Wikiunreliability

Thanks to TravelGall, I get this. Ahh, yes. Something highly secret, that was never referred to as "the letter of last resort" and contained instructions seen by few. Rumour had it, in my day, that it said "set course for Wellington and the best of British be with you, love and kisses, JM".

Monday, it must be Monday

Mrs S-E: Ugh, there are cat hairs on the scanner. Which cat has been copying its bum?

Master S-E: And who's it emailed the pictures to?

Little comment on a non-story

If (c)rap artistes can call themselves 'nigga', why can't a Nigerian company (that would be full of real Africans not 'African Americans') call a JV 'Nigaz'?

Are Americans of not-quite-recent African origin ('cauz homies, we're all Afro if you have long enough sight) really so special / delicate / in need of cosseting?

I will wish you good-night with a couple of links: here and here and the last word from the Ministry for the Eradication of Commonsense:

nigga

1. The spelling, pronounciation, meaning and usage of the word has been changed to convey a sense of pride and defiance, thereby removing the racial distinctness of the original term. Although similar in spelling and pronounciation to the original, its meaning is completely different. The word "nigga", when used between close friends, is as positive as the word "nigger" is negative. In general, whites should avoid use of the term, even in a positive sense, unless they are absolutely certain it will not be taken as derogatory.

God is Love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God

Okay, finding an appropriate quote for the title was hard work, but that is 1 John 4.16.

So, the Indian government has repealed the antique colonial law making male homosexual acts illegal. I am entirely happy about this - as a horrible right-wing reactionary (sorry, I meant libertarian but the new 'comment is free' translation module kicked in) the personal activities of consenting adults should not be a matter of the criminal law.

What I find luvverly is the contrasting reactions quoted of the Catholic and Muslim 'leaders':

"Our stand has always been very clear. The church has no serious objection to decriminalising homosexuality between consenting adults, the church has never considered homosexuals as criminals," said Father Emanuel.

"But the church does not approve of this behaviour. It doesn't consider it natural, ethical, or moral," he said.

Okay - I can live with that. The traditional interpretation of Christianity does not accept homosexuality but this appears to be a case of "love the sinner, hate the sin" - a perfectly rational position to take (even though I personally disagree with it - but then I am not a traditionalist Catholic, or any sort of Roman Catholic for that matter.) But here:

"This is absolutely wrong. We will not accept any such law," Ahmed Bukhari told the AFP news agency

What? They have repealed a previous law, not made mincing mandatory or arse-banditry compulsory. And anyway - fuck off you evil shit - you don't have the right to accept or reject laws, you pathetic 7th century bigot. Now, thank you, having got that off my chest, I can return to aimless web browsing.

Why's this so hard?

Cause: Government reduces orders for ships. (And this, and this and endless others)

Effect: Shipbuilders plan to close otherwise uncompetitive shipyards.

Simple, no? So why this?

Ah, yes. Because our politicians are incompetent fuckwits. SNAFU, then.

PS: Yes, I realise the irony of typing 'incompetence' as opposed to 'incompetent'. I'd blame the mists of screaming rage but I'm just taking a break from work.

Adopts sinister voice: "I'm Back"

And with a suitably onanistic post to re-start, thanks to Dick via Bella (and the chain in between):

OJ, June 17th, 1994

MSN: As such, the chase became a textbook 'where-were-you?' moment.

S-E: I think I'll stick with Dick's answer - he says it all really:

Where was I? Haven't a fucking clue.

Death of Diana, August 31st, 1997

MSN: It being a Sunday, virtually the entire nation was having a lie-in.

S-E : Ah, yes, this could actually individually identify me (if there is a copy of the Duty Officer list still knocking around.) So let's just settle for "by an Aroflex terminal, having opened the safe, wondering how much trouble being really fucking useless at drill was going to get me in to during the planning of the state funeral". Which, thankfully, never happened.

Challenger disaster, January 28th, 1986

MSN: It being a Tuesday, this meant that the first report of it on British television occurred at 5pm in an edition of the BBC weekday children’s programme Newsround.

S-E: Britannia Royal Naval College. Basic Training. Far, far too busy to worry about anything else.

Resignation of Thatcher, November 22nd, 1990

MSN: Even so, for those at work or school during the day, word of mouth had to make do until a television set could be found.

S-E: On Operation Granby (Desert Shield for any American visitors). Completely TV free. Although we did get very good news through the int people.

