McTodd Hates!

Is Ex-Archbishop Carey a complete cunt?

2012-01-24T23:41:00.000-08:00

Yes.

The evidence I present is as follows:

Lord Carey said the welfare system was "stoking social division" and that the scale of the UK's debt is the "greatest moral scandal" facing the country.

Not millionaire bosses' salaries rising by an average of 50% per year whilst both their companies' performance and their workers' wages stagnate or even diminish.

Not being ruled by millionaires in government who try to force cancer sufferers to justify why they're on welfare.

Not hugely successful companies such as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs which cheat the exchequer (ultimately that means you and me) out of billions of pounds in tax revenue by sharp practises and wining and dining the utterly corrupt criminal in charge of HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs), Dave Hartnett.

Not a banking sector which lined its own pockets whilst destroying the world's economic system and then got the state to bail it out, the ultimate in the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of loss.

Not a word on those, from which it follows with elegant inevitability that the snaggle-toothed fucktard ex-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey (who was a fuckwit when he was Archbishop and continues to be a fuckwit as an ex-Archbishop) is nothing but a cunt of the first order.

Archbishop Cunt

Adam Boulton is a Fat Cunt

2011-11-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

Not, of course, news to anyone who has actually watched Adam Boulton but, nevertheless, worth repeating on a regular basis. Boulton's latest exhibition of Fat Cuntery was on Sky News several days ago, on 25 October 2011, when he interviewed one of the Occupy London protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral, Phil McKeenan.

Apart from making the usual Daily Telegraph accusations against the protesters, of which more later, Boulton made a fantastically crass and spurious analogy between Occupy London's ad hoc campsite near St Paul’s and the Nazi occupation of France.

Yes, you read correctly. Adam Boulton, a professional (and highly-paid) television news anchor, compared the St Paul’s protesters (peaceful, if woolly, hippies sitting in tents) to the Nazis (you know, that lot who invaded Europe and Russia, kicked off World War Two and murdered six million Jews in cold blood). You can see it at 1m18s in this video clip:

Now, apart from the fact that Boulton immediately lost the argument pace Godwin’s Law (not that the knuckle-dragging morons watching Sky News will have ever heard of Godwin or his Law), the sheer spuriousness of the analogy should have been an easy target.

Unfortunately, for all his well-meaning idealism, Phil McKeenan utterly failed to capitalise on Boulton’s blunder and instead merely floundered with feeble antipodean platitudes.

Thus, for what it’s worth, McTodd will now present some easy to follow lessons in how to deal with Fat Cunts like Adam Boulton, using the above video clip as a framework, in...

The McTodd Guide to News Management

1. The “Protesters Don’t Always Stay Overnight” Rhetorical Ploy
Adam Boulton and his blonde cock-washer both attacked McKeenan with the tired Daily Telegraph canard about protesters not sleeping over at night and nipping off home for a nice kip. The natural response should have been:

So what? The Arab Spring protesters didn’t all stay overnight in places such as Tahrir Square, does that make their protests any less valid or meaningful? You and your assistant don’t sleep in the studio overnight, does that make your reportage any less valid?* I don’t know, are we allowed to go off-site to the toilet, or do you expect us to shit in our tents as well?

It doesn’t matter if all your points are 100% valid or reasonable, they just have to sound logical and – crucially – through them you need to attack the interviewer.
*No, it’s the fact that it’s for Sky News that completely invalidates it.

2. “When the Nazis occupied France they didn’t go home [to Germany] at night”
Actually, McKeenan dealt with this stunningly weird Boultonism as best as anyone could by simply looking gobsmacked and saying that Adam was overstating things a little, which leads us to the Fat Cunt’s next point…

3. “You are imposing your will on everyone else like the Nazis did”
A brilliantly attackable point, but one which McKeenan sadly utterly fails to deal with. This is what he should have argued:

In shaping, some would say manipulating, the direction of this interview with all your rhetorical tools, Adam, it could be said that you are imposing your will on your millions of viewers, just like Hitler’s speechmaking. Would you agree that that is a fair analogy? If you don’t think that you can be compared with Hitler, then you can only agree that your crass comparison of our peaceful protest with Nazi atrocities in Europe is grotesquely unfair.

Again, go on the attack. It doesn’t matter that you’ve stretched Boulton’s point, the important thing is to make him look a fool by exposing – through exaggeration – just how grotesque his argument is. However, don’t over-exaggerate. Note that in the above I refer to ‘Nazi atrocities in Europe’, I do not refer to the Holocaust. Had I done so, that would be over-exaggeration because of its specificity to a particular enormity (one with colossal emotional resonance at that), but a vague reference to ‘Nazi atrocities in Europe’ is sufficiently hard-hitting, conjuring up images of the Holocaust without explicitly saying so, whilst at the same time being vague enough to avoid outright offence and accusations of over-reacting.

4. “You’re stopping people going about their everyday business, as if their rights don’t matter”
This is the Boris Johnson Argument, the patronizing, “You’ve made your point, now go home like the compliant little boys and girls we want you to be.” It’s also dead easy to refute because most journalists, being lazy and/or too busy, have already made similar points before, so it’s easy to do a bit of research ahead of the interview and prepare for it. Unfortunately, again, McKeenan merely flaps about like a limp lettuce leaf. What he should have said was something along these lines:

We are not getting in anyone’s way, we are not preventing anyone going about their lives, people can still go to work, use the cafes and restaurants around here, worship at the cathedral. We did not close the area around the cathedral, the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities did that using quoting Health & Safety issues. It’s a shame you don’t check your facts first, Adam, I’d advise you to ask the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities why they closed the area.

Yet another example of going on the attack and also blaming someone else, with a beneficial side helping of attacking Health & Safety, which will appeal to the prejudices of the average Sky News viewer. And I don’t know whether the protest camp is getting in people’s way or not. However, it’s not important if what you’re saying is 100% true or otherwise, because Adam and his blonde pink-oboe-player won’t know what the true facts are as they simply don’t have the time to get the full background behind every story they cover. You just need to sound plausible, blame someone else and go on the attack.

So what have we learned about how to deal with aggressive news interviewers?

