The Rumour That Will Not Go Away

Who Started the Obama is a Muslim story? It is turning into one of those rumours that just will not go away. It sticks to the Democrats candidate like a bad smell.

Technically speaking of course B.O. is a Muslim even if he was never introduced to the faith and has never shown any interest in it. Just as Jewish blood is passed down through the maternal line, Islam is passed through the paternal line so as Brak Obama Snr. was a Muslim his son is too, technically speaking. In the same way the daughter of an atheist mother whose mother was also atheist is still technically Jewish if there is a Jewish woman way back in the line somewhere.

This is why Orthodox Jewish families have such a big issue with sons “marrying out.” If the daughter marries a Christian, atheist, Hindu, Muslim or whatever, her children are still Jewish and her daughter’s children will still be Jewish. If the son marries a non jew, the line is severed.

Its the opposte way round in Islam.

So the nasty smell of rumour will keep following B.O. around until he confronts the issue and finds a Rabbi who supports the Democrats to help him explain the situation.

Down in the Bible Belt states of course, all the explaining in the world will not change the fact that he’s black.

Sunday’s Blog Roundup

The appearance of this article in HuffPost’s green page raised a few eyebrows but aparently the author is deadly serious. Is a gas fuelled BBQ better for the environment that a charcoal one? If we are being picky then an open cooking fire is the best but it makes little dfference if you are cooking grain fead meat on it.

McCain says Obama’s word cannt be trusted. News from the American election, John McCain who changes his position more often than a contortionist, has accused Barak Obama of untruthfulness and hypocrisy because Obama seems to change his position on every big issue according to which audience he is adressing. Words like pot and kettle come to mind

Remember the scandal of Maidstone hospital, where the boss had to resign over dirty wards. Well the hospital management has not learned its lesson as Iain Dale reports.

A Conservative blogger says he enjoyed Cherie Blair’s book. That’s how bad it is

What does Henley Mean for the Lib Dems? So was the by-election a disaster for the Liberal Democrats. Opponents are quick to write off the third party but though unspoectacular their vote could point to a positive trend.

New Hybrid Car All Hype And No Substance

A new hybrid car developed by General Motors as the Chevrolet Volt is described by a reviewer fir huffington Post as the Barak Obama of cars. Raders of this blog will know I think Obama is all hype and no substance so is the Chevvy Volt the same.

It seems so.

As usual the scientists who have come up with the technology have blinded themselves with science and failed to see the big picture. Which is that making a set of Batteries for a hybrid such as a Volt or Toyota Prius uses quite large amonts of very nasty heavy metals which need some filthy and higly pollutive processes to turn them into batteries useable in cars. And then of course at the end of their life these have to be disposed of.

Meanwhile my 16 year old Volvo 440 still gets 40 mpg on the open road, more if I keep my speed down uses no fossil fuel generated electricy and seems to have a few years left in it yet especially as I only drive about 3000 miles a year.

The way to reduce pollution is a change of lifestyle, not technological gimmicks. Just think how much pollution you would have saved if you had all stuck to your Walkman or Discman and used BT phone boxes to call home or check in with the office.

Don’t get me wrong, technology is great, we just need to get a better perspective on how much it actually benefits us.

The Great Technology Scam

RELATED POSTS:
Google Car Driverless Because No Sane Person Would Be Seen Dead In One

Is Barak Obama a Legitimate Candidate

An interesting rumour circulating on American political blogs questions whether Bsrak Obama is legally qualified to be President. If there is any substance in this it will be very embarrassing for The Democrats.
Obama not a legitimate candidate?
We wait further new with baited breath.

But other political bloggers are suggesting more nasties are waiting to jump out and bite Little Black Barak’s arse.

Liposuction – the key to energy independence
A novel solution to the enegy shortage

Raw Story – The Coming War.
Following on from something we reported on Friday

And don’t forget the funnies blog on the web: Boggart Blog

Labour Invites You To Seduce Yourselves

In an interview with Progress magazine Andy Burnham, Culture Secretary in Gordon Brown’s Government warned voters not to be seduced by The Cameron Conservatives talk of how liberal and cuddly the Tories have become.
Burnham then went on to remind us of attacks on civil liberties that were every bit as illiberal as things New Labour are doing and that were enacted during the eighteen years of Tory misrule.

