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Three Lions kissing my arse

It's nearly world cup time again. It hardly seems like 4 years since fans rioted on the streets of Germany.

Ok so I lied, hardly any fans rioted in Germany. Maybe that's because they knew that they'd be taken away for a 'special shower' if they did.

Before I start the rant that this blog entry is surely destined to be, I should be open and honest and lay my cards on the table. I am Scottish. Ok I said it. We Scots have a reputation of hating the English, their football team in particular and supporting 'anyone who plays England'. This usually brings on the pathetic retorts from the xenophobic fuckwits at large such as 'if you don't like it here, fuck off home'. No thanks, I rather like it here. I don't hate the English in fact I live in England, I love it here, I consider it my home in fact. When I go to visit Scotland I can't wait to get back home, to England.

The facts above should lend particular weight and credence to the arguments I am about to present, hopefully.

I hate English football. I hate the team and I especially hate anyone who supports the team. I hate the World Cup and I hate the European championships. I can hear screams of 'go home then' being transmitted through the internet already. So why could a man who so loves living and working in England, who considers it his home indeed, hate the very soil that his fellow countrymen walk on?

Humility

Yes read it and try with your tiny mind to understand. Humility. Something that evades 99.99% of England fans. Let me offer a little insight into an age old question. A question that has been debated on countless talk radio station over the years, a question that has been drunkenly discussed in pubs north and south of the border for many a moon. The question is this:

Why do the Scottish hate the England football team so much?

Many postulations have been made over this age old question. Many a drunken night has been spent discussing and falling out over just this question. Many talk radio hours have been wasted giving air time to English people claiming the Scots are just jealous and counter claims by the Scots that the English are just stuck up bastards. I can reveal, neither are correct. Although both have an element of truth.

I can reveal in a scoop: The reason that the Scottish people hate the England football team and the English fans so much is quite simple: Expectation of triumph.

Don't believe me? Just switch on your radio and listen to any English DJ who shows any passing interest in football. As I write this the date is 02nd June. I listen to a UK wide radio station everyday, I like the DJ who does the breakfast show, although he is predisposed to football and for the last month (at least) he has been talking about England WINNING the World Cup. Not participating, not getting to the quarters or the semis, not doing well, WINNING.

That is why Scottish people hate anything to do with English football. It's not jealousy as most people believe. It's not because Scots just hate the English whatever. It's because of the expectation of triumph that every England fan seems to be predisposed to.

You see the Scottish people know and understand that they have a shit football team. We know this, it's no revelation to us that every 2 years we swallow down the phlegm of sporting disappointment as our team either fail to qualify or do qualify and then crash out in the first round. But we don't ever expect to win, we have a humility that carries us through this disappointment and spits us out at the other end with a sense that we done shit, but hey we're Scottish and we didn't expect anything else, lets get drunk anyway, and hey, there's always next time huh?

The English however are a completely different breed. Fuelled by fuckwit DJ's preaching what they mistake for patriotism or nationalism, there's not an English football fan in the country that doesn't believe they are going to win the World Cup by the time the first ball is kicked. I can't blame them. I always watch the English games and usually for the first 5 mins I am supporting England. Yes you read it correctly, I support England. That is until.... the commentators (usually John Motson) starts reeling off the old cliches like the following or at least including the following words:

1966

Geoff Hurst

England's famous 5-1 defeat over Germany

the Scottish stole the goalposts from Wembley

We was robbed by Maradona/Argentina

Three lions

Bobby Charlton

...and sundry other bullshit. As soon as the commentary starts on the first England game of the World Cup I can bet that one of the commentators will start to moot the idea that England can actually win the whole championship, quoting some or all of the above as evidence of England's impending triumph.

So what am I actually getting at here? After all what is the point in taking part in a competition such as the World Cup if you don't set out to win? The problem is that England fans have an expectation of triumph, unwavering and unswerving confidence in victory, a victory so sweet and so perfect that for ANOTHER 44 years we good people of the British Isles will never hear the end of it. This is unacceptable. Believe it or not, everyone knows the England football team are one of the the best in the world, but no one wants them to win because we couldn't possibly stomach the arrogance, overbearing and conceited pride that the average Englishman would walk around displaying like a bloated cockerel with three lions on his beer belly.

