Are we all created equal?

Posted on August 4, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — Leave a comment

Thomas Jefferson is quoted, as part of the American Declaration Of Independence, that all men are created equal, but how can that be true?
I truly believe we are all born equal, after all we all depend entirely on our parents. We all eat, breath & defecate. So why do some people grow to believe that they have the right to oppress others?
There will always be privileged people, there will always be those born to power and those who rise to power, but I don’t mean those people, I mean the ordinary folk who think because someone is of a different ethnic background, has different political views or has a different sexual orientation that they are simply not as good as “us”.
There is no place for racism, sexism or homophobia in the 21st Century. We live on a tiny, little pebble billions of miles away from the next nearest little pebble. A sobering thought indeed. We only have each other, we only have this minuscule rock we cling to the surface of, so why are we so bloody obnoxious to each other? Surely it’s time to stop?
I do believe that we all have the unalienable human right to free speech, but why do some think they have to use that right to spout such utter, utter bollocks?
While I’m on the subject of human rights I also believe that if you commit a crime, no matter how minor, you are volunteering to surrender you human rights to the rest of society. You cross the threshold of someone’s home or business you are saying “I do not believe in your right to live in peace so I choose to live outside the laws that protect us all. I do not believe in Human Rights”. It is therefore quite ironic that some of these miscreants appeal against their incarceration because they feel it undermines their Human Rights! It’s a good job. I am not President of the world, eh?
I have said many times I am an atheist but I uphold the rights of anyone to practice the faith they chose. Many men died to defend that freedom. But I have to take issue with the sheer number of “men of God” who used their position of trust to abuse children and the fact it was covered up for so many decades. If Hell exists, it is full of paedophile priests, burning.

Enough ranting for now. Live long and prosper, peeps.

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Grumpy Dad.

Posted on August 3, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — 1 Comment

My wife tells me I am getting grumpier. She tells me I have got steadily worse since my 40th birthday.
I now find myself staring at my 44th birthday in just a few days and I know what she means.
I used to be so tolerant and patient but nowadays pretty much everything and everybody gets on my tits.
Take Apple for example. I have always found the owners of iPhones annoying. With their complete reluctance to put the bloody things in their pockets and their ridiculous white headphones I truly want to punch them in their throats. But more recently I have come to the realisation that Apple and their rivals are no more than parasites feeding on the weak-willed zombie sheep that constitute the general populace of our once proud nation.
I also despair at the morons I share my daily commute with. The levels of lunacy I see everyday get me more than a little steamed up. Congestion is not caused by high volumes of traffic, it is caused by high volumes of incompetent f**king idiots.
The list of things that get my goat grows every day. Beamer/Audi/Merc drivers, number plates on cars that have been fiddled with to vaguely look like the pillock behind the wheels flipping name, Facebook, the emotionless, expressionless, computer generated tripe that passes as popular music today and (most of all) chavs, to name but a few.
I think I am entitled to a little grumpiness in my approaching middle age. Just don’t tell the wife.

Live long as proper, peeps.

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Age, it’s just a state of mind…apparently!

Posted on July 18, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — 1 Comment

I am 44 years old in a few weeks. There are days when I cannot believe I am that old and others when I feel every single bloody day of it!!

I have done quite a bit with my life. I have had several jobs and worked with a lot of different people, some of them I have actually liked!! I have been to a lot of different places and sampled quite a bit of what life has to offer.

My wife says I have gotten grumpier since my 40th birthday. I have to agree. There are many, many more things that annoy me nowadays, stuff that I would not have even noticed a few years ago.

TV adverts, for example. TV adverts get on my tits. If I want to buy something I will, I do not need annoying people telling me how great something is every 10 minutes. This is why most of the TV I watch is Sky+, or on catch up, so I can FFW through the irritating crap.

Something else that gets me seething is being touched by strangers. I can cope with accidental touching (as long as they apologise) and I can also shake hands with people I have only just met, it’s the over familiar nature of some people. If I want you to touch me I will invite you to do so. Just don’t hold your breath while you wait…

Now, some may say I over react to certain situations and they would be right. But I do not think of it as “over reacting”, I think of it as “appropriate reaction to the actions of complete idiots”. And yes, most people are complete idiots.

I struggle with people who do not understand things first time. I explain stuff the best way I can, I ask if they have any questions and, when they inevitably bugger it up, I lose my rag. Apparently calling someone an “idiot” isn’t acceptable in the workplace, so I tend to use “imbecile” instead.

