It lives!

After 3 months without internet access at all, and the previous 8 months being a miserable crawl using a 3G dongle that made the days of 56K dialup seem almost fucking halcyon in comparison, we now have broadband here in the deepest wilds of the Mayenne.

Sure, it’s only 2MB, but it’s a very reliable and consistent 2MB and comes as part of an Orange ADSL package that gives us the interwebs, unlimited national and international VOIP phone calls and French TV for a reasonable price.

We finally moved into our house last Friday and this coming Friday marks the beginning of our second year here.

We can’t decide whether the past year has flown by or we’ve been here forever.

Regrets about leaving the UK?

Absolutely fucking none.

The hardest thing is leaving the people we love behind – family and friends – but we’ve been back to the UK twice, are going at least twice this year and have had visitors with more to come.

The continued existence of this blog was never in question and, rest assured, it will be regularly updated with the usual mixture of comment, music reviews and reports from France on what we’re up to.

I’d thought about creating separate blogs for these categories but decided against it as I’d rather put my energies into the writing rather than organise several blogs.

I’m back.

The French paper chase – update – and Tiny Tom Cruise

I am now the proud owner of a…wait for it…

Certificat d’Importation d’un vehicule terrestre a moteur en provenance  de la commaunite Europeenne par une personne non identifiee a la TVA

Armed with this document and a few others I can now go to the prefecture at Laval of the departement in which we live – Mayenne – and get the car re-registered.

After two trips to Chateau Gontier in three days I’ll leave the final stage for next week.

Godammit – it is almost the weekend…

OK…the One Show…I had the misfortune to catch a few minutes of this evening’s edition.

There was a segment about how some people have been conned out of thousands of pounds by romance scammers via internet dating agencies. Personally, I wouldn’t give money to anyone I hadn’t at least met face to face, but some people obviously have more money than sense.

Then the One Show cuts to a red carpet interview with Tom Cruise – the diminuitive Scientologist film star – and the male One Show host’s (his bastarding name escapes me) first question to the Hollywood dwarf?

What do you think of online dating?

Now, whilst I realise that the hosts of the One Show might not be investigative journalists with searching and incisive questions springing naturally to their lips, and that the One Show itself isn’t exactly known for probing inquiries into matters of pressing public concern, what a stupid fucking cunting question.

Thank fuck I don’t have to pay a TV licence anymore, because if I did I’d be contacting the BBC as to why they were wasting the licence fee revenue employing cunts like the One Show twat and paying him good money (and lots of it) to ask stupid fucking questions.

It’s just one small step from ‘What’s your favourite colour, Tommo?’ – in fact, that might even be a more relevant question under the circumstances, as it’s probably something upon which Cruise has an opinion, but his experience of online dating must be rather limited, to say the least. Or so I would imagine.

And whilst I’m in rant mode:

What the fucking fuck are the Hairy Fucking Bikers all about?

Why are they being paid good money to fart around the country acting like the arsing Chuckle Brothers with a motherfucking cook book? All I can see are two mouthy cunts who are about as funny as a sack of drowned puppies and two more ‘TV chefs’ who ought to thank their lucky stars that they’ve got their talentless paws on the seemingly limitless supply of licence fee dosh provided by the gullible British public and chucked about like confetti by the BBC.

What’s more, BBC execs are getting even more money than these motherfuckers are getting paid for putting them on the screen in the first place.

It’s high time the BBC gravy train was derailed – I favour strapping the entire fucking cast of ‘My Family’ to the points, but that’s probably just me…

Next, please!

When we were back in the UK was week, one of the questions we were most frequently asked was how were we coping with the French language.

Our standard reply was that in this part of France, at least, very few people either didn’t speak English or felt inclined not to, so we had to do our best to communicate totally in French. This was getting easier as we were amassing a useful vocabulary and were beginning to understand the spoken language better.

Indeed, why should the French speak English? It’s their country, after all, and it’s up to us to adapt and not them. So, we shall struggle on – no doubt making many mistakes, faux-pas and gaffes but learning all the time and possibly amusing a few of the natives into the bargain.

I’m not sufficiently fluent yet – and I strongly doubt I ever will be – to tell if someone is using French correctly or to be aware of change in general use of the language, but after nearly 60 years of speaking English I think I’m better qualified to notice these things in my own language.

