What is British anyway?

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Murray receives weblog hate mail

SO Andy Murray made a daft joke about England losing the World Cup. So What? I was born in England and I hope they lose too - we get less football shoved down our throats that way!

The more fundemental question is does this highlight a growing schism between Scotland and England? Is there more resentment building from both sides to the trials and fortunes of the other?

Erm, no.

The Scottish and the English have been at each others throats for a couple of thousand years or so. It is not suprising really - they share so many of the same routes that, as brothers, it is fairly amazing they have completely finished each other off by now.

Of course, the nationalistic idiots on both sides will completely deny any common heritage - sacrilage that! But then nationalism spends so much of its existance in a denial of anything that might be called practical or useful, that it forgets that it is meant to be creating some sort of political system.

My partner is Scottish - lived on the East Coast till a handful of years ago. She, like so very many other Scots, voted against devolution as a complete waste of money. She felt that it would be a doubling of somethings, a half hearted split of some others and would engender disatisfaction. I think she has probably been proved right. Or at least not wrong.

The people who would be happy with it are probably still happy with it. The ones that wanted more are fed up and the rest just get on with their daily lives and are pretty pleased that it is not soley them that has to pay for that rediculous eye-sore of a parliament building.

So, not much change then. Some people, Alec Salmon for example, still look for English criminals under every stone, and the rest just wonder where all their money goes. And as for sport, well, if you want any sort of change, and the rough chance of a winning formula, perhaps some bright person should invent the idea of a UK football team. Sounds rediculous? Well, how many teams are representing the United States, who are way more devolved than we? Fifty one? I don't think so!

Read more at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sco...

BBC NEWS | Politics | Murdoch flirts with Conservatives

Okay, forgive me for being a little churlish here, but as to whether any of our (British) political leaders "Conincides" with Rupert Murdoch (American/Australian) views is of no interest to this limey in anyway whatsoever. Infact, of so little interest should it be that I would really like to see the views of the owner of News Corp be buried in the back of one of his cheap tabloids together with the girlie ads.

Murdoch would have been very recogniseable to Awesome Wells as a latter day version of Citizen Cane; a media tycoon who's power and influence extends through his own outlets with dictatorial precision as he instructs his editors on what they should publish.

I feel he has no right to use his power to sway an election in a country where he does not even hold a vote. I feel that as a publisher he has no moral right to dictate political policy through his publiushing interests. And yet he feels duty bound to give or withdraw his backing in a loud and influencial way to parties within a political system that is nothing to do with him.

I therefore issue this Challenge to both David Cameron and Gordon Brown - tell Murdoch to go and stuff his support. The next election should be decided on issues, not the whims of a man who only has his own business interests at heart!

Read more at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_...

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Israel warns of 'extreme' action

I get confused easily. I know I do. But some situations are just designed to confuse me more than others. And any situation which involves two suprisingly similar peoples striving head to head for mutual destruction is guarenteed to confuse me most of all.

Make no mistake - the Palestinian/Isreally conflict is nothing to do with Jews and Arabs, though many would love you to believe so. It is about land grabbing colonialism where one side wants what the other side has, for the moment.

In this sort of situation, rediculous action appears to require over zealous reaction. We steal your soldier - you bomb the hell out of us. You shoot our leader, we blow up your busses. And the spectators of the world, the countires and organisations and charities just stand on the sidelines shouting foul.

Is there a solution here? Of course there is! Stop fighting, go home, feed your families, do business with each other. The Israelies and the Arabs are some of the oldest and most successful traders in the world. Maybe even the most devious, from time to time. They should be making fortunes from each other and anyone that passes by. That is what they do - that is what they have ever done. Unfortunately, they also seem to take pleasure in killing each other. It is not logical. The history behind it leaps from one momentous piece of bad logic to another. It is 3000 plus years of stumbling round idealism, slavery and biggotry. And yet, you only have to look at them to be able to say, "You are brothers really, aren't you?"

And maybe that is the problem - for no war is as bitter as the one that is between brothers!

Read more at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor...

