Ever the comedian, Herman van Rompuy,
one of the EU's many faceless, dubious, utterly unknown “presidents”,
pretends that the €uro has a future.

Despite my oft-expressed contempt for the US president (who, somewhat gratifyingly if unfortunately, has consistently fulfilled my worst expectations), I recently bought a delicious-looking loaf of sliced, healthy-looking bread, whose label declared that it was “fit for a president”.  It was apparently “Created to Celebrate the Visit of Barack Obama to Ireland” in May 2011.   

The loaf was dark, with little titbits of tasty seed and luscious fruit, rich in texture, deep in flavour and full of promise.  Even the name of the bakery, “Soul”, evoked something romantic - indeed soulful - from African-America's deep South. 

The first few slices were indeed inspiring and delicious. 

But after a short while something strange and unexpected happened.  The loaf rapidly began to crumble, until it became impossible even to remove a slice from the pack.  It just came away in your hand.  In the end the loaf had collapsed into a pile of tiny morsels that you could eat only with a spoon.  I threw the remains out to the birds who made short work of it. 

But what a metaphor for the president it celebrates. 

Dark and mysterious, he too began with such high expectations for so many people.  Yet within a very short time, his promise and inability to deliver anything of worth were cruelly exposed, as his presidency began to crumble away into fecklessness.  As he nears the end of his (inevitably only) term, what remains of his legacy, after Omacare has been repealed by President Mitt Romney, will be fit only for the consumption of wild animals.  Indeed, prior to coming to office whatever he had produced had also disappeared into nothingness, other than his two best-selling unread books, both about himself. He is a man of glitz, glamour and teleprompters, but without substance or achievement. 

I had thought the Soul Bakery simply produced good and unusual breads.  I had no idea it was also in the business of geopolitical commentary and metaphor. 

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ESM Treaty - A Totalitarian Abomination  - 28 May 2012
Easily remembered alternative permalink: tiny.cc/esm

The treaty to set up a €urozone bailout fund is totalitarian and
an irresistible invitation to rampant, institutionalised corruption

I have only recently been perusing the detail of the ESM Treaty, that is the “Treaty Establishing the the European Stability Mechanism”, to give it the full title.  It was signed on 2nd February 2012 by the seventeen members of the €uro area, each of which becomes a member of a newly-created EUrocracy, the European Stability Mechanism, ESM.  This is intended to lend money to distressed members, even though such bailouts are expressly forbidden under existing EU treaties.  This is why “Decision 2011/199/EU” had first to be enacted (no, I didn't know this had been done either), whose key provision states in Article 1 (of just three) that

“The Member States whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole”. 

To create an initial total of €700 billion, each €uro member will make a contribution, in accordance with a mysterious “key” percentage whose calculation is not clear to me.  Ireland's “key” is 1.6% meaning it will have to pay in €11.1 billion it doesn't have.

Under preamble (5), access by a €uro member to the ESM is made conditional on its ratification of the FU Treaty on which Ireland will vote on 31st May.  This is  sometimes referred to as the “blackmail”, or “gun-to-the-head”, clause. 

This is by no means the worst of the Treaty.  Consider the following articles. 

ARTICLE 10 - Changes in authorised capital stock

1. The Board of Governors ... may decide to change the authorised capital stock and amend Article 8  [“Authorised capital stock”] and Annex II accordingly.

So at their whim, they can simply demand more money, without limit.

ARTICLE 9 - Capital calls

3. The Managing Director ... shall make such capital call(s) as soon as possible ... ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them by the Managing Director pursuant to this paragraph, such demand to be paid within seven days of receipt.

And member states must pay up within just a week

ARTICLE 8 - Authorised capital stock

4. ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to provide their contribution to the authorised capital stock, in accordance with their contribution key in Annex I. They shall meet all capital calls on a timely basis in accordance with the terms set out in this Treaty.

Members have absolutely no basis or right to argue about demands for money

ARTICLE 32 - Legal status, privileges and immunities

3. The ESM, its property, funding and assets, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process

4. The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall, wherever located and by whomsoever held, be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action.

5. The archives of the ESM and all documents belonging to the ESM or held by it, shall be inviolable.

6. The premises of the ESM shall be inviolable.

The ESM is above and immune to any law anywhere for any purpose

8. To the extent necessary to carry out the activities provided for in this Treaty, all property, funding and assets of the ESM shall be free from restrictions, regulations, controls and moratoria of any nature.

9. The ESM shall be exempted from any requirement to be authorised or licensed as a credit institution, investment services provider or other authorised licensed or regulated entity under the laws of each ESM Member.

