04 December 2010

04/12/10

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
-René Descartes

201 comments:

  1. Good evening Visitor from NZ !

    Don't be shy;-)

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  2. These Wikileaks addresses did not work this am,

    http://213.251.145.96/

    http://88.80.13.160/

    Could someone update me ?

    Wanted to look at cable --Wikileaks tag 09LONDON11­56
    --- on Chagos Islands .

    Thanks.

    -------------------------------
    The Times frontpage--

    World News British diplomat ‘plotted to keep islanders in exile’

    Colin Roberts urged American diplomats to support plans to prevent natives of the Chagos Islands from returning home.

    Go !

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  3. Jesus christ, Dave, that's depressing...

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  4. Knew I'd seen the new address somewhere - it was posted on the Zimbabwe thread

    Here we go, Dave

    http://213.251.145.96/

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  5. BB

    After reading last nights offerings (great music) I have just got to say that you are a classy woman.

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  6. BB --bonjour ! Well we already knew that they were an immoral unscrupulous loada shit, so am completely unsurprised ... and actually not depressed ... because more ammo available .
    Later!

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  7. "Summary. HMG would like to establish a “marine park” or “reserve” providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on May 12. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park -- the world’s largest -- would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT’s former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve. End Summary."

    The utter contemptible bastards!

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  8. Jen - do you like 90s dance music as well?

    Hurray!!

    Lately I have been feeling like I was the only one left in England. :o)

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  9. Wikileaks Chagos --

    http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/05/09LONDON1156.html

    maybe those first two addresses are good, I was half-asleep ...

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  10. BB - Thanks for 'Heads Up', if I get the chance to read yesterdays thread, In the words of a classy pussy cat - 'I'll just scroll on by'

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  11. Love it BB (one of my guilty pleasures (the other is Hollyoaks (the shame))).

    I was actually referring to your offer of truce to bitey, makes you the better person by miles. x

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  12. Jen

    Ahhh! Thanks!

    It's not the first time I've tried, either. Sometimes he will post for weeks and weeks under a new nick, but it is almost like he has to be seen to "take me down" publicly. Fair enough, if he wants to keep on playing silly buggers. I will ignore it to a point, but sometimes it is quite hard to ignore when it nasty personal stuff.

    I wasn't joking when I said that what Luke posted yesterday is nothing in comparison to some of the stuff the manuphage has said about me on CiF. :o)

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  13. Talking of NZ ( well I'd ve liked to .. with visitor'X') my Ma just called, at length, and the tel is in the very coldest part of the Chateau, so into a warm bath to recover!

    BTW she is enjoying Golem's book, not bad for 83 ?

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  14. Right - gotta get me skates on and get over to my dad's for airport taxi duty. See you later folks xx

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  15. Is it just me or is the treatment of Simone Webb on the thread about her Dorries article just incredibly patronising? I keep trying to engage it with sensibly, but just keep finding the combination of head patting and smug one upmanship a tad nauseating. She's obviously an intelligent and able woman, she doesn't need to be either patronised or defended.

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  16. Just like to say thanks to Sheff for Buddy Guy/Santana from last night. Just awesome.

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  17. Morning all.

    Yippee! A snow plough is clearing the roads round here.

    Meerkatjie

    Oh dear ...

    BB & jen

    I like the music too, but when I listen to it at home I feel the urge to be part of a big friendly crowd out dancing the night away in a secret rural location. And the kids went to raves, carnival etc with us, when they were old enough.

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  18. Morning all

    My pleasure shaz!

    The arseholes are all over the place today. The utter disgrace of Chagos Islanders plight - whole communities destroyed, the royal perogative used to overide court decisions simply to pleasure our US masters and their military ambitions.

    And Michele Hanson is having a righteous rant against Trump and his monstrous plans for Menie in Aberdeenshire over on cif. Good for her.

    I daren't look to see what else there is as I was rather hoping to enjoy my day.

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  19. Morning All,

    Can someone check the spam bin please? Think Bitey got spammed at the end of last night, and since we're NOT into censorship here, better reinstate it!

    Right things to do, back later.

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  20. shaz is right, Buddy & Carlos - just awesome.

    Been playing it all morning.

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  21. Oh the horror...the bullshit you read on CIF these days...

    "Many biases in judgement stem not just from misuse of cognitive heuristics but from social and identity processes."

    "affirming the same error as it fits the social group narrative."

    "Typically such a measure will have predictive value up to about a correlation coefficient of .6 or .7 (though obviously it depends on task, domain etc). However, one needs to square the coefficient to get the shared variance, so .7 means about 50% shared variance."


    "However, if it is over extended it may become sub-optimal at best and actively bad at worst."

    "There are all sorts of rationality, passive, substantive, active, procedural, individual, collective. And there is a difference between formal rules and the actual cognitive and motivational etc processes in actual people."

    MORNINGTON CRESCENT!!

    ...(by the Reibentroffsteinberg transposed rotational attribution-model paradigm)

    Why do some people suspend their critical faculties and accept this shite as anything but trivial, tautologous or plain fuckin wrong?..using unnecessarily technical language is just about the surest sign of a fraud there is; especially when it's there for 'appearance'...it's not as though it's to ensure precision of meaning...(duh whatevs blah)...and it sure as fuck isn't for clarity...it's a pathetic attempt to secure a reputation as an 'authority' from a rather sad little guy. Take silly people seriously and you just encourage them.

    Next time...just say: "yes dear...now why don't you take a break from Google and go down to the shops"

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  22. Dotterel 04 December, 2010 10:58

    No need to check - all my posts are there.

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  23. My favourite jarg on the the Financial Front is

    "THE GAUSSIAN COPULA"

    some things do still stick in what's left of a mind...

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  24. Hel said... 04 December, 2010 01:32

    Bitethehand, some of us round here have been drinking, any chance you can sum that post up in say 50 words or fewer? Cos if not I am going to have to go with my original impression, which was "blah" (I am sorry, I do not mean to be rude but I posted you a damn fine song and you just ignored it. ***Sniff)

    OK:

    Shallcross posted a "joke" about rape. I posted condemning it, which was removed by the mods. Montana responded at length also condemning it. I wrote to the mods saying they should reinstate my post and giving reasons why "rape" jokes aren't funny. The mods sided with Shallcross.

    Chemical Brothers - well I've heard better of their stuff although it's not really my taste but thanks all the same.

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  25. I know I've posted this before, but it's well worth it:

    Santana - Abraxis

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  26. Are you sure Bitey? Because the last post there ends with this:

    "I emailed the post that follows this one to the moderators on CiF not long ago. (It's too long to include with this one.) "

    Really am off now!