What a silly campaign, this FOREST lot.

Neil Rafferty, Scottish spokesman for the pro smoking lobby Forest has been critisising the Scottish smoking ban (comming into force in 4 hours time)

"The ban will do nothing to improve the health of the nation, but it will give a warm glow to those who enjoy telling others what to do. The anti-smoking fanatics will use the ban to victimise and stigmatise smokers even further. " Says Raffert.

I have to declare an interest at this point. I smoked for many years and gave up two years ago. Now, first of all I would like to say that even when I smoked 60 a day I thought Forest was the most dishonest, stupid and corrupting intitution. I was once told by a fourteen year old that they smoked because Forest, who know what they are on about, said it was alright really.

The ban on smoking in public places has one flaw, however. It is years too late. If it had come in 20 years ago, I would have probably given up then. That would have been 18 years less of nicoteen in my body. A drug, Mr. Rafferty would might like to know, that is considerably more poisoness than Heroin.

Of course, on Forests own site they do things like portray major health scares as "The phantom menace." They promote a book by Jo Jackson, a musician who has "researched smoking issues in depth over the last three years and has become increasingly sceptical about the overblown hysteria whipped up by recent anti-smoking propaganda".

And his qualifications for such meaningful reserach? Oh yeah, he is a musician - very authoritive that. Personally I will rather take the words of doctors I have worked with over the years and their enourmous catalogues of smoking related deaths. They don't need any research, they don't need lobbies such as Forest distorting facts. They have seen it for themselves in the blood and guts of the dying.

But then unlike Forest, doctors are not funded directly by the tobacco companies - a group who have sistematically lied about the dangers of smoking for decades.

Give it up, Forest, most of us, even those who smoke, wised up to you years ago.

Personally, I would like to see the end of the sale of tobacco. My health would have been way better without it. And of course Forest would cough and splutter into nothngness.

Rat

Read about the Scottish ban: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sco...

Islam has an uphill climb

For a moderate muslim deperate to show his neighbour that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, they must want to hide their head in their hands at the news that a man may be excecuted in Afghanistan for converting from Islam to Christianity.

The sin of Apostasy (rejection of a faith) has troubled religion through the centuries. It is a uniquely paranoid crime, levied by insecure and contolling officials against those that may bring their religion into disrepute. Why should a people, united by a faith, worry that a single person of their number decides to walk a different path is beyond me. Why such a crime should be inshrined in law is rediculous!

Islam, as a world religion, has had bad press of late. Some of this is foisted upon it by rediculous groups such as the BNP. Much of it by the unwelcome fanatics and fundamentalists (the curse of many religions). But some, like this instance, is purely from within.

Islamists want to be accepted by the rest of the world, and for the rest of the world to welcome them, and yet seem suprised that we will not accept their right to excecute for adultery, remove hands for theft, issue death threats for people who write books, dress up as suicide bombers to react against pen and ink drawings and now, to kill because someone changed their mind.

No human being has the right to treat others so, what ever the culture, what ever the belief system. It belongs to a different, more violent age, the age when many religions, Christianity included, was punctuated by bararism. The dark years of the dark ages.

In the modern era, when we should be demonstrating that we, this difficult, egotistical human creature, have learnt better ways, can tolerate, educate, discuss and peacefully disagree, Islam, at least in some of its practices around the world, is being left behind. It has to change, not just in the peaceful communities we see in the UK, but through out the world. Maybe it is time that Islam as it seems to exsist here should take the lessons of peace it teaches to the people of Afghanistan, Iran, and other countries. Maybe then Islam will be more comfortable and learn to live with the rest of the world.

See article at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor...

Backers and Backbenchers

Just a thought - what is the difference between a backer and a backbencher?

In the case of the Labour Party I would say that the backers are more useful. At least they help the party move forward!

In the case of the Tories, well it is nice that mummy and daddy are so involved with little David's/Tarquin's/Nastasia's (delete or add as appropriate) political career.

Rat

BBC NEWS | Politics | Tory lenders 'feared reprisals'

Read more at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_...