Tag: Stupid people

Prevention

Crime, Gummint, Politics

The next time some whining liberal tells you that capital punishment doesn’t prevent murder, feel free to quote this article (once you have done kicking them in the balls, that is):

In March, two men were convicted in Newcastle Crown Court of the murder of a 29-year-old mother of two, Quyen Ngoc Nguyen. In a pre-meditated crime of unimaginable depravity, Stephen Unwin and William McFall robbed, raped and bludgeoned this 5ft-tall nail bar manager.
They dumped her — possibly still alive — in her own car, which they then set alight. They posed for ghoulish selfies at the scene.
Both men were already convicted killers, released as a result of parole board hearings.
McFall, now 51, had been freed after serving 13 years for battering to death with a hammer an 86-year-old woman whose home he had burgled.
Unwin, ten years younger, had been released after serving 14 years of a ‘life sentence’ for stabbing to death a 73-year-old retired pharmacist in the course of a burglary — on Christmas Day, 1998. Unwin had sought to cover up his tracks by setting fire to his victim’s bungalow.
There is no parole board on earth which can know if someone is truly remorseful (pictured: Nick Hardwick, former Parole Board chair) +6
There is no parole board on earth which can know if someone is truly remorseful (pictured: Nick Hardwick, former Parole Board chair)
He was released in 2012, because the parole board had believed his claim to feel ‘deep remorse’.

Yeah, he was remorseful, all right.  It bears no reminding that had these two bastards (and the others in the article) been executed, their subsequent victims would still be alive.  Prevention at its finest.

Frankly, I think that the parole boards who freed these animals should also face the needle / chair / gallows.  This was a basic precept of Hammurabic Law, and I for one regret its passing, in this respect at least.

Remember too that our Liberal Class want us to be more like Europe or Britain, and the modern-day “democratic socialists” have included the abolition of the prison system in their election manifesto.

Communistatis delenda est.

Slobbery

Grooming

I’m not talking about your mouth when the smell of steaks grilling over the fire hits your nostrils.  Nor am I talking about Harvey Weinstein’s reaction to seeing a fresh young actress who wants a part in a movie.

Nope, I’m back to my old gripe about people who dress like slobs.  Theodore Dalrymple takes up the cause:

Indeed, if there is one thing that unites mankind today it is casual slobbery in dress.
This is rather odd, considering that so many people seem to spend a lot of their spare time shopping for clothes. The fact is, though, that however much time they spend on shopping, they will always look just as much a mess as ever. They choose, but they do not discriminate.
Our unwillingness, and increasing inability, to dress elegantly represents the triumph of self-esteem over self-respect. We dress to please ourselves, not others, and not looking like a slob takes effort, especially keeping it up through the day. Convenience is all, and it is easier to throw on a few casual clothes than to dress well.

What sparked Dalrymple’s ire was his experience at a couple of airports:

Sitting in two airports last week, in Paris and Riga, it suddenly occurred to me that I had not seen a single person who was smartly, let alone elegantly, dressed.

Now I seldom disagree with Teddy about much, but I do on this occasion.  Imagine this scenario:

You get dressed to go to an important business meeting, so you do it properly:  ironed shirt, tie, decent navy-blue suit, leather belt and shiny black lace-up Oxfords.  You check yourself in a mirror and damn, you look good.

But did I mention that the important business meeting was out of town, and you’d need to catch a flight there?

Now go back and reflect how difficult it’s going to be when you’re confronted by the surly TSA apparatchiks at the airport.  Belt? Take it off.  Shoes? Unlace them, and take ’em off.  Jacket? Run it through the X-ray.  And that gold tie-clip?  We’re going to pat you down and run you through our Magical Cancer-Generating Full-Body Scanner, bub.

All of a sudden, a tee shirt, sweatpants and slip-on moccasins make a lot more sense, don’t they?  And the net result is that you look like a slob, because it’s a big enough chore to dress properly in the first place without having to do it all over again at the airport in front of hundreds of people.

However, while I may make a (grudging) allowance for looking like a slob under the above circumstances, the next scenario is absolutely unforgivable.

