Glorious Bullshine

On one glorious day in Madrid, in the Las Ventas stadium in Madrid, three men were downed by their opponents. The men were David Mora, Antonio Nazare, and Saul Jimenez Fortes, none of whom were killed but all were hospitalised.

So what was special about this .... well it wasn't a boxing match, nor in fact any one on one Man versus Man contest ..... no, it was the usually very one sided Man versus Bull, known as a 'bullfight'.

For the First Time In 35 Years At The Las Ventas Stadium - The Fights Ended Early

Sadly of course, despite the bulls shining in this hat trick, they are always slaughtered during the or after the battles .... but for one brief hour, they got their revenge. Its pity we don't know their names.

Mad Hatters Party

I have something of a soft spot for men in costume stories ... usually I pick up on Superheroes patrolling our streets.

 

The Mad Hatter Wasn't Amused By Tiggers Party Antics

But sometimes the story is just too funny to resist, even when there are no 'super heroes' involved.

 

John Bull's Peoples Army

Do you remember those days, not so long ago, when we were told by the Liberal Party that if only we had proportional representation, then they would be the third force and hold the whip hand in any government forming. And that like in Germany, the Liberals would then prevent the worse excesses of one of the big parties running a country on its own. Oh and incidentally the Liberals would always be in power themselves .... not that they had ever apparently noticed this fact.

Council Results Were Poor:

The Liberals Did Badly In Council Elections in 2014

Well for decades, the two main parties ignored this demand for PR, and then circumstance gave the Liberal Party its chance to show the UK what they had been banging on about. The 2010 election threw up a hung result, with the Conservatives just failing to get enough seats to rule without a coalition, an event that had only occurred in recent times in the mid 1970's. On that occasion the Liberals had resisted a coalition with Thatchers Conservatives in 1977, but opted for what was then called the 'Lib/Lab Pact' with Jim Callaghan's Labour Party. It was however not a coalition, and only amounted to not voting the minority Labour Party out of governance.

Murder Is Murder And Is Not An 'Honour'

A young woman who marries for love, and not to the ubiquitous 'First Cousin' that all Asians seem to marry by arrangement (I don't know enough about genetics, but surely that must end up being dangerous after a few generations, with everyone related directly to each other, even when they are 'First Cousins'?), is murdered by her father and male relatives.

Dis Honour Killings aka Bloody Murder

Sadly not actually a rare event, with several thousand young women killed for the sake of 'family honour' in Pakistan alone, and many many more across the sub continent.

Cheesy Chalkboards

Following on from a funny food chalkboard I spotted in Edinburgh at the festival ...

"Its only Pork and Roll, but I like It" .......

Its Only Pork And Roll .... But I Like It

.... there have been a spate of these humorous comments from around the UK and elsewhere, publicised on the web.

Perhaps my favourites are, the very witty  "Sweet Dreams are made of cheese, who am I to dis a brie?"

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Dis ...

 

Followed by "When Miley Cyrue gets naked and licks a sledgehammer, its art, and music, but when I do the same its called 'wasted' and I "have to leave Homebase".

Miley Gets Better Treatment .......

Honourable mention to .... "We have beer as cold as you ex-girlfriends heart!"

Cold As Your Ex-Girlfriends Heart

..... been there, still got the scars myself!

Bad To The Bone

Sirgiorgiro Clardy was a pimp, and in fact, in a 'profession' where nastiness is a job requirement, he was one known as one of the most violent in Oregon.

Sirgiorgiro Clardy - Bad Ass Pimp

So its perhaps no surprise that he's currently serving a 100 year sentence (which sadly we don't have in the UK), after he was arrested for stamping on a man’s face so hard, that his victim needed stitches and nose surgery .... an offence which by the way, you can see being attempted most Saturday nights in many British city and town centres.

Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting

Such was Mr Clardy's antisocial bent, that even in court a bag had to be placed over his head, just to stop him spitting on others, and in scene reminiscent of movie comedies his own lawyer was desperate to quit because they felt it was unsafe to sit next to him .... shades indeed of 'Cape Fear'.

