I read an unbelievable story at the weekend in a magazine about a guy who had been dumped by his girlfriend, and had sued her - AND WON - for £6000 that he claimed he had spent on her during their relationship.
They didn't live together or have any children, they were just boyfriend and girlfriend. He got clingy, she backed off, they ended up finishing and she met someone else and was happy. He started emailing her saying how he'd done this and that for her and bought her this and that, and how he thought she should pay him back.
To get rid of him she casually emailed back "yes ok sure" - big mistake. This guy was a partner in a law firm and used her reply as evidence of an agreement to repay all costs - AND HE WON HIS CASE!!
The girl had to pay £3000 legal fees plus £6000 back to this guy, who obviously couldn't deal with being dumped, so used this a BIG revenge.
I was talking with my mate at the weekend and we both agreed that dating as a whole is shifting and changing SO much that soon you will need a written contract just to meet a guy for a drink in a bar!
"Hi how are you"
"Great thanks, good to meet you again"
"Here, I bought you some flowers"
"Oh I can't accept them just in case you sue me for the cost should I choose not to see you anymore. Can you just sign this contract that we will go 50/50 on all drinks costs tonight??"
AHH ROMANCE!
My friend goes on a lot of internet dating sites and more and more she sees men who, in their profiles of "who do you want to meet", they are asking to meet ONLY financially independent women with their own property/car, who will be willing to split all date costs down the middle". She's talked about men who have been fleeced so many times by different women who date them for a few weeks, extract free posh meals, clothes and gifts from them, then walk off and leave them when the next cash cow comes along.
It's no wonder that more people are choosing to live alone, fewer people are getting married, fewer marriages are lasting, and more and more people are choosing to be independent, and just have a few flings here and there to satisfy their needs. It seems safer!! If you can be sued for just allowing a man to buy you a gift then what hope is there??? You can lose your house if you split with a partner, you can lose half your income to them - I mean is it worth it any more?
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sued for chocolates and flowers?!!!
Fat Kids
Social Services should get a kicking for allowing her to keep her son. I'm presuming they will be watching her closely and putting her on a full dietary re-education programme, not to mention telling her to be more disciplined with her son, who screams and whines and nags if he doesn't get the junk food he craves.
I see so many fat toddlers waddling along with their parents nowadays and I marvel at the apparent blindness of the parents. Surely they SEE their children are already overweight, they can't put it down to "puppy fat" and just presume it will "burn off" (how can it burn off when all they do is watch telly and play video games). Many of the parents are overweight themselves and don't even watch their own diets. Lots of babies today are bottle fed, to me a heinous crime, for a mother's milk is of the utmost importance for immune and nutritious reasons. Tests have proved that powdered-milk bottle fed babies have obesity problems as young kids.
14 stone Sam's mother has tried padlocking the kitchen door, but Sam "tears the house apart" looking for the key, throws tantrums, and screams until she gets her own way. She eats 500g bars of Galaxy on the way home and says "I know I'm addicted to it but it's so creamy and yummy that I can't stop eating it. I love it." She is a sugar-addicted Pot-Noodle eating addict, and I think this is the tip of the iceberg with so many kids in the UK today.
All her pocket money is spent on sweets - why her mum has simply stopped giving her pocket money I'll never know.....Why she still BUYS the junky food and puts it in the house, I'll never know. Just buy healthy stuff and don't have anything junky in the kitchen!! And more importantly, learn to deal with the tantrums and screaming of a spoiled child in the grips of sugar withdrawal. Seek medical help, go on a diet yourself and make your child join you, take her to a fat camp, do SOMETHING!!!!!!!!
Unfortunately the mum is probably only doing what she KNOWS - if HER parents fed her similar rubbish then she knows no better herself, and the bad eating habits get passed on through the generations. I used to fry everything in LARD and didn't know any better, until I found out otherwise.
I don't believe for one minute that these parents can claim utter ignorance as to what is good for their children. EVERYONE knows that fruit and veg are better than sugar and Pot Noodles, EVERYONE knows there are cookery classes, nutrition classes, and books to help you understand more about healthy eating and living. Connor's mum had previously complained that Social Services were to blame for her obese child, because "they didn't intervene earlier". Oh, and you DID???? Why is it always someone ELSE'S fault?????