No statutes or conditions anywhere shall impede the activities of the ESM in any way

ARTICLE 35 - Immunities of persons

1. In the interest of the ESM, the Chairperson of the Board of Governors, Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, as well as the Managing Director and other staff members shall be immune from legal proceedings with respect to acts performed by them in their official capacity and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents.

The immunity extends to the management and staff of the ESM; they can do whatever they like with complete impunity.  A more comprehensive recipe for fostering and protecting corruption would be hard to devise. 

ARTICLE 33 - Staff of the ESM

The Board of Directors shall lay down the conditions of employment of the Managing Director and other staff of the ESM.

There can be no external scrutiny of employment practices; the Board can pay (themselves and) their staff as much as they want without fear or favour.  More invitation to corruption.

ARTICLE 36 - Exemption from taxation

1. Within the scope of its official activities, the ESM, its assets, income, property and its operations and transactions authorised by this Treaty shall be exempt from all direct taxes.

4. Goods imported by the ESM and necessary for the exercise of its official activities shall be exempt from all import duties and taxes and from all import prohibitions and restrictions.

5. Staff of the ESM shall be subject to an internal tax for the benefit of the ESM on salaries and emoluments paid by the ESM, subject to rules to be adopted by the Board of Governors. From the date on which this tax is applied, such salaries and emoluments shall be exempt from national income tax.

Everything and everyone is of course tax-free, except for an “internal tax” devised solely by the ESM for the ESM, in other words it is circular and meaningless. 

So the new ESM EUrocracy can demand from EU States unlimited money (ie in excess of the initial €700 bn) at will with just seven days notice, which EU States “irrevocably and unconditionally undertake” to pay.

Moreover both the ESM and even its staff are immune forever from prosecution or even examination.  Oh and nobody pays any real taxes.

It is as if the sole purpose of this treaty is to create a €700 billion cesspool of corruption to enrich everyone who works in it and countless other bodies that come into contact with it. 

Of course this may not be its purpose, but it will most certainly be the result, as sure as night follows day. 

It is utterly totalitarian.

And why does the ESM Treaty apparently not require an Irish Referendum as the FU Treaty does? The Irish Constitution could hardly suffer a greater violation than this abomination.  Nevertheless, inexplicably, the Attorney General has apparently advised that it doesn't. 

Here is an excellent summation:

Inevitable Grexit - How It Will Happen - 28 May 2012
Easily remembered alternative permalink: tiny.cc/grexit

Greece is already on the path out of the €uro;
here is how the Grexit will happen. 

Greece is faced with a choice: accept EU bailouts but with harsh austerity conditions attached, or reject both.  Further negotiations may soften the terms somewhat, but it inconceivable that Germany or anyone else will pour further money into Greece without at least a fighting chance of getting some of it back.  Its needs are simply too great to be solved with unconditional gifts, which is what the left wing movement is effectively demanding. 

€uros are already flooding out of Greek banks, because people are thinking that they might be lost or confiscated in some way.  And of course thinking makes it so.  Where those €uros are going is anybody's guess.  Gold?  Swiss banks?  Dollars?  German securities?  Under the bed?  The only relevant issue is that the money is disappearing and fast.  Greeks have withdrawn €72 billion (30%) since 2010, and €700 million on Monday 21st May alone.  There is not a single reason to leave €uros within Greek banks.  Greeks are not stupid and they know it, prompting appeals from, extraordinarily, the Greek police to trust the banks and leave their money there.  But it will be to no avail.   

Late Note (reinforcing the trend alluded to above):

The Guardian reported on 13th June 2012 that

·         an estimated €8bn flowed out of the Greek banking system in May 2012;

·         another €4bn was withdrawn in the last two weeks (ie since 31st May),

·         on top of an estimated €20bn since the start of the crisis in late 2009.

There is only one way to stop the Greek tsunami of €uros, and that is to freeze all bank accounts and impose capital controls, before the banks are completely denuded.  Perforce, this action will be denied right up until 5 pm on the Friday that it happens, not very far in the future.  A month at most.   

Then over the weekend, every €uro note will be stamped with one word: DRACHMA.  (Or more precisely, ΔΡΑΧΜΗ).  When the banks re-open on Monday, all accounts will have been converted from €uros to Drachmas on a one-to-one basis.  But on the open market the new Drachma will trade at 20 €urocents if it's lucky. 

The €uro coins will probably have a notch filed off. 

In due course, new Drachma notes and coins will be produced. 

There will of course be uproar and riots across the country, maybe even a military coup, but the basic move to the Drachma will be irreversible.  Nevertheless it will at a stroke drive down costs to a level where Greece, when it calms down, will become competitive on world markets once more, albeit at the cost of a massive cut in everyone's quality of life coming from the huge rises in the cost of imports.  But that is the inevitable consequence of Greece's profligacy. 

