PC Madness At The BBC

Two items on the BBC radio news flagship Radio5 live caught my attention today.

1. Six Muslim men in the Midlands, appeared in court charged with terrorism including a suspected suicide bombing campaign .... not once did the BBC use the term "Muslim", either on the radio reports, nor on the web report. It wasn't hard to work out who and what they were, because their names were given on the web site ...Irfan Nasser, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, Rahin Ahmed, Bahader Ali  and Mohammed Rizwan (all remanded in custody).
2. It has been reported that the BBC has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ), can be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era by their programme producers.

 What have these two stories got in common? two things .....

1. Political Correctness - The publicly funded BBC made a decision some time ago to stop reporting the race or religion of criminals when they are what it considers an oppressed 'minority', even when its race and religion inspired terrorism and mass murder. Its a form of 'Newspeak'
2. Appeasement - Instead of standing up for the Judeo / Christian values that allows immigrants to settle here, even if they dislike us and our liberal values i.e. tolerance, no, the BBC prefers to appease the minority inside these minorities, who want to force us to bow to their values. 

Appeasement Never Works In The End 

The BBC has apparently given the reason for abolishing the use of AD and BC (which have been in use for 1,200 years in the UK), as that as the BBC is committed to impartiality, it is important not to alienate or offend non-Christians.

There have been Jews in the UK in reasonably large numbers for over 150 years .... the Muslims have been here just over 40 yrs in any numbers. One of these immigrant groups got on and largely assimilated, while keeping their culture and heritage, and the BBC didn't think to change its dating system. The other group has a section of its community who have done nothing but threaten the rest of us both with violence, and an insistence that we change our laws and culture to accommodate their 7th century barbarism. I'll let you guess why the BBC is changing their dating references to satisfy one of these groups. 

Finally, I hate to point out a couple of things:

1. 'CE' and 'BCE' could be read as Christian Era and Before Christian Era 
2.  The year, 2011 or 2012 etc are based on Christian dates.

.... just a thought.

Greeks Will Default On Debt

At least that's the sentiment of the Greeks I talked to for a week .... they all consider it a certainty that Greece will default on its debts. Everyone I spoke to said that Greece would never pay back its debt. That it couldn't ever keep up the debt repayments for even a few years, let alone the decades required to cure the underlying problems, and that lending it more and more money was 'stupid' but 'German' because it just made the debt worse, not better.

In fact the consensus was that as soon as the Greek government had drawn the next tranche of EU/IMF funds, the price paid to get this money would prove to be too great, and Greece would default sometime over the coming winter, but before the next tourist season, so that they can devalue and get their competitive edge back. Most of them wished that their government would just do it now, instead of taking them to the edge of a civil breakdown (and possibly a left right civil war), by stretching the country to breaking point, but then defaulting anyway.

There was even a rumour that the UK mint (or other, secret, Greek printers) are printing a supply of Drachmas in secret .... which just goes to show how far things have gone. I managed to avoid all the strikes and travel disruptions travelling there and back, but I was told that the disruptions would get a lot worse over the coming winter. Many Greeks have been thrown into poverty, not so much in the resorts where the holiday trade underpins the economy, but in the bloated public sectors, which are the mainstay of Greek employment these days. It was noticeable that it was mostly British workers in many of the bars in the resorts, when 15 - 20 years ago it was mostly Greek workers, with just a few Brits employed.

The Drachma - Many Greeks expect this to return.

We could  be seeing this currency return to our holiday wallets next year ..... wouldn't that signal a big reverse in the European federal dream?

Corfu On The Rocks

At least that's the sentiment of the Greeks I talked to, who think the whole country is finished  .... I have just returned from Greece after several years away. I returned partly as I was curious as to how things had developed, and partly to see how it is handling the Euro Crisis.

Needless to say, things haven't gone especially well on either front, but another post covers the euro crisis. I was in Kavos (Cavos) in Corfu, so lets not beat about the bush, it was not a classy place. In fact its very run down and dirty, with a lot of drunken foul mouthed Brits, biting mozzies and wasps, and a faint but noticeable smell of human sewage (all of which I knew about beforehand, so wasn't a particular surprise or disappointment), but its fairly cheap (€2 -3 per bottled beer and a main course plus a beer under €10), and it was very very hot (over 30c everyday).

There is loud music everywhere, plus the ubiquitous quad bikes, but in mid/late September the resort was winding down, so the Gypsy's and most of the African pan handlers, who can both be a real pain on the Greek Islands these days, had gone, and the resort was 'quieter' than normal i.e. the noise volume was not unbearable most of the time. 

I was told that a British firm had been hired to to fix the sewage problem (and potentially the mozzies), by repairing all the broken sewage pipes, and clearing up the still water sites around the island and resort (where the mozzies breed), but when the first payment tranche became due, the Geeks had defaulted, and the company had abandoned the work .... which about sums up Greece all over.

This leaves the resort plagued by mozzies (and wasps) .... the beach is only 'safe' when there is a breeze, which sadly was lacking in the time I was there, consequently I was bitten over 50 times inside a day, but after that, a few basic precautions ensured that I wasn't bitten again. I didn't scratch (which really inflames them and you see a lot of bloody legs in the resort), and I used a mozzie stick (ammonia based), plus a basic antiseptic cream, and this stops them hurting and takes inflammation down quickly. So although a pain in the neck (and shoulders, and arms and legs etc), it didn't ruin my holiday break, but be warned, there were many people who seemed to be a real mess because of the bites.

