Merry Christmas and the battle against the Evil Politically Correct forces, part 2

As per my last post, the Politically Correct Evil forces are trying to get rid of Christmas by calling it any possible name in order not to “upset” anyone who is not Christian, although, funny enough, non-Christians (at least the ones I know) do celebrate Christmas as much as the Christians do. But this is not deterring the Politically Correct Evil forces. In fact, common sense and the real world is what they despise the most and they like things their way and everybody should follow.

Well, the hell with that, and I think I made my view clear enough in my last post, but what about the rest of my colleagues? Majority of them are British and from a Christian upbringing: Would they join my fight for Christmas?

Well, once Human Resources forwarded to all of us the email about the Festive Winter Celebration, there was a bit of talking about a possible boycotting of the party and a proper uprising was taking form, in the shape of an alternative Christmas Party staged somewhere at some point.

Wow, I thought, power of the masses! Yes, we can! The times they are a-changing, and all that jazz…

Yes, because only the masses can change the world. Take Ghandi, for example, he managed the independence of India not by being non-violent as the “historians” always want us to believe, but because he had 300 millions (at the time) Indians behind him to kick the British out of the country. In fact, if he was just as non-violent but with his family and his mates as his only supporters, do you think we will still be talking about him?
On the other hand, take the Olympics in China last year. If every single athlete had the decency of boycotting the opening ceremony, the Chinese government would have suffered an unbelievable embarrassment by staging an open ceremony with no bloody athlete (apart for the Chinese of course) to take part in it. Instead though, only a small minority of athletes boycotted the opening ceremony and in the end nobody noticed they were missing.

But masses need a leader. Even the commies, always banging about collectivism and “people”, they always had a leader, didn’t they? Mao, Stalin, Che Guevara and so on, because they well knew that without a leader the masses lose any interest and go back to watching Ex-Factor. Talking about that, Simon Cowell is a leader too and if tomorrow he was going to start a political party, I bet he could get more votes than Brown and Cameron put together. Not sure how the country will cope with the credit crunch but Britain will put up a hell of a karaoke show.

So, in order to do a rebellion, we need the masses, a leader and then propaganda, leaflets, banners and yes, of course, some money to keep the fight going.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any of the above: no masses, no leaders, no propaganda, no leaflets, but this didn’t surprise me. The British have many qualities, but what they are absolute rubbish at is to set up a proper rebellion!
After all, they still have kings and queens and the congestion charge could double up tomorrow morning and nobody will move a muscle.
So, at the end the only thing I could do was to boycott myself the Festive Winter Party and tell as many people as possible why I was not going to the party. I was the masses, I was the leader, I was the propaganda.

I must say I did get the odd look about this but no arguments were raised and no clash happened and the world did not (sadly) change.

Lucky Ghandi. I wish I had his 300 million (at the times) followers. I will be celebrating Christmas every day.

And now Happy New Year to all of you, Happy 2010 and if I remember correctly, aren’t we all counting the years from the birth of Jesus Christ? Or maybe should we not count the years from another important event in the history of the world? Such as, let me say, when Political Correctness was invented?

I am not sure exactly of the year when this rubbish thinking started, nobody is, but more time goes by it seems 1984 to me…

Merry Christmas and the battle against the Evil Politically Correct forces, part 1

Merry Christmas everyone!

Yes, you heard me right, Merry Christmas, I said, and no happy Diwali, joyful Ramadan or gracious Winnie-the-Pooh day but Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas!

I hope I said it many times, because one day, if we keep prostrating our intellect to the Politically Correct brigade, the C-word will be banned and we will be doomed.

It all probably started in America I guess, like Coca-Cola, Rock n’ roll and take-away pizza, but political correctness is now a disease spreading all over the Western world, to the point that, sadly, it is already corroding our way of living.

Political correctness is such a big subject that I cannot describe it in one post, so I will instead focus my attention on two things: the battle for Christmas and the unwillingness of the British to rebel.

Christmas had been suffering a few setbacks in the last few years. Christmas lights in Oxford Street had been renamed Winter lights, for example, and in some schools Christmas is not celebrated anymore. However, it was not until this nonsense reached me directly that I really understood the gravity of the phenomenon.

Now, my company held every year a Christmas Party, in which I have always participated, and this year I was going to participate too, until I received the invitation from the Human Resources Department where, with my anger and disbelief, the Christmas Party had been renamed Festive Winter Party.

Festive Winter Party? I never knew that people celebrated winter since the times the druids were constructing Stonehenge, or was it some kind of typing error? Some of us in the company made the point of asking if, by any chance, there was some kind of mistake and this is the reply we got from the HR department:

Further to the recent disappointing comments concerning the ‘Company Festive Winter Party’, I would like to clarify any confusion.

As I expect you are aware, we have a team made up of many faiths, and in recognising our diversity we have referred to the party as our Festive Winter Event. As the event is not themed as a Christmas party this is thought to be more appropriate.
Criticisms which have been made in this regard have upset and offended other employees and all staff are asked to use email in an appropriate way which does not or could not cause such offence.

Please feel free to approach HR further if needed in regards to this.

Thank you for your cooperation, understanding and appreciation of others.

I decided not to reply to the statement, considering that, although I had the right to do so, it would have done me no good and, who knows, maybe put me into trouble. So, I have decided to do it here and HR is welcome to comment on my post:

Dear Human Resources Department,

Further to your recent communication, let me clarify the following points:

I am aware that we have a team of many faiths, as a Catholic I myself belong to a minority in this country, and as an Italian I belong to an ethnic minority, so I can play the race-faith card too.

Christmas is a tradition of this country as much as the Queen and therefore it is ridiculous to abolish it in the name of political correctness. Diversity is a wonderful thing, but in Rome do as the Romans do, as the saying goes, or otherwise, shouldn’t the Muslims rename the Ramadan and the Hindu Diwali?

If the criticism made has upset and offended some people, could I please have a word with them? I am sure I will be able to explain my action, although I guess this is out of the question, considering that probably nobody was upset and offended…

Lastly, don’t thank me for what I am not doing: cooperating and understanding, and the appreciation of others does not mean that I have to renege on the 2,000 years of history and tradition.

I was going to talk about the unwillingness of the British to rebel, but I will write it in my next post, in the meantime, Merry Christmas and if you are offended, I couldn’t care less.

Thierry "Handry" Henry is just like a politician

Unless you are Michel Platini or a fundamentalist France or Barcelona or Arsenal supporter, or you are not aware that at football you cannot play with your hands, you will agree with me that Thierry Henry is a bloody cheat.

As you may know, during last night’s World Cup qualifier against Ireland, Monsier Va Va Voom has controlled the ball with his hand (twice) before making the pass to his team-mate Williams Gallas, who did eventually score the goal that qualified France for the 2010 World Cup.

Now, it seems like that even the most fundamentalist France or Barcelona or Arsenal supporters (although I am not so sure about Platini) could, after all, possibly agree that Thierry Henry was wrong in controlling the ball with his hand (twice) but nonetheless they still excuse Mr Henry’s behaviour by claiming that everybody else would have acted in the same way in the same situation.

Sounds familiar this way of thinking, doesn’t it? Where did I hear it before? Oh yes, the politicians!

Do you recall the scandal of the MP expenses, a few months ago, where British politicians were caught claiming expenses for non-existent mortgages, armchairs, gate repairs or any other possible bizarre purchases with taxpayers money? Well, yes, do you remember their excuses? Yes, you got it, everybody-else-would-have-done-the-same-it-was-the system-that-was-wrong...

Nobody was feeling sorry for the politicians then, so is Thierry Henry any better? What about the bankers then? They were doing the same as the other bankers, why so much rage against them? Huh?

