How Dare They Use Facts

Those damned EU migrants. They come over here and contribute more to the UK in taxes than they receive in benefits and services, according to new research.
Just who do they think they are paying taxes and enriching the country by £20 billion since 2001.
Professor Christian Dustmann, director of UCL's Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration said: 'A key concern in the public debate on migration is whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems. Our new analysis draws a positive picture of the overall fiscal contribution made by recent immigrant cohorts, particularly of immigrants arriving from the EU'.
So now what are the reactionary anti-immigration Ukipers who want to take us out of Europe going to do now that their reason to come out of Europe is exposed as a busted flush?
It just isn't right, the UKIP and their voters are already a laughing stock and this isn't going to make things any easier.
I want a return to the days before the people who know these things would spout such evidence that contradicted things that us little Englanders thought we knew, the old days when Nigel Farage could scaremonger about EU migrants without fear that he would be made to look an absolute twonk with the facts.
Bah, humbug.

Let's Pray

As it's Sunday and i am obliged to write one article a year about religion that doesn't ridicule the whole God thing, i usually leave it to December and hide it amongst articles about Santa and reindeer's with red noses but this year i thought i would get it out the way early and do it in November.
That was the plan anyway but as i dropped to my knees, clasped my hands in front of my face and prayed for some inspiration, i began to wonder, what is the hand clasping thing all about?   
I asked my neighbour who is a Reverend and should know if anyone does but he never and instead tried to get me to write about all the good things religion does in the world but i was on a mission so ignored him.
I asked a Buddhist, a Muslim and a Jew but it was a Chinese atheist who shone light upon it as a sign of submission.
According to her, the gesture goes back to the very early days of Christianity when the Romans were feeding lions on a diet of shackled Christians and the lion's lunch would offer their joined hands to the Romans in the hope that by submitting to their fate the Centurions would pity them and spare them.
Pretty sure that didn't work out so well for them and it just made the job of tying the hands of the prisoner even easier but apparently it's an act of waving the white flag, or surrendering themselves to their fate stating you are submissive to your God or Roman guard, whichever is most fitting at the time.
Happy with the explanation she then said that it could also stem from the traditional way of greeting someone in many south-east Asian countries from the same time when people wore loose garments with large sleeves and was specifically to demonstrate that they are not concealing any weapons within those sleeves, much in the way the handshake originated as a way to show you were not holding a weapon in early Western society.
I'm happy that it is a sign of submission to your chosen deity as if saying: 'Look God, i gave up a Sunday morning lie in, i'm kneeling on a hard floor in a draughty Church singing about rowing a boat ashore and listening to someone in a frock bang on for an hour about talking bushes..i give up!'
Righty, that's that out the way so next Sunday the story of how  if you give a man a sandwich you'll feed him for a day and if you give him a religion, he'll starve to death praying for a sandwich.

Preaching To The Wrong People

The world faces 'severe, pervasive and irreversible' damage unless swift action is taken to switch to fossil fuel alternatives and cut carbon emissions, according to the most detailed climate change report in years.
The window of opportunity to limit global warming to 2C is closing, according to UN experts who warn that the levels of three greenhouse gases, methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, are at unprecedented levels that haven't been seen in the past 800,000 years.
It seems that John Kerry gets it, saying: 'The bottom line is that our planet is warming due to human actions, the damage is already visible. We're seeing more and more extreme weather and climate events, whether it's storm surges, devastating heatwaves and torrential rain across the globe. Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us, and for our kids and grandkids'.
As Kerry is a politician, it is up to him and his ilk to do something about it, we are not in any position to stop the bad stuff being pumped into the atmosphere despite how many low energy light bulbs or how many plastic bottles we recycle.
I could reduce my carbon footprint for a year to almost nil and it would be undone in seconds by China, USA or India so don't preach to us, take on the real bad guys in countries that are destroying it for us all  and making emotive speeches isn't enough, let's have some real action short of putting a dome over the worst offenders so they get to keep their damaging emissions at home.

Picking A Premier League Team For Americans

They may annoyingly insist on calling it soccer while the rest of us call it football but whatever they call it, the game seems to be catching on in the States with NBC picking up the Premier League and Fox showing UEFA Champions League coverage so now the Americans have a new problem, which team to support.
The Premier League sides breaks down into 3 divisions in one, the Big 5 who will divide up the winners pots come May, the relegation fodder who will spend the season trying to avoid looking at the league table and the teams who float around between them both not doing very much.   
While it is true that every team offers something unique, in reality you don't want to get stuck with a team that will get kicked out of the Premier League never to be seen on NBC again so Hull, West Brom, Crystal Palace, Leicester, Sunderland, QPR and Burnley can be left on the shelf unless you are some sort of masochist and enjoy the fans of other teams reminding you of that latest 5-0 hammering your team received. 

