So much for that resolution

OK so I didn't make a blog post yesterday and I guess that means I broke my resolution on day four. It's OK, the alcohol one isn't going that great either.

In my defence however I did try and make a post on the way home from The Netherlands on the pride of Stena's fleet, the Stena Brittanica which since its upgrade to a "superferry" (which I suppose means it can leap bulk crude carriers with a single bounds) boasts "free WiFi"

Well yes and no. It did have wifi, my iPhone found it just fine and after about three minutes managed to log on but after that pretty much zip, it didn't even manage to load Google's home page. Not to worry, they have four or so computers in one of the lounges, I'll use them. Nope, same thing, only with added disgruntled fellow users complaining that it would be faster to send mail by carrier pigeon. OK so it's satellite internet and having got that installed myself I know it's pretty sucky in poor conditions but there was hardly anyone on the boat and at this point we were still very firmly roped to Holland so there's really no excuse.

OK so a bit of an inconvenience but no great drama, it's a night sailing so I'll just go to the bar, down a Heineken or two and go to bed; if I'd have been on the daytime sailing though I'd have been more than a bit miffed.

Still I'm thinking of having a moan and seeing if I can get a discount next trip.

Mind your own business.

You might remember that back in 2001 there was a national census and for the first time it asked you what religion you were and many of us went "feck you arseholes" and wrote in "Jedi" just for the lulz.

This time around there's a campaign I think I'll be supporting. Basically you just say "None of your business" on the optional (so far) question about religion. The original census was in 1801 and was for the purpose of finding the number of men of fighting age (we were fighting Napoleon at the time) but governments of all stripes just love information about their citizens, knowledge is power. And the more they know about us, and this information extracted at the barrel of a 1000 pound fine, the more powerful they feel.

I would be tempted, sorely tempted, to write "FUCK OFF" in nice big red letters on the whole form and let them see if they could get their database to accept that. However not having 1000 quid to burn I guess I will stick to saying "None of your business" on the religion question and see how many others I can tick "Other" on or just simply "forgetting" to answer some questions.

I would urge you to do the same.

The Silver Screen

I'm staying with friends in The Netherlands at the moment and last night we all trundled off to the movies. Now I haven't been to see a film at the cinema (or "bioscoop" as they call them here) for, well, ages. I think the last time was when the first Lord of The Rings film came out.

Now people do tell me that the "experience" is what the cinema is all about, the big screen, the sound system and the guy behind you eating a packet of crisps loudly during the quiet bits.

Well OK but I have a nice sound system at home, regrettably when it gets above "15" on the volume control the dogs start getting upset and howling and OK I can't quite do the several metres wide screen thing but then again I can see things quite adequately on my flat screen telly and probably in just as good resolution now I've got blu-ray. The seat was comfy sure enough and there was a shop where you could get popcorn (I hate popcorn) in the intermission.

So I can kind of see why people watch their movies at home these days. Mainly because I can think the good people of Hoogezand would have been a bit put out if I'd sat there sprawled out over three seats and paused the movie to go to the bog.

Oh and the film was Harry Potter 7(a). Not at all bad to be honest, just turn the brain off.

More new year resolutions

Whilst on the subject of new year resolutions one I'm making a booze one this year. You maybe know how it is, end of the day you come home and crack open a bottle of wine to have with dinner with Mrs Dragon. You're having a nice time and oh dear wine's finished, maybe we have another little glass...

... next thing you know, and it is the next thing because it creeps up on you when you're not looking, you're drinking a bottle of wine a night, every night, and maybe a nightcap or three at the weekend. I did a little tot up the week before and I made it 75 units. Now I know the government pulled those unit limits out of their arse but even I can realise that that's a bit too much and if I keep this up my liver is going to be applying for a transfer to the ghost of George Best.

So I think a bit less wobble juice would be in order.

Dragon's new year resolution

OK so I have been a lazy dragon and not keeping my blog up to date. Bad dragon!

So this year, 2011, I've decided that I'm going to make a blog post at least every weekday. Moreso it'll be a post of incisive wit, clever political commentary and intellectual rigour...

... ah crap. No it won't, it'll be me cursing and swearing and setting random motherfuckers on fire.

That sounds painful

I can't say that this sounds like a very attractive prospect, especially for any ladies concerned.



And I'm really going to trust a company called "ruindive" with the care of my todger.

(Pic taken from my 419 catcher account)

The only Avatar review you will ever need

And Avatar is shit anyway: a humourless fable about a bunch of sanctimonious, stand-offish jungle-smurfs who spend their days running around in thongs, attacking explorers, interfering with sky-horses, and obstinately halting the march of progress for the sake of a poxy tree. Watching the Na'vi (see? even their name is obnoxious) mope and moan in three dimensions simply made them more real, and therefore more objectionable. Maybe if the final half-hour had consisted of one of the human soldiers repeatedly kicking one of the Na'vi shamen in his leaf- bollocks until he spewed blue sick and his eyeballs popped out in 3D, I'd have found it easier to stomach.

Charlie Brooker, of course.

Let the witch-hunt begin

You probably don't subscribe to the daily "Here is the City" email newsletter because if you're reading this blog odds are you don't work in the City of London¹ but pretty much everyone in The City (and the annexe down at Canary Wharf) does so it's a pretty fair bet that yesterday lunchtime when the newsletter came out there were a few ruined keyboards as they got sprayed with half eaten sandwiches in HR and up on the management floor when this little item hit the streets.

First things first, it's not from me. As I've previously mentioned I rank on the organisation chart at about the same level as the mould behind the coffee machine and this reads as if it's come from someone around mid-levels in the corporate food chain. It also reads as someone whose been "Pissed On and Passed Over" for promotion - I certainly don't recognise the part about bringing in external people rather than promoting internally, that's not what I've seen in my few years at Banko Di Haggis and I've seen plenty of people who want to climb the greasy pole be able to so.

