Tuesday 29 August 2017

TIME TO TELL THE EU TO **** OFF !

As the UK's 'Brexit' negotiations back underway, it seems clear that the European Union's representatives are determined to be as awkward as possible.

Consistent with his previous pronouncements, Jean-Claude Juncker, a true 'giant' of Luxembourg politics before his elevation to become president of the European Commission, has been making loud noises about the need to settle the 'divorce bill' before any trade negotiations can begin. He's also been complaining that none of the papers and proposals provided so far by the UK are 'satisfactory', presumably meaning that they don't meet what the EU wants; does he not understand that the EU can no more get everything it wants than can the UK ?

Much continues to be said about EU citizens continuing to have all of the same rights while living in the UK after 'Brexit' as they have now, and for these rights to be legislated by the European Court; what a ludicrous idea. It is akin to saying that British citizens living in the various former British colonies should have remained subject to UK law when those countries obtained their independence, which would have been utterly ridiculous. No country can have some of its populace governed by one set of laws and some by another; this is no different to the idiotic notions that some have about instituting Sharia Law for sections of our society and it is equally unacceptable.

Juncker and his overpaid Europhile pals insist that the UK must be realistic and start negotiating seriously. In reality it is he, and they, who need to wake up. If I was David Davis I'd be making it very clear to Juncker and his cronies that I have no fears about walking away from the negotiating table empty-handed and with no agreement at all. The EU would be billions of euros worse off, both immediately and annually thereafter, and would be thrown into such chaotic turmoil that the mess it's already in would seem like perfect organisation.

Come on, Mr Davis, grow some balls. Tell these jumped up bureaucrats a few home truths and if they don't like it, who cares ?

Friday 18 August 2017

KILO-METRES OR KILOM-ETRES ?

Why is it that so many supposedly intelligent people find it impossible to pronounce the relatively simple word 'kilometre' correctly ?

Confronted with 'kilogram' they happily say 'kilo-gram'; 'kilowatts' are always called 'kilo-watts' and 'kilohertz' are rightly sounded as 'kilo-hertz'. However, presented with the identically structured 'kilometre', these same people almost always lose all sense of  grammar and end up saying 'kilom-etre'.

A 'kilometre' means a thousand metres; the two parts of the word are no different to the two parts of 'kilogram' 'kilowatt' or 'kilohertz', and yet news readers, assorted commentators and even highly qualified and otherwise intelligent broadcasters such as Professor Brian Cox insist on calling 'kilo-metres' 'kilom-etres'.

No doubt, various trendy teachers of English would argue that the pronunciation is up to the individual and there are no 'hard and fast' rules, but surely when a word has two quite clear elements, its pronunciation is not a matter for debate. It is obvious. 'Kilo-metres' it is and 'kilo-metres' is how it should stay. 'Kilom-etres' is simply wrong.

Wednesday 16 August 2017

TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT CHARLOTTESVILLE.

For once, Donald Trump has got it right, although the politically correct masses, unfortunately including our own Prime Minister Teresa May, aren't prepared to say so.

The recent events in Charlottesville were awful but to place al of the blame on 'the far right' or 'white supremacists' is simply to ignore the facts. It always takes 2 to make a fight and, in Charlottesville, there were 2 sides representing, it seems, what some would see highly simplistically as the good guys and the bad guys.

In such scenarios, the 'bad guys' are always those of a politically right wing persuasion, be that 'extreme' or just strongly conservative. The 'good guys' are those of the left, regardless of how extreme they themselves may be. More often than not, or so it seems to me, it is the left wing 'rent-a-mobs', claiming to occupy the moral high ground and supposedly defend liberty, democracy, the 'disadvantaged' or next door's cat, that start the violence. These avowed defenders of democracy are more than happy to deny free speech and expression to anyone who they brand as 'extreme right', racist, Nazi and a hundred other things.

Most politicians, now not including President Trump but certainly including Prime Minister May, refer to right wing groups as Nazi whether or not they actually are and without having any knowledge of what Nazism was or is. They use the term simply as a means of getting on the 'right side' of the political debate and being seen to be in tune with modern liberal thinking. Shame on them.

