Obloquy of only option...

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Sepptic Shock. Sepptic tank: in the FIFA president elections Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan - the ONLY other candidate - withdrew after the first round of voting. In that first round Blatter won 133 votes (only just short of the 140 votes needed for an outright win!); Prince Ali got 73. One by one the contenders withdrew until a re-election of the chief maggot was pretty much guaranteed ("...scores of rich, powerful men in their sixties and upward, an international cosmopolitan amoral exploitative malbolge of filth that encompasses all the vice of Dante's eighth circle; pandery, seduction, flattery, taboo breach, barratry, hypocrisy, theft, fraud, peculation, trickery, perjury, impostry and schism. Now here you have the parasitic maggot-heap that clusters around international 'sport', a maggot-heap...").



After the controversial decision to have the 2022 World Cup in Qatar it seemed things might come to a head: billions spent beforehand (yes, b-b-billions) on national level bribes; millions from slush funds for personal bribes; tens of billions in contracts to 'fight for'. One can only hope that the US instigated investigation (takes the USA to get the ball rolling! They don't even like football soccer!) and arrests etc will lead to many more arrest not just confined to the North, Central and South America Confederations. [edit] THIS screenshot really tells a story.



THIS IMAGE tells another (borrowed from a friend and previously shown in the post; size made me want to link it instead).

Update: Another good maggot-mention post by Sigillum at Anna Raccoon's. 

Obloquy of only option...

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Sepptic Shock. Sepptic tank: in the FIFA president elections Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan - the ONLY other candidate - withdrew after the first round of voting. In that first round Blatter won 133 votes (only just short of the 140 votes needed for an outright win!); Prince Ali got 73. One by one the contenders withdrew until a re-election of the chief maggot was pretty much guaranteed ("...scores of rich, powerful men in their sixties and upward, an international cosmopolitan amoral exploitative malbolge of filth that encompasses all the vice of Dante's eighth circle; pandery, seduction, flattery, taboo breach, barratry, hypocrisy, theft, fraud, peculation, trickery, perjury, impostry and schism. Now here you have the parasitic maggot-heap that clusters around international 'sport', a maggot-heap...").

After the controversial decision to have the 2022 World Cup in Qatar it seemed things might come to a head: billions spent beforehand (yes, b-b-billions) on national level bribes; millions from slush funds for personal bribes; tens of billions in contracts to 'fight for'. One can only hope that the US instigated investigation (takes the USA to get the ball rolling! They don't even like football soccer!) and arrests etc will lead to many more arrest not just confined to the North, Central and South America Confederations. [edit] THIS screenshot really tells a story.

THIS IMAGE tells another (borrowed from a friend and previously shown in the post; size made me want to link it instead).

Update: Another good maggot-mention post by Sigillum at Anna Raccoon's. 

Orinoco opportunity...

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What a state of affairs: toilet paper so scarce and expensive you could use use money to wipe your arse? Not quite, as Tim Worstall explains; however - and more interestingly - he also mentions how making money (i.e. the act of making money) loses money, or that you can make money (make a profit) by selling paper money and buying coins. It certainly isn't the first time either of those things has happened but it could be happening now in Venezuela, hypothetically.

"A country really has come to something when robbing banks isn't the way to make money. Instead, go and make change at the bank is. Swap paper money for metal money and make a 2,000 percent profit by melting it down"... ..." You can walk into a bank in Venezuela with $300 worth of banknotes and someone will give you $7,000 worth of metal. Assuming they will make change for you, of course. And who would rob banks when this is true, when such profits are available entirely legally?"

I'll tell you how it goes :-)

Orinoco opportunity...

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What a state of affairs: toilet paper so scarce and expensive you could use use money to wipe your arse? Not quite, as Tim Worstall explains; however - and more interestingly - he also mentions how making money (i.e. the act of making money) loses money, or that you can make money (make a profit) by selling paper money and buying coins. It certainly isn't the first time either of those things has happened but it could be happening now in Venezuela, hypothetically.

"A country really has come to something when robbing banks isn't the way to make money. Instead, go and make change at the bank is. Swap paper money for metal money and make a 2,000 percent profit by melting it down"... ..." You can walk into a bank in Venezuela with $300 worth of banknotes and someone will give you $7,000 worth of metal. Assuming they will make change for you, of course. And who would rob banks when this is true, when such profits are available entirely legally?"

