flu kills a percentage of people that get it, fact. That percentage has and will always be higher in third world back waters like Mexico. Here are the symptoms of Swine Flu (from the BBC):-

"Swine flu symptoms are similar to those produced by ordinary seasonal flu - fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, chills and fatigue"

No limbs dropping off, no spewing blood, no eyes seeping black pus? IT'S JUST PLAIN OLD NORMAL FUCKING FLU! Only a tiny percentage get seriously ill from it, even fewer drop dead. Chances are we will all get it at one point or another, thanks to modern living standards a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage will die. Some people will probably die in the UK from it, then again some people died from flu last year, and the year before. The media are cunts.

But in the mean time we can all panic about something new and completely forget that the elected fuck wits of the world have fucked us over and plummeted us into financial meltdown.

People in third world countries need to worry about Swine Flu, the rest of us have got other things to worry about.

The Joy of Self Employment

There is one thing that I couldn’t live without – and therefore why I wouldn’t consider working for “the man”.

Singing. I love singing.

Currently, I’m bellowing out Star People (George Michael). And I mean bellowing. Not like that half-hearted mumbling I did at my last job (sorry to all the staff there).

Closely followed by:
Michael Buble – It had better be tonight
Take That – Shine
Bobby Darin - Mac the Knife
Etc.

In fact, I have an actual Playlist called “Singers” which contains all the songs I THINK I can sing. And who cares if I can’t. I’m in a converted attic in a Victorian house with 3 foot thick walls and all the neighbours are out, working for “the man”.

I think I’ll add REM – Losing My Religion – I bet I can sing that.

M.

p.s. Praying for Time – another Georgie Michael tunette just started! I might have to stand up for this one. And then I'm gonna put some clothes on.

UK Budget - An Advert For The Isle of Man

As anybody who knows me will tell you, I'm no huge fan of the Isle of Man, well that's not fair exactly, it's not the island as a whole that I don't like, rather just the moronic imbreds that have positioned themselves in power via the old boys club. Anyhoo, it's not like me to big up the place but having just watched the UK budget I feel like I've got to do my part.

If You Earn More Than £150,000 A Year You Must Move To The Isle of Man!

I'm being serious. The UK budget sees a 50% tax being levied on those that earn more than £150k a year, can you believe that? Before you even get started with NI or VAT (or simply just plain old living) you get to hand over half of your wages to the tax man. Fuck that. That's knocking on the door of communism.

I'm in the lucky position of working for myself so I have some understating of what it takes to start a business from the ground up. I'm not in the UK and I certainly don't earn more than £150k a year so I'm not being biased here. It takes a shit load of work, commitment and sacrifice. Behind every successful business there is a story - usually involving struggle. Labour have decided to ignore that. They have worked on the assumption that everybody earning over 150 grand a year is unworthy of it and should have it taken from them immediately. What about the people who have spent 8 years studying law? Those that have spent 12 years training as surgeons? You fuck them and the entrepreneurs, business owners, risk takers over in order to make life better (the truth as they shall will be in the pudding of this) for the people happy enough to plod along in life. The western capitalist world is based on a notion of risk and reward, sure it can get out of hand but it is based on the idea of free will, we all set our own levels of risk that we are willing to accept. To punish those that succeed (and at the same time bring about the opportunities for those that prefer the easy life) is fucking stupidity of the highest order.

What incentive is there to run a business in the UK? What incentive is there to push yourself harder, to work harder for that pay rise? £150k a year is not a ridiculous amount to earn, not when you consider that any old shit for brains with a GCSE C in English can easily earn £30k plus in the Civil Service. The majority of the people earning big bucks in the private sector have earnt it, they bring value, if they didn't they soon get let go. Of course there is the odd piss taker, the recent economic crisis has taught us that, but they are the con men, the dirty salesmen, they are the minority not the majority of high earners.

