Sea Of (Political) Troubles

Water water everywhere, and not a drop into the drain  .... like the ancient mariner, the British Government (a term we may only be able to use this year), has found itself drowned by the tidal forces of nature, as the flooding in some parts of the south of England cause it a sea of publicity sorrows.

Now if you read the BBC and Newspapers, all of which a London centric, then the flooding of houses near the Somerset levels, or worse the breaching of the River Thames north of London, is a disaster of biblical proportions and all the Department of Environment, or cost cutting governments fault .... its not, and its not.

Fact: We are having the worse winter rains since no one knows when (when incidentally, last October it was predicted that we faced the coldest winter ever!!), and of course its what used to be described as "an act of God", but which probably is better described as "an act of Man", with some scientists saying that as four of the five wettest winters on record, have occurred since the year 2000, we are in fact now inside "Global Warming".

This has been combined with many many sea storms lashing the coasts, and tides backing the rivers up. So ground water levels are at record highs (many boreholes are under record pressure levels), so that rain water has nowhere to drain to, and is bursting some river banks. It's therefore no wonder that there has been some flooding.

I say 'some flooding', because out of an overpopulated nation of 68 million, with maybe 35 - 40 million dwelling places, until this week, whether its 100 or 1,000 homes that had actually been flooded in recent weeks (with admittedly more under threat as the wet weather continues), its still a tiny proportion of the UK housing stock.

This media sense of the apocalypse arriving was added to this week when the high winds disrupted the rail traffic for a couple of days .....in response the government has kicked off the biggest emergency services response since WWII.

Dawlish Railway - Damaged Again By Storms

But despite the hardship all this brings locally (and I am not pretending that its not horrible for those affected - I spent 2.5 hours getting home on Wednesday night), it's still affected only a tiny proportion of the UK's population, with the rest suffering just some travel inconvenience and some fences broken. The reality is that if the government hadn't already spent hundreds of millions on flood defences in the UK since 2007, then at least 1.3 million other properties would have been flooded this winter ... now that would have been apocalyptic.

Dawlish Railway - Damaged In the Past By Storms!

By many countries standards (and I am thinking  of Italy for example, where earthquake victims are still waiting for action more than a decade after the events of 1997), this would be hailed as a fantastic result of forward planning and public defence .... so in fact, by many standards this actually a success story .... but you wouldn't know it. We have had much the same weather, but with much worse results in the past

As Harold Macmillan once said, what brings a Government down is 'events dear boy, events' and we have had a lot of those recently.

Art Imitates Life

Believe it or not, this is actually a statue, which was placed in the grounds of a Massachusetts college in order to promote "unexpected new ideas" in the viewers, prior to a display of the artists works.... I bet it did. In fact according to reports those new ideas included 'feelings of apprehension' and of 'fear' amongst some of the female student body.

Life Like Statue ...Too Life Like For Some

That aside, I am amazed at how lifelike it is - is it wax, or wood, or plastic, the reports that I saw didn't say, but if someone plonked that in my front garden I'd be calling the police.

Apparently many hundreds signed a petition asking for its removal .... I can understand why.
 
Its a strange old world. 

Moyes Hell Season

Sometimes there is a terrible attraction in watching a mans suffering - I guess many people at the Roman Coliseum must have been drawn partly by that same feeling - and so there is now a terrible new sport developing ......

 

David Moyes Takes Over Man Utd

.....in which the public failure and subsequent ordeal of Mr David Moyes, the man who took over managing Manchester United from the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson, is subject to ever increasing ridicule.

 

What Wimmin Really Want

I have questioned before what feminists want in the UK ..... it seems to me that unlike their foreign counterparts such as the Femen group, their campaigns are largely over small puerile 'issues' that are of no interest to 90% of the women in the UK, and that they dodge the big issues that really affect women. For instance there have been feminist 'campaigns' against:

• Page 3 models. They have been after these for 40 yrs .... the Sun and Star newspapers have resisted, mainly out of spite LOL.

Page 3 Forever?

• The worlds oldest professional service (were lawyers the second oldest? .. You know ... Moses and the Laws?): As part of this futile campaign, Jaqui Smith, who may have been the worst 'Home Secretary' in British political history, sponsored a bill in Parliament to make it a criminal offence to 'knowingly' have sex with a woman who was trafficked into the UK to become a prostitute. Specifically they were open wording it, to include anyone, having sex with any woman who was "controlled for another person's gain" .... rather obviously users of prostitutes were never going to ask the prostitute ... in the end, the act never got anywhere in the dying days of the Brown regime.

The Worlds Oldest and Most Honest Profession?

• And finally, against British banknotes not having a woman's face on any denomination when Florence Nightingale was rotated off. Yes apparently, this was the latest big issue for Wimmin in the UK  Or at least that's what  a feminist called Caroline Criado-Perez believes. It was she who according to the BBC, who apparently 'led' the campaign to ensure that a woman's face was still on one of the banknotes of the UK ... not counting the Queen apparently. She was roundly abused and threatened by a section of 'social media users' for this, and convictions have occurred already (The Raoul Moat and Dale Cregan Chav brigade out in force again) .... this was considered a major news story on the BBC. 

Jane Austen Banknote - Worth All The Fuss?

Although I had noted the argument about women faces of banknotes, I had considered it just another dead campaign by the PC wimmin of the left, and had never heard of this woman. However, if she is going to be trumpeted as the new Germaine Greer by the BBC and the wimmin of the left, then perhaps she will have the balls to take on the real issues of women in the UK.

And to show that I am not just some 'sexist' man, using the diversionary tactic of  trying to ask, why are feminist fighting over tits on newspapers, or faces on banknotes, when 'children are starving in Africa'? Both of these feminist campaigns are issues that I would guess that 99% of the women in UK couldn't give a toss about. I asked at work about the banknotes campaign, and out of approximately 15 educated women casually questioned, only two had heard of this 'banknote campaign', and none knew the name of its leader, or cared about the issue. 

Here's few issues that directly impact women in the UK and feminists should be fighting:

• Clitoral circumcision in the Thames Valley area.
• Forced Marriages and physical abuse in the Asian Communities.
• Under-age Grooming. 
• 'Honour' Killings where women are usually the victims.
• Acid Attacks, a crime which has crossed from the Asian community into the general one. But women are invariably the victims.

When UK feminists stand up to the men and groups that practise these activities, and actively campaign against them without fear of offending them on PC grounds .... then and only then, will I care about the little nonsense campaigns that they inflate into great victories for womankind against their male 'oppressors'.   

The Robber Barons Of Capitalism

Its being widely reported that the legally richest 85 people in the world (excluding drug dealers, and state asset appropriation), a group who could fit in one rail carriage (or to use another analogy, would comfortably fit onto a single London double-decker bus), have a total combined wealth of $1.65tn (£1tn), that is the equal of the entire combined wealth of the poorest half of world.

Trickle Down Economics At Work

That is simply shocking when you think about it .....