Wedding bells on the horizon

A rather beautiful lady has for some reason agreed to marry me. We shall be getting wed some time in September and I will undoubtedly be posting many more pictures of celebrations etc. here.

"The River Tiber foaming with much blood" - 40 Years Later

Forty years ago Enoch Powell made a speech at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre. Earlier in the week, Powell had said to his friend Clement Jones, who was a journalist at the Wolverhampton Express & Star, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."

The actual speech is recorded on the Daily Telegraph's website here, should anyone wish to read it. Personally I found it a bit too over dramatic - one, ten or even a hundred constituents' views do not equate to the views of the whole constituency and much less those of the nation. I find Powell's contempt for Heath's view that Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority just as irksome now as I daresay it was to many back in 1968.

Lest I be thought of as completely hypocritical (I am, after all, on the verge of emigration from the UK) I do not feel that mass immigration into the UK is the cause or the root of any of our problems, nor has it ever been so. People may often whine and whinge about the Somali who arrives at Heathrow with no passport and but one word in his vocabulary - "Home" - but our society is rather uniquely created from a melding of differing cultures, differing views and different religions. The reason I am leaving is down to the simple fact that I do not believe that this land holds any further promise for me. I believe that the economy is being mishandled by imbeciles on both sides of the House of Commons who have no idea of what they are doing and whose only apparent way out of their predicament is to surtax and to shift blame onto those who are the least likely to complain. In short I am voting with my feet, a good, time-honoured tradition of how one peacefully demonstrates one's contempt for those idiots who would insist on their right to be our lords and masters.

Easter warning: crucifixion is bad for you

Oh .. yuk!

Please send 300 kilos of white mice. No time to explain!

Seems the Kremlin has been reading Harry Hutton's blog a bit too much ...

Emigration

For a long time now I have been running a mental spreadsheet where I add reasons for emigration into one column and reasons to stay into another. I've finally clicked the 'calculate now' button and come up with a significant balance in favour of permanent emigration, however I'm not about to do the big deep breath thing and launch myself over to the other side of the planet and cut all ties.

We are going out on the 20th March to look at much larger apartments along the Croisette, in Cannes with a view to living there permanently. Door to door (Pimlico to Cannes) the travel time is usually less than 5 hours so I can, if necessary, occasionally travel back to the UK to keep an eye on things.

No place for racism

Lewis Hamilton, who finished runner-up in last year's championship, has become a hate figure in Spain because of his rivalry with former McLaren team mate Fernando Alonso who now drives for Renault. A number of papers report that the McLaren driver was booed and insulted whenever he made his way from the team motorhome and into the pits on Saturday, during testing at the Spanish Grand Prix circuit in Barcelona. The correspondent from sports daily Marca said that shouts of "puto negro" (bloody/f****** black) and "negro de mierda" (black s***) were clearly heard and he said that large sections of the crowd were involved.

One wonders what the international reaction would be to UK fans yelling racist abuse at a young, talented, black driver. I very much doubt that it would brushed under the carpet as seems to have happened here.

Another take on THAT RyanAir advert

The Daily Mash reports:

AN advert featuring a grown woman in a short skirt has been banned by Britain's regulator of masturbation fantasies.

Offwrist, the Office for Wanking, Rubbing and Independent Sexual Techniques, said the images would encourage men to think about grown women in short skirts in an inappropriate way.

Tom Logan, Offwrist deputy director, said: "This country has a deplorable attitude towards eye-poppingly attractive grown women wearing incredibly short skirts.

"A model in her mid-twenties wearing a teeny, tiny little skirt, a tight top and showing a mouth-wateringly tantalising degree of midriff is simply not appropriate for frenzied sexual daydreaming.


"Parliament has given us the statutory responsibility to control the supply of masturbatory stimulants.

"It is a challenging job at the best of times, so the last thing we need is this scorching hot woman staring out at me all day, telling me she wants me and urging me to abuse myself. Just look at that skirt, I mean Jesus Christ."

He added: "Thank god she wasn't sucking on a pencil because, quite frankly, I wouldn't have time for this interview."

Julian Cook, of the Consumers Association, said: "Perhaps the next Ryanair advert could show a picture of a dilligent schoolboy trying to work out why the advert said a flight to Barcelona would cost £7.50, but he's actually been charged ten times that."

2 1/2 months left to register for London!

