Tuesday 2 November 2010

WOTSONTELLY, THE TEA PARTY, THIS WORLD, WITH ANDREW NEIL, BBC2

MORE EMPIRE BURLESQUE

An inconclusive and at times lightweight examination of the TeaParty phenomenon, Neil's tour of America nevertheless puts some flesh on redneck bones.   The TEA stands  for Taxed Enough Already and TeaParty, of course, harks back to revolutionary events in Boston Harbour, back before civilisation was born.  In a nutshell, TeaPartiers,  childish,  disgruntled would-be frontiersmen are being led by the nose towards civic rebellion,  a rejection of the very idea of essential public services funded by  taxpayers being co-ordinated by national government;  the leading, of course, as in  the UK, is being done by big business, notably but not exclusively by skymadeupnewsandfilth's Amerikan arm, FoxShit.

The political nous and expertise of this apparently spontaneous, grassfuckingroots movement comes from former members of the House, too extreme even for Bush's swaggering Republicans.  God, as ever, has a starring role in  the preservation of racism, bigotry and dumbass, cynical Bible-thunping stupidity;  it is hard to believe that some of these whining, hysterical, headbangers can take themselves for a piss, yet, with Murdoch's help, they might just take the Presidency.

In the  modern home of ethnic cleansing, a bankrupt nation which nonetheless maintains eight fucking hundred overseas military bases, all sorts of insanity are possible but this programme reveals that some of the states contain extensive and wide-open lunatic asylums,  their inmates running around organising themselves just like regular folks, just crying rather a lot and probably masturbating all over the Stars and Stripes.

Even the right-winger, Neil, a man who detests the poor, was taken aback by some of the bizarre, anti-Obama rhetoric, although he didn't and never does reveal how his millions of Sky shares are faring, how far he personally supports the soon-praise-God-to-be-dead-rotten-filthy-fucking-bastard Rupert,  they fell out but for people like Andy, money's thicker than anything.

Shot through the summer in anticipation of a Democrat meltdown shortly - I'm not sure it'll be THAT bad  for Obama - this is, when you stop laughing, chilling stuff. Selective, infantile interpretations of history and fundamentalist sub-morons being educated, agitated and organised by Uncle Sam's neo-Nazis, whilst damning Obama for a Hitlerite, it's good shit, black and foul and even Neil can't help but signal that.  It's all we have on mainstream telly about these loonies. Well worth a look.

34 comments:

mongoose said...

I am confused about the Tea party lot. I mean, what is the point of it all? In fact, the other day I had to ask a mate what it was all about. No coherence came there. Angry tax-hating shouting seemed to be the best guess.

I don't subscribe necessarily to the necessary public services stuff as you know, Mr Ishmael. What is essential, what is necessary, is a tyrant's argument. I know that you don't mean it that way but the counter position is not necessarily heartlessly savage. The point when we started was to give everyone a chance of improving their lot, and if not their lot, that of their kids. It was not about giving everyone 48" plasmas on the Social. We want honour and kindness and safety not generations of folk too enmired in fecklessness to even begin to try. There was a kid today when I picked up Middle from gymnastics. The poor lad. Fucked. Maybe 14. Fucked. Bright enough but not a chance. A fucked yobbo now. How do these poor lads get given a chance like what some of us got given, innit, eh? This is what we have lost.

call me ishmael said...

Talking about roads, fire service, the police, mr m, those sorts of services. Have a look at the programme. They are entirely incoherent.

I have worked with scores of your sinned against yobboes, further down the road, and they can be given a chance, it's generally the regularity and comradeship of work which does it, sometimes it's just someone paying them some attention; cheaper to invent jobs for them, than put them in and out of prison.

But I don't think that the position you mourn is retrievable, if it ever was. That does not mean that we should abandon the pass to Business, make a profit and loss account of our humanity. And nor do you.

a young anglo-irish catholic said...

Heard one of this Teapot lot on the radio a few months back.

She explained - in a rant - that a healthcare system that made you queue, told you which doctor to see and what drugs to take was 'Communism'.

