The Most Popular Boys Name In The UK Is ..........

2010 was the year that the boys name 'Mohammed, Muhammed or other of the 12 different spellings of the name' was reported as the most popular in the UK in 2009 (the last full year the office of national statistics reported on) ......

Anthony O'Brien

Anthony O'Brien is a 69 yr old RAF veteran who lives in Manchester .......... he was attacked by what the police described as "Asian or mixed race" teenagers, for this description read "Pakistani descent", simply for wearing a poppy and a RAF blazer.

"They were shouting, 'Fucking shoot all you bastards and blow your soldiers up. Death to all soldiers.' I was scared. I was wearing my RAF blazer and poppy - I wear it regularly because it's smart and I'm proud of it. I thought they were drunk or something. I told them to leave me alone but the little fella hit me on the side of my head. Then the other fella head-butted me. Then they ran away."

I put the two stories together because, whilst you and I probably can see a connection, our politicians apparently can't ...... the BBC can't bring themselves to report this story on their web sites, and don't discuss the nationality of the attackers on the local radio reports of the crime.

PC crap drives the left's agenda, and the BBC thinks its the natural champion of this credo.

Compare And Contrast

Yesterday the ex-President of Israel (he resigned from the largely ceremonial post of head of state in 2007), Moshe Katsav, was convicted of rape by a jury in open court in Tel Aviv.

 

Ex- President ......

 

He was found guilty of raping an employee in the 1990s, when he was tourism minister and of later sexual offences while he was President. The judges said they believed the evidence of the woman whose testimony had led to two charges of rape.

Beggars Banquet

Haiti dropped off the worlds news map very quickly after last years disaster ...... 

 

Haiti Earthquake Damage

 .... the reasons are the usual ones for this benighted country ..... violence, and corruption, and lets face it, ignorance.

Spam, Spam, Spam ... Eggs, And Spam

Spam, Spam, Spam ..... the bane of the email users life, is a common enough problem for most of us that we usually think of this context when the word comes up ...

Spam Cans

.... but of course originally it was the commercial name of a salted pork meat product.

Message In A Bottle

On the 4th of  July 1863 a soldier wrote a coded message and placed it in a bottle ..... the intended recipient was Gen John Pemberton, the officer in charge of the defences at Vicksberg, which was under siege from the Unionist forces.

General John Pemberton

The message was never delivered because that same day the Unionists marched into Vicksburg and the fate of the 'Confederacy' probably assured .... they lost the Civil War two years later.

Tall Romans, Old Romans, and Healthy Romans

And in another bit of research, its been shown that the Romans of Pompeii were as tall as we are, and ate a far better diet than the average Victorian.


Tall and Healthy Romans

We are often told that that the Romans, or anyone in the past for that matter, were all much shorter than we are.

 

The Long Road To Wealth Creation

In one in the eye for the welfare state ethos of 'welfare benefits' for life (which has made sections of us the poorest and fattest society in Western Europe), it was revealed this week that peasants living in medieval England, were better off under the feudal system, than the poor in many African countries today!

I had heard this idea of English peasants lives before (notably on Terry Jones history show about peasants that showed that with all the religious holidays and other holidays, they actually worked less than most of us today ..... they averaged three days a week off), but this latest study suggests that economically, they were doing OK as well. This despite the fact that the period was a particularly violent, with warfare and plagues a regular set of events.

Rich Medieval Peasants?

The report showed that the average income per head was $1,000 (around £638 in 1990 terms), and living standards were higher then, than in countries such as Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo), with an average income of $249, and Burundi ($479), in 1990. Even on the eve of the eruption of the Black Death, which first struck in 1348-49, peasant per capita incomes were more than £510, the report "British Economic Growth 1270-1870" has disclosed.

This means that people could afford a much more varied diet rather than the one based on grains and oatmeal, which is normally described in books, according to Prof Stephen Broadberry from the University of Warwick. He based his research upon a wide variety of records that have survived since the Norman conquest, which produced the most literate and numerate society (judging from the court records from the time, in which peasants were forever in court suing for their 'rights'), in Europe, and possibly in the world at this time.

• Zaire ($249)
• Burundi ($479)
• Niger ($514)
• Central African Republic ($536)
• Comora Islands ($606)
• Togo ($617)
• Guinea Bissau ($628)
• Sierre Leone ($686)
• Haiti ($686)
• Chad ($706)
• England in the late Middle Ages ($1,000) 

African Peasants

‘The path to the Industrial Revolution began far earlier than commonly has been understood,’ said Prof Broadberry ...... According to the World Bank, countries which had a per capita income of less than $1,000 last year (2009) included Ghana ($700), Cambodia ($650), Tanzania ($500), Ethiopia ($300) and Burundi ($150), while in India, one of the BRIC emerging economies, the gross income per capita stands only just above European medieval levels at a mere $1,180.

