When still a young man, I served a five-year apprenticeship. Once out of my ‘time’, I joined the Merchant Navy, and realised how much I still had to learn; about people, about my work, about the fact that, when you are an Electrical Engineering Officer, you are the guy to go to when things go wrong. You learn fast, or you don’t survive. All the other Engineering Officers, junior and senior, know very little about your line of work, because that’s what you have been trained for. So you cope; you answer the questions, and those answers had better be right, from Day One.

Transfer those thoughts, those ideals and ideas, to another line of work, a significantly different work, and a much more responsible position, and the answers must still be the correct ones, every time. Imagine you have been in the ranks of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and through a certain rigorous process, you become a Cardinal, a Prince of the Church of Rome. Then, one day, out of a cloudless blue sky, comes the thunderbolt: your close colleagues believe you have the qualities to be their leader, the religious prince of Princes, the Pope. You impress many with your humility, your willingness to learn, your acceptance of a simple life, even as Head of the Church of Rome. You continue to stay in a small religious hotel, you don’t want all the fuss, the attention. You commence your own crusades for tolerance, for acceptance, for peace; and it is commonly felt, even amongst your opponents, that you are doing a pretty good job.

And then you screw it all up, in the space of ten seconds, when you state that the Freedom to Speak, the very Freedom of Expression, has its limits. The Pope said “”One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.”.

Well, Frankie, you are dead wrong. You may be considered ‘infallible’ by your billion-strong congregation, but only on matters of Dogma, of Faith: in everything else, you are just another fallible human being, and you got the Freedom bit totally, utterly wrong! What you have espoused, what you have told your followers; that is the excuse used by the murderous killers of the Charlie Hebdo staffers.

Russia lets everyone down, again! I dunno’, they get thirty of the stupid, self-publicising clowns in one place; and then they just let them go.

I heard the bit about the ‘Concentration Camp Aura’ on the Beeb this a.m. It is indeed an insult to the shades of the Holocaust victims who died in their millions to have their captivity compared to the prisons where these thirty foolish idiots were confined.

The Russians would have received greater applause if they had shipped all the Greenpeace protesters off to some Siberian gulag, and then set them free outside the camp gates.

What if hospitals were run like a mix of Wal-Mart and a low-cost airline?

Yes please, and Dr Devi Prasad Shetty is making it happen in India. He clearly understands that when government and industry club together, the customer gets ripped off, as we see with astronomically inflated health care costs in the West. His response is to cut through that and give value for money. In the mega-regulated health industry this is revolutionary stuff. Do read it all.

(h/t Old Holborn)

What she did:

“In one of her first moves on coming to office she delivered capital market liberalisation. What that meant was that money was allowed to roam free around the world.”

The outcome:

“Firing the starting gun on one third of the world’s population rising up to the petit bourgeois pleasures of three squares a day. How could it be possible to praise someone aiding the solution to humanity’s most persistent problem, abolishing poverty?”

For poverty has indeed been humanity’s greatest enemy, making life nasty and brutish for the great majority of people who ever lived. This then is the woman who many hope is now stoking the fires of Hell: the one who helped unleash that miraculous wave of economic growth which has seen more people lifted from grinding poverty than any time in history.

Damn her to Hell!

Gosh it’ll have to be an early night. Just as well there’s only Comic Relief to ignore tonight. If it was any worse I’d complain to the BBC that there’s nothing worth not paying for. Until tomorrow …

0700 – 0800: Cooked breakfast, a few gallons of coffee, first fag of the day

0900 – 1100: Trigger time

1100 – 1300: A nice stroll in the great and ancient county of Essex

1330: Buy monumental amounts of booze and food and booze and food and fags and booze on the way home

1430: Italy vs Ireland

1500: Wales vs England

2000: France vs The Porridge Wogs

2200: Watch the News/state propaganda

2230: Match of The Day

I hope yours is as good. Blogging might be light tomorrow …

This is what the She-Beast is up to, besides being pelted with Tomatoes.

Clinton waives conditions placed by Congress on the 1.3 billion dollars of aid – requiring Egypt to meet certain democratic reforms before being granted the funds.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the green light Friday for U.S. military aid to Egypt despite concerns that Cairo was not meeting goals in its democratic transition.

Clinton waived conditions placed by Congress on the 1.3 billion dollars of aid – requiring Egypt to meet certain democratic reforms before being granted the funds – saying the move was in the United States’ national interest.

“These decisions reflect America’s over-arching goal: to maintain our strategic partnership with an Egypt made stronger and more stable by a successful transition to democracy,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Now she does these actions on behalf of the American Public at the Orders of President Obama. The other issue is even more troublesome.

The U.N. Small Arms Treaty, which she will sign on Friday the 27th is a direct assault on the American Public and the U.S, Constitution. Now there are not enough votes in the Senate to Ratify it, but it doesn’t have to be ratified, to be implemented. If a Treaty is signed by the Secretary of State, and not renounced by the President, and not voted on by the Senate IT BECOMES THE LAW.

On July 27th, the nations of the world are scheduled to meet in New York to sign a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Disguised as a way to prevent the proliferation of small arms throughout the world, it is, in fact, a backdoor way to legislate gun control in the United States and effectively repeal our Second Amendment.

