Author Archives: hairygoose

14/06/2017

Smartphones – The choice of a New Generation.

By hairygoose

The other day, I very nearly took a step into the unknown.  It would have been a momentous occasion too, no less spectacular than when Armstrong walked on the moon.

I almost wrote a blog from my phone.  It would have been a first for me, if I am honest I find those little screens a bit fiddly.  Can you imagine JK Rowling writing her next book on a smart phone? Aint gonna happen – genius needs comfort.

Anyway, not being a complete tech phobe – I did upload some photos from my phone to the blog.  It also happened to be very easy too. I liked it.  But there was method in my madness.

Around 6 months ago I finally took the plunge and bought an Android phone.  Spurned on by Apples continued push to constantly take away all the functionality in their products that I like and thus force me to pay for a cloud account that I do not need or want.  Better still, they take away functionality and then put it in an app that you have to buy.  That can’t be right.

So, slowly I began to use the Samsung S7 Edge. What a beautiful phone – if nothing else, looks wise it was like comparing Florence Welch to Vera Duckworth, Florence being the Samsung.  It sits in your hand with more ‘ooomph’ than an orphaned kitten, it really is something to behold.

The big drawback was something all Android/Mac users will tell you about – synchronizing.  See, when you plug your iPhone 6S into your Mac, it syncs everything for you, writing data in both directions between your phone and your laptop.  The Samsung has none of that, despite several apps claiming they will do it, I have yet to find one that really does work.  So manually, I pull out the expansion card and write all of my data, music, contacts across once or twice a month.

It really was a bit of a drag – or so I thought.  The more I used the phone the more I liked it.  Yes, dragging the data across was a bit of a pain but I am happy to do it now and have much preferred to stick with the Samsung over the iPhone.  In fact over the last couple of months, the 128gb iPhone 6 has become nothing more than a very expensive iPod.

Another nail in its coffin – I downloaded a music player to the Android the other day and have to say the sound is insanely good so the iPhone days are clearly numbered.  With a 7 year old Mac beginning to creak at the seams, there could easily be a 100% move away from Apple on the cards.

Apple have left me miffed for a long time, offering updates with many new things but they never – NEVER tell you what they have taken away, and they always take away something I am very used to using.  Now at this point I would normally push you over to the App store where you could read customers reviews of Apple software updates so you can see for yourselves – BUT – as their last 3 software releases got so badly slammed by the users, Apple decided to stop letting people leave reviews. That’s good logic right ?

Now, back to Samsung – technically, the phone is streets ahead.  I won’t bore you with blurb but instead stun you with a master piece of a practical experiment.

In the photos section of my blog you will find a folder entitled ‘Asia’.  In there are photos that have only been taken with a smart phone, my big camera hasn’t seen the light of day. If you click on one of the photos it will open it in full screen but also show you the source of the photo – i.e. iPhone 6s or Samsung (SM).

You will be stunned by the photos the Samsung has taken – stunned!  You will be certain I am telling porkies and I used my big camera – but no, they are all phone shots – the Samsung not streets ahead, but motorways/freeways/autobahn ahead.  The iPhone is an infinity away – it misses the mark by at least a Steve Jobs.

So there you are – Samsung over Apple every day of the week.

There is however, a sting in the tail.  A sad ‘Steve Urwin’ style of sting that threatens to diminish all that the Samsung has achieved. Even the waterproof phone that I can use to Skype the squeeze while I am in the shower has a serious, loyalty threatening flaw.

Customer Service.

I had the misfortune just over a week ago to be laying on the floor with the phone in my pocket. I heard that light and gentle crack that can only come from smart phone glass and knew instantly I had damaged my phone.  I took it out of my pocket to see the back of the phone was shattered.  I was pretty amazed if I am honest – I didn’t even realise the back was glass.

Anyway – it broke. I took it to the local Samsung shop here in Singapore.  They told me as it was a UK phone, they could not repair it as the parts were different.

I got in touch with Samsung customer services in the UK. I got in touch with then 6 times in as many days.  After 6 days of repetitive email it transpired that the Samsung ‘Experience’ store in Leicester couldn’t repair it for me, they could only sell me a new unit. It also came to light that there was not an approved Samsung repairer within a 50 mile radius so my only option was to have a courier collect the phone, have it repaired and returned to me.  This would take 7-10 days.

