|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
freethought
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
|
 Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:59 am Post subject: What craziness happens in your country? |
 |
|
I've had conversation after conversation with Koreans who are paranoied or outright crazy with regards to mad cow. Today I had a kid doing an exercise on traveling saying that on his hypothetical trip he saw a premier league match in England, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Mad Cow in America. Others who think America is deliberately trying to kill them.
All of this is totally based on lies and misinformation...
So I was wondering if anyone can think of similar idiocy based on total misinformation or outright lies that this mad cow stuff has produced in Koreans.
The only thing I can think of is SARS in Toronto, but I honestly don't know anyone, nor do I remember anyone saying they would not go to Toronto for fear of it.
So, who can think of examples of this kind of craziness in their own countries?
One more thing, this is the best blog post I've seen illustrating the craziness. http://thisiskorea.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-say-send-pills-over-by-cargo.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Lekker
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
Um, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Somehow more than half of the U.S. believed that.
George Bush became president a second time? Somehow that happened.
I don't know, I'm sure crazier things have happened. That's just what comes to mind when first reading your question. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
aka Dave
Joined: 02 May 2008
Location: Down by the river
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 6:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
The only reason Bush was re-elected was the most spectacular terrorist event in the history of mankind happened, and unfortunately he cashed in on that.
There is tons of craziness and downright stupidity in the USA, but there's a huge difference from Korea. In Korea the sentiment goes in (usually) in one direction.
I have yet to meet a student who passionately supports American beef. You go in an American classroom, on any issue there will be passionate support for opposing sides of a political issue. Really, any issue.
When everybody thinks in group think, even if they're all right, that's usually a real problem. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SeoulFinn
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: 1h from Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 7:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
We pay 1.5� (USD 2.36) for a liter of gas.
EDIT: And that's almost 9 bucks a gallon, folks! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bagpipes11
Joined: 10 Nov 2006
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
| aka Dave wrote: |
| The only reason Bush was re-elected was the most spectacular terrorist event in the history of mankind happened, and unfortunately he cashed in on that. |
hmmm...hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's killed since the 1991 Gulf War and you call 9/11 the most spectacular terrorist event in history??
Now, who believes whatever their government tells them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rusty1983
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Go back to bed America your government is in control again...Here, watch this, shut up. Here's American Gladiators, watch this pictuary retards bang their f*ckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of the free.....etc etc and so on |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Chicoloco
Joined: 18 Oct 2006
Location: In the ring.
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Literal interpretations of religious books of questionable origins. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Grab the Chickens Levi
Joined: 29 Apr 2008
Location: Ilsan
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: |
|
|
We're too far the opposite in the UK. The pc view always wins hands down (or hands tied...)
We have radical Islamic Clerics in the streets inciting Muslims to kill us and take over our country and if anyone tried to stop them or complain THEY'D be the one who was seen as dangerous lol....
I like to tell myself that it's really a subtle and intelligent plan of our government's to 'contain' the enemy so they can keep tabs on them, rathe like when the US imported the Nazi scientists and psychologists after the break up of the third Reich - better we have their secrets than the Soviets. It must be, the British govt, MI5 etc can't be that naive and innocent after the centuries of experience at the top of the game right?
Right.....? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mrsquirrel
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| SeoulFinn wrote: |
We pay 1.5� (USD 2.36) for a liter of gas.
EDIT: And that's almost 9 bucks a gallon, folks! |
Oh you poor poor people with your 8 litre engined cars.
No wonder euro cars are so much better than those fuel inefficient POS you have over there.
Oh as for craziness
How about opening the doors of the country to half a dozen poorer countries and letting them come in and live freely, use the health care and generally put a strain on the system (whilst filling the menial jobs that others wouldn't do which is a good thing)
Or just for real fun here is some Little John from the daily mail
www.dailymail.co.uk
| Quote: |
Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
Last updated at 9:24 PM on 19th May 2008
* commentsComments (10)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
After Labour's mauling in the local elections, Gordon Brown announced that the hated plans for pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes would be scrapped.
That was a blatant lie and he knew it. Within days it became clear that 'trials' would still be going ahead. Why bother piloting something which you have no intention of introducing?
Far from dropping the scheme, Labour is ploughing on despite the trivial matter of what the electorate thinks.
That's because ministers are obediently implementing orders from our real
government in Brussels. Gordon couldn't stop pay-as-you-throw taxes even if he wanted to, which he doesn't.
He was the one who cranked up landfill taxes in his last 'green' budget to meet EU recycling targets, which is why councils are cutting back on collections in the first place.
All is revealed in European directive 75/442/EEC on waste disposal. In answer to a parliamentary question from the Tories, ministers have been forced to admit that they are following rules laid down in an EU handbook entitled 'Variable Rate Pricing based on Pay As You Throw as a Tool of Urban Waste Management'.
This 'toolkit' lays down the blueprint for charging every household for the amount of rubbish it generates.
It has been produced by the Dresden University of Technology, which was commissioned by the EU under the 'Fifth European Commission Framework Programme'.
Rubbish! Gordon Brown said plans for pay-as-you-throw taxes would be scrapped. But now pilots are going ahead
The Eurocrats admit bin charges are a ' politically sensitive issue', and warn of 'uncertain and perhaps uncontrollable citizens' response'. But the handbook stresses 'this lack of consensus should not be allowed to intimidate us into avoiding innovation'.
They acknowledge that higher charges, tougher rules and fortnightly collections will be unpopular and will lead to an increase in littering, fly-tipping and dumping of waste in other people's bins and recycling containers.
To combat this, it urges the 'disciplining of citizens' by 'intensive observation of illegal waste disposal through patrol and special task forces'.
Councils should set up a 'police department' to sift through rubbish to search for the addresses of 'offenders' in discarded mail, and issue fines of up to �400.
All those stories about people being punished for leaving the lid of their bin open, putting out the 'wrong' kind of rubbish or dropping an old gas bill in a public litter bin can be traced back to this sinister document.
They weren't isolated incidents, or the result of over-zealous enforcement by bloody-minded local officials - they were part of the great masterplan.
Thought those reports of some councils installing microchips in wheelie bins was localised madness? Think again. It's all outlined in this handbook.
The eventual aim is for every dustbin to have an 'individual identification code' using either 'transponder chips or barcodes'.
Dustcarts will be fitted with tracking devices, which explains that story a couple of weeks ago about York City Council spending �40,000 fitting sat-nav systems to all its refuse lorries, complete with maps of the whole of Europe.
