Secretary forced out of Muslim school by parents who thought she was a man

Sometimes I wonder whether the parents need to be educated as well, because as in this story, this bunch of hoo haa’s are clearly shown up as being stupid, moronic, idiotic, lacking in basic decency, obscurantist, medieval, stupid, horrible, mean, pathetic, disgusting, and and and. This is being taught at a British School? Crikey, what a sad sad state of affairs:

Shifa Patel, who dressed for work in a traditional hijab (head covering) and full-length robe, was targeted after photographs of her with short hair and wearing a shirt and trousers were copied from social networking site Facebook.

But when an angry mob of parents gathered at the school gates attempting to force their way in and demanding she be sacked, the secretary decided to hand in her resignation and the head also decided to quit in protest.

The school seems to be setup by parents who are seriously stupid.

It was established in 1995 by parents who were concerned about the state school environment and the effect it might have on their children. Music is viewed as un-Islamic and GCSE students are taught Islamic studies, rather than religious education, and Arabic and Urdu instead of modern European languages.

What’s good is that these people will soon get extinct as only idiots like them will want to teach in their school and only more idiots will come out of the school. PATHETIC!.

Royal British Legion tell Nick Griffin to stop wearing poppy badge

While I am sure Nick Griffin has a right to wear the poppy, I found it amusing to note that the real holders of the poppy image, the British Legion, got furious with him. I quote:

The Royal British Legion has accused Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, of trying to ­politicise "one of the nation's most treasured and beloved symbols" after he repeatedly wore a poppy badge during the European parliament election campaign.

In an open letter in tomorrow's Guardian the armed forces charity said it had ­written privately to Griffin last month "appealing to his sense of honour" and asking him not to wear the badge or any other emblem associated with the legion.

Griffin, one of two BNP candidates elected to the European parliament last week, ignored the request and wore the badge at campaign events including the party's televised election broadcast.

Yesterday the British Legion demanded that Griffin stop using the armed forces to further the BNP's agenda.

"The poppy is the symbol of sacrifices made by British armed forces in conflicts both past and present and it has been paid for with blood and valour," the ­letter says.

"True valour deserves respect ­regardless of a person's ethnic origin, and everyone who serves or has served their country deserves nothing less … [our national chairman] appealed to your sense of honour. But you have responded by continuing to wear the poppy. So now we're no longer asking you privately. Stop it, Mr Griffin. Just stop it."

But then, as I have said so many times, Nick Griffin and the BNP aren't exactly the brightest lights in the political firmament. They suffer heavily because of the incoherence of their platform and are desperate to grab any kind of respectability. So they go about trying to rub up against true national hero’s like the soldiers or the war. But it usually backfires. Here’s another example:

The legion's demand follows criticism of the BNP from Winston Churchill's family after the party used his image and quotes from one of his speeches in its campaign. Churchill's grandson, Nicholas Soames, described the BNP as ­"monstrous" and said its use of Churchill was "offensive and disgusting".

Another one.

The BNP was also caught up in a dispute with 1940s singer Vera Lynn after she objected to the party selling copies of her White Cliffs of Dover CD on its website to fund its European election campaign.

But guess this? I mean, come on, Nick, are you really THAT pathetic that you are going to say this?

Griffin said he had worn the badge in solidarity with injured British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. He added that he would stop wearing it if troops recovering in hospitals in the UK were not charged to watch television.

Bleah, you are such an incoherent idiot. Do you actually know there are non-white soldiers in the army? And you are actually asking for benefits for them? surely that goes against your manifesto, no? lol. What an idiot.

God Like Project Managers

You must have seen this parable before.

One day a man was having a conversation with God when his whole life flashed before his eyes as a series of footsteps on the sands of time.
He saw that there were two pairs of footprints, but during the most difficult periods of his life there were only one set of footprints.

He asked God "You said you will be with me throughout this journey, but why have you deserted me during the most critical times of my life??".

God answered "Son, I did not desert you, I was always with you...you see only one set of footprints because during those difficult times in your life, I was carrying you in my hands"

I am usually neck deep in project managers and I am one myself. Well, I deliver change, broadly speaking :). So this take on the above parable appealed to me.

Another day I was having a similar conversation with my Project Manager (PM) when my whole project flashed before my eyes as a series of footsteps on the sands of time.

I saw that there were two pairs of footprints, but during the most difficult times in the project there were only one set of footprints.

I asked my PM "You said you will be with me throughout the project, but why have you deserted me during the most critical times of the project??"

