VandalSpace

Drinking on the Tube - Forgive us our National Vices

2008-06-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of a holiday in Spain, I was recently reading up on the etiquette that should be observed whilst dealing with the foreigners. Alongside wearing appropriate evening attire, thanking people and being polite, all generally adhered to, there was this stark warning “do not get drunk, drunkenness is frowned upon, all previous good behaviour will be quickly forgotten.” This was a total shock to me - the Spanish friends I have in Britain get pissed all the time. Then I realised, they’d been reading the Spanish equivalent of the book I’d been reading. In a similar passage it reads “get drunk, sobriety is frowned upon, all previous good and bad behaviour will be forgotten, along with your name and the minger you wished you hadn’t with.” The foreigners know we like a drink.
Outsiders only have to look at the scenes from the London Underground to understand the place drinking has in British culture. Where else in the world would the transport system of the nation’s capital be turned into a party because of drinking on trains being banned?
But why should it be banned? It’s our national sport - nanny state I say. Let us have our fun, let us have our vices - other countries have their vices. The Americans have their guns and Republicanism, we have drinking and Coronation Street – it’s only fair.

The tube revellers weren’t your usual grimy Booze Britain sorts that the Daily Mail loves complaining about…

They were more Pims on the lawn…

Five Years Today

2008-04-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite holiday snaps. It was taken five years ago during a party being held for some journalists, we were lucky enough to stumble on it just as the celebrations started to kick off.

It's just a shame that Baghdad hasn't got the same party vibe anymore - It's Ibiza for me this this year!

New Events for Beijing 2008

2008-03-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

China’s Olympic Committee today announced that new events will be played at the Beijing Games later this year.
The decision to include new sports was made in response to recent Tibetan independence demonstrations and is aimed at creating a feeling of greater unity between China and the disputed region.

A jovial Chinese official gave a statement earlier today to explain the decision, “we felt that Tibet should play more part in the Games.” He went on to say, “we have designed some sports that Chinese government thinks best promote unity and are best understood by Tibetans.”
Following the statement the official detailed some of the new events, these included Tear Gas Table Tennis, Monk Wrestling and a whole host of bat-ton related sports currently being perfected by the authorities.
Unfortunately none of the new events competitors were available for comment because they are busy training in Tibet.

(Pictures from the Chinese Olympic training camp)

Who gives a shit about American Politics?

2008-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

At the moment it seems people are more interested in the US Primaries than their own nation’s politics. I’ve talked to a few people about it recently, and not your usual politicos either, but people who I’d of thought were more interested in Britney’s lack of underwear or the reason for Newcastle Utd's poor performance.
Why is this though? Surely we should take more notice of our own country’s politics than somewhere thousands of miles away. Maybe it’s because we were promised an election and never given one, so now we’re getting all the hot poll action we can get. Maybe it’s the sight of Hillary Clinton in all her finery – err nah. Or is it that Americans know how to put on a good show – The Terminator and Rambo never turned up when old Tony B was trying to get elected.

Or maybe, after nearly eight years of George, we’ve started to realise how much of an impact the US has on the rest us.
For the UK, going to war in Iraq was a big one, and although it was ultimately our choice, we were leaned on, then had our collective head patted, rolled over and had our belly tickled – good boy Tony. For other countries it’s much the same – in the name of protecting it’s interest or expanding them - the US throws its weight around – which is considerable (look at some of the people that live there), and the rest of us feel the fall out.
So who can blame us for being interested in who’s in charge next, after all, we’ll probably feel the effects in one way or another. I'm just glad that the UK is considered an ally and US Presidents aren’t allowed to serve more than two terms.

Happy New Year … Now Feel Guilty!

2008-01-03T06:15:00.000-08:00

Detoxing, dieting, quitting, exercise – boring. It’s that time of year again, the used to be a fatty minor zelebs are all over the adverts in straining new rave leotards, the government is pushing its - You Smoker Scum Propaganda, and supermarkets are replacing the eggnog with evil detox drinks that have a life of their of own and contain more fruit than Africa in one handy little shake – yuck

He’s something to think about while you’re wondering if you should buy Strictly Come Dancersize or Shilpa Yoga for your post Christmas workout.

How much money is made off our post chrimbo guilt trip?

The same people who want to starve us now, were stuffing us before Christmas!

How big is the mountain of unused exercise videos?

What makes ex soap actors the experts on ridding women of their bingo wings?