At the time we assumed it was just the latest wheeze for wasting taxpayers' money. Now we know that it was simply York getting ahead of the curve.
It also explains why all those people who ejected their local councillors in last year's Town Hall elections in the na've belief that they would get their weekly rubbish collections reinstated have discovered that their votes didn't make the slightest bit of difference.
Local democracy - or democracy of any kind, come to that - has no place in Brave New Europe.
The recycling rules were designed to accommodate the Low Countries, which have run out of landfill sites. But nowhere are they being more rigidly applied than in Britain.
On the back of this directive, our government has introduced a draconian rubbish collection regime, designed to bully, fine and tax hard-pressed householders.
All those of us who sort our bottles and newspapers into separate boxes under the illusion that we are doing our bit to save the polar bears are wasting our time.
A few months ago, I wrote about watching dustmen in the London Borough of Camden throwing all the carefully recycled rubbish into the same bin as household waste and then chucking it onto their cart in one huge pile.
Now it has been revealed that the amount of domestic rubbish recycled by Camden in Britain is precisely nothing.
Every last magazine, wine bottle and plastic container is dumped into containers and shipped to the Far East for recycling. And Camden is just the tip of the waste mountain.
In the name of protecting the planet, we are transporting our rubbish thousands of miles away to the other side of the world. It doesn't get much more environmentally friendly than that.
Of course, that won't stop Camden, or any other council, rigorously enforcing 'Variable Rate Pricing based on Pay As You Throw as a Tool of Urban Waste Management', as laid out in European directive 75/442/EEC.
Taxing and fining people and refusing to empty the dustbins every week isn't about 'climate change' or 'global warming'.
It's just another manifestation of our Punishment Culture, about showing us who's boss.
This is how Britain is now governed, through rules drawn up by German academics, at the behest of unelected bureaucrats in Belgium, and enforced by single-issue lunatics hired out of the jobs pages of The Guardian.
It's been going on for years, but in signing the European Constitution without a referendum, Gordon Brown consigned to the landfill site the last vestiges of our ability to govern ourself.
We no longer even have any say over how often our dustbins are emptied.
The sooner Labour is thrown in the wheelie bin, the better. Now, I would pay good money for that.
They never give up, do they? The Government is spending �6million on a campaign telling the middle-classes they drink too much.
Never mind that the real problem is under-age and binge drinkers, and girls who get so sozzled every Saturday night they end up lying in the gutter with their knickers round their necks.
Some of us have long since suspected that having banned smoking, the purse-lipped puritans would turn their attentions to drinking next.
One advert has someone ordering a 'pint of three units'. A bottle of wine is relabelled 'a chilled bottle of ten units'. 'We're not saying don't drink,' said health minister Dawn Primarolo.
That's big of you, pet. 'We're saying here's the information in a non-judgmental, directly identifiable environment.'
Give me strength. Just how stupid does Patronising Primarolo think we are? Large VAT, please, Dave. Better make it four units.
Littlejohn cartoon
Two Jags' true voice
I've pretty much refrained from joining in the gloating over the Wicked Witch's tawdry memoirs. Being proved right about her these past ten years has been satisfaction enough.
Quite why the BBC thought it appropriate to make this selfserving tripe Book Of The Week on Radio 4 is beyond me.
They'd have been better off buying up Two Jags's hilarious diaries.
Hunter Davies has done a fine job of capturing the authentic voice of the man. As usual, the best stuff is in the detail.
No one cares about Two Jags boasting about brokering the peace between Blair and Brown.
But his account of getting drunk at an awards lunch with my colleague Petronella Wyatt is priceless.
'I was seated next to this young woman from The Spectator - Petrofino, Peregrino, something like that.'
You couldn't make it up. |
| Quote: |
Free the Ripper? Now that's what I call REAL madness
Last updated at 10:18 PM on 15th May 2008
* commentsComments (0)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
This week's winner of the Here We Go Looby Loo award is London solicitor Saimo Chahal, who is demanding the release of the Yorkshire Ripper. She claims that Peter Sutcliffe's yuman rites were breached when he was given 20 life sentences back in 1981.
Sutcliffe killed 13 women and attempted to murder seven more in a five-year spree. He's currently safely banged up in Broadmoor.
But Miss Chahal, who specialises in civil liberties and social welfare, thinks he's sane enough to be set free.
She argues that the Home Office disregarded his yuman rites by failing to set a tariff - a minimum term - when he was sentenced and she's confident of getting him out within three years.
Saimo Chahal
Saimo Chahal
Peter Sutcliffe
Peter Sutcliffe
There was no need to set a tariff. He was sent down for life and no one in their right mind ever expected him to be paroled.
So why the hell is Miss Chahal making such a song and dance about it now?
Apparently, she likes to take on ' difficult cases'. According to a report on a legal website: 'For Saimo this case raises the issue of how we treat mentally ill people who have committed heinous crimes.'
I'll tell you how we treat mentally ill people who have committed heinous crimes, pet. We lock them up in a padded cell in a secure institution and throw away the key.
What we don't do is try to get them released on a technicality.
This isn't a game. It's not an academic exercise. Sutcliffe is a deranged murderer who butchered more women than Jack the Ripper. His party piece was smashing in their skulls with a hammer before mutilating them.
While he was on the loose, women in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester were too frightened to go out on their own at night.
More from Richard Littlejohn...
* Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: The sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* Not nice to see you, to see you...if Brucie met Gordon
15/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Listen and lead? Gordon Brown doesn't listen and he's not a leader
05/05/08
* VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
Has Miss Chahal given a moment's thought to his victims and their families, let alone Olive Smelt, who survived one of Sutcliffe's brutal attacks and is still living daily with the nightmare?
What about their yuman rites? Of all the cases in all the world, why would she want to take on this one? She can't be short of work. In 2006, Miss Chahal was named Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year for 'repeatedly pushing the boundaries of the law on behalf of those with mental illness'.
Very commendable, I'm sure. But trying to spring the Yorkshire Ripper is pushing the boundaries of the law off a cliff with a bulldozer and into a sea of insanity.
Perhaps she scents another refreshing cheque from the legal aid fund.
Sutcliffe hasn't yet been granted legal aid, but that won't stop his lawyer applying. That's how she makes her living. And given the state of our venal yuman rites laws, who would back against her getting it?
Saimo Chahal is acting like one of those madwomen who start writing to serial killers doing life and end up marrying them behind bars.
Maybe she's just in it for the notoriety, a good story with which to regale her fellow lawyers over a glass of Fair Trade chardonnay in Pommeroy's.
