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Oh dear....

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
While I will not always agree with every judicial decision, I think it is fair to aver that our Lords and Dames of the higher judiciary have pretty sharp minds. This might not be the case in the South Pacific, judging from this photograph hosted at the Commonwealth Secretariat in its report on 'the annual meeting of the heads of the South Pacific Council of Youth and Children’s Courts'.

Firstly they have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into wearing fancy dress, but much, much better still they have been photographed under a fascia board that says 'Barlow's Rehab Centre - Moemoe Fou'.


(Snigger).

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"With stupidity, the Gods themselves do battle in vain"

Wednesday, July 09, 2008
A terrifying insight into the minds of Londoners c/o London Councils:

"The poll, carried out by Ipsos MORI, revealed that almost half the people surveyed incorrectly believe that their local council runs the police and hospitals. Only two in five people know which political party runs their own local council, and just 6 per cent of Londoners know the name of their council's leader".

But "one in four said they would be interested in standing for election as a local councillor".

To the hills, to the hills....




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Nonsense on stilts, German style

From The Local:

"More than 40 German deputies on Tuesday proposed that the voting age be lowered to birth to give children a say in the country’s political future, the parliamentary press service said...They proposed that parents be allowed to vote for their offspring, until such time that the children felt they were ready to cast ballots themselves".

One of the partisans is named as a Free Democrat, the FDP being reasonably sound, generally. I will accept that 16, 18, 21 or whatever is an arbitrary age, and would regard dropping the voting age to 16 in these parts as being reasonable, with this the youngest age regarded as a threshold of adulthood.

What our woolly-minded German friends do not seem to have factored in is that an awful lot of pater and mater familiases will deem their progeny incompetent to vote, and should mutti, vatti and die kinder kick off in a polling station, who decides who gets to exercise the franchise? I forsee lots of litigation, lots of harassed polling officials, domestic violence and probably an outbreak of parties bribing younger voters with the promise of jelly and ice cream rather than the traditional cakes and ale.

Truly etc etc.

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Lèse majesté in the Antipodes

Sunday, July 06, 2008
The indignities Her Maj has to suffer:

"New Zealand shopkeepers are being fleeced by fake 100 dollar notes featuring a sheep wearing a tiara in the place where Queen Elizabeth's portrait should be. Police said the notes, which all bear the same serial number, were crude forgeries but some merchants in Rodney, near Auckland, where they were circulating, were taken in".

And here is the note in question:


Nice that even the criminal element wants to honour the national mammal. The moustachioed fellow is Ernest Rutherford, by the way.

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Parents of the year

Thursday, June 19, 2008
A brace of Danes: "One couple thoroughly tested the limits of the approved name process, wanting to call their baby 'Rhododendron Bush'. Their application was rejected".

Presumably it was the Bush bit that did for their application.

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A new Kennedy theory?

Thursday, June 12, 2008
From the one, the only Muammar Gadhafi:

"Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said on Wednesday that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's expressed support for Israel stems from his fear that the Mossad would assassinate him, just as it did President John F. Kennedy.

"We suspect he may fear being killed by Israeli agents and meet the same fate as Kennedy when he promised to look into Israel's nuclear program," Gadhafi said". Source.

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Remedial geography lessons for wee Dougie?

From Hansard (again):

"Mr. Ellwood: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans he has for the funding and operation of the Park for Women in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province in the next 12 months.

Mr. Douglas Alexander: The Government of Iraq has responsibility for the funding and operation of the Bolan Park in Lashkar Gah".

I would imagine that the Iraqi government has quite enough on its plate without worrying about gender-specific initiatives on the other side of the Hindu Kush, and therefore I think that wee Dougie has got his quagmires mixed up. So much for his degree in politics and modern history.

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Quote o' the day

Monday, June 09, 2008
From Russian nationalist Alexander Belov, leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, or DPNI:

"Those who shout 'Heil Hitler' must be gradually isolated".

Shades of that quote from Saint Augustine.

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Nonsense on stilts. In clown boots and dayglo orange plus fours

Thursday, June 05, 2008
I have no reason to believe this is a joke:

"Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has spoken out in favour of setting up an Asian-Pacific Union. The organisation should be based on the model of the European Union. Possible member states could be Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and the United States. According to Prime Minister Rudd, the Asian-Pacific Union could be set up by 2020 and would mainly benefit security, and political and economic cooperation". Source

Now Rudd is a former management consultant, they being a breed that will borrow your watch and charge you for telling the time, and can be expected to come up with idiotic suggestions on a regular basis, but even so... I am no lover of the EU, but at least membership is restricted to liberal democracies with market economies.

So, always supposing Roddo has his way, presumably there will be an Asia-Pacific 'parliament' with seats allocated on the basis of population, as it as the EU (ish). At the last count China had a population of 1.3 bn, whereas setting aside Pacific Island microstates for now, New Zealand has a population of 4.2 m, meaning it would get one MAPP (so to speak) for every 309 that China did.

Then there would be the fun of dishing out Commissariats - how comfortable would the average Australian be about a Beijing appointee being the Justice, Freedom and Security Commissar, for instance?

Further parallels welcome.

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The world's most useless intelligence service

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
I nominate the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German equivalent of MI5.

In a truly astonishing finding, it has worked out that Die Linke - the German Left Party - has extremists in its midst. Die Linke is a newish party formed by Oskar Lafontaine's mates (the hard left of the SPD) and the soi disant, cough, Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the Socialist Unity Party, the former rulers of the far from lamented German 'Democratic' Republic.

