Making Money For The Meatloaf CD

It is nice to see the Meatloaf album, Bat out of Hell, is being sold again because it must have been 3 or 4 years since it was last re-released. To be fair this one does come with a 3D cover and no self-respecting Meatloaf fan would want to be seen without a 3D cover and it is being pushed as a 'collectors edition' so they have tagged on a special live recording of Meat singing 'Bat Out Of Hell' just to make if different to every other edition the collectors already have.
It does make me wonder just how low wattage some people are working on that they will keep paying out for the same thing over and over again, probably the same people who turn up to this, being paid for taking potentially lethal medicines.
Just how broke must you be to agree to take untested pills and medicines to, as the website states: 'test in order to determine whether it is safe and effective enough to be used by humans'.
If the 'safe and effective enough to be used by humans' bit isn't enough to penetrate a brain dulled by years of listening to 'Two out of three ain’t bad' then it probably won't notice the rest of the waiver either that warns: 'there is always a possibility that the outcome will differ to that which was expected' and 'the effects of a research study drug on an individual is not always easily predicted' which is why they require you to sign an informed consent form, so you can't sue them if your eyeballs explode.  
While it is true that the £120 per trial you receive would buy a lot of Meatloaf CD's, they don't just take any fan of 70's operatic/metal, at the moment they are looking for Japanese males aged between 25 and 40 and breastfeeding mums aged between 18 and 40. I did check but middle aged former headbangers who know the words to 'Paradise by the dashboard light' need not apply.
I just hope that when Meatloaf cashes that royalty cheque he thinks of all people taking a potentially lethal cocktail of drugs, dragging themselves from their clinical trial clutching his CD (with the 3D cover) and collapsing down at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun, torn and twisted at the foot of a burning' hell, think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell, and the last thing they see is their heart, still beating, breaking out of their bodies and flying away. Probably.

North Korea Cranking It Up

Last year, when Psy was everywhere i turned doing his Gangham Style dance i did wonder why it was North Korea that was considered the bad guy but he has thankfully disappeared again and our attention is turned back to above the 38th parallel and Kim Jong Un.
At first glance it is difficult to understand why the North Koreans are threatening not only the most advanced military in the World but also one of the most keenest to use it. If North Korea attacked America, Kim Jong Un and his country would be obliterated so why tug on the tail of the tiger at all?
Over the last few decades, North Korea has found that if it throws a tantrum, it gets aid and as North Korea is a land of not much, it needs international aid.         
North Korea now though face the problem of stamping its feet so often and so loudly that nobody is taking much notice anymore so it has to make people take notice and its thinking is to crank up the rhetoric.
Coupled with a new, young leader keen to show that he is no pushover, North Korea could become more of a problem than we give it credit for.
In 2010, under Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang sank a South Korea ship killing 46 and shelled civilian and military building on the Yeonpyeong Island killing 4 South Koreans following US and South Korean war games so it has proven that it is willing to reach for the military if it deems necessary to bring the attention back to itself.  
The concern is that with tensions so high, events could quite easily spiral out of control and an escalation could easily follow something going off by accident or a misinterpretation or even a miscalculation and these things can spiral out of control.
What is also seemingly overlooked is that although there is plenty of bluster around North Korea's nuclear weapons, there is no proof that they have the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to the coast of America but what they do have is thousands of ballistic missiles and a vast array of chemical and biological weapons that would inflict carnage on it's neighbours in the South and Japan in an initial onslaught.
It wouldn't survive long afterwards but it would go out with one almighty bang and take large swathes of its enemies with it.

Solving The Dangerous Dogs Problem

After yet another death by dog, the debate rears it ugly head again with the argument on one side being it's all the owners fault and those on the other blaming the breed of dog.
I come down somewhere in the middle, finding the fault lies somewhere between the two, irresponsible dog owners and the breed of dog.
It is undeniable that when these attacks happen, the same dog breeds overwhelmingly come up such as the pit bulls, staffs and rottweilers. I have yet to hear of a person being mauled to death by a Yorkie, Poodle or a Chihuahua which is not to say that these dogs don't attack people, just that when they do, they obviously don't inflict such damage as a Pit bull.
Then there are the irresponsible dog owners who keep these powerful animals in their homes and don't control them or in some cases, encourage their violent streak.
The obvious solution, to me anyway, is to find a way to have less of the type of breeds of dog that if it attacked could cause death and serious injury but doesn't stop people having dogs altogether.
One often mentioned solution is the reintroduction of a dog licence which i consider a good idea, not sure why it was ever scrapped but by bringing it back, we then have the chance to bring in a workable solution to the amount of dangerous dogs in our midst.
Using the car insurance and size and power of car as a template, charge the licence per breed of dog. A small dog such as a King Charles Spaniel would be considerably less to purchase a licence for than a Rottweiler which would see less powerful dogs in our parks and on our streets.
Any irresponsible owners would then be able to have their licence withdrawn and unable to own another dog.
Seems simple to me, if you want a big dog for security, intimidation or any of the other reasons that are put forward as justification, then you will have to pay handsomely for that privilege and if you then fail to control your dog, then that privilege is removed also.
Why is that so hard for the people making the decisions to understand that making halfway decisions about muzzles for some and not for others and what breed is dangerous and which isn't is not solving anything, just treat dogs as we treat cars, guns or anything that can cause death if misused and regulate them. 

