DOGS DINNER, AND THE NEWS LOVES FESTIVE MISERY

DOG LICENSES

The Scottish Government plan to microchip every dog in Scotland. Of course it’ll be a brave vet who goes anywhere near a drug dealers obligatory devil dog. On hearing this news the Koreans got very excited, excitement that led to disappointment when it was explained to them that the Scots had not invented the technology to turn dogs into small chips that can be micro waved. Well the Koreans eat dogs don’t they?. 

In fact North and South Korea are the only countries in the world where Sausage dog, the other name for the Dachshund, is taken quite literally.

A consultation is to take place to discuss cutting the number of dog attacks. The consultation will also consider whether dogs should be licensed and muzzled. Another way to cut down on dog attacks would be for the Koreans to eat the dogs because fewer dogs would mean less dog attacks.

There was a dog licensing scheme in place but that was abolished in 1987 before which the license cost 37p. A new scheme would no doubt be a lot more expensive and should be priced in relation to how dangerous different breeds are. For instance a poodle and a Chihuahua should be very cheap whereas a licence for any of the stocky muscled dogs that look just as scary as their owners should cost the same at the average family car.

Bans may be the answer too.

If a person has any visible tattoos they could be banned from having a dog because if history has taught us anything it’s that the owner of a dog who has attacked someone will have a lots of tattoos.

ACER CASHBACK

Beware of Acer cash back deals on lap top and tablet sales. Acer offer a cash back scheme whereby you buy a piece of Acer technology and they will give you cash back. At least that is the promise, but Acer doesn’t make it easy to get the cash back. I purchased a tablet in June, and you have to wait a month before you can make a cash back claim. I made a cash back claim after the 30 days received an email in July telling me that the cash back claim had been approved and I would receive the cash in within 56 days.

Why 56 days? That seems like a number of days plucked out of thin air, which it is.

After 70 days I called Acer and was told that the claim had not actually been approved, but thanks to the call they would approve it immediately. No cash back was forthcoming and I called Acer again in early December and they agreed that the payment was a bit over due. A bit overdue, you swear word think?

I eventually received the cash back on the 19^th December, a full six months after the purchase. Perhaps when Acer said 56 days they meant that in Donkey years as the Donkey lives for a third of the human life span. So the cash back took three times longer than it should have.

Acer seem to work on the premise that they won’t have to cash back everyone, only the people who follow up the claim. Which I did. The cash back should be automatic and not only paid to people willing to chase Acer to keep up their end of the bargain. So if you are thinking of taking advantage of Acer’s cash back scheme be aware that Acer will mess you around for months before paying up. Bad Acer, bad, bad, bad.

                                                   
THE NEWS

Where would the news programmes have been over the festive period without the misery of thousands of people live on every news bulletin?. People who were flooded or had no electricity, or both featured as the lead story all the time.

It was as if they were trying to make everyone who the weather did not affect feel good with “Count your blessings that this isn’t happening to you” stories.

And they went live to reporter after reporter after reporter interviewing flood victims asking incredibly stupid questions like “how do you feel about being flooded?” or “has the fact that your presents are now floating about in your living ruined Xmas for you?”. 

 If that wasn’t bad enough they also went live to the houses of people who have had no electricity for days and filmed them and talked to them using their camera and other TV equipment powered by outside broadcast truck electricity generators. Not one reporter asked anyone without electricity if they’d like to plug their kettle into their van to make themselves a nice warming cup of tea.

Seems cold and nice warming cup of tea starved people make better television.

And how much footage of water lapping up against upstairs bedroom windows do they have?. Judging by how much they showed they must have months of footage of such.

The only news item that was pertinent to people having their Xmases ruined by power cuts was when they interviewed a boss from a power company who explained that it was taking a long time to get people back on line because his teams of engineers couldn’t get anywhere near the sub stations that needed repaired because TV news crew were in the way.

As for the floods. One representative from the Environment Agency stated that he was mystified as to why one particular area had flooded when it had never flooded before. I’m guessing that it might have had something to do with the BBC water tankers in shot in the background pumping thousands of gallons into the area in order to get even more footage of a flood hit village. Not to mention the Sky News Land Rovers seen in various places driving into power lines poles to bring them down.

If you were flooded who would like to see, an insurance assessor?, a fireman with a pump?, the Red Cross? Yes to all three. Who do you not want to see, a reporter from the BBC sticking a camera in your face?, a reporter from the Sky sticking a camera in your face?, a reporter from the ITV sticking a camera in your face?. No to all three.

GOOD TO KNOW.

