Tag: tank

7 Reasons That I Hate The Mayor Of Vilnius

Unless you have been on the moon for the past few days (and perhaps even if you have) you will have seen this video of the mayor of Vilnius keeping the cycle lanes clear in his city by crushing illegally parked vehicles with a tank. This video has been everywhere. And it’s annoyed me. A lot. Here are 7 Reasons that I hate the mayor of Vilnius.

1. The Mayor Of Vilnius Is A Liar. The message in the video is that if you park in the cycle lane, the mayor of Vilnius will crush your car with a tank. But he doesn’t have a tank. Look at it. Look at it! It’s got wheels and there’s a distinctive lack of a huge gun at the front to shoot things with, tracks and other tank-y accoutrements that are the universally acknowledged signifiers that the vehicle is a tank. That means that it’s not a tank. What it is, is an armoured personnel carrier. What it is not, is a tank. The mayor of Vilnius is fibbing.

2. The Mayor Of Vilnius Is In The Least Convincing Video Ever. I have seen theatre sets that look less staged than this video. I have seen ham actors less hammy than the acting in this video. In fact, I’ve seen entire pig farms less hammy than the acting this video. The man that gets “his” car crushed is the single worst actor that I have ever seen, and I’ve seen Piers Brosnan. The video wouldn’t be less believable if it was narrated by Jeffrey Archer. No it would. But still, it’s not a convincing video.

3. The Mayor Of Vilnius Hates The Poor. During the video, there are three examples of illegal parking. In the first two, a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari are illegally parked and are not run over by the mayor of Vilnius in an armoured personnel carrier. A third illegally parked car (a knackered old Mercedes worth almost nothing) is run over by the mayor of Vilnius in an armoured personnel carrier. What sort of message does this send? Poor people of Vilnius: The mayor of Vilnius is after your cars. Run (drive?) for your lives, he’s got a grudge against the impoverished and an armoured personnel carrier and he’s not afraid to use it! The message it sends out to the wealthy is somewhat different though. Rich people of Vilnius: Feel free to park wherever you like. Sit back, relax, and eat a diamond or two while you enjoy the spectacle of a man menacing the poor with a “tank”. This is not a nice message to send out.

4. The Mayor Of Vilnius Is The Wrong Man For The Job. People like to have sensible, solid, reliable citizens as their mayors. Qualities that they don’t like in a mayor are publicity-hunger and buffoonery. The evidence for that is clear: The population of the world is 7 billion people and the population of London is 7.7 million people. This means that by far the vast majority of the planet’s population choose to live in the world, which is outside London. If they wanted a buffoon for a mayor, they’d live in London where, incidentally, everything within in the cycle lane is mown down by taxis. The people have spoken and we don’t want buffoons.

5. The Mayor Of Vilnius Is Missing The Point. Why does it even matter if people are parking in the cycle lanes there? Judging by the film, it would appear that Vilnius is the world’s emptiest city. The mayor of Vilnius seems to be some sort of latter day Omega Man cruising the deserted streets in his armoured personnel carrier desperately searching for signs of life. The only person using the cycle lanes in Vilnius is the mayor of Vilnius. Why not use the empty road? No one will ever know.

6. The Mayor Of Vilnius Isn’t Even A Proper Mayor. He’s obviously the mayor by default because he’s the only citizen of Vilnius. Look what happens after he crushes the Mercedes: He has to stop and clean up the glass. He’s the parking enforcement officer, the military, the mayor and the street cleaner all rolled into one. If the mayor of Vilnius became embroiled in a corruption scandal – a quite common occurrence in local government – he’d end up having to arrest himself, but that would be okay, because he’d be able to pay himself a bribe and get the whole thing swept under the carpet. Then he’d be free to win the next mayoral election by a margin of one. Again. Doesn’t the man have any ambition? Why doesn’t he enact a constitutional monarchy and appoint himself King of Vilnius? Emperor? God of Vilnius! If you’re self-appointed, think big!