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  27. Very good one here on WikiLeaks by Jonathan Cook the un-embedded reporter in Israel --

    http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0536.htm#Top

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  28. "Typically such a measure will have predictive value up to about a correlation coefficient of .6 or .7 (though obviously it depends on task, domain etc). However, one needs to square the coefficient to get the shared variance, so .7 means about 50% shared variance."

    couple of people on waddaya seem to have questioned this...and wondered whether it could be expressed more clearly..it can... FUCKIN WRONG...it's someone trying to sound knowledgeable but never reading past the first two lines of wikipedia and so ending up making a fuckin tool of themselves...again...and yet people engage with this crap..pretend to be informed by it and have long rambling discussions which they and others seem to regard as highbrow debate...should I be surprised...that CIF has become overrun with morons trying to show off and affirming their faith in each others' intellectual powers...if I were at all cynical, I'd start to suspect a "social group narrative"...basically the speccy kids who couldn't play football at the edge of the playground telling each other that one day the rest of the kids would all prostrate themselves before their geeky brilliance..well dream on

    *accidentally kicks ball as hard as possible in their direction*

    "Whoops...Sorry...it was an accident...oooh..that looks like it hurts."

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  29. Buddy Guy doing On The Road, from his latest LP 'Living Proof'. 74 years young and better than ever.

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  30. monkeyfish

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one's pov) I've left my basic stats book at work. Or somewhere.

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  31. "RE Gardner it relates to stuff on modularity (cf Fodor Modularity of mind) but that is getting into computational models of mind and such like stuff. I guess I shouldn't bother mentioning it as it's kinda advanced and some posters might feel ignorant and one cannot have that. (All must have prizes eh?)"

    ooh..now there's a coincidence..

    "Serious suggestion. Dissonance between 'supporting students and education' and the anti -learning on display on Cif."

    I'm sure this is just blind chance...he can't have read my post..he recently assured 'the World' that he never reads this site...unless...drum roll...that was even more bullshit?

    "Re Vygotsky, he's ok, a more social take and influential on GH Mead. (That none of you can be bothered to read sigh."

    Shame on you people...he descends from the clouds (or the spare room in his mum's house..whatevs..) to impart his wisdom...and you lot can't even be bothered to work your way through the reading list....sheesh...seriously...unless you are prepared to scream bullshit when you hear it..you get everything you deserve...on CIF as in life

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  32. Dotterel 04 December, 2010 11:18

    Are you sure Bitey? Because the last post there ends with this:

    "I emailed the post that follows this one to the moderators on CiF not long ago. (It's too long to include with this one.) "

    Well it was there, hence Hel's post at 01.32.

    So let's try again.

    And I'm not suggesting anything other than a technical feature of posts that approach the character limit. I've notice that before.

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  33. Email to CiF's moderators:

    Jokes that belittle and demean the victims of rape

    Yesterday you removed the following post of mine:

    "backtothepoint:

    "For a couple of days there, I thought you'd turned over a new leaf and I was happy to engage with you in a normal, community standards-compliant way on Ally's thread, but it seems you can't control your compulsions."

    "Shows what a poor judge of character you are then as I will always make a point of opposing those who tell jokes belittling rape victims, gays and ethnic minorities, as this poster also did following your poor attempt at humour:

    My "problem", Spike, is that I don't find any humour in belittling rape victims or the crime of rape, itself."

    backtothepoint also posts as Spike on Montana Wildhack's site and writes for CiF under the name Tony Shallcross.

    The final quote, - 'My "problem", Spike, is that I don't find any humour in belittling rape victims or the crime of rape', was by MontanaWildhack who also wrote in the same post:

    "Yes, Spike. I did read up thread. Did you? I also read the full article at the link JackofDiamonds provided and looked around the site to try to satisfy myself that it was a reliable source. While I can't be certain, there did seem to be enough of a balance in the articles and their mission statement that I don't believe the site is a blindly pro-Israel sham. I read the woman's full account of the incident. You are belittling a woman who was sexually abused by her father from the age of six, forced by him into prostitution. and sexually abused multiple times by other men. Or do you think all of that was just made up to get back at the guy for telling her he was a Jewish bachelor?

    "You don't think that it's possible that an Arab man might think he could get away with raping a Jewish girl who seemed vulnerable and possibly mentally unstable? You don't think he might have even flattered himself that she would enjoy it?

    "My "problem", Spike, is that I don't find any humour in belittling rape victims or the crime of rape, itself. And I have no sympathy for men who feel so entitled to a fuck that they think that it's acceptable to tell whatever lies they need to to get laid and that the women they lie to are just saps. Women aren't cum buckets -- we (don't) deserve to be treated as such.

    "If you think this makes me a humourless bitch -- I'll wear the badge with honour.
    "

    Later and because her objection to this kind of belittling 'humour' was challenged, she further clarified her point:

    "To go back to Spike's original "joke" and the notion that it should be obvious to anyone who reads it that it was making fun of the law and not of rape or the victim in this particular case: (Sorry, Jessica, but my time zone wouldn't allow for a quicker reply)

    "You might want to stop and think about the fact that the only people here who seem to think that this connection is "obvious" are all male. I think most women who read that "joke" will also see in it the male-held myth that women falsely accuse men of rape at the drop of the hat when they later regret having had sex with a man.

    "Therefore, it is categorically NOT simply a joke about a law. It's a joke about women who supposedly find it easy to charge a man with a crime, just because she regretted sex. I have had consensual sex that I later regretted. I have also been raped. I know the difference. Women rarely report the real rapes. Why the hell do you men find it so easy to believe that we would make the shit up just because we'd changed our minds?
    "

    Now by removing my post you are sending a very clear message that I, Montana and anyone else who objects to so called jokes about the victims of rape, are making a fuss about nothing, indeed that we are wrong to do so. I think you should reinstate the post.

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  34. "A correlation is between 2 (or more) variables and produces a correlation coefficient, this may be Spearman's r or another depending on the stat (parametric or nonp for eg). However, shared or common variance is not the same as the correlation. One obtains the common variance (common variance being variance in two or more variables) by squaring the coefficient. (Standard deviation is something else. So Framed you don't remember your stats very well. Like I care, I'm not testing you duh)"

    Except that Spearman only produces a rank coefficient and so can only be used as a prediction of likelihood of a similar rank order rather than objective performance for an individual...can't be calculated for more than two sets of data simultaneously...or...for those of you who like their explanations in the vernacular...BOLLOCKS...keep digging Homer

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  35. IIRC, we girlies also had some discussion about how care should be taken when raising sensitive issues which can lead to survivors revisiting painful memories. Survivors of sexual violence are everywhere - please consider their feelings, BTH, when you make their suffering part of your campaign. Let them speak for themselves, when & where they wish to do so. It's a fundamental premise of feminism that women's voices assert a critical narrative, after all.

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  36. "Oh the horror...the bullshit you read on CIF these days..."

    My current favourite is:

    "the 2 syllable attack dog is the word 'racism'"

    eggandbeans. Bless his ultraright socks. My daughter read that over my shoulder, and said 'but mummy racism has three syllables'... She's nine.

    It always fascinates me that defenders of the English realm and English language are so utterly crap in their use of said language.

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  37. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  38. @bitey

    As you're fully aware, I pointed out at the time that it wasn't a joke. As always, you're very careful not to post what I actually wrote. There was a discussion of the Israeli Arab who'd been found guilty of "rape by deception" because he hadn't told the woman in question he was married or (very probably far more pertinent in an Israeli court) that he wasn't Jewish.

    I commented that I once slept with a woman who told me she wasn't married but in fact was, and wondered whether it was too late to press rape charges.

