Page 50

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

Humility

Saw a joke the other day that sums it up:

What is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship?
In a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting!

Concern grows year on year about the lack of any real democracy in our so-called democratic countries. If you want a recent example of the sort of utter contempt that our politicians hold for public opinion, look no further than the killing off of the EU Referendum Bill by Labour and Liberal "DEMOCRAT" (hah! hah! hah! hah!) peers in our unelected House of Lords. Strange how the Liberal "DEMOCRATS" (hooh! hooh pnaar! gumph!) want a reformed House of Lords with all elected members, yet are quite willing to use those unelected members to oppose the right of the electorate to have any say on a major issue!

Our first thought is DEATH to all politicians! Kill the F* lot of them, especially the most contemptuous in their stinking ranks, like Ken Arrogant Cunt Clarke and Vince Ignorant Wankshit Cable but then (after a few vodkas) we recovered a little of our atheist charity. Being open-minded, we are not against learning a few lessons from the world of religion. (As long it's not the malignant bollox of the lunatic prophet obviously, there are limits!) Pope Francis is a very decent and sensible (for a pope) chap and we felt quite inspired by this story of him washing the feet of prisoners in imitation of Christ's reportedly similar services to his disciples.

If a Pope can show such humility towards the lowest in his church, if the son of a god (snick, snick) can show such humility to us mere mortals, is it too much to expect some humility from mere politicians, especially when we are paying their salaries? Let's make all our MPs undertake a training course in humility before they are allowed to stand in elections!

Welcome back art!

Fame in the art world is a lottery. We went to an excellent little local art exhibition last year in which the art was by people with a disability, we forgot what exactly, and one artist was just brilliant. So why was she not famous or even selling her work for £100s? No idea. Given the many really good amateur artists around, it is debatable if this boy's paintings are worth quite so much attention but they are darn good.

One thing for sure, to our mind anyway, is that it's nice to see that attention focusing on works of a real artist instead of utter bullshit from the likes of Emin and Hurst.

Sensible countries

The lefty loonies in the UK will castigate anyone who wants tighter immigration controls, yet what most people want are not BNP style anti-black/anti-Muslim/anti-etc policies, just ones that prevent significant problems for British citizens, ensure their safety and do not oblige them to foot the bill for the problems of the third world and nations blighted by conflict and religious conservatism. The sort of policies that most sensible countries, like the US and Canada, already have. Here is the US policy on Asylum seekers:

If you have a criminal record that includes any of the following, you will not be eligible for asylum:
•conviction of a particularly serious crime
•commission of a serious non-political crime outside the U.S.
•reasons to believe that you are a danger to the security of the U.S.
•participation in terrorist activities, or
•persecution of others.
These criminal bars to asylum are mandatory. That is, even if you meet the definition of a “refugee,” you will not be
granted asylum once an Asylum Officer or an Immigration Judge finds that a criminal bar applies to you. Also, if you
are applying “derivatively” through your spouse or parent who obtains asylum, but a criminal bar applies to you, you
will not be eligible for asylum.

WTF is remotely racist or unreasonable about any of that? How did the UK ever get so politically correct that the most rational laws should be taboo?

They would do well to pay attention

We will not comment yet again on the idiocy of uncontrolled immigration to the UK. Anyone who is prepared to look at the real facts and weigh up all effects on our own citizens rather than ignore or even actively look for reasons to exclude the downsides will not need convincing. So we will just warn of what this contempt for the valid concerns of people of the UK is doing.

Look at the majority of comments in the online press, and we do not mean just the right wing ones but all of the major papers including The Guardian, and they are increasingly bordering on hatred. How many more really are considered hate comments and have been removed we can only geuss. People of our acquaintance who used to be rather left wing are now far less so. They are annoyed by the frequent overrepresentation of minorities, on pictures on government ads and website except those dealing with crime or spread of disease, for example. They are beginning to voice resentment at the one-sided nature of multiculturalism, where ethnic minorities are encouraged and subsidised to cling to their own areas, cultures, languages and beliefs while any white person who does the same is called racist. Many ordinary people at the bottom of our society who do look for work are sick of finding it more and more difficult, of being accused of laziness if they do not want to settle for conditions that those from much poorer countries are used to, of finding rents at the bottom of the rental market being pushed up by demand from migrants.

The UK has taken in far too many useless migrants over 6 decades. We have major groups who are overrepresented in our prisons, who use a disproportionate share of our social housing, health and welfare budgets, who have brought back diseases to the UK that we once thought were defeated, who present huge administrative costs due to poor English and disparate cultures, who have kicked off most of the major riots in the last 50 odd years and been responsible for most of the terrorist incidents and threats, outside NI, for the last 12. We are supposed to allow people with serious communicable diseases to freely enter the UK while our citizens who have paid taxes cannot get the treatment they need on cost grounds and put our own safety at risk to protect the human rights of dangerous foreign criminals.

True, we ought not to hold to hold it against the many decent ones among those groups but, human nature being what it is, when real concerns are constantly dismissed, many more will start to do so. As Shakespeare said "A plague o both your houses". Our government needs to act before the occasional racist verbal rant on a train is replaced by something much more serious and much more common.

Ah yes!

We continually see these dismissals of the realities of Islam in the UK. What terrible Islamophobes the EDL are for suggesting that there is a serious problem with militant Islam in the UK!

Now the former English Defence League Tommy Robinson, who quite recently left the EDL over concerns about far-right extremism, has been jailed for mortgage fraud and will probably have to spend his entire jail time under protection in solitary confinement because his life is in danger from Islamic militants, among others. Ooooh let's think! Did the Monty Python performers need police protection from offended Christians after the "blasphemous" Life of Brian was released? It seems not.

Doesn't this tend to prove the point about Islamic extremism in the UK that Robinson used to make?

Ah yes! 2

More recent news, someone defending the wearing of Jesus and Mo teashirts gets the inevitable death threats from the usual suspects, serious enough to involve the police. As anyone who reads it will know, this atheist cartoon is no more derogatory about Mo than it is about Jesus, yet, once again, Christians apparently don't feel the need to threaten people. Here is a much longer comment on the issues that we at bloggoth would make if we could be arsed. You don't need to go back too far to find other instances of death threats from extremist Muslim organisations like this one or this one. It is perfectly true that others make online death threats but how many are taken seriously enough that police provide protection?

Why are we allowing the free speech we have fought for over centuries to be threatened by this imported bullshit?

Topic: Ah yes! Comment here. Comments so far: 0

Crappier still

Crappy life and major problems in family keep coming. Still, music always helps.

Too wet for running/cycling today and could not be arsed to go to the boring gym or swiming pool so spent 35 mins doing some dancing to "Best of the Rolling Stones". Funny how tiring really dull things like slowly swimming back and forward in a swimming bath are, while jumping around like a loony to loud rock music for 35 mins seems really easy.

Relatives had best not play "Start me Up" at my funeral or that coffin will be dancing out the door.

They are watching us again

We went out for 90 mins of off-road cycling the other day on what used to be a local railway line and is now a public foot/horse/cycle track. There are a few breaks where building means you have to use the roads to get to the next bit and, not being keen on cycling on busy roads anymore, we usually walk on those. A strangely tall dusky woman with a big beaky nose was behind me. So what xoggoth? cry the non-existent readers, other people walk on roads too! But we walked along to a main road, could not be arsed to go any further, walked round the roundabout and turned back. She did the same. Three changes of road, round a roundabout and back the same way, both of us. Only lost her when I got on the bike and peddled off down a bridleway.

Yeh, coincidence probably, or was it? Funny, we keep on seeing that old bloke too, twice in the last week in just two trips to town. We thought we had discovered why, there is a care home on the road, so he was probably keeping fit by volunteering to pop into town for the other residents. Except that this week he was well past that place heading into the country and there is nothing beyond for miles except the Scientology Centre.

So this is our new theory. He is really Ron Hubbard. He does look remarkably like Ron might if he was 113 years old and, after all, a wise Guru with the powers of the Thetans at his beck and call can surely avoid ageing like the rest of us.

Crappy life and a story

Most miserable Christmas/New year ever, times like that really make you aware of a loss. Things much better the last week or two but now it looks like my bro in law may have the big C too, was at hospital earlier and my sister is facing the same as I did. And a great nephew's (great in the sense of nice bloke, I ain't that old!) marriage has fallen apart.

Oh well. I actually recovered a bit of my creativity this week and managed to come up with a story for my writer's club.

Running Around in Circles

On mice and men

Serious disruptions to natural cycles are rarely good for wildlife, even when it's something we find positive, like an unusually warm winter. The most obvious danger is that premature growth and development of plants or animals can be nipped in the bud when normality returns but there are others, as mentioned here.

