Monday, 24 January 2011









Baking soda. 

A quick bio of Simoncini:
Of course, Simoncini's baking soda doesn't come for free.

Still, presumably Simoncini put the money to good use.


The Sun are campaigning for better mental health care for armed forces veterans

Of course, the best way to avoid mental health problems is to keep away from unnecessarily stressful situations in the first place.

In which case, shouldn't the Sun be campaigning to end the conflict in Afghanistan and bring all the soldiers back home? I mean, if you really want to save public money...

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Friday, 21 January 2011

An exquisitely beautiful return to blogging

Haven't posted for what seems like ages. What a pathetic excuse for a blogger I am. In mitigation, I've been busy clambering onto the bottom rung of the property ladder, and I've still got a lot of sorting out in my new house to do, so it'll probably be a little while til I get back to proper blogging.

Meanwhile, I'll post this exquisite and lovely video by the Mummers, whose album and sad backstory I acquired from the Guardian.

Friday, 7 January 2011

Proof that Power Balance bands work!

Or not. I suspect that England's marvellous, historic Ashes victory (which I've already promised not to gloat over) is more to do with superior skill, preparation and execution over an unusually aimless Australian team, than a silly, rather expensive rubber band that has been shown not to have any magic properties whatsoever, whose manufacturer has been forced to issue a statement retracting its claims.
Power Balance Australia said: ‘In our advertising, we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.
Perhaps if Ricky Ponting had bought a Placebo Band, things might have worked out very differently.

Thursday, 6 January 2011

No gloating please, we're English

In anticipation of England's third innings victory of the Ashes series (well, at least a comprehensive win, now that Australia's challenge in the final test has been all but extinguished) I do not want to gloat over the triumph.

That wouldn't be cricket.

No, I'll just post, from 2002, a reminder of how not to behave in victory.
After Nasser Hussain's men sealed their fate in Perth, Matt Price wrote in The Australian: "There have been numerous excuses put forward for England's poor showing during the Ashes series: a collective lack of skill, nous, courage, coordination, commitment, knowledge, fitness, resilience, imagination, talent, esprit de corps, energy, nerve and I could keep going but I'll run out of space."
The triumphant march of Steve Waugh's team through the series prompted renewed calls for the Ashes to be sent to Australia. The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney tabloid, ran three separate pieces demanding that the trophy – which resides at the MCC – be looked after by whichever nation wins the tournament.
The Telegraph invited its readers to telephone a hotline to express their views on the subject. One columnist, John Pierik, wrote: "Hand it over now. The time has come for the stuffy-nosed Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's to hand over cricket's most famous prize to Steve Waugh and his world champion Australians.
"It's ridiculous that the original urn... remains housed in England when the Old Dart hasn't won a series against us in 14 years."
Writing in the Herald the day before England's collapse in Perth, Peter FitzSimons bemoaned the disappearance of England's once-vaunted fighting spirit. Under the headline "No sign of the old bulldog, only poodles", he said: "The most perplexing thing about the whole English débâcle that they are pleased to call their Ashes 'campaign' is that these blokes come from the same country that produced the likes of Boadicea, the Duke of Wellington, Ian Botham, Darren Gough and Michael Atherton.
"Where is their manhood? Where is their fury at their fate and determination to fight their way out, come what may? Are these blokes really the toughest, hardest, best cricketers that England can produce?"
Some cricket writers said the series boded ill for the future of the Ashes. Mike Coward, writing in The Australian, described the win as a hollow victory. "England's breathtaking ineptitude is bringing Test cricket to the brink," he said. "The traditional game is so fragile it cannot afford a pitifully weak England and rarely can England have been so pitifully weak."
Other commentators were more restrained. "If anyone still has anything bad to say about the Poms, let them speak now or forever hold their peace," said Peter Roebuck in the Herald. "There is no fun to be had in driving staves into a corpse."

