Liar Liar Your Pants Are On Fire Luke Byrne

I have to apologise to regular readers here. When I first joined this blogging community I started off with light hearted fluff. But recently I have been getting more serious in the posts and the subject matter that they cover. Sadly with my blood boiling once more I feel the need to rant about what is on my mind.

After reading “In response to Irish Mail on Sunday” I was disgusted. I’ve chatted with Melanie Schregardus on twitter, and I read her posts. I can tell you the way Luke Byrne (@Lukezo on Twitter) has portrayed her in his hatchet job that sparked Melanie’s post (the link above) is the complete polar opposite to how she really is.

So often the journalistic profession beats the drum about how amateurish bloggers are. That they don’t check facts, they are written badly, etc etc blah blah blah.

Yet here we have yet another example of how the “professional” journalist really works. Ok how Mr Bryne works anyway. I really don’t want to start smearing a whole profession because of one or two bad eggs.

It’s funny really because since his story went to print and out to the public in todays paper Mr Bryne has locked his Twitter account. Why would he feel the need to do that? Maybe he knows that a shit storm is coming his way. He must realise that by quoting stuff totally out of context, false reporting, and basically assassinating an innocents good name, it will all come back to haunt him.

Yes there is the whole fair use thing for the quoting from the blog post. But I’m sure that doesn’t cover distorting what was actually said and meant and using it totally out of context.

It’s probably why he has locked his twitter account. He doesn’t want folks to quote him out of context and distorting his words, and doing a similar job on him as he has tried doing to Melanie.

There is a saying that goes something like “what goes around, comes around” (I hope I got that the right way round, I usually never do). Some religions believe in karma. Another saying is that “payback is a bitch”. I just hope that justice is swift in this case. That Mr Bryne gets what is coming to him.

I fail to see how he can remain employed when it is known that his journalistic integrity is none existent. But then MP’s are still in a job after being caught with their hands in the cookie jar. So I’m not holding my breath over this one.

Sadly I know that usually when a paper has to print a retraction or apology they do it in as small a font as they can get away with, and bury it on some page near the back of the paper. It is a shame that they can’t be forced to print the apology etc in an equally prominent way.

Luckily in this day and age with the bloggersphere and other outlets the record can be set straight quickly online. It just means that for the justice bit we have to rely on the old system. Here’s hoping that they do the right thing and slap Mr Byrne down.

Guilt Factor

The other night one of the folks I follow on that echo box called Twitter tweeted the following:

“Know what will make one stop feeling sorry for themselves? Reading about Haiti.”

So I replied:

“not if u r homeless or unemployed & living on handouts struggling to live it wont”

When I woke up I had the following responses back:

“there are children starving &hurt, injured trapped in crumbled bldgs w/no hope 4 rescue, there is always someone worse off.”

“they have no WATER, even, in many places. any homeless person in the US can get themselves a glass of water.”

“Update from Haiti: "People with broken limbs were so numb they don't cry"”

Oh my blood is boiling over this.

But before I dive off the deep end and upset people. Let me state for the record that Haiti is a massive disaster and the price in human life that has been paid, the suffering that is going on with the survivors, is truly beyond words. (On a side note once more the international community are demonstrating that they are not capable of organising a piss up at a brewery let alone get desperately needed aid to the survivors.)

Right now on to upsetting folks…

If your sitting at home deciding “do I pay the bills this week or eat?”, maybe the debt collectors are knocking at your door, or your biggest decision of the day is which doorway or alleyway do I sleep in tonight, do you really need some self righteous git telling you to stop feeling sorry for yourself because there are worse off out there?

In case you are wondering and weighing up the pros and cons of the argument, let me give you a big hint. The answer is NO.

I’m not saying that folks in the circumstances described are heartless or shouldn’t care, they will be shocked, horrified by the images coming out of Haiti. They will also feel empathy for the survivors and their struggle to live through the aftermath.

The last thing we need are sanctimonious twats sitting in their smug comfortable towers, looking down on the less fortunate and preaching to them.

There was only one reason for that initial tweet. It wasn’t to inform people of the horrors that have happened, or of the struggle to exist by the survivors. No it was a plain and simple attempt to make folks feel guilty. As were the follow up tweets,which were meant to make me feel guilty for even voicing dissent against the first tweet they did.

I hate these guilt trips that they try to play on people. I really do. Luckily for me I am an insensitive bastard that is already suffering for past crimes against humanity in a previous life (feck does this mean in my next life I’m going to suffer even more? Will I not learn? Looks not.)

If all you have to add to the discussion is playing the guilt factor like this, then I have something to say to you. Shut the feck up and listen to the conversation between the adults, and try and learn something.

I’d like to close on a positive note, and say how much I admire those that are raising money to help those in Haiti. Whether it is by passing on info on how to donate and where, to those that are doing sponsored events.

How Stupid Do You Think I Am Brown?

Sometimes you read a news headline and you think “I bloody knew it”. I had one of those moments when I read the following headline on the BBC website “PM targets 'middle class voters'”.

