The usual tinfoilers are getting uppity that Dubya brought up the horror of 9/11 in his Fort Bragg speech about what the stakes are in Iraq. Well tough titties to them.

As this excellent article reveals, the war on terror and the need to establish a peaceful liberal society in Iraq are part of the same deal. Read the whole thing.

There are more than half a million illegal migrants living in Britain, according to Home Office figures. Sheesh. Several things spring to mind: one, it makes a mockery of our supposed security laws against terror because among many of the folk moving into Britain, a handful may have hostile intent, and it also underscores the scale of organised crime now involved in smuggling people into the country, creating fake IDs, etc. It goes without saying on a robustly free market blog like this that immigration per se is a fine thing especially when the migrants entering a nation do not expect, and do not get, a penny of state subsidy and just get on with building a new life. I want to live in a Britain that enterprising people want to join. (Let’s face it, migrants are not exactly rushing to live in Belgium). But illegal migration on this scale can only undermine harmonious relations between ethnic groups and weaken respect for the law.

We don’t need an ID card system to fix this. All that is needed is that no immigrant to the UK gets access to state welfare for a minimum of five years apart from in dire emergencies. It is that simple.

Hey, what are friends for? After all, he said such kind things about the US during his election campaign.

Everyone’s favourite blogger pollster and interviewer extraordinaire John Hawkins has conducted another interview with our fave columnist Mark Steyn. As per normal Mark does not suffer fools and tells it like it is…

Like you always assume that a gun is loaded, you always assume that a webcam is on. This woman, taking part in a videoconference call, apparently thought her connection was down. It wasn’t.

Warning: audio, and also possibly otherwise NSFW.

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Smokers in the UK are getting organised. Well found by Harry.

Like uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan, I adore the obituary columns of the Daily Telegraph, recounting the lives of eccentric old generals and pilots, crazy dukes, nutty art collectors and the odd philandering drunk. This gem of an obit for the man who became famous as the jokester letter writer, Henry Root, is an absolute classic.

Here’s a couple of gems:

He volunteered to run sundry failing football clubs; to visit the Chief Constable of Manchester with his newly formed-group The Ordinary Folk Against The Rising Tide of Filth in Our Society Situation (TOFATRFLOSS); asked Angela Rippon to send him a photograph of Anna Ford and enquired of the Tory Party director of finance the going rate for a peerage. He wrote to the late Sir James Goldsmith urging the elimination of “scroungers, perverts, Dutch pessary salesmen and Polly Toynbee”. “Dear Mr Root”, Goldsmith replied, “Thank you for your letter which I appreciated enormously.”

He first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer of Beyond the Fringe, which brought together Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. He was also the first promoter to arrange a Bob Dylan concert at a time when the singer was barely known in Britain. “He [Dylan] was sitting in my office one day when I came back from lunch,” Donaldson recalled. “I couldn’t get rid of the f***er.”

May he rest in peace.

For another persecuted grouping, of course.

I really have a terrible time sometimes trying to think up a title for a post. For this one I eventually grabbed my nearest dictionary and swore to use the first word I saw. Epicycle.

The definition is from geometry: Small circle rolling on circumference of a greater. [C.O.D., 1964] Which is a perfect introduction to this:

Google has renamed their previously subscription-only “Keyhole” service “Google Earth” and made the basic version free. Not to be confused with Google Maps, this enables you to tilt and rotate the camera, giving a much improved 3-D view. Or you can enter an address and pretend you’re a missile zooming in on a target. (Unfortunately, no missile sound effects are provided—I find a reserved, genteel ssssss SSSSSSS ZZZZ zzzz … KABLAMMO!!! works well.)

More information here, or you can throw caution to the wind and download it (10MB file) here.

Minimum specs (Mac isn’t supported as yet):

Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP
CPU speed: Intel Pentium PIII 500 MHz
System memory (RAM): 128MB
200MB hard-disk space
3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM
1024×768, 32-bit true color screen
Network speed: 128 kbps (“Broadband/Cable Internet”)

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That is the gay cat that is…and Abby..

