One Is A Lonely Number

Talking about hope springing eternal in the hearts of men, if 'Three' is a magic number then 'One' definitely isn't.

Mr Brovedani - Lonely Udinese Fan

You have to laugh at the news story of the lone Udinese football fan, a Mr Brovedani, who drove the 4 hours to Genoa on business, decided to go to watch his team play the local team Sampdoria .... as he said "I like the stadium there, it's very similar to English stadiums, I always take my flag and scarf around - they're always in the car with me." ..... only to find that he was the only away supporter.

Buzz Off

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of men, and having been occasionally plagued by mozzies (mosquitoes) on holidays (notably in Corfu and also once in Turkey), I read the following story with some anticipation .....

Mosquito Beat Radio - Beat to the DEET

..... News agencies reported that a radio station broadcast ultrasound along with its programmes to repel mosquitoes .... great! Radio listeners in Brazil were told that listening station 'Band FM' was all you need to do to beat mosquitoes .... just have the radio stuck close by (probably their ears).

 

Whistle For Your Money

In the London Underground, licensed buskers are allowed to perform and can earn good money ..... so much so that a few years ago, a blind man who was something of a whistler, found that for just standing and whistling 'tunes', after just 90 minutes he had earned £36.80 .... and after three and a half hours he got £90. His weekly benefit giro cheque at the time was around £38.

Now he's a professional whistling busker and the BBC ran a story on him ..... "All you need to know is that I live in Wolverhampton, travel down to London four days a week, employ a helper and I make a good living." ........ all for a 4 day week.

So its safe to assume that he's doing at least 7 hours and that he gets more than £250+ per day. A minimum of £1,000pw or (allowing for holidays) it could easily be £48,000 pa .....

Admittedly, he suggests in the story that as he's really blind (as opposed to some who may not be disabled at all .... despite the glasses), he gets more than the average busker, and presumably there's time slots i.e. He can't keep the pitch all day (but that's not actually explicit in the story) ... . even so, probably about £30,000 pa is achievable.

Who says it doesn't pay not to work? ...... we have fostered a very strange culture in the UK.

In fact intrigued by the notion that you can  make a very "good living" for doing very little in the UK, I researched 'Begging' and what can be earned for doing nothing at all .... just hanging a card around your neck with the words "hungry and homeless" and sticking a container in front of you. I was genuinely shocked with the results.

In 2007, the London council of 'Westminster' council revealed that beggars in London could earn up to £300 a day at the time. In 2009, Leicestershire Police and council started an investigation and found no beggars who were arrested to be homeless. In fact most had council accommodation, welfare benefit cheques, with some beggars earning up to £200 on a Friday or Saturday night, which if done regularly would be equal to be about £21,000 a year on top of their normal incomes.

I say 'incomes' because what was most shocking was the fact that the investigations uncovered the fact that a number of the weekend beggars were actually office workers with homes, who were topping up their salaries ....  'We have intelligence-there is a woman who is begging because she wants a new kitchen for her flat,' said a police Sergeant Underwood in one of the reports. In London their are now vast numbers of Eastern European organised begging gangs ... children and adults. Whole villages of villas are going up in Romania and Albania financed out of organised crime in the UK including professional beggars.

The answer to this is simple, make street begging totally illegal, with prison sentences (and deportation where appropriate), large fines, loss of housing benefits and council tenancies all part of the punishments ..... but also make it illegal to give to beggars, with the same punishments meted out to offenders.

Begging in our society, which hands out so much in welfare largesses, is virtually unneeded .... it appears to be nothing more than a fraud of welfare benefits, or taxes, or a means of financing drug taking habits. It should be stamped out now, (along with benefit abuses), before it gets much much worse when millions of Balkan Europeans are no longer stopped from arriving on our shores next year.

'Liberal' Politicians who make these decisions (such as decriminalising begging), never seem to consider the likely long-term consequences and we always end up paying a very heavy price for their lack of foresight. I personally would make every act of legislation have a built in 'Sunset clause' after a decade .... meaning that it would expire after 10 years unless renewed by parliament (no further need after that). The idea being that if a law has worked as expected and with no unforeseen consequences, then it would be nodded through before expiry, but otherwise it could be replaced or allowed to expire.

This would stop bad laws or ill considered laws becoming permanent millstones round our societal necks .... 

NB: There has been something of a tradition of 'whistlers' in the UK .... the folk singer Roger Whittaker made something of a trademark by breaking into whistling in songs .... but who remembers 'Whistling Jack Smith' anymore?

Naked Protests

In antics that aren't dissimilar to those adopted by burn your bra and hippie campaigners in the 1960's ....

 

Femen Protesters - Echo Hippies Of
The Make Love Not War 1960's

 

.... the female activists of the Ukraine are tackling what they consider to be a three pronged attack on women's rights, they are in their words ".. fighting against patriarchy, in its three manifestations: sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship and religion", by walking round topless, while cutting things down with chainsaws .... hmm.

Dark Side Of The Earth

Anyone who visits this hidden corner of the web more than occasionally, will know that we love space stories, and that our biggest regret is that the race to space stopped with the moon landings. Even so, amazing images are beamed to us almost very day.

This one .....

Dark-Side Of The Earth - Taken By The Suomi Satellite

...... is the night side of the Earth, as taken on a series of cloudless nights ..... its fantastic.

