Oh Bollox!!

Before you start complaining about the word “Bollox” I must inform you that a court in Nottingham in 1977 actually ruled the word to be neither obscene nor abusive, read this http://www.acc.umu.se/~samhain/summerofhate/courtcase.html. This is of course the famous case against the Sex Pistols. My favourite bit is ……

Prosecutor Ritchie ” Are you an expert on the word bollocks?”

Professor Kingsley. “I am an expert on the English Language and feel that I can speak with authority on the derivation of the word bollocks. (You can just picture the Prosecutor saying to himself “Oh bollocks, there goes plan A”). You see this is a common tactic developed by the legal profession and it can be hugely successful, as in the Kieran Fallon race fixing case.

Defence Barrister. “Are you an expert on English Racing”?

Crown Expert Racing witness. “No”

Defence Barrister (to himself obviously) WOOHOO!

Anyway the reason for my utterance is this Human Rights Bollox. You probably saw during the week that a convicted robber is taking his case to the European Court using our money obviously to get his right to vote. So far it has cost “Tens of Thousands” and is likely to cost a lot more when he wins his case because 900 odd other prisoners will have to be compensated and the costs will be phenomenal.

Human rights is an interesting box of frogs, for instance you have the right not to be sold into slavery…. Good one, I’m all for that! Free speech….. Yes I like that, but I’m not that sure we really have it? Prohibited under the bill are Murder, Rape, Massacre and torture …yes that seems fair enough, but did we not have all that pre 1948 anyway when the Human Rights stuff was written. You would like to think that there wasn’t too much debate over whether to include murder rape and slavery etc, but it did take a while to get the thing up and running. An interesting quote from Wikipedia, so it may or may not be true but it’s worth looking at.

“When the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became apparent after the Second World War, the consensus within the world community was that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently define the rights it referenced.” Please tell me that before 1948 there was NOT some doubt at to whether you were actually allowed to murder 6 million people in gas chambers or not.

The robber vote case is interesting for a few reasons. First, You would imagine that the chap can’t be that clever or he wouldn’t have been caught and now languishing in the nick. So where did he get the idea? Could it be that he was put up to this and for what reason?

Second, why is there not a human right to have common sense applied? I thought that this would be enshrined somewhere in Common Law but the closest I can get is the “Reasonable man” concept which is well documented and used to determine the outcome of certain cases by asking the question “What would a reasonable man do, or have done in the circumstances?” Would any reasonable man have allowed this case to get this far? I don’t think so. All this does is make the judiciary and the government look stupid as they burn our money on this Bollox.

I am compelled to point out to you that in common law the concept of “A reasonable woman” has never been mentioned. I would speculate more on this subject but the Wife might read this.

How to lose £84 MILLION!

1) Derry factory site ’sold too cheaply’

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The report showed that the Tillie and Henderson factory was sold on after four months for a £175,000 profit – and the taxpayer never saw an extra penny of the profit.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/northwest-edition/daily/article2951343.ece

You can read that story but basically its no big deal. The most interesting part was

“The Northern Ireland Audit Office report found that a number of sites across the province were sold off at £4m below market value. £4 million, but believe me thats small change”.

2) Sweeney’s big land sale deal on the brink of being sealed

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3226489.ece

This is an excellent story and well worth reading, but basically what happened was the Government sold this land for £50 million which was £25 million below the valuation. Another £25 million gone, but they did turn down the first offer for the land of £9 million even though they were being lobbied by Ian Paisley jr and they do deserve some credit for that. Seriously they could have just sold it for £9 million and got a rap on the knuckles from the Auditors Office. So that’s ….£4m plus £25m = £29 million… GONE!

In the tradition of keeping the best until last this wasn’t even reported locally apart from a few sentences in Property News so I have to make up a headline. Try this……..

3) HOUSING EXECUTIVE LOSE £55 MILLION

In the Sunday Times earlier in the year (May) and there was a small report about the deal done by the Belfast Property Partnership MLS The Times reported that a plot land was bought 11 months ago by MLS for £40 million from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and will be sold to Irish investor Michael Taggert for £95 million. Obviously a £55 million profit in less than a year.

