FREE MARKET FAIRY TALES

Incompetent government ministers

South African security guards

Alan in Jo'burg is now taking a quick 40 winks have sent this one in

Clearly he is cooking spaghetti tonight

& has been out get the ingredients … such as mince

A wave of the fat capitalist cigar to Hugh for snapping this one

Economics explained

You might have looked at this before, but this version (via AJDS) has a couple of additions that I have not seen...

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you

BUREAUCRATISE: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, then throws the milk away

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank,then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for fivecows. The milk rights of the six cows is transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.Sell one cow to buy a new President of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull

THE ANDERSEN MODEL: You have two cows. You shred them

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'cowkimon' and market it worldwide

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so theylive for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.You charge the owners for storing them

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported otherwise

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad

IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out ofyou and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a democracy

AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate

WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive

Passport Application

I don't care if this is true or not, or even if it has been posted on a thousand other sites: to my mind, it just about sums it all up...

Dear Minister,

I'm in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.

How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?

How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government?

How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time. Do you people do this by hand?

You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30-odd years. It's on my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother's name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father's name is Robert, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!

I apologise Minister. I'm obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to activate the Fifth Reich for God's sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week's well-earned rest away from all this crap.

Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile in in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
Hey, you know why we can't smile? 'Cause we're totally jacked off!

I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am -- you know, someone like my doctor...

who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN...

Yours sincerely,
An Irate British Citizen.

(via AJDS)

Not much to ad(d) to this one!

Of course, being a bloke, I never read instruction manuals

Its not round you know...

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.
Revelation 7:1 (NIV translation)

It is a well-established Biblical fact that the Earth is flat and immobile. Every good Biblical literalist knows the Scriptural passages which demonstrate that the Earth does not move and that its surface is not curved: Daniel 4:10-11, Matthew 4:8, Joshua 10:12, 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1 & 96:10 & 104:5, Isaiah 45:18; the list goes on and on.

But far too many lazy Biblical literalists today ignore the plain fact that the Bible also tells us that the flat Earth does not have curved edges. Even the late, great Charles K. Johnson, the valiant fighter for the Truth who carried the message of the earlier Zetetic Astronomers forward into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by founding the International Flat Earth Society, made the grievous error of assuming that the Earth was shaped like a circular disk. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

The Book of Revelation, chapter 7, verse 1, makes the following unmistakable statement about the shape of the Earth

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

This clearly shows that the Earth has exactly four corners. One might argue that the edges of the Earth between these four corners could be curved. But look at the following passages in the Book of Job

for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.
Job 28:24 (NIV translation)

He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth.
Job 37:3 (NIV translation)

Both of these passages clearly state that the earth has ends — that is, straight edges. This, combined with the four corners provided in Revelation 7:1, means that the Earth must be some kind of quadrilateral shape. The possibilities are:

Square
Non-square rectangle
Non-square rhombus (i.e. a "diamond" shape)
Non-rectangular, non-rhombic parallelogram
Trapezoid
Concave quadrilateral
Isosceles quadrilateral
Scalene quadrilateral

Narrowing down the possibilities, we can find more information about the shape of the Earth in the Book of Isaiah

He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.
Isaiah 11:12 (NIV translation)

A quarter, of course, means exactly one-fourth. In order for the Earth to have four quarters, it must be of a shape that is divisible into four pieces that are all exactly the same shape and size as one another, i.e. four congruent pieces. Not all quadrilateral shapes can be divided into four congruent pieces. In fact, the only kinds of quadrilateral shapes that can be divided into four congruent pieces are the following

(so, in light of Isaiah 11:12, the two Job passages, and Revelation 7:1), the possible shapes of the Earth are limited to

Square
Non-square rectangle
Non-square rhombus
Non-rectangular, non-rhombic parallelogram
Isosceles trapezoid with three sides of identical length
Isosceles trapezoid with the shorter parallel side 1/3 the length of the longer parallel side
Isosceles concave quadrilateral .

Finally, we can look to the mention of the four winds in Revelation 7:1 to give us the last clue. Everybody knows that "the four winds" are the North Wind, the South Wind, the East Wind, and the West Wind. Right?

