No they haven't

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Your tax dollars at work

Apparently at the same time as John Sargeant is utterly taking the piss out of a dance competition the only people who take seriously are the four pompous arseholes on the judging panel* there is some sort of glorified karaoke and talent show over on ITV.

Turns out that there was a "shock eviction" last week and somebody who might have won it got kicked out of the show. OK so just another night of lowest commen denominator celebretoid dogshit for brain-dead proles to watch on their 46" plasma cunt-tubes before the bailiffs reposess them (and I get to pick one up piss-cheap at an auction)

So why the fuck do I read this...

Even the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, had something to say about the show in Parliament. He said White, who lives in his constituency of Leigh in Greater Manchester, was "wonderful and talented" and the decision to axe her was "very harsh".

Excuse me, excuse fucking me!! The fucking culture secretary, his second home, expensed travel and kickbacks to his family for "secretarial duties), paid for out of my fucking taxes, thinks it is important enough to vomit up his opinion on some cuntsnotting "talent" show aimed at epsilon minus sub morons? So what now - is a ZaNuLabour comittee going to have to scritinise every eviction from one of these shows now? You know what even the most brain dead of chavs is going to sodding notice when the next season of "Strictly Come Maria X-Brother Can Do" starts and Bruce/Davina/That Camp One comes on and says "You know what, all twelve of you have won, after all that's only fair".

I dispair, I truly do.




* I only watch it waiting for "Merlin" to come on - I have the serious hots for John Hurt's Great Dragon - would not be chucking him out of bed**.

** The dragon, not Mr Hurt, obviously.

Entertaining Mrs Sunshine

Just when you thought ZaNuLabour fuckwittery could not get any more stunningly fuckwitted they pull stunts like this.

Cat and dog owners are to be told to provide "entertainment" and "mental stimulation" for their pets under new government advice.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo-stick! I swear not even in some kafkaesque fever and LSD dream could I come up with something this freaking dreadful. These people truly are world class twunts.

Of course these are just "advice" and "guidelines"...

Owners will not be fined for breaking the rules

and

DEFRA said it wanted to remind pet owners of their responsibilities under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act.

...but you don't have to dig very far into this report to see the state's goon-squad kicking in your door at 4 in the morning because you failed to take Fido for walkies one evening last week...

failure to comply may be used in animal cruelty prosecutions.

and

"It is your responsibility to read the complete Code of Practice to fully understand your cat's welfare needs and what the law requires you to do."

Ihr Katze ist nicht in Ordnung. Kommen Sie bitte mit uns.

So I guess we can look forward to some council Stazi wannabe snooping round our houses checking that our cats are not bored in the very near future, all paid out of my taxes, natch.

Wonder if they will want to check my ponies too?

There are similar guidelines for horse owners under the proposals, which are subject to an eight week consultation period.

Yep, thought there might be. How do you entertain a horse exactly, show it carrot porn?

But what are these orders and dictats guidelines and reccomendations from ZaNuLabours ministry of fucking over the middle classes? Well it turns out that you should feed your cats properly, ensure they have somewhere to have s shit and maybe consider letting it wander around over your shelves kocking over your picture frames. You know all the things that normal, responsible people who have animals in their homes do already without being ordered to do so by Central State Command.

Now what about the pond scum on the Nelson Mandela estate, what do you reckon to their chances of reading 28 pages of Pussycats For Dummies is? Yes probably about the same as their chances of cleaning up after Tyson their pitbull takes a dump. Do you think that our lords and masters will be going after them - course not, but you can bet that a nice soft easy prosecution of some frail old dear who can't really walk the pooch so well any more will be following on swift wings following the "consultation period".

And what about the *real* cruelty that happens. The pikeys who drown their horses, the muslim halal slaughter of conscious animals, the racehorse industry that cripples hundreds if not thousands of horses each year by riding them hard when they are too young for all their bones and joints to have fully formed. Any chance of tackling those instead of going for a nice soft option of putting the jackboot into the ordinary Joe? Let me see: ethinic minority (violent), religious ethnic minority (insanely violent), organisation with lots of money and bought-off politicians. Thought not.

Incidentally if you go over to the Defra website good luck on finding the document. There's no link so you have to search for it. I'm currently pulling down the horse welfare one as I fancy a bit of "consultation" with Hilary Benn, the current minister of state for picking up dogshit. I'll try not to use too many swear words.

Quick, dig a hole

Because sometime over the next four years we will be hit by an asteroid.