Mmm. Made me think.

Have to say though, was at the Quacks today. Regular blood test (on HRT...at my age) and blood pressure test.

Mentioned odd feeling in the feet and Quack added another five blood tests to my running total. All adds up, more money. They check everything, scan everything. You need to be on Statins. 'No'. It'll happen sooner or later says the quackette....

NHS has gone mission creep mad. Is it their way of securing rising funds forever, by super-serving the patients?

Anyway, have been on blood pressure stuff for ever and today, finally, quack decided to find the big collar for my big 75 percent Irish arms. Normal pressure, for the first time ever.

You really needed that bigger collar he says. So your tests have been out for that last 7 years, then?

Mind you, the mad ex-indoors woman left 7 months ago, so that might account for creeping normality.

We'll have to talk about my brother's new step-son. Aged 8 was on the chemical cosh and nailed to the desk at school with his own supervisor. Single mother all his life, v few men at home or at school.

Brother appears. Does man stuff with him. He won't read - Harry Potter too much - so I send him some fat Commander cartoon books. Starts reading. Where I started, really.

Off the chemicals, supervisor gone, improving all the time. Drove lad and brother and new wife away from church in big Jag. 'Can I call you Dad now' he says, sitting between bride and groom.

Not hard, is it girls? You can'y get rid of the man - all men- without fucking the lads right up.

Fucking clueless, to a woman.

Mike said...

Mr I: I too yearn for a period when the paternal hand of Govament could be relied on. No longer now, or ever more - as you have chronicled.

The TEA party has gained traction because Obama has been seen for what he is - empty suit, snake oil.

Its not much of a choice - Govament or business. The former mostly 2.1 grads and chancers just on the make. At least with the latter you know what they want. Its a choice of being fucked or buggered - the latter, applying literally to the Govament spivs of all hues.

I suspect we are on the cusp of a new politic. The old way - labour/conservative or republican/democratic has demonstrably failed, and the people are finding they have a voice - riots in Europe, TEA party in US, the UK lagging the social changes as usual.

But there is a new world order. People who owe no allegiance to any prticular country, fee "abused", but have the skills and the reources to be mobile. The demographics could have their say in the end. People voting with their feet.

Dick the Prick said...

It's USkIP. I dunno, I kinda think it's funny.

Anonymous said...

Their wasn't much difference between the Democrats and the Rebublicans,the Democrats are slightly left of the Republican party,Obambi has moved the Democrats to the far left and all of a sudden 1950's Communism has come into view,so it's made people uneasy and are now ready to hunt bear with the public keeping the gun and cartridge manufacturers busy for the last 2 years and Obambi threatening to take these toys off them even though it's enshrined in their constitution,he's hated well the USAsians I know detest him,civil war no,assasination possible,tea party a way of calming things down from ordinary people,maybe big business has jumped in on the deal but they are involed with all parties.

call me ishmael said...

Except that Neil's programme reveals that although the anger may be real, the whole thing is slickly orchestrated by the same-old same-olds, plus Murdoch, and it's just a new way of doing the old shit. Do have a look.

I think, also, that Obama is surrounded by, has surrounded himself with, is guided by ex Wall Street hoods and I cannot think of a less communistic leader in the West; he's just another bankers' plaything - that Murdoch and Co can get away with calling him a man of the Left demonstrates the peurility of American political understanding, it's malleability by Citizen Kane.

Any state thoughtful of all of its citizens should attempt to regulate domestic arms sales = the murder and imprisonment rate in America is fucking mind boggling, this isn't civilisation, this isn't freedom's last great hope, that these nutters can go and buy themselves military weaponry and yet cannot own an ounce of weed in some states is ludicrous. Doesn't fucking matter what the blessed, rich, white man's constitution says, didn't it also enshrine the rights of men to own other men? I'm fucking sick hearing about the constitution of America. Let them keep small arms by all means, under strict conditions but beardy gay headbangers out in the woods with bazookas and flamethrowers, nothing democratic about that. It is not too late for these redneck morons to learn of civilisation. Obama? Wall Street's house nigger, communist? Jesus wept.

