So, as 2014 comes to an end, we find that my stated aim for this section of the blog from October was a miserable failure. After a review of one episode of X-Factor and a single review of The Apprentice, well, that was all I managed to do. The reason (or excuse) is the same as it always is. Time. Or lack thereof. That’s the thing about having a responsible job in a sector of the economy that is suddenly thriving. The job ends up taking up all your time and sapping all your energy. The key is to find a good ‘work/life balance’. But let’s be honest, there are entire writing careers based on teaching people to achieve said balance, so if it was an easy thing to do, we’d all be doing and the ‘life coaches’ would have to find other ways to fleece us of our hard-earned. But overall, for me and in many ways for the UK, 2014 has been a good year. Certainly, it’s been a better year than some of recent times. Oh, I know there will be people that disagree, people that lay the blame of every ill at feet of the government and maintain that because ‘those evil Tories’ are in power the country is in a worse state than its ever been. But honestly, I don’t see it that way. Perhaps it’s because I’m not on benefits – or maybe that’s just me being typically un-PC. But you know what? I don’t care. From my point of view, 2014 has been great. I’m earning more than ever before (and getting another pay rise in January 2015). I published a couple of short stories and a novel and I’m selling more books than ever before. I’ve met some great people on Facebook and made some good friends. My personal bank account is healthier than it’s ever been. Indeed, through some careful planning, prudent changes and finally learning how to controlling my spending properly, I’ve stayed in credit all year. Not gone overdrawn once – and that’s a first for me in the twenty-odd years I’ve been looking after my own money. So, all in all, I’m in a good place. And I’m looking forward to 2015. I have a few things planned for my writing career, and I’m hoping that will include more time dedicated to the blog in general and this section of it in particular. There’s also a general election coming up in May, and that opens up all sorts of possibilities for The Grumpy Blog. So to everyone I know, thanks for a great 2014, and here’s to an even better 2015.
X-Factor 2014 – Week 2 review
Okay, Okay, I watch the X-factor. Don’t hate me for it. Mind you, sometimes I hate myself for it. This week for example. I hated myself for watching it this week. Why? Well, it was 80s night, and boy did it make me feel old. This was partly because most of the contestants were singing songs much older then they were, but also because I found myself shouting at the TV a lot. “NO, no, no, NO! That’s all wrong.” “That’s not a fucking ballad!” “Shit, I love this song, and they’ve murdered it!” “That’s not even an 80s track FFS!” Were just some of the more printable things I yelled during the two and a half hour torture on Saturday night. Still, at least we got a laugh out of it when Simon spent most of the night calling Cheryl Tweedy-Cole-Fernandez-Versini “Kermit” due to her God Awful green dress. “It’s Lanvin!” she screeched the first time he mentioned the dress. I’m sure that’s supposed to mean something, but for the life I me I’ve no idea what. p.s. her name is getting so long now it’ll soon take up a whole tweet on it’s own – Cheryl-Kermit Tweedy-Cole-Fernandez-Versini. It’s quite a mouthful.
A Sign of Things to Come – It’s going to be a Long 7 Months
Last week, The Labour Party released a secretly recorded tape of a Government Minister, Lord Freud, making ill-advised comments about disabled people and the minimum wage. Now, it’s clear this was a cynical attempt by Labour to make the minister and the Government look bad – part of Labour’s election strategy for next May is to make the Tory’s look like “The Nasty Party”. The comments were taken out of context and when you examine the – poorly expressed – meaning behind the bad choice of words, the Minister was actually saying something that even disability campaigners have been mooting as a possibility for quite a while. But the rights and wrongs and merits or not of what was said is not the issue of this post. The issue here is that this nasty little indecent looks like it’s a sign of what we, the Great British Public, will have to put up with in the run up to next May’s General Election. The comments were recorded on a smart phone without the knowledge of the speaker. And then held on to by Labour until what they considered the ‘optimal time’ to do most damage. And Labour are not alone in this tactic. The Torys have done the same thing to Labour. So are we really going to have seven months of secretly recorded conversations drip-fed to the media, each designed to make the other party look as bad as possible? Yes, I think we are. Which is tragic really. Both parties seem to have already decided that the best way to win the election is to convince us just how bad the other party is. Whatever happened to a positive message? Whatever happened to telling the public what your vision for the country is and how you can make things better as opposed to how the others will make things worse? Honestly, is it any wonder the public in England and Wales are as turned off by politics as they are? I despair, I really do.