Still, it's nice to go for a run in January (despite the mud) and soon be warm enough to be down to the tee shirt. For nature nuts like us, it's also interesting to find oneself running through swarms of flies or see bumble bees buzzing about or a hover fly (?) crawling on the van or find spiders making webs in the shed. Don't recall another winter with so many nice little bigs around. Rescued a couple of earthworms wiggling on soaking paths too, normally they'd be way down away from the cold. Maybe if you keep an eye on the temperature and go back to bed at the first sign of frost little things you'll be ok.

Not just invertebrates acting peculiar either. Pheasants are very common around here and, in the winter, what is very noticeable is that the males and females are segregated. You see fields and clearings with numerous males or females but almost never both together. Yet today I looked out the window and there was a male with his usual little harem of three ladies, something you usually only see in the spring. There was another male next door, if he had come through the hedge would they have been buddies as they usually are in winter or would we have seen one of the springtime punch ups?

Sex and breeding are major causes of aggression in man too. How much hate speech has included the allegation that those *** are after our women? How many kings have murdered their rivals throughout history to ensure it was their line that continued in power? One does wonder, if our governments put bromide (or something effective in minute quantities) in our drinking water except for one week a year, the designated breeding season, would it bring a vast reduction in human conflicts?

Resemblances

One of the chefs at a local pub has a marked resemblance to Daniel Radcliffe. One of my nephews looks quite a bit like whatisname, that chap who played Superman. Given the 60+ million in Britain there are probably a fair few who closely resemble other people, we recall passing ourselves in a Croydon street a few decades ago. Are there any unfortunate sorts who look like Tony Blair or other bastards whom every sane person despises? Must be tough.

Another surprise - not

Given significantly higher unemployment figures for some major ethnic groups over decades, from Pakistan, Bangladesh and black nations generally, it is hardly any surprise that these groups appear to be much more affected by immigration from Eastern Europe than those supposedly lazy white British.

According to the Guardian, while unemployment fell a little between 2012 and 2013, unemployment among those ethnic minority groups has risen. More worryingly, following the Duggan trial, unemployment for younger members of these ethnic minorities is now up to a massive 37% and rising, compared to a steady 21% for the UK as a whole.

Whether they are ethnic minority or white British, the interests of British citizens should come first and, if we want to avoid more gang crime and riots, it is in everyone's interest to include the former in any economic improvement. Funny how those who laud the latest immigration wave at the expense of national interests appear not to give a damn about previous migrants or their descendants.

Poor old Bulgarians and Romanians. Give it ten years and they'll be calling you lazy and handing your jobs to space aliens.

Future plans

Is it right that those who do not do all they reasonably can for themselves should be funded by others? What do we do about the entitlement mentality?

We have suggested before that individuals in the UK should be obliged to file annual accounts. Pluses on the profit and loss account would include tax payments and allowances for things like charity work or genuine disability, minuses would be things like pension payments, welfare claims, use of the NHS, crime etc. Anyone with a negative balance sheet would be unable to claim any form of state help or benefit until they were back into profit.

Somebody made a valid criticism of this very sensible scheme. What if a disability is genuine but an avoidable consequence of the individual's own actions, such as overeating, lack of exercise, smoking etc? Surely they should not receive a credit on their account for that? There are other flaws too, like the fact that only detected crime would count.

We would like to address these failings with a new proposal for microchipping all citizens in infancy. This chip would gather data from behaviour sensors embedded in the body which could be picked up by government monitoring points around the country. Then the goverment would be able to check that filed accounts were accurate whenever an individual made a major claim on the state. Some specific details of this scheme are below:

The microchip. This would be bound to the carotid artery to prevent removal without danger of death. Other monitors would be similarly embedded in vital organs.
An arial to beam data to government recording posts.
A stomach food monitor to check for healthy eating. This is easier than you might imagine because law will require that all food sold must contain one of a small number of flourescent dyes in exact proportion to the unhealthy items within it, one for saturated fats, one for sugar, one for alcohol and so on. The monitor uses a small LED and UV sensor to measure quanitities of each dye and hence the unhealthy food amounts.
An embedded pedometer to monitor amount of exercise taken.
Several cameras with microphones to make sure you are not doing something dangerous or criminal. The number is a matter of discussion and it is probably there will be several more than are shown here. These would include a bum camera which could be scrutinised for unprotected bum fun should you attempt to obtain NHS treatment for HIV. The purpose of those on the ankles may not be obvious but you lot are bound to be up to something even there.

There's Liberal Lefties and there's really stupid Liberal Lefties

Some whose politics or faith one does not generally agree with deserve respect and we quite like The Guardian. That bete noire of the right wing, Polly Toynbee, is an intelligent lady and pretty sensible a lot of the time, as in this article in The Guardian. Apart from the paragraph about Tory intentions *Note there's a lot of truth there. Quite why she is castigated as a mindless PC spokeswoman we have no idea, maybe some never read her because of the reputation.

Unfortunately, The Guardian does on occasion live up to their reputation with some articles, like this one The essence of the "argument" is that, since there has not been an immediate flood of migrants from Romanian and Bulgaria by 2nd January, all those right wing fears are unfounded. If he had waited six months and numbers were still small he would have a case, but even most of the Guardian readers point out how stupid it is to judge a trend after one day, especially when it's a public holiday over there too.

Why the hell would any reputable paper give a voice to an idiot who writes material that would be utterly laughable even by obscure blog standards?

Note :Would ANY party seriously shrink the state, and therefore its own power, to a rump Polly? Wish you were right, I'd vote for them like a shot, but it's not in their interest. Even Thatcher only managed a tiny reduction.

Real socialism

Polly Toynbee's latest article in The Guardian suggests that employers should be providing decent wages and conditions to British people rather than undercutting them with cheap imported labour.

Some white collar liberal lefties might cast that as right wing but it is it?. When a society becomes more prosperous, shouldn't it be left wing policy that we share that prosperity with the lower earners? It is often the capitalists, the businessmen, who insist on boosting their own profits by bringing in foreign labour, letting the rest of us subsidise these low wages through our benefit system. They cast aside our own working class and contemptuously call them lazy if they are not prepared to settle for the wages and conditions that those in poor countries are used to. On the EU too, some real socialists like Bob Crow believe the rights of the British workers should come first.

Look at every communist state in history from Stalin's Russia to modern day China and the emphasis has been on providing for its own people, these were/are very nationalistic nations. WTF does real socialism have to do with mass migration, a global economy that serves international businesses and self serving bosses or globalist notions that dismiss the rights and wishes of the working class as necessary casualties in pursuit of an ideal?

Deterrent? Maybe, but not of the right people

Some commenters on Toynbee's 1st article above article suggest that the furore here may be a factor that will deter immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria. Maybe, but unfortunately the ones who are likely to be deterred by this hostility are those who would probably not be a major problem. It will not deter theives and beggars who are already outcasts in Eastern European society; they are used to it.

What we need is real action by our government.

Adapting to the environment

Interesting series about animal behaviour on TV at the moment. Last night they covered the stray dogs in Moscow who use the tube trains to commute, just like humans. They spend the night in quiet suburbs, travel to inner city areas in the morning to beg for food, then travel back again in the evening. They mostly use the same trains at the same times every day just like human office workers. These dogs no longer have their normal hunting instincts, preferring to hang around humans looking soulful in order to get fed. It isn't totally unique behaviour, cats and pigeons have been known to commute too.

Humans are also more affected by technology than we imagine. Apparently, when we know something will be on Google, we are less inclined to remember it. Bad enough while most have to fiddle around with keypads/smart phones to look something up but we now have weareable computers controllable by winks or eye movements. How long will it be before they communicate directly with our brains? How long before we start relying on such technology so much that we forget how to think, how to react, how to move on our own?

Attenborough Fakes

We like David Attenborough. He a) is an atheist b) likes wildlife c) thinks there are far too many crappy people in the world. Sound chap. Some have accused his nature programs of faking various scenes. As long as it is to make it interesting and does not actually distort the facts about nature, why not? I expect his critics will have a field day with his latest program set in London's Natural History Museum. I bet hardly any of those Dinosaurs, Mastodons etc shown wandering around in it are real!

What a pity they aren't. A few Tyranosaurs, Sabre-toothed Tigers etc could acheive a lot of good in some parts of modern London.

Topic: Attenborough fakes Comment here. Comments so far: 0

F* ell!

Not all modern art is bad. Even when little talent seems to be involved it can nevertheless be very decorative and would look good on your wall. Unfortunately, stuff from some prominent artists is just absolute crap.

Great to own some Tracy Emin "artwork" for its value but that's about it. Until some idiot paid us for this piece of crap we would probably just leave it in a bag in the attic somewhere. Better than this bunch of dots by Damien Hurst though. £33k for those???? Not even original, my granny had an apron like that back in about 1952.

That moderate Islam again

Problems continue in Turkey and commentators say it is caused by a power struggle bertween Erdogan's Islamist government and an influentual cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whose Hizmet movement is "seen as the modern and benign face of Islam".