Do I intend to grow old gracefully? No I do not!! I will continue to listen to my Rock music fast a loud, I will continue to be disparaging about people who are obviously of lower intelligence (or drive Audi’s) and I will continue to be opinionated, offend or please!

Live Long And Prosper People!!

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My childhood and Mrs Margaret Thatcher

Posted on April 18, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — Leave a comment

Now they have buried Margaret Thatcher I can say what’s been on my mind since she passed away.

It wasn’t right or decent before her funeral to voice my opinion of her. That was the private time for her bereaved family.

Mrs Thatcher was an evil woman. She destroyed the lives of millions while making an elite few even richer.

She is quoted as saying she wanted a “return to Victorian values“. The Victorians sent children down mines & up chimneys.

I grew up in the industrial heart-land of the Black Country. We moved here in 1975, after my Dad left the RAF. I was six.

He decided on a career as a HGV driver. A trade much in demand, and relatively well paid in an area where steel, copper & aluminium was manufactured and needed to be moved about the country. We never saw him. He traversed the Nation in his “Guy Big J” happy as a pig in muck. Then Maggie came to power.

Maggie told the owners of Companies that greed was okay. That coupled with selling off all the Nationalised Industries, closing down the foundries, mills, mines &  factories finally saw off the Heavy Haulage the Company my Dad worked for.

Her sole destruction of the trade unions (we will come to that in a minute) meant that the Company bosses had no opposition to paying rubbish wages and applying poor working conditions.

Maggie had achieved her Victorian values.

With hindsight it is clear that something had to be done about the trade unions. Nutters like Derek “Red Robbo” Robinson at British Leyland & Arthur Scargill at the NUM were bringing this country to its knees. They were not interested in the rights of their members, they were only interested in rubbing the Government’s collective nose in it and progressing their own interests. It is said Scargill had a huge portrait of himself behind his desk.

I just about remember the 3-day-weeks and the power cuts caused by our miners & power workers always being on strike. I definitely remember the “Green Goddesses” putting out fires. I remember the Poll Tax riots and social disharmony in Handsworth, Toxteth & Brixton. I remember our troops travelling thousands of mile to re-capture a group of islands very few of us had actually heard of. I remember the poverty and the hopelessness. I remember what she did to my community.

A lot of the social issues we have today were caused by Maggie’s policies. We have generational unemployment leading to State dependency.  Today’s disaffected youth are simply a product of Maggie’s Lost Generation. We left school in the mid-eighties to no jobs and no futures. I was lucky, I was bright, I stayed on at school and joined the RAF at 18.

There are kids now whose Grandparents lost their jobs because of Maggie. Their Parents have never worked and now they do not see the point of working. They are today’s lost generation.

As I sat and watched her funeral yesterday I was sorry for her family’s loss. The people booing and throwing things were out-of-order and the chart entry of the “wicked witch is dead” from “The Wizard Of Oz” is as amusing as it is distasteful.

By far and away the most intolerable bit of the whole shebang was Edwina Curry eulogizing endlessly about Maggie’s time in power. Ms Currie is by far the worst product of that Conservative era. A self-publicising, self-satisfied wholly dislikeable woman who’s only contribution to our Country was telling us all not to eat eggs and shagging John Major.

I have said before that we must learn the lessons of the past and Thatcherism must be consigned to the annals of history with Nazi-ism, Marxism and tuberculosis.

And finally to George Osborne weeping in St Pauls. They were tears of joy, I believe. He was remembering that he is a millionaire and the Oiks booing outside aren’t.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!!

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Me, myself & football…

Posted on April 2, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — Leave a comment

I am not a grumpy old git. Well, yes I am, in a lot of ways.

I do not covet the company of others. I am quite happy being by myself.

My wife is the gregarious one. I have often said you could put her in the queue at the Post Office and by the time she gets to front she knows the life history of the person in front & the person behind. Often we have been out having dinner, I will pop to the ablutions and by the time I get back she will be deep in conversation with the people at the next table.

I love the time I get to spend with my family, both immediate and extended, but I see no reason to be in their pockets.

I found myself in an unexpected position yesterday, I actually cared if Wolves won. This has not happened for a good while. My apathy towards everything football has never been higher than it has the past 18 months or so. I was actually nervous about the result, it was astounding. I am still not back in the place where I care if a bunch of overpaid nancy boys in the Premier League win, lose or draw but I am beginning to care again about what happens at Molineux.

