I was not planning to blog at all politically about the events in the Southern Hemisphere. I, naively or rather unrealistically, thought that people on all sides would just get on with helping the victims and not use this as an oppotunity to make a political point. It didn’t take long for the tranzis, enviroloons, left-wingnuts, and extreme isolationists to use this as opportunity to try to make a point. First we had the arsehat from the UN talk about how stingy the West, and more specifically the US, was in giving aid to poorer countries. (He has since had to back-peddle in a big way and Kofi looked positvely pale when he was challenged on this at a press conference.), then we had some moron from Greenpeace (a director) blame the event on the US’ failure to sign Kyoto and, of course, we have certain isolationists (yes, alas, including libertarians) who asking why we should care about this event. Of course the German press is getting in on the act. Then, of course, there are those from various fringe denominations blaming this on God’s wrath.

Of course, all of these people, barring the isolationists, fail to admit that this sort of event has been happening for millenia. There was even a major tsunami in the same area as this one in the middle of the 19th century. In fact, the Atlantic has this type of occurences, as pointed out in a letter to the DT.

We should recall that Atlantic tsunami are also destructive. The wave after the Grand Banks earthquake in 1929 killed dozens of people; the wave after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake may have killed as many as 100,000.

Disasters happen, and man has not, nor probably ever will, be able to completely prevent them. The earth is ever evolving and changing; not always for the better of humanity. This is not an act of god or an act of Bush, it’s merely nature doing what it always has done and always will do. What a bunch of hair-less apes do on this rotating globe does not matter that much in the long run. I am betting that this rock hurtling around the sun will be here for a very long time to come (until the sun consumes it when it goes supernova), and I would not bet humans will be here until the very end. At the risk of sounding uber-caring & sharing. Humans should worry about other humans and let mother nature get on with it. We are the ones that need the help, not her.

Or to put it another way, in the words of the Pythons:

Galaxy Song

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ‘round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

The UK Inland Revenue is know for its voracious appetite for other people’s money but this is unbelievable.
It seems that the Revenue were taking workers on fixed contracts, training them up to do the job then letting them go at the end of the contract and immediately taking new people on to replace them in the same roles.

This is idiotic, but it seems it needed revised government guidelines on civil service employment practice to point it out. Can no-one in a position of responsibility in the Inland Revenue think for themselves?

I think maybe there was another reason why this was going on. One of the early pieces of employment legislation Labour brought in was to grant full protected employment rights to workers after twelve months, as opposed to 24. Realising the cost implications of granting full civil service employment rights including generous final salary pension, annual leave and sick leave, the IR adopted a practice that has become quite common in the private sector – make employees redundant just before their 12 months is up, saving a small fortune. So we have one wing of government trying to get around the problems imposed by another wing of government by employing dubious employment practices.

The problem for the Revenue came when the new government guidelines came out obliging them to extend the contracts of existing, trained employees. So we have the farce of job applicants being paid severance pay for jobs they haven’t worked a single day in!

Having just gone through the annual ordeal of getting everything together for my Self-Assessment Tax Return one has to ask – If we do our own taxes nowadays, what do these people do all day anyway?

Just watched the ABC News (on the BBC News 24) and they did something on bloggers.They showed a whole bunch of blogs, not one of them from the right (well Andrew Sullivan) and, of course, they interviewed that talentless sow lemming Wonkette. Did they mention that bloggers nailed Rather? Not a freaking chance, but shockingly they they mentioned bloggers going after Trent Lott. Biased…ABC…never!

It is impossible for me to grasp the sheer horror of what has happened in the lands adjacent to the Indian Ocean as a result of the tsunami. I have already made a donation to one of the many charities you can find on the Internet, and I urge readers to do the same. In this increasingly globalised world, let us take full advantage of the power of modern communications to do what we can to help. Be sure to take real care in the kind of groups you choose, mind. I tend to steer clear of the more blatantly political ones and the big NGOs, preferring those taking the most practical approach to aid delivery.

