DUFF & NONSENSE!

Hail to the Mail!

Regular readers will know that in my not very humble opinion there is only one newspaper in Britain and that is The Business.  However, the little 'Memsahib' insists on taking the Dail Mail.  This results in a daily demonstration of our total incompatability.  She starts reading at the top, left-hand corner of the first page and over the next two hours works her way through the entire thing by completing the 'Quick Crossword' in the bottom right-hand corner of the last page.  I skim the entire thing in approximately 3.5 minutes!  But not today.

The first item to give me pause was a re-print from The Spectator of an article by Fraser Nelson who normally writes for The Business.  In it, he describes the way 'New' Labour has corrupted the country with the most brazen example ever of bribing people with their own money.  Read it and weep!

Having been depressed by that, I turned next to an old favourite of mine, Andrew Alexander.  I disagreed with him over the Iraq war.  He is a real-politik man to his finger-tips and, pace Bismark, does not think Iraq worth the bones of a single British grenadier.  Normally, I would be shoulder to shoulder but I believed 'Tony' Blair on the subject of WMD and considered that justification enough to support an invasion.  I now feel a fool!  Still, we are where we are and the problem is, as Spike Milligan used to chant, what are we going to do next?  I was always doubtful of the 'neo-Kamm' dream of a democratic Iraq.  It's not that I don't believe millions of Iraqis understand democracy and would like to keep it as a system, but the fact is that their society is such, that it is a step too far, and too early.  I had assumed that the Americans would do what they did so well during the cold war, and install a 'Saddam Mk. II' to grip the place and thus provide a safe base for American muscle.  It is exceedingly difficult to judge things from this distance but all the indications are gloomy.  Alexander believes we should "accept humility before it turns to humiliation" and get out now.

Finally, I turned to the inimitable Richard Littlejohn.  The hatred that erupts in the 'Trot-lot' creche at the mere mention of his name is an indication of how viciously effective his satire is.  Today, even the 'Trot-lot' can enjoy him as he lampoons 'Prince Chuck' by printing an extract from the 1997 'diary' of Chinese president  Jiang Zemin who was present at the hand-over of Hong Kong.

Collected by a Rover car taking him to the official reception, he muses: "Car overheats and breaks down halfway there. [...] One day Chinese will take over Rover and show them how to build a car properly.  Maybe we will turn Rongbridge into a nice housing estate for Blummies.  Eventually get to reception in back of AA Relay van."

At the reception: "Young gentleman comes bouncing over to me like a cat on hot tin wok.  "Hi, call me Tony," he says, thrusting his hand towards me.  Who is this iriot?  This honourable Prime Minister Tony Brair, I'm told.  With him is scary woman with gob like red pillar box. [...] She ask if there is any chance of a free holiday in China. [...] Would I be interested in a lecture on human rights, call it thirty grand for cash?  This must be the one they call the Ricked Ritch."

On the royal yacht he is "met by gentleman dressed up like a New Year dragon. 'Have you come far?' he asks.  From Beijing, I reply. 'Is that anywhere near Peking?' he says.  He's Clown Plince Charles [...] This is the sirree iriot who dumped Lady Di for old boiler called Camirra."

And so on.  All quite disgraceful but weepingly funny.  And all you po-faces reading The Guardian or The (so-called) Independent missed it.  Serves you right, or do I mean left?

You could hear a pin drop!

David Irving, the infamous Nazi sympathiser, has been given three years by an Austrian court for saying, 17 years ago, that the holocaust had not occurred, despite now admitting that he was wrong.  I have just carried out a quick sweep across the 'Trot-lot' sites, plus those 'useful idiots' to be found capering in their wake and attempting to up their credibility by being even more vociferous in 'defending' freedom of speech whenever religious organisations attack those who insult their deeply held convictions, and guess what?  You're right, not a word, not a squeak, not even a whimper!  You have to go to the great neo-Kamm and the detested (by the Left), Stephen Pollard, for suitable commentary.  Harry's Place simply reports the facts and so far the commenters are fairly evenly split.   Meanwhile, over at Forceful and Moderate, they are trying to convince us that 'New' Europe is a wonderful, democratic, freedom-loving, happy family.  Possibly, but not judging by the standards of Austrian justice.

Still, I should be grateful.  With all the constant 'jabberwocky' on the net, such silence is golden - just so long as those hypocrites don't start on again about the sanctity of Danish cartoons.

