Women Bishops May Be Beating Their Husbands

In an appropraite follow up to the previous blog post, the Ministry of Justice is reporting that the number of arrests for violence carried out by women has doubled since 2003. Violence now accounts for 35% of arrests and is the most common category of crime committed by women.

By these statistics, there are the equivalent of 240 violent attacks by women in the UK each day. But this really doesn’t tell the whole story, especially when it comes to domestic violence. According to a report prepared for GMTV,

British police attend 75,000 domestic violence cases a year where men are the victim although this could be at least half the real figure as surveys show 50% of men haven’t called the police when attacked, putting the figure to 150,000 a year or more.

Since there are no women bishops in the UK yet, we can’t ascribe any of these attacks to them.  After all, we are in a place where it is culturally acceptable for women to beat people.

In the US 3.2 million men each year are the victims of domestic violence. This sounds like it’s a place where it is culturally acceptable to beat your husband. Using the logic of Catherine Roskam, chances are there are some women bishops who beat their husbands.

Bishop, Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

A putative Episcopal bishopette has accused her some of her male colleagues at the Lambeth Conference of beating their wives. Catherine Roskam, suffrgan in the diocese of New York said,  “We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do. The most devout Christians beat their wives… many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife.”

The comments were published in the gay Anglican newsletter Integrity. Having read the whole article, it is clear from the context that the remarks were aimed at those nefarious conservative African bishops. It was perfectly clear to Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, who is not particularly conservative, but came to the UK from Uganda. He challenged Roskam to produce evidence,  which as far as I am aware she has been unable to demonstrate.

I can’t imagine that Roskam would be happy with her male colleagues stereotyping female bishops.

Huffin and Puffin

I watched Gordon Ramsey last night as he was sky fishing for puffin in Iceland and cooking the freshly netted birds. I was quite impressed with the whole sky fishing idea, not to mention eating a bird with breast meat the colour of venison.

As you might expect, Channel 4 received complaints from viewers, including accusation of “puffin murder”. Yep, this is where the animal rights folks lose touch with reality.  Murder has always been an intentional homicide – that is the killing of a human being.

Now I’ve always said if you can kill it, I will eat it. However I know there are those folks how don’t like the killing of animals, live on granola, ride bicycles, and wear comfortable shoes. I’m happy for them. But killing an animal is killing an animal and murder is killing a human. You can call it fraterculacide or aukicide, but not murder.

I thought this comment was particularly telling: “A very bad move on Gordon’s part to be seen to condone practices in another country that would definitely not be tolerated here.” Ah yes, Brits are so culturally superior to those savage Icelanders!

Then there was “Are there no depths he won’t sink to in his quest for the latest gastronomic fad? I don’t care if islanders have eaten them in the past, or if they are considered a delicacy… these birds are adorable, and surely an endangered species?” Hmm… Icelanders have been eating them from time immemorial and still eat them, so is this really a fad?  Oh, and they are not an endangered species. Cute≠endangered. They are a protected species in the UK, but not in Iceland.

Country Music Goes PC

As I have mentioned before, I’m a big fan of country music artist Taylor Swift. I may not fit her target demographic, but clearly she has a broad enough fan base to be the only female artist in the history of the Billboard country charts to have five consecutive Top 10 singles from a debut album.

I was pleased to learn that she got her high school diploma through a Christian homeschooling organisation. Families have to agree with Aaron Academy’s statement of faith. I’m guessing that means Taylor and her family are Christians.

I acquired a copy of the available-only-at-Wal-mart EP Beautiful Eyes. Since we have no Country radio in this country, I had never heard the radio mix of “Picture to Burn”. I was disappointed that the PC lobby apparently got to her record company. The lyrics originally said:

So go and tell your friends
That I’m obsessive and crazy,
That’s fine
I’ll tell mine
You’re gay,
And by the way,

Now the last part says:

That’s fine,
you won’t mind
if I say

The thing is that the original lyrics weren’t even offensive gay listeners, if the 90 comments on the 9513 blog are any indication. It’s only politically correct straight people who couldn’t get the context and the usage. The original lyric is about retaliation and fighting fire with fire. (Not exactly turn the other cheek stuff, but when have you ever known an offended young woman to thinkabout that when it comes to lying ex-boyfriends?) The new lyric makes no sense.

