Shoppers on Black Friday see a bargain, lose their senses and charge

“This situation must be controlled before it’s too late. They’re multiplying too rapidly!”

This is a quote from George Romero’s 1978 zombie masterpiece Dawn of The Dead. In the iconic film the words are obviously applied to the increasing number of zombies intent on eating brains, but it could be applied to the current occupy movement which is spreading, much like a plague, across the world, as seen through the eyes of the financial and political institutions the movement is, at least in a diluted and unorganised form, trying to change. Now the two worlds of zombie and occupy have collided in Harrisburg where an occupant has been arrested for dressing like a zombie.

For those of you who know, Dawn of The Dead was primarily shot in a shopping mall and so it comes as no surprise that this particular occupy demonstration was taking place in the Capital City Mall on Black Friday, the day the traditional American Christmas shopping season gets under way. Dawn of The Dead is seen by many as a documentation of a consumer society gone mad on its own spending habits, creating a population so obsessed with spending money on material things that when they, for all and purposes, die, the only thing their disintegrating brains can remember is an innate desire to go shopping. In a bid to replicate the message of the film, the occupy protesters descended on Capital Mall dressed as zombies to highlight the folly of spending more money and escalating the debt culture. *

Jenn Hara was a zombie amongst zombies when she was arrested for not complying with mall police. According to a police report she refused to remove the face-paint she was wearing, thus breaking the “no face-paint” laws of the mall; something to do with obscuring a persons face. Jenn Hara claims that she was merely asking for more information on the draconian face-paint rules.

*no economic theories we investigated, researched or in anyway entertained for this article.

Nogent-Sur-Marne has made looking in bins for food a criminal offence

Nogent-Sur-Marne is a French town in the eastern suburbs of Paris and it has introduced a law banning people from looking in bins. In a bid to clear up the town centre, the Mayor of the French suburb, Jacques Jean-Paul Martin, has made it a public offence to delve, rummage, fish, forage or in any other way look in the rubbish bins of the town. The guilty culprits will be handed a 38 euro fine and repeat offenders could find themselves at the local Gendarmerie facing even sterner punishments.

Obviously some people are not happy at what they see as a piece of cowardice from the city Mayor as he tries to oust the increasing number of poor and homeless who frequent the Parisian streets. William Geib, chief of the opposition sees the new law as nothing more than an outright and blatant attack on the poor of Nogent.

“We see that there is a form of escalation from the mayor. The only thing that remains to do would be to ban the poverty stricken of Nogent.”

What beggars believe, to use a badly worded pun, is the reasoning behind the decision of the UMP (the ruling party of President Nicolas Sarkozy) Mayor Jacques Jean-Paul Martin. In a pathetic attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the common man he has blamed gangs of youths who operate in the streets of Nogent ransacking bins and looking for technology that they can then sell on at a later date: iPhone, mp3 players, laptops, coffee machines? The bins of Nogent-Sur-Marne, if the Mayor is to be believed, are a treasure trove of electronic goods; a Dixons, an electronics store, a Christmas stocking where everything is free and just waiting to be found in a bin near you. Speaking to someone the Mayor obviously thinks is a gullible sucker, he said that,

“For several months, some people search the containers and spill on the road in search of objects that could be marketed. These are not people looking for food.”

Really Mayor? The streets of Nogent are awash with gangs of bin looters and opportunistic bin searchers? Obviously this is bullshit. The streets of Nogent-Sur-Marne are no more full of people looking in bins for iPhones than anywhere else. It is a blatant attack on the homeless and poor wrapped in the pathetic, inept ramblings of an out of touch Town Hall. The 38 Euro fine which accompanies the new law is also as inept as the law itself. What people are looking in bins for food who have 38 Euros burning a hole in their pocket? These people have no pockets to have holes burnt in; their trousers are frayed and worn and falling apart at the seams. It is why they are looking in bins for food you arrogant brandisher of power.

This is not the first time that the Mayor and politicians of Nogent-Sur-Marne have tried to oust the poor. Every winter since 2007 the Mayor’ office has banned begging in the streets. Every Winter! Numbers are hard to come by and ever-increasing but it is thought that over 100,000 homeless people “live”in France with hundreds dying every winter on the hard, concrete streets of Paris. When begging is most vital, they ban it. Class act.

No, really? If there are more off-licences in any given area then the number of under age drinkers and hospital admissions as a result is higher than the average, according to a report carried out by the lobby group, Alcohol Concern.

