Basically we should just write this week off. We were never going to win. Most of the papers care not for the crimes carried out by or covered up by the Catholic Church and neither do the television news programs. They have God on their side so that is such a massive positive that all other things are swept away. That is the right God by the way, not one of those funny foreign Gods.
Try this thought experiment; a Muslim leader wants to come to Britain for a bit a stroll around. He has been accused and has been shown to be, with documented evidence, to have known about and actively helped to cover up sexual crimes committed against children. Do you think that he would have got a visa? How much fuss would the Murdoch press and his TV news channel have made about that? You just have to look at the Fox news coverage of the not-a-mosque-that-isn’t-at-Ground-Zero story for a bit of a hint.
Do you think that the Mail and the Express would run glowing editorials about what we can learn from him and what an all round good egg he is? Do you think he would be allowed to compare a significant number of people in this country to Nazis because they think that his unpleasant views on homosexuality, abortion, woman, other religions, contraception, reporting crimes to the Police and how important people who believe in the same sky fairy (but only if they worship it in the correct way) are and should be listened to more than others, are wrong and harmful?
To be honest we are winning anyway, there are only about 5 million Catholics in the UK, which leaves about 60 million of us that aren’t. In a fight I think we will have them.
Their numbers are also declining (as are the circulations of the papers that support them credulously but so are ours) so if we wait around a while and let them continue to shoot themselves in, what seems like an extraordinary number of, feet then they will, hopefully, dwindle away to nothing and we can go about our lives, living them in an inclusive friendly way without these nasty little bigots having a say.
Again stolen from the BBC website.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not anti any religion, you/they have as much right to worship who or what you want as I do to not do it, but the double standards, hypocrisy and outright lies of the Pope, the Vatican and most of the British Press is becoming a little wearing.
Modern Religions have not given us our morals, these existed before these religions, the oldest of which is about 2000 years, and they merely wrapped their philosophies around them. The general principles of being nice to each and not killing others make basic evolutionary sense to preserve the group.
Whilst we are at it, lets have a look at those 10 Commandments shall we?
ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.'
TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'
THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'
FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.'
FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.'
SIX: 'You shall not murder.'
SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.'
EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.'
NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.'
TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour's.'
The first 3 aren't even about morals, just God. No mention of marriage being about between a man and a woman, nothing about dodgy employment decisions against woman.
The continuing argument from the Churches, especially the Catholic one, is that Atheists have no morals and are bad people and, as I would imagine that most people who read this ARE Atheists, we know that this is just blatantly untrue.
During his sermon at Westminster Abbey, following being on the front of every paper all week, he said to an audience made up of the Prime Minister and various Ex-Prime Ministers, various leading politicians and other important types, that the Church was being side-lined. That after having private meetings with all 3 party leaders.
Sorry about the ranty style today, when the week started I really wasn't that fussed about Popey coming here. OK, I didn't think we should cough up the money for it but I wasn't to upset about it. Now however, you have no idea how filled with righteous anger I am now.
Let's do some awards to help dissipate my rage,
The Award for Making Sure Your Child Hates You and Will Definitely Get Bullied,
Congratulations to Jamie and Jools Oliver on the birth of their healthy new son.
Just one little thing, and I know that it is a little lazy to have a cheeky shot at celebrity baby name, but Buddy Bear? Really? That is what you want to call him? Sure?
The Award for Most Deserved Coming 14th in a Survey of 117 Towns of the Week,
The high street of Dorchester has been dubbed a “clone” after we came 14th in a survey of the country’s blandest high streets.
Obviously this has offended local shop keepers but the survey is quite right. Whilst there are a few independent shops, if you came here you wouldn't be enthralled by the dazzling range of artisan stores, unless you really like mobile phones.
I think that will do for today. Significant Other has written a review of our weekend at the End of the Road festival here. My podcast is here.
Have a lovely week, the Pope goes home today, I think, which will make it nicer for everyone.