Clicking on the above link will take you the London Elects website. Please do remember that you only have until April 16th to register if you want to take part in the election to oust the truly odious Ken Livingstone from office on 1 May 2008.

That time of the year again ...

Time to replace all the computer equipment we use, soooo first up are the Macs. Very neatly coinciding with the release of the new multiple processor Mac Pro we have just spent about £5000 on just one computer, with a massive NVidia 8800 graphics card, 16Gb of RAM, 2x320Gb hard drives and 3.2Ghz processors. Tomorrow its Sony Vaio time, which will probably be all consigned to being donated to charity since I think we're going to go down the route of getting Acer 5920 laptops now instead.

Personal protection can be both fashionable and functionable

Introducing the Stun gun MP3 "iTaser" (not its real name, just a trendy label).

Arizona-based Taser International sells the handheld stun guns under the rather hyperbolic banner of 'Changing the World and Protecting Lives'. It maintains that the iTaser "allows for both personal protection and personal music for people on the go".

UK banks and foreign exchange

Why is it that most banks do not have the capability to issue you foreign currency on the spot? Went in to my local branch of Lloyds TSB only to be informed that if I wanted £500 in Euros it would take at least 1 working day and most likely 2 before they could get Euros. Withdrew £500 and went around the other 4 banks (Natwest, Barclays, HSBC and RBS) and they all said the same ... i.e a minimum 1 working day to be able to give you Euros.

Presumably the intent is to drive business to their airport branches, along with the exhorbitant currency rates so I shall just settle for waiting until I am in a much more civilised France and do my exchanges there.

Government Archives and Bolivia's finest export

Now it would appear that Customs have 'lost' 1.5Kgs of cocaine. According to the 'Acting Chairman' David Hartnett (the last one was ostensibly fired only to pop up again later in another government position, rather like scabies),

I am very concerned about what has happened in Coventry. All I know is that an amount of cocaine - 1.5kg - is missing from the place it should be in a
secure lock-up.

What I don't know at the minute is whether this cocaine has been sent for destruction, or to a court or to a forensic science laboratory and the paperwork
has not been done properly or it has been stolen. I am very worried if it is the
latter.

Of course one should point out that the flipside of a government data CD would be the perfect vessel for snorting your newly pilfered (oops, 'misplaced') cocaine.

Someone at HM Customs is going to have a very Merry Christmas indeed.

EU emission rules hit British Army vehicles

The fighting capability of the Army's new generation of armoured vehicles could be limited by European rules on greenhouse gas emissions. To avoid breaching the EU rules, the 3,000 vehicles must be specially designed to limit the damage to the environment in the battlefield. However, critics claim that this could compromise their fighting effectiveness and say protecting British troops should take priority over complying with the regulations. Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, fears the EU rules could prevent soldiers from being able to share fuel with American allies.

Presumably our ICBM nukes should also now be carefully labelled so that anyone upon the receiving end of a 2mt Trident warhead understands that 'this item contains products that are hazardous to health and may cause permanent damage through prolonged exposure'. On second thoughts, scrub that - some EU official might think "what a great idea!"

How to avoid arrest and deportation for murder ...

Andrei Lugavoi, wanted for questioning by the British authorities, in connection with the investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, has evaded future arrest by being elected.

Lugovoi will now enjoy guaranteed immunity from prosecution, further frustrating British efforts to have him extradited to face charges over the polonium poisoning of the Russian dissident in London.

Just weird ...

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away" ...

Unpleasant scenes broke out at Leatherhead Leisure Centre in Surrey when the wounded veterans, who are at Headley Court Military Hospital, had to use the 25-metre public pool because the hydro-pool at the defence rehabilitation centre is not big enough for swimming.

The servicemen were about to begin their weekly swimming therapy in closed-off lanes when they were verbally abused by the swimmers.

One woman in her 30s was said to be infuriated by the lane closures saying the soldiers did not deserve to be there when she had paid.

It was also reported that others complained that limbless servicemen were scaring children at the centre.

Of course the notion of impinging upon those womens' civil rights would be simply atrocious.

St Pancras and Eurostar

Helping to edit some of the new adverts for the new Eurostar terminal I got invited to the launch a couple of days ago. Very cold indeed but the new terminal looks really amazing and far better than the 'tacked on' look of the old Waterloo terminal. Of course, as lots of wags at the launch reminded us, the French might start using Eurostar a bit more now that they don't have to arrive at Waterloo station any more - perhaps we might rename St Pancras to Agincourt?

