Conspiracy corner

So the King of Pop is no more. Yes, Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50. Many people will be very sad today, not least those who may not get their money back for tickets they bought for the UK gigs. But what is the real story here? I am starting to hear the rumours already…

He was under a lot of pressure over these gigs, he had huge debts and was basically in big trouble. But what to do? Go ahead with a punishing tour and hope that all will come good? …Or appear to die? He had to have a four hour medical checkup to get insurance for the tour and was given a clean bill of health. What’s that all about then?

I put it to you that the King of Pop is living on an island in the Pacific – a very special island. This is the island where the wealthy, famous and infamous go when they want to disappear.

Quite an interesting place to visit, if only we could find it. Richie Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers is there, living two doors down from Elvis. The Bin Ladens run a little kebab empire on the island, and Marc Bolan organises whist drives in the Town Hall. They have welcomed their new arrival with open arms and are already building a small stage for him to perform on.

You read it here first!

Recession Clarity

Y’know, I reckon this recession is just what we all needed. It was either this or a good war, and personally I’m glad we went for the recession. So why is it so good? Well, look at all the things it has brought to the surface? They are things we all knew already, but now we have been forced to confront them.

Politicians are on the fiddle, big bankers are as bent as a nine-bob note and nothing short of very highly paid criminals. Celebrities are largely talentless retards and anyone earning a salary above a certain figure is on the make.

A simple truth in life is that if you are earning £12,000 a year, you will not be able to buy your own home, buy fancy clothes or eat like a King. You will rent your home (at great cost) from some bastard who owns loads of them. You will not be claiming expenses or looking forward to big bonuses.

Now, if you earn in the region of £150,000++ and up and up and up,  you will have a nice home (or two), a swish car, wear the best suits and eat at the Fat Duck. But also, the wages of that woman who cleans your house, the bill for the guy who services your car and the cost of the meal can all go on ‘expenses’.  And that’s before you’ve received the annual bonuses and other perks that probably triple your salary anyway. Who are these people? Just go to a City bar and watch the champagne corks popping – yes, the word is – bonuses are back!

The excuse made by their employers is that they are the best of the best and they have to pay top whack to keep them. But often, these are just people who have, over the years, worked their way into this position, through schmoozing, luck, cheek and sheer front. They are just pen-pushers and managers, nothing more. Sack all the bastards tomorrow, re-advertise their jobs for a much lower, more sensible salary, with no daft expenses and bonuses. I reckon those posts would be filled quickly by people who could probably do the job twice as good because they wouldn’t be spending half their time on the make.

The thing is, that we all sit back and accept that all this is going on all around us and do nothing about it. We elect one incompetent, smug politician into office after another. Look at what is happening in Iran at the moment – the people are mightily pissed off and they are angry enough to do something about it. What the hell will it take to make US angry??

Come on – get out on the streets – pick up that baseball bat! – grab that pitchfork! – light those flaming brands!! What we need is an Angry Mob Revolution!!

It won’t do any good of course, but I reckon we would all feel better for it.

A tip for Gordon

I was amazed this week by the amount of coverage that Barack Obama got in the news for swatting a fly. Even the Guardian covered it with a full page spread, with an added guide to the ’science of fly-swatting’. It seems to have done Mr Obama no harm at all and everyone is impressed by his speed and accurate aim.

Now Barack Obama is already in a place of great popularity so has no need of this sort of character boosting publicity. But our poor Prime Minister, Gordon Brown is another kettle of fish altogether. He is currently slightly less popular than being slapped about the face with a plastic bag full of shit, that has been dipped in rancid chip-fat, wielded by Anne Widdecombe in the nude, with Rupert Murdoch sitting on her shoulders in a monkey costume.

However, maybe Gordon could take a leaf out of Obama’s book. Next time he is being interviewed on TV, we could arrange for a Rottweiler to attack him, attempting to stick its slavering jaws around his leg. Imagine how impressed we would all be if Gordon reached down, grabbed the savage beast, hauled it up and strangled it before our wide-open eyes and dropping jaws?

What a guy! This is the man who should be running this country! How did I ever doubt it?

