Statement on that petition:

"The EU Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015. The Act was scrutinised and debated in Parliament during its passage and agreed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Act set out the terms under which the referendum would take place, including provisions for setting the date, franchise and the question that would appear on the ballot paper. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout."

For once, CF finds himself in agreement. 

Dry your eyes, kids ...

It cannot be said often enough that not everybody who voted Leave in the recent referendum - remember it? - did so purely because they wanted all immigrants to be driven into the sea "first thing Friday morning".

No. Some - CF included - voted to get out of a massive, and failing, political project, which had already constructed a vast and anti-democratic superstate.

And the beneficiaries of that Superstate are mightily pissed off. They can't believe the cheek of us, the little people. "Oi! Where do you think you're going? Come back here at once"

Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, is particularly enraged at our temerity:

"The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate.."

Is that so? Really?

In which case, this 'crowd' probably made the right choice ....



.

"What we need.." said the senior representative of the Political Class ".. is a massive distraction. Huge. Something to take the great unwashed's attention away from bloody Brexit, give us time to smooth things over, kick things into the long grass for a bit.

Other than pies and racism, what else do they like?"

"Well, sir .." blurted the eager junior ".. they like X-Factor, and Big Brother .. oh, and Football"

"Football? Really? I thought we weren't very good at football? We're much better at Rugby, not bad at Cricket these days either. Why don't they like that?"

"Well, sir, I don't know. But they love football. Can't get enough of it. Spend a lot of the little money they have on Sky TV to watch the games, and on buying the same shirts as the players wear. Spend a lot of their time talking about how the England team are doing, and what they should do next"

"Really? Oh well, perhaps we should have the England team do something really spectacular, really memorable, to give them something to talk about in their pubs and clubs. Look into it, would you?"

"Certainly, Sir. I'll speak to the right people, and make they do something so memorable that the man in the street talks of nothing else. That'll get us off the front page of the tabloids, Sir!"

Noooooooo!! George was right! Arrrrghhhhh!! We should have listened to him!

"The FTSE 100 is being routed AGAIN" shrieks the Gruaniad.

Yes, apparently ..

"Shares are hitting fresh lows after another wild morning in the markets.

The FTSE 100 index of major blue-chip companies is now down 100 points, a loss of 1.6%. That follows a 199-point tumble on Friday."

Well, yeah, that's true. And probably a fair reflection of the uncertainty generated by all of the political fuckwittery occupying the airwaves day 'n' night.

But hang on just a moment. When CF last looked (which was about 15 minutes ago) the FTSE 100 stood at 6,018 - so yeah, well down from the 6,338 it closed at on the 23rd, that Golden Era when we all believed we'd be happy Europeans for ever, and when you didn't need a passport to ride on the bus*

You know what? If it falls much further, the index might be as low, as desolate, as routed as it was two weeks ago. That's right. On the Tuesday two weeks ago, the FTSE 1000 stood at a mighty, pre-Brexit 5,923.  

Oh, to return to those heady days of endless optimism, eh? Before the racists stole our futures?

For fucks sake ...



* (hat-tip to The Daily Mash for that)

Much, much anguish from the yoot following the referendum. 

Those wicked old people, with all their experience of the EU, and all of their wisdom, somehow conspired to vote the nation out of Europe, even though thats not what we, the yoot, really wanted.

And shouldn't the yoot always get what they want? 

But wait, hang on, look at the papers, what's this?

Ah. "..result would have been different.."? Oh. It seems that, perhaps, if you'd actually bothered to trot along to the village hall, pick up a old-school style 'pencil' and express your views at the ballot box, guys, rather than thumbing it into WhatsApp, things might have been a little bit different. 

So actually, little ones, we didn't 'steal' your future, did we? No. You got pissed, left it on the night bus and slept through your alarm.

Oooops.

Hello boys and girls!

Today's Word of the Day is 'Bigot'

bigot

ˈbɪɡət/

noun

1. a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions.

You might have noticed recently that anyone who, for whatever reason, failed to vote 'Remain' has been - universally and endlessly - termed a 'Bigot' by those who did.

As the great Alanis Morissette said ...

We were warned, weren't we, that there would be huge devaluation in the event of #Brexit?

And boy, were 'they' right. There has been a devaluation. A ma-hoo-sive devaluation .. of the English language. Great swathes of words that used to mean something, suddenly worth less; devalued, cheapened by the weeping Remainers.

