THE WIND OF CHANGE

Farting contest controversy.

I know this is a bit of an old story by now but I've been busy with other things and have only just got round to commenting on it.

There was controversy at last week's Grand Slam Farting Competition when both players accused each other of cheating. Dutch player Wesley Harms accused his opponent Gary Anderson of trying to distract him by throwing some darts each time he farted. Gary Anderson however was quick to respond to the accusation by claiming it was the Dutchman who was tossing darts at the board every time he tried to let rip with a particularly knockout parp.

"I know it was him" claimed Harms. "I could see his arms waving about every time I stepped up for a big one. He claims that it was just to get his fart smells properly spread over the oche, but I saw the darts in his hand; he can't deny it".

Anderson won the match 10-2.

This isn't the first time that important competitions have been sabotaged by contestants throwing darts. Who can forget the 1980s beer drinking competition, ruined by gamesmanship.

Every time you say "I don't believe in vaccines" a Reptilian Overlord dies.

Getty Images

A World Health Organisation report shows a world-wide resurgence of Measles with 30% more cases in 2017 than 2016 resulting in 110,000 deaths. 

The causes are various, from the collapsing health systems in emerging nations to the promotion of anti-vax scaremongering by the "alternative" health industry.

Sad, that a disease that should have gone the way of Smallpox years ago should still be killing children on an industrial scale because of  profiteering by crackpots and charlatans.

AN ODD TALE

This is a story about two people.

The first person is Michael Barnbrook. He used to live hereabouts but has since moved to Ramsgate I believe.

The second person is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon but who also goes by the names Andrew McMaster, Paul Harris and, perhaps more famously and recently, Tommy Robinson. For simplicity's sake, I will use his preferred pseudonym Tommy Robinson.

Michael Barnbrook is a retired Police Inspector with 30 years service. After retiring from the Police Force he went on to work for Greenwich Council before retiring for good in 2001.

He then started filling in his leisure hours as an active campaigner against UK membership of the EU, firstly by joining UKIP then later migrating to the British National Party following issues he has with the way UKIP were running their finances.

This, of course, is the the complete opposite of the usual direction of his Brexit associates, most of whom were originally BNP members but left to join UKIP whose policies are almost identical but don't try to ban you if they discover you can do joined up writing.

Apparently, he isn't a member of the BNP either now, or so I'm told.

This would all be of no real account were it not for his main extra-curricular activity which is the outing of dodgy politicians. I won't go into the details of them here, if you want to learn more, do a Google search. He was however, responsible for the breaking of the expenses and allowances scandals, the home flipping scandal, election expenses and other nefarious activities. He has never really sought any credit for these although many others have.

Tommy Robinson can fairly be described (among other things) as something of  a career criminal. (Okay, perhaps that's a bit harsh; let's say more of a serial offender).

In 2005 he was was convicted of assault in a brawl involving a Police Officer who was trying to stop him from beating up his then girlfriend, Jenna Vowles.

In 2011 he was convicted of involvement in another public brawl, this time while leading a gang of 100 plus football hooligans.

Again in 2011, he was arrested at another brawl. This time involving another EDL member at one of their rallies.

In 2013 he was arrested after trying to enter the United States using a stolen passport. (He claims it wasn't actually stolen, a friend had lent it to him).

Again in 2013, he was convicted of mortgage fraud.

On various dates, convicted of assault and drug offences.

More recently, he has taken it upon himself to try and sabotage the trials of Asian paedophile gangs.

Firstly in May 2017 at a rape trial in Canterbury Crown Court where he tried to film defendants in what was going to be an online broadcast entitled "Tommy Robinson in Canterbury exposing Muslim child rapists". The trial was only saved by the Judge arranging for the defendants and jurors to leave by a different exit. Robinson was ranting on about "the paedophiles are hiding" an action that could have resulting in the whole case having to be abandoned.

Fast forward to 25 May 2018 when he was at it again. This time trying to sabotage a trial (again of a paedophile grooming gang) at Leeds Crown Court by making a live broadcast initially outside, then later inside the court itself. This action breached the conditions of his suspended sentence for the first offence and he was duly banged up.

Subsequent to this, because of alleged irregularities in the second trial, Tommy Robinson is out of jail awaiting  retrial.

So, I hear you all ask, what connects these two people? Well, apart from their connection with Neo-Nazi political parties and xenophobic hatred of all things foreign, you would think, nothing at all. One is a long serving Police Officer with an exemplary record and the other is a vicious thug, racist and football hooligan.

 But then this happened............

Taken from Michael Barnbrook's Twitter account dated 1st August 2018.

Michael Barnbrook@Sleazebuster

#TommyRobinson I am sitting here at home, having a drink, celebrating your release from prison, thinking of you cuddling up to your wife and children, after so long away from them. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I love you like my own son. I am so proud of you.

