Vote "None of the above"

http://www.protestvoteparty.org/P56681.asp?bb=58&bx=1

Interesting concept. But would it work??

Poor football....

A TV advert encouraging viewers to sponsor a child in the Third World has been banned for being "an unfair attack on football".

The World Vision ad, to have been screened during the Cup, shows an African boy playing with a ball made of maize, bags and string.

The advert then says: "England's team are sponsored for £49million. Masidi is sponsored for 60p a day."

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre watchdog said it "suggested money spent in the development and sponsorship of football was wasted".

World Vision boss Rudo Kwaramba said: "We're extremely surprised by this ruling."

===========================

"money spent in the development and sponsorship of football was wasted"

HOW TRUE - 40 YEARS AND WE'VE STILL NOT WON THE WORLD CUP. How much has been invested in the England team in that 40 years? I bet it would write off the whole third world debt.

Redhead facts & myths

Good Lord I should go into hiding!

1. Red hair is seen on the heads of only four percent of people. Most of these exist in the U.K., the Republic of Ireland, and Australia.
2. There is a belief that redheads are prone to industrial deafness. This actually could be true as the melanocytes are found in the middle ear.
3. A 2002 study found that redhead are harder to sedate than any other people requiring twenty percent more anesthesia. Inadequate doses cause people to wake up during surgery and have increased recall of procedures.
4. In the late 16th century, the fat of a redheaded man was an essential ingredient for poison.
   The Egyptians regarded the color as so unlucky that they had a ceremony in which they burned red-headed maidens alive to wipe out the tint.
5. An Irish judge in 2001 fined a man for disorderly conduct stating "I am a firm believer that hair coloring has an effect on temper and your coloring suggests you have a temper."
6. Redheads have always been thought untrustworthy. Judas is most always depicted as a redhead displaying the prejudice against red hair.
7. Adolph Hitler reportedly banned the marriages of two redheads as he feared their children would be "deviant offspring".
8. Red haired children have been historically branded as offspring of "unclean" sex. This has earned them taunts such as "red-knob" or "tampon tops."
9. Bees are thought to sting redheads more than others.
10. In Denmark it is an honor to have a redheaded child.
11. In Corsica, if you pass a redhead in the street you are to spit and turn around.
12. In Poland, if you pass three red-heads you'll win the state lottery.
13. In Greek Mythology, redheads turn into Vampires when they die.
14. During the Spanish Inquisition flame colored hair was evidence that its owner had stolen the fire of hell and had to be burned as a witch.
15. Russian tradition declares that red hair is both a sign that a person holds a fiery temper and craziness.
16. A Russian Proverb warns "There was never a saint with red hair."
17. Aristotle was known to believe that redheads were emotionally unhousebroken.
18. A French Proverb states that "redheaded women are either violent or false, and usually are both." 

See also: 

Redheads are vampires, and other interesting myths

DNA project aims to count Scots redheads

Is gingerism as bad as racism?

Redheaded donors are being turned away at sperm bank

Understand Red Head Genetics - cool but nerdy reading!

Peak Oil is a myth

Very VERY interesting article here:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm

Seems plausible - scare the public into thinking oil is running out, then put the prices up and make even bigger profits - while happily knowing there is MORE than enough oil left in the ground to run the world for another few million years.

Bastards.

Fat kids

Interesting report here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5003766.stm about "fat tests" for young kids at primary school.

The report says "From next year, parents of any obese four or 10 year olds can expect a letter telling them their child faces long-term health damage unless they lose weight. "

Erm do parents need a letter from the Government to tell them their kid is fat? Are they blind? They should bloody well SEE and KNOW that their kid is fat!

I marvel when I see families walking down the street towing their waddling kids behind them, or feeding them McDonalds or a huge ice cream, or letting them suck on a can of Coke. I marvel when I'm at the supermarket and I see that sort of crap that parents buy in their weekly food shop. Ready-meals, frozen mechanically-separated chicken nuggets, sugary milkshakes, bags of Wotsits, bottles of fizzy drinks, and just for good measure, a bag of carrots.

It must be a sort of blindness where they don't really SEE that their kid is fat, or they think it's "puppy fat" and that it will melt away miraculously as the kid grows up. But there's a huge difference between puppy fat and just plain FAT. "Parents don't know what the correct weight of their children should be" says the article. Maybe so, but they should notice when their kid starts to waddle and grow a belly.