PM answered "Dude, I did not desert you, I was always with you...you see only one set of footprints because during those difficult times, I was sitting on your head!!"

Poxy buggers are always on my head, lol. Well, I am also a nagging poxy bastards so many times, but there you go. Nice one. Although perhaps the humour might only translate to people who have either been project managers or have been sat on by one, lol. Never you mind! :)

ChipMonks

The Relational Ontology of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach: Incorporating Social and Individual Causes

What does this mean? Sweet Epona and Mother of God, why are you forcing people to write this? Makes my eyeballs itch and hair hurt. Somebody should point them to the Plain English Campaign. I understand this is academic writing but they are not talking about anything technically complex. It is talking about basic development and social aspects. Does this have to be so difficult? Can you understand this? Why am I feeling so stupid?

The Relational Ontology of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach: Incorporating Social and Individual Causes

Authors: Matthew Longshore Smith ^a; Carolina Seward ^b (Show Biographies)

Affiliations:

^a International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada

^b Canadian Department of Health, Ottawa, Canada

Published in: Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Volume 10, Issue 2 July 2009 , pages 213 - 235

Abstract

While Sen has written extensively on the social factors of capabilities, the exact nature of these social factors and how they interact to form and influence capabilities is contested and unclear. Consequently, how to coherently integrate social components into capability research remains a concern for those attempting to put the capability approach to practical use. This paper proposes one approach to understanding and integrating the social nature of capabilities. Building upon two recent contributions by Martins, we argue that underpinning Sen's notion of capabilities is an ontological conception of a relational society. In this perspective, an individual's capabilities emerge from the combination and interaction of individual-level capacities and the individual's relative position vis--vis social structures that provide reasons and resources for particular behaviors. Crucially, this conception of society is predicated upon a contextual notion of causality that is flexible enough to incorporate both individual and social causes into social analysis.

Keywords: Capability approach; Causality; Ontology; Relational society; Social theory

Expatriates / Immigration in Saudi Arabia

One thing always makes me curious, why are non-citizens in the gulf countries called as expatriates rather than immigrants? Well, i was told by a friend of mine that while people would love to go and work there because the wages are so high, nobody actually in their right minds would want to live there. But the labour situation in Saudi Arabia for example is a very strange place, the prevailing concept seems to be, we will simply seek rent while most of the work is done by expatriates. If you look at the numbers, you will see what I mean.

THE EXPATRIATE POPULATION IN SAUDI ARABIA

In recent years, I have seen the Labor Ministry say that there may be 8.8 million Expats in the country. About a decade ago I saw the number of 6 million, twenty years ago the number was 3 million, and 40 years ago it was about 1 million. So here is an estimated breakdown for 2009, 1999, and 1989:

NATIONALITY 2009, 1999, 1989

Indians 1.5 million, 1 million, 300,000

Egyptians 1.2 million, 1 million, 300,000

Pakistanis 1.2 million, 1 million, 300,000

Filipinos 1.2 million, 600,000, 100,000

Jordanians 500,000, 300,000, 100,000

Syrians 400,000, 300,000, 50,000

Sudanese 300,000. 200,000, 50,000

Lebanese 400,000, 200,000, 50,000

Yemenis 600,000, 100,000, 1 million

Afghanis 200,000, 100,000, 50,000

Bangladeshis 200,000, 150,000, 50,000

Sri Lankans 200,000, 100,000, 100,000

Europeans 150,000, 100,000, 100,000

North Americans 50,000, 50,000, 50,000

Others 700,000, 800,000, 400,000

TOTAL Expatriates: 8.8 million (2009), 6 million (1999), 3 million (1989)

Working Saudi Males 3 million (2009), Unemployed 500,000?

Working Saudi Females 500,000 (2009), Unemployed 2 million?

Total Saudis 16 million includes workers, unemployed, old age, children and about 1 million women who are unwilling or unable of working..

Most of the Expatriated labor breaks down into three language groups: English, Arabic, and other. All the Expatriate labor and their few dependents eventually gain minimum elements of both spoken English and Arabic, but there are over 2 million who cannot read nor write neither English nor Arabic. About 3.5 million can read and write Arabic, and most of the 1.2 million Pakistanis and 200,000 Afghanis can read Arabic letters due to their Islamic and local written alphabet that uses Arabic letters. Of the remaining 4 million, about 2 million can read and write English.

