For an excellent account of the recent history of terrorism in Northern Ireland, TheEye recommends this book by David Vance. E-mail him (link via the picture) to buy a copy.
At the time of writing this (approx 7pm) confirmed panelists according to the BBC Question Time website are Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Sarah Teather MP, Diane Abbott MP and the regularly tedious Clive Anderson. It's unclear whether an extra panelist is yet to be confirmed, whether Abbott is vast enough to count as two people, or whether she's already eaten the unlucky 5th chair z-list celeb.
Perhaps Abbott and Teather are supposed to average out?
The LiveBlog will also cover the insane This Week, with Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, a random lefty politician and an unbranded 6-pack of hangers-on.
Your cheerful brace of Moderators; TheEye and David Mosque, will be looking menacing here from 10:30pm.
"....Flossie felt trapped. The Royal Regiment of Wales were in Afghanistan.
And they were homesick"
It's not much different to the 'treatment' that the sheep will be familiar with from the locals though. Who'd want to eat mutton stew out there when the animal's probably 'used' and slightly salty?
Actual Caption: 03/26/2011 - U.S. Soldiers assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade look at a sheep during a mission to the Shorabak district center of Kandahar province, Afghanistan, March 26, 2011. The purpose of the mission was to conduct a site survey of the Zone 3 Afghan National Police station to see what improvements are necessary. (DoD photo by Sgt. Canaan Radcliffe, U.S. Army/Released)Read more...
Red Ken on tonight, eh? Doubtless Boris will be on next week for Mayoral election balance? No, thought not. On a positive note, though, QT will follow a Party Budget Broadcast by Red Ed which should cost him a couple of points in the polls.
The LiveBlog will also cover the insane This Week, with Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, a random lefty politician and a veritable smorgasbord of hangers-on. Let's see if they can top the owl-eyed and off-her-face fashion designer from last week who mumbled some disconnected views about nuclear power.
TheEye and David Mosque will be cutting fuel tax here from 10:30pm.
So after a lot of posturing and hand-wringing, he's finally done it.
Florida Pastor Terry Jones has burned that Koran. And he had the cameras on hand to record it.
Ironically it comes at the same time as a judge in Tampa has ordered sharia law, not US law, to be used to decide a dispute between the trustees of a mosque.
It's bound to disappear from YouTube pretty sharpish, but we'll use their bandwidth whilst it's still there. Afterwards it's also got a safe home here on censorship-free EyeTube.
Here's one for the splendid Captain Haddock to investigate and report back on for us all.
Are you a sea captain in need of close companionship? Are you a landlubber who craves the crustiness of a grizzled old sailor?
Well, there's a website devoted to your needs. A dating website specifically devoted to...well, you work it out. The search form is interesting. It distinguishes between three genders: male, female, and sea captain.
Okay, not quite as blunt as the Sun's Gotcha! front page when the Belgrano was sunk, but do you think their headline writers are getting a bit bloody carried away with all this stuff on tomorrow's front page?
There was a time, a while ago, when spammers made a real effort. You got a back-story worthy of a (fairly drunk) Dickens; spinning tales of doomed airline flights, lost gold bullion and Nigerian names which look like a bad hand at Scrabble. Some of you may know that under a different identity (several, in fact) TheEye has been active in scamming the scammers over on 419eater.com
But some people just let the side down.
Take this rather pathetic effort received half an hour ago. Come on, man, where's your bloody pride in your work, eh? Where's your motivation? Effort?
YOU HAVE WON ($650,500.00USD) FROM UN
HERE IS YOUR PIN NUMBER (UNO-154/4456/011)
Contact person Dr. James Young
Email: dpt001004@aim.com
Telephone No: +60103868287
Regards,
Mr Ban Ki-moon.
(UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL)
As if we haven't got a few other things going on at the moment.
That this House notes with concern the comments of Brian True-May, the producer and co-creator of ITV’s Midsomer Murders, in which he implied that the show would not be successful if it included ethnic minority characters; welcomes the action taken so far by ITV; further notes that there is no place for such attitudes in today’s society and media; further welcomes ITV’s work in integrating minorities into some of its programmes, such as Emmerdale; recognises the need for greater representation of ethnic minorities in television; and asks ITV and other broadcasters to continue to ensure programming is properly reflective of modern British society including in quintessential English villages.
Primary sponsor: Vaz, Keith
Sponsors: Bottomley, Peter Caton, Martin Connarty, Michael Corbyn, Jeremy
A more dubious selection of tossers is hard to imagine outside of a police station line-up room.
