Some (more) casual observations

A couple of years back I wrote something of a guide to modern life in London. You should read it. It's  here and much better than this entry. Go on, I'll wait, it's fine.

Good wasn't it. Anyway as something of a continuation of the theme, a few more things have been bothering me lately, and in order to sort it out I've produced a list. Enjoy!

1. Airport security. We all know that anyone with half a brain cell considers it little more than a farce to perpetrate an illusion of security, but when I'm being searched for knives, quizzed about if I've ever been a Nazi, and being swiftly relieved of my vicious looking bottle of mineral water, why has nobody ever asked if I'm a Ninja?
2. Looting. Yes I've done this already, but I dropped into my local hardware shop last weekend and discovered that the shop next door had been looted. That shop was Argos. Who the hell loots a catalogue shop!?! It's not that it's clearly just bloody stupid, it's the fact that it's so stupid that you have to make a conscious effort to be that idiotic. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but if this is the class of criminal we have in the UK, then we need to be giving these kids TVs, as they clearly aren't watching enough episodes of Sesame Street as they're growing up.
3. Mobile Phone signals on high speed trains. Just to state the bloody obvious, you are (unless you're traveling on South Eastern) moving at speed something faster than stationary. If your phone has no signal, moving it 4 inches closer to the window means nothing when during the time taken to do that you traveled countless times further in another direction. It does however make you look like an idiot.
4. Product labels that attempt to talk to you. Wine, for the less observant amongst you, is a drink that comes in a bottle. It did not 'grow up' anywhere, it certainly wasn't raised, and I have very little interest in the way it was nurtured. But having a label that tells me all these things, in the first person, isn't so much 'connecting with your audience' as providing fuel for schizophrenics. Stop it. Immediately.
5. Manly seating during rush hour. Now, I often sit with my legs apart because I'm sodding huge, and there's nowhere near enough room to sit with them straight ahead of me short of digging a hole in the seat in-front. You, I can almost guarantee, are nowhere near my size, so when you're sitting on rush hour transport doing your best John Wayne impression, no one is thinking of hour enormous your manhood must be as you mark your territory, they're thinking about where you got the rash that's making you sit so carefully. And if they weren't, they are now.

Finally, you know I know you didn't click that link at the top don't you. I can see who's been where, and I know you didn't click it. Bastards. Now, go back to the top, click the link, and remind yourself that when things get going this might actually be a good blog to read. Go on now, both of you.

Rioting retards

Following on from yesterday, here's is a quick collection of the extra special morons who've been involved in the rioting. I'll be adding more to this over the course of the day as I become aware of them. Brilliantly these are all being passed onto Crimewatch as people spot them online, so with a little luck some retribution will be on it's way.

Along with this, please check out CatchALooter who are doing an excellent job of gathering images together to help identify this filth.

This idiot works for Currys, and decided that looting her own store was a good idea (apologies for linking to the *spit* Daily Mail *spit*), because she'd never get recognised on the CCTV

Here are some digital genius' who felt that bragging to everyone online about what he stole might be a good idea;

At least that guy came close to being able to put together a coherent sentence. "Barbz" here looks like she's struggle to tie her shoe laces in the morning:

It's a wonderful world out there some times isn't it.

Update: Looks like this particular split condom has had it pointed out to her enough times that she's a complete moron, and has since deleted her Twitter account. The internet will never be the same again.

This is a new favourite, stealing crisps from Poundland, how shit does your life have to be for that to be an improvement? Christ, it must be shit being you. (left the original tweeter in as he posted it, not because he had something to do with it. Obviously.)

When I'm done with a hard days rioting, I like to head home and cook up a nice healthy dinner of Tesco Value rice. I'm guessing anything more complicated than "just add water" would be pushing it. Pot Noodle stockists take note.