For the record, if you are not on a vomit, beer and sh*gging party, there are usually one or two decent bars and food places, in even the worst of resorts, but as a rule of thumb in these places, I will stick to the burger/pizza joints if in doubt. In Kavos, if your are over 30 and resigned to a week surrounded by the council estates of the UK, then try the following:

DayTime: BabyG's cafe on the Beach Road - Run by 'Tony' and his family. Quiet, with both open and shaded areas. Home cooked basic cafe foods. Free Internet and Wifi. Very friendly and full of Greek hospitality.

Baby G's Cafe Bar - Kavos Corfu

Evening Meals:

Likourgos Taverna - very good traditional food on the beach, so away from the disco's.

Likourgos Taverna on the Beach Kavos - Corfu

There was also a traditional restaurant actually on the strip, but its name escapes me (it might be The Village Taverna), although the food was good and there was plate smashing and dancing .... it probably suffers a bit in full season.

Late Drinks:  If you don't want head banging music, and all the semi-naked males that this brings with it, then there is only one bar to go to, 'Rodneys Bar', a 'Aussie themed' bar at the far end of the strip (left hand end of strip, if looking from the beach). It features the odd live musician (a singer/songwriter), and chilled out, grown up music, not played above talking volumes. Its part of a chain (TKD's), but was very well managed by an English beach dude called 'Russ Brown'. They also serve up the popular Melon drinks at various prices and sizes ..... only one picture of the bar I'm afraid, but as you can see it has a patio with the bar serving area running against that, and also an inside area.


Rodneys - Best Run Bar in Kavos 

Russ's Melons Were The Talk Of Kavos

You only get out of a holiday, what you put in to it .... Greece has a lot of problems that are not going to get any better soon, and certainly you must really research your resorts before booking them these days (especially Corfu and other popular British resorts, which can be hellish), or end up like the couple I heard, who had come, hated it, and spent the whole time complaining ... if they had spent another £100 or so, they could have gone to a nicer resort on the same Island or the mainland.

Although I won't be going back to Kavos (or Corfu) again by first choice (it was my third or fourth visit over the years), I did and could continue to manage to get something out of it, if I ever ended up there again.

Libya's "Banksy"

During any war there are some oddly surreal moments, and the overthrow of Gaddafi has thrown up one of these at a checkpoint in Benghazi being manned by engineering student, Ibrahim Humaid, aged 22. He was bored, but excited by the possibilities that his new 'Freedom' offered. The war had moved West to Tripoli, and there wasn't much to do at the checkpoint, so he started painting caricatures of Col Gaddafi, and just kept going.

Now I don't necessarily agree with the Arab idea that everything wrong in the Islamic world is because of 'Zionists', and so his suggestion that Gaddafi was a Zionist Rat is frankly plainly stupid .... Gaddafi was all Arab, and all Rat .... but hardly a Zionist.

But regardless of that one caveat, I think its fair to suggest that Mr Humaid has a real talent, and could, if he can throw off these religious blinkers, as quickly has he has thrown off the shackles of the regime, become the Arab "Banksy".


The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



The Work of Ibrahim Humaid

 

The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



The Work of Ibrahim Humaid

 

The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



The Work of Ibrahim Humaid

The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



The Work of Ibrahim Humaid



Ibrahim Humaid At Work



The Artist - Ibrahim Humaid



A Strange Crime Or Respect?

Robert Young and Mark Rubinson, have been charged with 'identity theft, criminal impersonation and abuse of a corpse' by police in Denver Colorado for allegedly driving around the town visiting various of his favourite haunts with the body of a close friend after discovering him dead in his apartment.


Robert Young and Mark Rubinson


They bought drinks, took dinner and removed $400 (£253) from Jeffrey Jarrett's bank account to pay for all of this .... they even visited a strip club (Shotgun Willie's, in Glendale) before eventually reporting his death the following morning.

Now I realise that technically its a crime, but if it was my corpse I would not object to taking one last night out (although maybe the lapdance club was taking it too far ..... one stiff too many so to speak), before I was buried.

A 'Wake' can take many forms

Many years ago, in the early 1970's in South Manchester I attended a 'wake' at a house where the coffin was half opened and stood up in the corner of the next room, while we all had a drink with the embalmed deceased (who had a glass in his hand) .... it was only mildly odd, and while a deviation from the more traditional wake described on the link above, it was considered a decent way to send him off.

Now I don't know if it was legal (although I wasn't aware of any offence at the time), but it was still a fairly common practise to hold some variation of 'the wake' in the Irish community, especially amongst older Irish men who had no family having worked for decades on building sites and who were living in England when they died. I seem to recall that there was a priest drinking with us, so it wasn't socially unacceptable even if it was dying out so to speak.

So maybe that's why I don't really see this as a crime, but in fact a little bit of respect ..... in fact isn't this story rather like that 1989 'road movie' comedy Weekend at Bernie’s?

Weekend at Bernie’s