Anyway, what has been said can't be unsaid and the keys to the Outrage Bus have been duly fetched. But what of the over-hyped and misreported race bandwagon?
The main trouble with including non-white characters in Midsomer Murders would be that it would limit the ‘who done it’ choices. Television nowadays is so PC that a non-white suspect couldn’t be the murderer...so viewers can rule them out as soon as they appear on screen.
That sort of writing approach spoiled the last series of Foyle’s War, for example, because Horowitz’s politics shone through. One episode had a Labour candidate as a suspect, and you knew right from the start that he had to be innocent. Another had a Tory suspect, and predictibly he did it. US series Law and Order is painfully similar - even when the disabled black lesbian is found gun in hand over the victim shouting that she'd capped his ass the eventual villain always turns out to be the white Republican congressman.
On the broader subject of ethnic minorities in English villages, this post-war British government propaganda film "Springtime in an English Village" is a must-see:
The idea seems to have been to attract immigrants from the Caribbean, but somehow the image of a little black girl being selected as the May Queen in a perfect English village, in around 1950 (not 1944 as the page claims), may have given a rather misleading impression.
And so back to Midsomer. Apart from the stunningly high murder rate in this leafy part of the world, everything else should reflect the part of the world that it seeks to mimic. And that means appropriate rather than quota-driven characters.
Unload the Outrage Bus, chaps. This one's a non-starter.
And if that puts you in the mood for black-and-white propaganda, you have a few minutes to spare and want a good laugh, take a look at this excellent wartime film on how to boil a cabbage.Read more...
Dan Hannan MEP; one of the last bastions of common sense in the EU Parliament isn't happy (and why would anyone be) with the blatant throwing of taxpayers' money at propaganda to influence...taxpayers.
Question Time tonight comes from Eastbourne, which boasts of being the sunniest place in Britain based only on a freak statistic from 1911 and is the location of the third most popular suicide spot in the UK. The ashes of Frederick Engels were scattered there upon his death. Marvellous.
On the panel tonight we have...well, it's just surreal. Question Time's favourite minority box-ticker Baroness Warsi, the Labour guy who posed in a gay contacts magazine in his Y-fronts Chris Bryant, Bermondsey by-election "The Straight Choice" against Peter Tatchell - and who later turned out to be anything but straight; Simon Hughes, and eco-fascist Caroline Lucas. Kelvin MacKenzie occupies the lone chair of reality.
This LiveBlog doesn't promise any improvement afterwards when the grim horror of This Week is lanced like an exploding corpulent pustule of stupidity all over our screens. Two washed up politicians, Andrew Neil and a surreal collection of F-List wannabes and never-will-be bores will escort the live-chat into the night.
Moderators TheEye and David Mosque will be sobbing quietly into their absinthe here from 10:30pm.
In case you're in the office today and the person sitting next to you - that one with the really irritating habits - is pushing you just that little too far today...you're not alone. From the previous week alone we've got a splendid roundup of people randomly snapping:
Police in Neptune Beach, Florida, said that a man had threatened two co-workers with a butcher knife on Tuesday, and said the argument started when the two men refused his request to change the channel so he could watch "American Idol." Police were able to subdue the man, who has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
According to the report, "American Idol" doesn't air on Tuesdays anyway.
Maybe food is the root of your passions? In Clairton, Pennsylvania, the stabbing was hot-dog related.
Police said that Charles Westbrook was at a friend's house last Saturday night when he chose to cook two hot dogs. It wasn't clear from the report whether the argument related to the cooking of the hot dogs or to the fact that Westbrook ended up eating them both, but whichever it was, hopefully he enjoyed the hot dogs because he also got a knife in his right leg. He was hospitalized, and the friend, or former friend, was arrested.
It's a period of lazy-ish blogging, possibly, but TheEye is finally catching up with stuff....just in time for a week-long training course starting in a few hours. Sigh. There is no mercy, it seems.
At least, as bad as this week promises to be, it's not as bad as that experienced by customers of a certain launderette featured on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph...
A rather unfortunate combination of unconnected picture against headline there.
From This is Gloucestershire last month.....the printed version has a great headline on a story about girls' schools. Unfortunately it's no longer on the web version, but the dead tree copy survives to give us a laugh...
