Long story short:
Four men in Indonesia set an animal trap.
Tiger Cub caught in trap.
Family of tigers chase men.
Men run up tree.
Men still up tree 4 days later while tigers wait at the bottom.
Don't you just hope there is a woodpecker pecking away at there heads as they sit there.
Monday, 8 July 2013
Sunday, 7 July 2013
The Failing Of Democracy
The demonstrations and Government removal going on in Egypt highlight what, for me, is the major failing in Democracy in that once the Government is in, they are there for the duration regardless of how dire they are.
The majority of people didn't much care for the religious way, lack of jobs created and the tanking economy that Morsi was overseeing and built up such a head of steam that the military intervened and removed him.
My biggest gripe about Democracy is that the voters have no way to force another election if the party who won turn out to be a disaster and it is only four or five years later we get to vote again.
What should be introduced is a way to remove a Government if they turn out to be a shambles or if the manifesto they promised before the election day turns out to be a pack of lies or if they are as corrupt as the last Government.
We are inundated with polls so why not have a poll made up of all polls which if support falls below a certain percentage, an Election is triggered.
No need for demonstrations or the military airing it's hardware in the streets, just the will of the people who the Government by all accounts is supposed to be representing us and if the people think you are lousy, off you go.
The majority of people didn't much care for the religious way, lack of jobs created and the tanking economy that Morsi was overseeing and built up such a head of steam that the military intervened and removed him.
My biggest gripe about Democracy is that the voters have no way to force another election if the party who won turn out to be a disaster and it is only four or five years later we get to vote again.
What should be introduced is a way to remove a Government if they turn out to be a shambles or if the manifesto they promised before the election day turns out to be a pack of lies or if they are as corrupt as the last Government.
We are inundated with polls so why not have a poll made up of all polls which if support falls below a certain percentage, an Election is triggered.
No need for demonstrations or the military airing it's hardware in the streets, just the will of the people who the Government by all accounts is supposed to be representing us and if the people think you are lousy, off you go.
Congratulations Andy
It was 77 years since a British man last won Wimbledon, the last British winner was Virginia Wade in 1977 and today's date was 7-7 so all the indicators were that Andy Murray would win this afternoon and he duly delivered with a straight sets victory over Novak Djokovic.
All in all a decent weekend for British sports with the British lions also trouncing the Aussies in their own backyard and even Ivan Lendl smiled.
Well done Andy.
All in all a decent weekend for British sports with the British lions also trouncing the Aussies in their own backyard and even Ivan Lendl smiled.
Well done Andy.
e-cigarettes As Medicine
Almost a year ago i switched to an e-cig or 'nicotine delivery system' as the leaflet which comes with my monthly order of nicotine liquid calls its. It isn't the same as smoking a real cigarette but close enough to have won over 1.3 million users in the UK alone and it has the added bonus of not exposing me or anyone in my immediate vicinity to cancer.
It is a fair assumption that the vast majority of 1.3 million Brits who now regularly use e-cigarettes are former smokers and as nicotine is almost entirely harmless (although highly addictive), you would have thought the medical industry would be delighted but not so the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) who are pushing for e-cigarettes to be classed as medicines and the e-cigarette companies subject to tough new tests before they can sell their wares.
Now i have some sympathy with the people who argue with me that e-cigarettes may not be the wonderful things us 'vapers' say they are.
They say we are just substituting one addiction for another which is true and that e-cigarettes can be used as a stepping stone to 'proper' smoking and that the fruity flavours may encourage children to 'vape' and then smoking.
I have yet to hear of anybody who has made the opposite journey and gone from non-smoker to vaper to smoker but it is plausible and i agree that the flavours such as tutti fruity, ice cream and toffee popcorn could entice children to try them out so i do have sympathy with that argument.
My problem is that by classifying e-cigarettes as a medicine, the plethora of small retailers who sale the nicotine and the vaping accessories will be forced to pay millions for the required testing and the licence to sale the nicotine liquid which will close many sites, leaving only those with the deepest pockets to continue which in turn will make it harder to buy the stuff and force many ex-smokers back to cigarettes.
Seems rather a backward step to reduce the availability of something that has stopped so many people from smoking but therein lies the rub.
