DUFF & NONSENSE!

"Try and look on the bright side of life, de-da, de-da, de-da-de-da-de-da!

I seem to have been tripping over depressives recently.  First, there was the 'Happy Feminist - not', but who is at least more cheerful now since she whacked me with her handbag.  Then there was the 'Bondbloke' who belies his macho nom-de-keyboard by appearing to be utterly feeble if anyone criticises his rotten non-poetry.  So I am doubly grateful to that 'Newky tyke', Will, for finding this obituary which is, I'm afraid to say, as hilarious as it is sad.  If you're feeling low, read this and cheer yourself up!

The HAFs and the HAFs not!

Four posts down I pointed to the danger that lurks beneath the surface of the horror stories invented and promoted, for political reasons, by HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics).  Like virtually all contemporary mass-movements HAFs are a mixture of the naive, the lonely, the pig-ignorant, the socially inadequate, the corrupt and so on, with a leadership that contains a core of hard-eyed 'Trots' with a very clear agenda - or at least, very clear to them!  In the comments, a Mr. 'Barry Bananas' (whose nom-de-keyboard is, I suspect, a Freudian slip) took me to task for lacking scientific knowledge which was somewhat redundant because I had admitted as much almost from the beginning.  To rectify my ignorance, and as a service to undecided readers, I offered this link which is worth looking at:

http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Greenland,%20Iceland,%20northern%20Norway,%20and%20the%20Arctic%20Ocean

If, like me, you have a fear of mathematics (Mathemaphobia? Quick, send for a counsellor!) then you will find graphs easier to take in at a glance (although it is precisely this facility of graphs that needs to be treated with caution).  These graphs show annual temperatures from weather stations (mostly non-urban) all round the globe.  The ones to check first are the polar or sub-polar stations because if disaster is just around the corner, these are the places you will see the first signs.  Well, I've checked a few at random and I think a fair summary is that some are up, some are down, but virtually none of them are as 'up' or 'down' as they have been earlier in the 20th century.  Not so much a case of lying awake waiting for the second shoe to hit the floor, as waiting for any shoe to hit the floor!

Even so, like me, you may be interested in what is the prime cause of fluctuations in global temperatures.  The answer is, mysteriously, the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI).  This number is "derived by comparing air pressure at sea level between Darwin and Tahiti" (see link).  The differences are known as the El Nino and the La Nina effects in which the Pacific alternately heats and cools and disturbs temperatures and weather systems all round the world.  The cause of the Pacific variations are unclear but the finger of suspicion points to solar activity.

I trust all of that plus the links are sufficiently 'scientific' for Mr. 'Bananas'!  But, I hear him cry (or if it isn't him it will be that Nit-Picker in Residence, 'NIB') why should I accept one scientific theory over the vast majority of the scientific world which says the opposite.  The answer is simple, in both senses of the word, I suppose, in that it rests on an old adage: you shall a know a man by the company he keeps.  I can, metaphorically, spot a Trot at twenty paces and were I in any doubt as to their malign influence in this field, a quick read of the essay by 'Ed the Ignorant of York' dated 21st Sep would be enough to settle the matter.

From now on, dear reader, whenever you read or hear anything from 'Enemies of the Earth', 'Green War', or their ilk, just believe the opposite!

'HMS Darbyshire, sails full, guns blazing!'

When it comes to 'shock 'n' awe' attacks that nice uncle 'Rummie' in the Pentagon has nothing on Leah Darbyshire when she sails forth, guns blazing in all directions, in a post entitled "Attacks Answered".  Her motto, 'Fear Leah!', is well and truly earned.  I did venture a tremulous response, as follows:

"I did indeed mis-call your dog 'Yucki' instead of 'Yishi' and I trust his feelings were not too badly bruised but of course, it was never aimed at the dog, only at the, shall we say, overly gushing and sentimental description you gave of him.  Please give him a Boneo from me!

Alas, I have never deliberately peaked at your bikini shots although I did skim through *some* of your photo album - alas, not all, but you know how it is with other people's holiday snaps; too, too tedious! - and I couldn't help wondering at your frequently repeated stance, whilst having your picture taken, of crossing one leg over the other whilst standing.  However, you chose not to publish my query as to how that came about. [I commented at the time, wondering if it was a new, Chinese method of hop-scotch, but alas, received no reply.]