Strangely (or perhaps not, if you live in this weather benighted country), you will notice that the only landmass where they couldn't get a cloudless night this year, is Britain and Eire, where band of cloud runs from Brittany in France, across the UK and into the North Sea ..... they had to publish a second, separate picture for this  northern rain centre.

Where Women Are

What's the most popular song in Saudi Arabia (in those areas where Western style music is allowed)?

"Stand by your man" (or at least very near him).

It has to be that song because the Saudis, those fun loving libertarians, who most definitely didn't have anything to do with '9/11' ... No Siree! ..... it was just a coincidence that all the plotters funders and executioners of the attack were Saudi (.... so the US and its Western allies invaded Afghanistan?), have just found a novel use for new technology ....trackin wimmin.

Yes Siree, in Allah's kingdom, all women's phones are potentially tagged and an SMS alert is triggered to her male 'owners' phone if she crosses the border and leaves the paradise on earth that is Saudi Arabia ... Some Saudi Tweeters have mockingly suggested that it would be easier if the Mullahs just had all women micro-chipped, or forced to wear radio ankle bracelets (like western criminals), to make tracking Saudi women's more accurate ....

Saudi Women's Movements Are Tracked

Although how far most of them could ever get given that they can't even leave the house without a male escort, makes it a moot point -- its often forgotten that despite 'reforms', Saudi women are denied the right to travel without their 'male guardian's consent' and are also banned from driving. I am posting this story as yet another warning to the western sisterhoods and 'wimmin of the left' of the threat their liberties face.

You are sleep walking into servitude when you turn your PC driven 'blind eye' to the 'Islamic cultural practises' being practised under the guise of multiculturalism ..... they are already at a mosque near you now, and when numbers suffice (see election of the 'Respect' party MP's), will be coming to a council near you as well.

Small Nations, Small Triumphs

You know what they say ....... 'the smaller the nation the bigger the flag'.

Largest Human Flag - A Pakistani Triumph

So in that spirit I had to laugh when Pakistani men turned out in their thousands ... well 24,000 actually, in order to create the worlds largest living human national flag.

 

Crawling Out From Under A Rock

There is a term in the English language about what 'crawls out from under a rock' when you turn it over.

The police investigation into the sex crimes alleged to have been committed by the late, and not so great Sir James Saville  OBE, KCSG, was the turning over of a very large rock, and some very big insects have been crawling from under it .....

The Police operation has three strands.

• One is looking specifically at the actions of Jimmy Savile, and 
• The second strand concerns allegations against "Savile and others". 
• The separate third strand relates to alleged complaints against other people unconnected to the Jimmy Savile investigations.

So far, as a direct result of the investigation, and its related enquiries, five people have been arrested:  Max Clifford (publicist), Freddie Starr (comedian), Gary Glitter (ex pop star and convicted child sex offender), Wilfred De'Ath (a retired BBC producer), and Dave Lee Travis (ex DJ and radio broadcaster). Police have also questioned under caution a man in his 80's (who we can't name, but whom its speculated is a very well known TV presenter).

Arrested or 'Interviewed under caution' - More expected.

The publicity has also rattled old skeletons up and down the country ..... with the well known TV presenter Stuart Hall OBE arrested for unrelated sexual allegations ..... it should be pointed out that not all of the arrests (details on their web links), relate to the sexual abuse of children, some of those arrested have been charged with sexual offences related to adults. Not that this excuses them of any crime, if they are firstly ever brought to trials, and then secondly found guilty of the crimes which they are accused of.

What we can comment on is the general age of those so far arrested or interviewed under caution .... all of them are well over fifty years of age, with the youngest being the 59 year old Clifford. This suggests a 'culture' of some kind existed in the 'celebrity circuit' of a generation or so ago .... its very strange.

Justice Is Blind - For Rich and Poor

However they have not been found guilty of anything to-date and therefore are all presumed innocent until proven guilty, despite all the speculation on some sites. Its possible that the claims are entirely fictitious in some cases - sadly we live in a society where some people would try to make money out of falsely accusing an individual of the most hideous of crimes. Justice in these high profile cases must not only be carried out blindly, but it Must Be Seen to Be Done, or it isn't justice.

NB: Please don't speculate about identities of people not named by the police .... its illegal, often wrong, and brings down the wrath of lawyers ..... and I will delete the comments.    

Web Spread Lies and Myths

We have talked before about 'urban myths' and the power of the web to disseminate them ..... this is as nasty an example as you could wish for .....

Rescuers Pull A Man From The Libyan Embassy Attack

There is a story doing the rounds amongst right wing conspiracists and anti-muslim groups on the web, that the late US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, wasn't just murdered in the attack on his embassy building, but that he was either sexually raped, or raped with an instrument before he died.

Dalit Goddess 'Hinglish'

'Hinglish or Inglish', that peculiarly Indian language construct, much beloved by call centre managers everywhere, and as equally loathed by the misbegotten western callers to those same centres (See Dell Hell post for example), has its own goddess.

Dalit Goddess English

Yes the pantheon of Hindi gods and goddesses has gained a new goddess 'Hinglish', with her own sādhu or 'saint' in the form of the high Victorian politician 'Thomas Babington Macaulay', who introduced the idea of teaching and governance in English, to the different races of India (incidentally cementing the possibility of a united independent India).

 

Race Not An Issue?

Here's where PC nonsense is really shown at its best .... a 16 yr girl is attacked by a complete stranger

Male Attacker - Race Not Known?