You’e married to one of the most beautiful women in the world — an actress, as it happens — and you have to attend a promotional red carpet event with her, to hype up her latest movie.  So you both get dressed and let the limo sweep you off to this important event.

Your wife, of course, looks sensational:

You?  Not so much:

It’s even worse when you look at the pair of them together (and small wonder she’s not looking at him, I imagine, out of pure embarrassment):

This is “dressing up”?  A shabby cardigan, an untucked golf shirt, too-short casual trousers, socklets and sneakers?  Are you fucking kidding me?  

What bemuses me (and I’ve had this thought before) is why Anne Hathaway didn’t take one look at this slob and tell him either to change into a tux or stay the fuck at home.

I don’t care how “fashionable” this little fart thinks he is, or how important he may be in the business, or any of that crap:  there is no excuse for this.

What this is, folks, is a total lack of respect;  for the event, for the occasion, but most of all, towards his wife.  In the old days, he would have been horsewhipped for looking like this outside the home — which is one of the many reasons I hanker for the old days.

Now:  where did I put that sjambok?

Temptation

Business, The Gun Thing

Over at Insty’s, Stephen Green commented on this little story that he couldn’t imagine going into a Levi Strauss store ever again, and I agree.

Levi Strauss announced on Tuesday it would be creating a new gun-control group with billionaire Michael Bloomberg and donating millions of dollars to a collection of established gun-control groups.

I don’t wear jeans often — in fact, I last wore them about a year ago, so I’m hardly in Levi’s target market anyway.

But that’s not the “temptation” I refer to in the headline;  this is.

A couple weeks back I gave a woman a “lyft” to the airport.  She’d just come out of the Levi Strauss store here in Plano, and as we drove off I asked her what she’d just bought there.  She said “Nothing;  actually, I work for Levi Strauss.”

For a moment I considered — really considered — whether I should act like someone from the Left would act, and terminate the ride then and there, declaring that as a member of the National Rifle Association, I refused to provide a service to an organization which supported gun control.

I didn’t do that, of course, because I’m not some virtue-signaling asshole.  What I could have done was start to talk about how much I loved guns, and shooting, just to piss her off;  but I didn’t do that either because that might have “triggered” the woman into giving me a one-star Uber rating at ride’s end, running the risk that she was a virtue-signaling asshole (she was a San Francisco native, so the odds would have been high).

As it stands, though, I’ll just have to content myself with never again buying anything associated with Levi Strauss (which would be Dockers, Signature and Denizen).

Bastards.

Spanking Time

Grammar Nazism

Back when I were a lad — this would have been just after they discovered the wheel — it was common practice for a teacher to smack your hand with a ruler each time you made a mistake in your grammar.

[pause to allow Millennial snowflakes to recover from this tale of unspeakable brutality]

So I’d like to find the person who did the copy for this sign, and whack their grubby hand three times:

The first transgression is easy:  their  for they’re  — or to be an even bigger stickler for form (and I am), “they are” because an apostrophe on a sign is a big no-no.  That said, I’ve pretty much given up on complaining about the “their” / “they’re” / “there” mistake because most people nowadays are fucking illiterate and are either too uneducated or too lazy — both are inexcusable — to bother with correct grammar.

Ditto the incorrect use of the word they for “their privacy” in the sign-off statement.   Without bothering to check, I’ll take an educated guess that the copywriter is Black because this grammar is right out of Ebonics 101.  (I may be wrong, but I doubt it.)

The third  transgression on the sign, however, is one that drives me absolutely crazy, and if offered a ruler and the offending copywriter’s hand, I would instead deliver a resounding smack to the side of the fool’s head with my open hand.

Folks, this isn’t difficult.  If you want to make sure of something (e.g. customers’ privacy as in the above), that is to “ENsure”.  If you’re going to “INsure” something, you need to call Liberty Mutual and take out a policy.  So unless an INsurance company is going to pay out money each time Wally World breaches someone’s privacy, the correct word is “ENSURE”.

And speaking of Wally World:  whoever hired the moron who wrote the copy for this sign also needs not a smack on the hand but an almighty kick in the balls.  I know that WalMart generally feeds out the bottom of the staffing barrel because they’re too stingy to pay decent wages, but that doesn’t excuse this.  Nothing can.

