This Is Not A Hoax

In Leeds, England, UK, there was a site known as Quarry Hill.
In the old days, one would wait for a bus in the old Art Deco bus station and stare at 'Quarry Hill Flats' opposite.
Built in 1936 to provide cheap rental housing on a massive scale, the flats were heated and had such devices as sink waste-disposal.
Years ahead of their time.

The Quarry Hill flats in Leeds were earmarked by Adolf Hitler to become the headquarters of the SS in Britain, following the invasion.

Thanks to Grammar School boys in Hurricanes and Spitfires, that never happened.

The flats were demolished in the late eighties.
As were most remaining Grammar Schools.
The building in the photograph was opened in 1995.

The people of Leeds immediately christened it 'the Kremlin'.

It is real.It is huge. It is the national headquarters of the Department of Work and Pensions.
It stands on the site of Hitler's projected headquarters.
The carpet in the foyer cost £250000(half a million dollars).
It has a private Gym and swimming pool.

Don't be dumb, be a smarty, come and join the Social Security.

I mean, they are doing this in the open!

I Deprive You Of Speech!

An 82 year-old member of the labour party, named Walter Wolfgang, was present at Jack Straw's conference speech.
The speech proclaimed the rightness of the occupation of Iraq.
Wolfgang disagreed.
Wolfgang was a survivor of the Nazis.
He shouted, "Nonsense!"
Whereupon two burly wardens descended on him and physically threw him out of the conference hall.
Outside, the police confiscated his membership card and detained him under the Anti-Terrorism 'laws'.


One little old man, nay, veteran.
One word.
He has been a member of the labour party since before that pile of little shits was born.
And he was treated like a criminal, like a Jew under the Nazis.
Again.

Fuck you, Blair.
You and your whole shitty, criminal regime.
And no, I'm not a member of the labour party.

Released!

Sylvia was released after just one day.
An unknown 'benefactor' (probably Tony Blair) paid the £53.71 to the council so she was free to go.
This was the scene near the Catholic Cathedral in Leeds today when it started to rain. The building on the left is the Radisson/SAS hotel(note the flags); in the distance (take my word for it) is the Cafe Nero coffee shop, which does a nice Americano and a passable Espresso.Another interesting view from a few streets away; this is O'Neill's Bar, an 'Oirish' theme pub.
Note the Star Of David near the top. The building used to be the most central synagogue in Leeds.
Finally, this interesting shot of a terrace to the South of Leeds:'Ashfield Terrace,1885'
Maybe the Old Pot was the New Pot in Victorian times?

The Prisoner

This picture shows a 73 year-old lady called Sylvia Hardy.
Last year her local property tax was £683 (about $1200), for a retiree living alone.
Her pension rose by 1.7% this year, so she paid tax of 2004 levels plus 1.7%.
This left £53.71 outstanding, and the local authorities took her to court to get it.
The judge awarded them £53.71 plus £10 costs.

Sylvia refused to pay.

They gave her 56 days to pay(a threat), and a suspended sentence of 7 days in prison.

Today she went to prison.

The imprisonment will cost the state an estimated £700($1300), which means she will be destroying a whole year's worth of expropriated income.

If a young, able-bodied 'youth' beat her up for the fifty quid, he would not go to prison.
He would receive an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order) telling him to stay out of her street.

I mean, come on. What the fuck do these crooks take us for?

Famous Classic.

This is an MGB-GT.
It is a hatchback coupe based on the B Roadster, and originally had an 1800-four engine.
Variants came with a straight six and even the 3500 V8 from the Rovers.
This last engine was a sweet aluminium job, which remained in production until very recently;I believe the it was a sixties GM project that was sold to Rover(when Rover was a real company, not the rump of the Wilsonian Socialist Corporation(BMC/BLMC))
The 1795cc four was the last version standing when production ended in the early eighties.

Safe And Sound Again.