There really is only one story that I want to talk about this week. It is one of the most talked about and life changing events of the week (well in our house anyway). It could alter the way we live our lives for years to come. If we do not act now, history will judge us to have failed.
As of July a Scrabble rule change will mean that you are allowed to use proper nouns! You will be able to put company names and the names of celebrities.
A company spokesman said "This is one of a number of twists and challenges included that we believe existing fans will enjoy and will also enable younger fans and families to get involved." I'm sorry? What?
Why do you think that young people need to be patronised by making the game easier? It is fun because it is hard, that is the point. Do we encourage children to play football by making the goals bigger? Do we get children to play “Battleships” by making the board smaller? Do we make teenagers seem more clever by making GCSEs easier? Ok, bad example (and I’m not sure if that is actually true) but my point still stands; making things easier does not make them more appealing. It does, however, make them less valuable. Have you ever been allowed to win by someone else, at anything, not just games? It is a totally empty feeling, even children understand this and they are stupid.
JFK said “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” He could have been talking about playing Scrabble.
They also said that the changes will “introduce an element of popular culture into the game". Why is that a good thing?! I don’t want to have my scrabble board looking like a copy of Heat magazine. I want it to look like a scrabble board.
Significant Other and I have discussed it and this is a rule change that we will not be implementing in the Norris household.
Ok, I suppose there was something else of some importance that happened this week. Gordon Brown has been to see the Queen and asked her if he can have an election and she said Yes (Do you think that she has an option? Could she say “No, cos I think that you will loose and I don’t want that twat Cameron in charge”? It seems unlikely).
A clear Tory policy has emerged of not telling the truth about Nation Insurance. “We will not implement this 1% NI rise because it is a tax on jobs.” No, you will only raise it by 0.5% won’t you and “a tax on jobs”? Now this is a revelling line.
What they mean by this is that it is a tax on businesses (rich people who fund the Tory party) but they have no problem with a rise in Income tax because that only affects workers.
James Caan (out of off of Dragons Den) pointed out on Newsnight that the 1% rise will cost about £15 a month per employee. Will that stop a business employing a person? He said not. If they want a person they will employ them. He also pointed out that the NI rise only comes in when the employee earns about £20,000, how many shop workers earn that much? The job that I applied for at Millets (and didn’t get) paid £6 per hour, I don't think that I would have earn that much. So is the Tory plan nonsense and are their business friends only trying to preserve their profits? Yes, yes they are.
The business men who queued up to side with their puppet, did I say puppet I meant Party, and say that Gordon Brown was wrong didn’t really fool anyone, despite David Cameron referring constantly to them.
One of the people supporting the Tories was Sir Stuart Rose of Marks and Spencer whose company, this week, posted a health profit for last quarter of the year and estimates that it’s full year profit will be between £620m-£630m. Not really struggling then in the recession. They probably can afford an extra 1% on employees earning over £20,000 and not really notice it.
Combine this with their calls for a reduction in Health and Safety legislation to make it easier for companies to kill you, their lack serious plans for increased regulation of the City and plans to reduce Inheritance Tax and you have to ask yourself, whose side are they on? I don’t think that it is yours.
They are also a little hypocritical (I know this will come as no surprise) over income tax. On Tuesday the new top rate of income tax came in to force going up to 50% for those earning over £150,000. The Conservatives criticised this ferociously and, with various business groups, said that high earners would leave the country. Well they had one years notice and it seems that they haven’t.
Despite this friend-protecting rhetoric they have no plans to reduce it.
Whilst we are talking about tax and benefit changes can I bring your attention to these?
Mothers will now be able to donate all or part of their maternity leave to their husband/partners. At the moment mother can take up to 52 weeks of fathers get 2 weeks but now the mother will be able to take 6 months and then go back to work and the father/partner can take the next 6 months.
ISA limits have been raised to £10,500 per year (so good for small savers then).
Sick notes have now been replaced with Fit notes. Instead of just being signed off sick your GP will be able to suggest what work you are fit for. Whilst there are a few problems with this, GP are not Occupational Health specialists for instance, overall this is great. Research seems to suggest that the sooner people get back to work the quicker they get better.