Of the 8.8 million in 2009, about 6 million are Muslim, 1.5 million are Christians, and 1.3 million are Hindus and others. Some of the Muslims, ranging from 1 to 2 million, are illegal immigrants who have come into the country on Hajj or Umra visas, and then stayed on. Some of the other illegals are runaways.

Of the 8.8 million Expatriates, perhaps 6.5 million are bachelor status men, 500,000 married status men, 1 million working women (mostly bachelor status and some married wives), and 800,000 non-working wives and children.

Can you see the problem with having a national labour force like this? there are nearly 8 million working expatriates as compared to 3.5 million working Saudi’s. or just a shade under 50% of the overall population. What on earth is happening there and how do you expect to manage your society on that basis? No simple answers, but here is a good analysis. I quote:

Despite the fact that seven million foreigners work in Saudi Arabia, the country is ironically finding it hard to place the estimated 300,000 unemployed Saudis in the workforce.

A combination of a weak educational system, and an attitude of entitlement brought on by once having had an annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $27,000, has contributed to the current dilemma of Saudi unemployment. Some Saudis also believe that the easy availability of cheaper foreign workers has prevented Saudis wanting employment from finding work.

But the heady days of a welfare state are over. For sure, education all the way up to the university level is still free, and all Saudis have access to free healthcare, but the Saudi government has been steadily privatising everything from the telephone company to desalination plants in an attempt to lighten its burden of a SR660 billion public debt ($176 billion).

With annual per capita GDP now down to $7,500 and one of the world's highest annual population growth rates of 3.2 per cent, the pressure on the government to help needy Saudis has grown exponentially. "When the Saudisation of jobs held by foreigners was first mentioned in 1987 it was like a far-fetched goal, somewhere there on the horizon," said an American teacher who has been teaching Saudis English for the past 20 years.

Not anymore. The government has become very aggressive in cracking down on businesses that are too slow or even reluctant to employ Saudis. An ambitious Saudisation target of five per cent a year for the workforce of every company with more than 100 workers was put into place in 1993. Companies initially complied with the order to show how cooperative they were with the government, but subsequent years saw a slide in compliance.

But as soon as the main problem stays, this is what the government does.

Saudi Arabia has slashed its Saudisation requirement and opened up its market to a larger foreign workforce in a move to encourage contractors to bid for more work in the country.  The cut in the Saudisation quota for on-site workers from 10 to 5% was prompted by a severe labour shortage, which has so far hampered construction activity.  Saudi Arabia's government launched its Saudisation programme in 2003 in a bid to eliminate massive unemployment among Saudi nationals by reducing the country's intake of foreign workers.

Some results are more comical than serious. One day will write more about my experiences with this strange behaviour.

Technorati Tags: employment,Saudi Arabia

The BNP is not racist – they just bumped into KKK

HA!

 

PHOTOS have emerged of BNP leader and north west European Parliament candidate Nick Griffin with a Ku Klux Klan leader. Griffin, who is contending the north west seat in the European Parliament elections next month, is pictured sharing a platform with American Nazi Stephen 'Don' Black, who is banned from Britain for stirring up extremism.
Black is on the list of banned people made public by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith yesterday as an example of behaviour that would not be tolerated here. Griffin and Black - founder of racist website Stormfront and formerly a KKK grand wizard - appeared on the same bill at an 'American Renaissance' conference in 2005 and 2006.

I am fast coming to the conclusion that everybody who did vote for BNP is actually a racist. If they are not, they are plain and simply stupid. And I mean that in the full medical sense of the word. They are intellectually incoherent. If I wasnt bought up properly and still dread my Ma, I would be laughing at these village idiots for believing the pure and simple incoherent pap being shoved out by the BNP. But people are known by the company one keeps.

Bill Gates has croaked…

Somebody really hates feet

The chap is obviously showing a clean pair of heels but then I remember the quote, “He who talks by the yard and thinks by the inch, gets kicked by the foot”. The puns you can come up on foot and feet and toes and all that are legion but i wouldnt even dip my toe into this morass. But still, read this: An extract:

Men's feet, in particular, make me squirm and gag: the mottled colouring, the sparse hair, the little toe that has been crushed into the one next to it over the years so that it has turned and bent and cuddles up against it now, sadly, as if trying to spoon an unwilling lover, the yellowed, cracked toenails, and the fully blackened one on the right biggy from toe-punting a goalpost 14 years ago. How can bringing these out in public be considered acceptable?

Do go read them full article, very amusing.