I deny *absolutely* ever accusing you of being over-weight!  I would never be so ungallant, and I wouldn't dare lest the little 'Memsahib caught me out and used me for karate practise again.  However, I did wonder, from what I admitted was a position of minuscule expertise in ladies' fashions, whether *white* high-heels were quite the thing to go with a little black number, and I did remember vaguely that such an accoutrement had originated in Essex - splendid county and I won't have a word said against its ladies!  [Am I right or wrong?  White shoes, black dress?  The picture is at the top of her preceding post.]

My admiration for you, now that I know you have left for ever those unspeakable receivers of stolen money, the il-Lib-non-Dems, is boundless.  At least 376 of those 'hits' you receive come from me, your ardent admirer, David Duff."

Leah claims, correctly, that her site has been placed recently in the top 100 political blogs by a Tory, Mr. Ian Dale, who must be a particularly dim 'Cameroon', because I have failed to read a single word of politics on her blog, if one doesn't count the odd screech about the il-Lib-non-Dems from which she wisely resigned long before her reputation could be sullied by association with receivers of stolen moolah! 

So, it is no wonder that Leah is confused and that she bleats so modestly, "Honestly, I just don't get the fascination with us."  No, dear, you don't and perhaps it's best it stays that way!

"Why I'm a Left libertarian"

No, no, not me, perish the thought!  It's Chris Dillow from 'Stumbling and Mumbling' in a post with that title.  I can appreciate some of his reasons but best of all I liked the good sense in his final sentence: "Rationality, then, isn't the cause of my political beliefs. And I doubt it's the cause of anyone else's."  How very true!

The loonies are running the asylum

I am obliged to Peter Briffa and his always witty and sharp blog for pointing me to this article in The Guardian in which Mark Oaten reveals rather more about himself than he realises.  Many years ago when I was a subscriber to The Spectator I used to read and enjoy Auberon Waugh's vitriolic descriptions of the scabrous denizens of Westminster whilst assuming that he was exaggerating for the sake of a good essay.  It was only gradually that I realised that he was deadly serious and meant every word.  Members of Parliament are, on the whole, deeply peculiar people, definitely not the sort of people you would wish to entertain in your own home and, as Mr. Oaten, himself, proves, very definitely not the sort of people you would want to marry your daughter!

Who else but a psychiatric and social inadequate could spend a lifetime struggling, creeping, betraying and lying to stay in a 'profession' in which, to quote Oaten, himself, "... politics isn't a place where you achieve anything. You go through the motions, you sit with the pressure groups and say things like, 'Oh, we'll table an early day motion, we'll meet with the minister.' But, actually, it's like pushing a stone up a mountain. Once you've realised that getting things done around that place is nigh on impossible, your busy little mind turns to something else."  But the horrifying thought is that actually politics is the place where things get done, if you are, by a sheer fluke, one of the lucky monkeys who actually reaches the top of the greasy pole.  The thought that they are all more or less like Oaten is not a thought upon which I wish to dwell.  Pass the Laphroaig!

On Picking the Right Emergency In Order to Instal a Dictatorship

It is, of course, the Right who are normally accused by the Left of engineering emergencies for the sole purpose of seizing our cherished liberties, or at any rate, those few still remaining.  Such suspicions, kept within the sort of moderation that is beyond the capability of the rabid Left, are probably rather sensible but it is worth reminding ourselves that this sort of sly insinuation of Dictatorship for the Greater Good by the Great and Good is not confined to neo-Nazis of the Right.  Their comrades (and they are comrades, believe me!) in the Fascist Left are equally adept at the tactic.

Read, especially if you are not sleeping well, Ed Rooksby's post entitled "Doom, Downturn and Doubt".  Ed Rooksby is a rarity for a member of the 'Trot-lot' creche in that he lacks that nasty, brutish, snarling face of hatred that is all too apparent with the likes of 'lenin', 'Meaders, 'BionOc' and the rest of the species.  He tries from time to time but it never quite works, and every so often a tiny gleam of doubt shines through his witterings so that you just know that 'come the revolution', poor old Ed will collect the bullet in the back of the head even before old re-actionaries like me.  Ed's problem is that he is rather dim despite (or because of) the fact that he is studying for a Ph.D.  (Regular readers will know at first-hand from this blog's comments that being a Ph.D. is no bar to the ability to spout nonsense!) 

