Perhaps we don't deserve free movement of persons

So for the European elections the far right has made definite gains. whilst the turnout was shit as always, both UKIP's rise in here and the National Front's gains in France suggests a few things. Namely, we can't have nice things, and secondly: is freedom of movement between borders worth it?

From my perspective, that's a definitive yes. However, it's undeniable there's a big swell of thought in Europe right now that we have too many foreigners wanderin' around.

When I talk to people, there's constant fear and anger about people in this country walking along the street talking a different language, or wearing different clothes. And I was be the only person who doesn't give a shit. Whatever. You're talking something that's not English. You're wearing non-English traditional clothes. I'll be over here, looking for my fucks to give.

I don't even give a fuck about the lack of apostrophes in this picture.

Tragically, my incredible tolerance / incredible apathy isn't a universally shared thing. UKIP and the National Front has been making their gains of the back of an anti-immigration stance, with many comments levelled at the stance 'they're finally saying what we're all thinking!' Well, awesome. But you know why the Big Three parties (well, Big Two after the Lib Dems dismal showing) have never got round to doing anything about immigration? It's a boring answer, I'm afraid. It's because we gain a net economic benefit.

That's not the story that every newspaper, and every 'everybody knows' story that's been doing the rounds for god knows how long. And the stories that are wrong, or blatantly false, like Farage's '29 million Romanians and Bulgarians are totally going to come here,' (even though there's only 27 million of them, and god damn is that stupid to suggest) are never really challenged, or called out for the scare-mongering lies that they are. But whatever. Clearly we just don't like immigrants.

So what's next? Perhaps we should have tiered freedom of borders, like the big players in Germany, France and England can wander freely, but everyone else in the EU can wander around themselves but need border checks coming into the big three. It is admittedly not a good system, and is brutally unfair, but hey, it lets me dodge getting visas when I go on holiday. It does somewhat stop the 'takin ma jobs' cries, as look everyone - we're all just well off white people wandering around, amiright? Non of those, poor, ethnic chaps!

Excuse whilst I go puke for writing that.

How I feel about myself right now.

However, this, whilst politically perhaps more acceptable to the public, would be immediately challenged as other countires would want to get into this tier of free movement. Then you have the problem we don't have any internal borders, so you'd just have to walk around to get it. And thirdly, the big three want immigration, to do those jobs cheaply we don't to do or fill skilled roles we don't have, and not having it would make us exceptionally uncompetive. Also, I have friends who live here but aren't from Germany and France, that I'm basically determining that they gotta be deported. Er. I don't want to do that. I did say this idea was fucking terrible, right?

Perhaps we should have a leaflet to anyone turning up, quietly saying, 'Welcome to Britain! We fucking hate you. Please do us a favor and hide your unquie cultural hertiage and pretend to be just like us until we decide we're cool with you. It will only take, twently, thirty years, tops. Peace out!'

Or we could have the media stop fellating Murdock's wrinkled cock, and actually tell the truth about immig-

Heh, I made a funny.

Yeah, fine, that's not going to happen.

You know, immigration is never going away? It's never going to end? It's been with use for-fucking-ever? And that some of our best people were from abroad? Oh, hey, the big man, Winston Churchill's British, right?

FUCKING WRONG HIS MOTHER WAS FROM AMERICA.

What about Brunel, our famous engineer?

NOPE, HE'S FROM FRANCE, A FUCKING FRENCHIE.

T.S. Eliot, poet?

AMERICAN AGAIN, FUCKFACE.

Okay, the guy who designed that weird twisty thing in the Olympic park? That weird thing is the British thing ever. It even stands like it's embarrassed at itself.

KEEP LOOKING, ANISH KAMPOOR'S WAS FROM INDIA.

Fine. The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, he's as English as you get, right?

AS ENGLISH AS A FUCKING IRISHMAN. WHICH HE WAS.

Dame Helen Mirren, the quintessential English-

DAD'S A RUSSIAN IMMIGRANT, YOU. UTTER. FUCKTARD.

This, this! Is what people who bitch against immigration stand against. One generation, two generations, and they are British. One of us! Even earlier, if they want to be. Whatever. Fine. No immigrants. Woo.

I'll be over here, watching Eddie Izzard's Mongrel Nation again.

