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I am deeply offended at having been accused of turning on the comment moderation by a cheeky upstart! In retort I can only say that WordPress automatically places comments containing LINKS into moderation as part of it’s anti-spam protection. This happens no matter what level of moderation settings I on.
That is all.
It has been drawn to my attention that some of you are having trouble reading posts of more than 100 words. I believe this may be because you have forgotten to install ADULT BRAIN 1.43 and it’s attendant hot fixes.
That may be a euphemism though…
I find that the Picture of the Day is a consistently interesting feature of Wikipedia’s front page that often draws my eye. Recently it featured a picture of a starving, emaciated group of prisoners from Buchenwald Concentration Camp (see it here). The picture was taken shortly after the liberation of the camp by the American army in April 1945 I’ve recently been giving some thought to The Holocaust. Not as a strictly historical event but more in a psycho-social what-if scenario.
What-if the situation were to arise that we, the people of the modern, rich, freedom loving western world were to find ourselves in such a situation. I admit it’s not a pleasant idea but what if you or I were in the situation that was forced on over six million people?
Take this proposition:
In 2007 in a parallel world an ultra-hard-line government takes control of Russia in a wave of unprecedented nationalist fervour. The new Russian government almost immediately begins to advocates a resource hungry expansionist philosophy that leads to a massive military build-up. NATO and the UN alarmed by the increasingly hawkish and rhetoric try to defuse the powder keg situation. Several smaller nations on Russia’s borders nervously deploy military forces in anticipation of an all out attack. The American and Chinese governments repeatedly shy away from a political confrontation with the Russians fearful of provoking an already volatile state of affairs.
The situation deteriorates rapidly and diplomatic channels disintegrate into militant posturing and brinkmanship on both sides. The world hangs on a knife edge for a moment until the Russian’s call NATO’s bluff. The massed Russian armies surge across the border into many of the former Soviet Republics. as the Russian sweep relentlessly into central Europe, then Germany and Austria before finally annexing France and the Low Countries. The UK ever eager to remind the world of her past imperial glories jumps into the fray with both feet Thousands of British soldiers are killed or wounded and an all out invasion of the British Isles seems a certainty. A concentrated diplomatic effort finally brings America into the war on the side of an ailing Britain. The USA pours men, money and material into Britain transforming the entire island into a fortress. The UK in a last desperate gamble threatens to use her nuclear deterrent if the Soviets land on British soil. The Soviet Union recognises that a nuclear exchange even on a limited scale will cause vast destruction to their industrial heartland. The Russian government agrees to an armistice to give them time to consolidate their considerable gains. The War ends as quickly as it began as the two vast superpowers of Russian and America carve out an uneasy peace between themselves. Britain is forced to concede a great deal in the negotiations including agreeing to vastly inflated “war reparations” to the Russians.
The scene is set with a vision of Great Britain forced into a pariah like existence on the edge of a Russian dominated Europe. Law and order rapidly begin to break down forcing the government to declare martial law. The pound has dropped to an unheard of low. The physical currency is debased to such a level that people are buying a loaf of bred with a wheelbarrow full of paper money. The population of Britain become increasingly desperate and morose as food and other basic amenities are rationed to the hilt. With elections, political parties and many civil liberties effectively suspended for the duration of the “emergency” the populace become more and more unruly. Wide-scale political protests break out across the country and are put down with increasingly violent means. Thousands of tiny local interest parties, unions and groups spring up through the land as people band together for support.
One small party emerges from amongst on of the poorest areas of London. We shall call this Hypothetical party the English National Socialist Party and for arguments sake its’ leader can be a man named Alfred Hiller. Hiller is a veteran of the War and a shrewdly ambitious man. He has a sharp eye for spotting trends and a superior orator. He has an unprecedented talent for whipping crowds of people into an ecstatic frenzy. He declares that England can be great again. England has been held back by the lazy spongers of the other three Home Nations and by the leeching of immigrant workers.
