New Blog...

I will keep this place running for a while so that the search engine crawlers can catch up, but the blog has moved...

http://www.rickjoshua.com/loupblog

Enjoy.

Ten Days...

It has been a while... Which says something about how busy I have been. Between work and the last week's excellent time at the War and Peace Show, time has just flown by. It hasn't helped that there have been a glut of news headlines that have been utterly depressing - I have had enough of ranting about this, that and the other every day. Children being beaten to death by their so-called parents. An accident victim being left lying face down in a ditch because the situation was too "dangerous" for the emergency services. A woman who has had a dozen children - all of whom have been removed from her care - demanding another one.

The truth is that a large number of people in this country need a quickly-administered bullet to the back of the skull.

It sounds cruel, but who would really miss these people? Their relatives would mourn for a few minutes I suppose - before going back to their miserable lives sponging off the rest of society.

Take the example of the mother - I use the word "mother" lightly - of the tragic Baby P, who has claimed that life after she emerges from jail "will be one long party". This is a person whose child was abused, beaten and murdered for pity's sake - and yet this miserable piece of shit is looking forward to "getting drunk and having sex". Of course, this will only result in her having another child, who will either be brought up in the same drudgery or spend most of its life in the "care" system, which itself is rotten to the core.

This woman should at the very least be spayed, and in all honesty it would not be too much of a loss to society if she just was made to disappear. What function do such people serve? What is their purpose, beyond the spreading of misery? Are our lives made any richer by their existence? Of course, such people keep the care industry in their jobs. It is in the interest of these career pen-pushing do-gooders to keep the factory operating; after all, why would these people kill the goose that is laying the golden egg?

I may sound cynical, but it does serve to explain why those in this system who do actually care about what they are doing are often accused of "rocking the boat" or called "whistleblowers". It is no different at the top of chain in government, where hundreds of men have been killed in a desert hell hole at the behest of a criminal government that is rich in doctored sound bites but completely lacking in principle and moral fortitude - and those who have sought to expose the scame have been driven to suicide.

It's the ultimate in socialist social engineering: you set up something that is unplanned or inefficient, and then staff if with idiots and jobsworths. When the inevitable hits the fan, you simply employ another layer of idiots to watch the first lot. And so on.

And I said I didn't want to get into a rant. Pfft.

Keep your doors locked and windows up...

Reading the above advice, you'd think you were in the Bronx. Or Peckham. Or some other run-down shithole. But no, this is the advice currently being meted out to all cross-Channel travellers making their way through the port of Calais.

Apparently, the ever-present and seemingly ever-growing army of illegal immigrants camped in the area are resorting to a new trick to raise funds: setting up human roadblocks in order to stop and then rob passing drivers.

Well, I suppose it makes a change from threatening lorry drivers with baseball bats.

It's a good thing that I usually take the Eurotunnel in making my way across to the continent; you are straight into a secure zone from the motorway and back out again, and there are no obvious gathering points for the would-be roadblockers - unless, of course, they want to take their chances with the fast-moving A16 heading out of the terminal. It must be a nightmare for those taking the more leisurely ferry route however, with the threat of a holiday ending before it has even begun - all thanks to a complete lack of any political will to do anything about this problem.

It's like a gaping wound: the politicians either bandage it over in the vain hope that it goes away, or just keep picking at the scabs.

Of course, it just needs one politician with enough conviction to decide that enough is enough, and that people just going about their way shouldn't expect to have their car being placed under siege by marauding bandits out for a free meal ticket. If these people are genuine refugees, then they should be housed in appropriate secure accommodation to await whatever decisions need to be made. If not, they should be carted without ceremony onto the first available aircraft and sent on their merry way back to their country of origin.

As for how to deal with those who might chose to set up human roadblocks with the aim of committing robbery, I'd suggest that the next driver who faces the challenge put his or her foot on the accelerator. But then they'll probably get hauled up for depriving some buck-toothed criminal of his "human rights". Boo.

The world is under threat again...

Erm, yeah.

When I read the rather bizarre headline Police investigate 'Nazi' gnome I thought here we go again - yet another piece on poor old Bernie Ecclestone.

