Goodwin, 50, the now retired clueless boss of RBS. Sir Fred will get
a pension of £700,000, a year, mainly as
a reward for destroying the bank.
Republican Candidates in a Coma
17/02/12
Reporting on the GOP presidential race has revealed convincingly that the hopefuls are as brain dead as it's possible to be whilst remaining horizontal.
Yesterday, the hopefuls were faced with a tricky question concerning a man in a coma who has no health insurance - would they assist him. Not one hopeful was able to answer.
Their inquisitor pushed on, would they let him die? Still the hopefuls would not acknowledge that they were heartless bastards. The audience helped them out, shouting 'yeah'.
Newt Gingrich responded lamely, the man should have had health insurance - it was his choice. That's the American way, unfortunately, it will become British way too under the Tories.
10/02/12
Mervyn King: first among turnips
The Bank of England have injected another £50 billion into the financial institution. This brings the total of fictional money created under the rubric Quantitative Easing to £325 billion.
The Bank is claiming that the first £200 billion led to somewhere between 1 and 2 per cent growth in the real economy. How this was calculated is a mystery because most of the money was used to create asset bubbles in the commodity markets, the upshot of which was higher food prices and inflation higher than would have otherwise been the case.
We also know that QE has seriously impacted indemnity rates and created big income losses for pensioners. Merv' the turnip says his sorry about that but sorry doesn't cover it since the income losses are infinite, given the nature indemnities.
Last year's injection of £75 billion is so far unaccounted for. Turnip followers believe the money's doing the trick, non-believers see no evidence beyond the negatives. The Adam Smith Institute have describe QE as theft.
In truth, QE is a leap of faith, the theory is perfect but when the financial community diverts the money away from British business it becomes a pointless exercise.
07/01/12
Why isn't Cobra and the Couch Potato Council doing their bit for goggle box watchers?
Sir,
I understand that Cobra is the Government's civil contingencies committee, which supposedly responds to national crises. Well, I believe we have a national crisis.
The next time Cobra convenes I suggest that they put the appalling output of the BBC high on their agenda.
I sense revolution in the air. We are just a few days into the new year and the output of the BBC in terms of sitcoms and comedy resembles that of Dave and Gold, the repeat channels. And, in terms of movies, it seems that the Director General was given a box set of the Bruce Willis 'Die Hard' Collection for Christmas.
In terms of programme schedules, someone at the Beeb is clueless. Today, Saturday 7th January, the World Darts was being aired on BB1, at 4.30pm we were forced to turn over to BB2. Why? because they were showing Final Score on BB1. Excuse me, the BBC does not have any real time football coverage on a Saturday. Why on earth are the Corporation asking its audience to sit through a radio type report of the football fixtures - pointless. People who follow football subscribe to Sky, it's that simple, as a meercat would say. And genuine supporters get out to the stadiums and cheer their teams on. Everyone else knows that they can watch the vastly overpaid Alan Hanson, the man with a two word vocabulary, on Match of the Day.
If this reckless abandonment of the Corporation's Charter continues people will stop watching television and start listening to their radios, playing CDs and learning to play musical instruments. Egad, there'll be making their own entertainment next. Is this what you want, people returning to a pre-TV age, before the great pacification on the national mind by the cathode ray tube. Did John Logie Baird know what he was doing, probably not.
Do you sir appreciate the importance of television, beyond a stage where you can posture. All the threats of Bernard Hogan Howe are as nothing to the stunning influence of the tube. Two thirds of the nation are glued to their sofas everyday of the week. Are they thinking, hardly, scientific evidence tells us that the left hemisphere starts to switch off after an hour and from then on slumbers.
Are you prepared for the worst, people may even start reading books, talking to each other and, (deep intake of breath) discussing politics. Is that what you want? Before long, today's children will be as smart as their grand parents and then you'll be in trouble.
I recognise that the scope and effectiveness of Cobra is limited. I mean, some of us remember the bird flu fiasco and how Tony's Cobra team over ordered slightly on the antiviral medicines. So, on reflection, asking Cobra to get involved with the BBC would be like taking a lawnmower to a window box.
However, I do feel that there is scope for the Couch Potato Council, CPC, to get involved. I realise that you have pledged, promised, and guaranteed to rid us of wasteful and unnecessary quangos but we both know that all you've done is change some names, done of a bit of merging and created a few new ones. So, with that in mind, may I suggest that you appoint the Couch Potato Council as the ombudsman, with teeth, for goggle box watchers.
