Welcome to 'A to Z', people. I'm not sure how this particular idea will pan out, but it seems to me that an opportunity to moan about things in alphabetical order should provide me with plenty of scope. As you can see, I shall be adding entries as and when the mood takes me - they won't be publicised on the Home page, so check back regularly to see if I've been arsed...
 'A' is for Art: I don't know much about art, but I know what I don't like. Mainly, this consists of anything in the Tate Modern, with arseholes like Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin holding special places of contempt in my heart. Sorry, but if it's a toss-up between looking at half a pickled sheep or an unmade bed, or simply crossing the river, strolling up to the National Gallery and gazing upon Turner's 'The Fighting Temeraire' or something by van de Capelle (I'm a sucker for a sea-scape), then it's a bit of a no-brainer. So-called 'experts' will no doubt point out that art is all about challenging preconceptions and that there is as much merit in a mural by Banksy as there is in a Botticelli, but frankly, the experts (in this field as in so many others) are full of shit. Be honest with yourself - which would you rather spend your afternoon quietly contemplating, this or this?
 'C' is for Charity:
 'E' is for England: I'm an Englishman. Both my parents? English. I was born in Shropshire (right in the middle of England), which makes me about as English as it's possible to be. I like being English in the same way I like being a Wolves fan. It's because, as things stand right now, both of these labels denote an underdog. I have trouble coming to terms with the British Government frowning on me for wanting to be English, as if I, as an ordinary working man, should personally shoulder the blame for hundreds of years of Colonialism when it was the British Government of the day that made all its money on the back of slavery and exploitation, not English working men like myself. People like me were the ones coughing our lungs up at the age of twenty during the Industrial Revolution. People like me were the ones shot to bloody ribbons at Passchendaele. The ruling classes tended to be sat around making idiotic decisions and getting richer by the day. No change there, then.
So it tends to get on my tits each April as St. George's Day approaches and I look round and wonder where all the red and white flags are. It's not as if people need much encouragement to wave a flag and have a beer; just look back a month at St. Patrick's Day. Most of London was wearing green and wobbling about with a Guinness in hand, yet on the 23rd of April in England's Capital city things are always quiet. It's because we have been successfully convinced that a bit of national pride once a year is tantamount to Fascism: that the only people who would want to wave a red-and-white flag are skinhead thugs; racists and queer-bashers. You can't be English anymore as we're all one big happy nation. You're British, don't you know. Except, if that's the case, how come there's a Scottish Assembly to decide Scottish matters and a Welsh assembly for the Welsh. Where's the English one, then? At Westminster, only it's not English, it's British; weren't you listening?
There's also another connotation of the red cross on the white background. It's the symbol of the Crusader, so not only are you a jingoistic Nazi and a racist for wanting to display it, you're also an Islamophobe. And you hate women. And you touch up children. And you eat meat/smoke/drink yada yada yada. How many years have we fallen for this now? How long will we continue to swallow this shit before we say 'enough'? Take a look at who's currently running the show (though thank God, not for much longer!) The Prime Minister? Scottish. The Chancellor? Scottish. Huge swathes of money are sent to Scotland year after year so that Scottish students get free higher education and Scottish pensioners get treatment denied English ones. So that's a 'United' Kingdom, is it? Bollocks! The brilliant thing is that the Scots are willingly moving towards devolution, meaning they'll eventually go back to being their own country and we'll no longer have to pay for them. As an added bonus, all the Scottish MPs currently filling their snouts at Westminster will be booted out too. Marvellous.
However, that's a dream for the future. Right now, it's about time we, the ordinary English, took back the Cross of St. George. Took it back from those who profane it with racism and violence. Took it back from those who would use it to paint us all as Fascists and bullies. Took it back and used it for what it is. A symbol of national pride to be celebrated once a year. We're not better than the Scots or Welsh or Irish, merely separate in the same way that they are. It's time we were allowed, nay, encouraged, to celebrate this difference; this 'diversity'. Otherwise...well, G.K. Chesterton may eventually turn out to be more prophet than poet...
 'F' is for Freemasons:
Reading this
site you may come to the conclusion that I don't have a great deal of time for
Freemasons and you'd be right. Now I'm aware that they're a very old and very
worthy organisation and that they do a great deal of work for charity and I'm
not knocking that. I'm also aware that membership of an exclusive club with
secret signs can provide an enormous amount of comfort for a certain type of
chap. I was in the Tufty Club myself when I was seven and I've still got the
badge to prove it. No, I don't begrudge these fellows their evenings out with
their aprons and their complicated handshakes. They deserve all the joy they
undoubtedly get from their Tubal Cains and their Boazes.
