Duck Ass Dynasty

When I was a lad, the local barbers used to have posters up advertising the cuts available .... these included an old Brylcreem poster with an ex-footballer / cricketer (who I didn't know) called Denis Compton ... 

 

Denis Compton - Brylcreem

 

.... you could point at him and get the same hair cut (and presumably use the same Brylcreem).

What Passes For European Values

You can often go a whole ten minutes without a story from the Islamic world that pulls you up short ... this time, its that 'European minded, Freedom of Speech loving, Demagogue', Prime Minister of Turkey - Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His vitriolic and rabble rousing manner of language in speeches, now ever increasingly reminding one of the rhetoric of Bin laden, or President Assad, or even Ex President Gaddafi.

In Turkey, The Internet Is Not Always Uncensored ...

So its perhaps not too unexpected in that part of the world, that he's now enmeshed in a web of financial corruption stories, that are not only dragging in his cabinet and political allies, but also his immediate family .... so what does this paragon of financial and political probity do? Why he opts to gag the messenger ....

 

Justice Is Not Blind

I have noted before that there is a bias against being a right winger in the UK, that is not evident in being a left winger  ... this is more evident in the UK, than in Europe or the USA. In the UK there are around nine right-wing parties outside of the Conservative or UKIP parties, while there are around twenty nine left wing political parties outside of the Labour, Liberals and SNP. On both the far right and far left are supporters of extreme views .... that's a fact that by their nature they can't avoid.

However supporters of Stalinist or the Maoist creeds in the UK are not vilified to the point that they are banned or physically attacked when standing for office .... When Stalin killed millions upon millions in Russia in the 1930's, and again in the 1950's, we didn't purge the Communist party of Great Britain or vilify the supporters of this creed, in fact they actually thrived in our seats of learning and academia to the point that in the UK at least, the best spies the Soviets had, were recruited at Oxford or Cambridge universities by Communist lecturers ... to whit, Philby, Burgess, Blunt, and Maclean and others.

Now why am I rehashing this part of an earlier posting?

Well most of us can recall the case of Gary McKinnon, the UFO Pentagon hacker with Asperger's Syndrome, who when threatened with extradition to the US to stand trial for his crimes, was suddenly defended by every Left-wing lawyer, and millionaire socialist in the country - ranging from 'Sting' to 'Stephen Fry', and eventually the UK refused to extradite him. We also backed this up by saying that he wouldn't be prosecuted in the UK, for what the US had described the "biggest military computer hack of all time".

Only there is another 'Asperger Syndrome' criminal, I doubt you will have heard of him, his name is Michael Piggin, and he was arrested for allegedly planning to attack his old school in a Columbine style attack, as well as a Mosque and oddly, a cinema. He also has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, and so one would expect that this diagnosis would be treated in the same way, and that the UK Crown Prosecution Service and Home Secretary would treat him in a similar manner to Gary McKinnon. But no, he is on trial, his mental condition not withstanding ....

So to recap, we have two men, both with the same mental condition, one, who has hacked the US military, but is deemed to be unable to be extradited, or stand trial for his alleged crimes due to the mental condition. The other man is on trial as I write this piece, despite his mental condition, and can expect a lengthy prison sentence if he (and his two co-defendents), are found guilty in the next few weeks.

Justice Not As Unbiased As We Thought?

It appears that his politics are a major factor, he is a supporter of far right politics and holds extreme views (with Swastikas adorning his bedroom), and he also supports the English Defence League .... now you might think that this would be taken as additional proof that his mental illness had affected his judgement, but that is seemingly not the case for Mr Piggin, who has no 'human rights' lawyers, nor any celebrity supporters batting on his behalf ..... not even any mental health campaigners.

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that Mr Piggin not be tried, but rather so should Mr McKinnon, or it seems as though justice is not politically blind in the UK.

UPDATE 30/05/2014: Well I have to hold my hands up .... the Jury, who it seems, at least a third of  whom, may well have been thinking like me, that there was something wrong with this case coming to trial, failed to reach a verdict on the terrorism charges, although he was found guilty of possessing a knife (I assume that we can all get arrested for that .... just look in any kitchen), and perhaps more damningly, having parts for an improvised explosive device, for which he will be sentenced.

I repeat that personally, I think that Mr McKinnon should have been tried as well.

