Chillax

Some time ago on a holiday we were sat at dinner opposite a family with two youngish children. After the meal the father said to the children, " come on now it's time to go and do some chill out". Oh please NO! How can you turn something like chilling out into an activity that you have to go and do. That defeats the whole object of it.

I was reminded of it when I received a text today, after declining an invite to a social gathering, saying "no problems go chillax". For goodness sake, have the morons who think it is clever to use management speak invaded relaxation too.

There is no way that I will go chillax, it is a preposterous word with no place in the language of normal people.

White Christmas

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, as the song goes.
Millions of Christmas cards are sent showing idyllic scenes with snow covered churches, fields and old cottages or Robins sitting on snow covered branches. Isn't it lovely all white and clean.

Then the week before Christmas the UK is hit by a few centimeters of snow, you would think the world was about to end. Everyone starts complaining, schools shut, roads become blocked with crashed cars, rail and air transport systems grind to a halt.

I am dreaming of a White Christmas, so long as it only falls on Christmas morning, after all the essential workers have got in and melts before they need to change shifts.

As more snow is predicted for the North of England and the Met office issues another warning of winter weather perhaps they would like to check the calender, oh look its December in the UK!

Increased Airport Security - AGAIN

Yet again someone decided to blow himself up on a plane, why these people can't stop at home with a can of petrol and a zippo I really don't know.

And, so again "the President" of the USA has ordered increased security at all airports.
OK right, yawn. There are so many problems with that "order" the first being that it is a total waste of time.
I have just been in and out of the county by air and other than taking my kit off there was not much that didn't get searched. As usual I walked through the arch and it went bleep so got the full rub down. Let me assure you the guy searching wasn't shy on where he put his hands either.

The bomber this time apparently moulded explosives to the shape of his body and hid it in his underpants. (sounds like a load of balls to me)

There is one solution, I dare to mentions it at the risk of the power crazed idiots who now run the world actually thinking it a great idea.
Every passenger will have to fly naked, yup, and before you think "Cor yeah, cool views", remember that you could still be sat next to the 25stone 5ft2in woman from Manchester who would normally be in her tracksuit bottoms and lager stained T-shirt. Prior to take off everyone will have a full body x-ray, then to be escorted onto the plane and strapped into their seat by a nude security guard, so that they can not possibly pass you anything.

The seat belt check will be more fun for the flight crew, I have it on good authority it is already know as "the crotch check" and in future it will be more obvious who is well hung and who has just got PETN stuck to their penis.

Silent Night- Holy Night (Never trust on-line translators!)

Over the Christmas period I shall be singing just one carol, it will be silent night, the thing is it will be sung in German and in the company of Germans and Austrians so I thought I would brush up on the German version as there are a few bits that you have to fit the German cleverly into the tune.

Because I had very little to do at the time I thought I would cut and paste the German version into an on-line translator, even I didn't expect the result to be quite so funny.

Try singing the output of the translator next time you sing Silent Night: -

Satisfies night, holy night, Everything sleeps; lonely is awake
High-holy pair only trusted. Holder boy in the curly hair,
Sleep in more heavenly rest! Sleep in more heavenly rest!

Satisfies night, holy night, Herdsmen only kundgemacht
By the angels Halleluja,
It sounds loud from a distance and near:
There Christian, the rescuer is! There Christian, the rescuer is!

Satisfies night, holy night,
God son, o as laughs Lieb' from your divine mouth,
There the saving Stund' strikes us;.
Christian, in your birth! Christian, in your birth!

"Climategate" - Global Cooling

So there we have it, scientist have been fudging the data for years to keep themselves in jobs and provide fodder for the multi billion pound businesses that have sprung up around global warming also allowing governments to have jollies with champers and big dinners at conference after conference to discussing global warming when all along it is most likely that the climate has been cooling for some time.

