Lizard Love

If you are wondering why the lizard pic, well it's simple. It's to avoid being grossed out every time I open the blog. See below.

Better still. I've moved it down the page a little.

There'll Always Be An England: Professor Pongoo

As long as there are fellows like this around and as long as you ignore the fact he's Scottish. But I think you know where I'm coming from, it's still quintessentially the English thing to do.

Man dressed as penguin receives more votes than the Liberal Democrats
4 May 2012

A council candidate who campaigned dressed as a penguin has received more votes than the Liberal Democrats.

Professor Pongoo is an independent candidate in the Pentland Hills ward for the City of Edinburgh Council.

With 444 votes, he received more than both the Liberal Democrat candidate and the Green party candidate in the local authority elections.

The Liberal Democrat candidate Stuart Bridges received just 370 and Phyl Stuart Meyer from the Green party got 322.

Professor Pongoo, whose real name is Mike Ferrigan, carried out his campaign dressed in a penguin costume. He even promised to go to every full council meeting in the costume.

The Pentland Hills ward was one of the first to be declared at the count on Friday. The three seats were won by SNP Bill Henderson, Labour’s Ricky Henderson and Conservative Dominic Heslop. STV




NICK CLEGG'S LIB DEMS BEATEN BY MAN DRESSED AS PENGUIN IN EDINBURGH

MORE embarrassment was heaped on Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg today, as his party was beaten by a man dressed as a penguin in local elections in Edinburgh.

It is reported that Professor Pongoo, an independent candidate, polled 444 votes in the Pentland Hills ward for the City of Edinburgh Council.

Lib Dem candidate Stuart Bridges scored just 370 votes whilst Green candidate Phyl Stuart Meyer got 322.

Mike Ferrigan, who created the character Professor Pongoo, had promised to go to every council meeting in his penguin costume if he was elected.

The black and white outifit was a regular feature on the streets of Edinburgh, as Mr Ferrigan campaigned before last night's vote.

The embarrassment will add to Nick Clegg's misery, with his Lib Dem party having already lost 144 councillors and one council as votes continue to be counted.

There are also reports that Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick could finish fifth in the race for Mayor of London. Express

US Politics Thirty Seconds of Magic

The best bit of television that I have seen in years, thirty seconds from Fox News of all people.

Fox News anchor Shep Smith has a sudden moment of clarity.




And there is probably more if I could be bothered looking.



H/T Tom Phillips

This Is No way To Talk About My Religion: Selected Hate Mail Towards The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster

And I won't allude to the grammar.

Well perhaps the odd cartoon or two.

Now I know one shouldn't take the piss out of the afflicted, but don't you think that people with such levels of literacy might show a little reluctance in exhibiting the fact.

But what I find really scary, and it's not a new thing with me, it happens every time I come across stuff like this, is that most of these people have a right to, and probably do, own a gun.

Your a stupid ass and your religion is gay. Thats why god hates it and evne though he loves yu he hates ur gay and will kill you and all yoru followers. Your god is spaghetti, i ate spaghetti lasnt night. So, ha. Christian god is in teh sky, your is on a plate. Your guy doesnt even have brain let alone create things. Your stupid douchbag. This isnt a religion, its a belief. And you are standing in between you and gods yours love. I hope ur happy.

- Connor Fargus

- - -

I saw your site and it just amazes me how delusional you guys are, you are trying to create a delusion around the world. A sick joke gone wrong really, its really sad that you are so completely obsessed with brainwashing that you try to pass of a Italian cuisine for a deity of some sort. This whole religion is of hate and defies all logic, rational thought, and it shatters common sense completely. You’re lousy evidence doesn’t cut it either how can you say fire works and noodles are evidence for your delusion? and its not even slightly sane that you walk around like a bunch of pedophiles in those shabby suits of yours. I bet if a Scientologist and a mutated Christian extremist had sex, the offspring would be a Pastafarian.

-Pizbi

- - -

The government actually passed this BS as religion? You just did this so you can get tax cuts, your religion is based on christian hate because thats all i see you mocking on here, You might as well side with the church of satan who mocks their own belief, Just because youre too blind to be enlightened you have decided to scam all the atheists out there, in a way i have to side with you, because all of your followers are just as stupid as you are, nobody ever looks into history, philosophy or multiple religions before basing their faith, they always just side with hate and disbelief, when love is just the true meaning behind every religion, and science is formulated from the start of religion, it seems that your church and your followers will all go down the same stupid path, even if you are a teacher or a doctor you probably are a bad one at that, well except the church leader who is rolling in money from his t-shirts and probably initiation fees and getting tax cuts, what a smart way to scam atheist church goers, you might as well start the next jonestown massacre.

–Nick

- - -

You sicken me with the fact that you now have my best friend believing in your stupid, sick, blasphemous crap you call a religion! I can tell you what it really is, BLASPHEMOUS, MADE DURING A DRUG BINGE, IDOLATRY THAT WILL HAVE YOU BURNING IN HELL OR ON THE TABLE AFTER THE LAST WAR!!!! I am furious about the fact that there is a religion DEVOTED to SIN OF ALL THINGS! If you don’t change you and all your followers will be in a special place in hell just for IDOL WORSHIPPING, SIN LOVERS LIKE YOURSELF!!! You disgust me and I hope you see the truth before it’s too late.

Antipastifarian,

Chance

Answer to the above: I need more information on this “special place” in hell you refer to – will there be cake?

Interested,

-bobby

- - -

I should really have given this one below, pride of place, it's a cracker. But I shall carry on posting comments from the front page, only in reverse order.

You are a fraud. It’s obvious to me that you don’t give a shit about you’re so-called religion. I am not even that christian but this site makes me sick. you have no right to start a religion or should i say cult. People need to think for themselves they dont need to listen to your nonsense. I am not even that christian but at least they are trying to help people. What are you trying to do? make money and buy a pirate ship and fill it with strippers and beer? That is the most stupid thing I ever heard. I hope the government shuts you down and takes you’re money. You will never have a pirate ship they cost millions moron.