Two Sided Arguments

Self-determination seems to be a funny old thing .... in the Falklands and Gibraltar, Britain respects it .... while Argentina and Spain don't. However, in Georgia and Ukraine, some Russians have wanted 'mistakes of history' corrected and have returned to mother Russia (without a vote in one case, but with an overwhelming one in another) and the GB government doesn't respect the changes.

It’s this lack of coherent and logical policy thinking which has allowed the USA (with the GB government in tow), to invade and ignore the boundaries and integrity of a number of sovereign nations, while at the same time screaming 'foul' when the Russians or others (remember Iraq's invasion of Kuwait? ... seems so long ago), do exactly the same thing.

At least the Chinese foreign policy of 'not interfering in the internal affairs of others', no matter what the regimes internal politics are like (especially those who have natural resources), has some consistency ..... except of course, that they have interfered in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well a war with Vietnam, and defended North Korea. Oh, and you also have to ignore those territorial claims on an entire sea, that they have lodged. So in a fact, they are all as hypocritical as each other and none have any fig leaves to hide their shames behind.

In the meant time, the 'self-determination' as the driver of boundary change, has spread far and wide, to such an extent, that an environmentally challenged old mining town in the Russian part of the Ukraine, the city of Donetsk, has launched a spoof campaign on the 'Novosti Donbassa' web site, to re-join the UK 'Cups of tea and God Save the Queen' and all that.

Donetsk Wants To Be British Like Its Founder.

The claim is based upon the fact, that its a dirt poor town, which is not able to re-join 'Mother Russia' but which crucially, and its this that they claim is the driving force of their claim to be part of blighty, the town was founded by a Welshman. Apparently, the 'Hughes the Town Founder' in this case was, John Hughes, a native of Wales whom the locals called 'John Yuz' (phonetic, gettit!), so the town was initially named 'Yuzovka' ... he was the founder of foundry.

John James Hughes (Yuz) - Founder Of Donetsk

But before the GB government decides to back this 'self-determination' as way of getting a foot hold inside Russia ... they may wish to consider that:

• Although Donetsk is the Ukraine's fifth-largest city, it is also a hotbed of pro-Moscow sentiment inside the Ukraine and the home of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
• It has also seen violent clashes over Ukraine's loosening of the ties with Russia, in which at least one person has died.
• The new Government in Kiev claims that the pro-Moscow rallies in eastern Ukraine involve "provocateurs" from Russia, and even members of Russian secret services.

So maybe not an ideal candidate for our 'new garden city in the East' ......

The Future Here Today

Like most people, when I think of mechanical exoskeletons (which I admit isn't all that often), I picture 'Ripley' fighting the Alien Queen (aka 'C'mon Bitch'), in the film 'Aliens' ...

Ripley - Sexy and Fighting Fit - C'mon Bitch

..... a thrilling mix of robot and android machine, but still human inside .... and I might add, something to fire up the imagination of the most jaded of Sci-Fi loving cinema goers.

Polished Liberalism

There are odd little stories on the web, that don't always get quite the publicity that they deserve .... take this tale from Poland for example. A country that suffered more than most under the Nazi invasion of 1939, and then under the subsequent conquest by the Communists for another 45 years ...... so its the last place on earth that you would expect Adolf Hitler to be honoured.

However the town of Szczesin (formerly Stettin when it was a Swedish town, and German after 1720), Polish from 1945 when it was handed to Poland as part compensation for the Soviet land grab of Polish lands following WWII, has resisted all efforts to perform any historical revisionism, and alter its past. 

To the complete surprise of all the PC western revisionists, the town, which is now a wholly Polish populated city (the Germans of the previous 250 years having been expelled by Stalin's troops), has refused to withdraw the honorary citizenships, that the town councils over the last 400 years have granted to the luminaries of the time. They voted on a proposal to do so, but rejected it in a free vote.

Those luminaries honoured included former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in the 1930's, and former Soviet Premier, Nikita Krushchev in the 1950's .... both of whom races oppressed Poles. When asked about this rejection, the 'Liberal' (in the way that term used to mean in the UK, before the UK Liberal Party MP's became more left, and less liberal), Council Leader Bazyli Baran said, "They are all dead now, so let's forget about them"

Bazyli Baran - A Very Liberal Politician

In this attitude I commend him, as airbrushing the past is something that the Nazi's and Communists did .... and is now being busily performed by the politically correct and multi-culturalists amongst the western 'intelligentsia'. Given the culture we have in the UK now ... can you imagine any of our councils ever taking such a liberal view?