So, step forward the BBC.

Long cited as one of the bastions of the Queen’s English, the Corporation seems to have embarked on a mini-Crusade to change not just a very basic and common word, but also a fundamental concept that guides each and every one of us through life.

The word is ‘next’ and the concept is sequence.

This culminated last night in a rant at the television between the penultimate and the ultimate episodes of the latest series of ‘Doctor Who,.

Having just sat through episode 12, the overpaid continuity announcer then informed me that “next on BBC3’ was a film about dragons called ‘Reign of Fire’, but first the last episode of ‘Doctor Who’.

What the fucking fuck?

That’s like me saying that after today (Saturday) the next day coming up is Monday, but first we’ve got Sunday coming up.

Sitting here, in the kitchen, I can see a row of mugs on a shelf. looking from the left I can first see a stripy mug and then a blue one and lastly a yellow one. That’s a basic sequence and describes exactly what I can see. I haven’t got a stripy mug and next a yellow one but, oh look, there’s a fucking blue mug before the yellow one.

The sequence is stripy, blue, yellow.

End of.

Just as last night’s schedule was ‘Doctor Who Episode 12’, ‘Doctor Who Episode 13’, ‘Reign of Fire’.

What the blistering cunting fuck was the problem with saying something like, “Next on BBC 3 is the last episode of ‘Doctor Who’ and after that a film about dragons called ‘Reign of Fire’”? It’s informative, correct and logical.

Similarly, I’m getting mightily pissed off with the word ‘best’ used to mean ‘favourite’. Although I don’t listen to BBC Radio 5 anymore, early on a Monday morning during his book phone-in when Dotun Adebayo used to ask listeners to ring in and tell him what ‘my best book’ was, it used to drive me fucking mental.

Dotun, you drivelling shithead, it’s ‘favourite book’. ‘Best’ implies that it’s either the smartest one on the shelf or it’s the writer’s master work.

I realise that language evolves, but this doesn’t have to mean that it loses precision or meaning. As our chief means of communication, language is precious, particularly the spoken word, which is how we all interact on a daily basis. Fuck with this and you could cause all sorts of problems. I mean, you can argue all fucking night about what the terms ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ mean, but surely ‘next’ or ‘best’ are so clear cut that we can all use them without the need to puzzle over them first.

Anyway, fuck the BBC and their publicly-funded shit, I’m going to post this to my blog.

Next I’m going to go to bed.

But first I’m going to sit outside with coffee and a smoke, have lunch, play guitar, sink a few beers, have dinner, watch a DVD and read for a while before turning out the light… 

It’s smuttiness gone mad, I tell you!

(Read on, it’ll put you off kebabs for life)

You’d expect the Daily mail to run with this story – if you can call it that – but possibly not the Telegraph, who have anyway.

It concerns a well-known but slightly old-fashioned English dessert, Spotted Dick.

Council turns ‘offensive’ Spotted Dick into Spotted Richard to spare blushes of diners

A council has taken Spotted Dick off the menu at its staff canteen because of comments from sniggering diners.

Flintshire County Council’s dining room now serves Spotted Richard instead.

County councillor Klaus Armstrong-Braun was told Spotted Dick was banned because it was ‘offensive’.

‘I couldn’t believe it, it seemed ludicrous. Spotted Dick is part of our heritage,’ he said.

‘It just seemed political correctness gone mad. There was a sign in the dining room for things like rice pudding and then this Spotted Richard – I had to ask what it was,’ he said.

‘Whoever has changed it needs to be told they are being silly.’

(Klaus Armstrong-Braun – what an amazing name!)

Delve a little deeper, however – and I find that always pays, especially with the Mail – and all is not quite what it seems.

A spokesman for Flintshire County Council said: ‘The correct title for this dish is Spotted Dick. However, because of several immature comments from a few customers, catering staff  renamed the dish Spotted Richard or Sultana Sponge.

‘This was not a policy decision, canteen staff simply acted as they thought best to put an end to unwelcome and childish comments, albeit from a very small number of customers.’

So, it wasn’t the council, in fact, but some of its over-sensitive kitchen staff.