FFS, I need to stop reading so early in the morning:  it’s barely light outside and I need a bloody gin & tonic already.

Oh FFS

Pussification Parade

If ever we need to be reminded that today’s (so-called) young men are a bunch of whiny twerps, here’s additional proof (and carries an extreme barf warning). One example should suffice:

And out of all the “Best Of Bread” memes in the article, only one guy seems to have a little spunk:

But as for the rest?  Sheesh;  it is, as they say, to puke.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range before I start growing breasts.

Wealth-Envious Bullshit

Business

Apparently, some financial “experts” in Britishland have taken exception to the massive bonus paid out to a company’s executive chairman:

One of Britain best-paid female bosses has been slammed by critics over a £29million bonus.
Avril Palmer-Baunack runs British Car Auctions, which owns We Buy Any Car, the car-buying website known for its catchy jingles.
On top of the £29 million bonus, which is linked to an increase in the share price, she also got an eight per cent increase to her basic salary to £525,000. The company defended it by saying it needed to pay a ‘competitive’ rate.
But in a report to investors, influential advisory firm Glass Lewis called the £29 million payout to Palmer-Baunack ‘exceptionally disproportionate’.

…and needless to say, the politicians want to get in the game:

Last year, Theresa May announced plans to censure stock market-listed firms who drew exceptional levels of complaints from shareholders over bosses’ pay.

There is just one problem with all of this outrage:  it’s total bullshit.  Here’s why (from the article itself):

The vast sum, 59 times her normal salary, is the result of an incentive plan drawn up four years ago to grow the firm.

In other words, four years ago the board of directors told the CEO that if she managed to grow the company’s value by x, she would be paid y.  (And I should also point out that this incentive plan would have required a formal agreement from the shareholders — the same shareholders who are now bitching about the thing — before being implemented.)

Well, that’s exactly what our Avril did, so she has to get paid the bonus.  (The size of the bonus is irrelevant, because it was obviously based on a sliding percentage driven by the amount of growth.)

Of course, the trolls at Glass Lewis don’t see it that way, because (and once again from the article):

[Glass Lewis] said the increase in the value of BCA may have been boosted by broader swings in stock market prices ‘rather than company or management performance’.

Well, guess what?  “Broader swings” in the stock market are a result of shareholder confidence in the market’s activities and results — and if the company and its boss benefit from that, it’s called “good luck”.  I should point out once again that if the market is tanking and it takes a company down with it — through no fault of the company boss, mind you — the boss may well get fired anyway because at the end (and please note this, because it’s important), executive management is responsible for one thing, and one thing only:  growth in the value of the shareholders’ investment.  How it gets there is irrelevant (except in the Land Of Wealth Envy).  When they say, “The buck stops here”, that’s precisely what it means:  the ultimate responsibility for shareholder value lies with the executive manager, and with this comes either termination or reward, as agreed by the shareholders.

All the other guff about Palmer-Baunack being a female executive, incidentally, is just smoke — her sex is completely irrelevant, as it should be.  Then there’s this:

The vote on the pay report is only advisory so, if Palmer-Baunack feels able to shrug off criticism, she will be allowed to keep the lot.

Let’s hope the woman has an iron nerve (which she seems to have, by the way), and tells all the wailers to fuck off.

Palmer-Baunack, who has a grown-up son and daughter and is married to a German executive at Volkswagen, previously defended her £7.1 million pay packet for 2015 by saying: ‘Anyone who says they don’t want money is talking bullshit. We all want to earn money for our family.’
The Edinburgh-born executive, 54, has been vocal about women in the workplace in the past. She once said she was ‘very cynical’ about the existence of ‘glass ceilings’ – the term used to describe the limits on the career opportunities for women in big corporations.

Considering that she started off as an agent for a car rental company, I think she’s proved her point.

And if the wailing gets too much, she should really tell them all to get stuffed by taking her £29million bonus and going off to live in Switzerland, Monaco or the Caymans, beyond the reach of the would-be wealth confiscators.

Good luck to her, say I.