Mind you, I play a game on the tube whenever its summer and I see people wearing sandals or slippers.  Do you know you can tell much about a person by looking at their feet? How their toes look, their heels, how they stand, a ton of information is provided by the feet.

And there is nothing like a dainty well maintained foot to make you interested in the lady. I recently read H Rider Haggard’s She. That reminds me of somebody :), but the point I want to mention here with respect to this post is the section relating to the foot. I quote:

Presently his face brightened, and with an exclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust; which he shook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains of a rotting rag, which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a beautifully shaped and almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and firm as though it had but now been placed there.

"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice, "I spake the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my son, and gaze upon it."

I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as on the day of death--a very triumph of embalming.

Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten civilisation --first as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, and lastly as a perfect woman's. Through what halls of Life had its soft step echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the dusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night when the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, and well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its jewelled whiteness.

Pretty interesting, eh? that section talked to me. Then again, even a personage like Leonardo da Vinci said, “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art”. I agree, then again, as somebody said, your toe is the part of the body which you use to find furniture legs in the dark. Bah!

London Underground Tube Strike – Sod them all

I had to work from home because London Underground Union bosses want a 5% pay rise. Great, you and rest of the world. Go ahead, strike, you poxy gits. Dont give into them, Boris, let them strike. Dock their pay. We are being held to ransom.

And this song just says it all. Warning, NSFW.

Two Clowns

Here are the 2 clowns:

 

And for details of the silly photograph that the clown on the right is wearing, here’s the actual photograph:

And here’s the background to this story.

Lets elect a book burner to head up UN Education Body

You couldn't make this up even if you wished. This chap, Farouk Hosni, is supposed to be the Egyptian Minister of Culture. And he is on record on wanting to burn Israeli books. The idea that a book burner can be a Minister of Culture boggles the mind, but since its Egypt, one lets it pass. Not sure what passes for culture there but I am sure the ministry will apply proper guidance to it. I look forward to more Egyptian cultural exports. <Snorts>. By and large, they have been living off culture and history made by their ancestors hundreds or thousands of years back, current contribution is between nil and minute. Anyway, but that’s not what made me go WTF.

This chap is now nominated to be the head of the United Nations top Education body. What on earth is the matter with these people? Here’s what this hideous barbarian and savage has done:

He has apologised for comments he made to an Islamist MP last year, which were reported to include the words: "I will personally burn Israeli books if I find them in Egyptian libraries." Mr Hosni has also banned and censored books and films, including The Da Vinci Code and novels that offended Islamists. He ordered the withdrawal of three books published by a ministry agency in 2001 in response to criticism that they were "pornographic" and sacked officials responsible.

So we have a book burner, we have a person who does not obviously believe in the sanctity of education or freedom of speech and prefers to close things down. And this is the man who is supposed to lead UNESCO? The Arab League, which nominated him, are well known to inhabit the shallow end of the human gene pool, but what about the rest of the world? Do they really want a flip flopping, scared, obscurantist, obscure traditionalist, book burner, silly sod man to be in charge of driving a giant educational global organisation? Despite his utterances about veiling which I agree with, I most certainly dont think he is the right man at all.

Wikipedia: The 5,000 Page Book

Heh, very funny. Thanks, Dickon.

BNP Press Officer on Black People

By their words, they condemn themselves…And they aren't racist, so they say :) hahahahahah

British kids believe Auschwitz is a type of beer

Good heavens!!! I knew things were bad in the school but THIS?

A new study shows that around 10 percent British schoolchildren could not identify Auschwitz as a Nazi death camp, and 2 percent believe it is a kind of beer. The poll of 1,000 pupils between the ages of 11 to 16 was conducted by the London Jewish Cultural Center and Miramax film company, to mark the launch of the DVD edition of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
According to the survey, 60 percent of pupils did not know what the Final Solution was, and 20 percent defined the phrase as the talks that brought an end to World War II. Just 37 percent of the children polled knew that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. "We are not surprised by the results, although we are disappointed," said Stephanie Rose of the London Jewish Cultural Center.

While I know 10% sounds a bit tolerable, but still…

Can you just feel the emotion in this picture?

Made me near tear up just seeing this picture of a mother and soldier with her baby. Looks like she is just returning from active duty…

 

I dont know, I find homecoming pictures very heart rending. The other types of pictures are when your loved one is waving you off to battle. I have this painting copy hung on one of my walls.