1. Like the Scouts, Be Prepared
Journalists are lazy, they will generally merely parrot the points other reporters have made previously (see Point 4 above). Check in advance what the most common points they make are and prepare your response.

2. Exaggerate
Reporters are vain creatures and will therefore attempt to stamp their mark on an issue by making one or two points unique to them. Adam Boulton’s Nazi Analogy is a classic example of this. Exaggerate what they say and go on the attack, but be careful not to over-exaggerate, as this leaves you wide open to the counter-attack of being over-sensitive or sensationalising (or trivialising) the issue. Seeing where the boundaries of over-exaggeration lie can be difficult, and they’re different in each case. Check out Point 3 again for a concrete example.

3. Don’t be over-scrupulous about The Truth
As mentioned before, reporters are either too lazy or too busy to get the full background of a subject. Use this. Attack their argument if necessary with a borderline spurious point of your own (for example, I don’t know if the protesters really are getting in people’s way or not). They won’t be able to argue against this, and if it turns out you stretched the truth (don’t ever outright lie, though) this will only become apparent much later. The important thing is to score your points and win the argument on the spot, that is what viewers will remember. They won’t remember a later report which shows you over-egged your case.

4. Shift the blame
News stories are rarely back-and-white issues, there’s usually someone else who can be blamed, so blame them! Divert the interviewer’s ire! Point 4 above is a classic example – put on your best wounded more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger voice and say don’t blame us for closing the area, ask the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities, Adam… Not only do you shift the blame but you sound dead reasonable by giving the reporter some friendly advice.

It's a service, this.

Will solar energy be the new oil?

2011-11-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

That bastion of liberal-thinking eco-friendliness The Grauniad reports that Germany is backing a €400bn renewables network designed to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050, with Morocco chosen as the first venue for solar energy farms. The Grauniad then goes on to say

Discussions are already underway with the Tunisian government about building a solar farm ...and Algeria is the next "obvious" country, due to its close proximity to western Europe's grid. Countries such as Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia are predicted to start joining the network from 2020.

Bloody marvellous, let's build the foundations for Europe's future electricity generation in some of the most volatile regions of the world. Does this sound familiar? Back in 2003, when McTodd and a friend (Fwengebola) were running a spoof news website (now deceased) called worldwidewebshite, I wrote a piece which now looks somewhat prescient...

Legal Inconsistencies

2011-10-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that seven of ten challenges to harsh sentences handed down by courts relating to the riots in England in August have been rejected. Disturbingly, among the seven were two four-year jail sentences for 'incitement to riot' made by a couple of jokers on Facebook (riots which, incidentally, never occurred):

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, of Northwich, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Warrington, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

It appears that the two cases are quite different, as detailed by Index on Censorship:

Blackshaw, who will serve his sentence at a young offenders’ institution, called upon his virtual friends to meet for a “lootin’”. He created a Facebook page entitled “Smash Dwn in Northwich Town”. Only nine of his 147 friends responded to the event and Blackshaw arrived alone at the designated meeting place. He was met by police officers rather than fellow looters and was immediately arrested.

On 9 August, Sutcliffe-Keenan created a page called “Let’s Have a Riot in Latchford”. A few hours later, he took down the post. According to his lawyer, Rebecca Tanner, Sutcliffe-Keenan was drunk while posting the messages and quickly removed the event after “a phone call from a friend prompted him to remember his action”. Once he “realised the gravity” of his actions, Sutcliffe-Keenan removed the page and made a public apology. No one turned up for the event, but 47 individuals confirmed their attendance on the page. According to prosecutors, the Facebook post still caused panic in the town.

Even if you accept that Blackshaw should have been jailed, as he appears to have been quite serious about trying to start a riot, four years is nevertheless excessive, and Sutcliffe-Keenan's sentence is utterly ludicrous. It was clearly a drunken prank, and a short-lived one at that which he regretted and apologised for at the time. And for both, four years for something that never happened is disproportionate and clearly a case of vindictiveness in sentencing.

It is in marked contrast to the rugby player Greg Johnson who sexually assaulted a bride-to-be in a pub and glassed her in the face when she spurned his advances, almost costing her the sight in her right eye and leaving her vision permanently damaged. He received a pathetic two years jail sentence.

And we can also usefully compare the cases of Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan with the evangelical churches in London which are telling HIV sufferers in their congregations that their medication doesn't work and that the Lord will cure them (presumably helped with generous donations to their churches - that's usually the way of things with the evangelicals).

People have died because of this, and yet the most the government can say is:

"Over 60 recommendations were made [in the House of Lords committee report into HIV awareness] and we will be responding to Parliament in the next few months."

Pretty feeble stuff, considering evangelical Christian pastors are, in effect, inciting members of their congregations to kill themselves. These deaths have actually occurred, they are not notional or hypothetical events in the sense that the riots-that-never-happened were. And yet I see nothing about arresting the pastors concerned for conspiracy to murder, or perhaps collusion in manslaughter or maybe incitement to commit suicide.

Fox run to earth at last...

2011-10-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

Accident-prone portly Secretary of State for Defence Little Liam Fox has finally fallen on his sword.

How typical of the Tories in their reaction, however - they bleated on and on about the ban on fox-hunting in 2005, but when that most noble of bloodsports is finally revived, all they can do is condemn it!

Come on Tories - make your minds up about what you want!

Charlie Brooker Loves Grandaddy!

2011-10-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

I am not - as the title of this entry might imply - accusing Charlie Brooker of incestuous gerontophilia (and possibly necrophilia, as I have no knowledge of the metabolic status of his grandfathers).

No, for the first time ever, McTodd dips his toe into the uncertain waters of - wait for it - Popular Culture. Not only that, McTodd goes on to paddle off to the entirely alien (but very tiny and substantially deserted) island of Not Slagging Something Off!

Yes, you read right - it's not McTodd Hates! it's McTodd Likes! I think I'll have a lie-down first...

Right, having recovered, let the rambling commence.

