CHRISTMAS TIME IN THE UK AND SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

Thanks to Cynical Highlander for pointing me in the direction of this.

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Seen on Twitter:

BBC: The oil business is finished? Expert: No

BBC: It's over for North Sea? Expert: No

BBC: But it's catastrophic isn't it? Expert: No.

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Well, Ed, Tony said it was just for show...

Yep... just for a laugh...Nigel Farage started it by saying he felt threatened by people on the train speaking a different language. (Amazing when you consider that his wife is German and his daughters speak German fluently... but maybe he feels intimidated at home too...it would certainly explain why he spends so much time in the pub and elsewhere!!). I wonder if, when they are in Brussels, on a train, or more likely in a bar, the UKIP lot all speak Flemish or French to each other in order not to put the locals in a state of fear?
Anyway, you'd kinda hope that if people were going to have a go at immigrants for speaking 'foreign' on our trains, they might make a wee bit of an effort not to mix the possessive pronoun "OUR" with part of the verb "to be" ..." ARE"...
Oh, and what the hell is the hyphen for?

LETTER FROM ABROAD...

The following people have signed a letter to ask us to stay in the UK. 

I've no idea who most of them are, but I am wondering how many of them are personally affected by what happens in this country. I'm wondering, too, how many of them have been hurt by the likes of Iain Duncan Smug, Esther McVile or Lord Fraud. I wonder if any of them are forced to use a Food Bank, or don't have access to private health care if the NHS as we know it disappears completely.

I wonder it, in fact, what they are is worried that the loss of Scottish revenue might mean their taxes will have to go up.

I recognise some of the names... I mean who doesn't know McJagger and Cliff Richard, Melvyn Bragg and David Starkey, Sandie Shaw and Ben Ainsley. 

I'm disappointed to see David Attenborough's name there. I'd have thought him above getting involved in this. The rest seem to be the usual suspects. Labour activists and very rich people from England, or further afield.  I wonder how many of them really live in Scotland or even the UK. Doesn't McJagger live in America, and Cliff in the Bahamas?

Now they have every right to ask us to stay... as does a wee woman living in Phnom Penh. For that matter I have every right to write to the people of Greenland and tell them never to ditch Denmark. 

I just wouldn't do it, because it's not my business and I don't know nearly enough about it.

Still I expect Sandie Shaw does.

Mick Jagger (SIR)

William Dalrymple

Eddie Izzard

Sir Patrick Stewart

Sir Bruce Forsyth

Sir Mick Jagger

Stephen Hawking

Jenny Agutter

Sir Ben Ainslie

Kriss Akabusi

Roger Allam

Kirstie Allsop

Alexander Armstrong

Sir David Attenborough

Steve Backley

Baroness Joan Bakewell

Frances Barber

Andy Barrow

John Barrowman

Mike Batt

Glen Baxter

Cliff Richard (SIR)

David Aaronovitch

Helena Bonham-Carter

Stanley Baxter

Martin Bayfield

Mary Beard

Sarah Beeny

Anthony Beevor

Angelica Bell

Dickie Bird

Cilla Black

Graeme Black

Roger Black

Malorie Blackman

Ranjit Bolt

Alain de Botton

William Boyd

Tracey Brabin

Lord Melvyn Bragg

Jo Brand

Gyles Brandreth

Rob Brydon

Louisa Buck

Simon Callow

Will Carling

Paul Cartledge

Guy Chambers

Nick Cohen

Michelle Collins

Colonel Tim Collins

Bruce Forsyth (SIR)

Olivia Colman

Charlie Condou

Susannah Constantine

Steve Coogan

Dominic Cooper

Ronnie Corbett

Simon Cowell

Jason Cowley

Sara Cox

Amanda Craig

Steve Cram

Richard Curtis

Tom Daley

Richard Dawkins

Dame Judi Dench

Jeremy Deller

Lord Michael Dobbs

Jimmy Doherty

Michael Douglas

Simon Easterby

Gareth Edwards

Sandie Shaw (?)

