Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

I feel sorry for women forced to wear the burka in order to placate their religion or others.

I feel sorry for them wrapped up on a hot day parading after a likely clad partner.

I think it is b. stupid, but feel, if it is voluntary, that it is their right to do so, unless it covering up "criminal activity". This problem could be circumvented in different ways.

But, I also find it offensive to see little boys dress up in the Etonian garb. They all look alike.

But they have a perfect right to look like penguins, or the women wearing the burka to advertise their beliefs or culture.

(Don’t like Nuns’ habits.)

========

43066 - it's not really that either, though it is indeed a cultural thing

the Koran says that women should be dressed decorously, but it is the husband's choice as to what that constitutes

while the hijab (head covering) and chador (gown)is pretty much universal in muslim countries, the niqab - the veil - is nearly always the husband's choice or at least that of the society in which he moves

I think the descriptive words and interpretation are correct, but am happy to be told otherwise by those who truly know

Haze,

You must be grateful for the Saudi Cleric existing.


It shows that there is somebody dafter than you!

Cynic,

I will ask my wife.

She truly knows everything.


Must go now before this is read!

rf - football thread, if you can't take a joke foxtrot oscar you old maid!

Wierd Stuff

Tracey Emin's Bed is sold at auction for over £2.5m

Hundreds pack Christie's auction house in central London for sale of 1998 installation that documents relationship breakdown


Hannah Ellis-Petersen


The Guardian, Tuesday 1 July 2014 22.43 BST



Emin next to her installation My Bed: she described the sale as 'the end of an era'. Photograph: Niklas Hall'en/AFP/Getty Images




Tracey Emin's installation, My Bed, which documents the artist's traumatic relationship breakdown, sold for £2.54m at Christie's auction on Tuesday.

One of Britain's most famous and polarising pieces of modern art, My Bed was made in Emin's Waterloo council flat in 1998. Referred to by the artist as an unconventional and uncompromising self-portrait though objects, it features the artist's own bed covered in stained sheets, discarded condoms, blood-stained underwear and empty bottles of alcohol.

The Turner-nominated artwork was first purchased by Charles Saatchi in 2000 for just £150,000. On the market for the first time, My Bed was put up for sale as part of Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale, which also included works by Francis Bacon, Peter Doig, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.

Hundreds crammed into the Christie's auction house in St James's in central London, including Emin herself, to watch and take part in the historic sale, with the auction house estimating her work would sell for up to £1.2m.


more smelly shit here:http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/01/tracey-emin-my-bed-sale-auction

Is it art?

Cleggy reverts to type...must be on a nice promise from brussels




Nick Clegg defeats Lib Dem bid to guarantee EU referendum

Deputy prime minister's victory means party will stand by its current policy, to hold a referendum only if UK loses sovereignty



Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent


theguardian.com, Tuesday 1 July 2014 22.34 BST





Nick Clegg has defeated an attempt by senior Liberal Democrats to match the Tories by guaranteeing to hold a "seductive" referendum on Britain's EU membership in the next parliament. The deputy prime minister, who has faced direct calls from ministers for a change of stance on the EU, won the agreement of the Lib Dem parliamentary party to stand by the current policy. This is to hold a referendum only if UK sovereignty is passed to the EU. The Tories would go further by guaranteeing an in/out referendum on Britain's EU membership in 2017 regardless of the result of negotiations on the future of the EU.

Clegg defeated an attempt by senior party figures to guarantee a referendum in the party's general election manifesto. Tim Farron, the party president, and Simon Hughes, the former Lib Dem deputy leader and justice minister, have spoken in favour of a referendum. Calls for a referendum increased after the Lib Dems saw the party's crop of elected MEPs crash from ten to one in last month's European parliamentary elections.



more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/01/clegg-lib-dems-no-in-out-referendum-eu

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jckm3X5MXo


or,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jckm3X5MXo


in praise of IDS.

Have a listen to this tirade to the end!

I don't understand. I've just been on the phone to my local auction house offering my unmade bed but they were very rude. Why don't they want to sell it for me? It looks just like that Emin one!

Kim,

Your bed doesn't have the same history or provenance.

Be careful though, if you buy Tracy's bed and she goes to court it may be worth less than nothing.

(Sorry valued and less than nothing.)

‘Every state has right to be different’: Top 10 takeaways from Putin's foreign policy speech


Published time: July 01, 2014 17:10






Full story : http://rt.com/news/169680-putin-diplomats-ukraine-west/

A German's View on Islam - worth reading. This is by far the best explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His references to past history are accurate and clear. Not long, easy to understand, and well worth the read. The author of this email is Dr. Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist.

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II and owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

‘We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

‘The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

‘The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

‘The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving?'

‘History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

‘Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.’

‘Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to it being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.

‘In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores.

‘In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.

‘As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without considering sharing it with others, may be contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand.

Let us hope that thousands world-wide read this, think about it - and share it - before it's too late, and we are silenced as well.

The same can be said of Judaism in Israel.

It ain't Judaism, but the Israeli leaders who get into "power" and misuse and misdirect the "fanatics".

The same can be said of Farrage, some UKIP and other far right groups using the "ideology" of the "right wing" to stir up hatred of smaller sections of the public.

But of course that isn't happening, or is it!

PS>

This is tolerant Britain!

Britain is alright as long as you don't rock the boat and disturb the ruling class and their neat, corrupt way of living ; don't think that this is a "free" country (I'm not sure if that is the right term to use), because it isn't !, the above applies to regardless as who or whom is at number ten....if you step out of line : they have various means of causing you a lot of trouble...

Cameron absolutely USELESS at PMqs as ever not answering questions.

The NHS is in a SHAMBLES and all he can do is qoute FIDDLED figures.