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The ramblings of an old git

bloggoth Mission Statement:

We aim to never raise our sights above the gutter and preferably to stay much lower

It might catch on

In the current depression, even "hard working families" *Note 1 are worried and trying to save money on food as the increased sales of basic supermarket food items indicate. Some will consider less conventional means of putting food on the table as this item about animal rescue centres indicates. As expected, we are also seeing a rise in crime, *Note 2 with our local parish chronicle reporting a sharp increase in poaching in our area.

With people worried about the future and the state of their investments and property it is not only those who are actually redundant or currently in financial difficulty who are looking to save money. In the circumstances the news that Madonna is seeking to adopt another African child might give a few people the wrong idea.

Note 1: Anyone who uses that PC lefty phrase so often trotted out by government ministers without putting it in quotes and without sneering at it in a note like this deserves to be hung. Sneering is an established means of neutralising leftist evil.

Note 2: Not sure quite why, those who are most likely to see petty theft as an immediate solution to a cash shortage are likely to have been useless welfary sorts in the first place.

Government to ban hot cross buns for fear of offending Muslims

The government is to ban hot cross buns for fear that the crusader symbol will offend Muslims. Instead, supermarkets will be obliged to provide a range of halal hot crescent buns. All currents and raisins used will have been slaughtered in a humane manner by having their throats cut while still alive.

Commenty boxy thing

Post comments here. Promises of money or ecstatic praise only please. Anything remotely critical will be removed. If you do not agree with me you are clearly insane.

Is the Home Secretary a real person?

Have a Google for images of some ministers like Jack Straw or Harriet Harman. No doubt they are all pictures of the same people. Now try it with Jacqui Smith. We at bloggoth are not at all convinced that is the same woman, there appear to be three different Jacqui Smiths. Could it be that our Home Secretary is not a real person at all? That the Home Office is run by some shadowy organisation that just sends out various look-alikes when a photo shoot is needed?

Brill

The Irish have the right idea when it comes to attitudes to their more revolting politicians. See this item. Mr Cowen is better known by his nickname Biffo, which stands for “Big Ignorant F***er from Offaly”. Love it.

Step in the right direction

Needless to say, we at bloggoth *Note 1 are totally in favour of new rules on animal testing although they do not go nearly far enough. At most, animals should only be used for the sort of research that people volunteer to do, to see if they get mild sniffles or if cough medicine tastes nasty, that sort of thing. In return they should be provided with huge luxury pens with gardens, TV sets, saunas and complimentary drinks cabinets.

Why do horrid things to NICE little animals to save horrible people at all? Why not use all those people on long term welfare without good reason? We understand that there is sufficient genetic similarity for the research results to be moderately reliable when applied to useful people.

Note 1: Given that any research still in the animal testing stage is unlikely to benefit we at bloggoth.

Just a thought

People oppose the religion we promised not to mention because it is so militant and that in turn causes us to look into what it is about and conclude we do not like what we see. Maybe the ideas in some other religions are as bad, does anyone have the slightest idea what Sikhism is about for example? Sikhs seem a bright lot and it may just be that they have more sense than to advertise their ambitions. Could it be that they are planning to take over the UK and make us all wear beards and turbans? The missus would look great in a beard and turban.

Impressive

When I do that lumpy thing with my cheek I can make it come right out to here now!

Hear, hear

Never shared some of the dire views about Obummer, so far an improvement on foreign and some social policies (not welfare) as we expected. Also as we expected, looking like a disaster on economic policy and if you cock that up the rest goes down the drain. Foreign policy will suffer due to reduced influence and liberalism has always been a luxury of affluent societies.

This man has much the same viewpoint as {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff}, surely the most incompetent, economically ignorant and unthinking man ever to be chancellor or PM, isn't that in itself enough to tell us Obummer is getting it wrong? The EU presidency is bang to rights on this one.

Told you that too

Here, that the (insert name of religion we promised not to mention)ic extremist threat facing the UK would start to come from Bangladesh. Has it started already?

Told you so

On average atheists are significantly more intelligent than the religious.

We recommend it to the house

Robots are in the news at the moment. We have had a robot Einstein, a robot catwalk model, a robot plane to spy on the Taliban and another robot, Big Dog also to fight the Taliban. The video of that last is amazing, the way it retains its footing when kicked, we want one. Scary!

Isn't it obvious where we need robots now? That's right, in the House of Commons. Much cheaper and we could get some real democracy too. We could tie all our robot MPs into an interactive TV system so people could sit in their armchairs and get the robot MP for their own constituency to vote as they wanted. All the human MPs made redundant could find other jobs suited to their talents, although in the case of New Labour MPs we cannot think what those could be.

Note

We at bloggoth promise not to mention Islam in the next five items. Starting now.

More wonderful proofs of Islam

We at bloggoth were unbelievers but feel we must soon embrace the true religion. The arguments in its favour overwhelm us.

The book mentioned in the last but one post demonstrates quite conclusively that the author of the Qur'an knew things that science has only discovered much more recently and must therefore have been guided by Allah. You may say that if you went through The Merchant of Venice selectively with the purpose of doing so you could probably find many things that appear to foreshadow events in WW2 but I am not listening to you. Shame on you, you Islamophobe!

There really is far too much to admire in this book, we can only mention the following:

Reference to the heavens and the earth being joined together shows knowledge of the Big Bang theory.
Absolutely, the emergence of heaven and Earth from one mass can only be a parable for one huge nebula that expanded outwards and eventually formed the planets. This should not be confused with the Big Bang theory of Infidel science in which the initial universe was millimeters across and took eons to expand as opposed to a few days. The Ancient Egyptians also believed there was initially just a uniform sea out of which the land and other elements sprang but that was just a lucky geuss.
Reference to fecundating winds, winds spreading clouds about and rain falling from them proves knowledge of meteorology.
Indeed. Nobody had ever noticed that wind moved clouds about and that rain fell from clouds before the Qur'an was written.
References to Night merging into Day and vice-versa proves knowledge that the Earth is round.
Not that the author simply observed dawn and dusk.
Referring to the Sun as a blazing lamp or shining glory while the moon is just referred to as a body that gives light proves knowledge that the latter only reflects light.
Not just that the sun is much brighter.
Reference to the sun running its course proves knowledge of the exhaustible nature of its chemical (sic) processes.
Just because a religion believes in a final day of judgement does not mean it would assume the universe would end, Allah could easily have left the sun going afterwards. Or for as long as it still had some acid and alkali left to react anyway.
Reference to all in between heaven and Earth proves knowledge of interstellar matter.
Not the author's experience that, when you travel from A to B, there usually is something in between.
Reference to rain falling from the sky soaking into the Earth and causing plants to bloom shows knowledge of the water cycle.
Absolutely correct. That part of the water cycle that would be familiar to any peasant farmer anyway.
Reference to every living thing being made of water proves modern biological knowledge.
Just because plants dribble sap and men and animals weep, sweat, spit, vomit, bleed, urinate and have diarrhoea and if you chop them open all this squidgy stuff comes out, it is not at all obvious that living things contain much water. The Shona tribe, among many others, recognised how life depended on water but again, that was just a lucky geuss.
Reference to all animals, without exception, living in communities shows knowledge of animal social behaviour.
This is quite true and not at all obvious from watching flocks of birds, shoals of fish, rabbit warrens or swarms of flies! The non-social animals must socialise in secret in gay bars and the like.
References to birds shows knowledge of migratory behaviour.
Ok, the quote just says that the Power of Allah holds them up but that is too darn close for coincidence.
Reference to a spider's home as being flimsy shows the Qu'ran's author knew a spider's home was flimsy. Irrefutable!
Reference to a talking ant shows a detailed knowledge of the lifestyle of ants.
The ant talking shows knowledge of how close the ant is to man and it follows from that the Qur'an's author knew all about the other complex ways, communication and so on, in which the ant resembles man. Argue with that one if you can!
Reference to healing properties of honey shows modern knowledge.
The idea that healing powers have been attributed to honey for thousands of years and was certainly known to the ancient Greeks is an Infidel invention.
Providing the damned with fresh skins to burn when their last skins have burnt away shows knowledge about nerve endings in the skin.
This is certainly not just based on an observation of where a fire actually hurts!
Reference to milk being a conjunction of the contents of the Intestine and the blood proves knowledge of blood circulation.
Not quite sure why but it must be true. Tastes great considering.
Three veils of darkness protecting the feotus refers to the abdominal wall, foetal wall and interuterine wall.
Even leaving aside that mystical texts love the number three this cryptic reference is clearly far too close to the mark to be explained. Three "veils of darkness" and three major membranes!
Various other items on the shape of the feotus at different stages of development prove advanced knowledge of embryology.
There are references in the Haddiths to pregnancy, miscarriages, abortions and eating the unborn young of prey animals but there is no way the author of the Quran could have learned enough from those things to have an idea on how feotuses developed, it had to be divine inspiration.
Mention of male and female plants shows advanced knowledge of botany.
Amazing! Other religions, like Wiccans and Hopi Indians, also believe that everything has a male and a female version, but obviously those devil worshippers were just making assumptions from the fact that men and higher animals have a male and female, they weren't guided by Allah like the prophet was.
Reference to an egg shaped earth shows knowledge the Earth was not flat and even that it is flattened at the poles.
This can be deduced from the visible curvature of the earth at sea and the way that objects appear over the horizon as you approach them and Pythagorus actually did in the 6th century BC? Just another infidel invention! The egg shape bit is bang on and Muslim scientists who say it is completely innacurate must be heretics.
Reference to man created from a drop emitted from between the backbone and ribs shows knowledge of human biology.
Everyone know that sperm comes from there. Well, not exactly but the male organs start up there during development of the embryo and the blood vessels supplying them come from around there. The accuracy is uncanny!
Reference to quintessence of a fluid despised shows knowledge that but one sperm is needed for fertilisation.
Not just an observation that only a tiny part of the jiz is needed since most of it can run out down the lady's arse and she still gets pregnant.
Reference to creating Man from a drop Of mingled sperm shows knowledge of male and female gametes.
You have to understand that sperm here includes the lady's sperm as well as the man's obviously.
Reference to two sexes, male and female shows knowledge that it is the sperm that determines sex of the child.
Absolutely. Some will read the paragraph before the quoted ones and think that this is just about mankind being one of two sexes but they are ignorant blasphemers.
Reference to bees using a female form shows knowledge that worker bees are female.
So what that in Arabic every word is either masculine or feminine and, where objects with no sex or unknown sex are concerned, application is arbitrary. In this case it obviously isn't arbitrary, the prophet used female for bees because Allah told him they are all ladies.

