Simple solution

Ms Gillian Gibbons is currently on trial in Sudan for Inciting Religious Hatred or some similar bollocks trumped up charge. Apart from the outrage of arresting someone for something so trivial (and yes, to all Muslims, this is trivial) it just goes to show just how far behind us some of these 3^rd world tin pot countries are.

As a dyed in the wool socialist who believes in a fairer society that looks after those that can’t, and should ignore those that won’t, I find events like this test my in-built abhorrence of racial or religious intolerance. In fact my intolerance of all religions, with the exception maybe of the “harm no-one or nothing” Buddhist type ones, is growing all the time. Radical Christianity is as bad as Fundamental Islam any day of the week. It’s actually heartening to see the Muslim community in this country actually show some balls and condemn this petty and vindictive act.

So, no wishy washy, do goody, slapped wrist type actions from me. If I was Mr G. Brown Esq of 10, Downing Street the simple solution would be this – if this woman is not released with free pardon and allowed to come back home we will cut off all financial aid and supplies to Sudan, and we will stop all UK business with or in Sudan with immediate effect. The diplomats will be thrown out of the UK, no more refugees or immigrants will be accepted and any Sudanese person found in this country illegally will be deported without any leave to appeal on the same day.

Yes, the poor starving people of Darfur might suffer even more but the Sudanese will have bought this on themselves. Go on, disagree with me….

Later, Grocerjack

How to install a Dishwasher

Yep, it arrived on its due date so here are my friendly instructions on how to install a semi-integrated dishwasher.

1.) Welcome delivery drivers but be prepared for surly misery guts with one thing on their mind – to drop the dishwasher into the house at the nearest point of entry. (2 mins)

2.) Remain calm when they refuse to take the old one away despite you having paid £13 for this privilege. (5 mins)

3.) Put on your best aggrieved customer voice in order to persuade delivery miseries to place dishwasher in kitchen where it will be installed.(3 mins)

4.) Remove the rest of packing they were supposed to take wit them (10 mins)

5.) Check all the bits are there (5 mins)

6.) Work out what the one extra item is that isn’t listed in any documentation after you’ve found the English section of the 3 different manuals (5 mins)

7.) Place dishwasher in front of the space where it will go. (5 mins)

8.) Run power lead to socket and attach mains hose (5 mins)

9.) Run waste pipe into relevant waste pipe. (1 min)

10.) Prepare to fit furniture door (5 mins, loo break)

11.) Read instructions on how to fit door (20 mins)

12.) Make cup of tea and calm down – read instructions again because they are about as much good as Athletes Foot powder to Heather Mills (20 mins)

13.) After 30 minutes work out how to fit door for yourself as instructions might as well be written in Cantonese and drawn by Picasso. (30 mins)

14.) Swoon as it appears to fit first time and the holes you drilled were perfect. (10 mins)

15.) Slide dishwasher into position (5 mins)

16.) Open door and then work out why the kickboard under sink units immediately pops out.(1 min)

17.) Sigh and swear when you work out that door spacers should have been removed. Check documentation to find out there is no reference to them anywhere. (10 mins)

18.) Remove dishwasher and the door (5 mins)

19.) Remove stupid fucking spacers that shouldn’t have been there anyway and seem to serve no useful purpose other than to piss you off. (5 mins)

20.) Mark and drill new holes in fucking door (5 mins)

21.) Fit the fucking door (10 mins)

22.) Re-mark and re-drill holes to rectify stupid DIY fuckwit basic error you made (5 mins)

23.) Fit door and lose temper when screws won’t go into the allegedly WOODEN furniture door (15 mins)

24.) Try and remove screws that have now had the head sheared away by powered screwdriver (15 mins)

25.) Go and get proper drill with proper drill bit (5 mins)

26.) Scream when drill bit breaks in door (5 mins)

27.) Mark and drill new holes in door using new drill bit (5 mins)

28.) Find new equivalent screws in box you have containing hundreds of assorted screws (10 mins)

29.) What’s this fucking door made of? Diamond?

