Wankers of the Day

Well done to almost everyone in this photo for deliberately ignoring the extremely heavily pregnant woman who was forced to stand on final carriage of a southbound Northern Line train at about 5.15 this evening. I got on at Kennington, along with the woman fourth from the front on the right-hand side. Blonde, glasses, pregnant.

And no, she wasn't just fat. There was no danger of being slapped around the chops for kindly asking if she'd like your seat. That's a natural fear for most of us. I'd accept it if she had been a bit husky. But she wasn't. She was a skinny as a rake, with an enormous baby bump which made it look like she'd swallowed a hot air balloon. She was even wearing one of those "Baby on Board" badges. There was absolutely no excuse whatsoever. And yet unbelievably not one of these fuckers could get off their arses.

Here were my travel colleagues:

Click to enlarge. Do you know any of these people? Well give them a kick in the cunt from me if you do.

I particularly liked (and by "liked", I mean "hated") the way the girl with the brown hair on the right-hand side looked closely, then around the carriage, and then settled back into her crappy free magazine for idiot women. Embarrassingly for her, she then had to spend the rest of her journey sat next to the women she had so flagrantly stared at, decided to ignore, and then got back to another article about pantyliners.

I should point out that the guy front right is utterly blameless. He got on after we passed Stockwell, when a tosser with a silly beard reading a comic secreted in a Forbidden Planet carrier bag (saaaaad bastard) left the train. He had sat, unblinkingly, without a care in the world, like a toad, directly in front of the mother-to-be. And then had the balls to push past her in his hurry to get off and go back to reading a fucking comic. He was comfortably 25. It was presumably one of those horrendous Japanese things rammed with women with enormous eyes and breasts, the ones read by the mentally disturbed wankers as they dance in swamps of their own semen and shit.

The other guy on the right looked like Ming the Merciless. You wouldn't miss him in a crowd, bald bastard. On the left is a woman with nails so gruesome it looked like she'd spent her day digging graves. Next to her, some sort of deeply unattractive elf sporting a Cable & Wireless neck lanyard thing with her ID badge on it. I won't name her. Next along, Red Riding Hood, aged by 100 years of sucking lemons. Then a large chap in an Everton beanie and a suit. And then more, and more, and more complete and utter bastards. You should be ashamed.

And they say using bad language is a sign of limited intelligence, a weak vocabulary. Well at least I give my seat up on the tube, you fucking bellends.

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A Penny for Laurie's thoughts

Laurie Penny is, whilst I disagree with almost every single position she takes on absolutely everything, a brilliant writer. And I always enjoy trawling through her stuff, one hand pinching my nose, the other feverishly scrolling down the page at lightning speed. You need to read this stuff, you just don't have to believe it. It's like reading a comic. Not a serious piece of graphic art, like Tintin, but just something light, breezy and essentially absurd. Like Asterix. That's it, Laurie Penny is like Goscinny and Uderzo. Amusing, light; readable when you're straining on the toilet, but ephemeral and pointless.


Normally, Laurie's stuff is about riots and What A Good Thing They Are. Stuff like this, which was a sort of middle-class version of the carnage at the Clapham Junction branch of Footlocker last summer. She writes loads of stuff praising anti-social behaviour by feckless students, op-ed balls which is so far off piste it's already been in the hot tub, drunk ten jaegerbombs and danced the night away in L'Avalanche. I devour this stuff, but I hate it - and myself - too.


But today, I've got a new found love for Miss Penny, and not just because I enjoy her mind and sharpened pencils. She's actually written something about the complete paucity of ideas and hubris and mindless bullshit which came with the whole Occupy London-let's-all-camp-outside-St-Paul's too which I've been walking past most weeks, and enjoying its gradual decline from earnest shouting shop, to bonkers conspiracy theorist patch, through to its current iteration, Glastonbury for the homeless. Last time I went past, there were - literally - people doing that bastard poi thing talentless gits do at festivals. You know, where they get two sticks with little tassels on the ends and wave them around. It's like rhythmic gymnastics, but even more shit - and, as a nation, we're already terrible at that. And there was someone with one of those hourglass-shaped things thrown up and down on a string between two sticks. No idea what that's called, other than "sticks connected by string from which you toss up and fail to catch a rubbery hourglass-shaped thing to ensure that you look like a complete bastard in general public". Suffice it to say: arseholes.


