[political correctness] and the coming backlash

Steve Rhodes, in reviewing Goldeneye, mentioned that:

Xenia Onatopp, the femme fatale, is played with tremendous zeal by Famke Janssen, and flies brilliantly in the face of political correctness.

Those last nine words are a credit to a modern day writer. It’s difficult to effectively analyse the essential problem with political correctness and many words have been written on the topic but maybe this post might contribute to the understanding of such a societally debilitating phenomenon.

Let’s start with a statement.

Surely no one would disagree with Professor Marilyn Edelstein’s take on what should permeate university policy and by corollary, society’s:

University policies must now become more pluralistic, more multicultural, more sensitive to race, gender, class, personal orientation and disabilities. Universities need to minimize harassment, on campuses, on the basis of gender or race.

Fine, ‘more sensitive’ and ‘minimize harrassment’ – all good stuff. But notice the other elements also slipped in there as a job lot.

Now we come to the problem. The Politically Correct see the method of implementing these ideals as rewriting history, indoctrination, legislating in order to beat people down with a big stick and finding funds from anywhere the state can lay hands on them, even plunging the country into a generation of debt.

You see the motif – no idea whatsoever of how money is actually generated, ‘someone’ injecting the finance, from ‘somewhere’ to pursue the noble cause and riding roughshod over any opposition. The amateur rules, OK?

The indoctrination itself can be seen in the quotes below but is especially visible in the Mentoring programme, which says that parents can’t be trusted to bring up the child so the state needs to take a key role in this.

Beating people down with big sticks can be seen, tangentially, in the Rest In Peace Act:

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was changed [in autumn, 2007] to allow police to force people to hand over passwords or keys to encrypted data. Refusal to do so is a criminal offence carrying a penalty of two years in jail, or up to five years, if the issue concerns national security.

One criminal law specialist has told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that the law could be challenged under the Human Rights Act, though he also warned that such a challenge could fail under legal tests set out by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Perhaps the worst aspect of it all is the utopian lack of realism in the targets, the idea that the pursuit of an impossible dream lends legitimacy to heavy handed tactics, put well by Winston Churchill [1920], when he referred to the:

… world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality …

You only need live in the former Soviet Union for twelve years to see the legacy of those years, especially in the ‘arrested development’ and the infantilization of the population, alluded to by Tom Paine.

The envious malevolence refers to the way the have-nots look greedily at those who have built something up, automatically ssume that it must have been come by corruptly, latch on to a political philosophy which reinforces and legitimizes the politics of seizure of that which is not theirs and so the call goes out for the state to redistribute resources their way, without the need for any contribution on their part. They’re quite happy for anyone other than them to be dispossessed, as with the calls to remove the pension from Goodwin, which, in itself, reveals a key aspect of the PCer’s mindset – vindictiveness.

Another key aspect is ‘multiculturalism’:

Multiculturalism is nowadays affiliated with a postmodern outlook. The pivotal ideas of this vision of life are relativism (cultural relativism, in particular), a negative attitude toward Western political tradition, the cultivation of collective guilt for the transgressions of the colonial past, and other real or presumed black pages in Western history.

If Western societies think they have no core values important enough to fight for (by peaceful means), then there is no reason for immigrant minorities to accept them. If the dominant ideology in Western societies is that democracy, the rule of law, and human rights have no specific quality that makes them superior to theocracy, dictatorship, and authoritarianism, there is no need to oppose the radical assault directed at Western democracies by the teachers of hate.

Here are a few examples of how bizarre it has got:

• In 1988 a Stanford University faculty changed its popular "Western Culture" course to "Cultures, Ideas and Values", as "western" was now seen as a dirty word for some minorities.

• The Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, in the UK, believes that "non-fluency in English should not be used as grounds to refuse employment, even for an interpreter or air traffic controller". That means you don’t need English any more to become an English interpreter – you learn it on the job.

• In 2003, the University of Middlesex drew up a paper calling for a ban on all "unsound" words which a committee had identified. When you look at the composition of that committee, it becomes even more interesting.

• American historian and educator, Diane Ravitch, in 2003, quoted guidelines by New York publishing houses for prospective writers: "Topics not to include are: abortion, death or disease, criminals, magic, politics, religion, unemployment, weapons, violence, poverty, divorce, slavery, alcohol or addiction. Women cannot be depicted as mothers or caregivers or doing household work. Men cannot be depicted as lawyers, doctors or plumbers. African citizens are not to be portrayed in a negative light. None of these things can be themes in any publications handled by us."

• A London educational conference was told, in 2003: "Everything written before 1970 was either gender or racially biased" and that "reading and writing are merely technologies of control." Therefore, writers like Shakespeare are now out of favour.

• In 2005, at two universities in Britain, it is now possible to obtain a degree in English literature without even reading Shakespeare. Two-thirds of reading lists now comprise feminist writers instead.

• Early in 2005, in the United Kingdom, a government think tank wanted schools to replace the term "Failure", for under-achieving students who did not pass their exams, with the term "Deferred Success", so they would not "feel sad".

• An under age criminal must now be called a "child at risk", so that he does not become traumatized by the word "hooligan".

• A person living illegally in our country is now to be called an "undocumented immigrant", so he does not become anxious about his situation.

• Men must never call their beautiful wives "wives", because that’s humiliating. They are now your "spouses" or "significant others".

One from some time back, related to a Glasgow City Council tiff:

I'm actively involved in trying to rid the church of exclusive language, and would like to see certain words banned, such as ‘brethren’.

Pause for a moment, good reader and consider that last statement, which now brings us to the dirty F word. As Patricia Sexton points out in "The Feminized Male" (1969):

... our schools are run by women for girls" and "cultivate feminine ways of life ...

To succeed in them, notes Richard Podles, boys must betray their masculine identity.

In the last generation we have built a society that is severely inhospitable to men and boys. When one considers the four- to fivefold increase in youth crime, drug use, emotional illness, educational failure during the same period, it's clear whose interests have been served and whose injured.

Or this:

More couples are getting divorced because women no longer see the importance of a dad/husband in the family's life. They think they can and should do it all on their own and no one should tell them otherwise. This leads to higher rates of sexual activity among teenage girls who do not have a father figure that is prominent in their lives.

Thus we come to the recent news of the beauty pageant front-runner who lost the title because she said that ‘gay marriage was wrong’. Far more significant to me was why she was asked that question in the first place. How does that sit with the ‘privacy of the individual and human rights’, parrotted by PCers?

Beauty pageants and the women who enter them are another question, so leaving that aside for the moment, why, when she was supposedly being judged on her feminine charms and intelligence, would an overtly political question have determined her fate instead?

This brings in yet another characteristic of PCers – the rampant hypocrisy.

Ostensibly believing in tolerance and free speech, they ended that woman’s shot at the title on the grounds of her political views. How totalitarian is that? But if you call them totalitarian, they’ll try to legislate for you to retract that statement or implement existing laws to silence you.

Johnathan Pearce, at Samizdata, wrote:

One of the problems with Political Correctness … is that it will invite a backlash. That backlash will not necessarily be for the good, but could encourage a new sort of ugliness: a desire to say things that are by any yardstick offensive, rude and coarsening of public life.

This is the huge fear. It allowed the National Socialist party to be overrepresented at the Reichstag. It enables groups like the BNP to flourish and fare well at elections, as in 2010. Whoops, that hasn’t come yet, has it?

