Friday 30 November 2012

Evil Santa

It is not easy to know where to lay the blame for eating disorders, obesity, anti-social behaviour and drug & alcohol abuse. Not easy that is unless you are a barnpot like Pastor Harry of the Church of Philadelphia who knows exactly who is to blame, Father Christmas.
As he explains on the SANTA BE GONE section of his website 'It is very possible that the stress caused by The SANTA LIE causes a child to suffer POST TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME and causes a wide range of serious mental illnesses for a child as they reach Adolescence from bed wetting, anxiety, OCD and bi-polar disorders to depression, hyperactivity, eating disorders, obesity, anti- social behaviour and drug & alcohol abuse. THE SANTA LIE MAY WELL BE THE WORST FORM OF CHILD ABUSE TODAY!'
He believes that 'SATAN is the one who is laughing the loudest as he urges Churches and Christian Parents to turn Christmas, The Birth of Christ, into his biggest Lie Ever Told and if Santa is a Lie, then you are sinning against God and your children when you tell them that Santa Is Real and lying to your Children about Santa is a work of Satan and will keep you out of heaven, unless you repent and practise truth'.
But Pastor Harry, what can we do?? Luckily, the Pastor has thought of that and he can sell you some freaky looking 'Burnable Effigy Dolls' which use a specially designed 'filler' that burns quickly and brilliantly. The cost of these hand made effigy dolls is $95.00 per doll (plus $25.00 shipping and handling). Just to make sure that Jesus will let you in, he suggests 'Maybe you can buy two dolls one for the night and one for the day'. Salvation guaranteed for $240, thanks Pastor Harry, but what about the children?
'If you want your child to grow up normal, psychologically healthy and value honesty' says Harry, 'then REMOVE THE SANTA LIE FROM YOUR HOME AND THEIR LIVES! Is it just an accident that SANTA scrambled = SATAN, the Father of Lies? A Child who has been deceived by The Santa Lie not only doubts the Truth about JESUS but everything else a parent tells them from smoking and drugs are bad to sex outside of marriage is harmful. After all, why should a child believe a bonified LIAR who has lied to them about Santa?'
'America and our youth leads the world in anxiety and depression disorders, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse and violence. America also leads the world in LYING TO OUR CHILDREN ABOUT SANTA.  Coincidence?'
There you have it, tell kids about Santa and they end up obese, an anorexic drug taker with mental issues and you wont get into heaven.
Thanks Pastor Harry for showing us that believing in the man in the sky that nobody ever sees is such a danger, we can tell our kids straight out that he doesn't exist and it will endanger your well being and mental health to believe that he is real.  
Santa on the other hand, he exists.

Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

The Christmas adverts are on the television, the advent calendars are being pinned to the door and we are planning what bit of the ceiling will be on the receiving end of a drawing pin this weekend when we stick up the decorations.
It's the first of December tomorrow but i have been listening for weeks how it seems that Christmas starts too early and anyway, it's just an excuse to pump shoppers for a few extra quid to buy the tat in the shops. Bah Humbug to 'em, I'm with Andy Williams in declaring It's the most wonderful time of the year.
To some it is about the birth of Jesus, to others all about the decorations, the carol singers, the anticipation of snow, advent calendars, Christmas films, the school nativity play, holiday from work, Christmas pop records and the general feeling of goodwill that builds as the advent calendar is carefully opened with each passing day.
If you don't like Christmas for whatever reason, pipe down and shove a mince pie in your grumpy face because the rest of us do. 

Thursday 29 November 2012

Such A Small Thing

 “A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”
“Small!” echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said, “Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”
“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, “He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

Jennifer Foster was visiting New York with her boyfriend on November 14 when she came across a shoeless man asking for change. As she was about to approach, she said a police officer came up to the man with a pair of all-weather boots and thermal socks.
Mrs Foster quoted the policeman, Officer DePrimo, as saying 'I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you'.
Miss Foster said that the homeless man 'smiled from ear to ear' after getting the boots and it was if someone had given him a million dollars.
We sometimes forget that despite all the horror stories in our newspapers and on the television, that there are many random acts of human kindness going on unreported all the time.
'The happiness he gave, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune'. Such a small thing but quite as great as if it cost a fortune'. Indeed it is.

Leveson

After an inquiry into press intrusion lasting 16 months and costing £6m, Lord Justice Leveson has delivered a damning verdict on decades of 'outrageous behaviour by newspapers'.
After hearing evidence including how News of the World journalists had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, his 2,400-page report condemned the behaviour of elements within the newspaper industry and called for the establishment of a muscular new independent regulatory body, backed by legislation.
Leveson concluded that 'The press had repeatedly acted as if its own code of conduct simply did not exist, and wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people. He said that he was left with no doubt that the existing model of voluntary self-regulation under the Press Complaints Commission which is run by newspaper editors and overseen by Ofcom, the regulator for televsion and radio journalists.
David Camerons response? Let's give the press another go at regulating themselves shall we?
In other news, The Sun newspaper found itself £400,000 lighter yesterday after an out of court settlement with x-factor judge Louis Walsh after it incorrectly accussed him of sexually assualting a man in a nightclub. 
Good call Dave, i think the press policing themselves just may work this time and i am sure that when the next election comes around, you can now count on their support.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Avo Fellow Brits Abroad

It's cold, its raining, the Conservatives are back in Government and the economy is stuffed so it is hardly surprising we hadn't at some point considered leaving it all behind and moving abroad.
Last year 149,000 Brits did just that and waved goodbye to Blighty and washed up somewhere else with Australia the favourite destination.
The Home Office reports there are 4.7 million British citizens living in other peoples nations, probably moaning about the food and telling the natives what they are doing wrong, and it's Australia that has the greatest numbers of Brits cluttering up its landscape, with just over 1m of my fellow countrymen now calling sausages snags and wondering where they left their didgeridoo.    
The second favourite destination is the USA with 829,000 Brits forgetting some words have a letter u in them and almost blowing their hands off when they first handle a gun. 
The sun, sea and empty supermarket shelves of Spain comes third where 808,000 Brits now live and then Canada which has 608,000 trying to understand Ice Hockey and develop a taste for maple syrup.
Ireland 289,000, France 253,000, New Zealand 248,000, South Africa 219,000, Germany 97,000 and UAE 65,000 make up the top ten.
While i can understand the draw of a life of sunshine and sparkling seas, i look out of my window on Good Old Blightly and wonder just why 4.7 million Brits have given up all this for life elsewhere.
Then i remember its dark, cold, raining and the Conservatives are back in power. Hmmm, i wonder if they could squeeze another Brit into Pimpinbudgie, Queensland or Burrumbuttock, New South Wales?