Why do they turn this blind eye and continue with the unhealthy crap they feed their family? Is it that they just can't be bothered with the endless fighting and moaning if they tried to make them eat healthy? Is it because they "don't like cooking" and would rather spend an hour in front of EastEnders than an hour in the kitchen preparing a lovely homecooked healthy meal? Is it because they want their kid to love them, and fighting with them about food choices will "make them hate me"?

If you don't want your kids to whinge about having to eat healthy food then don't get them hooked on junk food in the first place! Start them off on healthy food and they will know nothing BUT healthy food - bingo, no problem.

Or just learn to say NO and put up with the crap that is thrown back at you. Tell your kids that if they don't eat the tea you've prepared then they go to bed with an empty stomach (then lock the door to stop them sneaking out to McDs).

The article also says "A Department of Health spokeswoman said: 'We feel this is a real chance for parents to play a more active role and to be aware of the health risks to their children of being obese.' "

Erm a chance for parents to play a more active role in their children's health? Shouldn't they be doing that ANYWAY as a parent??

And finally the do-gooders step in and preach that these Fat Tests will lead to "overweight children being bullied". Well DUH? If their kid is fat it's likely he will already be getting bullied. Are they trying to say that a fat kid will be ignored in the schoolyard until his test announces that yes, "he is fat" and then suddenly the bullying will start?

Fat kids will always get picked on at school, just as ginger kids will, kids with jamjar glasses, kids with acne, kids with frumpy clothes, kids with dorky parents - any kid who is different from the "norm" for whatever reason. It's a fact of the schoolyard, and fat tests will make sod all difference.

This constant nannying by the Government needs to stop, and parents need to be fed a good dose of common sense, have their blindfolds removed, and open their bloody eyes to take a good hard look at their fat kids. Then make changes.

See Bush take a fall and help him on his way!!!

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Class! :-D

Fucking transport taxes

For every £10 spent on fuel, £8.50 is taken in tax.
The Treasury generates nearly £33 billion from drivers, but less than 5% is re-invested in roads,and no more than 20% in transport as a whole.
It is estimated that within 5 years, petrol will cost £7 per gallon.



£1.34 per mile to go on a motorway says Labour - if they do this are they going to abolish or cut the licence fee??? Shit, I won't be driving up North to see my parents anymore, won't be able to bloody afford it!

By the time I get my Elise I won't be able to bloody afford to run it. Country road taxes, workplace parking taxes, "owning a car in the city" taxes, "farting in your car" taxes, FFS I am SICK of being milked like a f*cking cash cow for this Goddam Government. £8.50 out of £10 spent on petrol goes direct to Brown, generating £33m income, and only 5% of it is reinvested in traffic and road schemes.

And meanwhile more airports are built and extended, more planes spew pollution into the atmosphere, and the flight companies don't get charged f*ck all in extra taxes. British families today are poorer than ever and more in debt than ever thanks to endless taxes. Then Labour bang on about economic growth, all the while throttling us and our cars and stopping us from going places, spending money and HELPING "economic growth".

And is ANYTHING being invested in alternative forms of transport using renewable energy??? You're having a f***ing laugh aren't you????

The car flags are back again .....

Morris dancers, black men and speed cameras - shit!

Ambling around Asda tonight I walked past a muscly black man with dodgy skin. Saw him again in the checkout queue 3 down from me. En route back to my caar with trolleyfull of goods, he appears and says hello and tries to talk to me in a decidedly weird accent. I said hello and carried on walking. He follows me to my car and gives me the old "I think we've met" line. "I don't think so" I say politely. he asks for my phone number, I lie and say "I have a boyfriend". "He pretty much doesn't care - "take a chance" he says in his dodgy foreign accent. "Er no, I have a boyfriend and I'm not interested", and I get in my car.

The bloody car then won't start, as he stands outside my window and taps on it. I'm glad that other people are around in neighbouring cars, watching me. Car starts - I wind my windown down "take a chance" he says again, "no thanks, bye" I say. "Maybe I'll see you again" he says as I back out of my parking space. "Sure", I say in my head, "when World Peace is here".

I've never been picked up in a Supermarket before, and in my newly-single state of mind it was quite flustering. Also I was pissed because he totally wasn't my type and didn't care when I said I wasn't interested and was with someone.

Driving home pondering it, I spotted the local pub beer garden - FULL of Morris Dancers, in their extremely gay outfits, standing around swilling pints. Staring at them and sniggering, I then caught the double flash of a fucking speed camera as I went thru it at 40+mph - FUCK!

I'm hoping that I won't get done - don't these cameras run out of film or something? But knowing my luck I'm screwed, another 3 points and f*cking £60. FUCKITY!!!

