Skylon space plane gets a thumbs-up

If we, as a nation, can spend billions on overseas aid, then we can afford to invest in technologies such as this that would put Britain at the forefront of space technology.

Read more... (CNET News)

The Magic of Monaco

World of Water

The sun sets on the world we know.

Ayrton Senna: Mr Monaco

Image credit: Hector Cademartori

Start charging for healthcare

"Debate about the future of the NHS remains largely frozen in a miasma of post-war nostalgia. On healthcare reform, as on much else, Britain is firmly stuck in the past."

Read more... (The Telegraph)

Doctor Who - the top ten female assistants

From which episode is this? I'm sure I would have remembered...

I actually met her (and Jon Pertwee) once - at a church fête forty-odd years ago - but unfortunately she was fully clothed at the time.

Read more... (The Telegraph)

The National Health Service

The NHS. Our "beloved" NHS. The sacrosanct, sacred cow of the Left.

When it was conceived 65 years ago, most people didn't live much beyond their retirement age and diagnostic procedures and treatments were relatively few and inexpensive. It was an affordable service.

Well guess what? Times have changed and the NHS must change. The population is growing (thanks in part to unrestricted immigration), people are living longer, modern medical treatments prolong life (not always a good thing), modern diagnostic procedures and treatments are very expensive.

Research and development costs for new drugs are huge and that money must be recouped; you need that new drug to treat your illness? It has to be paid for somehow.

I can see nothing wrong in paying a nominal fee to see your GP (with exceptions for certain groups - OAPs and children for example) or for emergency treatment (especially if you've been out boozing all night and got hurt in a fight). Look at it this way: your National Insurance contribution is like an insurance premium and these fees would be your excess.

The NHS: get over it - times have changed and the NHS needs to change.

Read more... (The Telegraph - Tory MPs in campaign to stop Nick Clegg diluting NHS reforms)

Updating WordPress Manually

I finally got fed up with waiting. WordPress (WP) was updated to 3.1 in Fantastico Deluxe on my web host's cPanel back in late February/early March. Since then WP has had three updates (3.1.3 was released yesterday), but none of them have appeared in my cPanel. So today I decided to perform a manual update. It seemed to work OK and so far no issues.

One minor problem was that the editor font in WP had reverted back to the default and I'd forgotten how I'd changed it. Multiple searches returned a number of solutions, but none of them looked familiar. Nevertheless I finally figured out what I'd done:

I edited the body.mceContentBody section in the content.css file in wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/wp_theme to my chosen font (Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif).

I'm Spartacus

"...open expression on the internet should be part of the human rights framework..."

As far as I'm concerned, if you're rich and famous and want a private life you should be a bit more circumspect in your behaviour. And if your indiscretions do find their way into the public domain, take it on the chin and admit it instead of hiding behind your wealth (and associated privilege) in an attempt to suppress the truth.

As we have seen recently, it only makes things worse; had it not been for the Twitter super-injunction nonsense, I couldn't have cared less.

Read more... (The Register)

The Joys of Beach Volleyball

Here's one from the past. I was browsing my image library and came across these from the 2004 Olympics which I posted to one of my old blogs at the time. Worth resurrecting, I think. And still mind-boggling.

Harold Camping admits he got the Rapture date wrong

One of the things this whole Rapture nonsense highlights is the contradictory nature of the Bible.

According to Camping's Christian detractors: "But as for that day and hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father only." (Matthew 24:36).

And yet: "The Father and I are one." (John 10:30) and "In the beginning was the Word: [i.e. Jesus] the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him..." (John 1:1-3).

So, as Christians are taught that Jesus is God, it seems unlikely that he wouldn't know "the day and hour".

And according to this logic, the meek and mild Jesus of the New Testament is at one with the "jealous and quick to anger" god of the Old Testament. The same god who said: "Yahweh your God shall deliver it into your power and you are to put its menfolk to the sword. But the women, the children, the livestock and all that the town contains, all its spoil, you may take for yourselves as booty. You will devour the spoil of your enemies which Yahweh your God has delivered to you." (Deuteronomy 20:13-14).

More proof, if proof were needed, that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of disparate (fairy) stories, irrelevant in the 21st century except as a literary curiosity (and the same goes for the Koran).

Read more...

