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Turkey's democratic dusk

There is an interesting article in New Europe about "Turkey's democratic dusk". The media is being controlled and military officers and others who have defended the secular Kemelist tradition have been arrested on trumped up charges.

Increasingly the state is controlled by Gulenists, followers of the "moderate" Islamist Ferthullah Gulen, who are finding their way into important positions of power in the government, the police, the judiciary, the military and the security services. Even more worryingly, children are being targetted in schools and indoctrinated in the need for Islamic law and this is not just happening in Turkey but in the more secular Muslim countries and in non Muslim countries - this is a worldwide movement which presents itself as moderate but seeks to establish Sharia.

Check Gulen's comments on human rights here. This is a man who sees rights as being defined by the Qur'an, who dismisses consideration of all other views on how they should be defined by saying that it is not possible to talk about them with those who have no faith in God, stating that they do not show respect for truth and even implying that they are following the example of Satan. Are his views and the contempt he displays for those of non Muslims really compatible with a rational, secular democracy that treats all citizens equally? Is he even being honest in his so-called tolerance? According to that 2nd link, in 1999 Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for a Turkey ruled by Sharia:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

Both the Dutch authorities and the FBI are looking into the activities of this group, including connections to radical or terrorist organisations. There are clear problems for Western leaders in breaking links with what was once a major political and military ally but at least the way Turkey is moving away from democracy towards an increasingly authoritarian Islamic state does not seem to have entirely escaped their notice. Just maybe they will have reservations about letting it into the EU.

On the other hand, our rulers are total fucking idiots who usually fail to grasp obvious facts, for example, that a common currency between very different economies could not work, that the war in Afganistan was not winnable or that the Arab "Spring" would be nothing of the sort, so we do not hold out that much hope.

Dream

Dreams often reflects the experiences of the day or perhaps a news story or TV program. After seeing a bit of Childen in Need the other night we had a dream about taking children up in a flying transparent cylinder and dropping them at random in peoples' gardens. When we woke up we were convinced it was a great solution to the problem of children in care who are difficult to place with foster parents.

Our much more logical waking self feels it needs a minor modification in that the worst kids, the ones who are clearly going to be the next generation of criminals, are dropped into volcanoes instead. Otherwise, it's a great idea.

Whoops, racist assumption right again

Read the headline here about cat coursing, used to train dogs for dog fighting, and thought "the Midlands or Lancashire will probably feature prominently". Oh dear, right again. That news is in The Daily Mail so must be wrong according to the lefty mantra. What does the liberal lefty BBC say about dog fighting in the Midlands? Oh dear:

Ian Briggs, chief inspector of the RSPCA's Special Operations Unit said dog-fighting is up 400% in the past three years in the UK.

"Out of all the work we do 98% is Asian".

...
Dog fighting is part of life in rural Punjab and Kashmir and there are fears that its acceptability could be increasing among a new generation of young Asians in the UK aware of fathers, uncles and cousins attending dog fights in Pakistan.

This long banned "sport" is not just one of Pakistanis as the extent of it in Scotland and some other areas indicates. However, there is no doubt that this is an issue, along with others that most would regard as more important like female equality or freedom of religion, where immigration has contributed significantly to a rise in unnacceptable attitudes and practices that we spent centuries trying to eliminate.

When we take in people from backward nations without adequate checks, let them refuse to integrate fully and allow them to retain strong cultural links with their countries of origin it is hardly surprising that we import backward views. Not PC to say it of course but this is an observable truth and acceptance of it, "racist" or not, leads to suprisingly accurate assumptions.

Well done

We at bloggoth have previously provided many great tips towards getting the important things of life as cheaply as possible, such as here, here, here or here. What is more important for a lady (ok, us) than a huge bottom? According to this news item a fake doctor used cement, super glue, mineral oil and tyre sealant to give himself/herself/itself and another person gigantic arses. Naturally we at bloggoth heartily approve of him/her/whatever. We don't really care about someone's gender when he/she/it has an anormous arse as we would never bother to look round the front anyway.

Let's see, got an old bag of cement and the van's engine oil needs changing. Tyre sealant and superglue are a bit expensive but got a bicycle pump and some sellotape, sorted! Oh missus xoggoth? Got a present for you! On the other hand, a bum made of cement, especially given that we might go overboard a bit, may have some downsides.

Cows

Another great sunny footpath jogging day. A problem round here is that most of the farms are cattle farms, so you are often gingerly picking your way through fields full of bulls or skittish bullocks, ducking under electric fences or wading ankle deep in manure.

That cow pooy footpath today was a nightmare. Just wait until we at bloggoth get our parish path inspector's certificate next week, then he's in for it! Ooh! Just imagine the JOY of issuing a Schedule D (x1) Notice in accordance with sub section J (2) of the Public Rights of Way Act (1998) Amendment 4 requiring it to be cleaned up.

Trouble is, we've met the couple from that farm and they are very pleasant. Funny how you volunteer for things thinking it might be fun and interesting and immediately find yourself in a minor dilemma. To report the poo or not to report the poo? Nah! We at bloggoth have already issued an Exemption under Section J Clause 4(iii) of the bloggoth Ignoring Rules When We Feel Like It act.

This week's article that we at bloggoth would have written had we been arsed to do so

Social progress

We at bloggoth had a dream with a black guy in it last night and naturally we are very pleased. Do others have multi ethnic dreams that properly reflect our exciting rich culture? We certainly hope so.

It is surely high time that the government required everyone (ie the white British) to don brain monitoring equipment at night so they can ensure that all dreams are properly inclusive. Anyone who has dreams that fail to reflect the nature of our splendidly vibrant society in an entirely positive way would have to report for correction.

Yeh

No idea what this sort of heavy beat music(?) is called but love it. Great words too. Stretch me, bite me, kiss my ass...

PS It's Industrial Splatter Porno Pop apparently.

More

Like father, unlike son

Hate the principle of royalty but have always quite liked the Duke of Edinburgh. Another bit of sense from him here, Wind farms are useless. Quite. On the other hand his eldest son, The Prince Of Daftness is an irrational fucking idiot.

Hugging - yuck!

People have been queueing to be hugged by this lady. Being hugged is supposed to release a hormone, Oxytocin that has a calming effect on the brain and increases empathy. Some people seem to hug everyone they meet. We at bloggoth cannot stand being hugged. Being hugged by anyone except the missus bloggoth and, er, well, no, only missus bloggoth obviously, results in release of huge quantities of carbolic acid and creosote, we could use our blood to treat a fence after being hugged. Why would any man want to be hugged by anyone except a lady when there was a possible bonk going?

Maybe we are lacking in some essential social programming here to our own detriment. If only there was something to encourage bonding with our fellow man that wasn't quite so personal. Perhaps other social animals have some better ideas. What would monkeys do?

Ah yes. Picking off and eating each other's fleas. That's more like it, not just about bonding but practical too and you don't have the embarrassment of having to look at the other person. If I could just lie on my stomach while somebody fumbled around with my bottom I think I could quite enjoy social bonding. Maybe it's a variation that nice Hindu lady should consider.

The unrecognised genius of our "unemployable" yoof

In the wake of the announcement of huge levels of youth unemployment we have had more reports in the usual papers that British youth, unlike our wonderful immigrants, lack the right work ethic. They would rather stay at home on welfare and play computer games.

On the other hand, with a bit of imagination, this attitude could be used to our advantage. Perhaps the UK can lead the way into a new golden age of industry and commerce. Why not use the power of computing to create a virtual reality that controls a, erm, real reality and harness the decision making skills of gamers to enact real life decisions in the workplace or use their fast reactions to build things quickly? Maybe choice of powers, skills and weapons of your games characters could be linked to real data, making sound choices over whether to grant a morgtage or decide treatment based on a patient's symptoms. Some games involve creation of a virtual worlds, so maybe the likes of Wimpey Homes could feed in real parameters and use the results as the outline plans for new housing estates.

In any case, our British yoof are going to come in really handy when the earth is invaded by dragons, aliens, demons from hell or monsters from another dimension. Who else will know how to tackle the threat? Not those hard working immigrants, that's for sure, nobody will be able to fight off the evil time lord Kanzoor using their shelf stacking skills. Who will have the last laugh then eh?

Never ending nightmare

What the hell do the locked in think about? The TV had an interview with someone who had been in that condition for many months but had made a full recovery. He reported that he had felt frustrated. Frustrated? I can’t imagine I would apply such a bland description because it would be the most terrifying experience it could be possible to have. It would be a nightmare, but one from which it would be impossible to wake.

