Even Nazis have feelings, and Naughty Arabs (allegedly)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7685905.stm

What a lovely story of how love survived against the odds, and probably against the wishes of his wife...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7684407.stm

6 months to "talk to" a man accused of molesting a 15 year old girl....
Either:
"They wont arrest him cos he's Arab and they are worried he has terrorist friends"
"They would have arrested him sooner if he was white"
"They come over here, molest our girls..."
It would be nice to think there is an innocent reason why it took 5 months to get round to talking to him, but can you think of one? Should we not be jumping on suspects a little quicker than this - especially when descriptions of him are "He is the man who owns Harrods and is there every day." Its hardly "Where in the world is he?"

This note's for Jonny

Who says Sarah Palin has no executive experience...

Only 4 months ago, and it has the word Russian in it so qualifies as international...

Governor Sarah Palin helped unveil the new logo for the Anchorage Cooperative Weed Management Area at the “Citizen Weeds Warrior Kickoff” at Russian Jack Park in Anchorage, Alaska on June 17, 2008.

Joey Barton

Apparently Joey Barton wants to be a role model.
So kids, get your brother in prison for life for a racist murder, then beat up a 16 year old in the town centre at 3 in the morning while lagered up, then maybe slap a few mates and finally try and kill one of your teammates at work. Do all this while earning the best part of #50k a week, and then perform maybe one week in ten at the office....
I'm not surprised kids want his lifestyle, but i will do all i can to make sure mine don't learn a thing from him.
And while we are on the subject of Newcastle.... ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

musings

Tis a dark and stormy day... the view from the office window is alternating between the darkest day and shards of sunlight breaking through...

Its about time i caught up, realise i havent ranted for a while!

Firstly, i caught 10 minutes of Fox News this morning, and that is enough to drive anyone to blog. Joe the Plumber. Ah, Joe the Plumber...

One right wing ranting host (cant remember if it was Brad or Shep or Tipp...) and 3 panellists. The question - "Why is everyone talking about Joe The Plumber?"

3 answers - all the same - "Because the left wing liberal media are obsessed with him." One of them almost said that John McCain had mentioned him 20 times in the last debate, and they were shouted down and i think may even have had their mike turned off. It was being denied - almost unhappened... No, it was the Liberal Media obsession, especially the East Coast media...

And Fair and Balanced Fox - sorry how on earth are they not shut down by the Federal Commission for blatant lying - would be like me telling everyone i meet i have never tried cake... -just kept going - East Coast Liberal Media.... So when did being Liberal, or from the East Coast, or even just a bit left leaning become such a crime? Why is it so bad to care about your fellow man. The Republicans think you should encourage everyone to make their own fortune, and anyone who cant should just be left by the wayside. Some of us think we should help the poor, the tired, the lets be frank, huddled masses, so if that makes us Liberal or Lefty then so be it. Its not Communism, so stop being so scared Right Wing America!

Ok, on another note, we are having the kitchen and both bathrooms ripped out this week, and its a real pain in the ass... We have one guy in the bathroom, quietly banging away and you can see things changing... The other is in the kitchen, and succeeded in ripping out every cupboard in a few hours. Since then his only visible contribution has been cutting through wires 3 times and tripping the power. Nothing seems to have changed. And what a miserable old sod! A pleasure to share my house, now stop whining and get the kitchen made!

Puppies... Algy has now been here best part of a month. Its about time we put a picture of him up here...

There is a skill to naming dogs. None of this Blackie, Rex or Fido nonsense. Welcome please Mr Algernon Braithwaite. New best friend to Montgomery Montmorency Williamson III. Now they are proper names.

From johnmccain.com - this is why we should care...

John McCain believes the institution of marriage is a union between one man and one woman. It is only this definition that sufficiently recognizes the vital and unique role played by mothers and fathers in the raising of children, and the role of the family in shaping, stabilizing, and strengthening communities and our nation.

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.
However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the question is returned to the states, the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby. The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level.
(But its ok for state courts to decide, just not federal???)

John McCain opposes restrictions on so-called "assault rifles" and voted consistently against such bans. Most recently he opposed an amendment to extend a ban on 19 specific firearms, and others with similar characteristics. John McCain has opposed "waiting periods" for law abiding citizen's purchase of firearms.