NB: The other episodes from Terry Jones series on the middle ages are here:

The Monk
The Damsel
The King
The Minstrel
The Knight
The Philosopher

New Politics, Same Broken Britain

We may have a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives forming what the government but two stories last week illustrated that Political Correctness still holds sway over the Law and other agents of power.

A Child Killer

Firstly, an illegal Iraqi Kurd immigrant, Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who has fathered two children while here, killed a 12 yr old girl with his car (which he was driving illegally in any case), and two 'Senior Immigration' judges declared that it would contravene this mans "right to life and to "a family life" under the "Human Rights Act" to deport him .... the right to life of the little girl he killed was apparently of no consequence to the decision.

Her father said what most of us are thinking "What are the judges saying here? They are saying it doesn't matter what you do when you come here, who you kill, what laws you break, as long as you have children you can stay here? He's not a life saving surgeon or a Nobel Prze winner. he was a criminal before, a crimminal now, ands he will continue being a criminal".

And Secondly: There was the tale of a killer, Roger Kearney, who is suing the Post office for wrongful  dismissal because they sacked him for 'gross misconduct' six months before he was sentenced to "Life" or whatever passes for a life sentence in the UK, for the murder of his girlfriend . He says that he should have been paid while on bail and therefore is owed £8,225 .... his statement said that because he was “innocent until found guilty” and says his "human rights" were breached.

Killer

‘I feel that, if the Royal Mail could not trust me, they must have believed that the allegations against me were true and after 34 years of loyal service, a clear conduct record and no affect on my ability to perform my duties is a clear breach of my human rights.’ .... which ignores the fact that both the court and the jury also believed the allegations, which is why he is in Prison.

The "Human Rights Act" has been nothing but a millstone around our necks ever since the Blair government foisted it on the UK without the slightest hesitation. This liberal interpretation of the act, seems to be a peculiarly British thing, and now features in criminal stories on a regular basis.

• Being British Is Not A Privilege Anymore.
• "Haggis Munchers"
• Terrorists Can't Face Long Sentences
• Terrorists Evade Eviction From UK
• Rapist Paedophile Can't Be Deported From Britain
• Democracy Ain’t Working No More

The UK truly is an lunatic asylum run by the inmates ....

"Jaws" .... Not Radio Controlled?

Finally, this week .... there has been a series of Shark attacks in Egypt at the Sharm el-Sheikh which the Egyptians with their typical efficiency have completely failed to get control of. First they killed a couple of the wrong type of shark, and then in a scene reminiscent of the movie "Jaws" declared the beaches open again, only for another fatal attack to take place.

Mossad Agent

So what do you do in a Muslim country when you have a failure?

Why blame your failure on Israel and its intelligence service Mossad, the US and its intelligence service CIA, or even the near toothless UK and its intelligence service MI5 ..... normally this apparently satisfies the Islamic masses who seem unable to notice that its a stupid idea, and merely fuels their belief that they would shine, if only they didn't have so many powerful enemies.

But, surely a shark attack can't be someone else's fault?

That's no problem if you are a Governor of an Egyptian province and South Sinai governor, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, who was reported on an official Egyptian news site as saying that "What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in to the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm".

Utterly imbecilic ..... needless to say Israel dismissed the idea .... with Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Igal Palmor telling the BBC: "The man must have seen Jaws one time too many, and confuses fact and fiction." .... not just the man, but the whole culture which could even allow such an idea to circulate.

Nobel Prize, Ignoble Politics

China's behaviour over the award of the Noble Peace prize to Liu Xiaobo one of their own citizens, but one who is in prison for protesting for human rights, has been nothing less than shameful

..... but the behaviour of some of their 'friends' around the world has been equally disgraceful.

 

Corruption Not Terrorism Threatens Most People

Sweden is possibly one of the most highly developed societies on Earth and regularly tops leagues for ethical societies ....... so imagine the shock to their self psyche when a story suggested all was not as squeaky clean as they believed ...... shock horror! The Swedish news headlines are dominated by a scandal in Gothenburg, with police investigating allegations that local government officials had accepted bribes from a major construction company.

Stockholm, Sweden

Now by most countries standards this would hardly be headline news, or certainly not for more than one day, but in Sweden, this is a shocking revelation ..... when you consider that outside of the first world economies (and there is a tie in with this fact), most countries are corrupt, with the very poorest societies also the most corrupt, then the Swedish problem is minuscule.

In fact some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt in the last few years, which is a sad indictment on the state of the world. What makes this even more depressing is that most bribes are paid to the Police.