I know this because every real nightmare I have ever had has been about just that, being trapped, unable to move, unable to escape from some small place, being totally helpless. So profound has been the effect of this occasional occurrence that when I have awoken the effects have stayed with me. In near panic I have had to get up and turn all the lights on, watch anything on TV or pace back and forward just to get back the feeling of reality and physical interaction with the world. It has sometimes been an hour before I have been able to go back to bed, turn out the light and lie still without the loss of those sensory stimuli starting the anxiety up again.

If you were locked in, how could you apply these remedies? How would your mind alone ever be able to stop the panic or avoid being overwhelmed by that overpowering feeling of unreality?

Going backwards

We were going to rant about the BBC cutting programs while still wasting licence payers' money on providing a news service to the world in umpteen languages but got totally diverted by some interesting technical points.

We all know Arabic is read from right to left but you have to select a block of webpage text backwards too. On this BBC Arabic page you have to start top right then move down/left rather than top left and down/right. That is also true if you paste it into notepad. It seems there are various fairly simple additions to HTML tags to implement right oriented pages (when the scroll bar appears at the left) and to reverse text on websites, although when we tried the latter on a paragraph here it didn't work.

Me? Do horrible Muslimy Arabic? Said the bloggoth page, not on your nelly! Quite right, bloggoth page, I don't know what I was thinking. This blog hasn't been the same since we lost the wise council of Mr Manky Sheep Skull. We suspect he may have been kidnapped by Al Qaeda.

PS We thought Google translate was much better than Yahoo babelfish but it's useless at Arabic. If using IE9, right click and use Translate with Bing, it's brill,the page appears in almost perfect English. Jeez! It's ten times as dull as the stuff the BBC feed us. Lots of old news about cartoons of the prophet. We recall reading somewhere that Arabs have no normal sense of now, maybe that's why some think their selective tales of Muslim tolerance in 13th century spain have any relevance to today.

Ramblings

The non existent reader will not have noticed but we at bloggoth like little creatures far more than crappy human beings. We were most saddened to find this very recently deceased pheasant today, cause of death unknown as it had no visible injuries, not even a feather out of place. The missus xoggoth collects feathers for her American Indian days but we could not bring ourselves to desecrate the little corpse. The first fox or badger to find it tonight will not be so respectful unfortunately.

And we accidentally destroyed a mouse's nest while tidying up a big pile of tree trimmings at the weekend. Sob! We are now planning to set up lots of little mouse homes made of old boxes under the shed by way of compensation. Was it planning a late crop of little meeces? According to this there is a second spring going on. While running in teashirt today we took several photos of freshly blooming wildflowers. Some branches I chucked on the bonfire pile three weeks ago have tiny new shoots on them. That's wierd! A bit like Anne Boleyn's head opening its eyes and asking what's for breakfast.

Elkie Brooks - Don't Cry Out Loud

This week's article that we at bloggoth would have written had we been arsed to do so

Public sector fraud

According to this, fraud by public sector workers is on the increase and these internal fraudsters now account for over 50% of the total. If cuts to their perks, early retirement and subsidised pensions goes ahead, especially if the cuts also reduce controls, we can assume this percentage will increase.

Awful! Something must be done. On the other hand, the missus bloggoth does keep pressing us to decorate the downstairs toilet.

Another hero

Not really into football but from now on Harry Redknap, who is facing trial for tax evasion can do no wrong and has automatically entered the bloggoth list of absolute heros. We hope his team, whoever they are, trample the rest of them, like er town, and um city and um and er, to win the trophy, league, cup or whatever it is that football teams play for.

More meaningless gestures

Those of us who bother to check out what Islam actually means for non Muslims throughout much of the Islamic world will know that extremist groups are merely the most extreme end of a creed whose principles mostly have no compatability with our own. What other creed has quite so many "untypical" extreme "minorities"? It needs tackling here before we become second class citizens in this country just as non Muslims are in most Islamic countries.

Yesterday we saw Muslims Against Crusades banned. A step in the right direction? No it isn't! This is a pointless gesture since they will soon pop up again under a new name. Restraints on free speech, unless it is an incitement to violence, are of no benefit to our society whether by extremist Muslims or by those who oppose them. It's a fine line; on the one hand, we don't want these people to stir up indiscriminate hatred that might spill over on to those Muslims who really don't want Shariah law. On the other hand, society is rarely well served by pretence and silencing this group makes it that much easier for some to perpetuate the cosy myth of tolerant Islam. On balance, given the ignorance that abounds about its true nature, these people were probably doing us all a favour by making some look at it a bit more closely.

We need effective actions, specifically, controlling our borders to ensure we get no more like this and ensuring that the young and impressionable are not infected with this nonsense in British schools, at universities and on the net. All we get from governments throughout Europe, as with full veil bans, is mere window dressing.

Update. Told you so

Gee, thanks

Where is all this mild sunny weather the South East was promised this week? We at bloggoth went to the gym earlier in the week on a moderately pleasant afternoon, having been told Friday would be even nicer. Now it's all grey and damp looking. What does the local weather forecast say? Hey! A bit of sun at 4pm! Great! Perhaps I can go for a jog after all!

As that's 18 minutes before sunset, maybe I'd better take a torch.

More sense from the unexpected quarter

Not for the first time that arch lefty Bob Crow has said something we agree with:

"From Siemens' involvement in the betrayal of Bombardier through to Deutsche Bahn taking over the UK's Grand Central franchise last week, EU diktat is driving a German corporate takeover of Britain's railways."

"Profits that could be invested in our services are instead spirited out of the country without touching the sides." "It is extraordinary that the German companies can't even be bothered to translate their safety instructions into English and instead UK rail workers have to take responsibility with these crash courses in O-level German."

From the perspective of the rest of us who have to foot the bill for public sector workers' perks or large salaries for those who, like tube drivers, are completely unecessary, lefty union leaders like Crow are a malignant force. As most of the bill has to be picked up by ordinary workers in the private sector who do not get these things themselves, it sure isn't socialism.

On the other hand, leaving aside the usual leftist hypocrisy, defending their own members is what union leaders are paid to do and perhaps Crow should also get some credit for defending British workers as opposed to internationalist ideals that benefit only big businesses.

Artwork is irreplaceable. On the other hand...

We have always thought that those who damage or steal irreplaceable artwork or historic artifacts deserve the severest punishments. In so far as there was one, the best justification for tackling the Taliban was their destruction of the Bamiyan Statues and many other Hindu artworks. Left to their own devices those miserable men, brainwashed from birth into probably the most malignant, joyless and irrational major creed the world has known, would have erased the cultural products of millenia to the detriment of the world.

On the other hand we have no particular concern about destruction of "artwork" that almost anyone could knock together from old bits and pieces in a day. Klippenberger was not talentless so one is suspicious that when he did put together stuff like that or this, it was a cynical act to profit from his reputation with minimal effort. Some modern art is awful but much is inspiring and requires real talent. Modern or traditional, figurative or abstract, one thing the Western art world has always had is immense variety, something to suit every taste.

Except the Taliban's obviously. To return to the original subject, if we don't tackle the growth of Islam at home, a visit to an art gallery could one day get a lot worse unless you like patterns or coloured calligraphy. Probably more inspiring to stay at home and stare at your Homebase wallpaper.

Yet again, the real left are much more sensible

As we have said before AACATFFAC * many of those who call themselves socialists in the West are nothing of the sort because socialism requires that nobody gets from others more than they need and that everyone should contribute according to their ability. If you check out the history of communist states (self styled socialist republics), these are principals that, bribery and corruption aside, have often been enforced pretty harshly.

Our pseudo lefties oppose measures like workfare, moving people out of social housing that is too big for their needs or in expensive areas that the employed cannot afford to live in. It may be, as with increased disability checks, that there can be valid concerns that need to be addressed but that does not justify total opposition to the principles. Perhaps those who oppose attempts to ensure that welfare goes only to those who really need it and who see them as measures by the nasty right should read what real communists say:

Also last night, the chairman of the supervisory board of China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, put further distance between China and the eurozone bail-out, saying that Europe’s bloated welfare state meant that people did not work hard enough.

"I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies", Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. "I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack."

*And Actually Could Be Arsed To Find For A Change

Hedgehogs and nice chaps and Queen

We like Queen even more now, knowing that the great guitarist Brian May is silly about little creatures. Looking after a brain damaged Hedgehog is the epitome of civilised behaviour in our view.

Much better use of money than foreign aid to Somalia. Will a saved hedgehog grow up and start kidnapping elderly ladies in Kenya or come to the UK and live off our welfare while contributing to gang mayhem on our streets or go to the US and plot another 9/11? Probably not.

Bottoms and nice chaps and Queen

We always liked Queen, what a pity Freddy wasn't a bit more careful with his bottom, we might have got lots more great rock songs. Like the very funny Kenny Everett, another great bottom related loss to the world.

