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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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The Church of England used to be known facetiously as “The Tory Party at prayer”. Not any more, it seems. Under the feeble leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan “Catweazle” Williams, the church seems headed for terminal decline. Probably a good thing too: natural selection and the survival of the fittest requires that the weak and wishy-washy should go to the wall. Shame about all the nice buildings, though. Who will look after them when all that's left is a mindless, twitching puddle of gutless, liberal-lefty half-baked ideas?
 
In a rather incomprehensible article published in the New Statesman this week, Catweazle attacks the coalition government, bleating that “we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”.
 
What a dim-witted thing to say. Since when did any General Election give us the opportunity to vote for policies? Did Labour voters in 2001 know they were voting for war in Iraq? Did they eagerly put their crosses in a box marked “ID cards”, or “open our borders to all and sundry, we have loads of benefits money to squander”?
 
In 1983 did we know we were voting Thatcher in to smash the miners? In 1970 did we realise our ticks in Edward Heath's box meant joining the EU?
 
These are rhetorical questions, of course, and the answer to all of them is a resounding “no”. Because that's not how elections work – in fact, it's not how democracy works, unfortunately. No government is elected with a clear mandate to carry out a particular policy. We simply elect the gang of crooks and chancers we dislike the least, and rely on them to make the decisions for us. Sad, but true.
 
In 2010 we all went to the polls knowing full well that whoever we elected would have to implement a whole raft of measures to cut the government deficit created by the previous Labour administration. Whether it was Cameron or Brown made little difference: either would have unpopular decisions to make, and the results would hurt us all.
 
Of course there are always ignorant, selfish people who believe that cuts are OK provided they themselves are not affected. If they're in work they don't want to pay more taxes, if they're out of work they don't want their benefits cut. Teachers don't want their spending reduced, and NHS workers want to carry on splashing public money around. Unions are happy to see cuts, but not at the expense of their members' pay packets. Arty-farty freeloaders can't see why their pet theatre or dance company or hedgehog sanctuary should lose its lump of public money so they can no longer prance about looking important at someone else's expense. Local government bosses can stomach reduced spending so long as they can keep their exorbitant pensions and cut services to the public instead.
 
But the selfish and the venal apart, we all knew what had to be done, and expected it. The only difference between Cameron who did get in, and Brown who didn't, is that Cameron was brave enough (or possibly foolish enough or inexperienced enough, depending on your point of view) to grasp the nettle and get on with it.
 
So, in case poor Catweazle is still having trouble sorting out his muddled brain, let's spell it out as simply as we can ...
 
• The government is in debt. It owes zillions and zillions of squids, and its creditors selfishly demand punishing interest payments (it's worth pointing out that the Blair government often got into debt deliberately, saddling future governments with colossal obligations in the form of PFIs. It's not just self-employed plasterers from Basildon who over-mortgage themselves with gay abandon)
 
• We none of us want the government to be in debt so much, and would like something done about it
 
• In order to cut the debt, the government has to spend less money
 
• Therefore the things the government normally spends money on, won't get quite so much money in future
 
• Therefore we must all expect some changes in the way our society and our services operate
 
• Or, if we don't like it, we could all just dig our heads in the sand and hope the debts go away. It might happen. A tsunami might come and wash away all the banks and financial institutions, miraculously leaving the rest of us unscathed. Or there might be some new plague, a sinister disease that only kills people who have more than £500,000 in the bank. It could happen ...
 
There, Rowan, old fruit! That wasn't so difficult, was it? You get the point now? Unless we introduce some sort of “government by referendum”, no one votes for policies, they vote for parties. No government has any mandate except for the mandate to govern.
 
Actually, come to think of it, who voted for you? And what is your mandate, exactly? Anyway, take our advice and lose the silly beard. You'll never get a man date if you don't tidy yourself up. “Man date”, get it? It's a joke.
 
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