I think that the punishment for a commited crime in this country is much overlooked, and frequently misunderstood. A lot of things take place out-of-sight to those who haven’t had any experience (be that first or second-hand) to behind the locked-cell doors. I’ll give an example to what I mean:

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Last month, warders at the maximum security Wakefield Prison found that some inmates, including sex offenders, were using their PS2s to watch pornographic DVDs.

Wakefield MP Mary Creagh demanded that authorities at the prison, which houses Roy Whiting and Ian Huntley, implement tougher controls to clamp down on the viewing of pornography.

Following the discovery, prisoners were banned from having the consoles in their cells – and nine of those who had their PS2s taken away received a total of £1800 in compensation. The Prison Service argued that this was simply a case of refunding the men, who purchased the PS2s with their own money.

It’s thought that a failure to offer compensation could have been seen as a breach of human rights – and that the threat of legal action may have influenced the decision.

The move has been strongly condemned by local politicians and victims’ groups. Norman Brennan, chairman of the Victim of Crime Trust, told the Yorkshire Post that it made “a mockery of the whole criminal justice system.”

Creagh said she also disagreed with the decision, on the grounds that prisoners “have forfeited the right to free enjoyment and possession of PlayStations by using them in this way.”

A spokesperson for the Prison Service said: “The prisoners were not given compensation, but were refunded for their Playstations.”
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Now, how many of you thought you could get PS2s whilst you were in prison, and also where in the understanding that it is part of human rights to be able to access pornography whilst you’re detained. Now, okay, there are obviously more serious matters at hand when people are in prison, but I bet the majority of you were under the impression that people were simply locked up… and didn’t know that they could purchase a PS2 and watch porn. Which is their right.

The meaning of this post was the fact that I read this on a forum I’m a member of:

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There was an article in the paper this morning about a thief who stole a motorbike, and even though he got caught the victim was advised not to press charges as the thief might sue him because there wasn’t a helmet for him to steal so he could have been injured!
—

Basically the law now states that the person who had his bike stolen is not allowed to press charges, simply because he didn’t leave his helmet for the criminal to steal, therefore the criminal could have been injured.

Honestly, that is pathetic.

You are granted three wishes. What do you wish for?
1 – The ability to change anything I want to.
2 – …
3 – …

You’re stranded on an island. You have 3 items with you. What are they?
1 – Genie in a lamp.
2 – …
3 – …

Connexions is a company which helps teenagers from the age of 13-19, in the UK. They apparently ‘help’ through education; help you make the right choices and provide you with awesome information whenever you need it.

This is one of the companies I absolutely dispise. They’re meant to help you out, and all they do is treat you like a kid. I called them earlier this year to get some information on a webdesign job, or something:

Me: “Hi, I’d like to get some information on reference number ####”
Woman: “Okay, well you have to apply via e-mail… Do you have a computer with an internet connection.”
… No, of course I fucking don’t. I want to be a website designer for the intranet, you dumbass.

Another reason why I hate this company is they have these really annoying posters in the window saying something like:
“R U 18-19?” Ahhhh!

Perhaps they should hire me as their website designer though… Their current one clearly failed English:

In every house I’ve lived in for over 3 months we’ve had one of those outdoor keymeter electric systems. Basically, you have an orange key which you take to a shop to “top up”. With each of these keys you have a £5 emergency budget, so if the electric goes you have spare for the next day or two, so that you have time to get some more without living in the cold and dark.

I think my Mum failed to see the point of the emergency money, and simply would wait until the electric went (causing everything to be turned off (my PC loves that by the way)), put the emergency in, and thus be reminded that she has to go to the shop to get some more.

In all of the houses I have lived in up until present (which I make 7) I think three of them didn’t have this system… And out of those three, only one of those places did we live in for over 18 months, as far as I can remember.

Now, with every house supplied by the council, they intelligently put these meters outside, in a cupboard. Now, living in England it rains a lot, and it’s often cold. So, the electric meter is outside, and to check it we have to go out in the cold and/or rain… Gee, that’s clever! We couldn’t put them inside so that they’d be easy to check, because that’d be too GOD DAMN NICE.

Honestly, electric meters are one of the things that often make me feel like my life is a livng hell. How do you think PCs and routers like being turned off instantly. How about that work I was doing? That game I was playing? That music I was listening to? Those files I was downloading? That bLOG entry I was posting?
“You should have saved it.”
“NO! I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO RELY ON THE GOD DAMN ELECTRIC! I’M IN THE TWENTY-FIRST FUCKING CENTURY, I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PRESS SAVE EVERY 10 SECONDS BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW THE LAST TIME SOMEONE WENT OUTSIDE TO PUT THE DAMN KEY IN!”