Now even Guardian readers think he is an utter arse

You might think it is just us righty DT/DM readers who loath {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} but take a look at the comments on this Guardian article.

An absolute proof of the existence of an afterlife

We at bloggoth trust that this completely and typically logical text from an Islamic book is taken by our non-existent readership as the irrefutable proof it so clearly is. How can one possibly fault it?

2. Hereafter a logical belief

There are more than a thousand verses in the Glorious Qur’an, containing scientific facts (refer my book “Qur’an and Modern Science-Compatible or Incompatible?”). Many facts mentioned in the Qur’an have been discovered in the last few centuries. But science has not advanced to a level where it can confirm every statement of the Qur’an.

Suppose 80% of all that is mentioned in the Qur’an has been proved 100% correct. About the remaining 20%, science makes no categorical statement, since it has not advanced to a level, where it can either prove or disprove these statements. With the limited knowledge that we have, we cannot say for sure whether even a single percentage or a single verse of the Qur’an from this 20% portion is wrong. Thus when 80% of the Qur’an is 100% correct and the remaining 20% is not disproved, logic says that even the 20% portion is correct. The existence of the hereafter, which is mentioned in the Qur’an, falls in the 20% ambiguous portion which my logic says is correct.

Ten common assertions on Islam

Adverse comment on Islam is motivated by racism.
Funny we never see adverse comment on Hinduism or Sikkhism. Those white racists sure are getting picky these days.
One should not criticise another's faith.
Not if it is a purely private belief with little impact on those outside the faith. But Islam seeks to set laws for the rest of us and overturn major cherished principles of our society. That makes it our business.
Commenters selectively choose adverse news about Islam.
Terrible. All those atheists threatening to bomb the UK, Sikhs demanding execution of homosexuals, Catholic countries having people hands cut off or stoned to death and nobody says a word!
Christianity has done things at least as bad and is responsible for killing and torturing millions.
Quite true but Christians mostly stopped doing it three hundred years ago.
The things that happen in the worst Islamic countries like the stoning of adulterers, cutting off the hands of thieves and treating women as second class human beings are not the true teachings of Islam.
Apart from them being the things that the prophet himself advocated in the Qur'ran and the Haddiths, that is.
The things in the Haddiths and Qur'ran that Islam's opponents sieze upon are mistranslations of the Arabic.
They use the versions used by Muslims from Islamic websites or bookshops so any mistranslation is irrelevant. Arab countries tend to follow the more extreme versions of Islam which would suggest that any mistranslation represents Islam as more moderate than the Arabic texts dictate.
Anti Jewish rhetoric and inflammatory speeches on Arab TV reported in the Western media are also mistranslations.
Terrible, you would think somebody in the entire Western world could translate Arabic properly but it is a very subtle language, only properly understood by Arabs. And non Arabic speaking Muslims obviously.
The fanatics we constantly read about are just a tiny unrepresentative minority.
Statistically that is unlikely, given that they pop up so often in every place. Send a reporter to Catholic services for three months and what are the chances of recording even one priest preaching the killing of homosexuals? Polls indicate that objectionable views, 40% in the UK wanting Shariah law for example, are held by rather a large minority, not a tiny one.
It is only the fanatics who are the problem.
No it isn't. The rest of us do not want subjugation in an Islamic state even if it is acheived peacefully and those who bring it about are decent people who genuinely believe they are leading us into a better society. Islamic societies suck.
The solution is to reach out to the moderates.
Organisations like the MCB are part of the problem, the political price for addressing Muslim "grievances" is more concessions to Islam. Moderate Islam often looks like spin, as with those mosques that by sheer bad luck had mistakenly invited unrepresentative extremist preachers in just before a C4 reporter happened along. Islamonline, an apparent model of reasonableness, likes to quote 5.32 of the Qur'ran but is strangely silent about 5.33, 5.38, 5.45 or 5.51. There are genuine moderates but how reliable are they given the nature of Islam? If forced to choose over introduction of Shariah will they really side with us unbelievers against their Muslim brethren? Unlikely.

Wake up

There is no point in we at bloggoth with our minus 20 readers commenting in detail on the almost daily abysses of Islam, the abuse of our troops by the Luton militants, the elderly lady in Saudi lashed just for having male visitors or the Headmistress forced out by Islamic governors when it is in all the papers with millions of readers and covered by many popular blogs.

We have added another good anti-Islamic blog at left, "Thoughts of a Nationalist Indian". A week or two back we also added Lionheart, the Luton blogger. A year ago we thought he was rather extreme, now we see he was right. If anti-Islamic blogs rather dominate at left, this reflects the view of we at bloggoth that there is no current threat to our society greater than that of the backward and barbaric political creed that is Islam. Tolerance is for those who tolerate us, like Hindus, tolerance for those who would destroy our society and subjugate us is purely insane. More and more people are becoming concerned about it, it is not just the comments in the newspapers but those of ordinary people one meets. When will those in charge wake up to the nature of this threat?

This article on Right Truth says it well.

Selective Science

We are being assured that regular moderate drinking is worse for the liver than binge drinking. They have established this from results of experiments using rats. Are rats comparable to humans? Not in many cases and perhaps not this one given that rats never drink in the wild, while men have been drinking alcohol since the spring of 368,198 BC when Og The Ugly drank some date juice that had been left lying around.

Maybe a better rodent comparison is the Malysian tree shrew, which imbibes large amounts of alcohol every day with no ill effect.

Talk about selective science! Pass the vodka.

Papal bullshit

We see that Pope Grandpa Munster has been in Africa telling Catholics that condoms are not the answer to AIDS, they should instead practice abstinence.

Technically he is quite correct, there is no better way of not getting AIDS than avoiding shagging but practically speaking, what chance is there of getting any significant proportion of randy young men to do it? Much more likely they will sin by shagging. They can always go to confession and get forgiven anyway.

Even if they stick to wives and partners they know are safe, Africa needs more children like a hole in the head or rather the rest of do, as it seems to be mostly us picking up the bill.

What we really need is a giant condom that everyone can wear over their heads from birth that will protect us from the infection of religion and all the world's other isms.

PS Good cartoon here

Images from photobucket

Yet more joys of the Haddiths

If you live in the desert you will become rude.
If you cleanse yourself with animal dung the prophet won't want to know you.
It's ok to wash in a well into which dead dogs and stinking things are thrown as water is not defiled by anything.
You should not pray while peeing. If you fart while praying you should wash and then say the prayer again.
The time limit for wiping over the socks for a traveller is three days.
Every grey hair you have will blot out one of your sins.
Don't curse a thief or you will lesten his sin.
You are credited with good deeds if you kill a gecko but the number of good deeds reduce with every blow it takes to kill it.
You can eat jetsom but not flotsam.
In Paradise a believer lives in a hollowed pearl sixty miles wide.
Adam, the first entrant to paradise, was sixty cubits (27.4 metres) long. Entrants to paradise have been getting progressively smaller ever since.
When a stone is thrown into hell it takes seventy years to reach the bottom.
Allah left space in paradise for another creation if he feels like it.
The thickness of an unbeliever's skin is a three night's journey.
On the day of resurrection the circumcised will get their foreskins back and everyone will stand in perspiration up to their ears.