Utterly confused about media coverage

I'm blanking on what to write about, so I'll feebly excuse myself until tomorrow.

I will leave with a parting thought. Alongside the European Elections, we also had a whole bunch of local elections. What makes me confused is the accepted story on how UKIP did really well, and Labour not so much. This is weird, considering that Labour made net gains of over three hundred seats, and took many councils outright, where UKIP, whilst having a bunch of seats, were shotgun scatted giving them precisely... jack shit. No councils taken, no not even being the opposition for a council. For fuck's sakes, the Green Party has a council, and is an opposition! That's not even including the fact that it looks like UKIP's percentage share of the vote went down compared to the last council elections.

So what I ask you is this - if this is Labour doing badly, and UKIP doing well, what the utter fuck would Labour doing well and UKIP doing badly look like?

Doing a protest vote right at the European Elections

The European elections are coming up, and you don't care!

Ugh. Politics.

Why would you? They are very boring. Also, as a Brit, common knowledge is that the EU is ridiculously undemocratic so what's the point of voting anyway? Er, aside from democratic accountability and shutup.

But there is going to be in all likelihood a lot of votes for UKIP, as a protest vote. Yeah. We need to talk about that.

Okay, so you don't like the EU. Or the Tories. Or Labour. Or the Lib Dems. I get that. I am with you 75% of the way with those statements, and depending on the day, maybe even 100% behind you. However, if you really don't like the EU, I'd recommend passing on voting UKIP as in doing so you're not helping. What you're doing is voting in people who won't bother turning up - thus missing your chance to do anything meaningful over the EU - and who take every penny they can from the EU. Before you chortle that they deserve it, please note that money is our money. We pay it to the EU, which then gets claimed by UKIP who don't turn up to work. So yes, they are in fact wasting British money in doing so.

They are also not a protest vote. Sadly, if your attraction to them is that they seem different to the main three parties we have (and I am sympathetic here, the main three parties as undeniable arseholes and incompetents) they are just like everyone else. They're primarily funded by Paul Sykes, as ex-Tory backer, and are staffed by plenty of ex-Tories... when they're not jumping ship back to the Tories. I mean, come one, Neil bleedin' Hamilton is a UKIP member, and the only reason he's famous is for being a Tory MP whilst being on I'm a Celebrity. Also Nigel Farage himself used to be a Tory. Go figure.

So they're basically Tories who don't like the EU. Which to me, sounds like they're basically Tories. The only thing I found in their manifesto (which I'm not sure is the right one, as they've disowned previous manifestos for being kinda bonkers) that's different to the Tories is that stand opposed to the Bedroom Tax. That's it. Everything else seems to be roughly the same, bar whatever bonkers bits they keep, which may include making the Circle Line a circle again (wha?) more freedom to manage their own expenses (Hell. No.) and a flat rate of 31% tax of everyone earning over the pitiful sum of £11,500 per annum, which is fucking terrifying. Do you earn enough to lose 31% of your wage? The hell you do!

(If you actually do can I have some? So hungry.)

But if I've convinced you to not bother with UKIP, but you don't like the EU, the Tories, Labour, Lid Dems, and want a protest vote, the fuck can you actually do?

Well on Thursday the 22nd of May you can go into that polling booth and draw a giant, throbbing phallus all over your voting card. That's a protest and a dick joke, so that's a twofer there.

I'm serious. Boom. Spoil your ballot with a giant dick joke. That's a much more effective protest vote than voting in more of the same with UKIP, and is absolutely hilarious to boot. You could also draw a big pair of breasts, a dinosaur, a spaceship, or even a second, bigger penis.

MIND. BLOWN.

Or you could vote. Now, the electoral process for the MEPs are done by proportional representation, so unlike our First Past The Post bullshit where you can live in an area where it makes no difference who you vote for as you're against a cliff wall of voters, this means you vote matters a little more. There's less safe seats, so change actually happens. Weird, that. Also, fun fact - if you get an alternate party in, even a little, then the bigger guys may notice and nick some of their policies. Democracy in action! Sorta!