Killing Cowell

Depeche Mode's Martin Gore has urged someone to shoot Simon Cowell.
Gore declared: 'I'm not advocating violence, but I think somebody should shoot Simon Cowell' which is an outrageous thing to say.
Beating him to within an inch of his life with a copy of 'Hallelujah' by Alexandra Burke and then burying him up to his neck in sand while made to listen to Joe McEldrey's 'The Climb' on repeat until the tide came in would be much fitting.

disclaimer: This site's author does not advocate the killing of Simon Cowell with a Joe McEldrey record and any upcoming death of Mr Cowell by way of an X-Factor winners CD is purely coincidental.

Monday 26 November 2012

The Miracle Of Mumbai

Only Fools and Horses: The Miracle of Peckham - While in the local church, Del Boy witnesses a miracle when he notices that the a statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar appears to be weeping. Within days, reporters and cameramen from all over the world are in Peckham to cover the story when after a few more miracle weeping sessions, the priest realises that the miracles only occur when it is raining. Upon inspecting the church's roof, he finds that all of the lead tiles are missing.
Only Fools: The Miracle of Mumbai - Local people declared a miracle when tears began trickling down the face of a statue of Jesus at the local church. Locals began collecting the holy water and the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni began to promote it as a site of pilgrimage. On inspecting the Church's plumbing, it was discovered that the dripping water was due to clogged drainage pipes behind the wall where the statue stood.
Unlike Del Boy, the man who discovered the dodgy pipework received death threats, was charged with blasphemy and is now seeking exile in Finland as an arrest warrant was issued.
It seems that keeping up the cash flow from the miracle is more important than stopping the sewage flow which caused the miracle. I just hope that nobody is christened in it as i wouldn't want to be the vicar who has to explain to the parents why the water had a faint yellow tinge to it.

Sunday 25 November 2012

Why Does Britain Keep Flooding?

The question everyone is asking lately is just what is going on with all these floods in the UK recently?
The Met Office put it down to torrential rain already falling on sodden ground creating flash floods and the large amount of water running off into rivers which rapidly expand and burst their banks.

The Environment Agency website states that 'as future assessments are completed it is expected that we will see a trend in the level of flood risk. These assessments are expected to show that flood risk is increasing'.
That answers the first half of the question but it doesn't explain the torrential rains that leads to the flooding. which only happened once or twice a decade previously. So what  has changed that we now get two or three major floods in Britain a year?
This year bought flood chaos in early summer to Northern Ireland, Wales and the South West, again in the North of England in September and now the South West has been badly hit again this past week. .
Historically, the UK has always suffered from winter floods but these occur after a slow, but relentless, build up of rain over months and by melting snow but modern day floods are happening out of 'flood season' and rapidly after sudden, torrential downpours.
The Flood Hazard Research Centre, said: 'We appear to be shifting to a situation where you get a lot of rain and you get surface water flooding — sudden rainfall is driving the flooding’.
A study at Newcastle University concluded storms have become twice as heavy since the Sixties — and the most torrential occur four times as often.
The last Government increased spending on flood defences but one of the first things the Coalition did after coming into power was slash the flood defence budget by 30 per cent so the required level of defence is missing combined with housing being built on flood plains so with nowhere for water to go, it enters our streets, gardens and homes.
Another reason offered is the amount of grass areas, a natural soak for rain, which have been paved over so more rain runs off the concreted areas into storm drains and into the already swollen rivers.
Why are we getting more rain? The experts who study the climate and the extreme weather events point towards our old foe global warming.
The Earth System Science Centre at the Penn State Department of Meteorology: 'There is no question in my mind that the "signal" of climate change has now emerged in our day-to-day weather. We are seeing the loading of the random weather dice toward more "sixes". We are seeing and feeling climate change'
Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution, at the Met Office Centre: 'The globally warmer atmosphere now carries 4% more moisture over the oceans than in the 1970s and in many places this extra moisture would be expected to lead to increased rainfall when storms form over land'.
Dr Clare Goodess, senior researcher at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit: 'An anthropogenic influence has recently been detected over Northern Hemisphere land areas in the largest daily rainfall events experienced each year.
Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences: 'The link between extreme events which have occurred recently and the build-up of the greenhouse gases is best represented by the "loading the dice" analogy – as the world warms, the likelihood of occurrence (frequency), intensity, and/or geographic extent of many
types of extreme events is increasing. According to computer simulations of climate, the likelihood that such an event would occur was about doubled by the buildup of the greenhouse gases.
Harold Brooks, head of the mesoscale applications group at Noaa's National Severe Storms Laboratory: 'We understand that warming the planet will likely lead to a more intense water cycle, with heavier rain when it rains'.
Michael F. Wehner, staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 'This risk of extreme weather has already changed significantly due to human induced global warming. While these events could have occurred without the human changes to the climate, it is important to know that the amount of climate change that we have experienced so far is very small to what is projected to occur by the middle and end of this century. By 2100, today's most extreme weather events will seem relatively normal.
NASA: 'All individual weather events observed could have happened prior to the human intervention in the climate system, however unlikely that may have been. However, if the question were posed as 'would these events have occurred if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm?”, an appropriate answer in that case is 'almost certainly not'.

