Media

Toddlers & Tiaras

If ever there was a reason to believe that parts of the USA are completely degenerate I found it this afternoon!

We were round at the sister-in-law’s and idly flicking through her Skybox (Ooo, Matron!) we stumbled on this uniquely American offering. I’ve watched a lot of “wrong” TV in my time, I’m a big boy, I’m allowed to! But this was wrong on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to start.

For those of you lucky enough never to have encountered it, Toddlers and Tiaras (we will call it TaT for short) follows kids as young as 18 months as they prepare for and appear in what the yanks call pageants. (Over this side of the pond a pageant tends to involve lots of am-dram societies and battle re-enactment clubs performing scenes from British history in a muddy field outside a stately home!) TaT is on an altogether bigger scale of tasteless yukkiness.

I would have to go back nearly 30 years to when I worked in a school to recall such displays of pushy, ill-tempered, self-centred and selfish brattishness. And some of the kids were just as bad as their parents. One has to wonder, as one watches a three year old being tweezed, spray-tanned and blinged-up to the eyeballs, how much of this is for the benefit of the child and just how much is “mommy” living vicariously through her sprogs.

It’s quite obvious that some of those kids don’t want to be there and don’t want to do it, but it’s easy to rebel against your parents when you’re 14 or 40. It’s not so easy when you’re four to explain your objections to being objectified.

The pushy “mommies” are worthy of note. Quite aside from the major mommy hissy fits, here’s just a few examples:

Quote – “When I see her on stage it’s just like having a life-sized doll.” Well, if that’s what you want, then buy one and let your daughter lead a normal life!

Quote – “We’ve spent a quarter of a million to get the girls started.” I can’t help feeling that would have been better spent on a college fund!!

Mommy reducing her daughter to tears while she’s on stage because she forgot part of the dance routine. She’s FIVE, for crap’s sake.

I could go on, but if I watch any more of this dross I WILL chuck the coffee table at the telly.

However, the most worrying and sinister part of all this is the overt sexualising of these children. A three year old dressed as Madonna, complete with conical boobs, is very disturbing. It aint cute. It’s nothing short of soft porn for paedophiles. Mommy and daddy should be ashamed.

Law, Religion

What a Pickle!

Eric Pickles has now flung his not inconsiderable weight into the dispute over whether local councils can hold prayers as part of their business. He’s going to rush through a commencement order for powers contained in the Localism Act 2011 which would give councils a “general power of competence”.

Now, while most of us would be only too delighted to see our local councils exercise some competence, there is some serious doubt whether the new powers would solve the “problem”. It all arises because of a recent ruling in the High Court that Bideford Town Council had acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said during meetings. I find it astonishing that, in the 21st century, we are even having this debate.

The business of a local council, or any body that exercises executive power, outside of the church itself, should not contain an act of corporate worship. I am a civil servant and if I suggested starting a meeting with christian prayers I would firstly be howled down and then, probably, subjected to disciplinary action. I also find offensive in all this the suggestion that you can only be a good councillor if you’re a christian.

We are a nation of many faiths and of none. The churches claim that 6 million attend regularly. That’s probably an over-estimate, but even if it isn’t it’s still less than ten per cent of the population and, therefore, no basis on which to incorporate religious worship into the public functions of organisations that exist to serve everyone.

Religious worship has its place, but that isn’t in the council chamber or, come to that, the chambers of the Houses of Parliament.

Politics

Eggwina rides again

There’s a dull rumbling coming from just east of here! It’s the local worthies of the Tory party in our neighbouring constituency waking up to the realisation that their new(ish) MP was bought off the shelf from Rentaquotes ‘r’ Us. (Actually, he was one of an emergency short-list imposed on the local association by Tory Central Office because they didn’t have enough candidates in safe seats from “non-traditional backgrounds”.)

Sam Gyimah, for it is he, appeared in a debate on BBC Radio 5 Live earlier in the week. Clicky. He was challenged to go to Salford and live on benefits for a week. If you bother to watch the video you will see him duck the question with a completely amateurish deflection. (Mind you – Salford on 65 quid for a week? I’d have told the guy to fuck off straight away, but then I don’t have to try and convince anyone to vote for me!)

Sam was probably wise to back away from the offer. The precedents are not good.

Remember Edwina Currie? She of the eggs and “chips and telly”? Back in the 80s she took up the benefits challenge and failed miserably after blowing half her budget on courgettes and grissini sticks. Coincidentally, Currie was also on Five Live this week, reducing a young mother struggling with debts and unemployment to tears.

Since they banned fox hunting it seems that mocking the poor is the only fun these privileged, rich Tory bastards get.

Law

Just Dizerts

So “Commander” Ali Dizai is back in jail again after his second trial for perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office.

Dizzy’s first conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal when it came to light that the main prosecution witness, Waad al-Baghdadi, had a conviction for diddling money off nanny state. His credibility was, therefore, in question and My Lords Cocklecarrot couldn’t decide whether this would have affected the outcome of the original trial, so round we went again at huge public expense.

We might as well not have bothered as the end result has been exactly the same as Dizzy is once again kicking his heels in solitary. But, joy of joys, he says he’s going to appeal. One wonders what “new” evidence will be brought up this time. One wonders even more how much extra public money we’re going to have to waste on this toad.