Jonathan Edwards

Tracey Emin

Sebastian Faulks

Bryan Ferry

Ranulph Fiennes

Ben Fogle

Amanda Foreman

Neil Fox

Emma Freud

Bernard Gallacher

Kirsty Gallacher

George Galloway

Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Bamber Gascoigne

David Gilmour

Harvey Goldsmith

David Goodhart

Lachlan Goudie

David Gower

AC Grayling

Will Greenwood

Tamsin Greig

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson

Lord Charles Guthrie

Haydn Gwynne

Maggi Hambling

Mehdi Hasan

Sir Max Hastings

Peter Hennessy

James Holland

Tom Holland

Andrew Lloyd Webber (SIR and LORD)

Tom Hollander

Gloria Hunniford

Conn Iggledun

John Illsley

Brendan Ingle

Betty Jackson

Sir Mike Jackson

Howard Jacobson

Baroness PD James

Griff Rhys Jones

Terry Jones

Christopher Kane

Sir Anish Kapoor

Ross Kemp

Paul Kenny

Jemima Khan

India Knight

Martha Lane Fox

Baroness Doreen Lawrence

Tory Lawrence

Kathy Lette

Rod Liddle

Louise Linton

John Lloyd (journalist)

John Lloyd (producer)

Vera Lynn (DAME)

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber

Gabby Logan

Kenny Logan

Sarah Lucas

Dame Vera Lynn

James May

Margaret MacMillan

Stephen Mangan

Davina McCall

Sir Ian McGeechan

Heather McGregor

Andy McNab

John Michie

David Mitchell

Lord John Monks

Lewis Moody

Michael Morpurgo

Bill Morris

David Morrissey

Philip Mould

Al Murray

Neil Stuke

Sir Paul Nurse

Andy Nyman

Peter Oborne

Michael Parkinson (SIR)

Sir Michael Parkinson

Fiona Phillips

Andy Puddicombe

Lord David Puttnam

Anita Rani

Esther Rantzen

Sir Steve Redgrave

Derek Redmond

Pete Reed

Lord Martin Rees

Peter Reid

Baroness Ruth Rendell

Sir Cliff Richard

Hugo Rifkind

Sir Tony Robinson

David Rowntree

Ian Rush

Greg Rutherford

CJ Sansom

June Sarpong

Simon Schama

John Sessions

Sandie Shaw

Helen Skelton

Hercule Poirot 

Sir Tim Smit

Dan Snow

Peter Snow

Phil Spencer

David Starkey

Lord Jock Stirrup

Neil Stuke

Sting

Tallia Storm

David Suchet

Alan Sugar

Graeme Swann

Stella Tennant

Daley Thompson

Alan Titchmarsh

James Timpson

Kevin Toolis

Lynne Truss

Gavin Turk

Roger Uttley

David Walliams

Zoë Wanamaker

Robert Webb

Richard Wentworth

Sir Alan West

Dominic West

Kevin Whately

From the Guardian...via Twitter

WHO WAS THAT LARD-ARSE WITH THE COMB OVER?

Talking of austerity (as we were in the last post), it seems that whist the rest of us are wondering what the hell Osborne is going to cut next to save the next tranche, Mr Cameron is considering an "austerity" version of Air Force One to transport him or the Queen around.

The idea has been flagged up by Airbus's boss in England, said that Mr Cameron had been let down by the aerospace industry when he arrived in the Far East on a plane built in America and owned by an Angolan company. Downing Street is said to be interested...you bet your life it is.

The plane wouldn't be the flying palace that the president has, but presumably it would be done out to a standard that would be suitable for a man of Mr Cameron's breeding.

So... I read all this in the Telegraph, and of course it is always a laugh to glance at the comments in that paper, so I read down at a few of the usual right wing blethers, and then I came across this piece from Sticky2TheMan, which I thought was hilarious:

Cameron really is the Heir to Blair, isn't he?

Didn't His Toniness claim that the Queen's aeroplane was as much his as hers and steal the keys to fly off to Cliff Richard's paradise island or some such nonsense?

Is it not a tradition now that as soon as a prime minister comes back from playing with the Americans, he puts out feelers to see whether 10 Downing Street can be tarted up to look like the set of West Wing?