Emotional or what? War is such extreme as it gives rise to such extreme emotions…

Miss Morals National Contest

Now this is an interesting take on carrying out female contests. We know of Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss Congeniality, Miss Personality, now we have Miss Morals.  I quote:

Sukaina al-Zayer is an unlikely beauty queen hopeful. She covers her face and body in black robes and an Islamic veil, so no one can tell what she looks like. She also admits she's a little on the plump side. But at Saudi Arabia's only beauty pageant, the judges don't care about a perfect figure or face. What they're looking for in the quest for Miss Beautiful Morals is the contestant who shows the most devotion and respect for her parents. "The idea of the pageant is to measure the contestants' commitment to Islamic morals... It's an alternative to the calls for decadence in the other beauty contests that only take into account a woman's body and looks," said pageant founder Khadra al-Mubarak. "The winner won't necessarily be pretty," she added. "We care about the beauty of the soul and the morals."
So after the pageant opens Saturday, the nearly 200 contestants will spend the next 10 weeks attending classes and being quizzed on themes including "Discovering your inner strength," "The making of leaders and Mom," "paradise is at your feet" - a saying attributed to Islam's Prophet Muhammad to underline that respect for parents is among the faith's most important tenets.
"Pageant hopefuls will also spend a day at a country house with their mothers, where they will be observed by female judges and graded on how they interact with their mothers," al-Mubarak said. Since the pageant is not televised and no men are involved, contestants can take off the veils and black figure-hiding abayas they always wear in public.

Quite interesting, what? I am sure most of the other winners in other contests will lose this one, eh? and what’s with the mother’s bit, eh? lol, how interesting :)

UK poison plot against Asians, blacks busted

The rise in the BNP is inexorably going to give rise to more and more terrorist events such as this. The fact that there are people stupid enough to judge people on the colour of their skins rather than the contents of their characters tells me that this is going to happen more. And why not? We have now got the proud honour of claiming that an woman from the BNP has been democratically elected to public office in the UK.

But back to the terrorist plot. Here’s the link and I quote:

LONDON: A deadly terror plot by suspected white supremacists was busted when the police recovered dangerous ricin meant to poison ethnic minorities in the UK. It is feared the lethal nerve toxin was intended for use as part of a biological weapon against blacks and Asians, the Daily Express reports.
The fatal agent, for which there is no antidote, is 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. An amount the size of a grain of salt is enough to kill an adult. During an anti-terror raid at a terraced house in Burnopfield, the police found the ricin in a jam jar in a kitchen cupboard.
Durham's assistant chief constable Mike Barton said: "This shows that the terrorist threat in the UK is real. We believe the people involved to be white supremacist extremists and one of our lines of inquiry was that they were going to target people from ethnic ­minorities." The house in Burnopfield, and another in nearby Annfield Plain, were raided by police on Tuesday. ccording to the government labs in Edinburgh, the jam jar had ­contained the ricin for up to two years.
The jar will be taken to the Ministry of Defence's chemical biological warfare labs at Porton Down, Wilts, for further tests.

White supremacists are what you can point to the BNP and extremists? Well, the cockroaches are coming out now…

What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you are God

My Dad used to tell this joke. A Sikh was on the bus and he finds that his 10p coin has slipped out of his pocket and into a deep crack in the side panel. So he starts praying, “Ya Allah, please help me get the 10p out, please please please”. A Mullah was sitting next to him and after some time of hearing his prayers, gets a bit irritated and then pokes the Sardar. “Oiy, Sardar, you are a Sikh, why are you taking the name of Allah?” Pat comes the answer, “Do you think i am going to send Guru Gobind Singh into that crack for just 10p?”

But I was reminded of that joke when I read this:

the Roman Catholic Church has been banned by a Malaysian court from using the word "Allah", the word commonly used for God in the Malay language. A court upheld a government ban that has become a symbol of religious tensions in the Muslim-majority country. Christians in Malaysia are banned from using "Allah" in their literature, because the government says it would confuse Muslims.Christian groups say the ban is unconstitutional, arguing the word "Allah" predates Islam.

I am amused because I grew up respecting all religions. My grandma had a picture of the Kaaba inside her temple room. Here’s a song that I grew up listening.

It just means, Allah is your name, God is your name, you give sustenance to all.

Curious, no? how people are stupid enough to fight over a name for the God? And how patronising, Muslims will get confused because a Christian organisation calls God as Allah? And it also says that the court knows sweet sod all about theology because the God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is considered to be the same. And I am sure God is looking down and digging his elbow into his friend’s ribs, pointing to that silly court and laughing their heads off. Clowns.