A-Z of the new year!

With the news that the company who own dooyoo have purchased ciao.co.uk recently one or two of you may not be sure of the future of both sites. They could co-exist but then why spend money on something that does what you do? Dooyoo made 200,000 Euro in 2010 and I doubt if ciao barely makes 100,000 a year and so must mean the end for one, right? I suspect ciao will be absorbed and dooyoo will be market leader by the spring. At least there will be one left so we can keep writing. Hell, maybe the rewards will even go up on here because of!! What is for sure is the guide's rewards won't be going down any day soon, taking 24 Christmas week crowns from just 59 reviews written last week, and just 40 members taking 40% of the crowns all year Ba Humbug!. Let's hope if there is a merged dooyoo he or she spreads the rewards around a little fairer next year. Without cross post revenue I like many of you will be considering our future here, the first time I have ever thought that.

I thought I would use my A archive slot to talk about the past year in our world in general as that's what I generally tend to bore people with in the pub this time of the year anyway. As dooyoo won't be adding any new 'Dooyoo Lounge' suggestions before Japan is no longer radioactive, where else can I put this review? Baring in mind my 'Action Man: Global Edition' review was somewhat pedantically locked for being in the 'Action Men in General' category I fear this review wont last long either. lol.


A - Arab Spring Watch with Bill Oddie!

As the oil price shot up the dictators tumbled, or so we thought. Turns out they fell but were being pushed over by the next one in line, edged on by the west, Egypt still an oppressive military state and Libya already holding open X-Factor auditions for the next nutter. I mean, what sort of dictator only takes the rank of Colonel? You only have to throw some chicken in a basket in America to do earn that rank!
Britain was forced to act over Libya, the government say on moral grounds, we say because we get 14% of our oil from there and hopefully 20% with the new leaders, someone we just so happened to be grooming in the U.K. at the same time. Syria, alas, has no oil and hated by Israel and so left to burn in the name of the same democracy. The irony here is the Arab Spring has let the Muslim leaders in as the scarf's go on and the call to prayer comes on. Oil is all that matters.

B - Bin Laden Bin bagged!

Obama was killing dictators faster than he could create them as the shock assignation of Bin Laden in April nearly upstaged the Royal Wedding. There was even a suggestion the operation was put back 24 hours so both massive events would not lose crucial publicity for both Obama and Cameron's election campaigns. The wedding was clearly timed to tighten up the traditional Tory vote in the local elections and proved the case, blasting the Liberals into oblivion, as Obama did Bin Laden. But looking at a stopped and pathetic Bin Laden in those pictures you knew this was not the guy who organised 911. No wonder he was buried with his secrets somewhat sharpish. The US stock market is up 1100 points since Bin laden was shot on the toilet. Where there is conspiracy over 911 there is none over Bin Laden, dead as can be with no tapes or videos since. The juries still out on William and Kate though as she is getting as uncomfortably thin as her husbands barnett.


C - Crime and no punishment

The jails are full and so instead of building more prisons the CPS have been forced through budget cuts to simply not allow criminals to be prosecuted. It's been revealed that nearly 1.2 million on the spot fines have been handed out since Blair bought them in and 25% of those cases were worthy of a prison sentence. This method simply brings down the crime rate falsely for politicians to crow about and then the government can cut the CPS funding even more because the crime rate is coming down. Get it?

An example of this slight of hand would have to be a Manchester woman and her accomplice from a local traveller's camp who filled a trolley with £400 quid's worth of booze and whilst her friend distracted the security guard she wheeled the booze into the car park and put it in the boot without paying. But the car ran out of petrol and so they pushed it to the pump and paid for the fuel. Some diligent CCTV work revealed the crime later on and the women went to court. They got suspended sentences, even though they were serial shoplifters and likely to reoffend, making a mockery of the recent and rather severe riot convictions. Rose had three things going for to keep her out of prison. She was a woman, a declared ethnic minority and the local women's prisons were full. How absurd is that. It's no wonder the rioters thought they could get away with it. The Tories have increased the public anguish over crime by cutting legal aid to save money, but humans rights laws meaning they cant cut court offenders defence lawyers rights and so the cuts made on other areas of legal aid, like welfare and employment arbitration.

D - Drugs and Drink and Dad

Amy Winehouse died on Q at 27, the most popular age for young showbiz deaths, and no surprises how, drunk and swallowing her puke. Dad Mitch, who had always lived is failed musical career dreams though his flaky daughter, quickly released an album to cash in on his daughters death. Adele didn't do any of those things and took the music world by storm, young girls not just buying her records for her powerful voice and song writing skills but the fact she looks like them and talks like them, a refreshing change for the often vacuous and vain music business. If we get to download what we want from the internet then the charts will change radically, boy bands out and genuine voices and musicians in.