Well, Revelation 7:1 clearly shows four angels holding back these four winds. In order for each angel to "hold back" one of the Four Winds, he would have to be standing at the point on the Earth from whence the Wind originated. Thus, to hold back the North Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the northernmost point on the Earth. To hold back the South Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the southernmost point on the Earth. Et cetera.

The four angels would have to have been standing at the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost points on the Earth — in other words, at the extreme ends of the four main compass points.

But we already know that they were also standing at the four corners of the Earth. This means that the four corners of the Earth are located at the compass points! A non-square rectangle, a non-rhombic parallelogram, or an isosceles trapezoid cannot be aligned in such a way that their corners are pointing directly at the compass points. Only a rhombic shape can be aligned in such a way.

Therefore, when we have carefully examined all the clues in Revelation 7:1, combined with the two Job passages and Isaiah 11:12, the only two possible shapes for the Earth are a square, or
a non-square rhombus . . . with its corners oriented to point directly north, south, east, and west.

We know that God is perfect. God would, therefore, have created the Earth in the most perfect shape possible. As I've already proven, we know from Rev 7:1, Isaiah 11:12, and Job that the Earth must be a rhombus of some sort. It makes good Biblical sense that God would have created Earth to be the most perfect kind of rhombus possible. The most perfect kind of rhombus is the square. Its rectilinear corners perfectly match the rectitude of God. Therefore, the Earth must be square.

And if that's not enough to convince you, consider this: Of all the nations on Earth today, God most loves the United States of America. This is evident from the fact that Pat Robertson, God's chosen spokesman, lives in the U.S. One of America's main pastimes is the game of baseball. Baseball is played on a "diamond", which is perfectly square in shape — and which, I might add, has its corners oriented to point toward the four compass points. God would not have made baseball into the national pastime of His 'favourite' nation if He didn't have a higher purpose in mind for it. Clearly, His higher purpose is to show us the true shape of the Earth. The Earth must be perfectly square, just like the diamond-shaped field in God's chosen sport is square.

Take a gander at this passage from First Samuel

He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.
1 Samuel 2:8 (KJV translation)

This clearly shows that the Earth rests on an unspecified number of pillars (Discworld fans take note). A couple of translations of the Old Testament floating around say "foundations" or "fixtures" in place of pillars, but the original Hebrew word that appears here is "matsuwq", which literally means a cast metal support, a pillar, or a column. What the pillars themselves are resting on is unknown. They might not be resting upon anything. Perhaps they are being held up by divine grace. Perhaps they are infinitely tall. All we know for sure is that a set of pillars beneath the Earth must exist.

This means that Hell, which is under the Earth, is interrupted by pillars in some places. This may explain how Satan is going to break out of Hell after the thousand years of peace in Revelation: perhaps he's going to climb up one of these pillars. This is a speculation for another webpage, however.

F.A.Qs

"Can I believe in the round Earth and still get into heaven?"
No. As you know, if you do not accept every word in the bible as literally true, you are not really accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and are doomed to burn in Hell for all eternity. God won't let any half-assed believers into heaven.

"What about all those pictures from space, showing that the Earth is round?"
Just more proof that Hollywood is in league with the devil. Charles K. Johnson of the International Flat Earth Society has already demonstrated that every picture of the "Earth" as seen from "space" was faked. In fact, the entire NASA space program is a sham. The movie Capricorn One was a documentary about how the Apollo moon mission was faked; the people who worked on the movie knew all about this, but were told to keep quiet. O.J. Simpson, one of the stars of Capricorn One, was going to come forward with THE TRUTH, but he was silenced by being framed for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The conspirators agreed to convince the jury to hand over a "not guilty" verdict only because O.J. Simpson promised not to go public with the cover-up.

"How come no airline pilots have ever reported seeing the edges of the Earth?"
Airline pilots are also in league with the devil. This is for your protection. If True Believers were allowed to pilot airliners, many planes would instantly become unmanned during the pre-Tribulation Rapture, thus crashing and killing everybody on board. When crossing the Equator or the Prime Meridian, airline pilots have to make sharp 90-degree turns to follow the square contours of the Earth. They hide this fact by blaming it on "turbulence."

