Well, as predicted, North Korea has totally got away with the murder of 40 odd South Korean sailors. The UN has issued a totally anaemic comment that does not blame North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan, even though a multi-national investigation concluded beyond reasonable doubt that NK was guilty. This has enabled the gruesome NK regime to crow “victory”.
It seems that China insisted on no blame being attached to North Korea as a condition of the UN statement being issued.
One can only conclude that A) China is ignoring and/or condoning this murder, and is therefore complicit in it and B), the free world doesn’t really give a damn because their business with China overrides all else, in particular morality.
They – and Obama in particular – seem not to understand that A) you never cower before bullies and B) China needs us as much as if not more than we need them.
The North Korea regime is an obscene and tyrannical scar on the planet and has brought unimaginable suffering to its people for long decades. Many of its citizens have been born and died without ever knowing freedom, either of travel or of the mind. If the free world cannot make a firm and principled stand over this then it shames all of us.
Obama is a major disappointment. Here, as in US relations with Israel, I see no intention of standing up for what is right, i.e. freedom, democracy, self-determination and justice. How long must we wait for real statesmanship in the free world?
Well, the World Cup is great at one thing, throwing up moral dilemmas.
No, it's not Netball!
Once again a MASSIVE injustice has been done through inadequate and idiotic rules, but the REAL issue is the moral vacuity of much of this world, with an inability to be honest, true, moderate and humble.
Why “moderate”? Because so many are so GREEDY. Greedy for “success”, fame, money at WHATEVER THE MORAL COST.
Suarez of Uruguay hand-balled (see picture) to prevent a certain goal by Ghana. This would have meant Ghana won the game and became the FIRST African team to make it to a World Cup Semi-Final.
Handball is illegal; it is therefore absolutely clear that Uruguay defeated Ghana thanks to an illegal act. That is one tragedy.
The second and greater tragedy is that Suarez and millions of South Americans have REJOICED in this win obtained through cheating. But what sort of moral code is it that makes people REJOICE when they win through cheating? It is totally against the ethics of true sportsmanship, and is enough to make one vomit.
I don’t know what hope there is for the world when cheating is so widely applauded by those who benefit from it, and who would no doubt be the first to complain if cheating disadvantaged them.
Yes, this was three-ways a depressing nonsense:
We lost the chance to see an African side progress, and the whole African continent feels justifiably robbed.
The moral bankruptcy of the rejoicing Uruguayans and South Americans is nauseating.
The idiocy of FIFA is shocking; this has been a problem for DECADES which they have FAILED to address; unlike rugby of course, where a penalty try can be awarded.
FIFA is a disgrace. They threaten France and Nigeria with expulsion for “interfering” in the affairs of their national footballing federation, yet does anyone in their right mind suppose that football in North Korea is not totally and utterly controlled by the tyrannical regime?
Sepp Blabber is a blot on the landscape, a moral and practical vacuum of pontificating mediocrity.
A professional footballer’s instinct is NOT to handle the ball. His reaction certainly was “instinctive”, but to instinctively CHEAT.
The bottom line is that CHEATING HAS GAINED A MASSIVE ADVANTAGE. It should not and never should. Have we heard any apology from the Uruguayans? Ha, bloody ha. Man’s ability to rationalize his greed is astounding.
[Interesting article by Robert Peston of the BBC about England’s approach to the World Cup. Ed.]
Football – and the winner is ……. money and the lust for fame.