"I'm terrified.." ..  Really? Nah. People cowering in basements while their town is being bombed are 'terrified'. Those poor fuckers in the toilets at the Bataclan were 'terrified'.  You? You're just 'worried'. Alright, possibly 'very worried'. But terrified? Get real.

"I'm devastated.." ..  Don't think so. Someone who's just had a late-stage cancer diagnosis is 'devastated'. Jo Cox's poor husband is - presumably - devastated. You? You're just pissed off.

".. the worst day of my life.."  Oh, for fucks sake. Really? Really? The worst day? If that really is the case, then you've had a pretty fucking great life so far. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who'd be fucking delighted to have the Western, civilised, Starbucks, Grauniad-informed, "worst" day you've just suffered.

Friday 24th March 2016

Jeez, what a heaving, writhing, monstrous fucking mess. What a brass-bound, ocean-going clusterfuck. What a festival of arse.

See the politicians, the media and the bien pensants floundering, utterly astonished that we didn't do what they told us to.

See Facebook and Twitter going into meltdown, with thousands of "terrified" people having "the worst day of my life".

To paraphrase Batman: "Somewhere, stupidity is happening".

One feels, dear reader, the need to put virtual pen to virtual paper over the coming weeks. Repeatedly.

Watch this space...

Krispy Kreme doughnuts .. mmmmm.

But now the purveyors of these tasty treats are in deep, deep trouble. They've fired up the PR people:

“Krispy Kreme apologises unreservedly ..  an internal investigation is currently underway.”

Wow. What have they done? Did someone sneeze into the mix? Is there horsemeat in the pink icing? Has an errant chef made love to a batch? Nah...

What they've done is far, far worse. Oh yes. They have "offended" some people. They referred to the Krispy Kreme Klub by its initials. Which are also - oh no - the initials of a racist organisation in America.

And someone, somewhere - in fact several people - have decided that the use of the letter 'K' is this way is "..inappropriate". Their feelings are hurt. They are - as fucking usual - "offended".

Dear god, fuckwits, get a fucking grip...

.

"I've got a great idea.." someone at Airport Operations must have said ".. instead of accurately displaying whether a flight is delayed, about to board, boarding, closed and so on, let's just have a computer work out when that should happen, and display that."

"So, like, 40 minutes before a flight is scheduled to take off, let's display that it's boarding"

"But will it be?"

"Dunno; probably not, but let's do that anyway. And then, say, 30 minutes before the spreadsheet shows take off, let's show 'Final Call'

"But won't that panic people into dashing through the airport to a 'plane that's not even boarding?"

"Yeah, probably'

"And won't this whole idea just make the lives of a couple of ground staff fractionally easier, for no other benefit?"

"Well, yes"

"And won't this lead to herds of passengers sweating their way through a crowded airport, panicking that their flight is going to go without them, when in fact it hasn't even started boarding yet?" 

"It might"

"And won't this lead to endless people mistakenly jumping to the front of the queue, causing chaos, in the mistaken belief that their flight is already boarded, when in fact they've just barged past 200 people who've been stood there fuming for 25 minutes?"

"Yes, it will"

"In fact, won't this whole idea just mightily piss off pretty much every passenger in the airport?"

"Yeah  ...  Fuck 'em"

.

CF has been growing slowly more and more enraged, as the days tick down toward the Genraleckshun, and the politicians grow e'er more desperate. Not desperate to put over their great ideas, oh no. Desperate to blame everyone else for everything since the Great Fire of London.

And don't the press just fucking love it? Running between the quarrelling factions like an overexcited, dimwitted Spaniel, yapping and pissing in equal measure. And this week, the juicy bone is tax avoidance. Not evasion, because that's already illegal. No: avoidance, which is not illegal, but which a lot of people would like you to believe is.

So, today's tendentious drivel comes to you courtesy of the Sunday Times. No link provided, because CF is fucked if he's going to pay money to observe the drivellings of the Murdoch Press - or indeed any press. Suffice to say, this is legit, as it was all over Twitter: so it must be true, eh?

This week's question was ...

"Is it acceptable to legally avoid tax?"

To which 57% of the public apparently answered 'No'.

'No'? What?

Dear God, public, what? Did you understand the fucking question? Did you read all of the words? If so, what the living fuck are you on, for Christ's sake?