Anyway, Ed, in the innocent way of so many academics, has swallowed whole the lying propoganda (I use the words deliberately) of the 'Hot Air Fanatics' (HAFs), such as 'Greenwar' and 'Enemies of the Earth', who tell us continually that 'The End of the World is Nigh'.  I call them Hot Air Fanatics because not a little of the reason for the earth warming is due to the hot air they expel from every orifice on a non-stop basis.  Before sundry Doctors Emeritus chip in to prove definitely and unanswerably and usually at great length that indeed the earth is warming, let me state clearly that I am absolutely convinced that the temperature is changing for the simple reason that it has always changed since it was created.  Whether it is warming or cooling, I know not, and there has to be some doubt because I can still remember the time - 40-years ago? - when the experts told us to expect a new ice-age.  The fact that a 180-degree discrepancy has already occurred within my lifetime leads me to doubt the efficacy of all these mad ideas intended to curb warming just as we might be about to go into a deep freeze!

However, let us suppose that the HAFs are right and that the global temperature is increasing.  Two questions arise immediately; what should we do about it and, more to the point, should we do anything about it at all?  I must asume that, dim or not, Ed Rooksby is conversant with what passes for thinking in HAF circles and that in his resume he is regurgitating their ideas which seem to me to be the stuff of nightmares.  What Rooksby suggests is dictatorship, no more, no less.  A command state that will enable and empower legions of un-civil masters to boss even the smallest items in our lives.  (If, dear reader, like me, you live under a council regime that has just issued pages of edicts in relation to the correct use of the multiple waste bins they have issued, and dire threats if they are mis-used and you find this intolerable then, to quote the greatest president of the 20th c., "You ain't seen nuthin' yet" if Rooksby and the HAFs get their way.

If that is the cure then I can only say that it is worse than the imagined disease.  I would rather go out in a blaze of conspicuous consumption than live a minute under the HAF autocracy.  It is yet another indication of Rooksby's peurility that despite all the evidence that hits the headlines on an almost daily basis demonstrating the incompetence and the complete incapacity of our un-civil servants to organise anything from a Dome to a terrorist disaster, he wishes to put his trust for the future of our planet in their hands.  One is entitled to ask what on earth they actually teach at York University?

But of course, whilst Rooksby and his ilk are the "useful idiots" of the movement, behind them are some very clever people indeed.  They will use this earth-warming scare to introduce the sort of Marxist state planning that they dream of.  One of the reasons why George Bush is such a good president is that he blew that criminal Kyoto treaty out of the water.  Let us hope his successor has similar strength of purpose.

He's back and playing a blinder!

Blind-winger Jones is rather like one of those radio stations that only operate on the medium wave so that at night their signal fades into a mush and then suddenly booms out at full volume.   Well, he's been dead since the 27th Battle of Ypres so it's only to be expected.  Anyway, he's back in full volume again and just as funny, particularly his post entitled "Australia mourns the death of a hero".  Read him and cheer yourselves up!

Feminicely or feminasty?

I have been frolicking with the ladies.  Not last week, of course, because I was fully involved with my smash-hit, long-running production of Ghosts which actually ran, er, one week.  No, it was before that that I indulged in some frolicking which, alas, at my age only means pestering some wretched women on their blog-sites, here and here.  The first, an American, posts under the name The Happy Feminist which, were she British, would make her actionable under the Trade Descriptions Act!  At first glance she appears quite normal in a breezy, bossy, humourless sort of way (well, she's an American woman and a lawyer, to boot!) but closer reading reveals that she is totally and unutterably miserable.  She has self-obsession the way some people have bad breath, it is all-enveloping.  She recently wrote a long, long post on her father which constituted the most virulent, personal attack I have ever had the pleasure of reading and in which she accused the poor sap of suffering with 'narcissistic personality disorder'.  In her next post this frantic woman who has raised 'me, me, me' to the level of an ideology proudly boasted that she had placed herself in therapy.  When I pointed out gently that in view of the fact, apparent to any disinterested outsider, that she was already pathologically self-obsessed, and that spending several hours on a couch talking about herself to some charlatan was hardly likely to help, I was banned!  Needless to say, the Sisterhood rushed to congratulate her on her 'courage'(?) for taking this bold step into the mumbo-jumbo-land of psychiatry.  Mind you, with very few exceptions all of her commenters, including the men, were 'an ego short of an id'!

The other feminist site in which I frolicked belongs to a pair of Brit bird-brains whose political theories could be, and frequently are, written on placards because they are unlikely to need any more space.  Their ignorance is compounded by their arrogance, in which condition they cannot see the mirth-inducing silliness of their social stance.  For example, when their oft-trumpeted feminist principles actually collided with their 'right-on', 'let-it-happen' libertarianism, as occurred on the subject of pornography they ended up standing on their silly heads.  I pointed out that the pornography industry induces stupid, greedy, young girls to copulate for the profits of the men who run the industry and the titillation of those who watch it and must surely be a prime target for anyone supporting feminist principles.  But these two latter-day Pankhursts would have none of it lest their free-wheeling comrades thought they had caught morality - a deadly virus in 'Trot-lot' circles!  Instead, they seriously proposed that it was perfectly alright for young girls to be stripped and degraded, physically and mentally - so long as they were allowed to carry a union card!

