Thing

A thing is happening, in the environs of that London, on the 12/1/12. Thursday.

Do register your interest by filling in the comment thingy down there vvvv with your Twitter handlage.

I can't say what it is yet. But I will. And I'll make sure you know.

Beer is involved, obviously.

Oh, OK, it's a piss up. But there's a better-than-usual reason.

Dear Pengy

Pengy,

Many thanks for the summary, which I have to say I agree with in full  (and will state that when I share the document).

If you have no objections, I would like to share it all with both Carl & Phil (as well as Jim's new boss).

I would again like to express my personal sadness at the ending of our association.  

Whilst I think you've summarised yourself very well in your note (your words ! ! ) ...... you've not sold yourself well enough on your knowledge, experience, capability and abilities. Not just because it's now, but I have always said you are without equal the best process control engineer I have ever had the good fortune to work with and for me it's been an absolute pleasure to have been able to experience working with you.  

I hope that the future is good to you, and I also hope that our paths cross again ... hopefully sooner rather than later.

Best regards,


Boss

Enlightenment

My 10 y/o told me earlier that the teachers are striking because the government is trying to take away their pensions, just like Mrs Thatcher stole their milk.

"Oh, really?" I enquired.

What I really meant was this.

Mrs Fucking Schoolteacher, you chose your profession. I'm sure your pension is under threat, even though there are people who work 48 fucking weeks of the year and work hard too, who retire when they're 65, and I'm sure they'd love the world fucking cruises that you're going on when you jack it all in.

And, furthermore, Mrs Fucking Schoolteacher, your job is to teach my kid English and Sums and History and Shit. I let you get away with PSH Fucking E because it's in the National Curriculum (it's government propaganda, for those who don't know).

What your job ISN'T is shoving your fucking political views down my kids' throats.

I may well turn up with my friend the Enlightener to your picket tomorrow. If you're lucky I'll be in a good mood and bring hot soup.

Be lucky.

Programme

Next Wednesday's Skool Programme

0900-0915 BACON
0915-0930 Physical exercise. It fucking hurts.
0930-0945 Recovery and tea.
0945-1000 Maths.
1000-1030 More Maths. How to do it properly. BODMAS. Hundreds, tens, units.
1030-1100 Even More Maths. WHY you need to know.
1100-1115 BACON
1115-1200 Physical exercise. Properly, this time. You fat fuckers.
1200-1300 Lunch. Cook or starve.
1300-1400 English. No, not American, English.
1400-1500 Break for those who can speak English. Beatings for those who can't.
1500-1530 Smoke break.

Letter

Dear Mr [name removed]

Accept this as notice that I expect my fees to be refunded for [name removed] guitar lessons.

Not only am I disappointed in the quality and content of the programme, but also I cannot cope with the political influence which you have directed at her through your blind, inconsiderate action in participating in the November 30th strike.

I shall be conveying my thoughts in no uncertain terms to the Council for whom you work, the Chairman of which I have just spoken to, in the pub.

I wish you well. You will need these good wishes.

Yours

Pengy

Fuckwit

Here is an extract from Premier Foods in-house magazine.

And here is their share chart for that period, in which this fuckwit was in charge.

Evan

Right, toads.

I'm not giving too much away, but I spent 15 long years in brainwashing. I KNOW about it. Trust me. Push me as far as you like, I'm saying nothing. But trust me, I know the difference between what makes people believe you and what makes people want to die for you. I can see it in a heartbeat.

I've seen Nigel Farage in action. He isn't saying what he says for effect. He isn't saying it because he wants the job. He's saying it because he knows that what he says is thought by many, many people.

I am one of those people.

Go, Mr Farage. Go go go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bdob6QRLRJU

Evidence

I am seriously unhappy about the way this project is being bulldozed in, seemingly to protect someone's reputation.

 

There are no safety features incorporated in it, and even if it is bodged in this afternoon I'm not sure it will be done properly, the safety protocol isn't a five-minute job.

 

If someone is hurt, or worse, during the night, then I fear that someone will go to jail for criminal negligence.

 

It won't be me, which is why I'm putting this in an email.

 

Regards - Pengy

 

 

Business

Brilliant business plan. I know you'll like it and want to get involved.

All I ask from you is some money. Doesn't need to be much, maybe a couple of grand a year each.

What do you get for it? Well, for a start, we'll build some pretty neat buildings, on lakes, in cities around the place. We'll need to employ quite a few people and, I suspect, grease a few palms to get it kicked off. That'll give us an air of legitimacy. Then we'll set up a framework, and get things nicely under control.