So this is why I'd suggest anybody running a business or earning more than £150,000 seriously consider relocating to the Isle of Man. Besides the superb quality of life we enjoy our upper personal tax rate is 18%, not 50%, 18%. On top of this there is a tax cap of £100,000 in place meaning that you will not pay more than £100,000 in personal income tax. Just think of the savings for a minute. I'm not going to go into the various advantages of running your business here, that's perhaps a post for somebody from the DTI to make.

The Isle of Man government has tried to attract exactly the sort of people that the UK seems determined to punish for a while now with not much success. This budget may well provide the Isle of Man with the influx of creative, intelligent businessmen and women which it craves.

Twazmuppet

And so what is a twazmuppet? Glad you asked! First, you take a large banking corporation (such as the Royal Bank of Scotland), then, with cutting edge idealism that you learnt in your youth (the 50's were such a good era), burden said corporation with ridiculous loss-making purchases (don't worry - accountants count debt as a good thing! All those creditors look good on the balance sheet) and gather amongst yourselves a droneful of yes-men to your board and switch to smug-mode as the economy soars!

Whatever you do - jump ship before any economic wobble - or else a plummet in share price will follow and you'll look a right twazmuppet. But don't worry - with the right exit strategy you'll land yourself a sweet, sweet pension deal and probably some sort of golden parachute leaving bonus.

Good News For The Isle of Man

Woo hoo, we are a white tax haven! Maybe to mark this we should rename the Isle of Man the Isle of Wh.... oh hang on a minute.

Here's my uneducated take on things. We managed to avoid a OECD tax haven black list that ONLY has 4 countries on it, Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Uruguay. Notice that none of them seem to have any real connections with the major world players? I wonder what you have to do to get on that list?! hmm

Everybody else has been bunged into 2 lists, a white list and a grey list. The Isle of Man is in the whitelist so what does that mean for us? Actually bugger all, there is no reward for being white instead of grey. We do not get a Brucie Bonus. The only difference is that we have implemented some stuff for information sharing instead of "committing" too. We have been very busy running around kissing asses. So if you're a wealthy ex-pat looking for somewhere to LEGALLY put your money you have a choice between the Isle of Man (who will squuueeeaaalll your details at first asking) or a nice "grey" tax haven that is treated the same as the Isle of Man but won't be so obliged to share your details with every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks. Now where would you put your money?

I reckon this bit of free marketing is going to do wonders for Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Uruguay (cos there will always be a black market). The countries on the grey list will probably do OK out of it as well. The tax havens on the white list - not really much of an incentive to use them now is there?

Best April Fool So Far

Has to be some sour faced bint by the name of the Badger on GMTV preaching to the new hoard of recently scrapped dole-ites. Her top tip:-

If you want your CV to stand out from the crowd, use coloured paper!

Genius I tell ya!

I also have some tips to add to Ruth's expertise:-

1. Use a different font for every line of your CV
2. Headers need to be BIG, anything over 80pt preferably
3. If after all the above your CV still doesn't stand out enough for your liking consider drawing small shapes like stars, butterflies and houses in the corners (and trees, everybody loves trees)

Un-Fucking Believable

A pay rise is not your right, you should ONLY get extra pay for WORKING HARDER.

Private Sector - Unemployment Up

Public Sector - Pay Up

But is was a 3 year deal? Fuck that, when a "fixed" deal goes against the employee's side all hell breaks lose in order to have some work around sorted out to give them more. The employer's side (that is supposed to represent tax payers) will just pay up without a grumble. That deal can now be quoted by every other public sector group in pay negotiations - public sector pay just goes up and up whilst the mugs paying for it scramble around shitting their knickers over just keeping their job.

In other related news a private care home in Peel have told staff that their hours are being cut, it's either that or some staff are let go. When will the dickheads in charge of running this island come down from their ever so high fucking high horses and take a little look-see in to the real world?

All Aboard The Gravy Train

The Four Cats


Four men were bragging about how smart their cats were.

The first man was an Engineer,

The second man was an Accountant,

The third man was a Chemist, and

The fourth man was a Government Employee.

