spEak You're bRanes

Thanks to Jamie. On the spate of suicides at France Télécom:

Walter Ellis wrote:
Orange took three weeks to reconnect internet access to our house in France this summer. This followed a period when, in spite of the fact that I was paying their bills by direct debit, they denied I was even a customer. Soon after, when the line broke down, it took another three weeks to have it repaired. Today, when I tried to suspend the service once more until our return next May, I was told I could not do this over the internet or by phone. I could only do it by writing a letter. Perhap, just to be sure, I should send a carrier pigeon.

You know if you want anyone to take your suffering seriously, there’s only one thing for you to do.

Where now for the Sugababes?

They should get Lemmie from Mortorhead in the line up , now he would make it interesting. With his music writing abilities , years of experience in the industry, could teach them how to live rock n roll & do it For real !! They could change the band name to Sugg’a Daddy then ?? Least the music might sound better. Maybe their ace of hearts would compliment his ace O’ spades ??
Now that wud be sweet !!

Simon Joe Brown, Pontefract, United Kingdom

I look forward to hearing your views on the future of the Church of England.

Blah blah missile defence.

Those of you who bash the US constantly for being “warmongers” would be wise to remember the last two times our country was asked to step in a save your bacon. The kind of resentment seen from some in Europe resembles that of a spoiled child who hates Daddy, even though all the child has, in some way or another, he owes to Daddy’s sacrifices in the past. War is never going to end – it is an unfortunate part of human nature. So show some respect to those who have the power to rescue you…
Dave, Pittsburgh

Right, I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks. Bye.

The Guardian is running a poll to find out who would be the nation’s favourite celebrity headteacher. David Tennant is winning at the mo.

Thanks to Jane for spotting “Reynardmandrake” taking the opportunity to Make A Point.

Don’t forget Christopher Eccleston – both he and David Tennant would make excellent teachers. I can see them now – teaching children how to think for themselves and to look at the mind as a growing thing – not as a receptacle for NuLabour philosophy.

The mind is “bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

Oh Yessssss!!!
reynardmandrake

Jane says “I like the Churchill quote at the end”.

Thanks to David for finding this one. It’s from a Times Online article about some ex-pat American bird’s struggle to decide whether her daughter should spend more time in the English countryside (feeding horses) or over in Texas (swimming in the Gulf of Mexico). I guess there are some decisions that nobody can help you with. The comment thread is full of people trying though. They’re mostly offering spectacularly generic advice about “being yourself”. Good call.

And then there’s this.

You are lucky in that you can leave the UK and escape the opressive tyranny that is the EU. The rest of us are stuck here. Believe me, your ‘get ouf jail free’ card is well worth it. If it was up to me, I would out of here before it is too late. The comparisons with the Soviet Union are very real. Keep your eyes and ears open and be ready to move.
Anthony Farrar

I love these ones. Anthony is a short step away from turning into my absolute favourite kind of long-suffering, middle class twat by proclaiming that he’s “ready to fight”. The only thing these fat-fingered gits are likely to end up fighting over is a fucking parking space.

From the (largely quite pleasant) thread on Alan Turing’s posthumous pardon. Good old Alan.

I think it absurd to appologise for the past, especially the distant past. We learn from the past, but we can not be held collectively responsible for it. The responsibilty for the actions of those who have gone before us lay with them, not us. Also you cannot judge those who have gone before us by todays standards or criteria.
Gerard Dilworth, Stratford upon Avon, United Kingdom

Indeed. As I keep pointing out to the missus, her entire gender has only been clever enough to vote since the 1920s, whereas men have been doing important stuff for centuries. We need to respect those wise men of the past. Except the gay ones.

You know what, we’ve not had an good old straight-up racist fucknut-magnet thread for a while. Should the EU welcome more refugees? One of the more unorthodox answers comes from Glen Thomas, who I assume is transforming into some kind of white supremacist werewolf.

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH NNNOOOOOO!!!!

Glen Thomas

But rather than just roar, some HYSers have decided to use this topic to try out their dry, cutting wit, and that’s what we’re going to be learning about today.

What an absolutely splendid idea. Cut the number of illegal immigrants by allowing them to come over legally.

Could we please extend this to other crimes. The murder rate would be cut drastically if we made it legal to kill and the number of thefts slashed if we made it legal to help yourself to other peoples property.

Phil, Liverpool

You’ve made a bit of a mistake here Phil. You’ve gone and opened your sarcastic tirade with a very reasonable idea, one that we already do anyway by allowing any immigration at all. Then you’ve made a massive jump to something completely different. Doing that doesn’t make the idea look stupid, it makes you look stupid, and that’s not what you want from sarcasm. Let an expert show you: I see where you’re going with this. While we’re at it, let’s eradicate a terrible disease by cutting the cancer quota to zero and bring in an Australian-style points system for rape.

See? Much better. You could also try something like this, if you don’t mind being a cunt.

”They often rely on human traffickers and risk their lives as they try to enter the EU on rickety boats.”

Oh, my heart bleeds for them, sniff…

peter paxton

Some competent sarcasm there. But what a cunt. Somehow though, straight insults aren’t enough for me. I wanted to work out exactly how one achieves such world-beating sarky cuntishness, and I think I’ve got it. These two actually think immigration is a crime. Not just illegal immigration, all of it. They actually think that what basically amounts to moving house is a heinous act in and of itself. All that stuff about visas is just the government going a bit soft. From that viewpoint, there’s a delicious irony to immigrants drowning on their way to Europe. Poetic justice! You wanted to flood our green and pleasant land with yourselves, but now it is your own lungs which are flooding! Hoist by your own petard! Live by the boat, die by the boat! Peter Paxton, you’ve passed both sarcasm and irony with flying colours, simply by failing as a human being. You cunt.