In addition, the Met Police's official flickr feed for suspects can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/

At the risk of creating a link farm here, there's even more brilliance in this direction http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/

London Riots, a little look in the mirror

So for the last 2 nights parts of London have been turned into war zones but hundreds of rioters who decided to take the opportunity to show the rest of the country just what passes for society in parts of London these days. But now, while the various councils are digging in the broom cupboard for a broom big enough to sweep up Tottenham and quietly wishing that we'd shot a few more of them, people are starting to go around trying cast arbitrary blame for the past 2 nights.Which, as usual, means looking in every direction possible, while desperately trying to ignore the mirror.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are saying that it's all the Tories fault for cutting services and leaving the country with a disaffected youth with no hope's and no future.

Bollocks.

And I don't like the Tories cut's either, but regardless of which party was in power, and whose flavour of cuts we'd be stuck with, that would still have fuck all to do with it.

Other's have said it's Twitter's fault for 'fanning the flames'. Apparently these people can distinguish between riots being encouraged by seeing a tweet, and riots being encourage by 24/7 news coverage of buildings on fire and running battles in the street, and casual looting. But in fairness, most of those Twitter accusations have come from the Daily Mail, so the chances are everyone who Tweeted on Saturday night has died from Cancer by now anyway.

Quite simply, what this is, is scum acting like scum, and believing that they're entitled to things for free, and setting fire to peoples homes and businesses to walk off with it. This attitude isn't something that's magically arrived in the past 18 months, it takes years of practice and idiocy to develop the belief that acting like that is a good idea. This genius however, has managed to go even further and make himself the poster boy for chlorinating the gene pool overnight by deciding it's a good idea to post a picture of himself online with all the stuff he managed to steal over the weekend. And while it might be the supidest thing outside of the Darwin awards that you'll see anyone do all year, it's a great example of the mentality that lies behind this.

This isn't a product of cutting funds to Libraries, or having to trim back the Police force, or anything else for that matter. This is a product of people who spend their entire lives on hand outs, feeling like they don't need to work for a living, kicking off because they want to blame everyone else for the shit state they live in, rather than taking a look at themselves, and trying to do something useful about it. The closest this rocket surgeon will ever get to education will come this morning when he watches a few episodes of Teletubbies on his shiny new 46" TV. What's even more embarassing though, is that he probably doesn't even understand why posting this picture was such a monument to stupidity.

So do me a favour, if you want to go and loot and steal things, understand one thing. Your life if your own, and the consequences are yours. If your life it shit because you act like scum, then maybe you should try and loot a mirror, then when your taking a photo of yourself in it to post on Twitter you can have something to look at when it slowly starts to dawn on you what you've done with your life, and exactly why it is that the rest of the world wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Prickley Priorities

Right now the country is running around panicing about a second credit crunch, nobody being able to afford Christmas presents ever again, and the fact that John Prescot say's the Cabinet has been entirely replaced by a Prime Ministerial Pussy.

As a direct result of this Londoners are flocking to the internet desperately trying to keep up with what's going on, while people in Stockport are still standing in awe wondering what the big glowy thing is in the sky.

Except they're not. The Londoners that is. I'd recommend not checking on the people in Stockport, it'll only make you sad. In reality the top 3 stories on the BBC website right now are:

1. Man get's eaten by Bear
2. Bird get's eaten by Plant
3. Mr Bean get's eaten bruised by Car

This can only mean one thing. The internet has reached the provinces, and the unemployed have woken up.

Thankfully though, hope for western civilisation can be found in Sweden, where recently a resourceful chap was cruely arrested for attempting to build a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen. As you do. Science's new hero has now come out as saying that in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea. I'll type that again in case you missed it. Hell, I'm even going to use big bold letters for this to help out; "in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea." Got it? Good. Presumably this means that at some point in Professor Balls Up's planning process he thought that it might be a good idea instead! What the hell were his criteria?!? And what point would he have had to reach before stopping himself and thinking that perhaps continuing with the plan might not be in the best interest of, oh I don't know, say, anyone within a radius of about 100 miles?

It does however prove one thing. While Al Qaeda are using a network of secret international training camps to teach people how to secretly build a couple of petrol bombs in a cave, hobbyists in Europe are working towards the casual distruction of entire cities by splitting Atoms in their back garden.