Cultural Defence

I have often remarked before that its a strange world .... one of the strangest aspects of the modern world is the phenomena that holds White people to differing standards to the rest of the world, particularly in the difficult world of the 'ism's' e,g, 'racism'.

• For example, if a White politician says that its wrong for a Christian to marry a Muslim or a Jew as it lessens the numbers of Christians, that’s racism.
• If a White politician says its wrong to marry a person of colour as it diminishes the white stock, that’s racism.
• If a White politician said its OK for a Christian man to marry a non Christian woman (as long as all the children are brought up as Christians, or the woman converts to Christianity), that’s racism.
• If a White politician said its not OK for a Christian woman to marry a non Christian man, that’s racism.

 However,

• If a Muslim man says that its wrong for a Muslim to marry a Christian or a Jew as it lessens the numbers of Muslims, that’s 'cultural'.
• If a Muslim politician said its OK for a Muslim man to marry a non Muslim woman (as long as all children brought up as Muslims, or the woman converts to Islam), that’s 'cultural'.
• If a Muslim politician said its not OK for a Muslim woman to marry a non Muslim man, that's 'cultural'.

And now apparently, the Jews are also joining in the 'cultural' fun .... with many saying that any intermarriage - when Jews wed non-Jews - is a threat to the future survival of the Jewish nation. Jewish identity is matriarchal, so if a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman, their children would not be considered Jews. 

The Feared Future Of World Jewry - If Jews Are 'Assimilated'.

There is even a Israeli organisation Lehava, which works to prevent any assimilation, and which targets Jews who are marrying non Jews, by posting social media messages to them stating that their "grandparents are turning over in their graves, they did not dream that their grandchildren would not be Jews". They even have a name for non Jewish women who marry Jews  - 'a shikse', a very derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman, who are considered "worse than Hitler", as a threat to the Jewish survival. Apparently though, however racist this may seem to you and I, rest assured in the western PC world, this is all deemed as 'cultural'.

So seemingly, despite all the 'globalisation' and 'multiculturalism,' that we are told by Western PC politicians is the new world order (and the reason apparently why we can't close our borders), all the non-western nations don't believe in anything of the sort, and actually feel free to practise any form of 'racism' (which somehow isn’t 'racism' at all, but actually 'Cultural’ in a PC kinda way) .... It really is a strange world.   

Rocky Road To Riyadh

There are those people out there who would shoot their mothers, if it made them look good to the PC  'Multi-cultural' Brigade .... they often end up working in the NHS, Education Establishment or Local Government or public media .....

They seemingly have no shame in aiding the forces of backwardness and social regression, even though perversely, those same forces would see them locked up, if they ever held power.

Ban Halal Meat Campaign Poster

The latest example of this reckless stampede in to Dhimmitude, is the local education authority, governors, and head teacher at Brinsworth Manor primary school in Rotherham Yorkshire.

 

Leopard On The Loose

There is, or more probably was (by the time I post this), a leopard on the loose in a city in India ... the animal wandered into the Indian town of Meerut, where in response, all the local schools were shut, because it hasn't been killed or captured so far. The creature was probably driven to an urban lifestyle by lack of habitat, as the Indian population continues to grow in a frighteningly fast manner.

Attempts to capture it are at best amateurish, with the closest being when it was locked in a hospital room for a few hours before it escaped by clawing its way out. The whole process hampered by 'gawpers' who proved once again, if more proof was needed when you see the deaths at every Indian 'political protest' march, that in some cultures, 'life is held cheaply', and a few bystanders have been mauled .... none killed so far.

Leopard On The Loose - Gawpers Beware!!

There is no report on where the authorises were when it was locked in the room, but they obviously were not rushing. Population estimates for leopards in India, suggest that their number may be down to about 10,000 (from figures around 10 times that fifty years ago), so sadly this not a problem that we will see in a few decades ....

Yakety Yak - Don't Talk Back

There are lots of theories about how humans started talking - 'hunters need to communicate during the chase and in laying ambushes', or food gatherers needed to 'pass on information about rich food sources such as trees being in fruit' ... others suggest that our early human ancestors started talking as soon as their brains became large and sophisticated enough, while yet others think that language evolved slowly, from the gestures and sounds used by our earlier ape-like ancestors ..... and that all human languages arose from a common language, spoken by our ancestors in Africa.