(A small digression – I’ve seen Dizzy’s internet home and, frankly, I wouldn’t have paid for the damned thing either. It’s “my first website” writ hideous large, complete with larey graphics and some truly awful English. But that hasn’t stopped Dizzy using it to trash al-Baghdadi.)

The public have a right to expect the highest moral standards of those it employs – nowhere more so than in the police, and nowhere more so in the police than in the upper ranks. Unfortunately, this is a man driven by ego – unable to accept that he has done wrong or to contemplate that the wheels have come off his comfortable lifestyle.

Media

Kavanagh’s a pratt

One could almost weep for Trevor Kavanagh! Where does he leave his brain and his moral compass when he opens his mouth and shoves his foot firmly in it?

Kavanagh has today complained about the way some “journalists” from The Sun have been treated following police raids on their homes.  He says that such intrusion into their lives is “out of proportion”.

This is quite staggering in its level of hypocrisy. This man works for The Sun, for crap’s sake – the lowest form of life in the media sewer. (And SHIT! Is there some shit down there!)

Just a couple of snippets:-

“He said money sometimes changed hands while unearthing stories, and this had always been standard practice.” That may be true, but it doesn’t make it legal or moral.

“ The company would always consider the public interest first when a story was under consideration.” Fuck RIGHT off. They consider the profits and nothing else.

If/when the rat-pack end up back at their desks perhaps they will ponder on the experience and accept that it really isn’t very nice to have your skiddy undies paraded to the world.

At least the police are investigating suspected criminal activity – not muckraking or trawling  through dustbins to satisfy the prurient interests of knuckle-draggers.

Law, Religion

Fred vs The Hackers

I make no apology for returning to an old soap box – the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) – since news came this week that several of WBC’s egregious websites had been hacked and taken offline by the anonymous group LulzFinancial.

I must admit to a reasonable degree of schadenfreude when I heard that WBC had been hit in this way – again! I seem to recall that some years ago someone hijacked godhatesfags and pointed it at godhatesfigs – a statement for which there is no small biblical justification!

If you read the bible literally (and particularly the old testament) you’ll find shed loads of things that god hates – adultery and sex outside marriage, for instance, and Shirley Phelps-Roper (Fred’s vicar in the real world) ought to know a thing or two about that. But you don’t see people waving vile placards at funerals to protest about eating meat on a Friday or wearing polyester. Continue reading Fred vs The Hackers →

General

It’s Christmas Day.

On the kitchen table is a Debenhams carrier bag the size of a small tent. It’s full of brightly wrapped presents, including one that took Alex a heck of a lot longer to wrap than the 10.3 nano-seconds it will take little Florence to unwrap. (It’s a toy treehouse, but don’t worry about spoiling her surprise – she can’t read yet. And, even if she could, I doubt whether her mother would let her on this site!) Later today we will set off  to see one of my sisters and then to Alex’s parents for distribution of aforementioned presents and a rather large lunch. Just like the last ten Christmasses. Continue reading It’s Christmas Day. →

Health

Joining the Camera Club

Well, it’s the morning after the morning before and I am somewhat relieved – in more senses than one!

I won’t go into all the gory details, but there’s been a few problems with the drains in recent months. Eventually, and way too late being a bloke, I went to the doctor and he ordered a colonoscopy. Instantly you think of bowel cancer, despite the reassurances that it’s probably something more benign – and that’s certainly what’s been running through my head for the last few weeks. Happily, at the moment, I can say that I don’t have cancer and that what I do have can be dealt with easily, even if it cannot be cured.

The reason for writing this blog, though, is to set down the experience of a colonoscopy. Google the term and you can find no end of horror stories about how invasive and painful the procedure can be. I don’t doubt that some people found it so, but what follows is my experience and if it helps someone about to go through it for the first time then it’s worth me spending twenty minutes to write it! Continue reading Joining the Camera Club →

Politics

All Out

It is 37 years since I left school and went to work. In all that time I’ve been unemployed for about two months. In all that time I have spent 16 years in the private sector and 21 years in the public. In all that time I have never had a bad report, I have never been disciplined and I have never been on strike. Until today!

When you join the civil service you realise very quickly that the world and his wife think that you owe them something. Everyone is an expert on your job and everyone thinks that all you do all day is The Times crossword and drink tea. Nothing could be further from the truth . The vast majority of public employees are competent, hard-working and dedicated. Yes, it’s true that we get things wrong and when that happens it hits the headlines. We’re human and we can drop a few clangers. The redtops scream about the one in a thousand case that goes tits up, but are oddly silent about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine when we get it right! Continue reading All Out →

General

A Bit Fed Up …

Warning – Sweary Alert.

Been a bit of a shitty week and I’m a bit fed up.

I’m fed up with

  • Sleazy politicians.
  • Sleazy politicians breaking their election promises in pursuit of the trappings of power.
  • Sleazy politicians trying to be sincere and showing us how crap they are at acting.
  • Sleazy politicians lying to protect themselves.
  • Sleazy politicians making piss-poor points because they just don’t have a decent grasp of their subject.
  • Sleazy politicians trying to convince us that they understand how tough life is.
  • Sleazy politicians screwing up pensions while they keep their final salary scheme.

I’m fed up with Continue reading A Bit Fed Up … →