'Do tell us, Saimo, was he really as scary as he looks?'
'Darling, I felt just like Jodie Foster in Silence Of The Lambs. You should have seen his piercing eyes. Very Hannibal Lecter. I might even get a book deal out of this.'
But let's imagine, just for a moment, that she's successful and in three years' time Sutcliffe is allowed to return to society. What then?
If Looby Loo is so convinced that the Yorkshire Ripper is sane and safe, perhaps we should arrange for her to move in with him.
Not nice to see you, to see you ...
How many times have I wondered why the hell anyone bothers interviewing Gordon Brown?
He drones on with his prepared script, sets the controls for the heart of the sun and stomps towards the exit, regardless of what is thrown at him.
Gordon was at it all day yesterday, during his little round of the TV and radio studios. I couldn't see the point of any of it.
Why should anyone waste their time attending his monthly news conference, let alone waste their breath asking a question? He's genetically incapable of giving a straight answer.
Gordon bruce
His ludicrous assertion that the back-flip over the 10p tax debacle was some kind of stimulus package, like the Bush tax rebate, was a risible insult to our intelligence.
If John Humphrys can't get any sense out of him, there's no hope for anyone else.
I notice Bruce Forsyth was knocking around Westminster this week. Maybe the BBC is planning to give Brucie a crack at Gordon...
All right, my love. And what's your name?
Gordon.
And where have you come from today?
Kirkcaldy.
I'll make a note of that. Miserable Scotch Git. Give us a twirl, Gordon.
I am taking the right long-term decisions... getting on with the job...
Steady on, I'm in charge. And what job do you do for a living, Gordon ...
I'm the Prime Minister... the best man for the job...
Nice to see you to see you... NICE!
As the Governor of the Bank of England said, the nice decade is over...
Speak for yourself, Gordon. Right, first question. What's the basic rate of income tax? Is it 10p... ?
(Audience) HIGHER, HIGHER!
Come on, Gordon, what's your answer?
We are raising thresholds... taking millions out of poverty... global turbulence... best man for the job...
Yes, my love, but what's the answer?
We are taking the right long-term decisions in the interests of...
Look, Gordon, I'm going to have to hurry you. It could still be a big night if you play your cards right.
I am getting on with the job, which is what people want me to do...
We've got a right one here, haven't we. I don't know where they find these people.
I am putting in a draft legislative programme for the year ahead... getting on with the job...
All right, my love, there's no need to go on. For a Brucie bonus, how many people voted for you as Prime Minister?
Global turbulence... lasting prosperity... passion and purpose... getting on with the job...
Can't someone shut him up? I asked how many people voted for you? Was it more than one..?
(Audience) LOWER! LOWER!
You mean no one voted for you. Just as well you're not on Strictly Come Dancing, you wouldn't last five minutes.
Long-term decisions... millions out of poverty... right leader... getting on with the job...
Let's try again, Gordon. Do you have any plans to visit Crewe in the next seven days?
I have already said... long-term decisions... international factors... getting on with the job...
I'll take that as a 'no' then. Well, if you're not going to answer a single question, I'm not wasting my time. So let's have a look at the old scoreboard.
Draft legislative programme... millions out of poverty... turbulence... getting on with the job..
Oh, dear, look at that. Only 23 per cent. Gordon, you're the least popular contestant since this programme began. Not such a good game, good game.
Cuddly toy... long-term decisions... getting on with the job... teasmade... er, cuddly toy...
Didn't he do BADLY!
Plods, lies & videotape. Heads must surely roll
Last year, Channel 4 produced a brilliant documentary, Undercover Mosque, which exposed the Islamic preachers of hate operating in places of worship across Britain.
Mad mullahs were caught on camera urging the murder of British soldiers, holy war against the Jews and violence against women and homosexuals.
As a result, the police in the West Midlands launched an investigation - against the documentary makers, Hardcash Productions. Rather than prosecute the rabble-rousers identified in the film, they falsely and publicly accused the producers of faking footage, using material out of context and stirring up hatred against Muslims.
Now, West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have had to pay the programme-makers �100,000 in libel damages and legal charges for these outrageous and completely unfounded slurs. Since the police have no money of their own, that means taxpayers must pick up the bill. This was an outrageous abuse of police power, public money and a gross dereliction of duty in the fight against terror.
If the Chief Constable of the West Midlands and the head of the CPS won't resign, they should be sacked.
The greater good?
The man stabbed to death outside McDonald's in London's Oxford Street was on bail awaiting trial for gang rape.
Steven Bigby was one of ten men accused of raping a girl and pouring caustic soda over her to destroy evidence.
He was also due to go on trial next month accused of wounding and violent disorder.
You might well ask what on earth he was doing out on bail in the first place.
Still, no great loss. Sounds like whoever killed him did us all a favour.
Terms of concealment
Last word on the Wicked Witch's tawdry diaries comes from Mail reader Dora Law, who wonders where she hid her 'contraceptive equipment' when she visited the Pope at the Vatican.
|
| Quote: |
If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
Last updated at 9:55 PM on 12th May 2008
* commentsComments (0)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
Am I missing something here? Man shoots at police. Police shoot back. Man dies. Case closed.
Police repair to nick, retrieve bottle of Bell's from bottom drawer of desk, drink a few large ones out of paper cups and tea mugs in the squad room before moving on to The Feathers for a bit of post-match analysis.
Scroll down for more
police marksmen
Duty to protect the public: The police didn't shoot first at Saunders, they returned fire
Inquest hears the gunman was an alcoholic suffering from depression. Coroner expresses sympathy to family and congratulates Old Bill on a job well done.
Verdict: death by misadventure. Oh, dear. How sad. Never mind.
So why all the hand-wringing over the death of barrister Mark Saunders, shot by police after a five-hour siege? Of course his family are upset. That's only natural. His father, Rodney, asks: 'Why did they have to kill my son?'
More from Richard Littlejohn...
* Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: The sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* Free the Ripper? Now that's what I call REAL madness
15/05/08
* Not nice to see you, to see you...if Brucie met Gordon
15/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Listen and lead? Gordon Brown doesn't listen and he's not a leader
05/05/08
* VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
I'd have thought the answer was obvious. Saunders was drunk as
a skunk, howling at the moon, holed up in his Chelsea flat taking pot-shots out of the window.
He fired at a woman neighbour, put a couple through the window of a child's bedroom and despite - in the words of Gene Hunt - being surrounded by 'armed bastards' shot not once, but three times at the police.
