Another year (nearly) over a new one just begun (in a bit.)
And so this is Winterval, and it’s bugger all fun.
Hmm, I’m obviously wasting my time not working for Hallmark cards.
Anywho, not been blogging ‘cos nothing has been happening.
After the tentative proposition about a possible job nothing further has been said. I think that’s because at then minute they are rushed off their feet and need me to keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t think it’s any reflection on that bump I had.
Instead of just disciplining you they show you videos and do a talk on how to avoid further accidents. Better policy all round. The work has been constant. 5 days one week, usually 6 the next. The shifts are alright, Sun-Thurs usually 11.30 or 13.30 start, before midnight getting home. People are beginning to get on my tits. Not the ones I work with, the other road users. I have to travel around the Manchester ring road (M60) and over the M62 each day. They are upgrading it to smart motorway so a long stretch of it is 50mph average speed cameras. The amount of muppets I have to avoid killing daily is a real drag. It’s starting to get me down. I am having to remind myself what a cushy number I’m on compared to,say, the army, or order picking in –28 C.
Talking of which, I was watching a documentary on Sci-fi the other day (Tomorrow’s Worlds, it’s a series, very good.) and the theme was time travel. It seems I completely missed the underlying philosophical premise of Groundhog Day. It was the same day. Yes, I know. But at the beginning he went through it pissed off and pissing everyone else (my preferred M.O.) but at the end he was happy and he made everyone else happy. It was the same series of events, it was how he chose to react to them that made the difference.
I vaguely remember a Buddhist text saying that happiness cannot be found externally. Which makes a silly bit of whimsy quite a profound film.
In short, I’m trying to turn that frown upside down.
One thing that tested that maxim for Wendy was the boiler breaking down. It suddenly stopped on Friday morning, just as we’d gone into a really cold spell. I rang them, they said they’d be here in 24 hours. Wendy waited all day Saturday, no-one came. Called again. Sunday morning the guy turned up, grumpy and surly, obviously gutted that he’d been made to work on a Sunday. Not my problem, pal, it’s your job. “CPU’s broke. Common problem.” Oh good, can you fix it then? “Not got the part I’ll let the office know tomorrow.”
I rang on Monday. Nothing, maybe this afternoon. Wendy rang in the afternoon, fix it tomorrow. Wendy took the day off work to wait in. Nothing. Rang again. Got the wrong part. Thursday.
All of this time it was freezing cold. We haven’t got a front room fire so we were leaving the gas cooker on in the kitchen. No hot water for showers so we were having to heat loads of pans of water and have 2” baths. No radiators to dry the clothes so bare minimum of washing. Cold shaves. Freezing cold upstairs.
Wendy had to take Thursday off. I was getting ready for work as it happens when the guy came around. Changed the CPU over, still broken. There are two parts to the CPU, front and back. He’d been sent, and replaced, the front. It was the back that was broken.
He was very helpful, not like the first git, so he got on his computer, tracked down the right part and ordered it himself there and then. He came around on Friday morning, his first call of the day at about 08.30, and fixed it.
Poor ol’ Wendy was frozen like a lollipop. No meat on her bones, she just grazes and hardly ever eats a hot meal so she was perished. I was out in my nice warm truck, then troughing and getting in bed so it wasn’t that bad for me.
So that was grim. Makes you feel for all the destitute though. All the working poor who can’t afford heating. The foodbanks are having to prepare cold food parcels for desperate people because they have no means to heat food. In the sixth richest nation on Earth. Where “Money is no problem” if you are a millionaire and your house gets flooded. But if you’re working on a zero hours contract you have to die quietly to reduce the surplus population.