In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India more than 50% of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police. Bur even so they are not considered the most corrupt institution .... Political Parties were regarded as the most corrupt institutions with 80% of people regarding them as corrupt. Political parties also topped the list in Transparency's 2004 barometer, with 71%.

Religious bodies experienced a sharp rise in people regarding them as corrupt - 28% in 2004 increased to 53% by 2010. And with one in four of those polled saying they had paid a bribe in the past year, its not hard to make the correlation between corruption and poverty around the world.

• In sub-Saharan Africa, 67% of bribes were to avoid trouble with the authorities.
• In the Arab world and Latin America most bribes were paid to speed things up.
• In Asia-Pacific, 35% of people bribed to get a service they were entitled to.
• In North America and the EU, most bribe payers said they could not remember why they had paid (about 5% of those polled said they had paid a bribe).

(90,000 polled over 86 countries for the results)

NB: Sadly this morning the Swedish are discovering once again that being a civilised country only  makes  you apparently a target for the new barbarians with two apparent 'jihadist suicide' bombers attaking them ..... but they are not alone in this regard, and even so, I would argue that more people are affected by Corruption, than by Terrorism. 

Global Warming .... British Ice Age!!

Every year is record warmest year according to Meteorologists, and yet Britain currently has harder and harder winters ......  If Britain has much more "Global Warming" like this 'autumn' .....

 then I will freeze to death!

"Honey Traps" And Other Cold War Strategies

A British MP has had his Russian 'Parliamentary Aide', Katia Zatuliveter, age 25, arrested over claims she is a Russian spy.

Katia Zatuliveter

Of course he says she isn't a spy, but as the KGB (FSB, or whatever they call themselves these days), have used Russian ingenue's, to beguile older western males into loosening their tongues (if nothing else), over sensitive information for decades, so its rather odd that she should gravitate towards an old minor leftie MP just 'for love', and for no other reason.

Malware and Other Ills

This weekend I picked up a virus ..... no not the 'woman flu', or 'heavy cold' that is going around frozen Britain, no I mean one of those horrors that beset the Internet, the Trojan/virus call it what you will.

The one I got was the "Google Redirect" .... this is caused by something called the 'TDL3 Rootkit' which causes the Google redirect virus infection. A person who is using Google as a home page or search engine is redirected to visiting unwanted websites ..... and its a real bugger to get rid of!!

Eventually after much searching (hampered greatly by the fact that I was being redirected) I found a site that didn't just spout nonsense ....  "How to Remove the Google Redirect Virus", which apart from being full of generally good advice, has a specific link to the the utility 'TDSSKiller.exe' which is by Kaspersky, and killed the problem in a few moments ...... so a full cheer from a grateful web user for these companies who offer free cures for very nasty little problems.

Oddly, I still have no idea where I picked this problem up from because I most definitely did not give any administrator permissions to a download ..... ah well, at least its apparently fixed for now. 



 

How The Elephant Got His Trunk

When the great Rudyard Kipling wrote his "Just So Stories", he included the story of 'how the elephant got his trunk' ...... 'he trod on what he thought was a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees. But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the Crocodile winked one eye--like this!' ....

The little elephant enquires what the Crocodile eats for tea,  'Then the Elephant's Child put his head down close to the Crocodile's musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger than a boot, though much more useful.' 'I think,' said the Crocodile--and he said it between his teeth, like this--'I think to-day I will begin with Elephant's Child!'

Dirtiest Job Of The Week?

Wei Xinpeng is a man whose method of earning a crust definitely qualifies as dirtiest job of the week ..... he skulls up and down the Yellow River in China in his little skiff, looking for the bodies of those drowned or killed and dumped in to the  mighty river.


Its A Dirty Job, But Someone Has To Do It...

He was originally prompted to do it when one of his children drowned, and he never recovered the body for burial .... he then started looking for other bodies and then 'selling them back to relatives for burial. "I bring dignity to the dead," says Mr Wei, who goes to the temporary bridge where many bodies are caught up in the current eddies there .... if the finds one, he then posts notices in the newspapers and he charges relatives up to $500 if they want to take the body home (he has sold about 40 corpses in all) .... if they don't he buries them himself.

Two Speed Web In UK

In the UK the 'coalition' (sounds like a war government doesn't it?) have decided that instead of having a web neutral Internet in the UK, where each web site is served to your browser at the same speed, regardless of the the 'importance' of the site you are viewing, we will have a two speed system.

