Global Head of August

According to my manager I have been appointed the "Global Head of August" which apparently means that as everyone else in the team appears to be taking some if not all of next month off which leaves your scaly green friend the only person with any experience with his hands on the controls.

Why is everyone off in August? Ah that would be because they all have made a lifestyle choice to have little kiddies and August is school holidays and of course as I have made the other lifestyle choice not to clutter up my existence with little ankle-biters everyone assumes that I won't want to take any holidays in the summertime.

Well thanks for consulting me guys. And also, as it was your choice to have kids, how come you get tax breaks and benefits from government and I don't?

Oi Cleggeron! How about a "Covering for you when you have to go to Tarquin and Chardonnay's school sports day / leave early because it's parents evening / must have a week in Lloret del Mar when it's sunny and you just have to put up with whatever's available in September" tax credit.

Yeah, didn't think so.

Locked in, and the religiots have stolen the keys

Over on the BBC website today I read about this poor bastard called Tony Nickilson who, following a massive stroke and irreparable brain damage, has a body that is completely paralysed from the neck down but his higher brain functions are all fine.

Quite understandably he really doesn't want to keep on living like that but of course there's nothing he can do for himself so if he wants to die his choices are to starve himself to death or for someone to help him along. He's seeking a legal clarification that his other half won't be prosecuted for murder if, as he has clearly stated, she complies with his request to end his life.

Now in any sane, rational world this would not be a problem. Report from two or three doctors and psychiatrists into his mental and physical state and some proper oversight by a judge or similar legal figure of high standing and it would be all done and dusted. There would be, what, five, maybe ten such cases a year.

But oh no, the religious idiots, religiots as we'll call them from here on in, have to stick their oar in... let's see what the crypto god-bothering cockwallets at ProLife Alliance have to say:

“This is the most frightening attack so far on the current laws governing euthanasia in this country. As Mr Nicklinson cannot do anything himself to take his own life, this would not be a case under the law of assisted suicide but of murder... Hard cases make bad law and we simply cannot endanger the lives of thousands of vulnerable people in the interests of a tiny minority by sending out the message that it is permissible in certain circumstances to actively kill someone. A ‘right to die’ would rapidly become a ‘duty to die’ as the disabled would be made to feel that they are a burden on resources."

Look will you cunts just fuck the hell off my planet right now. This is the worst example of the slippery slope fallacy and it's the one you come out with all the fucking time. You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever about your "duty to die" assertion, none at all. It's complete bullshit and I know damned well you don't give a shit about the disabled, this is all about your angry middle eastern sky god. Proper oversight of any requests for assisted suicide by medical and legal professionals (who would naturally have to be screened to weed out any fans of Ratzi the Nazi and his paedophile protecting army of bishops) would be able to sort out the very rare cases of people leaning on granny to bump herself off before she spends their inheritance and unfortunate people like Tony would get the dignified release they so desperately want.

It's quite simple. If you want to cling onto life at all costs because you're scared of dying because of some myth invented by bronze age goat herders in Palestine then fine, you do so. But don't expect for one fucking nanosecond that your idiotic, irrational beliefs trump my right to decide what I do when I feel my life is not worth continuing.

I thank you for the lightning that shoots up and sparkles in the rain

OK so this is my last post on temporary celebrity dead ginger nutter Raoul Moat, even though he's still a trending topic on Twitter (mainly people reposting jokes at the expense of his admittedly silly name) and, unbelievably there are over 3000 people on the "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend" page.

As London Misfit points out in the comments to the last post it appears that he was tasered during the standoff, whether by Gurning Copper or someone else I guess we will never know. I heard two different accounts of said taser incident. The first one, that they zapped him after he had shot himself, seems a bit off to me. I mean the guy had just fired a shotgun at his head - it would be pretty obvious, even to the police who sometimes aren't the sharpest chisels in the toolset - that he wasn't going to be doing anything dangerous any more so hitting him with 20,000 volts seems a bit like overkill to me.