Come to think of it, how many really malignant homosexual despots has the world seen? Definite or possible homosexual rulers included Alexander the Great, the Emperor Hadrian, Richard the Lionheart, Julius Caesar, Saladin and Frederick the Great but none were considered the worst/most oppressive leaders by the admittedly low standards of their times. So what about the most famous butchers/dictators like Caligula, Nero, Ivan the terrible, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Robert Mugabe, Tamerlane, RobeSpierre, Kim Jong il, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin or Saddam Hussein? Some "flexibility" in sexuality in some cases, Caligula would cuckold both a man and his wife, but none was wholly homosexual that we have read.

Most of the world's major problems are caused by male testosterone. Perhaps homosexuals, like women, are a bit less of a liability. Except perhaps those wierdly ultra macho ones with the huge moustaches and bulging biceps - a future dictator there?

PS There's serial killers of course but then who hasn't done a bit of serial killing?

PPS We have received an email from Caligula's lawyers demanding retraction of the above slander. Damn! That's the problem with posting comments about gods.

Utter crap

As we have said before but CBATF Note 1, we always thought Sentamu was fairly sensible (for a bishop), better than the Arsebishop of Canterbury on the issue of Islam anyhow. Public figures from ethnic minorities who are prepared to take a balanced view rather than just push the victim mentality can be an asset as they can state realities about some migrant issues that whites can't. Unfortunately, by definition, no bishop can be sensible on bishopy issues as this indicates.

"Illness can be... mental but it can also be spiritual" ? No it can't! "Spiritual" illness is mental illness, the only sense in which it can be termed spiritual is when the strength of belief in utter crap is a factor in the mental state. If any of us believe something, whether its because we think we have been bewitched or we think we are going to die because of a false cancer diagnosis, it is irrelevant to our mental state that the threat is not real. The mental state in turn can affect the psysical condition. We don't doubt his story about the girl left unable to move after attending a Satanist ritual Note 2 but it is a known psychosomatic condition called Conversion Disorder and can happen to anyone subject to major trauma or stress.

If the bishop wants to spout such bollux from the pulpit that's entirely a matter for church goers but why, in the 21st century, are we still automatically giving Bishops seats in the house of Lords so they can influence our laws at taxpayers' expense?

Note 1:Cannot Be Arsed To Find
Note 2: Although we suspect that there was more to the cause than the bishop says he was told.

Water

More of life's little coincidences. Just a couple of days ago on a jog we took this picture of a local reservoir on our crappy phone camera:

Then today we came across this news from Southern water that everyone in our area will have to have water meters fitted in 2013 due to a projected water shortage:

So which is the major factor in this further pressure? Climate change or population growth? According to this report a warmer climate will increase demand by 150 Ml/d by 2026 while demands of the planned South East Housing Plan plus contingency for assumed extra inward migration is 235 Ml/d.

This is just another in a whole list of factors and problems caused or exacerbated by mass immigration that is never taken into account in those idiotic studies of how it benefits us all.

Business opportunity

As we said just a little while ago xoggoth.org appears to have a minor profile in the sex industry, about which we are obviously most pleased.

Now we have a genuine email from a Chinese manufacturer/wholesaler about a remarkable sex toy which has a double vibrating end which could "stimulate two points or two people at the same time". Hang on - minimum order quantity of 1000 units? $20 each? Somebody has not only slightly overestimated the scale of the xoggoth conglomerate but seriously failed to grasp the xoggoth ethos!

It doesn't look that difficult, just a curved rubbery double ended knobby thing. Let's see, couple of party balloons filled with rice? Probably a bit floppy. I know, how about that old foam pipe insulation in the shed? There's a bit of red paint left over from the old garage door too. Brilliant! Now, just need to vibrate it a bit, hmmmm, got some old loud speakers here.

No change there then

Out jogging today and there was one of those council notices on a telegraph pole about a forthcoming road closure so BT could fix some phone lines. One part read:

Permission will begin on 16th November 2011 and continue for one year or until the work is completed, whichever is the sooner. However, it only expected that the road will be closed on the 16th November 2011.

So, work is expected to last a day but they get permission to fanny about and inconvenience motorists for a year if they feel like it! Way back in 2004, the then transport minister Tony McNulty promised legislation to ensure that utilities would be required to complete such work in a reasonable period or face penalties. Four years later nothing had happened and seven years on there has been no change to that nothing.

Not a big issue in the scheme of things but, like the reduction of red tape for business that never happened, it would have been great to be able to credit the last government with something positive. Fat chance.

I am a tree

The leaves of some trees and the hair of some male humans have something in common, they start getting thin from the top although trees will get it all back next year, the lucky bastards! All the flowers will be back too.

How useful it would be if we could get injected with DNA from plants and take on some of their characteristics; just think how great it would be if a full head of luxuriant hair, a handsome/beautiful face and fresh young limbs sprouted every spring time.

Although autumn might be a bit of a bummer.

The true quest goes on

To give Islam some credit, enjoying a bunch of virgins in paradise sounds vastly preferable to standing around praising the lord for eternity.

We bet that at this very moment, hordes of bored male Christian souls in heaven are attempting to evade border controls and sneak into the Muslim paradise next door. Muslim paradise is doubtless full of phony colleges where Christian "students" get fake attendance certificates while secretly working in Fish and Chip shops in the day and sneaking out at night to take advantage of all the young girls they aren't allowed to touch back in heaven.

Not that us rational secular sorts are any better. Through our secret sources at NASA and elsewhere, we at bloggoth have discovered that the main goal of the space program is to discover new sources of exciting porn. The Hubble telescope, the Planck telescope etc are in their infancy but the ultimate goal is to provide huge webcams to be used for the grooming of underage space aliens.

Below left we see a stunning picture from a space telescope, typical of those that have been released to the public. Below right we see a secret picture obtained by we at bloggoth which indicates that these devices are actually far more powerful than we have been told and showing what scientists have actually been looking for, an underage zemale space alien *Note 1 from the planet X55&*-@~#.

Note 1: There are 27 sexes in this species, male, aemale, bemale etc. The zemale is felt to be by far the sexiest, having more tits/bums/fannies etc than all the others. Note that this individual is only 574 years old in a species that lives for approx 6500 years so this picture is probably illegal in some parts of the universe.

Inconsistency on human rights

Cameron has threated to dock aid from countries that do not reform legislation banning homosexuality but more generally has said that those receiving UK aid should adhere to proper human rights.

We quite agree, so what the FUCK is he doing giving huge quantities of aid to arguably the most violent and repressive Islamic nation in the world, Pakistan, where Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmahdis have been marginalised by law, driven out and almost routinely attacked, often with the complicity of the government and the general support of its backward populace?

Time to stop supporting this shithole of a country and to stop the flow of its disgusting attitudes into our own.

Urgent - missing mankie report

Loyal non existent readers will be familiar with the sterling work done by the bloggoth editorial staff, the manky skulls, Phil the broken pedometer and Mr P. Now our oldest and most experienced member, Mr Manky Sheep Skull, whom we found in the Peak District back in the late 70s, has gone missing from his home on the edge of our pond. 30+ year old skulls are not normally attractive to animals as food, so this disappearance is a great mystery.

If any non existent readers happen to see him please contact us at xoggoth Towers.

More nonsensical conclusions from government reports

No reason to think the basic figures in government reports are wrong but what we continually get are false conclusions and/or misleading coverage. Like this item in the Independent:

Almost half of the population increase over the next decade will be fuelled by immigration, the ONS figures showed. Of the 4.9 million projected increase over the next 10 years, some 2.1 million (44%) is the assumed net number of migrants.

We saw in this government report that educating children of migrants was quite absurdly excluded from consideration of the net costs of migrants. Now here we go again, counting only new migrants as factors in a huge expansion of the population that will lead to major future problems of housing, food, energy and water supply.

According to this, almost one baby in four was delivered to a mother born overseas in 2008. So, if 56% of the projected expansion of the birth rate is not due to new migrants then 14% of the total expansion must be due to children born of migrants who have already arrived. Since those figures are three years old so probably it's at least 15% by now. The new migrants yet to come will presumably have children at the same rate too, that's another 11%. Any sane assessment of the impact of immigration on future increase in our population would probably arrive at a figure more like 70% than 50.

What, dear non existent lefty reader? Those calculations are a bit crude? We agree, but they are certainly a darn sight closer to the truth than those government reports.

Update: Ah yes, more recent figures say Two thirds. Two thirds is a darn sight nearer "more like 70%" than "nearly half". Once again, crude bloggoth calculation proves more accurate than lefty lies.

At last

Following our triumph over Churchill F* Insurance (Oh yes!) we got an email from the Financial Ombudsman Service asking us to fill in a brief survey. Quite why any of this is relevant we are not sure but we enjoyed ticking the other box in sexual preferences. At last us pig fanciers have been recognised.

