Archive for July, 2011

Selective deafness

July 31st, 2011

I think our Sandy has gone deaf.

I have noticed for the last while that if I call her she doesn’t respond.  When someone walks up the lane, she stays dozing instead of going into a frenzy of barking at the gate.  She no longer runs at the sound of gunfire.

I suppose it’s only to be expected as she is getting on a bit.

I find it strange though that she can still hear a Bonio box being rattled at 500 yards.

bonio

Compulsive reading

July 30th, 2011

I’m reading a book at the moment.

There is nothing inherently strange about that, as I read a lot.

I don’t know where this book came from but I found it lying around the house and started on Chapter 1.  As one does.

The main character in the book is Marty, a bloke who gives up his studies in Trinity College in Dublin and moves back to the family farm down the country.  So far, so good. 

After the first chapter, I began to have concerns about our friend Marty.  He is obviously meant to be a sympathetic character as we are told of all his anguish at settling in back on the farm.  He even buys himself a pet lamb to keep himself company.  Anyone who does that can’t be all bad?

Wrong.

I have rarely read about a worse character.  He is self indulgent, bad tempered, depressed and generally thoroughly dislikeable.  He screws his brothers wife, hates his best friend and worst of all, treats the lamb like shit.  Every chapter sees him sink to a new low.

Why do I continue to read it?

Because I can’t wait for him to have the shite beaten out of him by someone.  God knows, there isn’t a sinner he hasn’t done the nasty on.

I hope he meets with a grizzly and painful end.

I keep hoping it will happen in the next chapter.

Rocket science

July 29th, 2011

A week ago I scribbled a little piece about CERN and Global Warming.

I was accused of several things.  I was told I wasn’t a climatologist or even a scientist.  This is true.  I was told that the science is established.  I argued that one.  I was told that the whole scientific community took an opposing view.  I debated that one also.  I make no apologies for regurgitating the subject.

Do you remember the Polar Bears?  Do you remember how we were told that those cute cuddly animals were in grave danger of extinction because of the ice caps disappearing?  My, how that galvanised the world and electrified the cause of Global Warming!  Well, apparently their golden boy who originated this scare is now being investigated for “integrity issues".  Oh dear, oh dear!  This is indeed a blow against The Great Cause.  However, I doubt that one snippet by itself is going to derail the Global Warming bandwagon, though it should please lovers of Polar Bears.

But what happens when one of the World’s largest scientific communities casts more than doubts on the integrity of the Alarmists?  What would happen if NASA turned around and said that there were huge discrepancies between the Alarmists data and the truth?  They have.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!  Apparently carbon dioxide isn’t the great evil we thought it was.  Apparently the Alarmists models are wrong.  What’s worse is that this new evidence is based on accurate measurements and not just a hypothetical model or one of Al Gore’s wet dreams.  I would imaging there are a few red faces around?  They are still fighting a rear-guard action after The East Anglia fiasco, and now this?

But as I said before, this whole lark has gone too far.  Governments can’t suddenly forget their carbon taxes and their carbon trading.  They are making too much money.

Why do I get the impression that if young Johnny McGregor finds a dead seal in the Outer Hebrides, there will be banner headlines throughout the world proclaiming that the seal is irrefutable proof that Global Warming is worse than we thought?

But we won’t hear a whisper about NASA’s findings?

-oOo-

[With a large tip of the cap to The CIA for the above snippets]

For training purposes

July 28th, 2011

I do not like telephones.

I have what you might call a hate-hate relationship with them.

My first memory of a telephone was of a black Bakelite thing that hung on a bracket in the hall.  It had one of those twirly dials that cut the finger off you if it was a long number.  The only good thing about that phone was that if the caller was boring, you could idly pass the time by untwisting and unknotting the cord to the hand piece.

Nowadays they are all cordless and mobile so I keep losing the fucking things.

Apart from losing them, I find that they are constantly needing recharging which is a bit of a bugger.  I normally leave the main phone charging in the junk room where no one can hear it, or else I bring it out to the living room where it promptly discharges, gets lost and ignores all incoming calls, which suits me down to the ground.  My mobile is a simpler matter – I have discovered that switching it off stops the battery discharging, so that’s the way I leave it.  Unfortunately when I want to use it I can never find it and there is no point in ringing it from the other phone as it’s switched off.

I had to make a few phone calls yesterday and today.  As luck would have it, the calls were all to State and Semi-state organisations.  Of course this involved using their fucking menu systems which drive me mad.  Each one is a five Prozac job.

The last call was a ten Prozac one.  I dialled the number and immediately this female with an oh-so-cheery-chirpy voice came on to welcome me to the company.  Then we had the obligatory warning that “all calls are recorded and may be used for training purposes”.  Why they can’t just warn us to watch our fucking language is beyond me.  Next she announced that their menu system had changed [why I don’t know, as I don’t know what their old system was like], and that I was to listen to the entire menu before making my choice.

The very first option was the one I wanted so I pressed “1”.  I swear to fuck she sighed at me.  There was a pause and then she ignored my attempts and continued the whole fucking way through the menu.  Then she asked me to make my choice.  I pressed “1” again and the whore then started off on another series of fucking options.  It is really no wonder they have that implied “watch your fucking language” notice at the beginning.

I swear if all companies ditched their fucking menu shit and employed real people it would make the world a better place to live in.

And we’d employ half the unemployed.

A gross invasion of rights

July 27th, 2011

There is no need to say what this is about.

I honestly thought our Minister for Health had more sense.  I was stunned therefore to see that he is not only contemplating banning smoking in a car where there are children but is talking of going the whole hog and banning smoking in cars altogether, whether there are children or not.

I own my car.  I paid a lot of good money for it and what’s more I pay the government a lot of good money every year for the privilege of running it.  I also shell out a lot of money to the government when I buy tobacco.  It is my property and the state, or anyone else has no right to tell me what I can do in it, provided that action in itself is legal. 

There has been a massive amount of propaganda over the years about smoking, to the point where the truth has long since been buried.  One aspect of smoking which they don’t mention nowadays [purely because it would be politically incorrect] is that nicotine has a lot of advantages including improving concentration, attention and memory. [also here and here]  Now I would have thought that anything that aided concentration and attention would be a damned good thing for a motorists, but instead of that they are going to force a smoker to abstain, thereby causing irritability which not exactly desirable behind the wheel of a car?

One of the most galling aspects of this intrusion into our private lives is that this legislation seems to be less a health issue and more an attempt to “get one up on” Wales who are also contemplating a ban.  There seems to be a race on to see who can bring in the most draconian laws.  I remember when Micheal Martin brought in the ban on workplace smoking that there was much gloating at the fact that “we were first”.

This is a bad move.  There is no justification for it whatsoever other than rolling forward the agenda set by ASH who won’t be happy until we are all shelling out for nicotine patches and nicotine gum [you don’t seriously think it’s about health, do you?].  It is the final confirmation of a Nanny State becoming the Bully State.

In the meantime, Luke Clancy and his cronies are convinced that it is “safer to have the exhaust pipe on the inside of the car than to smoke cigarettes in terms of fine particulate matter”.  I would like to issue a challenge.

I am prepared to sit in a car for any number of hours if Clancy, or Reilly will sit in another car breathing exhaust fumes for the same period.

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