0% Wholegrain
4.3 Cholesterols
140% RDA Annoyance
2000% RDA Vitriol
200% RDA Swearing
13mg Tar
2000g Caffeine

Well, actually I wasn’t heartened. Quite the opposite, in fact. I can honestly say that if I want to eat a biscuit, I couldn’t care less how healthy it is. Baked goods are hardly part of a nutritious breakfast – so why, in the name of all that’s holy, does the nutritional content of a biscuit matter at all?

There are some times when the content of one’s food matters. I’d prefer it if my Diet Coke didn’t contain radioactive slurry, for example. And obviously I would be a touch irked to discover that my QUarter Pounder contained lean flank and forequarter rat**. But in the case of a McVities biscuit, it is most assuredly not one of those times.

It’s a biscuit, for fuck’s sake, not a fucking multivitamin. Have you ever tried dunking a fucking vitamin tablet in your tea? It’s not pleasant. And on top of that, I’ve never managed to find a multivit that is best when it’s coated in plain chocolate. God knows I’ve tried.

But McVities, while deserving winners of this week’s Twats Of The Week, are merely the first target for this morning’s barrage. Because it’s fucking hard to savour my morning coffee and Sky News when the commercial breaks are jammed to the gills with irrelevant bollocks telling me the interesting and novel ways my diet is going to kill me.

In the space of one ad-break, I’ve had Gloria Fucking Hunniford telling me that I need to switch from (tasty) butter to a vile chemical slurry masquerading as margarine in order to bring my cholesterol down to 4.3***. Nestle have lectured me about wholegrain in my cereal, Birds Eye on Omega 3. I’ve had the Goonvernment and their Nanny cohorts cautioning that if I have anything more than one wine gum a month my skin will become transparent and I’ll die a horrible painful death (or something), and it now appears that smoking causes chronic umbrella dysfunction. At least, I think that’s what the ad was saying. My elevated fucking blood pressure was affecting my vision by that point.

It would appear that by their insistence on preaching at me about my health, and forcing all food manufacturers to follow suit and laud the health-giving characteristics of their products rather than important things like flavour and quality, the Healthists are going to give me a fucking coronary out of simple rage. Stop, stop, just fucking STOP preaching.

This is LIFE. You’ll only get one of them, so rather than worrying that a chocolate Hob-Nob will cause cancer, how about just enjoying it?

Because if you listen to, worry about and slavishly follow all the ‘eat this, don’t eat that’ edicts and pronouncements in case you die early, then you’re simply eking out a joyless, pointless existence in the pursuit of longevity. And longevity, dear Reader, is not the same as life.

So. Advertisers, food manufacturers and Government – please, stop. Stop. Stop fucking preaching, warning, cajoling and cautioning. Most of us don’t care, and don’t want you foisting your lifestyle decisions upon us. Leave us alone, let us enjoy our food and our lives. And please, do us all a favour and set yourselves on fire – though I doubt there’s sufficient fat in your wholegrain-fed carcases actually to burn.

Twats.

*No pun intended.

**Note that I said ‘to discover’. I’m not saying it doesn’t contain rat, just that I don’t know about it. And I’m fine with that.

***4.3? What does that MEAN? 4.3 out of what? 10? 1000? 4.3 globules of cholesterol per pint of blood? 4.3 homicidal episodes if I ever see that stupid fucking advert ever again? 4.3 advertising executives and Quangoists I’ll set on fire if they don’t stop fucking preaching?

Speaking in a rare manifestation (which, due to an unfortunate spacio-temporal anomaly, happened to be in a Norfolk pig farm), the Prophet, 1432, denied that firebrands such as Toejam CHoudary were acting in His name, and contradicted several key tenets of the Qur’an – the book he actually wrote.

Mr Mohammed said, “y’know, I never wanted all this Jihad stuff going on – it’s quite embarrassing really. I mean, I only took the ghostwriting gig as a temp job. I’d been made redundant from Isa & Sons’, I was 40 and I needed the work. We never thought it would take off like it did, much less turn into a justification for all this blowing shit up and general violence.

