Julyblog2007

July 2007...

July 31 2007

It still sucks...

I decided that I might as well install Internet Explorer 7 again, just in case I get any requests for help with it. On re-acquaintance with it, something quickly became clear - my first impressions were right - it really does suck! And I can think of no justification, after 10 years of having the buttons in the same positions, why they felt in necessary to relocate some of the most important buttons, while adding more for functions that had, previously, happily existed as toolbar items, tucked neatly out of the way. The excuse given my MS for this change is that is was to avoid "toolbar creep." No, I don't know what they mean either - idiots will still clutter up the screen with toolbars - I know one person who has reduced her IE pane to a 3-inch slot. It seems clear to me that MS's motivation was simply that they wanted to have more buttons - do they think that users are too dumb to use toolbars?

I've been using Mozilla's excellent Firefox browser, as many of you will know, for most of this year, so my first task was to update IE7's Favorites - but I can't. It won't allow me to import the Bookmarks from Firefox - as far as IE7 is concerned, it doesn't exist.

Interestingly, the Opera browser will allow me to import Favorites/Bookmarks from all the browsers I have installed (so I can ensure this website displays as it should in all of them), yet IE7 doesn't acknowledge the existence of any of them. This really is unacceptable. I can move the relevant folders over manually, but I really shouldn't have to do that - it's just more Microsoft arrogance (or stupidity - they're pretty good at both), and it's disgraceful.

Interestingly, Netscape Navigator will only import from Opera and IE, and Firefox is the same, but only IE7 refuses to recognise any other browser.

If you're tiring of IE6 or hate IE7 (or just feel like a change), then I can't recommend Firefox strongly enough. It's not perfect (what is?), but it's arguably the best browser available right now. Get it here.

You can import your Favorites from IE easily, and while Firefox is pretty intuitive to use, in Help you'll find a section for those migrating from IE.

One thing worth mentioning that catches new users out - clicking on Organise Bookmarks opens a full page, not a pane, so when you've finished close the page down in the usual way - click .

July 30 2007

Age concern...

A 108-year-old woman needing a digital hearing aid, has been told that there is an 18-month waiting list. Her granddaughter, unhappy with this, says "Olive has worked hard from the age of 16 to her late 60s and paid taxes. She has been healthy all her life and lived with her daughter until 15 years ago - she has never sponged off the state. I thought a 108-year-old deserved to be treated better than this."

To which I can only say "Why?" Is an old woman, who needs this expensive device to improve the quality of her life a little (she can hear well enough with her current aid - it's just that the digital version is better at isolating conversation from background noise, according to the newspaper article from which this is taken), any more deserving than a deaf child who may need one to aid his/her schooling, or an adult whose ability to work efficiently would be improved, and who still have to wait 18 months? Somehow, I think not.

And it could be argued (I'm not being ageist here, just making a point!), that giving a digital hearing aid, which has to be personally fitted to the user's ear shape, to someone who is inevitably going to die soon is a waste of resources were she to be treated as a priority. It simply wouldn't be cost-effective. Primary care trust funds are obviously limited, and that £1,000 - were it so be spent now, instead of when it's budgeted for - may well mean that essential drugs for another patient may have to delayed. Everyone expects to get what they want when they want it, but that's very often not financially feasible.

Take my case. I need oxygen. Not to keep me alive, though it certainly won't hurt in that respect, but it will hugely improve the quality of my life as, without it, I'm almost 100% housebound. With it, I could be far more active, enabling me to lose weight, which would substantially improve my health and life expectancy. However, oxygen is no longer available on demand, not since NICE, with their penny-pinching ways, got involved with it. Now I have to be assessed at the local hospital and, if the numbers don't come out right, I don't get it. Now that's more unacceptable than waiting 18 months to be able to hear just a little better.

July 29 2007

Maintaining the balance...

I have been highly critical, here, of some members of the Muslim community in Britain, and rightly so. It is, therefore, right that in the interests of balance, I post this article detailing anti-Muslim crimes by intelligence agencies here and in the US.

July 28 2007

To see ourselves as others see us...

This gives a very good insight into how others see recent terrorist events in the UK. Scary...

Bovine TB...

Shambo the bullock's autopsy confirmed that it was infected with bovine TB. This, of course, puts the Skanda Vale Hindu community's herd of 60 cattle at risk.

In the 19th and early 20th century, over 50,000 new human cases, with 2,500 deaths, were recorded each year in Britain. Estimates suggest that about 1% of these cases were due to bovine TB - it is contagious to humans.

Pasteurisation of milk, and an aggressive program of testing (for many years milk was labeled "TT" - Tuberculin Tested), brought the situation under control. Bovine TB has never gone away, though, and it's only by a continued programme of rigorous testing, and the slaughter of any suspect animals, that the national herd has remained healthy.

This is why TB-infected cattle, no matter who they belong to, have to be put down. Cattle are not pets, and this is not a game.

July 27 2007

Stupidity Studies...

In an item about student debt, on BBC News 24 a few minutes ago this evening, a student who has just completed her first year said she'd budgeted for the big stuff, but it was the small stuff that had caught her out. I can understand that, apart from one thing - among her list of "small stuff" was food!

