Hear Me Roar

Essex has long been associated with a number of things. White stilettos, fake tan and an average IQ across the population of about -12. But thanks to this Bank Holiday Weekend's premier news event, the good folk of this fine county have dispelled one stereotype and reinforced another.

Not everything has to be 'leopard-print' and we have a cracking sense of humour.

I am of course talking about the Essex Lion, who is now a close third in the list of 'World Famous Lions', behind only Mufasa and The Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz in the rankings.

From the tone that many newsreaders were taking when reporting the story, you'd have thought they were simply not aware a man-eating creature was loose. Many were talking about the story as though a light gust-of-wind was nonchalantly blowing its way around Essex, such were the smiles etched across several news anchor's face.

Or like everyone else bar Essex Police, they knew this was the most preposterous thing to come out of the county since Jodie Marsh's six-pack.

Lions are not particularly common in this part of the world. It is unlikely I'll be stopping the car driving along Southend seafront anytime soon so I can take a picture of a lioness wandering around the arcades. There's probably about four in the whole county and they're all behind a cage or busy napping on a rock in view of many trained animal holders. Therefore I'd like to think someone would know if one of the beasts was missing before a dog-walker or holiday-maker had the misfortune of running into one.

Incase, like half the population of Essex, you were unsure of what a lion looks like, I have provided a handy image.

Yet this weekend, a police operation consisting of 25 police officers and two helicopters, one fitted with thermal cameras began in the hope of hunting down the rogue cat that was spotted by residents from a nearby caravan park.

I couldn't start a police hunt with 25 officers and two helicopters if I hijacked a tank, screamed 'Death to the West' and blew up Basildon.

Yet it turned out half of Essex's police were merely looking for a 'large house cat'. I'll remember that next time I go and put up 'Missing' posters for next door's runaway moggy.

I'm not sure that such a fuss should be made over one man's claims that he saw a lion, especially one from a caravan park. Have you experienced the fumes when visiting the tank containing all of the park's urine and turds? They're so hallucinogenic I'm surprised the man didn't see Jimi Hendrix riding a polar bear made of daffodils while reading 50 Shades of Grey. I would've sent all the police out then.

The next step the authorities should've taken is to phone a nearby zoo (say, Colchester Zoo, which is a few minutes down the road) and request they check all of their lions are accounted for. You don't have to have watched every episode of the Really Wild Show to know that a lion's natural habitat is not Clacton-on-Sea. A simple check of owners of exotic pets in the local area would identify a) if anyone owned a lion and b) if any of them were mental enough to take them out for a walk without a leash. If both of these admittedly quick investigations failed to back up caravan man's claims he had a staring contest with Simba the Apparently Stationary Lion, I would've filed the whole thing in the drawer marked 'Funny Bank Holiday Hoaxes'.

But no. Everyone in a 40 mile radius suddenly feared for their lives, people were told to stay indoors as though the 10 Plagues of Egypt were making an ill-timed comeback and everyone outside Essex sniggered, placing bets on which TOWIE cast member would find themselves mauled by the big cat first.

Of course now, the idea that it was a lion is absolutely ridiculous and the people of Essex appear just that little bit more stupid. Some are even claiming that the sighted creature was named 'Tom', a clear indication how wrong we were to hunt down something that sounds so pathetic.

What can we learn from this highly entertaining episode? Many of us need to learn that lions and domestic house cats are related. It is pointless starting a massive police investigation because someone says Mary-Kate is robbing a jewellery store when it could very easily be Ashley. Even if they produce a grainy photo which instills so much doubt that even Elizabeth could become part of the equation.

(For future reference, this is the last time I'll use the Olsen siblings as an extended metaphor)

I thought over-zealous policing was an American exclusive. While you can imagine the law enforcements of New York hunting down a 'lion' with a SWAT team, helicopter gunships, tanks and a camera crew to put together fly-on-the-wall documentary 'On The Hunt for a Maneater', I thought the British police were a bit more reserved about such things. Apparently not.

Maybe they were all a bit bored after a relatively quiet Olympics. The first sniff of a case where they could save the lives of thousands of innocent Brits obviously triggered the part of the brain where policing suddenly becomes a Hollywood blockbuster. How long will it be before such a saga is translated to screen with poetic license and Jason Statham as the leader of the investigation?

Not long I imagine.

Do You Want Fries With That Qualification?

Ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is a night to celebrate. Tonight, we honour the commitment and hard work that your sons and daughters have put in over the past two weeks. We've had nothing but praise for them, and I like them all to come up to the stage one by one to collect their awards. Without further or do, I'd like to present all of these wonderful boys and girls, their Level 2 BTEC in working at McDonalds.

In my head, this is roughly how I'd think an award ceremony would go at a particularly shit school where kids are awarded for not setting the teacher alight every term. Well, now these miscreants have the chance to leave with maybe the odd-qualification, as ol' Ronald McDonald has stepped into the British education system armed with a hamburger and a shit-load of easy qualifications.

You see, in exchange for working for 10 days at a McDonalds restaraunt, teenagers can now get a level 2 BTEC qualification in 'Work Skills'. Essentially, it's the equivalent of a B or C at GCSE, or what I used to call 'hard work'.

According to Edexcel (the exam board who run the qualification), the experience will help to build 'team working skills' and improve teenagers communication. N0w I don't know another generation who can chat quite as much as ours. The last thing a teenager who spends all day on their phone, Facebook and MSN is to be taught how to communicate at work. And what team working skills can you possibly hope to achieve from working behind the counter at McDonalds? The only thing I can possibly think of is which nationality of employee is on fries duty and which is on adding human fluids to the burgers.

I am not at all impressed by this. I worked bloody hard for my GCSEs and for exam boards to be handing them out like fucking Happy Meal toys is taking the piss. What happened to a bit of social elitism i.e. the people that work the hardest get the rewards. Lets face it, the kids who are going to be taking this qualification are going to be the ones flipping burgers anyway, so essentially these 2 weeks are just practice. I'm waiting for the day when AQA start giving out A-Levels to people who busk...

Come on Pig, didn't the hedgehog teach you ANYTHING?

Let's be honest. Animals and road safety don't really mix. It seems very hypocritical for a hedgehog to tell kids about crossing the road safely when they're often the first piece of roadkill you see on a morning commute. Foxes aren't exactly the cleverest either. Sure they may be a bit shrewd when it comes to looting from the bins, but the bastards can't cross a road without causing at least 3 cars to swerve out of their way just so we don't end up with Basil Brush's cousin flattened on the grass verge.

But now it seems that pigs have ignored the most basic rules of road safety. Well, when I say pigs, I actually only mean one pig. One very troublesome little pig.

Toddlers call her...Peppa Pig.

Yes that's right, that little poorly animated, poorly drawn cartoon pig that appears on Nickelodeon Jr. and Channel Five has been in breach of safety laws. You see, in several scenes of the TV show, Peppa Pig gets into a car and fails to do her seatbelt up. Now, whilst this unbelievably serious crime (which should be punished by death by firing squad) has been enforced for many decades, the producers of this show have....

...I'm not even going to bother with this sarcastic approach anymore. Honestly. The makers of the show are now reanimating previous episodes to show a seatbelt because ONE parent complained when her toddler refused to wear a seatbelt because the TV Pig wouldn't.

ONE.

When are these TV shows/production companies going to grow a backbone and tell these people to be better parents? They're not. Instead they're grovelling to these (well actually "this") parent(s) saying things like 'If we could turn back the clock we would' and 'we were very naive when we started making Peppa'. Ok, so you have to be quite sensitive when making TV shows for toddlers I admit. If Peppa had a gun, fair enough. If Peppa was explaining how she got turned into sausages and bacon, again fair enough there are probably Jewish kids watching. But no, she was sitting in some poorly animated box car thing, and the animators forgot to draw a line across the character to emphasise she was wearing a seatbelt. I've had enough of over-sensitive muppets having OFCOM on speed-dial and ruining television for everyone else. I guarantee the episode where Peppa gets flung through the windscreen after a 20 car pile up will have the highest ratings for the show, ever.

No seriously this has to stop. We're going to end up with emotionless TV pretty soon. And when that happens, these fuckwits will have something to complain about.

When You Were Young.

I found a remarkable news story on the BBC's website today that has a significant importance to me. Despite coming to the end of my teens, I still look like I should be half way through them. Which is fine now that I have my ID, and at the end of day, millions of people spend billions of Pounds on looking young, so who am I to complain when I get Garnier's best face cream for absolutely sod all.

The story goes that some Danish scientist has come up with the theory that people who look young for their age live longer.

Now I'm not being ignorant here, but doesn't that kind of go without saying?

