One man's rant against the 21st Century....: December 2006

Sunday 31 December 2006

"London" Luton Airport

During a recent elongated bout of channel-hopping through the mire of designed-for-the-mentally-impaired channels that make up British TV the other day, I happened across "Airport" being repeated on ITV7+1 (or something).

For those fortunate enough to have not seen this, it's yet another cheap filler of a programme designed to fill out ITV's schedules between the latest offerings of Z-list celebrity reality shows and Coronation Street. Basically, it's a tour around Britain's provincial airports (cue Tony Robinson explaining that "later, we will go to Barnsley's Michael Parkinson Airport to see how Tanya at check-ins wedding preparations are getting on....) giving a fly on the wall view of EasyJet employees laughing their tits off at the cretins who still foolishly turn up for their hols expecting their plane to a) be there, b) be working, c) depart on time and d) not be triple booked; and then get highly pissed off when any combination of these factors fail to materialise.

Fair enough, a proportion of these idiots are foreign, so it is difficult not to enjoy their collective misery.

One stop off on this tour of locations that EasyJet try their best to avoid flying from or to was London Luton Airport.

Now, let's get one thing straight. Luton is nowhere fecking near London. To be precise, it's 35 miles away from London. Calling Luton Airport "London Luton Airport" is about as geographically precise as "Newcastle Edinburgh Airport".

Talk about taking a fecking liberty and trying to "big up" the image of a shitty town in the middle of nowhere that has absolutely bugger all going for it.

Think Sunderland without the glamour, charm and charisma.

I can understand (to a degree) Luton Airport wanting to shake off the image created by Lorraine Chase, but for Christ's sake that was thirty years ago!

You can just imagine the poor foreign sods expecting to fly into a London Airport and get off the plane to be met with a majestic view of St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. How disappointed are they going to be.....

Thursday 28 December 2006

Who's in Charge??

So, no sooner has "Two Shags" Prescott got out of his Christmas stay in hospital, than Teflon Tony gets on a British Blairways flight with his clan and sods off to Miami on his jollies.

Who the bloody hell is running the country?? Upon reflection, whoever it is can't be doing a worse job. War going badly in Iraq/Afghanistan, Health Service buggered and an education system that is quite merrily turning out Burberry clad scrotes by the truckload - obviously a good time to put your feet up in the sunshine....

And are the "First Family" staying in the local Miami Travel Lodge? Are they hell. Of course, they are paying for the luxury of staying in the £5m pad of an ageing Bee Gee who, coincidentally, appeared at rallies supporting TB in 2005 and who was described by the PM as one of his heroes. Just like they paid to stay with a football club owning dodgy Italian PM in Tuscany.

Arise, Sir Robin????

Wednesday 27 December 2006

"Lenz a tab, mistaah"

For those of you unfamiliar with the North East, the rough translation would be "Kind Sir, please could you avail me of one of your fine cigarettes".

This is the cry of the greater-spotted chavettes, heard most frequently around newsagents, bus stops and Metro stations across Newcastle. Uttered in a bastardised nasal-whine version of the Geordie dialect, this is more of an order than a polite request and generally comes from the mouth of some unwashed tracksuit-wearing little oik. That would be "little" in terms of height only, because in terms of circumference, as my mate Nev would say, "you couldn't bend wire that shape".

Sorry pet, but you ain't going to get one. Because you are about twelve. It doesn't matter how much make-up you slap on or how much "gold" jewellery you've got on (nicked from Elizabeth Duke at Argos), you still look twelve.

Now be a good little girl and run along to your friends - yes, that' s them at the bus stop drinking alcopops and eating chips. Then you can plan how many kids you are going to have before you leave school (at fourteen), how much benefit that will earn you and what incredibly stupid names you're going to give them.

It's almost worth giving up smoking just to avoid them approaching you.

Almost.