Nothing to do with what Klaus baby calls ‘political correctness gone mad‘.

And there it is again – that FUCKING WANKING CUNTING cliche.

It’s nothing to do with fucking ‘political correctness’ – it’s to do with a few kitchen staff being stupid cunts.

Strangely, for the Mail, most of the readers’ comments adopt a flippant, sometimes smutty approach, of which this is probably the best example:

I remember when you could get a ham shank from a frendly butcher.

– spg, uk, 8/9/2009 17:24

But there are the odd couple of comments that prompt me to ask whether a humour bypass is now available on the NHS:

I am appalled. This is political correctness gone mad. If the traditional British pud is not safe from the PC brigade, then what’s next on the list. Dumplings ? I suppose they’ll have to be renamed “Suet lumps” ( suet balls would be out for obvious reasons). Why should they stop there? Nut cutlets will have to be renamed ” meat substitute cutlets. We need to stand up to these numpties before they take all the fun out of life. I’ m all for not offending people but there needs to be some fun in life- and some common sense applied…

– Ed, Northampton, England, 8/9/2009 16:30

(Note ‘PC brigade’ – a variation of ‘political correctness gone mad’ trotted out by some stoat-fucker who hasn’t read the article properly.)

How much longer is this stupid and insidious political correctness going to continue? When will common sense be restored to this country?
Why are there such idiots on some of these councils?

– Raymond cox, Halesowen, England, 8/9/2009 16:19

I bet Raymond’s only narked because his name sounds like the plural of ‘cock’.

Well, you cliche-spouting, PC-weary, ignorant fucks, why not fight back, you fucking pussy-assed weasel-felchers?

Why not rename some of our favourite meals?

That’ll show the Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, muesli wasitcoat-wearing, loony lefties.

Here’s some examples, you wimpy cunting muthafuckas:

Doner Kebab – Slapper’s Minge

Meat and two veg – Cock and Bollocks

Sausage Roll – Knob in a Flannel

Fight back you gutless bastards – reclaim our native smuttiness.

Do anything, in fact, except bang on about political fucking correctness, you humourless, ignorant, whining shitheads.

And learn to fucking read, you spunkbubbles.

Not my ‘Digital Champion’

Where do you fucking start?

Well, here or here might be a good place.

Olympic aim to get Britons online

Speaking to BBC Business Editor Robert Peston, Ms Lane Fox said she wanted a “virtual race” to coincide with preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

As the government’s new Digital Champion she has been charged with getting millions online who are not yet connected to the internet.

The race is on to get as many British people online as possible by 2012, Martha Lane Fox has told the BBC.

So, Martha Lane Fox is our ‘Digital Champion’.

Digital Champion?

Who the fuck thinks these ‘job’ titles up?

Yet another focus group of drones paid for by the taxpayer at the behest of some Nu Labour cunt of a politician who doesn’t understand that this country is fucked economically speaking, I’d imagine.

It’s adding insult to the injury already announced that those of us with fixed phone lines will have to pay a levy of 50p a month to fund nationwide broadband internet access.

But, more significantly and inevitably, the devil is in the detail here:

Some 17 million Britons are currently not online, either out of choice or because they cannot afford internet connectivity.

Ms Lane Fox has indicated that she wants to concentrate on the six million poorest “nonliners” first.

For starters let’s just forget about those 11 million who couldn’t give a fuck about the internet and just hope that access isn’t made compulsory by this ‘inclusive’ government.

It’s that six million “nonliners” that worries me.

(“Nonliners”…give me a motherfucking break you soundbitten cuntwafts…)

These would presumably be the same six million that the taxpayer is supporting.

Now, don’t get me wrong here; I don’t wish to see anyone starve, be homeless or lack the other basic human comforts, but that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to fund luxuries for people.

I also have no wish to condemn anyone who’s been buttfucked out of a job and onto the breadline by this sorry bunch of tractor-counting cuntsocks that we call a government.

But…

Internet access is a luxury.

Ms Lane Fox doesn’t think so, however.

But she’s wrong – not to mention intellectually-challenged.