They were totting it up, and it works out people subsisting on minimum wage and tax credits (which is to say, the tax payer paying their wages to subsidise millionaire business owners) are in effect paying a minimum of 60% of their money in taxes. The actual millionaires had to have their 45% tax cut to 40% because they had no incentive to work. *spits*
Sorry. That came out of nowhere. Just venting my rage. And the fucking quisling Judas bastard LibDems who six months ago said the bedroom tax was unfair and should be scrapped voted in favour of keeping it last week. The Mansion Tax is too much like hard work to try to enforce, who has a house over 2 million pounds etc, and is “unfair” but working out which disabled person or minimum wage zero hours contractor has one bedroom they only keep their oxygen tent in is a piece of piss and is perfectly reasonable.
I swear to god, when the revolution comes I’ll be volunteering to put the bastards to the wall. With a song in my heart and joy in my job.
Hmm, best get back on track before Big Brother disappears me.
My bike is still a thing of beauty to behold and a joy to ride. So that’s nice. It was making a blowing sound, and starting to backfire. I checked the exhaust all over, no major leaks, then I checked the bolts holding the manifold on, they were loose enough to tighten with my fingers! That’ll be why then. Just checked, it is the manifold. *awards self extra man points* Rebalanced the carbs while I was messing and fitted engine crash bars (to protect the engine from damage when you crash, obvs) They’ve made it slightly less pretty but tis the season to be worried about ice and snow. Personally I consider myself a truly year-round crasher, but ice and snow really help.
I’ve not done any runs for the last two weeks, due to the boiler being buggered for one of them, and early starts all week this week. 11.30 all week. Until 21.00- 23.30. No time to run before or after. Still, off a bit next week.
That’s the limit of my doings. Lot of work, some dicking about with the bike, trials and tribulations with the heating.
So cut the crap and get on to Twitter. Your word is my command.
The DMreporter had:
CENSORSHIP: Politicians accused of ‘sneering at the white van driver’ after banning strangulation, urination and sado-masochism from porn.
WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Fury as Lidl continue to sell reindeer meat despite our 5yr campaign to ‘expose’ them.
TV: ‘Farage clearly named the ethnic groups destroying Britain while Brand just waffled about a mythical blame culture’ – we review #BBCQT.
CELEBRITY: Mel B whores her children out to promote #XFactor in bid to prove she’s not an unimaginably desperate person. It doesn’t work.
EXCLUSIVE: We proudly boast of having the ‘first picture’ of a dead baby girl because, honestly, our editorial staff are sociopaths.
In Politics/ Tory Scum we had:
According to UKIP the Tories have sunk to a "new low" by calling Tim Aker by his real name. Which happens to be Turkish. Because he is.
2 Lords a-leeching, 10 plebs a-rioting, FIVE. PAEDO. RINGS. A Tory Christmas
Good grief “@UKIPCheltenham: @gawdonbennet @Jaffa64729021 It’s about our women who throw themselves at African men unknowingly”
Please disabuse yourself of the notion that individual women have ever been ‘yours’
"OUR WOMEN" can you provide a receipt for these women?
OMG, after being made Ukrainian citizen today, former US State Dept official takes reigns at Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance. Coup much?
I hope The Sun will soon establish for us the exact income level at which it is permissible to discuss inequality.
Ukip anger as Nigel Farage on church mural with Adolf Hitler, Oswald Mosley and Nick Griffin
The top 1 000 have more than doubled their wealth since banking crash, bankers bonuses continue unabated
Richest tory MP’S slams welfare state but makes £625k a yr in housing benefit
UKIP is the homeopathy of politics. Utterly baffling to sensible people, and harmful because is seems to present a solution.
Garner is unarmed. The chokehold is banned. The coroner ruled it a homicide. It is on video. None of this matters #ICantBreathe #EricGarner
#EricGarner Reminder: White cop IMMEDIATELY FIRED after photos show him choking white student
Clear message sent by #NYPD: cop kills unarmed #EricGarner, no charges. Man films cop killing Eric, charged & arrested. #Priorities
Shot 72 people and killed 12 in a movie theatre and was subdued and arrested unharmed. #CrimingWhileWhite
Looks like cameras aren’t gonna do much. Let’s try outfitting cop uniforms with non racist cops.