Dick the Prick said...

It's nice to just observe elections, though, with neither affilaition or affection. I dunno why we get so much focus on Yanky elections - maybe as the language is transparent or perhaps because they are important. It seems that we get about 4 weeks heads up when Froggy or Kraut elections occur, they happen, no one gives a fuck, but Yanky elections seem to go on endlessly....Hollywood - where the show never ends?

Montana seems nice. Would genuinely like to go fishing in the Pacific one day; that would be fun. To be fair though, the Palin woman freaks the begeezus out of me and I hope it's a valid opinion rather than the media prism.

call me ishmael said...

BP testing is notoriously fickle, mr yaic but yes, they do seem to be preventative tests mad; something, though, in combination with better diets, perhaps, is working, because people are living longer, sixty is the new twenty. The mission creep factor is inevitable, isn't it, as new technologies and medicines develop? My mother died at 47 from BP-related stuff, she would have been routinely checked and treated today and have lived a decent span, what's to moan about? If we have to pay more taxes to live longer and healthier, so what? Can't take it with you.

As for single mums, well, they are a man-creation, aren't they, biologically and culturally? I don't dispute the ill effects of absent or serial father-figures but everyone bears some responsibility, from Germaine Greer to you and I.

But whatever the over-reach of the NHS, whatever the cock-ups, surely it is a tiny but significant mark of civilisation that all are equal before the stethescope, if not the law?

------

I believe there is a fundamental difference between EU riots and the US TeaParty, mr mike, and we should not conflate them, despite superficial similarities; the former insist on joint - ie state - provision of minimum standards of living, otherwise what is the point of the state, the latter romaticise a frontier America which never was, and never will be. No business like showbusiness.

jgm2 said...

Mr Ishmael - I'm convinced NHS mission-creep is real. Spend all that fucking money on something. Anything. Just get it fucking well spent or the bastards will take it off us. The same mentality that drives practically all departments both state-run and private-run. Gotta preserve my budget, gotta preserve my head-count, gotta preserve my empire.

The missus went to the doctors a while ago over something or other. H'mmm. Might be low blood pressure - have a go on the machine in the lobby. Blood pressure fine but the fucker's eyes were out on stalks about her heart rate. Low 40's.

Yeah mate - it's even lower when she's not stressed by being at the doctors.

Yeah, she says - always been like that. Been like that since university - the first time my boyfriend (me) pointed it out. S'not a problem. You're not the first doctor to notice it.

I'm the fucking doctor he says - I'll tell you when it's a problem. Except I won't. I'll get some fucking battery of tests and a specialist who'll tell you if it's a problem. Days of fucking tests later (spread over weeks) finally see a specialist who spends 5 minutes looking at reams of printouts.

'Not a problem' he says.

What a fucking surprise. Wasn't a problem last time either.

That life expectancy is increasing is not in question. What is also not in question is that the increase in average life expectancy is almost entirely due to factors outside the NHS. The elderly of today lived through the war where their diet was, by necessity, absent of much of the shit we eat today.

All the lung-destroying foundries and factories and mines and ship-builders yards have been closed down. Not that anybody ever thinks to thank Maggie for saving an entire generation from such health-hazardous work. Let the fucking Chinese kill 'emselves sucking up fumes in foundries instead. And falling off scaffolding in some shipyard. Or coughing up black shit after a life-time down the mines. Or getting crushed like a bug 3000ft underground.

In the 1920's we killed more people on the road than we do today despite the fact there's about 100 times as many cars and 1,000 times as many miles covered.

We all smoke a lot less. On average.

If we could get boozing and diet under control we'd live even longer. Without ever seeing a doctor. Just pay attention in class or read the fucking label.

Point is Mr Ishmael a penny of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In all the areas of improvement I've mentioned the improvements are due to society taking the handle off the pump rather than trying to fix 'em after they've got sick.