Who gives a shit? I like smoking, eating, drinking, having fun and not feeling guilty!

Royal to Royal

2007-11-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

Last week two Monarchs headed royally up to the palace. On their way they noticed small crowds of commoners had gathered to welcome the foreign King.

“Nice Park you have, who are all the people on the side of the road shouting though?”
Said the foreign King

“Oh I do apologise, it’s this bloody Tatchell fello having one of his little protests. You see we have these freedoms over here, bloody annoying they can be, we would have had a much more pleasant drive without all these people cluttering up the pavements, I do apologise.”

“They’d be flogged like dogs in my country.”

“Yes there’s a lot to be said for the way you do things over there, we wouldn’t have to worry about people like Tatchell if we did things your way, I expect you’d give him the lash.

“I know this Tachell's kind - we’d stone him I think”

“Ha, ha, ha - you certainly do have things right, you’d get on well with my husband, he’s always saying how we should never of stopped hanging people you know”

“Oh yes - I love hangings.”

“I’ve always fancied a beheading myself – I’d of loved the chance to say off with his head, especially if Tony was still around.”

Where’s, where’s, where’s, where’s Saudi – where’s Saudi?

2007-10-31T04:20:00.000-07:00

Kyle in the Dock Shock! (well not really)

2007-09-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Whilst clicking around Internet news outlets I came across a story about the Jeremy Kyle Show. For those of you that don't know it - it's like Jerry Springer, but less friendly, the host acts like a know-it-all pit bull that's strung out on speed and the guests represent all that's great about Britain's trailer trash pond life - incest, adultery, teenage pregnancy - you know that sort of thing.
The show was in the news, not for the first time, because two of the love rival guest came to blows and ended up in court. Ok, well this was bound to happen sooner or later, matches and dynamite and all that - but what was more interesting was the Judge's reaction to the case.

He came up with this brilliant description of the show, "human bear-baiting which goes under the guise of entertainment," and then went onto poke the producers in the eye. "This type of incident is exactly what the producers want. These self-righteous individuals should be in the dock with you. They pretend there is some kind of virtue in putting out a show like this."
I would agree with the Judge, it definitely is "human bear-baiting." I've been told what the researchers say to the guests as they usher them into the pit; "go on, this is your chance to really tell them what you think," "she deserves it, don't be put off by the audience." The Judge was also right about the Producers too, there is no way on earth they believe they're helping people solve their problems, their only concern is making brilliant trash telly, and after this incident, avoiding the potential backlash.
The Judge was however wrong to lay so much blame on the Producers. They are only providing what people want, the viewing figures don't lie. People want to watch crap and if they didn't there wouldn't be a show. Ok, I understand that the Producers have certain responsibilities, but if someone wants to go onto to national television to sort out their problems, then that's up to them - and if someone wants to watch, then that's up to them too. Who are we to judge - that's Jezzer Kyle's job.

Bogey Man Brown

2007-08-02T02:50:00.000-07:00

It's been around for a while but it's brilliant!

God bless democracy - oh wait we didn't vote for him. Oh well, he seems like a nice chap.

What Time is it George?

2007-06-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to a good old Presidential shooting hey? I don't think the Albanians have quite caught on to what the rest of the world think of Old W yet. Weirdly, it also sounds like the crowd are shouting "Putin, Putin" - maybe he was stealing the watch and the crowd were alerting George in a kind of pantomime fashion "He's behind you, Putin, Putin, he's stealing your watch, he's stealing our independence"

Olympic Logo Fit

2007-06-06T03:45:00.000-07:00

Well it causes fits – but is it fit? Well in my opinion, it’s a just logo and you’re never going to please everyone. However I do think you can criticise it on cost - £400,000 is a huge cost for a logo and a bit of animation. Apparently it’s aimed at the “internet generation” – a generation that probably understands more than any other that you don’t have to spend £400K to produce a fancy bit of design.
I suppose I’m being quite harsh though, the company behind the logo probably did have very high overheads – I bet Latte’s are quite expensive in London and all the blue paint for the fancy blue sky design suites must have cost quite a bit as well. However I bet the most expensive part of the Wolff Ollins design strategy was the salary of the speech writer – just listen to Seb Coe at the launch, whoever wrote this was definitely high on fair trade coffee beans. “[The Olympic logo] is the vision at the very heart of our brand… will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world” Nice one Seb.
Oh, and to anyone that says the logo will generate large amounts of sponsorship revenue – any Olympic logo will generate huge sponsorship, £400K or not.