The Price of Fame

So, you're rich and famous with millions of adoring fans. Their adulation gets you out of bed each day and is like a drug which gives you a perpetual high.

You want a private life? Then join the rest of us in relative obscurity and poverty.

No? Then put up or shut up.

Rapture: the end was not nigh

“I survived May 21, 2011. You really thought the world would end? Dumb ass.”

Read more...

And the winning number is: 449

I bought this (randomly allocated) raffle ticket the other day; for obvious reasons it will win:

May 21st is Judgement Day

Apparently. The Bible "guarantees" it. We shall see. I obviously didn't need to have any worries concerning my post yesterday.

Meanwhile, I guess there's not much point in quitting drinking. Happy Judgement Day everyone.

Creationism on tour

I fear that before the end of this century, the rise of Islamism in the East and Christian Fundamentalism in the West will plunge humanity into a new "Dark Age", from which it will take decades (or even centuries) to emerge.

Read more...

The final launch of Endeavour

I have been watching spacecraft launches for probably more than forty-five years; it's still an awe-inspiring sight. Such a shame that the youngest shuttle couldn't have been kept going just a little longer.

The self-righteousness of the Left

Judging by the reaction of lefties to the Rally Against Debt (notably on Twitter), you'd think that they have a monopoly on "demonstrating". Guess what? It's called free speech. And you can bet your life (unless some mindless left-wing thugs have a counter-demonstration) it will be peaceful and good-natured.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with holding a rally to counter all that UKuncut nonsense.

Once again those on the left show themselves to be envious and hate-filled, smug and moralistic, and intolerant of the opinions and behaviour of others.

Facebook hired PR firm to smear Google

And yet another reason why I will never bother with it again. Facebook is the Microsoft of social networking.

Read more...

Casio ECW-M300E-1AER EDIFICE

I changed my mind; I want this one:

Beauty and the Apprentice

I hate reality TV. It seems to me that it's a form of social control designed to subdue the Proles.

Having said that I do enjoy watching The Apprentice (if only to see what tossers most of them are).

But it's a sad state of affairs when a middle-aged dude (i.e. me) likes Beauty and the Geek.

Casio EQW-M710-1AER Edifice

I already have one of these and one of these. Now I really want one of these:

Motor Racing at Snetterton

Last Saturday (7th) was my annual trip to Snetterton with Mike Saunders Racing. Apart from a few spots, the rain held off and the intermittent warm sunshine burnt the top of my bald head.

It was also an opportunity to try out my new Nikon COOLPIX L120. Excellent camera, but the results of the "sport continuous mode" were a little disappointing - no match for a decent DSLR - and let down by the limit of 20 frames for each shot (which caused me to miss some of the action).

Bitter Nick Clegg tries to blame Margaret Thatcher

Everybody tries to blame Margaret Thatcher. It's patently ludicrous to blame Margaret Thatcher for anything that is happening today, more than twenty years after she left Number 10.

Read more...

Ed Miliband Embraces “Dancing on Thatcher’s Grave” - Guy Fawkes' blog

It never fails to amaze me the number of young people (people who can't possibly remember when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister) who have been brainwashed into believing that she was some sort of monster. If you don't remember the 1970s and 1980s, you simply can't be objective.

The "Left" have been very successful in demonising Margaret Thatcher when in fact, it is they who are the demons. The decline in the (nationalised) British manufacturing and coal mining industries started in the 70s with the unions demanding (and securing) ever higher (and unaffordable) pay rises; they effectively priced their members out of jobs because it became cheaper to import. I know this because I remember it.

As a consequence, when the Conservatives were elected in 1979 (after Labour had virtually bankrupted the country - as it always seems to do), the necessary course of action was to either privatise or shut down inefficient industries (you just can't throw good money after bad - something that socialists never seem to understand).

Obviously many lives were blighted by this, but the damage was done not by Margaret Thatcher, but the militant left who brought Britain to its knees in the 1970s.

Read more...

What an amazing long weekend

The weather stayed fine, we put the Great back in Great Britain and the Yanks got bin Laden (what took them so long?). Rejoice! (As the great lady once said).

If there was such a place as Hell, I'm sure bin Laden would be languishing there; he's certainly not in the fairy tale place of Paradise with 72 virgins (what morons actually believe that crap?).

But I think we need to stop all aid to Pakistan; there are many questions to be answered about their role in harbouring bin Laden.