SCRIBBLES ON... MOTORWAY HIGH SPEED LANE SWAPPERS

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been away to Devon for a few days. The sun shone. Kids splashed in the sea. Everyone wore flip-flops. It felt like a proper holiday. It's raining again today though.

One thing I noticed on my two M5 journeys is that there appears to be a style of motorway driving that has become the height of fashion for far too many.

We're all familiar with the Middle Lane Hogger, but they seem to have been supplanted in numbers (and irritation factor) by the High Speed Lane Swapper.

The High Speed Lane Swapper drives a sporty car and slams up behind you in the fast lane doing 90 mph plus. Once you've overtaken the cars you need to overtake, you move back into the middle lane, out of his way. The fast lane is his. But instead of him continuing unimpeded at 90 mph in that lane, the irritating twat swings dramatically in front of you in the middle lane.

You are travelling about 80 mph, he's travelling 90 mph, you are surrounded by other vehicles doing the same sort of speeds, and he thinks it's a great idea to cut you up.

He continues speeding. At 90 miles an hour he obviously can't stay in the middle lane, so when he slams up behind the next car in the same lane, he has to swing out into the fast lane again.

Why? Why do that? If you are intent on going twenty miles an hour and more above the speed limit, why not just stick in the fast lane?

The worst ones, on a less busy motorway, will also swing into the slow lane if there is space. You watch them making their way up the motorway, dramatically weaving in and out of cars at speed when the fast lane is mostly free.

It is attention seeking of the most annoying sort because it's dangerous. I don't give a shit if they have a fancy car that goes really really fast, I don't want to be part of a five car pile up because some wanker is having an adolescent fanatsy that they are driving at Le Mans.

The pulling in front of you. It's like they are deliberately trying to communicate with you how little they think of your existence. Like they are saying - you are so unimportant in your slower, less expensive car that I barely noticed you there as I moved into this lane, but whilst you are there, look how flash my car is as I speed off in front of you.

It's maddening that you can't find someway to say back to them that you find their need to validate their sense of superiority on other road users sad and pathetic. That they don't look flash. They look like a three year old crying to get mommy's attention because they've done big poo poos they're proud of.

Should a High Speed Lane Swapper be reading this, just to let you know, other drivers on the motorway aren't thinking, "Wow! Look at that great car being expertly driven at speed by some superior human being. I feel so inferior". We are all thinking "What an arsehole."

LADIES CLOTHING; PART TWO

I wailed in an earlier post here about how impractical ladies clothing is, abundant as they are in frills and flouncy bits, often stopping short of the midriff and wrist.

This weekend, dear reader, I was reminded that it is the same with bras and knickers.

If I wish to buy a pair of knickers that finish half way down my arse, or up my crack, or cover my belly, then I am spoilt for choice. I can buy such monstrosities in their hundreds, in every puke inducing colour and design you ever could possibly think up; and I can usually buy three for a tenner as well.

If, however, I wish to wear knickers that take in the full roundness of my bottom, but for which the waistband is not so high that I could pull them up under my chest should I so desire, then the quest becomes the stuff of a Hollywood epic.

Bras are equally frustrating. I can buy lots of fancy crap that would definitely be appreciated visually by my husband; bows and jewels, red satin, patches of lace in indiscreet places. If, however, I wish to wear a bra that supports my tits and fits smoothly under clothes, which is actually the entire point of the things, then my choice is limited to the boring beige T-shirt bra. If I can find one on my size.

If female underwear designers had their way, under my jeans and T-shirt everyday I'd be wearing granny knickers with a tart's basque. Why the hell can't they just design attractive underwear, that fits, and wears well under clothes?

I spent some time observing all the other women choosing underwear in La Senza and Marks and Spencers, and I tell you, I know they were having the same problems as me. Most of us being neither prostitutes nor geriatrics, the rows and rows of underwear were completely fucking pointless. What a shameful waste.

In the end, after much intense, headache-inducing searching, I did come away with a handful of stuff, though the designs would appeal more to me if I were 15 years old. At least, however, my arse and tits are properly supported today.

SHOULD MARGARET THATCHER BE GIVEN A STATE FUNERAL?

Vote no here

NOT REAL

This story today.

All in our heads.

THE ISLAMIC THREAT: MYTH OR REALITY?

Soumaya Ghannoushi says myth.

Apart from those times when it kills, presumably.

"The victims have included objectivity, balance, and the ability to judge issues calmly and rationally."

Yeah, those things, and people in tall buildings and on public transport.