Nothing is mentioned about whether these kids do any exercise, but I'm doubting it. The size of their mums I'm guessing they don't go for walks in the park or bike rides. Connor has already broken half a dozen bikes and a few chairs.
I dread what state this country is going to be in when I'm an old woman and may need the NHS and some medical care. I fear that by then, the NHS will have collapsed under the (literal) weight of fat people - today's fat toddlers - who will be plagued with medical problems all their lives, at what financial cost to the rest of us. I fully agree with the MP who, a while ago, said that overweight people who make no effort to LOSE weight, should not be prioritised for operations and healthcare. Maybe such a rule would force them to take some action.
Men & Women are NOT meant to be compatible
Found this article on the Daily Mail website, never a truer word spoken.....
==================================
We exist in two different time zones. Men want to be happy right now, today, preferably in the company of a beautiful woman. Tomorrow can wait.
Women, on the other hand, are constantly concerned with the future, and with their prospects financially, emotionally and sexually.
The reason, I believe, is that we are fundamentally selfish beings, only really interested in ourselves.
Some people claim to be lovingly entwined with their partners. They're deluded or lying. I'm in my mid-30s and have met no such couple.
I've known couples of all races and ages, some of them in arranged marriages - all of them simmering with tension and dissonance. [Yes, same here]
I've never met a couple I've envied. I don't feel sad admitting this. I feel liberated. I no longer cling to the myth that relationships create happiness, and I don't feel guilty or alone when feeling dissatisfied in my marriage. [Exactly my sentiments!!]
Everyone else feels this, whether they admit it or not.
Men and women speak two different tongues. We can barely even get to know each other, let alone make each other happy.
Women are pathological worriers, especially the intelligent and successful ones.
I remember how, at university, the brightest girls were the most meticulous notetakers during lectures, while the boys slouched through them half-asleep.
Women can't trust their abilities and go with the flow. Even the most capable ones are riddled with doubts and desperate for security.
And that means security for the future: are they going to meet a nice man they can take home to meet their mother? Are they going to have a nice house with a conservatory at the back?
Women think and think about their lives, they plan and scheme and imagine how things might go with Mike or Sam or Joe. Who would be the best husband, the best father, the best lover? Which would have the best pension plan?
Meanwhile Mike and Sam and Joe are probably just thinking about whether the woman in question will sleep with them tonight, and who is going to win the Champions League this summer.
I remember when I proposed to my wife. We were lying in our hotel bed, on holiday in Thailand. We'd been living together for six months and my wife was now pestering me to find out where our relationship was 'going'.
I had no idea where we were 'going', and it was late and I was tired. I told her that if we were still together in a year's time I'd marry her. Then I went to sleep. Romantic, huh?
My answer was a reasonable response to her demands to know what the future held. It was rational to think that after we'd been together for 18 months that marriage was a logical continuation.
The topic wasn't discussed again for over a year, until I came across an envelope in her desk drawer.
It held the booking receipt for the country house she'd gone out on her own and hired for the wedding. Though I hadn't been informed of this, I wasn't upset. I had, after all, proposed to her. [My mum did this to my dad - when he was at sea in the Merchant Navy and after they'd been engaged for YEARS, she booked the church and sent him a letter saying he had to be there or it was over....he duly turned up!]
Women generally drive the direction of relationships, partly because most men are happy just to be laissez-faire, but also because women are natural control freaks, simply because they have an inbuilt paranoia that their lives are going to go horribly awry.
For example, no intelligent man spontaneously asks a woman to marry him. She will let him know well in advance via hints, leading questions and outright nagging that she wants to get hitched.
She might squeal with mock surprise when he offers that ring, but she'll have been nudging him to do it for months if not years.
One man I know proposed on one knee to his long-term girlfriend in their room at a country house hotel. Even as he began his spiel, she began shaking her head violently.
In the end, she had to tell him this was not the kind of place she'd always imagined would be the setting for her proposal. Only a windswept hillside would do. She, you see, had been planning for this moment in her mind for years. [OMG I can't believe the cheek of the daft bint....]
