Renton

I got Apple TV for 6 months from so route so banal I can't even remember what it was. Watched Ted Lasso on Gloom's advice, it is indeed shit. Bad sisters has been okay. Overall underwhelmed and sick of the fact I need a dozen streaming services to watch the odd decent show.

Yeah, you're right. When I wasn't finding out my old mate was dying, I was taking lots of photos of graves trying to get the right epitaph, it's hard to please my mum, especially as one day she'll share the grave. Very cheery activity. And then I found a grave neighbouring our "plot" is of a woman and her kids, who she had murdered. 🤯(instant Google regret). Fucking tragic. I dont think I'll tell my mum about that like. Anyway, cheers, I am genuinely okay, I think anniversaries of deaths are difficult in the early years regardless. I never understood this until now. My sister's is tomorrow (2 years), which is a bit of a pisser for my future St Paddy's days, but at least I'll never forget. Going out to a gig tomorrow night which should be the perfect tonic. 👍

A bit shocked, a bit down. Went to the cemetery on a bit of a reconnaissance mission to find inspiration for my Dad and sister's epitaphs. Only taken me a year to get organised enough to buy the stone. Anyway, bumped into an old mate whose mother had passed away in November unbeknownst to me, he was doing the same as it happened. That was sad enough as I have fond memories of her as a kid, we were best mates and grew up together before drifting apart. Anyway, worse, this friend is pretty seriously fucked due to alcohol issues and, well, it doesn't look good for him in all honesty. He also told me how many people he had lost during the pandemic, he's the oldest surviving family member. He's exactly the type of person this government is fucking over too. I dunno. I felt okay before I turned 50, then this happened during the covid pandemic and my realisation of my own mortality has hit me like a sledge hammer. Mainly because suddenly I had family and friends dying right, left and centre, many of whom were of the same generation. So many people also seem to have serious illnesses to deal with. It's difficult for me to seperate the machinations inside my head with reality at the minute. Am I percieiving the world in a certain way because I am depressed, or is it really as bleak as I sometimes feel? At the same time, I do feel genuinely more accepting of things and appreciative that in fact I am personally blessed. Could really do with a holiday like, or at least spring properly arriving.

This is what I never understood, so many of them were certain that they would get top 6, seemingly oblivious to a dozen clubs in a similar situation, most of whom were better equipped to do so. This lad knows the score, the amount of abuse he gets on the thread for saying it though is quite something! Genuinely, you go against the message you're treated like a hertetic, or even worse, a Mag.

Both reported.

And meanwhile, Hunt is extolling "Work is a virtue" which yeah, is something I can well imagine from Germany circa 1930, I can see it in front of the poor houses soon. He's telling us that at 50 years of age, we have to graft for at least another 20 years. The state pension age going up to reflect this of course. But latest data out today confirms our life expectancy is now going down, mirroring what is happening in the US. Where we were once 7th in the league table of life expectancy, we are now 29th. So not only do we have to work harder, we will die sooner. Less money for the state to spend on pensions I guess. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expectancy-in-uk-growing-at-slower-rate-to-comparable-g7-countries

I've hardly heard it mentioned on the MSM or BBC, but the tax thresholds are being frozen until 2028!!! That's an effewctive 4% increase on your income tax, which is quite mind blowing if you think about it. Still, at least massively rich earners will get some much needed tax relief on their pensions.

Teachers are on stike so have the joys of trying to home educate two kids today, as well as keep on top of work (monitor e-mails today only I think) and keep up my toontastic duties. Such is life.

In contrast over the same time period, real term pay has gone up 10% overall in France (all sectors) and 20% in Germany. And in just 7 years now, the average pole will be better off than the average Brit. The tory cunts have been MUCH worse for the UK than my worst fears.

They're not making the play offs, they never were. Let's hope they have a tricky second season next year and go back to their spiritual home. With the "model" they are so proud to boast about (which to my eyes seems to be an even shitter version of Ashley's), I think this is a possibility, although tbf, you have to be pretty shit to get relegated from the championship.

Eeeeh, you and your wars Isegrim, what are you like?

