Last night, Channel 4 bravely defied the West Midlands Police and showed a followup to Undercover Mosque, cunningly titled Undercover Mosque: The Return (forum)

If you are in the UK, for the next couple of weeks you can download the full high quality programme from 4OD.

If not, here is a youtube playlist showing the full programme in 5 chunks

But that’s not all that some representatives from the religion of peace have been up to:

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2580350/Teenage-boys-forced-to-whip-themselves-during-Muslim-ceremony.html

Syed Mustafa Zaidi, a devout Muslim, forced two teenage boys to whip themselves with a Zanjeer Zani - a wooden-handled implement fitted with five chains, each of them bearing a curved knife - during a religious ceremony.

In it Zaidi is seen repeatedly flailing at his own body with the multi-bladed instrument. His back is soon reduced to a mass of cuts, with blood running down onto his jeans.

At one point he is taken out of the throng because of concerns about the injuries he had inflicted upon himself.

Minutes later, his back now covered by a white T shirt, he is apparently seen to approach the younger of his alleged victims.

The child joins men in the centre of the room and begins to ritually beat himself with the Zanjeer.

Elsewhere in the video men - and some boys - are seen beating their chests so violently with their hands that they inflict bright red marks.

At set times in the ceremony some of the men break into a chant before swinging their individual Zanjeers in order to gouge wounds into their backs.

They occasionally withdraw to have dressings applied to the cuts. At other points helpers spray the devotees with antiseptic.

By the time the ceremony is over one man, his back bloodied, is slumped against a black drape. Others are weeping and wailing as the fervour of the ceremony rises to a crescendo.

The court heard that once the ceremony was under way Zaidi struck himself so forcefully with the Zanjeer that other devotees “feared for his safety to such an extent that they sought to calm him down”.

The older of the two alleged victims was among those who approached him. Zaidi is said to have responded by washing his Zanjeer and handing it to the boy so he could use it.

According to the prosecution, the child “felt he had no choice but to do so”. He was pulled away after inflicting a number of lacerations to his back. Zaidi then allegedly turned to the other boy, took off his top and put the Zanjeer in his hand.

So is it any wonder that Pat Condell’s articulate voice of reason and clarity continues to be #1 in so many categories on youtube? Here’s his latest:

No wonder it is….

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Tags: islam,pat condell,patcondell,Politics,poltical correctness,video,youtube
Categories: Politics, political_correctness, religion, video
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According to the BBC:

Britain’s involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England from September.

Children will study the development of the trade, colonisation and how slavery was linked to the British empire and the industrial revolution.
Um, haven’t all schools always taught that anyway?! Isn’t that just part of history? I guess not.

I have a concern. I remember listening to a programme on R4 about the anniversary of the abolition last year, and I heard a couple of bits of astounding ignorance, both from teachers who basically chose not to (or were unaware of) African chiefs and Saudi Arabian involvement in slavery.

And then there are sites like this…I see NO mention of of the fact that Britain was one of the FIRST to abolish slavery, that Britain only accounted for 5% of the slave trade.
Most of the trading happened in Arabian countries, which didn’t abolish slavery until 1962.

But then, this site’s title informs us that
“Britain abolished the slave trade on 25 March 2007“. Doesn’t sound like Marika Sherwood is very clued up!

You know, listening to people talking about British involvement in slavery, you’d think we were going to Africa with nets and rounding them up!

I’m all for history being taught, but in full. But I wonder if they’ll include the inconvenient truths?

By the way, I think slavery was a horrendous and despicable part of history that we should learn from. But let’s get some perspective - I’ve no reason to feel guilt. My forefathers weren’t sugar traders or land owners.

Let’s have history as it was, and less “guilty white man” crap like this

Hmmm, I’ve just had a thought - imagine a world where between 65% and 80% of everthing you worked for was taken from you. And if you didn’t give it, you were threatened with violence and imprisonment.
Oh, wait. That’ll be tax in the UK.

Tags: education
Categories: Politics, education
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Best speech of the Olympics -
Boris Johnson: “Ladies and Gentlemen - Ping Pong is coming home!“.

Click here for the full length speech video on the BBC website

Transcript of part of Boris’ speech:

I mourn the passing of some of these sports - for example, the pancrateon, whose chief exponent was Milo of Croton, whose signature performance involved carrying an ox the length of the stadium, killing it with his bare hands and then eating it on the same day - I’m trying to persuade them to bring that one back”.

