Friday, August 29, 2008

Norfolk & Holmes – the estate agent of choice...


I watched a great programme on BBC3 last week. It was the sort of programme the BBC used to make years ago before the age of spin doctoring, inter-liaisonal projects with the resident party in power and the creation of BBC’s ‘Number 10 Brown-nosing unit’ (Motto, we’ll get so far up Brown’s backside, he’ll think we’re piles). It was part of the ‘Mischief’ series in which presenter Alex Riley had set up a new estate agency with a difference – ‘Norfolk & Holmes’ (not to be confused with the bookmakers ‘Norfolk & Chance’ and the Fat Friends Club – ‘Norfolk & Weigh’).

Who’d have thought it? Anglo Saxon irony on Auntie Beeb! Heads are sure to roll at the BBC when Gordon’s McStasi work it out.

Riley’s remit was to travel the length and breadth of England, finding just a small fraction of the estimated 1 million empty homes that blight our land –and then asking awkward questions to Council Dons and Government Lackeys as to why so many houses were being left empty and derelict while our glorious leader keeps banging on about the need to concrete over England with 3 million new rabbit hutches....

The most obscene part of the show was in Liverpool – row upon row of fantastic Victorian houses, some as big as five bedroom dwellings boarded up and awaiting demolition. It was a surreal site, Riley strolling around entire streets, no people, no cars, nothing. Every house empty, every community destroyed...... I mean, who could be responsible for such an arse up? Who do we know who’s as thick as pig sh*t, as dyslexic as a cooking funt and likes to have a Jag’ to transport his mighty corpulence to places where he just isn’t wanted...

There can be only one. John Prescott and his Pathfinder project.

In all, some 15,000 houses in the Anfield area of the city are empty. It’s the result of the Lib-Dem council (voted the worst run council in the entire country) trousering the cash from central government to help the moron Prescott realise his cretinous ‘Pathfinder’ dream . Anfield is now a ghetto, a suppurating monument to a shambolic cretin of a man and a money grabbing, no-honour cabal of local little Hitlers. And there they stand today. Street after street of brick husks – a gaunt, empty tribute to the consequences of the credit crunch and Labour’s continued obsession with the worst kind of unsocial engineering.

Riley interviewed a former resident of the community. She sort of hit the nail on the head, when she said the council told her the existing houses were jerry-built death traps – and it would be best if they were all knocked down to be replaced by bright, shiny new ones. The only problem was that the bright shiny new houses would be way out of the reach of the displaced community – so God knows where they would end up.....

Riley got a team of surveyors in to have a look at the state of the boarded up houses. They poured scorn on the claims of the council, stating that the quality of the existing houses, even in their abandoned state could not be matched by new build replacements. They took Riley round to see a street that had repulsed the unwanted attentions of Prescott’s chipolata fingers. Each house had been done up at around 20 grand each. The builders had sold them to locals – the place, as they say in Liverpool, was buzzin’....

And so it was ever thus. Agendas, no matter how bizarre, no matter how flaky are pushed by an administration so wrapped up in their own demented agendas, that everything they touch degrades England just a little more . In order to find out what the bloody hell is going on, Riley tried to have a word with the brassy hagged Minister for Housing, Caroline Flint.

In a nanosecond, gobby Flint became coy Caroline. She slipped out of a side entrance at the Ministry for Housing so she wouldn’t have to meet him.

Pathetic.

You can watch the show, here.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

‘Dirty English’, the new fragrance for men – apparently.


‘Juicy Couture’ the hippest fashion house in America has brought out a new range of street cred’ smelly stuff for your not-so-average urban male...

The range is called ‘Dirty English’ – and according to Juicy, ‘it’s the scent of irresistible bad boys all over the world – Dirty English, the new fragrance for men’.... (Yeah, but it ain’t no Old Spice, is it?)



How do I feel about this? Insulted, obviously – but then again, am I being a tad over sensitive? For all I know, the marketing men at Juicy might have chucked other similarly contentious monikers for consideration by the focus groups...
‘Corpulent Gobby Yanks’, maybe. Or how about ‘Sweaty Jocks (trap)’.... ‘Garlic Eating Surrender Monkey French’.... ‘Whinging Minging Aussies’..... ‘Stormtrooping Germans’......

Or maybe they didn’t – for obvious reasons.
So why do they think it’s OK to insult us?

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Spot the Union Flag...


Cardiff, a Union flag-free zone
In today's Gordon Brown world of total Britishness, I tuned into BBC News to witness five bemedalled Welsh Olympians being presented to an ecstatic crowd outside the Welsh Assembly building.

I expected to see the beaming athletes wrapped in their British flags - while an adoring crowd waved their little Union Flags for all they were worth.....

Some hope.

It was dragons all the way, the crowd, the flagpoles and the athletes were dripping with the dragon rampant. Not a Union Flag in sight, anywhere. Cue interviews. They were so proud to be Welsh. They were no longer British, they were Welsh - and it was fab....

The Scottish version will happen tomorrow, as wil the Northern Irish one....
But what about the English?

Oh yeah, of course. We are 'British' aren't we?

Monday, August 04, 2008

UPDATE....

I'm back.
For the last few weeks I have been a bit busy putting together the latest edition of 'English Voice' - which has, as usual been a bit of a labour of love (and a hell of a lot of hard work).

My email facility has been goosed for a few weeks - a result of a row between myself and my provider about which accounts I wanted to renew (and pay for) - and which I wanted to dump. Happily, Henry Kissinger was passing by the other day and has now sorted everything out - the result being that we are all friends again, and at last, I have my email back.

So now English Voice has safely been despatched to the printer I have got a bit more time - and will be posting more often from now on ('whoopy do', I hear you cry).

On another matter, over the past few months, I have been travelling around England - as a start of my personal journey to 'See it while I can before it becomes a Gordon Brownfield site' I will be writing about the places I have visited and posting them on the 'Alfred the OK' blog. First essay coming up will be concerning the City of Bath, the Mendips and the 700 year old 'George' pub which is one of the oldest hostelries in the whole of England and was the Headquarters of the Duke of Monmouth shortly before his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor.