the real farepak victims are our ears

All this bleating and whingeing about Farepak is really beginning to wind me up.

This was the scenario - a bunch of losers lent money (for NO interest!!) to a multi-layered company for hampers that, on average, could have been put together elsewhere for half the price. The company then diverted these idiots' money to other parts of the group that were cash-poor. When the inevitable crash came who gets blamed? Not the financially-illiterate fools that think there's a free lunch, but the business people who were sharp enough to divert the money! Communism and the victim culture is still rife in the UK. Thatcherism still struggles on despite its ousting throughout eastern Europe since 1990.

The fact is far too many people in the UK are money-blind. They spend their lives borrowing against expected future income (in an increasingly uncertain economy) and waste billions on financial products that are little more than legalised robbery.

And what are the Farepak 'victims' doing now? Borrowing from dodgy unsecured credit firms to finance their yuletides! They don't think to be frugal this year, or only use money they actually ALREADY have ... they keep jumping on the treadmill 'cos they're too thick to appreciate what's going on.And they expect US to contribute to some sort of rescue fund? They've got to be joking ...

And if our poor ears get this much grief from a minor episode like this, how high will the shrill decibels go when the roosters really come home and house prices start crashing and repos go through the roof?

under the broadwalk

I'm a country boy. I like trees and soft hills and leaves in the road and sunsets and driving my Land Rover through ruts. I don't quite get the city, even though I'm fond of Budapest and Vienna and Zurich and Helsinki. But even British cities have a sort of savage beauty, found in concrete and straight lines and watery reflections. Knowing it will all be gone soon also adds a sort of poignancy, lives and things soon to be lost to the twin perils of Climate Change and Peak Oil, a crumbling of the edges prior to wholesale meltdown. Cities are a form of art if you know where to look, and art is really all there is - which is great!



Could any of us describe this or explain it once it's gone? Again, straight lines everywhere, like something by Mondrian or Joy Division. With Symes Avenue on its way out perhaps the Broadwalk will become my third favourite hangout in Bristol - after Trin's and the Loiusiana ...



And what about this? This is a temporal displacement of the highest order - not 1976 but 2006, yesterday in fact, some of the fare on offer to the innocent and unprepared shoppers in Somerfield, Broadwalk. Lard and beef dripping anyone? I ran back to the real world and stocked up on fruit, yoghurt and Tizer. 

bleating from the holy lambs ...

The new Yule stamps are out today and very nice they are too - I bought my village post office's complete stock!

Within a few hours of being issued the christians were already whingeing that they 'aren't christian'.

Read my lips - they aren't christian because Yule is a Pagan festival idiots!!

The sad thing is that every second year our Yule stamps do have christian symbols - and if you look carefully even many of the 'secular' stamps have a bit of the invader's religion added - the £1.19 value issued today for example has a star on the top of the tree, an allusion to the so called star of Bethlehem, part of the christian myth. In previous years the 'secular' stamps often have a church on at least one of the values. Last year's 'christian' abominations even had the brass neck to impose christianity on other religions - the 60p Hindu stamp being the prime example!

It should be the good Pagans, the daft athiests and the sensible couldn't-care-lessists who should be moaning, not a minority tribe of bigots, prudes, divs and foreigners.

Let's declare that from next year Yule stamps should show Pagan imagery celebrating the solstice and the lengthening days ahead, and let's return Yule to the people that respect it, not have it snatched from us by those that just a few centuries ago thought the best way with dealing with our BRITISH religion was to burn its followers alive. 

wanton vandalism

The long-awaited and crowed about by the middle class snobs demolition of Symes Avenue, Hartcliffe has begun, with nary a protest from those who are going to be most affected by it. In a month or so this will all be gone, and a shiny new pointless Morrisons will be in its place.



This is what I call a post office, stark modernist prefabricated architecture crowned by razor wire complementing the tower block in the background, together giving a homely atmosphere of neo-classical ease with life. Will Morrison's match this? I doubt it. Will they even celebrate the Hartcliffe Riots? Look at the average supermarket manager, all pallid pie-flab, dark suits, novelty ties and suppurating moles, and I somehow doubt it. Mumm-Ra should write a song about this, vicious vicious games of Buckaroo with a chorus featuring Matthew the duck.



Wulf peers into an Iceland freezer at Symes for the first (and probably last) time.



And carries off the long-promised six pack of Lucozade like a prize.

Yet another demise of local shops for a faceless supermarket. Will the fuckers ever learn?