However, perhaps we should be less churlish and let our dear leaders have their way.

Perhaps we should allow them to have  their own chamber orchestras dressed in monkey costumes like Louis XIV.

Or - since Cameron has or had his own private photographer funded by the taxpayer - their own propaganda film-maker, like Leni Riefenstahl, with a fully-equipped Hollywood studio.

Maybe a private theme-park and zoo, like Michael Jackson. After all, he was a mere popular music crooner, not a global statesman.

How about a continuous stream of teenage prostitutes, like Silvio Berlusconi?

Or perhaps a private bakery producing nothing but the finest Cornish pasties, to which Cameron is known to be utterly addicted?

Why shouldn't our prime minister show how completely and utterly detached he is from the lives of ordinary people?

The only problem with trying to ape the POTUS is that there is such a vast gulf between the power of one and the other.

After Obama met Cameron, it is said that he asked one of his minders:

"Who was that lard-arse with the comb-over?"

AUSTERITY OLYMPICS? NOT ON YOUR LIFE

The cost of the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics and Paralympics in London, are set to more than double after David Cameron saw the original plans and found them too niggardly and un-grand for him.


Given the hard economic times, the poor old "hard-working taxpayer up and down the country" so often cited by politicians, was promised an "Austerity Olympics"...an Olympics fit for the times. Nothing showy, just an opening (maybe SIR Elton John doing his 'Candle in the Wind' rewritten, yet again for yet another unhappy national occasion), followed by the sport, and then a closing (probably SIR Cliff Richard singing 'Congratulations').


But it seems that now that the time is near, Cameron wants to preside over something rather grander than the ration book games that had been foreseen. I'm sure I read somewhere were to have the biggest medals ever. (Yes, I did, and I found the link.) You couldn't make this up.


Apparently the money will be found from within the £3 billion sorry... very out of date figure... £9.3 billion that has been given to the Olympics by London the UK.


Additionally, they have had to revise the security costs upward. It had originally been thought that £271 million would cover it, however, when Seb  found his calculator and redid his sums, just a small error was discovered... ooops. It's going to cost £553 million. Terrible when you can't add up isn't it. 


No, it seems that instead of 10,000 guards, they are going to solve the unemployment problem for London by employing 23,000... close though, huh? (Actually it's not bad by, say, MoD standards.)


SIR Seb must have been washing his hair when this bad news was due to be released because they trotted out some totally unknown English sports minister called Hugh Robertson (what no SIRhood?), to take the flack. 


He said that the extra money was being spent so that the UK (the UK, mind) could reap the maximum economic benefit from the games. He said that he wanted people to have the best possible impression of the country, so that they will come back again and do business.


OK, so first of all these games are damn all to do with sport. It's all about making money, which, if I'm not mistaken, no one ever does from the Olympics, and this shower are even less likely to, because although their arses and armpits seem to be there, they just don't know which is which.

Secondly they seem to think that people will forget the overcrowded late trains (and drunk women telling them to speak F******* English when they are in her country), the over-priced hotels and restaurants, the surly staff and awful food, the disorganisation (because let's face it, they haven't exactly shown themselves efficient up to now, and I see no reason to expect anything else in the future), the crime, the beggars, the street sleepers, and the general air of unhappiness, shabbiness and discontent that pervades the whole place, ............and only remember how wonderful the opening and closing ceremonies were...?


They are mental.


All the security staff will have to be screened by the security services, and  that should be fun. I wonder how much that will cost us and how many potential terrorists they will let through.

Actually, they'd never admit it, but I suspect that the security increase is at least partly due to the fact that the USA was unhappy about security and wanted to send 1000 of their own CIA people, toting guns.


We probably won't be able to offer that level of skill and training, but under the Big Society some of the unemployed off the estates will be given a half-day course and then let loose with their new uniforms (how much will that cost us?) They can probably supply their own weapons.


Frankly, I wouldn't go to London next summer if you paid me, and I'll offer sanctuary to any of my London mates who need to escape for a while. 


No, I'm going to sit here and wait for the economic benefit that my tax money has bought Scotland. 


It's just as well that in addition to being very patient, I'm easily pleased.