So let's look at a few parties that are actually legitimate alternative groups. For starters, let me introduce you to The Pirate Party. Not only do they have a bitchin' as fuck name, they stand for the reform of patent and copyright laws, greater protections to freedom of speech and less government surveillance, of which I can say Yes Fucking Please to all three of those things. Particularly the last one, as government, get the fuck out of my emails. And that first one? If you're the sort of person who sees nothing wrong with perusing a torrent site of two, that may be relevant. Of course, patent law while boring is becoming a utterly farcical hammer in recent years, and that's gotta stop.

Of course, those guys aren't probably running in your area, so you might be in mind for someone more widespread. Then funnily enough the Green Party might be for you. For starters, they're big enough that they're challenging the Lib Dems for forth place and I'd love for them to win that to blast the Traitor King further into obscurity. They stand for a bunch of things that you'd probably like - bringing public services such as mail, NHS, trains and energy back under public control which oh. My. God. Wow. That. I love that. How much has your energy bills gone up? How shit are the trains, which we still pump money into and raise above inflation every year? Also, remember that whole line about what if you don't like the EU? The Green Party doesn't like the EU either. They want some urgent reforms, and failing that, a referendum, which is doing EU management correctly - instead of having a hissy fit and walking, they want to reform to make it better, and leave if they can't. Admittedly, that sounds an awful lot like what Davy boy said, but I reasonably sure he doesn't intend to ever have a referendum and regardless of what happens with the EU he'll declare Mission Accomplished so the referendum's averted. The one sticking point for me personally is how they hate them some nuclear power, and I love me some nuclear power. Can't have everything, I suppose.

There are some more, but go research them yourselves. Go on! Go! I'm bored of researching already. You can be to.

It's worth noting that I'm still researching who to vote for in the elections, and drawing a giant throbbing phallus is starting to sound really tempting. Nor am I affiliated with any party, beyond once joining the Lid Dem university group on the sole reason that if I signed up I got a goody bag of lollipops and condoms.

At only £2 to join I strictly speaking made a profit.

The halal non story

Enough with the Daily Mail bashing, I hear you cry. Fine.

I can bash The Sun instead.

I see three headlines, a hat trick of offensiveness!

So The Sun is mad that there's a bunch of halal chicken being served in Pizza Express right now that nobody bothered to announce. And by a bunch, I mean all of the chicken is halal chicken. And by nobody bothered to announce, I mean it's all over their website, just not their menus and for some reason this is important.

Admittedly, I know the reason. But we'll get back to it.

So I paid attention to this story for about thirty seconds, long enough for every other newspaper to run a mini-story on it. My attention briefly flicked over if the chickens were stunned first, and thus humane, and they were, and I just stopped caring. Look, I don't care what you say over a dying chicken, unless your whispering at it how you're going to fuck it's new holes, it which case, damn, that is creepy. As most (like, 90% more most) of the meat is pre-stunned, and thus like every other piece of meat served to me, this means the only difference a halal chicken and a non-hahal chicken is the that little prayer the halal stuff gets. I'm an atheist. Praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monsters is equally valid to me, in that prayer is utterly invalid to me. Praying to the dead chicken makes no difference, it's like talking to plants - only that plants benefit from the carbon dioxide in your breath. If anything, praying is a sort of selfish action. It makes you feel better, but muggins over here stuck in hospital thinks you're just wasting your own time and mine.

Besides, if you're religious but not a Muslim, surely that prayer is as equally invalid? As every religion claims they're the only right one? ...yes, I don't know jack shit about religions, I kinda gave up of them a while ago.

As long as the animal was killed humanly with as minimized suffering as possible, I'm down with that. Look, abattoirs are gross. And you know what? If you're not cool with that, don't eat meat. I know plenty of people who've decided that, and good for them.

So the story went on to look at the multiple places that sold halal meat and whether they announced it, and you know what - they probably should. A lot of meat nowadays seems to be halal to hedge the bets that everyone is cool to eat it. But that's really where the story should of stopped. But it kept on.

So why then? I mean, it's all stunned humanly, and no one's talking about the animal welfare beyond the death - not one mention about mistreatment - so why's this going on? Well, I'll tell you.

It's because The Sun is fucking racist.

What? I said it. I know plenty of well meaning people who are obsessed that there is a secret Muslim conspiracy to overtake Britain and that my friends, is lunacy. Lunacy! We're a country run by rich white men, and we'll always be run by rich white men. Our pastimes are bacon butties and beer. It ain't happening.

