But the most dangerous electrical item is still allowed ...

Before I delve into this, I need you to keep in mind, dear reader, that French fries are known as "chips" in Britain. This word survives in this sense in American English in the phrase "fish and chips".
Now then, one popular electrical kitchen item in many British homes is something called the chip pan. You pour oil into it, plug it in and fry your potato sticks or wedges up in that. Sounds safe, right?  As you have already guessed, they are notorious for catching fire as a result of all the oil that is involved with using them.
It also doesn't help that many people, who are on the idiotic side of the spectrum, use their chip pans after a night out and addled with intoxicants. As soon as they get in the door at 4 a.m., they think the following:
In the campiest English accent I am capable of: "Ooh, time for some chips. That would be just lovely. Some nice, lovely chips coming up."
After firing up the chip pan, you can almost guarantee an individual like this will crash on their living room sofa, intending to wait for the oil to get hot, and become absorbed in their text messages or a repeat of "The X Factor" or whatever vacuous garbage passes for "entertainment" these days. It is just a matter of a very short time till this person, along with several unlucky neighbors, will be made homeless once the oil goes beyond being hot, if you get my drift.
Chairman of the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority David Acton said, in the wake of two serious local home chip fires in the space of one day, "Chip pans are dangerous and we want people to get rid of them and use safer alternatives like oven chips instead." The Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service notes that "chip pans can be extremely dangerous" and "are the cause of the largest number of fire-related injuries in the home." [Emphasis mine.]
So, chip pans are pretty bad and really shouldn't even be offered on the market. I am not a big fan of the ban, but this is one exception I'd consider, especially as these devices are responsible for causing most fires in the average home.
The unelected oligarchs of the European Union have declared war on powerful electrical appliances. A ban on vacuum cleaners with motors of 1,600 watts or over went into effect last week. The aim is to make only vacuums with just 900-watt motors available by 2016. Not satisfied with this, a whole range of other high-power electricals including tea kettles, hairdryers and lawnmowers will be banned and replaced by lower-wattage versions.
How this makes sense when people will be using these appliances for longer in order to get their carpet clean or hair dry or water to boil has not been explained.
Also, is anyone — aside from those who honestly believe the Obama adminstration is committed to defeating ISIS — stupid enough to believe that these privileged politcos will abide by the same diktats they handed down to us?
Seriously, go into European Commission leader Jean-Claude Juncker's home in 2016, and I guarantee you'll find not just one but several 1,600-watt vacuum cleaners. Hypocrisy, it's elemental, dear Watson/reader.
Chip pans, however, do not appear to be on the list of appliances targeted by the EU. It's fine to allow people to endanger their lives and possibly those of others by using these little fire-starters.
The EU needs to learn that the point behind a ban on things, if considered, usually evolves from the desire to save lives, not power. The purchase of a 1,600-watt vacuum cleaner to adequately clean one's floors is a free market choice. Having to flee your residence because your jackass of a neighbor viewed his kitchen as his personal fast-food establishment while high is a choice no-one would make.
I am not suprised that the EU lacks the libertarian élan to know the difference.

Obama apparently has not cured anti-Americanism

Remember when Obama attained the highest office in the land in 2008, and was reëlected in 2012, all the talking points of light said that the U.S. had now gained favor with the rest of the world? Now that progressives controlled Congress and the Messiah was in the Oval Office, we would be the world's darlings.
Still with me?
How then, perchance, that a letter-to-the-editor such as the following could be published during this administration's tenure?

Successive UK Governments and their relationship with the US, reminds one of those creeps in the playground who stick with the school bully, fawn and flatter to keep themselves onside. New British PMs cannot fly to the White House quickly enough to get on their knees and pledge allegiance to their masters and pledge the lives of working-class youth as cannon-fodder. With all in Washington rolling helplessly about the floor with laughter, those idiots in Westminster call this "the special relationship." Mao-tse Tung hit the nail on the head when he said that Britain was America's running dog.

