At least, that’s what you’re supposed to conclude from this article. The war profiteering of German industry should have been more harshly punished, and there are a lot of wrongs committed in the Second World War that will never be righted. But using them for some specious argument against the EU is a bit much.
A group of churches has banded together to counter the atheist bus adverts with their own banners which read ‘There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.’ Fair enough, though the definite nature of the proclamation does leave it open to referral to the Advertising Standards Authority- at least the atheists hedged their bets by saying there probably isn’t a god.
And the photo used in the article looks like a photoshop. Is someone winding us (and the Daily Mail) up?
Update
Courtesy of Kalyr and the bus slogan generator.
Irony is a writer for the Daily Mail calling other people “pious, pompous, prudish, sanctimonious, semi-hysterical, self-righteous, mealymouthed, whining prigs”. Andrew Alexander thinks it’s okay to give someone a nickname that may sound, to anyone with a brain and some sensitivity, crass and insulting. In that spirit, I shall call him Tosser from now on. Me old mate Tosser thinks it’s a terrible shame that people have pointed out that Paki is a word loaded with racist overtones. He seems to be arguing that as Prince Harry’s used it it’s been given the Royal seal of approval as an acceptable way to refer to our brown friends.
Tosser’s argument is doubly pathetic because of the paper publishing it. The Daily Mail has an editorial policy of being offended by everything and anything that doesn’t fit into its narrow world view and is the loudest source of pious nonsense in the country.
It needs to say “snorkelling” on it somewhere. The Australian Tourist board are advertising a job as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Reef. The successful applicant will be paid £70,000 for a six month stint with an expected 12 hours a month worth of duties.
Find out more at www.islandreefjob.com
An interesting looking study into “sociosexuality” has tried to explain why different people have different attitudes towards sex and promiscuity and what factors affect those attitudes.
According to Daniel Nettle from the University of Newcastle, UK, the classically promiscuous man will be high in extroversion, low in neuroticism and fairly low in agreeableness as well. “The extroversion gives you the desire to do it,” he says, “the low neuroticism means you don’t worry too much about doing it and the low agreeableness means you don’t really care if you mess someone around or cheat on your wife.” The situation is similar for women, says Nettle, although another factor, openness, comes into the mix to some extent. This makes sense since people who are open to experience are likely to want to explore new relationship possibilities.
The Daily Mail’s take on this- “OMG! THE BRITISH ARE SUCH SLUTS!” And apparently it’s all the fault of female equality and rationalism.
The US elections are like a big, scary soap opera. They’d be more entertaining if they weren’t so important. So far all the best stories have come from, or been generated by, the Republicans.
The polling figures are so poor, and John McCain’s campaign so dire, that the right wing bloggers and commenters have descended to grabbing any fantasy solution that comes near them and holding on tight. Over the weekend I saw reports that Barack Obama was about to be arrested as part of someone else’s corruption scandal, that he had an affair (the details of that one look a lot like one of the plots from the first season of 24, they have a hard time with original thought on the right it would seem) and that he was somehow knee deep in an invented voter registration scandal involving a group called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
I’ve done a little research into the ACORN “scandal” and it looks like a smear. The organisation is accused of voter registration fraud (cut down to voter fraud as part of the smear so that it can sound like an attempt to steal the election) because they turned in dubious or duplicate registration forms. ACORN hands over every registration form its workers generate, as they are required to, so if an individual gives them something fraudulent they’d be breaking the law if they discarded it. In fact, ACORN points out that they separate suspicious registrations out and flag them for the electoral commissions to investigate.
Meanwhile, Republican organisations are trying to remove people from the electoral roll. Specifically the sort of people who would be more likely to vote for Obama- the poor, blacks, people who have lost their homes as part of the mortgage meltdown. It’s a familiar story, basically the same methods they’ve used to steal the last two elections.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin- whose husband was a member of a political party that wanted Alaska to break away from the United States- is accusing Obama of wanting to destroy the country because he worked with a reformed- if unrepentant- former member of the Weather Underground. This has struck such a chord with certain McCain/Palin supporters who prefer not to think that they’ve started parroting “terrorist”, “traitor” etc. at rallies. It’s got so bad that the people who started the name calling are now asking them to shut up and getting booed for it.
Whichever way the election goes it looks more and more like the USA wants to be two countries.
This post was inspired by an article on the Daily Mail website. It’s an expansion upon the comment I left there, which I expect, based upon past experience, won’t be published.
Rev Peter Mullen, chaplain of the Stock Exchange and rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, has “joked” that homosexual men should be tattoed with messages such as SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and FELLATIO KILLS. And Jews should wear yellow stars, gypsies should be rounded up and shot, Communists……
Update I forgot to mention that the link is to a Daily Mail article, so if you do read the comments be prepared for a lot of frothing “political correctness gone mad”, “homosexual agenda!” type stuff. Apparently it’s good that he has stood up and chosen to counter all the homosexual propaganda that’s out there. Where is this homosexual propaganda exactly? I’d love to see some, just to find out what it looks like. I guess those perfume adverts with David Beckham could be guerilla gay propaganda- it can claim to be about something else, but smelly stuff is a bit gay isn’t it?
