Time to See the Light

I stumbled across this article recently and it got me thinking. Why do people actually let this kind of behaviour keep going? I personally have never experienced or seen workplace bullying but it seems to be common sense to nip it in the bud a.s.a.p. But what if it is your boss, the one person you could usually complain too, who is the bully. Time to make their life a living hell.

There are a few ways you can get back at someone who sees it as their role in life to make yours miserable. However, in this situation, laxatives in their coffee and superglue on the earpiece of their phone is unlikely to achieve the desired effect. So what can you do? Easy, time for a religious conversion. This way, as soon as someone treats you in a way that you feel the remotest bit undesirable then you can play the religious discrimination card, your boss would think twice about giving you shit if he thought he could end up on the front page of the tabloids labeled as some kind of bigot. It will also improve your working conditions in other ways. Choose a relatively well known but still fairly minor religion such as Buddhism and you are looking at a good number of days off for 'religious holidays'. How many holidays does a Buddhist have? I have no idea and I bet your boss doesn't either. He says no to the time off, where's that number for The Sun again? One of the few bonuses of a PC-gone-mad country like this is that people are absolutely terrified of offending/oppressing others so think big, small and destructive pranks are always fun but useless in a situation like this, time to head of to the temple of your choice and get worshiping. Due to the sheer number of religions around there is also ample opportunity for multiple conversions so always feel free to chop and change as necessity dictates, if anyone tries to pull you up on this and accuses you of faking your beliefs then simply state that you suffer from ADHD and have a syndrome that makes it impossible for you to be decisive, then vocally complain about how you are being persecuted for having this disability as well as your beliefs being mocked. With a bit of creativity you can make this run and run.

Dear Pre-written Letter Template

Agony Aunts, usually unqualified and the very fact that they are paid at all means that they're overpaid. So I'm going to offer my services for free, after all I too am completely unqualified to give advice on the myriad of problems that the general public seem to have so here goes, my all new 'Dear Pseudo'

Dear Pseudo

I'm not certain if my stepdaughter has had sex but she looks at me a lot, especially my genitals. Please give me some advice as she is like a closed book. Darren

Yeah right. This isn't Forum magazine so stop bragging. Is she over 16? Is she attractive? If you can answer yes to both questions then what is the problem? Or stop walking around naked so she can't look at your knackers.

Dear Pseudo

My mam is losing her job because me and my brother are always fighting and my nana won't mind us any more. I am really sad over this and I can't sleep or eat. What should I do? Lauren

Lauren, you should leave home as your mother will put you up for adoption. How will she feed and look after you without a job? She will end up turning tricks on the streets for sailors. She probably loves your brother more then you so you should go now before she sells you to a traveling freakshow.

Dear Pseudo

I have lately found myself in a deep state of depression, which nothing can shift, so I turned to the 'dark side' as some people call it, and later became 'emo'. I began to slit my wrists and try to commit suicide many times. ... until I met this boy at a club I go to every week. After a while, I fell madly in love with him. But the trouble is, he hardly knows I exist. He only talks to me if it's absolutely necessary. But I still love him. I think about him night and day. He finally makes me feels good about myself, even though he doesn't like me very much. I don't want to slit my wrists any more because of him. Now, after about 5 weeks of him not noticing me, his magic has begun to wear off. What do I do? Unloved4good

The dark side, you became a Sith Lord? Ah, no, emo, got ya. Don't worry, you are making a simple beginners mistake and one that is easy to rectify. Elbow to wrist is the only effective way, try Gillette blades, then you'll have no more problems. Don't do it for him, do it for yourself.

Dear Pseudo

I have been with my present boyfriend for 9 months now and we are yet to make love. My boyfriend is 35, has had one previous sexual partner and says he is nervous and 'inexperienced' in the bedroom. We have a very loving and attentive relationship - I love him to bits and I know he feels the same. Each time we have tried to make love he does get an erection. That's not the problem, but he doesn't seem to be able to keep it. As soon as things get a little heated he panics and loses his erection. The problem is not just affecting him, it's having a knock-on effect on me, and we both want to get this resolved quickly. Any advice? Wivany

Wivany, your partner is gay. Every time he's with you he's actually thinking of the postman, or Brad Pitt. Try waring a Brad mask in bed and things should improve no end. If that doesn't work then set him up with a gay friend, you'll be doing him a favor as I'm afraid you are never going to rock his boat. As a last ditch attempt you could try taking testosterone and growing a beard.

