Monday - April 21, 2008

Psssst. Hey. Yeah, You. Had any S_X lately? When? How much? The gument wants ta know.

AH, don’t we live in interesting times?

Government to quiz households on sex lives and salaries
By Lewis Carter
Last Updated: 3:05am BST 21/04/2008

More than 500,000 people a year are to be questioned about their sex lives and salaries by Government inspectors, it has emerged.

Officials will ask for information about former sexual partners, contraception and how long couples have lived together before getting married.

(when I applied for my Brit visa to come here with my wife, I was asked that very question.)

The 2,000-question survey, which will be carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has prompted fears of further data security breaches as both names and addresses will be logged by inspectors.

Critics also say the £3.5 million-a-year cost will be a waste of money as people tend to lie about their private lives and begrudge intrusion into personal matters.

Eric Pickles, the shadow communities secretary, said: “Day by day, the liberty and privacy of the British public is being undermined by Labour’s surveillance state. People will be shocked that taxpayers’ money is being spent on intrusive surveys. Now state spies want to log and record who sleeps with whom and how often. Not even the Stasi went this far.”

Inspectors will ask the questions as part of the new Integrated Household Survey.

They will visit 200,000 homes at random each year and question each occupant, meaning that about 500,000 individuals will take part.

One of the questions asks: “Have you ever had a baby - even one who only lived for a short time?”

Interviewers are warned: “Exclude: Any stillborn; Include: Any who only lived for a short time.”

The survey features intimate questions on exact dates when relationships ended, and the precise amount of money people take home.

There will also be 35 questions on contraception, such as whether men have had vasectomies, the brands of Pill women use, and whether they have ever taken the morning-after Pill.

Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at Kent University, said: “When researchers ask about sexual habits there is a very strong tendency for ­people to clam up, or to say what they think they want to hear.

“I would resent being asked these questions and I don’t think the Government should be doing it.”

A spokesman for the ONS said the survey was the most efficient way of meeting the Government’s “information needs”.

He said that all names and addresses would be deleted from the files once they arrived in the main office.

http://tinyurl.com/4jdtjc

Posted by Drew458     on 04/21/2008 at 10:28 AM   
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   Sunday - April 20, 2008

Boris Johnson defends stance on Islam in mayoral debate

Anyone besides meself get the feeling there’s a bit of backsliding here?
A religion of what?
I sort of expected more from Boris .... 

By Natalie Paris and agencies
Last Updated: 2:50pm BST 20/04/2008

http://tinyurl.com/6kkgek

Boris Johnson was today forced to defend his stance on Islam, insisting he believed it was a “religion of peace”.

News and views on the Mayor of London election 2008
The Conservatives candidate for London mayor, Mr Johnson, has been criticised for an article he wrote in the wake of the 7/7 London terror attacks in 2005 claiming “Islam is the problem”.

The debate was attended by the three main mayoral candidates
But in a televised debate today, Mr Johnson said the problem was extremists taking the words of the Koran out of context.

He said: “The problem is people who wrench out of context quotes from the holy book of Islam, the Koran, and use it to inspire evil in men’s hearts.

“That is a fact that few serious people would deny and we need to tackle the extremists.”

Mr Johnson also raised concerns about uncontrolled immigration to the capital on BBC 1’s Politics Show,

He said: “There has certainly been too much uncounted and unfunded immigration into London.

“That presents huge problems for the London Boroughs which have to cope with the influx.”

The current Mayor, Labour’s Ken Livingstone, said London could be a “model for the world” in terms of its ethnic diversity.

But he was forced to justify his decision to share a platform with the controversial preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The cleric has described homosexuality as an “unnatural and evil practice” and said the Koran permitted wife-beating as “a possibility” in certain circumstances.

Mr Livingstone said: “He is a man who is prepared to say al Qaida is wrong and to be very strong in that condemnation.”

Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, said: “What I said in the immediate aftermath of July 7 was that the term Islamic terrorism, as far as I was concerned, is a contradiction in terms.

“In that there is nothing in the Koran to justify the murder of 52 innocent men, women and children.”

Posted by Drew458     on 04/20/2008 at 01:41 PM   
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   Saturday - April 19, 2008

A GREAT MAN WHO PAID A POLITICAL PRICE FOR CORRECTLY PREDICTING THE FUTURE

His name was Enoch Powell, and I much doubt many Americans if any, have ever heard of him.
That is regrettable.  He saw the future of his own country, England.  He was a conservative, (already one strike against him, right?)
he was highly critical of immigration, (strike two) he gave a speech and was critical of black immigration back in 1968.  (Bingo! Strike Three!)

I would like you to read his ENTIRE speech, ever after referred to as, The River of Blood speech.  Don’t pick out bits. If you’re gonna do that, don’t bother at all because what he had to say was true then and as important and true today as it was then.

Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 06/11/2007Page 1 of 3

This is the full text of Enoch Powell’s so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which was delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: “If only,” they love to think, “if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.”
Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.

After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.” I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: “I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.

I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office.

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.
The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: “How can its dimensions be reduced?” Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.

The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.

It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen.

Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I stress the words “for settlement.” This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants.

I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.

Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party’s policy: the encouragement of re-emigration.

Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent.

Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.

The third element of the Conservative Party’s policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no “first-class citizens” and “second-class citizens.” This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it “against discrimination”, whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong.
The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming.

This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/19/2008 at 04:55 PM   
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Hillary Clinton is the US Gordon Brown

OBOY-OBOY. Ask Lyndon to write a few lines about Mr. Brown. He can explain beter then I. 

AMERICA, WAKE UP!  Tell em Lyndon .........

By Andrew Gimson
Last Updated: 2:30am BST 19/04/2008

American election sketch

Hillary Clinton has moved to consolidate her position as the Gordon Brown of American politics. There are some superficial differences between the two. Mrs Clinton is a woman, and better than Mr Brown at pretending to be delighted to see whichever audience she happens to be addressing.

AHHHHHHHHHH!  O-GOD HELP US!  BROWN’S HER ICON?  AHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAG

The possibility arose of a meeting of minds when Mrs Clinton announced, during an appearance at Haverford College in the suburbs of Philadelphia, that if elected president she will introduce new tax credits.

Mr Brown is the only other leader to speak with such enthusiasm on this subject. He and Mrs Clinton share an impressive grasp of the technical advantages of tax credits, coupled with a complete inability to understand that many of us will never get around to claiming them.

Mrs Clinton declared with a smile that she “wanted to have a conversation” with the students, but she proceeded instead to give them a series of lectures. Like Mr Brown, Mrs Clinton displays an unshakeable faith in the ability of the state to solve every problem, as long as a gifted and serious technocrat, namely herself, is in power.

When asked about the environment, Mrs Clinton disclosed with pride that she had discussed that very subject at a meeting with Mr Brown on Thursday: “Gordon Brown has done a lot more than we have. They’ve actually created jobs… They’ve even invested in eco-cities… We just need presidential leadership and I will offer that.”

yeah right. silly damn pratt. eco-cities huh?  she doesn’t really know what folks here who are threatened by it think, nor would she listen if given the chance.

It was the same with every subject, from immigration to the economy. The longer she went on, the more exasperated she sounded that the American people may, conceivably, decide not to elect her, even though she knows a hundred times better than her rival Barack Obama what needs to be done.

The same note of disbelief enters Mr Brown’s voice when he contemplates the possibility that the British people might entrust their destinies to a lightweight such as David Cameron.

When Mrs Clinton was asked to explain how she would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within 60 days if her own generals warned her against it, she replied in an irate tone: “I have spent a lot of time thinking through how we are going to do this responsibly and carefully.”