What were the cops supposed to do? Seal off the King's Road and surrounding area until he ran out of ammo? Send for some soppy social worker to try to talk him down?
The police are being criticised for refusing to allow his wife to reason with him.
What if they had and Saunders had given her both barrels in the chest? Those same critics would now be accusing the Met of reckless endangerment, sending an innocent women to her certain death.
What if he'd killed or wounded that woman neighbour or a child had been asleep in that bedroom?
Sophisticates insist he was only armed with a shotgun, which has a limited range. Would you want to be on the wrong end of it?
He had five hours in which to give himself up. That's plenty. The police didn't shoot first, they returned fire.
My understanding is that Saunders was already dead when they stormed the flat. The officers involved weren't aware of that. For all they knew he was crouched behind a table with a loaded gun pointed at the door.
Mark Saunders
Hand-wringing: Mark Saunders died after a confrontation with the police
But what if he'd been merely wounded? Imagine the squeals if they'd delayed going in and he'd bled to death.
Whether he wanted to be shot - so-called 'suicide by cop' as the Americans call it - is immaterial.
If he had a death wish, he could have thrown himself in the Thames or turned up at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon wearing a Manchester United shirt.
Nor does it matter whether or not he was clinically deranged or smashed out of his mind on absinthe. No sane, sober man turns a quiet London square into the OK Corral.
There's a suspicion that the police's behaviour is being questioned only because Saunders was a lawyer from a good family. Possible, but irrelevant.
It wouldn't have mattered if he was a drugs dealer from a sink estate.
A nutter is a nutter, no matter where he went to school, and the police have to act accordingly. Their first duty is to protect the public and themselves.
Here's another scenario. What if instead of shooting at a neighbour and a child's bedroom, Saunders had used his shotgun to kill a burglar and then given himself up?
All those now leaping to his defence and attacking the police would have been bouncing up and down calling for him to spend the rest of his life in jail.
The fact that he was depressed or had poured a bottle of vodka on his cornflakes wouldn't have helped him. Ask Tony Martin.
I'm the first to put the boot into the Old Bill where there has been conspicuous stupidity.
But I'm also the first to recognise the bravery of the men and women who put their lives on the line to keep us safe.
And the officers in this tragic case are beyond reproach. They have no case to answer.
If there is one lesson to be learned from Mark Saunders' death, it is this: if you fire a shotgun at armed police, don't be surprised if they fire back.
Have a butcher's at those bingo wings
He must have been 65 if he was a day. Flabby, pasty, stripped to the waist, wearing cut-off jeans, brown socks and black shoes, strolling down the High Street with his obese wife, resplendent in little more than a bra and a size 20 ra-ra skirt.
It was revolting. This happened to be North London, on Saturday, but it could be any British town centre when the temperature rises much above 70.
Why do people think that warm weather gives them licence to strip off in public?
There were some real horrors around at the weekend.
Brits in summertime
Tattooed beer monsters sprawled outside pubs, dopey birds with bingo wings and huge guts hanging over their knickers, sweaty blokes walking shirtless around supermarkets.
As a nation, we seem to have no idea how to dress in the heat. Where do middle-aged men get the idea that they look stylish in three-quarter-length trousers with patch pockets halfway down the leg?
And what possesses hideously overweight women to put their stretch marks on public display? I've seen better-looking butchers' windows. Who wants to sit on a bus next to a half-naked blubber mountain?
Once Boris has brought in his alcohol ban on public transport, perhaps he can think about following it up with a dress code.
The WW's sex life is making me bulimic
As I've remarked before, political diaries rarely tell you anything you didn't already know.
The current crop adds little to the sum total of our knowledge, if you discount the hilarious Two Jags bulimia episode.
Sometimes, though, they end up telling you things you didn't want to know. I'm not talking about the Wicked Witch informing the world that her last baby was conceived during a stay with the Queen at Balmoral.
Cherie Blair
Too much information: Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has revealed she forgot to pack her contraceptive equipment
Some of us worked that out at the time. I can remember joking that I'd assumed the squealing coming out of the upstairs bedroom at the castle that weekend was Alastair Campbell practising the bagpipes.
It's the fact that she felt it necessary to let us in on the secret. And that she attributed her unplanned pregnancy to forgetting to pack her 'contraceptive equipment'.
Thank you so much for sharing that. What, exactly, is this 'equipment' to which she refers?
I have visions of something involving guy ropes. Perhaps she makes Tony wear a Gordon Brown mask on those nights when she's not in the mood for love.
I'd have thought the knowledge that Her Maj and Phil the Greek were in the next room would be more than enough to put you off your stroke.
But even if you'd been at it like rabbits in the royal household, why would you tell anyone?
Call me old-fashioned, but there's something deeply demeaning about the wife of a former Prime Minister writing about their sex life and her 'contraceptive equipment' like a kiss 'n' tell scrubber in one of the Sunday tabloids.
You can't imagine Denis Thatcher ever having spilled the beans on his nights of passion with Maggie in the four-poster at Sandringham. Norma Major has far too much class to go down that route.
And I'm confident that Sarah Brown won't reveal her most intimate moments with Gordon.
Roma woman's contempt for our laws
The Roma gypsy woman who forced her 13-year-old daughter into marriage in a ceremony in East London says: 'Just because I live in Britain doesn't mean I've got to behave the way you think is right.'
Why hasn't she been arrested and the girl taken into care? Imagine if this was a middle-class white girl in, say, Basingstoke. Social services and the police would have stormed the house.
There are reported to be 100,000 Roma gypsies living in Britain, many of whom presumably share this woman's contempt for our laws and way of life. Who voted for that?
Strange idea of balance
Speaking to the Guardian, ex-Radio Authority and Ofcom regulator Tony Stoller justifies the sacking of presenter James Whale from talkSPORT for telling listeners to vote for Boris Johnson.
He then cites the 'tawdry Evening Standard campaign against Ken Livingstone' as an example of what the media can get up to when not regulated by people like him.
James Whale
Sacked: Presenter James Whale was dropped by talkSPORT after asking listeners to vote for Boris Johnson
Ken Livingstone
Campaign: Labour Party candidate Ken Livingstone lost out to Boris Johnson in the mayoral race
For the record, the Standard's reporting of Livingstone's record as mayor was scrupulously accurate. Stoller is typical of the types who get appointed to 'independent' regulatory bodies.
They think telling the truth about Left-wing wrongdoing is a smear campaign and advising anyone to vote for a Tory is a hanging offence. That's their idea of 'balance'.
Picture imperfect
Couples who get married in register offices are being banned from having their picture taken under 'data protection' laws.
