Blogger (linked to Google) is also parading a new interface and causing many bloggers to threaten emigration to WordPress.

I understand that Google is trying to create a uniform “look” to all their their enterprises. Fortunately we can still toggle between old Blogger interface and new, but that is going to cease at some point in coming months.

Same kind of objections have arisen for the new Blogger look as those mentioned in the post about G-mail. Too much white space, font not bold enough, stuff moved around for no reason but to create “change”. Re-inventing the wheel by making it square.

Quite right but it’s even worse than that, so I discovered.

WordPress itself has “done a Blogger” and wrecked what was once good. Its Menus don’t work with many themes, its new image resizing doesn’t work, comments don’t work with older versions of Firefox and there’s a problem with spam reported from many quarters. Google will not interface with old Firefox – it simply doesn’t allow comments using its new mechanism. Go over to Safari – piece of cake.

Regulars at my place will remember the horrific time I was having with comments and spam a year ago – regulars were being spammed for no reason, all sorts were going on. Now it isn’t happening. I’m still with WordPress and still with exactly the same theme.

So why is it working now and didn’t before?

Simple – I downgraded to an old version of WordPress. End of problem. Whenever I do images for OoL, for example for Mark Wadsworth, it can’t be done at OoL. I do the images at N.O., resize there, take the html and go over to OoL.

The newer versions of WordPress are c**p but even that’s not the end of the story.

My novel[s] are on Blogger. Formerly, if I wanted to edit, it was simple – change it in Word, Control+A, Control+C … take the html over to Post Edit [html mode] in Blogger, Control+A, Control+V, Publish.

All done. As many times as I liked … and I liked many times.

Now they’ve applied the new abomination and here’s how it goes. First part in Word’s OK … take the html over to Post Edit [html mode] in Blogger, Control+A, Control+V, lose all formatting – all of it!!!!   One massive slab of text, no paragraphs, no italics, no blockquotes – nothing!

OK, the only way around it is to go to Compose, which formats for text but not for other html, such as for pics and links, take the html for every pic and link, one by one and put in Html mode in Edit Post. Switch to Compose mode. Take the text body only from Word and put it in to Edit Post in Compose mode. Now highlight the text only in Edit Post but not the pic or link html and go to T in the menu. Select Normal, as it is preset to Small [meaning tiny]. Go back to Html mode to tidy up, Publish.

Oh and you’ll have to reformat every pic now which was there before. Each and every time you wish to edit – it’s a total nightmare. And don’t even think of manually resizing pics. The only way you can do that is to go into automatic and specify new Large and Medium. You can get it to manual but you can’t see it change before your eyes – you have to guess, Publish, look, reopen Edit and do a little more, Publish … and so on.

This has to be the worst “upgrade” I have ever seen from any company – the coding is kindergarten, there are so many issues which haven’t been considered – simple things people with any sort of formatting ability above an amoeba will need – plus it looks awful. They have no aesthetic sense and no coding ability.

They need to be summarily sacked.

It looks like Google has finally pulled the plug on the old GMail UI. As far as I can tell, this redesign is just change for the sake of change. I can’t see a single improvement! But I can spot three distinct un-provements *:

1.  The featureless white void: the old interface had colored borders and variations in background color which served to deliniate navigation from content and provide visual landmarks that helped me find my way around the page. It had visual ‘texture’.

2.  The “importance” marker is now right next to the stars. I find the (algorithmically-applied) importance marker completely useless and would remove it if I could, but I use the stars quite heavily.

3.  The new icons are inferior to the old text buttons. The text buttons were self-describing. The new icons are not. I’m not usually a fan of toolbar icons; they’re never as self-explanatory as their designers think they are, so they usually need text labels to be decipherable.

Why were these changes made? I don’t know. According to the Gmail blog, the goals of the redesign included: to put mugshots of people into conversation view, to make the density adjustable, to make themes fancier, to make the left sidebar customizable, and to add an advanced search panel.

In other words, a complete wank we neither want nor need.  Can’t leave well enough alone, can they?

The most common way until now has been a browser plugin, like MAFIAAFire, but alternate DNS systems are starting to become more popular. One of those, OpenNIC, is looking to capitalise on that with its new .pirate TLD (top level domain).

Registration takes just minutes, and then your new .pirate domain will be accessible by anyone using one of OpenNIC’s many DNS servers.

Gotta have one.  Check out the available TLDs: http://www.opennicproject.org/

It’s a measure of the capriciousness of humans that we can condone one thing but seek resolution for another. If Brooks hadn’t grinned about what she’d done, I’d have not been all that bothered. Now it’s sweet to see her charged but it will be even sweeter to see her behind bars, to see that no matter how high-flying, you still need to treat people right.

As for a different type of justice – the post before this – I was just asked if I expected people to read it. No I don’t – it’s a reference more than a blogpost. It’s something that when someone says something stupid about the case, I can just point to this url, rather than have to explain it over and over and over. It’s also a source of quotes.

Frankly, this has been a rotten two days and all manner of things have gone awry.

For a start, Saturday is the graveyard day for this blog – it starts going down on Friday afternoon, is always at its worst on Saturday and starts coming up again on Monday – consistently and uncannily so, in terms of numbers of readers.  So anything written here now will be seen by very few.

This is a bitsy post because there are so many awful little things to report on, none of which justify a post in themselves.

1.  Cranmer – Boiling Frog reports:

In an almost rational-defying move by the Advertising Standards Authority it is investigating Cranmer for carrying an ad on his blog on behalf of the Coalition for Marriage, which I reproduce above. Apparently complaints have been made that it is ‘offensive and homophobic’.

That’s not only sickening, it’s gut-wrenching.  In response, I’m going to devise a pro-marriage banner and put it up in the sidebar.  I can’t even begin to blog on how despicable this so-called ASA is, how illegitimate in terms of the common law of the land and if I don’t get off this topic now I’ll lose my rag completely.

2.  When football is more than football:

In 2007, my team downunder came up and won their first flag in 40 odd years but not only that, they started a dynasty.  Out of about 120 starts, they won about 105 of them – don’t know the exact stats.  They were close to invincible.  They had a rotten 2010 and at the end, it was clear they were too old, too slow, over the hill and the era was over.  Their manager and top player left for pastures new.

The assistant-manager who’d been there for 17 years and was acknowledged by all to have been a major factor in their success, knowing the players through-and-through, their strengths, weaknesses etc., felt he should have got the top job but he was passed over for a former head-kicker from another former top club.

The assistant stayed on for 2011.

As it turned out, the old-timers were blended with some youth and the combination stunned everyone by winning the flag last year and not by any fluke – they steamrolled the opposition.  The assistant though was offered the top job at another club, Adelaide and he spent the summer getting them ready.

Meanwhile, four of our players retired, including two the club could barely do without but these things happen.  In the past few weeks, other champions have fallen away to niggling injuries, loss of form etc.  Just as you’d expect.  This morning, from 4.15 a.m. to 6.50 a.m., UK time, our club played Adelaide and were taken apart, utterly dismantled, not only by the former assistant, now manager of Adelaide but with one of our club champions having also defected over there.

The result was that those two knew every single weakness of our players and instructed their players accordingly.  It was an utter snow-job, the worst loss for years and years, which was really nice to read as I got ready to go to work.  Not only that but one of the new young [injured] stars has for weeks refused to sign a new contract with us but insists it’s not because he wants to go home to Adelaide, where he comes from.

However, as it now appears the dynasty really is over, many such players may well be having second thoughts about sticking round with a declining club.  the fact that with this new blood remaining loyal, the club could rise again may or may not be a factor in them not leaving … or leaving.

So that’s awful from where I stand as that was one of the few good things going in my life in recent years.

The thing which stuck in my mind though was the manager’s reply to the question of whether all the good players being out had hurt the team.  “Oh not really,” he replied, “we value our system over our personnel.”

WTF??!!  He doesn’t value his players and wonders why they’re underperforming?  He calls their flare on the field “cavalier”?  He wants them playing as automatons?  The reason he got the result he did last year was because he let them play their natural way.  Now he wants to change it, to justify his salary.

Looks bad from where I’m sitting.

3. Nurse Ratched and her henchwomen:

I was inducted onto a training course at the end of last week and whether it was deliberate or intentional, there was the most appalling image – wish I’d had a camera.  I thought it was to be a one-on-one interview, as it had been stated it would be.  Instead, hordes of us were herded into a large room, like cattle and were lounging around on plastic chairs, legs outstretched and with defiant eyes.

WTF, I thought?  I thought this was meant to be a training course for a new career.  Some woman came in and started telling us all how many opportunities there were in the UK today and how good things were, then she wanted to introduce two other people to us, who’d help us set up businesses or whatever.  The two who came in had HR written all over them – they were butch, gruff, arrogant and were answering questions bluntly.

At one point, there was this image of two of the three [these HRs] standing up the front near the whiteboard, arms folded, staring down their noses at the punters and every one of those punters was male and in his 50s – every single one.  Not only that but these were guys had clearly been something special in their former careers, line managers most like – erudite, quick, not given to verbosity [unlike me] and I was wondering just how they saw this divide – all of them corralled together in this room and these three Nurse Ratcheds with zero life or corporate experience peering down at all them, thinking: “What losers”.

