Many thanks for all the very kind messages. I appear to be back on full fighting form again and will resume blogging shortly.
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@Jemand. 8 43am
“…an elected president would be a disaster.”
Mary Robinson, Mary Mac Aleese, Michael D. Higgins.
Disasters? Maybe one bit of the system that really works, in Ireland at least.
You should give it a try at a hundred and twelve times less cost. Then you could invest in a few thousand nurses. See what benefit that would bring to UK society.
What’s wrong with the Irish system?
My crystal ball tells me that you will shortly receive a not-very-polite answer to that question…
@Flaming, you beat me to it. Thanks.
Interesting list of folks buying our arms here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23336914
The committees also want more detail on a sales licence granted to Israel earlier this year for the purchase of £7.7bn worth of what is described as “equipment employing cryptography and software for equipment employing cryptography”.
This one licence granted in February 2013 accounted for well over 50% of the value of all existing licences to the countries in question.
Completely unrelated news:
http://www2.cfoi.co.uk/Delegations/RecentDelegations/
Philip Hammond’s attendance was of course completely coincidental. Trust they had a nice time not selling £7Bn -worth of crypto kit to our faithful allies.
HM The Queen has never been to Israel. Because it would risk souring our relations with the oil states, it is said.
Persecution of a young woman by Thames Valley Police.
Private Eye In The Back: What Katie didn’t do
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1344
Yet Katie Bowman has never been convicted of any crime. … Sara Thornton…. from Katie’s MP Dominic Grieve QC (who also happens to be the attorney-general), …
Forensic science graduate has been stopped 70 TIMES by police …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2366360/Forensic-science-graduate-stopped-70-TIMES-police-splitting-PC-lover.html
9 hours ago – Katie Bowman, 24, alleges she was targeted over 28 months by Thames … Dominic Grieve, who said he was ‘seriously concerned’ by damning …
Dominic Grieve who is her MP is taking up her case. Katie was on Radio 4 Today this morning apparently. It’s here at 6.50am.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036vrsc/live
Flaming June. 10 33am
Re the case of Katie Bowman.
You have me half persuaded that UK monarchy benefits society after all.
Cost of 1 UK monarch = Cost of 2800 police officers
you poor thing, Villager, your vile, endearing words won’t help anyone, especially not yourself.
“We need another way to live but i remain deeply sceptical of the armchair activists like Flaming June, Herbie and our failed petty-politician Nevermind and such likes”
So you need another way to live do you? so why do you exercise your few grey cells here, when you could be doing something about it. Ohh you are apathetic with political parties, diddums. So dependent on them aren’t you?, couldn’t possibly stand up yourself, oh no, what a shame, and to take the ‘losing’ against these party political crooks would really be to much for you.
It is not me who is the loser, I got used to the masochismn that is British politics, its feckless little gnats like you, who just can’t be bothered.
I wish you everything you deserve and desire.
Now to an update on yesterdays incident two days ago in Norfolk. The chap who was beaten up by police is in Kings Lynn QE hospital awaiting an angiogramm at Papworth, he has no idea what or why the police did what they did. And apart from them trying to make out he assaulted the police,THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE PRESS OR BBC ABOUT IT!
This arrived this morning.
“He had a heart attack and is on standby for an angiogram at Papworth, will be in hospital at least 5 days as standard, police gave him a good kicking, broke into his house, ransacked his office and took something they wanted??? but he has no idea what.
10 police cars, incl 2 dog vans and I’m sure he said the shooting squad and helicopter … bit OTT !!
He will be charged with assaulting a police officer on June 29th …..
His phone is not working properly ….”
I wonder why
Sorry to hear that dreadful news Nevermind. Fascist bullies are at work. Arrests should be made.
Have the EDP said anything yet? There was nothing yesterday when I looked. They even have buttons for Incinerator and Environment.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/incinerator
Holy heck …
“Vatican offers ‘time off purgatory’ to followers of Pope Francis tweets”
Papal court handling pardons for sins says contrite Catholics may win ‘indulgences’ by following World Youth Day on Twitter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/16/vatican-indulgences-pope-francis-tweets
Christ!Goodness!, Dreoilin. The Dark Ages are coming round again. I’ve suspected this for a while, but now I know.I need to find the official tariff of charges and discounts for Purgatory, btw. Anyone? Is it on the internet? All I get when I Google them is this:
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g33397-d1486100-Reviews-Purgatory_Lodge_at_Durango_Mountain_Resort-Durango_Colorado.html
I suspect I will be staying for a while, and it looks expensive.
Nevermind,
I am wondering if it might have something to do with this earlier event (roundup on 5th July)..
http://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/news/breaking_news_police_name_11_suspects_on_false_imprisonment_and_assault_charges_due_in_court_today_1_2265364
Sounds like they were tooled up for organised crime.
@Nevermind. 11 29am
“…vile, endearing words…”
To me they seem to sit badly with continual advice about deep stuff.
The sermons come from one who gives the impression of being one of a superior group who are doing all the inner heavy-lifting, while the rest of us poor unfortunate ignoramuses wast our energy on trifling worldly matters .
Would the great teacher so often invoked have thought that clicking to a blog that causes such regular verbal eruptions should be done with extreme caution, maybe in the presence of a mentor, for an occasional bit homework?
The pupil might then carefully visit the site and look deep to identify where those words and judjements are coming from.
Best every week or so, so as to have suficcient for all that inner work.
In the meantime, back here, we can chew over…. lets see…
…monarchy – what an anachronism!
…the bankers’ putsch – still has our leaders grovelling and dismantling both national sovereignty and those parts of the state which most benefit society!
…the secret and overt use of destructive state violence for private gain – a superpower running amok!