It would be wrong, however, to imply that Mrs Clinton cannot tell a joke. When a supporter asked what to say when out canvassing for her, she replied: “Just knock on the door and say, ‘You know, she’s really nice’. Or you can say, ‘She’s not as bad as you think’.”

But Mrs Clinton then spoiled the joke by cluttering her reply with several more points. Like Mr Brown, and unlike Mr Obama and Mr Cameron, she lacks the human touch: the ability to imagine how she will appear to other people.

http://tinyurl.com/45jace

Posted by Drew458     on 04/19/2008 at 03:35 PM   
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This is what real disenfranchisement looks like

This post was put up as an educational opportunity to any far left readers. Surely we have one or two? Remember this post come November, and think back to how much blood has been shed in Zimbabwe between now and then. My prediction is that several thousand will die over this in the next 7 months, and it could go so far as revolution.

Officials began recounting ballots for a couple dozen legislative seats Saturday, an exercise that could overturn the opposition’s landmark victory.Meanwhile, an independent human rights monitor charged that the government has begun a campaign of torture and harassment against those who voted for the opposition, while the country continues to await the results of presidential election.

The ruling party is challenging the count in 23 parliamentary races, most won by the opposition, including in President Robert Mugabe’s home district of Zvimba. The counting began after an opposition attempt to stop it was blocked in court Friday. The court is stacked with Mugabe loyalists.

The opposition has also gone to court to try to force the release of results from the presidential vote. Three weeks after the March 29 elections, which Mugabe is widely believed to have lost, they have not yet been published.

Results from legislative races held alongside the presidential votes gave control of the parliament to the opposition for the first time.

In Zvimba, officials excluded reporters as the count began in the presence of officials from the ruling and opposition parties as well as local observers.

Reporters saw no international observers present, though the state-controlled Herald newspaper quoted officials of the Southern African Development Community as saying it had sent 50 monitors.

In one contested constituency, The Herald reported a failed petrol bomb attack on offices where ballot boxes were stored early Friday morning. The newspaper quoted police as saying three attackers threw a homemade bomb at the Gutu district administration office, but that it did not explode. It said the attackers drove away when challenged by a police officer.

New York-based Human Rights Watch charged in a report released Saturday that “torture and violence are surging in Zimbabwe.”

It said the ruling party was setting up “torture camps to systematically target, beat, and torture people suspected of having voted for the (opposition) MDC in last months elections.”

Let’s also recall that Mugabe has ordered up a boatload of weapons from China recently. Maybe since the election? After all, how long would the proverbial “slow boat from China” take to get to Zimbabwe? (about 2 weeks actually. 7000ish nautical miles at 20 knots)

So there you have it. The counting is obviously rigged. The courts are rigged. Probably there is no privacy in the balloting, if “suspected opposition voters” are being tortured. There is torture going on, and in Africa that means the real deal, not some panties on your head. So the next time we have an election here, shut up. Somebody has to own the voting machine companies; just because Mr. Diebold happens to be a Republican doesn’t mean a thing. And if you’re not allowed to vote because you were too stupid and lazy to get out and register ahead of time, tough luck. And if you’re such a loser that you can’t even detach a chad properly AND you don’t even bother to check, too bad. Is our system perfect? No. Can it be improved? Yes it can, but most of the resistance to such improvements is coming from your side of the aisle. So shut up again. And thank God once again that you don’t live in Africa.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/19/2008 at 08:51 AM   
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   Friday - April 18, 2008

England Stinks

but it’s not their fault.

It wafted in on the morning wind, setting off a spate of panic calls to the emergency services. And every one asked the same question: What’s that terrible smell? Police, fire and water services were at a loss to explain the manure-scented cloud which afflicted great swathes of the South. But with the wind in the East, it soon became clear that our Continental neighbours were to blame - and almost certainly the Germans.

Britain is more used to south-westerlies bringing clean, unscented air from the Atlantic. But the switch to the east means it has swept across large tracts of Continental agricultural land before reaching British shores.