A perfectly good lyric has been sacrificed for the sake of a group who don’t even care.

Not British Enough

I have to follow up on the previous post with this story I saw in the Mail on Sunday. I thought it was bad enough that I have lived here for nine years and have to pay £655 to become a citizen. Keir Hardie is an ex-Marine who has lived here for 52 years – since he was three years old. He’s also been a policeman, a fireman, and even a town councillor. He now works for the NHS.

Now he’s facing departation because he was born in Canada and never officially got indefinite leave to remain. The fee for that is £750, plus he has to take the Life in Britain exam as well.

Because his British grandfather was serving in the Army in India when his father was born, he has to produce his grandfather’s birth and wedding certificates, even though they have long been lost, as they were issued a century ago. Otherwise he will be deported. To Turkey.

That’s right. He’s a Canadian citizen who has lived in the UK for over 50 years and the Government wants to deport him to Turkey. His only connection to Turkey is that he last entered the UK returning from a holiday there. I suppose that, jobless for the first time in his adult life, he could eventually make his way to Canada, though it has probably changed a bit since he was three years old.

Summer of Discontent

I suppose it is a good thing that we can’t afford for the unnamed grandchildren to visit their grandparents in America this summer. Since they are dual citizens they are required to enter the United States on their American passports, but upon returning they have to show their British passports. The older unnamed child is still waiting for the renewal of his British passport.

It’s been a long wait. The Unnamed Woman sent everything off to the passport office in plenty of time. She enclosed the required two photographs, taken in a photo booth which advertised that the photos could be used for passports. After the usual bureaucratic delay, we were informed that the photos were unacceptable, so another set would have to provided. They were “too light”, though the bureaucrats didn’t explain what they meant by this description.

The Unnamed Woman took the child to a professional photographer experienced in producing passport photos. This photographer had already produced photos to the more rigorous requirements of the US Passport Agency. Another set were dispatched. After another extended bureaucratic delay, another letter arrived, informing us that once again the photos were unacceptable.

After extended unproductive telephone conversations with the four or five different useless passport office apparatchiks, another set of photos was sent. Then nothing. Why? Because the passport workers went on strike. The result? A backlog of 150,000 applications.

The backlog will take well into August to clear, according to jubilant union officials, smugly pleased with themselves that the general public will feel the maximum impact of their industrial action and that thousands will lose out on their holidays. If they haven’t already bought their travel insurance, then potentially they will have lost all the money they have paid for that holiday, meaning there will be no way to make it up at a later date.

I can understand why passport workers are angry. None are getting better than a below-inflation pay rise – in effect a pay cut. The longest serving staff are getting no pay rise – real or imagined – for the fifth year in a row. It is interesting that the governing party is tied to the trade unions, yet has more trouble appeasing them than the Tories. Because there has been industrial action across this civil service this year, we could be headed for another Winter of Discontent.

The only question is whether Gordon Brown will be around as Prime Minister by that time. His Government is falling apart. A couple of days ago, the third safest Labour seat in Parliament was lost to the Scottish Nationalist Party in a by-election.  His own cabinet ministers are questioning his future and plotting his downfall.

For the first time in years, the Conservative Party is way ahead in the opinion polls. It appears that having finally convinced the country that they are greener and gayer than Labour, so there will be no challenge to the cherished values of the Left, the British population may very well be willing to give them another shot at governing.

Having lost most of my affinity for the Tories, I only want to see them in power to see the Red Rose lot out. I think the Government will run marginally more effectively and we may see a slow down on the road to totalitarianism, but no great change. I doubt they will even get the passport office to function more effectively.

