Quote of the Day

"It was the relentless pursuit of beaver that opened the great Northwest."

New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin.

 

he he he said beaver

£5.99. Surely You Can’t Be Serious

I am serious ……..and don’t call me Shirley.

Hello, I’m back from the ‘The North’ for a brief stop over and laundry, the Panserbjørne haven’t got me yet and I’m driving back up tomorrow.

The hotel they have us in is very nice and was probably quite exclusive in its day, although it’s looking a bit ‘worn’ at present, but it still has a few pretensions of grandeur  i.e it is not cheap.

There’s no bar/snack menu, everything has to be ordered off the restaurant menu  and at  £13.50 for what is fish & chips no matter how much you tart it up and £15.50 for a cheese burger and chips even if it is 100% Aberdeen Angus, well let’s just say there’s not much left of the ‘per diem’ if you eat in. Fortunately there’s a 2xMeals for £10 pub just down the road so that’s sorted.

But really  £5.99  to watch a 31 year old film is taking the piss,  did I mention there’s no free wifi either, no, if you want to connect to the net you can use the in-room ‘HI-SPEED INTERNET’ a bargain at  only  £4.95 for 15 minutes or £19.95 for 24 hours (and that’s clock time, not time actually connected)

So I will be travelling back with a portable hard drive loaded with movies & TV and a £10 PAYG dongle.

An amusing (to me) aside,  As an exercise, we individually had to prepare and deliver a 10 minute presentation on a random subject with very little time and materials.  After I’d finished the trainer seemed impressed and asked if I’d ever done any presenting before, how I chuckled [inwardly of course]

Still the breakfasts are good (and inclusive)  Although I have no idea what the green stuff is doing there, perhaps it fell off a pot plant in passing.

Live Long and Prosper

North To The Wall

I am heading North today to start my new job, the farthest north I’ve been in many years, Leeds in fact. Last time I was in Leeds was for a demo for the Miners Strike in 1984, I wasn’t personally demonstrating, but I was the only one in the students union they could find that could drive the minibus.

I will be living out of a hotel till Friday and as I don’t have a personal lap top , blogging and commentating will be by phone if at all. Just letting my loyal reader know that I haven’t abandoned him/her.

I will be oop there weekdays for the next 4-6 weeks, I probably won’t have much time for exploring, but any tips or places of interest to recommend please do so in the comments.

A friend has already given me one useful tip  on how to recognise a dyslexic Yorkshireman, apparently he’ll be the one wearing the cat flap.

TTFN

Want To Be A Dictator? It’s About Knowing When To Quit

Much is being made of the capture and summary execution of Colonel Ghadaffi, about the fall of all such men and all the ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ that entails.

The Daily Mail even lists the downfall of  The World’s Infamous Dictators …..and how they met their violent ends

It would seem being a dictator and tyrant is a pretty hazardous job or is it?

Yet they could only come up with six, of which one, Adolf Hitler committed suicide  and another Saddam Hussein was executed after a trial according to the laws of his own country.

So I thought I’d take a look at how some of the other ‘Infamous Dictators’ ended their days.

Name	Country Ruled	Where Died	Age at Death	Cause of Death
Idi Amin	Uganda	Saudi Arabia	78	Natural Causes
Jean-Bedel Bokkasa	Central African Republic	CAR after lavish exile in France	75	Natural Causes
Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier	Haiti	Haiti (in office)	65	Natural Causes
Erich Honecker	East Germany	Chile	81	Natural Causes
Mobutu Sese Seko	Zaire	Morocco	66	Natural Causes
Augusto Pinochet	Chile	Chile	91	Natural Causes
Pol Pot	Cambodia	Cambodia (after exile in Thailand)	72	Natural Causes [still debated]
Alfredo Stroessner	Paraguay	Brazil	93	Natural Causes
Suharto	Indonesia	Indonesia	86	Natural Causes
Joseph Stalin	Russia	Russia (in office)	74	Natural Causes
Mao Tse Tung	China	China (in office)	82	Natural Causes
Kim Il-sung	North Korea	North Korea (in office)	82	Natural Causes
Francisco Franco	Spain	Spain (in office)	82	Natural Causes
Enver Hoxha	Albania	Albania (in office)	76	Natural Causes
Marshall Tito	Yugoslavia	Yugoslavia	87	Natural Causes
Ferdinand Marcos	Philippines	Hawaii, USA	72	Natural Causes
Nicolae Ceaușescu	Romania	Romania	71	Executed
Ruhollah Khomeini	Iran	Iran	86	Natural Causes
Still Going
Name	Country Ruled	Where Now	Age	Circumstances
Jean-Claude’ Baby Doc’ Duvalier	Haiti	France	60	Free At Large
Mengistu Haile Mariam	Ethiopia	Zimbabwe	74	Free At Large
Manuel Noriega	Panama	Panama	77	Prison
Charles Taylor	Liberia	Netherlands	63	On trial for war crimes
Kim Jong-Il	North Korea	North Korea (in office)	70	Supreme Leader
Fidel Castro	Cuba	Cuba	85	In Office
Robert Mugabe	Zimbabwe	Zimbabwe	87	President