But no.

It turns out the furore is about a garden gnome created for an exhibition by a Nuremberg-based artist, Ottmar Hörl - who maintains that like many other pieces of art the little man with his right arm outstretched is simply a parody designed to mock rather than celebrate the Third Reich.

The Nazi Zwerg. I am actually surprised that nobody has noticed that it looks a little like Eugene Terre'Blanche.

Whether one chooses to believe the artist or not, this is yet another rather boring tale of people getting into a merry flap about this now rather dull issue. If the gnome had been baring his behind or copulating with a ceramic duck, it would have been lauded by the so-called critics as a witty piece of modern irony with a rather twee twist. Or something.

Next!

A quick one...

No news:
Australia: British backpacker Jamie Neale silent as questions about his ordeal grow

How can someone survive for twelve days in such extreme conditions only to emerge looking as bright as a button with a few cuts and bruises? Sounds a bit fishy to me. Before the press start handing this imbecile silly money for selling his story, they should check out every single last detail first.

Bad news:
Pickpockets and bag snatches rise 25 per cent, British Crime Survey shows

I wonder if somebody somewhere will look at the influx of Romanies from Balkan and Eastern Europe and put two and two together... Erm, probably not. It's a damn good thing I don't travel much on the tube, though - I wouldn't put it past one of them to try and pull off the sheep trick.

Good news:
Cherie Blair has suspected swine flu

Couldn't happen to a better person, though we shouldn't be surprised given that she has had her snout buried in the trough from the start. Let's hope that it is the most virulent strain and the pillarbox-mouthed, cat-hating, money-grubbing wicked witch passes it on to her equally odious husband. Ugh!

Farewell Colonel...

It has been a rough last couple of days: on Monday we took Withnail, our portly and furry cat, to the vet after he had been seriously lethargic and had refused to eat for a day. The lethargy was nothing new for he was a fairly large chap and had over the years acquired the demeanour of a crusty old colonel, but the loss of appetite was worrying.

Despite all this, Withnail was still bright-eyed and showed no obvious signs of dehydration; his exaggerated slouch however suggested that he might have been suffering from some sort of joint problem. The vet seemed to agree, but suggested he have a blood test just in case. The injection he was given to relieve the joint pain didn't seem to have much of an effect, but we thought nothing of it until we got a call back later in the day with the news that the blood test had revealed serious abnormalities with his kidneys. Although this was a shock after the initial spot-check diagnosis, we were able to mentally prepare ourselves with the idea of him being put on a special long-term diet after coming home.

The Old Colonel as we will always remember him... Slouching about in the garden.

Withnail was an animal that always defied convention and was something of an unique character. He'd always announce himself with his distinctive chirrup when walking into the living room, would purr loudly in anticipation of being given a cuddle or a morsel of food, and would give us his own unique warning when he walked in soaked by the rain. He even treated the small creatures he caught differently from most other cats: rather than toy with them until they dropped dead of sheer exhaustion, he'd perform what could best be described as extensive surgery - with the mouse or rat looking like one of those cleanly-prepared specimens you'd see sitting on a desk in a biology class. His defying convention at every turn also bamboozled the vets - despite the fact that he would have been in obvious pain, he continued to not show the obvious signs of deterioration.

I am guessing that Withnail was either a doctor or biology teacher in a previous life...

It took an ultrasound scan to confirm what was actually wrong: one of his kidneys had clearly packed up, and what might have been months or even years of living like this had clearly overworked the other one. Most mammals can get by happily with the one kidney, and cats in particular are very good at not showing outward signs of distress until it becomes acute; these factors led to what was in the end a very rapid deterioration. Having been informed of the situation, the vets - and Caroline and I - concluded that there could be only one practical solution.

So we drove to the hospital in Richmond late on the Tuesday night, braving the horrendous London roads and a maniacal search for a petrol station that was still open, to say our final farewell. It was utterly gut-wrenching as Withnail still looked his same old self, purring gently as we both spoke to him. In spite of the vet telling us that we might witness convulsions when that moment came, the old colonel remained calm to the last and passed away quietly.

A striking shot of the Colonel, sitting proudly like a tiger in the long grass.

