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Friday, December 31, 2010

[CARTOON] Happy New Year 2011

Cartoon image of Johnny Ancich. Creator of Past Expiry Cartoon.

Can you spot the hidden 2011 ?

Past cartoons about...
bathroom

drinks

men

pictogram

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Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.
Bill Vaughan

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?
Catherine O'Hara

Let our New Year's resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
Goran Persson

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
Cavett Robert

Happy New Year!

I wish you all a Happy New Year and I really hope 2011 is full of joy and happiness. 2010 has been a tremendous year so I am very much looking forward to 2011.

Cheers to a New Year!

Image from Roomenvy.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

[CARTOON] Rudolf Obsolete!

Poor Rudolf. You'd have to think this would be the logical (cynical ?) conclusion to the 1964 TV special that airs every Christmas. He was outcast from the start, and only accepted by Santa and the other reindeer once Rudolf proved to be useful to THEM. With GPS for your car running for under $100, you could say Rudolf would easily be outsourced (both Garmin and Tom Tom GPS units are manufactured overseas).

Past cartoons about...
animals

christmas

layoffs

Santa

spoof

unemployed

work

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Wonga is all wronga

It says something for the value of London Underground’s Brand (the second most recognised in the UK) and which is also widely recognised internationally that TfL has allowed it to be devalued by having its New Year’s Eve Travel sponsored by an usurious short term loan company called Wonga. Set up by two South African ex-Investment Bankers and backed by three Vulture Capital funds Wonga has the air of a short term get rich quick scheme for all involved, except the unfortunate and vulnerable customers. Mindful of the opprobrium rightly heaped on usurious money lenders Wonga craves respectability and brand recognition by sponsoring the new boys in the Premier League Blackpool FC and now the London Underground Brand and New Year’s Eve in London has been hijacked by them in a disgraceful abdication of moral authority by a publicly owned and accountable transport system who, according to the posters on The Underground, are bringing you free New Year's Eve Travel "in partnership with Wonga.com."

The move has been criticised by London Mayoral challenger Ken Livingstone and Labour MP Stella Creasy, who called on Boris Johnson to step in and cancel the deal. She said: “Evidence tells us that the average level of debt amongst Londoners is rising, with many now facing unemployment in the New Year as well as struggling to make ends meet given the high cost of living here. I hope the Mayor will change his mind on taking their cash.”

Now sponsorship is hard to find particularly as previous sponsors are excluded by the “No Booze on the Tube” policy (Fosters, Bacardi) and bankers now longer sponsor (NatWest, ING Direct, Barclays) but should Bozza Johnson really be encouraging London's most desperate and needy to get themselves into even more debt over the Christmas period? And how does this tie in with the Conservative party's pledge to "tackle Britain’s' debt culture"?

CEO Errol Damelin (ed_wonga on Twitter) in his St. John's Wood office - they don't have much local business

2012 Labour Mayoral contender, Ken Livingstone has said;

"It’s hard to think of a clearer demonstration of the values of today’s Tory party than Boris Johnson’s decision to sell prime time advertising space on London’s buses and tubes to a loan company known for charging 2,689% APR. While millions enter Christmas and the New Year with concerns over their jobs and family finances, our Conservative Mayor is busy plastering the capital with adverts for loans companies who profit from increasing the debts of the poorest in society."

But Transport for London insists it will not tear up the sponsorship agreement with Wonga, which says its mission is “to solve people’s short term and urgent cash flow problem with an equally short term and responsible solution.” Wonga employs 37 staff at its St. John's Wood offices in London with a development team in the Ukraine, and is backed with venture capital from Balderton Capital, TAG and Kreos Capital.

