The Grumpy Old Blog

  An epidemic of ironic child-naming has broken out in the Borough of Bolton . I heard no fewer than three " Skylars " being hailed (sworn at) by their mothers this weekend. Naturally enough, being of Dutch origin , it is a gender-neutral name, derived from the Dutch surname Schuyler , and the first irony, it means " scholar ". As a current and approximate 4-year-old, yes, there will be intervening years where he or she could indeed develop at school and consequently be accused of being "scholarly". That a mother with Beluga lips, covered in tattoos and lumps of former shipbuilding rivets welded into her face, as she wandered around with her head jammed in ThickTack as said snot-machine named Skylar was digging solo into a very large bar of chocolate, is, I'm afraid, debatable. Skylar, a name that is plainly aimed at the intelligence-neutral . . . . . . or Elon Musk when he runs out of Roman numerals for his current fleet of kids. I know, this is abje...

 "𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸" and "𝗜 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁". Perhaps the most caustic sentence fragments in the English language. Especially when uttered by either conspiracy theorists or the congenitally stupid. Firstly, they never think, as it is not within their general cognitive abilities to be able to do so - their thinking is usually limited to "I saw it on TikTok", "time to eat", "time to sleep", "time to crap". And that's about it. One particular neighbour of mine, with a PhD in Benefit Claiming, has a remarkable ability - for one so unbelievably dense - to make up stuff at a rate that might suggest all the "stuff" in the world is severely endangered.  For example, he always announces when a white car (do take into account there are currently some 4.4million white cars in the UK) passes at the end of the street, "Oh look, I think (there's that magical fragment, "𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸") that was 'our Mart...

I think the Green Party needs to stop nagging the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that "eating five greens a day" might be encouraging cannibalism, and get down to the real nitty-gritty green agenda. The Green Party needs to tell its members about Chat GPT. They will, of course, have to use words such as "mindful", "mindfulness" "demure" and "super" as an adjective/adverb that the ThickTack lump of lard, Jools Lebron, (described an an "internet sensation" and "internet celebrity" - what on earth is that crap all about?) has virally popularised for all the sheep to grab their attention. This is to stress that she is fantastic and deserves being labelled a celebrity sensation so she can avoid actually working for a living. Life on benefits is so much more grim in the USA. Maybe chuck in the odd "ringfenced" and "blue sky thought", and the Green's membership goldfish-like atten...

  I appreciate that with age comes the almost inalienable right to become a grumpy old git who flies off the handle when normality from his childhood transforms into an unnecessary modern-day evil. With last night's 1% Club having run on my second screen while I was graphicising, I am astounded at the number of contestants who "were out" when it came to very simple questions about English and wording. People seem clueless. If this is how they are with questions designed allegedly to "show how their brain works", the future's neither bright nor orange! It's bleak. I cannot understand the term "pre-order", which to me means "ordering before you order", which is total horseshit. Will the soshul influenzas be telling us soon that breaking wind is a "pre-sh*t"? All "pre-order" is, is an effort to disguise the fact that brands want to grab your money into their bank accounts as far ahead of you receiving the goods as the...

A frequent topic of conversation among my own peer group of retired and semi-retired wrinklies is regarding Millennials (born 1981 to 2000) and early Generation Z (2001 to 2020) and their ability to be glued to their mobiles 24/7, yet never replying in a timely manner to a communication from their older kith and kin. They don't reply, yet will gladly get it touch immediately with their own peers to ask, "Do you follow Chardonnay Moron on 'Insta' - she's soooo cool". Yes, cool, but otherwise clueless, and usually an inept, Beluga-lipped, tattooed moron who prefers to spout total crap on 'soshul meeja' on topics they in reality know absolutely nothing, using this as a job, instead of actually working gainfully for a living. " Like, follow and share " are the only three words these wastes of space know. Yet they are the new Messiahs of the Millennials and Gen Z, and woe betide any Millennials or Gen Z who might miss one single word - spelt wron...

ON THE PASSING OF THE 46A To those of Irish descent (I was thrown out of an Aer Lingus Dublin to Milan flight in a shamrock-green parachute over Manchester myself), you may care to join me in a minute's silence for the passing of a well-loved Dublin institution. So well-loved, that a group called Bagatelle mentioned it in their 1980 worldwide hit "Summer in Dublin". This passing institution is no less a monument to Irish society than the 46A bus from Dublin City Centre to the port suburb of Dun Laoghaire, the one no one outside Ireland can either spell or pronounce. Actually, it's getting to the stage that not many people in Dublin can spell it either (according to a poll undertaken in Allahu's Snackbar, Glasnevin) Yes, the passing of this great institution. I remember standing at bus stops in the rain myself, putting my hand out and seeing this great 46A pass by. It was one of the first buses in the world to follow the "safety in numbers rule", where yo...

A small charity committee get-together has concluded. Having been one myself on several contractual occasions, one can always spot a civil-service lifer. They have this inane ability to naturally inject meaningless bullsh*t into the conversation "through the chair" (we were sitting on the sofa and armchairs, so it was an absolute bugger to get the 'chair' into the air so that "Sha" [Patricia] could speak through it. Sadly, I haven't the space to be able to get away with playing "HR bullsh*t bingo" on the laptop I was taking minutes on, but I lost count, as well as the will to live, as a result of the number of automatic interjections of pure drivel she added to everything she said. We had ringfencing, bar raising, envelope pushing, blue-sky considerations (it's bloody dark outside woman!), gaining viable traction (I thought my laptop was the four-wheel drive version - plainly not). And then she finished by discussing the DNA of Manchester C...