Those on the wrong side of the digital divide were disadvantaged in many ways, said Ms Lane Fox. Studies showed, she said, that those familiar with the web earned more, performed better in job interviews, could save money by shopping online and had an easy route to keeping their skills fresh.

Among those 17 million Britons not online was a group of six million who were “the most socially and economically disadvantaged people we have in this country”, she said.

“We are really going to focus, I hope, on the six million that are at the bottom of the pile. Partly because that’s the right thing to do and partly because we know quite a lot about these people – who they are and where they live.

“I am sure we can put our arms around the problem,” she said.

(Slight pause whilst I vomit due to that last sentence)

Studies showed, she said, that those familiar with the web earned more

What studies? And maybe because they earn more they can afford broadband and thus be more familiar with it.

performed better in job interviews

Er…how does that work then?

could save money by shopping online

You need a debit or credit card to shop online. Possession of such a card hinges on some assessment of credit worthiness. This is something that the poor do not have very much of.

And why is it

the right thing to do (?)

We already have a section of society that is welfare-dependent and  that I’m helping to support. Why should I be expected to fund a luxury for them? Why is it always right to give to those who give nothing in return?

Let’s get this straight…

I’m expected to fund broadband access (something I pay for myself already and am also taxed on via VAT) for people I’m already helping to support?

Where’s the fairness in that?

Yes, it would be great if everyone who wanted it had broadband access, but where do you draw the line?

If we’re going to fund luxuries then why not go the whole cunting hog and give this 6 million what everyone else pays for out of their own pocket?

I’m sorry, but if we give internet access to that section of the ‘poor’ who are benefit-dependent by choice then we’re going to be subsidising a fair few people whacking off to internet porn or watching YouTube videos of what happens when you microwave a frog.

Both very laudable things to do if they can afford it.

If they can’t then why the fuck should I pay them to do it?

Along with buying their cans of Stella and fucking Lotto scratch cards.

You want all this stuff?

Well fucking pay for it yourselves.

As the Devil would say – fucking hellski…

PS

Many libraries offer free internet access and membership is free.

These places also contain things called ‘books’ which more people ought to read. Maybe being literate might have more to do with getting a better job than whether you have broadband or not.

Just a thought…

Shoot ’em all

It’s bad enough living in close proximity to other people – although if they’re reasonably civilized it can be OK.

Other people’s dogs are quite another matter.

It’s the fucking barking that gets me.

I’m assuming that when a dog owner lets his dog out into the back garden it’s for a crap or some quality sniffing time but most dogs just seem to want to cunting bark.

Now, if a human being went out into the garden every so often for a shout and persisted in such behaviour then I think that their mental health would be called into question.

If they kept on being a nuisance in this way then they might eventually get sectioned.

No such luck with a fucking barking dog though.

So, here’s an idea.

Legalize gun ownership and if you have a noisy dog living near you then you have the legal right to go and shoot the cunt – along with its braindead fucking owner.

Can you tell I’m annoyed yet?

“How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic”

There was a time when you’d have to do something pretty fucking serious to bring social opprobium upon yourself.

I mean serious shit; like beating your wife, mugging an old lady for her pension or your kids getting into trouble.

Nowadays, however, it’s all changed and as far as I can see, you now have three new transgressions that are likely to get you shunned in most social circles:

1) Stating that even though someone, for sake of argument, might have a hook for a hand, be transsexual, come from a different ethnic group to your own or is in any way different to you, they can still be a cunt.

Not because they’re different, but because a cunt is a cunt is a cunt – as Gertrude Stein once wrote.

Being a cunt just slices across ethnic, social, cultural, political, physical and religious boundaries.

Anyone can be a cunt – and, be warned, there’s thousands of the fuckers around and many of them are protected by law.

2) You smoke.

This really is the new ‘addiction’ monster paraded to scare people. It’s replaced drinking alcohol and jacking up heroin as being the single worst thing a person can do to their body and not only do you harm yourself, you kill others around you with second hand smoke – a fact not proven by anyone of any scientific reputability so far – and you also produce third hand smoke.

Yes, third hand smoke.

Read it and weep – and then cry because so-called serious scientists who help to form government policies which become bad laws can also be cunts…(see #1) above)

This brings me on nicely to:

3) You’re a climate change sceptic.