The untermensch of this land oft wander around screaming "2 world wars and 1 world cup" when England play Germany. They say this like they were actually there at Dunkirk, having their legs blown off and their friends decapitated by German Panzerfaust. So proud they are of their football team they suffer extreme delusions of participation in WW2.

That's why everyone except the English hate the English football team. It's not because we are bitter at being shit at football, it's not because we just hate the English with no justifictation, it's not even because you talk funny. It's because you are a nation of swaggeringly arrogant, immodest, narcissistic, pompous, conceited, egotistical cunts.

Go get some humility, then I might change my mind. But you know what, I bet you are so arrogant, you don't even care.

On the 11th of July this year I hope to be singing "1 Eurovision song contest and 1 World Cup" for obvious reasons.

Fairness, equality and discrimination.

Unless you have been living in a news vacuum or mental institution for the last month, you will know there is a UK general election just around the corner.

In the last weeks the main political parties have rolled out their manifestos as if they were rusty old lawnmowers which have been festering in the political sheds for the last 5 years. All have had one common theme, fairness.

Except of course for the SNP (Scottish National Party). In the true xenophobic bigoted ignorance which runs as a steady undercurrent of sewage in Scotland, they have set out their manifesto as: vote for us and we'll protect the things that are important to Scottish people. Surely the first time that square sausage, cheap booze, batter and heroin have been the centre piece of a political party's stall.

Alongside fairness, there has been countless debate on talk radio and sundry other news outlets about equality and discrimination. These three ideas: fairness, equality and discrimination are all components of the misdirection which seems to be driving this election.

In the most simple terms I can muster, there is no difference between the two biggest parties at the moment. They are vying for the same piece of middle ground and simultaneously losing. The issues which have been highlighted are so subjective as to be laughable. Come on, discrimination? Please. Everyone thinks that they are discriminated against at some level. usually they are the bullshit rhetoric cliches which are trotted out day after day in the media i.e:

I'm black, I have been disadvantaged by not being given the same educational and social standards as a white person....... FUCKING LIES

I'm a white middle class person (usually a line trotted out by the white working class) and I feel discriminated against because I don't get the same concessions and allowances as..(insert: blacks, muslims, asylum seekers etc here)..... FUCKING LIES

I am a mum, although I cry a lot and am essentially a shell of the person I once was, I now believe I'm a super strong woman who would do anything for my children and I feel discriminated against because...(insert: there aren't enough mother and child spaces at Tesco, I can't have any more than a year off work when I shit out another kid, I can't get my kid into my choice of school even though I've bought a house in a specific area for that sole purpose).... FUCKING LIES

So as you can see, I think if you really drilled into everyone's psyche that 95% of people believe they have a valid reason to infer discrimination against themselves. In reality, it's bullshit. We live in the UK, the laws of this country and the multicultural society that we live in means there are very few people who could claim actual discrimination.

The definition of discrimination has become clouded with ideas of race and religion, these are the two main protagonists of the grounds on which people believe they are discriminated against.

Here is a different and I think, clearer definition of discrimination, from Dictionary.com

something that serves to differentiate

So discrimination is essentially, being different. This is why, as political ideal, discrimination is a winner, because everyone is different. So we all could have a fairly water-tight case in saying that we are discriminated against in some respect.

The idea of fairness plays into the hands of someone who believes they have been discriminated against. Another winner with everyone. Equality? Same story, doesn't everyone want to be equal, no they don't, only the people who perceive themselves to be 'less than' equal, actually want everyone to be equal. And I'm sure if I took a straw pole in the local High St, I could find that everyone thought of themselves as 'less equal' than some other section of society.

So what do the political parties really purport to do about all this discrimination, inequality and unfairness? Perhaps we should all become Communists? Yes that's it, lets live under a totalitarian regime. For that is truly the only way to iron out the inequalities in society, is it not? Well I for one don't want to be queueing up at the supermarket to find the shelves bare. Communism has been tried and it doesn't work. As much as the idea of driving around in a papier mache car and growing potatoes for my dinner appeals, it won't work.

Why can't people realise that we are all born different? I might be tall and strong, but I also have bad teeth. Things always balance out in life and voting for a certain political party because they promise to make everyone equal is just madness.

I live in the London Borough of Sutton. It's a 'two horse race' here between the Tories and the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems have been in power since I've lived here (10 years). I don't mind admitting that I've always voted for them and will do in the future unless something radical happens to their ideals.

