Pick your time period:
last millennium (the whole bleeding lot of it in minute detail.) year 2000 (column only started seriously late in 2000 - includes GWB's squirm to power) year 2001 - first part (more GWB, human genome, and foot-and-mouth) year 2001 - middle part (including Sept 11 eerily foretold, black holes.) year 2001 - last part (EM solves global warming... as if. And it's Christmas.) year 2002 - first part (includes link to EM's spookily accurate predictions for 2002/3.) year 2002 - middle part (designer babies, clever crows, happy hamsters, etc.) year 2002 - last part (Nice Treaty, Rallies, Dolly & Bali, + link to '02 rural round up.) 2003 starts on a new page - Blogjob 2003 2004 is on yet another page - Blogjob 2004 |
Atlantic
Divide - the turn of 2000/1 WHO CARES
IF-
USA 2001. By Stew the
Oil. From
Feb 2001 On mice and men, mapping the
Human Genome, by Evelyn Murray. Easter in the Country. By Evelyn
Murray Name That June. (UK general election-
expected to be June.) Black Holes by
Evelyn Murray Name That June Update
Global warming - no
problem. Second solution. By Evelyn Murray.
Nnnnnn! Silly season TV
Global warming - no
problem. Third solution by Evelyn Murray. (Typical EM, can't
be the Drambuie again, surely not? Ed.) After New
York. By guest contributor, Stew the Oil. (That's what ozone's supposed to do. It is the
Drambuie. Ed.) Global Warming - No Problem - part 5 by
Evelyn Murray The Euro. By Stew the Oil. Small World - Small Minds? By the
editor HO HO HO oh no, by
Evelyn Murray
Winter Dreams Down
Under Quickies - by Stew the
Oil
Global Warming - No Problem (yet again)
Politicians are Good for You - Street crime - no
problem - a new series - by Evelyn Murray Beckham for President - it's about
football - (soccer for US friends) Tit for Tat? - by Stew the Oil
Wall Street Cash by the
editor (Stew works for Shell; they've just been implicated as
well, so he couldn't write this.) Street crime - no problem - part 2 - by Evelyn
Murray A Lot of Wind - by Stew the
Oil Saddam Saga - by the editor PS
- Since the above was written many moves have been made,
many statements uttered and many interviews given. One of the most chilling
comments to be heard was from Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz - THREE
TIMES in a short interview he quoted "Religious Duty" in regard to fighting
Americans. And this is from supposedly one the more secular states in the
Arab world. Who's stirring the most trouble I wonder. Make your own mind up
about that: it's a close call. Brrr! The Ethics of Ethics - by the
editor PS: since this was written the
UK government has allowed the setting up of an "embryo bank" Stone the Crows -
by Evelyn Murray Ham and Eggs -
August Holiday Extra! Turned Out Nice Again - by the
editor Rallies - Sad Facts -
by Stew the Oil Dolly Good
Show; Bali Awful - by Evelyn Murray Feeling Deflated
- by the editor Didn't Turn Out
Nice Again - Evelyn Murray
responds to a previous article - with
hindsight The last entries for 2002 are
rather different and are therefore stored elsewhere - go to NuGgets last for 2002 2003 starts on a new page - Blogjob 2003-on - first entry includes
predictions for 2003 from Nimodamus.
Oh come on now! Surely you
didn't believe the top menu; did you? (If you did perhaps
we can interest you in this investment opportunity: dessert sandwiches with
100% organic sand - surefire winner. Note - the value of your investment
might go up as well as down...)
Look, the word
'blog' didn't exist in current meaning until the last fraction of a percent
of that millennium - you'll have to look in the original records and
decipher old-fashioned hand-writing, which frankly we can't be arsed to do
unless someone pays us.
(Although actually we
don't recommend expending the effort: our office diaries indicate little
happened.)
New millennium? Whose millennium? - Jan '00
To
certain monks it isn't even Christmas yet; to Buddhists and Jews we're
already well into the next millennium, astronomically we're somewhere in the
6th, 7th or even 8th Gillennium, so why make so much fuss over a mere
whimsy?
The answer, of course, is that it's the
French's fault; as usual. The only way to boost flagging champagne
sales.
I'll drink to that...
(EM)
WHO ARE
Hank N. Chad and his pregnant partner Dimples that we heard so much about
before Christmas? Is she still pregnant, has she given birth, or was there a
miscarriage? Did it pressage a second coming, a saviour; perhaps Mrs.Chad
gave birth in a polling booth because there was no room at the Commonsense
Inn? - We'll never know: the lawyers saw to that. What would have happened
to Jesus if the lawyers had been as powerful then? Probably would never have
had time to preach his ways for fighting all those injunctions in court! Now
there's a thought, maybe we'd be Lawrians now and read from the Acts of the
Lawmakers on Lawmas day...
