QuickQuid

"Too many bills this month? Do what I did, visit QuickQuid.co.uk and get the money you need today" so says the smiling actress on the television advert for QuickQuid.
According to the website, QuickQuid is 'helping hard-working Britons across the UK find a fast and convenient solution to immediate money needs from the privacy and convenience of home.'
Hard working Brits would need to work considerably harder if they take a loan from this company without first checking out the APR, an eye watering 2278%. That's TWO THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT PER CENT. And let's not forgot the £10-£14 admin fee per every £50 borrowed.
While loan companies like QuickQuid make no secret that they are targeting the desperate and downtrodden, and make it amazingly easy to get the money, it does seem that they are exploiting the poorest of society, a conclusion that the Advertising Standards Authority deduced also when they banned the advert in 2009 for misleading advertising.
The ASA ruling stated: 'the ad should have displayed the typical APR in order to comply with the Code. In addition, because of the rate of the interest charged and the potential vulnerability of consumers likely to be attracted by the ad, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead consumers by omission of information concerning the rate of interest.'
So now the television advert is back with the appalling APR displayed among the waffle at the bottom of the screen and directing you to the QuickQuid website where they boast the 'fastest and most hassle-free lending available.'
If you can locate the Privacy Policy link on the website (small writing beneath the login section if you are looking), you see QuickQuid is owned by CashEuroNetUK, LLC which is registered in Delaware, the corporate haven of America.
If you still need money to last you to payday and you feel yourself drawn by the smiling actress on the television urging you to do what she did, remember TWO THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT PER CENT and there is always room for one more in the gutter.

2nd Amendment: Still Not Getting It

There are many things that i have blogged about that tend to get less than favourable comments thrown at me but three opinions seem to hit the buttons more than others.
The first is any criticism of Israels treatment of the Palestinians and the second is criticism of religion, both of which while i can respect and even understand the opposite view, i haven't heard an argument yet that has convinced me enough to change my opinion.
The third, and probably the one where my opinion tends to get most mauled is America's gun laws and this subject i just can't understand the opposite view whatsoever.
I listen and have had many gun owning Americans explain it to me in terms ranging from self defence to it being in the constitution but neither overcome my natural position of wide eyed horror at the thought of so many deadly weapons in society.
I accept that i may be a whiny, left wing limey with no knowledge of guns but i just can't get my head around why the majority of Americans are so keen to defend everyone having the right to own guns and the argument, it seems, is most vociferous after yet another mass shooting such as the one which left 6 dead and 13 injured in Arizona this weekend.
Being British, and most of us never so much as having held a gun, i admit that there is a cultural difference between us and Americans when it comes to guns. If you grow up with them all around then obviously you are going to be more at ease with them, a recent show on television had a British reporter in an American gun shop where you could buy guns designed for children. He was shocked and so was those of us discussing it the next day but that's because over here the thought of handing anyone a gun. let alone a child, fills us with horror while in America it seems almost natural.
As i have said many times before, America's gun laws is America's business and if they want to keep a small arsenal of weapons in their homes then their country is thousands of miles away from me so i'm not concerned, it's your country and if you are at ease with so many guns, then i'm willing to accept it.
Doesn't mean i can even begin to understand why you would be easy with it, but if you think the mass killings that seem to come around with alarming regularity are a price worth paying for your right to bear arms, then i have yet to hear the argument made to justify it.

Give The Bankers Their Bonuses

From the outset, i have been against paying the bankers their bonuses, which is expected to run into billions.
It took a Taxman of all people to change my mind to do the unthinkable and hope that they do get paid the billions with two words, '50% tax'.
Mr Banker and his tosspot buddies get their £6 billion, the country receives £3 billion of that in tax.
If, as i previously thought, Mr Banker and the tosspots don't get paid the bonuses, they don't receive anything but then, as my tax friend pointed out, neither do we.
It would be a classic case of cutting off our noses to spite our face to give up an extra £3 billion just so the bankers don't get anything, that extra money could mean the difference between a hospital staying open or closing.
So i say give them the bonuses and hope they buy big yachts and sail them around the coast of Somalia which i hear is particularly outstanding this time of year. Don't forget to send us a postcard.

Wanna See Our Ashes Aussies?

It's easy to mock Australia what with the silly names such as Boing Boing, Burrumbuttock and Tittybong. Then there are the light fingered relatives that made them Australians in the first place and the fact that there are more than enough sheep in the country for the 20 million population to have 8 each to do what they want with. And now their cricket team have gone and lost the Ashes to England.
Usually, after England has just beaten another country at a sporting event, we take a lead from the Norwegian commentator when Norway beat England in a World Cup qualifying game who listed all the famous Englanders he could think of and ended with, you're guys took one hell of a beating.
To keep that fine tradition going, by this position of the post we should be well into a list of famous Australians and dredging Google for some obscure ones but i'm struggling because the best known ones, are all here and pretty much honorary Brits.
Kylie Minogue and her sister Danni, Jason Donovan, Rolf Harris and Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries) are all in the UK and refusing to budge while the other famous 'Australians' are Brit Olivia Newton-John, Hawaiian Nicole Kidman and Rupert Murdoch who is now American.
That only leaves one well known Aussie so Alan Dale who played Jim Robinson in Neighbours, you're guys took one hell of a beating!!
See, told you it was easy.