And here am I doing my best metal pose with Abby doing likewise backstage pre-gig.

Tomorrow I will review the awesome gig (that is a hint) over at Blogcritics. Pat gave me a t-shirt and asked me along for the gig on Friday. As he gave me one of theirs, I am going to give him one of ours.

Is it me, or is it rather bizarre that Motley Crue is playing one of the Live8 gigs? I mean Motley are not exactly the most aware of bands in the world. Their playing just strikes me as a good career move rather than anything to do with believing in the cause. Although it is possible they are feeling guilty for spending more than the GDP of many African nations on drugs and attorney’s fees. Of course, I suspect that Motley are not the only band that want to be on the bill for their careers rather than for the cause.

It’s sad to see that some Christians are letting age-old Jew-hatred creep back into their behaviour. Specifically I am talking about Reverend John Thomas and his idoitic UCC with their campaign against Israel. The SWC have launched a petition protesting this behaviour, and several bloggers including Melanie Philips and Silent Running have noted this as well.

Meanwhile Harry’s is keeping tabs on the forthcoming Judenhass-fest being run by the SWP. It’s good to see that some people are keeping this lot of reprobates in check.

So how come the MSM is not reporting on it?

There’s been a palace revolt at Autonomous Source! Max and Talia have overthrown their oppressors—and worse, have figured out how to work the computer!

Oh sure, locking their parents outside in the snow seemed like a good idea at first. After all, they did get to eat all the goldfish they wanted and there was no one to stop them from banging the pots and pans in their kitchen rock band. Plus, they hadn’t had to brush their teeth or wash their hands all day. But now Mommy and Daddy were all cold and still. Neither Suzy nor Callie could work the VCR. How were they going to watch their Barney tapes? Not to mention the vast quantities of bloomer pudding accumulating in their pampers. Maybe Operation Get Rid of the ‘Rents wasn’t such a great idea after all.

Okay, it isn’t really Max and Talia. It’s from a site called Threadbared, which is a couple of women who put up the covers of dressmaking patterns, knitting guides, etc., and proceed to weave bitchy fun at their expense. You’ll be in stitches.

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What would Nelson’s Navy use as a theme song if they had access to modern music?

I find this attitude typical of anti-smoking fascists.

Sir- Boris Johnson (Comment, June 23) asks why Labour has to legislate on smoking in public places “to accomplish what is already being accomplished by the market”.

In Gateshead town centre, several years ago, the number of non-smoking seats was reduced in what was, and still is, the only eating establishment to have such a designation (all of the others having no restriction at all). The proximity of the tiny “non-smoking” area to the other seats is such that there is no escape from the smoke.

I have yet to find a pub within two miles of where I live that has a designated non-smoking area. The market strongly favours unrestricted smoking in Gateshead. We need laws to enforce our right to clean air.

Andrew Bell, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

You see, most pub users don’t agree with them; so, in a strop, they go to the bully that is the state to go beat up the people they don’t like. Those of us that loathe loud dance music in pubs have to find one that is not playing any or something more to my liking. I would never think of getting the government to ban pubs from playing loud music. Why shouldn’t anti-smoking zealots have to do the same thing-find another locale? It’s pathetic and typical of people who don’t like other people enjoying themselves.

To wit, here is the proper way to deal with anti-smoking whingers.

Question: Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s?

Parkinson’s: better to spill half your drink than forget where you put it…

Colby is on a tear about a recent article on a piece of rubbish health science.
He ends with the following:

Yeah, but c’mon, doc. It makes for a way cooler story if we’re all getting cancer from nail polish and laundry detergent, right

Go read the whole thing; ok?

Over at GoD:blog there is a listing to the new and improved online version of The Fallen. The Fallen is the short movie which I stared in and is about vamps.

Well with a few other people and rather a lot of tyre smoke. Here was my companion for the day who has remarkably similar tastes in cars and speed.

And here we see Tabitha checking on a few possible purchases.

