www.mirror.co.uk/advice/money/2008/10/13/aliens-to-save-our-economy-115875-20799094/
It would be so awesome
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:15, archived)
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/10/13/15th-time-lucky-as-man-is-finally-crowned-world-porridge-making-champion-86908-20798685/
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:32, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:34, archived)
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7666660.stm
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:23, archived)
ET phone the banker..
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:17, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:17, archived)
*puts on make up and fists self*
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:42, archived)
I like the way William Hill think that despite the arrival of aliens, business will be carrying on as normal
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:18, archived)
"I say good chap, there appears to be some sort of alien space craft!"
"Blimey Charles, better put another pot of tea on."
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:20, archived)
An Afghan family gets 160K a year benefits but they grumbled they couldn't afford Sky TV.[1]
[1] www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/article43731.ece
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:37, archived)
News of the World; Journalism at its best.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:46, archived)
particularly when they make no effort to even suggest the true facts, such as:
Amount the News of the Screws claim she is getting a week - £13,901
Amount she ACTUALLY gets a week to support seven kids - £333.
slight discrepancy, no?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:51, archived)
and about 15k a year to support seven kids, with no other income?
The huge amount is simply to cover the rent on a property that needed to be given to them, for some reason in that posh area.
Bit daft innit.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:55, archived)
Isn;t that what I just said? or at least meant, anyway. the housing benefit is fundamentally irrelevant. She doesn't see that money, and it's not her fault councils are hideously mismanaged and just blindly pay a stupid amount of rent.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:57, archived)
like nice furniture that a furnished rented house of that kind is bound to have, as if that helps her survive somehow. "We have no money for food... oh well, at least we have these SILK CUSHIONS".
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:09, archived)
You should hear the people I work with. They're fuckwits, and frankly this sort of article explains it. They only read this sort of dribble and seem unwilling to actually use their brain.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:14, archived)
but surrond it with irrelevant heresay and speculation and OMG outrage.
I mean, the article does actually admit they only get £330 a week (as long as you can do basic maths anyway, which probably rules out most readers) and after going ON and ON about the expensive telly and the furniture, then actually admits it was all there when they moved in. i mean, seriously, why fucking bother? I'm going to go batshit with a chainsaw in their publication offices. And then describe it as a hedgetrimming episode
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:22, archived)
Or messier. depends on how well it goes..
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:26, archived)
I think it should be the new "postal".
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:29, archived)
but it's still shock and outrage that they have it. How dare they even have a telly at all, even a second-hand one!
Mind you, those things use a lot of electricity.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:24, archived)
With CUT FLOWERS!
Holy shit, they should have piles of B&H and Stella cans!
...but how can they afford even THAT!?
rabble rabble rabble red-top newspaper daily mail rabble rabble!
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:15, archived)
The majority of the comments come from people who've never thought to brighten up their house with flowers, or abhor the thought.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:21, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:22, archived)
pizza boxes and empty stella cans, how are we ever to know they are on benefits?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:24, archived)
if they're not wallowing in self pity. Poor people should be miserable, damn it! It's the natural order.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:26, archived)
or make the best of what she's got at the moment.
It doesn't mention that they don't actually spend the money on cheap fags, booze, sitting in the pub all night, a car, holidays, or anything like that.
They may have a huge house, but in cash terms they've got diddly zip, none of it is theirs.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:25, archived)
How dare she complain she can't afford things she can't afford, even though she's been given an implausibly large house she didn't specifically ask for.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:28, archived)
I think that shes takin the piss!!!!!!!!!!!
Send dem bak!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:30, archived)
How dare they have enough sofas to seat a family of 8?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:18, archived)
Rather her than me.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:52, archived)
but we spend £30-£40 a week on food for the two of us, and we don't get cheap stuff. That usually includes wine as well. You should be able to feed a family of eight easily on £150 a week.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:01, archived)
especially since they're from the desert and probably like it a bit warmer than most people.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:06, archived)
we probably live on not far off £330 a week. We spend most of it on booze, though.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:21, archived)
I'm trying to think through what I spend, and it's alot less than £330pw!
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:37, archived)
I don't know where it all goes, to be honest. But a night out can easily cost more than a week's food.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:39, archived)
it's utterly bitter in the winter. Worse even than Scotland.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:33, archived)
I was trying to make excuses for them there, but I'm all out now. I don't even spend £330 a year on clothes. Transport? If every single one of them needed to use public transport every week day, maybe. But that doesn't seem likely, if none of them have jobs.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:37, archived)
School things, trips, money to go out with friends, that sort of thing. New clothes as they do have that terrible habit of growing.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:41, archived)
10p for a pick and mix, now and then. They will need clothes, of course, but in the region of a hundred or so pounds a week? That seems a bit much. Especially since there are 8 of them, there's real hand-me-down potential there.