I am lucky.  I have a back up phone – the 6s.  Could you imagine not having a back up phone and being without your whole world for a week or more?

Now here’s the real sticking point for me.  If I broke my iPhone in the same way, I could walk into ANY Apple store worldwide, pay a small fee and take an exchange phone out of the store normally within 20 minutes or so of walking in. Samsung may just piss me off and direct me back to the Apple store.

Samsung please take note (but note a Galaxy note as they catch fire right ?)

Now, bug off over to the Asia photos section and see what I mean.

 

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04/06/2017

Pure Plagiarism

By hairygoose

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the… bill for all ten comes to £100…
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that’s what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20”. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).

The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).

The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).

The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).

The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a pound out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got £10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

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01/06/2017

Is Romance Really Dead?

By hairygoose

Hearts are about to melt !!

 

So for those of you in the know, I recently made the acquaintance of a new squeeze – courtesy of one Dennis Raymond Hambridge and a recent illness.  When people get ill, they end up in hospital – hospital is where nurses hang out !  Well, ok, to be accurate – they work there.  I recently hung out in a few hospitals as my Facebook followers will be well aware of.

Just happened that one of those nurses was extremely hot – and I am not over quoting that level of extreme either – super hot, hotter than fake news !

Now, with a little help from another nurse (Thank You Abby) – I managed to get a date with this hot nurse.  Her hotness did not wane – and she had quite an impact on me.  We met a few more times, had some more dates, walks, coffee, crumpets, wine etc etc until it was time for me to head back to Thailand for 3 months of work.

That was tough.  I really didn’t want to wait for 3 months to see her again so arranged to fly her to Singapore for 10 days – she will arrive on the 16th of this month.

Now, this is where it gets really sticky.

A little competition has ensued.  A competition between the pair of us to find the most romantic thing to do in Singapore.

I have no doubt that what I have just done will totally blitz anything she can think of, anything you could think of or anything you all could collectively think of.  It is completely untouchable –  I MEAN UNTOUCHABLE !!

When the lady readers find out what I have done, there will be collective sighs, smiles, happiness and maybe even a tear welling in the corner of an eye.

When the male readers find out what I have done – you will be doubly pissed off.  Firstly because when your missus finds out what I have done, she will be pissed that you have never done anything that could even come remotely close to this, and secondly, as a male, you will be jealous that you have never thought to do something so immense – and I do not use that word lightly.

So what have I done?

 

I can’t tell you ………….it’s not due to happen for a few weeks and the squeeze may just find out from here just what it is.  What I will promise all of you is to let you know when I will be back in the UK, and invite you all out for a beer or two again and you can meet her and ask her in person – then you are all gonna blub like babies – well the chicks anyway – Amy Beard will definitely blub!

 

Blub on Bitches

 

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16/05/2017

No Code

By hairygoose

Do some things just happen by coincidence or are greater powers at play, who knows.

Today, music playing totally at random a song came on as I walked past the speaker I bought just the other day – on the eve of a 19th aniversary, a song that at that time made my eyes fill.  It hasn’t lost its impact today.

 

 

I often wonder what would he be doing today if he were still alive.  What kind of life would he be living, would we still be friends getting up to similar sorts of mischief or would we have gone in separate directions.

 

Sometimes you see a strange spot in the sky – a human being that was given to fly.

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14/05/2017

Wonderlustre

By hairygoose

I went shopping today.  It was not your normal shopping trip but it was for me.

An elegant chance to fool around in someone elses territory so fool around I did.

I was looking for one of those bluetooth speaker thingys that are all the rage at the moment. I was struggling to find one that I liked but did happen across a slightly larger version with a separate woofer and fancy LED’s.

I paired the Samsung to it and tapped in a song to check out the quality.  It was actually pretty good.  It was also a little too expensive at $419 Singapore dollars and if I am honest, a little too big to be portable – but I could have some fun with it.

It boasted a 30 metre bluetooth range so I thought I should give it a go.  Selected a suitable song, in this case the classic Prodigy track ´Charly`(a trip into drum and bass version) and started to walk away.

Here`s the thing – in order to be sure the bluetooth was still connected, I would need to hear the song as I got further away. As the sound had further to travel, this could mean only one thing – more volume.  I pumped it up.