The 1.3m ex-smokers no longer buying 'proper' cigarettes leave a huge dent in the profits of not only the tobacco companies but if they are using e-cigarettes to quit, they are not paying out for Nicotine Replacement Therapy such as patches and gum.
In the UK in 2011, nicotine replacement therapies were worth £120m, tax on tobacco products swells the Government coffers by £9bn annually and tobacco companies profits are down (Imperial Tobacco announced that tobacco net revenues are down 5.9% in 2012) so while the publics health may be improving, these three would be the big losers by more people taking up e-cigarettes.
The government, tobacco industry and pharmaceutical companies will never admit to trying to reduce the proliferation of e-cigarettes because it needs the taxes it rakes in from you killing yourself.
The MHRA on the other hand can say that as e-cigarettes are used as a stopping smoking device, they should be classed as a 'nicotine replacement therapy' product and be subject to the stringent demands made on other NRT's.
The MHRA it should be noted is an official arm of the UK Government who have regular meetings with the tobacco industry and recently scrapped plans for plain packaging on cigarette packets after one company threatened to close its UK factory unless it relented on the plan, and the MHRA has strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry where it receives most of its funding and it is also the case that many of the MHRA’s senior staff have connections to the pharmaceutical giants which led to a House of Commons Committee report 'The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry' that concluded that: 'These close working relationships over decades have meant that industry views have been much more prominently represented than the interests of patients and consumers.'
So there you have it, the three who would most lose the most from a wide take-up of e-cigarettes are trying to thwart the wide-scale take up of e-cigarettes and if that means denying people addicted to a damaging substance the opportunity to transfer that addiction to a product most medical professionals rate as harmless then they will.
Profits once again trump everything.
It is a fair assumption that the vast majority of 1.3 million Brits who now regularly use e-cigarettes are former smokers and as nicotine is almost entirely harmless (although highly addictive), you would have thought the medical industry would be delighted but not so the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) who are pushing for e-cigarettes to be classed as medicines and the e-cigarette companies subject to tough new tests before they can sell their wares.
Now i have some sympathy with the people who argue with me that e-cigarettes may not be the wonderful things us 'vapers' say they are.
They say we are just substituting one addiction for another which is true and that e-cigarettes can be used as a stepping stone to 'proper' smoking and that the fruity flavours may encourage children to 'vape' and then smoking.
I have yet to hear of anybody who has made the opposite journey and gone from non-smoker to vaper to smoker but it is plausible and i agree that the flavours such as tutti fruity, ice cream and toffee popcorn could entice children to try them out so i do have sympathy with that argument.
My problem is that by classifying e-cigarettes as a medicine, the plethora of small retailers who sale the nicotine and the vaping accessories will be forced to pay millions for the required testing and the licence to sale the nicotine liquid which will close many sites, leaving only those with the deepest pockets to continue which in turn will make it harder to buy the stuff and force many ex-smokers back to cigarettes.
Seems rather a backward step to reduce the availability of something that has stopped so many people from smoking but therein lies the rub.
The 1.3m ex-smokers no longer buying 'proper' cigarettes leave a huge dent in the profits of not only the tobacco companies but if they are using e-cigarettes to quit, they are not paying out for Nicotine Replacement Therapy such as patches and gum.
In the UK in 2011, nicotine replacement therapies were worth £120m, tax on tobacco products swells the Government coffers by £9bn annually and tobacco companies profits are down (Imperial Tobacco announced that tobacco net revenues are down 5.9% in 2012) so while the publics health may be improving, these three would be the big losers by more people taking up e-cigarettes.
The government, tobacco industry and pharmaceutical companies will never admit to trying to reduce the proliferation of e-cigarettes because it needs the taxes it rakes in from you killing yourself.
The MHRA on the other hand can say that as e-cigarettes are used as a stopping smoking device, they should be classed as a 'nicotine replacement therapy' product and be subject to the stringent demands made on other NRT's.
The MHRA it should be noted is an official arm of the UK Government who have regular meetings with the tobacco industry and recently scrapped plans for plain packaging on cigarette packets after one company threatened to close its UK factory unless it relented on the plan, and the MHRA has strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry where it receives most of its funding and it is also the case that many of the MHRA’s senior staff have connections to the pharmaceutical giants which led to a House of Commons Committee report 'The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry' that concluded that: 'These close working relationships over decades have meant that industry views have been much more prominently represented than the interests of patients and consumers.'
