Duty Not Free......

.... before the harmonisation of our european cross border duty and taxation joys, we would look forward with some excitement towards the visit at duty free at the airport. The prospect of cheap fags, booze and goodies.

If a trip was planned we'd save our purchase till we reached duty free. My wife still does it now....next time you are at the airport can you pick me up some estee lauder lipstick/face cream/bum rub {delete as appropriate}.

But the reality is, there isn't really such a thing as duty free at airports any more...... with the boredom of more air travel looming, I wandered round the delights of London City Airport, and checked out the price of one of my favourite tipples...... Cardhu 12 yr old malt.

On the high street it's available at £31.45 inc VAT ......whereas in Duty Not Free, my Cardhu would cost me a whopping......

£44.99 if I keep it in the EU and £40.99 if I take it out of the EU....

well that's a bargain then.... nothing to do with the ban on liquids of 101ml or more being taken into the airport in hand luggage I would think. 

So not only is it not Duty Free, it's not even bloody VAT Free..... I wonder why in these day's of smart phones, so many people buy goods at duty free thinking they are getting a bargain and yet if they checked their smart phones before handing over their credit card and boarding card they might see that perhaps they are simply buying Duty Not Free.

Talking of boarding cards, I brought a packet of fruit pastilles and a bottle of coke from W H Smith at the airport...... at the till there was a big sign saying have your boarding card ready...... my bloody boarding card ready ?..... just to buy fruit pastilles ?? ....... me being the belligerent traveller I am, queried the till assistant why she needed my boarding card when she requested it from me.....[despite the sign I had not volunteered it] ...... 

she said so we can track your purchasing habits sir...... do I have to show my boarding card ?...... I asked in a sneering tone.... no.... she said...... I gave her cash instead.... it worked..... I walked out of the shop with my fruit pastilles and coke and W H Smith have no way of knowing it was me what brought them. Why do these friggin retailers think they are the FBI and should track our every movement ?  Of course it was not the assistants fault, she was merely following orders. I did say to her....and not in a sneering way.... that I respected it was not her fault as I handed over cash sans boarding card.

Talking of coke it turns out that at Frankfurt airport, coke is more expensive than beer......

The coke was €uro 3.30...... I choose the coke

Talking of Frankfurt airport...... the things you see at an airport...... I saw this......

My immediate thought on seeing it was....... that is going to be a complete bugger to fit in the overhead locker...... no way I thought.....

Talking of things you see at an airport..... on my way home from Frankfurt... I then spotted this......

Thinking about it, they must be quite difficult to light..... and also they are quite big, I can't imagine you could smoke a whole one on your own...... I wonder if [once you've finally got it lit] you have a drag then pass it round.....bit like a shisha pipe ?.....

 but when it comes to lighting it, you'd have to make sure you lit the right end....light the wrong end and it adds a whole new meaning to the phrase......christ, this tastes like smoking camel shit !

 Talking of smoking I also saw this at London City Airport.......

Now as it happens I am not a smoker, but if I were I'd be looking at these and thinking......erm err erm mmmmm...... I best have the ones on the left, they are only going to seriously harm me, whereas the ones on the right are going to kill me ! I think that would be an easy choice.

They are both Monte Cristo brands, so they must have like two separate production lines, one for the cigars that will kill you and the another one, where they don't fill the cigars with as much toxins so they only seriously harm you rather than actually kill you.

Imagine at the factory....... err Bert I see you are on the killer production line today...... yes arry I thought it would be more exciting on this production line...... what do they put in these cigars  to kill people anyway ? ....... dunno Bert.... I heard a rumour it was camel shit...... ere arry fancy going out for a smoko ? ......sure Bert...shall we have one of your killer cigars or one of my harm you cigars ?...... err err err I think we'll have one of my killer cigars arry....bin a tough day today I could murder a cigar.

Air travel is quite boring really.... causes the brain to think lots of shit...... my brain thought lots of shit yesterday..... but as always, my way of helping switch off, is through music. 

So wandering around airports/going through security/boarding planes I plug in my Sennheiser IE6 and create my sound track moments. I always have the same playlist for airport travel and there is always something quite paradoxical watching these people meandering/being herded around like cattle whilst listening to some great tracks.

Here is my Friday selection of the highlights.........

what's in a name.....

