All Fine And Dandy

I am off work for a long holiday break this year!!

I had a lot of holidays left which I was not allowed to carry over .... a practise that while common enough,  always seems a little counter productive to me. Anyway's, as per last year, no more posts until the New Year as I have other fish to fry (again) .... well Turkey's to baste.

So having enjoyed celebrating by reviewing 'The Beano' cover from December 1966 last year .... childishly transporting myself for a few moments into reliving a happier time for both me and the UK. So this year its a picture of the sadly defunct 'Dandy' Annual book from 1968, another that I will have read and enjoyed as a child, accompanied by a sugar mouse from the Xmas stocking, while waiting for my parents to say we could go downstairs to look at our main present.

The Dandy Annual 1968

Happy Christmas and New Year !!

Deep Fried Christmas Dinner

As we all prepare to pig out on the festive foods that we all like to eat ..... I was much taken by the idea that in some parts of the country, we could possibly see the advent of the all fried Christmas dinner.

Deep Fried Mars Bar

Now I freely admit that I was well aware of that culinary delight known as the 'Deep Fried Mars Bars', and that they are served in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland ....

Britains Criminal Masterminds

There seems to be no lower limit for the stupidity of most of the common criminals. Master Criminal minds like 'Moriarty' in Sherlock Holmes, they are not ..... unemployable idiots or thugs, they are.

Take the jobless man from Birmingham in the Midlands in the UK ... who for reasons that probably only he will ever know, dialled the police with a false report of seeing a gunman walking down Law Street in West Bromwich, placing a hand gun in and out of his pocket. Presumably he wanted the pleasure of seeing armed police turn up and waste their time, but only another idiot would really know what he got out of it.

However his 'cunning plan' for a bit of fun at the polices expense, all started unravelling when he gave the description of the gunman - he very carefully gave the police operator the description and put the phone down. he then walked away to no doubt enjoy the fun and games. However he had hardly got 5 minutes down the road, when he was surrounded and arrested by armed police. They had recognised him from the description given to them by the call operators ...... yes the dumb-ass had given the operator his own description for the gunman, including his clothing.

The 20 yr old, even had used his own phone to make the call, and when arrested police found that the phone in his pocket was dead, but later found the phones simcard inside the shoes he was wearing. He then tried to claim that a cousin had somehow made the call from West Bromwich, and then 'hidden' the simcard in his shoes without his knowing.

This 'story' was tested at a Wolverhampton Magistrates court and was found wanting ..... he then pleaded guilty. He was sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court to a two years supervision order, after he admitted wasting police time, and was also ordered to pay £160 costs. It's rather a light sentence all things considered (the court case will have cost thousands), and the fact that 'Brains' (as we shall be forced to call him), had also breached a suspended sentence for armed robbery given to him by Warwick Crown Court. Yes, a suspended sentence for armed robbery.

Armed Robbery - Warrants Only A Suspended Sentence In The UK

When an armed robbery only warrants a suspended sentence, you have to wonder what line in the sand someone has to cross, to go to prison in Britain these days ...... no surprise then that the head of Group 4 Securicor recently said that: " ....Britain is the worst country in the world for [armed] robbery."

BBC's Last Word On Mandela

The BBC never miss a chance to promote their own racial agenda .... Take Nelson Mandela's death. Following a large number of complaints about the 'excessive coverage' (and it did seem to go on, and on, and on, for 9 days of 'national mourning'. Which seems a tad excessive as he's not British, but hey, apparently the BBC feels it had to broadcast the whole event for some reason), the head of BBC news James Harding, refused to apologise .... In fact he said that in Mandela "we are probably talking about the most significant statesman of the last 100 years".

BBC Says: 'the most significant statesman of the last 100 years'

Really? The head of BBC News, genuinely believes that since 1913, the most significant world statesman, has been a one term black (and that may be the key word), former president, of a middle ranked third world nation.