On the panel we have Leader of the Scottish Conservatives Annabel Goldie MSP, SecofState for Scotland and LibDem Michael Moore MP, Labour's Wee Dougie Alexander MP, Green Party MSP and painfully right-on Patrick Harvie, and the SNPs Nicola Sturgeon MSP. Londoner Nick Ferrari is the final panelist despite his only apparent connection to Scotland being appearing with Sean Connery as an extra in Octopussy.
As we're coming from Scotland for those playing the Buzzword Bingo we'll be using the Caledonian Rules. Therefore rude references to Fatcha and NorthSeaOil are not on the Bingo cards tonight but will instead be weighed and points awarded accordingly. Attempts to make Gordoom look anything other than a disaster are worth 10 points apiece. The Hutton Report is your Joker tonight, and you'll want to double it up with Brown's Pension Raid, Final Salary, Retirement Age and Sending Kids Up Chimneys depending on the panelist. Independence will only score points if on the same line as Barnett or diagonal to Trident Hypocrisy.
The LiveBlog will also cover the insane This Week with Andrew Neil, two washed up politicians and a surreal collection of F-List wannabes and never-will-be bores.
TheEye and David Mosque will be operating a no-fly zone here from 10:30pm.
Last weekend saw even more violence than usual at the Old Firm football clash north of the Border. And Strathclyde Police, as usual, took this as a golden opportunity to plaster their ugly mugs all over the television calling for everything from calm and peace to a restocking of plastic bullets. In the same breath.
One Plod will be wishing he didn't though. Witness a hilariously poor cut-scene by Sky and some of the worst mong typing you can imagine...in front of a login screen no less...at about 30 secs in. What on earth were the producers thinking to let this actually air?
A New Haven, Conn., man is in the hospital and due in court later this month after police said he stabbed someone while getting his hair cut in Stamford.
David Davis, 21 of New Haven, was sitting inside an apartment on Henry Street in Stamford's south end just before 12:30 p.m., getting a haircut, when a man he had been arguing with approached him, police said.
Davis thought the other person was going to harm him, so he picked up a pair of scissors and slashed the other in the back, police said.
Donald Rumsfeld is currently doing the rounds on the US media circuit plugging his autobiography "Known and Unknown". Last week one such appearance was on the Opie And Anthony Show, where comedian Louis CK happened to be a guest.
"Louis", going completely off-base, repeatedly asks the former US Defence Secretary whether he's a flesh-eating lizard-man. And whether Dick Cheney is too.
Rumsfeld dodges the question with a folksy anecdote about visiting New York and everyone wanting to shake his hand, get his autograph and pay for his dinner. Louis keeps on at Rumsfeld with the lizard rumour again and again, but Rumsfeld refuses to answer the question, later explaining that he "did not just arrive in town falling off a turnip cart."
It's oddly fascinating to hear someone who used to pay a major role in the world reduced to deny being an space-lizard-baby-eater on national radio. And to speculate on whether he'd nuke France to save Texas.
When the interview finally ends, Opie declares that Rumsfeld handled Louis's questions "like a gentlemen and a professional," to which Louis points out, "He handled it like a lizard who knows how to never answer."
Strangely you could *just* imagine a radio show doing this to Gordoom if he dared go out in public again.
There have been rumors in the past about Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s Jewish roots, and now it seems to be confirmed. Israel National News TV met with Gita Boaron, who claims that the Libyan dictator is indeed Jewish and that she is a distant cousin.
“Qaddafi’s grandmother is my grandmother’s sister,” explained Boaron. “His grandmother is my father’s grandmother. She was Jewish, became Muslim and married the town sheikh. She had children and he’s her grandson so he’s considered Jewish because his mother was born to a Jewish mother. So it means he’s Jewish.”
Boaron, who heard the story about Qaddafi’s Jewish roots from her mother as she was growing up, said that her family has never even considered getting closer to Qaddafi, since “There’s no place like Israel,” as she put it.
She noted that it is only recently that Qaddafi has really become anti-Jewish.
“He always loved the Jews and didn’t do anything bad to them,” she said. “The moment he started to speak against the Jews, I said: ‘Just wait. He’ll get what’s coming to him.’ Two weeks later the protests started there.”
We have heard the politicians defending how they've gone about the extraction (NEO) of British & other nationals from Libya. Fox was quizzed on Radio 4's today program about whether it would have been a good thing to have still had HMS Ark Royal & some harriers available to park off the North African coast, and he spewed all the weasel politician words that we would expect, about having enough ships with what we've got, what use would planes be if there was not a multinational position etc etc. Well, your correspondent had it from the horses mouth, that last week a certain conversation from ministers to chaps high up in Navy command went something like this;-
{Govt lacky} Hello First Sea Lord, frightfully sorry to bother you , but just wanted to know how you were doing with the, ahem, cuts and things.