It's a pity that rule didn't apply when I got married, since my wedding photos show me wearing a brown three-piece suit, with flared trousers and lapels which look like the wings of a Vulcan bomber.
Not to mention the beard and moustache. I wonder if we can get the Data Protection Act backdated. |
Last edited by mrsquirrel on Tue May 20, 2008 4:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
- Iraq has WMD that could be used against America.
- Israel is our greatest ally.
- Those who aren't with us are against us.
- Mission accomplished.
I dunno, it would really be a toss-up between Korea and the US In terms of which is the most fearful and gullible. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roch
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Bagpipes11 wrote: |
| aka Dave wrote: |
| The only reason Bush was re-elected was the most spectacular terrorist event in the history of mankind happened, and unfortunately he cashed in on that. |
hmmm...hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's killed since the 1991 Gulf War and you call 9/11 the most spectacular terrorist event in history??
Now, who believes whatever their government tells them. |
Was the invasion of Nazi-occupied Continental Europe, in which thousands upon thousands of people died, a good or bad thing in your estimation?
Respectfully,
R&B
Last edited by Roch on Tue May 20, 2008 4:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roch
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
- Iraq has WMD that could be used against America.
- Israel is our greatest ally.
- Those who aren't with us are against us.
- Mission accomplished.
I dunno, it would really be a toss-up between Korea and the US In terms of which is the most fearful and gullible. |
Aren't you from Greater Vancouver, British Columbia? If so, why are you taking the piss out of the U.S.?
Do you really believe that these two nations are the most fearful and gullible in the world?
Respectfully,
R |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Roch wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
- Iraq has WMD that could be used against America.
- Israel is our greatest ally.
- Those who aren't with us are against us.
- Mission accomplished.
I dunno, it would really be a toss-up between Korea and the US In terms of which is the most fearful and gullible. |
Aren't you from Greater Vancouver, British Columbia? If so, why are you taking the piss out of the U.S.?
Do you really believe that these two nations are the most fearful and gullible in the world?
Respectfully,
R |
Yes, I really believe they're amongst the most fearful and gullible on the planet. The main difference is that Korea reaps the consequences almost entirely internally, whereas the US tries to share them with everyone else. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Grab the Chickens Levi
Joined: 29 Apr 2008
Location: Ilsan
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| mrsquirrel wrote: |
| SeoulFinn wrote: |
We pay 1.5� (USD 2.36) for a liter of gas.
EDIT: And that's almost 9 bucks a gallon, folks! |
Oh you poor poor people with your 8 litre engined cars.
No wonder euro cars are so much better than those fuel inefficient POS you have over there.
Oh as for craziness
How about opening the doors of the country to half a dozen poorer countries and letting them come in and live freely, use the health care and generally put a strain on the system (whilst filling the menial jobs that others wouldn't do which is a good thing)
Or just for real fun here is some Little John from the daily mail
www.dailymail.co.uk
| Quote: |
Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
Last updated at 9:24 PM on 19th May 2008
* commentsComments (10)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
After Labour's mauling in the local elections, Gordon Brown announced that the hated plans for pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes would be scrapped.
That was a blatant lie and he knew it. Within days it became clear that 'trials' would still be going ahead. Why bother piloting something which you have no intention of introducing?
Far from dropping the scheme, Labour is ploughing on despite the trivial matter of what the electorate thinks.
That's because ministers are obediently implementing orders from our real
government in Brussels. Gordon couldn't stop pay-as-you-throw taxes even if he wanted to, which he doesn't.
He was the one who cranked up landfill taxes in his last 'green' budget to meet EU recycling targets, which is why councils are cutting back on collections in the first place.
All is revealed in European directive 75/442/EEC on waste disposal. In answer to a parliamentary question from the Tories, ministers have been forced to admit that they are following rules laid down in an EU handbook entitled 'Variable Rate Pricing based on Pay As You Throw as a Tool of Urban Waste Management'.
This 'toolkit' lays down the blueprint for charging every household for the amount of rubbish it generates.
It has been produced by the Dresden University of Technology, which was commissioned by the EU under the 'Fifth European Commission Framework Programme'.
Rubbish! Gordon Brown said plans for pay-as-you-throw taxes would be scrapped. But now pilots are going ahead
The Eurocrats admit bin charges are a ' politically sensitive issue', and warn of 'uncertain and perhaps uncontrollable citizens' response'. But the handbook stresses 'this lack of consensus should not be allowed to intimidate us into avoiding innovation'.
They acknowledge that higher charges, tougher rules and fortnightly collections will be unpopular and will lead to an increase in littering, fly-tipping and dumping of waste in other people's bins and recycling containers.
To combat this, it urges the 'disciplining of citizens' by 'intensive observation of illegal waste disposal through patrol and special task forces'.
Councils should set up a 'police department' to sift through rubbish to search for the addresses of 'offenders' in discarded mail, and issue fines of up to �400.
All those stories about people being punished for leaving the lid of their bin open, putting out the 'wrong' kind of rubbish or dropping an old gas bill in a public litter bin can be traced back to this sinister document.
They weren't isolated incidents, or the result of over-zealous enforcement by bloody-minded local officials - they were part of the great masterplan.
Thought those reports of some councils installing microchips in wheelie bins was localised madness? Think again. It's all outlined in this handbook.
The eventual aim is for every dustbin to have an 'individual identification code' using either 'transponder chips or barcodes'.
Dustcarts will be fitted with tracking devices, which explains that story a couple of weeks ago about York City Council spending �40,000 fitting sat-nav systems to all its refuse lorries, complete with maps of the whole of Europe.
At the time we assumed it was just the latest wheeze for wasting taxpayers' money. Now we know that it was simply York getting ahead of the curve.
It also explains why all those people who ejected their local councillors in last year's Town Hall elections in the na've belief that they would get their weekly rubbish collections reinstated have discovered that their votes didn't make the slightest bit of difference.
Local democracy - or democracy of any kind, come to that - has no place in Brave New Europe.
The recycling rules were designed to accommodate the Low Countries, which have run out of landfill sites. But nowhere are they being more rigidly applied than in Britain.
On the back of this directive, our government has introduced a draconian rubbish collection regime, designed to bully, fine and tax hard-pressed householders.
All those of us who sort our bottles and newspapers into separate boxes under the illusion that we are doing our bit to save the polar bears are wasting our time.
A few months ago, I wrote about watching dustmen in the London Borough of Camden throwing all the carefully recycled rubbish into the same bin as household waste and then chucking it onto their cart in one huge pile.