“And I say this most respectfully to our Chinese hosts who have excelled so magnificintly … at ping pong. Ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in 19th Century. It was, and it was called “Whiff Whaff”. And there you have one of the essential differences between us and the rest of the world. Other nations - the French - looked at a dining table and saw and opportunity to have dinner. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play Wiff Waff.

And that is why London is the sporting capital of the world - and I say to the Chinese, and I say to the world, Ping pong is coming home, athletics is coming home, sport is coming home.”

Why do I have this sneaky feeling that some pillock, somewhere, will manage to take offence at something Boris said? There’s always one.

The closing ceremony, like the opening, was without doubt the greatest show on earth.

But seriously though, as soon as that horrible “Lisa sucking off Homer” waste of £400,000 of Olympic Logo came on in the stadium, I was so ashamed. That logo kind of sums up what Britain has become in 8 years of Labour: embarrassing, wasteful, no sense of identity pride or Britishness, unclear and just really, really lame.

Update: some reaction to the speech:
http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2008/08/25/ping-pong-is-coming-home/

While he is often lauded as a “bumbling buffoon” and erratic at best, I think we should agree that he is taking a very Churchillesque tone in everything he does. Winston Churchill is famed for his quotes to do with women and drink. He was OFTEN completely pissed whilst simultaneously leading the British army as one of history’s most famous and accomplished leaders. Look, I’m pretty pleased Boris Johnson isn’t heading up a war machine, but you you got to enjoy his approach. Conservatives and posh snobbery (with humourous undertones playing an essential part) is becoming cool again, and he is at the forefront.

http://www.uncorrelated.com/2008/08/ping_pong_is_coming_home.html

Most of the show around the London Olympics makes me cringe, especially the pc propaganda for ‘diversity’, cripples as athletes, ant-like communitarianism, wrinkly heavy metal, effeminate male performers, visual cliche’s of London buses and bobbies and so on. So the Mayor of London to the rescue in Beijing last night, effortlessly upstaging the PM, David Beckham and Seb Coe:

http://michellestyles.blogspot.com/2008/08/ping-pong-is-coming-home.html

Boris Johnson’s remarks about the Olympics made me laugh. It is easy to forget exactly how intelligent and what a polymath the current mayor of London is. I rather suspect that he did not have to do any research to come up with the remark.

http://machogrande.livejournal.com/324484.html

Forget Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream”, yesterday Boris Johnson made quite possibly the greatest speech in history. Forward to 2:20 for the best bits.

Back on the ceremony…Just think how many people were involved in those opening and closing ceremonies - not just getting all the people to move at the right time, but hundreds of wires, cables, motors, computers, hydraulics - every single thing worked. I am already cringing at what I’m guessing Britain’s opening ceremony is going to be like: “Celebrating multicultural diversity through the spirit of ethnic dance”.
That said, our little 8 minute spot wasn’t quite as bad as I expected, but it did leave me wondering WTF was going on at points. Token wheelchair dude too - nice patronising touch there!

There was something wrong with the bus, though: no groups of chavs robbing people, no graffiti on it, it didn’t break down, and no ticket inspectors fining a single, tearful white woman while letting 3 massive chavs off without a fine.

But Beijing has the money for this too - £20 BILLION altogether, and the ceremonies cost £4,000 per SECOND apparently.

Here’s an interesting insight into the effort behind the ceremonies (from Press Association)

BEIJING (AP) — Martial arts student Cheng Jianghua only saw the army barracks he stayed in and the stadium where he performed at the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony. But his sacrifices were minor — other performers were injured, fainted from heatstroke or forced to wear adult diapers so the show could go on.

Filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the ceremony’s director, insisted in an interview with local media that suffering and sacrifice were required to pull off the Aug. 8 opening, which involved wrangling nearly 15,000 cast and crew. Only North Korea could have done it better, he said.

Cheng and 2,200 other carefully chosen pugilist prodigies spent an average of 16 hours a day, every day, rehearsing a synchronized tai-chi routine involving high kicks, sweeping lunges and swift punches. They lived for three months in trying conditions at a restricted army camp on the outskirts of Beijing.

“We never went out during the time we were training,” Cheng, 20, told the AP in a phone interview. “Our school is quite strict. When we stay in school we can’t go out on our own, let alone when we’re at a military camp.”

