The Port of Dover to be sold to the French

If any proof were needed that this country is bankrupt, the papers are publicising that

"The Port of Dover is being recommended by Government advisers for sale to the French authorities.
It is one of a string of public assets which have been earmarked for privatisation as the Government battles with a record £830billion national debt."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249194/Dover-symbol-British-sovereignty-sold-French-help-reduce-debt.html#ixzz0exQgRYId

However, if you dig deeper, it seems that this is part of a bigger plan to carve Britain up into a number of regions, one of which is to be called "Arc Manche" 

Here's a link to the Arc Manche site

http://www.arcmanche.com/en/the-arc-manche/presentation/

"Arc Manche is a geographical area made up of the British and French territories bordering or in the English Channel. Since 2003 the Arc Manche has also become a political project resting on an informal and voluntary network of local authorities who can use the network to share best practices, coordinate initiatives and pull together project ideas to draw in EU funding,
In October 2005 the Arc Manche Assembly was created to improve the visibility of the network."

Informal & voluntary eh? What doublespeak! What happened to British sovereignity?

 

Please check out this UKIP site for more information

http://www.ukipwsx.org/?EU_Regions:Arc_Manche

Wake up England. The invaders are at the gates!

Get over it

Grumpyoldtwat has produced some posters in response to the increasingly strident Stonewall organisation.
Go to this site for more
http://grumpyoldtwat.blogspot.com/2010/02/gobby-gayers.html

English Speaking Driver

I don't normally read the Express, so I wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't called by the BigBrotherWatch site
Here's the link to the Express article
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/155892/Race-row-over-taxi-drivers-flying-the-flag


It seems that a group of English speaking taxi drivers have been told to remove a badge from their taxis. It's a St George's Cross emblazoned with the slogan "English speaking driver". The local council have declared it racist.
Excuse me, but surely the local council, who licence the taxis should be making it a condition that speaking English should be a must?


Or have I got it wrong?


Thanks to Big Brother Watch. Highly recommended site
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2010/02/taxi-drivers-ordered-to-remove-the-cross-of-st-george-from-their-cabs.html#comments

Heads they win, tails we lose

This article in the Daily Politics. com website caught my eye.
http://www.the-daily-politics.com/component/content/article/56-environment/169-un-climate-change-canute-policy-still-on-the-table

"Goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialized nations are a step forward but not enough to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by midcentury, U.N. officials said Monday. Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's top climate adviser, said the goals, submitted to the U.N. as part of a voluntary plan to roll back emissions, make it highly unlikely the world can prevent temperatures from rising above the target set at the Copenhagen climate conference in December."



Here's my comment that I posted-
It's increasingly likely that we are entering another "Dalton Minimum", when minimal sunspots coincide with greatly reduced temperatures. Should this indeed be true, then all the emissions controls that are proposed will be useless. If anything we ought to be looking at ways to keep the temperature up.
Of course, if we have another cold period lasting decades, then the IPCC will claim the credit for averting Global Warming. And we will have paid dearly, some of us with our lives.

Sunspots and climate

I've been following the Wattsupwiththat.com blog for a year or so and have read the various posts regarding the climate. As you are aware I'm a climate skeptic. The climate is changing but I don't believe that it's down to the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere. The more people shout that the science is settled , the more I dig my heels in. It's too simplistic, and the time scale is too short.
I read a lot of history and this week I read about Eric the Red, who discovered Greenland and established a colony there that included a church that was part of the Bishop of Hamburg's diocese. They were able to live there for a couple of hundred years until it got too cold. Why did he name it Greenland? Because it was green when he discovered it.


The climate scientists are happy to discount stories like this. They conveniently ignore the well documented fact that there used to be ice fairs held on the frozen Thames in London in the 17th and 18th century. There have been warm period and cold periods in the past 2000 years of recorded history.
The earth's climate is controlled by the sun. That should be obvious. The planets that are closer to the sun are too hot for human life, and those further out are too cold. Everyone knows that.
The sun from time to time shows sunspots on the surface. Astronomers have photographed them and shown huge solar flares that sent heat and radiation deep into space.
Scientists and astronomers have been studying the sun for centuries, observing sunspot activity. It just happens that the times when sunspot activity was at a minimum coincide with below normal temperatures.
The Dalton Minimum, according to Wikipedia

The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named for the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.^[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over 20 years.^[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum.