Whatever chance Greece has today of paying down some of its €uro debts will vanish once it's currency loses 80% of its value.  So it will have no choice but to default on pretty much everything, and thereby be shut out of credit markets for perhaps a decade. 

And it won't stop with Greece.  The minute Greece freezes bank accounts the effect on the remaining PIGIS will be electric.  No sane person will dare leave his/her €uros in domestic banks, so bank runs will occur everywhere, until further freezes occur.  And, yes, further overstamped €uro notes will ensue, followed by brutal devaluation, and various degrees of default. 

To all intents and purpose, that will be the end of the €uro except perhaps for the few strong Teutonic countries such as Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, perhaps Finland. 

But are they really strong?

The target of the PIGIS' defaults will, primarily, be the foolish German banks who profligately and ignorantly lent a trillion €uros to various EU countries (not to mention the Germans' additional trillion dollars of US sub-prime junk), as well as other European and American banks.  Remember Newton's third law of economics:

For every foolish borrower there is an equal and opposite foolish lender.

Undoubtedly many of these foolish banks will crash, unless rescued from the consequences of their private gambling debts by their national taxpayers, mugged just as Irish taxpayers were back in 2008. 

Either way, the “strong” countries are not strong at all and may ultimately also abandon the €uro; for they are sitting on gargantuan debts that they know will never be repaid in full and many not at all.  Yet they continue to dishonestly simulate health by showing these debts at full face value in their account books. 

My advice:

Get your money out of PIGIS banks now, while you still can. 

Only the first to do so will be saved. 

Easily remembered alternative permalink: tiny.cc/grexit

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What Currencies to Trust - 28 May 2012

There are only three currencies in the world that are truly trustworthy;
and they are not €, £ or US$

Having advised people to get their €uros out of the PIGIS' banks as quickly as possible, the question then arises, what do do with them. 

Better people than I can advise whether to put your €uros into stocks, gold, securities, gilts, under the bed, whatever. 

But I will say something if you want to retain your wealth in currency form.  What currencies can you trust?  Here are the three obvious ones you can't trust.

·         The €uro as discussed looks ever dodgier, even - because of the unpayable debts they are owed - in the so-called “stronger” Teutonic countries. 

·         The UK is doing very little to protect £Sterling and seems to think unlimited quantitative easing - ie printing banknotes - will solve its economic problems when this will and can only erode everyone's worth by creating inflation. 

·         President Obama is doing everything in his power to destroy the US dollar through debt, which he has relentlessly racked up by five trillion bucks in just three years (it took GW Bush eight years to do this).  It's now nearly $16 trillion, or $50,000 per citizen, and still climbing relentlessly.

What makes a currency trustworthy?  To me it needs to have just three attributes:

1        Huge natural resources, preferably underground as this keeps them safe until needed.  Unlike anything else, natural resources - principally hydrocarbons, minerals and precious stones - represent huge intrinsic wealth long into the future

2        A relatively small population with which to share the huge natural resources, ie there is plenty of spare capacity

3        The rule of law, whereby the chance of having your money confiscated by the State, whether directly or indirectly (eg through deliberate inflation), or access to it restricted, is minimised

Only three countries/currencies seem to fit these three criteria:

·         Australia, with its Dollar

·         Canada, with its Dollar

·         Norway, with its Krone (Time magazine agrees)

My advice:

Select one or more of these currencies as alternatives to the doomed €uro.

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10th May, Quote: “I don’t hack, I just have a great rack.”  And she clearly does. 

Campaign slogan by 19-year-old Oxford University student Madeline Grant, touting for election as Librarian of the prestigious Oxford Union.

The Union, in a fit of dreary political correctness,
fined her £120 for “bringing the Union into disrepute”.

Apparently it is anti-feminist for a feminine person
to brag about her feminine attributes

National Leaders and Child Rape

A letter to the Irish Times on 4th May 2012
(which it appeared to be too fearful to publish)

Sir,

Let's see if I've got this straight.

A man becomes aware, in the 1970s, of a vile child molester. Yet he fails to tell the police or take any action that might put a stop to the molester's depraved activities and even tells the child-victim to remain silent. So consequently the molester continues child-raping with impunity for years. That man today holds a senior position of authority.

Ireland's Tánaiste [deputy prime minster] Eamon Gilmore, Taoiseach [prime minster] Enda Kenny and numerous other worthies who are not members of - and indeed are hostile to - the entity which the man now leads, declare that he “should not hold a position of authority” and should therefore resign.

This sounds most honourable.

Yet why then do they remain so pally and respectful with Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein?

