Medicine Sans Frontiers

...is an international humanitarian aid & relief agency, committed to providing medical aid wherever needed, irrespective of creed, religion, colour or nationality.

However this is a rather crowded space. You already have The International Federation of The Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies - and (in a Monty-Pythonesque situation) The International Committee of the Red Cross ("What did they ever do for us??").

There is Oxfam. International Save the Children Fund is out there doing good around the globe. The UNHCR (with their Swiss-based website - clearly a tax dodge) are muscling in on the action as well. UNICEF, The WHO, International Rescue Committee - they all dabble in this "helping people in need" business... And the list goes on, and on and on....

So - if disaster befalls you, a plethora of agencies are out there working to bring you help and relief. Your home has been washed away, all your meagre possessions are lost, but you know the big wide world is caring for you and trying its best to help you.

Finally, the helicopter arrives, and a safari-suited angel of mercy descends to pluck you out of your bottomless well of despair, smiles benignly at you and says "alllo allo!". And you realize then that your luck is still on the wane....

If its The UNHCR, The Red Cross, any of the others - "Hi - I bring Help" actually means "I have the resources of a charity fundraising effort where we have money donated from every single country in the world - the entire global population has contributed to what we are bringing to you today"

But, get rescued by Medicine Sans Frontiers and its not quite the same. "Bonjour - voila - the population of France, 15% of Belgium, 26% of Switzerland - oh, and three other micro-sized islands in the South Pacific France used to own (before we blew them to sh-t in a series of illegal nuclear tests in the 1960's) could manage to scrape together for vous."

And - this bottomless well of generous donations - what will it have bought you?

If its money channeled through Oxfam - every $1 given = enough grain to feed a family for a week. If its the UNHCR, you not only get the grain, you also get a share in some "don't-say-looted" Nazi war treasures held on your behalf by a highly tax-efficient trust fund who's head office features excellent uninterrupted views over Lake Neuchatel and the Matterhorn.

But, if its Medicine Sans Frontiers - every $1 given gets turned into 0.86 Euros, losing 3% exchange rate in the process ("we cannot use that American currency, oh non!"), a further 28 cents goes to subsidize some fat farmer sat supping his latest vintage in the worlds most unproductive - because its still using historic artisonal production methods - vineyard in the Loire Valley, 15 cents gets spent on a damn big monument in central Paris to thank the founder of MSF, and 43 cents makes it to actually buying enough grain to feed a family of one for one day - because "vous wouldn't want nous to be serving any of this cheap non-authentic mass produced bread would you now..?"

So, its not the being saved - its who saves you that counts!

Peter Andre and Jordan

"Hello!", "OK" and all the other various celebrity magazines are notorious for juxtaposing photos of super-famous people with headlines about other stories on their front covers ... and for going to extraordinary lengths to scoop each others photo-exclusives.

The biggest seller recently has been the pictures of Peter Andre and Jordans wedding.

So, why have we not seen - in some terrible typographical fraud - people accidentally buying their copy of "Hello" thinking they are getting the photos of the amazing ceremony between the antipodean hunk and the large chested page 3 favourite magazine, ony to find they get a double page spread of shots of the wedding of Peter Jordan and "Andre".

What would the photos be like of the decidedly OTT (yet slightly macabre, but in a well planned and well organised way) wedding of Peter Jordan the Associate Professor of Management at Griffith University in Western Australia, and "Andre" AKA Andre the Giant, the famous and late lamented Canadian based WWF wrestler, who sadly died in 1993?

Or maybe the nuptials of Andre 3000, star of pop tunesmiths Outkast (Heee-ee-hey YAH!) - voted the worlds sexiest vegetarian (2004) - and Peter Jordan, the Norfolk-based wild mushroom enthusiast and star of the highly popular 90-minute video 'The Collectors' Guide to Wild Mushrooms' (a comprehensive mushroom foray through the seasons, filmed in the UK). Guess what's on the menu at their reception ?

Maybe there is more money to be made in seeing some of these than in selling pics of the real thing ?

It would never sell in England !

Special edition VW Polo as seen in Italy recently.

