Tag: Britain

Several Hundred Words About Money

Northern light, by Don McPhee
Sad about something? Don’t even bother reading this then – have another piece of chocolate, you deserve it, everything’s going to be just fine.

In Britain, welfare amounts to over 30% of overall public spending. If we ignore the bail outs – and we should, because £1.2 trillion could have built schools on the moon – then that’s the single largest area of public expenditure; a provision to guarantee a basic standard of living for all those in financial need.

The Welfare Reform Bill of 2011 was the biggest change to the welfare system for over 60 years. One element is the introduction of Universal Credit, a ‘streamlined’ replacement for six of the main means-tested benefits and tax credits that is said will ‘ensure work always pays.’

A fortnight ago, another change – the replacement of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – was the reason hundreds of thousands of Twitter users were trending #spartacusreport, relating to Responsible Reform, a 37 page independent report into the alleged general awfulness of the DLA reforms. Continue reading “Several Hundred Words About Money” →

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A Gløgg is Not Just for Christmas

Wherever you are right now, dear reader, my money’s on it being cold outside. Granted you could be somewhere temperate – the southern hemisphere for instance  – in which case why not bookmark this for winter, because the last thing you want right now is a hot mug of spice infused heaven washing down your bare, tanned, fortunate throat. But for those of us who have to wrap up warm to walk the streets and – in a job without windows – wouldn’t see the sun until March, I have a tasty little treat for you that, like all treats, is ripe for abuse.

I only discovered Gløgg – hot spiced wine – a few years ago in Scandinavia, and much like when I first stumbled across masturbation, I decided it surely had to be my own invention rather than an encounter with something people have been enjoying for a long, long time; otherwise however did people manage to leave the house in winter? Continue reading “A Gløgg is Not Just for Christmas” →

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Santa Claus Arrested in Connection with Phone Hacking Probe

NAUGHTY OR NICE? Santa Claus is the latest name to be implicated in the phone hacking scandal.

Children across the world had their world shaken today when the Leveson enquiry into phone hacking saw Father Christmas taken into custody by Northumbria Police.

Exact details are not known at this time, however it is understood that the arrest took place at Santa’s Magical Christmas Grotto in The Mall Shopping Centre, Middlesbrough just before 9am this morning. Continue reading “Santa Claus Arrested in Connection with Phone Hacking Probe” →

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Three Years of Cuts and Closures

As I mentioned already, I intended on working my weird rant against non-recyclers into the last real work of the year – the vox pop assignment. However, the apathy of others and the growing realisation that I am just another hypocrite – three paychecks and some half decent head in a fast car away from turning my back on mother nature and concreting over the lot – gave me pause for thought.

I’ll get back to it in due course, once I get my mojo back. In the meantime I decided to work on something probably everyone’s sick of reading about by now but it remains a subject that really gets people’s backs up, and with good reason.

I have censored the names and faces of the people I spoke to as I’m not sure of the rules on putting stuff like this online without permission; it was hard enough to get anyone to speak to me as it was (I was mostly in the pub, mostly) so I’m going to play it safe and only let my teacher see the full version. Continue reading “Three Years of Cuts and Closures” →

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Lingerie, Whiskey and Burning Flags

Two Chinese Pandas are being loaned to Edinburgh Zoo. The thinking is that they’ll be so cold they’ll have to fuck continuously to keep from freezing to death.

Hey, am I wearing lipstick? When I’m getting fucked I want to make sure my face looks pretty.

– George Jung, Blow

I put the news in my brain today. It didn’t help my depression. Not one bit.

I hear the cuts with which we are being punished for the avarice and incompetence of our betters is going to plunge this country into a Dickensian level of class divide and destitution; the eurozone is breaking apart, another mistake that will have us all over the sodomy table before the decade is up.

Stories of increasing numbers of honour killings and the grooming of children are a proud racist’s wet dream – proof positive in their bloodshot eyes that if they were right about Europe then how about all these dirty immigrants taking British jobs. All the while the justice system is too PC to tackle problems by race, leaving the idiots among us to judge entire swaths of their communities by the diabolical actions of a few. Continue reading “Lingerie, Whiskey and Burning Flags” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three

G.A.Harker. Don Quixote: Windmill
‘Tis better to gasp one’s last breath twixt the unspoiled hill and valley than suffer the ignominy of the turbines!

Question Time. BBC One, 10.35 Thu, 17 Nov 2011

Against a more newsworthy day’s backdrop of the biggest strikes in 30 years and my own Senior Lecturer – a former journalist at the News of the World – being arrested in connection with the Leveson phonehacking enquiry (later bailed until March), I have a deadline. I should’ve written this a week ago but I’m shit and lazy and I think I might be losing it, again. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three” →

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About Me (2008)

A couple of years ago I was studying Multimedia Design and Communication. A prerequisite was a personal web-site containing an e-portfolio. All that code is redundant now but for posterity’s sake here is the content from the old ‘About Me’ page. Please understand that at the time the side effects of my pills were quite, quite maddening.

Christopher John Parlett (born June 5th, 1979) is a British mongrel dog; a drunk, a hack and spiteful, anchorless trash. He is best known amongst those unfortunate enough to be acquainted with him for his pernicious satire, gluttonous hurtful appetites and poor life-choices.

Hark, such a vicious degenerate was not born – it was fostered by a cruel fate. Continue reading “About Me (2008)” →

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Insurrection Lite

Playing Devil’s Advocate to the English Riots

 

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The August 2011 riots of England and Wales were perpetrated by mindless thugs hell-bent on violent assault, the destruction of property and opportunistic theft.

The terror and anarchy that spread from the capital to other UK cities may have started as a peaceful protest against the fatal shooting of 29-year old drug-dealer Mark Duggan but quickly spiralled into chaos, fuelled by criminal avarice.

The reason and the message of that protest was lost the minute the first missile was thrown. This violence was not triggered by public unrest nor is it our melting-pot boiling over. This is not our Arab Spring nor should parallels be drawn with the civil unrest of the Thatcher era. Continue reading “Insurrection Lite” →

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