I ask you, in all seriousness, what sort of half-wit think you don't have to budget for food? I always thought that a prerequisite for a place at uni was at least a modicum of intelligence...

RIP Shambo...

Shambo the bullock (sorry, I referred to it as a bull previously), is no more. Give that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, I was amazed at the media circus this event provoked. Anyway, it has been shown that the law carries more weight (once the Welsh Assembly had got past the unforgivable error of not issuing a warrant), than religious belief, and that's a point well worth making. Many local farmers will be relieved that a source of potential infection has been removed from their midst.

I'm sorry, but the life of an animal, as repeatedly claimed throughout this affair, is NOT equal to that of a human being, and by no means all Hindus are vegetarian. It is true, though, that the slaughter of cows is illegal in most Indian states, and in Hindu society, the cow is venerated as a symbol of unselfish giving. It's not like it has a choice, though...

Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

You can't have missed the furore over the "revelation" that cannabis causes schizophrenia (the numbers - a mere 800 known cases out of untold thousands who indulge every year). But this "research" `is nothing of the sort - it's yet more meta-analysis, a statistical number-crunching act that takes no account of the quality of the original research that generated the numbers that they totted up.

If you use cannabis recreationally, or to ease your ME symptoms, then you can download the document here just right-click and save it to your Desktop. Be warned - it's crashingly dull reading!

July 26 2007

Dumb & dumber...

You'll love this, well, I did anyway! In the centre of Manchester, buses and approved vehicles (Royal Mail vans, for example, as you'll see), are allowed through by bollards that retract into the road at their approach. Local numpties think they can beat the system by tailgating. Er, no!

Bovine ordure...

There has been another set of tests to prove/disprove electrosensitivity - guess what? It disproved it - I'll post details later today. For now though, I'll just say this:-

One testee, a Brian Stein, said he had to drop out of the tests because his symptoms were too severe. I'd be inclined to view this as significant were it not for his choice of venue to announce this to the world - the electronic jungle of a TV studio, on the Richard and Judy Show. Anyone who can claim, on national TV, that the mythical electrosmog makes him ill, while surrounded by a whole mass of electronic equipment (and while probably wearing a radio mic), is a liar.

If you can't wait for me to get around to it, go here . In particular, the Comments section down the page.

July 25 2007

Floods & the Red Cross...

Interesting to see that the Red Cross is distributing food parcels containing exactly what I recommended - nice to know I've got it right, though it's hardly rocket science. They've added canned fruit to the mix "for the vitamins", but that's really not going to be a problem on this sort of time scale.

One thing that bothers me, though - not everyone has camping gear to fall back on, as I do, so although people are getting food and water, if they're living in flooded areas they're likely to have no light or power, but no-one seems to be addressing that problem, which seems strange.

Where, too, are the charity appeals? People are quick off the mark when such disasters strike on the other side of the world, but seem to have no interest in supporting their own country. I watch little TV, but what I do watch isn't showing any flood appeals at all (I do watch in long enough spans to pick up appeals if they're actually there - just not every day).

The Thames...

Areas along the Thames above Sandford lock are flooding - it seems to me that opening, or partially opening, all the Thames locks to allow the water to flow away naturally might be a good idea. Does any one know if this is happening and, if it's not, is there a genuine reason why not?

Such lock openings would have to be timed carefully, of course - there's a substantial hazard in allowing flood water downstream while the tide is pushing upstream - although flooding London may make the government take things a little more seriously!

Environmentalists would probably argue that opening the locks would scour the river; maybe so, but isn't that preferable to the current situation - the south Midlands look more like the Mississippi delta right now.

Talking of the Mississippi, that river is famously confined by levees (earth embankments), in its southern reaches. Mostly they work (though when they fail the effects can be catastrophic), and if they can work on a body of water the size of the Mississippi (the river drains water from an area of over 1.10 million square miles), they can surely be even more effective on the relatively tiny British rivers. True, many riverside properties would have to be moved or demolished, but surely that's a small price to pay for not having a repeat of this summer's events?

July 24 2007

Digital TV...

Like me, you're probably anticipating that the analogue-digital TV switchover starts in 2008. However, this is no longer the case, and in Whitehaven, Cumbria, it happens in October this year. Whether other areas have been brought forward, I don't know yet, but if I find anything new, I'll post it here.

July 22 2007

A load of bull...

The owners of Shambo, the Hindu-worshipped Welsh bull have finally run out of legal ploys to avert the death sentence imposed when he was found to be infected with TB.

This is from The Guardian:-

"Swami Suryananda, also known as Brother Michael, said: "We have put a very strong case across about our rights, and those of all Hindus, to freely practice religion by recognising the sanctity of life. This decision seriously disregards the principal tenets of Hindu dharma.

"We are devastated that an animal in our care might be taken away for slaughter, even though it hasn't yet been proven to be a threat to anyone."

He said the community would not assist in Shambo's death and would try to find other ways to save him.

