September 2005

I’ve been burgled. Inna lillahi wa inna illaihi rajioon.

The police have actually been brilliant. It was disturbing walking into my ransacked flat with my daughters. What amazes me is that the crackhead bitch left my iPod, TV, laptop and Dunhill lighter. Other things went, but not these things. The police already have her in custody within 8 hours.

I’ll let you know more soon.

Warning: Gratuitously obscene language throughout

Perhaps Bliar is going to rename his party Labour Camp. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for him to call his fascist party Labour Kampf. Mein Labour Kampf. Fuck it. Just call yourselves the Fourth Fucking Reich you sad twats.

Ah, there I go again with the swearing at politicians. What have they done to earn my ire this beautiful Autumn day? And it is a beautiful day, a crisp Autumn with a bite in the breeze and beautiful sunshine. Are these scum worth my anger on a day like this?

Walter Wolfgang would know what I’m talking about. An escapee from Nazi Germany and a Labour supporter for the 60 years since the end of World War II, he was ejected ny security from the party conference yesterday for heckling Jack Straw on Iraq. He’s 82 for crying out loud. And we are supposed to value free speech here! Free speech is dying. Even the staunchest Labour supporters are not safe. Tony Bliar is a fucking Nazi and he should kill himself now. He’s a disgrace to the old Labour, a shame on the face of the new and an all round weasly, lying sack of fuck.

This is what Mr. Wolfgang, 82 remember, said to the Mail, a paper I despise, but it’s quoted from the Telegraph, a paper I despise, but respect. Sort of.

“This would never have happened 10 years ago. This would never have happened under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan. At least they were confident of their own position.

“But Tony Blair cannot face any criticism about this illegal war. I have always tried to change party policy by being an active member of the party and doing it from within.”

He added: “As a Labour leader, Tony Blair has been a disaster.

“I voted against him becoming leader and I marched against the war in 2003. It was an outrageous thing, the invasion of Iraq.”

All he did was shout “Nonsense” and “That’s a lie and you know it” in response to the Foreign Secretary, a nob of monumental proportions, telling the conference that we are in the war for one reason only, to help the elected-by-outsiders-patsy-government.

Mr. Wolfgang, (82 remember, that’s 15 years older than my pensioner dad, a Tory all his working life was when he passed away, so that’s pretty old I can tell you,) was surrounded by security and strong-armed out. To make matters worse, in the aftermath, the same kind of lying spin machine, might as well call the Labour Party Zanussi or something, started spouting shit about how Mr. Wolfgang had been told to be quiet a number of times. This was in front of TV, so it was a complete and utter lie. But the same arseholes who buy into the governments utter bollocks about the fucked up war in Iraq where a hundred thousand civilians are dead thanks to our fucked up intervention for no good reason, will believe this complete lie without question as well. Fucking sheep. Go to sleep and rest while the freedom that was so hard-won is pissed away on the streets of Falluja, London, and every little working town in our country.

You know what’s really sick? This 82 year old man, who mildly heckled Straw, was stopped and searched by police after having been issued a section 44 under the Terrorism Act. And just like when they lied about the complete innocence of Jean Charles de Menezes, they lied about detaining Mr Wolfgang too.

A man two rows in front saw what was going on, and said “you must be joking”. He was also thrown out.

Labour have issued an apology of sorts, but fuck the apology, stuff it up your useless, brainless arses you abhorrent, unholy shit-riders from fucksville. That’s like killing a comlpetely innocent man and then offering his family £15k by way of apology. Not that such a scenario could ever arise, right?

Bring back Maggie Thatcher. Someone get these cunts out before it’s too late. They’re a disgrace to democracy as we used to understand it.

Friday 16th September

It’s the first time I’m picking up my eldest from her new secondary school. I’m really looking forward to it. I take a cab, which is an outrage, but this is one event that can’t be repeated. No second chance for first impressions, right? So, coughing up the equivalent of about six meals, I get out of the cab and walk to the playground.