Can the sanguine writer of this charming missive still be blaming Bush? Just asking.

Catch-up: Murietta, Hong Kong democracy and community displacement

Since I've been gone for well over a year, there is some subject matter catch-up I'd like to engage in. So, let's shake off the cobwebs ...

1. The Murietta protests and the alien invasion:
Early in July, hundreds of protestors of this southern California town blocked a main access road on which buses full of illegal alien women and children were travelling, forcing the vehicles to turn around and drop the illegals off in a Border Patrol compound in San Diego County.  They managed this not just once, but on two separate occasions.
Murietta mayor Alan Long had urged residents to take action. Speaking of behalf of the town's population, Mr. Long said, "Murietta expects our government to enforce our laws, including the deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing our borders, not disperse them into our local communities."
Sounds logical, doesn't it? Except for the phrase "illegal immigrant," which is an oxymoron. There is only one type of immigrant: legal. Illegals are aliens, they do not belong. They are also criminals, even if they are not MS-13 gangsters.
President Barry O. is determined to change the face of this country through his complicit participation in this invasion. For the moment, we can only try to fend off the onslaught.
A massive rally held by talk-show host Jeff Kuhner in Boston earlier this month in effect cancelled Governor Deval Patrick's plan to take in thousands of these migrant "children" and house them in facilities in Chicopee and Bourne.
These Minutemen-like protestors are heroes. But do not expect them to be regarded as such by the media and the White House. That's par for the course, though. We know that decent American citizens will always be demonized and law-breakers placed on a pedestal. In the name of diversity and compassion, you understand.
The importance of the coming mid-term elections cannot be overstated. Honestly, if Americans do not wake the hell up and flood both houses of Congress with Republicans, we will end up with the third-world, Spanish-speaking, terrorist-sheltering banana republic with which Obama is so keen to saddle us.

2. The 'Big Four' firms oppose democracy protests in Hong Kong:
In Britain, there are four major accountancy firms: PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. In late June, the Hong Kong affiliates of these four competing firms united as one to release advertisements denouncing pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.
At this time, a large protest known as the Occupy Central with Love and Peace was poised to shut down the business district of Hong Kong. The "big four" firms feared this would cause investors to flee the city and that it would disrupt the "rule of law".
I'm no hippy and I'm all for capitalism. But, honestly? Business is more important than a people's right to democracy? The people of Hong Kong have every right to let their feelings be known in the post-colonial climate they find themselves in, subject to China's whims.
Legal professionals in Hong Kong were especially within their rights to protest given Beijing's announcement that a basic requirement for those in the judiciary was to "love the country". Whatever that means to the Mao disciples in charge of the land.
Shame on the "Big Four". Their actions amounted to a travesty.