Listening to Charlie Brooker's new(ish) Radio 4 show So Wrong It's Right, I couldn't help noticing that the feme choon is a track by the magnificent American alt-rock-country-indie-electronica popular beat combo Grandaddy. To be specific, it is Summer Here Kids from the sublime album Under The Western Freeway, which you can listen to on YouTube:
Summer Here Kids Videographic Motion Picture & Song

And because I can't be arsed to link to the official BBC webulous page for So Wrong It's Right, because they keep fucking around with their Listen Again feature so by the time you've found, and read, this page it will probably have pissed off again, here's a link to some sad bastard's upload of a radio show (an entirely audio medium) onto YouTube (an entirely video medium, as implied by the 'tube' part of YouTube, in honour of the term 'tube' being derived from the fact that television was made practical by the advent of the cathode ray tube, thus superseding the pisspoor electro-mechanical scanning-disc system of the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird):
So Wrong It's Right (a radio show) on YouTube (a video site)

Still, (s)he* might be a sad bastard, but it's done me a favour.

Brooker has form with Grandaddy, as he used another track from Under The Western Freeway (the fabulously plinky plonky A.M. 180) for his Screenwipe series.

I have now dug out all my old Grandaddy albums (on CD no less!) and am wallowing in the gorgeousness of them. That is because I am a man, and therefore terminally sad.

*Though I'd wager it's a man because only a man could be that sad.

It's HAVE you cunts, not OF!

2011-10-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

What is fucking wrong with people these days?

What simple, utterly elementary part of the English language can people increasingly not understand that compels them to write could of - would of - might of instead of could have - would have - might have?

I'll tell you what - fucking CRETINISM!!!

It is now creeping into every part of the internet like some hideous linguistic cancer. For all I know it may be infecting the written word outside of the worldwidewank, but as I am fortunate enough not to have to ever read anything written by a pleb offline, and as standards are (just) high enough for it not to have affected books, periodicals and newspapers (broadsheets anyway, I can't vouch for the tabloid mindrot read by proles), I cannot say.

I can understand the mechanics of the error - when spoken, especially given the slovenly inability of most people to open and close their fucking mouths properly and work their tongues with some vestigial memory of care and attention to detail, the h is usually dropped from have, and the word is further corrupted to sound like of.

But it's NOT actually of, is it? As even the most peripheral encounter with the English language should underscore, as even the most moronic braindamaged dribbling cabbage of twenty years ago would surely have appreciated, have is not fucking of!!!

Are teachers not addressing this in schools? And if not, why not? If I taught in a school and caught some hideous greasy pimply little shit writing of instead of have I would beat the ignorant fucker to within an inch of his life. Never mind bringing back corporal punishment in schools, I'd bring in capital punishment for that particular crime.

Honestly, it makes me so angry I feel the day Western Anglophone civilisation falls and the Chinese take over the world can't come soon enough.

That'd learn us.

Bremner’s Brown Blag Bust!

2011-07-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

Roy Ters: Tuesday 12 July 2011, 13:01 BST

IN A twist bizarre even by the standards of the ongoing News International phone hacking scandal, satirical impressionist Rory Bremner has been arrested by police investigating the ‘blagging’ of former PM Gordon Brown’s financial affairs.

Concealed beneath a blanket, Bremner was bundled into the back of a police van in the small hours of this morning and driven to Lewisham police station, where he was questioned for eight hours before being released on bail.

‘Blagging’ is the practice of impersonating someone’s voice in order to obtain information over the phone under false pretences. It is a technique more often used by private investigators working for shady newspapers, such as Barry Arsehole who, working for the not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be Sunday Times, impersonated nobody in particular and tricked gullible solicitors Gonad & Overy into giving away details of a property purchase made by dour Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

But in this instance it is thought that Bremner had been corrupted, or more likely blackmailed, by flame-haired temptress and erstwhile Sun editrix Rebekah Brooks who needed a very specific and well-known personality’s voice to be impersonated, none other than that of dour Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown himself. It is believed that Brooks forced Bremner to pretend to be Brown in order to phone controversial Prime Minister Tony Blair to tell him how much he hated him, though why she bothered seeing as Gordon Brown used to do that himself several times a day is anybody’s guess. A source close to the titian-haired homophobe said it was 'probably just force of habit'.

The police were tight-lipped about the exact nature of their questioning, but after being slipped a few quid a police source told us, "We got him to do his Gordon Brown, you know, where he makes his cheeks look all jowly and lets his lower jaw hang lifelessly when he pauses speaking, but to be honest I thought he sounded more like that bloke out of Dr Finlay’s Casebook, what’s his name, Doctor Something-or-other wasn’t it? Anyway, the Super backed me up and said there was no way anyone would be fooled into thinking he was Gordon Brown so we let him go with a caution and a bit of a friendly slap around the head."

Tony Blair was not available for comment as he is too busy whoring himself around the lucrative US lecture circuit to earn enough to keep his missus in baubles and furs.

Napoleon Gaddafi

2011-05-26T05:10:00.000-07:00

Way back in February, just as the situation in Libya went completely tits-up and Mad Dog Gaddafi went for the rebels' collective jugular, your's truly emailed the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki Moon, and wrote a letter (yes, a letter!*) to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr David 'Call Me Dave' Cameron, outlining a completely brilliant plan for resolving the imminent collapse of dodgy regimes.

*Only because the No 10 website won't let you email a message much longer than a twitter thing, whatever one of those is.

Said letter ran as follows (bear with it, it's bloody long):

24 February 2011

Dear Prime Minister

Re: A Plan for Minimising the Violent Transition of Power When Autocratic Regimes Collapse

I write to you concerning a plan that I have lately presented to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, for defusing tensions as autocratic regimes begin to collapse, thus avoiding bloodshed of the kind currently seen in Libya. As a respected international statesman, I am confident that you have the qualities to lobby on my behalf and persuade Mr Ban to adopt my proposal. Also, the rules of the United Nations preclude their being able to adopt any proposal not made by an Official Representative of a Member State, which you are (or at least the Ambassador to the UN is, and as his boss I have the fullest confidence that you can persuade him to present this proposal). As a further incentive to lobby for my plan, I am convinced that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee would look upon the proposal most favourably, and I feel that Mr Ban would, like myself, be happy to share the prize (which I understand is perfectly permissible within the rules of the Nobel Foundation) with a third party – I am sure I need not spell out who I have in mind, Prime Minister...

