Let’s hear it for the Team, guys!

As many already know, I have zero interest, and less knowledge, in all forms of sports; considering them on a par with, as a lifelong interest, watching paint dry. The tribal chants of the fans, which title of course stems from the more literary translation of fanatics, at British football games, are echoed around American football arenas, vastly different of course to its British namesake. The similar chants and songs of Rugby aficionados echo whether in New Zealand or Wales. Whether the sport is athletics, or curling, ski-ing or horse-racing, the fan(atics) will surge to their chosen meeting, or game, or whatever; often at huge expense, to watch their heroes perform, or not; as the case may be. It does not really matter to the supporters that, in many if not most of the various sporting endeavours, the clubs are owned, and are indeed operated, as big, lucrative businesses, and those same supporters’ needs and wishes are usually subservient to the bottom line; which is that of profit.

The County Council which allegedly serves the City where  I live is a good example of how the cash is thrown around, with over Six Million-odd pounds thrown at the County Cricket Club just because they are really nice guys!

It is profit which determines how much cash is spent upon players, of whatever sport is being discussed, and the players, and their talent, are just another calculation in the rush to gain a better place in the league, or the competition, or indeed whatever. The players are meat on the hoof to the financiers, nothing more, and nothing less. They are paid, sometimes, obscene amounts of money, but if a ligament goes, or a bone fractures once too often, they can be, and usually are, discarded like yesterday’s newspapers. The players are charged by the coaches and managers to go beyond their physical and mental limits to achieve the slogans of ‘be the best’, and ‘we will win’, but a story which has just emerged gives a deeper, darker side to the old chants from the terraces.

The Basketball and Football teams at UNC-Chapel Hill has achieved great glory for that University, in a time span spread over literally nearly two decades, but the leading players, many of them talented African-American students, were given a virtual free ride through enrolment into an African-American Studies Department with zero oversight, accountability or interest in the academic well-being of its students. As long as they performed on the boards, as long as they ‘won’ for the team and the University, they got a virtual free ride, with lies marked up as study, and non-existent examinations given full credit.

However, one group did know plenty about the scheme and actively tried to protect and preserve it. Paid counselors in the school’s Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes (ASPSA) were tasked with doing whatever it took to keep Tar Heel athletes eligible, especially those in “revenue” sports like football and basketball. To that end, these counselors not only “steered” athletes to the AFAM department and did homework for them, but they regularly alerted Crowder and Nyang’oro about the grades that each student-athlete required in order to “remain academically or athletically eligible.”

But the worst part is when those gifted athletes left the University where they had been lied to for years, and probably a phoney degree which could not possibly stand against the truth that they had no decent education at all, what future could they look forward to, apart from a tale of how many times they had Won for the Team’

Sports and Sportsmen, don’t make me laugh!

Where there is blood; there is money!

If a legally-operated Charity suggests that members of the public donate for a cause, it is widely presumed that the cash generated goes towards the purpose which the Charity is advertising. The fact that executives of that Charity gain ever-higher salaries and/or bonus payments is never stated, nor even acknowledged. But that fact is possibly more widely appreciated than most of the fat-cats in Charity high places care to acknowledge. If someone wishes to donate any cash to a particular charity, in this country, he or she is free to do so, but I do feel that the PROPORTION of that cash which goes to the charitable purpose is more fully and widely stated.

Take, for example, the installation, now nearly complete, of the 888,246 ceramic poppies, set into the moat which encircles the Tower of London. I do not criticise it as the Guardian’s correspondent did; when he used the barbed tones which sneered at this remarkable installation as purely ‘nationalistic’, as ‘prettified and toothless’, not as ‘Art’ as he snobbishly interprets Art to be; but instead as ‘popular art’, which is something to be decried and distorted. No, I criticise it because it only tells a part of the truth. I criticise it because the British public are being lied to, whenever they read and believe the blurb about paying a donation of £25.00 for a ceramic poppy. When I state that £8.75 is earmarked for charity, £4.17 goes to the taxman for VAT, leaving the majority of the money – £12.08 – to cover ‘costs’. If all the poppies are sold, and even allowing for 10 per cent ‘breakages or returns’, this means a company called Paul Cummins Ceramics Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red Community Interest Company, could receive almost £10million.