He said: "The law needs to be broad enough and should include viable alternatives such as isolation and treatment to achieve their purpose so that they don't cut across people's ethics, religion or conscience.

"We don't cull infected humans, we treat them. The same is the case for zoo animals, so why can't the government use their discretion in exceptional circumstances to provide such an option within the law on BTB?"

Total, arrogant nonsense, I'm afraid - an animal does NOT have the same rights a a human being, no matter what its owners beliefs are, and the farmers in the region have the right to have a source of infection removed from their midst.

As I've said before, the law of the country takes precedence over religious beliefs. End of argument.

Flooding...

Sitting here, smugly believing myself safe from flooding, being about 100 above sea level, and watching the appalling pictures from Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, something was brought home to me very clearly.

One of the threats in the flooded areas is to a waterworks and to electrical substations - I may be safe, but the plants that supply my drinking water and power may not be. Neither may yours.

I'm not suggesting you rush out right now, and stock up on bottled water and candles, but if you see the torrential rainfall heading your way (see below), well, it might not be a bad idea to get some in. A camping stove wouldn't hurt either. It goes without saying - or at least it should - that, as people with ME, you routinely have enough food in stock for several days in case you are too ill to shop, or your carers have problems. You don't need a freezer - canned stuff keeps indefinitely, and many packet foods have a long shelf life. You don't need to spend a lot of money either - you just need stuff that's easy to prepare and keeps well, it doesn't need to be haute cuisine.

In fact, if you don't have a few days emergency stash of food, it may be worth stocking up - ME can impair your ability to shop anyway, often without notice; you don't need floods for that. I always (well, mostly!), have about three day's worth of food in stock, as long as I don't come back from the pub and eat some of it!

There's no need to buy water, of course - if you have containers, or can scrounge some from bottled-water-using friends, tapwater is perfectly fine assuming it's taken when supplies are OK. I'm not trying to alarm you, but as a group we're vulnerable, so taking sensible precautions if you think an excess of wet is heading your way makes perfect sense.

Don't be alarmed, just stay alert and, unless things take a dramatic change for the better, keep an eye on the Met Office website for extreme weather warnings, and the Environment Agency, for flood alerts, because floods can happen a long way from where the rain actually falls.

Don't take TV news warnings as gospel - at the moment I was copying that link from the Met Office website, BBC News 24 was claiming that the Met Office were posting extreme weather alerts, when in actual fact they were doing nothing of the sort.

Oh, and if you know where I can buy gopher wood, let me know! And where can I get an ark-sized outboard?

See here for an expanded version.

July 21 2007

Harry Potter and the Bitter End...

Well, it's over at last. The Harry Potter series is no more (though already there are rumours of an eighth volume!). I have to confess, I find the hysteria over the books baffling (it's just words on paper, kids, it'll be just as good/bad/indifferent at midday today as at midnight last night). Scary fact - signed copies of the final (maybe), book are expected to fetch several thousand pounds as soon as they hit the market. If they haven't already. However, if there should be an eighth book, anyone who forked out thousands for a signed "final" one is likely to be a tad peeved.

I may well be one of the few fantasy-loving adults not to have read Potter, but the excessive publicity sends my bullshit-meter into overload, and any desire to dip into the series withers quickly - I suspect I may find it's more hype than substance. I've only read two children's books as an adult - The Hobbit, and Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People (and if you haven't read either, that's your loss).

I have to admit, though, whatever its literary merits, the series has at least introduced a generation of kids to the joys of reading for pleasure, and for that, if nothing else, JKR deserves her success.

July 20 2007

Rubbish on the Vine...

Those of you who listen to Radio 2 will have been told, on the Jeremy Vine Show, today, that you don't need the telephony deals offered by ISPs as part of their broadband packages to make free phone calls, you can just use Skype or similar VoIP applications. Actually, no, you can't.

Skype, and the like, offer free computer to computer talk, but to make calls to a telephone costs money. True, you only need the minimum of hardware - speakers and a microphone - just as you do to use the computer-computer service, but you have to pay for the calls.

On the other hand, some ISPs offer genuinely free calls, as with my BroadbandTalk service from BT. As an existing customer, I got that free when I upgraded to their 8Mb service, for new customers, it's a fiver a month. You simply plug an ordinary phone into the broadband hub and away you go. They will sell you a dedicated phone for around £100, but why bother when a £15 phone from Argos will do just as well?

My point is that, as so often happens, the info from the JV show was wrong, and ISP's bundled Internet phone services can be worthwhile (but they are not the same as Skype). Bundled landline service - as with the TalkTalk fiasco - are probably not.

Just deal with it, OK?!

Dear god - I heard on the radio a few minutes ago, that because the final Harry Potter book may possibly feature the death of a central character, extra counseling services are being laid on (somewhere down south, it goes without saying), for the kiddywinks. My flabber is absolutely gasted - what sort of milk-sops are we breeding that they may need counseling after reading a work of fiction? More importantly, what namby-pamby wuss even thinks it might be necessary?

OK kids, sit up straight and pay attention - this is fiction; that means - now brace yourselves - that it's not real! So no-one actually dies. In addition, there really aren't seven dwarfs, hobbits, dragons or honest politicians - it's all made up. So please, get a grip, you horrible little wimps!! Time to get back to sending these pampered brats up chimneys again...