"Couldn't the phrase 'four corners of the Earth' in Revelation 7:1 merely be a commonly-used metaphor for the farthest reaches of the Earth?"
Beware the slippery slope of interpreting a Biblical passage as "metaphor," for that way surely leads to Death. Next, you'll be saying the Earth wasn't created in six literal days, or that the Earth wasn't literally split in two in Genesis 10:25, and then your daughters will grow up to be temple prostitutes and your children will learn how to cast real spells by playing Dungeons & Dragons® and locusts will descend upon Israel and lions will lie down with lambs. They've already kicked God out of our schools because of such thinking. Don't let Satan convert even more souls away from the One True Way than he already has.

"What about Isaiah 40:22?"
Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 22 reads (in the NIV translation)

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Does this mean the Earth is circular? Not at all. If it were circular, Job's mention of the ends of the Earth would be meaningless. The word translated as "circle" in this verse is the Hebrew "chuwg", which can mean circle, but can also mean circuit or compass. When occurring by itself, this word can also mean the vault of the heavens. This verse probably refers to the fact that God sits enthroned above the vault of the heavens, which encompasses the whole Earth. Besides, everyone knows that tents are supposed to be square.

"What can I do in my community to make the heathenous Round-Earthers see the light?"
Show them this webpage. Take out your own bible, and show them Revelation 7:1, Isaiah 11:12, and the two Job passages. If that doesn't convince them, you can use your bible to hit them on top of the head and shout, "Earth square!". Hold Square Dances where you hand out International Square Earth Society literature. March in picket lines in front of globe manufacturers with signs reading "Earth square!", "Satan says the Earth is round," "No round Earths", etc.. Boycott Rand McNally. Buy square Earth maps and place them prominently in classrooms and on bulletin boards. Yell at the school board and demand "equal time" for the "equally valid" scientific theory that the Earth is square, while reminding them that the notion of a round Earth is "just a theory." Hold up signs saying "Rev 7:1" for the cameras at football games. There's so much one person can do to spread the Word that it's impossible to list all the possibilities here.

(& thanks to Alan for this one)

& this mornings piece of homo-erotic Nazi propaganda is

Is the sort of thing that Christopher Isherwood (pictured left) would have no doubt have approved of

As W H Auden (pictured right) wrote of him

He loved the trees, he loved the squares, he loved the little fountains & the cafes; but most of all, he love those beautiful Berlin boys

The British disease?

The truth behind classic LP covers

Opus Dei launch their new range of lavatory seats

& no, this wasn't me last week

... however a few years ago, it might well have been

Contributor TDB thinks that he heard a rumour that this chap was looking for his snowmobile after a blizzard. Sadly, we will probably never know

The sun never really set on the Empire

At last proof of why the sun never really set on the British Empire

Stolen from here . Sadly, as our author goes on to point out

The British Empire, in one sense long gone, confirmed with the return of Hong Kong to Communist China in 1997, thus continues a slow fade everywhere. At the same time, British sovereignty in Britain itself becomes increasingly compromised by participation in the ill designed, ill considered, corrupt, and heavy handed Euro-government of the European Community, and by separatist movements in Scotland, Wales, and, as always, Ireland.

But we knew this already

Stolen from Blognor Regis

BTW, here is one for all you bacon lovers (via Breakfast Blogger) & Geoffrey is asking himself the sort of questions that I pose myself every morning

I ran across an odd family last month, and walked away irate. It’s a mother with 5 kids, multiple fathers. Mom doesn’t speak one word of English, and has been living in this country for 20 years. I’m unsure of her status, but she is not a citizen. She doesn’t work, and as far as I know never has. She lives in government subsidized housing, and collects some form of assistance. Why the f*ck are my tax dollars paying for this? I hate welfare to begin with, but the realization that we are IMPORTING people to give our money to burns me. I wish I could build my own country. Not many moonbats would want to live there, though.

