One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

Francis Maude has advised motorists to keep a jerry
can of fuel in their garage in case of a tanker driver strike.

I’ve seen some pathetic things from governments, but this one is right up there with the best.

A) Storing petrol is dangerous, not to say illegal; there may well be some horrible deaths and injuries because of this.

B) Such stockpiling will only ensure stocks run out faster.

C) It could lead to a spate of thefts from private garages by East-European immigrants and others, but with any luck they’ll still be too busy ripping the lead of church and the wiring from power supplies.  Sorry – not very PC, but to be honest I’ve just about had PC.

D) It would only make any difference for a few days anyway.

E) It’s for the govt to ensure supplies – SACK all the strikers. If they think they are undervalued presumably someone else will snap them up as soon as they are free. While you’re at it, do the same with the tube drivers AND the bankers.

This reminds me, I must see: “One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” once again.

 

NEWS OF THE DAY

Unresearched and Fallacious Rant of the Day

Well, another event-filled day. I note that the ECC (Evil Capitalist Coalition) is planning to give more rights to fathers to see their kids. Long overdue of course, though 13 years weren’t enough for Labour to get around to it.

Minibruder has turned into a latter-day Wilberforce battling nobly on our behalf to rein in Fat Cat bonuses. This is despite the fact that the GPB&BP (Great People’s Binge and Bust Party) spent 13 long years (and it seemed even longer of course) removing regulations from banking, indulging in a surreal borrowing binge, ignoring the vastly-increasing wealth-gap including banking bonuses and EVEN (HILARIOUSLY) drawing up and signing the contract by which Mr Hester was to have milked up to FIFTY MILLION QUID from the public for rescuing the RBS – which of course has suddenly overnight metamorphosed into something nasty and horribly immoral.

Yes, throughout this entire period of Blair-Brown feuding, lies and incompetence, not one peep was heard from the now evangelistic Minibrain about any of it. No doubt he mightily approved of Mandelscum’s “I don’t mind if people get filthy rich.” What happened? Did he wander into a cave somewhere and have a vision from the Archangel Gabriel?

You only have to look at this cynical U-turn designed to catch the public mood and earn him short-term headlines as a true English dragon-slayer to see the shoddy, cynical, short-termism mindset into which politics has sunk. Or perhaps it was ever so.

BUT, there is wonderful news for the unintelligentsia. A Canadian “research” team has concluded that Conservatives tend to be less intelligent than those of leftish orientation. WONDERFUL. Some brilliant quotes:

Conservative politics work almost as a ‘gateway’ into prejudice against others, say the Canadian academics.’Individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate towards more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo.

Great stuff. Isn’t research wonderfu!! I must give it a go one day. But Conservatives of course will generally be too thick to understand “cognitive” and “gravitate” I do wish these people would use shorter words.

“The authors claim that there is a strong correlation between low intelligence both as a child and an adult, and right-wing politics.” The authors also claim that conservative politics is part of a complex relationship that leads people to become prejudices (sic).

BUT – and it’s a big one – fortunately, intelligent, non-prejudiced Conservatives and thick, racist Socialists have a get-out clause, since:

‘Clearly, however, all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative.’

WHEW! That’s a relief. This accounts for the idiocy of quite a few of those on the left. Strange how they all seem to herd together and end up in the GPB&BP!

There you go, Michael! Wonderful what a bit of “research” can come up with. I had doubted the value of research of course, but this is gripping stuff. I wonder if they got an EU grant?

FACEBOOK - in the news of course, and I was struck by this:

“People with low self-esteem who sign up to Facebook often end up over-sharing personal information and moaning, which irritates their existing friends, according to Canadian researchers.”

Indeed. People always moaning and irritating their friends are to be both excoriated and pitied simultaneously. Still, I do post the odd joke now and then, and anyway, this theory is only important if you have any friends to start with. But my gut instinct (sorry – no research; my gut is all you’ve got to go on) is that Facebook may soon peak as a passing fad. Everything has its day and eventually fades into the dust.

I note that this report is from Canadians once again. I didn’t know they were so much into research!!  Researchers on every corner so it seems. Of course, no Great People’s Binge and Bust Party, but you can’t have everything.

The Concordia sinking. Oh dear – the Captain’s woes continue. Just when his wife sticks up for him to the hilt it emerges that this dishy singer/dancer he had on the bridge while he was showing off his “How close can I whizz past the rocks?” skills was using the Captain’s suitcase to store her knickers in. Funny that – it looks such a big boat; you’d have thought they’d have more storage space. I wonder how wifey is going to react to this. “Don’t kick a man when he’s down.” Indeed – tell that to the drowned passengers trapped in their cabins far below deck.