Professor Kaare Christensen's (not exactly the most stereotypical Scandinavian surname) research consisted of taking twins and seeing which one died first (nice...). The results showed that it was generally the older-looking twin that died first. Obviously the subjects were all in their twilight years (70's/80's, and no they weren't vampires/werewolves with allergic reactions to shirts).

Crude as it may sound, apparently there's some science behind this. Each human is blessed with DNA strands called telomeres, and generally, people who have younger looking faces have longer telomeres. Shorter telomeres are linked to rapid ageing and lots of diseases. Interesting stuff, indeed I for one was simply jumping around at this news. To have been born with Indiana Jones' Holy Grail (not Dan Brown's one which is just some triangles) and potentially have a longer life is nothing short of b-e-a-utiful.

Then you remember the Americans are killing the ice-caps and I probably won't reach my 50th birthday because my house will be underwater as part of some kind of 'New Atlantis'. And having a face as fresh as Joe McElderry's ain't gonna save you from Mother Nature.

Tactical Nuclear Blog

With Christmas and New Year coming up, I'm always left wondering a) what do I want for Christmas? and b) how do I get unbelievably drunk on New Year? Well, some Scottish folks may have just answered both of my conundrums.

You see, a brewery in Fraserburgh in Scotland named BrewDog have come up with a beer that has an alcohol content of 32%. The beer is stored for a year and a half and then chilled at -4 degrees celsius for about 48 hours and voila, a world-record breaking beer. So, what did these Scot's decide to name their sophisticated concoction?

Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

That's more like it. In a world of red tape and health and safety officers who've got a phD in 'being a dick', it's nice to know there's a company out there with a sense of humour. Hell, even the label is brilliant: 'This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance'. And to top it off, BrewDog revealed their 'Nuclear' beverage to the world on the same day the Scottish parliament were discussing minimum prices on alcohol. Perfect time.

In other news, I now have Xbox Live set up in my room at Uni. I'm now currently waving my degree goodbye like passengers on the Titanic waving at the people left in Southampton's docks. Ah bliss.

Reaction to Question Time and the BNP

It was pretty much compulsory for me to watch Question Time yesterday. Little did I realise that it would be like watching a man get stoned (not getting high haha) to death in the Middle East. Question Time turned into a coliseum, as an audience of crazed members of the public applauded everytime a blow was dealt to Nick Griffin, and quite literally, egged each other on to attack Griffin even further.

Now this may sound like I am defending Griffin and the BNP, but believe me, the last thing we need is a party with the potential to quite literally start a civil war between races, to be prominent in British politics. I just thought the way the people on the show conducted themselves was a bit, well, sh*t really.

Jack Straw used the whole thing to try and dump the massive pile of sh*t that's currently sitting on top of the Labour Party onto the BNP. He nearly cleared all the manure when he was asked about how Labour's immigration policy could have led to the rise of the BNP. He twisted and squirmed and didn't really give an answer. Let's get the shovel and put the sh*t back where it came from...

Then there was the audience. Rather than see what Griffin's views on postal strike/economy/other current issues, we got an entire hour dedicated to Griffin's shady past. By all means, interrogate him in to why he can feasibly think the Holocaust didn't exist, ask why he believes Britain should be 'colourless like the South Pole'. But then move on. All these people who are moaning today about how giving Griffin the limelight was a bad idea. Well, if maybe you hadn't dedicated the ENTIRE program to him like some kind of memorial, we may have come away from Question Time with something other than the image of the weird looking face of Griffin.

Now, I hate protestors at the best of times. I have absolutely no sympathy with any of them if they get hurt or injured by the police. But yesterday, to protest against a 'violent and racist organisation' with, ermmm, remind me again, oh yeah, VIOLENCE. Injuring policeman and creating scenes that look more like the battles in Lord of the Rings. Well done. I hope all you slacking hippies get thrown into some fascist-flavoured shark-infested water.

And now the big man himself, Mr. Griffin. Didn't do himself LOADS of favours yesterday. He mostly sat there whilst everyone around him just shouted stuff. I imagine he probably just turned his ears off after a while; I would have. There was something troubling though about Griffin's performance. He kept a fairly low profile, didn't say much, and the things he did say was to try and worm his way out of his previous actions. It was almost as though he was temporarily hiding his racist ways, like when a child cleans his room and just stuffs all his toys in the cupboards. His mum's always going to find the mess, and it may even be worse when she finds it. That's probably the worst analogy I could have come up with, but still. Who knows, but the backlash from yesterdays Question Time will be massive. Over and out xD

The Greedy Bastards

It was announced today that the head of the CWU was angry at Royal Mail's decision to hire 30,000 temporary staff to cover the backlog of mail that is likely to build up thanks to the planned postal strikes.

The cheek.

Billy Hayes sat on Andrew Marr's couch this morning and spouted a load of nonsense about

how it'll 'devalue' the postal strike. Good, I hope it does. The only people who want it are a few

thousand posties and I think the majority of people in Britain are showing no sympathy

towards this strike whatsoever. I hope the Royal Mail get wise and get rid of the lot of them.

And why the hell are they angry? Angry that someone will actually deliver kid's christmas presents? Angry that people will work without asking for a f*cking pay rise and better conditions, IN A RECESSION? I mean you get up early but finish work at lunchtime. Plenty of time to go and get revenge on dog's who've eaten your hand or pay the woman who collected her parcel in her nightie a visit.

Angry that someone else is doing your work? Well go and do it your f*cking self then you lazy sh*ts. Over and out xD

Is this Strictly necessary?

It's pretty obvious now that red taped bureaucracy has ruined our lives. Children can't feed bread to ducks without filling out an absurd number of forms just so the child's parent can't sue the population of ducks for potentially biting their child. We now have to go through once over in our head what we say next just incase we say something 'offensive'. And slips of tongue are now treated with the same severity as full on insults. Obviously none of these examples are 100% true, but it certainly is going that way...

I am of course referring to the pathetic race row that has emerged on Strictly Come Prancing. Anton du Beke (who is renown for his brilliant 'off the cuff' remarks) is currently in the firing line for remarking that his partner looked like a 'Paki' after a spray tan. Where is the harm in that? Did he insinuate she was a 'Paki' (OK, so she is from a Muslim background, but when did it become wrong to state fact?) Did he make a racist joke? Did he say anything derogatory about the Pakistani race? No. No. No. But of course, meddling uniformed members of the public jumped on the 'lets take every race-related comment way too seriously' bandwagon, and now this whole thing has been blown so far out of proportion it may well be residing on Saturn's new ring. I'm glad in a time where we are all 'meant' to have freedom of speech, a childish little remark backstage manages to get to the stage where someone is potentially getting fired. Absolutely f*cking scandalous. Over and out xD

Obey Your MASTER, MASTER...

I read an interesting article on the Guardian's website today about what music the troops in Afghanistan are listening to whilst out on patrol and in camp in general. Apparently, the large majority of troops are listening to heavy metal such as Metallica and Slayer, with Eminem also a favourite amongst soldiers. Now this struck me a little bit. I can imagine Metallica being good whilst out out on patrol, gunning down Taliban soldiers (the thought of 'Enter Sandman', explosions, blood and dead Arabs is making me go all gooey inside in a kind of Jerry Bruckheimer kind of way), but many of these guys are playing this really heavy stuff whilst sleeping. The report also suggests that some songs like Welcome Home (Sanitarium) (for those of you who haven't heard it, it's a Metallica song about being trapped in a mental asylum) are actually having some serious psychological affect on them, and, I quote: 'turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts'. That is some seriously deep stuff, and I imagine many sceptics in America will be rubbing their hands together with the view that aggressive music is bringing up a generation of psychos. But hold the burning torches citizens of Obamaland, because other soldiers have expressed that heavy metal is virtually the only kind of therapy these guys are getting and is keeping them pumped and 'on their toes' in times of battle. So there we are, don't go and see a psychiatrist, put on Master of Puppets...Over and out xD

Goodnight Sweet Prince...

After reading The Sun today, I think it's safe to say the last of many nails in Gordon Brown's coffin has been hammered in. Whatever glimmer of hope Labour had conjured up in Brighton in the last week has been pretty much vanquished by The Sun's front page this morning. With Mandelson's 'Hitler-like' speech (watch the way he gets more and more animated towards the end of sentences like Hitler used to) and Sarah Brown commenting on Gordon's 'hero-like' persona (the woman HAS to be on medication), Labour seemed to be going in the right direction. However like everything Brown has done for Labour, something 10x worse always follows a bit of good news. In some ways I feel sorry for the guy, but then you realise that it's Gordon Brown and you just have to laugh...

In other, more light-hearted news, an estate agent has been criticized for failing to mention the fact one of their properties has a 'nuclear reactor' on it's doorstep. What sane estate agent would say that? "And instead of a sea-view, you are more likely to gain three arms and turn green thanks to the proximity of a nuclear plant." Honestly... Over and Out xD