11:19 PM - Aug 1, 2018

• 1,446
• 1,514 people are talking about this

This is, without any doubt at all, one of the creepiest things I have ever read on social media. It's the sort of thing one might expect some drunken old sod to say to another equally drunken old sod in the pub at around closing time. Given the time of the tweet (11:19pm) he may well have been in his cups by then but I don't think that's any real excuse.

As a retired Police Officer of many years service, he of all people should know the consequences of interfering with court procedure and the damage this can cause. He will, I'm sure, have personal experience of seeing criminals walking free from court; discharged on a technicality.

Personally, the thought of a group of predatory paedophiles getting away with child rape because some moron thinks it's all right to trample over court procedure makes my blood run cold.

Shame on you Michael.

MEASLES AND MORONS

I've covered this subject enough times now so my opinion doesn't need repeating. I'll just let this BBC report about how over 41,000 children have been infected in Europe so far this year with 37 deaths because moronic parents don't want the Reptilian Overlords to give their children the Autisms speak for itself.

MEASLES CASES HIT RECORD HIGH IN EUROPE

BOOM

I have decided to try for the Guinness Book of Records with my attempt at being the first person to be fired from Thamesmead to Wolverhampton out of one of those cardboard tubes you get in the middle of a kitchen roll. I've got the tube and I think enough explosives to do the trick but in order for the project to progress, I need a device that can shrink me down to just three inches tall so I can fit in the tube.

Szalinski Shrinking Machine

I have had some advice as a result of a request I put on my Facebook page and one suggestion is to use the Szalinski Shrinking Machine, as featured in the Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". Unfortunately this device doesn't really exist. Worse still, according to the classic scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, never could. 

According to Asimov, it's not just a simple case of reducing the overall size of the object, you would also need to reduce the size of the atoms that make it up. This, he claims, is impossible.

"Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics."

I have therefore had to consider alternatives. How about a machine that could enlarge the cardboard tube. Thinking about it, you don't even need to enlarge the tube, just get more cardboard and build a bigger one. 

Now where can I get some cardboard?

SUPERMARKET WOES

As the world and his Wife is currently talking about Morrison's Supermarket right now, I thought I would add my two pennies worth.

My local branch is in Thamesmead Town Centre and I have some issues with it. 

Like other commentators, I too have a real issue with self-service tills. 10:00pm the other evening and there wasn't a single till open. The self-service section was alive with announcements that there was a "surprising item in the bagging area" which needed to be removed and most of the lights were flashing red. There was a queue of customers waiting for the only staff member in the shop to come and sort out their order and resulted in several of them giving up and leaving. This adds to the problem as these abandoned goods have to be put somewhere before the till can be used again. In truth, I felt like joining them and would have if I hadn't needed the goods I was trying to buy.

The other issue is accessibility. I think our branch of Morrison's was designed by the same people who do those obstacle courses in adventure playgrounds.

Some time ago, they decided to install barriers on the entrance to the car park to limit the size of vehicles entering. This was supposed to stop the travellers who would pitch up from time to time and trash the place. The trouble is, it doesn't stop them as they simply drive in through the other entrance where there are no barriers. Getting out again presents a similar problem.

If you manage to get through the pinch point where the queue for the cash points meets the stacked shopping trolleys and past the Romanian millionaire shouting "Big Issue, Big Issue" at you, then you are confronted by a huge barricade made of cardboard boxes which block the entrance to the shop itself. You can't get past on the right as this space is taken up by a queue of twitching nicotine addicts wanting to buy their cigarettes and lottery tickets. You can't get past on the left because that space is blocked by people trying to use the parcel delivery drop point and cash changing machine.

Assuming you manage to navigate all those obstacles, you will then meet my real grump which is the (sometimes) huge surcharge they place on any product if you only want to buy one of anything.

Three packets of  six doughnuts that have to be eaten on the day of purchase is not much use to me. Neither is the offer of the Christmas card with the legend "Wishing my dear Wife a Merry Christmas" written on them, just £5 for three. 

Who the hell needs three chickens? Well, you do unless you want to pay an extra 78p as a penalty for just buying one.

Leaving the car park is an interesting experience as you have to navigate that blind corner where you encounter vehicles trying to turn right into your path to get into the petrol garage. Seen a few accidents there over the years.

p.s. Try and turn left out of the car wash without crossing in front of the oncoming traffic.

MORE MORONS

Romafaschifoto/Twitter.

This picture features two idiot British tourists cavorting in a memorial fountain in Rome. The fountain is dedicated to the The first King of Italy after the country's unification and perhaps, more importantly, contains the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which honours Italy's war dead.

I can imagine the Daily Mail headline if that was a couple of Italian morons doing something similar in Westminster Abbey.

What's Italian for "Roll on Brexit"?