Update - this seems to be a widespread phenomenon, and not just in the UK - what a bunch of pussies!

July 19 2007

The crucifixion of the BBC...

Can't say I'm surprised really, that there is institutional dishonesty at the Beeb, even though, despite all the numpties baying for blood, it wasn't particularly serious. And to their credit, they've been very open about it, and not tried to hush it up.

Far more serious, in my view, is the gross factual misrepresentation that is all too frequent in programmes like the Jeremy Vine Show (covered here last month), and in Panorama (the Wi-Fi lie-fest) - Vine was involved there, too.

Vine is supposed to be the moderator of a current affairs programme, yet he allows anyone to call or email and spout the most egregious drivel, without ever challenging them. He also deliberately emphasises some emails, when he reads them out, and de-emphasises others, to slant the programme in a certain direction. This sort of thing is, to my mind, far more serious than a few fake competition winners.

Taken together with the outright lies and distortions contained in the Panorama Wi-Fi farce, it makes me wonder just how deep this vein of mendacity runs at the BBC.

In fairness, though, I have to say that the pillorying of the BBC over the Queen's video was a disgrace, and should never have happened. The production company who deliberately juggled the editing to present a sequence of images entirely at odds with reality, are entirely to blame, not the BBC, who had no way of knowing that the finished tape was a gross misrepresentation.

Beyond acceptability...

This was the scene outside the Old Bailey yesterday, as Muslim women demonstrated in favour of their men folk to solicit murder and incite racial hatred, without paying the penalty that was, at the time, being imposed on them inside. Rather ironic, then, that the police officer in the picture is there for their protection.

The Daily Mail describes these people as "women, mostly young", Really? And how do they know that? How many, maybe, are AK-47-toting terrorists? That may seem a little inflammatory, perhaps, but my point, now as in the past, is that no segment of British society should routinely be allowed to appear in public dressed in such a way that their identity, indeed, everything about them except the colour of their eyes, is totally hidden.

Kids in hoodies, while probably in need of a slap, are mostly harmless, yet their chosen mode of dress has, rightly, come under fire for not allowing their identity to be seen on security cameras. Bikers, too, have to remove their helmets before entering banks, and often at filling-stations too, which is perfectly reasonable. Muslim women - well, presumably women - are, however, allowed to wear a form of dress that has no foundation in their religion, and which totally obscures their identity, with complete impunity.

That is neither reasonable nor acceptable in this country, at this time.

I would love to know if any bank has ever denied access to a burka-clad woman and, if not, why not?

You can, should you be so disposed, hide a lot of explosives under a burka, and there's little doubt in my mind that the detonating of gigantic suicide bomb is on the cards - it's just a matter of time. I believe the only thing preventing such an occurrence is the almost cast-iron certainty that it will result in a massive and violent backlash against burka-wearing Muslim women.

British society, as a whole, is remarkably tolerant (though this has not always been the case), and yet certain sections of Muslim society seem hell-bent on testing that toleration to destruction. Should they succeed, they will, of course, accept no responsibility whatsoever for the inevitably backlash - it is, always and for ever, someone else's fault.

I recommended this page to anyone worried about the rise of radical Islam.

Get a life...

Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, admits to smoking pot as a student. Yeah, so? Surely not doing drugs as a student would be more worthy of comment?

If she thinks this admission will make her seem less dull and boring, man, is she wrong - she must be the most uninspiring Home Sec. since Jack Straw - even David Blunkett was more dynamic.

July 18 2007

More "research" nonsense...

Vitamin C useless in combating colds - says the headline in The Telegraph, today. But this is based on yet more useless meta-analysis. As I've explained previously, meta-analysis is not research, it's statistical juggling. Findings - in this case from 30 studies - are totted up and the numbers trotted out to "prove" something or other.

There's a massive problem, though. Meta-analysis is purely about numbers, and takes no account of the quality of the original research, and very often that's rubbish. My advice is to disregard meta-analysis - there's no way of knowing what it's based on. I would also say - and as you're reading this you have a computer and Net access - never believe any claims of this nature made in newspapers; check it out online.

The article also goes on to say that very few people need to supplement with Vitamin C, as they get all they need from their diet. More rubbish - I can't eat citrus fruit, the main dietary source of Vitamin C, as it causes massive gastric irritation, so my diet is substantially deficient. I take 1,000 mg a day (a soluble tablet), as I believe this, along with the rest of my supplements, helps with my ME, and this has its own problems as C is excreted very rapidly. This can be addressed by taking sustained-release products (expensive), but the simplest way is to re-use a 250 ml water bottle and dissolve the tablet in that (cap it after it's finished fizzing!). Keep it in the fridge and sip it through the day, that way you derive maximum benefit.

I haven't had a cold, by the way, for over 20 years. Because of the Vitamin C? No idea...

You couldn't make it up...