Yet, with the NHS, as it is, (and you'll remember this) we had that cunt McConnell quite freely guaging healthcare success in Scotland not by outcome but by how much money he could piss away. 'I make no apologies for pissing away an extra umpty billion quid this year...'

CUNT!!

Meanwhile folk in Fucking Scotland are dying years earlier than folk in England. Folk in Fucking Glasgow Shettleston (is it?) die on average aged 53.

Holy Christ.

There's not enough gold in the world to cure these idiots of whatever they contrive to kill themselves with. It's a fucking bottomless hole of idiocy. It's a failed fucking state like Haiti up there. They're only a few short steps away from a cholera outbreak.

jgm2 said...

I've not seen the show Mr Ishmael and I take your word for it that the entire 'spontaneous' nature is being engineered by well placed dissident Republicans with the help of Fox News. But they are simply tapping into a well of existent frustration and anger.

Just as Guido Fawkes is tapping in to an existent well. Those who contribute here and there do so because deep down, coherently or incoherently we know it's fucked. What 'it' is varies a bit of course. But 'it's' very definitely fucked and these fucking politicians sat there and either turned a blind eye or held 'it's' coat while 'it' fucked things up or actively fucked 'it' up themselves.

The words that best express my feelings about the prior 13 years of imbecility are 'rage, revulsion, incredulous'. To see every single fucking sensible decision eschewed for some imbecile alternative. You begin to thing the fuckers are doing it for a laugh. To deliberately piss people off. And then leaks take place that confirm (for example) that they did cut loose on immigration purely to enrage the Daily Mail readers.

So, you know, I can understand how the TeaParty would arise in the US. The distinction there is that while they're raging at Obama they should really be raging at Bush and Greenspan. They're the ones who fucked up America. Just as Brown is the one who fucked up the UK.

The Teaparty's 'genius', such as it is, is to blame the Democrats for the clusterfuck and thereby ensure that at some point in the future - not even the future because it's what's happening right now - those dissaffected Teaparty votes will return/remain Republican. There's the incoherence in it all.

They're mad at the wrong people. No point getting pissed off with Obama. Should be getting pissed of with Bush. Should be voting Democrat. Or Ross Perot or something. But certainly not Republican.

mongoose said...

I hold a public contract, Mr jgm2, and even in these times it is as you say. In fact, the year end (April) spend-it-all attitude has already started. And we are six freaking months out! They are spending it now because they know that come February the shutters will come clanging down. It is all mad.

mongoose said...

And, yes, it is cheaper to invent clipboard jobs for them than to bang them up. Absolutely so. But not fucking millions of them.

Agatha said...

Mr. YAIC said: "Not hard, is it girls? You can'y get rid of the man - all men- without fucking the lads right up. Fucking clueless, to a woman."
Boys do need male role models and interested male carers, true, but it is just wrong-headed to blame women for men being absent from their children's lives. I'm sure Mr. YAIC's bitterness stems from the wilderness of his former marriage - but there are as many women bitterly complaining about the husband and father of their children who walked out the door, never to come back, taking their sex, financial security, love and safety from predatory paedophiles and violent, serial "stepfathers" and "uncles" with them. And the girls who did the drunken nasty with young men who were still at the scalphunting, male bonding stage of their development, to whom penetrative, unprotected sex was just something to boast about, to score them points with their mates, and who had absolutely no intention of sharing responsibility for the raising of the product of their mutually heated loins into a functional human being.You could say those girls are just plain foolish to continue the unplanned pregnancy - but "unplanned" is not the same as "unwanted", and the foetus triggers hormones just designed to protect it in the womb by manipulating the owner of the womb's feelings, generating a tidal wave of maternal emotions that ensure that the woman says - so what if no support? no bloke? no money? a lifetime of poverty? no house? no career? this darling baby turning into an ADD monster and attacking me in his teens, stealing the little money I have to buy useless designer clothes, phones, games, drugs and abusing me when I ask where it is? so what, my body is insisting that being a mother is the only possible option.
No, Mr. YAIC, don't blame the woman, try blaming the society which has allowed the biological differences between the genders to grow into a yawning chasm that cannot be bridged. And for "society", read "capitalism".
Oh, and Mr. Ish, I saw some of the Teapot party programme. Scary men.

a young anglo-irish catholic said...

