At the ‘click’ of a phone, we shall remember, er; who?

I wouldn’t mind our Jeremy getting all hot under the collar about a bunch of wharfies who had been made redundant, after several face-to-face meetings, an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) negotiated by HPA and the MUA which had made text message and email an agreed means of communication between the company and staff; e-mails and a staffer confirming that  “The texts and emails were not sent in isolation, they were preceded by lengthy consultation and followed by proper processes. In addition to the text and emails, letters were also posted to the workers on the same date”: but at least try not to look so bloody despondent.

I mean, if he thinks its a lost cause, why the photograph?

Its all a bit like that idiotic Facebook  or Twatter campaign which said “Bring back our girls”. That didn’t achieve very much either.

He just knows the Priorities of Government!

America’s leader has just announced an end to America’s problems. Forget the massive debt, running into literally 18 trillions of dollars. Forget the ferocious onslaught on ISIL, which is achieving absolutely nothing. Forget the 7,000 American soldiers still stationed in Afghanistan, acting as stationary targets for the odd Taliban with an AK-47 and an itch. Forget the huge problems with race, and black-on-black crime, and drugs, and illegal immigrants. Forget about the ongoing slog for millions of Americans who are searching for a job!

Don’t worry about all those festering problems; for your fearless Leader has just done something incredibly brave, far-sighted and with incredible honesty and compassion.

He has just renamed Mount McKinley as Mount Denali.

We are saved! Glory Hallelujiah! We are saved!

and the Answer is?

Listening with only one ear this morning, to the the usual tripe and propaganda bilge from the BBC, care of their Toady Programme. The original discussion, as far as remembered, was about how teenaged girls would jump into hysterics over some spotty-faced Boy band, and how this differed from people watching a rugby or football match. The presenters and some bloke were talking about sport, and how it was ‘understandable’ for a grown man to cry if his team had lost, or won for that matter; but this ‘emotional response’ was totally different to a bunch of adolescent females showing off their hormonal urges as a group.

Now, as for myself; I just cannot understand the whole idea of ‘my team’ or being ‘the winner’, or the ‘best’: or whatever is shoveled out by the sports-lovers lobby, which of course is vast and all-pervasive. Sport itself, in all its forms, is just another Industry, and all its individual tendril offshoots are dedicated to doing one thing, and one thing only, to take your cash, and endeavour to get ever more of your cash, and business’ cash, and tv and broadband cash, to enrich the Empire whilst delivering: exactly what? Emotional release? Team loyalty? Admiration of individual endeavour? Let’s face it, sports fans are just as deluded as any other mass entertainment audience. When the  Chelsea fans roar their approval, what are they actually stating? That their team is better than their opponents? That they are ‘winners’? What actually have they, the spectators, silly, deluded people that they are, really won, or achieved? When an Olympic crowd of eighty-odd thousand cheers a victory in a distance race, are they applauding the winner, or are they stating that their country, and its political philosophy, is somehow on a higher plane than the runners who came second, or last? What I am asking, in admittedly a roundabout way is this: What’s the Point?

So your team wins, or the runner comes first, or the penalty-taker misses, or whatever god-forsaken physical activity which you hew to makes the headlines on the back pages of some gutter-press production. Why the glorification? Why the deluded doom when the ‘Team’ is headed, inexorably, for the demotion area of the League? There seems to be a total lack of awareness that, for every winner, there must be a ‘loser’. I remember reading some ‘pop-ed’ piece where the female writer came home on a Saturday afternoon to find her fiancè lying on the floor, beating his fists into the carpet, whilst moaning ‘Liverpool lost!’ Big deal! The governmental, with the emphasis on the ‘mental’ part of that word, push when the Olympics were being touted around as the saviour of all things British is but typical of the hype surrounding sport and its promotion. The Olympics would give new emphasis to inclusivity, and general health, along with all the usual mealy-mouthed phrases from the lowest of the low: an ex-Government Minister.

The words which shape the phrase ‘role-models’ are used, especially in football, to determine who is being hero-worshipped by the plebs this month; but just let us examine those who are being touted as the ‘role-model’ for impressionable youngsters in today’s shabby little universe. The likes of Ryan Giggs, of whom I wrote  “a footballer whose ‘clean-living’ image was parlayed into a huge array of sponsorships was found, after the removal of not one but several ‘super-injunctions’ was found to be leading such an amoral lifestyle as not only carrying on a liaison with some prostitute, but also to have had sex with his brother’s wife over an eight year period: is portrayed as a role-model; no wonder men of my generation shake their heads in silent sorrow.” In my younger days, our

Statue Of Newcastle United Football Legend Jackie Milburn (wor Jackie) In Newcastle Upon Tyne.

heroes were heroes, worthy of the name, but that sort of individual wouldn’t stand much chance of reward in these days of instant glory, and of fame for fame’s sake. I wrote of a young man who was being touted as the ‘next great thing’ in football, but I also wrote of that same youngster as being an amoral thug who threatened a contemporary with violence because his friends had been charged on evidence given by this young man. The footballer was named Ravel Morrison; and I musingly asked if an elderly man would post a picture of Ravel Morrison on a blogsite some twenty-three years after his death? Somehow, I doubt it!