The mid-division teams include West Ham, Swansea, Newcastle, Stoke and Aston Villa who are in the division purely to beat the relegation fodder while in turn get beaten by the teams at the sharp end of the league so if you pick one of these teams you had better be prepared for the Who? question because even us English forget about them and we live in the same country. This leaves eight teams who you can realistically support and not face ridicule week after week and the first is Tottenham Hotspur.

If you are the sort of person who never finishes things or loses interest halfway through then Tottenham, or Spurs, should be your team as they are the one team you can rely on to buckle under the pressure and fall spectacularly from grace which is brilliant fun to watch as long as you are not a Spurs fan. As a Tottenham fan you will have to legally hate Arsenal fans.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Wile E Coyote who does all he can and just when it looks as though he will succeed, invariably ends up in free-fall down the side of a cliff holding a sign that says 'Help'.

Southampton
One of the few teams who have broken away from the previous group and look as though they could disrupt the normal order of things but they do have a policy of selling anything that isn't nailed down as they did at the end of last season so potentially could be dragged back into the former group before they have chance to add to the one FA Cup they won in 1976. As a Southampton fan you will have to legally hate Portsmouth and Bournemouth fans.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Barney Rubble, there as much as his neighbour but everyone is watching what Fred is doing.
 
Everton
They have American Goalkeeper Tim Howard which should draw in many American supporters but most famous for being a club from Liverpool but not being Liverpool. A safe team to support because while you won't be wallopped by the big fish, you won't ever celebrate anything either. As an Everton fan you will have to legally hate fans of Liverpool.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Velma from Scooby Doo, in the midst of the action but nobody would miss her if she wasn't.
 
After disregarding the chaff, we are left with the wheat, the Big 5 of Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool.

Chelsea
Owned by a Russian billionaire friend of Vladimir Putin and managed by a man with an ego so big that the Chelsea players train by running around it, Chelsea are the team to beat but considering they are chock full of the best players Russian rubles can buy, boy can they be boring to watch. If it wasn't on the off-chance that John Terry would get a painful kick in the groin, nobody else apart from Chelsea fans would watch them. As a Chelsea fan you will have to legally hate fans of QPR and Fulham.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Mr Burns from the Simpsons, rich and successful but not very well liked.

Manchester United
The choice of the glory hunter, the team for anyone who wants to walk around saying their team are champions of everything and they did right up until they won zip and the country was deafened by the sound of Man Utd replica tops being thrown into the bin. Everyone's second favourite team is whoever is playing Manchester United that day. Probably not the best time to be a Manchester United fan because the fans of every other team are taking revenge and revelling in their demise. As a Man Utd fan you will have to legally hate fans of Man City.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Tom from Tom & Jerry, makes everyone else laugh when it all goes horribly wrong and he ends up looking ridiculous with his head stuck through a fence and a bowl of milk on his head.

Manchester City
Since one side of Manchester has slipped away, the other has stepped up with the help of the Abu Dhabi United Group who have spent well over £1 billion transforming the squad into one that could dominate the Premier League. Man City are the current champions and have some of the most exciting players to watch but despite the billion pound blown on players, have not yet attracted the same amount of vitriol as Man Utd or Chelsea for 'buying' the titles they have won but that will come so this may be the last chance to get in and claim supportership before the inevitable taunt of 'glory hunter' is thrown at anyone with a Manchester City shirt. As a Man City fan you will have to legally hate fans of Man Utd.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Bart Simpson, been around a while but is just starting to wear out his welcome.

Liverpool
The team who once lit up Europe but have since spent the last 2 decades saying they are coming back to do it all again but never looking like ever getting there. Past glories keep older Liverpool fans warm at night but for the newcomer, today's Liverpool are like being told you are being taken out for a meal and ending up at McDonalds, it's technically still a restaurant but not really what you were expecting. As a Liverpool fan you will have to legally hate fans of Everton. 
If they were a cartoon character they would be Mickey Mouse, once ruled over everything but peaked a while ago.

Arsenal
Generally regarded as the thinking mans team and as they are owned by an American, Stan Kroenke, they should appeal to Americano's. They play a beautiful game with skill and speed but if you pick Arsenal as your team you will have to learn the basic shout that all Arsenal fans master of 'Stop fannying about with and and shoot the bloody thing' as the 75th pass makes it way across the opponents 18 yard box. All means that for all the beautiful football, they will end up 3rd or 4th yet again as they have for the past 9 seasons. As an Arsenal fan you will have to legally hate fans of Tottenham.
If they were a cartoon character they would be Jessica Rabbit, beautiful to look at and involved in the action all the way through but never one of the main players.