Living in Interesting Times

Why are the UK bothering to go to the Olympics? It's not as if we are actually going to win anything (except maybe the Curling). Our generally poor results in sport aside, should we really be supporting a country that has a human rights record so bad it makes half the Middle East look like a hippy heaven? Perhaps our beloved leader, Gordo, is unaware of the situation in Tibet. Maybe he is in the dark about the threats China have made to Taiwan should they refuse to come peacefully back under Chinese rule (hint: it doesn't involve a harsh letter). Or maybe he's just interested in the benefits he will gain by cosying up with the Beijing government and the expanding Chinese industrialists. France and Germany are threatening to boycott the games, good for them (never thought I'd say that). The Chinese aren't hosting the games out of the goodness of their hearts and their love of the international community (now there's a phrase I loathe, who is this international community?) They are doing it for cash, pure and simple, never have I been to a more money grabbing country then China, bastards tried to charge me the equivilent of £5 for a bloody postcard, and what grates more is that I nearly unwittingly paid it.
Oh well, we are supporting a totalitarian state with an unelected leader, a state where the Internet companies spy on their users and the authorities always know what is best for the general populace. I hear China's pretty bad as well.

Whoops

OK, well after my last post I've had a fatwah declared against me!!
Burning Effigy of the Unhappy Camper

Fitna

So liveleak have been forced to remove Fitna from their servers due to death threats from Muslims who don't like Islam being shown as a violent religion. Luckily Google are still hosting it here.
It's a documentary that really makes you think, a wake up call to Europe and Geert Wilders is a brave man indeed for having the bravery to make a film of this type, and good on Google for not pulling it (although you can hardly blame liveleak for doing so).
More then anything, Islam fears being shown as the violent, intolerant religion it is and the more films of this type that are made, the better. Instead of people wrongly thinking that Islam can co-exist with any other belief system it is time to wake up to the fact that Islam is here to conquer, nothing less. They want to dominate the world and the West needs to wake up to this.

Damp Squib

So the worrying Byron Review turned out to be far less damaging then many of us had feared. The BBFC won't be given vast amounts of new power and British adults are not going to be limited to playing Tetris and Pong. This leads to the question 'what the hell was the point of this report?' Apparently all computer games should be given a Pegi and BBFC certificate and children should be more carefully regulated with regards to what they play. Well duh. How much money has this earth shattering revelation cost us taxpayers Mr Brown?
The kind of games this report targeted are usually 18 rated anyway and so parents know what the content is liable to be.
Online games can only be certificated if the servers are based in the UK, most aren't.
Many young children have games consoles, Sky TV and broadband in their bedrooms. Whilst this is appallingly bad parenting and extremely irresponsible it is so much easier to let your kids be entertained by modern technology then to actually put the work into looking after them yourself. Parents do know of the material that is available online and it still doesn't stop them letting their children surf away in their own rooms.
At the end of the day it is not the games developers who are to blame but the parents themselves and all the courses designed to educate them will be a further waste of taxpayers money. On a positive note there was no declaration of video games turning children into drooling, gun toting nutbags and on an even more positive note I still haven't featured on Crimewatch despite playing Halo and GTA back to back last week.

Lies, Damned Lies

So Hillary Clinton was 'misspeaking' when she claimed that she came under fire on a trip to Bosnia in the mid 90's. I don't know what is the more stupid, coming up with this story or actually thinking she may get away with it. Pictures have emerged showing that there was no sniper fire and she did not have to hurl herself behind the nearest Secret Service agent (possibly much to her dismay).
As a Brit it is easy to become absolutely baffled by the American election process. Watch Clinton and Obama hurl abuse at each other and it is easy to forget that they are in the same political party. Clinton is known for her crocodile tears and being married to Big Bill, a President whose popularity she could only dream of emulating, whilst Barack Obama has a past so murky that he makes Howard Hughes look like Hugh Hefner. Lets face it, either of the Democratic candidates would promise pretty much anything to gain the Presidency and both have the gleam of megalomania in their eyes.
In the end it really doesn't matter what policies the candidates have, people the world over tend to vote with their hearts and not their minds so the entire charade boils down to a 'character contest', and as we've seen in the past, it's not always the candidate with the most vote who becomes President. At least no one else could be as inept as George W.

She Loves You Yeah, Yeah..... erm No!