 

So, when you check the pages of your newspaper, or watch the well-documented scenes on television, just remember that besides ‘Help for Heroes’, besides ‘SSAFA’, besides ‘Combat Stress’ and the Confederation of Service Charities, well-run and dedicated charities all; you are making Paul Cummins and his millionaire backers a great deal of money!

Whatever turns you on, Bud.

The news that Secret Service agents preferred Colombian prostitutes, when visiting that cocaine-fuelled country was perhaps dismaying to some, inclusive of the agents’ families; but what is to be made of the news that the investigator, supposed to run the gruelling trail of finding out who did what to whom, with what, and of course fuelled by which; was himself caught not exactly with his pants down, butcertainly with the zipper undone? He was presumably targeted because he was doing an unpopular task in an exemplary fashion, and had to be silenced.

Seems as though the rumour was that, besides commercial transactions made between the Colombian whores and the Secret Service detail, in Cartagena town themselves as part of the Obama protection detail, at least one member (if you would forgive the pun) of the White House party was also involved in, as it were, testing the ink!

So Investigator David Nieland was given the task of pushing his way through the thicket of legs, arms and other body parts, to establish who else did what, with which, and of course with whom, whilst down in Cartagena, besides members of the Secret Service.

But the best part is the shocking news that Nieland was suspended for two weeks for taking pictures of anINTERN’s FEET, and circulating them on T’Internet. Now I have heard of many disgraceful and appalling pictures of various parts of the female body, in various poses and in full colour, being sent all over the place: but FEET? Are there no ‘ends’ these investigators will not stoop to?

 

From the Swamp, to the Stars

The video is twenty-nine minutes long, but every second is prime-time! Watch and listen to these words, spoken just fifty years ago yesterday, from a man who was hailed, much later in life, by an American author as ‘THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR’

Selected excerpts include these prophetic passages:-

We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. Swap the Caliphate, Muslim extremism, Islamic State and the rest of the Muslim/Mohammed crap for Soviet Russia, and those words could have been used yesterday

Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,” and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document.” He must “be freed,” so that he “can do for us” what he knows “is best.” Swap Lyndon Johnson for Obama, add those pernicious Executive Orders, and those words could have been used yesterday

He’ll find that they’ve also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn’t keep books as prescribed by the federal government.

The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.  They’ve just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you’re depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We set out to help 19 countries. We’re helping 107. We’ve spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country. Judge this record with, say, our own Department for International Development , with our Billions of Pounds Sterling thrown at corrupt governments everywhere, and those words swap rather easily.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

Their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. Swap America for Great Britain, and insert the words ‘Northern Ireland’, view the smirking killers IN GOVERNMENT at Stormont, and there you will see the same words, with the same result, as those prophetic words, spoken Fifty Years ago gone yesterday!

 

 

The quick, and the Dead.

If you are stupid enough, or thick enough, or indeed suicidal enough to want to ‘help’; to want to work with Ebola patients, you should realise that you are more than likely to have compromised your own safety, so isn’t it just the smart thing to do to go into quarantine until all dangers have passed? Kaci Hickox was out in the cess-pit named Sierra Leone, and was welcomed back into America by a fast ride in an isolation ambulance to a ward in a Newark hospital. But instead of being reassured that she would be monitored, and tested, and given all that American healthcare has to provide, she took out a lawsuit stating her ‘rights’ had been violated.

So, enter the two big-talking Governors Cuomo and Christie, having cemented their entirely laudable and sensible plans to segregate and quarantine ANYONE who came back from the disease-ridden slums which pass for towns in Sierra Leone; to make anyone who had actually escaped from the filth, the disease and of course, the DEAD which litter the open sewers which masquerade as streets in that god-forsaken place undergo a nominal three weeks isolation, just to ensure that they don’t have the capacity to kill thousands more. They take one look at the ‘outrage’ which erupts when the word gets out that someone is actually quarantined, and backtrack with the speed of light.

