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June 2016

This is not a good argument for Remain

No one, least of all the PM, had mentioned Europe, but I asked the gay couple whether they were out, or in. Out of course, they said, scandalised. Independence, proud nation, stand on our own two feet. And me? In. Why? they asked.

Because, I said, you assume there’s something inevitable about society’s progress towards greater equality, justice and freedom, for LGBT people or anybody else. Except there isn’t. Those beliefs have evolved slowly and painfully in Europe and the West since the Enlightenment, and globally they are under threat. The countries struggling to implement them, however imperfectly, need to stand together to defend them if they’re not to crumble under the onslaught of cultures with very different principles.

Islamic State would throw a gay couple off a building to their deaths.

So therefore we should stay members of an organisation which would let some few millions of such homophobes in then? Actually force them upon us at risk of a €250,000 fine?

Well done to the New York Times

While the precise motivation for the rampage remains unclear, it is evident that Mr. Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians. Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians who see prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish.

Oh well done. Not one single mention of Muslim, Islam, imam, etc etc….and that’s the damn editorial.

Muslim cleric is shaky on female reproductive bits

Big surprise, eh?

Robertson was interviewed this evening by Greta van Sustern. Considering it was an interview with a sick bastard who wants us infidels dead, it did have its amusing moments. Among other things, Mr. Robertson gave his weighty opinions on the presidential race. Among his pearls of wisdom was that Hillary would be dangerous as a president because as a woman she might get angry during her menses, and push the button.

Perhaps Mr. Robertson is a little bit shaky on the realities of the female reproductive system (which seems to be the case with most fundamentalist Muslim clerics), but I am pretty sure that Hillary is well past the age when menses, or even menopause, can have the slightest effect on her behavior.

Who wants to break the news to him? It could change his vote!

Project Fear continues

George Osborne will threaten today to put 2p on the basic rate of income tax, raise fuel duty and slash spending on health, education, defence and pensions in an emergency budget in the weeks after a Brexit vote.

In the Remain campaign’s most explicit ultimatum to voters, the chancellor outlines tax rises and cuts to frontline services of £30 billion, which are being readied in case Britain opts to leave the European Union next week.

The interesting question is whether people are going to believe the lying little shit.

A piece of advice here

photoshop

This image being:

Recently I was quizzed about the mission of Operation Black Vote (OBV). “I thought OBV was just about getting black and minority ethnic individuals to register to vote and vote in elections,” remarked BBC London’s Vanessa Feltz. But voting is only a means to achieve our very important end: to tackle racism and ensure we have greater equality of opportunity. And to do that, we have to be creative, bold and at times provocative. This is what we’ve sought to do with our recent ad campaigns for the EU referendum with partners Saatchi & Saatchi.

Today we have released a recreated version of the rather infamous image of the 1987 Bullingdon Club, which in its original form portrayed a group of young men who have come to epitomise great privilege and power. It’s no coincidence that the two main protagonists in today’s EU in-out drama, the prime minister, David Cameron, and former London mayor Boris Johnson are in that picture.

The advice being: get better at Photoshop matey.

Amaaaazing

The majority of boys who view online pornography believe it provides a realistic depiction of sex, according to the most extensive survey of British secondary school pupils undertaken.

Children are often misinformed about things….

An interesting insight into the British left

The EU is a festering cesspool. But it’s a crystal spring compared with what the outers want to do – surrender Britain’s sovereignty to the United States

The country which has done rather well over the past couple of hundred years in improving the life of the average bubba on the street. Sure, there’s been bad stuff. Jim Crow wasn’t anything to boast about. But in general and on average the US has taken in tens of millions from Europe and other places and built a pretty decent society.

But the US is the enemy, eh? The very Devil itself for some reason. If it were the US that finally solved the problem of economic scarcity and thus ushered in the possibility of true communism then the British left would still be rejecting it.

Because, you know, America.

It’s an odd, odd, position to take.

And it’s one that I don’t really understand either. As I say, the US isn’t perfect. But then neither are any of the places over here. Why is it, this rejection of the place built, at least in part, upon Tom Paine?

An interesting self-solving problem

San Francisco, the nation’s hotbed of innovation and and a veritable millionaire-production factory is struggling with its economic development. To wit: a new report from the city’s Human Services Agency (via The San Francisco Chronicleand Valleywag) finds that, on some metrics, San Francisco has more income inequality than developing nations, rivaling not the likes of Sweden and Denmark, but countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

The figure cited by the Chronicle is the Gini coefficient, which measures income distribution on a scale of 0 (everyone shares wealth equally) to 1 (all of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of one person). Sweden landed at a .25, and Denmark came in at .24. The United States, per the World Bank, earns a .45, with San Francisco at .523—worse than Rwanda’s .508, and barely better than Guatemala’s .559.

Hmm, OK, so, what should be done?

What’s clear, regardless of what side of the gentrification/tech-boom debate one is on, is that San Francisco’s demographics are rapidly changing, and living in the city is increasingly—and rapidly—becoming a practical impossibility for many of its working-class residents.