So there you have it, the three who would most lose the most from a wide take-up of e-cigarettes are trying to thwart the wide-scale take up of e-cigarettes and if that means denying people addicted to a damaging substance the opportunity to transfer that addiction to a product most medical professionals rate as harmless then they will.
Profits once again trump everything.
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
Cameron's Text Message Curse
I don't know what type of mobile phone David Cameron possess but someone should take it off him before he causes even more carnage with his 'good luck' texts.
The Curse of Cameron struck yet again Monday as Laura Robson crashed out of Wimbledon just hours after the Prime Minister had sent her a text message of support but then this isn't the first time Calamity Cameron has messed up our sporting dreams.
He text Murray before he was beat by Roger Federer in last years Wimbledon final and then rocked up at the Olympic road race and watched our nailed on gold slip through the fingers of Mark Cavendish, another recipient of a Cameron text.
Our other Olympic hopefuls, Tom Daly, Shanaze Reade and Liam Phillips fell short in their finals and the England Football Team where sent a good luck text just before the 2010 World Cup and niftly got hammered 4-1 by Germany.
On the television behind me, Scotsman Murry is 2-0 down and Scotland's favourite son is not playing particularly well so it could well be the man from Scotland's final appearance at Wimbledon this year.
Gideon, hide Cameron's bloody phone but not until he has sent David Moyles a 'good luck for next season' text.
The Curse of Cameron struck yet again Monday as Laura Robson crashed out of Wimbledon just hours after the Prime Minister had sent her a text message of support but then this isn't the first time Calamity Cameron has messed up our sporting dreams.
He text Murray before he was beat by Roger Federer in last years Wimbledon final and then rocked up at the Olympic road race and watched our nailed on gold slip through the fingers of Mark Cavendish, another recipient of a Cameron text.
Our other Olympic hopefuls, Tom Daly, Shanaze Reade and Liam Phillips fell short in their finals and the England Football Team where sent a good luck text just before the 2010 World Cup and niftly got hammered 4-1 by Germany.
On the television behind me, Scotsman Murry is 2-0 down and Scotland's favourite son is not playing particularly well so it could well be the man from Scotland's final appearance at Wimbledon this year.
Gideon, hide Cameron's bloody phone but not until he has sent David Moyles a 'good luck for next season' text.
Another Great Idea From The Keyboard Of Lucy
I think it is fair to say that if the Cubans had a choice, they would prefer to be closer to their ideological comrades Russia and China than the United States of America.
It is probably also fair to say that the Israelis had the option, they would rather be living nearer the shores of North America than in the Middle East.
The answer is so simple i don't know why it hasn't been discussed before, Cuba and Israel do a swap.
America doesn't want belligerent Cuba stuck there off its east coast, it would much prefer a more compliant Israel and Cuba has had 60 years of America trying to invade it and bump off its leaders so everything would be fine on that side.
Likewise, Israel has been at war with all its neighbours at some point in a little over 60 years and nobody in the area wants its stuck there in the Middle East so no problems from that side also.
Being an Island, Cuba has no direct neighbours for Israel to horribly oppress but as Israel is a fifth of the size of Cuba, the sticking point may come that it will be another decade at least until Israel steal enough land off it's neighbours to swap like for like but that's plenty of time for Cuba to wrap it's things up in newspaper and learn what 'Do you want to buy some cigars?' is in Arabic.
America wouldn't have to cough up so much in transporting arms halfway across the World and Russia could finally stick a few of its nuclear missiles on Cuban soil without any hassle from America.
Everyone's a winner and its economical so the UN should get Raul Castro and Benji Netanyahu on the phone and sort it out.
It is probably also fair to say that the Israelis had the option, they would rather be living nearer the shores of North America than in the Middle East.
The answer is so simple i don't know why it hasn't been discussed before, Cuba and Israel do a swap.
America doesn't want belligerent Cuba stuck there off its east coast, it would much prefer a more compliant Israel and Cuba has had 60 years of America trying to invade it and bump off its leaders so everything would be fine on that side.
Likewise, Israel has been at war with all its neighbours at some point in a little over 60 years and nobody in the area wants its stuck there in the Middle East so no problems from that side also.