Doesn't quite translate does it ... ?

Sainsburys Milk Gives You The Runs!

Supermarkets are the acknowledged masters of Customer Profiling. They aggregate huge volumes of data on purchasing patterns of millions of individual customers, and use it to carefully tailor special offers, in-store promotions and even how to organise the layout of the store.

A supermarket data centre can crunch the numbers and find hitherto unknown links between buying patterns for different, often seemingly unrelated products, and use it to maximize revenue and generate valuable new sales.

So, given these things don't just happen by accident, why have Sainsburys chosen - from all their 20,000+ product lines - to put a special offer for super-soft bog roll onto a carton of milk?

Effective advertising is about either:

• offering to meet an existing customer need in a better way - your average Camden tramp buys Tennants Special Brew because it gets you smashed much quicker than normal larger,
• creating a previously unknown customer need - classic example being the ipod. No-one needed one before they were invented, but now Apple's brilliant marketing has cleverly begat the ipod as a "must-have" desirable gadget
• placing your product at front of mind at exactly the time it is needed - you would only buy a kebabs at 2am because that's when you neeeeed one right now - its not for their healthy nutritional value or intrinsic elegance - and luckily that's when they are for sale.

Applying these principles gives us the three following possibilities:

• Sainsburys milk creates unforeseen gastro-intestinal effects that may give you cause to buy hitherto unimaginable quantities of (super soft) toilet roll.
• People who buy milk at Sainsbury's generally don't wipe their ars-s properly, probably because they are too stingey to buy sufficient loo roll, so having a 50p offer may tempt them to enter the (highly profitable for Sainsburys) world of top-drawer anal hygiene.
• People who shop at Sainsburys are in such a hurry in the morning they eat their cornflakes on the bog.

Do they know something we don't ...?

Joggers on the High Street

Walking out to get a paper this morning, I was almost trampled by a veritable herd of joggers pounding and sweating their way down Chiswick High Road.

Now, open any A-Z of London and you will be confronted by a fairly large number of streets. Most of them are quiet, residential roads with little traffic and little pollution - especially on a Sunday morning.

Some of them even go near parks, or other nice open green spaces where it would be nice to run

Run down such a street and you will not risk bumping into shoppers or people having coffee outside innumerable branches of Starbucks.

You will be highly unlikely to run over by cars or lorries.

So why, given the almost infinite number of better possibilities would anyone risk life, limb - and lungs?

Are these people who have so little life they only ever leave their houses to go to the High Road on foot or to Sainsburys by car, so simply haven't spotted all these other streets to run down?

Maybe they are reformed smokers still subconsciously craving a hit of lung-searing pollution?

Maybe they even think they look good whilst jogging - and haven;t realised that they do themselves no favours when inflicting their sweaty red-faced countenance onto the general public ?

So, High Road Joggers - GET A LIFE - AND GET OUT OF MY WAY !!!

Long John Silver

Long John Silver - Pirate, wooden leg, crutch, tricorne hat, eye patch, hook for a hand.... and parrot on his shoulder? Sounds familiar eh?

But having a parrot on your shoulder means.... having parrot poo down your back on a fairly regular basis.

And having a wooden leg, and resting on a crutch, means you would find it pretty damn difficult to reach behind you to wipe it off...do you go for the hook hand - erm no, or the one holding your crutch - erm no again..

And being a pirate your lifestyle is fairly boat-dependant. Your days are all spent bobbing away upon the "Spanish Main". Which in turn is famous for treasure islands, mermaids, sea monsters - but not at all famous for its extensive selection of 24-hour turnaround dry cleaners.

So, this proves Long John Silver must have been a pretty fearsome character. After all, anyone who can earn the nickname "Long John" whilst playing host to a veritable lifetimes worth of parrot poo on their back, instead of being known as "The Dump-Back of Notre Dame", "Bird-Dirt Silver", or "One-Eyed Guanao" must be pretty damn hard indeed.

Beard Guy

Russian Beard Guy

In India...

...the Cow is sacred, and cannot be killed, molested or generally disturbed in any way whatsoever.

Now, everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs, live and let live etc etc ...