Then there's the Maunder minimum


The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum",^[1] when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. Astronomers before Eddy had also named the period after the solar astronomer Edward W. Maunder (1851–1928) who studied how sunspot latitudes changed with time.^[2] The periods he examined included the second half of the 17th century. Edward Maunder published two papers in 1890 and 1894, and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer. The Maunder Minimum's duration was derived from Spörer's work. Like the Dalton Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 spots in modern times.

So it can be shown that low sunspot activity coincides with low global temperatures. So what about the current cold weather? It's too early to say with certainty, but sunspot activity has been very low for the last few years. If we are indeed at the start of a new minimum period that could continue for many years yet.
As I've blogged repeatedly, we have more to fear from the cold than from the warm. We may yet find ourselves huddled around our gas guzzling cars trying to warm ourselves on the exhaust fumes.

I found this interesting link
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Solar_Cycles_24_and_25_and_Predicted_Climate_Response_22nd_October.pdf

It's titled " Solar Cycles 24 and 25 and Predicted Climate Response", and sets out all the relevant study of the effects of sunspot activity. It's a pity that the IPCC and the other warmists didn't read it before making their outlandish and alarmist fables about melting glaciers and drowning polar bears. If it gets as cold as it did in the 17th and 18th centuries, we'll be chasing them away from our rubbish bins, as they walked all the way from the artic on the ice cap.

It's funny what you find on the HM Government's website. Evidence that contradicts the government's own claims about global warming!

Democracy, the least worst option

I got back from the cancer clinic to catch a glimpse of Mad Gordon trying to justify a change in the "first past the post" voting system that we currently use. If anything reeks of a desperate measure to stay in power, this is it. I heard the boss of the Electoral Reform Society say that the problem with the current system is that the person who gets the most votes can also be the least popular, a statement that sounds contradictory. His view is that the candidate with 40% of the vote actually has 60% of the electorate against him. We are however, discussing popularity, and the most popular newspaper or soap opera or chocolate bar all share the fact that more people voted for other choices than the most popular.
Can this version of democracy be changed for the better? The problem is falling turnout. A significant percentage of people don't turn out on polling day. They say they don't/won't vote because it only encourages them (the politicians). Many local elections have a turnout of less than 50%, which means that the combined total of votes cast is still a minority, thereby reinforcing the Electoral Reform Society's viewpoint.


I've thought long and hard about this and have come to the conclusion that if the turnout decreases through voter apathy, we'll end up with a comitted minority going to the polls and electing an extremist government by default, because the majority of the electorate didn't or wouldn't vote. And that would be dangerous for everyone. So how can the turnout be increased?


My limited knowledge of world affairs nags away at me. Is voting compulsory in some countries? I don't mean the so-called democracies where a dictator stands unopposed, but countries like Australia.
My system would involve both compulsion and choice. Firstly, the right to a free vote is precious and must never be lost, therefore make it compulsory for every UK citizen of voting age. This is obligatory and a condition of UK citizenship.
Then add the element of choice. There are lots of them, that's why they're called choice. My favourite would be to abolish political parties and have every candidate stand as in Independent. The candidate would then have to be someone well known to the electorate, thereby ensuring that local interests are put before party lines.
Anyway, let's say that the political parties are retained and the names are put on the ballot paper, along with one extra box marked "NONE OF THE ABOVE". Each voter must tick one box. The extra option can be used as a protest vote where instead of the customary practice of voting against a candidate by voting for a rival.
The votes are counted. It's still "first past the post".  If the "None of the above" candidate scores the highest number of votes, then  the election must be retaken, perhaps with different candidates.