Well, the England v Germany game was tragic of course. But it wasn’t because:
the England team lost
they played not only badly but moronically, with an idiotic rush upfield of the whole defence as if it were the last few minutes of the game, thus allowing the Germans to score more or less at will
they repeated a few minutes later EXACTLY the same error as described above
the Germans scored a goal straight from the kick-off, which BBC commentators said they had never before seen in an international match
many of the players seemed “tired”, though this didn’t seem to trouble other players of the Premier League who were playing for other countries
the English players mostly plodded about like sleepy elephants compared to the racing panthers of Germany (resisting the temptation to say ‘panzers’)
the 5 million quid manager didn’t seem to have a clue; playing people out of position in a 4-4-2 formation that NOBODY else uses
there were no specialist wingers; quite useful for getting behind the defence and lobbing in crosses, a strategy that seems as foreign to the manager as he is himself
the same person was clearly unable to motivate and organise his players; as he speaks a different language this is not all that surprising – NO OTHER NATIONAL TEAM has a foreign manager, but we have to be different
the manager – with three goals needed in 15 minutes brought on Emile Heskey as our ‘last hope’, no doubt a worthy person but with a very poor goal-scoring record
the forward with the best goal-scoring record of all the English team (Crouch) hardly got a look-in
the players were clearly disorganised and uninspired
there seemed to be little real leadership on or off the field, with rumblings of discontent in the camp
for all of the above the FA is paying this hopeless manager nearly £20,000 per working day of the year
No, all the above is or was silly – or perhaps a better word is “pathetic”. The real tragedy concerns the goal that wasn’t.
The Goal that wasn't ....
Of course, this was every bit as silly as the rest of it, FIFA looking completely ridiculous by its refusal to contemplate the use of technology to enhance “fairness” (a concept I am quite keen on but which seems a bit out of fashion generally). It seems that some of the vastly-paid and expensively-hotelled world-ranging FIFA executives think that technology would “reduce the drama”. I am seriously hoping that Argentina “do a Lampard” on Germany in the Friday game so that the idiocy of this policy will be rubbed in, especially to the (rather sadly) gloating Germans.
But we STILL haven’t got to the tragic bit, which is that the Germans missed a chance to be remembered for ever as the team that owned up to a goal. Neuer, the German goalkeeper, has said that when the ball rebounded from the bar and went in (as it clearly did) he at once reached behind, grabbed it and hoofed it upfield “so that the referee wouldn’t think it had gone in.” which of course (being blind) he didn’t.
In other words, Neuer KNEW it wasn’t a goal but didn’t say so. With this action he joined the serial cheats, divers, “get-an-opposing-player-sent-off” and Maradona “Hand-of-God” players who will do anything to win. These are people to whom the concept of sportsmanship, fairness, honesty and “doing the right stuff” are alien.
In the case of Maradona, the ability of humans to reach the peaks of irony was once again illustrated when before the World Cup started he made a plea for “fair play”. I am unaware that he has ever apologised for his own cheating, but of course it is much easier to urge other people to behave in a certain way than to do it yourself.
Anyway, I do not claim the English would have done any different; we’ll never know. Just as we’ll never know what the score of this match WOULD have been HAD the goal been given. What we DO know is that we’ll be thinking for the next forty years about how silly and unjust this was just as the Germans have been whinging on for the same length of time about 1966. It could and should have been so different. HAD the Germans gone at once to the ref and said: “It was a goal”, they would have been moral heroes for the rest of footballing history rather than remembered (by me at least) as just another bunch of cheats.
The tragedy of course is that a TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY was lost to make a pitch for honesty, fairness, sportsmanship and decency. What an example that would have been to everyone, especially our kids! And WHAT A CHANCE to dump for ever and ever the image of football as a cheats’ activity dominated by the false Gods of money and fame as well as the stereo-typed image that some idiotic Brits have of Germans as unfeeling Nazis.
No, their instinct was NOT to admit the goal and to benefit from an unfair error. Sad … for the next 40 years we’ll be talking about the unfairness rather than what a wonderful gesture they made.
Oh, and as for 1966, let’s lay this ghost to rest. There was NEVER ANY QUESTION that it wasn’t a goal. The referee and linesman on that day BOTH said it was a goal and it is obvious from the reaction of the players that it was a goal, even if in those times the cameras were not as sophisticated as today’s and cannot definitively PROVE it was a goal. I am afraid this 1966: “It wasn’t a goal – we wuz robbed.” stuff is a bit like the urban myth: “The German army was stabbed in the back by politicians.” that Hitler exploited after WWI.
Well, for me the World Cup has lost some sheen; it is all so silly, nationalistic and rife with unsportsmanship. All that one lives with (one is used it these days), but the missed opportunity to make a moral stand is one I deeply regret.
I hope it is clear that this has NOTHING TO DO with my being English. Had our boys done the same I would have been just as sad, even more so, as – perhaps stupidly – I would like to think we are made of better stuff. However, football is not cricket and even cricket is often not cricket today either.
The Internet is clearly an extraordinary revolution, one almost as big as the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. Amazingly, it also started out FREE and totally democratic – a fantastic boon to humanity.
However – as with everything else – it has inevitably become abused by the selfish minority that we seem unable or unwilling to deal with effectively, and for this we all must suffer.
So, because of this minority abuse the majority can expect more and more controls and bureaucratization and no doubt in the end it will be taxed as well. Indeed, I am astonished that greedy, incompetent, reckless governments haven’t already got their nasty paws on it as the next milch-cow to satisfy their insane rapaciousness.
But it is the potty EU (another giant institution that is currently sowing the seeds of its own demise through its arrogant grasping for power and control) where the most control-freakery is being displayed.
Firstly, we are apparently to have a new EU organism to “oversee” the Internet, and Estonia and France are currently vying for this lucrative (for its staff – not the EU taxpayer) little gravy-train.
Secondly, it seems that the EU now wants to log everyone’s Google searches for two years in a bid to ensnare paedophiles. Thankyou EU, but much as I hate paedophiles to be honest I do not want my Google searches logged, not even actually by Google. I have no faith whatsoever that someone, somewhere, sometime will not exploit this data even though I am completely innocent.
And anyway, as is pointed out in the above-mentioned article, this bit of overkill bureaucratization (no doubt another EU organism will have to be set up to actually do this – not of course in some run-down bit of Sicily but some posh and extremely expensive suburb of Brussels with loads of staff, secretaries, expenses and all the rest) will be totally ineffective anyway since paedophiles are far too cunning to use Google.
As for Google, is this yet another example of an organism overreaching itself? Have they gone too far for their own good with their street-level photography – amazing technology but one snoop too many nonetheless?
And returning to search monitoring, I am not sure I want to be the constant victim of oh so-clever targeted marketing all the time. There comes a point when I simply want to be left alone and unmonitored. Sometime this data juggernaut has to be stopped, or where will it all end?
PS Is the Internet changing our brains?It is claimed people are losing the ability to concentrate. I certainly notice this in schoolkids I teach. This poses me three questions. If anyone out there is clever enough to provide answers I’d be most grateful.
Amazed they don’t just tax Fun and leave it at that!
Lemonade isn't a substitute!
Once again the British Politically Correct nanny-state lobby seems about to pounce by reducing the drink-driving limit to 50 mg. This is yet another fatuous knee-jerk “Let’s give the image that we are responsible and doing something” initiative.
No, I do NOT favour driving while drunk, but at 80 mg per ml you are not “drunk” or even impaired. The introduction of the 80 mg limit was a great step, but more would be a mg too far.
I know for an absolute fact that if I drink one pint of beer I am in no way more dangerous than if I drink nothing. Don’t ask me how I know; I just do. I’ve been driving all over Europe for 40 years; and experience counts for something after all.
Yes, I do want to see road accidents reduced, but let’s see something REALISTIC and EFFECTIVE. Why are most accidents caused? (apart from people way over the limit, unlicenced or driving unroadworthy cars and so on)
arrogance and lack of imagination: “It can’t happen to me.”
impatience: overtaking dangerously to save 45 seconds on a two-mile journey
driving too fast in the wrong place at the wrong time.
driving without consideration for others
not driving as if every other driver was an idiot
failing to give yourself enough of a margin for error
failing to understand statistics
The last two points are perhaps crucial. Drive on the périphérique in Paris and you’ll see examples of both. Of course, the French are, in general, brilliant drivers and 99.9% of the time they can get away with driving up someone’s boot, but statistics tell us that there is 0.01% of the time when this will NOT be OK.