Perhaps the truth is hidden
by a Bush? (EM)
... the president elect of the USA can't
read long words and hasn't a clue where Albania is? (+¥*)
... the same man sent two hundred people
to be executed? (Which means statistically at least four were likely to be
innocent of 1st degree murder.)
... said president elect is alleged to
score 9·0 on the Reactionary scale compared to Hitler at 8·9, Ronald
Reagan (allegedly) at 7·2, Ghengis Khan at 8 dead, Margaret Thatcher
(allegedly) at 8·7, (who's she? Aren't memories short: Falklands war
etc,) and finally Pol Pot at 9·4.
BUT- there is one redeeming feature: Mr. elect president scores almost zero
on the Machiavelli scale; doesn't even know what Machiavellian means and
certainly couldn't spell it. (By comparison Ronald Reagan was (allegedly)
3·9, Khan was 8 dead again, Hitler was 5·6 and Thatcher {who?}
(allegedly) was 7·1.)
Come back Bill, even you'd be better! (Not Gates.) There's
a Monica or two over the pond here in the Old Country who wouldn't mind your
moniker! (Allegedly.)
(Bill J. C. scores around 3·1 on the R scale and 7·6 on the M scale
(allegedly.))
(Note- Ed has added the "allegedlies," okay?)
(+¥* You go to Bari in south-east
Italy, jump in a boat, set the compass for due east and go, but watch out
for all those Albanians coming the other way!) (For pres-elec GWB- Italy
is near an American air base so you can ask a general where it is.)
DON'T get me wrong: I'm not anti-Republican; more like
anti-politician, anti-lawyers fiddling in business that isn't theirs and
especially anti politically motivated judiciary. It's a great shame those
old statesmen who drafted the various constitutions made it so difficult
to right obvious wrongs - like the man with the most votes losing. Land of
the free? Not obvious from our side of the Atlantic - at all. We may not
like those elected in the Old World, nor even the election system, but at
least we know all our votes will be counted. (EM)
Global warming - no problem.
By Evelyn Murray.
Now let's see if I've got this
right: too much rain and floods in Europe; high unemployment in the ex
communist block; droughts and starvation in Africa.
Build an enormous aqueduct. Drain Europe into Africa,
after all it's downhill. Unemployment solved too. One slight drawback, all
those illegal immigrants walking into Europe.
Oh what
the hell, they do that anyway.
There was a guy at the surgery desk having a minor argument with the
receptionist- it went something like this:
"No, no, my
opthalmist said I definitely have to see a doctor."
"But Mr. Bush we don't deal in animal by-products...
especially not fictional ones."
"But I can't see in
the dark."
"You probably need some vitamin A."
"The optician said come to you, my Soylent Green
definitely isn't working."
"Your... Oh, hang on! I
think you mean visual purple."
"Same difference ain't
it?"
"As close as Iraq and
Idaho."
"That's fine then."
To the average US citizen, who still
hasn't realised that the US is likely soon to be outranked both in terms of
economy and global political power by the new Europe, the 'election' of
right-wing GWB as their president is likely to be a bad move in the long
term. Let me explain why...
You see Europe is somewhat
divided, although when it does finally come together as a cohesive unit,
(especially if western parts of the old Soviet block such as the Czech
Republic and Poland join up, as seems likely,) then the US will pale into
the background compared to this new super-economy. Now several key nations
are wavering. Britain is one of the waverers. And one of the biggest
problems the UK has to overcome before it can join, is the problem of a
comparatively weak euro. (The new European currency.) This is where GWB and
the UK interact. It is a fact, (not very significant to the average
American, but actually very important,) that the US dollar and the UK pound
tend to react in similar ways to money market changes. It is also a fact
that the UK pound tends to be in the middle of that piece of elastic which
brings the euro and the dollar occasionally closer and before stretching
again.
So what of GWB's administration? The dollar has
dropped against the euro, (most money analysts realise he has hasn't a
clue,) shortening the elastic and bringing the pound closer to the euro-
just what those European bankers need to persuade the Brits that they should
join up. So the European currency and the UK pound converge in relative
value, it becomes easier and more advantageous for Britain to join the
European monetary system; this makes the euro more stable and attracts the
other waverers like Denmark and maybe even Norway to join as well.
Suddenly the euro is strong. Meanwhile the dollar becomes
a smaller player in the global market and sinks even more. Peripheral
countries like Turkey and Israel, who have already approached to EC to see
if they could join too, suddenly have an added incentive to make their
considerable economies part of the biggest in the world, pushing the US even
further into the background.
