Yearly Archives: 2007
Andy does the London Marathon
It’s what he’s been training for, for months and today he joined the 1000′s of others to run the London Marathon.
Nice job mate – Bloody well done!
+17Rant: One rule for us and another for THEM!
Norman Baker – Hero of the HourHeartening news on the Beeb today; Former Conservative chief whip David Maclean tried – and FAILED – to introduce a private members bill to exempt MP’s from the Freedom of Information act.
Thankfully, the bill was effectively thrown out during initial debates (many thanks to Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and a handful of MPs from all parties who managed to talk out the planned bill by making sure the debate continued for five hours, ensuring that the bill now goes to the bottom of the pile of private member’s bills.)
+21Top Marks for Andy!
Andy has outdone himself this year in raising money for Brain Tumour UK.
Not only did he organise a fantastic night out at Loch Fyne in Winchester, but he also persuaded 50 friends, colleagues and complete strangers to join him on the Reading Marathon!
Fantasic job mate! Thank to this and the many other fundraising activities you and many others have organised, Brain Tumour UK will be able to continue improving life for adults and children touched by brain tumours, and to establishing the causes of and finding a cure for the disease.
But the war isn’t won yet! So please help Andy and many other dedicated fundraisers by making a donation to this very worthwhile cause.
+14Trident Followup
Well – yesterday’s vote on Trident went as expected, despite rebellion from 95 Labour MP’s.
The labour rebels can at least hold their heads high this morning. Even a political cynic like me (who always assumes that there is a fair degree of self-interest involved when MP’s rebel against the party line like this), can see that on this issue these men and women voted their conscience. Many thanks and well done.
Conversely, the Tory party support of the Government’s weak position clearly shows that all Cameron’s modernist rhetoric is just that – bullshit rhetoric. The Tories haven’t changed one bit since they were last in power. They are largely still the same bunch of fat gits in nasty pinstripe suits. And given their previous record in power all we could ever expect from them would be a long list of Quangos, several perjury trials, a couple of sex scandals and a huge amount of personal nest feathering (probably with a cones hotline for good measure).
No wonder voter turnout is so bloody low…
+19Rant: Trident (What a bloody waste!)
OK – just give me a moment to get this straight…
- The Cold War is now over and we’re on reasonable terms with the Russians and most of their eastern bloc colleagues. What’s more we have been for over a DECADE and the odds of previous hostilities resuming are longer than the odds of winning any state lottery (even ours!).
- Unilateral disarmament speeches (including from the current Labour cabinet and our “Prime Minister” himself) are a regular feature in the long-running farce that is UK politics for well over TWO decades.
+23Rant: Time for a Rainforest Tax?
Recently, I watched a video of an old episode of Equinox, recorded about 18 months ago.
Called “The day the oceans burned” the documentary discussed the issues of global warming and concentrated on an aspect of the process which is often overlooked…the impact of large scale deforestation by the timber companies and beef farmers in Brazil.
The Brazilian rainforest not only represents the largest carbon “sink” on the planet, it is also helping to slow the greenhouse effect by extracting an increasing amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For the non biologically inclined amongst you, plants absorb and breakdown CO2 as part of the process of photosynthesis; the carbon is used to construct cells and the oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.
+21Rant: Valentine’s Day Sucks!
Of all the naff annual events on a typical western-civilisation calendar, Valentine’s day has gotta be top of the list of all but the most stupid and gullible.
It’s a day when men (and women but mostly men) all over the world are compelled out of some kind of misguided sense of obligation to make largely empty gestures and spend a small fortune on overpriced crappy flowers, sickly chocolates and naffly sentimental cards.
+20