Donkey’s Blog

New website twatboy.com gives you the opportunity to nominate and vote for candidates for the prestigious Twat Boy of the Month award.  Previous winners include David Cameron and Graham Norton, but the current poll is devoted to our brave overpaid boys in the England football team.  The “Spud faced Nipper” aka Mr W Rooney is the current leader so if you think it should be Robert Green, John Terry or Capello, you’ll need to get in quick and vote.

I voted for John Terry mainly because of his Twatish new haircut, but don’t let me influence you, what do I know?

There is a link to the site in my blogroll on the right hand side.

Remember if you don’t vote you shouldn’t complain about the outcome.   In a way it is just like the general election except the candidates are even less impressive.

 

Unfortunately twatboy.com has been withdrawn due to possible copyright infringement so the link to the site has been removed.

    Highlights From Old Donkey’s Almanac

The Internet
The web will degenerate into a vile soup of twitter / facebook type sites where everybody talks in txt spk and consequently no one understands each other. Computers will cease to be the main interface with all this rubbish, and the mobile phone will be favoured because it is so much easier to say nothing much on a smaller device.

Politics
There will be a general election in the UK and the results will not mirror the polls.

The turnout at the general election will be so poor that the new government will contact Simon Cowell to organise a television celebrity politics program and telephone voting.

A new general election is called for later in the year. In an interesting twist the three main parties are eliminated from the contest in the early stages. One of the leaders becomes abusive to the judging panel and has to be taken away by security staff. The other two become tearful and start weeping, one of them pleads “let me do the speech again, I know I can do it” All three judges give the thumbs down sign and he is lead gibbering away. All three leaders are interviewed by (minor UK celebrities) Ant and Dec and they vow to come back next time with a new act and win it.

In the series final the Scottish Nationalists win by a considerable margin over the far right BNP and the anti Europe party UKIP. The Scotts Nat leader moves in to No 10 Downing street and after consultation with his party declares that they no longer wish for independence, but since they now rule the UK there will be a new bill later in the year to extend the Scottish border down to the south coast and rename the UK “Scotland”. Trousers will be banned and everyone, male and female will have to affiliate themselves to a clan and wear the tartan in the form of a kilt. Haggis and deep fried Mars Bars will become mandatory in Fish and chip shops and takeaways across the country. This is part of a plan to reduce the life expectancy to that of Glasgow so that the country will have less to pay out in old age pensions and thereby solve the outstanding national debt in a much shorter time scale than would otherwise have been possible.

Prison Reform
The Isle of Wight will be evacuated and turned into an inmate controlled penal colony (similar to the movie escape to New York). All the empty old prisons will be converted to hostels to house the rising number of unemployed homeless people. The prison warders will be re-employed as Hostel Wardens with similar powers to those they previously enjoyed but slightly fewer opportunities to give someone a good beating.

Celebrities
Some famous people will die, others will get married, have a civil partnership and/or adopt some poor unfortunate little orphan from a third world country.

Technology
3D TV will become more popular but a Japanese manufacturer and a Korean company both announce that they are perfecting a 3d/Holographic display that will give you lifelike images at full size projected into your room. Both of these new services will be interactive, using the “hard light” holographic system invented on “Star Trek” so that the viewer can touch and communicate with characters. Unfortunately the two systems are incompatible and neither manufacturer will back down so the market is put on hold as no one wants to commit the $20,000 for a set until they work out which one is the betamax.

UFOs
A flying saucer will be publicly caught by the US Military when its invisibility shield is deactivated by vandals pointing their laser pen lights at an aircraft cockpit as the flying saucer accidentally crosses the laser beam. To everyone’s surprise the occupants are not from another planet they are human time travellers from after the next ice age. They explain that they have been observing us for years so that they can analyse where we went wrong in our attempts to control the climate. Apparently the man made global warming was the only thing stopping the ice age from happening, and as soon as we stopped using fossil fuels the glaciers took out most of the temperate zones.

The House of Windsor
A prominent member of the royal family will unexpectedly die in very unusual circumstances.

More Technology
A breakthrough will be made in producing electricity by cheap-to-make cold fusion generators. At last the electric car is a viable option. Road traffic accidents and deaths start to escalate as pedestrians cannot hear the cars coming. The government decides that all electric cars should be fitted with a new loudspeaker and amplifiers system continuously playing the new Scottish National Anthem “Donald where’s your trousers”.

Around the World
Celery will be declared an illegal substance in Uzbekistan, possession of Celery and Cottage Cheese at the same time will become a capital offence.

Show Business
Beth Ditto will join the Cheeky Girls and they will have a number one hit with an old Rolf Harris number. Beth will also become romantically involved with a minor member of the Royal family. Unfortunately it will all end in tears.

Conspiracy Theories
There will be a major revelation regarding the involvement of a certain fugitive bearded terrorist in the assassination of JFK, Princess Di and several other prominent figures from recent history.

The Environment
As the glaciers start to melt information regarding the last period of global warming starts to appear. Evidence that Intelligent Dinosaurs had a vibrant civilisation and invented the internal combustion engine millions of years ago is seen as proof that the people at the top of the food chain are always causing global warming.

The World of Sport
Southampton FC will be promoted into the championship where they will play against south coast rivals Portsmouth who will be relegated from the premiership.

England will win the world cup beating surprise finalist USA by 1 goal in an exciting match.

David Beckham will be knighted.