3. HS2 1, Homeowners 0:
In Britain (there's that phrase again), there is a transportation infrastructure project in the works known as "High Speed 2" or HS2. According to reports, homeowners living within 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet) could receive compensation as little as £7,500 under a scheme announced by the Government.
Those opposed to HS2 assert that the compensation scheme is "derisory," and assert that hundreds of thousands of homes within one kilometer (roughly two-thirds of a mile) of the planned track will receive no compensation for the blight.
Hilary Wharf of HS2 Action Alliance opined that these homeowners will be "locked into homes made unsaleable" by the project. It will tear up thousands of yards of forest — as if this country isn't short enough on woodland — and displace people in villages such as Little Missenden in Buckinghamshire.
But, for me, this speaks to a larger issue: that of displacement. It's an age-old story. "We're going to make life so much easier for everyone," some planning committee will tell local residents. "But, in order to do that, you must move."
We saw the great effects that had on the community life of the West End of Boston after the construction of the Central Artery in the '50s. Aside from Massachusetts General Hospital, there was nothing there! Renewal of the neighborhood could only begin once it was torn down. The North End suffered too, having been separated by the massive fly-over from the rest of Boston.
Up until 1973, Neptune Road in the East End was a flourishing working-class residential street. Massport, the agency in charge of Logan International Airport, tore up the local Wood Island Park in 1967 and then started buying up homes along Neptune Road in order to demolish them six years later. This occurred as the airport grew in size and expanded.
Today, Neptune Road remains but it's as if an H-bomb had exploded there. There is nothing. It is the same for all surrounding neighborhood streets to the east of Route 1A around the Wood Island subway stop. Frankfort Street, Vienna Street, Lovell Street ... asphalt paths through a great deal of nothingness.
I watched a documentary a few years ago on the community of Deptford in south-east London as part of a BBC Series called The Secret History of our Streets. It demonstrates how Deptford was practically destroyed by urban planners.
The effort to clear "confusing" streets free of "slums", and shuffle everyone out of their homes and into nearby, newly built tower blocks was, according to the narration, "a vast, Modernist socialist experiment to be carried out in the working class East and South." Gee, ain't that grand? Ritzy West London, of course, was untouched. No plebs there.
People were displaced, good neighbors separated forever, the marketplaces that were their livelihoods dismantled. In the name of progress. The programme made it clear that, as with the Neptune Road area of Boston, modern Deptford, hardly a showcase today, is practically unrecognizable with nothing holding it together.
All this leads me to the overall point: Progress is all very well, but does it always have to come at the expense of ordinary people? You do not tear up communities unless it's comprised of squatters or a terrorist cell. Working, tax-paying citizens should not have to suffer indiginities at the hands of planning committees and their corporate kick-backs simply because it might be good for their children.
How do the children living on Neptune Road in 1973 feel about that one, I wonder? They watched what their parents went through, lost friends and probably still nurse grudges against Massport. I don't blame them.

Time to treat this illness seriously

Nothing can accurately describe my shock when, after logging on to the 'net yesterday morning, I was confronted by the news of Robin Williams's death. I was convinced that the 63-year-old actor-comedian had died as a result of massive drug use. Not a binge, just the built-up effects of heavy intoxicants over the course of his adulthood. The same type of thing that took George Carlin out.
Turns out, however, that Robin Williams died of asphixation. The latest news from the coroner indicates that he had hung himself. His personal assistant had found him near the closet door of his bedroom. Initially, he looked to be in a sitting position but was suspended a little bit above the ground.
Sad, shocking, horrific stuff. People thought that because Williams was a "funny guy," that he could not be taken down by something as trivial as depression.
Only, depression is not trivial. It is sinister, insiduous and even downright aggressive. It can kick the stuffing out of anyone: 6-foot-3 boxer Frank Bruno's severe depression was well publicized. If a guy that big and capable can be afflicted, surely the more mortal among us can be so stricken.
It explains why I have been gone so long. Since April 2013, the last time I contributed to this dusty, cobweb-covered blog, I suffered myself from depression. I was too depressed to write. The longer I didn't write, the worse it became until it was like a vicious circle. I carried on working and enjoying evenings with my family. I laughed to the podcasts playing on my iPod. But I could no longer do something I loved: writing. I am fond of this blog and am proud of it. Why, then, did it suddenly make my stomach turn to think about it? Why was I rendered incapable of doing something I loved?
Depression is something that has long been with me. I remember having feelings of worthlessness at the age of 12. No 12-year-old should have to feel that. But this thing, dear reader, is a monster. I'm not bi-polar, but I do have chronic depression combined with social anxiety. I have OCD. Perhaps I even have a slight touch of autism; there is some evidence of that, although it hasn't been confirmed.
I do take an anti-depressant medication. It helps. I know they're not for some people. For some, pills make the depression and suicidal ideation worse. But it's up to the individual affected and it is the responsibility of the doctor to very closely monitor how any medication affects him or her.
Maybe, eventually, we will have a true understanding of depression. Society will no longer regard depressed people as mental misfits. We will move beyond the perceptions of the Mental Health Act of 1953 and enter the modern age where depression is recognized as an organic illness. People suffer from failing kidneys, diseased lungs and perforated pancreases. Is the brain no less an organ than the liver, the stomach or the intestines? I suffer from occasional renal colic as well. Is that disease really so different from depression? If your brain, as an organic body organ, is ill, will that not manifest itself in so many deleterious emotional manners? Should you be told to simply "pull your bootstraps up" or "look on the bright side"?
I'm not saying that we need to give people a free pass. The excuse of depression is too often used to avoid work and receive SSDI "crazy checks".
That doesn't mean depression isn't real. Fourteen years into the twenty-first century, we still don't understand depression nearly as well as we should. It is a disease and, in so many cases, it is a killer.
It is high-time that we gave this illness some respect.