Sounds good for Europe
and bad for the US. But it is never that straightforward: there is still a
chance that Bush's administration will fall foul of their zero majority and
ill feeling about the way the election was 'won.' Only time will tell.
Meanwhile if you're a gambling sort, put your money on Europe while its
fledgeling currency is still low. Stew, ©infinityjunction.com
Ha! So we're only
twice as complex as a mouse, so says Celera. No surprise to me. The little
b*ggers run riot round my rustic dwelling, despite all those traps.
Some years back I lived in a 14th century farmhouse. Mice;
oh yes! We bought mouse traps, we bought more mouse traps, we bought bigger
mouse traps; we caught more and bigger mice. Then one night after the larder
had been despoiled for the umpteenth time we decided to shoot them. We
borrowed 3 airguns, put down bait in the middle of the kitchen floor under a
dim lamp, then waited. And waited. Eventually one came to the bait. Bang,
twabb, b-bang, ping, ptunngg! Three holes in the lino, a ricochet dent in a
kitchen cupboard door, bait everywhere; mouse lived to squeak the tale.
Maybe I should move to a city high-rise. Er, no thanks.
Guess I'll just keep chasing and cussing the little half-humans.
Spring's a'comin', season of fluffy bunnies and
baa-lambs. Ah, well not actually, not here anyway. You see in Britain, the
home of Infinity Junction, we have something of an animal disease problem:
myxomatosis in rabbits and foot-and-mouth in sheep. Bang go the Easter
fluffies; or rather crackle-crackle-smoke-smoke in the case of the lambs.
Foot-and-mouth is the Gandhi strain: causes severe pain in the sandals and
fasting for long periods, and it's said to have come from the Indian
sub-continent. Myxie's origins are not so clear, but it may have been an
endemic strain, which due to all those foxes that the hunting lobby tell us
are such a menace, had not reached sufficient population levels for it to be
epidemic. Now of course, with hunting by dogs about to outlawed here, we'll
probably have a dozen extra foxes each year to add the millions strong
population.
Poor rabbits- they lose either way.
Meanwhile, the livestock industry, already crippled by BSE
and falling prices, has to become even more intensive to make ends meet.
More stocking density- faster disease spread. It's a vicious circle that no
government can either afford to ignore, or actually afford to fix, properly.
No wonder farmers are topping themselves in ever increasing numbers.
At least Easter helps egg sales to pick up... unless
there's another salmonella scare.
Elections: don't you just
love'em... not.
That little "muppet" as Sophie Wessex
called him, Wee Willy Vague says the first trite thing that comes into his
head, regardless that it's the opposite of what he said last year, and Tony
Oh-So-Serious-and-Caring-To-Look-At but really rather dangerous Blah, has a
hidden Euro-agenda that he daren't admit to. Now me, personally, myself
don't give a monkey's whether we go headlong into Europe or not, but I do
hate it when it is so obvious that the mouth says one thing and brain means
something else.
So for those enduring politiboritis:
what they really mean -
"There is no evidence..." =
cannot find any other good reason to deny what is patently
obvious.
Remember quite a few years back the government education
minister of the day saying: 'there is no evidence that class size in schools
affects pupil performance.' So that's why it is now a manifesto pledge of
every major party to reduce class sizes in British schools,
eh?
"Let me turn that question on its head..." = if
I answer it directly, you'll realise I'm a liar.
"There
are challenges ahead..." = we can't do it at all.
"We
have an agreement in principle..." = not one that will
work.
"There is no threat to peaceful nations" = unless
we look like losing the next election.
"The economy is
in good hands..." = mine and I'm taking a 10%
commission.
"I was in a meeting then..." = having it
off with my secretary.
"Time a younger person took
over..." = been offered a plum directorship.
"Standing
down at the next election..." = before my luck runs
out.
"I want to spend more time with my family" = been
found out and sacked.
Education, education, edu... by the editor
Question recently asked of British pupils in a national geography exam -
"A farmer in Cumbria is having trouble diversifying. Explain why this
may be so and suggest solutions."
I hope and expect that this was written before a large proportion of
Cumbria's livestock were culled due to rampant foot and mouth disease.
As the teacher who told me said: "Dead sheep there, dead pig here, dead
cows all over the place."
Guess that's full marks to the exam board.
So much fuss recently in the more
scientific end of the press about discovering black holes and how awesome
that is. Well did you know we've got our own black hole at the centre of our
galaxy? Oh wow! Mind you don't put your finger in
it.
Look fellas it's been there a hell of a long time
so stop getting all uppity. As far as I'm concerned, the black holes we
should be more worried about right now are those in the economies of certain
Third World countries duped or tempted into massive loans in second half of
last century.
Each to his own I suppose; banks to
their profits, poor people to scraping a living against the odds - or not in
some cases,
and astronomers with space in their heads.