The World of  Television
Reality TV program “Big Brother” will be pulled from the schedule halfway through the series when the producers realise that in spite of the incredible free publicity from the gutter press nobody can be bothered to actually watch it.

Health Matters
New research will indicate that exercise is bad for you and that chocolate, doughnuts and ice cream are health foods.

Religion
There will be a major scandal towards the end of the year when a leak from area 51 reveals that the captured UFO Time travellers have unequivocal proof that in the early 35th century the remains of what can only be the supreme being will be discovered floating in deep space behind the Coal Sack nebula.  This information, dragged out of them by waterboarding and other unpleasant activities, also confirms that the deity had been dead for several million years.  The world will be appalled that the US military had tried to surpress this information because it didn’t fit in with what they had already decided to believe.

The organised religions will all protest about this except the Roman Catholics who are strangely silent.  On the last day of the year the pope announces that they have known this for centuries and that it doesn’t matter because “Nobody takes this stuff seriously anyway”.

International Show Business
The Australian spin off talent show “Australia’s got talent” will be won by an aboriginal gentlemen who has an original act juggling live cats.

Remember -You heard it all here first!

7^th November 2006

I would like to point out an excellent service offered by the Supermarket Tesco.

This offer is only available to those of us lucky enough to reside in the UK.

It is even better that the BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) offers that you see in the supermarkets everywhere, it is a BONBANO (Buy One Never Buy A New One) offer.

If you follow these instructions you will only ever have to buy one toaster in your life.

The procedure may not work for on-line purchases so I suggest you go into the local store.

There are three factors that make this work.

1) The EU directive that all small electrical products are now guaranteed for 2 years.

2) The fact that a lot of really cheap Chinese made electrical products are built to last about 6 months.

3) Tesco’s ineptitude.

This is what you do.

A) Purchase a cheap Tesco own label toaster for £4.78- keep your receipt.

B) When it goes wrong as it usually does after 3 to 9 months (mine first clapped out in November 2006 - purchased in April 2006) take it back for a replacement under guarantee. Showing your receipt as proof of purchase.

C)Tesco give you a new receipt as proof of purchase dated from the day you picked up the replacement!!!

D) Repeat steps B to C as required.

I urge everyone to take up this offer it serves the retailer right if they sell crap products when they know they have to guarantee them. It’s a small blow against the forces that are driving down prices and consequently quality in our electrical sector.

Unfortunately you don’t get clubcard points each time you get a replacement. For some reason they take them off then add them back on again. No idea why.

This is why we are “Great Britain”! You won’t get a deal like that in Wallmart.

 

7^th April 2007

Just a quick update to let you know the plan is still working, the everlasting toaster is now in its third incarnation, and again they have given me a guarantee starting from yesterday.

I feel slightly cheated because the toaster has been reduced in price - it is now 3.76 including vat.

Good old Chinese workmanship the first one lasted nearly six months, the second one just about five months so if this is a trend I should be onto number 4 by sometime in August.

This time the Tesco customer service guy seemed surprised that I should want a replacement, I suppose everyone else just asks for their 3.76 back. Losers! I will never have to buy a new toaster.

Tesco seem to miss the point about guarantees, I sell Italian made domestic cleaning and ironing appliances in the UK, and like most manufacturers we will continue to repair or replace a faulty item up until the guarantee period is over, the guarantee runs from the date of the original purchase. When we replace or repair we make a point of telling them “you have X months left on your guarantee” so there is no argument.

Tesco either don’t realise that this is the way the system works or they have a different policy so they give you a new purchase receipt dated the day you get the new exchange model. It really is an everlasting toaster. If they sold products that lasted more than a few months then they would not have a problem.

I suspect that they are just sending them back to whoever imports them from China for them so Tesco won’t suffer, just the poor supplier as usual.

There is no extra cost involved in making lots of trips to Tesco. I drive by the shop every day and quite often call in to get a paper or some milk so there is no cost really.

As it is a shoddily made piece of Chinese engineering I take the precaution of keeping it turned off when it is not being used.

 

3^rd August 2007 - Update - Now on version 4

As I so accurately predicted in my post of 6th April the toaster gave up the ghost again this week, and has duly been replaced yesterday (Saturday) afternoon when we did our weekly shop. Once again my guarantee runs from the day of exchange. It is weird; they check my details on the Tesco clubcard so they know that I am now on my 4th Toaster but they make no comment. One would assume that they would think I was involved in some sort of toaster scam and give me the third degree, but no they meekly exchange it . They must have a mountain of these knackered toasters somewhere. The young lad who exchanged it for me did comment that he has one the same that he’s had for 2 and a half years and it’s still going strong. Perhaps Tesco staff trainers tell them to say that in a vain attempt to keep up morale.

If anyone else would like an everlasting toaster details are here Tesco Cheapo Toaster

They are even cheaper now £3.75 “cheap enough to buy to throw at the cat to make the baby laugh” as the market traders used to say.

I hesitate to make a firm prediction, but if the trend in toaster longevity continues I should be replacing it again in late November or Early December. Watch this space.

12^th February 2008 - Update - It’s still working!

This could be the worst case scenario - this one isn’t faulty so far - if it lasts until the guarantee runs out then cacks out I may have to invest £3.76 in a new one.  I’ll keep you informed…

12^th February 2008 - Update - It’s still working!

One is pleasantly surprised that this last incarnation of the device has soldiered on so long, it is definitely out of warranty now so when it turns up it’s toes (as it probably will now) I will bin it and probably buy a better one.

——————–Story Ends——————-