Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

Old Times There Am Not Forgotten

Legal Stuff, Lies and Untruths

Here’s a little bit of rank injustice:

Harrods could be forced to pay out tens of millions of pounds to female employees sexually abused by Mohamed Al-Fayed because of ‘systemic wrongdoing’ at store, lawyers say.

The Egypytian businessman has been accused of raping five women during his 25-year tenure at the luxury retail outlet, with at least 15 other women saying they were sexually assaulted by him.

Lawyers have warned that Al-Fayed’s offences could range beyond the allegations made in a BBC documentary, with his other former business interests, including Fulham Football Club, now under scrutiny.

Okay, you may be asking about this “systemic wrongdoing” — i.e. that Harrods had a system in place which either encouraged or else allowed the old goat to molest his female emplyees.

Of course, Harrods doesn’t or didn’t have any such system.  But the lawyers have to argue that they did, because:

Al Fayed, who died last year aged 94…

They can’t very well go after him now, you see, so they have to go after the company because, well, because that’s where the bucks are.  And it’s really conveeeeenient that the old fart isn’t around to refute the claims now crawling, like their claimants, from the woodwork.

In the reign of Emperor Kim, of course, bullshit like this would be stopped in its tracks because, duh, it’s bullshit.  And of course some feeeemales stand to get a lot of money out of these unsubstantiated accusations, as do their lawyers, which is how this creative nonsense ever came to see the light of day.

‘It seems from the information received from those who have contacted us, and the information brought to light in the BBC documentary, that the abuse of young women at Harrods should properly be described as human sex trafficking,’ said Richard Meeran, a partner at the London law firm Leigh Day.

Ah yes, the old bogeyman “sex trafficking” — where would we be without this handy little catch-all expression?  And the BBC… hardly an unimpeachable source.

‘This is because the recruitment of young women for the alleged purpose of sexual exploitation entailed and depended on systemic wrongdoing by the company, its senior managers and security personnel, as well as the ultimate perpetrator.’

So these women were hired for the express purpose of being the Harrods owner’s sex toys?  And all the senior management of Harrods were aware of this and did nothing to stop it? 

And it’s not just one woman, but a hundred and fifty (always be suspicious of nice round numbers).  And all of them have kept their mouths shut for all this time, because…?

I report you decide;  but I’ve decided that this — all of it — is arrant bullshit and an attempt to wring money from a wealthy company, just because its erstwhile owner and the “alleged’ perpetrator is dead and can’t defend himself.

Just to be clear on this:  Al Fayed probably was a loathsome old bastard who deserved a good hard flogging / ball-kicking for oh-so many reasons.  But even given that, it doesn’t mean that this pussymail can be justified.

Wrong Categories

Food & Drink, Old Fartism, Two-Minute Hate

As I wrote only yesterday about the silliness of pubs allowing children inside their premises, and on many occasions about my permanent dislike of the whole “gastropub” nonsense, you can imagine my irritation upon reading this article about Britain’s best pubs, and finding the following results:

Best Pub For Families
and
Best Pub For Food

Bloody hell;  two anger buttons for the price of one article.

But wait!  there’s more!

Best Pub For Dogs

I need a drink.  Thanks to the article though, there are at least three pubs I know not to visit.

No Place For Children

Entertainment, Food & Drink, Two-Minute Hate

It seems like only yesterday (actually, a month ago) when I made this comment about bars and pubs:

The business of a pub is to serve booze to grownups. End of.

You can imagine my irritation, therefore, when I saw this little bit of nonsense:

Two fuming mums have criticised a historic pub for not catering properly for their kids — and claim their youngsters were told to “turn the iPads down” while they were dining.

The angry mothers took to Tripadvisor to deliver two bruising one-star reviews of Victorian pub Sam’s Chop House after having Sunday lunch there.

They say that no children’s menus were offered, not enough high chairs were available and that they were left appalled when asked by staff to turn down the iPads their brood were watching in the restaurant.

The mums said they were told they were not allowed to take their prams into the restaurant, “which was fine”.

Big of them.  Then:

“I’d rather have gone to Toby Carvery for half the price and a much more decent roast dinner than atrocious meal they call Sunday roast.”

I bet the staff, and all the other patrons, wished they had.  All of which begs the question:  why didn’t they go to Toby’s instead of a basement pub?

Okay, I have no plans to visit Manchester in the future (Mr. Free Market:  “Never venture north of the M4, dear heart” ) but if I ever do, I’ll be heading to Sam’s Chop House, you betcha.  It sounds like my kinda place.  I don’t consult any of the so-called “ratings” websites like TripAdvisor much anyway, but if I were to do so and found a one-star rating like the above, I’d be more likely to go there because it means that Management has the right idea about how to run a drinking establishment.

Kids have no place in a pub.  It’s not as though there aren’t enough fucking eating establishments everywhere that cater to the rugrats, that parents have to take their precious brood into a booze palace and disturb the serious drinkers.

Fach.

Grown-Up Sippy Cups

Guy Stuff

This is a silly topic to discuss, but whatever.  Even though I am by no means triskaidekaphobic, it’s nevertheless Friday the fucking 13th, so here we go.

Back when I worked in an office, I always used a coffee cup with a lid, because knocking an open cup over your PC keyboard was not one of life’s pleasantries, both in terms of the actual mess, and the hassle involved in cleaning the gunk out from under the keys.  Likewise soft drinks:  never a can, always a bottle with the screw-off top.

It’s a habit I’ve carried into my private life too, not only for all the spill containment, but also because these thermal cup thingies keep my coffee hot in case I forget to drink it quickly.  (I’ve talked about this topic before, under different auspices, but note the El Cheapo Magellan thermal cup I mention in passing.)