Now, this really is serious shit, because you’re not just insulting someone (however much they deserve it) or even jeopardising their health, you’re destroying the whole fucking planet.

Yes, you, you selfish and utter cunt – unwittingly you are now in category #1.

But without any legal redress whatsoever.

Because you are an unbeliever.

This is the new religion for the 21st century – the new dogma – the basis of a new Inquisition; snooping in your rubbish bin, curbing your freedom of movement, impinging on your lifestyle and when you have sinned you can buy your way to redemption through the indulgence of the holy carbon offset or by recycling your empty alcopops bottles.

Start to object, criticise, question, even, and you’re going straight to climate change sceptic HELL.

(Oh, are you going to fucking burn, you bastard.)

So tainted are we heretics that the apostles of Gore have devised many answers to the naive and petty questions we ask.

Here, in a handy list, are all the questions we will want to ask and all the answers we can ever want to hear under the heading of  “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic ” by one Coby Beck (file under #1 above).

That, my fellow sinners, is one fuck of a long list.

It’s worthy of the Jesuits or the Scientologers or the Moonies.

It has headings such as ‘Stages of Denial’ – ‘Types of Argument’ – ‘Levels of Sophistication’…

Then there are the questions and concerns Mr Beck thinks someone who walks round in shoes made of muesli should be addressing and asking us as we luxuriate in our dirty sins and which are supposed to convert us to the right path one by one.

Here’s a sample – a very small sample:

Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect
There is no proof that CO2 is causing global warming
CO2 doesn’t lead, it lags
CO2 in the air comes mostly from volcanoes
What about mid-century cooling?
Geological history does not support CO2’s importance

It really does look like the ‘how to convert’ pages from some religious cult manual.

But nowhere does it ask two rather pertinent questions – to me, at least.

1) Aren’t many people making a shitload of money on the back of climate change concern?

2) Can anyone think of a better way to enforce social control?

Think about it…there’s a whole new technology coming out of this with all manner of opportunities for people to trouser fucking tons of cash and there’s all sorts of ways in which people can be monitored, observed and regulated even more than they are already.

It’s possibly the biggest hoax ever perpetrated by mankind and it’s going to affect all of us for years and years to come. It’s going to halt economic recovery, it’s going to place restrictions on us that are going to have a profound effect on our everyday lives and it’s going to cost every one of us who pays tax more – a lot more.

It’s not even as if there aren’t scientists who offer the alternative point of view – that climate change isn’t man made and that it’s as natural as the sun rising and setting and the tides ebbing and flowing.

But no, all oppositional debate is drowned out by cries of ‘vested interests’, ‘denial’ and ‘crackpot theories’.

Anyway, come what may, I shall still continue to call a cunt a cunt, smoke – if only to annoy prissy bastards who inhale more shit than I produce from their own fucking car – and refuse to get suckered in by the climate change clergy.

Fuck them and their carbon offset scams.

I’m already seeing my personal freedoms and liberties taken away on an almost daily basis.

Enough is enough.

So, how should you talk to a climate change sceptic?

Pretty fucking carefully if you don’t want a solar panel rammed up your arse…

“It’s political correctness gone mad”

I swear that the next moronic, inbred window-licker who uses this expression in my presence will be hunted down with rabid dogs to the ends of the fucking earth and fucking killed – painfully and very slowly using some sort of blunt instrument and a bottle of bleach.

I’m sick to the fucking back teeth of cliches like this – but that one in particular – and the unimaginative cunts who use them.

I bet 99% of the arseholes who use it couldn’t even explain what they mean.

Perhaps they’d like to use the English language to explain precisely what they mean.

If they can.

Then I might start listening to what they say.

Until then…

Ignorant motherfuckers.

The Telegraph just doesn’t get it either…

A depressing article in the Telegraph that proves the old adage that a leopard never changes his spots.

Our readers are in no doubt about what matters in the scandal over MPs’ expenses, and nor is the country as a whole. It is the character and the conduct of our politicians that are at issue here, not structures or procedures or regulations. That is why the call from leading Cabinet ministers for the introduction of a system of proportional representation is supremely irrelevant to this crisis. It is the quality of the people who represent us at Westminster that matters, not the machinery we use to elect them.