Seduced by the Tories eh? Hang on, Andy Burnham is a supporter of New Labour, the party that removed all constraints from the Finance industry and invited us to seduce ourselves with the idea that we could all become millionaire property developers by selling ourselves our own houses. Labour is the party that told us run down inner cities could be regenerated by building supercasinos and opening lap dancing clubs. Labour is the party that turned government job centres into recruiting services for pimps and ponces by making managers advertise jobs in the sex industry (with the tacit threat that anybody turning down interviews for such jobs could lose benefits.
Labour is the party that relaxed licensing laws to allow supermarkets to sell cheap booze seven days a week and now castigates those who buy it in order to seek a temporary respite from the living hell that three terms of Labour government have of Britain.

Don’t be seduced by the Tories, New Labour will be happy to carry on raping you.

Apology wanted from Andy Burnham

Jack Straw is Caligula I had him down for Claudius myself.

Taking The Food Crisis Personally Is vegetarianism the only way to save the world. Not if cranks like this guy are the best advocates of a meat free diet.

Is It Time To Ban Maths From Schools?

Yesterday I was involved in yet another discussion about whether we should be encouraging Faith Schools with Government Grants or banning them completely. Not so long ago another discussion in the same forum was about whether we should be trying to force fed pupils more maths or whether maths as taught in schools is a waste of time? The arguments followed a remarkably similar course which lends credibility to my contention that certain scientists treat science as a religion.

In the maths debate, mathematician Marcus de Sautoy opened for the pro maths side and demolished his own case in his first sentence, saying: “When Wayne Rooney takes a shot at goal he first does a simultaneous equation.”

I think not. Can you imagine Motty raving: “ And the ball goes to Rooney. He does an equation, he shoots, he scores.” The suggestion that Rooney even knows what an equation is stretches our credulity.

The reason I raise this is a new government report on education concludes that primary teachers are not good enough at maths to teach their pupils. I think fatsally might have a few things to say about that so we await her comments with baited breath.

When I had a quick look at a SATS examination paper aimed at eleven year olds it was clear at once that the problem lies not with teachers but with the people who control the curriculum, the maths academics. The tests are being set by the kind of fuckwits who find maths fascinating.

The problem with maths you see is there exists a small minority who think mathematics is the most interesting thing in the world and worth doing just for fun. Then there are the rest of us who are sane. Now the maths for fun brigade, who include most academic mathematicians, cannot understand why sane people do not share their enthusiasm. But these people would rather solve an equation than get laid so there you go.

To illustrate why maths is such a deeply unpopular subject for study here is a question from that maths test.

Steven makes between 30 and 50 biscuits. If he packs them in threes he has two left over and if he packs them in fives he has one left over. How many biscuits did Steven make.

So what does this question tell us about Steven? First, he hasn’t the sense he was born with, anybody with at least one functioning brain cell would just count the effing biscuits. Second, Steven suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. A normal person would just tip the biscuits in a tin or a Tupperware box. The answer to the question then is who cares, Steven should try to get out more.

Only a person with the mindset of Roy Cropper from Coronation Street or Gordon Brown would pack the biscuits in threes or fives. And even they would just eat the spare ones instead of fretting over them. This leads us to think that Steven the biscuit maker is not simply a tad obsessive but might be autistic.

And what kind of message does that send to schoolkids about the desirability of learning maths.

The skill of the Mathematician lies in their ability to turn a very simple everyday situation into a very complex mathematical problem. Count the effing biscuits, fuckwits.

As Aristotle said: What we have to do we learn by doing. And many of us who daydreamed through maths lessons in school found in later life we could solve very complex arithmetic problems because we had a practical need to solve them.

RELATED POSTS

Britain’s maths policy simply doesn’t add up – but neither does overestimating the importance of maths.

I Can’t Do That.