Additional: I would have bet the deeds of the house on it but, of course, since I posted, the 'sainted' Norm has come out with this,  "Not that I'll be wasting any sympathy on him, but for Holocaust denial he should not be going to jail. Poisonous and untrue as it is, Holocaust denial is a form of opinion."  So much more succinct and elegant than my rumble up above.  Perhaps that Larry's right after all, there is some advantage to a university education!

Additional #2: I just know that 'N.I.B.' is hovering so let me save him some time by stating that I think it is completely wrong for the Adjudication Panel for England to ban 'Ken' Livingstone, an elected official, for reasons that are so obvious they are not worth repeating.

Many Happy Returns ...

... I hear you cry with but a single voice!  Yes, today is the birthday of "Duff and Nonsense".  No 'pressies', please, just cash and cheques to my favourite charity "Duff's Poor Children's Beer Fund".

According to my hit counter 16,554  of the sleepless, bored, drunk and/or simply lost, clicked on this site during the year. Well, 16,554 is what it says, but we all know about the vagaries of hit counters.  At least half are probably me re-reading and laughing at my own jokes, and half of the remaining half are 'Son of Duff' making sure he knows what the old man has been boring on about so that he can keep in my good books and ensure his place in my Will.  (He doesn't know I'm leaving him my overdraft!)  Finally, half of the last quarter of my so-called readership are mistakes by Typepad's useless computer*, so that leaves me with a regular fan club of, God help me, 'Larry Teabag'  and 'N.I.B.' the nit picker!

Never mind, I've enjoyed myself and the 'little Memsahib' is happy that I'm stuck up here at the top of the house well away from her.  To be serious for a moment, I have enjoyed all the contributions to my site, even (or perhaps I mean, especially) the ferocious ones.  All of them have made me pause, and think!  For a befuddled old fool like me, that is important.  I'm off now for a weekend away, back on Sunday.

* When I checked back the counter had jumped backwards to 16,485 - typical, bloody computers!

'Clairwil' - WARNING!

Last night the House of Commons passed, by a huge majority, a motion requiring a Government Health Warning to be pasted on all posts emanating from 'clairwil' on the grounds that too much 'clairwil' can damage your health.  The Minister for Health, Patricia Spewitt, warned that there was far too much laughter being produced by this source and it was having detrimental effects across the country.  "Just today", she said, "I have been told of the case of an elderly gentleman in Dorset, normally known for his cantankerously foul temper, seen chuckling on his way to collect his morning paper and completely forgetting to lash out at small children with his stick!"  To cheers from all sides of the House she said that henceforth anyone visiting this site would go on a central register of humour addicts and their ID cards would be marked with a special code! 

Smoke signals!

Please forgive the less than smooth composition of this post but what you are getting, you lucky people, is 'immediacy'!  I have just watched the TV responding to the entirely predictable conclusion arrived at by that collection of little Hitlers in parliament to ban smoking in public places.  Now, if you can be bothered I will give you my re-actions:

Re-action 1: It is now only a matter of time before these swivel-eyed fanatics insist that smoking is banned in the homes of anyone with children, and in time, anyone who smokes will be forbidden from having children at all.

Re-action 2: Some idiot once said, "Trust the people!"  He wants his bumps felt! First, the totally unproven hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer has been foisted on "the people" and they have inhaled it without a thought.  The fact that such 'proof' is, so far, entirely statistical and follows the same syllogistic form as: 'Most men who contract lung cancer wear St. Michael underpants, therefor ....' has failed to penetrate their thick skulls.  As of today, no causal link has been found between the chemicals in smoke and the creation of cancer cells.  You may ask how I know this and the answer is simple; if there was a direct causal link the anti-smoking Gauleiters would have emblazoned it around the globe.  They haven't, so it doesn't exist. 

Re-action 3:  Still, you have to applaud the Goebbels-like propaganda campaign that the 'sifs' (Single Issue Fanatics) have so ruthlessly driven through to the point that "the people" now actually believe that second-hand smoke can cause lung-cancer!  When I was trying to stitch them up with my second-hand cars, I wish they had been as gullible then!

Re-action 4:  We can now only rely on the ingenuity of that small minority of independent, and wily, thinkers to work out how to subvert this nasty piece of hectoring legislation in much the same way that the hunters have done.  I guess that patio heaters will sprout round every pub and club alongside tents in the pub gardens.  Needless to say, off-sales will go up like a rocket so the kids at home will be hoovering up even more second-hand smoke than hitherto.