We'll use the money wisely though; obviously to keep our position in the marketplace we'll need to engineer things so that we look good.

Trust us, when all this has been worked through it will be better for ALL.

Interested?

Send money (cash, please), to

The Chief Accountant
The European Union
Brussels
Europe.

You won't be disappointed.

Project

I work for a huge organisation.

I work in one of the biggest factories in that huge organisation.

I pointed out to them some years ago that there was something lurking in their system that was going to bite them on the arse one day. I explained what it was, and what needed to be done in order to prevent it from biting them. I costed the solution and it came to £60,000. It was actually £10,000 but I factored in a fair bit of contingency, downtime, meetings and a fortnight on the piss, and expected them to knock it down to £30,000.

They responded accordingly and had meeting after meeting after meeting, whereupon it was decided that they should virtually rebuild the factory.

They assigned contractors by the dozen. Three years, and £2,500,000 later, the arse-biting thing is still there, they have had more downtime than ever, the new system still doesn't work.

People have egg on their faces. Last night they ran the new system all night, for the first time, produced virtually nothing, and today had a meeting where it was declared that "the project ran for 24 hours".

Does that sound scary? It does to me. The "project". Fuck the project. It's a factory. It makes things which we sell to make profits and pay people. But no, all that matters is the "project".

Just like the EU.

Dissonance

I heard a thing on the radio this morning, about a transgendered person (I think) who was 60. Very interesting, poor thing. Anyway, the interviewer mentioned cognitive dissonance and, as I like big words, I looked it up.

It is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.

Anyway, I had just bought a can of faux-red-bull, which is 35p, from the local shop. Eric, who runs the shop, is not really very well, he's getting on a bit. His counter is covered in post in brown envelopes.  At least one is from The VAT Hounds.

The 35p includes VAT at 20% so Eric has to enter the sale of goods somewhere and HMRC (spits) get 6p. At the end of the month all this has to be added up, and no doubt an accountant is paid handsomely to look at it, and the total amount has to be paid to the governments coffers.

I understand why there needs to be 6p given to the coffers. It's because there are people who, through no fault of their own, need financial support. Disabled people, for instance. I probably can't think of any others. And we probably need some sort of NHS and some sort of roads. So I have that idea in my head.

I have another idea in my head. That idea is that a bunch of lunatics decided that there should be a continent in which a pile of disparate economies should have two presidents and the same currency. Both of these ideas are stupid and I don't let them affect me. But then, as the idea slips quietly into the chasm of stupidity, the Supreme Rulers of this paradigm decide that in one last-ditch attempt at keep their bizarre creation alive with a life-support machine of which Frankenstein would have been proud, they decide to throw 1,450,000,000 of these silly Euros at it. It broke the fall for a couple of days, but it's now on its course to oblivion.

Some poor sod has to sell 24,000,000,000 cans of faux-red-bull for these bastards to do this. That's a whole lot of fun someone could have had instead of filling in a line on a ledger or keying in a stupid number on a computer.

This isn't the way the world should be.

Poor Eric.

Someone's taking the fucking piss, that's all I can say.

Humbug

Is this just me being bah humbug?

I was in a restaurant on Saturday, which had pissed me off already by changing the menu between my choosing what I wanted and my order being taken, and I had to go without lobster, so maybe I over reacted.

But on the table there was a small card, which I took, and which I have since lost, saying how a quid would be added to my bill unless I took it off, which meant that I'd have to notice this card.

The card is for StreetSmart - Helping the Homeless. It is "sponsored" by DeutscheBank, which means their advertising is all over the stuff, which means that restaurants everywhere are advertising whoever the fuck DeutscheBank are, for nothing.

Stephen Fry is on the inside cover.

Let me tell you, DeutscheBank could contribute MORE than StreetSmart make, out of petty cash, and set it against tax. In a heartbeat.

So I crossed off the quid from the bill. Then went outside and gave the Big Issue seller a twenty quid note and told him to get a B&B for the night. He probably bought drugs.

Fucks' sake. Deutsche anything can fuck off. So can Santander.

http://www.streetsmart.org.uk/

M5

The M5 crash on Friday midnight was tragic. Seven dead, many injured.

Our esteemed Plod are now treating it as criminal because some smoke from a bonfire may have drifted across the road. Or something.

Let me explain.

The M5 is a three-lane motorway. It's designed to have a thing called traffic on it. That's cars and vans and lorries. They go from A to B.