Russian Genocide Deniers

The Russians are angry with the Ukrainians. Nothing new there.

Seems the Ukrainians are insisting on bringing up the past. In particular they are bringing up the time the Russians murdered millions of Ukrainians during the Holodomor of 1932-33. Estimates of the number of unnatural deaths during this period range from a conservative three million to a frequently referenced seven or even ten million.

It all started earlier than that. The attack on Ukrainian nationalism began in 1928.  First the Russians eliminated the cultural elite – academics, writers, and significantly most of the Orthodox clergy who had separated from the Moscow Patriarchate. With the leadership out of the way, the Russians then starved the rest of the population.

How did they starve the breadbasket of Russia? The agriculural collectivism of communism meant that all grain was state property. The grain was shipped off to Russia or simply allowed to rot. Stealing any amount of grain was a capital offense. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, capital offenses were not subject to a lengthy process of judicial review. Whole villages were taken out to dig their own graves and then shot to fill them.

But Putin and his puppet president don’t want anyone to mention this and they most certainly don’t want anyone to blame the Russians. They have become genocide deniers. Perhaps this is offensive to Russian-ness like admitting the Armenian genocide is offensive to Turkishness.

I have written about the Holodomor in a previous blogging identity, but this was brought to mind again by a extensive article in today’s Dail Mail. Definitely worth a read.

The Real Helms

Fr Patrick Reardon pointed me to an article by Ann Coulter on the Human Events website. She outlines some of the things about Jesse Helms that were left out of many of the published obituaries, especially the New York Times.

Results

My father has had the results back from his colon cancer surgery. Unfortunately, cancer was found in two of the lymph nodes taken out with most of the right side of his colon. This means chemotherapy.

He is still very upbeat. I’m considering going to the States for part of the summer holidays, though I don’t know that I will be of an particular help.

Your continued prayers are appreciated.

Fatwa Rules Paedophilia Preferable to Christianity

Following up on the the previous story, I was looking to see what other WordPress bloggers might have said about the kidnapping, forced conversion and forced marriage of the Younis sisters. That’s where I found Blogging for a free world referring to information from Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Even though the legal marriage age in Pakistan is 16 for females, this was negated by a fatwa – a decree issued by religious leaders – which justified it. It was worth it to them that the girls be kidnapped, sold as property, and then sexually abused in order to effect their conversion to Islam.

Reports indicate exactly what has happened to Saba Younis, the elder sister. After Muhammad Arif Bajwa kidnapped the girls at gunpoint, he sold them to Falak Sher Gill. Gill then gave Saba to his son, Muhammad Amjid. To whom Anila has been given seems to be unknown at this point.

In contravention of the statutory law, a Pakistani court has previously approved of the marriage of a 12-year-old because it ruled that Islam allows a female to marry if she has reached puberty. However, in that case it appears that the girl wanted to marry. Of course in that case, both parties were Muslim.

It now appears that special rules apply if the girl is a Christian and doesn’t consent. Puberty need not be an issue.

Remember to file this under “All religions and cultures are equal.”

Pre-teen Christian Girls Forced to Convert and Marry

Another one for the all religions and all cultures are equal file . . .

Saba and Anila Younis, sisters from a Christian family. They are 12 and 10 years old respectively. They were kidnapped on June 26 on their way to their uncle’s house in the Punjab province of Pakistan. When their father went to the police to complain about the kidnapping, he was threatened. By the 28th, their kidnappers had married them and filed with the police for custody of them. Their husbands declared that the girls had converted to Islam.

Apparently in Pakistan if a man finds a 10-year-old that he just can’t resist, he kidnaps her. If she’s not Muslim, he wants her converted, because even though it is legal for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman, there’s no reason he should have to have a kafir as one of his wives. I’m not sure if a man has to file for custody of any of his wives in Pakistan, or if it is just for those under 13.