Well, you might say that it is grossly unfair to judge an entire movement by just a few of its adherents.  True, but the feminist commenters seem to be in total agreement with all this nonsense.  Anyway, it leads to a more important question: what is feminism for?  What, in the western world in the 21st century is its purpose?  You might suppose that it is to take the fight to foreign lands and free the women there.  Going abroad and bossing the natives around used to be called 'imperialism' and was rather frowned upon in Left-wing circles.  Perhaps it still is because apart from one or two desultory references, a sort of Sapphic lip-service one might call it, it never seems very high on the priorities of western feminists as exampled in 'Blogdom'.   Quite the opposite, they seem totally immersed in their own perceived grievances which in this day and age are petty beyond belief.  The Great Feminist War was won long ago.  Of course, there might be the odd outpost of male chauvinism hiding out (and if they've got any sense they'll make sure they're well hidden) here and there but nothing to get worked up about.  Modern feminists are like victorious soldiers crossing the battle field and kicking the corpses!

The Marxists have it partly right (in this and other things) in saying that the 'personal is political'.  They are right, I think, in the psychological sense, that those women who nurse personal grievances probably from childhood, like the 'The Un-Happy Feminist above', are likely to take up daft ideas and take them to extremes.  There are, it seems to me, two types of feminists.  There are the mad, bad and dangerous to know ones who I call 'feminasties'; and there are the sensible, humorous, confident women, comfortable in their feminine skins who I call 'feminicelies'.

Because I'm short of time ...

... I thought I would link to this (courtesy of The Flying Rodent via Dr. Teabag) because it made me smile whilst, like the very best cartoons, it contained more than a grain of truth.

Back next week.

Ghosts - The Finale!

Well, not quite, but we have completed the first four performances and on Thursday we begin the final four.  By midday on Sunday, four months of work, and a terrific set that drew spontaneous applause, will have disappeared "And these our actors/ As I foretold you, were all spirits, and/ Are melted into air, into thin air/ [... and] Leave not a wrack behind."  Why do I do it?!

Anyway, I am very grateful and touched by your good wishes.  It has gone well.  As usual I am racked by doubts about how I handled it all and irritated by what seem to me now, having watched four performances, to be very obvious faults and errors.  As I once heard a nervous actress exclaim in a dressing-room 5 minutes before 'Beginners', "Do other people have a hobby that makes them feel sick?"

I can't say I warm to Ibsen any more than when I began.  The play is brilliant theatre despite being the grimmest of grim tragedies.  I admire it with an almost sick fascination, somewhat similar to watching one of those Leni Riefenstahl documentaries which are beautifully filmed until you remember what it is they extol.  There is some wry humour in it for me when I realise that feminists consider Ibsen to be a hero and his fictional heroines to be icons of the women's liberation movement.  The fact is, of course, that the nasty, old brute didn't give a fig for women's liberation (or anything else come to that), all he was concerned with was to pull down and destroy the prevailing society.  Needless to say, well it would be needless if some feminists weren't so dim, he treated his own women abominably.  As he himself put it, and I paraphrase, 'as soon as the mob reach where I am now, I will already have moved on!'.

I also enjoyed some sardonic humour at the expense of part of my 'post-modernist' audience, particularly the younger members, who indulged in snorts of derision at the sentiments and precepts thundered out by Pastor Manders, Ibsen's villain of the piece.  These sentiments, in a different context would be wholly admirable and humane but, of course, Ibsen, the clever Goebbels to Nietzsche's insane ramblings, spins them on their axis and makes them sound despicable.

And next - Hamlet.  (Oh, my God!)

My feminist tract will appear next week, so stay tuned!

Back soon ...

Sorry for the absence of posts.  My show has opened and I am somewhat pre-occupied and spending a lot of time away from home.

However, I have two posts simmering (festering?) at the back of my mind on the difficulty of deciding who are the silliest sillies in the world, socialists or feminists.  I might get one of them posted on Wednesday if the little 'Memsahib' doesn't produce too long a list of outstanding jobs to be done, otherwise it will be next week.

In any case, thank you to those regulars who check in so faithfully to 'Duff & Nonsense'.

"Like a scurvy politician" - or six!

