Category Archives: Current Affairs

If defending life on Earth is extremist, we must own that label
George Monbiot

Then you should be on that list of extremists then George?

The conclusion: nothing is certain, and there must be a future path back to a non-Tory government. This will involve luck, but also a decent amount of design.

Two main obstacles block that path.

First: the “Scottish problem”. The last Labour government held 41 Scottish seats; today the party has one. The SNP’s rise has helped the Tories in two ways. Tory opposition to independence detoxifies them for “unionists”; and more importantly, the SNP’s strength in Scotland blocks a UK Labour majority. The Tory trump card is that the only alternative to a Conservative majority is a ragtag Labour-led coalition, with the nationalist tail wagging the dog and demanding the dismantling of the UK.

And why should the English be ruled by the Scots?

Independence now therefore.

Boris Johnson has said that Iran shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane in Tehran after Western intelligence agencies concluded that the downing of the jet was most likely an accident.

US satellites reportedly picked up two surface-to-air missiles being launched shortly before the accident and US officials suspect there are missile fragments near the crash site where all 176 passenger died.

After all, planes don’t normally just fall out of the sky.

Well, actually, we used to say that about Boeings, but now…..

But other than that what is to be done?

As many as 4,500 primates face having nowhere to go when the government bans people from keeping them as pets, a BBC science presenter has warned.

Dr Ben Garrod, a primatologist who is presenting two new science-based shows for the broadcaster, said that while he welcomed the expected policy announcement, which is currently in the consultation stage, there remained concerns about where to accommodate the animals if they are confiscated.

He said: “We think there are 4,500 privately owned primates in the UK, even if we banned it tomorrow what do you do with these 4,500 animals that can live decades? We don’t have the facilities to confiscate them off people.

It appears that we’ve got that not thinking thing going on again. It’ll be illegal to keep them. But zoos won’t want them, or couldn’t take them. And?

So what will happen to them? Presumably be put down. Which will be a grand victory for the protection of animal rights, won’t it?

I don’t know the answer here but I would incline toward the idea that it’s actually a racial rather than merely cultural grouping. All those Celts rather than Anglo Saxons etc. Of course, thinking this way does mean that South Wales isn’t Welsh but then that’s true anyway. Be a slur on the hell that it is to call it Welsh.

But we do still get this:

This week, Gwynedd council raised concerns that Welsh people of colour will have no tick-box option to indicate they are Welsh and minority ethnic in the 2021 census, as a result of the survey format designed by the Office for National Statistics. This is a bitterly disappointing and frankly astounding omission. It implicitly embeds the dangerous assumption that people of colour aren’t Welsh, or that those who can speak Welsh have to be white.

So, what is Welsh? A culture or a race?

We know a few things about wild fires.

1) The American forests have largely evolved to have regular, low level, fires. Suppressing them has led to more high level and damaging fires. The solution is to let them burn more often.

2) We know the Abos used fire to manage the terrain. Extensively in fact.

3) Oz bush fires are happening a lot.

So, the question, are they happening enough? That is, are we seeing the Septic problem in Oz, not enough fires often enough, therefore they’re more damaging when they occur?

London Bridge attack: Prisoner who confronted terrorist is not a hero, say family of the woman he murdered

That someone has done something bad is this thing over here. That someone has done something good, or brave, or heroic, is this other thing over there.

Eric Gill really was rather good at carving despite his rape of the family dog. Michael Jackson cut some pretty mean tunes whatever happened at Neverland. Certain VC winners have been less than wondrous in the round and yet still heroes.

Yes, agreed, this rather goes against the current mores which say that if anyone ever uttered a single waycist sentiment then their entire lives were in vain. Yet it is still true, it is possible for a human to be more than one thing, both a hero and a villain for example.

Boris Johnson has pledged that no-one will have to sell their house to pay for social care under a Conservative government, as he announced a £5 billion cash injection to ease the current funding crisis.

The Prime Minister will “end the injustice” of people having to sell their family home by seeking a cross-party agreement on how to pay for the soaring costs of caring for the elderly and disabled.

Think it through for a moment.

