Great new Facebook group called "Noisy neighbours should be used as targets in shit throwing contests"

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5831714898

Here's a Facebook group - memorably called "Noisy neighbours should be used as targets in shit throwing contests' - which deals with the whole hideous idiot neighbours thing. Let's all join and get some pressure building on the powers-that-be!

Catching Up

Well, yet again it's been a while. My excuse is that I've been back in the workplace - for far more hours a week than counts as any kind of work/life balance. I know this is not the time to complain about having a job, but really - my job stinks - despite supposedly being in a glamorous media environment. It's just like The Devil Wears Prada but without any shoes to compensate. (And it would take one hell of a lot of shoes anyway.) So I'm working on reclaiming my life and returning to doing something more creative, which will hopefully allow more time to blog, as I'm still not short on opinions.

In the meantime, I've just heard (on Channel 4 News) the most sensible question I've heard in a long time, from a member of the US Congress Financial Institutions Committee. He asked a group of (allegedly) top US bankers to explain the culture of bonuses, by enquiring as to exactly what parts of their jobs they would not do if they weren't given bonuses? His point was that most of us in the real world do what we're paid to do and perceive that as the whole point of having a job. Once the job description and the salary are agreed - we do one in return for the other. But not bankers, it seems.

Just how did we get to a point where bankers have to be given bonuses for doing what they are employed and already paid to do? And then when they totally f*ck it up, why do we the taxpayers then fund their bonuses which seem to be payable to reward even spectacular failure? Yes, yes, I know we had no choice - but surely to God it can't be beyond the abilities of either our government or the US Senate and Congress to get some restitution for the taxpayer for the added insult of these bonuses having been paid. The argument that bankers need to be offered "competitive" salary and bonus packages to stop them going elsewhere would be laughable if not so serious. Let 'em go!!!!! I can't see anyone queuing up to employ them anyway.... and it would behove the Government to take the mood of the country seriously on this one - especially when considering the relative proximity of the next election.

Back soon....

Ha! The Bitch is Finally Back!

I've worked out how to access my blog again - or rather, I worked out (admittedly somewhat slowly) how to request a password reminder. So the Provocative Cynic is back - and with a vengeance, due to all the vitriol I have built up over the years since I last posted......but, as it's taken me 'til 4am to get this far, the first 'new' post will have to wait for another time.

This blog quoted on Channel 4's Newsroom website

Forgot to say that this had happened - and thanks to Pupski, who spotted it and let me know. At least it means that we're not all blogging into a complete void.

Go to: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/surgery%20for%20obese%20kids/173190 or http://www.channel4.com/blogs/page/newsroom?entry=stomach_stapling_for_kids

OFFICIAL -BMI UNRELIABLE, NEW BVI WILL TELL THE TRUTH

At last, some common sense may be about to prevail in the overheated and often hysterical so-called 'Size Zero Debate' of which I have been such an outspoken critic in this blog.

It turns out that the BMI (on the basis of which Ken Livingstone and others considered banning thin models from London Fashion Week) is inaccurate and may not mean that someone with a supposedly 'underweight' BMI of below 18 is unhealthy. Well - tell me something I don't know!

An article in today's 'Independent on Sunday' (8 April 2007 Home News http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2432469.ece) refers to a new measuring system, the BVI, which is a more accurate test of someone's weight as a guide to health. I'll try not to go on (although I am crowing in triumph) but just give you two of the examples quoted in the article:

1. Maria Sharapova, tennis player. Supposedly underweight with a BMI of 17.6 and therefore both unhealthy and verging on the anorexic by standard criteria - obviously nonsense as tennis is a rather demanding sport, but then when has common sense entered this debate up until now? Under the new, more accurate BVI measuring system, she is perfectly healthy - which should have been obvious from both her appearance and occupation.
2. Jonny Wilkinson, rugby player. With a BMI of 26.7, he was 'overweght and verging on obese' - a bit of a joke if you've ever seen him. The BVI test would again show that he is perfectly healthy and has no need whatsoever to cut down on his eating.

So let's hope this message gets through to the various idiotic fuckwits who have jumped on this bandwagon. May it also put an end to the media barrage of anti-size zero publicity that has been equating size zero with being anorexic.

The new BVI will apparently show, quite clearly, when someone actually is anorexic. Of course, it would be too much to expect the various special interest and lobby groups with their funding and jobs dependent on scaremongering to be gracious about this. The old Eating Disorders Association (now re-named Beat for some reason that entirely escapes me) were ' cautious about whether people could be helped by the results of a [BVI] scan. "People with eating disorders can know they are severely underweight but are less frightened of death than by the idea of having lunch", said Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of BEAT.'

Then, in classic illogical fashion, and despite the EDA's protracted assault on size zero women as being somehow responsible for causing eating disorders, Ringwood actually confirms what I have been arguing all along: 'The mind is so distorted in these cases so that one cannot apply logic'.

Seems that this lack of logic also applies to those organisations and individuals representing those with eating disorders for whom slim women have, up til now, been the easy target to blame in our nationwide victim culture. Please God, the media and the do-gooders will now realise that anorexia is entirely different to slimness and get off size zero's backs.

Richard Alston Dance Company.

No time for anything tonight except to steal someone else's view of the male of the species.......