My proposal is simple, though not necessarily just. It is simply this: that a remote tropical island, perhaps in the Indian Ocean, be mandated under United Nations governance and protection and set aside as a sort of superannuated retirement home for ex-dictators. Luxury accommodation could be built for the ex-dictators and their families (if need be), with entertainment facilities provided, and enough of the money they stole could be kept by them to keep them in comfort until they die (the rest of their ill-gotten gains would be repatriated to their countries). The ex-dictators would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution, but only if they agreed to be exiled there for the rest of their lives.

How would this prevent violence such as that unleashed in Libya by Colonel Gaddafi? It seems to me that part of the reason for his clinging on to power with such desperation is because he feels he has nowhere else to go. Mubarak was able to retire to the seaside because his rule, while repressive, was never as nakedly brutal as Gaddafi’s. Even Idi Amin was able to retire to Saudi Arabia. But Gaddafi has no such option, and having got on the wrong side of so many national leaders it is incredible to think that any state would grant him asylum. And when numerous international organisations call – justly, it must be said – for Gaddafi to be prosecuted for war crimes, the man himself probably believes that unless he fights he will only end up on the end of a rope, like Saddam, so it is easy to see why we are in the situation we find ourselves in.

But what if my proposed retirement island existed now? Imagine the scenario: popular sentiment in Libya grows against Gaddafi, protests start, his forces try but fail to quell the uprising. At this point, with the situation on the brink of spiralling out of control, the United Nations steps in and tells Gaddafi: “The writing is on the wall, now is the time to go. If you step down now, avoiding bloodshed, you can retire in luxurious exile, immune from prosecution. Refuse, and face the consequences.” Chances are he – or any other dictator in his position – would opt to retire.

Okay, it isn’t just; he won’t pay the price for his crimes. But it would avoid a lot of bloodshed, senseless death and waste. And there is also the entertaining possibility that as the years rolled by and the island filled up with more and more ex-dictators, being such power-mad egomaniacs they might try to impose their power on each other in a sort of geriatric version of ‘The Lord of the Flies’.

I am sure that this plan will make a major contribution towards World Peace, and I have total confidence in your ability to ensure that my plan is presented to the United Nations and adopted by the entire world.

Yours sincerely

McTodd

Imagine my utter disgust when The Grauniad ran this editorial comment on Saturday 9 April.

The air was rendered several shades of blue in the McTodd household**, the phrase fucking thieving bastards being only the most printable quote...

Some weeks later I received a postcard from No 10 acknowledging receipt of the letter. However, to the best of my knowledge, no moves have yet been made to put this Guaranteed Nobel Peace Prize Winning Plan into practice***, and Mr Ban Ki Moon never even so much as emailed me back. So much for the UN.

**Saturday being the only day I will actually part with my hard-earned for The Grauniad. Any other day and the air in my place of work would have been similarly rendered.

***I am keeping a sharp eye on the situation - there's no way I'm letting anyone claim all the glory for themselves and thus screwing me out of my part of the Nobel Prize, no way at all.

THAT bloody engagement...

2010-11-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, Wills and Kate. Kate and Wills.

I couldn't really give a toss about their engagement, apart from the fact that the BBC, in its capacity as Lickspittle Pursuivant, saw fit to slip in an unscheduled half-hour drivelfest on Tuesday night after Newsnight, thus delaying 'The Secret Life of the National Grid' (Part 2) and causing my timer-recording of that programme to end halfway through it!

McTodd was distinctly unimpressed and rendered the air several shades of blue...

Meanwhile, here is the complaint I emailed to the BBC using their online contact form - I might add that I have yet to receive a response:

Dear BBC

You unspeakable bastards.

I write in reference to your sickeningly obsequious extra programme (‘William and Kate – A Royal Engagement’) following yesterday evening's 'Newsnight', reporting – a word I use in the loosest possible sense of the term – the engagement of some heir to the throne to an upper middle-class woman of no objectively discernible distinction.

Thanks to this wanton act of sycophancy, my advance-timed recording of Part 2 of the excellent and informative documentary series 'The Secret Life of the National Grid' was utterly ruined, the recording having ended only halfway through the delayed broadcast.

I was not aware that the BBC still clung to the moribund social mores of the 1930s by insisting on treating everything the royal family does with a level of reverence not seen since the days of Lord Reith and the Abdication Crisis, or even Sir Alastair Burnett's famously toadying reportage. What next? Live coverage of the Queen blowing her nose next time she has a cold? In sharp contrast, the excerpt I saw recently of North Korean state television news coverage of the ascension of Kim Jong-il's son to heir-apparent of that troubled land was a model of decorum and proportion in comparison with this televisual farrago.

Having been a lifelong defender of the BBC license fee, an increasingly minority position in these days of market forces and economic despondency, I feel my loyalty to the Corporation's values sorely tested by this frankly disgusting and annoying last-minute lash-up of a programme and its insensitive, not to mention inept, scheduling.

Not only is the fact that it ruined my viewing of 'The Secret Life of the National Grid' – a prime example, incidentally, of the type of programming for which the license fee can be ably justified – in itself infuriating in the extreme, I am also disgusted at the fathomless cravenness of the Corporation in pandering to the type of braindead rightwing cretin who reads the 'Daily Mail' and whips out a Union Jack every time a royal is within forty miles of them.

To cap it all, what little I could bring myself to watch of this inadvertantly-recorded atrocity revealed a production of such rank sentimentality, ineptitude and servility as to utterly vitiate whatever kindly disposition I may have hitherto had towards the Corporation. The idea that you consider it fitting coverage of what is, by any objective criteria, a distinctly minor event by wheeling out rancid toadies such as Piers Morgan or sweaty oleaginous royalists such as Andrew Roberts – men of whom there should be a public warning preceding any television appearance they make – is a sad indictment of the risible editorial values that threaten to destroy the BBC and lose it the last vestiges of public support. Furthermore, any programme that features witless privately-educated wastrels who are happy to be referred to in public as 'Ollie' is deserving of nothing but boundless contempt.