What steps COULD be taken instead of clobbering the one pinter?
Start with the apparent ONE MILLION people in Britain driving either unlicensed and/or in uninsured or unroadworthy cars.
Ban rich Daddy’s boys from driving high-powered sports cars: nobody under 25 should be able to drive anything over 80 bhp for a start.
Where is the logic in manufacturing cars that can drive at three times the speed limit? BAN THEM. BE LOGICAL.
Make the viewing of video of the aftermath of accidents a compulsory part of the driving test so that people came reeling out of the room white and vomiting at the sight of accident victims with their faces smashed up and/or their heads severed. This is the REALITY of accidents. Let’s GET REAL.
Prevent people from driving for TOO LONG. Tiredness is a MAJOR factor in accidents, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over the hours that private motorists can drive. Modern technology could do something here.
Make the punishments for careless and/or dangerous driving SEVERE.
Make people AFRAID of causing an accident.
The truth is that a car is as dangerous as a gun and people should treat them as such. Sadly, familiarity breeds contempt and people too often forget the basic principles.
Every time I get in my car I tell myself the following:
Drive with as much care as when you first drove so nervously and gingerly on your first trip with your new licence.
Every journey could be your last. Just because the last n days have been trouble-free it doesn’t mean that today will. (statistics again)
There could be an idiot around the next corner, so drive defensively. (there is always a percentage of idiots, so statistically you are CERTAIN to meet one now and again)
Going too fast in the wrong place and/or conditions isn’t worth the risk. (stats again)
You have no right to maim or kill anyone else by bad driving and causing “an accident”‘.
Be afraid – think of what a serious injury or even your death would mean to your family.
It’s no good being “sorry” afterwards ……
Let’s hope the new British government has a bit of commonsense about this.
PS The Police could do their bit, too. A significant number of people are killed by policemen rushing about.
By Chris Snuggs
IAM Logo
A P.P.S. from the Editor. In fact, one of the best things that could be done is create an
incentive for passing the Institute of Advanced Driving driving test. I passed the test in 1966 and it has been the best investment I have ever made.
Why doesn’t the UK Government give a free year’s road-tax for every person who passed the IAM test. All this proposed change in the drink/drive limit will do is to put yet more British pubs out of business. G’rrr.
“The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of someone else’s money.”
The Human Species is unique in many aspects, but outstandingly so in the art of irony. Take Socialists, for example.
Now these are extremely caring people; they love their fellows so much that they want to do everything possible to make them comfortable and happy. It’s so wonderful; one is so admiring, inspired even at this outpouring of fellow-feeling.
In pursuit of their noble aim, socialists therefore spend vast amounts of money on all kinds of services to make people’s lives happy.
It’s true that they don’t always ASK people what they WANT in order to be happy, but that’s because they are very clever people who know what is best for other people.
And so mushrooms a whole myriad of agencies and quangoes for this or that disability; this or that special needs group.
There is free this, free that, handouts, subsidies, initiatives, pledges (Gordon Brown’s speciality). It is all so uplifting, and of course FREE!! What could be more wonderful?
Of course, it all has to be paid for. Now this phrase “of course” is very interesting. It means that being paid for is bleedin’ obvious to the writer and to anyone else with the slightest understanding of economics, including my old Gran.
Funnily enough, however, it is not quite so obvious to socialists, who – rather sadly – seem to believe that money grows on trees. This phrase is a bit hackneyed, but I can’t think of a more fitting one.
So where DOES the money come from, since it does not actually – to the surprise of many socialists – grow on trees? Well, it comes from those who MAKE money! What a surprise. And of course, that is an inexhaustible fount which can be milked till the cows come home (or perhaps after they come home!) Hence the expression “milch cow”. Yes, those nasty capitalists can be milked for all they are worth.