Excessive surcharges on card payments and pre-ticked boxes on websites are to be banned following the coming into force of new EU consumer rights legislation today. Under the new rules, which must be fully implemented by 13th June 2014, retailers across the EU will also have to give clearer price information and provide shoppers with longer cooling-off periods to cancel orders and return goods.

Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles, who helped steer the EU legislation through the European Parliament, commented:

“These new rules will finally bring consumer law into line with the digital era. This is particularly welcome news for customers in the UK who now do more of their shopping online than almost any other country in the world.

“I am also glad that UK businesses have been overwhelmingly supportive of these changes. Greater legal clarity will make it easier for Britain’s world-leading digital firms to expand into Europe, where the rapidly growing e-commerce market is now worth over £200 billion a year.

“This is an example of what the EU does best, getting a better deal for consumers at home while creating exciting new opportunities for businesses abroad.”

BOXING DAY SALES, BIEBER TO RETIRE? AND GOVERNMENT CALL CHARGES

CHRISTIANS THE PERFECT FESTIVE TREAT FOR LIONS

A BBC news online headline read: Park Lions Get Festive Treat. Now I know that Christians are persecuted a lot these days but feeding some of them to the Lion is maybe a festive treat too far. It transpires it wasn’t that at all. The lions at Blair Drummond Safari Park in Scotland were given a Xmas tree with meat treats hanging from it. No doubt the lions were disappointed because when they heard they were getting a festive treat they assumed that the zoo’s staff would be chucking a gazelle and a couple of wildebeest into their compound.

After all it’s hardly lion like behaviour to select meat treats from a tree because hardly ever in the wild do lions come across trees with meat hanging from them, and on the odd occasion that this may happen the meat tree is almost never covered in tinsel with a fairy on the top.

There they are pacing about their compound desperate to use their natural instincts to kill their dinner, and you can’t really kill a tree unless you have an axe, and as lions don’t have opposable thumbs operating an axe is out of the question.

Obviously a slow news day at the BBC when they are basically reporting: Animals In Captivity Get Fed.

Still makes a pleasant change from the usual Boxing Day news story: People Go To The Sales To Buy Stuff.

That story is always accompanied by made up figures, such as “People will spend £6b at the sales today”.

How can they possibly know that?. They can’t, but stating that with great authority sounds better that “People will spend some money at the sales today, we have no idea how much, because how could we”.

Each sales news item featured an interview with a shopping centre manager and they all said the same thing which was “We are delighted as trade is up 3% on last year”.

Yet again, making stuff up. To know the actual percentage trade was up they’d have to go round every store to ask them their takings. And if they were willing to reveal that figure which they wouldn’t be the shopping centre manager would then have to contact the shops head office, on Boxing Day, to find out what last year’s figures were for comparison. But head office’s aren’t open on Boxing Day, so.............every shopping centre manager is a liar standing there lying to a BBC news camera crew.

And you shouldn’t tell lies at Xmas because everyone knows that lies make the Baby Jesus cry.

Some people queued from 3.AM in the morning to be amongst the first into Next for the Next Boxing Day sale. Apparently they all had their eyes on the 50% off T shirts with a Get A Life motif.

The thing is, 50% off just an okay discount, it’s not a standing in the freezing cold at 3 AM discount, especially when there are much bigger discounts on line.

There were also queues at Debenhams stores for the Debenhams sales. Doesn’t Debenhams always have some sort of sale or other on though? Yes it does, there’s a BlueCross sale of something or other every week. So what makes the Debenhams Boxing Day sale different from Debenhams other 364 sale days every year? The difference is that for the Boxing Day sale the Debenhams staff wear Santa hats. Debenhams are very much the sofa and couch stores of the retail world. You show me a sofa and couch store that doesn’t have a January, Spring, Easter, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Xmas sale on all round year and I’ll show you..........no I can’t show you anything because the DFS’s etc ALWAYS have a sale on.

BIEBER RETIRING?

For the second time in a week Justin Bieber has suggested that he’s quitting music. This news came as a shock to most normal people who had no idea he’d even started music. The Consumer King www.consumerkings.co.uk isn’t a Belieber and neither was Anne Frank. The Consumer King is a Belathiest.

The singer, I say singer, but you know............. tweeted “My beloved Beliebers I’m officially retiring”.

And the world rejoiced and there was peace and goodwill to all men.

But then he tweeted “I’m here forever”.

Its thought that he was drunk when he made the first tweet, maybe had one too many Warnink’s Advocaat Snowballs, well one anyway.

It was revealed that he was the most searched for person of 2013. By that’s it assumed that the searches were made on Google, and not searched as every music lover hoped by teams of serial killers working in tandem.

CALL THE GOVERNMENT?

Government departments have been told to stop using 0845 and 0870 numbers as calls to the Government that we already paid for through our taxes cost the public £12m in phone calls.