The huge business of Sport, whether it is football and the fatally-corrupted & -flawed FIFA, or Athletics and the dope-ridden IAAF; cricket, and the fantastic numbers of Indian enthusiasts; or any one of a dozen differing sporting endeavours, are all inextricably linked with cash, with sponsorship, with the huge deals for global television. But again I ask the only question which counts: What’s the Point? Does it really matter if one man or woman runs faster, jumps longer, or moves a ball more skilfully than his opponent? Apart from individual earnings, that is? Why this adoration of certain people because of either a natural or learned ability to perform certain manoeuvres? Why the fevered following for a team of a certain city, or even a locality; despite there being hardly any native sons in that team? When I was much younger, my Dad and my brother went to all Newcastle home matches, and there they could watch and cheer men who came from the same villages and vicinity as the fans. But could a similar family identify with a team today? I doubt it very, very much indeed!

it all depends if the water is supposed to do that!

As I am, by training, of the Electrical Engineering persuasion, with a necessary amount of Mechanical knowledge obtained over the years, I comment upon matters pertaining to Civil Engineering mostly by osmosis. One of the basic elements of good concrete is the simple fact that, once the concrete commences being poured into the shuttered area which has been filled with the required re-bar, the workers immediately shove ‘vibrating pokers’ into the concrete mass, to ensure that both all the volume of the shuttered area is filled homogeneously with the concrete, but also to ensure that all air bubbles are expelled from the mix before it commences hardening. To allay any fears regarding my use of the term ‘vibrating poker’, I feel I should explain that the average diameter of a ‘poker’ is around 75mm., with the weight somewhere around fifteen kgs. The vibrator crew usually walk in the concrete, dragging the vibrators with them, the noise is usually horrendous, and the work is both strenuous and really, really necessary, because without good homogeneity, the concrete will fail if stress is later placed upon it.

Another source of worry, to Civil Engineers that is, is to either restrict or eliminate any pauses during the filling of deep or large pours of concrete, mainly because, once the concrete has commenced hardening during a delay, no further mix should be poured until the initial surface has been roughened or ‘scarified’, so as to provide a seamless and problem-free continuity of concrete for the rest of the work. It is a definition of good concrete work that all delays beyond a certain time limit are treated with scarifying equipment, because without such treatment, a joint will fail under pressure!

I would now present two photographs and one video, as a commentary, by an independent observer sited some thousands of miles away from site, of the quality problems of the Panama Canal Expansion.

Photo shows a concrete section removed from the Cocoli Locks compex.

Full views of the size and reach of the leaking water in the lock cill.

Oh dear; It does not look Good!

For those not up-to-speed with the Canal Lock system, the huge, super-thick concrete cill is what the rolling lock gate rests against when the lock actually fills with water; hence the concern about the actual strength of the cill concrete: because if the cill wall fails, the lock gate moves, all the water drains out, and the ship would be sitting on the concrete deck of the lock, with nowhere to go. As I remarked; Oh dear!

(Acknowledgements to my mates Kumar, Mark and Benji for the thorough introduction to large concrete works.)

You & I voted for them; so, really, we brought it upon Ourselves!

Net Immigration statistics have just revealed the UK-bound inflow at an astounding 330,000 people last year until March. Astounding because of the shallow lies (immigration down to the tens of thousands) told by not only the Conservatives when in coalition, but also the Labour bunch in the thirteen years of their, hopefully, last time in power: with their immigration ‘open-door policy’ which they admitted was nothing more than blatant social engineering to break down the overwhelmingly white background of the British population. But the migrant number which I write about is the figure 39,000. This is the number of people coming into the UK from Pakistan, Iraq, Bangladesh and points eastward. This is the important figure because these people are, overwhelmingly Muslim by religion, background and what is laughingly called ‘upbringing’. They will, to use our estimable Prime Minister’s terminology; join the ‘swarms’ who have already infested and colonised parts of London, Birmingham, the old Yorkshire and Lancashire mill towns, Manchester and up on into Scotland.

Being perfectly honest, I don’t have much time for those who state that the ‘floods’ of EU East Europeans from Poland, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia have done harm to our very existence as a Nation; mainly because these people are, really, mirror images of ourselves. Overwhelmingly Christian by faith, by belief and by example, they are hard-working and keen to get and keep a job, help their communities, generally mind their own businesses, and integrate into British society. I tend to discount the alarm tales spread about the huge numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians, as, again, they are either Greek, Roman or Eastern Orthodox Christians; if we also accept the totally feckless inward population of Roma, or gypsies, or pikeys, as living down to the usual image of themselves. Before anyone attempts to claim ‘offense’ because of my terminology; thats just ‘tough’!

