Thursday, November 30, 2006

i'm back....

well, i think i am. this is a test post to see if I remember how to use this thing again after 'er indoors used the auld laptop as a shot glass. she's been told, grrr.... £500 this thing cost me, can't even remember what model it is. do know it has intel of sorts in it - keeps making the stupid noise all the time. brb.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

an apology to alex fergusson msp

so today this Y campaigner went to stranaer to help in an action day for alex fergusson msp. an action day is a congregation of folk en-masse in an area to deliver as many leaflets as physically possible. once we distributed 18,000 in glasgow - ah the days...

so i were supposed to meet up with floppy hair at the office at 0830 to set off for the 2 and half hour trip and be there by 1000 - we're lazy... floppy hair was late. after a good start we quickly ran out of petrol by ayr - not even half way there. floppy hair also needed the lav so we pottered around ayr for this as bp don't have toilets. a little further on and by the time we passed maybole we were 45 mins late and receiving 'where are you phone calls'. then we hit girvan where we watched the local fire brigade in action, being stuck in the queue as the main street ground to a halt helped. proceeding to fook up and take the wrong turn we headed straight for newton steward - a full 50 miles in the wrong direction. the windscreen reservoir then ran out of water and i couldn't see a thing. after rummaging around for water floppy hair decided he needed the lav again, but was "particular about where he pee'd". another stop. along along this detour - on the a174 - neither of us had a mobile phone signal to get directions... it was at this point we realised the toyota corolla actually had sat nav...........

we arrived in stranraer at 1230... a tad late. still, we both managed to deliver 300 leaflets each in the time we had. if everyone who turned up - a total of 12 - delivered that many then just under 5,000 households were paid a visit. not bad, but then some actually made it there before noon - and without a four hour detour - so more was probs delivered.

a good day for the peeps of stranraer and for alex fergusson msp; to whom we should apologise for an amusing day of tardiness.

Friday, November 03, 2006

i have more dvds than you do...


a moralist debate occurred around the smokers corner at work today; idle boastfulness resulted in a who has more dvds than whom. normality dictates this to be a no starter as 'er in doors boasts a legion of dodgy foreign dvds that beggar belief and leave one reaching for the middle ages when eyes could not be polluted by such utter shite.

however today the hobbit claimed to have near one thousand dvds stretching from tv programmes to films, to wier's way to pirate movies accumulated on scratched discs living nearby the shire somewhere. defeat was inevitable yet the issue remained; remove the hobbit's dodgy pirated dvds from the equation and did he/she/it really 'own' more than 'er in doors and i?

inclusion leads to acceptance of the crime, albeit a minor infraction. pirate dvds are a piss poor crime but a legal infraction none-the-less, so surely none inclusive in a debate that gravitated around "who was sad enough to spend more of their sparse pennies on luxuries more than the next?".

anyways, hyperbole is best requisite here - maybe. a ned that danders around and breaks a wing-mirror on a crappy 'citreon zx' has committed a crime. the ned's elder brother than meanders later and breaks the whole windscreen also commits a crime - and in comparison a greater one at that. the owner of said 'zx' is the victim irrespective of how severe the crime; damage is still done and ergo some poor sod aspiring to own an audi has to foot a bill for essential car repairs.

so; poor audi aspiring sod needs to get the car to the garage. a broken windscreen ensures the car is not driven but a wing-mirror, well that's easy to drive with... but then fife constabulary turn up and notice the 'road traffic violation' and proceed with their customary response - points on ones license.

a crime committed, irrespective how small, turns the victim into a criminal. that's the problem here - well it's a problem endemic with the whole country. the audi aspiring victim cannot afford to go to the garage every time the young decide it's fun to wreck the place. not because wages are too low but because taxes are too high. by the time 22% is lost through income tax and a further 11% through national insurance they discover a pay cheque one third less than what was earned. after paying a 'second mortgage' (known in labour circles as 'council tax') to ensure a roof over head the realisation that people in britain work 179 working days paying off tax hits home. this is soon followed by the realisation that garage owners have their own 'business rates' to pay; the cost of fixing that 'minor crime' of cracking a windscreen suddenly becomes a decision betwixt buying the kids milk and re-placing the mirror - well, no wonder the aspiring audi driver took the risk. victim becomes the criminal...

so, the point. a few years ago i bought die hard 3 for £9.95. this week i bought still game series 5 for £16.95. at over a pound a year rise in the cost of dvd's will mean a two to three hour will cost over £21 when new by the end of the decade... the victim - those who pay, the criminal - those who pirate.

in otherwords; it does not matter how sad moive buffs are for spending money they can ill afford on luxuries, it matters that only that the more pirated movies out there the more film makers charge to prevent lost revenue. so i don' care i have less dvd's than the hobbit, i care only that every dvd i own was bought and i didnt contribute to some poor citreon driver getting pulled over by fife constabulary for something they could not prevent.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

is it wrong to say

insert typical german joke here:
well the story go thus; germans in tanks kill people, dance around with skulls and adorn their tanks with swaztika's. no, not poland 1944 but afghanistan in 2006. kudos to das bild for their honesty...
but then germs do come from germany so it probs not unsurprising in the end.

because the euro is worth the paper it's written on

so, the reason i started this blog. to rant without flooding your inbox. its brittle, pointless and worth less than a proper currency - the pound! read this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6109634.stm) and question the logic of the euro. one day ill learn how to link from a word.

clueless

i have no idea how to add something on that stupid box on the right hand side which simply states "rant" below "about me"... can damn stupid grrrr. anyways lets think people, what do i do? yes, you, sat there reading this. what do i do?

opening salvo

opening post; american dad is funnier than family guy. dont be boneheaded, live with it.