Children n Greed

The eye patch bear has been out this evening rattling his bucket in the hope of yet again raising a few bob for children who need help. And yes the T.V, for those who own one, will be boring and you will keep having updates from all over the country of how various weirdos desperate to get on tele do something stupid to raise money. Good luck to them! Last year 'Children in Need' raised £39 million and have doen some amazing work with that money.

Like in Pentrebach where Darian, aged 15, lives with cerebral palsy and experiences learning difficulties. At Bridging The Gap he is always helping out and making snacks for the other young people. He enjoys it so much he would like to work there one day! Project manager Christine explains: "We are hoping to train him in food hygiene, first aid etc, thus preparing him for his transition into adulthood."

Or in Warrington where Jacob's Unique Memory Pot (J.U.M.P.) work to capture moments in the lives of children with life-limiting illnesses to provide happy memories for them and their families. James, aged nine, is living with a rare blood disorder and growth problems. J.U.M.P. recorded Jame's baptism and his mum says that he always asks to watch the DVD as it "brings the biggest smile to Jame's face".

This is just a tiny sample of the kind of projects they have been involved in funding.

Today also saw 'Switch', the people behind the technology of your debit card, announce projections of £10,000,000,000 to be spent by the British public on Christmas. That's just switch, that figure is not the total combined cost of Christmas that's just those people using switch. Who knows what the eventual cost will be by the time the turkey has been curried. To put some kind of perspective on that figure, which is in itself quite difficult as we generally don't measure things in billions, the budget cut backs that every single newspaper and media outlet has passed comment after comment on since they where announced in October will amount to a saving of £6 billion over the next twelve months. 

So we all moaned like hell at the thought of having to pay more on VAT in the new year. All the benefit claimants, some of whom I'm sure are completely justified, even though I've never had the pleasure to meet one, pondered how they would try to fraudulently justify keeping the 5 bedroom council house they live in now that the three kids have moved out to council flat when they all fell pregnant. Poor old plod would have to take cuts too, except when they had the chance to get rid of one lousy copper who dragged a 50 year old woman across an arrest suite by her hair they let him off. We all fear the impending doom of the budget deficit and what it will mean to us, the normal working people............

Well we could always bin Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

O.k, o.k, keep your hair on, let me finish.

We'd save, to quote Harry Enfield in the eighties, loads of money. At least £10 billion.

"Ah yes Rob but the economy relys on all that spending so by not spending it we'd make the situation worse!"

We could give it to the one eyed yellow bear and he could spend it on all the same stuff just for people who really needed it, in fact if we just gave him the £10 billion he'd have more money this year than all the years put together since him and the boy Wogan started the whole thing on the radio back in '78. Think how much good that could do!

You will still have a good Christmas, you could still eat so much that that old hernia scar starts to feel tight, or is that just me? You might, god forbid actually spend some time doing nice things with the people you love. Enjoying playing the games they kids still haven't opened from last Christmas or going and visiting those friends you haven't had the time to see since the summer because you spent every weekend clogging up the aisles in Waitrose crying in case they run out of goose fat. We've all had pointless presents over the years and yes the sentiment is always nice but surely the time has come that a wasted present represents so much more than what we think. We spend time and money making it,shipping it from China (Let's be fair it's coming from China!), buying it, wrapping it, sending it in some cases, to then open the thing and go "Wow a Homer Simpson bottle opener than says 'mmmm Duff' when you use it. It's just what I've always wanted". Then promptly place it in the pile of other presents you don't want before sorting it into three categories. 

1) Stuff that you can re gift to some other sucker as long as they don't know the original gifter.
2) Stuff that you would be embarrassed to re gift so you'll send to the charity shop and feel warm inside that you've done your bit for poor people.
3) Stuff that has been bought from the innovations catalogue and it has your name printed/stitched/etched on it. This has to go straight in the bin.

There is a fourth category for really greedy people and that is the "they'll buy any old shit on Ebay" category.

So even the crap we don't want is creating polution, a huge carbon footprint, wasting time and disappointing everyone so let's just all collectively decide that this Christmas we will buy ourselves something we really want for ourselves, we would be happy with it, and then give the rest to the yellow bear. Most of us would just sort the kids and the bear and be happy with that.