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Christians want liberty, and by God they're going to fight for it

Sam Webster, in Christian Today, kicks off his New Year by whining about the "persecution" of Christians in the UK.
As Christians living in modern Britain we enjoy precious freedoms that our fellow believers in less open nations could only dream of. These freedoms didn’t fall out of the clear blue sky, they were won for us in past generations by courageous Christians who wrestled for them and passed them on to us.
Now, I was under the impression that the head of state of the United Kingdom was also the head of the Church of England. How much, do you think, have Christians in this country had to fight, over the centuries, to practice their faith? Not a lot, I suspect.

On the other hand, it wasn't until 1753 that the Christian rulers of this country would actually allow Jews to become citizens of the UK. Even then,
When Webster claims
There is not one inch of liberty that isn’t worth fighting for
I wonder how far he intends to go.

He backs up his moaning by providing examples of harassed Christians, such as
Lillian Ladele, the Christian registrar from Islington who was threatened with dismissal unless she performed homosexual civil partnership registrations. The Supreme Court said the case “does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance”. Miss Ladele is now taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the UK has unlawfully infringed her rights to religious liberty.
Liberty in this case meaning, the right to bring your prejudices against homosexuals to work, and refuse to carry out the job you're paid to do. If Miss Ladele was a bus driver, and refused to allow homosexuals onto her bus, would people like Webster be making a song and dance about it? It's exactly the same principle.
There was good news in April when a case involving a Christian mother and part-time school receptionist was settled without going to court. Jennie Cain had been disciplined by her employers following a dispute about a private prayer email.
Mrs Cain took legal action against her employers for religious discrimination and the matter was settled out of court. Her employers paid out an undisclosed sum of money and agreed that Christians should be treated with “sensitivity and respect” at the school.
What isn't mentioned is that Cain's daughter had been going around informing her classmates that they would go to hell if they didn't believe in Jesus. After the headteacher admonished her daughter, and then reprimanded Cain (since, after all, the child didn't pluck notions of original sin and eternal damnation out of thin air), Cain sent around an email whining about her treatment.
Mr Read defended the school's treatment of the matter and said they encouraged all children to "think independently", but would not condone one child "frightening" another.
He said: "We have 271 children in our school from a diversity of backgrounds.
"We encourage all our children to think independently and discuss their beliefs with their teachers and classmates when it is appropriate to do so.
"We conveyed to her mother, in a perfectly respectful manner, that we do not expect it to happen again."
Webster then cites the case of the homophobic B&B operators, who presumably have no problem with a husband raping his wife in one of their double beds, but can't abide the thought of two gay men having a good night's kip in one.
In the same month, the Christian owners of a Guesthouse appeared in Bristol County Court to defend themselves against a claim of discrimination brought by a homosexual couple. Peter and Hazelmary Bull’s guesthouse restricts double bed accommodation to married couples. The guesthouse is also their home. But civil partners Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall say the policy is unlawful and are suing the Christians for £5,000, including for injuring their feelings. The trial lasted two days and the judge has reserved his decision until after Christmas.
More pathetic whimpering. If you want to provide a service which is open to the public, why do you feel that your beliefs earn you a right to opt out of whatever equality provision you choose?

To sum up, then, Christians want their place in society while taking none of the responsibility. As their book states, they deem themselves special, and demand their prejudices be taken seriously. They want the right to discriminate against whoever they choose, and not to be discriminated against themselves.

It's time they started to stop complaining about their lot in life, and start accepting that in a modern secular society, which is what it is, there's going to be a lot of people who disagree with you.

Anyway, isn't it supposed to be good for you to suffer? And aren't you going to have the last laugh on Judgement Day anyway?

This is an example of a militant Muslim

Mumtaz Qadri assassinated Pakistani provincial governor Salman Taseer because of Taseer's assault on Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws. By Qadri's twisted logic, Taseer's support for free speech and the rule of law meant he had to die.

And the response from the religious parties in Pakistan?



That's a militant Muslim, someone prepared to kill because someone might say something they don't like.

I hope that people now think twice about using the term "militant atheist" pejoratively for thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens etc.
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