The Americans amused us
last year with their election fiasco, (which I believe is still being
investigated in Florida,) and now our elections in Britain are over too.
Thank goodness.
The only amusing thing to come out of
it was to see just how badly Wee Willy went down with the electorate; the
least believed leader of any major party since Harold Wilson. Margaret
Thatcher started a war to keep her going well past sell-by date. Nobody
would take Hague seriously if he declared war on them - of course now he's
giving up. Perhaps it will knock some of the right-wing stuffing out of the
Tories and allow sensible policies that people actually care about. Nah,
next man's likely to be Portillo; almost as far right. Lucky other
parties!
As for Blah, well he's there for a while; the
real question left is - will any of the promises be kept?
Now let's
see if I've got this right. Global warming: jungle being burned; atmosphere
getting hotter; deserts spreading; ice-caps melting. Well why don't we solve
the problem by towing that ice to Amazonia before it's all gone? It would
melt there, flood the rain forest, put out the fires, flush away the
loggers, cool the atmosphere and hey presto! Within few hundred-thousand
years we'd be back to square one.
Inane plunkety music plays as middle-aged
tart walks on stage. Announcer: "Gayle Cleavage presents Blankety Brain.
Tonight starring as panelists are: Brian Dismal" (cheers) "Olde Poofe"
(cheers) "Witty Gayperson" (screams) "Sope Starr" (cheers) "Faded Idol"
(muted cheers) "and Bimbo Blonde" (Ecstatic whoops.)
GC, (for it is she,)
into microphone: "And our first contestants - Boring Officeman who once took
his trousers off in public. Ooh." (applause) "And Silly Housewife who only
married her present husband after a hoax letter said he'd won a million
dollars." (guffaws and applause.)
It's SO predictable.
I might just go and find a street riot somewhere for a bit of stimulation.
If TV companies realised just how bad their output is these days, with
formulaic US rubbish and corny, badly acted dramas, they could change their
ways and all those summer riots might just evaporate.
Roll on this years University Challenge or repeats of
Shooting Stars, yet again. (At least South Park is back... now there's
intelligence compared to above - IQ 80+: amazing for a US show.)
Some
people say it's greenhouse gases, others that sheep and cattle are to blame,
(well I can understand that; never trust a cow to hold its wind,) yet
another group think it's a natural cycle, like ice ages and the length of
shorts. If it is carbon dioxide, then get those genetic boffins to stop
messing about with crops and breed CO2 fixing microbes with a bigger
appetite for the pesky gas. If it is methane from cattle belching, breed
cows that can compress the stuff so then it can be used to generate
electricity for the labs breeding CO2 consuming bugs. If it is a cycle, get
off the saddle and break the chain.
It's happening all
over the English speaking world: England particularly, but also Australia
and USA prime targets. People trying to enter illegally, I mean. The trouble
is England is already pretty full up- an official population of nearly 47
million crammed into an area about the size of Cuba, which has a population
around 7 million, or North Island New Zealand, with a population of around 3
million, and you can see why. And UK government officials finally admitted
recently that there were over a million illegal immigrants in the UK, hiding
from the authorities. It doesn't take a great mind to realise that a lot of
very different people have to live pretty close together. Add that to the
facts that English speaking nations are amongst the richest and a lot of
'refugees' speak at least some English, being the most widely spoken single
language in the world, and you can understand it. Unfortunately it puts a
massive strain on social services and when our own less well-off citizens
see refugees housed and fed for free, it causes a lot of tension.
It isn't a problem when it's just a trickle, but
right now it's a tidal wave, hundreds every single day. It wouldn't be
problem if these were all genuine refugees fleeing in fear of their safety,
but 80% are in fact just looking for state hand-outs from an over-generous
country like England. In cases where people are clearly in danger, such as
when England took thousands from Kosovo during the war there, most citizens
welcomed the refugees. Mind you most of them did go back home again.
But Evelyn Murray has a cunning plan. Start World War
3, then they would be genuine refugees. Can't see why the government hasn't
already thought of it- a word or two in Bush's ear should suffice; look out
Afghanistan, guess who's first bet for a Bush broadside.
As anyone
who works in the oil industry will tell you, business goes on whatever the
cost of crude.
And the price of oil is set to rise as
speculators buy forward to protect themselves from the possible effects of
retaliation for the horrific events at the World Trade Center. The US
economy, already unstable as a result of the technology industry slowdown,
is likely to suffer from this immense disruption and prices of many
commodities will rise, fuelling inflation.