.... and so now the banality of our news reporters, has gone into to over drive..... speculating as to the name of the baby, born of our Duchess of Cambridge....

But spare a thought..... it's a good job the Americans aren't put in charge of naming the baby....

I recently received a report at work..... authored by an American, named non other than .....

Rand E Riggle Jnr  ! ...... meaning out there, is also a Rand E Riggle Snr as well !

Watching  embarrassing bodies on channel 4 and I saw there was a Nurse Joy Tickle on there..... and so to take this a stage further, I noted that a Rand E Riggle once married a Cassie Winkle.....

Imagine the birth scene at that hospital...... Rand E Riggle and Cassie C Winkle being looked after by Joy Tickle ! You have no chance of announcing that wonderful occasion on Twitter or the Internet as David [I'm a Wanker] Cameron would have you stripped of your mouse and dongle .......

ooooher matron !

As our next-next-next king to be 

has become a boy in waiting

I bow to thee with today's SoD

the selfishness of thyself......

..... 20 years ago today, James Bulger, was led away to the end of his very short life..... he was just 3 years old....

I remember the original events well, I can even remember where I was driving, when the news broke on the car radio that his body had been found, and the sorrow I felt for his family, the strangers that they were, that they still are......

And so this morning, radio 4 was running an interview with his father.... I couldn't listen.... I just knew it would be too hard to listen..... such is the selfishness that is thyself, I could turn the dial to off....

Ralph Bulger does not have that luxury.....

I am not sure whether a song is appropriate, maybe to assuage my guilt at turning the radio off perhaps......

a sad story.....

...whilst doing my rounds of the news headlines, I saw this one, which nearly crept in under the radar....reading it made me think...just how sad.....

why oh why ?

Suicide is an ugly beast, and I am not about to write all I know about suicide, because I know very little about it nor what drives someone to take that ultimate step........however,  in my life, I have had 2 experiences of a close association to suicide, and both times when I was told, they were like a bolt through me and whilst I can't claim to be close to the individuals who took their own lives, it still had an impact on mine.......being in a car with 23 year old lad for an hour, who's mum had just taken her own life, what in god's name can you say........ I said nothing........

I consider my life quite ordinary, so for me to have two direct experiences, is that unusual ? Neither of the persons were blood relatives, but in my recent life I have also known 2 other people who each had an experience of the suicide of a blood relative. So it's hard to know what the true impact in society suicide truely has. It is a complex subject and take for example, the hoax queen call suicide, what ever the puerile nature of the 2 antipodean disc jockeys might be, I do think it was disingenuous to plant the guilt of Jacintha Saldanha suicide, squarely at the feet of the DJ's [shortly after her death].

......and so to my 2nd experience, last year there I was on the other side of the world, having just come out of an intense session of meetings and I read my text.....Richard has taken his own life........ How could that be I thought, he was such a smiley happy chap......... my daughters were bridesmaids at his wedding, his wife was a bridesmaid at our wedding, my wife was a bridesmaid at her mothers wedding...... But for reasons that he has taken to the grave with him, in the middle of the night he went into the garage, he took his own life....... a wonderful wife and two young boys left behind.....

And so that's what caught my eye, when I saw this mornings story..... to all intents and purposes she is a complete stranger, and had I not scanned the headlines I would never have known her story.

When all said and done it is a Daily Mail headline, so one can only surmise at the true nature of her relationship with her husband and the lecturer, but what can be readily inferred, is that they both cared for her, such that had things been different, they would have both shared the joy of a new life being born within her, but instead it all just ended so sad....... and so now there are two men who will never see life the same, a daughter who will never know her mother to the full, and a child unborn.

I make no judgement about her act, people are too quick to condemn those who take their own lives.....when I think about my 2 experiences, I can only think how sad....and that's what I thought this morning.....what a sad story....

Shame on you.....Mr Blair.....

....shame on you !!...

If proof were ever needed as to why this

 man

should never be allowed back on to front line in politics in England, then this must be the final irrefutable reason.....

Britain kidnaps Libyan liberator

There can be no doubt that the world changed forever on 9th September 2001, and on that fateful day we sat and watched lives extinguished with the swipes of 747's. There can be no doubt the sense of out rage that day........ Was that the day that this

man

lost his moral compass ?

Since that fateful day, how many more innocent lives have we witnessed being lost, in the name of this

man's 

politics....... but his stunt with Gaddafi was buried somewhere deep in the cesspit of his morality.