And believe me, these two HRs were the very worst you can imagine HRs to be – ignorant, talentless, by the book, having graduated from HR college or wherever they came from.  I was mightily unimpressed and my cooperation level is going to depend next week, as I discovered the main one is the one assigned to me.  It’s going to be all I can do to bite the lip and not say something to her but this is soul-sapping stuff.

What these idiot women don’t understand is that these men are only going to accept this female attempt at oppression for a short time longer.  For example, I asked Ratched why we couldn’t use USB sticks when all modern firms allow them?  She said they had allowed them but someone put one in last year and crashed the system.  There were smiles all around.

Time is running out for these Ratcheds and I, for one, am not the type to put up with this crap.  I’ll see what she has to say for herself next week.

4.  The parachutee departs:

At work today, I found out that the area manager had resigned and so I’m delighted to be able to bring you a tale of parachutees for once not involving a woman.  I’m glad I can do this to show you, for once and for all, it’s not anti-women but anti-parachutees.  The heroes in this tale are the women.

The idot had been appointed because a bunch of women at head office felt they needed a man to get them in line – they were forever at each others’ throats, they’d squabble over this and that, they needed some discipline and men are good at that.

Often.

Not this time.

What they’d hired, unfortunately, was a “my way or the highway” type who’d brook no opposition but whose expertise in the field simply did not match his disciplinarian approach.

The worst thing he did seems petty and minor but it actually cascading into many other failures.  There had been three sizes of bags for bagging up people’s purchases – small, medium for most clothing and large for coats etc.  Good system, names on the snazzy bags, all was well.

He was looking to cost-cut and decided to cut out the medium sized bags.  Now the large bags were like body bags and the small ones would just about fit a paperback.  So, needs must and staff were bringing in packets from all over – Primark, M&S, whatever but the bottom line was 1. all these packets were used and crumpled and 2. they weren’t ours – they didn’t have our name.  People were going out of our shop with crumpled up packets.

Then he decided to spend the savings on brand new, super-slick packets which cost customers a pretty penny.  No one wanted them.  They were a white elephant.  Not only that but he started bringing in rules for money floats which left almost no money in the till.  His answer to the outcry was that staff could jolly well wait until customers bought something and then there’d be change.

WTF?

There was apparently a store managers’ meeting, they all brought up the same issues, he virtually asked them to shut up and sit down as he didn’t want to hear any more.

As my assistant boss said today, “James, there are certain ways never to speak to women.”  Not mentioning my own little to-do last week over my apparent brusqueness, I just nodded in agreement with her.  Seriously though, the guy just had to have been an idiot.

Feeling he didn’t have the support of all the women managers, he stormed out and wasn’t seen again.  Apparently he found a job elsewhere.  He was quoted as saying he hadn’t realized management at our place was so “hands-on”.

WTF?  Management is not hands-on?  What is it then – come out of management school and take over some company without any knowledge of the ropes?

Good riddance.

By the way, I asked my assistant-lady-boss who bought me some Belgian chockies to welcome me back after my illness – she sees me as one of her proteges and who am I to complain – I asked her: “Well, do we eventually get our packets then?”

“Ah,” she replied, “he [the area manager] committed us to so many schemes, there’s no money left to get the new packets.”

Brilliant – he’s gone, his schemes live on in obligations and the central issue – providing packets customers like – cannot be because of the ongoing wastage.

Seriously, people – is that insanity or is that insanity?

“The internet has made many things easier, but unfortunately this also includes crime: it seems that nowadays not even people wanting to know their future are safe from fraud. Two fortune tellers are being investigated, after the Romanian police uncovered that they have utilized some extraordinary help in their clairvoyant acts.

The pair used information collected from internet search and social networks to gain the trust of their customers, claiming that they could see their personal data through their crystal ball. In some cases, they also used high-tech surveillance techniques such as hidden cameras and phone tapping.

But they didn’t stop at merely spying on their victims: their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a monster.”

Nice to know that internet-based fraud isn’t limited to motivational speakers with real-estate seminars and other get-rich-quick flim-flam.

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” – John Gilmore 

This is a joint haiku/JH post. Haiku provided the material and the narratives, JH linked the narratives.

As a result of the ruling:

The ability of one [totally clueless] person to change the world:

http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-must-censor-the-pirates-bay-high-court-rules
-120430/

The High Court has ruled that several UK ISPs including Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must censor The Pirate Bay website. This means that millions of Internet users will be prevented from accessing the popular BitTorrent site in the weeks to come. The Pirate Bay say they aren’t concerned by yet another court-ordered blockade, and point out that there are plenty of ways to circumvent such censorship.

After better people have tried:

http://torrentfreak.com/epic-6-year-file-sharing-case-over-just-3-songs-come
s-to-an-end-120430/

When the Portuguese arm of IFPI first decided to bring file-sharing prosecutions to the country, their aims would have been simple – to scare Internet users away from file-sharing networks and into the shops. It didn’t work out that way.

Since 2006, the Portuguese Phonographic Association filed more than two dozen cases with the Attorney General’s Office. Only two bore any fruit at all – one in 2008 and another just over a week ago having dragged on for an epic six years.

And his learned brother (genuinely so this time) has explained (though in
American):

http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt-identify-a-person-120503/

Among other things, New York Judge Gary Brown explains in great detail why an IP-address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers. According to the Judge this lack of specific evidence means that many alleged BitTorrent pirates have been wrongfully accused by copyright holders.

The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Or put differently; an IP-address is not a person.

The results are quite spectacular:

It’s called the Streisand Effect (after a certain self-important singer) :

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-enjoys-12-million-traffic-boost-shares-un
blocking-tips-120502/

“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.

“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

Leading to a boost in sales:

http://torrentfreak.com/30-of-uk-file-sharers-intend-to-pirate-more-in-the-n
ext-12-months-120503/

According to a report from a leading UK law firm, nearly 30% of UK file-sharers say they intend to pirate more movies, music, games and ebooks during the next 12 months. The entertainment industries shouldn’t be too disappointed though – 36% and 34% of paying music and movie customers say they’ll consume more in the year to come.

And other tools [UK to follow]:

http://torrentfreak.com/young-file-sharers-respond-to-tough-laws-by-buying-a
-vpn-120501/

A new survey has revealed that young people are responding to tough legislation and increasing levels of online spying by investing in VPN services. The study, carried out by the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, found that when compared to figures from late 2009, 40% more 15 to 25-year-olds are now hiding their activities online.

Faced with the almost impossible task of physically restricting people’s activities online, during recent years authorities and copyright holders have sought to have legislation tightened up, to encourage citizens towards a path of “doing the right thing” through the fear of more and more serious consequences.

In Sweden, the results of intense lobbying are clear. Due to a combination of fat Internet pipes and its status as the spiritual home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden and file-sharing go hand in hand. As a result the country is being subjected to considerable online surveillance.

But according to new research from the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, an increasing proportion of the country’s population are taking measures to negate the effects of spying on their online activities.

John Gilmore is quite spectacular, all by himself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_(activist)

http://www.toad.com/gnu/

while the allegedly boracic* Wapping-based Baroness will return after the Queen’s Speech in May

Woodsy: Google rate the Euro an “unsupported currency”.

Martin Kelly:

Seeing both Rangers Football Club and the Scottish National Party in such turmoil could almost make one think we are seeing could be called a ‘Scottish Spring’; like the Arab Spring, but with more rain.

*boracic lint = skint; the Tavern’s always ready for an anachronistic bit of rhyming slang.

When I broke my wrist bobsledding, bone sticking through, the only way to cope with the beefy boys at the hospital struggling to haul the hand back into place was to make jokes about it.

I only ever got one bad report card at school and it said, “Inclined to take the more serious aspects of [insert school name of choice] too flippantly”.  Always been a problem for me.  Which is not to say I’m a fun guy – I don’t think people would go that far but like many, I simply can’t take seriously the things we’re meant to take seriously.

Like political correctness.

The things we should take seriously – look around the blogs, look at OoL, look at the serious posts here, are taken seriously.  The things which shouldn’t, e.g. anything coming from the buffoons above or from people who take themselves way too seriously – get sent up on these “politically incorrect days”.

Sure, there’s an edge to them.  The constant bellyaching from some sections not only gets on the nerves but actually polarizes people to the point they have to invent the term “political correctness” to both identify and ridicule it.  My favourite still remains the council who sent officers to arrest a grandmother for planting flowers on a roundabout in her sleepy village.  There are thousands more – see Julia M for pointing out many of those.

Seems to me there are two kinds of people today – those of us who, deeply demoralized about how society is going, frustrated, infuriated, trying to warn people, have gone into a sort of sullen silence or have shut it out or are even defiantly non-cooperating … and then there are people, blissfully unaware of anything wrong, who castigate us for our “insensitivity” and who happily re-elect people like Obama.

These posts are for the former.

