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Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

"Welcome aboard flight UR OXN flying from Heathrow to Sydney. My name is Sandra and I will be assisted by Dee in First class, Ben and Jerry in business and some trainees I look down on in economy. We understand you have a choice of other airlines and appreciate your custom ........We will be cruising today at 35, 000 feet at approximately 900 kilometres, or 560 miles or 490 knots per hour. First I need you all to pay attention to the safety demonstration, even those amongst you who have flown before…..” And so it begins. Flight attendants have become nannies in the sky, ready to instruct and scold. They know best. So listen up….and just to make you are awake the speakers screech with feedback. Most of us just want to recover from a cavity search after foolishly packing a pair of nail clippers in our hand luggage and watch a movie. The only thing we may ask the cabin staff (whose name is on their badge) is to turn the heating down.

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Where there’s a will, there’s a... relative

November 8, 2019
Friends Kids/Family/Relations Politics Sex Uncategorised
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Why...

Did God invent money? To keep you in touch with your children.

It’s a sad truth that money trumps politics, religion or sexual orientation as the biggest buster-upper of families.

Here I stick my hand up and admit in my own family if mention is made of wills and inheritance it’s like nails down a blackboard.

Before we get personal, let me start with the tax logic... or utter lack of it. If you’ve had your nose to the grindstone, worked hard and paid your taxes, why do you get taxed again gifting it to whomever you please. Now I know in the UK there is a daft provision that if you live for seven years after the bequeath then what you bequeath is tax free. But why? What cockamamie logic is that?

When you are on the last lap of the race of life and you need money to look after yourself and lessen the burden to others... sorry, you must give it all away to lessen the inheritance tax bill. Either you live in poverty in your last years or rely on those you gave your money too will look after you. Either has the potential for disaster.

Next. The taxman's beady little eyes are more shortsighted than a mole. They value an Estate at time of death, not at the grant of probate. Mad. Let me give a simple example. Let’s say you sadly popped your clogs before the crash of 2007 when stocks were high but your wife who achieves probate afterwards when stocks were often more than halved; she would find there was very little left after the taxman had his Jaws like bite.

Then there is probate itself. Legal constipation at its finest. Even simple probate takes a year and more complex ones taking up to five times that.

Once you have got through all this... the legal challenge. A minefield and the explosive device upon which many a family have trodden and blown themselves to smithereens.

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I want to determine Government Policy... right after I’ve tidied my room and finished my homework

Why...

Should a 16 year-old get the right to vote? Winston Churchill once said the biggest argument against democracy is to hold a five minute conversation with a voter. God knows what he would have said if confronted with an acne-infested child whose only experience of voting is on Big Brother or X factor! There is good reason to keep the vote at 18. It’s called maturity and experience. The same reason in the UK you have to be 18 to:

Buy cigarettes, rolling tobacco and cigarette papers
Buy alcoholic drinks in a pub or a bar
Buy fireworks
View, rent or buy an 18 rated film
View, rent or buy pornographic material that does not contravene UK obscenity laws
Place a bet in a betting shop or casino
Get a tattoo
Join the Army and fight in conflict
Drive a car
Fly a plane

At sixteen all you get to do legally is shag, stop going to school, and so remain an unemployable moron, and ride a moped. And now there is demand these people get to vote!? At 16 boys are just packets of testosterone ready to challenge any status quo and girls often naive romantics; both sets are naturally drawn to the idealism of socialism (often pushed by zealot teachers) without the knowledge that it has failed in just about every country to embrace it. Hence, Socialists are always eager to lower the vote to people 99.9% of whom pay no taxes and have about as much experience of the real world as Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.

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Are there no ghosts from the Stone Age?

Why...

