The sad passing of a friend

Captain Haddock, a regular commentator on this blog has passed away.

May your Rum barrel always be full Captain.

That delinquent teenager

Donna Laframboise is a journalist who has spent much of her time in research into debunking the theory of AGW. The video below is part of her tour in Oz explaining why she thinks the IPCC is not fit for purpose.

She shows how the final assessment reports were mainly compiled by a mix of green advocates and poorly qualified lead assessors.

If you would like to read her excellent book,

The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert you can buy it on Amazon. That link is to the paperback version. £12.78. Or you can buy the Kindle version for £4.37

Well worth a read.

And No. I’m not her agent.

Iconic or not.

What do you think? Personally I’m pissed off with the onslaught of “You will enjoy the Olympics or else”. And as usual the BBC coverage is the most fawning and nauseous. Last night’s news was obviously setting the way for hours of coverage of this expensive wankfest.

or

It’s that time of year, isn’t it?

H/T to Skip Licker

A Warning About Drinking and Driving

I would like to share an experience with you about drinking and driving,
and  you should all take heed.

As you well know, some of us have been known to have had brushes with the  authorities on our way home from the odd social session over the years.

A couple of nights ago, I was out for a few drinks with some friends at a  local pub and had a few too many G & Ts and some rather nice red wine.

Knowing full well I may have been slightly over the limit, I did
something I've never done before: I took a bus home. Sure enough I
passed a police road block but as it was a bus, they waved it past.

I arrived home safely without incident, which was a real surprise, as I
have  never driven a bus before and am not sure where I got it from.

Smoking Bloggers

If you smoke and are fed up with the lies and false statistics made up by the fanatics who inhabit the Tobacco Control Industry, there is help at hand. Tobacco Control have set up a Wiki called Tobacco Tactics. To that end a counter Wiki has been set up to refute the badly researched propaganda that is prevalent in the tobacco control Wiki.

I give you:

The Tobacco Control Tactics Wiki.

I would like to point out to my non smoking readers that the template used by Tobacco control is being eagerly viewed by other prohibitionists to enhance their particular goals.

Alcohol (Minimum pricing, graphic labels)

Like a fried breakfast (Sorry it’ll be a Tofu sandwich for you).

Salt. (How dare you like to add taste to your food. Not withstanding that you need a balanced salt diet to live).

They’re all in the firing line now. You have been warned. You never stuck up for the smokers so you’re on your own now.

London travel warning

 

I bet you didn’t know that

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of  British  Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their  escape. Now  obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-run could go for food and shelter.

Paper maps had some real drawbacks --  they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

Someone in MI-5 got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny  wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever. At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology  of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board  game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games  and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners  of war.

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system)..

When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece. As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add:

1. A playing token, containing a small  magnetic compass
2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and  French currency, hidden within the piles of  Monopoly money!

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by  means
of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated  one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly
sets... Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy Indefinitely, since the British  Government might want to use this highly successful ruse  in still another, future war. The story wasn't  declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen  from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honoured in a public ceremony.

It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free card!

Just a thought

Madrid. Beer, fags and riots.

Continuing  on from my last post about myself and Mrs FE’s trip to Madrid, I thought I’d just touch on a couple of topics close to my heart.

Everywhere as always in countries with a warmer clime, there are open air pavement bars. Usually in the limited space they can occupy, the tables are placed as close together as possible for obvious reasons. Now Mrs FE and myself spent a fair amount of times in these bars in order to heed the Chief Medical Officer’s advice to ensure our fluid intake was commensurate with the climate. To our surprise we found that in many of the bars, the price of a small beer could be as low as 1 Euro. (Before you call me a woos for imbibing small beers, the logic is that if you order a large beer it ends up warm before you’re finished. Better two small cold ones rather than one warm one).

Smoking was never a problem even in close proximity of the other tables. In Spain they don’t seem to have been brainwashed by the anti-smoking brigade that you find in the UK. They just accept that some people smoke and some people don’t. It used to be like that in the UK before 2007. One problem I did find was where to buy cigarettes? Outlets were almost non existent, however if you are a local you’d know where it was, so no problem. In fact when I did find one, it was refreshingly like the old tobacconist of yore in the UK.

The demonstrations. We finally worked out why they were targeted in our street. Silly really. The Spanish Parliament building was across the road about 50 metres away!

And finally. The hotel bar. Mrs FE suggested we have a night cap or two in the bar when we got back from our meanderings late on the first night. I should have smelt a rat when we were given our own personal waitress to service our needs. Without looking at the price list I ordered a large whisky for me and a large G & T for Mrs FE. I will admit that they were super large. (My throat nearly burned out with the first swig, forcing me to disappear out for a remedial cigarette). The mistake of course was that we didn’t quit and gone to our room. Oh no we repeated the order.

Eventually after Mrs FE has finished her final drink, she decided to call it a night and head for the room, leaving yours truly to pay the bill.

Cheap at half the price? You must be F*****g joking! 82 sodding Euros.

I do think that we were lucky to leave when we did, as the situation that is not being reported in the UK MSM, is getting quite dangerous.

Would I go back? Assuredly yes.

THE ORIGINAL SIN

Bloody idiot.