Archive for January 2011

Egypt: Be careful what you wish for

Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, will be spending what is quite possibly his last night in the presidential palace in Cairo after the British and American governments called for “an orderly transition”.

Egyptian Soldiers

Image: MSNBC

The stability of Egypt is of great importance to most of the world for two reasons: the Suez Canal and Islam.

The Suez Canal cuts tens of thousands of miles of journeys by ships heading for the east coast of Africa, Asia and Australia and the pacific.  Threats to the Suez Canal have prompted invasions in the past.

Egypt is a muslim country but religion is banned in politics.  New laws in Egypt have to agree with Sharia but the government is still officially secular.  Along with Turkey, it drives a secular wedge between Islamic north Africa and the middle east providing a buffer zone along Europe’s borders.

The key turning point in the revolution was the military deploying in cities where protests were taking place to protect civilians from the police who have been marauding the streets in plain clothes with knives and indiscriminately threatening, abusing and even killing civilians.  The military is well respected in Egypt and whilst soldiers are careful not to intervene, they are overtly on the side of the protesters.  Protesters are having their pictures taken with soldiers and they are making no attempt to clean off the anti-government graffiti daubed on the side of tanks.

While it’s great to see Tunisians and Egyptians ousting their unpopular, undemocratic and oppressive governments – and I hope that one day soon we’ll see an uprising in England against the British government – there is a real danger that Islamists will end up taking power.  The recently ousted Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was pretty strict in his opposition to Sharia and the oppressive aspects of Islam such as women covering themselves in public and treating women like slaves.  Christians and Jews in Tunisia have enjoyed relative freedom in Tunisia but the country is 98% muslim and there is a good chance the next government will be controlled by Islamists.  In Egypt too, Christians and Jews are well tolerated by the muslim majority but the Muslim Brotherhood is expected to convincingly win elections once Mubarak has gone.  With Tunisia and Egypt converted from secular states to Islamic states, most of north Africa – Europe’s maritime border – will be under the yoke of Sharia law or at least well on the way to it.

Gray and Keys lose jobs for sexism, what about Loose Women?

So Sky Sports presenter, Andy Gray and Richard Keys, have lost their jobs for making off-air sexist comments.  Why?

They haven’t made any sexist comments on the air, only privately.  Someone has deliberately and vindictively leaked recordings of their private conversations to destroy them.  Why were the cameras recording private conversations and how did someone manage to accumulate a collection of recordings of off-air, private conversations and get them on the internet?

Will the presenters of lunchtime trash TV programme, Loose Women, come under similar scrutiny for their on-air sexism?  Every episode of Loose Women consists of a couple of interviews, a bit of gossip and the rest is made up of sexist comments and jokes about men.  Why is it acceptable for a gaggle of middle aged women to base an entire TV programme around slagging men off but it’s a sackable offence for a TV presenter to make sexist comments off the air to male colleagues who clearly took no offence at them?

I’ve said it before: straight, white English men are the most discriminated against section of society.

Burns Night – so fucking what?

It was Burns Night last night in Scotland.  I wouldn’t have known because it’s not on my calendars – and nor would I want to know – if it wasn’t for the bloody BBC who didn’t shut up about it all bloody day.

Robbie Burns was a shit, illiterate Scottish poet who wrote shit poems in a Scottish accent.  He’s been elevated to national hero status in Scotland as the only person in their history who has ever been marginally famous for something cultural but he’s still a shit poet and completely irrelevant outside Scotland.

BBC Breakfast were gushing over Burns and Scotland in general (by way of variety) yesterday and I ended up changing the channel.  Later in the day, listening to BBC Radio Shropshire, they were falling over themselves to appear more “Scottish” than each so I changed the channel.  Yesterday evening the news came on and guess what?  Robbie fucking Burns again.

What relevance does Robbie Burns have to English people?  What relevance does he have to Shropshire – it’s over 200 miles away from the Scottish border and in a different country.  I could understand if our local BBC radio station were bigging up a Welsh “hero” because Shropshire is on the Welsh border but not Scottish.

And to top it all off, the BBC are creaming themselves over Andy “Anyone but England” Murray this morning.  It’s a conspiracy to piss me off, I’m sure of it.

Then you go an spoil it all by saying something stupid …

Telford & Wrekin Council have been deciding what services and budgets to cut after the British government cut their block grant by more than expected.

What they were talking about on local radio the other day was a bit of a mixed bag.

One good idea was requiring parents to opt in to free school milk.  Telford & Wrekin is one of very few English local authorities where all children are entitled to free school milk but one third of milk they buy in for schools is thrown away because the kids don’t want it.

Another good idea was switching off lights on rural roads and main roads outside of residential areas between midnight and 5am.  The Leader of the Council said on the radio that he has often wondered why we have lights on throughout the night on every road but not on motorways.  It’s a very good point – major roads and rural roads don’t need to be lit all night except around junctions and residential areas.

But then they spoiled the good ideas with a bloody stupid one – cutting the road and footpath repair budget again.  There isn’t enough money spent on repairing roads and footpaths already and spending less is a false economy.  Not repairing damaged pavements leaves the local authority open to legal action and it’s council tax payers that foot the bill.  But the main problem is with the roads.

If you don’t repair potholes before the winter the holes fill with water and then the water freezes.  When water freezes it expands which damages the road even more and makes the next repair even more expensive.  Cutting funding for road and footpath maintenance  doesn’t just cost more in the long term, it costs more in the short term – it will take literally only one or two years to see the increased costs cancelling out any savings from not spending as much on maintenance.

The Times warns of “culture of silence” around muslim sex offenders

So, the dead tree press has finally caught up with the internet and realised that muslim gangs are committing sex offences against white women and the police are covering it up in case they are accused of being racists.

According to an “exclusive” in the Times (behind the paywall so no link), there is a “culture of silence” around the problem because of a “damaging taboo” where police and social services are scared of being accused of racism if they speak up.

Everyone knows this is happening but most people are scared to talk about it for fear of being accused of racism.  Labour’s forced multiculturalism project included indoctrinating people with the belief that even talking about immigration, multiculturalism or immigrants committing crimes is wrong.

It’s not.

Muslim gangs committing sex offences are probably no more a problem than white gangs but the stats are suppressed so we can’t know for sure.  A lot of people will come to the conclusion that if the problem is being covered up then it’s worse than everyone thinks.  For all we know it might be and that’s the problem with officially denying something that is common knowledge.