So for example, the defeat of Fascism led by Churchill, was a less significant statesman like act, than a black man peacefully becoming President of South Africa and not taking revenge? Wasn't Nazism more of a threat to the whole world, than the apartheid system in southern Africa was? .... maybe Mr Harding should talk to his father or grandfather, about how nears to a Nazi conquest of Europe we came in 1939-41 ....

Winston Churchill: Stood Alone Against The Nazi's

Maybe we should also dismiss the achievements of Lech Wałęsa, or Václav Havel, who both peacefully set in motion the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe? ... they undoubtedly freed millions more from dreadful tyranny, than Mandela ever did.

Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa Risked a KGB Firing Squad To Peacefully Lead Their Countries Out Of Communism. 

In fact, according to this man who studied history at Trinity College Cambridge, Mandela peacefully becoming President of South Africa, was a more significant world event than the election of the first Black President of the United States of America, or more statesman like than President Roosevelt leading the US and the free world out of the 'Great Depression'.

But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by Mr Harding's opinions, despite his degree in history, as he has made it a mission at the BBC that the "BBC must tackle diversity 'problem'", which tells you all you need to know about his attitudes to race .... by 'problem' he means putting more ethnic diversity on the screens (so more of the Black Ancient Brits, like the Merlin 're-write'of white British legends to Multi-culturalise them).

What dangerous garbage the BBC spouts whenever it represents its own PC views, and not ours. When it voices its own opinions, instead of simply reporting ours, and we can do nothing to get rid of them ..... a state within a state.

The unelected ruling elite of Britain have held our white British culture' in complete contempt since the 1950's, but now they are apparently in a position to actively pursue their agenda's, unhindered by the need to reflect majority public opinion.

Hidden Clawses

We sign our lives away in agreements and terms and conditions, which few, if any of us, ever read ….. however most of us would expect that its only when the 'Devil goes down to Georgia', that agreements may have an ‘Immortal Soul’ kind of risk.

In Georgia The Devil Strikes A Tough Deal

But you would be wrong ….. for in what they said was just a bid to prove that very few people actually read their Terms and Conditions (and who are we to disbelieve their claim?), in 2010 GameStation.com - a UK-based games retailer - added an "Immortal Soul Clause" to their T&Cs (The clause was added to their standard T&Cs on April 1st …. 'April Fools Day' ..... funny).

The website claimed 88% of customers hadn't read the clause, which gave the company legal ownership of thousands of their customers souls for all eternity.

Now apart from the obvious gags about their lawyers always being on hand in hell for consultations, it also makes you wonder if only Jehovah or Satan can actually legally ‘own a soul’? Or would in fact GameStation.com have had full eternal rights and be able to enforce this in some Infernal Court?

Perhaps we will never know, because although thousands signed away their souls (more than 7,500 customers), about 12 percent of their customers did notice the clause, and on clicking the relevant opt-out box, netted themselves a £5.00 gift voucher in the process.

Perhaps fearful of the outcome of a challenge (and this gag will have netted some US fishes, who might not get the joke), the GameStation executives assured all customers via an email that contained a notice of nullification of that part of the deal, and confirmed that they were not enforcing the Immortal Soul Clause.

We have touched before on the subject of selling ones Soul, and at what price (even if you’re an unbeliever), so I won’t try and claim that I would have seen the funny side of this if it had been me, even though I veer toward atheism.

Educating Audiences

I am not old enough to remember "Educating Archie" ....
 

Archie Andrews - Dummy

..... which was an old BBC radio show, which believe it or not featured a ventriloquists dummy called Archie Andrews, which was manipulated by ventriloquist Peter Brough.

 

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Mythconceptions

We all think that we know about the world and its problems, particularly the apparently exponential growth of the human race and the accompanying explosion of the backward and poverty ridden masses of the third world.

So with the news that the UK population is to reach a staggering 70 million (driven by immigration and birth rate rises accompanying this fact). This was first reported in Oct 2011 BBC, but apparently was repeated again recently, causing much shock in the Daily Telegraph newspaper and others ... (Interestingly none of the reports have picked up on the fact that this "70m plus" population figure isn't some upper quartile figure, and in fact the next 10 million of population growth after that in the UK will be arrived at even faster, because we haven't stopped immigration to the UK) .... a Swedish professor, Hans Rosling, says it's time for a reality check.