I'll tell you how it goes :-)

Obliged obedience or oppression?...

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More interesting stuff: Samizdata blog in yesterday's quote of the day quoted Rand Paul:

"With regard to the idea of whether or not you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies….I'm a physician, that means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me, it means you believe in slavery. It means you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the assistants, the nurses…There’s an implied threat of force, do you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away, and force me to take care of you? That’s is ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be."

Now that may sound a bit harsh, silly even ("slavery"?) but he has a point. On Samizdata two concepts of liberty (negative and positive: Isaiah Berlin) is mentioned whereas also IMHO, the distinction between negative and positive rights (not the same) comes into play: witness almost the exact thing Rand Paul mentions, "In the field of Medicine, positive rights of patients often conflict with negative rights of physicians" [Wiki]. Going further: the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (IEP) provides reams in a 'philosophical analysis of the concept of human rights': Moral vs. Legal Rights [IEP]; Claim Rights & Liberty Rights [IEP] ...we can see how easy it was for politicians to make a dog's breakfast of all this.

Obliged obedience or oppression?...

---

More interesting stuff: Samizdata blog in yesterday's quote of the day quoted Rand Paul:

"With regard to the idea of whether or not you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies….I'm a physician, that means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me, it means you believe in slavery. It means you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the assistants, the nurses…There’s an implied threat of force, do you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away, and force me to take care of you? That’s is ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be."

Now that may sound a bit harsh, silly even ("slavery"?) but he has a point. On Samizdata two concepts of liberty (negative and positive: Isaiah Berlin) is mentioned whereas also IMHO, the distinction between negative and positive rights (not the same) comes into play: witness almost the exact thing Rand Paul mentions, "In the field of Medicine, positive rights of patients often conflict with negative rights of physicians" [Wiki]. Going further: the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (IEP) provides reams in a 'philosophical analysis of the concept of human rights': Moral vs. Legal Rights [IEP]; Claim Rights & Liberty Rights [IEP] ...we can see how easy it was for politicians to make a dog's breakfast of all this.

Only one outlier...

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Interesting stuff: How Britain voted on May 7th – the Ipsos MORI guide (click image to enlarge but better to see it HERE at Political Betting unless you're eagle-eyed). Not much we didn't already know/ suspect; personally I find it odd that 65% of BME still voted Labour although this is lower than in 2010 when they got 68% (and this was down from much higher historical levels: see conclusions in Runnymede Trust PDF also re 2010); presumably another reason for New Labour's disgraceful, cynical and probably treasonous immigration policy (MW briefing paper) [yes, I know the Coalition did nothing to reverse it].



This time the Conservatives increased their share of the BME vote: maybe just a result of the collapse of the Lib Dem vote...[edit] more info HERE re BME split: black and minority ethnic identifying as Christians plus Muslims preferring Labour but Hindus and Sikhs preferring the Conservatives to Labour, again IMHO, no real surprise.



Also, back to the PB link: "Meanwhile the British Polling Council has announced details of its inquiry into what went wrong with the polls." Could the EU IN/OUT polls be equally flawed?

Only one outlier...

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Interesting stuff: How Britain voted on May 7th – the Ipsos MORI guide (click image to enlarge but better to see it HERE at Political Betting unless you're eagle-eyed). Not much we didn't already know/ suspect; personally I find it odd that 65% of BME still voted Labour although this is lower than in 2010 when they got 68% (and this was down from much higher historical levels: see conclusions in Runnymede Trust PDF also re 2010); presumably another reason for New Labour's disgraceful, cynical and probably treasonous immigration policy (MW briefing paper) [yes, I know the Coalition did nothing to reverse it].

This time the Conservatives increased their share of the BME vote: maybe just a result of the collapse of the Lib Dem vote...[edit] more info HERE re BME split: black and minority ethnic identifying as Christians plus Muslims preferring Labour but Hindus and Sikhs preferring the Conservatives to Labour, again IMHO, no real surprise.

Also, back to the PB link: "Meanwhile the British Polling Council has announced details of its inquiry into what went wrong with the polls." Could the EU IN/OUT polls be equally flawed?

Oh O...