I have my own favourite  theory, formulated over many journeys on my daily commute .... Gossip. Women can't stop themselves. Its 06:45am on a wet Winters morning, men are sullen and quiet, but as soon as two women who know each other sit down .... "Yakety Yakety Yak ... and she said and I said .... and did you know that ... of course she's always like that .... Yakety Yak" non stop for 50 - 60 minutes.

Women's Gossip - Driver For Human Language

..... It's like they have a mission to fill silence with anything that comes into their heads, and that can be transferred in to their mouths .... just so long as there is no silence .... or so it seems.

Half joking aside, in fact there is a serious point here. There were so many theories on the subject of the development of human speech, that at one point in 1866, the 'Linguistic Society of Paris' went so far as to ban debates on the subject, a prohibition on debating the subject, which remained influential across much of the Western world until late in the twentieth century.

Of course there is a scientific version of this which is that 'gossip' is form of social 'grooming', which has replaced the physical grooming that our ancestors and apes performed to hold the group together,  because the task of manually grooming all one's friends and acquaintances, became so time-consuming as to be economically unaffordable. However this theory has its critics - mainly that as it was so easy to 'vocally groom', its value would have been quickly lost.

But I have noticed that on wildlife programmes for example, its often the female primates (monkeys/apes), that do most of the vocalising (outside of male fights), and therefore its the basis of my belief that it was they who developed language skills in the human race, driven by their overwhelming urge to tittle tattle (Gossip) on their peers. There is also the research which suggests that women prefer men who talk less ....

I suspect that this is partly the reason, why they are few months ahead of boys in language learning in childhood ... cos it just ain't natural for boys to talk or need to talk!!

Dhimmitude For Christians In Syria

Here we go ... coming soon to a country or neighbourhood near you real soon ... 'Dhimmitude for Christians', paid for and backed by the UK government, who 'support' the “Syrian rebels”. The terrorist group known as the 'Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant' (ISIS), who captured the regional capital of Rabba in Syria, have now issued a proclamation demanding that the Christians of that area pay a ‘Dhimmi levy' in gold, and accept severe curbs on the practise of their faith, or face death by the ISIS butchers.

Medieval Islamic Civilisation - Not Changed Since

After the cannibalism of some of the rebel savages, this latest outrage has just been coming, it was just a matter of time … the payment of the tax, is by the submission of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold, in exchange for their *'safety'. 

 

Leftwing Loses Icons

Its by a strange coincidence, that this week the Left-wing lost another of its 'icons,' shortly after the unexpected death of Bob Crow the trades union leader, when today Tony Benn died.

They Say You Are Measured By The Company You Keep

He was a politician who while feted over by many socialists and others on the Left, was equally despised and detested by many others, both in his own party (mainly for giving far left infiltrators free rein when he was on the party executive), and those not in his party, including me.

All Fur Coats and No Knickers

This really is a case of all fur coats and no knickers ....

Kazak ladies sing this song,
Doo-da, Doo-da!

..... because at this time of year, both Russians and Kazaks wear their warmest clothes, which are often real fur (No PC qualms about fur here) .... but with the Kazakh ban on lace, its now 'sans culottes en dentelle' for the ladies, as the production, import, and sale of lace underwear will be stopped in July 2014 in Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, under a Moscow-led Customs Union. The regulation was originally approved way back in 2011, but has not been enforced until now. 

 

Geodesy - The Circumference Of The Earth

I came across a new term the other day "Geodesy" .... which is the history of the measurement and representation of the Earth throughout history. Now given that the scientifically measured circumference of the world is 24,901 miles (40,075 km), I find it amazing how close our ancestors actually got to getting this right .... this obviously excludes those who believed the Earth was flat, or rectangular (yes, at least one ancient Greek philosopher, Anaximenes, believed strongly that the Earth was rectangular in shape!).

So just to give you an idea of what I mean by 'close', here's a brief history of the history of studying the circumference of the Earth:

• Plato guessed the circumference of the Earth to be 400,000 stadia (between 39,250 miles and 46,250 miles) 
• Archimedes estimated 300,000 stadia ( 34,687 miles ), using the Hellenic stadion (which scholars generally take to be 185 meters or 1/10 of a geographical mile). 