“Anyway, the whole ‘transcribing the Word of Allah’ thing was pretty dull, as you can imagine, and in all honesty I made a few typos. ‘Martyrs’, for example, was supposed to be ‘Mates’. That bit about the 72 virgins in the Garden and so on? Well, I know it says ‘houris’, but actually what Allah said was ‘hoirus’, which was a nasty yeast infection doing the rounds in Medina at the time. So there’s a lot of itchy suicide bombers Up There, y’know? In fact, the whole ‘putting infidels to the sword’ stuff was . . .er. . . well, he didn’t actually say any of it. It was just embellishment, if you know what I mean. Embellishing a few details. He and I were having a laugh about the whole ‘5 times a day’ thing, which we didn’t think anyone would really go for, and over a beer we were trying to think up the maddest bits we could put in, stuff that we never thought any idiot would be stupid enough to believe. Next millenium, we’ve got idiots like Choudary advocating death for anyone who doesn’t do it.

“And, to be honest, that tosh about ‘women should wear Burkas and be modest’? Allah didn’t really say that. I was having a few problems with the wives at the time, you know how it is. I had some leeway in the drafting, and it seemed like a good idea to chuck a bit in that I could point at. Truth be told, I never thought anyone would be mad enough to take all that stoning, chopping and flogging bollocks seriously. Still, it goes to show, doesn’t it?”

The Prophet said that he had manifested personally to apologise to the British people on hearing that Toejam Choudary was to march through Wooton Bassett seeking a punch-up in His name, and added, “listen, really it was all just a laugh. You know, you get a few mates together, make a few silly clubhouse rules and before you know it it’s all out of control and you’ve got pilgrims on your front lawn. So I’m sorry about idiots like Choudary and that Bin Wotsisface. I didn’t mean it. Just ignore them, OK? I reckon Allah’ll give ‘em a right smiting once he gets hold of them.”

Speaking from the Dark Ages, Islam4UKOK’s spokesman Toejam Choudhary said, “it is our Holy duty to help the Faithful show their piety by killing themselves. While we understand the desperate desire of every fundamentalist wingnut to enter Paradise and claim their 72 virgins, the use of suicide bombing is dated and inefficient. It is time, we believe, for Islam to embrace a more effective and cost-effective method of killing ourselves.

“We are therefore in the process of trialling new methods of getting large numbers of radical fucknuts killed in a single hit for a minimal outlay. Our next trial is to hold a protest march through Wootton Bassett, and we are confident that this act alone should ensure the successful deaths of 90% of those demonstrating.”

Residents of the Wiltshire town have welcomed Mr Choudhary’s suggestion, and have said they are very happy to assist Islam4UKOK’s planned mass suicide. Several leading dignitaries in the town are offering to personally help Toejam Choudhary show his faith by getting himself killed.

However, the validity of the suggestion has been questioned by moderate Islamic scholars. Shaykh Yerleg Aboutabit, Professor of Deciding The Best Way To Kill Yourself at the University of Kabul, said, “while it is the duty of every true Muslim to kill himself, I can find no reference in the Qu’ran to say that martyrdom comes from being beaten to death by an irate Wiltshirian.

“Muhammed (d’oh) would no doubt have preferred the traditional Islamic way of showing faith – that is, strapping Semtex to the testicles of the Faithful. For is it not Written ‘by detonating your bollocks in the service of Allah shall you find peace and the garden of Paradise’? Something like that, anyway.”

That goodwill does not, as of today, extend unto Mercedes-Benz UK.

The Darling G ordered her new company car – a C-Class estate with a few tweaks – back at the beginning of November. “There are a couple of parts on back-order”, said the dealer. “But you’ll be on the build list, so you should have it by the end of February. We’ll keep you updated”.

No updates were forthcoming, of course.

A call at the end of November intimated, but didn’t confirm, that the delivery date might be pushed back to March 2010 – which is bad enough for a mass-produced fleet car, but still we kept our peace. Cue today’s update call.

The dealer was advised on 5 December that the earliest delivery date for our New Shiny Car would be June. June! Eight months from the point of order to the point of delivery?

