“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”

This is the tag line from Jaws 2, the 1978 sequel to the 1975 Steven Spielberg shark film Jaws, a film about a big shark terrorising the fictional town of Amity. In the second film another giant shark finds its way into the peaceful waters of Amity and starts harassing unsuspecting bathers. After chief inspector Brody – the bumbling hero of the franchise –  takes offence to yet another man eating shark infesting his tranquil waters, he sets up a one man crack team (him) and sets about trying to exterminate the beast. In jaws 2 the Brody stakes have been upped and the Brody family, in the shape of his son, are now in danger. Not only that, but the kids on the beach are being targeted by the big rubber fish.

No killer shark and no naked men

In France a similar story is happening only without a shark, without any shark victims and without Chief inspector Brody. Infact the only similarity between the two stories is a beach. But the ineptitude in the story breaking in France far outweighs the rubber shark puppet modelling on view in the Jaws films. Take a look at the photo below.

Is that a naked man in the background?

La Redoute is a French fashion retailer that specialises in mail ordering. It is a huge company with a turnover that could squash you in banknotes. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on how you look at it – no such thing as bad advertising and all that – the crack team of editors who compile their website couldn’t spot a naked man splashing around in the ocean literally metres from 4 children showing off this years summer kids collection. The photo appeared on the La Redoute website and had gone viral long before the sea urchins at La Redoute had clocked onto what was happening. In a twist of glorious stupidity, La Redoute offers its customers magnifying glasses to inspect the **cough** cough** wears more thoroughly.

At some point before publication surely the same magnifying glasses were used to inspect the photos before release? Surely someone, at some stage saw the stark bollock naked man a stones throw from some kids and said “you know what? we should airbrush this naked man out of these photos. And what of the camera crew taking the photos? Did they not sense that they were filming on a nudist beach? Or are all beaches in France nudist? And why oh why can I not see this naked man by these kids?”

TakeTheBlame™ would like to point the finger at some very glaring ineptitude.

The ineptitude has begun

Just. Where. Do. You. Begin? That title is correct. Not only did 10,000 more people than can fit inside the aquatic centre apply for tickets to watch synchronised swimming at the 2012 London Olympics, but they actually got allocated tickets, only for the organising London Olympic tickets distribution monkeys to telephone the poor unfortunates to inform them that inepts had been running the ticket allocation machine and that there weren’t any tickets after all. Welcome to part 1 of what will surely be a very expensive experiment into Olympic organisation ineptitude.

The London Olympic ticket distribution system is one of two things, depending on who you believe. Either it is a fluid, mathmatically perfect, exceptionally accurate, 7th wonder of the ticket allocation world, or, it is a big fat pile of biased, coporate mollycoddling crap. If you believe the 50% of the fee paying public who will be lucky enough to sit behind a pillar and watch the blind-folded syncronised dog sledge events, then its the later. If you believe the pampered corporate 75% who will be watching the good events and didnt even need to join the lucky dip for tickets, then its the former. Join an orderly queue.

For those who don’t know how the Olympic ticket allocation system works, Harvard business school is running a 4-year course on theoretical mathematics. Essentially what you have to do is – over the course of 2 gauntlet running draws – is put in an “order” for a sum total of tickets – the higher the bid, the higher the mathematical chances of getting a ticket – and then wait to see what you get. As you have to put in an “order” for an amount which could be anywhere between 10 and a billion pounds, you run the risk of getting all of your tickets granted, and thus having to pay out thousands, or none. Or, synchronised swimming. But at least you can be part of the biggest sporting event to hit London since.. well… ever. Or can you? No you cant. Because in an exceptional piece of ineptitude which is already being covered up with “ah, but you will now get a ticket for another event” excuses, the ticket allocation system can’t even count.

