Robert,

Thanks for the Cliscep plug. And for the positive reference to the band who decamped from BH to Cliscep some time ago. Some of us do still lurk here occasionally.

Radical Rodent,
Welcome back to the rather depleted BH.

I see what you mean about the discussion area: years' of worthless spam. For some reason, that part of BH was never my cup of tea. Blog dead, discussion area worthless, unthreaded moribund, yet I still like it here.

It was reasonably lively here during the COVID capers when we had TinyCO2 and golf charlie fighting the good fight defending lockdowns, vaccines, etc., and pcar, tomo and me all opposing the silly measures. We also had a nice group of interested bystanders (e.g. stewgreen, Mark Hodgson, AK/supertroll) who would weigh in from time to time.

Frustrations with BH's random buggy Captcha authentication drove a fair number of people away. I think more or less all of them moved over to cliscep.com. If you're not already active there, I expect AK would be especially pleased to see you.

But your comments here would be very welcome too. Would be nice to see an *increase* in the number of commenters for a change. Some weeks, it's been just me posting links and/or waffling into the void.

Mailman,
No wonder we can't connect: different worlds. How lucky are you getting a simple world! Afraid I've been lumbered with a complicated one.

Another EV fire. Short video of a burnt out Jaguar EV. Not much to see. Really: not much to see.

Robbo,

Both aren't particularly complex issues. One is race related and the other is made up...funnily enough by the same kinds of people who are celebrating Hamas at the moment (probably because they would love to do the same thing to so called climate deniers).

It's been some time since I last visited this site. It's good to see some names that I recognise; sad to see what a debacle the "Discussions" site appears to have become. I may actually log in more often, now, and try to follow your discussions.

Mailman,

Sorry Robbo, but you are wrong. This isnt complex at all.

Couple of links spotted in comments at Jo Nova's:

Telegraph lining Orwell up for cancellation. They cop a deserved bollocking for it. Haven't previously heard the expression "chef's kiss", but it captures the irony beautifully.

A couple of years ago I mentioned about the gradual inflation of blood pressure guidelines. It appears they're taking another step with the American Heart Foundation now declaring 120/80 (or 120/70, or 115/80) to be "elevated". It appears some people won't be satisfied until we're all on daily medication for something.

The BBC's hypocrisy is even all the more galling as they are quite happy to label anyone who disagrees with the left as far right wing extremists and anyone related to the Democrats Jan 6 wet dream as insurgents and any parent not down with adults f99king children as domestic terrorists.

Sorry Robbo, but you are wrong. This isnt complex at all.

Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. It literally says that in their constitution and everything they do is to further this aim. Not complex at all. Pretty straight forward actually.

Hamas and Palestinians (and the Arab world and the left) view ALL of Israel as occupied land, therefore the only way to unoccupy that land is to kill every last Jew in Israel. Once achieved, there will no longer be any occupied land.

Therefore, every murder we saw last week was justified in the fetid mind of the Palestinian because every Jew murdered was murdered in occupied land.

Hence why if Israel does not deal to Hamas now it will all happen again in 3, 4, 5 years time. It is time for them to ignore the whaling of the left, roll up their sleeves and get on with the business of ending Hamas once and for all.

And another thing...

His Grace has an excellent article at NetZeroWatch on the BBC's guideline of "due impartiality". Closing para:

“Due” impartiality seems then to look very much like outright bias, a way for the BBC to enforce a hard-left agenda, promoting and defending things its staff are in favour of, and denigrating and attacking things they oppose. It’s an ugly, ugly picture, and they can’t hide it any longer.

tomo,
apologies for yesterday's mild dig. It was meant to be lighthearted, but was clumsily worded. Should have been more along the lines of "tomo thought it was so good it deserved a second read".

Mailman,
The "complexity monster" lurks in many places, not just climate, and it is certainly there in geopolitics. If there were truly *no* innocents in Palestine, Israel would have had little bother ridding the world of the problem and we'd all be happy about it. But the Israelis know there *are* innocents in Gaza, and so does Hamas, which uses them as human shields. Latest news is that Hamas themselves bombed vehicles trying to take the Gaza escape route that Israel promised not to attack.

"Unity" has high propaganda value. So does "fanaticism". I simply don't believe their propaganda. Sure there are *some* fanatics (I suspect it's usually the dimmer ones — funny how the leaders are never in a hurry to reach paradise), but what unity there is is mostly built on fear.

I blame the Hamas terrorists, not only for the barbaric killings they carried out in Israel (and I bet there were Muslims as well as Jews amongst those victims), but also for the deaths in Gaza, because those were going to follow as sure as night follows day. I lament them, but don't blame Israel for them at all.

Oddly enough there *are* a couple of commenters at Jo Nova's blaming Israel, so if you feel like an argument you could pop over there.

Back on the "Voice", here's a rather long-winded intellectual article by a philosopher arguing that "yes" was a bad idea. Readable, but not great. Liked the reasoning in this bit:

The fact that ‘white people’ with a trace of Aboriginal ancestry can identify as Aboriginal and are instantly recognised as such, but ‘black people’ with a trace of non-Aboriginal ancestry are never identified as ‘white’, suggests that nativism is only a cover for the conceptual erasure of the Aboriginal race, diluting it with ‘whiteness’ to the point where indigeneity is transformed into a virtual token of corporate privilege

Hamas just murdered several thousand Jews. I dont see any protests against these killings anywhere in the Arab world.

Palestinians dancing in the streets....dont kid yourself here pal, if there is any disappointment on Arab Street its that more Jews weren't butchered when they had the chance.