Striking Posties Reveal They Are Doing It Just To Piss Us Off

The public has expressed consternation and alarm at news that a postal strike may go ahead on October 22 if a deal isn’t reached between Royal Mail bosses and the Communication Workers Union, and Idle Thoughts, in a humanitarian effort to attempt to mediate between the unwashed masses and their long suffering post men and women, has been delving into the news behind the story to bring you this exclusive.

Pat reveals: "We just think wearing curly red wigs really irritates people, so we're encouraging all postal workers to do so". (Pic creds: Iain Farrell 25/07/08)

Several members of the public emailed this blogger with anxious questions about whether they would get their next electricity bill, their Christmas cards and their parcel from Amazon, as well as what the hell the problem was and why couldn’t the posties just get on with it and do their damned job.

One woman wrote: “I work for a living, I’m not unionised and I don’t feel the need to constantly moan about my working conditions. If the bosses want me to take a pay cut I take it and if they decide to replace my job with a machine well then I’ll just join the dole queue like anyone else”. Another expressed sympathy for the postal workers: “I have a lot of sympathy for the postal workers but it’s quite clear that they are just a bunch of moaning bastards who won’t work for a living”. Several others claimed they could do a better job of delivering the mail: “Frankly, how hard can it be to deliver the mail? I send out Christmas cards to my street every year and I take them myself – it’s only a matter of putting an envelope through a letter box – hardly taxing is it?”

Such insightful objections bring to light the concerns of a public who only have the postal workers’ best interests at heart – so why is the union pushing ahead with the strike? In a frank and enlightening interview, Idle Thoughts spoke to one postman about the reasons for the industrial action. ‘Pat’, whose name has been changed to keep him anonymous, revealed that the planned walk-outs have nothing to do with the enforced modernisation, pay cuts and redundancies that are being reported by the media, but are in fact the result of a long simmering vitriol toward the public.

“We were going to accept that our pay would be slashed, our working hours extended, several job cuts enforced and our workload dramatically increased without remuneration, but then we all got together over a pint and decided that we should just strike to piss people off. After all, there’s nothing funnier than annoying the public.” Pat intimated that other service workers may have overheard the conversation and decided to follow suit. “I know there were a few bin-men in the Red Lion at the time – they were listening in on our conversation and I notice they’ve deliberately started to miss people’s bins on rubbish collection day.” When asked if he thought that bus drivers were intentionally coming along three at a time he was unsure, but added “I don’t know if there were any bus drivers there but I do know that plenty of Royal Mail workers use buses every day so I don’t suppose it would be that hard to get the idea rolling in that direction”.

The news has shocked the public but affirmed the suspicion that all service workers are indeed out to get them. It remains to be seen whether the threatened strikes will go ahead or if the posties will decide the joke has gone too far.

In his closing comments, Pat emphasised the purpose of the action: “I know there’s been lots of media attention on this issue recently but I want to make clear the reasons for the strike. The fact is we genuinely don’t mind being exploited, poorly paid mules while the company makes millions in profits from our back-breaking labour. We just really like annoying the public”.

Eriksson Joins Axis Of Evil

As an exciting round of international qualifiers for 2010 wrap up, one coach will do anything to manage a World Cup squad – including moving over to the dark side.

In the Axis of Evil dressing rooms Sven discusses what is worse: a swirly or a wedgy (pic creds: chris1002x 19/07/2009)

Sven-Goran Eriksson, currently Notts County Director of Football, is reported to be in loan talks with Axis of Evil representative North Korea after being rejected by several War on Terror goodies during his career, including England and Mexico.

The status of North Korea as an Axis of Evil member has been much debated in recent years. The country first joined in 2002 after intensive interviews and a team building weekend with other members, Iran and Iraq, which was reported by delegates to have been a “very useful weekend for Axis members – we did some outdoor activities, you know, tried to get a balloon from one end of the field to another using only our knees, that kind of thing. There were also some questionnaires. I wasn’t sure the Iranians were going to be evil enough but they were.”