 

Below is a report on the same deal in Property Week,their figures are slightly different and I believe the land was in Strabane and was possibly called Millmount. The original report in the Sunday Times Business section was done by a girl called Aine Coffee

 

 

Investor Michael Taggart, meanwhile, has bought the 90 acre (36.4 ha) Mill Mound site in Belfast from the MLS Partnership for £96m.

The MLS Partnership, bought the site three months ago for just £36m.

http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=36&storycode=3086230&c=1

So that’s £25m + £4m + £55m = £84 million GONE! The list of things Northern Ireland could have done with £84 million is too long to even start. How come all the really smart guys work for the property developers and not the Government apart from Ian Paisley jr. He works for us.

IQ TESTS FOR MPS

 Interview with Edwin Poots Northern Ireland Minister for Culture on the BBC.

Part of a discussion on evolution………….. starting at the “Big bang theory”

Edwin Poots: Matthew, you’re telling me that cosmic balls of dust gathered and there was an explosion. We’ve had lots of explosions in Northern Ireland and I’ve never seen anything come out of that that was good. And you look at this earth and you tell me that there was a big bang and all of a sudden all that is good about this earth came out of it?

Matthew Parris: Good heavens! You’re the culture minister and you don’t believe in evolution?

Edwin Poots: Yes, absolutely. And you’re telling me that all of this evolution took place over billions of years, and yet it’s only in the last few thousand years that Man could actually learn to write?

William Crawley: How old is the earth?

Edwin Poots: My view on the earth is that it’s a young earth. My view is 4000 BC.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Now maybe we are expecting a bit too much from Edwin, basically hes a farmer and an excellent one for all I know, but what is he doing as Minister for Culture. Its embarrassing for the people of Northern Ireland to be represented by someone like this. One of the blogs I read had a comment that said “My God these people are watching the Flintstones and think its a documentary”

I know its a paradigm shift that is required, but could we not have some small intelligence test for MPS, even the 11 plus would do. Oh and maybe a little test to see if they are actually sane!

YOU ENGLISH…. Teh

I remember reading years ago about a guy in Australia who had the same name as a particularly nasty spider. This could be an urban myth but the story goes he changed his name to Smith and when the Aussies heard about this on the News they started calling the spiders “Smithies” Keep this in mind.

I was reading today about Jeremy Clarksons campaign to raise money for the injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and the treatment of one Ben Parkinson who lost both legs and suffered  injuries so serious he has been described as “the most wounded soldier ever to survive” Now thats bad enough ,but …

1. His comrades were not allowed to visit him in an NHS hospital while in uniform because it might offend Muslim patients and Staff………. Do Muslims not get embarrassed about this stuff?
2. His first offer of compensation to cover his lifelong medical expenses, hes 23, was £152,000. A Typist in the RAF was awarded £484,000(yeah 484k) for a repetitive strain injury to her thumb. (Sunday Times today). …….What is going on in England?
3. If you can donate, go to www.timesonline/sundaytimesappeal. Please note donations are not for the typist.

Meanwhile an English Schoolteacher is incarcerated in Sudan for letting her pupils name a Teddy Bear Mohammed. Hmmmmmm Aussie guy, spiders……Opportunity knocks here , I personally am very tempted.

GOOD FOR GUINNESS

“Guinness said Wednesday evening’s heist was a serious security breach. In all, 360 kegs of Guinness and Budweiser, and 90 kegs of Carlsberg were taken from the huge distribution complex on the busy Victoria Quay. The beer and stout was worth 64,000 euro.”

This is the best thing that ever happened to Guinness, it could even be a very clever marketing ploy (probably not though) but, look at the advertising generated for a paltry 64,000 euro. Covered in all TV NEWS SHOWS, Newspapers, websites and blogs. How would 64k euro compare to the millions spent on their excellent and artistic advertising campaign. Maybe there will be a load of copy cat heists, Murphys Stout people are probably sitting in the brewery right now with a truck loaded up with 800 kegs and their fingers crossed that somebody will steal it.