Another selection of my Sunday regurgitations. These are, if you like, mini-posts; topics that are the mental equivalent of a pebble in the shoe. Once again I am grateful to The Business ("Britain's Best Newspaper" says David Duff!) for sparking some of them.
Cheering Up Jim: Sounds like an old episode of Mrs. Dale's Diary but actually it refers to my old blog friend and adversary, Jim Bliss, a man peculiarly mis-named as his morbidity is as far removed from 'bliss' as it is possible to get. According to his blog he is under-going some severe personal problems at the moment so I hope this news will cheer him up. According to The Business ( "Britain's Best etc, etc ...") the international oil companies are already shifting zillions of dollars into the search for new methods of extracting oil from 'new' sources. I put the inverted commas round 'new' because they are not really new, but are only viable when the oil price rises above $20 a barrel. Today it is pushing the $60 mark! As I kept telling Jim in our many altercations, when the price of oil gets too high new technologies will come into play. Unhappily for Jim, who is Greener than a leprechaun, the main target for the oil companies is shale. Some believe that the Canadian shale fields are capable of producing more than the Saudi oil reserves. The White House is urging the oil companies on, not least because such a source will, of course, reduce enormously their utter dependence on Saudi oil. As I mentioned below in my over-long screeed, it must now be a matter of grand strategic priority for the west to find new energy sources outside the middle-east. Britain should be re-starting a nuclear energy programme now!
Disgusted of Dorset: I remain gloomy but unsurprised that a story featured in The Daily Mail has raised not a ripple amongst all those bloggers, particularly the 'Trot-lot', who never cease keening at any perceived infraction of civil rights. A few weeks ago, two Special Branch officers employed at an airport were reported for passing the odd derogatory remark concerning coloureds in general, and immigrant coloureds in particular. Their 'superiors', instead of hauling them in and ''avin' a quiet word in their ear-'oles", chose instead to secretly bug their private conversations. Having got them 'bang to rights', they fired them, and both officers lost their pensions. Now, I suspect that people like Ed Rooksby, to judge from the discussion we had on his poste entitled Racist Morons last Friday, would heartily approve, because he and his ilk believe that anti-racism is such a heinous crime that civil liberties should be torn down and trampled upon, in order to safeguard, er, civil liberties. My point, that private conversations are just that, private; and that the ability to make a public declaration to the effect that you do not like certain classes of people is the right every free man should enjoy, short of doing it in a threatening or intimidating manner likely to cause a breach of the peace, or if the words used could be construed as inciting some-one else to violence; all that, was, well, trampled upon. As for the officers concerned, no-one, as I understand it, produced a shred of evidence that they failed to do their duties in the prescribed manner, irrespective of their private opinions. They found out the hard way that these days you can be punished for what you think and say, not what you do.
Through a glass, darkly: Is the way most of us view the future, and as my glass frequently contains a large slug of single malt, my view is, perhaps, more clouded than most. Even so, the clouds I see are more than a touch heavy and ominous. I, along with most of the world, have no idea what those hyper-secretive maniacs in North Korea are up to, but for sure, there will be tears before bedtime. Just as dangerous is the mounting crisis with Iran. They have just elected a Muslim fanatic as president and appear to be hell-bent on producing their own bomb. If they are, in fact, bluffing in Saddam style, they should be very, very careful. President Bush is not a man to trifle with, and neither is Ariel Sharon. Reports have it that the USA and Israel are planning air strikes for early next year. A major breech with Iran could lead, with Iranian connivance, to a mass uprising by the Shias in southern Iraq where a tiny and ill-equipped British army force will be in big trouble if they do. As the greatest US president of the 20th century once said, "Stick around, you ain't seen nothin' yet!"
Another casualty of the Tube bombs: Something else was blown to smithereens on July 7th - multi-culturalism! This has been the driving force behind social policy in Britain for the last 40 years. According to the 'intelligentsia', this would allow us all to live happily ever after. Tell that to the families of the dead and dismembered of 7/7. Yet, even now, the 'idiotentsia' are insisting that we must reach out to Muslim communities in Britain. We have given them admittance, we have given them all the rights that we enjoy, we have given them free medical care and schools, we have given them state hand-outs, we have used the full power of the law against anyone who complains in derogatory terms against them, and what do we get? Young, disaffected thugs killing us wholesale. Not, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, that this condition of idle, feckless, un-employable 'youf', is confined to the Muslim community. Just today a gang of white 'youfs' put an axe through the head of a black boy who was doing them no harm at all. Only last week Larry, an amusing fellow and a potential PhD, no less, had a jibe at me for saying "the '50s was an almost idyllic period in which to live" because "the institution of the family, the patriarchal family, was strong, and... bound us into a cohesive society". In a month in which various children have been arrested for murdering other children, in which homicidal maniacs set off bombs in the underground and youth gangs bury an axe in another boy's head, it ill-behoves semi-educated smart-Alecs like Larry to sneer at a period in which these sort of events not only did not happen, but were unimaginable.
Music, i'nnit! I am constantly amazed at what a large part of their impoverished lives the younger generation spend on what they are pleased to call 'music'. I am not referring to the brain-dead morons hanging around streeet corners with axes in their belts, I mean the so-called educated 'youf' who have enjoyed the privilege of what they have been told is a university education (yes, yes, I know they are mostly just non-University Polytechnics teaching non-subjects, but they don't realise it yet.) They, too, from what I read on their blogs here, here and here, for example, spend an inordinate amount of their time and energy listening, discussing and blogging on the merits supposedly to be found in the incomprehensible crash-bang-wallop-and-screech cacophany that constitutes modern pop music. The high pitched hum is the late, great George Gershwin spinning in his grave.
David, have you ever thought of enumerating the things about modern Britain that you *do* like?
Posted by: N.I.B. | Sunday, 07 August 2005 at 18:25