Can't fault his timing
- the same week as one of his welcomed back bishops confirms his pro nazi values, The Accessory after the fact of extraordinary mass pederast criminality is set to become a member of the house of Crime Lords, he sits well alongside Jeffrey Archer I suppose, that well known spinner of substandard yarns, funder of prostitutes and perjury and fan of cottage pie if not cottaging...
Now, with his imminent retirement from the role of chief child tormenter in the British catholic hierarchy, he has made a speech on "values"...

“The greatest danger for us at the moment is to let ourselves believe what secular culture wants us to believe about ourselves, namely, that we are becoming less and less influential and in decline. I believe that the Church has a vigorous life, and a crucial role to play in our society – more important than at any other time in our recent history.”

(more important than protecting Nazis and blocking exposure of the holocaust in the 40s - that role was really less important I suppose...)

The values he goes on to defend are indeed those of his own Crutch - Lies, obfuscation, mental abuse and cult indoctrination, theft, attempted genocide paedophile priest cover ups, a trail so despicable that it turned one monk from Catholic protector into legal pursuer of this blasphemous organisation and author of Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: the Catholic church's 2,000-year paper trail of sexual abuse.
While everyone is busy hating Sir Fred, the bank boss, for getting rich on the strength of organising others losses, I put forward this Cardinal character as a more worthy target as public enemy No.1.
He now has the nerve to mount a public defence against the "He's got no clothes on!" secularists and a denial of the plainly visible evidence of his own culpability in heinous crimes, to try and bolster the position of the Church in our society.

Where is the outrage in our newspapers?
Why are the cries of outrage from the hundreds, (possibly thousands worldwide), of families destroyed by paedophile priest activities not being heard?
...and being headlined and shouted aloud instead of editors kowtowing to the silencing edicts of the wolf packs of catholic power?
Paedophiles who are not priests are publicly hounded from pillar to post - so why do we go silent when these gaily clothed church people's crimes are so much bigger and corporately organised?

The Guardian, as linked above, has published some exposes but still, the obscene nature of these criminals being Lorded, (literally) whilst their victims are buried in suicides' graves and mental hospitals, should surely warrant no headline unturned from slamming this institution whose real values fall somewhere between those of the disgraced merchant bankers and Hitler's SS...

I shall continue to do my bit, hope lies with those who never let these crimes go, lets hope "Brother" Wall continues to do his work and the wider public wakes up to this sleepily neglected mass crime organisation masquerading as respectable authority.

I do hope most of you find this story as hilarious as I do...

There is a furore - good word, used a lot these days - about Bishop Richard Williamson, a so called holocaust denier, caught on tape saying that the historical evidence is that there were no gas chambers and not one Jew was exterminated in them.
The furore seems to be a common one when it comes to those who want to deny the holocaust existed, and those who want to kill everyone who does this...
- arguments centre along the lines of:
1) "how could they? - it is a betrayal of fact, and our duty to remember and not let it happen again."
2) "Let us have a free debate about this, why shouldn't he/they be allowed to express these views?" (they should always add the rider "even though he/she is obviously an idiot")

There have been a lot of further media flare-ups because this bishop is one of several who were excommunicated and have only recently been allowed back into the fold by the benevolent Benedict.

Anyway, the footage of the press hounding the guy is just too funny to make up. It illustrates the ridiculous prestige we afford these men of the cloth when the picture above, like so many others, shows a silly man in a silly costume who is not to be taken seriously.

and please note, the excommunication was to do with his original ordination by a breakaway archbishop who denied, not the holocaust, but the reforms of Pope John Paul Belmondo the ninetieth (or some such)...Churches do love their schisms and infighting - such fun to watch them do this arguing over irrelevance upon irreverent irrelevance.

(sigh...)
Where do you stand on this?

The notion of a crime of denial is an interesting one - given Peter (later Saint Peter)'s denial of Jesus as recorded in the Bible.
I am happy to state my position. I do not believe there should be any such crime as holocaust denial - any more than it should be a crime to deny that Tony Blair took us to war as a turncoat, selfish, capitalistic, warmongering liar. - (whoops! digression there)

Is this fuss a religious issue? or merely one of making sure history is preserved as truth, and there is a danger of the deniers "winning" if they are allowed to speak in public?