A recent report links off-licences to drinking

The national UK average for off-license density is 63 per 100,000 of the population, dropping to as low as 27 in Malvern Hills – where getting a drink on a Sunday or after 8pm is as easy as swallowing swords – and rising as high as 117 in Salford where there are more off-licences than houses. The studies’ main conclusion is that more off-licences equates to more drinking. So, there are more hospital admissions to under 18s as a result of drinking alcohol in Salford than there are in Malvern Hills. The report didnt say if there are more tennis and country club inscriptions in Malvern Hills than the estates of Salford.

Not the worlds most astute conclusion ever, we are sure you will agree. Take The Blame™ could have come to the same conclusion without spending 17 truckloads of money on research. Its pretty self-explanatory one would have thought. More chip shops in a street, people eat more chips in said street. More tattoo parlours in a town, more tattoos adorning the arms of those who live there. More booze shops equals more binge-drinking kids on the street corners and dark alleyways on a Friday night equals more hospital admissions. Because drunk people do stupid, reckless and dangerous things.

One has only to think of young, under age adolescents. Come the weekend – and increasingly, come day light hours – they want alcohol; they want to binge drink. If you are under age and live in Malvern Hills then alcohol intoxication becomes a problem if the only off-licence for miles around refuses to believe your fake ID and categorically refuses to serve you. In Salford the same problem can be overcome by walking a few hundred yards and trying again. And again. And again, until a landlord is found who doesn’t give a crap how old you are. Let drinking commence. The report, in a roundabout way, examines the mindset of underage drinkers. A stubborn lot whose desire for the amber nectar is matched only by their disdain for soft drinks and history books.

The obvious. It's researched you know.

According to the report, for every 2 off-licences per 100,000 of the population, 1 under 18 was admitted to hospital for alcohol poisoning between 2005 and 2009. A rights of passage has now become a damning statistic in the fight against the bottle. To quote Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern and Friday night killjoy for many a 17-year old,

“It is a sobering thought that the numbers of off-licences in any one area has an impact on under-18s drinking and ending up in hospital. It is a failing of the current system that so many licences are being granted without due consideration to young people’s health</em>.”

The Alcohol Concern commissioned study highlights the dangers of too many off-licences in any one town and calls for local authorties to have more control over the setting up and awarding of licences in a bid to try and curb hospital admissions amongst the young.

“Local licensing committees are currently operating with one arm tied behind their backs. Current licensing legislation does not give licensing committees enough power to restrict the high density of licensed premises“

Take The Blame™ would like to take the blame for the lack of Off-licences in Malvern Hills and highlight a study whose conclusion that In general, as the density of off-licences in an area increases, so do alcohol specific [hospital] admissions as being rather obvious.

“You know what thought did? It ran after a dust-cart, thought it was a milk-float” – anon

Neil Armstrong stood on his parents porch, looked up at the moon one cloudless evening in late autumn, the leaves having long begun their silent descent, and decided he was going to go and walk on it. He went. Martin Luther King tired of racial segregation and instilled in himself the belief that he could set in motion the end of racial injustice. He did. Seventh born of eleven children, Jesse Owens took it upon himself to be the greatest short distance athlete of a generation. He won 4 gold medals in Berlin in 1936, right under the racist noses of the Third Reich and re-wrote the history books. Rosa Parks sat down like no person has ever, and will ever do. Isambard Kingdom Brunel thought that building a steam ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean was well within his means, set about doing it and then built The Clifton Suspension Bridge as an after-thought. Timmy Mallet thought he should go on television and hit children over the head with a pink foam hammer. Sadly for a generation, procrastination was not one of his stronger traits.

Encyclopedia’s have been artfully crafted highlighting the deeds, words, inventions, ideas and actions of people for whom procrastination was a 4-letter word that should forever rot in the deepest darkest regions of Middlesbrough. Sadly for the other 99% of the free-speaking world, it is an ugly, unshakable hobbit, forever loitering over the shoulder, eager to ambush any ideas that spontaneously materialise and replace them with visions of grandeur. Anything, everything, something that should be done instead. We are taking the blame for all of the great ideas and inventions that have wilted and died at the hands of procrastination. We are taking the blame for your procrastination so you can release the shackles and go and do what it is you intended to do before mañana.

Time is ticking people. Tick tick tick. Procrastination cares little for that.

Psychologists on Wikipedia (Schraw, Pinard, Wadkins, and Olafson – to give them an identity) have proposed three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. So who hasn’t experienced that? If you have, if you are, or if you ever do, think about the people mentioned above. Think about them and their equals, for they are many, and take a leaf out of an old Nike advertising slogan. Just do it.

Online solitaire is great, that is not in doubt, but it won’t win you any nobel prizes and it sure won’t help you get that essay finished. Checking your emails for the umpteenth time this minute will not solve your debt crisis or get you laid. Another cup or tea will hydrate you but it won’t rise up out of the cup and write your CV or clean the house or book your holiday or call an old friend or finish that painting you promised yourself to finish. It won’t magically fix your car or explore the world, take you to the theatre, experience something new or learn you a language. Only you can do that and procrastination is the only thing standing in your way. And if you can’t shake it, we take the blame for it. Because nobody else will.

Back in the 7th Century, when the Chinese were harassed by evil spirits, dastardly ghosts and were afflicted by all things spooky and without explanation, they blew the hell out of them with the precursor to what we know today as fireworks. In reality they were probably little more than bamboo firecrackers that made a loud bang, but they did the trick. No more evil spirits and China now sits on the edge of World domination. Coincidence? Probably not.

The Chinese did for fireworks what the French did for cheese. And neither of them belong in coffee machines

Initially the “devil sticks”, as they were probably known by the local busybodies, caused little of a stir outside of the Occult. That is until some Chinese military men put one and two together and started blowing people up. By the 14th century the Chinese had a missile weapons system that would make the feeble arsenals of many-a-crackpot modern day dictator green with envy. Whilst Guy Fawkes’s parents were little more than an embryo, the Chinese were rocking the gunpowder and firework plot for all it was worth. What were they packing? According to the Huolongjing, a Chinese book of war which was written during the Ming dynasty (1368-1649) and roughly translated in English as Firedrake Manual - or the worlds first online bomb making guide – it was a fucking firestorm.

So the Chinese Ming got all of this from a pretty little firework. What about stateside? Fast forward 600 years to modern day Colorado. Durango, Colorado. Enter Sean Michael Odgen, no dragon. He put fireworks into a coffee grinder in a lame attempt to make a bigger firework. The ensuing blast shook the neighbours house and left Mr. Odgen with some serious burns. And this is why The Chinese will de-throne America; because whilst the Chinese took the little firework and created the worlds most advanced, deadly and yet beautiful military machine ever assembled, the Americans put them in a coffee grinder.

Put fireworks in here if you are inept.

Take The Blame™ is recoiling. Recoiling in the same way that the 12-gauge shotgun recoiled when English Yorkshire man Sean Murphy used it to remove a wart on his finger. Ignoring doctors advice to “under no circumstances” remove the wart with a shotgun, Mr. Murphy took the medical world into his own hands and blew the wart, and most of his finger, off.

Lets be happy the wart was only on Sean Murphy's finger, otherwise this story could have had a very unhappy ending

Now you might think that Sean Murphy was acting irrationally; not everybody would take on the same course of medication. But this incident was 5 years in the making. 5 years of mental anguish and distraction. 5 years of doctors and creams and medication and, above all, mind destroying itching and scratching. And of course the strange looks, bizarre comments and sniggering from anyone who saw his finger. “haha, look at that mans finger“, they would say.

Doctors across the land are forgoing scalpels for shotguns

The medical world failed repeatedly for over 5 years. Sean Murphy  succeeded in around 3 seconds. And could now faces 15 years in prison for illegal ownership of a firearm. Jesus, as if shooting your own finger off wasn’t enough.  Under British law it is illegal to have a Beretta 12-gauge shotgun under your bed, and firing it indoors, even if it is in a medical operation, is frowned upon.

We would like to Take The Blame™ for the inability of the medical world to help a man who’s only solution was to blow his finger off with a shotgun.

Like love struck teenagers, Google and China are at it again.

In a very unsurprising piece of news, Google has blamed The Chinese for the hacking of online email accounts belonging to US officials. China, never one to admit to their wrong doings, has remained quiet and is perhaps considering kidnapping in retaliation to the blame.

That the Chinese are involved in underhand Internet espionage is about as surprising as a French politician being involved in a under the table extra marital affair, that is, not surprising in the slightest. What is surprising, or at least marginally more interesting, is that high level US official are using their online Gmail to store and send what, one assumes, is pretty important information. Next they will be posting photos of the Christmas party on their Facebook accounts. It’s inept, careless and downright ridiculous. Do these people not have a special, secure system for transmitting information? or at least someone upstairs to say, “you know what, online email isn’t the best way to send top secret information linked to national security.”