30.) Re-fit door and attach using near-enough screws (10 mins)

31.) Re-attach mains and hose. (2 mins)

32.) Switch water on at hose connection (1 min)

33.) Run and get bucket to catch water pissing from connection (10 mins – bucket will be hidden away)

34.) Ring LittleSis and beg for plumbers tape. (2 mins)

35.) Switch off water and wait (20 mins)

36.) Sigh with relief when LittleSis arrives with plumbers tape.

37.) Remove hose and put tape around connection (2 mins)

38.) Switch water back on

39.) Drive to shops to get dishwasher salt and rinse aid of which you have run out (15mins)

40.) Add salt and rinse aid (2 mins)

41.) Load with 2 days of washing up no-one could be arsed to do because they knew the new dishwasher was coming (5 mins)

42.) Decide to do in 2 sessions as there is so much washing up on side

43.) Select program and press “play” button (1 min).

44.) Stand back with LittleSis and scratch chin when nothing happens (2 mins)

45.) Select another program and try again (1 min)

46.) Start sweating and worrying that the whole thing is a duffer and a waste of £360 (2 mins)

47.) RTFM * (2 mins)

48.) Press and HOLD the “play” button for 3 seconds.

49.) Hey presto, one fully working and installed dishwasher!

50.) Find spare item with no apparent use and discover in manual that it’s a hard water filter for mains hose (5 mins)

51.) Resolve to fit that another time

52.) Go to pub and drink excessive amounts of Guinness to alleviate stress of doing all this.

53.) Wait 48 hours until you have hangover from Saturday session

54.) Go back next day and fit filter and re-tape connection to water (10 mins)

Easy huh?

Later Grocerjack

*RTFM = Read the fucking manual

Bodysnatchers?

And Lo! The Call Cometh to Him! Yesterday I attended my Band F "Development" Centre. Yep, thats right, identified as a potential Band F within The Company having only worked there 15 years, the first stage of my "transformation" from tall, witty, slim, good looking, sensitive, caring and humble (only 2 of those are true!) GrocerJack , through the "Stepfordisation" process into a complete replica of myself, minus any of the personality or attributes that make me who I am, has apparently started.

The interesting thing is the use of the word "Development" . For most of us the dictionary definition has stood the test of time pretty well...

Development : the act or process of developing; growth; progress: child development; economic development

In The Company's Official Management Gobbledygook Bollocks Talk Dictionary the word "Development" actually means "Assessment".

Assessment : the act of assessing; appraisal; evaluation.

As can be clearly seen these mean different things, so the current F band Club probably had a bright young thing, freshly scrubbed from Uni who thought "why not change the meaning so that people who are stupid won't understand what is actually going on?" Yeah, OK I understand how business works, but the very nature of the 4 of us on this event means we're not stupid, so we knew what was going on, so why not just call it what it is? A chance for the hunters to size up the prey before the kill. A chance for the mad scientists to see what they're cloning. They are demi-gods ready to turn us into their own image. For them this is fun and they get to play the part of God's with omnipotent power over whether we live or die (in the metaphorical career sense one hopes).

And you know what? The damn thing is I would sell my soul for the extra money and benefits. Yes, I am suffering from yet another bout of Hypocrititis! The day itself was the usual mix of a group activity, a competency based interview and a bit of role play. All the usual stuff which is quite fun. Apparently we will get feedback which act as an "enabler" for us to recognise and act upon our developmental areas (or weaknesses as we used to know them).

I have now gone past caring to be honest, a bit like Red in Shawshank Redemption when going to his parole hearing for the 20th time...

SHAWSHANK PAROLE HEARINGS ROOM - (1967)

Red enters, sits. 20 years older than when we first saw him.

      MAN #1
 Your file says you've served forty
 years of a life sentence. You feel
 you've been rehabilitated?