I went out this morning after a good night's sleep, and bought a new cell.
The smoke alarm has now resumed normal service, actually being mains-powered despite having a battery cell.
I think it is for back-up, and the 'beep' is a warning of either power source failing.
Of course, it doesn't beep for long if you rip out both sources.
Irritating, belt-and-braces approach.
Anyway, the cell lasted for five years last time, so I should not have to touch it again for a while.

And There We Went....

I examined the wiring. It is possible that the wire was never connected in the first place.
Trouble with a lot of these dick-wad electricians is they use all sorts of wire to do the job.
The main cable is right, but the Earth was ported to a RED wire(the loose one). The power is in a Brown wire with a Black neutral, which hasn't been code for thirty years.
The unit was never earthed, but the probable cause is the Cell back-up going flat.

So I'll replace it in the morning.

Let's hope nothing unlucky happens eh?

By the way, I've edited the source code so the 'blog loads properly on Firefox.

Gosh, I Haven't Lost My Cherry After All!

Nice looking little motor, eh?
It was with these that Datsun conquered the world; then they changed. It used to be about the motors, man!
Now they're called Nissan and they're owned by Renault of France, which was nationalised in the forties.
It was nationalised because it was deemed that M.Renault had collaborated with the Germans.

Here We Go Again.

Got home today, sat down with the TV and a little beer, and then I kept hearing this intermittent 'beep'.
Now I knew what it was immediately.
It's the power-interruption warning of a smoke alarm.

So I gave it the once over, and the input wire has been cut.

I don't know whether they intended that the alarm should warn me, or whether they thought they would prepare for a fire which would 'remove' me.

Thing is, I wrote those letters.
And I don't think that the companies(big, reputable companies) would be particularly bothered.
But I know who would, and I know more than that.
My father died. Before he died he had my key(I gave hime a spare) duplicated.
I thought I had all the copies.

But, perhaps he gave one to Pinky? Pinky was his friend. Pinky fooled him into thinking that he would look after me after dad died.
Pinky is a heap of cowardly shit and is probably making yet another little 'escalatory' threat.
Thing is, with shite-hawks like Pinky, it's all psychology and no reality.
He is really playing with fire, more than he knows.

Tomorrow I have a workman coming to change the locks and examine the smoke alarm.
If I'm right, I'll call the police and they will examine the Security Camera footage.

In The Ghetto...

Trevor Phillips is the head of the Commission For Racial Equality.
Quite how enforcing equality for races helps individuals is not something that the commission explains particularly, but Trevor has plenty to say about issues of race.

Recently he called for separate schools for 'black' boys.
Then, last week, he complained that British cities were turning into racially-segregated ghettos.

Quite why this is, he didn't say, even assuming it was true.
Anyway, why do certain people choose to live together, and why are these neighbourhoods likely to become dominated by any particular race?

And why is that a bad thing?

Well, the argument goes that anybody coming to the UK should adopt the customs and values of Britain.
But there are few customs and no values worth a dan that anybody has codified successfully.

But what do people anywhere choose to do?
They choose to live with people who share their outlooks and values.
It definitely does not have to be racial, but imagine; you are a Pakistani and you have come to Britain.
You speak several languages, including Urdu, (I think) and you want to be here.
Who else wants to be here, speaks these languages and still has a few traditions from the 'old country'?(How many 'white' South Africans miss Africa when they come here?All of them).
The answer to the question is, 'other Pakistani immigrants'.
So they congregate peacefully in certain neighbourhoods, sometimes these being the ones which have always welcomed waves of immigration.
So you might get Irish, English, Pakistani and now Kosovan, all moving into and changing an area at different times.

Trouble is, some of these people decide to overpower the local customs and law, to turn that 'ghetto' into a private kingdom;like the Irish in Kilburn in London, or the West Indians (once upon a time) in Chapeltown, Leeds.

Liberal, soft societies are ripe for this sort of takeover, but it is not the fault of the ghetto as such.
It is the fault of a weak civic structure.
It can happen anywhere.
If you 'google' ghetto, the images are either Warsaw or various references to moronic rappers.

