Ok, bankers seem like a boring thing to complain about, because it is so obvious they are irritating, and everyone is complaining about them in the press all the time, however, here are my two cents:
We live in a society that, on the whole, runs as a meritocracy where people are rewarded on their basis of the own merits and achievements. Not so for bankers. Last year bankers gambled with lots of money, not their money, other people's money. They messed it up so badly they almost bankrupted the banks themselves, incredible! The government were so concerned about the losses they decided to give the banks more money - our money - to bail them out. This money was obviously intended to purely to get the banks out of trouble, but the banks decided to give the money to the aforementioned bankers who lost all the money in the first place as a "bonus".
Next time you go to work do a really shit job of something, in fact do such a shit job that you bankrupt the entire company, then see if you can get that company to give you a bonus paid for by the uk tax payer - bet you can't, unless of course you are a banker.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Friday, 4 December 2009
Airports
Flying used to be a glamorous thing, and not surprisingly, the very idea of getting into a giant hunk of metal, blasting down the runway and shooting up 12,000 meters into the sky, before landing down in some hot, unknown destination is pretty exciting. By rights when you walk into an airport the check-in staff should be wearing silver uniforms and salute you upon entry before whisking you off to a giant dome on the roof of the airport terminal, where you can sip gin and tonics and watch aeroplanes take off while the ground crew put your bags on the plane.
I don't think it is possible to make the current check-in situation any less dull and annoying than it currently is. Firstly, you wait in line to be told your bag is two kilos over the allotted weight allowance and you will have to pay the price of your return ticket in excess luggage fees. You look around and see some giant fat bloke who you know ways at least 30 kgs more than you, and he is not being charged a penny, but there isn't time to complain. Next you queue up to have your eyeball scan, strip search and internal examination, all the while being barked at with a series of questions from some half dead airport drone "any liquids?" "laptop in the bag" "phone in your pocket?". You shuffle along the line with you belt in your hand and your trousers falling down thinking of those harrowing photos of piles of gold teeth, glasses and other personal effects left at concentration camps.
In previous years you would have spent the remaining time swanning around the shops, or drinking in the bar, but the security process has taken up all your time and now you must sprint to the gate. Clutching all of your possessions and belt in one hand you run to along trying not trip on your jeans, which are by now around your knees.
You console yourself with the thought that you can spend the entire flight getting pissed for free from a pretty air-hostesses trolley. However, chances are, you are on a budget flight, your flight attendant is called Garry, there are no drinks and that fat bloke from check in sits next to you.
I don't think it is possible to make the current check-in situation any less dull and annoying than it currently is. Firstly, you wait in line to be told your bag is two kilos over the allotted weight allowance and you will have to pay the price of your return ticket in excess luggage fees. You look around and see some giant fat bloke who you know ways at least 30 kgs more than you, and he is not being charged a penny, but there isn't time to complain. Next you queue up to have your eyeball scan, strip search and internal examination, all the while being barked at with a series of questions from some half dead airport drone "any liquids?" "laptop in the bag" "phone in your pocket?". You shuffle along the line with you belt in your hand and your trousers falling down thinking of those harrowing photos of piles of gold teeth, glasses and other personal effects left at concentration camps.
In previous years you would have spent the remaining time swanning around the shops, or drinking in the bar, but the security process has taken up all your time and now you must sprint to the gate. Clutching all of your possessions and belt in one hand you run to along trying not trip on your jeans, which are by now around your knees.
You console yourself with the thought that you can spend the entire flight getting pissed for free from a pretty air-hostesses trolley. However, chances are, you are on a budget flight, your flight attendant is called Garry, there are no drinks and that fat bloke from check in sits next to you.
House Price Braggers
How many times have you heard this conversation: "10 years ago we bought a place in ...(insert previously run-down now trendy area) for 200 grand, but now it's doubled in value. There is no way we could afford to live in this area if we hadn't been so fortunate."
You of course didn't buy in this area, weren't so fortunate, and now couldn't afford to buy there if you wanted to. This type of showing off is a bit annoying, but more importantly it is incredibly boring. There is of course a solution. With house prices now on a downward slide, wait until interest rates go up and home-owners are struggling to meet mortgage payments, at the point they are chucked out on to the street go over and tell them how you are fortunate that you rent your flat because there is no way you would be able to pay a mortgage.
You of course didn't buy in this area, weren't so fortunate, and now couldn't afford to buy there if you wanted to. This type of showing off is a bit annoying, but more importantly it is incredibly boring. There is of course a solution. With house prices now on a downward slide, wait until interest rates go up and home-owners are struggling to meet mortgage payments, at the point they are chucked out on to the street go over and tell them how you are fortunate that you rent your flat because there is no way you would be able to pay a mortgage.
Baby Bores
Life is exciting an interesting and then you hit an age when everyone around you starts having babies. To the couple who have just had a baby it is an amazing, life-changing experience and they are keen to share every detail with you, no matter how small. If their baby grabbed a fist full of its own shit and smeared it around its plump little face, they would find this cute and probably think it a sign of its superior intelligence.
When a gazelle gives birth on the Serengeti its young gets up, staggers around for a few minutes, and then follows along with the rest of the herd, and within a year or two will probably be have offspring of its own; human babies however are rubbish. Even after a year or so of being alive they are still staggering around like park drunks, babbling away incoherently and covering themselves in their own piss. The parents seem delighted with these shoddy efforts and tell you all about how their baby farts at night, burbs, smears shit on itself etc.
