Redundant caravans

It can't have escaped your attention that there are lots of examples of redundancy in the English language. Lobby, foyer and atrium all mean roughly the same thing; teenagers, youths and adolescents are in essence the same. We keep inventing new terms for things we already have names for. As another example, why did Mr L Ron Hubbard feel the need to invent the term "scientologist" when we already had the phrase "malicious, deceitful, vicious c**ts"? To provide evidence for my assertion would take ages and wouldn't be particularly amusing, if you're interested see www.xenu.net for numerous examples of what can only be described as torture of vulnerable people for financial gain. No, that's not in the nature of my rantings; let's instead look at some of the 'teachings' of scientology, they're much funnier.

Scientology consists of the idea that human bodies are just a shell for a spirit ("thetan") that, were they to lose all supressed subconcious traumas from their past trillion or so years of existence, would achieve a god-like level of omnipotencecy. As such the generous church of scientology offers so-called 'audits' that remove these traumas. For this service they charge 1000's dollars and, naturally, you need hundreds of them before you achieve omnipotency (incidentally, many people who've reached the top of the cleansing cycle aren't omnipotent either, see above link). You get the idea of what these people are about. Anyway, apparently 2 of the worst things that can have happened to your thetan in previous incarnations are;
1) "encounters with the Marcab Confederacy and various Invader Forces from spacefaring Galactic civilizations"
2) "life on earth as a clam"
Sounds pretty bad.

Also, there's a supposed event (apparently the most traumatic in history) which happened ~75 million years ago which reads, in the founder's own words:
"The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet) -- 178 billion average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged." His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. were placed in the implants. When through with his crime Loyal Officers (to the people) captured him after 6 years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confed.) has since been a desert. "

And here is a more detailed version from an ex-scientologist of the same event:
"75 million years ago, the galactic overlord for this sector of the galaxy was called Xenu. He was in charge of 76 planets, including Earth (at that time known as Teegeeack).

"All of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178billion people. Social problems dictated that Xenu rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation problem, so he developed a plan.

"Xenu sent out tax audit demands to all these trillions of people. As each one entered the audit centers for the income tax inspections, the people were seized, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and frozen. Then, all 13.5 trillion of these frozen people were put into spaceships that looked exactly like DC8 airplanes, except that the spaceships had rocket engines instead of propellers.

"Xenu's entire fleet of DC8-like spaceships then flew to planet Earth, where the frozen people were dumped in and around volcanoes in the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian Islands. When Xenu's Air Force had finished dumping the bodies into the volcanoes, hydrogen bombs were dropped into the volcanoes and the frozen space aliens were vaporized.

"However, Xenu's plan involved setting up electronic traps in Teegeeack's atmosphere which were designed to trap the souls or spirits of the dead space aliens. When the 13.5 trillion spirits were being blown around on the nuclear winds, the electronic traps worked like a charm and captured all the souls in the electronic, sticky fly-paper like traps.

"The spirits of the aliens were then taken to huge multiplex cinemas that Xenu had previously instructed his forces to build on Teegeeack. In these movie theaters the spirits had to spend many days watching special 3-D movies, the purpose of which was twofold: 1) to implant into these spirits a false reality, i.e. the reality that WOGS (Hubbard's derisory term for anyone not a Scientologist) know on Earth today; and, 2) to control these spirits for all eternity so that they could never cause trouble for Xenu in this sector of the Galaxy. During these films, many false pictures and stories were implanted into these spirits, which resulted in the spirits believing in all the things that control mankind on Earth today, including religion. The concept of religion, including God, Christ, Mohammed, Moses etc., were all an implanted false reality that to this very minute are used to control WOGS on Earth."

And people really believe this shite! Bloody yanks.

Here's another example of redundancy in the English language; roadblocks and caravans. Argh! Words cannot describe how much I hate these fucking polystyrene boxes on wheels. Why would anyone buy a vehicle that overturns as soon as you hit 50mph? What's the fucking point? The main reason for owning your own vehicle is to get from A to B quicker than you can bloody walk.

