Marvin Richardson

Not content with having to put up with the hypocritical Larry Craig as their Senator for several years (he was the high-ranking government officer who allegedly* propositioned a fellow homosexual in an airport toilet stall, despite publicly promoting an anti-homosexuality agenda), the state of Idaho now has a brand new 'crazy' in their midst.

Marvin Richardson has changed his legal name to "Marvin Pro-Life Richardson" JUST so that he can get on the ballot for Craig's empty seat whilst simultaneously promoting his holier-than-thou viewpoint on abortion issues.

He's such a crazy messed-up guy that he actually wants to advocate murder charges for not just any doctors who perform abortions but also for women who obtain the procedure.

The abortion issue is such a ridiculous religiously-led political hot potato in America. Let me state my own viewpoint here on IGMS... people who are so adamantly pro-life grip my shit. Abortion exists to allow women the right to choose their futures and to live in 'free will'. I have no doubt that further hypocrisy would reign, and that losers like this Marvin Richardson and his ilk would line up at the clinic if their 11,12, 13 or 14 year old daughter came home one day and announced she'd been knocked up by the village idiot.

*I feel as if I have to say "allegedly", but only because Craig has asked his lawyer to vacate his previous guilty plea, and he is now maintaining he was doing nothing wrong. However, the very fact that he was a Senator in "that situation" does suggest some element of wrongdoing, don't you think?

Flu & Illness

Flu grips my shit

That's why I haven't been here much lately.

Normal-ish service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Believe me when I say there have been several days when it was impossible to grip my shit. You could not have even saved any in a colander

Andrea Bailey

Andrea Bailey grips my shit.

This clueless mother, from Ashland, KY, complained to Wal-Mart because she bought a set of 'fun straws' for her three year old daughter, and when she got them home she thought a couple of them looked 'disgusting'



She called the local news channel to tell them that she thought the straws - I kid you not, dear reader - "looked like a penis"

She has a child. Andrea Bailey MUST know what a real penis looks like? If her husband's/boyfriend's/one-night-stand's penis actually looked like this straw, he must have been injured in some kind of a bizarre boating accident, or he earns his living as a circus freak.

Nothing like totally humiliating yourself and your child on television for that brief 15 minutes of fame though. Well done on making Ashlynn and yourself a total laughing stock in the eyes of sane people everywhere else in the world. You really must be so prude proud.

Reckitt Benckiser

Despite apparent proof that it effectively ripped off the British government to the tune of millions of pounds, drug maker Reckitt Benckiser tries to say that it is "a responsible firm which behaved honestly and ethically"

So honestly and ethically it appears to have wilfully abused the regulatory process to turn its stomach drug, Gaviscon, into "a generic"

An executive from Reckitt wrote this in an e-mail: "Should we not drag it out as long as possible... nine million pounds of business is at stake"

Furthermore, it is alleged (no smoke without fire) that Reckitt misled doctors and had behaved unethically in some of its dealings with them. Its response to that accusation?... "this was an unfortunate one-off incident"

Presumably, this one-off incident excuse also applies to the fact that Reckitt delayed the introduction of a generic for Gaviscon in 2000.

In 2003.

In 2006.

Oh, and again in 2006.

Generic copies of the drug could have saved the NHS, and UK taxpayers, over £40 million. A parliamentary select committee is now all set to investigate the fact that there is STILL no generic equivalent when Reckitt has an 88% hold on the market for this kind of medicine.

Reckitt Benckiser says that "patient care and safety has driven all its actions"

So, not good old-fashioned greed and profiteering then? The stuff that shit is gripped by.

In the USA Gaviscon is made and marketed by pharmaceutical behemoth GlaxoSmithKline. Not that I am suggesting for one minute that USA drug companies act in anyway as unethically as Reckitt Bencksier seems to have done. Perish the very thought.

U-Haul

Truck rental firm U-Haul have announced they going to start charging an "environmental fee" - anything from $1-per-day to $5+ for a one-way hire - saying its mandatory introduction will "defray a portion of the costs associated with the disposal and treatment of waste fluids, batteries, tires and many other environmentally hazardous wastes"

Just like the airlines with their totally bogus "fuel surcharges", this fee is a massive crock of gripped shit. The disposal and treatment of hazardous waste items are entirely the company's responsibility, and, as such, the costs associated with them are all part of U-Haul's regular operating procedures, therefore those costs should be swallowed up in the fees they charge consumers. Not tacked on like a third testicle.

BUT, I guess, a "$19.99 rental" is nowhere near as attractive to advertise as a "$24.99 rental", so u-Haul instead use fuzzy math to rip its customers off, additionally adopting the familiar - and apparently well-loved - "American" bait and switch method of doing business.

There's nothing like misappropriating a genuine global concern to try and up your profits is there? Company officials, management, shareholders and workers should all feel embarrassed by the introduction of this fake fee, and I REALLY hope people start abandoning U-Haul in their droves as a result.