Orchidectomy of outrecuidance...

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Holy Fuck! Cranmer rips Canon Clark a new one...and then some. Katharine Birbalsingh, a teacher who won hearts and minds after her speech at the Tory conference last year railing against the UK's 'broken' education system has now been blamed - publicly - for the school's sudden shutdown by the Canon Peter Clark, Chairman of Governors of the school (St Michael and All Angels Academy). I wrote that Cranmer ripped him a new one but in reality it's worse (and well worth a read!); it is either false in which case Cranmer should apologise and retract OR it is true and Peter Clark should resign from all public functions forthwith...and perhaps retire and change his name and leave the country! Jeez.

Optical observation...

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"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." [Link]

"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side."

Opinions overview...

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I'm catching up again. CH has an interesting round-up of recent opinion polls, not all bad! Although it is worrying, before, many voters accepted the need for "budget reductions" but more and more (too quickly IMHO) the public are being convinced to forget the last 10 years and blame the firemen for trying to put out the fire.

I see Balls is doing the rounds testing the media to see which are more sympathetic to his lies and the one's that go on and on about cuts and "crushing spending"; presumably his view is that the British public have forgotten why the UK is in such a state. We know they spent all the money (most of which is on a big credit-card). Click on image to Mark Wadsworth's reminder of these "cuts".


Update: Guido has a post on the (evil lying) logic of Balls denying the deficit.

Other obsessions III...

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Another lefty-liberal media obsession - apart from Coulson and Climate Change - is Sarah Palin. Today on Richard Adams's blog at the Guardian he posts "Forgetting Sarah Palin". He writes about the Washington Post's Dana Milbank announcing February as a Sarah Palin-free zone due to his clear obsession and multpile articles on the Tea Party Talisman. There are other media sources with severe Palinophobia who may join in...Feb 1st is a Tuesday; if they make a supreme effort they might make it to the weekend but I doubt it.

Overreacting?...

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Click image to enlarge the Guardian's News homepage...anything else going on in the world? I don't think I've ever seen so many articles, blogs, videos of the same not-really-news news story.

Incredibly, on their UK News page there are 5 MORE articles (only the main story is as per the Home News page)...and note how the Blair news (and everything else!) is demoted.

Update Sunday: been without Internet for 36hrs!!; I was going to do a follow up about what I considered the BBC's own version of overreaction but couldn't post anything; anyway Autonomous Mind has something altogether better - and somewhat appropriate following Peter Sissons comments:

"In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there".

Obsessed or ordinary?...

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Afshan Azad - Padma Patil in the Harry Potter films - was assaulted by her brother who threatened to kill her (click on image for the news): "Marry a Muslim or you die!". "Sort your daughter out! She's a slag!". The father got involved: he said "Just kill her!" (this was disputed in court). The mother and sister-in-law get involved: the family discussed what to do with her. Apparently her father suggested sending her back to Bangladesh for an arranged marriage and her mother called her a "prostitute". The brother then said: "I'm going to kill you. I'm actually going to kill you".

Is he an obsessed or an ordinary Muslim? This is not a unique situation; a family row is 'normal' in any race or religion; a Muslim family row isn't odd; an honour killing or an arranged marriage isn't that rare an occurrence; [edited 5:50P.M.] however, what would Sayeeda say?

Opposing Osborne...

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Not me of course but the new Shadow Chancellor. We'll soon find out whether George Osborne has Balls or not. There are many ways to look at this, "Ed Balls will frighten the Tories" – but he will frighten the voters and no doubt Ed Miliband too. Or as The Rambler Nik writes about a certain irony: "had Ed Miliband appointed Ed Balls as his Shadow Chancellor back in October, the new leader would probably have been able to command a certain amount of authority over his defeated challenger"...not now, especially when this move could be seen as desperation.

