Because it’s never the drivers fault

We’ve all had that feeling when driving early in the morning, you know the one where you arrive at work and can’t really remember the journey you’ve just taken. You can’t remember the countless roundabouts that you seamlessly navigated, the old lady who left her indicator on for 3 junctions or the poster for the new Justin Bieber album you drove past 64 times. It therefore could be said that drivers are not the most observant of creatures, so of course anything that can aid them in being safe should be applauded. Shouldn’t it?

The brainboxes at Volvo have come up with a very nifty bit of kit in order to help drivers spot cyclists in their vicinity. Apparently it works by making a succession of beeps and flashes when a careless cyclist pulls out from a junction in front of them eventually leading to the breaks being automatically slammed on to avoid collision.

Now I can hear what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “yeah that’s a good idea innit. Those bloody cyclists are always pulling out on me and nearly scratching my paint work”.

Now a lot of cyclists are wankers. Don’t get me wrong I am a cyclist and consider myself to be safe considerate, law abiding while on the road and therefore fall way outside the wanker marker but there are a lot that break the law and do stupid things. However cycling around London you can observe countless cases of cars pulling out on you at junctions, people on their phones while speeding past barely letting you hug the curb and everyone’s favourite move, driving right behind you at a snail’s pace as if it is you forcing them to do so.

I do actually however prefer the drivers who risk hitting me as they speed past as at least they are not patronising me while nearly killing me to save a few extra nanoseconds. The ones who pretend that they can’t get past me without squishing me even though there is plenty of room, they really piss me off. JUST GO AROUND ME!!

Anyway let’s bring this back on point. It is always the case in an accident or collision, as accident assumes no one is to blame, that the cyclist is asked, were you wearing lights and reflectors? It’s never the driver who is asked “were you being a dickhead and not looking out for someone that you might crush underneath your tires?”

Remember when Wiggins got knocked off outside that petrol station a few months after the Olympics? What was everyone asking? Yes you guessed it. Was he wearing lights? They didn’t ask if the driver was actually looking where she drove her two tonne vehicle!

The point to all of this is that drivers need less automatic devices and sensors to hide behind. They need to open their fucking eyes and stop thinking the road is their sole property and anyone else using it is an enemy to be berated and destroyed.

So Volvo from a lefty liberal cyclist, please stop making excuses for our drivers to stop using their brains. We wear flashing lights, high-vis jackets and reflectors, so just think for a second do you actually need an £1,850 piece of equipment or could you just use your eyes and ears instead maybe?  

I'm So Hungry I Could Ride a Horse to Death

A child growing up in the working class south of England in the 1990s was never too far from a dodgy burger stall. Cheap roadside burgers were nicknamed Shergar burgers, in reference to the famous European horse of the year 1981 that was stolen on 8 February 1983. He was taken from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland by masked gunmen with the body never being discovered. Also inspiring several books, documentaries, and a film.

Now it seems these nicknames were more prophesy than humour.  It’s come to light in the last few weeks that certain food manufactures have been using horse meat as a cheaper alternative to beef. The controversy comes from the fact that the food still advertised itself as beef products. This has resulted in apparent outrage from somewhat mystified and corralled Asda customers all the way to number 10.

There is obviously a serious case of misrepresentation on the side of the food companies as they are misleading customers as to what their food contains. This is of course a very serious situation and one that should be handled in the courts in order for justice to be upheld.

Now having said that there does seem to be a massive, and when I say massive I mean so huge it could knock the moon out of orbit, contradiction here. Everyone is crowing about how it’s disgusting to have eaten horse meat when they thought they were eating beef.

We are used to breeding, slaughtering and eating cows as they have been doing that for hundreds if not thousands of years but horses are noble steeds to be ridden and raced too good, or should I say useful to be eaten.

In fact we love horses so much here in Britain that we all get together, get dressed up in silly hats with fruit on, stupidly high heels and absolutely fucking wankerish tweed suits with white checked shirts, not forgetting the flat caps of course, in order to watch them race or rather force them to be raced, in huge stadiums where the sweaty faced, porky, rich, pompous millionaire toss pots can fritter away their daddies hard inherited income.

Of course we love horse otherwise we wouldn't race them really fast around a track while whipping and kicking them in order to increase their speed. We also wouldn't make them jump over fences at 30 miles an hour so they fall over and break their legs. Then of course we wouldn't put up a little tent right there on the track and shoot them in the face in order to be “humane”.

As you can see we really love horses so that’s why we just get so bloody annoyed that horses are actually being used for something useful such as food, rather than a needlessly cruel and sick folly for the ignorant and bored upper classes or gambling addicts alike.

