This is great newspaper / comment fodder. The sort of thing the Daily Mail specialises in. Print blaring nutty headline on populist drivel and sit back with your popcorn.

A taster of the story….

University of Western Australia sociologist and anthropologist Professor Farida Fozdar and a team of assistants surveyed 513 people at the Australia Day fireworks on Perth’s Swan River foreshore last year to find out whether there was a link between car flag flying and racist attitudes, Perth Now reports.

Professor Fozdar said the team found that of the 102 people surveyed on the day who had attached flags to their cars for the national holiday, 43 per cent agreed with the statement that the now-abandoned “White Australia Policy” had “saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries”. 

Cue fantastic responses like this, proving once and for all that comedy is not dead…

“Professor Farida Fozdar” – surprise surprise, it’s a forigner [sic] who wants to say we are racist. If you’re not happy with us – GO HOME!!!

Take the effing caps lock off – nurchure it, don’t abuse it…

MY 5 YEAR AND 2 YEAR OLD GRAND SONS ARE WAVING THEIR FLAGS, THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT A RACIST IS. WE WILL NURCHURE THEM AND SHOW THEM GOOD VALUES AND TO RESPECT OTHERS. ITS FUNNY HOW THAT SOME ONE DEFENDS THEIR COUNTRY AND THEY ARE THE ONES CALLED RACISTS. IT IS A REQUIREMENT THAT WHEN YOU MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA THAT YOU ADOPT ITS VALUES AND ABIDE BY ITS LAWS.

I’m a moron, and I don’t mind people knowing it…

Racist – you bet. A proud Australian – you bet. Sick and tired of the bludgers on the boats turning up here univited – you bet.

And one man cries about the flag itself…

The flag is only 3/4 ours anyway: WE NEED A NEW FLAG, we are not a British colony

Read them. It’s hilarious if you find muppets unable to control their emotions at the slightest provocation funny…. This newspaper article is brilliant in its conception, a perfect trap, a perfect vehicle to show the world what idiots you can be…. there are blatant wind-up merchants, unreconstructed lunatics, and plenty of people think it is so wrong to have a go at the “foreigners”, but bogans are a different matter…..

You don’t need an anthropologist to tell you there are loonys about.

Like where is the test match being played on Tuesday between England and Pakistan. Dubai, as the 5 Live report said? Nope, Abu Dhabi. Laziness that.

But that was a minor error compared to the one later in the broadcast. According to 5 Live the Superbowl will be between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots. Now with a beloved who is a Giants fan, who woke up to be told the great news her team is through, and with the winning kick played out on the TV before I set off this morning, this came as a shock to me. So I thought it might just have been an error he would correct. Nope. The Patriots beat the Ravens to win the AFC Championship he said, and the 49ers beat the New York Giants in the NFC.

It might be 6:30 in the morning chaps, but get it right, eh? All we ask.

And yes, I did check SI to make sure I hadn’t imagined it… New York did win.

I opened it up on youtube to find, sadly, the guy responsible for the track died last year, aged 44.

I know I am a morbid old soul, but they really hit you when you see people in your age group pass away. Only this week, in my office, we found out that a bloke I knew only in passing died of we can only presume was a return of his awful brain tumour and that poor man was in his mid-30s, I think. As I said, I only knew him in passing, but it still hits home. RIP, Duncan.

Tillmann Uhrmacher is not a household name, but this is a nice dance track if you like this sort of thing. Which many of you don’t. But this is my blog, and 20 hours in, I’m still into the music….

I know a number of people who don’t like the Pet Shop Boys, like this. Most of them are male…

I came across the 12″ version of one of my favourites tonight. Again, I know people not into PSB pick this one out as “pretty damn good”. There is just something about that late-80s Latino House beat that just kicks it off for me…

You see the difference between the 80s and now is DEPTH. PSB had, what, four number 1 singles (West End Girls, It’s A Sin, Always On My Mind and Heart) and the above song made me realise they probably had reached the peak of their popularity as this charted about #7 in 1988. It’s the best 12″ single up there with Left To My Own Devices which clocked in at 12 minutes long!

