Archive for WTF?

Parent forces school to cancel trip

January 3, 2010 Education, Scotland, WTF? 2 comments

A primary school in Inverness has cancelled an adventure holiday for its pupils after the mother of a disabled pupil threatened to sue the school for discrimination because her daughter was incapable of taking part.

Rather than tell the idiot mother to crawl back under whatever rock she’d dragged herself out from underneath, Highland Council has cancelled the trip.

The British government’s DirectGov website has these guidelines on obligations for service providers under the Disability Discrimination Act:

Under the DDA, it is against the law for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably than other people for a reason related to their disability. Service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the way they deliver their services so that disabled people can use them.

[…]

What is considered a ‘reasonable adjustment’ for a large organisation like a bank may be different to a reasonable adjustment for a small local shop. It is about what is practical in the service provider’s individual situation and what resources the business may have. They will not be required to make changes which are impractical or beyond their means.

Is there any reasonable adjustment that can be made to enable a disabled child whose mother says would be unable to take part in any of the physical activities to take part in an adventure holiday?  No, quite obviously not and Highland Council need a slap for caving in to this idiot.

Met Office severe weather warning out by almost 24 hours

December 29, 2009 WTF? One comment

The Met Office issued a severe weather warning yesterday for Shropshire, Herefordshire and eastern Wales, warning of up to almost 10″ of snow overnight.

I excitedly looked out of my window this morning to see this fine example of global warming at work and … nothing.  The forecast had been revised for late morning/early afternoon.  Took #1 to a birthday party shortly after lunch, no snow.  Went to the shops, no snow.  Picked up #1 at 5pm, no snow.

Finally, at about 7:15 this evening it started snowing.  It’s settling despite the couple of hours of rain we had previously but unless it starts coming down heavily through the night it’s going to be a light dusting in the morning.  Certainly nothing like the heavy and sudden snow we had in February.

All of which leads me to one very important question.  The Met Office is the British government’s advisor on climate change, handing it carefully crafted “predictions” on the climate for decades in advance.  Their predictions are used to form British government policy on the environment, taxation, industry, recycling, transport, civil liberties, energy security and more.  But if they can’t predict the weather 12 hours in advance, why do they expect us to believe their apocalyptic climate change predictions and why does the British government pretend that they are a reliable source of information?

Until the Met Office stop making outrageous, headline grabbing predictions like the annual prediction of a BBQ summer that fails to materialise, complete with associated health warnings and advice to paint your house white on the outside to reflect the heat, I can’t take them seriously.  While they continue to issue severe weather warnings that never happen or are completely out with their timings and predictions of how severe the weather is going to be, I will continue to treat every prediction they make with suspicion.

Weather forecasting is never going to be an exact science but missing the mark by almost 24 hours on a severe weather warning for 10″ of snow is ridiculous.  The Met Office would struggle to predict last week’s football results, let alone the earth’s climate in 50 years time based on dodgy data and an obvious inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Update: In the time it’s taken to type this post, the rain has turned to sleet and the snow is disappearing.

Bloggers4UKIP: Diplomatically incompetent, economically illiterate

December 11, 2009 Climate Change, Economy, WTF? No comments

Gordon Brown has plumbed new depths of diplomatic incompetence and financial illiteracy with the announcement that the UK will contribute £1.5bn to a £6.5bn fund for “poor” nations to combat climate change.

The pre-budget report this week set out the bleak outlook for the economy – taxes are going up, £30bn of extra pre-election vote buying, tens of billions of pounds of extra borrowing – but the chosen one has found a spare £1.5bn down the back of the sofa in Number 10 to spend on adverts showing drowning puppies and polar bears in the Seychelles.

But setting aside the idiocy of borrowing £1.5bn to give away to some corrupt, third world tinpot dictatorship to spend on guns and gold plated Mercedes, why are we paying one fifth of the amount being pledged in the name of the European Empire when there are another 26 member states who are supposedly out of recession?  No wonder the economy is in such a state when the person holding the purse strings thinks 6½ divided by 27 is 1½.

Fuck you Jack Straw

December 3, 2009 Police State, Political Correctness, Traitors, WTF? 8 comments

Female prisoners are very different to male prisoners, and while there is a consensus that we need to be tougher on male offenders there is also a broad consensus that where possible we should punish and reform females in the community and not in prisons.

– Jack Straw

What the fucking fuck?  No, seriously, what in the name of all that is fucking holy is that fucking idiot saying?  Women shouldn’t go to prison but men should, just because they’re women?  Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Is it a coincidence that the Equality Bill was passed today making discrimination against white men legal?  Is it bollocks.  Why must we endure this constant fucking battle just to be treated fairly?  Why do these people think it’s ok to treat white men like shit?

