Page 46

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

Harvested

The religions of the book, as is laid down in Genesis, regard the world and all its plants and animals as being created solely to support the existence of mankind. Of all the living creatures, it is only man who has a soul and any prospect of salvation. How much logical sense does that make really? If man is the sole purpose, what is the point of all the things, distant comets for example, that don't affect man at all?

Mankind may have a purpose, why else would we exist? He may even have a soul for all we know. It is just that the purpose and the fate of those souls may not be exactly what our self-absorbed species imagines. Salad anyone?

What a bunch of loonies!

It seems some really believe that the world will end on the 21st December because of a Mayan prediction. The real idiocy, as we have seen so many times before, that US preacher last year for example, is that they will still believe in the prophecy on 22nd December.

It's all a conspiracy, we tell you!

We are becoming fascinated by global conspiracy theories and, more and more, we keep seeing little connections that those of lesser intellect and perception would miss. We are working on a great unified conspiracy theory that brings all the others together - 9/11, global warming, giant lizards, the Zionist cabal, the Bilderbergers, paedophile politician rings, er, um, and others. From time to time we will be bringing to the attention of the non existent readers some things that even our hero, the great David Icke, has missed.

Conspiracy theory 1 - household water meters are really government monitors

Back in bloggoth 45 we suggested that government installation of smart meters, water meters etc was a cover for government monitoring and we now have further evidence.

Some blokes from a company named clancydocwra came down our road this week and fitted water meters outside everyone's houses. They are a major UK construction business and we see their vans all the time round here as they do work for the regional water and drainage companies. But what's with that odd name? Their site explains that they were founded by a Michael Clancy in 1958 to undertake ground works, drainage and road works but nowhere does it say where the docwra bit comes from.

A Google finds one Thomas Docwra who, in 1494, was Grand Prior of the English Knights Hospitaller, the most famous of the Western Christian military orders which sprang up during the crusades. So what does this have to do with a modern construction company? Do I think that everything that pops up on a Google search is connected? Of course not, *Note 1 but, if you read that link properly:

As Grand Prior of St John he served on a number of commissions: he was involved with drainage in Lincolnshire, where the order had substantial holdings and was brought in on a commission to investigate irregularities by the Masters of the Mint. He was also connected with the "search for suspicious characters in London" in 1520.

So he was involved with drainage, just like clancydocwra! Is that really just a coincidence? And he was employed by Henry VII, one of England's most dictatorial Kings, to keep tabs on those deemed suspicious! Needless to say, we will be out there tomorrow examining that meter very, very closely.

Note: Well actually I do, that's a part of my all-encompassing conspiracy theory, but my proof is not yet complete.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Never mind all that crap, we are off to Brazil. They have a Miss Bumbum contest!

The French direction

Anyone who who dares to mention the realities about some migrants and ethnic minorities, like this lady, will get condemned as racist or Islamophobic. Is she telling the truth about the welfare dependency of UK Muslims? It would seem so from this government report based largely on the 2001 census. What's that, that page is not found? It used to exist because I kept these snippets:

Welfare: In 2000/01 Pakistani and Bangladeshi households in Great Britain were more reliant than other groups on social security benefits which made up nearly a fifth (19 per cent) of their gross income.

Employment: Bangladeshi men and women had the highest unemployment rates at 20 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. In 2001/02 just over 40 per cent of Bangladeshi men aged under 25 were unemployed compared with 12 per cent of young White men.

Acheivement: In 2001/02, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were the most likely to be unqualified.

Health: After standardising for age, Pakistani/Bangladeshi men and women were three to four times more likely than the general population to rate their health as bad or very bad.

Ah well, pages do get moved don't they? Or perhaps there are some more up to date figures. Nope! If there any statistics left on the ONS website relating to the relative performance of ethnic groups we can find no trace of them whatever. After a long search elsewhere, we did manage to find this link that appears to summarise what used to be in that ONS report. It seems we have to rely on Wikileaks to get the truth on immigration now. Will the ONS publish any unnaceptable truths from the 2011 census when (if) they are available? Don't hold your breath. The one world lunatics will love it if the only facts that counter their nonsense come from The Daily Mail and right wing bloggers, so much easier to dismiss out of hand.

We seem to be heading in the French direction. France forbids publication of any suggestion that crime or other problems are related to ethnicity. That might make sense if it reduced resentment and delivered a more stable society but the opposite appears to be true. France has seen more severe and more frequent riots than we have seen in the UK, there was one just a few months back and they were not mainly by White Frenchmen, even the BBC alludes to France's marginalised youth, "many of North African origin" in that article. The far right has also been much more successful in France than in the UK, getting 18% of the first round vote at the last election.

Governments can try and suppress the truth about immigration but people know it. They can see the names and faces behind too many of the crimes reported in local papers. If those are banned they will still see what is happening around them, who is living in the council houses and who is filling up the hospital waiting rooms. If they or those they know get mugged or have their pockets picked, they will know who is doing it. Maybe individual perceptions and word of mouth are worse, look at the ethnic conflicts around the world in countries where few have access to any form of media. In the absence of a true picture, people are likely to overestimate a problem.

Secrecy acheives nothing. We keep saying it but if governments really want to reduce racism they need to act on the facts and start tackling genuine concerns.

Keep on believing your crap

Old Bellusconi got a lot of flack a few years ago for daring to suggest there was no compatibility between Islamism and democracy. We can understand Muslims doing that, even those who are not liars and propogandists, for who does not have a blinkered and rosy view of their own culture, politics or religion? Who will not tend to defend it against outsiders? What we cannot understand is the non-Muslims who parrot this crazy notion of tolerant Islam when it bears no relation to what is happening in the world. Look at what, totally predictably, is happening in Egypt. Are they f* blind or what?

A referendum sounds very democratic but the Egyptian people can only decide between adopting an undemocratic draft constitution that makes Islamic law the main source of legislation or carry on with their future in the hands of an Islamist president who has already ruled that his decrees may not be challenged. It is quite likely that he may not be too heavy handed until the takeover of the "Arab Spring" by the Muslim Brotherhood is complete because the facade of moderation (by Islamic standards) is an important part of their strategy. Once that happens we will see what that they really are. It is time some people woke up.

We feel sorry for the Christians and others, including many Muslims, who had high hopes for secular states and real democracy in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East but we are even more concerned for the future of Europe. If it is not already too late, we need to stop the growth of this lunatic creed in Europe, crack down on any further immigration from Muslim countries and halt the welfare-fuelled expansion of the Muslim population. If we don't, the future of our own secular, democratic societies is truly numbered.

Gettin ranty

Looking at a previous bloggoth page and our commentary on the news was all so much more light-hearted back then. We must be getting more and more of a miserable old sod as we age. Or are we just reacting, like others, to a world and especially a Britain, that is getting steadily more ridiculous and miserable? Today's BBC main news items for England are:

2 killed and 800 made homeless by floods
Staff disciplined over failures to stop child grooming in Rochdale (rant!)
Protest march in Blackburn over Gaza by the Muslim Defence League(rant!)
Racist tweets by football fans
Football manager dies
11 YO girl raped in park (RANT!!!!!)
Dead man found in river
Cyclist killed by Porsche
Actress dies
Murder arrest after body found
Man impaled on table leg
Charges after naked statue climb

Not much silliness anyone would want to make about most of those, except perhaps the last. Getting his tackle out after climbing a statue of The Duke of Cambridge, must be a joke there surely - here comes some bloggoth silliness of old, hey! wait a minute! He deliberately damaged this Grade II listed statue and he's a Ukranian! F* foreign criminals! RANT, RANT RANT!

Ok, it will have to be the table leg incident. We really must applaud the BBC for its reporting. Here is the report in the Guardian that quotes the ambulance service spokesman

This was a very delicate incident to deal with and our crews, a critical care paramedic and Hart operatives...

Here is the BBC's version:

A man has been rescued in a "delicate incident" after he became impaled on a table leg in his loft in Hertfordshire.

That poor chap! Surely the BBC must know that if a man is impaled in a quote delicate incident unquote everyone will assume he slipped up while attempting to insert the table leg into his arse! He should sue them!