He was given the incredibly lengthy by UK standards prison term of 100 years, after being described as an anti-social psychopath who was 100 per cent likely to commit violent crime again .... I also suspect that everyone from the judge to his lawyer, recognised that if he ever gets out, he will be carrying a grudge, so a life sentence was safest for everyone.

One court psychologist said: "People like him are born bad. It’s not something we can fix, that’s why we have prisons." ... again a concept we could do with here. So why am I writing about this petty scum-bag?

Well he has raised himself above the ordinary by showing a brass neck of extraordinary length. Seven months after his sentencing, Mr Clardy filed a lawsuit against Nike for £60million because it failed to warn him that shoes could be used as a dangerous weapon.

He had been wearing 'Air Jordan' trainers (obviously the footwear of choice for the Oregon pimp .... whatever happened to the Mack Daddy code?), when he stomped on the man’s face.  He insists that this could have been prevented if a warning label had been on his shoes.

Dangerous Trainers When Worn By Mr Clardy

Mr Clardy claims Nike neglected its duty of care as its ‘potentially dangerous’ products could be used to inflict serious injury or death. He also suggests he has sued because Nike’s lack of ‘an adequate warning or instruction has caused personal injury in the likes of mental suffering’.

We live in a world gone mad ....

Little Brother Is Watching You

In all the companies I have worked for, the CEO's Personal Assistant was a position of great trust and responsibility.

 

Even Tyrants Need PA's

The PA was expected to keep company secrets absolutely, and ensure that minor indiscretions were not broadcast to the world, amongst other things.

Captain Hooky - Tarmac Road Warrior

Born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, Abu Hamza al-Masri came to Britain from Egypt in 1979, where he drank alcohol, worked at a strip club in London's Soho (under our usual no borders immigration policy, we must have been short of London bouncers, which is the only reason I can think why he was given leave to stay), and had relationships with whatever stupid western women would tolerate a hypocrite like him.

He then later styled himself 'sheikh' (a name Muslims give for a 'learned cleric' ... and an oxymoron in this case if ever there was one), and started 'preaching' in a London mosque at Finsbury park .... surrounded by the idiots who follow these people, such is the British way, these fine days. 

Abu Hamza al-Masri - Tarmac Road Warrior, Not Holy Warrior

His conviction in the US marks exactly how low UK justice has sunk. All the same evidence was available on his active involvement in terrorism activities that led to the deaths of British and Commonwealth citizens, but the UK we couldn't risk a trial, because in the current climate in the UK it was likely to fail, probably on some technicality, or maybe a European Human Rights violation in the process  ...who knows. Certainly the Home Office didn't. Apparently even Her Majesty the Queen was totally confused by the fact that man was free to walk London preaching hate without the Police or Courts able to act.

He was eventually jailed for seven years for inciting murder and racial hatred in his preaching. A sentence so small that he was soon back on the streets spouting, hatred - he even publicly advocated Muslims taking Western women and young girls as captives (aka sex slaves), without being touched by the law ... anyone trying to say the same thing about Muslims in the UK would be hounded and probably murdered.

So despite the overwhelming evidence of his involvement in extremist Islamic crimes, to whit:

1. He sent a Satellite phone directly to the leader of a very violent Jihadist group in Yemen
2. The Jihadist group then took 16 western hostages in Yemen in 1998 ... Three Britons and an Australian died when Yemeni forces rescued the hostages.
3. His Son and Stepson had been arrested in Yemen for terrorism offences including the Yemen attack.
4. The fact that he had been trying to swap the western hostages for his children.

He remained free to cause untold damage in the UK and elsewhere, before the US stepped in. The only US citizen in the Yemen outrage was wounded, but that was enough for the US authorities to start gathering evidence ... and even then it took 16 - yes really, 16 years before our legal process could be forced to extradite him to the US ... shameful on our whole country.

During his US trial, about the only truth he told was when he admitted that he never lost his hands and eye fighting in the Soviets in Afghanistan, but in a road building accident in Pakistan when he was a manual labourer there (he couldn't pass himself off as a Sheikh in Pakistan), and some road explosives went off in his hands .... that's about as near as he got to 'Jihad' ... but I guess that makes him a tarmac road warrior.