To show off, the Engineer called his cat, "T-square, do your stuff."


T-square pranced over to the desk, took out some paper and pen and promptly drew a circle, a square, and a triangle.

Everyone agreed that was pretty smart.



But the Accountant said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said,

"Spreadsheet, do your stuff."


Spreadsheet went out to the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies.



Everyone agreed that was good.



But the Chemist said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, "Measure, do your stuff."


Measure got up, walked to the fridge, took out a quart of milk, got a 10 ounce glass from the cupboard and poured exactly 8 ounces without spilling a drop into the glass.


Everyone agreed that was pretty good.



Then the three men turned to the Government Employee and said, "What can your cat do?"



The Government Employee called his cat and said, "CoffeeBreak, do your stuff."



CoffeeBreak jumped to his feet.......







Ate the cookies........



Drank the milk.......


Sh*t on the paper.......






Screwed the other three cats.......


Claimed he injured his back while doing so.......



Filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions.......



Put in for Workers Compensation...............and



Went home for the rest of the day on sick leave............






AND THAT, MY FRIEND IS WHY EVERYONE WANTS TO WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT!!

As _____ As A Witches Tit

It's something my dad used to say but I can't remember what the hell the blank was, any ideas? What exactly could a witches tit be?

Why Do We Put Up With Our Banks?

There are 2 things that can really piss me off, 1 is being treated like a dip shit, the other is being lied to because you think I'm a dip shit.

Mrs B has had a problem with her bank account lately, it's a long story but the short version is it got blocked for security reasons. The first part her fault for not remembering her memorable words (doh!) the second part not her fault because the muppet in the call centre blocked the account after only 2 security questions 1 of which shouldn't have been asked. Then to make thing worse when she went in a month ago to get the info she was originally after they assured her the account was unblocked. Yesterday it turns out they lied.

So I decided to go with her to the bank today and get it sorted out, morale support. I was quite happy to let Mrs B do the talking and sit their quietly, right up to the point where the highly trained personal banker came out with the old "it's for your own good" spiel. I've worked in enough banks to know that it's fairly standard that no matter what the circumstances under which an account is blocked you must always tell the customer that it's for their own good. In this case it wasn't for Mrs B's own good at all.

Thinking enough was enough I decided to chip in. Mrs B had been very humble in explaining what had gone on and was just looking for an explanation on why the account was blocked without having been asked the 3 security questions and why wasn't the account unblocked when they said it was. It had caused a lot of inconvenience. Personal banker had got very defensive with a pinch of patronisation thrown in for good measure. So I asked about the second security question Mrs B had been asked. It was about the last transaction on our joint account. That's an impossible question to answer cos there's no way you can know what the other signatories on an account have done today/yesterday. You might as well ask when was the last time your partner farted? They are supposed to ask about the last transactions YOU did. Big difference. They are trying to identify you. Personal banker would not have it, defended the banks stance that they can ask whatever they like about any account they like for a security question. What she was actually doing was lying. Treating us as stupid people and fobbing us of with lies. I wouldn't leave it and eventually after much goading she slipped, only to back track as quickly. So I picked on the fact that Mrs B wasn't asked 3 security questions. She lied again. They can block an account anytime they like, they say it will only happen after 3 questions but they can do whenever they like. That's not right,it shouldn't happen - I just phoned the call centre to confirm that's not their policy, nor is saying you unblocked an account when you haven't.

Why lie about this shit? It's partly Mrs B's fault for forgetting stuff, fair enough, but it's also the banks fault for not going through with their own security procedures. Somebody deviated from the script and mistakenly asked an impossible security question and then blocked an account when they shouldn't have. The call centre monkey screwed up, that's all. It caused inconvenience to a customer. All you need to do is apologise on behalf of your colleague, unblock the account and the jobs a good un. Why start trying to defend a mistake by acting like a big shot and lying? It's about time that personal bankers were taught to think for themselves and have the stock answers taken away. A tiny bit of humbleness and customer service ability would have gone a long way in sorting this out. You'd think with all the crap going on in banking at the moment that customer service would be seen as being quite important?