Spying Vultures & Undercover Squirrels

Not that Israel's neighbours don't trust it but the Saudi Arabians have arrested a vulture on suspicion of being a Mossad spy.
The raptor was wearing a leg bracelet with 'Tel Aviv University' stamped on it and was handed over to the Saudi authorities. It is not know if the Vulture was in possession of a stolen British passport at the time of its arrest.
Recently numerous shark attacks on the banks of the Red Sea were suggested to be the work of Israel to destroy Egyptian tourism and in 2008, Palestinian authorities accused Israeli of training poison resistant rats to drive Arab residents out of Jerusalem.
But it is not just paranoid Arabs who have fallen victim to the Zionist tactic of training nature against its enemies as Iran has also been a target.
In 2007, Iranian intelligence services arrested fourteen squirrels who were suspected of conducting espionage within Iran’s borders and Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reported capturing two pigeons carrying spy gear near its nuclear facilities.
The use of animals in war is nothing new, in WW2 the Soviet Army trained dogs to destroy enemy tanks.
The dogs were trained to run under German tanks and then an explosive tied to the poor pooch was detonated.
Problem was the dogs were trained using Soviet Tanks and kept running underneath their own ones.
This just goes to prove that we can trust nothing and we should be on our guard while discussing anything of a sensitive nature in front of the family cat and no secret documents should be placed within view of the goldfish bowl.

Oh, We're Going To Khorramshahr

Hey America...have a guess who got an invite to Iran's party. What, you never got one?
Nobody likes you, everyone left you, there all out without you, having fun.
Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany all found invites in shiny envelopes on our doormats this morning inviting us to a nuclear party at Iran's nuclear facilities.
The US State Department dismissed the offer as a "clever ploy" and then mumbled something about they didn't want to go anyway.
To be fair, you can't blame Iran for blanking America who got diplomats to spy on United Nation members and is the financier of the country itching to drop massive bombs on it. It's hardly the country you would invite into your home, it would be the diplomatic equivalent of asking David Hasselhoff to hold your dubonnet and lemonade while you popped to the toilet. They wouldn't be able to help themselves and Iranian scientists would spend the next 4 years asking each other where that camera shutter noise is coming from.
Anyway, i'm sure Canada will invite you over if you are feeling lonely. Game of Charades and a few bottles of Labatt Blue.
Nope, best you stay over there out the way and we promise not to talk about you. Much.
Hey Russia, that vodka is meant for all of us and who asked Germany to provide the music...

The Rapture

Floods of biblical proportions in Australia, birds falling from the sky in America and earthquakes in the North of England. Oh bugger, it's the rapture.
Right, don't panic because i live opposite a priest and i just saw him coming back from the local Tesco so we have a bit of time right because all the goody two shoes are still here.
In order to find out what is going to happen and what we can do about it, i turned to the one and only source that can give us the answers. Blondie.
Right then, her Rapture video shows a black man in a white suit and white top hat prowling the streets so he should be quite easy to spot. Oh why did she start that rapping thing halfway through, if we weren't at the start of the End Times i'd click that link to Denis Denis on the right hand side.
So according to Blondie: 'And you get in your car and you drive real far, And you drive all night and then you see a light, And it comes right down and lands on the ground, And out comes a man from Mars.' Mars??
'And he shoots you dead and he eats your head, And then you're in the man from Mars, You go out at night, eatin' cars'.
So according to Blondie, the sinners will be shot and eaten by a man from Mars before going out to eat cars.
I'm beginning to think that we can't leave this to 80s American new wave bands but if we go back a few years to the Sex Pistols and their Anarchy in the UK song, Johnny Rotten proclaims himself an Anti-Christ.
That leaves the choices of going to heaven or staying here and being ruled over by Johnny Rotten.
Tell you what, if the options are punk music or eternity with Cliff Richards in my ear, you go on ahead.
I will take my chances here with the alien, how bad can a Nissan Micra taste?

Why Should I Pay?

