Me

I left school once. It was a very long time ago.

Whilst I was at school, we did lessons. We did History, Geography, English, Maths, RE, Sport, Music, French. We did Chemistry, Physics, Biology.

I learnt quite a few things.

In history I learnt that we used to kill each other and still do.

In geography I learnt where Ceylon, Yugoslavia and Rhodesia were, and why rivers don't go in straight lines.

In English, I learnt English. And that a conjunction is something with which one should never start a sentence, and a preposition is something one should never end a sentence with.

In maths, I learnt that e^(pi.i) + 1 = 0. Also that triangles don't fall over, and the square on the hypotenuse is the sum of the squares on the other two sides. And that minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c all over two a lets you solve a quadratic.

In RE I learnt that thou shalt love the LORD thy GOD with all thy heart and with all thy heart and with all thy mind and with all thy soul and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, and there is none other Commandment greater than these.

I learnt that I was crap at sport.

I learnt that I was good at music and I could play things.

I learnt that, although my great (....) grandfather was French in 1066, the language escaped me. Even though the inhabitants of dear England spoke it for 400 years.

I learnt in chemistry that by mixing certain substances you could get quite high, also blow bloody great holes in brickwork.

I learnt in physics that what goes up must come down, that gases expand when heated, and that if you put a battery and a small electric motor on the LT side of a transformer you could electrocute wasps with the HT side without too much personal risk.

I learnt little from biology.

You can see from this that my career path was mapped out by the time I left. I was to study Tonmeistry at University, and work in the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Apart from failing the A levels.

Bollocks.

So I got a job. It was a pretty shit job, as jobs go. Shift work, which fucks with your head every time the shift changes, and for which I blame what I am now. A penguin with a hook. You had to work, too. Quite hard. None of this having a day off, unless you were dead. You got the morning off for being dead.

The boss was a complete cunt. A northerner, and a Yorkshireman at that, who'd had polio and had a huge chip on his shoulder. Who would sack people simply for being late or lazy or crap. And wouldn't employ anyone who was in a union. He was fucking BRILLIANT. He bollocked me on a daily basis. He sold out his firm to a Big Company and took me with him, simply because I was a cunt too. But a cunt who worked fucking hard when he needed to. And a cunt who was earning Bloody Good Money by the time he was 22 and all his mates were coming out of Uni looking for jobs, mostly in the public sector, many as teachers.

I was lucky.

I would like to say that, had I done what I was "meant" to do, I would have been canny enough to suss out that the whole bloody civil service pensions thing was a huge Ponzi scheme, and if anyone else had tried to get away with it they'd have gone to jail, but I dont know. I like to think I'm not so thick that I could have been conned.

So, there we have it.

If I have a pension, I've bought it. You haven't. If I want a day off I'll have one. I don't expect to be paid for it. I owe you nothing. Anything I have I have worked for, myself. That's not pride either. It's common fucking sense.

So, on this day of strike action, I say to you, teachers and public sector workers:

Just. Fuck. Off.

Whining cunts.

Now get back to work.

Thanks.

Malvinas

The Falkland Islands are in the news. Well, they were, a few days ago. Rely on me to be last to know.

But, as Peter Falk, star of Columbo, died recently, I am mindful that Falkery, like Fawkes, must never be forgot.

Here is my take on it, just in case I had any friends at all left.

The Falkland Islands is a group of Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. Its Capital city, or town, or village really, is Stanley, which is not unlike Royston Vasey (apart from the airport). The weather is shit.

When the British Empire was around, we probably robbed it from someone like Argentina. Argentina is famous for Fray Bentos.

In 1982 Argentina wanted to nick it back. They should have asked, because I'm pretty sure our Maggie (who was the Prime Minister) would have given it to them in exchange for a year's supply of those tinned Steak and Kidney Pies with the magic pastry. I would have done. But they didn't. So we sent at least one of the Royal Family over in a helicopter, along with some soldiers, and nicked it back. Argentina lost the General Belgrano (a ship) which was a bit of a bugger for them. Quite an expensive ship.