I once paid my daughters an impromptu visit at their infants’ school at lunchtime. I tried to find a way in, but sensibly, the playground gates were locked. I stood around looking forlorn, wondering if I might catch a sight of my daughters playing. Within minutes, I had triggered a full-scale alert. System shutdown. Kids hidden, Headteacher walking stiffly towards me. As she approached, I realised I was still wearing my crash helmet. Ah. that would be why they thought a predator was prowling. The Head was apologetic for not recognising me, but I was chuffed. I complimented her on her vigilance and safety-first approach before apologising myself for being a twat by casing a kids playground in full leathers and helmet.

Now, I have been told I look young. Normally. I just shrug and mumble something about genetics, an apology of sorts, it’s not like the years haven’t taken their toll, they’ve just buggered up bits not immediately visible to the human eye, if you catch my drift. So it was with some trepidation that I stood outside the gates of a secondary girls’ school. I looked younger than most mums there frankly and this of course can work against me. The dads there looked old enough to be my own. I got a few odd looks, and I was grateful that my daughter found me quickly.

I enjoyed a few seconds of her company before the inevitable happened. Her mother called. And again. And again. And again. During the 15 minutes that it took us to walk from her school to the bus stop, which included a brief stop at Pret for a coffee for me and a cereal bar for both my girls, I received no less than 7 calls from their mother. 7. Seven. That’s one more than 6. And 7 too many. I would have liked to have spent this time with my eldest alone, so that we could chat about her day and so that she could enjoy this rare event. It wasn’t to be. My daughter looked at me with hurt. She knew what was going on, but was powerless to stop it. This wasn’t some worried mother. It’s not like I’m unreliable. One call might have been understandable. And the conversations were brief and pointless. Their only purpose was to break up our time together.

We rode the bus to a meeting point mid-way between the school and my younger daughter’s school where we were to pick up my youngest and then continue the bus ride back home. On the way, my eldest asked if we could get off the bus to bid her mum farewell. I told her it wasn’t a problem. So we got off.

Now, their mum was just getting warmed up. Here’s a summary of what happened:

Mum asked me what I thought of the route.

“Let’s talk about this later - not in front of the kids” was all I could manage.

“Look, I’m only trying to have a grown-up conversation” she huffed. Well. I could have shat myself laughing. But I didn’t. The idea of her having a grown-up conversation is pure farce.

“Since you hadn’t bothered discussing the idea that my eldest would now do the school trip without her mum with me in the first place, there’s not really much point. The time for this grown-up conversation would have been before your unilateral decision to allow our child to travel on her own”.

She persisted, but I maintained silence.

Then she decided that instead of going home, she would get on the bus with us for part of the journey. This was another well-worked routine to piss me and the kids off. It prolongs handover and increases the chances of argument.

We got on the bus and for some reason, mum was faffing around and the bus moved off without her. I stopped the driver. During this period, I turned to see her giving me the look of death, red rage on her spiteful face and mumbling obscenities. She pulled off the quickest schizo switch I’ve seen in a while when she boarded and I explained that I had to stop the driver for her. Her face cleared in a femtosecond. Or maybe even a zeptosecond. Whatever. She switched quick.

Then on the bus, I offered her and the girls the available seats. An old couple got on and I offered the lady a seat occupied by my youngest who I called to stand with me. Within a few seconds, her mum had called her back to stand with her and started up a silly conversation. Pathetic.

That evening, the girls and I had a good time. Their mum calls them often while they’re with me and eats into their time with me by chatting about shit for hours. But we still have a good time. My eldest cooks a meal of pasta with pesto and cream cheese with a beautiful salad and I help her. It’s all on video. They’re great kids.

Saturday 24th September
My girls have stayed overnight. Last night their mum called and spoke to them for ages. Gave my eldest crap about the mobile phone. Which mobile phone?

Her mum and I disagree on this. Her mum gets her way. I want my eldest to have a mobile phone. It would be nice from a safety point of view. We had discussed this many times over the years and agreed that she’d have one once she started travelling alone to secondary school. I’m pissed that she’s travelling alone so soon without discussion, but that’s life. The point is, this was when we’d agreed she’d have a mobile. The mother staunchly, stubbornly and for no fucking good reason whatsoever, refuses. It’s simple. If my eldest had a phone, I could contact her and vice versa without the fucking troll being in the way.