Anyway, so today's piece in the New Statesman. Here it is. I can't be bothered to go through it line-by-line, because I've not blogged for so long that I don't really know how to anymore. Just read it yourself, and marvel that someone who writes so well could hold such whacko opinions. And then read it again, and remember that she's the (former) flag waver for these people. And then know that when Laurie Penny deserts you, it's definitely time to leave. That court decision means nothing; this is like the ravens fleeing the Tower of London. It's bound to crumble. No more Laurie with her stentorian tones bestriding the steps of the cathedral marshalling the troops to victory. No more writing about how important and brave and brilliant they all are. 

No. Now she's just mocking them. Seriously, could anyone who secretly didn't hate the smell and the mess and the notices attached to Natwest (about how all money is fraud and all private property is a sham and how aliens are coming back to earth and Prince William is a lizard and you can copyright your name) serious paint the remaining rump of knackered, grubby waifs left behind in such an unflattering light. She mocks their generally quite socially-accepted drinking and soft drug use (they're camped out in the middle of the City, so surrounded by others doing similar in more expensive attire). 


There's still some of the old Laurie here - "an honest counter-culture", "There are different ways of being on the streets, and all of them are political" - but the killer blow lands in the paragraph on self-styled "tramp liason" Tom, 24.

All the camp beauraucrats will come up to you and say, 'oh, you can't roll a spliff in the uni tent', and I'm like, 'fuck off man, I'm an activist. I've been out fighting the EDL in Barking all morning'."

That is a low blow, Penny. You can withdraw your support, and critique the movement. You can cry salt tears for its abandonment of revolutionary aims, and letting public support slip by holding votes on allowing drinking, rather than stating what are probably partially valid grievances about excesses in the City. But you've made Tom, 24 into David Brent. And that, Laurie Penny, is unforgiveable.



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postscript


This is the quote I was reminded of:

And if there's one other person who's influenced me in that way I think, someone who is a maverick, someone who does that to the system, then, it's Ian Botham. Because Beefy will happily say "that's what I think of your selection policy, yes I've hit the odd copper, yes I've enjoyed the old dooby, but will you piss off and leave me alone, I'm walking to John O'Groats for some spastics."

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"Unlimited income appeals to me"

Janice is 38, lives alone in Crumbsville, suburban London, and has paid £4,000 to a variety of dead eyed monsters with nice teeth to coach her on how to become a millionaire. Every morning, she dumps a couple of coppers in a few jars liberally strewn around her bare abode, rubs her earlobes whilst insisting to her reflection that she is both a "millionare" and "an excellent money manager", and then heads out the nursery at which she works. I mean, she's probably got a good defined benefit pension, but I don't think it's going to make her a millionaire. She watched videos of "couples in love", sees Eighties stock camera work of people lounging in hammocks sipping cocktails with little umbrellas, and fancies a slice of it. And why not?

Janice is one of the stars of this week's Most Depressing Yet Watchable Documentary, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", the first part of a tryptych on money from the BBC. Make sure you catch it on the iPlayer before it vanishes. The cast of grotesques, cranks and desperate money-worshippers made for particularly edifying viewing; tales of depthless human misery are always enjoyable. A brief dramatis personae.

Maria floats around her large and indecently horrid large property in a hideous faux fur coat. She loves having croissants and cocktails on her balcony, and funding her husband's musical career with the proceeds of her property portfolio. And you don't need O-Levels for that. Given that the husband's career appears to be that of a professional Brian May impersonator gigging in pubs, it's lucky that Maria owns so many rental properties. He doesn't bring much to the party; I bet Maria doesn't even invite him to the endless lunches she says she attends.

Rhys and Sarah are 18, have just celebrated their two year anniversary, and are already thousands in debt to charlatans. They go on bollocks courses on how to invest in rental property, mentored by a couple of grinning sharks. She got into the work of Robert Kiyosaki age 12 (he wrote something called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", a treatise on the whole pointlessness of education and work, and an homage to buying four hideous cars and living in a bungalow in Phoenix, Arizona)., Rhys can't bring himself to tell his parents about his get rich scheming - presumably because, secretly, he knows that if it waddles like a duck, it's probably good dried, roasted and served in small pancakes with cucumber, spring onion and plum sauce. These silent scream nightmares must come to him as he works at his minimum wage job watering plants at Homebase.

Biblebashing millionaires Shirley and David used to be a nurse and engineer respectively. They've packed in those rubbish jobs now, of course, because they own 29 properties, a portfolio worth about £4 million. That sounds a lot, I was impressed. They've invested well, clearly. But then Vanessa Engle, who's a sort of highbrow female Louis Theroux, asked them how much they make from it. About £36,000 to £40,000, says Dave. £40,000, from a £4 million portfolio. That's a 1% return. By any measure, that is miserable. Still, it's worked for them because some people just lack ambition, and want. And they top up the pathetic return on their assets by telling other people how to be just like them. So if ever you want a course on how to be bald, chubby cheeked and painfully mousey, just call on Shirley and David.

You see becoming super rich and never having to get out of bed again (which, admittedly, sounds terrific) means that you need to create "passive income". You just need to buy enough assets which you can leverage to buy more assets in the hope that you eventually make enough to allow you to stop buying assets. And by assets, these people mean rental properties. There's nothing else to do, simple as. Just buy a property, leverage yourself up to the eyeballs, and keep buying more and more. And pray and pray and pray that mortgage rates don't go up even the teensiest bit, because then the whole edifice will come crashing down around you, and you'll lose the whole thing. But you cannot afford to be negative. Not. At. All. Don't question this stuff, because then you won't make millions. It's like not believing in fairies - every time someone says it, one dies.

And to prove that they still believe in fairies, all the willing all go to Excel to watch the shitehawks flogging their bullshit in person. They're queuing for the gas chambers.

I think it would be fine if this was just an American thing. It's got all the hallmarks of evangelical religion. Repetitve phrasing, call and return, charismatic leaders, phony success stories, a lumpen and unattractive crowd bulked out with stooges and - lest we forget - an impressively bulky bottom line. But it seems we have our very own British versions too. Marcus is lank and horrid looking, desporting the guru's uniform of pug-ugly shirt and testicle-nippingly tight stonewashed jeans. He's a millionaire, natch, and he teaches people how to become millionaries. By "teaching", he means publicly humiliating, making them run up and down a crappy hotel conference room, or jump up and down and clap. He is David Brent, right down to his gimpy little beard. His clearly embarrassed wife looks very sad indeed, although it may be the crotch-displaying pose he strikes whilst sitting on the sofa in their spartan flat (none of these millionaires seems to spend any money on furnishings) whilst being interviewed that causes her to hate him.
 
It's obvious - obvious to anyone with a brain - that the whole thing is a pyramid. Ask any of these people how they became rich, and the answer is that they got rich charging other people vasts amounts of money to tell them how to get rich. It's an endless circle jerk of hellish proportions. When I (briefly, it was far too tiring) worked as a postman, I was regularly asked by one of the people to which I delivered (they're probably called "clients" or "customers" in Post Office speak) to join his pyramid scheme. You just need to sell household cleaning products to other people farther down the pyramid, in the hope eventually that all the suspiciously branded (never Cif, always Rif or Tif) and clearly dangerous (i.e. "this will destroy your skin")will eventually be sold to a consumer and someone will get some money. The people at the top get rich from the endeavours of the Solylent Green types below.

You're stuck though, aren't you? Once you've paid Robert Kiyosaki your £1,500 - which will just about cover the cup holders on his latest appalling car - and realise that you've been sold a crock, perhaps you have to keep going on the courses in the hope that you do finally crack the old financial success game, so that you can afford to pay off your credit card bill.

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