Can you not see that the only possible answer to this question is 'Fuck off, you idiot from the Sunday Times, this is a pointless and unanswerable question. Stop wasting my time and yours'  ?

CF fucking despairs. Time to restart the blog, and right a few of the ever-so-ever-so many wrongs currently crowding the horizon ...

CF was idly watching TV earlier, when on came an advert for the TSB.

Obviously, all adverts have only one purpose - to tell us all how simply fucking marvellous the advertisee is, if you'd just, y'know, take the time to understand them, people.

So, here we go. The thing to know is that apparently the TSB, amongst other things..

 ".. foregoes using its own investment bank .. refuses to lend to big business and .. keeps all of its money within the UK"

Hang on. Hang the fuck on.  That might just about work if CF set up a tiny bank, with 5 customers and no shareholders. He could keep the money safely hidden, and give it back to the customers when they wanted it. Lovely.

But what if there were thousands of customers? What if those customers wanted to be able to get 'their' money out of an ATM at any hour ofthe day, anywhere in the world? What if those customers wanted standing orders and direct debits to fire money all around the world at short notice? What if customers wanted to have an ... er ... overdraft, so they could keep buying shit even when 'their' money is gone?

Well, that's all easy for any of the old, eeevil, banks - they've made money elsewhere, investing (yeah, 'casino gambling'), and lending money to businesses who pay interest for the privilege. They can afford to build a vast ATM network, to pay for the huge server farms that calculate balances and run transactions (and yes, to reward the people that turned every pound deposited into one pound fifty)

So how's the new, improved, hippy, airy-fairy TSB gonna do this then?  Certainly not by getting all grubby with .. eww .. 'investing' or lending. Perhaps they're going to magic the money out of thin air? Perhaps they're going to charge customers 50 quid to use a cashpoint, and 30 quid to transfer funds?

Or perhaps, just perhaps,  it's all utter bollocks ..

Horror! Drama! Extreme emotion! This just in: Amazon have withdrawn from sale a 'bad taste' halloween costume that made the wearer look quite a lot like Britain's-best-known-baby-botherer Sir James 'Jimmy' Saville. Bad taste indeed..

Apparently, according to a representative of one of the seemingly fucking endless succession of 'never-rattled-a-tin-because-the government-gives-us-stacks' charities that comment on such matters has announced that

"Nobody wants to remember Savile’s horrible face, particularly his many victims"

Really? Really? Wow. Who knew?

Amazon won't give a tiny rat's arse about this; they've got a free mention for "doing the right thing", and they've probably reduced their overall product range by, what, mmmm, 0.001%? For fucks' sake.

The real winners in all of this are - as so often - the thick, idle journo's: this is an absolute fucking godsend on a quiet Monday, ain't it?

In fact, you know what? CF is willing to bet that for every 'saddened' Jingle-Jangle-Jimmy victim who has been upset by this stupid costume, there are at least ten lazy provincial hacks who have been absolutely delighted to have an easy story gifted to them, without having to get off their spotty arses...

What the actual fuck?

CF doesn't watch a lot of television - life's far too short. But on this particular evening, CF found himself lounging in front of the box.

Suddenly, in the midst of some grotesque American crap, an advert came on. For Kinder eggs. You know, a small piece of greasy chocolate surrounding a collection of random choke-a-child plastic pieces?

But now there's more; now there are two types of eggs to chose from. According to Kinder (with CF's italics) :

"The different coloured eggs will allow parents to choose an egg with the most relevant toy inside for their child. The first limited edition eggs will contain Fashion Dolls in pink eggs for creative play and Sprinty Cars in blue eggs, to fuel the imagination"

Now, as (formerly) regular readers know, CF ain't no whinging social engineer, but hey, really?

Pink for girls? Blue for boys? "Fashion Dolls" for girls, "Sprinty cars" for boys?

What the actual fuck? What year is it?

-

CF, alongside many other more talented and energetic writers, spent much of the years up to 2010 blogging about how fucking angry the useless, spineless, spinning, lying Labour "government" made him.

But, hey, time heals all wounds, doesn't it? Well .. no. It shouldn't. And thankfully, Sean Thomas (writing for the Daily Torygraph, but don't hold that against him) has written this most excellent piece - ".. The Worst Government Ever.." - describing those horrendous years.