While he has said the Muslim community is obliged to conduct interfaith dialogue with the people of the book, AKA Jews and Christians, he has made no such committments to those of other faiths and has compared atheists to terrorists. Dialog does not necessarily mean there is equality in decision making of course. Some believe, according to the BBC, that this group seeks to gain power in order to spread socially conservative views on issues like marriage and alcohol and several prominent critics of the group have been jailed. What does it say on Gulen′s own site? Well, despite the defences of a curse he made, it does state that these were the exact words:

If they have done things that are contrary to the spirit of the religion, if things they have done are contrary to the fundamental disciplines of the Quran, if it is against the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, if it is against Islamic law, against modern law, against the accepted rules of democracy today... then may God bury us and them into the earth, bring fire to their houses, ruin their homes.

Regardless of the context in which he said it, does that really sound like the words of a man committed to a secular society with equal rights for all? On another page there is praise of Muhammed's Medina Charter. Even if this airbrushed tale of a tolerant prophet impartially judging Jews according to Jewish law is true, there is no dispute that it was still an Islamic state, it was a Muslim doing the judging. What happens in such a state when the laws of Muslims and others conflict or when a Muslim and non Muslim face each other in court?

We know that already from supposedly moderate Malaysia which has such a system, non Muslims are second class citizens. Civil cases between Muslims and non Muslims are increasingly heard in Islamic courts yet Christians are barred from representing their clients in them, all lawyers must be Muslims. True equality that! Even in this supposedly moderate state, as in almost every Islamic state in the world, Christians face rising suppression and persecution. Christians even face prosecution for using the word Allah, even though that has been their own word for god for centuries. Muslims have no rights as individuals either and are banned from leaving the religion.

So often when you check on these prominent Muslim moderates or look at the laws of so called moderate states you find their ideas of democracy, tolerance, freedom and equality bear no resemblance whatever to our concept of these things.

It's moderation Jim but not as we know it.

Economy

Does anyone really understand it? Buggered if we do. Just a few months ago we were reading about the economic success of Turkey. Now it seems Turkey is the ′sick man′ of the emerging market block. An increasing political crisis caused by Erdogan's Islamisation and the inevitable decline of human rights and democracy is scaring investors in Turkey but the wonderful emerging market in general is suddenly not the great investment opportunity that we were assured it was a little while back, with many countries in it close to recession.

One reason? The US is winding down global stimulus. So wasn't anything real in these booming economies? Weren't there genuine entrepreneurs with flourishing businesses, actual factories making goods for export etc etc? Presumably there must have been but they have been halted by a decision in another country. Beats us how this works. Most grateful if any economists among the non-existent readership of bloggoth could explain it.

PS One figure on that chart is no surprise though, Venezuela is well above most other countries for risk of recession. We admit we do not understand economics but one thing is sure, stupid leftist policies correlate very reliably with economic failure. Venezuelan Society does not seem to be developing too well either.

Sums it up

Yet another family do today, didn't go again. Go Elvis. After the boring 30s advert obviously.

Blue Christmas Elvis Presley by CPOSTIT

PS

Maybe go to the club and get drunk. Heading there last Friday just before closing time but never made it. Spent about 15 min trying to direct an Eastern European delivery driver with very little English to a local business park. Naturally, at 11pm, it was all shut up and had been for over 5 hours.

The wonders of skilled immigration eh? What would we do without them?

PS Club deserted, usual pub only had MR PIKEY SCUM, so went to our 3rd establishment in next village. Ok except for loud drunk who kept singing. Spanish.

PPS

Power cuts/voltage reductions all xmas eve and part of xmas morning too. F* pothole damaged my van wheel. What′s the nasty version of "Icing on the cake"?

Mould on the turd - that will do.

More sense from unexpected quarters

Rare that the agnostic republican bloggoth will praise sermons by archbishops or a speech by the Prince of daftness but these prominent men have spoken out about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, something that, all too often, is never voiced due to this ridiculous pretence of a tolerant Islam. It isn't only in the Middle East and it isn't just Christians either, Sikhs and Hindus are also under attack in Muslim nations, even in the supposedly moderate ones like Bangladesh:

Violence is dominating these elections with minorities being the easy target. Hindus are being attacked every time there is a spike in the political thermometer, with their properties and their very own lives being vandalized. Rapes, kidnappings and conversions are being reported almost every day for the last couple of months. Women and other minorities, such as LGBTs are being excluded from participation at the elections, effectively diluting the voters’ pool and derailing from the democratic process that the country has been following the last years.

Maybe if prominent men like this, especially those generally seen as politically correct, will speak out more often it may bring some to see what so much of Islam really is. Facts sure as hell don't seem to work.

Rather than repeat what we have said many times before, we will simply link to this week′s article we would have written if we could be arsed.

Looking for somebody to blame? Try the back of the queue!

Following the butchering of Lee Rigby there has been unsurprising news of a spike in anti Muslim hate crimes. No surprise either that the papers quote a Muslim who blames it all on promotion of online hate by far right groups like the EDL.

We all defend our own but too many non Muslims also have this inexplicable inability to relate cause and effect. It isn't comments by the EDL that have provoked this questionable "spike" but the actions of a Muslim man. One never sees online or real attacks on Sikhs or Hindus because of their faith and the obvious reason is that they do not cause the rest of us any problems. The words of the far right are not driving anti-Muslim feeling, they are merely reactions to the primary driver of Muslim extremism, of which the Rigby attack was only one in a long line of extremist actions that have been in the news in the last ten years. It is only the efforts of our police that have, so far, protected us from a 7/7 scale attack every year.

Such an obvious thing really should not need saying, but you do not solve problems by tackling their consequences, you solve them by tackling their causes. If our government is serious about reducing hatred against ordinary Muslims it needs to tackle those who are stirring it up and that is not the EDL but the radical Islamists.

And does it really help to quote someone like that?

Some on the right have it that all Muslims will lie to further the aims of Islam and, while this is clearly nonsense in relation to the majority, one does have to wonder about too many supposed "moderate" leaders, given the nature of news that often emerges.

The man quoted above as blaming the EDL is a director of Faith Matters which aims to reduce tensions between religious communities. That sounds a great idea but he is also a leader of a project to monitor anti-Muslim attacks which has had a government grant withdrawn. This Telegraph article tells a tale of misleading figures, potentially illegal methods of obtaining information which have been reported to police and legal actions against critics. The lawyer acting for this group is also reported to have acted for Islamists. Hard to reconcile any of this with a group of Muslim moderates trying to reduce inter-faith tensions.

The same group is reported as opposing a crackdown on radicals on the grounds that this will raise anti Muslim feeling. This is the complete opposite of the truth. People will be less inclined to take matters into their own hands if they feel our authorities are at last taking the the problem of Islamic militancy seriously. Nothing will reduce antipathy towards Muslims more than a few years without news stories of actual or foiled terrorist attacks, Muslim vigilantes enforcing their view of society on others, radical clerics spouting anti-Semitic hatred, young men fighting Jihadist wars abroad, polls showing not insignificant support for Shariah law among Muslim youths, banners calling for the death of those who oppose Islam etc. etc. Does this group seriously believe that allowing these things to continue will reduce anti Muslim feeling? Are they really that ignorant of how human nature works?

Whatever the real reason, the Muslim extremists must love its defence of them.

Oh, gee, what a F* surprise!

Just a few weeks back we questioned the daft focus on internet porn and said that simplistic porn filters would not work without impeding legitimate searches. Sure enough, that is exactly what is happening. Sites offering sex education, sexual health advice or support for rape victims are getting blocked while real porn sites are not.

How this could not be F* obvious to anyone is beyond us. We don't blame the internet providers, just the stupid and ignorant politicians like Camoron who are pushing them into it.

The real downsides of population increase vs the imaginary benefits of immigration

Immigration in the UK as a whole accounts for 60% of the UK′s projected "soaring" population and nowhere is affected more than the South East. Our local town now has 10% with English as a second language compared with almost zero ten years back, the next nearest has 20% Polish alone, again almost zero before 2004. Walk down the high street and you constantly hear foreign languages and accents.

We at bloggoth do attempt to be less ranty about the insanities inflicted upon us, honest, especially those we can do nothing about, but it is hard. WTF will this do to our lovely countryside? Everywhere we go, in every pleasant little village, affordable housing developments are covering the once pleasant little green areas and major developments, like this one, are planned on beautiful countryside. And for what? A princely net contribution of £8.8Bn over 15 years. Are these people total idiots???? Even assuming they mean £8.8bn for each year and that that figure is accurate, which it almost certainly isn't judging by the ludicrous misrepresentation in past studies, it is still a paltry 0.6% of GDP and it is GDP per capita of the existing population that matters anyway.

