The Mind Boggles

Just when you were thinking politics is a yawn, along comes the resignation of the leader of Liverpool’s Liberals in a cloud of election fraud allegations. He says he witnessed his son signing up to be a candidate for next month’s council elections. The son says he never wanted to be a councillor, he wants to be in the RAF instead and the signature on Exhibit A is someone else’s.

All of which conjures up a vision of the Liberals getting a stooge elected, the stooge calling the Leader “Dad” and the Libs hoping no one realizes he’s an imposter.

They say Liverpool is a very weird place. Looks like “They” got it exactly right!

The Death of SF

There has fallen into my clutches a copy of “The New SF”, which is described as an anthology of “modern speculative fiction” from 1969. And it’s just crap. The “fiction” is just words thrown onto the page and not very interesting sets of words at that. The “authors” make little or no attempt to tell a story. They just expect the reader to fall over in amazement at their cleverness. No wonder all the British SF mags, like New Worlds, died off at this time.

How did they get away with it?

What went wrong with science fiction in the 1960s? I’ve just been looking at “The New SF”, an anthology of “modern speculative fiction” from 1969, and a bigger load of tosh you would be hard put to find!

The “fiction” is just words thrown at the page, and not very interesting sets of words. No attempt is made to tell a story, presumably because that would be “old-fashioned”. No wonder all the British SF mags like New Worlds died off at this time.

It’s only our money

You might have been wondering why the police force costs so much. Well, take the case of the sentry, who shot two officers (allegedly, one fatally) on HMS Astute at Southampton. The perp was detained at the crime scene in possession of the murder weapon. To sew up the case, all the police need are 3 or 4 eye witnesses and some forensics, mainly ballistic. Two days’ work tops for the whole deal.

But what are the Southampton police planning to do? Question scores of people, which will take weeks or even months, to “build a case”. And by the time the Can’t Prosecute Service and the lawyers have finished faffing about, a couple of years will have drifted by before there’s any danger of a trial. And they say the British justice system is the envy of the world. Only by people who make money out of what passes for justice.

Tripe, Dave, and you know it, you grovelling bastard!

Britain ain’t responsible for “many of the world's problems”. Britain might have exploited colonies in the past but they’ve had more than enough time — 60-odd years in the case of India & Pakistan — and more than enough British taxpayers’ cash to put everything in good order. And if our former colonies are a mess today, that’s down to the thieves and bunglers running them. Britain’s not to blame and Dave deserves a big slap for talking down his country when he gets back from junketing abroad, trying to buy friends with our money.

They were probably skiving at the time!

MPs who voted them through Parliament are now playing the outrage card over arms sales to foreign tyrants. But, I guess, hypocrisy is the common currency among the Pals of Westmonster. And if we hadn’t sold those weapons to the tyrants, our neighbours would have So better that the British taxpayer got the benefit,

WTF??!!

I got these unhelpful messages when I clicked on a Google pop-up:

“This Help Centre is not currently available in your language. However, you can select another language from the "Change Language" drop-down menu at the bottom of the page or download Google Toolbar, which can instantly translate websites in 42 languages.”

And:

“The information you've requested isn't currently available in your language, but you can select from the list below to view this help topic in another language or download Google Toolbar, which can instantly translate websites in 42 languages.”

Does this mean Google has sold its website maintenance contract to Indians or a Chinese outfit and English is no longer a permitted language?