It's cool to smoke now

Is it really have the reverse effect? The smoking ban.



You tell me.

Uncovered in France

I see the French have got the balls to make it a criminal offence to wear the veil in public. With all this Hooha about terrorist threats to the UK, how can it make sense to allow people to have their face hidden?

Women who wear Islamic veils in public in France face a £700 fine under strict new laws being proposed.

The amount could be doubled for Muslim men who force female members of their family to cover their faces.

Jean-Francois Cope, president of Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP Party, said the legislation was intended to protect the ‘dignity’ and ‘security’ of women.

burka woman "

A woman wears a burka in Roncin, northern France. The proposed legislation to ban the veil in public would protect the 'dignity' of women

He is set to file the draft law in the National Assembly after Mr Sarkozy said veils were ‘not welcome’ because they intimidated non-Muslims.

‘We want a ban in public areas,’ said Mr Cope, making it clear the veil would not be allowed in public buildings, or on the streets of France, home to five million Muslims.

After all, many shops won't allow hoodies.

H/T to the Daily Mail.

Harman fined

Harriet Harman has been fined for driving with undue care and attention. But why did the CPS drop the other two charges of using her mobile phone and leaving the scene of an accident? Could be the wiff of Keir Starmer be smelt here?

Anyway the Biassed BBC report is here for you to read if wish.

The BBC says it's still warming.

Watching the 6 O'clock news, I was interested to see that the BBC and the Met Office were trotting out their spiel about the AGW fairytale.

Mmmm. Methinks they are worrying that support for this fable is rapidly racing away from them like a skier down a ski slope. And maybe their jobs when they are tossed onto the bonfires of the vanities.

Why I won't vote for Cameron's Conservatives either

A long article on Peter Hitchens blog, mirrors what I have been thinking about the wishy washy pinkish Tory Party of today.

A little snippet here to wet your appetite:

When Theresa May favours all-women shortlists, when David Cameron accedes to Lisbon and panders to the Green movement, when David Willetts adopts the language of the enemy as he declares that the alleged but non-existent ‘war against single mothers is over’, when all of them knuckle under to the idea that ‘Human Rights’ should be the supreme arbiter of what is right and wrong, they are all the unknowing followers of Antonio Gramsci, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse and the rest of the cardboard deities of the Sixties New Left revolution, not to mention discredited sex-gurus such as Margaret Mead and Alfred Kinsey, whose bogus ideas and dud 'research' are still widely revered on the Left, and among those unconsciously influenced by the Left.

Go and read it here and see if you disagree or not.

H/T to OBO for pointing me to it.

Colder

An interesting website showing the underlying cooling that has been going on over the last decade. Lots of interesting links to a plethora of articles.

The article is here. Nicely set out and simple to read.

H/T to EU Referendum

Thrice Stricken

It snowed last night.

Dug the car out and cleared the drive.

It snowed again.

Cleared the drive.

Aaaaagh. It's snowing again.

One redeeming fact. Not a Toyota Prious in sight. Plenty of 4 x 4's though.

Ecoloonies banned here.

More of that white soot falling.

I had to laugh when I read an article today, where Sea Shepherd conservation Society's super duper new boat was trashed by a whaler. Now I'm not particularly keen on whaling, but these buggers got what they deserved. These idiots (and Greenpeace) are totally irresponsible when it comes to the rules of the road at sea.

They tried to claim that it was all the fault of the whaler.

'They were stopped dead in the water when the incident occurred,' Maclean said of the Ady Gil.

It doesn't look like it to me in the above video clip.

Watch the wake build up at about 15 secs in. They most certainly were not stopped dead in the water. Mind you after the collision they were!

Idiots like that deserve all they get. They make the blood boil of professional seafarers. And don't get me started on fishermen.

Source

Oh well. Time to throw another Polar Bear on to the fire

Public safety message.

Instead of all those fatuous Television broadcasts exhorting us to drive less and save the planet. Why can't they produce one telling people how to actually drive in snow? Not just tell people what to wear, and to keep a shovel in the car.

If people were actually shown how to drive in snow, they wouldn't need all that gear.

Yes, that means you, the silly cow who nearly T boned me this morning.

Snowed under?

Can the Railways get anything right?

Commuters desperate to avoid spending the night in a railway station or being eaten by their snow-bound fellow commuters were left none the wiser if they went to the National Rail website this afternoon.

The site, operated by the Association of Train Operating Companies, is a clearing house for train service information in the UK.

This afternoon, nervous commuters were greeted with a reassuring 503 error message as they wondered when to make a bolt from work, before a southwards moving band of snow hits the South East and completes the smothering of the entire UK under an icy blanket.

"The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later," the site cheerily told travellers facing the UK's worst Siberian onslaught since the Big Freeze of 2009.

The whole story is over at the Register.