Your behaviour with regard to this non-event has been in every sense shameful, incompetent and thoughtless. I trust that you will go some way to compensating for this egregious error of judgement by repeating 'The Secret Life of the National Grid' (Part 2) so that those of us who do not enjoy last-minute so-called 'documentaries' about the blonde descendants of inbred German robber barons and their tediously predictable upper middle-class fiancees may enjoy the scheduled programming.

Yours in utter disgust

McTodd

For Fox sake...

2010-09-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

Liam Fox, the Cleggeronic Libservative Coalescence Defence Secretary, has form - remember when he lost his laptop?

But now he's scared.

He's scared that naughty dusky-skinned foreign ne'er-do-wells will explode a nuclear weapon in space with the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP) frying our dainty little computer circuits and causing an apocalpyse!

This is the terrifying picture he paints with his word-brush:

Weapons detonated in our upper atmosphere would create an electro-magnetic pulse and knock out our satellites and electricity grid.

This would be worse than a direct nuclear strike such as that which targeted Hiroshima in World War II, Dr Fox said.

Oh my God, worse than having an atomic bomb land on your head?

Just how bad would that be?

Dr Fox elucidates:

Transport systems, computers, phones, fridges and water networks would all be brought to a halt, he added.

Fuck me, that is terrifying.

Just think how much worse it could have been for the hapless victims of the fifteen-kiloton blast at Hiroshima as their eyeballs were melted by the flash from an explosion brighter than a thousand suns:

Bugger me, she got off lightly...

Cat Twat: "It was a joke!"

2010-08-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

So the miserable hag who chucked a cat in a wheelie bin has been identified as fat 45-year old drinker Mary Bale:

She claims she did it because she "thought it would be funny"!

Well, Mary, do you know what I think would be funny?

I think it would be hilarious if somebody kicked you in the cunt so fucking hard your ovaries popped.

The Atheist-Team

2010-08-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

I have been a member of b3ta* for many many moons now, but it is only today that I finally got a frontpage! Hoorah pour moi!

I got it with this (click for vastitude):

*Teh interweb's premier home of photoshopped nonsense

Moat Madness...

2010-07-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

Grim as the unfolding saga of steroid-ridden bodybuilder-turned-murderous rampaging gunman Raoul Moat was, I couldn't help but laugh at some of its media manifestations.

First, the magnificent photo, reproduced everywhere in the British media, of gritty armed policemen stalking the fugitive gunman...

The Grauniad captioned the photo 'Police point guns and stunguns towards Moat'.

More accurate, I feel, would have been 'Gurning policeman auditions for You've Been Framed' or 'Gurning policeman finds rampaging gunman drama a bit of a laugh'. What was he thinking as the camera pointed his way? "I'll put me gritty face on, you never know, I might get a part in The Bill"?

EDIT: It has been suggested by various people that the gurning policeman may, in fact, be shouting at the photographers to get back. Now that I look at the photo more carefully, this seems a very plausible explanation, the copper's apparent snarl merely being a warning caught mid-shout by the eager snapper's camera shutter. If this is the case, then I apologise unreservedly for casting aspersions on a professional doing a tough job.

But even better was the news that Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, famous alcoholic nutter and one-time ball-botherer, appeared on a Geordie radio show pledging support to his old mate Moat.

The cherry on this particular newscake was the quote from his agent:

Gascoigne's agent, Kenny Shepherd, said: "He's doing what? I am sitting having an evening meal in Majorca. I'm speechless."

A wonderful scene is conjured of Mr Shepherd being phoned during his meal and told what Gazza's done now followed by a stream of half-chewed paella and four-letter amazement projecting from his mouth...

Silly Mugger...

2010-07-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

I was mugged the other day. Saturday night, to be exact. Well, Sunday morning, to be anally precise.

This is the third time I’ve been mugged since moving to London in 1997.

The first was a brutal affair, back in 1999, as I was grabbed at knifepoint by three bastards who nicked everything on me, including my bankcard, with which they also emptied my tenuous account, before kicking the shite out of me. But they didn’t stab me, which was a victory of sorts.

A few years later, after a thoroughly lubricated evening down the pub, I was robbed at knifepoint by a little scrote who came up to me, asked for a pound, and then pressed a knife into my ample gut and demanded everything I’d got. This consisted of around £3.50 in change. He was genuinely aggrieved at this, whining, “Is that it?” as if expecting me to reply, “I'm terribly sorry, I forgot this Faberge egg stuffed in my back pocket.” It was my turn to be irritated at this point, and I explained, as if to an especially dim school child, that my pissed state was indicative of an evening in the pub and that, therefore, he was lucky I had as much as £3.50 left on me...

Last Saturday’s affair was even more feeble, demonstrating both a lack of commitment and a want of intelligence on the part of the mugger. I was proceeding in a homeward direction, having availed myself of a refreshing non-alcoholic drink at some friends’ flat (after a victorious pub quiz evening), when a youth in a hoodie (not at all a stereotype, then) ran up to me from behind, swung in front of me and said, one hand deep in a pocket and pushing out the front of his jacket, “I’ve got a gun, gimme everything.”

He looked more nervous than I was, so I handed over some small change, and with his free hand he patted down my pockets and took my phone and a memory stick, before patting a lump in a small pocket and asking, “Whassat, then?” “Those are my house keys.” “Oh right, I’ll leave you those.” Cheers, I thought, how chivalrous. Which, in the circumstances, it was. After grabbing my bag (which contained my Spitting Image Series 3 DVD, the bastard) he legged it. He completely missed the other pocket with my wallet, containing my bankcard, Oyster card, and £60 in cash. The knob-end.

Each time I’ve been mugged, it’s been a progressively pathetic affair, characterised more and more by idiocy tempered with almost a residual chivalry.

At this rate, I confidently expect, around 2015, to be mugged by some berk dressed as a Regency fop who will flounce up to me, wave a scented handkerchief around my nose, and lisp, “Stap me vitals, sirrah! Would you be so kind as to furnish me with the contents of your pockets, my good man?”

To which I shall reply, “Fuck off.”

