Yet another new blog

This is what strip mining looks like on Earth. Vast areas of the planet, especially in Russia, Africa and the United States, have already been laid waste in order to dig out metals. But of course resources are finite. And human beings, resourceful as ever, are looking to the skies. Having devastated Planet Earth, man is now moving on to other planets. The worst news I've read in the past few weeks is that the exploration of Mars is not for any purely scientific reason. Nobody cares if there's microscopic life there, but if there's water it will make mining the Red Planet that much easier. It will all be remotely done. No need to risk the lives of human beings at all. Just fly in the machines, set them up remotely, dig away, load the stuff up and transport it back to Earth. That way, we can keep on running our inefficient power stations, producing cars and trucks that go on spewing contamination into Earth's atmosphere. But we'll be able to power up our m

The BBC have requested that Youtube take down two pro-independence websites - and they have done it. Maybe they've asked for more pro-independence channels to be taken down. Maybe they've asked for loads of non -independence Youtube channels to be taken down. Maybe I'm paranoid - me and the other (roughly) 48% of the population of Scotland who are in favour of independence. Who knows what the complaints are against either of the channels I know about - or anyone else - since no one has any information about what's going on? Is it to do with copyright, as the manager of one channel supposes? Who can tell? I'm sure I don't need to remind you that we (the taxpayers) actually own the BBC and have little choice but to pay for its services, even if we don't want - or like - them. You can end up with a criminal record if you fail to pay the BBC licence fee and if you want to know the BBC's place in the UK establishment for me that says it all. I would g

At some point in every 'emergency' caused by the weather, I find myself raging at the TV or radio: It's weather - just weather! I've spent more hours than I care to think about waiting for planes stuck at another airport due to bad weather to get to me. I've seen boats nearly reach the pier and then turn back without taking passengers away because it was too dangerous. I've been on planes diverted from Glasgow due to fog, so that I flew over my house on the way to Prestwick but knew I still had to get a bus up to Glasgow International because that's where my car was. So today, just a few months after the frozen horror of the Beast from the East, we have life being disrupted by an unexpected heatwave. Passengers waiting to board trains at Eurotunnel and flights at Standsted airport are put to great inconvenience. The usual cries go up: why don't they have more staff on duty? Because you can't conjure staff out of thin air, that's why. And if

Here are my first and last words to hackers who want to infiltrate my phone, tablet and desktop computer. Hack away, people. There is nothing - I promise you, nothing - on my IT platforms of any interest to hackers. Stop sending us all messages via Facebook and twitter that the hackers are out to get us. Frankly, if people are so daft they can be persuaded to give up their bank account numbers - or whatever the hell it is hackers want - then hell mend them. You want my friends list? Just ask me. For a fairly sizeable sum, I'll provide access to the 375 people on my list. At the moment, all you're doing is pissing me off and wasting my time.

I kinda listened to your resignation speech in 'The House' today. I'm sure your friends were impressed. In fact, I saw a couple of them patting your shoulder in support. Me - meh - not so much. I'm one of the people who have sussed you out, Boris. You're an ass. Or an arse. Suit yourself. Not a word that comes out of your mouth can be relied on. You are likely to contradict what you said today, either tomorrow or next week. But contradict yourself you surely will. Because that's just how you are. You're not in politics to serve the people. You're serving Boris. And you'll say whatever suits you. The big difficulty is that what the UK really needs right now is not arseholes who have bluffed their way through two years - two years, Boris! - since the EU Referendum and still haven't been able to come up with a plan. They need leaders. Treeza doesn't fit that category. She's the Tory Party's bouc émissaire . And they'll dump her

I picked this up on the internet yesterday:  The old man took his cattle up the hill that morning in December 1991, because that’s what he did every day, rain or shine, winter or summer. He took his cattle  up the hill that morning, and he never came back. A handful of men in police uniforms arrested him. Whether or not they were legally police officers was moot, and it was also irrelevant: round these parts, power came from the barrel of a gun, not from a piece of paper. The man’s crime was the same crime it always is in places riven by sectarianism: not being one of them. Being the other. Being the enemy. His crime was nothing he’d done: it was who he was. He was Croatian, they were Serbian. That was all there was to it. The men took him and a few others to the nearby village of Jesenice, and there they were executed. The old man left behind a family whom he loved and who loved him: none more so than his six-year-old grandson with whom he shared a name and from whom he had

In my family, we teach the kids to talk about passing wind as 'trumping' so they avoid the word fart. So I start off prejudiced against him. Not that that's my only reason. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/12/how-the-bbc-lost-the-plot-on-brexit/ Welcome  ( sign in  |  sign up )   Advanced Search Subscribe Current Issue NYR Daily Calendar Archive Classifieds Shop Newsletters EMAIL PRINT How the BBC Lost the Plot on Brexit Nick Cohen Late last year, BBC executives had the nerve  to erect a bronze statue  of George Orwell outside its headquarters in central London. The sculptor caught Orwell’s spikiness. He stands one hand on hip, the other pointing forward with a cigarette between his fingers, as if caught in mid-argument. Carved into the wall behind him is the journalistic motto that Orwell and the BBC wanted us to learn: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to te

Just an idle question... I caught an ad on TV tonight by a company that sells sanitary products. The ad was built round the issue of period poverty and was looking for donations - presumably from girls and women who buy these products - to help girls and women who can't afford them. My question is: what's the profit margin on these products? I don't expect the company to sell products at a loss, but is there no room for the business to cut their profits by a small amount and use the surplus to provide sanitary goods for poor girls and women? Maybe through schools, food banks, doctors' surgeries, etc. In the days when I had to buy sanitary products, I was always amazed at how much they cost. It seems to be like this for many products aimed at women. Not just perfume and make-up but pink razors come to mind: there's a price to be paid for being female, at least in the eyes of some manufacturers. And if we just accept this, hell mend us.

My kitchen radio is set to Radio 4. It's a tricky little booger and I canny be bothered trying to reset it every time I hear something I don't like (which is often) so I just leave it and leap for the off switch when it gets really annoying. A few weeks back, I was emptying the dishwasher and put on the radio, to hear two men discussing why teachers at state schools (obviously in England - or was it England and Wales - I never know which services are devolved these days - mainly because mainstream media fail to make it clear) don't encourage young people to apply for places in Oxford and Cambridge. The discussion was honestly bizarre: it was as if the only universities worth applying to were those two. These was no mention of any others - and there are surely quite a few universities that are not Oxford and Cambridge, some of which are excellent places to study, do well in the world league tables of universities - and are quite hard to get into. It was clear the two men