Someone who does not buy a house but stick the money into a pension will have to pay for their social care. Someone who buys instead of pensions will not. Why is that fair?

Now, if you were to say that no one should have to pay for social care I’d insist you’re wrong but you’re being reasonable. But why the house among all possible investments and lifetime spendings?

An oft-quoted statistic is that there are more tigers in American back yards than there are left in the wild. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, there are between 3,200 and 3,500 tigers remaining in the wild globally. By some estimates there are 5,000 in captivity in the US, though there might be more. The truth is we have little idea how many there are in American ranches, unlicensed zoos, apartments, truck stops and private breeding facilities, due to a mishmash of state, federal and county laws governing their ownership.

Thank God for private property, eh? Or thank Gaia, eh?

From 9 th November 1989 – obviously the clip, not the YouTube posting of it.

Berlin Wall. Workers remonstrating with the border guards. The news has come out that the Wall is to be open at midnight. The guards haven’t heard of it, or don’t believe it. They say to everyone “Go home” or summat. And the crowd laughs.

I’ve used it before and now can’t find it. The point being that once people laugh at the police then it’s all over.

Anyone with better search skills than me able to find it?

Fewer people would have died in the Grenfell disaster if London Fire Brigade had not suffered “serious shortcomings” and “systemic” failures in its response to the fire, the official report into the tragedy has concluded.

The damning 1,000-page report also accuses Dany Cotton, London Fire Brigade’s commissioner, of “remarkable insensitivity” after she gave testimony insisting she would have done nothing differently.

If you didn’t bugger it up then what should you say about doing it differently?

Agreed, that’s a big if, but still.

UK weather forecast – Britain is hit by three weeks of rain in 36 hours

Sure, the place might have produced Prime Ministers but how many Presidents?

Rodrigo Duterte, the abrasive president of the Philippines, returned last week to one of his favorite laments — his poor health — and declared he was suffering from a chronic immune-system disorder.

The timing does not seem accidental. The Supreme Court, its benches now packed with his appointees, is set to issue a crucial ruling about who should be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

If the 74-year-old Duterte — who is prone to long, unexplained public absences — gets his way, his current vice- president would be replaced by Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator who ruled for 21 years.

Assuming it comes to pass, Worth 1, Eton 0.

As earlier, Oxfam tells us that the workers only get 3 p put of the 79p paid in the shops for the tea.

OK, 4% say.

Right, now, what is the value of that plate of beans the starving kid gets. And how much does it cost Oxfam to get it there? If that kid’s eating 4% of what Oxfam’s taking in I’d be surprised. As much as 4% that is.

And wouldn’t it be fun to turn this on them in a radio interview…..

Greens condemn Chinese high-rollers being offered wombat hunts

Seriously? Aren’t wombats a bit like ground dwelling koalas? Not all that exciting to chase?

Four teenage boys aged between 15 and 17 have been charged with an aggravated hate crime over a homophobic attack against two women on a London night bus in May.

Five years ago it looked as though the country’s great Serengeti plains would be bled dry. From 2009 to 2014 Tanzania lost more than 65,000 of its 110,000 elephants to poachers, while there were only 15 rhinos left in 2014, leading experts to warn that both species would disappear within a decade.

However, over the past five years the big game population has increased. There are now 60,000 elephants and 167 rhinos, according to the Tanzanian presidency.

Simply because I don’t believe a word Magufuli says. Harsh perhaps but there it is.

Police arrest man suspected of having a meth-fuelled trained attack squirrel

Sounds fun but I didn’t know it was a thing

Why Sri Lanka attackers’ wealthy backgrounds shouldn’t surprise us

Lots of terrorists with lots of causes have come from educated/wealthy backgrounds. Therefore:

Taken together, this teaches us that neither education nor economics can help explain any one individual’s violent activism.

But back when we didn’t know that they came from educated and wealthy backgrounds it was said that economics explained it all. The righteous anger of the proletariat at the capitalist and bourgeois classes.

Is it that we iz learnin’? Or we’ve changed the story when it became inconvenient?

Sudan’s fourth leader in three days vows to uproot old regime

Name the prison preparing to go on holiday referenced in the headline. Added points for where it goes.