…and a hunderd other other matters which, for our kids, will determine the world they inherit and adversely blight all their futures.
Their future. Now those are things worth being passionate about.
Komodo, nice try, but no, nowt to do with that, he is an inventor.
Craig- great to see you on the road to recovery.
The news of the latest official whitewash will, I trust, not send your blood pressure rising…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23341597
SaVile contd.
http://news.sky.com/story/1116790/thatcher-pushed-for-jimmy-savile-knighthood
ZBC have spent £5m on their SaVile inquiries so far. For what purpose? Just a few manager types have been booted out with nice packages to leave.
They have also handed over £14m to Clarkson. Austerity. What austerity? Laughing in our faces?
Top Gear: Jeremy Clarkson netted more than £14m from show last year
Presenter received £4.8m dividend and £8.4m share buyout from BBC Worldwide, plus his presenter’s salary of nearly £1m
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/16/jeremy-clarkson-top-gear-bbc-worldwide
He is part of the Rebekah Brooks/Elisabeth Murdoch ‘Chipping Norton’ grouping so double black marks for him.
Nevermind 12 51pm
“…he is an inventor…” and so clearly needing his state’s industrialised repression experience. Pour décourager Les Autres. Nous sommes tous Les Autres. Chacun d’entre nous!
Why would “the state” want social or technical inventiveness outside the boxes flagged in the corporate media as “acceptable?”
…he is an inventor.
That should seal his anonymous fate , then. Dangerous people, inventors. They invent stuff, you know. Requires
original thinkingthoughtcrime.Would any word be possible of what he invents? Might it be relevant?
Snap, Sofia. But it may be nothing to do with the death ray he is building for al-Qaeda. It may just be that the police don’t like him (see Flaming June 17 Jul, 2013 – 10:33 am )
FJ –He is part of the Rebekah Brooks/Elisabeth Murdoch/David Cameron ‘Chipping Norton’ grouping…
FIFY
@Komodo.1 29pm
Good to see you’ve digested that goat enough to crawl back.
What an exhibition that was!
Can you imagine Agent Cameron dressed as The Stig?
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/07/clarkson-cameron-rebekah
What shallow people.
On the matter of how we appoint a head of state, I rather keen on the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
This isn’t for romantic reasons but purely practical ones.
The problem with an elected head of state is that we would almost certainly have some sort of restricted list of potential candidates to choose from.
The candidates would either be self selecting ( heaven forbid) or chosen by some Falkirkesque cabal or less than transparent committee potentially with their own agenda. Who chooses the choosers!
Something a bit less manipulated and arbitrary is what I have in mind.
We could simply choose our head of state at random and by lots….everyone on the voters roll automatically entered in the draw, or simply have a good old fashioned hereditary system ….how more arbitrary can it get than that?
No, not yet Komodo, I know of his name but shan’t use it here. I shall let you know when I know, via email.
@Dreoilin. 11 33am
“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”
Voltaire
Seems he understood a thing or two.
Komodo,
Tripadvisor! That cracked me up. Nice looking place though.
[I was under the impression that Limbo, Purgatory, and especially indulgences, had been done away with long ago.]
And Sofia, yes, if we believe absurdities … and to marry tweets with ‘time off purgatory’ … grotesque somehow. My mind has not quite finished boggling.
Idiots
Right, Tony, they have not started on the Fourth Amendment yet, much less
– the human right to privacy, UDHR Article 12, part of federal common law and of the common law of every state, and ICCPR Article 17, supreme law of the land by Constitution Article VI and equivalent to federal statute, with which the US is bound by treaty to comply at all levels of government;
– The human right to freedom of association, UDHR Article 20, federal and state common law, and ICCPR Article 22, supreme law of the land equivalent to federal statute, with which the US is bound to comply at all levels of government;
– Or the human right to seek and obtain information, UDHR Article 19, federal and state common law, and ICCPR Article 19, supreme law of the land equivalent to federal statute, with which all levels of the US government are bound to comply.
Best of all, since the US has signed the International Court of Justice statute, the rights above must interpreted based on international precedents and experts in international law. These rights can’t be perverted or waved away by the US judges that NSA spies on and blackmails. Every country in the world can pile on to enforce those legal rights on the US pariah state.
and more from (almost) the same quarter
Some here will be aware of the Magdalene laundries
“Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called on the four religious orders who ran the Magdalene laundries to “reflect” on their refusal to pay into a redress scheme for the survivors.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/kenny-asks-orders-to-reflect-on-refusal-to-pay-redress-1.1466287
And here is a rightly appreciative comment about our tabloidal excretions in Britain, especially that of the misogynist Daily Mail.
Habby, wisely listen to Sophia and take your blue pill before you watch this delightful response.
http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130713/
In fairness, if Habbabkuk told Mary to, “take your blue pill before you watch this delightful response”, all hell would break loose.
Re the Ben Franklin quote – “In our democracy, you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater when no fire exists.”
Quite so, in a real democracy. But the problem in a country that is a sham democracy without real freedom of speech/press is that people are scared to speak out even when fire does exist. Think of the Sir Jimmy Savile pedophile scandal that is now being brushed under the table. Sure a few minor celebrities have been exposed, but the big boys are walking away unscathed.
Jake
That’s a rather confused argument.
You say
“The problem with an elected head of state is that we would almost certainly have some sort of restricted list of potential candidates to choose from.”
and you then propose as a solution to this restricted list that we should
“simply have a good old fashioned hereditary system”
I’m not sure that it could get more restricted than er restricting it to the Windsor breeding machine.
Anyway. The real issue here is what sort of system is produced by monarchy. We’ve seen that it produces an elective dictatorship, allowing extremists like Blair and Thatcher to do as they please.
That’s the price of monarchy. The rest is distraction.