I get annoyed for several reasons, but partly because there is already a denial going on - that the holocaust is always just about the Jews.
Communists, gays and gypsies were treated the same way by the Nazis - yet they haven't cited the word of God as justifying the theft of aboriginal people's land and perpetual war on their pathetic opposition to such theft.

but I do not want to digress into anything that might be assumed to be anti-semitic. I am anti-Zionist, anti-Catholic, anti-C of E, anti-Scientology, anti-Mormon, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu - and anti almost every other organised religion due to their pathetic and ridiculous claims upon truths that are not only patently fiction, but also used to dangerously deny humanist free thinking and sane development.

I may find a lot of good in the reported words of Christ,
I may regularly attend a meeting where most of the people are avowed Christians,
but then none of them support armed conflict of any sort, ever - which is a bit like the Buddhist principle that I can also support (Buddhism isn't a religion by the way)

personally, I will happily deny 95% of the Bible as tosh.
I will happily deny that smashing the Catholic church structure to rubble and imprisoning the pope is a bad idea - seems eminently sensible to me.
I will deny that the Muslims who want to burn books should be allowed to ever enter any building containing a book. (let the punishment fit the crime!)
I will happily deny the British gentry's fake histories of how they didn't steal their land from "we the people".

perhaps none of these denials sounds as serious as "Denying the holocaust"... but I cannot see why the holocaust should have such special status - history is never the truth, it has always been written by the victors, those with the biggest rockets, swords, clubs or rocks - depending on how far back you go.

Maybe that's what these denial law makers are afraid of? -
that one day the biggest stick will belong to another gang that are fed up with their particular religious group claiming special status as laid down by God, and they will re-write history to exclude the holocaust, and thus the modern central tenet of Jewish identity (?)

so this could explain why Israelis are determined, just like the Iranians, Koreans and others, to be, and remain, part of the gang with the (nuclear) biggest stick. To make history and fake it in their favour if necessary...

A plague on all their houses.

There's a big fuss (over nothing) going on at the moment because one of the best knowledge test TV shows is due to reach its final tonight, with a female captain of one team being so apparently uber-intelligent at the ripe old age of 26.

The title linked blog starts with a man who, in typical modern British fashion, slags her off for being "cocky, arrogant, and smug" and saying how he developed a huge hatred for her. (she was said by friends to be hiding her embarrassment at knowing so much by these smiles)

This man needs help...
educational help - as do many in this country who display this pathetic inverted snobbery that rejoices in knocking those who try to make the most of their thinking skills in whatever way they can.
I note many of the other comments show others find her sexy, presumably because she is reasonably good looking and intelligent - a sign there is some hope for intelligent male life out there?

The dangerous part of this equation is the wider sense that Hollywood and much other media material is playing into the "stay dumb" culture by making out that women all really just want a nice man to shag and shack up with.

Films are a reflection of this general dumbing down: Films such as "He's just not that into you" and countless other post teen formula pieces featuring that nonentity up for an Oscar, whose name I am not ashamed that I cannot even remember (I'd better avoid 'entertainment' and stick to science questions in my general knowledge section on any quiz show).

Boys at school are bullied for being clever, standing out from the brutish gangs whose lack of self belief and confidence is taken out on those who might remind them of their pathetic laziness. Girls are groomed for supporting roles at all levels - STILL, in 2009. Where are the Katy Hepburn modeled women, who were striding the world setting a post feminist agenda back in the sixties?

As for the blogger striving desperately to mock the hallowed halls of Oxbridge, Is he really saying he would rather have spent time in a pig trough of jocks drooling over chavs flashing their tits out of limousine windows? There may be some privileged idiots who can answer complex equations, but cannot park a bike, who get to these dreaming spires due to their background - but thick people do not, cannot, get there even when their Dad is leader of the Conservative party...

It would help everyone in this country if striving for the best education available were to be seen as a noble enterprise - and if it leads to intelligent engineers, social workers and home workers - great, at least we will begin to develop a new intelligent mass culture, and thus be able to use intelligent criticism to raise the cultural and political bar to somewhere that may positively develop the country and our species.