The religious part of Christmas has been lost so lets replace that with a celebration of giving, but giving to people who actually need it.

What's next. What about giving Geldof the Chocolate eggs? Share the love, No?

P.S - We just gave the Irish goverment £7 billion becase they've ballsed their economy worse than we have so Terry if you have any left could you spare some for your brothers.

School's out!

I'm back now people and yes it has been a while but I feel my common sense bladder is fit to burst.

I've had a Charlie Croker moment and had a great idea.

Why don't we have schools open all year round?

Don't get me wrong we would still have school holidays but we wouldn't have the huge 6 week break in the middle of the year. My reasons are this, if we spread the terms out the country's children would have a better grasp on what working life is all about. There aren't many people who have enjoyed the luxury of a 6 week holiday in the height of summer, apart from wife beaters footballers and even they have to go to a world cup every four years, unless they're welsh. The reason I have been given for the long summer holiday is that the children used to help with working the land through the summer to help the family. The last time I checked there really isn't that many farmers left now that we will fly lettuce from Italy or Spain so that our school children can avoid eating the stuff, but child obesity is another blog altogether.

So if we don't need the children to help on the farm anymore lets not give them the time off. The positives are that by spreading the holidays out over the year we would stop this monopoly on foreign holidays during school summer holidays, It's not fair that a week in one of the piss poor, scally resorts of where we buy Lettuce from is three times more expensive at the end of July than at the beginning.

As good as the NAS are they are not likely to give me a 6 week break in the middle of the year. After a really busy June I would not come in until the last day of 'Work Term' where I would bring my favourite toy (Hungry Hippos) and play happily with all my colleagues. I would then spend the next six weeks forgetting how to write, falling in the brook, building dens, playing football and eventually being bored and wanting to return to work. Then first week of September I would be back, ready to go and fighting fit. I'd spend the first week covering my work laptop with wallpaper, sharpening pencils and claiming I was lost when and couldn't find the room when being late for meetings. BRILLIANT!

I'm going to go out on a limb here but I think we should also scrap homework, yeah I said it. A police officer doesn't fill in unnecessary paperwork at home. A soldier doesn't kill people at home, unless he's suffering PTSD and suffering vivid flashbacks from his time in NAM or perhaps struggling to settle back into civilian life. Doctors aren't overworked at home. Politicians don't bollocks up the economy from their expenses claimed homes/moats/duck islands so why do we expect our children to work from home. The slaves that picked the cotton didn't do it at home. The weavers of Manchester in the 1800's didn't lug a power loom through the cobbled streets home to work on their weave project. Even Richard Crawshay didn't expect his workers to finish up a day's work in the blast furnace and then say "Right everyone I need you all to smelt another tonne for me at home tonight because we have an OFSTED inspection next week we would like to display this in the hall". All homework proves is not how applied you are or how intelligent you are but how good are your parents at making you do things you don't want to do.

If it was done in school more work would actually get done in an environment that is hopefully conducive to learning. Children can't concentrate these days at home because children have too much stuff that is much more fun than the average rainfall in East Anglia. Xbox is better than maths, I'm sorry but that's a fact. Hungry Hippos is much more fun than homework so lets leave the school work in school and leave Hungry Hippos at home, where it belongs.We can't unwish the invention of Xbox but what we can do is change and adapt to real life.

It would be safer for the children as we could use some of the time we have saved in the summer by having time off in the winter saving on unnecessary journeys at the most dangerous time of the year. The schools could save money on heating the building at the coldest time of the year. The best thing would be that kids could actually spend some time enjoying their Christmas presents before returning to school in the freezing cold first week of January. The last few years the schools have been off in January due to snow and this way they would be off anyway instead of wasting valuable school time.

Childhood violence would also reduce as you wouldn't have to fight the kids from other schools that attended the same 'Play Schme' as you. It's a win-win from every angle as far as I can tell.

I shall make this a manifesto pledge, if I come to power this will be policy, or I might dump it if I need to form some kind of coalition, who knows what the future holds for me.

Be well, sleep tight and kids..................go to school.

