SHOULD MARGARET THATCHER BE GIVEN A STATE FUNERAL?

Vote no here

NOT REAL

This story today.

All in our heads.

THE ISLAMIC THREAT: MYTH OR REALITY?

Soumaya Ghannoushi says myth.

Apart from those times when it kills, presumably.

"The victims have included objectivity, balance, and the ability to judge issues calmly and rationally."

Yeah, those things, and people in tall buildings and on public transport.

Should. Not. Read. This. Shit.

TODAY I WAS GIVEN A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

Today someone gave me a box of chocolates and some home-made sweet bakes. She was a young woman from Iraq who had sought to help bring women rights to Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Her work was discovered by the insurgents meaning that she had to flee her family home. She continued to work for women's rights. Members of her family were assasinated by the insurgents. She continued to work for women's rights. Her husband wanted her to stop her work. She refused, divorced him, and continued fighting for women's rights.

Eventually, when the insurgency was wreaking its bloody worst, she fled to Britain. If she hadn't, I doubt she would be alive now.

My boss and I have fought for over a year to get her granted leave to remain in the UK, and the Home Office have finally granted her three years temporary leave. It's a start.

I am wholeheartedly sorry for the sickening fuck-up of the invasion that was so inadequately planned. We have disgraced ourselves with what we have put the Iraqi people through. But I can never never never apologise for the fact that the aims of the Iraq war were something that I felt was worth supporting.

When this lady was fighting in Iraq, even though I didn't know her then, I was on her side.

I still am.

CLIMATE CHANGE: FIRST DO NO HARM

Long time loyal readers will know that I am somewhat irked by the whole Climate Change subject, in that I feel hypocrisy abounds and that debate has been trampled upon in the rush to make money. This post of mine sums up this view.

I don't understand the science behind the claim that humans are responsible for the warming of the planet, but I don't understand the science that claims that humans are not responsible for it either. And so, I comment from the sidelines about the whole human circus that has grown up around the issue.

One 'argument' that always gets the blood rushing to my head is that the best option is just to throw everything we have at tackling possible human contributions to climate change, then if that doesn't prove to be the case, we have lost nothing. Well, I think that's one hell of a gamble. Don't we also need to consider what's to be done either if we cannot stop global warming or if we fail to?

Well, now, here is something else to consider along those lines. Do we not also need to be careful in what we do to try and tackle human contributions to climate change less there are unintended consequences?

I'm talking, of course, about biofuel. That seemingly good idea to save the planet, which is playing a big part in the rise of food prices and driving 100 million people around the world into poverty and hunger.

So, no, we can't afford just to chuck everything we have at climate change. We never could.

REMEMBERING LONDON

Red bus in Birmingham.

DOCTOR WHO: HUH?

Last Doctor Who of the series.

Davros wanted to align some planets, including earth, which would for some reason mean the end of reality, and David Tennant regenerated as himself because of a hand in a jar, but Donna Noble also regenerated on the jar hand to try and save the Tardis - which had been flushed down some sort of celestial loo - and she became half doctor, also creating another Doctor Who who was half human and wore a blue suit, who went off with Rose who went back to her alternative universe, which along with every other universe managed to survive 'the darkness', which was eating up all the stars, but which was somehow reversed by Doctor Donna so that it ate up all the Daleks instead, which along with Dalek Caan betraying Davros in some way I didn't understand, meant that, happily, none of the Doctor Who franchise people had to blow planet earth up themselves with the Haagen key or the deathstar pendent, which was then pulled back to its proper position in the universe by the Tardis - which seemed to have no negative affects other than to make objects on people's shelves wobble - but then Donna had to return to her boring old self because too much Doctor knowledge would burn her up, which was a shame because she had inexplicably been fated to travel with the Doctor to stop 'the darkness' by becoming a hybrid Doctor, which had earlier seen her defeat the time-steeling beetle stuck to her back.

Perhaps I needed to pay better attention all series, but, huh?

UPDATE:
Best summed up by this most excellent quote from David Thompson's from this post of Matt's:

"My overall impression was of RTD shovelling Doctor Who characters and plot fragments into a bin liner and shaking it violently in the hope that something vaguely coherent might fall out afterwards. Someone really should take Mr Davies to one side and hammer nails into his face until he promises to stop."

SHORT AND CURLIES

I have naturally curly hair and I have spent the best part of my life torturing it into being straight. Partly, this is because when I wear it curly, people look at me with mistrust and ask if I have had a perm.

They don't say, "Oh wow! Your hair looks great like that!" or, "Your hair is so pretty curly, you should wear it like that more often." No, they look suspiscious and ask, "Have you had a perm?"

Either that, or they say nothing at all. I have a great big mop of curly hair on my head and they pretend they haven't spotted it.

Well, if people can't cope with my hair being curly, then from now on that's tough. Because I'm going curly. I've bleached and straightened my hair to near extinction and it's now time to give the poor fibrous protein sprouting from my head a break.

From now on, it's Peggy from Hi-De-Hi all the way.......

VALERIE SINGLETON NOT GAY

And she had sex with Peter Purves!

I find the idea of Blue Peter presenters having sex with each other a little disturbing.

But at least she didn't have it off with John Knoakes. That would have been too much.

WHEN THE JUDICIARY GOES MAD

Bad people benefit.

"Police said yesterday there are 40 to 50 cases either going through the courts, or about to start, that could be affected by last week's Law Lords ruling. ...

The law lords acknowledged the public interest in bringing dangerous offenders to justice, but said it was for parliament, not judges, to deal with the problem."

Arseholes to the lot of them.