I can see a hundred reasons why a system like this would be unpopular with the political parties,which is why it won't happen, but it is democratic. I'm as sick of our politicians as the next man, but if we are to retain democracy as the least worst option, something must be done, or else we'll see ever more extreme polticians elected with ever decreasing majorities.


What about the problem of elections being declared null and void? That's the price of democracy, and the art of politics is to get people with differing viewpoints to agree on something. The current political system gives the real power to the unelected government officers. In local politics, the council officers make the decisions and the councillors tweak them before rubber stamping them. If the council wishes to build a house, the councillor can choose the curtains and the colour of the front door and no more. He can't choose not to build the house, or build it somewhere else, or build more or less. This is not democracy, but that's how it is, because the electorate aren't encouraged or compelled to contribute any more.


I've read of lot of books and enjoy the speculative and prophetic fiction of authors like Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein ( The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an excellent political what-if book), George Orwell and others.


Brown's proposal is crazy, an act of a desperate man looking for allies in the Liberal Democrat party. Like everything he devises, from tax credits onwards, it's badly thought out and impossible to implement. In short, it's rubbish and will only hasten the demise of the current system. Maybe that's the long term plan?

Quote of the day

"Libertarians are so often portrayed as cruel and heartless, but nothing could be more wrong. We believe in people. We trust them. The statists of right and left do not. They see humans as fundamentally evil; to be controlled at all costs. We see evidence everywhere (despite the odious exceptions on whom they focus) of humanity's essential goodness."

Can I recommend this blogger to you?
http://lastditch.typepad.com/lastditch/

Been robbed or mugged recently? Don't call the Police until after April 5th

You really couldn't make this up. Inspector Gadget has blogged this-
"
In a conversation which I recorded on my mobile for a “rainy day”, and a “blanket” email which I have kept to show HMIC, we have been told that the proactive teams are to come back into Jack Straws warmth, and start clearing up any outstanding crime reports.
They must not, under any circumstances, get out on the street and find any more crime. Not until the next financial year anyway. All their accumulated leave (and there is lots of it being as we don’t pay overtime any more) is to be taken between now and April. It’s best to have them out-of-the-way, they just cant be trusted to stay indoors......

Please visit Inspector Gadget's blog for the rest of the article.

Never let them forget it

I'm an ordinary civilian member of society. A citizen if you like. I've lived a long time and can remember the days of Dixon of Dock Green. In those days we had a Police Force. These days we have a Police Service.
One of the strange inconsistencies is that when we had a Police Force, the Police never had to resort to using it. Now we have a Police service and increasingly they do.
I can remember when the local constable was local. He lived locally and knew everyone on his beat. He had the unwritten permission from my parents to dole out such punishment as he saw fit, in order to keep me from straying from minor to more serious transgressions.
These days any policepersons who live near me work somewhere else in the county. They work a shift pattern which means that their involvement in the community they police ends when they clock off. They have been increasingly politicised over the years and are now target driven.
I recommend Inspector Gadget's blogsite to anyone in doubt at the ludicrous targets they have to work to.
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/


Lest we forget, the modern Police force was set up by Sir Robert Peel. He set out his "Peelian Principles" and they are set out below. I have highlighted point 9, because it has been all but forgotten in the chase to meet Home Office targets.

Principles of policing

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

By the rivers of Babylon

I've had this recurring dream for the last seven or eight years. I think it was triggered by Chancellor Brown's statement that presonal indebtedness was beginning to be a concern, yet we must all continue spending in order to maintain economic growth.

I kept waking up having dreamed that the media were announcing the takeover of UK Plc and that all moneys owed were to be repaid immediately.
What would happen if all the people who we owed money to demanded instant repayment?
At that time I was a Bible student and couldn't help notice parallels between Old Testament Israel and modern day UK.

The nations we defeated all those years ago have long memories. Their revenge will be served cold. It will be brutal.
This once fine nation is being looted of all its treasures. Once they have all gone, what will happen to the people?
As Boney M once sang
"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion."
A paraphrase of Psalm 137.

Double standards?

Two recent reports in the papers made me sit up and ask what is going on.
The first concerns Dr Andrew Wakefield, a long time critic of the MMR vaccination programme.