Clotted Scream

Right people I've just heard some of the most ridiculous racism ever. Whilst listening to radio five live, Nicky Campbell, on a call in about immigration a caller from Cornwall said:

"It's the immigrants taking the minor jobs that is driving up the house prices in Cornwall making it difficult for the people born in Cornwall to buy houses. My son is eighteen and he has been unable to get a job in a bar or restaurant or even stacking shelves because people from eastern Europe have taken all the jobs."

I love a screaming generalisations, all scousers are thieves, all men from Brighton are gay, all welsh people shag sheep etc, but what I heard from the this caller almost made me fall from my high horse.

Cornwall I believe to be the most boring place in the whole of the British isles bar none. Even when you drive to Scotland you see the Scotland sign and then Scottish places begin to appear in front of you. You have numerous places to visit and it's very Scottish. Cornwall you drive for hours to get there then drive for hours more to get to anything. The drive itself takes twice as long because because you almost certainly get stuck behind a VW camper with a bumper sticker 'Air cooled rules'. No, air cooled means slow, if your having a crap day in work when the day is dragging even though you been for a chat to other people in the office made drinks for everyone and hidden in the toilets just for something to do and someone asks you how your day is going reply, air cooled. If not a camper then a caravan, ridicule for caravans is copyrighted by Top Gear, the most repetitive programme (Clarksonesque).......in the world!

 

So you've finally got their and your starting to worry about where you are going to buy petrol for the return journey when you suddenly realise.......you can't surf! Body boarding was a way of surf board manufacturers to make revenue from fat people or those with poor balance once they realised that they can't surf. The whole of Cornwall is pretty much tourism it's not industrialised at all. All they make is clotted cream, fudge and pasties. None of which you can eat if you want to fit in that wet suit you bought because you can't go in the sea because the water is so cold your testicles have retracted into you lungs and it's affected you breathing. So being a tourist area the jobs are all in hospitality. The Brits don't do hospitality, we are rubbish at it, so surely it's better to get foreign people to do it so that we at least get good service if we have to stay in this hell hole at the back of oblivion or just past Yeovil as it's known. The others jobs are service jobs, cleaning hotel rooms and making beds etc. Not really something you associate with 18 year old boys really is it and they just wouldn't do it.

The reason why houses prices are high is because the rich of the rest of Britain thought that it might be nice to buy a house somewhere that justified getting there by helicopter, mainly because the drive took an eternity! So all the best properties that aren't hotels are owned by people from London wanting to get away from the hustle and bustle of civilisation, and the house prices grew as it became a more desirable place to live. The problem is that lazy dole scrounging people are unable to move from there council properties and move to where the work is. The world is smaller now than it has ever been but moving to where you could be needed is harder than it has ever been. 3o years ago my father moved from the north west to south wales because the labour market had collapsed and jobs on Merseyside where hard to come by. SO WE MOVED! I don't think he really wanted to move, I don't think my mum really wanted to move but that was what he had to do to find work. Now he drives nearly an hour a day to get to work, he does it because that's what he needs to do to support his family and have an occupation. A hundred odd years ago people moved from all over the country to Merthyr because it was the industrial capital of the world at the time. Back then you needed a job or you starved so you moved, now your dole will cover you food, drink, fags, sky+,dental work and foreign holidays so your better off lowering you golf handicap than getting of you clotted cream, fudge and pastie arse. You aren't allowed to swap your council house to other areas of the country and yes this is a problem but again people have done it, the person with a job could go first and wait several months before the rest of the family come to the area, yes it will be difficult but ultimately worth it in the end.

We must stop this endless attack on people who are doing what we all did once which was move to where the work is. the people who have the problem with immigration are the people who are causing it. If people where prepared to do the work that people from Poland or wherever will do then they wouldn't come here because there wouldn't be any jobs, they would be taken by the people who live here already. Also our emigration massively exceeds our immigration this is proven by the fact that i have never been to a Polish theme bar in Ireland, or Spain or Greece or every country in the world.

Wagons east Cornwall, wagons east! 

When will we ever learn?