What form of fucking insanity is this? You’re building a car, not painting the Sistine Fucking Chapel! You claim to be waiting for engine parts – quite frankly, you could hand-tool the parts from purest Unobtanium using nothing but stone-age flint tools in eight months, yet clearly you prefer to sit idly on your Germanic backsides expecting your buyers to show the patience of fucking Ghandi while they wait for you to get around to sticking another fucking order in for widgets.

Did I miss the memo? When was Mercedes-Benz taken over by fucking British Leyland? Are you waiting to rebuild Longbridge before building another fucking car? And don’t even get me started on the laissez-faire attitude of a dealer network that thinks it’s OK not to bother to keep customers informed of the delay to their order.

So, Mercedes-Benz? Stick your order where the sun shineth not – it’s become painfully clear that the name C-Class defines your quality of service. You should be impaled on your own three-pointed star. And then set on fire, though it would probably take you eight months to wait for the matches.

Mercedes-Benz. Teutonic Twats.

020 8216 1550, 020 8216 1552, 020 8216 1560, 020 8216 1567, 020 8216 1575 and 020 8216 1588; and by the letters C A R D A T A.

This earnest and very determined company have called me at least twice a day, every single day, since we put The Silver Beast on the market. They tell me that they have many, many buyers for the car* and that for a small consideration of just £99.50, they will send me buyers. Guaranteed. Honest.

Oh, really?

So, Cardata, which is more likely? That you really do have hundreds of buyers who, on your say-so, will make their way en masse to Oxfordshire and stampede my house in their rabid clamour to hand over their money for a 2002 Saab estate – or that you’re rather keen to divest me of MY cash for which, in return, I will receive almost precisely fuck-all except a few sleepless nights in fear of impending credit-card fraud?

If you were genuine, you would have happily accepted my offer of payment upon a successful sale, don’t you think? But no. You demanded, quite rudely, for payment in advance and, when I refused and told you not to call again, you called again. And again. And again.

I’ve tried being reasonable, even amiable, in my requests for your calls to cease. Even telling you the car’s been sold hasn’t been enough to stop your incessant calls. You seem dead-set on disregarding my disinterest, ignoring my rejections, braving my warnings and continuing to call me. Daily. Well, fair enough. You’ve clearly been too stupid to listen to reason, so now it’s time to face The Wrath Of Dungeekin instead.

By the time you read this**, your details will have been passed to the Nuisance Call departments of both O2 and BT, and a written letter of complaint sent to Trading Standards. That’s on top of posts on scammer forums where you are already largely featured.

Your little ploy might work on someone who is a) desperate to sell, b) either unable or unwilling to use Google and c) the owner of a single-figure IQ, but it is unlikely to work on somebody with even the barest modicum of intellect or common sense. It simply beggars fucking belief that you cold-calling cretins can’t conceive, after 15 increasingly-abrupt refusals from the same fucking person, that your pointless scam has been rumbled and your putative mark is not fucking interested.

Take me off your database. Now. I can no longer guarantee even the minimum of civility towards you when you call – the next time you disturb my reverie, you will be met with the sort of response I normally reserve for BNP members, followed by the sort of retribution that will leave you needing at least counselling, if not long-term medical care. And it’ll fucking smart a bit when the A&E department remove your telephone headset, I can promise you. And then I’ll set you on fire.

CarData. Twats.

*Said ‘buyers’ clearly being those people too stupid to read Autotrader and dial a telephone number.

**For values of ‘read’, obviously. If you’re too fucking stupid to understand plain English, and my repeated requests to be left alone, it’s unlikely your literacy skills extend much past the pack of lies you have passing for a sales pitch.

You see that rock over there? That’s my contempt, that is. And right now, MoD Bureaushits are beneath it.

Back in 1994 I was involved with a NATO exercise, and I worked with a couple of USN reservists, both of whom had the Gulf Medal from 1991. I was impressed, and asked them about their experience.

“Oh no, we didn’t go”, they said. “We were in Basic Training, but everyone in the US Military got the medal”. I can only assume it’s because the colonials actually won a battle for pretty much the first time in their history.

The reservists in question were, understandably, mocked mercilessly for wearing a decoration to which they were not entitled.