Mike Read, erstwhile DJ, performer, and currently washed-up has-been, has a Profile page on The Guardian's website, where it says he has "...just finished an album collaborating with many literary greats including Shelley, Byron, Kipling, Auden, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Tennyson and Wordsworth." Oh yes, and there are also collaborations with Rupert Brooke and Enid Blyton on audio tape...

Tremendous achievements all (ha!), but shouldn't the spiritualist get some credit?

Be afraid - be very afraid...

Bush's minders have released details of Dubbya's favourite snack foods - peanut butter and honey sarnies, crisps, and "cheeseburger pizzas".

Think about than for just a moment - the most powerful man in the world has the sophistication of a small child. We already knew he had the intelligence and vocabulary of a small child (plus the cunning of a deranged redneck) - this just compounds the scariness.

July 16 2007

Justice - seen to be done...

From The Guardian, today:-

Schoolgirl loses court fight to wear 'purity ring'

Lydia Playfoot, a 16-year old pupil, today lost her high court challenge over a ban preventing her from wearing a Christian "purity ring".

Her rights to education and to express her religion had not been violated, said deputy high court judge Michael Supperstone QC, who ordered her father Philip to pay £12,000 towards the school's costs.

The judgment, backing the Millais school in Horsham, West Sussex, confirms that English courts are supporting schools and headteachers in imposing uniform policies against religious challenges.

It follows last year's decision by the House of Lords that Shabina Begum, 17, had not suffered a breach of her human rights when she was banned from wearing the full-length jilbab at Denbigh high school in Luton, Bedfordshire.

And last year a teacher, Aishah Azmi, lost her case for discrimination at a Leeds employment tribunal after she was dismissed for refusing to remove her veil in a primary classroom.

Lydia said she was disappointed would consider whether to appeal. "I believe I have a right not only to state my Christian views on sex, but also to demonstrate my Christian faith and commitment to God and my future husband not to have sex before marriage, through the wearing of a purity ring," she said.

You really can't argue with that decision, though I'd wonder just how repressed and weird a teenage girl has to be to flaunt her virginity. If she want's to hang on to it for her entire life, that's her choice, but for pity's sake, it's nothing to boast about!

The kid is unarguably pretty, and I have a feeling that, given the volatility of teenage hormones, this is an affair she may come to regret, and her virginity will become a target, not an asset.

One born every minute...

MP, total wazzock and overgrown schoolboy, Boris Johnson, is many things, but I'd never have taken him for a sucker. He has, though, been royally screwed by the Tory party; I can't say I'm sorry.

Johnson has been an embarrassment for years, and there were those who would have been happy to see him gone, but his transgressions - mainly stupidity and a big mouth - haven't been serious enough to boot him out. Now, though, he's been conned into standing as London mayor, against Ken Livingstone, which gets him neatly out of Parliament.

He may win, but I sincerely doubt it, he's too much of a buffoon. Yes, there's sharp mind behind his Woosterish facade, but he hides it far too well, and all the public sees is a blonde, over-privileged clown, and his fondness for his bike will alienate motorists, too.

Even if he does win, the office is very much a poisoned chalice, with the Olympics becoming a bit of a farce and, in the next few years, London is likely to be inundated by the Thames and/or subject to a massive terrorist strike, and I really don't think he has the capacity to respond adequately to something like that. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the man of the hour after 9/11 - I can't see Johnson rising to the occasion here. I don't know if Ken has either, but at least he has hugely more experience and would likely fare far better.

I think Boris is doomed, but he does, I have to say, deserve all he gets - described in The Guardian as a serial liar and a sociopath (and that was the favourable bit), and who am I to argue? And in case you're wondering about the sociopath accusation, this is why:-

Apart from being caught often lying to all and sundry - he was fired from the Times for making up a quote - how has he survived the Darius Guppy scandal when he was recorded agreeing to find a journalist's contact details so old Etonian friend Guppy could have the man beaten up? How badly? Guppy suggested just a few cracked ribs. Later when Guppy was jailed for a £1.8m insurance fraud, Boris explained his role with: "Oh poor old Darry was in a bit of a hole. He was being hounded."

from Polly Toynbee, today's Guardian.

July 13 2007

Good God...

This torrent of dangerous drivel is from the Telegraph. Islam clearly doesn't have a monopoly on religious fruitcakes, though home-grown loonies are rather less lethal:-

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence.

"This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," he said. "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

"We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate," he said.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance."

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

He urged people to respond to the latest floods by turning away from a lifestyle of greed to instead live thinking of the consequences of their actions.

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones. "However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.

"We have a responsibility in this and God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done."

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

The Bishops' warnings came as flood-hit communities were being warned to brace themselves for more torrential rain this weekend, with the Met Office issuing a severe weather warning for large areas of England and Wales, with up to 50mm (2in) of rain forecast.

No whingeing, please...

Updated.

Two 16-year-old girls, from Islington, have been arrested in Ghana for allegedly trying to smuggle 6.5 kg of coke, worth about £300,000, back to the UK and, already, the bleeding-heart liberals are campaigning for leniency.

