[justice on its head] signs of a deeper malaise

Vox quotes a judgement in the UK where a cuckolded husband has an injunction against him, preventing him from naming [anywhere or in any form] the public figure who slept with his wife. The adulterer is being legally protected from the victim, in other words. Vox comments:

This is a powerful demonstration of the way that Western governments are increasingly taking positions which not only attack traditional morality, but do so in a manner that demonstrates their intrinsic opposition to the very rights which they are supposedly protecting. One would think that the "reasonable expectation of privacy" would easily, automatically, be trumped by the husband's free speech and economic freedom rights; after all, one cannot slander someone so long as one speaks the truth, nor should one be prevented from profiting from his unique knowledge. That is, after all, the entire premise of the media business, that people will pay for knowledge they do not currently possess.

You might agree that, quite apart from the rank injustice of this decision, it points to something further – that the justice system is actively protecting the perpetrator and blocking the victim. This is a convolution which Vox [and I] understand only too well from our increasingly marginalized vantage point and it’s numbing that whereas before it was all done surreptitiously, now they are openly turning justice on its head and brazenly lying to the people.

‘They’ is people very high up who are the driving force behind the moral equivalence and the marginalizing of any voice which could have spoken out against what is going on. Their deep cynicism is born of the knowledge that the majority either can’t see where the trail leads back to or will simply refuse to accept that it is so, preferring varied sociological explanations.

[no climate change] tornado in london every day

Hundreds of people have been left homeless after a tornado brought devastation "like a horror movie" to a residential area of north London late today. They took cover in a respite centre set up in a local church after about 100 homes were damaged in "freak weather", injuring six people and causing millions of pounds' worth of damage.

My friend was at a European conference yesterday where they were discussing Austria’s devastating losses in tourism because of the lack of snow. I ran a post on Switzerland yesterday. Meanwhile, over here, when there should be bitter cold of around minus 15 to 20 and dumps of snow, there is plus 3 [plus 7 in Moscow], the streets are awash in sludge and slime and I’m back to the autumn jacket and light cap.

But of course this situation, the London tornado and the weird weather in Australia and the Philippines are all ‘normal’. Don’t dare say ‘climate change’. It doesn’t exist, according to the experts. Truly.

[native americans] raking in the billions

Osceola, Seminole hero

British leisure group Rank has agreed to sell its Hard Rock cafe and casino business to the Seminole tribe of Florida for US$965 million ($1,378,474). Rank has shed British household names like Butlins holiday camps, Odeon cinemas and Pinewood film studios in a drive to get rid of its image as an old-fashioned conglomerate. Hard Rock's portfolio includes 124 Hard Rock Cafes, 4 Hard Rock hotels, 2 Hard Rock casino-hotels, 2 Hard Rock Live! concert venues and equity stakes in three unbranded hotels.

Semi-what? A little from Wiki: They never surrendered to the U.S. government, hence the Seminoles of Florida call themselves the "Unconquered People." The Seminoles are the only American Indian tribe never to sign a formal peace treaty with the United States who spent $20 000 000 and lost 1500 soldiers in the early 1800s to subjugate them. When South Florida tourism boomed in the 1920's, Seminoles capitalized by wrestling alligators for money. In 1979, the Seminoles opened the first casino on Indian land, ushering in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry operated by numerous tribes nationwide.

This is the sentence which jolted me: They started out in northern Florida, but when the Americans attacked them, the Seminole tribe retreated further south, into the Everglades. So they’re not American? Yet they’re on American soil and taking in billions of dollars. Go America!

[want to escape] the horror of the silly season

Today, I learnt the word for ‘I’ll be hiding’ in Russian: ‘Спрячюсь! Spryachoos.’ That’s the answer to the question: ‘What are you doing for New Year?’

I plan to be hiding from Friday December 22nd until Saturday, January 2nd. If anyone rings on the bell during that time [well, actually they can’t because it’s disconnected] or knocks on the door [well, actually they can’t because there’s a triple security door system], then we’ll just go to ground until they go away. Everything will be via the e-mail or website.

Why so? Firstly, there’s absolutely nothing I can see to celebrate at this time of year except Bethlehem and that can be done on January 7th in Russia, after all the madness has passed. This, now, is the time of year when we’re at our most weary, when we’re at our lowest financial ebb, when all we want to do at night is curl up in a warm room with one’s love, when all the prices are sky high, when the roads are absolute mayhem, when everyone’s coughing all over everyone else and the wisest course is to quarantine oneself.

There’s so much false bonhomie when people who’ve walked past you all year or wouldn’t have given you the time of day suddenly lose all sense of proportion and wish to press-gang you into some sort of enforced group frenzy. It’s like they’ve been injected with a dervish pill and the drunken shrieks and hysteria rend the night as they grimly ‘let their hair down’. Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong that a few whiskies won’t fix with friends or at the pub - ordinarily – but not with a bunch of complete strangers who’ve taken leave of their senses during the silly season.

Stephen Pollard wrote a classic on this matter last year [an abridged version of his article appears here] but I’ve also reprinted a comment by a girl which gets very close to the real reason I’ll be hiding. It’s an incredibly lonely time of the year.

[lexicon] ten handy shakespearean taunts

Gratuitous nudity for a Wednesday morning – wonder why they had to be naked to have a quarrel.

Which of us have not, at some time, wished to have a classic Shakespearean jibe at the ready to hurl, like a thunderbolt, at the unsuspecting offender? Now you can – here are the first ten in an ongoing series of wonderful taunts:

1] Thou gorbellied reeling-ripe clotpole!
2] Thou puny elf-skinned strumpet!
3] Thou reeky clapper-clawed gudgeon!
4] Thou fawning tardy-gaited joithead!
5] Thou bootless fat-kidneyed skainsmate!
6] Thou mammering spur-galled codpiece!
7] Thou mangled unwash'd clack-dish!
8] Thou droning full-gorged apple-john!
9] Thou dankish rump-fed jolt-head!
10] Thou warped dismal-dreaming foot-licker!

[fraught] bit under the hammer these 24 hours

Hope to post two or three before tomorrow evening but I’m a bit under the hammer until then - tomorrow doesn’t bear thinking about so I’m not going to.

It’s also killing my blogvisits to you and it’ll take till tomorrow evening to get round to you all to annoy you so please bear with me and forgive my tardiness. All will be back to normal soon.

Coming back to Leighton’s painting again for a minute [the one in the slavery post and partly reproduced to the left here], I was thinking, you know – let’s have a party and everyone has to strike a pose and act in character as depicted.

Better still, we’ll have a ‘classical day’ and everyone in, say, London or Edinburgh becomes ‘sad Andromache’ or ‘the babe with the urn’ or the angel with the urn on the head for 24 hours. Better still, let’s forget all about it.