I have always thought that Socialism got a bad press in the United States because it got confused with Communism and the images of Stalin and the Soviet Union it conjured up. So ingrained during the cold war was the notion that Communism was a bad thing that Americans now balk at the idea of anything that smells of Communism, therefore Socialism is a swearword.
Not to say that there are not some similarities between the two but i had my bubble burst by a visiting Texan today who dismissed my claim and stated that the reason Americans are so against Socialism is because they are too selfish.
He explained that the reason that Obama will never be able to introduce NHS style Health care in America is because of the 'Why should i pay for it?' attitude of his fellow Americans, a position that he agreed with.
Americans, he stated, will not agree to pay for anything that other people and not they will benefit from, if you can't afford it then tough, you go without.
No concern from him for my argument that medical care should be a basic human right available to all and not just those that can afford it, he just fell back to the 'Why should i pay for their treatment?' argument.
Equally short thrift was given to my ponderings that the USA is the only industrialised nation that does not provide universal health care for its citizens and almost 60 million of his fellow Americans had no health insurance. 'Not my problem so why should i have to pay for them?'
I don't know if this friend of a friend was purposely being a jerk to try and provoke me or is just a jerk anyway but if what he said is true, and Americans are too selfish to care enough about there countrymen to put in a few cents of their wages each month to help those less fortunate, then good luck to anyone old, unemployed, poor or underprivileged because it seems that you will be hard pressed to find many there who care.

2011 Predictions

I do admit to gaining some satisfaction from psychics predicting events and then being made to look foolish when they don't happen. The fact that most of these psychics and mediums charge people for their services when they are so woeful at predicting world events or keep them so vague that anything could be shoehorned in makes it even worse so this year i have decided to dismiss the crystal ball gazers for the 2011 predictions because, to be frank, i have yet to find one that hasn't been a pile of pants.
Instead to find out what is going to happen in 2011, i have asked Bet365 because you never see a skint bookkeeper and these guys get more right than they do wrong.
So in 2001, the winners and losers will be as follows:

New Zealand to win the rugby World Cup (97/100), Barcelona to win the Champions league (21/20) and Manchester City to bring home the Europa League Cup (41/10). Manchester Utd will top the Premier League (101/100) while Wolverhampton Wanderers will finish at the bottom (11/21).

Ralph Nadal will win both the US Tennis Open (2/1) and Wimbledon (15/8) and Sebastian Vettel will take the Formula 1 Championship (5/2) while Americans should pile their life savings on The New England Patriots to win the Superbowl (23/10).

The winner of the Irish election will be Michael Higgins (7/2), the Bulgarian election Boyko Borisov (1/100) and the Danes will elect Villy Sovndahl into power (15/1). At 3/1, they also expect the UK Government to fold and us Brits to be trudging around to the election booths next year.

The Queen will wear a blue hat to Williams wedding (7/2), the Icelandic volcano Grimsvotn will erupt (5/6), Beyonce will announce she is pregnant (9/2) and 2011 sexist woman will be Russell Brand's better half, Katy Perry (2/1).

The best picture Oscar will go to The Kings Speech (7/4) while Colin Firth (1/3) and
Annette Bening (11/4) will walk away with the best actor and actress awards.

It is very short odds that Pete Doherty will once again end up in front of a judge on drug charges (3/1) and Girls Aloud will announce the end of the band (3/1).

Take the £1.50 that it would cost you to phone a psychic who will pretend to tune in to great Aunt Gladys and take it to the bookies instead. If my maths is correct and all of the above come in, you stand enough to buy Belgium.

Kagame Another Blair Friend

Say what you want about Tony Blair but he won't let criticism stand in the way of him forging close relationships with some of the more worlds unsavoury characters.
His relationship with the most hated American President in memory cost him the Prime Ministership and he counted Ariel Sharon of the Sabra and Shatila massacres as a friend.
Now he is defending his support for Rwandan leader Paul Kagame stating: 'He's someone I've got to know well and I'm a believer in him, and I believe I won't be disappointed'.
Paul Kagame is the current President of Rwanda and was one of the founders of the Rwandanese Patriotic Front (RPF).
The same RPF that twice invaded Rwanda to otherthrow the Government from its base in Uganda and shot down a plane carrying both the then Rwandan and Burundian Presidents which set off a civil War which resulted in 1,000,000 Rwandans deaths before the RPF took the Rwandan Presidency in 1994.
A French investigation concluded that Kagame ordered the downing of the plane and the assassination of the two African leaders but immunity from prosecution as a head of state stopped Kagame's indictment under French law.
The Spanish Courts issued an arrest warrant against Kagame and 40 other RPF members for several counts of genocide and human rights abuses during the Rwandan Genocide.
After invading Congo in 1998, a United Nations reported stated the 'mass scale looting" of Congolese mineral resources and the Rwandan government of making hundreds of millions of dollars from illegal mineral trading.
A 2001 Amnesty International report implicated Rwandan and Rwandan-backed forces in the deliberate killing of thousands of Congolese civilians while a 2002 United Nations report dismissed Rwandan claims that there were in the Congo for 'defensive reasons' and were using it as cover to illegally mine gold and coltan.
Human Rights Watch has accused Rwandan police of extrajudicial killings and deaths in custody and the International Federation of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch described what they called 'serious violations of international humanitarian law'. That's your pal Tony and the man who you brokered a £175m bio-fuel deal with for the UK firm Eco Positive.
As you said, i very much expect you and the Eco Positive board won't be disappointed.