Perhaps sometimes, we should speak ill of the dead….

.. or at least we should save the gushing eulogies for those who actually deserve them.

This is prompted by the tragic case of the 14 year old girl apparently mauled to death by dogs recently, and by the headline on the front page of today’s Sun newspaper – or at least the edition on display in my local shop.

THE heartbroken boyfriend of killer dogs victim Jade Lomas-Anderson said yesterday: “She was a beautiful girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Immediately that I read the headline, I thought , “aye, right.”

Then I felt ashamed, and had a little think. There’s no reason to disbelieve that this poor sod was a “beautiful girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly”. She was just 14 years old; why would one have cause to believe anything to the contrary?

Well, I’ll tell you.

If you look on various Facebork ‘Walls of Remembrance’ or read any newspaper story of someone dying an un-natural death,  you will find gushing messages saying that exact thing (or variations) about people who turn out to have lived less than savoury lives.

“S/He was an angel”, “S/He was the best friend you could wish for”, “S/He loved his/her family”, “S/He was the life of the party”

Yet when you scratch the surface, you’ll quite often find s/he was, in fact, a thug, a thief, a small time dealer or other kind of rogue, and that the eulogies are emotionally-incontinent bare-faced bollocks.

And that is a problem, because you can become so used to that being the case, and the reality being the opposite of the public outpourings from the bereaved and the bereaved-by-proxy, that even when a case comes along where these eulogies are indeed fitting, you’d be daft to believe them without checking into it first.

Now, perhaps I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that people should speak the unvarnished autistic truth about the deceased. The actual grieving family don’t want to face those ‘facts’, true enough, and they may be perfectly innocent and respectable people who deserve to grieve in peace.

They have two societal maxims to enforce that:

• Don’t speak ill of the dead
• If you can’t say something positive, don’t say anything at all.

But that’s all a bit one sided, so I suggest that if protocol dictates that we observe the above, then we need a third maxim.

• If it’s complete bollocks, leave it out, you’re spoiling it for everyone else, you deluded prat.

Then we can start to drop the cynicism. Deal?

AJ

Schadenfreude

One of the reasons this blog has run out of steam in the last 12 months is that I realised not only the utter futility of politics – party politics in particular – but that my own intellectual investment in it was making me miserable. It was achieving nothing and it was making me a worse person.

But… just occasionally something comes to pass that it would be impossible for me not to comment on. I’m prepared to take the hit, just this once.

Mr Justice Sweeney told Huhne he should “have no illusions whatsoever” about the type of sentence he is likely to receive. The maximum penalty for the offence is life imprisonment.

If any MP deserved an ignominious ending, it was Chris Huhne. Okay there are several hundred others, but Huhne is definitely in the top 50.

I reckon he’ll get 3 years, of which he’ll serve 9 months mostly in an open prison, before being let out on a tag for a further 9 months. I predict that he’ll have a book out in 2014 and his smirking, shit-eating face will be back on BBC’s political programming by 2015 latest. He’ll be a non-exec director of a dozen renewable energy scams by 2017 & made for the rest of his disgusting subhuman life.

So… it’s a small victory, but it should still be celebrated in style.

I shall have my manservant pull one of those vintage bottles from the cellar for tonight.

AJ

Gay Marriage & Forced Entry *snigger*

Ahh.. gay marriage. Is there anyone who should really have an opinion about it other than gay people?

Well, it turns out that everyone has an opinion on it because, thanks once again to the state, it’s become everyone’s problem.

Some people think it’s a disgusting, disgraceful, sinful calumny. Most of those people take advice from a man in a dress, with an imaginary best friend, who thinks that contraception is a sin, and a woman should not be allowed an abortion even when her life is in danger, or when the spawn is the product of a rape, yet who is also an alcoholic abuser of young boys.

You know what, though? If those people want to think that, it’s fine with me. So long as I’m able to point and laugh, and call them on their small-minded hypocritical idiocy.

I have no problem whatsoever with gay marriage. I understand that there are sound legal reasons for equalising rights between gay and straight couples, in terms of the legal protections and entitlements that are accrued by married people, but not currently by those in a civil partnership.