Now it has been revealed that the amount of domestic rubbish recycled by Camden in Britain is precisely nothing.
Every last magazine, wine bottle and plastic container is dumped into containers and shipped to the Far East for recycling. And Camden is just the tip of the waste mountain.
In the name of protecting the planet, we are transporting our rubbish thousands of miles away to the other side of the world. It doesn't get much more environmentally friendly than that.
Of course, that won't stop Camden, or any other council, rigorously enforcing 'Variable Rate Pricing based on Pay As You Throw as a Tool of Urban Waste Management', as laid out in European directive 75/442/EEC.
Taxing and fining people and refusing to empty the dustbins every week isn't about 'climate change' or 'global warming'.
It's just another manifestation of our Punishment Culture, about showing us who's boss.
This is how Britain is now governed, through rules drawn up by German academics, at the behest of unelected bureaucrats in Belgium, and enforced by single-issue lunatics hired out of the jobs pages of The Guardian.
It's been going on for years, but in signing the European Constitution without a referendum, Gordon Brown consigned to the landfill site the last vestiges of our ability to govern ourself.
We no longer even have any say over how often our dustbins are emptied.
The sooner Labour is thrown in the wheelie bin, the better. Now, I would pay good money for that.
They never give up, do they? The Government is spending �6million on a campaign telling the middle-classes they drink too much.
Never mind that the real problem is under-age and binge drinkers, and girls who get so sozzled every Saturday night they end up lying in the gutter with their knickers round their necks.
Some of us have long since suspected that having banned smoking, the purse-lipped puritans would turn their attentions to drinking next.
One advert has someone ordering a 'pint of three units'. A bottle of wine is relabelled 'a chilled bottle of ten units'. 'We're not saying don't drink,' said health minister Dawn Primarolo.
That's big of you, pet. 'We're saying here's the information in a non-judgmental, directly identifiable environment.'
Give me strength. Just how stupid does Patronising Primarolo think we are? Large VAT, please, Dave. Better make it four units.
Littlejohn cartoon
Two Jags' true voice
I've pretty much refrained from joining in the gloating over the Wicked Witch's tawdry memoirs. Being proved right about her these past ten years has been satisfaction enough.
Quite why the BBC thought it appropriate to make this selfserving tripe Book Of The Week on Radio 4 is beyond me.
They'd have been better off buying up Two Jags's hilarious diaries.
Hunter Davies has done a fine job of capturing the authentic voice of the man. As usual, the best stuff is in the detail.
No one cares about Two Jags boasting about brokering the peace between Blair and Brown.
But his account of getting drunk at an awards lunch with my colleague Petronella Wyatt is priceless.
'I was seated next to this young woman from The Spectator - Petrofino, Peregrino, something like that.'
You couldn't make it up. |
| Quote: |
Free the Ripper? Now that's what I call REAL madness
Last updated at 10:18 PM on 15th May 2008
* commentsComments (0)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
This week's winner of the Here We Go Looby Loo award is London solicitor Saimo Chahal, who is demanding the release of the Yorkshire Ripper. She claims that Peter Sutcliffe's yuman rites were breached when he was given 20 life sentences back in 1981.
Sutcliffe killed 13 women and attempted to murder seven more in a five-year spree. He's currently safely banged up in Broadmoor.
But Miss Chahal, who specialises in civil liberties and social welfare, thinks he's sane enough to be set free.
She argues that the Home Office disregarded his yuman rites by failing to set a tariff - a minimum term - when he was sentenced and she's confident of getting him out within three years.
Saimo Chahal
Saimo Chahal
Peter Sutcliffe
Peter Sutcliffe
There was no need to set a tariff. He was sent down for life and no one in their right mind ever expected him to be paroled.
So why the hell is Miss Chahal making such a song and dance about it now?
Apparently, she likes to take on ' difficult cases'. According to a report on a legal website: 'For Saimo this case raises the issue of how we treat mentally ill people who have committed heinous crimes.'
I'll tell you how we treat mentally ill people who have committed heinous crimes, pet. We lock them up in a padded cell in a secure institution and throw away the key.
What we don't do is try to get them released on a technicality.
This isn't a game. It's not an academic exercise. Sutcliffe is a deranged murderer who butchered more women than Jack the Ripper. His party piece was smashing in their skulls with a hammer before mutilating them.
While he was on the loose, women in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester were too frightened to go out on their own at night.
More from Richard Littlejohn...
* Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: The sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* Not nice to see you, to see you...if Brucie met Gordon
15/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Listen and lead? Gordon Brown doesn't listen and he's not a leader
05/05/08
* VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
Has Miss Chahal given a moment's thought to his victims and their families, let alone Olive Smelt, who survived one of Sutcliffe's brutal attacks and is still living daily with the nightmare?
What about their yuman rites? Of all the cases in all the world, why would she want to take on this one? She can't be short of work. In 2006, Miss Chahal was named Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year for 'repeatedly pushing the boundaries of the law on behalf of those with mental illness'.
Very commendable, I'm sure. But trying to spring the Yorkshire Ripper is pushing the boundaries of the law off a cliff with a bulldozer and into a sea of insanity.
Perhaps she scents another refreshing cheque from the legal aid fund.
Sutcliffe hasn't yet been granted legal aid, but that won't stop his lawyer applying. That's how she makes her living. And given the state of our venal yuman rites laws, who would back against her getting it?
Saimo Chahal is acting like one of those madwomen who start writing to serial killers doing life and end up marrying them behind bars.
Maybe she's just in it for the notoriety, a good story with which to regale her fellow lawyers over a glass of Fair Trade chardonnay in Pommeroy's.
'Do tell us, Saimo, was he really as scary as he looks?'
'Darling, I felt just like Jodie Foster in Silence Of The Lambs. You should have seen his piercing eyes. Very Hannibal Lecter. I might even get a book deal out of this.'
But let's imagine, just for a moment, that she's successful and in three years' time Sutcliffe is allowed to return to society. What then?
If Looby Loo is so convinced that the Yorkshire Ripper is sane and safe, perhaps we should arrange for her to move in with him.
Not nice to see you, to see you ...
How many times have I wondered why the hell anyone bothers interviewing Gordon Brown?
He drones on with his prepared script, sets the controls for the heart of the sun and stomps towards the exit, regardless of what is thrown at him.
Gordon was at it all day yesterday, during his little round of the TV and radio studios. I couldn't see the point of any of it.