VICKI POLLARD IS NOT A ROLE MODEL

Jehovah's Witnesses

Now before anyone kicks off, this isn't about anyone's beliefs or religion - I personally couldn't give a monkey's whether people believe in God, Buddha, Allah or little green men from Mars.

What is completely nuts is that Jehovah's Witnesses did a tour of local front doors...... on Christmas Eve!!

Surely to God/Buddah/Allah/little green men from Mars, somebody should have realised that people might have had one or two more pressing things to do on this particular day (wrapping little Johnny's presents, praying the Turkey will defrost in time, running around town like a headless chicken as they realise that they've forgotten to get 'er indoors the perfume she wanted which is now sold out in every shop in Britain...) than to have a full and frank discussion on their doorstep about their forthcoming damnation to hell and how to prevent it.

Bloody Hell, even double glazing salesmen give it a rest on Christmas Eve.......

Sunday 24 December 2006

Digital TV Charge for Council Tenants

Our first contributor!!!

"Gezza" (name changed to protect the innocent etc etc) writes:

"Have you seen this!!! Poor council house tenants having to pay for digital TV, we have to so why the f*ck shouldn't they. Bloody namby pamby state, we would be paying twice for the digital change. BTW, Merry Christmas"

The article in full (obviously 100% true as it's in the Sunday Mirror!):

"THOUSANDS of council tenants will have to pay up to £100 a year extra to get new digital TV services.
Town hall chiefs - who plan to stop people fitting dozens of "unsightly" satellite dishes in blocks of flats - say they will be forced to levy an extra charge for new communal aerials because Whitehall won't pay for them.
The revelation comes ahead of the planned "digital switchover" which will start in late 2007. The changeover will mean that anyone with an old analogue TV will not be able to receive a signal unless they buy a digital TV or a set-top box.
Documents obtained by the Sunday Mirror, show they plan to slap an extra charge on tenants to cover the cost of installing the new digital systems. The move will infuriate tens of thousands of tenants who will have to pay to watch even the "free-to-air" channels on their communal systems.
London's Camden Council has warned its 22,000 tenants that they will face a £1 weekly fee from next year which will rise annually in line with inflation. Other councils may levy a charge of up to £2 a week to fit the new systems - making an annual fee of around £100 per year.
One Camden tenant said: "It's an outrage. Why should we pay extra? All I want is the basic channels which are free now."
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said £600 million of Government cash would help Britain's poorest pensioners switch to digital TV. The money would help the over-75s, the blind and the disabled.
But MPs fear many of Britain's poorest homes may struggle to afford to buy the equipment needed to watch digital TV."

Poor buggers. Whilst there are undoubtedly those that are less fortunate, I bet if the councils concerned actually bothered their arses to have a wander around the relevant areas I'm sure they'd be amazed at how £100 a year is a stretch when they consider how much the repayments on the brand new cars, 42 inch plasma tellies and National Grid emptying Christmas lights cost.

Saturday 23 December 2006

Kid's Names

Gone are the days when giving your kids ridiculous names was solely the preserve of royalty and stars of music and film (a la Eugenie, Peaches, Fifi Trixabelle, Satchel, Dweezil etc etc).

Nowadays, for which the Beckhams must take at least some of the credit, the common men and women of this great country have taken to naming their offspring in increasingly bizarre and badly spelled ways.

To give you some recent examples, many of which have been taken from the "Announcements" section of my local rag (and all are genuine!):

Chardonnay
Mercedes
Kai
Kaj
Kenzie
Nyle
Demi-Leigh (does that mean she's only half a normal Leigh?)
Shardae
Helayna

And the best one of all for doing a Beckham and naming your kid after the place of conception - Clio!!!!!

I'm not sure which is worse, the names that are just plain stupid, or the ones that have had the spelling changed, just to be different.

For the love of God, do people not realise that their little ones either face a constant barrage of piss-taking for the next 18 years of their lives (at least) or have been perfectly set up to become one of the Burberry/baseball cap/chunky gold jewellery wearing little darlings that we all love to see hanging around on street corners after dark drinking Lambrini??