That said, I think marriage is mainly a ludicrous construct. To involve the state – or the frontmen of a sky pixie – in one’s personal relationships is a need which baffles me to this day. This is all by the by though. If people want to get married then whatever…  and the legal benefits, if you’re prepared to play the game, are plain to see.

The current public debate about gay marriage, though, isn’t about gays or marriage. That’s just a smokescreen. The debate is about whether the state should be able to force private institutions to undertake ceremonies which, rightly or wrongly, they hold to be immoral.

The answer to this is simple: Of course they fucking shouldn’t. The state should have no business in dictating to any religious institution about what they must and must not undertake within the bounds of natural law.

Sure, there’ll be some religious organisations that will be prepared to perform gay marriage ceremonies – good for them. But the corollary must be that there’ll be those which refuse to do so, for whatever reasons they choose. There are always non-religious wedding options as well.

Why cannot this be the status quo? If you want to get gay married, you should be able to get gay married. If you want to perform this marriage service, fair enough. If you do not want to perform the service, fine. Everyone actually gets what they want in this scenario.

But oh no. This isn’t good enough for the ‘liberal elite’ (perhaps the most disingenuous two-word phrase in the English language). They want to make the pious suffer for their foolishness and ignorance. If the irony of secular liberals imposing an orthodoxy on dissenting religious groups is lost on you, by the way, you’re a fucking idiot. Go away.

Gays: shop around. And what are you even doing wanting to get married in the church/mosque/temple of a creed that holds your very being in such contempt? Is it really a victory for anyone if you FORCE them to marry you. Your wedding vows overseen by a man under duress who holds you in contempt? Wow – you should be so proud.

Settled? I think so.

AJ

Supertard DJs… Here we go!

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. It’s a funny old world, innit?

The other day, two idiot Australian radio DJs made a prank phone call to the hospital where a royal wench is undergoing intensive treatment for feeling a bit queasy, and having a bit of a dribbly bottom. In so doing the idiot DJs committed the capital crime of doing an impression of the Queen so badly that even Jon Culshaw would have been embarrassed by it.

Nevertheless, a bamboozled foreign nurse gave out confidential information over the phone.

*sigh*

Global storm of outrage is whipped up by idiot media. Planes take to the skies above Bristol, trailing banners proclaiming, “THIS MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN”.

Fuckwits on Twitter whip up a lynch mob to protect/avenge ‘our Kate’.

Bamboozled foreign nurse kills herself.

Fuckwit Twitter lynch mob bays for the heads of the idiot DJs, completely heedless of their own roles in the unfolding tragedy.

Twattish media saying Idiot DJ’s on are now on ‘suicide watch’. Twitter steps up its demands for their heads on a barbecue.

Can you guess what will happen next? I propose pre-empting that by starting a Twitter lynch mob to bay for the heads of the Twitter lynch mob that bayed for the head of the bamboozled nurse, then bayed for the heads of the idiot DJs when they got precisely what they wanted.

It’s hard to know where to start really. It’s like a meta-cluster-fuckwit-athon. You could light cities with it.

Eventually, all of time and space will collapse in on itself under the weight of all this unbridled stupidity.

Pull up a chair, grab a beer. And remember… This whole idiot DJ/suicide thing all rests on the profoundly shaky premise that a jumped up shop girl who married wisely is of any importance whatsoever.

Dicks.

AJ

Cameron vs Leveson and the Statists – Another battle Cameron will lose

A fairly remarkable day, in that Cameron has taken a position I agree with.

The Leveson report is out.

Pic Via www.order-order.com

The Conservative leader gives a cautious response, saying he has "serious misgivings and concerns" about state regulation of the press.

The Liberal Democrat leader, however, wants to step on the gas and fully and uncritically implement the recommendations of this report. This is because Nick Clegg isn’t a Liberal of any variety. He’s just another big-state socialist authoritarian stooge who’d be at home in Labour. In one move, he has given the lie to the very raison d’etre of his party.

Quite what Clegg is up to is something of little concern to me, to be honest.

Some in the media and those of a ‘freedom loving’ disposition are now desperately cleaving to Cameron’s words, as reassurance that the danger is not serious.

