March for the Alternative - the counter-argument

What can't speak, can't lie. The clipping above shows why we need cuts.
Incidentally, my predictions in advance of the TUC rally last weekend were as much wrong as right - no-one got killed. Otherwise, the destructive mayhem was much the same as usual. The police haven't been accused of brutality - instead, they have been accused of not being brutal enough. My memories of public demonstrations span four decades, and nothing seems ever to have changed.

Predictions (2) March for the Alternative

These are my own predictions for 'March for the Alternative' protest against government cuts being held in London today.

1. Lots of shop windows will be broken.
2. Hundreds of people will be 'kettled' by police, and will announce their intention to sue.
3. Papers the following day will tell of violence being caused by 'a minority of troublemakers'.
4. The police will be accused of provoking violence.
5. Someone in The Guardian will speak of a 'police riot'.
6. At least one person will die under mysterious circumstances.
7. Government policies will not be amended in the slightest.

For once, I hope all of my predictions will be wrong!

Predictions (1): Was Corbyn Right?

A few days ago (March 22) I blogged about Piers Corbyn's prediction of another earthquake following the Japanese disaster. Well, now we have one; this time in northern Myanmar (alias Burma). This one measured around 6 on the Richter scale, and is so far known to have killed seventy people and injured hundreds.
So, was Corbyn right? Or is it merely coincidence?

Twilight of the Arabs

I have just read an excellent article in The Spectator's by Matthew Parris.  It is titled "The Arab world deserves our pity, not our fear", and it points out that behind the hate-filled rhetoric of Al Qaeda
and Co. lies a culture in terminal decline.
Which brings me to the current protests and insurrections flaring across the Middle East. I'm afraid that I don't buy the 'Arab Spring' argument that they represent a mass movement towards democracy. Against corruption, incompetence and unemployment, yes. But democracy is still an alien concept in the Islamic world.
I have a theory about the current upheavals, which is that they represent the second act of a massive, unplanned cultural experiment. The first act of that experiment was the mass emigration - for the first time in history - of Muslims into the non-Muslim world. There can now be few Muslims - whether they be situated in the Middle East or elsewhere - who do not know of friends or relatives who live in what is vaguely know as 'the West', and who are simply better off, and safer, than they. It is that which is making them look critically at their own living standards.
As for the bombing of Libya, I'm agin' it. You can't bomb order into chaos, as we should have learned by now.

R.I.P. Liz Taylor

Well, she finally bowed out.She may never have been the world's greatest actress, but my God, what a life! She was a one-woman soap opera for two generations.
Amazingly, I have managed to dig out a caricature of her which I pasted into one of the scrapbooks I used to keep when I was doing an arts foundation thirty years ago, and which shows her wearing the heads of her past loves as jewelry. It is by an artist called Charles Griffen. I am happy to share it with you.

UK Uncut protest

Here are a few protesters in town on behalf of the UK Uncut campaign. This aims to contrast tax avoidance with government cuts. The idea is to blockade shops belonging to those who, in the opinion of the campaigners, don't pay enough tax.
The arithmetic doesn't add up; the country's debt runs into trillions. The millions which the 'evaders' are supposedly hanging on to doesn't come near to balancing the books. Secondly, the fact that there is a moral justification for many of the cuts is not being addressed. Finally. and most importantly, tax avoidance (as opposed to evasion) is perfectly legal, and I suspect most people who are in a position to avoid paying excessive tax do so. In a country which made heroes of of fictional petty crooks like Arthur Daley and the Trotter Brothers, this campaign is a non-starter.

Corbyn predicts more doom

Piers Corbyn has issued another earthquake/extreme weather warning. See here.

UPDATE: Geologist Jim Berkland echoes warning, claims the  United States Pacific North-West likely epicentre.

Take That, St. Pat

The Chinese have announced that the St Patrick's Day march in Shanghai has been cancelled. The reason, apparently, is that the authorities are concerned that the mass assembly of people may be used as a cover for the sort of anti-authority riots we have been watching in the Middle East.
Good for them! It's high time we banned this booze-soaked bore in England. If it weren't for the marketing department  of  the Guinness brewery the whole thing would have sunk without trace years ago, except among the Irish community. As an Englishman, It is my birthright to get drunk as a skunk on any day of the year, not just one accepted as a safety valve by the Irish Catholic church. Anyway, this is a protestant country; we don't do saints. Which is why, incidentally, we don't celebrate St George's Day.
 That's Patrick, above. Note the snakes, to which the old lad is pointing. They are symbolic of Patrick, as the cross keys are symbolic of St Peter. That is because, according to legend, St Pat drove all the snakes out of Ireland. ( in reality, they were driven out by the last ice age). That is also why you will find similar posters of Patrick all over Haiti. Voodoo devotees use them to symbolise their serpent god, Damballah.
Not many people know that, as Michael Caine used to say.

Tsunami horror

With estimates of the number of dead rising steadily, it is beginning to appear that the Japanese tsunami could turn out to be the greatest natural disaster in human history. Newsreel photographs of that wall of water and debris grinding inexorably across the landscape should remind us of our relative impotence in the face of nature's convulsions. Hopefully the world will unite to succour Japan in its hour of need.