So, No holy warrior, No trained cleric. Just a semi-literate road labourer and ex night club bouncer who had never fought the Soviets, or risked his neck in Islamic Jihad.

But somehow he had tied the entire UK legal system in knots for 16 years (with the connivance of the UK's legal aid system and anti-US human rights lawyers). We are a laughing stock in the Western world ....imagine this in France? Don't bother, as we have seen they deport first and then consider human rights issues afterwards. 

We face another 'Abu Hamza' its just one legal aid funded challenge away ..... Joke.

Shit Happens

In the film Back To The Future, the character Biff and his cronies get covered in manure in a car accident ....

Biff and Cronies Covered In Manure ....

In fact its a recurring theme in that film series, and in many other movies, that loads of manure are regularly transported about towns, and that they can just pour into your car almost any time. But of course it never happens in real life, does it ......

Prussian Pirhanas

You can always tell when we are approaching what the UK press call the 'Silly Season' (a term by the way, that the German Press have adopted as 'Sommerloch' literally 'silly summer'), because you get the sort of stories that just maybe wouldn't make the main news normally

Not These Sorts Of Prussian Piranhas .....

In Germany, the stories follow much the same style as those in the UK. In 1994, there was 'Sammy the Cayman', a small crocodile who escaped from its owner and made it in to a quarry in the Lower Rhine near Dormagen. he remained 'on the run' for several days, but was eventually was recovered from the lake. He was then presented to the local zoo when no one claimed him.

 

Boko Haram and Forced Conversions

With the release of a video apparently showing about 130 of the more than 200 girls kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria on 14 April by Boko Haram, its focused the world on the events once again ..... Infamously their Muslim abductors led by Abubakar Shekau have threatened to sell them as 'slaves' and 'booty of war' ....

Boko Haram Terrorists

 

Of course what's not been so highly mentioned in the UK press until this week (presumably for fear of upsetting some groups in the UK), is that the majority of the abducted girls are Christians, so are considered fair game for abduction, rape and forced conversion or 'marriage' (which is a bit like being a slave in many respects), by Islamic extremists.

The Invisible Web Man

The new EU law on Internet search results ...... the right to be forgotten or opt out of the Internet search results, is yet another in a long line of stupid decisions by a European Court that is almost semi-literate about the real world, and how the Internet works.

The Web Invisible Man Of Europe

I can maybe understand the right to have web sites take down incorrect information, or even spent criminal charges, that no one has the right to see elsewhere. But search engines are not where this information resides, its merely the road map to the content of the Internet .... its sites like this one that hold the information.

Obviously the idiots who came up with this law, chose to attack the search result provider because they can do it easily, rather than individual sites around the world. However how Google and the others such as Bing (other search providers are available), are supposed to police this arrant nonsense is not explained by the court. Probably because they haven't the slightest clue how it should work. On the face of it, Google and the others will be forced to just censor every requested result, or risk European courts fining them.

So just one day later, guess who are the first through the gate requesting 'web invisibility' .... a bad politician (who wants details of his bad behaviour struck from web records), an incompetent doctor with bad patients reviews, and a paedophile, convicted of downloading child pornography ... that about sums it up.

Another bit of clear thinking by the EU courts .... we now have lost the right to 'know' inside the EU. Apparently the court believes that what the individuals wants, outweighs any society gains .... a blow for big brother everywhere. I wonder if we can sue the EU when the first person who would have been protected by open knowledge, is hurt when that the information was not available because of this law. e.g If said paedophile is now hidden from view again, how can the Sarah's Law or Megans Law still work?

It would serve Europe right if all the major search engines abandoned Europe, and left us to the tender mercies of the only search engine that really knows how to censor results ..... Baidu in China.

Whale Meat Again

A while ago, I discussed the fact that some farmers were blowing up dead cows, before they rotted in the fields after they had frozen to death in the Colorado mountains ...

Exploding Whales, More Of A Hazard Than You Think.

...... well as we have also discussed, nature sometimes bites back.

Crossroads Of Civilisation

If anything proves that the cockpit of civilisation was the Middle East, its the latest archaeological finds from the region ....