10,000 extra tickets available for this

According to a spokesman in conversation with the BBC

“As a result of finalising the seating configurations in our venues and reconciling the millions of Olympic and Paralympic ticket orders against the seating plans for around 1,000 sporting sessions, we have discovered an error in seats available in four synchronised swimming sessions…. In December we contacted around 3,000 customers who had applied for tickets in the four sessions during the second round sales process. We are exchanging their synchronised swimming tickets for tickets in other sports that they originally applied for.”

So 10,000 too many tickets were sold. Why?  ”a human data error”. Thats good old-fashioned ineptitude to thee and me.

Tickets? what tickets?

Once upon a time curiosity may well have killed the cat, but that time has long passed and curiosity won’t get you any closer to the promised land when you are a feline in the cybertronic age. Indeed the 4-footed present from long dead alien cultures are now pitting their paws against the spreading fat cats of China. And it would appear they are winning. Admittedly they are having to put themselves in Chinese cat stew to accomplish their mission, but that is just a footnote.

The fat cat in question is Chinese billionaire Long Liyuan who died on the 23rd December in Guandong Province after he himself ate a cat. As with anything in China, the news does not leave the country with feline speed but more details are slowly coming to light. Mr Liyuan made his mega fortune in forests. Now, judging by the cost of Christmas trees, it is quite easy to see how such a fortune could be amassed, but since the Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas or, indeed the trees that frequent this most unholy of holy celebrations, how do you make a billion from a tree? Ship them around the world stuffed with cocaine in an elaborate bark-coated smuggling organisation? Who knows? And one supposes we never will as Mr Liyuan is now lying in a box made of trees. How ironic.

What really happened to Long Liyuan is being investigated by Chinese police in Quandong Province and although there was a cat involved, the story is much more fishy. It would appear that Long Liyuan was having dinner with Huang Guang when he, one imagines, went a bit red in the cheeks, fell dizzy and took himself off to hospital where he promptly died of heart failure. He had fallen prey to the poison that Huang Guang had allegedly slipped into the local cat delicacy they were eating.

Huang Guang, an agricultural official, was advising Mr Liyuan on a lease that he was seeking to take out on a piece of forest in the province, when things turned sinister in a way that would have had Miss Marpel and Poirot fighting over the deduction process.

“Huang, who was helping Long take a lease on a forest, had himself used funds provided by Long. This led to an economic dispute and gave Huang the idea to kill Long with poison.”

Chinese fat cat is killed by cat

The plot, like the stew at the heart of it, thickens with some sleuth like detective work. It turns out that Long Liyuan was no saint himself, using Huang Guang to get planning permission in exchange for bribes amounting to anywhere between 0 and 400,000 US dollars. Meanwhile Huang was running up debts elsewhere and hit Long up for some more funds. When a project they were working on together began to stall the two parties showed their true colours with Long threatening to expose Huang. At some point in the whole murky timeline, Huang decided to Kill Long.

According to reports the two men, along with a third interested party, were eating at a local restaurant when Huang Guang excused himself from the table, slipped into the kitchen and sent the chef on a decoy errand and slipped the local suicide plant Gelsemium Elegans into the bubbling pot. A pot he himself was set to eat from. On returning to the table he commented that the food tasted a bit unusual (cat?) and pushed his plate aside. Mr Liyuan wolfed his down with deathly consequences. The cat got his tongue.

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.

Is this game responisble for American Footballers losing their edge?

At any one moment 3 million players are locked down and playing Call of Duty 3 online. In its first week of release in early November the game shifted over 775 million dollars worth of cyber war joy, enough to make small countries, let alone the latest cinema blockbusters, weep jealous, covetous tears of saline envy into their morning cereal bowls. Modern Warfare: the game, is as monetarily successful as Modern Warfare: the reality.

The hours of lost revenue that this one game must be costing doesn’t bear thinking about; the minds of children’s this game must be warping, unknown; the cost to society; considerable. The average Call of Duty player logs over 170 hours a year, and that is small fry compared to some. But it is a damn-sight more fun than Facebook, so its not all Doom™ and gloom.