I am currently on a well deserved holiday from work. My Boy is on a “Gifted & Talented” Easter Challenge Academy at School and my better half is at work. So there is just me, the cat & the pigs here at home. It’s bliss. I even popped to Merry Hill for a wander round. I bought “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath on CD in HMV. Had it on in the car on the way home. It is every bit as brilliant as I remember. No one wails like Ozzy!!

I know I shouldn’t treat this blog like a diary, but it’s hard. I like putting down my thoughts, offend or please.

I am known at work as someone who is quite able to speak my mind. I say what needs to be said, I don’t mince about with politics or words, I just tell it how it is. I try to be humorous but it is often like casting pearls before swine, so I just say it in a way that the dimmest of minds are able to understand.

I despair at the bastardisation of the English language. Are we to be left at the mercy of a generation that believes they are “like” 10 minutes from school or their latest pair of trainers were “like” £60, or that something is “literally” happening, or that “bare” means a lot? Yes, I know I speak with a Black Country accent and say things like “yow am” or “I ay” but that’s colloquialism not the disassembling of our native tongue.

Finally, I have a theory why the Government are steadfastly refusing to repair the roads:

1. It makes us drive more slowly.

2. When we damage our vehicles we take them to be fixed – keeping recovery drivers & mechanics in work.

3. When our vehicles finally become to expensive to repair, we buy a new one, keeping the manufacturers in business.

It’s a cunning plan. It ignores the fact that the thieving bastards who portray themselves as our Government take our Road Fund License, Our fuel tax, the VAT on our cars and fuel and they give it to multi-millionaire nom-doms to stash in their offshore accounts.

David Cameron, you and your cronies are on a one way ticket to the opposition benches, please don’t leave our Country a bigger shit hole than you found it, eh?

Nuff Said? 

Live Long And Prosper.

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So, I lied…

Posted on March 17, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — 1 Comment

I said my last blog would be my last. Obviously I was lying. The truth is I cannot work out how to close the thing down for good, and being lazy I can’t be arsed to keep trying.

So, to today’s rant.

I work in Coventry but live in the Black Country. That is quite lucky because it must be the only place in the country where the locals cannot laugh at my beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers because their club is in as much shit as ours.

The downside to working in Cov is two-fold. Firstly the commute. 45 – 60 minutes of dodging pot-holes, white van loonies & foreign HGV drivers all trying to kill me and, more importantly, the fact it is in Coventry, (More accurately Holbrooks, Warwickshire) which is a complete shit hole.

I once had to get off the M6 for road works and had to approach work from the other side of the city centre. This meant driving down the Foleshill Road.

There are parts of Wolverhampton I would not walk down. The Foleshill Road is very much like that, but worse. I felt uncomfortable driving my car down there. That may have something to do with the Wolves badge on my rear windscreen & Gold & Black fluffy dice hanging from my rear-view mirror, but it was probably more down to the sheer number of hoodie wearing scumbags hanging about in every bus stop/shop front/corner. It was my worst nightmare…Chavsville!

But that’s enough of that, I survived to tell the tale…just!

Holbrooks is basically a big sink estate. Apparently the local chippy is good place to acquire drugs! Saying that I was once offered some marijuana outside a chippy in the West Park area of Wolverhampton, just after a home match! A strange man just walked up to me and offered me the drugs while I waited for my mates. I told him “No thank you” and he simply disappeared into the dark again. Classic Wolverhampton!!

Maybe Coventry isn’t as bad as I think it is. They have issues with drugs, alcohol & crime, but which city doesn’t? They have a large immigrant population and high unemployment, like all modern cities. The people I work with are mostly decent & hard-working. We have one or two idiots, but when you employ over 500 people they can’t all be decent, eh?

The one thing I will say for the people of Coventry. I have never worked anywhere that has the levels of domestic issues of Cov. They are all breaking up/having affairs/beating up ex’s, it’s extraordinary. I think there is something in the water.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. UP THE WOLVES!!!

 

Posted in general rant, life & shit, life stuff, Wolves

Angry? Moi?

Posted on February 15, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — 1 Comment

I sit and watch TV.