PS Oh yes means sometimes

Arab Spring is coming

Libyan laws to be based on Sharia

Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote in Tunisia

Attacks on Christians in Egypt rise sharply as Islamists gain in power

EU leaders meet for crisis talks on Greek bailout

You don't say - 1

In our experience the liberal left are more likely to substitute smear tactics for argument than the right.

Hardly surprising, given that actual facts to support their rosy views of human nature are few and far between. Anyone making a case against large scale unskilled immigration from the third world, for example, has a wealth of reliable sources to draw on to back the case, including the ONS, police crime reports, hospital and university studies on health and articles about the natures of the countries themselves by reputable sources like the WHO, The US State Department, charities, The Guardian, The Independent or the BBC.

All the LLy has to support his case are personal anecdotes, other people's opinions and slanted reports *Note that ignore all downsides, even the cost of the immigration departments themselves, and yet still show benefits from all migrants, including the highly qualified ones that most have no problems with, that enrich the rest of by peanuts. Still, why do you need facts when you can just accuse your opponents of reading The Daily Mail or sounding like Enoch Powell? Problem sorted.

Note: Like this official report that looks solely at tax less direct benefits of recent migrants and comes up with the princely sum in £6bn in 2006, about £100 for every British resident including the migrants themselves, just 0.3% of average income in return for a 12% increase in our population. Since everyone made a net contribution that year, the additional benefit provided by migrants migrants over the same number of indigenous Brits was actually only £50. To arrive at even this insignificant figure the study ignores almost every downside, even the enormous cost of schooling of children born to migrants, arguing that they are not themselves migrants. It also draws on reports in a highly selective way, quoting Gott and Johnson for example, but not Professor Robert Rowthorn who has a rather different view. Even the Gott and Johnson study states that migrants are more likely to be unemployed and on welfare than indigenous British and that the net benefit is almost entirely down to lower age, ie fewer taking retirement benefits. So what happens when they do retire, often earlier than the rest of us due to poorer health if the government's own figures are correct, having contributed less in tax? Not a lot of forward thinking here.

You dont' say - 2

One does wonder why people resort to trivia to denigrate someone even when almost nobody, apart from a few nutjobs, is defending them.

Hitler was an appalling chap because he killed 6m people and was responsible for a world war. Yep, mister lefty, we have to admit you do have a valid point there. Oh? So he was a rotten artist too? Gosh! we never knew that, the bloke was far worse than we thought! Now we have new evidence of how terrible the man was; it seems he told lies to show himself in a better light. How awful! A politician being economical with the truth! What unbelievable villainy!

Assuming any of it is true. A letter in English, written in the US well after the start of the war, in which a man agrees about what another man said ten years earlier is hardly proof. There is a bit of a contradiction in the rest of it too; if he was an unpopular loner how come he had sufficent influence over his officers for them to award him 5 undeserved medals? Watch out for the forthcoming new "research", based on what a lady's aunt Betty told her in 1962, that they did it in return for use of his skinny little arse.

It is also a measure of the lack of detachment in every debate that anyone who, like we at bloggoth, suggests that new "facts" about a villain don't quite add up must have a hidden agenda and these doubts can therefore be safely dismissed without consideration. Heil Hitler!

Nibble and peck

Why on earth would anyone want to pay to have fish nibble their feet anyway?. Knob woodpeckers now, that would be something worth paying for.

Over population is only part of the problem

A lot of sane people, like Richard Attenborough, have spoken out about the dangers of ignoring overpopulation which is leading us into inevitable disaster.

According to this item the taboo on mentioning on this issue is due to "a bizarre coalition of the religious right and the liberal left ". That isn't bizarre at all. The idea that all human life is valuable, no matter how flawed the individual or how negative its impact on society, is one that these groups share. Humanism is every bit as irrational as religion.

However, are the unreligious right any better? Not much point allowing the world's numerous huddled and useless masses to die off if you continually pursue an ever increasing standard of living for yourself that consumes far more resources than those ex huddled masses ever did. Forests are not being destroyed just by poor farmers clearing land to feed their own children but because of first world demand for raw materials, food, bio fuels and fancy furniture. Wildlife is not just under threat from third world poachers but also from all the toxic rubbish that richer nations generate.

It is not just expansion of world population that needs to be addressed but the absurd idea, embedded in our economies, that standards of living can go on increasing year after year and the equal idiocy that happiness and personal status should be measured by the number of unecessary things we possess.

PS It beats us why people feel the need to have the best of everything; we could certainly afford an expensive car but why anyone would want one when an old van gets from A to B perfectly well is beyond us. Maybe there's a few things we could learn from the third world, like re-use of discarded materials. If only we were allowed to take what we want from council tips we at bloggoth would be round there like a shot, picking over the stuff for bits that might come in handy like any little African kid. Joy!

Cheap security measures

Certain types of crime, like burglaries and street robbery, are rising in the UK.

Even in low crime areas, like xoggothland, street robbery and thefts of farm equipment, vehicles, metal and heating oil have gone from negligible to being a significant concern. Just last week, there was a street robbery targetting mobile phones in a local town and a bloke just up the road had £1000 worth of oil siphoned out of his tank. More importantly obviously, our old van was damaged last year during an attempted vehicle theft. Now even our sheds are under threat. If any of our boxes of rusty old bits of things we have kept because they might come in handy got nicked we would be heartbroken.

We at bloggoth have beefed up security at xoggoth Towers but it isn't cheap. Bad enough the £10 *Note 1 for a combination padlock on the oil tank but replacing the broken lock on the garage door cost us a whole £45!!!! We expect a Holiday in Antiga with depraved services of high class whores thrown in for that sort of money! A little while back we explained a low cost way to avoid being mugged, now here is a great cheap way to protect yourself from crime at home.

On the left above is a real "low cost" CCTV. With the recording equipment and leads, a one camera system will set you back about £160. On the right is the xoggoth CCTV camera we put together in under 5 seconds *Note 2 from a milk bottle, half a Pringles tin and some silver cloth tape. Other realistic features could be added given a bit more time. Put that up in a tree overlooking your shed where it can be noticed but not closely examined and it will deter any would be rusty bits box thief.

Note 1: Well, it probably would have cost that if we hadn't found one in our fabulous box of rusty old bits in the shed!
Note 2: TBH, it might have taken us 2 or 3 minutes if we had not already had half a Pringles tin covered in silver tape but then who hasn't?
PS: It's a good thing nobody reads this or hoards of rusty old bits thieves would now be planning their swoop on xoggoth's treasures.

So

Mumra Gadaffy Duck is dead. Now to build a democratic nation. Yeh, right.

In an Arab country? To build a nation the citizens have to be able to put the needs of that nation above those of the tribe and the extended family. In a Muslim country? Real democracy means an equal say in all aspects of society by all the people regardless of sex and creed and even Muslim countries that have elections, like Pakistan and Malaysia, are not and never have been democracies.

We would comment further on Libya but why be arsed when Max Hasting has said it all?

Who are these useless people?

Having missed out on some fat naked lady pictures from non existent reader Teeth, we at bloggoth allowed links through the anti spammer of our brilliant commenty thing and bastards have immediately started posting comment spam with links to all sort of crap. Who on earth has time to check bloggoth daily to see if the spam settings have been changed? Even an automated thing to submit to the comment boxes of every obscure website in the world would seem immensely costly in terms of machine time.

Maybe, without knowing the content, they are misled by analysis engines into thinking we are more important than we are. Visitors to bloggoth are non existent but visitors to xoggoth.org are not. The top phrases that lead to our site are:

• safe do it yourself sex toy
• electric diy sex toy
• diy sex
• male love doll d.i.y
• ladies sex dolls

Clearly the only section that gets visitors, however briefly, is the astute erotics page, although whether our visitors are really looking for instructions for making anal dildos from old newspapers or sex dolls out of toy lions and plastic bottles we rather doubt. Still, it's hits that matter! and this shows that the bloggoth Three R's do not have the right balance, too much Rant and Rubbish, not nearly enough Rude. This WILL be rectified.

PS We bet not many bloggers get a cartoon featured on the prestigious Ecologia e biologia de isópodos terrestres. So there!

The inverted commas British are coming

It was plain even before the details emerged as here that those British men detained by the Kenyans on suspicion of terrorism would not be British but "British". Over and over again, in Britain and outside it, the term British is used to include those who have no allegiance to Britain, who hate British society and who actively work against Britain's interests and those of the British people here and abroad.

Maybe it is time we stopped this double standard of encouraging minorities to cling to their own cultures while simultaneously denouncing as racist any white Briton who wants to do the same thing. We cannot force British citizens to integrate but we should not be actively assisting them not to by providing translators, information in different languages, "culturally sensitive" advice or dedicated TV and radio channels at taxpayer's expense. Any special funding should encourage integration.