Crap meals out

http://b3ta.com/questions/crapmealsout/

F*cking hilarious, I got hysterics in the middle of the office reading this .....

Flag waving

Here we go again .... in the run up to the World Cup, we Brits are being told we can't fly the St George Flag or the Union Jack, "in fear of upsetting ethnic miniorities".

I'm sorry but IF YOU COME TO LIVE IN OUR COUNTRY YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH US FLYING OUR OWN FUCKING FLAG. If we went over to S. Africa or the Balkans or Lithuania and started pissing and whingeing about seeing their flags everywhere, do you think they'd say "oh, we're terribly sorry we'll take them all down, is that OK?" Somehow I THINK NOT.

I for one am never offended when I'm in a foreign country and their flags are everywhere - because it's THEIR country. Why should they compromise?

Whether or not it's just the PC do-gooders that are saying this, or whether ethnic minorities HAVE actually complained, I don't know. I remember last year at my local Uni, UK students were told to take down their flags for fear of offending foreign students. But the foreign students were allowed to fly THEIR flags in our faces. Great!

I'm not a football fan and I really don't care if we win the World Cup or not. But I am sick of us being told we can't be patriotic in our own country. Any foreigner who is offended by the sight of our flag should just deal with it. We are supporting our country in a worldwide event, which means flying our bloody flags. Wht about the Olympics? The most multicultural event ever, with flags galore - but nobody complains during the opening and closing ceremonies.

We could do things a lot worse to offend them, ie put signs up saying "f*ck off foreigners". Now that would be a better cause for complaint.

So soon we will see those Chav-tastic St George car flags banned then? And when the Queen troops the colour, the soldiers will walk around with empty flagpoles? Austin Powers' "Shaguar" is resprayed?? Are we to have fines introduced next, or even worse - a "Flag Tax" to extort even more money from us?

America is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, and they are zealous about flying the Stars & Stripes from every house, window, building and flagpole. Yet we don't hear any PC bollocks from all their foreign inhabitants. This summer and indeed, any day of the year, we should be allowed to fly whatever bloody flag we want - before any remaining Patriotism towards our country is stamped out for good.

Marriage Quotes

• Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her. - Agatha Christie
• Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy, fat women. - Marion Smith
• I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid. - Dorothy Parker
• Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get home, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house. - Jean Kerr
• I never married because I have three pets at home that answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls every morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night. - Marie Corelli
• No nice men are good at getting taxis - Katherine Whitehorn
• I like to wake up each morning feeling a new man. - Jean Harlow
• Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you. - Mae West
• Behind every great man there is a surprised woman. - Maryon Pearson
• The trouble with some woman is that they get all excited about nothing, and then marry him - Cher
• A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve is extracted - Helen Rowland
• Before marriage a man will lay awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage he'll fall asleep before you have finished saying it. - Helen Rowland
• An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. - Agatha Christie
• By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy - If you get a bad one you will become a philosopher - Socrates
• Marriage is a sort of friendship recognised by the police
• Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? - Groucho Marx
• Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures - Sanuel Johnson
• It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married - Robert Frost
• Marriage is popular because it combines the maximim of temptation with the maximum of opportunity - George Bernard Shaw
• Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw in his job and go to work in the brewery - George Nathan
• All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart - Ogden Nash
• A husband's last words should always be 'OK buy it'.
• Nothing makes a good wife like a good husband
• Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing - The Bible
• The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him - Oscar Wilde
• No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out - Oscar Wilde
• The most dangerous food a man can eat is wedding cake
• Woman like silent men, they think they are listening - Marcel Achard

Water shortage

Apparently panic buying of water butts has hit the shops, because of the impending hosepipe bans and water shortages that are hitting us even before the hot summer gets here.

How amusing that again, we have to pay for our Government's lack of action on this issue. Why hasn't legislation been put into place to force ALL new buildings to use water-saving toilets, and to use rainwater for their toilet/washbasin water? A rainwater system is easily installed and would help save our normal water. Why isn't more being done to promote these systems to householders, to encourage them to install such systems?

And I've always thought it's stupid to use how many gallons of cistern water just to flush away less than a pint of piss??

Also, the current hosepipe ban guidelines need totally revising. For instance, you can't use a hosepipe to wash your car/sprinkle your lawn, but you can use it to fill up an outdoor swimming pool. HELLO?????????

My last visit to London I marvelled at the lack of green space - there was nowhere that rainwater could fall and be soaked into the ground and back into the water table. Nope, it went on the concrete and was washed down the drains only to be leaked away, never to reach our houses. And Prescott still continues to build and build in the South, despite the impending water doom. And none of them will have water saving toilets in I'm betting.