We buried the old chap yesterday in the garden; it was so sudden that I am still half-expecting him to come blundering in through the cat flap either in search of a drop of tuna juice or carrying half a dead pigeon for our perusal. I am convinced that should any other cat head towards the nearby plants to do its business, they will get that uncompromising glare and protracted hiss.

RIP Colonel.

Incapability Brown...

You've just got to love this Government of ours - what a bloody shower they are. Unwanted wars, financial fiddling, the rebranding of Peter Mandelson, the constant stream of lies... And now what looks like a full-on war with the Army top brass over Afghanistan.

For having the temerity to question Government policy regarding both funding and troop numbers in Afghanistan, chief of Army general staff Sir Richard Dannatt has been roundly turned on by these scowling apparatchiks, and accused of playing a "high-risk game" by daring to step out of line. As if these morally bankrupt imbeciles would know anything about risk - unless, of course, they are talking about gambling with billions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

They are beneath contempt, and if the Labour Party are condemned to a thousand years in the political wilderness I wouldn't shed a tear. They are hypocrites, the entire lot of them - from Gordon Brown right down to his lowest-ranked horned minion.

One the many foul little minions is one David Crausby MP, who offered the following:

"It is not appropriate to play party politics at this time. Dannatt should just get on with the job. After the conflict, if there are lessons to be learnt, we should do so in a considered manner."

After the conflict? This moron is having a laugh, isn't he? After the conflict? What, after the troops are finally withdrawn after suffering unnecessary losses due a lack of manpower, supplies and equipment? Just who is this David Crausby anyway? Is he a man with an experience of the military or military life? Someone who knows about putting his neck on the line? Er, no. Just some former trade union hack and local councillor. A pencil-necked apparatchik.

It gets worse when one has a look at the background of the man who currently holds the position of Secretary of State for Defence - former union boss Bob Ainsworth, a one-time candidate for the International Marxist Group.

Big in the 1980s, the IMG was a rag-tag bunch of anti-imperialists, pro-Soviet, pro-IRA types, the sort of pondlife that would not exactly be well disposed towards the Armed Forces. This is the same Bob Ainsworth who, in response to a Tory MP's complaint about soldiers receiving shoddy equipment in early 2008, uttered "absolute bollocks" - a statement that was initally recorded by Hansard but subsequently scratched from the record at the suggestion of the former Speaker Michael Martin.

A better life for hardworking families, Mr Ainsworth? What a load of absolute bollocks. Grow that moustache a bit and do a little more with your hair, and you can even get to look like your hero Uncle Joe.

Of course, we all know about Michael Martin - he of the expenses scandal and the perhaps even more scandalous involvement in the unwarranted arrest of Tory MP Damian Green. I wonder what other things the man known as "Gorbals Mick" might have brushed under the carpet before scurrying off in a huff to his little hole.

Dirty secrets and even dirtier lies, cover-ups, expense fidding, political skullduggery, politically-correct kowtowing - this lot have seen and done it all. When you throw into the mix the ceaseless stream of mind-bending spin and the sort of feeble excuses one would expect a six-year old child to have grown out of, you really want to put them against a wall and shoot them.

Though hopefully matters might be taken out of our hands, for according to one report, a strain of the infamous swine flu has reached Downing Street. Whether this is yet another attempt at spin to garner sympathy - it's not just you who are at risk, silly British public, it's us as well - we all know that if Incapability Brown and his crowd were to go down with the lurgy they'd be given the best possible care at our expense, and not placed in some MRSA-ridden dump staffed by auxiliaries from God-knows-where who scratch their behinds, don't wash their hands because water offends their religion and cannot even speak English.

Of course, we could always pack the One-eyed Scottish Idiot™ and his buddies off to a field hospital in Helmand Province so they can see what the Army have to cope with. Now that would be a vote-winner.

When Gordon met Gaddafi...

I laugh every time I see an image of Gordon Brown - who often looks as though he is going to catch and kill a fly - though not as impressively as Barack Obama. Then there is Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, who looks more like a cartoon caricature every day.

Imagine, then, the sight of these two in one photo taken at the G8 summit in Italy....