So that’s an average age of 79 at death for some of the worst dictator's and tyrants of modern times, all of whom died pretty well taken care of.

So far from being the risky career choice that the MSM make out, being a brutal despot & tyrant is a pretty safe occupation

Makes you think

Once Again It’s Japan With The Burger WIN

or Not Coming To These Shores EVER

After the disappointment of not getting; The Meat Monster , The Mighty Mega Tamago  and the Windows 7 Whopper

Burger King to offer all-you-can-eat Whopper campaign for two weeks

TOKYO — Burger King Japan is once again holding its “B"iking campaign from Nov 1-15. It’s an all-you-can-eat Whopper campaign. If you order a Whopper set meal, you can order as many extra Whoppers as you can eat within a 30-minute period

Or if you don’t fancy that there’s always the XT Steak House

Click to go LARGE

TOKYO — XT stands for “extra thick.” The beef patty weighs 155g, compared to the 113-gram Whopper. It comes with cheese, shredded potato and grilled onions, topped with Chaliapin sauce (named after a Russian opera singer).

As part of a campaign to release the XT Steakhouse, through Oct 10, you can add your choice of lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, and egg to the burger for free, in line with Burger King’s mantra “Have it your way.”

 

However I might personally give the new McDonalds KBQ a miss

click for larger

The K is for Korean

The KBQ is a 100% beef patty topped with “sweet & spicy” bulgogi, melted cheese, crisp lettuce and spicy Korean gochujang sauce, all on a sesame seed bun.

 

Sources:  Japan Today  : Burger King Japan : McDonalds Japan

Remember The Tub Of Lard?

In all the hoo-ha of the debate about the possibility of a Referendum on the EU, calls for three Line Whips and email campaigns to your MP’s to let him know your views.

I am always behoved to remind people of the words of  Roy Hattersley  MP for Birmingham Sparbrook 1964-1997  who said in 2005.

“For most of my 33 years in Westminster, I was able to resist Sparkbrook’s demands about the great issues of national policy – otherwise, my first decade would have been spent opposing all Commonwealth immigration and my last calling for withdrawal from the European Union.”

This is not a Con/Lab/Lib-Dem thing or a Left/Right thing or even a Pro/Anti EU thing . This is a Political Class against the People thing, a THEM vs. US

Always remember THEIR contempt for US is TOTAL

 

Inconceivable

Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You know when so many people use a word or a phrase over and over again in the wrong way or the wrong situation it ceases to have any meaning or connection to what it was originally intended to convey, a bit like ‘decimate’  so it seems to have happened to ‘Human Rights’ 

Family told to pay £225 after boy breaks teacher's Tiffany necklace

from the article

The school's head, Sashi Sivaloganathan, is said to have told Zak's parents that it was a teacher's "human right" to wear whatever they chose to school, no matter how impractical.

Mrs Marquand said: "What about my son's human rights? He has a disability, it isn't his fault he behaves the way he does."

Sigh

You really want to give them a High Five

In the face

With a chair

No Bear, Honey & Jams Are Aisle 6

A Boo-Boo Booby Trap

Man pokes dead bear, gets electric shock

LIVINGSTON, Mont. - Authorities say a bow hunter in southern Montana suffered serious injuries from an electric shock when he used a knife to poke a dead bear that was lying on live wires.

