Piercing glare warms the soul

How I know that Scottish media (at the very least) has its head so far up its own arse: why in Deity’s name are Christmas cards sent by politicians worthy of news headlines?

For that matter, why are politicians wasting taxpayer-funded time in worrying about the ‘message’ sent by their cards? Can’t they just go and buy cards from charity shops?

Which reminds me, Neil mentioned Band Aid’s Do They Know it’s Christmas, because Mount Kilimanjaro is located in Africa, and there’s snow on it. Plus, why would the starving Africans in the 80s have wanted snow in order to ‘know’ it’s Christmastime? They were suffering from famine — hypothermia would’ve just killed more of them!

Yup. Bah humbug.

And I haz so much to say today…

… but my web host sent me invoices to renew my hosting that I never received so my account was suspended. But it’s fixed now (clearly).

In an attempt to make my Google Reader more realistic, I cut out almost all my news feeds, and was planning on posting short snippets of things I wanted to comment on. Now it’s late in the day and frankly I cannae be bothered to publish loads of short posts, so here’s one list. Imagine they’re four posts.

  • Nurse suspended for offering to pray for patients (story 1, 2) is political correctness gone mad. As long as she wasn’t evangelising and forcibly dunking them then pronouncing them saved I don’t see what the harm is.
  • I have received a flyer and e-mail from the Scottish SPCA about the RSPCA ‘stealing food from the mouths of Scottish animals‘. I’d rather volunteer my time but I ain’t got any.
  • New .tel domain seems like a mad idea. Um, we already have Facebook and Plaxo and no one needs to be that contactable. Why not walk up to a hacker and give them our personally identifying information instead?
  • Ah, protectionism rears its ugly head in a country where workers are too used to a cushy life. Yet more on this Total refinery hiring non-British EU workers. If the Brits were better workers they would be hired, because any company would want to get as much as possible for their money.

Should obese passengers buy an extra seat?

If you’ll pardon the pun, I don’t think there’s a ‘one size fits all’ solution to the rights of obese passengers and the normal-sized passengers who sit next to them. I am convinced, however, that obese or extra-wide people choose to sit next to me on the bus because they think they can occupy >1 seat without having to inconvenience me (although I need to scrabble under their arses when I want to disengage my seatbelt).

Scaredy cat Brits

Oh, you Brits. You’re turning completely psycho, accusing a man taking photos of his kids on a slide of being a pervert (via BoingBoing, I am loving some of the comments). Does it not say more about the accusers than the accused? Who sees children as sexualised objects in this case?

Rights or privileges?

Fathers want to be left holding the baby:

The health service is simply used to doling out advice to new mothers and doling out expectations, too, with no sense that fathers should be made similarly aware from the very beginning. When it comes to newly borns, fathers are considered an optional extra, and this father, for one, finds that deplorable.

Just by reading the silly and sometimes sexist comments on this article, how can any reasonable person not come to realise that there is no ‘one size fits all’ policy? IMHO, if a couple chooses to have all the bells and whistles (entire family present, private room, etc. etc.) when delivering an infant in hospital, they can jolly well pay for it.

All the NHS should be obligated to provide is a no frills, hygienic (hah) obstetrics service. No frills mean only the health of the newborn and mother are their direct concern. It’s not about considering a single mother’s feelings or providing father-baby bonding time, it’s about delivering babies efficiently and doing what they can to prevent complications. In this case, a father’s ‘feelings’ are most definitely an optional extra!

(Who wouldn’t want a fairly good-looking man like Andrew O’Hagan, if he was your baby-daddy, to be present, though?)

You just hate me ‘cos I’m black (again)

Estelle attacks ‘blindness to black talent’:

“There is a fashion for YWFs – young white females,” said Paul McKenzie, editor of the urban music magazine Touch. “They are the ones who are given the money and the time, and most importantly, people are patient with them. Duffy, if she hadn’t had this hit, would have been given a second chance, and a third. Estelle wasn’t. The people who hold the purse strings are looking at trends rather than talent. If you’re not a young white female – in other words if you’re black – I can imagine that is incredibly depressing.”

Hmm. I don’t listen to young black men and women (or young white men and women) doing soul and R&B and hip-hop because… I don’t like soul and R&B and hip-hop. They should be thanking their lucky stars I’m not into that kind of music, since I’m such a cheapskate I only buy the S$11.90 Special Singapore Editions once a year anyway!

Besides, if what Paul MacKenzie says is true, it’s not about race, it’s about what makes money (well, knock me over with a feather). Can talented young black women musicians not create a demand for their ‘product’? Are they mad that what is considered ‘black’ music is mainstream enough for white chicks with nice voices to get in on the action? But if soul music had never gone mainstream, the record companies would be accused of being racist, wouldn’t they?

I also have a question. How many successful (commercially or critically) bands / acts that do NOT do soul, R&B, or hip-hop feature a strong black presence? There are loads of people of every colour trying to do R&B (mostly poorly), but when it comes to black people doing rock, pop rock, or indy, I can really only think of Hootie and the Blowfish and the the Dave Matthews Band.

BTW, didn’t Leona Lewis just get her first Billboard no. 1? She’s not a YWF.

Yes, let’s discriminate

GAH! I get so mad when I read the counter-argument on Obese ‘should be barred from IVF’:

“Weight loss may improve the success of treatment, and women should be made aware of that, but to deny treatment outright is discriminatory,” he said.

Why can’t they bloody discriminate? Resources aren’t unlimited, for fuck’s sake! We’ll be transplanting livers into unrepentant alcoholics next… oh wait, it’s already been done (although Neil tells me he went private).

I mean, come on, equality for everything is a nice goal to aspire to, but if people refuse to help themselves, why should anyone else?

Perhaps children need to learn about responsibility before being given rights

News today on teachers trying to ‘fight back‘ after being abused and humiliated online by their students:

The US-based RateMyTeachers website carries comments about individual, named teachers. Remarks left on the site have included: “I have heard awful rumours about that man” and “he is evil personified”.

Not all teachers are good teachers, and some may even be criminally unfit, but for the most part, I reckon teachers are doing the best they can to educate their charges. This does not give students the right to post lies in an attempt to damage their teachers’ reputations or abuse them in class and film it for distribution on the Internet. Where do these kids learn this utter lack of respect for others?

I do believe that children have certain rights. The law has obviously gone miles too far in ‘protecting’ children — those who do not have a pressing need to have their rights protected have NOT learned that there are consequences to their actions (or at least, there should be).

These kids need to be caned or something.

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