The quietly smug, mentally unsound, hypocritical, big stick intolerance of the intrusive, female-dominated, bourgeois nanny state is heading for a huge over-reaction from the newly oppressed, indigenous population and folks, it ain’t gonna be pleasant when it comes.

The reason I am so concerned with the damage women have done in these two decades is that I’ve spent the majority of my professional life, especially in the early years, trying to improve the lot of girls and by extension, women, only to see the advances in understanding on the part of many males, of which I was but one, swamped and soured by the nutters in the feminazi movement who have, with the connivance of the state, Them, with its own tacky agenda, undone all the goodwill with which the modern male was prepared to meet the needs of the female, in favour of the politics of confrontation and legislation, [the dark side of the female].

Now the average non-emasculated male harbours deep resentment, particularly the older he gets whereas before, he was quite willing to meet the girls halfway. For a person who adores and has worked for women all his life, this is hugely dispiriting and yet understandable.

The average non-rabid woman reading this illustrates, in herself, why PCism is so corrosive – she can’t see that such a concept exists in the first place, outside a male’s fevered imagination and even if it does, she sees it as a positive thing, that feminism did bring a better situation for women and no amount of argument, such as the one below, will persuade her otherwise.

The trouble is, that falsehood usually starts with truths, then perverts them. Yes, women’s material position did improve and she thinks the climate for her own marriage has improved, whereas she can’t see the deep resentment of the male which is going to spearhead the reaction mooted by Johnathan Pearce.

She genuinely believes things are better now.

However, sorry to say, ladies, women in the not-too-distant-future will find themselves in one of two situations:

One scenario says they’ll go right back to where they started from, as oppressed as ever, still clinging desperately to the plethora of legislation designed to protect them from men, not realizing that their politics of hatred and confrontation with the male will have exploded back on them, when their real skill - the ability to influence and persuade – will have been left unexercized these many years and would now need to be rediscovered, in order to avoid a Sharia like situation, even in the west.

Or …

An even more likely scenario, which explains the active collusion of the state in driving a wedge between men an women in a fundamental way, creating the desire to be unencumbered with a partner we can’t deal with [as distinct from office friendships and pillow talk], a scenario which is the logical extension of the current climate of female infidelity and non-commitment, matching that of the male, something the female has always wanted for herself but can only have with the active support of the state, will be the disempowerment of all of us, male and female.

This will put the last nail in the coffin of marriage as an institution and result in a semi-permanent Brave New World scenario of enforced, female, sluttish promiscuity, a climate of coupling with anyone and separating the act from the notion of love, with in-vitro procreation reserved for state-controlled ‘hatcheries’.

Girls, the state’s agenda is far more focussed and powerful than your warm, fuzzy feelings and your demand for gender justice but you can’t see the danger we’re all in as a result, can you?

When we unbalance society, however much it is to our personal advantage, we are reaping a whirlwind and it has always been so throughout history – it’s always been the avenging wind of Moriah.

[truth] and how to lose a contest for speaking it

“In my country, and in my family, I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman,” she said on Sunday night. She went on to come in second to Miss North Carolina.

PC rules, OK?

Her sentiments might be worthy but she's a bit inaccurate. She said gay marriage was 'wrong' but actually, it doesn't exist. What gays have is a partnership, right or wrong.

Marriage itself, on the other hand, is an official union for the purpose of procreation and the idea of anthropologists 'debunking' that is laughable.

Put simply, there's no such thing as 'gay marriage' but people have always tried to struggle against reality.

Marriage exists in virtually every known human society. . . . At least since the beginning of recorded history, in all the flourishing varieties of human cultures documented by anthropologists, marriage has been a universal human institution.

As a virtually universal human idea, marriage is about the reproduction of children, families and society. . . . Marriage across societies is a publicly acknowledged and supported sexual union which creates kinship obligations and sharing of resources between men, women, and the children that their sexual union may produce.

Gays are welcome to do what they do, they can form partnerships all they like but they're simply not 'married'.

Now let's support the campaign for the right of men to have babies or for an elephant to be a lion.

[pdfs] negotiating the maze

I've just wasted two hours of valuable blogging time trying to find a way to put the chapters of my book as pdfs. I'd already made the pdfs on my Mac and that was no problem - there they sit on the desktop, in a folder.

The problem is uploading them to my bedside reading website. When using googledocs, they're only available to google users and the url skews the whole template when the link is put in the sidebar.

OK, so I went to Scrbd and it uploaded fine, the url was made, it was put in the sidebar, all was fine, except for one thing - to click on the link doesn't take you to my pdf, it takes you to my pdf upoaded on their site and your have to register with them to view it.

Stuff that.

My friend mentions easyspace but I'd like to know from you good people out there - what do you do to get your pdfs in a form where I can come along, click on your link and read them?

[pornography] keeping it where it belongs

Zoey Zane was murdered and they finally got the killer.

It’s hard to get sound stats on the explosion of porn around the world but here are some articles about it.

These things tend to be dry and boring but to go anecdotal is also fraught, for obvious reasons. It comes down to how much you care, in the end. It’s so widespread that even religious groups are trying to come to terms with it as to how much and what type is acceptable.

I think I’d like to step back from moral judgements and just urge all men [and women], boys [and girls] to start boycotting any images or categories which depict the type of young lady in the pic above, the one who was murdered. Start boycotting the webcams, don’t post them, don’t view them.

Idealistic, yes, but …

If we were to pull the rug from under the young market and concentrate more on the Milfs and the like, then market forces would surely prevail and kids would not be drawn in to the same extent. We could start a campaign ‘Milfs, not Teens’ or some such.

You might say, ‘Let’s wipe it out altogether.’ You can’t – it’s human nature for men [and women] to try to cater for the libido. Even being married is not going to help that – look at the stats on the most common age range of porn viewers; these are more often than not married.

Sexuality is too powerful to control. Of course I’d be tempted to see that girl in the pic unclad but when it involves multiple men and even farm animals with her, somewhere the line has to be drawn. And that’s the most frightening thing today – how young they are doing things which twenty years ago would have been the preserve of scaggy whores.

I hate to defend old-time pornographers from decades ago but at least they portrayed women in those pics, not children. There just wasn’t the broad market for kiddy porn then which there is these days.

At least a boycott might be a start.

[inference] deduction, induction and abduction

From the International Encyclopaedia of Communication:

Deduction, induction, and abduction are three basic forms of inference that inform the methodologies of communication research as well as other fields and disciplines.

Whereas the most familiar forms are inference from a general principle or law to individual instances (deduction), or from several instances to a law (induction), abduction is an equally important constituent of scholarship, serving to identify possible explanations for a set of observations.

Different traditions of communication research can be seen to rely on distinctive variants and combinations of deduction, induction, and abduction.

Aristotle had identified abduction as a type of inference; it was reintroduced in modern philosophy by Charles Sanders Peirce in an 1878 article.

Wiki defines abduction thus:

Abduction, or inference to the best explanation, is a method of reasoning in which one chooses the hypothesis that would, if true, best explain the relevant evidence.

Abductive reasoning starts from a set of accepted facts and infers their most likely, or best, explanations.

The term abduction is also sometimes used to just mean the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions, but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing.

Just thought you’d like to know.

[caption time] what's wrong in this picture

[easter day] today in the eastern tradition

This article was from the Melbourne Age from 2005. Sadly, I can't attribute it, as it is from my pre-blogging days but it does put the significance of Easter in perspective. There are statements in this article you're going to challenge.