Miliband Appointment Puzzling

I thought irony hit its peak when Tony Blair was made a special envoy to the Middle East, a man who had done more than his fair share to bring death and injury to the region and was now trying to bring peace to it, but irony now has another high.
One of Blairs most loyal lieutenants behind the Labour Government policy of bringing democracy to places by bombing the hell out it, David Miliband, has been appointed as President and Chief Executive of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) a global humanitarian aid organisation that 'saves lives and protects people around the world'.   
Many people believe that when the Labour Party were looking for a successor to Gordon Brown, they chose the wrong Miliband brother but for many of us Labour voters, older brother David was tainted by his support for the atrocious Iraq War.
The irony of David Miliband heading a humanitarian organisation when he was part of the Government who created some of the worlds disasters areas has not been lost on other aid agencies such as Medicine Without Borders who have criticised the appointment of a former foreign secretary, especially one with the record of the elder Miliband, as they already have to battle accusations that western aid agencies are just another tool of nations involved militarily in conflict zones.
'Our efforts to convince warring parties that are independent from foreign political agendas has became less credible as a result of this appointment' said a spokesman for MWB and he has hit the nail on the head.
When a charity rolls up to help out, and you hear it is funded by the likes of the US Government (72% of its funding is from the US Government) Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Pepsi and Pfizer and have board members that include Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and now David Miliband, you would be mad not to be suspicious of an ulterior motive as all these ex-Government members are distributing humanitarian aid to the very places and people that they did there damnedest to make sure now need it. 
Why a charity feels it needs a boardroom full of people who were part of the Governments who oversaw kidnapping, torture, illegal wars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands i will never understand, but if this motley crew turned up offering aid you couldn't blame the leader of being suspicious and as David Miliband is being paid £280,00 a year for his services, you should also wonder when we give to charity, how much is going to a board members fat salary and how much to the cause?  
Sadly, this news will mean supporters will be thinking twice about giving money to the IRC the next time they shake another collection box under our noses.

Bye Bye Amazon

The latest quarterly figures show worldwide revenue for Amazon grew 23% to £14bn in the last three months of 2012.
Marketplace traders in UK and major European markets to be hit by fee hikes of up to 70% after Easter following similar rises in US.
Commercial suicide? Hope so as there will be no shortage of firms willing to replace them and it will serve the greedy buggers right.

