Curmudgeon's Rants and Moans

Rants and Moans

You know what a broad-minded, tolerant person I am, someone of a sunny disposition who thinks that pretty much everything's right with the world. But when I had an enforced stay in hospital a few years back I made a short list of a few minor niggles that I wanted to get off my chest....

People who continually do loud, juicy sniffs in public and don't seem to have a tissue or handkerchief
People who stand on the point of going for ages and don't actually go, especially when holding doors wide open
People who leave the caps off pens
And people who unfold maps and can't fold them up properly again
Fat blokes who wear "sportswear"
Young men - or indeed men of any age - who can't be bothered to tuck their shirts into their trousers. This is an appalling sartorial habit that for some unaccountable reason has become widespread
Middle-aged men who imagine that wearing three-quarter length cargo pants is a good look
Chubby women who imagine that their bare midriffs are sexy
Why are XL T-shirts so much smaller than they used to be?
Men who wear short-sleeved business shirts with ties. Don't they realise it makes them look like photocopier repair men?
People who don't look where they're going on a pavement or in supermarket aisles and keep bumping into you
Why do Walkers use green for Salt & Vinegar and blue for Cheese & Onion when every other crisp manufacturer in history has logically had the colours the other way round?
Why do they only sell giant-size bags of crisps at motorway services? And many of them don't even sell cans of soft drinks any more, just bottles which are bigger and more expensive.
"Easy open" packets of biscuits and nuts that actually can only be opened with extreme difficulty resulting in the complete destruction of the packet.
Hospital "food" - hardly surprising so many patients suffer from malnutrition
That great British culinary delicacy, pizza and chips
Hotels and guest houses that offer a choice of orange juice or cereal
Hotels that charge for the room meaning you pay a 100% surcharge for single occupancy
Middle aged or elderly men who drink lager. I mean, why?
People who wander around drinking water from plastic bottles. Did huge numbers die of thirst before this fad?
Red wine - I've never tried any that didn't taste like Ribena gone sour
Vegetarians who insist that naturally carnivorous pets such as cats and dogs adopt a meat-free diet
Why is it beyond the wit of engineers to design a shower where the water temperature and flow can be controlled independently and accurately?
Lay-bys with no litter bins, just big signs that say "take your litter home". So where do you take it if you're on holiday?
And stations with no litter bins either, because of some overblown threat of terrorism, so rubbish ends up strewn all over the place
Railway companies that patronise their passengers by referring to them as "customers"
Richard Branson - what a charlatan. His useless, grossly overpriced "Virgin Trains" are a national scandal. A good thing he never got his hands on the National Lottery
People - and even official signs - that refer to "train stations" rather than "railway stations"
People who leave their cars parked on the road when they have perfectly usable garages
Staff in customer-facing positions who chew gum
Indeed anyone at all who chews gum - a disgusting habit that leaves filthy residues all over the place. And many people in their thirties don't realise there comes a point when chewing gum starts to make them look more like a chomping pensioner than someone cool (if it ever did the latter)
Why do young people from black and Asian families still speak with identifiably "ethnic" accents despite often being the third generation to live in this country?
Any advert for the Halifax "Building Society". They're just all seriously offputting
Banks that have got rid of most standard counter service positions, so there's a huge queue of people waiting to transact genuine banking business while legions of "customer service representatives" loll about in the vague hope they might sell someone a dodgy investment or insurance policy
Why do some people seem to find using a cash dispenser a major intellectual challenge?
People who are as thick as two short planks but insist on offering half-baked, dogmatic opinions on every subject under the sun (usually actually culled from the leader column of The Sun)
Close-shaven haircuts on men which invariably look unbecoming and thuggish
Supermarkets offering "25% extra free" on ready meals and the like which are already more than you want. Why not 25% off?
And surely this - rather than lack of exercise or car dependency - is the key reason for the epidemic of obesity. Every meal you buy outside the house is half as much again as you want or need.
Packets of peanuts with a message saying "Warning: contains nuts"
Why are chips in Britain so often pale, half-cooked and flabby?