"Andrew Wakefield, who first linked the triple jab to autism and bowel problems, acted ‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’ when publicising his research, the General Medical Council ruled yesterday.
Its verdict at the end of the longest and most expensive hearing in its 148-year history was supposed to draw a line under the 12-year saga provoked by his study of 12 autistic children published in the Lancet.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246775/Doctor-centre-MMR-row-Andrew-Wakefield-faces-struck-GMC-ruling.html#ixzz0eCBWs6D2

The second concerns a GP, Dr Jane Barton.

"Grieving families reacted with horror yesterday as a doctor who gave lethal cocktails of drugs to 12 elderly patients 'to keep them quiet' was allowed to carry on working.
Relatives of the dead pensioners walked out in disgust as GP Jane Barton escaped being struck off the medical register despite being found guilty of serious professional misconduct by a General Medical Council panel."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247000/Dr-Jane-Barton-escapes-struck-prescribing-potentially-hazardous-levels-drugs.html#ixzz0eCBtGmtT

It does make one wonder. One expressed doubts about a vaccine and has been silenced. The other made decisions that contributed to the deaths of many pensioners and is allowed to continue working.

I've always had my doubts about the GMC. It's body of professionals that polices itself. A bit like Parliament (except for the professional qualifications). Play the game and you're invulnerable. Rock the boat and you're out. 

Is this the future for us all?

Aside from that, there is evidence that we are but a few years away from euthanasia. Voluntary of course. But voluntary soon becomes obligatory. How long before we hear the whispers that old age pensioners are costing us too much money, are blocking beds in the hospitals, are stopping unemployed families from living in nice houses, are using valuable resources, etc etc?

Here's an interesting post on Biased BBC that reinforces my misgivings
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/01/have-mercy.html

"See that the BBC is pushing the merits of "mercy killings". A poll for Panorama seeks to inform us that almost three quarters of respondents would support assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The liberal BBC agenda has been a fervent advocate of the death cult of assisted suicide and this Panorama poll is but the most recent manifestation of it. I do appreciate the sensitivities surrounding this issue and the great pain people go through, including the families of the person with the terminal illness but I have to say that the BBC persistently pushes just ONE side of this debate, as it chooses death."

GIGO

GIGO is an acronym, meaning "garbage in, garbage out". It was the first thing taught to me when I started using computers back in the middle of the last century.
It is the first law of computing. A computer is, after all, only an adding machine. if you input incorrect data, you get a wrong answer. As the meerkat says- simples.


The recent bad weather and the global warming fiasco has hammered the point home.
This is the BBC's description of the Met Office's new supercomputer
"The computer is about the size of two football pitches and can make about 750 trillion calculations a second - equivalent to 100,000 PCs."

Yes but- if you feed duff data in, you'll always get duff answers. Remember the first rule?

All these computer models are doubly or even triply flawed.
1. If you devise a computer model according to your specifications, the results will be in line with your model. So, if you believe that global warming is happening, you will devise a model to reflect your views/beliefs, and no matter what data you feed in, the answer will come out the way you programmed it.
2. If you filter the data to take out any anomalies before inputting it, the result will be flawed.
3. If you then publish your results (in the form of a weather forecast) and it's wrong, people will get upset.

And it doesn't matter how big your computer is. Garbage in, garbage out, remember?

Believe in God- instantly

 I saw this on Dizzy's site. Priceless!

HowManyOfMe dot com

Go to www.howmanyofme.com and find out who shares your name (in the USA). I checked and there are five David Clemo's in the US!
I think one's quite enough thank you.

