numbers

does anyone have any statistics on how much money the peoples of the 'civilized' world spend in an average weekend on booze? no offence intended, not implying none of us are civilised, just that i wonder where one draws the boundaries of civilisation. but it must be a huge amount of money. even just what london spends. never mind all the other cities. it's unbelievable. now, don't get me all wrong, i'm not hacking at you telling you not to drink, that's your own business. i can talk about my booze free life. actually, yes, i can, since it's my blog. but right now the point i'm making is how many problems we could solve if we just stayed in one weekend and gave that money to charity. and i'm not just talking about what others should be doing. i've got no money anyway, that's one reason why i'm not out drinking these days. i don't know, i was just thinking about it earlier. people happier in the rest of the world, us over here feeling like getting up in the morning. the sewage system having it easy for once. big idea. but i guess we need big ideas now, people saying 'why do we keep doing everything the same way?'. it's obviously not working as well as it might.

other stuff... all this crap with the embassies burning. some people in the muslim world didn't want their religion and culture to be associated with terrorism. so they had a huge demonstration and smashed up and set fire to some buildings. makes sense. hmmm.
now, i'm not religious but i think, and i'm sure i'm not alone, this has got a bit out of hand. if someone who is not a muslim decides to portray someone of whom they are not a devotee, what is wrong with that? i can understand we need to be aware of other people's sensitivities and some of the pictures went too far, but the idea that people who have absolutely no relation to a religion whatsoever should adhere to something as if they were a part of it strikes me as ridiculous. from the small research i've done there is nothing in the koran banning depictions of mohammed or allah. it is a muslim tradition however. but then taken literally there shouldn't be any depictions of any person or animal in muslim tradition as this is seen as idolatry. should we take all such pictures out of our art galleries as well? it just seems too much to ask. people in some countries eat animals that are kept as pets in other countries. but we don't have a problem about it as both sides understand that other people have different ways of doing things. this is the problem here. expecting other people to live your way. now i'm a big critic of the part the west often plays in the muslim/arab world but i think the leaders in many of those countries have work to do in terms of controlling those people that go around acting like maniacs over such matters. some of the pictures went too far, i agree. but the idea that they shouldn't be able to publish pictures of mohammed is just too much i think. i think press freedom sometimes goes in the wrong direction but in this case it has been blown out of all proportion, and burning embassies and boycotting goods is not the way to respond to the actions of a newspaper. i shudder to think where this will end. hopefully in greater understanding, but i don't know. at least the danish bacon industry won't notice any difference...
oh and those silly fellas from hizb-ut-tahrir shouting '7/7 on it's way' should be tickled to death, unless they renounce all stupidity from now on. after a good tickling, though. i'm not going to give a link to them as they've been naughty and should have their board-games confiscated.

so that's all for now.

oh, actually you should read damien hirst's book 'on the way to work'. it's very interesting reading. interviews. it's a bit like talking to your mad mate at the pub. familiar, scary, true and strangely nice.

learn to think that everything you think you know may be bollocks.

see you later

mr w

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