We are bombarded by news programmes stuffed full of bad news. Para Olympians allegedly murdering their model girlfriends, cheap TV dinners stuffed full of ketamine fuelled horse meat, inflation rocketing and making my beloved chocolate hobnobs far too expensive to buy.

We are told that global warming is boiling our planet, yet I still have to wear thermals to go to work. We are told that paedophiles no longer have to stalk our children on the streets, they simply do it from their laptops. The Daily Mail would have us believe that all immigrants are benefit-swindling crooks and that Princess Diana was assassinated by the Russian Mafia or some other such bollocks.

And amid all this gloom and doom we all still go about our lives. Working, eating, sleeping and caring for our families. We pay too much for our food, for our petrol and for the privilege of our getting our bins emptied.

I have watched our “beautiful game” reduced to a pantomime. Cheap foreign imports bringing their play-acting, diving & feigning injury with them. Over-paid professionals, acting like a class of pre-schoolers, spitting out their dummies and stamping their petulant little feet every time the nasty man in black gives a decision against them. How can we teach our children right from wrong when their heroes behave like spoilt babies? Even the most revered coach of his generation, Sir Alex Ferguson, behaves more and more like a pantomime villain every match.

Our roads are deteriorating into something akin to the worst 3rd world Country. My little car is being steadily shaken to bits by my daily commute. We pays billions of pounds in road fund license every year, but the roads we fund get worse & worse. It’s a scandal.

Our NHS is suffering from decades of neglect and incompetency. Too many ADW’s* in suits and not enough Nurses. Too many targets and not enough caring for the sick. Our NHS was (and still is, to be fair) the envy of the world, but if your chances of dying from an infection in hospital are higher than your chances of dying from your original ailment, then something is seriously wrong. Do the Tories care? Do they F……..

The Scottish “want” independence. Do they now? All I can say is “See ya then”. And set about turfing all the Scottish MP’s out of Westminster. I give them a decade before they do a “Greece”.

But still I sit and watch TV. 

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

*ADW – Audi Driving Wanker.

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Cynical? Moi?

Posted on February 9, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — Leave a comment

I have been accused of being a tad cynical sometimes. It is something I refute. I am entirely cynical all of the damn time thank you.
One of my key skills, and greatest curses, is that am good at people. I can weigh people up almost instantly. It is a skill when interviewing but a curse when it comes to more social interactions.
It is probably why I have very few actual friends, I find trusting people hard, I like people to stay at arms length.
I like pragmatic people, I don’t like whiney, dramatic people. If I ask you if you are ok, all I want is “yes thanks mate”, I don’t want your whole life story, mainly because I don’t care.
I have also been accused of being dismissive, this is true, I am.
I am not a heartless bloke, I care about my family and friends. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for any single one of them. I am fiercely loyal, but only to people I love and respect, the rest of you can bugger off for all I care.
Back to my cynicism. It keeps me sharp. I don’t get sucked in, by people or events, I stay calm and analytical. I am very good in a crisis, because I am cynical. I take nothing at face value. The hardest question to answer is “why?”. People do not liked to be asked why. I like to ask why, it makes people uncomfortable and gives me the edge.
I am not an optimist, nor a pessimist, but a realist. I know shit happens, there is just no reason whining about it.
I like people who make me laugh. I have a sense of humour that some find difficult. I am as at home ripping the piss out of myself as I am everybody else. And I am very good at that. Very, very good.
On my wander through life all I can hope for is that I stumble across some people who will make me laugh and not too many people who will piss me off. Unfortunately I know that I have very little hope of the latter. That’s because I am cynical, you see.

Live long and prosper.

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Everywhere we go now…

Posted on February 1, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — Leave a comment

The recent demise and subsequent castigation of my Team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, on various internet forums (aren’t we all so opinionated from behind a keyboard?) has been most depressing.

The terms “dark days” and “back to the 80’s” are being banded about, often by people old enough to know better.

I admit it is hard work being a follower of our famous old club at the moment, but when has is not been? If you don’t like adversity, don’t become a Wolves Fan!

To me being a Wolves fan is more than about football. I had always “followed” Wolves but came to football full time in my very early 20’s, at a time in my life when I was looking for something to hang my hat on. I had just left the RAF, I was going through some turmoil in my personal life and had had to stop playing my first love rugby because of a knee injury.

I found the camaraderie on the terraces of the South Bank comforting. The guys I sang with, drank with and even hugged in celebration didn’t care who I was, I was there, I was a Wolves fan.