Pre-Pottery Neolithic Stone Masks

..... apart from the amazing discovery of massive pre-civilisation carved stone megaliths, about 11,000 years old, at a location called 'Gobekli Tepe' just outside the ancient city of Urfa in south-eastern modern Turkey, there are the new finds from Jerusalem.

Cracking Skulls Together

If anything illustrates why 'liberals' should have nothing to do with the justice system ........ its the story of Michael Wheatley, a habitual criminal, who uses extreme violence to commit his crimes .... he was on parole from a 27-year sentence for other robberies, when he went on another crime spree .... raiding 13 building societies and banks over a 10-month period in 2001 and 2002. During this spree he used gratuitous violence, often pistol-whipping victims (including a 73-year-old woman) over the head, thus earning his nick name 'Skull Cracker".

So after a 27 year sentence, from which he absconded, you would think that the courts might decide enough was enough (after all he still had the remainder of his 27 yr sentence to serve, plus more crimes to be sentenced for) ... but no. liberal leaning sentencing prevailed yet again .... his previous uncompleted 27 year sentence was just ignored, and new sentences imposed.

Except they were more meaningless than the original sentence, because they were the laughable UK 'life' sentence which replaced hanging.

So in 2002 Wheatley received 13 life concurrent sentences for armed robbery, and 13 concurrent five-year sentences for possessing an imitation firearm at the Old Bailey - strangely, nothing was added for the physical assaults he administered during the raids. So 13 life sentences were the same as just one, and the five year gun sentences were also the same as one, and were just subsumed into the less than life sentence.

Michael "Skull Cracker" Wheatley Recaptured ... Again

Roll on 12 years and "Skull Cracker" Wheatley was back in an open prison awaiting parole again .... prisoners should only be moved to an open prison - also known as category D jails - if the parole board finds they are not a danger to the public or other inmates, or likely to abscond - so apparently the life sentences, and the 27 years for armed robberies, were all forgotten as a bunch of social workers / parole officers and a judge, once again assume that they know better than anyone else about who is fit to be released in to society.

But "Skull Cracker" Wheatley obviously wasn't prepared to await the shilly shallying of a bunch of naive do gooders, and just walked out of the prison, and was free for several days, a menace to anyone who got in his way, until he was caught in London, after carrying out another armed raid on at the Chelsea Building Society branch in Sunbury-on-Thames ..... he remains a major risk to the public. A fact that should have kept him out of consideration for open prison, and parole in the first place.

Prisons minister Jeremy Wright, said there would be a full review after Wheatley failed to return to prison .... too late. We need someone to crack skulls together in Parliament, The Home Office, The Judiciary, and the Probation Services and start giving us a justice system that's fit for purposes.

The whole system of life sentences, concurrent sentences, and parole needs reviewing before the British public conclude that the only justice they will see is that which they administer themselves .... in other words back to the hue and cry and lynching's of an era when the courts also couldn't be relied upon.

Tax Evasion Taliban Style

Britain currently pays £446 million to Pakistan in 'Foreign Aid money.

Tax Evasion Endemic In Pakistan

 
What annoys me about this fact is that, aside from the fact that Pakistan has spent millions developing nuclear weapons (and the missile delivery systems) solely to threaten India with, or the fact that most of Britain's militant Islamic threats comes from or are taught by, Pakistan based clerics. Or even the fact that Pakistan has supported the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill our soldiers .... all of which seem very good reasons to stop any aid to Pakistan or even breaking all relations .....

 

William H Bonney - Billy The Kid Studies

I occasionally have a play with a Photo Shop or Paint Shop Pro type of application .... sometimes the results are worth sharing (well in my modest opinion) ....

So here without further ado, here are my studies of William H Bonney, aka 'Billy The Kid'.

In Black and White:

Billy The Kid B/W Study
Enhanced On Left - Original On The Right

In Colour:

William H Bonney - 'Billy The Kid'  - Colour Study.
(right handed as per modern opinion - see comments)

I like to see the past brought to life like this .... I know I may be alone in this, but there you are. These are all my takes from the original tin plate photograph that was sold last year, with the first B&W one a clean up of original plate, and then each succeeding picture is an enhancement on the one before .....