The question is how our shared values might be kept from consignment to the museum if the faith that shaped them continues to decline in influence.

The cross, according to Christians, stands at the centre of history. On this day, about 1975 years ago, Roman soldiers scourged Jesus and nailed him to the cross. Christians believe this appalling piece of cruelty was God's deliberate plan, the supreme demonstration of his love and his identification with human suffering. The cross is used repeatedly in the New Testament as a metaphor to sum up the content of Christianity.

On the cross, the Bible teaches, humankind was ransomed, redeemed, reconciled with God and acquitted of guilt and sin. Sydney Smith, the 19th-century Anglican wit, was surely right when he observed that "man is certainly a benevolent animal. A never sees B in distress without thinking that C ought to relieve him directly." According to Christianity, God saw A, B and C's distress and acted, in the cross.

Non-Christians, of course, don't see it this way. Nevertheless, for them, too, the cross represents a defining historical moment because Christianity's influence has reached most of the globe. Certainly it has been the overwhelming force shaping Western culture and values, so much so that many humanists concede there is little in their ethical outlook that wasn't earlier in Christianity.

Sometimes the influence is obvious, as in the church's work among the poor and broken. Hospitals, for example, are a Christian invention, along with free public education. And sometimes the influence is malign, as when the church has helped to entrench injustice and endorsed the status quo.

Sometimes the influence is so deep it is taken utterly for granted. Take the ethic of love: Christianity took the Greek concept of unconditional agape and gave it new meaning, centred in human relationships. Or humility - perhaps the central virtue of a Christian - is by no means esteemed in all cultures. Agamemnon and Achilles, Homer's heroes of ancient Greece, fell out over the honour owed them.

Centuries later, Aristotle's great-souled man was duty-bound to trumpet his worth and require due recognition, so long as he did not exaggerate it. As Australia moves into post-Christian modes of living, humility is ever less valued, and most of us regret its loss (at least in other people).

The most enduring ethical bequest of Christianity is the belief that all humans are equal in dignity and have unique worth as individuals. That flows directly from the belief that every person is created in the image of God. Many can no longer use that sort of language today - opting instead for the discourse of rights - but most still insist that humans have individual value. Whatever else people might make of what Christians commemorate today, this enduring value flows from a Christian culture.

Most Australians, while valuing a pluralistic and multicultural society, also admire many other ethical values that linger from our Judaeo-Christian heritage - such concepts as compassion, love, forgiveness and redemption. The question is how our shared values might be kept from consignment to the museum if the faith that shaped them continues to decline. Some ethical capital remains but it is fast being spent.

One thing Christians note with interest is that though atheists and agnostics may reject the notion of a personal deity they admire the example Jesus set in his life and teaching. Non-believers often suggest that these ethical qualities can endure independently of religious belief. Christians have their doubts, because Jesus' ethical teaching flowed directly from his theological commitments.

But, in a pluralistic society, Christians should be glad that their values retain the purchase they do. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the church is to present and preserve a world in which these values can flourish.

[hillary] where is huma now

The thing which always puzzled me was why Abedin would have wanted to.

[unwitting partners] we’re always the good guys, aren’t we

The importance of being right

In Russia, there was a particular father who had this unfortunate habit of concluding every third sentence with, ‘… am I right?’ This also went to show that people are the same the world over and that middle-aged men [and women], including me, are susceptible to this characteristic.

For us, the blog was invented, to pour it all out and to spare our partners an earbashing. Would that women would all blog as well and give us some peace and quiet 30% of the time.

By the way, there’s only one thing worse than an old pontificator, who at least knows something of the world … and that’s a young ponitificator. I still remember an eighteen year old mate of mine talking cars with my father and saying, ‘Well, you know, I’m not impressed by the Jensen Interceptor.’

My father replied with the equivalent of, ‘Who gives a f--- what you’re impressed with?’ He didn’t say those exact words because he never swore and taught me not to – that’s fraying a bit round the edges now.

That boy was little different to Mark Twain being impressed how much his father had learned between Twain’s 14th and 21st years.

Mr. White [a motif in itself] also said, in Quantum, ‘We have people everywhere,’ and concluded the remark with, ‘… am I right?’

Everyone likes to think he [and she]’s right. This personality quirk of yours, though annoying to us, is hardly as world shattering as, say, Gordo’s omnipotence.

When concepts don’t work

Svali, who incidentally said in 2000:

The good news is that if a person is debt-free, owes nothing to the government or credit debt, and can live self sufficiently, they may do better than others. I would invest in gold, not stocks, if I had the income. Gold will once again be the world standard, and dollars will be pretty useless.

… also said about Them, the ignorant Middletons, Balls, Millipedes, Obamas et al who corrode the cogs, nuts and bolts which help the world cough and splutter along:

Basically, they are in denial. They believe that history can be changed …

and:

They dominate the financial picture, have immense wealth, several mansions around the world, anything they want, and the (to them) joy of controlling millions of others. They believe their intellect is sharp, and that they will be the "good guys" in the New Order. They are Luciferians, and so believe the Bible is misguided in its assertions.

They believe that basically, they are GOOD and doing a good work, even if the means are tough to endure at the time. They are weeding out the weak and unfit, and developing a supreme human being. I know it sounds like hog wash, but they truly, honestly believe this at a core level.

If you think your humble blogger is ‘impressed’ with this woman, you’d be right, especially as it was said in an interview in 2000 … and look what’s happened since. Malcolm Fraser [former Australian PM] was in line with this thinking, smugly delivering to a suffering electorate [at the time]:

‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy.’

Look at Gordo and Harold Wilson, the pied pipers towards austerity. All part of the plan, comrades. The pound in your pocket – anyone remember that?

Agatha Christie, no less, wrote in ‘N or M’, 1941:

‘Incredible!’ said Tommy.

Grant shook his head.

‘You do not know the force of German propaganda. It appeals to something in man, some desire or lust for power. These people were ready to betray their country, not for money but in a kind of megalomaniacal pride in what they - they themselves - were going to achieve for that country. In every land it has always been the same. It is the Cult of Lucifer — Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Pride and a desire for personal glory.’

Now, you tell me how any of that is different to Gordo’s socialist world vision?

How is it any different to the principal speaker at the Oxford meeting of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders On Human Survival [1988], co-sponsored by the Temple of Understanding and the UN Global Committee., James Lovelock, a Fellow of the Lindisfarne Association (a New Age group headquartered at the Cathedral), who authored the book The Ages of Gaia?

… on Earth she (Gaia) is the source of everlasting life and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her.

Lovelock wrote:

Orthodox Christianity, properly understood, is a distortion of the pure forms of religious truth … we must immediately return to the worship of the Earth goddess if we are to save ourselves from destruction.

Present there, nodding on and making speeches in support, was Maurice Strong, whose claims to fame include:

In 1992, [he was] chairman of the United Nation's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro He was co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum, became a member of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), found time to serve as president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, on the executive committee of the Society for International Development, and as an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. Above all, he served on the Commission on Global Governance. Friends include former Vice President Al Gore.

This is Them and here is their global vision, which Strong was heavily involved in promoting:

The purpose of the World Service Intergroup is to generate a focused, conscious and deliberate intergroup effort to specifically assist the Externalization of the Hierarchy and the Reappearance of the Christ.