England v West Germany, July 4th, 1990

MSN: It was said even Princess Diana, attending a social function in London, was being kept in touch of the score by telephone.

S-E: Professional football? Does anybody seriously give a fuck? Anyway, I thought she was the Princess of Wales?

Queen Elizabeth's Coronation, June 2nd, 1953

MSN: The coronation was the first event in British history to be seen by a mass audience on the small screen.

S-E: Unborn.

Iranian Embassy siege, May 5th, 1980

MSN: Their dramatic rescue attempt took place in full view of the ITN cameras. Footage, however, was not broadcast live.

S-E: I probably did watch this. Can't really remember though.

September 11th, 2001

MSN: It was a weekday afternoon, so most people didn’t see pictures of the attacks until they got home from school or work.

S-E: At a security conference, with a lot of financial and disaster recovery people. Watched it live - having asked the hotel to open the bar 'cause there were a lot of people in serious need of a stiff drink or 15.

Assassination of JFK, November 22nd, 1963

MSN: It wasn’t until 11pm that the BBC was sufficiently organised to broadcast a proper tribute programme.

S-E: Still not born. And he was the American President so you would expect the BBC to have a tribute programme lined up for the event of his assassination? I dunno ...

So, not really 'The whole world turning on the TV' at all. Or is it just me?

Nope, clearly not just you. BTW, in case you are (to my great surprise) interested, the first "famous event" I saw was the Apollo 11 landing - my parents took the infant me to a neighbour's house, that having a TV. It is not recorded whether I dribbled, blew bubbles or just slept through the performance.

Mummy, When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Stasi Informer.

Hat tip to the Green Man for this:

So perhaps the occasional outing is just the level of control that the blogging community needs.

SO where does Murdoch get these stuck in a rut cunts from?

Three summers ago, while on work experience at The Sunday Times, I wrote a story outing a sex blogger, Zoe Margolis, who had just turned her online collection of back-alley exploits into a book titled Girl with a One Track Mind. The writer’s anonymity was used as a marketing gimmick and the piece was the first high-profile “exposé” of an online writer’s anonymity; I promptly became public enemy No 1 in the blogosphere.

Hmm, investigative journalist Google on ...

Nothing much here, just lots of shit about too expensive houses and scummy ex-Soviets. But, here, we have it. What the fuck is wrong with Oxford these days?

Musings of a late evening

Whilst reading about the unfortunate demise-by-exposure (shortly, possibly and even more unfortunately, maybe a 'doocing') of the blogger Jack Night (covered here, here and strangely here), I was engaged by the furore (in a blog-cup) over his "Evil Poor" post (the blog has gone but see here with yet more linky things in the comments).

Now, that got me thinking - always a dangerous thing.  Happy that the "evil poor" do actually exist, that they are a particular problem and that they are one overwhelmingly burdening on the non-evil (just to note that I am fully aware that the latter are the vast majority) poor.  Happy also that the "evil rich"exist  and the "evil moderately well off" and the evil ...  (Ed notes: stopped that with a brief application of 240V.)

What is the difference?  Might it be that impoverishment makes your search for subsistence the sole or overwhelming focus of your life?  The evil billionaire might be famed for the size of his yacht, the plasticity of wife No5, the vanity purchase of the football club etc, etc.  (Or even, to return to banking, the size of his pension!) The virtuous pauper (just to continue the moralistic fixatedness) is probably going to be considered a cleaner, a call-centre slavey (I can't actually think of a better word for their miserable existence), or a benefit-trapped proto-failure  than for their stunning personality, care for small animals, remarkable impressions of Monty Python actors or spectacular calligraphy.

Of course, I am being simplistic.  But then I'm a libertarian blogger so I'm just pandering to the stereotype.

Voting

Having been effectively disenfranchised for this election, I find myself joining (not of my own free will) the Chris Dillow school of cynics^*.  Personally, I am from the "spoil my ballot if I can't vote for anyone I could tolerate" wing, also known as the "none of the above" tendency.  Although I generally express this by voting Tory which, in Central Scotland, has the same impact as supporting Rangers at a Papal mass.

Still, from a distance, congratulations to all of you who had the opportunity and did drag yourself along - the first fruits of victory have already been harvested.

* Although I disagree massively with his implication that Neil Harding is anything other than a badly damaged autonomic propaganda troll.