For decades, he hid and facilitated his allegedly debauched, incestuous, child-molesting brother Liam who is accused of routinely raping his own daughter Aine as from when the little girl was just four years old. Oh, and used to beat up her mother, his wife. Gerry not only protected his brother but got him work in youth clubs where he had easy access to children [Ref 1].

Gerry was outed as a child-rapist-protector only when Aine eventually told her story publicly in 2009. Liam was finally arrested only six months ago on charges of rape and gross indecency.

Now, what was that about Cardinal Sean Brady?

Then, on today's front page [Ref 2] Harry McGee reports that

Northern Ireland's “Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, said when the issue first emerged two years ago he had said Dr Brady should consider his position. He said many Catholics would be ‘dismayed’ at the new allegations and Dr Brady should reflect on his stated position that he will stay on as leader of his church in Ireland.”

Yet apparently Mr McGuiness's own leader, being Cardinal Brady's fellow child-rapist-protector Gerry Adams, does not need to “consider his position” and can happily “stay on as leader of” Mr McGuinness's own party Sinn Fein.

A cynical person might conclude that the current furore is more about attacking the Catholic Church than being concerned about the rape of children.

Yours etc,

·         Ref 1: “Revealed: The full chilling story of how Gerry Adams lied to protect his paedophile brother - and helped him work with children”, Daily Mail, 24 December 2009

·         Ref 2: “Brady urged by party leaders to consider position”, Irish Times, 4 May 2010

Explanatory Note

This letter refers to the hypocritical uproar in Ireland over a BBC TV documentary on 2 May, “This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church”.  This revealed, not for the first time, that Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of all Ireland (ie Ireland's most senior Catholic cleric), took notes when he was a junior 33-year-old priest in 1975, of interviews by senior clergy of children who had been molested by a depraved paedophile priest, Father Brendan Smyth; the children were then sworn to secrecy.  As he was required to do, Father Brady then passed the notes to his superiors for action (which they failed to take) but took no other action himself such as informing the police or the children's parents. 

People are now demanding that Cardinal Brady resign for his omission.  Many of these are lapsed members of the Catholic Church, non members, atheists, or a combination, and virulently hostile to the Church.  Meanwhile, all these hand-wringers are silent about the widespread  public knowledge and acceptance of (albeit non-sexual) abuses by the Catholic Church that existed in those days, whether in its industrial schools and orphanages noted for their corporal punishment or its slave-labour Magdalene laundries. 

·         Sight of children from such institutions being taken for walks in sullen single file was commonplace throughout Ireland; mothers would often threaten their own children with being sent there if they didn't behave. 

·         The Magdalene laundries would not have existed had not Irish men and women regularly and knowingly patronised them with their dirty shirts and bed linen.  These were laundered at bargain prices thanks to the young women confined in them and forced to work from dawn to dusk for no wages. 

The demands for the Cardinal's head are akin to outsiders demanding the resignation of the miscreant president of a private golf club.  None of their business.  The demands are, above all, acts of spite against the Church. 

Some may think there is a case to bring criminal charges against the Cardinal.  But other than that his future is an issue solely for believing members of the Catholic Church.

Letter-writer Jim Stack makes an apposite point about Father Brady's role in 1975 when he argues that a fair analogy

“would be to a court clerk in a trial where the defendant is found guilty but subsequently released to re-offend. Not even The Irish Times, one would have thought, would blame the court clerk in these circumstances – even if the court clerk went on to become a Supreme Court judge.

“But this is Ireland 2012, and the subject of media coverage is the Catholic Church, so the old journalistic maxim applies: when the truth is in conflict with the legend, print the legend.”

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2 May, Quote: “When the desirable jobs are  

·         spending other people's money,

·         reporting on spending other people's money and

·         lobbying to spend other people's money

then you know that the society is f***ed”.

Tim Worstall, a renowned British blogger,
comments on an observation by Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
that only the children of comfortably-off middle class parents
can aspire to “the jobs that people want to do —
notably in politics, the media and the third sector”,
the latter being the non-profit sector, ie NGOs and charities.

2 May, Quote:

President Obama's latest hare-brained wheeze,
by way of an instruction to the US Military by the commander-in-chief. 

This clearly means

+ no more slagging off Catholics and their hysterics over abortofacients,
+Jews over their love of Israel and of staying alive,
+ Sikhs over their turbans,
+ Shintos over their visits to war-criminals' graves, thinks again.

 

This is about Obama's latest command that
some book full of murderous instruction must NOT be burnt.
Can't quite recall the name. Das Kapital, Mien Kampf, somthing like that.

Oh, yes, now I remember. Quran.

29th April, Quote:  “Fornication is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

Michelle Mulherin, Fine Gael TD for Mayo in the West of Ireland, shocks the country -
and the world - with her exposé of the bleedin' obvious. 

