Category: Travels

Proper Attire

Business, Corporate Wokism, Travels

Oh FFS, this just takes the cake:

British Airways bosses have apologized for telling cabin crew members what bras to wear under new ‘transparent’ uniforms which led to comments from passengers.
The see-through blouses were issued as part of a new uniform, unveiled earlier this year, designed to ‘take the airline into the next chapter’ and for a non-binary crew.
Last year BA relaxed the rules around its strict uniform policy and went gender-neutral to allow male pilots and crew to wear make-up and carry handbags.

Lemme just deal with the low-hanging fruit first.

  • Companies have every right to create a “uniform” policy, and to dictate what does and does not constitute “proper” clothing under that policy
  • the corollary is that if the uniform consists of “transparent” clothing, they also have the right to set policy for “proper” undergarments
  • but if they do specify transparent clothing, they deserve everything that comes to them.

Now for the ugly stuff.

I’m sick and fucking tired of companies feeling that they have to apologize to their employees for bullshit like this.  Were the topic that of terrible salaries, foul working conditions and in short things that deserve corporate groveling, okay;  but for causing hurt feeewings?  Screw that.

But in to the topic at hand.

Nothing would make me question the capabilities of an airline’s crew faster than the whole thing turning into some kind of costume party, with the “men” wearing clown makeup and the “women” wearing no bra under a transparent blouse (although at first glance the latter wouldn’t seem too bad, please consider that the average age of trolley-dollies now appears to be 50, and all seem to have been recruited from branches of the Ugly Tree).

And frankly, I’m not sure I want to see any of the flight crew wearing transparent clothing, given that said crew will likely include girlymen and butchygirls, all of indeterminate gender.

I don’t know why I bother fulminating about this stuff anymore, considering that my chances of flying at all are minuscule, and on any British airline even less than that.

I’d give this one a try, though.

Travel Tip

Travels

Here’s a little something I picked up on my travels:

Some hotels have some curious ideas about “double beds” — in fact, they’re often just two single beds shoved together, each with a single-sized duvet.  This is fine, unless you and your partner are of the “cuddling” kind.  Also, the duvets are often “European” single-size (i.e. totally inadequate, especially for us fat-ass Murkins).

What I always do now, after my first such experience, is pack a queen-sized duvet cover and about eight safety pins.  Then, if I find the sleeping arrangements as above, I simply pin the two duvets together to make a larger one, and stuff it into the queen duvet cover with the pin mechanism facing up.  Problem solved.

Side note:  Safety pins are an essential travel item anyway. Europeans do not know the concept of “safety pins” (at least, they didn’t in Vienna), and trying to explain what a safety pin is and how it works is in your fractured attempt at a furrin language will just lead to puzzled looks.  Pack your own.

Getting Back To Reality

Crime, Men & Women, Travels

Start off by reading this article (excerpt below) and then we can continue:

A British tourist has told an Italian court how she was raped by a barman in Naples after stopping for a meal at a pizzeria while on holiday. 

Returning to the southern Italian city to testify before a judge, the 22-year-old tourist this week told the court how she was holidaying in July when she suffered ‘the worst experience of my life’.

Some time back, I also commented on a stupid bint who was raped in Paris after leaving her party to relieve herself behind some bushes, and that leads me to my main point:

Women shouldn’t be on their own outside their homes, because they are not safe.

When I say “on their own”, of course, I mean in a deserted or isolated spot where they could be attacked — such as in a restaurant’s back room, or in a park hidden from view behind bushes.  Or walking back home alone from a party / dinner.  Or jogging along a lonely road, or through a park.

I think you get my drift.

Now let me address the thoughts of the people who might disagree with me on this point.

I know, I know:  women shouldn’t be at risk in the above situations, and men shouldn’t prey on women when the women are solitary.

Unfortunately, the world just doesn’t work like that.  Men (of a particular sort) often succumb to their baser instincts when confronted by such situations.  This is an unfortunate fact of life, and this is especially true of men who come from, shall we say, less civilized backgrounds and societies (e.g. Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, all of Africa, Russia, the Balkans, Muslim countries, most of South America, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, North America, Central America… actually, pretty much anywhere in the world).