Pasty-gate

2007-05-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

Greggs Bakeries have caused outrage in Manchester by introducing the supposedly “new and improved” cheese and onion pasty.

This scandalous move to change the recipe of the legendary pasty came to my attention last week. As I bit into my favourite savoury, expecting the heavenly taste and cheesy goodness of the great pasty, I was shocked to discover extra pastry and an extremely weird filling. I thought ok, maybe this is a one off occurrence, maybe there was a mix up with the order and Greggs received a batch of horrible Hampsons pasties. To my deepest disappointment- I was wrong!
On my next trip to Greggs everything started to make sense, “new and improved cheese and onion pasty” posters were proudly plastered all over Greggs. All my fears were confirmed, Greggs had changed the recipe - the classic pasty was no more. Following this bombshell, I quizzed the staff and found out that I wasn’t the only person to be affected by the change – other people had registered their disgust and the staff weren’t happy either. Something had to be done!
As soon as I got back to work I was straight on the phone to Greggs Head Office letting my thoughts be known about this apparent “cost cutting measure.” But, as is usually the case with customer complaints, I felt my protest fell on deaf ears and I was consoled with promise of some Greggs vouchers – although I didn’t see the point in sending them to me, I couldn’t buy my favourite pasty.
Even though I was slightly disheartened by the pasty apathy I’d experienced from Head Office I wasn’t going to give up, I couldn’t face going through life never tasting the delight that is a classic Gregg’s cheese and onion pasty - It was time to enlist the help of my pasty loving friends.

Register your disgust here

As soon as I informed the pasty lovers at work and at home about the terrible and shocking recipe rethink I had a whole host of people bombarding the Greggs website (follow the link above for complaints in the North West). This of course was brilliant, but the Save the Pasty campaign must not lose precious momentum at this make or break time. Tell you friends, tell you family, tell the man at the bus stop you see everyday but never speak to, shout it from the roof tops, sing it from the hills – stop this savoury stupidity now and BRING BACK THE PASTY

Scientology Panorama

2007-05-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

Panorama Scientology episode, brilliant - car crash TV in fact, with two great car crash characters. It didn’t however tell me much about the Church’s dealings and I don’t know much more about the religion/cult (oh mustn't call it that) than I did already. The Church also missed an opportunity to perhaps silence some of its critics through this programme. Instead they employed a spokesman who wasn’t willing to answer Sweeney’s questions, got in his face at every available opportunity and also quite strangely, looked like a pumped up version of Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. Great PR, piss off and harass the guy making a film about you!

Oh and pissed he was - “YOU WEREN’T THERE FOR THE START OF THE INTERVIEW…” the flustered old boy from the beeb bellowed out – you can almost imagine him saying to himself - “people listen to me you know.”

This is brilliant - Scientology Spokesman makes BBC Journo blow up!

2007-05-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I loved this, I can't wait to watch the programme.

Myspace Morons, quoting the scriptures and the joy of vandalism.

2007-05-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

Myspace really is a wonderful thing. It brings groups of people together that would never normally talk or come close to meeting. You get a picture of what people think and do on the other side of the world. You get to interact, build bridges, make “friends,” and my personal favourite - tell the freaks what you think about them!
My virtual journey into Myspace started about a year ago after being told about the site by a friend (a real one) who was promoting his band. At first I was very dubious about the idea and made a mock up character to put up instead of exposing my real self to a huge online community, after all it was just a glorified chatroom which at the time I didn’t want to be associated with. This did eventually change however and I started to embrace the idea more and discovered an interesting side of the site that didn’t contain posey pictures and pornstar chat. This side of Myspace was the groups section. Here I found people with opinions, debate, a place where lots of fun can be had, and plenty of opportunities for vandalism. The first group I signed up for was Hardcore Christians – Living Hardcore, this section of Myspace is filled with the believers and preachers – and is also totally devoid of reason. You may be thinking; why would anyone sign up for this if they aren’t a Christian, or what you might be thinking - a Christian hater? Well I’m neither and really just wanted to go on the group out of pure wonderment and devilry, and as I said earlier, to see what people on the other side of the world think. Well I found out what some crazies think:

Topic: I don’t know weather to be creeped out

Wendie, Manchaca, Texas, F/22
“[Some]one I know did a satanic spells because someone threatened to kill me .Oh and the guy that threatened several other people as well.”