Perhaps they’d care to recall that a former Prime Minister of ours was committed to preventing blanket bans on smoking and fox hunting? And that those words provided significant reassurance to interested parties, which actually stopped them maximising their continued opposition to the bans, thinking it’d be fine for them.

If you think Cameron will get his way, and the knee-jerkers, statists, milquetoasts and wounded slebs will accept that, I predict that you will turn out to be dead wrong.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history…

AJ

Nissan Juke 1.5DCi review

Pic blatantly nicked from Autotrader.

Of late, motor manufacturers have adopted the “blue” motif for their efficient diesel vehicles.

VW have the ‘Blue Motion’ which sounds like a stool sample taken from a Smurf. Mercedes has ‘Blue Efficiency’ which was originally the name of a German porn film. Nissan brings us the Pure Drive, which whilst eschewing the word ‘blue’ and being completely disingenuous, is presented proudly on a blue badge on the back.

The motor manufacturers were canny to avoid going for the obvious “green” moniker for their efficient diesel vehicles, as there’s not much that’s green about spewing carcinogenic 10 micron soot particles into the atmosphere (PM10s).

As a died-in-the-wool petrolhead, I should have no business saying anything at all positive about either diesel vehicles (which I detest with a passion most reserve for their football team’s arch nemesis) or lifestyle vehicles, which my prejudices tell me are driven by mums, idiots and metrofags.

All told then, it’s as much a surprise to me as anyone else that I find myself quite taken with my latest rental cart – a Nissan Juke 1.5DCi.

While I didn’t take to the looks when it was first released – but then few ever do love anything radical until it’s had time to sink in – I have found the shape growing on me. It has all the hallmarks of dynamic ‘moving while stationary’ characteristics that were once reserved for the likes of BMW with their Hoffmeister kink.

So powerfully is this effect embodied in the Juke, that twice in a day I found myself thinking, while stood close to the car (fuelling, unloading), that the car was rolling forwards. Both times I checked my head, and then checked that the handbrake was on and the car was in gear. No drugs were involved in the experiencing of this car. Sadly.

When I arrived at the car rental place, I perked up when I heard them muttering about a Juke, given that I had expected (knowing the place) to end up with an Astra or some horrific Chevrolet p.o.s. The best I had hoped for was a Seat Leon, and that prospect didn’t provide much more cheer than piloting a Chevy Daewoo. So, I was already up on the day before I even got in the car.

This was clearly the poverty spec Juke. Cloth seats, basic stereo, no cruise control. The seats proved remarkably supportive and comfortable. The basic stereo is poor, although I was thankful for a 3.5mm AUX input, and that the speakers seem able to deliver fairly robust bass without farting. The cruise control was really missed, given the 400 miles that lay ahead of me. All of this could be fixed with a browse of the options list, I suspect.

This review is based on a single day of using this hire car, to do a ~400 mile trip from Berkshire to Hertfordshire, via central Manchester. I was in the morning rush hour leaving Berkshire, and in the evening rush-hour leaving Manchester. I also heroically negotiated a 45 minute traffic jam, which meant 15 minutes reading twitter, then half hour of crawling, sighing loudly, and jockeying for position to make sure I didn’t get stuck behind the gap-leaving milquetoast idiot in the Volvo/Passat/Insignia/Saab etc.

On with the detail then. I like the looks. This car was black. Probably not metallic black, but black nevertheless – and it suits the car. If it were my money, I’d probably go the force red, and I’d avoid the ‘Haptic Blue’ on the assumption that it’d vibrate each time I touched it.

The cabin quality cannot be faulted – by me anyway. The plastics feel robust and high quality – with the notable exception of the plastic cowl around the gear lever. The ergonomics are first class. The instruments are clear and effortless to read. The seating position is perfect.

The car corners with very little roll for something that sits so high on the road. The corollary of this is that the ride on the motorway is a little firm. Not BMW firm, and certainly not Audi firm, but firmer than I was expecting for this sort of car. It’s not at all unpleasant though. The steering is apparently electrically assisted, but until I looked it up, I thought it was traditional hydraulic system. Although light, it provides decent enough feedback from the road for a car of its type, and inspires much more confidence than the system used by VAG.