Cuomo said his decision balanced public safety with the need to avoid deterring medical professionals from volunteering in West Africa. “My No. 1 job is to protect the people of New York, and this does that,” he said. Those quarantined at home will be visited twice a day by local authorities, he said. Family members will be allowed to stay, and friends may visit with the approval of health officials.

So when the Ebola numbers commence rocketing upwards in New York, will Kaci realise that she was maybe wrong?

I doubt it, since she will probably be dead!

 

Four Hundred & Fifty-Three

To begin, allow me to pass some names before your minds. names of battle honours awarded to the famed and famousBritish Regimental names, illustrious for the places where British soldiers and sailors fought the enemies of the Crown, and; in most cases, prevailed. St Lucia 1778, Egmont-op-Zee, Copenhagen, Douro, Talavera, Albuhera Nivelle, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Kandahar 1880, Afghanistan 1879 -80,Egypt 1882 Tofrek, Suakin 1885, South Africa 1899-1902.

The names of Regiments famed for over six centuries, all of which began from the Fraternity or Guild of Artillery of Longbows, Crossbows and Handgonnes; latterly transformed into the Honourable Artillery company, the oldest regiment in continuous service in the British Army, reel off before your minds eye. The Coldstream Guards, the Irish Guards, the Scots & Welsh Guards; the list of Regimental names, and the Battle honours they fought, won and died for, dazzle the very eye which perceives them. Our history is military, our very Nation was formed in the blood spilled in the dark ages after the Romans left, their own Empire crumbling. We have seen a conqueror come in 1066, but none after that, although many tried.

In the photo, the faded flags set high on the framed wall of the Durham Light Infantry chapel, set within the majestic stones of Durham Cathedral, are held with the mental concrete of martial memory. We revere our dead, we honour those who survived, and the colours reflect that honour.

Will there be honour; will there be flags; for Camp Bastion, for the wounded who survived the roadside bombs whilst being transported in unarmoured Land Rovers and mobile Coffins? Will there be Drumhead Services for the British Army of 2014, as we scuttle away from the place where the very flower of our generation were sacrificed to allay the political pretensions of f***king politicians, one of whom uttered those infamous words “ “We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction.” By 2008, 4 million bullets had been fired by the British armed forces; and Four hundred & fifty-three men and women, wearing the uniforms and badges of Her Majesty; lay dead!

better late than………………….

 

A  small salute to Corporal Nathan Cirillo, the victim of yet another Muslim fanatic, who was murdered just because he was there; because he wore the uniform; because he was doing his duty!

Libiamo!

What I cannot figure is what a Muslim woman, veiled or not, is doing sitting in an audience watching and listening to an Opera whose story-line is that of a young man’s infatuation for a prostitute, that same prostitute’s high-living, the intrusion of the lover’s father into the affair; and the acceptance by the prostitute of the father’s heartfelt plea that she breaks with the young man, dying though she may be, and head off back to the sinful life of Paris, and away from the young man’s cash!

I agree that the draw is the superb music, and the wonderul singing, but surely a good Muslim woman should shun these terrible signs of depraved Western life, and get back to her kitchen, and her fifteen jihadi-in-training children; and once more be totally subservient to her husband; while he gets to do exactly what he wishes!

 

As my old Grandmother stated……

 

Adams admitted the IRA’s kangaroo courts for sex offenders meant they were ‘ill-equipped’ to deal with the issue.

He wrote on his blog: ‘This included very sensitive areas such as responding to demands to take action against rapists and child abusers. The IRA on occasion shot alleged sex offenders or expelled them,’ he said.

‘While this may have been expedient at the time it was not appropriate.

‘Victims were left without the necessary social service support and abusers without supervision. It ultimately failed victims and the community alike. That is a matter of profound regret for me, and many other republicans’.

Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are!

 

 

“I had no idea!”

A comment upon another blog thread led me to search for this small clip from ‘Contact’ the sci-fi film based on Carl Sagan’s novel of the same name.

These days, I have little time for the various talking heads which claim to represent the so-called Religions of this world, or even less for those Religions themselves; as I wrote in a small piece on my own blogsite a few years ago. Have a read, and then maybe you will understand why I maybe accept that there HAS to be a Supreme Guiding hand which founded this sprawling, infinite Universe, we simply don’t have a real clue either what His or Her, or even Its name might be, we have not read any words from the Hand of that Supreme Being; and we certainly do not have a close grasp on any message which may have been sent from those twinkling stars.