The Caribbean Character, Catersville, Georgia M/37 – replied

“Wendie, if you're a Christian you have nothing to worry about. Even if this guy did "cast a spell", you are a child of t he living God who is a lot more POWERFUL than the god wannabe that he worships.

2Ti 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

This is one of the more comical topics, others range from; the big creationism evolution debate to the evils of Harry Potter. One thing that most threads had in common was the blind quoting of the scriptures to justify a debate. This really started to annoy me, I could no longer start fun agitating topics such as “God is a lie,” “hell doesn’t sound that bad” or “what constitutes sex, I only did it for a few minutes and she was asleep,” without being shot down with a scripture. Ok, quoting the scriptures probably does have a place when interpreting the bible, but when your talking about voting republic, can you defend rape or hardcore rock it seems pretty irrelevant and even stupid. All that said, people are entitled to live their lives the way they want, but if you quote the book Vandalism 2007:05 “Doth moron that quote the old dead men, shall burn in a pit of eternal stupidity and wander the lands blindly and without reason”

Next on my group hit list “Military guys and the girls that love them,” “The Coalition of Non-Sexual Cuddling,” “Republican Girls Do It Better,” and “Mass Debaters”

You've got to love Myspace really!

Nuke Hair for Davey C, and Tony’s Missile Mods

2007-03-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Parliament voted to keep our nukes. Loyal to the PM Labour and Tory MPs skipped joyously hand in hand out of the chamber safe in the knowledge of our Mutually Assured Destruction, or well someone else’s destruction (watch out Ahmadjady).
Good old Tone, letting Parliament vote, not like previous governments who just went ahead and built new bombs without giving the option of objection, he wouldn’t dream about not consulting parliament before updating our nukes… Oh wait what’s that Tony just bought some new parts to mod up your Tridents from the Americans, oh Tony that will impress boys down at the Nuke Club, and maybe George will be your friend again.
Good old Davey C will be rubbing his hands together too; he’ll have the chance to play with big boys toys when Labour expires. He can be like a real Tory leader then, that’ll show the old boys that he’s not just a PR man.
“Ha, how many PR men have a got a big red button to press and whole countries to bully, and with my new power hair cut that makes me look ultra butch I’ll be even more popular than Maggie, and they call me a PR man.”

A case of misunderstood youth

2007-02-26T08:54:00.000-08:00

The young Wythenshawe resident Ryan Florence has been treated very unfairly in the national press. His picture has been in every paper and his life is now subject to a large amount of media scrutiny and criticism.
It is generally believed that Ryan was pretending to point a gun at David Cameron (something that no one would ever want to do of course), however on closer examination of the picture you can see it is not gun pointing action but an outstretched finger. Ryan obviously had something interesting he wanted Mr Cameron to smell, as you can see in the picture he has his other hand down his pants as if he is trying to get the smell onto both hands.
Another picture that was not seen in the media (to make the story look more sensational) looked something like this

This incident highlights yet another case of misunderstood youth. Instead of trying to understand the obviously troubled young man, the media brand him a tag wearing, drug taking, hoodie glad gang member that needs locking up!

Who is the taker?

2007-02-21T02:36:00.001-08:00

George or Ahmadinejady?

Just imagine... after the mushroom clouds settle and the nuclear standoff is resolved.

George and Ahmadyjady become good friends, lovers in fact. However its not all peace and love in the nuclear desert, the couple's now much closer relationship is still fraught with difficulties and they constantly argue over who wears the trousers, well the radiation suit.
What do you think they should do to solve this? who should be the taker, more to the point who would this role be more suited too.
My personal opinion is that George would be the taker as he's always had the power and Ahmadjady the giver as he's always wanted the power but never had it. Well Ahmadjady in the wastes of modern civilisation your time has come.

Our in-depth (ha) investigation into congestion charges in Manchester

2007-02-20T02:23:00.000-08:00

The Boredom of Blogs

2007-02-20T01:20:00.000-08:00

Most blogs are very boring, they are usually written with an eye on part of the world that everyone sees. This blog will probably be much the same as I don't live in an interesting or war torn country, have an interesting (paid) job or mix with the glitterati. So for now I will try to look through other windows, and criticise and praise (well mainly criticise) wherever I see fit.

I will vandalise and spoil and annoy the people that annoy me.