The Human Condition As Understood By The British

BRITISH NEWSPAPERS

Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, “We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.”
(The Daily Telegraph)

Police reveal that a woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole salami in her underwear. When asked why, she said it was because she was missing her Italian boyfriend.
(The Manchester Evening News)

Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van, because they cannot issue a description. It’s a Special Branch vehicle and they don’t want the public to know what it looks like.
(The Guardian)

A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard spokesman commented, “This sort of thing is all too common”.
(The Times)

At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coast guard and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied he was sorry, but he didn’t have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff.
(Aberdeen Evening Express)

Mrs. Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she recalled -
“He’d always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out ‘Heil Hitler.’”
(Bournemouth Evening Echo)

HEARD ON THE LONDON UNDERGOUND TUBE

A list of actual announcements that London Tube train drivers have made to their passengers…

1) “Ladies and Gentlemen, I do apologize for the delay to your service. I know you’re all dying to get home, unless, of course, you happen to be married to my ex-wife, in which case you’ll want to cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.”

2) “Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering from E & B syndrome: not knowing his elbow from his backside. I’ll let you know any further information as soon as I’m given any.”

3) “Do you want the good news first or the bad news? The good news is that last Friday was my birthday and I hit the town and had a great time. The bad news is that there is a points failure somewhere between Stratford and East Ham, which means we probably won’t reach our destination.”

4) “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but there is a security alert at Victoria station and we are therefore stuck here for the foreseeable future, so let’s take our minds off it and pass some time together. All together now…. ‘Ten green bottles, hanging on a wall…..’.”

5) “We are now travelling through Baker Street… As you can see, Baker Street is closed. It would have been nice if they had actually told me, so I could tell you earlier, but no, they don’t think about things like that”.

6) “Beggars are operating on this train. Please do NOT encourage these professional beggars. If you have any spare change, please give it to a registered charity. Failing that, give it to me.”

7) During an extremely hot rush hour on the Central Line, the driver announced in a West Indian drawl: “Step right this way for the sauna, ladies and gentleman… unfortunately, towels are not provided.”

“Let the passengers off the train FIRST!” (Pause ) “Oh go on then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I care – I’m going home….”

9) “Please allow the doors to close. Try not to confuse this with ‘Please hold the doors open.’ The two are distinct and separate instructions.”

10) “Please note that the beeping noise coming from the doors means that the doors are about to close. It does not mean throw yourself or your bags into the doors.”

11) “We can’t move off because some idiot has their hand stuck in the door.”

12) “To the gentleman wearing the long grey coat trying to get on the second carriage — what part of ’stand clear of the doors’ don’t you understand?”

13) “Please move all baggage away from the doors.” (Pause..) “Please move ALL belongings away from the doors.” (Pause…) “This is a personal message to the man in the brown suit wearing glasses at the rear of the train: Put the pie down, Four-eyes, and move your bloody golf clubs away from the door before I come down there and shove them up your arse sideways!”

14) “May I remind all passengers that there is strictly no smoking allowed on any part of the Underground. However, if you are smoking a joint, it’s only fair that you pass it round the rest of the carriage.”

Walmart, Guns, Dumb And Scams

Walmart sues victim. And that’s just the start.

Yet another victim: Arsonist firefighter sues to get his job back.

Another good reason to pull a gun: Keeping your shoes on.

Incredibly dumb.  Incredibly dumber.

The next Nigerian scam- coming soon to a lake near you!

European Dispatch, Tibet And Bill Clinton’s Legacy

Yesterday, we received an email from readers Expat, an American in Germany.

I was watching Sandra Maischberger [award winning German talk show host, journalist and writer- SC&A] do a talk round on the revival of religion. I won’t go into details, but one atheist, psychologist guest was saying that the bible is a form of child abuse. None of the other guests had an adequate reply. At one point, Maischberger (who is supposed to be a particularly good journalist–Helmut Schmidt really likes her) asked whether the bible was necessary today. Wouldn’t the UN Declaration of Human Rights an the Geneva Conventions suffice?

There was an opinion piece in Die Zeit about an incest case upheld by the courts. This involved a brother and sister raised apart who fell in love, married, and had children totally unaware of their blood relationship. When this was discovered, they were found guilty of incest. After the guy served his sentence, the pair got back together and had more children. It was a second guilty finding that the court upheld. Now, I am a firm believer that hard cases make bad law, so I won’t get into this case; however, the op/ed writer in
trying to be terribly consistent and liberal advocated getting rid of the old incest taboo.