What I find really pathetic is that, after the match, Henry admitted to have handled the ball with his hand (twice) but then he concluded by saying “I am not the referee”.

Love that: “I am not the referee”.

So, if I understood correctly the Henry-philosophy (if there is actually any), I can go and steal a bike right now because I am not the law, I can throw a rubbish can in the street because I am not a cleaner and I can pee in your beer because I am not a barista!

I also must say that, in a way, I am glad Henry did what he did. I always knew the guy was not a gentleman and finally now I don’t have to hear or read any rubbish about the supposed flair of this overrated player. It is almost as good as when Zidane showed his true colours by head-butting Marco Materazzi after the 2006 World Cup Final, another example of a “gentleman” loved by the media and then showing himself as the thug he really was.

Save the crucifix from paranoid atheists and the EUSSR

The crucifix, in Italy, is everywhere.

If you go to a school, or if you go to a hospital or to any public place in Italy, you will always see a crucifix hanging from one of the walls. It is so much part of the Italian identity that the first time I happened to be in a British hospital, it took me several minutes to understand why the hell I did not feel to be in a hospital at all.

“Damn”, I then thought,”the bloody crucifix on the wall… it is missing!”

If you are a fundamental atheist or a know-it-best-laic, or an even-more-know-it-best-Liberal, you are probably thinking that I am a small brained bigot, brainwashed by the Catholic Church from an early age.

Maybe, I was indeed brainwashed from an early age, but I am rather glad to have been brainwashed by the Catholic Church than by the Soviet Communist Party or by the Politically Correct lobby that is running the propaganda show these days.

Anyway, back to the crucifix, in Italy it is everywhere and it has been there for a very long time.
However, Christ is not very much liked by the Socialist Super-State of Europe and it is recent news that the European Court of Human Rights has awarded €5,000 (of our money) in damages to Soile Lautsi, a Finnish woman (married to an Italian man and living in Italy) who had opposed the display of a Catholic crucifix at a state school attended by her two children.


Now, where should I start?

The European Court of Supposedly Human Rights is a Soviet-style bureaucratic body where all decisions are filtered by the political agenda of the European Union with the ultimate goal of undermining the sovereignty of each member of such a union.
Just as much Christmas has been increasingly banned by becoming Festive Winter Celebration in the United Kingdom, the goal of the EU policies is to eliminate the identity of Italy by diminishing the influence of the Catholic Church.

Now, Mrs Soile Lautsi is a paranoid atheist, who has not a clue of Italian history, Italian identity and Italian way of living. It is such a shame that she married an Italian and moved to Italy, it would have been much more engaging for her to have married, let’s say, an Iranian and have moved to Iran… there she could really have made a bigger name of herself!
Can anyone sane of mind imagine brave-heart Soile taking a stand against the theocratic government of Iran? Anyone guessing how much compensation the Great Council of the Ones You Do What I Say will be giving her?

Exactly.

However, the people who I understand the least are the Italians who stand on the side of the paranoid atheists and The European Court of Supposedly Human Rights.
I guess they think that Italy should follow whatever Europe decides to do with our history, tradition and identity… I guess they think it is advisable to avoid any confrontation with Mighty Europe… I guess they think that if they can get rid of the crucifix today, well why not getting rid of the saints from the calendars tomorrow, alongside with the sound of the bells of the churches and the images of saints and Madonnas in the streets… and I guess I am having none of that knee-jerk rubbish.

And, as a final thought, I would like to point out the wording of The Times in reporting the news:
The ruling could encourage a review of the use of religious symbols in state schools throughout Europe. The court did not, however, order the Italian authorities to remove the crucifixes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6901228.ece

I repeat: the court did not order the Italian authorities to remove the crucifixes…

Of course they didn’t! If they had, that would mean that Italy is not a country anymore but only a colonial outpost of the European Community Empire.

But that, I am very sorry to say, is only a matter of time.

Andre Agassi and the wig (and the drugs)

Unlike many tennis fans of my generation, I never managed to idolise Andre Agassi. In the ‘90s, in fact, most of my friends loved the guy to bits, partly because of his tennis skills, but also because he came across as a kind of “rebel of tennis” because of his heavy metal hair style, bad-boy behaviour and coolish (at the time) outfits.

I always considered Agassi a great tennis player (although too stuck on the baseline for my liking) and a charismatic entertainer. However, I couldn’t see any rebellion in him, because there was none. To me he was more like a clever businessman who managed to fill a gap in the bad-boy-tennis-player market after McEnroe had retired.
What Agassi did was to take SuperBrat’s nutty behaviour and adding to it the funky clothes and the long hair. What I didn’t know at the time was that, just as much the rebellion was fake, the long hair was a trick too.

In fact, as per Agassi recent admission, he had been wearing a wig from 1990 to 1994 (making him the only player to have won Wimbledon wearing a wig) and I wonder how his teenager supporters of the time would have felt if they had found that out… By the way, thinking about it, in 1994 Agassi shaved his hair and dumped the wig. Did anybody ever wonder how he went from long thick hair to baldy in one go? I guess we were too busy watching Beverly Hills 90210 back then… for that matter I had a crush on Shannen Doherty, and wasn’t she hot?

Anyway, as time went by, Agassi slowly ditched the Rebel Without a Cause image and instead turned himself into a kind of Dalai Lama of tennis, throwing kisses to the crowd at the end of every match, raising money for charity, crying after victories and becoming one of those gentlemen that in the early years he despised.

However, as much as Agassi was not a rebel at the beginning of his career, he was not a gentleman at the end. By his own admission, he took illegal hard drugs in 1997 but was not banned by the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) because he had written them a letter asking for forgiveness! The reason why Agassi was not sentenced is simple: he was too popular with the tennis fans and too “marketing valuable” to receive a ban.

What I find irritating, but not surprising, in Agassi’s behaviour is that he has decided to come clear about his tricks only now, three years after having retired from tennis and just before publishing his autobiography… but will the extra bucks do him any good?

Ultimately, the Agassi’s saga can also be read in a political way. Agassi has, in fact, shown us the true colours of the Liberal he has always been: a rebel not really rebelling in his youth, a publicised do-gooder in his older days and all along, while pretending to be equal to others, cunningly not paying for his errors by abusing his popularity.

I must say that I am quite glad that Pete Sampras beat him most of the time. Nobody in my circle of friends liked Sampras back then. “Too boring”, they were saying. Still, he won 7 Wimbledon titles, never pretended to be anything more than a great tennis player and, I can pretty much say, never dared to wear a wig on Central Court!

Obama or Berlusconi should have won the Nobel Peace Prize? You decide!

Can you believe it? President Obama has scooped up the Nobel Peace Prize! Wow, the guy has been President of the USA for only nine months and he has already grasped a prize that many others have spent a lifetime to achieve.

I mean, think about it, Al Gore, for example. The poor chap had to come up with a full 94 minutes documentary packed with convenient lies and mistakes to get the prize, although I must admit the accusations to George W. Bush helped him quite a bit in getting the prize.

Then think about Yasser Arafat, a terrorist leader, who in order to scoop up the prize had to pretend to care and cry of rage about the Israeli people blown apart (by his men) and, mind you, no onions were left on the shelf in his local supermarket, I can tell you. So then, after such incredible performances, how could Obama get the prize so quickly?

Well, it seems like that he won the prize because, first of all, he is not George W Bush, and this is a great achievement.

He is also sending more troops to Afghanistan. No, that is not a real peaceful thing to do, I admit, but because he is not George W Bush we’ll let him off the hook. You never know, instead of bullets the US soldiers will be firing flowers!

Furthermore, he has politely asked the Iranian leader, Ahmadinejad, to stop being a bully and to get rid of his nuclear toys soon. It seems like the Iranian Big Boss does not give much of a monkey about it but, hey, that is irrelevant!