For those not born here of British parents, maybe it is time that we stopped doling out British nationality so readily and we do not mean by setting idiotic tests asking when women got the vote etc that any extremist or criminal could easily mug up or cheat on. British nationality is something that should be earned by behaviour over a period of some years and should be withdrawable for at least ten.

And just maybe the foreign office should be less ready to help out such people engaged in anti-Western activities abroad. In the past we would have had another word for these "British" - traitors.

Cookies show the way you crumble

We at bloggoth often knock up our own little PC utilities in Excel VBA. One such is a file utility that, among many other things, allows us to list all the cookies that have accumulated on the PC and delete the ones that look like adware or are for sites we probably won't revisit.

What a revelation! Whereas once we would have been deleting loads of malware and cookies indicating dodgy searches like xoggoth@rammyarse[2].txt or xoggoth@hotbabboonsex.txt now we just find stuff like xoggoth@companieshouse.txt or xoggoth@developer.android[1].txt. The content of the low directory with meaningless names is no better, XECGE8BB.txt is not from a site called X rated Extreme Cunt Gape, it's just The Daily Express.

What will our cookies contain in a few years time? xoggoth@stannahstairlifts.co.uk? xoggoth@hearing.aids.com? We can't wait.

The Chav Nav

Not got a Satnav myself as xoggoth van journeys are all a bit too familiar and predictable these days, although once we get senile and can't remember how to get to the local gym we might buy one. Who would have thought ten years ago that loads of people would have these relatively cheap gadgets that told them in detail how to get from A to B? The next big development is well overdue. Why limit such gadgets to road journeys? Surely they should be directing us how, when and what to do in every area of our lives; it isn't actually such a big step as many people already join up to online lifestyle sites telling them how to keep fit, lose weight etc

We are told that many criminals and long term welfare claimants in our society lack discipline and direction, so we think it would be beneficial if such sorts were forcibly implanted with ChavNavs that enforce a way of life aimed at getting them back into productive society. The implant would be tapped into the nerve centres and if they failed to follow a direction given to them within a five minute period they would receive an increasingly intense pain. The ChavNav would only be removed once they had held down a job and stayed out of trouble for six months.

PS We at bloggoth are very envious of the young chav fashion of having rings through the face and body parts. If only it had been the thing in the 60s and 70s we would have been able to hold all our saggy bits in position with wire and still look cool.

Unattractive solutions

One featured in a couple of films, although forget which, is to protect yourself from cold by cutting open the belly of the corpse of a large animal and sheltering inside it. A rather messy and smelly solution we imagine, whatever the age of the corpse.

Can't recall where I read it but if you ever get trapped in a burning building and are threated with suffocation due to smoke, one way to stay alive until rescuers arrive is to stick a bit of flexible tube down the toilet through the U bend into the waste pipe and breathe through that. The water in the U bend keeps the smoke out of the pipe so you can breath "fresh" air while waiting for rescue. If breathing through your mouth from a pipe connected to the sewer makes you throw up, you are at least in the right place.

What other remedies can the non existent readers think of that seem almost as bad as the problem?

Faccialibro

We at bloggoth signed up to Facebook as part of its company profile thing, although quite what it has done for sales we cannot discover. Occasionally, we get an email about someone else who wants us as a "friend" although, as they seem unconnected with the business purpose we never bother to add them.

Checked it today and the list of photos was too long to count but must now have well over three hundred who would be our "friend" at the click of a button. What we can't understand is why they are virtually all young Italians. The latest is an Aleandra Salinas who does look very chewy from the risque photo and she lists her interest as Men. But why would she add some old fart in the UK? Does she have a curious fetish?

Maybe one of the non existent readers who is not even more ancient than we are can cast some light on this wierd networking site.

Unnaceptable truths

When we are are on the machines at the gym we have to watch boring Sky News, it's either that or CBeebies or just listen to the crappy rap music they keep playing. The lengthy adverts always include a charity appeal, for just £2 a month we can save a child, and not just any child, these kids have names to appeal to the emotions.

Yes, it is tragic, some poor little African kid dying of starvation or malaria or some other "preventable" problem. It isn't their fault to be born where they were born, we in the west just got lucky. On the other hand, leaving aside the emotion over these little individuals, is aid doing anything at all to reduce the problem? As we said a little while back, most studies show that aid given to well governed poor countries is less than 50% efficient in increasing per capita income and in poorly governed countries has no effect at all except to increase the population. Save poor little Alaisa today, and what is the consequence except that your kids will be donating to save her offspring?

There are some things about the world that don't add up. Malthus was right, the time when we could reasonably expect all mankind to share in a reasonable prosperity with sufficient food, warmth, housing, protection and health provision passed 100 years back. There are too many people and too few resources left for this to be possible. Look at the huge impact that growing prosperity in China and India has had on costs of food, energy and raw materials in recent decades, yet most in those countries still live in poverty by Western standards.

Some believe that the world's wealth should be shared more equably. A very few charitable sorts may grasp what this actually means for them but most don't, they think it can be achieved with little impact on themselves. The reality is that a more equal world would mean a huge fall in living standards for the developed world and it will be far worse than people imagine. We would not simply be sharing what we have but decreasing what we have to share as the productive will see no further reason to be so when the fruits of their labour and those of their forebears pass to those who have contributed little.

Can we even be sure that all of the the world's poor will ever contribute equally in this socialist world? Political correctness aside, maybe not. There are no certainties but current realities are about the best guides we have to future ones.

Weeds and religion

This Android wild flowers app is turning us religious. To identify your flower you select from a small number of choices for flower colour, flower type, leaf shape and height.

We never noticed before, most people wouldn't, but these flower and leaf shape patterns can be seen over and over again, not just among wild flowers but in garden plants and trees too. What else these plants with a virtually identical leaf or flower shape have in common is... absolutely nothing. They are not related species, they do not have similar habitats, they do not even have the same national origins.

There is a limited number of blueprints used in nature and if they are not set by heredity or environment or common evolutionary pressures, just what is applying them?

Leave off

Bah. Into tests and checks of my Android wild flowers app and was using Google to ensure all the colours are correct. Started typing Dog's Mercury and Google kindly supplied the suggestion "Dogs mating with humans". Naturally we had to have a quick scroll down and were most disappointed, not a fit young lady being serviced by an Alsation anywhere.

Look 'ere Google, if you must distract us from our work like this, at least supply some reward for it.

Bizarre

It's a week for very trivial but wierd things to happen. Dropped a coin on the kitchen floor, it bounced a few times and ended up balanced on its edge almost exacly where I dropped it. Ok, that happens, the next one is impossible to figure.

Doing some strimming and rewound the string on the little spool thing inside as it kept getting stuck. The reel was nearly full, there was at least ten feet of the stuff. Did about two feet of strimming and it stopped cutting again so checked the reel and it was empty, all the string gone, nothing there at all. No sign of it around and it wasn't in a position where it could just shoot off somewhere.Can a wrongly wound strimmer pass out ten foot of string in less than twenty seconds? Can the blade on the shield thingies cut it into so many very tiny bits that you can't see them?

To cap it all, the phantom van tyre letter-downer has come back. Earlier in the year, mostly on Sundays, we would suddenly find one tyre flat although CCTV picked up nothing. We took it to a local tyre shop and they replaced the valve which had the tiniest of leaks and they said it could not possibly have caused the tyre to totally flatten over a few hours as we described. Nevertheless, it seemed ok after that, so we assumed that the leak was variable due to the faulty valve shifting in the wheel. Then on Saturday we parked it, it was fine at Sunday lunch time but totally flat a couple of hours later. We pumped it up again and the pressure did not alter one iota overnight. It has not dropped one iota in 2 days. No way any normal leak can explain that.

We will set up the CCTV again this weekend. If it picks up nothing again we really are going to start believing in evil spirits.

Will the minister explain his figures? Of course not.

In defending the idiotic scale of foreign aid a minister has said:

If we had tackled the deep causes of poverty and dysfunctionality in Somalia and Afghanistan, we would not have to grapple with the symptoms today. These problems affect us here – terrorism, the drugs trade and illegal migration. If we want to tackle these problems at home, we have to understand and address their root causes abroad. Some people say we can't afford to engage in international development, but we can't afford not to.

It costs four times as much to deal with such problems years later as it does to tackle them upstream, he said

Oh really? This looks like utter bullshit. Saying things is easy, actually doing something effective is something else. Even in the context of the UK's own problems, which are simple by comparison, how often do we hear that we need to invest more money to solve some problem only to find, decades later, that little has changed and the money has largely been wasted? Was pouring money into these corrupt, divided and fanatical societies that we have little influence over really going to do anything apart from help increase the population by 25m in 50 years as it has done? Why should we be able to control religious fanaticism and crime half a world away when we can't even manage to do it in Luton or Bradford or the streets of North London?