These kids allowed themselves, apparently, to be recruited by UK drug dealers (and to do that, you actually have to know drug dealers), and traveled out to Ghana together, presumably with the sole intention of bringing back illegal drugs. They were not, it seems, coerced into doing it.

"They were given bags to carry and we do not know if they knew what was in them," an HM Customs spokeswoman said. So what, I wonder, did they think was in them? Dirty washing? Old books? What? "Hey girls, want to take these entirely innocent bags, which actually do not contain any Bolivian Marching Powder whatsoever, back home for me?" Please, give me a break...

The officials at Accra were taking part in Operation Westbridge, set up by UK customs in conjunction with the Ghanaian authorities to tackle the problem of drug smugglers using the airport as a gateway to the UK and Europe. Tony Walker, leading the operation for customs, said the alleged use of such young girls as couriers "vividly illustrates the ruthlessness of the criminal drug gangs involved in this traffic".

They are accused of committing a serious crime, one which in some countries would carry the death penalty, so I don't really have a problem with the prospect of a 15-year sentence, which is what they're facing, if a trial eventually finds them guilty. And with 6.5 kg of coke - that's over 14lb in real money (the weight of two bricks) - I really don't see how anyone can unknowingly carry that sort of weight, even if divided between them.

The argument that they are only sixteen cuts no ice. If guilty they committed an adult crime, the consequence of which should be adult time and yet there are pleas for leniency because of their youth.

What rubbish! Hell, Gordon Brown wants to give the vote to kids their age (and hopefully parliament will kick that lunatic notion into touch!), so if they're deemed old enough to have a political conscience, and the brains to make a reasoned decision on whom to vote for (yeah, like that's how everyone votes!), they surely have the brains to know that drug smuggling is a serious, often capital, crime, and the penalties are dire. And if they didn't know that, perhaps jail is an appropriate penalty for mind-boggling stupidity. If they're guilty - and no matter how obvious it looks, they're innocent until proven guilty.

Interesting that the pleas are for leniency too; no-one is claiming they didn't do it, or were set up - not yet anyway. For that we may have to wait for The Sun to spring to the defence of Our Girls - as they surely will. Ha! I've just had a look, and they've already spun the facts to make them innocent - try this for complete bollocks:-

One of the girls claimed: “There were basically two boys over here who gave us two bags, and told us to bring it (that) it was an empty bag. We never thought anything bad was inside ... and they told us to go to the UK and drop it off to some boy ... at the airport." and "It was basically like a set-up. They didn't tell us nothing and we thought it was nothing because basically we're innocent." No, girls, what you are is criminally stupid, if you really were taken in, and I have problems with that. How can anyone, even at 16, be brain-dead enough to (a) fall for that, if it's even remotely true, and (b) not notice a great slab of coke in a supposedly empty bag? Or bags - she says two bags, but then lapses into the singular - that story needs work...

I mean, come on, who the hell approaches complete strangers and pointlessly asks them to carry an empty bag, or bags, back to the UK (do we have a bag shortage, or something?), and then pass it on to "some boy"? It's a tale the courts have heard a thousand times, "Sorry your honour, but my client is entirely naive, and without even the brains of a gopher, so this is entirely credible..." Yeah...

Apparently, as more info comes to light, they were paid £3,000 each to bring two laptops back to the UK from Ghana. They lied to their parents about where they were going (school trip to France was the story), and made their own way to Ghana, where they were given the drugs-loaded laptops at a celebration party. Call me cynical, but even at 16, a trip to Ghana, for laptops that are available in the UK for a whole lot less that six grand plus return air fare to Ghana, should have rung alarm bells in the stupidest of brains and, by all accounts, they were far from stupid. So it's rather unlikely that they thought that three grand each and a round trip to Ghana was for the good of their health, and the lie about the school trip to France must have required supporting "evidence" - school trips abroad just don't happen out of the blue. Let's face it, all the planning, and the money up front, militates against their claim that they were innocents abroad, cruelly taken advantage of.

July 12 2007

Hmm...

Just heard a news item on the radio, about a proposed enquiry into why the recent floods were so bad. Ooh... that's a hard one. Let's see - building a city on a watershed catchment area (Sheffield), and building on flood plains and water meadows (pretty much everywhere else). Not rocket science, guys.

Concreting over huge tracts of the countryside for housing doesn't help either and, of course, good old Gordon is planning even more of the same (and there are even plans to build on all that nice, conveniently flat, land along the Thames estuary!). For me, not a single house should be built on a green-field site while a solitary brown-field site remains - you could build hundreds of houses within a mile of here, without touching a single blade of farmland grass, and I suspect most towns and cities are the same.

And why the focus on houses? What's needed is affordable accommodation, and the best solution, in a country where building land is limited, is low-rise flats, not semis with car-ports and pocket-handkerchief gardens.

July 11 2007

Justice, seen to be done...

At last it's over (well, almost), and the 21/7 would-be bombers get life, with a minimum of 40 years - a sentence no sane person can argue with. Shame they couldn't get a bit longer for being ugly buggers too!

Two more to be retried, and hopefully the next jury can get its act together and return a verdict - they're either guilty or not, and no-one should be fannying around unable to make up their minds - both the accused and the country deserve a verdict. I'm forced to wonder, though, how many people on the jury shirked their responsibilities through fear of reprisals?