Now, as I have said before, I am no fan of Labour. I have watched my civil liberties disappear faster then the Twin Towers came down since 2001, they have taken us into 2 wars, 1 of which may be illegal and the Digital Economy bill is a disgrace but all of the above ARE great things and they should be applauded for these things.
And while I’m talking about Government achievement, the economy may do much better than predicted.
According to the OECD the UK economy may grow at an annualised rate of 3.1% for the second quarter of 2010 which is much better than most other countries in the G7.
Let me continue, if I may, with more slightly dull economic numbers.
Many analysts say that The Markets are “jittery” about the possibility of a hung Parliament or the Countries credit rating being downgraded over the size of the deficit (this is so unlikely as to not be worth talking about). If this is true then The Markets are reacting in a very strange way. They are going up. The FTSE closed on Friday at 5770.98, up 58.28 points on the day. For the year they are up from their lowest point of 3968.40 points, that is a rise of 68%! Does that sound like a market that is concerned about how Labour are running the economy to you because it certainly doesn’t to me.
Sorry, that was a bit dull but the points had to be made.
The scary thing about the pre-election is the blood lust that the 2 main parties have got up for cutting things.
Alistair “those aren't his real eyebrows” Darling said that they would have to cut harder and deeper (he was also writing porn dialogue at the same time) then anything done by Margaret Thatcher. Really? Fuck off. You are a Labour chancellor. What are you doing trying to keep up with the Osborne’s?
And then they all try to hide other cuts in euphemism, “We will make efficiency savings”. So you are absolutely sure that these are not cuts then because when big companies merge they make “efficiency savings”. Shortly afterwards an awful lot of people loose their jobs and those that remain have their terms and conditions shredded. So I ask you once again, are you absolutely, completely and utterly sure that these “efficiency savings” are definitely, definitely not cuts?
The Award for Using Words in an Article That Only Newspapers Use,
There are some words that don’t get used enough in modern day English, such as bobbins and poppycock (which is my favourite word in all of the language), and there are some words that are only used by tabloid newspapers. The word “romp” for instance is only used by red top newspapers when they are referring to sex, i.e. “The footballer romped with the model”
The mighty Daily Mail has decided to bring back a word that hasn’t been used in its correct context since Queen Victoria sat upon the throne. They claimed in an article about the New Dr Who assistant Amy Pond “that viewers were left scandalised” by her short skirt. Scandalised? Really? By some legs?
Now I would link to the original article but I’m not clever enough and the Daily Mail on-line is like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, it is constantly changing things that have been printed to closer reflect the views of it’s witless commentators (and the Google Cached thing doesn’t seem to work for that paper). The article no longer includes that word because they probably realised that it has been used since the “Lady Chatterley” trial.
I would just like to say to people who were upset, or indeed scandalised, by the sight of Karen Gillan’s (not even bare legs, although that might be the issue, oh I don’t know) legs that they should avoid nearly all female professional sport and it is probably best if you stay indoors for the summer (especially around May the 6th sort of time).
The Award for Trying to Get Something Really Rather Wrong on to a Plane,
Two women have been caught trying to smuggle a dead bloke in a wheel chair on to a plane at Liverpool's JohnLennonAirport. It really is as simple as that.
They claimed that he was asleep and put sunglasses on him and then attempted to board a plane.
They also travelled to the airport in a Taxi. That is how observant taxi drivers are people, you can pop a dead bloke in one and they won’t notice.
The Award Sticking Your Head In the Sand and Placing Your Fingers in Your Ears,
For the third week in a row I am forced, mostly by their own stupidity and trying to make out that problems don't exist, to mention the Catholic Church.
Now I am not a religious man, well actually I am an atheist, and the activities of the worlds various religions are not of a great deal of interest to me except if they are justifying flying planes into buildings or telling AIDS ravaged countries that condoms actually make the problems worse or….., oh ok, I do take a bit of any interest but the Catholic Church is really trying to push the boat out at the moment.
