I Am Livid

My friend TOWTAL (The One Who Talks A Lot) is in hospital with a broken leg and ankle, sustained whilst playing football on Saturday.

This meant a trip to the hospital on Sunday to visit him after his ankle had been pinned.

I don’t like hospitals.  I never have.  They are nothing like the television would have you believe, nothing at all.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that the makers of Scrubs have never set foot in a real hospital.

Towtal was in a bed in a room with four others, he had no television, or even a bulb in his reading light, so time was passing very slowly.  He is a member of Bupa, but he had not been able to reach them to sort out a private room as they are not available from Saturday lunchtime until Monday morning (if you pay for private medical care, please make sure you get sick during office hours).

Whilst I was there trying to take his mind off his injury by telling him about the run I had been on that morning, a lady came round with a menu.

This would be my first experience of hospital food.  Even if it was vicarious in nature.  The menu itself didn’t seem to bad, and certainly didn’t conjure images of prison food as I had imagined. I pointed out that some of the options looked almost as tasty as the delicious take-away that I would be having later that evening.

After a brief perusal, a frankly starving Towtal settled on Fish and Chips with strawberry trifle for dessert.  A choice I was quite impressed with.

A short while later, it arrived.

I am not sure that words can truly do it justice, except to say that I now know why no-one ever gets fat in Hospital, and it appears the NHS has done a deal to procure the global stocks of square fish.

This photo has not been digitally enhanced in any way.

Following the guilt trip I had been enjoying since telling you all about the conversation with my mother last week, I did something nice.  I took the time to print off some family photos for her that I had taken during the Christmas holidays.  I had to do this as old people do not use computers and the Internet, so sending her a link to Flickr was pointless.

There were about twenty photos in total, with family members in varying states of inebriation.  I knew she would like them.

Unfortunately, I had to visit the Post Office as I had no idea how much it would cost to send them since the Post Office changed their rules so that anything more than a sheet of rice paper requires two first class stamps.

I waited my turn in the queue and was finally dealt with by a chipper gentleman who seemed a bit too happy about the fact that he was behind a post office counter on a Friday afternoon.

“That’ll be £1.10.” he told me after weighing the photos and including the envelope I had purchased in order to post them.

I handed over some money and waited for my change.  He mumbled something at me as I picked up the shrapnel he had passed to me under the bullet proof glass.

“I’m sorry?” I queried.

“I said, can I interest you in credit card?” he repeated.

I didn’t know how to respond. I have heard of post office workers raiding personal mail in order to get hold of credit cards and spend on them before they are listed as missing, but it was a bit brazen of him to offer one to me.  I only wanted a stamp.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Would you like a credit card.  From us here.  We have some good deals.”

Ah.  It was a legitimate business offer.  This made a bit more sense.  I did not want a credit card as it happened, but I found it strange that in these times of crunchy credit, people are finding it extremely difficult to borrow money from a traditional source of cash; the banks.  And yet here, in a place I least expected it, at the Post Office, they could not give me some almost-but-not-quite-free money fast enough.

Is the solution to all our problems really as simple as getting the Post Office to lend money to the banks?

A letter sent today to the Advertising Standards Authority:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to complain about an advertising slogan soon to be seen on the side of a buses in central London.  It proclaims, in large letters, that there DEFINITELY is a God.  I find this interesting, as my long-term agnostic stance would most definitely be softened if there really was a God.  I have always found the thought of eternity in Heaven an attractive prospect (who wouldn’t), but the arguments for God (all of them, I am not discriminating by picking on any one of them) seemed weak at best, and laughable at worst.

So as you can imagine, I was delighted to see this advert.  Imagine, proof at last that there was, without doubt, DEFINITELY a God watching over us!

So I got in touch with The Christian Party to enquire about this new proof, and to see if I could help spread the word of it’s arrival.  It is after all, a momentous occasion in the history of our planet.  Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Do you know what I found out?  NOTHING has changed!  I know, it was shocking to me too.  In fact, all I found was a suggested donation on their home page of TWO HUNDRED POUNDS!  I found nothing to show there definitely is a God.  Nothing whatsoever.