Suck it,

Mike



What exactly do you think you are going to prove? it’s just disrespectful to other human beings faiths and beliefs, and im sure u of all people should know u can’t put any sense into say a devout christian. Honestly, what your doing is the equivalant of making a rude, sarcastic joke to a child that doesn’t understand humor. u cant tell a christian thats been raised from birth to believe that there’s a magic man in the clouds that he’s wrong. you’ll just get what uve been getting, hate mail, and death threats. God is the equivalant of santa exept the child is never told he isn’t real until it’s to late. and u think your doing a good thing by making up this pastafarian crap to prove how absurd the idea of god is. what i don’t think u understand is that u cant argue with idiots about this stuff as most christians are dont know a thing about science.(I apoligize to all respectable christian scientists). as an athiest, im disgusted what youre doing. like making fun of christians being killed by somali’s, and u quoting, "apparently they thought there god could give them safe passage"(yes ive read ur website). really, did it ever, or does it ever occur to you that these people are actually human being’s with family’s and feeling’s, and just because they think the world was created differantly than u, u have to mock them… that’s kind of a dick move. your being no better than they are(religious people) by making fun of and disrespecting other people just ’cause they think differantly than u. oh wait u are religous, u worship a flying spaggetti monster. which means i have the right to ridicule u on how stupid your dumbfuck religion is(oh may the great pasta diety forgive me for my sin) and dont deny that u worship the all mighty pasta king, because your the leader of the church. with the true words of your religion written on a piece of paper. it’s ironic that u, by trying to prove how bad religion is. go about it by u yourself inbodying everything that is wrong with human beliefs. u are everything that is wrong with athiesm. u go around acting all superior and pompus, like u know better than everyone else and tell them why there wrong mockingly. the world would be a better place if u took all your "followers" (butt pirates) got on a pirate ship and ate spaggetti until you all died of overeating.have u ever heard the term live and let live? and i love it how u post all the hate mail u get on a your page to be ridiculed by your cronies( who by the way need to get of the internet and do something productive)yes we all the the bible huggars are gonna say dumb stuff because they’re uneducated. but that doesn’t mean u have to be immature and make fun of there faults so just lay off. even though this message sounds hostile just know i agree with what your’e trying to do (i think) educating people, i just wholly disagree with how u are going about it.

-David

More hate mail.

The Genesis of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Frivolity with serious undertones.

Front Page.

I love Grannies

Especially when they are feisty old gals who get the boot in.




H/T @Timcast

Costa Concordia: Stuff You Couldn't Make Up - ''I Tripped''

Francesco Schettino, you're a star, ''I tripped and fell into a lifeboat.'' He reminds me of Larry Craig, he's not gay, he just trips and falls onto penises.

Costa Concordia captain claims he tripped and fell into a lifeboat

Francesco Schettino explains at hearing why he could not lead evacuation of stricken cruise liner but admits crashing ship into rocks
Tom Kington in Giglio
18 January 2012


The cruise liner captain accused of abandoning ship after he struck rocks off the Tuscan coast last Friday has reportedly claimed he was unable to lead the evacuation because he slipped and tripped into a lifeboat while helping passengers leave the stricken vessel.

During a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, captain Francesco Schettino said it was an accident that he left the Costa Concordia, according to La Repubblica.

"The passengers were pouring on to the decks, taking the lifeboats by assault," the newspaper quoted him as telling a judge during a hearing to determine whether he should be held in custody on charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

"I didn't even have a life jacket because I had given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get people to get into the boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60-70° angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That's how I found myself in the lifeboat," said Schettino.




"Suspended there, I was unable to lower the boat into the sea, because the space was blocked by other boats in the water."

The captain did however admit responsibility for crashing the ship into rocks which tore a hole in the Costa Concordia, forcing him to ground the vessel.

"I made a mistake on the approach," he said.

"I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I had done this manoeuvre three or four times. But this time I ordered the turn too late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. I don't know why it happened. I was a victim of my instincts."

Schettino confirmed he sailed close to the island of Giglio to salute a retired captain, Mario Palombo, and was on the phone to Palombo at the time.

Schettino said he was not afraid of a drugs test: "I don't do drugs and I had not drunk." By grounding the vessel close to the shore after it struck rock he believes he saved the lives of many passengers.

On Wednesday, a Dutch-owned salvage vessel arrived in Giglio port ready to go into action once divers resume their search for passengers on board. The brother of an Indian waiter who worked on the cruise ship and who was still missing arrived on Giglio on Wednesday to search for him. gruniad

Clarence Mitchell to Spin the Sinking of The Costa Concordia

I can't wait to hear Clarence Mitchell spin this lot. Yes you heard right, Mitchell has got the job of spinning the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

It should be quite hilarious, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a certain house in Rothley, where the occupants can sit back and enjoy Mitchell in full cringe factor warp nine.

Every time Mitchell opens his gob, people are going to associate it with the McCanns.

A public relations masterpiece. Drive on!

Sounds familiar.

Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.

"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port.

"But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case." The Scum

- - -

Burson-Marsteller MD Clarence Mitchell started working on the comms last night.

- - -

Port Authority to cruise ship captain: 'Get on board, damn it'
January 17th, 2012

Recordings between the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship and the Livorno Port Authority, which is part of the Coastal Guards, have given new insight into what happened on the ship when it hit rocks Friday night just off Italy's western coast.

A total of 23 people remain missing following the wreck, which led to 11 deaths, Italian officials said Tuesday. Capt. Francesco Schettino is under arrest and may face charges that include manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, according to an Italian prosecutor.

Questions abound for captain of doomed cruise ship

Below are several transcripts of recordings between authorities and the captain published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and translated by CNN's Hada Messia:

Livorno Port Authorities: "Concordia, we ask you if all is OK there."

Concordia: "All is well."

-----------------------

Port authority: "Concordia. We ask you if all is well there."

Concordia: "All is well. It is only a technical failure."

Port authority: "How many people are on board?"

Schettino: "Two-three hundred"

Port authority: "How come so few people? Are you on board?’

Schettino: "No, I’m not on board because the ship is keeling. We’ve abandoned it."

Port authority: "What? You’ve abandoned the ship?"

Schettino: "No. What abandon? I’m here."

-----------------------

Port authority: "You must return on board. Climb the ladder (rope ladder), return to the fore (stem) and coordinate the work."