Being an Island, Cuba has no direct neighbours for Israel to horribly oppress but as Israel is a fifth of the size of Cuba, the sticking point may come that it will be another decade at least until Israel steal enough land off it's neighbours to swap like for like but that's plenty of time for Cuba to wrap it's things up in newspaper and learn what 'Do you want to buy some cigars?' is in Arabic.
America wouldn't have to cough up so much in transporting arms halfway across the World and Russia could finally stick a few of its nuclear missiles on Cuban soil without any hassle from America.
Everyone's a winner and its economical so the UN should get Raul Castro and Benji Netanyahu on the phone and sort it out.
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Half Time
Today is the 183rd day of the year which marks the halfway point in the year so we are as far away from when we made a drunken arse of ourselves on New Years Eve as we are from the next time we make a drunken arse of ourselves on New Years Eve.
As we are also past the point when the Northern hemisphere is closest to the Sun, we in the top half of the globe are in a headlong rush towards colder times with snow days, Christmas and making an arse of ourselves on New Years Eve.
It is also an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate your year so far with your goals and objectives and to take the necessary action to get things back on track if necessary.
It’s a chance to thinking over the aspects of your life that you might want to improve and vow to make the second half of the year count, to achieve those goals that you set out while waking up with a massive hangover on January 1st after making an arse of yourself on New Years Eve.
It's like a football match where you collect your thoughts in the changing room at half time, consider the first half and devise a strategy for the second half to get the required result.
Alternatively you can say stuff it and just do in the second part exactly what you did in the first and worry about it on New Years Eve when you promise to give up the fags, drink, junk food, lose weight, get fitter, travel more and find a new job and move house and then you think stuff it, i will do that in the second half of the year when you can say stuff it, i will...and so on and so on.
As we are also past the point when the Northern hemisphere is closest to the Sun, we in the top half of the globe are in a headlong rush towards colder times with snow days, Christmas and making an arse of ourselves on New Years Eve.
It is also an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate your year so far with your goals and objectives and to take the necessary action to get things back on track if necessary.
It’s a chance to thinking over the aspects of your life that you might want to improve and vow to make the second half of the year count, to achieve those goals that you set out while waking up with a massive hangover on January 1st after making an arse of yourself on New Years Eve.
It's like a football match where you collect your thoughts in the changing room at half time, consider the first half and devise a strategy for the second half to get the required result.
Alternatively you can say stuff it and just do in the second part exactly what you did in the first and worry about it on New Years Eve when you promise to give up the fags, drink, junk food, lose weight, get fitter, travel more and find a new job and move house and then you think stuff it, i will do that in the second half of the year when you can say stuff it, i will...and so on and so on.
Danny Nightingale Guilty
There seems to be a split of opinion over SAS sniper Danny Nightingale who stands accused at a military court martial of illegally keeping hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a working 9mm pistol at his house.
The defence is that the he had brought the gun back from Iraq in 2007 and had intended to have it decommissioned and made into a trophy but had forgotten due to a brain injury sustained while running a marathon in Brazil in 2009.
Nightingale now claims that the weapon and ammunition may have been planted by somebody else and denies even possessing the pistol and ammunition.
That he passed the assessments and was declared fit for deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 and he had 3 years to decommission the gun but never with the changing reasons how it got into his house pretty much seals it for me that his excuses are bogus.
He knew full well that to keep the gun and ammunition was illegal and under no circumstances should he have that kind of weapon with that amount of ammunition in his bedroom wardrobe unlicensed and being in the military doesn't matter a jot.
He broke the law, a law that is there to protect us, and he should suffer the consequences for his actions.
The defence is that the he had brought the gun back from Iraq in 2007 and had intended to have it decommissioned and made into a trophy but had forgotten due to a brain injury sustained while running a marathon in Brazil in 2009.
Nightingale now claims that the weapon and ammunition may have been planted by somebody else and denies even possessing the pistol and ammunition.
That he passed the assessments and was declared fit for deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 and he had 3 years to decommission the gun but never with the changing reasons how it got into his house pretty much seals it for me that his excuses are bogus.
He knew full well that to keep the gun and ammunition was illegal and under no circumstances should he have that kind of weapon with that amount of ammunition in his bedroom wardrobe unlicensed and being in the military doesn't matter a jot.