The adverse effects on all of us are already very apparent with projected power and water shortages, an acute shortage of places in schools, pressure on the NHS and other public services, ever more crowded roads and railways and increasingly expensive housing. Land is going to become more and more expensive and that green and pleasant stuff is going to diminish.

Ah well! Calm down xoggoth! At our age there should be still be plenty of country around by the time we snuff it. What will things be like in 50 years time? We went swimming at the local council leisure centre the other day, take up a lot of room they do and they will be less and less affordable as land prices rise. Maybe they should start planning ways to save space by combining them with other necessary facilities.

PS

What is this "I before E except after C" crap. It′s not true! Probably invented by some religious person or lefty. Reality never bothers them.

Interesting bits

Bro in law phoned tonight. Great chap and very normal, unlike my own demented relatives. Anyway, he mentioned that, since retirement, he likes doing jigsaw puzzles so searched online for some adult jigsaw puzzles as a Christmas present. Seems a lot of adults do like jigsaw puzzles so plenty of choice online but surprisingly, when you think of what you get when you type adult toys into Google, there appear to be no "adult" jigsaws.

Dunno though, on second thoughts, maybe that would be rather unsatisfying.

Clicking around

Fairly fit for our age and we do a lot of exercise in the attempt to remain so but one can't escape all the consequences of advancing years. No obvious pains or stiffness in our knees but we have noticed they have started clicking when we move around. Looked it up on the net and it seems that this often happens, even in much younger people and is no cause for concern. Phew!

Dunno though, have our knees got Death Watch Beetles? It's a possibility.

Correlations - real and imagined

Out running yesterday and got nipped on the leg by a dog. Not suprisingly, it was a tiny little terrier thing, they are always the aggressive dogs, it's never the bulldogs or alsatians. There's a common perception that small people are more aggressive too and it certainly seems that, if there's unecessary violence, as in this case, it is often some shortish chap, about 5'5" or 5'6". But logically smaller blokes need to be more aggressive than large ones to acheive the same result of intimidating the opponent, that does not necessarily mean they are more aggressive by nature. What is the truth of it? According to this research it′s a fallacy but according to this research it′s true. Take your pick.

Two other common perceptions concern white van drivers who are a) dangerous drivers and b) kiddy snatchers. The first appears to be true, according to these links: White van men are involved in twice as many accidents as heavy goods vehicle drivers and are the most aggressive drivers when it comes to overtaking cyclists. We can certainly relate to that, F* cyclists! Get off our roads you bastards!.

But are we all kiddy snatchers? Can't find any figures from reputable sources on that one but, like others, we have noticed the seemingly high incidence of white vans in attempted abductions and checked news reports on the first 10 pages of Google. Ignoring the many duplicated reports about a single incident in Halifax we found one serious rape, four cases where a man had actually tried to entice a child into his white van and ten cases where there were simply reports or rumours about a man in a van stopping or driving slowly near children. In many of these the police had investigated and found the suspicion of attempted abduction was without foundation. Do the real cases show a greater propensity of white van drivers to commit such offences? It does not seem so. We could not be arsed to check 10 Google pages again but checked the first three and there were 7 actual abduction attempts by car drivers compared to 3 by van drivers.

Fellow white van drivers, be sure to check (discretely) that there are no kids about before you stop at your destination or drive around slowly looking for an address, otherwise the unfounded hysteria about this issue is liable to get you into trouble.

Bits

Now we have to do our own housekeeping (a woman's job my lord) bits are even more annoying. You hoover the dark carpet and within an hour that bits monster has scattered white bits all over it again.

Actually, the universe is is full of bits, made of bits. Could it be that, at this very moment, some enormously mighty creature out there is looking at all those stars and planets in our galaxy, tutting and pluggin in his Dyson?

Digging for any facts

Do you sometimes wonder whether the mainstream press are all covering the same story? That's certainly true of today′s news about the scale of sexual abuse of children by other children following simultaneous release of a report by the Childrens' Commissioner and a supporting study by the the University of Bedfordshire.

Read this article on Sky and the issue is almost entirely one of gang rape but the Daily Telegraph's tells of a much wider problem fuelled by easy access to porn and says that practices once associated with inner city gangs are now common in affluent middle class areas, although what they mean exactly and where they are getting that information from, we can find no clue whatever. Curiously, we were firmly into "racist" territory, as far as the South East is concerned anyway, with the supposedly liberal BBC this evening. The BBC SouthEast news, with its shots of "diverse" London streets and the voices in the interviews, left viewers in no doubt that this was primarily a black gang problem.

So what is the truth of it? The commissioner's report is principally concerned with addressing failings by local authorities to tackle child abuse by both youth gangs and adult groups. There isn't any actual data in it, the nearest we get to this idea of a major problem of sexual violence among youths in leafy suburbs is a vague statement on page 5: "While we have published chilling evidence of this violence in gang-associated contexts, we know too that it is more widespread than that". Hmmm. So why not publish that evidence too?

The only real figures are to be found in the supporting study based on interviews with young men and women of whom 41% described themselves as ‘Black/Black British’, 27% as ‘White’, 10% as ‘Asian/Asian British’ and 22% as ‘Dual Heritage’. Hmmm again. If all this gang rape is going on just as much in white areas of the UK shouldn't these kids be 90% white British?

There may well be bullying and sexual pressure on girls fuelled by online porn and sexting throughout the UK but to fudge this with the issue of brutal gang rape, as some papers seem to be doing, looks like just another cover up of a separate problem that is largely a result of laxity on immigration, a failure to raise the bar for groups whose youths, for whatever reason, fail to succeed in Britain and feel alienated from it.

Yet again, we repeat what should be basic logic. The fact that our own society has significant problems of its own is not a reason to import more problems from other nations to whom we we have no obligation whatever.

Chamberlain all over again?

This week′s article that we at bloggoth would have written if we could have been asked. William Hague’s appeasement of Iran’s mullahs is a historic and terrible mistake. Why do we agree with it? Are we experts on Iran or foreign policy in general? Of course not, but there are a couple of basic logical points to consider here:

Hassan Rouhani certainly appears a more moderate and rational character than Dinner Jacket but, like Dinner Jacket, he is not the man who actually runs Iran. Real power is in the hands of a) the Guardian Council, a body of theologians which has to approve all laws passed by parliament and which can bar parliamentary candidates and b) the Supreme Leader. These are conservatives who, at times, made DinnerJacket seem liberal and there have been no recent changes so is it likely that attitudes have really changed? According to CNN, Tehran has continued its incendiary statements against Israel even in recent weeks with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying Israeli officials "cannot be even called humans"

Then there's the lessons of history which, judging by the results of one failed foreign policy after another, those "experts" never seem able to grasp. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a book they would do well to read:

Chapter 9
The First Steps: 1934-37
To talk peace, to prepare secretly for war and to proceed with enough caution in foreign policy and clandestine rearmanent to avoid any preventative military action by the Vesailles powers - such were Hitler′s tactics during the first two years.

Bluddy 'ell!

Coincidences keep coming! I read the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich about three years ago and, while I recall reading that Hitler was very clever in appearing moderate while secretly rearming, I could not have said what chapter it was in. I took this 1245 page book off the shelf, opened it at random and there was the above quote!

Another un-PC correlation

Watching BBC's Fake Britain tonight about counterfeit alcohol and the specific instances indicated, although we are not supposed to mention it, a strong link to immigration. The food standard agency figures quoted here state that fake food and drink incidents have risen by 29 times in 6 years with fake alcohol accounting for most of them. What else has happened in that period that might explain this huge rise?. Er, um.

According to The Institute for Alcohol Studies "it is largely foreign migrants who are behind the growth in the illegal alcohol trade, which is not restricted to Lincolnshire." Major distilleries in the UK have been run by Lithuanians and Poles while, according to HMRC, most illegal alcohol is smuggled, predominantly from Eastern Europe. Apart from the loss of £1.2bn a year in tax revenue and the defrauding of customers who are paying for what they think is quality booze, there is a huge health risk to those who drink this stuff due to the high concentrations of methanol and other toxins. Although buying from small retailers is the main risk, one case on Fake Britain indicated that even buying from a major supermarket is not a total gaurantee that your booze is genuine.

Needless to say, this is yet another downside of all that wonderful immigration that will never be counted in the next lefty "study" showing the benefit to the UK. Carry on living in your dreamworld of ignorance lefty idiots. Hey! Maybe they are all stoned on methanol!

History and tits

Was watching a TV program about naval history with Richard Dimpleby. He was describing a miniature of the figurehead of HMS Victory, pointing out the figure of George III at the top, the British Lion peering around the back, the crushed and defeated figures of Frenchmen and American Indians at the bottom, saying how they were all told a story of British power and invincibility.