Worrying, the the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre report Long-term trend in global CO2 emissions show that the amount of CO2 emissions we pump into the atmosphere is still going up.
Sorry to the flooded parts of Britain but it seems that due to a warming atmosphere and a cut in the flood defence budget, you will be paddling in your living rooms for quite a while yet.

Saturday 24 November 2012

Solving The Arafat Death Mystery

Its probably the worst timing possible but the remains of the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to be exhumed to examine whether he was the recipient of a lethal radioactive dose of polonium-210  courtesy of Israel.
Arafat's death in 2004 was always mysterious and the mystery deepened after French authorities began a murder enquiry in August following the detection of traces of polonium-210 on Arafat's underwear, toothbrush and hat. Those tests were inconclusive and Swiss, Russian and French experts said
they need to check his remains to learn more although they have already warned that polonium-210, the same toxin Moscow used to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, is known to rapidly decompose, and there may not be enough remaining samples sufficient for testing.
'These stories are simply ridiculous' blustered Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev but the medical records of Arafat appear to show that doctors could not determine the underlying cause of his death at the time and his death came a year after Israel's then vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: 'Arafat can no longer be a factor in what happens here. The question is: How are we going to do it? Expulsion is certainly one of the options, and killing is also one of the options.'  
During the three years leading up to his death, the Israeli siege prevented Arafat from leaving his bullet-riddled government headquarters in Ramallah.
Mahmoud Abbas's political adviser, Nimr Hamad, has said 'if we find polonium in his body, it is 99.9 percent certain that it was Israel' and you know that spells trouble as and just from Gaza this time as the whole Middle East will erupt so we can only hope that no radioactive material is found and Israel is not the responsible party for Arafat's death.

Friday 23 November 2012

Merry Christmas, I Don't Want To Fight Tonight

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in all things Christmas that we forget the real reason behind Christmas, the birth of Santa Claus.
Though the vast majority of us will spend the day eating, drinking and sleeping through the Queen's speech, some couples will be having a less then merry time according to the divorce industry.
A survey by insidedivorce.com and the Family Mediation Helpline found that 1.8 million couples will have contemplated divorcing their partner during the Christmas period which translates into some very long queues outside the offices of divorce lawyers in the New Year.
Unfortunately, Christmas in the midst of a recession can only add to tensions and another survey found relationship counseling had risen during the economic downturn which all must make Baby Santa very sad indeed.
Relationship counsellors, Relate, commented: 'It’s a really sad fact that we see a huge surge of calls for help during and after the festive season. This year, all we want is for families to enjoy a happier and more peaceful Christmas.'
The most common problems for festive fireworks over the plum duff were identified as personality clashes (14%) and not agreeing on what to do (10%) but Relate do offer some advice on how to get through Christmas with your partner, recommending that we do as much planning and organising before the festive day and remembering that alcohol has a way of making tongues loose and problems larger if an argument does erupt.
This Christmas let's have less Wham 'Last Christmas' and more Ramones 'Merry Christmas, I Don't Want To Fight Tonight' because as Joey tell us 'Cause Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other's heart'.

It's Called What?

When the protests erupted in Burma in 2007, i remember a bit of a spat developing between bloggers who called it Burma and those who insisted on calling the country Myanmar.
Seems in the United States and UK it is Burma as they do not recognise the junta who overthrew the Government in the 80s and changed its name to Myanmar so not to lend any legitimacy to the usurpers, they carried on calling it Burma. 
To add to the confusion of what to call where, the Mexican President wants to rename Mexico as Mexico.  
The country's formal name is the United Mexican States, but President Felipe Calderon wants to make it simply Mexico which i venture, is what everybody thought it was called anyway until he piped up.
It might save on ink and reduce the cost of sign making which might trigger changes in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, or Bolivia and Luxembourg as anyone without a copy of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names handy calls them.
To confuse things even further, Greece isn't even called Greece, but saying beware Hellenic Republicans bearing gifts isn't quite so snappy and i don't know how Uruguay got the official name Oriental Republic of Uruguay but they might want to have a words with the Mexicans about simplifying it.

Thursday 22 November 2012

Solutions To Peace In Gaza

Of course it is great news that the ceasefire in Gaza is holding but we have been here before haven't we?
Israel pulverises Gaza and then after international pressure a ceasefire comes about and we hear big noises about peace before it all breaks down and once again the Israelis are running from missiles coming from the Palestinians side and Palestinians are digging their relatives out of the rubble of their houses.
A cynic may say that neither side wants peace as both Governments use the other as the reason they should be elected, to keep their own people safe from the barbarians on the other side of the wall.
This has gone on for decades and will continue all the time that the Palestinians are criticised more heavily when they fire rockets into Israel than Israel who are an occupying army illegally seizing and building settlements on Palestinian land, defying UN resolutions, killing Hamas politicians, holding over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons, destroys farms, bulldozes homes and businesses and maintaining a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice amongst numerous other violations.
There are only two solutions that will bring about peace and stop this cycle of violence.
The first is that America stop bankrolling Israel, especially its military. It could not maintain such a large military presence without US help, so it would have to make peace with its neighbour or it would be bankrupt.
The second solution is for Israel to finally agree to a Palestine state.
The problem with the first is the American religious voters who would not stand for America cutting Israel loose.
The second is if Palestine became a country and a UN member then it will be under the protection of UN and international law and more importantly the International Criminal Court where it could take up the legal case against Israel for war crimes and challenge the settlement building in the occupied territories.
Netanyahu shared what vision he had for a state of Palestine in his 2009 speech where he envisioned a state which would be 'without an army, without control of its airspace and obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts'.
Netanyahu's Palestinian state would be defenceless, have no sovereignty, and hand control of its geographical space over to its decades long oppressor.
Hamas are not good for the Palestinians and they should be rightly berated for firing missiles into Israel but the vast majority of the problems are due to Israel and its abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians and until Netanhyahu is replaced, Israel stops military incursions into Palestine, lift the blockade, stops stealing Palestinian land and remove the wall that acts as an open air prison to 1/7 million Gazans, we will be watching this scenario repeating itself over and over again just like it has been for the past 60 years.

