Toadfish Monastery

One nation indivisible?

So was that written before or after the civil war?

Attempts to divide state and religion never seems to prove very effective. I guess because politicians love to use religious dogma to futher support for their campaigns and priests love to use political policy to futher their religious dogmas

The man who first placed a fence around a piece of land and said to his neighbours "This is mine" and had them believe him. That man created our modern society.

Cameron freaks me out.
Theres something vaguely reptilian about him.
I tend to think of him like one of those aliens from V.
I expect that if you walked in on him suddenly you would catch him swallowing live mice whole.
Mark my words one day soon he'll fall off his bike, have a serious spill, loose some skin and reveal his true scaly skin beneath.

I can't help but feel that the man has not a single principle or policy he has which he would not drop at a moments notice if it were to benefit him.

Also Grrr

Would you like fries with your God?

Suddenly early career in the fast food industry can be viewed in a spiritual light. I wasn't standing at that deep fat fryer staring off into space I was in a deep medatative trance, at one with the universe.
Those two things can be easily confused.

I knew a fellow once who told me that the term Heretic comes from an old Latin phrase meaning "Able to choose".
Whenever anyone asked about his religious leanings he would proudly announce he considered himself to be a heretic.
Which to his way of thinking was anyone who made up their own mind of the subject of God and who had private beliefs not codified and approved by some manner of reigious organistation.


I always liked that

Touching yet sinister.
The suggestion that thought there may not be an all knowing god watching over us his followers are listening at the door to the nursery.

Hmm I don't think I have what it takes to be a militant atheist.
I'm more an apathetic atheist.

Thanks for the good will all.

Ah Lindrom who do you think is trying to get me on a plane?
Sunjumper and I have a friend in common who happens to be passing through scotland on her way to amsterdam. she told me I was coming along. She may have threatened to show up on my door step and shanghi me in fact.

I'm given to understand sunjumper is getting similar treatment on his end.

With a bit of hand holding I have been talked into going to Amsterdam for a long weekend.

The very idea of travel makes me nervous as hell mind you.
Being something of a hermit by nature it takes me a couple of hours to work up the nerve to go down the pub.

Never the less tickets are booked passport is, finally, in hand crippling nervousness or not I am going on holiday damn it and I'm going to have a bloody lovely time.

Now, now all we know is the the person who writes her speeches remembers the Exxon disaster. And witht he wonder that is Google we can't even be sure of that.

Every time she appears in the news I am just the little bit happier that the democrats won that election. That woman terrifies me.

The bit that really makes me is the company pointing out how good the safety record of this model of rig has been up till now and some times accidents happen.

Yeah it had a wonderful safety record right up until it caught fire, exploded and sank killing part of its crew and unleashing an ecological disaster which will have ramifications for years to come.

They Id me by my neck length?
Remind me not to hunch my shoulders when I try to get on the plane.

Hmm I suppose I hadn't been thinking of things in terms of facial recognition software.
Perhaps because the last time I got on a plane the security check consisted of a guy looking at your photo squinting at you suspiciously then back at the photo.

Jokes on them anyway.
Rather than file out anouther form I just had my neighbour sign my extra photos and falcify the dates.
Muhahaha take that Bureaucracy

A friend of mine has recently convinced me to join her on a little holiday excursion.

This will mean my leaving the United Kingdom for the first time in a decade.

This is undoubtedly a good thing, getting me out of house and seeing new and exciting things in exotic locales. On the down side this required me to update my passport as my old one showed an image of a spotty faced sixteen year old boy who hadn't taken to shaving his head yet.

And so I embarked upon my epic mission to get a new passport navigating system of outdated and often frankly crazy rules that are in place seemingly for no other reason than to discourage me from trying to leave the country at all. By the end I was beginning to suspect that it was all some cunning government ploy to make me holiday in locally and stimulate the economy.

I won't bore you with the entire tale instead lets focus on a few of the highlights.

When submitting your request to update your passport you are required to have your documentation counter signed by "an upstanding member of the community" who has known you for at least a year, is not related to you by blood or marriage and had a passport of his or her own.

I am given to understand this law was written back in the days of yore when it was common for everyone to know their local policeman by his first name. The list of acceptable people included police officers, court officials and doctors. Of course now a day's it's pretty unlikely you're going to know such a person. So the government made some changes.

Did they remove the absurd law?

Most certainly not. They simply expanded the list of acceptable professions. As such you can now have your local travel agent, funeral director, journalist, optician or professional photographer. Quite how the opinion of a funeral director puts the governments mind at ease when it comes to identity theft and international terrorism I do not know but there you have it.

Personally I found myself in the bizarre position of asking my next door neighbour, a retired primary school teacher who according to the government is an unimpeachable source, to counter sign my documents. So the deal is I look after her cat from time to time and in return she verifies my identity and allows me to leave the country.
Another point of note is that the passport photos much meet a surprisingly exacting standard. Some of it makes sense, I have no objection to taking off my glasses so my face is clearly visible, some of it does not. The thing that confused me was that I was required to take off my jacket for the photo..... for a photo which only includes my head and the very top of my shoulders. One can only assume that airport security rely on the line of my shoulders to identify me.

The photos of course must also be counter signed by my neighbour who is, in essence, required to write "Yep that him alright" on the back of each photo and sign and date them. Now you might think it would be acceptable to have her sign the paperwork one day and sign the photos the next once you have collected them from the developers, I know I did. You would of course be wrong and your passport application would be rejected. You see in the one day between signing, to the governments mind at least, anything could have happened I'm not entirely sure what their afraid of exactly but I can only assume it would involve a radical surgical transformation like that shown in the movie face off.

In the end after three attempts and two weeks of annoyance the government grudgingly allowed be the pleasure of giving them £87 for the privilege of a new passport with a rather more accurate picture contained there in.

Has anyone else found this to be a horribly silly and frustrating process?
Is it an altogether less crazy process in your homelands?

Ah Sarah Palin.
Suddenly I feel so much better about choosing between Brown and Cameron.

Ah here is the video that was shown at the inquest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4

That is really shocking.
I cannot for the life of me think why they attacked the van driver.
Even if he was an "enemy insurgent" he was taking a wounded man to safety.

I similar story of "Friendly Fire" against a british army convoy was in the press a while back

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/07/iraq.military

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541724/Transcript-of-the-friendly-fire-video.html

Again the american military announced first attempted to supress the tape and later decalired that the pilots had be acting correctly and that the matter would be resolved internally.

If the can't even identify their own allies. Whose positons should be recorded. Who are transmitting on radio and who have marked their vehciles in an agree manner then what hope does anyone else have the ground?

Does anyone else find themselves hoping the new Dr Who season features the LHC?
Because this could totally be an episode.