Is anyone else sick to death of the endless Paul McCartney and Heather Mills divorce? For the last couple of years we have had to endure endless stories of the harpy Heather and Sir Rubber Face and their dirty laundry being washed in public. Hop along Heather has finally been given a multi million pound settlement and the judge has described her appearance in court as generally unhelpful. Most right thinking people could see that Mills was only after Pauls money when she married him, and her increasingly irrational public rants seem to cement the fact that she is a deeply disturbed (or should that be disturbing) individual.
I must admit to not feeling too sorry for Paul in all this, he can still sit back and count his millions made from being in the most over-rated and hyped band ever. Mills will no doubt now be off on the talk show circuit in the US. Telling Oprah how terrible her life has been and how the constant media interest has made her feel like Osama or whoever the villain of the week is. She would probably feel more at home on Jerry Springer, isn't that where all the white trash go. Still, if the talk shows, book deals and magazine articles all dry up at least she she can go back to porn, either that or playing Long John Silver in panto season.

Shifting the Blame

So the Goa police have finally decided that Scarlett Keeling was murdered in Goa after all and her mother has declared her outrage that the police are still covering things up. How about her mother take a portion of the blame herself, a jobless, drug using dole scrounge with 8 children whom she could take on holiday for 6 months, all paid for by the tax payer. Scarlett was, at 15, already a known drug user and heavy drinker and had been left by her mind blowingly irresponsible mother in the care of a 25 year old tour guide whilst she swaned of around the island. Now, her mother is trying to proove beyond doubt that her daughter was killed and also trying how to work out how she can most profit from selling her story. Heartless? doubtful when you read up on this woman. Whilst anyone dying at such a young age is a tragedy this is yet another case that could have been averted. Why were social services not keeping an eye on this family? By all accounts they were known troublemakers. Why was a 15 year old girl left in the care of a 25 year old man she hardly knew? Because her mother couldn't give a shit about her. One would like to think that the rest of the children will be removed from the mother as soon as possible and placed into care and hopefully she will be prosecuted for irresponsible parenting but as long as she keeps playing the devastated mother card then this is unlikely. The poor parents of Maddy McCann are being hounded relentlessly when this harridan is allowed to wax lyrical to anyone who will listen. Something is very wrong here.

Religion of Peace? Yeah, Right.

I came across this article whilst browsing the Spectators website and it left me seriously depressed but hardly surprised. Anyone who criticizes Islam is instantly an intolerant racist and deserving of a fatwah being issued. Intolerant, one word that is very apt to level at Muslims. As far as they are concerned the rest of the world should be bowing to their religion and anyone who disagrees should be killed. The UK and most other Western countries are suffering a huge deluge of Islamic immigrants who have no interest in conforming to our ideals, they expect us to conform to theirs. The only time they would embrace peace is when the whole world has been conquered by them. An awful lot of noise is being made about the so called 'moderates' and this is most misleading. They still want a global dominance of Islam, would still prefer to live under shria law and still call foul when ever something they perceive as anti-Islam is said/written. In this country today we are being lectured by the Government on how we can all co-exist together. Rubbish. Muslims do not want co-existance, they want dominance, and the problem is that we keep bowing to pressure from them, people are to scared to stand up and say that if you want to live under Islamic law then to leave this country. If they want to attack churches then fine, but in that circumstance all mosques in the UK should be closed down and the preaching of this dangerous and hateful religion be illegalised. Any attempted attack on UK soil should be deamed as treason and any Immam preaching hatred should be instantly deported with no chance of appeal. 9/11 showed the true colours of this reiglion, that the murder of innocent people is acceptable to further the spread of Islam, as the Quran preaches.
Oh and if you think that the founder of Islam has simply been misrepresented and mis-understood over the years then try reading this. What would Muhammed do?
This is not a call for violent action and certainly not advocation for any sort of illegal activity but unless the people of the west wake up take a more vocal approach to denouncing this deeply unplesant religion then we are in for a great deal more trouble.