Similarly, men become fathers having never really thought about it. In my experience, they are often swayed by the desires of their partners.
Very few women get pregnant by accident; they generally know exactly what they're doing. The fathers I know have admitted to being crestfallen when a girlfriend first told them she was pregnant. It was a shock end to their independence they'd never properly contemplated.
But they feigned jubilation and made the usual offers of support.
It generally takes the arrival of an unplanned child for a man to start scrupulously practising safe sex.
One of the ironies of this gulf between the mindset and aspirations of the sexes is that a woman's cloying need for certainty often drives men to be unfaithful.
The oppressive intimacy they force onto a relationship - always wanting reassurance, and always wanting to know what he is thinking and feeling - has the effect of making him seek a cheap ego boost elsewhere.
Men cheat to re-establish their sense of independence, to carve themselves a brief space with someone else that doesn't involve their partner.
My own adulteries - which occurred a couple of years ago on a long trip abroad - were driven by the need to escape the overbearing intimacy of married life.
Women will hate me for doing this and not being coy when admitting it. But I know very few men who've been faithful to their partner. The only men I've discussed sex honestly with who've never strayed are both gay.
I'm not the greatest husband material going, but it hasn't cured my wife's compulsion to seek permanence with me. After she uncovered my misbehaviour we separated briefly, but got back together and decided to make a fresh start in a new house. I had nothing to contribute to the deposit and my wife arranged the mortgage, yet she insisted that I sign the deeds. I didn't feel remotely entitled to it and explicitly told her many times. But signing was her pre-condition for continuing our relationship.
I guess she felt it would be a clear sign of commitment from me, and also put me in debt to her morally. I, naturally, did not analyse this event in terms of a long-term emotional power struggle the way a woman would. I simply noted that my infidelities had resulted in making me the co-owner of a fourstorey Georgian town house.
Figure that out.
The only reason I can give for why my wife hangs onto me is sex. She fancies me. That's it. Within the emotional turmoil of the female mind is the primal force of sex. Though they waffle about their need for empathy and sensitivity, women are actually far more libidinous than men.
God created sex for them. He gave them a body that is one big erogenous zone, and a taste for myriad erotic nuances. Male sexuality is blunt and lumpen: no man is aroused by the thought of warm breath against his neck. [Beg to differ there....] But a woman's body is made for sex. The female orgasm makes the male climax seem a pathetic nonevent by comparison, and is proof that women enjoy sex far more than men do.
In my early and mid-20s, I had a series of liaisons with older women (one of which developed into the marriage I'm in now.
I was then penniless, and had no status and nothing noteworthy to say.
Yet accomplished and intelligent women in their 30s and 40s happily took me to bed. I knew then that women, like men, are driven by narrow, selfish agendas, be it the desire for security, money, or a healthy young body. Having sex with those women, I'd watch them lose themselves in the animal intensity of it, becoming oblivious to my presence. I was nothing. They said they liked me because I was 'sweet' and 'funny', but those qualities would have been meaningless if I wasn't up to scratch in the sack.
I recently had a frank chat with a female friend, and she admitted that women address a man's qualities as though they are scanning his CV with a view to employing him. Above all, they want a man who turns them on.
Failing that they settle (in descending order) for a man's money, his ability to entertain them, and his willingness to do the dishes.
Her words confirmed my belief that men and women are incapable of a genuine spiritual union. We're too dissimilar even to understand each other, let alone combine in harmony, so we just grasp what we can from our relationships.
That's why, when a woman does meet a man who flips her lid sexually, she isn't going to let him go. Men and women are held together by biology, not by love. Love isn't powerful enough to overcome the tremendous contradictions between us. Genetics isn't a recipe for happiness - but then our genes don't exist to make us happy. They exist to keep us alive.
So yes, I believe men and women do exist in different times zones in emotional terms. We find mutual satisfaction in sex, but that aside we must remain strangers.
Stupid-assed rubbish and recycling fines in the UK
Householders will have pay to take rubbish to the tip under the punitive new regime for refuse collection. The charges will be introduced to deter those who try to dodge the impact of strict rubbish quotas at home.