Her observation makes plain that since fornication is wholly avoidable
(with the help of an aspirin I have heard),
therefore so are most unwanted pregnancies and
thus the abortions that sometimes follow.

Any statement that challenges the virtue and necessity of abortion
is treated with horror in today's enlightened world.

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Michael Jansen - Female Muslim - 18th April 2012

For over twenty years, Michael Jansen has been the Irish Times' Middle East correspondent. In this two-minute clip, Jansen is exposed on air for the first time as a female and a Muslim, which explains her consistent anti-Israel, pro Palestinian/Hamas/Hezbollah bias.

Yet the Irish Times has never revealed that she is an American, or a woman or a Muslim.

Information Note:

This is the first Youtube clip I have published and the first video I have produced. 

To produce it I used VideoPad Editor from NCH Software and Any Video Converter from AVC, both of which are downloadable free of charge and easy to learn how to use. 

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Latin Lovelessness Perpetuates British Outposts - 14th April 2012

Were Argentina and Spain to apply love rather than aggression,
they would surely win the hearts and thus the much coveted land
of the Falklanders and Gibraltarians

It seems scarcely believable that three decades have already passed since Argentina invaded what they call Los Malvinas and Britain calls the Falkland Islands, on 2nd April 1982. 

Notwithstanding Argentina's long-simmering resentment that Britain has held these islands since 1833 (though they have in fact never fallen under the sovereignty of nor been settled by Argentina), the attack was unprovoked.  It was designed to appeal to Argentineans' nationalism while distracting them from the dire economic and political environment created and perpetuated by the illegal military junta that ruled and tyrannised them. 

And for a while it worked.  Under tyrant General Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentina had conquered the islands, raised its flag, suppressed the native Falklanders and their few soldier-defenders and established itself as an old-fashioned imperialist.  Everyone cheered. 

But eight thousand miles away a housewife didn't cheer; Margaret Thatcher was not amused.  Prime Minister of a former great power now in the throes of a seemingly terminal decline that began after the First World War and accelerated after the Second, she astonished everyone - not least her own countrymen and women - by declaring that the invasion would not be allowed to stand. 

And it wasn't.  Within just three days, she ordered - to the consternation of many of her senior commanders - the assembly of a huge naval task force comprising no fewer than 112 ships, from aircraft carriers to freighters to hospital ships to tugboats, and sent it off to the Falklands.  74 bloody days after the invasion, it dispatched the defeated Argentineans back whence they had come, and the warship Belgrano, pride of their navy, to the bottom of the Atlantic.  By the time the Argentines had hoisted a white flag, the war had cost the lives of 649 Argentine military personnel (including 323 on the Belgrano), 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders, plus multiples of that number of wounded. 

Let us rejoice, said the triumphant Mrs Thatcher, who - heretofore trailing in the polls - was promptly re-elected for her trouble, and with a thumping majority of nearly 200 seats. 

Earlier this month the thirtieth anniversary passed, and Argentina is still smarting, still resentful that Britain holds the Falklands, still seeking ways (albeit short of an invasion) to impede British sovereignty and make life difficult for the island residents.

·         It is trying to set up an economic blockade of the islands, including denying aerial transit rights to the weekly flight between Chile and the Falkalnds. 

·      In a fit of pique it recently forbad 3,250 passengers on two cruiseships, the Adonia and the Star Princess, from landing in southern Argentina because they had previously visited the Falklands (how does keeping rich tourists away help virtually bankrupt Argentina?). 

·      It threw a hissy fit when the RAF assigned helicopter pilot Prince William to the Falkands for a routine six-week stint, calling him a conquistador (yes, really!).   

What Argentina is demanding is that Britain simply hand over the Falkland Islands.  They have no strategic value for Britain, so it would have no compunction in obliging were it not for the pesky islanders.  Oh and a thousand years of evolving democratic tradition that says you must consider the views of the people most affected, in this case the residents.  (In 1919 in the ashes of the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles re-drew the boundaries of post-Hapsburg post-Ottoman Europe on the related principle that ethnically similar people should have their own countries; hence Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory to Czechs, Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenes etc.) 

And the Falkalnders most emphatically do not want to become Argentineans.  Considering the centuries of unremitting hostility they have endured from their nearest neighbour, who can blame them?  Yet if only the Argentineans could persuade them to change their minds, the Malvinas would be instantly theirs. 

Meanwhile, back in Europe, Spain continues to simmer with pathological resentment because of Britain's long-standing sovereignty over Gibraltar, which in 1713 Spain signed over in perpetuity. During the intervening centuries, the Spanish have given effect to this resentment with a serious of antagonistic behaviours, from attacks and sieges to sanctions, boycotts and travel impediments, which I wrote about a decade ago.  For their part, the Gibraltarians have steadfastly expressed their desire to remain firmly attached to Britain, most recently in a referendum in 2002, which gave Spaniards apoplexy. 