What I do object to is that specific tenet
of the Masonic code that insists that each Mason is obliged to help a fellow
Mason wherever possible, which all the ones I've ever come into contact with
have taken to mean 'promote all the other Masons you can find.' In my organisation, this leads to people
being promoted into areas they know nothing about, where they then rely on the
people already in that area to do all the work; which the newly promoted Mason then
takes the credit for. This ensures both advancement in the lodge and a trip up
the pay scale for the lucky Frat Boy, and a good deal of bitterness and
resentment for those tasked with making him look good.
Last year, I spent weeks and weeks of my
free time worrying over something that was absolutely nothing to do with me. I
pushed my blood pressure sky-high creating and revising training
protocols to a deadline for a new Degree course, until I'd got them to a
suitable standard to be accepted by the University for accreditation purposes.
I then watched as someone else got their face on the front page of our
organisation's website in recognition of all that hard work.
More recently, I've worked out that over the years
my organisation has spent north of eight grand sending me on courses and
training programmes. I have ended up with eleven letters after my name and am
now the most qualified gibbon in my particular section of the zoo, and yet I'm
a good twelve grand adrift of the people above me with the desk jobs and the
funny handshakes.
Very soon, there will be a whole group of
new people that will require training on the back of the work I helped put together
last year and no doubt the management will be looking to the small handful of people
with training qualifications to train them. I have a training qualification. At
least I did. It's currently in eight pieces in an envelope addressed to the person
who will, any day now, be asking me to get involved in training again.
I may not
have the handshake, but I'm more than capable of giving them the finger.
 'G' is for Great Britain:
 'H' is for History:
 'J' is for Joke:
 'L' is for Lager: There was a wonderful episode of 'Men Behaving Badly' where Les the landlord laid on a selection of European beers to see what the lads made of them. Cue much merriment as Gary and Tony imbibed copious amounts of 'Binky', 'Plop' and 'Sod'. Well, I may not be as worldly-wise as those two, but my local offy has a sterling selection of Polish beverages, and I'm having a right good go at working my way through them whenever the football's on. It all started off with the fairly innocuous 'Lech' at 5.2% and then slowly morphed into the lovely 'Tyskie' at 5.6%. Then came the frankly unpronounceable 'Zywiec' at 5.7%, before all bets were called off as I discovered 'Zubr' at 6% and 'Warka' at 7%. Now I'm at the stage - Real Ale boy as I am - where I will occasionally fancy an ice-cold lager and for once won't have to worry about feeling guilty and compromising my alcoholic integrity by ordering a 'Budweiser' or a 'Carling', because I now know that there are some real, top notch brews out there, courtesy of our friends from the other side of the old Iron Curtain. God Bless Poland!
 'M' is for Money:
 'P' is for Politics: Politics is where all the gobby fucks you couldn't stand when you were at university eventually end up. There is something in certain people's genetic make-up which encourages them to think they know what's best for everyone else and that they must passionately strive to inflict their vision on the rest of us for the greater good. There is also something in other people's genetic make-up which encourages them to listen to the voices telling them to kill you and eat your sweetbreads. One of these groups of people we refer to as 'politicians', the other 'serial-killers'. On the whole, I'd trust the latter more.
Politics in Britain is a terribly complicated business, but it basically all boils down to the Left and the Right. The Left believe that everyone should be equal (apart from the politicians on the Left themselves, that is) and that everyone is entitled to a bit of the pie, even if they didn't contribute to any of the ingredients in the first place. Vote for them and they'll tell you what to do to make everyone equal. The Right believe that if you don't get off your arse and work hard for a living, you have the right to starve (unless your ancestors had a stately home and were fabulously wealthy from all the money created for them by people doing exactly that - working hard and starving.) Vote for them and they'll tell you what to do to make everyone rich and prosperous. There's a third party in British politics too, but I couldn't tell you what they believe in because they don't know themselves.
Me, I'm a Libertarian, which means I believe they can all go and fuck off because only I know what's best for me and don't trust anyone to tell me otherwise, least of all some ex student activist/public school knob-end. I believe in the concept of 'do as you please' rather than 'do as you're told', and that the role of Government is to be small, discrete and to stay the fuck out of my life. It certainly shouldn't exist to spend my money on adverts telling me to drink less, exercise more and eat vegetables. These political beliefs mean that I always vote tactically, which usually means finding out who is in control and voting for whoever is most likely to beat them. I feel this sort of approach should be encouraged, as unemployment every five years might sharpen the minds of some of the gits purported to be acting in our best interests. That, or regular armed insurrection...
 'S' is for Sex: I remember that.
 'W' is for Work:
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