Elizabeth - The Golden Age

Went to see it last night. Despite being a massive fan of Shekhar Kapur I was still very, very impressed at his cinematography and his clever use of both Winchester, Ely and Wells cathedrals as royal palaces. Worth noting that had the Spanish actually succeeded in The Enterprise then,

But for the Great Storm ..... without which their would have been no British Empire. Spain would have probably gone on the conquer the world. India would have been a Spanish Colony, and Spanish would have been the primary language of the world. This blog would have been in Spanish. And perhaps India would have been Catholic and not primarily Hindu....

Amen, brother

Andrew Orlowski, one of my favourite Mac journos echoes my sentiments once again with a piece about Apple's new OS 'Leopard' and the symbiosis between Apple's software and hardware, which always makes it all more of a computer than just an operating system bolted onto a lump of hardware.

Catching Cold

Now the cancer is 'cured' and I don't have to undergo more of the awful chemo sessions I can relax and just deal with the withdrawal anguish from almost 9 months of various drugs and other noxious substances being injected into me.

Last Saturday morning I did my customary Waitrose shop, only to have the checkout lady sneeze over me. By the time I had got back to the car I was already sneezing, runny eyes etc etc and this within less than 5 minutes. The cold and cough lasted just a few days but it serves as a reminder that I won't have immunity from others' illnesses for a very long time to come now.

"Freedom of speech is not an unfettered right"

Ok, if that had been the UK my reaction would have been "yeah, yeah... Gordon Brown/Tony Blair authoritarian twattage etc etc" but it isn't.

Herb, a resident of West Scranton, was tackling her overflowing toilet last Thursday evening when she lost patience and let rip with some choice expletives. This bog-based ballyhoo upset her neighbour, off-duty police officer Patrick Gilman, who called his chums on the force when she declined to stem the flow of rude words, some of which were directed at himself.

Scranton's director of public safety Ray Hayes disagreed, saying that these things are not always "as cut and dry as they originally appear. Freedom of speech is not an unfettered right".

And since everyone else is doing it ...

This is the Google cached transcript from Craig Murray's website, which has been taken down following action by (yet another) Russian criminal:

Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you. You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the media becuase he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers, including the latter:

“Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.”

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal. He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke "Gorbachev", a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue.

Usmanov's pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socilist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered the "Pardon" because of his alliance with Usmanov's mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev's side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.

Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World's most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the "privatisation" process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed.

Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country's natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this. This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand.

Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin's long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprominvestholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov's role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom's bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out - with the owners having no choice - the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom. The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window.

All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist's death, is set out in great detail here:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable. Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment.

I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan. I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski's name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters - as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any - can be heard saying they don't care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea.

I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

No more white lines ...

The Conservative Party has published its 'Quality of Life' report into the future for the environment, available here in PDF format. Among many other gems it features solutions to our transport problems (no more road building), crowded air routes (only the wealthy should fly), the housing problem (no more new houses anywhere in the countryside - we have the MORI opinion poll to prove you don't want any more houses) and, of course the way of dealing with the population: kill them. Don't believe me? Take a look at page number 317 (318 on the PDF):

The overzealous interpretation of road signs regulation has led to a proliferation of signs that are aesthetically unappealing and can actually reduce road safety through distracting visual clutter. .... Experiments elsewhere have suggested that motorists drive more carefully where there is no white lining and only exiguous signing. Proper science would enable more effective decision making.

Couldn't we also apply this to aviation then Zac? Surely if we allowed more air traffic controllers to have more time off there would be more accidents and, as a result, pilots would fly with more caution. I bet 'proper science' would back me upon this one.

All I see in this report is another 549 lamentable reasons not to allow the Conservative Party back into power for another 10 years, and I am very much a stalwart Conservative.

Probably the most stupid group of nazis in the world ...

19-year-old Eli Boynatov, who styled himself "Eli the Nazi", was taped denouncing his own grandfather as a "jewboy" and vowing not to have any children because it would continue the "jewboy bloodline". Boynatov was the ringleader of a gang of homegrown neo-Nazis who praised Adolf Hitler, attacked orthodox Jews and surrounded themselves with the paraphernalia of white supremacists.

Unfortunately for them they did it in ... Israel.

On Britain withdrawing from Basra ...

"But ye gotta know *where* ye're just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in *anywhere*. It looks bad, havin' to rush oout again straight awa'."

Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

"CCTV Cameras are aware" ... A Tale of Two Citylinks

Ten days ago I ordered a couple of geeky-type bits and pieces, some inkjet-printable CDR discs, a cheap graphics card for a friend and a 2Gb USB ‘pen’ drive, using my favourite PC supplier at Aria. As usual you pay the amount plus VAT and then choose your delivery time, which then calculates the delivery charge according to Citylink’s rates. I opted for normal next-day delivery between 8am and 5pm, in the knowledge that I would be there all that time to take receipt of the goods.

Next day ... no delivery. Log onto the website (the above link) and it claims that they tried to deliver but nobody was there and the driver left a card. Bit perplexing since no, he/she didn’t leave a card. Then the next day (last Friday 24th August) I get the same message, that the driver tried to deliver and nobody was there. Ok, so then I log onto my local business park’s IP CCTV system to which as a tenant I have access to and ask it to search an hour before and an hour later of the time the driver specified – no result. Then (wonders of modern technology) I ask it to search for any green or yellow vans delivering over the past 48 hours – a DHL van shows up delivering to someone else on the estate, but still no Citylink.

I phone up Citylink asking where the delivery is and it goes like this:

Citylink: We tried but there was no answer
Me: Nope, you didn’t try
Citylink: Yes we did.
Me: No, I have CCTV proof
Citylink: [long pause] let me check with the drivers
[longer pause]
Can we deliver it on Tuesday?
Me: Yes, what time?
Citylink: Oh, usual time

If this was a flow chart I would stick a {return to start} statement here. Come Tuesday, no driver. At all. 5.00pm comes.

Citylink: Oh, he says he tried to deliver but there was no answer
Me: No, again the CCTV coverage does not show any Citylink van.
Citylink: Ah, it was a white van this time
Me: As it happens there WAS a white van ..
Citylink: See what did I tell you!
Me: But it was from a company that collects and delivers feminine hygiene products to offices in London.
Citylink: Ok, would you like us to bring it to you now?
Me: Yes please, when?
Citylink: Our manager will come now and deliver it himself.

8.00pm
No Citylink

Yesterday (29th August)
By now I’ve given up. I’ve emailed Aria and told them to cancel the order which they apparently can not do unless the courier can not deliver the goods (??). I call Citylink yet again:

Citylink: We tried to deliver it again today but you were not there.
Me: ok, What does my front door look like?
Citylink: Its glass
Me, No, wrong. Its light ash wood with the company name on it.
Citylink: Oh, would you like us to try and deliver the parcel again?
Me: Its so kind of you to keep trying to deliver the parcel, yes please, DOOO try.

So here we are at Thursday afternoon and they guarantee now they they will deliver .. err ... tomorrow 31st August ... subject to weather and various traffic conditions ... no, like really we will try.

Here’s a copy of the order manifest from Aria and the delivery schedule from Citylink’s site:





Update:

Just been emailed by someone ‘in the business’ who tells me that about 5% of all deliveries get chucked into a bin, regardless of when or how they are to be delivered. This is to ensure that the drivers will be able to deliver the rest of their route without a problem and leaves them enough time to get back to the depot without running over into overtime. She says that what I’ve encountered is the normal procedure when dealing with people phoning up about that 5%.

Update 2

1:05pm ... It arrived. Despite having asked them to deliver any time after 10.30am they sent a van at 9.35 (this time caught on CCTV). I phoned them up and threatened Citylink with hellfire and damnation for eternity unless they sent the driver back to re-deliver, which they did. What made us all fall about with laughter were all the caveat notes on the package thus:



Note the "CCTV Cameras are aware" memo to drivers and the 'Must be attempted' note on the right (the blurred bits are my address and telephone).

xBox Gamer misses Darwin award ... narrowly

A North Carolina teenager decided the best way to set up a water-cooled Xbox was to stick the power supply in a bowl of water. Sadly he survived, so his family do not qualify for the Darwin Award. Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

'Surviving' Cancer

Technically I'm cured of cancer. That is to say I AM cured of cancer but not cured in the sense that I am 100% guaranteed to have been cured of cancer. The best is that I don't have to have any screening for another 10-15 years, which I will quite happily settle for. Quoting the Office for Cancer Survivorship:

Cure is a term with emotional and medical meanings about which there is
little agreement.

Which I take to mean as "Ok, you're cured but don't make a song and dance about it just in case something we didn't foresee happens?"