The Associated Press is reporting that it has a letter that is signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, in which he resists the defrocking of a convicted sex offender.Cardinal Ratzinger said the "good of the universal Church" should be considered in such cases.
Rev Stephen Kiesle was convicted in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco and was sentenced to 3 years probation. His diocese, Oakland, had recommended Kiesle's removal in 1981 but it didn't happen until 1987.Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department that deals that sort of thing, in 1981 and this letter was written in 1985.
So here is another bit of evidence that shows that Cardinal Ratzinger was aware of the abuse and attempted to cover it up and what did his spokesman, Rev Federico Lombardi, say? Why he tried to play it down of course, saying “The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations."
Let’s end with a song to lift your spirits as I have gone on a bit this week.
I know that everyone else of a skeptical bent has linked to this or embedded it and that I am a little behind the curve here (as I am with so many things, I hear those Beatles are pretty good, you should check them out) but here is The Daily Mail Song by Dan and Dan,
Have a good week. The sun is out and the sky is blue, enjoy yourselves whilst you can as soon we may have a Tory Government.
If you want an insight into how a society can/will breakdown just turn the power off on a set of traffic lights at a particularly junction.
I think you can describe this as a perfect storm for a Daily Express front page, Princess Diana and weather.
I don’t think we need to go into the story really do we? No of course we don’t. The Daily Express is rapidly becoming Britain’s answer to the National Enquirer.
Wednesday's Mail and Express both had the same story with the same basic premise, “It is political correctness gone mad!”
The version that you got from the head and by-lines was that a person was fined £1000 for selling a goldfish. Well, how ridiculous and of course not entirely correct.
Great Grandmother (who is 66! A great grandmother at 66, usually the Mail would have been criticizing that, how young were these people having children?, but they have bigger fish to fry! Ha, see what I’ve done there!) Joan Higgins sold a goldfish to someone who was 14 and this is illegal under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, they have to be 16 or occupied by an adult. Oh much later on in both versions of the article “a council officer in the shop at the time also noticed a cockatiel in a cage that appeared to be in a poor state of health. A vet found the bird had a broken leg and eye problems. It was later put down.” So more breaking of the law then.
This may come as a surprise to Mail and Express but cruelty to animals is against the law. The maximum penalty for this crime is £20,000 and a year in prison so she, with her only £1000 and 120 hrs of community service, got of quite lightly really.
This obviously has annoyed these papers, especially the Mail. This paper seems to be pushing for a 2 tier legal system, one for us and, as they would see it, the scummy people and then their readers who they seem to think the law should not apply to. See their offence when “middle class” types are charged with crimes.
A second tier of law, ummm, can you imagine the outcry if someone suggested a second tier of law based on say….. Sharia law? Of course you can because someone nearly did and this happened, here, here and here.
They don’t, however, make a fuss about Jewish or Beth Din courts which have been operating in our country for many, many years, how strange. Is it because they don't know about them? Perhaps someone should tell them. Can it be me? Please?
Science news now.
The Large Hadron Collider’s power is being turned up (yes, possibly to 11 but is that joke funny any more?) and they have started smashing very, very small things into each other.
The worlds most complicated ever machine is now setting records for the most powerful particle collisions created by man. They are running at seven-trillion-electronvolt (TeV) collisions (no, I don’t know what that means either) which have initiated 18-24 months of intensive investigations.
This is a good thing. Some people see this sort of thing as a waste of money, science for science's sake, but they are wrong. Do we know where these ground breaking experiments will take us? No, of course we don't, if we did there would be no point in the experiment.
Did NASA think “what we are looking at inventing is a fabric fastening material and a coating to stop our bacon sticking to the frying pan”? No they didn't. They wanted to put men in space and then on the moon and they found some other stuff along the way.
The Commons Science and Technology Committee has critised the University of East Anglia’s Dept of Climatic Research Unit (which consists of about 3 people) for not dealing with endless Freedom of Information requests for AGW deniers (not overly comfortable with that word but sceptic is the wrong word. Sceptics consider all the evidence not ignore most of it) well enough and that was all.