The other question, and one I'm sure will be asked over the next few weeks, is that did they zap him unsuccessfully before he shot himself and, crucially, did that cause him to shoot himself? Now from where I sit (on the outside, making generally uninformed guesses) this seems more plausible. It was pissing down and he had a lot of thick clothes on so I imagine that a taser, which to work properly has to get the little barb things to contact the skin of the target, probably got blocked by the soggy clothes and didn't take him down as desired. I'm also wondering if said soggy clothes just conducted the electricity round his body and caused a muscle spasm whilst his finger was on the trigger and blammo, instant dead Geordie.

Only not quite so instant, as he died in hospital a couple of hours later. Now I would have thought (again, with nothing to base this on apart from it seems to make sense) that a shotgun under the chin at point blank range would, when discharged, blow your head clean off your shoulders. Maybe as well as causing him to pull the trigger the taser caused him to miss a bit.

Anyway it doesn't really matter. He's dead which means my taxes aren't going to keeping him in chokey for the rest of his life which is a good thing. If it were me in charge up there instead of Margaret Beckett and Shergar's bastard love child I'd have said "first one of you with a clear shot, drop the bastard".

However one last thought. If one whackjob with a sawn-off and six cartridges can have the resources of 10% of the entire armed constabulary thrown at it, can you imagine what would happen if 20 or 50 people were to do what Moat did at the same time as a co-ordinated attack? You could destroy a country that way. For fuck's sake nobody tell the mussies.

To the gurning copper at the Raoul Moat standoff

Hello, yes you, the gurning copper with the taser.



Look I know you get a bit upset with people taking pictures, especially pictures of coppers, but might I give you a spot of health and safety advice. If you are going to turn your head, grimace and berate a member of the public for having the temerity to photograph you in the course of your duties it would be a really good idea if YOU TOOK YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OF YOUR SODDING WEAPON!

Thanks for listening.

Grumpy.

PS: Apparently former footballer and celebrity wife-beater and pisshead Paul "Gazzer" Gascoigne turned up in Rothbury last night, pissed as a newt, wanting to take his old mate "Moatie" some chicken, a warm coat and a can a lager then sit down with him and do some fishing. A local radio station managed to get an interview with him which is hilarious... go have a listen: http://ht.ly/29y6m

Anybody seen a Raoul

You know for a ginger haired body-builder ripped to his tits on steroids he's proving rather elusive isn't he?

Mind you plod are not exactly covering themselves in glory here because despite flooding Northumbria with any copper who can be more or less trusted to hold a gun and not point it the wrong way, flying about in helicopters and apparently getting the RAF to strafe anything that moves fly over in a Tornado with a thermal imaging camera they seem to be sigularly unable to find him.

Of course this is leading to a few wags gently taking the piss at the competence of the Northumberland Constabulary: http://twitpic.com/23rywn

Actually in more than a few cases not that gently. In fact you don't have to dig too deep on Teh Interwebs to see a rather weird phenomenon developing - that of a psycho nutcase who has shot his ex-girlfriend and her new bloke rapidly becoming something of a folk hero.

Actually on reflection it's not that strange. Moaty-boy's stroke of genius, albeit one more by luck and paranoid delusion rather than careful thought, was to say "I'm only going after coppers" and then taking a pot shot at some unfortunate plod in a panda car to prove his point.

Now there's a considerable number of people out there who don't really like the police, nothing serious, they're not going to have ACAB¹ tattooed on their knuckles any time soon but years of state nannying, stupid laws unthinkingly enforced, random "terror" searches where you know you're being searched just so they can tick the "we don't target mussies" box, people illegally stopped by plod from taking photos and sundry other minor injustices has got quite a few people's backs up. As Raoul says we're not a target and as plod start to look more and more incompetent I can see how your average bod can sit back and almost enjoy the spectacle of the police being made to look like bungling incompetents by the most unlikely of folk heroes.

The police really haven't helped themselves by saying "Ah, we have information that he's now a threat to the general public" and then when asked what kind of threat the Police Chiefette who looks like Margaret Beckett's love child with Shergar pops onto the TV to day "Er... we're not going to tell you." You could hear the cries of "Oh yeah? Chinny rec-on" all up and down the nation.