Well I’ve got a message for you Jack Straw you fucking fascist.  Fuck you.  Fuck your government and fuck your fucking illiberal, fascist fucking agenda.  I swear to god, if I ever see you in the street I’ll fucking spit on your shoes you fucking twisted, fascist bastard and if that’s all you get you’ll be fucking lucky.  There’s a special lampost reserved just for you outside parliament because come the revolution comrade, you will be the first one swinging.

Free £200 school trip (terms & conditions apply)

November 12, 2009 Education, WTF? One comment

#2 came home from school today with a letter offering him a trip to Arthog for a week.

Arthog is an outdoor adventure centre in Snowdonia owned by Telford & Wrekin Council (our local authority) that’s used mainly by schools in Shropshire.

This trip costs £200 for 5 days – not the cheapest school trip but #1 went last year and had a great time.  But what is unbelievable is that the letter says that any kids who are entitled to free school meals are also entitled to a free trip to Arthog, as are those whose parents are on income support.  And how do they subsidise the kids whose parents aren’t paying?  By charging more for the kids whose parents do pay.  This is what they do with every school trip – the last few have come in at £8 and some of them started off lower and then went up when they’d worked out how many parents were prepared to pay.

Of course, with unemployment the way it is, there’s an increase in the number of genuine cases where people have lost their jobs and are on income support but there are a core of parents that don’t work – the ones that are often carrying carrier bags full of beer when they drop them off and pick their kids up – and refuse to pay for trips because the letter says the payment is voluntary (even though it says the trip may be cancelled if not enough pay) and brag about the fact.

The other day one of the kids brought home a letter saying the British government were going to pay for a computer and 12 months of broadband for anyone who is eligible for free school meals.

It’s a great wheeze this free school meals thing, it’s just a shame people who work for a living aren’t entitled to anything.

Queue? What queue?

November 8, 2009 WTF? 3 comments

One thing the English are famous for is queuing.  But someone forgot to tell that to the people at the petrol station today.

Every pump was taken with people waiting so I positioned myself strategically covering both sides of one pair of pumps.  Then a woman came out of the forecourt shop and got into her car and then pulled alongside the car in front of me that was parked up at a pump.  I assumed she was waiting for someone else to come out of the shop but she then pulled into the pump in front which had just been vacated by a motorbike!

A pump on the other side of the forecourt was vacated so someone else who was waiting alongside me pulled up and very kindly waited while the woman in the pump in front of him adjusted her mirror, did her makeup, tinkered with her hair, etc (I’m exaggerating) so he could pull alongside the front pump so I didn’t have to wait.  Which was very nice of him and much appreciated.

While I was filling up an old dear pootled onto the forecourt, drove in front of a waiting car and despite the waiting driver honking her horn at her, pulled up alongside a newly vacant pump.  She then proceeded to sit about 5ft away from the pump and presumably waited for the car in front of her to finish filling up and leave.  I say presumably because I had time to put diesel in the car, queue at the till, pay and drive off while the old dear just sat there blocking a vacant pump that she’d got to by queue jumping.

Bizarre.

Manifesto Clubs calls on schools to stop demonising children

November 5, 2009 Education, England, Police State, Political Correctness, WTF? One comment

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises.

The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism and called for changes to the law that requires English schools to fill out racist incident forms every time a child says something that could be construed as racist.

Most of the children accused of racism on these forms are between 9 and 11 years of age.

Help me, I’m turning into my dad

October 27, 2009 WTF? One comment

I’m away from home this week on a training course and I took a walk into Watford town centre this evening to find somewhere to eat.

Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe society realy is taking a turn for the worst because I found myself shaking my head in dismay at the sights that greeted me on Watford High Street.

The sight of a good looking woman in a mini skirt is certainly nothing to complain about but when young girls who don’t look old enough to be out on their own after dark (some of them looking no more than 13 or 14 years old) are walking around dressed in something like this * …

… then a) I don’t want to see it and b) what the fuck are they doing out at night in a street full of bars dressed like whores?

Do their parents know where they are?  Do they know they’re tottering down Watford High Street in 6 inch heels and a mini skirt so short it barely covers the cheeks of their arse shouting at gangs of lads?  If not, why not?  And if they do then why do they allow their young daughter to go out dressed like a paedophile’s wet dream?

I swear to god, if my daughter ever came down the stairs dressed like that she’d get through the front door over my cold dead body.

Christ, I’m turning into my dad.  Somebody shoot me!