Anyway, now, some pillock who lives there wants to be Argentinian. Something to do with his wife/bird/mother of his kids living in Argentina. Or something.

So, some Argentinian politician says "Therefore we can have the Falklands back" and Cameron (another politician) says "The Falklanders can be British as long as they want".

What I remember about the Falklands War is that Terry Wogan was in the charts with "The Floral Dance", Mark Knopfler was in the charts with Dire Straits (appropriately), I think with "Romeo and Juliet", I knocked the wall down in my house and it fell through the floor, I failed to pay my office rent because I spunked the profits on beer, so got slung out, I made thousands of pounds in cash (say no more), and I got divorced. Additionally, the Sun had a headline about Argy Bargies. People all thought Maggie was a bit daft about it.

I hope we don't fight over it again.

I also don't understand why people are so possessive about things, and why we can't just eat more Steak and Kidney Pies and live together in peace and harmony.

But the bottom line is that I wanted to show you this black penguin who lives off (quite a long way off) the coast of the Falklands. linky, and also draw your attention to the fact that the Humboldt Penguin is endangered by the people of Peru who steal their guano for fertiliser. The Humboldt Pengy hatches its eggs in guano, because it keeps them warm. And these guano-stealers are Peruvian. And Peru is in South America, like Argentina is.

I think that's a lot more important than politicians. Penguins have done nothing to deserve your detestation and disgust. Most politicians have.

Journos

This is extracted from something I wrote about a year or so ago.

I'm not defending Johann Hari. I'm just commenting on Journalism.

Many years ago, in a different life, I was in the paper. I'm actually in it quite a lot, usually in the little column describing what happened in court yesterday. But this one was a bit more special. I'll try to summarise what the paper said:

PILOT'S SKILL SAVES PREGNANT WIFE FROM DISASTER

Pilot Philip Foster's skill and training saved his pregnant wife from certain death yesterday when his aircraft's engine failed whilst returning to his home airfield. He averted disaster by landing in a field, avoiding surrounding villages ...

What a hero, eh?

This is the reality.

Philip Foster (the name they used, and nothing like mine) was actually buggering off somewhere else because the weather was nice, rather than returning home, and was skiving off work. The wife at the time was indeed a bit pregnant as I remember, and was reading a book, oblivious to the engine failure which the hero, Marvo, was addressing with what can only be described as the full three degrees of incompetence.

Having looked around for a suitable landing site and found something vaguely greener than most other possibilities, Marvo proceeds to fail to turn off the fuel. He then descends, because this what aircraft do when they have a buggered engine, normally. He fails to apply the flap, then careers into a field of winter barley, about two feet or so higher than the wings, at a rather unusual angle and executes what can only be described as a "crash" which, had it not been for the height of the crop, would have taken out a small village, church and sub post-office.

Marvo then finds the nearest pub and proceeds to drink it dry.

Now, compare that to the MSM article above? Any similarity at all?

No, didn't think so.

Meh

Meh

Division

I'm afraid the time has come, as the walrus said, to talk of many things.

Not shoes, nor string, nor sealing wax, not even cabbages, nor kings.

But there is going to be a division, I'm afraid. A huge division. Not like the constant bickering between the party faithfuls of the Left and the Right. Not even the North and the South.

It's whole countries, whole paradigms, whole currencies, whole industries.

Looks like Greece is going tits-up. Not a surprise to anyone who understands that people want, want, want all the time. Personally, I'd swap the finery and nicely-mown parks of the UK for a bit of Greek sunshine and taramasalata any day, but my priorities are different from most people's.

But there are people with a huge vested interest in Greece being in the EU, and the Euro, and everything working according to plan. And those people will be smarting badly if it goes wrong.

On the other hand, there are people like me who are probably more cynical about the whole social engineering experiment and gravy train that is the EU.

I think it WILL go bad. And I HOPE it does. There, I've said it.

That will alienate me from some people for whom I have very much respect and affection.