Why is it so difficult to get the bill and pay in a restaurant?
And why do restaurants have menus with long lists of main courses without mentioning what accompanies them, let alone allowing you to swap chips for rice or whatever?
Why is it that you always get in a queue at the supermarket checkout behind someone who is exchanging a purseful of discount coupons?
And why do you have to spend hours searching round a DIY store the size of the Boeing factory to buy a packet of screws? Whatever happened to hardware shops?
Male assistants at supermarket checkouts - always desperately slow and clumsy compared with women
And when they offer to pack your bags at the supermarket the dork doing it always puts the light, fragile items at the bottom
Checkout workers who pass supposedly matey comments about the contents of your shopping basket
Shops in winter where the heating is set for the benefit of the staff and it's absolutely stifling when you walk in off the street
Those extra single pages in broadsheet newspapers that make them difficult to fold and are always falling out. At least now the broadsheets are going tabloid that will come to an end
And why have calendars been changed so that the week now starts on a Monday rather than Sunday as it always used to?
The way programmes on the BBC always overrun by two or three minutes making video recording a hit-and-miss business
Yet they still find time for loads of unnecessary, offputting trailers
The clock shown on TV sports broadcasts which is constantly ticking over the seconds and distracts you from the match
TV cricket coverage which is always from behind the bowler's arm, losing the natural rhythm of the match. The basic view should be from one viewpoint, with replays from the other end if needed. They don't switch over on football matches so ManU are playing from left to right in both halves
Mark Ramprakash - totally useless when playing for England. Why he was ever picked is a mystery
Yet they kept dropping Graeme Hick - potentially the finest England batsman of his generation - after one or two poor scores
And for that matter why did Sven Goran Ericsson keep picking Emile Heskey who is basically just a plank?
Piercing vibrato whistling from middle-aged men - it's always the same tune, but you've never heard it anywhere else
And men who sit in pubs, even where they're with companions, and suddenly start singing little snatches of song
Yobboes playing loud dance music in cars - what's wrong with REO Speedwagon, ferchrissake?
Jazz music - a tuneless, meandering cacophony
Likewise opera, aptly summed up by the small child who described the opera house as "the place where they pay fat ladies to scream"
And most "middle of the road" music from the pre rock'n'roll era is now completely unlistenable for anyone under 60
Why do Scousers think they're funny?
People who believe Princess Diana was a noble, wronged, tragic heroine rather than a thick, spoilt, hysterical woman. We of a curmudgeonly persuasion had to keep our mouths firmly shut during the week of her funeral. Blair's speech referring to her as the "People's Princess" made me physically sick.
How long will it be before people start saying "twenty-oh-two" rather than the longwinded "two thousand and two"? That Stanley Kubrick has a lot to answer for with "2001".
Why do sportsmen get banned for taking cannabis - which is in no sense a performance enhancing drug - yet their teams are prepared to tolerate assault, drunk driving and many other far worse offences?
Does anyone apart from anal-retentive council bureaucrats actually think that "Superloos" represent an acceptable form of public toilet provision?
Social services departments who make adoption so difficult and hedged about with political correctness when at the same time there are so many children being born to teenage mothers who are not in a position to look after them properly
Why do A-level results keep improving every year despite the fact that employers find that even graduates taken on as new employees struggle to add up or spell?
TV documentaries that say "the leopard is now only ten metres away" when nobody in real life would say anything but "yards"
Women only want to look like Calista Flockhart for the benefit of other women - men much prefer them like a pre-diet Kate Winslet
And women who seem to be constantly on some diet or other, yet never manage to lose weight for any prolonged period
Women who wear short skirts and keep pulling them down
Similarly, women who wear low-cut trousers and keep pulling them up
Thirtysomething career women who whinge that there are no single men about. Why don't they try their local CAMRA branch?
Why is there so much denigration of men and male interests in the media, especially in TV adverts? Isn't this sexist?
And why do women moan about men's supposedly Neanderthal habits, yet consistently fall for bastards who metaphorically drag them around by the hair?