Presidential Responsibility and Soviet Equivalence Delusions

Every day we hear the phrase 'the most powerful man in the world' applied to the US president, whomever that may be at the time.
We have been hearing this phrase for most of living memory, since the Cold War was in its infancy.
So I will now explain.
It started as a sustained attack upon the values of America, and persevered for so long that the thoughtlessness of the unthinking has spawned a habit of the unthinkable; it being unthinkable that the 'President of the USA' could be any other than 'the most powerful man in the world'.

Having set up this Straw Man, these wicked, scheming cultural step-parents of the media can then indulge in their favourite perversion whenever they like, that is, to drink deeply at the trough of scorn whenever some trouble erupts in the vicinity of America.
They jerk off intellectually at every new problem, every real, human calmity that they can lay at the door of the president or his country. The lick their lips and smack their teeth at the apparitions they conjure, thinking all the while that the targets of their hatred, the innocent honest everywhere, will fall before their malice.

Originally the phrase had a slightly more coherent, though no less evil, purpose: namely to induce an illusion of equivalency between the non-dictators of America, and the actual dictators of the Communist Empire.
There was therefore nothing to be gained from resisting the communists, but, surprise surprise, a sliver of hope could be held out by the obligators of the masses, so why not 'let them in'?

Since communism collapsed irrevocably, they have clung to their mantra in the desperate illusory 'hope' that they may yet induce a world in which they can still confuse and hurt when they should be telling the truth.

Too bad for them we have the internet.

There May Be Some Bridges Burning Behind Me...

..and I may have many rivers to cross to reach Berlin, but like the Cheshire Regiment in 1945, I should manage it.
Incidentally, I saw Freddy Kruger again recently.

He is a very steady type, but seems filled with an aggressive, cheerful spirit at the moment. Can't quite put my finger on it, but he looks somehow changed.

Lost My Cherry Today, But Found This Little Sweety.

This, of course, is a Jaguar XK-120, so called because it can cruise at 120mph. Flat out of course.
All that, and a couple of pints of the good stuff: Theakstons Best Bitter(which has suddenly become very, very good since the two elder Theakston brothers bought back the brewery) and a Wheat Beer from the York Brewery.

I believe this car was the first to use Jaguar's legendary straight six.

Blast! I've Cut Off My Cherry!

Not sure if this classic Datsun is a Cherry or a Sunny. Nice styling, which I will try to capture better if I see it again tomorrow.
The green/yellow triangle in the right hand corner of the windscreen is the tax-exemption symbol.
If you have a car which is 25 years old or older, you don't pay road tax.
This is part of 'joined-up government' in the UK.
They make petrol expensive to discourage pollution, but give £170 per year back to people who drive ancient, inefficient, polluting vehicles.
And I've seen the tax-exempt sticker on modern cars too.
The wankers must think the specialist Traffic Cops are bloody thick or something.
I'd love to see what happens when one of these tax-cheat jokers tries to talk his way out.
"Oh yeah, my Renault Clio is twenty-six years old, actually".

Global Bullshit.

Anybody wondering why the ocean levels have not risen at all despite 'global warming'?
After all, we have been told, 'when the icecaps melt the ocean levels will rise andlowlyingpropertywillbefloodedout/click/when the icecaps melt.....'

Okay.
Ice.
Lower density than water.
The Arctic icecap is floating, as is much of the Antarctic.
Displacing exactly the same as water.
When it melts?No more ice displacement.
No more water than before.
Just more dense water.
Which occupies less volume.
Which means water levels might fall.

What a load of lying, alarmist crap, eh?

The Original Ghostbuster Dies.

Simon Weisanthal, the hunter of Nazis, has died.
He was a very old man, of course.
All the same, I hope there will be others to succeed him.

Here's One For The Self-Preservation Society

Found this nice little Italian Job at my friendly petrol station this morning.

It is, of course, a Fiat.

An X-19 to be exact.

Talk about bloody nonsense. The Triumph TR7 came out around the same time as the Fiat. The Triumph was front-engine, rear drive 2-litre, and the Fiat was mid-engine, rear drive 2 litre.

Fiat is still in business. Triumph is extinct except as a brand-name owned by BMW.