The ENSP starts as a minority, grass roots party with a half dozen members at most.  Through carefully staged rallies, pamphleteering and media manipulation they quickly establish themselves as a legitimate political party. The hardcore membership is surrounded by a wider cadre of others who don’t really believe the core values but. The ENSP grows rapidly in size an influence as it promises the earth to its loyal followers. Hiller’s delivery is electric and the ENSP slickly market themselves as the party of the ordinary working English man and woman. Ordinary people who would normally consider Hiller a dangerous right-wing lunatic are caught up in the whirlwind.
The ENSP organise youth groups to curb youth crime and direct their energies. They form vigilante “Civil Protection” groups that rapidly curb crime and promote wholesome English values. Ordinary people watch as their government flounders and the ENSP deliver peace and security. These otherwise rational logical people start to listen to the ENSP’s message. Deep down in their hearts they don’t really believe that the Scots, Irish and Welsh are responsible for Britain’s problems. Never the less they go to the rallies; they attend the meetings and they read the pamphlets.
Hiller’s political opponents go to the ENSP rallies to decry him but end up mesmerised by the carefully engineered propaganda machine. They try to shout down his energetically delivered rhetoric but instead find themselves surrounded by thousands of others who seem to believe. Those who prove too troublesome tend to disappear quickly. Nobody seems to notice in the growing fervour surrounding the bright new party that’s going to restore Britain. The ENSP quickly gain acceptance on the political stage, their membership swells as they are seen to be the only force capable of taking action in a paralysed Britain.
The government is pressurised to life martial law and restore proper political representation. The government resists until several famous political are swayed by fair means or foul to join the ENSP. Wide spread ENSP lead “pro-democracy” protests are met by heavy handed police and army tactics. The government loses all legitimacy in the eyes of the public and is forced to hold a snap general election.
The election is a foregone conclusion as the ENSP is swept into power by the greatest landslide in political history. Hiller is installed as Prime Minister. The public are ecstatic. They have the man who can get things done in charge. Nobody seems to mind as more and more basic rights and freedoms are taken away “for the good of the country”.
The machinery of oppression begins to turn, slowly at first but with increasing speed. The Scots, Irish and Welsh are restricted to their respective parts of the UK. Then they are stripped of their right to travel, their right to own or buy property. Finally the government begins to concentrate them in a series of large “internment camps”. The vast majority of the land in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are given over to government backed entrepreneurs.
Shipments of food and supplies for the detainees dwindle away to nothing and thousands begin to starve to death as the ENSP government watches. The conditions within the camps are kept a secret from the public for fear that support of the ESNP will waver. Internees are selected to work as forced labour in government owned factories or farms in return for food and shelter. Those who refuse are returned to the camps where the conditions are rapidly reducing the population to less than animals.
Finally the ESNP begin to implement a program to remove the internees forever. They begin by moving the internees throughout the network of camps at random till the move between areas is seen as part of the daily routine. They then introduce decontamination in large communal showers at the end of each journey. This is followed by the first real hot meal that many have had in months. Quickly the internees become used to the cycle of loading and unloading onto the trains. They begin to look forward to the showers and hot meals and as a result they slowly come to terms with their constant movement throughout the camp network.
The ESNP meanwhile build specialist camps in remote locations far from prying eyes. They equip these camps with gas chambers that are perfect facsimiles of the decontamination showers at the other camps. Trainloads of unsuspecting internees arrive eager for their hot food and shower. Instead they are quickly and efficiently murdered using a powerful nerve gas. Their bodies are then incinerated and their ashes spread on fields as fertiliser.
Months pass and the general public remain unaware of the horror taking place in some of Britain’s most remote areas. They turn a blind eye to the latest reports of political agitators or opponents of the ESNP who have disappeared and the wild reports of mass murder being perpetrated by the regime.
Finally on the anniversary of his election as Prime Minister Alfred Hiller announces to an ecstatic rally of the public faithful that the re-education of the Scots, Irish and Welsh has been a complete success. They have seen the error of their ways and been reintegrated into British society. Britain is on track again, Britain is great again.