What a fuss over nothing

So a kid is left tied up outside a bookies for a whole 2-3 minutes. Big deal! How does anyone know that she wasn't keeping an eye out for the kid anyway? I recall a worse incident in a high street when I had to stop a pram that was running away down the hill and heading for the road.

Doing something useful

Was in the shed fetching some logs for the fire when the missus called down that someone from the local police station wanted to speak to us. Fear not non existent readers, they haven't found out about our pig-oriented Jimmy Saville type activities (yet), it was about an application to be a search volunteer we made back in March; apparently some resignations and lack of a team leader had put the whole thing on hold for months. Excellent. We like roaming the countryside so, as with our footpath inspector thing, we are quite happy to also be doing something useful that saves the ratepayers a bit of money.

Although we don't agree with the idea mooted last month that the retired should be obliged to do volunteer work or lose state pension (unless they are useless sorts who did not pay enough NI to fund it) we do think that this sort of volunteer work should be actively encouraged. Let's hope this aspect of Camoron's Big Society turns out to be a lot more than hot air. Most people, even uncaring bastards like we at bloggoth, would be happy to do things they like doing or even the occasional thing they didn't, like driving old people to the shops, but there obviously needs to be some organisation of such schemes and some proper checks of the volunteers.

Going back to the search team. If someone goes missing round here, should we mention that old well in the woods that's hidden under a mass of brambles, the one that nobody else we have spoken to locally seems aware of? Hmmm. But if they did find a body there and I was the only one who seemed to know about it? Perhaps we won't mention it. Anyway, that's reserved for the missus.

Where will it end?

Not a week goes by without news of some medical discovery concerning modification or transfer of cells. Just this week we have read of dogs being partly cured of paralysis with cells taken from their noses. Genetic transfers occur between different species too, and I'm not talking Welshmen/sheep here, but the natural proces of horizontal gene transfer that is responsible for much of the spread of drug immunity among unrelated bacteria. Some of those processes, infection by viruses or introduction of foreign material, would seem to apply to higher animals too.

Interesting if the scientists came up with some genetic modification to faciliate this transfer so they could cure someone with DNA from another species and that then escaped into the wider natural world. If all species started inadvertently swapping DNA as easily as bacteria do.

Religion is utter crap. Let's root it out

It seems the CofE have voted against women Bishops. No great surprise there, what is amazing is that we still allow irrational religion to be a get-out from all the equality laws that apply to the rest of us.

Why should us atheists pay tax when religions can claim charitable status for expenditure which has nothing to do with charity? Why should our taxes fund their schools that exclude others and indoctrinate children with irrational drivel? Why should laws that affect us all be subject to decisions by bishops in the House of Lords?

Sinking into a sea of aburdity

It is absurd that nobody should be able to even mention a name that practically everyone already knows from the internet. Surely the whole point of having libel laws is to protect the innocent. What purpose do they serve when such protection has already flown out of the window?

Now Sally Bercow is in trouble again for naming the British runaway schoolgirl who went to France with her teacher lover last month. That's right, the one whose name was in all the papers for weeks. WTF? Now a well known name that was widely and freely reported in the mainstream press without any restriction whatever just a week ago cannot be named? Can any lawyers among the non-existent readers of bloggoth explain the logic of that? We can't see any.

Starting to feel rather sorry for Bercow, she is a victim of a self-serving and supremely illogical establishment. Not to mention money wasting, as she may be investigated for this last lapse. Funny how the police can always find time for nonsense like this while so many serious allegations appear to go uninvestigated.

Economic myths

Looking at comments about foreign firms who pay litle or no tax and it seems to me that there is no grasp among those responsible for our economy of just what an economy is. In particular, they fail to realise that simply because a business makes a profit or employs people, that does not mean it is of any benefit to the UK.

We would certainly not be wise to drive out the likes of Google or Amazon which have become an intrinsic part of our market economy but what actually is the point of Starbucks? It pays little tax, it does not provide its British employees with skills they can't easily get elsewhere, it provides no useful expertise, goods or services to other British companies and, if it was shut down, its staff could find jobs at other coffee shops that would soon expand or start up to replace it. The demand for coffee shops is pretty constant.

Equally, with this daft idea of migrants doing jobs that the British "don't want to do" Actually, too many of those jobs should not be done at all, like those in all those little ethnic restaurants that are empty much of the time and probably barely break even. If they and their workers don't make a substantial contribution to our tax system, if they don't even employ British people, what use are they? Look at any basket-case third world economy, there are lots of little businesses that scratch a living and employ people but would anyone seriously argue they would benefit us if they and their owners and workers were transported to the UK?

Competition is only good when it is between high performing companies who strive to provide a better service than the other. Just adding more and more indifferent little strugglers that each take a little business from the good ones is not positive at all.

Pennywort and Islam etc

Just watching a bit of BBC Country File. Apparently, the imported aquatic weed Pennywort is a major problem, it's clogging our waterways, pushing out native plants and preventing necesary migration of our native fish. Clearance costs us tens of millions of pounds a year.

This is not unusual - the reduction in numbers of our White-Clawed Crayfish by the the larger Signal Crayfish, the near extinction of our native Red Squirrel by the Grey Squirrel, the choking of our ponds by New Zealand Pondweed, the spread of Rhodedendon and building-damaging Japanese Knotweed and many other instances are very expensive. Trying to counter the impact on our native species by foreign imports is estimated to cost the British economy £1.7bn a year. Worldwide, there is a huge problem with introduced species, the best known examples being the rat, the rabbit and the Cane Toad which have profoundly affected the ecologies of countries into which they have been introduced.

We are not supposed to mention it but there's a corresponding people problem too, the threat to British culture by imported backwardness. We did once seem to be heading in the direction of sanity, towards a more tolerant, secular and democratic society. Then, just as we did with with pondweed and squirrels, we threatened all of that progress by poorly-controlled, mass introduction of foreign species, the backward, barbaric nonsense of Islam, Evangelical Christianity, Witchcraft and Catholicism, not to mention huge crime and other social problems. The cost of tackling Islamic terrorism (approximately £3.5 billion in 2010 - up 350% in 9 years) alone makes the problem of American Crayfish look trivial by comparison.

Our sympathies go out to you, little Crayfish and Squirrels, we know how you feel.

Some rich and powerful men are shit

Whoever actually started these paedophile stories or posted new allegations should have to defend their comments but for a very wealthy individual to sue someone, some very ordinary person who may not be too bright and simply referred to an allegation made elsewhere, something they may have immediately removed, something that, in many cases, will not have been read by anyone, is utterly despicable. Any sympathy many might have had for this bastard for being the subject of such damaging allegations will have entirely evaporated in light of this behaviour.

Various allegations are still online and some claim they have evidence they can use in court. We do have reservations about the motivation of some of these sources as there are definite hints of anti-semitism. Nevetheless, if those sources are sued and, so far, we have not seen anything to indicate it, we would be most pleased if the evidence they claim to have proves convincing. Some people really deserve to be taken down.

Hmmmmmm

It's Children in Need tonight and there are various children with obvious disabilities participating. Maybe it's just coincidence or the BBC and other news channels are being selective, but there is something we have been noticing for a long time - children with Cerebral Palsy, Downs Syndrome and other real problems often seem to be a darn sight more articulate than many kids we see on TV. The speech may be slow or slurred but they stick to the point and say what they want to say quite concisely. You don't get the long pauses, you know, erm, like, that fill the sentences of "normal" kids.

Assuming this is an accurate observation what does it tell us? Certainly, kids with identifiable problems will have a lot of individual attention and help to overcome them and we can't afford such individual attention for everyone. But is individual attention really necessary? If you are drumming something important into a kid, does it really make any difference if 10 more, 20 more or 40 more are all hearing the same thing? There were a few low acheivers in my primary school but we don't recall any who could not speak decent English. There was another school nearby with a very poor reputation but we recall encounters with some of its pupils and they were uncouth or bullying but never innarticulate like so many kids now seem to be.

Maybe the more rigid educational methods we had then, making kids learn by rote, worked a damn site better than "inspiring" them and all the other crap we do now. Children are animals, nature provides them with the means of survival and nothing more. To make them really human, to enable them to participate in thousands of years of human development, we first need to mould them into humans before we start handing them freedom.