No seriously, you look at all those movies where we get hit/are about to be hit by an asteroid and there is always a black guy as president of the USA.

We're doomed, doomed I tell you. And he's not even as good looking as Morgan Freeman!

But seriously thank fuck that's the Bush era over (although I guess we should not discount his halfwit brother Jebadiah - seriously, that's his name although he shortens it to "Jeb" because he loses concentration and wanders off if he tries to sign the whole thing) and thank even bigger fuck that the cerifiable whackjob that is Sarah Palin is back off to Alaska where all she can do is upset some moose.

Now how about letting me enter your country without fingerprinting me like a common criminal?

O Tempora! O Mores!

As you may already know being a dragon I am moderately well versed in Latin; the rules for being a dragon say you have to be I think. Back in the day a knowledge of your second and third declensions was regarded as a mark of an educated gentleman. If you didn’t know your locative from your dative you were regarded as a bit of a thickie.

Now of course in ZaNu Labor’s brave New England that will never do so certain councils have instructed their staff under no circumstances to use Latin phrases in speech or writing because

using Latin is elitist and discriminatory, because some people might not understand it - particularly if English is not their first language.

Well boo fucking hoo! Look you morons Latin was used for years as a lingua franca (see, see what I did there) to enable people who spoke different languages to communicate, it greased the wheels of politics and learning for centuries. The whole point of using it was that you didn’t need to know the other guy’s first language.

But what are they talking about, are council officials writing huge tracts of Plutarch and Pliny to Mrs Scroggins of 27 Mugabe Avenue and expecting her to understand it…

Several local authorities have ruled that phrases like "vice versa", "pro rata", and even "via" should not be used.

Fuck me, if you don’t know what these mean then you really are too fucking thick to live. I bet even most of the pond scum of this septic isle know what these mean even though they don’t know where they come from. Are we going to have to remove the “v.” between names of people in boxing tournaments or football teams in next Saturday’s fixtures now as well?

Course we are, it’s elitist and discriminatory. So in the spirit of anti-elitism shall we get rid of words from other foreign languages that people won’t understand. How about all those Arabic words: algebra, azimuth, zenith, nadir. That’ll do for starters.

What was that Mr Inclusive Councellor, we don’t want to upset the mussies? Thought so.

Final word on the subject has to go to the morons at the Plain English Campaign:

A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".

Can I suggest that anyone who does mistake “e.g.” for “egg” have several ostrich eggs rammed forcibly up their rectums? Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem!

Varsity Dragon

Some time ago your scaly green friend forgot the first two rules of working for a corporation:

1) Never volunteer for anything
2) Especially anything to do with graduate recruitment

and answered an email asking for volunteers to turn up at the various milkround events that the company holds to try and get the "brightest and best" talents of esteemed seats of learning to come and lay down their lives work for Banco Di Haggis. As one of these was the capital of Swampland where I live I figured that at least I'd get home early enough so I put my name down.

That was months ago so it came as a bit of a shock when on Monday, as the perfect shitstorm was breaking around me as the realisation that I and my colleagues now worked for the bushy eyebrowed monocular cunt who calls himself prime minister, I got a reminder that I needed to be in Cambridge on Wednesday afternoon to pimp my employer.

"Hmmm...." opined my co-workers, "Tough sell little dragon."

"No shit," I replied as I wondered about faking tail-rot on the day. Ah well, might as well go, at least I can blag a few pens.

Anyway Wednesday comes so off I trundle to some grey concrete building down by the river out of view of all the really nice colledges; it sort of looked like someone had glued a load of square concrete egg-boxes onto the side so having spent a goodly proportion of my student days living here...


County College, Lancaster. As seen by a dragon after several pints.

... I felt right at home.

The gig kicked off at one in the afternoon and in trundled the keen students... well keen enough to be awake and moving at 1pm which rather lets the side down student-wise I thought and they all go off to talk to JP Morgan, UBS, even the fucking Bank of England; anyone but us whom they give a wide berth in case they catch a bad dose of government intervention and loss of bonuses. In the end I started humming the old Milwall FC chant that goes to the tune of Rod Stewart's "Sailing"

We are Banko
Banko di Haggis
We are Banko,
From Auld Reekie
We Are Banko
Banko di Haggis
No one likes us
We don't care

Spot the dragon

In the end we did get a few people come up and have a chat about what we had to offer and were we actually going to be hiring anyone? I had got myself all prepped up with clever words like "good capitalisation", "sound foundations" and "being a civil servant isn't so bad you know" and despite being a dragon and thus having all the sales skills of Gerald Ratner I got a few people enthused enough to say they would come along to the evening do we were having in a few days time. Usually the conversation went something like ...