Tony Blair presided [in a self glorifying Presidential way] over a Labour government that sanctioned the kidnapping of 2 Libyans and their families and used British Tax payers money and resources to hand over these victims to the then Libyan regime all in the name of commerce, to win access to lucrative oil resources.

Tony Blair of course went one better, and tacitly permitted the Lockerbie Bomber 

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to be released from a Scottish Prison. Alex Salmond was a strong supporter of the decision to release....was this on account of another secret deal done by Blair on Scottish Independence  ??? 

Anyway a lot has been written about al-Magrahi about whether he was the actual bomber or not, but what I do know is, that at the time of his release he had been convicted in a court of law as being the...... or one of the bombers of Pan Am flight 103 on 21st December 1988.  

So how ironic [or should that be moronic] that this 

man

should allow a guilty man to be released from British custody and then arrange for the rendit* ....ach erm..... kidnapping of 2 innocent men and their wives and children [yes children......SHAME ON YOU BLAIR !] ....kidnap innocent people and then hand them over to the brutality of Gaddafi.

This all only came into the public domain, because Gaddafi was over thrown with western allies support.

And what did the authorities say yesterday when commenting on the £2.2 million payout.....

In a statement, a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We can confirm 

that the government and the other defendants have reached a settlement 

with the claimants. There has been no admission of liability and no finding

by any court of liability."  [bbc news web site]

Absolutely shocking, it was that last sentence that got me, and we wonder why we have such p!ss poor politicians in this country......sometimes I think we get the government we deserve.

As for Jack Straw......you should be ashamed of your self too......

Reacting to the Saadi settlement last night, Mr Straw said: “At all times 

I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the 

law, and I hope to be able to say much more about all this at an appropriate 

stage in the future.” [independant online news]

What sort of wooley mouthed sort of inexcusable excuse is that ? Jack....

yes you Jack !..... 

are you on some sort of mind bending medication ?

But what makes the Libyan story even worse, is that we ......YES US...the tax payers will be responsible for the funding of this settlement [and many more to come..... you see].....

but this 

 man

has earnt sh!t loads of money, and I mean sh!t loads on the public speaking circuit, so if anybody should be paying this compensation then it should be him !!

SHAME ON YOU MR BLAIR !

*[Rendition: ....Rendition is a terrible word..... it is used by Governments to make something illegal sound soooooo innocent..... my arse it is !]

Nessy Lives ! .........He Lives...He lives I tell ya

..... seems I was wrong.... Nessy lives and not only that, he has gone to skeggy for his holidays !

http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981546853

Wonders never cease.... I am shaking my head at my own dismay for thinking that Nessy could not have possibly existed.....and now we know the truth at last.


There can only be one song for this story .......

sticks and stones may ......

...break my bones.... but woe betide you.... should you chose to abuse me on twitter....

Cause if you do.... you will be arrested !

Forgetting, whether it is morally reprehensible or not to make such comments about Tom Daley and his dad, you seriously have to question if it is the role of the police in such circumstances. Society should be grown up enough to judge and dismiss bigots without resorting to the judiciary.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19059127

And then when you think things can't be any sadder, you find the police doing this..... and then you seriously start to question the morality of the police.... are they really there to find lost sun glasses !! seriously WTF is that all about ?

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=250739198

When my car was broken into and my mince pies* were stolen, were the police interested ? answers on a post card will not win any prizes.....when my garage was broken into...did they arrest the man who they know did it...... not on your nelly !! Now if the thief [s] had abused me on twitter to say my mince pies were shite or that my garage was in such a mess they couldn't find much worth while to nick then maybe, just maybe I might have got a result.....

So be warned, next time you want to vent your spleen in public...think to yourself...is it really worth it...take my advice and stick to nicking mince pies instead.... the punishment is non existent **

So my song of the day for today must surely be:

*[Mincepie footnote 1: - They were not just any mince pies, they were M&S mince pies and I was so looking forward to eating them, on the journey home after seeing the new year fireworks on London embankment. Daft thing is they took my mince pies and left the brand new, still in the box digital camera, so it wasn't sooooo bad, notwithstanding just how much I love pies !]

**[Punishment footnote 2: - I have a clear policy for miscreants, which I know will work, so I will post that on another day. Trust me it is good and it is effective]