its all about timing….

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So, did you miss me? No, thought not but for what it’s worth I didn’t miss you either!
Anyway my unfinished rant on the evils of global retailing seem to be pertinent given the sleight of hand and judicious accounting practices that now seem to be coming to light as a result of Tesco’s somewhat unfortunate PR issue concerning a large black hole in their expected pot of profit!
I shall write more on this monumental subject shortly but for now I leave with one question…is this the end of Tesco and possibly the start of the end of capitalist rape and pillage?
’til next time.

Unexpected item………..

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Enough!!!!!

I’ve bitten my tongue for far too long on this issue but in a world where soundbites rule everything; its time to analyse the total and utter crap which is the self service checkout.
Oh where to start on this subject? Profit before customer service? Efficiency? Maximum hourly throughput, or any other buzz word or term of 21st Century capitalism and consumerism speak?

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I despise self service terminals with a passion. I despise that I have to process my own shop. Its bad enough that I have to trawl up and down the aisles looking for the things I want or need – whatever happened to a helpful assistant gathering your requests from the shelves?

It’s also bad enough that every month or so they (the evil ones) decide to completely rearrange the store to prevent you from doing your automated shop walk in the hope that you’ll buy new stuff that you don’t really need just because the finest organic sun blushed tomatoes happen to be where the washing up liquid was last time you shopped.

Actually I am going to stop now because I feel this needs much more reasoning as there’s a whole load of stuff brewing and I need to get it out succinctly.

So further thoughts on unexpected item to follow – now you didn’t expect that did you?

And to think this only started because I wanted a sandwich without queuing for ages..

Tesco, Saintsbury’s and the rest – you have been warned.

’til next time…..

YAPPP

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Following an extensive OFSTED /DOE and DWP joint exercise;it appears that there is a new vision about to be unveiled which appears to finally confront the uncomfortable truth about the continuing growth of non compliant children within the state education system. A five year government backed study has shown that despite repeated attempts to identify juvenile delinquent behaviour as a result of exterior influences such as environment, social and physcological bias; the overriding influence is a hitherto unidentified condition now commonly known as YAPPP. Dr.Ivor Bigan acknowledged that the findings were potentially explosive and that the implications for social welfare reform would be far reaching.
Commencing in September this year, all primary and secondary school senior leadership teams will be establishing task forces to identify and target YAPPP cases for immediate and thorough reprogramming.
YAPPP:You’re a piss poor parent….

AUGUST 4TH 2014: Oh Oh Oh what a Lovely War

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Excellent piece on a day when we should all think about the past and our future.

 

The Slog

adolfviennaSoon-to-be Corporal Adolf Hitler (left) celebrates the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia in a Vienna crowd, 1914.

There is no thought too crass, no anniversary too sick, that the media and their friends in the political class won’t celebrate.

‘Celebrate’ is an odd word in the English language, because it can mean both ‘remember’ and ‘enjoy’. From what I’ve seen of the papers today and the Westminster soundbites, we are low in remembrance but high in enjoyment. Lots of tabloid pigs are grunting their fractured prose out into the environment today, because it is a century since the First World War began.

More than 65 million men from 30 countries fought in The Great War. Nearly 10 million died. That figure is greater than the population of Hungary, and much more than that of Austria.

More than 75% of Russian troops were wiped out. Thismay have something to do…

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Bramble “Face Off”

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If you are a regular visitor to MoM then you will recall that i have major ongoing issues with a bramble that has decided to set up home in my otherwise pristine privet hedge! Seriously you have to admire the sheer cunning of mother nature in her ability to manufacture creatures plants and organisms that can be parachuted in at a moments notice to destroy your handywork. I am losing count of the episodes this year where my efforts have been sabbotaged by an army of natural suicide bombers.

But back to the bramble. Today I decided to cut the hedge using my petrol hedgecutter. Now, if you don’t have a hedge that is about 10 feet tall you probably don’t need to worry about hedge cutting. If you do then you’ll know that the primary question is electric v petrol hedge cutter followed by ladders or telescopic cutter. The more sensible of you will default to option 3 – pay some other bugger to do it.

But anyway I have a petrol hedge cutter, some ladders and am a tight arse – so unsurprisingly this blog is about me doing it myself!

Firstly there is the process of refuelling. This is similar in complexity to NASA fuelling a Saturn 5 rocket for an Apollo mission to the moon. OK a slight exaggeration but we are talking about critical fuel to oil ratios. Get it wrong and you’ll get one of two outcomes. At best you’ll create a smog that would hide a mouse at five inches and at worst have a seized up lump of metal that previously traded as an engine!

My god, are you still reading this shit? Ok, armed with a correctly fuelled hedge cutter I entered the danger zone. This entailed firing up the machine then carefully climbing the ladders as SWMBO held onto the ladder to prevent accidental falls. It is at times like this that you appreciate it is not a good idea to make jokes at your other half’s expense. Literally a case of your life in their hands!

Sorry this is going on a bit isn’t it_?

So to the point – the bramble is bloodied but not dead. I only got pricked once. My hedge looks reasonably good again but there is still unfinished business between us.

Oh and to add insult to injury the bloody bramble was growing loads of berries that I know for a fact taste great in apple and blackberry crumble. Its almost as if if its taunted me!!

’til next time…….

THE ARAB/ISRAELI STANDOFF: WHY TAKING SIDES IS JUST TAKING THE PISS

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Interesting thoughts on an issue that continues to fester…

 

The Slog

Replying to Greek friends who had seen this Democracy Now piece about how unutterably wicked Israel is (natch), I felt at the end of the email, having pressed ‘Send’, that it might be worth a fatwah-earning Slogpost. So being a lazy bastard, here it is:

While this has long been Siegman’s view (he is a clone of our very own Jewish former MP and expenses embezzler Gerald Kaufmann) his impeccable fairness credentials neither make him right, nor do they deliver a solution.
Israel has committed two acts of blatant aggression in the last 66 years: the land grab of the State itself in 1947/48*, and the attempt to colonize land they kept after various equally blatant acts of aggression by Egypt and Syria against it in the 1960s. I totally understand why the Palestinians are pissed off about this, and with united support for their cause they would…

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Baby, You Can Clean My Car.

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God, I hate washing cars.

The Missus’ Peugeot has needed a bit of a wash & brush up since she had the misfortune to park it underneath the branches of a tree which appears to have been home to an incontinent Albatross.
So this evening I decided to bite the bullet and remove half a metric tonne of avian excrement from the flanks of her family runabout.

Normally I’d have taken it down the road to the incredibly fast & admirably industrious team of Eastern Europeans who will leap on your car & have it sparkling (door shuts and all) within about ten minutes – £7 very well spent I reckon.
But this evening, with it being past their knocking off time & being unable to ignore the fact that SWMBO’s car was increasingly reminiscent of a plasterer’s radio, I dug out the hose reel & bucket..

After about 20 minutes of hosing & vigorous shampoo-ing it was looking a bit more metallic red and a bit less bird-shit white and I made what I regard as the correct & rational decision to quit whilst I was ahead & skip the chamois stage – primarily because:

I. Could. Not. Be. Arsed.

Like I said earlier, I hate washing cars but this little reminder was a worthwhile demonstration to me that seven quid is a small amount to pay for an infinitely better finish than I’ll ever be able to achieve and I’m helping the local economy into the bargain.

So there.