Bears always seem come out the loser in encounters with humans, even if they win the first round they come off worse in the end. Score one for the bears. Although If the bears planned this and it was not just happenstance it shows remarkable cunning.

Where The Deer And The Antelope Try And Kill You. Part II

And in this case succeed.

click image for story

The animal apocalypse is coming people, don’t say you weren’t warned.

That Should Fix It

So the HoP Clock Tower is off the vertical, due in some part I suppose by the river of shit that flows past it daily (and no, I don’t mean the Thames)

My solution is to knock it back upright using the cannon on an M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank

There may be some collateral damage to the people inside.

But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Where The Deer And The Antelope Try And Kill You

After all the hoo-ha about rampaging deer

Comes this tale of a hit and run from the South African veldt,  Don’t tell me that with all the space out there that this was an ‘accident’ .

h/t Scary Duck

Don’t Do It Yogi

"the ranger isn't going to like this!"

Bear breaks into Macclenny home, eats birthday cake

The bear apparently broke into a home at 2 a.m. Monday and grabbed food, including a birthday cake, before ambling off, according to commission spokeswoman Karen Parker.

Ha ha ha, sneaky

Wildlife officials set a trap baited with cupcakes, since this bear seems to have a sweet tooth.

Tee Hee Hee

Biologists tracking the bear say it had moved several miles south of Macclenny by Tuesday morning, and when it's captured, it will be put down.

Ah, not so funny anymore.

And as if bears didn’t have enough trouble at the moment

A New York man came up with an unusual plan to hurt his ex-girlfriend: kill a bear, skin it, and then dress up in the carcass and attack her.

The Associated Press reports that Clyde Gardner, of Malone, N.Y., planned to wear the bear hide and claws to attack his ex-girlfriend and kill her, leaving no trace of his foot or fingerprints at the scene of the crime.

Genius, even Colombo would have trouble with that one

Bears have still not recovered from this

Answer, Came There None

There’s a lot of fluttering amongst the Lefties and the usual suspects that Education Secretary Michael Gove has BARRED or BANNED schools from attending a Palestinian Literary Festival

Evening Standard: Michael Gove bars schools from Palestinian literary festival

Children from local schools had been invited to take part in workshops at the festival and enter a creative writing competition on the themes of human rights and children under occupation.

Who could complain about that? I wonder what the reason for barring them was?

A spokesman for the DfE said: "The Secretary of State wrote to a number of schools seeking an assurance that they were not in breach of their duty under section 407 of the Education Act 1996 requiring that where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils, they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views.

That seems fine to me , I like the fact that children should not have a one sided agenda forced on them at an early age. Make your own mind up, that’s what I was taught at school.

Not anymore it seems.

"All the schools responded confirming that they are not taking part in the festival."

So they actually BANNED themselves rather than arrange ‘a balanced presentation of opposing views’ Because that would mean hearing what Israel had to say about it all and that really will not do.

No, That’s Bears* Lady

Not Deer

Mule deer attacks Idaho woman and man who tried to rescue her

BOISE -- Wildlife managers say a mule deer injured a woman near her rural Idaho home and the man who came to her rescue in an unusual, though not rare attack. 
They say Sue Panter tried to play dead, hoping it would discourage the deer.

Two things

They say Sue Panter tried to play dead, hoping it would discourage the deer.

Face/Palm

Although there is always the chance that  Sue Panter is a Daily Mail Picture Sub Editor in which case it’s an easy mistake to make. Remember these are the people who can’t tell a rifle from a shotgun.

an unusual, though not rare attack.

WTF!  I keep telling you dudes, animal apocalypse is coming.

A handy guide

 

*Specifically Grizzly Bears, all that playing dead in front of a Black Bear will get you is its thanks for not moving around whilst it’s trying to eat. This is also slightly worrying for Daily Mail Sub Editors who it seems cannot tell the difference between the two.

Mail Subs Not Even Trying Now

I know this pales compared to them posting the incorrect verdict in the Knox appeal. But it should be pointed out.

Front Page

Yep, that’s a Grizzly alright, well done the photo editor for once, been watching those Animal Planet videos, good.

Let us click through and read the story

In the time it takes to click a URL, hey presto the species has changed.

 

Story here