Miss Agatha

'No, Mr. YAIC, don't blame the woman, try blaming the society which has allowed the biological differences between the genders to grow into a yawning chasm that cannot be bridged.'

Well, I didn't express myself so clearly. The point I was making is that women - as far as i can see across generations and the class divide - have come to think they can do it themselves without any potential risks.

The boy child in question was diagnosed, chemicalised and pinned down almost entirely by women. They - even now - parrot the line that the child's problems are medical or in the mind.

Even now, with improvement apace, Granny clips the Mail of mad articles about 'school phobia'.

Perhaps the mothers, grannies, aunts, teachers and medicos could have just about dimly thought, well he's a boy, he needs to be run ragged, challenged and led by example, not told to shut up and play nicely like the girls.

They just seem so extraordinarily dim-witted, unaware, blissfully confident, while their own children go off the rails.

OK, so they had a child with a man who was clearly unsuitable, and sometimes left out of the blue but not so often as you might wish to hear.

Now what? Where are the male teachers at primary, the uncles and brothers? Outside the circle of the increasingly female dominated public arena. Men, potential paedos, kept at arms length.

I take this stuff so seriously, Miss A, I decided not to have children. My mother hardly knew her father and I lived with the consequences.

The missus - from other end of the class divide - suffered divorce and decades of her father being degraded by her mother. A few years in it became clear that happy families would be impossible with this person, so I just said no.

Marriage? I only regret the loss of 15 years of extended family and friends, After all, one must take sides even in an divide that took place in silently, without a raised voice.

And one must side with the women, of course, no matter how much bankruptcy and adultery she indulged in along the way. But I don't mind. It was a horrible time with a damaged person who, in her 40s, harboured dreams of her parents - divorced for 25 years - getting back together.

Anyway, the children - boys - are suffering, slipping down the school leagues tables, out qualified at every turn and the minority of graduates.

Men are disposable. How can we reach any other conclusion?

The only amusement in the bleak landscape is the sheer number of nice middle class girls with good jobs, who are single and childless. Now there's a shortage of grad-level men.

Honest, not make up, go to 'my single friend' and search 35-45 yr-old women in London.

Note also that nearly all the girls in question are 'as comfortable in wellies are they are in a cocktail dress'.

'My single friend' really does catalogue Ruin. The Ruin of runaway, thoughtless, un-reflective, feminism.

jgm2 said...

@Mongoose...

There may be some merit in inventing jobs to give the disenfranchised and 'good with their hands' a job and a place in society. But if we had to 'create' a million unnecessary jobs in order to keep order then surely we could have created jobs at 1/3 of the price. Let's have some new roads - give the lads and lasses a pick and a shovel and set them digging. Tell 'em we're saving the planet by not using a JCB. They'll like that.

The utter lunacy of creating one million clip-bard jobs is that they were somehow deemed 'graduate' jobs. On graduate pay. And public service pension entitlemments. To make good on Blair's 'education, education and education' bollocks.

And we have fuck all to show for it. Not a lump of coal. Not an Austin Allegro. Not a bar of steel. Not a yard of motorway. Fuck all. Less than fuck all. Because they're affecting every other bastards productivity as they idiot about the place trying to look busy and justify their job. Plus the ongoing sense of arrogance and entitlement engendered by waltzing through school and university with the IQ of a fucking fish and still landing a plum job.

The cunts should have been issued with a pick or a shovel along with their comedy degree certificate and told to get started widening the M25. At least we'd have a fucking road to show for it and the cunts would be a lot healthier too. As it is they're all off with stress or a years maternity leave on full pay. When they're not fucking up everybodies lives that is.

jgm2 said...

@YAIC,

Oh aye, feminism has really come back to bite us all. As you say the number of professional women without kids or a husband as they pursue their 'career' is staggering. Moreso the absolute folly of those with children who insist on trying to have both a career and look after their children.