It’s a light car, the Juke. Surprisingly, for its size and shape, it’s a relative bantam-weight at 1285kg (kerb) in the 2-wheel-drive manual configuration. That’s the kerb weight of a Honda S2000.

The engine… well. It’s a 1.5 litre diesel engine, so what are we to expect? It’s a little gutless, that’s for sure. With just 110bhp, it has less than a third of the power of my daily driver. It’s the only diesel powered car I’ve ever driven where you cannot pull away from a standstill on the clutch without touching the throttle. If you don’t give it enough gas and it bogs down, there’s a terrible knocking sound of oil starvation at the bottom end. That may not be what it is, but that’s what it sounded like to me and either way, it cannot possibly help the longevity of the engine.

Once you’re on the move, though, it’s responsive enough so long as you make decent use of the 6-speed gear box. This is not such a trauma: the gear change action, while not entirely perfect, is better than anything BMW or VAG can offer by way of a manual gearbox. In normal motorway traffic, the Juke will mix it with the Teutonic hoarders of the outside lane without ever feeling overwhelmed. Just remember to get out of their way when the lane clears – they’re probably in a hurry, and much more important than you.

In terms of efficiency, I can’t really fault the car. The on-board computer reported an average 47.4MPG after ~400 miles of mixed driving. This is remarkable for anything driven by me, who is short on patience and leaden of foot. I was taking it reasonably easy for the first 300 miles or so (70ish MPH), but as the night drew in, I found myself thinking ‘sod this for a laugh’ and applied some anvil to the situation.

Make no mistake: if you floor it, economy will plummet (relatively) but if you’re prepared to sit at 60-65mph all day, expect to see north of 55mpg – maybe even more.

All this talk of efficiency is for the birds of course, but the geek in me is unable to resist the MPG readout on the dash.

Much of what I learned about the Juke is, with hindsight, unsurprising. As an adherent to the old Primera, which was by far the best car of its kind for the enthusiastic driver, I should have expected a quality cabin, decent seats, good ergonomics and a proper gear-change.

The shocker is that I was unable to find myself disgusted by the diesel engine. It suits this car – I wouldn’t expect the petrol engine to be up to the job of providing the torque to move this thing around with any passengers or luggage– at least anywhere near as efficiently. If I was speccing a Note or (God forbid) a Micra, I’d go for the petrol version every time, but for the Juke, the diesel makes perfect sense.

So would I buy one of these? The head says yes. It’s a great package and Nissan dealerships could teach VAG dealers an awful lot about service, just as Nissan’s engineers could teach VAG a lot about reliability. Until I get to try out a Nissan Juke-R though, the heart says no.

But…… If it was a choice between this and some Seat/Skoda/VW thing in the list of company cars, it would be an absolute no-brainer for me.

AJ

Andrew Mitchell’s Sacking

Dave: Ah, come in Andrew, take a seat. I trust you watched the induction video in reception?

Andrew: Oh.. er not really. I was watching my portfolio on my phone.

Dave: Come now , Andrew. We know what we’re here for. I’ve to give you a good talking to and take away your tiffin rights for a year. This is not easy for me.

Andrew: I knew it would come to this *slumps shoulders* *hangmong expression*

Dave: Don’t worry Andrew. It will turn out fine. Should blow over in a year or so.

Andrew: I’m all at sea, Prime Minister.

Dave: How so? You know the drill, chap.

Andrew: It’s just that… I don’t care about the money.. *does the oodles dance* .. it’s the ability to set intractable problems for publicly employed imbeciles that I’ll really miss.

David: *adjusts tie* We’ll all miss that in 2015, chap. *dabs eye with napkin*. But to other matters.  We’re busy writing the Queen’s honours list. Would Sir Andrew care to go quietly and with decorum?

Sir Andrew: Naturally, Prime Minister. It has been my most profound pleasure to serve me.

David: Likewise, Sir Andrew. I say, pass your wife, would you?

Sir Andrew: Tell her not to wake me back when she get’s back.

Meh.

AJ