But back to the initial theme of this small essay, which is the huge influx of Muslims, which has built up, inclusive of the 39,000, into our astonishingly pliant society. There are now well over two million (2,000,000) Muslims living in Great Britain, and in a recent poll, 25% responded favourably to the killers of Islamic State. Please note that I do not state that Muslims are ‘scroungers’, or ne’er-do-wells, or wholesale benefit claimants; most are hard-working and admirable in many ways. The trouble is within their DNA, in their very belief structures, where just a little emphasis on the wrong syllable or phrase in their alleged ‘holy book’ will turn a mild-mannered student into a cold, calculating killer! Remember the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris?  Recall the near-miss on the Paris-bound Thalys express, where the muslim fanatic only wounded two people, although he had seven full magazines for his Kalashnikov in his backpack? If you just take one percent of one percent, that gives at least 200 fanatics who are ready to die for their f**king Caliphate. We all know how leaky our borders really are, with less than one percent of freight examined, and almost no cars checked or searched; what are the chances that the AK-47s and the loaded magazines are already in cupboards in Dewsbury, or amongst the 250,000 muslim residents of the swarming ghetto suburbs of Birmingham; and that is not the one in Alabama?  All it takes is one to get to shave his body hair off, cleansing himself according to his murderous rituals; then spraying himself with perfume and dressing in clean clothing; before loading his magazines with 7.62 calibre bullets, cleaning and oiling his fool-proof AK-47 assault rifle, the choice of terrorists and armies alike, and setting off towards the transport hub of his choice, the death of his choice and his brain-addled beliefs; and carnage will result. This will repeat and repeat itself, with either bombs or bullets, until our so-called Government realises that they must defeat the Fifth Column in our very midst, which they have helped build up, with their stupid laws, and interminable processes of law, which gives shelter to the very scum who intend death and destruction of our very way of life.

And, folks, just to end this small essay upon an uplifting note; there are 75 million, that is 75,000,000 Turks living in Turkey; they are all Muslim, and they are only blocked from full entry to the whole of the European Union because of a minor difficulty in the Accession process. This hiccup was caused by the Turks not wishing to sign up to the Greek side of Cyprus, the French being more than a bit Bolshie, and, well, read the damn thing and you will realise the Euro-clowns are doing their level best to get around their own rules: and then, hey: you have 75,000,000 Muslims able to get on a train, and they don’t even have to join the queue at Calais. Magic what our great leaders have placed in motion!

The missing numbers!

China Diary

IN…….

Economic development in Tibet

70th anniversary of defeat of Japan

Chinese missiles pictured

China’s first deep sea high pressure and high temperature exploration well –

This year, there are 8 blind students who took the gaokao, and 7 of them were admitted by colleges.

OUT

Dramatic dive in Shanghai Stock Market value continues

Strange, rather than funny; that particular omission! 

I wore a uniform; but, otherwise….

Says it all; really

h/t James Higham

Exaggerated? Possibly. Generally factually true? Certainly.

Personally, I don’t believe Nigel would ever wear trousers as wrinkled and rucked at the ankle, as is depicted.

Lunacies of Labour

A letter to my two local newspapers:-

For the attention of the Editor

Dear Sir,

I write in sheer wonder, not at the lunacy exhibited by hard-left members of the Labour Party when they propose and indeed make Jeremy Corbyn favourite to be elected Leader; the most unlikely MP ever to be considered as standard-bearer for the Labour Party, but wonder in reality if indeed all sense has deserted a Party which held a tradition of common sense in internal governance ever since the days of Keir Hardie. I have often been in awe of the giants of the Labour movement, men of integrity, men, indeed of honour; from way back to its infancy as a movement for and of the Common Man; with truly uncommon men as its founders and early leaders. But, we look in vain for a leader with both vision and integrity as we gaze at the present-day pip-squeaks who seek power both within, and without, their Party structure.

Mr. Corbyn has been quoted as stating that he would return some, if not all, the enterprises which were wrested from the iron grip of the State; back to the control of the ‘Working Man’ and his outriders, the Trade Unions. I would gently ask if the history of the Nationalised Industries, water, power, railways, telecomms, the former mines; gives a hint of what might happen if Mr. Corbyn, along with his rag-tag army of Communists, Socialists and fellow-travellers have their tender way with the sinews of our Nation once again. Can I remind the reader of the ‘winter of discontent’, which occurred only thirty-five years ago: remind the reader of the bodies left unburied, of the mountains of garbage bags left lying in the streets for weeks, of the hospitals which could only accept ‘emergencies’,of the lunatic strikes for unrealistic pay increases; of the sinister ‘flying pickets’ of the trade union ‘Heavy Mobs’, which made, by force, unwilling drivers do the bidding of the Labour Union movement. Can I remind the  starry-eyed Labour voters that their precious Corbyn’s ideals are the same as those which virtually bankrupted Liverpool during the reign of the ‘Militant Tendency?

The Labour MPs which presently represent the big majorities from Blyth, Newcastle down through Durham to Teesside and Stockton are competent able people, and while disagreeing with virtually everything they stand for, I have to admit that they are good at their jobs; but how many would be able to withstand the pressures exerted by a hard-left Labour presence, under Socialist and Communist control: which is what is likely to happen if Corbyn’s Red’s grab control!