Me and the missus came to the point when we had kids and one of us had to give up our jobs because otherwise we'd be paying strangers an absolute fortune to look after our kids. So I gave up work. Not a tough decision - she had a career that was destined for greatness and I was destined to spend my life 'non-resident for tax purposes' but ultimately on a much lower income.

So that's what happened. But the number of our contemporaries who insist on both burning the career candle whilst also worrying constantly about their farmed out kids or rushing home because the au pair has set fire to the sofa or whatever is staggering. And the result of that divided attention is that neither of the parents is able to build the career they imagined. And so now they're stuck in their mid-forties and they can see that this, career-wise, is as good as it's going to get. They never will be on the board. They never will have the six-figure salary. They worked their arse off for nothing. Because neither of them were truly able to give their 'career' the attention it required. Because of the kids. And now they'll resent their kids for fucking up their lives. Oh, ayte, and they both still have to work because millions of other dual-'career' families have bid up the price of housing to astronomical levels so they have an enormous mortgage.

Fucked? I should say so.

a young anglo-irish catholic said...

"Oh, ayte, and they both still have to work because millions of other dual-'career' families have bid up the price of housing to astronomical levels so they have an enormous mortgage."

So very, very, very true. Really, this is the key to ruination and the key to why life in the UK is so much less civilised than elsewhere.

a young anglo-irish catholic said...

JGM

The utter lunacy of creating one million clip-bard jobs is that they were somehow deemed 'graduate' jobs.

Oh, yes, oh yes.

On the one hand I am the son of an Irish immigrant road worker. The M6 over Shap is something to wonder at.

On the other hand I'm subjected to box-ticking public sector dollies, without an original thought in their box-ticking heads.

You can guess what I have respect for...

mongoose said...

Allegro? Jesus, let's keep the swearing down, shall we?

I had to give up the manufacturing game. It just got too hard to take it seriously. Performance Management - made me want to die. Measuring stuff does not do anything. Targets, standards, balls this and bollocks that. Got any targets pinned up in the kitchen. 'Course you haven't. Procedures for loading the dishwasher? Little notice saying the things'll be hot when they come out? Bollocks have you. And you'll find no fucking targets in a Japanese factory. You'll just find people doing stuff right, and trying to do stuff right, because if you don't, matey, we will all just look at you in a disappointed way and you'll have to start again.

And now even the Japanese have gone bonkers and screwed themselves silly but they still make stuff that'll knock your socks off. Remember that robot from a decade back? Have a look at it now. "How long will it take too make this humanoid robot?" "No idea. Quarter of a century or more." "How much will it cost?" "No idea. Squillions." "OK, crack on then." You cannot do that sort of stuff though - even if you have got a zillion A-stars - unless you work and want to do it. We Brits now don't want to work or do stuff. And so we don't. Fucking Millenium Dome. Brunel lies in his grave weeping. The country is screwed.

lilith said...

...er...actually Mongoose, we have "Am I closed?" scrawled in magic marker on the freezer door...

mongoose said...

Goddam hippies! There oughta be a law.

call me ishmael said...

There will be.

Woman on a Raft said...

There had better be. I'm off to check the builders again. I believed Stanislav once explained that the action of not squirting a fried egg sandwich with brown sauce over the customer's towels was an entry-level building and allied trades skill which the Poles had mastered and the Brits had not.

Several years on and the fuckers have still not understood how to tip paint from one can to another without making it look like they are auditioning for Charlie Caroli's Slapstick Clowans.

Engineering; the stupid bastard stood in front of me and claimed the key to the loading bay door didn't work, and that was why they hadn't got on. Of course it works; what made the idiot even think I would hand him a key I hadn't already tested? Large as life and twice as ugly, he tried to outface me on this.

I took the key, put it in the lock, opened the door and demonstrated that it did work.

"Ah, admittedly I only tried it once". Well, once is all you need. To open the door, like. Look, it locks as well. Uses the big 'andle which is conveniently placed above the key 'ole.