Look for studies that claim foreign aid as a success and they deal only with effect on poverty and not the affects on other factors that he mentions. Assuming they are correct, to what extent does aid stimulate growth? According to this one, 1 per cent of gross domestic product in aid given to a poor but well-managed country can increase its growth rate by a sustained 0.5 percentage points. GDP per capita is the more important factor and that will be lower as one effect of that wasted 0.5% is to expand the population. So, putting it another way, in excess of 50% of aid even to well managed countries is wasted.

"Well managed" is critical here because a point that these studies all make is that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary and trade policies but has little effect in the presence of poor policies. Most studies have been made on sub Saharan countries which are models of prudence, financial rectitude and stability compared to Afghanistan and Somalia which do not even have generally accepted governments. Can we really be optimistic that aid to those will achieve anything at all?

Even if there was any measurable effect of aid on wealth in these countries how would it reduce immigrants and asylum seekers coming to Europe? Somalia has a population of 10m and a GDP per head of $139 while Poland has a GDP per head of $11,273. Assuming it was 100% effective in raising living standards you would need to give Somalia $11 trillion and that would not stop migration to the UK with its GDP per capita of $35,165 because Poles are still flocking here.

How would it reduce international terrorism (not the same as religious extremism) when that is not correlated to wealth? Many terrorists have come from wealthy Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden was from a wealthy family. Some would-be terrorists in the UK have been from well off families too, so why does he imagine that pouring money into Afghanistan will cure fanaticism?

Still, we at bloggoth are engineers and if there is some evidence of something we are quite willing to look at it and change our minds if the argument is convincing enough. Maybe the minister can give us details of investments in such places that have proved to have been a success? This very specific figure of a list of things being four times better with aid than without is obviously based on some brilliant study that has not been released to the world yet. It could not possibly be that a government minister is just wildly making up numbers could it? Perhaps the minister would supply a reference for this learned treatise so we can all read it?

Minister?

Minister?

Minister?

PS We were going to send the Minister a very polite email saying we were most interested in his speech and would love to learn the basis for his "four times" figure but he only accepts correspondence from his constituents. How convenient.

Unbelievable

What sort of disgusting people kidnap an elderly disabled woman?

There are many nations that are heartily disliked by others, Greece for its profligacy, Iran or North Korea for repression, nukes and nutty leaders, Saudi Arabia for its intolerant Islamism, the US/UK/France for their interference abroad but in many cases it is the leadership rather than the people as a whole who are to blame. Get rid of that Roy Orbison look-alike and his heirs, for example, and what is to stop North Korea being as successful as many countries of that region? Even when the problems are wider than that you can still see upsides and imagine that things can improve.

Unfortunately, in a few cases you look for positives and there are none. What looms large are the awful things, widely perpetrated or supported by the populace, that happen in the countries themselves; the terrorism, the religious conservatism, crime and piracy they export and the negative economic impact of underperforming emmigrants on other countries. These places are not going to improve much in a hundred years, if that.

We would all be much better off if they disappeared from the face of the Earth. Our current smoking pit list would be Somalia, Pakistan and Mexico. Come friendly bombs...

Come Scandal Dancing

We at bloggoth and the missus bloggoth will not be going out on Saturday evenings for a while, that godawful Come Dancing is back on our screen with another bunch of so called celebrities and she won't miss it. Some Italian woman was on it and according to the missus her main claim to fame was being the lover of that overpaid dipstick Sven Goran Eriksson. So being bonked by a well known person makes you a celebrity?

It's given us a great idea for a new Come Dancing format though, we might write to the BBC about it. It involves a lot of ex politicians and past it celebrities like the current one but rather than the individuals themselves it "stars" the alleged Note 1 illicit liasons of celebrities. Nothing generates more interest than a scandal and it will be an absolute hit that will break all viewing records for shows of this type. Our provisional list is:

• The 52 year sex worker that Wayne Rooney allegedly had a paid session with.
  
  
• The unknown black guy that former Welsh secretary Ron Davies allegedly tried to have a moment of madness with on Clapham Common. We would have preferred the badger he allegedly had a moment of madness with off the M4 near Bath but fear it may have been run over by now, busy road that.
  
  
• Divine Brown, who allegedly sucked off Hugh Grant in a car in Los Angeles. Note 2 In accordance with further advice by our solicitor we should add that Hugh Grant was only allegedly sucked off, we at bloggoth do not want to be sued by either party. To backtrack a bit, we would like to add that any activity by that badger was only alleged too, just in case it has not been run over and has a good solicitor.
  
  
• One or more of the German sado-masochistic prossies that FIA president Max Mosley allegedly indulged in Nazi style fantasies with. Actually, it would be great if the BBC could get all of these alleged ladies, Anton Du Beke would be great dancing with all of them at once. We think he could choreograph something really special with material like that, although Craig Revell Hallwood would still only give it 2 probably.
  
  
• Gary Glitter's alleged... oh no, hang on a minute. Maybe we need to work on this a bit more.

Note 1: Alleged has been inserted throughout on advice from our lawyers.

Note 2: The lady made a fortune from that alleged encounter, allegedly. Good for her, about time some ordinary people got some reward out of the alleged behaviour of celebrities. We seem to recall all the papers at the time said she was plain, looks ok to us. We would, although she probably doesn't do it for 99p anymore. If we can't get sex for 99p nowadays we don't usually bother.


PS: Always check the spelling of allegedly. Apparently some blogger got successfully sued after he spelt it alledgedly, like we usually do. The judge held that it didn't count in avoiding a suit for defamation.

Not all her fault

Actually, it isn't all the missus's fault we are staying at home on Saturday night 'cos Merlin is back - wahee!. Somebody we know Note 1 says it is a little "diverse" to properly represent 6th century Britain but pointing out elements of unrealism in a show with dragons and wizards is maybe a little academic. Anyway, the village club has an Elvis impersonator on tonight - yech!

Note 1: Oh, ok, this "somebody we know" is actually us but only before we've had a few vodkas. After a few vodkas we are as liberal and inclusive as can be.

Confusion

We at bloggoth are getting really worried about our memory, we simply cannot remember names of celebrities - a form of dementia that will surely cut one off from the modern world more than any other.

The missus was watching some old western crap today, it had some bloke we really loathed in it, absolutely no idea why, everyone has people like that surely? Oh yes, it's George Hamilton according to the credits. Anyway that twat Hamilton was punching out some other bloke we did like, he was in Death Wish and The Great Escape, wtf was his name? Hang on, it's coming. Oh yes, Richard Branson. Amazing chap, not many people are successful in Hollywood and go on to found a major British Airline.

PS But wasn't he also that demented killer who murdered Catherine Tate? Famous comediennes had better avoid flying Virgin.

Out of nothing at all

Something else we are not supposed to mention?

We have noticed it for some years. Why is it that in so many cases of doctors assaulting female patients the doctors have foreign, especially Indian, names? On the first 10 pages of Google after typing "doctor assaults patient" the British cases of sexual assault of female patients listed in newspapers only (no blogs etc) make up this list - Dr Amit Yadav, Priyantha Kandanearachchi, Dr Mahend Bissonauth, Kanval Nagpal, Dr Clifford Ayling, Adil Shareef, Dr Samir Asad, Haleem Bhatti, Dr Narendra Sharma. Is this just pure coincidence? Not checked them all but the picture in Australia seems similar too.

Such offences are not that common but there are wider problems with doctors who trained overseas due to poor English and other unspecified failings:

NHS doctors who qualify overseas are far more likely to be banned or suspended then those who graduate in the UK, according to a report.

...

The report found that differences in referral rates between doctors in secondary care were down to place of qualification and training.

There were no differences in levels of concern between white and non-white doctors who qualified in the UK.

So why do we need Indian or any other foreign-trained doctors? We are told there is a shortage of doctors but the same article states that a significant cause was the implementation of the EU working time directive last year:

The European Working Time Directive, which was fully introduced into the NHS last August, limits doctors to working no more than 48 hours per week and has left gaps on rotas.

Some district general hospitals have had trouble attracting enough staff to cope with the changes leading, in some cases, to services being cut.

Another major problem was the utter cockup by the last awful Labour government in the recruitment system three years ago:

The problem was caused by changes introduced last year in the system for recruiting junior doctors to training posts that could qualify them to become consultants.

The government was forced to abandon an online application process after hundreds of excellent candidates were not given interviews. But it pressed ahead with plans to fill all the posts in August instead of staggering recruitment through the year, as happened previously.

The BMA said gaps in hospital staffing rotas are now appearing whenever a junior doctor gets promoted to consultant, or leaves for other reasons.