Think about it Gordon…

Welsh Oddness

Have you ever noticed that Welsh men are considerably shorter than their female counterparts…?  …Neither have I, which is why I was very puzzled to see these public toilets on a recent visit to Pembrokeshire…

That door to the Gents is very small indeed…

Swine flu destroys World!

Celebrities and their wild and highly entertaining antics have been sadly missing from the ‘press’ this weekend. This is due to the life threatening arrival of swine flu.  11 people have already died in Mexico and a London man was heard sneezing loudly only this weekend. It is feared that the 21 deaths in Mexico could be the start of a similar scenario right here in Great Britain.

We must all be vigilant to prevent this scenario from occurring. Wearing masks whenever in contact with other people and not eating any pork based foodstuffs will go some way toward preventing a repeat in this country of the 46 deaths already reported in Mexico.

If  any of your colleagues display any signs of the illness, sneezing, coughing, sniffing, nose-blowing, or if they just look a bit tired (you can’t be too careful) lock them in a cupboard immediately and call the emergency services. We do not want to see a repeat of the 250 deaths that we have seen in Mexico.

So stay warm, button up your cardies, wear your masks, stay away from bacon and be alert. We can all be a part of the effort to keep this menace from our shores and prevent the situation that the outbreak caused in Mexico where there are only 7 people left alive.

Gotta go, just had a job offer from the Daily Mail – health correspondent…

Stunt Crutches

Maybe I am just out of touch with the latest sports craze, but am I the only one who finds the ’stunt crutches’ advert for VISA to be just a little bit in poor taste. I know that if I had to use crutches or had some kind of mobility impairment, I would be a little pissed off that Visa were advertising credit cards with a perfectly healthy, athletic loon wearing Heely’s and occasionally utilising a skateboard to run rings around the people wandering the streets.

What’s wrong with that you ask? Well, the point is that to facilitate this wonderfully dance-like athleticism, the guy is brandishing what, to all intents and purposes, is a pair of  ’stunt crutches’.

Why not advertise a bank account with a Fred Astaire looky-likey tap dancing on a wheelchair, set atop a surfboard, crashing across the top of a nice foaming crest of a wave?

I really should be in advertising

Harum Serum

The vanity cosmetic industry must be one of the most ludicrous in it’s advertising campaigns and yet billions are made in profit every year, all in the name of vanity. I guess it’s an easy sell. The potential buyer wants to feel better about some aspect of their appearance and are easily convinced by the pseudo scientific babble that accompanies these products nowadays.

A popular one at the moment is the inclusion of the word ’serum’ on the product’s packaging and in advertising – ‘this wondrous wrinkle banishing cream contains a serum, specially formulated to reduce wrinkles. It has been tested on old man Steptoe’s bollocks and he now has two shiny billiard balls swinging in his trousers’.

Wrinkle banishing creams are a real good one to look at – and there are lots of them. As far as I can find, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that they work. There are no proper clinical trials that have been published. The statistics are usually given as something along the lines of  ’90% of women using Glassbollock wrinkle removal cream stated that they had seen a visible improvement in only two weeks of use’. Very scientific – and then you look at the small print and find that only 35 women had actually taken part in the survey.

So what are these amazing serums? Here is a dictionary definition of ’serum’.

se·rum (sir′əm)

noun pl. serums -·rums or  -·ra (-ə)

1. 1. a clear, watery animal fluid, as serous fluid
   2. the clear, yellowish fluid of the blood which separates from a blood clot after coagulation and shrinkage in full blood serum
2. blood serum containing agents of immunity, taken from an animal made immune to a specific disease by inoculation: it is used as an antitoxin and for diagnosis
3. the whey of milk
4. the thin, watery part of a plant fluid

I can’t see anything there that would make this an ideal wrinkle remover. The only wrinkles that you are removing by buying these products are the wrinkles in the many banknotes you will shelling out on useless nostrums and quack potions and unguents. They do not work.

Love your wrinkles. There’s nothing wrong with them!

Latest News – Boots have just paid for a proper clinical trial of one of their ’serums’ – very brave of them, but it paid off. Some positive results were noted with some people after 6 months use. Even though it only does any good for 1 in 5 people I can hear the cash registers from here!

Save the World, Live in Fear

It doesn’t get any better. This morning I noticed a new billboard advert that has appeared on the hoardings. It shows a busy shopping street with words along these lines – ‘A bomb won’t go off here because a few weeks ago a shopper noticed someone studying the CCTV cameras’.