The Law of Diminishing Returns

No matter how good a film is there is rarely a good reason to make a sequel. I came to this conclusion whilst watching Starship Troopers 2, and anyone who has had the misfortune to sit through this dross knows what I mean. The reason behind sequels is money, pure and simple. No body sets out to make a life changing story worthy of an Oscar if it is going to be a follow up, and usually straight to video. If you cobble together a load of c-list soap actors, shaky sets and special effects knocked up on a Game Boy then you can make a film for next to no cash and therefore make a healthy profit when it's released.
I do concur that there is the occasional sequel that equals or improves on the original movie but these are rarer then an Essex virgin. Aliens, The Godfather part 2 and The Empire Strikes Back are all examples of this but then we have the likes of Alien 3, Exorcist 2 and Speed 2 are some of the worst films ever made. All meant to cash in on the success of the originals and all virtually unwatchable trash and although I am not a fan of Grease, it is a celluloid masterpiece compared to the garbage that is Grease 2.
It has recently been announced that there will be a third Bourne sequel, and whilst I loved the first 3 films I really think it is time to call it a day now. Why ruin a good thing. Of course it is all your fault, yes yours. The general public. Because as long as you guys keep renting this crap, the studios will keep on churning it out. Next time you're at the video rental shop avoid the cheap and nasty 'budget' releases and pay for something decent or we will be subjected to The Lion King 9 and Saw 17, repeat ad nauseum.

Is Sorry Enough?

Finally the papers have apologised to Madeleine McCann's parents, and not a moment too soon. The number of attacks and criticism's of these people has been absolutely staggering and in light of the atrocious handling of the case by the Portuguese police, generally unfounded. Ok, so they should never have left the children alone but the constant hounding of the couple based around this fact beggars belief. They made a mistake and now they are paying for it in the most agonizing way possible. Maddy McCann is, in all probability, dead and her poor parents have to live the rest of their lives knowing that this could have been averted. Haven't they suffered enough? I'm not calling for more accountability of the papers but surely a little morality won't go astray. Leave the McCann's alone, they have enough to deal with.

Parental Advisory....Explicit Stupidity

There's something rotten in Soho Square, yes the BBFC are at it again. Somehow the memo that they are a now completely redundant and anachronistic institution failed to land on their desk and talks are happening in Parliament to strengthen and regulate our beloved censors years after they ceased to have any real function. All this come in the wake of Rockstar fighting and beating an attempt to ban their Manhunt II game, and our moral guardians are up in arms due to the imminent collapse of civilization as we know it. The last time we had an uproar of this scale was with the Bright Bill in 1984 that bought the home video under regulation and implemented one of the strictest censorsorial institutions in Europe, if not the world.
Nearly any crime nowadays is, if you are the Daily Mail, a direct result of violent video games, horror films and Heavy Metal. Rather then take a look at the disappearance of family values and the increasing number of near-feral kids running amok on council sink estates with out any parental supervision or control, we are being told that the media is to blame. Crap. There has never been one single proven link between music/films and crime despite what cod psychologists with a definite social agenda, like Dr Clifford Hill, would have us think.
The Columbine Massacre, the murder of James Bulger. Both have been linked with music, film and games without any real evidence (in fact in the Bulger case the link was totally discredited by the judge presiding over court case).
Now a new report has been commissioned and handed to Dr Tanya Byron and it will focus on how the internet and video games can warp the fragile little minds of the nations kiddies. Will this be a fair, subjective and un-biased report? Somehow I don't think it would have ever been started if this was going to be the case and I strongly suspect that it will turn out to be a deeply flawed clone of the Professor Newson study back in the 80's that concluded, again with deeply suspect 'evidence' , that there was a link between violence and the media.
I started this by saying that the BBFC had no power anymore. Why? Broadband + Torrents. Simple really. If something is banned then it can easily be downloaded, handily bypassing customs and the censors. I've managed to track down pretty much every 'Video Nasty' banned by the BBFC and with stores like Amazon shipping worldwide and the fact that customs really couldn't give a flying fuck about people importing horror films these days, it really is very simple.
I'm off to play some Doom whilst listening to Marilyn Manson and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing in the background. If you see me on Crimewatch next month then at least you'll know I was wrong (or willing to suffer for the sake of irony).