Families will be fined if they exceed a set amount of rubbish they leave outside for the dustman.
But if they try to avoid these charges by driving their domestic refuse to the tip, they will have to pay anyway.
Councils are already preparing to restrict the use of tips because the areas where fortnightly bin collections have been introduced have experienced heavy use and long queues.
A number of local authorities have installed cameras to monitor tips. These can read car number plates and show what kind of refuse householders are leaving.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't believe this. It's almost fucking Orwellian. Numberplate recognition at rubbish tips????? Spying on what rubbish we throw out? I read the other day that some areas will be given 5 BINS to sort their rubbish into. Who has room for 5 bloody bins??
Of COURSE there will be more queues at tips in areas where fortnightly collections are imposed. Your average family with 2/3 kids will get thru a lot of stuff each week. "Oh but you should recycle more!" we are told. But there are still no facilities for certain types of rubbish, eg clear hard plastic that is used to vacuum-wrap toys and electrical products.
The Government really has cottoned on that they can make shitloads of money in taxing us for our rubbish, all under the pretend-condern for "green environmental reasons". BULLSHIT. How much of the £ from these rubbish taxes will get invested in renewable energy sources? Probably none of it.
And people are still banging on about supermarket and carrier bags, and how they are going to "reduce usage within the next 5 years". For fucks sake, when I was at school about 23 years ago, The Body Shop introduced their biodegradable carrier bag, that you could bury in the garden and it would rot. So why, 23 YEARS LATER, haven't all shops gone over to this??? www.biobags.co.uk produce corn-starch based carrier bags that are just as strong as regular ones, but they are 100% compostable. They sell them in palettes of 50,000 bags, WHY AREN'T SUPERMARKETS BUYING THESE????? Then it won't matter about how many we use - they will all safely rot in a matter of weeks. The sheer ignorance astounds me.
And finally, I ask AGAIN - Why aren't companies and supermarkets being fined for excessively packaging their products? Easter Egg packaging, toy packaging, electrical goods packaging, computer peripherals packaging - they aren't being told to cut back at all? Why not? Why do WE, the already over-taxed public, have to pay fines for having to dispose of rubbish that is the fault of the companies who refuse to cut back? I'm guessing its because the companie stuff £££ into the coffers of the campaing funds, in return for being let off the hook.
So many times now when I buy products, the checkout girls automatically put them in a bag - even if it's just one tiny product, they will put it in a huge bag. A policy should be introduced where they should ALWAYS ask "do you want a bag for this". I always decline, and bring my own bags to use.
Our council tax is rocketing, yet we are now being royally fucked over to get rid of our rubbish. Big Brother is in our bins, roll on the Two Minute Hate!!! I feel like a goddam cash machine that the Government just keeps coming back to and helping themselves.
Children "should be allowed to play outside"
Parents must allow their children to play outdoors - even if it means they get hurt, a safety campaigner has said.
Research published last week by the Children's Society suggested that too many parents are refusing to let their children play by themselves outside in case they are injured.
It found 43 per cent of adults think children should not be allowed out with their friends until they are 14 or over.
"When children spend time in the great outdoors, getting muddy, getting wet, getting stung by nettles, they learn important lessons - what hurts, what is slippery, what you can trip over or fall from. We need to try to break down the perceived safety barriers to playing outside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Good grief - why is this being reported like it's a "new thing", as if kids have never played outdoors before?? And why oh why do parents lock their kids up and never let them play outside anymore? Fear of paedos? Fear of them scratching their finger? Fear of them being sued by another parent if little Johnny bumps into another kid whilst bike riding?Not letting kids outside to play until they are 14 is ridiculous - unless they are showing tendencies for hanging around on street corners drinking DIamond White and hassling Old Mavis down the road, in which case yes - lock them up at home....
I was lucky enough to grow up in the country, we spent our childhood biking up the leafy lanes and mostly playing in next doors farmyard - climbing up huge piles of grain, swinging off gates, climbing haystacks, playing tennis in the main yard.....it was ace. We fell over, bumped our heads, scraped our knees, got dirty hands, ran around, bounced into eachother on our spacehoppers, and came home at tea time red-faced, sweaty and glowing, with dirty hands and scraped elbows. Mum patched us up and didn't say a word (she used to put butter on my head whever I bumped it - never understood that one!)