When I was a wage slave there were tonnes of times where I've had to apologise for somebody else's mistakes, it's just part of working for big companies. Don't know what it is with UK banks and a lot of their staff but they seem incapable of grasping it. In my overly long and not remotely illustrious finance career I'd worked in enough banks and dealt with them day in and day out to know the score. It was always the UK banks that had problems with bullshit. I used to dread phoning them, I still hate dealing with them today. It's why the first thing I do with a new bank account is setup Internet banking. What is it with the lies and bullshit people?

Never Buy Somebody Game Vouchers

Game, as if anybody needed any more of an excuse to hate the Game chain then I've just found one. Whatever you do never suggest that somebody gets you Game gift vouchers as a present, they're a total pain in the hole to try and spend.

First things first there is the problem of knowing how much you have to spend, it's a swipe card type thing and nobody ever thinks to write the amount they've put on it for you. There isn't anywhere you can check online either so the only option is to go in store, either buy a game and take a chance or stand in the queue to find out. Then when you find out you've got enough to buy a game there's the problems of finding a game from the limited local selection and then justifying to yourself spending way over the odds. I've found the prices in Game shops to be 10%-20% more than what you can find online at places like Amazon.co.uk and Play.com At times when the online retailers are having specials you can save up to 60%. It fucking guiles me to my core to not be paying the best price.

Secondly and more importantly there is the stupid rule that you can't use your Game gift vouchers online. What the hell is that about? Because Game online do happen to have some decent discounts from time to time and being able to use your vouchers to buy these might just about make them worth having. You've obviously got the option online of being able to search for a game you want as well. It's a lot easier than shifting through piles of stacked on top of each other boxes. It's not even like they bother to put them in any sort of order in the shops to help you either. By not making Game vouchers usable online they've made them more trouble than they're worth.

I'm not going to buy any "shop local" shit here either. For a start it's a national chain, we don't even get the VAT from it, then there's the over pricing, then there's the not being able to get through the door without getting hassled by staff and finally there are the dickheads that do shop in there who can easily spend half an hour returning games to fund their next purchase. Game, it's shit.

4 Out Of 5 Schools On The Rock Are Really Good...

...obvious then that we end up in the other one. I ask you what are the odds? (Yeah okay, 5-1)

The Day You Lose All Your Family Photos

It was bound to happen sooner or later, old hard drive in old PC containing 10 years worth of photographs. Of course I'd done the sensible thing and had them backed up, loads of times in fact, spread across god knows how many DVDs over the years. It's just a case of putting them into some sort of order and recovering them I suppose...

Or maybe not, a little while back I was looking into online backup as part of work (work from home) and came across a company (Mozy, same name as my best man) offering 2 gigs of free storage for "personal" use. That was more than enough for all our pictures so over the shiteness that is the MT upload limit (256k) I spent the best part of a day uploading the lot. It was worth it, cue instant (well shitty MT 2Mb) recovery onto the new NAS box.

There are times in life that I think I was born unlucky (how many people have a hard disk just stop altogether on them?) but if you look at it the other way how lucky was I to have backed the lot up only a couple of weeks ago? As an added bonus I can now go through and bin the shit loads of DVD's I've got lying around with god knows what on them.

Backing up, it's a pain in the ass right up until the day something goes wrong.

Halo Wars Demo On X-Box 360

All work has ground to a halt, at least for the next few hours. The much anticipated Halo Wars demo has finally made it onto x-box live. I'm currently at 33% downloaded and willing my broadband to work quicker. Damn you Manx Telecom with your shitty service!

I'm more interested in playing this than just about anything else that's hit the x-box in the last 6 months. First of all it's being heralded as the first ever RTS on the x-box that will actually play like an RTS. The others all seem to have fudged controls and it makes using any strategy almost impossible (Highlight all, click on baddy). Secondly, I've already pre-ordered and paid for a copy so if it's a pile of shit then I'm £40 out of pocket.