The dam is cracking

Andrew Neil is at it again. A few weeks after he savaged the head of the Met Office for their lousy weather forecasting on his lunchtime TV show, he's blogging on the BBC website that the global warming dam is cracking.
You can read it here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html


Copenhagen was about money. The distribution of my money to so-called poor countries to combat so called global warming. It is and never was about saving the planet. The UK even has a "climate change" minister to massage the collective guilt of the population and to carry the bag of loot. The chief conspirators in the scam are the BBC, who have bought into it lock stock and barrel; the Met Office, who publish doom laden forecasts that cannot possibly be backed by science, and provide short term forecasts that cannot predict snow in winter, or sun in summer. The boss of the Met Office used to head up the third party in this conspiracy, namely the World Wildlife Fund. It was their report on the Amazon that the IPCC used and subsequentky had to retract, and the was the WWF report on the Himalayan glaciers that was found to be pure speculation. For more about the WWF and AGW read this
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/25/the-wwf-and-the-epa-endangerment-finding/


A few brave voices are beginning to be heard above the roar of the mob. The science is not proved. I believe that the climate is changing. I believe that it is constantly changing. I don't believe for one second that cherry picking a few stats gathered over a quarter of a century can be used to predict what will happen to the climate a century from today. I don't believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming. A great many wiser, better educated and more qualified people agree with me.
So why are the governments of the world so obsessed with AGW?
They gotta have a bogeyman. Once it was the reds under the beds, then it was Alky Ada, now it's global warming.
Their weapons of control are fear and guilt. We supply their weapons. We fear and we feel guilty and they use those weapons to keep us under control.
If I don't feel guilty and I don't feel scared what power do they have over me?
Life or death?
I have leukaemia. My treatment means that my immunity to infection is shot to pieces. I'm not going to spend what remains of my life cowering in a bunker at some preceived threat, or shivering in an unheated house through choice.


In the meantime, let's be glad that some voices of sanity are beginning to be heard. Please check out Andrew Neil's blog
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html

Joe Dolce

One of my Facebook friends announced that she's now a friend of Joe Dolce, so I became one too. Ten or more years ago I was so sick of the Princess Diana funeral moneymaking rip-off, that I speculated what if.....
Not for me the conspiracy theories concerning her death. Oh no. What interested me was the conspiracy theory concerning her funeral.
Dying young isn't a bad career move. Look at what it's done for Michael Jackson. Or Elvis. Or Freddie Mercury. Or John Lennon. I mean, if Lennon was still alive, we wouldn't have to put up with bloody "Imagine" in every popular music poll, with Bohemian bloody Rhapsody at number 2.
No, dying young can help you sell an awful lot of records.
So, no sooner had Diana's body been brought back to England when they began sorting out her funeral. And it seemed that everyone knew that her favourite song was candle in the bloody wind, a song that dates from when she was a little girl.
Her favourite song was "Candle in the wind".
Really? I mean, they didn't just make that up did they?

What if.....?
What if her favourite song was Joe Dolce's classic "Shaddup ya face"? Can you imagine Joe with his mandolin in the Abbey, regaling the great and good with the immortal lines
"What's a matter you, hey?
Got no respect hey?
Whatta you thinka you do?
Why you look so sad?
It's not so bad
It's a nice place
Ah shaddup ya face!"

And yes you can play it at my funeral.





And here's Samuel L Jackson's version

How politics works

Dizzy has an easy to understand chart to explain how politics works. You can find his original post here.
http://dizzythinks.net/2010/01/how-politics-works-and-why-people-hate.html

And here's the chart.

SETI and the digital revolution

Dr Frank Drake founded the SETI unit more than fifty years ago. (SETI= Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) They basically point radio telescopes at the sky in the hope of hearing something that sounds artificial (I almost said man made!) You may recall that Jody Foster made a film called Contact based on their work.

There's an article in the Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245970/The-digital-revolution-making-Earth-harder-detect-inquisitive-aliens-worlds-leading-ET-hunter-says.html

And it reports that Dr Frank is concerned that the digital age is making it more difficult for aliens to hear us. Why? because the digital signals sound like noise. This is how the Mail reports it
"To a race of observing aliens, digital TV signals would look like noise, said Dr Drake


Correct me if I'm wrong but.....
We're looking for an alien civilisation. As advanced or more advanced than our own. And we're scanning the skies listening for analogue signals?


We've spent fifty years listening for for a message from space in a format that is now officially obsolete on Earth. From an equally or more advanced Civilisation?