Great headline in the Daily Grail: foreigners, welfare state abuse, landlords – all in one economical package.

“Latvian landlady with £1.1m property empire fleeced £33,000 in benefits after claiming she was unemployed”

Still, no doubt unresearched prejudiced rubbish – and it’s only money.

Chris Huhne? A double dose of good news of course:

A) One of the pillocks running the country bites the dust:

B) There is sometimes justice.

The problem for Cleggo is to find someone of Huhne’s calibre to replace him. I’ve sent the former a note, however. My old Gran in the Dementia Care Home has some time spare just now. And does this mean we get a break from vast taxes on energy to save the world unilaterally by building wind-turbines just when China is opening one coal-fired power stattion per week? I hope so.

Have a good day.

 

Hysterical Guilt

I have been following the Turkey-France spat about the Armenian “genocide” with growing disbelief. One reason I started this site was the appalling lack of logic allied to nationalism that seems to stalk the world and a desire to make a gesture in defence of sanity.

Re the “genocide”, let’s start from square 1.

FACTS:

A “country” cannot feel, think or speak. It can, therefore, obviously not be GUILTY of anything. A “country” just “is”. Only PEOPLE are capable of the above: feeling, thinking, speaking and being guilty.

As for historical guilt, there are TWO major premises that concern us:

1) Only a MINORITY of people can be guilty of acts at a national level, namely THOSE WITH THE POWER OF DECISION. This clearly does not apply to the majority of the population in any country.

2) In the case of Turkey and the Armenian question, ALL THE TURKISH INDIVIDUALS RESPONSIBLE for the action against Armenians are LONG DEAD. NO TURK currently alive can possibly be guilty of ANYTHING; it all happened LONG BEFORE the vast majority were born. Even those alive in 1916 were far too young to have had any power of decision.

THEREFORE, NO GUILT WHATSOEVER CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO “Turkey”. No child can be held responsible for the acts of its parents.

Given these FACTS, which in essence are bleedin’ obvious, how does one explain the hysteria of the Turks and their refusal to admit that yes, indeed, their ancestors were guilty of the genocidal killing of Armenians, which is apparently the conclusion of most historians?

Personally, I cannot understand it. A total refusal to apply logic to human behaviour is beyond my understanding.

This question of historical guilt is of course not confined to Turkey. The Germans are supposed to continue to feel guilt about the Nazis. The British should still feel guilty about the bombing of Dresden. The Japanese are supposed to feel sorry about their army’s behaviour in WWII, about the appalling massacres in China. Europe is supposed by Muslims to feel guilt about the Crusades; many Muslims still feel angry about them. Some British no doubt STILL hate the French because of the Norman invasion in 1066.  But NOBODY alive had anything to do with these acts and/or atrocities.

Concerning Dresden, I personally think it was wrong, a bombing too far, but I cannot feel ANY GUILT about it. I was not born when it happened. My parents had nothing to do with it, but even if they had, that changes nothing. The decision was taken by individuals who are all dead. Whatever guilt they bore they took with them to the grave.

Time for the Turks to grow up. The ironic thing is that by refusing to admit the facts they appear to be SYMPATHETIC to what was done by their forefathers.

The worrying thing is that even in the 21st century much of international politics seems to be carried out on the basis of primitive tribalism and illogicality. How the HELL can we change this?

 

What 2012 has in store …..

- Argentina will successfully invade the Falklands and most of the inhabitants will emigrate from their homeland and birthplace to Britain. A giant statue of General Galtieri will be erected in Stanley, or rather Freedom-from-Colonialism City as it will be renamed. A protest by Argentinian Indians demanding the return of their country from Spanish colonialists will be suppressed with massive force and the ringleaders shot if lucky or imprisoned if not. The EU will support Argentina with the French supplying Exocets Mark 21 and the UK will leave the EU in disgust. UK fishermen will reclaim their traditional fishing areas, the stocks will be better managed, the population will eat more fish and be healthy. A brief fishing-war will end with one of our aircraftless aircraft-carriers ramming a Spanish trawler. The UK will save 20 million GBP per day previously wasted on the EU and Dame Ashton, Boringoso and Van Rompo will lose their jobs. (riotous joy breaks out all over England)

- The euro will collapse leaving only Germany, Austria and Holland as members of the currency to be renamed the Nordmark. Whether the people will end up calling the Mark or the Nord for short is unknown at this time.