... but lets also remember here, the cow is not exactly your obvious choice for religious veneration.

Its not even like the Indians had no choice in what animal to choose. India is teeming with bird and animal life. In the "What shall we make sacred today" stakes, they are almost spoilt for choice.

There are Eagles flying majestically almost everywhere you look...

Both Lions and Tigers are native animals...

They even have Elephants! Wise, long lived, generally damn impressive whichever way you look at it Elephants for Petes sakes!

So why the Cow?

Did someone have a religious vision whilst sucking too hard on a McDonalds milkshake?

Did they see a revelation in the way cow-pats were one day spread across a hillside in the shape of Lord Krishna's divine countenance?

Who knows..... ??

Your Gym - a seething hotbed of fear and resentment?

Sports Science is apparently the 10th most popular choice of University course for British Students, with just over 2% of all students enrolling in theses courses. Essentially this means 1 in 50 people educated to degree level in the UK are qualified to manage a gym or sports centre.

As 20% of all people in the UK have a degree, this then means that one person in every 250 in the UK population is qualified to manage a sports centre.

However, only 7% of the UK population are members of a gym . Or 17 out of every 250.

Gym staff-member ratios are around 200-1, so there are clearly not enough jobs to go round - by a long way.

Assuming that anyone who was dedicated enough to do Sports Science to degree level will certainly be a member of a gym after they graduate, 1 in 17 people using your gym are also going to be qualified to manage it.

Take away the near-50% of people who join, go for the first 2-3 months and then slack off, and suddenly around 1 in 8 people pedalling away on an exercise bike near you are also qualified gym managers - unable to get one of the handfuls of jobs actually working in the gym itself.

All across the country legions of unemployed Sports Science graduates are sat right now pedalling away, giving the evil eye to the handful of staff fortunate enough to actually get jobs in the gym, and plotting ways to kill, kidnap or generally sabotage the genuine instructors and managers, all the while bitterly muttering under their breath "I could do your job far better..."

10 Rules for Doing Business in Moscow - UPDATED

1. You know that smell of petrol just outside the airport terminal? Its not "just" outside the airport terminal...

2. No, you are wrong. Your driver has probably been picked because he drives MORE safely than the average Russian

3. 30% of all coffee in Moscow is OK. 70% tastes like its been made from ground squirrel droppings and tree bark. The decor, cost or location of the establishment is not a guide.

4. There are three standards of eye contact you will experience in Moscow:
a/ Blatant, slightly aggressive yet also blank faced staring = I am a normal Russian
b/ No eye contact whatsoever = I am a waiter or waitress in a restaurant you are sitting in
c/ Eye contact with an open, warm smile = I am a hooker working your hotel bar for punters

5. Other Russian translations:
"Bored, uninterested, slow and unhelpful" = "Waitress".
"Bored, uninterested, slow, unhelpful and rude = "Waiter"

6. There is no word in Russian for restaurant. The closest word actually translates as "Totally OTT themed eating establishment, ideally with the most obscure theme imaginable, extending throughout the menu, decor and costumes of the staff."

6.a. And you can choose from the sushi menu for your starter. Sushi is a part of every theme.

7. There is no Russian word for "personal space". If you are a small women and its a tall man then it really is very unpleasant which is why most Russian women wear very high heels (see point 11)

8. Don't drink Russian beer. It's all poisoned

9. Cream cakes. They look nice but don't be fooled. They are all made from a slightly denser version of the "not really-cream" that gets sprayed from a can.

10. The petrol smell does go, eventually. It then turns into a nasty, nagging taste at the back of your throat that lasts until about 3 days after you get home.

11. Never check in luggage on the way out. Its no less likely to arrive than anywhere else, but if you have to buy clothes in Russia, you may decide that it is better to go straight home and not cut the deal rather than wear Russian shoes...

12. Fags are cheaper in the airport before duty free

13. Most Russians do not wear deodorant or perfume. They are confident that their own body odour acts as a perfectly reasonable substitute. You may want to plan you trip to avoid periods of warmer weather accordingly

14. Yes, I know there were supposed to be 10 rules. But "President Putin decided last week...."