Then, President Obama is also working to reduce the impact of global warming, taxing naughty businesses lots of money to go green and spending billions of US taxpayers’ dollars in order to stop the world getting hotter and hotter. Let’s really hope that global warming is a real thing, otherwise all the money and energy will be wasted and that would be a shame.

Finally, President Obama is giving hope to the world because he is a nice, cool chap and he can talk, and now that I am saying this, why all of you are suddenly thinking of Tony Blair?

Anyway, all of this is great stuff, and one day President Obama will be walking on water scooping up the Second Coming Prize, but in my personal opinion another man should have won the Nobel Peace Prize instead, and his name is….

...Silvio Berlusconi.


“Naah! Who are you kidding?” You must be thinking, but, hell, give peace a chance and I will try to explain.

Now, aren’t they all, the Peace loving people of the planet, always telling you to make Love Not War? Aren’t they? Well, Mr Berlusconi has been doing Love for quite some time and with many women, some rather hot, I must say, so respect for the man and we all know Love is the answer.
Secondly, he is not George W Bush and this is a great achievement too.

Berlusconi is also trying to make a peace deal with the magistrates in Italy, he keeps saying to them: “I don’t want anything to do with you, let’s be friends”, but they keep bullying him.

Well, if I have not done enough to convince you, and you still think Berlusconi’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is ridiculous, I hope that you consider Obama’s victory ridiculous just the same.

I personally think the Nobel Peace Prize is nothing but an expensive and useless political circus, and it stinks.

One last thought, before I go betting on President Obama winning the next Miss World title… the President-Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner, is he or is he not the same President Obama that refused to meet the Dalai Lama? I mean: one Nobel Peace Prize winner that refuses to meet another Nobel Peace Prize winner!

That is not very peaceful, is it?

News from the EUSSR

Heard the news? No, I am not talking about Sir Alex complaining to a referee or Ken Livingstone whingeing about Boris Johnson appearing on Eastenders, what I am talking about instead is the Irish voters handing their sovereignty to the EU.

Only last year, if you recall, the Irish had casted their vote about the European Constitution. But last time the No had won, so the European Parliament has allegedly changed parts of the European Constitution (Really? How? Can anybody give me a clear example?), threw money to Ireland (i.e. bribed their government) and, voila, Irish voters have been asked again to cast their vote.

This time, however, the Yes has won and no more referendum is now needed. In fact, in true European Union style, once the only acceptable answer is given (Yes, of course), the game is done and politicians of the main parties (Left or Right, whatever) rush to congratulate themselves to the next target: convincing the renegade states, Czech Republic and Poland, to sign the bloody Lisbon treaty.

The media, in the meantime, are quick to glorify the great achievement of the European Union and the Irish voters have been immediately re-instated to the status of human thinking beings, and the same happened with the US voters after they voted for Obama in the last presidential election.

It is undeniable that every time some European country, naughty enough to hold a referendum in the first place (where are you Mr Brown? Mr Berlusconi?), decides not to give away their sovereignty to the EU super-state, the media and the establishment are utterly disgusted. All of a sudden the pro-Europe intelligentsia, usually so much “for the people”, is raising the issue that maybe the people are not clever enough to vote, or maybe the questions were not asked in the proper way because, in their Soviet-like minds, there could not possibly be so many people not agreeing that the European Union can only be a successful idea.

Euro-sceptics, in fact, are usually portrayed as a mixture of fascists, close minded, Neanderthal, underdeveloped morons who must be silenced in order for the future of Europe to be possible.

The European Union is getting more and more executive powers without our consent, but why Brussels should decide how to rule the UK or Italy or Ireland? What is the point of having fought World War II if the sovereignty of our states is given away to a utopian un-represented bunch of bureaucrats?

Behind our back more laws are introduced and political correctness is the weapon of the new dictatorship that is taking over Europe while we waste our time thinking about the new football season or X Factor wannabe singers.

The EU is getting bigger, just like the Soviet Union or the Third Reich did. The first two empires used tanks, while the EU uses the media, diplomatic bullying and lack of information to allow the empire to expand. Can anyone, sane of mind out there, explain to me why, when a referendum about Europe is finally taking place, and if the answer is not what the EU wants, the referendum is taken again and again, until the outcome satisfies Brussels? Do we call this democracy? I call it scam.

The issue about Europe is a big one and a serious one. Please note the following:

The word empire, referred to the European Union is not mine. I have actually quoted from Jose Manual Barroso, yes, the President of the European Commission. You can check him out in the following interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Ralocq9uE

The link between the Soviet Union and the European Union is not mine invention either. It has been expressed by a former Soviet dissident and free-thinker, Boris Bukovsky. You can read his opinion in the following link:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865

Or watch his interview on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YEjgg5cuwE

Bruce Springsteen is hitting 60

You know what? Also rock stars get old. They dye their hair and keep singing the old anthems, but time ticks for them too and this week Bruce Springsteen will be hitting 60.

The difference between rock stars and normal people is that rock stars do not retire, they earn way too much to take retirement into consideration. They rather prefer producing overrated records instead: they know too well that there are always some deluded fans willing to buy them. What rock stars, though, have in common with normal people, is the desire to talk about things they don’t know much about and trying hard to be popular. Bruce Springsteen and his fiddle with politics is a typical example.

The guy, as per his own admission, was never much interested in politics and he had never read a proper book until he was in his mid-twenties. In fact, he had spent most of his younger days making music, great rock music if you ask me and millions of people who bought his records.

“The Boss” was so much disinterested in politics that many people even thought that he could even be a bit of a Conservative. I thought it too, after all most of his songs were about getting on with it.

I remember my Leftie friends hated the guy because of the American flags flying everywhere at his concerts and because of him looking as a “white trash” without a clue about the issues of the world, but what they despised more than anything, was that “Born in the USA” song, so damn patriotic.

But that was then, now Bruce Springsteen is the prodigal son of the Liberals. He has been bashing George W Bush in the past five years with so much hatred that from listening to his interviews and songs you must think Dubya must be the reincarnation of the Devil.

Springsteen is entitled to his own opinions, but there is more than just “patriotism” in his passion for politics. In the 80’s he was keeping a bit quiet about politics because those were the Reagan’s years and many of his fans loved the then President of the USA as much as him. With the arrival of the ‘90s though, “The Boss” started to lose followers and in order to keep afloat (aka making money) he needed a way to come back into the spotlight, and what a better way than to receive an ovation from the political Left?

The first pivotal moment was the song “American Skin”, written in 2000, in which Springsteen was condemning the NY police for having killed an innocent immigrant, Amadou Diallo. The song was the kind of bad white cops kill innocent black immigrant and was a condemnation of the “zero tolerance” approach of Rudolf Giuliani and a call against anti-racism. Of course, Springsteen never wrote a song about all the policemen killed while on duty or praised Giuliani’s policies that made New York City much safer. Instead, he preferred to concentrate on a tragic episode in order to make himself a “hero” and get some publicity (aka making more money).

September the 11th was the second and more important pivotal moment. The Boss was always known for his tedious attention to details in producing a new album, but with “The Rising” (the album that followed 9/11) it didn’t take him long to produce it. In less than a year, in fact, the album was ready. America was still shaken by the atrocities that happened in New York and the old blue collar hero (who, by the way, has never worked in a factory) was ready to be back at the right time in the limelight.

From then on, it was all about Bush did this and Bush did that. Listening to Springsteen you would think that America was at risk of becoming a dictatorship run by a dick, a bit like Zimbabwe.