School uniforms can be an arse. One of the other receptionists I used to work with had a 14-year old son in school and she had to get all sorts of stuff. My parents were lucky my school only asked for generic stuff, plus the sew on badge and tie (which would last you the whole five years), but this poor woman had to shell out for specially embroidered school polo shirts and stuff, it's ridiculous really.
Mind you he also used to insist on £100 Nike trainers.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:47, archived)
I remember mine were quite pricey, you had to get them from a special shop.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:51, archived)
Everything costs 330 pounds per week there.
How much would food for eight people cost for a week? Ten years ago I worked on 40/wk for myself, with room for economy of scale and no luxuries you're still over 200 pounds, assuming you're not eating spaghetti hoops on toast every day. Plus shoes, clothes, school uniforms, electric and gas for a big house, transport... like I say, rather her than me.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:42, archived)
but like I say we spend up to about £40 a week on food, and it's not from LiDL. If that's enough for two of us, and would probably serve three or more people with lesser appetites, well for eight adults that should be £160 a week.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:52, archived)
that's not counting wine and what the Daily Mail etc might call Luxuries.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 13:03, archived)
800g of mince - £5
£3 worth of peppers, onions, garlic and chopped tomatoes.
I reckon that would serve 3 adults and 5 children.
A tenner a day. £70 a week. Although that's only one meal. They could probably get through a couple of big boxes of cornflakes and a hell of a lot of milk in a week, and a loaf of bread wouldn't last much more than a day, so that's 50p a day for supermarket bread, and maybe another couple of quid a day for sandwich turkey. £100 a week ought to do it.
You'd need some fucking big pans, mind you.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 13:12, archived)
Jawad, wearing a Tommy Hilfiger designer shirt and acting as interpreter for his mother, moaned that the property was much smaller than the massive house they used to have in Afghanistan.
He said: "Our house there was huge compared to this one. We laugh at this house and would give this space to chickens to walk around in a cage."
They actually just made that up, didn't they?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:58, archived)
"... is 20, and has never had a job"
why the fuck should he have had a job by the time he's 20? I'd bet more than a third of the population hadn't had a job by 20. they're called students.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:00, archived)
and I don't imagine the job market in Afghanistan was... I was going to say booming
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:02, archived)
have been builders since they were 14 though.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:02, archived)
then shares in Krispy Kreme increasing ten-fold.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:15, archived)
WoWoWoWoWowwww
Two luminous, disk-like eyes appeared above the rim. A huge rounded bulk, larger than a bear, rose up slowly, glistening like wet leather.
"You can't park that there mate".
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:47, archived)
unless the ship is directly over London town then everyone will be outside gawping at it and taking video of it on their mobile phone, just, you know, in case the news people don't get high quality footage of it. Then after about an hour they'll get bored and go back to their desks.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:22, archived)
might not save us, but it would be a slap in the face for certain greedy bastards, so I for one welcome our new alien overlords.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:19, archived)
desperately trying to make them fit in with their established world views.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:24, archived)
They'd have a hard time doing that.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:26, archived)
They don't seem to have any difficulty denying that their beliefs are at odds with reality- the problem comes from getting them to admit it.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:49, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:27, archived)
Who's with me?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:19, archived)
I'm going to have a look to see if there are any lost antiques or forgotten fortunes up there
/stoney broke blog
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:20, archived)
It's the law.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:22, archived)
Would we move to their planet in search of jobs? Would they try to live here? What new technologies could they bring to us, and would it put our companies out of business?
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:24, archived)
If they made it to earth, they're clearly more advanced. We'd be considered the less economically developed planet, and would probably start receiving benefits packages from them.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:27, archived)
where they get all the jobs at the top of the civil service and as officers in the army, while we have to serve them tea.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:30, archived)
So I assume they'll choose to stay in Blighty
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:31, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:30, archived)
they might have mastered intergalactic space travel, but they might still have an abundance of hair technicians and media studies graduates needing to find work
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:32, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:34, archived)
Plenty of offices out there need someone to make the tea.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:43, archived)
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:36, archived)
they could be aboard an autonomous generation ship and been in space for so long their technology has long been forgotten, yes I've given it too much thought :(
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:34, archived)
where some sort of transport ship carrying alien slaves crashes in California or somewhere and they all end up being given citizenship. They have two hearts and are killed by salt water.
Always with the two hearts.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:38, archived)
that had been on a vast ship for so long the no longer knew they were on a ship, I LIKE THIS.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:55, archived)
Maybe we could steal THEIR woman!
YEAH! YEAH!
*Puts gel in hair*
*realises his gelled hair is a 15 inch side parting...*
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:28, archived)
OMG THESE PUT A DOLPHIN'S BOX TO SHAME
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:31, archived)
which would make all of the output of the likes of Boeing and British Aerospace look a little bit primitive.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:28, archived)
along with a load of other companies.
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:29, archived)
Screw the economy, fuck the aliens, just don't let us lose money on bets!
(, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:28, archived)