On the subject of the election I have a few things I’ve been thinking about recently, maybe somebody can tell me I’m wrong, but exactly how is it that any of the world’s governments are actual democracies?

I got to thinking about this when I was discussing Iraq last week and I was, for once, on the pro-side of it. I basically just took that side because the guy I was discussing it with was making really stupid points about how we should just up and leave and let them fight themselves, which I don’t agree with. Although he did have some half-decent points – his argument based around the fact that if they want to kill each other why don’t we just let them so they stop killing us? – I felt I had to counter with the fact that one way or another we invaded their country and destroyed their stability, and whatever the motivation for doing so we can’t do that and just leave them to battle it out because whoever ultimately seizes power would be far worse than Saddam Hussein was on his worst day.

Ok, so moving away from Iraq before I get sidetracked, one of the biggest points about that that really irk is me Bush’s speeches about how he went to bring democracy to Iraq, and I ask you can a country that doesn’t have democracy really attempt to share it?

Now I’m not saying just America doesn’t – the fact is none of us do.

Every four years we get to choose who it is that will have power over us for the next four years. The idea of democracy is that we each get representation in government and we elect somebody who will fight for what we as a small community want on a larger stage, but that simply doesn’t happen. Every four years we don’t get to vote for the guy who will best represent us, we get to vote for basically one of two guys who are promising us things we know they ultimately won’t deliver on. And it’s always one of two – or occasionally you can throw in a few smaller groups/individuals who you also know damn well won’t ever get power. So how is that exactly electing somebody who will listen to us?

As soon as this individual takes power do they consult us, the little people, on the decisions they make? Nope. They make their decisions, they control every aspect of our lives and then in four years time they’ll come and beg for us to vote for them again, and ultimately people will because they’re sheep.

Democracy should be asking the people to vote for all the issues that matter. We should be consulted on the way things are done, every major decision – especially invading foreign countries – should only be done with the people behind you and it should be your job to sway the people to your side, not to do something against public opinion and then try to explain it away when you want to get re-elected. That’s not democracy, that’s dictatorship. All we do with our votes every four years is elect a new dictator for the next four.

So to all the people out there who say that their vote doesn’t matter, I actually agree. What’s the point in voting in a system that’s totally corrupt?

All politicians care about is getting re-elected in four years time and they’ll say anything and do anything to make that happen, and in the mean time what do they do? They stuff their own pockets with as much money as they can until it comes time to beg us to let them do it for another four years. And yes, I do fully believe that ALL politicians are like this, you can’t name a single one who will change my mind. They don’t care about fulfilling promises or making things better, they care about being in charge for another four years after this era ends and what they can do to better themselves in that time. That’s why they’re paid so much, that’s why they take so much of our money to spend on their own benefits and that’s why you don’t know any politicians who live with regular people. They’ve stuffed enough money in their own pockets to ensure that they don’t.

So what’s the solution? Well there isn’t one in my mind right now, aside from voting for the people who actually stand for something and not for one of the bigger parties. They always exist after all, just nobody hears about them because they don’t have billions to plough in to propaganda and marketing.

No politician is fit to run any country because by the time they get to the top they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a real person. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be at the bottom of the food chain and to watch your money disappear in to the pockets of those higher in the chain than you are. They’re not fit to lead us because they no longer know what we want. End of story, end of rant.

That is all.

*sigh*

Ok, here’s a rant that everybody will probably relate to no matter where you live in the world, and considering I’m only twenty three years old (twenty four in a month today if you want to donate money to me for my birthday, hint hint) even I find the next statement quite funny, but isn’t everything expensive these days?

Yeah I did mention my age as an excuse to plug my birthday but also to point out that I’m still relatively young and yet I can remember back when things were so much cheaper. And obviously since I’m bitter and twisted I tend to blame all the problems on various things – mostly America – but still it’s in my mind a rant that needs to be stated.

A few months ago I signed up for a business account at HSBC because I had an idea for a business that never really went anywhere mostly due to the fact that it cost too much to advertise, and this is a problem that my mum is currently experiencing in her business. She has a wonderful small Oven cleaning business that was doing relatively well back when she could afford to advertise but with everybody’s mortgage costs and electricity and gas bills going up and the general cost of living going through the roof in the last few months it’s harder and harder for people to spend money on things like getting their oven cleaned, even though in reality it’s something that they really should do and nobody actually wants to bother with. And having been her assistant for a while I know that things like Mr Muscle do serious damage to the ovens compared to getting them professionally cleaned and no matter how hard you work with Mr Muscle it’ll never come out as good as it would getting it cleaned, but people can’t afford it.