President Bush was not for everybody’s taste but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you want to save your citizens from further atrocities you have to take some though decisions, whatever that takes. After all, if the terrorists do not care about out rights why should we care about theirs? Does Springsteen really believe that leaving the terrorists alone, they will be leaving us too? Does he really think the US government is imprisoning random people? A man who spent his life singing songs what does he know about the security of the country? Not a word came from Springsteen since 9/11 about the Islamic threat, not a word about the number of Islamic terrorists’ plots that the CIA has stopped from happening.

Thankfully for Springsteen though, now Obama is the President of the USA and he is already “Working on a Dream”.

I am guessing “The Boss” is having a very happy 60th birthday and I am wishing him so, and at least now, with Bush out of the picture, he will hopefully stop talking about what he doesn’t know.

CD Shops vs Spotify

I used to love CD shops, back in the 90's and early 00’s, when I was younger and CD shops were a cool place to spend time and the only place where you could buy music.

Time used to fly in CD shops, looking for rarities, bargains and sometimes both. CDs were expensive at the time and you couldn’t afford many, so when you decided to buy one, you wanted to buy something worth the money.

But nowadays, things have changed so much that the 90's and early 00’s are ancient history.

I went to HMV recently, only because I had a voucher that I received a year ago and I wanted to spend the last £8 remaining. I ended up spending half an hour undecided between Led Zeppelin, Piazzolla and AC DC. I must say, in the last three years I have been in CDs shops only because I had vouchers given to me for my birthdays.

The problem is that I don't enjoy anymore buying CDs in a shop, especially in megastores. First of all, the CD section is shrinking by the day, and soon you will be able to buy only games and DVDs. Secondly, the music I like, rock and jazz, is dying out and the majority of music in the store I cannot make out what it is. Maybe, it's called getting old I suppose, but anyway, what's the point of making the journey to a shop, getting bombarded by loud music, sandwiched between people and then queuing to buy your purchase, when the Internet can do most of the work for you?

If I have to buy a CD I would rather buy it online. On the HMV website, for example, I can listen to 30 seconds of most of the songs, and there and then I can decide to buy the album or not. The price is also generally cheaper than at the store. There are also other websites, like Kazaa (is it still around?) or some others like E-mule where you can download music for free.

However, I recently discovered the best website of all, called Spotify. This site is free and you can access thousands of tracks apart from Beatles, Pink Floyd and some others who have not signed up (yet).

I personally love jazz and at Spotify I can find lots of albums that would cost me a fortune at the shop. That's the thing about jazz, in a shop it's expensive because not many people listen to it but online instead it is, together with classical music, the easiest music to get, maybe because most of the artists are dead or maybe their copyrights did not include any Internet clauses.

With Spotify, like everything else in life, there are downsides too, but only two that I can think of. The first one is advertisement, but the ads are every four songs or so, and they last just ten seconds.

The other downside is that you cannot download music from Spotify into your Mp3 or Ipod.

I am personally rather suspicious of the idea of free things and at the beginning I thought the ads were during the actual songs, similar to when I was a kid and the radio hosts used to talk over the songs to discourage you from recording from the radio and at the same time persuading you to buy the cassette or the CD.

The benefits are, however, more substantial than the downsides and what I like the most about Spotify is, apart from the selection of music, the fact that you don't need to download the music into your computer! You are practically borrowing a CD shop every time you log in and then giving it back.

As far as I am concerned, CD shops do not do for me anymore but, I must say, I still like the very small ones or the ones I visit while I am abroad. I like the feeling of looking through random titles instead of going to a shop where everything you know is where it is supposed to be.

By the way, at the end of my shopping I bought AC DC, maybe because they are not on Spotify... yet.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a man?

Another summer is gone, oh dear, well, at least here in good old England we did have a summer at last. Climate change is finally working but, blimey, it will take a while before matching Brazil or Thailand!

Anyway, summer is all about sport.

England has won the Ashes, apparently. I don’t know anything about cricket, or what some kind of ashes have to do with a sport competition, but it seems like the trophy was a cool thing to bring home. In tennis, Roger Federer has won Wimbledon (again) and Andy Murray still hasn’t managed to win a bloody Grand Slam title. However, the main sporting attraction of the summer was a sportswoman (or sportsman) under the name of Caster Semenya.

Well, as you probably know, Caster Semenya has won the Women's 800 metres of the World Championship of Athletics by a mile. Nothing wrong with that, if it wasn’t that, well… she looks A LOT like a man… I mean much more than Ann Widdecombe does! And she talks like a man, with a pitch of voice that she could be performing as a decent tenor. I could get hold only of an interview of her/him (what the hell) in the web, but the way she/he looks, talks and moves is unquestionably manly, and many people I talked to seem to agree.

The questioning about Semenya’s real gender has been growing for a while, and increasingly so since her stunning victory in the final that IAAF (the International Association of Athletics Federations) has forced Semenya to take a gender test. By that, I don’t mean just checking what she looks like naked, but a thorough examination of her body, internally as well as externally.

The story has obviously created, since the start, a lot of controversy. Not only the issue is rather intriguing, but political and racial ingredients are playing part in the story, and many commentators and members of the public are willing to read into the story other “conspiracy” meanings.

There is, in fact, the customary talking of “raaaacism” by some usual forever-guilty white liberals and from some over-sensitive members of black community who believe all this talking of Semenya’s gender issue has to do with the fact that she is black. Bloody hell, this has nothing to do with race but with gender! In athletics, differences between man and women are huge. I was myself an 800 metres runner back in the ‘90s and with my record (1’ 57” 6) I could have been easily running in the Women's Olympic Final, but as a man I could barely manage to reach the semi-final of a regional event.

The other issue is that the athlete is South African, and this story has apparently been created to discredit a black person from a country guilty in the past of apartheid. Should we then all pretend nothing is happening until we will find a white woman with the same conditions?

Last, let’s not forget, South Africa is hosting the next World Cup of football, and the country is trying to keep a good appearance on the international stage, and a sex scandal, as every US President wannabe knows, is not welcomed.

But now, finally, the test is coming through, and it seems like Semenya is a hermaphrodite after all, in other words not a woman and not a man, but more a man than she and all her supporters and “raaaacist” idiots wanted us to think.

Now what the IAAF is going to do? Strip Semenya of the gold medal? And who is she going to run the next race with… Lily Savage?

Tuva: the centre of Asia

I have been away the first two weeks of August to a faraway land called Tuva. I can guess the vast majority of you have never been there, but don’t feel bad about it, people go there either because they have an interest in throat-singing (!), unspoiled nature or they have married someone from there.

I belong to the last category, but first of all: where the hell is Tuva? You may (rightly) ask?

Well, Tuva is a republic in Russia, but not the White Russia we all think of, such as Moscow or Saint Petersburg. The Russia I am talking about is actually Siberia, that big mass of land covering 77% of the Russian territory that almost everyone has heard of, but at the same time almost nobody ever dares to visit.

Siberia is a very weird place indeed, no doubt about it: freezing cold in winter, boiling hot in summer, thousands of miles away from any urban environment, and even more miles away from the sea. Talk about Siberia and people think about the hard weather, Communist gulags and a very big chunk of land that to see it all it would take you a couple of lifetimes. This is rather true, not only because Siberia is so damn big, but also because travelling around is not that easy, they haven’t got four lane highways over there and not many airports too.

Tuva is located in the southern part of Siberia (but it is still on average -30 degrees Celsius in winter), on the border with Mongolia. It is slightly more than half the size of Italy, but with the population only of a city like Bologna, and actually one third of this population live in the capital, Kyzyl. Basically, once you drive outside the capital, you have the whole country for yourself.

I have mentioned throat-singers at the beginning of this article. Throat-singers are, as the name indicates, singers who sing using their throat. The kind of music they sing and play is not for everybody’s taste, but the sound they create is rather amazing. They can come up with up to five different tones at the same time and they master the art from an early age.