    As you well know, it said nothing about the woman in question. It wasn't a joke about rape, but an ironic comment on an Israeli law that devalues and banalises the entire concept of rape.

    Whether rape was actually committed in this case is immaterial to what I was saying, since the man was convicted solely of rape by deception. Convicting someone for rape because they lied about their marital status or concealed their religious persuasion just provides ammunition for those who want to belittle the terrible crime of rape ("oh yeah, these days you can be convicted of rape for not wearing your wedding ring...").

    Of course, I'm pretty sure that doesn't bother you, bitey, because as someone said so aptly, you're mainly interested in humping the leg of any passing femininist poster.

    Now would you like to explain why you joke about adults handling children's genitals, bitey? Does that tie in with your defence of adults who groom and have sex with children?

    I sincerely hope you don't practise what you preach out there in the Far East, bitey.

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  39. Bitey is Bitey, I've read one of his last however many hundred posts. At least Bracken and Luke have some semblance of cognitive humanity behind them.

    Pen is Pen. I don't know why, but I like his words. When was being right a precursor to posting on CiF?

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  40. "the 2 syllable attack dog is the word 'racism'"

    not 'pit bull'? or 'poodle'?..or 'Bayesian Attribution-model Hound'?..although I'm not sure the last one isn't just part of a much wider socially constructed narrative

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  41. Gegen posted something a little more sound, MF:

    penileplesythmograph, framedraggingfridge:

    The correlation coefficient is not the standard deviation.

    You square the CC to get the shared variance of 2 variables (a rarely used quantity in my experience, though Jonathan's may be different).

    You square the SD to get the variance, or, rather, you usually calculate the variance first and then take its square root to get the SD.

    "An interesting property of the shared variance is that it's always positive or zero. If you have a negative CC, which would mean than one variable is doing the opposite of what the other variable is doing, you still get a large and positive shared variance. Something of a misnomer, the "shared" ..."

    I don't pretend to be a statistician, but even with my passing understanding of stats thought that the variance stuff up thread was a tad, erm, dodgy?

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  42. When was being right a precursor to posting on CiF?

    well I'd be stuffed if it was Habib!

    Here's some Mance Lipscombe - Texas Blues

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  43. "When was being right a precursor to posting on CiF?"

    ..it never was...but there was a time when telling somebody they 'weren't right' wasn't a cue for accusations of 'mobbing', 'abuse' and a cue for the moderators to wipe your stuff because one of the mollycoddled and indulged spam was getting a bit upset

    Now telling someone they're 'wrong' is abuse..and, further, telling them why they're wrong is "months of continual abuse"

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  44. Love the texas blues link, sheffpixie.

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  45. Sheff, that's my kind of music.

    Monkeyfish, you're right. They are nob-ends.

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  46. By the way, MF, if you're tired of finding new monikers, I'll still happily post over there for you.

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  47. Pen is Pen

    yes..but 'what' is 'pen'?...and not to put too fine a point on it...just how willing would you be to take advice from a middle-aged guy who lives with his mam?.. ostensibly because of..well...hints and insinuations about the dark forces of the State having fucked up his life and career because he was so popular and down with the kids..presumably we're supposed to conclude that he'd reached such a deep level of understanding of social dynamics that if he'd been allowed to get his 'truth' out there, the whole neo-con hegemony would have crumbled at the sight of the harmonious new cognitive utopia.

    although to be fair..I don't give a fuck who he is or what he types...I'm just concerned with pointing out that his brand of bullshit seems to represent the intellectual high water mark of CIF..which says it all...oh along with Martyn...who may lack pen's expertise with a correlation coefficient but...as I've always maintained... when it comes to channelling the mental processes of a Somalian goat herd...give me an egotistical Welsh bigot every time.

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  48. Bastard! Totally unanticipated by both BBC Weather and Meteo France, it's been snowing like hell here in Paris. Fingers crossed that it melts before I start driving round the country...

    @MF

    Next time bru goes off on one, mind if I post your magic wand comment over there? I loved that one!

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  49. MsChin - bears repeating:
    "IIRC, we girlies also had some discussion about how care should be taken when raising sensitive issues which can lead to survivors revisiting painful memories. Survivors of sexual violence are everywhere - please consider their feelings, BTH, when you make their suffering part of your campaign. Let them speak for themselves, when & where they wish to do so. It's a fundamental premise of feminism that women's voices assert a critical narrative, after all."
    Very well put. Have been trying to formulate my own response on this issue in relation to a couple of statements, but didn't manage this level of insight / constructiveness (or 'lack of swearing', the two things could be related).

    I would also add that rape can affect women and men and that the totality of this should be taken into account when discussing the issue.

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  50. "and not to put too fine a point on it...just how willing would you be to take advice from a middle-aged guy who lives with his mam?.. "
    Erm... Mam has taken me in. Sorry. You are, of course, quite right. :-(

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  51. Habib

    I don't really want to bother posting there...besides they all nip over here..read what's being said and then in an effort to 'rise above it' make complete tits of themselves by placing half-arsed veiled rebuttals which make their posts on CIF completely irrelevant and unintelligible to anybody else. Better still, you can actually shame them into doing what you want...Martyn and Pen are particularly responsive in this last respect but nowhere near as puppet-like as Kermit..anyone can yank that dickhead's strings.

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  52. Good comment by lierbag on the Moore thread:

    In protest against South African apartheid, UK activists used to visit supermarkets stocking South African produce, load up their trolleys, have it all checked through at the till, then walk off before payment - having left a leaflet behind explaining the reasons for their action, and leaving chaos in their wake. I just hope people don't use similar tactics against Marks & Spencer, ASDA, Next, and any other Coalition cuts supporting businesses, as it would obviously be most unfair, especially in the run up to Christmas.

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  53. Is anyone else finding it really hard to find a place to shop these days that doesn't make you feel dirty by association?

    (I know, small and local. It just isn't always quite that simple, though!)

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  54. I hope my desire for death is explained away by my way current circumstance.

    Relax people, I really am just kidding.

    Here, have a song.

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  56. MsChin

    Survivors of sexual violence are everywhere - please consider their feelings, BTH, when you make their suffering part of your campaign. Let them speak for themselves, when & where they wish to do so. It's a fundamental premise of feminism that women's voices assert a critical narrative, after all.

    If someone posts on a public forum without specifically saying so, perhaps you'd advise whether they want others to comment on it or not.

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  57. "Next time bru goes off on one, mind if I post your magic wand comment over there? I loved that one!"

    Feel free

    here's a sign of the times..from Gegenbeispiel..who I've nothing against..other than his tendency to the beige end of the prose spectrum...

    "Beware, there are right-wing stalkers on CIF making abuse reports and getting posts removed for tiny technicalities."

    now..maybe I've succumbed to a spot of "golden-ageism"... but I seem to remember when the general reaction to an influx of 'right-wing stalkers' was to lay right into the 'right-wing stalkers'...I'll even venture that as a causal factor in explaining why there didn't used to be quite so many right-wing stalkers...they were laughed off-stage (there used to be plenty of libertarians who'd stick around and make a case but the hordes of outright neo-con loons were largely unknown)

    Now it seems the response to right-wingers is to issue 'warnings'...no doubt a precursor among the usual suspects of a high-minded debate about "construction of corporate narratives" or the "social dynamic of conservative in-group reinforcement"...it's pitiful...chickenshit servility...don't want to get pre-modded by actually laying into the idiotic fuckers so we'll stay in our happy little village and try and sound superior by using arcane technical terms which sounded good at psychology conferences in the 80s...that'll teach them.