If you believe in things that go bump in the night (excluding booting the dog off the bed) has anyone been haunted by a club wielding Neanderthal dragging his wife along by her hair (just her head of course)? Or how about being spooked by a crazed sixties groupie, complete with kaftan and red sunglasses (but minus her teeth following a lifetime of heroin abuse)? No. How is it mankind has existed for several millennia, yet ghosts did not seem to really get their act together till circa 1500 and lost interest around 400 years later? Clearly an enterprising soul from the other side set up a decent post life ‘how to spook academy’ around 1500. Admissions for this phantom University seem to have reached a peak from the “Burn them! Burn them!” Witch Frenzy of 1560 till the end of the Victorian era at the turn of the 20^th Century. That was the real prime time for ghost and ghoulies. After that, it all seemed to quieten down. Maybe spirits found something better to screw with? It is mildly worrying small electrical equipment with its inherent gremlins came into our world about then…but that’s the subject of a different blog……

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No, it’s not an illness nor a condition... it’s lack of self-control

October 18, 2019
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Finance/Law Kids/Family/Relations Sex Sport
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Why...

Is everything bad that happens to young people not their fault or beyond their control? However, if anything good happens, especially by blind stupid luck (yes, you lottery winners & Love Island/ Big Brother) it is all down to destiny and a well-deserved reward from society ‘for being me’... especially if I am lazy and lack a nanogramme of skill. We have created a generation that is obsessed with the self and values just existing as a reason to enjoy rewards, regardless of any talent (a bit like the succession in the monarchy....). When growing up, my generation wanted to have a talent to allow us to be an astronaut, athlete, Rock God, movie icon, Wall Street Titan or porn star. Ambition was about having talent. A recent survey showed that the most popular ambition now is to be a reality TV star; i.e. not bother with learning to fly, run, play an instrument, sing, act, count or keep a hard on for a day! Basically, you just permanently shop, make vacuous statements and put your name to a line of cosmetics to get paid buckets of money. If you have butt cheeks between which you could park a Harley Davidson, even better.

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How you treat your servants will predict how long you will live

Why...

Do we treat those who help us with such disdain? History tells us what happens. All empires fade away... usually about the time the home help gets pissed off. Take Ancient Rome. There are only so many orgies you can clean up after, a limited number of vomitorium’s you can sluice out, before even a slave decides “screw this for a game of coco, I’ve had enough”. Their debauched and jowly bosses were so far removed from the granite hard soldiers who founded Rome that sure enough, before you could say Barbarians at the gate... it all came tumbling down. And not one slave or servant shed a tear. It is in fact a little scary to note that the sudden rise in the transgender ‘population’ almost exactly coincided with the collapse of Rome, but that will be another blog.

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Anyone who yells “I know my rights”... invariably does not

Why...

Do people think watching episodes of Law and Order or Judge Judy qualifies them to understand all aspects of the law, when most don’t know their writs from their tits? During my last trip in the aluminium hen coop they call Air Malta, I tilted my chair back a fraction. As some of you know I have had back surgery and sitting bolt upright for three hours is painful. Immediately behind me this beached whale kicked the back of my chair and slapped the top of my head yelling, “I know my rights. Put your chair back in upright position. I have no room.” Rather than get into a huge fight, I simply pulled out a card and gave it to him, whispering, “So, do I”. He shut up. It was not my card, but a lawyer’s card from one of the UK’s top law firms I had recently visited. It read Senior Litigation Partner.

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Sorry. Your toddler ain’t Einstein

Why...

I understand no parent is going to say to their friends that “My child is as thick as a whale omelette”………… But when pointing to their offspring gurgling “car” while pointing at the family pet, why do parents always say “Isn’t he lovely? But did you know little Tommy is very advanced for his age…….” Just because your nipper can insert a spoon of apple puree into his mouth instead of an ear, does not necessarily mark him out as a future brain surgeon. There is a long way to go from sitting in your own pooh to sitting in your own Porsche.

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Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.

September 13, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Sex
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Why...

Does nail upkeep score so high on life’s necessities for women and are just a short chore to men? During one of those lulls in a dinner party conversation after I had chatted for twenty minutes on politics, shopping, Love Island and varicose veins with the woman on my left and now waiting for a chance to break into conversation with the woman on my right, I heard the most extraordinary exchange between two women sitting opposite each other. “… Yes. Ruined it. Can you imagine?” “Oh my God. Disaster. What did you do?” “Well. I had to have a drink just to keep me from screaming and losing it. No choice. That night I had to wear closed toed shoes and came back first thing next morning before anyone could see. I mean. It was horrific.” The cause of this tale of woe was not frostbite, a malignant verruca or even an in-growing toenail. The nail varnish that had been so lovingly applied to this lady’s big toe had not dried properly before she left the salon and when she got home found her shoe had smudged the scarlet varnish and left a wave effect on her nail. With this severe handicap, open toed shoes that night were clearly not even a remote possibility. The fact the other lady expressed equal shock, drove home to me the importance to women of the upkeep of their hooves. Something men cannot comprehend. Every so often my wife remarks I could play the banjo with my toenails and I take three seconds per toe with clippers to prune them. That’s it.