I came across this “tribute” outfit who covered Domino Dancing. I wanted to hate it, but, really, it weren’t that bad…

Ah yes. I despised that God Awful “The Clothes Show” for nicking this tune for their show…

They can still do it….A brilliant pop song..followed by one of their newer ones.

The other thing, after an hour of listening to them is also the fact that my mum really liked them too. It seems an uncool thing to say, but I really feel a connection back to her when I listen to the songs from the 80s. Especially What Have I Done To Deserve This? And this one, which as I have said a few times, was her favourite by them…

Always brings a tear. Never afraid to admit it. It’s why they are the most important musical ensemble of my life.

Keep going.

One of the new-found joys of the shift I am working is the ability to listen to anything other than the sneering of Peter Allen on the radio home – for some reasons I am not in a music-listening mood at the moment. While on Fridays this means the excellent Mark Kermode on 5 Live, on the other days of the week it means Richard Bacon.

Now everyone of a certain age knows what this man is most famous, or should it be infamous for being fired from Blue Peter for snorting coke. Now what you get up to in your own time is your business, but when you knew the puritanical requirements of that show, well…. stupidity doesn’t quite define what he did.

I haven’t followed his career much since, it has to be said, but I do remember him getting a newspaper column in which he attacked one of those ill-advised Christmas Specials they made of Only Fools and Horses (it wasn’t up to its usual standards, but was still, by miles the best thing on BBC that Christmas) and I thought – hang about, you got fired from the BBC for snorting coke, you’ve blown your career, and then you can have a go?

Fast forward to the present, and I listen to his show this week on the drive home. I know he is a fan favourite on Biased BBC blog, one I read to sometimes nod my head and more often to see swivel-eyed tin-hattery in full effect. He once raved about how great a comedian a bloke was, advised people to tune into him on youtube. The thing Bacon found hilarious was a skit on a baby with down’s syndrome….only, of course, the baby was a spawn of Sarah Palin, so that was alright…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdFJ-hFFdI8 (NSFW)

Now different strokes for different folks and all that, but the Biased BBC nutters went off the hook on that one. Me? I think jokes about the disabled really are the worst kind of bullying, for someone with a bully pulpit and with right-on folks braying with them. But they ain’t out to appeal to me, after all… but for Bacon to say this was hilarious, summed the bloke up. When the righteously indignant (and remember this towards the end of the piece) organised a bit of a campaign against him on Twitter and such, he wasn’t happy. See this Huffington Post interview in October…

Being pressed further on the issue of complaint to the BBC, Bacon was asked about Twitter and its role.

“You can whip up a bit of a storm and gather some supporters and get them to complain and before you know it twenty or thirty people have complained to the BBC and then BBC will get very nervous.

“It gives people a louder voice than they sometimes deserve,” he added.

That last point is great on so many levels – one on its alarming lack of self-awareness, and two, when you consider the amount of people it took to get a story he could debate on his show yesterday…coming up below!

Back to the present and the drive home yesterday. The story Bacon was droning on about was some student turning down Oxford. ONE student. The student was a state school candidate, who found the process rude, intimidating and believed it placed her at a disadvantage compared to private school pupils. There then came this hoary old picture painted that the non-state sector all resembled Eton or Winchester, with grand halls, books and stuff, and masters walking around like Wackford Squeers or whatever his name was which gave Bufton-Tufton an advantage because he was used to it. BOLLOCKS.

I went to the non-state sector, and Jesus, we had a main builiding where the roof had blown off! We had no cathedral like assembly hall, the Headmaster’s study was hardly huge, the staff room wasn’t all that, and the classrooms not much either. The building dated to the 1960s, I think, and it was not the lap of luxury. They’ve tarted it up a lot now, but it wasn’t old halls and authoritarian, although it did instil discipline and gave me a good education.