Red doesn't answer. Just stares off. Seconds tick by. The
parole board exchanges glances. Somebody clears his throat.

      MAN #1
 Shall I repeat the question?

      RED
 I heard you. Rehabilitated. Let's
 see now. You know, come to think of
 it, I have no idea what that means.

      MAN #2
 Well, it means you're ready to
 rejoin society as a--

      RED
 I know what you think it means. Me,
 I think it's a made-up word, a poli-
 tician's word. A word so young fellas
 like you can wear a suit and tie and
 have a job. What do you really want
 to know? Am I sorry for what I did?

      MAN #2
 Well...are you?

      RED
 Not a day goes by I don't feel
 regret, and not because I'm in here
 or because you think I should. I
 look back on myself the way I
 was...stupid kid who did that
 terrible crime...wish I could talk
 sense to him. Tell him how things
 are. But I can't. That kid's long
 gone, this old man is all that's
 left, and I have to live with that.
  (beat)
 "Rehabilitated?" That's a bullshit
 word, so you just go on ahead and
 stamp that form there, sonny, and
 stop wasting my damn time. Truth
 is, I don't give a shit.

The parole board just stares. Red sits drumming his fingers.

CLOSEUP -- PAROLE FORM

A big rubber stamp SLAMS down -- and lifts away to reveal the
word "APPROVED" in red ink.

Like red I feel I've been through this "Development" every year and still never got anywhere near the door. Maybe , just maybe if I really don't give a shit then something might happen? But I won't hold my breath.

Later, the original Grocerjack

Scousers won’t like this, it’s a bit of a knock to their pride I guess. Aren’t you sick of hearing the people and officials of Liverpool harping on about the community spirit of the City. Whenever a news item comes on about Liverpool it will always be accompanied by some local dignitary or hack ready to spout on about the wonderful community spirit that ties unifies the city and sets it aside from anywhere else in the UK. It doesn’t seem to happen in London, Birmingham or Manchester possibly because of the sheer size and population diversity within them. The major Scottish cities seem tied together more by Scottish Pride or Nationalism than the individual City behavioural traits so rarely do you hear the same level of bleating about community from them – the football and sectarian rivalry displays this adequately.

Why this “attack” on Liverpool…well it doesn’t seem that long ago that the Bishop of Liverpool was holding a memorial service for Rhys Jones, the 11 year old boy shot dead in a pub car park as he walked home from football practice. This poor lad was murdered in August of this year, his family devastated by the loss of such a young person. And yet….have the police discovered the killer yet? Has anyone come forward and given them a name? Has any parent

come forward to name their child or their friends child, other relatives child as the killer? Someone somewhere is hiding this information, someone close to the killer, someone in the killer’s gang or family knows who pulled the trigger.

And yet, displaying the full depth and breadth of the “community” spirit in Liverpool, no-one has been named or convicted yet. A family still grieves, their son torn from them and yet the great unified City of Liverpool still hasn’t given up the killer. Some are even intimidated by the gang threats if they inform the police.

Fucking cowards the lot of them.

If any of my children or my relatives kids did such a thing I would not hesitate to hand them over and let justice takes its toll.

All the fuss over the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor finally identified the killers despite police cover ups and cock ups. In Stephen Lawrence’s case the killers are well known but through legal loopholes walked away free…..no-one doubts they did the killing though. In Damilola Taylor’s case a conviction was secured against two brothers in 2006.

Surely someone, somewhere in Liverpool has the balls to finally nail the bastard who killed Rhys Jones. Until they do, they should really keep quiet about the so-called unity and spirit of their now shamed city.

Later Grocerjack

Could it happen today?