Which brings me to civil servants. Specifically, those beancounters awarded the Operational Service Medal for their outstanding administration in the face of bureaucracy.

Money Quote:
To qualify for award of the medal with a clasp, personnel must have served in Afghanistan for either five, 21 or 30 days continuous service between various dates depending on the operation.

And how long does a deserving serviceman spend on a tour of duty in Hellmand Province to earn the same decoration? A hell of a lot longer than that.

Medals are – at least, to date have always been – recognition of a HERO’S action in the face of the enemy. Bravery. Courage. Selflessness. Above and beyond the call of duty, in the face of gunfire and with the risk – often the result – of death in the line of duty.

They are NOT, I repeat NOT, some gaudy lapel decoration for some fucking REMF who exceeded his target of reducing bullet supply budgets to serving troops for the quarter preceding.

Those who wear their medal on a uniform deserve our respect and admiration. Those whose contribution has extended only to spending a few days conducting logistics surveys while trying to find a decent dry-cleaner in Kabul deserve nothing but our scorn.

Can you really, honestly, say you earned it? When was your life really at risk? You were in your air-conditioned environment, protected by the very uniformed personnel whose service you now dishonour with your wearing of a medal meant for them. You want to wear your medal? Go and wear it in Tidworth, or Aldershot, or on the streets of Wootton Bassett – places where they understand what valour means, when for you it’s just a word you read in the despatches before you file your paperwork on another life lost. Go on, bureaushit – walk the streets of a garrison town with your undeserved decoration and see how long you last. I’ll even wear a tie to the funeral.

You want to wear the OSM? Go and pick up a fucking rifle. I don’t care if you sat on your fat, besuited arse in a hot climate for a couple of weeks, second-guessing the people who were facing the bullets. You haven’t earned that decoration and you don’t deserve it Get your pasty, bean-counting backside out onto the fucking front line and then we’ll talk.

Twats.

Until today.

Dear Reader, please allow me to introduce Dr Evan Harris MP, who seems to have suffered an unfortunate Prioritiesectomy.

Amidst all the issues weighing heavy upon the people of this great Nation, what is the priority of Dr Harris MP?

Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, said: “All parties in the House had agreed that discrimination against princesses and Catholic spouses is not justified, and that the language in the Act of Settlement is offensive.*

“All Gordon Brown has to do is to consult Commonwealth Heads of Government so that we can get rid of this discriminatory symbol at the heart of our constitution. It’s hard to believe that countries like Canada and Australia would demand that discrimination against Catholics and women continues.”

Listen, you ineffective, incompetent imbecile. I am a taxpayer who pays YOUR £64,000 salary, expenses pot and mink-lined pension plan. I pay you to act as a fucking MP, not a documentary fucking historian.

It’s hardly surprising that a document drafted in 1700 doesn’t meet your Grauniad-reading needs for political correctness. There are probably a million things you could be doing to earn your Parliamentary salary, rather than wringing your recycled sandals in ineffectual outrage over the discriminatory language in a 300-year-old historical document which, to be brutally honest, nobody in this country could give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut about. HM and Phil The Greek are pretty much there to stay anyway, and after that the succession’s sorted for a good couple of generations. So unless Charles becomes a fucking Hindu or something, it’s hardly an urgent priority for Parliamentary time, is it?

And I shouldn’t think the ‘Princesses and Catholics’ really care about your right-on solicitude anyway, because even if they don’t get the top job, Crown, Orb, Sceptre and all that, they still make a fucking good living off the Civil List, earning a great deal of money for not a great deal of work. Sort of like a Member of Parliament really, only less of a pointless parasite.

So, Mr Harris, get of your limp-wristed Limp-Dumb hobby-horse and try doing your fucking job. You’re paid to represent your constituents – all of whom have bigger things to worry about than whether the next Consort’s a left-footer – and to hold the Government to account. Given the current parlous state of the economy, a collapsing NHS, a rising death toll in Afghanistan and 2 million kids in failing schools, you’ve got plenty of choice actually to do something worthwhile.

Fucking hell, it’s no wonder people have given up on politics.

Twat.

*emphasis mine.