After that they actually tried to calculate it 'scientifically:

• Greek scholar and philosopher, Eratosthenes (276 BC– 195 BC), used maths to determine a figure of 250,000 stadia (probably 25,000 miles). The additional 99 geographical miles can be attributed to the fact that his belief that the town of Syene was actually on the 'Tropic of Cancer' was wrong, (it was actually 22 geographical miles to the north), and that accounts to most of the error in his resulting circumference of the Earth.

Eratosthenes Calculations of The Earth's Circumference.

Unfortunately for history, the other Greeks didn't stick to this method of calculation, but kept trying other methods, such as by timing ocean sunsets from different heights, which produces a size of the earth too low by a factor of 5/6, due to horizontal atmospheric refraction. So that they actually got less accurate results than Eratosthenes.

• The Indian mathematician Aryabhata (AD 476 - 550), got the figure to within an accuracy of 1%, at 24,835 miles ....
• Around AD 830, the Arabs calculated that the Earth's circumference was 24,000 miles.
• Later, the medieval Persian Abu Rayhan Biruni (973-1048) estimated the Earth radius at 6,339.9 km, which was only 16.8km less than the modern value of 6,356.7km. With this radius figure you could get a circumference of 23,915.5303 miles

Meanwhile back in Europe, there were two schools of thought on the subject, which competed with each other for centuries .... by the way, the idea that the Church and leadership of Europe thought the Earth was flat is a complete fallacy, largely propagated by the author Washington Irving, in his popular 1828 biography of Christopher Columbus.

In fact all educated people in Europe knew the Earth was round, a fact reflected by many writers, including 'The Venerable Bede' in his book 'Reckoning of Time', written around 723 AD. The modern historian Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the flat-earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and that "with few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat."
 
The myth that there was ever a strong belief in a flat earth, in fact has more to do with the ideological setting created by the struggles over Darwinism, and the theory of evolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The real issue in educated Europe in the Middle Ages, was over the exact circumference, not on sphericity: For example, in 1492 Columbus held to the Ptolemy calculations, which were either 252,000 stadia in the Almagest, or 180,000 stadia in the later Geographical Directory - so that's why he thought he had landed in China when he reached the Americas. However some cartographers recognised the maths of Eratosthenes, so for example chapter 20 of Mandeville's Travels (c. 1357) gives the Earth's circumferences and distances based on those calculations.

• In 1699–70 the first modern meridian arc measurement was carried out by Jean-Félix Picard a French astronomer and priest, and found that the Earth was oblate (egg shaped) and this changed the debate for scientists (who turned the debate into one of the study of the "undulation of the geoid") ..... and thus ended the normal debate. 

So now, for practical purposes, we use a circumference figure of 24,901 miles (40,075 km), as though the Earth is a perfect spherical object, but in fact the true answer now depends upon where you take the measurement .....

Payday Loan Britain

There is a an alarming film on this link on the moneyweek website, that suggests that the true state of Britain's indebtedness is far far worse than British politicians have publicly admitted, with debts currently at 508% of  the value of our economy - a level that puts us in a far worse position than France, Germany, Italy or even Greece (we are twice as badly off as them, whose debt is only at 276% of their economy) .... in fact the only countries worse than us in the report, are allegedly Japan and Ireland.

Our Debts Are Amongst The Worlds Worse

Essentially the report is stating that the cuts and austerity regime were far too soft, because the British public are too wedded to a NHS and welfare system, that is not in force in the rest of Europe - they point out that when the welfare state started in the UK, the funding required was tiny, as the pensions went only to men aged over 70 years (when the average male life expectancy was just 48), which meant that it was the equivalent of offering a pension to man aged 115 now!

But that since 1945, the welfare state has grown exponentially, and now no one knows how to stop the gravy train ... any attempts to stop its growth are attacked by economic illiterates, who claim its morally wrong, and that Government borrowing has to carry on increasing to fund it, or we cut elsewhere to fund more welfare spending ....  in short, according to the report we are headed to national bankruptcy, sooner rather later. 

We Are Going Broke

If this is true then we face an IMF enforced set of arbitrary cuts, which will not protect the 'sacred cows' of either the left or right, and Britain will emerge as a much smaller player in the world - the armed forces will be a 'self defence force' (something that's happening already), and the welfare state, both NHS and Benefit payments, will have been massively cut or wiped out, while general taxes will have risen .... all of course being the exact opposite of what 'New Labour' wanted, when the socio-economic wrecking balls of Blair and Brown embarked upon their 'New Labour project' in the 1990's.