It would be nice to make this a regular feature but if it were on Saturday, the comment moderation day here, it would mean nobody could comment until late in the day – well, that’s incorrect in itself, is it not?

Enjoy … or not.

Traffic: Blog advertising works on CPM or cost-per-mille, meaning cost per 1000 page views. Overall presence of the blog on the web is tied in with that. Also, what sort of traffic is it – visitors, google image searches, trolls, what? Then there is country share – a UK advertiser is hardly going to be interested in 60% U.S. traffic.

Demographic and content:  What sort of people come to your blog and for what purposes; how far your content appeals to them and gives the advertiser a line on whether you are suitable and vice-versa.

Blog “presence”:  If CPM works on per thousand and Blog A gets its thousand in half a day but blog B gets it in five days, then it stands to reason that Blog A earns ten times the amount but that’s not the end of it.  By the very “presence” of the higher traffic blog and the non-visiting stats, e.g. the blog being discussed, it has a higher value again.

Size and type of ad: Working with 125 x 125 as the default, you might offer 125 x 65 as well or even line ads.  Are they static or changeable?

Position on site: In post, banner above, in sidebar, above fold or below?

Going with a hypothetical example – let’s say you’re a fair to middling blogger getting 30 000 hits per month, mainly visitors, your blog is not overly political and has a reasonable range of content plus the advertiser identifies that your demographic is matched to your content, then a CPM is going to be in the range of $1.50 to $5.00, on current rates – see this source and this source.  If you’re using Ad Sense, you can find out the CPM they go on:

Say you have a 125×125 space in the left sidebar where you are seeking advertisers. Run an Adsense campaign in that space for a week and track the performance using Adsense channels.  After a week, get the average CPM value for that space (this data is available in Adsense advance reports under eCPM).  Armed with the Adsense CPM figures, you can easily quote rates that are 20% lesser than Adsense.

So, on our example, if we go with a CPM of $1.50 for that fair to middling blog, it stands to reason that you’d be talking $45 per month for a banner ad.  At a time when I was getting fairly good traffic [old site], using SEO, I had an advertiser on a much lower real figure – $180 per year.  Therefore, we’re in the region of $15-45 per month.  Let’s call it $30 pcm before other adjustments, e.g. fluctuation of traffic.

If that blogger ran two ads in addition to his Ad Sense, those extras would net him $60 pcm which would pay for much of his monthly net costs.

Notes

The primary danger is the request through the email.  These are often spammers or malware installers and it takes some checking out.  You shouldn’t be flattered by the attention – they send this out to most blogs.  There is also the losss of street cred – it’s almost uncool to direct advertise unless you specifically match it to what your blog’s about.  I’m currently looking at a public liability insurer for small business, which does match part of my demographic.

………..

On the old blog, I was using better SEO and was basically a Blogger/ Google person.  The traffic was medium for the UK and the blog attracted advertisers, most of whom I ignored.  As a recognized centre-right blogger with Tory affiliations, I had a certain amount of [variable] traffic.

On the current blog, I’ve severed party connections and employ no overt SEO, bar RSS feeds.  I see various aggregators have me on them so there’s a certain amount of it, despite my current passivity.  The provocative edge to my political blogging has sharply increased and that loses readership as well.  Someone said to me: “Have you thought whom you would like to offend next?”

This is the second most popular post at this moment and this the most popular.  My Easter posts [as distinct from JD's] have been getting 4 readers in 100.  Pathetic for the amount of work in them.  Amanda Knox, on the other hand, went off the scale.

The reality is that it’s neither the amount of work nor the level of the subject matter.  Some posts will attract, some less so.  Anything Christian is a dead duck.  A quiz where no one knows the answers [except Cherie] is one in which people are interested for knowledge purposes but not for commenting on.  A post like Steep Slopes will get a large amount of click in-view-click out traffic but will not come up for much comment.

People only comment if it touches a nerve.

Then there is the Higham factor at this blog.  Some people wouldn’t be seen dead commenting here but might glance at posts in RSS.  There are also a hell of a lot of posts for people to get round and look at in a session.

Unfortunately, the other authors here get caught in that wash a bit -  RSS doesn’t help because it does not list author.

By the way, most readers are unaware of our unwritten contract here – there are a few lads who are full of knowledge but don’t feel comfortable with or couldn’t be arsed writing them up into legible posts, so they leave the arty-farty side to me and just supply the detail.  I’m more than comfortable with the epithet “glorified proof-reader” and semi ghost-writer.

I suppose what I’m saying is not to read too much into lack of comments but “viewed posts” is a reasonable indicator and those of the co-authors here are always viewed, often by different kinds of readers to those who view mine.  With the high volume of posts on this site, some are bound to be dud but these tend to be from the most prolific blogger here – me.  On the other hand, one or two of my posts get much traffic.

It’s just how it is, which is to say that it’s very much worth doing.  If there were only one reader of your post, that’s one reader more than you need to justify posting it.  Why this fixation with “mine’s bigger than yours” which some bloggers go on with – stat porn in other words?

Overall, this is a medium sized blog in British terms and there are always people around the world reading whatever post has gone up, by whomever.  Multiply this by the number of bloggers in our corner of the sphere and that’s a lot of reading.  Frankly, I’d rather read them than any amount of MSM articles.

One of the more entertaining aspects is the way the ads are targetted to the post. When the posts are varied, as on this site, then the ads are also varied and I like to see what they’ll come up with for any particular post. Mention a Muslim and you’ll get Muslim dating sites, mention yachts and you’ll get some luxury cruisers.

The last post was about teen pregnancy and sure enough, the ad you see to the left here came up. On a women’s post, one came up for Charlotte Church. And people actually do click on them. Google’s been telling me there’s money waiting but I don’t know if I should or not.

“Penultimately, how many people are actually still reading this post and for that matter, how many saw my name and immediately turned away?”

Superb levels of self awareness.

Just to add, I generally find your posts on here to be amongst my least favourite and amongst those I agree with least, however, that shouldn’t stop one reading them. Why the people of this country feel the need to be sheltered (by the state) from any contrary opinions is an absolute mystery to me (well, not quite, but my thoughts on that would fill half a book).

This post, however, was absolutely excellent and had I been amongst those who just ignore posts by those with whom I disagree I would be diminished by that willful ignorance.

Keep it up James, like I said, even though I largely disagree, that in no way diminishes the value you get from writing or I get from reading your posts.

1.  Arrogance and thinking one is always right

There is a difference between one’s facts/data being right and the way one joins the dots being right.  If you say I always think I’m right, that’s confusing two issues.  As to my data/facts being right – they are because on the occasions they are not, someone swiftly comes in and tells me that in no uncertain terms, I go into the post and correct/delete and so I end up, logically, correct in my facts.

My interpretation of those facts is another matter completely and comes down to:

a. how widely I’ve researched;
b. the sum total of prior experience in the area and
c. how far I’m prepared to see “one of us” as the enemy.

2.  Sniffing out the wrong ‘un inside

Kim Philby got away with it for so long because he was inside, he was “one of us”, he was vouched for and a person of some standing among his peers. I have no such automatic loyalty, perhaps because in my work, I was burnt many times for blind trust and so, if a megablogger say, is an unassailable byword within the sphere, I prefer to explore that person a bit, which leads me to someone or something else, which leads me to some other connections.

If he’s clean, no harm done. If he’s not, it comes out.

3.  Taking on shibboleths

Many people never forgive you for tackling a shibboleth, a sacred cow, especially one revered by most people.

For example, if a Christian is debating with an atheist, my loyalties tell me to back the Christian. If you send me the dirt on that Christian though, I’m quite prepared to explore further, turn up some more data and do a post exposing him.  Or not, if the data doesn’t stand up.  I’d prefer to trust someone who’s undergone a thorough fisking and is still standing than someone living on reputation alone.

With an attitude like that, one doesn’t make many friends.

4.  The thrill of the chase

What motivated Holmes?  Garrison?  Ness?   It was a realization that what they were being fed was BS.  Something smelt, something needed exploring.  The mind needed opening, clearing of preconceptions and then you could investigate properly.  God, Queen and country?  Not really – more in the nature of sport.  The PTB, Them, are lying through their decaying teeth to the people and we are in grave danger of becoming enslaved.

I waltz into the blogosphere and read all the good bloggers, realizing some of them have turned up some real data on the PTB that the MSM never told us.  Not only that but they’re consistently right, e.g. The Slog.  Hey, I want a piece of this action.  I’ve some skills to bring to the table too and so I’m going to join this great game of freedom and slavery.

5.  The sphere’s where it’s at

The MSM, by-and-large, are lying toerags.  Twitter’s been dominated by the wrong as well as the right and what truths can you explore in 140 characters?  Good for breaking news and chat.  Message boards can be OK, youtube can be both.  Blogs can be woeful but the best are right on the money and worth every minute, e.g. Burning our Money.  I’m comfortable here, it’s less pompous, more egalitarian, one’s told very quickly if talking faeces.  It’s good stuff.

It can be philosophical too, e.g. AK Haart and most humble.  There’s also a place for the extrovert – it’s a good medium.

