Diary of an English Tosser

Something and Nothing

2008-12-08T13:46:00.003Z

I was going to write some long rambling thing about the EU court overruling the British government about the retention of DNA on a database of people who have been arrested, but either not charged or subsequently acquitted, and therefore in the eyes of the law totally innocent.

The fact that the retention of this DNA data has been ruled as a breech of human rights and illegal is obviously a very good thing indeed. I'm sorry but if you don't agree with this you're either a complete moron, have more in common genetically with a sheep than with the rest of the human race or are a member of our shambolic government. Possibly all three.

Anyway like I say I was going to go on and on about this. I've had all weekend without an internet connection, although I have had an accompaniment of uncouth cable engineers (can you engineer a cable?) If I ever meet Richard Branson I'll have a few choice ideas where he can put several miles of his cabling.

And now today though I feel like shit, and not because I'm ill. So this is the best I can manage, sorry.

Addendum

2008-12-04T12:07:00.003Z

Here's a picture I took on my flight back to London. And I rather like it. You can see where I live.

I can also report that British Airways seem to have abandoned their much derided policy of distributing passengers' luggage all over the world with little regard for their actual destination.

Flying, some thoughts on

2008-12-02T13:47:00.003Z

So, to cut a not very long story a little bit shorter. I’m sitting in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. It’s dark outside, even though it’s only 4.30. I've always had a hatred for airport terminals, they are almost universally hideous buildings. This one is a little different though. Although negotiating your way from the underground station to departures is actually a little harder than it appears or needs to be. Everything inside is lit in a soft warm light, which makes everything seem very calm. It also means that when you look up, you’re surprised by how impressive the dimly lit cavernous steel and glass roof above you is. It all feels very nice and efficient as my bag is checked in, and I’m excited because it will be nice to go away for a few days.

Then you go through security. First as you go through passport control you have you’re picture taken by four little cameras, but you’ve got no idea when they actually take the picture. It’s a bit disconcerting as you don’t know when to try and look as un shifty as possible. So you try to look like that all the time. Which probably makes you look really shifty. I’m sure I’ve already been marked. Then you get in a slowly shuffling line. At the end of which you have to remove everything from your pockets, remove your belt, shoes, jacket and put them in trays, along with your bag. And then wait to be called through the metal detector. I imagine this is a bit like it must be checking into prison. If they come up with away of delousing by irradiation then this is exactly what it will be like. (do they still delouse people, or is that just in films?) Anyway I left my wallet in my pocket, meaning I set off the metal detector so had to be thoroughly groped before reclaiming my possessions and being released into the departure lounge. There are lots of very shiny and expensive shop inside, and some kind of Gordon Ramsey franchise. So I went to the bar, sat and had a beer listening to the very soft piped music and watching sky news, muted but with subtitles, on the big screens behind the bar. I just ended up staring blankly at pictures of the terrorist attack in Mumbai . Then I realise that my earlier optimism had been sapped somewhat, so decided to cheer myself up by buying a book and some new headphones for my I pod. Which is fine except I can’t open the packaging for the headphones. After wrestling with the stupid plastic box for 15 minutes, which taunts you by being transparent so that you can see the sodding things inside, I went into a shop to ask if I could borrow some scissors to get the headphones out. I can’t, clearly I don't hold the relevant certificate to operate scissors in an airport building, but they’ll do it for me. Even armed with scissors it took another couple of minutes to get my headphones out. As I was watching this and then as I walked down to the holding pen by the gate the very idea that flying was ever considered to be glamorous, or indeed was glamorous seemed so alien it was ridiculous. It’s more like being a wrongfull arrest. Followed by a every so slightly exotic bus journey. Except the bus stop has been designed by some very clever architect.

Had a nice trip. Thank you.

Apologies for radio silence

2008-11-21T21:39:00.003Z

Ok, so this has been something of a false start. I have my reasons, a tosser always has his reasons. Personally I put my blogging inactivity down to bad timing, I admit that this is a pretty piss poor excuse but then again I am a tosser!