Now for those of you that are not immediately familiar with the trip into drum and bass version of the Prodigy’s ´Charly`it is a little further down the page.  One thing I did notice though – from the peripherals of a 30 metre range, I had a very good view of the sales attendants moving in on an increasingly loud audio system playing what might be considered inappropriate music for the normal clientele of downtown Singapore.

And this is where bluetooth comes into its own – before they could get close enough to identify which of their machines was pumping out such a gorgeous tune – I could turn it down, down so far it was silent and they had no idea where it was coming from.

You guessed already what happened next right?  As they walked away I could turn it up again.  I got four assaults in before they realised that if they stood next to the machines I would have to expose which one I was connected to  in order to continue the dance.  Imagine the fun you could have if you and say 5 of your friends went in to Currys and all connected to different devices?

I am now looking for 5 friends when I return to the UK in July.

 

It did remind me of a trick my grandma taught me as a kid.  Did you ever play knock door run?  Posh southerners call it knock down ginger, Richard Bolam used to call it ´Cherry Knocking although I never understood why.  Well my grandma told me I should get a bit of cotton and tie it around the door knocker and unravel the cotton and hide on the other side of the road.  It bloody worked too - I ´borrowed a reel of black cotton from my mums sowing basket and headed to the top of Hinde Close and found a suitable victim with a door knocker on the row of houses opposite on Stonehills.

Very carefully tied the cotton to the knocker, walked backwards across the road unravelling the cotton and hid behind a small bush on the opposite side of the road.  Pulling in the slack, I could then give it a gentle flick and rattle that knocker

Five times I had that man come to his door, even knocking it again seconds after he had just closed it.  I only stopped because I could no longer contain my laughter – I never did tell my grandma how well her plan came off  – she would have laughed, offered me a fag and a glass of Sherry no doubt.

 

Anyway – Drum and bass Charly as promised. Turn it up and get out of your seat.

 

 

 

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01/05/2017

Whole Lotta Rosie

By hairygoose

You have to ask – is there any hope?

I just appeared on the bridge at midnight – wait wait wait, there’s a verse there

twas on the bridge at midnight

His leg was all a quiver

he gave a cough, his leg fell off

and floated down the river

 

Anyway – I was on the bridge at midnight just letting the navigators know I was around when we got talking about stuff.  The two watchkeepers are of a younger generation than me you see.  We got chatting.  Now young Rosie, a youthful and energetic 18 year old from Australia seemed to think her generation were all ´fucked up´and of little hope.  We talked more about the politics of the current world, North Korea, Marine Le Pen, China and of course America (fuck yeah). I also expressed my admiration for a fella over in the states called Elon Musk, and that I hoped he would be our salvation an unlikely hero, not like John Connor!

Rosie immediately asked if Elon Musk was on YouTube as she didn´t know who he was.  Equally as quickly, she realised the irony of her two last statements and we chuckled about it.  Maybe there is hope yet?

I think there is – the other day, Rosie tipped me off about the young Aussie lass below – I was stunned !

Talent – she has it,  considerably more than my verse writing skills for sure.

So right now, about 5 hours out of Singapore which will most likely be my new home until late June.  I am a little excited I must admit. More on that soon.

I am also more than a little excited about my new squeeze.

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23/04/2017

And as quick as a flash

By hairygoose

It was gone – 5 weeks of holiday disappeared in the blink of an eye.  In my terms, an unproductive month to say the least – or was it ….?

I was a little miffed that I didn’t get to see my old mucker and avid reader Conor over in Northampton, but I did get to catch up with some other good old buggers so it wasn’t a complete write off. I really wanted to have a rip in his bug but will have to be next time now.

I am in the luxury of an Ibis Budget hotel at Birmingham airport with a pint of John Smith’s Smooth, reminiscing over the last month or so.  I must confess that I thought maybe I had gone the whole month without writing a page here but then I saw the last post which was most definitely this month with the knee photos and the killer Courtney Love vid.

Glad to say that the knee is making a great recovery now and better still, the doc and the physio think I could be running again in 3 months – that would be absofuckinglutely fabulous – I miss running.  My waistline does too  – without those extra calorie burns, I am a good 7kgs too heavy – that’s a stone and a little bit to you old timers!

Now, I did have the absolute pleasure of meeting a very tasty young lady while I was off.  See, when you get to my age, it’s all MILF’s and GILF’s – I am very VERY pleased to say I have encountered my very first GILF and thoroughly enjoying it!  I am also hoping it will be my only GILF encounter if you fully understand what I mean.  Can’t tell you too much right now but as things unravel, I will share more.  Needless to say she is smoking hot and has my fullest attention.