I'm not making this up. I wish I were. And this does not refer to JC. From an article I can't find the link to:

Strong was at Findhorn, together with the Lucis Trust. Gordon Davidson and Corrine McLaughlin, who set up the WSI in Washington, D.C. in 1995 were also instrumental in setting up the Valdez Principles, committing corporate America to the Gorean Eco-principles now in vogue today. Here is the mindset:

The Shamballa force is in reality Life itself; and Life is a loving synthesis in action. We also used the Six Laws and Principles of the New Age to lead us towards creating a vision of how these principles might create patterns for the New Civilization humanity will be constructing over the next 2500 years.

The environmental movement therefore has an occult angle influencing it which sets it apart from the mindset of most people who see themselves as at least partly green. Shamballa force would seem to have little to do with recycling your bottles and using eco-friendly lamps and yet the connection is forced at high levels of society.

These people really believe they are the Good Guys. Black is White [Mr. White] and White is Black. Does anyone recall the biblical ‘woe to them who call white black and black white’ [or words to that effect]?

What socialism really entails

In 1990, Strong gave an interview to writer Daniel Wood [West Magazine], in which he discussed a novel he'd like to write:

'Each year,' he explains as background to the telling of the novel's plot, 'the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEO'S, prime ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead.'

With this as a setting, he then says, 'What if a small group of these world leaders were to form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse? It's February. They're all at Davos. These aren't terrorists. They're world leaders.'

'They have positioned themselves in the world's commodity and stock markets. They've engineered a panic, using their access to stock exchanges and computers and gold supplies. They jam the gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostages. The markets can't close. The rich countries -' and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out the window.

Ravings of a loony? Maybe and there are many loonies, even in the blogosphere but the point is, this man is one of the Gorean ‘in-crowd’ of which Obama is a key member. In other words, the people coming out with these loony ideas are the people running things.

Look at the top in Britain and there he is in all his glory – El Gordo, with his global economic plan. If you’re an economic writer [I think here of Cityunslicker and Sackerson], you’d want to dissociate the ‘pure’ economics so beloved of you guys from the Shamballa guff but boys, you can’t separate it, not because I say so [and people have called me left field before] but because it really is the driving power behind Their actions.

Them.

You wouldn’t ignore inconvenient statistics, would you? You’d include all the stats. Ditto here. You need to weave the ravings of the people who actually run the show into your eco-view, at least to take the opposition into account.

Remember boys, these are the people who say capitalism and the free market have failed.

To my sweet, everyday, garden, socialist friends whose hearts are true

In Maurice Strong's April 8, 1997 speech introducing the Earth Charter to the UN, he said:

There is a need to address the fundamental ethical imperatives of sustainable development.

And what are these ethical imperatives?

Strong spoke of 'ethics of participation' . . . and 'ethics of inclusion' . . . in order to 'foster a healthy balance between quality of life and quality of environment — because development must henceforth be in balance with Mother Earth.' It will 'develop a sense of belonging to the universe.

There you go – tolerance, balance, the ethics of inclusion, love for humanity, multiculturalism where racism is anathema – all good stuff, eh? You’d subscribe to those values, socialists and left liberals, wouldn’t you? I hope Aaron’s reading this.

Of course you would, except that certain people at the top, Them, have hijacked the agenda and are pushing a very much unsustainable and bizarre policy which includes you, yourself, my socialist friends, who voted Nu Labour back last time and are now regretting it.

It’s not your fault but you can’t seem to see how the people at the top are manipulating your basic good will for completely other purposes.

Look at what motivates you. Look at what motivates my dear friend Cherie – care and compassion. Care for her members, care for the poor who can’t find a way on their own, respect and tolerance for humanity. Giving back to society.

Beautiful values.

You really are the Good People … except that you’ve been unwitting partners to the hijacking … and the agenda you think you’ve been supporting has actually been skewed and twisted into the shambolic Shamballa, at the higher echelons.

The fish rots at the head and always has.

You, my socialist and left liberal friends [and I mean good friends in many cases], are no different to the right of centre libertarians in that we all want prosperity and the right to a slice of the good life for our families. Yet we find ourselves on opposite sides of the political fence.

Why?

The simple fact is that the world does not owe us a living and even if it was altruistic enough to wish that, the resources don’t exist to implement such a panacea. Especially not when the resources are being skimmed off by Them.

If everyone felt the same and wanted to, rather than were compelled to , make personal sacrifices, as Lord T says, then people would not be as unemployed and living off the state which can't afford it, the current situation.

The nub of the matter

Look, I’m no wiser than you, considerably less so in many ways. Your world view you’ve sorted out in your mind has much to recommend it but if it does not include ALL the facts, including the inconvenient ones above, then it is flawed.

I’m not wise, I just report report these things as they happen, that’s all.

[political gaffs quiz] can you get all five

That gaff wasn't political though.

1. Name the gaffmeister who allegedly told British students in China: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed."

2. Obama had meetings with the Chinese, the Russians and ...whom?

3. Name the man who said: "I don’t particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it."

4. Name the person who sent this e-mail message to the Department of Local Government, Transport and the Regions on 911, : "Today is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury." [H/T Paul]

5. Who originally used the epithet "the longest suicide note in history" to describe Labour's 1983 election manifesto?

Answers

Phil the Greek, David Cameron, Dubya, Jo Moore, Gerald Kaufman

[air travel] fly the python way

How would you like to find one of these on your in-flight magazine?

[pascha] good friday today

It's Orthodox Easter Friday today and you might be wondering about the discrepancy between east and west.

The Christian Easter is tied in with the Jewish Pesach or Passover.

The Passover itself is complicated and ties in with the Metonic cycle of years, which involve the Golden Numbers 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19.

From this come calculations for the Jewish calendar year which - the Hebrew Pesach is determined in the Old Testament to begin on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nissan.

Originally, this meant, from observation of the moon, that Passover was celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Christians, therefore, celebrated Pascha according to the same calculation-that is, on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Almost from the very beginning of the existence of the Christian Church, the issue presented variations. Although the New Testament relates these events to the Jewish Passover, the details of this relationship are not clear.

On the one hand, the tradition of the synoptic gospels identifies the Lord's last supper as a passover meal, placing the death of the Lord on the day after Passover. On the other hand, the tradition of the Gospel of St. John situates the death of the Lord at the very hour the paschal lambs were sacrificed on the day of Passover itself.

In practice, one group were celebrating it on any day of the week [wherever the Jewish mid-Nisan fell] and the other was putting it on the Sunday after Passover.

The First Ecumenical Council convened at Nicaea in 325 took up the issue. It determined that Pascha should be celebrated on the Sunday which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox-the actual beginning of spring.

There was a strong feeling in some quarters that the Christian tradition should not tie in with the Jewish calendar.

Also, there was the question of determining the calendar. In the East, the 19-year cycle was eventually adopted, whereas in the West an 84-year cycle. The use of two different paschal cycles inevitably gave way to differences between the Eastern and Western Churches regarding the observance of Pascha.

A further cause for these differences was the adoption by the Western Church of the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th century. This took place in order to adjust the discrepancy by then observed between the paschal cycle approach to calculating Pascha and the available astronomical data.

Therefore, in practical terms, the invariable date of the vernal equinox is taken by the Orthodox church to be April 3 in our current calendar (but March 21 on the Julian Calendar).

To this blogger, except that it is celebrated vaguely round the spring equinox, it hardly matters, as long as it is celebrated. Personally I like the two Easters plus the rabbits and eggs but I also like the kulich and all that tradition, as well as the midnight vigil.