Stem cell research offers tremendous hope for those suffering from a variety of deadly diseases - hope for both cures and life-extending treatments. However, the compassion to relieve suffering and to cure deadly disease cannot erode moral and ethical principles.For this reason, John McCain opposes the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes.

Senator McCain has enjoyed the quiet blessings found in serving others.

this is the official web site. its not a smear campaign, these are his actual words... and lets not even start on Sarah Palin...

Writing in Bodo where i couldnt get on the internet...

5 days away in the beautiful North of Nowhere, and the mind turns to home. Travelling has been my blood for nearly 20 years now - hard to believe that next summer will be the 20th anniversary of that first Inter-Rail trip. Memories and people pass and fade, places merge from one to the next and parks and hostels and bus stations have turned to 5 star hotels, taxis and work work work... Travelling for me is watching and listening, moving and waiting... absorb understand, compare and relate... move and absorb some more... to travel is more important than being somewhere, and sitting still becomes addictive in the middle of this constant airport flow of people on deadlines and holiday dreams... and now a new angle to travelling that i havent really had before - the going home. More specifically going home to someone. Going home to someone who makes it a pleasure to stop moving, to stop sitting still, and to be back amongst the familiar and the mundane. For the first time in life i am anchored. "No man is an island of himself" said John Donne, everyone knows that line but then he carried on to say something like "one foot fixed he returns..." and now for the first time in life i finally understand the feeling. The temptation to descend into saccharine is there, but if there is one thing the Metformin does it stops that coming out in print. But to have that solid base, that one foot planted so firmly - life has changed and developped and i am no longer looking in the mirror and seeing the 23 year old just moving and running and looking for a home, somehwere, anywhere, nowhere... home is found, and it is with my wife. Its not the building, its not the walls, not the fields and fences - it is with her that i am home. It is with her that i belong. And it is too her that i am now travelling, and that feeling is the most wonderful feeling. Travel remains exciting, the experience of the new, the mysterious and the far away... learning words and phrases, listening to stories, forcing down a beer for the boys - all remain wonderful - but now the best travelling is back to her, back into my baby's arms. On the road home, i now have a home to go to. So much more makes sense than it did before, so much has changed, and so much better... so much more meaningful. To move.. to travel... to be somewhere.... Now i know where i am going, and peace and happiness descends... Ok, enough of this poor reader, lets return to slagging off politicians :)

The Unspeakable Rage

Ok, so no prizes for guessing i have been listening to the best of Sarah Palin. One of the joys of travelling is returning home to 5 episodes of the Daily Show. So i finally got to hear the VEEP debate, and see the Katie Couric interviews. And so this is the woman who will be Pres should 93 year old McCain get cancer for a 5th time.
Its all been said more eloquently than i could... so i wont repeat it again.
Frightening. Terrifying.
"If a 15 year old girl was raped by her father would you make it illegal for her to have an abortion?"
"I would counsel her to consider choosing life."
What the almighty Jesus sponsored God in his heaven fuck is that? Shouldnt be given a library card or internet access, and yet... a heartbeat away.
RUN!!!!

Back In Bodo

This is a beautiful town. Some shots from this morning from the hotel window and down at the quayside. Worth enlarging them to enjoy the full splendour!

Today i am glad that Thatcher is alive

No, really i am.
She lived long enough to see her Capitalist experiment finally fail. It teetered before, but this time its dead. When Henry Paulson gets on his knees (according to Fox News of all people) in front of Nancy Pelosi and BEGS THE DEMOCRATS to accept his proposals, so that he can ignore the Republicans saying "leave it to the markets to sort themselves out..."
Well its a strange kind of day. I just hope that the no doubt immigrant carer who daily smears ointment into Thatcher's scales and trims her talons has the economic knowledge and enough English to explain to her that this all started with Keith Joseph. (Is he still alive - i think he died but then i dont remember the street party??)
As long as the carer can do that, then let her pass quietly into the dark night. We have no more use for her in this world. And state funeral? Bank Holiday i think....

Nietzsche

Should really explain the quote of the day from the guy with the impossible to spell surname.
I'm not a Nazi. I just have to respect a man with limitless arrogance and self confidence, who is not afraid to tell people just how brilliant he is.
Have recently read his pamphlet "Why I Am So Wise" and it was sensational. It is about 80 pages detailing every way in which he is superior to every other human. He is my new role model. At one point he descibes how he weeps every time he thinks about how horrible it must be for everyone else not to be him.
Genius.
And for those who know me, they will understand i have found my master :)

Where next?