Finally, Stanly Kurtz, at The Corner, mentioned a book by David L. Tubbs entitled Freedom’s Orphans, which talks about the way children are not considered in today’s social policies. I haven’t read the book–it costs 60 bucks. But it seems to raise questions about the kind of thinking displayed in my previous two paragraphs.

How can an adult like Maischberger believe that a legalistic document can replace the stories and humanity of the bible? Does she not see that it fails to address the meaning of life questions? Is she totally ignorant of how love plays a part in transmitting values?

How can an adult fail to see that the incest taboo is based on the entire experience of humanity, which recognizes that the family home must provide safety for children? How can she not see that intrafamily power structures and raging hormones of the young need
control?

I can only question whether today’s “thinkers” are all fucking nuts. Do they really think that kids pop out of the womb and enter law school? How come knowledge of child development has become so degenerated?

So, there you have thoughts for the week…

Expat isn’t really cherry picking Euro oddities. Sandra Maischberger is highly regarded and mainstream. The incest story referred to wasn’t under the radar. While most Europeans were clearly to be found on one side of the issues, many of the literati were hell bent on eliminating the taboo on incest.

We noted in an email reply to Expat that

The incest case was more problematic- not because of the details, but rather because there is an attempt to legitimize the conversation… [There won't be] legions of little boys fantasizing about their sisters…

What is equally important is that the ‘conversation’ on legalizing incest was no more than a vehicle to be exploited so that some people might be heard. Not unlike Madonna, in the early years of her career, these Euro avant garde types seek to shock others so that the spotlight falls on them. Like Madonna, they are willing to exploit just about anything so that their ends might be served. Like Madonna, they too will fall by the wayside and be forgotten.

The atheist/psychologist who suggested who referred to the Bible as a ‘child abuse’ and suggested that the UN Declaration of Human Rights an the Geneva Conventions ought to be the sacred documents of a new age, might want to reconsider her ill considered ideas. The morality of the UN and her precious declarations are probably lost on victims in Rwanda, Sierra Leonne, the Congo, Darfur and Tibet (although incomplete, see this list for a bit if perspective on UN success in dealing with conflict).

In addition, here’s a reminder (noted by Gagdad Bob): One of the most significant influences and contributions of the Judeo-Christian religions was the elimination of child sacrifice, wresting that atrocity from the more ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ religions. In the UN’s culturally and morally equivalent world view, child sacrifice (and cannibalism) might be perfectly acceptable practices. This is no pie in the sky theory- as it is, the UN has yet to decry the racism, bigotry, hate and calls to slaughter taught in schools, broadcast in media and preached from religious pulpits in many places in the world today. There are cultures that teach from an early age that the killing of innocents is the highest form of religious expression. Finally, let’s recall that the Nazis plied their evil in the shade of the well meaning and very useless League of Nations- the precursor to the United Nations and equally endowed with magnificent declarations of human rights and documents of ‘understanding.’

The League of Nations was an utter failure- and that organization had no ‘Israel’ or nation blocs of some the most dysfunctional and failed nation states in the world, that serve deflect attention away from the most egregious violators of human and religious rights in history.

Expat isn’t the only one questioning the bizarre realities of our world. In Morally Twisted, Dr Sanity considers an article by Dennis Prager, in which he asks, ‘Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans?

We’re going to jump around a bit. Later in her post Dr Sanity remarks that

Now compare and contrast the Palestinians with the relatively gentle culture of Tibet and the non-violent philosophy of its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. You can also compare and contrast the deliberate brutality of China and its Communist leadership with Israel. China’s brutality and oppression is almost always given a free pass by the left in much the same way they have extended to Fidel Castro and other despotic totalitarian and authoritarian regimes their devoted loyalty and sympathy. Israel, as a Democratic and morally conscious nation actually works hard to spare innocent human life is automatically condemned whenever they respond to Palestinian provocation simply because it represents Western values and is by definition of the neo-marxists of our day, an ‘official’ oppressor. The left always calls Israel’s response to the provocations “disproportionate“; but in reality, it is the left’s moral equivalence that is so disgustingly disproportionate.