A Met Office spokesman said: “We’ve had quite a few calls. Apparently it’s quite an organic smell - and anyone living in the country will be quite familiar with the term organic.”

At the German Embassy in London nobody was willing to apologise for the smell. Staff had not noticed anything unusual in the air and pointed out if anyone was looking for another country to blame, the French coast was “much nearer.”

Holy cow. I mean, holy pig! Has anyone heard from little Belgium? Are they completely overwhelmed, or didn’t they even notice? And the smell of raw piggy-poo travelled over 700 miles and was still strong enough to stink things up? It must have been just about lethal at closer ranges.

Do we have any farmers here? Don’t manure fertilizers have to be, well, well rotted or something? We’ve had a bag or two of cow manure fertilizer, and it’s a bit smelly until the first rain, but it’s nothing like this. What do they do, save up all the raw pig waste and then just spoon it around?

Peiper, Lyndon, I hope you guys are holding up Ok. Or at least holding your noses!!

Posted by Drew458     on 04/18/2008 at 09:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Gossip Blogging

Ask a stupid question:

“So, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, what do you see in a 24-year-old, sensationally beautiful gymnast with a penchant for posing semi-naked that you don’t see in your lovely, middle-aged, matronly wife Ludmilla?”

Ha, look at that sly old dog! What could he possibly be thinking? Uh, yeah! Some thoughts don’t need translation, they don’t even need to be said out loud. Some things are just about universal.

This sudden frenzied interest in a woman who, until yesterday, was frankly a rather obscure Russian athlete, comes after a Moscow newspaper reported that Mr Putin recently split with Ludmilla and is preparing to marry the young and very pretty Miss Kabaeva.

Mr Putin today appeared to relish being linked to a beautiful gymnast less than half his age as he gave a press conference alongside Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi - himself no stranger to allegations of womanising.

Denying the claims of a divorce and marriage plans, 55-year-old Mr Putin seemed to enjoy playing up the image of a ladies’ man.

“In other publications of the same type, the names of other successful, beautiful young women from Russia are mentioned,” he said. “I think it won’t be unexpected if I say that I like them all - just as I like all Russian women.”

He called women of his homeland “the most talented and beautiful” in the world - adding diplomatically: “If anyone can compete, it may be only Italian women.”

There is added piquancy in the fact that, despite her youth, Miss Kabaeva has recently been made an MP. The gymnast is one of a number of young and beautiful Russian dancers and athletes who, under Mr Putin’s patronage, have lately become deputies in the Duma - Russia’s lower parliament.

Vlad ... you da dawg!!

Neither the Kremlin nor a spokesman for Miss Kabaeva were prepared to comment. Some even suggest the story has been deliberately leaked by the Kremlin to allow them to impose further restrictions on Russia’s mass media.

It’s said that power is quite the aphrodesiac. I guess the proof is in the Putin.

UPDATE:

So much for freedom of the press in Russia. The paper that ran this story has been shut down. Guess old Pooty was pissed the word got out!

A newspaper that defied the Kremlin by reporting that President Vladimir Putin was planning to marry an Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast half his age was shut down Saturday.

The closure of Moskovski Korrespondent, whose editor Grigori Nekhoroshev was forced to resign, was a sharp reminder of the perils of invoking Kremlin displeasure.

Rumors of a romance between Putin, 55, and Alina Kabaeva, 24, who is also an MP in his party, have been circulating in Moscow for months, but until last week no one had dared to print them.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/18/2008 at 03:26 PM   
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Endorsing Obama

Former Clinton Cabinet member Robert Reich (Labor Secretary) has decided to endorse Barack Obama — and not Hillary Rodham Clinton — in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. In a blog post Friday, the former labor secretary said that “although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so.”

Reich says the Illinois senator’s plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding, and his approach to the nation’s housing crisis and financial market failures “are sounder than hers.”

Reich is a longtime friend of the Clintons. Obama also was endorsed Friday by former Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma.