Why "horrifying" can be an ironic word

Let me start off this entry by acknowledging how much of a non-story it concerns. My reason for bringing it up is to show how ridiculous Yahoo! news, or any other on-line source of "news" for simpletons, can be.
Most of us who are not afraid to use our brains have had the experience of seeing a sensationalist headline catch our eyes on MSN or Yahoo!, clicking on the story and then feeling very disappointed or remarkably aggravated. This story made me feel both.
Martin Fitzmaurice, a compere who has become regarded as "the Voice of Darts" allegedly "horrified" an audience at a recent tournament between England and Scotland. Two examples of the "sickening" jokes included: "What's black and eats bananas? Half of London," and "What's the difference between a P*** and ET? ET went home."  Because Yahoo! engages in censorship like all good politically correct robots, I can't tell you what P*** is. It's either Pole or Paki.
Now then, I can accept that these jokes are inappropriate. Perhaps it's not the job of a tournament host to engage in behavior that strokes and encourages the lowest common denominator.
But is it really "sickening" and "horrifying"? Classifying the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence" is sickening. North Korea's saber-rattling is horrifying.
But for modern Western mankind, with its three seconds of short-term memory, such news is too cumbersome to worry about. It's easier for the news networks to stoke the masses with non-stories and inflated rhetoric as to why we all should subsequently be upset and distressed.  If you're not outraged to the point of wanting Fitzmaurice strung up and struck like a piñata, you are an unfeeling ogre and an example of what is wrong with the world.
Needless to say, since this so-called incident, Fitzmaurice was, shall we say, encouraged to quit.
It would be very nice if our politically correct overlords admitted their affinity for censorship and thought control. All they need to do is say that it's to keep from offending (non-whites), and the sheeple and opportunistic claimants of victimhood will happily buy it.  The heck with true, genuinely harmful racism where it exists.  It's all about the headline and feeding the people heavily processed food for thought.