So when did this debt cycle really start to bite Britain? Well according to this report - Blair came in to power with national debt at £150bn .... a decade later he handed over to Brown, with the figure at £250bn .... and then it was let it rip time, as possibly the worse PM in two hundred years, went on a spend spend spend bender .... all funded by cheap borrowing which can no longer be sustained.

Cheap Borrowing Sustained The Big Spend

So when the coalition took over, the national debt was up to £700bn, and spiralling out of control. When taken with all our governments 'unfunded' obligations (Public sector pensions etc), then the debts total up as 900% of our economies value. If these figures are true, then this is the biggest act of economic vandalism in our history, made only worse by the introduced spectre of a possible Scottish independence, which will dissolve the United Kingdom ... two events which if placed together, could break Britain forever.

We are now according to this report, therefore facing a runaway train crash for our economy, and no one has the honesty to admit the position, for fear of spooking the markets ..... the best the politicians can hope for is a bumpy but softish landing, but the reality is that we will probably hit the buffers full on, with a run on the pound triggering the collapse.

Of course, with hindsight, if the Coalition had been open about the true position when they got into power then (as well as pinning the tail on the blame donkey), they may have been able to sell the 'Big Freeze' approach to public borrowing (like the Irish followed) - this is the idea that a few years of real misery with no more borrowing and real cuts, could be followed by a better long term position. At least then we could have chosen as a nation where we wanted the pain to fall, but now its likely that the agony when it comes, will be inflicted at the whim of international bankers - just like Greece.

Of course the facts in the film could be wrong, but the makers challenge anyone to prove that they are factually wrong on any of the the content (which means that its only on the interpretation of those figures that’s open to debate). However if they are wrong in their conclusions, then we will probably muddle through in the British way, with just about manageable debt and staving off the breakup of the political union.

However if they are right, then we may be back to the shames of the 1970's, when we went cap in hand to the IMF ..... myself, I think it would be better if we squared up, and redrew our socio-economic model to face the realities ... we can't live beyond our means, and we can't offer a cradle to grave welfare system anymore. The denizens of 'Benefits Street' (James Turner Street, in working class Birmingham), on TV, 98% of whom don't work and have never done so, are almost being lauded in some quarters ... but I suggest that any country that finds 'heroes' amongst the work shy, is one that has a deep moral malaise. Unsurprisingly there is no reality TV show for places like 'Frimley Gardens' in the traditional working class area of Wythenshawe, Manchester, where 98% of the residents do work.  

The Welfare State Sustains Many In Britain.

There are some times when I wish I could have seen the future decades ago, and I would have strained every sinew to have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the US .... the future is there, if its anywhere. But 20/20 hindsight is something we all have ..... so all we can do is watch this space.

Reaping What We Sow

History has a way of unravelling historical mistakes. once the dead hand of authority is taken away .... 

Domino Effect Crisis After Crisis

.... and as we have seen in the Balkans and in Africa, artificial unions of borders and peoples, are often fated to unravel unless a greater force intervenes. 

 

Chinas Imperial Cats

Elsewhere, on the cat front, the Chinese, not a noted race of animal lovers, except as diners, have kept a pack of 200 cats at the imperial palace complex, aka The Forbidden City, to keep rats and vermin away from the cultural relics.

Imperial Cats Wear Royal Hats

Vaccinated, neutered and fed vitamins, the only other cossetting is that they are allowed to sleep indoors in the winter.

 

Starting Your Own Country

It used to be the that first things that an emergent nation did were:

50 Billion Zimbabwe Dollars -
Bought Nothing As It Was Withdrawn.

• Get rid of its Democratically Elected Government in a military coup - usually by a sergeant or corporal (or occasionally a lieutenant).
• Get an airline - mostly run-down Aeroflot planes from the Soviet Union.
• Get its own currency.

Airlines Crashing

Once you look into it, its surprising how many airlines close down each year, and even more scarily, how many are closed for safety reasons. There have been almost as many Western Airlines collapsed as in the Third World, but usually they were no loss to these countries, as they have other airlines based in the countries.

