and we shall walk upon the waters!

A twin-engine passenger plane has an engine failure and the
altitude and speed are decreasing rapidly.

The pilot speaks over the intercom … ” I’m sorry it has come
to this ladies and gentlemen, but unfortunately we are going to have to
jettison the luggage in order for the aircraft to remain airborne “.
Baggage is thrown out but still the plane’s altitude continues
to decrease. Once again the pilot gets on the intercom, “I hate to do
this folks but in order to save the majority we are going to have to
start off-loading some passengers. The only fair way is to do this
Alphabetically, so we’ll start with the letter ‘A'”

“Africans? Are there any Africans on board?” There was no
answer so the pilot calls, “Black people, are there any black people on
board?”

Again silence.

” C – coloured people? Are there any coloured people on board?”

Still there is silence.

A little black boy sitting near the rear of the plane turned to his
mother and said, “Mum, ain’t we African? Ain’t we black? Ain’t we
coloured?”

She replied, “Yes, son but for the moment we is Niggers. Let
them do the Muslims first. If that don’t work we is Zulus”……

 

H/T The Filthy Engineer

Sign here, and here, and here!

From the Office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer

 

Dear Mr. Hester,

This letter serves to confirm that we, having scrutinised your long list of excellence in business, and also having assured ourselves that you have the stamina and business sense to take on a task which would daunt many a smaller man, would like to offer you the position of Chief Executive Officer of a bank which has fallen into our ownership because the last bunch of directors and executives totally screwed things up almost beyond redemption.

We accept that you might look askance at the tasks offered you, but we feel that they are achievable, mainly because we feel that with the combination of excellence in business, combined with the necessary ruthlessness needed to slash away at the  deadwood which has built up under previous management which you have demonstrated in previous roles, you have the skills to accomplish the task.

Please sign and return this acceptance letter, which shall form part of your employment contract.

Signed. Alastair Darling  Chancellor

Gordon Brown P.M.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Letter section not sent to successful candidate:-

Please also note that, we totally reserve the right to cancel, denigrate or otherwise alter parts of your full employment contract. We also state that we hereby agree to two different sets of bonuses payable a year in arrears, but the full amount is only available as shares in the bank. We also hereby announce that, if politically convenient, we or our successors in the Labour Party will turn and demand that you agree not to take any bonus amount due to you, if we find that, by doing so, we will gain many cheers from the unwashed multitude which thinks that we work for them, as M.P.s and Cabinet Ministers, instead of being entirely in it for ourselves.

We also acknowledge that if you do take the bonus shares at their full value, you will be viewed as a rapacious bastard, and not, as we earlier agreed, as an intelligent man doing a very difficult job on our behalf.

No Fairy Story this, Hans Christian!

One of the better things which right-wing commentators look forward to is the occasional news item which demonstrates that the liberal, metrosexual, ‘rights for everyone except normality’, touchy-feely brigade don’t get their way all the time.

So it is with some enthusiasm that I draw your attention to the name and actions of Dr. Hans-Christian Raabe. A more unlikely Don Quixote than this man one could not imagine or create. A German national, he has lived and worked in Manchester as a G.P. because he likes working for the NHS, and because he sees the problems caused by drugs in and around Manchester, he has long campaigned with a charity which helps drug addiction.

But he did something really stupid recently. He volunteered for an unpaid position on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). So the trawl began to unearth something, anything, which his opponents could use against his appointment. Why does this mild-mannered man have opponents? Because he campaigns against the legalisation of drugs of any kind; because he speaks out in the face of the liberal elite which is marching to a very different drum-roll!

From the maelstrom of accusations and insults whipped up when he was appointed to the council in January last year, another grievance against him emerged. His opponents exhumed an academic report he co‑authored in 2005, while he was living in Canada, linking homosexuality to paedophilia.

The report, a collaboration between several doctors, was written when the Canadian Parliament was debating whether or not to legalise same-sex marriage, to which Dr Raabe — while  he is not against civil partnerships —  is opposed.

‘The paper summarised scientific evidence, which was in the public domain, and it was one paragraph, mentioning homosexuality and paedophilia together, which — so the Home Office tells me — caused them “embarrassment”,’ says Dr Raabe.

The offending paragraph states: ‘While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there are a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles.’

So now he has two strikes against him; the first is that he speaks out against drug use and legalisation, and now the larger crime seemingly against everything held so dear by the liberal self-appointed elite amongst us, which is to state that he is of the belief that homesexuality finds much in common with paedophilia.

