A Potpourri Of Political Moralities

A little follow up blog, on stories that seem to have developed legs .... albeit strange ones!

Recently I mentioned the Asian Labour Peer, Lord Ahmed, in connection to a blog about 'Freedom of Speech' being eroded in the UK, to satisfy radical Muslim 'sensibilities' ..... News this week that the same Lord Ahmed has been jailed for careless driving. So British social policy was set by a man who doesn't obey the laws of this land?

UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who has featured in these pages before when Condoleezza Rice couldn't visit parts of his Blackburn constituency because of protests from Muslims, was in the news this week, when Nigerian fraudsters hacked into his constituency computer and issued 'begging e-mails' to everyone on its address book. The e-mails claimed he had lost his wallet on charity work in Africa, and needed $3,500 US dollars to get home.... if only it was true, instead the man charged with administering law in the UK and protecting us, is not even safe from criminal activities at his own office.

Hazel Blears, who was in these pages when she expressed her fear and concern that the British National Party (BNP) is making inroads into the "white working-class voters " in the inner cities (again!). Has now been caught short on the road to Damascus and announced that British values 'must be defended' now .... oddly, thats the line the BNP also take.

And finally, this Blog has reported frequently on the fact that British passport holders of Asian descent are taking 'killing holidays' to Iraq and Afghanistan to attack or support attacks on British Troops.

These people are surely 'traitors'? But in PC Britain, not one politician has spoken out on this "non subject", presumably for fear of being classed a "Racist". Can you imagine if Britons of German descent had popped over to the continent to fight against British troops, and then come home for a well earned 'R&R' in Bradford or Oldham?

Well this week more of the press reported on this story, and I am interested to see how far behind public opinion the UK's cowardly MP's are. The story hit both national and regional newspapers without apparent comment from those in charge of this country.

Oddly, according to the aforesaid Ms Blears new credo, MP's should be defending British "core values", which I have always assumed included not attacking our soldiers. In her role as "Communities Secretary", she said that there were clear boundaries about what was acceptable in British society and that "At times leaders have been reluctant to challenge absolutely unacceptable behaviour - forced marriage, female genital mutilation or homophobia - because they are concerned about upsetting people's cultural sensitivities." ...... err what about being a traitor?

A Rose In Any Other Language?

All bloggers need a language and mine, is English, obviously ... I mean if this was Spanish, you probably wouldn't be reading this .... err anyway, with English you get a lot of words to play with, as it is generally stated (within a very wide range), that English has around 250,000 to 300,000 words (when obsolete words, which still exist in some unabridged dictionaries aren't counted), and other languages such as Spanish, may have only approximately half that number.

However all languages have an ancestral beginning, such as Indo-European, and recent advances of super-computer power have allowed some of the oldest surviving words in English to be identified.

According to the University of Reading researchers, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger whereas the word "four" experienced a sort of linguistic evolutionary leap, that makes it significantly younger in English, and completely different from other Indo-European languages.

The oldest words we use today have been in existence for at least 10,000 years, but "50% of the words we use today would be unrecognisable to our ancestors living 2,500 years ago. If a time-traveller came to us, and told us he wanted to go back to that period, we could arm him with the appropriate phrase book, and hopefully keep him out of trouble" explained Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Reading.

So there you are then, time travel would be much trickier than you thought!

Naughty Popes

The Most Controversial Popes.

The Roman Catholic Popes in general have been as much politicians as religious leaders ...... so perhaps its not surprising that violent times produced violent Pontiffs. More modern times have led to more philosophical disputes, but through out history the Popes have always been controversial.

The Mediaeval Believe Was That Hell
Was For Emperors, Popes, and Princes.

Monsters Inc

The web is full of the marvellous, the stupid, the bizarre and the informative ..... in fact just about every folly that the human mind can think of, now holds its own little space on the web.

Today, instead of the conspiracy theorists, for whom I hold a little soft spot, I decided to illustrate another aspect of this world of the strange, which is best described by the cartographers of old nautical maps, who inscribed uncharted regions with the legend “Here Be Monsters.” Sometimes they would draw pictures of these fanciful beasts rising from the waters, and occasionally would even show them devouring wayward ships.

Well on the far side of the increasingly respectable world of cryptozoology, lurk the believers in monsters. These can range from Big Foot, Yetis, Big Cats in the UK, to devils skulls, faked giants bodies, insect men in Argentina, and finally through to 100 ft giant snakes in Borneo.

I make no apologies for posting a few photos which are openly posted on the web (but if any copy right infringed let me know and I will take that picture down) because although they are most certainly all fully explainable as 'natural', or fakes, they can be interesting in their own right!

The Strand Irish Giant 1895

This 'giant', from County Antrim, Ireland, was said to be 12ft 2in high. Its girth of chest was 6ft 6in, and length of arms 4ft 6in. There are six toes on the right foot. This fossilised body was on display in exhibitions in Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester. What later happened to the giant and its owner is unknown. (Photo from the British Strand magazine. Dec 1895).

 

Our Country Cousins Of The Past

Neanderthals, our genetic cousins sadly died out about 25,000 yrs ago. In the Homo Sapiens centred bias we were often taught that they were just out thought and out competed by the 'more intelligent' humans.

Neanderthal

 

However a recent revision of the Neanderthals life suggests that the poor sods were done by the first "Climate Changes".