TODAY I WAS GIVEN A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

Today someone gave me a box of chocolates and some home-made sweet bakes. She was a young woman from Iraq who had sought to help bring women rights to Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Her work was discovered by the insurgents meaning that she had to flee her family home. She continued to work for women's rights. Members of her family were assasinated by the insurgents. She continued to work for women's rights. Her husband wanted her to stop her work. She refused, divorced him, and continued fighting for women's rights.

Eventually, when the insurgency was wreaking its bloody worst, she fled to Britain. If she hadn't, I doubt she would be alive now.

My boss and I have fought for over a year to get her granted leave to remain in the UK, and the Home Office have finally granted her three years temporary leave. It's a start.

I am wholeheartedly sorry for the sickening fuck-up of the invasion that was so inadequately planned. We have disgraced ourselves with what we have put the Iraqi people through. But I can never never never apologise for the fact that the aims of the Iraq war were something that I felt was worth supporting.

When this lady was fighting in Iraq, even though I didn't know her then, I was on her side.

I still am.

CLIMATE CHANGE: FIRST DO NO HARM

Long time loyal readers will know that I am somewhat irked by the whole Climate Change subject, in that I feel hypocrisy abounds and that debate has been trampled upon in the rush to make money. This post of mine sums up this view.

I don't understand the science behind the claim that humans are responsible for the warming of the planet, but I don't understand the science that claims that humans are not responsible for it either. And so, I comment from the sidelines about the whole human circus that has grown up around the issue.

One 'argument' that always gets the blood rushing to my head is that the best option is just to throw everything we have at tackling possible human contributions to climate change, then if that doesn't prove to be the case, we have lost nothing. Well, I think that's one hell of a gamble. Don't we also need to consider what's to be done either if we cannot stop global warming or if we fail to?

Well, now, here is something else to consider along those lines. Do we not also need to be careful in what we do to try and tackle human contributions to climate change less there are unintended consequences?

I'm talking, of course, about biofuel. That seemingly good idea to save the planet, which is playing a big part in the rise of food prices and driving 100 million people around the world into poverty and hunger.

So, no, we can't afford just to chuck everything we have at climate change. We never could.

REMEMBERING LONDON

Red bus in Birmingham.

DOCTOR HUH?

Last Doctor Who of the series.

Davros wanted to align some planets, including earth, which would for some reason mean the end of reality, and David Tennant regenerated as himself because of a hand in a jar, but Donna Noble also regenerated on the jar hand to try and save the Tardis - which had been flushed down some sort of celestial loo - and she became half doctor, also creating another Doctor Who who was half human and wore a blue suit, who went off with Rose who went back to her alternative universe, which along with every other universe managed to survive 'the darkness', which was eating up all the stars, but which was somehow reversed by Doctor Donna so that it ate up all the Daleks instead, which along with Dalek Caan betraying Davros in some way I didn't understand, meant that, happily, none of the Doctor Who franchise people had to blow planet earth up themselves with the Haagen key or the deathstar pendent, which was then pulled back to its proper position in the universe by the Tardis - which seemed to have no negative affects other than to make objects on people's shelves wobble - but then Donna had to return to her boring old self because too much Doctor knowledge would burn her up, which was a shame because she had inexplicably been fated to travel with the Doctor to stop 'the darkness' by becoming a hybrid Doctor, which had earlier seen her defeat the time-steeling beetle stuck to her back.

Perhaps I needed to pay better attention all series, but, huh?

UPDATE:
Best summed up by this most excellent quote from David Thompson's from this post of Matt's:

"My overall impression was of RTD shovelling Doctor Who characters and plot fragments into a bin liner and shaking it violently in the hope that something vaguely coherent might fall out afterwards. Someone really should take Mr Davies to one side and hammer nails into his face until he promises to stop."

SHORT AND CURLIES

I have naturally curly hair and I have spent the best part of my life torturing it into being straight. Partly, this is because when I wear it curly, people look at me with mistrust and ask if I have had a perm.

They don't say, "Oh wow! Your hair looks great like that!" or, "Your hair is so pretty curly, you should wear it like that more often." No, they look suspiscious and ask, "Have you had a perm?"

Either that, or they say nothing at all. I have a great big mop of curly hair on my head and they pretend they haven't spotted it.

Well, if people can't cope with my hair being curly, then from now on that's tough. Because I'm going curly. I've bleached and straightened my hair to near extinction and it's now time to give the poor fibrous protein sprouting from my head a break.

From now on, it's Peggy from Hi-De-Hi all the way.......