Yet again, Britain would be quite happy to cede Gibraltar to Spain if only the residents were to agree. 

Men from the Iberian Peninsular, and their descendents in South America, are rightly famed for their prowess in winning over beautiful women.  Their rugged good lucks play only a small part - it is  above all their gallant behaviour that leads them to victory.  At its most simplistic, they seduce women with champagne, chocolates, glittering gifts, but above all with extravagant flattery and compliments. 

Aesop tells the fable of an argument between the wind and the sun as to which is more powerful. They decide to settle this with a contest to see who can more quickly remove the cloak of a hapless traveller.  First the wind blows and roars as it tries to rip the cloak from the man's back, but the stronger the gusts, the tighter the man grips his cloak around his shoulders.  Then it's the sun's turn: the sun merely turns up the temperature and to no great surprise the overheated traveller quickly casts his cloak aside.  Moral of the story: persuasion is more effective than force.  Or, more bluntly, seduction is preferable to rape. 

So,

·         why are Argentineans and Spaniards so thick and obtuse when it comes to the Falklands and Gibraltar?

·         Why do they favour force rather than persuasion?  

·         What has happened to their Latin lover skills? 

And why do they direct their bad-tempered demands to the sovereign power (Britain) rather than to the actual people who matter (Falklanders, Gibraltarians)?  

For as long as these misgiuded Hispanics pursue the route of force, it is certain that they will succeed in appropriating neither the Falklands nor Gibraltar.  Their Latin lovelessness serves only to perpetuate those British outposts as British.

But should they ever decide to capture the hearts of those redoubtable outposters, their land will surely follow, as they willingly fall into the arms of their Hispanic suitors.  But will those Latin lovers ever learn how to woo?  Not on evidence so far. 

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Dyson Vacuum Cleaner - It's Disastrous Unique Selling Point - 14th April 2012

Don't buy one!  Its unique selling point is a sham.

My wife recently bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner, a DC29 Allergy Parquet.  You know, the one that advertises that it's more powerful because it doesn't use a bag to collect the dust, so the motor doesn't have to drag air through the walls of the bag. “No loss of suction” it boasts.  

Furthermore to empty the dust you simply dump contents of the plastic collection trough into the bin.  The lack of bag is its unique selling point, USP, and has made a billionaire of its entrepreneurial investor James Dyson.  It uses the cyclone principle whereby the sucked air is spun around in a cylinder such that the solid bits are separated out by being flung to the edges through centrifugal force. 

Interestingly, this simple technology has been used in the oil & gas drilling industry for over fifty years to remove drill cuttings from the chemical fluid (“mud”) pumped down the well to cool the bit and lift out the cuttings. Known as desanders and desilters, the devices comprise banks of hydrocyclones (cyclones that work with water) like the one illustrated, which remove different sizes (sand, silt) of solid particles.  These can then be analysed to learn what kind of rock has just been drilled through.  Meanwhile, the cleaned mud is pumped back down the hole to continue drilling. 

So the Dyson technology is highly appropriate and thoroughly proven. 

But its USP is a phoney. 

Who cares if there is “loss of suction”.  You just need to build a slightly bigger motor.  The user will never notice. 

But the lack of bag is the real problem.  Because without it, should you suck up a bit of fluid, eg your kitchen floor is a bit damp, that moisture will quickly start rotting the organic material that is always present in the dust.  Within a a few days, the dust will set into a morass of sludge and will stink to high heaven, a stench that is almost impossible to get rid of.  And you will need a big knife for the unpleasant job of scraping out the sludge - into a disposal bag - and will need to put the collection trough into the dishwasher to clean it properly.  And did you notice - you need a bag anyway, if you don't want the dust to spill back onto your floor.  So it's false to claim you don't. 

Then there is the size of that collection trough.  With our old Phillips machine, a single bag would last almost a year.  I know, because when changing it, I used to write on the date.  And because it was effectively sealed, the issue of sludge and stench never once arose.  But the Dyson collection trough is so small I find myself having to clean it out every three or four weeks. 

But how does it actually work?  Like a dream.  It is effective, lightweight, extremely ergonomic and looks very smart.  A pleasure to use. 

Would I buy another?  Never. I hate the current DC29.  It's Unique Selling Point is a disaster, if not a con, that trumps everything else. 

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Issue 220’s Comments to Cyberspace

·         A warning to Israel -  18th May
Online comment to an editorial in The Irish Times
Ooooh! The EU is getting tetchy. Here are another couple of ideas. Ask the Palestinians why they have refused their own state every time they have been offered it - in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000 ...