As you can guess, the electric just went… And yes! I’m pissed off.

As I was growing up as a child all of my family watched a lot of TV, part my father, who I wouldn’t see very often.

I was never much of a TV child… I was more into video games, and the only reason I’d watch TV is because I had nothing much else to do. Now that I’m older, I don’t even own a TV and probably watch under 20 hours/year. It simply doesn’t interest me. I’ll watch TV shows, and such, but those come from DVDs or something. I won’t go out of my way to watch TV, but I’ll happily watch a movie or comedy series on my PC.

Now, being a person that gets easily annoyed by simple things, and not liking TV, I used to get put in a very, very bad mood when I’d want to say something to someone who was watching the TV… And instead of them giving me some sort of structured reply, it’d be “Shush!” or “Listen!”.

I got that from a very young age, and I still get it now. Each and every time it happens it triggers that mind-frame and I get put in a very, very bad mood. I hate being second place to the media, and I often feel easily replaced if someone blankly ignores me whilst muttering one word replies to tell me to shut up whilst something is on.

I mean, sure, I understand they might be interested but there isn’t any need to be so short and rude about it.

So, today was meant to be the last day of life. The day of recognition. The apocolypse?

Why? Because the date slightly relates to the number 666; the number of the Devil. The fact that in a true date format, 10 characters long, is obviously completely irrelevant, and thus the date is 06/06/2006… Ohnoes! 3 6s, the Devil is upon us! Ahhhhhhh!

Sorry, but this is pathetic. Some important religious figure just had to make all the worshipers of his diety be scared of today, and generally have a bad day, which reflected upon everyone else, because that’s the way with religion.

I bet God is sat in his cloud with his hareem, sitting on his throne laughing, with this sign:

The Devil is near by shouting “Oi! You prick! Give me my fucking sign back!”.

I think this entire event goes to prove that people simply can’t live without reason. – No one knows how the hell we got to this world, no one knows how the hell this world got here, so therefore someone had to go and makeup some guy that is so powerful we can’t comprehend, and thus no Human can ever communicate or contact this being/force, and thus everyone was happy with life. Then 20 other people thought they could do a better job and thus we have religious variation. Sorry, but no.

The guy who predicted the apocolypse must be feeling pretty stupid now, as he’s sitting with his wife watching Eastenders, or whatever. What a nice guy he must be.

(The Grammar Police)

Ok, I’ve decided that I’m going to get a small group of people together, and call ourselves “The Grammar Police” simply so we can go around and correct all the terrible grammar that people so foolishly use. As described in “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” the “Greengrocer’s Apostrophe” is so common in advertising that it drives me mad. This link shows some fine examples of what I mean.

The reason I want to start this now is simply because today, as usual, I head into town, and I saw two perfect examples of why some people need to be hit so hard with the grammar stick.

Example 1
The bus went past a mobile/cell phone shop. Posters covered the shop window, obviously printed by people who have an ounce of English language understanding. Then I noticed that one of the employees had intellectually written this on the window, in glass-staining pen (whatever they call them):
“XTRA 500 TXT’S FREE PER MTH!”
Now, considering the fact that words such as “texts” and “teams” was printed on posters all over the window, and yet this writer failed to understand how to use an apostrophe is verging on the edge of embarrassing to be part of modern society.

Example 2
Our city’s bus service, Stagecoach, are advertising the availability of driving positions. Apprently they’re offering £14/year due to the fact they used a decimal point/dot/period instead of a comma.

When… When will people learn!?

What I was thinking the other day is the fact that the majority of ‘chavs’ like rap music. Now, the rap music I’ve heard consists of relatively advanced English… However, they’re the prime users of shorthand (text messaging slang), and then they proceed to call the people who use language properly; “posh”. So… How does that work?

Edit: I’m aware of the mistakes in this post, and did them simply for irony. Please don’t be pedantic and leave a comment correcting anything.

I was on the bus today, on my way into town. As usual I was watching the world go past when I noticed that one of the shops had suffered quite a drastic outburst of colouring…

Infact what had happened is they’d printed out several very large posters saying “SALE. TODAY ONLY. 20% OFF!” or something. These posters were completely covering the windows of this shop, which isn’t exactly small, to say the least. Now, this didn’t bother me. You see posters over shops advertising sales, or generally any advertisment they want to be noticed. However, what annoyed me was the woman stood less than a yard away from the shop handing out leaflets to passers-by with exactly the same information written on. She must’ve had about 500-750 of these stacked in her arms, which led me to think:

We get so many people complaining about the environment, and how we’re destroying rainforests, and such, yet you don’t see anyone having a go at the crappy clothes shop who will do (or kill) anything to make a sale.