And women are vulnerable in all those places and circumstances because they are… the weaker sex.  [pause to allow the angry feministical screams and expostulations to die down]

This, by the way, is why I fervently support the idea that women should carry guns, because of all forms of self-defense, guns are the best equalizer.  It’s why I have helped train literally hundreds of women how to shoot, and helped them purchase their handguns and shotguns.

If guns are not available to women (and this would apply almost universally outside Second Amendment Country), then they need to seek safety in numbers and not stroll around by themselves, because it’s just not safe.

It’s the same reason, for example, that I avoid walking through specific downtown areas at night, and shun all back alleys even if they’re a shortcut.  And I’m big and tough and armed.  How much more ridiculous is it for an unarmed woman not to do the same?

There are times when a woman finds herself in a position when she feels she has to walk by herself — e.g. to get to her car in a deserted parking lit or parking garage after a night shift — but she shouldn’t.  She should instead try to find a man (security guard, workmate, whatever) to accompany her.  Fortunately, I don’t think we’ve reached the stage yet where a man would refuse to do so.  (Yeah, I know, chivalry is so outdated and demeaning to womyns [/feministical] shuddup).

It’s got to the point that whenever I read about such events of a woman being attacked / raped / whatever when she’s on her own in some foreign country / strange city / walking back from the pub, I just shout at the page / TV screen:

“What did you think was going to happen?”

This air of unreality that seems to be so prevalent in modern society needs to end.  People need to grow up and understand that when reality meets philosophy or theory, reality is going to win, every single fucking time.

Even for (or especially for) feministicals and their adherents.

Same Time Next Year

Travels

Apparently there’s this German guy who visits the same city in Britishland each year for his vacation, and has done so for the past several years.  (My Brit Readers can be excused for going “Huh?” when they discover which city has so enthralled our Frequent Visitor.)

Which leads me to ask the question:

Is there any city in the world that you would re-visit for two weeks exclusively each year for the next, say, decade? 

(I’m going to assume long lives for the Olde Pharttes among us, bless ’em, who could always just substitute “…for the rest of my life” if they so choose.)

Give reasons, in Comments.  It could be a furrin city or a Murkin/NorMurkin one, your choice.  In the spirit of the thing, it has to be a city, not a region or a resort.  Play the game.

My choice is below the fold:

Read more

Asking For Trouble

Crime, Perverts, Travels

This is the kind of thing that gets me throwing things across the room in angry frustration:

A British police officer has said she was raped at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower on Monday.

The victim, 23, has told French police she was attacked by a man wielding a knife in the Champ de Mars park shortly before midnight that evening.

She said the suspect pulled out a knife as she tried to deflect his advances.

Okay, here’s my first point.  I know this area very well indeed, and let me just say that it is — along with, say, NYfC’s Central Park — a tourist attraction I wouldn’t go anywhere near after dark.  So why would this Dickless Tracy do such a stupid thing?  Ah, here’s a clue:

The attacker pounced after the victim went behind a bush to go to the toilet.

She was separated from her friend for only a few moments when the attacker threatened her with a knife. 

Translation:  she’d been drinking hard, and needed to pee.  Where better than in a dark park in a strange city, away from her drinking companion?

Anyway, the gendarmes found the guy and busted him.  Surprise, surprise, it was another tourist (nationality not given, uh huh) — but a tourist who travels with a knife and harbors larcenous thoughts.

Sheesh, I myself generally carry a knife when I travel (because I can’t carry my 1911 [lots of bad words deleted] ), but I would only use it in the last extreme in self-defense and not to, say, indulge in a little coercive seduction.

My second point:  One would think a cop — especially a Britcop — would know better than to do stupid stuff like the above;  but clearly, an excess of booze makes a cop as stupid as the average idiot.

And so much for her police force’s self-defense training;  she should ask for a refund.