Prisoner Voting

It is often said that as you get older you turn more to the right, something that i have scoffed at but today i'm worried because i find myself in absolute agreement with the Prime Minister, and he is a Conservative.
David Cameron has said that the thought of giving the vote to prisoners makes him physically sick and although i haven't upchucked over it yet, i agree that prisoners and voting booths should not meet.
If a person has been removed from society for whatever reason, then it seems a bit mad to then give them the opportunity to choose who makes the laws of the land that they couldn't co-exist in.
This is one time that the European Court of Human Rights who is pushing for Britain to allow prisoners to vote, should be ignored but if Europe compels us to follow then just pass the law that prisoners can vote but it must be done at a proper polling station, if they can get there.
The worst thing about becoming more right wing is that as my IQ drops i will have to get rid of all my books that contain words of over two syllables, stop recycling, not show any concern for my fellow man and argue cluelessly about the fairness of our capitalist system with the man who lost his livelihood in yet another recession and now lives in his van and bang on about how global warming is a hoax to the lady whose house has just been flooded.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Bashing The Bishop

After 12 years of debate, The Church of England has decided it won't let female clergy become bishops after all.
Not sure what the big bearded bloke in the clouds would make of it, i thought we were all equal in his eyes but apparently not and the Church of England refuses to join the rest of us in the 21st Century.
Maybe us women should start up our own religion, it all nonsense anyway and we can leave out the bits about killing gays, people Who Don't Listen to Priests, Witches, fortunetellers, anyone who hits their parents, anyone who curses their parents, adulterers, anyone who follows another religion, non-believers, women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night, Blasphemers and people who work on Sunday.
Yes, would be very much nicer than that male dominated religion we have been stuck with for the past 2000 years.   

Sunday 18 November 2012

Eat Chocolate, Get Smarter

Not being a regular subscriber to the New England Journal of Medicine, i almost missed the latest scientific breakthrough and i would of just been stuffing my face with chocolate not knowing that rather than just stuffing my face with chocolate, i was actually improving my intelligence.   
The studies author, Franz Messerli of Colombia University, was apparently wondering one afternoon about the power of chocolate after reading that cocoa was good for you and reached the conclusion that the higher a country's chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita.
Apparently regular cocoa intake leads to improved mental function and there is data in rats showing that they live longer and have better cognitive function when they eat chocolate, and even in snails you can show that the snail memory is actually improved.
So Messerli took the number of Nobel Prize winners in a country as an indicator of general national intelligence and compared that with the nation's chocolate consumption. The results were, he said 'striking'.
"When you correlate the two - the chocolate consumption with the number of Nobel Prize laureates per capita there is an incredibly close relationship," the prof explained before turning into geek mode and continuing 'This correlation has a 'P value' of 0.0001. This means there is a less than one-in-10,000 probability that this correlation is simply down to chance.'
No idea what that means, i haven't eaten enough Snickers today obviously, but what it boils down to is eat chocolate and your chances of winning a Nobel Prize go up.
I'm on it Prof and booking that plane to Sweden as we speak.

Why Is The UK Backing Israel?

When you look at Israels past history its a wonder that anyone supports them but as the latest war against Palestine grows we hear the two usual suspects, the US and the UK, providing the diplomatic cover for what they are doing.
As the Israeli interior minister comes out with quotes such as 'we plan to bomb Gaza back into the Middle Ages', US President Barack Obama 'reiterated US support for Israel's right to self-defence in light of rocket attacks from Gaza' and the British Government claim that Hamas 'bears principle responsibility for the Israeli attacks on Gaza' and 'creating an intolerable situation for Israeli civilians in southern Israel, who have the right to live without fear of attack'.
I have asked before just what does America get out of continuing to back a country that acts with such disregard for human life while blatantly defying every UN security council ruling against them, continuing an illegal occupation of another people and hands out collective punishment to the Gazan's and the answer seemed to be political.
America has a lot of religious voters and no President can afford to lose the backing of the 75% of Conservative Christians who strongly support the Jews.
That explains America's dizzying refusal to condemn Israel but the UK hasn't got a big religious block vote so why not join the rest of the World and condemn Israel when it uses its superior military against an already battle scarred Gaza?
David Cameron's words justifying Israeli aggression on the Palestinians on grounds of self-defence seems a bit thin when you consider Israel is a country of 7.5 million people with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, helicopter gunships and F-16s and F-18s, plus 400 nuclear warheads set against the Gaza which is a small occupied territory of 1.7 million which has no heavy weaponry except some largely ineffectual rockets.
The Palestinians are heavily criticised when they fire their rockets into Israel but when Israel seize land and building settlements on it, defy UN resolutions, kill innocent Palestinians with rocket attacks, hold over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons, destroy farms, bulldoze homes and businesses, builds a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice amongst numerous other violations involving war crimes, it is all quiet from the UK and US.
Not that the attacks on Palestine have ever really ended, an Israeli gun-ship shot and killed a teenage boy playing football last week which escalated the rocket attacks from Gaza which allowed the Israeli side to launch their latest adventure into Gaza, but in the last full scale incursion in 2008, the United Nations found the IDF guilty of using Palestinian children as human shields, deliberate bombing of civilian houses and UN buildings and targeting innocent civilians.
The enquiry rejected Israel's argument that the war was a response to Palestinian rocket fire and therefore an act of self-defence, instead, it found the war was 'a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population'.
So what is in it for the UK to stand by such a nation with such a terrible record, especially as it is actually seeking the removal of the Syrian and Iranian Government who have no such black marks on their record?
Even in it's own backyard, Israel is disliked and distrusted by it's neighbours and is very much a pariah in the Middle East and is blamed for most of the tensions in the area. There is no political leverage we gain from such an alliance and by standing by Israel we attract even more vitriol from the other countries in the Middle East. It's military is one of the strongest in the World so it isn't in any danger of being wiped off the map and there is no oil in Israel and no other natural resources that we need so again, i am stumped on what we can get from being so intrinsically linked to a small country virtually the same size as Wales.
It not only seems morally wrong for the UK Government to back Israel while it goes about its deadly business of bombing the Palestinians back to the Middle Ages but it gives us a real headache with our allies in the area and has no military, financial or political benefit so why are we doing it?
While most of the World find it hard to unearth any likable quality about Israel, the only conclusion i can find for the UK's wrong headed backing for Israel is that America backs Israel and once again we are running along behind it wagging our tail like a good little puppy.

