Ode To Poets Everywhere

For some strange reason, there seems to be an outbreak of poetry on blogs lately so not one to miss out on a fad, i have composed my own poem entitled 'Ode to Poets Everywhere'.

To poetry writers everywhere
You may find this post unfair
Your cloud may wander lonely in the air
But for your writing i just don't care

I don't want to be misunderstood
Just I don't think poetry is very good

This art form once had a romantic air
Elaborate men with passion and flare
If, The Raven, a wonderful pair
But now decent poems are very rare

I don't call all poets unexciting
Just your chosen form of writing

It's adolescents with floppy hair
With broken hearts they must repair
Their deepest thoughts that they must bare
With rhyming couplets laden with despair

I am not mocking lovers dismay
Just write things in a normal way

So to bloggers to make you aware
This recent outbreak of poetic fare
Is pretentious and a little bit square
And not a practise that i will share

We all get passionate about things some time
Just we don't make it into a bloody Rhyme!

As Poe once said from his reclining chair
His nerves all shredded and his whitening hair
It wasn't the Raven that gave him the scare
T'was the thought of a poet standing there

So take a lesson from the Raven on Poe's Door
And make words rhyme..'Nevermore'

Thank you

Mithra & Jesus Story Just A Coincidence

The mince pies are out and there is the smell of Christmas in the air.
That time of the year when we sing carols and give and receive presents in memory of the small child born on the 25th December to a virgin and wrapped in cloth and placed in a manger with only shepherds in attendance.
The young baby who grew up to perform miracles and lead 12 disciples before sacrificing his life for the benefit of mankind with Sunday being his sacred day.
Yes, good old Mithra who was one of the religions of the Roman Empire which was derived from the ancient Persian god of light and wisdom.
You thought i was talking about who? Oh, the virgin, manger, shepherds, 12 disciples and dying for the peace of mankind bit. I understand now.
No, this is Mithra who pre-dated Jesus by centuries.
Yes, all the similarities are a remarkable coincidence i suppose and Mithraism was around a long time before Christianity so that makes it all the more remarkable that the two stories are almost identical.
No, i'm sure the early Christians never and just embellished it. Just enjoy your mince pie and don't think about it.

Has Cameron Doomed Us?

In the words of the Sun, David Cameron has told Europe to shove it and walked out of any plans to save the Euro and it seems nobody knows what to think of that.
The anti-European right wing press are lauding him for his actions while the left wing press are scolding him for isolating us and turning our backs on our Europe brothers and sisters.
My own sympathies are somewhere in the middle and i'm uncertain what Cameron has done is a good thing or not.
If we had signed up to what the French and Germans are demanding, then it would have cost us tens of billions for countries that are not going to be able to claw there way back from the brink they are balanced precariously on.
Harsh to say but the PIIGS are doomed and further bail outs are futile, not that we could afford to dig out Spain or Italy without bankrupting us all anyway so i'm with Cameron on that score.
Where i think Cameron fell down was setting his face against Europe and going in with a list of demands and threatening to walk out if he didn't get them. No negotiation, this is what we want and we will take our ball home with us if we don't get them.
Now he has done that, we are on the outside with no input into how the European system evolves, a European system that we are heavily reliant upon for our own survival. France and Germany now get to make all the calls and mould it into the system they want and we have to just go with the flow.
I have always maintained that what we have is a halfway Europe, with everyone looking out for their own interests and that is never going to work. It needs to be all or nothing along the lines of the US model, an United States of Europe with one person calling the shots rather than 27 separate leaders squabbling.
Now we are outside and in the immediate term, you could argue that Cameron has saved us a fortune but in the long term, we have managed to remove ourselves from the decision making process of a system that we are eventually going to have to join with if we are ever going to have an influence on the World Stage.
The future is China, USA and the EU, Britain on it's own will be sidelined and ignored so it's a case of Cameron saving us a few pound today but we will sure be paying dearly for it tomorrow.