I can’t believe that I’m so much less aware than the average Daily Mail reader that I can’t see the great big billboards that must be out there emblazoned with catchy mesages like “Become a poof- it’s good clean fun”. I assume that’s what they mean by homosexual propaganda, because they can’t possibly mean calls to treat homosexuals equally when they go on about it. Can they?
So why is all the reporting about the results of a Times Educational Supplement survey focussing on the minority who do want to hit children? I understand that discipline is a tricky thing, but I agree with the majority of teachers who think that violence is no sort of answer.
“50,000 women abandoning church every year as Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns them on to witchcraft”
Love that headline. I’m impressed by the even more blatant than usual implication that female empowerment is a horrendously bad thing.
A couple of random things that have been in my head for the last few days but haven’t coalesced into anything long enough to post by themselves-
We need leaders, but what we get are politicians.
Fundamentalist levels of danger: individually, Islamic fundamentalists are more evil, but they’re not going to destroy our society unless we help them. Collectively, Christian fundamentalists are far more dangerous, because they exert an influence on the US and other western governments far out of proportion to their grasp on reality.
Plus- I just challenged the Daily Express to send me a journalist I could take cycling around Manchester. I don’t think they will, but you never know until you try. Next week the Daily Mail.
Or something. A silly advert for the new product showed two men kissing (the magical properties of Deli Mayo having morphed Mum into a gruff New York diner chef) and a handful of people with nothing better to do have complained so it’s been pulled.
I’m reminded of one of the many satirical radio adverts in GTA IV, which plays on this tendency of some parents not wanting to do any responsible parenting and demanding the rest of the world should shut up so they don’t have to explain things to their kids. Heaven forbid they should try to prepare their little ones for the real world by having to explain that we’re all different.
So Nick Clegg doesn’t believe in god and had had sex before he met his wife. He sounds like a real person, which is a vast improvement over most politicians. I like him more and more.
A booklet has been released with guidelines that suggest stopping using phrases such as “Islamic terrorist”. Cue frothing “it’s political correctness gone mad!” commentary in the Daily Mail-iverse. My response-
Call them what they are- terrorists, murderers, criminals. Don’t play into their hands. This is actually a sensible suggestion. The phrase “Islamist terrorist” gives them something to use. It lets them make claims of islamaphobia (merited in some cases given the pathetic bigotry of the sort of person who wants to use such stupid words as Islamofascist) and try to get sympathy from other muslims who wouldn’t normally pay attention to such criminals.
We should use language to marginalise terrorists and other criminals who hide behind religious or political causes. Make them sound stupid and pathetic and they’ll have a harder time drumming up support amongst the group they claim to be a part of. It won’t stop them all by itself, but it’s a start.
Iain Martin roles out is a tired old argument that I’ve heard several times before. So this is as good a time as any to reply.
Really? Who is going to build the windmills? Manufacture and mount the solar panels? Build all the low energy houses? Bring existing houses up to standard? Where are they going to spend the billions that stand to be made? What are home owners going to do with the money they save by cutting down on waste?
How blinkered do you have to be to miss the huge opportunities that are available to the early adopters of energy saving technologies? You can finesse your arguments against climate change as much as you want, but you’d be an idiot if you couldn’t see the advantages of switching to renewables and becoming more efficient.
Technorati tag: EcoHouse
A Goth couple in Yorkshire have been victims of harassment by a bus driver who won’t let them on “his” bus. Their sin- she likes to be walked around on a lead.
Cue the usual Daily Mail-iverse prejudice against anyone who is different from their definition of normal.
A Goth couple in Yorkshire have been victims of harassment by a bus driver who won’t let them on “his” bus. Their sin- she likes to be walked around on a lead.
Cue the usual Daily Mail-iverse prejudice against anyone who is different from their definition of normal.
I’ve said it before, Santa is a pimp. Except in one Australian shop, where he’s been sacked, allegedly because he says ho-ho-ho, which might be offensive to women.
Cue steaming piles of “it’s Political Correctness gone mad” commentary from the DAily Mail readership.
This seems appropriate reading after spending the afternoon watching the Pride parade.
During the recent floods “youths” decided to take to their local streets on jet skis. Which sounds cool to me, though, as usual, some morons had to get violent when asked to stop.
Also, spot the hypocrisy of the Daily Mail website. Having taken the high moral ground about how terrible this behaviour is and suggesting it shouldn’t be uploaded to YouTube, they embedded the video below in the report.
He said: “These people have actively sought British citizenship because they want to make a contribution to the UK.
“I am not sure how many people born in this country have the same commitment. The tests for citizenship are greater than they have ever been.
“We are now turning immigrants into better citizens than people born with a British passport.”
The Daily Mail and its frothing “I’m not a racist, but…” readership are up in arms about this, and goes out of its way to cite Abu Hamza et al as examples of the sort of immigrant we’re getting, insinuating that they’re all muggers, rapists and killers. Take any million British citizens and I think you’d find a number of vile scum in the mix. I mean, a few of them would be Daily Mail readers for a start.