Saturday 17 November 2012

Rolling Jubilee

I think i understand the new strategy by the Occupy Wall Street group in their latest venture Rolling Jubilee.
The Rolling Jubilee website describes it like this: 'Banks sell debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors' so if i owed the bank £100, they would sell this debt to someone for a few pence and the newcomers would then come after me for the £100. What the Occupy people are doing are paying the few pence to become the new debt owners but rather than chase the debts, they are writing them off.
The Rolling Jubilee has already made its first debt purchase, spending $5,000 to acquire $100,000 of debt and sending out letters to the borrowers, telling them the debt is abolished and as the Rolling Jubilee website is showing it has raised $327,397 from donations, it could wipe out over $6 million worth of debt.
I always thought the Occupy movement had great potential but it needed a focus to make it a real threat and although this is a great idea, i'm not even slightly convinced this is the killer idea to change things, that will only come when they make use of their numbers and force a few of the banks and financial houses into collapse which would scare the others into line, along the course of the idea that they have previously of moving accounts into other banks because a drastically dropping share price is the only way they can be frightened and this isn't going to do that.
At least they are doing something and helping countless families and that has to be applauded though and all the time they are in there swinging, they have a chance of happening across the killer idea.  



Friday 16 November 2012

Who Britain Hasn't Invaded

Back in the day when we believed that ruling over an Empire was a good thing, almost a quarter of the world map atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule.
Putting to one side the horror and damage we forced upon other nations, Britain did punch way above its weight for a tiny little island off the coast of France but a new book has found that at one time or another, the British have invaded almost 90% of the countries around the globe.
Only 22 countries have not heard the sound of British boots upon their soil, countries such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some we missed a bit closer to home, such as Sweden and Luxembourg.
It may look worse than it actually is because included are countries that the British were found to have achieved some sort of military presence in the territory either through force, the threat of force, negotiation or payment and the book includes incursions by British pirates, privateers or armed explorers, provided they were operating with the approval of their government.
Not that it is anything to be proud of but anyone else would be hard pressed to match our record although America seems to be having a  good go at it.

The countries never invaded by the British:
Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Republic of, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vatican City.

Cheating Violent Meat Eaters

Meat-eaters cheat, tell lies, forget promises, are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes according to a school textbook available in India.
New Healthway, a book on hygiene and health is aimed at 11 and 12 year-olds and details the benefits of a vegetarian diet and goes on to list some of the characteristics found among non-vegetarians.
 It calls Eskimos lazy, sluggish and short-lived because they live on a diet largely of meat and explains that the
Arabs who helped in constructing the Suez Canal lived on wheat and dates and were superior to the beef-fed Englishmen engaged in the same work.
So what scientific evidence do they present to back this up? God.
'The strongest argument that meat is not essential food is the fact that the Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables' so there you have it, yet another crackpot religious idea trying to brainwash kids with their man in the clouds nonsense and as usual with crackpot religious ideas, and religious ideas in general, we roll our eyes and ignore it. 

Thursday 15 November 2012

Listening Dave?

The Government spent £75 million convincing us to vote in the Police Commissioners election yesterday and we did, or a few of us did.
Turnout could be described as sluggish, only 14% of us bothered and at one polling station in south Wales no voters turned up at all.
The previous worst ever turnouts was 23% in the 1999 European election but now this has become the worst in British electoral history, In other good news the Tories were took an almighty kicking in Corby, not only losing the seat to labour but dropping their share of the vote by 15%/
Tory top banana David Cameron said: 'Obviously with mid-term results you listen carefully to what people are saying' and with this result the Conservatives are not only being screamed at but there isn't a good deal of hand gesturing going on as well.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

And So It Goes On In Gaza

On Thursday, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza was killed by an Israeli military helicopter after being shot in the head while playing football with his friends.
In retaliation, Hamas fired rockets into Israel and today the Israel Defence Force launched ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ which began with the assassination by missile of the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, as he drove through Gaza City, followed by aerial attacks against targets in Gaza killing at least nine Palestinians, including civilians and three children.
Hamas warned that Israel 'had opened the gates of hell upon themselves' while The IDF Spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said: 'Were I a Hamas operative, junior or senior, I would now opt to shelter underground'.
And so it goes on and it is only going to get worse and the death toll will rise. So very, very depressing. The poor Palestinians do not deserve to have leaders like Hamas in charge or have to live next door to such a kill happy country like Israel.

UN Slam US Embargo on Cuba Again


Out of the 193 members of the UN Assembly, 188 have today voted to abolish the 52-year trade embargo with Cuba with only Israel and the Pacific nation of Palau voting against and The Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstaining.
This is the 21st year running that the UN has decried the American economic sanctions against the island nation but America justifies continuing the embargo by saying it is waiting for signs of changes in Cuba’s political regime and improvements in the island state’s human rights record.
The US envoy at the UN assembly, Ronald D. Godard, argued the embargo is 'one of the tools in our overall efforts to encourage respect for the human rights and basic freedoms to which the United Nations itself is committed'. Ironic that he chose to talk about the human rights and basic freedoms of a country where the US built a massive detention centre where people have been held without charge for the past ten years.    
The representative of Egypt said that while peoples in his region were fighting for freedom, justice and a genuine democracy, it was troubling that the United States continued to adopt coercive measures to prevent a neighbouring nation from freely deciding its own political and economic system while the Russians condemned it as an 'outdated relic of the Cold War era which had resulted in the worsening of the living conditions of the Cuban people and the Chinese said it violated their fundamental human rights including the rights to food, health and education as well as their right to development.
Even the North Koreans described the embargo as 'a serious violation of the principle of non-interference in sovereign States' and when you have the North Koreans sitting on the higher moral ground than you and your policy is backed only by the most unpopular country on the planet in Israel and an island nation nobody could point to on a map, maybe someone somewhere in the White House should realise that maybe they are doing something wrong here.