6.  Exploring the byways

Morse was told by his superior, when sent to Italy to investigate a wrong ‘un, “You stay out of the byways, Morse.  You’re going straight for Clarke.”  Telling Morse not to explore the byways in Italy was like telling a Chelsea fan with a ticket not to attend a game against Fulham.

The byways are where the unguarded facts are, the light on particular issues which is generally left unrevealed.  The byways are illuminating.  Telling a person who’s explored Lappland and New Zealand not to go off the beaten path is like telling a toddler not to pick up that knife.  And often there are undiscovered wimmin down those byways.

DOS type traffic problem. Servers running fine, it’s simply being overwhelmed by the incoming requests, no bandwidth left to send anything.

There’s certainly mania behind the people doing this, as well as with the latest attempt to regulate the net, which was hit by such universal vilification.  There’s a fervour, together with an incompetence and I can’t help but feel they’re just parrying at this time, testing out our defences for the real assault.

I mean, look at OoL.  If this continues, we simply go to free WordPress [we need very few bells and whistles] and migrate the posts over there.  Simples.  So many ways to get around the issue.  And though we were getting traffic, we weren’t exactly up to American proportions, yet what we were saying and the type of people we are, i.e. sane and having had enough – the PTB can’t stand.

It’s a known known that the PTB always try to stamp out every last vestige of dissent, even if it is of no imminent danger to it, simply on the principle of the nausea of its presence.

The advantage is, as it always has been, with:

1.  the people;
2.  time.

Civil disobedience has never sounded more sweet. Meanwhile, here’s what we should perhaps all be doing more of:

Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo begin mating attempt

I’ve heard it called many things – LOL.  Mating attempt?

And don’t get me started on those types of women again.

Basically, there’s so much material coming through, at about 70 – 80 emails a day, e.g.

… and some have multiple links:

… that processing it was an issue and some pieces needed a fair bit of research to be any good. Then there was the architectural, musical and anecdotal material – the only way to cope was to schedule posts ahead and have a sort of daily pattern – short serious post – anecdotal – long serious post – artistic – musical – something else.  The downside was that it made things a bit pedantic, a bit inflexible and co-authors couldn’t just post – they’d put in drafts.  If it was time specific, it usually worked out though.

I’d like to free it up and make it more a case of posting if there’s something to say, although there are a hell of a lot of interesting stories to cover.  Anyway, I’ll run things more free form from now on and see how it goes but certain items, e.g. the Friday quiz, should stay the same and music is better in the early evening.  You may have noticed too that the sidebar features posts from all over, changing each week.

All of which was a roundabout way of saying nigh-nigh to Nightcap for now and see you on the morrow.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame and you can call him (although it is) quite in vain because it suits him not to come. Nothing helps, neither threat nor prayer. One man talks well, the other, silent but it’s the other that I prefer. He says nothing, but he pleases me.

Love is a gypsy’s child, it has never known the law; if you love me not, then I love you; if I love you, you’d best beware! If you love me not, if you love me not, then I love you (You’d best beware!)

The bird you hoped to catch beat its wings and flew away … love stays away, you wait and wait; when least expected, there it is! All around you, swift, swift, it comes, goes, then it returns … you think you hold it fast, it flees; you think you’re free, it holds you fast.

Oh, love! Love! Love! Love!

If you have a .com domain name, or other at-risk domain names like .net, you are subject to US domestic laws and jurisdiction. This allows the US government to seize your website or even seek your extradition to USA to stand trial, based on allegations of breaking their laws. You’re also at risk from any mistakes and collateral damage.

But incompetence helps:

Following the raids on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in January, police seized millions of dollars worth of property belonging to the Megaupload founder. But thanks to a police blunder, he could now see all of those assets returned.

On Friday, Justice Judith Potter in the High Court declared the order used to seize Dotcom’s property “null and void” after it was discovered that the police had acted under a court order that should have never been granted.

The error dates back to January when the police applied for the order granting them permission to seize Dotcom’s property. Rather than applying for an interim restraining order, the Police Commissioner applied for a foreign restraining order instead, one which did not give Dotcom a chance to mount a defense.

You win some, you lose some.

If they’re going to make comments about women, then a blog like this is the place to do it, never face-to-face with her, to humiliate her.  Humiliation of the other, face-to-face, is what the weaker person in an argument/discussion does.  Surely no man would fall into the trap of taking a weak position?

Also, rightness or wrongness on a particular topic is only one minor factor in relationships generally.  Looking at the woman in the clip at the end of the link above, her qualities just so outshine any apparent inability to grasp a concept that I fear he doesn’t know the beauty he has on his hands [and I mean her internal beauty].  I fear he’ll try to lord it over her and keep putting things to her he knows she won’t be able to shine in.

And for what?  I’d love to see her get him on the dance floor and make a few moves, then say, “You do that.”  Then: “Oh you can’t?  You dumb slab of meat.”  She never would though because she lacks ego.

Surely, if he loves her, he’d have found out all the things she’s good at and silently noted those she’s not, then in public, say with friends, he’d non-obviously showcase those, say by initiating a discussion where he knows she could shine.  [That should also translate later into a nice night in bed but let's not get too cynical about this.]

The qualities in a woman

Which brings us to the list and the ability to admit she’s wrong, doesn’t know or is not capable has now shot up to N4:

1.  Niceness.  I can’t define it beyond that and every man and woman knows that “nice” women get snapped up and never let go.  You don’t hear from them, you only see them in passing, they’re happy people inside.  Part of “niceness” is a lack of a chip on the shoulder, lack of a sense of self-entitlement, lack of a sense of victimhood, lack of a feminazi mindset, as in “I can do anything you can, you despised man,” plus one more thing.

She is essentially outward-looking, rather than inward.  She’s far more into the person she’s with or her field of interest than in her own cosmetics/mirror-gazing/shopping.  She does enough of those to keep herself looking reasonable but is not narcissistic.

2.  Looks and a brain [combined].  Let’s not lie.  Let’s not be hypocritical here.  As long as she is fortunate enough not to bear a resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster, give or take and as long as she looks after herself and is not obese, nor at the other extreme an anorexic beanpole, then that’s still a pretty broad range and I’m far more likely to judge on N3.

However, brains do affect looks.  I don’t know if the facial muscles move differently or what but a dumb woman actually looks far less beautiful and an intelligent woman can compensate for perhaps a lesser deal in the looks department.  If she’s also “nice”, then who’s complaining?  In fact it’s better that way because you have a treasure that not all perhaps appreciate.

3.  She puts you N1 in her life.  This doesn’t mean she needs to have you there 24/7 or interprets love as having you at her beck and call – she gives you the required space, as you must with her – but it does mean she is faithful and loyal.

Fidelity - this means that you can trust her to go off with ten men from her office and nothing beyond a bit of flirting and repartee would result.  You just know her that way.  Her lack of ego would let her enjoy a space away from you [or do you want her home worshipping you the whole time?] and you need that space too.  Yet you know she never would … and you never would either unless you were an effing idiot and your own ego makes you put it around to confirm your imagined alpha-male status.  Fidelity more often than not comes down to love and that’s an entirely different twenty-post topic I have no intention of getting into.

Loyalty – this is equal to fidelity in my book.  She’ll stick up for you and support you, especially when you’re not present.   Even after we’d broken up, my gf, apparently, would drive her new suitors mad by dropping me into the conversation as an example.  Pity she didn’t see it at the time.  On the other hand, I’ve had partners who weren’t loyal and in a snooker comp once, she was silently cheering for the other guy, an alpha hunk – how could that relationship ever have hoped to continue?  When I realized that, even though she seemed to be faithful, she sure wasn’t loyal and so I lost all interest.

4.  She can admit she’s wrong.  This is so important to find in a woman and until I saw that lady in the clip, I never thought it possible in a female.

I’ve had endless fun seeing women squirm out of having to admit they’re wrong.  The fact that the lady in the clip could admit her inability skyrocketed her upwards in my estimation.  All the women who could never admit it and who shunted responsibility sideways went down in my estimation, though I bet they didn’t know it at the time.  And one remembers those incidents as clear as day.

Her general acceptance of responsibility goes in with this point perhaps.  Responsibility for her words, for example.  How many women take responsibility for their words?

5.  Though the two don’t need to have identical interests, they do need to have a fairly healthy dollop of sympathy with and be concerned with each other’s projects, to care.  I simply won’t put up with a woman expecting me to accompany her shopping, listen to her music, do her things with her [all of which I'm happy to do] but when I would like her joining in with mine, she finds excuses to get out of it.  This is enough for me to walk away these days.

A woman who is so selfish that she wouldn’t even take notice of his achievements can go to hell.  I do have one in mind and it’s the Geelong footballer Jimmy Bartel’s squeeze, Nadia Coppolino.  I see trouble ahead.  Her thing, apparently, is to appear at all the social events as the fashion icon, like Liz Hurley – famous for being famous, whereas he is an outright champion player, having won more awards than you could shake a stick at and last year’s championship was in no small part down to him.