It's that time of year again when every newspaper, news website and television news dust off last years story that exams are getting easier. It's the last chance you have to be a proper student, 'student' meaning that you all compete on a level playing field where everyone is aiming at the same standard pretty much, A Levels. So from sixteen onwards you slog your guts out trying to get as good grades as you possibly can amongst the backdrop of being:

• An employment pariah: I mean really who wants to be served in a shop by someone aged 17 studying for 3 A levels when you can be served badly by someone aged 18 with six months experience studying nail and beauty care but dropped out of the course as they found it too taxing. So from 16-18 your pretty much skint.
• Emotionally disabled: Everything is difficult when you are a teenager as everything you do has a consequence from how much effort you place on your studies to the type of laces you have in your designer trainers. The teenage world has an opinion of what is cool and what is not. Once you get to uni this disappears because uni is full of everyone trying to be individual and in turn overly eccentric and sometimes just plain weird. e.g being weird in uni gets you friends, being weird in school gets you beaten up and bullied.
• Relationships: Anyone who had a relationship during their teenage years will know this is train wreck!

Given all this you spend your time studying for your A Levels. The pressure is on because these are the most important exams you will ever do.....well since the last ones you did...........or the next ones you'll do. Then that day in August comes and the results come through.......... Yessss!! 9 A*! YOU'RE A GENIUS.

Except, no. The world turns around and says that exams are easier, that in fact even though you know much more about everything in the world than your father and your grandad you are in fact educationally subnormal. This doesn't happen in any other field. We don't line the streets honouring our war dead from Afghanistan saying yes they gave their life but war these days is much easier than it used to be. Perhaps we only have a 30 second silence based upon the level of difficulty you faced in dying for you country.

the news tells us that exams are easier, that all children are stupid and that all university courses are in pointless topics, might have a point there but that's a whole other rant. So you spend all day on the phone to desperately trying to see if your 9 A*s can get you into a university you've never heard of, in fact you where fairly sure it was a leisure centre the last time you looked, to get you on your seventh choice course of Jedi Knightism or the Science of Glee. You have no choice to accept the course, the fees and the student debt until you die because there are no jobs! Only rich people went to university in the past to be a doctor or a research scientist now everyone goes otherwise it would mess with the unemployment figures. So being good at something because you are interested or have a natural talent for it or a willingness to learn that trade from the bottom up has gone and has been replaced by a degree which qualifies you to be able to do nothing.

Then just when things couldn't be more depressing for the world of A level students, one dies. A group will have gone out and rolled their Saxo through a hedge sideways because nothing celebrates having three more years to go out socialising and drinking than going out socialising and drinking and the tragedy will be that they would have got the best results in the whole history of the school/college. It's o.k, as long as somebody remembers to mention during the eulogy that dying it just so much more easy these days.

Workers of the world unite, all you have to lose is your chains!

I like shopping, anyone who knows me knows that i like nothing more than to have a good old mooch around the shops to see if I can pick up and item of loveliness at a snip of a price but this is ruined if I can't get anywhere near the shops because it's clogged up with shopping amateurs. So what I'm suggesting in my new manifesto is this,

'Pensioners, children unaccompanied by adults and umemployed people are not allowed to enter the town centre during the weekend between the hours of 8am and 6pm.'

 

Pesioners to be fair don't really go to town on a weekend but when they do they cause chaos. They insist on queuing for things and then promptly forget what it was they wanted by the time they get to the front of the queue. When they bump into other old people they can bring a busy supermarket to a complete standstill recounting stories of the weeks freshly deceased and how Chris and Michelle have split up and it's those girls I feel sorry for. Also being run over by a mobility scooter hurts so this should reduce the number of those shin bruisers considerably. Old people have all week to go to town, they can talk as much inane bollocks as they like on a Tuesday as everyone who has a job is busy saving the economy from complete colapse. Besides anything that stops me from having to listen to old people having no patience and being rude at what seems to be every opportunity can surely only be a good thing.