Most interesting, but what did the lady with one tit showing represent Richard? And what did all the bare tits on the other figureheads you enthused about mean? At one point he was rubbing his hands all over a large one, marvelling at how smooth it was, careful avoiding the nipple. Curious symbol for war machines but naval figureheads often had nice tits in those days. Maybe sailors weren't all rum and bum with cabin boys, not when they had any other choice anyway.

Pity the way these great old traditions have died out, killed by technology and feminism. If we at bloggoth were PM we would be bringing them back. We are not so much a tit man but we would honour the principle at any rate. If there ever is a nuclear war we are sure the Iranians or whoever would really appreciate being hit by a nuclear missile with a huge carving of a fat lady's arse on the front.

Sunset

Those country runs (and vodka) are the only thing keeping me sane at the mo. Always seems only to be sunny late afternoon recently. Here is Dracula's castle:

PS Weren't Romanian migrants great in Dracula's day? No welfare or begging, just the odd pint of blood.

PPS Actually it's a water tower. So they say anyway.

More pretence

Hardly any surprise that Attorney General Dominic Grieve has felt forced to apologise for suggesting there was an issue of corruption and electoral fraud among some ethnic minorities, especially Pakistanis. It′s not true? Really? This is what The Economist had to say on this issue:

Yet two trends are troubling. The first is the prevalence of Asians, especially of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, among those convicted of electoral fraud. Stuart Wilks-Heeg of Democratic Audit, a research group, points out that British Asians make up half of all those convicted since 2000. Where fraud is most common—such as in Burnley, Oldham, Birmingham—and allegations most persistent there are also large Asian populations. He points to “biraderi”, brotherhood networks, used to rally support for particular candidates—a practice imported from Pakistan. (He also notes that convictions for electoral fraud may be undercounted because some cases are pursued under general fraud laws.)
....
The most serious allegations of electoral fraud suggest that leaders of biraderi networks, or others, apply for postal ballots for non-existent or ineligible voters and then establish “vote farms”. Residents of one small home in Tower Hamlets, for example, where five adults were previously registered, reportedly applied for an extra seven postal votes in recent weeks. Even where voters do really exist, the suspicion is that network organisers put pressure on people to back a favoured candidate, or complete their ballot papers for them. Salma Yaqoob, a Respect candidate in Birmingham, wants postal voting on demand scrapped because “thousands” of Asian women are disenfranchised by male relatives who take control of their votes.

As is always the case with major migrant groups, this is not some by-product of exclusion etc but simply a reflection of similar corrupt practices in the country of origin. This is from The Guardian:

Close to one million strong, 45 per cent of all Muslims in Britain are of Pakistani origin and 80 per cent come from villages in Kashmir and Punjab. They brought with them a rural tribal mentality, where everything remains in the family group. Marriage, business, religion - who your friends are, who you vote for, everything from the cradle to the grave - it's all designed to keep power with the elders, who are in turn answerable to clan elders, who may be answerable to senior members in Pakistan. This clan system is called the Biraderi. In a community with two thirds aged under 35, the closed doors of clan power mean frustration. Clan elders have for years provided huge vote banks for mainstream parties, in return for positions and influence in local politics. Uneducated, even illiterate, Biraderi elders can get elected as councillors. Younger members of the community talk about a closed hierarchy, which does not recognise talent or ability. I am No 53, in a huge extended Biraderi, and no amount of personal achievement will change that.

Those who believe that most third and developing world nations do not have far more corrupt societies than our own are just ignorant, maybe they should take a look at the Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International; Pakistan is in the bottom quarter. Those who imagine that migrants do not bring such corruption in with them have no understanding of human nature. How can we ever have a real debate on immigration when anyone can say whatever they like about the white British while nothing negative whatever, no matter how true it is, can ever be said about others?

Ah yes

This is a trivial case but it does, yet again, illustrate the stupid one-sidedness of all "debate" on race. A councillor suggests that a merger of two local authorities could be awkward because one has mostly white staff and another black. Naturally some (white) twat has complained that his remarks are infering that people of African origin can't get on with others and that his comments are terribly offensive to those of African origin.

No they don't, you fucking illogical twat! They are infering that both sides may have similar problems! If that is offensive to those of African heritage, then it is equally offensive to white British people. Again, in reality, it is no more than an observation on human nature.

There is another idiocy inherent in these comments. Those who praise and encourage multiculturalism apparently imagine that cultural differences can never be any sort of barrier or will instantly disappear when it matters, such as in the workplace.

More selective leftiness

Loony lefties love to castigate readers of The Daily Mail and compare them to far right sympathisers, as in this bit of utter nonsense. The reality is that most Daily Mail readers are normal people whose real anxieties have been ignored for far too long. When real issues are not addressed, when legitimate concerns are constantly denounced as racism or xenophobia, it is hardly surprising that resentment grows.

Another reality is that indignation about what is inflicted on the British citizen and taxpayer is far from being limited to Daily Mail readers. We do read the online version of The Daily Mail but we also read The Guardian, an excellent paper mostly, and it is apparent that many British citizens who do so share many of the concerns of the Daily Mail readers, on mass immigration, the EU, the money wasted on foreign aid and the necessity for the West to be expected to solve every problem in the third world.

Take this Guardian article on the conflict in the Central African Republic. The author asks " What needs to happen before the world intervenes?" Funny how almost no Guardian commenters are agreeing and calling for more taxpayers′ money to be spent or British soldiers′ lives to be lost. The great majority of those "lefty" readers are against the idea. They are saying that it is absurd for colonialism to be blamed so many decades after the event and that nobody needs to make such excuses for India or other Asian former colonies, that Africans need to start accepting responsibility and solving their own problems, that nobody else can do it for them, that outside interventions do not work anyway, that if we took military action it would only be a matter of time before we were being blamed for more deaths and being accused of neo colonialism or trying to grab their raw materials.

This failure of real Guardian readers to fall in line with what some idiots (yes, the right has them too!) think is the liberal lefty Guardian agenda is nothing unusual, try the comments on this Guardian article on Asylum seekers. The great majority of the serious commenters are against the idea of too ready asylum, express scepticism about the claim of this overstaying Nigerian and are against the idea that someone with numerous health issues who would be a burden on our society should simply be granted leave to stay.

We all have different opinions but the great majority of people in the UK have similar concerns on many issues and opinion polls show it. Unfortunately, too much attention is paid to those who try to cast anyone who does not agree with their extreme ideas as extremists.

Sympathy rises with respect

Although not a fan of international aid in general, we do agree with it being used to help those struck by natural disasters. Most of us are also much more willing to help when we see that the recipients do what they can to help themselves and, from the TV reports, the Fillipinos certainly seem to be doing that.

The coincidence storm

We have said before that coincidences create themselves. You latch on to the few things that do chime and forget the many more that don't. All events are in accord with statistics but we are selective about our recording of them. Most logical, xoggoth, we hear you cry!

Trouble is, we are no longer entirely convinced by our own logic. Take that old man we reported seeing over and over again on our occasional (once and, rarely, twice a week) trips to town. If our theory had been correct we should have seen him no more, just a run of coincidence, but the sightings will not stop. We keep seeing him; we saw him yesterday and again today. Here he is, in chilly November, dressed exactly as he was in the last photo taken in August:

What is even crazier is that #1 son, who works nights, reports regularly seeing him when he comes home from work at 7 am. Either this old bloke spends his entire day walking backwards and forwards to town to keep fit or he is part of a coincidence that is off the scale of probability.

If only he was the only one. I dig out my old records from the attic, listen to a tune I have not heard in decades, turn on the car radio and there it is. Following a tip I spent much of this morning looking at investments in storage pods, including the growth of the market in the US. So what is The Simpsons about this evening? They discover apparently gay apparel in Grandpa Simpson's storage pod which looks just like the one on my brochure!

From now on we are keeping a log, this deserves further study. At the very least it will make a silly xoggoth tale.

PS It was 14.05 not 15.05, knew we forgot to put the clock back on something.

PPS The last photo we posted of the old bloke was taken on the 22nd too. This is getting creepy!

Update 23/11/13. Here we go. Just yesterday, two posts down, I gave a link to Tor, AKA the Darknet. Never seen it in the mainstream press. So what's in The Daily Mail today?

Henry VII was a great chap, really

Our village has traffic lights due to laying of new water pipes and the work is scheduled to last until mid January. As is usual with such works, absolutely bugger all seems to be going on. We expected the length of the road to have been dug up by now but there are just a couple of small holes. WTF are they doing closing the whole road? Must be just to annoy the public, as are most road works.

However, we have discovered from a local source that the pipe is actually being laid, they are using horizontal drilling which does not require the whole length to be dug. We do apologise for doubting you clancydocwra, please assure Henry VII that we are his most loyal of subjects.

Being seen to be doing something

We have questioned before whether this emphasis on tackling illegal online pornography is actually doing much at all to reduce sexual abuse of children. Fewer images on the (visible) internet may make child abuse less obvious but will it stop it happening in the real world?