The other odd thing about babies is that parents are hard wired to find them beautiful, hardly surprising when you think about genetics. However, to you, the on looker, they often look like bloody aliens: pallid white skin criss crossed with blue veins, eyes popping out, a clutter of oversized features crowding a head the size of a basketball with a body that is patently way to small to support it - hence it has to be pushed around in a carbon-fibre invalid carriage for the first three years of its life.
The worst thing about people with babies is when they tell you about the birth. Nobody, but nobody, can surely want to hear this. Graphic details involving pain, bleeding, tearing, screaming, stitches and other horrors, which need not be brought up whilst your trying to tuck into your pub lunch (which is incidentally in a pub right near their house, because now they have had a baby there is no way they are ever travelling around to your neck of the woods again.
I am sure everyone of us has at some point taken a shit, and despite it all being a bit of struggle, when you saw it there lying at the bottom of the crook in the U bend, you felt just a tiny bit proud, however, it is not acceptable to bring this up in public, and more importantly NO ONE CARES.
When a gazelle gives birth on the Serengeti its young gets up, staggers around for a few minutes, and then follows along with the rest of the herd, and within a year or two will probably be have offspring of its own; human babies however are rubbish. Even after a year or so of being alive they are still staggering around like park drunks, babbling away incoherently and covering themselves in their own piss. The parents seem delighted with these shoddy efforts and tell you all about how their baby farts at night, burbs, smears shit on itself etc.
The other odd thing about babies is that parents are hard wired to find them beautiful, hardly surprising when you think about genetics. However, to you, the on looker, they often look like bloody aliens: pallid white skin criss crossed with blue veins, eyes popping out, a clutter of oversized features crowding a head the size of a basketball with a body that is patently way to small to support it - hence it has to be pushed around in a carbon-fibre invalid carriage for the first three years of its life.
The worst thing about people with babies is when they tell you about the birth. Nobody, but nobody, can surely want to hear this. Graphic details involving pain, bleeding, tearing, screaming, stitches and other horrors, which need not be brought up whilst your trying to tuck into your pub lunch (which is incidentally in a pub right near their house, because now they have had a baby there is no way they are ever travelling around to your neck of the woods again.
I am sure everyone of us has at some point taken a shit, and despite it all being a bit of struggle, when you saw it there lying at the bottom of the crook in the U bend, you felt just a tiny bit proud, however, it is not acceptable to bring this up in public, and more importantly NO ONE CARES.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Texting Circles
You're standing around with a group of your mates and someone glances down at their phone, it is infectious, within seconds the entire group is huddled around cupping their mobile phones like squirrels holding precious nuts. The conversation stops as everyone click clicks away with their thumbs, with nothing left to do you end up pulling your phone out of your pocket and checking your texts. There is one from your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend it says "what do you feel like for dinner" you reply "dunno, spaghetti Bolognaise?" I mean really, was the text that important that it was worth killing off the conversation. Next time someone does this to you, as soon as they have put the phone back in their pocket, take out a fountain pen and paper and start writing a long letter to a relative you haven't spoken to for sometime - or just punch them in the face.
Restaurant Menus and restaurantese
One of the most annoying things to confront modern man are restaurant menus. Pub menus used to say things like "fish and chips" now they say things like "Fresh, Atlantic, line-caught cod lightly dipped in beer batter and pan fried to perfection with oven-baked, hand-picked Suffolk potatoes, cut into thick wedges etc etc.
This is annoying for a number of reasons: firstly it is written under the mistaken belief that it is seductive, it is as if the menu is trying to get you into bed, when all you want is fish and chips for dinner; secondly, these menus are always full of non-sequiturs and extraneous words, like "hand picked", "pan-fried" or "oven-baked"- how else would you pick something if not with your hands?
Recently I found an irritating example of this in a restaurant in Seattle. For a starter the menu had "Chef's whim of antipasto", which I suppose you can translate to "vaguely Italian bits and bobs that the Chef has lying around in the kitchen and feels like throwing on the plate." I immediately stormed out of the restaurant and found a canister of the finest machine-pumped petroleum, sourced from the deserts of the Middle East, doused the restaurant with liberal lugs before hand-lighting a match and flambeing the restaurant to a crisp. Ok, I didn't, I just tutted.
This is annoying for a number of reasons: firstly it is written under the mistaken belief that it is seductive, it is as if the menu is trying to get you into bed, when all you want is fish and chips for dinner; secondly, these menus are always full of non-sequiturs and extraneous words, like "hand picked", "pan-fried" or "oven-baked"- how else would you pick something if not with your hands?
Recently I found an irritating example of this in a restaurant in Seattle. For a starter the menu had "Chef's whim of antipasto", which I suppose you can translate to "vaguely Italian bits and bobs that the Chef has lying around in the kitchen and feels like throwing on the plate." I immediately stormed out of the restaurant and found a canister of the finest machine-pumped petroleum, sourced from the deserts of the Middle East, doused the restaurant with liberal lugs before hand-lighting a match and flambeing the restaurant to a crisp. Ok, I didn't, I just tutted.
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