One thing that I think that may come out of this, if we are lucky, is an end to the Green cant expression, “The Gentle Earth”. The next time I hear an environmentalist witter on about how Man is disrupting the stable, delicate fabric of this planet, I will want to spit. The Earth can unleash terrible forces and has done so since it was formed billions of years ago. Stability lies more in the human imagination than in the reality of our world. A lot of people who tend to assume that nature is all green and cuddly have suffered a monstrous shock.

I fear the news is going to get grimmer in the next few weeks.

From the DT’s letter page, no comment necessary.

Sir How right the UN’s disaster relief co-ordinator was to describe the developed world’s aid offer including a paltry $15 million from Washington as “stingy” (News, Dec 29). That initial pledge (since doubled) is worse than stingy; it is proof of the bargain-basement price that Washington puts on vote-less, non-American lives.

The offer since shamefacedly upped to $35 million equates to what? Three oil tycoons’ combined annual salary? The cost of some television slots in the President’s re-election campaign?

One two-thousandth part of one per cent of the $80 billion additional appropriation that George W Bush now seeks for the Iraq war? And all this after Western aid to the Third World has dropped from about one half to one quarter per cent of GDP.

For Colin Powell to link further monetary aid to an assessment of need is like a surgeon saying he must do a bandage count before he will be in a position to staunch the blood flow of a haemorrhaging patient.

If Washington is to lay any claim to the moral, as distinct from the military, high ground, let it emulate Ireland and Norway’s prompt and proportionate attempts to plug South-East Asia’s gaping gap of need and help avert a further 80,000 deaths from infection and untreated wounds.

Robert Eddison, London W1

It’s so nice to see the left not using this genuine tragedy as an excuse to bash the US and President Bush. I wasn’t the only one that is less than umimpressed with this pillock’s letter. Mark Steyn has made him the anti-star of his entire piece.

I am not normally into New Year’s Resolutions however I think the Telegraph’s advice to various people makes for good reading. I have to say, while reading this collection of advice, I found it echoeing the thoughts of many British bloggers.

Against all the odds, I managed to survive the last weekend.

My computer, alas, didn’t. So I’ve been setting this new one up, which involves an ungodly amount of drive and cable swapping. (One pleasant surprise with Win XP is that it more or less automagically recognizes the drives. For that alone I could kiss Bill Gates. )

More of the same today and I should be geared up to resume my frenzied blogging schedule by Saturday at the latest. Speaking of which, best of wishes for the New Year to all of you.

the blog québécois

“The Collectivist State is a Prig and a Bandit;
It may be my Fate,
But I’m damned if I’ll stand it.”

G.K. Chesterton, as quoted by James Bartholomew in his fine new book, The Welfare State We’re In.

After reading this column from Rich Galen detailing why the UN is far worse than useless, JFM is left to wonder why the US can’t just seize all that beautiful riverside property in New York City under eminent domain for the common good and then sell it to a canny real estate developer. The UN has gone from being an ideal straight downhill to a somewhat useful forum to a downright subversive, dangerous, and criminal institution, no longer deserving of even one iota of respect or recognition. The sooner it is disassembled, deconstructed, and banished to the scrap heap of history the better off the entire world will be.

Makes for some rather interesting reading.

I was getting worried for a moment that the erudite Natalie Solent has not posted for a while. But there is an explanation.

Sir John grimaced and put down the plastic tumbler on the dressing table. He didn’t usually drink this early in the morning but this was to steady his nerves. It was a special day. He was going to make a speech to the Party Conference.

A veteran of such events, Sir John knew the format. It was to be the Tuesday afternoon slot. The Prime Minister would have spoken in the morning, just in time to catch the lunchtime news. By the afternoon, the media would be locked in combat with the Party’s spin doctors over how the PM’s message would be reported in the evening news slots. It was particularly important because it would be the last Conference speech by the PM before the expected General Election. There would be little interest in the speech of the newly appointed Minister for Community. Nevertheless, Sir John had been working on his speech until 3a.m. the previous night, refining the wording, polishing the soundbites, putting his phrases into groups of three. It was a textbook example of a speech, just as all politicians are taught to make by the legions of advisers, tutors and stylists that make a living moulding politicians.

So goes the old children’s puzzle.