{First Sea Lord (or maybe his lacky)} They are a damn disgrace, but being loyal servants of the crown we have started to enact your ridiculous cuts.
{Govt lacky} Oh! Well, how far have you got?
{Navy Type} Slow but sure. Why do you ask?
{Govt Lacky} We, well, the minister was wondering, you know, what with the whole Libyan mess, and the general state of that whole area, we were wondering how quickly HMS Ark Royal could be readied for possible action?
{Navy Type} (with some satisfaction) We finished removing the second engine this week, she now has just the manoeuvring engine, no radios, life support, generators or indeed pretty much anything. She is nearly the hull you said you wanted us to reduce her to.
{Govt lacky} Oh! Shame. OK I'll get back to you.
So, the same f&ckwits are in power as have been for the last 13 years, they just wear different coloured rosettes, but make the same bone decisions.
There's an article in the Daily Telegraph today which deserves fisking for its pure wrongheadedness:
David Cameron should admit to watching porn, says Jacqui Smith
The former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has called on David Cameron to admit that he has watched pornography, in an attempt to start an “honest conversation” about whether adult websites should be more tightly regulated.
Let's work our way backwards through that, shall we? More tightly regulated...sigh...will they never take the nanny state boot from our throats? "Honest conversation" from Labour? Really? Said with a straight face'n'all? Bugger off.
And Jacqui Smith herself? Let's just not start. Or rather, let's start.
Miss Smith Mrs Timney was one of the early casualties of the MPs’ expenses scandal when it emerged that she had claimed for two pay-per-view pornographic films watched by her husband, Richard Timney.
Which is a typing error. It should read
Vile thief Mrs Timney was one of the early casualties of the MPs’ expenses scandal when it emerged that she had claimed everything from £39.99 barbecue to a £2.50 toothbrush holder, a £14 doormat, a £104.56 patio heater for her garden, £369.99 flatscreen TV and £157,631 for a second home which really belonged to her sister. Oh, and two pay-per-view pornographic films watched by her husband, Richard Timney.
There we go, Telegraph; fixed it for you. No charge.
She said that she had seen “shelves and shelves of DVDs picturing women reduced to no more than… their bits. That’s what makes me angry.”
Was this the shelf with remaindered DVDs of the Saw series on? The only way to reduce her bloated carcass to its "bits" would be with a chainsaw too, but that's just a dream. Of many.
Miss Smith Mrs Timney also contrasted her view with that of her husband. “What’s particularly difficult for me is that I don’t like pornography, and I don’t like what I think it does to men,” she said. “But of course somebody I care a lot about and who cares about me has watched pornography and I have argued with him about it, and he takes a different view from me.”
"I don’t like" so I want it banned. "I don’t like what I think it does" but even though I admit I only think and don't actually know I still want it banned. "And who cares about me" although possibly not whilst he's watching sweaty bodies in action on a DVD. "And he takes a different view from me"...through squinty eyes, obviously.
Miss Smith argued in favour of greater regulation
Labour? Check. Regulation? Check. Okay, all present and correct - move along.
And so what of the main thrust (excuse the pun) of the article....that Cameron should admit to doing the five knuckle shuffle?
TheEye has no comment other than to refer you to the immortal words of that great Australian philosopher-king Kevin "Bloody" Wilson, who, in his thought-provoking masterpiece "I Gave Up Wanking" makes the observation:
So if you say you don't wank, Your a liar, And a fool if you say that you do, So next time you see, Prince Charles on TV Remember he wanked himself too
Haven't seen much in the UK press about the buildup of British forces in the seas around Libya...except for HMS Cumberland and the obvious jibes about her imminent scrapping.
However locally there are signs of more activity than that. Yesterday and for the third time within the space of a week, Gibraltar’s military base has played a logistical role in the military buildup with RFA Argus sailing east through the Straits.
The picture right is of a Merlin helicopter from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship landing yesterday to pick up equipment and navy personnel.
This follows Royal Navy destroyer HMS York sailing from Gibraltar last Thursday evening. She made an unexpected stop here to pick up supplies and personnel before sailing east. York was originally bound for a six-month deployment in the South Atlantic but was diverted for a week to deliver medical supplies provided by Sweden to Benghazi..