Another More Doubtful Attribution:

William H. Bonney ... born Henry McCarty (aka Billy the Kid) .... Possibly

Update: The crotchet player has now been confirmed as being Mr Bonney as well and been valued at around $5m.

Knee Jerk Reaction

Now you might think that being rich and wealthy, Mrs David Beckham, or 'Victoria Beckham' if you prefer, with a bit of effort would be able to ensure a perfect body, for pretty much long as she cares to. After all, cosmetic surgery is advancing all the time, and anti-ageing processes are being worked on feverishly as I write.

But in fact, I was told once by a surgeon I was at a party with, that there were two areas of the body that he thought would remain beyond cosmetic surgery ..... and they are the elbows and the knees. Apparently, if they tried to 'tighten them up', it would either cause them to split, or they would just sag again (I can't remember which .... split I think) ... of course he may have been pulling my leg, but it seems right.

So why am I mentioning this? Well I saw this picture ....

Kneed Some Plastic Surgery .....

 
..... and it made me consider that with all her money, Vickie Beckham, will still have to live with saggy knees in the future.

Even the wealthy and powerful are limited to some mortality, like the rest of us.

State Within A State

I have always suspected that the BBC long ago gave up having programme making or impartial news coverage as its primary reason for existence, and now thinks of itself as an alternative government, elected by the licence fee ..... and Jeremy Clarkson has just confirmed my suspicions.

Notwithstanding his latest 'N' word problems (another bit of PC self censorship nonsense, considering its usage by other groups) .... He has a column in the Sun Newspaper and in one of the filler paragraphs, he published what he claimed were the courses coming up in a week at the BBC, this after Lord Grade declared the BBC to be to be too big, and in need of slimming .....

Listed are just some of the "Staff Courses" being run in the BBC - and at vast expense I might add (These alone will total £10,000 to run).

• Changing The Face Of TV - an exploration of how we can better achieve authentic and accurate portrayal of under represented audiences across broadcast media. 

•  The Road To 50% Women In Leadership - self explanatory feminist course.

• Managing Your Career At The BBC - a discussion about the experience of disabled staff and their managers.

• Abnormally Funny People - Can disability be discussed in a comedic way.

• Open Discussion - A discussion about the business case for diversity and why it matters to the future of the BBC.

• Mental Health Briefing - another discussion about the treatment of mental health issues by the media.

and finally

• Class Workshop - A workshop on the class system in Britain.

Remarkably, nothing on making better programs, or funny comedies, or spotting new talent ..... just 'minority' courses (if women make up 50% of the population, how are they a minority?). Its also probably the last place outside of the offices of the Socialist Worker, where the 'Class System' of Britain is still discussed as being remotely relevant.

The BBC Long A Go Succumbed To A Feminist Agenda

Of course Mr Clarkson could have been making these courses up .... but why would he bother? They have the terribly earnest look of being true, and smack of the sort of thing that 'Human Resources' like to spend money on. There is no need to make them up. 
 
Remember this is the BBC, operating on a tax on virtually every household in the country, and while there is a lot to admire about some of their services, when they close down stations like BBC3, but carry on running course after course like these Politically Correct, Lefty Feminist Multiculturalist nonsense, the case against radical reform and overhaul of their whole structure seems unarguable.

The BBC was never intended to be a state within a state. It has just developed like this because its been largely independent of political supervision, and now has its own 'culture' that is as foreign to the majority of us as the internal politics of the Labour Party are to the 2/3rds of us who don't vote for them.

In other words, the BBC has abandoned impartiality, it now has a 'stance' on subjects, which are by their nature 'political', but which then makes it an anathema to large parts of the nation its supposed to represent.  

The Drowned World

Years ago there was a Sci-Fi book called 'The Drowned World' by JG Ballard (recently re-issued I understand), which I read ....

 

The Drowned World

 

.....written in 1962, it details the world after a catastrophic burst of solar radiation has caused the polar ice-caps to melt and worldwide temperature to soar, leaving the cities of northern Europe and America submerged in beautiful and haunting tropical lagoons.