Moving on from nurses, let’s talk about eBay for a moment.  You may remember me putting my beloved Range Rover up for sale.  Inevitably I got the usual spaztards with the ’10 grand cash by the weekend’ bollocks – I don’t play well with spaztards if I am honest – so imagine this – some complete wanker messages me simply saying ‘£8000?’  That was it – his whole complete message.

Naturally I had an epiphany and responded exactly as such an insult deserved.  Screen dump below – read it from the bottom up – he even had the audacity to call me a gentleman afterwards – the prick !

 

I think you might call that ‘not suffering fools gladly’ ??

So tomorrow morning I start the long hard slog back to Thailand.  I still have no idea where I will meet the boat but will rest easy in the first class section of both legs of the flight – actually, come to think of it, I still need to find a hotel for Tuesday night.

A couple of days in Thailand and then we head to Singapore.  It’s all new to me but there is one thing I am extremely mindful of.  There is a section of the trip that runs through the Straights of Malacca – now apparently this is rife with piracy so please keep an eye on the news to see if we make it safely through.  If you hear about some mad English fool that used a home made flame thrower to fight off a pirate attack – that will most definitely be me!  If I don’t make it out alive – don’t send flowers but do drink a Belgian beer or two!

After surviving Singapore for a couple of months, we sail for Bali – Are you at all jealous yet ?

Special thanks to those who came out to the Merchants Inn on Friday night – it was good to see each and every one of you.  Thanks for the beer and the hang over that followed.

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06/04/2017

Frances Bean Cobain

By hairygoose

I got side tracked today – somehow I ended up looking at some old Kurt Cobain footage and as always ended up looking at Courtney Love too.  Now after looking at those two, one has to be curious about the progress of their offspring right?  What a stunner she turned out to be.  Go and have a look for yourself.

That said, I always had the hots for her mum, Courtney.  Rocking that junkie scuz look but better still, a gravel voice and rock chick status, she always grabs my attention when I see or hear her.  Hugely under rated as an artist if you ask me – but judge for yourself.

I’m fake it’s so real I am beyond fake !! That line is up there with Robbie Williams’ I’m contemplating thinking about thinking’.

Anyway moving on, lets talk about knee damage.  Today we are looking and feeling pretty good.

Then afterwards

A little while later

Getting closer to the end

And then finally

And that was that – two tiny little holes.  In comparison, when you look around, really nothing at all.  More of a splinter wound than anything resembling having a camera, vacuum cleaner and scissors shoved inside your knee but that is modern medicine for you.

 

Anyway – off to the Apple store in Leicester – while I am there, take a look over to the right at the album ‘Tinder Girls’ if you really want to see what goes on with that App.

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29/03/2017

Tinder Ladies

By hairygoose

Don’t confuse that headline with ‘Dinner Ladies’ they are two very different beasts.  Now, I am sure that there are some very nice ladies using the Tinder dating app, very nice.  There also seem to be a bunch of dick heads or, I guess to call them the female equivalent ‘ muff heads’.

It’s a mine field full of shaggers, liars, wasters, losers, drop outs, bounders and cads but sometimes ladies, you have to help yourself a little.  I happened across this young lady earlier, and I have to say, she is not selling herself very well.

 

She went on to waffle a bit but being honest with you, I got bored and clicked that little red X button on the left hand side – or to give it its corrected name – I swiped Left !  This is one of the more blatant abuses but there are plenty of others.  Many Tinder ladies claim to not be looking for ‘hook ups’ or ‘ONS’  (that’s ‘one night stands’ to you and me) but have posted photos of them half naked, some even more naked , photos, or others of them seductively laying in bed.  Call me old fashioned but that is only going to attract the bounders and cads surely.

What really makes me laugh is the amount of contortion a woman is prepared to undertake to get that perfect selfie.  I have never seen women physically twist out of shape so much – it is absurd.  Better still when they are taking the photo in the mirror of a bathroom in the establishment they are in, with a line of crappers in full view behind them – classy ladies!

Then there’s the trout pout – this I really don’t get.  I don’t find it attractive and every man I have spoken to agrees with me, so why do it ? You look stupid !