In June 2008 President Bush, having noticed some discrepancies in the notes from this weekend, had them removed them from the Axis, however several evil events including some prank phonecalls and a couple of nuclear tests ensured that their place remained.

Eriksson has not publicly announced his commitment to evil but close friends insist he will fit in fine. “I’m convinced Sven has what it takes to lead North Korea to victory in the World Cup. He’s a firm believer in tripping up the referee and making it look like an accident, and although he doesn’t have any formal evil training he’s a really quick learner and I’m sure he’ll pick it up in no time.”

‘Chill Out’ Says Mayan Elder – 2012 No Big Deal

Mayan leaders have dismissed as 'ridiculous' the belief that on December 21 2012 a giant hand will thrust into the Pacific ocean and the Earth will be bowled into the Sun (pic creds - woodleywonderworks)

Millenarianists everywhere have been dismayed by a Mayan elder’s recent comments that the world is not going to end in 2012, contrary to assertions by Roland Emmerich and the History Channel.

The Telegraph reports that Apolinario Chile Pixtun is starting to get a little pissed off with constantly being asked about the prophesy, which foresees the end of the Mayan calendar and is believed to herald all kinds of scary events ranging from the shifting of the poles, the approach of Planet Nibiru, first contact with aliens and the annihilation of the universe. Pixtun claims that the idea of an apocalypse is not mentioned at all in the predictions and the date is significant merely as the beginning of a new calendar – in short nothing to worry about, just the turning of a page.

Adherents to the end of the world theory have thus far been unmoved by Pixtun’s banal suggestions. One millenarianist group member, who didn’t want to be identified, stated: “Mr Pixtun has obviously been commanded to say these things so that we don’t panic, probably by the Americans as some sort of trade deal. I watch the History Channel just like anyone else and I know that we are in some deep shit as far as 2012 goes.”

He added that signs had already been recorded that the end of the world is nigh, “We’re seeing all kinds of things that point to an apocalypse. One of the prophesies tells of an age being repeated, time being lived all over again, at the end of days. We think that this might mean the 1980s are being repeated again right now. You only need to look at the return of leg-warmers, shoulder pads and asymmetrical hair to see the signs are all around us. Add to that the renaissance of electro-pop and the remake of the movie ‘Fame’ and you can see that there are so many tell-tale signs that people are just ignoring.”

The anonymous source admitted that some of the prophesies were inaccurate, but stated that this didn’t devalue the doomsday theories. “The fact that Newcastle were relegated this year has thrown us off somewhat as that was predicted to happen in 2011. I suppose it’s possible that they’ll be promoted and relegated again, but we’ll have to see.”

Sex Tourism For The Cash Strapped

Escapism is a necessity in a society marred by the twin evils of open-windowed crack dens and lack of competitive sport in schools, and The Sun – ever mindful of its responsibilities to the beleaguered British public – today provide  just that in an eminently informative account of where in the UK one might find the largest boobies.

It’s well documented that these times of economic depression have forced all but the richest to holiday at home, exploring the rich cultural and natural diversity of the British Isles instead of wasting cash on poor exchange rates and eco-unfriendly plane trips to Europe and beyond. The Sun’s map of plenty therefore provides a helpful guide for the British holiday maker in search bountiful cleavage rather than dusty museums or sandy beaches, and it is in the dock cities of the North where the greatest treasures may be found.

An over the shoulder boulder holder without pretension (pic creds - tamebay 05/12/07)

Liverpool is the place to go if you wish to leer at the ladies, with an ‘average’ bust size of 34E, closely followed by Newcastle (34DD) and Manchester (36D). The newspaper helpfully warns its readers not to waste the train fare to Manchester – “Despite the bigger number – which is the measurement in inches around a woman’s chest and back – the letter denotes the breasts’ volume”. So don’t be fooled by internet strumpets boasting about their 40AAs lads.

It would be easy to launch into a polemical hate-filled tirade about The Sun, but perhaps unfair – after all in their pervy way they’re only trying to boost the UK economy, encouraging no end of stag parties to forgo the dubious pleasures of Amsterdam in favour of a quick leer at British women. It’s pure patriotism.