.... the police appeal for witnesses and give a description, which the BBC give out as 'a muscular man, aged between 25 and 30, and about 6ft tall. He was wearing a black baseball jacket and jeans' ...... yeah, that'll do in PC multicultural 'la la land'.

 

The Endless Wars

Although I am heartily sick of the region and its war like inhabitants, one has to accept that the recent fighting between Hamas and the IDF in the Gaza strip is worth a post. Basically for reasons that any intelligent peoples might consider stupid, the terrorist Hamas group, and rulers of the Gaza strip have been lobbing missiles into Israel, but apparently expected no response (image if they did this to Turkey or Egypt ....).

The Israeli's then retaliated with airship attacks, and then last week with a full scale bombing assault. In the meantime the Hamas rockets continued to be fired. This isn't the first time these events have occurred .... in fact every couple of years or so there are pretty much the same action - reaction.

Turkish Troops Attack Kurdistan

My question is why the apologists for the Hamas terrorists seem to think that firing missiles into Israel everyday is totally acceptable,  and that no one should ever expect any sort of response back?

As an example of this, in a war that's been going on for as long as the Israeli Arab conflict, when the Kurds attack Turkish troops across the Iraq border, the Turks bomb and strafe whole Kurdish villages in the border regions, and also send troops in to 'clean up' the area in retaliation .... but there is almost complete silence from the Islam apologists. No one complains, and the Turks belligerently shout about Turkish pride etc.

However when the same situation occurs in the Gaza strip, the Israeli's either have to take it or get flak from every 'pro-Palestinian' group in the West ... I fail to see the difference in activities, provocations and responses, except that one is Jews retaliating to Arab attacks, and the other is Muslim Turks retaliating to Muslim Arab attacks ..... obviously in Left Wing politics, that makes a difference, somehow.

No More Heroes

The world is running out of 'Brave Democrats' ..... they fall too easily to the forces of evil. Take as an example, the very brave ex mayor of Tiquicheo in central Mexico, who had held office between 2008 and 2011. During her reign, Mrs Maria Santos Gorrostieta had twice been attacked with guns by the local drug cartel warlords. In the first attack, her husband was killed and after the second attempt to kill her she was scarred by wounds, which she bravely displayed on TV and to the press.

Although it was obviously a drug related issue, she had professed ignorance as to why the attackers were so relentless in their efforts to kill her "I have a clear conscience, I have never had any issues of any kind, be it money, family or crime related, and I have never had any fights with any neighbours or residents of my town, or any other town" .... but she continued to stand "true to my ideals and my convictions, convinced that the truth will make us free", even after the two attempts to murder her.

Mrs Maria Santos Gorrostieta - A Very Brave Democrat.

Sadly, the attackers were very determined that she should die, and so last week, three days after her family had reported her missing, the body of Mrs Gorrostieta, was found in a ditch, killed by a blow to the head. Her death brings the total of democratic leaders killed by the cartels to an even two dozen.

We are losing the drug wars ..... and finally, this fact seems to be getting through to some in the US, where some states are voting to legalise some drugs such as Marijuana ... its a small step, but like many people, I believe that we have to try and take the criminal out of drug use, and some steps towards, taxing and controlling many low level drugs in a manner like tobacco and alcohol. This may be the only way to stop states like Mexico, Columbia, and Afghanistan (where heroin production is up 61% in the last 12 months), from becoming official instead of defacto 'Narco States'.

Commuting - The Curse Of Working

How long do you commute each day?

I guess that it depends on whether you are prepared to live near where you work, and move houses when you change jobs. If like most people, you don't want (or can't) to just keep moving home every few years, then over a period of time your daily commute may vary, but the OECD average is reported as 40 minutes per day, which strikes me as rather low.

Commuting - A world wide curse.

I work in a big city centre office, where even the 'locals' spend about 30 minutes each way to get door to door, thus making the lowest commute I could find at around 50 minutes a day, and the average about an hour and 10 minutes (but with many more facing something over an hour and a half a day). This begs the question of how they obtained the figure of 40 minutes which as you can see, is the total average commute time for the UK (just 20 minutes, door to door each way).

Me? Well I am an extreme commuter, I face a daily trek, door to door, of 1hr 35 minutes each way (made possible by train station just 10 minutes drive from my house, and an office just 10 minutes walk from the train station), which I may add I share with around twenty other daily commuters from my small town rail station.

So why do I do it? Well the pay I get in the city office is about 25 - 30% higher for full time employment than in the local employers who might want me, but I don't want to move back to the city .... quality of life reasons. I also have to be honest and admit that as long as the train isn't delayed more than 10 minutes, I have got used to the journey and barely notice it - just read a book or a paper and your nearly there.

Still, when I looked at these figures I was made to realise that I am spending a lot of time (and money), on travelling costs, just to get the money to afford to be able to commute, and whether that's sufficient justification for the loss of life time .... maybe I have let the work/life balance tilter too much in one direction?

Blog or Micro-Blog

As we approach the end of the year, as with many other bloggers who have lasted more than a couple of years (this blog started in 2007, and as we shall see, that is actually quite ancient as these things go), we at PC Towers wonder whether our meagre offerings are really worth keeping going. Particularly as we have an interest in another subject that we would like to blog on, but which we currently can't find the time for.