It all seems to give a nice balance of gravitas and fun. After all, the Resurrection is joyful by definition, not gloomy.

[blessed are the little people] not ... and other topics

You might like to see this article.

Is this the car of the future?

English singalong [Hat tip UKIP]

[censorship] do community standards exist

Does anyone remember the 1971 Schoolkids Oz pornography trial in the UK? Does anyone remember Judge Alex Kozinski in 2008?

Not only does there seem rampant hypocrisy in the matter of what constitutes community standards and the actions of its supposed defenders but these days, I wager no one really knows what community standards are.

Let's face it, the games kids are playing on the net and using the new technology, the sex, drugs and the instantly clickable gross porn kids can access any time they want on the net has changed the ground rules completely. Parents are either naive, turning a blind eye or throwing up their hands in despair.

What are community standards now?

Censorship classifications are a case in point. Take three films I've seen in the past months - Saw [18], In Bruges [18] and From Russia with Love [12].

Now Saw deserves its classification for gratuitous violence [people hung up with meathooks, limbs being twisted asunder and so on]. So if that constitutes an 18 rating, then what of In Bruges?

It has tame sex [Clemence Poesy even keeps her clothes on], has swearing and one drug scene. There's a point where someone throws himself off a tower and you don't see the splat, you see a closeup of his face, still alive, with some ketchup spread about. Poesy, in an outtake, uses the F-word to describe the F-act.

That's it. So where's the 18 and for what? For swearing?

On the other hand, the re-released Lowry Bond FRWL is tame in itself but the menu and links feature unclad females who are quite clearly unclad and therefore the silhouettes don't work. Let alone the womanizing theme of Bond in the early episodes.

This is rated 12?

So I ask again, what are the community standards which lead the censors to decide on classifications, on what do they base it, who enforces it and is there any need for it at all?

My own view is that what adults watch is their affair but that kids need some form of protection. However, I'm well aware of the obvious flaw in that - where is the line drawn.

[keyes] beautiful

Hat tip Lord T, from here.

Changing the topic, this on privacy and the lack of choice in the UK now:

Just look at what BT does with your phone service now. You don’t even want a BT phone but you need one to get a broadband connection with any ISP so you pay BT £11+ a month even if you don’t need, want or use the phone. OFCOM should fix this but is clearly toothless. It’s effectively a cash cow for BT and an additional cost for subscribers that looks very much like a license fee on broadband. BT marketing did well here. What consent is required for this? If you want broadband by anyone other than Virgin then you need to pay it and sign up to their user agreement. No options.

[pirates] a time for everything

Humorous line of the day:

Is anyone else getting tired of reading about pirates in this day and age?

[closure] and when to call and end to it

Round table discussion yesterday:

A: You remember that woman whose child was killed by Brady fifty odd years ago and she spent the rest of her life seeking justice?

B: Meanwhile, the rest of her kids lost her while she was fixated with the murder.

C: How do you know she didn’t spend part of each evening writing and phoning but the rest of the day she took care of day to day things?

A: But she still had it in the back of her mind the whole time, day in, day out.

D [me]: Mothers do that.

When there hasn’t been any more than the usual trauma of old age, when there was a closure of sorts, then it’s usually only once a year when it becomes difficult. But like Hamlet, when there has been no closure, then perhaps a person can be forgiven for becoming distracted.

However, if the living suffer because of this, then when is enough enough?

[extreme wii] phase two

It's possible this won't work so try the url.

[statement] with comment moderation turned on

Regular readers, the ones who remain, will have noticed the ratcheting up of provocatively opinionated and wildly generalizing posts recently, the last one, on Bond, published yesterday. Put it down to the now-passed fad of a pontificating, middle-aged man-on-a-bicycle who wanted to see how it looked.

So to this post.

Higham is currently miffed.

Bloghounds was set up with a concept in mind and leaving myself aside, the original committee represented this concept, namely that they blogged ethically. To make that statement is to leave that ‘group’ wide open to one simple challenge – their ethical blogging.

Just what is ethical blogging?

None of us are saints and we all have skeletons in our personal and private cupboards, some more than others, admittedly. Many of us also, by the nature of our political blogging, are into fiskings, exposés, debunkings and the tearing down of hypocrisy; my statements in the ‘middle-aged post’ obviously, in some people’s minds, crossed the line into hypocrisy.

There is a line though which should never be crossed. One should never bring anything into the blogosphere about another person’s private life, especially personal details we know of a fellow blogger, we shouldn’t even intimate it and here’s the criterion:

… if that person has never set out to personally harm us and has shared bread with us, either metaphorically or for real.

Please look at the name of my blog.

Many bloggers wish for simple privacy and privacy is an endangered concept in today’s big brother society. In the open sphere, there are sharks circling for blood and the very nature of our political blogging makes enemies.

So yes, expose hypocrisy, yes, call someone out for being an unmitigated liar, yes, quote from his or her words but no, never publish, or email to a third party, his/her real name, address, workplace, sexual proclivities [if you didn’t know mine before and if they’re still of the remotest interest, read the soon to be posted book - it’s all explicite in there], yes, expose the fact that he is one of that detested subset, that pariah of the highways and byways – a closet bicycle rider, do any of that.

But no, don’t publish or bring into question the personal details of someone you’ve shared bread with and who wishes you no harm. Especially don’t touch on past misdemeanours, unless he or she is specifically denying, in a public forum, that they occurred, in order to harm someone else or you or to hide his/her little game.

This last is the key criterion – that he, for his own reasons, goes public and denies what he/she did, for the purpose of attacking another. Even then, the blogger might like to desist, if it doesn’t personally harm him/her.

I am angry because I believe someone I admire had that happen yesterday, quite out of the blue [no, not me - another person, on another blog]. That’s beyond the pale, in my eyes.

There are various commenters I hugely enjoy and some I know the personal details of, even down to photos sent either by them or by someone else; they’re lost somewhere in the library which is this computer.

Two ladies reading this, [other than Uber], will be smiling at me coming over all moral, given what we did some time back and ‘je regrette rien’. I’d do it all over again, for sure, if I were partnerless, which I currently am. One of those women is one of the nicest people I’ve ever known but unfortunately, we fell out over the f---ing CSA [and no, I’m not an alimony jumper – certain partners and I came to arrangements before the nazis took over and rewrote the rules]; we also fell out over a certain English blogger [my gripe] and over a young Melbourne-based blogger whom I never had anything with at any time, truly, despite what you saw – that girl would laugh in my face to think so [that lady’s gripe].

I’ve missed that lady ever since, even though she thinks I’m a smarta—e, which is true. The other I actually proposed marriage to and when she took it to be more than the ravings of a maniac and we got down to details, that involved more complex emotions and a total paradigm shift on both parts, which had my closest people freaking and shouting at me to get back to the real world.

By the way, to the one whom I suggested the idea [or maybe you suggested it and I embellished it, I can’t remember], I’m still planning to take you to that beach for the night, the cool sand, don’t think I’ve forgotten and I hope I’m still up to it and it’s not all talk.

Any of these ladies could sink me in the sphere if she wished and that just shows that some people have principles and are true to themselves, despite how they see me acting. The man trying to ‘out’ me last year was amusing – he was barking up the wrong tree completely. Does he think I’m a bunny rabbit? St’ruth, the real thing was otherwise.

And another thing, be careful of women. All the time you were [allegedly] manipulating women, one clever Australian [surely no oxymoron] was [allegedly] manipulating you to help get at other women. It’s not only the men, you know.