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To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Has the concept of service become a lost art and rarer than a redneck with all his teeth? It is an anomaly that we live in an age with every company, from car insurance to incontinence pads, to mobile phone providers, shouting about service, yet not really giving any. Customer Service is on life support. You can experience its death throws in shop assistants who don’t look up when you approach them, people who leave you on hold for a couple of millennia, to being rebuked for misplacing a dry-cleaning ticket etc. Top of the list of people I would like to recommend a visit to the vivisectionist are restauranteurs who present you with sliding scale charges. These starting at (clearly in their opinion a mean and piffly) 15% via 20% to clearly a justifiable 25%. Add VAT at 20% and before you have so much as nibbled a grissini stick nearly half your bill has been swallowed by tax and services. I appreciate waiters are underpaid but for the life of me I cannot understand why this extra is simply not built into the bill. It’s not as if you can order a meal without a waiter. Seems as basic a requirement in a restaurant as food and a chef. If I have received spectacular service, I leave an amount at my discretion. It’s never a percentage that I have been nudged into paying because it’s printed out and therefore looks official. It’s usually a few pound notes rounded up or down as I see fit.

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Don’t talk to me. I’m breathing and I can’t do two things at once

Why...

Is the law about to stop me talking? (Hooray you all cry.) I see there is legislation being pushed to stop people using a hands-free phone whilst driving as it disturbs concentration. The idea that you are incapable of driving a car and having a conversation is absurd. And the idea that a phone call requires more concentration than talking to your passenger is equally daft. Let me tell you, I have to concentrate far more whilst conversing with my passenger, especially if it’s my wife, than chatting on the phone. For a start, I can’t pull a long face, flick her the bird, put her on mute, mutter obscenities under my breath, pick my nose, fart or even ignore her, like I can a voice in the ether. If communication whilst operating a vehicle is so dangerous, how come pilots who are constantly on the radio, don’t veer off to Iceland when on the way to the Costa Brava? Ships heading for Rotterdam don’t end up at Pismo Beach? The real problem of course is that a couple of generations have grown up whose idea of a conversation is texting. People just don’t have conversations, especially in a car. Usually there is a stereo blasting away so loud it makes your ears bleed. So, when a call does come in, an inordinate amount of concentration is needed to hold a conversation. Or worse they text. Result… car crash. Perhaps as part of the driving test, the examiner should have a heated debate on politics or religion. Or the person taking the test should take a call from the Boss.

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Why is my chocolate bar digitally challenged?

Why...

Is there a massive gap in the overcrowded chocolate market? Over the past ten years, fancy schmanzy chocolate from every corner of the globe has appeared in retail outlets. Some plain but many with a wild mix of ingredients; everything from moon dust to crushed lark tongue (well not quite, but you know what I mean). However, when it comes to simple chocolate you are offered anemic milk at around 32% chocolate content… then there is a huge gap till you get to 65, 75, 80, 85, even 99%. What the hell happened to mid-range 35%-65% content? This gap is mystifying. I want chocolate to taste of actual chocolate but not be as bitter as a fired Cabinet Minister. 50% would be perfect.

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Cover up! ...My wife, the sunscreen Nazi

Why...

Does my wife insist I face the summer’s rays, either fully covered up or looking like an animated meringue… a white blob completely covered in cream? As I watch Sky News today from Malta, I see the UK is nudging 40c (104 Fahrenheit). My fellow countrymen are slowly melting whilst watching their new Prime Minister inflict verbal assault and battery on the Leader of the Opposition in his first Prime Minister’s Question Time. I note none of the MP’s gathered are smothered in sun cream despite it being hotter than Beelzibub’s underpants. Clearly their wives have never met mine.

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Assume the position...

July 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Life Travel/Nature Work
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Why...

