I do still exist.

Sorry for my repeated absences from the blogosphere - life has taken a pretty negative turn recently, which means you can enjoy less frequent posting for the time being - but once I am out of this crapness I am sure I will be back to complaining on a regular basis.
But just to recap, for anyone out there who is not sure
WHEN IN YOUR CAR PLEASE USE YOUR INDICATORS
I mean how hard is it really? You want to make a turn, or change lanes? Well, simply flick that little switch and let everyone else know your intentions. It is easy, it makes sense and it prevents accidents...so why aren't you doing it? You know who you are people....don't make me come and bash the sense into you the hard way.

Oh, and one other thing that really peed me off today - I received a letter today from the solicitors dealing with the May car crash asking me to sign a form giving my consent to release my medical records to prove I did indeed receive hospital treatment after the crash. The thing is they don't just want the records pertaining to the injury I sustained, or even for records of any previous similar injuries - they want everything, from the day I was born onwards. Now while I can see why they might want records pertaining to my neck and back I don't see why they would need to know when my next smear test is due, or whether I have ever had an ingrowing toe nail or whatever. Most disturbing to me was the request to access any or all psychiatric records. I just don't see how these things are relevant. So I rang them and asked and I was told that psychiatric records are important as if you have mental health issues you may have caused the crash, or lied or exaggerated about the extent of your injuries. Now this seems to be skirting very close to discrimination if you ask me - to assume that anyone with any previous mental health problems will immediately be viewed with suspicion, that they may have caused an accident or lied about injuries because at some point in the past they had been depressed seems like discrimination to me. It's enough to make you feel paranoid...

euro-elections

Well, tomorrow (or probably today now, it has gotten quite late) is voting day and I have to make a choice between several rubbish parties. I don't even know who is standing in my area, I have seen no campaigning of any type, I have had no letters or leaflets pushed through my door, I have seen no stands in the city centre, nothing. I had a look on iPlayer for the party political broadcasts, but that didn't tell me much except that:
Gordon Brown is next to useless,
David Cameron spends a lot of time travelling first class on trains,
Lib Dems seem to have missed the point of the "liberal" part of their name and do not seem to be making the most of the opportunity afforded to them in light of recent pubic opinions on labour and the conservatives,
BNP were the only party to clearly give their website address, so that I was able to read about their racist policies online,
and the Green party used an awful lot of paper in their broadcast.
So I have a decision to make, and I don't even know who the candidates are for my area.
Isn't democracy brilliant.

looking for an alternative

I sent this email today to the Green Party, I will let you know if I get a response:


Hi there,

I was wondering if you could answer a couple of queries that I have about the Green Party and your policies and viewpoints to help me make my final decision for voting in the euro-elections on June 4th?

I wondered if you could tell me what the Green Party think about the very real problem of overpopulation? As far as I can see it one of the main issues facing our planet is that there are currently more people than this planet can sustain, and the population is growing all the time. On a large scale this equates to extra pressure on resources, over crowding, famine, drought and the easy spread of diseases. On a more local scale it equates to larger class sizes, longer waiting time for NHS care and additional pressure on the infrastructure of this country. I am disillusioned with the major parties stance on promoting reproduction as a good thing for our country and for the world and I wondered if perhaps the Green Party, with its obvious concern for the environment around us could offer something different?


My second query is to do with the Green Party policies on the workplace. As you will be aware the major parties seem to be promoting flexible working and extra perks for those with "families". However it is clear that what they actually mean is those who have chosen to become parents. Those of us who provide care for elderly, disabled or severely ill relatives find it very difficult to be awarded the flexible hours and other perks offered to those who have children, and regardless of loyalty or years of service within an organisation it is practically unheard of for a childfree person to be awarded time off, paid or otherwise, to pursue other interests, such as other care responsibilities or further study.
Despite all the talk of equality it would seem that those without children are somehow less equal than those who do become parents.
Do the Green Party have policies to ensure that the flexible working and other perks offered to those with children will be extended to all employees, who after all are also paying tax into the system that allows for these perks in the first place?

I am very interested to hear the Green Party stance on these topics, and I sincerely hope that you do offer a real alternative to what the other parties are offering.