Several studies have indicated that most blogs are abandoned soon after their creation (with between 60% and 80% abandoned within one month, depending on which of these studies you choose to believe), and that few are regularly updated. One study found that 66.0% of the surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, "representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned". Of the blogs that survived the first few days or weeks (and that's only 40% of those started), the average duration before abandonment was 126 days ..... with the oldest abandoned blog in one of the surveys, maintained for 923 days before abandonment. The figures from 'Technorati’s Top 100 blogs' were analysed by 'www.problogger.net', and showed that even these top 100 'popular' Blogs, had an average (mean) length of blogging of 33.8 months before abandonment, and that the median figure was 28 months i.e. half the blogs have been going for longer than 28 months and half shorter than 28 months.

So we feel quite virtuous having lasted well in excess of 1,500 days ..... but there's a nagging doubt about the blogs and bloggings sustainability. For example we don't really have any regular followers or contributors, and although we have had over 150,000 viewers (with a current average on 200+ visits per day), this is we assume, a tiny fraction of more successful blogs. So in an age where celebrity (and other) idiots pass themselves off as intellectual giants to their 'followers' (people with the attention span of seconds), by using micro blogging tools (twitter et al), to pronounce their opinions on every event in less than 140 characters, what's the point of blogging actual content?

Apparently, the average stay on a blog site is 96 seconds, so any content that takes more than that length of time to digest, is doomed. we reduced this blog sizes down over a period of time, and with just 4 updates a week, probably its relative 'success' in keeping going for a 'Nano-audience' of about 200+ blog readers a day', is actually exceeding what we might extrapolate as expected from the blogging figures (We should clarify that the individual posts usually get something close to a dozen visits - although a few have been visited thousands of times - but the blog total for the day is approx 200).

The maths suggests most blogs aren't even that lucky:

• If we assume that on any one day, 100 million people regularly read a blog or blogs, and that they each read 10 other peoples' blogs. That translates into 1 billion subscriptions (10 X 100 million).
• Now assume on that same day there are 20 million active bloggers. That translates into 50 readers per blog (1 billion / 20 million) - these are nano audiences by any standard of communication.

And this is just an estimated average - in practice probably many blogs have no more than two dozen readers in all, and many will plough a very lonely field, with few visitors, and no comments or feedback.

Samuel Pepys was a Blogger!

So you can see the attraction of micro blogging - just one inane comment of 140 characters or less .... no explanation required and basically just an SMS text, and certainly rarely an insightful addition to the worlds thinking.

A blog on the other hand has no size limits, and can display thoughtful content (as well as not), while also allowing the building of an argued point. It also allows for criticism via the comment box, although rarely do these 'debates' last more than one or two posts.

But saying all that, its easy to see why so many blogs are abandoned .... posting your life observations to complete silence is an experience that can easily be described as unnerving. It certainly takes some self certainty and the absolute dedication of a more traditional diarist of earlier times - after all they were posting their thoughts into their diaries each night, with no real expectation that anyone would ever see them .... and look what happened to Mr Pepys!

So, for all of you who are thinking of blogging, or perhaps more importantly thinking of stopping blogging, remember that a blog with regular content does build up a nano audience, and that in this endeavour, staying power is definitely a virtue,

A Man Of The People

A man I could vote for (and a man of the people) is Jose Mujica, El Presidenti of Uruguay, and sometimes known as 'The world's 'poorest' president'.

 Jose Mujica - Man Of The People

He gives away most of his salary and lives on the average salary of a Uruguayan at about $775 (£485, $560) a month, and lives in a run down old farm with his flower growing wife, where there is no running water. He is really an ex-left wing revolutionary who really did believe in the socialist ideals that he fought (and was shot 14 times) for. This is very unusual, as we have seen in North Korea and China, where Communist politicians live a life of wealth and privilege (and think nothing odd about it),while their subjects often live far less luxurious lives.

I also suspect that the Castro brothers in Cuba have never lived in this kind of poverty, well not since 'La Revolución', and certainly the Soviet Russian leadership never pretended to live like the average soviet citizen.

Margaret Moran - Guilty as Charged?

This contrasts with most politicians, including those in the UK such as socialist and ex Luton South MP Margaret Moran, who has just been found to have committed one of the the biggest thefts of public expenses (£53,000, $62,000) so far, in the pig trough free for all that passed for MP's expenses 'self restraint.' (needless to say she's pulled the old 'too ill to plead' caper and has walked away scot free ... its not even clear if she has repaid the money, or lost her pension). 

 

Oddly the 'ill health' that she convinced a judge was enough to stop her standing trial (the politicians and judges really are hand in hand with each other), didn't stop her being secretly filmed, offering her lobbying services for money, while being 'too ill' to speak on behalf of her constituents - she later said that she only meant after she left parliament.

You may not agree with his philosophy and politics (although he seems to be correct about world consumption levels), but one can't help admiring Jose Mujica the man, his bravery and his commitment to his beliefs. If all politicians were like him in this regard, the world would be a far better place.

What Men Want

Most men and school boys like 'lists, maps' and 'worlds greatest' (including biggest, loudest, worst etc),  and its fair to say that men and boys also like Wars, Soldiers, and Empires .... I know ladies, but we aren't women.

Its no good trying to make us like fake life TV (soaps, non -'reality shows', and all the other stuff that you appear to enjoy). When you talk about these, we nod, say 'yes' or 'really' now and again, but our head is full of other stuff, like drill bits, or whether we would go and watch women's topless football. We don't even 'gossip' properly, about 10 minutes, and we are totally bored with the conversation about who is going out with who.

