The railways in Britain are a huge, huge ripoff and have been for quite some time. As a personal example, the Poorhouse reguarly travels from Sheffield to London. At "standard" (i.e. the cheapest - no food, no drink, no entertainment, often enough no seat) class, this can cost £185 for a return trip. This is equivalent to wages for about 33 hours of hard graft at the UK minimum wage, a salary the Government presumably expects it to be reasonable to survive on. Yes, if you book weird train times half a year in advance you can get far better deals, but sort of cash is what you can expect to pay should you not have the staff / luxury / wherewithal to plan trips in advance down to the precise minute of the precise day. And even that goddamned £185 ticket had date restrictions on it!

The Poorhouse was therefore disgusted to hear before Christmas about yet another average train fare rise this year. And yesterday's revelations in the Times are just disgusting:

Rail fares will more than double from tomorrow on some routes under new ticket restrictions being quietly introduced by train companies.

In recent days, an ex-BNP-er managed to leak something of a membership list for that foul party. It seems that it's a few years out of date and includes a few people more accurately described as prospects than fully paid up members, but nonetheless, it's out. The list also included some addresses, phone numbers, and job descriptions it seems. It was not a good thing to release, especially not if you're a loathed neo-facist right wing party.

I mean normally, who would care? Yes, it's a bit annoying that your address is available to all and sundry, but the fact you (mostly) chose to affiliate with a party you believe in, well surely you should be campaigning loud and proud for them, not praying that no-one finds out you're in it. Anyone would think that even its own members realises its sheer wrongness.

Sarah Palin: nasty

As you might have heard, it's not so far off before the election for the President of the great free world and universe etc. (i.e. the United States) is to take place. Candidates are in place, debates are in motion, and the usual kind of tedious - but not as tedious as the UK it must be said - political process is in action.

One particular enlivening star in a world of otherwise lacklustre Republican (ugh) politicos is of course Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential candidate to John McCain's presidency for their party. The more the Poorhouse learns about her, the more bad-film-fictitious the whole event seems. The film "Legally Blonde", as well as being awesome, had a greater credibility to it than the thought of Palin as VP (and perhaps even the president, should McCain who is not far off the average US life expectancy sort of age anyway, plus has his all too often mentioned Vietnam war injuries to contend with) come to a sticky end - and the protagonist was a whole lot more decent too.

Just like pornography, you can't stumble blindly around the internet for more than 2 minutes without coming across some news. Ugh. Yep, with the sheer profusion of internet version of news papers, news aggregator sites, bloggers rehasing, enhancing and reporting new stories, you can’t get away with it.

Somehow though, actual-paper newspapers just won't die. And that's good actually, trees aside, because the Poorhouse does like a non-electronic browse of the comings and goings of the world now and then. Plus, a computer’s an expensive thing to drop down the toilet.

What else the Poorhouse likes is being cheap. So join the fun, and get these free vouchers for a month's worth of half price Guardians and Observers. Yep, it's even one of the nicer types of paper!

The answer to the question posted in part 1:

Of course you didn't get it right! And not only because you didn't understand the word separatist.

Shocked? Yes - those awful Islamist extremists you spend your days fearing committed an amount of terror attacks so goddamned low in 2006 compared to other various terrorist factions that you can't even really see their slice of the pie. Here's the figures by country:

What a silly title eh? As if we don't constantly have images, videos, sights and sounds of "our" terrorist foe drummed into us every time we do anything other than literally watch paint dry. I mean, this little game of spot the terrorist isn't exactly difficult is it? Try your luck!

Tax tax blah blah blah. It's not often that it's worth paying all that much attention to jibbery Government statements on tax and the like, but now and then it's something to get excited about. The Poorhouse has nothing against tax as a concept, being a great fan of at least some variants of the welfare state, but the amount of money squandered away into pointless, even harmful, stuff by Governments is something of a deterrent to the joy of giving. So it's nice to get a brucie-bonus back.

This month, gang, if you (as a UK worker) earn between £6035 and £40835 per year, check for a bonus £60 in your wages! Whoo!

Things are worth different amounts of money. Shocking, the Poorhouse knows. But as a measure of this, consider the measure of "monetary density" as defined over at evilmadscientist.com.

"Normal" density of a substance, as all you GCSE science-educated people will know, is mass divided by volume. Lead is more dense in this case than say feathers. But what about in terms of monetary density: value in currency over mass?

Sitting down is nice to do, isn't it? Not as nice as lying down perhaps, but hey, beggars can't be choosers and for some reason there is a social taboo on lying horizontal in many public spaces.

But some sitting down is nicer than others. Often this is to do with cushion quotient, padded seat back and the like; but much of this is out of your control when out and about. But even in the most horrendous trapped spaces - yes, even aeroplanes -  perhaps the internet can help you sit more comfortably.

From yesterday's rabid tabloid campaign to a different campaign, this time by the hater's favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail. Only the really exceptional thing is that the Poorhouse actually supports this one. Having just 2 minutes ago eaten half of a 2-course meal made for four himself, an addiction for moneysaving expertise and an inherent hatred of the larger type of corporation, this was a born winner.

So here it is: "Shoppers 'cheated' as supermarket brands downsize". Yes, it's true, and not just old men moaning about stuff, food has got smaller recently. In size, that is, not price, what with UK food inflation having hit a record 13.7% last month.