7. It All Boils Down To Envy. It looks like fun. I want a go.

August 5, 2011
7 Reasons That James Blunt Must Be Stopped

You may agree with Dave Cameron; you may follow Nick Thing; you may be a supporter of Mad Elliband; you may be a devotee of that Scottish man with a name like a fish. It doesn’t matter, because there’s one cause that everyone must unite behind: Stopping James Blunt. And be in no doubt whatsoever, James Blunt must be stopped. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Ubiquity. He’s bloody everywhere. On everything. I can’t turn on my television or my radio at the moment without James Blunt being on it. I can’t visit websites – though I’m aware I’m now partially responsible for this – or open newspapers (yes, newspapers, those paper things from the past that existed before this screen in front of you with these words on. He’s in them too) without seeing or hearing him. James Blunt has – in the last fortnight – achieved total, absolute, all-permeating multi-platform media omnipresence. He’s in a magazine somewhere near me right now. And near you. In fact he’s in all of the magazines. Everywhere. All over the place. Being James Blunt.

2. He’s Becoming Weirder. Remember when Tom Cruise seemed normal? No? Well some of us have long memories and he did once. Before he split up with Penelope Cruz; before he started jumping up and down on Oprah’s sofa; before he began espousing odd birthing techniques, Tom Cruise didn’t seem all that weird. But he does now. And the same thing is happening to James Blunt. He used to look and seem relatively at one with the world, but the more I see him, and the more I see him respond to external stimuli (interviews, conversation etc) by grinning inanely and then grinning inanely some more, the more he reminds me of Tom Cruise. Which is the slippery slope to weirdness.

3. His Hair. Have you seen his hair? I’m about to skirt the accepted boundaries of heterosexuality right here and right now, but I don’t care; because James Blunt’s hair used to be lovely. Absolutely fucking lovely. A dark, lustrous, bounteous, luxuriant barnet; a follicular paragon; a mane to rival the legendary tresses of both Samson and Aniston, but have you seen it recently? When he appeared on Have I Got News For You (and Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Daybreak and The One Show and BBC Breakfast and T4 and Something For The Weekend and London Tonight and The Graham Norton Show) it looked like he’d painted a brillo pad orange and stuck it down to his head. I don’t know how this is happening to his hair or why it’s happening; but what if it’s catching? What if it happens to my hair?! Or yours?

Seriously. What has happened here and is it contagious?

4. The Bath. And then last night it all became even stranger. Because, when I was listening to a politics programme on BBC Radio 5Live in the bath (on a rare occasion that it wasn’t full of champagne and dancing girls), they announced that they were about to interview James Blunt. Oh God, I thought. I’m trapped. I’ve just put on my facial mud (for MEN) and now I’m going to be stuck in the bath for twenty minutes listening to James Blunt…again. And I was. And I couldn’t even put my head under the water to cover my ears or to drown myself because of the mud. So I had to listen. And listen I did. I listened to James Blunt recount the time that he disobeyed orders from his commanders in Kosovo and didn’t attack the Russians, thus averting a massive East-West conflict. That’s right, James Blunt saved us from World War III. And while, at the bottom of my heart, I knew that not having a third world war was probably a good and desirable thing, I couldn’t help thinking that if we’d had a third world war, James Blunt would never have been allowed to leave the army and we’d never have had to listen to his music, and he wouldn’t be bloody everywhere; all over the place; even in my bath.

5. The Song. And sure enough, as I lay there unable to escape from James Blunt: Saviour of the World, they played the song. The same song that I’ve heard everywhere, every time that James Blunt has appeared over the last fortnight: You’re Beautiful. The one James Blunt song that I know, apparently the one James Blunt song that everyone knows. There are others, sure, but can you name them? No, and I can’t either. I, a musical man with an enviable collection of music; a man for whom music has been a passion for his entire life. A man who owns all four Electrelane studio albums, and has most of the Os Mutantes albums on original vinyl. I can’t name more than one James Blunt song and neither can anyone else except his fans, and even they can’t do it with any certainty. And having heard it sodding everywhere for the past fortnight (even the Sesame Street version) it came as a blessed relief later on, to turn the television, the computer and the radio off knowing that I would escape from it. And then my wife started humming the bloody thing (having presumably absorbed it through some sort of osmosis) and, while I couldn’t help but agree with her sentiments, it was still the same damned song…again. But off key.