The E-mails of Professor Phil Jones of the CRU were hacked and posted on the internet. These were used by some people with dubious motives to try and claim that he had manipulated the data to make it look like Climate Change was happening when it really it wasn’t. The committee said much of the data that critics claimed Prof Jones had hidden, was in fact already publicly available.
“We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is induced by human activity”.
Now I don’t know about you but I think that that is a pretty big smack down to the doubters but I don’t think that it will help to change their minds, after all they think that just because it is cold in England right now that this quite clearly proves that AGW is nonsense. That is an ok view for them to have in my opinion because it will be summer soon when it will be hot and by their logic this will prove that Climate Change is happening and then we will all laugh at them.
More architecture this week because London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced that they are going to build a fucking big statue/sculpture type of thing for the Olympic Games.
Now don’t worry if you don’t like it because you aren’t going to pay for most of it. The ArcelorMittal Orbit (odd name) is designed by Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and £16million of the total £19.1million will come from steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who owns the company ArcelorMittal, oh that will be where the name of the thing comes from. The other £3.1million will come from the London Development Agency.
Priests raping children update now,
The Vatican has decided that the best form of defence is attack this week with the Pope describing the news coverage of the church’s of the cover up of decades of sexual abuse as “petty gossip”. In his address on Palm Sunday he said that faith in God leads “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion”. He didn't refer directly to the scandal but the implication was pretty clear. He managed to ignore it or cover it up when he was a Cardinal and now he intends on dismissing it while he is Pope.
If they wanted to mount a proper defence they have 2 options open to them; they can either attack the victims by trying to make them seem unreliable which may yet happen or you can attack those printing the allegations about you, which is what the Vatican has decided to do. First there was the “petty gossip” thing and now we have accusing the New York Times of going into “attack mode” for printing a series of articles about what the Pope may or may not have known. Cardinal William Levada, who is doing the Pope's old job (no, honestly, the man defending the Pope is the man whose job it is to cover things up, just like the Pope did) said that the paper should “give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on". No it shouldn't. It should be reporting the news not doing your advertising for you. If your Employees have broken the law, which it seems they have, then that should be reported.
I thought about making some sort of joke about it's only a matter of time before someone tried to make out that it was “an anti-Catholic” conspiracy but thankfully someone has gone one better. Someone has stepped up and compared asking some questions and trying to get justice for the victims and with....., no wait for this, this is good........... Anti-Semitism! No really!
I give you the Rev Raniero Cantalamessa, Pope Benedict's personal preacher, raised this brilliantly distracting but ultimately spectacularly offensive idea during Good Friday prayers in St Peter's Basilica. And there we have it, now we have playing the victim.
Strangely enough this has not gone too well with those of non-pork eating, foreskin removing persuasion. Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, described the remarks as offensive and repulsive. "So far I haven't seen St Peter's burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests."
It's not wall to wall criticism though; some members of the Church are taking the issue seriously. Archbishops in Austria and Switzerland are appealing to parishioners to come forward with their allegations, and admitting to past mistakes when dealing with claims. They also asked for forgiveness as they tried to repair the damage caused by the sex abuse scandal currently not being cover or investigated as it should.
Well it's a start, perhaps they could Email (or Tweet) the Holy See to try and encourage him to do the right thing. I know that after all this time he’s unlikely to change his mind but that would be the decent thing to do.
The links that I have used for this story all come form the BBC and the Guardian, there is a good reason for that. It does seem that a lot of news outlets in the UK are a little quiet on this story, you can click here for a made up Deity's view on this.
The Award for Panic of the Week,
Why on earth are we banning Methedrone? I assume it is because it has crap nicknames like “meow meow” or “M Cat”.
The tabloids got really upset about it, wrongly I might add (these 2 boys took Methadone (the heroin replacement, prescription only drug), and alcohol as well as Methedrone) and then the Government asked the , really understaffed, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to consider what to do with it.