I've said
this before, but it is still true, that the average US citizen hardly
realises, (RealiZes for our US readers,) that there is a very big world
beyond the boundaries of the U.S. of A. The global economy is not strong at
present, south-east Asia still hasn't recovered from its burst bubble, Japan
and US suffering from over-emphasis on technology products, and so on. In
the Old World however, the seat of original power and money, European
nations are at last pulling together financially and the launch of the euro
currency in a few weeks time will make a huge single market that is probably
the most stable in the world today and almost certainly will be in the next
few years.
And so it seems we go full circle with
Europe likely to be the safest financial zone in the world - that took 150
years, or so. Let's hope the next 150 years will be less traumatic.
Global Warming - No Problem. Fourth
solution by Evelyn Murray.
As I understand it,
ultra-violet comes down and infra-red tries to go back up, but can't. Now
forgive me if I'm wrong, but can't we just reduce the amount of U-V
arriving? Obviously not enough people, animals and buildings wear Ray-Bans.
Perhaps if the government put a subsidy on sunglasses things might get
better.
Okay editor clever-clogs - so it's ozone
that needs to be beefed up a bit. You get ozone from the seaside and
photocopiers; be a bit difficult to send them up into space... I mean the
seaside is sort of big and might spill on the way up, and you'd need one
hell of an extension cable for the photocopiers. But I have a cunning plan.
How about starting a few thunderstorms up there? Lightning - see? Get those
shuttle boys to seed the upper atmosphere with rain-making crystals as they
go past.
The
'euro' is upon us! Yup.
The
WHAT?
I bet if you asked most Americans what it was,
they'd think it's a new Disney or something. Trouble is, many British people
are hardly aware of it, at best those who do know either don't care or
actively dislike the idea. Well, a euro looks a bit like the UK 2 pound
coin, but it's exactly the size of a one pound coin. Now here's an
interesting thought: many slot machines like supermarket trolleys that you
have to put pounds in to use, will accept euros. And what's a euro worth?
About the same as a US dollar, (no coincidence!) And what's a pound worth? A
lot more. In other words those who finally do get their hands on euro coins,
will be able to run at a tidy profit at some stores, putting euros in the
trolley taken from outside and taking out pounds from that trolley you
transfer shopping into at the checkout. Just like one of our local stores -
I wonder if they realise?
Infinity Junction is based at the rural western
edge of a largish borough in Cheshire which includes the UK's largest oil
refinery at the eastern end. Its local free newspaper has already been
mentioned in this column before because, for a small circulation paper, it's
damn good. Usually the Ellesmere Port Standard has headlines of purely local
concern, another factory closure, a nasty car crash, occasionally even
something about our relatively remote neck of the woods, but after the New
York disaster it had on the front page, unusually in full colour, a dramatic
picture of a Boeing 767 just about to plough into that stark steel, glass
and concrete skyscraper tower. That shows what sort of an impact it made at
the time.
It's amazing how short people's memories are
though. Now we have MPs and councillors both in England and Wales
campaigning to stop just retaliation against terrorist organisations.
Lunacy! While I intensely dislike violence of all sorts, there is a time
when continuing debate is self-defeating; that time is now. To give up
trying when you are half way there is to give up, full stop- just look at
what Saddam has done since Kuwait for proof of how foolish that course of
action would be. To protect us all, and our children, the terrorists must be
completely disbanded absolutely as soon as possible. If that means bombing
the Taleban, then reluctantly I say: so be it. (Any of you who have read the
novel Infinity Junction will know that I don't have any Christian, nor any
other religious axe to grind, so there is no anti-Muslim motive. And I'm
certainly not a reactionary right-winger. It's plain common
sense.)
To the knockers I say: just shut up for a while
and do something useful at home - that's what you were elected for.
Sorry
to be serious for once; but this is serious.
Shops full of tat from September onwards
these days - Christmas of course.
Drunken office
parties; fun at the time, but did I really do that? Ho ho ho and
Jingle-Bells in shopping malls; ugh! Time to relax in front of the telly
with family; hummm, not all those repeats again. Socks from Granny; as
usual. Piles of Xmas dinner and fizz; excellent - but spare a thought for
those who can't. Peace and goodwill to all.
One year
maybe.
This is the time of year
I reserve for hating Ozzies - why? Well in Darkest Cheshire we have merely 7
hours or so of daylight on Christmas Day, that's less than about 6 hours of
actual sun you could see, if it isn't too overcast. And it has a habit of
throwing rain or sleet diagonally at unwary souls on a force 6 gale straight
off the Welsh mountains - guaranteed to soak and freeze simultaneously any
time from November through to April. Just the thing when you've a hangover
from Hogmanay celebrations. Meanwhile our Australian relatives sizzle gently
by their barbies and our European neighbours enjoy winter sports in crisp
dry air. So you see it is pure jealousy.