BBC: Utter Cunts

Here.  You really shouldn't have to ask why.  But, as you are probably wondering, there is no such institution as the "British Navy".

There is a reason the law was written that way!

Bloody hell, first the French, now I'm agreeing with the fucking unions.  It must have been that extra sausage at brunch!  (Ed notes: Neither gibbering insanity nor a potty mouth being recognised symptoms of swine flu!  Nor is overcooked pork sausage a recognised way of catching it.)

Under the new rules universities are expected to monitor whether overseas students really attend their courses.

The Home Office said such things were part of their normal duty of care.

Indeed and undoubtedly. In fact:

Educational institutions have a duty of care to all their students and checking that they are attending and making progress in their studies is part of that responsibility.

The records we expect education providers to keep are those which most will keep for their own purposes anyway.

Which is exactly why the Data Protection Act 1998 states (Schedule 1, s2):

Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.

So uni's can check whether you are attending lectures for the purposes of laughing at you when you fail your exams.  I'll even allow them using the attendance register to check on people who are claiming grants, student allowances or loans.

So would you just fuck off and watch your boss's hubby's p0rn collection, you bunch of fascist cunts.

Gordon Brown is a sanctimonious, hypocritical cunt.

And ill-educated to boot. The nerve of the pointless blob of cowardice:

The event was intended for prime ministers and presidents rather than royals, Mr Brown added.

"But if the queen wanted to attend these events or if any member of the royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible," he said.

So what the fuckup meant was that the event was intended for Heads of State and Heads of Government.  Oh, and I wonder who the Head of State is in Brown's Britain.  Actually, I'm scared to ask, just in case the answer comes back "Peter Mandelson".

I really hate to agree with the French, in fact, I think it may be "dereliction of duty" but:

French officials said the Queen was welcome and the UK government was responsible for deciding who should attend what was "primarily a Franco-American ceremony"

.

An Utterly Stupid BBC News Headline

Here.

Mosquitoes 'resist malaria drugs'

Well, now.  Let's see.  Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the actual story - drug resistant malaria spread from Cambodia - mosquitos aren't (deliberately) targeted by malaria drugs.  Ed notes: We did try DDT on them once but that has been fairly uniformly condemned as a "bad thing™".

Anti-malarial drugs target the malaria parasite, Plasmodium, which happens to spend part of its life-cycle in the digestive systems of female Anopheles mosquitos.

Now, I am no biologist or medic, so if I knew this (although I'll admit that I did have to google the name of the parasite genus), why didn't the BBC?

BTW: Still on hiatus!

Oi, Hang on a Minute

Okay, so the Church of Jock has finally admitted that some of its ministers are of the homosexual persuasion and has openly supported one in Aberdeen.

The certainty is a good thing - the lily-livered wishy-washy mumbling of the Church of England is definitely a bad thing.  I am not saying that any of the open-promotion of homosexual clergy as in the Episcopal Church of America, the simplistic bigotry of Gafcon or the "don't ask, don't tell" attitude of the Episcopal Church of Scotland are right - I personally think they are all wrong (Ed notes: but you are just a contrary bastard).

And some of the Jockanese laity are upset.  Well, most church-goers in the UK are older, many are conservative (note size of "C") and it's their right to be upset and even to protest about it.

But - here is the "WTF" moment:

The demonstration at The Mound in Edinburgh on Saturday was led by Pastor Jack Bell of the Zion Baptist Church in Glasgow.

"We are absolutely opposed to that on the basis of what God has to say about homosexuality in the Bible," he said.

The Zion Baptist Church - "an independent church based in the south side of the city of Glasgow".  So not part of the Church of Scotland, then.  Or even, I suspect, formally in communion with it.  And, as their website makes it clear, the sort of fundamentalist evangelical Christians who make me cringe.  I wouldn't be surprised if they were "young-earth creationists".  Anyway, clearly not the sort of people you would expect to approve of poofs and their disgusting goings-on.  But about as much direct connection with the Rev Rennie's appointment as I will have with the election of the next Pope.

Oh, BTW: 

On Saturday night the 8th December, Zion Baptist Church lead by their Assistant Pastor Mr Bell, conducted a protest against the satanic influence and music of Marilyn Manson at the Braehead Arena, Glasgow."

Smirks!

BTW2: Still on hiatus - really.

Hiatus

I know you haven't noticed but this blog is having a temporary break from both profanity and its occasional attempts at profundity. 

Expect the usual whitterings to reappear in early July.