Next week: an in depth guide to the Lake District for ass men.

Prolific Writer Banned By Miserable Bookshops

Everyone knows that bookshops are staffed with hordes of miserable failed and would-be writers, so it should come as no surprise that this jealous bunch plan to sabotage the launch of the new book by one of Britain’s best loved and most prolific authors.

I am of course referring to the inexhaustible Katie Price, whose latest release is reportedly facing the ban by bookshops unwilling to stock her fourth autobiography in five years. Price has proved a literary surprise to many in the publishing world who believed her to be a vacuous airhead with no talent and a permatan, yet her success as an author paved the way for others in the celebrity world to attempt to write the ‘great novel’ themselves and has been held up by industry magazines as a “riches to further riches story that inspired countless other millionaires to turn their hands to writing”.

Price poses with her Pulitzer nominated series of satirical children's books (pic creds - sp3ccylad 15/06/2007)

Price, or ‘Jordan’ as she is sometimes known, began her writing career with her 2004 autobiography ‘Being Jordan’ which told the dramatic story of her life. Two years later she released another ‘tell all’ book detailing the years 2004 to 2006. Faced with the demands of angry fans who insisted she fill them in on the years 2006-2008, Price capitulated with a further addition to the collection. Her new book is believed to be a philosophical reflection on how the war on terrorism has changed the nature of celebrity culture.

The threat of a bookshop boycott could seriously harm sales of Price’s latest offering. Whilst Borders have made clear their antipathy toward the tome and Waterstone’s have dithered about noncommittally, the supermarkets are reported to be rather excited about the moralistic hand-wringing of the major UK booksellers. An anonymous source stated: “I walked past Asda the other day and there was this bloke stocking up the books and rubbing his hands and doing this weird little laugh, you know like the one Mr Burns does. It was well dodgy.”

Price is said to be unfazed by the struggle and maintains that she is optimistic that the latest book will be stocked by all the major bookstores, however on the possibility of a ban she stated: “It never did Lady Chatterly any ‘arm did it? An’ that ‘ad buggering in it! Hahahahaha”.

Victims of Witchcraft Marginalised By Liberal Satanists

The hot news story of today is that JK Rowling was denied a Presidential Medal of Freedom under the Bush Administration because her Harry Potter series of books were believed to encourage witchcraft.

Now I think most of us can agree that Bush was a little on the cuckoo side but let’s face it – about this he was right, and the indignant din of the liberal media only goes to show that victims of primary school sorcery are not being taken seriously by the wet lefties taking over this country.

Take the sad tale of Miss McGrady, whose high-flying career as a History teacher at a struggling comprehensive school in South London was cut short when she was turned into a toad by a 13 year old boy who cannot be identified because of his age. The boy allegedly stood up in the class, shouting “This is propaganda!” and made several gestures with a wand fashioned from wood whilst murmuring words under his breath, described by a fellow student as:  “Guttural utterances utterly incomprehensible to those of us who sat in close proximity”. The student then turned the wand upon himself.

Young Satanists gather in a malicious attempt to disrupt the public by forming an orderly queue (pic creds: jaimelondonboy 21/07/09)

I remember a similar response to Jill Murphy’s ‘Worst Witch’ series. Encouraged by these books my cousin and I spent a great deal of time using Mechano pieces as wands in order to influence our moms in increasingly devilish ways. Our first ever spell involved picking lots of grass from the lawn, putting it in a cauldron (bucket) and stirring it menacingly whilst mumbling ‘magic’ words (“halabala gulliver stincraguliga”, etc) and repeating the mantra “they will let us sleep over tonight so we can stay up all night giggling and being menaces”. Innocent enough, but isn’t that how all cults start? We swiftly moved on to more dangerous devil worship – summoning the power to ‘fly’ from a cupboard to my mom’s bed. Soon it was clear our dabbles in the diabolical were spiralling out of control.

