Tuesday Groans

A few rambles on various . . .

1. During the Second World War, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was also his own defence secretary.  Which brings this small saving suggestion to mind.  Similarly, today, why are we paying for a chancellor, when, for all intents and purposes, Gordon Brown is his own chancellor?
2. But if Mr Brown is looking for advice, there’s lots out there.
3. And an honest face sure helps.
4. Ladies and gentleman, the President-not-elect of the United Kingdom.
5. Confirmation: hey, terrorists do exist!  (Someone call our friends at Reuters.)
6. And they say young people nowadays have limited attention spans?
7. With all the talk of “carnage” here, we’d hadn’t heard nearly as much in recent days about the real carnage there.
8. Memo to latest left-wing “charity”/“think-tank” to engage in activity which the BBC dutifully reports as news: a major reason teenagers particularly are so feared by so many adults is because over the years the State has not only so blurred and reduced the boundaries within which adults may attempt to cope with “disruptive” or violent minors, but the law has now reached the truly sophisticated level of development whereby merely good faith disciplining your own child puts you, an adult, at serious legal jeopardy.  Therefore, from a self-preservation standpoint, it is definitely eminently sensible for adults to steer well-clear of most other “children.”
9. Choose your excuse: “It’s not my fault.” or “There was a restructuring.” or “We are underfunded.” or “We followed guidelines.” or __________.
10. From where are they going to conjure up yet more billions for “schoolsandhospitals?” (Remember, that’s one word here in Britain.)
11. This is how a liberal, in this case, the Independent, sees the glass half-empty: interpreting suggestions that encourage marriage as nastily aiming to curtail “rights” for not married couples.
12. Also leave it to the Independent insightfully to posit the natural death outside of hospital of an elderly man is of direct moral equivalence to denying food to a woman in care.
13. How about another comparison?  The Independent desires we all have the right to kill ourselves with liberal dignity and impunity?  How about before we get to that promised land we get at least this modest reassurance: whenever we do die — as every one of us will assuredly eventually — to know our mortal remains will NOT be defiled and looted by the State, without our consent?
14. Typical: the only government entity looking to save money.
15. Why do they need “permanent sites?” Aren’t they Travellers?
16. President Bush has been threatened, abused, called every derogatory name imaginable and then some by every crackpot and Huffington Post “intellectual” imaginable, and the Telegraph is suddenly stunned! stunned! that some people are cranks and tacky and nasty?  But, as with President Bush, the bottom line is Barack Obama will be president, isn’t it?
17. Think it is bad now?  Just wait ’til those 25 percent U.S. military cuts kick in, and there’s no U.S. Navy anywhere nearby to be seen.
18. Sorry, does Paris care what Amy Raphael thinks?
19. Looking back is indeed always useful.  Next up, a necessary review of the Government’s role in the Falklands having surely been the longer-term consequence of the Sudetenland crisis.  Afterwards, an ascertaining at last as to just what was really promised to Belgium.  And finally a real inquiry into the justification for the Anglo-Boer War.
20. But you mean “the war is over, and we’ve won?”  Irrelevant.
21. Good grief, the world is coming to an end.