Thank god I'm an atheist...

More religious intolerance, this time from the Catholic church, where Pope Rottweiller has pronounced thus (from The Guardian, today):-

Protestant churches yesterday reacted with dismay to a new declaration approved by Pope Benedict XVI insisting they were mere "ecclesial communities" and their ministers effectively phonies with no right to give communion.

Coming just four days after the reinstatement of the Latin mass, yesterday's document left no doubt about the Pope's eagerness to back traditional Roman Catholic practices and attitudes, even at the expense of causing offence.

The view that Protestants cannot have churches was first set out by Pope Benedict seven years ago when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican "ministry" for doctrine. A commentary attached to the latest text acknowledged that his 2000 document, Dominus Iesus, had caused "no little distress".

But it added: "It is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of 'Church' could possibly be attributed to [Protestant communities], given that they do not accept the theological notion of the Church in the Catholic sense and that they lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church."

The Pope's old department, which issued the document, said its aim was to correct "erroneous or ambiguous" interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. Quoting a text approved by the Council, it said Protestant churches, "because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood", had not "preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery".

However, other Christians saw the latest document as another retreat from the spirit of openness generated by the Council, which laid the basis for talks on Christian unity. Bishop Wolfgang Huber, head of the Protestant umbrella group Evangelical Church in Germany, said: "The hope for a change in the ecumenical situation has been pushed further away by the document published today."

He said the new pronouncement repeated "offensive statements" in the 2000 document and was a "missed opportunity" to improve relations with Protestants. The president of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy, pastor Domenico Maselli, called it a "huge step backwards in relations between the Roman Catholic church and other Christian communities".

A statement from the French Protestant Federation warned that the internal document would have "external repercussions".

The Church of England reacted more cautiously than seven years ago when Dominus Iesus was issued and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, denounced it as unacceptable. The spokesman for the current archbishop, Rowan Williams, said: "This is a serious document, teaching on important ecclesiological matters and of significance to the churches' commitment to the full, visible unity to the one church of Jesus Christ."

The Vatican's statement had fewer misgivings about the Orthodox Church, which had "true sacraments" and a genuine priesthood. But their failure to acknowledge the Pope's authority meant they suffered from a "defectus", politely translated from Latin as "a wound".

On Saturday, the Pope freed Catholics to ask for masses to be celebrated according to the Latin rite abolished by the Second Vatican Council. This meant the reinstatement of a Good Friday prayer describing Jews as blind to the Christian truth.

The president of the Italian rabbinical assembly, Giuseppe Laras, yesterday called it "a heavy blow". He told the daily Corriere della Sera: "We are going back. A long way back."

At a time when the Christian churches should be formulating a joint response to the excessive influence of Islam, this divisive nonsense beggars belief. What next, fish on Friday again? The Inquisition?

Yes - I do know it's an injunction against meat, not in favour of fish - just making a point. I grew up in a predominantly Catholic community, a fact that, I suspect, influenced my subsequent atheism. And I'm an equal-opportunity atheist - in my view, all religions that claim to have a direct line to a supreme being, or beings, are equally wrong-headed.

July 6 2007

One law for us, and one for them...

Today, Lib-Dem MP Charles Kennedy has been taken to task for smoking on a train. He refused to stop when asked to by the train manager, and was greeted by the railway police when he arrived. They gave him a talking-to and sent him on his way.

Consider this, too. In 2003, I was on the same train, out of Liverpool Lime Street, as Kennedy - a train that was non-smoking throughout, as many signs made perfectly clear. Even before the train left the station, he was publicly rebuked for smoking in the Gents! So, when it comes to smoking in prohibited areas, old Chucky Bumface (as he was christened, very aptly, by a Guardian writer), clearly has form, and probably lots of it.

I think, honestly, that he should have been prosecuted and fined - he clearly broke the law, and the fact that he's an MP shouldn't see him let off with a wrist-slap. Do you think if he'd been some spotty oik he'd have got away with it? Really?

July 5 2007

Blind(folded) Justice...

This from the Guardian, today:-

A magistrate in Manchester is under investigation after he refused to
deal with a defendant wearing a full Muslim veil. Ian Murray walked
out of the case at Manchester magistrates court last week because
32-year-old Zoobia Hussain of Crumpsall was covered by a niqab. Ms
Hussain's lawyer sent the court a formal letter of complaint.

Ms Hussain appeared before magistrates on Thursday on a charge of
criminal damage. But Mr Murray claimed her niqab raised issues of
identity and her case was adjourned until July 18.

Her lawyer, Judith Hawkins, said the young mother was "shocked and
distressed" and found Mr Murray's treatment of her "insensitive and
unacceptable." Last week, a judiciary spokesman said Mr Murray agreed
he had acted unwisely by walking out of the court without giving
reasons, and regrets that his behaviour could be interpreted as
intolerant of other cultures. The Magistrates' Advisory Committee in
Manchester is looking into the incident with Mr Murray. The committee
will decide whether to hold a full investigation.