Wonga on The Tube

They describe themselves as the providers of ‘fast, short-term loans online’ and promise to ‘deposit cash straight into your bank account within 15 minutes of approval, 24/7′. When their sponsorship deal with Blackpool FC was announced, ‘Wonga’ issued a toe curling Press release. “Everyone here is bouncing around with excitement and looking forward to the new footie season with even more excitement than usual,” it gushed. It quoted their founder and CEO, one Errol Damelin, as saying: ‘It’s sure to be a rollercoaster of a season and we can’t wait for the ride to begin.’ And it concluded: ‘C’mon The Seasiders!’

‘Wonga’ are a ‘payday loans’ company. They offer the poor and the desperate quick money at soaring rates to get them from one pay-day to another. Their annual percentage rate charged is 2,689 per cent, a fact which their literature goes to uncommon lengths to explain away. Last month, in the same week as the Blackpool sponsorship was announced, the Advertising Standards Authority – acting on 63 complaints – found them guilty of two breaches of the TV Advertising Standards Code and warned them about future examples of misleading advertising.

Complainants claimed that the light-hearted presentation of the ad was likely to "mislead vulnerable viewers" about the nature and implications of the product, and also challenged whether the presentation of APR complied with the consumer credit regulations. In the ad, a man stated that he needed to borrow £70, and ridicules the idea of going to a high street bank, with laughter heard in the background.

Wonga.com: TV ad banned by the ASA

An ASA spokesman said: "We considered that the tone of the ad, which included light hearted background music, colourful imagery, laughter related to the concept of obtaining a loan from a bank, a seemingly casual conversation and a character that wore a split costume and had half a beard gave the general impression that the service offered was a trivial one that could be considered in a light hearted manner.

Wonga admitted it had breached consumer credit regulations, as the typical ARP should have been displayed with greater prominence than the on-screen message "£70 for 5 days = £9.22. Total repayable £79.22".

Wonga: slang term for cash or money, used in the UK and especially in London (“A whole lotta wonga”). From the Romany word wanger (coal) - coal was sometimes used as a casual term for money in England in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Boris Wonga Johnson

Boris himself has never been short of Wonga, he grew up in The “Pink House” on Primrose Hill which is currently on the market for £5.25 million if you want to give your kids a Boris childhood, went to Eton and Oxford where David Cameron described his best buddy’s fun personality speaking in 1986;

“Things got out of hand & we’d had a few drinks. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets.”

These are the people who recently condemned the student protests in London, no doubt greatly assisted by a short memory. As well as his Mayoral salary and expenses Boris gets £250,000 a year for a weekly column in the Daily Torygraph which, considering the variable quality of his output, must be considered a political subsidy. Boris will not be in London on New Year’s Eve, he, his much put upon wife Marina Wheeler and their four children are on a Major Wonga Grand Tour of India.

A week ago Boris was on LBC radio station with James O'Brien where he seemed mighty confused about the issue saying that Wonga's interest rates were "extortionate" whilst claiming that it was "perfectly acceptable" for him to promote them:

O'Brien – There is concern about your choice of Wonga as a key sponsor for TFL over Christmas and New Year. Ken Livingstone has had his abacus out and has calculated a 2689% APR rate on their loans and he suggests it is not very wise of you are selling their advertising on the buses and tubes?’

Boris – Well there are legitimate outfit and they are licensed to trade in this city, and if they want to sponsor, reduce cost of travel in London then that seems to me to be something that is perfectly acceptable. But what I would say and I would stress this, people should be aware of the extortionate rates of interest that they can charge and people should not enter into irrational or unwise debt obligations...

O'Brien– But you appreciate seeing it on side of bus or tube can actually camouflage what you have just described as extortion?

Boris – Well as I have said I think it is very important that people are aware of the massive downside of getting exposed to debt on this scale and I will lose no opportunity to make that point...

Green Party Assembly Member Jenny Jones said:

"The Mayor of London must understand promoting 2,689% borrowing is stupid and dangerous. Reducing public debt, by promoting private debt is irresponsible politics. We live in an age where personal debt is an all time high and it is the money men who are profiteering from the excess. This is giving a platform to a loan company just as Londoners are hit by the January blues, when bills arrive and cash is short."