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The tale of a man and women: 1. the record has gone again. Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) [Women of Algiers] a Pablo Picasso oil painting from 1955 (14th Feb)) has set the new record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction yesterday (USD179 million or in real money GBP115 million). It was "inspired by Picasso's fascination with the 19th-century French artist Eugène Delacroix. It is part of a 15-work series Picasso created in 1954-1955 designated with the letters A to O." Not quite the sort of art I prefer here or here but incredible nonetheless.
2. In the same auction "Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man) sculpture sold for a hammer price of $126 million, or $141.2 million including the buyer’s premium; a new auction record for any sculpture ever sold" [Forbes]. 




Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said "Fucking ding dong, would you Adam 'n' Eve it; the Milky Bars are on me!"...OK, he didn't really say that but I'll bet what he did say means the same thing.

Oh O...

---

The tale of a man and women: 1. the record has gone again. Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) [Women of Algiers] a Pablo Picasso oil painting from 1955 (14th Feb)) has set the new record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction yesterday (USD179 million or in real money GBP115 million). It was "inspired by Picasso's fascination with the 19th-century French artist Eugène Delacroix. It is part of a 15-work series Picasso created in 1954-1955 designated with the letters A to O." Not quite the sort of art I prefer here or here but incredible nonetheless. 2. In the same auction "Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man) sculpture sold for a hammer price of $126 million, or $141.2 million including the buyer’s premium; a new auction record for any sculpture ever sold" [Forbes]. 

Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said "Fucking ding dong, would you Adam 'n' Eve it; the Milky Bars are on me!"...OK, he didn't really say that but I'll bet what he did say means the same thing.

Offering opportunity II...

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UKIP heaven. They have only got one seat in the House of Commons (with 12.6% of the total vote!) and they may have come 2nd in over 100 constituencies (see Update 2 on previous post) across SE and SW England and the Midlands but, more than this, surely the map that highlights UKIP's success the 'most' is the one above, which shows the biggest party swing in each constituency (See 16.38 'The biggest swingers'); UKIP performed in almost every single English constituency. For David Cameron the future's bright; if he was pragmatic (thanks alexsandr at Speccie) could it be blue and purple?

Offering opportunity II...

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UKIP heaven. They have only got one seat in the House of Commons (with 12.6% of the total vote!) and they may have come 2nd in over 100 constituencies (see Update 2 on previous post) across SE and SW England and the Midlands but, more than this, surely the map that highlights UKIP's success the 'most' is the one above, which shows the biggest party swing in each constituency (See 16.38 'The biggest swingers'); UKIP performed in almost every single English constituency. For David Cameron the future's bright; if he was pragmatic (thanks alexsandr at Speccie) could it be blue and purple?

Maggie's back!...

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The O's in the blog-post titles will resume tomorrow! The UK political map now looks a lot like Maggie Simpson! Mashable on Twitter ...although it looks like they have used the 2010 election map [update**], the current one doesn't have all that Lib Dem orangey-yellow down in the South-West and Wales fooled everyone. One thing right: the red's a dummy...

** Update: "The image was first posted before the election results were known; the election map shown is actually a prediction of the voting results that was published by The Telegraph."




Update 2, 9th May: Interesting: below the Louth to Severn line (not including London) shows barely 12 Labour wins (all in urban centres: Plymouth, Bristol, Oxford, Luton, Norwich etc.), almost replicating 2010, BUT more interesting: the Severn to Thames line has Labour not even 2nd in most constituencies:  Michael Heaver [on Twitter] "This second place 2015 map shows why UKIP has a very exciting future indeed".

Maggie's back!...

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The O's in the blog-post titles will resume tomorrow! The UK political map now looks a lot like Maggie Simpson! Mashable on Twitter ...although it looks like they have used the 2010 election map [update**], the current one doesn't have all that Lib Dem orangey-yellow down in the South-West and Wales fooled everyone. One thing right: the red's a dummy...

** Update: "The image was first posted before the election results were known; the election map shown is actually a prediction of the voting results that was published by The Telegraph."

Update 2, 9th May: Interesting: below the Louth to Severn line (not including London) shows barely 12 Labour wins (all in urban centres: Plymouth, Bristol, Oxford, Luton, Norwich etc.), almost replicating 2010, BUT more interesting: the Severn to Thames line has Labour not even 2nd in most constituencies:  Michael Heaver [on Twitter] "This second place 2015 map shows why UKIP has a very exciting future indeed".

Boom!...

