Doctors say most Britons reject swine flu vaccine

As I've been saying for some time (see my other posts), the swine flu vaccine is even worse than getting a strain of the real thing so stay away. (Click on thee link above (in the title) to access the original article.)

Don't believe me? Read my other posts within the last year:
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The article states that the British government is on record as saying that the virus would kill 100,000 s + yet, to date around the world several months on it has killed a total of only 6,000 people! More people have died on public roads, in freak accidents, botched surgical operations so what's all the fuss about?

Your government is trying to scare you and have you ever wondered why? Perhaps it's time you should!

The smell of old books...?

Great article about how to measure the age of old books and historical documents simply by sniffing them!! Whatever next? Touching a rhino to see how temperamental it is? Tasting a rare item of food to see when it was made?

"Researchers report in the journal Analytical Chemistry that a new "sniff test" can measure degradation of old books and historical documents."

I used to love walking around large civic libraries when I was younger, mostly in Southampton in the south of England and inhaling large doses of that "old book smell". I'm sure I must have got high on it at times - that old familiar smell was music to my nose!

The article goes on to say, "These [smells] are released by paper as it ages and produce the familiar "old book smell". Will the kindle ever be able to give you the same experience? Or any of the new breed of portable, handheld reading devices? I doubt it and the sheer joy of reading from paper bound books and the portability factor will never completely eradicate the love of carrying around a small tome in your pocket! Viva la tome!!

Boys from the hood?

Below is a really great paragraph from a great article on the hoodies that roam the streets of the UK bored and with little opportunity to make a good life for themselves! (Click on the link in the title to read the original article.)

Don't they just look like the grim reaper himself, with that hidden face not giving away any sign of how they're feeling or what they're thinking?

"If you go to these places, it's very grim," says Philo. "The culture of violence is real. But for the British media, it's simple – bad upbringing or just evil children. Their accounts of what happens are very partial and distorted, which pushes people towards much more rightwing positions. There's no proper social debate about what we can do about it. Obviously, not all young people in hoods are dangerous – most aren't – but the ones who are can be very dangerous, and writing about them sells papers because people are innately attracted to what's scary. That's how we survive as a species – our body and brain is attuned to focus on what is likely to kill us, because we're traditionally hunters and hunted."

Football training?

Click on the link above to read the article and see all the pics.

This story brings a whole nw meaning to telling your mum you're going out training for football. It's a train journey starting in Plymouth and ending in Montrose, Scotland taking in 20 football grounds in the process!

You are where you live

This is one of the reasons why I don't live in the UK any more. It's primarily because you are your own post code. The equivalent of "you are what you eat!" in geographical terms. There is too much of an authoritarian air about it these days with more cameras than anywhere else in the world and the recent furors about forcing carers and teachers and indeed any school visitors to undergo a screening test to see if they are fit to be near minors Oh and at a cost of GBP 64 which the person tested has to pay!

The latest silliness from the UK government is that parents who know the crazy rules regarding post codes and school selection have been trying a few scams to get their kids into better schools. Can you blame them when your kid could suffer because he lives in Birkenhead instead of Brighton? That his postcode is W1 and not N12?

The UK government is now clamping down on all those parents who simply want a fairer chance that their kids will attend good schools.

"According to a report, local councils report that "deceptive applications have become more commonplace as many parents do not consider the consequences of their actions for others any longer". "

Here are some of the examples of what the parents have been doing to "play the system",

In one example, a council reported that multiple false applications were made by a number of parents with children at the same pre-school.

According to Dr Craig, the Chief Schools Adjudicator, the most common scams reported by councils in the last year were the following:

* Use of relatives’ addresses – usually grandparents with the same name – if they live nearer a sought-after school (70 examples last year)

Can you blame anybody for doing that?

* Parents who rent homes in catchment areas during the applications process (33 examples)

Smart thinking!

* Families who feign marriage break-up then report that one parent – usually the mother – has moved to another house nearer the school (28 examples)

Ok, a bid dodgy here and a bit extreme!


* Parents who genuinely separate but then pretend the child is living with the mum or dad who lives closest to the best school (25 examples)

Again, a bid dodgy here and a bit extreme!

* Use of an address owned by parents but rented to someone else (24 examples)

Smart thinking!

* Parents who use an address to get a school place but move away without telling the local council (21)

Smart thinking!