As a result of the current economic climate she’s had to drop her prices to get more customers, and this has meant that she’s making less money now for two different reasons – less customers and less money from each customer – which means she can’t afford to advertise as much anymore which in turn means less exposure, which means even less customers… and it’s a really nasty and vicious circle. The HSBC Business Account thing triggered this because they’ve put their Business Account cost up from £3 to £3.15 a month. Not much of an increase but an increase nonetheless. Luckily both her and I get our business accounts free until 2010, which is mostly why I even still have mine since I’d have cancelled it by now considering I pay no money at all in to it, but just an increase of a few pence just adds to the cost of absolutely everything costing more.

I heard on the radio yesterday as well that the banks were increasing the interest rates for mortgages again, making it even more difficult for people to afford to pay their mortgages. Now the people who were barely able to afford them before are all losing their houses because the banks keep raising the prices and pricing them right out of their homes, and then because all these people are losing their homes the banks are losing money on people being declared bankrupt, and their response is to increase the interest rates and making everybody else suffer – isn’t this counterproductive though? Shouldn’t they REDUCE their costs because people can’t afford to meet them so that people can keep paying their mortgages and in turn they lose less money on people’s homes being repossessed?

To me that’s just basic logic, but in the business world there is apparently no room for logic. That’s the same with electricity and gas companies putting their prices up, which people can’t afford to pay. It makes me genuinely sick that companies like this who provide a service that in the modern world you simply can’t live without can charge you pretty much whatever they want to. It’s not like you can boycott them because how can you live without electricity? Cooking everything on a barbeque and gathering around the fire at night to stay warm? Play card games by candlelight because you can’t watch television or turn on the lights? It’s sickening to me, it really is. Meanwhile they’re making BILLIONS off of our misery.

And to make things even worse for my mother, her mobile phone bill attempted to come out yesterday, which she needs for her business. The bill was £39.07; she had £39.02 in her account. The bank refused to pay it and now say she owes them £30. So they’ve charged her £30 for not having £0.05 more, so they’ve effectively charged her SIX THOUSAND times the amount that she needed. Nice, huh?

So I had an idea. I seriously want to start some kind of movement that will go down to the bank on the day that you get paid and remove ABSOLUTELY EVERY PENNY out of the account, leaving you with a balance of £0.00, and take all the money home and phone up all the companies that you would normally pay telling them that you’ll send them something like money orders you can purchase at the post office instead or asking them to send you a bill that you can pay across the counter just so that the banks realise that effectively we don’t NEED them at all, there are other ways of paying bills without them. That way hopefully they’d realise that they can’t get away with the bullshit that they put us through, and that attempting to charge me £63 for being less than £8 overdrawn, or charging my mother £30 for being 5p overdrawn, is just not on.

The problem is that this message won’t be read by enough people. So I had a new plan and it involved running for mayor and then making a proclamation to the entire town that basically we were sick of dealing with this bullshit. I seriously think it’s time that we revolt against those who think that they have power over us controlling every aspect of our lives.

Of course it’ll never happen. People may be desperately unhappy in the current world but nobody seems willing to change it, and nobody will listen to some student who thinks he has all the answers (even though I genuinely DO think I have all the answers, and if I don’t then I know people who can help me think of them). So I may be one sexy, sexy man with my new goatee and all but dammit I am just one man up against the machine, and as much as Hollywood may love to tell you differently one man really can’t make a difference.

So now we’re back to my original statement that started off this whole thing:

*sigh*

On the bright side, Kevin (if you’re reading this), thanks for the help today. I’m overflowing with ideas for my University project now!

Until next time true believers…

That is all.

Why is it that whenever one thing goes right three more things seems to go wrong? I genuinely and completely hate life at the moment and will either a) soon become infamous for going on a murdering spree and basically killing everybody who’s pissed me off recently or b) be in the newspaper for killing myself.

And no, it’s not lost on me how I went from so happy to so depressed in such a short period. Whenever one thing in my life goes well enough to make me happy the universe immediately begins work to balance itself out by kicking the shit out of me, metaphorically, until I’m depressed again.

Yep, things are great. I hate everyone. Including you!

That is all.

I know how concerned you all were with my financial problems and your outpour of support was touching.

Wait, what support?

Still I figured I’d follow up on my previous post just to inform you all that not only did Halifax wipe off the £63 worth of charges, which I am most grateful for – even though I stand by the fact that charging that much for being overdrawn by so small an amount is ludicrous – but today I finally got a letter from Canterbury Christ Church University confirming my place there, so a big thank you to them as well, and got my student account sorted in HSBC, so starting tomorrow I shouldn’t be broke as fuck anymore.

Exciting, no? That means I can afford basic things like food again! AMAZING!!

This is truly an exciting period in my life, and with Uni starting again it seems on September 29th it seems everything is going well. Plus I got my exercise bike back as well so I’ll be doing some exercise regularly as well now, so soon I’ll be so damn sexy that I’ll have a different woman every night. Or something like that anyway.

Yep, fear my awesomeness.

That is all.

They say it makes the world go round, and they might just be right. I managed to accidentally go £7.14 over my overdraft a few days ago because I totally forgot I had a payment that was due to come out, and stupidly enough it’s for something I don’t even use on a regular basis anymore and should probably just cancel. But my banks response to this was to tell me that they’re charging me £35 because I went over my overdraft, and a further £28 for being over my overdraft.

Now personally I see those as the same fucking thing. If I go over it then yes, I’m over it. Why are they charging me twice for this? And more importantly why are they charging me £63 for being over my overdraft by £7.14? How does that seem even REMOTELY fair?

So I’ve been reading up online about bank charges and how there’s a case in the courts at the moment that will hopefully make it completely illegal for them to charge such insane amounts of money, but that there’s fuck all you can do to get your money back until the case is settled (which the banks will just delay continuously and then appeal a thousand times of course) unless you’re in financial difficulty.

My theory is, I’m a student without a job who’s just gone over his overdraft because he can’t afford to pay shit. That makes me in financial difficulty, right? I mean I think that’s a pretty clear case.

So tomorrow I’m marching down to my bank to tell them that no, I won’t be paying £63 in completely insanely overpriced charges and that in the past they’ve charged me £78 for a mistake at the University where the University tried to take my fees twice by accident and I didn’t have two lots of £400 in my account, so my bank paid one lot of £400 and then charged me £78 for bouncing the second one back. And while that was 19 months ago I’ve read today that you can claim back fees up to six years in the past, so I shall be claiming that back as well.

So hopefully I’ll go from having no money at all today to having £78 tomorrow, and if not and they still insist on charging me then I shall just refuse to pay any money in to that account, move all my direct debits over to my student account and just let them keep charging me and charging me and charging me and when they eventually take me to court I shall tell this story to the nice judge and watch him (or her) tell the bank to take a very long walk off a very short cliff.

So yeah, I’m fighting the power. And oddly had they not tried to charge me £63 I was willing to let the £78 old charge go, but now they’ve pushed me I’m pushing back.

On a related note, I’m poor. I don’t think this is news to anybody here, but if anybody wants to be my BFF they can do so by clicking the link below and making a donation to making me less poor.

http://www.peteebdon.com/donate.php

Not going to work? Didn’t think so but I figured it was worth a shot…

That is all.

Ok, so just a short post today about a little wrestling fact I found out today that’s annoyed me considerably.

A few years back a young female Canadian wrestler named Gail Kim got her big break in the WWE and managed to capture the WWE Women’s Championship in a pretty quick time (in her debut match I think) but lost it four weeks later and basically spent the next two years losing constantly and being sporadically involved in rather pointless storylines. Basically she became just another person lost in the mix in the WWE like so many are, and then bam, they fired her in 2004 for no reason apparently giving the reason they “wanted to take the Women’s division in a new direction”. What other direction for a women’s wrestling division is there but women’s wrestling? Whatever it was apparently it meant firing probably one of the top women wrestlers in the world. Bravo WWE.

So in 2005 she popped up in TNA and initially didn’t do much. She joined Planet Jarrett, as every former WWE employee did around that time when they joined (probably to make Jeff Jarrett feel special that he got to boss around people who used to get paid more than him) and became the manager of both Jeff Jarrett and America’s Most Wanted. Eventually she stopped managing Jarrett and continued on with AMW, getting massive ovations from the fans for some of the high-risk stuff she’d do to help them win matches. Whether heel or face she worked great with them, and when AMW eventually broke up she broke out on her own, and eventually TNA began to build a women’s division around her. She was the centrepiece, the top face and the first ever TNA Knockout’s Champion (in TNA women are “Knockouts”, in WWE they’re “Divas”).

Even when she lost the Knockout’s Title to Awesome Kong she remained the top face, the most pushed woman in the company and even when injured remained in storylines and was involved in every pay per view that I can remember. I don’t ever recall her NOT being at a pay per view event. To me that says she meant a lot to TNA Wrestling and that they were giving her plenty of television time and, I’d imagine, quite a nice contract. More importantly she meant a lot to the TNA fans, who cheered the building down for her.

Earlier this week she left TNA to rejoin WWE.

Now I don’t know what happened with TNA, I’ve read that her contract expired but I can’t believe that TNA wouldn’t try everything they could to keep her and offer her a new contract. Apparently however the money that Vince McMahon could throw at her to be eye-candy and a serial jobber on Raw or Smackdown means more to her than being a successful, innovative and headline performer in a smaller company like TNA. What does that say about her, honestly?