In other news, former members of Carter’s Cabinet have also endorsed Obama:

Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas’ top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, delivered his endorsement in an interview with WorldNetDaily and WABC Radio in New York.

“We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections,” Yousuf said.
...
Asked about Obama’s criticism of former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas during his Middle Eastern trip, Yousuf said:

“I understand American politics and this is the season for elections and everybody tries to sound like he’s a friend of Israel…

The question is: which one of these endorsements will help him more?

Posted by Drew458     on 04/18/2008 at 03:03 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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   Thursday - April 17, 2008

Baldness not disability, ‘harassed’ teacher told

With all the very serious stuff posted last day or so, I was a bit shy about posting this stupid thing but then I remembered ....
we are on the lookout for Moonbats. Yes?

I think this fellow qualifies and wanna bet politically he’s a libral?

By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:26am BST 17/04/2008

Baldness is not a disability, an employment tribunal has ruled, after a former teacher complained he was harassed by his pupils and called “baldy”.

James Campbell argued his baldness had a severe effect on him and his career

James Campbell, 61, said schoolchildren perceived his lack of hair as a sign of weakness and told the hearing that he was a victim of disability discrimination.

But the tribunal in Glasgow decided that being bald could not be regarded as an “impairment”. Robert Gall, the tribunal’s employment judge, added: “It seems to me to take the definition of impairment too far if baldness of itself is to be regarded as being an impairment.

“If baldness was to be regarded as an impairment then perhaps a physical feature such as a big nose, big ears or being smaller than average height might of themselves be regarded as an impairment.”

The retired school teacher, who is also claiming unfair dismissal against Falkirk council, claimed his baldness had a “substantial and long term adverse effect” on his ability to do his job.

(okay folks, all together now. mememe .... clear throat ....  On Top Of Old Baldeeeee .....  oh, never mind.)

Mr Campbell, from Falkirk, added that while baldness might seem unimportant to some people, the effect it had on him and his career was severe.

Mr Campbell told the tribunal said: “How can I stand in front of a class with confidence to get on with my job when I am getting teased and bullied about baldness, when I think they are laughing at me all the time?”

Mr Campbell, who taught at Denny High School, Stirlingshire, said he did his best to avoid corridors, where he would meet pupils who shouted “baldy” at him, and left school late every day to “avoid the kids”.

The teacher claimed that because the children were prepared to call him names to his face he was always concerned that they could also assault him.

But Falkirk council argued that baldness was not a physical or mental impairment and was therefore not covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.

The council also told the tribunal that no depression or other medical condition was said to exist as a result of baldness.

Mr Campbell’s constructive and unfair dismissal claim against Falkirk council will be considered by the tribunal at a later date.

http://tinyurl.com/44s8jy

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 05:21 PM   
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Arrgh, Pirates, round IV

Ok, ok, I know. That’s me who wrote the headline. “Brave” and “French” togeter in the same sentence. My head is spinning. I feel a little sick. But it’s true! The crew of the hijacked sailing cruise ship Le Ponant is safe, and the French Navy captured at least some of the pirates. Bravo, mes amis!

Six pirates were arrested in a high drama raid Friday by French commandos as the hostage-takers tried to escape in a 4x4 vehicle, having gone ashore in Somalia after releasing the Le Ponant crew members for a ransom. A ransom of $2 million was reportedly paid by the company that owns the cruise yacht.  The Le Ponant skipper said he had managed to contact the authorities without the pirates’ knowledge, despite having been warned not to.

While complete details were not available at press time, it seems that part of the 30-member crew were taken ashore by the pirates, while others were left aboard Le Ponant, anchored offshore. Once the money had changed hands and the crew members were safe, French commandos arrived by helicopter, probably from the French Navy’s helicopter cruiser, Jeanne d’Arc, which was waiting offshore.