This child abuse thing

This thing about child abuse is getting so wide it becoming clear that it is abnormal not to have done it. It is those of us whose only experience of underage shenagigans was playing doctors and nurses behind the garden shed when we were 6 who are clearly the perverts. We recall being obsessed with bottoms then too. We met up with the girl in question - a cousin by adoption (and now a mature woman obviously) just 10 years ago. We would have loved to have taken her behind the shed for old time's sake and see how much it had grown but missus bloggoth was with us at the time. Damn!

Being remembered

Various Twitterers, or is that Twits?, are getting sued for comments. Can't stand the woman but not quite sure quite why Bercow is being sued for a vague allusion when there are still some far more explicit and much worse allegations available online.

The IMPORTANT question is, unless it's about promoting a business, why do people use Twitter at all? A useful thing about a blog, even if it's one nobody reads like bloggoth, is that it allows one to summarise one's own views in a coherent fashion, especially for us misfits for whom the written word is a more important form of communication than actually talking to people. For some reason we have always found that writing something down allows us both to sort things out in our mind and to remember them. We found this back in exam days, we had umpteen pages of notes that we never bothered to look at as we didn't need to, just writing them down made us remember them in a way that reading text books did not. But what purpose do banal comments on Twitter serve?

Hang on though! We see that (according to the DM anyway) even deleted comments are archived by the US Library of Congress for historical reasons. That means somebody in 200 years time might see that we "Had a great sandwich for lunch" or "Really enjoyed last night's Come Dancing". Wow!!! It isn't quite being Shakespeare but is there any better way for us nonentities to live on in history? How do we sign up?

They are real. Here is the proof.

Icke and his Giant Lizards, L Ron Hubbard and his Thetans. Two men who made a fortune from peddling strange ideas involving aliens. Good for them, religion is just entertainment. George Lucas made a fortune from Star Wars - what's the difference?

But both are/were quite bright chaps, so should we dimiss their ideas out of hand? Where is the proof that either was wrong? Certainly, we did have our doubts. A major flaw in David Icke's theory about the world being run by a single clique of giant lizards is that there is no such unity at the top. There are huge differences between the Conservatives/Republicans/nationalists/capitalists on one side and the Labour party/Democrats/socialists/Communists on the other. It was only when we linked Icke to L Ron Hubbard that it all became clear! Both men are/were partly right but there is not one set of aliens controlling us, but two, and they are fighting for dominance. Secret agents acting for bloggoth have been covertly filming private residences of major political figures for the last six months to catch them in their true form and we now have absolute proof!

PS We would vote Giant Lizard any day. That Thetan looks distinctly poofy.

Not all conspiracy theories are wrong - that's just a conspiracy theory

Some bloggers do seem to be making ridiculous allegations. Just because a high profile figure once visited Saville's home or had a wife that knew somebody on the blogger's suspect list does not make them a paedophile. For all we really know about any but the closest friends, those ideas might make any of us paedophiles. Nevetheless, it is a concern when news stories seem to get rapidly shut down and the retractions don't always seem to make sense; when nobody, including the police or our government, seems to be interested in looking at the wider allegations.

We should not take everything the bloggers say as gospel but, when these are people who can put together very coherent text and are plainly not stupid, we should not dismiss everything they say either. Anyone who believes every conspiracy theory that pops up is daft but so is anyone who dismisses them all out of hand. It does seem curious that all these quite explicit allegations exist and none of those accused appear to want to make a court case out of it.

One high profile commenter is David Icke. Ok, this is the chap who "believes" the world is secretly run by shape-shifting giant lizards or that Satanism lurks behind the scenes but many of his ideas on the self-serving nature of those who run us ring a great many bells. Giant lizards or just selfish, self-serving people like the rest of us, like you and me probably would be if we had the power and the money, it really doesn't matter. What matters are the facts about how they run the world to suit their own interests or their ego-driven ideals and how the rest of us are pawns in their game. It is not all correct or even sensible but if you you want any comment at all on some of the things they get up to by someone who has the wealth and influence not to be cowed into silence like us lesser mortals, someone who never seems to get sued despite being quite a high profile figure, you are likely to find it on the headlines of David Icke's site.

We think he is doing a great job on behalf of the little man. And making a fortune out of it but let's not mention that. Well, actually, we will mention it. If his books weren't so bleeding expensive we might buy them! Maybe he could do some half-price condensed versions with just allegations about government figures and leave out the aliens and Satanism. Anyway, see link at left under our new "Our leaders totally suck" list. Just ignore any lizard stuff if you like.

PS Actually, looking at the way the world is run, we are not so sure that giant lizards are not as good an explanation as any.

Making your ideal world

We have some great dreams. Last night we dreamed that all the world was in big blocks and every block was replaceable from a sort of infinite alternative reality store. If you didn't like what was going on around you, you just swapped it for another block that was more to your liking. Some of us would probably never find one we really liked but it would be great to keep on swapping.

Topic: Making your ideal world Comment here. Comments so far: 0

Going down

Romney is an utter twat, anyone who believes in the idiocy of Mormonism has to have some pretty big screws loose somewhere. Nevetheless, we agree with the principle behind his comment about the ever increasing numbers who depend on the state rather than take responsibility for their own lives and the frightening implication that the growth of such people is excluding the real contributors from any say in the way things are done. The US election result is a disaster for one reason, summed up in the words of Democrat Clinton, "It's The economy Stupid". If you don't get the economy right, if you don't understand the basic factors that make it work, then does anything else matter?

There's that collosal debt that makes even dimwit Bush's look small. How can we go on spending money we do not have in the vague hope that some future surge in prosperity will cover it? In the longer term the obsession with a "fairer society" is even more damaging. The result of destroying incentive was apparent in any comparison of GDP per capita between the West and the USSR before its fall, West Germany (3rd) with East Germany (11th) for example. What is the point of more equality if it means a fall in standard of living for a majority? The idiocy of the leftist emphasis on judging everything by equality is well illustrated by recent news that child poverty is down in the UK:

A fall in income throughout society in tough economic times has meant that thousands of families have been lifted above the poverty line without their circumstances changing at all.

A Scottish minister also came under fire recently for suggesting that only 12% of households actually contribute to Scotland's wealth. That is highly simplistic but there may be a basic truth there for Western nations as a whole. If we could have a detailed audit of everyone in the UK who would be the net contributers? Most obviously the able inventors, engineers, farmers, scientists, businessmen etc who produce and market goods and services we actually need or can sell abroad. But then there's those, not just in the private sector, who enable them to do so by providing all the things that they and their businesses need, doctors, factory workers, shop assistants, dustmen, chefs, lawyers, policemen etc. We even need some of those government "pen pushers" too, proper regulation is necessary for anything to work. But is there a proper balance between the primary contributors and the essential people that support them? Almost certainly not.

It's not simple and it isn't just anyone on welfare who is the problem. The fact that a factory worker who does a full-time useful job still finds it difficult to make ends meet without a council house or tax credits could be blamed on the distortion of our economy by an overbloated state. If his bosses did not have to pay so much tax to pay for handouts they could afford to pay him more in the first place. If goods were not so highly taxed to pay for handouts, he would not need as much income. This is the aspect of the state that is unproductive and wasteful, the whole redistribution of wealth and welfare nonsense that people like Brown and Obama promote. The shear lunacy of it all is illustrated by the fact that those who get various benefits often pay tax because their earnings are above the taxable threshold. Money is taken off them, expensively processed and then given back to them, what little is left after all the admin costs anyway.

Shooting almost everyone at HMRC and the various welfare departments would be a good start towards a sounder economy but there are many, many others whose net contribution is zero or negative. Unfortunately, they all get the vote and, as Romney said, they vote for those who keep the pointless jobs and the handouts coming.

Even more frightening, we keep funding breeding by the least able at the expense of the most able. If Darwin is right, we in the West are heading back into the Primordial soup.

Maybe but

A black former executive has said that the NHS is institutionally racist because only 1% of NHS executives are of BME origin.