Whatever the fine details of what happened in Charlottesville, it is a racing certainty that there were as many violent thugs claiming to be 'the good guys' as there were violent thugs branded as 'the bad guys'. The simple truth is that they were all thugs and all bad guys. Teresa May seems to not understand this at all, having said "I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them" Really ? Does she really believe that violent thuggish behaviour is fine when initiated against 'fascists'  but not when directed at communists ?

The issue in Charlottesville was not to do with propounding views, it was all to do with thugs fighting other thugs. All those involved, left, right or centre, were equally culpable and it's time that our politicians grew some balls and said so, just as President Trump has done.

MEN AND WOMEN ARE *NOT* EQUAL !

This evening the BBC is broadcasting a programme that involves messing about with small children in an attempt to demonstrate that boys and girls are essentially the same. A Doctor Abdelmoneim has some daft ideas about supposed 'gender bias' and has set out to prove his theories by dressing boys up as girls and vice versa along with an assortment of other nonsense. Of course, the BBC, wearing its equality-mad hat, is only to happy to subject us to such drivel whenever it raises its sorry head and the opportunity to follow this experiment in 'gender neutrality' was obviously too attractive to miss..

In case anyone, including the those at the BBC, has any doubts, boys and girls are DIFFERENT. Not only do they have different bodies, they also have different biological functions; as a consequence they tend to have different driving forces and desires. Women have babies and suckle their young, men do not; the hormonal differences between the sexes are there for all to see - women suffer periods and men suffer the never-ending growth of beards. Men tend to be bigger, stronger and more aggressive than women; men's ambitions tend to be different. The play of boys and girls, which Dr Abdelmoneim seems to think is interchangeable, is nothing more than preparation for later life, boys tending to ape their fathers and girls their mothers.

There is nothing wrong with trying to ensure that men and women have equal opportunities in life but to pretend that they are actually 'equal' is nonsensical. To extend this rubbish to experiments on children is coming close to the eugenics of the past, but in reverse; while eugenics attempted to prove differences, the new mania is to prove that there are none. In this crazy world of equality, men and women, genius and idiot, criminal and law abiding, Inuit and Bantu are all 'equal', which may sound right but is nothing more than politically correct drivel.

Geniuses are celebrated, idiots are locked away; criminals are locked away while the law-abiding are relatively free. The Inuit live lives which the Bantu couldn't possibly endure, and vice versa. Far more men than women seek powerful positions of authority, something which has nothing to do with opportunity but is all about desire.

Dr Abdelmoneim's experiments border on child abuse and the BBC is complicit. It should be ashamed of its politically correct promotion of such appalling and utter nonsense dressed up as science.

Sunday 13 August 2017

BBC ATHLETICS COVERAGE IS THE PITS !

I have always enjoyed watching athletics on television though have to admit that I've often found the commentators and studio experts to be over the top, overly jingoistic, hopelessly bad, and, frankly, annoying. Sadly, the World Championships which are just concluding in London have been no different.

The BBC's coverage has been the traditional 'wall-to-wall, whether or not there's been anything happening or anything to say. Race commentaries, particularly those of Brendan Foster, have often been little more than a resumé for one or more of the competitors rather than an actual commentary on the race. In common with the appalling David Coleman from years ago, the commentators have frequently talked utter nonsense, telling viewers that someone or other was just making his or her effort when it was plain that they were a spent force and going backwards through the field. Foster and the fairly new Steve Backley also seem to suffer from pretty nasty cases of verbal diarrhoea, seemingly unable to say in 10 words what can be said in 10,000 while adding nothing to the actual content. Thank God that Andrew Cotter and Steve Cram have been on hand to alleviate some of the pain.

After every event, assorted competitors have been interviewed, if that's what it can be called, by one Phil Jones, a man with a list of questions which he's repeated over and over again; what on earth is the point of asking breathless athletes the same stupid questions about whatever they've just done ?

As if that hasn't been enough, the studio presentation, led by the normally excellent Gabby Logan, has been horrendous; we have been subjected to non-stop shrill twitterings from Logan, pointless and highly repetitive drivel from Paula Radcliffe, Jess Ennis, Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson, with only Michael Johnson sometimes present to add some calm sanity to proceedings. Clearly the BBC, in pursuit of some sort of equality targets, decided to use a predominantly female studio panel which, quite frankly, has been awful.