Here's a few of the more notable Western casualties:

1) PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS | US | Founded 1927 Closed 1991 Fleet size 226 - a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack in 1988 destroyed confidence in the passenger safety and it never recovered by the time that fuel prices rose in 1991

Pan Am - The Future Once Looked Bright

2) SABENA | Belgium | Founded 1923 Closed 2001 Fleet size 87 - closed following the Saudi funded 9/11 attacks on transatlantic airlines business.

3) BALKAN AIRLINES | Bulgaria | Founded 1947 Closed 2002 Fleet size 150 - a player in the the 1970's but the company did not survive the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. In 1999, it was acquired by Israel's 'Zeevi Group' and 'Arkia airlines'. The Israel connection insured that Balkan lost its lucrative Arab routes and the airlines finally became defunct.

4) TWA | United States | Founded 1925 Closed 2001 Fleet size 190 - TWA was another major American carrier which neglected the deregulation of the domestic market and had to file for bankruptcy and was subsequently merged with American Airlines.

5) ALITALIA-LINEE AEREE ITALIANE | Italy | Founded 1946 Closed 2009 Fleet size 172 - The Italian national carrier went in to bankruptcy. It was overstaffed and under performing for decades and the Italian government tried to bailout the company by investing nearly 5 billion Euro's from 1998. EU rules restricted further state investment in the sinking airline.

6) MALEV | Hungary | Founded 1946 Closed 2012 Fleet size 22  - The Hungarian national Airline went bankrupt

Actually once they were listed, I noticed that it was either Arab related terrorism or financial mismanagement that saw off the Western airlines .... But there are many many other failed airlines around the world (including the UK) .... many because of airworthiness concerns, quite worrying really, in a 'how come so many are flybynights' kinda way .... LOL

Rotten Boroughs In UK

The Labour Party (I think we quietly dropped the 'New' moniker sometime ago), recently won a by-election in the Wythenshawe and Sale East constituency (districts of Manchester, England).  The votes and details were as follows:

• Labour 13,261 votes,
• UKIP 4,301,
• Conservatives (or 'the Tories' as the BBC prefer to call them) 3,479 votes, and
• The Liberals 1,176.
• The voter turnout was 28.2% compared with 54.3% in the 2010 General Election.

Nothing unusual about this result in the North of England, except that the Conservatives were beaten by UKIP (perhaps a foretaste of the fact that UKIP take more Conservative party votes than Labour or Liberal ones) .... and that's my point. 'Nothing unusual'.

We have vast numbers of these seats where 'choice' no longer, or never has been an option ... For example Labour have held this particular seat since time immemorial, and if you put a Labour Party rosette on a brick, the good citizens of Wythenshawe and Sale East would have voted it in with a thumping majority. There are Conservative seats that also exhibit a similar voting pattern .....

Rotten Boroughs - Still Around In Another Form.

My concern is that these tribal 'safe seats' breed real voter apathy, with the refrain 'it makes no difference if I vote' being true in far too many cases. Now you could blame this on poor education, or class divides or some such rot, but in truth, these seats were rather comfortably created by both the major parties via little boundary tweaks here and there, made in a manner that allowed both the Labour and Conservatives a reasonable shot at power, as long as they got about 39% of the popular vote. I might at this point, mention that for a long time it was the Liberals who got the 'labourers vote', so it was still a two party carve up, even before the 1945 election.

Reform is necessary if we are to breathe life into a democratic system that is dead in many areas of the country. I am not advocating 'proportional votes', a system which in England at least, would lead to the Liberal Party being the 'King Maker', after most elections. No I would like to retain the first past the post system (which I believe helps keeps UK politics largely clean of the outright corruption, that permanent government for some politicians seems to create in both countries with proportional representation, and our local councils), 

Private Eye Rotten Boroughs Awards Hackney 2010

 

.... but I do want electoral seat boundaries redrawn to try and more accurately reflect the general 40/40/20 Conservative, Labour, Liberal percentages posted in the popular general election votes. They could use the council electoral ward voting results to try and achieve this ..... Of course there are obvious pitfalls e.g. If it won't work in too many inner city seats, where blind voting is endemic, then it would only open up 'safe' Conservative and Liberal seats, while leaving Labour heredity seats untouched, so it may need some imaginative boundary redrawing.

For example why do seats have to all be geographically one location? Why not join a rural 'Tory' area with an inner city ward? .... Anyway, I do think it would be healthier if parliamentary seats are more reflective of any trends nationally at general elections.