OK, so Bacon’s on this one. The student in question, who prior to this article, I had never heard of ironically goes to a school in Winchester! I wonder which particular private school she’s benchmarking against? As with many teenagers (patronising hat on) she clearly thinks she knows the world and has done a jolly old Millie Tant impression. She has the right to do it, she probably thinks she’s exceptionally clever for doing so, whereas, frankly, I think she comes across as an up her own arse brat. Hey, that’s my view. Any 19 year old who has the arrogance to tell a 550 year old institution how to make itself better, as if there is no dispute she is correct, does leave herself open of accusations of being a bit full of themselves.

But this ticks Bacon’s boxes. A bit of lefty, a bit of an attack on class privilege, and a chance to come across as a witty, sharp, clever interviewer.

He first introduced a bloke who said over 50% of Oxbridge applicants came from the State Sector – a figure that surprised me, to be honest. This was then put into context when considering 93% of children are in the state education system. Yes, yes, yes and that issue will roll on until I die, my nieces and nephews die, and probably their siblings too. Rich people and connected people get the breaks. C’est la vie. Come the revolution we’ll change it, but in the same breath we whinge about that, but seem perfectly content to allow the Toffs running this country to destroy public sector pensions while just tut-tutting when the banks use our bailout funds to pay ANY bonuses…..

Then Bacon turned the debate over to the representative of students at Oxford – the editor of the newspaper Cherwell. Given the topic, given the medium, and given the presenter the individual concerned must have been off her bloody head going on the show.

Bacon kicked off – “So which state school did you attend, Sophie?”

The c*** knew her background, new who and what she was, and he thought he’d make a cheap point at her expense. I swore out loud. I know about privilege, I went to a fee-paying school which my mum and dad paid for through sheer bloody hard work as working class parents (my mum worked in a pub, my dad as a printer) did. That would have me tagged alongside the more toffish element in the world, and if Bacon had asked me that question, here would be my response.

“That’s the tone of this then, coke boy. How many confessed criminals work at the BBC? What state school did you attend, Bacon (Wellow House Prep School and independent school Worksop College)? Why is my academic career relevant to this discussion?”

And then I would have said:

“Given you are going to treat this in as even-handed a way as you have indicated, I am afraid I won’t be carrying on with this interview. And if you want to look at the very definition of a working class, state primary school, I attended Deptford Park Junior up until 1980, not some hoity toity prep school you now seem to sneer at, you self-loathing, pull the ladder up, fucked up your best opportunity but still survived through your sneering lefty claptrap tosser.”

They wouldn’t have had me back.

Of course Oxbridge is snobbery. We know that. And all the while idiots differentiate between their education and that from other institutions then it will continue. Our current PM is from Eton and Oxbridge, and he’s doing a bang-up job! So is our Mayor of London, and we laugh at his buffoonery like some end of the pier act.

I switched over the radio to hear Sir Michael Parkinson begging for money. No wonder my eye test showed some deterioration. My desire to constantly scratch them out after listening to the radio is now affecting my optical health.

Who the hell did this?

This is a belter…

And of course….Leeeroy Jenkins!

The Patriots are better-suited to win the Super Bowl right now, at 14-3, than they were exactly four years ago, at 17-0.After New England’s 45-10 beat down of the Tebows in Foxboro, Vince Wilfork agreed with me that the Patriots were in better shape at this stage of the playoffs than they were after their undefeated season. “Four years ago, we peaked too early,” he said.

Four years ago, New England scored 34 or more 11 times in the regular season, then won by 11 and nine in the playoffs before losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl. They had Randy Moss in his prime then, and he was great. I’d rather have Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez.

 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/peter_king/01/16/divisionals/index.html#ixzz1jeZW3NiX

A Kick From The Team I Want To Win It All!!!!

Company makes money out of nothing, cares nothing about anything other than its stock price and executive enrichment, makes money from a crisis which it milked for all its worth, frauded its accounts, and went bust with ordinary people duped by its lies left to pay the price. What’s not to hate?

Another example in the Land of the Free, but by no means unique to that, that dictators still exist who are beyond question, who can commit the most awful financial wreckage and by and large get away with it – if you rob a bank with a gun, the bank is insured, the criminal is stuck away and you might need to pay a couple of basis points in charges above the norm, or some increase in your premium. If you invested in Enron, believed the ratings and stock prices as reputable truth, you lost pretty much everything. The armed robber goes away for 20 years and he scarred a handful. The fraudster ruins thousands of lives and he gets five years in easy street. Lovely ain’t it?