 

Enough about bitches and Ho’s – lets talk about me for a moment.  Two things, a right knee repair and an O/S repair.  The first being an old injury from mountain running last year finally fixed.  A little trip to the private ward yesterday and a few hours later, i was out of the door, initially on crutches by glad to say by last night, the crutches were no longer needed.  Some keyhole surgery and all is good I think

More photos when the dressing comes off in 6 days

 

The second part of my story is about my beautiful Range Rover.  Many of my followers and friends will know about the love I have for this motor car.

Sadly and stupidly, I managed to scrape it along a telegraph pole while parking in Newbold upon Avon a couple of nights ago.  Initially it looked bad but I managed to polish off most of the marks to leave two dents, one on the rear door and one on the rear arch.  Lucky for me I have a Dave Singh in my arsenal.  I dropped the car there on Monday and he will do a jolly fine job of it for me

 

Not pretty, and I felt like a real arse.

 

I did take some comfort in the fact that I massively excelled at mother’s day this year.  Primarily because I was here for the first time in many years but also because I pride myself in looking for alternatives to the usual chocolate and flowers. Previous years saw a 4 pack of Heinz Baked Beans.  Yes, I bemoaned the unprepared in Sainsburys while I was there having lunch, with their limp, late offerings of flowers – because I had gone off the scale this year.  A couple of bird houses to be fixed in the bushes at the bottom of mum’s garden and a pack of giant outdoor chalks so that she can draw on the patio while bird watching – I thought it was an awesome set of presents.  The girl who sold the chalks to me looked a bit confused when I said they were for my mum.

 

 

But what really made it special was the card I happened to find – it seemed very apt!

 

 

 

So now the Rangie is in the repair shop, I decided to try to sell it again.  Now I am after a 500hp supercharged V8 so that next time I hit that telegraph pole, I can knock the fucker clean out the ground.

If you know anyone looking for a very well cared for RRS – look no further

A very Beautiful Car

 

Anyway, I am back off to Tinder to look for more silly women but let me leave you with a very clever thought that I have just found under a Pot Noodle lid (it’s not a faffy food)

 

If at first you don’t succeed – Sky Diving is not for you

 

 

Planning a beer on 21st April – watch this space

 

 

 

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15/03/2017

Fake News

By hairygoose

Fake News

Lets get political ! OK, Olivia Newton-John sang about getting physical but the lyrics still fit the tune, try it !!

Fake news is a new watchword, all over the media. I can’t decide if it is deliberately fake news or just people embellishing stories, misreporting facts, not researching correctly of just trying to be seen as the first to publish something fashionably ahead of all the others. The latter being the reason they haven´t researched the subject properly.

Now, Donald J Trump uses the words fake news an awful lot and I want to analyse that a little. See, I think Trump is being quite clever about this. The media are well known for hashing up shit, misreporting or to be more accurate with that – selectively reporting what happens in the world

By selective reporting I mean that they leave relevant information out so that the facts they present, distort the truth to the point that they completely change the story.

Remember that TV advert for the Guardian Newspaper from a few years ago? Several different camera angles as a skin head ran towards a city slicker with his briefcase?

Guardian Ad

That is exactly what I mean, the skin head was saving the city slicker from a falling pallet of bricks but a different camera angle would have you believe he was trying to snatch his bag. Ironically, that advert itself was misrepresented too, with the final cinematic cut not being the same sequence as the other angle presented.

But move on to Trump. This is where I think he is being very clever and ultimately very brave. He is using a media stream to communicate with 20 million followers. In that stream, he can give exactly the information he wants you to see, that only he can edit, no media slant, misrepresentation, no so-called experts opinions, just his own voice.

There is also a down side to that. He can write whatever he likes, admittedly he will have some self censorship but ultimately if he wanted to tweet ‘Hilary is a Lazy old cow’ he could. So for his own gain, he could also deliberately mislead 20 million followers with no-one able to call him to task on it before it hits the outside world.

I am still curious about Trump. In a year of big political upsets, where the establishment is being challenged, it brings a little bit of hope. I am tired of weak and woolly politicians speaking without actually saying anything meaningful. Many of them too scared to say what they really think or what their electorate want them to bring into the public forum. Nigel Farage was not like that – he generally said what he thought and also what many of the voters were thinking too. Not afraid to say what he thought might just need saying.  I am so curious about the enigma that is Mr. Trump that I opened a twitter account purely to follow him – show me another politician that has grabbed my interest so much that I did similar!