I can therefore only conclude that this is an elaborate money-making scam.  Perhaps it is one of those pyramid things I have seen on Watchdog.  I don’t know.  All I know is that there will be many consumers that, like me, fall into this trap after seeing an advertisement promising there DEFINITELY is a God.  I believe this is what you call “false advertising” and I would like to know what you plan to do about it.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Angry.

I will post any response I receive.

As part of the ongoing fun-less month of Sober January, a few of us, including Mr & Mrs Fat Jim went to the local Cinema on Saturday night to see the new Tom Cruise film, Valkyrie.  I had been careful not to read any reviews, as I did not want to accidentally read a spoiler and find out if whether or not they managed to kill Hitler.

When we arrived at the cinema, there were two huge queues for the confectionery, but I can not enjoy a film without sweets, and Fat Jim needs and enormous box of popcorn so we took our place in one of the queues.

A few minutes later we noticed the other queue was moving much more quickly than our own.  As always, this presents a dilemma.  Do you jump ship and join the other one, or stick it out where you are?  The law of Sod dictates the one you are in will always move more slowly, so we decided to stay put. Then, we watched as a women, in the position we would have been in had we moved queues, began taking clear strides ahead of us in the race to the service point.

We had been queueing for ten minutes when we discussed shop lifting.  I mean, technically we had every intention of paying for our goods, but they were making it very difficult, and we were in danger of missing the trailers, which are often the best bit in Tom Cruise movies.

“I could create a diversion for you?” offered Fat Jim as our plan began to take shape.

“Like what?”

“A domestic disturbance of some kind.  I could slap the missus about a bit?”

“No you fucking will not!” replied Mrs Fat Jim, reminding who was boss.

“OK, how about a bit of shouting and running around?”

“Excellent.  Go!”

“I’ll do it for a tenner.”

“You want to charge me ten pounds so I can steal less than three pounds worth of confectionery?”

“Well, when you put it like that.  But I am offering.”

Unfortunately, I have a rudimentary understanding of economics, and so declined this generous offer.  I will however take him up on it if ever I want to steal a TV or a car.  Ten pounds for a public diversion is actually quite good value when you think about it.

As we finally got to the front of the queue, we noticed that there were three members of staff servicing the other queue, and only one child approaching puberty serving ours.

“Do you realise there are three people serving that queue, and just you on this one.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s funny isn’t it.” replied the tattooed and lip-ringed child.

“No, it’s not remotely funny.  We’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

“Oh yeah, sorry,  I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We might miss the trailers, and they are generally the best bit in Tom Cruise movies.”

“I’m sorry, again.”

We missed the trailers and the film began with a statement that it was based on a true story, and no, they did not kill Hitler.

Have you seen the new Virgin Airlines 25th anniversary advert?

It is a celebration of 25 years in the business, and ends with the tag line, “Still red hot”.  The advert is a 90 second message which is essentially saying, “Come and fly with us, because you will definitely want to have sex with all of the the air hostesses, and you women passengers will want to shag the pilots.”

I suppose it’s true that sex sells, so I should not be surprised.  But personally I think it is false advertising.  I flew to Barbados with Virgin last summer, and there were some right dogs serving the drinks.  I was in cattle class, admittedly, but still.  They were still very good at their jobs, don’t get me wrong.  I just didn’t want to have sex with them.  I do not know if they wanted to have sex with me, it never came up.

Virgin are setting themselves up for a fall with this campaign.  How many horny travellers will pay that little extra to fly Virgin only to find themselves being served peanuts by Anne Widdecombe’s ugly sister?  Of course, there are people who like that sort of thing, and pay good money for it, but why travel across the Atlantic to get fed by ten ton Tess?  There lots of websites and private members clubs you can visit if you are into ugly fatties.  Probably.

Anyway, if you happen to work for Virgin, and look like the cabin crew in the video, feel free to get in touch to correct me.

I am a big fan of that there Facebook.  I am on it, this website is on it, the podcast is on it.  Even my own little group to stop all DEATH is on it.

I am particularly impressed when I see people shunning the requests to become a Vampire, grow a plant or populate an aquarium, and instead look to use it in an attempt to effect social change.  So I was intrigued to notice that one of my school friends had joined a group called, “What [removed] Needs”.  Of course, the [removed] is the name of my home town, but I am not giving you that, because of, well, the stigma.

