ID cards not compulsory
June 30th, 2009 by mikeIt’s about damn time – now scrap the entire scheme and save upwards of £10 billion…
H/T the Daily Telegraph
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It’s about damn time – now scrap the entire scheme and save upwards of £10 billion…
H/T the Daily Telegraph
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Training montage from Rocky III, for when you need to get motivated:
Rocky III is, without doubt, the best Rocky, although the recent Rocky Balboa is 2nd…
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Friday just gone, I decided to cheer myself up and go see The Hangover. I’d kept putting off seeing it as I’m short on funds, but I needed cheering up.
The film concerns four friends off for a bachelor night in Las Vegas, the usual thing: a suite, smart clothes, a few drinks up on the roof – and then nothing. You see nothing of the night, and when everyone finally comes round, they find one of their number is missing (the groom), and no-one can remember anything of the night.
The film then becomes a quest to find the groom, using little clues they find along the way, such as a medical bracelet on one of the character’s wrists, a baby left by a stripper, a tiger in the bathroom (“F***, I keep forgetting about the tiger”), a crazy naked chinese guy, Mike Tyson, etc.
The four main actors (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha) are absolutely fantastic, and you will feel a lot of sympathy for Ed Helms’ character Stu, and feel just, well, confused by Zach Galifianakis’ character Alan. Justin Bartha is the groom Doug, so you don’t see much of him but he’s a good solid chap, and Bradley Cooper’s (a.k.a. Will Tippen from Alias) schoolteacher Phil is just a great character: a bit amoral, but still doing the right thing for his friends and trying to get the measure of his new friend Alan (who’s so odd).
The comedy is just spot on. In my Star Trek review, I said I hadn’t been so entertained at the cinema for a long time. Well, this is a completely different film, but I can’t remember laughing so much at a film for quite some time either. Proper, laugh-out-loud laughing at that. The comedy comes from unexpected events, a bit of slapstick (oh, that poor baby), situations, and other things. To be honest, I don’t want to even explain some of the jokes, or quote some of the hilarious dialogue, as you should really watch the film
Here’s the trailer to whet your appetite, and I really recommend you see the film – I’m buying it when it’s on Blu-Ray:
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Whilst I was watching the gut-bustingly funny The Hangover, I saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes:
I was interested in the film before, but the trailer does a good job of increasing my interest – looks good, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes
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It’s easy to lose almost a stone in weight! Read on for the secret technique that will have the weight dropping off!!!!
Bit further…
Carry on…
The secret is…
…get yourself made redundant!
Seriously, I’ve lost almost a stone since being made redundant, I guess it’s a mixture of more exercise, less food and stress about not having a job. Still 9lbs to lose until I’m a “normal” weight, but I’ll be happy with losing about 3 – 4lbs. It’s nice to see my abs again
I don’t expect to lose much more weight because a) I like food a lot and b) I’m putting on a bit more muscle (which weighs 18% more than fat, y’know). My body fat percentage is dropping, so that’s the main thing.
Update: Weighed myself after training, and I’m down to 12st 1lb – I celebrated by having a bacon sandwich
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Today is Cost Of Government Day. Today, you finally start working for yourself as opposed to working for Gordon Brown’s inept Labour “government”. For the past six weeks, you’ve actually been working to pay fund the amount of borrowing the government is doing. Hey, up until May the 14th, you were paying for all the taxes we have to pay.
Anyway, there’s a fantastic explanation of what Cost Of Government Day is and all its ramifications at Old Holborn’s blog by a chap called Dr Eamonn Butler, the director of the Adam Smith Institute. It’s well worth a read as it explains how much debt we’re in (oddly enough, Labour is keeping some debt off the books), how the private sector is faring as opposed to the public (state) sector, etc.
H/T to Old Holborn
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Here’s the trailer for Richard Kelly’s new film, The Box. In it, a couple facing financial ruin are given an opportunity to press a button and get a million dollars – at the expense of someone, somewhere dying.
Richard Kelly was responsible for Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. I loved the former (even though it took a while to work out), but have not yet seen the latter. The trailer does a great job of piqueing my interest, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing it.