Driving back from the dump yesterday ('tis a glamourous life indeed) I tuned into the local radio station - original 106 - which if nothing else is a brave attempt to provide an alternative to the homogenised, safe pap that constitutes local radio today (see posts passim). As good fortune would have it they were playing a Rolling Stones song, but not for them the normal Jumping Jack Flash/Satisfaction/Start Me Up safe bets. Nope, they were playing the classic Stones blues-fest that is Little Red Rooster. The song just oozed sleaze and atmosphere. In fact I was momentarily transported to a seedy little blues bar in the Deep South as it played.

This sort of music can only be played live in a small, smoke filled, crowded bar, with people standing shoulder to shoulder or sitting too many at tiny little tables with a stage only a few feet away where you can talk to the band between numbers. It's the implicit sleaze that makes it work, the feeling of being somewhere underground, somewhere that's bad for you yet has that irresistible pull and most of all is bursting with atmosphere.

Today, non-smoking pubs and bars may have all the advantages of being cleaner, healthier places to eat and drink, but they lack soul, spirit and atmosphere. They will never be able to create an atmosphere whereby a band can play Little Red Rooster and make it feel like something that moves the soul.

Later, Grocerjack

The Magic of The Internet

Internet shopping has transformed the way we buy everything from food to electrical goods to second hand stuff to illegal stuff. It's driven down prices and forced the incumbent high street retailers to up their game. No question, it's really delivered value and choice.

Or has it?

Last week, in a couple of disastrous months the cherry on the icing on the cake was the diagnosis that our less than 4 year old dishwasher had suffered a massive internal failure and that repair was out of the question. That's the society we live in now. We throw things away and don't get them repaired because the items are so bloody cheap that the time and materials required to fix them would be more than buying something new. It's a different economic model to the everything that went before.

The first thing I did was use Google to search for some decent sites that would sell me a 60cm semi-integrated dishwasher on-line. The results of the search are a strange mixture of "shopping intelligence" sites and on-line retailers with names like Appliance City, Appliance Planet and Appliance Universe. Some well known names appear their as well, such as John Lewis, B&Q (Appliance Warehouse!), Boots, Tesco's and Sainsbury's. I tend to use either Ciao or Kelkoo as my intelligence sites to get the lowest price available, and so after doing some research I came up with the perfect model by German giants Bosch. I ordered one on-line from Sussex Appliances Online and duly gave my credit card details over and printed my receipt. Within 10 minutes a very jolly chap rang to thank me for the order but also to inform me that they didn't actually carry any stock and that Bosch had none of that model in the UK. None were expected until mid to late December. Hmmm....Christmas with nigh on 20 people for dinner and NO dishwasher? Not fucking likely. I thanked him and searched again. This time Empire Direct came up with the goods. A day later I get a phone call telling me the same thing. Order attempt number 2 cancelled then. Never mind, I'll try Appliance City, again no luck. I gave up on Bosch at that point.

Some more research followed and I decided on a Smeg (titter ye not!) model. Good reputation I thought and a good price with a lot if funky (I guess) features for a dishwasher. I ordered one through B&Q Appliance Warehouse from their website repleat with a background indicating a yawning great carbuncle of a warehouse somewhere...a white goods heaven in their eyes no doubt. Within30 minutes back came the call.....that's on back order with the manufacturer and might not be available until mid to late December. By now I'm getting a bit agitated....I have up to £400 to spend and no one wants to take the money in fair exchange, within a reasonable time frame, for a dishwasher to help spare the growing pile of plates and the arguments between me, Hellsbells, Kid and Pie.

I then order from Boot Kitchen Appliances. This seems to go well until the dreaded phone call from a nice Northern girl called Kerry (Katona...moonlighting from Iceland and being a professional mum?). Yep, you've guessed it...no can do Jack. To be fair to Kerry she was armed with some alternatives that were in stock from Electrolux, but they were dearer and the details were confusing and didn't quite ring true (no cutlery basket? surely not...) but at least she tried. I asked her to ring Smeg and get an answer as to when they'd be in the UK so i could decide whether to chance delivery before Christmas. The lovely Kerry agreed and said she'd call me on Tuesday.