Mark Steyn notices a new phenomenon. The Inland Revenue and the pensions industry are looking into the tax and death benefit implications of polygamy.
But It’s illegal! I hear you cry.
Not exactly. It is not legal to marry more than one person in the UK but authorities do recognise legally entered-into polygamous arrangements made in other countries where it is legal. The problem is how this fits in with UK law which assumes only one partner.

Gay marriage rights? That’s So last year! We should legalise polygamy. And while we’re at it, polyandry and line marriage. Confused? Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or just about anything else by Robert Heinlein – He of Starship Troopers fame.

He had some good ideas about the education and justice systems too.

There is a blog dedicated to news on the aftermath of the Tsunami, and Command Post is covering it in typical lazer-like detail. Kudos to Michele for all her efforts in getting the info out there. Tim Blair is covering this event from an Australian point of view.

BTW: the UN is being caring and sharing…they are claiming the West is being cheap and should raise taxes to be more generous. Besame el culo senor!

The so-called Christian Science Monitor is holding a disgraceful poll on whether or not there should be divestment from Israel. Please go vote; the numbers are not going well right now.

The public are disillusioned with politicians and trust nothing they say.

The answer to rebuilding trust, therefore, is to say as little as possible. That seems to be the tactic adopted by Britain’s Conservatives.
The idea seems to be that if they say nothing anyone could possibly disagree with, somehow they will avoid being ridiculed by the Labour Party and their allies in the media.

All so much baloney, or so I have said in the past. Political parties must stand for something or they go nowhere.

What if I am wrong?

What if the voters really are so disillusioned with politicians that they really will vote for nothing.

By standing for nothing, Britain’s Conservatives might just qualify as the “None of the Above” option in next year’s General Election.

The Tories are close enough to that now. So why not go the whole way?
So I offer the “None of the Above” manifesto for their consideration.

If elected we promise:

1. Not to appear on television if at all possible. People have better things to watch than politicians. Like … the Simpsons.

2. To increase the Parliamentary Travel budget to the point where MPs and their entire families can spend eleven months of the year away from Westminster. And make it compulsory. This will actually save money because they won’t be passing laws or finding new ways to spend our money.
And when politicians do make a rare appearance on TV, at least they will have nice suntans.

3. To drop all that stupid lifestyle legislation. Anyone who argues that they need the government to tell then what to eat, drink, smoke, bring up a child, exercise, chase on or off horseback, with or without dogs, is obviously too stupid to take part in deciding such matters for others and should not be allowed to vote.

4. To pass no more legislation. Apart from the law stopping idiots from voting (see 3. above)

5. To abolish income tax and lay off 80% of the civil service. OK so nobody is going to believe this one but only political hacks read past the second paragraph in a manifesto and besides, without any new laws and 4/5 of the civil service now doing something productive in the private sector, we won’t actually need all that money.

JFM would request that you all help Dodgeblogium’s friend Murray’s cat to achieve stardom! Jess needs your votes! Go to this page of Laurence’s Calendar Model contest and vote for Jess3, please.

Gary’s has put the BOMS up for week with a Camile Paglia theme? The Carnival is up for all to enjoy.

Blogger Idol week 3 is in its review stage. These are my picks, in keeping with the time of year, most of them are religious themed: whether about the haj, Christian “Road Rules, and someone traveling to Israel. The non-religious ones are a trip to Fez and then there is an ode to jet-lag.

Guess what the Germans think? The Gulf War is all about oil, natch. Dean expresses an opinion on AIDS that is not the acceptable one, with expected results.

The Guardian does not seem to be amused by the roll that Pollard had in the demise of Blunkett. And if you think the Catholic Church has forgotten its tendency to bash Jews, think again. Nothing like using the death of thousands of people as an excuse to bash Israel. Oh speaking of Isreal and the Jews, I defend both, so therefore Imust be a Jew according to some on this thread.

The most Shameful of 2004? You decide.

The fate of the free world is at stake…well, at least according to Murray.

Course, in another contest, I didn’t win squot.

It looks like Yushenko is finally going to get the victory he deserves. Congratulations to the opposition party on their victory over both the fraud of the last election and this one as well.