So powerful is the call for Call of Duty that University of Louisville Coach Charlie Strong has blamed the game itself for his football team being crap. Now you may think that a computer game couldn’t possibly be responsible for university men clad in over-sized ponchos failing to live up to their preconceived notions of excellence, but you would be wrong.

“That new, what do they call it, Call to Duty? Yeah, they got called to duty…… But, these are young people and that’s what we’re dealing with. Guys who, all of a sudden there’s something new and they want to try it and it just engulfs them.”

As ludicrous as it sounds, the coach could obviously be hitting on something he has no idea about, squarely in the heart. Professional athletes need a few things to keep at their peak levels, both in terms of mental and physical fitness. If these athletes are not sleeping and not training but are instead sitting in the dark twiddling their buttons and shooting German, Afghan and Iraqi soldiers for 16 hours per day, something is going to give. Sacrificing sleep for X-box is going to have a direct result on performance. Really it actually goes without saying.

The futures bright. Hopefully not mushroom cloud orange.

In February 2005 Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez accused America of entertaining ideas of political assasination whilst he himself was entertaining the Venezuelan people with his weekly radio and TV show. Now, 7 years on, he has upped the ante and brought nuclear war into the equation by blaming the United States for possible nuclear war in the Middle East.

Once again using his weekly TV and radio broadcasts he has pointed his big chubby finger at the United States, accusing them of inciting War, and this time there could be reason to his madness. Tensions between Tehran and the West have been increasing by the hour as more evidence of Iran’s determination to produce its own nuclear arsenal unsettles the (extremely temperamental) status quo. Only last week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report on the Iranian nuclear program highlighting its fears and concerns about the military connotations of its program.

“The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme….. (The IAEA encourages Iran) to engage substantively with the agency without delay for the purpose of providing clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.” Worrying.  The report in its entirety is available here.

So there is concern in the West that The Republic of Iran is gearing up for weapons capabilities. What that capability represents in terms of stability in the Middle East is a hornets nest, and a nest that Hugo Chavez believes the Americans are going to possibly eradicate with a big red button. To make matters worse the rhetoric coming out of Tehran is not exactly passive. Ahmadinejad is not known for bowing to pressure. During last years rounds of political pressure and sanctions he had this to say.

“They know that there is a sleeping lion in Iran which is waking up and if she wakes up all the relationships in the world will change. Their (The West) pathetic acts show they know what a great human power is hidden in Iran.”

With Iran being provocative in its flaunting of increased nuclear capabilities and The United States adamant on preventing nuclear proliferation proliferating further, then perhaps Chavez, although delusional with his cries of nuclear war, is not so far off the mark with his war prediction. Britain has already stepped up its military plans for Iranian (specific, nuclear targets) attack by examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and tomahawk laden submarines. And then there is America and Israel.

Whether Israel has the capabilities to destroy the nuclear facilities of Iran sufficiently enough to put back the nuclear program, or indeed stop it all together or not, talk of attack is already advanced. As recently as early November the Israeli cabinet was discussing attacks on Iranian facilities in the immediate future; a strategy that has been met with both support (by Iranian Prime minister and Defence secretary Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak respectively) and opposition. Any attack from Israel would be, as Iran has often stated, see retaliation against America.

And what of America? With an election looming and a population, for all their patriotism, which must be growing tired of war after war – four and counting – Americas current administration must fear another invasion, and that’s without even bringing the cost of war during a possible double dip recession into question. The population would be against it, parts of Capital Hill would be against it, the battle weary would be against it and with every escalation of war, the stakes are rising. Should Iran be invaded then the outcome is earth shattering. China and Russia have been supplying weapons for years and China is Irans biggest buyer of Oil, indeed most of China’s imported oil comes from Iran. So whose side are they on? For any security council sanctions to come to fruition then full council support is needed. With China and Russia holding vetos, there is… oh, about Fat Chance of anything coming to pass there.

Should Iran get the bomb then The West could see a cataclysmic shift in oil distribution from the Middle East, especially, as many commentators point out, the real victims of Iran obtaining fully functional nuclear weapons would not be Israel but Iran’s other close neighbours: UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The picture is bleak. But not as bleak as the one below.