* The picture isn’t of one of the 13 or 14 year old girls, I’m not a paedophile

This is a local cafe for local people

October 16, 2009 Apartheid, WTF? No comments

Our poor precious MPs aren’t very happy MPs Onlythat the number of seats reserved for them and their guests in the Strangers Cafe in the House of Commons has been reduced so that the peasants don’t have to wait so long while the MP’s reserved seating area sits half empty.

Fifteen MPs have signed a motion complaining that:

[there is] often insufficient capacity for hon Members and their guests

… and …

that no consultation of Honourable Members took place prior to the decision

I rather think that the MPs in question may have answered their own complaint.  There is sufficient capacity for honourable members in the back of my car and I have no doubt the parliamentary authorities would have debated the decision with honourable members were they able to find some that hadn’t done the honourable thing and resigned.

Och aye the fucking noo

October 14, 2009 Scotland, WTF? 6 comments

A translation company is advertising for “Glaswegian English” interpreters.

The advert says:

“GLASWEGIAN” Interpreters: Translation company seeks speakers of “Glaswegian English” with knowledge of vocabulary, accent, nuances, to meet interpreting needs of clients who fund it an unexpected challenge.

I expect the Scottish government will be giving out grants for “Glaswegian English” interpreters before long.

Shropshire Star: Man sends out council ‘fine’ over bin upset

September 18, 2009 Telford, WTF? 4 comments

The Shropshire Star evidently thought my wheelie bin “upset” was newsworthy as well as the BBC …

Man sends out council ‘fine’ over bin upset

A Telford man has sent his own “funny” fine of £75 to the council over his wheelie bin being left in the street.  He said he was annoted that the bin was never returned and blocked the street.

Stuart Parr of Brookside, in Telford, said he was tired of refuse collectors leaving his wheelie bin on the road.

Mr Parr alleges his bins are taken from a designated spot in his garden and not put back in the same place, resulting in him trying to fine Telford & Wrekin Council.

He said: “I am fed up of having to get up and drag my bins back after they just leave them on the street.

“They are leaving them on the road rather than on the pavement.  So I sent them a funny fine.  I didn’t get a formal response from them but I know they got the fine because I know someone who works there and they told me they got it.

“I got a phone call to say they would make sure it would not happen again.  Then last Thursday they emptied the bins in the road and left them in my street at the end of the drive.

“When my wife came home and wanted to get the car in she had to stop in the road and move the bins before she could park, they were blocking the road – it’s an irritation.”

Telford & Wrekin Council cabinet member for the environment, Councillor Steve Bentley, said: “I can confirm we have received a complaint from Mr Parr.

“We are now working with our contractors to try and help resolve matters to his satisfaction.”

Just to clarify something which neither the BBC or Shropshire Star have made clear: the road outside my house is no more than a car and a half wide which means that when the bins are left in the road – particularly when they’re left “double parked” with the next door neighbours’ bins – they are causing an obstruction.  I recently spent 10 minutes being entertained by a fire engine trying to do a three point turn in our cul-de-sac after being sent the wrong way by its sat-nav.  The road was designed – like so many others in the 60’s and 70’s – for Mini’s, Fiat 125’s, Renault 5’s and the like and not for modern cars.

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Mandelson the Incompetent strikes again

September 18, 2009 WTF? One comment

Is it unreasonable to expect that the Business Secretary might have some small amount of business sense?

The British government recently confirmed that it intends to build a number of nuclear power stations in England which will, of course, require a large number of experts in the field of nuclear energy.  Experts such as the Atomic Energy Agency.  These experts don’t come cheap so it’s a good job the Atomic Energy Agency is state owned isn’t it?

Enter Peter Mandelson, failed MP, failed international marxist, failed EU commissioner and now failing Business Secretary.  His bright idea for a cheap, secure nuclear energy industry?  Sell the commercial arm of the Atomic Energy Agency to Babcock for £50m.

As the developed world moves towards nuclear energy for its future energy needs, in the knowledge that windmills and solar panels will never produce enough electricity to satisfy demand, Mandelson sells off yet another state-owned nuclear asset.  The Atomic Energy Agency will join the now French-owned British Energy (formerly BNFL) in charging the British government commercial rates for the commission and maintenance of critical infrastructure and all we have to show for it is a paltry £50m.  That won’t cover more than a few minutes of interest payments on national debt.

And this is the man that will lead the Liebour Party when El Gordo is deposed?

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Must be a slow news week

September 17, 2009 BBC, Telford, WTF? 2 comments

I thought the media silly season was over now the British government are off their 3 month holidays but apparently not.  Either that or my wheelie bin story is more interesting than I thought.

