May 2013
1 post
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Council elections tomorrow. All very exciting. I reproduce, for posterity, the statement from our Labour Candidate in the Harrogate Advertiser last week -
“Pope Francis demands that we must look after ‘the poorest, the weakest and the least important’. Archbishop Welby states that ‘when times are hard, that duty (to the vulnerable and those in need) should be felt more than ever, not disappear...
March 2013
3 posts
I’ve been feeling blue for a while now. I went to my doctor and he said I was a surrealist.
When I was seven, my parents gave me a Mr Potato Head and threw all my other toys in the bin. They said it would be character building.
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Why did George Osborne cross the road? Because his refusal to believe in Keynesian economics meant that his local Council did not have sufficient funds to repair the pavement
February 2013
2 posts
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There is a video doing the rounds on Facebook of a hippopotamus doing a noisy poo. And it is amusing.
I watched this video and was about to click ‘like’ but then I realised the terrible social implications this would have. Obviously I’m not ashamed of enjoying watching a hippopotamus poo, its not like I’m admitting to having sex with Phillip Schofield or eating a Fray Bentos pie. The...
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November 2012
1 post
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"...the systemic problems of 21st-century...
The government is proposing to cap child benefit at a maximum of two children if you are unemployed. This will apparently save the country two hundred million a year that can then be spent on more important things like management consultants and killing badgers. Presumably, the only reason the government hasn’t gone even further and proposed to fit unemployed women with actual caps is because the...
October 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Who'd have thought a bunch of Tory MPs wouldn't...
Andrew Mitchell has finally resigned as chief whip of the Conservative Party. As the chief whip’s main job is trying to stop MPs saying what they actually think, the fact that he couldn’t stop himself from saying what he actually thinks meant he was clearly unsuitable for the job.
Being chief whip of the tory party is one of the most difficult jobs you could have. Its similar to being a prefect...
Sir Jimmy Saville
Sir Jimmy Saville walks into a bar. The barman says “Sorry, we don’t serve thirteen year old girls.”
August 2012
4 posts
10 tags
The four tories of the bookpocalypse
Four backbench Conservative MPs have written a book called ‘Britannia Unchained’ that is due to be released next month. The title of the book sounds like a BBC Three documentary about a bondage (something Tory MPs would no doubt feature quite heavily in) but it is actually a detailed right-wing prescription to fix ‘Broken Britain’. Basically, if you like the idea of a ‘Where’s Wally?’...
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¿Puedo hablar con Julian Assange, he abierto una...
Ecuador has granted asylum to the austra-swedish sex-fugitive Julian Assange. Instead of facing a potential prison sentence in Sweden, where he would be confined to a small room with limited access to daylight, he will instead be living in the small London flat that passes for the Ecuadorian embassy. Basically the same experience but worse because the embassy gets ITV. On the plus side, at least...
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Inevitable Olympics Blog
Its the inevitable Olympics blog.
Team GB have been having their best Olympics for over a hundred years. Apparently we have now won so many gold medals that our reserves are actually back to the same level they were before Gordon Brown sold most of it off in 1999.
The country has been so successful that anyone not winning now feels they have to apologise in the interview afterwards. No longer do...
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National Lampoon's Mitt Romney Vacation
Mitt Romney’s brief world tour has not been a success. It may well go down as the most unsuccessful world tour in history, unless Queen reform again and decide to include a lycra-clad Piers Morgan on vocals. Romney managed to anger most of the UK with his comments about our preparedness for the Olympics, and then got his racism on to help raise election funds in Israel. In Poland, his aides were...
July 2012
1 post
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Go Team GB!
So its official, the country is now worse off than when the coalition government first came to power. Go Team GB!
Who would have thought the Oxford-educated heir to the Baronetage of Ireland and the Oxford-educated son of a millionaire investment banker would not be the people to deal with the worse economic crisis since the second world war the great depression the fall of Rome?
We’ve had...
April 2012
1 post
4 tags
March 2012
1 post
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
1 post
Clarkson
I’m still alive.
This amused me.
Http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/the-ultimate-insult-for-clarkson-his-views-been-ruined-by-a-recycling-tip-2329674.html
I enjoy the idea of anyone who has paid a ridiculously large amount of money for a country residence having the reality of modern life intruding on their tranquillity.
The only thing better would have been if the Council...
February 2011
1 post
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The musical education of our (my) children.
I was listening to some music last night whilst bathing my children, and our eldest daughter Isobel started complaining about every single song that came on. Like most parents, I want my children to be able to think for themselves but at the same time, I don’t want them to end up liking whatever the latest heavily marketed pop sensation is when they reach that age. The idea of my daughters...
January 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Profanity - Je regrette tout
Over the last couple of days I have been going through my old tweets and deleting the ones with swear words in. With the uncertainty at work due to the budget cuts, I’ve been thinking about what any potential employer could read on the internet. I’m not actually looking for a new job, and don’t want to leave, but we don’t know what is going to happen with the ridiculous...
2 tags
Long Live Comedy
I did my first gig of the year at Long Live Comedy in Newcastle on Tuesday. When I booked the gig, it was intended to be the grand unveiling of the new set that I was going to spend November and December writing. In the end, I only did one new line.
This was the first time I had revisited a previous venue, so I was pretty apprehensive about doing basically the same set. I had booked slots for...