For the price of one of these things you can have 10 years of holiday cottages, which are warm, dry, have a kitchen and a bathroom. And they're always decorated like something from Clockwork Orange. They look hideous parked outside your house and take up the entire driveway. And they emit some sort of weird chemical that turns otherwise normal, decent people into vindictive bastards (although many, 64.7% at last check, caravan owners are already vindictive bastards to start with). They just sit there doing 30mph below the speed limit (which is why they're such a pain in towns!), refusing to fucking move. And when you finally overtake the damn things, they're always being towed by a beige Volvo estate (already big enough to holiday in without the caravan) driven by some bald bloke with glasses thicker than the Hoover Dam who's about half the size of the steering wheel! And then he has the cheek to look over at you as if to say "I'm within my rights and what right do you have to want to go faster than me". Tosser!

They're too big, too ugly, pulled by bastards, too expensive, and they always pick campsites where their ugliness is exemplified to ruin the landscape (see any aerial photo of the Dorset coast). Top Gear gets it right; destroy them! Destroy them wherever you see them! But do it in an amusing way.

I'm driving up to Sheffield in 24 hours, a good 6-7 hours by the country route, so I'd better go and start to calm down (and fit the mini-rockets behind my headlights) now.

All Daves are created equal, except me!

So I'm going to have to work to 70 before I can retire now am I? And why? Because I went to university, that's why. Well forgive me for going and learning to do something useful for our society rather than being some fucking dosser sitting around doing fuck-all and wanking over Hollyoaks every day! Obviously I deserve some sort of punishment, it's not like I'm contributing anything! Jesus!

Apparently university graduates have a longer life-span on average so should work later. Right, and do you know why we live longer? Because we've really made an effort to gain decent qualifications, get good jobs, and afford to have a good quality of life. And for that we're shit on at every turn; huge debts, loathing reputation as layabouts by non-graduates (i.e. people who didn't bother to go to school before 15 and dropped out afterwards, fucking hippocrites), and now this!

It's all part of the never-ending drive towards mediocrity. Forcing decent, able people down to the level of the dregs so goody-goody liberals can claim to be helping the 'common man'. Fuck that! Who the hell is the 'common man' anyway? These spoilt brats, who most of these bleeding hearts are, have never met the people they're trying to 'help', they can't even define who they are. They're just doing it so they can tell their prissy friends how great they are. They'll usually refer to them as "those people", did you ever hear a more arrogant turn of phrase in your entire life? C**ts.

And it's the same at school level. The obsession with so-called equality and the belief that all kids have the same potential. I'm sorry but they don't and by saying so you fuck up everyone; the best feel undervalued and end up under-achieving, and the worst get unattainable hopes and become disillusioned when they fail. Everyone gets screwed in the name of egalitarianism.

Hopefully I'm demonstrating my firmly and angrily held belief that equality only works one way, George Orwell got that one right (For anyone whose best literary experience is English lit GCSE, that was an Animal Farm reference. And that is a title of a G. Orwell novel for those who did foundation English lit. A novel is a fictional book for those who dropped out of school, and will now be able to retire before me. Grrr! And fictional means, oh fuck it, I'm sick of this).

Here's another example; hands up those who heard the story about the policeman who has just been cleared of dangerous driving (and not even had a speeding ticket) after being caught doing 159mph on a motorway in Shropshire, 130 in a 60 zone, and 64 in a 30 (i.e. urban, where people live!) zone. What the hell is that about?!? Apparently he was "testing the new car, seeing what it could do". Piss off. Could I get away with 'testing' what my car will do? No, if I did that I'd be slapped in irons and thrown into a deep, dark hole on the Isle of Wight, and damn right too. Completely bloody irresponsible. Yet I'm the one with the sky-high insurance premium! Or at least will be come 16th July renewal date. Arse!

Isn't it amazing, this wonderfully equal society. Apparently it's because I'm inexperienced. Fair enough, I am, but why exactly can't my ability also be taken into account? In the 10 months I've had my car, one clipped wing mirror, and that wasn't even my fault, I was stationary and bloody white-van-man hit me. Inexperience is no excuse for charging me more. Should people inexperienced at using the rail system pay more for tickets? No! Should kids learning to read be charged more for books? Stupid idea. Just because virgins are inexperienced at sex, should they be charged more for condoms? Of course fucking not (excuse the pun). The excuse is that it's based on risk. Well how the hell can it be when no-one has assessed how good I am at driving, and hence my risk of accident? Someone who has just scraped through their 8th test is blatantly a worse driver than me, or they'd have passed second time. Is that considered? Of course not, same premium. If it is based on risk, I am, therefore, paying for the privilge of driving in a more risky manner than a worse driver of equal experience, and hence should be allowed to do 120 up the motorway and get away with it. My insurance company should pay the fine and go to prison for me, that's the risk, that's what I pay them for. It should be twats who don't indicate, tossers who don't stop at zebra crossings, people who sit in the middle lane doing 60 when it's clear, and taxis, these people should be paying more, they cause the accidents. How about people who use chicane traffic calming measures as an excuse to have a little fun and see how quick they can get through? Oh no, wait a minute, that would be me.