All I can say to the woman who helped establish the Knockouts division in TNA (which is fifty times more interesting than anything WWE do since most of WWE’s matches, even now they have half-decent wrestlers, are still hair-pulling and shitty, botched moves done by girls without two brain cells to rub together who are hired just because they look good – and I’ll contradict myself in the future when I talk about Mickie James, Katie Lea or Beth Phoenix, all of whom can actually work, but still the many talentless outweigh the few talented) is so long, good riddance and don’t come back when you’re fired in six months, ala former TNA wrestler who joined WWE Chris Harris. His career in the WWE went so well, he made about 10 television appearances and was then kicked to the curb. And yet Gail Kim, who used to manage him in AMW, still wants to work for them.

*sighs*

TNA will most definitely go on without her and in all honesty they’ll probably give more opportunities to those who were held back so that she could have as much of the spotlight as she did, which will only help TNA grow. So yeah, her leaving is probably a good thing but the fact that she’s going back to Vince McMahon because of the money just sickens me. Thank god for AJ Styles, one of the few men who have told Vince where to go, and Christian Cage, who actually left WWE to join TNA rather than sign a new contract. Long live the few wrestlers who care more about the fans and their careers than the money!

That is all.

Ok, I have come to the conclusion today that people are dumb.

I come to this conclusion after the evidence has just mounted up beyond belief. Earlier today I was chatting with a guy on AIM who showed me a video on YouTube where a McDonalds manager was tricked in to stripping down one of her employees and leaving the room while the girl was sexually abused because she thought she was talking to a police officer on the phone who was telling her to do it. I’m sorry but what the fuck kind of police officer would tell a manager to strip-search an employee and make her do naked jumping jacks to prove she’s not stealing? That woman should just be killed for being too dumb to live.

Adding to that was then a picture posted on a forum of a birthday cake for a four year old that had GTA-based logos and characters on it, and a discussion broke out about little kids playing GTA online and swearing up a storm. Simply put that just shouldn’t be allowed. Ok so I know that I played video games that were rated above my age when I was a kid and I saw the film Die Hard when I was about ten and I haven’t turned in to a serial killer, but the way the world works nowadays rather than raising your kids the right way to know things are bad parents are too weak and too stupid to teach their children morals, and too cowardly to admit they fucked up when their kid goes on a killing spree so the solution is apparently to blame video games.

So if the video games are apparently meant to be making kids kill people, why are four year olds celebrating GTA? And most importantly if Microsoft and Sony know their online services are being used by kids to play games they’re not meant to be playing why aren’t they suspending accounts and levelling parents with massive fines to stop their kids from playing games like that online, if those same parents are then going to blame Microsoft and Sony for the violence that they’re too dumb to stop?

Of course I know the reason they don’t – they want the money. That’s what makes the world turn, but it doesn’t stop it being stupid.

So I have the solution to both these problems: selective breeding. Simply put you’re not ALLOWED to have children unless it’s approved by a doctor from a medical standpoint and a psychiatrist from a mental standpoint, not to mention approved by somebody somewhere to say that yes you’re capable of caring for the child financially. This would then stop the parents who have seven kids so that the government gives them a nice wad of money and a council house and most important of all it would stop the complete idiots from breeding and dragging down the human species. We got to where we are by being the dominant species on the planet but with the level of idiocy in the world to go any further the only damn solution is to kill off half the population of the planet solely for being too worthless and stupid to be allowed to live.

And yes, this is a very hate filled rant but I’m in a bad mood. I just struggle to believe how dumb some people are…

That is all.

Yes, the rumours are true, I do in fact have a brand new blog. I know what you’re thinking, “but Pete, what was wrong with the old blog?” Well the answer to that, loyal reader, is that my old blog is no more. It was located on the server where I used to host this website, which was hosted by the most annoying and unreliable of companies, and so being that I’m not the sort of person who grins when none of his websites are available and given that I shall soon be creating a website for my mother’s business, which obviously will need to, you know, NOT go down every ten minutes I definitely need something more reliable.

So welcome one and all to the Pete Ebdon [Dot] Com blog, version two. And this one I might even update more than once a month. But only if you’re lucky and you ask me REALLY nicely! And I mean REALLY nicely, I’m talking puppy dog eyes when you speak and that quiver in your lip that just screams love.

Of course I’ll also settle for you asking AT ALL, that would be fun. Because aside from two loyal readers, who shall remain nameless so it seems like I have more than just two friends, most didn’t even so much as comment on the previous blog. Aside from that time when one of my lecturers took something I said wrong and thought that I’d insulted him. That was funny. Lucky for me it happened AFTER that part of the course was over or that could have been really awkward.

So yes ladies and gentlemen (mostly gentlemen since most ladies don’t like me much), the Pete Ebdon [Dot] Com blog is back. Rejoice!

That is all.