Friday, October 26, 2007

Sick World

Today on the news we heard of a young man from just up the road in Hartlepool that has been jailed for 3 years for urinating on a woman dying in the street while his friends laughed and joked and took video on a mobile phone.

3 years...

3 F****ing years!

I tend to be a fairly tolerant person normally, but I'm afraid this depths to which mankind has sunk not only wants me to bring back the death penalty, but lets actually have people like this tortured to death. Bugger this "the death penalty isn't a deterent" - I don't care if it doesn't deter people, but these sad w***ers DESERVE to be put to death. Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating any vigilanty group going out and doing the job to this one person in 3 years when he gets out. No I just mean the time is now long past when we should have stopped worrying about the basic human right of trash such as this man is. Human rights should not apply to people that prove themselves to have no sense of human behaviour. The law and the view of society needs to change such that people have to live with the consequences of being evil, and not let evil people get let off because of feeble excuses like bad parenting, drug use, depression and the like.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

For God, Queen Lizzy and St. George!

Well, what about the Rugby tonight, eh? I'm not one normally to be racist but the emnity between us and France is hundreds of years old, so it's always an emotive pairing.
Anyway, 2 things struck me as I watched the match tonight. Firstly it amused me how we british (to be said with the same indian accept of the guy from "it ain't half hot mum") always like to be the underdogs. With the score at England 8 and France 9 I had a conplete stranger comment "doesn't look good, does it?" on the way past to the loo, and Shelley sitting next to me saying, "It'd be great to win, but I can't see it happening". Now I know the line of wisdom from Hobson's Choice goes "It's always best to look on the worst side of things first. Then whatever chances can't be worse than you've looked for", but do we take this feeling in England just a little bit too far? We seem to always assume we'll be crap at something just so we won't get disapointed when we do fail. The problem with this approach is that, a) we are just as disapointed as ever when we lose anyway, and b) if we go into things assuming the worst, have the time that apathetic approach puts us on a bad footing to start with.
The second thing that stuck me was oneof the newspapers that headlined with a picture of the Bayeux Tapestry and commented about the Norman Conquest that it depicts that, "this was the last time that the French beat us at anything important. Although in my best pub landlord spirit I have to agree with the sentiment, may I just stop everyone to point out that really speaking they didn't even beat us then. The invasion was by the Normans, or as they were originally called the Norse Men. These were Nordic people who had already invaded the North of France and settled there. The original Gauls that were displaced never had anything to do with the invasion. So next time any frenchman tries to remind you about Hastings, just remind him that those same Normans probably raped and pillaged his ancestors a few hundred years earlier!

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Good News at the White Swan!

Went back down to The White Swan for a few jars last night, and I had also been interested to find out if Ash did carry on working as the barmaid there now that the new owners have taken over. So I got myself a pint of Consett Red Dust (a guest beer for the night) which was very pleasant indeed while Shelley has a Slimming world Vodka and Diet Coke (you can get 4 of those for 10 sins as opposed to just the 2 glasses of wine, don't you know), and I spotted Ash on the other side of the bar....I mean our side, the punters side! So I started to wonder if she'd packed it in after all. But then I noticed she'd moved about and was talking to someone else and I thought "Hang on a minute, she's got that 'landlady' look about her".
Sure enough it turns out that although Ash could raise the capital to buy the place (as I'm sure she would have had first refusal from June), it seems she's got the next best thing and the new owners have given her the managers job.
And from the grin on her face when we spoke to her, I think she's more than happy with the situation.
Good on yer, Ash! I'm sure you'll do very well.