The man who cried ‘Beware the Ides of March’ to Caesar wasn’t wrong with his warning; the Daily Mail isn’t wrong; and those who speak against the fuzzy ideals of Jeremy Corbyn are not wrong either!

Regards

Mike Cunningham

Reasons to load your fully-automatic Kalashnikov in the train toilet.

• You want to reclaim your seat after being dispossessed by a big, fat, American.
• You wish to warn the kid behind your seat to stop kicking the seat backrest.
• You wished to protest against the lack of Halal food on board.
• As a protest against the Global Warming deniers, who infest high-speed trains.
• You dislike the colour scheme of the trains, and wish to have everything painted in sober colours.
• You disagree with Zayn Malik’s move away from 1Direction, and wish to register a protest, whilst agreeing that LadyGaga rules.
• As a statement against the outrageous lack of modestly-dressed women on the train.
• You wanted to draw a picture of Mohammed, outlined in bullet-holes.
• You just wanted to liven up the ‘bring-your-own’ party which you were hosting.

Have you got a light; boy?

When much younger I smoked cigarettes, lots and lots of cigarettes; at one time I smoked a pipe, but mainly cigarettes. I honestly forget how I started, it was probably because my Dad smoked, and all my mates commenced smoking, and you feel ‘left out’ if you aren’t doing what your mates are doing. There was a fair bit of advertising, mostly for British brands, and as I lived for most of my teenage years in a pub, we got used to smoking.

The advertising was all around us, from Senior Service, to Woodbines, the sophisticated smoked Gauloise, those who felt lucky went for Luckies, for Chesterfield; and of course for the big one: Marlborough. We smoked, and inhaled, and honestly believed that smoking helped us relax, and helped us tackle stress, and not too many people wondered why such an awful lot of cash was literally pouring into the Advertising.

When the British saw this in 1940, it wasn’t considered anything else than linking a patriotic photo with a product which was considered okay; after all if the Royal Navy smoked; and His Majesty the King smoked, what did that say for the products? Maybe a little naive, but we were at war, and we needed to cling to something. After the War was over, the ads got a lot more into our lives, and they went from ‘smoke this, and you are cool’ to ‘you are never alone with a Kent’.

Over in America, Big Tobacco was pushing for ‘Market Share’ with all the tobacco giants scrambling for their share of the suckers’ cash, and there was one hell of a lot of cash just swishing around. From Camels’ ‘less nicotine’ to Chesterfields’ ‘Top choice’, they all shoved their wares into the minds of America, but the big winner was Philip Morris; with one single advert series ‘Come back to Marlboro Country’, where they went from a one percent share to the fourth largest cigarette company in the USA. Darrell Winfield was the epitome of the Marlboro Man, an image which was designed to reflect that which Americans believe, and to a large extent, are, which is rugged, individualistic, and stubborn. He epitomised resilience, self-sufficiency, independence and free enterprise.”

The adverts also were, legally, very very subtle and clever. Because they levered the ‘individualistic’ idea of America, they also pushed the ‘fact’ that the smoker chooses to smoke entirely of his own free will, and nobody made him inhale noxious substances by force.

I stopped smoking over thirty years ago, before I returned to England with my family. It was a nightmare journey which lasted for over a fortnight; I was like a bear with a sore head, my kids walked softly past my armchair; and the worst part was when I found myself reaching out for a non-existent pack of smokes. But then the craving went away, I re-discovered my sense of smell, of taste, and the fiction that it helped me relax was also found to be false. I had been addicted, and I had broken that addiction. Fortunately, all of my kids have never smoked, as they have far too much sense, and of course they saw what it did to me, with a hacking cough which never seemed to leave me, together with the reek of tobacco smoke on all my clothing. I stopped for purely economic reasons when we left South Africa; I was buying thirty smokes for 30p, and when we came back in 1984, I saw the prices on the shelves at twenty smokes for £1.85. I had a ‘health check-up’ about eight years after I stopped smoking, and the Consultant remarked ‘Your lungs are just starting to recover’. Says a great deal for the strength of my body, but also a great deal about the suggestive power of words, and pictures, in adverts today!

The silly cow should have stayed home.

Just about a year ago, I wrote in fairly straightforward and uncompromising language of the fools who went towards their deaths in Syria and the surrounding regions. I of course am writing of the foolish people such as James Foley, (beheaded), Alan Henning (beheaded), many others all either shot or beheaded, and the latest name to appear once more in the headlines of the press, Kayla Mueller (apparently killed either by Isis, or the American bomb strikes).

The stories which now come tumbling out of the ether about this silly, stupid and totally, mind-bogglingly confused, young woman are mainly space-fillers, basing their content upon claims by ‘released’ Yazidi female hostages of the sexual activities of the Isil leader as he allegedly raped this young ‘aid worker’ in the days and weeks before her death. Its a bit like our own politicians saying, loudly and piously, ‘Look what happens when you don’t embrace Democracy’.

