rant

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Losing my religion

January 24, 2010 in Rants | 1 comment

Religion.

Yes, potentially a controversial subject. I make no apologies. Moving on.

I have some friends who are religious, religion is important to them and they go to church. Fair enough. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. For the record, who am I to say that because something isn’t important to me, it isn’t to anyone else? I have no problem with these types of religious people.

Oh no, I take issue with people who try to shove religion down your throat. If everything is going to pot for someone else, don’t tell them to pray if they are not religious. It is just as disrespectful in my opinion as me telling you that it’s a pile of shit.

I take issue with people who walk the streets, giving out prayer cards and telling people they are sinners for going shopping.

Yes, I swear. Yes, I drink. No, I don’t pray. No, I don’t believe in god. Yes, I have had sex before marriage. I get angry, I get bad tempered and I can be selfish. I wear make up. I like clothes. All sins apparently. I’m going to hell.

Yet, I am (in my opinion) a nice person. I’m loyal. I’m honest and truthful. I may be a cynic, but I will always listen. I’ll do anything for my friends and I’ll buy a cup of tea for a homeless person. I do some volunteer work. All good things, yet I’m going to hell because I like the song ‘Number of the beast’ by Iron Maiden.

I’m going to hell because I don’t repent my sins. Of course I don’t; to repent would be wrong when I am just going to sin again. In fact, surely this makes most church goers sinners? Why apologise and repent something when you have no intention of giving up sex/drugs/rock’n'roll?

I could say a lot more, but it will end up a pile of meaningless drivel.

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Public Sector Pay Freeze

December 10, 2009 in Rants | 3 comments

Alistair not-a-Darling yesterday released his pre-budget report for the financial year 2011. He has to save a lot of money and make cuts due to the recession and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t want that job. I find it frustrating enough doing budget forecasting. However, I digress.

Amongst his plans, he has decided to enforce a 1% paycap on public sector employees from 2011. This fills me with rage, partially because I am a local authority worker.

I know many people will be sitting there saying that we are overpaid, shouldn’t be complaining, we get paid for pointless jobs and essentially not doing much, yada, yada, yada. Yes, I do Tweet and Facebook in worktime sometimes, however I very rarely take a lunchbreak, I am always in early, I sometimes work late and I am constantly doing extra work from home. I have a stressful job, which is often difficult and whilst for my age I am well-paid, my salary is not enourmous. I have bills to pay, just like everybody else. The cost of living rises for me every year, just like everybody else. My job in the private sector would probably be paying me in the region of 40-45k, at least. There would be annual pay reviews and possibly bonuses. We don’t get bonuses in LA.

Yes, there are some jobs in LA which probably are pointless and there are some jobs which probably do pay too much. But spare a thought for that man who collects the trash from your street and doesn’t get paid all that much for it. Is it fair that his pay is capped?

I’d also like to throw it out there that we also pay taxes, just like everyone else. So, in essence, we are actually contributing towards our own wages.

So, before you start saying that it’s just right that our pay is capped, I’d like to point out that most people in the private sector get rises in line with inflation and it’s only right that we should, also.

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“Chewing gum is really gross, chewing gum I hate the most!”

August 27, 2009 in Rants, Shopping | 5 comments

The above quote taken from Johnny Depp in the wonderful Tim Burton remarke of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Yes, chewing gum. Yesterday, I bought myself my first digital camera. I know, I should get with times, but I finally have. It’s a rather cool little thing, purchased from the Currys clearance sale. It’s a Samsung PL50, in pink and set me back a rather meagre £89.99. Not bad for a 10 megapixel camera. It’s very lightweight and dinky, and best of all is very easy to use. I am also loving the ‘red-eye’ fix.

Anyway, back to chewing gum. The woman who served me in Currys was chewing gum. Not just chewing it, but chewing it with her mouth open, jaws spread wide as she chomped down hard, which added to the squelching sound effect. Lovely. It’s disgusting and it’s bad mannered and it makes Currys as a company look like they only employ idiots. Oh, wait. They DO only employ idiots. To be fair to her, she was actually very nice, but I couldn’t wait to get away from that gum chewing. That was her warranty sale for the day, out the window.

Although I personally don’t like chewing gum (I’d have it banned, myself), I understand why some people chew it. Off to an important meeting and you have coffee breath? Chewing gum helps to freshen you up. I also believe that there is evidence that it can help to make your teeth stronger.

However, is there really any need to move your jaws apart as far as possible and chew with your mouth open? I don’t wish to hear you chew gum. I certainly don’t wish to SEE your already-been-chewed gum. You wouldn’t eat with your mouth open. Well, most people wouldn’t.

So, for the good of all mankind, CHEW YOUR CHEWING GUM WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED.

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Important Lessons Learnt from Teenage Fiction

August 25, 2009 in 1990s, Books | 1 comment

I have absolutely no idea what the youth of today are reading, other than Harry Potter, but back in my day, it was all about The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley. Everyone had their favourite sitter and everyone had their favourite twin in Sweet Valley. Unless you were just a fan of The Awesome Lila, the spoilt rich-biatch. But, I digress.

At the time, I loved these books. I read them avidly and I could never wait for the next one to come out. Of course, they never taught me anything – or so I thought. Sure, there were a few ‘issue’ books dealing with anorexia, divorce, etc but these were rarely done well. The only exception springing to mind is Claudia and the Terrible Truth, a BSC book dealing with child abuse. Heavy stuff, indeed, especially for the targeted age group of these books.

No, with the exception of this book, SV and BSC in general taught me a big, fat, nada. Unless we’re counting some useless bits of trivia which may or may not come up in a pub quiz. However, on reading back over these for nostalgia’s sake, I have, in fact, learnt many lessons. Though, not necessarily the right ones. Read the rest of this entry »

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