Alfred Hiller is long dead and buried, remembered as a hero of Great Britain before word emerges of the atrocities he presided over.
Frightening isn’t it?
The Nazi’s put six million Jews, Slavs, Homosexuals, Gypsies and others to death in a manner not unlike that which I have described. To put that number into some kind of context its worth noting that the current estimate population of Scotland is only five and a half million people. Â The Nazi regime brutalised and dehumanised these people out of a deadly mixture of ingrained bigotry and calculated malice. In the process the Nazi’s successfully transformed the Jews et al. from ordinary people into a politically convenient scapegoat and turned an entire nation against them.
The strange part in all of this, the part I cannot fathom is how this could be allowed to happen in such a well respected nation. It’s true that Germany had suffered heavily from economic depression. The German people were desperate and bitter at the heavy noose the Allied Nations had tied round their neck after the Great War. What I can’t understand is how easily it all happened, how the otherwise famously belligerent and strong willed German nation allowed this to happen. I can’t understand how six million people were put to death so easily. I hope within my own heart that should the nightmare situation I described above been real I would have stood and fought. That I would have seen it coming and stood up and be counted.
If there is a lesson in any of the things I have said it is simply an echo of a famous quote attributed to the influential politician Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I closing I will say only that I firmly believe we are approaching a crossroads in history. The world is heading for a point where we will have a choice: Let history repeat itself and bring the world crashing down or grow up a little and send the little bigoted bullies back to where they came from.
While at work yesterday I witnessed what was later described as a small “altercation” between a pair of drivers. This got me thinking about the way a lot of situations are being downplayed by use of euphemisms. I’ve noticed that American English is particularly bad for including needlessly wordy political correct terms. It seems the norm in the modern world to treat everyone and everything as though it should be wrapped in cotton wool and stored in a giant safe. This is especially true when dealing with those members of the human race that take delight in driving everyone nuts.
Let’s face it here folks, we’re talking about ARSEHOLES.
I’ve pulled a few examples from what I’ve heard about the office and on the way home today:
They say: There was a small altercation between two gentlemen.
They mean: Two ARSEHOLES were fighting in the car park.
They say: I was tailgated by another driver on the way here.
They mean: Some ARSEHOLE was right up my arse on the way here!
They say: Excuse me but we were already in line.
They mean: Back of the queue ARSEHOLE!
They say: I’m sorry I don’t have any spare change.
They mean: Out of my face you jakey ARSEHOLE!
They say: I don’t like the tone of your voice
They mean: Don’t talk to me like that you ARSEHOLE!
They say: I don’t disagree with you there.
They mean: That’s right you pompous ARSEHOLE!
They say: *SOUND OF A CAR HORN*
They mean: *SOUND OF A CAR HORN THAT SAYS ARSEHOLE*
As your assignment for tomorrow I want you all to keep an eye out for thinly veiled cries of ARSEHOLE. It’s more common than you might want to admit.
Once again I apologise for the strange series of random timeouts that have plagued this site. I blame the gopher out of Caddyshack…
The omniscient powers of Kat have detected a tremor in the force emanating from the world of Scottish Rock Music. It seems that Big Country have somehow survived the untimely death of Stuart Adamson and risen anew for the ashes. These giants of the 1980’s Scottish Rock movement are at this very moment conducting a twenty-fifth anniversary tour all around Europe. Tony Butler the mighty bass player who added his deep tenor voice to all the greatest hits of the band has taken over as lead singer. The reviews have been positive so far and the videos on YouTube are definentyl more promising than I could have ever hoped for.
The Kat has graciously sought out and acquired tickets for Big Country’s triumphant return to Glasgow on the 30th of December at the ABC Club. All hail the KAT!
I command ye all tae honour the spirit o Stuart Adamson and join Kat and myself in a chorus of In a Big Country!
In an idle moment today I was talking with one of the guys at work. He expressed his continual amazement that I’m crazy enough to walk all the way from my house to work. It’s roughly four miles or so and takes me an hour depending upon my mood. I countered with the fact that he drives all the way from Dundee every morning but that’s another story.