So that’s a problem that solves itself then, the poor move out of town and the gini falls…..

Idiot sodding stupidity

Why is that journalists just cannot do numbers?

From Grist:

If U.S. health care were a country, it would rank 13th for emissions

The US is the second largest emitter. Health care is some 18% or so of the US economy. US emissions are 5 billion tonnes or so. Thirteenth emitter is Indonesia on 400 million or so.

Yes, and?

No, sadly not

The Last Guardian release date:

We find out when the paper finally dies? Yeeeeehah!

But sadly not:

The Last Guardian release date: Sony’s follow-up to Shadow of the Colossus is coming to PS4 in September

This would be a most unkind translation

Voice of America

LA Muslim Leaders Demand Gun Control in Response to Orlando Shooting
Voice of America – ‎1 hour ago‎
June 14, 2016 3:19 AM. LOS ANGELES—. At a multi-faith vigil at the front steps of the Islamic Center of Southern California, Muslim leaders said it is time to do something after the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States.

Don’t let our peeps have guns because one of them might do this again…..

Mr Price? Report for your beating

Australian scientists claim to have produced the world’s oldest beer from 220-year-old yeast salvaged from a ship that went down with 7,000 gallons of alcohol on board.

The Sydney Cove was en route from Calcutta to Sydney when she sprang a leak and ran aground on tiny Preservation Island in Bass Strait near Tasmania in February 1797. It is the the eight oldest known shipwreck in Australian waters, and the first merchant vessel lost after the establishment of a British colony at Sydney in 1788.

Eighth, eighth…..

And no, just no:

In the meantime, a homebrew using the yeast has been made based on a common English ale recipe.

The beer has been named Preservation Ale by Mr Thurrowgood, after the island where the Sydney Cove went down, and is quite possibly a revival of the world’s oldest beer.

Ale is sans hops, beer con.

Sure, a rather archaic distinction but then when talking about history why not be archaic?

Don’t believe it but here’s hoping

A clear majority of voters want Britain to quit the European Union, according to a poll for The Times that gives Brexit a seven-point lead.

The YouGov survey puts Leave on 46 per cent, up three points since the end of last week. Remain is on 39 per cent, down three — giving Brexit its largest lead since the start of the campaign, the pollster found. Eleven per cent of people do not know how they will vote and 4 per cent plan to abstain.

So that’s a PR tactic that won’t work any more then

Ads that ‘shame’ Londoners over their bodies are to be banned from the Tube and bus network, Sadiq Khan has announced.
The newly-installed mayor said there will be a block on adverts that ‘demean’ women or encourage them to conform to unrealistic shapes.
The policy means controversial marketing campaigns – like Protein World’s ‘Are you beach body ready?’ poster that provoked a huge backlash last year – will no longer be allowed.

That is, creating an ad campaign that you know will enrage the SJWs, putting a few up here and there for cheap and then watching them multiply your budget by screaming blue bloody murder about it.

Millions upon millions of advertising to be gained for 35 pence or so.

Ah well, looks like my plan to promote heterosexuality with posters of Julie Bindel is out then.

Get rid of this one matey, get rid of her now

A shopaholic has revealed how she makes her soldier fiance treat her to whatever she wants including designer shoes – she threatens him with a sex ban.
Janey, 30, from Durham, says she can get her partner of five years Ross to buy her anything she wants by simply denying him action in the bedroom.
‘He knows not to say no. I will quite happily put him on a sex ban for one to three weeks which I have done in the past,’ she reveals on Channel 5 documentary Little Divas: Tantrums and Tiaras.

We all rather joke about women with holing sex in order to force men into certain actions. But quite so nakedly? Unless she’s a serious performer that’s one to get rid of straight away.

Fun story about North Korea

Years back, in Moscow, knew one or two North Koreans. Actually got a job offer from them. Turn the English translation they had of the Leader’s memoirs into something rather more English English.

Hmm, why not?

We’ll pay you $100.

What, per page? Great!

No, per volume…..

I hope this isn’t true about John Oliver’s medical debt forgiveness

In short, here’s what happened. As part of his segment on debt collectors, Oliver formed his own debt-collection company. Through that company, he then bought just under $15 million in medical debt — the debt of about 9,000 people — for $60,000. Once that debt had been bought, Oliver forgave it. Then, in a moment of self-adulation, he showered the stage with dollar bills as a symbol of his good act.

OK, it’s an intern at National Review writing this so details, details.

But if it was a company forgiving that debt than those whose debt was forgiven owe taxes on that debt forgiveness.

If it were a charity or an individual making a charitable act then they don’t. But corporations are assumed, unless otherwise detailed, to be operating for profit. And a for profit organisation forgiving debt is income to the debtor who gains that forgiveness. And taxable income too.

I do hope that Oliver got this the right way around.

Update: Apparently he donated it to a charity that then forgave it. So, settled then.