Christ almighty, but they are builders. Why don't they have their own ladders, radio, masking sheets? Why are they incapable of working out where the wooden cover to the loft hatch is? Clue: they pushed it up and moved it aside in the general fashion of loft hatches. All you have to do is poke your head through the 'ole and abracadabra, there it is. Right by the side of the 'ole.

I'm frightened to let this lot have bladed objects in case they inadvertently slice their own knackers off. They are quite capable of it, if they haven't already done so.

Meanwhile, the Poles have all gone home for the winter and won't be back till the spring.

Don't talk to me about creating clipboard jobs; there are plenty of real jobs which need doing and for which real money is paid.

call me ishmael said...

It's the radio, makes me mad; contemporary tradesman cannot work without radio two being on. Next time I employ anyone I will ask in advance if they are radioheads or tradesmen, you know, what is it they want to do, work or listen to some babytalking deejay? Of course, if the work in itself isn't sufficiently entertaining they are doing something wrong. The Zen of work, eh? No thanks, guv; milk and three sugars, please.

mongoose said...

I currently have five tonnes of topsoil standing in bags in the garden. (Well, whatever five bags is - 4 tonnes?) The useless bugger who was going to shovel it for me didn't turn up, can't turn up this weekend... Doesn't apparently, unemployed, divorced, skint need the money all that much.

call me ishmael said...

Five tons isn't much, a friend and I moved twenty tons of gravel in the spring, with a wheelbarrow, took all day, mind, and white hot determination. Yes, and a couple of those long handled, round-headed shovels they used in Cool Hand Luke, make all the difference, they do. You should do it yourself, mr mongoose, save the money and great exercise, sort of thing people pay good money for, down the gym. One of the things I do is break the loads into fractions of the total - a big barrow, this is a hudredweight, twenty of these is a ton, five lots of twenty, or ten lots of ten and it's jobdone. Take a break and a stretch very five or ten loads.

The money you would have paid to this guy, put it towards a good barrow, or some good shovels. This is the way of it, and you can scale it right up, buy the tools, instead of paying the labourer's wages, unless you have a good labourer and he or she is worth their hire. My friend bought a cherrypicker for three grand, for his roof and gutters, better than hiring one or paying some other fucker to come along with theirs, when it suits them.

I had a gardener like your man, turned up when he wanted, wanted to do what he wanted to do. It's awful, ruinous, that people just refuse to understand the transaction, it's not to do with servility or anything like that, just with fairness to all parties; they don't understand the circulation of money, that I have to do my things in order to get it, to pay it to them, so that they can pay other people for other things and eventually all prosper.

Try, these days, not to employ anyone, gardeners, cleaners, painters, builders, especially builders. If they can do it, so can I, how hard can it be?

Terrible, really, that things have come to this. I used to say to my customers, If I don't turn up at the agreed time with your piece of furniture it will be only because I am dead. If I was five minures early I would wait at the end of the road, to be on time. This makes for a better world, just a little bit, when people do as they say they will.

mongoose said...

Yes, I do most of that - except painting. Can't abide painting. The thing is he is the son of a friend, he needs the hundred quid, he's built like a proverbial, he's not frightened of work.

He was late earlier in the year when we too were to be shovelling gravel. So I started myself. Got one bag done - shovelled into barrow, tipped down an ad hoc chute, raked at the lower level. Climb down, climb back up... Took me a couple of hours. He turned up - two further bags of gravel and a couple of tonnes of earth. Levelled, rolled. Done. An hour and a bit. All over by lunchtime. A bottle of beer and off home with his fifty quid.

It's the silently not turning up that pisses me off. Eventually his mum tracked him down in the afternoon. 30 years old and fetched out of the pub by his mum. Worthless bugger, but I cannot sack him without upsetting her.

"Spoons", Mr I, is what we used to call those shovels.

jgm2 said...

Well Mr Ishmael and Mr Mongoose. This is indeed the fucking problem. Nobody seems to want to work for your money. Because the government will simply give 'em your money for doing fuck all.