Now things are looking really silly with the latest measures by Google. Now, if you type "child pornography" into the search engine you see a warning ad at the top that child porn is illegal. Hmmm, I daresay that blokes all know that anyway, will a little ad do anything? Unless it is going to do long term tracking and perform pattern analysis of searches made by individuals, will even Google be able to distinguish perverts from others making legitimate searches, a parent concerned about a rash on their baby for example? Are illegal website owners really so ignorant of SEO that they won't adapt their text to reach the right people? And what is to stop men just finding illegal stuff on Darknet?

Still, as long as these measures let politicians feel smug, what else matters?

PS To non existent readers asking why I was Googling "child pornography", the story about the warning is in The Independent. No specific link as their videos do not appear to have them.

PPS Phew! At least there′s no warning when you Google "pig pornography". Thank heavens for that, we thought we might have to find some other online satisfaction.

PPPS. Here it is, How to access the Dark Net. Wahee! unrestricted pig porn!

Talking of which

Forget all this stuff about apes being the nearest living species to humans, except in some strictly scientific, DNA analysis sense. Who gives a shit about such technicalities?

The nearest relatives we have, in any sense that really matters, are certain members of the camel family. We have mentioned before just how human and very, ahem, interesting are the naughty parts of female Llamas. While other female animals (not that we have been looking of course) just have boring little holes, they have fantastic slitty bits with flaps and stuff, just like our own ladies. We would encourage our male non-existent readers to go to their nearest Llama park and take a look for themselves, purely out of scientific interest obviously.

We caught a bit on BBC's Country Watch today about how female Alpacas will discourage the male′s attentions when they are pregnant by spitting in his face. A big drop in amorous interest when the f* kids are on the way? That rings a bell too.

Nice day for a White Widow

Bit dubious about all this "White Widow" stuff.

So, A WOMAN, wields this incredible power among militant Islamists who are mostly Wahhabinists, members of a creed that comes from Saudi Arabia where women have few rights at all? Men who follow the most extreme interpretations of the idiotic Islamic texts, who believe that women have half the intelligence of men, that they must satisfy their needs on demand, that they cannot leave home without a husband′s permission, that they can only inherit half what a man can inherit, that their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of man′s, men who have assassinated (or tried to) any other women of influence in the Islamic world, are running around obeying the dictats of this white foreign lady?

Not to say she does not play a part in these groups, after all, women have been willing suicide bombers before and maybe she did spy on the Kenya Mall, although the Kenyans themselves say they have no evidence of that, it′s just this notion that she, or any woman, can be a powerful leader that looks like bollux.

We don't know for sure but this looks like another case of The Daily Mail trying, yet again, to counter its racist image with some politically correct craptrap - hey look! white British people can be major Islamic extremists too!

Topic: Nice day for a White Widow Comment here. Comments so far: 0

Drivel

Non existent readers seeking usual Daily Mail rants move on, nowt to see. Drivel follows:

Some things have sentimental value but are of zero worth, like stupid little free toys your kids used to play with. Can't throw those away, so there is a little collection down in the greenhouse. We have to admit that, being very puerile, we occasionally add to it with things we find lying around on our runs. Like this Smurf we found a few weeks back and put next to a miniature bottle to make him look like a drunk.

Then #1 son rearranged things and sabotaged our little tableau by creating a Viz style Up the Arse exhibit.

More drivel/dribble

Water was dribbling out of the overflow in the water tank and was probably adding at least 10p a week to our water bill! Anyway, looked a simple job, so we replaced the main ballcock and valve only to find one joint kept dripping. Among all the bits in our shed we soon found a suitable seal, sorted. Think it was a brake cylinder seal from our old 1970s Morris Marina Aan. Didn't we always say it would come in handy one day?

Utter crap - no hang on - utter FUCKING crap

The Capers report that treasury coffers Oould be boosted if employers paid the living wage. You can find the figures of this study (ha! ha!) here. So the government gets more due to increased tax and NI from these employees and increased employer NICs, less, er, er.....

Less NOTHING! There is no account taken of reduced company profits and the consequent reduction in corporation tax or their employer's tax and NI, no account taken of the fact that they will be less able to afford to take on other employees and get them off the welfare bill.

Anyone who is taken in by this crap must think that money can be conjured out of nowhere. For such lefty idiots we have a great idea. Why not make employers pay everyone £1 million a year? Just think how much better off we would all be!

Mutual obligation should be just that - mutual

You take a job, you work hard and fulfill your obligations as an employee in accordance with your contract. Your employers treats you well, provide you with salary, holiday and perks, again in accordance with the contract you both agreed to. So when you leave, do those employers still owe you anything, apart from good will and a decent reference? Of course not! Why should they? You worked for them and you were fully paid for the work you did!

So why, when the British government provides any sort of employment for foreign nationals, is there always this assumption that Britain has an open ended duty towards them? This is one of the more trivial examples of the sort of case we have in mind. If he had been engaged in covert operations or knowingly putting himself at risk, like some of those who worked for us in Iraq, it would be right to protect him and his family but there is nothing in that article to suggest that was the case. We are supposed to have a duty to protect this man from his own government, to take in him and his family and to provide for them simply because he worked as a security guard at one of our embassies.

A more significant example is the 25,000 Gurkhas who retired before 1997 demanding equal pensions to British army retirees. Like any employees they received what they were promised in accordance with the contracts of employment they agreed to, including pension rights which would have seen them quite reasonably well off if they had remained in Nepal as was the intention at the time. But, thanks to that F* cow Joanna Lumley, the previous government caved in and let them settle in the high cost UK where such pensions are inadequate. Now we have to up their pensions to the level of Gurkhas who signed up after 1997.

1997 eh? I think I will write to the place I used to work at then and demand they pay me to make up for the salary and pension I have now decided I ought to have had, otherwise I will get my lawyers on to them.

Noma

Yuck! Just by chance came across the word Noma. You don't want to do a Google images search of that! Even worse than a Google of Krokodil.

This means WAR!

Interesting stats on religious belief in England and Wales here. Between the last national census in 2011 and the previous one in 2001:

The number of people declaring ‘No religion’ has jumped from 14.6% in 2001 to 25.1% in 2011
The number of Christians has fallen from 71.7% of the population to 59.3%
The number of Muslims has grown from 3.1% of the population to 4.8%

At some time in the future there may be a UK composed mainly of sane rational people, ie those who are not convinced by the illogical nonsense of any established religion, and Muslim loonies who believe in the biggest pile of widely accepted, irrational crap in the history of humanity.

Interesting times lie ahead.

Good old Express

Mentioned the obsessions of The Daily Express before, including their repeated warnings of weather disasters. Other papers have reported The Met Office prediction of strong winds on Sunday night and Monday with a potential for gusts of over 80mph, especially on exposed coasts. In the Express this becomes MEGASTORM: Devastating 100mph winds to bring 48 hours of ‘utter hell’.

Last week they warned of Apocolyptic weather. Watch out for pale riders. Maybe we need some more stories about F* Princess Diana to ward off the evil.

Birmingham

That nasty right wing Daily Express has also revealed that nearly a quarter of Birmingham's residents were born abroad and that only one in three school pupils is white without saying how utterly fantastic that is. Still, at least they do quote a Birmingham City Council spokesman who said that: "Birmingham’s diversity makes it the great city that it is, and has done so for many years.".

Hmmm. Is this the Birmingham that is a 'national disgrace' according to an Ofsted chief inspector?

Social problems now so bad that it compares unfavourably with communist Cuba, and parts of Eastern Europe.

Infant mortality rates almost twice the national average and “worse than in Cuba and on a par with Latvia and Chile”.

Having 12 of the 20 neighbourhoods which have declined most dramatically in the whole of England over the past 10 years.

A third of children growing up in households on low incomes.

The highest levels of homelessness in the country and double the national unemployment rate.

Let's have a look at London where Newham, the borough with the highest proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) residents, has the lowest employment rate in the UK and is among the worst in the UK for poor health and high crime. According to the Independent, Newham is the most deprived borough in England. London24 brands Stratford, in Newham, as the crime hotspot of the UK.

All coincidence obviously. Or the white British minorities in the worst areas are dragging everyone down. Yes, that must be it!

Here they go again

Yet again, the religious are demanding rights at the expense of others. Other staff members had to cover for her in order that this Christian could have Sundays off. It may be that this woman had a verbal agreement before starting work but and it is reasonable that that should be honoured but her claim does not appear to restrict rights to such cases. If her legal challenge succeeds it may grant rights to those of all religons to similarly demand specific days off, including Christians on Sundays, Muslims on Fridays and Jews on Saturdays.

While there should be no problem making such arrangements if they do not inconvenience others how often, in most small workplaces, will that be the case? And what days can atheists demand to have off, when F* Christians, Muslims and Jews will be obliged to fill in for them? Oh no, silly us, they can't can they? Because they don't believe in irrational f* bollox, they have to adhere to the contract they signed when they took the job.