Sodor & The Man With The Big, Black Book

The people of Sodor lived on the side of an ancient volcano and since the discovery of the yellow liquid and the expulsion of the man with the bowler hat, they had plentiful food, housing and everyone was happy.
One day a ship came into the harbour and out stepped a man carrying a big black book.
He called together all the inhabitants of Sodor and began to tell them that all they had, the land, the sea, the food they eat, the sun and sky were provided to them by an all powerful man named Hod.
The Sodor people had never questioned how they had came to be on the side of the volcano or how the sun and moon got into the sky but the man with the black book explained how Hod had made them and the volcano and they should be thankful to Hod.  
He told them that if the people of Sodor thanked Hod and lived good lives like it said in the big black book then they could go be with Hod one day but if they were not thankful to Hod and lived bad lives, Hod did not want them and they would go to a dark, cold place and Hod would be angry.
'But we don't want to go to go to the dark, cold place' cried the Sodorians, 'how can we live good lives, what must we do?'       
The man opened the book and read out 23 things that the Sodorians must do so that they can be with Hod one day and how if they built a house where they could say thank you, Hod would hear them better.
When the man got back on the boat, he left the big book with the man in the crowd who seemed the most enthusiastic and said that he would be known as the Big Hod and that they would return in one year to see how they were getting on.
The people of Sodor talked about the visit of the man and his big black book and some were scared of going to the dark, cold place so they built a house and went into it every day to tell Hod how much they loved him and to say thank you for the food and the sunshine.
Some of the other people of Sodor said 'I will not say thank you to Hod, we cannot see him or hear him or talk to him so we will just carry on as we were before the man with the big black book came'.     
The people who thanked Hod were worried that Hod would be angry with the people who never said thank you to him everyday and told them that they would not go to Hods House if they did not say thank you but still they refused.
One day the roof fell off the house where the Hoddles, as they called themselves, said Thank you to Hod and the Hoddles tried to work out how the roof had fell down.
They agreed that it must have been pushed down and it must have been done by one of the non-Hoddles as nobody from the Hoddles would do such a thing as they were nice, kind people who said Thank you everyday and the non-Hoddles where not nice as they never said Thank you to the man who made everything for them.
There was a big argument and the Hoddles said that Sodor would be a nice place if everyone said Thank you to Hod and the non-Hoddles said that Sodor would be a nice place if the Hoddles stopped trying to get everybody to say thank you to Hod.
The Hoddles had a meeting and said 'If Hod is angry with the non-Hoddles, then he will destroy our island and everybody on it and that is not fair because we say thank you to Hod every day. We must make the non-Hoddles into Hoddles and say thank you everyday.'
They took the big, black book and went into the non-Hoddles homes and workplaces and told them how Hod had made everything and they must say thank you or Hod will take it away and they will go to the cold, dark place'.
Some were so scared of going to the dark, cold place that they started going to the house to say thank you to Hod everyday but some still refused.
The leader of Sodor was worried that his people were starting to listen to the Big Hoddle more than him and had now got more power than him.
The Big Hoddle knew this also and he tested his Hoddles when the Leader said his non-Hoddle son Aaron would be next in line as leader but the Big Hoddle said he wanted Aavon who was a Hoddle and said all the Hoddles should meet in the town square to tell the leader they wanted Avon instead.
The leader was worried that if Aaron became leader there would be trouble in his peaceful land so he said Avon would be next to be leader.
One year had passed and the man with the big black black book came back to Sodor and were very happy to see so many people thanking Hod but were not happy to see that some people were still not saying thank you.
'We have tried. We have told them that they will go to the dark, cold place but they refuse' explained the Big Hoddle.
'We must make them say thank you to Hod because they will take all the Hoddles and make them into non-Hoddles again and Hod will be very angry' said the man with the big, black book.
The Big Hoddle told the Leader to build a prison and anyone who did not act nice like the big black book said should be put in the prison. Soon the non-Hoddles were being watched by the Hoddles and they would read the big black book to see if they could be put in prison.
Soon the prisons were full of non-Hoddles and the Big Hoddle would tell his fellow Hoddles that the prisons were full of non-Hoddles so they must all be bad and are therefore to blame for everything bad that happens in Sodor and all the non-Hoddles should have a large yellow circle on their backs so the Hoddles knew who to watch more closley.
As the prison got more full of non-Hoddles the Big Hoddle went to the leader and said that it has been proven that all the non-Hoddles were all bad and 'the symbol of all evil on Sodor assumes the living shape of the non-Hoddle' and that he had an idea of how to clear Sodor of such bad people.
The Leader was very sad that his once peaceful land now had prisons and his people were arguing and some wore big yellow circles on their backs and he wished that the man had never arrived that day with the big black book.

Tory Cuts Makes Heir To Throne Redundant

The surprising thing about the news that the search and rescue service is being sold off is that anyone is surprised about it, this is what the Conservatives do, if it isn't nailed down they flog it as we learned last time they had the keys to number 10.
Now an American firm has waved £1.6bn under the nose of the Government and before you can say 'cash only please' the RAF and Royal Navy have been bundled out the door and it's the private company Bristow helicopters that will be plucking us off mountains.
The privatisation of such a vital service is going to be controversial, quite how making profit and rescuing people go together will be interesting, we can only await the news of a death caused by cost cutting but a nice angle is the heir to the throne could be made redundant.
Not from his job as the next bum on the royal throne of course, but as a search and rescue pilot, his job is on the line along with all the other pilots but he need not despair, what a great opportunity to combine the Conservatives favourite pastime, selling things, and reducing the cost of the family who take us for £200m each year, let's sell off the royals.
It's a win/win because even if we don't get much for the Queen, her husband and other assorted Royals (nobody would pay for Edward or Anne but Harry should fetch a few quid), we save tens of millions in not paying out for her waving tours of the nation.
America seem to like our Royals, maybe we could get a delegation up and offer the Queen and we could throw in Andrew and Fergie to sweeten the deal.
Australia is a land in need of a monarch and i'm sure if we offered Charles and Camilla to them they would take them, especially if we throw in a crate of cold ones but to be fair we could offer them chlamydia and they would take it if it came with a six pack of Fosters.
The remaining minor Royals could be sold to a collection of Pacific islands so they can rotate when they get bored with them or Harry has drank the place dry.
We should keep William and Kate though, one because he knows how to fly a helicopter and that always comes in handy and two because Kate likes to strip off and pose for the paparazzi and we can make a few pound from the photos. Every little helps