A hasty thought due to current pressures - play to produce, actors to bollock, tantrums to be thrown, you know how it is with us 'luvvies' - but I hear that an assortment of six junior bag-carriers and bottie-wipers have resigned from their prestigious(?) posts in the government.  Was this a matter of deep principle brought about by honourable disagreements over social policy, or education, or Europe, or  'the War on Terror'? Do me a favour!  The only principle they might have heard of is Victoria Principal.  No, these political poltroons have resigned because their party leader is taking his time before stepping down and thus they hope to curry favour with who-ever gets the top job.  When I think of the number of incidents in the career of  Tony ('Hey, I'm a pretty straight sort of a guy') Blair that might, and indeed, should, have brought about mass resignations from his party and compare them to those offered by this collection of snivelling deserters, I realise why I despise politicians. 

Blair, for all his faults, and they are manifold, has led the Labour party to an unprecedented length of time in office.  You would think these political pip-squeaks might at least have a modicum of loyalty to a leader who helped keep their greasy bottoms on the equally greasy seats of Westminster, but 'loyalty' is another of those words which spew forth constantly from the lips of politicians accompanied by a huge nudge and a wink.

Even so, I remind myself of my own words, "In a democracy you get the politicians you deserve."  Well, at least I haven't voted in years - so what's your excuse!

Additional: Kirk Elder says it all much more wittily than me and uses Lear quotations better, too.

Yeees, but would you have them to dinner?

I am obliged to Stephen Pollard for pointing up this obscure news item which reports that a panel of  "experts"(?) have, at the behest of The Independent, chosen a list of 50 individuals who they believe to be "motivated by an 'ethical' dimension" - whatever that may be - but which they describe as 'goodness'!  I must confess, being a country bumpkin of lowly social connections I am unacquainted with any of them personally, and indeed, I have not even heard of many of them.  One should not judge a man or woman by their occupation, not least because my own cv, ex-squaddie, ex second-hand car-dealer, is less than inspiring; but alas, we're all human and the list of activities attached to these people is of such a nature that I can feel my synapses slamming shut at the mere mention.  My general antipathy is enforced by my personal opinion that several of these individuals are actually exceedingly wicked.  In addition, I suspect that even more of them are A1 crashers of the the most tedious kind whose one-way conversation, or harangue, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment on any unfortunate recipient.

So, I have two questions and a solution.  First, why would anyone buy a newspaper as obviously silly as The Independent, and second, would you have any of these people to dinner?  My answer to the second is 'no' but my solution is to send them to the Darbyshires because I feel, as my vicar might put it, 'in a very real way' they deserve each other.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, Muslim leader

Andrew Linzey, animal rights moralist

Anne Owers, HM Inspector of Prisons

Benjamin Zephaniah, poet

Bob Geldof, poverty campaigner

Bob Holman, community worker

Bruce Kent, peace activist

Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company

Chris Patten, politician

Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer

David Attenborough, television naturalist

Donald Findlater, pioneer in paedophile treatment

Gareth Peirce, solicitor

Gee Walker, mother

Gordon Conway, ecologist

Indarjit Singh, Sikh leader

Jean Vanier, disabled campaigner

Jill Pitkeathley, careers' campaigner

John Bell, peace activist and hymn-writer

John Harris, bio-ethicist

John Houghton, meteorologist

John Sulston, scientist

Jon Snow, broadcaster

Jonathon Porritt, environmentalist

Justin Forsyth, poverty strategist

Ken Loach, filmmaker

Ken Newell and Gerry Reynolds, Northern Ireland peace activists

Kevin Watkins, anti-poverty researcher

Laurie Pycroft, animal testing campaigner

Lionel Blue, rabbi

Mark Malloch Brown, UN official

Martin Dent and Bill Peters, debt campaigners

Mohammed Mamdani, founder of the Muslim Youth Helpline

Niall Fitzgerald, businessman

Nick Hargreaves, refugees campaigner

Ann Pettifor, debt campaigner

Peter Tatchell, gay rights campaigner

Phil Sumner, community worker

Philip Pullman, children's writer

Richard Adams, fair trade pioneer

Richard Curtis, comedy scriptwriter and global campaigner

Richard Harries, moralist

Robert Chambers, anti-poverty thinker

Shami Chakrabarti, civil rights campaigner, director of Liberty

Sheila Cassidy, palliative care pioneer

Shirley Williams, politician

Sister Frances Dominica, founder of the Helen House hospice

Tariq Ramadan, Islamic reformer

Timothy Radcliffe, Dominican friar

Tom Shakespeare, disability activist