Thank you for your help with this matter

Regards

Bitchin' Atheist*


*I did actually use my real name in the email!

random weirdness

Well firstly yes, I am still alive I have just been absent from the world of blogging recently due to increasingly difficult personal circumstances.
Anyway, I managed to drag my sorry self into town today and managed, as usual to encounter some of my cities weirdest residents.
While walking through the city centre I saw a man throw a handful of rubbish onto the floor, so I kindly pointed out that there are plenty of bins around and his littering was unnecessary and stupid. His nonsensical reply was "yeah, well, just coz you are a prostitute."
I pondered this logic and decided it makes no sense unless "whore" is actually an acronym for "We Help Others Recycle Enthusiastically".
I also had to pop to the local hospital and saw a man leaning against a wall outside the coronary care unit, with ECG stickers still stuck all over him puffing away on a cigarette while saying into his mobile "It wasn't a heart attack, thank god. I am so relieved..."
I would think that if I had been checked into hospital with a suspected heart attack I would wait a little while before sparking up.
And then the other day when I went out I was sat on a bench for a few minutes having a rest when a teenage girl wearing a t-shirt proclaiming "punks not dead" noticed one of my tattoos and started a loud conversation with her friend about how she hates tattoos and thinks that they, and people who have them are tacky. I guess she has not learned about irony yet.

write off

You may remember the other day I mentioned that some idiot had driven straight into the back of us at a red light. Well we have now found out from the insurers that even though the car looked OK with just a cracked and dented rear bumper it turns out that it will probably be a complete write off as the innards of the car are knackered - all the back of the car inside is cracked and buckled with much of the mechanics being damaged too. (Sorry, I know very little about cars so I can't elaborate much more than this.)
So yet again I realise that I have been very lucky as things could have been much worse. And I am glad that the car took the brunt of the impact rather than me or Himself - a flimsier car and it could have been us that were cracked and buckled. Although in a strange way I do feel kind of sorry for the car - in the way that one does occasionally feel sympathy for inanimate objects.
Either that or I am going slowly insane...

Hicksville

I made a journey today down to the backwards, inbred small town backwater where I grew up to visit a relative and yet again encountered the kind of pathetic yet ultra-aggressive neanderthals that made me realise why I left in the first place.
Don't get me wrong the place itself is lovely. Beautiful scenery, open countryside, rolling hills and woodland that gives way to moorland, lambs frolicking in the fields...unfortunately there are a large number of d*ckheads that populate the otherwise lovely town and seem to have made it their mission in life to make sure they narrow their minds and attack anyone or anything that they perceive as different in some way.
Today was the third time in as many weeks that I have encountered the kind of abuse I received today.
The first time I was walking down a quiet road when a car that had just driven past me suddenly reversed and pulled up next to me so that the occupants could shout abuse and hurl empty cans and bottles at me. It wasn't even particularly imaginative abuse. I have short hair and olive skin and the best they could come up with was "paki dyke".
Then a week later a woman followed me from the centre of town for over a mile as I headed out of town, occasionally raising her voice to shout obscenities at me, until she got bored and turned and headed back.
Today as Himself and I walked back into the town centre a primitive being left the confines of the pub in order to stand in the doorway shouting abuse at us. The best he could come up with was "f*cking queers, wheres the fancy dress party?" which says a lot more about him and his level of intellect than it does about anything else. He then proceeded to do a strange dance in the doorway of the pub as he attempted to attract the attention of his mates, but evidently they were more concerned with guzzling their mid afternoon pints than coming out into the rain to laugh at us.
It really is pitiful, the people who do this are so pathetic. Unfortunately though they often tend to be extremely aggressive and it does scare me. Lets face it I am only small and one of me against 4 or 5 angry drunk men is not a fair fight. I do not understand what it is they find so threatening that they feel the need to behave in the way they do. So they see me and wonder if I might be gay, or foreign...so f*cking what? What kind of a difference would it make to them if I prefer woman to men, or if my parents were born in another country? I really don't understand why that makes them so aggressive - all I do understand is that the hate in their eyes is genuine and it scares me.
At the moment I live in a deprived inner city area, an area that has a bad reputation, an area that people from the affluent end of town consider to be unsafe, whereas the area I grew up in is considered to be a nice, safe middle class area. All I know is that I will happily walk around my inner city "ghetto" without a problem even at night, yet I walk through this supposedly nice rural area in the middle of the day and can almost guarantee I will encounter abuse of some kind. Go figure.

what not to say

When you get on a bus and accidentally make eye contact with an overweight young woman who then sticks her multiple chins out at you and aggressively asks
"what the f*ck you looking at?"
it is probably best not to reply with
"a fat bird with an attitude problem".
Luckily I have not had my face rearranged.