You just know the gene pool is screwed up....

100 Hits and Rising!!

Fantastic - first one hundred hits to the blog!

Hope you have been enjoying the rants! Remember, you can rant too - just email using the link on the right hand side.

Thursday 21 December 2006

Arjen Taking The Piss???

Fact - Premiership footballers are a bunch of overpaid egotistical ponces who have sod all better to do than drive round in Bentley Continental GT's and date slappers and third rate pop "stars".

Add in the phrase "cheating bastard" and you have..... Arjen Robben.

A man who seems to either feel gravity 10 times more than the rest of the human race or is a walking target for every sniper in the world. What's even worse is that he plays in a team which, thanks to the untold riches (however they may have been attained. Allegedly.) of their owner, contains some of the best players in the world and really don't need to cheat to get any sort of an unnatural advantage against the opposition.

Below is a classic example of Robben at his very "best":

Oh well, at least he's not French. Tosser.

Monday 18 December 2006

Pictures to Boil Your Piss - Number 1

Enough said.

Booze Plus Cameras Equals??

Why is it that (allegedly) upstanding, sensible and otherwise "normal" human beings, once they have had a couple of beers, seem to take great pleasure in making themselves look like complete tools any time a camera is waived in their general direction?

I present the evidence m'lud...

I rest my case.......

If anyone has any further contributions, feel free to email them to me at havearant@boilsmypiss.co.uk

PS - If any of those featured in these photos are offended or if they are breaking any copyright, please let me know and I will remove them whenever able. If you ask nicely...

Bah-bloody-Humbug...! (Part 2)

Well, I finally did it. Summoned up enough strength and good humour to brave the rigours of.... Christmas shopping.

The good humour didn't last long, but I guess you had already predicted that.

Why, oh why, oh bloody why is it that people who have never seen each other for donkey's years always manage to bump into each other in the middle of the narrowest sodding aisle in Marks and Sparks/Fenwick/Bainbridges etc, and then have to catch up on the last 25 years of chat and gossip ("little Mercedes is at junior school now/having her third kid"... "Did you hear about our Wayne"... "I see Elsie's passed on" etc etc etc. By the time they've caught up to 1985 the entire shop has come to a standstill around them and at least one fellow customer (ie Me) can feel blood pressure rising to hitherto unheard of levels.

I can see why people think Argos is a good idea - the "laminated book of dreams" always seems a practical and stress free alternative to having to fight your way through countless shops, all of which are "temporarily out of stock" of all the damned things you are looking for. A good idea, that is, until you actually get there and see the hordes of track suited chavs desperate to get their hands on the latest Jordan jewellery for "our Leeanne" whilst picking up a couple of new sovereign rings for themselves.

Next year the whole lot's getting done on Amazon.

PS - If you're struggling for a last minute pressie, why not try the new "Boils My Piss" shop! Just click on the ads at the side and bottom of the page to be transported into a veritable retail wonderland. And make me some cash at the same time......

Get Your Revenge Here!

On my neverending travels through the world of t'internet I've stumbled across a couple of great little sites for getting your revenge on those things that, quite frankly, get on your tits!

First up is "Shoot It" - follow the instructions, load up a picture of something that irks you, then simply blast it to buggery and back!! Only downsides are that the size of the picture you can upload is pretty small (100kb) and you don't get gushing blood when you shoot someone in the head. Ah well, nothing's perfect...

Second is "Knife Throw 2" - great fun - you get to throw knives at a whole bunch of irritating-as-hell politicians and so-called celebs (Blair, Bush, Britney and Paris plus others!!) - most fun is "Practice" mode with more knives to chuck!! I think you're meant to miss, but it's more fun not to..!!

Saturday 9 December 2006

Information Technology

Why is it that computer systems only ever break down when IT support is either:

a) Unavailable
or
b) Costs more because it's a bloody weekend/holiday?

And yes, I have tried turning it off and turning it back on again......