After that call I decided to call Sainsbury's Kitchen Appliances before ordering to check if they had any stock ......an attempt to be proactive at last. A very nice northern girl called Kerry answered the phone and.........do you see what's happened here? Kerry works for Boots and Sainsburys! And probably all of the others I tried to order from. It didn't take long to see what had happened here...all of the top searches from Google and within Kelkoo and Ciao are for household name companies who back off the supply of the appliance to a company called DRL Ltd. DRL operate a fuck off great big warehouse in Bolton and supply that service to the names you and I know. They also supply the "sales" and "customer support" staff who with chameleon like stealth can change their employer to whoever they want depending on what number you ring. So, if B&Q ain't got it, then Boots won't. Neither will Sainsbury's, nor Tesco's probably.

You think you're being provided with choice, when in fact your new vaccum cleaner or washing machine is all coming from Bolton.

And the lovely Kerry will be whoever you want her to be.

There are other choices of course, but look into the T's and C's and you'll discover that quite a few are fronts for a single out of sight operating company. Trade Appliances Ltd operate under 5 or 6 different names so that depending on which search engine you use they increase the chance you'll use one of the front flash named gateways to get to them. If this was the world of TV, there'd be scandal in the tabloids at such a .....well "con" is too strong a word....but it is a smoke and mirrors device to deceive the ordinary punter.

Kerry did ring me back, and very sweetly said that Smeg had changed the code of the product and it was in stock. It's due next Friday, thank fuck. Unless of course , and knowing my luck, they've shipped the wrong thing and the code was right!

Later, ConsumerChamp Jack.

Ooops

I forgot my Friday Crap Jokes

Boxers don't have sex before a fight. Know why that is?
They don't fancy each other.

I hate those emails where they try to sell you penis enhancers. I got 10 just the other day.
Eight of them from my girlfriend.
It's the two from my mum that really hurt.

The dodo died. Then Dodi died, Di died and Dando died... Dido must be shitting herself.

My parents are from East London which means they're incredibly hard, but I was never smacked as a child ... well maybe one or two grams to get me to sleep at night...

The doorbell and when I answered there was a 6ft beetle there. it smacked me in the mouth and called me a wanker.
Apparently there's a nasty bug going round.

Groaning, Grocerjack

Everything is Fucked

Nothing ever rocks and nothing ever rolls and Nothing’s ever worth the cost!

So said former fat bastard Meat Loaf on his epic ditty, Bat Out Of Hell. I struggled with that lyric for a while but now I think I know what he was getting at. The truth is that anything gadget-like or labour saving that you buy provides a mere few minutes of unbridled joy before it gets discarded through boredom, or no-one uses it, or because the damn thing doesn’t quite do everything it promised, or is too hard to use, or you decide that it’s raison d’etre was never something you really needed anyway. One thing for sure, it’ll break down and your hard earned cash might as well have been shoved in the washing machine until it becomes a pulpy unusable mush.

Why am I even discussing this? Well, it seems to me that fate is playing some cruel tricks on me at the moment. In the last 2 months, precisely 5 months after converting from my comparatively cheap interest only mortgage to a hideously expensive repayment one, we have seen mechanical failure on household appliances ona an unprecedented scale, forcing me to uncover capital investment funds in order to keep the operational business of daily life on track.

1.) The vacuum cleaner packed up earlier this year. After 4 years of tackling the crap left behind by Kid and Pie, plus all the other members of the Brood, it decided it wanted to die and hence committed vacuum cleaner suicide. Of course, to me it was just fucked. We got by because we either didn’t bother cleaning the carpet or borrowed and hid LittleSis’s cleaner. It was no good, she found it and she demanded it back and we ended buying a new one – cost £130

2.) The Fan Oven enter the world of The Fucked when it decided to finally give up, extending cooking times for oven chips (as an example) from 20 minutes (crispy) out to a week or so. Replaced – cost £400 plus £50 for the install.