What is clear is that "The mark of Mr Brown is now stamped all over the upper end of the shadow cabinet". Alan Johnson is/was well liked, despite not seeming right for the post (oops) he was given - and clearly not able to grasp the details - his departure could be a serious setback for Labour even if only because Ed and Ed are both easily unlikable and with a distinct lack of charm. [Edit, 1300hrs] I like Cranmer's take on it: "...one is an impotent, insecure, political milipede and the other a testosterone-charged rottweiler with a lot of balls...".

I suspect that UK politics is about to become much more fun as does Allister Heath at City A.M.; he explains how Balls is essentially a flawed econmist (and IMHO a Gordon Brown mini-me): boom and bust 'abolished', doomed system of financial regulation, flawed and ignored fiscal policy rules, grossly expanded regulatory burden, hiking public sector employment, labyrinthine over-elaborate systems of incentives, tax credits etc "snaring millions into complex benefits" and reliance on off-balance sheet public sector accounting "with billions of debt hidden from view".

Let the games commence...

Odious ogre officially outed; only oblocutor O'Donnell obnubilates...

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A reader contributes...

If you can't understand the title it means that at last Blair is being outed over the Iraq War lies and the intentional misleading of parliament. The smoking gun is in view, the evidence is now before the Chilcott Inquiry: big news but not particularly interesting to the MSM apparently because hardly anyone seems to be giving 'sufficient' coverage or column inches that the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's evidence deserves. I guess these days any day is "a good day to bury bad news". One who has reported it: Stephen Glover in today's Daily Mail. "At last, the damning evidence that should bury Blair for his lies over Iraq".

Unfortunately, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has banned the Inquiry from releasing records of secret talks between Tony Blair and President George W. Bush...

Apart from the seeming lack of interest in giving Blair his comeuppance I also note that nobody seems to be mentioning Gordon Brown either; cunts. It is as though he has been airbrushed from history and all the problems the UK faces are now the evil Coalition's fault.

Obdurate options...

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Obstinate or hard-hearted options rather than sensible, necessary ones? As expected councils across the country are instigating polemic cuts, similar to what many of them did with the Poll Tax: use it as a stick to beat the government. Instead of cutting waste and trying to slim-line where they can they immediately go for the headline, rabble rousing cuts...however, maybe I'm not seeing their priorities the right way: Raedwald today asks whether we would like "Libraries or dead children?".

"As the Indie reports this morning, public anger is growing at the 'bloodbath' facing public libraries, with some 375 having been identified to date for closure by councils making savings. However, this is an entirely rational and self-interested move by council bosses; no-one will put them in the dock, or summarily dismiss them, for depriving their populations of access to books. If they have a child die on their watch, they face personal disgrace, even imprisonment. In fact, they will first cut not just libraries but every single traditional non-statutory function of local authorities before they reduce by one pound the budgets for children and child protection."

Needless to say the comments under the article in The Independent are almost exclusively slagging the government but as Raedwald points out in THIS (opens as spreadsheet) the councils are spending more on children's 'social protection' than the combined total of that spent on libraries, parks, rubbish collection/disposal, food safety & environmental health, street lighting, road maintenance and trading standards...so, consider the close dlibraries as

"a consequence of a Rousseau-esque State that's worked hard for decades to destroy the horizontal ties of family and community and replace them with a direct vertical link between every individual and the State. And this is the cost - and it isn't cheap."

Ousland's offer...

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Today, only 13 years ago in 1997, Børge Ousland, a Norwegian Polar explorer became the first person ever to cross Antarctica "alone and unaided"; he did this having already crossed the North Pole (solo and without resupply) so becoming the only person to have accomplished both feats. 2011 is 100 years since Roald Amundsen and his team became the first to reach the South Pole. It will also be 150 years since Fridjof Nansen was born. Nansen and Amundsen would be the Norwegian equivalent of Frederick Jackson (who literally 'bumped' into Nansen on one occasion) and Robert Scott. Anyway, Børge's wonderful offer is to join one of two expeditions - one of which will pass all the same waypoints as in 1911 - that plan to be at the South Pole for 14th December, the 100th anniversary.