On some occasions do I happily perform physical feats that I know are pointless or make me look like a gormless half-wit? Another day, another business flight... another useless safety demonstration. My favourite part is when instructed, I must… “Assume the brace position” (i.e. bend forward, head on lap, hands locked under knees). The only position I am assuming, is that in a moment or two I will be zipping through the Pearly Gates of St. Peter at 600MPH. Whether seconds before this I perform a handstand or a fiendishly complicated yoga position, will make no difference to the outcome.

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Why hasn’t Viagra saved the rhino?

Why...

Are rhinos still being hunted? I read with some joy that a bunch of white rhinos from different European zoos are meeting in Prague for a few days of R and R before being shipped out for their club 18-30 holiday village in the wilds of Rwanda. It is hoped the traditional summer holiday spirit of fornication, so alive from Fort Lauderdale to Magaluf, will also turn our teen-age rhinos into sex machines and help build back their numbers. Apparently, rhinos are polite beasts and like a ‘getting-to-know-you’ cocktail party before deciding to mate. Hence the Prague get together. Rhino courtship is in fact quite complex involving a lot of pooh smelling by the males to determine which fragrance most pleases them. I can just imagine the chit chat over a gin and tonic: “I say, Griselda. I was mighty impressed with the aroma of your pile back there. I wonder if you would care to accompany me for a stroll in the forest once we reach our holiday destination?” “Why thank you Herman, yes I spent several hours choosing the right food to leave that bouquet. How gallant of you to notice. I’d be delighted to take a walk with you. Meanwhile can you pass me some of those pineapple and cheese chunks on a stick and top up my drink?” Now a rhinoceros is in fact quite a peaceful thing. However, when you reckon they weigh 2,300 kilos and run at twice the speed of Usain Bolt at full tilt, it’s best not to piss them off. Coz you ain’t getting away from them. I spent a pleasant afternoon with some in Nepal not long ago. One did bear a big gash over a hind quarter, but the guide assured me this was a result of a little light foreplay before getting down to some serious rutting rather than ramming a tourist vehicle! However, their ground up horns are highly prized to cure erectile dysfunction. Daft really as it’s made from hair, not bone and thinking hair can help an erection is like thinking you can play snooker with cooked spaghetti. This dust, however, costs as much as Viagra. I do not understand how there is a market for an expensive piece of witchcraft that does not work as opposed to a little blue pill that does. Surely the easiest way to stop this trade is to make Viagra available at deep discounts in those parts of the world that believe this nonsense... and cut the Johnson off anyone stupid enough to buy rhino horn instead of the pill, as they clearly have no idea how a willy works. I suspect by adopting those two simple ideas, the rhino poaching problem would be solved.

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If you are going to sing the National Anthem at an event, the faster the better

Why...

Do people insist on singing National Anthems at major events at full vibrato and wringing out every note for eternity? I understand the recently deceased Aretha Franklin set the bar in the USA at a staggering 4 minutes 55 seconds at a football game on Thanksgiving 2016. That’s longer than it took a surgeon in the 1550’s in Malta to whip out a kidney stone AND amputate a leg! The normal time for the US ditty is one minute 40 seconds. I mean, I’m all for putting your hand over your heart and showing some national pride but 5 minutes before you get to ‘From sea to shining sea…’!? In winter?

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Time travel exists... if you can splash the cash

Why...

Can’t I have my own flux capacitor in a Delorean car, like Marty McFly in Back to the Future? There are a couple of people whom I would love to revisit in the past and give them some sound investment tips; Atari, Pan Am and Bernie Madoff! However, in the real world anyone who actually wants to experience time travel simply has to go to a National Health Service A&E department at the nearest hospital to remove the saucepan stuck on their toddler’s head. By the time their infant is extricated he or she will be a teen-ager and the parent will be eligible for a pension. If however, they had shelled out for private A&E they’d be home in time for tea and the private hospital would no doubt scrub the saucepan before returning it. Same result... decades apart! Now, before you all yell at me that this is a disgrace and elitist, I fully accept there are people who have no option but to use the NHS. However it’s £100 for this service privately. The same as a family dinner, a football ticket or a couple of months of Sky TV. Plenty of people can afford those. It’s really about priorities and our sense of entitlement. It’s no different from buying a priority boarding pass on an economy airline so that they can cattle-prod you to the front of the queue. For me it’s worth it not to sit next to a gaggle of hen party revellers or be lectured by an expert on Brexit for three hours. And the same journey can feel like it’s taking twice as long if seated next to someone listening to rap music but without headphones rather than a pretty girl asking what she should do all on her own at her new destination. Well, that’s the theory of relativity explained for you. The only equaliser amongst us all is time and how we allocate it. Having spent a week bouncing around North America, then a week unpacking furniture, had I the money I would gladly have paid other people to do either.