However
matters are different in our summer; late June sees at least 20 hours of
daylight here and usually outdoor temperatures around a temperate 16°C -
close to what Oz has in Melbourne at the same time. We even have the heating
turned off. So then it's us basking in high summer and them freezing in
winter... Er hang about - surely that can't be right - their winter as warm
as our summer?
I wonder if I'm too old to emigrate?
A trip round the world first - always wanted to see ancient sites of Egypt
and Mesopotamia; get a suntan too. Then perhaps India by steam train. A
small boat cruise later, via Indonesia sounds nice; what's that bloody great
warship doing? Nauru? My ticket clearly says Australia... What do you mean,
no boat people...
Guess I'll just have to dream
until summer, with luck it'll be a good one, at least three days hot enough
to sit out on the patio. Fresh Welsh lamb chops on my barbie; delicious. Ah;
forgot - no lambs left after foot and mouth. Get the NZ ones out of the
freezer someone. Now our Kiwi cousins... wonder what it's like there? Can't
be all that far from Nauru...
Dont
forget to check out EM's whole page of predictions - click me.
Those who have read some of my past comments will
know that I've never been impressed by the wisdom of GWB. Watching TV
recently I saw a clip of George Bush senior while he was president: "Using
illegal drugs is against the law," he proclaimed pompously. George, look up
'illegal' in the dictionary. If you can read.
On a
completely different subject but just as tactless. - Many of you will have
seen the forest fire pictures coming from around Sydney over Christmas and
into January. Well I overheard this at the oil refinery
canteen:
"What! Charlie? You didn't ask him to do it
surely: he couldn't organise a barbecue in a Sydney suburb!" (Guffaws all
round.)
Now let me get this straight. Arctic ice cap melting; big pool of cold water
acting as a wall and diverting the North Atlantic Drift away from Europe and
up to Iceland, Vatnayökull melting too as a result.
Cold
water sinks right?
So make a big pipe from the Arctic
Ocean, point it down towards the tropics and let the water flow of its own
accord. Coral reefs cool down and are saved from certain death. That cold
block of sea drains away and the current swings back to its original course
bringing all that Caribbean warm air to us in the UK. And the hurricanes.
GW (give us huge
donation and we'll scrap Kyoto) Bush has his foibles; no brains, but
foibles. Doesn't he make us laugh over here in Europe! But he's pretty sane
compared to some! Look at Italy's Burlesconi for one, he makes Bush look
positively saintly!
Speaking of saints, we we have are
own twits here in England too; Saint Blair for one. Now I have nothing
against him personally, he seems honest and eager - but he doesn't listen.
For example nearly every poll in the last year has come down strongly
against more privatisation, well after the railways and buses you would have
thought he'd seen the disaster. Blair obviously doesn't use either trains or
buses because he's hell-bent on privatising almost everything in sight.
It'll be you next. Your shareholders will cream off your profit so you'll
have work until 75 to pay for your pension. It's
coming.
Looking on the upside, where would we be
without them? You see they fulfil a vital function - that of punchbag for
our frustrations, even if they do cause some of them. Without Saint Tony and
the Cronies the Conservative party would have no-one to pick holes in, then
they'd actually have to work out some policies to talk about instead. And in
the local shop there'd be no common cause to chat about, unless there'd been
a murder nearby. It could even cause the breakdown of verbal communication;
God, it'd be like London streets all over the place. What a thought! I feel
a sudden reprieve coming on for politicians. Hang about, that gives me an
idea - what did I say about a local murder... Amazing how people get
together when something serious happens.
So there is a
use for politicians.
I've
had so many attempts at curing the problem of global warming, you'd think at
least one of my ideas would have been tried by now. Wouldn't you?
Nevertheless, undaunted I go on to a new issue.
Car
crime is down officially, but mugging and robbery are up. Obvious! The
answer is to go by car. Then the footpads will only have each other to mug:
justice done at no expense to the tax payer.
Why don't
politicians and police see things that clearly?
Everyone Englishman
knows that David Beckham is the best footballer in the
world.
Trouble is nobody seems to have told those
Brazilian lads.
In a match that really should have been
the World Cup final England did okay, better in fact than the freakily
fortunate German finalists who were given precedence over the UK, even
though England beat them 5-1 in the very same season they were given what
should have been our seeding. Frankly Brazil were a tad lucky to win. It
could very easily have been England, especially as we had far more
far-eastern local support than them.
Now if all the
separate national teams within Britain could stop old rivalries and pull
together to make a UK team...
First it's steel GWB moans about, now its Europe taking
away his satellite navigation monopoly. Oh dear, how sad can a president get
when there are elections looming?