Wonga claims it is different and responsible but this contribution on Martin Lewis' Moneysavingexpert.com seems to suggest otherwise;

“Wonder if anyone can give me some advice please.....!!

I took out a Payday Advance with Wonga for an amount of £405.50 in December 2008. Much to my surprise I was then made unemployed due to the recent credit crunch crisis and laid off in January 2009.

I advised Wonga of this and was able to come to a payment arrangement of £10 per week for one month and then I was to call back and speak to the same adviser to see if my circumstances had changed. However they never even attempted to take to the money from my account and then when I did telephone again the adviser I spoke to was someone different and was extremely rude and un helpful.

I then wrote to Wonga complaining of this adviser and also explained my personal circumstances with supporting documentation to state that I was claiming benefits.
I then received a phone call from Wonga saying that I had not stuck to my agreement of the £10 per week and I explained that they have never even attempted to take it nor had they telephoned me or wrote to me to say they that they could not collect it!!!!!!! I was somewhat really confused. I asked if they had received my letter and she said she didn’t know!!! I then went on to Royal Mail and got the signature to say that the letter had been delivered which proves to me that they totally ignored it.

Anyway I now have received a letter through the door from Marston Group stating that I failed to respond to their previous request - but this is the first letter that have sent to me!!! And they are asking for an amount of £1015.18, that’s nearly another £500 on top of what I borrowed, they are also saying that if I do not respond within 5 days of receiving the letter they will be sending an enforcement officer to my door.

Please help someone!!!!!!

Thanks”

Usury has been rightly condemned over the ages for exploiting the poor and vulnerable. No addition of high tech gizmos will make Wonga and similar operations acceptable, not the financial backing of American Vulture Capital Funds looking for a quick buck, not the panting porno prose of press releases by PR Pharisees nor the get rich quick dreams of the spivvy wide boy Investment Bankers who thought up this wheeze and no doubt are contemplating the Chateau and vineyard in France by the time they are 40? Consider this; Wonga only lends up to £1,000 pounds to repeat customers for up to 31 days maximum – if they lent their typical loan of £262 for twelve 30 day periods they would have earned £1,008.72 in a year – some wheeze. If they must exist they should stop sponsoring Blackpool FC and “Free Travel” on New Year’s Eve and lower the interest charged to their needy customers.

As for New Year’s Eve travel in London Underground ticket offices will be closed from 23.45 to 4.30 so you don’t have the option of going up to them and saying “I’d like to buy a ticket as I don’t want to exploit the poor and needy on New Year’s Eve.” So who will sponsor NYE next year, maybe “Cash for Gold”,"Foxy Bingo" or the Colombian Cartel with a strapline “Please use our products responsibly” – can’t see anybody too respectable being interested now the brand has been so rubbished?

Time To Relax

I hope you all had a great Christmas with plenty of food and total relax! It's been fabulous here with the company of family and friends and delicious food. It's that time of year after all the festivities that all you want to do is curl up in a cosy chalet and do I have the perfect one for you ;)

I came across this rustic chalet in the French Pyrenees over at 'Le journal de la maison'. It's a perfect mix of a traditional wooden features filled with a few ultra modern pieces. I just love the wooden tables mixed with the vitra chairs and those light fittings ooze a unique appeal.

whisk yourselves away with these images...Happy Tuesday :)

On the Feast of Stephen.

Helen and Ian came on Boxing Day. We had a lovely day and then they had the long drive back to Exeter.

We just sat by the fire and watched television.

Bryony and Mark sent us some pine cones that give off coloured flames. We put a couple on and they were most effective.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Free Gaza, Free Palestine, Free Palestinians

Today 27th December marks the 2nd Anniversary of the massacre of around 1,400 old men, women and children at GAZA in 2008. This war crime was committed by the powerful army of an occupying power equipped with American weapons’ and financed by £1.1 Bn dollars per annum of American military aid.

