Snowpocalypse

Over heard as we came out of the cinema this week, “That made no sense to me, although I haven't seen any of the other Harry Potter films or read any of the books.”

 It's been another great week for those that bring you your news, Britain has entered Weathergeddon. Last week it was Royal wedding news and this one has ended with endless pretty pictures of the English countryside covered in a thin but beautifying layer of snow.

 The 24hr news channels have dispatched poor correspondents to various snowy hilltops and motorways to tell us how dangerous the driving conditions are which always leaves me with the question, how did you get there? This is the closest most of them will get to that coveted War Correspondent post so rather then delivering a considered, dispassionate piece to camera whilst the unit with which they are imbedded are taking fire they get to stand by the M62 just outside of Pontefract making out that they are Scott of the Antarctic,

 Those really are some mixed messages that they are sending out, see how pretty it is out there but don't go out, you will die. The snow is back and this time it's personal.

 Our newspapers get really very excited by the cold weather but especially the Express.

 There are 2 reasons for this, 1) they are able to trot out the meaningless argument, “well, if we've got all this snow then global warming is clearly made up” (although the Met Office disagrees) and 2) most of their readership is so very old that the cold might actually be a problem.

 Yes, the cold can present some problems, especially for the elderly, but please, calm down, it's not “The Day After Tomorrow,” it's just some snow.

 Let's do some awards now,

The Award for Pointless and Meaningless Survey of the Week,

 What happens if you ask a load of xenophobes who read a xenophobic newspaper that feeds them xenophobic stories everyday, many of which are untrue, whether or not they want to be in Europe or not?

The Award for Being Sarah Palin of the Week,

 I have some advice for the Democratic Party, let it happen. Get on with doing your thing and if the Republicans want to nominate the awful Palin person then so be it. The more she interviewed and comes under the spotlight, the more she will be shown to be an idiot. Which Korea is your country friendly with Mrs Palin?

 If you point out that she is an idiot you will strengthen the resolve of those who are thinking about voting for her and you will just come of as the class bully. Just let the people find out for themselves. Tea Party nutters will vote for her anyway so ignore them; concentrate on what you want to do. Can you imagine the an Obama/Palin debate? Those wavering voters will be put off by her. What you have to worry about is a reasonable Republican candidate.

The Award for Just Being a Massive Douchebag of the Week,

Well you have a choice for this one. You can either have Bryan Fischer, a right-wing Christian journalist, who criticised the giving of the medal of Honour, America's highest military honour, to U.S. Army Sergeant Salvatore Giunta because he saved the life of several colleagues.

 Sgt Giunta is said to have ‘exposed himself to withering enemy fire’ as he helped a wounded colleague to safety and rescued another who was being dragged away by Taliban insurgents.

 This however is not good enough for self proclaimed “Christain” Fischer who claimed that the medal was being “Feminised” because it was given for saving people rather than killing enemies. Mr Fischer, who writes a column for the American Family Association, said “When we think of heroism in battle, we used to think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.

That kind of heroism has apparently become passé when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.

So the question is this: When are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honour once again for soldiers who kill people and break things, so our families can sleep safely at night?’

He added: ‘Our culture has become so feminised that we have become squeamish at the thought of the valour that is expressed in killing enemy soldiers through acts of bravery.' Tosser.

 Your second choice is Joe Rehyansky. He is a part-time magistrate and Vietnam veteran of Hamilton County, Tennessee. In writing for the conservative news site The Daily Caller he seems to have suggested that it might be a good idea for Lesbians to serve in the army, with their “medical and administrative specialties”, because all those strapping young men will be able to “cure them” and “bringing them into the mainstream.”

 He said “it fell to men to swing through the trees and scour the caves in search of as many women as possible to subdue and impregnate – a tough job but someone had to do it”. Umm, “subdue and impregnate”, does he mean force themselves upon? Does he? Does he mean that straight men should rape lesbians? It does seem that way.

 Does he think that gay men should be allowed to join up as well? Don't be silly. He said that the “promiscuity” of gay men, together with HIV, would have “the potential for disastrous health consequences” if gay men were allowed to join up. “Gays spread disease at a rate out of all proportion to their numbers in our population and should be excluded from the military,” he argued. He then went on to say “Shouldn’t the overwhelmingly straight warriors who answer their county’s call be spared the indignity of showering with other men who achieve lascivious enjoyment from the sight of those lithe naked bodies, and who may be tempted to seek more than the view?”

 Two things from that sentence, 1) he seemed to enjoy typing it a little too much if you ask me. “lithe naked bodies” indeed and 2) “ overwhelmingly straight warriors,”? Now, does he mean in general or individually? Are most soldiers straight or are all the soldiers mostly straight? Is he saying that everyone in the US Army is a little bit gay? All those buff man in uniforms, it could turn a man's head. Anyway, tosser.

Hat tip to Carmen D’Cruz on twitter for pointing me in the direction of that last story.

The No Shit Sherlock Award of the Week,

Massive stoner and all round lovely bloke Willie Nelson has been arrested for possession. Does this come as a surprise to anyone really? Seriously, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. When doesn't he have dope on him? The arresting officer said that his suspicions were aroused when the bus pulled into a routine checkpoint and he detected a distinctive odour. Of course he did, Willie Nelson was on it. It's a little bit ingrained now.

 See, drug laws just don't work. He has been arrested a number of times but has this put him off? No, no it hasn't. It is not a deterrent. Prohibition just doesn't work. If it did then we would have any problems with drugs.