Bullshit! And again, Bullshit! Kayla Mueller went into the most dangerous place on this Earth, (most dangerous for Westerners, especially good-looking western women) because she ‘wanted to help’. No one begged her to go across the border to work with Medecins sans Frontieres and some so-called charity called Support for Life; no one dragged her by her hair, she walked and drove into the cauldron because she was ‘deeply’ moved by the stories of suffering, and ‘she wanted to help’. She got exactly what she deserved, because she made the fatal mistake of thinking that the fundamentalists are just misguided Muslims, trying to make their own way in the fog which is Islamic thinking. She was wrong! She died because she thought she knew better; better than all those who warned her, and many others exactly like her, that Isil was worse than all the others. Worse because there are few things in this world to be feared than a bunch of fanatics who do not fear death, but actually embrace it, if it brings their beloved Caliphate one step nearer.

As I previously wrote:-

“It is all very well saying ‘These actions, by these murderous men, are against civilised behaviour’, when everyone accepts that most of these terrorists, and probably all of their supporters, don’t accept Western values or behaviour at all. They think us decadent, they think us immoral, they think us foolish. So why even bother to help, when the helpers will no doubt be treated the same as they do to their other enemies and captives.

It is all very well for Lord Dannatt, he of the smart uniform and totally-closed mind, to state that British soldiers should go and fight in that sandy shit-hole; but I notice that he wasn’t volunteering his services.

As I stated before, they brought their fate upon themselves, and not a single bullet, nor a gallon of fuel, nor a drop of blood should be spilled by America or the United Kingdom to rescue the fools who knowingly went into Bedlam!”

Remembrance; or, ‘apologies, the following item could be distressing!

Seventy years after we won the War in the Far-East, the standard statement from a BBC Today report about the manner and fashion which the Japanese Military treated British civilians was given as though the man was reading out the weather, and thus, our very way of life is once more denigrated. Was the elderly lady telling lies about her life in a Japanese internment camp? Did she lie about the brutal fashion with which her brother was bayoneted, thrown off the truck and left to die, lingering in agony, for three days? Was she exaggerating about the pathetic diet handed to the over two thousand inmates, a diet which was the basic cause of so many deaths from malnutrition? Did another interviewee lie when describing the rigours, and indeed the very survival, of life in a Hong Kong internment camp, and the savage and vicious treatment handed out to those who had the temerity to attempt an escape?

On this particular day,  when we should be CELEBRATING the fact that we beat the living shit out of the Japanese because they were a war-mongering bunch of bastards, when we should be CELEBRATING that we killed them by the very thousand, and tens of thousands, before they surrendered, as we, the Allies, had demanded: the BBC tends towards the soft approach, covering the inhumane manner in which thousands were imprisoned as though it was a side-show in the War; is the thing which I find particularly revolting. The film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ was of course, a work of fiction, sanitised beyond belief from the inhuman savagery which was inflicted upon thousands of British, American and Allied Prisoners of War. Sanitised because the producers would never have got a release certificate to show the true side of those yellow bastards, and their worship of their f**cking emperor, and how they treated men who had surrendered as a lower form of life; because they were taught that surrender showed them as less worthy of life, and so they treated our soldiers, and our kinsmen, as similarly less than worthy of life.

It is perhaps a good time to discuss parts of Hirohito’s speech which signified the end of the War, because, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japs couldn’t even mention the word ‘surrender’; but instead mentioned, almost in passing,  that the Empire accepted the provisions of their joint declaration (the Potsdam declaration; where we demanded UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER). Prior to that, the Imperial clown puppet stated that the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage,

No, it should not be ‘distressing’ to tell the truth, and to remind the grandchildren of those who lived through those six long years of war, that their opponents, on the Japanese side, were cruel, bestial, and inhumane: and it should not be ‘distressing’ to state that brave people died at the bloody hands and swords of the Japanese; and on the other side of the world that the average German was either a Nazi, or a whole-hearted sympathiser, and well-versed in the knowledge of the treatment in store for their fellow human beings who were of the Jewish faith; and that the Germans too deserved the punishments meted out at places like Bremen, Berlin and Dresden, for the horrors of places like Auschwitz.

A traveller from a far-off land……

I have authored this, my own small blogsite since May 2006. I have a small but loyal following, and I can read my traffic by country of origin within the statistics page. I get visitors from the UK & Northern Ireland, of course, but also from just about anywhere in this Web-connected world of ours, as people surf, and stop, and then move on.

I state my causes, my grievances, my annoyances, my dislikes, my detestations: and on the rare instance; I write of Love, Happiness, Triumph and Sadness both in the wider world and within my own life.

But a few days ago, I had a very, very strange visitor from an unknown entity: this visitor came from The European Union. I do hope he or she was truly disappointed in what was read.

It all depends what you mean by ‘strange’.

Man lets daughter drown rather than let strange men touch her

The father of a 20-year-old woman who drowned in Dubai allegedly stopped lifeguards from helping her.