3.) The Shower – the only one in the house is in the en-suite and is a gravity fed shower. It’s had the cartridge replaced once about 3 years ago but this time it’s gone and I couldn’t face just a refurbished one. It gets used around 4 times a day and so like anything that heavily used it also became fucked. New integral power shower purchased – cost £275 plus somewhere in the region of £180 for the plumber to install and cable it up. Plus a new one in the main bathroom for Kid and Pie to abuse to their hearts content.

4.) The Shower Cubicle for fucks sake – the “bi-fold” door is held together in the middle by two plastic lugs secured to one half of the door with a screw and the other by virtue of the lug being inserted into the tubular spine. Yep, one broke a few weeks back and now the others gone. Can you buy a new door on it’s own? Yeah…..you guessed it….can you fuck! Unless the superglue works then that’s another £300 needed, plus the cost of install unless it’s so fucking ridiculously easy even a DIY fuckwit like me can do it.

5.) The final insult? I fucking hope so. Yesterday HellsBells came back from lunch to find the dishwasher still going. It had been put on a wash cycle by me at 07:00. She discovered it at 4 in the afternoon. Now, I all in favour of dedication to the task…but 9 hours to wash one load…and still it was going. Yep, it’s fucked and to add insult to injury we have a “semi-integrated” one…..functionally the same as a normal free standing one, but apparently the biggest difference between them is…the fucking cost. Another £350 for me to find.

I am almost scared to go home in case the front door falls off it’s fucking hinges.

Have a good weekend, Later Grocerjack

Bad ratio

What arslikhan goody-two-shoes fool determined that 5 days at work and 2 for rest was a good ratio.

Wouldn't 4 days at work, 3 days off have been a fairer ratio?

Here-in starts a campaign. 3 Day weekends for all, except for lousy benefit sponging loafers who live off my taxes. They should be forced into community work like cleaning street, painting houses or tidying up parks.

Rant over.

Later, Grocerjack

The Ministry of Crap Design

Yes, the Ministry of Crap Design is alive and kicking in Jack's world. Two examples hit me today. The first relates to a new power shower I'm having fitted to replace the old gravity fed mixer one that shuffled off the the shower heaven in the sky under the duress of 4 showers a day since Kid and Pie discovered the delights of showering instead of bathing.

To put the new one one I had to remove some tiles from MY FULLY TILED bathroom. i'd hoped they might come off in one piece, but no, the tiler was a real fucking professional and these were tiled for life. Hence from 12 only 3 survived. What's this got to do with the Ministry? Well, the tiles I removed were a nice 8" by 6" (" = inches in case anyone under 25 is reading). However since they were attached it seems a new law prohibiting the sale of this size has been passed. Now you can get 10x8, 6x6, 4x4, 8x4,6x4, 12x10, 12x8 and any other combination...except for the apparently unconstitutional 8x6. Marvellous. Thanks to this I've had to buy some at 6x6 which of course means I needed a tile cutter because it doesn't fill the same rectangle and my ham-fisted DIY capabilities will stretched to the full. Life really is just a fucking trial isn't it?

The second example is from a bed we had arranged to be collected by, get this....a Rag and Bone man. Yes, they do still exist. He will collect your rubbish and tale it away for nothing! Free! Fuck All! Zilch. In this day and age in a culture of disposability this is a bloody godsend.

He duly arrived and I decided to help him dismantle this old metal bunk bed. Of course The Ministry had been involved at it's construction, which means that they got rid of those stupid old "screws" and replaced them with bolts that can only undone with a fucking Allen key? What a shit invention that is anyway! I hate the bastard bloody things. Awakward, ineffective, slow and cruel to fingers. If it had been held together with screws then me and my electric screwdriver would have had the thing dismantled in 5 minutes, but no, because it was Allen keys it took 2 of us over a fucking hour to dismantle the thing. Luckily, R&B Man still took it for nothing, which was nice as he'd lost an hour and a bit of his day.