Communication Minister Ed Vaisey says that in future ISP's can throttle back the speed of delivering content of sites that they deem less important i.e. Those that don't 'pay more' to be classed as important. Sites which refuse to pay could see connections slowing to a crawl, while those who do pay would pass costs on to consumers ...... even those customers who paid for the highest-speed Internet connections could find their favoured sites slowing to a crawl if the website did not pay for a premium link.


A Communicator Who Can't Communicate ...

This is obviously a two pronged attack on the Internet and Web as a tool and medium for all, and suddenly on the 'Big Boys' will be 'first class' users, the rest of us schmucks will get a second class service ........ if the rest of the world ignores this new situation, then the UK could end up as backwater where international customers just disappear.

Increasingly I dislike the course that this 'coalition' is taking over a number of issues, but this is an outright attack on me and others (75% of the UK have Interent access) who use the web as both a tool of commerce and entertainment ..... it should at least be noted.

Oddly as I wrote this I found that Mr Vaisey had been doing some back tracking ..... "We're not saying one ISP should be able to prioritise one provider's content over another and I don't support the commercial decision to downgrade a rival's site." He added that he thought people who criticise him for abandoning net neutrality haven't read his speech: "I say the same as Berners-Lee." (Founder of the World Wide Web, who has strongly defended Net Neutrality), in which case he communicated this like a drunk with a sock in his mouth  ......... so we shall have to wait and see.



     

Asyum Seeking Reaches New Levels

There were two stories that show that the UN charter on Asylum needs serious strengthening ........

Firstly, a wealthy Pakistani cricketer, Zulqarnain Haider is seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, because he has fallen foul of the corruption that is an epidemic in both Pakistan's cricket, and wider society ..... now it seems to me that the political asylum laws were not meant to cover sportsmen dodging bookie gangs .... but I guess it covers everything these days, from African homosexuals, to wealthy sportsmen in corrupt countries.


Asylum Seekers Get Wealthier ....

And then, from the coming "Super Power" China, we are still getting "Asylum Seekers" (whys that then?) .... this one apparently boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver disguised as an elderly white male .... but apart from the ingenuity, it was pretty dumb as he used a Halloween "Ugly Old Man" mask .... apparently he was only caught his young-looking hands were noted , and later when he emerged from a washroom looking like a man in his twenties

You can buy masks like this all over the net and I found many example such as this one .....

Maybe they should be licenced in case the Canadian Border guards can't spot that they are jokes?

The United Nations and Womens Rights ....

In one of those stories that proves that the world has gone truly insane, the United Nations new super-agency to promote women's rights, is likely to get two members that weren't envisaged when the agency was proposed .......... Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Yes, the peace loving sponsors of Islamic fundamentalism worldwide are to be able to set the agenda and what constitutes a woman's rights around the world ...... women be afraid, be very afraid.

• Iran still sentences women to stoning, or hangs them from the back of open back lorries .....
• Saudi Arabia, sentences women to death for witchcraft.   

Both of them employ religious Mutaween police to whip women in the streets ......



Iranian Religious Police respecting women's rights ...

Ah well, I guess this is what the UN has become these days ..... and the West says nothing.

Bison Herding and Other Wonders

I was much struck by a BBC film report of the annual Bison round up in the Black Hills of South Dakota .... this entails cowboys moving the 1,000 animals to a winter pasture .....


Bison Stands Off Wolves 

 

I looked it up, and there are approximately 500,000 bison in captive commercial populations (mostly plains bison), on about 4,000 privately owned ranches ..... 

Breeders Cup Chaos - Fighting Jockeys

Two little men, but big on heart decided that enough was enough and showed their fighting spirit .....

Borel And Castellano Brawl

Castellano and Borel fought near the winner's circle moments after the Breeders Cup Race. Jockey Borel was angry over a mid-race move by Jockey Castellano aboard 'Prince Will I Am' that nearly sent Jockey Garcia's horse 'Romp' tumbling and blunted Borel's momentum on 'A.U. Miner'.

Borel approached Castellano while they waited to speak to race officials, jabbing a finger at Castellano just yards away from the celebration in the winner's circle for race winner 'Eldaafer'. Castellano then made a move toward Borel, setting off a chaotic scene that ended with Borel being restrained by a couple of security officials and older brother Cecil ..... Unfortunately for all concerned it was filmed by TV and video cams, and they will up before the racing beak this week.

Just cos your a bantamweight don't mean your not competitive ...

Update .... all videos marked as 'private' now .... so no longer embedded in story. I have found another version but how long it stays up I can't say .... sorry

Narco States And The West's Blood Guilt?

Do Drugs and the money they create, corrupt a society to the point that it becomes a Narco State?