Sometimes it doesn't work out, sometimes one of the traffic is tired, bent out of shape after an argument, distracted, even drunk. Sometimes one of the traffic has an MOT from a country in the EU that will give you an MOT for a Euro even if the wheels are in the boot. When one of the traffic misbehaves, it can cause a crash. Usually all the other traffic stops and everybody gets cross until Plod have cleared up the mess.

Sometimes it's worse. Sometimes a lot of the traffic is tired. This tends to happen at midnight.

It's a bastard for those involved, the families, everyone.

Learn. Keep your distance. Assume everyone else on the road is tired, cross, distracted, drunk, stupid, incompetent, homicidal, and that their wheels are just about to fall off. And assume you're the biggest twat of the lot. I know I am.

It's not worth trying to get there two minutes earlier. It really isn't.

Stay safe. Please.

Mum

My mum has gone to a nursing home.

She has this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson_plus_syndrome

You don't want this. There are a load of big words in there which are chiefly euphemisms for shit, more shit, and even more shit.

I haven't got a mum any more.

Where is Harold Shipman when you need him?

If I had one of "those" pills I'd give it to her.

Why

Why the government are targetting UNISON - and why UNISON need to take responsibility

The government promised to sort out the economy. There are many ways in which they could do that; unfortunately most of them rely on a stream of money coming in from people who don't have the confidence to provide it. Those people are too busy licking their wound from the Euro fiasco and they're very probably looking to get a mighty return on their investment to compensate.

One other way is for British Industry to get off its backside and start making things that other people want, but so many obstacles, both financial and administrative, are in the way. Perhaps removing these would be a start?

The cheap and easy way is to spend less. Again, one way to do that is to stop propping up dodgy economies like Greece’s, but for reasons I cannot fathom that is not an option. I suspect that Merkel and Sarkozy have kidnapped Cameron’s children, or something.

So, that leaves cuts.

Cutting spend means cutting jobs.

UNISON members are public sector workers paid for by the private sector. The private sector are people who do things that other people want to pay for, such as manufacturing, banking, finance, services, etc. The public sector do things that people have to have, like emptying bins, teaching children, nursing, doctoring, etc.

In the private sector, if a company doesn’t keep to its budgets, it goes bankrupt and everybody is out of a job.

In the public sector, if a company doesn’t keep to its budgets, tax goes up and their budgets are increased.

When the tax paid by the private sector drops below the cost of the public sector, then either more tax needs to be paid, or borrowing needs to increase, or cuts have to be made.

Cuts have to be made. UNISON is the biggest union, and to achieve financial stability, the government have to either pay everyone in it less, or lay some off.

Union leaders are being paid more than the Prime Minister, so they have an interest in appearing to support their members. The government won’t negotiate, because there is nothing to negotiate over, therefore the unions strike because that is their only recourse.

But this is madness. When the union workers are on strike, they are not being paid. This only exacerbates their agony and anger, and attracts the ire of the public whose service are being cut and who being inconvenienced. The union bosses, however, are still being paid, and the union dues are still payable. Genius, isn’t it?

UNISON need to take responsibility. They need to start by assessing any possibilities of their members taking early retirement, changes of job, retraining, etc. They need to work WITH the government. That won’t happen. They wouldn’t even work with a faux-Labour government under Blair and Brown, so there is no chance of it happening with well-heeled self-sufficient, nay rich, sons of bankers and Eton.

Greece

This is what has happened in Greece.

It is probably utter cock, which is why I'm writing it. Please let me know what is wrong here?

I am not an economist.

Greece is in debt. It owes money to people. I think these people are mainly China. They have lent Greece money (rather a lot of it) and they thought that Greece would pay it back, plus some more money, which is called "interest".

Greece can't pay it back because they have spunked it on buying votes for the government, by telling people everything is wonderful and they can retire at 55.

There were two options. The sensible one would have been to say "whoops" and then the people who lent the money would have gone "oh bollocks" and that would be that. The value of your investment can go down as well as up.

The second option, which is a bit daft, is the one they chose. Greece (via the EU) say "look, if you voluntarily accept a 50% haircut, we'll pay you back." This means that for every Quid/Euro/Drachma/Yen/ChineseThing the people lent them, half of it goes in the bin, and Greece will, one day (snork) pay back the other half, with interest. And the interest rate is HUGE.

They key is voluntary. Without voluntary Greece is bankrupt and under the rules of bankruptcy the lender can either fuck off or take the whole of Greece and ship to to China or somewhere. Expensive. Not worth it.

Here is the bit I have trouble with. Having done this haircutting, instead of Greece being about 60% short of being able to pay, they are no only 20% short.

So they're fucked.

Hope this has been of interest to one and all.