Mike Rice: Another victim of political correctness

This whole "controversy" surrounding Mike Rice, the head coach of the Rutgers basketball team, is inflated nonsense. In fact, Rice is—as so many others before him have been—a victim of political correctness.
There, I said it.
Rice was fired by the university earlier this month after practice video surveillance showed him whipping basketballs at players, grabbing them by the jerseys and kicking at them. He is also heard to have been verbally abusive, at one point telling a player, "You're a fairy, you're a faggot!"
That Mike Rice is passionate, there is no doubt. Did he deserve to be fired? Does he deserve to feel, in his own words, like an embarrassment to his family? He didn't embezzle any money, he didn't commit any crimes of passion, evidence of his friskiness were not found on an intern's dress. He didn't even wipe out an entire village with a drone.
Let's face it, Rice got in trouble because he was pushing minority students around. Once the self-appointed arbiters of justice infecting our social media got a hold of this video, the school was going to suffer a fate almost as bad as that of Penn State. Rice had to be fired to save face, especially since the assumption is people apparently cannot distinguish between raping 10-year-old boys and daring to be confrontational with, say, a 6 foot, 5 inch 19-year-old.
Rice was not abusing a group of people with learning disabilities. He was whipping a group of young, strong men into shape. In fact, for a great many of them, a man like Rice is exactly what they need to keep them humble and wipe the arrogant smirk that comes with being young (as well as the same height as the Washington Monument) and thinking they know everything off their faces. None of these "children" are short on self-confidence and none of them are easily wounded.
One is naturally reminded of Bobby Knight, the cantankerous former head baseketball coach of Indiana University. Knight, famous for knocking over chairs and hollering obscenity-laced tirades at players in the locker room, was made out to be a villain on many occasions. But his players always had his back, showing great devotion to him. One such player was someone by the name of Larry Bird.
Here's the thing: Though Rice was without a doubt a man with a temper, he also knew how to keep a team together. Since his firing, former Rutgers team members have said Mike Rice fostered a "familial" atmosphere. As much as he was brusque with his players, he also showed affection for them by taking them out for meals on the road and talking with them at length about their futures.  As for his behavior on the practice court, one former student has said that while Rice was indeed "in your face," he also gave players the opportunity to respond and speak their minds.
Rice reminds me of my former boss at the supermarket I worked at during my college years. There were plenty of times when I did not like him at all. Yet, in retrospect, I know that he wanted the best for me.
How do I really know that Mike Rice is not the monster he has been made out to be? Because New Jersey governor Chris Christie called him an "animal". 'Nuff said, methinks.

R.I.P. Margaret Thatcher: 1925-2013

I read with sadness yesterday that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died. It did not come as a big surprise as her health had been declining for several years.

Baronness Thatcher lead Britain for 11 years, from 1979 to 1990, not always with smoothness but always with great resolve. She believed in the free economy and wished to liberate British manufacturing from the twin yokes of too-powerful trade unions that demanded too much and socialism which, she correctly believed, was the granting of money from those who earn it to those who do or produce nothing yet believe they are entitled to it. This did have the effect of massive unemployment and inflation during her early years, but only because these backs on which British industry had run for decades were finally being broken.

Margaret Thatcher did not cave in. She earned the term "the Iron Lady" from her detractors. She embraced the term, noting that trying to be liked by everyone would achieve nothing. Thatcher stood up for the residents of the Falkland Islands who wished to remain British. It's regrettable that it took a war to do so, but you can blame that on the Argentinian tin-pot regime that invaded the islands, thus precipitating it.

Thatcher did not always get it right, as the implementation of the poll tax—which essentially placed the tax burden on the traditional working class—demonstrated. She was also perhaps a bit overzealous in her desire to privatize almost everything she touched.

But for a few mistakes and the eternal hatred that she will always fetch from those with a red streak running through them, she was as perfect a leader as you could get. By 1979, Britain was in desperate need of a strong-willed Prime Minister who would be serious about turning the British economy and manufacturing base around to reflect capitalist credentials. Like her or loathe her, she was essentially the first Prime Minister of note since Winston Churchill. Who can wax eloquent about Wilson or Callaghan? Macmillan was fairly effective but too quiet and behind-the-scenes.

Thatcher was, admittedly, a bit "school ma'am"-ish.  She reminded you of the head lunch lady, veteran teacher or principal you had when you were in elementary school—an imperious woman that everyone respected but no-one liked.  It didn't matter if she never smiled at you; you were just relieved if she left you alone.

But, in the end, Margaret Thatcher deserves to go down in history as one of the greatest leaders that the Western world has produced.  This is her due, whether you agreed with her strongly or not at all.

There's not much I can say about Lady Thatcher that hasn't already been said over the years by other conservatives. So I will end this entry with what I consider to be some of her most noteworthy quotes:

"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."

*   *   *

"To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no-one believes and to which no-one objects."

*   *   *

"Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause?"

*   *   *

"To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches."

*   *   *

"There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty."

*   *   *

"Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on Earth."

*   *   *

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides."

*   *   *

"If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage."

*   *   *

"The battle for women's rights has largely been won."