Big Business Are All Bastards...... ......And You're Going To Pay There was a shock announcement in the news yesterday when Goodwin Whitman III, the president of Staber Albatross Holdings said this...... "Folks, we're really sorry for all the titanic muck-ups we have made with economy and we understand that this is going to hurt the average worker much more than it is going to affect billionaire bankers like myself. A number of us 'fat cats' have therefore decided that this year, in view of the pending financial crisis, we won't take enormous wage rises and share disbursements, instead we will use our vast fortunes to save tens of thousands of low paid workers from losing their homes." That's wonderful isn't it ? Of course it's an absolute fantasy, the super rich are addicted to money and are driven to get as much as they can and keep it all for themselves. There was a story in the papers yesterday about a man called Joe Lewis. Lewis has invested about £490 million in a bank called Bear Stearns, the bank has promptly dropped like a stone and his holdings are now thought to be worth 'only' £22m. I'm not exactly crying for this bloke, he is still thought to have a personal fortune in excess of £2.5 billion. Our entire financial system doesn't seem right to me, we have people who are in effect gamblers, gamblers who play with the money of millions of people without their knowledge or permission, people who 'play' the stock markets, people who find the gaps in between money to make money, betting on the movements of currencies, stocks, shares and bonds to amass fortunes. to some degree unfortunately, the whole great financial system is a facade. The system relies on consumer confidence to keep it afloat, and without that confidence the system is revealed to be a paper house, liable to blow down in the first breeze of doubt. We can see at this very moment those winds of change sending the world markets into turmoil. I bet most of you are like me, either you have a job, like myself, where you actually manufacture something and turn raw materials into finished products, or you offer a direct service and get paid in return for your skills and knowledge. I'm going to be working just as hard this week and next as I was last week and the week before, yet, due to the actions of numerous idiot money gamblers, I'm going to end up paying more for my mortgage, and my savings and pension are going to be worth less. Millions upon millions like myself will be in the same situation, we will all be working hard, and we will all be a bit, or a lot, poorer. I wonder how many of the big financial barons will get into serious trouble, and by trouble I mean will they be poring over their bank statement and worrying whether they can meet the next months mortgage payment, or whether they might have to sell the family car and get the bus to work, or whether they might have to try and get a part time evening job to make ends meet ? Or course they won't, they might have to trade in the mega yacht for a slightly smaller version, or sell one of their private islands or vast estates. The problems with gamblers is that, well, they're gamblers. See those sad blokes loitering outside the bookies before opening time ? Gamblers. They look a bit shifty and shady, a touch of five o clock shadow at 1030 in the morning, they've got a copy of this morning's Racing Post and it's already well tatty and well read and once they've placed their first bet they'll be into the tap room for the first pint of the day. You wouldn't go to these blokes for financial advice would you ? And yet they run the world, of course they're dressed in sharp suits and they drink Lafitte in The Ivy and not Best Bitter in the Dog & Gun, but they are gamblers none the less. Now the gamblers have lost the bet, and we're all going to pay, bastards.

What Exactly Is The Point Of Lawyers ? Just about everything in life, with the possible exception of wasps and Belgium, has a definite use or purpose. Chefs are here to cook dinners, cows are here to provide beef, Scotland is used to gather 99% of the UK's midge population, that sort of thing, except lawyers. Lawyers seem to fill about the same space in society as vampires, they are blood sucking parasites who would probably benefit from a large chunk of sharpened oak driven through their ribcage. Lawyers came about like this, many many years ago, before we had even bothered to invent America, two shit covered peasants were arguing over who had the right to grow turnips on a particular patch of ground. The king got fed up with the endless line of excrement plastered commoners queueing up in his sitting room awaiting a royal decree, so he decided to bring in a few laws instead. For a while this worked, the laws were simple enough that even illiterate peasants could understand them, and if they broke them then they were rounded up and sent off to the Crusades. Laws kept being introduced though, and they got more complex, so complex in fact that simple, working class, dung coated field workers really needed an educated, and possibly non shit coated, person to explain the law to them, and to act on their behalf when Biff from the next hovel had planted a huge wall of fast growing laylandii which had cut out all the light from Sven's prize cabbage patch. For a while this worked as well, lawyers explained the law and received a fair wage for it, but somehow this has progressed to the point where if you even want to phone your lawyer / solicitor, he charges you about 20 quid a minute just to listen to you. Suing people is largely to blame. Today, if you are clumsy, too stupid to read an instruction book or if you find yourself wearing a tracksuit with 'Juicy' written across your backside and you watch Jeremy Kyle the chances are that you can sue somebody for something. If you trip up on the pavement, it is no longer because you are a clumsy fool who can't be trusted to walk in a straight line, it must be the fault of the council, so sue them. If your new state of the art cinema sized liquid crystal tv (handy for watching Jeremy Kyle when you're setting fire to old settees in the garden) blows up because you tried to put your fish tank full of piranhas on it, it's not being you're actually too stupid to own electrical equipment, it must be because the manufacturers didn't print "Don't put a bloody fish tank on it" in big red letters on the box it came in. So sue them. Blame is the modern thing. When I was growing up you were allowed to fall over on the pavement, you could cut yourself on the can of beans you had just opened, and teachers / policeman / scoutmasters / bus drivers and just men in the street were allowed, nay, even encouraged, to give you a thick ear when you were behaving like a horrible little toerag, but not any more. We live now in the era of greatest personal freedom, but with the almost absolute abdication of any personal level of responsibility, whatever happens, someone must be at fault (not yourself of course), someone else must be to blame. Consequently the lawyers have never had it so good, despite being a breed of people who can't manufacture, build or produce anything that is of any use to mankind, they now all live in vast detached homes in the countryside (which incidentally, used to be called 'farms' in the days when shit covered peasants could afford to live on the land they worked), drive top of the range BMW's and send their children to expensive private schools where they will be buggered by the sons of Premiership footballers. If you ever actually really need to talk to lawyer, for example if you come home and the council has invited thirty-seven Polish electricians to use your house as lodgings, then you find that your lawyer is of course unavailable. At this time of year he will be sunning himself in Barbados or Durban, and in the summer he will be somewhere on the 14th fairway with Sir Upton-Smythe and your doctor. Lawyers then, evil parasites draining the life blood and wallet of the honest working man, now if you'll excuse me I'm just popping out with a sharp stake in hand, and if I stick the pointed end through my hand, someone will have to pay. After a lengthy court hearing and the lawyer's deductions of course.