Who would have guessed it?

Well blimey, you could knock me down with a feather. I have feeling it also kills other things too.

If I say it it is done

What is it with politicians that they seem to think that wherever there is a problem all that is required is some legislation, or indeed their signature on a piece of paper and the world will be saved (or at least that part of the world that has temporarily grabbed their attention)?

Today's egregious exemplar of this absurd approach is Mary Lou MacDonald, the Sinn Fein MEP from Dublin.

"55 MORE SIGNATURES NEEDED TO END STREET HOMELESSNESS"

She breathlessly announces in an email which has just winged its way into my inbox,

Earlier today it was,

"87 MORE SIGNATURES NEEDED TO END STREET HOMELESSNESS"

No they won't you blithering ninny. No amount of MEPs queuing up to salve their well fed consciences will 'end street homelessness'. Indeed from the text of Written Declaration 111 it is immediately apparent how utter pointless the declaration really is.

"the European Parliament called twice for urgent action to tackle homelessness this year"

So the Parliament has made this call twice in the last three months, and bugger me there are still homeless people on the street. How damned ungrateful they are not to have cleared off.

But wait, if the 55 more MEPs do indeed sign up, what then will happen that will 'end street homelessness'. The declaration,

"1. Calls on the Council to agree on an EU-wide commitment to end street homelessness by 2015;
2. Calls on the Commission to develop a European framework definition of homelessness, gather comparable and reliable statistical data, and provide annual updates on action taken and progress made in EU Member States towards ending homelessness;"

Oh for pities sake, try cutting taxes and regulation to allow for greater ease and lower costs in employment. Then try to cut the levels of unsustainable migration from both within and without the European Union.

These actions might mitigate homelessness, even street homelessness, but it will never put an end to it. This commitment that she mentions, could it be that it could be made illegal to live on the street?

For a short while many years ago and for no fault of anybody but myself, I was "street homeless". I was lucky and got out of the predicament, but it was that experience that radicalised me never to trust state solutions to intractable social problems. In my case it became apparent that it was easier for the powers that be that I remained a supplicant than for me to get back out there on my own two feet.

Oh and another mail has just arrived. Hurry, hurry it's the, "Last chance!!!".

MEPs are big children, perhaps but this is ridiculous

This has just been sent to every email address in the European Parliament. For pities sake these people claim to be able to legislate for hundreds of millions of people, but they need to be told to 'avoid large portions at mealtimes'.

Dear Colleagues,

In anticipation of a possible heat wave this summer, the Service for Prevention and Protection at Work (SPPT) would like to bring to your attention some advice as well as inform you about the general measures taken according to the opinion 02/2005 of the Advisory Committee on Prevention and Protection at Work relating to "weather conditions - threshold limit values".

About your health

The temperature of a person in good health is constant. Under very warm conditions physiological mechanisms seek to keep the body temperature constant. Whenever the limits of these mechanisms are surpassed, risks to health arise. These risks are higher if there are aggravating factors : illness, heavy work and outdoors work.

We advise you to adjust your behaviour during very hot days:

1. Drink water regularly. Avoid alcoholic beverages. Limit your tabacco use. Avoid large portions at mealtimes.
2. Wear loose fitting, light clothes of light colours. Outdoors, protect your head
from the sun.
3. Avoid over exertion.
4. Eliminate any unnecessary heat source : shut off unused electrical appliances.

Symptoms of a pathological condition are : weakness, tiredness, over sweating, headaches, vertigo, cramps, incoherence...

Lets think,
1) Grow up
2) Panama's will no doubt become de rigeur
3) In this place of work, be serious
4) Well turn of the desk top of the Prevention unit would be a start.

Stupid, stupid stupid.

An old friend of mine, a Cambridge don, sadly deceased, would, over the summer trawl the flat lands thereabouts for Morrris dancing events. He felt they were a fraud, not some ancient pagan rite, but Victorian psuedo rurality.
He would get a young undergraduate to push his bath chair up to the front of the crowd, and from beneath his plaid rug he would yell at the top of his reedy voice,
"Stupid, Stupid, Stupid" until he was gently pushed out ofthe way by one ofthe attendent bearded loons.

Would that he were still with us to respond to blatant idiocy like this.

Warning: This play features a sugar-roasted chicken

A playwright has been told he must warn audiences his one-man act features a roast chicken - for fear of offending vegetarians.

Doug Devaney, 41, of Roedale Road, Brighton, has toured the city for years with his play Mein Gutt, a black comedy about a man's losing battle against obesity.

But the vegetarian Sanctuary Café in Hove has told him the show can only go on if the audience is warned beforehand that there is a dead chicken involved.

Mr Devaney said: "I phoned up as a matter of courtesy to let them know I used a chicken as an essential part of the show but they got back to me a few days later to say I would have to give the audience a warning.

"I've heard of strobe lighting or nudity being cause for audience concern but never sugar-roasted chicken.

"Do people really need that much protecting? I wonder what they do when they walk past the rotisserie at Asda?

"I'm happy to do it - I just consider it weird. Will Shakespeareans have to warn theatre-goers about eye-gouging in King Lear from now on? It takes some of the surprise of theatre away and how sensitive are we?"

Sandra McDonagh, who organises events at the Sanctuary Café, said: "Essentially we just don't want to cause offence so we want to give out a warning beforehand.

"I had to run it past the café owners and they asked for a warning in case somebody stands up and says, I wasn't told about this'.

"People would definitely assume there was no meat on the premises but it will be nowhere near the kitchen or any food preparation area.

"There will always be one person who will be sensitive enough to complain. I have come across staunch vegans in my time who will kick off about most things and it's better to cover yourselves."

Via Eye on the UK

Life was 'nasty, brutish and short' shock

Startling news is revealed today in The Times,

"Life for the first people to settle down to farm in Britain was far more violent than previously supposed, research suggests.

Far from a peaceful expansion into empty and fertile lands, the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farming society was riven with conflict and change".

"One barrow, Wayland’s Smithy, near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire, could have been opened and closed in a day to hold the remains of villagers killed in a raid. Three of the 14 bodies were found with the arrowheads that are presumed to have killed them and the other 11 are now thought likely to have died at the same time. The new evidence, with revised dates for five other burial barrows, means that archaeologists will have to spend the next 20 years reassessing their understanding of the period when farmers took over from hunter-gatherers in Britain"

.
Seriously, I cannot believe that archeologist, who after all are scientists, truly believed the post-Rousseauian ideal of the 'Nobel Savage'. How could they not be ware of the constant battles amongst the only highly populated society that is proximate to neolithic life, that of Papua? But no, it appears that soggyness of brains is not just prevalent in politics and sociology,

"Alex Bayliss, a radiocarbon dating expert with English Heritage, said: “Maybe the idea of an egalitarian, peaceful land is not as true as we thought.” Of Wayland’s Smithy, she said: “Maybe this is the result of an epidemic of collective violence. Maybe there was a cattle raid where most of the women and children fled to hide in the woods and the men stayed to fight and lost the battle.”"

Hat tip Eye on Britian