December 2010
1 post
A short note about the student protests...
So the (predominantly privately-educated) media people have decided that the most important issue to arise from yesterday’s protests against the (predominantly privately educated) government’s assault on social mobility is the fact that the (privately-educated) future head of state was momentarily caught up in it. FFS.
There is no hope of the media ever holding this government to...
October 2010
2 posts
Jim Davidson Jokes (1)
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson with a Digestive?
A racist biscuit.
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson with a Chocolate Digestive?
A self-loathing biscuit.
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson and Adolf Hitler?
A vegetarian Jim Davidson.
Sorry.
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Comedy 4.0
So I did my fourth gig last week up in Newcastle. It was quite a long drive, as usual but I tried to refrain from going over my routine too many times as my throat didn’t feel great. For various reasons involving builders, children (my own, not random ones) and a lack of free time, I felt underprepared for this one. On the plus side, it had prevented me from making the radical changes that...
September 2010
1 post
What I have learnt this week.
William Hague is not a closet homosexual, ironically placing him in a sexual minority within the Tory Party. This whole story came as a shock to me, as I can never tell when someone is gay. I remember one of my old school friends telling us he was gay, and my shock at realising that he was the campest man in the world.
Digital Taylorism is making humanity pretty much redundant.
When I die, I...
August 2010
6 posts
BBC 'News'
Top story on the news - Pakistani cricketers accepted bungs to bowl ‘no balls’ during the match (3 extra runs for England, impact on final result negligible)
Third story on the news - Problems with aid getting through mean that thousands more Pakistanis could die due to the after-effects of the devastating flooding.
I think someone at the BBC has got their priorities wrong.
I can't wait to read today's Mail on Sunday, what...
Posted via email from James Tilburn | Comment »
Advanced parenting.
Posted via email from James Tilburn | Comment »
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I'm special. Just like everyone else.
So I was pleasantly surprised today when O2 sent me some sweets through the post for no apparent reason. Like a child from the 70s getting a lift home with Jonathan King, I was touched. It’s not everyday that a sinister mega-global corporation sends you free stuff.
Clearly, there will be a reason for them sending me free stuff, corporations are of course psychopathic by their very nature (see the...
The Numbertaker from Numberjacks is genuinely...
Posted via email from James Tilburn | Comment »
1 tag
The Second Gig
I’ve had a few days to reflect on the disappointment of my second gig now. I don’t think there was any one big thing that went wrong, just a lot of little things. I had felt really confident walking on stage but as soon as I got up there, it was completely different to my last experience. First of all, there was probably a eighty people in the room, and it was a BIG room. This had not...
July 2010
1 post
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This post is not for the squeamish.
Today I managed to take my dogs for a walk without any poo bags. Anyone who says that I did it deliberately so I could post this pre-written blog is a liar.
About three or four times a year I end up walking my dogs without any poo bags, or at least not enough for the ‘excretory events’ that occur on our walk. One of my dogs suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Defecation) and...
May 2010
2 posts
2 tags
1 tag
As a non-Tory, the new Con-Lib government feels like my sister’s just announced that she’s marrying some guy that molested me in the 1980s. (I have never met Jonathan King or Michael Jackson).
A couple of liberals and a load of Tories discussing how to solve all the country’s problems? That’s not a government, that’s a drunken Christmas evening at my parents’...
April 2010
1 post
1 tag
I made this... →
March 2010
6 posts
1 tag
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Not Eating Chocolate
I haven’t eaten chocolate for three days now. Not because of lent, just because I eat a hell of a lot of it and I think it’s starting to show. It hasn’t been easy, everytime I open my draw at work I see the three Kit-Kats that are still in there, and can hear the little voice in my head goading me to eat them.
‘Go on, it’s fine, they’re Fairtrade...
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Monday 15 March 2010
I am writing this preparing to go to sleep in my two year old daughter’s Peppa Pig covered bed. She is in bed, my bed, with her mother due to a combination of Chicken Pox and a minor burn to her finger. As the burn is probably my fault, this seems like fair pennance.
When I got home today, Karrie and Isobel were making pancakes. Isobel was sat in her usual spot on the worktop so that she...
1 tag
An Evening Without...
Karrie has been out in Leeds tonight, meaning that I’ve had the night to myself. As is usually the case, an afternoon contemplating such an evening in allows me to concoct an endless list of things to do that I usually don’t get chance to. As a thirty-two year old man, this list isn’t very exciting, including such things as filing, shaving, planting my raspberries (yes, really)...
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for...”
– Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850)
January 2010
6 posts
2 tags
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November 2009
2 posts
3 tags
Drinking.
As I sat in the taxi on my way back from the stag night, I vomiting into my hand to prevent it getting on the upholstery and thought having to pay a £30.00 surcharge. As I looked at my vomit-filled hand, I thought maybe it’s time to quit drinking…
So, just one more Stag Night to go. Then two Weddings, the Xmas Night Out with work, our Xmas Party at home, Xmas itself and New Year. Then...
8 tags
Work. Lovelife. Miscellaneous.
This morning, I got up late. Only by ten minutes but as my usual time of getting up is the last possible moment to get to work on time, this meant that I spent the time before work rushing around worrying about being late. Today was Isobel’s first day back at nursery after being off sick, and therefore when we got there, she was quite reluctant for me to go. As I was already running late, my...