Time the modern world gave religion the boot. It does nothing whatever for human behaviour as so many facts, including the overrepresentation of Muslims and Catholics in our prisons, show. This millstone has been around humanity's neck for far too long.

ANg adaghin! A couple of staunchly religious beekeepers who refused to file their VAT returns online have won a landmark battle with the taxman. Graham and Abigail Blackburn run a small business making honey, and were told they had to follow the new guidelines on tax returns. But the couple refused – because they are members of the Seventh Day Adventist church, who shun modern technology. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2470227/Christian-beekeepers-win-case-HMRC-post-VAT-return.html#ixzz2iRZBzNnp Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook oh yes blood donor ambuance

History? Gone!

Damn it! We hate Google. Yes, it (or any other search engine) is great for looking up things at times. EXCEPT, when you want to look up something to see what it was that something else reminded you of, that something else that you were reminded of has been completely drowned by reports about the thing that reminded you of it. We trust that's clear.

No? Oh ok, here's today's example. Our MP, Fatty Soames, has lambasted another MP, Adam Afriye, for trying to force Camoron to hold a referendum on the EU before the next election. Concentrating on the important issue here, he has has called him a chateau-bottled nuclear powered ****. Chateau-bottled? That brings up a memory and when you are, if not quite senile, old enough to be losing your memories that matters. Yet we cannot find why we have fond memories of the phrase chateau-bottled because Google brings up lots of stuff about Fatty Soames.

Hang on, hang on. The Rolling Stones? Marianne Faithful? No, wait, a cat! It's coming! "Our cat is chateau bottled, has a label on his navel". Nope, that's not on Google either. Hang on. The carrier pidgeon of memory is arriving in its own good time. It was something some odd chap kept saying at school.

We looked up "St Josephs Catholic Primary School turd in urinal" on Google. It's not there either! Damn it!

PS And every time I have Googled "where did I leave my car keys" it has been no help either. If Google can't even answer a simple question like that about recent events how can you trust anything it says about the Hapsburg Empire?

Keep targetting celebs and dead people

In the wake of the Jimmy Saville Affair the investigation into historic "child" abuse rumbles on, concentrating on celebrities although, in many of these cases, they were only children in the legal rather than the biological sense. Let's be honest here, if you were a pop star and some fully developed and experienced teenager threw herself at you, would you ask for her birth certificate? Really?

But is this investigation ignoring the real paedophiles? Those powerful men who took advantage of children in every sense of the word, often vulnerable kids in care homes? Somehow, this aspect of the allegations seems to have been pushed under the carpet. It seems to have been accepted that MP Cyril Smith was one such but he is dead, how convenient! Was he really the only one? We at bloggoth do not intend to risk being sued but the non existent readers can easily find for themselves who the allegations have been made against and there are some very well known names in the political sphere, men still living.

Are they all innocent? Unless this story in The Daily Express is a complete fabrication, probably not. Lots of hand wringing about failures to bring the influentual and powerful to justice in the past but has anything really changed?

Run!

When did we ever get to the point where we can do nothing by ourselves? So much industry that used to be British, our steel, car and chemical industries, our utilities, is now dominated by foreign ownership. Now we can't even build our own nuclear plants, they have to be provided by France or China.

If our useless governments hadn't procrastinated about new power stations for decades, leaving us with a serious threat of power shortages, we could have built them while we still had experts who were not retired or dead. Will foreign companies have the UK's interests at heart? Of course not. Many British companies are rip off merchants too but at least the profits are more likely to stay here and they are easier for our government to regulate.

Wait a minute? China?? F* 'ell! Take a look at this EU report:

(BRUSSELS) - EU nations issued more safety alerts on consumer products than ever last year, with Chinese products again accounting for most of the potentially dangerous items, a European Commission report showed Thursday.

The number of dangerous consumer products notified through the EU's rapid alert system (RAPEX) rose by seven percent in 2009, extending an upward trend which has continued unabated since statistics were first collected from member states in 2004.

China increased its record as the country where most of those notified products originated last year, alone accounting for 60 percent of the 1993 cases in question, up slightly from 59 percent in 2008.

And we are going to allow these people to build nuclear power stations in our country? Osbourne say the strictest safety standards will be observed but, if we no longer have the expertise to buld our own plants, do we really still have the expertise to properly monitor what others are providing?

If the Chinese are to be involved in building nuclear power plants in England, we at bloggoth are looking to move to the Outer Hebrides. Should be reasonably safe when large parts of the UK are irradiated due to Chinese control rods made of processed rice and pressure vessels made from old milk bottle tops.

The idiocy of green energy in the EU

In Brazil they are lucky enough to be able get much of their energy from "green" (if you ignore the direct impact on the environment that is) hydro-electric power but they are an exception. Coal is the main source of energy in China and India and other countries like Pakistan are concentrating on building coal-fired power stations to meet their needs.

We have said it before, but it is quite pointless pursuing some green policies in the West unless there is a global strategy because they push our costs up and drive manufacturing to third world and developing countries where fuel efficiency is understandably less important. Add in the fuel oil needed for transport and this does not reduce greenhouse gases, it increases it.

Still, never mind that, as long as we can be smug about our green policies.

Mail Chuggers

Got an uninvited wad of 8 Christmas cards complete with envelopes from a charity in the post today. It was all good stuff, for anyone who can ever be arsed to send Christmas cards anyway. How much did that cost them? On the other hand I suppose many may send them money, even mean uncharitable bastards like we at bloggoth might if we ever get round to it.

The charity in question was Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. It's incredible what people can do without use of hands. But why do they only use mouths and feet? What's wrong with arse, fanny or knob Painting?. You can stick paintbrushes in them too.

More slanted reports of discrimination

The BBC reports discrimination by letting agents who were willing to avoid letting to black tenants.

But did they send anybody posing as a black or Asian landlord saying they preferred somebody of their own ethnicity to see what chance whites had of renting a room in predominantly ethnic areas? Of course not. The same article mentions a survey by the Runnymede Trust that found that 29% of black people looking for accomodation reported discrimination as opposed to 1% of whites. It's impossible to draw any exact conclusions since other ethnic groups, geographical distribution and relative levels of ownership all come into the equation but, given that the black population is about 3%, that does not look out of line with the assumption that blacks and whites are equally racist.

On the issue of racism we always get these slanted investigations or selective reporting of the facts. It's ok to compare responses to similar CVs with white and Asian names on but has anyone even questioned why it is that Asian shops and restaurants only ever seem to employ, legally or otherwise, Asians of the same ethnicity? When it is reported that young black men are more likely to be unemployed does anyone dare to point out that, according to DOE reports, their qualifications are significantly lower?

The white British might be a bit more in favour of multiculturalism if implications of racism, and blame generally, were not always dumped solely at their doorstep.

Dead

A long time ago, the comedy duo Punt and Dennis did a thing called Spot the stiff in which you have to geuss which character in a war film will soon be dead. Anybody talking fondly about how, as soon as the war is over, he looks forward to life with his darling wife Maisy, raising chickens and sitting on the porch watching the sunset - Dead! As far as war films went it was amazingly accurate but it wasn't just war films. You can usually spot who is going to end up dead in many other films too - when me and #1 son are watching some old crap one of us will say DEAD and we are usually right.

Hmmm. But is this strange perception limited to films? We read this news item on Richard Branson today and for some reason DEAD popped into our head. We trust we are wrong.

Real issues? Eh?

There has been much fuss recently about The Daily Mail's comments on Ed Milliband's communist father and we don't really blame Moribund for reacting to them; who wants smears concerning one's family in the press? By "smear", we do not mean that the comments are necessarily untrue, just that they are a deliberate attempt to besmirch by association. His father was a Marxist and therefore, we are supposed to think, Moribund is also a Britain-loathing closet Marxist whose secret Stalinesque tendencies will only become clear after the next election.

Of course it is perfectly reasonable to comment on the character of a party leader who may (the atheist god forbid) be our PM in a couple of years but people do not necessarily mirror their fathers. Why is it necessary to dig up such stuff anyway when the nature of this dipstick is fully apparent from his own idiotic leftist speeches and policies? His nickname is "Red Ed", after all. The left are no better, focusing on the words of some loon in UKIP or lambasting leading Tories as privileged toffs is much less hastle than serious argument about polices.

Wouldn't it be great if political debate in this country focused on the real issues?

Give it a few years

Predictably, there has been much fuss by lefties recently about the "spare room tax" whereby those in council houses that are too big for them lose some of their benefit. Anyone who has not done volunteer work that has taken them into many council houses and also been a cheapskate contractor living in some pretty rough rented bedsits may not appreciate that accomodation provided to those who rely on the state is much better than anything that others at the low end of the income spectrum can afford. Yet heaven forbid that that those who can't or don't fully support themselves should be expected to reduce the burden on those who do by giving up any luxuries whatever!