That proves what? Only a proper survey that compared like with like would be evidence. How many ethnic minorites in the NHS are fairly recent migrants and/or those who entered at low levels? Are nursing support staff, porters, cleaners or someone with limited experience really likely to be suitable candidates? How many are unsuitable due to poor English, even among the doctors?. Should somebody be put in charge if his subordinates can't understand him?

We keep hearing this stuff about racism but what we never seem to hear is any proper evidence, that properly compares equally qualified and experienced people.

They do what they like

The child abuse scandal that was originally only about Saville gets wider and wider and it's not just the BBC anymore. Allegations of various abuses and cover-ups by major past and current political figures are only hinted at in the mainstream press but names are easy enough to find on the net. Is it true? With regard to any specific individual, who knows? Mistakes and deliberate smears of the innocent do happen and any allegations should be investigated properly before we damn someone.

With regard to the rich and the powerful in general, the answer is obviously yes. If you hand any group the power to serve themselves at the expense of others they will always do so, that's a given fact of human nature. Our problem is that we still allow them to have so much power and privilege. Why do we go on letting our governments cover up unsavoury or inconvenient facts? Secrecy goes far beyond what is needed to protect Britain's interests. Now a minister is defending a secret courts plan which critics claim will be used for more cover ups. They are damn right, nothing new there, look how surveillance measures and the UK-US extradition treaty, supposedly introduced with the main purpose of countering terrorism, have been used far more widely.

The government uses weasely words about the public good and the title of the Justice and Security Bill is pure weasel - who does not want justice and security? You are not supposed to read it! The Intelligence and Security Committee that oversees any operations under the system and reports to parliament is composed of ministers appointed by the PM and can only consider any operational matter if the PM agrees. The committe cannot publish or make any report to parliament that is not first approved by the PM. If any party is excluded from a a secret court their interests must be represented by the attorney general, appointed by, you geussed it, the PM. The Secretary of State (who is appointed by the PM obviously) may issue a certificate banning revelation of sensitive information in court. Sensitive information includes, apart from information held by the intelligence services, anything that the Secretary of State says should not be disclosed.

It is true that such a decision by the Secretary of state can supposedly be challenged in court but I'm afraid we rather got lost at this point. "Proceedings arising by virtue of this section are to be treated as section 6 proceedings for the purposes of sections 7 to 11. (5) Sections 7 to 11 apply in relation to proceedings treated as section 6 proceedings by subsection (4)" etc. We have read quite a few acts of parliament for various reasons and the wording of this one is much more obscure than those dealing with more mundane topics like intellectual property or tax law and maybe that's deliberate. Would most of our MPs understand what it all means?

This act, like every other that I can find, allows the Secretary of State to modify the bill under statutory instrument and these changes can become law without a debate or a vote. They can be annulled by parliament in their entirety but cannot be altered. To oppose a new clause, a principled MP could have to expend a lot of effort in canvasing support, create enemies in his own party, jepardise his career and defeat any other aspects of the change he agreed with.

This is legislation by default, law making via apathy. Still think we live in a democracy?

What do they think? Do they think?

The film Apocolypse Now has that famous bit where the helicopter goes in for the attack in Vietnam playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

Great piece of music but if I was guiding a drone to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan I would probably play something a bit more down to earth, maybe Fat Bottom Girls by Queen, If You Leave Me Now by Chicago, Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward, Steamy Windows by Tina Turner, Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield or Time to say Goodbye by Brightman and Bocelli. Almost anything really, anything that relates to real human feelings and our need for pleasure, love and all the other emotions that make this strictly limited life worth living. If we could think of any tunes that invoked satisfaction, like that of a woman building a career on the back of her own ability, we would play those too.

Believing in something "beyond" is just as important for some and anyone should be free to do that too, just as long as they don't impose on others. The removal from the world of any who enforce their irrational beliefs in such a violent, intolerant way as these Muslim extremists do is no loss whatever. Just maybe, before we blew those deluded pieces of shit apart, such great music might cause them to grasp a little of the simple pleasures of life they deny to others and reflect on how they have wasted this life due to their nonsensical belief in another.

OI!!

Who this impertinent internet individual who has hijacked the xoggoth name? I see he is on a dating site. He is also younger than me! Bastard!

No wonder

Not a week goes by without news of some racism allegation against a black football player. Equally, not a week goes by without news of some huge benefit fraud perpetrated by Africans, a criminal ring arranging illegal marriages to get UK residence, trafficing of young girls from Nigeria, manipulation and abuse based on belief in witchcraft, another gang-related shooting or stabbing, a rape or mugging in which the perpetrators are black.

Just take this week's story about a bunch of Ugandans who made £4m false benefit claims and brought in illegals. Taxpaying citizens have a right to ask:- WTF are we doing giving benefits to those who are not British or even EU citizens?? WTF are we doing letting in people who are within a million miles of needing benefits in the first place?? WTF are we doing letting them bring in dependent relatives to live at our expense?

Nobody should be abusive to successful people, in football or any other sphere, but when you look at the real problems inflicted on us by excessive and uncontrolled immigration of so many unsuitable people, when you look at how valid concerns have been dismissed as racism for decades, is it any surprise that resentment sometimes boils over and targets the wrong people from the same ethnic group? Why will our government not learn? The impression created by press stories is not a false one, statistics on health, acheivement, welfare and crime by ethnicity show the "black" *Note 1 group is usually at or near the bottom of the heap. What is the point of keeping such data if it is not used to guide immigration policy? Surely it would be sensible, if people from a particular nation do not succeed in this country for whatever reason, *Note 2 to implement better checks on individuals or, if that is not possible, to restrict or halt immigration from it?

Perhaps they imagine things will improve on their own but, looking at an Africa that contains 18 or 19 of the world's 20 poorest nations, *Note 3 where conflicts, HIV, crime and backward beliefs like witchcraft and Evangelical Christianity are so rife, what real hope is there of that in the near future and why should the British be expected to suffer the spill over from such societies?

One thing we can be sure of, from those school statistics and the ethnic makeup of so many London schools, the riots we had last year will be nothing compared to the next lot.

Note 1: It is an idiocy of our governments and others that they will use these blanket categories. They should be collecting stats on specific country of origin and region within that country. Culture, rather than colour, is the main issue.

Note 2: There is no point in discussing underlying reasons on this issue since any logic that does not fit the acceptable viewpoint is ruled not applicable. Occams' Razor is a tool of the Neo Nazis!

Note 3: Some variations in sources but one of the others is always Haiti.

Look on the bright side

Very grey and damp today, so we just went for a run from home rather than drive to our latest map discovery. Feeling energetic, so we went a bit further than usual and were pleasantly surprised to find a little footpath that was unfamiliar. We soon found ourselves back on well trodden ground but it was great while it lasted, there's nothing nicer (nothing not rude anyway) than exploring a new bit of countryside. Maybe, if we end up with Alzheimers in a few years' time it won't be all bad.

God is Google

I was thinking today, Google tracks our location and that's pretty god like.

Maybe computers will get ever more intelligent, eventually liberating themselves from the earthly restraints of electronics and becoming gods. Mankind, thanks to his daft socialist ideals, sinks back into the primordial soup. Then time, (which is circular obviously) brings about another big bang and destroys all evidence of the previous existence. Mankind starts to evolve again and is aided by Google (the name now corrupted to God). Microsoft Windows is the devil obviously, and tries to lure man from the path of righteousness.

Pretty good theory I reckon, anyone want to join my church?

Neo nihilism

We do have the wierdest dreams. Last night we were being driven around in the back of an old jeep somewhere in the Far East, looked like Malyasia or similar. We were one of several volunteers for a UN mission to inspect sites of various massacres and report on the motivations for them. It did not matter what we wrote or why, just writing something on a bit of paper was all that was important. Like most, I just wrote "neo-nihilism" against all of them.

My conscious brain had never heard of neo-nihilism, but having looked it up, I can see I am devout neo-nihilist. I don't believe in morals or values, just realities. That does not mean rejecting all rules for society, those stem from the fact ("these things we hold self evident etc.") that we all have a desire for happiness and it therefore makes sense to cooperate to provide as many of us with it as possible. The essential point is that laws based on facts are not values and there are therefore no laws, no ten commandments, that are inviolable, all are malleable to suit that basic purpose of greatest human happiness.