They have a good local council, Sutton is one of the safest places in London (when I'm at home), they take account of the views of the people who live here and despite a few little (forgivable) mistakes they have made, they keep the borough in good shape, it is a desirable place to live.

So in the run up to this election the Tories have been out in force, trying to run down the Lib Dems, with no real evidence or justification to back it up. The Conservative candidate Phillipa Stroud is a Cameron clone, a smile on a stick, a career politician. She sends out mail shots with the holier than thou message that she'll 'fight a fair campaign, it won't be personal'. The reason for that is our MP Paul Burstow, is squeaky clean, a model politician, I know, I've trawled through his expenses when they were released. So she couldn't hope to do otherwise. It's a real irony, shes fighting a 'fair campaign' yet when I drive around there are 15 foot high pictures of Gordon Brown, grinning and telling me he's going to steal my pension and give it to and Afghan asylum seeker, all funded by the Conservatives of course.

Paul Burstow and his cronies visited my house in their publicity marathon in the run up to the election. One of his councillors came to my door and I seen him walk down the street. I told her that I wanted to speak to him and he duly came back and spent 10 mins chatting. I quite unfairly (see, there's the fairness again) pounced on something he'd once said against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. I gave him a 5 minute diatribe on the importance of the airline industry to a country which has systematically destroyed every industry which we could have been proud of. To his credit, he listened and he told me his thoughts on it. No Bullshit, no excuses, no flannel, none of the usual political misdirection usually employed by MP's. He's a real person, not one of the Westminster massive, using your tax pounds to pimp their second homes (duck houses, moats, toilet seats, buy porn films etc).

For me the Lib Dems are the only choice for this country. Everyone has been banging on about how there is no difference between the main political parties. This is true of Labour and the Tories. There was a televised debate (the first of 3) between the three party leaders. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader undoubtedly came out on top. Gordon Blair... sorry Brown and David Cameron spent the whole debate trying to run each other down. They argued backwards and forwards about which successive governments had made the worst job of running the country. Nothing positive, nothing of substance, just empty political promises which have been made time and again with little or no action or results.

Nick Clegg was different. He said things that meant something, he had ideas, some which he'd been talking about for years and which Cameron and Brown had suddenly adpoted as their own. There seemed to be a common sense and an honesty which could only come from a party which probably believes they have no real chance of getting into power, after all, what have they got to lose by telling the truth? Nothing. Labour and the Conservatives have had 65 years to run the country, it's time for a change now.

Let someone else have a go, after all, it's only fair isn't it?

Dog Shit

I seen something that was very rare today. As I was driving to work I passed a dog, on it's own, which had just squatted down on the pavement and was curling off a huge pooh. It was a very small dog and a very huge turd, relatively speaking. If I had a shit that big, relative to my body size, it would have been like squeezing out a large brown cucumber.

Now I say this was rare for 2 reasons. Firstly, in this country I think it's fairly rare nowadays to see a dog wandering about on it's own, no owner in sight, no poopascoop at the ready. In France, where people are filthy and have no morals, it's probably a common sight. The second reason I thought of it as rare occurrence is that I don't often see dogs having a shit these days, call me insular if you will.

This scene had filled me with a sense of satisfaction and by the time I'd gotten to work I felt compelled to share the fact in a Facebook update. That prompted the questions, why was I so satisfied by seeing a dog have a crap and why did it play on my mind to an extent that I'm now writing about it.

Just a quick reality check for myself at this point: I am 33, I'm writing on the internet about a dog shitting on a pavement, there'd better be point to this.

Anyway, I started to think about why a dog and a log had caught my eye. The dog looked happy, he needed a pooh and he just jolly well sat down and let it out. We as humans are so constrained by the boundaries society and moral understanding/expectations place on us. Whether that is about bodily functions or otherwise, we are bound to act by a code of what is acceptable and what is not. We all have the nightmares about arriving in work and being totally naked, with an erection and having to have a wee in the corner, or is that just me? OK, maybe an extreme example, but our brains play out these mortally embarrassing scenarios whilst we sleep. Whether that is our brain's way of release, or simply to sub consciously prepare us for situations of emotional stress, or just to get it's own back for all the horrible things we put it through from day to day, who knows. But the fact stands, these scenarios are some of the things that petrify us most, because as humans, a civilised race (French excluded) we find the thought of doing this, or at least being caught doing this, abhorrent.