I ask because the news from Mexico's drug war is getting increasingly bad ..... a mass grave discovered in Mexico, contained the bodies of 18 kidnapped tourists. They were seized by a drugs gang, although it may have been mistaken identity and their deaths bring the total to more than 28,000 people who have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to take on the traffickers. If the killings continue to increase at the current rate, that total will rise to about 75,000 by the time the government's term in office ends in December 2012.

This map, shows just how powerful Mexico's drug cartels have grown, with at least a billion dollars of US money coming over the boarders, and enabling the traffickers able to buy the very latest in weapons from the gun dealers in the US ..... see there is a trade of sorts.

Columbia is also discovering that drug lord money can corrupt even the law officials.

Police in Columbia became suspicious of what was happening at the National Narcotics Office, after drug traffickers were found to be in possession of properties, which had officially been seized by the National Narcotics Office, the agency that was supposed to  seize assets from drug traffickers .... it was found that in at least one instance the person put in charge of managing the property seized from an infamous drug dealer, had links to the dealer's cartel.

Colombian Minister of Justice German Vargas Lleras said he had ordered the intervention after "hundreds of irregularities and many serious anomalies" had surfaced at the National Narcotics Office, with over 100 of its contractors dismissed.

The Heavily Guarded German Vargas Lleras

I am increasingly supportive of calls for drugs to be 'legalised' as government monopolies, with the price and marketing set at about that for cigarettes .... because the misery and cost experienced by poorer countries to try to stop drugs being provided for the Western (US/European) market is far in excess of that being suffered by those Western consumer countries.

The point about the drugs trade is that its demand led ..... if the West wasn't producing millions of addicts, who are rich enough to buy the drugs, then the drugs trade would cease ..... it's this demand in the West, that fuels the drug trade, from supplier states such as Columbia and Afghanistan (where it funds killing our troops), through the route states such as Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, and finally to the drug markets of the Western cities.

It is therefore up to us to find some way of breaking the trafficking cycle, but surely not with the blood of innocent Mexicans, and Colombians?

Being British Is Not A Privilige Anymore.

A piece of hate filled human garbage named "Mustafa Kamel Mustafa" aka "Abu Hamza al-Masri" arrived on our shores from Egypt, slept around with whores, married a British woman, divorced, drank alcohol and slept around again (but with a British passport now) ..... 

Abu Hamza Cost UK Thousands In Taxes

 ... then he got that old time religion (aka decided not to work, but become a Muslim preacher while on state benefits), married again to a Muslim and had seven kids, (who are all supported by my taxes either in or out of prison), and preached that Westerners, Jews etc should be killed ..... he is currently serving a seven-year sentence for inciting murder and racial hatred, but is due out soon.

A Leap Too Far

Sapolai Yao, the Steeplechase champion of  Papua New Guinea was disqualified from this years Commonwealth Games Steeplechase race .....


First you climb ....

.... after he was caught by 50,000 spectators, and a world wide TV audience, using the nearest pot plant to get over the steeplechase barriers.

Two Faced Hypocrite

Harriet Harman is in my opinion the most detestable woman in British politics .... she was a key player in many of the New Labour Party's most divisive policies, from open Non EU immigration, to unequal 'Equality' measures, but always claimed that her anti-white, anti-male (white) laws were because she was fighting "Racism and Inequality" ..... even if it was all in her left wing PC head.

So she talked the 'equalities talk', and walked the 'equalities' walk while she was in in power ..... she even brought in "Quota" lists for the shadow cabinet .... only gender and skin colour, not abilities will count for the selection of the next possible Labour Government ministers ...

But now, after forcing us to use PC new-speak (under threat of criminal action or sacking if we spoke our minds), she suddenly calls a Scottish Liberal Coalition Minister and MP, Danny Alexander a "Ginger Rodent" ....

Now that's not only an nasty little insult, but an ethnic slur on rodents ...... but of course we can only hold her to a different set of values than she would apply to me or you, or Tory MP's. Of course she later apologised ..... later being the operative word, but then the mud has stuck by then.

How The Benefit Trap Works ....

Amongst all the rows over who has been most affected by the public sector cuts introduced by this Government there was a couple of nuggets that simply had to be rehashed and mulled over. These were the impact that capping at state benefits at £26,000 (net!) may have on those on long-term welfare claimants.

Now lets start with a few points .... most unemployed benefit claimants don't get much more than the basic benefits, plus housing benefits .... so a man, wife and two children, living in a local authority rented accommodation, in the North West of England, might be on £100.95 (Couple Allowance) + £17.40 (Family Premium) + £115.14 (£57.57 per child) ..... a grand total of £233.49 pw or £12,141.48 pa in benefits plus an average of £84.24 per week in housing benefits paid direct to the landlords. This represents a net income of £16,521.96 pa (the housing benefit element will differ in areas, but the main benefit income will not).