·         About time Dev Óg was put in his place: Silence is golden  [P!] - 13th May
Letter published in the Sunday Times on 13th May
Sir, / I am shocked. Not content with silencing five priests, the Catholic church has now silenced Father Éamon Ó Cuív for daring to speak out against the sacred Fiscal treaty. Should he violate his pledge of silence, Bishop Micheál Martin will throw him out of the Church. Oh wait ... 

·         Talking Property -11th May 2012
Online comment on 11th May to an Irish Times column
Effectively, only people with cash are able to buy. Who are they? Generally older people with life savings. What do they buy? Generally smaller properties into which  ...

·         Cardinal Brady and Child Rape - 4th May 2012
Letter (unpublished) to the Irish Times
Sir, - Let's see if I've got this straight. A man becomes aware, in the 1970s, of a vile child molester. Yet he fails to tell the police or take any action that might put a stop to the molester's depraved activities and even tells the child-victim to remain silent. So consequently the molester continues child-raping with impunity for years. That man today holds a senior position of authority. Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny and numerous other worthies ... declare that he “should not hold a position of authority” ...  Yet why then do they remain so pally and respectful with Gerry ...

·         Demand for same-sex marriage - 24th April 2012
Letter to the Irish Times (unpublished)
Tom McElligott blithely asserts that “there is now a body of evidence comparing straight and gay parenting and the results are negligible in terms of psychological and material wellbeing”. Such an extraordinary and counter-intuitive statement should not be allowed stand without ... 

·         Parents' wishes count on denominational schools - 18th April 2012
Online comment to an Irish Times column
But banned by the Moderator! “All necessary information should be disseminated by the department ... Other parties, particularly those with vested interests, should not be encouraged to circulate parents and other members of the community.” As if this Report of the Forum of Patronage and Pluralism did not itself reek of “vested interests”! Anti-Catholic, pro-atheist, pro-multiculturalism vested interests.  And “jody12”, if parents, who are CONSTITUTIONALLY the educators of their children ...

·         Why people avoided paying household charge - 16th April 2012
Online comment to an Irish Times column
Stop calling it “avoidance” which is perfectly sensible, widespread and wholly lawful. Non payment of the household charge is tax evasion, pure and simple, which is a criminal offence. If author Dan Hayen doesn't know the difference between tax avoidance and evasion, he is unlikely to gain his law doctorate. Unless of course his law professor is the similarly knowledge-challenged co-author Colin Scott. ;-]

·         It's time Ireland woke up to sevens
Letter to the Irish Times
Alan Quinlan's appeal for the IRFU to embrace seven-a-side rugby was more timely than he evidently realised. He rightly emphasised that Sevens will feature in the 2016 Olympics. But he forgot to mention that the quadrennial Sevens World Cup will be held in Moscow as soon as next summer. Moreover because of the inclusion of Sevens in future Olympics tournaments, the 2013 Sevens World Cup ... 

·         Rejection would jeopardise stability and employment
Online comment to an Irish Times column by a Trinity professor
You ask: “Those against ratifying this treaty should explain how day-to-day State expenditure will be funded from 2013”. By stopping spending, that's how. This State employs far more people than it needs ...

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Quotes for Issue 220

- - - - - O B A M A - - - - -

2 May, Quote:

President Obama's latest hare-brained wheeze,
by way of an instruction to the US Military by the commander-in-chief. 

This clearly means

+ no more slagging off Catholics and their hysterics over abortofacients,
+Jews over their love of Israel and of staying alive,
+ Sikhs over their turbans,
+ Shintos over their visits to war-criminals' graves, thinks again.

 
This is about Obama's latest command that
some book full of murderous instruction must NOT be burnt.
Can't quite recall the name. Das Kapital, Mien Kampf, somthing like that.

Oh, yes, now I remember. Quran.

Quote: “Punching above its weight is: ‘Denmark’ ... ‘Ireland’ ... ‘Netherlands’ ... ‘Norway’.” .......... “Our strongest ally is ‘Netherlands’ ... ‘Australia’ ... ‘Great Britain’ ... ‘Germany’ ... ‘South Korea’ ... ‘Israel’ ... ‘Italy’ ... ‘Japan’ ... ”

President Obama, that weird tenant in the White House,
directs compliments at, well, just about everybody. 

Someone should remind him of what the Grand Inquisitor observed
in Gilbert & Sullivan's Gondoliers:
“when everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody”, 

Quote: “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people [the US Supreme Court] would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example.”

President Obama, one-time Harvard professor of constitutional law (yes, really!),
completely misunderstands the role of the US Supreme Court. 

