[backpacking] when you're too old

Outside Vienna State Opera [Wiki]

Interesting article about when you're too old to backpack any more:

*you start dreading the act of travelling.
*it's taking you longer and longer to get ready in the mornings.
*you become obsessed with making sure there's a decent place to go to the toilet.
*there are kids.
*you start to hate the pub scene.
*priorities change, especially comfort wise.I was reflecting on this and the days of not only backpacking but car trips where we slept in the car by the roadside or in some little sideroad.

I only ever stayed in three hostels, the last in Finland and they were appalling – insecure, unfriendly management and you couldn't get in until 4 p.m.

One comment was interesting, mentioning that when the fellow guests are young and raucous and you want the light out at 11 and then proceed to snore them to death, it's time to give it away.

Now we're into this, the 'tourist destination' is equally as dire. Tenerife is a case in point where all the tourist hotels are grouped in a sort of ghetto in one area and if you don't hire a car, you only get to see hotels.

Either way, with this carbon footprint thing and iris scans, the incentive seems to have dropped away, in my case, to less than zero.

The backpacking thing is really a young persons thing [with some older exceptions] but methinks a law of natural attrition will cause most to fall away soon after 30.

The timetable at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof

[facebook] trapped members to become viral marketers

I wrote a piece on Facebook, then followed it up recently. The majority of the comments were negative towards this organization and now there's more:

The Facebook free ride is over as the social network now seeks to turn its 50-million-strong user base into an army of viral marketers.

It comes as the company is under intense pressure to cash in on the wealth of personal data it has collected, following a $US250 million ($268 million) investment from Microsoft, which valued the company at $US15 billion.

But time will tell whether Facebook has overstepped the line by revealing an ambitious plan to transform each user into a salesman for its advertisers.

Does this raise or lower Facebook in your eyes?

[racism] hastilow's resignation is all wrong

Rob, at Broadsheet Rag, says, about Hastilow's resignation:

Now I might disagree with certain parts of Hatilow’s article. Also mindless racism is sickening — I don’t believe his article falls into this category. But if you are going to debate an issue, varied opinions are required.

I'd go further. There are clearly sickening things like the BNP and Irving being given a platform by the Oxford Union to spew their ideas out but even here, why not?

I wouldn't have invited them and the Oxford Union top guns have rocks in their collective heads but to bow to pressure not to represent a point of view is just plain wrong.

It's wrong at anytime but especially when the lights are going out all over the "free" world and the next five years or so will see only the party line able to be supported openly.

Don't forget Courtney's article about this very principle:

My defense of free speech means that we should have the right to ridicule or hammer our opponents in open debate - indeed, this is the whole point. It now appears that the greatest threat to our right to free speech comes not from the misogynists of the BNP, or Holocaust deniers like the discredited historian David Irving, the fiercest critics of free speech come instead from those on the left.

Not sure that Left and Right are applicable tags any more - it's more Statist & Despotic versus Free and Democratic and no prizes for guessing where I am on this scale. It was Lenin who cynicaly observed: "Freedom is precious, so precious it needs to be rationed." That sums up the Statist's position:

We believe in freedom but only as long as someone doesn't ... a ... b ... c and so on.

Courtney again:

... it's about our liberty to be able to listen to a debate and all the arguments, whether they are dumb arguments or not, we need this liberty in order to judge for ourselves - it is this freedom that the left seem to fear the most ...

We not only need this freedom, we absolutely must fight for it, as our gallant and caring leadership slowly but inexorably and surreptitiously tightens the noose around our societal neck and every fresh piece of legislation is another blow to our hopes, as human beings, of enjoying the dignity of actually being human.

Finally, to come back to Hastilow himself - what was he doing if not representing the Black Country point of view? Isn't that precisely what he should have been doing? To say that Enoch Powell was right and that we'd see rivers of blood is precisely what we are going to see if the Deobandi have their way.

Hastilow wasn't even saying this. He was speaking of "uncontrolled" immigration. Well who could argue against that? Look at the Romi in Italy now, riding in on the backs of the ordinary Romanians. Why should the Italians put up with that? For what altruistic reason?

Introduce me to an individual Romi or Jamaican. Fine, we've met and he might become my friend. If I decide I don't like him, it could well be that I don't like that individual. Good and bad people in any grouping. Why is that racist? If she's female, does this become sexist? If she's gay, does that make me anti-gay now?

For goodness sake, pro-active groups get so tied up in their own rights and are so sensitive to the slightest criticism that all members of that group have to be blanket-accepted? Give me a break.

But wholesale immigration of one group or other cannot be good, especially if they bring with them a history of criminality and non-assimilation, non-integration. In other words, a ghetto mentality. That is completely wrong.

If there was a strong British sub-community over here where I am living, I'd not join it. I'd have friends from there as I do from among the native population but for what to cut oneself off from the locals? Why bother coming here if that's one's attitude?