H/T to FirstShowing.net
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Here’s the trailer for Zombieland, from first-time director Ruben Fleischer, starring Woody Harrelson (yay!) and Jesse Eisenberg. Basically, instead of going down the tried and tested “oh no, virus, zombies, what do we do, headshot, battle for survival” route, it looks like just out and out fun
Comparisons with Shaun Of The Dead are sure to be made, and I’ll wait until I’ve seen Zombieland to make them. That said, I enjoyed SOTD, but at the end it just went a bit too gory for my liking (and zombie-ing a couple of key characters was unkind).
Zombie Kill Of The Week!
Hat-tip to FirstShowing.net
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So, the open government promised by Tony Blair all those years ago is upon us, with MPs’ expenses being published this week in full. Apart from the bits you can’t read, like addresses, amounts, goods and services, stuff like that. Indeed, with various parts of the expenses redacted, we the people (and employers of the 646) would not have found out about the “flipping” of second homes done by Hazel Blears, Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon, et al.
The Telegraph has done a tremendous public service in publishing the full, unredacted set of expenses and I am pleased to see thieving gits resigning and paying money back. I’d be happier if most of the MPs were also had up on charges of fraud, such as the claims made on a non-existent mortgage by Elliot Morley (Lab), or by MPs avoiding capital gains tax. At least HMRC have launched an open-ended investigation into ax avoidance by MPs…
Here’s some good links to what’s going on today with the expenses:
Happy reading, but do remember that not all MPs are on the fiddle…
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As the title states, I’m still looking for work, but I have (I hope) a couple of opportunities that will be developing early next week. Both are very interesting positions, so let’s hope I’ll have the agony of choice soon.
I’ve not been doing much else apart from looking for work, stretching as proscribed by Paul Zaichik’s Elastic Steel program, and copious amounts of housework and some gardening. The garden has gone mad, filling out nicely and the vegetable plot is going well – and not just the weeds. We have onions, potatoes, lettuce (so much lettuce), runner beans, squash, broccoli and kale, all in various stages of growth. The credit is due to my wife, who has put in lots of effort into the garden and it looks great. The strawberry patch under the apple tree is also starting to produce some wonderful strawberries, so we’re looking forward to those.
Not much else to report, apart from SingStar and Burnout Paradise: Big Surf Island are amazing games
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Although I can think of far more descriptive things to call Gordon Brown than Houdini (Iain Dale referring to Gordon Brown being amazingly let off the hook).
Labour have had their worst results for almost a century, are widely reviled by the general public, allowed the BNP to gain a foothold (although I do hope Nick Griffin does expose the EU accounts as promised), Gordon’s had five cabinet ministers resign plus other junior ministers, and what do Labour do? They applaud him as he entered the PLP – although that was allegedly Gordon’s “crowd control”, i.e. enforcers.
Not many people seem prepared to stand up to this odious oaf, and the country would be all the better for it – and even better if we had a general election. Labour, by keeping Gordon in, have put party before country, and should be ashamed.
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Deservedly so, Labour are having an absolute kicking in the council elections. We have ministers resigning mid-press conference, withering attacks, all good fun.
Like Old Holborn, I hope this weeks PMQs was Gordon’s Last. Brown is stuffing the cabinet with unelected peers (and creating a peer in the form of the reality tv star Alan Sugar), which is very shady, in my opinion. Unelected people in cabinet is not a good thing…
And three amazing, WTF moments: Glenys bloody Kinnock back as Minister for Europe, Peter Hain back despite being a money-laundering git and (wait for it) PETER MANDELSON as Deputy (!) Prime Minister…
What a shower of sh*t.
Let’s hope Brown either is pushed, quits, or shoots himself (I really don’t care), we get a new PM whose very first task is to call a general election – I really can’t see Brown continuing for much longer…
A very good day for the Conservatives despite Gordon Brown’s handpuppet Nick Robinson advising the Conservatives not to crack open the champage – I think they should
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This is just sheer genius, it’s basically Magnum P.I.’s opening with clips from Star Wars, and is very well done:
Done by TheCBVee, found via Movieblog.
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I just saw on BBC News (ugh) an interview with Gordon Brown (a;hole) where he was talking about getting on with the job, etc. He then opined that he didn’t think that people would vote for fringe parties.
According to recent polls, Labour are tied with the Lib Dems (the Lib Dems, FFS!) and one poll has them below the Lib Dems.
As my wife pointed out, “Who’s the fringe party now?”
And please make Ed Balls chancellor, then we can be guaranteed to be rid of this incompetent, mendacious, foolish, rotten, corrupt, stasi-like Labour government for even longer than last time.
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