And what do those who still believe CO2 is warming the planet have to say now, well one was simply demanding that the people who hacked the computers with the truth hidden on be found and prosecuted for the serious crimes they have committed. Yeah OK.

Various professors and others who's jobs will likely evaporate if the truth comes out are saying anything to make it seem that the hackers have lied about what they have found, but having spent some time looking at the data it does seem to be pretty conclusive, we have been being led down the garden path for some time.

I am not one to say I told you so, but hey I did, its all a scam but even if truth prevails I doubt we will see our CO2 based car tax and others refunded anytime soon.

Waste Food

The latest "save the planet" idea of the local council is a waste food collection. If it follows a nearby council it will now purchase thousands of plastic boxes for us all to put the slops in. But hold on, what is waste food, I don't have any?

Supermarkets waste food by the tonne simply because they don't give a stuff about how much they throw away so long as they have covered the profits on what they have sold, but do people really have enough waste food for a collection. I guess some do.

I have seen a little of the TV program where families are throwing away 40-50% of the food they buy, but for goodness sake don't collect it from them, prosecute them for being idiots or make a new law against wasting food. Lets face it with over 300o new laws in the last 10 years another one won't matter will it.

The only waste food we have is meat bones, and the rag and bone man (or woman) went long ago.

Some one has worked out:-
We throw away:
860,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables and salads
870,000 tonnes of drink
500,000 tonnes of fresh fruit
680,000 tonnes of bakery
660,000 tonnes of home made and pre-prepared meals
290,000 tonnes of meat and fish
530,000 tonnes of diary and eggs
190,000 tonnes of cakes and dessertse

67,000 tonnes of confectionery and snacks
An average £480 a year for every household of 2 people and £680 for a family.

That is totally bonkers, and that is an average, so there must be a lot of people like me who don't throw food away thus some are throwing away even more. Crazy!

I look forward to my plastic box, it will come in handy for something I am sure. That is of course if they don't decide to prosecute people who don't put it out each week.

Boy with his finger in the dyke (2009)

I thought it was about time that the well known story by Mary Dodge of the little boy, Hans Brinker, who saved the town by putting his finger in the dyke was updated to the modern day so here goes:

It was a lovely autumn afternoon as Hans Brinker headed off to take fresh cakes that his mother had baked to his blind friend Jansen. Jansen loved visits from Hans, not many people visited the old man these days, with the fear of pedophiles rife old men living on their own, even blind ones, were considered too much of a risk to let children near.

On his way home Hans was walking by the dyke when he heard the sound of running water, that's funny he thought where is that coming from. He look around and found a small hole in the dyke with water spraying out. All children in Holland know how important it is to keep the water out of the town so Hans grabbed his mobile and phoned the police, who in turn contacted the council who then contacted the sub-contractor who sent an email back to the town council.

The following morning the town council opened the email and referred it to the department dealing with dykes who said that it was not a gender issue so forwarded it to the engineers.
This was major, they knew a hole in the dyke was serious so they called in a number of professors who together with super computers began to produce mathematical models of how the hole might look after 1 day, 1 month, 1 year and 10 years.

The professors presented their findings to the people of the town by a series of leaked emails to the press saying how the hole in the dyke could mean the town would be flooded in less than a year and explaining in detail how in the worst case the entire country could be flooded.

The professors were given a grant, began touring the area giving presentations, making videos such as "an inconvenient leak" and building a new dyke change institute.

Meanwhile the day after finding the hole Hans Brinke had told his father who being a builder had mixed up some cement and filled the hole. The professors knew nothing about this and continued to work with their computers predicting, forecasting and scaring people until one afternoon a professor was out for a walk when he noticed Hans standing with a friend and pointing at the dyke, "look" he heard him say, "that's where my dad filled the hole I found".

The professor pondered then headed back to his office and began another run of his model.

So who is the statue at the top, that's Hans a statue was erected to him in 1950 to please the tourists who thought the story was true and expected to see something about it.