People ask "What's wrong with English football?"

I have the answer. This Saturday coming, Phil Neville is in line to win his 56th international cap for England.

Enough said.

What's wrong with the UK?

You know I will tell you; a selection of stories from todays paper....

• A thriving economy, but not for us - Britain's economic growth outstrips most in the World at 2.9%, says a recent study; however, a separate study says that this is not making it into our pockets, with most families just £9 a week better off than 2002. So who's getting all this money, Gordon?
• £50,000 worth of damage at a detention centre for illegal immigrants - caused when an Algerian, about to be deported, set fire to his bed. The resulting chaos started a riot. Computers and windows trashed. I bet they're all still here too - why?
• Shops to get their own jails! - this is great. Shops are to get their own jails and powers to hold people for up to 4 hours, to combat shoplifting and "freeing up space at police stations". Brilliant move by John Reid. How long til he rents them to ease the prison shortage?
• Pikeys get their jail terms shortened - two pikey idiots who attacked an off duty policeman and left him a vegetable, unable to speak, unable to move, had their sentences shortened by two years each, from 9 years and 8 years to 7 and 6 respectively. This guy needs 24-hour care after being beaten because he refused a light for their cannibis joint! Excuse me, why are we reducing said sentences? Amazingly, they also got a promise that after they are released, if they re-offend, they won't get recalled to jail. Jesus Christ.
• In the meantime - a dad of one, who lived near a jail, got 5 years for keeping a pistol. He didn't use it, just kept it. Mandatory sentence.
• Uni of leeds censored - a lecture series on "Islamic anti-semitism in the middle East" was cancelled after complaints from muslim students. Free speech anyone?
• Vicar stabbed to death - a vicar was stabbed to death at his own home. A 23 year old man was arrested at the scene. I'd bet my hat he's a care in the community patient. Who's with me?
• Boy of ten gets an ASBO - while the reporter interviews said kid with his Mum, his Mum gives kid a cigarette from her packet. I guess we got to the root of that problem pretty quickly, eh mum?
• Scroungers claims £75k - two old pikeys claimed benefits for 15 kids who didn't exist and got £75k. They're so stupid they gambled and drank it and don't even have a house, now living on a friend's floor. I hope they rot there.
• Ambulanceman attacked - an ambulance driver was attacked when he stopped to help someone who collapsed. Passers by simply took photos on their mobiles.
• UK to employ more male primary school teachers - Alan Johnson wants more men in primary schools to provide role models "especially for boys brought up by single mums". Is labour finally recognising their terrible legacy of neglecting the family?
• Cabbie shot dead for £20 - a cab driver was shot 7 times as he tried to escape being robbed. His colleagues claim he would have had no more than £15-20 on him. Hanging is too good for these wankers

So, tell me again, how come the battlefield for the next election is supposed to be the environment? Mr Blair, Mr Cameron, your country is fucked, are you listening?

Girls - please don't get a boob job!

After the seriousness of my last post (typical that the religious topic got my one and only comment....)

Many media reports suggest Paris Hilton may have had a boob job. This seems based on some images showing her with big boobs, after previously being famous for having small boobs:

before

after

Even if this is not true (and I will be dismayed if it is) I want to use it to make a point, which is...

Natural boobs, no matter how small, will always be a million times better than fake ones

OK, there, I said it. This seems to fly in the face of the porn and glamour fashion industry, but it's so true. Paris has small but perfectly formed breasts, something I would prefer any day above fake, hard, stupid looking balloon tits.

So, who's with me?

An impassioned defense of Richard Dawkins

So I did a blogsearch for Dawkins and all of the top ten hits were people (ignorantly; see below) slagging him off. They miss the point, so here is my defense...

I will start my plea with a caveat; I do not agree with everything Dawkins says. He is overly confident in some areas and sometimes hypocritical. An example is his defense of the multiverse/megaverse theory as being more sound than the god theory. However, neither have scientific evidence to support them, so in my mind they have an equal footing in terms of scientific integrity (ie they exist as just theories).

However, all of the arguments against Dawkins concentrate on one, tiny little error in his approach and use that to invalidate his entire argument. This is completely incorrect. For every slip Dawkins makes, he puts forward ten arguments that creationists cannot refute.

In his book, The God Delusion, he easily and convincingly does away with every single creationist/intelligent design argument I have ever come across (and there have been a few), with intelligence, wit and a good degree of fairness (surprisingly). He reveals many of the transparent techniques used by the ID brigade (misquoting, deliberate misinterpretation etc) and simply puts forward scientific arguments that are hard to ignore - for example, if one argues that something is irreducibly complex, and is so improbable it must have been designed, then Dawkins argues that the designer must be more complex again, which begs the question - who designed the designer? We soon reach a recurring paradox that ID/creationism cannot answer.

Anyway, read the book; recognise Dawkins' mistakes, note them, and then concentrate on his more sound scientific arguments; they are very hard to ignore or dispute. Consider it a challenge.

Why do I shop at ASDA?

I have no idea why I do it. I hate it. Every time I go there, I leave feeling unclean, like my soul has been raped by a leper. It's disgusting. It's the only supermarket I know that still uses jingles, you know the sort:

you shop at Asda
savings are quite likely
you shop at Asda
because you are a pikey!

I realise the irony of criticising people for going to a shop I go to, for the same reasons I go there. But I hardly ever do it. There is football tonight and I wanted some good beer, cheap. I thought asda would sort me out, but they didn't, it was as expensive as everywhere else.

The place is just full of unhealthy fat people. And they always pay cash. Three trolley fulls of food, 14 kids, and a bill of £268 and they bring out a bunch of £20s. I am convinced this is because they are all tax-dodging wankers.

As I left, there was a surreal moment, with the PA playing "I have a dream" by Abba; sure, I have a dream of shopping somewhere without the risk of catching scabies off my fellow shoppers. Anyway, I was pushing my trolley out when one of the dumb mutts wandered aimlessly into my path, with a dull look in their eyes that told me their brain had vacated the premises after their last can of white lightening; I rammed my trolley violently into theirs and left the store. "Fucking twat" I thought as I heard the she/he thing whimper "Sorry...."

72 raisins - muslims shortchanged?

It's with great mirth that, in addition to the long known fact that the "virgin" in "virgin mary" was down a mistranslation, it would seem that the 72 virgins promised to martyrs by the Koran (Qu'ran) may also be a little white lie:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,631357,00.html

Christoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut.

Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris.

A vertical ship

This is just too cool

- a boat has been invented by people in the US that can travel along normally or vertically!!! It's been invented so that scientists can study the motion of waves.

Awesome.