I hate designers, they just don't think about anyone but themselves and their inflated ego's.

Later, Grocerjack

Cornucopia

Just a few comments before a weekend of Guinness, Golf and Cycling. And who knows, with any luck I might even get a bit of rest. I believe that there is rest for the wicked you see.

World of Sport

Fernando Alonso moves away from McLaren and Lewis Carl Hamilton (anagram….Car Wealth? Millions) decides that he’s too popular to live in the UK. When I was a kid we called this “car racing” and in those days it was all about dashing, devil-may-care heroes laying their lives on the line in the pursuit of sheer speed and the glory of being the champion driver. Nowadays it’s a dull procession of overpaid pampered primadonna’s in a “sport” ruled by the richest teams who can simply buy the best or develop the best, and governed by a corrupt body of stuffy old farts that are completely out of touch with the fan base and the soul of the sport.

Much like football I suppose.

Celebrity Special

Richard and Judy are quitting their Channel 4 TV show and I think the world of daytime TV will a poorer place for this. I know he can be an irritating and arrogant know all, but there are times when he has handled sensitive subjects with real sensitivity. Judy has always seemed to show great respect for people and admiration for what they have to say. I can’t help but like them. Their original show, This Morning, changed the face of morning daytime TV by creating a successful and popular magazine format and has consistently beaten any opposition from the Beeb or anyone else. It’s a testament to what they created that Phil Schofield and the gorgeous (my guilty secret) Fern Britton have continued that success by imposing their own personalities without really changing the format. Call me a cynic, but Richard has stuck with Judy through a time in her life when ill-health has ravaged her looks and figure, and occasionally her mood. In the shallow world of the TV celeb it’s obvious he would have been presented with plenty of “away-days” but, as far as we know, he has never been tempted.

Or never been caught.

Travel News

A new car share starts for me on Monday, taking it to 3 of us. The previous one collapsed when the closet sharer gradually decided to go his own way. Frankly he’d been pissing me and The Happy Hammer off for months by continually turning up hideously late and not apologising. He even recruited 2 other young blokes from the area into his team in what now looks like a blatant attempt to create a break away car share.

Or maybe it’s to share some George Michael moments.

Crime Shock

The Met are guilty! Apparently. In a time of heightened stress and fear we all know they fucked up when they shot the illegal Brazilian immigrant Jean Charles De Menezes, and no matter what his status he did not deserve to die. Especially at the hands of an apparently trigger happy bunch of gung-ho coppers. But the truth is they acted in haste and by mistake, a tragic and terrible mistake. But, the fact is shit happens and I’m unconvinced that the police are guilty of anything other than a horrendous error of judgement. A little known fact is that to date their have been 10,000 incidents to which armed police have been called, and guns have been used (firearms discharged in copper-speak) on just 3 occasions. It’s hardly the sign of a police force making its own law is it?

Sir Ian Blair is being pressured to resign, but I’m not sure this is deserved or serves any purpose other than to deliver yet another political scalp and lose more hard earned experience. In fact where this whole culture of resignation came from is the detestable tabloid press and their insatiable hunger for stories to sell newsprint and to show off their political clout. Why not give someone the chance to remedy the error of their ways, to put right what was wrong? What happened to the culture of forgiveness and redemption our so called Christian society was built on?

Friday Rubbish Jokes

Q. What tells you a spider is modern?

A. It has a web-site (groan)

Batman came up[ to me the other day and he hit me over the head with a Ming Vase and he went “T’Pau!!”
I said, don’t you mean “Kapow!”
And he said “No, I’ve got China in my hand”

I was reading this book the other day called The History of Glue. I couldn’t put it down.

I fancied a game of darts with my mate. he said "Nearest the bull goes first"

He went "Baa" and I went "Moo". He said "Your closest"

And finally

I've no problem with buying tampons, after all I'm a modern man.

But apparently they're not a real present.

have a good weekend

Later, Grocerjack