"I won't play my music out loud"

I'm sure those of you that travel on London public transport have seen a poster similar to the one on the left, asking you what you will do to make London's public transport a nicer place to be. I'm also sure you will have had to put up with someone breaking this particular one.

Every type of person, from any and all walks of life are guilty of this, but generally, it's either little chavs at the back of the bus listening to some generic rap on the tinny speaker of their stolen phone in an attempt to be cool. Or some pretentious suited city type on the tube, whose headphone volume is high enough for everybody on the carriage to hear what sort of musical mood they are in.

He's not Harmless, He's a Twat...

You're not funny, you're not harmless,
you're not a 'character', you're a twat

Have you ever heard someone described as harmless? Ever been venting your anger at someone over something someone else did or said to you, only to have your view dismissed in the two words, "he's harmless"?
I've noticed that there are a small percentage of the population, that while complete and utter toss pots, get away with things because people see them as harmless. I think it has alot to do with pity. Picture the people in your mind that you have heard described as harmless. Got them? Right, do you think they are described as harmless because they have some reason for people to pity them? I know the 4 or 5 in my head do. Be it a drink problem developed because of some family bereavement, or the fact that they are a bit simple but regularly put people down with scathing and biting comments, or people that intentionally go behind your back on something but get away with it because they are "so nice usually".

Let me describe the people to you that inspired me to write this article, and afterwards you can decide wether these people are harmless or just twats. They drink in the same local pub as me, two mates, ones Irish, ones English, lets call them Paddy and George...

Wills, Kate & The British Media

A statement has been released confirming impending marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton and we might get a day off work for it. Good. That's all I needed to know.

However, the British media has gone absolutely mental over this. Every news channel last night dedicated 95% of its program to discussing the story, it's all over the front page of every news paper, and there are already tv programs about the Wills & Kate story being advertised on the TV. Does anyone really care that much?!

Pointless Motorway Matrix Signs

Why is it the signs you see above the motorways never have anything useful on them? Always some nagging health and safety nanny state inspired message. I'd rather be informed about the huge delaying queue I'm about to join rather than be advised to "check my fuel level".

The amount of times I've been told there's a queue ahead then sailed straight through empty road, or not informed about a queue and then immediately found one. What is the point in spending what is obviously millions of pounds on a network of motorway signs that just display pointless or misleading information?!

Saw this last month..

There are many companies that monitor traffic jams for the purpose of their route finders including AA, RAC, and even Google. Perhaps one of those should work out a way of getting these signs to work properly, because the highways agency is failing miserably.

Some of my favourites are pictured below...

@Lord_Sugar disregards 2 minute Twitter silence...

#silence and #rememberenceday were trending on twitter, instructing everyone not to tweet between 11:00 to 11:02 to observe the 2 minutes silence.

It was brilliantly observed by 99% of twitterers, except for Alan Sugar, who used the 2 minutes silence to promote a competition for his book, guaranteeing everyone signed into twitter would see his message.

@Lord_Sugar .... you self important little man, have some respect

Bar Etiquette

These are all customer related, I'm not going to start having a go at hard working bar staff in busy establishments. It's not their fault it's busy and there's not enough staff. They're going as fast as they can (most of the time).

This is potentially such a large topic, as bars, pubs and clubs are obvious flashpoints of cretinous behaviour, but I'm going to focus on the 3 main ones that annoy me when attempting to buy a drink from a busy bar.

People that don't say thank you...

720,143 people are members of a group on facebook called "Saying you're welcome to people who don't say thank you"... so this is something that obviously winds alot of people up...

For me, it's specifically people that don't say thank you when you...
a) hold a door open for them
b) wait for them to pass through a narrow passage before you do
c) when you're driving and pull over to the side of the road to allow oncoming traffic to pass.