May I suggest that the key function of the CPC would be to make the BBC face up realistically to its inability to meet its stated target of Putting Quality First. Providing a meal of left-overs, that the dog has turned his nose up at, is not quality programming.
Sir, I entreat you to act before citizens replace the box in the corner of the room with a rubber plant and they tell you to stuff your detector vans - then, the revolution will definitely not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not go better with coke
The revolution will not be back after the break
The revolution will not be televisedGil Scott-Heron
2011 Turnip Prize
Bercow's Coat of Arms
Audacity and arrogance, and indeed, ignorance are epithets that describe Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, very well.
He married a woman called Sally who is clearly deranged, she embarrasses t
he position of the Speaker at every turn.
Both he and her spend most of their time on self promotion, displaying an incredible lack of self confidence.
John's latest jape: spending £37,000 of taxpayers' money on having his portrait painted, and having a coat of arms drawn up.
The coat of arms has a hint of pink (JB apparently believes that gay rights need to be promoted alongside himself), there are also four golden balls (something to do with tennis) and a ladder (something to do with his inferiority complex, or an allusion to social climbing, or perhaps, a form of cockeyed socialism - as in, everyone can rise from humble origins - like him.
John's chosen motto: All Are Equal, unlike him, since there's only one speaker, to whom no one is equal.
The Blast-it judges have conferred and all agree, the Speaker is definitely a turnip.
A-List or Suckers List?
What do Leonardo DiCaprio, P Diddy, Robert De Niro, Kate Middleton, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rubens Barrichello and 2.5 million other people have in common? They've been suckered by the Power Balance wristband.
The Power Balance wristband claimed to enhance performance and got away with this nonsense for two years until it came a cropper in an Australian court.
Californian entrepreneur Josh Rodarmel, 28, who developed the bands with his brother claimed to have incorporated some kind of beneficial frequency into the bands which combated all the negativity in the world.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the wristbands were 'no better than a rubber band' and the A-list accessory maker was forced to offer refunds to any customer who felt they had been misinformed - so that's everyone who bought one.
That's a lot of £29.99s to pay back, we do hope the boys haven't spent it all.
"Turnips have never had it so good" Lord Young goes gaga.
Lord not-so-Young-anymore told a journalist that during this "so-called recession the vast majority of people have never had it so good."
He also said, "people will wonder what all the fuss was about". Fuss, what fuss, we see no fuss but do see a lot of wheelbarrows going through the checkouts at B&Q, to facillitate the circulation of all that money they now have.
No one has told his lordship that the reason it is called a recession is because it is when credit is tight, firms go bust, people lose their jobs, savings lose value and those on fixed incomes are able to buy less as prices rise.
But twits who give old people a bad name will soon be making a trip to the Job Centre. Where the only thing on offer will be turnip picking at £2.00 an hour. Being a multi-millionaire means that the Lord will not be entitled to job seeker's allowance.
Lord Young, 78, Thatcherite to his core, was given a roving brief across Whitehall as Call Me Dave's enterprise czar. The Lord's interests include music, book collecting, photography and talking bollocks. And, (Blast-It scoop) the Lord's carer told us that just recently he has been buying dot-to-dot books but isn't very good at joining things up.
Some commentators are suggesting that Young was airing some Tory shire horse honesty, letting the mask slip after a few too many glasses of Krug Clos d'Ambonnay 95, not currently available at your local Cost Cutter but well within reach of citizens living the dream amid low interest rates.
Stop Press: Lord Young has resigned, 1.00pm, 19/11/2010
Poet's Corner
A poem for England
This
England,
this broken land,
this mismanaged estate,
oozing folly from the playing fields of Eton
to the
slumbering chambers of Westminster
and the
Islamist study
groups in Cable Street.
This England,
where's the passion
gone?
Where are the NHS dentists?
Where's England gone?
Gone to the dogs. Gone mad.
Gone to the Dome. Gone
multicultural.
Where's Tony gone?
Still searching for
weapons of mass destruction and five star lunches?
Stella on the stairs
This photographic composition captures the essence of spontaneity and deserves serious consideration for a Turnip Prize. (kendosan)