The evils of drink

Cor! this wine is nice,
think I'll have a bit more of this We'd better go for a stroll dear,
you need to try and walk it off
before the do Quick dear, get up,
the press are watching

Yet more joys of Islamic law

Could not find it in in the haddiths but according to this a woman successsfully appealed against a conviction for adultery although her baby was conceived significently after she had been parted from her husband. Her defense team argued that, under Islamic law, the interval between conception and birth can be up to seven years.

Better idea

We see the government of the Maldives *Note 1, one of the lowest lying regions on Earth, has decided to be carbon neutral. Ah yes, that will make a big difference, not. About as much difference as the similar gesture politics on this issue in the UK, not building a coal-fired power station here hardly makes a difference when the Chinese are building another one *Note 2 every week.

If the Maldivan president really wants to make a difference maybe he should kidnap the Prince of Daftness and lock him up in a secure jail somewhere. His pointless jetting about the globe with a huge entourage must add as much carbon to the atmosphere as a medium sized country.

Let's hope this utter arse never gets to be king. If we have to have this anachronistic institution our vote would be Harry who some of has the admirable characteristics if his father. Let's get back to the good old days of offending horrible foreign people. It's what made Britain great.

*Note 1: Not that we we at bloggoth would consider the removal of another typically intolerant Islamic state, where overt practice of any other religion is forbidden, would be a great loss but there must be nice little mice and things who are not Muslim.

Note 2: Not to mention all those Giant Panda-fuelled power stations based on Japanese Whale-fired power station technology.

Yet more joys of the Haddiths

The Prophet forbade payment for a cat.
If you have more than three sets of bedding the fourth one is for Satan.
Avoid sacrifice of these animals, a one-eyed animal with one eye, a sick animal which is sick, a lame animal which limps and an animal with a broken leg with no marrow. Or one with nasty teeth.
If someone glances into your house it's ok to poke something into their eye.
You should not drink when standing. If you forget and do so you should vomit.
Satan eats and drinks with his left hand.
An angel will not come to your house if you have a dog or a picture and won't travel with you if you have a dog or a bell. What an angel would think of a picture of a dog wearing a bell it doesn't say.
The most tormented people in hell on Resurrection day will be artists.
If you have a bad dream you should get up and spit on your right side.
Always ensure pots are covered or a mouse might set fire to your clothes.
A non-believer has seven intestines.

Quick, where's that recipe for TATP?

As we reported a while back (except the Crawley Observer got the date wrong) there is a big meeting of world politicians only a few miles from here today. We feel we should do our duty by putting on an explosive suit and going to blow a few of them up.

Any anti-terror people among the non-existent readers of bloggoth, please note that this is merely our little joke, we at bloggoth would never be so fanatical as to blow ourselves up just to get rid of a few politicans.

Good lord no, we shall send the wife.

bloggoth exclusive - British recession caused by Californian raisins

bloggoth has been passed emails by our undercover sources in the treasury showing that when {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} was chancellor he did indeed raise concerns in cabinet about the level of US toxic debt that was being purchased by British banks and the cabinet office initiated enquiries into the matter.

Unfortunately, the emails were sent to jsharpe@fsa1.gov.uk instead of jsharpe@fsa2.gov.uk and reached Mr John Sharpe, a department head at the Food Standards Agency rather than Mr John Sharpe, senior advisor at the Financial Services Authority. Bloggoth has seen the emails, including this initial one sent:

From: G Finch, Cabinet Office 
To:   J Sharpe, FSA 
Date: 13th September, 2002
Subject: US toxicity problem

Dear John,

Please initiate the study into this issue in accordance with your proposals
as discussed at Monday's meeting and report back to me. 

The PM is most keen to learn if there is a problem here ASAP.

Sincerly,
George Finch

Mr Sharpe of the Food Standards Agency insisted he had no reason to believe that the emails had anything to do with bank debt. "I thought they were talking about concerns raised at my last meeting with the Department of Health about pesticide levels in Californian raisins. I did wonder why it was so important that it had gone to cabinet but then I supposed it perhaps needed sensitive political handling due to the ongoing trade talks. Anyway, we did all the tests and checked it all out and I emailed back to say that after a thorough investigation I could see no cause for concern."

The rest is history.

Guilt is good

We at bloggoth have been retired for two years but weekends still feel special. The trick is to have little companies that you work on, as both me and the missus have, that take up lots of your time in the week.

If you plan your weekday properly and interleave the real work with all the government red tape, accounts, corporation tax, end of year PAYE forms etc you can feel stressed out and miserable from 9 to 5 and feel guilty if you are not working. It's just like you used to before retiring, the only difference is that the pay is negligible.

If you have enough to live on comfortably, why not just relax and enjoy your whole week? we can hear the non-existent readers of bloggoth cry. Not likely, that would not be British.

Nearly every time

It is always the right that is accused of violence and intimidation but whenever there is a violent or dispruptive incident here or abroad, like this one or this one it is usually the left (or their Muslim allies obviously) doing it.

Stop pandering to this waste of space

Rendition without the consent of the country concerned, holding people at Guantanamo without any proper review of their guilt and any use of torture was appalling. If the risk is great, there may be occasional need to hold people without full evidence that would stand up in a court of law but that is no reason why there should not be a proper hearing to establish the need to do so. The CIA and our own security services have made mistakes before.

That does not mean that UK taxpayers should have some obligation to this welfare dependent drug addict who has failed to give any credible explanations for his behaviour. He is at best a useless individual like so many that come to the UK from that part of the world. He is at worst a terrorist who is a risk to all of us. Malignant or merely sad, either way we have no obligation to foreign nationals, get rid of him and all like him.

How will he fare if returned to Ethiopia? Who gives a shit?

Me too

We see that David Cameron (we are dropping the blithering drivelling as he is making a bit more sense these days) has apologised for his part in the economic crisis.

We at bloggoth apologise for our part in it too, we are quite sure that we must have contributed to the general sense of irresponsibility over borrowing by forgetting to pay off our credit card bill in full a couple of times. EVERYONE should apologise for their part in it and we mean everyone. You there, little Ugandan kid, did you scrape every last scrap of meat off that goat carcase before you went to Oxfam to ask for another one? We think not!

There are 6 billion people in the world, I bet if our appeal was publicised we could get 5,999,999,999 to apologise.

Coincidence?

Someone is suggesting they tax chocolate now. It seems one can never see the news without there being an item on obesity. Another thing we have seen a lot of recently is UFO sightings.

More joys of the Haddiths

We at bloggoth are still reading the Haddiths, best read we have had for years. Here are a few highlights so far.

The Prophet always said everything three times. (That figures)
If you clean your private parts with stones you should always use an odd number of stones.
When washing a corpse you should start on the right.
If a dog drinks from a utensil you must wash it seven times.
The prophet once put water in his mouth and ejected it over the face of a boy. Quite why it does not say.
The prophet Moses once put his clothes on a stone and it ran away. When he caught it he gave it a sound beating. Having to run after a stone in the nude was not entirely a bad thing as everybody who saw him realised he did not have a huge hernia in his balls after all.
If you pray in a single garment you must cross the ends over your shoulders.
The Prophet once wiped some snot off the wall of a mosque.
Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey or a woman.
The Prophet forbade vessels used for alcohol, not alcohol itself as far as we can see. As long as we put our vodka in a glass not a Dubba or a Hantam we seem to be ok.
During the Adhan (call to prayer) Satan farts loudly so he won't hear it.

We thought it looked familiar

Further to the ridiculous way Muslims seeks advice on every piddling little detail of their lives, we found this (Note 1) on a British Muslim site:

Is it allowed for a woman to travel to a friend's house and stay overnight without a mahram?

If a woman travels for more than 24 hours on a journey outside the city/town that will cover a distance of approx. 48 miles (or at least two thirds of that), then she must have a Mahram accompanying her on that journey.

(i) If a man gives permission to his wife to stay at the house of another woman overnight or even for more than 24 hours and (ii) there are no men present at the house and (iii) it was a safe place, then that is allowed.

Even if she had travelled traveling distance without her mahram to get there, provided that the journey took less than 24 hours and was not outside the boundaries of the country and as long as he can reach her at any time, then it is still permissible.

The style of this looked enormously familiar somehow, ah yes, it's very similar (Note 2) to the sort of petty twaddle you get on HMRC's webshite:

Travelling expenses: business travel: travel for necessary attendance at a temporary workplace: the 24 month rule

A workplace is not a temporary workplace if the employee attends that place:
in the course of a period of continuous work at that place lasting more than 24 months, or when it is reasonable to assume that it will be in the course of such a period.

The broad effect is that a place at which the employee can expect to work for a period exceeding 24 months is treated as a permanent workplace from the outset.

A period of continuous work at a place is a continuous period during which the employee performs his or her duties to a significant extent at that place. For this purpose a significant extent can be taken as 40% of the employee's working time.

Geuss this proves that oppressive bastards have a lot in common.

Note 1: We are not linking to crap like that from bloggoth, who knows what drivel will leak along it? You can find the link on Lionheart's blog, link to that at left.