I'm really not sure who's winning here, but I'm very sure that the fact that all of the above is true* means that the stockmarket wobbling and jepordising everyone's imaginary numbers shouldn't really be our top concern about the state of society.

*Especially the bit about Stockport. I mean seriously, have you been there? Christ on a crutch it's grim!

The BBC / Sky split of F1 broadcasting is a farce

As of this morning next year's Formula 1 broadcasts will be split between the BBC and Sky. I guess this will be kind of like when both the BBC and ITV show the World Cup final and we can basically choose our commentry team.

What's that you say? That's not the case at all? Really? So one of them will show one race weekend, and then the other will show the next race? That's shit! I don't want to pay for Sky just t.......I'm sorry what? They're not doing that either? Then, erm, okay you've got me, what other options are left then?

Sky will show Practice, Qualifying and all the Races, and then the BBC will show half of that as well, thus successfully canibalising thier own audience figures, and turning the BBC into little more than a glorified advert for Sky Sports. Surely that's got to be breaking their customer charter. Christ, it's practically a concious attempt to be as deliberately insulting to the fans as is humanly possible.

Just to clarify, I'm obviously an F1 fan. I couldn't care less about other sports, and I sure as hell don't need to watch a few over paid prima donnas being cheered on by the barely literate in the Pampers Premiership. So why the hell would I want a contract to pay in excess of £30 a month to watch an average of 2 hours of F1, for 9 months a year? I didn't walk into anywhere near enough glass doors as a kid to think that's a good idea.

Apparently though, this glorious display of intellect makes great commercial sense. Presumably that's defined by the fact that once we've all finished channel hopping to find the damn thing, made ourselves comfortable, and left ourselves a voicemail for James Murdoch to thank him personally for the broadcast, then for half the season we'll also get to be interrupted with commercials throughout the race, and pay for the privelege.

Finally according to Sky this is "fantastic news for F1 fans". Really? Where the hell did you find one dumb enough to say that?

Chastising Chuggers

I work in central London, I choose to do this, like I choose to go out and get my lunch, or go for a walk, or nip to the shops in my lunch break. At no point in this do I walk along so desperate for social interaction that I want some professional irritant leaping in front of me with a fake smile and a sob story.

Chuggers are one of the worst things about living in any modern city. I can't even go out for lunch these days without some idiot in a left over Shell-suit trying to convince me that I could single handedly raise Africa out of poverty, cure cancer, save all the children, and populate a small aircraft carrier's worth of Air Ambulances.

At their best Chuggers are blatantly lying to you. They work on the assumption that people think they're volunteers doing it for charity, and that you're doing a good thing by signing up. Bollocks. All Chuggers are paid just like any other job, and pimped out as glorified contractors to the charities. They're not working for those charities, they've just been given that colour jacket for the day and a sob story to go along with it.

But here's the real kick, on average, the typical monthly donation to a charity via a Chugger will take approximately a whole year before you've even paid for the Chugger! That's an entire year of your donations and good will going to help precisely NO ONE. And I'm pretty damn sure that that's not what you signed up for.

The proof of this, straight from the horses mouth, is here here. My personal favourite is the line "Across the entire campaign, a charity can expect to break even (i.e. recoup the whole cost it spent on fundraising) in about 26-28 months." Do we really need a better reason to ban them than in excess of 2 years worth of helping nobody? If I donate a few hundred quid to charity I want to feel good about doing it. I don't want some clipboard warrior spending it all in Starbucks at the end of a hard days work pissing people off. I give money to help people, I do this reasonably regularly, I give none of this money so you can buy hair gel and fake tan. All this is before the spectacuarly arrogant statement that they genuinely believe that you're not entitled to walk down the street without someone stopping you. Apparently personal privacy and the right to go about your day without interruptions doesn't exist.

A friend of mine even had a Chugger for the Red Cross shout at her down the street "People will die because of you!" purely because she wanted to go about her business rather than waste her time talking to these filth.

So do yourself a favour, donating to charity is a great thing, so do it directly, don't give these professional irritants the time of day.

