Tag: Foreigners

Snatchers

Entertainment

Some Brit toffs just got married at the groom’s future digs (which he gets when his dad snuffs it), said shack being so vast that no ground-level photo can quite do it justice :

Now ordinarily I am disinterested in the couplings of nobility;  the nuptials of Lady Fontinella Waxwork-ffolkes and Lord Beastly Stiff-Upper-Lypp pass by my gaze unnoticed, and even Prince Harry’s marriage would have been disregarded by me but for the fact that the poor royal ginger ended up with some foul feminist Hollywood slag and was therefore only worthy of comment insofar as I predict that this unfortunate alliance will not end well (you heard it here 455th).

Anyway, the thing which caught my idle glance in the above report was this unfortunate description:

“George, the Marquess of Blandford, 26, married childhood sweetheart Camilla Thorp, 31”

Say what?  I’m assuming / hoping that he wasn’t 5 years old, and she 10 when they became sweethearts… oh wait, it turns out that they met ten years ago when he was 16 (not really a “child”, was he?) and she ummmm…. carry the two, 21.  That’s a fair age difference but not overly so.

Phew.  I am relieved.  Of course, had this liaison been consummated in Murka, she’d have been facing statutory rape charges at some point (assuming that they’d started bonking soon after first meeting, as seems to be the custom these days), but I suppose the aristocracy has a much more benign attitude towards this kind of thing so it’s okay, albeit risky.  (Remember that Chinless Charles married Super-Sloane-Ranger Di when he was in his thirties and she yet in her teens, and we all know how that turned out.)  Also, the Dukes of Marlborough are outrageously wealthy, thanks to Great-Grandpappy Marlborough marrying a Vanderbilt girl, so maybe there’s a different rule for the rich when it comes to bonking sixteen-year-olds.

Anyway:  congratulations and good luck to the happy couple, who seem to be quite charming.  And as wedding pics go, you have to admit that this isn’t one of yer ordinary backgrounds:

And all over Britain can be heard the gnashing of desperate debutante teeth as another eligible “catch” escapes their hooks.

Another age-distinct couple got married recently, and their backdrop was also rather special:

That’s the Umaid Bhawan palace in Jodhpur, but it’s not likely to be owned by either the bride or groom anytime in the future, as they are neither royal not even noble.  Like we couldn’t tell (note the bride’s ceremonial hand tattoo UGH):

Anyway, he is someone called Nick Jonas, a one-time (or current?) pop star of whom I know nothing except that like the future duke (above), he’s 26.  His bride, like the Royal Ginger’s wife, is some houri actress named Priyanka Chopra, and who like the Marchioness Blandford is older than her husband, but she by some ten summers.

At least this couple are not “childhood sweethearts”:  the thought of a twenty-one-year old woman bonking an eleven-year-old boy… well, you know.

This marriage, I give a couple of years.  Call it a hunch.

French Revolution

Behind Enemy Lines, Mocking Furriners

As Mr. Free Market puts it, “The French have always been revolting, dear boy”, but this latest round of mayhem is outstanding, even for the French.

Violence has erupted again in Paris today as masked protesters stole an assault rifle from police, clashed with riot squads and set fire to cars and Christmas trees on the Champs-Elysées in furious demonstrations against the French government.
Riot police sprayed tear gas, fired water cannon and stun grenades and pulled out their batons to fight back against ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters who occupied the famous boulevard and graffitied the Arc de Triomphe.
Police said 80 people had been injured in clashes, including 16 security officers, and 183 people arrested as more than 5,000 demonstrators brought chaos to Paris for the second week running.
Masked and hooded protesters hurled crowd barriers at police in Paris and this evening stole an assault rifle from a police car in the city centre.
Meanwhile there were further rallies spiralling across the country, spreading to Marseilles, Biarritz and Antibes on the Mediterranean coast and even into the Netherlands.
The protests, named ‘Yellow Vest’ after drivers’ high-vis jackets, began last month amid fury over rising fuel prices but have mushroomed into an all-out challenge to Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.