Why should anyone waste their time attending his monthly news conference, let alone waste their breath asking a question? He's genetically incapable of giving a straight answer.
Gordon bruce
His ludicrous assertion that the back-flip over the 10p tax debacle was some kind of stimulus package, like the Bush tax rebate, was a risible insult to our intelligence.
If John Humphrys can't get any sense out of him, there's no hope for anyone else.
I notice Bruce Forsyth was knocking around Westminster this week. Maybe the BBC is planning to give Brucie a crack at Gordon...
All right, my love. And what's your name?
Gordon.
And where have you come from today?
Kirkcaldy.
I'll make a note of that. Miserable Scotch Git. Give us a twirl, Gordon.
I am taking the right long-term decisions... getting on with the job...
Steady on, I'm in charge. And what job do you do for a living, Gordon ...
I'm the Prime Minister... the best man for the job...
Nice to see you to see you... NICE!
As the Governor of the Bank of England said, the nice decade is over...
Speak for yourself, Gordon. Right, first question. What's the basic rate of income tax? Is it 10p... ?
(Audience) HIGHER, HIGHER!
Come on, Gordon, what's your answer?
We are raising thresholds... taking millions out of poverty... global turbulence... best man for the job...
Yes, my love, but what's the answer?
We are taking the right long-term decisions in the interests of...
Look, Gordon, I'm going to have to hurry you. It could still be a big night if you play your cards right.
I am getting on with the job, which is what people want me to do...
We've got a right one here, haven't we. I don't know where they find these people.
I am putting in a draft legislative programme for the year ahead... getting on with the job...
All right, my love, there's no need to go on. For a Brucie bonus, how many people voted for you as Prime Minister?
Global turbulence... lasting prosperity... passion and purpose... getting on with the job...
Can't someone shut him up? I asked how many people voted for you? Was it more than one..?
(Audience) LOWER! LOWER!
You mean no one voted for you. Just as well you're not on Strictly Come Dancing, you wouldn't last five minutes.
Long-term decisions... millions out of poverty... right leader... getting on with the job...
Let's try again, Gordon. Do you have any plans to visit Crewe in the next seven days?
I have already said... long-term decisions... international factors... getting on with the job...
I'll take that as a 'no' then. Well, if you're not going to answer a single question, I'm not wasting my time. So let's have a look at the old scoreboard.
Draft legislative programme... millions out of poverty... turbulence... getting on with the job..
Oh, dear, look at that. Only 23 per cent. Gordon, you're the least popular contestant since this programme began. Not such a good game, good game.
Cuddly toy... long-term decisions... getting on with the job... teasmade... er, cuddly toy...
Didn't he do BADLY!
Plods, lies & videotape. Heads must surely roll
Last year, Channel 4 produced a brilliant documentary, Undercover Mosque, which exposed the Islamic preachers of hate operating in places of worship across Britain.
Mad mullahs were caught on camera urging the murder of British soldiers, holy war against the Jews and violence against women and homosexuals.
As a result, the police in the West Midlands launched an investigation - against the documentary makers, Hardcash Productions. Rather than prosecute the rabble-rousers identified in the film, they falsely and publicly accused the producers of faking footage, using material out of context and stirring up hatred against Muslims.
Now, West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have had to pay the programme-makers �100,000 in libel damages and legal charges for these outrageous and completely unfounded slurs. Since the police have no money of their own, that means taxpayers must pick up the bill. This was an outrageous abuse of police power, public money and a gross dereliction of duty in the fight against terror.
If the Chief Constable of the West Midlands and the head of the CPS won't resign, they should be sacked.
The greater good?
The man stabbed to death outside McDonald's in London's Oxford Street was on bail awaiting trial for gang rape.
Steven Bigby was one of ten men accused of raping a girl and pouring caustic soda over her to destroy evidence.
He was also due to go on trial next month accused of wounding and violent disorder.
You might well ask what on earth he was doing out on bail in the first place.
Still, no great loss. Sounds like whoever killed him did us all a favour.
Terms of concealment
Last word on the Wicked Witch's tawdry diaries comes from Mail reader Dora Law, who wonders where she hid her 'contraceptive equipment' when she visited the Pope at the Vatican.
|
| Quote: |
If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
Last updated at 9:55 PM on 12th May 2008
* commentsComments (0)
* Add to My Stories Add to My Stories
Am I missing something here? Man shoots at police. Police shoot back. Man dies. Case closed.
Police repair to nick, retrieve bottle of Bell's from bottom drawer of desk, drink a few large ones out of paper cups and tea mugs in the squad room before moving on to The Feathers for a bit of post-match analysis.
Scroll down for more
police marksmen
Duty to protect the public: The police didn't shoot first at Saunders, they returned fire
Inquest hears the gunman was an alcoholic suffering from depression. Coroner expresses sympathy to family and congratulates Old Bill on a job well done.
Verdict: death by misadventure. Oh, dear. How sad. Never mind.
So why all the hand-wringing over the death of barrister Mark Saunders, shot by police after a five-hour siege? Of course his family are upset. That's only natural. His father, Rodney, asks: 'Why did they have to kill my son?'
More from Richard Littlejohn...
* Sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: The sinister secrets of the dustbin Nazis
19/05/08
* Free the Ripper? Now that's what I call REAL madness
15/05/08
* Not nice to see you, to see you...if Brucie met Gordon
15/05/08
* LITTLEJOHN: If surrounded by armed bastards, don't shoot!
12/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Makes you proud to be world-class!
08/05/08
* Listen and lead? Gordon Brown doesn't listen and he's not a leader
05/05/08
* VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
I'd have thought the answer was obvious. Saunders was drunk as
a skunk, howling at the moon, holed up in his Chelsea flat taking pot-shots out of the window.
He fired at a woman neighbour, put a couple through the window of a child's bedroom and despite - in the words of Gene Hunt - being surrounded by 'armed bastards' shot not once, but three times at the police.
What were the cops supposed to do? Seal off the King's Road and surrounding area until he ran out of ammo? Send for some soppy social worker to try to talk him down?
The police are being criticised for refusing to allow his wife to reason with him.
What if they had and Saunders had given her both barrels in the chest? Those same critics would now be accusing the Met of reckless endangerment, sending an innocent women to her certain death.
What if he'd killed or wounded that woman neighbour or a child had been asleep in that bedroom?
Sophisticates insist he was only armed with a shotgun, which has a limited range. Would you want to be on the wrong end of it?
He had five hours in which to give himself up. That's plenty. The police didn't shoot first, they returned fire.