The Apprentice UK Series 10, Episode 1 – Review
Cards on the table. I’m a big fan of The Apprentice. I find it compelling viewing. And it looks like this new season – the show’s tenth here in the UK – will be just as compelling. This first episode was just what you’ve come to expect from the early shows in each series. The candidates are split into two teams, boys and girls, and they proceed to pick a really stupid team name then run around for the first half-hour like a bunch of utterly clueless headless chickens making mistake after mistake. Mistakes that even my 9-year-old son can tell are mistakes. This year, we have even more clueless morons vying for the £250k on offer to start a new business with Lord Alan Sugar. Twenty in total. I guess that since The X-Factor decided to have 16 finalists this year, the BBC felt the need to go one better. (Except that The Apprentice was filmed months ago) The boys went with the team-name “Summit” because they’ve all “reached the top” – of their ambition, I assume. The girls chose the name “Decadent” – a name so inappropriate for a “business” that Lord Sugar told them to go away and think of a better one. I’m a bit surprised he didn’t fire on the spot the woman who came up with it and then admitted “I wasn’t sure about the actual definition.” A definition which trusty old Nick Hewer provided – “a person who is luxuriously self-indulgent, characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline.” Speaking of Nick, that man has the most expressive face in British TV. Nick’s expressions should have their own show. But the biggest mistakes of the first episode involved t-shirts. The boys left £500 worth of t-shirts at the printers, while the girls paid a bloke £150 to print their t-shirts with the slogan #LONDON, then promptly sold the finished product to him for a grand total of £60. And I thought this show was about making money, not losing it. Then it was back to The Boardroom, where it was revealed that somehow the girls had won – or ‘got away with it’ – leaving the first bloodbath of the series to take place between the boys. Someone got fired. I can’t remember his name. We never can at this stage.
Summer’s Here
It has, to put it mildly, been freaking hot in the UK the past week or so. I mean, seriously hot. We’re not used to it here. We’re used to grey skies and drizzle. So, in celebration of the lovely weather, here are some customary generic pictures of ladies in bikinis, because… why not? Of course, the hot weather has led to some spectacular thunderstorms. So, here are some photos of that too, because… what the hell, right? It’s some contrast – but that’s what summer is all about, right? Let’s just enjoy it while we have it, that’s what I say.
Facebook idiocy strikes again
I have no words. Really, I don’t. This article in the Daily Mail (again – sorry), is about Facebook removing the page for Warwick University Rowing Club because they were using it to promote their charity calender, because they thought it was pornographic. Well, that’s how the Mail put it, but we all know that what actually is that someone reported the images as containing nudity. Now, in fairness, they did. It’s a nude calender. But ever since “Calender Girls”, tasteful nude calenders for charity has been a “thing”. And you can’t argue that these images aren’t tasteful because they are. It boggles the mind what sort of person would report these images, knowing they would then likely be taken down. The calender was rasing money for Macmillan Cancer Support – the organisation that helps look after people with that deadly condition. So screw you whoever reported this page. You suck. I hope one day you need the support of the Macmillan nurses, and maybe then you’ll look back and realise just how shitty your actions were. In the meantime, you might want to get hold of a copy of the calender and support the charity yourself. Go get it here
So Much for Equality
This comes from the Daily Mail (no surprise there then). A wife has been fined £300 for assaulting her husband, who has MS and needed 13 stitches. The article treats it as a joke story, but I can’t help think that if *he* had assaulted *her* then the sentence would have much more severe. Maybe even jail time. So much for equality, huh? Husband has face smeared with butter after demanding divorce http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2697531/Wife-fined-300-throwing-toast-husband-smearing-face-Clover-margarine-demanded-divorce.html @MailOnline
Nuisance Calls
This weekend I took a call from a very nice lady in, I believe judging from her accent, India who offered to “help you with your computer”. Well, that’s a technical inaccuracy. I didn’t take the call. My son was next to the handset so he answered it, couldn’t understand what was being said and handed it to me. Which is fair enough, I could only just understand the damn cold caller myself, and I have quite a bit of experience of Indian call centres. Now, I had a call like this about 12 months ago, so I knew what to expect. But I was still annoyed by it. The caller, who never gave me her name or stated who she was working for, started by wishing me Good Morning (it was the middle of the afternoon at the time) and informing me she was calling to help with the problem I’d been having on my computer. Here’s a paraphrasing of the rest of the conversation. Me : “That’s excellent news. Only… er… Which computer? We have 4 you see. So which one are you calling about?” Her : “I’m calling to help with your computer. If you could go to it and turn it on, then I can help.” Me : “Yes, you said you could