Tim Geithner? You can’t get much higher in responsibility for the US economy, yet he comes out with what to the layman seems an absolutely insane statement.
Germany is ALSO heavily in debt. The German coalition government has just announced a “Sparprogram” of €80 BILLION euros. Families, the unemployed and the civil service are all going to be hammered.
Germany like everyone else has overspent and of course been hit by the bankers’ insane greed and the ensuing financial crisis. (By the way, the latter was a total breakdown by regulators and if Obama really wants to rant at someone he should rant at the people responsible for organising the regulation of finance in the USA … oopps …. that was the politicians! No wonder BP makes an easier target.)
Tim Geithner
But returning to Geithner, does he REALLY think that we can get out of this mess by Germany getting more heavily into debt? It’s potty, isn’t it? Someone said recently “You don’t give a drunk more alcohol.”
Someone, somewhere, someone has got to say “ENOUGH – NO MORE DEBT” And anyway, why SHOULD Germans be expected to shoulder the responsibility for everyone else?
No Mr Geithner! Your government can continue to spend money it hasn’t got if you like (the US up to a $ trillion of debt now?) , but please leave us over here in Europe to sort this mess out in our own way. You are beginning to sound like ex- (God, how I love that prefix) British PM Gordon Brown, who spent 13 years playing Fantasy Finance, with the results all too clear.
Maybe I’ve got this all wrong – salvation really does come by incurring ever more debt? If so, perhaps the economists can explain it to me. Can we find two economists who agree?
The funny thing is, my Mum and my Gran both agree. In their day if you overspent you were in trouble and could neither blame anyone else nor hope that some benevolent soul would bail you out …. perhaps they should be running western economies?
In the good old days, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were watching a John Wayne western together when Blair said:
“Look. I bet you £10 (Ed: or in today’s money, £10 billion) that John Wayne is going to ride his horse over that cliff!”
Brown said: “You’re on. I bet he isn’t …”
Then Big John did ride his horse over the cliff ……
Brown held out a wad of notes to Blair … “Fair enough, ” he said. “You were right again.”
Blair replied: “Well, you’d better keep the money; I was playing a trick on you; I’ve seen the film before.”
Brown replied: “So have I. I just didn’t think he’d make the same mistake twice ……”
PS Yes, why kick a man who is down (and out), but the supposedly-clever former British Chancellor and then hapless Prime Minister Gordon Brown has left Britain with a £170 billion debt burden that will – according to the new government coalition – take a decade of pain to put right.
And his party STILL has the gall to complain about the danger of “cuts”. You couldn’t make it up.They just don’t get it. There is NO WAY to avoid a GREAT DEAL of SELF-INFLICTED pain.
François Fillon, the French prime minister, said on Friday (June 4th) that the weakening currency was “good news” because it could boost European exports. His comments accelerated the currency’s slide and prompted selling of French government bonds.
This of course is the cunning ploy formerly used by weak, failing, uncompetitive countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and so on before they hitched their waggons on to the euro gravy-train led by the massive German engine. (Anyone remember the story of the over-burdened camel, by the way?)
For France’s Prime Minister, the falling euro is “good”. Well done, François. Thanks for the increased price of oil and everything else we import. How the Swiss must be quietly smirking as they watch this shambles of overspending and reckless financial profligacy.
And the news of Hungary’s tottering economy is helping to push the euro further down towards parity with the dollar. Wonderful. Perhaps we should hope that it falls to half the dollar! Think of how much that would boost exports! This policy is of course about as fatuous as France’s idea that cutting the working week to 35 hours would increase employment.
Of course, the Yanks could copy our example and help to push the dollar down, so that the USA and Europe end up in a deadly game of spiral descendency (“Ha, Ha – our currency is weaker than yours!”) while the Russians, Chinese and Arabs quietly prepare to buy up all our increasingly-worthless assets.