The unnamed man had said he preferred to let her die rather than be touched by strange men after she got into difficulty on a beach in the city, a top Dubai official told Emirates 24/7.

Lt. Col Ahmed Burqibah, Deputy Director of Dubai Police’s Search and Rescue Department, said the incident had stuck with him.

He said: “The kids were swimming in the beach when suddenly, the 20-year-old girl started drowning and screaming for help.

“Two rescue men were at the beach, and they rushed to help the girl.

“However, there was one obstacle which prevented them from reaching the girl and helping her.

“This obstacle was the belief of this Asian man who considered that if these men touched his daughter, then this would dishonour her. It cost him the life of his daughter.”

According to Lt. Col Burqibah, the man became aggressive, physically pulling the rescue men away from the water and said he “prefers his daughter being dead than being touched by a strange man”.

The girl died in the incident but Lt. Col Burqibah said she could have been saved as they were “so close to her to pull her out of the water” when her father intervened.

The man was later prosecuted for stopping the rescue team from doing its job.

//

Just blow into the mouthpiece, Sir.

Apart from, and after one fantastically stupid and, after the fact, totally terrifying action, I have never driven a car with more than one small glass of wine in my body over the previous twenty-four hours. I shall not go into all the lurid details, but suffice to say, after driving at somewhere around 90 m.p.h. at two in the morning; on the WRONG side of a dual carriageway highway, with my car crammed with giggling drunks, just as bad or worse than I was, for a distance of some fifteen miles: when I woke in the morning, and remembered what I had done, I literally broke out in a cold sweat. I honestly believed, during that mad episode, that I was invincible, that my reactions and driving were actually enhanced: I had no inhibitions at all! I delivered all my drunken mates to their homes, then parked my own car neatly in the driveway, and went to sleep in my bed.
Which is why I feel strongly that the blood-alcohol limit for British air-line and commercial pilots, test to be taken the morning of their scheduled flight, should in fact be as near to zero as possible. Any alcohol inhibits and slows your reactions, and, whilst the test limit for British drivers is 80mg/100mL I have long maintained that this is still far too high, but while the average driver is maybe responsible for three or four lives other than his, the average airline pilot takes off with maybe two hundred lives on board: and I wish to be reassured that the bloke is stone-cold sober before he takes the controls of a jet with me on board.

This is just me talking out loud, but I have lost good friends through booze mixed with speed, and also lost relatives through constant use of heavy booze, so I am maybe a little biased; but, if I can do without drinking and driving voluntarily, why can’t everyone else, accepting that everyone reacts differently; but based purely upon the statistical, as well as the medical evidence?

We’re doomed; I tell you: we’re all doomed!

There have been many scourges to impact upon those nations who tend towards civilised behaviour. War, terrorism, the illusory threat of Climate Change and/or global warbling, politicians from all sides of the spectrum; you must get my drift?

But a terrible new threat has been identified in the former Colony known as Australia, and I fear that this will prove terminal.

Yes, folks, the dreaded  Vegemite plague is upon us, and there is literally, no hope at all!

whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Well, Shelley said it first, but I reckon the whole thing fits!

All we needed was more money, and the Government gave some, and then took it all away again.

and I don’t know why they let me on either!

There is a screaming kerfuffle building up in Belfast now over the scheduled appearance of comedian Frankie Boyle at Féile an Phobail (which, for the unreconstructed amongst us, comes out as ‘Festival of the People’. Why the clowns who organised the thing chose to use a dead language for the title is beyond me; but, there again, its their Festival, not mine.) However, those same organisers decided, in order to get a little more ‘oomph’ into their marketing strategy, to invite a ‘big name’ from the mainland as a draw to increase ticket sales and publicity.

Now, I would ask you to pause, for just a second, and consider the huge amount of talent at their disposal. Should they choose a singer, or a dancer? Would they fill the hall if they chose a winner from the Eisteddfod? If the choice would be from England or Scotland: whose name would be an instant draw to bring the crowds queuing to buy the tickets? It was a bit like the EuroMillions draw, with the added bite of knowing that the odds are clearly against you making the right choice; because one person’s draw is definitely another’s turn-off.

So, in the end, they plumped for a Scottish comedian: and about five milli-seconds after the contract had been signed for Frankie Boyle to front the Féile an Phobail, the protests commenced resounding round their pathetic heads. Why the protests? Simples: they had forgotten: FORGOTTEN, that the one thing Frankie Boyle is famous, or rather infamous, for is his ‘edgy’ humour and tasteless jokes. especially jokes about disabled people, people or kids with Down’s Syndrome, spastics: those disabilities. Now I am no great fan of the modern strain of comedians’ ‘edgy’ humour, with their sexual and twisted undertones; but I know that many people who do not hold to my own beliefs find that sort of ‘humour’ to be uproariously funny. I will admit that, in my youth, one of the jokes I used to tell had a young woman in a wheelchair as the main target, but as one grows older, and in my case, grows in companion with a wife crippled by a mental illness, and also confined to either a wheelchair or her bed, the jokes seem to lose their appeal.