Two halves of a pantomime horse

I hate Gordon Brown's government. I hate everything about it. When the Prime Minister's face is on TV I have to switch over. It's genuinely scary, specially when he smiles. Did he start his career at the Hammer House of Horror? I hate blinky Balls and his wife. I hate their hypocrisy and downright thieving ways. I hate the fact that there's not one member of the present government that's ever done a proper job. Robert Heinlein wrote that there are only three types of people-
Makers, Takers & Fakers.
Our soon to be ex-government consists of Takers & Fakers.

The other lot, the Tories, are almost as bad. They will get votes in because people fancy a change from being kicked by someone with a red rosette. They will now be kicked by someone sporting a blue one.
Callmedave and Boygeorge are trying to win by PR. By being nice. By airbrushed posters in lieu of solid policy. It's not enough.
The Tories and NuLiebor are two sides of a debased coin.
And Callmedave and Boygeorge are two halves of a pantomime horse.

Don't you just love those TV evangelists

Many of you will know that I worked as a Christian worship leader and singer/songwriter until about five years ago. For about ten years I played every kind of church, plus open air events, festivals, conferences and prisons up and down the country. I appeared on Christian TV with my wife Sue and we also made a number of appearances on BBC and Christian radio stations. I guess you can say that I met people from every part of the Christian faith spectrum. I worked with worship leaders and preachers from every denomination and I heard every version of the gospel (with perhaps the exception of the snake cult).
The end result of all this was burnout and spiritual confusion. I heard contradictory statements based on the same passage in the Bible. I was asked to sign up to beliefs that were frankly unbelieveable. I made many observations over the years. One was this- the more "spiritual" the church claimed to be, the less willing they were to get their hands dirty.
I also learned that knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
And I heard some absolute tosh preached in the name of God.

Which brings me on to Pat Robertson. If you have satellite TV you can probably tune in to his show "the 700 Club" which is broadcast on his TV channel TBN every day.

On the January 13, 2010 broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson blamed Haiti’s 1791
Slave rebellion for the Haitian Earthquake of January 12 2010, telling viewers:
"... something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the French, true story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor." He went on to state:
"That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come. But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable."
Apart from the fact that the rebellion took place four years before Napoleon III was born, isn't this just utter rubbish?
At least he is being consistent.
On his November 10, 2005 broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson told citizens of Dover Pennsylvania that they had rejected God by voting out of office all seven members of the school board who support intelligent design.
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city", Robertson said on his broadcast.
"And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because He might not be there."
In a written statement, Robertson later clarified his comments:
"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in His eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

In 1999 Robertson said Scotland was "a dark land" overrun by homosexuals. This caused the Bank of Scotland to drop plans for a business operation with him. Many Scottish customers were unhappy that their bank should do business with him.

I found all this out on Wiki, so take your objections up with them please.
It just shows that radical Islamic preachers aren't the only ones stirring up controversy

iziggy & Some Wierd Sinners

My son Chris is away in Blackpool at a music industry convention drumming up business for his Iggy Pop tribute show.
Here's the short showreel they produced. As you can see and hear, they've put a lot of work into the project.

Jesus and Mo

Can I recommend Jesus and Mo to you? Here's the link, or hit the title to this post.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/

Jesus and Mo share a house and drink at the local pub where various theological debates are aired. It's a very clever and funny way of bringing out the differences between Christianity and Islam, and where their views coincide. Here's today's post.

Free will

A facebook friend commented today
"How can God give us free-will AND the threat of Hell? Paradox!"

I replied
"God gives you free will- and then condemns you to hell if you use it...."

Those who know me will know that I used to dabble in theology until I realised that people believed what they want to believe. How else can one reconcile the added extras that the various Christian denominations insist on? Protestants are divided into those who believe that God chose who He is to save before they were born (predestination)and those who don't. Then there is the thorny issue of what happens when believers leave the church. Some will point to their Bibles and insist that it says "once saved, always saved", while others say that if a person leaves the church he has fallen away from the faith and is condemned to hell.
So you can see why I no longer preach or indulge in theology. People believe what they want to believe. How else can one explain the green movement?
It all comes down to choice. I choose to believe that Jesus died for my sins. I choose to believe Him when he says that all who call on His name will be saved.
I choose not to believe anything any of the mainstream churches try to add to my simple belief. It's a matter of choice. My choice.