Then, they said that the Triumph was no good because it only looked like a mid-engined car.

Now, they say that a true sports car has to be -:yes!Front engined, rear drive.

The scum manage to bring this out just as Rover goes bust, with the mid-engined MG-F.

The motoring pundits are like the mainstream press in one respect; they stick, tortuously, perversely, to their prejudices, even if it means destroying entire industries.

Me, I like the Fiat. And the Triumph was beautiful, although not well enough built.

We Can All Use a little Solidarnosc occasionally.

Two of the largest research companies in the country have started a collaborative venture with Pinky & Perky Ltd; they may or may not know the truth.
Clearly, publishing the truth here would risk(if names were named) 'legal' action which might cause me problems.
Clearly they are working with major players, and would have plenty of funds.
So.
What to do?
Obvious.
Continue with the Guerilla.
How?
Address the senior management of the collaborators.
As a very first step, inform them that I still have an active and outstanding claim on the technology.
Anyone for a game of Dodge-Tank?

Oh, Shems,Shems......

Tell me about the wonders of your country!

"Well, Oona, or can I call you Miss Von Trapp? Well, for instance, in the North we are well known for our Fish and Chips...."

"Oh, Shems, tell me more!"

"Well, they take the finest North Sea Cod fillet..."

"Mmm...."

"Dip it in batter......"

"Mmm, yes! Yes!"

"And drop it in hot fat. For five to ten minutes."

"Oh,Shems!Tell me more!"

"I'm afraid I can't. That is one of 'M' s closest secrets."

"If only they had chips too! Oh Shems, will you take me to one of these fish and chip shops?"

"Sorry Oona. We have to keep their location a close secret."

"I'll give you a 4 pound tin of Caspian Caviar..."

"Err......"

"And a plate of Steak Tartare-made with Japanese beef!"

"Erm, alright then.."

"Stop! Stop now! Thank you Funnyfanny. Good impersonation of Miss Trapp. Bond? What were you thinking? You know that one of our Northern fish and chip shops is actually the secret entrance to the underground Headquarters. Not good enough. Report to Q for you fish-frier uniform."

I Ain't Afraid of No Blair...I Ain't Afraid of No Blair...

According to local UK Sunday The Mail On Sunday, Blair 'relished sending UK forces to war'.
So he isn't really a communist then, right?
Trouble is, the print version shows the headline that 'they tried to censor' this report.
As you can see from the online version(if you're quick), they apparently did.

Blair The Communist.

Nuns.
In the UK the Benedictine Order of Catholic nuns is a closed order.
This means that the nuns mostly shut themselves away to pray. A few tired people can share their company for a while if they enter into a retreat, that is, a retreat from the worldly world.

Under present British law, they are allowed to claim charitable status, so gaining relief from taxation on their voluntarily donated income.

This is to change.
Blair's government is going to impose an onus of proof before granting charitable status.
They have to prove that they are 'of benefit to society at large', or they will be taxed.

This means that the State sees no gain in pursuit of the human spirit for it's own sake-dialectic materialism.
The State is also officially becoming communistically atheist in denying people freedom to believe as they wish.
They are also seeking to define all charity as the slave of society, ie their miserable client-populace.
This is pure Communism.

So, it looks as though we will be condemned for giving money to non-State-approved causes.

Is there a charity I can donate to? I mean, one that proposes, at the very least, to march these bastards through the streets of London in their underwear while pelting them with the contents of chamber-pots?

If only the Reilly Plot of 1918 had succeeded. We would have knocked most of twentieth century regression into a cocked hat, and had a prototype to base our behaviour on when confronted by such scum.

Mafeking Relieved!

Gurgle gurgle glug, what a relief it is!
Looks as if the government gambled right again, with a bit of subversive suppression by the police on orders from the Home Office.
Supplies are getting through.
We are overflowing with expensive petrol and diesel.
Meanwhile, the supermarkets are reducing prices by 5%, so that the government is not obliged to. This way they can drum up business, appear to be a public service (lots of bad press, supermarkets) and preserve the arrogance of the little fart politicians in aspic.