In the ended we decided I should get me one of these. Rather amusingly Tom & Noreen’s car was parked right near a wonderful example.

I found the placement of the Spitfire rather amusing.

More shots to come.

I ran across this today and thought it was interesting. It’s only available to residents of the UK, though, so I thought I’d post about it here.

It would also help to know something (which I don’t) about the geography of London to play it with a hope of winning. I have no idea whether many people take taxis to, say, Covent Garden or Wembley Stadium, or if using the Tube, or taking a bus, or one’s own car would be more likely.

It’s sponsored by Hasbro, free, and all you need is an email address to register. Here’s the idea behind it:

We have turned London into a real-life playing board, and real taxi cabs into real-life playing pieces. All you have to do is make as much money from rent as possible, from five other cabs who are your opponents in the game.

We’ve kitted out 18 cabbies with GPS (Global Positioning System), meaning we can pinpoint their exact whereabouts in London. They will be going about their normal day, picking up and dropping off customers all over town.

All that you’ve got to do is spend the 15m we give you on properties from around the Monopoly Here & Now board, distribute your apartments and hotels and choose your cabbie. You are placed into a game with your cabbie and 5 other taxi drivers, all travelling around London. Every time one of the other cabs stops outside one of your properties, you get paid rent. Any time your cabbie lands on a property you don’t own, you pay up. Simple!

This is the world’s biggest game of Monopoly. The locations are real, the cabbies are real and the other players are very real. It’s your job to beat them and bag the prizes.

To enter, go here.

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Found via: Silent Running

Newsnig8t is the new blog from Newsnight’s Paul Mason as he covers the G8 conference up in Scotland. It’s a pretty good looking blog; slightly let down by the fact it does not allow comments under the posts. The url is rather clever and amusing. It will be interesting to see if Paul manages to get the whole vibe of the “blog” thing and does not make merely an extension of Newsnight.

Not surprisingly Galloway is planning to cause mischief during the event.

What pisses you off?
Created by ptocheia

Via: Michele, who is nekid blogging too, is the source of this daft quiz.

This blog is participating in this effort to let it all hang out. It’s too bloody hot in London to wear clothes at home, anyway.

Michael Jackson, you may have beaten the charges: but you will pay, I swear you will, for what you have done to this young man.

Speaking of Idol rejects, here’s a bumper crop of ‘em. To be fair, singing in a stadium is a tricky business, what with echoes and dead spots and no monitors or earpieces that I can see.

It also doesn’t help to have 50,000 people laughing at you. To be fair, these guys are just plain awful.

To cleanse your palate, as it were, here’s some theatre-arts types getting frisky in class. Judging by the reaction of the professor and the other students, it was a successful ambush.

Warning: The third clip has music (and a somewhat stagey, but enthusiastic performance, perhaps imitative of a young Tommy Tune). The first two clips have, respectively, “music,” and “You call that music???”

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He and his mob are going after another Jewish woman MP. Harry has more, needless to say. Are the Labour goverment doing anything to help Jews who are subjected to this sort of abuse? Nope, course not, they are too busy sucking up to Muslims with draconian legislation.

Quite why its necessary to have a day for it befuddles me. It’s a common on the way to the shower or coming back occurence for me. But I will participating tomorrow, nonetheless.

Ben Rooney has been doing his homework and gone to some good sources for an overview of feelings in blogosphere about the leadership contest. Tories should be relieved that no-one blogged some of the comments heard at an event I attended on Tuesday night where several people were declaring the Tories dead. Congrats to those bloggers that made it onto the Telegraph round-up page. Let’s hope they all have the bandwidth to take the extra hits.

Someone from MIT is working with a school in Nottinghamshire on an interesting project using the Neverwinter Nights engine.

Now, I admire John Prescott as much as anyone. It is not his fault that he requires a squad of specially trained Japanese commuter-pushers to squeeze his fat bottom through the doors of a train, and so prefers to travel in a fleet of reinforced Jaguars

Christopher Howse in today’s Telegraph.