Now, a few of you might think that I have gone a little mental right? Donald Trump, Nigel Farage but let me throw a few more names at you – Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and a name soon to vanish into the political archives Angela Merkel

Merkel is about to pay the ultimate political price for not listening to the concerns of her voters, a trip to the political wilderness is all hers – she will get hammered in this years elections.

Geert Wilders is even more interesting. All the opinion poles are suggesting that he will get support but not enough to form a government – opinion poles, remember how wrong they have been in recent history? I think old Geert just might surprise a few people.

Marine Le Pen – not this time is my prediction, but next time yes. France is not ready just yet but her time will come. François Hollande will be walking off to the wilderness hand in hand with Merkel

Wow, you might think, what on earth has rattled my cage today?

 

The Bloody BBC !!!

 

I hate this. I have for many years been proud of the BBC – an establishment that can be trusted, to report fairly and fully. Respected around the globe for its neutral stance on delivering accurate information – but it’s been on a slide.

Being out of the UK a lot, my first choice for news is the BBC. I see spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, factual mistakes in their news now. There used to be a time where they had a website to report these errors. Send them a note with a link to the page and they would deal with it. Not any more. I can only assume they got tired with the amount of corrections that they shut down the site to tell them about errors rather than address the real issue.

You have seen it too right? A reporter is looking at Facebook or some other web site and using that as their single point of research on a story. They claim a ‘social media outcry’ on a topic and post 3 examples. In a country of around 60 million people – 3 comments from internet warriors is hardly a social media outcry in my book.

You may have noticed too that the BBC also use google maps to add photos to their stories. Lets say Alfred Hitchcock was shot dead in Wankalot Street, Greater Manchester. Do they investigate further or just type wankalot street into google maps and screen grab a picture of that street? It is assumed that Google has listed the map & street correctly then published all over the BBC.

Lets not forget inaccurate reporting too. Ever read a story where they say something like ‘more than 12 cars were damaged’. What – you can only count to 12????? Investigate, give us facts because 1000 cars is more than 12 and 1000 suggests more of an incident than 13 doesn’t it?

The BBC is under threat of extinction and it would be a real shame and completely irreversible if it were lost just momentarily. If nothing is done to stop the nonsense it is starting to spout its demise is just around the corner.

I just read an article on Scottish Independence. I see Nicola Sturgeon is now wanting another independence referendum. I say give it to them and we can bury her political career next to Alex Salmond. The article in question is linked below. I just don’t know why these people hate the English with such a passion but let them get on with it – I am sure the Scots have more sense than Sturgeon credits them with.

The article headlines with ‘Scottish Independence support at highest ever level’.  Later into the story it writes this paragraph.

 

Asked to choose between independence, devolution and not having any kind of Scottish Parliament at all, 46% of the 1237 people surveyed between July & December of last year now back independence.

 

I have two issues with this. Such a small sample of people to make, what is, a huge statement from is wrong, but pollsters, you can’t tell them anything right?

More importantly, I seem to remember the last Independence vote Scotland took ended 45% Independent to 55% stay in the Union. So why such a dramatic headline for Independence support when in fact only a 1% increase has happened and that 1% was from less than 1300 people in a country where 4.5 million voted last time .

By the time that headline has been regurgitated a dozen times on social media it will be 70% in favour of independence – and you wonder where fake news comes from ?

Don’t blame Zuckerberg and Facebook, blame the cannon fodder that blindly hit the share and like buttons.  Don’t take my word for it though, research it yourself here

 

BBC Report

 

Phew – rant over. Holiday time is just a few days away. I will be back in Europe from 22nd March until 24th April and there are some key people I really would like to see.

 

Sister, Parents & Uncle at the top of the list of course, then there are others – Connor, it’s about time I took you for a coffee after all of your avid reading. Faggot pants Clifton might also get a visit while I am in Cornwall visiting Maria Moore. There is also the real possibilities of Portugal, I hear the very lush yank from Salt Lake City is back in town, Zenia-June and of course Mallorca to meet with Jones the Prick who is about to become a father for the first time. If I am in Mallorca, I have to meet with Belahendro and Bomber too – the list is endless but does also include John and Mon or the future in -laws if I can just get Lynsey to say yes !

 

Flying on the 21st, back on the ground and on my UK number from 06:30 on 22nd – send me some love

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