Either way the people I am most indebted to are:

Marina
Just about all the staff at The Royal Marsden, Sutton and Fulham Road (even the ones who sometimes get the dosages the wrong way round!)
Tom, Noreen, Burak, Morgan, Martin, Irina, Tony, Dennis ("oh, cancer - I thought you said it was serious"), Amal, Hamish and Natalia, Fiona and just about everyone else who lightened up 9 months of CTCL hell for me.

Thank you all.

Comrades, we need to increase our babysnatching quota!

Brought to my attention via Englishman's Castle via Tim Worstall. If you would like to cut straight to the nasty little statist telling the expectant parents what to expect then click on the YouTube link below:

RIAA reaps what it sowed

Tanya Anderson is a disabled former Department of Justice employee and a single mother who claims the Recording Industry Association of America's 'investgators' impersonated her 10-year-old daughter's grandmother over the phone to extract evidence.

Charges filed against the Recording Industry Association of America include:
-counts of negligence
-fraud and misrepresentation
-racketeering and corruption
-abuse of the legal process
-malicious prosecution
-outrage and intention to inflict emotional distress
-computer fraud and abuse
-trespass
-invasion of privacy
-libel and slander
-deceptive business practices
-misuse of copyright laws
-and civil conspiracy.

Double check that, "misuse of copyright laws"?? but surely the RIAA is there to protect copyright laws? Not in this case it would appear. For the full transcript of charges levelled against RIAA and its record companies click here. It remains to see what the outcome will be, but hopefully Ms Anderson will finally be able to lift the lid on RIAA's campaign of extortion and blackmail against US citizens.

Vote Inspired for the Science Museum

At present the Science Museum, in South Kensington (everything for boys aged from 4 to 84) can only show about 8% of its entire collection. All the rest of its accrued knowledge is stored in a number of gigantic hangars near Swindon, Wiltshire awaiting a grant from the National Lottery to turn it into a gigantic history park. In today's Sunday Times Jeremy Clarkson implores us to visit the website and vote, Quoting from his article,

I went there last week and it’s a truly jaw-dropping experience. Just to the left of the creaking, rusted door, tucked away in an unlit corner, is the Blue Steel missile, Britain’s first nuke. And parked behind it is a two-stage Polaris rocket.

Then you’ve got the world’s first hovercraft, the mini submarine used in For Your Eyes Only and an early Hawk jet trainer, lost under the wings of a Comet airliner. Elsewhere there’s a huge 1930s hot metal printing press, several seriously important cars, and lots of early PCs: blue cabinets the size of small vans, some of which have the computing power of a modern-day wristwatch.

In another hangar there are miles of racks, stacked from floor to ceiling and stuffed with everything that was ever important. Honestly, I half expected to find the lost ark of the covenant in there.

It is properly spooky; like being in a 3-D reach out and touch pop-up book on all the stuff that changed our lives. And what made it even more eerie is this: I was the only person there.

The plan is to change that. The men in cornish-pastie shoes want the lottery cash so they can build an architectural wonder where all the quarter of a million exhibits can be displayed properly. A place that should help Britain’s schoolchildren understand that it won’t be environmentalists or politicians that’ll save the world from global warming. It’ll be a scientist.

If you want to ensure the Science Museum gets its cash go to www.voteinspired.org.uk and vote. I have.

Foot and mouth - from Pirbright to Elstead

Just checking, using Google Earth, to see how far away Roger Pride's farm is from the Merial laboratories, where the latest foot and mouth strain 'escaped' from. Call me paranoid if you will but I can't help but notice the extraordinarily number of farms between these 2 points over a distance of some 7.15 miles. At a brief count I make it at LEAST 14 farms within 200 yards of a direct line between the 2 locations, and over 20 within 400 yards either side of the line. If the strain was 'carried on the wind' to Mr Pride's farm, then what chance that it was also carried into other farms or houses and surely we would then be looking at a cull of everything along this line and beyond, dependent upon prevailing winds at the release occurrence?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in The Washington Post 'on holy war, apostasy and the rights of women in Islam'. She neatly segments muslims into 5 areas of belief, from apostates through 'moderate' muslims through to the spittle-frothing extremist clergy that we are regularly exposed to.