On Tuesday a BBC reporter turned up at my house unannounced wanting to talk to me about the wheelie bins.  He left a card so I called him back and he came round and interviewed me about it yesterday lunchtime.  At lunchtime today I got a call from the Shropshire Star asking some questions about it and for a copy of the fine I sent to the council back in June.  Now I’ve just had the guy from the BBC on the phone again saying the Press Association wants to talk to me and can he pass my phone number on?

Bizarre.

Edit:
I’m on the BBC News website!

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From the makers of “Microsoft Time” …

September 6, 2009 Technology, WTF? 2 comments

CPU running at 100.5% ... apparently… Microsoft Percentages!

I’m sure every Windows user has experienced the curious phenomenon of “Microsoft Time” which uses the same units as normal time – hours, minutes, seconds – but in an entirely random way so you can never know whether “15 seconds” to copy a file in Microsoft time means 15 seconds, 5 minutes or 2 seconds of normal time.  It all adds to that unique Windows user experience and I’m sure we wouldn’t have it any other way.

But is it really necessary to invent “Microsoft Percentages” to randomly gauge the performance of your processor?  Is my processor really running at 100.5% utilisation?  I suspect not.  And why is the progress bar at 50%?  Does Windows expect the processor to ramp up to 200% utilisation at some point?

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Helpful …

August 19, 2009 WTF? 2 comments

We were unable to upload this document because of this error:

Sorry, there was an error saving the file. Please try again.

This error message comes from the converter we’re using, and hopefully tells you what you need to know to fix the problem.

I got the above trying to upload a 700k Excel 2003 file to Google Docs.  Uncharacteristically unhelpful and pointless error message from Google.

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Move over Sherlock

August 18, 2009 WTF? 5 comments

On the front page of the Shropshire Star (yes, the front page) yesterday was a story about the statue of Charles Darwin outside Shresbury Library sprouting a traffic cone over the weekend.

This isn’t about the newsworthiness, or otherwise, of the Shropshire Star’s front page stories but the quote from the librarian, Mrs Buckley:

It’s something that does happen from time to time and I think it’s just people messing about

Erm … if it wasn’t just people messing about, what was it?  Millitant WI members protesting at the blasphemous image of Satan’s worker, Charles Darwin?  Aliens?  Shropshire is supposed to be a bit of a UFO hotspot after all.

Someone’s trying to prove themselves the exception to the laws of evolution I think …

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Another half a million will be in fuel poverty in 12 months time

June 27, 2009 Climate Change, Come the revolution, Propaganda, Traitors, WTF? 5 comments

El Gordo wants to set up a £60bn climate change fund to help poor countries come up with bullshit ways to deal with climate change.

Meanwhile, BBC News is reporting this morning (on the TV but not on the website for some reason) that an extra half a million families could be forced into fuel poverty because electricity companies are being forced to spend billions on expensive, inefficient and unreliable windmills instead of cheap, reliable power stations to hit bullshit government targets.

This is just getting beyond a fucking joke.  Climate change has been happening for millions of years and it will continues to happen for millions of fucking years.  There is no proof – not one single piece of evidence that stands up to the briefest of scrutiny – that the climate is being changed by human activity in any significant or detrimental way.

Windmills and solar panels can’t even come close to producing enough electricity to meet demand.  Relying on “renewable” energy will turn electricity into a luxury that only the ruling classes can afford which will, of course, solve the problem of electricity rationing which we will be seeing in the next few years.

And to rub salt into the wound, we’re going to be contributing our “fair share” of a £60bn fund so that corrupt third world despots can come up with similar bullshit claimte change policies while an extra half a million people are expected to be spending 10% of their income on gas and electricity in the next 12 months.

Where on earth can I get away from this fucking bullshit?  I swear to god, much more of this and I’m going to go postal in Westminster Palace.

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Warning, may contain raisins

June 22, 2009 WTF? 3 comments

Printed on a box of raisins from Asda:

Ingredients:
Raisins (100%).
Suitable for Vegetarians.

Do we really a list of ingredients in a box of raisins?  And is there anyone, anywhere on the planet (except Glasgow) who doesn’t realise that fruit is suitable for vegetarians?

As the late, great Douglas Adams said in So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy):

Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.

‘It seemed to me,’ said Wonko the Sane, ‘that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.’

Madness.

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Putting the cart before the horse

June 12, 2009 Federal Europe, Technology, WTF? 11 comments

Thanks to our glorious overlords on the continent and their proxy war with the US through the medium of anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft, Windows 7 in Europe will ship without Internet Exploder.