So what about the dog? He didn't give a shit, or rather, he did. He didn't care that I was watching him, or that other cars and other people were passing. He either didn't care about what people thought, or didn't have the self-awareness to understand. I have often felt quite jealous of my cats for this same reason. They only care about 2 things, food and security. As long as they've got those, nothing else matters:
Got fleas, don't care. Licking my arse in the front garden, don't care. Petrol prices gone up again, couldn't give a fuck as long as I've got a locking cat flap and some tuna.
That's their attitude to everything. Sometimes I wonder if I'd trade my self-awareness to live without boundaries and self imposed stress for a day.

They say "It's a dog's life" and now I know why. They can shit anywhere, that's why. But the shit isn't just brown and smelly faecal matter. The shit is their freedom from expectation and self-awareness that we humans hold so dear. So when I seen that dog laying a "dog egg" today a little bit of me felt jealous that I couldn't just squat down anywhere I like and shit on the idea that I have to conform to what society expects of me.

The sense of satisfaction I felt came from the knowledge that although the dog was just an animal and probably dependent on a human for it's ultimate survival, for that moment the image of it having a shit on the pavement embodied freedom. So from now on, when politicians or religious extremists or anyone for that matter, talk of freedom, I shall be thinking of that little dog and doubtless a smile will come to my face.

Confucius (should have) said: for a man to truly find his freedom, he must shit on the pavement.

Seecuhritaaahy

Everyone is so paranoid about security these days. I have to admit I have become just as paranoid about it too. Having had my credit card details stolen twice, but fortunately the fraudulent transactions have been intercepted by the bank. It's no wonder I'm a little suspicious about the security of my personal details. So as a precaution I now use the same strong password for every account I have whether online or otherwise.

It's really simple to remember: ●●●●●●●●

It's just 8 black dots, easy.

Guns don't kill people, tourists do.

I watched the film Hostel 2 last night. In the same vein as the first, the film depicts people being lured into a foreign Hostel, where they are captured and taken to a mass torture facility, where rich people pay to torture and kill them, fulfilling their own psychotic and often sexual fantasies. A nice sunday afternoon family film for sure. In the second part the film not only follows the victims but also 2 men 'murder tourists' if you will, prepared to partake in the act of torture and murder in the hope of changing their own life for the better.

I was watching the film thinking, I bet this really happens somewhere. What are the great taboos of civilised society? Illegal sex is one of them, sex with children, but allegedly (I say allegedly, it's a well documented fact) 'sex tourists' can go to Thailand or Cambodia to indulge in such a truly evil and mentally retarded practice. Drugs are another taboo in civilised society, but there are plenty of places in the world where anyone can go to indulge in whatever they like.

So is it really so inconceivable that a place exists that people, with enough money and no morals, can go to torture and murder innocent people?

I believe this is not too far from the truth, it happens somewhere. There are enough impoverished people in the world that would be easy targets, living in slums, with no family, no one to care about or protect them. These people could be easy targets, viewed as sub-human by some Western cultures no doubt. Perhaps these poor people's lives would be thought of as having less value than someone from a rich society who has the means and will to sustain their own life and develop it. So I am under no doubt as to the fact that there would be rich pickings around the world for any organisation wanting to set up such an operation.

It is possible, but is it conceivable?

I think it is. Killing someone is the greatist taboo of the human race. No matter how much of it is around, in wars, in the national or local news. The fact remains that humans, in general, know that killing another human is a bad thing. It is held as the highest of all crimes in Law: Murder. So if there is a rule, a moral, a code or a law, we as flawed and perverted creatures will seek to ignore it and want to do it anyway. For these reasons I fully believe that the greed of our species will seek to exploit this taboo for it's own gratification and proliferation.

So what would it be like to kill someone?

I find it a matter of some intrigue. Now I must state here that I'm not going to rush out and slice some poor bastard up, just to indulge that. But what is it like? The moment when such a complex organism, capable of thought and reasoning and self awareness just dies. Imagine it, something that lived, that had thoughts and memories and opinions, just gone. The shell of the organism still present as a dead body, but the body isn't the person, the person is gone forever. What must it feel like to be directly responsible for extinguishing that life. It's curious, that's for sure. I don't think I ever want to see someone die and I realise that some people who read this will have had the experience of watching someone die and not have relished it, in fact, quite possibly be scarred by it.