Suddenly my years of feeling persecuted by Brown (read all about Why Does Gordon Brown Hate Me? or as it should of been entitled Gordon Brown and his part in my downfall) seemed verified. At last others were acknowledging what a hate monger Brown was to a whole section of society. Ok it wasn’t the complete acknowledgement of guilt that I wanted. I’d of preferred something that was less general and more specific like “PM targets Darren”.

But it’s a start I thought in the healing process. Suddenly I felt less paranoid and delusional. As my hands reached for the phone to dial my ex to let her know I hadn’t been completely round the bend during our years of marriage, I thought I better read the article.

“What the feck?” This wasn’t an admission of how Brown had been picking the hard earned cash from peoples pockets in hidden taxes (well not so hidden as more smoke and mirrors) for years as Chancellor of the Exchequer like a sophisticated Artful Dodger. There was nothing artful about the way Brown operated. Brown picked the middle classes pockets like a clumsy and crude teenager trying to get into the pants of his first girlfriend.

This was an article about how Brown was trying to court the middle classes to vote for him in the up and coming general election. Brown was expecting these people to forget the years of larceny he has committed in his positions of power. He wants them to come to him after having a beating and say “please sir may I have another?”

He’s spent billions bailing out his banker buddies, and happily does nothing to bail out joe public. He just lumbers joe public with the bill. But then I guess that is only natural we won’t be offering him a seat on the board once he gets kicked out of office. But we have to ignore that fact and vote for him apparently.

In Browns myopic world his relationship with the British public is that of owner and puppy. Where he is the owner that kicks the puppy in angry fits (also known as budget statements) and expects the puppy to come back wagging it’s tail.

Well it’s time that the puppy turned and bit it’s master. So in the spirit of last years Christmas number one I hope the the British people will join me in saying “Feck you I’m not doing what you tell me”.

Snake Oil By Any Other Name

What the mutha feckin heck is a “word of mouth specialist”? Is that a posh way of describing a hooker that only does blow jobs?

Why do I ask? Well that is how some-one described themselves in their twitter profile.

I was checking them out after they asked “is there anything that you do like? at least something is being done...” after I had made the following comment to some-one else “I was going 2 say there is no good taste in Farnborough just bad planning decisions ;)”.

[Side note: the some-one else agreed with me about the more town planning in Farnborough is crap]

I did respond to their question with “well I did like it when they were knocking large chunks of it down”. Which apparently is harsh!

But seriously “word of mouth specialist”? Can we stop with these pretentious self important twatish names please?

You’re not fooling anyone, a snake oil salesman is a snake oil salesman whether you call yourself a “social media guru” or “word of mouth specialist”.

I’m going to leave you with a clip of the genius of Bill Hicks (miss ya Bill the world needs you more than ever) and his plea to folks in advertising/marketing which I feel goes doubly to the “social media guru” or “word of mouth specialist”.

Children of the Revolution

join me in the counter revolution I am planning. What will we be revolting against? I’ve not got that far in the planning. But whatever it is it’ll be big. The odds will be against us, with plenty of opportunities for pointless suicide missions that prove the futility of the struggle.

I think the recruitment videos for this counter revolution should be shot by a scandinavian director. They seem to have a thing for shooting their films in black and white, and getting over to the audience a bleakness that just makes you want to slit your wrists.

So where will the headquarters of this counter revolution be? I’ve given this a lot of thought and it can be only one place really. That place is the North Pole and Santa's Grotto. It’s perfect. Let’s face it any revolution worth it’s salt needs the capability to manufacture weapons, make uniforms etc. Over the last two or three years it has become politically incorrect to exploit children and the poor of this world. Luckily the world does not share this view of the elves working for Santa. So if Santa can exploit them, so can we. Which means between January and April (Santa’s downtime between his seasonal work) the elves will be pumping out AK47 clones. Plus how cool would it be going on that suicide mission in a sleigh and reindeers?

No revolution would be complete without an iconic image of the leader that could be used on merchandising. We’ll be going with the classic revolution merchandise, posters, t-shirts and badges. To keep initial start up costs down all official merchandise will be available through Cafepress. The iconic image that we will be using is a licensed image of Snoopy as a pilot on top of his kennel.

So there are the plans so far as they stand. Up the revolution.

Here’s An Idea

Here’s a game for those of us that are unemployed that have iPhones or Google Android phones.

One of the in things on those phones is to take part in the geo location based social game thingies like Four Square or Gowalla.

So instead of marking locations like coffee shops, and other expensive hang outs that those with money have.

Let us unemployed mark alternative locations, like the jobcentre and really cheap places to eat, or a park bench. Places that we go that don’t require having disposable income.

I’ve already marked my local jobcentre on Gowalla. Next visit I have to the council offices to get free dog poo bags guess what I will be adding to Gowalla?

So lets rage against the machine and have our counter social geo location game within the social geo location game.