Unfortunately these next two weren’t up to sarcasm and could only manage unintentional irony:

Right now, people all over Europe are remembering the 70th. Anniversary of the outbreak of WW2 – a monumental struggle to free Europe (and elsewhere) from the yoke of unbearable tyranny. And now along comes the “EU” with this notion.

Remind me – what did so many die in WW2 for?

The “EU” must be stopped. Now. No ifs, buts nor maybes. Abolished. Thrown into the dustbin of History. Period.

[NewsMonitor]

You’ve got to admit he does it well though. I can’t help but admire anyone who can wax lyrical about how noble it was of us to fight Hitler and then call an ineffective trading bureaucracy that lets people flee to Britain “unbearable tyranny”. It just goes to show, nothing helps you with unintentional irony like having absolutely no sense of perspective whatsoever. Though he’ll never quite be the mack daddy of the discipline:

No, the UK should not welcome more refugees.

Queue the swivel eyed leftys and their personal attacks, devoid of an argument.
g mitchell, kent

Good point. An internet discussion forum is no place for unjustified assertions, straw-man arguments and hypocritical ad hominem attacks.

Thanks to Alan for pointing me at the thread on state pensions rising to seventy.

UNLESS YOUR A PUBLIC SERVANT, then its somewhere around 52 with FULL GOLD PLATED PENSION paid for by the tax from my state pension and savings…SHOCKING!

MPS, COUNCILORS, TEACHERS, POLICE, FIRE, etc…all should work until the same age…if they can’t work in the front line then they should be forced to do voluntary or desk jobs to earn their GOLD PLATED PENSIONS

MillerMan UKIP, Staford, United Kingdom

I’m sorry MillerMan UKIP, I can’t quite follow your point exactly. Could you highlight the key words, maybe in bold or underlined, just to make it a bit clearer to the layman?

Why do you think that the elderly will not be getting the swine flue vaccination this is the governments hope that they all die off so they can save on their pensions and othe social security benifits thereby saving the treasury money. Back in the 60′s they used to secretly spray the population with biological germs just to test how they would work out in a crowded environment as I do not trust the government whats to say they have not created this one to save the treasury money on pensions
[johnilmalin1], Edinburgh, United Kingdom

And as we’ve seen before, it’s the public sector which costs the most on pensions. Don’t be surprised if the government tries to infect the NHS by directing sufferers to hospitals and doctors’ surgeries.

I’ll give the last word to Alan though, as it’s genius and made me wee myself a bit: John has not made it entirely clear whether ‘swine flue’ is a biological, non-bio or coloursafe germ.

Something about war.

“Declaration of war by Great Britain was not followed up with any military actions against Germany. Poland was abandoned by its allies…Why do we always say that Great Britain declared the war on Germany if it sat still and did not help its friend?
Marcin, Hartford, CT”

The fact is, we could not defend Poland as it was too far away, across hostile territory and we didn’t have the means. If wishes were horses, eh?
potato lord, cardiff

You’d have shit horses.

Germany was victorious in the war declared by Britain because she inflicted more harm compared to what she incurred.
wodgot, uk

Britain lost 400,000 in WW2. Germany lost between 6-8 million. The famous Luftwaffe raid on Coventry killed 800. At Hamburg the RAF killed 40,000 and at Dresden possibly 100,000. By the end of the war every major German city was reduced to cinders and their country occupied for 50 years. Germany lost very badly indeed.
[Peter_Sym], Nottingham

I made you a t-shirt.

The Daily Mail and its shitting bumwank of comment monkeys are all angry and confused again. This time it’s because Stewart Lee has done some very naughty material about Richard Hammond and his car crash.

I’m fairly convinced it’s the Daily Mail readers who are responsible for all those HYS comments that can’t distinguish between art and reality, whether that’s films, books, TV or comedy. No wonder it’s a bit light on culture. They probably get halfway through a play before running, screaming, to the nearest police station to breathlessly report that some Danish immigrant just knifecrimed Ophelia’s dad through a curtain.

Thanks to Rob for finding Lizzy here, merrily blathering away with so little self-awareness you wonder whether she was actually awake when she typed it.

I always follow this golden rule:

“If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.”

Thank goodness I’ve never seen this excuse for a human being – and, in future, I will go out of my way to miss him.
I hope his career goes straight down the toilet.
- Lizzy, W.London, 30/8/2009 3:04

“A” for effort, Lizzy. That was the best you could do.

I’ve not heard Stewart Lee’s current show so I don’t know what he was on about. I suspect he was either making a point about something, being very funny about something or, quite likely, both. I’m not sure how much I can be arsed to wish car crashes on Richard Hammond but I’m sure that I don’t subscribe to the idea proposed by the Daily Mail’s “readers” that Hammond’s car crash is something you “wouldn’t wish on anyone”. I don’t think there’s really anything in that category to be honest. Just try and think of something that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Got it? Right, now imagine it happening to, say, Richard fucking Perle or Tony shitting Blair? Suddenly it’s ok isn’t it? In fact, I think I’ve mentioned before that I’d like people to stop using the phrase “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone” and replace it with the phrase “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone except Melanie Phillips” e.g.

A: Apparently, there’s a tropical disease that makes your nose go all flaky and drop off and then, where your nose used to be, you grow a little, poorly cock instead! Look, I found a picture of it on the fucking internet.
B: Urgh. I just sicked up in my mouth a little bit. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone except Melanie Phillips. I hope her nose falls off and then she grows a little, poorly cock there instead. A cock like a horrible toe.