People who refer to Reliant Robins as Robin Reliants
Where does that phrase "At the minute" come from? Why can't people say "at the moment" like they always used to? Is it an Americanism?
And who called their daughters "Keeley" twenty-five years ago? Is it just a modern affectation for girls really called "Kelly"?
Dreadful music on the phone while you're put on hold
Michael Barrymore - the most cringe-inducing TV performer of recent years, a man who made an act out of aping the old boy who comes up to you in the pub and starts singing some ancient song while attempting a soft-shoe shuffle
Children with no sporting aptitude being forced to take part in competitive sport at school - football is not an essential life skill
And how often do you find that the people who go on about their exercise régimes and healthy diets have twice as much time off work as the pubgoing couch potatoes, and fall victim to every bug going?
Children who play football in the street, damaging cars and annoying people by kicking the ball against walls. Why can't they be inside playing computer games?
The British Olympic Bid - how on earth could this succeed when London is mired in transport gridlock? And now we have to look forward to seven years of remorselessly upbeat, politically correct propaganda, while anyone expressing the slightest degree of scepticism will be accused of "rocking the boat". I'm booking my holiday in France now!
Mobile phones - occasionally useful, most of the time a gross invasion of privacy and a major annoyance in pubs and other public places
And people who walk around with a mobile clamped to their ear oblivious of everything going on around them
People who wander around in midwinter in flimsy, skimpy clothing and complain how cold it is
Likewise people - often Geordies - who wander around in midwinter wearing only a T-shirt to prove that they're "hard"
And people who turn the heating on and start saying "Isn't it freezing?" on the first coolish morning in September
Not to mention those who complain about the cold on conspicuously mild winter days
Fleeces - given that Britain has a mild, wet climate, why do people insist on wearing a form of clothing that keeps out the cold but does nothing to protect you from the rain?
Open plan offices - you keep getting distracted from your work, and it's always either too hot or too cold. And it's too difficult to hide from the boss.
And it's always the women who complain about being too cold when the men are fine. And then the women hide fan heaters under their desks even when the temperature's well above the recommended 21º C
But some men are just as bad and expect to be able to work in shirtsleeves even in the depths of winter
Why is it that the Americans seem to have air-conditioning in office blocks that allows people to wear business clothes in comfort throughout the year, but British aircon typically produces a stuffy, sweaty, unhealthy fug?
Dress-down Fridays - a patronising sop to employee individuality from organisations that are busy stifling it in most other areas
Anyone who uses the Comic Sans font for business documents. And it appears I'm not the only one to feel this way
Age discrimination in the workplace - an absolute disgrace that should be consigned to the history books along with racism and sexism
And what's the point of extending the retirement age to 70 when in many careers people find it extremely difficult to get a job after the age of 40?
The way the staff in Job Centres treat claimants like dirt
Dazzlingly bright "security lights" on houses that are activated whenever the neighbourhood cats walk by
Cats may look cute - but if only the little b*stards wouldn't crap on your lawn!
Tony Blair - no explanation needed. Likewise John Prescott - what a waste of space!
Ann Widdecombe - dreadful woman! There's certainly "something of the night" about her.
And Ken Livingstone - an evil, vindictive, reptilian individual
Why are the Liberal Democrats so illiberal?
The post-Dunblane handgun ban. Now that really worked, didn't it?
People who are brought before the courts for defending themselves and their property, when the police hardly seem bothered about investigating burglary and criminal damage
Reporters who say that it's good news when interest rates go down, even though there are far more savers than mortgage borrowers, and on average the savers are less well off
People who regard domestic chores as an appropriate subject for social conversation
When there's bad weather and the police say you should only make essential journeys, do they mean it's OK not to go to work? If not, what's the point?
People who moan about the British weather - if you don't like it, go and live in Spain!
Why, despite all the publicity, do people still think that a suntan looks healthy and flattering? Personally I prefer women who look as though they've spent far more time in dimly-lit bars than on the beach. Morticia Addams is my pin-up
People who whinge about British people being convicted of drug smuggling in foreign countries. If you visit other countries you should respect their laws - particularly if their penalties are much more severe than ours

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