Note 2: The comparison relates only to the unecessary red tape, in no other sense are the expenses rules comparable to a malignant oppression of women.

This religion truly is awful

The idea that society should be ordered according to the supposed words and deeds of a 6th/7th century warlord is about as ridiculous as an idea can get but I suppose it is just conceivable that you could run society according to the sayings and doings of Bugs Bunny and it could turn out ok, or at least no worse than we have in our so-called democracies. I'd vote for Bugs over {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} any day.

There is much dispute on blogs about what the Qur'an and the other Muslim texts actually say but few actually attempt to read them. Have a skip through here* and among much meaningless dogerrel (no wonder many non Arabic speakers learn the Arabic version, it hardly matters) you will find the Qur'an appears to be as its detractors say, not taking unbelievers as friends, forcing unbelievers into submission and making them pay dues, punishing transgressors with terrible agony in this world, pleading for destruction oft-repeated, asking how many generations did they destroy. The meaning of much of it is debatable, but the violent and condemnatory nature of the text is not such as to encourage peaceful coexistence with others.

The Haddiths similarly contain extreme material although one has to search a bit. The prophet ordering a male adulterer to be stoned to death, ordering the digging out of the graves of unbelievers to make space for a mosque, having an entire tribes' feet cut off and letting them bleed to death, telling a woman she has but half the intelligence of a man because she is female. This religion, on the evidence of its own texts, is every bit as vile as its detractors say it is. Difficult to see how anybody who understands and reveres the man depicted can be a tolerant moderate.

Then there's the sad way that their approach to every piddling little thing they do has to be proscribed, how they should pray, view womens' periods, plant trees, react to an eclipse. After hunting animals with a sharp bit of wood you can eat the animal if it was killed by the pointy bit but not if killed by the edge of the wood apparently. I glad I know that, I would hate to make a mistake on that one. If the Prophet were to return, doubtless there would be umpteen other chapters on how to buy a bus ticket, put batteries into a TV remote and what to do if you run over a squirrel.

Although there are numerous dead ends, by and large, human society does appear to evolve for the better. There are some general principles from all the major religions that have played a part in that but to tie the principles of society and the behaviour of so many people in such detail to what was deemed appropriate in a savage society of 1300 years ago is a millstone around the neck of human development and a sad waste of the human intellect. Islam quite literally is a backward creed.

*Note: YUSAFALI et al (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall and Mohammed Habib Shakir) are all 19th/20th century translators. So what you have there are three different versions of the Qr'ran. Just as well they don't do the bible that way, it would take forever. Here is just the first chap. It's still bollox but mercifully much shorter.

PPS Marmaduke????

The list grows AGAIN

Sorry, we know we said we would not keep listing those who think {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} is an incompetent arsehole but we cannot resist it.

Now it is not just major industrialists, the head of the FSA, the German finance minister, the French President, the IMF, Alistair Darling and president Obummer but the former Australian PM John Howard.

Why can't we ever get a PM like Howard? Why can't {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} just die?

Predudice?

Here are some Muslim men. Do you see any reason to make fun of their beards? No, me neither.

Here is yet another of our wonderful minorities alleging discrimination against nasty whites who, among other things, made fun of his beard. How appallingly racist to laugh at his beard!!! Gumph, snuk, snigger, snort, oh sorry, tickle in our throat there.

PS. I jolly well bet there is virtually no discrimination against minorities in Muslim countries and that the few isolated instances are soon dealt with by their anti-discrimination laws that provide for equality for all, Muslims and non Muslims alike.

Offshoring and uncontrolled use of skilled migrants is destroying our own skills base

As we said back here.

If every job that has been vacant for a few weeks can be advertised abroad you destroy the normal equilibrium of supply and demand and create a long term and destructive disincentiving process. It is important that this natural demand exists because it is the demand that drives the solution. Take a look at how people think in schools and universities, do students decide to do a course in A when they can see there are absolutely no jobs going in A because they have all been filled by workers from India? Of course not, they choose something else. Or give up altogether.

Not just my opinion either, that is a reality that would be recognised by anyone with experience of how markets work and who are not ignorant radical overgrown students with a malignant leftist agenda like most of our government ministers. According to the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), IT skill in this country is being eroded by offshoring and the huge influx of non EU IT staff:

'offshoring' IT jobs to low-cost overseas locations, which is likely to accelerate during the downturn as organisations look to cut their budgets, is eroding the IT skills base in the UK.

This was making it easier for organisations to justify importing IT skills from abroad, it said.

'Offshoring has eaten away at the bottom rungs of the skills ladder, making it much harder to get the experience needed for the mid-level jobs which foreign companies are bringing workers into the UK to fill,' said Miss Swain.

'If anything we are going to see more entry-level IT jobs sent offshore in 2009 as recession bites. 'Is it any wonder that seven per cent fewer students leave British universities with IT qualifications than five years ago when so many jobs are going offshore?'

Maybe the paranoids are not so barmy after all

Take a look at this.

Ok, let's not get too paranoid, protesters do cause damage. It would be reasonable to record any doing so as evidence. Maybe it would also be reasonable to record at random and then, if there was any trouble, to examine the videos afterwards to see if there is anything that might help to identify the culprits or ringleaders. But what possibly justifies tracking and identifying individuals who have not been suspected of causing any problems, of keeping footage that shows no lawbreaking on a database for long periods or, most sinister of all, keeping close tabs on the press?

Take a look at the way those police film the reporters and camera crews, a few of whom get fed up and film them back. Do you seriously believe that that new law under which individuals can be prosecuted for filming the police, that law that supposedly will never be invoked except where there is a serious threat of terrorism, would not have been invoked by those police? That it will not be used freely in future under similar circumstances?

A couple of years ago we at bloggoth would laugh at those who told us we are becoming a police state. Now we have a government who are determined to ignore the wishes of the electorate on every major issue, to destroy Britain as a nation with its own culture and values, who are corrupt to the core and who use every means to deceive us and keep us in our place. We would no longer put anything past them.

Like most sane people we cannot wait for the election so we can get shot of them. Assuming there is one of course.

While on the subject

Is any of this untrue or seriously exaggerated? We don't know but we doubt it.

Cameras for all

The government has been criticised for actively supporting a surveillance society in which all of us can expect to be photographed hundreds of time a day. In another exclusive, bloggoth has learned that the conclusions of a new study are under "serious consideration" by this government.

CCTVs are seriously expensive, the images are of poor quality and many do not work due to lack of maintenance. On the other hand compact cameras in even cheap mobile phones can provide good quality colour photos and videos. In the US, some car insurance policies require cameras fitted inside cars they insure to provide evidence in event of an accident. The study concludes that instead of installing more CCTVs in public places to check what people are doing, it will be cheaper and provide better evidence if we all have cameras fitted to our foreheads to record what we are doing.

Memory fitted in the cameras is expected to be able to record up to two weeks activity and the content must be submitted to the authorities on demand. Being away from our registered address without having the camera fitted on our forehead will be a criminal offence punishable by up to 18 months in prison or a £30,000 fine. The cost of each camera is expected to be covered by requiring us to pay an annual licence fee of up to £180 although the report suggests a reduced fee for pensioners over 75 on the grounds that they don't shoot or stab many people. This is likely to be rejected by the government on the grounds that, unlike the people who do, the old bastards mostly don't vote Labour.

The camera is likely to be a low cost version of the one currently used by the police. Those requiring something more fashionable or in other colours will have to pay an extra fee.

Agh!!!

"Stop Hitting Me Officer" does not exist. Where have you gone to Mr Stop? The coven is seriously low on silliness.

Senile ramblings, please ignore

The news brings back memories. Non existent readers please move on, senile rambling reminiscences alert.

Mandelson has been hit in what some newspapers are calling a green slime attack.

There was a B horror movie called The Green Slime. We remember it well as we saw bits of it at least three times, with Greek subtitles, from the roof of an Athens youth hostel in 1969 next door to an open air cinema. We were dozing on the roof in skimpy swimming trunks when we had a curious sensation and looked down to find a girl biting the inside of our thigh. Curiously, we never got anywhere at all with her, what a let down.

Marianne is in the news a lot today for no very obvious reason. We at bloggoth really fancied her and still have her LP called erm, um, it's up in the attic somewhere. Saw her perform once at a university thing. All the best people were born in December 1946. We had stuck a U tube thing of her here but removed it 'cos it was crap. Not sure why we liked her early stuff now and her "acclaimed" later material seems to have transmuted her into Edith Piaf. Perhaps she got hit with green slime.

Didn't we tell you we were influential?

There is to be a top secret meeting of the world's most powerful finance chiefs in our area. We are not supposed to say but we can reveal that they have all come to seek the wise advice of we at bloggoth. Why do you think we put that new new shed up?

Bleedin eck, that's tiny

We at bloggoth have never felt ourselves unduly endowed in the lunchbox department before, but according to this extension surgery is not usually considered for a flaccid penis less than 4cm. 4cm????