I was suffering something of a momentous event hangover. The entire capitalist system seemed (still seems) to be collapsing around us. The news continues to serve up generous daily portions of rapid rises in unemployment, home repossessions and numerous other financial disasters and assorted doom mongering (Robert Peston, take a bow). Our great esteemed (read clueless) leader saw fit to give the very people who seem to have largely caused this dreadful mess many hundreds of billions of pounds of public money. This appears to have been syphoned with unexpected efficiency directly into various executives various Swiss bank accounts. Thus the very rich get richer and every body else gets brutally sodomised. Low and behold the status quo is rectified. Happy days indeed.

The watery wintery sun shone slightly brighter in early November when America voted an actual bonafide deity as it's next president. I was, like most of the rest of the world, rather pleased by this. My pleasure is mildy tempered, and remember pleasure is only ever fleeting, by the fact that if you thumb back through only a couple of pages of British history you arrive at the apparently wonderful spring of 1997. Substitute "Change we can believe in" with "Things can only get better" (perhaps the most dreadful slogan in the history of politics) and you might see some fairly obvious parallels, mainly huge great dollops of shallow rhetoric eagerly fed to a desperate population by a fawning media. And just look at how all that turned out.

Come my people's revolution it is Murdoch who'll be first against the wall. (Just to clarify i'm talking about media moguls not members of the A-Team)

Anyway his devine holiness Obama can sleep easily knowing that he still has the benefit of my doubt for now. His speech in Chicago (a great city I have very fond memories of) on that night was certainly very impressive. Three hearty cheers for the speech writers. In my experience though adulation generally turns rapidly to disappointment. Maybe, just maybe.

Around this time the British nation lost it's collective marbles and worked itself into a frankly ridiculous frenzy, almost entirely engineered by the odious Daily Mail mobilising the "moral majority", over the fact that a couple of puerile, but reasonably funny comedians and radio presenters broadcasted themselves leaving a slightly rude message on an aging actors answering machine in which they discussed the fact that one of them had slept with his granddaughter (One of them actually had). For the purposes of proper outrage said actor was turned into a "national treasure" There were 2 complaints, from people who'd actually heard it, the day after this moderately tasteless item was broadcast. A week later after the Mail had properly outlined this outrage, and the rest of the media had jumped unedifying onto the bandwagon, complaints numbered well over 30,000, from people who hadn't actually heard it. The fine institution that is the BBC was publically flogged, resignations and suspensions ensued. Our clueless Prime Minister passed dour judgement. Questions were even asked in Parliament for fucks sake! It all ended well though when the granddaughter in question, a member of a vampiric burlesque show called the Satanic Sluts, complained bitterly that all this attention was hurting her grandfather. She even managed to maintain her righteous indignation as she hired a publicist and sold her "story" to most read tabloid newspaper in the country. (Mr. Murdoch, again I salute you)

Anyway all this is irrelevant. I missed the boat. It's all been discussed endlessly. Since then things have been a touch mundane or just a case of same old, same old. And that has left me a touch impotent, blog wise. This is of course no reflection on my own personal life, which is actually looking quite promising right now, and I may or may not choose to mention aspects of it at certain points as I see fit. These are things that have bothered or interested me and may give people a bit of insight into how I think about things. Right that's it various rants over with.

On a lighter note I have just finished reading a rather good book. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. He wrote it in the 60s but no one would publish it. He suffered depression as a result of this and killed himself at the age of 32. A rather tragic story, his mother believing in her son's talent persevered until it was published in the 80s. It subsequently won the Pulitzer prize for fiction. I can heartily recommend it. It really is very good and very funny. Incidentally it was also Bill Hicks's favorite book, which may or may not put you off.

Right i'm tired now and need fine wine, so i'll say goodbye. Until next time.

Welcome to my blog

2008-11-07T13:09:00.003Z

Hello and welcome to my blog. So I am an English Tosser, in as much as I'm English and people regularly tell me that I'm a tosser. I feel like a bit of a charlatan using it as a name as I don't really consider myself to be a tosser, but there's only so much flying in the face of public opinion that one can do.

So anyway I will be posting some, no doubt somewhat incoherent, ramblings here sometime very soon.

And thank you to The Blogbunnie for designing and setting up this blog for me. She really is very lovely.