Schettino does not reply

Port authority: "You must tell us how many people are on board, how many women, how many children. You have to coordinate the rescue operation. Commander, this is an order. Now I’m in charge, you have abandoned ship and now you are going to go to the stem and coordinate the work. There are already dead bodies."

Schettino: "How many?"

Port authority: "You should be the one telling me this…What do you want to do? Do you want to go home?...Now go back on the stem and tell me what to do.."

-----------------------

Port authority: "Listen, this is De Falco from Livorno. Am I speaking with the captain?"

Schettino: "Yes."

Port authority: "Tell me your name."

Schettino: "This is Captain Schettino, commandant."

Port authority: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped on board. Now, you have to go with your lifeboat and go under the boat stem on the straight side, there is a ladder there."

Port authority: "Get on board on the ship and tell me, you tell me how many people there are."

Port authority: "Clear? I’m recording this conversation, Captain Schettino."

Schettino: "Well then commandant, I need to tell you something."

Port authority: "Speak loudly."

Schettino: "The ship now…I’m here in front of it..."

Port authority: "Captain, speak loudly."

Schettino: "Commandant, at this moment the ship is tilted."

Port authority: "I understand. Listen. There are people who are coming down the stem ladder. You must take that ladder in the opposite direction. Get on board the ship and you tell me how many people are on board, and what do they have. Clear? You tell me if there are children, women, people with special needs. And you tell me how many there are of each category..."

Port authority: "Is that clear?"

Port authority: "Look Schettino, you might have been saved from the sea, but I will make sure you go through a very rough time…I will make sure you go through a lot of trouble. Get on board, damn it."

-----------------------

Schettino: "Commandant, please…"

Port authority: "No...please. No, you get on board. Assure me that you are getting on board."

Schettino: (Hard to understand) "I’m here with the rescuers. I’m here. I’ve not gone anywhere. I’m here."

Port authority: "What are you doing captain?"

Schettino: "I’m here coordinating the rescue."

Port authority: (Speaks over captain): "What are you coordinating there? Go on board and coordinate from there the rescue operation. Are you refusing?"

Schettino: "No, no, I’m not refusing."

Port authority: "You are refusing to go on board? And why are you not going on board?"

Schettino: "I am going because now there is the other motorboat (Lancia) that has stopped now."

Port authority: "You go on board. It is an order. You cannot make any other evaluations. You have declared abandoning ship. Now I’m in charge. You get on board. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commandant..."

Port authority over captain: "Are you not listening to me.."

Schettino speaks over Port authority: "I’m going..."

Schettino: "Call me immediately when you get on board. Our rescue officer is there."

Schettino: "Where is your rescue officer?"

Port authority: "My rescue officer is at the stem…Go …(can hear captain saying OK)…There are already bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies are there?"

Port authority: "I don’t know. I know of one. I’ve heard of one. You are the one to tell me how many there are. Christ!"

Schettino: "Are you aware that it is dark here and we cannot see anything?"

Port authority: "So? Do you want to go home Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Climb the ladder and get on the stem."

Port authority: "...and tell me what can be done, how many people are there, what do they need. Now."

Schettino: "Commandant, we are with the second in command…"

Port authority: "Then both of you climb up. What is his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitris Christidis."

Port authority: "You are your guard. Go on board, now!"

Schettino: "Commandant… I want to go on board, it is just that the other lifeboat here…there are other rescue operators... it has stopped and it is stuck there... now I’ve called other rescue operators..."

Port authority: "It is one hour that you are telling me this. You go on board. On b.o.a.r.d (says the word slowly almost spelling it out). And you immediately tell me how many people there are"

Schettino: "OK."

Source and videos

The Costa Concordia, a plank with a block of flats on top! Otherwise known as ''top hamper.''

My God Is Bigger Than Your God

Enjoy.

Spitting Image - My God Is Bigger Than Your God



Not the same theme, but this has to be my all-time favourite. Quintessential English humour at its best.

Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen

America: Can We Have Our Drone Back Please

Update: Video below.

Update: Iranian website featuring multi drone stories.

Iran not going to return captured surveillance drone to USA
13.12.2011

Iran appears to have declined the White House's formal request to return the surveillance drone it recently captured. But even if Iran retains the high-tech drone, experts are dubious about how much Iran can learn from it.

The semi-official Iran Students' News Agency reported today that Iran considers the RQ-170 "Beast of Kandahar" drone "Iran's property," according to Iranian Foreign Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi. "The US spy drone is the Islamic Republic of Iran's possession and our country will decide what to do in this regard," he said, according to Christian Science Monitor.

Obama wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know "just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday called the downing of the drone "a significant intelligence loss."

"For us to go in and take out the drone that crashed, I think, would have been a fairly simple operation," he said on CBS's "The Early Show." But Cheney said the administration "basically limited itself to saying please give it back." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behavior that Clinton said indicated "that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region", says Washington Post.

Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.

"We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world," he said. "We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime."

Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful, informs TIME. Source Pravda

“I've always been a Daily Mail reader. I prefer it to a newspaper”

There has been no small amount of effort gone into compiling this quite brilliant piece of satire.

You may wish to read the post below.

Daily Mail

“I've always been a Daily Mail reader. I prefer it to a newspaper”
~ Oscar Wilde on The Daily Mail

Often referred to as "Fascism with Oven Gloves on" The Daily Wail, also known variously as The Daily Hate, The Daily Heil, The Daily Bile, The Daily Hate Mail, The Fascist Manifesto and The Daily Fail is a hugely popular British comic for those who believe themselves (usually mistakenly) to be members of the middle classes. In 2010 it was also the UK's best selling brand of toilet paper. It is owned by Associated Newspapers, the same media group responsible for the Mail on Sunday and The Metro. A pair of rose-tinted spectacles must be worn to read articles in the Daily Mail, which describe how everything was great in the 1950s before the Islamic Conquest and the introduction of drugs, fat women, asylum seekers, paedophiles, Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, the homeless, Brown people and the invention of sex made daily life intolerable for the conservative middle-class Chelsea tractor driving mums and retired army colonels that inhabit these sceptred isles.