Re-action 5:  Lembik Opek (if that's how you spell his name) is "A Good Thing!"  As a matter of course and prejudice, I always clear my throat and spit at the mention of any 'il-Lib-non-Dem' but in recent days young Lembik has gone up in my estimation.  This will annoy 'Son of Duff' who went to university with him and was underwhelmed, but I must speak as I find.  I thought his loyalty to his erstwhile leader, Charles Kennedy, in that man's adversity was wholly admirable.  Likewise, his resistance to this hateful smoking ban on the grounds of liberty for the individual deserves praise and respect, which is more than can be said for those lick-spittle health fascists in the Commons, many of whom will slope off home for a crafty spliff or three.

God, doncha' just hate 'em all!

"A bloody good walloping!"

If anything proves what a soppy-soft, feminised collection of limp-wristed pansies we've become, the re-action to the video showing British 'Toms' giving some Iraqi rioters a good kicking proves it beyond dispute.  For goodness sake, that was hardly the Amritsar massacre!  In my basic training I received the odd thump or two, and knocking six bells out of prisoners was what we used to do on exercises!  I still remember an Indian superintendent of police in Singapore bemoaning the passing of the British on the grounds that in the "good old days we could give the scallawags a bloody good walloping".  No doubt, as soon as Andrew Bartlett has taken his smelling salts and Meaders has recovered from his fainting fit, they'll both be bleating about 'cruel and unusual punishment'.  And to crown this smelly pile of hypocricy, 'lenin', who admires a mass murderer so much he actually uses his name, will probably write several thousand words on the subject (has anyone else noticed how tediously prolix he has become recently, never uses one word where several hundred will do - and all of it rubbish!)

Shaken not stirred!

You may have been mystified by the comment left on the post below by 'Andy M' from 'The World of Barmcake'.  Allow me to explain.  Honest fellow that he is, he has owned up to advancing years and the onset of middle-age.  True, his confession was more implicit than explicit but it was there, plain for all to see, and expressed in these dread words, "I've recently discovered gin"!  In my experience the delight of gin is rarely discovered by the young and when it is, they commit the atrocity of smothering it with tonic water and then watering it down with melting ice cubes.  There is a dying breed, and I do mean 'dying', because they are now exceedingly ancient, who swear that gin can only be savoured at its best with the merest dash of angastura bitters, the famous 'pink gin'.  They may be right, but happily, I'm not quite that old!  So for me, and a few, fellow aficionados, the supreme flavour of gin is best appreciated when it comes in the form of the classic 'dry martini'.  (The fact that James Bond drinks vodka martinis, whether shaken or stirred is irrelevant, merely confirms what we have all suspected for some time, that he is not quite a gentleman.)

I am now going to share with you what I previously told 'Andy M' - the recipe for the perfect martini.  First the ingredients.  Only ever use Gordon's gin and French Noilly Prat.  Take a medium sized jug, and almost fill it to the top with gin.  Take the Noilly and whilst looking away splash a dash into the gin (looking away ensures that only a smidgeon of Noilly goes in!)  Stir, and then place the jug in the deep freeze.  Gordon's never freezes, so when you take it out the next day you have an ice-cold martini.  Take a sliver of lemon peel (too much and it over-flavours the drink) and give the inside of the glass a quick wipe with it.  Incidentally, treat yourself to a proper martini glass.  For absolute perfection, place the glass in the fridge some time before drinking so that it, too, is cold.  Pour in the cocktail which should appear as oily as nitro-glycerine because of its extreme coldness.  Last but not least, the drinking instructions: SIP don't SLURP !  It not only looks like nitro-glycerine, it re-acts like it, too - you have been warned!  You now have the greatest aperitif ever invented, ice-cold from the freezer, undiluted by any melting ice with the full flavour of gin, gently mixed with the complexities of Noilly Prat and the merest hint of lemon.

Should you be caught short by friends arriving and insisting on some more of those delicious dry martinis they had the other night, here is the way to produce an instant cocktail that will just about pass muster.  Take a large jug and fill it to the brim with ice cubes.  Pour the required amount of gin and Noilly slowly over the ice so that on its way to the bottom it is chilled by its passage over the surface of the ice.  Immediately pour the mixture either into another jug (which you will have previously cooled down by placing ice cubes in it) or straight into people's glasses with a twist of lemon.  The important thing is not to allow the cocktail to remain in proximity to the ice which will melt and ruin the flavour.

There you are, mes enfants, and remember, the path to hell is paved with good intentions and good gin!

(There was a story of a new York bar where, if you ordered a dry martini cocktail, the barman would ask whether you wanted it, "Dry, or dry-dry?"  Having chosen, he would simply ice down the gin, as described above, and then produced one of those old-fashioned lady's perfume sprays which contained the Noilly and you would receive either one or two squirts depending on how dry you wanted it!)