A true meeting of minds. Tweedledum and Tweedledumber...

You've just got to love Gaddafi's oversized "Africa" brooch and the stick on medal ribbons... I want one of those! Though I am not so keen on what looks like a chiffon dressing gown last seen being worn by one of his harem in Tripoli.

At least Gaddafi is true to his Bedouin principles, though: rather than stay in some opulent hotel he has decided to ship over a tent...

The Ecclestone Saga...

...rumbles on.

As is usually the case whenever somebody says something even remotely controversial - no, scratch that, whenever somebody says something the bleaters don't like - the perpetrator often feels the need to respond to the browbeating by indulging in some sort of apology.

More often than not these follow-ups change nothing; for those who agreed in the first place it is little more than an elaboration, and for the detractors it is the perfect opportunity to suggest that an already deep hole is being dug further still. And so it is with Bernie Ecclestone in the Times today.

In a piece with the unmistakably unambiguous title I was a fool to talk about admiring Hitler, Ecclestone embarks on a mixture of explanation and apology - which sounds perfectly reasonable and measured to most of us but constitutes yet another wave of the red rag to those hell bent on plotting his destruction. It is quite clear what Ecclestone means when he writes that "it is what I said - but it was not what I meant to say" - but this means nothing to those whose very mission it is to twist things out of context, put their own spin on things and deliver the dogs dinner result of their journalistic endeavours to the masses.

The "Hitler" angle of course detracts from all of the very reasonable points that Ecclestone puts forward - namely, that politicians are so obsessed with compromise and making an impression that they continually miss the point of what they are there to do - serve the people. The trouble is that hard, principled politics always has its victims; political compromise on the other hand prides itself on its trying to please everyone. What the mainstream politicians fail to see however is their playing to the gallery actually helps nobody. Well, perhaps nobody but themselves. Ecclestone writes,

"They [politicians] are like doctors faced with patients suffering from a serious disease. Instead of telling them what is really wrong, they give them a course of tablets and send them away. I don’t blame the politicians; it’s the system we’ve created."

It's the same the whole world over. We'd let someone die a slow and miserable death rather than upset them. We'd hide the truth in case it might cause offence. We'd refuse to be straight with someone and put them in their place because they might run away blubbing to their mummy or some good-for-nothing journalist with nothing better to do.

This warped social mindset has done much to shape how we live our daily lives: we cannot say anything just in case it upsets somebody else, there is little or no sense of personal responsibility, criminals are treated with kid gloves, someone or something else is always to blame, and politicians are more concerned with dead pop stars than what they have been elected to do. Politics has become less about adhering to a principle than playing silly buggers in trying to look good in front of everyone who yaps in their general direction. It reminds me of one of Aesop's lesser-known fables:

In the old days, when men were allowed to have many wives, a middle-aged Man had one wife that was old and one that was young; each loved him very much, and desired to see him like herself. Now the Man's hair was turning grey, which the young Wife did not like, as it made him look too old for her husband. So every night she used to comb his hair and pick out the white ones. But the elder Wife saw her husband growing grey with great pleasure, for she did not like to be mistaken for his mother. So every morning she used to arrange his hair and pick out as many of the black ones as she could. The consequence was the Man soon found himself entirely bald.

Moral: Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

We can say something similar about the various positions adopted by the mainstream politicians in Britain today: we have to look good for the gays. We have to look good for the Muslims. We have to look good for the Jews. We have to look good for the British people. Result: you look good in front of nobody.

Of course, this is why there is little difference between the Labour and Conservative parties - bar the few so-called mavericks and loose cannons that still can be found dying of old age on the back benches. Actual policies are never discussed, and politics has become a silly game that can rightly be called Our spin-doctors and hairstylists are better than yours, We are more gay-friendly than you, or something equally inane.

Since when have we seen a politician take on a challenge and stick to his or her guns? And when things have gone to pot - as they occasionally do - have we seen anyone stand up and offer an apology that hasn't smacked of blatant insincerity?

I am sure that we would all rather see politicians that are bold and principled in their approach to the objectives, but humble and honest in the face of criticism and adversity. Maybe Bernie Ecclestone is right. Perhaps Max Mosley would make a good Prime Minister.

