Majesty? Yeah. Right.

The economy is in flames, Gordo is busily spending our great-grandchildren's money propping up the businesses of people who should be in prison, the crusties are preparing to riot in London's streets against the system that provides them with everything they wear, eat, own, live in, drive, drink and travel in and what's on the front pages? The Act of effing Settlement. Yes, while real things are happening in the world, a lot of people are spending time, effort and (our) money debating who should be allowed to become Their Majesty the Chief Parasite. Apparently, it matters which kind of Sky Fairy you believe in. (OK, there's a tiny amount of merit to the argument that it shouldn't matter if your genitals are innies or outies). I don't have words to describe how little I care about any of this, and how little it matters in the real world. After all, the Royal Family is essentially a soap opera, of interest only to the subscribers of "Hello!" magazine and similar arsewipe. If Gordo absolutely must devote any time to this, it should be to abolishing the Royalty and chucking the entire useless parade of parasitical, inbred, moronic, jugeared, horsefaced wasters on the dole.

"I'm sorry ..."

No you aren't. You're a bloody recording. How dare organisations "apologise" for their shortcomings with a recording?! Of course, this merely demonstrates how little they actually care about you and I. As if it isn't bad enough that they have offloaded all their administration onto us via their web sites, getting the customers to do all the data entry that used to be done by their staff, they now "apologise" for their shortcomings via an answering machine. If I'm going to be apologised to, I want it to be by a human being, and I want them to mean it, too. Otherwise that apology is worth precisely nothing.

Failure of capitalism?

The favourite mantra among those who think they can run your life so much better than you can (politicians) at the moment is "market failure" or "the failure of capitalism". Pay no attention to these morons. Capitalism hasn't failed. It's done what it always has and will; punished those who think they can escape its invisible hand. Those who talk about "market failure" just mean that the markets haven't done what they wanted; make them rich. One of the multitude of reasons we're in the mess we're in is because those aforementioned idiots were well aware that they could skim off the cream in the good times and be protected by the State (that's you and me) in the bad. Instead of bankers being imprisoned, stripped of their pensions, homes and Bentleys, they're being paid off, rewarded for failure, protected, aurically parachuted. In a real capitalist society, the actual owners of their businesses, the shareholders, would be pursuing them relentlessly for retribution for what they've done. And the State would stand by and make sure that contracts were observed, and not provide a safe haven for those whose fault it is. Of course, the politicians are no better. If allocation of blame was being fairly made, they would be due their just desserts[sic], and it wouldn't be green custard, either.

Waterless toilets

Whose dumbshit idea were those? As if public toilets didn't reek of piss enough already. Now we have pools of stale urine in the pissoirs and even bigger pools on the floor. I really like having to wade through a pool of someone else's excreta in order to do my business. Not. And the reason those pools are there (other than the complete inability of some men to aim that damn thing inthe right direction)? Having dispensed with flushing, the operators of these mephitic facilities then do away with the cleaners. Yes, there's a list on the wall with the reassuring message that they are inspected every hour, with a supposed list of the initials of those who held their breath long enough to scrawl on that list. But actual cleaning? No. The evidence is overwhelming - or at least it is if you're unfortunate enough to inhale.

No, I don't want to buy a shoe horn.

Whinge, whinge, whinge, bleat, bleat, bleat. This is the sound of the ever-lengthening queue of whiners with their hands out wanting your money (and mine - I pay taxes too) to bail out their businesses. I can't say as I blame them (unusually for me) - after all, they've looked at the banks, who've pissed away the entire GDPs of medium sized countries, and got rewarded for doing so, and thought to themselves "I'll have some of that". Today's rant was prompted by some (ex-journo) MP on Radio 4's "World at One" asking for money for print journalism. Perhaps while he's about it, he should ask for money for the buggy whip industry? Or maybe the whale-bone corset makers? Or, more recently and for similar reasons, the makers of vinyl records? Or indeed, any kind of records. You see, these people are in industries which are Going Away. No amount of bleating is going to make the slightest difference; if you produce something that no-one wants to buy, you're doomed. Yes, the State can prop you up for a while, but why should it? That merely hastens the end, since you no longer have any need to pay any attention whatsoever to your customers (remember them?) and once the State gets sick of pouring money down your hole (as it surely will), you'll have to find something else to do anyway. So, people in businesses that are Going Away (or, as the business consultants would have it, with "dysfunctional business models") shut the f**k up and start doing things people want to pay money for.