Alledged American military prescence. Iran is surrounded.

Cocaine killed the neighbourhood.

Stepping away from global politics you have X-factor. Normally the home of pre-pubesent children and people who have no idea of what music is, the show has finally rocked out and been prone to a cocaine bust. As it is family viewing and no rock and roll should be entered into, the guilty party has been axed from the show and will be replaced with a piece of monotone monotony. 18-year old Frankie Cocozza (Cocozza does cocaine) has been portrayed as a teenage Libertine, filmed drinking with girls and bragging about doing cocaine. The path to excess is paved with X factor ejection and Mr Cocozza has been given the boot to protect the innocent children who tune in looking for a role-model, not a rock star. One  X factor judge is not happy.

Louis Walsh has blamed Gary Barlow for Frankie’s descent into affliction.

“Gary made a mistake. I blame him for it all…..Gary told him not to behave from day one and gave him the free licence to act up from the start. Gary’s responsible…… He said that on camera and now he’s back tracking. Gary never wanted Frankie to behave”

There you have it. No mistaking where the blame lies in this particular grudge match.

When you are a serial killer with nothing left to lose and facing a bit of state-funded execution is a serious obstacle between yourself and your next birthday, then why not blame the lawyer whose preposterous job it is to defend you. Danny Robbie Hembree did exactly this after having been convicted of first degree murder in a Gaston County (America) Court.

As superfluous a man like Robbie Hembree is to the every-day beating heart of the human species, he has placed a smug-shaped spanner in the reserved law community of Gaston County. Or at least he did, temporarily: that is until his ludicrous demands were tossed out of court as fast as this man will be catapulted into a concrete prison cell for the rest of his lamentable life. Or he gets the death penalty.

Hollywood serial killer

The defendant, who was convicted of first degree murder of teenager Heather Catterton – as well as previous convictions for a series of armed robberies, physical attacks and the videoed confession to the slaying of another victim, Randi Saldana – asked for the verdict to be dropped and a re-trial to be given. His inept reasoning being his lawyer.

“I don’t have any confidence in counsel, and I don’t have any confidence in the state……Let’s start this thing over and do it right” said the brutally belligerent, calm and calculating Hembree.

The demands were not met, the verdict upheld and sentencing awaits.

Europe maybe collapsing around the very foundations of the monetary mechanism that was imagined and constructed to unite, unify and catapult the EuroZone to the very head of the financial world table, but we don’t have time for that at the moment. First we have to trawl our way through the weeks blame game.

We have coffee, Guns n’ Roses, The X-factor, basketball, serial killers and the President of The United States of America. What do they all have in common? Well, they have all been seduced and bedded by the Italian media, political, womaniser, seducer, bringer of chaos, football club owner, sex addicted megalomaniac and now, thank the Italian food Gods, EX-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and they all have been pointing and taking the blame this week.

Blame is engulfing Obama, now its lazy people and foreign investment

In order of importance, lets start with coffee. OK, the US president, he is probably more important than coffee. Reading between the lines and creating something amusing out of what, in reality, was a meandering piece of sleep inducing sedativity we are left with the cold-hard reality that the one-term President has blamed lazy, good-for-nothing Americans for the financial maelstrom which is sweeping the modernised world into the proverbial shit-tank. Kind of.

“We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades”

Really Mr President? Who has been a bit lazy? The people? Way to win a vote contest sir. As the rest of America sat around watching TV, drinking beers, smoking joints, sleeping, lying in bed all day and generally being lazy, the President was in Hawaii (alright for some) having a “scripted” conversation with Boeing CEO James McNerney. Is a scripted conversation what it sounds like? Two men reading a conversation to each other which has already been scripted. How wonderful it would be if that were true.