Earlier in Morally Twisted, these unassailable truths are noted:

First and foremost is the fact that the Palestinians’ use of terror has captured the world’s attention, and, instead of bringing the condemnation such behavior deserves, it has brought them a continuous flow of money and sympathy. In fact, the resourceful Palestinians have managed to leverage their escalating terrorist tactics–murdering as many innocent people as possible–into the enviable status of gold-medal victimhood; all the while deliberately ensuring that their society remains as pathetic as possible to continue the con…

…leaders manipulate Palestinian “victimhood at the hands of Israeli oppression” so convincingly and with such great gusto, that they have conned the international community into believing that Palestinians have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for the garbage dump their society has evolved into. The poor, oppressed suicide bombers of Palestine have become the “opiate” of the leftist masses…

For every professional victim, there are hordes of victimhood pimps urging them on to even greater heights of victimhood in order for the pimps to bask in a glow of moral righteousness and virtue. You can see this in the adoption of the Palestinians as “global chic” by the morally bankrupt and mindless intellectual elite of the left, as they glorify and worship Palestinian dysfunction and pathology.

These ‘victimhood pimps’ are the intellectual Euro-trash reader Expat refers to, soiling a cultural canvas of great breadth and soiling the Continent.

Dr Sanity, again:

The Palestinians are probably one of the most undeserving victim groups in history. With the help of their own leaders, in connivance with the enabling behavior of the international political left, they have evolved into a homicidal mob that is more of a death cult than a society.

With every invitation to rejoin the civilized world that has been offered up to them, the Palestinians have instead chosen cultural suicide. They would much rather kill Jews than work to create a life for their children.

In fact, they’d rather their children kill Jews, too…

…how can the Tibetans fail to notice the moral inversion and perversity; that characterizes the world’s attitude toward them? Tibet’s truly just cause for a return to its statehood; as well as the deliberate crushing of both their cultural and religious heritage by the communist Chinese have been virtually ignored by the rest of the world for decades; while Palestinian terror and violence; murder and genocide are constantly rewarded, applauded, and appeased.

It isn’t just Tibetans who are blinded by uber immorality of deliberate deceit. We don’t have to look far from home. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama deliberately lie to the American people (she of the details of her Kosovo trip and he of his 20 year ‘unawareness’ of Pastor Wright’s bigotry and subsequent refusal to distance himself from the bigot. In Obama’s world, ’selected’ preachings from a bigot are perfectly acceptable reasons to embrace the bigot- a rationale embraced by the Klan), it should come as no surprise that this kind of deceit has a firm foothold here.

When Bill Clinton pointed his finger at Chris Wallace of Fox News, we noted that

This week, Bill Clinton went down in flames- nobly, of course. The MSM and the left are all a twitter, because Bill Clinton, beautifully and articulately lied his pants off. It didn’t matter that Mr Clinton wasn’t telling the truth- the proud moment was achieved because he lied with polish, poise and earnestness…

Rather than be ashamed of a former President of the United States boldly lying on national television, much of the MSM and the left believe they can finally touch themselves in public, for a change. It matters little to them that a former president has anointed himself with credibility equal to that of Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez and Bashar Assad. Clinton lied, with panache and style and so, he’s a hero to many.

Of course, Mr Clinton is a very smart man. Mr Clinton knew his record would be examined and he also knew that record would not bear him out- and it is precisely because of that, he felt compelled to lie.

Mr Clinton will not leave the legacy he so desperately wants to leave. His image will not be chiseled onto Mount Rushmore, awarded that lofty status by a national groundswell of love and admiration.

In lieu of that, Mr Clinton has chosen to be victim- the perfect victim. He wants to be seen as hounded by the right and Fox News, and denied his destiny by the evil of his persecutors. It doesn’t matter that he lied, to the nation, a Grand Jury, or Chris Wallace. Mr Clinton meant well, and that is enough. We do not need an honest president- we just need one who means well, defined as anyone that adopts an agenda of the left and articulates any disagreement as persecution.

The MSM and left are perfectly happy with those arrangements.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are free to deceive at will because they mean well.

And so it goes and will go- until Europe needs us again (and they will) and until the grandchildren of the baby boomers answer the call to serve the nation in the same way the grandchildren of the self absorbed Gilded Age libertines answered the call in 1941.