On This Day… 9 June 1870

2010-06-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

London, 9 June 1870

MUCH CONVERSATION in fashionable salons of late has concerned that most wondrous invention, the electrical telegraphic transmitting-and-receiving engine, or ‘telegraph’ for brevity of terminology. In an effort to impart to our loyal readers the requisite degree of informed comment, we felt it incumbent upon ourselves to solicit the opinion of a savant possessed of acknowledged expertise in such arcane natural scientifical matters, and approached, most humbly, Sir Isambard Kingdom Perkins (Bart) BSc, PhD, FRS, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Electrovoltaic Studies at the University of Oxford.

“The electrical telegraphic transmitting-and-receiving engine, or, as I shall henceforth refer to it for reasons of brevity and clarity, the ‘telegraph’, is a most complex device typical of the cascade of miraculous inventions which prove that Man is, indeed, the highest of God’s multitude of creations,” elucidated the prodigious savant.

Explaining that the new ‘telegraph’ represented a prodigious advance upon earlier communicatory techniques, such as the shoutophore, in which lines of men spaced every fifty yards shouted the message to each other, Sir Isambard waxed lyrical of the communications revolution this powerful new technology has opened before Mankind’s very eyes. “We now survey,” he stated, with a not unseemly degree of scientifically motivated excitement evident in the jaunty angle at which he set his top-hat, “the vista of untold thousands of ‘telegraphs’ around the world forming an ‘Information Superior Railway’. This is unifying as never before our great Empire, as thousands upon thousands of telegraphic cables gird the globe, criss-crossing each other o'er land and ocean in an extraordinary mesh which some of my more irreverent colleagues have termed the ‘World Wide Crinoline’.”

However, a cautionary note was sounded by the esteemed moral campaigner, Mr William Booth Esq., who warned of the capacity for this miraculous invention to deprave and corrupt the moral fibre of the nation by facilitating the spread of confidence trickery, ribaldry and general beastliness. “Why, only this morning,” Mr Booth told us, the colour draining from his face, “I received several unsolicited telegrams, one purporting to be from a dispossessed Prince of Ruritania, humbly offering to pay me a thousand in sterling to help him transfer a hundred-thousand guineas from his embargoed bank account if I would only first of all wire him a hundred pounds, another that started, ‘There was a young man named Blunt,’ and worst of all, an offer to make my top-hat taller…!”

Minister Outed As Lying Bastard Quits Government

2010-06-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

Roy Ters: Tuesday 1 June 2010, 11:14 BST

In a totally unsurprising development at the weekend, David Laws, the Liberal Democrat Secretary for Cuts in the Coalescence Government, was outed as a lying Tory bastard. His subsequent resignation was the least he could do, sources said.

His outing came as no surprise to anyone who had heard of him, however, as rumours had been rife in the Westminster village for years that Laws, an intensely secretive man, had flirted with Toryism. The signs were there from the start: public school, an obsessive interest in money, an obscenely lucrative banking career with Goldball Sacks, an even more obsessive interest in money, and millionaireism by puberty.

What clinched it for anyone with a modicum of intelligence, however, were Laws’s contributions to Liberal Democrat Supremo-in-Waiting Chairman Nick Clegg’s Little Orange Book in 2004. In two essays for the book, Laws advocated reducing the role of government to beating up poor people for not trying hard enough, and selling the National Health Service to an animal experiments laboratory in Milton Friedman New Town.

In a stomach-turningly moving interview at the weekend, after being rumbled and resigning, Laws stated that his upbringing as a fully-rounded member of the human race made it difficult for him to come to terms with his Tory tendencies. He had struggled for years to keep his Toryism a secret from his friends and his family, particularly his mother, and with the arrogance that being a Tory confers he had always assumed they were too stupid to notice.

However, Laws’s long-term relationship with arch-parasite James Nomates, a political lobbyist, proved to be the catalyst for his outing at the weekend. Simpering tributes to Laws were paid by Matthew Parris, another Tory bastard, his partner Julian ‘Not that Julian Glover’ Glover, and the increasingly-going-downhill Grauniad’s political egghead Michael White who, you would think, really should know better.

Smug Rightwing Fucktards

2010-05-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

One of life's innocent little pleasures in which I indulge myself periodically is posting abusive messages on Comment is Free (CiF), the interactive commentary section of spellingly-challenged broadsheet 'The Grauniad'.

One thing I will not miss, however, now that New Labour have buggered off and we are ruled by the Cleggeronic Libservative Hegemony, is the immensely tedious habit of rightwing would-be wits using the term 'ZaNuLabour' (or even more predictably, 'ZaNuLiebour' or, the apotheosis of the sclerotic mentality, 'ZaNuLieBore'), because they think it's oh-so-fucking-clever, oh-so-pants-wettingly novel after thirteen (thirteen, damnit!) shitting years of New Labour to join the other nine million original-thought-challenged cuntish rightwing dullard smegma-for-brains wanktards to compare New Labour with ZANU-PF, Bobby Mugabe's squalid and brutal Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front.

But oh-how-wrong I was. New Labour are History (albeit very recent history), and yet these smug arsebrains are still at it:

Gamebird
12 May 2010, 5:27PM
...Trident is not being replaced, what is being replaced are the submarines to mount the weapons system in... ZANULabour wanted to replace four SSBN’s with three which means there would be gaps. You want to make significant cuts then you cut the money going to the NHS, you cut the money we are spending on welfare benefits, you cut or eliminate the money given in foreign aid. We junk the non-jobs that ZANULAbour created.

Can't they let it go? Are they so unimaginitive that their tiny minds trap them into repeating it over and over again like some lobotomised monk mechanistically chanting the same invocations to his non-existent cunt of a God? Like some miniscule asteroid of thought endlessly orbiting a dying sun of unoriginality? No, don't answer that.

Every time I read it, I can just picture some four-eyed greasy-haired rightwing policy-wank fucktard hunched over his keyboard smirking and chuckling at how ingenious, at how razor-sharp and original he is as he types it (and it's not even a proper chuckle, but that loathesome snorting noise made by spotty sixth-form charisma-voids who think they're witty that sounds like a pig being rimmed) and I just want to reach through the screen of his monitor, grab him by the throat and scream into each ear in turn, “Your self-satisfied smuggery makes me want to vomit down your throat!” at which point I would do just that, ramming my puke down his gullet with a meat tenderiser until he chokes and splutters on it and coughs up blood and mucus and bits of his own teeth that I'd chipped off with the tenderiser and his own vomit mixed with bits of my spew fighting its way back up, before administering the coup-de-grace by emerging fully from the screen and kicking him slowly to death on the dried-semen-encrusted tissue strewn floor of his fetid den.