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Wow...just WOW! [edited] The Conservatives ended up with 331 seats, a wafer thin working majority. Paint the town red; paint the country blue. Highlights: turnout was 66%. Miliband, Clegg and Farage all quit in the last hour. UKIP third biggest vote haul: they got 1.5 million more than LDs and they got 2.4 million votes more than the SNP. The SNP got 4.7% of the vote and 50 seats; UKIP got 12.6% of the vote and 1 (one) seat.

Ed Balls lost his seat (haha), George Galloway lost his seat (hahaha) and along with a host of Lib Dems losing their seats, party grandee Paddy Ashdown will have to eat his hat.

Boom!...

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Wow...just WOW! [edited] The Conservatives ended up with 331 seats, a wafer thin working majority. Paint the town red; paint the country blue. Highlights: turnout was 66%. Miliband, Clegg and Farage all quit in the last hour. UKIP third biggest vote haul: they got 1.5 million more than LDs and they got 2.4 million votes more than the SNP. The SNP got 4.7% of the vote and 50 seats; UKIP got 12.6% of the vote and 1 (one) seat. Ed Balls lost his seat (haha), George Galloway lost his seat (hahaha) and along with a host of Lib Dems losing their seats, party grandee Paddy Ashdown will have to eat his hat.

Obvious offences; open omissions...

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Image credit Horatio at the News Hub [Link]

The most corrupt elections for 150 years writes Raedwald. He goes on to note that voter registration problems will skew the result, adding:

"...there are 3m folk on the rolls who should not be there and 3m missing who should be.** And add to this the total cock-up over getting postal ballots out to up to a million expats after 20th April that means many who wish to vote are unable to do so."

As one commentator there says, with fixed-term parliaments they know 5 years in advance when the election is going to be, even if it has to change the actual date by a week or even a month or two there is no excuse not to have these delivered anything up to a year before the election! Postal voting (from 2001) plus mass immigration ("...voting fraud and intimidation are rife in certain Commonwealth population constituencies", LOL, great way of putting it!) that can be laid squarely at the feet of New Labour, Blair, Brown and Co. have made things so bad but the Coalition haven't even got near sorting out the mess (Lib Dem dummy-spitting to blame for the "failure to eliminate Labour's corrupt advantage from Electoral Quotients").



Then we have Birmingham Muslims (city with 1 million + population, 20% Muslim) ordered to vote Labour and the chronic bias of the BBC [Google search] and my blood pressure is through the roof.



** Info from Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (Senior Consultant on Constitutional Affairs to Policy Exchange). Electoral Omission study [PDF] is well worth a read, depressing though it is: on the UK Electoral Register there are 13 to 15.5 Million Errors (doubled since 2006); the "dramatic decline in the quality of the electoral registers between 2006 and 2014"; voting fraud is rife and The Electoral Commission is "still a flawed institution".

Obvious offences; open omissions...

---

Image credit Horatio at the News Hub [Link]

The most corrupt elections for 150 years writes Raedwald. He goes on to note that voter registration problems will skew the result, adding:

"...there are 3m folk on the rolls who should not be there and 3m missing who should be.** And add to this the total cock-up over getting postal ballots out to up to a million expats after 20th April that means many who wish to vote are unable to do so."

As one commentator there says, with fixed-term parliaments they know 5 years in advance when the election is going to be, even if it has to change the actual date by a week or even a month or two there is no excuse not to have these delivered anything up to a year before the election! Postal voting (from 2001) plus mass immigration ("...voting fraud and intimidation are rife in certain Commonwealth population constituencies", LOL, great way of putting it!) that can be laid squarely at the feet of New Labour, Blair, Brown and Co. have made things so bad but the Coalition haven't even got near sorting out the mess (Lib Dem dummy-spitting to blame for the "failure to eliminate Labour's corrupt advantage from Electoral Quotients").

Then we have Birmingham Muslims (city with 1 million + population, 20% Muslim) ordered to vote Labour and the chronic bias of the BBC [Google search] and my blood pressure is through the roof.

** Info from Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (Senior Consultant on Constitutional Affairs to Policy Exchange). Electoral Omission study [PDF] is well worth a read, depressing though it is: on the UK Electoral Register there are 13 to 15.5 Million Errors (doubled since 2006); the "dramatic decline in the quality of the electoral registers between 2006 and 2014"; voting fraud is rife and The Electoral Commission is "still a flawed institution".