Tuva, as all geeks of geography know, is located right in the centre of Asia and the exact spot is in the capital Kyzyl, right next to the river Yenisei (the fifth longest river in the world, sorry geeks, I beat you again) that runs through the city. A monument, consisting of a big world-shaped stone and a kind of triangular obelisk rising from it, has been raised on the spot.

But I cannot talk about Tuva without mentioning the nature. I have been exploring a very tiny part of the country, but in that tiny bit I have been to a lake with the same level of salt as the Dead Sea in Israel! I didn’t know about its existence until I was there and never before I had seen so many eagles flying across the sky and an open road in front of me with mountains and valley as the only companions.

There are many things to say about Tuva, some good other rather not, that it would take me quite a while so I will leave it for future posts, anyway I feel like a kind of an expert in the country being now linked with it by marriage to one of its daughters and also by the fact that no many foreigners have actually been there.

Ryanair and the Internet Big Divide

I have the sneaky feeling that Internet is the new Big Divide. You are either In or Out, and it is better for you to be In, otherwise you’ll be in trouble.

Last Saturday, a friend of mine was in a great need of getting on a flight to Italy on the very same day, so he came to me because I have a computer and an Internet connection (silly me, specifying this, don’t you think? A computer without Internet connection is like a restaurant without a kitchen!) Anyway, we checked some flights and the only option, due to the flights timetable, was a British Airways flight or a Ryanair one.

British Airways flight was at 19:50 from London Gatwick at approximately £280 return or £127 one way. Not too bad, in my opinion, considering that it was a last minute booking.

Ryanair flight was at the same time, but from Stansted. The problem with Ryanair was that, because the flight was departing on the same day, you could not find out how much it cost, but you had to enquire by calling the company’s Reservation Centre.

Ryanair is a company where no chance of making an easy buck is left untaken. In fact, by booking over the phone you are not getting the website’s fares (i.e. you pay more), you are paying for the phone call (10p a minute) and also paying an extra fee (£10) for making the booking over the phone.

And even if you try to book online and you are having trouble, you can call their Internet Support for £1 per minute!

Ryanair’s tactic is to charge you for either not having an Internet connection, or when you are really desperate to get a flight (or both). In fact, if British Airways can make a booking on its website for a flight departing in less than 24 hours, why not Ryanair?

Anyway, the Reservation Centre’s number did not work because the office was closed on a Saturday or Sunday… so how can you make a booking? You can’t, I guess.

My friend was stuck then. Well, almost. He could go for the British Airways option or try his luck at the airport with Ryanair.

I tried to steer him towards the British Airways-Internet-booking-you-know-how-much-you-spend option but he decided instead for the airport-Ryanair-try-your- luck scenario instead, because of these three basic reasons:

1) Previous experience of having bought tickets at the airport with Ryanair (well, 10 years ago)

2) The long-standing belief that Ryanair must be cheaper than British Airways

3) Human beings are more trustworthy than the Internet.

Previous experience in a volatile world such as the travel industry (and many other industries) in this time and age is not always your best advisor, because things change, drastically and rapidly.

Ryanair was cheaper for many years, that’s true (I used it regularly to fly between London and Venice Treviso), but in the last three years or so hideous hidden fees and non-existing customer service has really become a annoyance too high to endure in my opinion, for saving what at the end? No more than £30-50 if you are lucky.

As for human contact, well, company like Ryanair don’t give you any. A booking made through a person cost the company much more than the same booking made online, and they charge you for it.

In fact, my friend ended up paying more for his flight than what it would have cost him with British Airways on the web, and the process was not hassle-free.

Ryanair is a typical example of a company that charge you as much as they possibly can when you don’t have the technology, or when you need them more than they need you.

FIFA double standards

Brazil has recently won the Confederation Cup in South Africa, as many of you may be aware.

Not as many of you, though, are aware that Brazil has received condemnation from FIFA (Federation International Football Association) and is facing possible disciplinary action because their players, after the victory in the final, have gathered together in the pitch and prayed to God (the Christian one in case you were wondering), thanking him for the victory.

FIFA has stated that politics or religion have no place in modern day sport, and therefore the Brazilians were very naughty in collectively celebrating in a religious way their victory. FIFA has explained that individuals can celebrate their religion on the pitch but not the team as a whole, or the majority of it.

OK then, so FIFA decides to ban collective religious celebration in order to make all religions live happily ever after. What a good idea you may think: no Brazilian players celebrating the Christian God, no Burmese players thanking Buddha, no Muslims celebrating… oops, actually, not really, there are, as always, exceptions.

In fact, a couple of days before the naughty Brazilians celebration, another team, after winning a match, have collectively celebrated in a religious way.

The team was Egypt, and the whole team (or the majority of it) started to pray, kneeling towards Mecca.

FIFA did not issue a statement, not a word of condemnation, nothing of the kind. Is it maybe because, as always, there is one standard for one religion and a different standard for another one?

To be honest, I found out this news only by reading the Italian papers online. I then checked the British ones, and the news was rather difficult to get. Actually, I couldn't get the news at all on some of the sites.

Is it maybe because the real censorship is in the UK (rather than Italy?), thanks to the liberal media championed by BBC and the Guardian, always condemning some religion or some ideologies and turning a blind eye when some other religions, or some other ideologies are concerned?

Next World Cup I would like a Muslim team to win the tournament, and then I hope to see the players celebrating the victory by praying, kneeling towards Mecca and then... I want to hear the sound of silence coming from FIFA.

How to run a Call Centre

Call centres can be irritating sometimes.

Some time ago, I had to call a tour operator (name withheld in accordance to Data Protection Act) to advise one of the agents of a possible strike happening in France and affecting one of their clients booked with us.

A task that was supposed to be rather simple, turned out to be almost a Mission Impossible one, considering that I was transferred six times between departments, dealing with seven agents, explaining the same story seven times, listening to the “I am sorry but you have come through to the wrong department, let me transfer you…” too many bloody times!

One of the sufferings I had to endure was actually rather amusing. The agent I spoke to on one occasion, explained to me I had to call the Customer Department because my request was for a trip that had not taken place yet.

You can imagine my reaction (AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH) when the recorded message instead was something like… "the department deals with trips already taken. Go away if you have not taken the trip yet. Here I go again I thought, and I did go, again and again.

Always look on the bright side of life, as John Cleese taught us, and so, from the dreadful experience, I have drawn the following conclusions on how to run a call centre:

1. If you have a computer, use it

When I called, I gave the agent the reference number and the name of the person who made the booking. Computers were invented mostly to be chatting away on Facebook I admit, but also to allow agents to quickly get the details of the enquiry, store information in the booking system and, if you could not deal with it yourself, pass the information to the relevant agent.

But for some reasons, even with the reference, the agents couldn’t understand what I was talking about.

2. Listen to the customers, they are human after all

Most of the agents I had to deal with behaved like yes/no robots on steroids. One of them was bombarding me with questions like: Are you an agent? Is it before or after the trip? It is about a train or a space-ship? Have you called before? The thing is, if you say yes, when you should have said no, or your enquiry does not fit with any of the pre-stated questions, then you are… yes, you guessed right… transferred to another clueless agent.

3. There is no point in creating departments that nobody in your organisation does actually know what they are doing!

When I finally spoke to an agent who could successfully understand my enquiry, take my details and pass the information to the clients (YUPPYYEEE), I asked what I should do next time I have a similar enquiry.

She said to call and ask for the Accommodation Support Department.

Blimey! Three magic words that would have saved me fifteen minutes and spared me to repeat the reason of my call seven times… If only I (and the five agents who had transferred me too) knew that!

Scribbles of an Endeavouring Spectator

It's time for rebranding!