My understanding is that Saunders was already dead when they stormed the flat. The officers involved weren't aware of that. For all they knew he was crouched behind a table with a loaded gun pointed at the door.
Mark Saunders
Hand-wringing: Mark Saunders died after a confrontation with the police
But what if he'd been merely wounded? Imagine the squeals if they'd delayed going in and he'd bled to death.
Whether he wanted to be shot - so-called 'suicide by cop' as the Americans call it - is immaterial.
If he had a death wish, he could have thrown himself in the Thames or turned up at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon wearing a Manchester United shirt.
Nor does it matter whether or not he was clinically deranged or smashed out of his mind on absinthe. No sane, sober man turns a quiet London square into the OK Corral.
There's a suspicion that the police's behaviour is being questioned only because Saunders was a lawyer from a good family. Possible, but irrelevant.
It wouldn't have mattered if he was a drugs dealer from a sink estate.
A nutter is a nutter, no matter where he went to school, and the police have to act accordingly. Their first duty is to protect the public and themselves.
Here's another scenario. What if instead of shooting at a neighbour and a child's bedroom, Saunders had used his shotgun to kill a burglar and then given himself up?
All those now leaping to his defence and attacking the police would have been bouncing up and down calling for him to spend the rest of his life in jail.
The fact that he was depressed or had poured a bottle of vodka on his cornflakes wouldn't have helped him. Ask Tony Martin.
I'm the first to put the boot into the Old Bill where there has been conspicuous stupidity.
But I'm also the first to recognise the bravery of the men and women who put their lives on the line to keep us safe.
And the officers in this tragic case are beyond reproach. They have no case to answer.
If there is one lesson to be learned from Mark Saunders' death, it is this: if you fire a shotgun at armed police, don't be surprised if they fire back.
Have a butcher's at those bingo wings
He must have been 65 if he was a day. Flabby, pasty, stripped to the waist, wearing cut-off jeans, brown socks and black shoes, strolling down the High Street with his obese wife, resplendent in little more than a bra and a size 20 ra-ra skirt.
It was revolting. This happened to be North London, on Saturday, but it could be any British town centre when the temperature rises much above 70.
Why do people think that warm weather gives them licence to strip off in public?
There were some real horrors around at the weekend.
Brits in summertime
Tattooed beer monsters sprawled outside pubs, dopey birds with bingo wings and huge guts hanging over their knickers, sweaty blokes walking shirtless around supermarkets.
As a nation, we seem to have no idea how to dress in the heat. Where do middle-aged men get the idea that they look stylish in three-quarter-length trousers with patch pockets halfway down the leg?
And what possesses hideously overweight women to put their stretch marks on public display? I've seen better-looking butchers' windows. Who wants to sit on a bus next to a half-naked blubber mountain?
Once Boris has brought in his alcohol ban on public transport, perhaps he can think about following it up with a dress code.
The WW's sex life is making me bulimic
As I've remarked before, political diaries rarely tell you anything you didn't already know.
The current crop adds little to the sum total of our knowledge, if you discount the hilarious Two Jags bulimia episode.
Sometimes, though, they end up telling you things you didn't want to know. I'm not talking about the Wicked Witch informing the world that her last baby was conceived during a stay with the Queen at Balmoral.
Cherie Blair
Too much information: Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has revealed she forgot to pack her contraceptive equipment
Some of us worked that out at the time. I can remember joking that I'd assumed the squealing coming out of the upstairs bedroom at the castle that weekend was Alastair Campbell practising the bagpipes.
It's the fact that she felt it necessary to let us in on the secret. And that she attributed her unplanned pregnancy to forgetting to pack her 'contraceptive equipment'.
Thank you so much for sharing that. What, exactly, is this 'equipment' to which she refers?
I have visions of something involving guy ropes. Perhaps she makes Tony wear a Gordon Brown mask on those nights when she's not in the mood for love.
I'd have thought the knowledge that Her Maj and Phil the Greek were in the next room would be more than enough to put you off your stroke.
But even if you'd been at it like rabbits in the royal household, why would you tell anyone?
Call me old-fashioned, but there's something deeply demeaning about the wife of a former Prime Minister writing about their sex life and her 'contraceptive equipment' like a kiss 'n' tell scrubber in one of the Sunday tabloids.
You can't imagine Denis Thatcher ever having spilled the beans on his nights of passion with Maggie in the four-poster at Sandringham. Norma Major has far too much class to go down that route.
And I'm confident that Sarah Brown won't reveal her most intimate moments with Gordon.
Roma woman's contempt for our laws
The Roma gypsy woman who forced her 13-year-old daughter into marriage in a ceremony in East London says: 'Just because I live in Britain doesn't mean I've got to behave the way you think is right.'
Why hasn't she been arrested and the girl taken into care? Imagine if this was a middle-class white girl in, say, Basingstoke. Social services and the police would have stormed the house.
There are reported to be 100,000 Roma gypsies living in Britain, many of whom presumably share this woman's contempt for our laws and way of life. Who voted for that?
Strange idea of balance
Speaking to the Guardian, ex-Radio Authority and Ofcom regulator Tony Stoller justifies the sacking of presenter James Whale from talkSPORT for telling listeners to vote for Boris Johnson.
He then cites the 'tawdry Evening Standard campaign against Ken Livingstone' as an example of what the media can get up to when not regulated by people like him.
James Whale
Sacked: Presenter James Whale was dropped by talkSPORT after asking listeners to vote for Boris Johnson
Ken Livingstone
Campaign: Labour Party candidate Ken Livingstone lost out to Boris Johnson in the mayoral race
For the record, the Standard's reporting of Livingstone's record as mayor was scrupulously accurate. Stoller is typical of the types who get appointed to 'independent' regulatory bodies.
They think telling the truth about Left-wing wrongdoing is a smear campaign and advising anyone to vote for a Tory is a hanging offence. That's their idea of 'balance'.
Picture imperfect
Couples who get married in register offices are being banned from having their picture taken under 'data protection' laws.
It's a pity that rule didn't apply when I got married, since my wedding photos show me wearing a brown three-piece suit, with flared trousers and lapels which look like the wings of a Vulcan bomber.
Not to mention the beard and moustache. I wonder if we can get the Data Protection Act backdated. |
|
Very annoying and unnecessary that, having to scroll down 2 miles to find the next post... We are all adults that are capable of clicking on a link. Perhaps just post the link next time.....? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
michael5799042
Joined: 16 Jan 2008
|
| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I can recall people getting hysterical about the safety of tap water. Some mothers were buying bottled water to wash their kids. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