One time on a bike ride I lost my balance and toppled sideways into the biggest patch of nettles ever, my screams were so loud a lady in a nearby cottage came out and took us all into her kitchen and smothered me with Anthisan cream. Mum was greatful for her help and still didn't stop me from playing outside.
As a result of being "allowed to play in dirt" as a kiddie, I think that it's contributed greatly to a robust immune system that luckily means I'm rarely ill. Kids today are sealed into double glazed houses where they breathe Glade not fresh air, and numerous other chemicals used to freshen the sofa/the carpet/the dishwasher/the dog/their trainers. What's wrong with opening the window?? A plethora of anti-bacterial this, that, and the other makes sure that not a scrap of bacteria is left alive in the house, and as a result when kids are exposed to it, their bodies shit themselves and wonder what the fuck to do. Asthma in kids has rocketed as "playing out" has fallen by the wayside in favour of vegitating in front of the telly and turning into a lard-based Playstation freak.
I guess living in the city won't help, where the farmyards and country lanes don't exist, and there is traffic and dodgy people around every corner. Even designated play areas are now under scrutiny by the Health and Safety people and the councils, who are afraid of being sued if little Timmy falls off the slide and messes his hair up, heaven forbid. What can be done to encourage safe "outside playtime" in built-up areas I don't know.
But for sure, parents need to kick their kids out into the garden, let them run around, get stung by nettles, and get their hands dirty. And also stop being so aggressive towards anything that could injure their little darlings. If Timmy falls off the slide it's because he was being clumsy, not because the slide was designed wrongly, or the council didn't provide 24 hour supervision. If Katie pricks her finger while playing near brambles, she will learn to be more careful next time. Leave the (anti-bacterial) cotton wool at home..........
The Princess Diatribe
When her daughter fell under the spell of Disney's Princess brand, Peggy Orenstein was horrified. But now she wonders whether she, as an ardent feminist, is just as guilty of peddling outmoded fairytales
I finally came unhinged in the dentist's office where I'd taken my three-year-old daughter for her first appointment. Until then, I'd held my tongue. I'd smiled politely every time the man at the supermarket till greeted her with, 'Hi, Princess'; ignored the waitress at our local café who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her 'princess meal'; made no comment when the lady at the chemist's said, 'I bet I know your favourite colour,' and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist's cutie-cute inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the chair and said, 'Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?' I lost it.
'Oh, for God's sake,' I snapped. 'Do you have a princess drill, too?' She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.
As a feminist mother, I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they'd never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they'd concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.
Read the rest of this article HERE. It's brilliant 
. It also says that there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs – who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty – are most likely to be depressed and least likely to use contraception. What's more, the 23 per cent decline in girls' participation in sports and other vigorous activity around the age of 13 has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine.
I too have noticed the plethora of Princesses that are popping up smothered in Pink, wherever I look. And worryingly, a lot of them are in their late teens or early twenties 
. Toddler girls are swathed in pink by their mums, and given pink bicycles to ride and pink bedrooms and Princess quilt sets - they are surrounded by images of glossiness, pampered royalty, humongous castles, oodles of servants, and dashing knights who will rush to their rescue while they swoon with gratitude as he fixes their sink or their car. Will this make them grow up believing the whole Princess legend? God I hope not, if so they are in for a shock.
It doesn't help that our media seem to be glorifying the more mature "Princess girls" like the odious Nikki Graeme from last years UK Big Brother. Nikki "loved money" and "wanted to marry a footballer, and go shopping a lot". Because of her tiny frame and long blonde hair she was instantly nicknamed "Princess" in the house, and proceeded to act like the most spoiled little brat in the universe.
Then as a reward for her petulant behaviour and screaming strops, she was given her own TV show "Princess Nikki" where she was put into yukky situations and threw yet more screaming strops. Such a perfect role model for the next generation of girls. What sort of upbringing had she had that had given her the ultimate ambition to marry a footballer and shop lots?