And now here is what the great British public have had to say on the subject:

The horse is Britain's totemic animal. Think of chariot burials, Celtic coins, white horses carved on chalk hillsides.

Jane Tozer, Helston, Cornwall

I feel her surname suitably sums her up quite well.

I remember the horse butcher in Sheffield in the early 1950s. My aunt used to buy meat for her cats there

Alec, Fethiye, Turkey

Very helpful towards the debate.

One possible reason which you haven't mentioned is the advent of Christianity in the British Isles and the campaign against pagan practices.

Brendan Sweeney, Copenhagen

Very good point Brendan. One that’s been widely missed by the majority of the population.   

I remember eating frikandels at school in Scotland at lunch.

Martin Craig, Assen, The Netherlands

That’s a lovely anecdote from Martin Craig there. Not sure if he’s understood the issues involved but lovely none the less.

And I feel this last one really sums this up quite nicely.

I remember seeing a sign in a Belgian butcher's which was next door to a betting shop that said "Get your revenge here".

Sandy Macdonald, Poole

Something I did before...

MONDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2010

Was He a Good Guy?

Yes he tried to blow up the houses of parliament but would it have been a good thing and by celebrating his death are we doing the right thing? Also do we actually celebrate his death or has this day become like Christmas and just a money making commercial rip off with shit fireworks?

I have started with a lot of questions in this blog and to be honest I would be surprised if I managed to answer any let alone all of them.

So I start the only way I can and that is with my personal opinion about this subject. This however is harder than I thought it would be, being that I actually have very little knowledge of these events. Now I know what you are thinking this is most out of the ordinary for one of my blogs and I agree, I usually am in possession of all of the salient pieces of information but this time I'm gonna wing it!

As I understand guy fawks was a bit of a bin laden of his time and thought "I don't like those politicians so I'm gonna blow them up". This is where my facts run out.

I have found out since typing the first half of this essay, and it is an essay, that Fawkes wanted to kill the king for religious reasons.

Now I was annoyed when I discovered this as I was thinking he was a guy who wanted to show something to the world and change it for the better, where as in reality him and his mates on parliament hill just wanted a guy, or more accurately a girl and even more accurately the kings daughter, who followed their deluded religious beliefs, in the hot seat.

As we all know he and his gang did't succeed in their mission. The punishment I feel was harsh even taking into account that they tried to kill the king.

Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. Guy was captured and tortured until he gave up the names of his accomplices, which he did after days of unimaginable pain. The sentence they were handed was death after being found guilty of high treason.

However the king was pissed and decided to not only kill them but quite literally cut their genitals off and burn them in front of their eyes, followed by a spot of hang draw and quartering, followed by bowel removal and ending in making them watch an entire series of the Catherine Tate show. One of these punishments is made up.

Guy Fawkes didn't fancy any of the above so took a dive off the top of the hanging gallery and broke his neck.

The king was a little annoyed by this and decided to still inflict the punishment on Guy even though he was actually dead and would no longer be bothered by it.

Well now for the conclusion... Guy Fawkes was a bit naughty trying to kill the king but cutting a guys nuts off and making him watch them burn? Seems harsh.

The Kings

I started listening to the Kings of Leon late. By late I mean just as they were becoming the “sex on fire” band that would be the best evidence that money erodes creative talent, since Elvis Presley went to Las Vegas. The kind of throw away trash pop rock music that should have been left to a Lenny Kravitz album filler track.

So I came in late but being somewhat of a geek when it comes to music I went back and bought all their previous albums. Listening to their first album Youth and young manhood and not understanding many of the words coming out of the lead singers mouth I found myself nodding my head along to it, not really knowing what he was saying but enjoying it none the less. The track Red morning light opens the album and instantly kicks you square in the jaw with its strong and fast guitar riffs then keeping you going with Happy alone a song about something you don’t really understand because you can’t hear the words but it doesn’t matter because you can hear and feel that it has soul and meaning whatever he is saying. The album seems to bring you back down with Wasted time but only for a few seconds before again lashing out at you with another quick slap to the face. The album continues very much in the same vein of slapping and kicking you with its drunken mumbling rock n roll and eventually leading to its big finish and possibly the best track on their album, if not their best song ever, Holly Roller Novocaine and then the eventual hidden bonus track to show off their bluesy soulful side 8 minutes and 21 seconds into the final track. All in all a great album.

Fast forward to Because of the times and the change is ridiculous. Now you can you hear every word he is saying but you wish you couldn’t. It seems that Caleb Followill was a little embarrassed by his somewhat flimsy lyrics in the early days that he used to mumble them through long curly hair and a distorted microphone.