[Zhang Yimou said] “North Korea is No. 1 in the world when it comes to uniformity. They are uniform beyond belief! These kind of traditional synchronized movements result in a sense of beauty. We Chinese are able to achieve this as well. Through hard training and strict discipline,” he said. Pyongyang’s annual mass games feature 100,000 people moving in lockstep.

Performers in the West by contrast need frequent breaks and cannot withstand criticism, Zhang said.

“In one week, we could only work four and a half days, we had to have coffee breaks twice a day, couldn’t go into overtime and just a little discomfort was not allowed because of human rights,” he said of the unidentified opera production.

“You could not criticize them either. They all belong to some organizations … they have all kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, can withstand lots of bitterness. We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in two months.”

I think there are two extremes here, but he’s really right about what we’ve become in the west.

Search: pingpong’s ping-pong pingpong pingpongs table tennis

Categories: Uncategorized, religion, tech stuff
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I don’t like to call this a “hack” cos it’s not, but there’s a simple way of seeing the “front of card” preview of other people’s moonpig cards. Not the inside, or the person to or from or any account details, just the jpg previews.

But if you’d like a look into the minds of others, click here!

Categories: my stuff
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…shouldn’t things like whether road signs about old people show old people or not and whether the Spanish team pose in one way or another, even though no-one has actually complained?

Here’s a good blog post about the hypocrisy of people who complain about this sort of stuff.

In the grand scheme of things, is this REALLY all people have to worry about?

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Just an interesting collection of articles for anyone thinking of installing a domestic wind turbines or who thinks that the government is doing the right thing by throwing away millions in grants for these pointless adornments of the gullible (btw, I’m not against “proper” wind turbines)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2006/11/are_domestic_wind_turbines_an_ecocon.html

http://markbrinkley.blogspot.com/2006/10/rejected-by-windsave.html

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=273400

I wonder if this report below will be published if it doesn’t “fit”.

http://www.warwickwindtrials.org.uk/

And it’s not looking as good as I thought for larger turbines:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/wind_power_needs_dirty_pricey_gas_backup_report/

Tags: green
Categories: Uncategorized
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From The Guardian: - worth a read of the full article. It’s what I’ve always thought - but well written…

A half-litre bottle of water in your average sandwich chain, now costs 80p. That’s around four times the price of oil. And it’s not like you’ve got an oil tap in your own kitchen. If only there were some godforsaken country we could invade in the adorably misguided belief that it would bring the price of this stuff down.

And yet - perhaps because bottling water is precisely the sort of business that would entrance Dick Cheney - we’ve yet to alight on the killing fields that would get us out of this mess. Not that bottled water giants such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola would class it as a mess, what with the global industry being worth £30bn and rising. For the rest of us, I’m afraid it’s time to swallow the bottled water lecture again. Come on: more of it is being sold than beer - you and I know that can’t be right.

In her book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, the investigative writer Elizabeth Royte covers it all: the nonsense about mineral water’s “health benefits”; the struggles of the communities from where this stuff is pumped in its billions of gallons; the huge environmental damage; the debunked science behind the eight glasses a day recommendation…

Tags: stupidity
Categories: Uncategorized
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We’ve been here before with Capita and Group 4 and all the others…

• Nov 2007: 25m people’s child benefit details, held on two discs
• Dec 2007: 7,685 Northern Ireland drivers’ details
• Jan 2008: 600,000 people’s details lost on Navy officer’s stolen laptop
• June 2008: Six laptops holding 20,000 patients’ details stolen from hospital
• July 2008: MoD reveals 658 laptops stolen in four years

And now yet more data has been lost - unencrypted - on a memory stick!

The memory stick contained un-encrypted details about 10,000 prolific offenders as well as names, dates of births and some release date of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales - and 33,000 records from the police national computer.

Just stop outsourcing to crap, usually foreign companies! I mean - who doesn’t encrypt everything they put on a memory stick? Most sticks these days come with automatic encryption and decryption anyway.

The government has buggered up our childrens’ education, lost millions on an abandoned Ancestry project and now lost data - who had been sacked? Anyone? Take some responsibility, you shameless fools.

Oh, and interesting that PA Consulting don’t seem to have got round to mentioning any of this in their PA In the news website…

Tags: labour,outsourcing,stupidity
Categories: Politics
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