So Hans-Christian was dismissed from his post with the ACMD before he had been able to attend a single meeting. And then he decided to sue!

For Dr Raabe, there is a moral imperative at stake.

‘There has been such enormous resistance to my sitting on the ACMD panel that I feel it is a matter of principle to challenge it,’ he says.

‘Besides, I see so many people, especially the young, whose lives are being messed up by drugs, I feel that to sit back and do nothing about it would simply be wrong.’

 

He might not win his post back; if he does he will be vilified from pillar to post, he certainly will lose his anonymity, but I do so wish him the best of luck!

We, the People,

I have maybe said it before, but we really need the pieces of parchment operating in the United Kingdom which allowed the guys in the robes to come to this conclusion in America.

Fair enough, the bad guy is truly a scumbag, but the Law is the Law, and I sometimes wish we had something of similar value in Great Britain.

If we had the protections afforded by those precious documents, we wouldn’t have witnessed this disgraceful perversion of the Law, and we would still be governed under the ‘Double Jeopardy’ rules

Islands in the stream….

I am an avid reader of many of the Travel pages in newsprint these days, avid because, to all intents, my travelling days are over. In my youth, I sailed across many seas, into many harbours and ports, and even travelled further that the nearest bar; well sometimes. I also lived and travelled throughout  a fair stretch of Southern Africa. Most of the travel columns and sunjects are of course to be taken with a pinch (at least) of salt, because the writers are paid to shuffle out these columns, and the advertisers pay for the pretty pictures as well. But on the whole, allowing for the usual caveats of ‘buyer beware’ and ‘watch out for the steelworks hidden just down the road from your four-star hotel’, the holiday and tourist reader gets a fair bash at the truth about any country under the lights.

But I do tend to get just a little heated when only half the facts are lauded and pushed at the buyer, and the other half are quietly swept under the thick carpet. A good instance can be found in the columns of a travel writer in the Sunday Times (obviously no link) where he was asked to provide details of independent backpack travel through China. So Mr. Green goes into considerable proposals for backpack travel through this vast and fabulous (his adjective, not mine) country, with organised backpacker-style journeys readily available. He rhapsodises about the well-known tourist traps spots such as the Terracotta Warriors, or the Great Wall. Hostels and cheaper hotels are also covered, so he doesn’t leave much out of his writing.

It is a great pity that Mr. Green does not go into the other side of the marketing aisle, as it were, and after pushing aside some of the undergrowth, also tell his readers about the things which visitors to China might also see, or rather not see, if they walk about with their eyes only a little wider than normal.

They might see the People’s Security Police as they rough up and arrest any one who dares to even contemplate protesting against the overweening power of the Chinese Communist Party. They could attempt to travel the miles to visit  ‘Chen Guangcheng’ the blind activist, but would also have to navigate past the echelons of Security Police who are determined to keep the activist ‘safe from harm’! They might check what happens when anyone attempts to speak out about the multitudinous abuses of basic human rights, but they are also advised to ensure that they are well-protected with medical insurance.

Finally, they might travel to the heart of Beijing itself, to see the ‘Birdsnest Stadium’, the ‘Forbidden City’ and all the other fabled sights of China’s capital; it is a pity that they won’t be able to see where five thousand students died in Tiananmen Square, because all the blood has washed away long ago, all the granite has been repaired, and absolutely no protests like this one in Hong Kong will ever be allowed, or even thought of, in the Capital City of the People’s Republic of China!

An ‘enterprise’ zone.

If you listened to today’s T0day Programme on the BBC, you would have heard a rare occurrence. You would have listened to an angry mother defending a Law which sent all the killers of her son to a justly-deserved prison sentence. You would have heard how  Lorraine Fraser, whose son Tyrone Clarke was stabbed to death in 2004, describe how current ‘joint enterprise law’ was used in her sons case. I stipulate the term ‘angry’ because moves are afoot to modify or even to diminish the outlines of this very old piece of Legislation.

As we also heard, earlier in the programme, Gloria Morrison of Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA) , another of these pressure groups with not-so-catchy acronyms for their names, was arguing that the trawl of gang members carried out after a death was unjust, illiberal and probably fattening as well. She seemed to want either a repeal of the Law itself, or if that did not occur, a definite diminution of its effects on gang-related crime and murder.

As for the arguments, let me state that I am a sucker for any Law which puts all those who even cheered the killers on inside prison; my only dissent is the ridiculously small amount of time spent in prison by these wanna-be baddies! Lorraine gets my vote any day of the week!

