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…!”
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Minister Outed As Lying Bastard Quits Government
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.
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.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Smug Rightwing Fucktards
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:
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.
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!
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:
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...
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
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.
Or something.
I think I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea when it was on the telly.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
HolidAid
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!”
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!”
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Daily Mail Irony Failure
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:
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.
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.
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