Rampant Racism

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

I went down to the village yesterday.

I had a few things to do and having done them, and given Penny a good walk around the place I decided on a coffee.  So I left Penny to make friends with some people out front and went into the shop.

“Howya Grandad” says K.  “Your usual?”

“Yup” says I.

“One Americano coming up.  I’ll bring out to you.”

“Woa!” says I.  “None of that fancy Americano crap along with those Cappochinos and Frappochinos and those Lattes or any of that modern rubbish.  I’ll have a large black coffee thanks.”

She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.  “Do you know that’s racist?”

“What is?”

“What you asked for.”

*sigh*  “May I have a large non-white coffee then?”

“That’s racist too.”

“How about a non-Caucasian coffee?”

That’s even worse!”

For fucks sake!  “May I have an African-American coffee then?”

“An African-American coffee?  No problem.  One Americano coming up.”

I give up.

Solar Wars

Head Rambles Posted on by 16

I came across an interesting item the other day about our climate.

I have always known that the climate is changing.  Even in my own lifetime it has changed and that is a minuscule timespan in the life of a planet.

What I do dispute, and dispute strongly is that humans have had any effect on that change.  We are like a rat at sea on an oil tanker claiming that our weight is influencing the tanker’s course.  We are tiny while the planet and its mechanisms are gargantuan, so the only logical conclusion is that it takes something equally vast to influence a climate.  My money is on the Sun.

Now apparently the Sun is doing strange things.  Sunspots have all but vanished and this has enormous implications for Earth.  The last time there was a significant lack of sunspot activity was during the Maunder Minimum or the Medieval Mini Ice Age. 

I’m not suggesting we are heading for an actual ice age, but we are heading into an interesting clash of ideas.  On one hand we have everyone screaming that we are destroying the climate with our reckless carry on while on the other hand we have a celestial event which has a precisely predictable result. One says the climate will warm up while the other says it will cool down, but both can’t be right.

An if the climate does take a nosedive then what are the climate alarmists going to do?  How are they going to justify all those carbon taxes?

We live in interesting times?

A strange feeling

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

I feel very unsettled.

For the last twenty minutes or so Penny has been lying on the couch staring at me.

She hasn’t moved a muscle or even blinked.

It’s very unnerving.

And why do I have this overpowering urge to empty all her treat boxes onto the floor?

Why this sudden need to fuck the cat out into the cold?

Is this a joke?

Head Rambles Posted on by 13

Now this is just plain weird.

A new European directive will make it mandatory for EU citizens and visitors to receive official alerts directly to their mobile phones during large emergencies.

Mandatory to receive messages?  I can be arrested for not checking my phone for texts?  Can I be arrested if my battery runs down or I forget to switch the yoke on?

This is bananas gone mad.

Will I be obliged by law to register my phone number with them?  They can stick that one up their arse for starters. 

I am assuming that the system somehow sends an alert from a particular tower [or towers] to all mobiles within range, but even that doesn’t guarantee that I [or anyone else] will receive them.  Reception around here is quirky at best yet it will be mandatory for me to receive them whether or not I can even get a signal?

Now our Glorious Leaders love emergencies.  A bit of a wind or a flurry of snowflakes has them frantically running in circles, calling press conferences and telling us in breathless voices that we are in imminent danger of Armageddon.  I presume then we will get a stream of these fucking texts telling us to do the obvious.  “It’s raining.  Stay indoors!” or “It’s snowing.  Stay indoors and keep warm!“

Fucking idiots.

I’ll just switch off my phone.

Beautiful bureaucracy

Head Rambles Posted on by 15

I received a letter from Revenue the other day.

Normally they go straight into the recycle bin but this one was interesting. It was suggesting that I might have some medical bills from which I could get a rebate. They said it was simple. All I had to do was to go online and claim.

Yesterday I decided to have a bash at this so I went into the website they suggested.

I had to have an account!

They gave an option to open a account and all I needed was my name [which I knew], my date of birth [Which I also knew] and my RSI number which is what I refer to as my cattle-tag number, though it isn’t permanently clipped into my earlobe. They also wanted my address, my mobile number and my home phone number. I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t have a mobile?

I entered the requested information and hit Return. They then told me I had to select two out of three options for verification – my driving licence, my P60 or a notice of tax assessment. My driving licence was no problem. I probably have a P60 somewhere but it would take weeks or months to find it if it hasn’t already been thrown out. And as for a tax assessment? Hah! Obviously I had hit a brick wall.

Another way to get into the site was to use MyGovID, which they tell me allows access to just about any and every government department all under one roof. I had nothing to loose so I decided to apply for this ID, even though it pains me to facilitate their moves to tag us all into their databases.

I went into the MyGovID website. They promised that it would be simplicity itself to apply and that all I needed was my name, my mobile number and my cattle tag. I entered them and sure enough they sent me a text to my mobile with a code to enable me to proceed. So I proceeded and generated a nice password.

I was in!

So I went to the home page where they welcomed me and all that shit and gave a list of departments. I selected Revenue.

Ah! says they. What I need now to get any further is a Verified Account but not to worry – it’s easy peasy as all I need is a Basic Account [how the fuck do they think I got this far?], a mobile phone, a Pubic Services Card [which I have] and my cattle tag number.

I hit the Login Now button.

So I logged into the site using the login I had already used to get that far. That brought me to a page telling me to verify myself, and what was my cattle tag number. I entered it.

This brought me to a page with just one simple message – “Please drop into your local office to have your mobile phone verified“. What the fuck?

I checked where my “local office” was and it’s in Skobieville. No fucking way I am going in there.

So they have already verified my phone number otherwise I couldn’t have gotten this far and now they want me to physically go into an office to verify it again? Am I supposed to walk up to a counter and wave my phone at them and declare “this is it”? What kind of gombeen shitehawks are they?

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  This is the government I’m dealing with and everything has to be as complex and as frustrating as possible.

Sometime, when I have a spare five hours I might phone them and ask how the fuck I am supposed to get into a system that is so secure that no one can get into it.

Either that or I’ll just hack into their system directly.