Kilroy gets his dukes up.

Kilroy HAS GOT FREEDOM OF SPEECH. He COULD SAY WHAT HE WANTED TO SAY. In fact, he said it twice. The whole point of freedom, the whole problem of freedom maybe, is that comes in a BOGOF package with a free helping of RESPONSIBILITY. If you can't deal with the response, don't say the bollocks, mate. He didn't say 'Arab Regimes' he said "Arabs". If he had said 'regimes', I'd be knawing on his tanned johnson in agreement. The Saudis are our allies? Geddafuckoutahere! But he didn't. And he should have.

When you talk about issues such as these, ambiguity is the mother of twatfestery.

You say what you say. If you say it that way, we take it as being what you mean. If you say something and say 'well, I meant regimes', well, it seems like you're pissing on the coals to take the heat off your feet, doesn't it?

Very interesting article by Rod Liddle in the Spectator from a couple of weeks ago. I missed Teddy Sheringham's original comments at the time, but it is an interesting point; people are genetically different, and evolution naturally means that races are genetically different. Genetic determinism is an easily misused perspective, but pretending we are all the same is naive.

In Steven Pinker's excellent book 'The Blank Slate' he looks at this issue amongst many. An area that some of the more 'Politically Correct' amongst us might like to mull over covers the concept of the 'euphamism treadmill'; where 'acceptable' words for various things change over the course of time due to the social meaning of the euphamistic words over time. Eventually, in many cases, the unacceptable word veers back into respectability when all the other possibilites have been (ab)used. Is it worth toying with the language rather than addressing the attitude? It certainly seems to be highly counterproductive, and boy oh boy are we going back in time in people's attitudes towards their fellow man anyway.

<rant>I do wish people wouldn't cross-womble their 'immigrant' with their 'illegal immigrant'. As always, there's a huge prevelance of negative attitude going on around and colour is the main simplifier.

I really get sick of all the 'sponging asylum seeker' crap, all the goddamn offshore tax breaks that the rich syphon out of the system and still the bottom tranche of society eats itself. *sighs* </end rant>

Firstly, this is one of those WTF?! days. Phil Spector charged with murder!?! We've all heard the shotgun in the studio stories, but ferchrisakes... he was doing some tracks for Starsailor! Hang on...is that the charge??

And well, the Jacko documentary was weird. It was weird seeing Bashir basically saying 'Are you out of your f---ing mind?' as Jacko started out normalish (in his world) and then ended up as Peter Pan meets Paedo Pan. Seriously, he may just 'sleep' wiv da kids but how naive can you be? And what are their parents thinking? Jacko is the self-centre of his own universe and everything last night affirmed that; not least his oxymoronic attitude towards the mother of his kids in comparison with his high regard of the family.

Uri Gellar speaks up for Jacko.

Have you ever changed personalities with someone like you've put on their clothes by mistake? Were you wracked with guilt? Did you squirm when you looked at 'yourself'?

Clocks gone back, weather's cack.
Dark and cold, grey and old.
Dirty city, rainy and shitty.
Bored, latent, cold, adjacent..

I did enjoy the poor side putting on a festival for rich Tim, that were crackin'. To the unaware, this involved Jonny and Alex (mostly) playing air guitar on hoes and spades (garden impliments not 70's retro politically incorrect words) to the mighty tune of 'You Remind Me' by Nickleback. I promise that I will never play air guitar in public ever again. Tim was clearly loving it. Which just goes to prove he's a cunt 'cause he likes Nickleback. And their singer looks like a shit dog.

8 February 2002

"Dear Customer,

We contacted you in January explaining the changes to the ntlworld service. It’s now time to choose which of our new ntl:home Dial up internet tariffs you wish to take. In order to retain continuous service, you will need to choose before 22-2-2002....Sign up to 'unlimited' today, and you’ll pay a flat rate fee of just £5.00 a month instead of £10.00, for the remainder of 2002. That’s £9.99 less than the 'AOL Flat Rate' service."