It has got me thinking though. If I’m walking four miles to work and four miles back that’s a substantial distance. That’s forty miles a week just getting to work. Then I got thinking how far roughly I must walk in an entire year. Assuming for arguments sake that I only walk to work and back.
First I needed to work out a rough estimate of how many days I work in a year:
52 Weeks in the year x 5 Working days = 260 Possible working days
260 Days – 37 Days holiday allowance and public holidays = 223 Working Days
So barring sickness, lifts, bike riding or anything else I’m walking for 223 days of the year.
4 Miles there + 4 Miles back = 8 Miles per Day
8 Miles x 223 Days = 1784 Miles per year!
Now I laboured that a bit, but really I scratched the sums out pretty quick on a bit of paper. Then came the question, how far could I have walked if I was going in a straight line instead of back and forth?
So we hit the map and drew a big circle with a radius of 1,784 miles centred on Glasgow and this was the result:
The black circle marks the outer edge of where I could reach, assuming I could walk in a straight line to any of these points. It’s quite interesting to see that I could have taken a left turn one morning and be in Saharan Africa a year later. Equally I could be cutting about the Arctic Circle or halfway to Newfoundland. Most temptingly of all I could be in the middle of THE ZONE in the Ukraine hitting the place up like in Call of Duty 4.
Each day I have the dubious pleasure of having to cross the now famous Clyde Arc Bridge to get to work (the Squinty Brig to you and me). It’s usually quiet in the early hours of the morning as I cross but on the way home at night the antics of drivers have got me spitting nails, giant rusty, SQUINTY NAILS.
On the south side of the river the traffic is heavily controlled, cars cannot turn right onto the bridge from Govan Road and this is enforced by traffic islands.
The bridge has four lanes, two in the middle for general traffic and one on either side for bikes, taxis and buses. There’s no time restriction on these lanes, they’re 100% dedicated for the use of these vehicles AT ALL TIMES. These lanes start on the south side on Govan Road and continue for some distance after the bridge up Finnieston Street as I’ve highlighter in a rather fetching purple below:
The limit is generally obeyed throughout the day as far as I’ve seen, except during the madness that men call rush hour. As soon as the clock strikes about 1630 all respect for other road users, Highway Code and the law go out the window. Most honest drivers sit in the correct lane and wait their turn but a few ninja back and forth between the two lanes trying to jump the queue and turns into a giant anarchic mess. Then two huge queues form in both the normal lane and the bus lane jamming up the whole bridge and defeating the whole point of having the bus lane.
That in itself is bad enough, but I suppose nobody really gets hurt by this stuff, certainly not a pedestrian like me. That thought however leads me on to my second complaint about the traffic around the bridge. This one is when drivers turn right onto the Broomielaw despite the explicitly marked NO RIGHT TURN.
To my knowledge the guys designing the traffic management put a lot of thought into the system. They obviously concluded that traffic turning right off the bridge would prevent a filter being set on the left hand lane of Finnieston Street. This is essential as Finnieston Street is a major shortcut for commuters trying to reach the financial district immediately south and east of the city centre during rush hour. The picture below shows the situation. The GREEN ARROW shows the route that the cars should take coming off the bridge. They basically have no option but to head straight up Finnieston Street.
The RED ARROW shows the chancy route that a few idiots consistently choose to take. In the map view it seems a straightforward route for anyone wanting onto the Broomielaw. If we ignore the NO RIGHT TURN however we run straight into a few very dangerous situations.
Firstly the Pelican crossing at the Broomielaw end of the junction originally showed a Green Man for pedestrians while traffic was coming off the bridge. This meant that anyone turning right was running the immediate risk of mowing down a pedestrian. Glasgow City Council changed the light sequence so that the crossing doesn’t show a green man anymore. Instead the inner lane on Finnieston Street shows a green filter arrow allowing cars coming down Finnieston Street to turn left onto the Broomielaw while cars cross the junction from the bridge into Finnieston Street.