Title linked story is just one example of how fast food chains are booming and expanding not just your waistlines but their empires. KFC announced a further 500 outlets over the next five years just yesterday, fast food outlets everywhere are seeing a boom in trade and not just from the "Can't cook won't cook" student hordes...

But is it really such a bargain?
Economising by going to take-aways more tells me that far too many people were eating out more expensively than was decent in an age where hunger and poverty still plainly exist side by side in our cities.

Economising on packaging is an essential part of the adaptations we have to make in these transition times and the notion of hundreds of polystyrene and cardboard boxes littering our streets and filling our landfill sites is a disgusting one.
My real worry is that the younger generations have an idea of economising that misses the real target by a country mile. And its not just their physical health that will suffer.

We have to (grow locally and) eat our own food as much as possible - not say, "aaaaah well, I never learned to cook so that's it, take-aways for me until I can afford restaurants again)...
This change is needed just to survive in the post oil boom world where we lose what has been described as 100 free slaves per western body, provided by cheap oil.

There is a real task ahead for the growing generations - learn to turn off the excess supply, and adapt to live frugally, so it doesn't get cut off completely when you really need it...

is May 3rd.

On the Mediterranean side of the continent it is common to find yourself invited to attend a wedding ceremony and celebration because you are a passing stranger, and your presence brings generosity and good luck on the couple and their lives together.

Underneath that notion is one I would quite like to repeat for an event I am planning for World Laughter Day - here in Minchinhampton.

I am asking my blog readers to express their interest (or not) in being the semi-stranger guest(s) of the day at the laughter event I am planning.

There will be others from the laughter network involved in some fairly easy exercises designed to help people laugh more easily, understand why they need to, and how to make it happen on a more regular basis. A bit of fun is also part of the equation.

If you are interested - drop your details into an email as suggested on that linked page.

A while ago I tried to read the Fukuyama book, "the end of history" - in which he argued, mainly, that capitalism had "won".

Not only was he not right - he wasn't playing in the right ball park. The end of history we face is the end of old economics. The end of the old economic idea of "growth" as the cure for all economic problems, the end of consumer prosperity in the sense that most people understand it today...

Its not "welcome back to the stone age", but the title linked "Crash Course" is the beginning of a salutary lesson in how capitalist economics have deluded us all and handicapped our opportunities for a real and meaningful life...
This guy spoke in our village last night and made a lot of sense, and what is more Rob Hopkins did it with a refreshing mix of optimism and realism.

If you have heard of Transition initiatives then, good.
If you haven't - you will, and you will wish you thought about it a lot earlier...

Britain is supposed to be a nation of dog lovers.
You know what's coming next, so if you are one of those wonderful safe keepers of well-trained dogs that never bark, bite, or shit in public without you instantly clearing it up, then you have my full permission to walk away now, feeling all saintly.

I quite like some dogs...
generally though, I feel it would be a good thing if they were as rare as red squirrels.
As it is, a recent nice walk in the snow-covered common was marred by the frequent glaring brown splurges and stains in the snow, all from dogs (I hope).

I put a solution to the RSPCA and others a long time ago - after Thatcher mistakenly got rid of the dog licence and started the race to achieve a high national dead child count that illustrated just why people need a licence for these dangerous animals.

First let's kill a few myths:

Only Pit bulls and other certain breeds are dangerous.
- Cocker Spaniels and other over-bred dogs bite humans more frequently than any larger mongrels that are properly trained.
Properly trained Pit Bulls are safe to have around small children
- Only if you are nuts.
The Dangerous Dogs act was a sensible replacement for the old dog licencing system
- What a pathetically knee jerk piece of legislation that was - picking certain breeds as dangerous is just irrelevant.
Nearly all British people love dogs
- Dog shit in public places is the most commonly complained about issue year after year, massively so.

The Compulsory insurance system we have in place for cars would, I believe, form the basis of a sensible start to changing the way we deal with dogs in this country and it would specifically:
1. Help eliminate the illegal and unsafe puppy farm trade.
2. Reduce, if not eliminate, and compensate properly for, the deaths and injuries to children from dog attacks.
3. Ensure that responsible dog owners lived in a world where their irresponsible majority shadows paid for their mistakes while they didn't.
4. Keep dog mess off public spaces.