And what does this idiot of a woman say?  She says she doesn’t want to be seen as a WAG and doesn’t know much about what Jimmy does, she’s not all that interested in football.  It doesn’t matter a damn if you are or you are not interested, woman.  The point is that you support him publicly, say you admire him.  Perhaps you said those things to show you were into him as a person, not into his achievements but what you did, in effect, was put him down, disparage his accomplishments and that I can not forgive, nor could many men unless they were being led around by the male member.

6.  She and he have ways of resolving conflicts which don’t turn into slanging matches and don’t involve ultimatums.

7.  They’re not likely to become starcrossed.   The only way I could have become involved with those Russian and French women was that I didn’t mind living on their patch and assimilating.  If both partners stand on their own culture/patch, hoping to get the other into that, then there’s trouble ahead.

This can come down to small things like individual needs, for example she likes a stuffy, hot room in winter and he likes a bit of air to circulate and enable breathing.  She loves to turn into a lobster on the beach, sweating profusely and getting sand into everything and he loves to walk through a snow-laden forest in winter and have a BBQ.   And what if both demand the left side of the bed to sleep on?  That sort of thing.

8.  All the other little aspects that make a person attractive or not.

Here’s the comment I left at the Mail:

People, this is not one where the male/female driver debate is relevant. Russian housing blocks have service roads going around them, connected to others which eventually let you onto the main road. She did what so many Russians do – travelled down the service road to cut through but some idiot had blocked it and you can see that. She tries to turn the care around and go back. You’ll notice that there is a girl in the commentating car too. It really is good natured but then they decide to help the driver – most Russians do have good hearts. Those service roads are not easy to negotiate either.

#   Not a bad day today but a poor one for the shop. A girl [of about 32] gave me a little furry birdy as a present so I’ll treasure that but my meat pie unfortunately was waterlogged and I salvaged what meat I could. Found out today about some council control freakery which requires a post but too tired tonight.

# Got home and neighbour had tonsilitis. Interesting because my assistant/colleague at work came out of hospital today from tonsilitis. Also, two other reports of it came up today. Is there something going on in the UK or is it just me giving people tonsilitis? Tell you what, I have a visitor tomorrow and if he ends up with tonsilitis, I’ll report back to you. For the record, I lost a bit of skin at 8 days, then my tonsils at 5 years and never looked back.

#  There must have been a toddlers’ convention in town – there were so many of them. I said to one mum: “Princess going to the ball, is she?” The kid was done up in full war paint. “She’s already been,” said mum, “and she won a prize.”

The four year old announced: “I’m spectacular and adorable.”  LOL.

When you’ve grown up with such good female role models as I’ve been lucky enough to have, you develop love for the female, not Greer’s version of hate.

The reason I don’t mince words these days is that the modern female role models I see about now are shite – pathetic specimens – and nowhere is this more obvious than with female commentators and politicians.

Hence the fixation, the obsession, somehow trying to reconcile these two disparate models.  If I can find an explanation, if I can reconcile the two, then I can have closure, leave off and get onto other topics to obsess about.  To that end, the solution was to look for “highly respected” females in the game I could quote and any time one of my misogynist mates began with things like, in the area of computer programming:

I have NEVER met a competent female programmer. I’ve heard of them, but never met a single one. The ones I met were all anal box tickers, just like female managers. Make reasonable administrators, but that’s it.

… I could quote this exemplary woman and win the argument.

So I began with Jacqui Oatley which didn’t start well:

To be fair, the main problem there was that she was commentating alone – if she’d had a partner, it may have been better.  Reactions:

Oh god somebody shut her up! Her squealing voice is enough to give anybody a splitting headache!

Think this one’s referring to our Kelli last evening:

Better than the shrieking westie nasally feral rat voiced woman calling the AFL in Australia these past few weeks.

And:

I feel that she was pushed forward, solely as “tokenism” because of her gender. I would guesstimate that there are hundreds of other males who could give a more cogent delivery.

And:

Appalling commentary. Her voice is just plainly annoying. No reflection on her as a person or women in general. There are some terrible male commentators too. The female voice just isn’t suited to commentary.

And:

Since then, Oatley’s television football commentary career has settled into a cyclical pattern. She will commentate on a forgettable mid-table Premier League game on Match of the Day, then a lot of football fans will pile on to message boards and claim it’s the worst thing they’ve ever heard, then one of the middle-market tabloids will run a story on it, then she will go back to doing a few forgettable Championship games on Radio Five Live’s digital station Sports Extra, then the fuss will die down, then she will commentate on another forgettable mid-table Premier League game on Match of the Day, then it all starts again.

A complete Jacqui Oatley cycle takes, on average, about two months to complete.

All right, so she was a bad example and have you noticed that both those mentioned last night were also young female journos who’ve crossed over?  That started me asking why?   Why are the “pioneers” among women such ineffectual people?  Where are the women I admire, of a middling-good age, sexy and yet sane?  The types of women I personally know?  Why aren’t they the ones who trailblazed?  Why tickbox bimbos and rabid feminists?

If you look at women going into a new field, perhaps one dominated by men for so long, surely you’d send in erudite, respectful, quiet, charismatic, knowledgeable women.  If you needed a respected couple to be able to perpetuate the Royal Family, you’d send in a Wills and Kate, rather than a Charles and Camilla.  If you wanted a girl to trailblaze round-the-world voyages, you’d send a girl with the resolve of a Laura Dekker, the organization of a Jessica Watson and the charm of an Abby Sutherland.

You do see where this is going?  I’d certainly not put in someone almost guaranteed to cause negative reaction and division.  The whole topic was looked at by Georgina Turner at The Guardian and allowing for her gender bias and Guardianisti leftism, might still have a point or two to make.  She said:

If, a good 12 years after Gabby Logan hosted ITV’s revived On the Ball, and three years after Jacqui Oatley‘s first stint on Match of the Day caused such uproar, the question is still being asked, we might as well get our chops around the damn thing and give it a good chew.

She dismissed the notion that you must have played the sport at elite level, quoting many commentators of note who hadn’t, with the possible exception of snooker and then addressed the men who really are seen by male and female in the community as authoritative:

What puts these chaps to the forefront of the profession is their enthusiasm and knowledge, their passionate articulation of the drama and details of live sport, their good humour, the metre of their delivery – which in Arlott’s case was indistinguishable from poetry at times.

Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder, who’s spent the past 50 or 60 years listening to men talking about men. And women for that matter. In order to be taken seriously by some viewers, female sports commentators must match the incumbents without straying too far towards imitation, at the same time as their differences and idiosyncrasies are not celebrated.

That was a pretty good take really.  Just voice alone is a factor, of course – women do get shrill when excited and too often try to emulate men commentators, whilst lacking the X factor some of these men have, the urbanity perhaps, the charisma.    I don’t even think shrillness is a problem if her voice is cultured but these are often chavs, hard-nosed little madams and when they get shrill, they sound appallingly gauche and uncultured.

Yes, of course there are so many bad men commentators too, no one’s disputing that.   However if 90% of commentators are men and if 70% of those are awful, that still leaves 37% of commentators, all up, OK.  How many women are there?  Gabby Logan and perhaps one or two others.

Here’s the appropriately named “Gabby” Logan who’s clearly kissed the Blarney Stone:

Did you notice how many words those two guys got in sideways?

I thought perhaps I really was looking at the wrong demographic, that it would be better to look at the older woman, the journo who’d been at it for decades.  Georgina above says as much – that when women have been in the game for as long and have carved out their own personality, their own intellectual capital in this, then there’ll be acceptance.  So the solution was for me to find one such woman.

Downunder, the only one fitting the bill was Caroline Wilson, senior football writer for major daily, The Age.  Experienced, erudite, not bad looking, an altogether different kettle of fish to Jacqui, Sammy and Kelli and her lithp is cute.  So I started researching her but again, soon it didn’t look good:

Using Caroline Wilson is a poor example as well.  She regularly shows disregard for the private lives of people involved in AFL and their families (eg. writing a story about Terry Wallace’s teenage son), peddles unsubstantiated rumours (eg. her story that Mark Thompson had an affair with then Cats captain Stephen King’s wife) and sees to have an agenda against several teams, most notably North Melbourne where the amount of hyperbole about their financial trouble and speculation about them relocation sometimes strays into Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin territory.  Wilson can dish out a whole lot of criticism and have no moral compass, but can’t take it when she is criticised by others with no moral compass (Footy Show).

This seems Rebekah Brooks territory in UK terms.  OK, there was nothing for it but to read some of her material and listen/watch her live.  I saw a few youtube clips and then this came up:

The issue is of no consequence to either you or me but the host [one of the chief execs of the Melbourne Football club] and a panellist [the ex-manager of St Kilda] laid into Wilson on air over an accusation she’d made about one of the club presidents.  She’d written in her column that this president had broken his promise over the team travelling interstate.

What was of consequence was the hidden agenda of those men, her own constant campaign against that particular club  for some reason and the way she handled this assault now.  Unfortunately, they ambushed her in a way I would have done.  They’d found footage which directly contradicted her claim and it was unarguable.  She’d made an error.