When I say “consider what to do with it” I don't mean how to take it, I mean ban it. And then it was so. There was very little discussion amongst the council according to latest resignee Eric Carlin. In his letter to Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, he said,
“Re-Mephedrone; we had little or no discussion about how our recommendation to classify this drug would be likely to impact on young people’s behaviour. Our decision was unduly based on media and political pressure. The report was tabled to the whole Council for the first time on Monday; the Chair came to brief you before the whole Council had even discussed all of the report. In fact, I still haven’t seen the final version.”
So if you want something banned get some newspapers to make a fuss about it. The Home Secretary will push it through and you will get your way, which is good news for all of us, if we are a right wing newspaper.
I know that it is childish but I want to go and see “Kick Ass” just because it has pissed of the Daily Mail so much. I want it to do well so that they are even for annoyed.
They seem not to like the film because a child uses a bad word and there is some violence, ah well. They describe it as “Evil” and if that doesn't make me want to go and see the film then I don't know what will. Oh and Mark Kermode gave it a good review too.
I will leave you with this happy little thought, British Chiropractic Association happily promotes bogus treatments even though there is not a jot of evidence.
Today’s opening question is, how many of you met a Minister of State this week? Come on be honest, did you? No, of course you didn’t. I, however, met Andy Burnham, Minister for Health, my ultimate boss. He seemed like quite a nice bloke. Slightly ill-fitting suit though.
I did ask on twitter if anyone had any questions for him and I received a few suggestions, most of which were appropriate, one was less so. Unfortunately my bosses where quite keen to stop me asking any questions but I did manage to get one in about the proposals to axe GP practices boundaries so that you can register anywhere you like. It’s an ok plan but there are issues i.e. home visits for patients who are really far away form the surgery and, if patient is registered with 2 practises and one prescribes a really expensive drug that the other one doesn’t use, who is going to pay for that drug. He is, at least, now aware of these problems.
Other questioned were on such topics as NHS Homeopathy (what performance indicator and monitoring arrangements there are for the 4 NHS Homeopathic hospitals) and what will he do to improve dissemination of evidence to healthcare workers and the public? That last one was from Ben Goldacre, he had 2 others as well. Does he type as fast as he speaks because if he does that would be a sight to behold?
I was impressed by the amount of sucking up my bosses did to the Health Secretary and the local MP who also tagged along.
As this is Diana Watch I feel that it is important to point out that she was on the cover of the Sunday Times last week but I missed it, sorry.
There was, however, a much funnier story that was sort of about her at all this week.
The Daily Express had found that there is a Twitter account called @dianainheaven, this is an amusing feed that pretends to be from the dearly departed Princess Diana, and it says that people are outraged. Well it says admirers of PD (can we call her that?) are outraged but really they mean them.
They have also managed to find someone from something called Diana Appreciation Society. Alan Berry, co-founder of (and I assume half the membership of) DAS, said “It’s sick that some people can pretend to be Diana. What respect is that showing?” He also called for Twitter to ban the page.
They also found it necessary to point out twice in the article that the account was fake and wasn't really PD. As if Daily Express readers, of all people, would be in any doubt that she is dead.
Prof Colin Pritchard of BournemouthUniversity is to publish a study into violence against children with particular emphasis on deaths. He looked at children from birth to 14. He has come up with some interesting findings. Despite what you may hear and read in the press your children have never been safer.
This will, of course, come as a crushing disappointment for Chris “it’s like the Wire round here” Grayling,Shadow home secretary,who has been accused for misleading people with has pretty poor use of the statistics regarding crime figures.
He has sent out some numbers to Tory activists saying that crime figures have risen under Labour. Unfortunately for him he has forgotten to point out that the way the numbers are calculated changed in 2002 and, as Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, the pre-2002 and post-2002 are not directly comparable. Well what he actually said in note attached to a letter sent to Mr Grayling "a comparison, without qualification, of police-recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public”.
In the letter it’s self he said "I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics."