This group claimed to have been set up as a forum for ideas to give to the local council, in the hope of making the town a bearable place to live.  This was a good thing as far as I could tell.

Then I read the comments from the concerned locals who were hoping to make their environment better for themselves, their children, and their children’s children.

“How about a music shop or summat?  We need an hmv!”

“I’d love to see us have our own KFC.”

“A cinema, but not one of those shit local ones.  A big multiplex, at least ten screens.”

I particularly like the last one, a cinema with ten screens would obviously thrive in a town which only recently saw celebrations in the street when its first supermarket agreed to stay open past 6pm.

The comments also show a distinct lack of understanding of the role of Local Government.  I have yet to hear of a local council meeting where the minutes were full of debate over which fast food chain would best serve the community at large.  Or why access to cut-price DVDs and box sets is so limited.

And still they wonder why I left.

“So you’re absolutely positive it hasn’t been opened, and that there’s nothing damaged or missing?”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to put that in writing?”

This was an unusual end to a conversation held with a B&Q employee during the January sales.  But it was necessary.  I was in need of a bathroom cabinet, and the last one on the shelf looked as if it had been opened up and then taped back up by an arthritic Parkinson’s sufferer.  I had little confidence all would be fine when I got it home.

“Maybe we should open it, just to be safe then?” suggested the B&Q operative.

And so open it we did.  To find several components missing, and a large scratch on one of the panels.

“I guess you were right to insist we open it then.” they continued, a little sheepishly.

Unfortunately this was the last one in the store, but I was given the item code and a number to call to reserve one after the next delivery.  Which is what I did two days later.  A helpful man said he had put one aside in the warehouse for me, and I could pick it up any time the following day.

I headed to the Bathroom department and explained my situation, and a lady headed out to the warehouse to fetch my cabinet.  She came back and put it on the table in front of us.

“This one has been opened as well.” I pointed out.

“That’s probably because he wanted to make sure it had everything in it after your last experience here, he wouldn’t want the same thing to happen again.”

This made sense, perfect sense, why would they want to upset me any more than they had already?  So, under time pressures, I paid for it and headed home.

If this was Question Of Sport, this next bit would be known as the “What happened next?” round.  Can you guess?

The following morning I opened to box and prepared to mount it on the wall.   Then I noticed the scratch.  And the bits that were missing.  I felt like one of those punters who has been conned by a street entertainer, cheap and used, but with a valid receipt.

I headed back to the store waited in the alarmingly long queue at the Returns desk.  Three months later, I reached the front.

“Look, I bought this cabinet yesterday, but it’s clearly not new.  It was opened, it’s scratched and there’s bits missing.  That’s not the worst bit though, I think you tried to sell it to me once before, only that time I….”

“Do you have your receipt?” he asked, interrupting me mid flow.

“Well…yes.”

“Would you like a replacement?”

“I suppose so.”

“If you’d like to select the one you want, bring it here and we’ll sort that for you.”

I headed off to select a replacement cabinet, and fortunately enough, there were two on the shelves.  Both of which had been taped up.  I picked them both up and took them back to the counter.

“Before we go any further, I want to know.  Do you put returns back on your shelves?” I began.

“Absolutely not.”

“Well twice I’ve been given a pre-opened cabinet, and now both of these look like they’ve been opened before.”

“We don’t sell returns without making clear they are returns.”

“Can we open these then?”

And so open them we did.  The first one had an extremely familiar look about it.  Partially constructed, scratched, and in no way a new item.  It even had a screwed up B&Q receipt in the box.  Still he continued to insist that they do not sell returns.

The other box, thankfully, contained what appeared to be a brand new cabinet.  And so I took it, and I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t wait around for a good enough answer as to why used items were on the shelf.  The old me would have kicked up much more of a fuss, but I could not be arsed to wait an hour until the manager returned.

Maybe I am getting too old for this?

There is a new advertising campaign under way aimed at preventing people downloading illegal films.  It centres on an individual known as Knock-off Nigel.