Yes, I have decided to change the name of my blog, and so it is goodbye On the Right Side of the Street and hello Scribbles of an Endeavouring Spectator. Why the change? You may or may not (but I hope you do) ask.

Well, I think, the previous title was too mono-dimensional, and the political terms Right and Left are becoming so entwined nowadays that sometimes you cannot differentiate a Dave from a Gordon, really, can you do it? So, even though I am still identifying myself with most of the ideas belonging to the political Right, I don't want my blog to become a monolithic point of view, and I think the new title is a better reflection of my way of dealing with the world I live in.

I chose the word scribble because diary is too Anne Frank (or call girl) and notes too office. Scribble instead is a very understated way to say that I write things, and understatement is a very British trait, and although I am not British, I have lived so long in this country that I have acquired the worst habit of Britishness, but I still don't and never will add milk to my tea!

…But, why endeavouring? Why spectator?

The writer, or blogger, is a spectator of his times and reports what he sees, like a nosy neighbour watching out of the window to see what’s going on out in the street. But I don’t just want to observe, I also want to raise my opinion about the world I live in, and hopefully out there, in the big wide world, someone is interested in what I have to say.

Endeavouring and spectator are also two words in conflict, one active and one passive, one in process and the other static, and I like contradictions, I am a walking and writing one.

So, to summarise, I scribble away while being a spectator in a world I endeavour to understand and change a little.

I also hope to make enough money one day so I can make a living by writing my blog (preferably from some beach hut in Thailand)… donations are welcome!

Life, death and Saint Anthony

Sometimes life is a matter of minutes… and death too.

Last Saturday, I was with my wife in our kitchen, cleaning, when all of a sudden we heard like a rain of something hard falling near us, on the roof at first I thought, or maybe outside; somewhere anyhow very close to us.

Both of us didn’t know what to think for a moment. We froze, like if what had happened did not make sense. I bizarrely thought one of the blinds in the living room or in the bedrooms, recently put up, had collapsed, and I ran into every room to check, but the blinds were all there.

My wife was in the meantime outside in the garden, looking puzzled at some stones, egg size, approximately twenty of them, scattered all around.

The flat where we live is a two-floor maisonette in a building of three floors, and our kitchen is an extension covering part of our garden. The rocks could have only had fallen from one of the two floors above us, and we both looked above to the higher floors for some understanding, but nobody came out.

It was absurd. Nothing had really happened but everything could have. Often we eat outside during the weekend when it is sunny. The rocks could have fallen on us when we were outside, and just one of them falling two sets of floors above on anybody’s head would have been enough for a one way ticket to the afterlife.

My wife and I were damn lucky to have been inside at that moment. I was actually expecting a guy to come around my place to buy some CDs racks that afternoon, and later on a masseur was visiting us. The guy arrived no more than five minutes after the rocks fell into the garden, and the masseur twenty minutes later.

Nobody came out from the higher floors, so I went up the communal stairs, still shaken, trying to find an explanation. I knocked at the neighbour directly above us a few times, but nobody was inside.
I then walked to the next floor above and knocked at the flat door. A man came out, and I asked him if he had seen any rocks flying into my garden. He said no, but then, speaking with his wife and daughter next to him, he told me they had an owl, and this owl did some trouble in their patio, and somehow the stones must have had fallen from the vase into my garden.

I was still shaken, and I don’t know why I was so calm. The scene looks to me so absurd. The three of them were there acting like the accident had almost nothing to do with them, and I was there, unhurt, but with the feeling that these three bloody stupid idiots could have had terminated my life or the life of the people close to me, or any people at the wrong time in my garden.

The thing is, they looked so pathetic and dumb, that I couldn’t even hate them.

When I came back to the flat, I told my wife the conversation with the neighbours and hugged her. I was immensely pleased the rocks had not hurt us.

While in the kitchen, I looked at the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi standing on top of the door and felt a true believer once again, and then, looking at the Italian calendar (where every day has a patron saint) I was reminded that Saturday 13th June is the day of Saint Anthony of Padua. The saint was born in Portugal but spent the last part of his life in Padua, near my town, and it is probably the most famous saint in the region. Funnily enough, a month ago, in Madeira, I had bought two statues of the saint: one for me and one for my grandmother.

Saint Anthony’s statue is in my living room now.

I don’t know if the rocks had fallen by coincidence on his day (out of all the days in the year), and if the saint had made a miracle or not, but I’d like to think that he did, and so I thanked him for that.

I also think, I should probably buy a net to put over my garden.

Election times

I am always surprised how elections are run in the UK. There is not much of a campaign of any party going on, apart for some leaflets sprouting up a couple of days before the actual election, and then, the most bizarre thing is that the election day is on a Thursday!

That’s an odd thing to me, being an Italian. In my homeland, elections are generally always been on a Sunday and half a day on a Monday. This means Italians have one full day when the vast majority of them are not working and, being the polling stations are not far from where they live, this makes it rather impossible for them not to go to vote. Even when Sunday happens to be a sunny day, and most Italians have spent all day at the sea or in the mountains, they still have time to go to the polling station on Monday morning.

Running the elections on Thursday means that, if you are working (shame on you if you do!) you either go early in the morning or late in the evening. Some people, who commute a long way to go to work, often end up not voting because they are too busy or stuck in traffic. I wonder: does the British government encourage people who do not work to go to vote?

In this year’s European election I could have voted either for the UK or Italian representatives and, although I wanted to vote for the UK ones, I sent my request too late and I ended up in the Italian register.

The election for the British was, as usual, on a Thursday. The Italians residents in the UK instead had a half a day to vote on Friday plus the whole of Saturday. So, the whole nation of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had one working day to go to vote, and the Italian community in this country (minus of course the Italians who have decided to vote for the UK representatives) had one and a half day. I can only guess the Italians had more time to vote because the polling stations were not as many as for the British.

My polling station was in Lewisham Town Hall, and checking the bus planner route from Elephant and Castle, it occurred to me that it would had taken me more than one hour to go there, so I decided to go by bike. I can’t believe I did that, 40 minutes cycling each way, and getting lost uncountable times on the way just to cast my vote!

My wife was waiting for me at home, rather happy to see me finally back in time for dinner. She finds elections rather amusing, being that she has never voted in her entire life. She is from Russia, and she left her homeland when she was nineteen.

She never minds though.

After Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin and now Putin, democracy for Russians is still an alien word.

You have been warned...

I didn't know this, but apparently the fascists are taking over Europe.

No, it is not 1922 or 1933 all over again, but the Spectator magazine headline this Saturday was The fascists are coming and then, on the same day, when I went to Tesco for my weekly shopping, people were giving out leaflets about the “Hope-not-Hate” campaign that is aiming to inform the electorate about the threat of the BNP at the next European election.

Both the leaflet and the Spectator were quite serious about the issue and, in their opinion, the BNP will transform the British society into a bunch of thugs and racists. So, instead of understanding the reasons why an extremist party is growing in popularity, they are just calling the people voting for them racists, and that's the end of the story.

I am, first of all, personally of the idea that everybody should make up their minds independently about what each party stands for and afterwards decide who to vote for. Instead The Hope-not-Hate campaign is the one that Leftie groups who, having nothing to propose themselves, prefer to tell you who you should not vote for. Their behaviour is more fascist than the BNP's itself and shows a complete lack of respect towards the electorate. It is like saying: "You dumb idiot, vote for anybody, but not for this party, they are the baddies, and if you vote for them, you are a baddie too".

People, let’s remember, always vote for a party or a leader for a reason. People don’t vote for BNP because they are racist or the Respect party because they are stoned. They vote for the party that they think matches their needs better, especially the ones that matter more to them, for example, immigration and crime. The BNP also receives a protest vote from a part of the electorate angry at the main parties, whose members are not talking about these issues but instead are pocketing thousands of pounds from the taxpayers by claiming second houses on their expenses.