Another factor in the shortage of doctors may be increasing demand for them due to immigration:

Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups generally have worse health than the overall population, although some BME groups fare much worse than others,

But maybe the major reasons in the longer term why the UK can't provide its own doctors is to be found in this British council document:

UK undergraduate medical schools take 7.5 per cent of their intake from overseas.

Overseas doctors who qualify in a UK medical school can make the same professional progress in UK hospitals as graduates from the UK and European Economic Area (EEA).

.....

Competition for undergraduate places at medical schools is intense. There are far fewer places than applicants.

So let's sum up. We have a system in which the doctor shortage is caused by ill-thought out EU initiatives, government incompetence, inability to control low skilled third world imigration and a failure to provide the resources we need to train our own doctors. We then exacerbate the shortage of training spaces for British students and limit their future prospects by taking in foreign ones and giving them all the same rights to practice in the UK. To attempt to make up for this shambles we then import even more who put patient lives at risk.

You do have to wonder if those allegations about a deliberate destruction of British society are a reality.

Update: Only seen one case of a doctor assaulting a female patient since writing this. Naturally we made a racist assumption. How appalling!! Oh dear, right again. Isn't it odd how racist assumptions are very often right?

Explode

Ghastly crying kid in the high street today - sounded like a yowling cat. In the garden the screaming and shouting noise from the kids two doors up is awful. One's own kids were ok (and always totally well behaved of course) but other people's kids are just ghastly.

The only plus point for other people's kids over one's own, at least other people's never made the wife's fanny feel like the Mersey Tunnel.

Let's all read The Daily Star - problems sorted

We at bloggoth have never understood economics because as an engineer we expect things to be logical and can find no logic in it whatever.

What in strictly physical terms - number of houses, number of trading companies, people with jobs, infrastructure, fields to grow food etc is any different today than a few weeks ago when it all started to go pear shaped again? It's all about fear and perception and the reason for that is that those who "understand" economics, mostly the people who make a very nice living shuffling money around, panic and infect everyone else. Then we get the real problems, banks won't lend, businesses go broke, people lose their jobs and people stop spending for fear of losing their jobs, causing more businesses to go broke, making banks less willing to lend etc, etc, etc.

What we need is total ignorance on and indifference to the subject to match that of we at bloggoth. Everyone should buy only The Daily Star or OK Magazine and marvel at what the celebrities are up to. They can look around and see everything still looks much the same and nothing really bad is happening except in ghastly places like Pakistan or Somalia that nobody sane gives a shit about anyway.

A new series of Come Dancing starts soon. Fantastic! So what's the problem?

Contradictions

The Dubliners - Molly Malone. She died of the fever and sure no one could save her and that was the end of Sweet Molly Malone. Now her ghost wheels her barrow through the streets broad and narrow, crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh.

Hmmm. So her ghost is wheeling live mussels through the streets? Or where they really the ghosts of dead mussels but she did not know the difference? Always a problem for those who believe that ghosts are spirits of the dead, how do they have clothes, swords, mussels, whatever, unless those things have spirits too?

Maybe the dead can create things around them that they were used to or loved in life. Brill. I am going to come back with a horde of waspies and sting MR PIKEY SCUM to death.

PS Unless of course a big chunk of satellite falls on the bastard this Friday.

The bad luck continues

The Stockwell Mosque is being accused of links to extremists in Pakistan. This is surely a false accusation, the Stockwell Mosque has never been linked to extremism has it?. Well, apart from that time it hasn't, has it?.

It may be that the current mosque leaders are trying to tackle radicalism as they say, that they may even have warned the police of dangerous individuals before 7/7 as they say. Trouble is, we keep hearing these protestations of moderation from mosque leaders but they keep getting caught out when they think no one is looking. The way this bullshit goes is illustrated rather well by this:

The East London Mosque’s response to accusations of extremism has three stages. First there are the injured protestations of its deep commitment to community cohesion, democracy, etc, often accompanied by straightforward lying – in 2009, for instance, the mosque’s assistant director, Shaynul Khan, claimed that “Anwar Al-Awlaki did not give a lecture via video link at an event held at the East London Mosque.” Then there are silly legal threats from its libel lawyers, again often based on lies: tedious, but perfectly easy to see off if you know what you’re doing.

Finally, if none of that works and their backs are absolutely against the wall, the mosque will crank out one of their statements claiming they’ve banned hate preachers. The supply of bad guys will dry up for a month or two, then as soon as the coast is clear they’ll start creeping back again. Let's hope it's different this time. But you’ll forgive me, I'm sure, for being a little sceptical about the East London Mosque’s “good faith.”

We agree. It is hard for us Islamophobes to take any protestations of moderation by mosques seriously. We checked the one closest to us and found that supporters of Al-Muhajiroun and Omar Bakri used to meet there and that two of the London fertiliser bomb plotters held a Sunday school there. Are there any moderate mosques at all? Any which have not allowed radical groups to openly target young men, which have not hosted extremist preachers? We suspect there are very few outside the Ahmadiyya community. That they all profess to be moderate we also have no doubt.

Islamophobe: Noun. One who is not a total idiot.

Associations with the sex industry

The bastards will try and make money out of anything. Since the announcement of the new .xxx domain for adult sites our hosters have been sending us emails about registering www.xoggoth.xxx to prevent it being used for an adult site and having our brand tainted by association with the sex industry. The fee is a mere £199!

Are they kidding? Even if it was only £1.99, why would we not want xoggoth.org tainted by an association with porn? Having heard the name xoggoth in connection with great porn they might Google and think the org in xoggoth.org stands for orgasm or orgy! If a few click on this site by mistake that will be a great way to get more hits and much simpler than all the boring SEO things like swapping links with other blogs that we can't be arsed to do.

PS We are rather surprised the government has never registered www.xoggoth.gov.uk. What better way for a government to appear sane and sensible by association?

PPS Apparently a portion of the proceeds from an .XXX domain purchase are donated to IFFOR, a Non-Profit Foundation which "aims to ensure the highest standards of privacy, security, free speech; and child protection" I wouldn't want my money funding such do-goody, nannyish stuff! Why don't they spend the money properly by ensuring the highest standards of porn? Especially fat lady bumhole porn.

More giants

We have mentioned before how an 80 foot giant was wandering around leaving fingerprints on our greenhouse. Now we have a 15,000 foot giant leaving fingerprints on our conservatory.

It's just condensation! cry the non existent readers. Ok clever dicks, pleace provide your detailed mathematical simulations showing how these patterns are a function of factors like convective air flows, variances in roof conductivity and our enormous monthly repayments. Until then, giants with grubby fingers is a much more likely explanation.

PS Those ugly lumps of moss from the gutters are chucked there by Dwarf Gutter Gibbons. Bloody nuisance they are.

Endangered

It seems that House Sparrows are an endangered species in the UK.

There are plenty at xoggoth Towers although we have noticed a distinct migration. Until earlier this year they were mostly in a dense MR PS bush near our fence from which it was a short flutter to our bird table. Since we started putting out cheap seed they have moved to a similar large bushy thing in our garden close to the other fence from which it is a short flutter to our nice neighbour's bird table where they can enjoy posh and expensive RSPB seed.

Clearly, it is the recession and money saving bastards like us who are driving them away.

Archie 10

Latest adventures of Archie

Multi porn and nature

Good nature program on TV last night. Showed baby Tasmanian Devils being sexed in the pouch - free animal child porn - wahee! It also had an interesting thing on the Mountain Chicken Frog, a species in which the female feeds the tadpoles with a stream of unfertilised eggs! Imagine this translated into human behaviour. Or perhaps not.

Anyway, less exciting, but here is a NICE little Garden Spider. Oh no, hang on, he/she is not nice at all, he/she is eating a NICE little Bee. The bastard!

PS Odd how similar the colours are. Clearly these species have similar tastes in fashion.

Insurance - an even bigger con than we think?

It's not just from the rip off merchants (Oh Yes!) who try and cook up bizarre reasons to discount your claim. Many must profit because people who could claim do not. Suppose someone with fatal accident insurance gets killed in an accident or with critical illness cover falls into a coma? How often does it happen that they don't leave records somewhere they can be found and never got round to telling their relatives about it? Or they have had the insurance for so long everyone has forgotten?

Street Fashion

Talking of London, it is not a very safe place at night and street crime has increased enormously in the last decade. We have no idea who is doing it obviously.

Clearly, it does not pay to look worth mugging. We at bloggoth are experts in looking not worth mugging. You have to look scruffy and mean enough to only have a fiver in your wallet for a shopping spree at the pound shop and a 4 year old cheap mobile phone from Asda. On the other hand, you want to show you are an educated white collar sort who will pursue a complaint and get yourself taken seriously by the police rather than a vulnerable incoherent alcoholic tramp who probably wouldn't and can be kicked around just for the fun of it.