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  58. @MF

    I had a drink with Gegen when he was in Paris a couple of weeks ago. A very pleasant, interesting bloke on the side of the angels politically.

    Turning to "neocon loons", they're certainly crawling out of the woodwork on the Suzanne Moore thread. Masterly contributions from Clunie and the Princess as usual.

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  59. Shallcross / Spike

    As you're fully aware, I pointed out at the time that it wasn't a joke.

    I commented that I once slept with a woman who told me she wasn't married but in fact was, and wondered whether it was too late to press rape charges.

    So you're now saying this was meant to be a serious contribution to whether Sabbar Kashur raped a women, a crime which I believe after plea bargaining, he pleaded guilty to?

    Now would you like to explain why you joke about adults handling children's genitals, bitey? Does that tie in with your defence of adults who groom and have sex with children?

    Care to quote me on either of those Shallcross?

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  60. @bitey

    So you're now saying this was meant to be a serious contribution to whether Sabbar Kashur raped a women

    The problem is, you're so ludricously dishonest that you come across as thick as two short planks to anyone who doesn't know you're a twisted, vicious pathological liar.

    As I said, "an ironic comment on an Israeli law that devalues and banalises the entire concept of rape". So fuck all to do with the ins and outs of the individual case and everything to do with the iniquity of the law on which the final sentence was based. Because as you well know, despite your usual attempt to twist reality to your advantage, the guilty plea bargain was for "rape by deception" - not saying he was a married Arab.

    If deception were a serious crime, bitey, you'd be serving a whole life sentence.

    As for quoting you, you tell me. You get banned for abuse on CiF every five minutes so it's a little difficult to consult your posting record. There are plenty of people who remember your defences of child sexual abuse, though.

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  61. In potentially the most significant attack on WikiLeaks to date, PayPal on Friday froze the account of the German foundation accepting donations for the secret spilling website, claiming that WikiLeaks was in violation of PayPal’s terms of service.

    “PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” reads a statement on PayPal’s website. “We’ve notified the account holder of this action.” - Wired.com

    The reek of hypocrisy is damn near overwhelming. So '...our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity...'.

    What horseshit. Rapidshare, Megaupload and a host of other file-sharing services whose sole raison d'etre is to circumvent copyright, use PayPal, without causing them any sleepless nights.

    I wonder when Elric of Melbourne will release the key to the encrypted 1.4 Gig file that 10s of thousands of people already have?

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  62. Jack - I saw that . Bastard PayPal!

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  63. How is Phil the Plumber getting on ?

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  64. badly. have just uploaded pictures of the doobrey in case that helps. about to nip out to try to find lubricant...

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  65. ...and possibly to try to find a stream of the football. enjoy your afternoons, all.

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  66. Woohoo, just had visitors! 2 actual people to converse with IRL (present company excepted of course).

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  67. deano

    Give us a wave if you're around. Not seen you for a few days and would like to know that you are ok.

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  68. My brother-in-law was called back into active duty military service just after 9/11 and was sent to Diego Garcia for a year. They'd been told that the islands had been uninhabited before the British started using them for military purposes.

    Now, does anyone know enough about Opera (that'd be the web browser, not the art form preferred by foreign relations experts from Brussels) to tell me:

    A) How to clear out cookies easily (and not individually)
    B) Why YouTube would refuse to allow someone to sign into her account after she'd cleared out her cookies individually, but not changed any of her settings vis Ă  vis accepting cookies

    I have more questions, some of them relating to YouTube and Chrome, but I'll wait 'til later for them.

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  69. Anyone without Rupertvision wanting to watch South Africa v Barbarians live - good stream here.

    Commentary in French, but it's all good practice...

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  70. can't get a city stream so am watching soccer saturday for the first time ever.

    just bizarre.

    how many former players are now earning a crust yelling incoherent goal news at the chaps in the studio, which looks like the world's weirdest call centre...

    ReplyDelete
  71. where did shaz's post go? has the spam filter struck again?

    ReplyDelete
  72. Was wondering the same thing myself, Philippa. About shaz' post, I mean.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Aucune idĂ©e, Philippa... le match est fini, quand mĂªme...

    ReplyDelete
  74. i think chris kamara is being paid by the word.

    he is now miming chances.

    this is brilliant! how come i have never watched this before?

    ReplyDelete
  75. ...i'm not sure we have a player called 'cholera', however...

    ReplyDelete
  76. I started reading Banks' Surface Detail last night. He's exploring an idea he first played with in Feersum Endjinn, but his vision of Hell, sort of a digital Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights is a corker.

    I actually put down Alistair Reynolds' latest (Terminal World, which I'm half-way through--it's good) to start the Banks; which was a bit silly because I can't put Banks down once I've started.

    I used to think Hell would be to be eternally trapped in a lift with The Linen Major, penilethingy, brusselsexsprout and MongosantamariaInEindhoven. Now I know better.

    More Buddy Guy. What can I say? I've posted quite a few Buddy Guy songs on ytube.

    ReplyDelete
  77. Rescued a post by Shazz from the spam bin.

    ReplyDelete
  78. and they still do the scores!

    the man with the lovely diction, reading everything out and occasinoally invoking th epools committee!

    haven't heard that in years...reminds me of grandpa.

    ReplyDelete
  79. mind you, he doesn't actually have a lot of scores to read out, given that most matches seem to have been called off...

    ReplyDelete
  80. @jack cade

    No Surface Detail spoilers! Turm hasn't started it yet.

    ReplyDelete
  81. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  82. anyone fancying a chuckle late - check out ipm on iplayer, because they are testing the rules on 'religious' music at registry office services by playing 'say a little prayer' on the ukulele and a kazoo.

    just very funny.

    ReplyDelete
  83. finishing on Pachelbel's Canon in D being the most played piece at weddings. which made me think of this, which is just genius...
    Pachebel Rant...

    "there's no way to be cool with an instrument larger than you...taking a cello to school is like being an injured gazelle on the serengeti..."

    ReplyDelete
  84. "...pachelbel's following me...he's following you too...la da da da, da-da-da..."

    ReplyDelete
  85. Meerkatjie "Is anyone else finding it really hard to find a place to shop these days that doesn't make you feel dirty by association?"

    Yes, to some extent, but in the end I mostly give in to the temptation of TK Maxx to be honest. However...

    I am going to be giving some people Palestinian olive oil this year. It supposed to be fantastic (too fucking expensive for me to have tried myself yet) comes from small Palestinian farmers, and is fair trade certified.

    And I got one bottle from a local wholefood shop and some more from a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean (not sure but I think they are Lebanese) shop in Kentish Town.

    I think it is more or less all imported by Zeytoun though, whoever retails it.