So to stem my daughter’s levee-crushing-tide of disappointment, I gave her a phone with a pay-as-you-go account to use when she was with me. You can’t imagine the joy on her beautiful face when she texts my sister, or very rarely her friends. On our recent trip to Brighton, my sister called her. And you should have seen how grown up my beautiful girl acted when she answered the phone, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She’s a responsible, sensible girl. She’s not going to abuse it and she is very conscious of how many texts she sends.

So this Saturday morning, her mum knows for some reason that she is using this phone and makes her cry non-stop for over an hour. Gives her the massive guilt-trip and tells her how badly she’s hurting her mother’s feelings. My daughter is so upset that she swears not to touch the phone again and indeed, does not.

This Saturday, I should also mention, their mother called them 12 times.

Monday 26th September
I arrive in good time for the first “Parents Information Evening” at my eldest’s school. Later in the classroom, mother, sitting at the front, starts spouting in front of all the other parents - after the teacher has stressed that a mobile phone is a good safety option for any child travelling without a grown-up - that “we don’t allow our daughter a mobile phone, we don’t agree with them. The school has a perfectly good phone and that has worked fine for us so far”.

(As an aside, the following day, my eldest reminded her mum how the system had in fact failed on one occasion and she had no way of contacting anyone about a change in post-school activity)

Of course, my instinct was to jump up and say “The woman is a lying sack of shit and doesn’t speak for me!” but of course, for the sake of face, I kept my mouth zipped.

Later, I got the teacher on his own and requested a set of school information notices be duplicated for me, as there was no guarantee of me gettnig them because our child’s parents are divorced and did he actually know that? He didn’t of course.

I had asked the mutha to give me some space and privacy. So she stood a yard and a half away, if that, with her back to me, but her ears pricked. I asked her for privacy again and she shuffled forwards about a centimetre. Sorry to mix metric with imperial, but hey, I’m British and Muslim too, so deal with it, ok?

Later, she asked with the gall of a thief shouting “thief!” in the market - “Why were you asking for privacy? We’re supposed to be presenting a united front!”

“Listen. To you, a united front is to do what you want to do and to have me go along with it. That’s unacceptable”. And before waiting for a reply, I left.

Right now, my daughters are doing well at school and they tell me their mum is not beating them or swearing at them as much as she used to. I explained that this alone was a good reason for us to be apart. That if they now get really upset if we have a mild argument, it just goes to show how damaging the big ones were when we were together, that they weren’t acceptable and that it was better not to fight and be apart. For the first time in years, they started to see the sense in this.

They also seem to be more affectionate and caring towards me recently, and more understanding that their mother is manipulating them and is not totally mentally healthy. It’s still not easy, their mother is still affecting their lives negatively, but she is raising them, and so am I.

So am I.

I’m trying out Google AdSense. It’s just the single bar at the top. When I can’t be bothered to post, and hit refresh on my own site like a saddo, it provides a cornucopia of irrelevant tosh. And I quite like that.

I’ve become very tired of writing sketchy and fruitless diatribes on fathomless politicians. There are others who do this with more precision, insight and cogency than I have the energy or even ability to muster. My anger at mistakes is not constructive and my ranting at Bushler, Bliar and Shaton doesn’t alter the facts that all politicians through the ages have had to do evil things. The fact that this Unholy Trinity seem to have made a career out of power-grabbing, hypocrisy, world-fucking, theft, butchery and other Satanic handiwork is by-the-by.

So I’m moving back to writing about what I know. I don’t know anything about politics. If you’re expecting informed political comment, try Xymphora, Another Day in the Empire, Minority Report and others. If you’re looking for irreverent and rude style, but with more brains than I will ever boast, try Famous for 15 Megapixels, Postman Patel and MangoWala’s excellent blog, whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten. If you look through the comments in my blog, you’ll find the link. Finally, if you want an uncanny level of satire that punctures the blown-up lives of the hypocritical elite with wit and insight, you need to be visiting the Olive Ream. You will find links to all of these blogs on the right somewhere.

If you’re looking for my style of writing, but related to matters I (think I) know a little about, then stick with me. I might surprise myself, and in the process, make your stay a little more interesting than it has been for a while.

Thanks for reading.