If the Shoe Fits-It Must Be Clarkes

Mister Clarke wants to introduce a new detention period of three months without trial for 'terrorist subjects'.
Since no charges are required, anybody can be classed as a terrorist and detained for three months, then released with a 'sorry' notice in the papers or on TV.
Naturally, it will deflect charges of 'racism' and reassure the public, if some of the victims are 'white', which will be the sort of spin which permits the government to interdict any form of opposition in the name of 'safety'.

Furthermore, he wants to create new charges (this is where it gets hilarious) : Glorifying Terrorism.
So, anybody who doesn't follow the taboo will be shut down or imprisoned?
Clarkes; you have to admire the new range of jackboots.
Stuck firmly in politicians mouths.

Still, he looks happy. But has he ever really forgiven the world for his ears?

Crisis, What Crisis?

Oops. Looks like I spoke too soon.
Looks like everybody spoke too soon.

First of all, the stabbings were over a land-feud. Not about the protests at all.
Second of all,it is obvious that the government is calling the shots and the 'safety' issue is bullshit.
Let's face it, every Putsch since the Paris Commune and before, has had a 'Public Safety Committee', which has resorted to locking up and eventually murdering the citizens it claims to be protecting.
All for the good of 'the people'. naturally.

Another Job Goes West.

Didn't get the job.
Again.
Still, not to worry, eh?
Once a Jolly Swagman......

By the way, three men were stabbed in Dewsbury yesterday evening. Two of them were senior protest leaders, and one of them died.
So the police were either sitting on information about an actual threat,(not very likely since they were not Yorkshire police yesterday talking about 'safety'), or I was right in the first place. But it looks as if there is a credible threat after all. I don't see anybody making threats, and if they are, I don't see them being corralled.
Better lock all of us law-abiding citizens up. That would protect us from the threat of criminals.

S.T.E.N.C.H.

What is STENCH?
The Society for Terrorisation, Extortion, Non-sequiteurs, Crap and Hatred.
STENCH.
This society thrives in Britain.
A senior Northern policeman was interviewed on TV tonight, talking about the Fuel Protest.
He actually(don't laugh, rather, PUKE) stated that the protestors had been diverted from the factory gates to a 'safety area' for their own 'safety', not to destroy the protest or save government face or make our wonderful Bobbies into a tool of the rulers.
No.
It was for their 'safety'.

I wonder what it was they had to be protected from?
Maybe a crazed policeman? Running amok because 'he couldn't take it any more'?
How about themselves?
That's the one we all need protection from, right?
One day, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of their lives, there will be a Prague Spring.
Or perhaps the Government plans to forestall that with it's terrorisation legislation?
The trouble about Britain is, that it makes East Germany look amateurish. We don't actually have a Stasi, or even a network of informers, but what we do have is a Ruling Class, a set of folks who, quietly and deliberately, in obeisance to some vague, but straight down image of 'propriety', sit on all dissent and kill the humanity in the humans where they stand, in the hope that one day, they too will have a relative who is 'Right Honourable' or at least sitting as a magistrate somewhere in the 'Home' Counties, that particular nomenclature being a dead giveaway for the deathly takeaway via the acres of crossword-Radio 4-loving blades of grass.

I don't want to get involved.
It just makes me sick to see, that's all.

Sorehead to Atlantis....Beam Me Up!

Interesting, eh?
But not as topical as the Fuel Protest, due to start this morning.
Yesterday was like the Klondike Gold Rush. Anybody with any sort of crappy vehicle, no matter if they only use it to visit mum every month, got in and took to the road in pathetic panic.
They were looking for petrol.
They (mostly) found it. They skived off work. They got out of bed. They went to the petrol stations. They made the roads gravely dangerous places to work due to their 'once a month' ineptness.
There was a traffic jam outside every Petrol Station.

But that was yesterday.

Today, I made a leisurely trip down to my usual petrol station, and took on a full load 'just in case'.
The place was deserted. There was hardly any traffic. It was as if the entire population was holding back out of sheer embarrassment.
As well they might.
Crisis? What Crisis?
Like, totally normal, man!