    Might be worth a thought. http://www.zaytoun.org/

    ReplyDelete
  86. Evening all

    Back from the avichi hell that is Heathrow Terminal 3.

    a) god I hate that place
    b) knowing I live 10 mins drive away from Gatwick, why does my dad's partner insist on flying to and from Heathrow?!

    Grr.

    Say a Little Prayer on ukelele and kazoo sounds like it will be excruciating...

    ReplyDelete
  87. Third attempt:

    Shallcross / Spike

    The problem is, you're so ludricously dishonest that you come across as thick as two short planks to anyone who doesn't know you're a twisted, vicious pathological liar.

    Rather than trying to butter me up with your smoothe talk Shallcross, why don't you do a little reading about what I have actually posted rather than parrot tittle tattle and gossip you've picked up from people here? You say:

    There are plenty of people who remember your defences of child sexual abuse, though.

    So let me direct you to WDYWTTA Here

    and

    Here

    so you can read what I posted and what others from UT posted in response - PhillipaB, MsChin, Fencewalker, MrsBootstraps, scherfig, among others. Then when you've read the posts you can show here where I'm defending child sexual abuse.

    And just to help you on your way here's my first post of the subject to some chump by the name of Auric, but it just as easily applies to you:

    Auric:

    Your prejudice against feminism comes through very clearly in your post, although there's no evidence whatever that either the 15 year old student or the 26 year old teacher were feminists. And even if they were why would that matter? But why let that bother you when you can get 8 recommendations so easily?

    And if you are going to describe a loving relationship between two women of 15 and 26 years using the word for the most heinous sexual act known, paedophilia, how then do you differentiate it from the monster Steven Barker in the Baby P case who raped a two year old girl?

    Or couldn't you care less?

    ReplyDelete
  88. Sorry, Turm, though with such a Banksian name, shouldn't you have read it by now? I kid. Never mind. Take the great Randy Newman's advice:

    Laugh and Be Happy

    ReplyDelete
  89. I am going to be giving some people Palestinian olive oil this year. It supposed to be fantastic (too fucking expensive for me to have tried myself yet) comes from small Palestinian farmers, and is fair trade certified.

    I got a bottle for Christmas last year. Am still saving it for a special occasion!

    ReplyDelete
  90. Shaz hmmm... not so sure that that is a good plan. Extra virgin olive oil does lose something over time.

    Actually, I got a bit confused because I was buying stuff early and during the olive harvest when the best thing would really be to wait for the new harvest oil. But I didn't know when that would hit the shops so thought I had better buy some while I could.

    Looking at the Zaytoun website they sell various other Palestinian products, like dates and almonds, but the only one I have seen for sale was olives and they had gone from the shelf when I went back to get them.

    Zaytoun themsselves don't seem to do retail. You can buy products from them but you have to buy a case of olive oil at a time.

    And most of my family would not probably not be overwhelmed by getting a bottle of Palestinian olive oil for Christmas, so I didn't want to invest in a case.

    ReplyDelete
  91. They do have a fairly comprehensive list of retail outlets here though.

    http://www.zaytoun.org/distribution/retail/

    ReplyDelete
  92. Bugger, Spencer - I'd better start using it. Just seemed a bit tame to use it for the lasagne...

    ReplyDelete
  93. Trying to work up the enthusiasm to go to a pub party I have been invited to.

    Don't really fancy going out into the cold. But there is an outside chance I might find a driver for Tuesday there so I probably should make the effort...

    ReplyDelete
  94. spencer

    Zaytoun is lovely olive oil - quite strong flavoured. I get it from our local Palestinian Solidarity Campaign Group, a bottle at a time (£5/£6 a litre). They usually email me to let me know when a new consignment has come over. I know its a bit more expensive but worth saving the pennies for.

    Find out where your local PS group is and you should be able to get it from them.

    Have just waved goodbye to kids and grandkids who came over for lunch and stayed all afternoon - now playing loud Buddy Guy and getting pissed...slightly absurdly dancing round the room by myself...excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  95. Woah - has anyone else seen this?

    The Obama administration is banning hundreds of thousands of federal employees from calling up the WikiLeaks site on government computers because the leaked material is still formally regarded as classified.

    and in addition

    It warned anyone downloading the WikiLeaks material: "Accessing the WikiLeaks documents will lead to sanitisation of your PC to remove any potentially classified information from your system, and the result in possible data loss."

    'Sanitisation of your PC', huh. Must try to access WikiLeaks at school on Mon to see if the LEA is equally paranoid...

    ReplyDelete
  96. Sheff, hey that is much cheaper than I was paying. Will check out the local group for future reference, thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  97. Re: Yesterday Dave from France

    I remember the 3 day week all right!Was in hospital having daughter! the babies were wrapped in (clean) nappies and we gave birth in our nighties instead of hospital gowns. Fathers were asked to bring in babygrows!

    Heath went to the people the night before she was born. Later that night my waters broke - not sure if the 2 events were linked!

    ReplyDelete
  98. WTF?
    The Obama administration is banning hundreds of thousands of federal employees from calling up the WikiLeaks site on government computers because the leaked material is still formally regarded as classified.

    Because.....it's secret. it's not a secret-secret, ok, but it still a 'secret', so you shouldn't know about it. yeah, i know it's available in every major news source on the planet, but you still shouldn't know, OK?

    just pretend it isn't there, and it will go away.

    bloody hell. looks like the US government really hasn't understood this 'interwebz' thing.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Shaz

    So they're getting their knickers in a twist and there's me thinking the powers that be and their compliant serfs were saying it was all trivial stuff everyone already knew about.

    Well, stuff 'em I say - and anyway its too late now, its all over the net and there is no way they can retrieve it. They can put up as many blocks as they like - ways will be found round them.

    ReplyDelete
  100. worth reading this from countercurrents

    Info war launched on wikileaks

    Electronic Frontiers Foundation co-founder says 'The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.'

    Amid international pressure and a series of crushing denial of service attacks, the site WikiLeaks.org has finally slipped underneath the waves. Its DNS host, EveryDNS.com, killed the domain late Thursday night, according to an update posted to WikiLeaks' Twitter account.

    The host cited "mass attacks," the whistleblower organization said.

    ReplyDelete
  101. Sheff & Philippa - that's the bit I don't understand. It's all out there. What is the point?

    ReplyDelete
  102. Interesting link, Sheff. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  103. shaz

    I guess it's because they can't cope with being shafted even at this level and must rattle a their sabres - however fruitless the exercise. They perceive this as an attack on their hegemony and are freaking out. The momentum needs to be kept up - I hope wikileaks don't fail on this one.

    In the meantime the rest of us can be as subversive as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  104. "there's no way to be cool with an instrument larger than you...taking a cello to school is like being an injured gazelle on the serengeti..."

    I completely love that rant.

    I can confirm though, that showing up to school with both your cello *and* your trombone might be ever so slightly worse.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Hi All--Enjoying the Buddy Guy stuff very much. One of my old standbys. Here he is with a couple of pals.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQRV6YlhqgQ

    This paranoia over Wikileaks is quite something. Why shut the barn door when there's not much left inside? Wonder if they have any shit on the weaselly criminals at FIFA?

    ReplyDelete
  106. In ashort break from the music you could eatch this - great stuff!