Little has changed in the BBC's coverage of athletics for decades. They seem to think that the best qualification for being a presenter is to have been a competitor, ignoring anything else. While knowledge of the events is obviously very important, an ability to commentate realistically and without the hyperbole so beloved these days is surely at least as important. Steve Cram does this, Brendan Foster does not; Phil Jones' post-event interviews are repetitive and banal tripe and the studio discussion has been mostly pointless verbiage.

That I and millions of others have paid for this through our licence fees appals me.

Friday 11 August 2017

BREXIT A CALAMITY, SAYS PR MAN.

Someone called James Chapman has been in the news recently, making noises about Brexit being a calamity and various political figures of both left and right being interested in forming a new party. It seems that he's been 'tweeting' prolifically and giving assorted interviews to anyone who'll listen. Such mouthings from a largely unknown personage would probably have been ignored except for the fact that Mr Chapman was on the staff of David Davis, the Conservative Brexit Secretary, until June this year.

The media has leapt on Mr Chapman's remarks as if they're of real moment. Sadly, the same media has said little if anything about Mr Chapman's history or current occupation.

Before taking on his role with David Davis, Chapman was a 'PR' man and spin doctor for that arch-Europhile, George Osborne, apparently being a committed 'Remainer' himself; why he ever took a job with an arch-Eurosceptic such as Davis raises questions. Now, after only a few months in post with Mr Davis, he has taken on a lucrative job with a PR company, Bell Pottinger, in the City of London, specifically to cater for clients with political axes to grind.

He took up his new role on 26th June and one has difficulty believing that his outbursts in the last 2 or 3 days are anything but moves on his part to promote the Europhile views of certain customers of his new employer; for all we know, he may even be dancing to the tune of his former master, George Osborne, again.

It's hard to conclude that this man is anything more than a mouthpiece for whomever happens to be paying his wages at any particular time and his 'twitterings' should be treated with the contempt that all such PR outpourings deserve.

Wednesday 9 August 2017

IS NUCLEAR WAR ON THE HORIZON ?

The posturing between the United States and North Korea seems to have reached a new pitch with yesterday's outburst from President Trump.

Following intelligence reports that the North Koreans may now have succeeded in developing a missile which can deliver a nuclear warhead, allied to suggestions that they may consider targeting US bases in the Pacific, President Trump stated that any further threats against the US would be met with "fire and fury".

While rhetoric is one thing and actual war something quite different, the brutal and tyrannical North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, and the frankly bonkers US President are probably the 2 most frightening people in the world at the moment. Neither will want to be seen to be weak and so neither will want to back off; both are bombastic and could easily reach a point of no return. Both have a finger on the nuclear button.

For decades, the threat of nuclear warfare has revolved around relations between the US and Russia, although several other countries with enmities have also achieved nuclear capability. China, India and Pakistan, Israel and others all have that capability and any of them might conceivably resort to its use under extreme provocation, however, North Korea is a very different 'kettle of fish'. Here, a dynastic megalomaniac rules the roost and normality doesn't apply, while Donald Trump is the most unpredictable US President ever.

Could we really be headed for war, even nuclear war ?

Monday 7 August 2017

CORBYN : CAN HE REALLY BE ELECTABLE ?

How can anyone fall for the supposed charms of Jeremy Corbyn ? How can it be that he is leader of one of our 2 most significant political parties and a possible future Prime Minister ?

Corbyn has a history of offering friendship and support to the IRA during the time when it was murdering British soldiers in Ireland and British civilians on the streets of major English cities; have we so quickly forgotten about bombs in London, Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere ? Corbyn supported those who were attacking our society and our country rather than supporting those who were defending it as well as innocent bystanders. 

Corbyn also has a history of supporting extreme left wing governments in other countries, his support of a brutal left wing dictatorship in Venezuela being the most recent such issue to be highlighted in the media. In fact, Corbyn seems to support anyone who is opposed to our country or who espouses different values; he is 100% anti-establishment, anti-monarchy and anti-British.

Corbyn's policies for a future general election all revolve around throwing vast amounts of money at anyone whom he hopes will vote for him - the young, the old, the sick, the low paid, students, public sector workers. He happily ignores the fact that all of this money would have to be found through huge increases in taxation and in borrowing and which would result in economic collapse. His policies, if ever put into practice, would destroy our nation as effectively as would the nuclear weapons that he would never use.

Are people really so stupid as to believe that Corbyn is the future ? Is the electorate really so naïve, even moronic, that it would ever make him Prime Minister ?