Amundsen and Scott along with Ernest Shackleton and the lesser known Douglas Mawson (who actually turned down an offer to join Scott's ill-fated expedition) would be the most famous of those involved in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

By coicidence yesterday (17th Jan) was the day, 99 years ago that Scott reached the South Pole, only to find that Amundsen had got there five weeks earlier! D'oh.

Oppressive onus...

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Apparently today - the third Monday of January - is/will be the saddest day of 2011. This is due to a combination of holidays over, debt from those holidays, Christmas etc, broken New Year's resolutions and 'sad' weather.

In the UK something else may add to it all: in a few minutes the ticking timebomb/debt clock of UK National Debt will pass GBP1 TRILLION; obviously that doesn't include an awful lot of off-the-books stuff (pensions etc)...this is just the cold hard debt. Click on the image to read about the impact of fiscal policy: in a non-business sense i.e. in a government sense, "all fiscal policy means is how the Government taxes us and how it spends the money."

Update 17:16 GMT: it just passed the GBP1Tr mark...well at least the Government forecasts were right: "it will soar to an eye-watering £1.1 trillion by 2011."

Hat-tip: Order-order. 

Orgulous over opuscule...

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Hugo the clown spits the dummy over Little Hugo, 'Huguito' [El Pais, Spanish] [Salon, English]. "What will become of Venezuela without Little Hugo?!", and to rub it in about interferring in everyone's business, "You will be free, Venezuela! Because recently Little Hugo has been getting into everyone's house, making you look bad". Crusty and the Venezuelan authorities have demanded that a Colombian soap opera be taken off the air because it is denigrating Venezuela. Maybe if Chavez weren't so oft to be found slagging off anyone and everyone he might have a leg to stand on.

The novela, "Chepe Fortuna" features a pair of sisters: Colombia and Venezuela (these names aren't that odd, I also know three Americas); relations between the sisters are tense- they are by no means the 'main characters in the show - but Colombia 'is a character full of virtues in contrast to the histrionic and unbearable Venezuela' (arf arf). Venezuela, an 'unscrupulous secretary', has a dog called "Little Hugo": he is an important character: "No more and no less than Venezuela's dog."

That said - and I apologise in advance for any offence - maybe Chavez is more upset because Omeris Arrieta, the actress that plays Venezuela, looks like Chavez in drag.

Our ontogenesis: only one outcome...

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Indeed: only one outcome: death. Ontogenesis is the sequence of events involved in the life of an individual organism, or more specifically from birth to death. I did go to the doctor today but that isn't what I'm on about: reading B&D's "We All Die In The End, But How?": a nice post and with a few links to little known charities; a self explanatory blogpost and with a link to THIS fantastic graphic at the Guardian (PDF). Some interesting and strange facts e.g. as many people die from falling down stairs/off steps than die from alcohol.

"So the biggest killer? That is heart attacks. [...] Yet it seems to me to be really rather under-represented in terms of fundraising and celebrity endorsement."

I commented there that the heart has never ceased to amaze me...

"Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. You're using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to the body. Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard—twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting."

A pump, made of meat, that beats 2 or 3 BILLION times in an average life...jeez. Amazing heart facts.

Odd Oldham outcome?...

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I think so. Clearly and as expected Labour won but was it convincing?. Open to debate: Labour votes in May 2010: 14,186. Labour votes in by-election, January 2011: 14,718...admittedly their percent of the vote went up but only to just under the level achieved in the 2005 election. The Conservative vote fell drastically (by over 7000 votes) as expected and so too the Lib Dem votes but less so (14 thousand down to 11 thousand) although between them the 'Coalition' got more than Labour (edit: imagine had there been AV, hehehe); so we can deduce that the people either didn't vote (turnout was 48%) and possibly many Conservatives boosted the Lib Dem vote as the best opportunity of a upset (pah!). This result is certainly a blow for the Conservatives BUT the tiny increase for the winner IMHO is hardly the ringing endorsement or judgement of Ed Miliband or his performance as opposition leader nor proof of public "anger" over reductions in spending to 2007/8 levels.