E - Europe is at war

Gyles Brandreth quips that in light of Meryl Streeps impending Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher we should make a movie called 'Eurozone', where Meryl plays Angela Merkel, the German PM - and Ronnie Corbett to play President Sarkosy! Yep, it's finally dawned on even the most fervent Europe fan that it's doesn't actually work and one too many Euro countries have politicians chasing vote's not fiscal union and used the cheap Euro loans over the last three decades to buy those votes with public service sector jobs with unsustainable high pay and conditions in those jobs. Now we all have to pay the money back at once and we are f**ked, the southern European countries more interested in lazing in the sun than building their private sector employment, the growth the loans were supposed to be for and the only way the union can function. Apparently, at the recent Paris summit to try and sort the problems out for the final time the fireworks were banned at the end in-case the Italians retreated at the sound of an explosion and the French surrendered to the Japanese tourists at the Arc de Triumph!

F - Fukishima fukup

The biggest heroes on the planet this year had to be those incredibly brave nuclear plant workers who stayed on site to battle the fires in the three reactors after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the 5th highest ever recorded on the planet, sent seven waves of varying size to crash, gush and roll over the plants feeble defences. It was another 911 moment. The world was scared. Anything and everything is as only as strong as the weakest link and the seawater only needed to overrun the poorly maintained water pumps that cool the reactors and it was game over, three reactors overheating and exploding in terrifying style. But, like anything else, once you see it for real and up close on TV you are better prepared in so many ways for next time, a next time that will come. It looks like thousands haven't died in Japan because of the feared radiation poisoning though as the most poisonous radiation elements blew out to see, ironically this accident meaning future plants will be much safer. 20.000 people have died so far from the wave but just three from radiation. But, like the old with dementia here, the old there were the ones left to drown in the wave and rot afterwards. Quite bizarrely, only 627 people in total died from radiation poising to this day form the after effects of the Hiroshima blast some 70 years ago.

G - GCSE ...General Certification of Silly education

It has been revealed that competing exam boards have been offering seminars at £200 quid a pop to effectively teach the teachers and headmasters/mistresses what questions will be on the coming exam. As soon as the government introduced exam and school leagues it was obvious the exam boards would pitch for business this way, driving down standards. Teaching kids the answers is not an education but it makes governments look good. These are some of the answers on GCSE papers over the years:

"Solomon had 300 wives and 700 hundred porcupines"

"The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have a history. The Greeks also had myths.

"A myth is a female moth".

"Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics"

"Joan of Arc was burnt to a 'steak' and was canonised by George Bernard Shaw"

"In 'midevil' times, most people were 'alliterate'

"Charles Darwin was a 'naturist' who wrote the 'Organ of the Species'.

"Nero was a cruel submariner who tortured his subjects by playing the fiddle to them"


H - Hurricane Irene...I swear it means rain...

This monster was America's first middle-class hurricane as it spun up the affluent East Coast, clattering the second homes of rich America. There were no riots or scenes of needy Black Americans atop their slums being ignored by George Bush after trying to escape the water, here just politely boarded up second homes with a cop on every corner. American weather experts had predicted the worse ocean storm season for thirty years at the start of the year but Irene the star of the show by a long way in what turned out to be an average storm season, more of that weather hype. But hundreds of lives were saved because people heeded the warnings and left town, always the real killer in forecast natural disasters.

I - Immigration means the welfare of the poor

Net immigration has increased in the United kingdom as less and less people leave the country as recession bites. But just as many are still coming and you have to ask why during recession? I think we know the answer to that. The rise in jobseekers claimants over the last year is mostly people being moved of other benefits and eastern Europeans now getting access to full benefits after an EU rule change. With temps getting full workers rights after just 12 weeks from today I expect a lot of Poles to be laid off today, believed to be over half-a-million Eastern Europeans industrial temping here. Eastern European immigration has also seen the rise of metal and copper theft in the UK by an extraordinary 45% year on year.