I found this quote on another website, regarding the difference between the "Common Sense" and "Pragmatism" schools of philosophy. Here's the link
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/01/common_sense_ve.html

"For choice is neither predetermined (for that is no choice) or random chance (for that is no choice either) - choice is what it is, neither predetermined or chance. Choice is choice." 19th Century philosopher Thomas Reid

Geert Wilders defence speech

Geert Wilders is on trial in Holland for defaming Islam. The Apostle Paul once wrote "Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?".
Islam is a dangerous religion. It is not a religion of peace, despite what they say. It is anti-women, anti-gay, anti-Jew and anti-Christian.
Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who made a film that dared to speak these truths. he is now on trial.
I urge you to watch this film. He speaks in dutch, but there are subtitles.

Dave on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_c0y9A0g44

Why you should vote UKIP

Here's a youtube video of Euro MP Geoffrey Bloom expressing in 90 seconds what we all feel about the global warming scam. Please note the cheering at the end.

Callmedave is firmly in the pocket of the globalwarming scammers. So are Labour. If you want to see a change in the way our once magnificent country is run, then I see no alternative but to vote UKIP this year. Our MP Philip Hollobone is a good honest man, one of the very few. Douglas Carswell and John Redwood seem decent enough as well. I'm sick of spin. I'm sick of political parties being led and run as if they were PR and advertising agencies.
We can't go on like this.

Make you own David Cameron poster

This is brilliant. Make your own David Cameron Poster
http://www.andybarefoot.com/politics/cameron.php

The Daily Mash rocks!

From the Daily Mash
"Fears were growing today that chocolate buttons are inevitably going to end up tasting like shit.
People across the UK have begun hoarding their favourite sweets after Mr and Mrs Cadbury, the owners of Cadbury's Lovely Olde Chocolatey Shoppe, were bought out by Kraft, the US-based fabricated cheese and industrial bleaching conglomerate."
Read on
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/will-chocolate-buttons-taste-like-shit?-asks-britain-201001192389/

NSFW but funny

Why focussing on customer satisfaction won't work

Over in Ruralshire, Inspector Gadget today posted on the subject of complaints about the Police. His bosses demand a 75% success rate in resloving complaints. Here's why he can't achieve it.
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/police-complaints-the-shocking-truth/
"As the Duty Inspector, I once took TWO complaints on one shift.

1. Someone in the High Street phoned to complain that a police vehicle on blues and two’s was driving too fast to an emergency call.

2. Later, the person who had called the police to that emergency, complained that patrols didn’t arrive fast enough.

Who was right? Both can’t be. Hence, 50% of all the people who complained that night were not satisfied with the police response to their complaint. My target is that 75% have to be satisfied, despite the numbers of complaints. Oh dear. I failed.

The paperwork for those two complaints ran into 15 pages and I had to note down their ethnicity! (why?)

Bonkers."

Islam not to blame?

Firstly I state that all discrimination is wrong. Positive discrimination in favour of a particular group or view is by definition negative to those who don't share their values or skin colour.
I also believe that organisations that exist to promote the views of a minority within say, the Police or the legal profession are by definition racist. The Black Police Association, which seeks to promote the interests of a minority above the majority is by definition racist.
Today the Telegraph is reporting that "Muslim police officers have rebelled openly against the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an “affront to British values” which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest. "
Read the article here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/7039572/Muslim-police-say-Islam-not-to-blame-for-terror-attacks.html

Excuse me, but "British values?" The religion of islam makes a distinct point of calling all non-moslems "Kaffur". Kaffur have no legal rights under islamic law. They are less than human. It is the duty of all moslems to convert the world to Islam, using force if necessary. As Kuffar (that's you and me) are less than human, we don't count.

