At my sister’s wedding about 8 or 9 years ago an argument broke out between friends of my mum and dad about which of my parents I was most like. From the debate I learnt: I’m too tall to be like my Dad but I have his receding hairline. I ...
Read MoreGive Athletes a Level Playing Field: Legalise Drugs
Some drugs make you fly high. Other drugs make you go low. Some make you fall on your back. Others make you bounce. Even more make you run like a cheetah, swim like a sword fish, jump like a kangaroo, and throw like a, ummm, throwing machine? It is these ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesdays: Sex, Love and Expectation
Valentine’s Day is almost upon us and I’ve lost count of the number of single people who have been lamenting their plight at this time of year. I decided to have a little look at Singleton town, so I opened the newspaper and began reading the personal ads: lonely hearts ...
Read MoreThought for the Week: The Virtue of the Labour Government
“The Virtue of the Labour Government.†Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would write. Those who have followed our musings for even just a little while will have seen our denunciation of much of what the Labour government has done. But they’re not all bad. Most them are ...
Read MoreShell: It’s Only Crime – Success
Last week oil firm Royal Dutch Shell reported annual profits of $27.56 billion – £13.9b. That would certainly buy you a pint of beer and a packet of crisps with some money left over for your bus fare home. I’m clearly in the wrong line of business. It’s a record ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesdays: When Atheists Scout for Trouble
“Be Prepared†is the motto of the Scouts but I seriously doubt anything could have prepared them for a rather bizarre attack by the National Secular Society (NSS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA). The Scouts association is being unceremoniously dragged up in front of the Equality and Human Rights ...
Read MoreThought for the Week – The Virtue of Death
In my short but colourful life I have almost died on one occasion (nearly drowned) and seriously considered killing myself on another (hadn’t chosen a particular method). I’m glad I didn’t in both cases. But there may come a time when death would be preferable to life and debate still ...
Read MoreThe Libertarian Diet
When faced with any problem the first reaction of some is to start shrieking hysterically, “the government must do something!†Unfortunately the government is singularly terrible at doing even the most basic things well: like keeping confidential data, umm, confidential and not losing the details of millions of people as ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesdays: It’s a Man’s World?
What do you call a man with one testicle? Geoffrey Jones. The poor sod used to have two but he lost one when his now ex-girlfriend Amanda Monti ripped it off. Ouch. Ripped it off. With her bare hands. I can barely sit on this seat thinking about it without ...
Read MoreThought for the Week – The Virtue of Forgiveness
Northern Ireland is full of the buggers: Born Again Paramilitaries, or “BAPS†as I prefer to call them. They swan around regenerated, forgiven, no longer the bad guys who terrorised people. They’ve found Jesus. And holy Hell do they know how to moralise. Often you can detect a rather horrible ...
Read MoreBad Laws, Bad Restaurants and Bad Coke
As a child I was always told to eat my dinner and keep my mouth shut; ask no questions, no derogatory comments about greens, no complaints or smart-arsed remarks. Seemingly as an adult that advice might remain shrewd. A year ago a ruling in Belfast’s High Court had journalists, newspaper ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesdays – The Walk of Shame
No trial. No jury. No judge. Straight to execution. Well, not quite execution – a walk of shame. Two men were forced to walk up and down the Shankill road in Belfast wearing mock-up sandwich boards proclaiming: “I am a burglar and a thief†and reportedly getting hit with walking ...
Read MoreThought for the Week: The Fucking Virtue of Swearing
I’m loving the recent song by Nickleback: “Rock Star.†Some of the lyrics include: “Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars Live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap We’ll all stay skinny cause we just won’t eat†“I wanna be ...
Read MoreMy Brain, My Bladder, My Bollocks!
When you live under a collectivist system you can expect a number of things to hit you during your life: increasing taxes, “national insurance,†rates, and a general increasing government infringement on the freedoms of the individual. In short: More tax. More regulation. More control. Until you find the sweet ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesdays: Oh Golly Gosh!
As some of you know my Weird Wednesday series is a commentary on the more bizarre side of the news. Regrettably some people won’t see this story as weird at all, but I was in disbelief about it myself. This week it emerged that several shops in Belfast have been ...
Read MoreSickos
Birth by Government: Part II Happy new year folks, I hope you all had a good Christmas. Getting caught up in the general busy-ness of the festivities I lost my blog time but now back and at it I’ll make strenuous efforts this year to beat the number of people ...
Read MoreThought for the Week – The Virtue of Remembrance
I’m not normally a terribly emotional person (except when it comes to anger), but I felt myself welling up with sadness during a feature run by the BBC for Remembrance Day. The BBC is telling the stories of “The Final Few†veterans of the Great War almost 100 years ago. ...
Read MoreThe Real Perverts
A Belfast sex shop – Misbehavin’ – has been involved in a long running legal battle with Belfast City Council to be allowed a licence to trade in Belfast. Sex shops are permissible in law but they require a licence from the local government authority. The Court of Appeal decided ...
Read MoreWeird Wednesday – Smell the Coffee!
An AIDS charity working in Ethiopia has come up with a rather novel way of encouraging the use of condoms. DKT International received a lot of complaints about the latex smell of conventional condoms, so they found a solution: java-scented & flavoured condoms for a nation of coffee-lovers. Already 300,000 ...
Read MoreThought for the Week: The Virtue of the Blind Boys
I had the pleasure of seeing the Blind Boys of Alabama at the Grand Opera House last week, and what a show it was. The only negative point about the night was the rather odd Argentinian guitarist & Irish accordion player duo singing songs mostly in Spanish, prompting my rather ...
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