The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

(28-01-2017 08:11 PM)simspeaker4 Wrote:  How were those sweetrolls, Caspin? Currently reading some Anne Perry and looking out at the incredibly grey, raw day.

I had to buy the beastie some cat food and I had to get the super-huge size because they didn't have the normal size. She only gets this dry cat food at 10 at night just to tide her over so the bag lasts weeks longer than normal. Still, it is kinda annoying to have to lug that monster home for my little monster.

I've been debating taking up volunteering for some of my evenings. Went on a tour of the WHS last night just in case I want to become a volunteer there. Just saying there is no way in Satan's left buttcheek that I will be part of animal intake. That's where animals are surrendered to the Humane Society. Just the thought that I will eventually see an abused animal makes me want to find its abuser and flay them alive. So yeah, that ain't happening.
So what about you guys? Ever done any volunteering?

Anne Perry, eh? Ever watched "Heavenly Creatures"?

I used to be the secretary for the local branch of Amnesty International. Complete waste of time & was left very disillusioned. Each branch was given a "case" to work on with addresses to write to (usually some Ministry of The Interior or justice department). They worked because they got their supporters to fudge up the postal services of some third world country by sending them more letters than they could cope with so they'd be forced to let said prisoner go. Once the internet came along & snail mail became less of a big deal, I knew they were doomed.

The dumber branches would spend a fortune buying prepaid aerogrammes & letter cards with the Amnesty logo on the outside - they may as well have scrawled "THROW IN THE BIN!" on it as they saved their targets a lot of work having to open & read each one.

Things got fraught when they started wanting us to write on the behalf of people some of us wanted them to keep in jail & lose the key, in particular members of Shining Path in Peru, a Maoist terror group whose activities at times had more in common with Nazism than Marxism. AI were starting to move from being apolitical into another buckled leftie group where people in jail without trial or under sentence of death were deemed worthy or unworthy of AI's time according to their ideology rather than notions of justice.

What caused me to give it up in the end was a bunch of SNP activists infiltrated us en bloc seeing it as a way of raising their local profiles back in the days Labour won everything. They got themselves elected to be in charge of everything (bar being secretary, too much like hard work!) & meetings became them talking amongst one another rather than an actual group. Their ringleader was a primary school teacher who I guess chose that career path as he had not a clue how to work with adults.

Matters came to a head after a "can rattle" fund raiser outside the local shops one Saturday morning & instead of heading back to the local church (who let us use their rooms for our meetings for free) to get it all counted, bagged & banked before they closed, they said to bring the cans back to the next meeting.

Come the next meeting, not everyone turned up who had been on the can rattle (surprise!), & I was the only one that had bothered beforehand to open my tin, get the money bagged according to denominations & totalled. Miss Primary Teacher decreed the money was poured into one big heap on the floor to be counted there & then, a complete waste of a branch meeting's time & allowing anyone that may have opened up their tin & taken a "skin" from it for themselves (or for a certain political party) to go undetected (everyone had finished the day with a full tin).

Weeks later I got pulled up by some LibDem newbie (they were now at it as well) & asked about when the next branch elections were. "You want to be Secretary? Here, it's all yours" I said, passing her my contacts folder & being glad to walk away from it. I bumped into someone I knew from the Flip Flip party weeks later & it turned out her political colleague lasted only a few weeks before chucking it for much the same reasons & said branch had been begging in the local rags for new members (wonder why!). Before that year was out, my old AI branch was "merged" with the local jumped up polytechnic "new Uni" branch (ie. folded).