Here we go…

Roughly translated the Telegraph is really saying is that if we keep the current electoral system then the Tories will win next time, so let’s just keep things all hunky dory the way they have been for fucking years, shall we?

Well, actually you fucktards, no, that isn’t what we all want.

It isn’t about the troughing or even the cunts who troughed – it’s about the fact that the British people are disenfranchised from their own elected Parliament and want less government and more say in what little government we can manage with.

Many of us want the repeal of a lot of the bullshit laws and regulations that NuLabour brought in over the last 12 years that threaten our peace, prosperity and privacy.

Cameron and Co simply haven’t got the balls to do it.

So, in short, take your reactionary paper and cram it up your fucking arse, you shower of servile cunts.

Fuck you and the Cheeky Girl you rode in on

Lembit Opik – just another greedy troughing thieving cunt

Well, it’s a start I suppose, with one ‘sacking’ per side in the Brown versus Cameron ‘I’ve got bigger balls than you have’ contest.

The problem is that at the moment you’d need an electron microscope to detect any bollocks at all.

It’s almost amusing how the Tory bloggers are seizing on Dave’s token sacking of MacKay and praising him for showing firm leadership and then reflecting how glorious it will all be when the Tories win the next election, when peace, prosperity and harmony will be restored to this Sceptered Isle and we’ll all be living it up munching Mr Kipling’s French Fancies and quaffing Tizer.

Or something.

The sad fact is that due to the last 12 years of Labour’s fiscal ineptitude if the Tories do get in then public services will be cut and we’ll all be taxed more – not because they’re Tories but because we’re totally boracic.

Even if – by some miracle that will put anything in the Bible to shame – Labour do get another term the same unappetising scenario will ensue, although you can bet your boots that they won’t cut welfare payments which are, in their own way, as big a scandal as the MPs’ expenses troughing and far more expensive to fund.

(If I was pulling in every available benefit – really working the system in an effort not to work – then I’d certainly put my cross next to the name of a Labour candidate.)

Whoever gets in we face a decade of heavy taxation and reduced public spending.

More germane to this blog entry, whichever party gets in will still be composed of the same greedy fuckers their leaders have allowed to remain and the British public have voted for in their usual tribal fashion.

At present I can see no real sign that Brown, Cameron or even Clegg – who stands to gain a lot from the fall out over the whole expenses row – are taking anything approaching firm and decisive action.

I mean, FFS, Brown can’t even keep his bitches in line now:

Mr Miliband, the MP for South Shields, said it was “right to say sorry” and backed the Prime Minister’s calls for a new expenses system that would be seen as “wholly fair”.

But it is understood he will not be following the lead of MPs like Health Minister Phil Hope and paying back the taxpayers’ cash he claimed for his constituency home in the north east.

That’s just a big ‘fuck you’ to every taxpayer who’s funded his excesses that is.

If Brown had any balls he’d demote the little shit to the backbenches at the very least.

Similarly, Cameron has problems exercising his authority, with Alan Duncan paying back £4000 wrongly claimed for gardening, but David ‘Sack of shit’ Heathcote Amory being let off the hook completely despite submitting equally unallowable gardening claims.

Then there’s that snivelling little prick Opik who’s going to repay the eye-watering sum of £40 000 which he wrongly received for paying a tax summons.

Whilst I’m on the subject of this fucking clown, it’s worth quoting what he’s said about the Telegraph’s exposé of MPs’ expenses:

“The Telegraph have absolutely no empathy and no understanding, no willingness to give you the whole story, and that’s tragic.”

No, you wheedling little cunt, what’s tragic is you ripping me off, so fuck you and the Cheeky Girl you rode in on.

Fuck you all, you shower of corrupt and robbing cunts.

It’s so bloody depressing, and this normally peaceable blogger now keeps looking at lampposts, eyeing up lengths of  rope in hardware shops and then imagining a few of these thieving fuckers swinging in the breeze somewhere in Parliament Square.

For fuck’s sake, you so-called leaders – just do something that shows some leadership.

A cheque here, a resignation or a sacking there just doesn’t cut it.

We want heads.

Fucking rolling.

And lots of them.

Now.

Like right fucking now.