To another young thing in my age range, quite unhappy with me at this moment, who’ll read this today, I’d like to say now – don’t ever think I’ll forget your arms. You can think what you like but it’s the arms and lips which remain in the memory although you think I made light of them but at least we had that, rather than just cyber words, which is more than many of us can say. That and the salt of course ☺.

I’m relatively silent on Uber but I’m saying here and now that she is one of the kindest people I know, to those who don’t f—k her about; she’s straight down the line and my feelings are consequently warm and have not diminished in any way. Trouble is, she’s someone else’s, so I’ve stayed at a distance.

All the good ones are taken. Sigh. Listen to the third verse, last line, of Turn, Turn, Turn [immediately before the instrumental break].

Anyway, back to the topic, what sort of an animal would I be if I did an ‘outing’ of any of my friends or the few people I’ve been really close to, male or female?

This is the thing.

Even after you’re well aware someone’s been undermining you through emails to others, with snide, disloyal little daming with faint praise [don’t forget that these people email to tell me, dearest, despite protestations to the contrary], even after you know that that person wants to hit back at you, you still must never release personal details.

After all else has gone, all we have left is personal principles of a sort … plus loyalty.

They’re more sacrosanct than the confessional.

None of us are saints.

That’s all.

Here endeth the sermon.

Note 1 – clearly, I can’t leave comments open on this topic, for fear someone will bring even more attention to some other poor blogger in the sphere. However, moderation seems the way to go on this post, allowing statements by you and allowing me the right to scrutinize them late tomorrow morning when I get to the internet again. That will prevent slanging matches either way.

Note 2 - This post has also been a way to send covert messages openly, without emailing or phoning and I have personal reasons for remaining incommunicado in the citadel for now. Anyway, I hate phones and hardly ever email. Doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you, please don’t see it that way.

Note 3 – Apparently this area near the sea here has no cable, it being stopped by a roughly parallel railway gorge, some distance away. What makes it worse is that I’m near the end of a track, right by the water.

Therefore, the only alternative is satellite, which is being installed in the next month, so I’m led to believe. When that happens, I’ll have cheap[ish] internet and will be able to research properly, visit properly, do bloghounds properly and blog properly.

Regular readers, be patient please.

[gun control] and logic

Wow! By: Joe Huffman Tuesday, April 14, 2009 5:45:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Crap for brains | Gun Rights )

From James Kelly on the gun control debate (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here):

The difference in this debate is that I have been arguing on the basis of what I believe to be true, and doing my best to explain why I believe it. Kevin, by way of contrast, claims to be able to literally ‘prove’ his case beyond any doubt whatsoever by recourse to detailed statistical data.

Mind boggles. Is that the same as, 'I know nothing about art but I know what I like?'

Hat tip Lord T.

[elopement] don't try it in a muslim nation

A happier elopement


Nice people, the Taliban.

[doctor no] when taken in context

Tiberius Gracchus would be the first to admit the principle that one can’t judge the past by present day standards.

As many of you know, the original Bond films have been re-released in cleaned up digital format; the visual and sound quality is excellent in one sense but a bit clinical in another. It seems not unlike the early CDs against the vinyls – tonal qualities are missing.

What’s also missing is the societal context in which the Bond films appeared.

It’s obvious to say that the early sixties were a follow on from the fifties but it’s as well to dwell a little on that time, the era of Stalin-Krushchev, the Rosenbergs, the reaction against McCarthyism, Britain getting back on its feet and the post-war death of its cuisine, the early years of the youth revolution, of Philby, Burgess and Maclean, immediately pre-Kennedy assassination, an era of Dien Bien Phu and the fall of French prestige, despite or perhaps because of de Gaulle; this was the time of The Manchurian Candidate, the Sinatra rat pack and the advent of the Beatles and the Stones.

Watch clips of ‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah’ or ‘Not fade away’, even watch the Yardbirds’ ‘I’m a man’ on Youtube, with the naive dancing floozies high kicking and that was the context of Dr. No.

Quite frankly, I don’t find Wiseman in the least menacing and his demise was a bit pathetic; like Buddy Holly, the early guitar quartets and the days of the 12 song LP, [no more than 12], comprising two hits and the rest fillers - it all seems nice but a bit thin in production values.

The trouble is, Bond films don’t bear scrutiny.

They’re all about image, in the context of its day – fine for what it was at the time but eventually dating; even Moore is now so dated and yet Live and Let Die was vibrant at the time and the graveyard voodoo sequence a bit unnerving. The Connery era largely passed me by and I was brought up on Moore’s Moonraker et al and let’s face it, it was escapist, fantasy entertainment.

For me, OHMSS and The Living Daylights were far superior films, the only problem being the lead actors. Bond films really must reflect current realities, as was shown by the way Licence to Kill did not do that, a good film, set in a boring part of the U.S., as was Diamonds are Forever … but years ahead of its time.

People were not ready for that Dalton darkness then and yet Craig today has quite acceptably reprised the revenge motif in Quantum of Solace, doing the scrunched up scowl better than Timothy Dalton but still leaving one wondering whether he has any other tricks up his sleeve.

Having grown up in the Moore era, that doesn’t mean we have to like the lightweight flippancy and I’d vastly prefer the brooding menace underlying From Russia with Love and in the new[ish] Casino Royale … but does Connery deliver?

I’d say, on balance, no.

Look at the moment when he appears to Honey Rider, crooning behind a tree and getting a silly look on his too young face. Connery doesn’t stand the scrutiny of time, sad to say. Yet the overwhelming memory most have of those early Bonds was of Connery at his peak, at his most dangerous.

Ursula Andress is a puzzle to me. Did people really find her beautiful or the way she appeared from the sea remarkable? I thought Halle Berry did it better but the setting was better in the original. No, Andress I find far too masculine with that strong body, as was Caterina Murino, a man in a woman’s shell and perhaps Eva Green and the huge Olga Kurylenko also failed to excite. People even found Grace Jones beautiful so it takes all kinds, it seems.

I’d hardly expect any man to agree with me here.

Maryam d’Abo, whilst her character in TLD was annoyingly cloying, was at least tall, elegant and feminine. Sigh. Why can’t women be women, like Carole Bouquet [who can actually act, by the way – see For Your Eyes Only] and why can’t men be either less than neanderthal [Vin Diesel] or with more testosterone than the average, present day, oppressed, emasculated, weaker sex [take your pick]?

Someone like Topol [Columbo in For Your Eyes Only] or Gabriele Ferzetti [Draco in OHMSS] would be two candidates for role models.

Why can’t men pack a bit of menace to them any more, like Telly Savalas [OHMSS] or even Goldfinger himself? Rick Yune [Zao in Die Another Day] was a good example. Sean Bean was always good [e.g. in Golden Eye]. Why can’t men be both horribly intelligent and dangerous and when they pause to look at you, you squirm a little inside?

Also, why do we have to put up with bland bores like Modern Woman Miranda Frost [played by Rosamund Pike in DAD]? Newsday sums it up:

Miranda's view of Bond as a sexual dinosaur puts him refreshingly in his place. (Don't worry, boys, she gets hers.)

Refreshingly? Yawn.

Associated Press’s Christie Lemire’s take on Halle Berry:

She's strong and sexy, a great match for the dashing Brosnan. She's more than that, though; she's his partner …’

… which no one would dispute the desirability of, is then spoilt by the modern female fixation:

‘and every bit his equal.’