So here, just for men, are a few links to the Worlds Largest Empires, and the .... Worlds longest lasting empires. Some come with maps just add to the fun. I enjoyed a good 20 - 30 minutes poring over the lists and then looking at the maps .... good clean fun, and I thought why not share it for the few visitors to this site. There are even web sites, enticingly listing the Ten Greatest Empires, and the same here. 

British Empire - Biggest Ever

Sort of like 'Top Trumps' for Empires ..... and talking of 'Trumps' ... here's a link to a site that every man in my office laughed out loud at (or sniggered over) when it was passed round the office ... I don't think any women were passed the link because of fear of complaint (no nudity or pictures - but) ... What Men Laugh At.

Reverse Racism

With calls for a Black Footballers Association apparently being shelved for the moment (but watch this space), 'Googling' the term 'Black Associations' produces - page after page of useful results - try doing the same for 'White Associations' and apart from neutral groups such as the White Ribbon Association, you get just one

 

No White Police Association?

 

 .... a Wiki page entry for 'National Association for the Advancement of White People' - which is a racial supremacist group ..... after that, all the results are people with the surname 'White'.

Secession States 'Dis' United States of America

Sometimes you just have to laugh smugly .... I predicted a few weeks ago that many Americans would increasingly consider themselves disenfranchised if the US continued the pattern of the coasts voting Democrat and the central landmass voting Republican. Admittedly New Mexico and Colorado break up the map, but in general this has been the voting pattern for the last three or four elections.

2012 Final US Election Results

Well it appears that more than 100,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to allow their states to secede from the US, after President Barack Obama's re-election. The Whitehouse is forced to answer if any one question gets more than 25,000 supporters (ours is 100,000).

 

African Aid Model

As is usual, the sub Saharan states of Africa are debating what having a black American as US president has meant .... and the conclusion seems to be .. not a lot. They seem to have been expecting either a lot of US attention in the form of money or possibly in political settlements .... in fact they got much the same as under a white US president. Total Indifference.

Obama Not A Saviour For Africa

The question as to whether China is a better bedfellow and aid model to the Africans, is the one currently being asked ..... I would argue yes.

 

Jeb Bush - President 2016

So a nation has spoken and President Obama will serve a second term in office.

Possibly he will be able to push through some meaningful policies, but with only the congress as Democrat controlled, and the Senate in the hands of the Republican, its more likely that the US voters have simply just opted to 'kick the can of worms, further down the street'.

Thankfully, the result of the popular vote (50.4% to 48% with Florida shamefully still to declare) was also reflected the electoral college in outcome - although not is spirit, where the college has given Obama a lead of about 100 votes, which shows how disproportional it can be.

As usual there are some interesting snippets thrown up, perhaps the oddest of which is the fact that:

Republicans Need A Bush Or Nixon On  The Presidential Ticket

The Republican ticket of 1928, is the last one to capture the White House without a Bush or a Nixon on it - that's both weird and worrying in equal measure ....

Herbert Hoover 1928 Presidential Ticket

Nixon Eisenhower - Inauguration of an era

........... So Jeb Bush for President 2016 anyone?.

Predicting The Next Presidential Race

The other interesting story from the US Presidential Elections are the pollsters demographics of the vote splits ..... The chart below shows the breakdown of the voting for Romney and Bush.

Demographics 2012 US Presidential Election

As you can see they make interesting reading ....

• The economic Middle Classes voted for Romney - but they are predominantly White.
• Blacks almost entirely voted for Obama.
• The majority of Whites voted for Romney but only in a 6 to 4 ratio.
• The Republicans appeal to only about a quarter of Hispanic and Asian voters.
• More younger people vote Democrat. 
• More older people vote Republican.
• More Men Vote Republican.
• More Women Vote Democrat.

Many a pollster will be poring over these results, trying to glean the possible results of the 2016 Presidential race .... for instance will the general ageing of the white population, give the Republican enough of an edge to overcome the growth of the ethnic minorities. Its upon such questions as this, that the outcome of the next Presidential race will already be determined. 

Rip Off Britain

Many in Britain believe that we get ripped off by almost all the major world players .... Computers, iPads, Cars, Rail fares .... you name it, and for some reason they cost more here than in the US or Europe. Recently the suspicion has risen that our energy costs (much of which seems to be owned by foreign companies), are being manipulated. As someone said to me, 'they always go up, never go down, and always just before the winter'.

Energy Rip Off Britain

This seems to be confirmed when these figures were published ...

Broken Britain - Multiculturalism Fails

As we approach remembrance day its hard to ignore the most socially divisive group of immigrants in the UK history. Not only do they insist on being treated as special, but they insult our culture, way of life and tolerance. The very attributes that allowed them in to our country without mass protests, they throw back in our faces, in a manner more like conquerors, not immigrants.

 

Lest We Forget

Two stories serve to illustrate the pointlessness of ever expecting them to 'assimilate' to the British people's, no matter how many times our politicians bend the knee.

Tax Dodging UK

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." .... said US billionairess Leona Helmsley in 1983. Although originally sentenced to 16 years, she later spent 18 months in prison (the wealthy even evade the 'justice' meted out to 'little people'), for dodging her taxes.

Lets not fool ourselves, the UK tax system favours the rich (and big Companies such as Starbucks and Amazon), just as much as the US model, but also the loop holes and lack of join up allow the lesser earners to run a 'cart and horse' through the idea of us all paying our fair dues. In fact, as I will illustrate below, only those on P.A.Y.E (Pay As You Earn), i.e. directly employed by someone else, actually cop for 'paying our fair dues'.