Their latest offering Come Around Sundown includes possibly their worst ever song Radioactive where they become what they were inevitably heading towards which was a U2 tribute band. The video is enough to make you want to puke as it feature the band frolicking in the sun with a load of seemingly peasant black kids as if to say we love everyone and we are all the same. Although I agree that we are all equal and all that, this just feel like the most patronising way to show it. It could be said that they are protesting too much even? Who knows? The Guardian had this to say about the album “the Kings of Leon have largely chosen – albeit through audibly gritted teeth – to stick fast to the Bono-approved stadium rock that caused Pitchfork to dub them Y'all 2.” They go on to finish by calling them “a band who've established, in a rather passive-aggressive way, that they don't want to make the music that made them famous any more, but haven't really thought what they want to do instead.”

Somewhere along the way it seems that two major changes have taken place with this band. The first major change is that they have become majorly successful. This has led to a change in attitude towards lyrics and their embarrassment towards them. It seems that the band no longer worry that they never actually say anything that is interesting or even makes sense in their songs.

The second major change is that the band has gone through a change of dress sense. In the early days they were a true rock band with the long hair Cuban heeled boots and a generally scruffy look. They were the kind of guys that could have looked equally at home in a soup kitchen line as well as onstage at the Hammersmith Apollo? Is it still called that?

Anyway somewhere down the line it seems that they have become victims of “the stylist”. Someone’s job it is to pick what clothes people should wear and how they should have their hair. Now days Kings of Leon look like they are being sponsored in equal measure by Top Man and Allsaints.

Kings of Leon recently cancelled a US tour amid “problems” within the band. It seems that maybe after years of making substandard Sky Sports Super Sunday soundtracks they are going to get back to making the kind of music that isn’t popular with stag parties. Either that or just hang up their guitars and Top Man store cards. Fingers crossed x

London

The United Kingdom has experienced its worst few days of violence, rioting and looting for decades. I’m sure by now you know how it started in Tottenham on Saturday night. Since then it has spread across London to places such as Hackney, Peckham, Croydon, Enfield, Camden and many others with varying degrees of seriousness. The rioting has not been confined to the capital with scenes of moronic and selfish violence playing out in Birmingham and Liverpool as well as other small towns up and down the country.

There are many people trying to understand why and how this has happened. Some feel it is to do with the economic depravity in certain areas and within certain racial groups. Others feel the reason may be to do with racial issues involving the police and their stop and search policies. There are some people who still think this is a protest about Mark Duggan and the lack of information surrounding his killing. The most popular opinion is that these are simply copycat crimes being committed because the police have no power to stop it.

As well as people trying to understand why these events are occurring there are many armchair police commissioners sharing their “ideas” for how best to control the rioting. Some call for water cannons to be used. This is totally unsuitable for this situation as they are best deployed in situations where there are a big number of people in one small space. As in London for the last few nights the rioters have been spread out and trying to use this tactic would be completely useless not to even mention the fact that no one is trained to use them. Another popular and equally moronic idea is to use rubber bullets or “baton bullets” to control the crowds. These bullets were used in Northern Ireland during the 70s and 80s and were responsible for the death of a 12 year old girl Carol Ann Kelly. Not only could firing these bullets on crowds be counterproductive but deadly.

The most ridiculous idea being thrown around is the idea of involving the army. Some people are actually suggesting implementing Martial Law, something that is usually only ever seen during dramatic moments of a terrorist attack in an episode of 24 rather than being used to disrupt small groups of British youths. Having Army patrolling the streets would be a complete disaster and certainly fuel the flames of tension and not to mention set a scary and irreversible precedent.

I have been watching the news for nearly 24hours straight trying to get to grips with what’s going on where I live. The news has been a helpful tool for me to find out the latest news about what is happening across London and the rest of the UK. However it has also made several mistakes and been guilty of shoddy irresponsible broadcasting at certain times during these riots.

My attention has been focused on the BBC as I can’t bring myself to watch a Rupert Murdoch news broadcast. On several occasions the BBC News channel has repeated things that in my opinion could be stirring up tension and encouraging people to commit these crimes. My favourite irresponsible piece of information that is being said at the moment is that all the police cells in London are full. Now call me crazy but telling violent youths that if they go on to the streets and loot businesses and torch cars, there is a good chance they won’t be arrested as there is no room in London jails for them, is a fucking ridiculous thing to say on live television! I am a fan of the BBC and I feel it’s a vital service that should be protected at all costs but during live broadcasts there are very bad decisions made.

During the last 24 hours I have noticed time after time news reports saying this sentence “what does this mean for the capital economically and the Olympics in 2012”. This is a textbook example of the government and the broadcast media turning people into numbers and transforming a human issue into and economic one. What everyone seems to be missing so far is that these are people hurting other people. They are not just businesses affected by this, there are families being made homeless and peoples futures being taken away from them by violent selfish criminals.