When a molehill is turned into a mountain...

Well, it appears that there is no let-up in the press assault against Bernie Ecclestone following his interviewer where perhaps foolishly failed to condemn the likes of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein in a manner acceptable to certain parties.

It's all rather ridiculous really - rather than read the comments for what they are, the career moaners are finding various ways of keeping this one running - even though the fuel ran out of the tank long ago. In an article in today's Times, Libby Purves writes:

"Cue general outrage at this blithe explanation of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust, accompanied by lesser outrage at the idea of Saddam as a strong, wise ruler rather than a murderous, hostage-taking, neighbour-invading chemical-weapon freak. Whatever you think of our Iraq war — I was against it - the idea of Saddam as a model leader is as breathtaking as casting Hitler as a patsy, too easily led..."

(Libby Purves, "Preening populism has put us off democracy", The Times, 6 July 2009)

First, I don't think Ecclestone's comments were in any way "blithe". If anything, they were well-considered. Further, at no point did Ecclestone suggest that Saddam was a "wise ruler"; he simply stated the clear-as-day fact that his leadership was best for that country. Just a bit of a difference there. One can argue that the point doesn't really need to be made, for any moron can see that Iraq circa 1990 was a far better place than the shambles it is today. But oh, no - you surely cannot say that... For you would be defending a dictator.

The truth is the truth is the truth. Everything else is political bluster and propaganda - including terms like "murderous, hostage-taking, neighbour-invading chemical-weapon freak". You have to wonder where these journalists get their lines from. And no, I am not talking about the lines these meedja types can be seen shoving up their snouts.

As for Hitler being a "patsy", Ecclestone didn't say that either. He merely suggested that he - for one reason or another - fell away from the path of responsible leadership. Now this may come as something of a revelation for some, but as I said on Saturday Adolf Hitler was far from being a "hands-on" leader. He was remote, aloof, and up to his neck in his own obsessions, which ranged from dog-walking and architecture through the evening viewings of King Kong and paint-drying monologues. The mundane act of government bored him rigid, and while he pored over scale models of Berlin the real work was being undertaken by the likes of Goebbels, Bormann and Himmler. You just need to read Hitler's own Table Talk or, better still, the excellent book by Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.

It's a shame that Libby Purves has to make it a point show that she is singing from the same hymnsheet as the haters, for the rest of her article is pretty much on the mark - particularly when she lambasts the mainstream political elite for arguing which of their two parties are the most gay-friendly (as if anybody really cares) or Gordon Brown's rather painful statement concerning the recently-departed Michael Jackson.

Of course, the mere mention of Hitler in any sense other than the comedic or pejorative brings vast numbers of people out in a rash, such as the Board of German Jews, who have called for a boycott of Formula 1. It's all rather silly.

Talking of things silly, there is nothing sillier than than the current obsession we have with "Health and Safety" - for that, read treating the public like children or imbeciles. Or both. In an excellent article appropriately titled "Health and safety fears are making Britain a safe place for extremely stupid people", London Mayor Boris Johnson rips into these nanny-state nincompoops with his usual rapier-like thrusts of wit.

Elf and Sayftee. Silly.

One bit in particular made me laugh:

"It was some years ago that my daughter and I first became aware of their achievements. We were exploring the magical cliff-top castle of Tintagel and we came across a sign on the edge of the cliff. It was expensively hand‑painted and about 1ft high. It said: "Edge of cliff". As a statement of the plonkingly obvious, it could have been bettered only if there had been another sign with a vertical arrow saying "Sky". We laughed so much we almost fell off."

Funny in itself, but more so given the fact that when Caroline and I were in France recently - walking around the fortress town of Montreuil-sur-Mer - we noted the wonderfully unfenced cliff edge. Families with well-behaved children were happily walking around the area, and one could see no real reason for spoiling the view.

Maybe we should remove all of the silly signs from cliff faces and dangerous places; the results would no doubt aid what could be happily described as natural selection. And rather than wasting time and energy protecting stupid people, we should be encouraging them to do what they do best.