DARWIN AWARD BY PROXY*

Many children who were strapped into car seats at an early

age have gone on to develop autism, yet parents are not

given any choice on whether to use them.

The tragic number of deaths and injuries caused by the measles epidemic in Europe continues to rise unabated;  caused solely by the fall in the number of children being vaccinated. Over 20,00 in 2017 with 35 reported deaths.

Spurred on by the the irrational fears of the uneducated and ill informed and encouraged by commercial interests in the "so-called" alternative health and medicine industry, we are now seeing ever more children dying unnecessarily or being permanently injured by a disease that should have gone the way of Smallpox years ago.

One could argue that it isn't people's fault for being stupid; governments should be doing more to protect children when it becomes clear that their parents won't. Several European countries have made childhood immunisation programmes compulsory and it's about time we did it here.

You're not allowed to drive around with a child unrestrained in the car even though there is a clear connection between the number of babies that have been put into car seats and the increase in autism but try telling that to the Judge.

Child abuse is child abuse and no-one should be able to just pick and choose which sort should be legal and which not.

*Darwin Awards are given to those people who selflessly contribute to human evolution by taking themselves out of the gene pool before breeding; usually by some act of extreme folly. Darwin Awards by proxy are awarded to those who have produced another generation but choose to remove their offspring; usually by an equally foolish act. (The author does not recommend this).

We lived depravity and called it truth

(John Daniel Thieme)

On the 14 December 2014 a 20 year old man walked into the Sandy Hook primary school in Newtown Connecticut and using the gun belonging to his mother shot dead 20 children aged between six and seven plus 6 adult staff members.

For the families of these people, the nightmare was just beginning. Psychopathic lunatics, afraid that the incident might eventually provoke their government into introducing a modicum of gun control, decided that the whole incident was faked for just that purpose and started a terror campaign against those families, claiming they were all acting and that their dead children didn't exist. 

They call themselves "Truthers" and belong to the same group of lunatics that believe that climate change is  a hoax, vaccines cause autism, GMOs are dangerous, cancer can be cured by lemon juice and weed, Prince Philip is a 12 foot tall shape changing reptilian alien who drinks human blood, homoeopathy works, and that the Earth is going to be plunged into 15 days of darkness in November (again). More on this later.

We, on this side of the pond could at least comfort ourselves with the thought that we wouldn't attack grieving parents and the hospital staff looking after their child with obscene abuse and death threats but unfortunately, we would be wrong.

The parents of Charlie Gard and the medical staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital will know from bitter experience the sickening depravity of some people. Over the past few weeks, they have been bombarded with threats and abuse. Parents visiting their own sick children have had to run a gauntlet of perverts demonstrating outside the hospital.

I'm trying to imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who thinks that sending death threats to medical staff is a good idea or who posts obscene messages on Facebook about parents who are going through the nightmare of seeing their child dying. If anyone reading this has the answer, perhaps they would like to share.

ON A SIMILAR THEME.

There are many people who might otherwise seem quite normal but have been convinced by the aforementioned "Truthers" that tens of millions of doctors, nurses, health care workers, medical researchers and government agencies have all been conspiring together for the last 200 years to cover up "the truth" about vaccines. This "truth" is that vaccines are unsafe and your children would be better off risking catching easily preventable diseases rather than risk the uncertain effects of being vaccinated.

The consequences of that idiotic behaviour are now coming home to roost with a dramatic increase in the number of children dying unnecessarily from diseases that should be more or less extinct by now.

An epidemic of measles in Romania has already claimed the lives of 17 children with over 3,400 cases being reported. In the UK in a one year period up to February 2017, 575 cases of measles were reported.

There really isn't any excuse for this and there is a good argument for the authorities to step in and make vaccination compulsory as has been the case in countries like Italy which is one of the worst affected by the current measles outbreak.

"Should parents have the right to choose?", I hear you cry. No, they bloody well shouldn't. Children have the right to be protected from harm and the things that can cause them harm and if the parents are not willing to do it, then society has to. It isn't a parents right to decide whether to strap their child into a car seat. (Nearly all children diagnosed with autism have, at some time, been strapped into a child seat). So why should vaccination be any different?

Only two things are infinite, 

the universe and human stupidity,

and I'm not sure about the former.

(Albert Einstein)

It's that time of year when we have the annual "15 days of darkness in November" hoax post doing the rounds on Facebook. You would think considering the predicted 15 days of darkness never happened in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012, people would now be wise to the hoax, but no. 

Round it comes again with depressing regularity. If only reality was so reliable.

I am so looking forward to the next "type  "Amen"" to save this sick child.

A LITTLE RAY OF SUNSHINE

On a brighter note, the BBC is reporting that the little 5 year old business entrepreneur who was fined £150 by Tower Hamlets Trading Standards for selling lemonade without a permit has been flooded with offers to set up her stall at other events. 

It almost restores my faith in human kindness. Almost.