It works like this:
A dog licence is required for you to own a dog.
Initially it costs the same as a TV licence - (enough to stop dumb people giving puppies as Christmas presents)
All dogs would also be identity chipped as per RSPCA recommendations.
The national government run insurance scheme basically covers third party insurance and pays a new massive scheme for dog warden's wages.
After one dog, consecutive dogs are progressively cheaper - just as cars can be - and you can pay extra to have fully comprehensive cover that includes health insurance for your precious pooch.

After a year of no claims against you (for fouling footpaths, persistent noise nuisance or straying - monitored by the new army of dog wardens) then your no claims bonus kicks in to a bigger degree than with cars - renewing costs as little as £10 per year.
If, on the other hand, you or your dog(s) are guilty of a misdemeanor that is discovered by the army of dog wardens aided by the general public - whoops... its the full insurance cost for you again the next year...

There would be special discounts for pensioners and farmers, and professional breeders would need a group licence - but it would finally mean we have a handle on the massive number of irresponsible twats that currently believe running around with a couple of Pit bulls or Dobermans in a children's play area is a good fun macho way to spend some time.

and one final point to address the lost dog syndrome...
strays...
or unchipped dogs
on national dog day,
found in a public place...
not on a lead...

swift bolt to the head and in the waste disposal.

It is about time we realised that dogs are pack animals descended from wolves and need to be treated with respect - the way we do with regard to lions and tigers... and insured as cars because, with irresponsible owners, they kill just like cars.
(But costing the same as a 'harmless' TV makes this unarguably fair.)
With this scheme in place I might start to believe that we have respect for human rights properly prioritised over idiots' desires for macho or posy dog "ownership" rights.

Any questions?

Why do football contracts seem to be under some law other than employment?

I know that, in reality, Scolari could not take the Chelsea board to an Industrial Tribunal, and not just because he hasn't been employed for a whole year so it wouldn't be worth it...(that's what would apply to others losing their jobs).
Football just pays huge sums in compensation and gets on with its merry go round of making things worse by constantly changing the management. In another job he could claim he suffered mental distress due to the lack of care from his employer, was discriminated against because he had a foreign accent, all sorts of angles and as an employer myself I resent many of the weasel ways in which certain types of employee manage to get a huge pay off and cost my organisation thousands in legal or settlement bills.

But there is the other end of the scale.
My step daughter recently lost her job in a hotel because she mentioned to a colleague that she was applying to go on a teaching course in September this year, she in turn told the bosses, and the management were looking to get rid of staff in the downturn, so, after five months living in and working all hours, she was out - for her lack of commitment to the job.

If she had been with them over a year they wouldn't have dared just sack her that way. "Wrongful dismissal", is a stout employment law stick to beat employers who treat workers badly. The anomalies abound in this world of employment, but as usual, those at the bottom of the money tree (hotel workers on minimum wage) fare a lot worse than those pocketing £millions for failing to manage a team to win anything in 25 games of football...

...or getting similar sized bonuses for incompetently helping a bank nearly go bust and borrowing my tax money to survive. - now there are people who should be sacked with no Industrial Tribunal comeback...

I only ask because there is a clear ranking of bad and worse Thatchers - Mark (pictured after his role in financing a military coup became known) being top of the polls for biggest waste of oxygen and public money one could ever invent.
I imagine he will have received the odd death threat, and of course he has been both at risk of death by stupidity (driving in a desert race while in possession of much too small a brain) and has also tried to support the death and overthrow of an elected government...
most of my friends would have supported, in spirit, the death and overthrow of the Thatcher government, but not by financing a coup d'etat.

Carol Thatcher always struck me as the least offensive of that particular nuclear family, and proved popular enough to actually win that ridiculous popularity contest for D list celebrities. That doesn't mean I was pleased when she tried to pick me up after we had been working on a TV documentary back in the era of her mother's government - something about that voice and the look of the grocer's daughter made me shudder - and her request for me to come out later for a drink had my cameraman colleague in stitches...Ken MacKay was also a man of some taste...