It's only reality that matters

An argument you regularly see trotted out by decent moderate adherents of any creed XXX is that the awful things done in the name of XXX are nothing to do with XXX at all.

Back in the 70s I knew some nice beardy communists who assured me that communism was great, I shouldn't judge it by the realities of the Soviet Union, that wasn't real communism. Similarly, you regularly see comments by jolly nice Muslims that there are not any countries who really follow shariah and we should not judge it by what goes on in Saudi Arabia or Iran, those are just nasty dictatorships.

Can we get a grasp of reality here? For practical purposes, when assessing the probable impact on the rest of us, it is only the implementation that matters, not some notional abstract concept. You could with even more justification argue that the Inquisition had nothing to do with Christianity but I doubt that heretics on the rack found much consolation in the fact that Christ told us to love our enemies.

Sorry, Mr Moderate Muslim but if people are being whipped for the crime of being raped or children are placed in the care of a Muslim parent rather than the one best fitted to care for it because somebody else thinks that is shariah, if terrorists are blowing up westerners or attacking Jews in the name of Allah then those are all part of what Islam is and your interpretation of the Qu'ran has nothing whatever to do with it. The more sensible of the rest of us will judge your faith accordingly.

Damn fools 3

I know we at bloggoth bang on about Islam but it is a very rational religion compared to socialism, because you can't actually prove that the tenets of Islam are wrong while socialism is proved wrong over and over and still people believe in it. That takes true idiocy.

Even with the current failures of capitalism it has still delivered average standards of living way above anything communism ever did. Look at how China has started to show the potential of its people since elements of the free market have been introduced. Compare North Korea with South Korea. Compare the former USSR with the west, East Germany was by far the most prosperous of the communist states and it trailed in at a miserable 11th in per capita income, way behind West Germany. I am betting that even in the current depression we won't sink to those levels.

After 9 years of Chavez's leadership the economy of his country is among the shakiest in South America. He has been seeking to set prices for rice without taking account of the cost of production and is now sending in the military to confiscate rice plants without any meaningful compensation. Many of the poorer people who voted to allow Chavez to seek power indefinitely will no doubt be happy that this move is only affecting the rich factory owners and the shareholders but I wonder what Chavez will do when he finds that poor farmers are not willing to sell rice to those nationalised plants at the cost he sets because they want an adequate living for themselves and their families. This is all starting to look dreadfully familiar.

You Venezuelans voted for endless years of a socialist paradise and now you are going to see what that really means. Damn fools.

Wouldn't it be great if?

We really could rewrite history. We just jot it down somewhere and it becomes true. We at bloggoth frequently write stuff here from memory and then spoil it with our usual extensive research before uploading. It was often a lot better before and most people would be none the wiser anyway. One of our favourite ploys on CUK or other discussion boards is to prefix some remark by "research has shown that" or "surveys indicate that" to make it sound jolly authoritative and usually nobody ever challenges it.

Anyway, another proof of the idiocy of socialism, if any was needed, is that Uganda was better off under the self-seeking potty dictator Idi Amin than it was under principled but leftist Julius Nyrerere. Well, these African countries are all the same really.

Gay frozen mummy porn

here

Sorted

We see that the Reform "think tank" has recommended that senior civil servants should be appointed by ministers.

Naturally, we at bloggoth assumed that Reform must be an invention of {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} that posed as a charity and was secretly paid from taxpayers' money to do the vile bidding of the Scottish one and mislead the public to aid his creation of a Marxist dictatorship. Despite our usual extensive research, almost a minute spent googling, we have been unable to find any evidence that that is so. Even The Devil's Kitchen does not think so.

Still, we disagree with the recommendation so clearly Reform is an invention of {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} that poses as a charity and is secretly paid from taxpayers' money to do the vile bidding of the Scottish one and mislead the public to aid his creation of a Marxist dictatorship.

Warning - totally tasteless post approaching

Just drop it in 2

Strictly Come Dying

We at bloggoth would not normally make any comment about someone dying unless it was {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff}. If that happened we would fill the entire webspace of xoggoth.org with a huge page of "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.........H" and then, in common with most of the sane and useful section of the populace, we would roll around on the floor cackling hysterically for days. Or MR PIKEY SCUM, although that would be a much lonelier cackle. But in Jade Goody's case she has quite deliberately opted to be the target of comments and we respect the decisions of sane adults.

For someone with terminal cancer she does look incredibly healthy, she is still well rounded with a nice (ie large) bum and a normal colour when she should be thin and yellowish. Could it be that the whole thing is some bizarre new reality show? Will she make a miracle recovery? Will John sergeant suddenly suffer a stroke and linger on for weeks saying profound things from his deathbed only to miraculously recover in his turn? At the end of the year, when several minor celebrities have all suffered apparently terminal illnesses and staged unexpected recoveries will we be asked to text our votes for the best protracted decline?

What about the next reality series? Killer Stars would be good, with minor celebrities like that fat bloke off the One Show having to murder other minor celebrities like Carol Thatcher.

Just drop it in

Talking of death, we at bloggoth drove past an undertaker's today. A sign on the door said "By appointment only". In these days of supermarkets and drive through take aways, why are undertakers so behind the times? Surely you should be able to just take your deceased mother/wife etc round in your car boot and drop them off without having to have appointments and prior arrangements?

Great idea, let's run with it and turn it into idiocy

Many expect that we've ain't nothing yet on the economic crisis but, apart from the bankers, what has contributed to the current situation and what will contribute to the problems of social unrest we have yet to see? It is in the nature of men to seize sound ideas, to elevate them into religious beliefs and then carry them forward into absurdity, applying them inappropriately and regardless of other factors.

Managed globalisation, with each country doing what they do best and a broad balance in international trade, is a good idea. Worship of the great god globalisation gave us a huge imbalance in world trade defecits and surpluses, high unemployment in the developed countries, a vast flow of industry to the developing nations and huge fuel wastage to the detriment of our environment. The flow of toxic debt that has triggered the primary problem was in itself one aspect of globalisation; who would have thought 30 years ago that our banks would be buying up mortgage debts in the US? Now both developed and developing nations face the same downturn with countries that have been both prudent and efficient, like Japan, facing the same problems as the profligate wasteful nations. Now another downside is apparent because the internationalised nature of trade reduces the ability of any one government to do anything to help its own people.

Managed immigration with movement of highly skilled people to provide flexibility in the workforce is a good idea. Worship of the great god immigration has allowed a huge influx of the mediocre or worse with woefully inadequate checks. It has given us overcrowded and more divided societies for little or no economic benefit, increased crime and the threat of terrorism and destroyed the dynamism of the market and the incentives for the less able of our people. Now another downside will become apparent because many of those workers our economy supposedly needed will stick around and become the socially restless welfare dependents we clearly don't need.

The concept of a united Europe is a good idea. Why not work to reduce trade and political barriers between nations like the UK, France and Germany with a similar Christian heritage and prosperity? Worship of the great god EU has forced a headlong rush to union that was far too fast for its ordinary citizens to adapt to and trampelled over national and cultural sensitivities. It has allowed full entry to countries whose economies lagged well behind. This has added to the strains of excessive migration into the older member states, given us more organised crime and too many useless individuals who beg on our streets and abandon their children to be looked after by our local authorities. Now another downside has become apparent because Germany and France are unwilling to bail out the bankrupt Eastern nations and we may see even the collapse of the Euro

Against Shariah law in the UK

Demo on Saturday, see left. We might go.

As we said in a comment on Mr Sheep's earlier, the problem with demos is they get used for secondary causes which have nowt to do with the headline cause. "Demand the right to asylum for all those who have fled Sharia law " ? A cast iron excuse for more phony asylum seekers? No thanks to that one.

Take a look at the main video and the related videos on this page. Johan Hari's piece is excellent...

The problem with multiculturalism is it puts nice liberal people into alliance with the most profoundly reactionary parts of the immigrant communities against the very people we should be siding with, women who want to live their lives their own way, gay people who want to live their lives their own way...

What on earth are we doing pretending that this obsessive, backward, profoundly undemocratic and anti-freedom religion has any right to respect?

The list grows AGAIN.

Now it is not just major industrialists, the head of the FSA, the German finance minister, the French President and the IMF who think {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} is an incompetent arsehole, even Alistair Darling and President Obummer, who rightly put meeting a group of boy scouts ahead of spending more time with our nose-picking PM, seem to think so too.

To save spending too much time on similar posts in the future, we at bloggoth have decided to start listing the people who do NOT think {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} is an incompetent arsehole, it's much quicker.

Mr Richard Rexel has not thought the PM to be an incompetent arsehole for nearly five years

Just the start

Terrorists have escaped after attacking the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan but one of bloggoth's many contacts throughout the world has already managed to track down one of a shadowy figures behind the operation.

A new phase in world terror may be beginning. In a secret training camp near the Afghan border our source talked to a senior member of a new radical group Amesha e Salabi which means in Arabic, "Stop boring cricket on the box" Golf is another utterly tedious sport high on the list of the group's targets.