During the scripted conversation Mr Obama, aside from blaming laziness, was addressing the real problem, as he sees it, for the current lack of foreign investment in the United States. After actually physically arriving on American soil and passing the I’m a celebrity get me out of here bush tucker challenge styled,  jump, I say how high, give me your blood, your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle ivestment screening test, foreign investors then have to counter additional challenges to be given the US seal of approval to merely sell a few wicker arm chairs.

“Because of our federalist system, sometimes a foreign investor comes in and they’ve got to navigate not only federal rules, but they’ve also got to navigate state and local governments that may have their own sets of interests……Being able to create, if not a one-stop shop, then at least no more than a couple of stops for people to be able to come into the United States and make investments, that’s something that we want to encourage”

This isn’t the first time that Obama has blames economic problems on the obscure, only earlier this year he blamed ATM cash machines for the growing and uncontrollable unemployment rates currently afflicting the United States. This time he has at least but the blame on humans.

The evidence is wishy-washy as the current American governmental system is hardly a new one (by American standards). It’s a mixture of lazy people and difficult foreign investment administrative hoop jumping? Then why was the 1990s boom time? Between 1990 and 2001 foreign investment topped out at $300 billion, only to fall 66% in the following 2 years. A sudden case of weekday lie-ins?  Or just cyclical? US foreign investment climbed healthily again during the second term of Bush, only to plummet back down to $150 billion in the early days of the Obama administration. Ups and downs, swings and roundabouts.

Unfortunately for the President, when you call somebody lazy at the start of what you are saying, it doesn’t matter how economically or politically sound or weak your proceeding arguments may be, people stop listening after the word “lazy”. Did you?

Carlo Giovanardi blames cocaine for the instability in the Italian markets

As trading in shares of France-Belgium bank Dexia tumble 36% as news of a £3.4bn bailout by French, Belgian and Luxembourg governments emerge, one Italian man has some ideas about what is causing the continued market volatility that we are regularly witnessing. Cocaine ladies and gentlemen.

Carlo Giovanardi is Undersecretary to Italian playboy/media-mogul/adulterer/sometimes President and master of all he purveys, Silvio Berlusconi, and as such he has been witness and heir apparent to some pretty monstrous ineptitude in his time. Now, after witnessing so much from his leader, he has thrown his own hat into the ring by blaming cocaine use amongst traders for the volatility affecting the Italian (and one supposes, global) markets.

On September 28th Italy extended a ban on short selling of financial shares until the 11th November. Short selling is far too complicated a financial concept for Take The Blame to understand, yet alone explain, but basically it is a concept which falls, almost perfectly, into the deranged hands of the cocaine freak. Because the cocaine freak is just that; a freak. A liar and a cheat who will prostitute the markets for their own gain leaving nothing but instability, volatility and confusion; the mirror image of the night before.

Short selling is the buying and selling of stock that the seller doesn’t own. Its like selling drugs that you don’t own on the promise that they will be there should your client actually want to get mashed. The stock is lent by the broker to the seller from a collection of his clients stocks. The stock is then sold and the money credited to the account of the seller. Now the crux of short selling is that at some point, as the stocks are not actually owned by either the seller or broker, the stocks have to be replenished back into the original account from where they were borrowed by the broker originally. Now, market drops and the seller can buy back the original stocks at a decreased price, thus making a profit on the difference of price. You borrow and sell at $10  then buy back at $6  and make $4 on every initial $10 investment and never actually owned any of it. By that end it is investing on the market falling, an investment in failure. Awesome. Rack up some lines and watch the market destabilise itself.

It is this availability of gambling with other peoples stocks that probably leads Mr. Giovarndi to his theory that there is a worrisome link between substance abuse and market flux. In a telephone call to Italian media, the undersecretary went on to say that Italians are trusting their money to people who are “not capable of making decisions”.

The idea is sound enough. Cocaine makes you confident, reckless, brave and full of your own ability to be a complete tool. Trading on the market gives you the opportunity to unleash these negative personality traits on peoples unsuspecting bank accounts. The problem is that, as almost every single financial institute has demonstrated over the last 5 years, you don’t need cocaine to royally screw things up.