Later in the week, the BfV will reveal that wrestling is fixed.

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Socialist admits mistake

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Not here, obviously.

However, Ségolène Royal has cast her eye over the doleful (pun very much intended) effects of La Loi Aubry, the idiotic 35 hour maximum working week brought in on Martine 'Jacques Delors is my pa' Aubry's watch:

"One knows full well that the second 35 hour week law has often been brutal, and has led to major problems in hospitals and certain other enterprises, where low paid workers in particular have seen their working conditions worsen, because the 35 hours [law] has been badly applied".

Mind you, she is still accusing the French right of 'scapegoating' the 35 hours law. That Sarko has not done the right, as well as compassionate thing and scrapped this law brings to mind Thatcher's famous comment about pendulums and ratchets.

For what it is worth, I have had the challenge of explaining what would happen as a result of this law to more than one monoglot Gaul at the low paid end of the medical business.

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A history lesson for Chavez

Monday, May 12, 2008
Hugo Chavez does not seem to be up to speed with German political history, judging from this little outburst at Frau Merkel:

"The Venezuelan leader criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for belonging to the conservative Christian Democratic Union, calling the movement "the same right wing that supported Hitler and fascism".

Well, the CDU was founded by Adenauer, who would have no truck with the Nazis, and consequently spent time in The Big House. Still, why let the facts stand in the way of a good rant?

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Those who cannot remember history....

Tuesday, April 08, 2008
A rather splendid, subtitled, video of an Italian manager making a rare old hash of his motivational speech.

Alas embedding has been disabled but click through, it is worth it.

With thanks to ANSA for telling me all about it.

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Employing a somewhat overbroad brush

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
There would appear to be the makings of a spat between London and Riga, as Interior Minister (from here on out, that's what I'm calling Jacqui Smith) Mareks Seglins has said 'They are pigs, those British. A piggy nation'.

And for why? Because several of my fellow countrymen have decided to use the Latvian national monument as a pissoir. I can't say I approve. And given that it appears to be guarded by what I suppose are mobile riflemen, even if they look remarkably immobile.

I suppose the equivalent would be the Cenotaph. Mind you, when someone attempted to imitate art by setting fire to a wreath at the Cenotaph I seem to recall no charges were pressed.

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I Can't Believe It's Not Macedonia!

Friday, February 15, 2008
Which is not much sillier than the US State Department's suggestion for a Skopje / Athens friendly name - New Republic of Macedonia. I am not making this up.

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O tempora, o mores

Friday, February 01, 2008
Woolworths is justly famous for the less than razor-sharp minds operating its tills, but it would appear that are plenty of remarkably dim people further up that particular food chain, as this tale from The Standard makes clear:

"An online campaign by a group of mothers has forced Woolworths to withdraw a line of bedroom furniture for girls called 'Lolita'....A spokesman for the company said: "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either".

Only one of the most infamous books of the last century, isn't it? And furthermore one which has seen the L name become tabloid speak. Perhaps I should go for a nose around its website to see if they sell anything called Humbert.

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Obscenity watch

Thursday, January 31, 2008
In a changing world there are few things one can rely on beyond death and taxation - but kneejerk reactions from trade unionists are one of them. Noting a BBC headline about Shell's 2007 results and its record profit, I just *knew* that there would be some economic illiterate ready to denounce them as being 'obscene' .

So drum roll, and up to the plate steps Tony Woodley of the T&G Unite:

"Unite's joint general secretary Tony Woodley described the level of profits in the oil industry as, "quite frankly obscene". "Shell shareholders are doing very nicely whilst the rest of us, the stakeholders, are paying the price and struggling."

I cannot lay hands on figures for Shell's revenue this financial year, but in 2006 it pulled in $318.8 billion, of which $26.3 billion was profit. I make that about 8%..... I did rather better than that with a few things I flogged on ebay, so I hate to think how Woodley would describe me.

We've been here before, of course, with Tesco.

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"A tasteless rewriting of history"

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
If I was choosing to be especially euphemistic, that's what I might call this too:

"The distribution in the Netherlands of a free postcard depicting Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian scarf will not be stopped, according to editor-in-chief Pascale Bosboom of Boomerang publishers". Source

Opinions seem to differ as to the precise cultural indicators thrown out by red headscarves (I am pretty sure I read Hamas the other day, but I cannot find the reference ...), but it certainly does not show loyalty to the 'moderates' in Gaza and Judea Samaria. Wiki suggests the PFLP and the rest of the alphabet soup end of PLO leftists, none of which are especially lovable. The EU and the US have designated the PFLP as a terrorist organisation.

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How to lose friends...

Friday, January 18, 2008
In a typically well thought out move, Buck House has decided that it cannot be bothered to send any of the cast of the national soap opera to attend the funeral of the national hero of one of the nations Betty S-C-G reigns over.

And lo and behold, our Kiwi friends know an insult when they see one, and it is the front page of one of the NZ dailies:

"Buckingham Palace has decided not to send a member of the royal family to Sir Edmund Hillary's funeral in what will be seen as a snub to one of the country's greatest legends".

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Good news for poker players - you cannot lose

Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Or at least not in Finland, where a university professor of law and economics has come up with a thoroughly well thought-out proposal which the kaiser blade-sharp brains in government want to put into practice: "Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is planning to introduce an amendment to the law on gambling that would enable Internet gamblers to claim back their losses. The payer would be either the firm providing the online poker services, a credit card company, or the winning player in the game".

I'm going to offer Helsinki my plan for extracting moonbeams from cucumbers.

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