The Mail was first issued on 4 May 1896. The headline on the first edition was 'The British Union of Fascists: Our Patriotic Angels!'. The present editor is Paul Dacre, known for his sweet, engaging personality and anti-swearing policy.

More recent additions to the Mail line-up include the side-splitting shenanigans of London taxi driver Richard Littlejohn, with his world-famous witticisms, including "British women married to Iraqis should be left to rot in their adopted country, with their hideous husbands and their unattractive terrorist children" and "Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe and eat their brains then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them".

It is worth noting that any Daily Mail headline phrased as a question can always be answered with the word 'No'. Hence 'Did Dragons Once Roam This Sceptred Isle?', 'Are we ruled by a Gay Mafia?' and 'Does food give you cancer?'

A first issue of The Daily Mail sold for £1 on 16 March 2004, which was, at the time, the lowest price ever paid for chip wrapping-paper at auction (its use as chip wrapping has long been banned, as people complained it made the chips taste of bile and hate).

In 2009 the Mail began a review of its "Pretend To Oppose Authoritarian Government Policies" policy as Conservative victory at the next election looked increasingly likely. Since May 2010, when a conservative oligarchy was reinstated, it has continually pissed itself in delight applauding Authoritarian Government Policies.

The Daily Mail has been from the outset published under the masthead buy-line "The Stink From The Shit on The Shoe of British Journalism". Drive on, much more

h/t http://twitter.com/#%21/StopDailyMail

Paul Dacre OBN

Sarah ''Shagger'' Palin: A Book Review

Something a little lighter for today.

How Much Do You Really Want to Know About Sarah Palin? Why Joe McGinniss' New Book, "The Rogue" May Be TMI

It's a book that puzzles as much as it enlightens. There's a fine line between "wow!" and "really?"—and McGinniss is working both sides of that divide.
By David Corn
September 16, 2011

It's hard to know how to read Joe McGinniss' new book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. The blistering work is not a traditional biography. One-third or more is devoted to a Palin subplot: Joe McGinniss—that is, the tale of the author moving into the house next door to Chez Palin in Wasilla, Alaska, and the blog-and-tweet-storm that bold (and PR-savvy) move triggered. There is a reason for McGinniss injecting himself into the story, since the episode presumably shows Todd and Sarah at their autocratic and paranoid worst. But in Rogueland, getting to the worst is a true challenge, for there is so much—too much—to choose from.

By now, maybe you've heard about the most titillating portions. For instance, there's Sarah Palin hooking up with basketball star Glen Rice when Rice was a college star playing in a tournament in Alaska. Rice confirmed to McGinniss what he called a "respectful" encounter, noting that afterward "we talked a lot on the phone" and he had a "big crush" on Palin. But for McGinniss, there's more to this episode. In his book, this bizarre-in-retrospect intersection is proof of Palin's "fetish for black guys." That quote comes from an unnamed "friend." But—wait a moment—another unnamed friend says that following the Rice date, Palin freaked out: "Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe that she'd done that."

Fetish or freak out? The reader is rightfully confused. But the point is, there's so much juicy stuff in this book attributed to blind sources, and much of it is hard to sort out. Titanic fights between Sarah and Todd. Drug use. Sex. Affairs. Awful parenting. Supersaturated self-absorption. And weirdness. All the usual touchstones of a celeb-bio. The Palins' home life is a 24/7 nightmare of spousal fights and parental disregard. A "former houseguest" tells of being tossed out of the Palin home because Sarah suspected that she and her husband were having sex in the guest bedroom using—OMG!—baby oil. There's too much TMI in this book.

As a journalist who does rely on unnamed sources, I'm not knocking the general practice. But when the context of the blind attributions is a flood of vituperation, the use of unidentified sourcing becomes more troublesome. After all, McGinniss doesn't seem to miss any opportunity to slide the dagger into his subject. Here's a small example. When Palin was finishing her term as mayor of Wasilla, she fired a close associate. The fellow, John Cramer, who had done much to assist Palin during her time as mayor, told McGinniss his dismissal came as a complete shock. He had no explanation for it. The move speaks for itself. If Cramer's account is accurate, it depicts Palin as ruthless and selfish. Point made. But that's not enough for McGinniss. He can't resist the urge to tap dance on the grave: "It was as if Sarah didn't feel her tenure would be complete without one last gratuitous exercise of her power, without hurting just one more person who had helped her."

Perhaps. But the reader, if he or she believes Cramer, probably already reached the conclusion that what Palin had done was vile. This little jab suggests that McGinniss is being propelled by his bias. And that does a disservice to the journalism within the book.

To be fair, The Rogue is full of named witnesses testifying against St. Sarah. Former state trooper Gary Wheeler, head of Palin's security detail when she became governor, notes that she was a lazy chief executive. "For six years I was with [Frank] Murkowski and [Tony] Knowles," Wheeler told McGinniss, referring to her predecessors as governor. "For them, the job wasn't forty hours a week, it was eighty…For her, it was a part-time job." He asserts that Palin spent much of her days shopping, coming to work at 10 a.m., and leaving by 3 p.m. He says she bought about 100 pairs of sunglasses her first year as governor. (Make of that what you will.)

McGinniss also does a fine job dissecting Palin's associations with extreme Christian fundamentalism—territory other authors have previously excavated. Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla with one public issue: more bike paths. But McGinniss shows how her real agenda was to transform her town into an enclave of evangelism. When she campaigned for governor, McGinnis writes, "the hardest job her staff had was to keep her quiet about her religious beliefs." He reports that after being elected governor she fired a group of minority state employees who had worked on her campaign. An aide (named) says, "Sarah just isn't comfortable in the presence of dark-skinned people." But what about Glen Rice?

Virtually anything negative one can say about a person who is not a murderer or genocidal war criminal is said about Palin in this book. Of course, that doesn't make it untrue. Yet as I trekked along on McGinniss' unrelenting death march to the bowels of Palin's supposedly dark soul, at times I almost felt sorry for her. How many backstabbing "friends" can one person have? (One "friend" told McGinniss of a snowmobile trip that included both Todd and Sarah and allegedly involved a cocaine binge.) And how much wrath does any biographic subject deserve? At times, I wanted to reach for the hand sanitizer.