Yet we get the hysteria about sharia law: they're running their own courts! Of course they are. Just like Jewish courts, or Sikh courts, we actively encourage people to set up their own courts to deal with financial bullshit because if someone wants to go through a court and be legally bound by that court whilst not going through our courts, thus not costing us any money, we're normally all for it. Because, you know, it's not costing us anything. And then we're got Muslims taking over our schools! So we lose our fucking minds and send in a counter terrorism expert - way to proportionally respond... to a likely hoax. Now they're sneaking in their halal food! Only that is wasn't snunk in, we invited it, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH.

As this adds up to a nasty piece of xenophobic hate mongering. Whenever I see those bloody Facebook shares of someone crying about animal welfare... look at the group promoting them. One of those nasty, cruel, nationalist right winger groups, right? Because that's the first thing they do to try for legitimacy; they attempt to claim they're kind. They loves them some fluffy animals! Yeah. No, you don't care. You're just bashing, and your types always do this.

Enough.

Any Irish here? I need you to do me a personal favor.

I need you to be our terrorists again.

Look, it can't be the Jews, they're still getting shit. It can't be anyone remotely brown lookin' to the average Dulex paint range racist as they've already been lumped into the Muslim camp. It can't be the Welsh, as we don't belive they care at all about anything beyonf their borders. And we built a wall around the Scots, thus keeping us safe from them forever.

FOREVER.

Just phone up a couple of prank bomb calls, and let us make horrible potato based racist slurs for a bit until we all calm down. That's as far as we'll go - you're in the EU now, you're safe from us unless we... uh... leave. Hmm. Yeah.

Scratch that.

It'll have to be the Welsh. Sorry.

How not to get your hair cut

I wouldn't count myself as a socially anxious person. Public speaking doesn't really deter me, I'm all right in crowds, and I normally greet my work superiors by jokingly ordering them around, in a habit that now occurs to me is potentially going to get me fired one day. I'm a well adjusted person, according to my court mandated counsellor.

Until I have to get my hair cut.

Look, they're waving sharp pointy things near my face and neck, okay? Whatever that person wants, goes. Besides, they take my glasses away, and then I'm kinda blind with sharp pointy things near my face and neck. Tragically, that deference to the person with the scissors coupled with my British desire to not make a scene has seen me get some god awful haircuts in the past.

Some of that blame is on me. I'm male. I have no idea what's a good look for me. What I've wanted for years is a psychic barber who knows automatically what looks good on me, and does it, and they turn out to be in high demand and rare supply. What I get are hairdressers who have nothing to work with as I mumble 'whatever you want, really' whilst they battle with the notion that a bloke wandered in here who doesn't want it all shaved off - and I'm not doing that again. I got out my shower once after shaving my head and thought a escaped naked axe murderer (the worst kind) had snuck into the bathroom by my glanced unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. Yeah. You've never considered yourself feeling vulnerable until you think an escaped naked axe murderer has snuck into you bathroom and is waiting for you patiently to get out of the shower, so you're nice and slippery. Never again.

And then smartphones came along.

God bless smartphones. They prevent me from getting lost with gps, carry a camera that I always forget to bring with me, wake me up extra early so I can get my daily weeping out the way before work happens, carry a secret backup stash of porn, track my position for the NSA's convenience, keep me entertained whilst I poop and distract me from boring people. Also, in this instance, they help immeasurably with my hair. I once heard that hairdressers do better if they have a frame of reference, and so I spent an afternoon on the internet looking at random people online, found a bloke with a decent haircut, saved it to the phone and voilà! Hello, honoured hairdresser, please make my hair look like this photo that I have on my cellular telephone, and I will pay you a shiny thrupence!

This photo, in fact. I specifically avoid the term,  "I want to look like him" on account of the
disparaging remarks about my physique. And attractiveness. And successfulness. Etc.

Follow the photo, and boom! That's not hard. And that's the way it went for a few years. For a few years, my hair looking gooooood. Yes, good, with six 'o's. That's pretty damn good, I have you know.

Tragically, the ability to follow the photo seems to be a skill which is getting rarer recently.

