Renaming frenzy

Nice to see that the Americans are still completely insane when it comes to things about patriotism, and thinking/believing/knowing they’re in the right etc. etc.

The BBC is today reporting that because of France’s promise to veto any resolution for war with Iraq, America is now stopping use of the word “French” – the ubiquitous “French Fry” is now – wait for it – a “Freedom Fry” (words fail me at this point, I’m afraid – I have a nagging suspicion that Green Fairy will sum it up far more succinctly, and with less use of swearwords) and “French Toast” will become “freedom toast”.

Basically, it’s all just more American reactionary hypocritical bollocks, but sometimes it’s just amazing the sort of shit they’ll come up with. I do love the quote within the story of “I don’t think we have to retaliate against France. They have isolated themselves. They have resigned from any responsibility for the war on terror.” – which seems to sum it all up from the American perspective.

The best sort of copper

Had to laugh at the mental image of police in Warwickshire holding a shoplifting spree to highlight to shops how easy it was to do. Shop managers are “reviewing their security policies”.

My personal favourite was the fact they managed to get away with a giant teddy-bear worth over £100. Sometimes the mind just boggles. Then again, I also know that one of the best ways to steal stuff is to simply walk out looking like it’s something you’ve already purchased – if you have the confidence to do it without looking all shifty as if you expect to get caught, most shop assistants simply assume it’s yours in the first place.

Thomas the crashed engine

At risk of jumping on the bandwagon after Gert and Graybo, I really can’t believe that there’s a psychologist who thinks Thomas the Tank Engine is putting children off travelling by train. He thinks that because there are so many accidents in the programmes/books, children expect the same thing to happen in reality.

Now, I’m no parent, but in my experience, if kids thought there was a real possibility of an accident, they’d be all for travelling by train. Also, when I saw the BBC TV news story about it, all the children asked replied that they weren’t scared of trains because of the Thomas stories. Which makes it pretty much a complete non-story really. *Grin* And at the end of the day, there’s a major difference between Thomas and real trains – which I suspect the person who came up with this theory may have failed to notice – in that real trains don’t have bloody great faces on the front of them, and nor do they have Ringo fucking Starr narrating the announcements. (Although that might actually make it more fun on occasion)

Dresscode Sexism

I know I’ve been a bit evangelical about this one, but I’m utterly overjoyed to see that a tribunal has agreed that the insistence on men wearing “business dress” (shirt and tie) while women can wear pretty much anything is a sexist policy. A “civil servant” in Stockport accused the Jobcentree he worked in of being sexist, they disciplined him, he took them to tribunal with the support of his union. They’re now saying there’s another 40-odd cases lined up.

Hopefully we’ll end up with a far more sane scheme before long – it’s been waiting to happen for far too long.

Classic headline

Sometimes the world of coincidences is too much for me – I went off to a place called Brighouse today for an interview. While there, I spotted that the local paper had a website and being a sad git, I couldn’t resist having a look when I got home (and remembered the URL).

And then I just had to laugh when I saw this as one of the headlines. Click on the headline for a bit more of the story. Small towns are strange, strange places…

And Yay, though I struggle through the valley of fuckwits

Ah, the joys of dealing with the council tax department of an authority first thing in the morning.

Over the last three months or so, I’ve been getting council tax mail addressed to the person who used to live here. What’s FAR more impressive is that this house isn’t even in the area of responsibility of the council that is sending me the shit. So I’ve been hearing “oh, I’ll sort that out” from the person to whom the mail was addressed, and it’s still getting sent out.

Today though, I decided to call them myself – and lo and behold, they’ve promised not to send any more stuff to the wrong address. Of course, only time will tell if they’ve actually managed to do so.

The fact that the conversation started off with me giving my address and them saying “well we can’t be sending it to you, because you’re not in our area” wasn’t all that promising. But it looks like they’re more sorted now, so we’ll just see how it goes.

Oops

One day I’ll learn to type. From the error logs, it looks like I’ve managed to call this page radnom.html instead of random.html on a comment log-in from somewhere else. *Sigh*