6. Then There’s His Name. James Blunt’s name is James Blunt. That’s right: James Blunt. And you might think to a humourist, that it would offer all manner of potential, but it doesn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Because it rhymes with the one word in the English language that you can never, ever use without losing the sympathy of your reader. If he were called James Bluck, James Block, James Blank, James Blick, James Blit, James Bliss, James Blits, or James Brance I might conceivably be able to make fun of him in rhyme. But I can’t. Because his name is Blunt. And do know what’s really annoying about it? It isn’t even his real name. He changed it. His original name is Blount: Pronounced Blunt.

7. And This Is The Worst Part. He seems like a nice guy. A man who, despite being everywhere with his one song irritating the hell out of you, me and all those other people standing about and clogging the pavements, actually seems to have substance. A man who has a mind of his own and is no mere vacuous, avaricious, chancer like many contemporary popular musicians. A man who has served his country in combat and has come out of the experience intact and has forged a successful post-army life for himself; sadly in contrast to many ex-servicemen who often don’t get the support that they deserve and that we owe them. A man who goes back and performs concerts for the troops and is a vociferous advocate of, and fundraiser for, Médecins Sans Frontières. And that makes criticism of him hard. And it probably makes me look like a bit of a count. But please, for the love of god, James. Stop. Enough. We all know we’re beautiful and we need a break now.

November 15, 2010
7 Reasons To Replace Your Car With A Tank

1. Parking. Parking a tank is easy. You can park it wherever you like. You’re not going to damage it by clipping other vehicles – unless replacing your car with a tank catches on – and you’re not going to get a ticket for parking it illegally. This is because (unlike cars) tanks don’t have windscreen wipers, which is where traffic wardens put parking tickets. They can’t clamp you either, and your local traffic wardens probably won’t have a tank trap – if you live outside central London, that is.

2. Camouflage. Many tanks come with camouflage paintwork which – if, unlike me, you can spell the word “camouflage” correctly on your tank order form – is great. This means that you don’t have to look at the unsightly tank parked outside your house. You can also have many hours of fun by parking it in your driveway and watching the postman walk into it.

The unsuspecting postman, a split-second before the big surprise.

3. McDonalds. McDonalds is a popular fast-food outlet. There are thousands and thousands of them. You can only drive your car through a few of them though. But when you have a tank, every branch of McDonalds is potentially a drive-through branch. Feel free to do that, even if you’re not hungry.

4. Traffic. You may be surprised to learn that I’m not an expert on military hardware. One thing I do know though, is that all tanks come with a long pointy-tool at the front. It’s a fantastic feature that cuts down on road-congestion superbly. You just point it at things – pedestrians, aircraft, cyclists, other vehicles – and they move out of the way. Quickly! You may even end up with the whole road to yourself.

5. The school run. You know the game they play outside the school gates – the one where parents compete to see who can turn up in the largest, least appropriate vehicle for manoeuvring in an environment that contains small children? In a tank, you’re the winner. Unless, that is, another parent turns up with larger, more incongruous vehicle like an aircraft carrier or a Hummer.

6. Continental motoring holidays. Driving in Europe can be a stressful business, but not in a tank. In a tank you don’t have to fear Italian traffic, you don’t have to drive at a million miles-per-hour on the Autobahn and you don’t have to drive on the wrong side of the road – or even on the road at all. When driving through France you’ll find that entire towns and villages will come out to greet you offering kisses, bearing cheese and wine, throwing petals and waving drapeaux blanc. This is their instinctive reaction to the arrival of a tank, do not be alarmed.

7. Fuel. Tanks are very un-economical and their fuel-consumption can often be measured in gallons-per-mile, but don’t worry. When you replace your car with a tank you may find that you’ll spend less money on fuel. After all, Shell Petrol Station is not a request and they’ll probably let you fill up for nothing. They may even throw in a pasty and some Air Miles.

March 29, 2010