UK's Most Wanted Tax Dodgers

Here's an illustration of how bizarre and unjust the UK's tax regime has become:

An I.T. Contractor, using a one man limited company as his employment vehicle (he and his wife are co directors, and he is the 'employee'), earns around £72k pa and decides to try and get round the provisions of Inland Revenue regulation 35, about what is 'self employed' in I.T. So with the aid of his wife, a qualified accountant, he says that he is compliant with this regulation, and can claim to be fully self employed, even though he is actually directed in his work by the companies he works for, and is not self employed in the same sense as say, a *plumber.

So in fact his contract doesn't get a round this IR 35 rule, and he most likely wouldn't be excluded from high rates of tax, should he ever be investigated by HMRC, but never mind, he decides to make hay while the sun shines, and declares his income as below the tax threshold and the vast majority of his income as 'dividends' i.e. Subject to tax at only 20% instead of the higher or standard rates, saving himself anything between £15 and £25k pa in taxes.

Now, being a bright and creative soul, he then hits upon another wheeze, and to reinforce his claim to be 'below the poverty line' .... he claims for Family Tax Credits. So now this genius is not only doing the tax payer out of £15k to £25k of tax revenue, but is also claiming free school meals and a tax credit for one year under Gordon Browns ill thought out scheme .... although presumably he will have to declare the 'dividends' as income at the end of one year and lose his Family Tax Credits for the following year.

He is also looking to see if he can try to dodge the change in rules on Child Benefit, that say families with an earner getting £50k plus can't get it, by using the same financial devices as he has used to avoid taxes.

If anything illustrates exactly why the tax burden is so high for the many, while being so low for the fortunate few, then this does. I know its a true scenario because the contractor was actually so proud of all his clever schemes that he boasted of them to a group of mere employees .... only prudence prevents me from naming him on this page.

Now before we all turn on the IT contractor, consider this:

(A) This is all 'legal' (apart from the IR35 part, which its very dubious that they would qualify to comply with if investigated), and is not breaking any laws except the moral standards we might hope for (and with an accountant as a partner, you would expect few of those).
(B) In fact most of the 'entertainers' on TV etc, and even those 'presenter names' at the BBC - "stars" in fact, employ exactly the same 'tax management' schemes via limited companies.

So when you are watching or listening to some liberal presenter, or a left wing comedians diatribe about 'the rich Tories', and or a liberal radio presenter on a day time phone in, 'tut tutting' at some wealthy persons money being 'off shore' .... just remember that they are all using the same tax avoidance schemes as each other. Jimmy Carr was just the more extreme edge of a thin wedge. To reinforce this view about who gets done, the HMRC has just announced that it won't prosecute those people with secret Swiss HSBC bank accounts (passed over by the French government), who admit tax avoidance.

'Pinsent Masons' director Ray McCann told The Times: “It is those at the lower end of the social scale who go to prison. There is no immunity offer for benefit cheats. The Revenue made a policy decision … Where there was an HSBC account, they would automatically go to contractual disclosure facility. This means immunity from prosecution is guaranteed if you own up to tax evasion, whether it be a small amount or billions.”

Unfortunately the Companies house check service doesn't allow for a check of directors, or we could put in names, and find what each of these high wealth hypocrites actually declares as earnings, because from the humble freelance IT programmer, to the winner of a Sony award for radio, they all think that, to quote US Billionairess Leona Helmsley again, "We don't pay taxes .... Only the little people pay taxes..."

* Neither are the BBC employees who claim similar status for much the same tax avoidance reasons, but that's another story.

Romney v Burns

The US Presidential election is throwing up some interesting attempts to influence the voter ..... who would have thought MAD Magazine was still going? I assumed it had died decades ago, but no, its still out there, and peddling its 60's brand of 'liberalism', and humour.

60's brand of liberalism?

I haven't actually seen a copy in decades, but I presume that it supports Pres. Obama's re-election campaign, else how can you explain the pull-out below?

Romney v Burns

Mind you, I think its fair to say that Mitt Romney probably wouldn't ever have been able to get far enough to be a candidate for the leadership in many democracies outside of the USA ..... even Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London looks more in touch with the common man than Mr Romney.

Bumble Was A Beadle

I was much surprised to discover that Britain still has some remnants of the 'private police forces' that were set up just prior to the formation of the first London and national police forces in the Victorian era ... there are actually several of these forces of which perhaps the most famous are the 'Burlington Arcade Beadles' who still patrol this exclusive shopping mall in their traditional uniforms including top hats and frock-coats.

Founded in 1819 by Lord Cavendish from his family regiment the 10th Hussars, they pre-date the Metropolitan Police Force by some 10 years, and are believed to be the worlds smallest private police force in existence. Their original aim was to enforce Lord Cavendish's code of behaviour in the shopping mall,and to keep the 'Hoi Polloi and general Riff Raff' out of the place, while assisting the 'gentry' in shopping safely.

Burlington Arcade Beadles

The 18th Century livery in dark blue, claret and silver, is a reflection of Lord George Cavendish's regiment uniforms, and is still provided by the livery tailor's at Henry Poole, which was founded in 1806 ... tradition within history.

History's a funny old thing, sometimes its hard to eradicate its footprints, and echoes of a different age can still be heard if only we stop and listen.

The Shadow Man

The shape of what is considered the male 'body beautiful' in normal societies has changed over the years .... but in general its been the Greek Olympian ideals as symbolised by the figure of Michaelangelo's 'David' (even with the prudishly little Weiner).