‘Poor’ #Farage finds it hard to get by on £109k/yr plus expenses. In his £540k ‘little house’
Real story from #AutumnStatement is we’re not even half way through Osborne’s spending cuts yet. 60% of cuts to come
£300 a day tax-free Tory crony unelected lawmaker: "Poor people use food banks because they ‘don’t know how to cook"
Tory Baroness who slammed food banks is on Lords committee that spent £250k on Champagne http://mirr.im/12EbRsv
"Poor people don’t know how to cook" – who’s been cooking for your family for the last 100 yrs? You chinless shit-house #baronessjenkin
Labour poll 36%, lead up to 3% Tory toff says let them eat gruel UKIP imploding LibDems (who?) All in all another bad day for Ed Miliband
people on benefits shouldn’t be allowed to have so many children if they can’t afford to keep them ” #skypapers
"These men (CIA) were patriots," says George W. Bush. Shame he wasn’t around in 1945. We’d have had no need for all that Nuremberg murlarky.
Yes we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Americans during World War II, but it’s totally different – they were Japanese.
Privatisation makes life more expensive. So why are the tories selling off our NHS?
When you hear that there are no mental health beds in the UK remember that is AFTER ALL THE PRIVATE BEDS HAVE BEEN PAID FOR BY THE NHS.
Here’s an excellent image of a State-funded #foodbank. It CAN be done!!
Any worker thinking of voting Tory. This is a foodbank parcel for TWO people for THREE days. Think again. ”
Farage blames shortage of GPs on immigrants – who supply 26% of our doctors #bbcqt
And loveliest of lovely, General:
That "UK’s most popular baby name is Mohammed" story is based on users of one website. Official ONS baby names:
Just opened my Richard Dawkins advent calendar. No choc, just the words "THERE IS NO GOD YOU INTELLECTUAL PYGMY". Only 23 windows to go
Other top boys’ names:
3. Al-Baghdadi
4. NotAllMen
5. Jihadi John
6. Gove
7. MH370
8. Yewtree 9.
Putin
10. A Disaster For Ed Miliband
2014 Reindeer Names
-Twerker
-Vine Star
-Gamergate
-NotAllReindeer
-Selfie
-Benghazi
-Updog
-Jaden
PRISON TATTOO TIP: Certain symbols will help you join a gang, but getting a full body tattoo of a prison guard uniform can be very useful.
Obligatory reminder that Rosa Parks was a trained activist and the common myth that she was "just tired" exists to rob her of agency & power
“What day is it?" asked Pooh. "It’s today" squeaked Piglet. "My favorite day" said Pooh
NEWS! Daily Mail’s homeopathy supporters urged to try Ebola treatment on themselves http://bit.ly/12kw9HB
Wife: wtf is this pile of clothes doing on the floor?
Me: I struck down a Jedi.
W: god I hate you.
M: yes, use your hate
My favourite thing about Scooby-Doo is that supernatural events occur and nobody suspects the four out-of-towners with a talking dog.
"Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die…"
I love the little Christmas traditions we have as a family. Like the one where I sob "MUMMY’S DOING HER FUCKING BEST" into a pint of Bells.
Whole community being evicted by predatory landlords. You edit The Sun. Do you a. Attack landlords or b. Attack someone trying to stop it?
Looks like next year’s Booker Prize is going to be a shoe-in
Q: See, it looks like a micro pig. Bond: Right. Q: But, and this is the clever part, it’s just a piglet. Bond: Amazing. I’ll have four.
My cat is sad because life has given him many, many lemons & he cannot use them to make lemonade because he is a cat.
Haves and have-nots in one picture.
Baroque Obama.
Homesick lorry 🙁
AVOID crying when chopping onions by imagining George Osborne on fire.
If I’m ever on life support, unplug me. Then plug me back in. See if that works.
If US Govt keeps having to say: "this can’t be disclosed or it’ll make people violent toward us," shouldn’t that cause some self-reflection?
Now how am I going to get home?
US suspected FBI mole helped IRA plot to assassinate Margaret Thatcher – docs released after @GuardianUS FOI request http://gu.com/p/442c2/stw <<But before we raise the stars and stripes the bastards failed, don’t forget.
Unsure where to take your break in an artic? Double park alongside a row of parked cars. Sorted. # dickhead
(Truck with hazard lights on was parked up, driver eating his butties!)
I like to show my eloquence on twitter. I’ve always been articulate as fuck.
I can almost always tell if a move doesn’t use real dinosaurs
ENSURE your child understands the value of debating evolutionary theory by shouting "LIES!" & "PROVE IT!" during their nativity play.
New Norton. Want. £20k. Maybe not that badly.
This is Margaret Hamilton, NASA lead software engineer, and this is the Apollo guidance program she wrote.
There is absolutely no reason for me to treat amoral torture supporters with respect. Don’t ask me to do so. You’re vile scum.
Can you all remember over the years, where Electricity and Gas was based on the price of Oil, great news expect your bills to fall by 40%
Only elected politicians can have influence or opinions on politics. @rupertmurdoch for example is an impartial bystander.
Wondering which coat goes with: "This weekend will be dry and bright, with colder spells, residual Weather Bomb and chances of drizzle"
"Kim Kardashian: My Pregnancy Weight Was a Punishment from God." No, Kim. Your existence is.
According to Fox News, waterboarding people is OK, but giving them health insurance is inhumane.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Henry Ford
What’s in a name? Here’s how two mass shooters are described in news headlines right now. #SydneySiege #Pennsburg
.@UKIP secures control of £1.5m in EU funds set aside for parties promoting Europe integration http://bbc.in/1uPfzHM
I’m not going to kill anyone today" you say. Then you’re beset by fuckwits on M62. The road to Hull is paved with good intentions.
Kids killed in school in Pakistan: the culture of that country is savage Kids killed in school in America: this was the work of one monster
Nigel Farage dismisses claims that he is over-exposed on UK TV, during Blue Peter interview.
Journalists & a room of freebies it’s like a t-rex on a goat.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Bloody foreigners, coming over here, caring for our sick and elderly and saving lives.
"What’s that? You’re a ‘foreign’ nurse? Oh I think I’ll just sit here bleeding until a ‘British’ one is free," said nobody. Ever.
This quote really keeps haunting me. "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.” –ULG
This is Grumpy Cat’s ugly, less successful brother. Look at him. He has no notable features. Waste of our time.
Six years of Obama: healthcare, gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and opening up Cuba all happened. Bush: 9/11, war, torture, Nickleback
Nothing says ‘Christmas’ like the queue waiting for Cash Converters to open…
Ah, the pawn shop. Dickens would feel right at home. Rickets, dodgy facial hair, and crushing poverty. #cameronmustgo #cameronout
Look everyone – tribbles!
Anonymous threats by hackers against women: "grow thicker skin!" Anonymous threats by hackers against movie studios: "CODE RED! CODE RED"
if you’re outraged by north korea’s attacks on sony wait until you find out about that time north korea murdered it’s citizens for decades
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, and one billion dollars.
Kids "dad one day can we have a big house like Kate + William" Dad "We can barely afford theirs let alone one for us"
Heartwarming: Rupert Harrison, George Osborne’s chief adviser, gets an18% pay rise. Well, imposing a public sector pay freeze needs a reward
Rage. Rage. Against the jingling of the bells.
Conservatives set out plans to ‘ignore’ European human rights rulings, Just like that nice man Mr Hitler did #votetory
Police taser chocolate-crazed monkey that had been on the run for 2 weeks (he’s fine btw)
This picture leaves little to the imagination
Just had to remind Mr B that he was close to tears last night as he thought he’d let the cat down by being drunk
Entering the fruit and veg isle of the supermarket at Christmas is like entering the hunger games
When you accidentally eat your house keys because they fell inside your sandwich.
Later,
Buck.
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