Please be good.

Note - It is very good! In fact it's probably the best demo ever to his x-box live, just a shame any silver subscribers don't get access until the 13th.

Chinese New Year 2009

Why is it always the same every bloody year? Whilst I always welcome a Chinese, why is it that I only desperately need one when it's Chinese New Year? 2009 has been no different, aching for Chinese grub and there's not a one open. Bugger.

Cocaine Trains, 24 Hour Licensing and Not A Chippy In Sight

The lads got together last night for a bit of a beer and rant session. Attendance was excellent with five of us showing up.

I got a taxi down, being the only out of towner. It wasn't the cost that alarmed me though, the taxi driver was one of those chatty English blokes and was happy ranting away about this and that. He mentioned how he was out last week and the pub closed at 11. WTF? What sort of hour is 11 o'fucking clock to be closing your pub in the land of 24 hour licensing. Anyhoo I took it with a pinch of salt, maybe it was just a one off?

When I arrived at Bar Gay..... I mean Boy George.... I mean Bar George...everybody was already seated. The nights of the round table. At about 2 beers in everybody loosened up and the rant was flowing freely. From the human race to teachers I think we just about covered it all. I learnt something as well, Cocaine Trains. There were a bunch of pin-striped toss pots (not that Iprejudge people of course) sat close to us who were regularly taking it in turns to go to the toilet in groups of 3. I just assumed they were bummers but in fact it's something called a Cocaine Train. The give away being the smug, back slapping looks they come back with.

So just as the night was really warming up for what could have been a better than great session time was called. At 11 o'clock. People left, chairs were put on tables until there was only us sat there. I was CONVINCED that it was some sort of a joke. Apparently not. Left to wander the streets it was decided that a chippy was the next order of the day, we wandered long and far, looking for anywhere that had a sign of life. Not a bloody one open. What sort of a shit hole island is this? I demand the right to be able to drink later than 11 on my thrice annual nights out and I also demand the right to go to a chippy on the way home, as I've done for the last 13 years. All this talk of credit crunches and shite is all great until you can't go to a chippy on your way home.

It was a great night, great company and shoddy lager. I've just crawled out of bed with a head that is begging me to puke my guts up to feel better. Now that wouldn't have happened if I'd had some chips to put on top of the dirty nasty lager.

Here's a picture of us in Boy George.....I mean Bar George:-

Insensitive

Is when you're laughing and joking with a mate about how you're considering getting another job "just" to fill your time, you walk away and only then realise that he was being a bit quite cos he's working for a company that has just announced huge layoffs.

Bugger.

Katrina Darrell - American Idol

I've never been a big fan of these make me a star shows like American Idol. However every now and then a story comes out about one that grabs my attention. Take Katrina Darrell for example who recently auditioned on American Idol in only a bikini. I don't know what it is about this girl that gets my attention....





The question is how would this translate to the UK, how would we feel if the average English munter turned up in her bikini on Saturday night TV? Do we have any Katrina Darrell's out there?

Oh my God! There probably isn’t one.

Atheist adverts declaring that "there's probably no God" have been placed on 800 buses around Britain after an unprecedented fundraising campaign. Well my point of view is neither here nor there, but I unquestionable know there isn’t one.

And if you needed proof, just look at the psycho bitch that was my first wife, no God would allow me to do that. Then there is the complete Cluster Fuck that is the world at the moment and in all likelihood since man managed to drag himself out of the primordial slim and pick up a pint.

Man’s inhumanity to man is legendary, whether it is the in name of some deity, some cause or just for the sake of power.

Yep, there is no God. The final proof is Chicks with Dicks… WTF?

New Gladiator Siren

Those bastards over at Sky have binned my favourite Gladiator Ice! Thoughtfully though they have seen fit to employ some even fitter totty - I give you Siren (Amy Guy)!