The Will Rhodes Portmanteau

Half his car should have been taxed? WTF!?

Explanation of what car tax is - it’s called the road fund license and you need to renew this each year or you are in for a heavy fine or losing your car. The costs vary you will have to read this link.

A man has sawn his car in half with an angle-grinder in protest at it being clamped outside his home.

Ian Taylor, from Tredworth, Glos, said the untaxed Ford Fiesta was parked on his drive with only part of a rear wheel poking out on to the pavement.

The 40-year-old builder said the vehicle was going to be scrapped anyway, but he wanted to make a point.

A spokesman for NCP Services said half of the car was parked on the road and should therefore have been taxed.

BBC Story

Americans don’t like Timmy’s - I have no idea why because it is fabulous!

But even Tim Hortons comes under scrutiny - but why for the love of God should it be for firing an employee giving a kid a Timbit?

Nicole Lilliman, 27, said she was fired Wednesday for giving one of the 16-cent treats to a regular customer with a small child.

Thankfully she was rehired, with an apology.

Timbit’s are cool by the way!

(This is from a guy who is biased - I LOVE Timmy’s!!)

If you think that the US has a bad time keeping some of their police in check I wouldn’t worry too much about it - send them to the UK, the government positively advocates the police harassing people!

Jubilation for the right-wing? You would think so, but this is from a left-wing (snigger) home secretary!

Youths who persistently misbehave and intimidate others in their communities should be “harassed themselves”, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said.

She said she wanted police in England and Wales to “turn the tables” on those who would not “live by the rules”.

So she will simply say that it’s OK for the police to clip the little buggers around the ear and give them a telling off?

Don’t be silly!

Ms Smith, speaking in Westminster to an audience of professionals who deal with anti-social behaviour, announced £250,000 to fund an “action squad” which will encourage areas to better use such measures.

There could be “no excuse for inaction” while people lived in fear, she added.

Give me a break!

Even today - in a very violent world, we see female violence as something that is quite abnormal, but should we?

Do we blame the rise of this violence simply on the lack of good female role-models, or the massive expanse of feminism throughout the last three decades. Women claiming the equality to men and taking it too far? Acting out like men after they have been fuelled up on drugs and alcohol - this violence is still rare, but is it a matter of aping their male counterparts?

The peer group always plays a large part in it, says consultant clinical psychologist Elie Godsi, author of Violence and Society: Making Sense of Madness and Badness.

“There’s a lot more of a ‘ladette’ culture where young women are aping and mimicking the traditional behaviour young men engage in.

“So there’s a small element of that, although I wouldn’t put too much [importance] on it.”

Many young people feel alienated from their family and community, he says, so the peer group plays a big part in gang culture, causing behaviour that the individual on her own would not contemplate.

Is this the case? Just a matter of making people feel more welcome in the community and family and things will go from bad to good?

From the comments left on this story:

“Women are defined in terms of relationships.. and men are defined in terms of achievements” is possibly the most depressing thing I’ve read in a long time. If that’s really true in Britain today, no wonder young women want to punch someone.

Lizzie, London

Is Lizzie correct?

They made a few quotes about Boris Johnson - and I really don’t think they understand the buffoon.

Boris is just Boris - he isn’t politically correct - he isn’t anything. He is a part of the UK conservative party, but even they fear him.

He is his own man - he is also the polar opposite to me politically, but I like him, I like him a lot. It is more the pity that there are not more of him in politics. He says it as it is - even when he is wrong you have to find him agreeable.

Of course with people like Boris they drop the clangers of all clangers - but you know that they were sincere when they do it. You can turn around to him and say how much of a div he was and he will accept that, no questions asked!

I congratulate him on his win - I only hope that he does, and doesn’t, take the victory to heart, if he did he wouldn’t be Boris any more.

Johnson’s first key test is likely to hinge on how he handles relations with China. As mayor, he will be expected to attend at least part of the Beijing Olympics, and his party will hope he is able to avoid offending the hosts.

“Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase,” Johnson wrote in one of his several books on subjects ranging from sports cars to ancient Rome.

The thing is - he says what others are thinking!

I am a man - do I have the right to call myself a Lesbian because of where I live?

Well, according to this story I should have!

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term “lesbian”.

The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.

The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.

Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece’s third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?

I always did say I was a lesbian in a man’s body - now it could be official!

You would think that this was an easy one - the answer is when you don’t have it. But is that the case?

A new law - well part of a greater law is coming up for enactment in the UK Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill - that’s how you get contentious laws passed in the UK, add them to something that isn’t related. But that is by the by.

This law deals with what you can do in your own bedroom - or, indeed, look at or watch. If you are a person(s) who are into something a lot different than the recognised ‘normality’ in the act of sex - you can be prosecuted and sent to prison. Let me give you a definition:

An act which threatens or appears to threaten a person’s life
An act which results in or appears to result in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals

What this law addresses is BDSM or sadomasochism. (more…)

But Cyrus is 15.

Oh-Kay!

While people are having a hissy fit about a 15 year old girl having photographs taken - this is what irks me:

At a moment when she otherwise would have been relishing an amazing week — a deal for her memoirs (reportedly seven figures)

Yes - a FIFTEEN year old selling her memoirs! And some say the photographs are bad. My dear Lord - what has the US come to?

No it’s real!

“Of course, if you view virginity as number one, and you’ve slept with someone, of course it’s going to be different and you can never go back - but that doesn’t mean there’s no tomorrow,” explains Ashley.

Oh Ashley, Ashley.

“Every day is a new decision and abstinence is not one you make once. You’re going to have to make this decision over and over again. So if you fail once, you get back up and you try again.”

Bit like stopping smoking, then.

What is this all about?

US lawmakers are investigating whether to cut government funding for health education programmes that promote sexual abstinence until marriage.

The move follows a report earlier this year from America’s leading health agency, the Center for Disease Control, which revealed one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

Opponents of abstinence education say the approach ignores the fact that teenagers are sexually active and fails to give them accurate medical information or advice on safer sex.

Education is a good thing - especially when that education can lead to you staying alive and/or having children one day.

They say - them, you know - the blind people, if women ruled the world there would not be any wars. Total tosh of course but some bright-spark had nothing to do that day, but was it a Scandinavian that said this?

Sweden has decided not to ban sexist advertising, saying it would risk undermining the country’s cherished right to freedom of speech.

So, who says a certain advert is sexist?

Anybody, and I mean anybody knows that sex sells - it always has and it always will, full stop! From cigs to cars, to condoms to hairspray - some one is going to put a semi or naked body in there somewhere. Only those who are basically stupid would see something more than what it is, it’s an advert!

What censorship leads to:

But in Denmark, where similar guidelines have been in place since 1993, some firms are ready to exploit the additional free publicity they will get from being highlighted.

Denmark’s advertising ombudsman recounts a recent example of a male underwear company which was forced to withdraw adverts portraying women in low-paid jobs, after outrage from several trade unions.

One ad in the series showed a nurse lying on a bed with the male underpants covering her face, implying that she had just had sex with a patient.

Bingo!

Now go grow up!