 I think that will do for this week. If you have been protesting against the cuts this week, either the various student ones or in Dublin on Saturday, well done you. And there was beginning to think that we all getting a little political disengaged. You make me proud.

 People are angry Mr Cameron because their lives are being effected by the actions of a small number of bankers who have suffer but not at all and when they try and exercise their legal right to protest they are treated like criminals by the police and press.

Have a great rest of week and enjoy the snow but if you have an elderly neighbour, make sure they are ok.

The Return of Diana Watch

Can I start with a question? Oh I've already asked one and used that joke before I think, ah well, a second question then, are attempted plane bombers just really, really committed environmentalists? By sewing some explosives into his pants and then using a syringe to add a substance to the hidden package (tee hee) so that he could set light to his testicles hence earning him the nickname “thunderpants”, he has made air travel and the resulting super increase in pointless security so horrible that people will be put off of flying. Think of all that carbon he has saved. Greenpeace should thank him. He should get a hand written letter from Ed Miliband.

 Usually I don’t use this blog to talk about stuff that is going in my life but due to the fact that all of Britain is snow bound there has been little else in the news. So little news if fact that Jonathan Ross leaving the BBC got 15 whole minutes on PM on radio 4 on the day he left. Well at least they weren't talking about snow for that quarter of an hour. Well, that's not completely true; Ross made his statement to the press carrying a tray of tea for them because they had waiting for a while IN THE SNOW. What non-English (because we don't know what's going on in Wales or Ireland) readers have to understand is that English weather is the worst in all of the world. It may only be -4 degrees C here (quite a bit colder in Scotland at night though) but clearly, by the amount of trouble caused by this not-that-cold-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things, our scale is different to, say, Russia's where the MAXIMUM temp will be -13 on Saturday or maybe Finland's, because it seems to be causing significantly more problems here than anywhere else and this leads me to that conclusion. Foreign's scale is different and easier, so our weather is worse. Well it's either that or we are just a bit rubbish at dealing with inclement weather and it can't be that.

 On Sunday we picked up a new kitten having been cleared for adoption (is that the right word? Do you adopt a cat or is it more like sub-letting?). She is very pretty and quite friendly, too significant other mind you, not me. See for yourself,

pretty.

 Whilst we were being interrogated by the slightly crazy cat women we mentioned that we were thinking about getting a second kitten to keep Tilly the Cat company. Oh my, we were met with a sob story. We heard about a kitten that had beaten up and this had resulted in a broken pelvis, cracked ribs and she has had to have half of her tail removed. Could we not take this cat? Are we dead inside? Well significant other is, she doesn't cry at  “It's a Wonderful Life”, but that's not the point. Of course we couldn’t and so on Friday we picked up our second kitten of the week, Ladies and Gentlemen I give you….. Pootle 2. (Named after our old cat and as a Simpsons reference)

As you can see she is a black cat, I like black cats and, because I’m not Rod Liddle, I don’t blame them for most of the small bird deaths in my area or all of the shit in my garden.

 This morning one of the kittens managed to get her paws underneath the duvet and attack Significant Others toes. She responded to this by saying “right! I'm going to have to get falconry socks to protect my feet”. It's a good job that people in the real world don't over react to a single attack in this same sort of over the top way, oh now, wait......

It must have been a great day in the office of the Daily Mail when this “report” came in. “Young children who are smacked 'go on to be more successful'” read the headline and the study, by Marjorie Gunnoe, professor of Psychology at Calvin College in the U.S. state of Michigan, “found there was not enough evidence to prove that smacking harmed most children.” Now, I have emailed Prof Gunnoe to try and see if this is what her report found but she is yet to get back to me. The thing is that the article written by the Mail goes on to, sort of, undermine its own headline.

“Teenagers in the survey who had been smacked only between the ages of two and six performed best on all the positive measures.” So between 2 and 6 disciplining your child is a good thing. Now I don’t think anyone can argue with that, however, after that it all gets a bit more vague.

 “Those who had been smacked between seven and 11 fared worse on negative behaviour but were more likely to be academically successful.” If you smack your child between 7 and 11 they will behave more badly. Now that is interesting. They seem to do better in School but their behaviour is worse. Take your pick parents, do you want a child that does as it is told or one that gets good11 Plus?

 “Teenagers who were still smacked fared worst on all counts. “ Not really a great surprise there.

 So the article that started out as a pro-smacking article very quickly talks itself into admitting that smacking (and by that they only mean a smack every so often, when needed, like when I was about to put a metal teaspoon into an electrical socket, not regular beatings, which I assume never did Littlejohn any harm. Except to make him hate all of humanity.) was only effective within a very specific developmental stage of the child.

 The brilliant self-undermining continued when right at the end they concluded with “Two years ago, Britain was criticised by the UN for failing to ban smacking in the home, after experts said it was a form of abuse. And growing numbers of the public seem to agree: A recent poll found 71 per cent of parents would support a ban on smacking.”  

 There won't be any awards this week because so little has happened that wasn't snow related and I've already written about to ill-fated Hewitt/Hoon thing.

 If you live in England, keep warm, if you live in a cold foriegn country, it's not as cold in your country despite what your therometer tells you.

 Have a good week all.

Clarkson Quiz

And now for a quiz. How predictable do you think Jeremy Clarkson is? Do you think that this week in his column in The Times he will use the snowy weather, a singular event in about 20 years, to claim that Climate Change, or global warming as he will call it, does not exist? I think he will as he is a man who mistakes his own opinion for fact.