The whole matter leaves me confused. With so many questions:

What is it like to kill?
If life isn't the body, or the brain, then what is it?
Could someone gain a greater understanding of life by extinguishing one?
How would it change my perception of my life seeing another life disappear?
What drives serial muderers to repeat the process most people find so abhorent?
Why has each of these questions got longer until now?

Maybe that's why people want to kill. To answer these questions. I know I couldn't do it. We all joke about it and make flippant comments "I could fucking kill that bastard" or "I wish he was dead". But when it really comes down to it most of us, thankfully, couldn't kill a fellow human.

Perhaps the reason we can't kill is that we spend so much of our lives actively trying to stay alive. Protecting ourselves from real and perceived threats. Insuring our lives and those of our loved ones. Is that what makes us cherish life and hold it sacred, that we realise the fragility of our own life?

Luckily I have never been in the position to suspect that my life is about to end iminently. Maybe if that ever happens, my views will change about life and death. For now I am not scared of death, although I will be doing my utmost to avoid it.

So I believe that people would want to kill an innocent person for 'fun' or even just 'curiousity' but I don't think I'll ever understand why or how any sane person could justify it to themselves. Let alone, live with that knowledge afterwards.

This post typifies my life in some ways. I started off by watching a film, a piece of fiction (or 'kidology' a great word my dad uses). It ended with me tying myself in knots with unanswerable questions, unfathomable posturings and more confused than I started out.

If I ever think of a conclusion to all this I will be sure to add it, unless of course I am doing a 20 stretch for murdering Jade Goody (and everyone thought it was cancer, pah!)

Demented!

I have noticed there is currently a radio and television campaign about Dementia. I kind of know what Dementia is, having some personal experience of a family member who suffered from it. Nowadays it has a proper definition:

Dementia is a syndrome (a group of related symptoms) that is associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities

This encompasses all sorts of diseases and conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Whereas in years gone by it just meant: being old and a bit mental.

One of my Grans had Dementia. She was as mad as a bag of snakes. But she was a lovely lady and even as a youngster of 5-10 I could see that there was a normal person with a normal perception trapped in a mind which obscured the outside world with 'smoke and mirrors'. Thinking back now I wonder what frustrated her more, was it the delusions which made her act in the way she did, or was it the moments of clarity in which she realised that her condition robbed her of the real world around her and the cognition to interact normally with it?

The aforementioned adverts use the slogan: I have dementia. I also have a life.

Two things popped into my head after listening to/watching these adverts. If the people in these adverts are real and not actors, they have real Dementia. So how fucked up will it be for them when they are sitting at home one night, minding their own business and suddenly, their own face pops up on the screen, telling themselves they have Dementia? Still, at least the next day they'll have forgotten all about it. A constant cycle of surprise! Also I thought with such a serious and debilitating disease, they could inject a little humour into the campaign by changing the slogan to:

I have Dementia. I also have a bag full of magic Marbles and did I ever tell you about the time that I paddled to the moon in a canoe made of Pedigree Chum?

The Mont Blanc challenge

When I go to the gym, I always try to take the time to read the hastily made and amatuerish notices posted up around the place. They are usually mundane, rich with trivial details which are soul-crushingly boring to me: A new class which the brain-dead mums can go to make their fanny's tighter again, why the air con has been moderatley too cold in the men's changing room, a reschedule of this week's 'Spin Class'. But last week one really caught my eye.

The notice proclaimed. COMPETITION:

Complete the Mont Blanc challenge, 120Km trek/climb on the cross trainer this month. The person with the quickest time will win 3 sessions of personal training.

If I could complete a 120Km trek/climb in a sweaty gym, choked by the stench of stale sweat and testosterone, I wouldn't need a fucking personal trainer, because, arguably I'd be the fittest (or at least the most competitive) person in the gym. I think that the person with the worst time should win the personal training, they obviously need it most!

This kind of incentive is self-defeating and nonsensical. It's like watching Michael Schumacher winning a Grand Prix and then walking on the podium to receive his prize of... 3 free driving lessons.