Anarchy, The Only Way To Be

If you travel up from France and take a right at Calais, you end up in Belgium or to give the country it's full name, 'that place that nobody can name 3 famous people that hail from it without resorting to Google'.
Belgium has always been a bit of a strange country, known as boring and flat, it gained it's independence from the Dutch after an uprising followed an opera which is not the most obvious of sparks but it literally was over for the Dutch when the fat lady sung.
Thanks to stubborn politicians refusing to agree on how to form a coalition, Belgium had been without a government since June 2010 and in a state of anarchy in the original meaning of no government.
No government!? Well then there has obviously been massive riots, chaos, lawlessness, buildings on fire, or any of the other apocalyptic scare scenarios of a state of anarchy, only there hasn't been.
Daily life continued almost the same as before with everything still functioning except with one notable exception.
Without a government, none of the stuff all the other governments around the World have been doing could go on so no cuts, redundancies or austerity packages. In the absence of anyone with a mandate to slash and burn, Belgian public sector spending is tootling along much as it always has and much to everyones surprise, the Belgian economy is experiencing slightly healthier growth than most of it's European neighbours.
In the second quarter of 2011, Belgium grew at a meagre 0.7% but that beats the 0.1% growth for Germany, 0.2% for Britain and the disastrous 0.0% for France.
The country appears to be benefiting from its accidental immunity to the austerity fever that’s sweeping Europe so from the economic point of view, a country with no government is doing better than those with a government.
Alas, the heady times of Anarchy have now come to an end as the Belgian politicians have finally sorted out their difference and from today a Belgian Prime Minister has his hands back on the rudder again but boring little Belgium has left us with an interesting thought that won't be promoted by any Government anytime soon.
During hard times, could the best form of Government be no Government at all? Johnny Rotten may have been onto something all those years ago.

Cheer Up, It's Nearly Christmas

It seems that every year the amount of people complaining about Christmas being an excuse to pump consumers into buying a lot of crap grows.
Miserable buggers are only one step short of the Scrooge refrain of boiling in their own pudding and burying them with a stake of holly through his heart anyone who has the words Merry Christmas' on their lips.
Bah Humbug to the lot of them because I'm with Andy Williams in declaring It's the most wonderful time of the year.
To a Christian it is about the birth of Jesus, to an atheist which to be honest is the vast majority of us, then Christmas is whatever you want it to be.
If you don't like the commercial side of it then no-one is forcing you to spend a fortune in the shops and if all you are going to do is moan throughout the whole period then you only going to be grumpy and a pain to be around anyway.
Christmas, to me anyway, is about the decorations, the carol singers, advent calendars, Christmas films, the school nativity play, holiday from work, Christmas pop records and the general feeling of goodwill that builds as the days in December get crossed off the calendar.
If you are one of those people who use Scrooge as a template for celebrating Christmas then as the nephew said to his uncle Ebeneezer, 'Christmas is as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.'
Now shove a mince pie in your miserable face and get some Christmas spirit

Career Change

I have been considering a career change for some time now and after some thought, i have decided to apply for the position of manager at Sunderland AFC.
Not that i am particularly a Sunderland fan but a couple of seasons playing football manager 2011 has shown i have a natural talent for running a football team as steering Reading from a mid-table Championship side to second place in the Premier League and successful negotiation of the group stages in the Champions League has shown. Flushed with this recent success, i have emailed Sunderland with my application as follows:

--
re: The Sunderland manager vacancy

Please can i be considered for the current managerial vacancy at your football club.

I have successfully steered Reading from the Championship to 2nd in the Premier League and to the group stages of the European Champions League on Football Manager 11 and feel i could repeat this feat with Sunderland. Admittedly i did use the editor to move Messi and Xavi to my team but they were both injured a lot and did not really contribute.

Thank you for your consideration

Lucy
--

I know i face stiff competition from Mark Hughes and Martin O'Neil and the fact that i cheated by making use of the Editor beforehand which may go against me but Hughes going mad and paying £20m for the hapless Brazilian striker Jo should discount him and Martin O'Neil's £120 million spending spree during his time at Aston Villa should suitably put the willies up the club owners in these austere times.
Up the Black Cats and while they are considering my application, i will be in training for my second choice career move as God with some Civilization 4.

Reply from Sunderland AFC

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Dear Lucy

Thank you for your recent letter regarding the vacant managerial role at Sunderland.

I’m sure you will understand that the calibre of candidates for the role has been very high and we will therefore unfortunately be unable to progress your application further.

Thank you for your interest in Sunderland AFC and may we take this opportunity to wish you every success in your career in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Sunderland AFC
--

Public Servants Are Not The Bad Guys

Approximately 2 million public servants didn't turn up for work today and the Government has been attempting to turn the private sector against them in a divide and rule movement.
They tried this before with some success when they moved the argument away from bankers bonuses and got the public condemning those on benefits and disability benefit instead.
Now they are attempting to pit the private sector against the public sector with the cry of 'Look, they have better pensions then you, the bastards!'
The Governments argument is that the public servants strike to resist the 20% reduction in their pensions is unjustified because those people who don't work in the public sector have even worse ones.
Rather than work to drag up the worst pensions to the level of the decent public servants ones, they are looking to bust the decent ones down to the worst level.
Things are really bad but what they would really like is things to be bad for everyone, yes everyone suffering equally, that's the ticket and logical if you are a Conservative Prime Minister.
The nurses, policemen, firemen and teachers are not the bad guys here, it's a right wing Government using the excuse of a a weak economy to fulfil their political ideological dreams.