According to the Public Accounts Committee lower paid people who use pay as you go mobile were hit the hardest by the charges and for a Government which claims to be doing all it can to help the poor has to stop stiffing the people it claims to help by charging them to contact Government services.

Research has found that the average call to child tax credits takes 17 minutes. 15 minutes of menu choices, a further minute of Mozart and one minute of talk time with a member of staff who explains “We cut your tax credits because we basically haven’t really got a clue how these things work”.

THE QUEENS SPEECH AND BABY BORN IN A PETROL STATION

QUEENS SPEECH.

Good afternoon and happy Xmas. I’m sitting here with the great Buckingham Palace staircase in the background. Those are the actual stairs that Princess Di flung herself down. But luckily for Diana she landed on my sister Princess Margaret who was crawling up them at the time.

And hasn’t it been a good year for my United Kingdom.

Andy Murray won Wimbledon and Andy is a great friend of my son Charles, and many the hours they spend together wondering just how to get rid of their Mothers.

But in my defence, at least I give my son Charles some breathing space, unlike Andy and Judy’s relationship which in my opinion is perhaps a bit Norman Bates and his mother.

In 2013 came the sad news that Nelson Mandela had passed away, a man who spent 27 years in jail, a man who went from prison and into politics, which is the direct polar opposite how Denis McShanes career went.

President Barack Obama attended Mr Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa where he was joined by hundreds of other leaders from all around the world. This gave President Obama the chance to speak to the other leaders to find out face to face what they were thinking, instead of his usual way of getting the American security services to listen in on their phone calls.

And there was a new royal baby this year and he cries a lot, in fact I haven’t heard so much crying since the phone calls I received from my son Prince Edward when he was doing basic training with the Royal Marines.

There was also a new Pope elected this year, Pope Francis the First who seems a lot less preachy than his predecessor Benedict the Sixteenth.

Benedict said he felt that at 85 he was too old physically to go on. Meanwhile 87 year old Hugh Hefner married a 26 year old so one yet again has to ask the question. Does celibacy take a bigger toll than rampant hedonism?

The new Pope Francis is on Twitter, the Catholic Church said it wants to engage with young people, in a way that doesn’t involve hush money.

Thank you for listening and have happy Xmas and a prosperous New Year.

GARAGE BABY.

A woman has given birth to a baby boy in a petrol station in Edinburgh.

Nicola McLean and her partner Julian Skinner were on their way to hospital when they were forced to pull in when they noticed that as the petrol station was closing for Xmas they were offering close to sell by date Ginster pasties at 75% off.

During the pasty purchase Nicola went into Labour but luckily a midwife just happened to be in the petrol station at the same time.

So going into labour turned out to be advantageous for the expectant mother as she saw a mid wife straight away because if she’d made it to the hospital it would have been hours before she saw one. There’s a moral here somewhere.

The baby was delivered in 45 minutes and is doing well. Nicola said she was shocked and tired. Tired because of the strain of pushing a baby out and shocked because the petrol station staff out the CCTV of her giving birth on Youtube.

INITIALS.

A surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth hospital has been suspended over allegations that he branded his initials into a patient’s liver.  This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because he had obviously carried out a successful operation if he was willing to put his name to it. Given the large number of medical incompetence cases there are nowadays perhaps every surgeon should be legally obliged to sign his name or even a number to an operated on organ. Even jeans come with a factory checkers number on a little slip inside the pocket that denotes that the jeans have been checked and are perfect. 

Yet surgeons can get away with anonymously operating on a liver or a kidney with no comeback blame should the organ has been left upside down, backwards or inside out.

BUCKFAST.

The Monks in Devon who produce Buckfast wine have said that it’s not fair to blame their wine for crime in Scotland. Strathclyde Police (now Police Scotland) revealed that Buckfast consumption has been linked to 6,500 crimes in the last three years.

So like the monks in Devon a lot of Buckfast drinkers sleep in cells, the only difference being that the Monks cells are in a monastery and the crime committers cells are in police stations.

Hampshire based J Chandler and Co which bottles and sells Buckfast is taking legal action to stop Police Scotland adding anti crime labels to Buckfast bottles. The company’s argument is that the majority of Buckfast drinkers drink responsibly. Which is true, it’s the other 49% who are responsible for the Buckfast fuelled chaos. Oddly Buckfast only accounts for 0.5% of alcohol sales in Scotland, but given the fact that Scots drink per head more than the per heads in the rest of the UK that 0.5% is worth £27b a year to the Monks. This probably explains why on the Sunday Times Rich List 2013 ninety four of the top 100 places were taken up with Brothers from Buckfast Abbey.