We don’t need more prisons, we just need a large open space surrounded by multi-layered anti-personnel mines and a fence to keep the illiterate from trying to break in!

Definition….encouraged (when voiced by a minister)

So when the clowns from the local Council attempt to tell me that I should move out of my own home in order to ‘free up’ unused bedrooms, and move into ‘suitable sheltered accommodation’ , will I be then arrested for attempting to disobey the word from ‘on high’, or will the armed thugs who seem to be on permanent call simply bundle me and my wife into their black vans and take us to a ‘home’?

Where are the cries from the ‘Liberal Elite’ that government plans to deprive ordinary Englishmen of their freedom and property are as welcome as leprosy? These proposals are being made in all sincerity by people who are supposed to be Tories!

The question, as asked in the Economic Voice blog is quite reasonable; “‘How long before the elderly ‘volunteers’ become the elderly ‘encouraged’ and then the elderly ‘morally blackmailed’ being forced out because they are made to feel that they are not worthy to stay in the home they paid for?’

Legal, honest & truthful?

As a Sky user and viewer of tv programmes, and also as a man of mature years with a fair intellect, I believe that I have acquired a certain immunity against the avalanche of blandishments to buy this, spread that, or try the other, as shown in the vast majority of tv adverts. I don’t need things which dye my hair, or those things which promise to make me more alluring to the opposite sex, or indeed most of the items which routinely batter the viewing population with their slanted messages. Being honest, as I always am when writing, I have organised my viewing evening so that I view most of the selection from recordings, so that I can fast-forward through the adverts without suffering the annoyance of the interminable assaults upon my hearing and my eyes. As such, I take very little notice of adverts which do cross my mental threshold, with the exception of possibly a minute number of extremely well-made and targeted productions which do grab my attention for the reason that they do their job rather well. I am not saying that I endorse their message, it is that I tend to admire professionalism in all areas of endeavour.

But there are adverts which grab my attention for another reason altogether; that reason being that they are false, they present a false picture about the product or the people they depict. In other, perhaps more blunt terms; they lie!

Watched the HSBC banking advert which features a Chinese family celebrating the New Year, or whatever? There are six children lined up to receive the blessings and presents from, presumably, their grandfather. But this family is unlike any family I know of in modern China. The same China which has, until perhaps last year, rigorously enforced the ‘Single Child Edict’ by forced abortions, imprisonment and even internal exile for daring to go against the ‘Will of the People’. That ‘Will’ of course, thought up and enforced by a bunch of criminal geriatric despots who routinely abuse the power they seized decades ago with the beginning of the rule of the paeadophilic Mao-tse-Tung and his henchmen.

Bank with HSBC? By all means, as long as you are happy with them playing fast and loose with the truth. As I have perhaps stated many times in the past, you, and you alone, decide where your cash ultimately goes,and whom it supports!

No contest!

The ‘Iron Lady’ which I know to be the real thing, is and was the most polarising influence in the second half of the Twentieth Century’s history of Great Britain. She was that rare thing, a conviction politician who saw the way forward from decades of misrule, from a pervasive political attitude which stated that ‘compromise’ was to be the finest achievement of a politician; which accepted that Great Britain was ‘second-class’, and even that status was over-rated!

The ‘Iron Lady’ who caught the imagination of voters who were at least capable of ‘thought’, who stated that the Conservative Party would revive and invigorate both the Nation and the economy; came to power in 1979, and, as politicians who make promises do; forged a path towards her dreams of a Britain free from the stultifying embrace of governmental control, of a Britain who spoke for and on behalf of those who were threatened, of a Britain which was willing to work with a voracious Europe; but on her terms and none other.

The ‘Iron Lady’ forged a bond with President Reagan, and with others watched as the skeleton of Communism collapsed from within. She was informed of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, and demanded of the British military only one thing, “when do we sail to regain British Territory?” Her attitude to Union power was best encapsulated in her statement ‘“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.” Her policies made Great Britain formidable once more, and it was good to announce to any enquirer that one’s nationality was simply ‘British’ because that said everything!

The ‘Iron Lady’ is showing a bit of ‘rust’ in reality, as that gallant Lady, now some eighty-five years of age, is showing more than a little of the ‘wear and tear’ that time brings to us all. I watched this bad and false facsimile, masquerading under the Thatcher trademark, as it makes an attempt at showing the alleged mental decline of a confused and befuddled old woman in the very sunset of her years. Meryl Streep gives a sterling performance, aided by startling prosthetics and make-up, but as to the Lady herself; it is simply ‘No competition!’