So where is he. My guess is he's in a bar in Ireland watching the news and laughing. Or he's crawled into a hole and killed himself.

I think we should ask that octopus who can predict footy matches.


¹ Stands for "All Coppers Are Bastards"

The iPhone 4. Great "i", shame about the "phone"

Well I've had my Jesus Phone for a couple of weeks now so I've had a chance to properly play with it and use it in the real world.

As a handheld device it's fair to say it pretty much rocks. It's fast, the piddly little keyboard which I thought would be a right nightmare actually works very well. Email and light surfing on 3G are fine and apps are quick to load and run.

However what Apple seem to have forgotten is the primary purpose of a "phone" is to, well, make and receive voice calls and at this I have to say it completely and utterly sucks. Firstly to use the device as a telephone necessitates developing the ability manual dexterity and hand positioning skills of a classical Javanese dancer in order to avoid touching the two bits of antenna in the "apple death grip". Sure you don't have to stand next to someone playing a gamelan when making a call but I can't help thinking thing might help with the hand positioning. Also the whole screen is touch sensitive, which is the point, but Apple seem to have not realised that a person's earlobe works just as well as a finger to hit the mute key during a call. Apparently the iPhone is supposed to have a proximity sensor in it to turn off the screen when it detects your bonce but it seems rather flaky unless you have the phone to your ear in just the right way so we're back to those Javanese dance techniques again... remember to extend that middle finger... here are some people making a call to their bank on their iPhone 4's to pay the gas bill:



The other thing about a mobile phone is that you would expect it to have a reasonable standby and talk time, what with it being a phone and all. Nah, not this phone. I use it as an iPod for about 3 hours a day and I'm lucky that the battery will still be reading above 20% when I get home. I almost feel as though I should be carrying around another phone juts in case I need to make a long phonecall at the end of the day. Unless you know you can definitely hook it up to some external power source at some point during the day you will not be able to make any calls on this fucker after 24 hours.

Oh and for a "it just works" device I've managed to crash mine, twice.

I tell you if I had paid more than 30 quid for this thing I would be absolutely livid.

Amen, or something

As you probably know I have a little hobby called "scambaiting" which involves me answering those Nigerian fraud emails pretending to believe them and then messing with the scanmmer's heads. I have a seperate email account whose address has been seeded in various places from which these scammers harvest their potential victims' email addresses; what we in the trade call a "catcher account"

However this little gem turned up in the catcher account this morning.


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Endtime Endtime
to Endtime
Re: Beloved,don't leave ur salvation to the future.Reject 666"(read-Bible-Revelation-13-8-18)
6:23 PM (12 hours ago)


To know that hell await sinners and keep silent on the matter would be injustice to mankind.eternal punishment is not a pleasant subject for discussion, but you must know it.hell the destiny of all sinners,who personly reject Christ Jesus in their life time. (read- Math-25-41-46.Rev-20-13-15,21-8.) Repent to day."Bewere of 666"-read-Revelation-13-8-18)9-Says He who has an ear,let him hear.Repent today and save ur life to Christ Jesus.

Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to man,"you and I"by which we must be save.(read -Act-4-12).A great multitude that no one could count,from every nation,tribe,people and language,standing before the throne and in front of the lamb, "JESUS CHRIST." they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.and they cried out in a loud voice,salvation belongs to our GOD who sits on the throns and to the lamb,JESUS CHRIST.Say Aman praise and glory and wisdom and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever Aman.(read- Rev-7-9-11).The wages of sin is death,but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (read- Rom-6-23) save ur life in CHRIST JESUS to day.

And it carries on for page after page after page in the same badly spelt vein.

Doubt he's a scammer but I could not resist dropping him a quick reply:

So as the bible talks about unicorns does it mean unicorns are real? If I believe in Jesus will he let me have a unicorn when I go to heaven?

I'd like a unicorn. Unicorns are cool.

Could I have a lady unicorn as I reckon it would be really great to have sex with a unicorn and I would want a lady one because I'm not gay.

You could use the horn for leverage.

Love and kisses