[gun laws] and the cost of health care

This is not really a "right to bear arms" post although of course it is a good thing. It's interesting though:

A man toting an assault rifle was among a dozen protesters carrying weapons while demonstrating outside President Obama's speech to veterans on Monday, but no laws were broken. It was the second instance in recent days in which weapons have been seen near presidential events.

Though carrying weapons in the street is not a British tradition and even Brits who support the right to carry a gun at home would probably not be out there carrying one round in the treet, nevertheless I wonder how many firearms are concealed in British homes, from shotguns to more exotic fare.

The problem in Britain is more the ammunition side of things but that would be soon solved with relaxing the ban on certain weapons at home. It would be enough to put the wind up the government too and wipe the smile off certain faces.

However that's not what this post is about. There was another quote which stood out:

"I'm absolutely, totally against health care, health care in this way, in this manner," he said. "Stealing it from people, I don't think that's appropriate."

That sort of thing would not compute in the Obama brain. The BO sort of mind, in lower echelons, has this "love everybody" idea that we give universal health services to every single person, including the unemployable, the druggies, the crims - everyone and we rip off the productive or working population to give it to them.

The problem with this is that the middle class workforce is being destroyed and thus there's nothing left to rip off, so as there must be a source of money to pay for all this, it comes from overseas borrowing - debt. This seems a good plan to those of this mindset, those quite happy to rip someone else off to pay for them.

The thought doesn't seem to cross their minds that if the country just got off its butt and exercised, ate more healthily and worked, then the costs of healthcare would come down, health insurance would be affordable and the GP system would work just fine.

[sweet dreams] sleep tight

[food accidents] horror lurks in the aisles

Angus has a piece on a store which not only hit a woman with a pineapple but then it closed down and sued the woman:

The pensioner claims to have suffered severe neck pain and headaches since the incident happened in her local store in Lochee, Dundee, which has since closed down, and is demanding compensation.

Be that as it may, one has to be careful with fruit and vegetables but especially vigilant with meat. A frozen steak nearly sliced my hand off once and I burnt my lips on a pizza.

Tell us about your food accidents. Maybe we should ask the government to ban food.

[monsters] how to deal with the one on your doorstep

This blog tackles both the serious topics and the less serious. This is one of the more serious so please arrange your straight faces and let's proceed to the issue of the day - how to kill a zombie? Professor Neil Ferguson says:

My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever.

Why stop there? How does one first prevent and then kill:

1. a vampire;
2. a werewolf;
3. a jinn;
4. a windigo;
5. lilit?

[tuesday quiz] five you might get today

1. What is another name for a ship’s load mark, the first word also meaning a type of shoe?

2. What is the collective name for the 9 handmaidens of Odin?

3. On which day of the year does All Souls Day fall?

4. Illustrated on its logo, the product Marmite is named after a French word meaning what?

5. What is the name of the poker hand containing three of a kind and a pair?

Answers

plimsoll line, Valkyries, Nov 2nd, cooking pot, full house

[accents] and the necessity to be up or down

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman despise him." George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Interesting from an Irishman.

I was in the library and a lady said "up to Sheffield". Non-Brits might not know but we have this peculiar way of using "up", as in "up to London", up to Oxford" and so on and the reverse of this - "sent down". She, though, was speaking geographically because she wouldn't be going "up" to Sheffield from Manchester in terms of the more important city.

So, the discussion came round to why I'd picked up on that and it was just that Sheffield always seemed "down" to us but then I remembered I wasn't that far north any more. When I was asked where I was from and said North Yorkshire, it was met with incredulity, which doesn't bother me because wherever I am, I'm not from there.

Someone asked, "South African?"

I get this a lot in Britain but more usually they pick up on the twang which depends on the weather. One fellow blogger last year said that some days she'd not take me for anyone but Australian and other days she'd not take me for anything but English [London dialect is the closest I get]. In Australia, I'm called a Pom and sometimes a Pommy Bastard, usually by the older set [the younger are less educated anyway] and I got sick of that.

In France, they know I understand French and the nasal note puzzles them, especially when my appallingly restricted vocabulary and poor intonation labels me as Anglais. In the American west, after a few weeks, I'm taken for Eastern seaboard, maybe Boston. In Russia, I'm taken for either Yugoslav or Prebaltika, never as Chukchi. In New Zealand, I'm British.

Just once, it would be nice if people took me to be one of their own but as that's never going to happen, I'll just keep pressing on, a damned foreigner to the grave.