J - Jobs and not Steve

I expected the Tories to be cruel on public service to control the deficit but not this nasty, a minimum 700,000 jobs to go in the public sector by 2014. But public debt is just 14% of the countries total personal debt and surely it's better to have some of that 700,000 working and pouring their wages back into the economy and paying off their private debt than this carnage. But the Tories represent private business and they want lucrative health contracts, transport deals and anything that isn't nailed down that they can exploit for a profit from the public sector, a square kick in the nuts for the public sector. Yes we need to cut some public spending to stop the speculators on the bond markets turning on us but it looks like they will anyway as they can't see any growth in Britain from the next ten years with Cameron's sever cutting strategy and so no way for us to pay back the money through growth. Sadly we will top three million unemployed next year and Cameron will push on for four million. Sacking people is the best way to control inflation, the Tories big fear.

K - Killing for oil

As soon as the Americans handed back the keys to Iraq the drum beats began for war with Iran, the 12 American bases across the country ideal launch pads, Iraq perhaps asked to chip in after America sold them 146 Abraham's tanks and seventeen F-18 fighters for a cool $24.5 billion dollars last month and more deals to come.

Once the ink was dry on the multi billion dollar oil and rebuild deals for the final act of separation the Shiite Prime Minister immediately sacked and then arrested the Baathist deputy Prime Minister, triggering the expected Civil War. We don't do democracy abroad, the supreme irony here that a man like Saddam is the type that will bring peace in Iraq now.

L - Leveson Enquiry means yet more tabloid publicity

It's no coincidence that the Leveson Enquiry is being held alongside the police investigation into the phone hacking scandal so none of the people at the enquiry have to answer any tough questions so not to incriminate themselves, another establishment whitewash. We all know hacking was widespread because it was easy for a period of time of around four years in the last decade and we only seemed bothered when poor Millie Dowlers phone was hacked. The police and press only monitored her phone because they thought her father was the killer, and if the tabloids had got exactly that scoop then we would be patting them on the back and saying I told you so. The constant parade of fading celebrities taking the witness box to harangue the press they would be nothing without was vulgar, and then pose for the same paparazzi outside of the court!!! I know Steve Coogan and Hugh Grant don't want to hear their careers are over but they are.

M -Man Made Global Warming stopped..

Well it's kind of cooled, if you can excuse the pun, world temperatures plateauing since the extraordinary hot year of 1998, what sparked the messianic rush to turbines and fair trade cous cous in the first place. Leaked emails have revealed third parties were quietly paying BBC science journalist and Met Office workers to encourage global warming hype now that doubt has flooded into the public conscious.
This is a problem for some governments who have hooked their general tax raising ethos towards green issues now that the big corporations increasingly refuse to pay any tax at all, this, an emotive way to collect taxes from the middle-class. All big business need do is go off shore or have a nice meal with the tax inspector and 80% of the tax bill is written off.

An example of the exploitation of green issues to raise taxes can be seen at the nation's airports. Air passenger tax was introduced by the government; they say to cut numbers flying to stem damaging the ozone layer. When flying numbers fell through the recession you would think job done and it's working. Wrong. The Treasury are narked numbers have fallen from 315 million flying to 250 million because they have lost 500 million tax from it. Like the London congestion charge they were quietly hoping people didn't change their habits much but just paid more for it. As a result Boris Johnson put up the congestion charge and widened its catchment area and then the bus prices to catch the strays when car numbers fell and the government wants a 25% rise in air taxes to do the same, which they will get. It's the same with trains where people are forced out of their cars and on to trains and then hit again by taxes and fare rises to reduce the trains 29% public subsidy so make money there of the green hype.

N - Northern Ireland is the rebirth of a nation

The children of the Troubles have won three golf Majors in the last two years, an astonishing feat for such a small country to produce three great players. The kids grew up amongst the chaos and now a new nation is being born, the province I.Q levels an average five points higher than that of the mainland, the gene pool well and truly cleansed, Northern Irelands civil war not really affecting the provinces middle-class. Watch out for N.Ireland in tennis is my tip.

O - Over - Population is not over yet

There are seven billion of us now and rising fast, 57 million dying every year but 122 million born. 99% of species that have ever existed on earth have been wiped out by man and 12% of the people that have ever lived on earth are alive today. There is no way the resources can cope and so we propagate man-made global warming myths through official bodies to stem growth in the developing world to stop them getting at our resources. This means the third world will continue to come to the west that will have to feed and house them, and with that comes more problems, much higher crime rates, health issues and housing shortages. You have all seen those Eastern Europeans living on roundabouts and in the local woods as you speed past. Infectious diseases are really taking hold now in these groups here and now responsible for 75% of all new TB and HIV infections and 80% of Hepatitis B cases in Britain. Because many Muslims don't approve of injections and insist on covering their kids up with religious dress we have seen a big rise in measles and rickets too. Without mass immigration to the UK these diseases would be on the floor. But a modern world demands movement from east to west to do the jobs we don't want to do and the habits we dot want to practice so that's the deal folks.