A review group has noted that the English seem to have a ‘can’t do’ mentality where Maths is concerned.
Perhaps they should have looked deeper, we appear to be raising a generation who just “can’t do”, nor can they learn.
Ask a young person to perform a task and the most likely answer is “I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”
Explain or demonstrate and then leave them to it and you will probably come back to find a half arsed effort at best or no attempt at all at worst.
For example, teaching children to divide a decimal number by 10, say. Now I know we are told to use the correct terminology and methods but the easy way to do this is ‘to move the decimal point one place to the left’, yes I know the decimal point never moves but to say ,”move each digit one place to the right”, makes it a whole lot more complicated to the average 11 year old, especially when many of them do not count ‘0’ as a digit. So you demonstrate on the board, then you get children to come and demonstrate on the board, then you check using Q&A around the classroom and then you ask if anyone wants any further help and then you say, “Ok, turn to page 31 in your text book and start working through exercise 1.”
Then you start going round the classroom and you come across the most weird and wonderful answers, some having completely different sets of digits in the answers than are in the question, and you ask what have they done and they say,
“I don’t know. I don’t get it.”
Then you ask if anyone wants to go through it again and half the class put their hand up, so you do and they say they understand, but left to their own devices the results are just the same.
And so the process goes on.
Or take writng. You set a task, you tell the children to think about what they are writing, to remember capital letters and full stops, and to have a go at spelling any words they don’t know, and you highlight strategies for spelling; break the word up into syllables, sound out using phonics or mnemonic methods, (hear has an ear in it, here the place is like there the place, I’ve Got Hairy Toes words light, sight, might etc.) You’ve barely got back to your desk than someone will be there with their spelling book asking, “How do you spell Saturday?”
And you say, “How do you think you spell Saturday?” and they say,
“I’m no good at spelling.”
So you suggest they spell ‘sat’, which they do, then you go onto ‘ur’, which they spell ‘er’ but you suggest they have another go and they come up with ‘ur’, then you prompt them on ‘day’ and hey presto!
“You spelt Saturday, see you can spell,” but two minutes later they will be back with another common word which they should really be able to work out and which, if they looked, they would see appears in a display on the walls, and yet they can’t be bothered, and when you read through their work you will see that the next time they write ‘Saturday’ it will be spelt wrong.
It’s the same with everything. Ask them to load the dishwasher and you’ll find knives in the bottom, cups the wrong way up, plates stacked so they are touching and won’t wash properly.
Peg washing on the line, the washing won’t be straightened out.
Lay the table, there won’t be any condiments.
Cut the grass, the lawn will look like a row of Mohikins and you think, “Surely I don’t have to explain how to do this? Surely they can see how things are done and they will try and do it the same?”
But they don’t, so you explain how it should be done.

“You take the envelope out of the bag, you look at the address and check you have the right road and then you take a note of the number and you find the house with that number on it and you put the envelope through the letterbox, usually situated on the front door.”
But no, not only does the trainee postman walk willy nilly over everybodies’ gardens, he shoves a whole streetful of post through your cat-flap.
When you collar him he say, “Oh I couldn’t see a number.”
“Well look, it’s there, on the front door, number 12. Just above the letterbox.”
“Oh I didn’t see that. And the house next door doesn’t have a number.”
“No, the house next door dosn’t have a number, but the next one does and it’s number 16, so what does that make the house next door?”
“I dunno. Number 9?”

And so it goes on. And we are to blame because we let them get away with it. A university lecturer resigned last year after 13 students whom he and a formal examinations board deemed to have failed a course were allowed a pass by the university authorities. An official felt that students should be able to pass on lecture notes alone and did not need to do the required reading. But that’s the whole point of further education, it’s finding things out for yourself, looking at the sources, analysing the material and forming an opinion, it’s not just reciting what your lecturer chooses to tell you.
But no doubt, if these students had been asked why they hadn’t done the required reading they would have answered, “I didn’t know we had to.I didn’t know what to read. I didn’t know where to find it. I’m not very good at reading.”
And so they’ll whine on, denying responsibility and wallowing in self pity, safe in the knowledge that they will still get their degree, get their A level, or GCSE or Level 5 at KS2, because the government has set targets and has league tables and all our educational institutions have to be seen to be performing to target, despite the fact that in reality they are becoming woefully inadequate and letting down a whole generation of pupils.

Wasting Our Talent

Every now and again I see an aricle written by someone who thinks they are a real smartarse that displays such a total lack of awareness of the realities of life I just find myself thinking “is the purpose of higher eduation to take bright people and turn them into fuckwits?”

Such and article was Talent Going To Waste an irrational whine from a writer on the hand wringing, wailing and gnashing of teeth extreme of the woolly brained left.

This article bemoaned the fact that immigrants with good degrees from Universities in their homeland are unable to find employment related to their degree subject in this country and are having to work as shelf stackers, burger – flippers and office cleaners.