Some may remark that to extract a short clip from a sci-fi movie, and use it to illustrate a belief, or even a lack of belief, is either facile or absurd; but is it not equally absurd to state a belief that, through the ALLEGED words of a Man who lived over two thousand years ago, we should adopt a certain code of ethics; or, taken from a different Book, the written words of an illiterate goat-herder which were remarkably spoken to him by an angel, and from those words have spread the whole panoply of Islam; or should we ignore those religions, and place our faith in Buddhism, or Hinduism, or even, slightly closer to home, the strange and somewhat silly beliefs of the Wicca?

As with all things Religious; You pays your money, and You takes your Choice!

I’ve said it before……

and I say it again………………….

 

Things go better with Coke

 

We’re tired of lies we want the truth!

As can be seen in the Telegraph story regarding Owen Paterson and the truly awful Climate Change Act, he is calling for the repeal, or at least the suspension, of this Act which promises to be THE most expensive legislation ever saddled upon this benighted Nation of ours. He states that the absurd levels of the so-called ‘Decarbonisation’ demanded by this Act will cost us £1,100 Billion in terms of cash we cannot afford, and after the disastrous damage wrought by the ‘Decarbon’ process, we will not have altered the Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere by one ounce. Click on the Link, and read the story for yourselves.

Now speaking and writing personally, as I always do, I had a fair amount of time for Owen Paterson as a man, but probably a bit less for him as a politician. He was, in many respects, the typical old-time Tory from the Shires; his background was rural, his values seemed to be based in the English countryside. He voted against the truly ghastly Same-Sex marriage farrago, and he also, happily, came down like a ton of bricks on the limp-wristed Chris Smith in his disgusting and disgraceful actions when the Environment Agency’s wholesale abandonment of decades of sensible flood management systems resulted in the worst flooding of the Somerset Levels since records first began.

But I think that Owen Patterson ought to state why he has come out against the Climate Act only now, when on the back-benches, instead of when he was in Cabinet, and in a much higher profile position than now, when he could have stood up and denounced this Act for the ‘Green Crap’ it so soundly endorses.

Why did he keep quiet, if he believed that the Act was so wrong for Great Britain?

Why did he not threaten to resign if no-one took any notice of a countryman standing up for the Country?

Why did he stay in the Coalition Government if he felt that this policy, and this Act, was so wrong?

Why did he allow the Environment Agency to continue for so long with the perverted schemes of Chris Smith, when it was plainly obvious of the damage they were doing to the landscapes of England?

 

Or is the simple truth that he is, and always has been, just another greasy bloody politician, out purely for his own purposes, and ever ready to ditch a long-held belief for his own advancement?

 

and who switched the lighting off?

I lived and worked in South Africa for many years, and thoroughly enjoyed my life, watching my family grow; working, studying and learning, so that I eventually progressed to Engineering Management. My original field was heavy electrical engineering, but progressed through necessity to encompass some knowledge of mechanical and civil engineering.

One item which South Africa possessed, and what was indeed treasured, was the vast infrastructure of the electricity power grid, which is so vital to uphold everything else needed to run a modern economy. Built up over many years, and expanded with good planning, the power grid grew exponentially; and Escom, the generating and supply Authority, took its duties seriously; planning, expanding and maintaining the stations and the grid which spread for vast distances across the South African landscape. During the entire time I spent in South Africa, never once was there a need for brown- or black-outs due to a lack of station capacity, or generation equipment being stood down because of a lack of spares, or essential maintenance. That was how things were, and that was what was expected.

Fast forward some thirty years, which time encompasses the rise of the fabled ‘Rainbow Nation’, access to the equally-fabled ‘vote’, and the takeover of a thriving economy by the A.N.C. and Black rule, together with ‘Black Empowerment’ (shorthand in Black-ruled South Africa for legalised expropriation and outright theft); and what does the Nation now see?

They simply see excuses!  They cannot see much else, because the lights keep going out!