Shit happens.

Nutjob

I don't know if I've been hanging around the headcases on Twitter for too long, but blimey.

My brain exploded last night.

There was some shit. My kid having her head smacked into a wall by a bullying bitch at school. And me "having a word" with bitch's dad.

Then when I thought it was safe to go back into the water I had some horrendous news, about a friend.

Then some more minor shit, which normally would have fallen off unnoticed.

Then there I was sitting, Twittering away like the babbling idiot that I am, and someone said something to someone else which I probably would not normally have even blinked at, and some bastard crept into my brain and flicked the self-destruct switch.

Fuck's sake. Red mist, black dog, tsunami of brain cells.

Obvious solution, attack the straw that broke the back of the camel.

Twat.

Anyway, that's where I went. I'm @RealPengy now.

Soz.

Misanthropy

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Hate

I don't hate very many things.

There are two things I really hate. They are rife in real life and on on Twitter. One is easy, it's lies. Being lied to. Lying. Fucking hate that.

The second one is more difficult. I hate it probably more. One reason I hate it is because it probably has a word and I can't find it.

The thing I hate is where someone says something in a crowded room, or tweets something on Twitter, and that something is obviously aimed at a someone, without saying who the someone is. But the someone knows. And I'm as guilty as the next man, woman or penguin. But that doesn't make it right.

I hate it so much that I think that when I see it again I shall be quite nasty. So be warned.

But someone, please tell me what the word for it is?

Thank you.

Alice

Facebook users can report a page by going onto it and pressing the "report" thingy. It's on the left, under all the bollocks like Wall, Info etc.

Alice Pyne, the brave lass suffering with cancer, does not need some misguided/evil/stupid bastard putting up a page on her behalf for whatever reason, and it is upsetting her.

The page is here (clicky clicky): The offending page

So, go there. Report it. I know Mark Suckaturd is busy making himself a box office success but FFS if enough people go there and tell him, he really might take it down.

It won't cost you anything. It won't take long.

Here's Alice's post: Alice's Post on Twitter just in case you think I'm the evil one.

Just do it.

Or the kitten dies.

Pengy

Pissed

Right.

Pissed off. Of course things happen. Of course they do. Sometimes they happen more than once. Usually cos you don't learn. But hold on. I'm getting right jacked off with this. As many of you know, my daughter, Melanie, died of fucking cancer. That was shit. And I've had another couple of mates who have.

And here's another one. A Twitter friend. Great lass. NEVER moans. Unlike some people who haven't got a problem and don't even know what a problem is. Like me, for instance.

Does good stuff, she does. Likes animals. Not like Miss World "Oooh I like animals and I want to do some good."

No. Like will make Christmas if she is REALLY lucky but it isn't likely. Like that.

I've had enough of this bollocks. I really have. Let's give it to the sodding banks, India, Pakistan, wherever people are dying of diarrhoea. We can't cure the common cold. We can't sort out cancer without killing the patient half the time.

Let's all extol the virtues of Bill Fucking Gates who's ripped the poor punters off since the eighties with half-baked shit, who has billions of quid he can't spend, and then bungs it on some arse vaccination to some Africans who will now have kids who grow up to be old enough to overpopulate somewhere else. Brilliant. Thanks, Bill, you four-eyed inadequate twat. Thanks you big pharma wankers who've been ripping us off for 95p in the pound since FOREVER.

Thanks God. or whoever the fuck invented cancer.  Thank you Church, for having more money and land and everything else than you fucking know what to do with.

I have a plan. Let's have the bloody lot. Let's shove it into sorting out this pile of festering shite. Let's stop bunging it into a country that's still spear-chucking (and those are Prince Philip's fucking words, not mine). And let's cut the shit. And the suits.

Pengy says let's get stuck in and sort it. None of this retire at 50 and have two hours for lunch bollocks. And meetings. Just fucking DO IT.

Now. Argue. You know you want to. Be offensive. I'll ignore you if you're not.