Pre-Inquiry Bad Smell

To lose one inquiry head is unfortunate but to then replace them with someone else with even closer links to those being inquired into smells of something much more rotten.
The inquiry was set up to look at how public bodies dealt with historic allegations of child sex abuse, following claims about paedophile's in powerful political positions in the 80s and 90s and establishment attempts to cover up their depraved actions.
First up was Lady Butler-Sloss who was forced to step down in July because her late brother, Lord Havers,was attorney general during the period when many of the alleged offences are said to have taken place.
The Home Office then turned to Woolf who in turn has been forced out by the victims groups after it
emerged that she was a friend and neighbour of the former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, whose role in dealing with allegations of child abuse in the 1980's is likely to come under intense scrutiny.
Before it has even began we are left with the feeling that far from a vigorous investigation into their fellow MPs, this is going to be a whitewash with very little naming and shaming and the blame put upon a few minor bad apples and the big fish slip away into the shadows with their reputations intact, a la the recent Iraq and expenses scandals.
And they wonder why nobody trust's politicians anymore.

Two Sentence Horror Stories

It's beginning to rain again. The drops are falling obliquely against the lamplight. It's probably falling all over the country. On the cities, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the graveyards, upon the crosses and headstones, upon all the living and the dead...and tonight the dead will be around to see it also because it's Halloween, when the dead visit the land of the living.
You can lock the door, stay inside and shut the horrors outside or you can come with me and step into the world where those who have left this world reign.
Take my hand, but beware because where we are going, everything can hurt you.

A girl heard her dad call her name to come downstairs. When she got onto the landing her dad grabbed her shoulder and said 'I heard that, too'.

'I feel so sleepy' my boyfriend whispered in my ear as he crawled into bed beside me last night. I woke up this morning clutching the suit that he had been buried in.

I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, 'Mummy, check for the bogeyman in the cupboard'. I smile and look in his cupboard and see him staring back at me curled up, shivering in the corner and whispering, 'Mummy, there's somebody in my bed'.

My daughter's screaming and crying in the middle of the night is keeping me awake. I visited her grave and asked her to stop but it hasn't help.

My sister told me that Mummy drowned her. Mummy says that I don’t have a sister.

The girl in my dream screamed, 'Don't answer the door'. I awoke suddenly and when it chimed again, i realised that it was the doorbell that had woken me.

I don’t know what’s more unsettling. The fact that my TV wakes me up at night or the fact that i unplug it before i go to bed. 

The longer I wore it the more it grew on me. The neighbour's daughter really did have such pretty skin.

I have been asked to put the mirrors back up around the house. Apparently they miss watching me.

I've always been okay with my brother crawling into bed with me because he was cold. What i don't like is the graveyard dirt he leaves on the sheets.

As i explained to the Officer, i was delighted that my wife has returned to her first love of cooking after her breakdown. It wasn't until after dinner that i noticed the empty pushchair by the oven and asked her where the baby was.

Daniel sat admiring his wife's face. He then decided to set it aside for dessert.

Mummy always tells me that i shouldn't talk to strangers. My other mummy in the cupboard tells me I should kill her.

I covered my ears to try and keep out the sound of the terrible, blood chilling noise coming from downstairs. I swear the first chance i get i will hide my husbands 'Best of Country & Western' CD. 

Warmest Halloween On Record

It really shouldn't be 23C on the last day of October but i spent my lunch hour in the park surrounded by sunbathers and people in shorts.
Forecasters had predicted a continuation of the mild weather that has already seen 2014 become the hottest on record but the temperatures will fall back to an average of 13C next week after the UK mercury crept higher than that in Cannes, Athens, Crete and Rome.
To balance it all, some long range forecasters are predicting heavy and persistent snow, freezing gales and sub-zero temperatures could hit the UK from November until March.
James Madden, forecaster for Exacta Weather said significant snowfall is likely in weeks with savage frosts and thick winter fogs and the possibility of thermometers dipping below the record -27.7C recorded in 1982.
Might be best to keep that summer duvet on the bed but keep the electric blanket on standby.

Gas Bills To Fall To All Time Low Anytime Soon?

UK gas prices plunged to a record low today fuel poverty remains rife in Britain, with 2 million households, 10% of the population, unable to afford adequate heating.
Having already issued the annual, pre-Winter threat that they may not be able to 'keep the lights on' the power companies are now facing a few tough questions regarding how come our bills are not coming down with the cost 25% cheaper than this time last year especially as this is the major justification of putting them up.
Blaming 'soaring wholesale energy prices' to raise their gas prices by 35% with immediate effect, suppliers explained that 'wholesale prices are just part of the bill and, although reduced pressure on the wholesale gas market is good news in the long term, companies buy energy days, weeks, months and even years in advance to protect customers from sudden changes in costs, and will have bought gas when prices were higher'.
All that must mean that when we get the gas they purchased days, weeks, months or even a few years ago our bills will be slashed and all our gas bills will plunge to an all-time low as well.
Anything else would make us think that they have been ripping us all all along.