We were the lucky ones. An intensive course of Enid Blyton immersion ensured that the evil was erased and our delicate little minds were saturated with the starched world of good old chaps and traditional British casual racism – a move that undoubtedly saved our souls. But what do the children of today have to wean them off the dangerous world of witchcraft that JK and her apologists have so malevolently thrust upon them?

The real tragedy of course is that whilst adults across the world fall victim to the uninhibited sorcery of minors the Left constantly lobby against the incarceration of the very authors who encourage this behaviour, leaving those whose lives have been ruined by the unrestrained exercise of the dark arts abandoned, alone and neglected. Under the banner of liberalism, and with constant asinine sloganeering, they ask us to respect the human rights of authors, requesting we ‘keep things in perspective’ and stop burning books whilst their policies dismantle the few fragments of civil society that remain.

No doubt the new administration will soon grant the medal of freedom to Ms Rowling, but they would do well to remember the counsel of another great female author of English descent: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a small child in possession of a Harry Potter book is a Satanist”.

The Daily Mail and the Fall of Western Civilisation

I’m back. While all sorts of noteworthy things have happened in my absence – lecturers being given the thumbs up for lecherous leering, all sorts of football shenanigans and some exciting experiments into frugal living (draft snakes, hundreds of them, will be adorning my home as part of an effort to last the whole winter without turning the heating on) – I have decided to focus on Daily Mail trivialities in order to vent my rage.

EMOs hate the Daily Mail - fact (pic creds - lewis chaplin 04/06/08)

First up is Kelly Osborne who is applauded and admired for dancing, being thin and wearing satin. The basic thrust of this utterly pointless article is that Kelly used to be a fatty and now, thanks to the intensive training required for her part in America’s answer to Strictly Come Dancing, she is a thinny.

Osborne has stated that the reason for her rapid weight loss is an untreated thyroid condition which she has no intention of remedying for fear of putting all the weight back on again. Now on this I’m something of an expert – I too became a thinny due to a thyroid condition, which was all well and good until crippling pain left me unable to use my hands for anything other than bandaged eyesores to scare the neighbourhood children away. Kelly, take the drugs – you will not look good in satin if your hands are the size of mallets and you will not be able to dance with osteoporosis.

Moving on, someone called Ben Caring married someone called Elle Perfect. I have no idea who these people are and I can’t even be bothered to Google them – to me it’s enough that they have such silly names and they managed to find each other. I really do hope Elle keeps her maiden name though, or at least hyphenates it. Caring-Perfect or Perfect-Caring?

Another mouth-watering morsel of non-news is that Andrew Ridgeley, the other one out of Wham! and proud CAMRA member, is bald. The Daily Mail reports that: “Now 46, Michael’s sidekick leads a reclusive lifestyle in Cornwall, where he was spotted over the weekend, looking healthy and tanned and wearing glasses.” When male pattern baldness and glasses become newsworthy items the West has really lost its way as a great civilisation, what would Aristotle and Jesus be thinking? The report further states that: “He ventured into town for newspapers over the weekend, but was lucky to escape a parking ticket as a traffic warden was doing the rounds close to his Mercedes estate.”

This is truly reporting at its finest – a bald man in glasses buys a weekend newspaper and narrowly misses being prosecuted for a parking infringement. With all the real news that is happening throughout the world – wars, famine, environmental disasters, and Barack Obama – I’m shocked that the Daily Mail has the time or resources to devote to such fatuous inanities. Well, not really shocked.

Why, you may ask, do I bother reading it at all if I’m so disturbed by all the nonsense this paper writes? I can’t answer that, but I do know that it’s things like this that give credence to some of bin Laden’s most rabid denunciations of the West – he’s right, we are obsessed with vacuous trifles of information that have absolutely nothing to do with anything of any relevance or importance to our lives or the rest of the world. On this issue, I’m with al Qaeda.

Campaign For A New National Anthem

I have spent the week wrapped up in a blanket, blowing my nose into an attractive shade of purple and coughing up all kinds of weird and exciting things. But aside from giving me plenty of reasons to feel extremely sorry for myself, all this disease and pestilence has allowed me to enjoy the World Cup Qualifiers fun – and I think it would be a whole lot more fun were it not for the cringe worthy English national anthem.