Everywhere I’ve been I have proudly worn the Old Gold & Black. If you tell someone you are a Manchester United fan they roll their eyes at you and say “yeah, okay pal”. You tell them you are a Wolves fan and it is a different story, they will engage with you, they will talk about football.

In the spring of 1993 I was standing by myself outside the train station in Frankfurt, Germany, waiting to be picked up by a mate stationed at Ramstein USAF Base when the doors opened and thousands of Stuttgart fans poured out. It was at that moment I realised I was wearing my “Manders Ink” shirt, covered only by a denim jacket. I was trying to sink back into the brickwork when a six foot skinhead spotted me. As he sauntered up to me grinning all I could think of was how dead I would be in just a few minutes. He looked me up and down and with one sausage shaped finger pulled my jacket open. He pointed to the badge on my shirt and asked “Wer ist das?”. Now my German is as crap as my French but I got the picture. “Wolverhampton Wanderers mate” I replied. He thought about it for a while as I braced myself for the inevitable smack in the mouth. “Ah” he said grinning “Stevie Bull!!”. I nearly fainted. He turned to some of his colleagues and shouted something. They wandered over yabbering away, I heard the words “Wolves” & “Stevie Bull” and the first guy turned back to me offering his ham-sized hand, I took it gratefully and winced as he nearly pulled the bugger off shaking it! One or two of his friends also shook my hand talking excitedly. At that moment several green & white VW combi vans with “Polizei” written down their sides screeched up and dozens of khaki-clad, heavily armed bastards jumped out. The half-a-dozen Stuttgart fans standing around me bid me “Auf Wiedersehen” and left to join their comrades in whatever bar they had retired to.

I believe to this day if I had been wearing a Man U, Spurs, Liverpool or Arsenal shirt I would have had my head kicked in, it had only been a couple of years since the World Cup and Steve Bull had become a bit of a cult hero, not just to us but to all the travelling England fans. This had been picked up by the football-obsessed Germans, they respected the fact he was from the lower leagues and was representing his Country.

The names of Billy Wright, John Richards, Bert Williams, Derek Dougan, Kenny Hibbett, Bill Shorthouse, Stan Cullis, Ron Flowers, and Steve Bull are known and respected the World over. That is what it means to be a Wolves fan. It’s not about who currently owns the club or who the CEO is, or the Manager, or who the current set of players are, it’s about History and Faith and belonging.

So while you are hiding behind your keyboard, slagging off MY club, remember we are a family. I have bumped into Wolves fans all over the place, from Turkey to the Maldives, from the Bierkellers of Germany to the hotel bars of Tunisia. So the next time someone asks you “where the hell are you from?” you can look them in the eye and, raising your arms aloft, tell them “we’re from Wolver-hamper-ton, lovely Wolver-hamper-ton!” and walk away with your head held high because it matters not how far we fall, we will not ever be Manchester United Fans!!

Live Long And Prosper. UP THE WOLVES!!! 

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Here’s a question…

Posted on January 29, 2013 by BennyBoy1969 — 1 Comment

I’m sick to death of Football. I’m sick of the cheating, diving & feigning of injury. I’m sick of whining Wolves fans, moaning about how they perceive the club is being run. I have no interest whatsoever in top flight football, no interest in the poxy “Champions” League & absolutely no interest in Peter Old-and-whingie.

In the absence of any interest in football I have taken to thinking about more important things.

One thing that has been bothering me is the debate over if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. There is precious little intelligent life on this sodding planet let alone others!!

There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe. If just one percent of one percent of the stars out there have planets that could support life, and just one percent of one percent of those planets actually has developed intelligent life, that is still millions of inhabited planets, millions of civilisations.

Some of those civilisations will be substantially older and more advanced than ours. We are still in our infancy and look at what we have achieved. Think about a people who are thousands, if not millions of years older could have accomplished.

Are these people on their way here? Have they already been here? My concern is if they have been able to harness enough energy to cross interstellar space, why are they mucking about abducting hillbillies? Why not just land on the Whitehouse lawn and declare to the world “This miserable little pebble is ours. Get used to it”?!

I have always enjoyed Science Fiction. I grew up reading the books of Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein and others. I am quite fond of Star Trek, Star Wars & Dr Who. I have to believe that we are destined for the stars and that there are others out there in the vastness of space. Otherwise it is going to be very, very boring.

Live Long And Prosper.

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