The Type 23 frigate, HMS Westminster, arrived in the Naval Base at 2 am yesterday to collect fuel and stores (pictured left whilst alongside yesterday). In addition to the more usual naval items, extra medical stores plus blankets and sheets were loaded onboard. When she left later in the morning, she sailed to the eastern Mediterranean to relieve HMS York on station, and York will now sail for her original task as the Atlantic Patrol (South).
So...much as the press may be pushing a story of no action...that's not what's happening outside my window.
Read more...
Question Time tonight, on the day of the Barnsley by-election, comes from Derby.
On the panel we have Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith MP. Fresh from her recent victory over Cathy Ashton in the regional heats of International Face Like A Horse, there is the local Labour MP and former foreign secretary (really) Margaret Beckett. Also former Labour minister 'Lord' Malloch Brown, historian David Starkey and economist and journalist Liam Halligan.
For those playing the Buzzword Bingo we'll be using the Pointless Voting Rules. Voting will be just about over in the Welsh Referendum to change the way the Assembly votes on...zzzzzzzzzzz *snore* and Barnsley will be voting in Mugabesque percentages for a lamppost with a red rosette on it. That leaves us open to Thatcher, Miners, and Doom. All three on your card and in the same sentence wins 100 points and a B-BBC coffee cup.
LibDem Meltdown and UKIP or BNP Surge also score tonight, with double points if used in an attack on the Coalition. Defence Cuts make a predicable return to the Bingo card this week, although Sea Harriers Scrapped by Labour in 2004 isn't on your card as it won't be mentioned. Play your Libya Chaos joker quickly for bonus hidden prizes.
The LiveBlog will also cover the insane This Week, with Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, a random lefty politician (probably Jacqui Smith now that the inconvenient expenses theftfraudlies stuff has been airbrushed out of history) and a collection of X-Factor rejects.
TheEye and David Mosque will be operating a no-fly zone here from 10:30pm.
Amazing stuff from the never-to-be-missed East Anglian Daily Times where we learn of exciting news from Beccles in Suffolk. It's got to be the best three line news item in the history of history.
Beccles: Firefighters called to report of person trapped under sofa
A confused resident called out fire crews after mistakenly thinking there was someone trapped under his sofa.
The man, of Clowes Court, Beccles, made the call at just before midday and a crew from the town arrived.
However, they discovered it was a false alarm and left 20 minutes later after reassuring the confused homeowner.
The mind boggles. One's gast is well and truly flabbered.
How does one become convinced that there is someone under your sofa?
What exactly possessed the Clowes Court man to decide to call the fire brigade?
Exactly how big is this sofa, that it needed twenty minutes to search under?
Why was the original headline "Person trapped under sofa" when that was the only untrue bit?
Enquiring minds demand to know.
NOTE: The picture of a woman on a sofa-ish thing with owls is purely illustrative and isn't the sofa in question :-)
Ohferchrissakes, this is the election literature for today's Barnsley by-election. Sent out, remember, by the party which complains when anyone says that the current economic mess might just have had a tiny bit to do with one G Brown. Move on, they whinge.
Margaret Thatcher. Remember her? Not necessarily. Many voters in Barnsley were not even born when she made that memorable tearful departure from Number 10 in November 1990. A whole generation is growing up with no first hand memory and only the twisted BBC narrative ringing in their ears.
The leaflet is a great tribute to the Iron Lady - she obviously still scares the lefties, and if you watch QuestionTime you'd think that she lives inside their heads 24x7. Brown and Blair both fell over themselves to invite her to No.10 and declare themselves the heirs to her heritage but that's airbrushed neatly by the BBC now. Probably relying on our short term memory and...oh look, it's a squirrel!
Ironically this leaftet will probably depress people more than motivate them. Cameron is no Thatcher.
Romanian MPs have almost bested Labour in the eternal government effort trying to screw money from obscure parts of society. From the ever peculiar Austrian Times we learn that Romanian MPs have backed off on an attempt to make witches pay tax....after they threatened to curse anyone who supported the idea.
The witches even held a mass protest march that ended when they gathered on the banks of the Danube and hurled poisonous mandrake into the water to cast spells on the president and government.
The draft law would have made witches self-employed - meaning they had to pay a 16 per cent tax on earnings.
Only the 25 MPs that put forward the law voted in favour - saying they wanted to make witches, sooth-sayers and mystical healers give a money back guarantee for the charms, predictions and potions.