Thankfully the second verse is pretty much unknown and rarely sang – you know, the bit where we beseech the Lord to rise up and confound the politics of our enemies. Forgive me, but I think He probably has more important things to do than meddle in the affairs of Iraq, Afghanistan, France or any other nation we’ve decided we don’t want to best friends forever with.

England fans terrify the Hungarians with graphic imagery of semolina pilchards climbing up the Eiffel Tower in their chilling rendition of 'I Am The Walrus' (pic creds - pickledshark 31/05/06)

But that’s really beside the point. The words are terrible – truly awful - but the morose tune only augments the gloomy atmosphere. How can we expect our sporting stars to try hard when they’re cheered on with possibly the most dull, dreary, lacklustre anthem the world has ever witnessed?

It’s hardly inspiring. When Liverpool’s Kop raise their voices in a heartening rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – with lyrics about solidarity through adversity and a rousing tune – the players are lifted and the crowd are brought together. Surely that’s the whole point of an anthem, and these boxes certainly ain’t ticked by ‘God Save The Queen’.

Part of me agrees with Bill Bailey that ‘The Pink Panther’ should be the tune our football stars line up to, but I feel we need lyrics lest the dandy atmosphere get lost amid opposition chants of ‘Who Are Ya?’ So it must be something rousing - a song that captures the national character, that lifts crowds in a flurry of nationalistic pride, and that can be equally applied to sporting events, military occasions and the midnight transition between Radio 4 and the World Service.

The obvious choice is Fat Les’s 1998 classic ‘Vindaloo’ – but, although I think we can all agree that the timeless lyric “we all like vindaloo” perfectly captures the essence of Britishness, the rest of the words (mostly “nah nah nah”) hardly serve to inspire brave deeds and national pride. ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ have been offered as possible replacements but they’re all a bit too Godly and the former’s references to dark satanic mills are surely now consigned to the edifices of history, dark satanic golden arches being much more culturally accurate these days.

The greatest English composers of the last century are Lennon and McCartney, so a Beatles song would be perfect. ‘Penny Lane’ has references to the very British institutions of the monarchy and pies, but is perhaps a little too regional to serve as a national anthem. ‘I Am The Walrus’ would be a good one, serving to terrify the opposition in both sport and war in much the same way as the New Zealand Haka – who would dare fight against a nation that in all seriousness declares itself both the eggman and the walrus, and finishes it all off with a “goob goob g’joob” to boot?

But I think the true essence of Britishness is captured in the apathetic indifference of ‘Let It Be’ – sure, we almost always lose everything, but we try hard and at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter – let’s give the World Cup a go, let’s attempt the Olympics and let’s allow the World Service to commence.

How To Do It French

It’s official: British women are shit.

The Daily Mail, in it’s ever-helpful crusade to make women more palatable, have offered a valuable guide on how to be more French. Debra Ollivier instructs readers that females across the channel are different to us – they are passionate, they are ambiguous, they love men, they regularly fornicate before dinner parties, and rarely indulge in the allegedly all-pervasive British pastime of trying to ‘change their men’.

British women shop for a Valentine's day ensemble geared toward unmitigated seduction (pic creds smee_me 23/02/09)

She enlightens us with fun facts – one in three French women would wear sexy underwear for their men, whilst only one in ten frigid English bitches would waste their hard earned cash on a pair of painful stringy, lacy, itchy pants that cost five times as much as a pack of 10 passion-killing cotton briefs that will still be going strong in five year’s time. I bet they even shave their legs! Fools.

It’s okay to sleep with a man the first time you go out with them, Ollivier reassures us, the French do it. Don’t feel bad. And by the way, the French don’t care for marriage like us starched, prissy, public school English losers whose sole purpose in life is to entrap men and then gradually wear them down with a carefully planned programme of incessant nagging designed to make them toilet trained or slightly less hairy.