Reports came in during the afternoon of the apparent failure of the fuel protests. The 'failure' is self-evident in the fact that the country has not immediately ground to a halt. And in the fact that the numbers of the protestors at the fuel depots was less than the number of journalists.

But wait. Apparently the Police corralled the majority into a control zone half a mile from this particular depot.

So the wheels keep spinning, as does the 'Government'. And the lie is created to cancel the crisis, and make the public distrust the media, and make the Cheshire Cat Government disinformation appear to be the only thing that can be trusted.

Meanwhile Gordon Brown 'stands firm' over tax revenues.

As did Prime Minister Sugden over Nationalisation in an interesting novel.

It's All Over Bar....

The mopping up.

Yes. It's that school again.

Mopping up? They say fire is the great cleanser.

Greater than a mop?
Or will they need a mop after the fire engine goes away again?

On an unrelated note, according to this graffito, the King of Pop has found new friends among the children of South Leeds; he did say he would be looking for somewhere new to live. But who would have thought he'd be joined by a famous cricketer?

Bad Old Good Old Days.

What do these people have in common? I am not sure, but the one at the top looks like he is a wanker. Perhaps the common factor is Heavy Metal then?

Even then, the Mercury Prize is the nearest to any form of 'Metal' that Anthony and the Johnsons will ever get.

I can't understand why he won the prize, but at least he doesn't have the Medieval approach to displaying his Johnson.

Something tells me that if they met today, there would be some kind of a mess.

There'll Always Be An England...

This is a 1948-vintage Foden 9 Tonner.
The model was introduced in 1937.
This one has servo-brakes and one or two other advances, made despite the war.
The dog on the right hand seat is a current model Highland Terrier, developed over millions of years by Earth Inc.
The Foden, close up, shows a wonderful sparseness, the application of Sufficiency Engineering; there is barely a stylised or hidden component anywhere.
Truly a part of any Classical education, the study of old vehicles.

Soon, Comrades

One day, comrade citizens, all motor cars will be like this. Even now, crack teams of engineers are working to unlock the secrets of the 1957 Cadillac.

Soon we will see a Rover, being built under Chinese control, that can finally match the vehicles of the class enemy.

Failing that, we can always have another drink. This is a pint of Golden Bitter from Kelham Island Brewery in Sheffield. The packet of nuts serves to show how a settled pint should look; clear and smooth.

Lor' Bless Yer Guvnor!

"I say, you there, peasant, we are going to run a power line over your land."
"Don't call me peasant. I know you. You were the English student at college. You went to Cambridge-or was it Oxford-and you joined a Party at college. Then you came home....."

"Now now, mister Bull, no need to get personal. I just wanted to say, we are going to build this. You don't own the land so it doesn't affect you.
They tell me it is actually beneficial to live close to power lines as they attract songbirds, which are proven to prolong gardening leave."

"I see. And if I want to sell my house?"

"Well, there is nothing to stop you selling your house..."

"Except the fuckin' pylon next door. And the crackling sound all the time."

"Never mind mister Bull..may I call you John? This is the necessary side of Progress. If we can't do a deal with the power company to grant access to the mass housing to the North..."

"What mass housing?"

"Centralised planning! It is coming! It is coming!"

"So I get trampled?"

"I knew you would understand."

"By your masses?"

"People like you! It's democratic! Anyway, at least the power company isn't to blame; we nationalised it."

"What exactly are you for?"

(Icy silence).

Fighting Fear with Fear

On TV we've been seeing images of the remaining inhabitants of New Orleans being arrested and removed from their homes.
Why is it that so many people suffer from the illusion that an 'emergency' must beget compulsion?
Why do some life-forms see in a tragedy the opportunity to push people around?
Oh, yes, they say, 'it is for their own good', so they blunder in with guns and handcuffs to show how much they care.
The troops are ready for anything, approaching wooden screen doors with machine-guns pointed, just in case anybody should take the US Constitution seriously; presumably these people will be shot dead.
At least the looters were only stealing things, souls and dignity under cover of darkness. These 'leaders' are doing it under cover of the Dark Age.