McGinniss is a journalist with a long, storied, and controversial career. Dialing back on the Palin-slamming might have yielded a better book—especially considering his run-in (or feud) with the Palin clan. The Rogue is must-cringe reading. It's a book that puzzles as much as it enlightens. There's a fine line between "wow!" and "really?"—and McGinniss is working both sides of that divide. Alternet

For blokes and gals who aren't porn shy, try Google image ''Nailin Palin'' funniest thing I've seen all week. Safe search off of course.

Will The Real Charlie Tooting Pot Smoking Sarah Palin Please Stand Up?

I left out the extra-marital shagging, the header was getting a little long.

You can't beat a good bit of gossip (?)

Sarah Palin alleged to have used cocaine and marijuana

Biography of the Tea Party politician alleges that she used drugs, and had a long affair with her husband's business partner

Chris McGreal in Washington
The Guardian,15 September 2011

A highly anticipated biography of Sarah Palin alleges the Tea Party politician and former Republican vice presidential candidate used cocaine and marijuana, and had a long affair with her husband's business partner.

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by the respected if controversial author, Joe McGinniss, claims Palin was seen snorting cocaine off the top of a 55-gallon drum while snowmobiling with friends. It also alleges she smoked marijuana with a professor while at Mat-Su College in Alaska.

The book, scheduled for release in the US next week, quotes a Palin family friend as alleging that Palin's husband, Todd, also used cocaine and that he was "on the end of the straw plenty".

McGinniss, who made his name as the young author of a study of Richard Nixon's campaign, The Selling of the President 1968, angered Palin by moving in next door to her home in Wasilla, Alaska. Palin warned him to not to spy on her family, saying she suspected he was trying to look in her daughter's window from his property.

The book claims to substantiate allegations previously denied by Palin that she had an affair for six months in the mid-1990s with her husband's business partner. McGinniss writes that the relationship put considerable pressure on Palin's marriage.

Anticipation of the book's release has been heightened by a deal McGinniss made with Garry Trudeau, author of the Doonesbury cartoon, to include extracts in the strip read by an imaginary Fox News reporter who moved in next door to McGinniss.

Some US newspapers have declined to run the strip which includes lines claiming that "Palin isn't comfortable in the presence of dark skinned people". Gruniad

Klaas Hendrikse My Kind of Preacher

Update: For reasons beyond my ken, the pics have disappeared, but they weren't imperative to the post. Follow the links for video.

Some people might think tulips, canals and clogs when they have the Netherlands in mind; I think, pragmatism, coffee shops and speeding tickets.*

"Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

And what a different world it would be if only the jesoids, and all the other oids for that matter, could manage to grasp what is patently obvious to the rest of us. And by us, I mean anyone with two neurons bolted together.

Click twice.

Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world
By Robert Pigott Religious affairs correspondent, Amsterdam

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.
Exodus Church The Exodus Church is part of the mainstream Dutch Protestan Church

An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.

It is part of the mainstream Dutch Protestant Church, and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."

Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."

Staphorst, in the Dutch Bible belt, has a by-law against swearing

Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.

A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the Dutch Protestant Church was either agnostic or atheist.

The Rev Kirsten Slattenaar, Exodus Church's regular priest, also rejects the idea - widely considered central to Christianity - that Jesus was divine as well as human.

"I think 'Son of God' is a kind of title," she says. "I don't think he was a god or a half god. I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found inside himself."




Mrs Slattenaar acknowledges that she's changing what the Church has said, but, she insists, not the "real meaning of Christianity".

She says that there "is not only one answer" and complains that "a lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more".

Bini Von Reingarden, who's been going to Exodus Church for 20 years, is among lay people attracted to such free thinking.

"I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."

Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."

Churches in Amsterdam were hoping to attract such people with a recent open evening.

At the Old Church "in the hottest part of the red light district", the attractions included "speed-dating".

As skimpily dressed girls began to appear in red-lit windows in the streets outside, visitors to the church moved from table to table to discuss love with a succession of strangers.





Professor Hijme Stoeffels of the Free University in Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion.

"In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.

"Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion."

To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.

They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.

Stroom ("Stream") West is the experiment devised by one church to reach out to the young people.

In an Amsterdam theatre young people contemplate the concept of eternity by spacing out a heap of rice grains individually across the floor.

"The difference from other churches is that we are… experimenting with the contents of the gospel," says Rikko Voorberg, who helps to run Stroom West. "Traditionally we bring a beautiful story and ask people to sit down listen and get convinced. This is the other way around."

Stroom focuses on people's personal search for God, not on the church's traditional black-and-white answers.

Rikko believes traditional Christianity places God in too restricted a box.

He believes that in a post-modern society that no longer has the same belief in certainty, there is an urgent need to "take God out of the box".




"The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society," he says. "It has to change to stay Christian. You can't preach heaven in the same way today as you did 2,000 years ago, and we have to think again what it is. We can use the same words and say something totally different."

When I asked Rikko whether he believed Jesus was the son of God he looked uncomfortable.

"That's a very tough question. I'm not sure what it means," he says.

"People have very strict ideas about what it means. Some ideas I might agree with, some ideas I don't."

Such equivocation is anathema in Holland's Bible Belt, among the large number of people who live according to strict Christian orthodoxy.

In the quiet town of Staphorst about a quarter of the population attends the conservative Dutch Reformed Church every Sunday.

The town even has a by-law against swearing.

Its deputy mayor, Sytse de Jong, accuses progressive groups of trying to change Christianity to fit current social norms.

"When we get people into the Church by throwing Jesus Christ out of the Church, then we lose the core of Christianity. Then we are not reforming the institutions and attitudes but the core of our message."

But many churches are keen to work with anyone who believes in "something".

They believe that only through adaptation can their religion survive.

The young people at Stroom West write on plates the names of those things that prevent earth from being heaven - cancer, war, hunger - and destroy them symbolically.

The new Christianity is already developing its own ritual. videos

*Hamburg bound, and about a kilometre before the Dutch German border, I was just getting my right foot into autobahn mode. Half a click later, the cop in charge of the radar was on the phone to the courthouse to ask how much to spot fine me. £80, and that twenty five years ago. I wasn't going that fast, honestly!