At 11:30am on December 27, 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of suppressing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. Israel opened the attack with a surprise air strike against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008. Israeli forces attacked civilians, police stations, schools, universities, mosques, and governmental buildings. Israeli forces attacked civilians and used white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas.

Israel claims that it was targeting Hamas armed fighters and infrastructure, ostensibly in response to the firing of homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel. However, field investigations by the Gaza-based human rights organization Al Mezan show that United Nations-administered schools, mosques, universities, emergency medical crews, private homes and other civilian objects have all been in Israel's sights.

Among those killed on the first day of bombing, when more than 100 tons of bombs were dropped on the tiny coastal enclave, included police officers who were attending a graduation ceremony, school children heading home after a day of study, and other Gazans killed without warning as they were conducting their normal business.

Entire families have been wiped out during the air strikes and shelling, including that of Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan who was extra judicially executed along with his family in their home in a Gaza refugee camp. More than 40 were killed on 6 January when Israeli forces shelled the United Nations-administered Fakhoura School in the Jabalia refugee camp, where families who had been displaced by the bombing were seeking shelter. The UN has demanded an independent investigation and its spokespersons assert that GPS coordinates of all UN locations were given to Israel to prevent such an atrocity. Israel recanted its claim that resistance fighters released fire on Israeli soldiers from the school, which has been categorically denied by UN officials.

The bloody operation in Gaza came after the expiration of a six-month-long ceasefire between Israel and resistance groups in Gaza, including Hamas. Israel had broken the ceasefire on 4 November, when it extra judicially executed six Palestinians in Gaza whom it said was digging tunnels to Israel. During the five previous months of the ceasefire, Hamas had refrained from firing rockets and prevented other groups from doing so. However, Israel failed to ease the nearly two-year-long embargo on the Gaza Strip that has crippled economic life and brought the area to the brink of a humanitarian crisis — one of Israel's obligations under the ceasefire.

On January 18, 2009, the war ended in a ceasefire, Israel completed its withdrawal on January 21. Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and other 5500 were injured while 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, were killed.

As I have pointed out before the democratically elected Hamas administration in Gaza has had a brilliant master stroke in appointing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as its recruiting sergeant. Rarely has an organisation had a more effective recruiter in a territory which has been systematically destroyed by Israel (The Airport, Port, Hospitals, Factories, Government offices, power generators, etc ;) in flagrant breach of International Law including the Geneva Conventions on administration of occupied territories, protection of non-combatants and two UN Resolutions.

Let us not forget in our PC world why Gaza exists is two words never used in Israel; Ethnic Cleansing. Gaza exists because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

The Wikileaks cables show the complete lack of concern by American diplomats for the people of Palestine, they confirm that America is acting in this region with no moral purpose when it come to the Palestinian people and that it is utterly uninterested in the so called “Two States Solution” allowing Israel to set 100% of the agenda to stop a Palestinian State being a reality. Better to withdraw its 1.1 Bn Dollar military aid to Israel which is totally contrary to the US’s strategic interests. Better to withdraw its 1. 0 Bn a year aid to Egypt which allows the Pharaoh Murbarak and the military elite to run a repressive farce pretending to be a democracy. Why, America will really be surprised when Egypt implodes and the US loses another great ally? Far better to cut both these payments by America’s hard pressed taxpayer and divert the resources to addressing the results and righting the wrongs of the 1948 ethnic cleansing and making the “Two Nation” solution a reality.

The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). The mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of willful killings and willfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility…

It [the UN mission] also finds that the direct targeting and arbitrary killing of Palestinian civilians is a violation of the right to life.

(source: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, UNO, Sept. 15, 2009)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

The opening lines of the United States Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776

We must never forget what happened to GAZA two years ago or to the people of Palestine in 1948.

For the background to Nakba - The ethnic cleansing of Palestine see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/05/nakba.html

Free Gaza, Free Palestine, Free the Palestinian People.

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/06/free-gaza.html