Work is dangerous

Common warfare.

I was watching the telebox tonight and it appears that in Burundi are having a bit of a spat about who their president should be. There are so many of these types of conflicts going on and you can see why. Cheap weapons.

Most of the anti war brigade always castigate the western nations for arms sales but maybe they should be looking elsewhere. What is the most common conflict weapon of choice? The AK47

The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known in the Soviet documentation as Avtomat Kalashnikova (Russian: Автомат Калашникова). It is also known as Kalashnikov, AK, or in Russian slang, Kalash.

Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year of World War II (1945). After the war in 1946, the AK-47 was presented for official military trials. In 1948, the fixed-stock version was introduced into active service with selected units of the Soviet Army. An early development of the design was the AKS (S—Skladnoy or "folding"), which was equipped with an underfolding metal shoulder stock. In 1949, the AK-47 was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces^[8] and used by the majority of the member states of the Warsaw Pact.

Even after six decades the model and its variants remain the most popular and widely used assault rifles in the world because of their substantial reliability under harsh conditions, low production costs compared to contemporary Western weapons, availability in virtually every geographic region and ease of use. The AK-47 has been manufactured in many countries and has seen service with armed forces as well as irregular forces worldwide, and was the basis for developing many other types of individual and crew-served firearms. As of 2004, out of the estimated 500 million firearms worldwide, approximately 100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s.^[3]

Over 20 years ago my ship was seconded to the UN to assist in peacekeeping in Angola As you can imagine after 20 years of civil war the country was awash with weaponry. During our time in Angola we were mainly stationed in the southern port of Lobito. The caring and sharing UN lent the ship a minibus for use during our stay. This was used for all manner of trips including trips to a safe bar (Can of beer $2*) on a spit of land outside the town. The trouble was you had to go through some dodgy areas to get there which meant having a welsh guardsman from our protection company, having to ride shot gun. After a couple of weeks I was advised that I could obtain an asset for the minibus's protection from the local police station.

Arriving at the police station I was astounded to be offered a selection of killing means at knockdown prices. Anti tank mine $8, Anti personnel mine $5, and last but not least an AK47 with a thirty round magazine for $1. (I turned down the 4 barrelled ant-air craft artillery as impracticable for a minibus).

I took the AK 47. A cheap, cheerful, and very effective weapon.

And we all lived happily ever after.

* Bloody expensive when you consider that a medium civil servant only earnt the equivalent of $8 dollars per month.

Banned

Yesterday I was at my local Tesco's store buying a large bag of My Dog dog food for my loyal pet and was in the checkout queue when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What did she think I had an elephant? So, since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Dog Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in hospital last time, but I'd lost 10 kilograms before I woke up in intensive care with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with My Dog nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in queue was now enthralled with my story.)

Horrified, she asked me if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off the kerb to sniff an Irish Setter's arse and a car hit me.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard. I'm now banned from Tesco's

Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of daft things to say.

Taxes under labour

This is what you can expect:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100...
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that's what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).

The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).

The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).

The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).

The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible

The reaction of Prince George after the birth of his sister today

Metric v imperial

Tea anyone?

Then again this is the bag I'm referring to.

Easyjet. The no frills airline.

Bollocks.

They're certainly not low cost now. They appear to be upfront when you go to book online. Until you go through the process.

Apart from the return cost which is £200, they also charge you for 20kg of baggage at £41 per person, and £6 for a cheap seat.

And here is the kicker. Do not try and change passenger details after you have booked. Even if you just try and change the name details of one of your party (Made a mistake in the spelling maybe?) they will charge you £35 for both the outbound and return journeys. Another £70 pounds for no appreciable extra work by these scavengers. Where it gets worse is if you have to, as I did, substitute a new passenger into one of the seats. They charged another £144 because the seat price now is that much higher and they expect me to pay the difference (Incidentally in the small print they state that they won't refund you if the price is lower).

I think a letter to trading standards is in order.

And if you read this, easycrap, don't hesitate to use the comment form.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Vote Green and get this.

Green Party Deputy Leader - Shahrar Ali

Dr Shahrar Ali was elected deputy leader of the Green Party in September 2014, becoming in the process the first BME deputy of a UK parliamentary party. He entered green politics after working as a researcher in the European Parliament on the risk of GM foods. Shahrar has a PhD in philosophy, in which he tackled the morality of lying and deception, with special attention to public life. He is editor of Why Vote Green 2015 and is standing for Brent Central at the next general election. - See more at: https://www.greenparty.org.uk

The religion of peace anyone?