Idiots homing to roost

I have often considered the hordes of ‘volunteers’ and ‘helpers’ who plague this planet to be worse than the scourges from which the ‘do-gooders’ are allegedly helping people to overcome . I see the pests masquerading as collectors, shaking their tins or buckets, and attempting to shame those who do not ‘give generously’ into changing their minds. I resent being described as ‘miserly’, or even as a modern Scrooge; just because I would not sign to sponsor some athletically-minded scrounger as he was planning to cycle, or run, or swim so many miles.

I used to hold in high esteem the R.N.L.I. charity, and indeed used to donate to its war-chest, because the rescue craft are expensive to build and maintain, but mainly because the roll-call of those who manned those life-saving craft were heroes, and were the true volunteers. I no longer donate to that worthy cause, because I discovered that the higher management echelons of the Lifeboat Charity were in fact making a very, very good living off of our donations, and as more and more cash was being sucked off to feed the high salaries, and of course pension fund pots of this echelon, less was being devoted to the provision of rescue craft around our coastlines.

The Chief Executive received emoluments of £133,593 (2012: £134,249) in 2013. In addition, he participated in the standard RNLI defined contribution pension scheme, which is available to all RNLI employees.

So, when we read of the Spanish priest who were volunteering at a hospital in Liberia, was infected and wasTRANSPORTED back to Madrid, and before dying passed on this deadly disease to at least one nurse, who has most likely infected many more before she also kicks the bucket; when we read of the lax attitude of Public Health England, which states that profiling and inspecting all who travel from West Africa is not necessary: which attitude has only now been changed because even politicians accept that some effort must be made to stop this disease before it commences wiping out their own families: what should our attitude be to any who willingly go into such danger because ‘THEY CAN HELP’?

The starkest, but also the most lunatic story is not of the late isolation of the lying and now of course dead Liberian who flew to America despite knowing he had been in direct contact with the dying and the disease-ridden inhabitants of the cess-pits around the slums of Monrovia, but of the true idiots who marched, and waved their fists in anger, and threatened the very people who were trying to eradicate this dread and deadly disease; all because the Spanish police were sent to kill the bloody dog which was stroked, and patted, and petted, by the same nurse who now lies gravely ill with Ebola. The mob was angry, not because some woman was dying, but because her bloody DOG was, in the terms so beloved of these creeping morons, put to sleep!

 

Not the ‘Final’; but the Only Solution!

We learn today of a Spanish nurse who has contracted Ebola after tending to a dying priestflown out of Liberia to a Madrid hospital. A few days ago, we read of an black bloke in Texas who went down with Ebola after travelling from Liberia, via Belgium to Dallas. He lied when he boarded the plane in Africa, as he stated that he had no contact with any affected person, but instead had ‘transported’ a woman who later died of this disease in Monrovia, exposed probably many people before he finally went to hospital in Dallas, and now expects to be treated.

What should be imposed on all these tin-pot West African states is a complete international travel embargo, no-one allowed out at all, and the only people allowed in are the truly stupid who think they can ‘help others’.

My solution to this dread epidemic is quite simple, if probably a little too strict for the liberals, the ‘do-gooders’ of this world, those who believe that the inhabitants of these tropical shit-holes deserve help. The countries where this dread disease is raging should be clamped down with an international air and land travel embargo, and left to rot, because all that is happening now is the ones with any cash are buying tickets to anywhere in the West, and transporting their deadly diseases along with them. The travel embargo should remain in force until a month after the last person dies. Many might die, but the West would remain disease-free.

But I know that most Western Nation-States are too soft, too woolly-minded, too full of the dread mindset which says ‘We can help’, when what they should be doing is setting up the barbed-wire fences around these plague spots, and then waiting until this disease kills all it touches, and then dies out naturally!

The truth of the real ‘Health & Safety’ Regulations.

When I was first exposed to real danger, when working in an environment where your life was seriously at risk if you did not obey the rules; most of which were not written down, but learnt, off by heart, from real people who knew of those dangers by learning them from their predecessors: you learned the rules fast. At the age of 21, I was placed in charge of equipment worth millions, and more importantly, of people’s lives who used that equipment, when on board British Merchant Ships. If the Safety devices protecting an alternator, an engine, or a winch, were not tested and found satisfactory, someone could die, or be badly injured, and that death or injury would be placed at your feet, and you would be asked the reasons. When my friend the radio operator wished to have me check out the rotating radar aerial, I made damn certain that the control and power fuses for the rotating aerial were locked away until I came down from the forty-foot-high mast, so that no clown was able to switch the damn thing on, and send the aerial slicing into my back.