70's Soviet Technology Today

Thankfully it was an unmanned rocket that exploded this week and not a manned mission but there are quite a few parts to this story that seem to be going under the radar.
Firstly, the launching of the rockets is now the responsibility of a private company called Orbital while the rockets were ex-Soviet Union Antares rockets with AJ-26 engines from the 1970's.
So to put that all into focus, NASA scrapped their space program and the private sector was bought in so they didn't have to to depend on Russian rockets to send us into space and the private sector then buys old Soviet era rockets and put together a rocket that exploded when they tried to launch it.
With previous experience of the private sector, i would assume they tried to do it on the cheap and cut a few corners to save money and therefore make a nice profit and then...kaboom. 
With a straight face, Orbital are trying to pin the blame on the Russians and with a smiling face the Russians are pointing out that they stopped using these rockets in the 90's because they proved unreliable after several launch failures.
Apparently, Orbital bought 40 of them from the Soviets so the astronauts had better not be running out of anything up there on the Space Station because it might be a while yet before they get their fresh supplies.

DIY Ghostbusting This Halloween

Way back in 1984, Ray Parker Jnr posed the question that 'If there's somethin' strange in your neighborhood, Who ya gonna call?
As we are fast approaching the one day of the year when the veil that separates the living and the dead is at its thinnest, Ray's question is even more relevant but as the emergency services are bound to be busy dealing with the multitude of calls that 'there's somethin'  weird an' it don't look good', we should be prepared to deal with the visit from one of the living dead ourselves. Luckily, we have decades of horror films to fall back on so here's a handy guide on the best way to stay safe this Halloween night.

Witches
By far the most popular Halloween character you may encounter is a Witch. Although they may possess the power to turn you into a frog, witches were killed by the thousand back in medieval times and are basically just warty women with pointy hats and a broom so if a woman with a big nose and dressed all in black climbs through your window on Halloween, a blunt object to the head should cool her heels permanently.

Vampires
Vampires are the living dead, forced to feed on the livings blood. They fear sunlight, the cross, fire and a stake through their heart. Their weakness is they always only go for the neck jugular so either sleep with a stake within handy grasp or wear a neck brace.

Werewolves
Come the full moon anyone can change into a ferocious werewolf which can only be killed by a silver bullet. Unless there is a full moon this halloween evening you are safe from having your intestines being used to decorate your bedroom walls. If it is a full moon then a silver bullet is your only salvation so you better start melting down that cheap jewellery.

Demons
Demons come in many shapes and forms but they all have something in common, they can be killed in many ways from fire to decapitation. They may come from hell and be super strong but they tend to be easily distracted. The old "Look out, behind you" ploy will give you more than enough time to grab a handily concealed battle axe and remove it's ugly head.

Ghosts
Ghosts are just rubbish. They can’t hurt you and the only thing they can do is make scary noises. This can ruin a good night’s sleep, but it can’t hurt you.

Killer Clowns
A relative newcomer to the hall of horrors but though they may look funny with their squirty flowers and big red noses make no mistake, while some will do no more than honk their horn at you, others will rip off your head and spin it on a wobbly pole for the rest of eternity.  Luckily, clowns have a liking for oversized shoes which can be easily nailed to the ground and a good shove will render them useless although beware cream-pies, over-sized hammers or buckets of confetti in their hands as you make your escape

Zombies
Zombies are the walking dead but their biggest drawback is they are as dumb as a post and unless you are wearing boots, trousers and a coat made from lead, you could easily outpace the slowcoaches before they get the chance to eat your brain. Fire or a bullet in the brain will stop them in their tracks.

Mummies
Mummies are just zombies wrapped up in bandages, which makes it slower and more flammable than a regular zombie. Hopeless.

Robots
Probably the least welcome thing you could find looming over you in the dead of night is a robot. Whether they are cyborgs from the future, aliens or escapees from a local tourist attraction out to kill all of mankind, robots are notoriously hard to kill. Not only are they metallic, but they are always immensely strong and impervious to fire, bullets, hitting with blunt objects or swords and have clear, logical thought which anticipates your every move.
You cannot outrun it so the only chance you have is to confuse it's circuits with some bizarre and confusing logic that will fry it's computerised brain trying to figure out. Reading out the lyrics to any REM song will work fine.

If the abomination that has made the journey into our world is anything else, then i suggest taking up Ray Jnr's advice of picking up the phone and calling Ghostbusters although to be honest, you will probably be in 17 bits spread around the living room before the first ring.
Above all avoid cemetary's, spooky looking houses and haunted forests and you should stay safe this Halloween.