I wish all of you, our readers, the safest travels, whether they be physical, emotional, astral, or spiritual, wherever they might take you this week or in the next year.

I was planning a diatribe of angst about the goings-on about this last, most eventful year. I could have waxed harsh on the people who believe its their duty to break up friends for reasons of their own ego and boredom, or similarly those friends who betrayed me and now each other for no other reason that they have nothing better to do, or rail against the service industry, in all its forms, and remind them what the term service means. Or the fact that two close friends have been diagnosed with cancer in the last 12 months.

Or I could have engaged in braggadocio about the woman who allows me the pleasure of accompanying her to many events and the reaction we get from the men in the room. I could brag about the fact I had a book published this year, arranged for another one next year (which I will be co-authoring with two others), or the fact that I have written over 25 songs for my band or the fact that our demo is getting positive feed-back from both fan and musician alike.

But I shall do neither.

Instead I publish for your edification and enjoyment, a song I penned, for which Mitch and John have written music. I think it sums up my wishes for all, whether friend of foe.

Find

Hope you find what you’re looking for
I wish you, no less and no more
Life as it is, can be a chore
Hope you find what you’re looking for

Some never find it ever
Even when they think the’re clever
Can affect you like a fever
Can rip you apart like a cleaver

Love is never perfect
Even if you think it
It’s a game of chance

It will never find you
If you never let it bind you
You can run and hide
All in all it’s just pride

What are you running from
You can’t live it on the run
Let yourself go have some fun
Life’s too short, when all’s said and done

You can find an mp3 of this, alas only of me singing acapella as a guide track; if you are so brave inclined you may find it here. I would give it a low cat alert (high meaning Victoria Beckham singing without electronic aides)...so if you allow your cats to sit on your comp you might wish to warn them.

Got me some manga, metal, and libations…so I am ready for the next two days. Will probably write a few things and read a few as well. Hope you all do what you want for this holiday season.

Well, TCS seems to think so, and I pretty much agree. In keeping with the piece, here is my re-write of the tale.

Scrooge’s dreams are actually manifestations of Cthulhu’s mind. Scrooge, who is ameniable to the Great Old One’s influence, spends Christmas night dreaming of Ry’leth and his master. After sucking up to the Cratchitts the day before, Scrooge arranges for them to go to a ceremony the next week where they are duly sacrificed…(insert slurping sound here) A reformed character, he duly influences the town into the clutches of his new cult.

Well, Emily, as you would expect, is all over it. Her handicapping of what paramilitary mob is responsible is classic.

Assuming I survive the celebrations—not at all a sure thing—I should be back on Monday. In the meanwhile, I’d like to thank all of you who drop by here and at my blog (except for the spammers), and I wish you all (even the spammers) a Merry Christmas.

Or as they say in Pittsburgh, have a Happy Sparkle Season.

the blog québécois

“I have not lost a single night of sleep over Africa and I never will… My first single release will be called ‘I Don’t Give a Hoot About The Starving’.” – David Carr, Samizdata.net

“The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world’s collapse” – back cover of Ayn Rand’s, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

If these sentiments are what a free market is about, I am not a free-marketeer.

I wonder whether the opening paragraph of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is wrong. This is where he says: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it… The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it. ”

It turns out that maybe there are some people born completely without a heart, with no compassion or empathy for others. Unfortunately, they don’t do the free-market cause any good.

This is my answer to the long question for my Witchcraft Degree final. It is about Witchcraft persecution in Europe.

I think I know the problem with Islamist preachers: they misquote the Prophet. It’s “Allah Akbar” not “Allah Ak-boom.”

In other insane Islamic news, the Egyptian government daily is claiming that American forces are harvesting organs from Iraqis. Obviously they have been reading the same nutty conspiracy sites I sometimes examine. What next? That American vampires are “farming” Iraqis?

Stuck with that last minute Christmas purchase for the guy who has everything? I’ll bet he doesn’t have this.

Yours for cheap on eBay—the last bid was $5.50 US. It’s a 300 MHz Micron Pentium II with a 2GB hard drive, 128 megs of memory, and a new install of Windows 98.

Via Fazed