The religious rail against "moral relativism" but morals make no sense and the very daftest of them are those that are not relative.

Prosthetics in reverse

As the boring paralympics reminded us, man has made great progress in using technology to overcome defects in human bodies. Many people who would once have been severely disabled or dead are getting around with effective artificial limbs, arteries, heart valves, heart pacemakers and metal joints. One chap even has an entirely artificial heart. As science fiction (less boringly) reminds us, there are probably many great developments yet to come in this field, which could even be used to augment functions of the healthy body.

That's all very well but us psychopaths have better priorities. How can we use parts of awful and useless people to cheaply replace, enhance or repair our household appliances?

Well done Lance! Good job Jimmy!

F* cyclists!!! The country roads around here are very narrow and one is always getting stuck behind these buggers. The other day it took about 10 minutes to go a mile behind a bicycling bastard on a one-track lane because there just wasn't the room to overtake safely. You'd think he could have pulled in at one of the many field entrances but no, let everyone wait to suit his hobby. There have been a hell of a lot of them around this year due to an increase in sales following British success at the olympics and the Tour de France. Blast you Pendleton! Damn you Wiggins! On the bright side, the recent findings of the US anti-doping agency regarding Lance Armstrong may do something to tarnish cycling's image and take one or two of the buggers off the road.

There is a bright side to most things. Jimmy Saville's antics and the suggestion that it was all part of the BBC culture have diminished the influence of that organisation, just as the similar shenanigans in the Catholic and CofE churches have done to those. It's never a bad thing to diminish the left or religion. We at bloggoth have received information from our secret sources and can exclusively reveal that senior members of The Labour Party have been indulging in ritualistic cannibalism and that the Unite Union is secretly funded by Al Qaeda who want to destroy the British economy.

Multiculturalism is an idiocy

Black poet Zephaniah warns that black children are being turned off history because they are mainly taught white British history. He may well be right and we don't blame him for being concerned, it is quite normal for any people to want to identify with the culture of their own group and a sense of that culture's history is part of it. But if it's a positive thing for black children to identify with their own kind, shouldn't the same be true of white British children or, under the absurd double standards that usually apply, is that too racist? Why should they have to learn history, in their own country, which has no relevance to them whatever?

How is it practical to teach every child their own cultural history in school? In recent decades there has been such a high level of immigration to the UK from all parts of the world and such an explosion of births among minority groups that if every child had a right to just an hour a week of their own history there would be little time in some schools to teach anything else. Another aspect he seems not to have considered (practicality from a poet may be expecting too much) is that history is not primarily about some abstract concept of "belonging" except to those with a big chip on their shoulders who make a living out of it. Do you "relate" to stories about King Arthur or Cromwell? Me neither. As with art or literature, the main purpose of teaching history in schools is to stimulate interests that make adult life worthwhile. All the real life history that adults can explore, the castles, monuments, battlefields, museums, art galleries etc are mostly to do with British history. We don't have any ancient Hindu temples or Egyptian pyramids and for that reason their own cultural history is much less likely to become a lifelong interest for most members of minority groups unless they can afford to travel a lot.

Multiculturalism is constantly impractical and unworkable. When groups want entirely different things from the state that we all fund, when people have to live in close proximity to others with entirely different views about what is proper behaviour, when they impact each others' lives because of opposing ideas about what British laws and standards should be, it brings nothing but tensions. We used to have a workable version of multiculturalism on a larger scale once but we called it nationalism. Nationalism, like multiculturalism, is about letting people determine their own cultural norms but, unlike multiculturalism, it is practical because they can determine their own laws and standards to affect only themselves.

It is manifestly absurd to constantly compare the workable concept of nationalism to the Third Reich. Tribalism, dictatorships and religious and ethnic divisions within single nations and political or religious differences between large groups of aligned nations have all been causes of atrocities, tensions, wars and conflicts throughout history and yet some choose to single out one period spanning twelve years in the history of one nation to denounce a whole concept. Like any other political idea, nationalism was and is capable of advancement. Let's respect and stop interfering in the cultures of other nations while at the same time preserving our own. Let's all be free to determine the direction of our own societies without imposing on others.

We do agree with Zephaniah's comments on the daftness of our citizenship tests. What any citizenship test should be for, whether it's Brits going abroad or foreigners coming here, is to determine whether the applicant is willing to embrace the culture of his adopted country. Not that that prevents future generations from reverting to their cultural roots it seems.

Maybe we should go back 700 years and start again

Reading a book on the Spanish Inquisition but not got to the heretic torturing bits yet, so far it's about the changes in European society that led up to it and it's an interesting perspective. We all think the renaissance was a great period of human flowering, of free thinking that liberated people from the stagnation of the middle ages but, in terms of human society, was it entirely positive?

Certainly, there was much about middle ages society that we think of as backward, especially the rigid hierarchy in which everyone had their place, from the royalty at the top to the peasants at the bottom, and there was very little anyone lower down could do to better themselves. The peasant worked on land allotted to him by the Lord of the Manor and produced according to his dictat and even his use of common land was closely restricted. Those in other trades could not increase profit by working longer, making a product more cheaply or targetting a specific sector or area because the guilds closely regulated location, working hours, weight, quality, price and means of production and this overregulation stifled progress.

On the other hand, these societies were largely self contained and localised and nobody could even import goods into a town if they competed with local products. Because there was no wider market for surplus goods they tended to produce only as much as they needed and, because there was no surplus money to fund external ventures, they tended to do only what was necessary to protect themselves. Aside from the constant external threat from the Arab world, middle ages Europe was relatively peaceful by comparison with the Renaissance and later eras. What changed the whole thing was what still causes so many of our problems today - capitalism, or, more specifically, the acceptance of interest. Interest, or usury, had previously been the practice of the hated Jews and was frowned upon or even banned in the Christian world. When that changed, people could speculate and gamble on uncertain outcomes and that made a whole load of things possible. International trade increased and a new sort of businessman began to appear, men who refused to accept the rigid strictures of the guilds and whose success was not defined by birth. On the other hand, interest funded other ventures like wars, invasions and occupations, since city states could afford to train armies or buy mercenaries.

The rigidity of middle ages society stifled progress and there was no freedom for most, but, during the good times at least, between the crop failures and the plagues, even the lowly peasant could usually feed himself and his family. He also enjoyed relative stability compared with today's world that seems to be continually changing at a faster rate than most individuals can cope with, a rate driven by the self interests of a rich elite that is as powerful as the kings and barons of yesteryear. We suffer continual economic stress, inflation, booms and busts because our economies function in a way that is divorced from real production, where only profit matters and the attraction of any investment has nothing to do with the real growth or long term economic benefits it can produce but only with the money that can be made. Just as long as you can make a buck by getting in early on the latest bandwagon before everybody else does, read the market and pull out before the bubble bursts, get taxpayers who got nothing from the boom to pick up the bill when it all goes bust, keep on spending and borrowing and hope that some future generations will come up with a solution to your debt. There's a good item from the "lefty" Independent here. I think he has a point.

One can't help feeling that there must be some better middle way between the rigidly imposed hierarchical conservatism of the middle ages, the centralised and always corrupt state control of socialism (with which the middle ages states had a lot in common in practice if not in theory) and the crazy individualistic world of the global free market economy. Maybe we should start by banning interest, sorry, we meant usury.

How about some honesty in adverts

Downton Abbey Doodles

Two separate Issues

We have kept clear of the incredibly boring phone hacking issue until now but the tedious arguments keep dragging on over press control and nowhere have we seen any understanding that there are two quite separate issues here. One is the issue of when, or even whether, the press should be able to publish private details of individuals and that is the more complex part. Our own view is that the mere fact that someone is a celebrity does not mean that everything about them should be in the public domain unless it is in the interests of the public to publish them, examples would be if someone is making a personal fortune from promoting a charity or if a politician (yet again) is being a total hypocrite.