He broke the law, a law that is there to protect us, and he should suffer the consequences for his actions.
Super Mega Jesus
God sed 2 Noah 'i wnt sum1 2 mak a ark. if u do dat pls lt me knw 2nite cuz i cnt w8 any mor.Noah replied 'Wkd M8, i do dat cuz i cnt swm LOL'
How much easier it would have been if God had spent the time creating Mobile phones all those years ago instead of insects. A decent reception and high quality apps are much more useful to us than a Crane Fly but who am i to tell the big guy how he should have done things.
The problem with God being too lazy to make sure there was a decent network coverage and squandering his time on mosquito's instead means that if you want to read the Bible, you have to wade through a thousand pages and it is almost impossible to find the good bits but publisher Kingstone publishing have cracked that by producing a 2000 page comic-book version of the entire Bible in the style of a Marvel comic.
Where Jesus was once a weedy looking chap in sandals, he is now a testosterone-driven muscled Super Jesus curing lepers and the blind with a touch of his hand and a witty one liner.
'Boys are sometimes reluctant readers so these comics and graphic novels are pretty adept at catching their attention and drawing them into the story' explained the Chief executive Art Ayris.
If i know young boys they will go straight to the pages covering Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot bonking his daughters, Judah having it away with his daughter-in-law and i'm not sure i want to see the pictures of Aholibah and her lovers 'whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses'.
They might need to tone it down a bit, that sort of material is normally found on the top shelves in the newsagents.
Next up, probably not though, a Marvel style comic of the Koran complete with Mega-Muhammad and the Hindu texts with Groovy Ganesha who has an elephants head which is way cooler than God and his boring man shaped bonce.
Monday, 1 July 2013
How To Punish The Americans
The French, Italians, Greeks and the Germans are not happy that the Americans have been bugging their European embassies and are threatening to pull out of the EU-US trade deal, the biggest bilateral deal ever negotiated, as a way to punish Uncle Sam and its evil empire.
I say to hell with threatening, just ban everything American from crossing the Atlantic and have nothing whatsoever to do with the yanks at all.
With the exception of music possibly. Most of the stuff i listen to is American bands such as Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Green Day, Ramones so we will take their music but that's it, nothing else.
Of course we won't count films, almost all the best actors and actresses as well as all the best films come from over there so music and films but that's it, nothing else.
Okay, TV we will also allow over, would be silly to deprive ourselves of Buffy, Friends, Frasier, MASH, David Hasselhoff, Angel and Big Bang Theory just because their paranoid Government couldn't keep their big flappy ears to themsleves.
Allowances would also be made for soft drinks, American sportsmen, computer software, tobacco, Jack Daniels, Rich Hall and we can negotiate a replacement for Gwenyth Paltrow and you can come and take Ruby Wax or we will just dump her in the ocean somewhere and don't even think about trying to slip Sharon Osborne back onto us, keeping her there is part of your punishment.
I think that's it, so taking it all in account, everything American is banned until you guys stop eavesdropping on us all and until such point, nothing is coming in except the previously mentioned and we will just sell all our crap to the daft Australians instead.
Sorry, quality merchandise.
I say to hell with threatening, just ban everything American from crossing the Atlantic and have nothing whatsoever to do with the yanks at all.
With the exception of music possibly. Most of the stuff i listen to is American bands such as Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Green Day, Ramones so we will take their music but that's it, nothing else.
Of course we won't count films, almost all the best actors and actresses as well as all the best films come from over there so music and films but that's it, nothing else.
Okay, TV we will also allow over, would be silly to deprive ourselves of Buffy, Friends, Frasier, MASH, David Hasselhoff, Angel and Big Bang Theory just because their paranoid Government couldn't keep their big flappy ears to themsleves.
Allowances would also be made for soft drinks, American sportsmen, computer software, tobacco, Jack Daniels, Rich Hall and we can negotiate a replacement for Gwenyth Paltrow and you can come and take Ruby Wax or we will just dump her in the ocean somewhere and don't even think about trying to slip Sharon Osborne back onto us, keeping her there is part of your punishment.
I think that's it, so taking it all in account, everything American is banned until you guys stop eavesdropping on us all and until such point, nothing is coming in except the previously mentioned and we will just sell all our crap to the daft Australians instead.
Sorry, quality merchandise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)