One of the advantages of this new job is the opportunity to get to some new countries. For me the 90s were a blur of travel, and 30 or more countries were visisted in next to no time. And then there was a lull, with only Ireland and Denmark added in about 8 years. All that is set to change as i look at my roster for the end of the year... Was talk of going to Russia and far eastern Siberia, but that seems to have been replaced by 3 weeks in Belgium! But i still have weeks planned in Malta and Cyprus which i seem to have missed on my travels, and suddenly a week in the Cape Verde Islands has also appeared on the list. I have no clue where they even are..
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/cape-verde/
Official language is Portuguese so must be somewhere between Lisbon and Rio... Looks like all flights are via Lisbon so can add Portugal to the list too!
Should also be some work coming up with CityJet in Dublin, which will give me a chance to catch up with some old friends. Will be strange going there with the new hat on, but looking forward to it.
Will be good to get stuck into some serious project work again, back to Bodo on Sunday for another week with the very hospitable Norwegians and some more stunning scenery and biting winds!

musings

Sometimes life intrudes on you and you have to seriously consider whether humans are a race worth saving.
There is nothing quite like a talk radio phone in to really attract the lower end of the social scale. Its an emotive subject - why aren't more men committed on rape charges? The UK has the lowest conviction for rape in Europe with something crazy like 3% of reported rapes leading to a jail term for the aggressor. But then there are the worrying stats - we have the highest number of false allegations. What drives someone to accuse someone of one of the worst things you can possibly think of? The stories of men losing everything to clear their name, contrasted with the women who reported an assault and were told by a cheery WPC to have a cup of tea and get over it... Its not just the actions of men that can make womens' lives hell - every false accusation probably leads to a dozen guilty men being presumed innocent "cos she was asking for it... she shouldnt have gone in the house.... she was drunk...".
Banks. They make huge profits, we find out they were all based on tissue paper foundations and the first drop of rain brings down the industry. Lehman Bros move $8bn from their UK arm to their US for 2 reasons last week - first the UK administrators cant touch it, and second so they can PAY BONUSES to the American management. Yes, the same bank that has just been declared the largest bankrupt ever, is paying out over $2bn in corporate bonuses. And the world governments are bailing out the industry. Imagine if you took your year's salary and bought a speedboat, because your mate down the pub told you that in a year's time you could sell it for twice as much. And then in a year no one wanted to buy your speedboat. But you have to pay all your bills. The world would laugh at you and call you a fool for buying a speedboat. You would have to sell your house and be declared bankrupt. So why the hell is the UK government giving the banks over a hundered billion pounds????
Trident. $100bn. Do i need to say any more. I would love to hear a convincing argument for how nuclear missiles defend us from suicidal terrorists...
ID cards... finally the Labour party have started refering to them as a weapon against ID theft and not mentioning the weapon against terrorism angle. I think the idea was that if some mad fanatic hurled himself at you, laden with explosives, anthrax and body odour (an all too familiar sight on Britain's streets) you could show them your ID card and they wouldn't harm you... So now its a weapon against ID theft. Or surely just a new way of stealing IDs??? 30 million fake one pound coins in circulation and i dont know anyone who has one, so these fakers must be good.
Personal freedoms? Nah, who needs them any more? We are fighting so we can give Iraqi citizens a corrupt banking system, id cards and queues at airports.
Did anyone else notice the govt lost their court case the other week over the supposed liquid bombers? The reason we have all these stupid liquid restrictions at airports - that was thrown out when the evidence was actually examined by someone who isnt paid to generate fear and apprehension and make the public more acquiescent... But we still have the restrictions on liquids... Like the x-rays of shoes because one nutter proved that you can not set fire to shoes on an aeroplane... Even when the UK government introduces its eBorders that will be for airlines only to start with. Supposed to make the borders more secure, but the Chunnel and ferries will be exempt for years...

And what does Gordon Brown launch as his save his skin policy? Free theatre tickets for the Under 26s. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7630736.stm
But only to shows that dont sell - the talking point on talk radio seems to be "Bet you cant get tickets for Mamma Mia".
No, oh beloved nation. That is not the point. The point is we are all going to hell in a flaming one wheeled handcart with Satan at the reins and Sarah Palin cackling by his side, guns blazing, oil fires burning... and our Prime Minister wants to give out crap theatre tickets to young people. That will make them put the knives down...