You get to the point where you're pathetically grateful if the cunts show up at all. Or so grateful that you recommend 'em to anybody who's interested.

And it is this great lackadaisical British attitude that has fucked absolutely everything. It is this attitude that means that there has always been work for generations of immigrants because the natives are too fucking good to do any work. Thousands of pounds up for grabs and the cunts can't even be bothered to swing by and give you a quote. 'Yeah, I'll be there tomorrow around 12 o'clock.' So you put your afternoon on hold. No show. No phonecall. No fuck all. And then whining because the Poles are coming over here undercutting 'em and taking 'their' jobs. Yeah. The countries going to the dogs because of the immigrants. Stupid, ignorant cunts. If it wasn't for the immigrants the idle fuckers would die of hunger.

I too have gone back to my roots. I'd let the fucking house fall down before I'd hire a British workman. Do everything myself. Painting, wallpaper, whatever.

We moved into this house last year and the folk we bought it off left a handy list of tradesmen they used - grass cutting -once a fortnight - £90. Ninety fucking quid! For, I dunno, half an acre of lawn. Every fortnight? Fucking hell pal - how much are you getting paid that you can afford to hand over 90 fucking quid after tax to save yourself 45 mins a fortnight on the mower? And him with two teenage sons to boot. Give 'em twenty quid - tear them away from their fucking X-Boxes.

Good for fuck all 90% of 'em. The bastard cousins of Austin Rover workers. There you go, there's your Austin Princess - costs the same as BMW but 'Buy British'. They can go and fuck themselves.

And then they stuck the same mentality - or 50% of the same mentality in university, awarded them some comedy degree from a rebadged adult literacy college and gave 'em a 35K a year job in 'compliance' for the fucking council. In any civilised country as opposed to the gangster controlled UK the cunts would starve to death. Good for fuck all.

jgm2 said...

And your old mate the Polish plumber must be laughing his bollocks off. Cleaning up he must be.

Plumbing is a piece of piss. Once you decide you're going to actually go ahead and do it and actually set to it then it's laughably simple. Want the dishwasher moved dear? No fucking problem. Want a second washing machine in the garage dear? No fucking problem. Absolute piece of piss. Which is why the thick cunts from school are able to do it. When they can be bothered to show up. Most of 'em are only a small DNA-step away from showing up with an unlicenced Transit and offering to tarmac your drive for 25,000 quid. Sur. Cash. Sur. Because I've got a bit of spare tarmac from a job I'm doing for A Big Corporation Plc in the next town. Sur.

So if they can do it then why can't you?

Plastering's a bit tricky but only because it takes a good six months to develop the fucking muscles. And carpet-fitting is so cheap it's not worth the bother. Plus, to be fair, they generally show up.

They're forever doing those TV shows with hidden cameras about cowboy builders. They could save everybody in the UK a fuck of a lot of time by trying to find a decent fucking builder.

Chancers, incompetents, 'learning on the job'. Fucking unemployable most of 'em.

Dick the Prick said...

Surely to fuck it's cash in hand?

mongoose said...

My gardener OTOH keeps a kitty and a note of how long she works and when it gets down to a few quid we bung her a twenty. She lets the children "help". She even grows bedding plants and stuff for the pots and brings it all along - subtracts a few pennies from the kitty. We are hard by a churchyard and at this time of year the leaves come up to your knees. Millions and millions of the buggers. She'll have all that bagged and gone too. She's been coming for a decade easily and we cannot remember how much we actually pay her per hour but twenty quid seems to last half the bloody summer. Fantastic woman, and before you ask, yes, she's English.

jgm2 said...

@Dick,

If I want to hand somebody 90 quid cash-in-hand then I have to earn 150 quid in order to do so. (150 - 40% tax = 90 quid)

His 90 quid for 45 mins work is the 150 quid I have to earn. Which would be acceptable if he was performing an angioplasty but unacceptable for some gimp with a ride-on-mower.

Dick the Prick said...

I see your point. I should probably stop using a gardener.