There are worrying links to radicals in the UK. Our source watched a group of British born radicals rehearsing the shooting of Ronnie O'Sullivan so we can be spared the interminable weeks of World Snooker. We at bloggoth have sent them a donation.

Here we see British radicals planning an attack on the UK darts championship. Extensive firearms training is not necessary for this attack as the fat bastards are almost impossible to miss.

Scientific breakthrough on stem cell research may endanger millions

In a move that may end the controversy over use of stem cells from human embryos, scientists have found a way to cause any human cells to develop into stem cells which may in turn be stimulated to form any other type of tissue. However in another exclusive, bloggoth has learned of related news of a less promising and potentially disastrous nature which, so far, has been kept from the media.

Earlier successful attempts to create stem cells from skin cells involved infecting them with a virus and applying chemical stimulants. In a case that has echos of the escape of Foot and Mouth from a government research centre a couple of years back, it appears that infected cells have been allowed to enter a public sewage system where contact with traces of Toilet Duck, Mr Muscle and other cleaners have caused raw sewage to change into stem cells and thence into monsters.

Three sewage plant workers in Hertfordshire are feared dead after being attacked by a huge shit monster. If this infection should spread further North where they eat enormous meals of quite revolting things we are likely to see even larger creatures and many more may be at risk.

A photo of the sewage monster in Hertfordshire

Time to isolate these contagions

Mr Sheep again mentions the growing problems of an increasingly lawless Mexico.

The US and UK face similar threats in that we both have many migrants from failing states, in our case it's Pakistan and (catching up rapidly) Bangladesh as recent events show. Problems in any country, whether crime or terrorism, inevitably spill over into other countries with many of their citizens/ex citizens and anyone who does not grasp that lives in a PC world on which the light of reality never shines.

High time we had firm controls on travel between the UK and those countries for the protection of us all.

Why insulate intelligent adults from the consequences of their own actions?

Any money spent on Gaza without a settlement is money wasted as The Mad Messiah rightly states. (Monkeys, typewriters, etc) What is the point of spending money on rebuilding if Hamas are just going to keep on firing rockets and the new buildings are only going to be destroyed by Israel again in a year or two? Sod that. It could be better spent somewhere else or (here's a thought) left with the taxpayers who earned it to spend on their own lives.

Our objection to Hamas is not really those rockets. There is a lot of hypocricy on this issue, when our own countries are at war we go all out to win and hang the other side. Were Hiroshima or Dresden somehow morally superior to a Hamas rocket? It is easy to be open minded when it doesn't matter much anyway or to worry about human rights in some little conflict where your own civilians are not at risk but when survival is at stake it makes sense to cleave to simple and natural priorities, you, yours and the others like you. If the UK was at war we at bloggoth would be totally in favour of firing rockets at the other bastards.

It's the Palestinians' apparent belief that everyone else should get involved in their dispute that pisses us off. If they choose to wage this unwinnable war on their terms why do they seem to expect the rest of us to partially insulate them from the consequences of their decisions with food and medical aid and rebuilding? If they don't care enough about the suffering of their own civilians to adopt a realistic negotiating position, why do they imagine that the rest of us should care? If we do supply aid then we have a right to set our own conditions.

Going beyond that issue, why are we so keen to protect intelligent adults from the consequences of their own actions? It is a modern disease that may explain why there appears to be so little sense of responsibility on a personal or a national level.

Commenty boxy thing

Post comments here. Promises of money or ecstatic praise only please. Anything remotely critical will be removed. If you do not agree with me you are clearly insane.

Was Slumdog a good thing?

Ah yes, a succesful, profitable and completely British film. Except that much of the profit will probably have come from saving on actors and extras who, if they were paid anything at all, were probably paid with old broken TV sets and other toxic junk that they could scavenge bits out of before dying of radiation poisoning.

The lesson will not have been lost on the rest of the media, who may now decide that profits should come before realism and that they too should outsource on a regular basis. After all, when we all loved those Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood we soon forgot about all the swarthy, hideously ugly and toothless minor characters and extras.

The ballroom scene from the remake of
"Pride and Predudice" "Hitler's Last Days" made in Zimbabwe

Chin sheep

There is no more obvious example of continual pointless redesign than that of men's razors. Cut throat razors to safety razors was a good move for the obvious reasons but the continual tinkerings since are ever accelerating, we get a new "improved" design every year. In ten years' time we will have a fifteen blade shaver with each blade independently sprung with its own proximity activated aftershave dispenser. Trouble is, you will have to change the blades three times for a single shave because they appear to be increasingly making them of cardboard. And they will cost £15 each.

We at bloggoth think we need a whole new approach. This is another area where genetic research and animal cloning could come in useful. Why not develop tiny sheep with a taste for human hair? When you go to bed at night you could sprinkle a packet of these mini sheep on your face and their grazing would ensure you woke up in the morning with a nice smooth chin.

More idiocy of religion - about 96 at least

A couple of years back a Google survey found that of the top 10 countries searching for sex-related sites, six were Muslim. Now New Scientist reports a study that shows that the most religious states in the US are the ones that view the most porn.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election...six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed.

If you put obstacles in the way of normal human desires for irrational reasons then people are going to find a way round them.

Colour of politics

Nurse M at the Gimcrack has posted a link to a gay site. What a lot of pink! The site background that is, not the nice gentlemen's bumholes. Why do gays like pink so much?

Actually, gays are not alone in having website schemes that are typical of their viewpoint. Have you noticed how far right websites always have large bold bright red text on a black background? Strange how white supremicists like black and red so much. Less surprising, Marxist sites like red too but it tends to be around the edges and on the banners (a bit like The Sun bizarrely) the main text is conventional black on white. Nutty Christian websites tend to use bold coloured text on a dark background too but they are a bit more varied, the vengeance of the lord is bright green and blue!

We at bloggoth were watching a fictionalised prog on the last days of Margaret Thatcher with the missus, trying to recall all the names of the ministers at that time. After the nth vodka(his)/whisky(hers) this blurred somewhat into trying to remember the names of the twelve apostles and that in turn blurred into the names of the Wombles of Wimbledon. It's a natural mistake to make.

Margaret Thatcher presides over her last cabinet meeting

The list grows again

The German Finance minister, the IMF, the French president, now the head of the FSA says {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} is an incompetent arsehole and much to do with the current situation in Britain.

Wouldn't it be great if he woke up tomorrow and realised he was an incompetent arsehole and shot himself through the head? On second thoughts perhaps not; led by someone like Darling, whose incompetent arseholeness has not yet been revealed to the public, this band of leftist know-nothing overgrown student radicals just might win the election.

Gosh, that is interesting

We have recently had news that the government is to pay someone £3 billion a month or something to tell them how to use social networking sites like Twitter.

No 10 already has a Twitter site. Gripping stuff. Maybe they aren't so stupid, totally destroy the concentration and intelligence of Britain's children with a rigid boring school curriculum and overtesting then program them with tiny sound bites suited to their gnat-like attention span. How long before stuff like "PM has been in Scotland visiting a factory" gives way to "Today our glorious and beloved leader saved his people from their enemies"?

Anyway, it is plain that we at bloggoth are making our posts much too long although, being mostly in the grip of can't be arsedness, we make them shorter than those of most of the coven. From now on all our items will be twitter style:

10.42 Scratched our arse
10.56 Read paper. When will that Lawrence women shut up about her son?
11.13 Had a cup of coffee
12.48 Scratched our arse again
13.15 Had lunch. We had burnt beens on toast.

Hey, we bet you are as excited by this as we are, non-existent readers! Be sure not to miss the next exciting episode!

Spoiled that one

The inflation rate in Zimbabwe now stands at a staggering 261 million per cent per annum. We had a great idea for an item about how you could put a farmer's clock back 5 minutes while he wasn't looking and buy his produce for half what it was worth, then go and put a shopkeeper's clock forward 5 minutes while he wasn't looking and sell it for twice what it was worth. One could make a fortune!

Darn! It's surprising what raising something to the power of 365 will do. An inflation rate of 261 million per cent per annum is only just over 4% a day!

Look 'ere third world, if you must have all these self-inflicted tragedies you can at least do them in such a way as to amuse we at bloggoth.

Oh dear, what a shame!

Lord Ahmed goes to jail. But not for nearly long enough in our view. It is quite true that the chap is no Islamist "fanatic" and has spoken out against Islamic extremism but nevertheless he is one of the growing band who seeks to impose the irrational dictats of his backward religion on us all and override our hard won rights to individual freedom and free speech with ill concealed threats. We at bloggoth loathe him.

There is something we do not understand here. He was driving dangerously and someone died as a direct result of his collision. Why is that "dangerous driving" and not "Death by dangerous driving"?