Monday 12 November 2012

Hammering The Fuel Suppliers

A report by the Department of Energy and Fuel have linked thousands of people dieing each year from illnesses linked to fuel poverty.
It found that 2,700 people die each year because of health conditions directly attributable to lower indoor temperatures in homes due to not being able to afford to heat there homes due to the rising cost of fuel.
Today, the Financial Services Authority, is announced it was investigating claims by a whistle blower that Britain's gas market has been 'regularly' manipulated by the big power companies.
They may say 'regularly manipulated' but what it means is that the people who supply our gas has been deliberately distorting the prices and blatantly profiteering on energy bills despite the constant cries of fuel poverty.
MP Caroline Lucas said 'this is corruption on a massive scale and a shameful case of corporates coming together to exploit a public utility' and she is right but i would say that they are complicit in the deaths of those 2700 people who die each year due to the prohibitive price of warming their homes.
Customers should be able to demand demand compensation from the companies ripping us off and then the law should be involved because in their push for bigger and bigger profits, people have died directly because of their actions.
Privatisation, what a bright idea that was. The whole system is designed to make profit for large companies who don't care how people pay their extortionate prices or in this case whether they live or die, as long as they make a profit.
The whole lot of them should be re-nationalised because privatisation doesn't work. It DOESN'T bring greater efficiency, it DOESN'T bring any benefits to the customer, it DOESN'T bring the best prices for the consumer and it DOESN'T bring the best service.
Scarily the Conservatives are still following the failed Margaret Thatcher ideal of privatisation and they have the NHS in their sights.

Two Sugars And Some Tax Please

Starbucks paid just £8.6m in corporation tax in 14 years of trading in Britain and none at all for the past three years, despite sales of £1.2bn in the UK so you would expect Starbucks executive, Troy Alstead, who faced a grilling about the tax the company paid by MPs at the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee to be a bit coy.
Mr Alstead said Starbucks had only made a profit once in the 15 years it has been doing business in the UK, stating 'I assure you we are not making money' he told the committee.
When pressed on why if they losing so much money by being here, why they continue to open new premises the man from Starbucks answered that 'It's very unfortunate. We're not at all pleased about our financial performance here'.
So what can we deduct from this?
Either the people who run Starbucks are the worlds most incompetent businessmen, continuing to invest while losing money year on year or they are lying through their teeth.
A third option is that Starbucks is simply a charity organisation, more concerned with providing us Brits with somewhere warm to sit and a hot drink then making a profit.
I don't think they are a charity and i don't think they are incompetent so it only leaves them lying and avoiding paying tax so a stonkingly huge fine must be in the offing.
If Starbucks threaten to pull out the country, we can all wave them goodbye as there are plenty of other coffee shops where we can get served by a miserable faced student and who are not conning us out of tax revenue.
I just hope that enough people now go elsewhere for their lattes and capuchino's so they really do make a loss and don't have to pretend then they may just feck off anyway.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Big Society Big Con

The Conservatives once had an idea they called the Big Society that worked like this, 'Sorry librarian but we are going to have to make you redundant because the country is running out of money. Sorry'.
'Hey, ex-librarians, you got some free time now so how about you volunteer to come and work at the local library doing the job we deemed worth £15k a year for last year while you look for another job'.
In short, they planned to sack ten of thousands of public servants and then ask for volunteers to run the amenities that they had just sacked all the people from.
Obviously, everyone gave the idea short thrift and we haven't heard it mentioned for a long time but it doesn't mean that the idea of sacking people and then getting people to do the same job for free has gone away.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced this weekend that he is looking to recruit an extra 15,000 army reservists who are ready to train and make themselves available for deployment.
Maybe it is just a coincidence that the Government has cut 20,000 regular army jobs and are wanting to take an extra 15,000 on weekend warriors and pay them £35 a day.
Only the most naive would think it a coincidence at all but don't worry if you are one of the 20,000 ex-servicemen and women now on the dole, you can still get posted to war zones and get shot at for £35 a day instead of the £21k you were getting paid for getting shot at last year.
The Tories Big Society sounds much like a big con to get people to do their old jobs for free or maybe i'm missing something here.

Friday 9 November 2012

Life On An Ocean Wave

The population of the planet is 7 billion and growing and as more areas become deserts, flood plains or so polluted that it will endanger human life to live there, the space available on the remaining 29% of the globe that isn't water is going to become pretty cramped.
We have a few options such as using the space above our head or the ground beneath our feet but building massive space stations are beyond us and living underground has the obvious problems of lack of sunlight and ventilation so the only option left is to build in the sea.   
We are already building structures in the oceans such as oil rigs, forts and tunnels and there are several man-made islands off the coast of Dubai so we have the technology and we have the sea so why are we not doing it?
The Pacific Ocean is 65 million square miles which is equivalent to nine Russia's. We could build three islands the size of the three largest countries slap bang in the middle of the 30 million square mile Atlantic Ocean and still have over 17 million square miles of Atlantic left for the fish to do there thing.   
A new Britain could be piled up on the other side of Ireland and as the old one holds over 65 million people that would relieve all of the overcrowding we face here in our cities.
The obvious problems would be material and the expense but a bit of levelling of the landscape would provide the material but coming up with the money might be a bit tricky and the last thing the world needs is a new country that is privately owned by a company.
It's a thought though and as more and more people are forced to live on areas that were previously deemed undesirable through lack of space, it might become something that we have to consider because we can't go up or down, only out.