You see Europeans are
to launch 30 of their own 'Galileo' GPS replacement satellites so they can
be free of interference by any possible petulant US politician, like Bush,
when things aren't going his way. It just so happens that the Europeans want
to be, and are sensible to be, independent. It also happens that the Galileo
system will have a resolution of 1 metre or less. Better than GPS by quite a
margin.
To make matters even worse, Europe has just
launched 'EnviroSat' which also has a very high resolution. Better than most
US spy satellites! The problem is, European data will be available to
'reputable' research scientists and environmentalists from almost everywhere
in the world.
US military are suddenly aware that two
of their most powerful tools are no longer an advantage: after all, Galileo
will be freely available world-wide and USA cannot turn any part of it off,
also there are 'reputable' environmentalists who would be quite happy to
sell or even give away EuroSpy, oh, er sorry, EnviroSat pictures to almost
anyone.
Look, the US does not have a monopoly on
technology and never has done. About time USA realized there was a bigger
world than Kansas, or Washington, or Texas.
And it's
largely just as advanced.
Some time back our guest writer Stew the Oil
said: "buy euros" to our American friends. We had the odd derisory E-mail
saying that the euro was a lame duck. Apparently socialist-leaning Europe was
no place to do business. The euro would sink and be abandoned. Enron.
WorldCom. Andersen. Now possibly dozens of others whose agressive
get-rich-stay-rich policies lead to 'economy with the truth.' Or 'white man
speak with forked tongue,' as some red-faced executive once said. Fraud as
most commentators see it. Dollar down, euro up; dollar ± euro, euro
± dollar. One more just half-blown financial scandal... well just who
is the lame duck?
You can talk it up as much as you
like, but eventually you run out of puff.
George
Ugly-Face-of-Capitalism Bush and his ultra-rich cronies should admit they're
wrong and quit.
Sorry there's no belly-laugh joke or
patent irony in this article - except that the arch supporter of keeping the
rich rich at all costs, seems to have cost his country rather a lot... and
his friends are not so rich now.
That's the irony.
Gun crime - shootings, robberies, post office raids etc - is at an all-time high. And this is in a country that introduced some of the toughest gun laws in the world. Hand guns are all illegal for non-service personnel. Obviously making hand guns illegal has not worked; having an illegal weapon simply adds to their status. So why not re-legalise them? Better still, give them away free. Street-cred zero. I mean when they started giving away free condoms to teenagers, the pregnancy rate actually went up. So it therefore follows that fewer boys were using them. Doesn't it?
It's sort of ironic that just a matter of
minutes by helicopter away from that source of sulphur polluted gas that
burns in a power station upwind of us in Wales, (it wouldn't have got
planning permission in England,) is going to be Britain's largest
wind-farm.
It's even more ironic that there were so
many objections to it. After all, that part of Liverpool Bay isn't exactly a
major seaway, nor is it a major yacht cruising
area.
Further south in Wales some months back there was
outrage at the proposal to build a wind-farm on farmland. Wreck the natural
landscape etc. These are quite probably the same people who peer in delight
at old-fashioned wooden windmills when they go on holiday. Non-polluting,
almost free power, brilliant! Let's have wind-farms everywhere. Places of
high wind. Westminster, Washington DC, the Ali G show. Seriously, when all
those coastal nuclear plants reach the end of their days, how about those
sites too?
There's old Saddam on the telly laughing out loud at
suggestions he's interested in weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq is a
peaceful nation." Who's he kidding? Kuwait. Gassing the Kurds. The
super-gun. Anthrax. Plutonium and other potential bomb parts. Ex soviet
military research scientists by the score. Now a significant defector claims
Iraq will have three nuclear bombs ready by
2005.
Saddam is one of the wiliest men on the world
stage, he is also one of the most determined, ruthless dictators
for many generations. One can only speculate what might have happened if
he'd taken over a more powerful country, USA for
example.
The problem is that it's likely to be the
Yanks who make the first strike. Now we all know how gung-ho they are.
Britain lost more men to US bombs than to Iraqi army action in the last do.
I expect Saddam is looking forwards to the next one.
A couple whose infant son has a rare form of
leukaemia have had to resort to US private clinics to get that best chance
of a matching-stem-cell new baby, with which they hope to cure the one who
will otherwise die. Of course it involves a certain amount of human
interference, not exactly genetic engineering, but some see it like that;
"designer babies" the popular media says.
Those who
make such decisions in the UK have a very difficult task as the law here
gives them a little leeway on the subject of ethics, so they have to work it
out for themselves; "ethically."
So what about these
ethics? There's a problem. Law is law. Even in Britain's archaic system of
law the situation is usually plain. Ethics is... well ethics is what people
think or expect. Which means very little if you don't follow conventional
wisdom. Designer babies are not conventional; until a few years ago they
were pure sci-fi. In these circumstances who can say for certain what is
ethical and what isn't? Which calls in to question the ethics of ethics
itself.