Now in order to 'earn' that amount net, a 'worker' would have to be on a salary of £21,291 pa ..... i.e. a starting salary that is higher than that offered on many non skilled jobs ..... and this is where the 'benefit trap' starts, because in reality no one is going to get up every day, pay for transport etc without being a lot better off, so a salary of at least £500 pw (£26,000 pa) is the realistic figure that would get this particular claimant back to work (but note: If they are in expensive accommodation they may never want to come off welfare benefit payments, which is why housing benefits will be capped at at £400 a week).

For single people the incentive to work is greater as they are on either (£51.85 and £65.45 pw ... under or over age 25).

You, like me, may think that these levels of benefits for people with kids, represent a quite high hurdle against finding work, when they are set above the lower levels of wages currently paid in the UK, so imagine what happens when they have large numbers of children or like Kellie-Ann Cottam, who apparently suffers from a painful disability called Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and needs help to care for her four children (to three different fathers) ..... to maintain the same lifestyle, she said she would need to earn £60,000 (£41,710.40 net) a year to meet her family's needs.

Now let us be honest, she is basically unemployable, she has no skills (psychology graduates litter the lower levels of many offices .... salary around £18k, so no good to her with her lifestyle), that could ever give her a career that would give her the £60,000 a year, which she considers to be the reasonable equivalent to living off the back of those of us who have to get to work everyday for a lot less than that.

Through the government's motability scheme she has also been given a specially adapted people carrier for herself and her children, who are aged between seven months and 14 years of age, oh, and she also gets free prescriptions, school meals for the children and free trips to the dentist and the optician .... she has been on the Benefit System for ten years, so she has managed to have relationships that produced at least two children, but somehow not ever managed to come off welfare payments.

She in fact epitomises all that's wrong with the benefits system .... "I am so grateful for the benefits system, I don't have a husband, I don't have a breadwinner - the state is my breadwinner," she said. Well I didn't get asked if I wanted to be her and her broods 'breadwinner', and nor did anyone else ..... still in all fairness this lady has admitted that the 'Benefit Trap' exists for her and that shes in it, and she has tried to launch a self help scheme called “Challenge Britain” to try to end people’s reliance on handouts ...... presumably not for herself though.

Final word on this benefit system to a woman from Grimsby ... A pub regular called Amanda said: "Don't cut the benefits for the people who are really, really struggling. I don't think it's fair - we are struggling enough as it is. I live on £174 a fortnight and it's not fair." ....... the keys to this statement is that the interview was 'lunchtime' in the pub where 'Amanda' was 'a pub regular' ..... and she thinks she is 'really struggling'.

She should read the diary of an unemployed family from living in York in 1910, where a Mr Nevinson was having a very hard time..... if he didn't find a job, he and his family didn't eat. From his diary its apparent that the family were only eating about a third of the calories they needed.

"Up at five, walked round and round the town until 12. Nothing doing anywhere, so I was fairly sick of walking about. No breakfast, no tea and no supper. Went to bed around 7.30."

The Watsons - Victorian Poor

The diaries reveal that in one week the family had just tea and bread for most meals. Occasionally they could afford margarine or jam as well. Sundays seemed plentiful in comparison.

Monday:

• Breakfast - Tea, bread and margarine
• Dinner - Tea, bread and margarine
• Supper - Tea, bread

Tuesday:

• Breakfast -Tea, bread and jam
• Dinner - Tea, 3 stale buns
• Supper - Tea, bread

 Sunday:

• Breakfast - Tea, kippers, bread
• Dinner - three pennyworth of meat pieces boiled with potatoes
• Tea - bread and margarine, onions

PS: If you agree with me that the "Benefit Trap" has to be addressed, before Britain can ever tackle the welfare culture, then email this article or a link to your MP or your representative in Congress (the problem is the same in much of the US) .... China, India and Brazil don't have this problem, and people work.  

True Democracy

US dollar notes to be phased out? In vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins.

Dollar Pile Would Reach The Space Station

The hoard has topped $1.1bn an amount that if stacked would reach almost seven times higher than the International Space Station, and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.

Another Day, Another Dollar ....... Stolen

Corruption is the biggest handicap to development in the third world  ...... the scale of it is mind blowing, and I have touched on it before, but occasionally I am still reminded of how massive it can be.

 

The Face of Corruption


Equatorial Guinea President, Teodor Obiang Nguema is as bad as any dictator on the continent .... in fact he may well be the most corrupt of them all, and that's some claim considering the opposition. 

Nigerians Do What They Are World Beaters At .....