Thursday 8 November 2012

Australian Inventions

The British do like to poke fun at Australians, all in jest you understand, we love them really with their cork hats and silly place names such as Bong Bong, Humpybong, Jimcumbilly, Mount Buggery, Poowong, Wonglepong and Yorkeys Knob. How can you not love a place with names that sound like they were thought of by a 3-year-old but apart from crazy headwear, funny place names and television shows about kangaroos, what else have the Australians given us?
A bent stick that you can throw you may say but the land down under has been trumpeting its other inventions also including wi-fi, the aircraft black box, the dual flush toilet, ultrasound and disposable syringes.
Not bad for a country celebrating its 225th birthday next year, all desirable and important discoveries i think you will agree but i think if you are after a country that has made world changing inventions, well i hate to brag but they will have to come up with more than a bog with two flushes to beat us Brits.
We can turn on the light bulb (Brit inventor Joseph Swan) in the living room and watch any modern sport (almost all invented by Brits) on our televisions (a Brit invention) while drinking some cool beer from the refrigerator (Brit inventor) or go on a computer (Charles Babbage, a Brit) on the World Wide Web (invented by Brit Tim Berners-Lee) to watch trains (step forward Britisher Richard Trevithick) or discover the theory of evolution (Charles Darwin, beardy Brit) or Gravity (Mr Newton) and explain it on the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell, fellow Brit) in the English language (second most widely spoken language in the world).
Just because the British inventions changed the World and defined the 20th Century shouldn't take away from the Australians inventing syringes that you can throw away. Well done chaps, the country that invented Australia are very proud and although you may not be as well behaved as our other invention Canada, at least you are not as much trouble as our oldest child America who frankly need some time on the
naughty step. 
Still, Wonglepong, got to love that name.

Obama To Stick It To Israel?

Apart from climate change, Israel was not mentioned so much in the US election apart from by Mitt Romney who the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, threw his weight behind which turned out to a bad move as the Interior Minister realised saying the day after Obama's re-election 'This is probably not a very good morning for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu'.
Mr Netanyahu must hope that Mr Obama will not bear any grudges especially as Israel are trying to convince the US to get involved in another war on their behalf in Iran.
The Jerusalem Post are wary of the damage their leader may have done to Israeli-US relations, saying 'Israel-US relations are already in need of some serious repair, and let us just hope that we are not in a situation of "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again."
Obviously the challah bread in the Jerusalem Post office had a few too many poppy seeds on it that day but i think it would only be beneficial for all involved if Obama decided to cut Israel loose for a bit. 
Israel can only maintain its outrageous stranglehold on Palestine land and keep its army so well armed with the backing of US dollars so if Obama decided to hold the cheques back, Israel would be forced into negotiating with its neighbours rather than dropping explosives on them and then bleating that they are the victims.
Netanyahu has an election himself next year and Obama, already on frosty terms with the Israeli Prime Minister, will get an opportunity to repay the favour and back either Olmert or Tzipi Lizni.
This could work out quite well for the much downtrodden Palestinians, an American President with nothing to lose and an Israeli Prime Minister unpopular with the man who writes the cheques.
If Obama wants to cement his place in history and actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize, this is his chance.

China Pick New Leader

America is not the only superpower picking a new leader this week, China are set to select the new Chinese president who is strongly suspected to be Xi Jinping who will lead the country until 2012.
The contrast could hardly be greater with Americans voting in their millions while the Chinese process of selection takes place behind closed doors by a handful of people.
Being the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, China seems to have manoeuvred itself into a good place, a decent reminder of the IOU's America has written the Chinese to the tune of $1.2 trillion is an amazing way to focus American minds when the temptation is to push the Asians a bit too roughly.
A favourite tactic of the West, not with China but with anyone we deem outside of the Western family, is to tell them how they should be like us, democratic, free and a guardian of human rights although the last point is highly debatable and not a point that is lost on the incoming Chinese President who described those attempting to meddle in Chinese affairs as: 'some foreigners who have eaten their fill and have nothing better to do then point their fingers at our affairs. China does not, first, spread revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; or third, cause trouble for you. What else is there to say?' 
Little is known about Jinping but in a World tour earlier this year he stressed Beijing's desire for steady relations and to 'overcome obstacles that have long stood in the way of Sino-U.S. strategic mutual trust and impeded deeper cooperation' which sounds positive.
China will grow, it will become the economic power and a superpower alongside America who i suspect will try to re-run the Cold War with China in the place of the Soviets but while China holds onto those IOU's, America is in a weak position and it will be interesting to see if America are still be calling the shots on the World stage when Jinping hands over power in a decades time. I think they will be facing some very stiff competition from a country who does things very differently to them.

Wednesday 7 November 2012

Laughing

Donald Trump has vented his frustration at President Barack Obama's election victory, calling it a 'travesty' and a 'disgusting injustice' in a Twitter tirade and saying: 'Let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us'.
I think the World was laughing at your weird hair Mr Trump.

Monday 5 November 2012

Obama Wins It!

If you listen to the mainstream media then they are predicting a close fight between Obama and Romney for which one will take the keys to the White House.
The BBC is calling it a cliffhanger and say that it is too close to call but anyone who is afraid that we will wake up Wednesday morning and find the mad Mormon in charge of the World's best equipped military need not worry, because Obama has it in the bag.
Google Trends has a perfect record of predicting the main election results this year and unless pictures of Obama eating puppies are discovered overnight, the man who is not quite as bad as the other one will be sitting his backside in the Oval Office for another four years.
Google are saying that it isn't even as close as they want us to believe, there is clear water between Obama and the challenger.
Hopefully, free from the shackles of having to be re-elected, Obama can now make up for his disappointing last term and do some good around the World by smacking down Israel, scaling back on the dreadful drone attacks, closing Guantanamo Bay like he promised four years ago and tackling the amount of pollution his country pumps into the atmosphere.   
On top of that he could really push that Socialist agenda that he has kept well hidden and ban Americans from owning guns just like the NRA say.
Well done Obama, now don't waste it and do something with it so we don't all think you were a waste of space for eight years instead of just four. 