Friday 8 December 2006

"Great" North Eastern Railway

I recently had the severe misfortune of having to make a trip to London. I say misfortune for three reasons:

1) It's London - my least favourite city on the planet. Expensive, dirty and full of bar staff/waiters/shop assistants etc who seem to have what could most generously be described as a deficiency in manners and a limited grasp of the English language.

2) It was for an insurance awards ceremony - yes, that is as dull as it sounds. Loads of bow tied managers and their secretaries getting pissed up, making tits of themselves and engaging in a back slapping love-in of biblical proportions.

3) I travelled by train.

Now it is the third point that I wish to cover today (although I'm sure that the other two will appear on the blog in the not too distant future!).
For those of you who may not know, "Great" North Eastern Railway (GNER) are the company tasked with transporting those of the populace daft enough to do so between Edinburgh and London.
GNER are quite a big company, with employees numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands.
It is not unreasonable, therefore, to assume that within this multitude of staff at least one of them would know how many seats there are on their bloody trains!!

Let me expand on this for you.....
On the return journey from London (a Friday afternoon, therefore a lot of people are looking to get out of the hell hole that is our capital and return to somewhere approaching civilisation) I had a "reserved" seat. This, you may think, would mean that there was a seat somewhere on the train with my name on it. Being relatively experienced in the art of train travel, I was fortunate to get on the train before the ensuing chaos set in.
I plonked my rear end in the designated seat, prepared to enjoy a peaceful three hour journey back home. Within five minutes, a young woman came up and barked at me that I was in her seat. I dutifully showed her my ticket, showing that my not inconsiderable arse was, in fact, in the correct location. Being the well brought up gentleman that I am, I promptly sat back down with a look of "sorry, not my fault, you should have got here earlier".
Another couple of minutes passed and then the same thing happened again with a different person. At this point I noticed that the same thing was happening up and down the carriage and the train was absolutely packed (aisles and corridors included) by the time that the train pulled out.
Whoopee - three hours on an overcrowded train full of half pissed Scots in a bad mood and whingeing for St Andrew.

Now I appreciate that GNER might want to sell unreserved tickets to people who want to take a chance on getting a seat and are prepared to stand for hours on end if they can't, but this was quite frankly taking the piss.

Especially when you consider that, for a lot less than most cattle class rail tickets, you can fly just about anywhere in Europe by EasyJet or Ryanair (although you do run the risk of the plane not turning up or not working, or the destination airport being a four hour bus ride from the city to which you thought you were travelling).

So, the upshot was that I put on my Walkman, ignored every human on the train and steadfastly refused to give up my seat (even for the sake of a trip to the bog in case I lost my seat to one of the aforementioned inebriated jocks).

This is the age of the train. Is it bollocks...............

Thursday 7 December 2006

Bah-bloody-Humbug...!

Tis the season to be jolly - MY ARSE!

Once upon a time, I'm sure that Christmas was something to do with the back end of December - now it seems that Christmas starts in August and goes through to February. At least that's what the shops would have you think. No sooner has Her Maj finished the annual diatribe to the proletariat then it's endless bloody adverts for sales ("Starts 6am Boxing Day") and poxy summer holidays!

What Christmas actually means these days:

You can't get served in your local boozer for all the people who only ever seem to leave the house of an evening once a bloody year and then think they have the divine right to command the full attention of every one of the poor unfortunates working behind the bar.
Morons who get mass media attention by draining the National Grid of every last drop of electricity by covering their streets with enough lights to confuse the hell out of any passing British Airways pilot.
Hearing sodding Slade/Wizzard songs blaring out of every shop in Christendom twenty four hours a day.
Traffic jams absolutely bloody everywhere as the nation decides, as one, to go Christmas shopping to the same shops at the same time whilst being compelled to take of all their screaming children with them.
Yet another repeated "Only Fools and Horses" Christmas Special. Whoopee.

Welcome to my world........................................

One man's rant against the 21st Century....