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Why tf does the Modern Woman always have to compete? Why can’t she complement her man? It was Boy George who sang [in a different context, of course]:

You're my lover, not my rival.

By the way, speaking of appalling modern day women, did you read the other day about Angelina Jolie’s ‘need for other lovers’? What a poor excuse for a human being she’s always been.

Having said all that, the three most lethal agents in my own little trilogy are all women – a Russian called Ksenia, a European known as Thirteen and an Indonesian called Frederika [who exists in RL, by the way and I miss her a lot] although there is a maniac man, Zhenya, to partly redress the balance. Women run security sections, women are strong but they’re lovely in the arms.

People get fixated about Bond’s neanderthal sexual politics or the leading lady’s kick-butt, ‘she can’t be oppressed’, sleep inducing politics but the simple truth is that they’ve misjudged what’s really going on.

Bond gets the woman because he knows how to treat her well, it’s as simple as that – he’s always treated his women well at the point of contact and they appreciate it.

Yet can you imagine him doing his thing without a woman by his side, not for eye-candy reasons but for mutual support? Brosnan would not have overcome Graves on the plane unless Halle Berry had been doing her thing as well. Look at the eye contact between the two – there’s real chemistry there and the mealy-mouthed, begrudged thanks of Kurylenko Camilla at the end of Solace was an insult. It would never do to actually appreciate your partner these days, would it, you ingrates?

Do you detect the smoke coming from my nostrils?

Craig was tamed by his love for a woman and Moore was saved by two martial arts savvy schoolgirls. Even Tell Savalas’s Blofield could not have done it without the excellent Ilse Steppat’s Irma Bunt. She, in turn, was the one who facilitated his vision.

Look, you can’t have bread without butter, you can’t have savoury food without salt, you can’t have an overseas trip without somewhere to stay, you can’t have a real man without a proper woman and you can’t have a proper woman without a real man. Period. Full stop.

For me, that’s the real world and this current travesty we’re enduring today will hopefully become a thing of the past.

Long live the Bond franchise.

[easter] a post for you to skip over

Sorry about the offensive image.

I'm reprinting an article by Christopher Bantick from March 27, 2005, I can’t remember from which paper – these were my pre-blogging days. You could call this lazy blogging but the article says all that I wish it to, so why not just present it as is?

Here it is:

My local supermarket has had Easter confectionary on display since January. Easter may be early this year, but the commercial potential for cashing in on creme eggs seems irresistible.

With Christmas over, no time was wasted in booting up the next festival. Out with the mince pies, in with the bunnies. But it is not just the early appearance of Easter chocolate items that gives cause for concern. What is troubling is the way Easter is being marketed. It is a singularly secular event and a targeted high point for chocolate sales.

My supermarket proudly advertises that it is the place "where the magic of Easter begins". But what is the magic? There is an observance of the mysterious and even the miraculous. You can have "dream rabbits" in various postures and "dream eggs" with the "real white chocolate wicked taste".

But how can we make sense of Easter among the menagerie of cutesie animals from chocolate bilbies, wombats and rabbits to milk chocolate footballs and all kinds of eggs? Are we happy with the smiling Freddo Frogs in Easter jumbo packs? Have we time for the Easter message? Do we care?

There appears to be confusion about what Easter means even in the messages of cards. With greetings like: "Hope the sun is shining on your little Easter world", and "For someone special . . . a Huggy Easter". Then there is the cloying, "You're really eggs-tra special. Happy Easter, Have Fun".

To be fair, there are the so-called "religious" cards that, it has to be said, don't look like much fun. They have a very serious Christ figure often lost in clouds or tending small animals. These token cards are in a minority and marginalised when on display. They simply don't sell.

Easter has been appropriated from the event that gives Christianity its sense and purpose to something approximating a chocolate festival.

Hot cross buns in my local supermarket sold out in days and had to be reordered weekly. Who noticed the cross on their tops? Moreover, Easter is now a celebration of the individual and friendship. If greeting cards are a true reflection of what people hope to say, then statements like, "Because we think about you in a very special way" and "Because you're special in every way", say a lot. There is no one more important than you.

On this Easter Day, there will be community mammoth Easter egg hunts. They are good fun and harmless in themselves. But what has been lost in how many eggs you can find is the message of Easter. On this, the churches could do far more.

French philosopher Albert Camus, not a man noted for his piety, understood the essential significance of Easter. He also observed the importance of Christians holding the line against intrusions when he said, "The world needs Christians who remain Christians".

Still, the rampant commercialisation of Easter should concern us all. There is something slightly out of kilter about seeing children pig out on Easter chocolate a month away from Easter Day. It was T.S. Eliot who pointed to the vacuousness of a life without a spiritual dimension being one where we may "have the experience and miss the meaning".

The reality is that children today are more than likely ignorant of the Easter story. Whether they believe it or not comes down to choice, but to not know what Easter stands for goes to the heart of the future viability of the churches.Without Easter, there would be no churches.

What the churches have largely failed to do is tell the Easter story, not just during Lent or on Easter Day, but consistently throughout the year. Instead, they have been distracted by issues such as the gay debate, or whether or not Dan Brown's best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, is threatening the stability of the church as an institution. But community ignorance about the event that defines the Christian faith is far more serious and damaging.

Last year, [now some year's ago- Higham] Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ gave Easter a focus in the secular world. Gibson did what the churches had broadly failed to do by generating interest in the Easter story. The ensuing debate was about the violence of the Crucifixion. It was easy to see why.

The brutality and savagery of the Crucifixion does not fit comfortably with marketers who know that Easter is about bright coloured eggs and happiness found in chocolate.

So what is the point of Easter and what do the churches celebrate on Easter Day? Today, churches will be emphasising the empty tomb where Jesus was laid after the crucifixion. It was empty for the miraculous reason of the resurrection. But it is a message that is lost in the ringing of cash registers.

The raisin and cinnamon hot cross buns in my nearby supermarket became a neat symbol of how Easter is regarded. They sold out in days and had to be reordered weekly. Who noticed the cross on their tops?

Leaving aside, for a moment, the rabid anti-Christian push with their bus ads about there being no G-d and writing to you instead, a rational person, there's not too much dispute with the historical record that Jesus of Nazareth did exist and he did sufficient things to come to the attention of some historians at the time.

The Muslims even concede that He is a prophet of the highest order.

The issue is now, as it ever was, not whether He was crucified but whether He came back to life. That's the point on which it all turns and where the fundamental dispute is. I'm certain He did come back to life because of personal things which have occurred. I wrote once before that you're never going to definitively know unless you've first bought the ticket, so there's no point having this discussion until you've done that.

This is the part which gets up many non-Christian's noses – this claim to arcane knowledge and I would wager that a huge number of those happy-clappers and militant anti-abortionists in the States have not actually bought the ticket [John 3:16]. Certainly the churchleadership is riddled with representatives of the other side, hence the sex scandals et al. Hence Christian militancy and the reason people don't like them.

Again I say, you can't know until you buy the ticket. I didn't make up the rules but maybe it's time some people started following them.

By the way, in following the Orthodox calendar this year, one week after the Roman, today is Palm Sunday.

Have a happy day today, everyone.

[middle age] how to become a bore

Hope the Daily Mail doesn't sue me but I'll be in enough trouble after this post anyway, so they'll have to stand in line.

Uber recently ran a not altogether tongue-in-cheek, misandrist post on why she hates men.