The writer berated British society for this terrible waste of talent and for treating these people so disrespectully.

FUCK ME, WHAT PLANET DOES THIS SILLY TART LIVE ON.

There are plenty of English people, including my daughter and a couple of her friends, who have excellent degrees from good Universities and yet cannot get employment related to their specialist subject. This is not because of institutionalised racism or any other kind of bollocks the Political Correctness Police like to bang on about. It is because of the failure of the lunacies of free market economics.

Ireland’s No To More EU Bureaucracy

I noticed the Irish PM’s first reaction was to say the no vote was a result of people “not understanding the treaty.”

I think the people understand the treaty far better than he and the other Eurorats would like.

The last thing we need is a sitting president of the EU, a unified foreign policy and a European army.

And does anyone really think letting in more Balkan nations along with many former soviet republics and nations like Turkey that are not even in Europe will do anything but turn voting on important issues into a pastich of the Eurovision song contest?

Iain Dale on the Irish vote

A Mixed Bag Of Stories Today

Why David Davies is resigning Is the resignation of Tory MP Dave (I cudda been a contender) Davis anything more than a cheap political stunt. Little Nicky thinks so as the Tory slence of plans to marginalise and silence Eurosceptic MEPs in the European Paliaments have been met with a deafening silence from the Cameroons.

The exploitation of AIDS It is revealed at last that the whole scare about an AIDS in the heterosexual population was nothing but a scam cooked up by the political correctness police in chahoots with Big Pharma.

Ireland Votes on Federalisation by Stealth The way the EU Commission have bullied and threatened Ireland over the likelyhood of a no vote on the new Treaty of Lisbon (The EU Constitution rejected by The Netherlands and France a few years ago, back only thinly disguised) shows that what is going on with the full support of our Labour government is Federalisation by stealth.

Well why not, they’ve done taxation by stealth and privatisation by stealth.

Its The Business (The Apprentice) No its not, its the money.

A Million Patients Battle Against Polyclinics

Ireland, Europe and The Price Of Independence

A couple of weeks ago we brought you a story about how the European Palrliament (with the full support of Britain’s neofascist Labour Group) are planning to silence MEPs (your elected representatives) who try to express Euroscepitc views.

If the issue of Federalisation by stealth concerns you, you will want to take a look at the story For Europe; Against The EU on how the Irish voters are being threatened and bullied as they prepare to vote on the revised treaty that is simply a disguised version of the European Consitution rejected by voters in France and The Netherlands a few years ago.

The plan is clearly to esablsh a Bureaucratic dictatorship in a federalised Europe and the voice of the people counts for nothing against the interests of the bureaucratic elite.

And as you read, remember our government, the Labour Government, the so -called people’s party, were absolutely determined under both Blair and Brown to deny us the opportunity to vote on this issue.

You Must Never Question Authority

RELATED POSTS:
What did Europe do to make Britain leave

Today’s recommended reads

The recommended reads for Monday, mostly focused on fuel prices, should be thought provoking.

TODAY WE COMMENTED ON:

Gas price to rise 50% An even tougher time ahead for consumers?

Fuel Protests Spread Across The Globe And even though we have the most expensive petrol in the world, it is not just us Brits who are feeling the pinch.

Spike Lee versus Clint Eastwood It’s film cannisters at dawn in Hollywood as Spike Lee tries to turn Clint’s casting policy into a race issue. Well we did warn you it would get messy if Obama won the nomination.

Europe hasn’t Gone Away And The Sceptics Smell Blood ~Meanwhile in Europe we are fighting Federalisation by stealth.

Rural America takes the worst hit on fuel prices More whining from the Yanks as petrol hits $4 per gallon at the pumps. They should chew on our prices for a while.

A comment thread that might save the planet

A few days ago I posted at Gather.com with the title A Big New Idea That Will Not Save The Planet. Being short of creative energy I posted a short article with a tongue in cheek spin on a controversial subject.
An absolutely brilliant comment thread was kicked off by that throwaway article, something that often happens at gather.

Maybe I should try the same tactics here, comments on anything but social chit-chat are getting to be as rare as rocking horse shit on this blog host.

Some people are still saying the ecomonic meltdown is just a blip.

How deluded can people get. There are “experts” out there still saying the economic crisis is just a blip, a market correction.

What planet do they live on?