The ATT will set up a global body which will require all nations to regulate firearms so that they can prevent their exportation to other countries. Inevitably, this will require countries to inventory the guns in private hands and to register them. A gun ban is not far away.

The ATT, under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, would have the power of a constitutional amendment and would, effectively, repeal the Second Amendment guaranteeing us the right to bear arms.

If after she signs this Treaty Obama is reelected there will be people coming door to door for our guns. There will be blood. Do not underestimate the venom and violence that the American Public will react with. I posted a clip of what the head of the NRA said to the U.N. and he represents the sane gun owners.

U.S. Constitution: Second Amendment A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Whose original intent was to ensure our Freedom against the Tyranny of the State. The PEOPLE shall be allowed to own and carry their guns so that if the POLITICIANS become a threat to our FREEDOMS the People can form Militias and over throw the Government by force if necessary. It has nothing to do with Hunters….

The Leveson Inquiry seems to have created some strange and nasty echoes in the land which used to be described as ‘The Lucky Country’.

The Leftist Australian Labour Party has apparently teamed up with the extreme Leftist Greens and initiated what can only be described as the Aussie version of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. They wish to establish a News Media Council, funded by Government, headed by a judge, with the members presumably recruited from the Print Unions.  Retired Federal Court Judge Roy Finkelstein wrote the report, and the Labour Party loves it

The council would have power to alter or permanently ban articles. Disobedience would result in a fine or imprisonment for contempt of court, and there would be no appeal. As well as having the power to ban articles, the council would have the power to compel media to publish responses to stories.

Now get this: its jurisdiction would extend not merely to newspapers — which would be outrageous enough — but also to any website. Perhaps even if it was visited by only one or two people a day. Finkelstein says its jurisdiction should cover websites which get more than 15,000 hits a year, or an average of 41 a day, that is, practically every website that could be described as publishing “news, information and opinion of current value.”

Keith Windschuttle, editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant,has written  defiantly:

If this oppressive scheme is ever implemented, we would feel compelled to defend the long tradition of press freedom by engaging in civil disobedience. While ever I am editor,Quadrant would not recognize the News Media Council’s authority, we would not observe its restrictions, and we would not obey its instructions, whatever the price. We hope other publishers will take a similar stand.

Good on you; Mate!

A thought struck me as I finished this small post, and it is this; ‘Wouldn’t our home-grown bunch of cripple-minded politicians, of all and any hue, just love to get their greasy hands around a British Media Council’? They would be having wet dreams on the hour!

I give you Geert Wilders, a brave man; one who is willing to stand up and be counted. Amongst his ‘medals and decorations’ he can proudly state that he was banned from entry to Britain by the Home Secretary, but came later, showed his film and said his piece, and the world did not fall apart; despite what Lord Ahmed said.

And so, courtesy of Fox News, Mr Wilders:-

I’m lying on my sofa right now, watching the Chilean broadcast of Bayern Munich vs Real Madrid, on my laptop.

You don’t get that under commies.

When you send an e-mail, search the web, or make a mobile phone call, even when using the latest digital technology, your call or message is monitored, and can be recorded and stored. Based at Menwith Hills, which is called RAF Menwith Hills, but strangely enough has approximately ten British staff (Cleaners, gardeners, similar-based workers) the Americans have their spy satellite downlink systems; all linked to the Echelon computer system which can pluck ‘key-words’ out of the ether.

The British have access to the feeds and discoveries from Menwith, but only on a need-to-know basis, (and the Americans decide who needs to know), and only through G.C.H.Q. at Cheltenham. This intrusion into our privacy has been going on for a long time, and was encouraged by the hard-left ideals of the Labour Government, who tried to get us all onto ID cards (failed), airport iris-scanning technology (failed), criminal record checks on everyone (failed); as well as the storing of all web traffic searches, e-mail traffic and other Socialist marshalling policies which belonged to the Stasi-segment of that same Labour Government.

Cameron & Clegg promised the following:

Introduce a Freedom Bill. Scrap ID cards, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports. Outlaw finger-printing of children at school without parental permission. Extend scope of Freedom of Information Act. More protections for DNA database. Protect trial by jury and restore rights to non-violent protest. Review libel laws to protect freedom of speech. Safeguards against misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. Regulate CCTV. Mechanism to prevent the proliferation of “unnecessary” new criminal offences. Establish commission to look at creating British Bill of Rights, incorporating and building on obligations under European Convention on Human Rights. Let me repeat one phrase; Safeguards against misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

The Coalition’s own Stasi-enthusiast, Theresa May, has been convinced by the ‘security people’ that the promise to scrap all the high-minded databases set up under Labour is a step too far, and they are proposing to make Internet companies store all e-mail, web and other Internet histories for a year, JUST IN CASE’.

So we can survey and trap terrorists, but we cannot deport the bastards, and we can’t hang them, so why are we bothering?

So starting from the day after these databases are brought back in, I will be attaching the following key-words to every e-mail sent:

Bomb; PET; terror, acid, nuclear, hate, jihad, suicide.

If we all do that, the computers will fill up so fast, the storage servers will simply overload!