"Go on, we have an evening presentation round the corner soon, why not come to that!"
"Oh I don't know..."
"There will be food."
"Er..."
"Free booze."
"Well..."
"Dwarves in mankinis having sex with live halibut!"
"Eh???"
"Chainsaw juggling lepers?"
"Oh go on then."

Regrettably I found out after a couple of conversations that it really did help if I prentended be a Cambridge aliumnus rather than having graduated with a 2.2 in Mud Studies from a northern redbrick so I started out with a maths degree from Trinity. I think by the end of the event it had become a double first in PPE and Quidditch from Gonville and Caius. Hate to think what I'll be saying at this evening do when I will have had the benefit of some free booze.

One thing that never changes is the coffee in student refectories. There was a nice view...




...but the coffee tasted like hot gritty water. Utterly foul.

The best bit of the event came towards the end when all the employees from the organisations who had been shanghaied into the event ignored the few remaining students (the sensible ones having all repaired to various alcohol retailing emporia) and started trading swag. The going rate was one tube of Banko di Haggis jelly beans to a pen and two to something worth having like a USB stick or I-pod amplifier (got both - happy dragon!). I even blagged a squeezy "stress bull" from my former employer Merrill Lynch which, now that they don't exist, will be worth something in a few years time.

Come six pm we all slope off with sore feet and pockets stuffed with as many pens, highlighters and packets of jelly beans as we can manage to carry.

I snapped this of King's on the way back to the bus station, very nice.



Anyway I'm at Loughborough in a few weeks... come and say hello to the Grumpy Dragon if you're in town. I'll be the the one with the wings and tail stood at the stand with nobody around it.

Civil Servant Dragon

As I work for Banco Di Haggis, one of the formerly proud and independent Scottish banks ZaNuLabour are about to nationalise, does that make me a government employee; a civil servant if you will.

If so can I have a copper-bottomed final salary pension, Nelson Mandela's birthday off as a holiday, 5 Whitley Days* a year and, if I feel like it, a couple of years on full salary sick pay sitting with my feet up at home because I have "stress". Oh and a straight 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch. And being able to go on strike at the drop of a hat.

I guess there will be some extra forms to fill in but otherwise it sounds like a sweet gig.



* Unrecorded sickness days - named after the brewer Greenall Whitley as they were used when you had a 5 star hangover and work was simply not an option.

Some words of comfort from a rich, well dressed cunt

OK so all over the world people are beginning to struggle because of the various financial crises: pension values are falling to levels that mean we'll all have to work longer and harder, people are having their houses reposessed, it's very likely that the fall out of this will make the unemployment of the 70's and 80's look like a walk in the park and even your little green scaly chum is not sure if he'll be gainfully employed come the end of the year if my company's share price continues not so much as to go down the toilet but is rapidly heading into the sewers and down the outfall pipe to the sea.

Given the circumstances you would think that the leader of one of the world's major religions would have a few gentle words of comfort for his flock and the wider world, just to show he cares. Sure your dragony correspondent would probably sneer and call them platitudes but you think that given his position the Pope would actually give some sort of a toss that the financial crisis would lead to family breakdowns, even suicide and have a kindly word of support or two to those feeling the night close in around them.

In your fucking dreams.

Nope, it's all your fault for wanting to, well, better yourself, have a career, earn some money so you could support and educate your children and give your family a measure of comfort.

The global financial crisis is proof that the pursuit of money and success is pointless, Pope Benedict XVI has told a meeting of bishops in Rome.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church said that the disappearance of money as banks collapsed showed that wealth meant "nothing".

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick. And this comes from someone we know has a taste for Prada shoes, Ferregamo shirts and judging by the piccie accompanying the article...



... he's not exactly skimping on the vestments and solid gold walking sticks.

But blind to the hypocricy he carries on...

Speaking to the bishops assembled at the Vatican, Pope Benedict said those who seek "success, career or money are building on sand"

Yep, all human progess is worthless. Want to make something better of yourself and his invisible friend in the sky thinks you're a twat. The answer is of course.

The Pope said that people should instead base their lives on God's word.

That would be God's word as interpreted by a Prada loving former Hitlerjungend member in a skirt I take it.

If I was in Rome right now I'd shove that gold walking stick so far up his arse you'd be able to see the glitter every time he fucking spoke to utter his next stream of banality.