Of course, they being French, there’s a certain element of style to the thing, even when burning the place down:

However, as my old buddy Erik at No Paseran! puts it, it’s more than just higher fuel prices which have got the Frogs miffed:

It is not wrong to say that the demonstrations were caused by the government’s decision to raise gas prices. What is missing is that this is just one of several draconian measures dating back half a year, i.e., ‘tis the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
For the past four to five months, the French government has done nothing but double down on bringing more and more gratuitous oppression and more and more unwarranted persecution measures down on the necks of the nation’s drivers and motorcycle riders.

Read the rest of it, because it’s quite obvious, when you follow the whole sequence of incremental governmental bastardy, just whence the burning anger came and why the French riots, unlike those pitiful pantomimes performed by our own Pantifa snowflakes, are so well supported by the French people en masse.

Good for them, I say.  Now, if I may be a little old-fashioned for a moment, let’s hope that the next scenes will show Frog politicians being carried in tumbrels to the waiting guillotines.

The Frogs always overdo things;  it’s one of their most endearing traits.

Never A Truer Word Spoken

Gummint, Health

In his Devil’s Dictionary, the late and very-much-lamented Ambrose Pierce once wrote the following:

“When politicians speak, no matter the topic, they’re talking about money.”

…and boy, was he ever right.  Here’s an example.

For the past couple of years, governments have been talking about the “obesity epidemic” (as though getting fat can spread from one person to another over the air, instead of being the result of a conscious decision by individuals).  And of course, along with such alarums and panic from the Usual Suspects — those who Know What’s Best For You — have come clamors that Something Must Be Done.  And when people use the dreaded passive voice, of course, that means one, and only one thing:  government intervention.

So, of course, in steps Nanny Government to the rescue.  Of course, instead of pointing out that people get fat because they eat too much, or that their children get fat because their parents give them too much of the wrong foods, Big Nanny sets about punishing people for ingesting said wrong foods — and the easiest thing to target, because of its ubiquity, is sugar.

We all know that too much sugar is A Bad Thing, and if you eat too much of it, you get not only overweight but various health problems.  Let me repeat:  we all know that.

But how to punish excessive sugar consumption?  Do we (i.e. Nanny Government) ration the stuff?  No, too difficult and costly to implement, manage and police (although I would bet against it in the future — such difficulties have seldom stopped government in the past, e.g.  ObamaCare coff coff )  But sugar is not only bought and sold per se , it’s also a ubiquitous ingredient, and most egregiously so in the case of carbonated soft drinks (to normal mortals, that would be Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew etc.) wherein can be found the equivalent of a dozen or so teaspoons of sugar per can.  Not that this is always A Bad Thing:

So, goes Nanny’s thinking, if we punish people for drinking Cokes and reduce consumption thereof by making it more expensive to do so, the very best way to implement such policy is… to tax it.

Which brings us back to Ambrose Bierce.  And lo, there we have proof of the man’s sagacity:

The UK’s sugar tax has raised almost £154 million in its first six months, Government figures have revealed.
From April, companies selling drinks with added sugar have been taxed between 18p and 24p per litre for certain drinks containing high levels of added sugar.
The new levy was introduced in an effort to fight childhood obesity, as more than a third of 11-year-olds in the UK are now overweight and soft drinks are one of their main sources of sugar.

With that degree of success, replication must surely follow:

Raising so much money from the tax was ‘encouraging’, one expert said, but they urged the Government to extend the levy to calories in sweets [candy] as well.

And there you have it:  Nanny Government at its absolute finest.  It’s even more nasty in that with the above policy, the BritGov didn’t increase the sales tax on carbonated soft drinks — too difficult to implement, police and collect, see above — so instead they levied the tax at its source:

 There are 457 companies registered to pay the tax, and more than 90 per cent of the money came from charges on drinks with higher levels of sugar.

Much easier.  And needless to say, most of said companies simply raised the price of their product and passed it on to consumers — that would be us — to whom rising prices are a fact of modern life, and therefore the added cost went pretty much unnoticed.

Which actually makes it a perfect government tax policy:  it’s barely noticed by the public, it’s easier to collect / enforce (457 companies vs. many thousands of retail outlets), and best of all, if it fails to have the desired effect (making people drink less of the stuff), Nanny Government can simply increase the tax rate until it does — or until the supplier companies either quit or go out of business, which won’t happen because Coca-Cola / PepsiCo / Dr. Pepper / Cadbury-Schweppes etc. are collectively richer than Great Britain.  So there is theoretically no limit as to how much tax revenue the BritGov could collect from this policy.