Portly Epitomes of North Korean Manhood

. Of course that has been debased occasionally, notably by the 'heroic' sculptures of the Nazi / Communist groups ..... and the occasional Asian and African dictator,

Big Tex Is A Gonna

Big Tex was a an icon of the Texan west (the part that's still not part of greater Mexico (texicana) .... at 52ft (16m) tall, this cowboy had stood overlooking the State fair grounds for 60 yrs, like a Midwestern 'Statue Of Liberty' .... "bring me your hot dogs, bring me your poor bored children, bring me your carnie folk!"

Big Tex at Texas State Fair

Sadly, like the white middle America of the 1940's and 1950's that he represented, he is no more, burnt down in an unexplained fire whose cause has not been determined. There are plans to rebuild him "bigger and better for the 21st Century" but one can't help feeling that it will be neither.

The days of a confident white America are seemingly gone ... enclaves and 'white flight' into gated ghettos (fleeing from their 'fellow Americans' who are seemingly not interested in the Protestant work ethic), are the long term future.

In the meantime, as it looks around it at the world, the country faces a less confident future than those oil cowboys of the 1950's. Its the end of an era the like of which we may never see again.

Darth Disney

The news that the Disney Corporation have taken over the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, has prompted many photo-shop wags to spoof up their pictorial representation of the series (I have linked to a few of them via this article here) ...

Mr Disney

But given the accusations of O'l Walts reputation for right-wing views, through his association with the 'Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals', which was both an anti-Communist and an anti-Semitic organization, whose views chimed closely with those espoused by Herr Hitler and gang at the time ..... accusations that he never completely dispelled,  maybe it would be more realistic for something like this

Darth Disney

To be the next unveiling of a Disney, 'Darth'.

Broken Arrows

I guess its surprising how many things, which aren't conspiracies, are still secrets. The reason, the narrative of our lives moves on, the press lose interest, and the story dies. So it only rang a vague bell when I read a story about 4 nuclear weapon carrying war-planes colliding over Spain in the 1960's.

Broken Arrows - Palomares 1966

By some miracle only 7 US airman were killed, and the nuclear bombs didn't explode (they weren't armed) ....... but the 'nuclear' wreckage was scattered wide and far, with three of the bomber's H-bombs landing in or around Palomares, the fourth landed about five miles offshore in the Mediterranean ... a reporting ban was assisted by the fact that Spain was so poor in 1966, that there was only one telephone in Palomares in 1966, and no running water, so a recovery operation remained secret.

The weapon from the sea bed was recovered. One of the other three was undamaged (its safety parachute had opened as designed) but two more fell 31,000 ft to the earth and split open, scattering waste in the form of radioactive dust over a largish area.

"What they decided to do was remove the contaminated dirt from the most contaminated areas," says science writer Barbara Moran, author of 'The Day We Lost the H-Bomb'. They literally scraped up the first three inches of topsoil, sealed it in barrels, and shipped it to a storage facility back in the US .... but they missed bits. And although there has been no evidence that the food or water supplies were ever contaminated (checks are made very year), the locals want the US to come back and do a proper job of finishing the clean up.

No one really knows how much plutonium was unrecoverable, as the US never admitted how much was lost, but there is still some out there, and locals want rid of it. A local barman summed it up, "Every time the story hits the media, it hurts tourism," he said. "A lot of people don't want to come here because they think the quality of life must be low, that cancer rates are higher, when that's not the case at all." ... discussions are apparently under way to get the final clean up completed.

Clark Kent - Super Blogger

This week its reported that Clark Kent (Superman's alter ego), is giving up his once-promising career in journalism.

George Reeve - Clark Kent and Superman

Apparently he will walk out in protest that hard news has given way to too many "soft" entertainment stories ....

 

Cuban Crisis Remembered

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 well ..... not the news stories, but my parents reaction - my mother glued to the reports (which seemed to be constant), of where the Russian ships were believed to be, and where the USA fleet was waiting for them. I would come home from school to face parents who seemed drawn. We even had a school event where we had to sit under our school desks when the teacher blew a whistle (although I don't think it registered why) .... I don't think anyone under the age of fifty five, really realises that we actually were hours away from the end of the world as we knew it.

Cuban Missile Crisis Anniversary October 2012

Nowadays we assume that the US, China and Russia are not stupid enough to invade each other, but we are not as far away from those times as many people assume .... Iran, North Korea, and possibly Pakistan are all armed and dangerous, and either have, or will have the capability to strike out with nuclear weapons at a superpower, or a close ally, in their stupidity.

What's actually more worrying is that in the case of one of these 'rogue' nuclear nations, there would probably not be any 'hot line' diplomacy, we would just wake up to their actions, and have to either back down, or instantly retaliate e.g. Iran drops a few warheads on Israel, or the other way round (Israel has the same weapons, but is not usually considered a 'rogue state' outside of the Arab/Muslim countries), then either the US or Russia would either have to retaliate on their behalf, or just accept that this had happened, and try to negotiate with the 'victors' or 'aggressors' .... if the result was obliteration for the victim, the question is, would the superpower ally, really risk 'Armageddon' to honour the treaty?

Its the point we would all have to consider when relying on an allies nuclear umbrella .... yesterday Sudan  said it was attacked by Israel after an explosion at an arms factory, that it claims was caused by an Israeli air strike .... not for the first time.