The sad truth is that equality never works for the young male in our society. Every other social group gets positive discrimination in some aspect of their life. But young men, nope. We're drunks, petty criminals, unemployed spongers, irresponsible drivers, football hooligans. You couldn't group anyone else like that on the basis of a minority; imagine the fallout if you said all black people were muggers, or all women were sluts who got their job on the basis of thigh visibility. Personally I think it shows us to be the most mature members of society that we just sit back, let people say what they want and get on with life. No bitching (except this!).

Right, I've made myself really cross now, I'm going to go and ram a copper, see if I can flip him. And let my insurance company pick up the bill and criminal record. Extortionist bastards.

The exam everyone passes

Oh dear... I've just scored 14/14 on the BBC's star wars quiz. I must be an uber-geek. In my defence, I had to guess 2 of the answers, but they were vaguely educated guesses. And education and exams are the subject of today's epistle (loose link? I thought so).

Aside: (There is actually something that's annoyed me more, but I'm not going to go into much detail as I'll get too offensive. Briefly; more than 100 people have been killed in anti-US protests in Muslim countries across the Midle East following the unconfirmed report of an American soldier at Guantanemo flushing a copy of the Koran down the bog. I'm just going to sigh and say "priorities?". You can put the rest together yourselves, right?)

Anyhow, education. The latest big idea is to remove negative marking for poor spelling in English GCSE exams. This begs the question just what the hell is left in GCSE English. Grammar went out more than 10 years ago, now spelling. Is the ability to hold a pen to be the only criterion for success? Perhaps being able to pick the only English word out of a list of symbolic Cantonese expressions will be enough. Maybe being able to read the exam timetable and turning up will be sufficient. Even getting one's name right is no longer required with 'annonymous marking' (indeed, having to remember your 5-digit candidate number means there is now more maths than English in English GCSE's).

Whatever the claimed motives of Mr(s)/Miss/Ms Whoever-they-are, education secretary, are, the true reason is to make the exam easier so they can make the assertion that educational reforms are working. This isn't just the case in English; many subjects have so-called 'foundation' levels. Foundation history invovles knowing what day it was yesterday, foundation geography involves counting cars, foundation maths actually has no content whatsoever (get a copy of the syllabus if you don't believe me), and foundation religious studies requires torching of oneself in defense of a typo in your copy of the (insert religious text of choice). (N.B - one of those examples isn't true. An A* in GCSE brilliance to the first 5 correct answers).

But even these vacuous foundation courses haven't been sufficient to get the truly stupid through the system. No, now we need to account for every possible excuse by allocating extra marks. Fair enough, something serious like dyslexia requires consideration, but the sensible step of extra time is usually used here, and that's ok. But it seems that, every day some new disorder is 'discovered' that impairs a child's ability to "reach their full potential". Amazing how no disorders seem to exist that "increase their potential". But who am I to argue with the medical profession, lets look at something even dafter.

There exists a rigorous system for giving extra marks to pupils based on circumstances at exam time. Death of a close relative up to five days before the exam: +5%; death of a more distant relative day before the exam: +3%; death of pet on day of exam(watch out pussycats everywhere!):+2%; death of pet day before exam:+1% Headache (with GP's note): +1%. There are lots of others too. Jeez, if you engineer all of them at the same time, there's a C already!

The motivation for all that I've talked about, is to make the exam system fairer (noble, but misguided). But let's take the argument to its logical conclusion and identify a minor flaw. The main thing that separates pupils in exams is intellect. As such, fairness requires that the IQ of all exam-sitters is measured and accounted for with bonus marks/deductions, like those given for pet death, thus leading to a situation where everyone has the same 'effective ability' (this is a term I've just invented, but I expect to hear it from a civil servant soon!). Consequence: Everyone gets the same result.

The only truly fair exam is one where everyone achieves the same mark. And make no mistake, it will come if we don't stop it now. But I'm too apathetic, and, as I passed my exams fair and square, no-one will listen anyway. TO THE PUB!