Young people can be just as much of a annoyance. The towncentre is no place for skateboards, Cwmbran is not Hill Valley! Marty McFly is not going to be seen clinging to the back of the X23 around the one way system. Keep extreme sports from our towncentres. You pray that young people enbrace some kind of physical exertion, that they might desire to remove their gaze from some sort of screened device just for one second and when they finally do they choose to do it between the bank and Starbucks threatening at every point to send you on your arse. They don't spend any money because they have no money and when they do all they do is pester adults to buy booze and fags for them so that will be eradicated with this new move. Go to the park, go to a sports field, go to I don't know....um...THE SKATE PARK! Hang around with other similarly threatening, pore blocked, black hoodied emo weirdos and leave the rest of us to shop without anxiety. I thought being down with the kids meant understanding them not sharing the same mental health issues.

 

My major bug bear is when town is full of jobless wonders wondering into town spending their free money on things I might want to buy and just smelling and getting in the way. I understand that they might need to sell all their possessions to the evil man in cash generator for 30p. Cash generator is brilliant! I'd love to have seen the goverment try to make some money to pay of the national defecit selling things in cash generator, "I can give you £40 pounds health minister for this 2009 MRI Scanner and you can buy it back for £54 in the next 28 days." Brilliant! Sorry, became distracted. If you have no job how have you got so much money to spend? You have all the time in the world in the midweek. O.k so you've got to keep coming up with reasons why you can't work and that must be difficult surely if you applied yourself in the same way you'd end up with a job in government. Lowering your golf handicap must also take up quite alot of time and watching Jeremy Kyle is fairly time consuming but I'm sure ITV4 could put an omnibus on on a weekend and you all set to see your relatives and intelectual equals at their best! The town centres would be a wonderful place for people who have to work all week to use without struggling to find a parking space and then be impeeded at every turn by people who could have came any other day of their life. The shopping utopia would be born. The weekend was designed so that people who work all week could relax before the hell of Monday arrives, let that be what it's for again.

All we need to do now is get the banks to open when people can actually use them and we'd be sorted, fat chance!

If you can't stand the heat, DON'T GO IN THE HEAT!

The world of competition Sauna, yes people Sauna, is mourning today. The world sauna championships held in Heinola Finland ended in tragedy on Saturday as Russian hopeful Vladimir Ladyzhensky (left) died in the final.

Little did he know when he packed his sports bag that morning with his towel and tiny Speedo swimming trunks that that days spa would be his last. Vladimir, an amateur wrestler by day, collapsed after six minutes of the final with reigning world champion, Timo Kaukonen, also being rescued from the 'Timber Room of Terror'. 1000 stunned spectators, Sauna fans presumably, watched in horror as the two men where worked upon by the emergency services after they had been exposed to searing temperatures reaching 110°C. Ladyzhensky died at the scene whilst Kaukonen is still recovering in hospital. A spokesman for the city of Heinola, where the nationally televised event has been held since 1999, said it would never be staged again. This year 135 male and female competitors from 15 countries took part. Vladimir will be held in high a steam esteem like other great sportsmen and women who have died doing the sport they love.

Is Finland trying to mask it's alarming suicide rates? Are we allowed to do things that are blatantly stupid. If you or I had see this going on at our local gym, or leisure centre for those of you who like to smell poorer peoples sweat, I'd like to think we would stop it before someone gets hurt. Or I think we may have mentioned it in passing to the 19 year old lad in white trainers, navy shorts and red polo shirt who armed with his I.D badge may dispense the nonsensical crowd of steam freaks with a loud blast of his 'I'm the responsible person here because I have this whistle' whistle. What next, The how long can you leave your face over a boiling kettle matchplay brought to you by Tefal or How many fingers can you put in a socket before your heart fails invitational sponsored by Powergen. I know all sport is somewhat pointless as being a Tranmere Rovers supporter I'm reminded of this on a daily basis but this is just mental! This was on television! What are we trying to prove as human beings? I'm the first to believe that if stupid people feel the need to endanger their lives and thus improve the intellectual concentration of the worlds gene pool then fine but this is just wrong, even the haircuts are offensive! Why can't these people volunteer for human drug trials if they plan on potentially damaging themselves and give something back to society and the human race.

This on the same day as Dr.Karen Woo was a number of people killed in Afghanistan. Karen was working with a Christian charity, providing healthcare in remote villages in the north-east of Afghanistan.

Only in America........Thankfully.

Every now and then you hear a story that makes you check that April didn't sneakily dawn upon you during the night. Today was one of those days. A US appeals court has ruled a couple who gave their children Nazi-inspired names should not regain custody, citing the risk of serious injury to them.

Adolf Hitler Campbell, 4, and his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, 3, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, 2, were taken from their New Jersey home in 2009. Michael McIntyre jokes about calling his son Adolf just to see peoples reaction, this couple only went and did it. I mean if you where to call your son Adolf it's inadvisable at best but essentially Adolf is just name. A name of a chap who got a bit gnarly in the 30's and there was some kind of tension, I'm not entirely sure of the whole to-do but that's the basic gist as far as my GCSE education carries me. But to name him Adolf Hitler Campbell, presumably after Alistair Campbell as they thought that just Adolf Hitler on it's own didn't carry enough menace, is clearly taking the biscuit, the barrel and the whole Burton's factory. O.k we accept that some people in the world have extreme right wing views and because we live in a free thinking and democratic nation we allow these people to have a voice so that there insane rantings and racist, homophobic and  anti Semitic beliefs are shown up for what they are......wrong. By not letting them have that voice we drive the problem underground making it more attractive to those unhinged few in society that like a good ethnic cleanse.

The children's parents may be the best Mum and Dad in the whole fatherland world but they have damaged the children having any kind of normal childhood by insisting on calling them these names. How can poor Adolf survive school with a name associated with hatred. Just listening to the register would be haunting. The poor might wouldn't be able to raise his hand to answer a question without people thinking he was making the Nazi salute. If he joined the debating team it might end up like Nuremberg. Then how would he get a date for the prom? He'd be all dressed up in his finest suit, brown presumably, with nowhere to go. What's he going to do for a living when he leaves school? Gas Engineer? Adolf Hitler Campbell, Corgi registered on the side of a van. Doctor? Not really. Politician? Unwise. He's not going to have an easy life because his folks are mental, a bit more mental than all of ours.

 Right I'm of out with my boys, Genghis and Herod, to check out a new oven. (Cooking Oven)

It's all been done.

The world is running out of new ideas. This can be the only explanation for it. The A Team is the latest offering from the people who regurgitated the Karate Kid, Batman, Transformers and the everything else seen on our screens over the last twelve months. As a race we seem to be completely devoid of creating anything truly original, so "I pity the fool" and the gang are rolled out like the emperors new clothes. I mean are these remakes actually any good or are they just available. I understand that you can now add to the experience with special effects, CGI and the like but what's new? What is remaking Karate Kid for apart from making money? No special effects to speak of, you can't tell me you need green screen technology to wax on or wax off. In some cases they have remade films twice in quick succession like The Incredible Hulk. The Eric Bana version was poor but the Edward Norton movie was pointless, you'd just made the film so lets leave it a while hey before we ruin another franchise again. That's the key, lots of these movies are franchises. Franchises give us lots of things, great coffee, flamed grilled burgers, an extra free pizza on a Tuesday but mainly the comfort of knowing what is to come. That's not what i want from my films! It's a film not a meatball maronara sub! If this is the case put on what ever the highest grossing film of all time every week. Walk into your local cinema like you do your local Chinese and see what's on the menu. Talk to your loving partner and decide to have the same as you always have because you know it's nice. "Let's watch Titanic again like last week sweetie, maybe this time the iceberg will float right by."

This wouldn't be made all the more grating if at the start of every film the distributor tells you......Piracy is copyright theft! You wouldn't steal a handbag? No, no i wouldn't but then again I wouldn't steal the whole idea of a film and palm it off as something new.

In the age of the Internet everyone is writing, creating, thinking and formulating all the time. Some of this must be good, obviously most of it is complete bollocks with a big fat wedge of voyeurism but some of it will be good and a little less will be original and brilliant. The original and brilliant is what I want to see not 'Harry Potter and the over exhausted plot' or the possibly terrifying remake of Police Academy.

Embrace the new! Creativity is king! Worst case scenario read a book, there are billions of great books that have yet to be tainted by the evil stain of Hollywood.

Right, I'm off to steal a handbag.....