She was rabbiting on, speaking of what “the footy community believed” as if she knew and generally trying to justify herself.  They laughed and said, “Well we can solve this very easily.  Will you go on the Footy Show and debate this with [the president], face to face?”

“No,” she said, “I don’t go on that show.”

“OK,” they said, “we’ll get him to come on here and you can debate it here.”

She refused, by saying something weird like, “Mohammed coming to the mountain,” the host looked at the viewers and said, “We need a break, what are we dealing with [here]?”

The woman lost everyone.  Worse than that, she lost, to women in general in that country, many of the advances they’d made.

Decades of experience in journalism was apparently not enough for this woman.  The problem was partly her lack of knowledge, partly the womanly way she tried to counter them, partly her not even understanding that these guys take no prisoners with each other and if she is purportedly equal, they’ll do the same with her.

She came back for a second show, as she must in her capacity of a Chief Football writer for The Age and this time they really went for her:

The questioner, himself a sensationalist, a bit of a buffoon but a popular one who often got it wrong and hadn’t played the game at AFL level but actually could play, as he showed one charity match, knew fullwell she had a vendetta mind, that being a woman, she could never admit she was wrong and they simply didn’t like the way she politicked with players’ and officials’ lives, seemingly without being interested in the game itself or the people in it.

If she’d been the skilled operator she liked to make out, she’d possibly have answered the criticism with a  self-deprecating smile and something like: “Well yes, Hutcho, you got me there but [that club president] did actually say the things I’ve accused him of and here is the evidence – 1. on December 22nd, he said, at the club dinner …….” and so on.

Now, if she’d done that, she’d have called the bluff of those men and struck a blow for women in commentating but what did she do?  She tried to redefine the word “president” as “the club” [semantics], tried the old “you can say that all you like and you can show me a lot of things” but when pinned by the raw evidence of the clip and unable to deflect her interrogator, she appealed for protection from the host [special pleading]:

“Let’s not make this The Footy Show versus Caroline Wilson.”

That president they were arguing about happened to be the co-host of The Footy Show.

She was yet another bad example.  So where are the good ones?  I know they have to exist.

Is this the pool we should draw from?

Even if case studies and details are on one’s side, still – I don’t like myself like this, don’t feel good inside. I’ve made many resolutions not to get into it again, to let it go by, not unlike an alcoholic giving up the juice but certain friends are naughty and send things such as this blogpost by someone called Katie and it’s so moronic that I knew I was gone.

I tried, Lord knows I tried.  I tried to resist commenting, I chewed on my typing fingers for minutes and beat my head against the screen but it was no use, the temptation was too much.

Katie wrote:

This industry [IT] is one of subtle sexism. I almost prefer outright sexism, because at least that you can point out. The subtle barbs are usually dismissed as something I need to not care about. It was a joke! Sheesh. Why are you so sensitive?! All I did was make a joke about you needing to be in the kitchen!  Lighten up!

I replied at her place, before she closed off all the hurtful comments:

Katie, with the greatest sympathy in the world, you really do need to lighten up a bit. The world is not out to get you. Well, actually, it is but not for the reasons stated.  Try being in an oppressed demographic, e.g. the older male and you’ll learn what real negative discrimination is.   It’s not just one’s colleagues, it’s the state too.

A feminist came in and wrote:

I’d like to hear a man who has ever been raped to say “lighten up”. It’s not about the sex, it’s about being objectified. Such men should try simply try to walk in our shoes – but they can’t.

To which someone wrote:

When you ask everyone to change their normal behavior to suit you.. you are asking for special treatment, not equality.

Another wrote:

If you’re in a team with no taboos where people joke about each other’s religion, clothing, weight, odd habits, sexual orientation – then I think you should just suck it up or leave rather than try changing the culture or making gender the only taboo.

There’s much sense in that.

In any all-male environment, particularly if these are alpha males, you’re going to get mercilessly ribbed and if you can’t take it, you only get more.  In this clip of life inside the club for AFL champions Geelong, someone gave the nickname Tiny to star forward, known playboy, ravisher of women and [on good authority] medium-sized pekker owner Steve Johnson [check the size of his hands].

It was picked up and everyone started calling him that.  At 2:23 of the clip, he tries to refute it on camera and immediately sentences himself to being given the nickname permanently, which is what happened.  If he’d laughed it off, it would have died away in a few weeks.  As it turned out, it went international on youtube and now everyone knows he’s called Tiny, including the girls.  You now know it too.  So there’s a lesson in there.

It’s also utter stupidity to try to alter the alpha male because then he would no longer be the alpha male and wouldn’t have the edge any more to be able to achieve the things he does.  Katie wrote of how everyone was so mean, hurtful and demeaning to her.  Another woman wrote in and said she’d had no problems in an all male environment. Now there have to be lessons in that as well but what are they?

It was reading about this woman who’s just spent $40k having her legs lengthened, it all went wrong and now she’s in hiding, which made the penny drop.  It’s about trying to be something you’re not, not being satisfied within the constraints of what you are capable of.  I’d suggest this is different to a ne’er-say-die attitude in trying to achieve some goal, e.g. sailing around the world and I think most people got behind Jessica and Laura.  This is about going into something which has no good purpose and what’s more, is doomed from the start because it simply doesn’t wash.

At that point, I left the topic and watched a clip of some football, admiring one of the players and suddenly my ears were assaulted by this – just listen to as much of her as your ears can take.  Apparently she took over the microphone in that clip and wouldn’t give it back.   LOL – I do admire her for that and she doesn’t look half bad.  Who the hell was she?

After discovering that she was one Kelli Underwood [pic to the left], it seemed she’d been on the receiving end of some pretty universal disdain concerning her future as a football commentator.

Men can be cruel but are usually straight down the line in summing someone up and here’s a sample of what was said about her: “Great game ruined by painful commentary,”  “Someone f***ing shoot her,”  “Someone call an exorcist,” “i wanna watch this, but i cant because kelli underwood has just raped my ears!”, “There’s one thing Kelli’s mouth is for and it ain’t commentating,” “Exterminate,” and yet another was: “I hope Channel 10  do not continue with this horrible social experiment.”

A few of the guys were even rude to her but I won’t post those.   And what did her sisterhood think?

Kelli Underwood is absolutely annoying beyond belief.   Please don’t spoil the finals by having this idiotic creature commentating.   It’s enough to make your ears bleed !!

LOL.  Seems she lasted a few more weeks.

Once more I left off the topic and watched the captain of the club I like interviewed on a panel show and there, lo and behold, was another female right beside him, asking questions and she seemed out of her depth, asking things mechanically, trying to get in on the discussion but lacking the background to ask anything incisive.

For some reason though, no one seemed to mind this one and I quite liked her too – she seemed nice enough so why not?  Actually, I really liked her.  The footballer accords her respect in the clip.  Now what on earth was OK with her and not with the first one, apart from the voice?  Why be prejudiced against the previous one but tolerant of the latter?  I did some research and both are spoken of as airheads.  The one we like is the daughter of a longtime TV commentator and the one we detest did it herself, so surely that should be admired?

Then the penny dropped again, later confirmed by many forum comments on the web.  The tenor of the comments about Kelli Underwood was that the TV station wanted to curry favour with this women’s quota thingy, there was much talk of PCism, they appointed her over the heads of many far more knowledgeable about the game and so this was not unlike the parachutee issue again – entirely the wrong person was appointed, wrong temperament, wrong voice, out of her area [journalism] and ambitious to strike a blow for womanhood.

Worse than that, any criticism of her was immediately attacked as misogynist and wishing to hold back the advance of women.  Not surprisingly, this fuelled even greater resentment of her and there were tales of the men trying to keep the mike from her to stop her embarrassing the crew but she’d seize it and force her comments on the public, uttering swotted up platitudes and getting details wrong.

So in the end, it was the ideological reason she was appointed and the bringing of politics into sport, her own behaviour and that voice which did for her.  They terminated her contract and sent her back to special comments from the boundary line.

There was a forum on what I thought was a legit question – how come, in a field where about half the dedicated followers are female, quite knowledgeable ones at that, were females so under-represented in commentary?

Two answers were given.  One man said that the commentators had played the game or had been intimately associated with it for a decade or more and had then moved into commentary.  Any female comes in sideways and by definition, has never been part of that locker room thing.  Samantha Lane [the one most like - pic right], accepts that and doesn’t try to be what she’s not, even though her father has been integrally involved for decades and she’d probably know a lot about it from him.

I hate to say it but she knows her place or at least where she “naturally” is on the ladder at this time.

The second point was made by a woman.  She said that women can excel in journalism and even on football panels [such as the one Samantha Lane was on] but in a commentary box, when females get excited [remember this is a woman saying this], they get shrill, their voices become hard and they become difficult to listen to.  She pointed to Kelli Underwood.