Now what I’ve seen three times now is the aftermath of some asshole turning right off the bridge and misjudging the movement of traffic in the filter lane. So far I’ve seen a brand new Mercedes Benz with the front caved in by a Vauxhall Corsa, a white van wrapped around the pedestrian safety barriers at the crossing and today I saw a Ford Focus sitting on the pavement with its’ rear end caved in at one side. I’ve also seen quite a few near misses of both cars and pedestrians cheesing it across the crossing because there was no traffic in the filter lane.
If drivers need to go along the Broomielaw after coming off the bridge they should turn LEFT towards the SECC and go around the roundabouts. This brings them back out facing straight along the Broomielaw, they can then drive straight across without breaking the law. If drivers don’t want to go all the way down that route they can follow Finneston Street for a few hundred yards and then turn right onto the tail end of the Clydeside Expressway which will get them into town the same way as the Broomielaw.
All quite legal.
I can’t hold the drivers entirely responsible in this kamikaze behaviour however. The blame can be equally shouldered by the person responsible for designing the traffic management. The fact that you can’t make a right turn isn’t instantly obvious unless you bother to actually look at the traffic signs. I can’t expect all those busy drivers to do that though can I?
It’s not like any of idiots I’ve seen doing these things are ned boy racers either. The majority are either white van drivers who are a law unto themselves anyway or they’re rich new-media middle management types who’ve just left the “Media Village”. You know the type, they’ve evolved an invisible third hand so they can chat on their mobile with one, jack off at their own reflection with another and somehow drive with the third.
One day, I hope that I’ll come down the road on my way and see the polis lifting all of these characters. We’re heading for a police state anyway, why not start on the Squinty Bridge Bandits?
I met an old acquaintance from my schooldays while trudging back from work. I call him an acquaintance because to be frank I couldn’t even remember the guys name for the first half of the conversation. We exchanged the usual pleasantries about how our lives had turned out and what we were doing now.
I noticed he was carrying a bag from A1 Comics and I passed a remark on the fact that he had never struck me as a comic book type. It was about then that he chose to remind me that I hadn’t really seemed all that comic book-y either. He quite rightly pointed out that I had actually made a comic back towards the end of primary school.
He’s right enough and I remember them well. The first was based on this character here:
 
That’s Marvin from Mart, a poor looking stick-man alien that served as a ship captain in the Mart Defence Forces. You can tell he was an alien because he’s green, with three legs and antenna. Somehow I managed to squeeze an A4 ring binder worth of single sheet comic strips out of him. They were primitive to say the least, hand drawn in with a fine roller ball pen and coloured with a pyrotechnic spray of felt tip pens. Â The stories mainly revolved around him flying around crashing into stuff and blowing stuff up in his saucer shaped space ship. If he wasn’t doing that he would land on some random planet and get into a rammy with the locals. The stories didn’t really go anywhere they were just the enthusiastic by-product of a particularly potent burst of creative energy.
I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of making a flash web animation based upon Marvin but each time I’ve set out to do it I’ve instantly lost my creative  momentum the as soon as I started up the flash program.
The second comic was a more ambitious one. This time I ventured from simple stick men into an all together more robust looking character:
This is Roboned and with hindsight I must admit he was rather unfortunately named. Roboned was a hybrid character somewhere between Robocop and Judge Dredd. He was originally an ordinary police officer (named Ned) in a furturistic city, but he was gunned down by a bunch of violent bank robbers and left for dead. The police department rebuilt his body using advanced cybernetics and gave him an indestructible armoured skin. He rode an advanced flying motorbike that had a dazzling array of weapons and equipment. Mainly however he seemed to spend his time shooting violent criminals into bloody pieces with his exceptionally powerful handgun.
I’ve asked my folks but they can’t find any trace of the comics in the piles of stuff I have stored at their house. I’m a wee bit disappointed as I’m sure they would make an interesting read nearly twenty years after they were written.
GreyKodiak 
