Turning up the heat

Things in the Middle East are still insane. Our government have yet again made me ashamed to be British. Even though I didn't vote for them we'll all still be considered collectively responsible for their actions. Anyone who thinks that supporting Israel isn't going to make us more likely to suffer from terrorist attacks is a fool. Israel are currently generating plenty of future terrorists all over the world by their actions, and while we could have avoided a lot of ill-will by trying to stop their war, we're now part of it. To rub salt into the wound, the Americans are even using our airbases as stop-off points for the weapons their are providing the Israelis with. If that doesn't make us complicit, I don't know what does...

Israel

Israel is still intent on starting wars with all of its neighbours. It's a sketchy situation there, so I'm not massively surprised to see us doing nothing about it. Of all the polarising issues, Israel seems to be the one that is the most clear cut. When anything to do with the middle east and Israel crops up, people here roll their eyes, make a tutting noise and complain about how Israel should get back to its borders and stop causing trouble. Speak to most Americans though and they say that of course Israel should 'defend itself' by attacking pretty much anyone and blaming everyone else. If it was fair to attack countries that 'funded terrorism' then surely the US funding of the IRA for God knows how long makes them a legitimate target? Of course, funding terrorists is ok when we like them, much as we did the Taliban in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. I'm not sure why quite so many people on the right have a problem spotting hypocrisy. I tend to think that a combination of gullibility and Rupert Murdoch are probably to blame...

Pandering to idiots

At the risk of sounding like someone much older... what is the world coming to? Anyone in the UK can't have escaped this story about a vicar who kissed a schoolgirl on the cheek when giving her an award and found himself in the centre of a criminal investigation. He was found not to have committed any crime of course, but he still ended-up having to give-up his post as a school governor.

So the school loses one of the few people who are willing to give up their time to help out purely to satisfy some insane mother who seems hell bent on someone hanging for innocently kissing her daughter. The quote from her at the end of the article about sums it all up really:

But the girl's mother said she was not satisfied with the investigationor the findings and continued to allege that Mr Barrett's kiss was an assault. "I am so disappointed with the way it has been handled and Iwould like him to be removed from his position," she said.

There are too many idiots in the world and we need to do something about it. To this end I think I will start to 'name and shame' them, so this woman (who sadly remains nameless for now) will be the first person on the list when I get it onto my web site this evening. It might be a very small and probably completely ineffective thing, but I'd get some small satisfaction if these people or their friends Googled their names in future and found themselves on a list of idiots.