But, I digress, this post isn’t about me; it is about the possibly-disastrous choice of a comedian with a reputation for jokes about disabled people. We now come to the best bit, where ‘celebrities’ cast their names down as part of the condemnatory process; and what finer and more well-known, if not exactly appreciated, name to use is that of Gerry Adams? Mr. Adams, casually turning away from the basin where he had been washing his hands, stated “The comedian was the right type of act for the festival. I didn’t know myself that he had made whatever offensive remark he made about people with Down’s Syndrome and of course, that’s reprehensible,” he said. “I understand exactly why the family members of citizens with Down’s Syndrome have been annoyed about that, but, you know, Féile an Phobail has a very, very, very good record of inclusivity.” What ‘inclusivity’ has to do with a comedian’s tasteless jokes, or the fact that the speaker’s past murderous activities and actions, as a prime leader of the terrorist IRA, were themselves ever-so-slightly reprehensible, was never explained.

The reason of course why the organisers of the Féile an Phobail could not cancel Mr. Boyle’s appearance was the unfortunate fact that his name was already inextricably linked with the Féile an Phobail, and the cancellation would also have cost the organisers a Gaelic arm and leg, what with the cost of cancelling Frankie’s appearance as well!

So the People’s Festival will be going ahead tonight, with the loud and forecasted dreary moans and calls from, mainly, the parents and families of those unfortunate enough to be unlucky in the draw of life as to be gifted with this particular disability, as to ‘the shame of it all’ resounding from every wall in the neighbourhood. The protesters, and of course the protest, are themselves never quite clear on the simple fact that they the protesters, are trying to deny a man the right to earn a living in the manner best known to him as being succesful, they wish to silence Mr. Boyle for being ‘funny’, and that last statement is, in the end, what all the noise is about!

Not too many sensible statements will be heard on the trumpeted tv and radio reports about the simple truth that, if you or your loved ones dislike the jokes and the slanted patter of Frankie Boyle, you don’t have to either buy a ticket, or indeed attend this dreadful circus.

and it tolls for thee.

A minute silence for the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima Bomb? Fair enough, but let’s have a little balance in both the memories, and the memorials.

• How’s about thirty seconds for the 2,403 American dead through drowning, burns, explosions, bullets, shells and torpedoes: delivered care of the Imperial Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbour.
• How’s about a few seconds for those unfortunates who commenced the Death March from Sandakan: unfortunates because no British prisoners survived out of 800, and only six Aussies out of over 1000.
• Care to spend a few more seconds remembering the human skeletons who emerged from the P.O.W. camps in places like Changi after the end of the Japanese War.
• On that particular subject, of the humane treatment of Prisoners of War, let’s spend five seconds remembering my mate Ron, who went into Changi weighing 168 pounds, and weighed a mind-boggling 77 pounds on his release.
• To provide adequate balance, give about five milli-seconds to the knowledge that General Homma was shot by firing squad as he was the leader, in all respects, of the Bataan Death March.

As the Japanese Ambassador said only this morning on the BBC; ‘the vast majority of those Hiroshima dead were women and children’ which is a strange thing to state about Hiroshima, a major military staging area. But it is good that they be remembered, but equally important to remember why they died; which was to state to a military dictatorship, with a figurehead Emperor, that America could wipe out their cities one by one, killing vast numbers of Japanese; until they accepted that surrender was the only alternative: that America would protect Americans, and her Allies, in any manner available.

Look, up there, a full squadron of flying pigs!

Well, well: its is a strange, strange day when I find myself in complete harmony and agreement with the Man himself, ‘The Son of Lenin’ and friend of both Hamas and Pol Pot’, Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy, who for some strange and unfathomable reason, possibly connected with both the wilder pronunciations of David Icke and the fortune-telling skills of Gipsy Rose Lee from Surbiton, is almost a dead certainty for the position of the Leader of the Labour Party. I have ever had a long respect for both Corbyn and his colleague Dennis Skinner, more widely and tenderly known as the ‘Beast of Bolsover’. A deep respect and admiration for these two men, products of the old-style Labour Party which produced this type of politician; honest, incorruptible, incapable of back-tracking on a policy or a political belief or strategy which had been proven to be unacceptable to the voters. That type of Labour personality has almost disappeared from both Front and Back-Benches, filled as they now are with clones of either Blair, Kinnock or Milliband. Which is almost a good thing for Britain, because the voters of Britain have seen through the gauze curtain which is wrapped around the core Labour Party, and have decided that the Conservatives are just that little bit more trustworthy than the alternative.

But of course I digress from my first point, which is my surprise to find an alliance with the presumptive Leader of the Labour Party. Mr. Corbyn has many, many beliefs, most of which are diametrically opposed to my own, which are firmly of the Right. He believes fervently in the benefits of Socialism, I am opposed. He believes that the so-called ‘Austerity’ measures, imposed on us by Osborne, are evil and wasteful; I myself am still waiting for Osborne to actually implement any ‘austerity’ measures at all: ‘austerity’ meaning actual savings to the Public Purse: as he is actually borrowing more now than Labour ever did during their time in office. But on  one point, and one only, I agree with Jeremy Corbyn: I too am opposed to the truly wasteful expenditure of over £50 billion on the boondoggle which will be HighSpeed2

No-one gave two shits!