It's a fine line. One essential piece of equipment is the free man bag. We always get one when our company has a stand at an annual exhibition. It is plainly free, having the promoting company's name on it. It a bag that clearly holds nothing more valuable than library books, a pack of tissues and a copy of Viz but it also says you are the sort of person who attends educational exhibitions and will pester the police daily until they get you.

PS Unlike some man bags, there is also nothing gay about the free man bag. No self respecting gay man would use that bag for his make up and super strength bum condoms. This is another essential characteristic of a man bag, especially in places like Shoreditch.

PPS Phew! Glad we got through that one without questioning the wonders of our diverse society.

Shoreditch - hub of the world

On the tube yesterday and there was this strangely dressed chap, tight black trousers, old fashioned light grey and black tweed sports jacket, thick framed glasses that were only marginally less wierd than those worn by Dame Edna Everage and a bowler hat. According to #2 son he was probably from Shoreditch, apparently a very arty area, Tracy Emin used to live there. He reckons that whatever is fashion in Shoredith will sooner or late spread to the world. Looked a bit gay, I opined, reminded me of something that Gilbert and George might wear. Ah yes, it seems they live there too.

I went to a Gilbert and George exhibition in Edinburgh once, not impressed, I think if I was asked to produce an artwork for a major exhibition I could manage some spunk on shit too. Have they ever actually painted anything? Most of their work not involving bodily fluids just seems to be collage, the sort of thing one can do with Photoshop effects. Still, some of their works, like this one are colourful and interesting and would brighten up a wall but it's impossible to find any positives in Tracy Emin's rubbish. If you think this is crap, wait until you see this.

PS We at bloggoth do apologise most profusely for not being enormously impressed by Gilbert and George. According to that link the paintings are:

suffused with tenebrous solemnity, they have all of the dramatic visual impact which one might expect to find in neo-Gothic medievalism – in Victorian reclamations of Celtic or Moorish symbolism, for example, regally bejewelled and portentous with romantic mysticism. ...possess a darkly graven strangeness, at once archaic and ultra-modern, in which their temper no less than their signage appears deeply contemporary, ritualistic and disturbed.

Yes of course, how could we not have seen that?

Bizarre concerns

Are we at bloggoth the only ones to worry about things that that are totally impossible?

While paying a bill online today we noticed that our old company was listed among the possible payees and decided to delete it. On the confirmation page it said "Please note that you will not be able to cancel or amend any existing scheduled payments for this payee once their details have been deleted" and thought, hang about, should we confirm this? What if there is an outstanding payment to this company that has not traded for 4 years and is in process of being closed down and whose own bank account was shut 3 months ago? Maybe we made a payment by mistake or some payment is still in limbo after 4 years or maybe...

A few years back we worked at home doing software for a satellite company and regularly sent them processed satellite images. We used to worry that we had sent them some porn pics by mistake although the images were in a special format created from raw satellite data and we never downloaded internet porn on that PC anyway, far too risky malware wise. The only way they could have contained anything rude is if the satellite had passed over some land features that looked rude or if Sony were selling CDs with porn already on them.

PS There is a place in Western Kazakhstan that looks like... Well anyway, we have some images, only £50 ($4894382388278412828941) to the usual address. They can't touch you for it.

Liberal, conservative, left, right, we basically think the same, so why this silly pretence?

Nothing brings out the dishonesty of liberal lefist ideas than a tragedy. Tonight the main news on the BBC is dominated by the accidental deaths of 4 Welsh miners. Welsh shadow secretary of state Peter Hain has felt this is so relevant to the British that he has taken a leading role in making announcements about it. On the other hand, 200 drowned due to a boat capsizing in Zanzibar scarcely rated a mention and the latest round of flooding in Pakistan that has affected 2 million people hasn't exactly captured the headlines either.

This not a criticism of Hain or those responsible for the news in the BBC or the press generally - they are purely responding to the concerns of the British people and presumably their own. This is the natural order of priorities that we all follow, ourselves, our families, our friends, our acquaintances, those like us and our nation in that order. By "we" we mean all mankind; do those in other countries give major tragedies in the UK anything even approaching the same coverage as they do lesser ones in their own? Of course not.

Why then, regardless of their natural instincts, do so many feel driven by the conceptual notion that we should have an equal concern for the world in general, even when that concern comes at the expense of our own citizens?

Daft

All in favour of people with health problems or disabilities being included as much as possible. It benefits us all if they are part of society and encouraged to achieve to the best of their ability.

There are no hard and fast divides between ability and inability, it is all relative and it is just conveivable that some may even be better at some things than we at bloggoth, although obviously we can't possibly think what they might be. In previous volunteer work people with mental health problems have played a major part.

All the same, inclusiveness does seem to have got rather silly. We got a council form to volunteer for countryside maintenance - clearing undergrowth, thinning out trees, digging out ditches, that sort of thing and it's darn hard work. The form asks, "so they can make suitable adjustments to the volunteer environment and better support you in your role" for details of "relevant disabilities or health issues (e.g. bad back)".

People with bad backs should be shifting logs and digging ditches? Bit like asking people with Aspergers to council the suicidal.

Why?

Why does cold make nipples get bigger while balls and willies get smaller? Has anyone done an experiment to see the effect of absolute zero? Would nipple size become infinite? That would be great, but if willy size became zero you couldn't do much about it.

We shouldn't generalise? True but, practically speaking, generalisations make sense

Looks like another appalling act by Somalis. As for Somali migrants to the West, anyone who pretends they are an asset is truly living in a fantasy world.

Sure, it can sometimes be innacurate to make assumptions about a group purely on national lines. In the US, Somalis raise major concerns about Islamic fanaticism. In the UK, while Somali gangs and welfare use are problems, they are rarely involved in extremism. In most of East London, Bangladeshis are way behind the national average in terms of income and acheivement but in Bristol only slightly so. Based on the prison statistics, Pakistani crime is an issue nationally and problems in Bradford and Birmingham regularly hit the headlines but there is little Asian crime in London and the home counties.

Is this surprising? Hardly, look at the enormous variations in our own society. There can be big cultural differences within one nation, it's just that when we are critical outsiders we don't see them. Rather like Al Capone in 1930s America, the gangsters weren't so much an Italian problem as a Scicilian one. Somalia used to be a fairly moderate Islamic country and the fanaticism has not spread to all quarters so maybe the Yanks got more people from the radical areas. Maybe Bristol got the more educated Bangladeshis and London the more educated Pakistanis. This isn't really surprising either and can be accounted for by recommendation and acquaintance - a wealthy British person does not emigrate to a place in Spain that is full of British chavs. Maybe numbers are a factor too, smaller communities cannot so easily live outside the mainstream, they are obliged to mix, to learn English and fit in in other ways.

So yes, these blanket judgements we make about those of other nations can be pretty innacurate. On the other hand, we do not know enough to make a more informed judgement, we cannot spend half our lives delving into the social and economic variations in every country that migrants are likely to come from. We can't be expected to know that that xxx is an upmarket town of prosperous types while yyy 20 miles away is a notorious gangsterland.

Our governments should be making stringent checks on individuals seeking to remain in the UK and if they did that, generalisations of any sort would not be necessary. Since they cannot or will not do so, blanket generalisations are the only things we have to go on and those from poorly educated, broken, high crime or religiously conservative states should not be allowed in at all. While some individuals or those from certain regions or groups may be an asset, these people as a whole never are.

Something doesn't add up here

As we have said before, the concept of "jobs the British don't want to do" often does not make sense because many of the jobs unskilled migrants do are not jobs that should be done at all. Telepests, cold callers or people who hang around shopping malls thrusting leaflets at you are just bloody nuisances and if these jobs were banned it would benefit us all. Other jobs, waitering in tiny ethnic restaurants or data processing for example, are not so obviously useless but if the pay is so low that the worker has to resort to welfare, how does that help the UK economy? The bosses are profiting from these low paid workers at the expense of the tax payer. Businesses like this we do not need.

But there is something even odder about all this. In many shops, bars, cafes and restaurants you are likely to be served by Eastern Europeans. They seem pleasant and do a good job but 6 or 7 years ago, before Poland and other Eastern European countries joined the EU, those same jobs were filled by British workers and they seemed pleasant and did a good job too. After nearly 65 years of the welfare state, are we really to believe there has suddenly been a huge change for the worse in British attitudes over 6 years? Unlikely. The BBC had a news item tonight on youth unemployment and interviewed some who had been deperately looking for jobs without success. They mostly appeared quite bright and articulate, not at all the lazy uneducated chavs some news stories try to portray as typical of modern British youth.

So what is going on?