Don't worry Obersturmgruppenfuhrer Ratzinger, I'm a dragon and I would breathe on it to make sure it was nice and warm first.

Scribbles on the bog door

On my travels back from the land of sheepshagging and close harmony singing recently (I think the two are related) I stopped off at a motorway service station to the south of Birmingham in order to top up the caffiene levels and take a dump. I don't know if you recall this but going to the lav in a service station 20 or so years ago was a journey into some Stygian abyss where you were met at the door to the bogs by a ferryman who would carry you in his coracle across the River Styx of urine that spread from a blocked loo across the floor.

Not so these loos which were, generally speaking, clean and reasonably pleasant, the hand driers worked and my cubicle was secured by a proper lock with a handle rather than a 2 inch screw hammered into what remained of the locking mechanism.

Now back in those dark and distinctly malodourous days the back of public bog doors seemed to be used as a general bulletin board. I am surmising that back in the days before the Intertubes came along people used to nip to the netty in order to post a message on topics of the day, mainly the status of their favourite football team or lack of form of a rival, politics - usually concentrating on the subject of The Troubles (such as "Fuck the Queen and the UDA", to which the considered political response was usually "Fuck off you Feinian bogtrotting cunt") and of course what everyone else uses the intertubes for, sex.

Specifically soliciting sexual encounters, normally between members of the male gender as, I assumed, that women of the heterosexual persuasion didn't tend to frequent the male loos, not even when there was a queue (and there would be) for the ladies.* I was never entirely sure what to make of these: I mean it seems a pretty odd way to advertise and I often wondered if they were all practical jokes truckers used to play on their mates - you know so Steve who had just got back from hauling a shitload of steel from Newcastle to Bristol was just bedding down for the night and gets a call asking to meet up at Forton services tomorrow evening for "Hot botty action".

Anyway back to 2008 and the interweb has triumphed; there isn't a scribble, no crude drawings of willies, no political slanging matches, no invites for participants in anal intercourse when, tucked up a corner, I spot this...



Not the best picture in the world but I didn't exactly want to turn the flash on did I! It was actually scratched into the veneer of the door and reads "Sicko wants to be bitch for large dogs"

Now I'm leaning towards "prank" for this one given the use of the word "sicko" but, even though there must be dozens of websites and forums for people whose interests encompass "being a bitch for large dogs" it is nice to see that even in this wired age there is still a place for the scribbes on the bog door.



* incidentally the one time I saw a queue for the mens bog and not the ladies was at the geekfest that is Microsoft TechEd.

Araf

Right, that's the blogging fatigue out of the way so here is your friendly neighbourhood grumpy dragon back on the intertubes and flinging bile at everyone and everything, especially if you happen to be a sattelite broadband provider called Tariam whose fucking system has gone down leaving me without warez and pr0n for the past four weeks and necessitating me dispensing more baubles from the horde to upgrade my kit - but I get promised 2Mb/sec (yeah like that's going to happen) and a free virgin every three months so long as I stay a subscriber. They are based in Gloucester so good luck finding those virgins guys.

And Vodafone, don't you sit there looking smug because if your GPRS sucked any harder than it does I'd probably enjoy it. And how about erecting a 3G mast anywhere north of Cambridge sometimes before the next millenium, eh?

Anyway I just spent last week getting back in touch with my inner fire-breathing lizard by walking up and down large hills in Wales. I quite like Wales, sure the locals can be a tad on the neanderthal side but the scenery is pretty.



and the local good-time girls are friendly



and a big up for the Black Lion in Hay on Wye



for good beer, good food and comfy rooms and being very, very close to England.

However one thing bothers me a lot about Wales and it is all the money wasted on writing "ARAF" as well as "SLOW" on the roads. Now I know if you kill a language you kill a culture but for crying out loud is it really necessary to write down something that sounds like the yelp you would get it you accidentally trod on a fox's tail?* I mean it's not as though there is anyone in the whole principality who can read who does not know what the English word "Slow" means? But it's not just that it's everything in the public space, parking restriction signs are twice as big as they need to be to allow for the random collection of consonants underneath the English bit and even my fucking bank is wanking away my share dividends (such as they are) by having special posters printed offering loans at 8% in Welsh.

So I got to wondering, who pays the extra for painting the road twice. Don't recall taxes being double in Wales so they can pay for their linguistic willy-waving?

Somehow, I suspect that all that cash to print fox-yelps on the road is coming out of my pocket.

There's lovely.




* I have a fox here and indeed it did go "Arraff" when I trod on it just now.