A Christmas Joke

Many years ago, Santa was having his worst Christmas ever.

The elves had gone on strike. Trade negotiations with ACAS had broken down, and it was clear that no financial settlement was going to be reached before the new year. Santa had drafted in the tooth fairies to help out, but they just hadn't had enough training in present wrapping, so delivery was going to fall drastically behind schedule.
On top of that, Mrs Claus had asked for a trial separation. It had transpired that she'd been having an affair with the Easter Bunny for the last six months and now felt more satisfied than she'd been with Santa. Apparently bunnies just liked a lot more fun!
On top of that, Rudolph's nose had gone out! The traditional Christmas trial run on December the 23^rd had failed abysmally when lack of light had caused the sleigh to crash into pylons over Greenland, electrocuting two reindeer (not fatally), thereby preventing them from working on Christmas Eve.
And on top of that, Donner had got Blitzen pregnant, meaning that she was entitled to maternity leave at the most inconvenient of times. I mean, really, who would have thought that Donner was a fella?!
Then, to top it all off, when Santa was already running hours late and was worried about having to deliver presents well into the morning of December the 25^th, the chief tooth fairy (a conceited so-and-so) strolled into the main workshop, lackadaisical as ever, and said to Santa: “Yo, fatman! Where do you want this last Christmas tree shoving?!”
And to this day, that is why we put fairies on the tops of Christmas trees!

 

Well That's A Relief

Barack Obama has won the U.S. Presidential election. This means that we will be spared four years of Republican belligerence, as they would probably have been threatening unilateral war with Iran (well, bilateral alongside Israel) and been much more reactionary towards Russia - not that Russia deserves a round of applause for recent decisions (i.e. Syria) but we can do without the old nuclear foes at loggerheads again. So as much as Obama isn’t perfect - he never was able to shut Guantanamo Bay - at least he guarantees us a calm head in any future storms, and he believes in universal healthcare (something us Brits take far too much for granted). And not forgetting, of course, that Democrats are generally liberal and free-thinking people; rarely a bad thing.

 

The Force Is No Longer With You!

Disney is about to start producing Star Wars films. It's bad enough that George Lucas remade some elements of the original trilogy (and invariably made them worse!) just because special effects technology had moved on (he seemed to forget nostalgia value), but now he's basically sold Lucasfilm to a Mickey Mouse company - get it?! I understand that money talks, but this is just too far - check out the picture of what they did to R2-D2 for a publicity stunt. It seems the dark side may have won after all.

Random Coincidences

In 1955, a book was published that contained one million numbers. It was a statistical exercise; all of the numbers were selected at random, yet patterns still emerged. There were sequences such as 12345 and 6666666. If you randomise enough numbers, then you are statistically bound to get seemingly determined combinations like these. But regardless of how neat they may appear, they are still random.
Life is like this. You may sometimes experience coincidences which make you think: ‘Wow, that must mean something. A sequence of events like that could never occur by chance. Maybe some higher entity is trying to tell me something?’ But, unfortunately, this is not the case. It is just coincidence, because coincidences happen within randomness. There is a much, much lower chance of you progressing through life without ever having experienced any extreme coincidences.
Dwell on this concept, it is needed to fight against superstitious demagogues.

 

Freedom Vs Criminality

A man from Manchester (who I’m not going to name because he’s a dickhead!) has been jailed for four months for a public order offence. The crime committed was going out hours after the horrendous murders of police officers Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes while wearing a t-shirt with some offensive words written on it. These words were: ‘one less pig perfect justice’. As I’ve already stated, this man was a dickhead; in fact, that’s putting it far too politely, he was a horrible bastard of a poor excuse for a human being. BUT … that should not be a criminal offence. In my life I have known many imbeciles with disturbing opinions, but I’ve always tried to re-educate them about the immorality of their idiotic / objectionable viewpoints (largely unsuccessfully, but at least I tried!), I never thought that locking them up would be a good idea; if you lock them all up together they’ll probably entrench their opinions even further through socialisation with other dickheads! Freedom of speech is bandied around like a cliche nowadays, but it is a fundamental core of civilised society. Locking up this man from Manchester sends out the wrong signals that people may be criminalised for simply disagreeing with the majority.

 

Ideological Conflations

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan as U.S. President and Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister were able to work together to introduce a far-right capitalist ideology of widespread proportions. Wealth creation became paramount to the extent where being rich was more important than being decent. That legacy still stands today when customers are allowed to treat workers like dirt, and the worker simply has to grin while eating shit so that the business doesn’t lose any profit!
Most political analysts have said that in yesterday’s Presidential debate, Mitt Romney was more successful in putting his viewpoints across than Barack Obama. This is making an unnerving prospect a little more likely: that Romney could become President while David Cameron is Prime Minister. They’re both right-wingers and could do untold damages to global economics. Cameron has already tripled tuition fees (regardless of what his Lib Dem coalition partners wanted), and if Romney were President then perhaps we’d have more situations like a recent one in California:
Community colleges in California provide access to higher education for low-income students. But as budget cuts have recently reduced the number of classes on offer, some students were not getting placements. So one college came up with the bizarre plan of charging up to 400% more for a guaranteed seat in class! The idea was that the extra revenue earned by the extortionate charges would then be used to subsidise poorer students, but in fact the less well-off were only gaining access to the cheapest classes; the more expensive lessons were mainly going to the richer kids. I think that Republicans would love that idea! Thankfully the programme has now been put on hold after a protest against it resulted in students being pepper-sprayed! But there is little doubt in my mind that policies like these could easily become more widespread (and not just in America) if a right-wing capitalist ideology were once again to hold all the power.
So please support Barack Obama. Don’t let money rule the world.

Pints Are Better In Pubs

As a regular pub-goer, I value local boozers. I don’t consider myself an alcoholic, but I also have no objection to the occasional binge. So it concerns me when I hear that minimum pricing for alcohol is going to unfairly hit pub finances. You see, supermarkets pay no V.A.T. on food but pubs have to pay 20%! Not sure what the logic is in that other than perhaps governments have a vendetta against pubs. So supermarkets will compensate for any alcohol tax rises (e.g. minimum prices per unit) by cross-subsidising, i.e. dropping prices on food and soft drinks. This means that an even greater disparity will be created between supermarket prices for alcohol and corresponding pub prices. As much as governments want to reduce alcohol-related crime, disorder and health problems (and I do appreciate the well-meaning intentions of alcohol tax), I can’t help thinking that minimum pricing won’t affect supermarkets nearly as much as intended, meaning that people will probably stock up on booze at home, then get pissed before leaving the house for a night out where they may have less to drink at the pub but still be just as disorderly as before. So pubs will suffer and there will be little to show for it. If alcohol must be so heavily taxed, governments have to ensure that supermarkets do not cross-subsidise; that way booze prices will be competitive wherever you buy from.