Obviously China are not the most open when it comes to discussing the Internet and Google have been known to partake in their own version of affairs over time, so getting accurate information about what has actually been hacked is as easy as obtaining a tourist Visa for North Korea. And about as welcome. What is known is that the accounts involved were connected to US political and military officials. Arnie and The Big Man perhaps? Arnie.gov@gmail.com anyone?

Google have said that there is no immediate problem with Gmail itself and that the accounts would have had their passwords and user names taken by the guilty hacking party. In reality, hacking is probably an over elaborate word for this affair and all the Chinese really did was guess a few passwords.

“Google detected and has disrupted this campaign to take users’ passwords and monitor their emails. We have notified victims and secured their accounts. In addition, we have notified relevant government authorities.”

Well that’s alright then.

Some people should not be allowed to drive. Pure and simple. Hell, some people are out there right now driving cars who shouldn’t even be allowed out of the house.  How some drivers on the road today managed to pass the driving test in the first place is a mystery to science, up there with black holes, quarks, string theory and The World Wrestling Federation. Just who dropped the ball the day that they took their test? Or most probably, the day they took their 6th test? So much ineptitude is shown on the road that we would need a whole Google server to highlight it. So to save your time and Googles server space, today we will only Take The Blame™ for erratic drivers.

Some people are given driving licenses when clearly they should be given common sense lessons.

They are like Sunday Drivers but worse. At least with a Sunday driver you know what you are going to get. They don’t try and deceive you into believing they actually can drive at a speed which in any way matches reality. If you are in a 60mph zone they will drive at 25mph, if you are in a 40mph zone then their speed will drop to around 6mph. If you are cruising down the motorway then they will hog the middle lane, completely oblivious to everything around them, cruise control locked at a regular 44mph. But they are honest in their ineptitude. They cant drive and they are not ashamed of it. Sunday drivers, for all their maddening ineptitude, do not deviate from their ridiculous course. Erratic drivers do, and that makes them worse.

Erraitic drivers see this junction as a playground to show off just how retarded they are

The Day after the latest End of the World date and we are still standing. Or are we all dead and this is indeed the Rapture?

Well that was a big anti-climax. The World didn’t end on the 21st May 2011 like it was forecast to do. There was no fire and brimstone. There wasn’t 5 continent destroying earthquakes all set up to cascade through the plate tectonics at 6pm local time like an advanced sprinkler system. The Tsunamis didn’t come, the avalanches stayed away and the swarms of locust held fire for another day. The Volcanoes kept their fiery stomachs under wraps and the biblical flooding, although on display in the Mississippi Delta, didn’t get out of hand worldwide. The sun kept shining and didn’t explode in a gargantuan fireball, evaporating everyone and everything in its path. The tornadoes, although destructive all spring, didn’t vortex the world away. The lucky few were not raptured up into space and the unlucky masses were not thrown into the fiery depths of Hell. The world did what it was supposed to and kept on beating. Hurrah for common sense.

In all of the prophecy and doom-mongering and through all of the predictions, everybody forgot about what was going to happen when the World didnt come to an end. Who was going to take the blame when peoples’ foreboding didn’t come true. Take the blame™ would like to take the blame for the end of the World (not happening).

This is the man responsible for the latest doomsday warning; Harold Camping. He is the self-proclaimed leader of the Church of Armageddon, or something like that. He seems to have a bee in his bonnet about something and insists on predicting the end of the world. He did the same thing back in 1994 only on a much smaller scale. They didn’t have the Internet back then so it was much more difficult to get to large amounts of people. Convincing the inept that the world is going to end is, was, and never will be difficult – there are a lot of stupid, gullible people – but getting the message out to enough people was the problem. Not this Judgement Day.

Part of Harold Campings prophecy was a Rapture.

Why May 21st you say? Well Mr Camping is pretty old and likes reading the bible. He has read it many times and must have seen a pattern. Using the power of mathematics and hidden code within the religious text he unlocked the end of the world. According to his calculator May 21st was to be 722,500 days from 1 April AD33, which he believes was the day of the Crucifixion. The figure of 722,500 is important because you get it by multiplying three holy numbers (five, 10 and 17) together twice. Pretty fucking vague. What if you multiply 6 by a carrot and add 3 months. That would be about as much use. Anyway. After coming up with the greatest mathematical feat of all time it was time for a publicity drive.