Audrey Gillan in today’s Guardian reports on our heroes in Iraq and how they got away from a violent and nasty mob:

British soldiers yesterday gave dramatic accounts of how they escaped from their burning Warrior armoured vehicles after an angry mob attacked them with petrol bombs in downtown Basra, following the explosion of violence on Monday night.

The account goes on in detail to explain how this repulsive bunch of uncivilised sand-niggers maliciously and lawlessly attacked our legitimate peacekeeping force:

The patrol had been negotiating with an angry crowd when it became “pretty hostile, pretty quickly”, according to one soldier. Men then began throwing “rocks and bricks and metal bars, petrol bombs, buckets of petrol, tyres, anything they could get their hands on”.

These uncultured, ungrateful foreign scum, how dare they attack our glorious liberators? I don’t know, so I thought I’d look to see what caused the “explosion of violence” on Monday night.
From Reuter:

British forces have freed two undercover soldiers from jail in Basra after a day of rioting in the Iraqi city that was sparked when the soldiers fired on a police patrol.

Why would our brave soldiers fire on an Iraqi police patrol, when we are there working in collaboration with local forces? Is it possible that the police patrol were mistaken for the “enemy” by our selfless lads?

Police and local officials say the two undercover soldiers were arrested after opening fire on Iraqi police who approached them. They say the men were wearing traditional Arab headscarves and sitting in an unmarked car.

“They were driving a civilian car and were dressed in civilian clothes when shooting took place between them and Iraqi patrols,” an official in Basra said.

Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, says the two men looked suspicious to police.

“A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them,” Mr Abadi said.

“They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and (suggested) to ask their commander about their mission.”

Why would they fire on approaching policemen? What were they hiding? What would their commander know about the situation? Digging deeper, I wondered what they were protecting, what they were hiding, what was so dangerous or important that it required them to open fire and kill the very policemen they were supposed to be working in collaboration with against the “terrorists”. And I wondered also, why our brave boys were dressed like “terrorists” themselves!
Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly had this to say:

There have been indiscriminate arrests, the most recent of which was the arrest of Shaykh Ahmad al-Farqusi and two Basra citizens on the pretext that they had carried out terrorist operations to kill US soldiers. This is a baseless claim. This was confirmed to us by [name indistinct] the second secretary at the British Embassy in Baghdad, when we met with him a short while ago. He said that there is evidence on this. We say: You should come up with this evidence or forget about this issue. If you really want to look for truth, then we should resort to the Iraqi justice away from the British provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly what happened today when the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basra arrested them. They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed some of them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime.

Why would our brave forces be dressing like “terrorists” in a Shi’ite city, in a car laden with ammo and explosives and then fire on Iraqi policemen (friendly fire?), duly killing the people they are meant to be working in collaboration with in order to “secure the peace”?

Unless there are far fewer terrorists than anyone ever expected….

Now I know we need to do some strange things in order to fight a war. There are all kinds of very dodgy things going on and some of them can be justified. After all, we all know that under-cover policeman have to cross the line into criminality to catch a bigger fish. Soemtimes an undercover operation is just so strategically vital, that it requires secrecy to the extent that a couple of soldiers dressed as Arabs need to be extracted with overwhelming force, or in this case, half a dozen tanks.

My concern is that since we got into this war thanks to Bushler’s lies and Bliar’s desire to be “blooded” like some ten-year old in his first fox-hunt, that not all our reasons are going to be kosher. Or in this case, halal.

It’s a bummer. Our soldiers are there now, wasting their undoubted skills on a war they should never have been sent to. So maybe we need to foster the violence a little more, to prolong our presence and get Bush’s pals some juicy contracts and justify a permaennt Jihad against the uncivilised Muslim scum of the world? And if that means blowing up the people we’er supposed to be saving, posing as terrorists ourselves, forever eradicating the dividing line between good and evil, right and wrong, so bloody what?

A friend of mine cycled past the Shell garage on Apex Corner and stared disbelievingly at a queue of a hundred cars or more in a mad dash for petrol before any possible petrol shortage. He does the sensible thing - he keeps his car purely for emergencies. The rest of the time he cycles. Cyclists aren’t that bothered by blockades.