Similarly, when I was running the installation and engineering of a huge and complex electrical system for a South African hospital, it was my ‘Safety Document’ which was the rule for all switching and cabling connections and changes. Everything was written down, and everyone signed, so that, again, everyone was aware that eleven thousand volts; a truly lethal voltage; would not be even close to a human being, when work was underway.  We were professionals, doing a dangerous job, and ‘Health & Safety’ was paramount.

Health & Safety was always high in our minds when working in the English water industry, because each rule, each prohibition or passage, had been generated and established by professionals, for professionals. Two men died, over a weekend, in the tunnel feeding the huge, deep pumping station I was in charge of, when they failed to obey the rules. The 3 metre-dia. tunnel planned and built to carry water for London, ended in a large metal chamber, where the pump inlets would push the water up into the domestic zones of Northern London; and this chamber had been sealed for three months. The rules stated that, if a sealed chamber was breached or opened, the first item was to drop a gas detector, on the end of a rope, into the newly-opened space, to check if the atmosphere was stable, or if any noxious gases or major changes, hazardous to humans had occurred. Plain, straight forward; common-sense! But our two heroes knew so much better than scores of highly-experienced and qualified engineers; so they simply climbed down into the chamber and tunnel: and there they died, as there was less than two-percent oxygen in the tunnel and chamber, as the atmosphere had simply been denatured, nitrogen had displaced all the breathable air, and they died from a bad attack of ‘stupidity’!

Terry Waite, the enormously self-important Anglican envoy who flew to Beirut because he just ‘knew’ that his contacts in Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the ordinary Beirut Arabic slime underground could be implicitly trusted. He has been assured that all was ‘safe’! So he climbed on to a pick-up truck crammed with armed terrorists, again trusting them all because they were all muslim, and therefore completely ‘trustworthy’: and promptly disappeared for five years. Tied to radiators, hidden in underground cells, his only contact was another hostage; until he was released after a huge ransom was paid. ‘Trustworthy’ is as trustworthy does.

Similarly, ‘humanitarian volunteer’ Alan Hemming was travelling in an ‘Aid convoy’ into the darkest place on this Earth, war-torn Syria, because he ‘wanted to help’; ‘wanted to make a difference’, and all the other bullshit phrases used to attempt to excuse the actions of a man who just ‘knew’ that he would be safe, ‘knew’ that he would compete his mission; ‘knew’ that everyone else was wrong, and he alone was ‘right’: going into a muslim maelstrom where no-one is or can be trusted, because, in the end, they all hate us, they call us ‘infidel’, they call us ‘kuffar’.

And now his bereaved family has the audacity to state that the British government should and could have done more to rescue this idiot, should have risked the lives of soldiers, because the family felt that, as a ‘volunteer’, he should have been given special treatment; despite his ignoring every knowledgeable Government Department stating the bleedingly obvious, that Syria was a no-go place, that Europeans, no matter how well-meaning, no matter how well-intentioned; simply should not be there, because their lives would be at risk the second they drove across the border.

I say, save the ink, don’t sign the books of condolence, don’t buy the silly bunches of flowers, don’t condemn the Government for its immobility; instead accept that Alan Hemming was a well-meaning but foolish man, who ignored the warnings of the real Health & Safety Brigade; who gambled with his life and placed his belief on black, but watched the wheel of life’s spin land on blood red instead!

‘its all their fault’ said he, again

I listened to the whining of Gerry McCann on the BBC this morning, and gradually had my long-held dislike of this man, along with his wife, confirmed as he continued his rant against the newspaper industry, as well as the newly-formed Independent Press Standards Organisation, because of a newspaper’s refusal to stop the printing of an article which libelled the pair over the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine. This intemperate man’s rant went on, despite the fact that the couple had won a libel action against the Sunday Times, and had been paid a total of £55,000.00.