The problem with the main parties is that they have lost any ideology: what is the difference between Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative? They copy each other policies trying to get the "middle ground" but in doing so have lost their identities. The BNP card is always an excellent trick the main parties have been using many times. They are basically saying, “We are not good at much, but if you don’t vote for us, the BNP gets the votes, so stick with us”.

It looks like this time more and more people have had enough, and this election could be a good wake up call, especially for the Conservatives.

Important information about the swine flu, but not for all!

The swine flu is in full throttle, chopping lives everywhere, and the government is giving out booklets telling us how to behave properly and avoid this mortal disease. Well done Gordon: you can always rely on him to deal with something he cannot be blamed for.

From the booklet I gather that to protect myself from the black plague of the 21st Century, I have to always carry a tissue with me all the time and cover my mouth and nose if I feel like sneezing and, once sneezed, I have to bin the tissue with the nasty germs.

I am very grateful to the NHS that I got this booklet because my mother never ever told me things like this. I was always told to sneeze on my hand and then wash my face with it, especially in summer.

Anyway, the booklet is all very helpful but my impression after reading the booklet is that some nationalities do not suffer from flu, or maybe do not exist, or maybe they do speak perfect English, or the government want them dead!

The reason I am saying this outrageous comment is that at the back of the booklet there is a form to fill if you wish to receive a copy of the booklet in another format (Braille, large print and audio tape) or in another language such as:

Welsh, French, Polish, Bengali, Chinese, Urdu, Arabic, Punjabi, Somali, Gujarati and on the website, you can also get them in Portuguese, Turkish, simplified Chinese, Farsi/Dari, Spanish and Tamil.

It is all very nice, but being Italian and living in England and unable to read English properly, I have requested a copy of the booklet in my native language and I urge the Germans, Dutch, Swedish, Russians and all other people from all the nationalities left out in the booklet to follow my example.

If we are applying political correctness and fairness to everybody, let’s do it for EVERYBODY, otherwise let’s just print the damn booklet in English and sod off the ones who do not know how to read the language of Shakespeare and Winnie the Pooh.

I am rather curious to see if I am going to receive a copy of the booklet in Italian (probably not), but if I do, I am then going to request another one in whatever language I fancy!

Neighbours, what are they good for?

There are quite a few things that I could do without in life, such as mosquitoes, hay-fever, hip-pop music or… neighbours.

Not many people are lucky enough not to have them and actually if you want to determine if someone is rich or not, you should count the number of neighbours he or she may have. Trust me on this: proper rich people do not have neighbours. Take Bill Gates, for example, he is trying to save Africa from malaria but the first thing he did when he got some money in his pocket was to buy out all his neighbours. I wonder what would happen if all these chaps he is saving in Africa one day leave their countries and go living next to him… He will not be too pleased I guess.

I am not a proper rich, or even a wannabe one, in fact I do have my fair share of neighbours. Although I cannot complain, my neighbours are such gentlemen. One of them, last Sunday morning, threw a chicken leg out of his window down onto my kitchen roof. This is the same gentleman who the week before threw not one but six tea bags again on the top of my kitchen roof, plus uncountable cigarettes butts. He is either does not have a rubbish bin or he thinks that, by having a garden I am a capitalist bourgeois exploiting unlucky people like him without one. In fact the opposite is true, he is exploiting me considering that he is living on benefits, and benefits are paid by taxes collected from taxpayers like me. He should be grateful he is living in such a caring society that caters for unemployable people like him.

The throwing by such gentleman is nevertheless not as annoying as the loud music he plays occasionally. The music is sometimes so loud that I can tell you which song he is playing and the music is so full of beats that it seems like the Germans are running the Blitz again.

But in rescue of me there is always the Southwark council. Oh yes, the brave council workers whose skills and knowledge are always at the citizen’s service!

Every time in fact I report a loud noise they take their time to come around and when they arrive, they always come up with a different excuse not to deal with the situation. One time that I called them they said, "oh well the noise is not directly above you, sorry mate". Thank God it was not above me or otherwise I would have to shout to talk to the council rep, and if my next door neighbour is too deaf too hear (or too Englishman to make a complaint), it is not my fault.

Another time I called the council at 9:00 on a Saturday morning, but because the noise was not affecting much the living room downstairs the council rep could not help. He said you are allowed to make noise from 7:30 on a Saturday morning unless the noise is affecting the living room! This means that, if I want to lie in bed on a Saturday morning, I cannot, and this also means I am going to move the bloody living room upstairs, so the next time council people come around they will have to come up with another bloody excuse.

Last time I called the council it was in the evening and the music was loud again. This time instead of coming and reporting the accident, the council rep went straight talking to this gentleman and asked him politely to turn the music down. That was good, for once, but then a few days later the council sent me a letter saying that they could not assess the noise level because by the time they arrived to my flat the noise had ceased… of course the bloody noise had ceased, they went and told the guy to put the noise down, didn’t they? If they had come to me first, they would have heard the noise!

I swear to God that if one day I ever become rich, I will follow the example of Bill Gates.
Save Africa? No, buy out the neighbours.

G20, villains, media and all that

The G20 is over.

Shame in a way, I had been enjoying going to the office in jeans and T-shirt and then, in the evening, watching the news showing ninja-lookalike economists creating havoc in the City of London.

The protesters were of course, as always, full of ideas. Destroy here! Destroy there! Death to capitalism! Hang the bankers! Global warming is frying us! America is evil... well, no, surprise surprise, this time around the anti-americanism was, unlike in the previous G# meetings, not as much a part of the agenda. This year with the credit crunch sweeping across the world, it could have been the protesters’ finest hour but, damn it, Dubya is not in the White House anymore... so they were a bit dull, I must say: without the villain, there are no heroes.

But the media need a villain too, and gone Dubya, there is still Berlusconi… In fact, the Metro this morning (3rd April) on page three had a pathetic mockery of the Italian PM G20 days, where it is claimed he has fallen out of favour with Obama. The article was a kind of a diary, supposed to be read with an Italian accent. It was supposed to be funny, but I found it misleading, stupid and offensive.

Then tonight I got a copy of the London Lite and there was the news of the Queen angry at Berlusconi. I then went home and checked the website for more clues. From the video you can hear Berlusconi calling Mr Obama! Mr Obama! in a loud voice, but Italians are loud, believe me, nothing new here. The Queen was probably caught by surprise but she is 80-something and her husband is Prince Philip. Have I said enough?

I can't anyway see the point of making such a big fuss about this meeting of the G20 (why they keep growing anyway, they were 7, then 8, what next? 37?). The heads of the states at the meeting were all clueless about how to make the economy running again, nobody more than Gordon Brown, who came up with this ridiculous meeting (costing UK taxpayers £50 million pounds) in order to beat the French at something, and then pretend to still have a reason to be in power.

Brown is acting like a wannabe leader of the world (he has claimed to have saved it already, do you remember?) when in fact he has not won a single general election in his life and, if the opinion polls are right, when finally the British citizens will be asked to cast their vote at the next election, Gordon Brown will be history.

That’s a nice thought for the next G20 or G8 or G whatever-many-countries-there-are-going-to-be.

Uefa cup, where art thou?

Is anyone really following the Uefa Cup these days?

I firmly believe Uefa cup should be completely scrapped, or the name of the competition be changed to I Am Not Bovvered Cup or to I Don’t Want To Be Here League.

I am saying this because I used to follow Uefa Cup a lot back in the eighties and nineties, being that my team, Inter Milan, was regularly in the cup by failing to win the Italian Championship or the Italian Cup, but still ending up second, third or fourth in the league.