Amanda Knox Retrial

I don't know if Amanda Knox killed Meredith Kercher that day in 2007, but i'm quite happy that the Italian courts overturned their previous acquittal of Knox and her ex-boyfriend and ordered a retrial.
Many people are under the misguided notion that she was cleared or found innocent in the 2011 trial but she wasn't, the ruling was that the case against her killing Kercher was unproven which means while there was not enough evidence to convict her, there was enough evidence that she could not be deemed innocent either. Another misconception was that she wrongly served 4 years in an Italian prison for a crime that she was not convicted of but that is also incorrect.
Her time in prison was for slandering her employer who she said was the murderer of Meredith and who was only saved by the number of customers in his bar that evening that gave him a watertight alibi. A crime that she was convicted and served 3 years for.
If the new court case find her innocent then i wish her all the best but there seems to be a weight of evidence that so far points to her escaping justice.
The change of alibi halfway through the case, from being in the other room blocking her ears to shut out the sound of the dying Kercher's screams to suddenly remembering that actually she stayed at her co-accused boyfriends house that evening working on his computer despite police saying tests on his PC show his computer had not been accessed that evening.
There is the Knox DNA evidence on the knife and the bloody footprints of Knox found near the murder scene and in Knox's bedroom which makes the earlier not proven verdict all the more surprising.
Knox always seemed an arrogant woman, a view supported by the Police testimony that she was performing cartwheels, doing the splits and giggling with her ex-boyfriend when she was brought in for interview but the largest problem now seems getting Knox to the Italian court.
America, while always keen for other countries to extradite their citizens for trial in the US, are not so quick to send their own people to foreign courts and as Knox is currently in the US preparing for a woefully tasteless book tour of her book about that night, the chance that she will be tried in absentia is strong.
Knox's lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said the 25-year-old student was upset but "willing to fight" and had not yet decided whether she would turn up for the trial in person or not.
I guess not because if the Italian prosecution gets its act together, she should be looking at the inside of an Italian prison cell for the next 30 years.

UK Running Out Of Gas

When we are told that the country only has enough gas supply left for 15 days and then the MET Office tell us that the cold weather is going to be with until the end of April, something has to give.
Forecasts suggest that gas supplies in the UK could theoretically be exhausted by 8 April because Britain only ever holds about 15 days of gas in reserve because of lack of storage facilities.
That we only have enough storage for 15 days worth of such an important fuel is a sticking point because the Government refuses to pay for the storage containers and so do the gas companies.
The situation was further complicated by the failure of a key pipeline from Belgium on Friday.
I wonder, would these gas supplying companies lie about our supply as an excuse to raise prices for a necessary service only they can provide?
Nah, perish the thought.

On an unrelated matter completely, there was an interesting article i read about the 'The Western U.S. Energy Crisis' of 2000 and 2001 were California had a shortage of electricity caused by the illegal shutdowns of pipelines in peak times which decreased supply and led to a 800% increase in wholesale prices in the winter of 2000.

Greens Blamed For Detroit

I don't much about Detroit apart from that was were the Spinners came from and it made cars and that bit of information was gleaned from Top Gear quite recently but it was on the news today because it is on the verge of bankruptcy, being more than $14bn (£9.3bn) in debt. 
Unemployment is twice the national average and a quarter of a million people have left the city in the last ten years, halving its population and those left face living in a city with the highest crime rate in the US.
Exaclt how Detroit got into such a bad way wasn't really explained but the loss of the motor industry seemed to be blamed for most of it and the reason the motor industry went down the pan was because of the green lobby.
Apparently, according to the mop headed lunatic they had in the TV studio, the greens and the onslaught of green  propaganda that the big petrol guzzling cars like the Cadillacs, Chevy's and Lincolns were destroying the ozone layer led to Americans importing European compact cars which were kinder to the environment and dealt the death knell to the American auto industry and the death of Detroit.
I don't know anything about cars but i would guess that the reason the automotive reason sank in America was because the price of the big cars was too much for the car buying owners pockets and the bosses of the car firms were looking at the balance sheet too much to drop the price which is why the potential customers looked to Europe for the smaller, more economical car and what was coming out the exhaust pipe was way their list of priorities and if anyone is to blame it is the bosses selling their cars for too much.
Only a guess though.