Will the Real Winston Smith Please Stand Up

If you went out today then there's a fair chance you were caught on CCTV. The UK may have 1% of the worlds' population but it has 20% of its' CCTV cameras. Scary, and thats not all. With the increasing expansion of the internet, many companies would love to get their grubby little mitts on your surfing history. One of these companies, Phorm, has signed up with BT, Virgin and TalkTalk to collect customers internet data to deliver more focused adverts which is causing one hell of a furore in Blighty at the moment. If for you, like me, online advertising is about as welcome as King Herod at a Jerusalem kindergarten then this is utterly pointless. I don't respond to internet advertising and generally run ad-blocker software to put a grinding halt to it, but the implications go deeper then this. At the moment this will be an opt-in deal, people have to sign up for it otherwise the ISP's will loose clients faster then Northern Rock. But what happens in the future if we do not have a choice? The UK is hardly the most liberal of countries when it comes to spying on its' citizens and internet history could be used for far more nefarious things then adverts. Insurance company? Worried some of your clients haven't disclosed their full medical history? Then why not check their web usage and see what medical sites they have visited. This kind of thing does already go on in the States where the insurance companies have people employed to check out a clients medical history and avoid paying out if possible. Us next no doubt.
Talks are continuing about combining all the UK's traffic cameras with the DVLA database so the authorities know exactly where anyone is at a given time. Combine this with mobile phone tracking and your position can be triangulated to a couple of square meters. Time to give up your car and phone and take up tree hugging in Wales.
Most of us have got no real reason to fear the Government having this data, it's them having this data and not loosing it (or giving it to the Americans) which is the real worry, and they will. Data encryption and password protection are as alien to our dicta... leaders as liberalism is to the Saudis and in the news in a couple of years we will be reading about how the entire nations web history was found in a taxi in Ealing.
I'll leave you with this thought. 50 years ago George Orwells' 1984 would probably be found in the fiction area of a library. These days you're more likely to find it under current events........ Remember, big brother is watching, and listening.

Over Paid and Under Brained

Hardly a week goes by when you don't read something in the tabloids about some footballers latest sexcapades. Generally something to with a rape or orgy, cheating on their wife/girlfriend or doing something equally distastefull. Remember that these guys are paid millions a year for kicking a ball around a pitch for 90 minutes and they seem to think that this puts them above the law. That they are no longer mere mortals subject to the beliefs and morals of society but are somehow above it, that somehow they are all deserving and virtually godlike. Basically they suffer from a Narcissus complex.
Monogamy seems so be pretty much optional for these buffoons, indeed most of them do more shagging then Austin Powers on viagra and then we get to read the kiss and tell stories in the Sunday papers. Generally mis-reported. Ashley Cole has an affair, the nation is hardly surprised but what if he had a fling with Sol Campbell (this is allegedly the case according to people who should know). It's amazing how those with the necessary cash can dictate the truth.
The sooner footballers take a serious drop in income the better, instead of their enormous (and enormously tasteless) mansions, make them live in a 2 bedroom semi. Take away their Ferraris and make them drive Rover's. When nurses are often living on the poverty line and some premiership lout is raking in cash for kicking around balls (or playing with balls in some cases) it is truly sickening. Beckham did the right thing and buggered off so maybe there is hope, but somehow I doubt it. As long as we continue to idolise these people who genuinely have nothing to contribute to society we are stuck with them. Mind you there is an upside to this. So long as they stick to marrying page 3 girls they are helping stop the gene pool from becoming too poluted.

The Evil That Men Do.....

Or more specifically one man, William Henry Gates III. Ok, so taking pot shots at Bill Gates is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel these days but there is a reason for this. Microsoft continually churn out sub-standard, buggy software that any other company would call Beta, and have the cojones to actually charge for it. The forementioned software is also usually so full of security holes that if you even think about looking at a link someone's emailed you then your computer will be compromised and have been integrated into a botnet before you can say 'why are virus checkers so damned useless". The sheer amount of spam and zombie networks in existence today is mainly down to Microsoft security flaws, Vista was supposed to change all this and has failed miserably. Primarily because it is such a horrible OS that nobody wants to use due to its' OTT system requirements and confusing number of releases (do you want Pauper, Duke, Emperor or Deity version?). It's no wonder companies like Dell will still supply XP with most of their PC's.
Ah yes, XP an out of date hack of an OS that took 2 major updates to make it in the least bit useable and which is about to get a third to turn it into 'Vista Lite'. Before that we had Windows '95 which was a pretty shell for DOS, Windows '98, a slightly updated '95 and ME (Millenium Edition), which nothing actually ran on. Adding to this, Internet Explorer which seems to actively encourgae users to contract viruses and you have a pretty nasty mess of software.
There is of course a reason behind Micro$ofts popularity, workplaces. IT staff love Windows because of its' inherent buginess. If you swapped an office's computers for Macs or Linux machines running Ubuntu then because of their usability and stability, you could have one person administering them and do away with the rest of the support staff. Of course these guys don't want to be out of a job so they'll churn out the usual ill-informed and anacronistic waffle about 'compatibility' and 'software support'. I have to suffer the usual daily crashes and restarts with XP and it certainly increases my enjoyment of using Leopard and Linux at home.
The Bill Gates gravy train rumbles on, but Microsoft are loosing market share and one of the main players behind this is Google. Gates and crew didn't predict the massive appeal of the internet and were caught on the hop and Google have capitalized on this. Google docs have the potential to damage Office severely and Microsoft buying Yahoo will not make a shred of difference to the search engine war. That fight has finished and nothing can change this. Google won.
Unfortunately Microsoft will not just dissapear overnight but their popularity will continue to be eroded. As a company they are past it and are now playing catchup with just about every other software house in existance, indeed so derivative has Windows been of many of the other major OS's, that even the generally blinkered public are starting to wake up to this and are voting with their feet. Windows 7, the succesor to Vista, will be out as soon as MS can cobble together something remotely functional and again we can expect the usual 'new' (i.e. stolen, copied and rehased) features, but it won't make a difference, it's too little too late and after the Vista fiasco the public are going to be more then a little wary about any new OS release.
RIP Microsoft, may your passing be as quick as possible.