From this guide "Death by dangerous driving" carries a maximum sentence of 14 years and is defined as "a person who causes the death of another person by driving a mechanically propelled vehicle dangerously on a road or other public place". The maximum sentence is rarely imposed but aggravating factors that tend towards a higher sentence include "Driving while the driver's attention is avoidably distracted, e.g. by reading or by use of a mobile phone". Texting, especially for us older sorts who have not yet evolved the texting thumb and whose eyesight is no longer so good at quickly focusing between near and far objects, is a darn site more distracting than just talking on a mobile.

In this very similar case a woman got 21 months. It was said that Ahmed's texting was not a factor in the crash but then that appears to be true for that woman also, she is decribed as having the accident "shortly after" the call. Maybe the main aggravating factor in her case was not to be a Muslim Peer.

It seems the bastard is to appeal against even this derisory sentence. Can anyone explain it?

Rigging the rules to justify the theory

The BBC TV news had more about Eastern European workers leaving and the tightening of rules for other migrant workers. Naturally, they found some employers to complain about how difficult it is to find UK nationals to do the job. One was running an activity centre for young people, another a home for the elderly. For these jobs UK nationals would have to provide good references and undergo a CRB check.

Migrants do not provide CRB checks or at least not ones that cover the time before they became UK residents. It seems likely that qualifications and references from some countries would be difficult to check, so are they being checked or even asked for? The fact that care homes are even taking on illegal migrants suggests not. How many of those who do have a work permit have supplied false diplomas, references and cvs?

Before it is reasonable to bang on about migrants doing the jobs the British don't want to do we should have a level playing field and allow the same laxity with respect to UK workers as we apparently do for foreign workers. Next time your care home needs a carer or your activity centre needs someone to instruct children, why not just take the first British citizen that wanders in off the street, no questions asked? We are sure you will fill your vacancies in no time.

At last a bit of good news

Great that Slumdog Millionaire has won an Oscar. It is rare that we at bloggoth and Mrs we at bloggoth both enthuse over a film, not many historical costume dramas with lots of zombies get made unfortunately. Not just British made but British funded too, the first time in decades. We need a bit of cheering up when our economy, and what is left of our nation, is fast going down the drain.

Residents getting ready to celebrate the film's success in Blackburn

A touch of sanity

As we said a while back, for all the sleeze allegations, Peter Mandelson is one of the saner members of this government and therefore one of the few that we at bloggoth deign to refer to by their proper name. He plans to axe some of the daft leftist measures like enhanced maternity leave pushed for by the more typically loony members. As one commenter on that article puts it "You know it's a bad idea if Harriet Harman is behind it"

Another inconvenient truth?

Diabetes is rising fast due to increasing levels of obesity. Not surprising, obesity has more than tripled in twenty years. Absolutely nothing to do with high immigration rates and the fact that diabetes in ethnic minority communities is 4-6 times higher than it is in white communities of course not, shame on you non-existent readers for mentioning it, we at bloggoth would never mention it. The health figures for hypertension, heart disease, strokes, renal failure, TB, HIV and breast cancer should not be mentioned either. All down to marginalisation and discrimination even if the figures were true. Which of course they aren't. Bad hospital studies, bad dog, bad!

Quantitative easing

Apparently money does not have represent any real value any more so the government is to allow us to print our own. You can't use the queen's head (not that us rabid republicans would want to) or the name "Bank of England" as they are copyright but other than that anything that is recognisably a currency note is legal tender.

We at bloggoth just knocked up this superb bit of currency using our own portrait and we think it is simply splendid. If the off licence will not give us a bottle of vodka and some change in exchange for three of those we shall demand to know why.

Evolution in the internet age

Real sex is horribly bad for you. According to some scare story we read the other day about 3/4 of my liberated generation have some sexually transmitted virus that gives you cancer. Then there's the population problem, we need more people in our overcrowded world like a hole in the head. There is a lot to be said for us all staying locked in our bedrooms and interacting, sexually and otherwise, with other humans only via the internet.

The use of webcams for a spot of gratification is not unknown but given the acceptability of sex toys and the popularity of the Wii we at bloggoth are surprised that the next development in online sex has not happened yet. Where are the USB sex toy plug ins that can be operated by someone else via the internet for mutual gratification?

The only fear we at bloggoth have is that nature is so powerful. When an environment changes it is not long, geologically speaking, before nature evolves new strategies and adaptations so that life can carry on.

Virus

Panic! When we turned on the PC this morning our AVG anti-virus alert popped up. Ah! Phew! as far as threats to the PC are concerned this is a false positive. We don't blame AVG Technologies, it's a very easy mistake to make.

Political correctness can be quite funny

Bah! We went to watch South Park last night and the missus had decided she was going to watch Question Time. We do hate her at times, the only thing in her favour is that her arse gets bigger every week. This week's program came from Peckham where some ghastly female minister, Jacquie Harriet Hilary Hazel Smith Harman Benn Blears I think it was, famously remarked that she did not feel safe in the streets there.

The topic of crime in Peckham was raised in the last question and it was hilarious watching these people trying to think of a comment on street crime in Peckham without MENTIONING IT. Talking about the terrible rise in youth fatalities on London's streets without MENTIONING IT. Taking comments from a typical Peckham audience without MENTIONING IT.

Michael Heseltine came close to MENTIONING IT once but ever the consumate political professional managed not to.

Image from Financial Times

OK we admit it, bloggoth gives you cancer

Is there any damn thing that is good for you? Now Facebook gives you cancer. Actually, bloggoth gives you cancer, a hunchback and piles but we don't care as we don't like you much anyway.

Anyway, why are people so crap at things these days? St Simeon Stylites lived up a pillar for 37 years and he didn't get much media attention. David Blaine lives up a pillar for 36 hours and everyone seems to think it's a big deal. We at bloggoth just spent 35 seconds looking at pictures of pillars on Google. Hurrah, hurrah for bloggoth. We are great.

Illegal?

Old TV sets and so on are illegally finding their way to Africa. Gosh that's awful, if companies operating from Britain are evading the import controls of other countries then our government should certainly cooperate to help put a stop to it.

Except that does not appear to be what is happening. The only laws being broken (or stretched since the dividing line between something resuable and otherwise is not exact) are our own. Empire ended 60 years ago so should it not be up to the governments of Nigeria and other countries affected to set their own safety laws and control what they take in?

Maybe poorer nations have to be a bit more realistic, better a toxic trade that brings a little prosperity than not having that trade at all. If we end the trade what happens to those kids picking over the dump? They will all get decent jobs and be much better off we suppose? Still, that's alright, as long as our consciences are free, problem sorted. Any other decent injustices on telly this week?

A fortune won and lost

We noticed this item about the growing value of rare coins and decided to have a search online to see what our Edward VIII penny was worth.

The first thing we came upon was this.

Edward VIII 1937 Penny

The king who abdicated. None of Edward VIII coinage was issued for general circulation. They are magnificently rare and enormously valuable. The ONLY way for most of us to own one is with this superb PROOF modern strike.

Hey! Brill, we are rich! Waheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Oh hang on. Ours is from British West Africa where they were issued. It's worth a quid.

Quite why we once found a 35BC-5 AD coin from the INDO-SCYTHIAN KINGS of BAKTRIA on the pavement in Purley we have no idea but the loser's loss was our gain. That's worth a whole 60 quid or would be in better nick.

Iran to test fire huge shoe capable of hitting the US

bloggoth has learned that Iran will shortly be test firing a rocket powered shoe with a potential range of over 7,500 miles. The shoe is a potent symbol of contempt in the Arab world and in Iran and observers fear that the Iranians, who have refused to allow proper inspections of their shoe stockpiles, could launch a first strike on the West.

bloggoth could not find a government official in the UK or the US willing to comment at the present time but an unofficial source said that NATO governments were stockpiling what we in the west regard as insulting and degrading objects and that Trident submarines may already have been loaded with suitable cargos. Any Iranian shoe strike would be met by an overwhelming response of skidmarky underpants.

Don't take any notice of us

It has to be admitted that many bloggers, although not us as bloggoth of course, are rather barking when it comes to being critical about government. We sit in front of our keyboards and moan about this or that when we really do not have the information that they have or any particular expertise in economics, crime or whatever else it is we are moaning about.

The big problem with this government is that even those who do have that expertise and experience think they are crap. It is not just Mr Ranty Blogger who says their economic policy is crap but the the heads of major conglomerates, the German chancellor, the IMF and the French president. It is not just Mr Ranty Blogger who thinks their control of immigration and specifically their control over extremists is crap but our European partners and the governments of the US and Saudi Arabia. Now it is not just Mr Ranty Blogger who thinks we have become a police state, a former head of MI5 has said so. Are we to believe that governments have been appointing unbalanced people as heads of our security services?

Getting back to us barking bloggers, are we all really so ignorant? We may not have had careers in politics and we may not have degrees in economics or criminology or whatever other field we comment on but many of us are intelligent, well educated and logical and we have eyes. Most of us have also had real long careers that give us some appreciation of commercial reality. Time and time again when it comes to ministers in this government you find that they have very little experience of anything at all outside of politics. Does an extended period as a student and 5 years as a journalist or lawyer really give you enough experience to run a country?

