One in seven kids takes a drink

The Hootsman reports that one in seven of our beloved children (won't somebody think of the children?) are drinking alcohol regularly.

“A young person receiving the average British pocket money of £5.89 can buy eight litres of cider containing almost 34 units of alcohol – more than enough alcohol to kill them. That’s why minimum pricing is so important.”

Here's a thought... How about enforcing the existing Licensing Act (Scotland) and throwing the book at those selling to underage folk - which is already illegal?

Ach, it'll never catch on. It's enough to drive you to drink...

Tesco Ergo Sum

Tesco.

Bastards.

I was just at (my formerly local) Tesco to pick up some odds and sods for dinner, which I did in about 5 minutes, and then I went to the checkouts.

I went to the left, which is where the checkouts used to be, to find they were all closed. I went to the right, and only found self service things. I went straight on and found nothing.

Self service it is then.

This makes me sad.

After more or less successfully scanning a bunch of stuff, swearing at the till, and then flagging down a member of staff to un-break the till, I asked why there weren't any humans serving...

Now, please don't think that I don't know how to work a till. When I was a mere PFY (Pimply Faced Youth) I worked in Iceland (the shop, not the country) and was crap at stacking shelves, but blisteringly fast and accurate at making the tills beep, and taking money off folk. Tesco, by having only self service tills open is doing PFYs out of work, and annoying people who know how to work tills, but due to how shockingly shite the self service tills are, require operator intervention every other item.

I am sorry tesco, but you are quite simply a bunch of bastards.
Get folk back on the tills!

Bloody Minded Wankers 1 Series

Yes, the BMW. Once driven by morons, now made by morons.

On my recent anger management break to Mallorca, my pals rented a 1 series BMW. Nice enough wee car, manual, four wheels, air con... and some sort of bloody green hippy engine cut out to save the planet when you're waiting at lights.

Auto Start-Stop they call it.

"When you next come across a stop sign or red light, or join the end of a traffic queue, it won't bust be your car that comes to a rest. Auto Start-Stop automaticall switches off your engine whenever you're stationary and in neutral, saving fuel and cutting CO2 emissions. Simply depress the clutch and the engine restarts automatically."

Lovely sentiment, but it can get to fuck.

Sat on a hill, about to turn onto a roundabout, handbrake on, clutch depressed, in to neutral, engine turns off, just as it's being put into gear... FUCK! Now you automatically try to restart the car, but pressing the ignition button of course turns the fucking car off. So you now have to start the car again, wait for another gap in the traffic, just for this fantastic thing to cut the engine again. Bastardos!

Yes, there is a wee button that switches this "feature" off, but since the hire company thoughtfully blagged the manual for the car, we had no way to figure out how to permanently switch this feature off...

I'd be surprised if this sort of eco-ass-hattery hasn't caused a few crashes.

And in other news, despite this, it was a lovely holiday. I ate a little octopus. Tapas there is so much better. Almost as if they invented it or something.

Authoritarian much?

Some Labour (quelle surprise) MP has called for the ban of smoking in cars carrying children. Why not go the whole hog and ban adults from smoking in their own homes you authoritarian cunt!

Or perhaps smokers should be banned from having children at all - it's for their own good!

For the record, the old boy smoked when I were a lad, and it really stunted my growth. (I'm 6'8", have no allergies, am not asthmatic, and am certainly not tolerant of this sort of bullshit).

Any other minutiae of our lives you'd like to organise for us?

Politically active

If I had been truly politically active today, a bunch of politicians and their sycophants would be hanging from lampposts.

Instead, I just went to the polling station. Interesting how there was nobody there to harangue the proles.

Wall bingo will break backs

You all know the game - put your card in, type in some numbers and see if some money comes out of the machine - that's wall bingo.

Recently, however, it has become increasingly difficult to play wall bingo due to the machines being lower to the ground than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.

After being at a cash machine with a friend - who also happens to be tall - I remembered I was going to have a rant about this wonder in accessibility that is breaking my back.

Cash machines these days are installed at a height where people who are 3 foot high can operate them, which sadly means that for anyone over 6 foot, they have to stand back from the machine (where's the privacy gone) duck down to try to see the screen - and if the screen has one of those privacy things, chances are you'll end up squatting whilst squinting to get the angle right so the screen doesn't appear fuzzy... All the while, hoping someone doesn't walk in to you or mug you because you're right in the middle of the thoroughfare. I am all for inclusiveness - but when there are two machines side by side, they both tend to be far too low to use comfortably.

I've found an ergonomic solution to this though.

- I just push the buttons on the machine with the end of my cock.