By some strange quirk of fate, immediately after I blogged on the countries 50yrs of achievements, Nigerians excelled in their national pastimes of corruption, cheating, and drug dealing .....



Would You Buy A World Cup from This Man?

 ..... and all in connection to sports events.

 

Civil Service Cuts - Your Joking .....

In October a 'Public Spending Review' is meant to 'slash wasteful expenditure' in the Civil Service etc especially on the IT projects, which are very expensive in the 'Public Sector'.... it's not going to work, and I will illustrate why.

A mole in the local civil service I.T. development centre, informs me of all the waste and scams (which often leave them open mouthed) they come across, and its on the other side of 'a joke'. I was aware of these scenarios myself, as I had left the public sector over a decade ago, but theirs is a more recent account.

Before I can start exposing the lengths they go to to avoid reform or work, I need to first give a few brief technical terms of explanation:

• BA - Business Analyst - A specialist business user, who analyses, defines, documents, and propose solutions for large and/or complex business areas and prepares functional specifications of what the business want from an application or piece of software to be developed.
• PM - Project Manager - A manager, usually but not always from the business who co-ordinates all the work activities required to produce and deliver the required application or piece of software to be developed.
• Other - System Testers, System Analysts, Programmers / Developers, Project Office Management (POM) - other roles - some of which would normally come from within the business, but may come from contract workers e.g. System Analysts,and Programmers / Developers would be contracted in if there were not enough within the business - however the lead in each role should be business provided.

Now we come to the Civil Service I.T. sector .... my mole works on a high profile government project, for one of the major government departments .... as a contractor of course.

The mole reports that :-

• In the face of the department facing 20% to 25% budget cuts it has been busy extending all the contracts until next year, AND recruiting more contractors - apparently this so that they can then 'sack' all these additional contractors, and thus tell the government minister that they have made 20% to 25% budget cuts without actually cutting anything.
• On most of the projects, the Civil service is, through lack of anyone capable, unable to provide even BA's .... so the departments application requirements and development decisions are created by private contractors, who are not specialists of that departments needs.
• This complete lack of Civil Service talents or skills, even extends to not being able to staff the POM - a series of roles which are simply handling paperwork sign off, library functions, time-sheets etc .... very basic administration skills.
• When they tried to use Civil Servants on project tasks, the project immediately fell into arrears and chaos because they were totally incapable of performing any of the tasks - they were replaced with contractors, at four times the costs.
• The contractors are all provided by just one supplier, so its more expensive than the going rate for the same roles in private industry .... also its effectively a closed list of the same faces moving around the sites.
• The mole reports that you can usually spot the Civil Servant desks on site because there are rows of empty desks come 3 pm - they are also the ones who organise round after round of 'meetings' which perform no function other than to stop the civil servant organiser from actually having to do any work. 

Finally the mole told me a story which sums up why the Civil Service is never going to be reformed - recently, in anticipation of the 'cuts' the contractors have been shadowed by a Civil Servant who is to take over from them ..... what a laugh.

The 'shadow' assigned to the 'mole', came in on the Monday and was unhappy with their desk location (it was in the centre where the computer screen could be seen by everyone - so misuse i.e. cruising the Internet all day would be spotted) and went off sick for three days.  When the 'shadow' turned up again at 09:30am on the Thursday, they refused to listen to what the 'mole' was trying to tell them, and kept trying to query old 'signed off' work, instead off dealing with current matters, then they went home at 3pm .... on the Friday they sat with the 'mole' until 11:20am when they announced they were going on an early lunch.  'Mole' asked if they would be back at 12:20pm and was told not until 2pm - the 'mole' finally reported that the 'shadow' failed to turn up at 2pm and had gone home - they had said that they had 'done their weekly hours and had taken 'flexi time' for the afternoon.

Project Management Team



And this shambles is why the Civil Service can't run or deliver any I.T. projects - they have lost any skill base for even the most basic of the functions required to run or deliver a body of I.T. work (the destruction of ITSA, its own IT department was the initial cause of this).

But more pertinently, they have in many project areas, largely lost any culture of work ethic or responsibility, and that's the most damaging loss of them all .....    

Dancing Cabin Crew

A well publicised story, but still funny ..... the Philippine budget airline Cebu has introduced dancing air stewardesses to give the safety demonstrations.

This is to make them 'interesting' ........ But in these PC times we live in, it meant that they had to make the 'Boys' do it as well ........ Hmm!

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Now I am collector (or 'hoarder' as one ex girlfriend said) .... I like old coins, because when you handle them, you know that they were handled by human beings when they were minted until they were lost. I have coins (in reasonable condition), going back the the Pre-Roman, Greek Empire and Macedonian conquest  periods ..... running through Roman, Medieval, English Civil war and up to late British Empire dates.  It's a cheapish way of owning a bit of history ......