We have all the usual suspects. Dodgy accountant, financial engineering, and an avoidance of making any commodity except money. There are demagogue bosses who send people off to Calgary if they make a joke, and very enlightened personnel practices where you live in fear that you aren’t one of the 15% let go every year in some sort of collective grass-a-thon. You bully and bribe politicos and journos, you manipulate accounts, you plead ignorance when it all goes wrong, and someone else pays. When Ken Lay said he lost 99% of his net worth and was having to scrape by on $3m, the tears rolled down my eyes. I won’t earn that in my lifetime you c***.

It was a good documentary, especially on the California energy crisis, and my only criticism was that it did not actually explain too much what it was that Enron did and how it made its money.

I’ve ordered the DVD about Eliott Spitzer, who was a lizard politico with skeletons in his closet, who decided it would be a great idea to take on the banks when he was Governor of New York. Should be fun!

According to all those out there I need to “pay my fair share”. That’s nice. So as a public servant, because we are all in this together I need to endure a two year pay freeze, and then have a 1% pay cap.. It is only fair when the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development state that 51% of private sector workers received a pay rise last year. In their recent press release they stated:

In its Annual Barometer report published today the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) forecasts that the number of people in work in the UK will fall by 120,000 in 2012 despite a continued ‘productivity pause’ and further real pay squeeze, with unemployment rising to 2.85 million:

So it’s working then.

By sector, 51% of private sector employees have had a pay rise since the start of 2011, 45% did likewise in the voluntary sector, but just 24% of those in the public sector have received an increase.

By sector, public sector employees (70%) are most likely to have seen their pay frozen in 2011, followed by those in the voluntary sector (48%) and the private sector (42%). In addition, 5% of employees saw their pay cut.

Yes. We are all in this together. A stat to recite to all those private sector clowns who say “I’ve not had a payrise since pterodactyls roamed the earth”. It is followed by this humdinger of a quote:

The combination of worsening job shortages for people without work, mounting job insecurity and a further fall in real earnings for those in work may test the resilience and resolve of the UK workforce far more than it did in the recession of 2008-9, and foster a tetchy ‘passive-aggressive’ mood in many workplaces that could prove very hard to manage.

Passive aggressive and tetchy. Lovely. We just don’t understand that while we pay for the financial sector’s recklessness, the private sector aren’t really having it that bad. We are all in this together, after all….

So we pay withour jobs and our pay in the public sector. It’s only fair. But wait, you want me to take even more of your pain in the act of fairness by pilfering my pension right, conflagrating my contract, and excoriating my expertise. Nice one. On top of a pay freeze, they’ll be nicking another couple of percent from my wages to not fund my pension, not increase it in any way, but to pay down the debt. Because I’m not over 50, and on the old scheme, I have to pay. It’s only fair.

But wait some more. Not only that, but in a year or two’s time the 40% rate of income tax comes down and neatly cuts into my salary. So not only do I get a pay freeze, have a job threat, have to pay an additional pension contribution to pay down the debt, I get to pay more tax too! It is only fair.

But wait some more. If I had a child, and let us say for the sake of debate I do, to be fair, they will take my child benefit off me as I am a single member of the household earning over the 40% tax rate! Great that the joint responsibility thing works for the tax system there, but there’s no recognition for marriage when it comes to my allowance. It’s only fair.

To cap it all off, the party that is supposed to be on my side is agreeing with the pay freeze.

In a week when all the power companies coincidentally cut their prices by 5% we sit by and don’t prosecute these profit-gouging scumbags for running such an obvious cartel that Pablo Escobar, if he were still alive, would be doffing his hat to.

Fair? All in this together?

FUCK OFF.

“Meanwhile, a survey by the Institute for Studies has found that 98.2% would prefer politicians to go back to stealing their money instead of calling them idiots and pretending to be their fucking mother.”

Amen to that.