As reported by Ecumenical News International, a court has agreed that the forced conversion was pefectly legal. There appears to have been to no challenge to the legality of the forced marriage.

This is by no means a unique situation. In a blog describing the hundreds of forced conversions to Islam in Pakistan, there is a quote from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling President Musharraf at a 2005 meeting that Pakistan is “a model country for the Muslim world”.

39

It was 39 years ago today that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. It will be another 12 years before anyone goes back.

I’ve just never understood that. I know there’s a lot of money involved, but the overall benefits of Lunar research far outweigh the costs. I was five years old at the time of the first landing and I’ll be 55 before the next one.

After Columbus reached the new World, what if the Spanish (or any other European power) had waited 50 years to go back? Or to put it into a better perspective – one of technological advancement – it would be like waiting from Columbus until Charles Lindberg to cross the Atlantic again.

How much opportunity has already been lost? How could this world have been different if that one had been used effectively?

WALL-E is a Waste of Wealth

Until today, the last time I went to the cinema with my children was see Chicken Little. After such a disappointment, I have been leery of spending the money to have more than one adult present. Today I took a chance on WALL-E, the latest Pixar film.

I didn’t think any film could be worse than Chicken Little. Man, was I wrong. WALL-E is awful. Really bad. The first big chunk of the film has no dialogue whatsoever. Later on, after Wall-E hitches a ride on a space ship and see all the morbidly obese people that make up the remnant of humanity, they say a few things. About ²/₃ of the way through, I started falling asleep. The Unnamed Woman kept poking me awake, alleging that I was snoring.

How she heard me snoring with all the racket being made by a bunch of 10-year-olds across the aisle, I’ll never know. They saw much less of the film than I did, because most of the time, they were either turned around talking to each other in loud voices or up and running back and forth the concession area.

And an afternoon’s entertainment like this only cost me £7.

I Believe in Time Travel

The Unnamed Woman and I just finished watching the entire six series of the British sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart that ran from 1993-99. It was being shown on ITV3 and the Woman decided she wanted the DVDs. We both enjoyed the show during its original run (though I had never seen the final series), as it was shown by the local PBS affiliate.

For those Stateside who may have never seen the show, it involves a Londoner from the 1990s who accidentally stumbles upon a time portal to the 1940s. It transports him back exactly 53 years. Thus on the 1940s side, the show starts with the Blitz and ends with VE-Day.  He travels back and forth and has a wife on either side of the portal. He’s also a nobody in the 90s and creates himself into a bit of a somebody in the 40s, pretending to be a member of the secret service and a songwriter (having composed various hits from the future).

Watching the show made me think about the nature of time. I believe that time travel is possible. Well, sort of. If Someone exists outside of time and space, then it is possible to exist anywhere in time and space. It would seem that it would even be possible to exist everywhere in time and space simutaneously, given that neither is a constraint.

I was thinking of this in terms of the Eucharist. Not only is there no problem with Christ being truly present in every Divine Liturgy being served at any one given time on Earth, nor with the Holy Spirit transforming the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood, but it need not be happening merely simultaneously in time or space. As far as the spiritual realm is concerned, when we are joining with the rest of the Church in prayer, we are with all of the Church throughout time at the same time.

Or at least it seems plausible in my fledgling study of theophysics.

It does give an interesting twist or amplification to the meaning of the words of Jesus at the end of the Great Commission, “…and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Truth in Reporting

Last year, Channel 4 ran a programme called The Great Global Warming Swindle. As you might expect, it presented the other side of the doom and gloom carbon footprinted gospel of Al Gore. Actually “gospel” means “good news”. What would be the Greek-derived word meaning “bad news”?  Hmm. . . I digress . . .

As you also might expect, the environuts were not well pleased. They filed complaints with the government broadcasting regulator, Ofcom. (In case you weren’t aware, we have lots of government regulatory bodies that start with “Of”, always pronounced “off” – Ofcom, Ofqual [see the previous article], Ofgem [energy], Ofwat [water], Oftel [telephone], and Ofsted [the school inspectors] for example.) Ofcom has upheld some of the complaints and dismissed some.