Update, more here. Preaching sense from the pulpit

Hackgate: 'Ere Guv Gotta New Tee Shirt?

Well that didn't take long, get your own, John, 'integrity' Yates teeshirt. Love it!

HACKGATE - Mr. Yates

- - -

10 things we learned from the Met police at the phone-hacking hearing

Sir Paul Stephenson, John Yates and Dick Fedorcio provided some illuminating moments in front of the select committee
by Peter Walker
19 July 2011

1. David Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, turned down the opportunity for the prime minister to be briefed on the fact that Neil Wallis was giving PR advice to the Metropolitan police, according to the force. The outgoing Met commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson first alluded to an unnamed "No 10 official" who briefed the force that Cameron should not be "compromised" over the issue. The outgoing assistant commissioner John Yates subsequently named the official as Llewellyn.

2. The buck does not always stop at the top in the Met. Stephenson deflected a number of tough questions by telling MPs this was a matter for Yates, giving evidence later.

3. No one properly checked Wallis before he began work for Scotland Yard. The force's head of PR, Dick Fedorcio, told MPs that "due diligence" was carried out by Yates, even though Yates and Wallis were friends. Not so, said Yates: all he did was make a single phone call to Wallis to ask whether anything he had done could "embarrass" the force.

4. Stephenson resigned despite, he believed, still having the full support of Theresa May, the home secretary, London's mayor, Boris Johnson, and the bulk of the force. He told MPs: "It was against the advice of many, many colleagues – and, indeed, my wife." He added: "I'm not leaving because I was pushed or threatened."

5. Yates passed on the CV of Wallis's daughter within the force, thus possibly assisting her to get a job with the Met. He insisted he had done nothing wrong but "simply acted as a postbox".

6. The Metropolitan police has 45 press officers, 10 of whom previously worked for News International, figures revealed by Stephenson.

7. Corporate PR consultancy can be a lucrative business. The Met received three tenders for a two-day-a-month contract to advise senior officers on press matters. The winning bid and "by far the cheapest", came from Wallis's company, at £1,000 a day.

8. Stephenson is not a fan of ex-colleague Andy Hayman's new career as a journalist. Asked whether he reads Hayman's Times column, the response was: "No, I do not."

9. Stephenson was determined to go out with a bang. He began quoting (inexactly) Macbeth on his resignation – "If it's done then best it's done quickly" – before vehemently defending his £12,000 free stay at Champneys health spa. He signed off with a clearly pre-prepared statement of defiance, describing his resignation as "an act of leadership".

10. We are living in strange times: there have been very few previous select committee hearings at which a Conservative MP (Mark Reckless) and a commissioner of the Metropolitan police go out of their way to praise the Guardian. Stephenson/Fedorcio/Yates blah blah video.

Sir Paul Stephenson on Champneys: I think it was very unfortunate for me.....I think it was damnably unlucky. See video link.

Noodle News

I love it.

Austrian driver's religious headgear strains credulity

Driving licence of Niko Alm Having received his driving licence, Niko Alm now wants to get pastafarianism officially recognised
13 July 2011

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

The Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.

The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.

A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.
Passport photos of Niko Alm with a colander on his head A medical interview established the self-styled 'pastafarian' was mentally fit to drive

The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".

In response to pressure for American schools to teach the Christian theory known as intelligent design, as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren, as an alternative to the Christian theory.

Straining credulity

In the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith. BBC

Fred Reed: Smiting The In-fiddle

Having, not many minutes ago, taken the piss out of German and American humour, I now find myself, in the case of this particular Yanky, in the unenviable position of having to eat my words.

Writing with uncommon verve and no doubt drawing from the benefit of having been around the block a time or two, Fred Reed is one genuinely talented and very funny writer, so much so, I think he is more than deserving of his own tag here.

Smiting the In-fiddle
And Malt Does More than Milton Can, to Justify God's Ways to Man
June 6, 2011

Cyberg, Tennessee—The Reverend McBilly Osfeiser strode to the rostrum of of the Full Bible Perfect Word Baptist Church, a frame building reeking of plainess and Protestantism. He was a tall man, with the sharp facial planes and hard visage of a desert patriarch about to kill something. The congregation shrank in their pews. He was a man who brooked no sin, and no sinners, whom he consigned to eternal damnation, and thought they were getting off light. He looked fiercely about, and spoke:

“Brethren, I come before you to preach the word of God, for these be evil times, and the children of Israel, and yea the parents and grandparents, even unto their heirs and assigns, are sore beset by the tribe of Mohammed, and Beelzebulb, and Luciferin and Luciferase. In the name of God we must gird our loins, whatever exactly gird means, and smite the followers of Allah, and suffer them not to live, neither child nor mother with child nor suckling babe. Their lands shall be accursed and nothing there shall prosper, neither tares nor the wild ass; thus saith the Lord God, the God of Israel , the god of love and mercy.

“Today we shall begin our sermon with the story of Samsung and Delilah, in the book of Hezechiah, chapter fourteen, verses nine through twenty-seven, in the reign of Herod Agrippa. In that time Israel was sore beset by the Malachites and the Catamites, even the Stalactites and Stalagmites, and the Assyrians of Kng Areopagitica with many chariots threatened the city of Solomon. But Samsung spent three days and three nights fasting and praying, and sacrificed a sheep, and it was good in the eyes of the Lord. In the morning he went forth and slew them all, cutting through them with sling and samothrace as one scything wheat until not a Stalagmite was left standing. saving the city.

“Today, brethren, we of Christ face the same test of our faith. In Afghanistan, as we speak, the Mohammedan Taliban build mighty forces which they will use to conquer all of Christendom and enslave us, having gotten here mysteriously.

“The powers of the darkness are many and patient, and the Mohammedan awaits to make our wives and daughters into harem slaves. It is well said that if we do not slew them there, or perhaps slay them, they will slew us here, or a slew of them will slay a slew of us there, maybe here, or they will...whatever. Remember the second book of Malthusians, when Chay-suss expelled the Gadarene Swine from the woman afflicted with leprosy, “Rebus sic stantibus,” he said. “Carthago delenda est,” which is the Latin for “Get the back whence thou camest, and thy towel.”