& for those of you that thought that their tactical rifles were fully kitted out...

you really need one of these

Stolen from Last of the Few

In the light of recent events at SocGen

Anybody seen one for Northern Rock yet?

Of pink gins, dolphins & poor puns

Sometimes I just sit here drinking & smoking: other times I just drink whenever it is that I have run out of cigars, cigarettes or just about any other tobacco product that you care to mention. In fact these days I have become much more selective about who I drink with. In fact there is considerable merit in drinking on your own. The conversation tends to be a whole lot better if nothing else. Indeed when you are soloing a bottle of something dark & peaty you can still construe, in your own addled mind, that mumbling incoherently into the recently drained bottle constitutes an erudite conversation. Indeed, as the years pass, social drinking seems to hold less & less attraction as the pleasure of getting well & truly biffed has to be balanced against the often excruciating pain of those whose company you share.

For example, you are sitting around the dinner table, having had a few little drinkie-poos, desperately trying to resist the urge to stick a fork in the eye of the next person that talks about house prices, when the anaemic ironmongery through the nose vegetarian (who probably lives in a trendy part of North London) finally opines that the sub prime mortgage crisis wouldn’t have happened if we learnt more for dolphins. Eh? Dear readers, I do know that I tend to be rather selective about the reality that I choose to accept but the day that a dolphin can lecture me on the inherent risks of over-leveraging real estate assets & poor credit quality is the day that I will stop strapping limpet mines to their heads.

Upon hearing this sort of nonsense, your immediate reaction has to be to ensure that the speaker is completely flambéed: take my advice, douse with a bottle of (cheap cooking) brandy & just toss in a Swan Vesta. However, when one of the guests looks as though that have been to an Afghan dog fight, conversation over coffee can become somewhat stilted… & all because this waif-like figure who up until that point contributed nothing to the conversation all evening since they refused to eat absolutely anything, not even the carrots, because they were dressed with butter that might not have come from free range fair trade milk, suddenly & so disastrously decided to pipe up.

Indeed, assuming that they survived the ensuing conflagration of pudding course, the red mist will descend & the voices in the salt seller urge you to go a get Jose’s machete that you have secreted under the drivers seat of your car, if the conversation continues on that particular course … which inevitably it will. In those last few fleeting moments of rational thought, you can consider that if dolphins are so bl**dy smart, how come they didn’t invent keyhole surgery, satellite telecommunications or more importantly, automatic grenade launchers.

Maybe it is a function of a flawed childhood overdosing on the Cartoon Network & National Geographic channel but some people still insist on imbuing animals with human qualities. So what if dolphins are capable of forming complex social structures … big deal … so do termites; & to date not even Sir David Attenborough has managed to film a member of the Coptotermes genus, building a proper drink. Piling up mounds of earth is one thing, but building a sensibly sized pink gin is quite another.

In fact the next time you should happen to be in the bar at Sea World & the dolphin behind the bar makes a complete fluff of your chosen sharpener, resist the temptation to ask him if he or she did that on ‘porpoise’ (sorry) & instead ask the animal if they are so damn smart, how come they keep getting caught in tuna nets?

However, it is important when posing such conundrums to ensure that you haven’t already partaken in a few crafty early morning come-back bracers & are in fact talking to a Delphinidae & not Le Dauphin. If you have made such an error, the chances are that your question will be greeted with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders & you drinks order will possibly comprise something green as well as being accompanied with a side order of half cooked Blackbirds feet. Confronted with a bolshie member of the former French Royal family the best course of action is to immediately threaten to smother the nearest soufflé with mayonnaise. This I guarantee you will engender a degree Vichy-ite collaboration not seen since Marshall Henri Petain started receiving long distance phone calls from Berlin.

See, all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided if you had just stayed at home with a half decent bottle which is why this evening your humble correspondent will be in … Bristol of all places. I have truly sinned in a previous life to deserve this & I already have a bad feeling about what might occur over pudding.

More on the Vickers ...

Just picking up from last weeks Vickers machine gun post, I found this cartoon sketch in the National Archive – the full cartoon is under the fold.

However, don’t you just wish that you Grandmother had given you a Vickers??