Also there's this...

And joining the bank's full-time payroll in the coming weeks will be a number of 'conversions' - temp or contractor staff who will be given full time jobs...

... so if B di H is such a rotten place to work how come these contractors have taken the shilling and kissed the book? Much of my team is made up of contract to perm conversions (hell I'm one!) so they must have seen something worthwhile? It's not as though there are no contract jobs out there at good rates, I must get about 50 emails and a couple of phone calls a week from job pimps trying to push me to 600 - 700 quid a day gigs.

That said pretty much everything else he says seems to feel right. I've largely ignored "Northstar" and "Napier" and "WorkOut" and the "Enormous Giraffe Willy"² projects but that's only because I do my level best to ignore any kind of management initiatives that can be summed up in a single word and some sort of crappy motivational poster stuck on the wall next to our mouldy coffee machine as much as possible. But its certainly true that Northstar does seem to have been hanging around like a bad smell for quite a while.

Anyway regardless of what he said and its veracity or otherwise I think it's a fair bet that right now a thorough search to identify said anonymous disgruntled employee is probably ongoing and HR are warming up the branding irons and dusting off the rack and iron maiden. Old timers here might recall my former work blog called "That's Not a Bug Its A Feature" that bumbled along with a few dozen readers until the Sunday Times decided to make it one of their blogs of the week. Within 24 hours I was getting hit after hit from inside Banko di Haggis and even though I'd not said anything too bad about the place I dropped the blog quicker than I would drop radioactive elk shit as soon as I saw the visitor logs.

Anonymous, whoever you are good luck. If they find you and you manage to keep your job then I'll be happy to introduce you to your new peers - the mould behind the coffee machine.





¹ In fact the odds are you're someone who landed here when you were googling for "furry dragon porn" - how many times do I have to tell you we are not sodding furry!
² I think I might have imagined that one.

Sums all done

Well so much for getting back into blogging. My excuse has been my Open University degree course with a couple of exams that needed doing, the last of which was yesterday so that's it for a while now so I can come back in here and whitter on about nothing in particular.

Anyway can you all hear that screaming noise up and down the country? Yes? Well that's the sound of thousands of useless council employees being torn from the state's teat and thrown into the street as the crushing realisation dawns on them that the real world really doesn't need a "children's play diversity co-ordinator" or a "street furniture compliance officer", hopefully one of them is that utter twat of a "refuse officer" at a certain Norfolk borough council who unilaterally decided that I now have to traipse half a mile to the main road with my binbags as they can't get the bin truck to my door because of "health and safety" of the fucking binmen!

Well quite frankly good fucking riddance to the lot of them and all those media luvvies at the Beeb who are going to get the boot as well. Anything that basically gets government pared back to the absolute essentials only is a plus in my book and making up a load of non-jobs is no way to warehouse the surplus population. After 13 years of ZaNu Labour throwing cash at anything to shore up their vote we're bust, borassic, broke and other things meaning we have no money starting with "B". However I would be neglectful in my duties as a dragon if I did not come up with a few more draconian suggestions of my own.

Overseas Aid Budget to be cut to, oh lets say £0. If people want to help out the little brown babies then there are plenty of charities out there to give money to. I don't want to help the little brown babies and I definitely do not want to assist President Mwumumumumba of Corruptionland fund new marble lavatories for his presidential palace.

TV Licence Fee. New fee is £0. The Beeb will survive, you make all those nice costume dramas that you can sell. Why should I fund a left-leaning monolithic broadcaster. Pay your own way and stop raping my wallet of 150 quid a year you bastards.

Those banks you bailed out: Sell them. See I'm prepared to take my chances as well. I noticed that shares in Banko Di Haggis are around 50p these days so UK PLC might even turn a profit.

And finally - leave the EU. Keep the money we send to these bastards and cut VAT to 0 (want to know why Darling only cut VAT to 15% - the EU rules said it couldn't be any lower as that would disadvantage the Froggies). The VAT cut will hugely stimulate the economy, get businesses flooding in here and generating jobs (and tax revenue) plus a whole layer of administrative arseholes who collect this regressive tax are now no longer needed.

Oh and Mr and Mrs Vatman? Don't think your new job is sitting on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle. Here's a shovel and there's some sea defences that need shoring up, come on, put your backs into it.

Next Week: Fixing the incapacity benefit problem by releasing a hungry leopard into the room. Anyone who can manage to run away from the leopard does not need incapacity benefit and anyone who doesn't won't be needing any benefits any more.

Of mini-diggers and political oblivion

Yes I know. Bad dragon, not keeping his blog up to date.

Well the last couple of weeks I've been off on leave and playing with chainsaws and mini diggers so now rather than looking like a wilderness with briars and overgrown cypress leylandii it now looks like a recreation of a battle of the Somme with chickens. Actually getting away from a computer and TV for a while was rather refreshing.

However on getting back onto the train this morning I see the monocular cunt is no longer leader of the walking corpse that is the Labour Party and we have one of the milliwatt brothers at the helm of the sinking ship. Apparently this one is the lefty one and got in on the back of block union votes. Now as someone who detests the Labour party with a passion one normally reserves for root-canal surgery I'm absolutely delighted that they elected a leftie in thrall to a bunch of union dinosaurs, you might as well have dug this guy up and made him your leader...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00981/96-michael-foot_981288c.jpg

... as you've just consigned the party to the political wilderness for the next 15 years.

Now all we need is Cleggeron to grow a pair, cut taxes and give us our country back. Oh yeah, I forgot, they're still politicians.




Oh yes also at some point over my vacation I spent an afternoon sat in a field in Surrey with Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmore and an eventing horse. It's a long story.