11°C, clear.

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9°C,

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Army speak: this story looks like a guy has been sacked for commiting thought-crime. It pays not to state the obvious sometimes.

 

Decadent consumerism– this time, me! It’s about a 2 weeks until I place that order for the new computer. The CPU choice is settled (Intel P.IV E6600), starting with 2GB of corsair RAM @ 800Mhz and Asus or Freecom motherboard plus 1 or maybe 2 Seagate barracauda hard drives. I really don’t want to make the same mistake as last time and buy RAM of inadequate quality. That causes occasional crashes and lockups, preventing the addition of more RAM due to timing mis-matches. The headline componant is a 640mb Geforce 8800 GTS. Possibly more onboard RAM than I really need, but there is furture-proofing to consider.

Other choices are mitigated by upgradability. I can’t do the step-by-step componant change as I have in the past because so many hardware standards have changed. Graphics card uses a new kind of connector as does the hard-drives.

Trouble is- I hate spending money, I’m inherantly mean.

9°C, rain, clearing.

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The Prince of Wales inspired little respect in me a few decades ago. Over the last ten years, he has risen greatly in my esteem. Today he said

It seems that few people have the courage to say something like that. He was in a centre that treats diabetes, see the article: His own "business" affairs have been admirable- actively supporting real farming, eschewing modern factory farming. Decades ago he seemed pompous and out of touch, now he has his niche.

 

Today has seen the laws banning use of mobile phones while driving stepped up, now it includes a 3-point penalty on the driver’s licence. This  practice is possibly the biggest threat to my life in Britain these days.

9°C, thin cloud.

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Interesting news thread: the argument between church and state is on the fron pages again. Here on the BBC is a brief summary.

Basically, the church are objecting to the requirement for anti-discrimination in the new Equality act. They want to carry on discriminating on the basis of some old anthology of short stories written by long lost authors. There are quite a few religions opposing this new law, none of them value equal rights- at least not in their leadership.

So far, the govt’ have been admirable on this issue.

 

To contrast- here’s a chuckle:
Woman gets 75,000 bank statements.

4°C, sunny spells, getting colder.

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I’m getting worse as I get older, these lil’ animal stories. Look here, a duck with shotgun wounds that survived a couple of days in the fridge.

9°C, rain and more rain.

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News story; as I write, the house of Lords (an unelected body of very old men who hold tremendous power here in England) are debating the law that could protect the human rights of homosexuals. Read here:

BBC: Gay Rights facing a challenge

Fortunately, I did find a readers’ opinions page which held quotes from christians who aren’t as bigoted as their religious leaders can be. You have to scroll down a fair way before the malicious side of christianity appears. Following on from there there are very few christians moved to criticise the proposed law, and many who want to be distanced from the intolerant members of their religion. Conclusion? for now, we must be wary of headline grabbers, the moderates are in the majority, just watch out for those Christians in positions of power.

16°C, light showers, and wind.

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 A current news story that illustrates the current times comes from Jack Straw. He asks Muslim women to remove their veil while in his Constituency office. See here. Now for my opinion, or at least a shortened version of it.

He’s come to a conclusion I can agree with but not with the reasons I would have given. He cites social separation as a reason, making community relation s more difficult. I’d say the problem is from a psychological angle, it relates to social interaction and body language. The mistake the some commentators have made when criticising him is that they claim it should make no difference. But it does because spoken words are only part of communication between human beings. The veils block natural communication via expressions and body language, often a more significant language than spoken words.

There have been no coherent arguments that refute Straw’s views. All that I have seen so far in the last two days, have been concluded from unsubstantiated assumptions at best. In fact there seem to be few arguments on this subject from any quaters, the media are saying words like "Storm", "Straw’s veil policy spark anger " and so on, but those storms remain hard to find.

 

Aww: Below is a Cedar tree, shot on a visit to Sudbury a few months ago. A magnificent tree that had me spellbound with awe on that day. A living form that was created by a combination of chance occurances both recent and from the distant past. No intellegence was involved in that process, unless some victorian gardener planted it there of course.

18°C, humid

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I felt very sorry for John Hogan who jumped off an upper floor of a hotel with his children when it was featured on the news yesterday.

The BBC broadcast footage of him so distraught that he had to be carried into the courtroom on a chair. No doubt the gutter press will attack hime like a pack of wolves, but then they would.

He’s going to be in agony every time he remembers what happened and how it turned out, a far greater punishment that anything the Cretian legal  system could mete out.  I can only see one outcome that could retain any honour; he ought to now commit suicide.

20°C, rain

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Soapbox: "Guilty of Tavelling whilst Asian": is a phrase used by a British muslim commentator last week- (Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent- Ali Dizaei). His premonition came true yesterday:

 

A Monarch airlines flight from Malaga was disrupted by passengers who took a dislike to two co-passengers. Interviewed on TV this morning they said some passengers thought they heard them speaking Arabic, also they pointed out that they were wearing warm clothes while the other passengers wore flip-flops and shorts. Some passengers then refused to fly and got off the plane.

 

Is this to be expected? You travel on a flight loaded with holiday-makers from Malaga, did you notice how many were carrying copies of the Daily Mail or Sun newspapers? These two guys were cleared later by security, the flight delayed by three hours and they had to fly on a separate flight. Those passengers missed an opportunity to apologise to the two "asians". I hope they received some compensation, and learnt not to fly on a plane full of British chavs.

 

 

 

24°C, same again

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On apologies that aren’t: "I’m sorry except that I don’t regret it- it was his fault". In a quest to find out how long it takes some men to grow up we can follow the process in a hitherto unheard of french footballer.

He claims his opponant insulted his mother & sister so for now let’s assume that part is true. He rose to the bait and assaulted the italian making the scale & scope of the insult has changed. What was previously only heard by two men on a large field, now is front page news on every newspaper in the world (nearly). Millions, including those two women, know something about it.

Now the Frenchmen is making the most bizzarre form of apology ehre he says he’s sorry but doesn’t regret it. For the record that is not an apology. There is probably some kind of absurd mediteranian macho ethic at play. Pass some cheap comment about a woman you can’t have ever met, know nothing of, and you get the most inflated reaction from those testosterone driven unthinkers. What did the italian say anyway-

My opinion is low.

Why bother commenting on a sport I care nothing for? There is a bridge with the crime of yesterday – read it.