* Use of a business or company address in a catchment area (16)

Smart thinking!

* Parents who swap homes with friends during the applications process – sometimes with a short-term tenancy agreement (14 examples)

Smart thinking!

* Use of an empty address or plot of land (10 examples)

Smart thinking!

What's the problem? Seems to me that if you base a silly system on silly rules, then you get a silly response! People will always try to find the best for their kids and that will never stop!

Nude totty..exhibitionism

Cambridge students in bikinis: the most depressing story of the week?

This story is laughable and written a real dyed -in-the-wool feminist who can't bear the thought that a woman who actually looks good in a swimsuit would want to show it just simply because she's Cambridge Uni student? What's the difference please? Isn't she still a woman? "If you prick me do I not bleed", as Shylock famously said in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"? Isn't there just a hint of double standards here, too?

You don't even have to look for a hint of upper class dissatisfaction or whining about how the suffragettes had fouhgt hard for female emancipation - it glares at you from the opening remarks!!

"These young women have not pulled this stunt for charity, nor does it have the joie de vivre of a student prank. As a gesture, it fails even to smell like teen spirit. Instead, it is a throwback to the most dreary Seventies cliché. Viewing these images, it is as if the world has regressed Life on Mars-style to a time when garages were littered with images of women posing on sports cars."

The corollary being that had it been a student prank they could have got away with it, but the fact that they want to be viewed as sexual beings (like the ordinary women that they are) seems to matter not a jot to the writer who, it seems is (contrary to her own assertions of "garages were littered with images of women posing on sports cars") like a throwback from the days when women burnt their bras as an act of not only defiance but female liberation.

Do I detect a slight hint of jealousy here? It's a bit like Germaine Greer, that most ardent of feminists and Guardian columnist calling a reporter that wrote something horrible about her, someone who "...wears "fuck me" shoes and has birds nest hair!"

Fantastic site for famous writing

(click on the link above to access the site.)

I just wanted to share this fantastic site for famous writing. Here a few of the more memorable passages:

*** *** ***
D.H. Lawrence

Fidelity and love are two different things, like a flower and a gem.
Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers in summer
and love, but underneath is rock.
Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than plasma altogether
is the soul of the human underneath.
And when, throughout all the wild orgasms of love
slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks,
of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,
a man's heart and a woman's heart;
That is the crystal of peace, the slow, hard jewel of trust,
the sapphire of fidelity.
The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.

Great use of language and imagery here - metaphors of time and rock and flora and minerals all collaborating in nature to create human love and in order to reach this state one must be faithful to oneself and your partner.

And this one is magical, too.

*** *** ***
Rainier Maria Rilke

To love is good; love being difficult.
For one human to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate,
the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation.
For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything,
cannot yet know love; they have to learn it.
With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart,
they must learn to love.
But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving,
for a long while ahead and far on into life, is - solitude,
intensified and deepened aloneness for those who love.
Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over,
uniting with another, for what would a union be of something unclarified,
unfinished, still subordinate?
It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen,
to become something in himself, to become world,
to become world for herself, for another's sake;
it is a great and exacting claim, something that chooses one out,
calls the lover to vast things...

The idea here being that love is a process over a long time that chooses you, not the other way around, and forces you to become something much more than before. D H Lawrence says something like this somewhere else when talking about marriage, something like "marriage requires three things: a man, a woman, and...something else?

This one is amazing as well:

*** *** ***
Goethe on "Commitment"


Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamt would have come one's way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

In other words, in the very act of just simply "going for it", the very boldness of actually trying something provides a window of opportunity in and of itself that was previously absent. When you create an idea from an initial impulse you set off a train of occurrences and trigger events and happenings around you.

Here's a few more to whet your appetite.

*** *** ***

Psalm 1

Blessed are the man and woman who have grown beyond themselves and have seen through their separations. They delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night. They are like trees planted near flowing rivers, which bear fruit when they are ready. Their leaves will not fall or wither Everything they do will succeed.

*** *** ***

The Song of Songs by Solomon, Chap. 3, verses 9-11


You have captured my heart, my own, my bride, you have captured my heart with one glance of you eyes, with one coil of your necklace. How sweet is your love, my own, my bride! How much more delightful your love than wine, your ointments more fragrant than any spice! Sweetness drops from your lips, O bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; and the scent of your robes is like the scent of Lebanon
The Tanakh (Old Testament)