    BB King and Buddy Guy on Meeting Jimi Hendrix

    ReplyDelete
  107. oops, spelling going to pot - better go easy on the collapso.

    ReplyDelete
  108. Meerkatjie - friend used to play the cello when we were at school. Until one day when it snowed , and she ended up arriving at school with a cello jigsaw after stacking it on the way...

    ReplyDelete
  109. meerkatjie

    Don't ask me how, but my husband as a sprog managed to lose a cello on the way to school.

    (Although thinking about it, as he was in Montreal at the time, maybe it was more a case of Shaz's snow effect kicking in, and not wanting to admit to it...)

    ReplyDelete
  110. God has he really been dead 17 years, luke?

    I'm getting old.

    ReplyDelete
  111. After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

    On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

    So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of
    . -Paul Krugman in The NYT, Dec.2

    Read the article HERE. It's as depressing as it is familiar sounding--punish the innocent, reward the guilty: the Camaclegg/Obama playbook in a nutshell.

    Obama has turned into the biggest political disappointment in my lifetime. I mean, I was sceptical about how much he could do, but he's surpassed my most pessimistic predictions. Sanctioning the murder of a US citizen who's been convicted of no crimes? Obama's cool with that. Jesus.

    I think it would have been better if McCain/Palin had won, thereby inheriting the mess the Republicans created and (inevitably) making things worse, rendering the Repugs unelectable for the next 50 years. It ain't much (the Dems are almost as bad) but it would have been something.

    Ah, fuck 'em all...here's some classic Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.

    ReplyDelete
  112. Jack

    Obama has turned into the biggest political disappointment in my lifetime

    Agree - I don't know why I got my hopes up but at the time of him winning and on as far as his inauguration a lot of things felt possible. Crazy looking back but you have to have hope...

    Here's some Etta James

    ReplyDelete
  113. Just had a thought about this wikileaks info war business. Didn't Assange say something about revealing stuff related to a major US bank would be coming out shortly?

    Perhaps they're getting nervous about that..

    ReplyDelete
  114. Jack Cade "Obama has turned into the biggest political disappointment in my lifetime. I mean, I was sceptical about how much he could do, but he's surpassed my most pessimistic predictions."

    Really? I was pretty sure that he was going to turn out to be useless.

    The reason was that I post on a very small site where the largest number of people are Americans, mostly quite liberal in US terms. One guy who is very Liberal and also very, very sharp, read one of Obama's books and also analysed one of his speeches and said that both were full of meaningless waffle.

    And his book was called "The Audacity of Hope." Seriously, The Audacity of Hope. OK I know that publishers often push their titles onto writers (have had it happen to me) but I would have thought he had the muscle to avoid anything quite so nauseatingly affirmative/meaningless, and anyway it seemed to fit into his general style.

    I mean, seriously, think about it for a moment.

    The Audacity of Hope.

    Anyone who can publish a book with that title has to be a grade A arsehole.

    ReplyDelete
  115. "Don't we usualy get a few waifs and strays when waddya goes awol? Ally, Jay, anyone?"

    Turm, i have been posting here since the blog was setup, I am not a 'waif or stray' from waddya.

    Jack Cade, nice BG link.

    ReplyDelete
  116. "God has he really been dead 17 years, luke?

    I'm getting old."

    Tell me about it BB. I fell in love in East Ham Library

    Glad you liked it Sheffpixie. I'm a friendly troll really.

    ReplyDelete
  117. And that last link was gorgeous...

    ReplyDelete
  118. Spencer, I was never starry-eyed about Obama. Here's part of what I wrote on my blog in Febuary, 2009:

    I’ve been hugely entertained by the tsunami of gush that’s greeted his election victory. The numbers of people trying to blow sunshine up my undies is both amusing and alarming. Amusing because fatuous, alarming because of the manifest ignorance of both history and politics.

    Reading the starry-eyed drooling over Obama, one might be forgiven for thinking he had spent 40 days and nights in the desert, feeding on locusts and honey before returning with a God-given vision.

    Recognizing this otherness his fellow Americans anointed him and unanimously elevated him to the White House.

    The truth is rather more mundane. Obama won %52 of the popular vote, hardly a resounding mandate. More disturbing is the willingness on the part of Obama’s groupies to abandon their critical faculties. They project their hopes and dreams onto a politician. They’ve made their hopes and dreams the context. Big mistake. Obama is a politician. He will disappoint. He didn’t get to the White House by practicing yogic breathing and turning the other cheek.

    Obama fought his way up the slippery slope of Chicago machine politics, developing very sharp elbows and a ruthless streak.

    Obama needs to be considered in the context of US politics and viewed in that context, Obama is an impressive operator, cunning and pragmatic. However, the notion, much bruited about by the rose-tinted spectacles mob, that Obama is an agent of change, of idealism, that he is, in short, a new broom is unsustainable.

    And so it’s proved. His appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff tells you all you need to know about what Obama’s policy towards the Palestinians will be: more of the same.

    Obama has committed a U. S. force of 60,000 to the black hole of futility that is Afghanistan and hired Bush’s defense secretary.

    Obama, who promised to keep lobbyists at arm’s length, nominated a top lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, William J. Lynn, to be his number two man at the Pentagon.

    Obama has appointed the very ideologues and financial strategists who have destroyed the financial system to save it. He is busy throwing even more money at the banks to no-one’s benefit but the bankers.

    Obama is refusing to sanction the release of documents relating to the grotesque detention in Guantanamo Bay of men who’d been convicted of no crime, citing national security.

    He has refused to state his position on nuclear disarmament by all nations.

    He has refused to commit his administration to destroying the US’s stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

    By their fruits shall ye know them.

    And you’d better believe the disappointments will keep on coming, surprising those who read politicians autobiographies but not those who read history. I wish it were not so but wishing away the truth is for infants not grown-ups.


    I was never much fooled. I'm just surprised at how utterly bankrupt--morally, imaginatively, etc--he's proven.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Evening all. Just delved into the Graun's Business pages and discover that Kraft is 'restructing' Cadbury's under a Swiss company. A similar thing happened with Pepsi-Co and Walker's crisps. Personally I don't partake in either of those dire products but this development cements it in my mind that I will boycott those in earnest.

    Anyways, how are we all? My other half's cousin lives in Sheffield and we found out they were well and truly stuck over the past week.

    A bit behind the curve I suppose but did any of you folks see the play Accused - Helen's story? Riveting stuff, written by Jimmy McGovern and so well done even if the ending was a bit naff. The experiences were a reflection of real life, the writers interviewed people who had lost a relative in an industrial accident.

    So, here in the south the snow is almost gone and I am luke-warm for a change.

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  120. Hello Ian - not quite as snowbound in Sheffield now, it's thawing.

    Completely lowering the tone here after sheff's wonderful choons but ... this made I larf!

    Baby Bob Marley

    ReplyDelete
  121. There is only one god and his name is Jimi.

    I think I've died & gone to heaven ...

    ReplyDelete
  122. Evening Ian and MsC

    Glad to see I'm not partying on my own after all..

    Ian

    I have been watching the Accused = they are pretty riveting although I found the second one so excrutiating I had to leave the room at one point.