That in fact all our conceptions on many of these issues are plain wrong when it comes to population growth, literacy, life expectancy, etc (although the same also applies to climate degradation - but in an opposite way, with many thinking that the worlds in far better shape than it actually is).

So here, are the 'facts' according to Professor Hans Rosling .....

 

As you can see some of these 'facts' are very different from what you may have thought of as the 'truths' .....

I admit that I only got 5 of the answers 'correct' when I took the test ...... so although I consider myself well informed on the subject, I only got the average sort of result. Still, what this information doesn't really address is that in absolute terms all the figures rise, even while the trends flatten out.

• So there will be more people on the planet, not less.
• More people in poverty, not less.     
• More people illiterate, not less (and concentrated in certain cultures).

So the road to hell is apparently paved with 'flattening trends' ....      

Truer Words Never Spoken

In an unusual act of honesty (well partially) the North Korean government described one of its top leaders as "worse than a dog", and “Human scum” … they promptly executed him with a machine gun after a secret trial.

Now let's be fair, this man, Chang Song-thaek, the uncle of ruler Kim Jong-un, and apparently an 'economic reformer', was in fact really a bit of “Human scum”, having been a top official in North Korea for decades. His hands are also washed in the blood of hundreds of thousands (if not millions), of men, women and children, who have died in torture rooms, work camps, or simply in the periodic starvation bouts the sweep across North Korea every decade or so.

"Human Scum", Denounced, Show Trial and Executed - Soviet Style

Liberals turn away now …He deserved the bullets in the body that he got (there, said it), but where this bit of honesty fails is that, so do all the rest of this mad dog regime, who have tortured and destroyed an entire country. They are all “Human scum” who deserve only to share a bullet in the head.

His crimes, for you have to have one, even in a show trial, was that as the state report put it

"Chang dreamed such a foolish dream that once he seizes power by a base method, his despicable true colours as 'reformist' known to the outside world would help his 'new government' get 'recognised' by foreign countries in a short span of time".

Apparently, in true communist redemption style (how 1950’s USSR), he admitted all at the end (well faced with the bare electric cables and the metal bed frame): So after he admitted his "crimes" in court,  a death sentence was "immediately executed" ..... what no appeal?

His full list of crimes included:

• Attempting to "overthrow the state".
• Transforming his department into "a 'little kingdom'" and attempting to "trigger off discontent" within the army to mobilise a coup.
• That he took control of the "major economic fields of the country" and "schemed to drive the economy of the country and people's living into an uncontrollable catastrophe".
• Committed acts of corruption, by transferring construction units to his contacts and cronies (expect more than Chang Song-thaek and two aides killed last month to go in this purge).
• Committed irregularities related to a joint economic zone with China i.e. Bribes.
• Was responsible for the unpopular currency reforms (revaluation) in 2009. In December 2009 Pyongyang's reported re-denomination of the won, knocked two zeros off the nominal value of each banknote and led to unrest.
• Pornography.
• And worst crime of all 'he only clapped half heartedly at the great Kim Jong-clone's ascension and speeches.  

Also in true Stalinist style Chang Song-thaek has already been written out of history and official documentaries by the country's propaganda machine. Obviously the message here is that such a public and total fall from grace for a member of the inner elite, proves that positively no one is untouchable …. Well apart from the ruler Kim Jong-un of course.

Now if only Bush and Blair had turned their attention to this terrible regime, instead of following Bushes 'Oil Interests', we could have rid the world of this nightmare state, removed a threat of nuclear war, and been thanked by a very grateful and hard working population. 

Instead we have failed in all our interventions and merely created a bunch of violent Arabs and Afghans who hate us, and want us dead and …. Strange world.

Wild Boys

The phenomena of 'Wild Boys' or 'Jungle Children' has fascinated people for centuries ....

Modern Wild Boys Are Often Self Created ...