Rising costs and an economy sustained for too long by unserviceable levels of debt combine to make this the most serious crisis in over a century. And all the politicians can think of is policies that will fuel another bubble.

The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan once commented on “how suavely we simply ignore great bodies of experience, any clearly analysed instance of which might present us with a very real necessity for change.”

Today we also looked at:

Gazza – how to make a bad situation worse

How to save £50 billion without even trying

The mirage of meritorcracy

Britain Should Learn From Switzerland

Bush Knew Iraq Weapons Report Was False

Wednesday’s Blog Roundup – 4 June

A Chill Wind: The financial meltdown has exposed the problems of failing to regulate the finance industry and parallels are being drawn with the positions of the trade unions at the end of the 1970s.
With other factors such as climate change and political tensions factored in could this be more serious than the recession that followed The Winter Of Discontent

Stop Digging: Despite overwhelming evidence that we are in really deep shit, there are still a lot of people pushing the idea that producing and consuming more of everything NOW is the only answer.

Huffington Post launches new Eco-News section

Being gracious in a sexist world
Erica Jong regrets the end of hillary Clinton’s run for The White house

Is Biofuel to blame for the food crisis asks Huffington Post

Lining up with Erica. Pandangon also thinks insitutional misogyny may have led the Democrats into making a big mistake.

Gordon Brown’s misery is showing
Poor Gordon, will nothing ever go right for him. The Daily Mail Thinks not.

More Obama vs Clinton at Crooks and Liars

McCain’s Personality vs Obama’s race

Tuesday’s blog roundup – June 3

What role did race play for the democrats As Obama tteters on the brink of nomination, hoping to gather enough delegace to grab the nimonation before the scandal that could ruin his career breaks, Salon.com asks what effect the niminee’s race will have on core voters?

Huffington Post has set itself the task ofmaking sure McCain does not avoid media scrutiny But are they not seeking to do the impossible. After all in order to attracts scrutiny McCain would need to have a personality.

Webhead Jeff Jarvis is not impressed by Time Warners move to bill users for access to its content Time Warner breaks internet convention by charging customers for content But only fools and dreamers ever believed that “eerything will be for free schtick the early web entrepreneurs peddled. Free was only ever going to last until users were addicted.

Little Nicky’s Blog Round Up

TODAY WE COMMENTED ON:

Bishop Deserves To Be Bashed says Iain Dale of the Bishop of Stafford’s suggestion that climate change deniers are as vilified as men who boff their own daughters. But I know from encounters on American web sites there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists who are busy doing both.

Some of the questions BBC radio interviewers are asking politicians are getting rather bizarre

An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle – Unless He Is Straight The Earl of Devon has had the licence to hold weddings at his stately home revoked because he refuses to allow gay marriages. Again we ask why would gay couples want to get married. The institution is about nothing but male control of the female body, psternity and inheritance rights.

The Death Wish Democrats TheU.S. Democrats blunder on, driven by political correctness to impose on their voters the candidate who cannot possibly win. But already there are signs the American people are asking “are The Democrats competent to form an administration.

Sunday Round Up

TODAY WE COMMENTED ON:
Last Oders Please on the tube The last party on the London Underground.

Not The Time To Abandon Green Ambition Government scientific adviser shows why the young shun careers in science in this piece of pompous claptrap that only proves many scientists don’t live on this planet.

The price of indiscreet blogging When Emily Gould, editor of Gawker blog published an explicit essay on her sex life she was deeply wounded by the hostile responses. But as Gould’s blog has encouraged lewd and offensive attacks on other women, in one case a young teenager, has she any right to complain?

Iain Dale’s Diary Conservative blogger Iain Dale reports a record month with 350,000 page views. In offering our congrats we just mention a record month in May ourselves.

Huffington Post – McCain’s shaky maths John McCain proves he can’t count. Is that unusual for an American Presidential candidate. So long as he knows a hanging chad when he sees one he should be OK.

Love me, I’m a Luddite Amanda Marcotte at Pandangon thinks those who say texting is pointless are just trying to show their superiority by sneering at technology. Amanda does not know the history of either Luddism or the SMS text system. I do. I learned about Ned Ludd for my Social History A level and did a lot of work on developing the internetwork gasteways that allow text messages to cross from one network to another. Which I think qualfies me to say people who think texting is cool are a bit sad.