This man, who together with his photogenic wife, campaigned and spoke for the complete censorship of the press when the Leveson Inquiry was proceeding, and is a firm supporter of the Hacked-off Campaign, which may give the reader some idea of the calibre of the man being interviewed. He whined on and on about how the Regulator was completely toothless, and how it was absolutely useless; this of course despite the interviewer’s comments that IPSO had only been formed a couple of weeks ago, and that IPSO had not been able to intervene in the McCann-Sunday times case because it had not yet been in existence.

I comment upon this interview, and this strange couple, only because of the high levels of interest in the original case. To my mind, this couple comes across as a pair of late-converted campaigners, eager to do and say anything to keep their cause in front of the public’s gaze. I cannot understand what their problem is; after all, they sought and won a Libel Case against the offending newspaper, the Sunday Times; they will receive a retraction, they say they will donate the money to charity: why all the angst and anger?

I would only comment, once more, upon this media-savvy couple, with their well-publicised books and constant stories of how much they miss their daughter. I cannot forget that, as far as can be established, they went out for dinner in a restaurant the evening of their daughter’s disappearance, and they wouldn’t even pay the few pounds required to give their three children a full-time and readily-available babysitter, so as to protect those small children from all risks.

Light match, then plunge hand into middle of fireworks bundle…….

As an ordinary Englishman, trained from early years in the field of Engineering, and being fairly successful in my chosen work for some forty-odd years, I am by no means knowledgeable of medical practices, except of course by immediate knowledge of illnesses and conditions which I, or family members have suffered from and mainly conquered over my life-span. However, the science of treating communicable diseases is well-known, even when the disease itself is both frightening in its efficiency and mobility.

The Ebola virus which is running rampant in West Africa is a deadly bug. Deadly to a point of some 80%+ of those who are infected; die. It is as simple and complicated as that. The first symptoms apparently resemble a bad dose of influenza, but once that virus takes its course, the human body usually cannot resist the viral onslaught. The patient is infectious from some three or four days into the disease’s journey, and the virus is spread by contact with bodily fluids; namely sweat, semen, blood, nasal and vocal sputum. Barrier nursing, using high-tech clothing, masks and gloves, is essential if the people who are attempting to treat those suffering from this deadly disease are not to be infected themselves. Total isolation of all those either suffering from, or adjacent to, Ebola is and must be adhered to, if the virus is to be beaten!

So why is the UK importing ‘experts and politicians’ from bloody Sierra Leone to hold a bleeding conference, when most of those same ‘experts’ have probably been exposed to the f**king virus back in bloody Africa?

and the wheels grind slowly onwards

My son’s wife works in Local Government here in County Durham, and being reminded of this link to those who, in large and small ways, help govern this Nation, decided to trawl through a couple of postings on the Northern Ireland pages of the BBC News website.

The first item which caught my eye was the news that ‘remains’ had been located in County Meath after  ‘information’ had been received from the murderers via the good graces of SinnFein. The remains, unearthed from a drainage ditch adjacent to a bog  near Kells, are presumed to be the mortal remains of Brendan McGraw.

We are led to believe that a sadness clouded over the visages of SinnFeinIRA’s leaders for approximately fifty-five milliseconds, as the information was handed over to the relevant search teams.

The second item, gleaned again from the BBC pages, was a list of reports emanating from the Historical Institutional Abuse hearings, set in Banbridge Courthouse. Although there are no reports of murders or unexplained deaths from these hearings, I would lay good money on there being a solid core of suicides resultant from the treatments ladled out from these ‘caring and god-fearing’ religious men and women. To read of the treatment dished out to small children: CHILDREN, simply makes my blood run cold. To read, as the report makes abundantly clear, of a small girl being beaten ‘black and blue’, and deliberately not crying or showing any emotion, because the nun enjoyed her tears, says many things of the regime and climate in which these children were supposedly ‘cared for’!

The third item was a detailed explanation of how the ‘Devolved Government’ had failed to implement theWelfare Reforms as required by Whitehall, and how yet another ‘Committee’ was going to explain how this was inexplicable!

Sure, and isn’t Local Government wonderful!