Flotilla of Fools

You’ve just arrived after a long journey, tired and looking for somewhere to stay.  You feel like treating yourself, so you ask your driver to take you to the best hotel that the town has to offer.  And he does; he could have picked none better.  Plush and polished, this five star establishment has over two hundred well-appointed rooms, a royal suite, a steam room, a swimming pool with a view of the sea and four restaurants.

So where do you think you have ended up; in one of the more luxurious Mediterranean resorts, perhaps?  Go out on the balcony and have a look around.  See, there, just to the south of where you are standing, the Hamas training camp should give you a clue.  Hamas; what, the terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel?  Yes, Hamas; for this is Gaza and the hotel is the al-Mashtal, recently refurbished at a cost of $40 million.  Continue reading “Flotilla of Fools”

An ‘exuberance of students’

What’s your favourite collective noun?

Collective nouns such as a murder of crows and a murmuration of starlings really amuse me.

Just wondered if there are  collective nouns for a group of  nurses, a group of doctors, a group of artists…. a group of policemen.
What would you call a  group of snails or a collection of ants?

Maybe you can help? Let’s make some up!

Or maybe you have a favourite?

A very European road to perdition -revisited!

In January 2011 I wrote ”A very European Road to Perdition’, which I posted on the ‘dark side’. The article was taken from the ‘Daily Reckoning’ web site. As this site gives out financial advice, my inherent cynicism of human sincerity and merit clouded my views on its veracity. At the time there was a critical comment on my view that contributors to the site were ‘snake oil salesmen’. I now think quite rightly so and withdraw, with some reservation, my comment about ‘snake oil salesmen’. However, I keep my view that politicians are ‘snake oil salesmen’. I’m with Diogenes in the adage that “It takes a wise man to discover a wise man” , and await my epiphany.

Here is my dark side post – revisited.  Bill Bonner writing from Paris for the ‘Daily Reckoning’ claimed that the US road to bankruptcy is running parallel to France. He stated that; Continue reading “A very European road to perdition -revisited!”

Alerts

The occasional alerts are intended to bring the help pages to your attention – and we do not appreciate rude comments in response.

While correcting one mistake may take only a few minutes – amending ten errors takes ten times as long. Sometimes we spend over half an hour putting things ‘right’ – and it gets tedious correcting things when we have already spent a great deal of time writing help pages.

We would ask everyone to remember that this site comes free – and it is meant to be fun for us too.

Strike update for a small part of England

As usual the children have turned up at our local school, delivered by mums and dads.  There seems to be no strike action there – but I won’t mention where in case we get a bunch of pickets infesting the neighbourhood.  It will be interesting to see a map showing the areas most and least affected in Britain.  I would have volunteered to man a Border Agency post at a nearby airport, though my method of letting everyone leave the UK and saying No to anyone I didn’t like the look of trying to enter might not have been acceptable.  It would probably have kept that border secure though.

Coal fired power stations

Greenpeace at it again

 My lunchtime news reported yesterday that Greenpeace Africa dumped 5 tons of coal at the headquarters of our electricity supply generator ESKOM.

They were protesting against the construction of (reportedly) two of the worlds largest coal fired power plants, the Medupi power station (4800mw on line from 2012) and the Kusile power station (also 4800mw on line from 2014) and six new nuclear reactors.

That’s a lot of megawatts.

My first thought was who’s going to clean this mess up, perhaps the residents from one of the local unelectrified squatter camps could do with some free fuel on these cold Highveld winter nights.

Secondly, Continue reading “Coal fired power stations”