Forcible Religious Conversion

A BBC story quoted a man called 'Sheikh Hassan Ghidan' (who is styled as a salafist scholar and preacher, who graduated from Cairo's influential Islamic university, al-Alzhar), as saying that he believes in changing society by teaching people at grass roots level, rather than through the violent jihad espoused by some other Salafists - but that he shares the same long term aims as them.

"The changes we seek are to apply the Islamic Sharia - the Islamic law to achieve social justice, and to establish an Islamic Caliphate, to liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Muslims, the lands which were originally Muslim."

He lists the following, as some of the lands that need to be re-taken 'Palestine, Iraq, Burma, Chechnya and Andalucia in Spain'.

This historical ignorance just makes me laugh, but doesn't surprise me .... the only land that can be said to be originally Muslim is the Saudi peninsular ... all the others were Christian or another religion, and were forcibly incorporated into an Arab Empire - there was only conversion by the sword after that - in fact its the only major religion that has gained its majority of followers by violent conquest, and its conversions almost entirely by violence (Sadly he Christians also did this in South America, but generally not elsewhere).

Islams Original Expansion and Expulsions

With the possible exception of the Sahel region of Africa and Malaya, Islam has almost never taken root via the intellectual winning of hearts and minds ever since. All the lands in this Salafist list, have either successfully repulsed an invasion, or thrown occupation out (Spain or Burma for example), and all have reasserted their native religions.  Others are an integral part of a non Muslim country such as Russia .... what's also interesting is that Iraq is now a Shia Muslim state now, and therefore to the Sunni crackpots, its also classed as non Muslim.

These Salafists are usually very violent men, with an agenda which our government should be addressing now with the Saudi's who continue to promote it ....... remember this is a major part of the Islam that the Saudi's export worldwide (including into the Balkans). One look at this map of the conquest years, shows that where the sword failed, Islam expansion stopped.

Islam is still only a force in those countries where Arab or Turkish armies suppressed the native religions .... maybe we should espouse a violent Christian creed, whose aim would be to 'liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Christians, the lands which were originally Christian' .... a list might include Bosnia, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt ... just a thought.

Multiverses and Multiple Earth's

I am currently reading a book by Iain Banks (not his alter ego of 'Iain M Banks'), in which unusually he has chosen to cross seed the story with what many would consider as Sci-Fi elements, in particular the fact that the main characters have the ability to transition between an infinity of parallel universes. As one character describes it to a 'non transitioner'

" ... there are infinitudes of worlds to work with. There are even an infinite number in which we are having exactly the same conversation as this right now [or in which you are reading this blog], worlds differing in only one tiny detail - which might be an atom of uranium in a deposit deep underground in Venezuela decaying a microsecond earlier than it did here, or a photon in the University of Tasmania taking one slit, not the other, in another running to the two slit experiment ....."

Multiverse and Multiple Earth's

Now I happen to think that this theory of a multiverse (or some variant on it), has something to commend it - it certainly explains some events that seem odd. For example, the occasional appearance of people who have claimed to be out of time i.e. from the past, or people who just disappear with no trace, after all the alternative is that millions of people worldwide are murdered, or are able to hide themselves every year.

Its my suspicion that we are all travelling (or transitioning) between multiple versions of Earth all the time, because the barriers between 'worlds differing in only one tiny detail', are no barriers to us. We are considerably more relevant than a photon for example .... but that while we can move between these closely related Earth's, where the difference is more than just an atom (and we are in fact unique within these closely related multi-verses), we can't cross over into those versions of reality, where there exists another version of us, or where the reality differs by too great a margin. e.g The Saxons won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, or the Mongols conquered Japan etc.         

To illustrate what I am talking about, when I was about 15 years old, I got up to go to school about 8:15 am, I saw no one in the house, and I walked to the bus stop (about a third of a mile away), in a cocoon of near total silence - I saw no cars, and none passed me on the normally very busy main road, and while I could dimly hear 'traffic noises', it was distant, and almost as though muffled through a heavy fog or snow (although it was only September). I got to the bus stop on a major road, no one was there, this despite the fact that this was the standard stop for school children, and should have been busy.

 

The Area Back Then - Now Very Changed

 

I stood at the bus stop (just where camera view was for R/Hand picture above, and opposite L/Hand picture bus stop), for about ten minutes, and became increasingly aware that something was 'wrong, or out of place' .... I felt dislocated. Across the road there was a very large horse chestnut tree (the whole area where I then lived had been part of the parked  garden estate surrounding Manley Hall, which had been occupied by a Lord Egerton until he became a bankrupt, so all the trees were mature), and as I stared, I became aware that it looked odd, as though it had been pruned. As soon as I had this thought, the sound suddenly cranked up, almost in a whoosh, people started appearing, and cars poured along the road again.

All this was so vivid an event, that even now, decades later, I can recall it with almost total clarity .... my only explanation, both then and now, was that I had moved to the very boundary of where I could transition naturally, and that the fact that a tree that was over a hundred years old, suddenly looked strange, was an indicator that I had been on the cusp of another version of the Earth. 

 

I don't attribute this to any mystical event, but rather the evidence of physics at work ..... and of course there are other explanations available for all of this, but the one detailed above, is the one that I have felt best fitted how it all felt at the time.

Additional:

By one of those strange coincidences that really make you wonder .... the BBC Radio 4 Extra is this week running a serialisation of  'Undone' written by Ben Moor .... which uses a sci-fi theme of parallel universes.