I mean, the warning signs were on the wall. The first sign was that my barber changed management, and became a hairdresser (there's a difference, I hear.) The staff changed. And yet I kept going, presumably because I must of believed that it was the building that contained the magic hair cutting skill, not the people.

So I went to get a haircut, as it was that or buy a truck with truck nuts and I'd have nowhere to park it. Midway through my hair being shaved off one of two employees started complaining about the monumental fuck up they had made with the previous clients hair. Which they had been cooing over before they left. So they lied. Yay. That was the second warning sign. The third warning sign was when I said to take a lot of the top off, she measured up a gnat's anus length worth and nodded to me. I asked for perhaps, maybe slightly more off, and she got out the clippers. Yes, because that's an agreeable escalation. The clippers incidentally that I was sure have never been used for this type of haircut, but yes, it's my head, but she's the hairdresser, she knows what she's doing, right?

Okay, fine, we're one sign number three, that's usually the strike out limit, but I was stuck in the chair. I was committed. Committed to stare at my blurry reflection hating everything about myself forever. It turns out the mirror was slightly warped (god I hoped it was slightly warped) so I spent over and hour looking at blurry me, who looked like an utter fat fuck with eyes that looked in two different directions. I spent over an hour staring at twisted, unrecognisable version of myself wondering if that's what I actually looked like: a manically disturbed obese frog. Do you now how unsettling it is to look at a reflection that's clearly yours but a) Looks's nothing like what you mentally picture yourself, and b) looks like a hideously ugly version of yourself? Let's just say staring at that mirror wasn't doing wonders for my self-esteem.

Also I may of spent a few hours at home obsessively looking in over mirrors to reassure myself I did not actually look like that. I'll have you know in real life I only look like a disturbed frog. It's so different.

The forth sign that I should of got up and ran away was as they were finishing up, they remembered the style was a side parting that splits over one side of my head, not what they were currently doing, which was plastering all my hair in one direction, like I'd been standing in a gale force winds blowing right to left. That's not my look. I think that's a boy band look. I'm not in a boy band, if only because I wasn't willing to do what Lious Walsh wanted me to do. Well, wasn't willing to do what he wanted with the suitable degree of eagerness he called for, at least.

You lied to me! You  said you'd make me a star!

The fifth sign took longer to hit. We were in disaster limitation mode, trying to recover what was left of my shorn locks into the parting I wanted. From the photo. That was right there. Which hadn't been looked at since we started. Anyway. It wasn't utterly awful yet. Sure, it was waaaaaay shorter than what I asked for, but one side sort of looked alright, so there's that, just gotta clean up the second side, cut it into shape.... cut it into shape... cut it into Jesus Christ she's still cutting. She's been cutting for ages. Like, cutting for so long I fear my partner may start posting a missing person report. Like, really cutting. Still cutting. I should say something. Say something. Stop smiling. Stop smiling. For fuck's sake stop smiling she think's you're approving of this god damn it stop smiling you've been smiling the whole time express your reservations you dolt.

No! That is what the photo is for!

It's not working stop smiling say something stop smiling.

It's still fixable!

No, you're worried about possibly going prematurely bald and this woman that your are paying is actually actively doing just that on one side of your head.

It's okay!

It wasn't okay. It's really not okay.

Like, 'maybe I can convince my colleagues I always wore baseball caps' not okay. Like 'Oh god, this looks so bad, I may have to enact scorched ground policy and shave it all off' not okay.

We still have warning sign number seven. Yes, I needed seven god damn signs and I still didn't leave. We have established hairdressers are my kryptonite, okay? Number seven was her burning my scalp with a hair-dryer powered by the fires of Mount Doom. As I frantically tried to leap off my chair, lest my flesh slough off, she admitted that she always did that, and turned it down to Mount Etna levels of fire. By that time the third degree burns that destroyed the pain receptors so it's wasn't a big deal any more.

Artist's rendition on how I felt after the hair cut

At this point, I took one last look of dread at my mangled hair, resigned myself to a month of enforced isolation in case my hideous form emotionally scar small children, thanked her, paid her, and left.

But I didn't tip.

Oh yeah! Feel the burn of that, bitch! Who's the big man now? I just put upon you the greatest insult my Britishness will allow!