Dennis is generally seen as something of a gin-soaked joke - but I suspect he had a better, more mature world view than any of his immediate family, and knew that Mark was a waste of space while his mother doted on the infantile idiot.

More recently there has been some debate as to whether we should have a state funeral for Maggie Thatcher - I was one of many who wanted it only to be allowed if it was done tomorrow, others said we should put the job up for compulsory competitive tender and give the job to the lowest bidder...

I know many will argue she was good for Britain in taming the unions - that's a maybe - organising a police state, destroying the notion of society, and creating the selfish culture of money grabbing criminal capitalism... those are the bits of her legacy that will see me dancing on the day she dies...

(I haven't even mentioned her portrayal of Mandela as a terrorist right up until he became president, or her love and unstinting defence of the mass murderer Pinochet)

Everyone is apparently looking out on the 8 inches of snow around this morning and worrying about getting the "grit" or rock salt supplies with which to keep roads open.
The linked article answers the question: where does this salt come from?
My query, as someone worried about issues such as phosphates running off fields into our rivers, is to know where it all goes?

does it run into drains that go via processing plants to the sea? - or does it get into rivers -
I know that it is immensely damaging for gardens, but I guess the sides of the roads are slug free for a while...

this is our gate guard... rather nicely protected from the snow by snow...

Hey America...
We even hear over here about your sad Neanderthal pundits.
(check the title link if you want a picture of the worst of the dinosaurs).

Rush Limbaugh is routinely castigated by liberals in the USA but his ranting ratings soar ever higher. Here we have a Guardian journalist pointing out that, as long as the Republicans continue to allow these nutjobs to control the right wing political agenda then we are actually better off.

The rest of the world needs Obama to succeed in bringing the USA to a state whereby international terror risks are reduced, there is a reduction in the strength of the Islamic extremist recruiting forces, (There already is) and people in power dare to behave morally, rather than be driven by selfish greed or political expediency. A tall order but far more believable than the miserable failures of Bushism...

So what is the argument for rejoicing that Limpoff-Limbaugh, Blimey O'Reilly, Hannity-Insanity, Savage, Ingraham and Levin are continuing their media hate campaign against the internationally most popular president since Kennedy?

As long as Obama holds his nerve, and gets results - these rabid rats' pathetic campaign to smear him as Muslim, Socialist and somehow worse than Bush can only take the Republicans further away from power and weaken or hopefully destroy respect for them from the wider US voting public.

The tricky bit is going to be countering their never ending propaganda campaign that turns the lie of free market capitalism "success" and Bush's true legacy of antidemocratic warmongering disaster, into some sort of Rambo-like redemption of yet another right wing imperialistic failure.
People forget these past failures (just as they forget Kennedy's true nature), and so we may be doomed to repeat these failures if Obama does not clearly show how the alternative works.

Intelligent thinkers everywhere know that, as well as Communism and over centralising socialist regimes' tendency to fail, all the most fervent governmental champions of free markets have ended up intervening due to their inevitable failures. They also tend to respect the idea of democracy - as opposed to the complete disregard shown by these rabid right wingers and their vote rigging Bush lawyers.

If I had the base to attack them publicly, it is on democracy, the complete misunderstanding of the idea shown by Bush and cronies alike, that I would concentrate my ongoing campaign against them. As it is, the great American religion (money before everything) is most likely to sabotage the Obama train eventually, I just hope it doesn't happen for a good 8 years.

..all thanks to a bit of snow coming to them like citizens of Nairobi..

Londoners don't normally do weather.
They also rarely do "Smile at each other", or "enjoy simple life".
But snow deep enough to cancel buses and tubes caused enough of a shock to the system to get those people who cram together daily in gaze-avoiding silent sardine cans to have to walk the streets... and they found they could smile - some even began to remember there are things called "society", and "community".