- In the final triumph of Brusselian zealotry the economies of Southern Europe and Ireland will collapse and millions will emigrate to the Nordmark zone and of course to England, forcing the govt to stop all immigration and review all benefits as they decide to adopt a Swedish-style benefits system. PM Cameron said: “If it’s good enough for the Swedes then it’ll do for us.”

- The Coalition will disintegrate as Cleggo leaves to spend an
indefinite period in a sanitorium recovering from a mystery illness; he was last seen being carted off by men in white coats. Meanwhile an arrest warrant will be issued for Gordon Brown for the new crime of “ruining an economy” – as opposed to running one as he thought he was doing.

- The govt will be forced to call an election which it will win in a landslide. It will then repudiate all pfi contracts signed by the previous Labour government, thus saving millions by no longer paying hundreds of pounds to change a light bulb. Striking tube workers will be immediately sacked and desperate immigrants from the south and east of Europe hired to replace them. The sacked strikers will parade around complaining about their rights. Once their benefits have stopped after the new limit of six weeks they will be hired onto the new government “Clean up your community” scheme to remove graffiti and rubbish etc. This keeps them active and fit and gives them just about enough to live on while they retrain as bog-attendants.

- WWIII will break out over Taiwan but it’s a long way away and the fallout will take months to reach Britain. In any case, a poorly-maintained nuclear reactor somewhere in Eastern Europe will explode sending radioactive dust all over Europe, so the fate of Taiwan will be the least of our worries.

- War in the Middle East will erupt between Shia and Sunni factions in various countries. Israel and the USA will bomb Iran back to the Stone age to destroy its nuclear facilities and all Muslims will be expelled from Europe. All oil imports will cease and the UK will return to coal with a gasworks being built in every town and city to provide heat and lighting. Arthur Scargill will be made Honorary President of the new British Mining Corporation. Horses and carriages will return to the City Streets with the added advantage that remakes of Sherlock Holmes stories will be much cheaper.

- Food imports will disappear and the English (the Welsh also have declared UDI and applied to unite with newly-independent Scotland, a double-whammy provoking yet another rare outburst of riotous joy in England) will start planting potatoes in their gardens – if they have one. The price of potatoes will rocket in inverse proportion to the resale value of Ferraris. Consumers will once more be able to buy curved bananas, except that there won’t be any. Curvy cucumbers, however, will regain their once-proud position in the market.

- Once the Sunnis have wiped out the Shia or vice versa they will turn on apostates (= everyone else) to try to cleanse the planet for Mohammed. They’ll have the oil but fortunately we’ll have the bomb . If anyone is left over when the dust has settled then perhaps Man will start again a bit wiser – but don’t bet on it…………..

 

Cuba mourns Kim Jung-Il

“Cuba declares three days of mourning for North Korean leader, while Nicaragua, Venezuela and President Mugabe loyalists express sorrow too.”

North Korea being hardly better than a giant concentration camp of brainwashed and starved humans counts for little then in this Cuban assessment of the defunct leader? So much for the New Dawn in the Cuban dictatorship. Plus ca change ….

We know well from experience that there are no depths of depravity or insanity to which even outwardly “normal” people can descend, but even to the sheer surreality of such behaviour still has the power to shock.

What is the take of the resident Cuba-lovers on this latest obscenity against the Human Spirit?

Still, the fact that the power of life or death over millions of North Koreans and the finger on a nuclear bomb threatening millions of others now rests in the hands of a four-star child general shows the lunacy of Human development. Any visiting alien would almost certainly decide to put this sick species out of its misery and eliminate it as a danger to the rest of the universe.

Meanwhile, we await Christmas to play with our Chinese plastic bits and then the sales to get our hands on cheap electrical goodies made in China, the country that totally sustains North Korea – its socialist brother alongside Cuba – in the interests of “stability”. Oh yes, that much-cherished “stability” and “order”.

Must stop – have to go and vomit.

 

Boringissimo Bores On

Jose Boringissimo: “The EU faces a crisis of confidence.”

“a crisis of confidence”? Has this pratt got a single brain cell?

It’s not a crisis of “confidence”; it’s a crisis of: A) being humungously in debt and B) being led by incompetents.

All the “confidence” in the world is utterly useless if you haven’t got the money. I could go out right this minute with enormous confidence to buy a Ferrari, but my confidence wouldn’t be much use in the showroom.