I use public transport, having given up on the car and having become too frightened through old age, lack of skill or perhaps just ready cash to buy a motorcycle, but I too recongise the absurdity of drivers panic-buying petrol. After all, what good will that petrol be when food doesn’t get to the supermarkets? Mind you, I try to avoid supermarkets too.

There are three factors behind the planned protest against fuel prices: greed, greed and erm, greed. Greed of the government, with its disgracefully high duty, far higher than just about anywhere else in the world. Greed of the USA, who in their imperialist and Christofascist nation-buggery have managed to sodomise the stability of the world’s biggest oil-producing region. And greed of the drivers. Yes, the drivers. Oh alright, the oil companies.

The USA wasn’t helped by Katrina of course, with so much oil production in the Gulf (the one they didn’t send troops to, oh wait a minute, erm, the one where there aren’t curfews and martial law then, erm… I mean, the one where innocent people aren’t shot, oh forget it, I mean of course the Katrina-ravaged portion of their own land), their own prices haven’t been helped much either.

I do wonder, like my cycle-riding friend did, why the God who supposedly talks to President Bush didn’t see fit to warn him about Katrina? Oh of course, He did, but Bush told Him it was ok, because only blacks who don’t vote for him live in the path of the Biblical Storm.

Stop driving. It’s rubbish. If you live in a village that has poor transport links, I understand. If you live in London, or any major city, I simply don’t. By sitting in your car, you are slowing traffic to a crawl. If you leave your car at home, or better still, sell it and use the money for something better, like, I don’t know, a bicycle or ten, and put the rest into your mortgage, there will be less traffic and the bus will get you where you want quicker.

Cars are stupid. They have trashed the planet, contributing to Force-Daft-Hurricanes like Katrina and they cost you money and cause you grief. Parking tickets. Parking fees. Resident permits. Gatso fines. Petrol. Insurance. Bus lane tickets. Congestion Charging. Some ‘roid-rage-road-rage-rascal ramming your roadster. And then you.

Relax. Take the bus. The cost of a single parking ticket is enough to let you ride on the buses for a whole month. And if you’re really minted, take the tube.

I climbed the stairs to the top deck and found a seat near the back, tripping over beer cans and the detritus of a take-away session on the way. Some unbelievably crap ring-tone from a dodgy mobile burst out in front of me. Mentally, I had called it already.

A foreign language. Japanese this time. I looked arond. One English newspaper. The only person not making a racket was someone who could read English. A minority, irritated as me, perhaps?

For a few years now, I have been dumbfounded and much to my surprise, irritated by the sheer number of foreigners in London. Foreigners who just don’t speak a word of English. I hear Polish, Russian, Romanian, Czech (it’s mostly East Europeans), Portugese, Arabic, Spanish and sometimes even Australian (kidding!). Of course, there is another foreign plague of a language - that crass cross between Chav and Jamaican Patois. The least honest accent of all.

“And she was like, chnaa meen?”
“Iz it?”
“Ja get me? N I woz like, I ain’t avin it, yeah? Coz it’s like, he’s in my face, init?”
“Iz it?”

Where does this bastard language come from? Is it not possible to communicate without littering every sentence with “like”? Is nothing what it actually is anymore? Is everything, even reality, reduced to metaphor?

Let’s get this out of the way; if it’s a Jamaican speaking in a Jamaican accent, fine. I actually miss that too. But if you’re second or third generation, you really should be speaking English now. Same goes for South Asians. A little bit of defloration of the language is acceptable too. I guess I’m just getting old and irascible, but standards are part of values and we are sorely missing both.

Every time I get on the bus it’s the same. Crap languages, foreign languages. Some honest cockney, some Queen’s English, even some cleanskin/brownskin trying to speak English, even if in the old “bud bud ding ding” accent would actually be nice. Foreign languages and crap cross crass shouted inconsiderately down their permanently connected mobile phones.

What happened to orderly queuing anyway? You don’t get queues at bus stops anymore. You get throngs. Then you get a scrum for the front as big lads, black, white, brown, English, foreign, makes no difference, they all barge past the pregnant ladies, the women with prams and the elderly. This has happened in twenty years. Two decades ago, we had order at bus stops. Now, we have town centres that can’t be visited at night without a police escort or an AK-47 and no English speakers on a bus. Not even the bloody driver.

(Thanks for sending this pic in A!)