Update: I have just added the image (above left, click on image to go to larger version in BBC news article), look at the numbers: would it be too simplistic a view to say that 'Labour' and 'Others' are more or less the same as before and that the Coalition together got 10,000 fewer votes and that voting numbers (62% then, 48% yesterday) were 10,000 less than the general election?

Organic ordure...

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Shit. That's what did it. And presumably organic shit at that: it seems a global warming activist at a Rainbow Camp, taking a dump, caused last year's "worst fire in Israel’s history"; a blaze that killed more than 40 people. "Greenpeace have yet to retract their statement blaming the fire on global warming". Oops.

Source: hauntingthelibrary
Hat-tip: Autonomous Mind.

Oncoming Oldham onslaught...

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Sorry for 'old-news' posts but hey, I'm catching up on a lot after a "well deserved" break.

Just one thought about Thursday's Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election: this seat was won by Labour at the General election so, IMHO, anything but a WHOOPING victory for Labour now is to be expected. Nothing else; certainly not a blow for Clegg or the Coalition. In fact, more to the point, the most worried should be Labour and Ed Miliband: if it isn't a thumpingly clear margin of victory he may as well pack his bags now, especially after the weak and ill-judged defence of his shadow chancellor Alan Johnson: when the mistake is clear best surely to admit it and move on rather than spout pathetic partisan dross, "I take his judgements over George Osborne's any day". What, even when you know AJ is wrong?

Ows obvention...

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obvention: n. - casual or occasional happening or gift.

Very ocasional: I agree with Brown! No, not Gordon (that would be too much) but with Yasmin Alibhai Brown: she, as an avowed "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani, and yes, a very responsible person" has come out in agreement with the Jack Straw despite his "devious, shady politicking and moral expediency" in regard to his comments on grooming and gang-rape of white girls by predatory Pakistani males. Instead of screaming 'racist' YAB states - quite rightly IMHO and surely in the opinion of any reasonable person:

"we need to expose and discuss more openly the underpinning values of the Asian criminal rings in many of our cities. If we don't, the evil will grow.

I will not melt the misdemeanours into generalities, and do not accept that ethnicity and sexual abuse cannot and should not ever be linked...

...Shouting down Jack Straw, busying ourselves with warnings about feeding the BNP, are displacement activities that will do nothing to stop Asian groomers, who, from childhood have developed distorted ideas about themselves, society, females, vice and virtue... ...it is up to insiders to examine and reveal what lies beneath these crimes. We owe that to ourselves, to our future generations, and to the country we have made ours."

Amen to that.

Outrageous opportunism over obsessed oddball...

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I really wanted to start the New Year for Owsblog on a nicer note than the following: I found myself open-mouthed reading all the blatantly opportunistic hyperbole over the shooting in Tuscon where a Bush-appointed judge and a young girl were killed along with 4 others, although those details took second billing to gunsights on political posters by Sarah Palin. I haven't yet read a report that doesn't mention this aspect. Tim Montgomerie blames Obama (not really...). [Update: Tim links to Toby Harnden at the Telegraph on the subject but Nile Gardiner's tuppennyworth is also worth reading] Glenn Harlan Reynolds at the WSJ clearly thought the same as I did: "With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular."

Biased BBC blog yesterday posted a whole raft of BBC employees revelling in their Palinophobia.

Happy New Year...D'oh.

Update p.m.: Guido links to how even 'quality' UK dailies are spouting tosh even AFTER the hypocritical "Left" have been exposed.

"While having a debate about what is an acceptable way to describe your political opponents is one thing, doing so on the back of an attempt to politicise the actions of a deranged lunatic is a new low for the left."

Just how dumb are these people?...and to make matters 'worse' for them it appears the loon assassin is a leftie.

Update 2, 8pm: final update and last word re Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona to William A. Jacobson's Legal Insurrection blog. Well worth a read a follow up on the various links he provides on the second sickness.