The other issue is surely the question of what methods should be legal to obtain information. As far as we can discover, the maximum penalty for hacking into a website in the UK is 6 months or a £2000 fine or both. Contrast this with the offence of burglary of a private dwelling, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years. In our cyber world where information is as important as physical goods, surely it is high time that data was treated in exactly the same way as any other property? We need a Cyber Burglary law with similar high penalties. Hacking or other theft of or damage to any information, whether databases, emails, recordings, phone calls, paper records etc should all be covered, as should the gathering of information by misrepresentation or by surveillance methods on private property without authorisation of the owner.

That is not to say that someone who hacks a site to post a political message should get 14 years, anymore than a kid who wanders in through an open door and swipes something of minor value should, but it allows for a proper penalty when serious damage is done to a business or individual. High time our Cyber Burglary bill was implemented.

Let′s have a review

The "politically correct, liberal lefty" BBC had a program pointing out some of the downsides of our free and easy attitudes to immigrants with its Panorama program on the costs of what is innacurately called Health Tourism. In fact, the number flying in simply to use our NHS services at the expense of the British taxpayer is dwarfed by the number of resident immigrants, both legal and illegal, who use our services when they are not entitled to do so. This is usually with the fraudulent connivance of those who are themselves immigrants or members of minorities who have not acquired any loyalty to their adopted country.

One thing that kept cropping up in the BBC's interviews is the ridiculous repeated ministerial assertion that Yes, there was a problem and that is why they were having a review. WTF?? We can well understand that some things on this issue are complex and may need detailed consideration and calculation, for example, the level of entitlement that foreigners who have contributed to our national insurance system should get for unexpected health problems. We should certainly not be denying free treatment to a useful non-citizen who has paid many thousands of pounds into our tax system if he has a stroke or gets run over.

But equally, some things are matters of principle that should be decided in a day and implemented in a week! Non EU citizens who have come to the UK voluntarily and have contributed nothing to our National Insurance scheme should not get anything but essential emergency treatment from our health system and should then be pursued for the costs of any such treatment, it was their responsibility to have proper health insurance before they entered the UK. Even if they have paid significant amounts of national insurance, we should not generally be treating people for known pre-existing conditions; those should be disclosed before a long term visa is granted and, unless the person concerned can show they would still be a net asset to the UK despite their health problems, that visa should be denied. Where practical, we should also require health checks for those from areas of the world where major health problems, HIV, TB etc, are common before long term visas are granted. Even for short term visits, those with obvious problems that might require immediate treatment, such as heavily pregnant women, should not be permitted to journey to the UK.

Why is any of this so difficult? With politicians, a review, whether on this issue or others like new Airports, bypasses in the South East England, supplying future energy needs or whatever are just a way of delaying unpopular decisions because they are fearful of damaging their votes with some section of the populace or other before the next election. Left, right, liberal, conservative, what they all have in common is that they have no principle whatever except the desire to get elected.

John Redwood, AKA The Vulcan, makes the main point well in this article. JR may be charmless, but who cares? this is the logical sort of man who should be PM. As an insider to the political system armed with relevant knowledge, he asks the logical question - What is the F* point of denying long term treatment to foreigners in our hospitals if we allow anyone to register with a GP and such registration is then accepted by hospitals as entitlement to long term treatment? Or, as he more politely puts it:

Anna Soubry, the Health Minister, just kept saying to each scandal that they were reviewing the situation. We offered the Health Department a 10 minute rule Bill recently, thanks to Henry Smith MP, which would have helped plug the gap. They declined to adopt it. The Minister had no explanation of why recent guidance has said GPs should offer free registration to anyone who asks, and no answer to hospitals who rely on the fact of GP registration to act as a passport for hospital treatment to which the people are not entitled.

Why not?

Talking bollux keeps the brain active. Me and the missus were following a police van today and it had a sign on the back, DOG SECTION. Naturally we wondered if it was being driven by a dog, which led on to a discussion of whether animals could actually be trained to drive. We reckoned that chimps and dolphins might have the necessary intelligence, although clearly you would have to fill a car with water in the latter case. On the plus side, you would not have to pay them much, even immigrants want more than a few fish.

PS Chimps would obviously make great policemen

New appointment

Mentioning no names but you know the sort. Full of "enthusiasm", about something but no practical ideas or plans for implementation, self absorbed and not really interested in anyone else's opinions. You can spend umpteen weeks providing detailed ideas but get no response or just more fucking woffle.

Maybe the solution is not to be in business with people at all. As far as we can find, there is no legal requirement for a UK company director to be human or even alive although he/she/it does have to be 16 or over, which rules out our first choice of Mr P, our puppet Parrot. We therefore plan to make Mr Manky Sheep Skull our fellow director; we found him in the Peak district in the 70s so he is well over 30 years old. He is also far less likely to drive us to drink than our current fellow director.

I am honoured. Now, my mission statement for the company...

PS He wasn't kidnapped by Al Quaida at all, but had somehow ended up in the middle of the garden pond, probably had a few too many.

Same old

Another black youth stabbed or shot on the streets of London and another promising young footballer/rapper is lost. Isn't it awful? Just think of think all the thousands of highly paid top flight footballers or rap stars we could have if marginalisation and discrimination did not keep forcing these highly talented youths into drug gangs.

Another union warning of the risks to public safety that may result from failure to maintain high staffing levels in a public sector area. Isn't it really admirable that these people so consistently put the public interest above selfish considerations about their own pay and job security? We could all learn from them.

Been a long time but

New Story. A ghost is a spirit without a body. A zombie is a body without a spirit. But what if they can get back together?

Don't get caught telling the truth

Romney's comments may have damaged his chances of election but he has certainly gone up in our estimation. That 47% figure is daft as it appears to include pensioners living on pensions they have paid for, not a group that is traditionally left wing, but the principle behind his comments is bang on. Most people who depend on state handouts are going to be reluctant to vote for any party that threatens to end them and it really is not relevant whether those handouts are deserved or not.

Maybe the phrase can't see the "Wood for the Trees" should be rewritten as "Can't see humanity for the individuals" because it is far more relevant. In any sort of political argument there are always be those, and they seem to be the great illogical majority, who will focus on the feelings of a group or trot out anecdotes about a few people they know or have read of as if it means something. They seem to think that one can extrapolate words or the actions of a few nobodies into predictions of human behaviour in general. Step back a little and you can see a few commonly shared characteristics of humanity that are supported by reliable statistics and one blazingly obvious one is that most people act in their own interests and in the interests of their own groups.

This is apparent in Britain too, in the way that our political parties and our government are, to a disproportionate extent, shaped by vested minority interests. The Labour Party leader was chosen, not by all Labour members, but by a union elite which acts in the interests of a privileged public sector that gets salaries, job security and pensions that are not enjoyed by the private sector workers who subsidise them. Based on total votes, the 2010 election should have been won outright by the Conservatives. The flawed nature of our system is the fundamental problem but something else we are not supposed to mention is the undue influence of minorities who are over represented in the smaller inner city marginals that can influence the election result. Not surprisingly, the great majority of minorities vote for Labour which is soft on immigration. This is not simply about the natural desire to be able to keep bringing their relatives and others of their own kind into the UK, some groups are actively exploiting their strength in these key marginals to increase their influence over other issues, to determine the future direction of the UK.

In some respects we can sympathise with Romney's critics. Like all groups, the rich act in their own interests too and, in practice, that goes well beyond just keeping the fruits of their own hard work from distribution to scroungers. It is also true that many of these claimants are genuinely disabled or have real problems that many of us could suffer if luck went against us and most of us have no major problem helping those through our taxes. What we need to do to avoid an unjustifiable influence on our voting systems by the undeserving is for all parties to avoid supporting the undeserving in the first place. Don't hand the rich businessmen or the unions undue influence over any party, control welfare much more strictly to ensure that long term help is available only to those who do whatever they can for themselves and don't let in any immigrants other than the high earners who are prepared to integrate into our society and not remain as minorities with separate agendas.

PS Romney's comments on Palestine are bang on too, even if Israel gave up the West bank and all of Jerusalem to a Palestinian state, the conflict would not stop. They want the end of Israel as they have done ever since its creation. Why are people's memories so short?