.... reports from Greeks, such as that by Athenian historian Apollodorus, stated that the Greek heroine 'Atalanta' was abandoned by her father Iasus at birth because he desired a son. But went on to say that she was suckled by a She-Bear, until hunters later found her, and brought her up in their community (and that was before her adventures even started).

War Horse

There was an interesting article on the BBC web site about the uses of animals in the wars, especially the two world wars, and this time frame excluded earlier usages such as War Horses, War Camels, War dogs, War Elephants and even War Pigs prior to the modern wars. Of course we still use dogs as mine detectors and guards, and even dolphins and seals in modern navies.

However the article concentrated particularly the first world war, and animals on the home front and featured the recruitment of zoo animals such as 'Lizzie' the elephant and some camels from a circus, to pull carts around the streets of Sheffield. There were other examples given of elephants pulling ploughs and as the article pointed out, by 1914, cars and trucks were little more than new inventions, and horse power really still did mean that for most small scale haulage (including trams), as well as on the battlefronts.

Animals On The Home Front

The British army alone employed 1.5 million horses for cavalry (outside of the Western front), and the hauling of field gun batteries around on all fronts. There were 485,000 killed in the British Army - the animals were often 'put down' when injured as the cost and effectiveness of treatment was uneconomic, unless the riders did it themselves, so the category of 'wounded' was a small statistic. When you add in all the horses used by the other combatants, the numbers used and killed must have been astronomical.

Take the pigeons for example, of the17,000 parachuted into enemy territory, fewer than one in eight survived crossing the front lines, the vast majority were killed ... no wonder they gave the Dicken Medal aka  'animal VC's', for those who made it in the Second World War. There was even an animal version of the 'Red Cross', known as the 'Blue Cross', set up in the First World War to raise funds to treat the vast number of injured animals on the battlefields.

Even by the second world war, most of the armies until the US troops arrived, still used large numbers of horses. The German army for example is remembered for its mechanised 'Blitzkrieg' tactics, but in Europe at least, it still used horses to pull supplies on the Eastern front, and in fact there is an argument that it was the over-stretching of the supply fronts because of this reliance on draught animals, that led to the USSR being saved when the Germans invaded.

No Blitzkrieg More Like Verlangsamenkrieg In Most Cases.

The strangest use of animals in modern warfare was perhaps the glow worms - used in WW1 as an aid for map reading, and maybe the saddest part of this tale was the mules used in the jungles of Burma, which had their vocal chords cut to stop them giving soldiers away to the Japanese by braying .... imagine trying to do that now, there would be 'animal rights activists' attacking soldiers on the home front.

I suspect that we couldn't fight a world war ever again, too many of our fellow citizens would actually attack us at home these days, and that's just the Animal Liberation Front, never mind the other terrorist groups in the UK ... and that's about the saddest condemnation of what our politicians have done to us as a united country, that you probably could make.

Being Your Own Worst Enemy

I can't help thinking that the saying that 'you get the governments you deserve' is true ..... 

Top Row Imelda - Imee - Ferdinand 'Bong Bong' Jr - Marcos
Bottom Row Joseph - Jinggoy Ejercito - JV Ejercito - Estrada

...... So the Iranians for example depose a Shah, but replace him with a Militant Mullah and his corrupt religious acolytes, who have become millionaires while the people suffer as a result of their policies.

 

Mourning Madiba

Have to lead this week with a quick post about the death of Nelson Mandela .... a story that will be lead on every news report this week, and many blogs will tackle, so as usual I won't waste readers time or patience discussing his life or achievements.

Nelson Mandela 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013

What I will therefore mention is a slant that some may not discuss, which is because of his legendary ability to forgive those who had sinned against him, his brief one term as President was possibly the only time in black African history that there was genuine hope of a Black African Government, that was free of corruption. Sadly that was not to stay that way and the A.N.C is now a corrupt organisation.

So what if the Boers and other whites had shown some foresight, and handed over power in the 1970's or 1980's, and allowed him two or three terms in power as President, steering both the country and perhaps more importantly the political A.N.C and keeping the government clean ..... the rainbow dream might have become reality ..... its only speculation, but a real 'What If' indeed.