23 June 2002

"...Notification of change of Direct Debit Amount

The Direct Debit payment due in respect of the above Direct Debit Instruction is now due for £10 and will be collected on or immediately after 11 Jul 2002.

Thank you for using ntl.

Yours sincerely

ntl:home payments."

Hmmmmph.

Beards are groovy, hip and *now*. Especially underbeards. Anyone not recognising this is a paedophile, looking for fresh, hairless kiddy-faces to pray on. Don't let THIS sort of bigotry and beardism spread like the far-Right across Europe post September 11. I'd also like to point out that Ted, the writer of the offending piece is just a very bitter man, being of jet-black head hair and bright orange beard hair, making him a figure of fun, often described by children as 'Mr. Upside Down Dundee United head'. I'd also like to point out that when Ted went to New Zealand he wasn't immunized, and that's a legal requirement. He's become increasingly slapdash since he bought that new hearth rug.

Good feature off BBC Online regarding the recent furore regarding this joke, told at a rugby club dinner by a senior Conservative MP, Ann Winterton :

"There was an Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man and a Pakistani on a train. The Cuban throws a cigar out of the window, saying they are "ten-a-penny" in his country. The Japanese man throws a Nikon camera out, saying they are ten-a-penny in his country. Then the Englishman throws the Pakistani out the window..."

This is typical of the sort of joke you get down the local boozer, where the 40ish bloke who's not spending any time with his wife and kids is showing how hard he is by talking about 'killing Pakis'.

Saying her sacking is 'PC rubbish' as some people seem to believe. Hate begats hate, and stuff. This was an MP, a representative of the people... why didn't she replace 'Pakistani' with 'Congletonian' if the joke is genuinely funny? Answer : It ain't, the only way you could get any humour out of it is if you dislike Pakistanis.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Checking out mumslut, I was amazed to see the influx of visitors looking for 'Holly Vallance naked'. If only they realised it should be 'Holly Valance naked'. They might have more luck. And why oh why are they looking on the goddamn net when she's totally blooming naked in the mofo-ing video!?!? Is that not enough??? Good song though, although I'm not altogether sure it would've been #1 if it hadn't had the video included on the single... Good whoring, girl! Girl power! BTW, I had a googler come here looking for 'HOLLY VALANCE BUM'. I can only imagine they didn't like the rest of her quite as much as her posterior..

"Women Empowering Women" is a Pyramid Scheme that's spreading like wildfire in the UK, with huge amounts of money involved. Basically you get a lot of people to put up say £100. The more people you attract to add money to the pyramid, the better chance you have of moving up and becoming entitled to many times your initial outlay. However, no investment occurs; this is simple cashflow juggling. Someone I work with gained £12000 on it in under a month - now everyone wants in the act. But (and I've pleaded with these people) the participants don't seem to appreciate the sheer idiocy of such schemes. Their attitude is "my husband goes to the betting shop, it's just my bit of fun". In the end, if you gain money, you're taking it directly from another participant. This is exploitation of people (normally hard-up, heavily mortgaged parents, it seems), is morally wrong and should be illegal - but it isn't in the UK. Here's a link to a BBC feature on pyramid schemes (aka trading schemes). This really boils my piss, but it carries on because individual participants can benefit from the fraud themselves. I understand women are targeted in this case as men are more likely to get in fights when they realise they've lost large amounts of cash. And the design of the scheme is so cynically done. Half of me says, fuck it, if you're dumb enough to join, you deserve to lose your cash.

I'd like to echo Ken's views on the Fark Lisa Lopes death thread. Inhuman in some cases (I know irreverent banter is a natural way to react, but some comments - e.g. by Walrustoof and LilMac and were way beyond that). It's like at school or in a particularly vile local pub where someone says something racist just so someone else agrees, to make them all feel good about themselves. And as for being able to see her dead body online....sheesh. TLC did some great tunes; 'Unpretty', 'No Scrubs', 'Waterfall'. If you don't like 'em, leave it. Say nothing. It's a basic respect thing, innit..