I am now waiting for inevitable suggestion that either violent computer games, music videos or scary films are somehow to blame for the violence that has been seen across the country. This usually comes in the form of a conservative female MP suggesting that young people can’t separate reality and fiction like they are somehow hypnotised by these “evil” games and music and encouraged to go out and cause destruction.

Pressing Issues

So I heard that there was a tabloid newspaper doing things that were illegal and disturbing. Is it just me or is this not the absolute definition of the tabloid press rather than just a new development specific to one publication?

The tabloid press have for as long as I have been alive, been morally devoid and all round shits. The real question here isn’t why have they done these things, it’s why the fuck do we buy them in the first place?

There were so many reasons not to buy red top newspapers before this latest suicidal gesture from The News of the World and now I am going to list some of them.

• They are written by some of the worst, most right wing, classless, lying, bastards to ever touch a keyboard.
• They advertise themselves as being cheap.
• They haven’t ever featured a story, to my knowledge, that didn’t involve paedophiles or Chelsea football club.
• They have a strange taste for women from Essex that forget to take their clothing to photo shoots.
• They are written in part by Jeremy Clarkson

There have been calls to regulate the press from almost everyone who isn’t either working for morally bankrupt tabloid newspaper or is a child of Satan. This leading to the ridiculously flimsy argument that it would inhibit free speech and the press’s power to undergo investigative journalism. This really doesn’t stand up when you make the eventual comparison to broadcast journalism which is independently regulated and it performs at a much greater quality and efficiency than the antiquated printed press.

So it seems a little mad that people are so shocked that an organisation as corrupt and morally bereft such as any run by Rupert Murdoch, could do such things. It also shocks me that people expect anything less from an industry unregulated and struggling to generate any interest away from new media or broadcast media.

The fact of the matter is that newspapers are dying and have been for some time. This latest saga only seems to be speeding up the demise of the cancer riddled body that was once the pride and joy of British journalism.

Minority Report

Have you ever wanted to complain about something you watched at the cinema or on television? Chances are the answer is no, unless somehow you are reading this thinking it was written by someone who works at the Daily Mail or something.

So it’s safe to assume that if you don’t like something you are watching on television you simply turn it over or do something else. This isn’t enough of a choice for some people however as they desire a third option where they can complain about Eastenders being too sad or there being “blacks” or “queers” on the screen because this obviously makes everyone violently repulsed.

Having said all this I can somehow, almost, in a little tiny way forgive anyone who registers a complaint about a television show that they have seen. Even though most TV shows that could in any way possibly have anything remotely offensive in them take a great deal of care to warn people that this is the case. The reason I can somehow forgive is because people may flick over the channel while watching television with their children and catch a glimpse of something that might not be suitable or could be a little awkward within the confines of a mother son relationship television watching experience. Again having said this, the shows that could offend are carefully scheduled for times when they are least likely to be seen by children or idiots.

So when people complain about films that they have seen in the cinema it really doesn’t make sense to me. Think about the order of events that has taken place for them to end up registering a complaint. First of all they want to go to the cinema. Then they think, or more accurately don’t think about what film they want to see. I don’t know about you but I very very rarely go to the cinema and pay £8 or whatever it costs, without first at least vaguely researching the film I’m am about to invest money and time into. Then once you have researched it you make a decision based on what you have seen and heard about the film as to whether you would like to go and watch it. So it does amaze me that anyone after doing all of this would still find a reason to complain about a film being offensive or scary.

These words you see here have not come from the clear blue sky but have been inspired by hearing the news that a film that grossed well over $60million has received 24 complaints and somehow this is news worthy.

The film in question is The Lovely Bones about a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family - and her killer - from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.

Now the film was given a 12a certificate which indicates there will be things in it that are not suitable for certain audiences. It seems to me to show a huge lack of common sense in anyone going to see this film solely based on the rating system and not using anything else such as the human brain to guide their decision making. However the title is slightly misleading but then again does include the word “bones”, which does suggest a certain degree of death.

So this leads me to believe that anyone who has researched the film, found out what it’s about, watched the trailers, goes to see the film and then complains that there is a dead girl in it is either a fucking moron or didn’t research it and chooses to go see the film in the manner of which a dribbling reanimated corpse might. While on the subject of dribbling reanimated corpses, sad news about Hugh Hefner’s wedding being cancelled.

So remember the next time you are sitting in a cinema or in front of the television stuffing your stupid face with shit food, that if you get offended by what you see in front of you then you are way too sensitive, or a prick. x