Coincidence again

We have said before (but cannot be arsed to look for it) that coincidence is self creating. We pick things out because they are coincidences, for example, if we had been thinking about an event previously we will tend to notice a reference to that event in the paper and skip over the many others we had not been thinking about. We remember the coincidence and forget about all the more numerous unrelated things. That's the scientific argument anyway. Trouble is, coincidences of a particular type seem to happen so often to us we are not enirely convinced that our own logic is statistically sound. Things often pop into our head because something reminds us of it or for no obvious reason at all. Then the same thing is mentioned by someone else, or is on TV or radio in a matter of hours. We are not talking about something connected to celebrities, current events or high profile news but really obscure stuff, a name, a song etc that most have not thought of for decades.

Just this afternoon we were sitting in the conservatory doing an online history quiz with the missus on our new tablet and mentioned historian Asa Briggs. Lo and behold, less than an hour later, the missus was watching a cooking program from Bletchley Park on TV, and a guest was Asa Briggs, 86 and still going strong! This is getting sorta spooky.

1984 three decades late and all the more effective for it

In connection with our miniscule businesss we do quite a bit of image processing and the BBC news coverage of the latest Sirian government onslaught on Aleppo just didn't look quite right. A bit too much contrast, a bit too much brightness, a bit too much sharpness. Ok, probably just a bright day, adjustment, the car windscreen, but it does make you wonder how long we can keep relying on apparent evidence about anything.

CGI in well known movies has not been too convincing to date but that's largely down to the facts that we are not programmed to believe in talking fish, space aliens or giant Persian demi-god rulers. Have a look at this page on Quora and then think about what might be acheived with unlimited funding from governments, courtesy of the taxpayer.

What really is to stop the bastards upstairs from creating any sort of reality they want to feed to the millions?

Being in fashion

Fashions normally come and go but shabby chic seems to have been with us forever.

You can spend a fortune in a clothes shop for distressed jeans that look grubbier and tattier than the cheap ones you just threw away. The sister has just moved to a 19th century cottage and is spending umpteen tens of thousands of pounds having an existing extension demolished and rebuilt to match the original look. Apart from an ugly concrete lintel that could be replaced for a couple of k, the only difference in appearance between the old walls and the new ones that we could see is that all the pointing is falling out on the former.

The missus bloggoth likes the fashion too as we were commanded to use the distressed look for the old sofa in the conservatory. We did the quickest and crappiest paint job we have ever done and then scratched it a bit, she was thrilled. This morning she was watching a cooking program and the studio "kitchen" was all badly pointed, cracked brickwork and the fake windows had bits broken out of the sills. Obviously, we made a mistake with the expensive, shiny granite surfaces, tiles and polished oak doors in the new kitchen and she does need cheering up a bit at the mo.

Dead all round

Not in any sort of mood for bloggy stuff recently due to major family problems. Not that the coven, the blogs at left, are any more active. Last posts: Bad Science-June 20th, Gimcrack-June 28, Old Holburn-July 3rd, Snail's Tales-July 30th.

Still, at least Mr Sheep is going strong and who can blame anyone for getting utterly pissed off at Islam? We could understand violent protests about civilians being killed by a US drone or something of that sort but the latest attacks on Western embassies do not have such a "rational" reason, being over a low budget film by an Egyptian immigrant who has nothing whatever to do with the US government or with the British or Germans at all. Yet again, mere words are deemed sufficient reason to attack or slaughter people indiscriminately. These attacks are just a part of a constant stream of news of more barbarism from this backward creed. Hardly a week goes by without news of some Muslim atrocity, crowded markets blown up, infidels being framed for blasphemy, being attacked, driven out or having their churches, temples or homes wrecked. In Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, most of the Arab countries, Bangladesh, Indonesia, almost anywhere this creed is in control and in some that it isn't, others are at risk.

As with the Channel 4 episode, a history documentary of the sort that has been normal on other issues and in which Muslims participated, it doesn't even matter if there is no intent to insult, people are threatened and intimidated and our freedom of expression is eroded. It never even seems to matter that the victims are not those responsible for the latest supposed insult, how young they are or what mental difficulties they may have, anyone who is not a Muslim or is the wrong sort of Muslim, is fair game. Even charity workers get slaughtered.

The apologists will say that these headlines give a false picture of a mostly tolerant Muslim world. Like crap it does, these people are just plain ignorant. The reality is that many of the commonplace actions of Muslim extremists are never reported because they do not involve Westerners. Take a look at the religious freedom reports from the US State Department for Algeria for example. Algeria is one of the more moderate Islamic nations and yet converts to Christianity are attacked and harassed. If the victims are Hindus, Sikhs or Ahmadis you are unlikely to hear about it at all, as with this story today for example. Not read about it in the UK press? Me neither, but it isn't unusual. One of the largest genocides in history was by Muslims against Hindus and Sikhs but hardly anyone in the West has ever heard of it.

It is perfectly true that most Muslims are not fanatics but, when violence and extremism is so much more common in this group than in any other and their views on the desirable direction of society, even among the law abiding, are so different from our own, it is purely insane to allow any more of them into the West or to boost their numbers and their power with Western aid to Muslim countries. Most Russians are nice people too but would we seriously have been funding the USSR, allowing free immigration from it and letting migrants set up Marxist centres?

Is it really reasonable to expect Europeans to have to constantly distinguish between the moderates and the others when they see some Muslims, over and over again, attacking non Muslims without any discrimination whatever? Maybe our leaders need to think seriously about the likely future conflicts and use some realism. They need to be reminded that we are not saints, some superior tolerant form of humanity, and that the patience of even reasonable sorts has limits. If there is one more successful major terrorist attack in Britain we suspect it won't just be the far right who are cheering if mosques get burned down.

Update: So they are really protesting about that???. Good grief! It's an amateurish 13 minute piece of crap by a nobody! We can think of several well known bloggers who can pack more insults to their ridiculous "prophet" into a 200 word post. We can't think why it caught anyone's eye. Actually, we suspect that 99% of those violent protesters could no more be bothered to watch that boring thing in full than we could, this trivial issue is just being used by the radicals as another excuse for violence.

I don't know why this pedophile issue keeps being raised, this was the 7th century and we can't judge history according to modern laws and ideas. What really matters is:

The idea of a God who gives a shit about the fate of individuals, whether Jahweh, Allah, God the Father or whatever is a delusion that makes no logical sense whatever.
Anyone who claims to be god, a prophet that speaks to god, the son of god or whoever is a) insane b) deluded c) a fraud or d) never existed in the first place.
Anyone who believes in i) or ii) is a) nuts b) conditioned by upbringing c) looking for comfort or meaning in life that lacks something. If they are converts it is usually a life that has gone badly wrong.

So there we are Muslims. No 13 minute boring film needed. Your god does not exist, your prophet was a nut/fraud/non existent and you are nuts/deluded/brainwashed/inadequate but don't feel picked on, Jews/Christians etc are just as deluded. The only difference, and it is a very big one, is that Jews and Christians are not routinely violent to anyone who disagrees with their stupid ideas.

More on gay Kemptown, lady boys, brothels etc

As the gay non-existent readers of bloggoth will be pleased to know (and the only real occasional reader of bloggoth will not) we have finally found some evidence of gay activity in Kemptown when we wandered a bit further away from the hospital towards the Brighton end. There's a bar called Kamp Kevin advertising an evening of entertainment with a "lady" somebody or other (their italics), another with Pauline Sparkle, Camp Drag Queen, a raunchy underwear shop called The Growler that seems to specialise in flimsy male things, a sex shop called Nice N Naughty, also with a distinctly male window display and a gay card shop. We liked the one "It's not homophobioa, NOBODY likes you!" Plus some unusually tall women. We know women can occasionally be 6'+ but to see three together, one must have been 6'4", seems a bit unlikely. Some aspects of sexuality always puzzle us. If you are a gay man, surely you are interested in men, why on earth do you want to dress as a woman or see men dressed as women? Why are Liza Minelli and Kylie Minogue gay icons, rather than Brad Pitt or George Clooney? It's all very wierd.