One gallant man named quite a few men whose voices also grated and I’d have to agree – there are two in particular I can’t bear but equally, that woman did have a point.  Someone else said the issue was that Kelli Underwood was not happy to be a girl looking for acceptance in a man’s world but was trying to out-boy the boys herself, aggressively pushing her RIGHT to be there.  There’s another appalling creature as well who’s tried the same thing on apparently and was roundly given the cold shoulder by men and women alike.

That appears to be the difference.  Lane is willing to walk before she runs, to earn her place on the way up [her Dad admittedly having given her the intro], it’s quite apparent in that clip that she’s liked and none of those males have any issue with her.  Personally, I find her quite pleasant to look at too and she obviously loves the game.  So why not?

Which brings me back again to the original point – don’t try to be something you’re not, which it’s impossible for you to be.  Also, be willing to learn the ropes and come up the way everyone else has to.

Finally, I think there’s a time and a place for each and every thing but when you are out of place, out of time, it simply doesn’t wash.

Aviation officials have questioned the need for such a strong permanent police presence at airports, suggesting they were there simply “to make the government look tough on terror”. One senior executive said in his experience, the officers were expensive window-dressing.

“When you add the body scanners, the ritual humiliation of old ladies with knitting needles and the farcical air marshals, it all adds up to billions of dollars to prevent what? A politician being called soft on terror, that’s what,” he said.

# So, the poisoned dwarf hijacked the Queen’s speech to bang on about effing gay effing rights, did he? I say well done and I’d like to see everything interrupted by gay rights. For example, let’s have Corrie or East Enders or whatever tele watchers watch suddenly interrupted by 30 seconds of two butch lesbians or Elton John and his mate snogging, with a voiceover at the end: “Be compassionate to gays and lesbians. Give today.” That should do the trick.

And why stop there, let’s have sides of buses daubed with “God is dead” on one side and a ginormous picture of anal sex between two ugly men, with the window conveniently obscuring the nasty bits and in huge letters; “Your child can go this way too. This is kaleidoscope Britain – full steam ahead.”

Yes, I can see it now. Or government inspectors interviewing all 5 year olds about their attitude to gay rights. Should go down a treat with the community.

Urban Dictionary on “berk” – could have been made for TPD:

An idiot. Similar in tone to ‘prat’, ‘prick’, ‘twat’ or similar. Originally from the rhyming slang ‘Berkeley Hunt’.

#  Quite funny at AKH: Dogs 1 Cats 0

#  Not funny at all – Ana brings us this gruesome story from Islamland: My Life as a a Dog:

Amina Filali was a sixteen-year-old Moroccan girl. I say was because she is now dead. She killed herself last weekend in a particularly horrible manner – she swallowed rat poison. Why? Because she had suffered a double violation: she was raped by a man and then raped by the law of her land. She was forced to marry her violator.

Under Article 475 of Morocco’s Islamic penal code, a rapist, even the rapist of a minor, can escape prosecution if he agrees to marry his victim. It’s a way, you see, of preserving the ‘honour’ of the violated woman’s family.

#  Venereal equiknocks today.

#  And that birdman again [H/T haiku]:

If you accept perfect equality, then logically you treat everyone equally.  Men generally only wind one another up to a point because if a man challenges the other’s honour in a way which can’t be run away from, there’ll be violence.  I don’t think it needs to be either condemned or condoned – it’s just men.

Men have always held back from a real fight.  Then they’ll glass someone, thump him in the solar plexus or whatever and it’s often over quickly but there aren’t all that many I know who’d go for the crown jewels.  It doesn’t sit well with the other guys.   What worries me about today is that, with women coming on as if they’re big, tough, kickbutt men, they are in danger of being taken at face value.  If a man does cross that taboo line, goes for broke and starts laying into the woman as he would with a man, it’s not going to last very long.

The very thought of it horrifies me.  Touching a woman in anger is so anathema, so impossible to get the head round that I think I’d rather be beaten up by a woman or even get the hell out of the house than do that to her.

I’ve only ever had two genuine fights with males [apart from the rugby, which was one long fight] and I was in severe trouble for one of them with the PTB.  Moderation in war is imbecility and if you’re going to do it, then there’s no turning back – it’s done totally.  Better not to do it.

All I was ever able to do with women who got physical in a negative way [there were two of these in my life, some decades apart] was put them in full nelsons until they agreed to stop being so immature.  There were two incidents though which I still haven’t got over, the second still haunting me today.

The first was WN2 who was quite sporty and played women’s rugby, so it was always possible she’d go the physical route.  She did suddenly come at me one afternoon just inside the bedroom and there was nothing for it but to pick her up and sling her onto the bed because we had two continental pillows there.  She was so shocked I’d done that that it ended whatever she’d had in mind for the day.  She accused me the next day of bruising her arms but that was BS – I’d just lifted her up and thrown her.  I made a mental note never to let her provoke me to that point again.

The second was my gf who was wont to lash out with her feet or pummel my arms if she was displeased but that wasn’t the incident.  It actually happened on a boat cruise.  She was so incensed by something [she was always incensed about something] that she surprised me by lashing out at the face in a slap, something she’d never done before.  Unfortunately, I have an auto-response and before I even knew it, she’d got one across her cheek in return and yes, she did actually say, “You hit me,” as she strategically withdrew to assess and presumably regroup.

With both of those, it was always very physical anyway – everything was physical and that was fine by me – it somehow gave them reassurance and neither of them would have ever pulled the PC feminist thing of having me charged because, despite the above, they were always honest and fair.  They knew very well they’d started it – both were Eastern European too.

This I feel was the situation with Rula Lenska although looking at her, she seems much softer than my two who were hard little madams.  I don’t know if I can make the distinction and am not trying to exonerate myself but I do see a difference between a slap or a throw onto the bed … and a punch.  A punch is so much a male-male thing that it has zero place with a woman.  It’s obviously played on Denis Waterman’s mind too, otherwise he’d never have come out with something which was going to damn him forever.

What bugs me is the double standard.  Are we judging by the rules of chivalry, in which case this was almost unforgivable or are we judging by egalitarian rules where we take women at their word, in which case, just as men usually get over something like this by the next day, so they’d expect this also to be an end to the case as well.

Did you read Christine Odone though?  She was almost hysterical in her expletives over Waterman.

A commenter reminded her that Waterman was, in fact, confessing something he didn’t need to.  Rula Lenska reportedly felt closure from his admission.  Again, not condoning him in the least but which criterion was this being judged by – the laws of chivalry or the laws of the modern world?  He also runs the risk now of being well-nigh unemployable.

I believe that the State should butt out of it and let the police just police normally.   I don’t accept in this equality BS to the point where if the lady gets a bit physical, the man should go off crying to Plod.  I mean, that’s just wimpish.  On the other hand, she needs to know the limits and often doesn’t.  He stores it up and stores it up and then it suddenly comes out.  For me, that’s the greatest test for a man – to have the self-control not to lose it with her.  I believe that if you can keep your self-control in that situation, then whatever the argument was anyway, you have the upper hand.

It seems to me that what she really wants is to be listened to in the first place, for her opinion to be heard and respected and the rest follows from that.  As her opinions are usually 24/7 from the moment of waking up to the moment of going to sleep, it can get a bit overwhelming and I could never remember points 27 and 54 when she was already onto point 128.  Every man has his coping mechanism for this womanism – some just repeat “yes dear, yes dear”, others try to talk it out but then she’s off on some other tangent.  The man who solves this one is going to make a mint.

#  Lovely tribute to Jim Styne’s wife Sam and her account of how she changed as a person to meet the tragedy which saw him die of cancer yesterday [it was in last evening's Nightcap].  It’s in such detail and her words are while she was still under that stress, that I found it a rivetting read.

If there’s a G-d, then let him now give her strength but I suspect she’ll need to ask for it first.

#  In completely different news, Sarkozy is heading for defeat and needs an issue he can be a hero over.  Something has to come up, anything, so he can pull the rabbit out of the hat and be the hero to all French.  It just needs a bete noir.

#  In completely different news, Cameron is heading for defeat and needs an issue he feels the community will support him on.  Now, who could be an irrelevant minority with official power out of all proportion to their official numbers?  Hmmmm.  And what issue could he get behind?

#  In completely different news, the globalist project is stalling and the crash is being temporarily held off, on the basis that no one wants it.  It needs a sideshow like a war to paper up the cracks or rather, the gaping chasms.  By an amazing cooincidence, certain things have now happened which have got the three major religions up in arms and the public thoroughly sick and tired of all this “religion”.  Who will rid them of these turbulent priests?

………..

Late addition:  Jim Stynes has died.

That won’t mean anything to those who weren’t in Australia for some years.  An Irish footballer, he was brought to Australia as part of an experiment and played a role for AFL club Melbourne.  After a rocky start, he played 244 games on the trot and won the best and fairest medal in the sport.

The club itself was on the skids when he took over as President and turned it round but he was then diagnosed as having cancer.  He fought it for a few years, inspired a lot of people but today [or last evening] finally succumbed, with family at his side.

I met him twice, once when he was running a training clinic for kids and asked me to tackle him.  Let me check his stats – 199cm and 99kg.  Wasn’t an issue as it had been my role in rugby earlier but he was still a big lad, I recall.