This years Big Brother has given us two highly irritating twins Samantha and Amanda "Samanda" to be known from now on. To quote the excellent TV blog from columnist Grace Dent:
A lot of people claim that "kids today grow up so fast. There's no time for childhood". OK, some kids do. But then we've got this sinister breed of retarded-development 18-year-olds who behave like 11-year-olds. It's all squealing and "I like pink! Yes, pink!" and lollypops and frou-frou skirts from Mothercare and claiming to be useless and wanting to be a pwincess.
We've bred this new genre of post-post-feminists who play on acting vacuous and say women should never buy drinks and how their top film is Legally Blonde and Paris Hilton is "proper aspirational" and that they know that some big stwong man will look after them one day and make everything all right. Hint: he won't. Put your clothes on and bloody grow up.
Digital TV also aren't helping, with shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" and "Daddy's spoiled little girl", which show stupidly wealthy parents spoiling their whining offspring so much that the programme should come with a sick-bag warning. Our teens watch these programmes and dream of having wealth wealth and more wealth, so they too can have Puff Daddy rap at their birthday party, in front of hundreds of other kids who they don't know and aren't even friends with, but don't care cos all they want to do is show off.
Ambitions to be wealthy are fine - but you have to be prepared to work for it, which a lot of kids today clearly aren't. So they go seeking Big Brother instant fame, tawdry z-list tabloid sleaze, or a rich anybody. who will give them their dreams. A white knight?
By all means dress your little girl in pink and read her fairy stories - but don't drown her in them. Other colours are nice too, and other stories that may not necessarily have a happy ending. They need to learn from an early age that life isn't like the fairy tale books, and that you have to work hard if you want anything in this cold, harsh world. White knights don't exist.
And if you're dressing little Suzie in pink and reading her Princess tales, why aren't you letting little Timmy be a Prince? I get the feeling that any boy who started telling his mummy he wanted to be a Prince, and be pampered like a Prince, would be given a toy gun and told to go play pretend war at the bottom of the garden. Where is the Disney line of "Prince" tat and merchandise? A bit sexist isn't it? You can't have Princesses without Princes?
I don't think my mum ever smothered me in pink, nor once did she ever call me Princess. I think she *tried* the whole Pink thing, and ribbons and bows too - but even as a 4 year old, I simply refused to be girlie. My gran would make me gorgeous dresses covered in frills and bows, and I'd stand there in typical kiddie-sulk mode, frowning, arms crossed, saying "I won't wear it till you cut the bows off!" They bought me dolls but I'd leave them in a corner to gather dust, in favour of teddies and stuffed animals. I finally got into dolls when I discovered Sindy - and I liked her cos she had lots of cool stuff like cars and a horse and a camping set and a swimming pool.
I even went through a mad phase where I wanted a realistic baby doll. Mum was ecstatic...her and dad made me a lovely crib, she knitted clothes, and we went to jumble sales and looked for half-decent towelling baby-grows. That phase soon passed and I was back to the stuffed animals. Mum read us stories and fairy tales and we loved nursery rhymes, but somehow I never bought into the whole "happy ever after" thing, and I knew that they were just stories, and life wasn't really like that.
By the time I was 12, my bedroom wall was covered in posters of sports cars, horses, and arty Coke cans from Athena. I didn't realise mum was starting to worry about my sexuality as I showed no interest in boys, or anything remotely girly (she admitted this to me a year or so ago). Oh how she rejoiced the day she saw a small poster of Michael J Fox on my wall, the week after I'd been to see Back To The Future. But even if I had turned out to have tendencies towards the female sex, I would bloody well hope she'd still treat me like her daughter, and not strap me down and cover me in pink frilly stuff in the vain hope it would girlify me.
She knows I am cynical about marriage and men, and has never whinged about my non-marriage at 35, or no-grandkids for her. She's probably pleased to be honest, as it's less stress for her compared to if I was going through divorce after divorce and custody battle after custody battle.
I do wonder what I'd be like if she had fed me the whole "Princess in Pink" dream - would I be on Big Brother now, in my frou-frou skirt, sucking a lollipop and talking about marrying some overpaid ugly midfielder?