Whilst not tangling with the lady on that, I’d still like to record some ongoing observations about men – middle-aged men in particular.

There was a moment, years ago in Russia, when my lady of that era found herself in a minority at at family New Year gathering. Not only was she heavily outnumbered by males, an unusual situation in that fair land but the males were of a certain age and loudly pontificating on this subject or that, whichever the vodka caused them to pursue at the time.

On the television was Moscow TV; they’d rounded up all the male hacks and sat them down in armchairs in a semi-circle. Most were bald or balding, all were from 45 to 60 years old and all were holding forth, shouting each other down, accusing the others of being rude and not letting them get a word in; I watched in horror as a smile played on my young lady’s lips, which were the best thing in that room at that time.

I determined, there and then, never to become a middle-aged man.

At least, whilst it can’t be avoided, there are things we can do to try to remain useful to the female gender – exercise, stay active, eat right, practise the libido on actual flesh ’n blood, rather than exercising Mrs. Hand at the computer screen, try to dress reasonably, take care of the personal grooming, don’t let yourself go and above all, don’t let women’s silliness and the current feminist game, which Gordo’s society’s playing, get you down.

Above all, was that? Maybe another thing – we can get our egos under control, concede that another person’s point of view has validity and fight to remain humble, a very difficult thing to do if we think we’re the font of all wisdom.

Now, as for middle-aged women, I’m sure there are things they can be castigated over, particularly their refusal to let a man have a bit of peace and quiet, without going to the other extreme and booting him out but as I’m no expert on middle-aged women, [I’d like to make friends with one some day], then I’ll leave it to others to point out their shortcomings.

In this day and age, with the ascendancy of women and the casting of the middle-aged, white British male as the most oppressed sector of society, we can beat the ladies at their own game by simply becoming useful again.

It’s better than the coming revolution, when non-native Brits who’ve been taking the Michael, the Julia Middletons and her ilk, the Jacqui Smith Porn Queens and the iniquitous CSA will all be slaughtered and women will become twice as oppressed as they ever were in the backlash. I’d prefer that day not to come and so it is up to the men to take back the reins in each and every sector of society.

[Can’t believe I just wrote that. ☺]

[gerund, infinitive and participle] a round eleven to try

English grammar is a minefield, not least because it is often dependent on intention and that was always brought home when observing Russian teachers of English. The Russians are pedantic in all things official, as distinct from the way they run their daily lives and continually demanded, ‘Which is the correct answer?’

I tried to explain that, in English, it’s more accurate to ask, ‘Which is the best variant?’

No, that didn’t compute. They’d listen to my explanation and then ask, ‘Which is the correct answer? What’s the rule?’

Try these:

1. Try _____ less butter in the recipe. [use]

2. Do you agree _____ me with my homework? [help]

3. Do you remember _____ to the beach last summer? [go]

4. They were expected _____ arrived by now. [have]

5. I’m telling you, it’s better _____ kind to all people –. [be]

6. I regret _____ you that now. [tell]

7. She stopped _____ hello. [say]

8. I like _____ in the bathtub – it helps me _____ . [sing, relax]

9. If you should decide _____ the offer, we’d be delighted to have you. [accept]

10. She started _____ as soon as he said he was _____ her. [cry, leave]

11. I regret _____ you that your application has not been successful. [inform]


Possible answers

[pascha] april nineteenth in 2009

Just thought you'd like to know:

19 апреля (дата для 2009 г.)

Христос Воскресе!
Воистину Воскресе!

О, как чудодейственны эти слова! Когда мы их произносим или слышим, в наших сердцах загораются огни святой радости о Господе Иисусе Христе Воскресшем.

This blog is going with the Orthodox celebration this year, as there are many cards to send. So a post will appear early next week, halfway between the western and eastern remembrance.

[you gotta laugh] faster response

Lord T today on the new first response vehicles:

There is one design team though who I think may be in the wrong field. Their ambulance is designed for rapid access off road and then, and I quote exactly, ”Once on the scene an ejector type seat is activated to launch the paramedic, with all the kit and equipment they need, into the thick of the action.”

Mind boggles.

DK images

[vicissitudes] it’s the little ones which irritate …

Life in Britain is a dream. For a start, there’s Gordo, socialism, we all have jobs and the money’s rolling in.

Not.

No truly, there are some great aspects to life here. Er … the woods are lovely, the view from the window is a treat, the people in the town are warm and friendly, you don’t need to buy bottled water as in Russia and the place is basically clean.

It’s civilized in some ways.

So forgive me for being frustrated by petty things. Let’s start with the saga of the buckwheat.

ASDA, bless its cotton socks, ran this line [see pic above] until two weeks ago, I suspect largely for the Eastern European market. Speak to a Russian about the efficacy of this particular grain, combine it with shredded cabbage and many of your food needs are met.

They’ve discontinued it, the bstds. When I went to the management, they told me it wasn’t selling. Oh yeah, then how come it slowly disappeared off the shelves? How could I know that unless at least I was buying it?

Sometimes, it’s the loss of the little things which knocks you for six. Now i know what you're thinking - wtf doesn't Higham go to one of the plethora of other stores across the length of Britain but I reserve the right to be petulant and immature in this - I want ASDA to stock the stuff.

Now for the pic below – do you know what that is?

It’s a bloody magnet and where was it? Stuck in the DVD I bought so I couldn’t get the DVD out of the case.

It took a bench top, a sharp knife, a fork, some pincers, seven or eight tries and about 45 minutes to finally work the case open without breaking or scratching anything and then came the problem of the plastic bit in the centre which holds the disc in. It wouldn’t go down because of this bar in the pic and so I had to carve the lugs off, trying not to touch the disc.

I bought a second DVD last night and asked the girl what the hell they sold them with that thing in it for? Was it to add piquancy to our enjoyment of the film when we eventually get to watch it?

She put it in a device and removed two magnets. No one tells you these things. I’ve been away, haven’t I?

[incentives] or one size fits all

Long ago, in my games-master days, we took our team of young tykes to a bigger school for a cricket match.

From the beginning, we were under the hammer and lost three or four quick wickets. One of our middle order, a young lad, had his father watching and it was clear that the game was soon going to be over; everyone was despondent.

I then overheard the father offering to take his mate [the next batsman in after that] and the kid to McDonalds or wherever, if they'd go out and knock up thirty runs. Obviously the man usually delivered because these two kids went in like mini-Bothams and smashed the opposition bowlers all over the ground, with the result that we won the match.

At Monday assembly, the Head sang the praises of the team, in coming back from the jaws of defeat and then asked me to his office to tear strips off me. One of our parents had complained that I'd done nothing to dress down the offending 'briber' and that this was against the spirit etc. etc.

This is an emotive issue, incentives and I reasoned that as the father had spoken only to his own kid and best mate [son of the father's best mate], thus there was no need to have said anything. On the other hand, the Head's view was that it was promoting the wrong values.

Fast forward to a discussion between two bloggers. One said that there should be one wage for all, to be fair to the have-nots. The other blogger asked what if he was a surgeon? As he can no longer earn any more nor less than the basic wage, he might as well do part time shelf-stacking round the corner and safe himself all that hassle in the high stress stress occupation of surgery. Ditto air traffic controllers and other well paid but stressful jobs.

Thus the brain drain is put in place and everything tends to mediocrity.

Incentives. Are they the lifeblood of society?

[april first] eleven - three