French women are so much better than us because they flirt, they’re mysterious, they’re ambiguous – “While British girls are stuck in the absolutes of total love or utter rejection, the French girl is already primed to think in nuances. While we lust after happy endings and closure, they’re comfortable with emotional subtleties and ambiguity”. Oh, these tortuous absolutes that taunt us deep into our sleepless nights! It seems that every woman in Britain is engaged in a battle to command utter undying love from every man that crosses her path. “Maybe so” is beyond the cerebral competence of this breed of British birds who have no sense of emotional in-betweens and no intellectual capacity to think beyond the dichotomous sentimental see-saw of love or rejection.

Is it just me or does this article advance an incredibly generalised, slightly racist, very sexist and ridiculously stoopid conception of gender relations in Europe? This isn’t meant to make us more mysterious – this is propaganda! Tellingly illustrated with a series of photographs of what presumably are to be taken as the many ambiguities of French female behaviour – Audrey Tautou seducing men for their money, Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife’s misty eyed doting and Belle du Jour’s romanticised whoring – the ‘nuances’ add up simply to pre-feminist conceptions of the feminine mystique and post-feminist ideas about liberation through prostitution. In short, not particularly ambiguous at all.

While Debra loses herself in her passionate ardour for femme fatales and their enigmatic behaviour, we can console ourselves with our hairy legs, huge pants and ability to sexually satisfy ourselves and men without resorting to cheap chicanery.

And don’t worry – having little interest in being alluring or ambiguous doesn’t make us any less baffling to men, just ask.

Transfer Deadline Day Shocks and Thrills

Well, the window has closed for the summer and nothing really exciting happened on the last day except for Redknapp Snr nicking the last remnants of the Portsmouth team to add to his super-Spurs empire that will surely now take over the world.

£460 million was spent in total during the summer, over a quarter of that by Manchester City, so what can we learn from this year’s mad summer scramble?

Lesson Number 1 – Wherever Harry goes, so too will Crouch. Like a Whippet puppy adorably following a very British Bulldog, these two appear to have entered into a binding contract that ensures the spindly legged striker will trot the globe in eternal pursuit of Redknapp. Fabricated sources reveal that Crouch plans to retire at 30 and become a full-time golf cart driver for his mentor.

Comedy signings are celebrated to much hilarity at the deadline day after-party (pic creds eviltwin 30/11/06)

Lesson Number 2 – Some signings are purely for comedy value. Several commentators have discussed the necessity of increasing the game’s appeal in these dark economic times by keeping the crowd laughing and managers have taken the advice seriously, signing players that are clearly only there to provide humorous contrast. Hence anyone with a small striker has rushed to grab a very tall one in order to provide maximum amusement for supporters – so Manchester City’s Craig Bellamy and Emmanuel Adebayor, Tottenham’s Jermaine Defoe and Peter Crouch, and Birmingham’s Christian Benitez and Cameron Jerome, become the new Syd Little and Eddie Large in the nation’s hearts.

Lesson Number 3 – The ‘big four’ know something we don’t. Like model citizens, the (obligatory so-called) big four clubs have confounded onlookers by selling important players and not buying anyone very exciting or expensive to replace them, making everyone quite nervous. What do they know? Evidence cooked up for the purpose of this post points to these clubs being subsidised by the government to carry out exemplary fiscal planning in order to set a good example to British citizens in a time of massive financial crisis. All of them appear to be using money from the sale of the likes of Tevez, Ronaldo, Alonso, Toure and Adebayor to pay off their loans instead of splashing out on fancy new players. In an exclusive interview with Idle Thoughts, an anonymous British Prime Minister stated: “We have offered the so-called ‘big four’ lucrative subsidies to act as a positive example by recycling old players instead of entering into the vicious cycle of consumerism that has contributed to the collapsing of the world’s economy in the last few years”.

In sum, even if transfer deadline day is dull as dishwater, we can still learn a lot. And now it’s over we can start making up rumours for January – I saw Robin Van Persie down the Lidl in Cannock the other day…