Well my new lawn and shrubs aren't going to suffer. I may not have a hosepipe but I have a huge watering can, and a few trips to and from the kitchen sink will be in order......

Replaced

My ex (the one before the current ex) told me on MSN yesterday that he has a new girlfriend. After over a year of him being single, I've finally been replaced. They met at a track day when he was still with me, and after we split they started talking over the internet when he went to Florida. She's just been out there to visit him and they finally got it on.

Even though we didn't work out and wouldn't work out in the future, you still feel a pang when you find out that you have truly been replaced. So this Christmas it will be her going to Australia with him to meet all his family, her enjoying Christmas Day in the sun, her going scuba diving with him, her laughing with and enjoying the company of his family. Where previously it had always been me.

And she has an S2 Lotus Elise. Gggrrrr.....

My first funeral

Well I just got back from my first funeral. It was my favourite Auntie Issy's funeral and it was everything I DON'T want my funeral to be.

I guess I've done well to reach 34 and never been to a funeral. But I hope I don't have to go to another soon and I *really* don't know how I will cope at my parents' funeral, which is inevitable at some point in the future.

We all met at Issy's house and we rode in the hearse that followed the coffin. I couldn't look at the coffin in front of me, I didn't 'want to imagine her lying in there all cold - I wanted to remember her as I last saw her or heard her on the phone when we last spoke. Her body to me was just an empty vessel, no longer relevant to her or who she was.

Nobody spoke during the journey to the crem, and when they did it was in hushed whispers. Some people say that the silence and the hush is for "respect for the dead". But to me it seemed to sit all wrong, I'd not want this for my funeral - I'd want AC/DC on the stereo playing "Hell's Bells" or something.

We arrived at the crem and I only got upset the one time, when the pall bearers lifted the coffin out and into the church. It still seemed to me that she wasn't in there, that it was empty. I guess in a way it was.

Being an agnostic, the whole "God" thing just doesn't appeal to me. Walking into the modern-built Crem church and sitting down, I listened to the preacher's Bible waffle with an acrid ear. It all sounded like such empty poetic bullshit. We stood for the hymns but I couldn't sing them, I felt like too much of a fat hypocrite. God this, God that, death is the beginning of a new life in His kingdom etc etc. I guess it's fine if you believe all of that and if it comforts you, but it just irritated me. I absolutely do NOT want a religious funeral. And the coffin - why spend all that money and wood on a coffin that is just going to be burned? Waste of money and resources.

Put me in a cardboard coffin, bury me along with a newly planted tree, and leave me to fertilise the tree and feed the worms. No God, no religion, just a darn good party with Benny Goodman on the stereo and nobody talking in hushed whispers. And strictly NO black. Bright colours only, and a celebration of my life that was, not a mourning of my life now gone.

Issy had a fabulous and interesting life and I saw this as NOT a fitting way to end it. It was too quiet, too miserable, too drab, and too rushed. I will miss her and the regular phone calls we had, and I wish I could have seen her one more time before she died, but in a way I'm glad she's gone, as her quality of life was getting bad and her 80-a-day habit had finished off her lungs to the point that she could barely breathe. She seemed ready to go and join my uncle John, who died over 4 years ago. I know that they are together again somewhere and I know that they are both happy.

Then to finish the weekend off I had a huge row with my mother when we got back to Norwich, about her total negativity about everything in my life and her inability to see the positive or the good in ANYTHING I had done with the house since she last saw it. Since they arrived on Wednesday night I have heard nothing but a string of whinges (now you know where I get it from!) about the downstairs loo, the rats being smelly, the hall floor, the wood floor in the lounge, the kitchen as a whole, the bench in particular, the garden, the fact my front door doesn't have a curtain, the fact that my cafe-net in the kitchen means that neighbours can see in (like yeah, they spend all day queueing up to look into my kitchen), and the limescale stain on the front wall needs scrubbing off, the shrubs I've chosen for the garden will grow too big, the compost bin I've started won't work "because mine never did" and the fact that my house is "full of clutter" (which it totally isn't compared to her chintzy cluttered house).

I spent the journey from Norwich to Swindon and then back again plugged into my MP3 player, just to drown out her droning negativity - and I got bollocked for that and called "very rude" because I wasn't talking to anyone. When she started to work herself up into a frenzy because my dad wasn't' stopping for any petrol, I could take no more and everything blew up.