In the advert, a man dressed like a 70’s porn star serenades an office with tales of this despicable man, Knock-off Nigel.  Nigel, it seems, likes to download films from off of the Internet.  According to the porn star’s song, this makes him a ‘grubby little man’ who also commits other heinous crimes against his colleagues.  Such as stealing money from whip rounds, and taking your food from the fridge.   I can only assume he mentions these crimes in the song because these crimes are EXACTLY the same as downloading a film.

I actually see this advert as a sign of success for the anti-piracy campaigners.  This move to target slightly grubby office workers who must mean they have beaten their previous foes, as they are no longer telling us that counterfeit films “Support terrorists and drug dealers”.

It is a bit of a step down from terrorists, drug dealers and organised crime, to focussing on people who take your sandwiches from the fridge, but I admire their community minded campaign.  Linking crimes such as lunch-theft and ’sneaking coins out of the whip round’ to ‘downloading films’ takes a certain level of skill, and possibly years of studying criminology.  I think it only fair that the advertisers tell us what else we should be looking out for, after all, they have done the research.

But why stop there?  By the same crime escalation logic whereby committing Crime A means you also commit Crime X, the guy in the office who smacks the secretary’s arse is probably a closet rapist who bums dogs in his spare time.  I think they should tell us everything they know.

I have travelled to or from most airports in the UK.  Most of the nine London airports, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Luton, and of course Birmingham International.

It was this last airport that had my attention drawn to it by a friend who works as a pilot after he had been reading their annual report from the website. Available by clicking here.

After reading the first ten pages of boring aviation stuff and corporate information, he got to page 11 about Safety and Security, something of obvious interest to a pilot.  That is when he noticed their choice of image to accompany the security message.  I have included it below to save me describing it (click the image for the full size view).

I appreciate him sending it to me, and it is heart-warming to know that that there are people out there, no matter how old they get, or how responsible their job, they will always be on the lookout for a cheap knob-gag.  For that I am truly grateful.

It then begs the question of what sort of person is unable to pack for their holiday without including that special set of plastic cock and balls?  Perhaps the owner of this suitcase was emigrating, and we should give them the benefit of the doubt.  But then the suitcase does look rather sparse apart from the cock and balls.  A small make-up bag?  A nail file?  A hairbrush?  Hardly the stuff with which to launch a new life on the other side of the world.  Unless you are going to find work as a very specialised beauty therapist.

There is also the possibility that it was put there deliberately by the security services as a coded warning to Al Qaeda.

“Yes, we are English, but should we suspect you of being a terrorist, we will not let our crippling embarrassment or our innate wish to avoid a scene stop us from opening up your suitcase case and waving around prosthetic genitalia.  That is how much we want to beat you!”

So if you are sat reading this in a cave in Afghanistan, whilst taking a break from cramming semtex into vibrators, think again, because we are on to you…

*** STOP PRESS ***

Tideliar has informed us below that the offending Phallus has been photoshopped out of the brochure!  I was wrong, we HAVE let our crippling embarrassment give the advantage to kinky terrorists.  We are doomed!

I do not know any men that dye their hair.  At least, I do not think I do.  I have always assumed that if a man dyes his hair, he would be quite good at it, seeing as hiding the fact that you are dying your hair is sort of the point of doing it in the first place.  After all, you do not see many elderly gentlemen with bright red hair.  It has to be believable.

Which is why I was struck by the advertising for one particular brand of hair dye at my local supermarket.  In it, the model - who I assume has dyed his hair - is looking cool and suave as you would expect, but there is just something wrong with the picture.  As you can see below.

I am assuming that you too have seen the ’something wrong’.

It is disappointingly rare to see man with hair that is an entirely different colour to his eyebrows, particularly when he is trying to conceal the fact that one of those colour is not natural.  We can forgive Alastair Darling, as quite frankly no-one is going to dye only their eyebrows, as you would have to be extremely tight to limit your purchase of dye to just that area, and if our Chancellor thinks like that when it comes to spending money, then we’re all fucked.

Can we assume that this image was placed on the front of this box of dye deliberately?  It surely had to go through some quality control process, as you do not end up on the shelves of a major supermarket by fluke.  Someone, somewhere, put a tick in the box to say that this was ‘fine’.