There needs to be some rationale in this debate but first we must ensure that we can continue to actually have the debate in the first place.

UPDATE: Wolfie mentions the Heffer piece in the Telegraph - it should be read.

[ron paul] could he be the modern lazarus

The Boston Herald says:

Bay State experts are divided over whether the record cyberspace fund-raising that catapulted Ron Paul into the media spotlight will be enough to propel him into the ranks of mainstream Republican presidential candidates.

The 72-year-old grabbed headlines when a massive online movement raised a head-snapping $4.2 million in one day, more than any other Republican candidate ever.

“If you are on that third tier of candidates, attention is the biggest part of the game. He now has two months to try and transform this little bit of impetus into something more substantial, but my sense is that he won’t get the traction,” said Thomas Patterson, of Harvard’s JFK School of Government.

Ron Paul is the thinking person's candidate, a man of intelligence and principle and not backed by the CFR and other traitorous bodies.

He could only get in if the people themselves wanted someone representing their interests but seemingly the American people are still under the illusion that someone like the Lizard Queen, who sold out decades ago and is now reaping her reward, will represent them. The CFR do not have Ron Paul on their approved list.

Perhaps a miracle can occur and the only candidate truly representing America itself can secure both the nomination and the presidency.

[tutanhigham selects] best of the phonetic dictionary

Shan't give links but type phonetic dictionary in the site search for all entries. Here are ten of my favourites:

6 Antelope................Absconding insect

8 Badinage................Memory, sex, teeth

11 Canteloupe...........Chaperoned

13 Carrion......................Continue

16 Condescending..........Greek Paratrooper

18.Divest........................Princess's garment

23 Felonious..................Monk

36 Ideal..........................You shuffle

63 Scintillate..................Nocturnal orgy

68 Surcingle...................Unmarried baronet

[blogfocus tuesday] mixed bag this evening

1.The lovely and talented Juliet has been touring this fair land and that's dangerous when you get near Eggs Tump – it could all pass right over our heads:

Alongside the church, which is now dedicated to St. Giles, is the picturesque 14th Century Prior's Hall, Little Malvern Court, which has been home to the Berington family for four centuries.

I didn't know any of that when I set out this afternoon, though I have visited Little Malvern Priory at least twice and have passed it countless times - it just seemed a bit pointless to put up a nice picture without any information, so now I know. :-)

Eggs Tump - what does that mean?

It may be too obvious for it to be a place identifiable by an egg shaped tump... I couldn't see one, anyway, but I liked the name. (Better, is Much Marcle, a bit further along - and where the notorious Fred West was born, and in which Letterbox Field he buried at least one of his victims, Anna Fall, his pregnant lover... )

2. Bob's a bit down, possibly due to the weather:

Something about the weather change seems to cause a slight ebb in my metabolism, which in turn affects my moods. It never reaches the depression stage, but it does cause an amazing case of apathy at times.

Add that to the pains of a bad back, edema, sleep apnea, and the normal BS of everyday life, and it can get to you at times.

Luckily I seem to be coming out of my slump, so thank you for visiting during this time.I haven't really been doing too much during this time, mainly getting things ready for winter out in the yard. I did go to a gun show Saturday, and that cheered me a bit, even though I couldn't afford some of the stuff I really liked.

Most of the weekend was classical music time; I seemed to be favoring Handel and Bach, with a bit of Vivaldi thrown in.

3. Ross Fountain is certainly a “key blogger”:

"Key workers" is the other buzz phrase that annoys me. First of all who decides which workers are "Key Workers"? From what I can tell the chosen few are exclusively public sector workers.

Apparently the private sector consists of work that is essentially trivial to the functioning of the country, so whilst Social Workers, Bus Drivers and Diversity Consultants are "Key Workers", those that work in the manufacturing or service sectors of the economy will have to damn well learn to commute.

Rather ironically the builders who are supposed to be erecting all this "Affordable Housing" aren't "Key Workers" whereas those employed at the council planning office creating obstacles to development are.

4. Chip's a brave man anywhere within proximity of the feisty Gabby but at least he's got his blog back [sort of]:

The crackle of small arms fire came from the direction of the allotment shed. I ducked. Gabby winced.

The trouble began when Gabby had uttered a few words of complaint about the quality of the cheap Chinese rockets she’d picked up in town. Compared to the Romanian fireworks that had arrived last week, the Red Star Dragon Super Burst Astro Rocket had been a rather tame addition to the night’s display. She’d decided to remedy the problem by tying four of the rockets together. The result had been as unpredictable as I’d predicted.

The bundle of rockets had begun to bounce around the garden, first taking out the chicken coop and eventually punching a hole through the side of the shed and igniting Gabby’s cache of .44 ammo.

The shed burned through the night, with the sound of the occasional bullet still making us hit the ground. At one point, a fire engine arrived but we managed to get them to leave us alone by claiming the shed was actually a bonfire, to which, by that time, it bore a great resemblance.