“I urge you, brethren, to support our Christian troops who with magnificent courage are killing the heathen with drones strikes from thousands of feet while sitting in Colorado. To those weak in faith, who say that we are killing innocent women and children, I say unto ye, women are the source of all Taliban and thus must be military targets. If we destroy arms factories, should we not destroy Taliban factories? As the mighty warrior Jay-suss would want, we will smite them, and leave them bleeding and dying, and wailing over their broken children, blinded and crushed and burned, that they might learn to walk in the ways of righteousness.

“And now, brethren, I want to introduce you to one of our own warriors for Christ, Willy Bill Bedford, who is just back from the heathen land of Afghanistan, and wounded—wounded, brethren!--smiting the in-fiddle for Jay-suss. Willy Bill, will you come up and testify?”

Willy Bill was a big, chunky kid with a sloping forehead you could have used to bank a turn in a motorcycle race, and about every other tooth was missing so he looked like a piano keyboard. His left arm was in a cast. “Willy Bill,” shouted Reverend Osfeiser, “Tell your brothers and sisters in Jay-suss how you been doing the Lord's work.”

Willy Bill seemed uncomfortable but he sort of scrunched up his courage and said, “Yeah, well. OK, Reverend. Well, we was out in Litani Province and there was twelve of us in a Humvee with 'bout a thousand rounds each of seven-six-two and a sack full of Bibles an'...” (see footnote)

The reverend roared, “And tell the brethren why you had Bibles, the inerrant perfect word of God, with you!”

“Oh, yeah. We belong to Bible Spreaders, we try to bring Moslems to know Jesus, you know. BS is real important to us, so we always....”

“You hear that? Bringing souls to God!” more fredoneverything

Not so funny from Fred Reed.

Extremely Dangerous Boy Kid

....Think about it. Kid—he’s eight—shows up with toy gun after watching 12,000 hours of shoot’em-ups on the lobotomy box, Luke Skywalker blasting funny-looking milkmen like a pretty little mollycoddle turned psychopath. Kid sees war coverage with heroic GIs in Afghanistan killing anybody they can see. He watches recruiting ads for the Marines, who carry guns and want A Few Good Persons. Why would he possibly be interested in a toy gun?

And why would nominal adults, even the barely educated variety characteristically found on school boards, want to wreck the kid’s life? Actually of course it is passive aggression, an attack on the tyke, said attack masquerading, or perhaps marauding is the better word, as high moral endeavor. See, they’re protecting Western Civilization. more

The sackful of Bibles? not half as bizarre as you might imagine.
US Army: Bible Bashing For Jesus

Monks Having Too Much Fun, Not To Mention The Nuns

Well they were, until the nasty Nazi stuck his oar in. I love little stories like this, they restore my faith in human nature.

But on a slightly more serious note, notice the reasons for building the basilica in the first place. Little wonder that anybody with two neurons bolted together dismisses the whole Catholic shooting match for what it is; dark age mumbo jumbo.

Pope ousts 'loose living' monks of Rome's Santa Croce monastery

Vatican acts after reports of monks staging concerts featuring a former lap dancer and running hotel service




It sounds like something out of Father Ted: a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.

As part of Benedict XVI's crackdown on "loose living" within the Catholic church, 20 or so Cistercian monks are now being evicted from the monastery at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which hosts some of the church's holiest relics.

"An inquiry found evidence of liturgical and financial irregularities as well as lifestyles that were probably not in keeping with that of a monk," said Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. "The church remains open but the monks are awaiting transfer."




Reports saying the monks amassed large debts have also emerged, but Benedettini declined to give further details of the Vatican report, which was signed off in March.

The monks' days have been numbered since 2009, when the Vatican sacked their flamboyant abbot, Father Simone Fioraso, a former fashion designer who built up a cult following among Rome's fashionable aristocratic crowd as well as show business worshippers such as Madonna, who prayed at the church in 2008.




In 2009 Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her "holy dance" before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines.

Dating back to the 4th century, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme was built to house relics brought back from the Holy Land by the mother of Emperor Constantine.

They include items described as nails and splinters from the cross, thorns from Jesus's crown, and a bone from the finger St Thomas pushed into the wounds of Christ.

The monks living there now had opened a shop selling organic produce from their kitchen garden, but this was shut down in 2009 amid accusations of their having secretly stocked the shelves from a neighbourhood grocery.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa said that VIP guests were also encouraged to stay at a hotel opened at the Santa Croce monastery which offered a 24-hour limousine airport service.




In 2008 Fioraso hosted a week-long, televised, reading of the bible with religious figures, politicians and celebrities reading tracts, starting with Pope Benedict himself. But a year later Fioraso was ousted, despite protests from parishioners who defended his "patience, dedication, sacrifice and passion".

The Vatican's removal of the monks to other monasteries, ending their 500-year presence at the basilica, follows Benedict's hard line with other wayward orders, including the Legionaries of Christ, run by the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, who fathered numerous children, was disciplined over sexual abuse allegations and was banished to a life of penitence.




The basilica was supported by the Friends of Santa Croce, a who's who of Roman society run by a Italian claiming descent from Charlemagne.

Italian press reports have speculated that the inspectors from the Vatican suspected homosexual relations between monks at the monastery. gruniad

Don't Look Now

Received from reader, Marios.

A Fairytale Wedding? What Nonsense! Hear Hear Old Chap

A German's eye view of the Wedding and the Windsors

A Fairytale Wedding? What Nonsense!
A German Journalist's Royal Frustration


The wedding of William and Kate on Friday will be a joke, a hopelessly overhyped celebration of an absurdly undemocratic system, writes SPIEGEL London correspondent Marco Evers. He pities the bride for her imminent loss of freedom, and wonders why this eccentric nation continues to worship the Windsors.


The whole thing feels like an aberration of history.

It's wrong if the head of state of a country can only come from one family. It's wrong to furnish this clan with palaces, land and all manner of grants to spare its members the indignity of having to earn their keep and enable them to live in luxury. It is wrong to address the Windsors and, from next Friday the delightful Kate Middleton as well, as Your Royal Highness or even Your Majesty. It is wrong to see them as anything other than people made of flesh and blood, like you and I.