Our Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority pontificates with no real logical foundation to start from. Do
they take account of religious views, or scientists, or do they just read
the tabloid newspapers. Not one of these, in fact nobody at all has a patent
on truth. So where's the logic in denying a life-saving opportunity? Hey
look, it's not making monsters or clones, the child, if it is ever born,
will be the true genetic offspring.
This couple and
their poor son, and anyone else who might find themselves in a similar
situation, are pretty much up shit creek while we still have reactionaries
or old biddies in the HFaEA. I mean to say - conservative, some would say
morally old-fashioned USA more forward thinking than us. Doh!
for stem
cell research, something president Bush of the USA banned on moral
grounds...
Here's an ethical paradox if ever there was
one! Let's stop playing God and get human.
Ooh Betty! (To coin a
phrase.)
Now fellas don't go a rantin and raven, but
this professor guy has just discovered that animals are clever! Maybe he's
never lived in the country and seen the various tricks foxes and squirrels
do to get food. Well his laboratory crow, Betty, has worked out how to bend
wire to fish meat out of a cylinder. No, not fish-meat; fishing
hook.
Now what sort of a bloke spends his time watching
a tame crow? Well apparently Prof. Kacelnik and chums thinks this bird
understands basic laws of physics. Hey, what's so incredible? After all it
can bloody well fly!
Beak that.
Nibbles the hamster has made the
headlines! Silly season eh?
But what makes this episode
so amazing is not the press's usual frenzy, but the fact that the bus
company who asked its owner to pay for the hamster to travel has had to
re-write it's policy... for hamsters!
Actually the
policy is a bit tongue in cheek, but that's not the point. The point is they
decided that they needed a specific policy for that sort of
animal.
Now if there's one for hamsters, why not one
for pet birds, or eggs? "Excuse me madam, are those eggs pets or shopping?"
The
European Community is ridiculed by its knockers, sometimes with good
reason, more often not. But even as a slightly more pro-European than anti, I get a sense of unease about
expansion, at least in the very near future. You see, most would-be
entrants, Poland and Hungary for example, are skewed in their economies
towards agriculture. One cannot help wondering if it isn't just the EC's
ridiculous farm subsidies they're after.
Britain,
Holland and Denmark have some of the most efficient farms in the world; the
question is, why should they subsidise inefficiency? That includes the
French, not just eastern countries.
Now with Ireland
about to vote on the Nice Treaty, (again,) we come pretty much to crunch
time. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the Irish rejected the
plan.
Then Nice would have to be re-negotiated and
perhaps a little more pragmatism could be injected into the brains of
European idealists who come up with such plans. And to CAP it all, it would also give the existing members more time to knock heads together over Common Agriculture Policy.
For fox hunting - 450,000.
Against war on Iraq - 150,000. (Even fewer in
France, by far.)
Car rallying - Ford lost. Citroën
win - Colin McCrae. (Another Brit going to drive for
France!)
FTSE index (shares) Daft Friday - falls,
rallies, crashes, rallies - one Swiss company and another German bank, 100
million UK pounds down the spout. Time taken: 2
minutes!
The last great British bicycle factory uproots
to the Far East - Raleigh. Nottingham is a sadder place now.
So Dolly the
cloned sheep's creator now wants to start on humans. The question that
immediately springs to mind is clone who?
With
terrorism still rearing it's ugly head, perhaps the answer is Osama. Keep
Osama-2 in the lab, feed him world news and see where he intends to strike
next. Then stop it.
Simple.
Japan officially in recession.
London worrying. US big businesses shitting
themselves...
So why is deflation such a worry?
Basically it's because unfettered capitalism is showing its weaknesses.
Without inflation at just the right level, finances don't work in capitalism
- unless it's modified and moderated. There is a ceiling to what the world
as a whole will accept: it sees top echelons as greedy. But USA and GWB and
pals in particular worship money. The idea of getting less rich is
anathema.
What happened to good old fashioned equality,
as espoused by many religions, and come to that, the basic premiss of
democracy?
Euro-subsidies; don't you just love 'em.
(Don't answer that: it might put some Brussells bureaucrats out of
work.)
Well apparently the Irish do - hence that
vote.
As I see the problem - bleeding efficient systems
dry to bolster the inefficient. Take a lesson from Zimbabwe and expel all
the efficient farmers and let the jobless take a quarter hectare each to
live off. Less dole money to pay out. Retire all those fat-cat board
directors and give their jobs to those ex-farmers; probably be much better
at it at a fraction of the salaries. And of course all the farms would be
equal then, nobody could be bled and everyone would qualify for
subsidies.
Simple.
That's all so far
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