1400 kids groomed, raped and sexually used and abused over a period of seven years in Rotherham……………..Police activity……………….Nil

Two separate allegations of paeadophile activity levelled against a DEAD former Prime Minister over a three-day timescale …………………FIVE major police forces, services; whatever, commence immediate and high-profile investigations.

Can anyone else besides me see a pattern of events developing? I mean, all those White kids in Rotherham, Rochdale and again in Oxford: the council, the social worker teams, the police; no-one can say that the warning signs were not there. And yet; until the whistle finally blew, and the Jay Report was delivered, NO-ONE gave two shits for those kids in that miserable, so-called ‘multi-cultural’ Muslim-dominated town in Yorkshire!

But when two allegations of the new ‘Holy of Holies’, of Historic Sexual Abuse emerge, a charge which cannot, ever, be conclusively proven one way or another; mainly because the suspect is DEAD: not one but Five Police Forces jump, and commence ‘investigations’ of a man who had held the highest political office in the land!

Just by the way, whatever happened to those allegations of a Very Senior Labour Politician who was thought to be involved in paeadophile practices? All those headlines, all those hints; and then….Nothing. Strange, that silence; or is it?

Drink up, its good for you!

You can say what you like about North Korea, and usually lots of people do, but strangely enough only when outside the fabled tracts of Kim Yong whoever-land, but one thing is definite, they really know how to show folks a good time in the true Party-time city of PyongYang.

A visit to a sparkiling water factory is a ‘must’ on the North |Korean tourist trail. (Al Jazeera)

No mate, you aren’t!!!!!

We are told, in big, bold letters that ‘She is Cait’. Bruce Jenner gets lots of publicity. No, mate, you might look like a woman, you might dress like a woman, but a woman, you are not! You are not so, so, courageous!

You are just a man who has had plastic surgery, hormone treaments, an enormous clothing and cosmetic allowance: but you are still just a man wearing women’s clothing!

Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Promises.

When I was but eighteen years old, the lies and the deviant statements commenced, and they have continued, without pause or interruption, ever since. The barrage of position statements, government propaganda, newspaper, radio and the slow start of television ‘current affairs’ programmes hammered, or rather attempted to hammer home the  story that Europe would be good for Britain. Good for jobs, good for trade, everything would be rosy. When Edward Heath was making overtures to France and Germany about joining, there was a healthy scepticism within the electorate. So, despite his promise that no movement would be made without the full-hearted support of Parliament and people, he took us in, and the Parliamentary vote was only won by eight votes. No sound or sight of a Referendum then at all; we were not asked.

We were asked in 1975 by Harold Wilson if we wished to stay in, and all the lies continued, and as we had been told that the Commonwealth had been cast adrift, and all the trade negotiations with the EC were completed, and we would not be losing anything: we voted to stay in. Nothing was said about our fishing fleets being decommissioned, and fishing grounds being decimated by the Spanish and the French, that was all discovered later on.

The Thatcher years proved equally barren of the truth, partly because our Prime Minister didn’t realise how dangerous Europe and its Single Europe Act really was until it was too late. John Major proved himself a true Europe-lover, piloting through Parliament the Maastricht treaty by applauding our opt-outs, which weren’t really opt-anythings; as Europe swerved around the roadblocks, and brought in the Social Chapter through Health and Safety! The European Union, that creature of Jean Monnet, was born with that Treaty, and it has spread its tentacles ever outward from that date.

Fast forward to the Blair years, with ever more untruths perpetrated by the Master Liar himself, when he accepted and signed the Amsterdam Treaty. Asked? We weren’t even mentioned! With this Treaty came European citizenship, a Euro foreign policy, and all the rest of the euro-garbage. We were promised a veto, but, hey, that promise, like all the other ‘promises’ wasn’t worth the paper it wasn’t printed on.

Gordon Brown came late to the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, but didn’t give much weight to any question of whether the People should be asked, before signing up to ‘ever closer Union’, probably because he thought we were all ‘bigots’ anyway.

Enter Cameron, and his promised ‘Referendum’. He promises that the British people will have a choice, but only after ‘Reforms’ have been completed, or agreed, or something: which is fine, except: no-one has been told the extent, or limit, or indeed scope, of these mythical ‘Reforms’. Various briefings have emerged after ‘discussions’ with him, and her, and sometimes ‘them’; but the British people, who are being asked to decide if they wish to continue being governed from Brussels, or whether they wish to have their Sovereignty returned; have not got a single fact upon which to base their decisions. Ignore the fact that most of the ‘desirable’ options floated by commentators, politicians of all persuasions and senior civil servants all require Treaty Change, and treaty change needs every other Euro nation to agree, which will never ever happen.

As I wrote at the beginning, the lies continue, but grow ever more convoluted.