The Ministry Of Truth

If my furtive page turning in Costcutter was accurate, it’s another Nicky Campbell-Free Guardian Thursday.

Perhaps we have won.

My pharmacist told me this afternoon that there is a national shortage of the antihistamine tablet Desloratadine.  But of course.  After all, how could the manufacturer, Schering-Plough, possibly have expected people to start suffering from hay fever at about this time of year?  Fuck me…

Nevertheless, and despite some Ikea-related difficulties this morning, today has been A Marginally Better Than Average Day on the grounds that those nice, helpful and efficient people at the Revenue & Customs have already processed my tax rebate for the fiscal year 2006-7 and credited my bank account with £640.  The Minister’s Wife shall not starve for at least another month; indeed, I have even bought her a chocolate brownie by way of celebration.

Oh, and this caption - carefully worded by the BBC’s lawyers - made me laugh my balls off:

Jose Mourinho will want to know why Chelsea were not awarded a penalty for it…

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans…

CNN: Watch Bush boogie

Is it him or is it Will Farrell?

9.25am update:

Fuck me, there’s more…

While I grant you that it’s not up there with MS or having a stroke, I can attest to the fact that Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a deeply unpleasant condition that has a disproportionate impact on the way a sufferer must live their life.

I can also confirm that one of the few things that can make worse an IBS attack is the discovery, with one’s trousers around one’s ankles, that you are sharing a bathroom with the biggest wasp this side of Massachusetts.

Laugh? I nearly shat myself.

On 20 Apr 2007, at 10:01, [A Parasitic Recruitment Consultant] wrote:

Hi [Minister]

My Client is looking for a property Litigation Solicitor with experience of dealing with registered social landlords Rent Arrears cases, nuisance cases, disrepair claims and injunctions.

If you would like to talk further regarding this opportunity or if your (sic) looking for a new position and want some general advice please call me on [telephone number].

Kind Regards

[A Parasitic Recruitment Consultant]
Manager
[A Parasitic Recruitment Consultancy]

On 20 Apr 2007, at 16:23, [The Minister] wrote:

Dear [Parasitic Recruitment Consultant] -

I am neither a property lawyer nor a litigator so I suspect your client would not be interested in me.

Incidentally, you never came back to me about either of the roles we discussed on 20 March. Should I assume, therefore, that nothing came of them?

Regards,

[The Minister]

If one of these clowns places me in a role they get 15-20% of my first year’s basic salary as their fee - so something like £13,000.

Just watch it.

Yesterday, someone who I think was trying to be nice to me called me “clubbable”.

The despicable bastard. Still, it’s one less Christmas card for me to sign this year…

Within the past 24 hours I have twice fallen victim to The Incompetence Of Human Resource ‘Professionals’ (sic), something that happens so often that I’m thinking of creating a new category of post just to accomodate it.

In the first instance, everything is apparently All My Fault because I am not psychic and/or clairvoyant. Clearly, I must’ve missed the lectures in law school where those skills were taught.

In the second instance, a Human Resources ‘Professional’ told me turn up today for “an informal, general careers interview” with a Commercial Director “at which you will have the opportunity to ask questions”.

It transpired that the Commercial Director in question was, until a few months ago, an IT outsourcing partner in a City law firm and he was intent on discussing the minutiae of IT outsourcing contracts. I might have done a wee bit of revision on the topic had I been told it might be necessary. As it was, I just sat there babbling and sweating.

I did, however, take the opportunity to ask a question of my interviewer: namely, “Shall I get my coat?”

Updated Phrases For The 21st Century:

Them as can, do.
Them as can’t, teach.
Them as can’t teach become Human Resources ‘Professionals’.

Why are these people so chipper…

…if this is true?

I dislike free newspapers because they make punters think it’s OK to be thick, indulge in insidious forms of marketing, encourage sloppy journalism and waste scarce natural resources. I don’t hate people who are not clever enough to read broadsheets, but I do dislike people - and also journalists - who are so lazy and cynical that they stand by clapping as the human race heads rapidly down the pan.

On the train home, I noticed a couple sitting opposite one another. They were each reading their own copy of thelondonpaper. Touchingly, they regularly interrupted their read to draw the other’s attention to a particularly funny or interesting photograph or fictionoid.

The fucking morons. The “newspaper” is only about twenty-four pages long, consists almost exclusively of a series of adverts masquerading as news and is written in large type. Why would you get one each, when each of you can read it in seven minutes? How low must your opinion be of your partner if you assume that they have missed something (for example, a gigantic quarter-page photograph of Sophie Anderton looking vacant) within a newspaper which is barely two hundred words long from cover to cover?

I stopped buying The Guardian some time ago in protest at that newspaper’s inexplicable employment of Nicky Fucking Campbell as a sports columnist, an appointment for which there is not enough post-modern irony in the world.

However, according to The Guardian’s website, Campbell’s pisspoor Thursday “column” (sic) seems not to have appeared for two months now.

Could some kindly Guardian reader and Minitrue contributor please let me know if it’s now truly safe to return to the fold?