P - Privacy is for perverts

Super injunction was a new legal word to join the lexicon of legal speak this year, a powerful law used to block the media reporting a fact or facts that may prejudice persons or organisations privacy. Some companies were using it to hide their crimes whilst certain celebrities were using it to block stories about doing likewise with sex aids up their bottoms! But the biggest irony was that of previous Big Brother contestant and confirmed bimbo, Imogen Thomas, who was so angry Ryan Giggs had stopped the press getting hold of details of her affair with him, one that would earn her money through kiss and tell stories (her main income), she challenged the super injunction. Giggs hinted at the idea that she only slept with him so to tell the tabloids and so he blocked the story. It now transpires Giggsy was also shagging his brother's wife for eight years on the side and so little credence to that excuse, she, too going public to make a few quid. There is no greater madness and contradiction than being a celebrity.

Q - Queens 50 year reunion gig

She has had a great year with the Royal Wedding and her 59th wedding anniversary well underway, although the Duke's ticker is beginning to pack up. It's a shame Prince Edward doesn't have a face like Pippa's ass though. I like the Duke and one of the five guys I would love to have lunch with at my fantasy dinner party. What secrets he must know! We won't discuss what Prince Andrew and his kids have been putting up their nose on the London party scene.


R - Riots and responsibility

Six months on and we are still too scared to call it what it was, a race riot, targeted against the police and anybody who wasn't African-Caribbean. The media chose to blame the police so not to have that debate. Mostly Asian, White and Middle Eastern businesses were targeted across London and 75% of insurance claims made so far are relating to those demographics. The majority of rioter's sent to jail were non white and the images and archives refuse to betray that fact, the evening wear department of JD Sports emptied across the nation! As a white guy I can't possibly understand the frustration of being stopped and searched all the time and I'm sure that anger brews but the majority of rioters had criminal records and this wasn't about innocent people making their frustrations made by pinching what they could. Rather incredibly one-in-eight of the rioters caught were claiming some sort of incapacity benefit and 40% were on standard unemployment benefits. 45% of London's unemployed are classed as black and so that percentage not as disproportionate as it seems. Foreign nationals from 44 countries were involved in the riots, one-in-seven of the convicted rioters born abroad, reflecting the current British prison population and so again proportionate.

Black communities have to accept that SUS laws were introduced purely because of the high levels of crime in black communities and there to protect innocent black people and residents of places like Tottenham and Hackney. The fact the riot was sparked by the FIRST shooting of a black male in London by the MET in their history, a black man who was a low level dealer and gang member and had hidden his stash of Class A drugs in his girlfriend's garden no less. Why are the community so angry that the people who bring the police to their communities are being policed? Its not reason enough to burn London down. The black community have to accept they have to hand over the bad guys in their areas or things will never change and the police will never go away. The Asian communities of Britain did not riot that week and also subject to oppressive stop and search, let alone all those false terror allegations to demonise Islam to justify the War in Iraq, something the media are not picking up on. It was what it was guys and only idiot Manc chav's aping it up north distracted from that fact.

S - Sports Personality of the Year, like lager, is not for girls

The feminist and rebel rousers were raging that there were no birds on the short list this year, fair comment. Rather childishly the BBC made all ten finalists on the Young Sports Personality of the Year Award female to prove the shortlisted is indeed bias in response. The thing is women have won the big award three times in the last ten years and so there is no bias. The problem is simple: women spectators don't like or pay to support women's sport. The female media...,say the 75 registered lifestyle magazines on sale here, and TV shows like Loose Women, just don't want to talk about women's sport and spend their time on sex, clothes and clutch bags because that's what gets them advertising revenue and that's what most women want to see in magazines. Young women don't want sporty muscles because they think they will lose their figures and looks. If these lifestyle mag's refuse to push women's sport unless they can squeeze sexy Jessica Ennis into a little black dress then what do they expect? Most women who prefer sport prefer men's sport and this is not a media or sponsors issue but participation and sex appeal one. They want to see Nadal sexy legs not some Brighton College student kicking a football around in empty stadiums. Let's face it; if women's athletics and tennis didn't share with the men then they too would get zero serious coverage.


T - Tsunami brings home nature in a rush


When TV and video actually capture natural disasters in all their awe and destruction that have happened for millions of years before some begin to believe the hype and buy into the fear that it's linked to global warming. The insurance companies, the lawyers that legislate health and safety laws and politicians will always exploit that to get control and your money. There is no reason at all why tsunami insurance cover should rise in Japan by 400% as the next one won't happen in the policy holder's lifetime and so the premiums should technically drop but that's exactly what happened. We are being right royally fleeced here.