She went upstairs in tears for hours, my dad came down and gave me the "your mother is really upset" speech, and then it was my turn to explode and say that I was sick of her constant negativity and her sniping at everything about the house - the house that I had worked hard on since she'd last seen it, the garden that I had dug over myself and broke my back on, all my seedlings that were successfully sprouting, and most of all, my Fuzzbutt sewing venture that I had started from scratch with no prior sewing knowledge - I'd drafted the patterns, worked on prototypes, developed some great products, had positive feedback from the testers, had made over £900 worth of stock all by myself, all ready to sell on and make some extra money for myself - and what had she said to me?

"If I'd not given you that sewing machine you'd have spent more time on the house instead of up here"

YEAH GREAT MUM, THANKS. The f*cking house isn't going anywhere, it's perfectly liveable in, and there is plenty of time to get all the remaining jobs finished on it - as and when I get the money to finish them (which is where Fuzzbutt will help I hope).

Somehow you can feel like you've done a great job, but if your parents themselves don't say you've done a great job - then you don't feel like you have anymore. I have to stop caring what she thinks cos it's destroying me. She's downstars now watching telly, they're going home tomorrow. I'm off for a bath. I can't talk to her at the minute as we will just argue again. This had to happen, it had to be said. Her negativity and constant moaning has already driven my brother to hardly visit her any more, and it will get like that with me too if this carries on. I'm negative enough without her crap weighing on my shoulders too.

But I hate feeling angry towards her, I hate upsetting her. Cos when the day comes that her coffin is carried into a church in front of me, I know I will regret every cross word.

Monthly Jake-fest

Goddam he makes one hot cowboy - gay or not I don't care :-O

This from http://grouphug.us

Interesting entry (amongst the other entries about screwing cats and killing your third grade teacher...):

"Sometimes you just need to survive.. so everyday you entertain yourself.. and ignore the real unhappiness in your life... every now and then you pause and think.. should you be so shallow and simply live life to entertain yourself or go to the roots of the problem of your unhapiness. Then you realise that you cannot solve it because it is beyond your control so you revert back to simply entertaining yourself. because you don't know what to do otherwise.. afterall you need to survive,... and perhaps entertaining yourself could be part of the solution... then the emptiness hits you and you realise that you have not completely solve all your problems... and you still don't know how to... clock is ticking... you are still far from achieving from what you want... or is it what society wants... you don't know anymore.... "

I don't do "relationships"

Well my break-up has now got to the stage of slagging and vicious emails from all parties. I never wanted it to degenerate into this, but it has. His emails cut deep and hurt, mainly because they are true. Nobody ever wants to deal with the black and white truth about themselves, specially when it's put forward by the one person that used to care for them above all else in the world. It will be a long time before we can be proper friends again I think.

I really REALLY don't want to go through this again, I seem to seriously be facing my future alone. I'm sick of the stress, hassles and upsets that relationships bring.

"But it's just cos he wasn't the right one" people say. Maybe so, but I'm not prepared to go through even more stress and shit to try and FIND the "right one". Is there such a thing, I wonder.

It will be shit to not have someone there for some closeness when you need it the most, but I'm not prepared to go thru tons of hassle just for that one thing. I'm sick of hurting people and I'm sick of being hurt myself. Fuck it! Ready meals for one here I come.

Power is an aphrodisiac

Unbelievable revelation today that jowly saggy-eyed John Prescott had an illicit affair with his secretary is absolute proof that power is an aphrodisiac and an attraction.

What the FUCK did she fancy about that man! Imagining him naked alone is enough to turn my stomach, but she actually WANTED and DID have sex with him?? Ew!!!!

Thoughts of Dahab

What horrid news to see Dahab on our TV screens all blown to bits. Having spent 10 glorious days there last May it was very upsetting to see the shops and restaurants I'd been to, smashed to smithereens. Many Egyptians are dead, and I wondered about all the friendly "restaurant boys" that spent their time haranguing us to come and eat in their establishements. I hope they are all OK. My brother is upset too as he lived out there for 9 months and made a great many friends.

Dahab was so quiet, so peaceful and chilled, so friendly. A rapidly expanding tourist resort with utterly fabulous diving, the big hotel chains were moving in and I could see that in about a decade's time it would be ruined, so I was enjoying it while it was still small and relatively simple. Why the hell did terrorists pick such a small inconsequential town to fuck up?

We are planning to go out there diving again this August, and despite these attacks we are still planning to go. Our money will help support them in their rebuild, and I'm sure they will be pleased to see visitors still turning up despite their tragedy.