And all because you, you fat bastards, insist on buying your kids Big Gulps and pouring  Dr. Pepper over their sugary breakfast cereals (a rant for another time, coming very soon to these pages).

And at the bottom of all this, of course is the reason why Gummint — in this case the Brit manifestation thereof — should care about fat children at all.   It’s not because they’re concerned for the chillins’ health (although that’s the figleaf), but because when obesity causes health issues, then said issues have to be covered by the foul (but government-funded) National Health Service.

Which brings us back — AGAIN — to Ambrose Bierce’s dictum.  It’s all about the fucking money.

At the beginning of this post, I said that Bierce’s death was much lamented but as I think about it, I’m glad that my favorite cynic of all time isn’t around to see all this.  He’d probably commit suicide.

And as a footnote, allow me to recommend unreservedly The Devil’s Dictionary, which under the reign of World-Emperor Kim would be a required textbook in all high-school curricula.

Winter Hammers Britishland

Weather

Temperatures are expected to fall to as low as -6C (21F) tonight after millions of people woke up to frost and icy conditions this morning – with snow falling as far south as Brighton and Devil’s Dyke in the South Downs of Sussex. The first flurries of snow hit high ground on hills in northern England, Wales and Scotland as November closes with an icy blast after the mercury dipped to below freezing overnight.

Stupidity

Africa

Sometimes I fear for us all.  In an otherwise-interesting article on the world’s “vanishing countries” which talks about how China’s population growth is slowing, we also see examples of foolishness such as this:

China is relaxing its one-child policy — but it may be too late. In addition to lacking workers, a fifth of China’s homes are empty, reported Bloomberg news — more than 50 million apartments and houses have no inhabitants.
Fertile countries have a far brighter future. They are a good place to invest your money, said Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor and demographic “prophet” who died in February.
“You will find an emerging China in Africa,” he told the BBC in a final interview. “Go there to invest if you want to earn money, if you want to have nice pensions when you retire, place part of your capital there because there you will see fast growth.”

Clearly, Rosling never set foot on the African continent, where there’s never been a shortage of workers, only a shortage of honest government.  Allow me to revise his statement for you:

“Go invest in African countries if you want to lose money, if you want to have no pensions when you retire, and place part of your capital there if you want to see fast growth in African politicians’ bank accounts and not in yours, and to see no tangible results from your investment.”

That’s the reality of investing in Africa.

It reminds me of that old, withering observation:  “Your suggestion is so stupid, so devoid of commonsense and logic that it could only have been made by an academic or intellectual.”  (Note that the latter two are not synonymous.)

And these are the people who are regarded as the intelligent ones, who advise governments and tell us how to run our lives.

About That Single-Payer Health Service

Gummint, Health

Not that I need to belabor the point, but any “free” government health service is going to cost you.  In almost every such case, it’s when Gummint decides that you’ve had enough.  Here’s one from Britain’s NHS:

A hero RAF rear gunner who evaded capture by the Nazis in 1942 after being shot down over Belgium has been told to sell his house to pay medical bills as he has ‘survived too long’.

(I have to warn you that if you read that whole story, you ought to remove all throwable objects and guns out of reach — and even more so for the next one.)

Over in oh-so caring Europe comes this horrifying story:

Dutch authorities are prosecuting a doctor for euthanising an elderly woman with dementia in the first case of its kind since the practice was legalised in 2002.
The doctor, who was not named, has been charged with secretly drugging the woman’s coffee with Dormicum to make her drowsy and asking her family to hold her down as she was lethally injected in a care home in The Hague in 2016.
Whilst the 74-year-old patient was receiving the lethal injection she woke up and began fighting the doctor.

(I should also point out that the Dutch doctor was a woman, which somehow just makes it worse.)

I know, I know:  “Oh, that could never happen over here in the U.S.” — until it does.  When to comes to money, every government will eventually resort to violence;  try to find someone who has ever dealt with the I.R.S. over an unpaid tax liability, and not felt threatened by the experience.  You won’t.