But it appears that this is no longer enough.  Advancing age has brought with it advancing clumsiness, and the problem with all these wretched thermal cup thingies (as you will see) is that very few of them have a screw-on lid — they all, even the nosebleed stuff like Yeti, have a simple press-in lid with a rubber gasket to hold the lids in place should the thing be knocked over.

And alas, with continuous use do the rubber gaskets deteriorate and loosen their grip, which means that if you do knock your adult sippycup over, the result is the same as if you’d just been using a regular plastic glass filled with the drink and (if necessary) ice:  a veritable flood of sticky liquid all over the floor.

Which is what happened to me the night before last, when in trying to move my tall Magellan sippycup over so I could see the beloved face of New Wife, I knocked the fucking thing off the side table and yea did the lid come off the cup, emptying the contents of ice and OJ all over the frigging carpet.

So yesterday was spent visiting various retail establishments, trying to find a container with a screw-on lid that wasn’t the size of a Thermos flask and resembled more a coffee cup, like the Magellan.

Total failure — and I went to Academy, Cabela’s and finally, Wally World, where I got what I was sorta-looking for, except that it’s tall and skinny rather than short and squat.

It’s also too capacious, at 16oz where I was looking for something in the 10-oz-12oz range.  But at some point one has to resign oneself to what the world actually provides rather than what the world should provide.

Earlier on I did find (and purchase) one such thing with acceptable dimensions and the proper screwtop from Cabela’s, but it’s so fugly that I was worried that New Wife would forbid its use in the public domain, and confine it to doing duty as my night-time cold-water source on the bedside table.  Surprisingly, she agreed that it’s kinda fugly, but likes its patriotic theme.  So she agreed to let me use it.

(Yes, she’ll be becoming a U.S. citizen as soon as the DHS/State Department/whoever gets their collective ass in gear.)

All this could have been avoided, of course, were I just to apply a leetle care in the handling of coffee cups — I could use actual china cups or ceramic mugs like civilized people do, and not have to look like an overgrown child with an expensive fucking metal sippycup.  But that’s the world I live in, and so it goes.

Anyway, having said all that, I’m off to make myself another cuppa in the tall black thing.  And by the way, it works really well at keeping its contents hot — actually, a little too well, as my scalded tongue will attest.  I might just go for the Patriotic Barrel instead… alert the media!

If I get too irritated by these two replacements, or if New Wife Puts Her Foot Down With A Heavy Hand© after all, they will be sent off in disgrace to live in our travel trunk, which we break out when heading for an open-road adventure and style is not a prerequisite.  They will join the regiment of other utensils which have been found wanting.

Whereupon the whole bloody search for the impossible sippycup dream will resume and my irritation, never far below the surface, will explode once more, to the consternation of New Wife and the chortles of my Readers.

You bastards.

Not Just China

Bad News, Economics

Via Insty, this little snippet:

The danger for China is deflation could snowball by encouraging households reeling from falling paychecks to cut back on spending, or delay purchases because they expect prices to fall further. Corporate revenues will suffer, stifling investment and leading to further salary cuts and layoffs, bankrupting families and firms.

China?  How about right here in the U.S.?

The Fed’s beige book, a survey of economic conditions in the US compiled by the regional Fed banks, suggested that the US economy was slowing. Five out of the 12 Fed districts reported flat or declining economic activity, three more than in May’s survey.

And just for (bitter) laughs:

“Inflation has also fallen faster than expected, hitting 3 per cent in June.”

Tell that to my grocery, fuel and utility bills.

Tommy’s Tale

Heroism

Anything produced by Jordan Peterson is worth watching.  His interview of Tommy Robinson, the bête noire  of British politics is very much more than that.

As Cathy Gyngell says of Robinson:

It also made me think of the many far more sullied characters on our political stage who have got away with it, and never been subjected to the across-the-board branding, silencing and curtailment of freedom he has been treated to. No epithet has stuck more effectively than those words thug, racist and far right have to him. You have to look quite far to find someone to whom you mention his name who doesn’t judge him so, who doesn’t assume he is the hooligan the press have told us he is, who doesn’t call him an idiot or simply display the distaste they feel for him on their faces. But ask those with these attitudes what they actually know about him and whether they have any idea of his story, and what his ‘beef’ is actually about they go quiet. They have no idea. Their judgement, as was mine in the past, is an unthinking one – based purely and simply on how the MSM cast him, and the fact he is actually working-class (unlike the elite politicians like Starmer so desperate to claim this background). This is a ‘tarring’ that is so universally accepted that anyone defending him in any way also risks being so tarred and outcast.

Of course no one ever sees him interviewed by the mainstream UK press or broadcasters: he is never allowed to defend himself, let alone be asked to tell his story. So there is nothing and no one to challenge the official Tommy characterisation as a law-breaker, inciter, thug or crook. Any out-of-context ‘angry monologue’ clips that people may have seen confirm their prejudice. It’s only when you hear his whole 20-year story that you start to understand it and empathise and are horrified by the cover-up. And understand his anger. There is such a thing as righteous indignation, and that without doubt is what Tommy feels.

The more the elite authorities want to suppress him, the more people like me want to know more about him.

And this was before the recent riots in the U.K.

This interview is quite possibly the most important insight into how the news is being shaped that I’ve ever seen.  Ignore that it’s primarily about a “racist” attack that took place in Britishland, because it concerns all of the news we’re being fed.

And by the way, if you start to feel the burn of anger when Robinson describes the fate of the hapless family, then you may begin to understand the background to the Stockport riots.