So, one of the good things about Spotify is obviously after I listen to an album (I still do this) once it finishes it continues with a play list with music simialr to that album. So today up pops the Divine Comedy with the theme from Father Ted (Songs of Love). I like the Divine Comedy, especially A Lady of a Certain Age and my Lovely Horse, but probably not the type of band I would actively listen to. But I must admit I actually listened to the lyrics to this song and thought they were brilliant. Made me think of back in the day times of Newcastle or Whitley Bay nightlife in the late 80s / early 90s meat markets that I could never feel part of. Remember those turqoise dress shirts, and then the striped ones that looked like pajama tops, and beige chinos, etc. Also reminded me of ewerk (given what we know of ewerk's irishness, skin pallour, and his obvious solitary proclivities). First verse:

GET BACK TO WORK YOU SHIRKING CUNT.

So listening to bits of that budget, my summary take is that, because there is a labour shortage due in part to Brexit (didn't see this on the side of a bus): If you are retired: GET BACK TO WORK YOU OLD CUNT. If you have kids: GET BACK TO WORK and ignore raisning your kids, YOU CUNT. If you are disabled: GET BACK TO WORK you bone idle shirker, CUNT. If you are unemployed: WE'RE STOPPING YOUR BENEFITS YOU FECKLESS CUNT. Is that about right?

Sunak there, saying Starmer is "siding with the people smugglers" in parliament when it is their fucking policies that has facilitated them. All part of a normal functional democracy.

Yeah, I remember it, was the Mail. The paper of the brown shirt (covered in sewerage shit) patriots.

Cheers, the day the date is announced, you fill your boots Gemmill. 👍

The tories are only doing this to give them the soundbites to cut off Philipson's policies imo. It'll help them in some interviews or debates but do fuck all to stop the rot.

That fucking tory tweet with Braverman's prologue is a fucking disgrace. It's overty fascist in my opinion, and combined with the blatant lying about Labour we have come to expect from this government. Sir Michael Take's mockery of it doesn't cheer me up, because most people won't see it and anyway satire is dead, he could well be a real tory back bencher like Gullis. It really shouldn't be legal for the home secretrary to do this, and yet they have the fucking brass neck to try and censor Gary Lineker. I think I officially detest Braverman the most of any in that rancid party, which is some stiff competition. From the day she came on the scene, she just struck me as evil incarnate. I had believed she was too stupid to advance to the upper positions of power but Johnson has normalised incompetence and here we are. Starting to despair we can ever get out of this now.

And, relating to the small boats, Rwanda issue etc.... So this shit works. Quite why, somebody living in a shithole like land locked Stoke on Trent blames their circumstances on small boat asylum seekers is quite something. But the tories will continue to swhip up wedge issues and hatgred while the country goes down the pan. There are far too many stupid people. And it is blatently obvious to me that if 1930s Germany had happened here, the outcome would have been the same.

When he was born, the doctor threw away the baby and kept the afterbirth.

I find it staggering this is only now the case. Just walking through town before, and fuck me it's like a set from the Last of Us. All the restaurants, cafes, shops, are deserted. Everything looks so run down. Shuttered retail space everywhere. Northumberland street, once the second busiest retail street in England after Oxford street, is a fucking dive. Cracked paving everywhere, interspersed with bare tarmac where they couldn't afford to replace it. Beggars and tramps on every corner. At my local Co-op in Tynemouth yesterday there's this homeless person who was drinking vodka neat out a bottle in fornt of the school kids, at 8.30 in the morning (and no, it wasnt me!). I mean, when I think back to the New Labour years, did I just imagine things were so much better? The town was busy, thriving, people had money to spend? Not saying it was perfect but my God, I reckon if you could do a side by side comparison it would be striking. And all the time we're paying more and more taxes for worse and worse services. And only NOW are people waking up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the tories are fucking SHITE at running the economy.

I know a lot of people aren't supportive of HS2, but what a farce this is turning out ot be. They're delaying building it, even though this will cost more, even before you factor in the delayed benefits, presumably to hand the costs to Labour. London to Manchester, if it ever gets built, will be complete some time in the 2040s. More than 30 years to build a railway. London Leeds and the NE, permanently scrappped, so we get no benefit at all. Yet it was the Eastern leg which made the most sense financially. As a country, we just can't handle infrastructure developments any more. We even need the French and Chinese to build our power stations. Fucking pathetic.

Ahh, the good old days. He used to terrify me as a kid, even more than Mr Baxter or Miss McCluskey.

All this is nonsense. The truth is the cafe had a spotless full length mirror.