    ReplyDelete
  123. Spencer, as you can see from this post on my blog from Feb., 2009, I was never fooled. As I said:

    I’ve been hugely entertained by the tsunami of gush that’s greeted his election victory. The numbers of people trying to blow sunshine up my undies is both amusing and alarming. Amusing because fatuous, alarming because of the manifest ignorance of both history and politics...

    Obama is an impressive operator, cunning and pragmatic. However, the notion, much bruited about by the rose-tinted spectacles mob, that Obama is an agent of change, of idealism, that he is, in short, a new broom is unsustainable...

    And you’d better believe the disappointments will keep on coming, surprising those who read politicians autobiographies but not those who read history. I wish it were not so but wishing away the truth is for infants not grown-ups.





    My friend Steven Augustine, an American who lives in Berlin, put it well in a response to my post:

    "Live outside the country for a few years (without watching television) and then absorb a few hours of the most popular American diversions: the obviousness of it all is astounding.

    Reverse-engineer the propaganda/hype/self-delusional imagery to its psycho-financial source. How can any culture be both supposedly respectful of human needs and differences while being so obsessed with money, and the Numba One-ism which is the capitalist’s sporty euphemism for murderous Greed?

    It’s blackly super- funny: all that smiley-faced a-hug-will-cure-everything bullshit mixed in with the most pornographic media cruelty since Caligula ran his own network.

    I have plenty of old friends over there who are basically in the tragic position of being very decent people trapped on the world’s largest theocratic warship/asylum. Not that the UK isn’t doing its best to play mini-Me.

    Yeah, it’s funny to say, but I feel safer here amongst the charming ruins of the Third Reich. At least the Nazis *here* don’t try to give you a hug."

    I'm only surprised by the degree of Obama's bankruptcy--moral, imaginative etc--not the fact of it.

    Ah, fuck 'em all...here's some classic Buddy Guy & Jr. Wells.

    ReplyDelete
  124. Just had a shufti at this, very clearly written . Not 'official policy', but I wonder ...

    The IMF's evil plans laid clear on "pages 9&10 peticularly"

    For Spain -"preventing excessive use of unfair dismissals;" and "relax restrictions in the rental market, such as landlords’ obligation to automatically renew leases for the
    first five years and the cap on rent increases to CPI inflation."

    Oh and just generally reduce wages, job security, health costs, pensions for the workers, all that old-fashioned uncompetitive stuff .

    And of course unemployment benefits are in general far far too high. Of course .

    Fuck that for a game of, off to see if it is a

    Buy two, get one free night !

    See y'all. XX

    (Can't say thankyou for the music, loads too slowly here ...a bugger so only do rarely ... )

    ReplyDelete
  125. I think they're being spammed Jack - it happens periodically. Can someone with admin rights have a poke around and find them?

    ReplyDelete
  126. Dunno Jack, but that was one hell of a choon. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Where do Jack's posts keep going?
    I guess after George W, and in comparison with Palin & McCain, Obama looked like the potential saviour of the nation.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Bloody hell Jack - I was just listening to Foreign Affairs

    have this

    Jack & Neal - California here I come

    Tried to find a decent version of I never talk to strangers on utube but no luck.

    ReplyDelete
  129. ...or perhaps your tastes run more towards Chinese food? Traffic - Shanghai Noodle Factory

    ReplyDelete
  130. I'm a bit of a Tom Waits bore, Sheff. I've posted loads of his stuff on my music channel. But here's a cracker from Keb' Mo' Perpetual Blues Machine

    ReplyDelete
  131. Ooo, Traffic! You have some good tracks on your site, Jack.

    ReplyDelete
  132. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKdUQQ8vI1Y&feature=related...give it 40 seconds

    ReplyDelete
  133. ..and as you're a fellow Little Feat fan, Sheff, you might want to Skin It Back.

    ReplyDelete
  134. Someone who's more boring about Tom Waits than me? Not possible. Give us a link to your music channel

    And heres a Christmassy one

    Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis

    ReplyDelete
  135. Well, my trip to the real world was a bit of a waste of time. Didn't find a driver for Tuesday. My old mate who invited me to the party (my oldest friend as it happens) is back on the juice so he was completely pissed when I got there.

    I said hello to a few people, had a couple of drinks, tried to avoid my mate who was in full tedious drunk mode and then fled when another old friend started to play Irish fiddle-de-de music (he has been doing the same tune, or at least accompanying it with the bodhran, for at least twenty years).

    Did you ever see Das Boot? There is a bit when they have been stuck under water by an Atlantic storm that lasts forever, for weeks. Finally it is calm enough to surface and there is this engineer who looks like a ghost and spends all his time in the engine room.

    He goes up to the conning tower and takes a breath of fresh, outside air. Someone else says something like "good eh"?

    But he just scowls and says "nah!" and goes back down to the engine room.

    A bit like how I feel this evening.

    ReplyDelete
  136. All the videos I'm posting are my own, Sheff. You just click on the name of the channel (PolitelyHomicidal). Meanwhile, The great Delbert McClinton saw Cameron coming. Smooth Talk.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Yeah, I could have been listening to Traffic instead of that bloody aural knitting.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Thanks jack - I'll have an amble around.

    Country haters look away now as have got a bit sentimental

    Amazing Rythmn Aces - Cowboy tune

    ReplyDelete
  139. I answered your comment suggesting that I was naive about Obama, Spencer, but my comments were eaten by the spamosaur. Here's the piece I wrote in Feb. 2009 on my blog. I wasn't fooled. I'm just surprised by the degree of Obama's utter uselessness not the fact of it.

    ReplyDelete
  140. You're a Randy Newman fan too Jack...gets better and better

    God's song

    ReplyDelete
  141. The Allman Brothers - Trouble No More

    You might like my vids of Hank Williams, George Jones and others, Sheff. Country's like everything else--99% of it is crap, but the 1% that isn't makes it all worthwhile.

    ReplyDelete
  142. Peggy Lee with the great Pete Candoli on trumpet Black Coffee. Gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
  143. @Jack, it was interesting to see it play out through the eyes of the mostly Liberal Americans on the site I referred to. Bruce, the guy who read the book and gave it a scathing review was alone amongst the left leaning Americans in being sceptical.

    Though there was a certain amount of delusion here along with some perfectly reasonable happiness that the US had a) got rid of Bush and his crew, and b) elected a black man, it was nothing compared to the deluded delerium of liberal America. They really were going on as if the Messiah had come.

    And a lot of these people are intelligent people who I regard as friends. They just bought the whole thing and it was wierd because whenever you looked at what he actually said (as Bruce did) it turned out to be the most ridiculous pile of meaningless waffle imaginable.

    Apart from healthcare which got fudged to ludicrous degree, there were no real commitments to anything but "change" and "hope."

    Of course, I had the advantage of the yanks of having lived through Blair, but then I never believed in that conniving little shit either.

    And to be fair, Obama gave a much better impression of a decent human being than Blair ever did.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Spencer, my friend Steven Augustine, an American who lives in Berlin, put it well in a response to the post I link to:

    Live outside the country for a few years (without watching television) and then absorb a few hours of the most popular American diversions: the obviousness of it all is astounding.