They are censuring Channel 4 because some of the proponents of global warming weren’t told that the programme was primarily designed to show the other point of view. It would seem they either would not have participated or would have said things differently.  However, Ofcom couldn’t find the evidence to censure Channel 4 for inaccuracy. This is despite a 131-point 270-page complaint.

The global warming scientific community is very angry that they are just not convincing the general population of their arguments. A recent poll showed that 60% of the British public  believe “many scientific experts still question if human beings are contributing to climate change”. This is despite the Government being behind the global warming message and like it’s American counterpart only providing funding for scientists who support this viewpoint. It is also being promoted very actively in schools, even though I know a number of science teachers who have not bought into the propaganda.

Benefits of Swearing

For students who feel they might be short a few marks on English GCSE exams, they can always add a few obscenties. In fact, the only thing a student needs to do is write some obscenties.

The largest exam board, AQA, gives marks for f**k off, as according to the chief examiner, Peter Buckroyd, “It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling. It’s better than someone that doesn’t write anything at all. It shows more skills than somebody who leaves the page blank.”

An AQA spokesperson tried to distance the board from the chief examiner’s remarks. The only thing is that it is the chief examiner who writes the exam and trains the other exam markers. So the AQA office can meaninglessly distance itself all it wants.

The Government has a regulatory body responsible for all the exam qualification, Ofqual. They don’t want to get involved. Their spokesperson said, “We think it’s important that candidates are able to use appropriate language in a variety of situations but it’s for awarding bodies to develop their mark scheme and for their markers to award marks in line with that scheme.” Who creates the mark scheme? The chief examiner, of course.

The student who wrote the exam answer used by Mr Buckroyd to train markers did not get full credit for “f**k off” because he did not include punctuation. “If it had had an exclamation mark it would have got a little bit more because it would have been showing a little bit of skill. We are trying to give higher marks to the students who show more skills.” According to The Times, with an exclamation mark it would be worth 11% of the marks on the GCSE paper.

Matters of National Insecurity

The Government is actively and admittedly planning the ultimate in surveillance on the British population. You could call it the Mother of all Big Brothers. Gordon Brown wants the Government to keep a database of every email, phone call and all time spent on the internet. After all, innocent people have nothing to hide. The Government just wants to be able to keep tabs on your innocence.

Sure it’s a lot of personal information, but if you can’t trust the Government, who can you trust? After all, the Government is only here to look after us and protect us. And where else could your information be more safe?

Take the Ministry of Defence, for example. They tell us it is just a fluke that 658 laptops were stolen between 2004 and 2007. That’s in addition to the 89 that have just been lost. But hey, they have recovered 32 of these. Up until a few weeks ago, the MoD only acknowledged that 347 laptops had been stolen. Seems there were “anomalies in the reporting process” that kept ministers from knowing that another 311 had been taken. A significant number of these laptops contained, as you might suspect, secret information vital to national security.

But the MoD doesn’t just keep information on the hard drives of its laptops. No, this the era of the USB memory stick. They have had 131 of these lost or stolen, but just like the laptops, they can’t even say when or where. They do know that some of the sticks also had classified information on them.

Yet in the midst of admitting all of this – and given that the British government never likes to admit anything, just think of what breaches of security and carelessness with data lie unknown that this point – they dismiss out of hand any attempt by opposition parties to hold them accountable and insist they must have more and more data about every single person.  It beggars belief.

There has never been a government in this country – at least in modern times – to have such complete disregard for the people they govern.

Ahead of His Time

The Welsh get unfairly blamed for a propensity to a certain crime against nature. However, a string of attacks has made national news (and here) and the alleged perpetrator is a Londoner.