In the olden days to test for Witches, it was common practice to tie rocks to their legs and throw them into a lake. If they were magic, they would escape and it would prove they were a witch. If they were innocent, they would drown.
Any chance we could test Polly Toynbee this way? Twice, if necessary?
Read more...
The Bulgarian census finished on 28th Feb and already preliminary number crunching as been completed. The website, by the way, is rather good. Clear, easy to navigate, and full of interesting facts if you like that sort of thing.
One rather interesting statistic, though, is that an astonishing 600,000 Bulgarians have left the country in the last decade heading to the West in search of jobs...and most have gone to the UK. As a result 28 whole towns, it was revealed at the launch of the results, have simply ceased to exist.
Well, that's enough to swing the results of the next London Mayoral race quite decisively, isn't it?
More than 100,000 Eastern European migrants will be able to claim tens of millions of pounds in benefits in Britain as the Government is forced to scrap safeguards imposed seven years ago.
The ending of the restrictions on access to key benefits will happen within weeks as ministers have conceded that they are powerless to prevent the change.
The migrants, from countries including Poland and the Czech Republic, will become eligible to claim jobseeker’s allowance, council tax benefit and housing benefit from May, when a special scheme introduced under EU rules in 2004 is abolished.
The admission comes as latest figures show a rise in the number of migrants from former Soviet bloc states seeking work in Britain.
There is nervousness in Whitehall about the impact on the benefits bill and the potential for abuse once the restrictions end.
Any nationals from the eight states will be able to access the three benefits as long as they can prove to officials that they have done some work here, are seeking more work and intend to live here.
Taken together the three benefits could be worth up to £250 a week per person.
A thought provoking article on the dangers (perhaps) of being too civilized and the rights and wrongs of intervening in the affairs of other countries.
We are rightly proud of the accomplishments of western civilization over the past 500 years. We have not been perfect - not by a long shot. But gradually, western values and attitudes have permeated the planet, softening the rough edges of civilization, and providing a framework of law where the strong do not always ride roughshod over the weak.
Imperfect, but viable. Flawed, but as a practical matter, better than any alternative.
There is one glaring weakness from which the west suffers in particular that has been exposed time and time again over the last 70 years; our inability to deal with individuals who are determined to act outside the boundaries of “civilized” norms and commit acts of barbarism so profoundly disturbing that they shake our faith in our institutions and belief systems.
Ohferchrissakes. What an embarrassing list of failures, wannabes and never-will-be types.
WikiLeaks and the Internet are among a record 241 nominations for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize that also includes Afghan rights advocate Sima Samar, the European Union, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, Russian rights group Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina. 'Looking at the long term, we can say interest in the prize is strong and growing along with the number of candidates,' says Geir Lundestad, a non-voting member of the Nobel panel.
WikiLeaks grabbed the world's attention and angered a number of governments by publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, while pundits say the Internet or social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which have been used to help organize dissent in countries with oppressive governments, could be rewarded. Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, the Nobel panel has not shied away from bold decisions — first picking Barack Obama just months after he became US president, and last year awarding the prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo."
Personally, TheEye believes that the prize should go to The Internet, whoever he is, because he's everywhere and has lots of porn. Presumably Al Gore will pick up the prize on his behalf, which would give the demented goon two undeserved Nobel prizes.
Amusingly, if Wikileaks wins it then Assange will have to go to Sweden to pick his prize up...
Read more...
Might as well just reprint this article. It's very....educational....
Cannabis fed to ducks by French farmer for 'deworming' A French farmer has been given a one-month suspended jail sentence and fined 500 euros (£428) for feeding his ducks marijuana to rid them of worms.
Police arrested Michel Rouyer after they discovered 12 cannabis plants and about 11lb of the drug during a visit to his home after a theft.
Mr Rouyer said there was "no better worming substance" for ducks and that his flock was in excellent health.
A police spokesman said it was the first time they had heard such a claim.
Mr Rouyer, who lives in the village of Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien on France's Atlantic coast, did also admit to smoking some of the marijuana.
Must also put on record my thanks to that utterly splendid chap Max Farquar who has helped me out with a few posts here in a week when TheEye was under pressure elsewhere, and was on hand with advice at just the right moments too. Microdave as well. Good drills from both oppos.
Read more...
All four co-conspirators here stand with our troops. If you don't then read elsewhere.
Ronald Reagan
"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."
Lady Thatcher
"If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you."
Voltaire
"Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare."