The wave didn't look like we thought it would, no arcing crest or crashing foam, instead just appearing to slowly crawl across the land and then eat it and spit it out. In some places in Japan it swept in six miles.

U - Universal AID and the poor who dont get it

One area of public spending Cameron isn't cutting and actually increasing is third world aid, much to the chagrin of many voters. But government aid allows British companies access in other countries and they love to piggy back off the back of that with high level ministerial visits and meetings secured to secure those big commercial deals. In fact most of the nine billion pounds earmarked for the third world will not be going to poor communities.

One such deal will see a mobile phone company get access to Kenya and Pakistan to help people bank through their mobile phones with one billion pounds of development money help, the amount cut on legal aid in the UK last year. It is a little hazy on how that will help subsistent farmers or poor villages in Pakistan that probably don't have a cell phone, let alone have money to make calls on one. Our aid money is also being used to help a GERMAN company introduce genetically modified crops in Bangladesh and big cheques are going to blue chip companies to be more ethical abroad, which to me suggests aid money is being used as a slush fund to win Tory support through donations at election time. Even a large British tea company based in Harrogate is getting aid money to encourage them to buy tea from Rwanda, rather than just supporting the fledgling Rwanda tea farmers. Where it gets really murky is where you tax money is given indirectly to African dictators, who have fleets of limousines and Learjets, the president of the Peoples Republic of the Congo a great example of this corruption. The PRC have rare metals used in the making and often mined by child labour. That's not what charity is supposed to be about. Dictator after dictator have been getting so much aid money over the years by keeping their countries in poverty that they have bought extensive properties abroad in the nicest of neighbourhoods. If Britain is increasing their aid by thirty-five percent this year you have to ask why.

V - Valentine Simathcehnko and the miracle cure

He was the guy who bravely tackled the perfunctory knife wielding thug at the Notting Hill Carnival who had stabbed a fellow gang member on camera. The press loved it and spun the tale they were told by the guy that he was an ex Russian policeman and a hero from the Chechnya war and this was run of the mill stuff for him as he had seen 1000 men killed. Turns out he was an asylum seeker who has been falsely claiming various sick and disability benefits in London for a while now and certainly didn't fight in the Chechnya war, actually a wanted man in the Ukraine for his involvement in the murder of two people there, of which he says he was framed for. Pictures quickly emerged of the disabled Valentine balancing on shopping trolleys swigging Vodka, a whole album of snaps suggesting he wasn't that disabled and yet another taking advantage of our extremely generous and welcoming benefit system to the peoples of the world. It seems to tally with the fact that of the 600,000 asylum seekers Blair let in, over 67%, when given the right to work and live here, signed on and have never worked. I would probably do the same in their shoes if my English is poor and the system is set up for just that.

W - Weather and why it wont go away

Australia flooded in January with unprecedented amounts of rainfall from two back-to-back cyclones with one third of Queensland under water, with both Thailand and the Philippines also suffering catastrophic soakings this year in the region. Americas so-called tornado alley saw an amazing 754 funnel clouds recorded in just three weeks as 299 lives were lost to vicious twisters, their worse storms for over 100 years, wiping out a town called Joplin in the process, that one the single most deadly tornado since 1947.

X - X Factor is on its last legs

A group won this year for the first time, Little Minx talking like the absent Cheryl Cole and taking home the prize, not the most attractive girls from up north. One of them is quite chubby and will no doubt have to lose that weight, if the girls are to cut an album. Leona Lewis is still reticent to show her fleshy thighs, the variables the record companies don't like when the public pic their pop champions. Beyonce and Rhianna only made it as solo singer as they have the bodies to go with the voices. Best not mention that fat bird Michelle McManus packing out the 02 that won Pop Stars a while back. The standard was poor this year and surely game over for Cowell.

Y - You're American, right?

In America and the Tea Party movement (they are all white) in America embarrass their president in front of the world by demanding he produces his birth certificate to show he is indeed American. They claim they are not racist but their number is large and you won't spot a black face amongst them. The crap Obama has to put up with because he is born black is astonishing. If you vote in a black president to appease your countries guilt then at least give the guy a chance to prove black people are equal , if not better, when left to make a change.


Z - Zoo's and poos

Edinburgh zoo purchased some pandas off the Chinese, 570 grand a pair and that again for annual living costs. The Pandas did not have black eyes before they got to Scotland, claim the Chinese.

Happy New Year indeed!