Lefties would like to abolish the "spare room tax" and make it ok to depend on others to provide things the latter often cannot afford themselves. They would also like to bring in a real property tax (as opposed to a "tax", ie a reduction in handouts) on larger houses without any consideration of how hard the owners have had to work to acquire them or how much tax they have already paid. How long before these lefty twats are in power again? Less than two years probably, given the electorial bias in favour of the Labour Party and the large numbers of mainly left-voting immigrants, with 77 marginal seats where Muslim voters alone could tilt the balance.

When it comes to other legislation on property, will there be a reward for those who helped them to power?

Too forgiving by far, that Jesus

We at bloggoth always check everything a million times and are a bit suprised that others do not appear to check them even once. How the hell can the Vatican issue a coin with a misspelling of the word Jesus?

The mispelt quote mentions a publican. Publicans feature in the New Testament quite a bit and in those days they were not pub landlords but tax collectors! Not that we beleive in him, but if he had existed, WTF was JHC doing forgiving tax collectors? Bastards! We a bloggoth are totally on the side of the Pharisees in this one. What is a bit of self righteous smugness compared to demanding taxes from ordinary people so they can be wasted by the state?

Crappy paper

Notwithstanding its excellent anti-EU approach, we have always felt that The Daily Express is a truly crappy paper. Apart from being the wrong sort of right (christian values, royalty, establishment, toffs) it has such totally predictable obsessions.

Today's headlines has two of the main ones including a thing on Princess F* Diana, yet again! Definitely no 2 on the all time most tedious dead person list, after Stephen F* Lawrence obviously. Then there's the usual prediction that we are going to get the worst winter in decades. Seem to recall they said that last year and the year before that. Do they just make it up? The only online long range forecasts for the UK that we can find give no hint of it at all.

Not true for other parts of the world. If the DE is correct, we can only conclude that the UK is to become part of the Rocky Mountains in the next few months.

Garden

So what do we do with the garden come next year? We ain't really into gardening, unlike the missus, but don't want it to be a total tip. It's got to look reasonably good with minimum boring effort.

We have already extended the lawn area, lawns are easy if you don't look too closely, and made a nice pond which will hopefully be infested with MR PIKEY SCUM biting mosquitoes next summer. Not sure if Mosquitoes never bite we at bloggoth because we are nice to them or if we just suffer no reaction to them whatever. Either way, a pond is a great downside-free neighbour tormentor. Lots of Raspberry bushes is another idea, we love Raspberries, although we would probably die of an overdose if we planted too many.

Another must is Lilies. Apparently they are fatal to cats who simply brush against them. Wahee! Creepy little bastards!

Old Dreams, past life, look in the attic

Got a plumber coming this week so had to tidy up the attic so he could find the pipes. Attics hold far more of our lives than the rooms we actually live in. The latter are constantly changed in accordance with practical requirements, the whims of fashion or so they look good to visitors. Our real history ends up in the attic.

We were most annoyed recently to find that the Greek "Burial Jacket" that we brought in Athens when we hitchiked there in 1969 had been eaten to buggery by clothes moths and we had to chuck it out. It did look rather like I was wearing a mini skirt though, no wonder that chap in Istanbul got the wrong idea.

Still got other even older stuff though, like this painting, circa 1967, based on a nightmare.

Wierd

The London Fire Brigade has reported some of its strangest callouts. One case involved a man who had his penis stuck in a toaster. A toaster? We can understand sticking it in something warm and wet, like a pile of fresh horse manure or the dog, but a toaster? How can anyone be turned on by bonking a toaster?

We trust fellow horse manure/dog bonkers will join us in roundly condemning such disgusting perversity.

The day that man nearly invented the wheel

Stupid applications of technology - 1

We have a Samsung cyclone vacuum cleaner. You can use it a couple of times with just emptying the cyclone chamber before the power drops off drastically and then you have to clean the tiny (about 5 square inches) foam outlet pad in water and washing up liquid to remove the fine dust the cyclone does not collect. This is not a criticism of Samsung, their stuff is great, but a criticism of the utterly ridiculous concept of using a cyclone in a domestic cleaner.

This is not what cyclones are any f* good at and we know what we are talking about, having worked in the cement industry where they use huge cyclones in the manufacturing process. We have even done mathematical modelling of the things! A cyclone is great for cheaply separating the major part of the solid particles from a gas with a high dust concentration, where the material has a high density and where the particle size is relatively large or where it flocculates. It is pretty useless at separating light or fine dust in low concentrations and no cyclone can discharge directly to atmosphere, a more effective device like a bag filter or electrostatic precipitator is needed to finish the job.

It is possible to improve cyclone collection efficiency of fine particles but the power required goes up with the square of the inverse of the particle size, it's all about centrifugal forces. A 5kw vacuum cleaner would probably work quite well but a cheaper and a more practical solution is to ditch the cyclone and just use an old fashioned dust bag so you only have one thing to empty.

You have to hand it to Dyson, making a fortune from a bollux application of an ancient device which was invented by person or persons unknown before patents existed and which the ignorant public found so thoroughly cool that all the other manufacturers felt obliged to copy it.

What a joke!

Real democracy should not just be about winning elections, it should be about delivering the society that most citizens want.

The Liberal "Democrats" consistently oppose leaving the EU and ridicule a significant claw back of powers from it, despite the result of a poll showing that 56% of Britains would vote to leave, as opposed to 30% who would vote to remain. Not suprisingly, they don't even think the electorate should have a say on the issue.

The Liberal "Democrats" consistently oppose any serious attempt to tighten up on immigration, even opposing efforts to tackle illegals, despite the 60% who correctly believe that mass immigration does us more harm than good as opposed to just 1 in 6 who accept the PC mythology.

The Liberal "Democrats" consistently oppose any serious attempt to reduce welfare costs despite clear public backing for the chancellor's efforts to do so.

Worst of all, the Liberal "Democrats" refused to back electoral boundary changes that would have made our elections results more representative of public opinion. Revenge on the Conservatives for not backing their changes to the House of Lords was more important to them than ensuring the electorate is properly represented.

Still, at least they were consistent in that last one, why give a damn about proper voter representation if you don't give a shit about voter's opinions anyway? Democrats? What a f* joke! While nobody would seriously compare Liberal "Democrat" policies with theirs in other ways, Clegg, like so many others on the left, does have something in common with Stalin, Mao Zedong or Pol Pot. Just like them, he puts his own ideals and beliefs first and what the people he supposedly represents think is just not important.

PS

PS It isn't as though the British are uniquely xenophobic on the issue of Europe, the citizens of the other largest EU countries are sick of it as well. According to Europe wide polls 59% of Germans, 56% of French and an astonishing 72% of Spanish no longer trust this institution. Polls in Germany indicate that half want to repatriate powers from Europe as opposed to 26% who oppose it.

These Liberal "Democrats" are not even representing the views of citizens in the Europe they claim to support.

NO!

As expected, in the wake of the sinking of a migrant boat on the way to Lampedusa, the usual idiots, AKA human rights groups, are demanding that we somehow make migration much easier so people don't resort to desperate measures like crowding onto unsafe boats. That they should just be allowed to turn up at any embassy and claim asylum without even leaving their own countries.

Nobody wants to see people drowned, especially children who don't make their own decisions, but there has to be a limit on what the first world can take in. Have these human rights sorts ever done any basic research? Have they calculated just how many people in poor, third world countries or in nations with conflicts or repressive governments would leave if it was easy? How many more can we let into Europe without overwhelming our own societies? Without bringing our own economies down towards their levels, with more unemployment, crime, poor health and overcrowding, without destroying the advancement of centuries with the poor education and backward attitudes that characterise much of the third world? Properly vetted high acheivers are a different matter but anyone who thinks African migrants generally are assets, let alone those from nations like Somali or Eritrea where many of these illegals come from, is living in a dreamworld of ignorance and we suggest they try checking the facts.

Unless we totally threw open our borders and provided free transport would simpler asylum claims help? Given the numbers of people who would want to come to Europe if it was much easier, and we could be talking millions, probably not. If we let in a few hundred thousand more each year, the trafficers would drop their prices and supply and demand would soon see these unsafe boats as full as ever. Maybe the more rational solution is to tighten up on asylum and immigration generally. To tighten up the visa system and border controls, to crack down on illegal migrants and throw them out without right of appeal, to stop allowing asylum claims except in accord with the UN convention and where there is a high degree of proof of their case, to put the safety of our citizens first even when asylum seekers do have a genuine case, to stop every migrant we do accept creating an open door for relatives, to stop allowing migrants access to our welfare, social housing or health service unless they have already made a proportionate contribution in tax and national insurance.

People will only stop risking their lives if nothing worth the risk is being offered.

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