The first group includes those Muslims who leave the faith because they cannot reconcile it with their conscience or with modernity. This group is important for the evolution of the Islamic world because they ask the urgent and critical questions believers usually avoid. Ex-Muslims living in the west are just beginning to find their voice and to take advantage of the spiritual and social freedoms available to them.

The second group is comprised of genuine Muslim reformers, such as Irshad Manji, who acknowledge the theological out-datedness of the Koranic commands and the immorality of the prophet. They tend to emphasize the early chapters in the Koran urging goodness, generosity and spirituality. They argue that the latter chapters wherein Islam is politicized and the concepts of sharia, jihad and martyrdom are introduced should be read in the context in which they were written, some 1,400 years ago.

The third group is made up of those Muslims who support the gradual perpetuation and domination of Islam throughout the world. They use the freedoms offered in democracy to undermine social modernity and, though initially opposed to the use of violence, foresee that once the number of believers reaches a critical mass the last remnants of unbelievers may then be dealt with in violence, and sharia law may be universally implemented. Ayatollah Khomeini used this method successfully in Iran. Erdogan of Turkey is following in his footsteps. Tariq Ramadan, deeply rooted in his Muslim Brotherhood heritage, is devoted to such a program among European Muslims.

The fourth group is the most obvious and immediately threatening. In this group we find a growing number of hard-line Muslims who have defined martyrdom as their only goal. This is an army of young men whipped into a frenzy of suicidal violence by power hungry clergy. These clergy have public platforms and work with impunity from institutions untouched and often funded by national authorities.

The fifth group is largely ineffective and only threatening in their refusal to acknowledge the truth. Here we find the elite clergy who make a show of trying to reconcile Islam with modernity. They are motivated by self-preservation and have no interest in true reform. They take selective passages from the holy books to make a case for a peaceful Islam, ignoring the many passages inciting violence, such as those verses which command the death of apostates.

As she summarises:

It is through the first two of these five groups that progress and reform will come. As for the rest, the western world would be wise to recognize the realities of Islam, a religion laid down in writing over a millennium ago with violence and oppression at its heart.

Harry Potter takes on authoritarianism

In the latest episode of the Harry Potter series on film we are treated to JK Rowling using the vehicle of her schoolboy wizard as a rail against the creeping authoritarianism so prevalent now in the United Kingdom. Brilliantly portrayed by Imelda Staunton, her Dolores Umbridge character exudes the chillingly sinister earnestness of the revolting Margaret Hodge, the former ‘Minister for Children’, dressed up in a severe 1960’s Barbara Castle style. Her lines are even similar to those of “Enver” Hodge (called so when as head of Islington council she used to profess her admiration of Albania’s dictator), who is quoted in the original Evening Standard newsprint article as having once stated that “some children need to be abused”, following the enquiry as to why she blocked any and all investigation into the widespread serial child abuse cases in Islington. At one point Dolores Umbridge rants to Potter about how “naughty children must be punished”; in fact Hodge went as far as to explicitly dictate to her staff that “children were not to be believed” – a very damning statement indeed for the future Minister for Children to make.

The film shows how it is far easier for authority to crush dissent among a compliant population than it is to face up to the problem. When He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named released ten of his followers out of prison the authorities choose to blame it upon Potter’s godfather, Sirius Black, than confront their own fears and admit that Voldemort is at large once more. Perhaps when we have more films like this then people in this country will gradually start to wake up to how they have not only yielded nearly all the born rights that their forefathers enjoyed and fought for but have destroyed those same rights for their descendants.

Politics aside I really enjoyed the movie, despite its darkness compared with the previous films. It managed to be totally engrossing throughout the entire 2 hour sitting which is a very rare thing to find these days.

Would the last monkey to leave please throw the used skins out?

Says it all really ...

Next generation of car doors?

The Price of Dishonour

(PDF file)

The correlation between making large donations to the Labour Party and receiving an honour is extraordinary. Statistical analysis shows that 58.54% of all donors giving more than £50,000 to the Labour Party receive an honour. This compares to just 0.035% of non-donors. Large Labour Party donors are 1,657 times more likely to receive an honour than a non-donor and 6,969 times more likely to receive a peerage. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Labour Party has been selling honours, including places in the House of Lords. An analysis of all donations over £50,000 since 2001 reveals that Honour certainly has its price. We publish below the average amount donated by the recipients of various honours – an “Honours Price List”. Those receiving a Peerage have given £1.07 million on average and a Knighthood £747,000...

(Hat tip to Guido Fawkes)