This could be the best thing since the credit crunch...
or maybe it will give way to sad cynicism and protectionism, such as demonstrated by the "English" workers wanting "English" jobs in oil refineries. (I want them to remember British means the Welsh & Scottish too, and am excluding them for lack of evidence of racist jingoism)

So let us export the city based mean faced banker types, and the BNP sympathising workers to some snowy corner of Europe - say North East Germany - they can get work and enjoy the snow at the same time.
Down here in the Minchinhampton streets, its friendliness, in the snow, as per usual.

I have always thought Dubai was the rich man's version of Valhalla, a horrid soulless desert in so many more ways than the literal site on which it is built.

Piers Morgan, every right thinking person's fair game for insults of the most tomato projectile type, has just made a TV programme, apparently demonstrating his love of the place.

Despite its pretensions to the western world, it has laws that mean liberal British types should avoid the place for common sense reasons.
- That is one fairly good reason to stay away.

They have created a kitsch horror city that only utter prats like Piers Morgan can fully belong to - that's another good reason to stay away.

and now, it turns out that the legionnaires disease that has just prematurely killed Bill Frindall - a wonderfully ego-less hero of Test Match Special and favourite character of thousands of Cricket fans worldwide - was contracted on his last visit there to support a charity cricket match.
(sniff).

I reckon we should just seize all the money due to be invested in that hell hole and give it to Gaza relief funds...

It's only 30 miles from here to Avebury, where I took this picture about two hours ago.
I was supposed to meet a group of people in the Red Lion Pub - but I feel pretty sure they chickened out because it was so cold...
(windy and 0 degrees)
- so I sat and watched the druids and imitation druids with their crusty children as they tried desperately to celebrate the "Imbolg" - a ritual involving, apparently, chanting or holding your arms up in the air, standing amongst all these standing stones. This then helps the fecundity of the local sheep.

I moved through the pub. Among the usual camouflage jacket/leather woven anti-capitalist chic, multi coloured hats and shawls, with the whiff of hand-knitted yoghurts filling the air that wasn't taken by the stale roll up on woolly coat, there were some intriguing characters.

One guy managed to stand out even in this cornucopia of "WE are alternate to YOU" presentations. He looked like a failed administrative assistant in "The Office", who had decided to try and grow those rat intestine, white man's dreadlocks - and apart form the reason that applies to all white men, should not have ever, ever, considered it because...
he had a large bald patch in the middle of these dark, six inch turd-like globules hanging from his head - this head-fest of horror combined with Andrew Lloyd Webber looks, but with worse clothes...was truly a sight for no eyes.

Another stand out face arrived, with a sleeping bag loosely wrapped around himself and carrying an acoustic flying V guitar, (I soon discovered), along with a sloppy bag holding a mini practice amp and a selection of tangled leads. He had bare blue arms, long dirty blond hair and green glittery eyeshadow and eyeliner fetchingly altering his crusty, upset, swearing male persona.

It turned out he had been playing his guitar for the locals in that pub the previous night and had had his coat stolen - with his very expensive phone, all his bank cards and £50 - no £100 in it. He had just walked 3, no 4, no 6 miles because his effing friends, couldn't be effing arsed to give him an effing lift.
He also repeated that this was the second time he had had his stuff nicked in this pub...before sitting down beside me.
(Firstly - why had it taken him so long to get mad, and why didn't he learn the first time I thought... before looking at him in his Metallica T shirt one more time and realising that was a stupid question)

So, feeling like the good Samaritan, I bought him a bowl of chips - he was clearly genuinely half frozen - and went once more around the cold and unwelcoming pub to look for the people I was supposed to meet. No luck, so rather than re-engage with Dirty Merlin the guitar wizard, I left.

The village sits within a circular man made mound, and the standing stones are arranged in complex swirls and arcs within that space - along with the main road, and ordinary residences - every one with a NO PARKING sign outside.

On this Sunday the druid types walked...
from the NT car park, past some ordinary folk playing soccer in the bitter wind, past the only shop I could see in the place - the "Henge Shoppe" (Uh-OH! crystal colour therapy for your cat anyone?) and the variety of vehicles, children, rags, and freezing tourists from a bargain "deal 'coz of the Euro/Pound rate".

On my own I had the chance to marvel at the alternate life so close to my Cotswold doorstep, and was soon very grateful I live here rather than there...