I would, if it wasn't such a plug-ugly name . . .

. . . encourage everyone in the world who isn't a nutter Muslim fundamentalist/extremist to call their teddy bears Muhammad.

Here's a nice insight into the fucking prophet's (syntax as in the singing detective's or the naked chef's) private life :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad

See also Daniel Finkelstein in the Times today on that outrageous word "disproportionate" that that hairy archbishop of Canterbury used:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/11/the-teddy-bear.html?cid=91841100#commentscid=91841100#comments

This is Jesus the Bear:

I would be recommending beheading.

This is what 50 lashes looks like after 20 days, so you can see that 40 lashes is just nothing at all.

I mean blasphemy!! Surely nothing less than beheading is called for?

It is very easy for us, in the Western world, to forget that a massive part of the world has totally primitive mindsets. What really bugs me is that the Sudanese Embassy in London put out a statement that this is a storm in a teacup.

If I had spend 4 days and nights in jail facing the notion of lashes or imprisonment I would never, for the rest of my life, think of this as a storm in a teacup.

This lets you see that the Embassy in London is as bad as the goon mullahs for all their veneers of diplomacy.

I once flew Sudan airlines. Thank Allah I didn't know till afterwards that its nickname is "Sudden Death Airlines".

As I type this, I hear on the news that Gillian Gibbons has been found guilty. Well, fifteen days in jail and deportation might make her think again about her life choices.

Sara Khawad, the school office worker who denounced her, is the one who needs the lashes. Wish I could get my hands on her. Nasty, nasty fundamentalist cow. But she must be feeling so great tonight with this "guilty" verdict.

Just in case you wanted to email the SUDANESE EMBASSY IN LONDON:

http://sudan-embassy.co.uk/en/component/option,com_contact/Itemid,3/

Oldest hatred, new mutation: Britain’s Anti-Semitic Turn

Melanie Phillips in the City Journal:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_anti-semitism.html

and also in her own blogspot:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=548

I Would Recall The Call Centres in India

I'm just calming down from having bought a ticket. It took me half an hour. Twice I gave up in disgust and said I'd drive; the third time I just bought it, at just about double the price advertised on the internet.

I don't mind these call centres in principle but in practice the Indian ones transform me in seconds into a ranting racist git.

I want to speak in my usual cynical drawl to someone who knows the branch line from my place to Reading, who knows the cheaper, other line up to London; who knows what time before the rush hour I have to hot foot it out of London before I get done for a massive hike in fare; or who knows the first train I can get onto after the bloody rush hour; who knows where the cheapest parking is when the station carpark is full (which it always is after 9.30 am anyway -- and, besides, I need to remortgage every time I park there).

In short, I want to talk to someone at MY station about MY journey, preferably someone like the station master in The Railway Children. When these little old ladies in India start bleeping away like Peter Sellers I just want to scream.