Yes, Internet Explorer is a shit browser but there are plenty of websites out there that just don’t work properly with Firefox and other browsers and lots of people that aren’t comfortable with downloading and installing software.  Not being able to buy a computer, plug it in and browse the internet without any faffing about will put off so many computer illiterate people from buying a computer and getting themselves online.

Presumably nobody at the European Imperial Commission foresaw any potential problems with this scenario …

European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.

And which browser will they use to get to a website to download a web browser, pray tell?

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Institutional discrimination in the Ministry for Inequality

May 13, 2009 Political Correctness, Propaganda, WTF? No comments

The Ministry for Inequality really is a bottomless pit of hypocrisy.  I sent the following Freedom of Information request the other day:

1.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. Male
b. Female

2.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. White English (or British if you don’t record English nationality)
b. White non-English (or British if you don’t record English
nationality)
c. BME

3.  What plans there are to appoint a Minister for Men.  If there are
none, why not?

The Ministry for Inequality has a Minister for Women but no Minister for Men and the three Ministers for Equality are women.  As expected, the Ministry for Inequality is heavily biased against men in its workforce as well:

Dear Mr Parr

GEO/09/FOI/000024

Thank you for your request for information sent on 28 April, which we have dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act.  I can confirm that the Department holds the information you are seeking.

1.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. Male
b. Female

Of our 118 staff in post:
42 are male &
76 are female.

2.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. White English (or British if you don’t record English nationality)
b. White non-English (or British if you don’t record English
nationality)
c. BME

Of the staff that have declared their ethnic identity:

36 are White British
30 are from Another white backgrounds
11 are from Black African/Caribbean background.

3.  What plans there are to appoint a Minister for Men.  If there are
none, why not?

Ministerial appointments are a matter for the Prime Minister.  The second part of your question is not strictly a Freedom of Information request, however we are sometimes asked about a Minister for Men. The following is the response that we use :

“The Government recognises that there are areas in British society where men face disadvantage or discrimination but the quickest glance at our income and poverty figures will show that overall, women are the main victims of inequality in our country.

This remains true today despite the passing of the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination legislation almost 40 years ago. For example:

Women account for over half of the United Kingdom’s population, but only make up 19.4% of MPs and 29.3% of local councillors.
Black, Asian and Ethnic minority women account for 11.6% of the UK’s female population but make up less than 1% of local councillors.
Only 11% of the directors in the boardrooms of the top 100 FTSE companies are female;
The gap between the pay of male and female workers is currently 12.6% for full times and 39.1% for part-timers.
In 2007/08 there were 106 homicides where the perpetrator was the partner/ex-partner of the victim. Of these, 72 victims were female and 34 male;
Women still shoulder the lion’s share of caring for the old and the young and 90.5% (2001 Census) of lone parents are female.”

So almost two thirds of the Ministry for Inequality’s employees are women, they have no male ministers and there are no plans to create a Minister for Men to represent the specific interests of men in the same way that the Minister for Women does for women.  White “British” (I would imagine “British” in this case mostly means English as the Ministry for Inequality is in London) employees are also in a minority if the recorded information is representative of the whole workforce.
How on earth can the Ministry for Inequality use the way people vote as justification for discrimination?  If we didn’t vote for any women in the next election, what business is that of the state?  The whole point of democracy is that we can vote for who we want, when we want.

There are plenty of women working their way up through the ranks at FTSE100 companies but large multi-nationals tend not to employ people just because they’re women, being able to run a large multi-national is usually one of the key requirements.

How much of the “gender pay gap” is down to the type of work being done rather than the fact that they’re women?

Is the Ministry for Inequality really suggesting that a Minister for Women can reduce the number of women murdered by their current or former partner?  Does Ms Harperson also have the answer to the problems in the middle east and a cure for cancer?

And the reason why 90.5% of single parents are women is because the system is institutionally biased towards women.  In cases of marital breakdown, the mother will automatically be given custody unless there is a good reason not to.

So the Ministry for Equality really doesn’t live up to its name at all.  Institutional discrimination is clearly rife in the Ministry for Inequality but they don’t seem to have any intention to clean their act up despite intending to pass a bill forcing companies to publish this sort of information.  If publicising the gender bias in the Ministry for Inequality doesn’t banish discrimination in a government department, why is it going to make a difference in a private company?

Harriet Harperson is a shamelss hypocrite.  Don’t forget to sign the petition calling on the Prime Minister to appoint a Minister for Men and deal with the gender bias in the Ministry for Inequality.

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