And “confidence” MAY be built up for idiots by getting another loan, but it doesn’t MEAN you’re not still in deep schtuck.

And I wish Boringissimo would stop banging on about full fiscal union. Germany has already ruled it out and is now calling the n trillion bailout fund “silly” and even better “stupid”.

What does that then make those CALLING for it?

 

The UK’s 50p Tax Rate

Daniel Hannan in “The Telegraph” is bleating on about the unfair and “morally and intellectually indefensible 50p tax barrier”.

Indeed, but the RICH-POOR gap is increasing ALL THE TIME. In the USA it has become OBSCENE, not YET quite as bad in the UK. The remuneration of directors has gone up VASTLY, the multiple salary received by top people over ordinary workers FAR more than just 25 years ago.

Are you happy to see this go ON and ON, with a deeply-impoverished plebian class and a small number of hyper-rich?

And as for this “they’ll go to Singapore or Switzerland” scaremongering, well let them.  I’d like to see all the supperrich in Monaco and find out what their slaves in other countries are going to do about the situation.

It has gone TOO FAR and will end in revolution unless something is done. It’s almost as bad as in Victorian times.

SEE THIS:
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

NOBODY can earn a vast amount without the PLEBS doing most of the real work. Soon the plebs are going to do something about this vast inequality, which is EXTREMELY BAD for a society and has ALWAYS preceded the collapse into chaos and revolution.

 

DSK – Oh Dear …….

Oh Dear  …… you’d think that someone as rich and powerful as DSK would be able to find himself a bit of compliant totty without having to grope a hotel serving wench …

Not having been filthy rich myself I find it so hard to fathom the way these people think. As Geoffrey Archer said, “The Rich are Different”. (or was that Gilly Cooper?)

But he is of course an exceptional person – stinking rich yet seeking to be the number 1 socialist in France and share out all his wealth, though – cynic that I am – I can’t help thinking that his real aim is to share out all MY wealth – using this word in its widest possible sense.

But fair’s fair – “innocent until proven guilty” and all that …. even if he is French ….. it really is a tremendous hoot …. I suspect a touch of the French CREEP – a secret squad of French Secret Service agents setting up a sting to ensure DSK can’t pose a threat to Sarko’s reelection ….. the wench is probably a secret agent employed by the French right … I’d like to see a pic of her in her “working” clothes! How short was her skirt? How tight was her blouse?  Will it all come out in court?

Will Wikileaks expose it all? Will Sarko be arrested? (Ooops – can’t arrest a serving French President – they are too important – see Jacques Chirac, history of) Will Carla flounce off calling him “a pathetic little nerdish git”? (not news to us of course)

And poor old Angela!! About to discuss the second Greek bailout and turning up at the airport with no DSK in sight!!

“Vot haz ‘appened to DSK?” she fumes. “Vere iz he?”

“Sorry, your Chancelloressship – he’s just been arrested for rape!”

“Vell …. if that’s how he is going to behave perhaps I can consider myself fortunate ….”

I can’t imagine why people bother with “Eastenders”; politics is MUCH more fun …..

 

“International Law”

“International Law”? HA HA …

It seems to be decided among others by China (a nasty dictatorship) and Russia (a mafia state) and it allows gangster families with NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to seize a country by force and oppress “their” people for decades.

It also witnesses blatant murder by despot leaders both of their own and other nations’ citizens without reacting. (Mugabe, Gaddafi etc etc.)

The concept of “international law” is a fine one, but reality it ISN’T, and until there is democracy EVERYWHERE it WON’T be.

 

Libya Update

Well, as the match draws into the metaphorical last 10 minutes it’s going really well so far .

Brutal Dictators and Assorted Kleptomaniac Monarchies and gruesome Gaddafiesque sproglets using western weapons = 250

Unarmed, oppressed, downtrodden and exploited peasants and generally revolting rabblesque mob = 0.

We can all live with that, can’t we?

Still, a lot of talking and meetings are talking place – the “rebels” must be delighted. I wonder if the talking, meetings, dinners and press conferences will continue once Gaddafi has shelled and bombed Benghazi and Tobruk to bits?

“Tobruk”? Great Film. Surely after this they could do a sequel. The Gaddafi lot could dress up as Nazis.

Where is Egypt in all this? Are they happy having a bunch of Nazi thugs next door? Funny old world ….

Meanwhile, Europe prepares to welcome a hundred thousand refugees or more while right-wing parties especially in France are going to have a field day.

Perhaps we should supply fiddles to all our great leaders to while away the time.