    Reverse-engineer the propaganda/hype/self-delusional imagery to its psycho-financial source. How can any culture be both supposedly respectful of human needs and differences while being so obsessed with money, and the Numba One-ism which is the capitalist’s sporty euphemism for murderous Greed?

    It’s blackly super- funny: all that smiley-faced a-hug-will-cure-everything bullshit mixed in with the most pornographic media cruelty since Caligula ran his own network.

    I have plenty of old friends over there who are basically in the tragic position of being very decent people trapped on the world’s largest theocratic warship/asylum. Not that the UK isn’t doing its best to play mini-Me.

    Yeah, it’s funny to say, but I feel safer here amongst the charming ruins of the Third Reich. At least the Nazis here don’t try to give you a hug.


    Chip Taylor (real name James Wesley Voight; actor Jon Voight is his brother) is best known for writing songs like 'Wild Thing', 'Angel Of The Morning' and 'Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)'. This track is off the 2003 album he made with the terrific fiddle player/singer Carrie Rodriguez, 'The Trouble With Humans'.

    I have a feeling you'll like this one, Sheff.

    Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez - Laredo

    ReplyDelete
  145. Thanks Sheff. I love Amy. I just hope she doesn't kill herself before realising her potential.

    One of my volunteers went on the piss with her a year or so ago. Just went for a drink to the Hawley (Camden pub) and Amy Winehouse was there drinking with a couple of people. They got talking and then my volunteer got taken off clubbing.

    This was when she was already a Paparazzi/tabloid obsession. But she was still going for a piss up in Camden Town, just like she did before the madness started.

    Mind you, it should be said, that volunteer was quite cool herself, being a modern mod and twentyfirst century Northern Soul fan.

    ReplyDelete
  146. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  147. Chip Taylor - John Voight's brother? Did like that.

    Spencer

    Agree about Amy - she has a great voice and terrific feel for the music but her penchant for getting down and dirty in the gutter might finish her off. Only a bourgeoise girl (and product of theatre school) could imagine the gutter is fun.

    ReplyDelete
  148. Jack - your Yardbirds link doesn't work.

    Heres some classic Billie

    One for my baby

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  149. Jack

    Have you come across this guy - I heard him at the Maryport Blues Fest a couple of years ago

    Paul Rose

    I've got a rather good CD of his acoutic music.

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  150. Cheers for the music, everyone.

    And NN from me with some Diamond Dust:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0qO8h9d2x4&feature=fvst

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  151. Sheff, she is a potentially great songwriter too.

    Don't agree with the bourgeois crack though. Her dad is a taxi driver.

    But more importantly I have known plenty of people from posh public school types to working class fuck ups who have gone down the road of excess. The guy I left the party to avoid tonight, who introduced me to dope and acid when I was sixteen is a Chadwell Heath boy (big Dagenham Estate).

    I think that when it comes to pissing your life away through excessive drinking or drug taking there is healthy competition between all classes.

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  152. More classic Billy from Politely Homicidal...These Foolish Things

    1936 with Teddy Wilson on piano.

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  153. Sheff. Liked the Paul Rose. Actually he sounds really Scottish for some reason. I was surprised to google him and find he was English.

    Maybe it is just that number but it sounded very Caledonian to me.

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  154. Spencer - her mother is a pharmacist and she went to theatre school - they weren't hard up.

    Anyway talking about Maryport blues fest reminded me of Cj Chenier (son of the inimitable Clifton) and how brilliant zydeco is

    The Red Hot Louisiana Band

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  155. My goodnight offering...a bit sinister...don't let it give you nightmares..

    Fleetwood Mac The Green Manalishi

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  156. Peter Green Era Fleetwood Mac will never give me nightmares, Jack.

    Goodnight.

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  157. It actually still astonishes me that a song like "Oh Well" could be top of the charts for weeks.

    Hard to imagine in the twenty first century.

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  158. grrrrrrrr.

    TMS still not working. should be f-ing working, am not using iplayer. just get 'due to rights issues...'

    grrrrrrr.

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  159. Hi All,

    Sorry for all the dance music :-)

    Montana,

    Good guide to deleting cookies in Opera here

    Alternatively, depending on which Windows you are running (presume you are), you can also go and delete temporary internet files, off top of my head you can use the disc cleanup facility in either System Tools or Control Panel or older Win, you can browse through your own documents to the Temporary file... Sorry I am not more specific, recently got new laptop with Win 7 and not used to it yet..

    Chrome - spanner icon on toolbar, Options then Under the bonnet.

    Or maybe get a freebie regclean program..

    Er, hope that helps...

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  160. Dudes, just uploaded a few pics on the gallery thingy but they don't come up, there's just a foreign radiator. ?

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  161. ignore the radiator, colin, i am...

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  162. Philipa, How can I it's yours. Seriously the pics are in my wossname but not in the main thingy with your rads.

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  163. colin - did you finish the upload fully? because i think have had problems when it said 'do you want to add a description?' and i didn't, but you have to say ;yes; anyway to get them up there...

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  164. Parking, from Willl Hutton...

    bartelbe 5 December 2010 12:56AM

    How much are you paid by the work foundation Mr Hutton? I've seen reports of 180k+. Surely in a publication like the Guardian, that believes in free speech, and forcing the rich to pay their fair share. You should declare what you yourself are paid; especially as you are writing about the pay of others. Even more pertinent, the Work foundation had to be bailed out, after it went insolvent under your leadership. Reward for failure and all that.

    How much do the people at the top of the Guardian pay themselves? This isn't a right-wing Tory troll writing, I think you have a point. There is too much reward for failure, pay at the top has runaway, while the masses have seen their pay stagnate. However this will not change unless the rich are forced to tell us how much they earn, and how much tax they pay. So the Guardian can set an example, or they can remove this comment. Proving they are just as bad as the rest of the unaccountable rich in this country.

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  165. Phillipa,
    Thanks I'll look into it but for now...
    Cheers.
    Colin.

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  166. When I press 'you' the stuff is there but in gallery it's just your bloody radiators (no offence, did you sort it?)

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  167. The Amy clip was brilliant.

    You know that I'm no good.

    Just lovely.

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  168. Spammed Re-parking from Will Hutton

    bartelbe
    5 December 2010 12:56AM

    How much are you paid by the work foundation Mr Hutton? I've seen reports of 180k+. Surely in a publication like the Guardian, that believes in free speech, and forcing the rich to pay their fair share. You should declare what you yourself are paid; especially as you are writing about the pay of others. Even more pertinent, the Work foundation had to be bailed out, after it went insolvent under your leadership. Reward for failure and all that.

    How much do the people at the top of the Guardian pay themselves? This isn't a right-wing Tory troll writing, I think you have a point. There is too much reward for failure, pay at the top has runaway, while the masses have seen their pay stagnate.

    However this will not change unless the rich are forced to tell us how much they earn, and how much tax they pay. So the Guardian can set an example, or they can remove this comment. Proving they are just as bad as the rest of the unaccountable rich in this country

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  169. dave, tiny niggle son, not how much they earn, but how much they get.

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  170. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  171. Morning all

    This track from RUMER is pure class.

    Apologies in advance if the link don't work again.I'm off me head.

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