Millions of Britons know that. The Guardian newspaper wants to abolish the monarchy, as does the Independent and the Economist magazine. Many professors, film directors, writers, actors and politicians would like Britain to become a republic -- but they remain in the minority which for years has been constant at around 18 percent of the population.

Cherie Blair, the difficult wife of the former Prime Minister Tony, once refused to curtsey in front of the old Mrs. Elizabeth Windsor, but the majority of Britons enjoy doing that, and much more, for Queen and Country. The Windsors are Europe's most expensive royal family, but the people go on paying, without grumbling, at least as long as Queen Elizabeth remains alive.

The Queen Owns all the Swans, Whales and Sturgeons

But Great Britain is a strange country. It has no written constitution but a rigid class system. The lawyers wear wigs in court and there are no citizens, just subjects. By law, all swans, all whales and all sturgeons are the property of the Queen, but there's no British national football team.

And if the Queen wishes to award an honor to one of her subjects, he can proudly call himself "Officer" or even "Commander of the Order of the British Empire." What on earth do these titles actually refer to? Much in this realm seems at least as antiquated as the London Underground.

British soldiers are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and Libya, and they fought for it in Iraq. But at home, they defend the absurdly undemocratic idea that nobody but a Windsor can be head of state. As soon as Elizabeth, 85, shuffles off her mortal coil, her son Charles, 62, already worn down by his long wait for the accession, will take the throne, even though opinion polls show the majority of Britons don't want the brooding, esoteric prince to become king.

The pomp and ceremony surrounding the marriage of William and Kate is the latest expression of British eccentricity -- but a large part of the world appears to be succumbing to it as well.

Yes, the carriages of gold and velvet look pretty, the bride's train will be a sight to behold and Westminster Abbey is quite a spectacular backdrop for the ceremony. But is it really worth all the fuss? More than 10,000 journalists are descending on London. The German networks ARD, ZDF, Sat.1, RTL, n-tv and N24 will hardly be broadcasting anything else on Friday. Everyone is pretending that this spectacle is the most important and beautiful event on earth -- but it is not.

Oddly, the British public isn't as interested in the wedding as one might think. Most Britons say they don't really care about the event. Only about a third of them plan to watch the show on TV. And, compared to previous royal nuptials, relatively few of them plan to take part in the traditional street parties. In the center of London, hotels have plenty of spare rooms even though they have been offering discount deals for the weekend.

Millions of British subjects already fled the island on budget airlines before Easter and are now populating the beaches of Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt or the Caribbean. The weather there is guaranteed to be better than in London, where heavy rain is forecast for Friday.

Britain is still mired in its worst economic crisis since World War II. Everyone should be rolling up their sleeves to haul the nation out of the doldrums. But the government declared the wedding day a public holiday, and schools, banks, offices and factories will be closed -- just because the heir to the heir to the throne is getting married. The extra holiday may lead to increased turnover in the nation's pubs, but it will end up costing the economy billions.

A Wedding Dictated by Palace Protocol

In truth, the marriage of William and Kate is a sad spectacle. Two young people aren't getting wed in the way they would like but how the palace, protocol and granny demand it.

William, 28, is accustomed to that because he was born into it. But for Kate, 29, Friday will mark the end of her freedom. For her parents, it will be a bit like the death of their daughter. She won't belong to them anymore -- she will be elevated to some form of distant, aristocratic human being, forever unavailable for that impromptu dinner with Mum and Dad.

Fairytale wedding? No way.

Some friends and relatives will be present in Westminster Abbey, but most of the guests will be strangers, and some of them will be repulsive ones at that. King Mswati, the despot of the impoverished African nation of Swaziland who has 13 wives, will be flying in with his entourage of 50 people. Arab potentates have also been invited, some of whom are currently having pro-democracy demonstrators shot at in their streets. Who would want to get married in such company?

Half the British cabinet is coming, along with opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband, who bears the grand official title "Leader of her Majesty's Loyal Opposition." Former conservative Prime Minister John Major will be present. But the last two Labour prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, have not been invited. Is that their punishment for having supported the ban on fox hunting? Why should the autocratic Sultan of Brunei get invited and not the two previous leaders of a democratically elected British government?

The whole world is waiting to admire Kate's wedding dress. The designer will be inundated with work after this. But the wearer of the dress faces a future that shouldn't really be desirable for an intelligent woman in the 21st century. Kate will have only three tasks from now on: serving her husband, looking good and bearing children, preferably boys. Apart from that, all she has to do is shut up.

It's like in the 1950s -- only much worse because she will have to continue curtseying to the Queen and other higher-ranking members of the family she has married in to.

The whole thing feels even worse than just an aberration of history. It's a joke. Spiegel

A report from Oz.

Banning the Chaser and bringing on a Republic

Just when you might have thought that things were looking a bit bleak for the Australian Republic, along comes the Chaser and heavy-handed royal censorship to remind us all why it’s so vital we become a Republic. David Donovan comments.

The royals have been in PR overdrive mode since Prince William visited Australia in early 2010. It is blatantly apparent that they see Prince William as the fresh marketable face of the royals. This is because, apart from the Queen, there is pretty much no-one else suitable to sell. The Queen, of course, is venerable, but she’s also 85 now and slowing down. Prince Harry with his partying and Nazi fancy-dress is probably out of the question. Prince Edward is just not attractive or saleable. Princess Anne, apparently prefers to spend more time with horses than humans; hardly appropriate. Prince Andrew, who is a close friend of tyrants, criminals, abusers, and receipient of Azerberjani largesse. Nope. Prince Phillip, who is a gaffe-prone racist and even older than the Queen. No chance. Or King Charles and Queen Camilla? The monarchists dread that day ever coming, though coming it rapidly is.

No, it is William and this wedding and all the preceding PR is meant to remind us, through him, about how wonderful and “normal” the Windsors are. It is an obvious myth, given the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha clan’s obscene wealth, power and by the alarming fact that William is just about the only decent and respectable one in the entire brood. Nevertheless, this has been the implausible message the Palace’s 130-odd strong PR team have been tasked with getting out into the public domain and they had, in the main, been doing a reasonable job. more