Vale to the gentle giant.

#  A pox upon ‘im. Sunday is a day of rest:

Osborne to announce Sunday trading changes

#  LOL – young female journo goes on about bias against women in boardrooms, speaks of “smashing through the glass ceiling” [groan], most significant part is that following her verbiage, the Telegraph allows no comments.

Wonder why not?

#  Well, well, well and what have we here?  Would you take my word for it that my original draft on the Williams’ resignation, at that time not knowing about Sentamu, said things like: “Just watch the bstds appoint another socialist liberal, then I found out about Sentamu and wrote the post I did.

Imagine my shock when I just read now:

The source added that the liberal Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, 61, was ‘very competent and a safe pair of hands’.  The anonymous briefings will enrage  supporters of Dr Sentamu, who believe the Church needs a charismatic, plain-speaking leader who would take on the Government over such issues as gay marriage.

#  The Nigella-Saatchi photo started a range of emotions,  – hey, here was actual love.  Then it became annoyance over his championing of greed, then chuckling over his sticking it up social engineers and modern art, then when the memory was jogged by a commenter that it was Saatchi who sponsored  “degenerates like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst”, it turned to disgust and when I read “Saatchi was sniffing around  Nigella while her poor departed husband, John Diamond, was still alive”, it was time to leave this pair.

Oh hang on: “Ms Lawson, what first attracted you to multi-millionaire Mr Saatchi?”

#  My goodness – Italy has a new mountain and not only that, it’s apparently erupting!!

Italy’s Mount Enta erupts

Hmmm – was this actually the Tleegrahp with sub-editing like that?

# There’s something exquisite about our national bitching, don’t you think, this time about Harry:

Commenter 1: Perhaps dating girls with names like “Chelsy” and “Flee” is part of the problem? We all remember Andy and “Koo” don’t we? No repeats of that needed, thank you very much!

Commenter 2: Try a “Mavis”, a “Vera,” or an “Ethel,” Harry!

Commenter 3: Forgive me, but I don’t think there are too many young people about these days with such names. Mavis, Vera, and Ethel belong to another age.

Commenter 4: No they don’t: they’re bang-up-to-the-minute – but unfortunately they’re all aged about 4.

LOL – it’s dangerous to take oneself too seriously in this country.

Woman soldier who was struggling to cope with working 80-hour weeks hanged herself in her barracks after scrawling ‘I’m sorry’ in lipstick on mirror

It’s stupidity, it really is.  I mean, well done to the ladies for having the spirit to try to be equal and the same but the simple fact is – they’re not:

Neither of the people in this photo were out of place, it wasn’t contrived, they are both in the demographic which would be accepted by the armed forces and both are in good condition.   Look at his bulk and stamina and then look at hers.  For a start she’s lugging two things about on her chest and the whole body lacks vital inches and hardness.  For crying out loud, it’s not even built for that.

The feminazis have much to answer for, filling these girls’ heads with this utter bollox about being able to do anything a man can.  Does he claim he can give birth?  Does he claim he can stand with one knee forward and both feet flat on the ground?  Can he contort as she can?  They’re just different species.

Months ago, I ran a series of vids by Christie O, a search and rescue officer and she was scathing about it.  In one of these [below], she spoke of the hypocritically false entry standards demanded of women compared to the men.  When they eventually must stand side by side in combat, as she pointed out, only a small portion of the women were going to be able to last the distance.

Well, you should have seen the feminazi reaction – she was “betraying her sex”, she was a “female misogynist” she was this and that. No she effing well wasn’t, you morons – she was a realistic lady whom you could admire and the men did respect for knowing her limits which happened to be quite high and only some way below the men’s.

If any one was qualified to speak on this matter, surely it was her.

When will the rabid harpies from Greer to Harman and all those in between finally be stopped from doing the damage they’re doing to women’s minds? Femininity has gone, decency has gone, realism has gone and what’s in its place? Some grotesque demi-man in female form. And you should see her vid on slut walks – she minces no words.

Common sense, a sense of proportion, a happiness to be what you are and not attempt to be what you’re not – when will these once more be with us?

# I said today at work – I want one penny for every glass of Guinness drunk tonight around the world.

# Mother’s Day – every kid who came into the shop with his mother, I asked today – have you got the breakfast in bed organized for mum tomorrow? Well, you’ve got the present organized, no?

I’ll not be doing a post on it* because it’s a bit tricky, emotionally on the one hand and on the other, I feel such anger at how mothers are acting today in so much of society – it wouldn’t avail to run a post on that.

* Correction as of 09:58 Sunday – I have to do a post on it, damn it.  How can I go by without praising mothers?

# Had a hellish time getting home this evening and many tales. Basically it was about cancelled trains – exactly the ones which had to be running to make the connection with others [they could happily cancel the one before and after].   At one stage I finally reached the junction station and saw it was going to be a long wait.

Now how can I put this delicately without offending the locals? What’s the most polite thing I can say? They’re the salt of the earth? They’re quite … um … earthy, particularly when carrying cartons of lager onto the platform and proceeding to demolish same, shouting and screaming at anyone within range? That they’re unshaven, in tracksuit trousers and a credit to their hoodies?  That actually buying a train ticket is something only those who consider themselves part of society bother with?

Standing by themselves in the middle of this swirling mass of very angry and well-fuelled localhood which had already been two hours trying to get home, stood The Southerners. Maybe they weren’t actually from Surrey, maybe they were from some other well-off neck of the woods but the moment I saw him in his pale-striped business shirt, jacket and polished shoes, daringly sans cravat, her in her “going out for a Paddy’s Day meal” outfit and however the English might be one big happy family, all class distinctions and north-south divide now forgotten between friends, these two were clearly in some danger, as the locals’ mood was a tad strange at this time.

How the hell they’d got there I don’t know but they were trying to get to another city where they had a dinner reservation and had just cancelled it by smartphone. It was not unlike a couple from Orange County finding themselves in Downtown LA.    I went up to them and my lack of local brogue had her smiling with relief – it was clear they were too beautifully spoken and most uncomfortable.   I said I’d ask the enforcement boys.

One of them told me the mayhem was over and the trains were now going through, I told my new pals and he phoned to try to rebook but management had given their table away within five minutes, I suggested a couple of places in the city I’d just come from and it seems that that was where they were originally from and probably should have been at this time.

Meanwhile, there was a lady also stranded who turned out to be a deputy-head teacher and she had many interesting tales to tell about the current situation on education from the inside, which would suit another post.

Not many stops from the final destination, a local couple told me of how they’d been trapped in the tunnel for an hour, they’d begun the journey just after four and it was now approaching seven.   I  got home and had a look to see if it was on the news. Not a sausage, which goes to show how blasé we’ve all become about train breakdowns and Londoners in particular must be well-used to these sorts of conditions, the poor wretches – it must be awful living in London.  Perhaps we should send them food parcels?

Now I did have something to add on a different topic but that would make this post too long, so it will go into another “the eleventh” hour to follow this.  Bear with me.

In a dark street bordering a cemetery in Mexico, a guy rigged a remote controlled motorbike with a skeleton driving the bike that has a speaker attached to it. The guy hides across the street from a walled cemetery and when people walk by it at night, the skeleton rides up quietly on his motor bike and the guy across the street is talking thru the speaker while operating the remote control for the bike. (It has training wheels on it).  Click link for the WMV:

Cementerio

# Athletic Bilbao 2 Manchester United 1, agg 5-3 Manchester City 3 Sporting Lisbon 2; agg 3-3

Let’s face it – English clubs are not up to it any more. They’re heavily into huge payouts, cushy conditions and poor attitudes. Time and again this has been shown.

#  Boris: “What we need to do is to overcome our natural British reserve and be a little bit more like the Australians.”

Wot, like this?

Yeah, right. Way to go.

#  Curses – missed Pi Day!

#  Julia M on the joy of giving:

[Lord Mayor] Brookshaw said that when visiting a woman on her 100th birthday he had been forced to choose between giving her flowers or a card.

*&^%$&* f*$£@&ed b&^st*@$d!

Think that’s worth blogging about, people.

#  Cherie has gone all K9 with her doggy-talk:

1.  Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be;
2.  Pure Ecstasy;
3.  Take naps;
4.  Stretch before rising;
5.  Run, romp, and play daily;
6.  Thrive on attention;
7.   Let people touch you.

Barring N7, they all seem reasonable.   N7 – no way, José!

#  Longrider quotes a fool, Arwa Mahdawi:

It is beyond question that every industry should be aiming for a workforce that is inclusive, non-discriminatory and accurately reflects the demographics of its market.

He responds:

No, no, no! Every industry should be aiming for a workforce that is competent and meets the needs of its customers.

Just don’t get it, do they?

Why is it whenever I see something like this, the word “deport” wafts through the mind?  Why do I feel a certain annoyance with these people?  Why do I feel a certain annoyance with people who try to equate and conflate this lot with Christianity?

#  Daniel has changed home.  Please adjust your blogrolls.

#  Perry de Havilland:

Ineptocracy – A new word for our times  (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy)* – A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.