British Embassy Ransacked

Hundreds of Iranians have stormed the UK embassy in Tehran, chanting 'down with England' and 'down with America' and 'down with Israel' which is outrageous. America and Israel are much more evil than us, they should be down with first.
My two personal highlights were the protester who was filmed running away with a picture of Queen Elizabeth II freshly nicked from our Embassy and the looter who was spotted scampering away clutching a large picture of Pulp Fiction.
Now i can see how a picture of the Queen might be hung in the British Embassy, but Vince and Jules?
The British government has confirmed a serious incursion at the UK embassy in Tehran and asked the Iranian government to make every effort to end the crisis immediately. Surprisingly the Iranian Foreign Ministry didn't tell us to go do one over our tightening of economic sanctions, but replied that it regrets the attack on the British embassy and is committed to ensuring diplomats safety.
There were the usual scenes of men dancing around Union Flag's that had been set on fire and even a man sat on the wall waving a satellite dish which is either a protest against western media pumping anti-government propaganda into Iran from outside the country, or he had just nicked it off the side wall. Either way they won't be watching The Simpsons in the Embassy tonight.
Just as a pointer to the Iranians for future ransackings of our property, it is the British Embassy, not the English Embassy. I'd hate to think that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are getting away with the hatred and i would like to repeat my earlier point that in any order of evilness and countries that should be downed, Israel is first, then America and then us. We are just America's poodle so leave us and our Pulp Fiction pictures alone.

X-Factor Advert Breaks

While watching a two-hour special of Mythbusters, i noticed that the actual running time of the show, once it had the adverts taken out, was 1 hour 26 minutes meaning over a quarter of the show was advertisements.
I don't know who runs the television rules in America but here we have Ofcom and they have been getting bashed for the amount of advertisement breaks in the X-Factor programme.
For commercial television, which has seen a heavy reduction in advertising income recently, a blockbuster show like X-Factor offers mouthwatering opportunities. Aside from the traditional advertising spots, there is the chance to sell sponsorship bumpers which top and tail the commercial breaks.
Ofcom have denied that it has increased the amount of advertising time available for ITV from the standard 12 minutes per hour which is true, sort of.
The situation becomes complicated because the bumpers at the start and end of the break are counted as programming minuteage rather than as part of the ad break. Similarly, trailers for other ITV programmes are outside of the 12 minutes also.
So no, strictly there are not more advertisement breaks in X Factor, it still has the standard 12 minutes, but the advertisement breaks are longer because the Talk Talk adverts bookending the adverts and the ITV trailers mixed in with the adverts for toilet paper and margarine don't count so they can have 6 breaks 2 minutes long with all the trailers and bumpers slotted in to bloat the break time.
In the eyes of the Ofcom regulations, ITV and X-Factor are within the rules but to the viewing public, for whom the adverts start when Dermot O'Leary announces they will be right back and lasts until he welcomes us back, the adverts are actually more in number and last longer with the actual programme shaved a few minutes shorter.

How To Solve The World Economic Crisis

UK owe to US 578 bn and UK due from US 834 bn
UK owe to France 209 bn and UK due from France 227 bn
UK owe to Spain 316 bn and UK due from Spain 74 bn
UK owe to Ireland 113 bn and UK due from Ireland 104 bn
UK owe to Japan 122 bn and UK due from Japan 101 bn
UK owe to Germany 379 bn and UK due from Germany 141 bn

Football teams have a tried and tested method of moving huge amounts of money between themselves in the transfer market. Put simply, Team A buys Smith from Team B for 10m paying 2m a year for 5 years. After 3 years, they sell Smith to Team C for 15m. Team A have already paid Team B 6m so they request Team C to pay them 11m and for Team C take over the 2m payments per year to team B, therefore paying off their remaining 4m. All three teams pay and receive what they are due and the books balance.

In the economic world, everybody owes, and is owed, money by each other. For example the UK owe France 209 bn, but then France owe us 227 bn. Why can't Cameron phone Sarkozy and suggest he take off the 209 bn we owe them from the 227 bn they owe us and then you just pay us the remaining 18 bn.

Then he can telephone Obama and say you owe us 834 bn, we owe you 578 bn, so let's just cancel out each others debt and you then just owe us 256 bn.

If all the countries of the World got on the phone to each other and worked out who owes who in this way then most of the countries deficits could be slashed. If we then juggled things around like in the football transfer scenario above so after cancelling each others debts, any outstanding balance is paid to another on behalf of someone else, we would clear up this whole mess or at the very least, drastically reduce the amount of debt held by each other.

Seems very simple to me which probably means there is a huge hole in my thinking but with a growing number of countries on the verge of going bankrupt, creditor nations are facing receiving next to nothing anyway so at least this way they will get what they are due.

It seems crazy that we are demanding someone like Japan pays us the 122 bn they owe us while Japan are demanding that we pay them the 101 bn we owe them with all the massive interest payment involved to both countries when we can just agree to them owing us the 21 bn difference instead.