Fuelled by the coffers of his vast business empire Harold Camping set about publishing the end of the world like a dog on heat. 2000 billboards across America heralded the day. News media across the land picked up on his prophecies. Twitter went ballistic and before you know it there was a global Rapture party. Amongst the maelstrom of media interviews and newspaper articles there was still enough time to do what he loves best; radio broadcasting.

The Family Radio Network is a worldwide business that Mr Camping set up in the 1950s. It now boasts millions of listeners and is worth 120million dollars. It is this net worth, compiled through the generosity of listeners, that enabled Family Radio and Harold Manning to publicise his findings and brainwash unsuspecting followers. And followers he has. In the million. Just exactly what they are doing today, the morning after the night before is anyone’s guess. Probably recalculating and predicting the next end of the world party.

Some say that the devil himself invented Friday 13th. Some don't.

Thank God its Friday? Not today. Thank the Grim Reaper himself. Thank the evil, red-hoofed Beelzebub that basks in the nether regions of Hell, for when Friday the 13th rolls into town, like it has this fine morning, heads will roll and bad shit will happen. Run for your life, take shelter, man up, arm up, stock the larder and cancel the post. The apocalypse is coming and the four horsemen who lead the charge are up to attack speed.

However, if you have to go to the office and cant spend the day cowering under the sheets, hiding from the imminent negativity that is sure to envelop your day, don’t worry, Take the Blame™ is here to absolve your concern. We take the blame for Friday the 13th, quite frankly, because no-one else will.

The doors of Hell flung open at this very moment.

Its like Christmas Day for the Black Arts. This year it arrives just once to spread its superstitious malice, next year it will be three-fold. 2012 is often quoted as the end of the world; with 3 friday 13ths polluting its Gregorian calendar, you can start to see why. More rational people amongst us would have us believe that Friday 13th is a natural coincedence that occurs whenever the first day of the month is a Sunday. They are heretics and not too long ago they would have been burnt at the stake for such foul-mouthed rambling insanity. Friday the 13th happens because Bad Luck happens. Burn the herectics. Burn burn burn. Joan d’arc was barbequed for a lot less than claiming Friday of the 13th was just a Gregorian date.

Friday 13th is a true story.

What, scientifically speaking, happens at middnight on Thursday 12th is not really understood but it has something to do with a devil vortrex which opens up somewhere over Greenland and essentially spirals around the globe in an anti-clockwise direction casting bad luck at anyone foolish enough to believe. In America, where superstition is engrained in the fabric of society, up to 18 million people hold real, documented fear of this day. So much so that they dont venture out of the house if they dont have to (obviously forgetting the terrifying statistics about death and injury in the home. It’s actually where most of the bad shit happens. Friday the 13th or not. More people were injured standing in their kitchen than struck by lightning last year.) and cost the US economy as much as 800 million of their greenbacks. Go figure.

In France, where superstition is frowned upon as a weak and pathetic mental disorder, even there Friday 13th has some kind of influence. The baguette will not be left upside down on the table and should 13 people end up at a dinner party and a 14th guest can’t be found, one unlucky diner will be cast from the party in a bid to even up the positive energy. 13 will not grace the table. Not on this day.

Whats behind door number 13? The Shining. Blood. Ghost children on bikes.

The links between 13 and Friday are everywhere. Hotels do not have a 13th floor. If you ever find yourself in one which does, run, run and run some more. You will not be waking up come morning. The same is true of planes although you can replace floors for seats. There is no 13th seat on a plane. It was removed because it brings bad luck. You can remove a seat and a floor. You can cancel your 13 guest. You can keep an eye on the baguette and you can close your eyes for fear of the black cat. You can avoid the ladder and not break a mirror and you can sing before breakfast if you really want. You canget married in the rain and leave shoes on a table. You can throw salt over your shoulder and wear lucky 4-leafed clovers in a daisy chain around you neck. But you can’t escape the reaper and you can’t change the date. Its Friday 13th 2011 and you have to ask yourself.

Do you feel lucky punk?

Hot Diggity, Hot dam. It’s that time of week again folks. Who would have thought it. As is the norm, the fingers are out and the blame game is in full effect. Most are accusations but amongst all of the slime and sin there is a smattering of self actualisation. Yes, the finger does indeed point both ways and when it does we will be there to leap on it like an injured zebra. We are the lion.