At least 3 French naval vessels took part in the rescue; the helicopter assault ship Jean d’Arc shown here, the Jean Bart, and the Commandant Buoan. None of the captured Le Ponant crew were injured, nor were any of the French commandos. Several pirates may have been killed, possibly as a result of their 4x4 escape vehicle getting shot up by helicopter machinegun fire to stop it. Gee, too bad. But it looks like some of them have escaped, and they took some of the ransom money with them. Still, it looks like France came out of this looking like heroes.

France is planning to take the captured pirates back to France to stand trial. And they are also going to write an angry letter to the UN. I do not know if piracy is still a hanging offense in France. It was in England until 1998.

Vive le France!

Now comes the hard part. It’s a good thing the French made this rescue and not the British. Damn, it hurts just to write that. You see, the always considerate UK government has decided that actually capturing pirates denies them their basic human rights. If it had been the Royal Navy running this rescue, the pirates, being Somalian, coud then claim asylum in Britain. I kid you not. And they probably wouldn’t even be charged, seeing as they all could say they have gambling and booze addictions so they were all forced to turn to pirating. They’d be victims, and probably get a free apartment and a few thousand a month walking around money.

The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.

The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

The guidance was sharply criticised by Julian Brazier MP, the Conservative shipping spokesman, who said: “These people commit horrendous offences. The solution is not to turn a blind eye but to turn them over to the local authorities. The convention on human rights quite rightly doesn’t cover the high seas. It’s a pathetic indictment of what our legal system has come to.”

Oh. My. God. The British Bulldog has been taken to the vetenarian and had them snipped right off.

A small article tells how the Le Ponant’s crew used fire hoses to fend off the attacking pirates, but against AK-47s they didn’t stand much of a chance. Meanwhile, Somalian President Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed wants the world’s navies to round up the pirates, and he wants UN troops to safeguard his government, and he wants to buy more guns.

“Since Somalia cannot at the moment guard its vast coast, we would want to authorize the international community to take action and combat piracy at the high seas of Somalia until we can effectively undertake the security of our territorial waters,” Ahmed said.

In other words, hang them. Somalia doesn’t give a damn. So much for human rights. I bet there are a lot of red faces aboard the HMS Pantywaist today.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 03:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • International •  
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Click clack, stretch snap

Design Indaba update: a condom applicator designed to help AIDS prevention has been named the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa by Dutch designer Jurgen Bey.Bey, who was in Cape Town to speak at the Design Indaba conference last week, selected the product from a shortlist of 15 products at the Design Indaba Expo.

The applicator, invented by Willem van Rensburg and designed by industrial designer Roelf Mulder of South Africa’s XYZ Design, allows a condom to be put on easily and rapidly.

The user holds the device with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, pulling the condom down over the penis in a single rapid movement.

It is hoped the design will encourage the use of condoms, thereby helping reduce the spread of AIDS.  The applicator, which was selected for the SAFE exhibition at MoMA in New York two years ago and is in the museum’s permanent collection is now being marketed and sold under the Pronto brand.

“Pronto Condoms ... the best way to get it on”. No, I am NOT making this up!

Let’s face it, using an ordinary condom is a real pain in the butt. First, you have to tear the pack open, often using your teeth. Then you have to take the condom out of the pack – this is a slippery business at the best of times. Next, you have to figure out which is the right side up, before you can unroll it. By the time the condom’s on, the mood is halfway out the window…

Fortunately, those days are over. Introducing PRONTO, the condom for the new millennium. The PRONTO condom can be applied in a few seconds. And it’s a lot more convenient to use, compared to an ordinary condom. You simply crack the pack open and unroll the condom directly onto the penis. Sounds too good to be true? See for yourself, by clicking on the demo

yeah, I found this over at C&S. It took a whole year to get there. 

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 02:47 PM   
Filed Under: • Neat Inventions • Sex •  
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This is freakin sicko

UPDATE - Macker points out that this is a hoax.