The order takes no responsibility for the crime figures claiming that they only make the tonic wine and what people choose to do after drinking nine bottles of it has got nothing to do with them.

This could be why the order chose the name Buckfast. It’s because they can pass the Buck faster than anyone.

NIKE FLYKNITS AND NIKE SNOTTERHANKIES, AND MCSHANE FRENCH BEFORE PRISON?

McSHAME

The disgraced Labour ex minister Denis McShane said “quell surprise” as he was sentenced to 6 months in jail for fiddling £13k in expenses.

It’s a French phrase and the BBC News helpfully pointed out that it means in English “what a surprise”. We all knew what quell means, but it was the French for surprise that we were all having trouble with.

French is regarded as the language of love and romance. Therefore was it really that smart for McShane to reveal that he speaks the language of love and romance when he was heading for prison. There are people in there who would literally kill for a bit of love and romance. So in couple of days once McShane has been fought over it’ll be no “quell surprise” that he’ll be someone’s French speaking prison wife and going by the name Denise or someone’s ooh la la prison husband and going by the name Big Den, or Gros Den as it is in French.

All I’m saying is than in honest political circles his name is Mud. That’s obviously a very small circle. And talking of Mud, with that sexy French accent of his he definitely won’t be “Lonely This Xmas”.

In fact Louise Spence find Denis’s French so sexy that he’s been into Liberties with a black bin bag filling it with shoplifted items in the hope of a being Denis’s cellmate. If Louis’s plan works, McShane will be serving the longest 6 month sentence that anyone has ever served. It’ll be so bad it’ll be bordering on a cruel and unusual punishment. Well there’s only so much dancing and mincing about that anyone can take. If you don’t believe me just ask the great British public who are now heartily sick of Mr Spence’s one trick pony act.

SOCKS APPEAL?

The Daily Mail reported that a glorified sock has seen Nike’s net income jump by 40% in the last three months. The sock in question is called the Nike Flyknit and it is indeed a sock with a rubber sports sole. The sock costs $160 and it’s being plugged as eco friendly, hence the price. Nike have realised the planet savers are generally speaking incredibly stupid people who’ll pay through the nose for anything that doesn’t in anyway hurt polar bears. You can sell them anything if you stick Eco in the title such as an Eco Humvee. Why is the Eco Humvee eco?, Because it emits .000006% less carbon monoxide than the regular Humvee. Does it?. Who knows because how can a .0000006% emission drop be measured in normal driving conditions.  The cost of a normal sock is what?. If you get your socks in Harrods perhaps £10 to £15, and if you get your socks from a street trader they are three pairs for a £1. So basically the worst case scenario is that you are paying ( at the current exchange rate of $160 equalling £97) £96.66 to have a bit of rubber glued into your socks.

Great marketing from Nike though because they’ve discovered how to get rid of tons of knitwear that wasn’t selling. They turned the knitwear into socks. Yes, great. But like who is ever grateful, truly grateful when they get a pair of socks for Xmas, no one. Socks are an even worse gift that hankies, and if you’ll be having a terrible Xmas if you receive both.

There seems to be some sort of unwritten rule whereby when you are a man who has turned 22 everyone decides that socks and hankies are the ideal gift for you. That’s why Xmas is rubbish if you are a male over that age. Now though Nike have alleviated the disappoint slightly and you may now be told

“here’s your customary Xmas socks gift, but these socks have a Nike twist........and in the other box there are also a pair of Nikes trainers, I say trainers but they are really hankies with a bit of rubber attached to them”

CURRENCY CON

The Financial Conduct Authority is to investigate manipulation of the currency markets. Manipulation is a euphemism for “fiddling”. Just something else the banks have been up to and to be honest everyone is losing track of their wrong doing. That could be their plan though and the banks realised that  committing one wrong doing would be bad, but committing hundreds of wrong doings would leave the FCA so confused that they wouldn’t know where to start, so they wouldn’t.

So can anyone who works for any financial institution be trusted. Well we can trust them just as much as they trust us, and they don’t trust us at all. Why do you think that banks have the pens at the counters on metal chains? It’s because they think we’ll steal them, and we do if we do our banking in banks with a bolt cutter.

How do you get to be a serious currency trader anyway?. It’s not that easy because the banks have to know that you are serious about currency trading. To find this out they have a test at the interview. They tell you that the Vietnamese currency is called the Dong and if you snigger they don’t give you a job in their trading department. If you don’t snigger they give you one more test which is; “And I happen to have a dong in my pocket would you like to see it”. That obviously only works with male applicants because saying something like that to a female applicant would result in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

But you pass the two Dongs test it shows them that you serious about a career in currency trading, so serious that you know that currency, even currency with a funny trouser furniture name is ripe for fiddling.