If it doesn't occasionally overturn laws
passed by the duly constituted Congress and the Senate
- such as Obamacare was -
then its very existence has no purpose. 

It has the duty to protect the US Constitution,
thereby overturning laws that it deems unconstitutional
no matter who has passed them.

Its nine members are indeed unelected;
the sitting US President appoints them for a life term
to ensure they remain uninfluenced by electoral or other pressures.

Quote: “We’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem.  What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (Democrat)
responds to a query from House Budget Committee chairman
Paul Ryan (Republican) about
how the Obama Administration is going to deal with
America's $99.4 trillion of unfunded liabilities for pensions and medical costs,
leading it inevitably to a catastrophic European-style debt crisis. 

Quote: “It's important for [Vladimir Putin] to give me space ... This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Obama makes plain to President Medvedev of Russia why he needs Putin to give him “space” over missile defence issues, until he is re-elected.  After that Obama can do what he wants without regard to the wishes of the people. 

Mr Obama was unaware that he was on an open mike. 
Nevertheless, it's good to have clarity of intent,
clarity of his utter contempt for American voters.

Quote: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Mikhail Muhammad, leader of the “New Black Panthers”
which has offered a bounty of $10,000 for the capture of George Zimmerman, responds to a question as to whether he is inciting violence. 

George Zimmerman is the half-Hispanic neighbourhood watch volunteer
who, apparently after a scuffle, shot dead Trayvon Martin,
a 17-year-old 6ft 2in footballer who was prowling within a gated community.

Mr Zimmerman, who was hospitalised for a broken nose and other facial injuries,
claims it was in self-defense after Mr Martin attacked him.

Of course since Mr Muhammad is black (and doubtless a Muslim),
he cannot be regarded as the leader of a vigilante mob,
no matter how much he incites mob violence with $10,000 incentives. 

Naturally, Mr Obama added his own racist fuel to the fire
by observing that “if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon”,
as if that had the slightest relevance to the incident.

- - - - - E U - - - - -

29th June, Quote: “The aim is of course to make the €uro an irreversible project”

Ever the comedian, Herman van Rompuy,
one of the EU's many faceless, dubious, utterly unknown “presidents”,
pretends that the €uro has a future.

As noted elsewhere in this blog
(“Inevitable Grexit - How It Will Happen”), it doesn't.

- - - - - U K - - - - -

10th May, Quote: “I don’t hack, I just have a great rack.”  And she clearly does. 

Campaign slogan by 19-year-old Oxford University student Madeline Grant, touting for election as Librarian of the prestigious Oxford Union.

The Union, in a fit of dreary political correctness,
fined her £120 for “bringing the Union into disrepute”.

Apparently it is anti-feminist for a feminine person
to brag about her feminine attributes.

2 May, Quote: “When the desirable jobs are

·         spending other people's money,

·         reporting on spending other people's money and

·         lobbying to spend other people's money

then you know that the society is f***ed”.

Tim Worstall, a renowned British blogger,
comments on an observation by Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
that only the children of comfortably-off middle class parents
can aspire to “the jobs that people want to do —
notably in politics, the media and the third sector”,
the latter being the non-profit sector, ie NGOs and charities

Quote:

·         “She certainly wasn't a beaten wife, she was hit and that's different ...

·         “The problem with strong, intelligent women is that they can argue – well.

·         “And if there is a time where you can't get a word in … and I … lashed out. I couldn't end the argument. 

·         “Something must have brought it on. When frustration builds up and you can't think of a way out …

·         “It happened and I'm very, very ashamed of it ...

·         “I must have punched her one time because she did have a black eye ...

·         “I'd never done it before or since.  But if a woman is a bit of a power freak and determined to put you down, and if you're not bright enough to do it with words, it can happen.”

Dennis Waterman, tough-guy co-star of the TV hit series
The Sweeney (1970s) and Minder (1980s and 90s),
confesses to Piers Morgan on CNN that he used to beat his third wife.

Not such a “tough guy” after all.

And, hilariously, he seeks the sympathy of viewers! 

Actress Rula Lenska (Coronation Street et al) has always claimed
he was a drunk who abused not only her but her daughter as well,
which hitherto he has always denied. 

He is currently on unfortunate wife number four.

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

29th April, Quote:  “Fornication is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

Michelle Mulherin, Fine Gael TD for Mayo in the West of Ireland, shocks the country -
and the world - with her exposé of the bleedin' obvious. 

Her observation makes plain that since fornication is wholly avoidable
(with the help of an aspirin I have heard),
therefore so are most unwanted pregnancies and
thus the abortions that sometimes follow.

Any statement that challenges the virtue and necessity of abortion
is treated with horror in today's enlightened world.

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Now, for a little [Light Relief]

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