Seriously, if you are getting smacked down by a statistician you are in serious trouble.
That was not the full extent of Conservative voter scaring this week, oh no. Liam Fox, Tory Defence fool, managed to get fear-mongering, Xenophobia and Jesus into his response to the Governments green paper into Defence review. Here are a few selected highlights, (this is a link to the Conservative Party homepage, I wouldn’t recommend it),
“That our nation’s security should be compromised by Labour’s historic economic incompetence is truly a national tragedy.”(fear-mongering), and “We also agree that France and the United States are likely to be our main strategic partners. For us there are two tests: do they invest in defence? And do they fight? Sadly too few European allies pass both these tests.” (Euro-Sceptic Xenophobia) and my personal favourite, “And despite all the good words in this Green Paper today, the future defence budget will have to be conducted against the backdrop of Government debt of 799 billion pounds. That is the equivalent of borrowing 1.1 million pounds every day since the birth of Christ.” That is an odd reference point unless that was a call to the elderly Christian usual Tory voters. Taking into account all the old Conservative touchstones mentions, do you think that he was appealing to their base?
How about a few awards to lighten the mood?
The Award for, Again, Proving the Tories Wrong,
Dear David Cameron, if Britain is so broken, if it is the home of an uncaring people, of thugs and yobs, of divorce and broken homes, then why, we when we saw people who we didn't know, suffering in ways that we couldn't possibly understand, then why have we given £70 million to the Haiti appeal so far?
The Award for the Most Horrifying Pictures of the Week,
This goes to an article on MSN about Miley Cryus’ sister Noah starting her own range ofkiddies “lingerie” (to be honest it is probably only children’s underwear and it’s a PR thing ) but the photos that accompany the article are truly awful.
I feel that the link needs a disclaimer. Whilst the photos are not child porn, I really don’t think that they are suitable for work. Or any other situation for that matter. Click here at you own risk. Scroll up to see as this link takes you to the comments section.
So my week has been pretty good. I met 2 MP’s, neither of whom turned out to be arses (despite what you might have read in the papers) and I had a bit included on the Pod Delusion (A podcast about interesting things.) Because I have finally worked out how to embed MP3’s on the blog (and a few people have said some nice things about it) here is my bit,
or you can listen to the whole thing if you just look to the left of the screen…… No, up a bit, there that’s it, the whole episode is embedded there.
My advice to you this week is, if you haven’t already (and I can’t imagine you haven’t), you must watch Charlie Brookers Newswipe on BBC4. It is, by far, the funniest show on the television at the moment. It says all the things that you think about News coverage in our lovely country but it says them in a really funny way. Here is British television news deconstructed in 2 minutes, enjoy.
Some of the things I haven’t had time to talk about this week are,
Obama says that he doesn’t “want to make decisions based on getting re-elected” and does things that are “the right things to do.” I still think he may be a great man.
Pope criticises the Equality act. Does that mean we can criticise him back, the intolerant, sexist, AIDs spreading, paedophile protecting, superstition promoting, Nazi?
He says the homosexuality is against “Natural Law”. What is natural law? Does he mean that it is unnatural because that is an odd path to go down? Nature is pretty weird.
Most parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside caterpillars and the Lava eat their way out? Mallard Ducks exhibit behaviour the researchers call “rape flight”. Male lions kill any cubs that they think are not their own. Is this the “Natural Law” that the Pope is referring?
10 Americans arrested for trying to kidnap 33 Haitian children, although it may be a little bit more complicated than it first looked. Still taking children without official permission with possible lying to parents, I think that qualifies you for “Cunt” status.
If you are on Twitter, or even if you aren’t, please check out Soichi Noguchi. He is currently in the International Space Station and is taking pictures of our beautiful plant and posting them on his feed. It is truly fantastic.
BAE Systems admits a lesser charge of bribery and corruption so that is can get bigger and better charges dropped.
Ok, I think I have to except that the Sunday Blog will ramble on a little, hope that’s ok with you lot.