Though it seems a bit over the top, he was arrested in a dawn raid on his home. He has been bailed by police while they continue their enquiries, on the condition that he not visit any farmyards in the London area. Of course there’s nothing to stop him visiting farmyards outside the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police.

This may be what has been happening all along. It may be Londoners looking for virgin territory, so to speak, visiting the hillsides of Wales, and observers have just assumed that they are Welsh. The lie is then spread by other English people, casting aspersion on the natives of the Principality.

The alleged crime carries with it a possible two-year prison sentence. However, in the news stories there is no mention of a political lobbying group protesting about his right to express his own sexuality. After all there is no suggestion that the sheep in question were lambs. These were described at violent attacks, though there was no evidence of actual violence. Do we just assume that the sheep were not consenting?

Isn’t is just a bit hypocritical to say that others are not bound by sexuality linked to the possibility of procreation, and yet criminalise this man for expressing his own orientation? This is especially true given the advances in embryology. Scientists have already created human-animal hybrids and cloning became most famous with the case of Dolly the sheep. Who’s to say that in a very few years, a man and his ewe (though I suppose that’s sexist to say “his ewe”, implying that it’s not an equal partnership) won’t be able to have their own offspring.

Rather than being criminalised and ostracised, this poor man should be recognised for living in the true spirit of the age. He is a shinig example of the British liberal ethos that it shouldn’t matter what you do as long as you’re not hurting anyone else.

School’s Out For Summer

Well, as far as the pupils are concerned.

I have to go back tomorrow for a few hours. I need to make an appearance at least. I can’t actually do anything in my room, because it is being used for a first aid course all day.

Because the Unnamed Woman had to go out of town today, I had to get a ride to school today with a colleague who also lives in Hooterville. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take me all the way home – something I didn’t know until she was about to drop me off on the opposite side of the city. All of a sudden I was stranded some miles from home. It is a good thing I didn’t bring my usual bags with me today and only had my lunch box.

I had to walk for a mile to get to a cashpoint so I could get money for a taxi. I’ve checked the route on Google maps to confirm this. Not bad for a disabled person with significant mobility limitations. It was another 1.7 miles to my house. The taxi cost me £7, about as much as it costs me to commute all the way to work and back each day. It took me nearly an hour from the time I was dropped off until I got home.

Success

My father came through the surgery okay. He is resting comfortably, as they say. At this point the doctors think they got all of the cancer in his colon, but they won’t know for sure until all the lab work comes back.

Prayer Request Updated

I’ve known for some time that my father has prostate cancer. The cancer as not spread and there is a good chance of a full recovery.

However, I learned this afternoon that thanks to the very thorough examinations, blood work, x-rays, CAT scans, and a colonoscopy at one of the top cancer hospitals in the world, it has been discovered that he has colon cancer. It is pathologically unrelated to the prostate cancer. However, it is only because of the one that they caught the other.

He will be undergoing surgery on his colon on Thursday. The doctors are hopeful that they will get it all without the need for chemotherapy. Your prayers are solicited.

UPDATE:

Due to some bleeding, the surgery has been moved up to Tuesday in the early afternoon CDT (early evening BST).

Mugabe’s Friends

When you are a vicious dictator known for fixing elections by intimidating and torturing opponents and any of their supporters, while still managing to have time to drive your country further and further into economic ruin, it’s always nice to know you have friends. In the case of Robert Mugabe, it is China and Russia.

As befits a non-democratic institution, the United Nations is run by a council of fifteen countries, five of which are permanent members, each with veto power, because of the nine votes required to pass any resolution, five of them must come from the five permanent members. That’s why when it comes to severe human rights abuses verging on genocide, Russia and China are always there to keep the world at bay. The two foxes always guarding the global hen house.

After all, China has had to lock down the population of entire cities whenever the Olympic torch has passed through, just to avoid the embarrassment of protesters. And of course most of those protesters are protesting about the Chinese takeover of Tibet, something the United Nations did nothing about because the Communist government of China was not the recognised government of China in the UN at the time.