While it's true that not all Moslems are terrorists, it is true that all the terrorist outrages comitted in the last decade or so have been carried out by Moslems.

So, it makes sense to pay more attention to people of middle eastern origin than my aged mother, when looking for possible terrorists. Stopping and searching middle aged whites in order to balance the books is wrong.

Those moslem police officers who are rebelling are wrong on several counts. We used to have a Police Force. Now we have a police service. Maybe that's why they think that they can pick and choose which parts of their oath they wish to obey. If a soldier is given an order he obeys. Why is it different for Police Officers?
Their duty is to uphold the law. All of it.
Secondly, their organisation should be banned as it is racist (see above)
Lastly, the Police and military should be non-political. Statements on government policy should not be permitted.
And if you don't like it, there's the door.
If any member of the BNP reads this and thinks he'll get a sympathetic hearing, bog off racist scum.

UN Science report "was a guess"

Lies, dammned lies and government funded scientific studies.
Today the Mail reports that the UN report that predicted that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 25 years was based on hypothesis and guesswork.

Yet another reason to view any government sponsored reports with scepticism. There's an old saying "He who pays the piper calls the tune".
Here in the UK, the biggest advertiser on television is the government. The biggest campaigners are "fake charities", ie those bodies with charitable status, which receive most if not all their funding from the government, and whose sole activity is political lobbying. For a comprehensive list go to www.fakecharities.org

Anyway, here's the first few words from the Mail's article
"Claims by the world's leading climate scientists that most of the Himalayan glaciers will vanish within 25 years were last night exposed as nonsense.

The alarmist warning appeared two years ago in a highly influential report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

At the time the IPCC insisted that its report contained the latest and most detailed evidence yet of the risks of man-made climate change to the planet."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1243963/UN-science-report-stated-Himalayan-glaciers-melt-25-years-guess.html#ixzz0cvH4iIX3

Met Office admit they botched snow forecast

Well surprise surprise! The Met Office has the most powerful weather forecasting supercomputer on the planet, which is so good it can predict the climate fifty years down the line, but was unable to forecast the snow last week. The super dooper agency, which costs squillions to run, failed to forecast the snow that trapped hundreds of motorists all night near Exeter, and failed to get the warnings out in time.
Apparently our dear leader Mr Broon has ordered an enquiry, which sounds all-action but is just hot air. How many enquiries has he ordered in the past couple of years? And how many have reported back? Precisely.

It seems to me that the biggest source of global warming and the biggest threat is from the hot air that emanates from Westminster.

Mystery object buzzes planet Earth

The Daily Mail reports that a mystery object passed close by the earth today. Here's the link to the page
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242914/What-Earth-Mystery-object-whizzes-past-planet.html

There's speculation as to what is is/was. Could it be an alien craft? An asteroid? Space junk? I read a lot of Sci-fi over the years and I enjoy a good space yarn as much as the next guy, but i have misgivings about our race ever heading out to explore the Solar System and beyond. And I have doubts about whether anyone would want to come to this place, even on a tourist holiday.

The reasons why I doubt that man will explore the stars are manifold, but one is the fact that we can't design and build a car that'll travel more than a few thousand miles without breaking down or needing a service, so where off earth are we going to find an intergalactic service station to change the oil and clean the screen? We design our vehicles to be obsolete within a few years, or else fashions change so quickly that most of us drive cars that are so, well, last year.
Can you imagine turning up at the galactic core in the equivalent of a horse and cart? The wrong shape, the wrong style, wrong colour upholstery.....?

There are practical reasons to consider as well. We're travelling through space. It all looks the same. What do we do with our time? Play I spy? Hide & seek? Watch TV?

I've been virtually housebound for the last three or four months. I go stir crazy. Can you imagine what it'd be like to sit in a tin can (as Bowie so eloquently put it) for years on end, then arrive at Galactic Central to find that your outfits are so old fashioned and you pick up a ticket for stopping and looking at the sights in the middle of the rush hour?

Space travel? No thanks.