And in at number 5. Denise Grimsley, she’s a politician. Sits on a chair. Chairwoman. House Appropriations Committee. Its American politics. She blames the budget frustrations on the senate it says here.

“Unfortunately, in each subsequent offer we have received, the Senate opened up previously agreed on issues and moved further and further away to the point where the last Senate offer places the House and Senate $425 million apart”

And in at number 4, (and it probably should be at number 5)  more politicians on the younger side of the Atlantic taking out and sharpening the claws and pointing blame at each other. This time we go right to the top. TO THE TOP we tell you. House speaker John Boehner blames the big man Obama for the soaring price of gas (petrol) on American soil. When asked who was to blame, what did he say to ABC News?

“They’re going to blame somebody, all right. And the fact is he has done nothing to help the situation,” oh yeah. He also goes on to the election campaign….

“But if the economy doesn’t get better, I don’t think he’ll win. If people don’t feel better about government-run health care, I don’t think he’ll win. And if gas prices are $5 or $6, he certainly isn’t going to win.”

In at number 3 is a sport story. We all like to do sport. If we’re not fat. And even if we break the scales we can still go swimming or indulge in some arm chair sport fanaticism. In football, Arsene Wenger has shifted the blame onto his, well, shit defence. He didn’t quite put it so eloquently but you get the idea. If you don’t give to shakes of a rats tail about football, then jump to blame number 4.

‘It is frustrating because you produce the effort. The team has had an outstanding attitude and they will not be rewarded because the small things cost you a lot.’

Banging on the cold fridge door of number 2 a glaring bit of obvious. Apparently Easter falls on different dates (oddly enough, the poor easter bunny rabbits of Otago New Zealand dont care when it falls) and apparently the moon is to blame for the date being different. Really? Actually it is quite interesting. Have a gander.

“Easter is determined by the paschal full moon because that is the date of Passover in the Jewish calendar, and the Last Supper (Holy Thursday) occurred on Passover”

And at number 1 and by no means any more or less important than the proceeding 4. We head down under, to the land of possums, kangaroos and boomerangs. Surfers Paradise, a paradise for surfers on the Australian East coast. The traders and restaurant keepers are getting annoyed with Christian evangelists who are preaching on Cavill Avenue and scaring of the paying patrons. They blame them for lost revenue and want action taken.

“They stand right outside the restaurant with a 300-watt amplifier and scream their message out,” he said.
“The group has a right to spread their message but not in front of restaurants at seven at night.”That is a time for families to relax and enjoy good food — not religion.“

Sympathy for the devil but no such compassion for the 10,000 people, who according to the UK’s Identity and Passport Service (IPS) thought it would be a good idea to throw their passport in the bin last year. Why I hear you ask? Why indeed. The ineptitude and careless abandon to passport mishap doesn’t end there obviously. A further 60,000 people saw it fit to lose their passport whilst on holiday.

On the back of research and careful analysis of passport replacement applications, the IPS, in a bid to stop the bleeding, has launched a campaign urging (yes, ‘urging’, not ‘asking’ because ‘asking’ wouldnt get the job done) people not to lose their passports. According to figures released into the wild, the past year has seen 162,500 men lose their passports and 112,00 women. Go ladies, you value the importance of your passport more than men.

Adding fuel to the fire of ineptitude, each passport replacement costs £77.50. Not a massive sum of money to many people but a months average wage in some African countries and a combined waste of £21,273,750 per year on lost passports. You could build a hospital. A school. A health centre. A rehab clinic. Buy an average English footballer. If people would just stop throwing their passports into the sea.

Identity theft. A reason not to lose your passport? Probably. How about the money? Good reason? How about the annoyance of having to organise a replacement? Going to the embassy, contacting your officials? Are all of these things combined enough to make the average human put their passport somewhere safe?

Going on holiday is nice but the impending return travel cannot be achieved without a passport and so, consequently, it is something that, barring the laws of physics, you should keep an eye on. Don’t give it away, don’t throw it in the sea, don’t give it a strange man at the airport when he asks if he can hold your suitcase for a while. Don’t give him your suitcase either, that would be careless. But people are inept and they do such things; it has been highlighted at Take The Blame™ many times before and will continue to be. For this case, we take the blame for the waste of time and money that 10,000 jetisoned passports brings.