Read the whole thing, multiple times, before ever considering supporting, or even fucking acknowledging the existence of, that bunch of utter imbeciles. But, if you want to get good 'n' apoplectic without even clicking a mouse button, scan the extracts from the piece, below. And nod, sadly, as you recall the truth in each one.

Immigration:

.. without warning, without consulting, without even asking our permission – allowed the biggest mass immigration into the United Kingdom in our nation’s history: three million people, possibly more than entered these islands in the preceding 1,000 years combined

On health:

1,200 died in Mid-Staffordshire Hospital alone, that’s more than died in Mid-Staffordshire during the Black Death.

Europe:

..  give away half our precious rebate .. at a cost to you and me of £9 billion so far .. in return they got precisely nothing, unless you count a chortling, after-dinner promise from Jacques Chirac, that he’d make Tony Blair President of the EU, which he didn’t.

The economy:

Labour presided over the slowest growth in 50 years, they produced the fastest decline in British manufacturing since manufacturing began, they left us mired in the longest recession since the war, they bequeathed maybe the largest deficit in peacetime history, 

Foreign policy:

Iraq .. Afghanistan .. 100,000-300,000 killed, 2 million refugees, the humiliation of the British army, the grotesqueness that was Alastair Campbell, and the complete destruction of any trust in what any government will ever say about going to war in the future

Education:

.. sending our schoolkids plummeting down the international PISA education rankings .. English youngsters are amongst the worst educated in the western world .. the only young people with an education inferior to their grandparents.

There've been other bad governments and leaders..

..but none of them equal New Labour’s magnificent record, right across the board, for wretched, lying, blundering, poisonous, catastrophic ineptitude.

Well put, that man. Jeez, no wonder we were all so fucking angry back then. And we should be even angrier - and fucking terrified - at the prospect of Labour coming back to power in a few short months from now. Say it ain't so...

It was Albert Einstein who pointed out the definition of Insanity:

" .. doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Remember what our good friends in 'merica did? When American Presidents aren't jizzing all over plump interns, or invading countries with oil underneath them, they're busy wondering how best to help the needy. Yeah: to help the needy remember who to vote for.

Good 'ol boy Bill Clinton concluded that the one way of doing this was to get banks to lending more money to people to buy homes. Why? Because those people wanted more money to buy homes. They wanted to buy a place of their own, rather than renting. And if a potential voter wants something ..

Historically, banks tended to only lend to people who they thought would pay it back, on time and in full.

However, with a bit of pressure, a bit of coercion, and a lot of bribery ("do this for us, and we'll do all the dirty things you love, Banks"), Bill and his administration decided to persuade the banks to spunk dollars over everyone's dresses.

Jimmy Carter had already passed the exciting-sounding 'Community Reinvestment Act, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901' in 1977. And it spoke to the banks, saying "Hey there, Banks. Y'all better stop refusing to lend money to people just because y'all think they might not be able to pay it back".

So all Bill needed to so was to ".. reduce the cost and compliance burden" for the act. In other words, to whip out the few tiny safeguards it had, coat it liberally in oil so it could slip past anything, and let it go.

The banks knew when they were on to a good, profitable thang, so lend, lend, lend, they did. And then offset their risks by bundling up and reselling the 'subprime' loans to other banks. And then used the money they raised doing that to lend to more wannabe homebuyers, just to keep Bill smilin'.

And didn't it all work out brilliantly? Remember?

Well, no, of course it fucking didn't. The people who couldn't pay back the loans, didn't pay back the loans. Turned out that 'subprime' was a polite way of saying 'fucking hopeless'. Which meant the bundled loans were pretty much worthless - they were never comin' home. Which meant that suddenly the banks had a fuck of a lot less money than they'd pretended. Which meant we were all in the shit. And still are, for fucks' sake..

So, Dave 'n' George, we're all hugely excited to see how your shiny new #helptobuy scheme pans out. What a lovely, fresh idea - to coerce the banks to lend more money to people, so they can buy a lovely house.

What could possibly go wrong?

So, once again it comes around, the almost-annual Glastonbury ticket shambles: music-lovers, hippies of all ages and well-stocked drug dealers all converge on the internet in a frenzied attempt to hand over hundreds of pounds to a cunning farmer and his family.

This totally unexpected (yeah, right) demand causes the systems vending the tickets to collapse immediately. You know, just like Amazon and Ebay do every day, when people try to buy things from them.