We deserve better leaders.
P.S. Ireland? The Forgotten Basket Case? Don’t worry – it won’t be forgotten for much longer:
Fears for Ireland’s financial stability also re-emerged after the minister of finance said that the country’s banks had to refinance more than €74 billion of debt by October 1. The sum is equivalent to more than half Ireland’s annual economic output.
P.P.S. The USA will save the world as usual? Maybe not!
This may not be very Politically Correct but I am getting a bit fed up for the following reasons with Obama’s constant bad-mouthing of BP :
If the regulatory procedures were not strong enough then that is the USA’s fault, not BP’s.
The USA is glad enough to extract oil from ecologically-dangerous places because it is hooked on oil. That isn’t BP’s fault either.
It is bleedin’ obvious that SOONER OR LATER (see previous comments on statistics) there was going to be an accident of this type, yet NO PROPER CONTINGENCY PLAN was in place. That is partly BP’s fault (over-confidence) but also the USA’s fault for not insisting on one.
BP is clearly doing all it can to put things right; constantly rubbishing it seems fairly pointless.
Nobody knows how much BP was to blame; there were other companies involved, including US ones.
The burning BP Oil Rig
In general, the USA has long been too soft on oil companies because it needs the oil.
Now of course we are going to have a pendulum swing the other way, but rather than knee-jerk reactions why not consult and put in place an effective “doomsday scenario” plan? For example, a 20,000 ton concrete dome that could be lowered right over a fractured well to seal it off?
Of course, Obama’s ranting is political. He does NOT want this to be his “Katrina”. However, nobody in their right mind would blame him personally for this accident and now that it has happened it is pretty pathetic to rant about how evil BP is.
What’s done is done. Statistically, there was BOUND to be an accident of this kind one day. By allowing deep-sea drilling the USA MUST HAVE ACCEPTED the risk. If proper and regulatory contingency plans had been in place then the environmental damage might have been minimised.
In general one must say of the Human Race that we aren’t brilliant at anticipating risks and preparing for the worst. Witness carbon emissions and climate change. As a man-in-the-street, the ONLY change in long-held habits that I have seen to combat global warming is that you can no longer in Europe buy old-fashioned light bulbs. Otherwise life seems to go on pretty much as ever, with all governments desperately wishing for growth because of their idiotic over-spending.
STOP PRESS: Above all a President needs to stay calm and rational. There was no reason to stop all off-shore drilling pending the result of an enquiry. This has put thousands of Americans out of work. No, I am NOT minimising the damage; it is tragic and disastrous, but 80% of Louisiana’s economy depends on the oil business.
And we badly need perspective. This is – as I already said – a terrible disaster, but the record of off-shore drilling is in fact extremely good in ecological terms. One bad experience should not lead to the knee-jerk shut-down of the entire industry. Fascinating article in the UK Guardian newspaper. That article concludes thus:
In an open letter to Obama published in Louisiana’s Thibodaux Daily Comet newspaper, local resident Stephen Morris vented fury at the drilling freeze: “If it was a knee-jerk response to everyone’s anger about the continued leak and possible annihilation of southern Louisiana’s way of life, you didn’t think it through or your advisers are smoking way too much crack.”
And this article in the UK Independent brilliantly sums up the way Obama is getting this all wrong for superficial, popularist reasons. Here’s how that article starts:
The evidence is overwhelming. Any fair-minded person who examines the Gulf of Mexico oil spillage is compelled to two conclusions. First, that there is no evidence of wrongdoing by BP. Second, that the President of the United States has behaved disgracefully.
The vessels of the Los Angeles class, the pride of the US nuclear submarine fleet, will not operate below 950ft. If they were to dive to 1450ft, their hulls would implode. The Americans do have three subs which could function at 2,000ft. They cost $3bn each. It follows that drilling for oil below a 5,000ft seabed is a difficult business which involves risks. But it is essential.
Learning from Dogs 