Or something like that.

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, John Finnemore, Not Even On Radio 4!

2010-05-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, you may remember reading a moan of mine concerning ‘The Daily Mail’ and their inability to correctly use the word ‘ironically’.

Some time after, imagine my surprise when I heard guest artiste John Finnemore’s contribution on Radio 4’s ‘The Vote Now Show’ (3 May 2010), which dealt with this very topic. Annoyingly, I can't post an audio clip of it, so here’s a transcription:

Steve Punt [reading from The Daily Mail]: “Ironically, his mother was interned by the Japanese during the War.”

John Finnemore: “Yeah, that is ironic, isn’t it? I’m sure the irony of it tickled her at the time: ‘How ironic,’ she must have thought, ‘even though I’m a foreigner, some other foreigners are locking me up. You’d think all of us foreigners would get on, given we’re basically all the same!’”

Right, you’re on fucking notice, Finnemore!

If, for example, I ever hear you use the term ‘Cleggeronic Libservative Hegemony’ I will kick your head in, and don’t think I don’t mean it, don’t think I can’t find you anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, and don’t think I’ll just be listening to your public utterances, your stand-up gigs and guest-spots on ‘The Now Show’, I’ll be listening to you when you’ve popped out for a cafe latte, I’ll be listening to you when you’re buying your guilt-assuaging traidcraft courgettes from Waitrose, I’ll be there listening to you at night when you’re asleep because I listen to your fucking dreams, Finnemore, I watch your dreams, I record your dreams on HD PVR, I live your dreams, I AM your fucking dreams, so just watch your step, son, alright?

Watch your cocking step.

Oh, and give us a fucking job at the BBC...

Cleggeronic Libservative Hegemony

2010-05-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently, some bloke called Dave Cameron and some other bloke called Nick Clegg - who looks amazingly like Dave, and who I always used to confuse with the old duffer in the cloth cap and mac in 'Last of the Summer Wine' played by Peter Sallis, who also moonlights as the voice of Gromit's mate Wallace in Nick Park's wonderful fillums (Peter Sallis, that is, not Nick Clegg... or Dave Cameron for that matter) - have coalesced into a Coalescent Government of Great Britannia.

Or something.

I think I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea when it was on the telly.

HolidAid

2010-04-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

Haiti, Chile and others launch HolidAid

Roy Ters: Friday 23 April 2010, 17:14 BST

Heartrending scenes of British tourists trapped in disaster zones such as Heathrow, Gatwick, the Bahamas and Australia’s Bondi Beach by the Icelandic Ashcloud of Doom have prompted the bighearted people of Haiti, Chile and that Chinese town flattened by an earthquake recently to set up HolidAid, an appeal to help the poor bastards return home.

Standing outside the rubble of his dwelling in Haiti’s earthquake-shattered capital, Port-au-Prince, forty-year old Jean-Baptiste Laurent, an unemployed mango hacker, told of his anguish in seeing the tragic victims of the holiday cancellation disaster on the Red Cross television he shares with five hundred fellow quake victims. “When I saw those poor people trapped in airports, unable to go home, my heart ached for them,” he said, with a dignity that only a lifetime living in squalid poverty and shit can confer. “How they cope with only temporary accommodation in mediocre hotels and three hot meals a day I cannot understand. At least my Red Cross tent is permanent and I get a free bowl of rice every other day.”

Meanwhile, in Chile, Carmen Miranda (no relation) said, “The Lord God himself, He cry when He see these poor travellers trapped in Heathrow and Gatwick. When I think of them I cry too, and if my mother, father and brothers hadn’t been killed in the earthquake, why, they would cry with me.” Fifteen-year old Carmen, currently working as a prostitute with her younger sister to make ends meet while her shattered town is rebuilt, went on to say, “Those poor people, they have nothing to do, they can only sit around all day watching the television. Luckily, I can keep myself busy giving businessmen handjobs.”

It is stoic and selfless people such as Jean-Baptiste, Carmen and some Chinese bloke we couldn’t understand in another earthquake-flattened town, who have been the galvanising force behind HolidAid, a new charity set up to help the wretched victims of the Holidaycalypse. Thanks to their efforts, and the generosity of other groups such as the New Orleans Flood and Indian Ocean Tsunami survivors, the first tragic victims of this unprecedented event have been able to return home from Heathrow and Gatwick airports by bus and even, in some cases, train.

At Gatwick, there were scenes of indescribable relief as the first HolidAid bus arrived to collect stricken victims of Holidaygeddon and return them to their far-flung homes, some as far away as Watford. Kevin Dagenham, a fifty-year old father of four, broke down and wept with relief as he described their horrific experience. “Me and the missus, right, and the kids, right, we was meant to be flying to Majorca, right, but then the Icelandic Ashcloud of Terror threw us into what I can only describe as chaos, right!?”

For over one night he and his family were forced to sleep in the main Gatwick terminal before being transferred to a Horrible Inn hotel for another six nights. He shuddered as he relived the scenes of chaos and horror that descended as some trapped would-be holidaymakers cracked under a strain never before seen in human history and almost turned to cannibalism when the airport's restaurant concessions ran out of pizza, fried chicken, and lightly-toasted ham-n-cheese panini by lunchtime on the first day. Fortunately, I didn't have to put up with any more of his intolerable whining and bleating as the HolidAid bus arrived in the nick of time to pluck him and his family from Biblical scenes of hell to return them to far-flung Romford.

Meanwhile, the people of the Bahamas and Australia’s Bondi Beach, among other places, have also donated generously to HolidAid, one bighearted Australian quipping through gritted teeth, “I’d pay anything to get those whinging Pommy bastards out of here!”

Daily Mail Irony Failure

2010-04-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mail. Words which generally induce ennui and nausea.

But their latest assault on Nick Clegg amuses me. Partly because it's utter bollocks. I could discuss the shameless dog-whistle politics, the buffoonish Little Englander nature of it, and much else besides, but others have analysed this far better than I could (be arsed to).