Investigation? Shocked and distressed? Unacceptable? Give me a break... The only unacceptable behaviour here was turning up in court with her identity hidden.

It's a simple matter of knowing who is in front of the court and, with someone wearing a niqab, that's quite impossible.

This is, presumably, a woman wearing a niqab. Can you tell who it is, or even what gender they are, because I'm damned sure I can't? I've said it before, but it bears repeating, there is no religious requirement in Islam for women to wear this garb, none at all. The Qur'an requires women to dress "modestly", that's all.

And even if there was a religious requirement, we simply cannot allow people to turn up in court incognito. The magistrate deserves praise, not the brickbats he's apparently in line for - you simply cannot adjudicate when the identity of the person alleged to the the defendant cannot be confirmed. Surely there should be a penalty for this? And as for the alleged defendant's lawyer making a formal protest to the court, surely her right to practice should be called into question for allowing her client to insult the court in such a way? I don't know if you can be held in contempt of a magistrates' court but if you can, her client certainly should be.

There are also reports, from airports, that women in niqabs have been waved through security checks. If this is true, then someone needs to be handed their P45 pretty pretty smartly. Security requires, especially right now, that everyone is clearly identified, no matter what their religion or beliefs. No exceptions, no excuses.

July 4 2007

Not before time...

This from The Guardian, today:-

Declaring that "condemnation is not enough", leaders of the Muslim Council of Britain, which has 400 affiliate organisations, voiced its most robust message yet and appealed to all Muslims to work hand in hand with the police. The message carries dangers for the MCB which has been criticised by radical activists for being too close to government and the establishment...

Read the full article here .

There's no guarantee that Muslim communities will take any notice, of course. To be sure of that, the message needs to come from the Imams in the mosques, and so far that hasn't happened. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

However, the fact that highly educated, apparently well-integrated Muslims have succumbed to the rabid anti-British propaganda that permeates Islamic society the world over, to the extent that they clearly have, as recent events have shown, bodes ill for the less well-educated mainstream of Islam, British or otherwise, particularly, as in the past, gullible, hormone-driven teenagers.

Harold Shipman was an aberration, but an organised group of homicidal doctors, whose attempts at mass murder failed purely because of incompetence, must surely cause concern in the minds of the public. After all, as someone said to me yesterday, why do they need bombs, they're perfectly placed to carry out murders, like Shipman, pretty much unimpeded. Makes you wonder...

And it poses a fairly obvious question - how much trust, now, will British people have in Muslim, or apparently Muslim, doctors? Logically, I don't see a problem, but logic may not have a lot to do with it.

July 3 2007

Doherty...

What the hell is it about Pete Doherty? Apart from his appearance, which is pudgy and totally devoid of definition (he looks like a giant baby - or something that might scurry out from under an overturned log), why isn't he in jail? Once again, today, after turning up hours late for his court appearance, he cries and gets the soft option of rehab - why? It doesn't work! Not for him, anyway, and pretty much anybody else would have been banged up long ago. I mean, it's not as if the drugs fuel his talent - there isn't any. His sole claim to any sort of fame is his association with Kate Moss, who really needs a good-taste transplant - although it's quite possible they deserve each other.

His lawyer whinged that the drugs (crack, heroin, cannabis and ketamine - he really is a pick-and-mix junkie), were in small quantities. Yeah, so? Possession is possession, and considering all the times he's been in court on similar charges, and left with a get-out-of-jail-free rehab card, all to no avail, it's time for a reality check - lock the bugger up and put an end to this farce. Or maybe he'll o-d and do the world a favour...

July 2 2007

Petition...

The petition, above, has reached the rather un-dizzy heights of 5,998 signatures today. It seems to me that if this is the best we can do we deserve whatever we get.

The trouble is, of course, that those of us who have signed it, and who actually care what happens, will be lumped together with the bone-idle, pathetically useless, dozy buggers who just can't be bloody bothered. And that sucks.

Get off your apathetic arses, people!!

July 1 2007

Smoking...

For those of you who are sulking about today's smoking ban, all I can say is that when you have to go outside for a fag while in the pub, I sincerely hope it's bucketing down!

I have never smoked, but after a lifetime of exposure to other people's cigarette smoke, at home as a child, on public transport and in workplaces for most of my life, in restaurants, cinemas, theatres - any damned place at all - and, of course, pubs, I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (which includes emphysema), and Cor Pulmonale (Right ventricular failure).

This is a direct result of exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke.

Smokers will no doubt say that I didn't have to go where there was smoke, but I DID! There was, until the last few years, nowhere that was smoke free. Soon, of course, the last bastion of that most selfish of beings, the smoker (selfish because not only do they smoke themselves to death, they share it with everyone around them, and care not one iota), is about to fall.

This is why smoking makes me so angry - the evidence of its lethality has been there for generations, but the tobacco industry ignored it, and smoker's are just too damned obsessed with their addiction to give a toss.

So, yes, tomorrow I hope you all get thoroughly soaked - a small payback for having my life substantially shortened by your selfishness. A shotgun would be more satisfying...