Category: Travels

Check This, Assholes

Behind Enemy Lines, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s something to brighten your day:

Miller was contacted following a complaint by an offended party about a poem he shared on social media which was deemed transphobic. The officer explained that, although not illegal, this nevertheless qualified as a ‘non-crime hate incident’.
Why, Miller asked, was the unnamed complainant described as a ‘victim’ if no crime had been committed? More to the point, why was he being investigated at all?
To which came that ominous response: ‘We need to check your thinking.’

So we’re all clear, this happened in Britishland, where the fuzz (I prefer the British term “filth”, myself) have been playing reindeer games like this:

Now I’m not one to advocate violence against the pigs (such as these);  I don’t believe in firebombing cop cars, or ambushing police officers, or anything like that.

But I would be hard-pressed to condemn an action where some free-speech-advocating malcontent might put a couple rounds of birdshot through this sign — as long as there weren’t any cops standing around, and nobody was hurt, or anything.

Note to the fascist Wokistas on this side of The Pond:  don’t even think about it [sic].  And if any of the local fuzz ever accuse me of an “offense” like this, they’d better have the relevant statute ready to quote, along with a large number of other cops.

I need to cut down my morning intake of gin, but bullshit like this doesn’t help.

Marksmanship In Flip-Flops

Hunting, Travels

There is an outstanding series on hunting in South Africa’s Eastern Cape:  a gentle, funny and very accurate portrayal of the conditions over there.   I’ve never hunted in that part of the world, and I wouldn’t care to do that now — heat, hills and thorn trees are not my idea of fun.  But it is for these kids, and they do it with consummate skill, in sandals.

Take an hour or so and follow the sidebar’s recommendations on the Oxwagon Diaries.

Nothing New

Gummint, Travels

Here’s an interesting consequence of the Chinkvirus:

Denmark is set to introduce a government-sponsored coronavirus vaccine passport in coordination with airlines early this year, a national Danish broadcaster has revealed.

Now the idea of a “vaccination passport” has a whole bunch of people tied in knots, as it’s just one step away from the old “Papieren bitte”  way to install restrictions, tracking and control on travel.

I’m not one of them.  In the first place, proof of vaccination has always been a fact of life when traveling anywhere outside your home country;  try visiting India or Africa without proof of smallpox/yellow fever/etc. etc. in your passport, and you’ll be turned away from the boarding area.  (This, by the way, is as much to ensure that not only are you immune to catching the pox whilst Over There looking at strange temples etc., but that you don’t bring said pox back with you to an un-vaccinated home population.)  The only reason one doesn’t need proof of vaccination when traveling from the U.S. to places like Britishland and Euroland is because said diseases are not only notionally extinct (except where, surprise surprise there are large numbers of illegal and un-vaccinated border-jumpers), but where children are routinely vaccinated in order to attend school and so on.

So I’m indifferent to the idea of a Chinkvirus vaccination passport as part of international travel — and for that matter, in terms of local travel and behavior as well — and especially because once inoculated, I wouldn’t have to wear a stupid and ineffective face-condom every time I wanted to go out of the house.

Of course, the conspiracy morons are going to insist that Gummint is going to use Pox Passports to track individuals’ movements and behaviors, and of course that is a valid concern.  Just remember, though, that we’re talking about Government here:  the morons who can’t find their own assholes with both hands, a map and a trail of crumbs.

I know that in movies, government agents always require just a few clicks on their (Apple — LOL) laptops to create all sorts of data reports at the drop of a hat — the risible Person Of Interest  TV series being the apotheosis thereof.  Longtime students of both government, database systems and the combination thereof know that this facility is very much part of the suspension of belief required to view any work of fiction these days.

Besides, I’m relying on the criminal marketplace to produce passable copies of said documents in sufficient numbers to make the entire thing untenable — just as fake driver’s licenses can and have been used to enable fraudulent voting.

It’s a non-issue, and we have bigger things to worry about.

Simple View, Utter Beauty

Travels

At the moment, I’m reading Bill Bryson’s The Road To Little Dribbling, and as always I’m torn between helpless nostalgia and loud laughter — my general reaction to Bryson.  But the reading has pushed me into homesickness for Britishland, the feeling all the sharper because under current Chinkvirus restrictions, I can’t go back there and do all the things I love doing, such as driving through the countryside and marveling at the towns and villages as so memorably described by Bryson and embedded in my own memory from countless trips past.

I don’t often do this, but I thought I’d share with you the picture that’s currently my laptop’s wallpaper (right-click to embiggen to its original 1920×1200 size):

I don’t know if I’ve ever driven through this particular village, but I’ve driven through so many like it that it doesn’t matter.  Frankly, after a while they all become a blur, another “OMG that’s-so-beautiful-I-want-to-live-here” moment.

Of particular interest, nay even alarm to my Murkin readers would be the fact that despite the single tire-tracks in the road, it is in fact a two-way street which leads itself to moments of sheer panic should you encounter, for example, Bob The Plumber’s oversize Ford van coming the other way.  Such a situation requires either

  • pulling to the side (left) as close as possible to the walls / hedges and hoping that Bob will be able to get past without scraping the side of your (rental) car, or
  • driving on regardless while hoping that he will squeeze to the side leaving you enough room to get past without scraping the side of your (rental) car, or
  • pulling into a driveway — which action is inexplicably frowned upon by the householder
  • or else in the final resort, reversing back towards a “wider” portion of the road so that both you and Bob can pass by each other with a friendly wave from Bob at your patience and good manners.

When Mr. Free Market sets out for a destination outside his own village, he as often as not takes a completely different road each time, just to take in the exquisite countryside.  I once asked him if he’s ever got used to, or even bored with the countryside he drives through every day, and his answer was succinct:  “Never.  Not even close.”

I can see why.  Scenery such as the above plays a huge part in my laptop wallpaper selection — I don;t change it because I’m sick of it, only because I hanker after another scene.  Here, for your delectation, are a few others (ditto the embiggening):

(that’s a giant pic;  allow some time to load)

More, upon request, if like me you’re a fan of the English countryside.

All Hell Diversity

Behind Enemy Lines, Immigration

So much for the Great Diversity Experiment:

As the world watched in awe five years ago, new faces were welcomed into Germany with balloons and banners proclaiming ‘We love refugees’.
More than a million strangers headed there from faraway lands at the height of Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War II hoping for a new life in the West.
In a rallying cry to her nation, the German chancellor Angela Merkel declared in the autumn of 2015: ‘We can do this. We are strong and can manage it.’
Even as Mrs Merkel’s historic speech was broadcast on German TV, reports flashed up on the screen that trainloads of men, women and children were clamouring to be let in at her borders. And they were.
In astonishing scenes a few days later, thousands of bedraggled, tired migrants turned up at railway stations in German cities to be met by local children blowing soap bubbles and handing over teddy bears as the country threw off its dark, xenophobic past to become the humanitarian face of Europe.
But today the celebrations for migrants are over in this powerhouse of the European Union.
Many of the foreigners who entered Germany in those heady days are being forcibly sent home to Africa, south Asia, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans on secret flights, marshalled by security officers, after being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police.

I wonder why?  Oh yes, because they can’t or won’t assimilate, their crime rates are astronomical, and far from being the fuel that would help Germany’s economy, most are pretty much acting as brakes, being totally dependent on Germany’s generous welfare state.

Who could ever have thought this this would happen?

Well, most of us, as it turns out;  only we were called “racists” and “fascists” or worse, for the sin of being realists and not starry-eyed dreamers in thrall to the “magic dirt” theory of socialization.

As for “being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police”, I just wish we could do the same to our ingrate immigrants, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with me saying that, too.