A first for me

I got called a Paki last night outside a bar in Hampshire. To give some context, I'm a middle-class white man from Norfolk.

I didn't really know how to react. Me and my mate George (also white) were just baffled to be honest, as we walked outside the bar for a smoke and the ignorant scum-boy started to quiz us - "not being funny mate, but does your uncle own a corner shop?". No, not being funny, thats the single part of your sentence that made any sense.

Racial inaccuracies aside, I would have genuinely liked to have known what reason he thought he had for instigating confrontation from a distance of 10 yards purely based on someones skin pigmentation. Unfortunately, I judged that this particular chap and his gang of giggling fuckwits weren't really up for some analysis of the issues at hand, or really a friendly chat.

I'm lucky, I don't really witness racism that often, and when I do it's usually in the form of ignorant old men in pubs who have never left Norfolk, and are scared by anything remotely unusual ("sponge pudding, on a Wednesday?! you're starting to make me uncomfortable Mary."). I've certainly never been on the receiving end of it, and I can tell you I didn't much enjoy it.

I really would have loved to be equipped enough physically (or have useful fighting super-powers) to have taken him on and tried to find out exactly how the crazy fuckers mind works. But I'm not, so we took the moral high ground and walked off, a bit confused as to what had just happened.

New UK VAT Calculation - 17.5% to 15%

This is as much for my memory as anything else, but I'm sure there are one or two of you out there having to tweak a load of code for the VAT change (Thanks Darling).

Old Calc = Gross * 7 / 47 = VAT amount
New Clac = Gross * 3 / 23 = VAT amount