No, what amuses me - and it's a minor point, I freely concede - is their use of the term 'ironic' in this excerpt:

Mr Clegg, who has a Spanish wife, a Dutch mother and a Russian grandparent, began his career as a Brussels bureaucrat and moved to Westminster after a spell as a Euro MP.

Ironically, his mother was interned by the Japanese during the war.

In what sense was the internment of his Dutch mother by the Japanese 'ironic'?

If she had been interned by the Dutch - now, that would have been ironic.

Or if she had been Japanese and interned by the Japanese - that would have been ironic as well.

I can only conclude that to the Daily Mail, the thought of any foreigner being interned by any other foreigner is ironic because they're all basically interchangeable. Dutch, Japanese, German, Polish, Burmese, Peruvian, Congolese, Martian, they're all the bloody same.

On the other hand, if we want to talk about 'ironic', I can think of few better illustrations than Tory defence minister wannabe Liam Fox berating the Ministry of Defence's carelessness in allowing laptops to be stolen, thus endangering Our Boys, only to (carelessly) leave his own laptop in the back of his car - which was then stolen last night from outside his home...

Getting back to the Daily Heil's strange concept of 'ironic', in case those devious bastards there notice their error and correct it, here's a shot of the relevant page:

Perceptive readers may notice the gorgeous, pouting figure of Tory grandee Nicholas 'Grandson of Winston Churchill' Soames on the right, which I have included purely so that I can gratuitously wheel out this old anecdote...

Many moons ago, an old flame of Soames remarked that sex with him was like having a wardrobe topple over onto you with the key still in the lock.

Careless Tory Bids to be Defence Secretary Shocker!

2010-04-22T05:29:00.000-07:00

The central London home of Tory defence secretary wannabe Dr Liam Fox has been burgled and his car pinched - with his laptop still inside:
Beeb Report

What I want to know is this: what the fuck was he doing leaving his laptop in his car? Was he too lazy to carry it indoors? Or too forgetful?

Either way, the man isn't fit to be defence secretary of the United Kingdom - imagine if he had been in office and this happened. What secrets might ne'er-do-wells thus glean? Detailed deployment charts of Our Boys in Johnny Arab Land? The launch codes of our luvverly shiny Trident missiles, to be flogged to the highest bidder? The mind boggles at the mischief such rank ineptitude might engender!

Of course, Dr Fox is not without form in this area, as can be seen from his forthright condemnation of the Ministry of Defence's sloppiness in allowing laptops to be, er, pinched:
Another Beeb Report

Dr Fox, for the Tories, said the incident showed "incompetence, mismanagement and poor procedures" on the part of the authorities.

He said it was potentially more damaging than HM Revenue and Customs' loss of 25 million people's child benefit details.

"Clearly we don't know what risks will be faced by those on the databases - it will depend on whose hands it has fallen into," he said.

"But to put our troops and the public at risk in this way is unforgivable because this seems like a systemic failure, not a single act of incompetence or irresponsibility."

Dr Fox said some 68 MoD laptops had been stolen in 2007, 66 in 2006, 40 in 2005 and 173 in 2004.

"What on earth is going on? How much information on our service personnel is floating around out there? Most importantly, why has nothing been done about it?"

We can only hope that Dr Fox's carelessness was merely 'a single act of incompetence' and not evidence of 'a systemic failure'...

Meanwhile, McTodd Hates! backs the defence secretary wannabe's fearless campaign against sloppiness putting Our Boys At Risk by allowing laptops to be pinched and says: "Sack these careless bastards NOW!"

Paedo-Priests

2010-04-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

“Dawkins made me do it!” claim Catholic priests

Roy Ters: Thursday 15 April 2010, 12:07 BST

In the latest twist in the ongoing paedo-priest scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church, a growing number of Catholic clerics are claiming that celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins personally forced them to fiddle with kids.

Speaking from his hiding place – the Church of St Xxxxx the Xxxxxxx in Xxxxxxxxx, Co. Xxxxxxx, Republic of Xxxxxxx – Father Pete O’Phile (not his real name) described his horrific experiences at the hands of the relentless God-non-botherer. Shaking with emotion, Father O’Phile said, “I was quietly polishing my chalice after a particularly vigorous choir practice, when I heard a sinister, lisping voice in my ear – ‘Look at that lovely choirboy over there, look at his innocent cherubic face, those blond curls, those luscious kiss-me-not lips’ – I turned around and there he was, Richard Dawkins, leering over me! Oh Jaysus, it was so horrible!”

Choking back his tears, Father O’Phile continued, “I tried to look away but it was too late. Before I knew it, Dawkins had pushed me up against the boy and grabbed my you-know-what and forcibly pushed it into that poor innocent lad’s mouth. It was disgusting, I felt sick to the stomach – I mean, he wasn’t even blond, he was ginger!”

Father O’Phile (not his real name) is not alone. In a completely different hiding place – the Church of St Xxxxx the Xxx Xxxxxxx in Xxxxxxxxx, Co. Xxxxxxx, Republic of Xxxxxxx – Father Pete O’Phile (yes, this time it’s his real name) showed me a photograph of Dawkins whipping him while he buggers a choirboy in the vestry. However, when asked why the head of ‘Dawkins’ appeared to have been crudely photoshopped onto a figure wearing a priest’s cassock, Father O’Phile became defensive and insisted that the image was 100% genuine and had been verified by the same Church investigative team which had recently authenticated forty-three tons of wooden splinters in Chile as being relics of The True Cross.

Lending moral support to their members’ claims, the Vatican has shifted from blaming Jews and gays to pointing the finger at atheists. Former Hitler Youth member Pope Benedict XVI backed his lads’ claims that arch Jehovah’s-ignorer Richard Dawkins was waging a one-man crusade against the Church.

Speaking from his modest, Michelangelo-designed apartment at the Vatican yesterday, the Pope shouted, in a surprisingly non-German accented tirade, “Dawkins? DAWKINS? That fucking slag? Don’t EVER mention that cunt’s name in my presence again or I’ll set the Spanish Inquisition on you! Now piss off.”