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Attention Airlines. I am not an egg. Please don’t poach me

Why...

Do airlines insist on cabins being too hot when you board? I admire pilots. My son is one. The only thing more difficult to understand how to operate than a plane is possibly Donald Trump’s hairdryer… but not a simple thermostat. So please, all cabin crew, can we set cabins at a temperature that human life as we know it can survive when we board? Overheated cabins incense me (in every sense of the word) so much that I have started to take a digital thermometer with me when I travel. I enjoy waving this at the In-Flight Attendant showing a toasty 28c/86f degrees and once in my seat I loudly suggest: “Excuse me, after three minutes I should be perfectly poached. My wife sitting next to me wonders if you would bring her some buttered toast to accompany her meal.”

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Moving house... so time for an overseas trip or be admitted to hospital

Why...

Does my wife and I moving to a new house together equate to impending divorce? My wife was brought up a military brat and so as a kid moved to a new house every two or three years. To her, it’s a disciplined exercise, undertaken with logic. To me it’s a maelstrom of chaos mixed with a healthy dollop of fear. Without fail, the one thing I need will be in the last box I unpack. This means as soon as we arrive, I start emptying one of 300 boxes to find this missing necessity (for example my lucky underpants worn at crucial meetings), without which life as I know it will cease and my business will go bust. On our first move together, my scurrying from box to box emptying contents all over the floor to unpack that moment’s ‘must find item’ upset my wife and sent her off to find a pick-ax to discourage me from my manic actions. That was the first and last time we moved house together. We survived the experience thanks to industrial strength tranquillisers, a plantation’s output of tobacco and a vat full of booze. After that trauma, during all other moves I have either:

been in the US on business,
been in hospital with pneumonia
or left the country at the start of a tax year.

By some miracle each time I arrive back at our new home, I find nearly everything unpacked and all that’s left is to hang the pictures and iron my lucky underpants.

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Legs eggs and stupid regs

April 19, 2019
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Friends Life Sex
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Why...

Is Easter so weird? In reality of course it commemorates the trial and death of Jesus Christ. Yet in a deft bit of marketing mixed with heathen tradition it has become all about birth, sex, spring and chocolate eggs. Of course to kick all this off we have all the Mardi Gras parades, the hottest of which is of course the Rio Carnival. I have the utmost respect for the Brazilian Catholic’s. They managed to turn the beginning of 40 days of fasting mixed with sackcloth and ashes into a bacchanalian extravaganza. In fact during the carnival things really do go with a bang. The amount of cocaine consumed is so vast that there are discernible traces in the air! No wonder even your grannie can samba for a week non stop.

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See all posts for

Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

Where there’s a will, there’s a... relative

Why...

I want to determine Government Policy... right after I’ve tidied my room and finished my homework

Why...

Are there no ghosts from the Stone Age?

Why...

No, it’s not an illness nor a condition... it’s lack of self-control

Why...

How you treat your servants will predict how long you will live

Why...

Anyone who yells “I know my rights”... invariably does not

Why...

Sorry. Your toddler ain’t Einstein

Why...

Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.

Why...

To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Don’t talk to me. I’m breathing and I can’t do two things at once

Why...

Why is my chocolate bar digitally challenged?

Why...

Cover up! ...My wife, the sunscreen Nazi

Why...

Assume the position...

Why...

Why hasn’t Viagra saved the rhino?

Why...

If you are going to sing the National Anthem at an event, the faster the better

Why...

Time travel exists... if you can splash the cash

Why...

Attention Airlines. I am not an egg. Please don’t poach me

Why...

Moving house... so time for an overseas trip or be admitted to hospital

Why...

Legs eggs and stupid regs

Why...