Let's not forget, in fact, that, from the sixties up to the late nineties, the European Cup (now Champions League) was the cup for the teams who had won the title in their own country the year before, and the Winner’s Cup (now defunct) the cup for the teams who had won the respective national cups.
Uefa was the cup for the top teams that had won nothing the year before but managed to finish close to the top. In other words, Uefa was the competition for the teams who had under-achieved the year before, and so these teams had a point to prove.


The Uefa cup used to be the most difficult cup to win. If the old system was still in use, on this year's tournament of the Uefa Cup we would have teams such as Chelsea , Liverpool , Arsenal, Fiorentina, AC Milan and Juventus. Champions League would still be good with Inter Milan, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. Winners’ Cup will have Roma, Portsmouth, Valencia and Borussia Dortmund.

But with the new structure of the Champions League replacing the old European Cup, allowing the second, third and fourth team of the major European leagues to take part, the Uefa Cup basically ceased to exist. You either have an under-achieving team from the year before who cannot stop thinking of being stuck in the wrong competition (such as AC Milan this year) or a team who is avoiding relegation (such as Sampdoria or Tottenham).

Not only that, winning the cup now does not generate as much money as reaching one of the Champions League spots! That is an absurdity, because football, and sport in general, have always been about winning trophies... but if the trophy is not good anymore, why spend time and energy for it? No wonder Aston Villa, Manchester City and Tottenham played a weaker side in Uefa Cup last week.
Reaching fourth place in the league or not to be relegated is now more beneficial than winning the Uefa cup. Gone are the days when winning silverware was the biggest prize of all. I remember Fiorentina in the 1989-1990 season, they were struggling to stay in Serie A but they played the Uefa Cup with the best squad they had and almost managed to win.

The new system however, not only devalued the Uefa Cup, but also downgraded the importance of winning the national title. In fact, you could become the champion of Europe only if the year before you had won in your national league. Winning the title meant to be the national champion and playing the year after in the elite of European football. Now, you can play in the Champions League even if you had barely managed to squeeze into fourth place in your league.

How Liverpool, for example, could have been considered Champion of Europe in 2005, if it had not managed to win a national title for fifteen years? It should have played and won the Uefa Cup instead... nothing to be ashmed of, I can assure you.

In the name of equality and for the joy of the Muslim Council of Britain

We are repeatedly told by the media that we live in a multicultural society where diversity is welcome, free speech is guaranteed, and we are all treated equal.

However, last week two news I came across in the paper made me think just the opposite.

The first news is regarding the Domino's Pizza branch in Hall Green, Birmingham, where you cannot order anymore pizzas made of pork or non-halal meat... and why is that you may be wondering? Well, Domino's Pizza has decided to please the fast growing Muslim community in the area by giving them the pizza that even the Prophet Muhammed could not have refused.

Great news indeed for the Muslims but what about all the other non-Muslims who do actually enjoy a Pepperoni pizza? They either need to eat Halal pizza and shut up or go somewhere else... well... somewhere else where the Muslim community is not the majority (for now) I guess.

Apart from pleasing the Muslim community, Domino's Pizza, a Western company, is promoting the cruelest method of animal killing the world has ever witnessed: Halal, in other words, the animal is not stung but its throat is cut while it's still alive and the poor beast is left bleeding until the last drop of blood is gone. The killing is horrible and the animal suffers the pains of hell, but hey, can you get an Animal Rights activist do something about that? Brigitte Bardot has been called a racist for having spoken out, and nobody likes to be called a racist these days.

The second news is that the Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been banned to enter Britain because, so we are told, he is preaching hate against the Muslims. Well... is he? Or was he coming in the UK by an invitation of UKIP MP Gerard Batten to a discussion about his film, called "Fitna", where he claims there is a link between the Koran and the Islamic terrorism? I mean, is it so crazy and racist to believe that the Islamic terrorists, such as the ones on 9/11, are slightly aware of the context of the Koran and possibly misinterpreted it?

Geert Wilders is not a threat to public policy or public security as the Home Office want us to believe, in fact, he is so much a threat to society that in the Netherlands he is under protection 24 hours a day! He has been threatened to death by the Islamists, so don't you think we should listen to what he has to say, or we just prefer him to end up dead like the Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh who was killed by an Islamist because of his film about Islam?

But again, I am told, we live in a multicultural society, where diversity is welcome, free speech is guaranteed, and we are all treated equal.

I am pretty sure the Muslim Council of Britain agrees with that.

Supercrunching me...

I knew she wasn't just making conversation. The crunchy granola, selling organic oils and soaps at the small farmer's market in Beaulieu this weekend, when she asked me: "Where do you come from?" All she want from me was an admission of guilt.

In fact, as soon as I said London, she smirked at me, shaking her head in disapproval, whispering "Oh poor thing, what have you done to deserve that?" and then she went on about the good life in the country and how grim life is in London where nobody care about each other and everybody think about making money and...

It took me a millisecond to understand she wasn't really a country person because real country people do not talk like that, they do not know life in the city and therefore they do not criticize it. She was in fact from East London and had been living in East London for most of her life, but now she was happy living in the countryside looking after her small business and probably a cat.

Now, I don't know you but "organic" people like that crunchy granola are really pissing me off. They are the most intolerant people I have ever met. According to them people living in big cities are morons that have lost contact with nature, do not care about the world and live a life of greed. They try to make you feel guilty about modern life or maybe is just that they can't get round the fact that, unlike them, you don't wear an oversize 1950's jumper and actually know how to comb your hair.

At the farmers market, it looks to me most of the sellers and buyers were eco-friendly crunchy granolas with a point to prove, but I guess that if tomorrow morning me and the other 8 millions of Londoners move to Beaulieu and join them, the eco-friendly people will tell us to bugger off.

By bicycle, preferably.

You really want peace? Complain about Hamas, not Israel

The destruction of Israel.

This is what the demonstrators in London on Sunday were asking, marching angrily to Trafalgar Square, burning Israeli flags and defending a criminal organization known as Hamas. Under the "peace" message, the demonstrators wanted us to believe that Israel is a bully Nazi state and the Palestinians are the usual innocent victims.

But a reminder to Islamists, ultra Left-wingers and the politically correct western media: even at its lowest level, Israel in the past year has received approximately 15-20 rockets a month from Hamas. Does anyone with a bit of brain really think that a country that gets a daily dose of bombs should do nothing about it? And, for the really smart ones out there, ignoring bombs and being goody goody will not help Israel a single bit. In fact, what has Israel gained for giving back to Palestine the Gaza strip? Gaza's rocket barrage against Israel went up 500 percent after Israel ended its occupation.

The simple truth is that Hamas asked for war and war is exactly what it is getting. If Hamas are worried (by the way, they are not) about their own kids getting killed, they should not put their own arsenal of weapons where the kids are. They should not attack Israel, they should actually work for peace, but Hamas does not want peace. Hamas wants blood and the destruction of Israel, just like good old Nobel "Peace" prize laureate Arafat always wanted. And by the way, if the Palestinians are so good and kind, why have they voted (65% of them) for a criminal organization to run their own country???

But what puzzles me the most, more than the so-called "pacifists" marching on Trafalgar Square yesterday, is the usual way the West is responding to the crisis. Brown and Sarkozy have asked for a ceasefire, but they are missing the point again, if by ceasefire we mean stopping Israel but still allowing Hamas to carry on with their own strikes... because this is what happens every bloody time.

It looks to me that yet again, behind the "peace" mask, there is a great hate of the Jews, and many people here in the West are more than happy for Hamas to complete the job that Hitler couldn't do.

Israel has the right to defend its own people at any cost. It is terrible that kids on both sides get killed, but if we really care about peace in Gaza, it is Hamas we need to point the finger at, not Israel. Otherwise, let's just be honest for once, and call for the destruction of Israel once and for all.