Proud Europeans

Are you British? Bad luck, not much to be proud of anymore. If you answered "No! I'm European" then why? Last time I checked we hadn't drifted 20 odd miles southwards and collided with France. It's the equivalent of telling a Kiwi he's really Australian or a Canadian that they are actually North Americans. Doing either of these things will guarantee a trip to one of the NHS's finest.
Let's get things straight. Europeans (the Dutch aside) don't actually like us. Sure we sorted things out a few years back when a small, vegetarian Austrian with a bad moustache decided that what Germany really, really needed was an Empire. But those past deeds hold little sway with your average Frenchman nowadays. This is partly our own fault. France exports cheeses and wines, Italy, beautiful cars and foods, Spain, whatever it is they export and us, well we export football hooligans and lager louts.
We recently signed over the remainder of our sovereign rights to the European Parliament but will this benefit us in any way? Of course it won't. Mainland Europe see the Parliament as an organization to be sponged off and manipulated in any way possible and usually ignore it if in any way possible. Meanwhile in the UK we slavishly follow it's every command and directorate.
The French love us so much they built all their nuclear power stations on the north coast, so guess where any fallout would end up. The Italians, despite having gone through about 45 hoplessley corrupt and innefficient Governments in the last 50 odd years have a way of life second to none. The Spanish don't actually seem to do anything worthwhile but are still a major player in Europe. The UK has rising costs, a collapsing health service, homegrown terrorism and out of control illegal immigration.
The main idea behind this European 'Super State' is as a counterfoil to US military and economic power, we must be crazy to agree to this, why not just join America instead? At least we (nearly) speak the same language. Besides, has no one here noticed we are slap bang between the increasingly hostile Russia and power crazed USA, great, this is a safe place to be, if you live 2 miles below the surface in a concrete bunker.
New Zealand and Australia, probably the only safe places to be now, mainly because no one cares very much about them, but that's a small price to pay. See you on the next flight.

Moan, bitch etc

Cheerful. Reading about my moan-du-jour when you could be doing something useful with your life. And todays pet hate is the budget, for all non Brits and other strange creatures, this is when our beloved Chancellor tells us how much cash he's going to be screwing out of us for the next few months. Surprise surprise I'm going to be financially worse off, again. Single male in late twenties with a distinctly average wage and a fondness for tobacco, that's me buggered then. Seriously, unless I can get myself sponsored by Marlboro I may have to give up the ciggies, which means less tax for the Government, this is why I find it hard to believe they really want us to stop smoking.
I know we are supposed to be about to go into a worldwide recession, inflation will rocket, house prices will tumble and we'll all end up becoming like Mad Max rejects, hunting the blasted wastelands of earth with only a picture of Gordon Brown for company (now there's an unpleasent image), but are we allowed no cheap vices nowadays? The answer is of course no, anything remotely bad for our health is taxed to the hilt and people who indulge in them end up being treated like social lepers, just try lighting up on a station platform and see how long you last before being pushed in front of a passing train by a socialy inadequete 'Platform Manager' or whatever the hell these jumped up idiots are called nowadays. Of course I jest, this would never happen, because the trains never bloody run!
So I had little money last year, even less this year, civilization as we know it is about to collapse and Bionic Woman got cancelled. There's a light at the end of the tunnel alright and that's because someone set fire to it.