"My Dear Reggie ..."

The 'little Memsahib' cut up rough today, amazing what vituperation can emanate from such a tiny body, so I was forced to 'tidy up, you useless specimen of humanity, wasting your time writing rubbish for other idiots to ignore whilst this room looks like a pigsty but then again you always have been a pig ...' and so on!  Being an orthodox coward I immediately began hoovering and dusting and shuffling the tons of paper on my desk.  It was worth it because at the bottom of one pile I came across a photo-copy of a document recently released under the Freedom of Information Act from the Public Records office which a friend had sent to me some time ago.  It is written on the headed note-paper of H. M. EMBASSY, MOSCOW and is dated 6th April 1943 and addressed to Lord Pembroke, The Foreign Office, London.  It reads as follows:

My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven.  My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God, I do, all the light I can get.  But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time.  So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards.  It takes a Turk to do that.

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr,

H.M. Ambassador"

Dr. Rooksby, I presume?

Come on, own up, there's nothing quite so deeply and satisfyingly pleasurable as a nice dollop of schadenfreude, is there?  One of my particular favourites is when Lefties start moaning about the Inland Revenue, so you can imagine my smirking smugness watching Jez grizzle into his blog on the iniquities of the tax system which he had the cheek to title "Take pity on me"!  What does not appear to have occurred to Jez is the certainty that if this is the sort of bugger's muddle they get into just collecting our money, think what a shambles it must be when they come round to spending it.

One area of government spending that needs looking at, but not for more than about 5-seconds before cutting it by approximately 85%, is what is laughingly known as 'higher education' - (stop giggling at the back, boy, or you'll have a 100-lines)!  Happily, and sometimes when I think of it I am convinced there is a God, I never went to university.  If I ever doubted my good fortune, my short experience in 'blogdom', where for the first time in my life I came into regular contact with the alumni of our universities, I am now utterly convinced.

If ever you have suspected that your tax money is being wasted consider some of the so-called 'swots' who litter and loiter around the web.  I am tempted to point the finger at 'Larry Teabag' whose witless, scatological ravings are the result, presumably, of several hundred thousand pounds worth of 'higher education'.  It makes you wonder what 'lower education' produces but you can see that for yourself if you're brave enough to skip through the vomit in your local High Street on a Saturday night.  Anyway, 'Larry' has a Doctorate in Sums and so doesn't really count - no pun intended - so I must point in another direction.

Consider, if you will, Mr. 'Ed' Rooksby.  I don't think he is Dr. Rooksby yet but it's only a matter of time.  I am not altogether sure which particular subject he is receiving instruction in except that it is in the Humanities and that, anyway, such instruction is entirely irrelevant because 'Ed' views the entire world with a fixed, not to say, rigid, stare through Marxist spectacles.  His mind is so narrow you could shine a laser beam through it.  Faced with any notion outside of his Marxist/Trotskyist dogma and he is reduced to the final, ignominious re-action of the truly infantile - he swears!  Lest you doubt me, I here reproduce a recent exchange on his 'blog', from which, technically-speaking, I am banned for a former infringement on the cloister of what passes for his mind, and I leave it to you to judge and to ask whether you are convinced of the efficacy of a university 'education' - (I told you to stop laughing, boy!)   

"Nazi Fucktoads Walk Free

Er, don't you mean "Innocent Nazi Fucktoads Walk Free"? Just asking! David Duff | Homepage | 02.02.06 - 2:41 pm | #

You couldn't be more pleased could you? Ed | Homepage | 02.02.06 - 3:56 pm | #

Actually, you are both right and wrong. Yes, I'm pleased that a jury has blown out a legal travesty that was both ridiculous and sinister - and even more sinister now that the government has decided to have yet another bite at the cherry. No, I'm not happy that Mr. Griffin and his despicable henchmen haven't yet caught Asian 'flu which would be the sort of delicious irony that I relish. Oh, and I'm also happy that the thugs of the SWP who attempted to pervert the course of justice by calling for mob demos outside the court were given *their* just deserts by this jury. (Hang on, I shouldn't be here, I've just remembered, I was sent to a Gulag!) David Duff | Homepage | 02.02.06 - 5:20 pm | #

Fuck off Duff you arsehole. Ed | Homepage | 02.03.06 - 10:07 am | # "

Yeeees, Dr. Rooksby, a very fine piece of reasoned argument!