All around the country, people frantically refresh and redial, only to be met by blank screens and hold music. The tension is upped by Twitter messages announcing that a third, then two thirds, of the fucking tickets are already gone. "Quick sheep, hit refresh faster! Faster!"

The proceedings are finally brought to a close by pretendy-hippie Emily Eavis, chirpily telling the frantic, helpless, largely ticketless masses, that she's very pleased to have sold out in record time, and that..

"..we genuinely try to make the ticket system as fair as it can be.."

What the fuck? How's that work, Emily? How is it fair?

Is it 'fair' that the ticket sales monopoly is given to one company, one website, so that we can't choose to go with the fastest, most responsive, easiest to use? Or even with one who can keep their website running for more than a few minutes?

Is it 'fair' that a chunk of tickets were allocated to a coach company to bundle with wildly overpriced coach seats, useful only to those able to get their tent and all their luggage to a coach station in the middle of a large town?

Is it 'fair' that people are allowed to buy tickets for other people - any other people - so all the Facebook monkeys can enter into reciprocal purchase agreements with complete fucking strangers, even in other countries, getting multiple bites at the same cherry? 

Not really, is it?

And then the hideous icing on the putrid cake? SEE tickets' - the sole ticket provider in this rigged election - posting on Facebook and Twitter a sarcastic little response to all those who'd had the temerity to criticise their websites fucking woeful performance. This after the first half hour was a write-off, and the next hour was a total fucking shambles of timed-out connections and "page unavailable"s :

"And thanks again for all the advice. Never knew we had so many IT consultants following us" 

Yeah? Fuck you, SEE tickets. You didn't invest in sufficient capacity because you didn't need to. No matter how slowly things ran, how many times people got timed-out or lost their sessions, you were always going to sell all the tickets, because you had a monopoly on them. So you were always going to get your hands on the whole of your slice of an abso-fucking-lutely massive pie, weren't you?

Is any of this fair, Emily? Is it fuck.

UPDATE: Apparently, its going to be Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk and Depeche Mode headlining. Phew; none of the above matters after all...

Jeez, how the fuck does this all work? It's been years..

Everything's fucking infuriating again. Time to restart?

Is there any appetite? Or is the telly enough these days?

Apparently, Norge-nutter Anders Breivik didn't just believe in all sorts of c-c-c-crazy shit about 'Monoculture' and driving the darkies into the sea. Oh no.

According to the Evening Standard, in his bizarre rants he also ..

"..praised Top Gear Presenter and Sunday Times Columnist Jeremy Clarkson."

Oh, Jez, how must you feel? Oh, the confusion; the mixed emotions. Where to begin?

.




.

While CF doesn't begrudge anyone a bit of good old fashioned luck, there was a surge of rage when he read the story of the couple from Largs in Ayrshire, named as the winners of the £161m Euromillions jackpot. Lucky, lucky guys, eh?

So, what were they doing before this unimaginable wealth?

The Weirs have both had serious health conditions in recent years and have not been able to work. Colin, 64, had previously worked as a television cameraman and Chris, 55, is a fully-trained psychiatric nurse

.

Not "been able" to work? OK, so the state stepped in and supported you, then? Rather too well, it would seem, judging by the amount of food you'd both seem to have consumed in recent years.

And tell us how it was when you won, would you?

"I started circling the numbers I had matched but wasn't doing very well. Then on the fifth line, all the circles seemed to join up."

What? Wait. The fifth line? The fucking fifth? Each entry into the Euro lottery costs 2 quid, right? So you lucky, lucky people spent at least ten quid on the lottery. While you were both on benefits.

Did you do that every week? Did you start doing it twice a week when the Euro millions started on Tuesdays too? Bet you fucking did.

Exactly how much of your benefits, which came out of our taxes, did you spend on the fucking lottery, eh? And did you ever feel guilty while you were doing so?

And what will you do now? Will you start to 'give back', in grateful recognition of what the state did for you?

"We have both always wanted to see the Great Wall of China and Colin would love to stand at the foot of Ayres Rock in Australia," said Chris.

Yeah? Well so would a fuck of a lot of people, only they can't, because they have to pay a fuck of a lot of tax, apparently so that the state can give it to fat people, to spend on lottery tickets.

For fucks sake.


-