And if you are a Chugger, crying with outrage after managing to convince yourself that you're actually a worthwhile member of society? Here's an idea, why don't you go out and get a real job, then donate everything you earn over and above your Chugging wage to charity, and let's see how committed you really are to this. The charities will get a lot more money, waste a lot less, and for once you might be able to find out what it feels like to know that if you got hit by a bus, someone might actually stop and help you out for a change.

Peons on the Peasent Wagon

One of the benefits of recently becoming a North Londoner as that I can just hop on the bus to work, and not have to cram myself onto a tube carriage that's too small for anyone who continued to grow past their 10th birthday, and save some cash in the process.

One of the bad things about doing this is the number of window lickers you have to endure on a daily basis. Over the years I've all gotten used to the arrogant types who seem to think that because everyone else has paid to get on TFL must have loads of money, so why the hell shouldn't the driver let them on for free. I mean after all, they've been standing there shouting about it for long enough, surely that's going to have won someone over?

But they're not the most disturbing people you get on Buses, oh no, more often than not that get's saved for me.

I've long since considered myself to be something of a Mecca for the unhinged, so on the way home last night it was no big shock that once we'd extracted the afore mentioned hitch-hikers that life decided to serve me up with a new best friend to keep me company for the rest of the journey.

What followed for the rest of my journey was a short and concise lesson as to why people in London generally want nothing to do with each other.

Once my new mate clambered up onto the bus and dug around in what I'm relatively sure was a spare shoe to find his Oyster card, he turned to find and seat with that glorious almost vacant expression that inspires the universal prayer of public transport, as we all simultaneously reached out to the nearest convenient deity and said to ourselves, "oh for the love of God, don't sit next to me!"

Sadly being a card carrying Atheist, science doesn't pay much attention to the stray thoughts of a wayward Londoner, and as I'd clearly forgotten to remove the sign around my neck that said "Hi, I'm friendly and love meeting new and interesting people, it'd be awfully jolly if you came and started talking at me!" I had no option but to accept my fate as he came staggering towards me.

So, just as I was finishing up my mental calculations of exactly how long this pleasure was likely to last, and accepted that by having a huge box with me getting up and moving wasn't going to happen without throwing a hoover at someone, my new friend reached that magical final foot away from me.

And it was there, at the kind of distance where you've usually had to pay a lot of money to get someone in to, that I was greeted with the sight of an unwashed, unclothed groin, complete with dirt marks and overhanging stomach staggering towards my face. You see, while this guy had worked out the complexities of an Oyster card, and the concept of Buses, basic personal hygiene and the ability to complete the dressing process weren't apparently running a close second on his list of lifetime achievements.

Immediately after that fleshy wake up call he parked his thankfully mildly more clothed backside down next to me and started ranting.

It was a this point that I thought to myself, "Aha! I've got you on this one, that hairy groin stunt might have been a new one on me, but this talking bollocks insessently until I react will get you nowhere, for I've come readily equipped with ear phones and an iPod, so I can't hear you." At which point the album I was listening to immediately finished.

This however allowed me a few precious seconds to hear what the hell he was saying though, and it turns out I was having a mildly better time of it than whoever  he was speaking to, as he was talking utter nonsense at them and doing things like repeating the bloody place names that the automated announcement system was sayi..hang on, he's not repeating them, he's.....talking to them. He's sat there hiding his man parts under a t-shirt that looks like it was turned down by any self respecting tramp, and having a conversation with the sodding automated announcements that tell you what the next stop is. How the hell does these people get allowed out!

Fortunately for me that's when I got to my stop, got up, and made a hastey exit. Then I wrote about my horror, and at least some of you laughed at it. You bastards.

Finally some of you are mentally shouting at me for being a heartless dick as he clearly had mental issues. Well, you're right, he clearly did. Incidentally, the opposite seat to me on the bus had a girl who looked like she was about 7 years old sitting on it on her way back from school. Perhaps the reality isn't just that I might be using this guy for comic effect, but that it's also a damn good job he sat next to me and not her. I'm used to dealing with this kind of shit, that could have scared the living hell out of her.