Anyway, imagine my envy at the find by a metal detectorist in the UK of this ....

Roman Cavalryman's Ceremonial Helmet

A Roman Cavalryman's ceremonial helmet ..... worn as an award for skill or bravery and possibly silvered (although that's gone if it ever existed).

Roman Cavalryman's Ceremonial Helmet Full Head

It sold after an anonymous phone bidder bought it for £2m...... which I hope is still in the UK (I certainly would block its export if I was the secretary of state involved).

I heard a radio presenter query why anyone would want to buy this outside of a Museum ...... he has no collectors soul. If I had won the Euro lottery £112m (its not been claimed yet, and I haven't checked my ticket yet LOL), I would buy this, and not even blink, its beautiful!

Ah well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I find it hard to imagine how anyone can't see the magic in this mask!

Complete Silence .... How Strange.

When an American pastor threatened to burn a copy of the Quran, all of the Muslim world went loco (as usual), with protests and mobs, and burnings ....

Another Peaceful Protest - Only Five Died

.... and also as usual in a 'peaceful Muslim protest', a few protesters died.

A Real Hero .....

Staff Sergeant Salvatore "Sal" Giunta is a brave man ..... he's the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor (The US's highest military award), since the Vietnam war. He is cited for saving members of his squad in October 2007 while fighting in the war in Afghanistan.

Staff Sergeant Salvatore "Sal" Giunta

In October 2007, Giunta's eight-man squad was moving along a wooded ridge-line in the Korangal valley  when at least a dozen Taliban fighters mounted an ambush that was coordinated from three sides at such close range that close air support could not be provided to Giunta's unit. Sergeant Josh Brennan, who was walking point, suffered at least 6 gunshot wounds. Giunta, then a specialist, was the fourth soldier back and was shot in the chest but was saved by his ballistic vest.

Another bullet destroyed a weapon slung over his back. Moving, firing and throwing hand grenades, Giunta advanced up the trail to assist Staff Sergeant Erick Gallardo and, later, Specialist Franklin Eckrode, whose M249 machine gun had jammed and who was badly wounded. Continuing up the trail, Giunta saw two Taliban fighters, one of whom was Mohammad Tali (considered a high-value target), dragging Brennan down the hillside, and towards the forest. Giunta attacked the insurgents with his M4 carbine, killing Tali, and ran to Brennan to provide cover and comfort until relief arrived.

"I ran through fire to see what was going on with him and maybe we could hide behind the same rock and shoot together ... He was still conscious. He was breathing. He was asking for morphine. I said, "You'll get out and tell your hero stories," and he was like, "I will, I will." ..... sadly Brennan died receiving medical treatment. But according to his father, Michael Brennan, "not only did [Giunta] save [my son] Josh ... He really saved half of the platoon."

Why we are fighting in Afghanistan with one hand behind our back is because the 'human rights lawyers' have set the rules of engagement in order to get brave men killed, and give the scum 'human rights' if they are captured...... they wouldn't last 30 seconds out there where the bullets fly.

We should salute those brave men and women who risk everything on behalf of the desk warriors of the left who do everything to make sure that they fail.  Yesterday another brave soul was killed after being taken hostage by the Taliban, she was called Linda Norgrove and was an aid worker. She had been taken 'hostage' by people she had been helping, and when US forces were close to rescuing  her, she was killed in the fighting (possibly by a grenade thrown by the allies, although reports are somewhat confused).

Linda Norgrove - aid worker

Meanwhile in Iraq, the murderers of five british military policeman have been freed by an Iraqi court because of 'lack of evidence', its believed that two accused are politically 'connected' to a local warlord/politician, and are therefore effectively untouchable in the legal system we have installed in 'democratic' Iraq.

Murdered Military Policemen

If we capture any of them, and then try to prosecute them over here, they have been briefed to claim mistreatment, torture, rant in court and generally play to the world Muslim population, who all too readily believe any shit put in front of them, as long as it includes the idea that they are under attack. 

There are lawyers in the West falling over themselves to prosecute soldiers like "Sal" Giunta for 'human rights abuses'.... we are the authors of our own downfall.

The House That Money Built

Princes and Princesses of the Royal House of Saud have long had a reputation for violence towards us 'mere mortals', as well as hypocrisy over their 'religiousness'. For the record there are about *22,000 royals in Saudi Arabia, with about 7,000 classed as 'Princes' — making the ratio of about 1 royal per 1,000 non-royals, and with total control over the media, this means what happens abroad stays abroad. 

 

House Of Saud

But as they don't yet control the western press, we can still follow their global indiscretions with some glee: