Ten Things That I Couldn't Give a Toss About

Regular visitors to my blog know that I like to have a good rant about things that are JUST SO WRONG and these things tend to come in tens, I've noticed. As a little diversion, here are ten things that I don't give a toss about; things that are, in all likelihood, also a bit wrong as well...

1) Virgin Airlines 'Executive' sells details of the travel plans of 'celebrities'...allegedly. That's an 'allegedly' both in the case of the executive's actions and the target names being in any way worthy of being celebrity personalities. The latest revelation - that the travel plans of Princess Beatrice have been leaked - is so astoundingly dull, as is the fact that the goofy toff is fifth in line to the throne, apparently.

Do we really want more pics
of this? No...didn't think so

Of course, whilst I (along with the majority of sane people) don't give a shit about where it is that Andy's progeny intends to travel to, the sad fact is that so many fools seem so to do and wish to read about it in some low-brow media publication, which only serves to encourage the bastards. I was, paradoxically, encouraged by the list of celebs whose travel plans hade been hacked / leaked / sold or whatever, because I'd not heard of so many of them. For instance, there was someone called Tamer Hassan, who I've discovered is an actor type that once had a fight with Vinnie Jones (so obviously stupid too). Then there's Eva Longoria, who is an actress in a TV show called Desperate Housewives which, presumably, is on a channel watched by equally desperate people. Why would I want to either a) know where these people are going or b) look at pictures of them arriving at, or leaving from, an aiprort? Another target celebrity was Fergie, whom I learn is not the idiotic princess's mother but in fact the singer from the Black-Eyed Peas. The Virgin executive has resigned, I gather, in the face of these revelations. It was all so utterly pointless, seeing as all of these celebs were probably tweeting about their latest voyages anyway for fear of being ignored for a minute. Sad bastards that I DON'T GIVE A TOSS about.

2) London Mayoral Candidates' Tax Affairs. What a fucking yawn-fest. There are only two possible winners from the London list; Bozzer or Ken. Paddick, Jenny Jones and the rest are also-rans already, as we know, yet Paddick still wishes to take the higher moral ground over his taxation probity. For Livingstone and Johnson to attempt to score political points about one another's tax planning and the whiff of avoidance that goes with it is just so mind-numbingly dull (apart from Boris letting down his guard in a lift and calling Ken a 'fucking liar', which was fun and possibly true). These guys are not poor. Both employ accountants. Ergo, some tax stuff will happen. Boris wants to surprise the London voters with news that a well-known leftie would even consider tax-avoidance and Ken goes for the potentially less-surprising suggestion that an Eton toff might have the wherewithal to make sure he maximises his income at the excehquer's expense. So what? However, the main reason that I DON'T GIVE A TOSS about this, is that I live in Northumberland.

Surrey, yesterday

3) Hose-Pipe Bans. The press, radio and TV persisting in conducting interviews with domestic, amateur gardeners in the Home Counties about how they're going to look after their flowers, lawns and vegetables without the use of a hose-pipe, must be the most unremittingly boring journalism. Learning about how the enterprising little-englanders are diverting water from their roofs, baths or their neighbours' ornamental ponds (while they're away on holiday) is desperately dull. As is hearing these arseholes complain about all the water that is being lost by the utility companies having been unable to plug the leaks in their systems; their leaky information having come from the screaming headlines in the Dail Mail, of course, who would have us believe that the water suppliers (who are all owned by foreigners, by the way) piss away sufficient waste every minute to water every garden in Tunbridge Wells, every day, for the next million years...probably. What really should be exciting interest instead, is the reduction in abstraction rights for farmers but that doesn't make headlines as everyone thinks that farmers get far too much money from CAP and there is little sympathy for them, especially as they supposedly spend all their spare time fox-hunting, shooting badgers and wearing green wellies. OK, some of them do...but not that many. And when everyone has to pay vastly inflated prices for imported fruit and veg, they might not worry so much about their bloody dahlias and their brown lawns. However, the principal reason why I DON'T GIVE A TOSS about hose-pipe bans is again, oddlly enough, because I live in Northumberland. Ha ha ha....

4) Amazon Dot Somewhere: Luxembourgian Bastards. I gather that Amazon have done some fiddly, entirely legal deal to register themselves in Luxembourg so that all the money they make from UK sales (c.£3.5bn) is free from Corporation tax. So, just like every other major corporate then? Never mind the 26,000 people directly employed by Amazon in the UK, the countless couriers and truckers supporting the distribution, and the VAT and the...oh, all the rest. But Amazon are also completely fucking up the bookshop sector as well apparently (as if Waterstones hadn't done that anyway) by forcing everyone to buy kindles. Maybe that's all just progress, hm? It isn't going to stop. Before long we'll all have chips in our heads so that reading matter can be downloaded direct to our brains. And shopping online isn't going to stop either. So I DON'T GIVE A TOSS, and it doesn't matter, on this occasion, where I happen to be living...

5) Bahrain Grand Prix. Does the staging of the F1 grand prix in Bahrain tacitly support the dictatorial regime of the Bahraini royal family? Probably. Does it matter? No. Vehicles that are loosely based on motor cars go round and round a tarmac track while Bernie Eccleston makes huge sums of money and television pundits have collective brainfarts about it all. Which is why I DON'T GIVE A TOSS. Another reason why, is that Jeremy Clarkson thinks that F1 is cool. Tosser.

Brand describes the
size of his intellect...
or something

6) Russell Brand. I gather that the pensioner-bothering lothario is attempting to schmooze the BBC into giving him work again. His desperation quite possibly knows no bounds. The 'project' on offer appears to be for him to front a documentary of sorts on the subject of addiction. It seems that Brand has been deeply affected by the death of his 'friend' Amy Winehouse who, apparently (and somewhat conveniently) was an addict. Brand is addicted too, to his ego. There is no reason on earth why any of us should ever, EVER GIVE A TOSS about this arsehole. Unsurprisingly, he was one of the Virgin Airlines leak subjects. Maybe that's a good thing. It might be useful to know exactly where Russell Brand is at every minute of every day in order that we can all be somewhere else. The same goes for Jeremy Kyle, by the way.

7) The Leveson Enquiry. Frankly, I just DON'T GIVE A TOSS about this any more. Too long. Too slow. Not much changed. Murdoch is still rich. There's nothing more to see here...let's all just move along, now.

8) Crucifix-Wearing. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the seventy-four year old head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, has recently expressed his opinion on all manner of things, most notably that "....gay marriage is madness..." and has opened his dogmatic gob again. This time he wants everyone to wear a cross to identify themselves as christians. There've been a couple of cases of late where women have been 'persecuted' at work for wearing a crucifix. If the christian church thinks that those employers' stances represented persecution, I suggest they travel a bit (and let Virgin know first so they can leak where they're going) and maybe go to Burma, China or North Korea and have a little look at what persecution can really mean. It's not the crucifix-wearing issue that I couldn't give a toss about, however, it's the largely irrelevant opinions of befrocked cardinals and their boss in Rome.

9) Education: I'm ashamed to record here that I just DON'T GIVE A TOSS about this anymore. I should, I know, but it's pointless. It really doesn't matter whether the government is made up of Tory toffs coalescing with Libs or if it's made up of useless Eds, the inexorable trajectory towards measuring the educations system(s) to death will never abate.

This man is in charge of
Britain's education system:
No! Really...he is!

The teaching unions are no better. They are currently being very excited at conferences about what's happeneing to their pay and pension deals because they fear that the compratively independent academies might actually start paying a wage that reflects the ability and productivity of teaching staff. 'Free' schools are bananas. Private, fee-paying schools will never go away and will ever be the preserve of the priveleged class. The University system is gradually pricing itself out of the domestic market and into the international student market (mostly Chinese) but will continue to produce graduates that will be disappointed that their 2:1 in History only gets them a job in a call centre. And our government will still be populated by PPE graduates from Oxbridge. Since the introduction of the Comprehensive system, successive governments have timkered away and tinkered away without ever having made any noticeable, genuine improvements. And now the universties (well, Oxford and Cambridge) have begun to despair over the readiness of under-graduates for varsity life, dontcha know, old boy. So they've decided that the only way that this can be remedied is if the dons set the papers. You know, those dons that are just so experienced in everything life has to offer...well, in studying, anyway. The problem really is that the baby-boomers simply want to reinvent their own experiences from the sixties and seventies like it has a relevance to young people in 2012. And the worrying thing is....that they can. Tossers. Gove and Willets promised so much in 2010 but in the end just ended up like all the rest...

10) The Olympics.

That's it...