Ok, Macker may be right. It may be a hoax. I went and read his link. I have some problems with the author’s arguments. I think he has an emotional barrier, because of his wife’s miscarriage, that causes him to cling to “proofs” that may not be totally valid:

• Impregnation via “turkey baster” does work. Perhaps not every time, perhaps it needs some assistance, and perhaps “turkey baster” is being used as a generic expression. But it can do the job.


• ‘herbal concoctions misleadingly called “abortifacient drugs”’ are not real drugs ... because the FDA hasn’t studied or regulated them. Which ignores that some shamans, herbalists, midwives and “witches” have known how to make concoctions that end pregnancy, in many many cultures, since before recorded history. Are these mixtures safe, are they 100% effective? Who knows. Probably not. But they exist and they have always existed. Do “urban legends” get passed down for so many generations that they were around before there was “urban”?


• The young woman involved couldn’t have done this because of the psychological pain involved. Generally I’d like to agree on this one, but I can’t. Watch the news any day and you’ll see stories of kids inflicting the cruelest kinds of pain on other people just for kicks. I posted just the other day about a woman who got her boyfriend to break her leg just so they could fake a lawsuit. While I can’t stomach the idea of punching holes through parts of my body to hang jewelry from, billions of people do. Tattoos are very popular, though there is no way I’m letting some guy go at me with needles. Lasik surgery? Hells no, you ain’t going after my eyes with a knife and a laser beam! Granted that these may be minor examples, but they show several ways that “normal” people are willing to do unnatural things to their bodies for artistic and ‘amedical’ reasons. A young woman with a very leftist mindset and a post-feminist approach to life (ie an art student at college) could easily go through multiple abortions for “art” because losing a zygote would be no more earth-shattering to her than moving her bowels.

However, the author makes an update, and links to an article in the NY Sun that says Yale says that this is all a scam.

Yeah, well, that’s what you’d expect them to say isn’t it? Ivy League School plays Cover Your Ass at hypervelocity. Certainly Yale would never have a student this mentally twisted. Wanna bet? What kind of over-the-horizon ideas do Yale students come up with from time to time? The Sun article tells us about a molecular biology professor there:

A science student of Mr. Silver’s once proposed impregnating herself with chimpanzee sperm. Mr. Silver convinced her it was a “horrible thing for her to do,” but his fictionalized account of the event became a book and a play.

So what’s the takeaway here? It is possible that this woman did what she did. It is possible that it’s a made up story. The only thing for sure is that articles in the Yale newspaper now have to be taken with a larger grain of salt.

LATEST UPDATE: “Artist" stands by her story? Or is she playing coy just for publicity?

Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.”… Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

Oh brother. This is one screwed up young woman. Anything for attention?

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.

Oy, such ART.
And the really Big Lie?

She said her endeavor was not conceived with any “shock value” in mind ... it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.

I suggest that the entire concept of “performance art” be tossed in the trash. Dance, Theater, and maybe a few episodes of “Punk’d” should cover things. I’m starting to think that “performance art” to “start a discussion” relates to real art about the same way that puns relate to good literature. It’s just spoiled little children pitching a fit to get attention.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 02:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Abortion • Art-Photography • Colleges-Professors • Insanity • Outrageous • Stoopid-People •  
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Why I Love Tasmania

Honestly, I don’t know much about Tasmania at all. I know where it is - South of Australia, West of New Zealand, just about at the end of the world. I know they’ve taken to growing grapes there, because I see their wines in the stores. But what makes me love little Tasmania is their online paper, Mercury, the voice of Tasmania. It shows me that there is some hope for the rest of us, because these guys have got their priorities straight. You can tell that just by reading the front page. The important stories today:

• The tunafish are running off the coast, and folks are catching some big ones.


• A car crashed into a cow shed during a local road race. No cows were injured.


• Australians abroad suffer hardship because Hong Kong has run out of Vegemite to eat. It’s a crisis!