It is also true that many of us are/were rather leftist and idealistic when young. It is easy to believe we should be tackling every supposed injustice in the world when it is not us who have to pick up the bill and the downsides of our actions can conveniently be ignored. But should we not have grave reservations about the wisdom and judgement of someone who was once a member of a Trotskyite International Marxist Group like chancellor Alistair Darling? Idealism and inexperience are understandable but that suggests an inability to think coherently at all. And can we assume he has fully abandoned those beliefs?

Is it possible that us nasty uninformed bloggers are actually right? That this government really is the most incompetent, corrupt and ideologically malicious of any that most of us have ever seen?

Sort of ok ish

We at bloggoth have generally given up commenting on additions to the coven. In the past we have enthused on some (or at least got as near to enthusing as us miserable old bastards can) only to decide that actually they were crap. The Devils Kitchen, Guido Fawkes, Ranting Stan, Pooter Geek, Harry's place and others have held a coven spot for a whle before they were removed for being crap. There were others like They Will Devour Us and that atheist one whose name escapes us at the mo that we always liked but they just died the death and had to be buried. (Like Mr C if he does not get his finger out soon)

Still, we have to admit that the latest addition, Stop Hitting Me Officer is a quite tolerable mix of silliness and rantiness. We trust that is sufficiently lukewarm to avoid invoking the bloggoth kiss of death. Collossal output too, keep it up MR SHMO.

PS Ain't you got a job to go to?

Trouble is, we don't believe a word you bastards say anymore

Talking of stop hitting me etc. he has recently done a good thingy about the latest so called anti terrorist measures that make it potentially an offence to film the police. Which is good as we cannot be arsed.

The London Daily news also covers this in some depth here. As usual we have blithe assurances that these measures will only be used against terrorists.

For the offence to be committed, the information would have to raise a reasonable suspicion that it was intended to be used to provide practical assistance to terrorists.

Taking photographs of police officers would not, except in very exceptional circumstances, be caught by this offence.

Right, it's not as though the anti terrorist laws have ever been used by local authorities to check on householder's use of bins or whether parents of schoolchildren are abusing catchment area rules is it?

On the related issue of the videos police take at even peaceful demonstrations:

Scotland Yard insists photos are taken in a non-intimidatory way, and would be destroyed shortly after the event.

Just like the DNA from innocent people including children you mean?

Another tragedy of global warming

We at bloggoth love nature programs, we like Polar Bears and other little animals (except cats) much more than horrible people.

If only they would stop eating each other. If Polar Bears feel peckish why must they kill those nice little seals? why can't they open a packet of biscuits or something? Same with seals and those nice little fish, if they opened a packet of biscuits instead they would not have to dive into that freezing water. Some may say this is getting silly, what could the fish eat instead of little prawns and things as biscuits would go all soggy? It does not have to be biscuits obviously, something else, a packet of mixed fruit might be more suitable in some circumstances. Healthier too.

We digress. We watched a Richard Attenborough thing on Polar Bears in the Arctic yesterday. The diminution of sea ice is causing the Polar Bears great hardship as they cannot hunt for seals. (Another good argument for biscuits) What we noticed more than anything else, because it is shamefully apparent on these huge white creatures, is that they can no longer afford toilet paper! Their arses were a disgrace and we have little doubt that these magnificent animals are deeply ashamed at being shown on TV with such shitty arses because of man's terrible treatment of the planet we live in.

Please send £10 or whatever you can to the usual address at xoggoth Towers so we can buy Polar Bears toilet paper so they can once again hold their heads high on nature programs.

A picture of a polar bear taken before global warming Here we see the tragic effects of global warming for bears who can no longer afford toilet paper

Ah well, so you did it - Damn fools 2

So Chavez has his way.

Mr Chavez had said he needed to stay in office to secure what he called "Venezuela's socialist revolution"
One of the first to congratulate him was his major foreign supporter, that well known democrat Fidel Castro.
His proposal had been rejected previously but the decision of the people was not good enough for him.
To secure the right result this time round he had brought up favour by allowing mayors and governors to run indefinitely also. So it begins.
According to that Guardian article state TV networks cheered for the "si" and civil servants were sent out to canvass.

There were a few clues there Venezuelans, pity some of you missed them. Not that we would blame you entirely, too many damn fools here in the UK and in Europe are missing those clues too.

Damn fools

Human nature never improves one iota and those who desire total power will never disappear. It is fortunate that few would-be dictators, other than in the most backward nations, have the following to take over a country in a single coup and roll over any opposition. It has to be done by a gradual process of deception, taking power a little at a time, representing each new law as being in the best interests of the people, buying up support and marginalising the opposition by smears and deceptions.

It is only the rules and laws of society, made by a few leaders with principles and the greater number who vote for reduced powers for government simply because THEY are not the ones in power, that make it difficult for would-be dictators. It is hard to remove those laws without the intentions becoming entirely apparent.

There is good reason to limit the number of terms any leader may serve even when an election must be won before each term, it makes it more difficult for future elections to be influenced by a gradual bias in the state apparatus. When most of the senior figures in the judiciary, the police, the civil service and the armed forces all owe their appointment to one man in one party then democracy may become very fragile indeed. The US and many other countries have the sense to realise it. In our own sad apology for a democracy with so few formal checks on an overpowerful government it is only our traditions that save us from a formal dictatorship if not from the contempt they show for us.

The damn fools? Venezuelans, if they vote yes.

Yeh but

We see that {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} has mentioned scrapping final salary pensions for MPs. He needs to do it for all but the lowest paid public sector workers to make a real difference but it's a good start.

Or would be, because we all know New Labour. Cutting business red tape, reducing welfare, controlling immigration, reforming the lords, whatever damn thing you can think of that makes sense is never actually carried out. This initiative will lead to a) a meaningless change that ends up costing at least as much or b) another long winded enquiry timed to conclude after the next election. In the unlikely event he wins it will be quietly shelved.

We at bloggoth make a pledge. If a substantial reduction* in the costs of MPs' pensions ever happens under a Labour government led by {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff} we will start referring to him politely as "The prime minister" or his actual name instead of {Lying Scottish C* ... Brownstuff}.

We think we are pretty safe on that one.

*Newly retiring MPs going away with no more than 10% above the average private sector pension for executives on the same salary with the same period of employment as confirmed by independent surveys, ie not a 20% decrease announced by a commons committee in an unreleased report which turns out to be a 20% reduction on an 80% projected increase.



Cor! this wine is nice, think I'll have a bit more of this	We'd better go for a stroll dear, you need to try and walk it off before the do	Quick dear, get up, the press are watching



The ballroom scene from the remake of "Pride and Predudice"		"Hitler's Last Days" made in Zimbabwe



A picture of a polar bear taken before global warming		Here we see the tragic effects of global warming for bears who can no longer afford toilet paper

HOME PAGE

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Page 28

The ramblings of an old git

It might catch on

Government to ban hot cross buns for fear of offending Muslims

Commenty boxy thing

Is the Home Secretary a real person?

Brill

Step in the right direction

Just a thought

Impressive

Hear, hear

Told you that too

Told you so

We recommend it to the house

Note

More wonderful proofs of Islam

Now even Guardian readers think he is an utter arse

An absolute proof of the existence of an afterlife

Ten common assertions on Islam

Wake up

Selective Science

Papal bullshit

Images from photobucket

Yet more joys of the Haddiths

The evils of drink

Yet more joys of Islamic law

Better idea

Yet more joys of the Haddiths

Quick, where's that recipe for TATP?

bloggoth exclusive - British recession caused by Californian raisins

Guilt is good

Nearly every time

Stop pandering to this waste of space

Me too

Coincidence?

More joys of the Haddiths

We thought it looked familiar

This religion truly is awful

The list grows AGAIN

Predudice?

Offshoring and uncontrolled use of skilled migrants is destroying our own skills base

Maybe the paranoids are not so barmy after all

While on the subject

Cameras for all

Agh!!!

Senile ramblings, please ignore

Didn't we tell you we were influential?

Bleedin eck, that's tiny

It's only reality that matters

Damn fools 3

Wouldn't it be great if?

Gay frozen mummy porn

Sorted

Warning - totally tasteless post approaching

Just drop it in 2

Strictly Come Dying

Just drop it in

Great idea, let's run with it and turn it into idiocy

Against Shariah law in the UK

The list grows AGAIN.

Just the start

Scientific breakthrough on stem cell research may endanger millions

Time to isolate these contagions

Why insulate intelligent adults from the consequences of their own actions?

Commenty boxy thing

Was Slumdog a good thing?

Chin sheep

More idiocy of religion - about 96 at least

Colour of politics

The list grows again

Gosh, that is interesting

Spoiled that one

Oh dear, what a shame!

Rigging the rules to justify the theory

At last a bit of good news

A touch of sanity

Another inconvenient truth?

Quantitative easing