“Matt also has “cunt” tattooed on his shoulder. Abracadabra boss Dave shakes his head. “We wouldn’t do that,” he says. Well, you say that, Dave, but looking at your website here, I see there’s a photo of you tattooing a picture of Gordon Ramsay on to someone’s leg. I can’t really see the difference, to be honest.”
So that’s the Guardian officially calling Gordon Ramsay a cunt. This is probably because what Gordon Ramsay does (running restaurants and fronting cookery programmes, just so we’re clear) is far, far worse than stabbing teenagers to death at Victoria Station, and that’s why he fully deserves the epithet. Unlike others who “might have gone on to university” if they hadn’t become murderous bastards before taking their A-Levels that dastardly justice system hadn’t decided to interfere.
And those aren’t from Argos either
Also, he’s white (what an arse, really), which probably forces tattoo artists up and down the country to overshade his picture otherwise he’d be “invisible”. That’s right, getting tattoos of white people if you’re white yourself is apparently surprisingly difficult. No race issue is ever left unturned by the Guardian, is it? Of course, the reviewer wouldn’t even dream of joking about, say, Will.i.am getting an invisible tattoo of Martin Luther King or even black people being invisible in the dark. Because that would be beyond the pale. But this
“Anyway, Matt’s having a picture of his baby daughter over the C-word. She’s white but Dave’s doing her black, presumably because otherwise she’d be invisible. I can see that it’s difficult, portraying skin on skin, and you have to do it a few shades darker to show up. That’s why this other white fellow Carl has a picture of a black Miley Cyrus on his leg, I guess. Interesting.”
Poor old Guardian. The article started so well, with sad stories of people, all with children in tow (non-parents don’t matter in the media), being forced to share one damp, tiny room in a grotty hostel with unpleasant, sometimes violent, neighbours, all because they can’t afford decent accommodation anymore – they got evicted when housing benefit caps were introduced by the evil coalition.
Then the journalist shot herself in the foot by telling us where the people in question used to live:
1. In a £500 a week (!!) two-bedroom flat in St John’s Wood, entirely paid for by housing benefit. Person doesn’t work due to arthritis.
2. In a flat in Hammersmith, partly paid for by housing benefit. Person works part-time.
3. In a flat in Maida Vale. No info on who paid the rent but person is a carer – not usually a fantastically-paid job.
4. In a shared flat somewhere in Central London. We are told person cannot afford to rent nearby – how did she manage before? Surely there is more than one flatshare in the area.
Apart from the fact that these locations are all very expensive, with Hammersmith being a bit further away and less extortionate than the rest, all the people interviewed keep complaining about having to leave the neighbourhood where they have their roots / GP / job / kids’s school / friends / etc.
Well, I’m sorry but tough titties. Are they not aware that everyone is in the same boat? I lived in Fulham for five years and loved every minute of it. Yet when my circumstances changed and I could no longer afford the rent, I left, broken-hearted, for the unexplored wilds of Zone 4. I am now in Zone 6 (here be dragons) and whinge about it on a regular basis. I’ve had to change jobs as the commute was not realistically doable any longer. Still, I never expected the state to keep me in the style to which I’d become accustomed. So why do they? And why is the journalist enabling them? (stupid question, I know)
My dear Guardian soft-hearted milksop, it’s very simple: nobody has a God-given right to live in central London at everyone else’s expense. And when they ask
“I’ve had the same GP for 20 years, the same hospital. All my daughter’s friends are here. Are we meant to change all these things?”
the answer is :”Yes. Yes, you are. It would be miles better than the grotty B&B in my opinion, but suit yourself.”
Waaaah! Oh dear, here I go again
The journalist even had the nerve to pre-empt her readers’ legitimate indignation:
“Housing is an emotive subject because most people are struggling to pay rent, or a mortgage, making life-altering decisions about where to live based on how much they can afford to spend – so making the case for the state to be subsidising large chunks of rent for other people to live in London does not instantly elicit sympathy. If you’re in any doubt about this, just glance below to read the comments that inevitably follow pieces on this theme.”