• and in international news, TV puppet Basil Brush is involved in a racial row because the show portrays gypsies selling the things that gypsies have always sold.

I think they’ve got the right approach. Focus on the things people might find interesting, and ignore all the rest of the crap.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 01:36 PM   
Filed Under: • International •  
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North Korea can’t feed itself, as usual

Oh noes!! The Krazy Korean Kommies under ‘lil Kim me so ronery Jong Il are running out of food. Again! Just like they do every year for nearly two decades!! What shall we do, what shall we do? Oooh, the poor and starvin’!!!

Anybody got that recipe for Rock Soup?

North Korea faces a looming food crisis due to floods last year, the U.N. food agency said.  Food prices at North Korean markets have doubled while state rations are dwindling, the World Food Program said Wednesday.  Key donors such as China and South Korea are not expected to send as much direct assistance to the North as they have in the past.

“The food security situation in the (North) is clearly bad and getting worse,” Tony Banbury, WFP Asia regional director, said in a statement. “It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy.”

Jean-Pierre de Margerie, WFP’s country director in North Korea, said by telephone from Pyongyang that North Korean officials were admitting for the first time that the state ration system—already erratic in providing food to the country’s 23 million people—was breaking down.  “It’s a bit of a perfect storm shaping up,” he said.

Prices of staple foods have doubled in the past year in the capital. A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice now costs about a third of a typical worker’s monthly salary of 6,000 won (about US$2), WFP said.

Well pardon me if I don’t give a damn. Maybe if they allowed a bit of free enterprise people would grow more food. Maybe if they invested a bit of their money in farming instead of the military they’d have something to show for it. Maybe if they weren’t trying to destabilize the rest of the world by shipping nuke material anywhere they could people might have a little bit of concern for them. But no. Lil Kim-chee has to spend all his money on his army, as if anyone would want that desolate frozen overflowing outhouse of a country.

And you know what else? Rice costs more here. A kilo for a third of $2? That’s not even 31 cents a pound. Shut up, that’s a great deal in my opinion!! But 3 kilos of rice as your entire monthly salary? Hey ... I see a solution!!! Kick out the friggin Mexicans and let’s get the whole damn country over here as illegals. They’d work harder and only cost a tenth of a percent as much! Woo hoo, recession avoided! Everybody could afford to hire 10 or 20 of them. Homeless guys could have servants!

In another blow to the food situation, direct aid from North Korea’s two top donors—China and South Korea—is also expected to decline this year.

Due to rising food prices, China has restricted its exports and is not expected to send as much to its communist ally as in the past, de Margerie said.

South Korea has a new conservative president who has said he expects North Korea to reciprocate for aid, a change from the previous decade of liberal South Korean governments. The new policy has angered Pyongyang, which has claimed it does not need Seoul’s help.

So this means less handouts from the neighbors. And CNN and the UN seem to be Ok with that. Guess who will get the Guilt Guns turned on them now? That’s right, Tibet! Um, no, sorry. Not Tibet. It’s gonna be the USA again, as usual, as always. And you know old spineless will not only send them food, he’ll give them oil. And probably more. And they’ll keep right on being our steadfast enemies, only with full stomachs now.

Since the 1990s North Korea has suffered regular food shortages caused by natural disasters, mismanagement and the loss of the country’s Soviet benefactor. As many as 2 million people are believed to have died from famine.

Remember how the CCCP had food shortages every year for 50 years because of bad weather? Uh huh, I think that cloud system has moved to the South East and is stalled. Don’t send them a grain of rice. Let them fall. Let the axle of the Axis of Evil grind to a rusting halt. Next. But what about the pore n starvin? Hey, maybe they’ll use their last burst of energy to have a revolution. Or maybe they’ll just die. North Korea is a secret closed world. Nobody knows what goes on there and they ain’t tellin. Let’s let them stay closed, forever. It will be our little secret.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/17/2008 at 12:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • United-Nations •  
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