There will be huge economic consequences. The financial damage to earth's already weakened economies will be incalculable. Ships full of goods have gone missing. Factories have had to be closed down. Five nuclear reactors have been damaged; there is danger of meltdown. The insurance payouts will run into billions.

And there may be more to come. Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, whose long range weather forecasts now consistently out-perform those of the Met Office, had predicted - in advance of the present disaster - that the world would suffer major quakes and geological events for the next two years. Mr Corbyn's thesis is that weather on the Sun is the main determinant of what happens on Earth. The sunspot cycles have been abnormally low for a couple of years now, and the current quake was preceded by a coronal ejection of record size, hurling billions of tons of matter in our direction.
Let's hope that, for once, he is wrong.

Jerusalem Olympics 2012

Iran is threatening to boycott the 2012 Olympics on the grounds that its (in)famous 'collapsing outhouse' logo is racist, and incorporates the letters of 'Zion' . Well, I at once dashed to my Photoshop CS to see if the logo could, indeed, be rearranged to read 'Zion'.  The result is above.
So, what can we deduce? We have, it seems to me. three options:
1. The IOC is in the pocket of the Jewish World Conspiracy.
2. The Iranians are afraid that some, if not all, of their athletes will claim asylum in London.
3. President Ahmadinejad is as crazy as a shithouse rat.

NOTE: Options 2 and 3 are by no means mutually exclusive.

Global Warming Begins to Grip

Here's a computer composite of several satellite photographs taken over the last few days. They show the remarkable extent of snow cover over the northern hemisphere. Obviously we shall be told that this is weather, not climate - but that distinction will become meaningless if the cold winters which we have been experiencing over the last few years become the norm. Climate is simply average  temperature  - and if temperatures stay low, they become climate.

Tattoos

Just read, in the course of an article, that the NHS spends £40,000,000 per year removing unwanted tattoos.
Why? What has this to do with the nation's health?
If people can find the money to have them done, surely they can find the money to have them undone.
There's no reason for the state to get involved.

Cheap Booze Britain?

To begin with, here's something you may have missed on the Guido Fawkes blog a couple of days ago.
Right now the anti-alcohol lobby are stampeding again, demanding higher prices for booze. Perhaps with this in mind, Guido has posted the following useful graph comparing British booze tax to those in the rest of Europe.

No extra comment needed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

But hang on - isn't it the 21st of January?
Well, yes. But fact is that ever since Christmas I've been in a sort of 'slough of despond', not wanting to blog or, for that matter, do anything else. I've been lying in bed for half the day like a human compost heap.Now, as the days begin to grow appreciably longer and lighter, I feel the sap rising again. Expect more stuff shortly.

Christmas Day

After all these years of dreaming of a White Christmas, we've finally got one, and it's horrible. Temperatures are stuck below zero and transport is paralysed throughout Europe. I am spending Christmas alone (as I usually do) but this year I shall be making no attempt to find a pub with the usual pitifully limited opening hours. I am determined to stay indoors, and to venture no further afield than the garbage chute. So, a Merry Christmas to all my readers(if any)!

In the Bleak Midwinter

The world outside my window is a composition in whites and greys as the snow drives in, silent and unstoppable. So, it's time for a warming chuckle from YouTube:

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

This being the festive season I thought I'd post this little gem of a Christmas film from 1955. It was created by the multi-talented Wendy Toye, and the art direction is by Ronald Searle.

Bienvenue sur le Jeux Olympiques 2012!

English might be the most widely  spoken language on Earth, but it isn't good enough for the International Olympic Committee. It has ruled that French must take precedence over English at all ceremonies and medal awards; that all billboards must be displayed in French as well as English; and that the Union Jack must be flown fifth in precedence behind the Olympic flag, the London 2012 symbol, the United nations flag and the flag of Greece. Moreover, free hotel rooms must be provided for 40,000 Olympic officials, sports administrators and 'official guests'.
The last two Olympics left their host countries out of pocket after the show; hard to see the present beano causing a departure from the trend.
  Oh, and most of the media have picked up on the announcement that EU rules on the classification of explosives have been nodded into British law by our dozy politicians, with the result that Christmas Crackers ( a British invention, by the way) can no longer be sold to children under 16.  Merry Christmas!

Frost and fog

The temperature is below zero, and likely to remain so for at least a week. I awoke yesterday to a remarkably dense freezing fog. Every twig and blade of grass was furred with white rime, and when the sun finally managed to leak through, it could be seen that the air was teeming with billions of tiny ice crystals. Meanwhile the Met office is still saying that 2010 could be the warmest year since records began. This is, of course meaningless; they are working in tiny fractions of a single degree centigrade, well within their own error margins - and they don't have the figures for November and December yet.
I presume that the statement was made as a propaganda device for the current Warmist's Sabbath in Cancun.

Man in the Know.

They actually lost 3-0.
Thanks for the tip, Daily Mirror!