Which leaves just one conclusion.  Out there, somewhere, there is a market for people wanting hair a very different colour to their eyebrows.  It is obviously a very niche market as I have only seen one or two in my entire life, but they clearly exist.

Is it you?

Consumer inflation in the UK has reached 5.2%.

This is just another sign that the country is going to the dogs.  With the credit crunch biting, the housing market stagnant at best, and the price of every day commodities rising faster than at any point in the last in the last ten years, something must be done.

We need cheaper products, and we need them now.  But how?

If there is one thing that Panorama has taught us, it is that children in the Far East can make things very cheaply indeed.  Surely it is not too much a of stretch to train them to make other things for us, apart from just trainers and jeans?  If we could get them into food production it would go quite a long way in reducing your weekly shopping bill, and this should be the overall aim for everyone at the moment.

So come on Tesco, come on Waitrose, let’s see you train up little Sandesh into a highly-skilled bread making machine and let’s start making Britain great again.

I am in the fortunate position that I do not have to drive anywhere near as often as I used to.  Getting through a couple of tanks of petrol a week was not unheard of in my last role.

Therefore I have not been hit particularly hard by the steady rise in the price of petrol in the last year or so.  So I tended to ignore it, like most social issues that do not directly affect me.

But, I recently filled up at a cost of over £60 for the first time, and after a long debate with the forecourt manager where he convinced me they had not, in fact, made a mistake, I decided to look into what makes today’s petrol so expensive.  After all, the price of crude oil is dropping quite quickly at the moment.

An average 115p litre of unleaded petrol is broken down like this:

50.35p on fuel duty
37.35p on the product itself
17.13p on VAT
10.17p for the retailer

Now, I understand the arguments for fuel duties, I really do.  Some of them I agree with, others I do not.  What I do not understand however is how the Government can tax us on the tax we are already paying.

You see, I was under the impression that the VAT (’Value Added’ Tax) should only be applied to that part of the price in which I am paying for, well, “additional value”?  i.e. the product and the service that is delivered it to me?  Whereas in effect they are benefiting twice by raising fuel duties, once with the duty itself, and secondly by the increased VAT charged upon it.

I hope someone out there cleverer than me can surely explain why this is not illegal?

Or maybe it is?

I just wish someone would hurry up and invent the solar powered BMW.  Though they would surely find a way to tax sunshine the day that happens.  It might not even be the first time.

I rarely make mistakes.

But when I do, I do tend to make an awful lot of them at once, and all about the same thing.

After posting a retraction just a few short days ago after mistakenly thinking I had eaten at Giraffe, it now turns out that I did not eat at The Bridge Bar either.  In fact, after several emails between myself and a nice man called Nick at the Bridge Bar, he has provided evidence that I ate The Tin Goose (which is not even listed as serving breakfast on Heathrow website)

I am not an unreasonable man, and as such I think it only fair that I correct this mistake.  Again.

I have again edited this post of a few days ago to reflect what I now believe really happened that morning.

Anyway, I have once again stealth-edited some of the comments so NO-ONE WILL EVER KNOW.  Except for all the people reading this.  And the people at The Bridge Bar.  And any Google refers.  And anyone you choose to tell about this.

So once again, no harm done.

If I have learned anything in this sorry mess, it is that I am a rubbish note taker when it comes to preparing blog posts.

I rarely make mistakes.

When I do, I tend to deal with them like a mature adult and ignore them in the hope that they will go away.  But sometimes, as in this case, someone will pop into my comments box and point out my mistake to the world.

I am not an unreasonable man, and as such I think it only fair that I correct that mistake.

In this post a few days ago I suggested I had eaten breakfast at Giraffe, when in fact it turns out I actually ate at The Bridge Bar.  This is what happens when you write a post a few weeks after the event, and when you are unable to recall the name of the restaurant, you search Google for places to eat in Terminal 1.  Unfortunately, Google lied and suggested there was only one place I could have eaten.

You see, it is mostly Google’s fault after all.

Anyway, I have stealth-edited the original post and some of the comments so NO-ONE WILL EVER KNOW.  Except for all the people reading this.  And the people at Giraffe.  And any Google refers.  And anyone you choose to tell about this.

So no harm done.