Whoops.

Since last time I've had time to check up on the 'riot'.
Apparently, kids from some place other than Belle Isle school invaded and got into a huge brawl.
Less of the Spartacus and more of the Robin Hood, perhaps.
Then again.
Now a little word about subtlety.
Below is a picture of an Opera House.
In a small town.

The town has had two railway stations for over a hundred years, true, but the Victorian opera house is testament to the society that used to live within a day's journey.

On the outskirts of the town are(or were) several coal-mining villages, and the point is that there were those among the population of this area that liked opera so much, they banded together and built this splendid building.

People in those days had a profile, a public profile, which reflected the realities of their personalities. There were also creatures like Emil Zola asserting that these were pretences, that they were hypocritical extensions of conformity.

Somehow, the Zolas of that world were eventually exalted and trumpeted across the land. Until, in the 1970's I attempted to grow up in ragged Britain in ragged Europe.

I saw that, indeed, the assertions had become self-fulfilling. This was the age of 10cc, 'concentrating on trucking right'-for God's sake, they weren't apparently even capable of perambulating anymore without,wait for it:worrying about other people worrying about the way they possibly looked(who knows?)when walking.

So I determined not to have one of these crappy 'personality' things. Naturally, I thought Punk was a bit flash, but liked New Wave.

Hated 'Disco'; all that bloody medallion man bullshit.

Trouble was I threw the baby out with the bathwater, although this was understandable as he hadn't ever used a nappy.

Then I met Americans.

What can I say?

They had personalities, the Genuine Draft of freedom. It made the Wind of Change look like mild flatulence.

And I decided to pinch my nose and be pleasant again. I now have a personality. Just need a place to put it!

I Predict A Riot!

According to news reports, Robin Hood is not just a place name. Robin Hood is alive and well and fighting for something or other.
Why?
Take a look at this (poorly photographed) scene outside Belle Isle School in Leeds today. There has been a heavy police presence since yesterday, when ugly behaviour led to a riot.

The new generation must believe that something is up; when something is intolerable, you might go mad.

But when something will not be tolerated, you get a riot.

The kids seemed friendly enough to me. But Belle Isle is and always has been a tough area. You see youngsters full of muscles standing on corners or at the gates to the houses, and you have to wonder what makes the non-jobbers think that they can confuse and rule these people.

According to the news reports, they can't.

Some people will probably talk about 'lack of discipline', but the sort of discipline required to tolerate year upon year of compulsion and confinement, while one's life ebbs away to grayness, is not discipline at all, but complete prostration.

My guess is that some of the slaves rebelled because they saw and understood too much.

Let's hope that whatever Spartacus kicked it off doesn't get crucified.

Developers Wanted.And I Don't Mean Software

If you look carefully at the rather over-exposed image below, to the left you see a roofline.
This is a house.
One of many along both sides of the road under the wires.





What, you may wonder, were the developers thinking?
Well, a famous part of the British Disease is a perverse desire to own housing. This is then passed onto children, with the inevitable and hoped-for result that one day we all just climb completely up our own orifices and disappear from the realm of victimhood completely, possibly raising two gnarled fingers at our tormentors before the exclamation mark that attends our disappearance.
This has led, traditionally and perennially, to a sustained and chronic demand for 'property'(houses), and so they were built anywhere and everywhere, choking roads, fields, villages and so on like some sort of steroid-boosted brick weed.
And so you get cynical 'developers' throwing up their thoughtless, misery-size Barbie-houses, so that millions can spend their lives hiding from the fight and piling their possessions high.

Funny though.
There has been a rash of TV adverts in the last four to five years.
Equity conversion.
They do a reverse mortgage on your house when you retire.
They sell you deathly dignity in return for your life's work. I suppose it's alright if you hate your kids, but isn't it funny how the last, dynastic dream, the commoner's way out, is suddenly vanishing into thin air?
And at the same time, the (New Labour) government is suggesting compulsion to make us save enough for our retirements.
So they can both blame and punish the victims of their latest scam.