Is that passive-aggressive or what?
On top of that, the people featured appear remarkably helpess and incapable of doing anything for themselves:
“Rana and her mother have responded by no longer using the communal kitchen. Instead they buy food from KFC and McDonald’s.”
That can’t be cheap or healthy (expecially for a child). I’d rather buy bread and stuff and make sandwiches and salads in my room. You don’t need a kitchen to prepare simple food; I once camped for three months with no facilities whatsoever, only a little portable gas stove to heat water. I didn’t crave cooked food once.
“The family don’t cook, because all their saucepans are in council storage […]. They too are surviving on takeaways – junk food and sandwiches.”
“She is not allowed to use the kitchen after 10pm, which means she can’t do any cooking when she gets back late from work, so has taken to eating McDonald’s on the bus on the way home.”
See above. It’s like for these people there’s absolutely no middle ground between home-cooked hot food and takeaways. I’m confused.
“The family stay inside a lot, because they don’t know the area; there is no garden, and they don’t know where the nearest park is.”
Are you kidding me? How about going for a walk one day so they, y’know, find out? There are no snipers in the street, I assure you!
Having said all this, here is my submission for the 2012 Rip-Off Britain Award:
“The family don’t cook, because all their saucepans are in council storage (along with their winter clothes) and it costs £45 every time they access it to get something out.”
Fucking outrageous. If Big Yellow tried to pull this one they’d be out of business within a week. You have to hand it to councils, they could certainly teach the Mafia a thing or two about extortion.
Clue: it’s cold, it’s liquid and there isn’t much of it. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
YES! That’s right, my problem is with the tiny, usually half-filled, mockery-of-a-refreshment glass of orange juice one always gets as part of a hotel continental breakfast. And you can’t generally ask for a refill either, unlike with tea or coffee. No provision is ever made for those of us who don’t like hot beverages but need to drink at least two decently-sized glasses of something cold in order to be able to eat.
Considering the juice is usually straight out of a cheapo carton anyway – I can tell from the slightly uriney taste – I’m not sure why they’re so miserly with it. Yes, it costs more than tea or coffee but we’re hardly talking Tropicana prices.
I can still remember those dreadful breakfasts when I was young, at guide camp or on any kind of school outing, where all I had to drink was water as the only two options were café au lait or hot chocolate. It was stomach-turning but since there was nothing else to drink I didn’t have much of a choice. Not a good way to start the day. On top of that, I had to put up with everyone staring at me as if I were an alien (not liking hot drinks makes you a pariah everywhere you go). Sigh.
So now I bring my own juice to B&Bs and have a nice swig in the room before coming down to breakfast – and the only reason I bother having breakfast is because it’s already paid for. In hotels I skip the overpriced breakfast altogether (and why is it served so early anyway? I’m on holiday, dammit! But that is another rant for another day).
Well stop selling the damn things then. I loathe them; they are huge, hideous, smug, useless and create blind spots for drivers.
That woman is talking out of her bottom by the way:
‘Baby On Board’ signs are useful in alerting the emergency services that a child may be involved in the event of a crash,” said Julie Townsend, deputy chief executive of the charity, Brake.
Rubbish. Emergency services regularly deny that they even look at the things as they are trained to search for children regardless. How many parents bother to remove the carbuncle when their kid isn’t in the car anyway? None. The ones who said they did in the article are almost certainly lying. Why would they remove them? They’re still ***A PARENT*** and that’s what needs to be advertised to the world, isn’t it? As for other drivers being extra careful around their oh-so-precious offspring, honestly, who gives a shit? My life is precious too but who’s being extra careful around me?
The very fact that Loud Chav (one of our less savoury neighbours) who yells at and insults his wife in front of their little girl on a regular basis has a “Little Princess On Board” sign in his car tells me all I need to know about what kind of parent he is.
The things are novelty items, full stop. It’s rather ridiculous that a charity is peddling an urban myth, although my cynicism towards charities and their self-serving ways increases by the day.