help, that’s great, but is it the Linux computer in the family room that my son uses to watch Minecraft videos on YouTube and do his homework, My wife’s laptop from work, which is maintained by them and we don’t have administrator access to, my personal laptop, which I recently did a clean install of Windows 8.1 on, or the netbook which just yesterday I wiped and did a clean install of Windows 7 starter on?” Her : “Yes. That one. I’m calling to help with the problem. If you can just turn it on for me” At this point I was beginning to wonder if there was a problem on the line. This woman, who clearly wanted to help me, was having trouble hearing me. She must have missed most of my answer and thought I only had one computer in the house. Okay, I mean, it’s a long way to India. And it sounded noisy where she was, too. Poor love. Oh well. Let’s press on. Me : “Okay, but can you tell me what the problem is that you’re calling to help with? I have some experience of computers. I look after the IT at work, you see.” Her : “Yes. It’s that problem I’m calling to help with.” Me : “Which problem.” Her : “The problem with the computer.” Me : “Yes, but all my computers are fine.” Her (sounding annoyed) : “But you have a problem and I’m calling to help. With your computer.” Me : “But I don’t have a problem. I run a strong firewall and a very strict anti-virus and anti-spam policy. It’s what they advised us to do on the course.” Her : “What course?” Me : “The MSCE course.” Her : “What course?” Me : “Microsoft Certified Engineer course. That’s what I do. That’s my job.” Her : “Oh. Right. Okay.” At which point the line went dead. The bitch hung up on me. But of course she did. The second she realised I might actually know what I was talking about, she gave up on her little scam. Okay, I’m not actually an MSCE, but I do know enough about computers to keep the four we have at home reasonably safe and clean. Not that this scam-artist was to know that. Actually, the call I had last year went along the same lines, only it was a man and he was much more aggressive about it. He even went so far as to ask for my MSCE number to prove I really was one (which I’m not). In the end I hung up on him since he clearly wasn’t going to back down until he’d infected my machine. Because that’s what they were after and that’s what annoys me about these type of people. If I hadn’t know what I was talking about. If I’d been elderly, say, they could well have talked and talked and scared me into switching on the PC and following their instructions. What they would have done is got me to open a web browser, go to a site they have set up, get me to download and install a dodgy piece of software that then either locks my PC until I pay them to release it, or infects my PC with key logger software to try and gain access to all my online accounts. And of course, if this had of happened, it would have been my own fault for falling for the scam. In these situations, the law offers the poor computer user no protection, because the call centre is based on the other side of the world and the UK Government have no power of it. The people who run these sweat shops and get workers to make these calls really do make me sick. And I’m today officially adding to the list. What list? The list of people I’ll have… er… “dealt with” after I come to power. It’s getting quite long – but that’s for another post.
One day ‘An eminent Lord’ – and the next – ‘A Child Sex Apologist’
Always an interesting read, Anna Raccoon hits the nail on the head with this one. My, oh, my – the Conspiri-loons are fair drumming their heels in the Twitter aisles this morning. Monstrous tantrums. So near the sweetie counter – and yet so far! Was it only Monday – two days ago – that Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was being hailed as an ‘eminent Lord’ along with the Bishop of Durham for heeding their call for an ‘overarching inquiry’ into child abuse? Every inquiry is ‘overarching’ these days, and none can be more overarching than an inquiry into the inquiries currently running which includes an inquiry into an inquiry into an inquiry that is the Macur inquiry. We need a portmanteau word. An ‘ArchInq’? Or perhaps merely a ‘KerchInk’ to reflect the handsome lawyer’s fees greasing the tracks. Read More….
The Power of Proper Tags
Over on a different blog, I posted a piece on Ms Debbie Delamar, who claims to be the proud owner of Britain’s Biggest Fake Boobs. She’s been all over the media (or the gutter press, if you prefer) this past weekend. It wasn’t a particularly unusual post, in the sense that it was pretty much what I was planning for that blog, which is to say, me moaning about something I’ve seen, heard or read. What’s interesting is that I ‘tagged’ the post with what seemed to me to be relevant tags – just like I’ve tagged this one. Again, nothing unusual—I try to tag all my posts. But blow me if I didn’t get a shock when I looked at the blog stats last night (and, indeed, again this morning). Massive amount of hits. Massive. The most I’ve ever had on any post ever. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but more hits than I expected, given it this is a new blog. And the really good thing is that because I’ve a menu that takes you to my ‘regular’ website, I had a spike in hits there too. This can only be a good thing, surely. So, the moral of this little post is this, tag your posts properly and write about popular/controversial stuff and you’ll get more hits. Now, it’s not like I didn’t already know that, but to have it proven in such stark terms on one post on a new blog – You get the idea.