We remember an occasion in Malaysia when we were approached in a bar by a rather tall, thin lady offering her services. We were really tired after a long flight and declined but have since wondered, given the things about lady boys over there, what we would have got for our dosh. Not totally sure where it was now, Singapore I think, we had three hours to kill before another flight left and took up the taxi driver's offer to take us to a house of ill repute. Bleedin' 'eck! It was pretty difficult to persuade the lady (yes, she was, definitely!) to go and find me some protection. Some must have had some nice surprises when they got home.

Ho hum. Why no brothels in our village?

We can't kill them, maim them or boil them in acid but we can at least swear them rigid

Had been quite a nice day until about 2pm, then the cold calls started in ernest. The fourth or fifth one we had was from this wanking bunch of bastards. We got to the part where we were offered £1000 of vouchers after answering a few questions before we slammed the phone down. Then they kept calling every minute or two and staying silent in revenge. It is clear that these f* c* are not even ordinary telepests, there are pages of complaints on Google about their offensiveness even when people politely say they are not interested. They are a British company calling from the UK, unlike so many where some f* Indian tells you his name is Brian or Jason or whatever, so why are those useless twats at OFCOM doing nothing?

Eventually, when we ignored them, they stopped but we soon started getting other cold calls. On the third, we really blew our top and the bloke then had the nerve to call back and ask why we were being so rude. That was an easy question to answer! Because he was a timewasting, annoying, f*, stupid c* and we weren't interested in the bu*, f*, bollo* crap he was peddling. He didn't ring again. Join the TPS? We must have joined the TPS at least three times and just signed up yet again, hoping that there might have been some problem with the records before and that this time it might make an ounce of difference, but it never does. We have tried commercial equivalents too and those are no better.

Maybe we should all make it our business to give the bastards hell, instead of just putting saying "no thanks" or putting the phone down, we should yell in their f* ears, swear at them, tell them to go and stuff their bloody offers, surveys etc up their arses. Just maybe, in time, it will put a few off taking cold calling jobs. Trouble is, we will probably have a stroke before the year is out.

Decluttering 2

Doing some more dejunking of the attic and we tackled the greatest problem today, the two large boxes of porn mags in the attic. All normal stuff, well, legal anyway, what's wrong with having an obsession with enormous female backsides?

How do you get rid of porn mags? The missus wouldn't let us put them in the recycling bin for the dustmen to see and the charity shop won't take them. They wouldn't sell anyway, there is something about another male's discarded porn collection that would put off any other (normal) male, however carefully the mags with the stuck-together pages had been filtered out. If you drive a van, as we do, it's too embarassing to take them to the council dump because they always stop vans and inspect the cargo to ensure we aren't disposing of trade waste without paying.

So, in the end, we decided to tear them up and chuck them on the bonfire. That was a bit of a worry too, you know what sheets of paper thrown on a blazing bonfire can be like.

We need a "Religion is shit" channel

More hoohah from the usual sources about an attempt to trace the historical orgins of Islam. Heaven forbid that any of us should pay attention to research by unbiased experts instead of believing guff in a holy book or "proofs" from Islamic Scholars! You can find the latter with just a brief Google, eg, the Prophet was illiterate and that proves he must have had divine guidance to write the Qu'ran. We will not insult the intelligence of our non-existent readers by pointing out the unproven assumptions needed to support that one. Not that we would single out Islam; all religion is total guff and, although it has moderated greatly by comparison to Islam in recent centuries, Christianity is no less irrational and still has far too much influence over societies in the West.

We need more debunking, not less. Maybe Channel 4 could restore some balance and do some historical research to investigate how much, if any, of the Christ story had any basis in reality. On second thoughts, maybe not. It is perfectly possible he was based on a real historical character and establishing a few facts as to where he lived etc, assuming they could, would automatically prove all of the bollux about him being the son of god and working miracles in the eyes of the religiously blinkered.

Unbe f* lievable!!!!

No socialist but we sympathise with some socialist views regarding the extremes of wealth and power in society. It is quite right that those who contribute in a major way to the wealth of society should keep the larger part of their own wealth for themselves and their families but there are too many who use their wealth and connections, rather than their hard work, initiative and inventiveness, to further their own ends. Tax avoidance schemes that nobody else can use, political influence, ministerial access or the financial clout of their companies to affect laws in their favour - there is a big difference between wealth and privilege.

We had thought, at least, that the days had passed when the hereditary wealthy were handed a direct veto over our laws but it seems this is not the case. Maybe the queen is a decent enough woman not to make significant use of such powers but that will surely not be the case with either of those interfering, twattish, self-serving shitrag sons of hers. These powers need to be ended NOW!

We also suggest that, once the queen has passed on, we crown Charles and then take him off to Tower Hill, chop his head off and put an end to this ridiculous institution once and for all. If we taxed the royal estates in the same way that everything else is taxed they would have to open all their historic residences and palaces to visitors to make ends meet, that would enormously boost tourism, not reduce it as the monarchists maintain.

Times past

Ah! The Isle of Wight festival, 1969, the UK version of Woodstock. We were there, as were others of lesser importance like Bob Dylan, Julie Felix and The Who. We wore our goat wool Greek burial jacket which is still up in the attic, assuming the moths haven't eaten it. It's probably ok, it smelt so bad (of goat) that we doubt they would fancy it.

Joe Cocker was there too. Brilliant gravelly voice. This one is a great later song of his.

About time

The government is doing things right occasionally and one of them is the long-overdue law to make squatting a criminal offence. As with all crimes, one would hope it is enforced with some sense and not used against every homeless person seeking refuge from the cold in a derelict building. It should certainly be used in cases, and these seem to be the great majority, where feckless people, drug addicts, lefties and immigrants have taken over a place that has temporarily been left vacant by the owner for good reason.

Good for the BBC

The BBC has been accused of stereotyping Muslims with its new comedy. The depiction of a daughter who wears heavy makeup and covers it with a hijab when her father is around has attracted particular criticism.

So why is it ok for TV programs to depict social problems in our own society, like the welfare scroungers, the drunken youths, the feckless unmarried mothers, but not those in Muslim society? We do not recall anyone shouting "stereotype" over any of the depictions in comedies like "Harry Enfield and Chums" or "Little Britain". There is also a serious issue here regarding the isolated, powerless and drab lives that some Muslim women and, especially, young Muslim girls lead in their strict male-dominated societies. Those lucky enough to do so can't wait to get away. This is something that needs to be brought into the open and addressed and if the BBC's flippant depiction causes some to look into the darker realities behind it, it will have acheived something useful.

We have a tradition of free comment in this country and part of that has been highlighting social issues in TV comedies. It is one of the more desirable aspects of our society that has led to social progress. Maybe if some do not like free expression they should fuck off back to their backward societies where they can stone or behead their critics in accordance with their own traditions.

Link 1 A recent study in Newham (Newham Inner City Multifund, 1998) reported that Asian women aged 15-24 years old have a suicide rate two to three times the national average and at 25-34 years a rate of double the national average. Moreover they are roughly twice as likely to self harm as white women.
Link 2 More and more Muslim women are using their time away at university to go wild, before returning to the confines of home.

Grooming plans

One keeps reading about cases of predatory paedophiles grooming young girls on the internet by posing as girls or teenage boys. Is it only paedophiles who misrepresent themselves in this way or are others at it?

We only ask because recently we have been having erotic dreams about elderly women, clearly there is a tendency trying to emerge here. Should we seek counselling or just give in to it? Maybe we could pretend to be 88 year old WW2 veteran George and sign up to a chat site or forum of interest to the elderly, about bowls or rheumatism or growing cabbages or some such dull thing. Perhaps we can lure an unsuspecting old dear back to our place for a nice game of cribbage, fnaaar! fnaaar!.

Internet grooming might be a much wider problem than we imagine. What sort of website do baboons like to look at?

Brevik

So Brevik faces 21 in years in jail for killing 77 people even though he has been declared sane. Ian Brady got life for killing only 5 over here. Either Norway has a very soft justice system or they very sensibly consider that it's not a major crime to kill lefties and would-be lefties!

Either way, someone should arrange for Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to attend a conference in Oslo, then have them ~~murdered~~ put down. They should be out of jail in 6 months.

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