Ethical Foreign Policy

The one thing the tinderbox that is the Middle East needs is more weapons so as luck would have it, David Cameron has rocked up peddling just that.
Now the Arab political protesters can have holes blown in them by the best of British but it comes with a warning from Cameron that  he would not shy away from raising concerns about human rights. Or he will once there is a break in the crushing of human rights in these places.
'We have one of the strictest regimes anywhere in the world for sales of defence equipment but we do believe that countries have a right to self-defence and we do believe that Britain has important defence industries that employ over 300,000 people so that sort of business is completely legitimate and right' he whined trying to get his ridiculous defence in before the protests of him whoring himself across the one place where Democracy is frowned upon and any dissension is met with military force.
It should be to his shame that when our Prime Minister is off around the globe to promote British industry, the one he chooses is is the one which deals in large scale death and destruction.
Oh when will we get a Prime Minister who isn't an utter tosser?

Saturday 3 November 2012

End Of The World 2012: Option Two

Boy will my face be red this Christmas when my family discover i haven't got them any Christmas presents which is why i am banking on the Mayans being right and Bolon Yokte is going to turn up and bring the end of civilisation as we know it.
Of course there is always the outside chance that an ancient Mayan God won't descend to Earth to wipe us out with great vengeance and furious anger so my  back up to avoiding that awkward explanation to Uncle Ernie after the Queen's Speech that i didn't get him a bottle of Whiskey this year as i presumed we would all be dead is The Web Bot Project which also says that we won't be here for turkey and brussel sprouts this year.
It is predicting a cataclysmic event that will devastate the planet in December, probably a reversing of Earth's magnetic poles. Phew, I may have dodged the bullet there then. 
The Web Bot Project, refers to a computer program that is claimed to be able to predict future events by tracking keywords on the Internet and claims to have predicted several events prior to them occurring, most notably the September 11 attacks, the Northeastern United States blackout, the Colombia Space Shuttle disaster, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and even Dick Cheney blasting his friend in the face while out hunting so it has some decent form.
So if the magnetic fields are going to reverse in mid-December, what should we expect as a way of going to meet our maker en mass?
Just like any child of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, it was never going to be pretty but the university of North Carolina physics department has a handy online guide to effects of Geomagnetic Reversal on humans and it seems we will go due to deadly cosmic rays killing most, if not all, living creatures on the Earth's surface. Only those living in deep caves would be safe.
It also notes that recently it was noticed that the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has declined by about 10% over the course of the 160 years that records have been kept.
On the bright side disruption of Earth’s magnetic field would also result in auroras being visible over much of the planet rather than just at the poles as they are now so that's a bonus, a nice view as our innards fry in unmentionable agony as well as not having to suffer the embarrassment of having to ask the shop assistant in the record shop if they have a copy of 'The Greatest Hits of Phil Collins' that Auntie Gladys had been hinting at.

Obama Win Good For Gun Manufacturers

Google Trends is still predicting a win for Obama and as it has done so well with every other major election this year, i am willing to go along with that as would the firearms manufacturer in America who say they have seen a sales increase of 86% since the beginning of the Obama administration. 
Obama, it would seem, is expected by gun toting Americans to wage a war on the right to bear arms as a win on Election Day would mean he would be free to do those things that he didn't dare in the first 4 years as they would have lessened his chances of re-election this time around.
As a Senator, Obama had a record of voting against guns and an NRA advert, part of a $11 million campaign it has launched, advising gun owners that a vote for Obama is a vote for gun control.
'Gun owners and hunters fear that a second Obama administration with no future political campaigns to worry about will try to destroy this great American freedom' ia the advert’s message, nodding towards the two Obama appointed Supreme Court justices considered anti-gun.
Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA, warned that 'If President Obama is re-elected, we’re going to see an anti-Second-Amendment, anti-freedom rampage in this country like we’ve never seen before'.
I would have thought if Obama was going to bring in tighter gun laws his window of opportunity would have been straight after one of the mass shootings such as the one at the Colorado cinema shooting or maybe he knows that in America, he will always get another opportunity in his second term because the next mass shooting is always only a short wait away.

Friday 2 November 2012

MIxed Messages Over Iran

Last week the UK Government rebuffed a request from Washington to use British bases near the Middle East for a possible attack on Iran citing 'a breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran'.
This week the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak downgraded the nuclear threat from Iran as it had actually moved vast amounts of the 20%-enriched uranium that Israel often mentioned as a threat towards civil needs, acknowledging what Tehran has repeated over and over, namely that it enriches uranium to a 20% level for purely medical purposes.
Yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron says he is considering a deployment of a fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon jets to the United Arab Emirates to demonstrate Britain’s 'military commitment to UAE' although they didn't say who they were committing our fighters to protect UAE militarily from but it isn't that much of a leap to think it's Iran. 
Mixed signals perhaps because if Israel, who are itching to bomb Iran, say Iran is not as much as a danger as they first thought, why are we poking a stick at the Iranians by deploying our military to the region in a move that is only going to antagonise the Iranians?
Is it so wrong to think that the West is preparing for another war with another oil rich Middle Eastern country and we are going to prod and pull Iran until we get it?

Thursday 1 November 2012

All Those Straight Lines

Something i have noticed when the maps of the US comes on the television now is the amount of straight state lines.  
Political boundaries usually follow rivers or other natural boundaries but it always looks as if America was divided up by someone using a ruler.
A Google search reveals that it is only Hawaii that doesn't have at least one straight border and the ones in the middle are all almost rectangular.
I guess that in places without natural features to mark a border, it is easier to have the states with nice, even lines but it seems strange most of the states that were created pre-revolution and created by European settlers were mostly the standard wiggly border shape but the vast majority of states created by post-revolution 'Americans' are box shaped with a lot of straight lines.
I don't know of there is a deeper psychological reason for it but i notice it all the time now. Does look very neat and tidy though.