Obvious offences; open omissions...

---

Image credit Horatio at the News Hub [Link]

The most corrupt elections for 150 years writes Raedwald. He goes on to note that voter registration problems will skew the result, adding:

"...there are 3m folk on the rolls who should not be there and 3m missing who should be.** And add to this the total cock-up over getting postal ballots out to up to a million expats after 20th April that means many who wish to vote are unable to do so."

As one commentator there says, with fixed-term parliaments they know 5 years in advance when the election is going to be, even if it has to change the actual date by a week or even a month or two there is no excuse not to have these delivered anything up to a year before the election! Postal voting (from 2001) plus mass immigration ("...voting fraud and intimidation are rife in certain Commonwealth population constituencies", LOL, great way of putting it!) that can be laid squarely at the feet of New Labour, Blair, Brown and Co. have made things so bad but the Coalition haven't even got near sorting out the mess (Lib Dem dummy-spitting to blame for the "failure to eliminate Labour's corrupt advantage from Electoral Quotients").

Then we have Birmingham Muslims (city with 1 million + population, 20% Muslim) ordered to vote Labour and the chronic bias of the BBC [Google search] and my blood pressure is through the roof.

** Info from Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (Senior Consultant on Constitutional Affairs to Policy Exchange). Electoral Omission study [PDF] is well worth a read, depressing though it is: on the UK Electoral Register there are 13 to 15.5 Million Errors (doubled since 2006); the "dramatic decline in the quality of the electoral registers between 2006 and 2014"; voting fraud is rife and The Electoral Commission is "still a flawed institution".

Only one option...

---

Everyone seems sure we're on the way to another hung parliament and another coalition of one mix of hues or another. There is only one option, surely (apart from the obvious best options of a Conservative majority or CON/UKIP Coalition)? I cannot believe the electorate would 'cut off their nose to spite their face'; well see. An Interesting article in the Spectator about newspapers and how they 'vote', [Link] or how they "generally... serve up what they believe their readers want". Nothing too earth-shattering about perceived political bent of the various newspapers; the only exception and 'gamble' as such in the current UK general Election campaign is that of The Independent, who have opted for 'more of the same'.




Update 7th May: Interesting follow-up: Order-order today has THIS. The graphic is from 7,000 articles analysed which found that The Mirror was the most partisan newspaper. Again, nothing we didn't already know but good to have it 'confirmed'.

Only one option...

---

Everyone seems sure we're on the way to another hung parliament and another coalition of one mix of hues or another. There is only one option, surely (apart from the obvious best options of a Conservative majority or CON/UKIP Coalition)? I cannot believe the electorate would 'cut off their nose to spite their face'; well see. An Interesting article in the Spectator about newspapers and how they 'vote', [Link] or how they "generally... serve up what they believe their readers want". Nothing too earth-shattering about perceived political bent of the various newspapers; the only exception and 'gamble' as such in the current UK general Election campaign is that of The Independent, who have opted for 'more of the same'.

Update 7th May: Interesting follow-up: Order-order today has THIS. The graphic is from 7,000 articles analysed which found that The Mirror was the most partisan newspaper. Again, nothing we didn't already know but good to have it 'confirmed'.

Oncoming Oblivion...

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The winner of last month's Draw Mohammed competition (the exhibition of the drawings in Garland Texas was attacked yesterday by terrorists) is Bosch Fawstin*, who according to Weasel Zippers is an 'apostate', that bravest of 'Muslims': an ex Muslim. Also hat-tip Carl Marsalis [Twitter]. The exhibits, not shown in the UK press, IMHO weren't as good as the two of Danish ones I liked from 2005/2006, although I think some of these were on show too.



* He's at Blogspot too; love his 'Obama's position on Iran'.

Oncoming Oblivion...

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The winner of last month's Draw Mohammed competition (the exhibition of the drawings in Garland Texas was attacked yesterday by terrorists) is Bosch Fawstin*, who according to Weasel Zippers is an 'apostate', that bravest of 'Muslims': an ex Muslim. Also hat-tip Carl Marsalis [Twitter]. The exhibits, not shown in the UK press, IMHO weren't as good as the two of Danish ones I liked from 2005/2006, although I think some of these were on show too.

* He's at Blogspot too; love his 'Obama's position on Iran'.