It wasn’t just Russia and China that voted against sanctions for the Mugabe regime. There was Libya. Yes, the chief perpetrator of terrorism in north Africa is also a member of the Security Council. Now isn’t that comforting? Gee, I can’t imagine why Libya would be against international sanctions applied to a rogue government.

Another vote against sanctions came from Vietnam. No bastion of human rights there. Just this week they only allowed a state-sanctioned Buddhist group to organise the funeral services for Thich Huyen Quang, the leader of a dissident Buddhist group which promotes human rights and religious freedom. He spend many years under house arrest.

So there you have it. This is the body created to maintain world peace and stability. Thanks to the UN, Robert Mugabe will continue to maintain his oppression of the majority of Zimbabweans.

Fix

We are coming into the home stretch. There is one more week of school. At my previous school, apart from Sports Day, this meant working them to the bone up until the last lesson. At my current school, in addition to Sports Day, there are other school activities plus the use of a time-honoured tradition, the I-can’t-be-arsed-to-teach -you-and-you-can’t-be-arsed-to-learn video. Surprising as it may be, this has not severely affected academic results.

For primary schools, it is the last chance to have their school fete and raise a bit of money. At the school where the Unnamed Woman is secretary of the PTA, that was last night. In the pouring rain. Since she is the real mover and shaker on the PTA, she organised almost the whole thing for days upon end. She even bought a load of raffle tickets and put my name on them. Now that was a waste of money. A real waste of money.

Instead of leaving her to do the many other things she was doing, the chairperson of the PTA needed the Unnamed Woman to assist with the draw, by keeping track of who won what, because everything has to be reported to the local government.

I have never ever won anything in a raffle. I still haven’t. When the local celebrity stuck his hand down in the middle of a bunch of folded up tickets – we are talking a huge plastic file storage box – he pulled out mine. The top prize. £100! Only I never saw the ticket. The Unnamed Woman unfolded it, looked horrified and to shouts of “fix” quickly shoved it back into box with the hundreds of other tickets. I don’t know why they were shouting – I was the one who should have been shouting and didn’t even know it until after everything was said and done.

So not only did the Unnamed Woman donated hundreds of hours of time, she also donated the top raffle prize. My £100. I’m not bitter.

Moneygrubbing

Carol Williams is a millionaire. She earned her money by divorcing a successful businessman. She said he was overbearing and controlling. She got £1.4 million ($2.8 million) in a settlement agreed by both parties.

Sounds like her lawyers did a pretty good job. She thought so. That is, until two months later when the House of Lords ruled that the wives of the rich were entitled to much more.

Now Ms Williams is suing her lawyers, because if they has delayed her case (even though she was very keen to push the deal through) until after the ruling, she could have gotten a bit more than twice as much. As they say, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. Since her lawyers couldn’t predict the future, she wants them to cough up the extra £1.6 million to which she is entitled.

Of course it’s not cheap to sue your lawyers. The costs are around £400,000 and Ms Williams says she has been forced to sell her house to fund the litigation. Forced by her own greed.

Right to Commit Crime

The Bristol City Council wants to cut the overgrown bushes around the Avon Gorge. Seems simple enough.

Well of course it’s not, or I wouldn’t be mentioning it. If the Council cuts the bushes back, they will be discriminating against people engaging in illegal outdoor sex. That’s right. I’m not making it up. You can’t discriminate against criminals. They might not feel comfortable committing their crimes in the open and that’s just not fair!

The Council has had to consult with various gay rights groups to make sure any horticultural maintenance in the area is done with great sensitivity. Apparently one of the gay rights is the right to break the law and have sex in public without fear of recrimination, not to mention discrimination.

The is the same area where firefighters shined their flashlights into the bushes last year. Because their actions disturbed a group of men having sex, the firefighters were fined, at least one was demoted, and they were transferred to other stations.