Oh great, so we are in possibly the worst recesssion ever, the dole queues are around the block, the high streets only have half the amount of shops that were there previously, and now we’ve got to spot terrorists too. How do we do that? By carefully watching everyone around you… See someone looking at a CCTV camera – call the police immediately – have them sent down for plotting a terrorist act.

Any ’suspicious’ behaviour must be reported immediately. If you see an apparently intelligent person buying the Daily Mail for instance – doesn’t look right – call the police! And it’s not always what someone is doing – it could be what they are NOT doing, or unexpected behaviour.

How about you spy a couple of hooded youths who could possibly be muslim (say one of them has ginger hair and is wearing a kilt – y’know, the obvious signs), helping an old lady across the road. What are they after? What possible terrorist act are they brewing up? You know what to do – call the police.

You’ve got no job, no money and society is falling to pieces. What we all need is a healthy dose of THE FEAR!!

Free Daily Mails for all! Bring on the paranoia!

Google Street View

Recently, Google added their Street View feature to their Google maps service for London. This means that you can look at actual photo panoramas for any part of the Streets covered by the service. Go have a look, it’s very interesting and I think, a really neat feature.  Google have run all the images through software, which whilst not perfect, aims to blur faces and car licence plates etc. Now personally, living in one of the most surveillance heavy countries in the world, I don’t find this too much of a worry.

However, it seems to have whipped up a right frothy lather for some privacy campaigners. They say that our human rights are being trampled over and that privacy laws are being broken. So, being able to look at streets that just happen to have people in them, with blurred faces, is some kind of worry is it? What about if you go to a bookshop and pick up a London travel guide? What about all those pictures in there of streets milling with people with unblurred faces? Why is no-one kicking up a stink about those?

After all, do we really believe that a photographer who has taken a picture of Trafalgar Square has gotten everyone in the image to sign a release? And this is what worries me. The police and private security guards are already giving photographers a hard time, citing the prevention of terrorism act at us for photographing a pigeon on a lion’s head in Trafalgar Square. There is enough nannying going on already and I fear that the feeding frenzy whipped up by these people is not only ridiculously wide of the mark, but will cause further problems for photographers in this country.

If you take this to extremes, we would not be allowed to look up when walking about the streets in case we catch sight of another person’s face and violate their privacy and human rights. Aren’t things bad enough in this country at the moment without everyone having to walk around with their heads down, avoiding eye contact.

Perhaps we should all wear disguises when we go out,  or to keep it cheap and affordable for everyone, wear paper bags over our heads.

Gee up Granny!

The latest idea to sort out London from that fine, trustworthy loon known as Barmy Boris is to speed up the rate at which people cross the roads. The poor dear recently had an awful experience and had to wait in a car in Ealing – ‘There was hardly any pedestrian traffic to speak of and we were being kept at red for minute after minute. The thing was totally crackers.’  Boris, I feel your pain! All that waiting is not good for a man. As Mayor of London, he is in a position to prevent himself from this sort of insanity in future. So what is the solution?

Well, pedestrian crossings are to be fitted with special lights, possibly with a countdown and an ever speeding up beep alarm. There is also talk of making the little green man walk faster and faster to speed people up. Of course the lights will be adjusted to reduce the amount of time the light is actually red. I recently talked to some visitors from Canada and they were amazed at not only the speed of the beeps at our traffic lights, but also how quickly the red light disappeared again. They will certainly be amazed if they visit in the future!

So, from now on, we can expect to have to wear running shoes when we are out and about on foot. Let’s face it – it’s only ‘oicks’ who walk about the streets anyway. And never mind those old people, blind people, the wheelchair bound and anyone else who may not be able to raise a sprint.

Solve our traffic problems and help people who are so poor they have to actually walk to keep fit. What could be wrong with that? Tell you what Boris old bean, why not take it a step further? Attach a starting pistol to every traffic light – when the lights change, there are three beeps followed by the starting pistol being discharged, and they’re off! A ribbon automatically extends on the other side of the road and we have a winner! There could be a cup awarded to the person with the most wins each month. 

Come on, it’s a winner, and with the Olympics looming, we could introduce this new sport to the World.