logo
Schadenfreude Is The Zeitgeist

It's always nice when those oh - so - smug politically correct types with their sustainable lifestyles, hemp knickers and wierdie - beardie philosophies are impaled on the horns of a dilemma. You know what happens, their determination to be green and politically correct on one issue causes them to give aid and comfort to the forces of climate change denial in another.

KEYWORDS: schadenfreude, zeitgeist, politically correct, climate change, environment, aga, energy
CREATIVE COMMONS: Some rights reserved. Distribution: Non - commercial, attrib, no derivs, All reproductions should be credited to Boggart Blog and linked to "http://www.greenteethmm.com/"

Schadenfreude is the Zeitgeist.
by Ian R Thorpe
2009-09-21

Oh dear, what subtle traps the gods of nature lay for the cohorts of The Politically Correct Thought Police, those individuals walk on hot coals (and often fall off) in trying to be PC on absolutely every issue when often defending one oppressed minority means offending another. They will defend everybody's right to free speech unless you want to say something they disagree with, they support freedom of choice for everyone except smokers and they believe all people are equal but in any dispute the person with darker skin has the moral advantage.

Not long ago I was attacked in several threads on British and American blogs for taking the piss out of International Athletics authorities after they allowed a contestant with bollocks and a beard take part in the women’s 800 meters event at the World Athletics Championship.

No right thinking person with eyes in their head could fail to notice the complete lack of female characteristics in the athlete in question. The Williams Sisters in tennis are both big and well muscled girls but undeniably feminine and good looking too, a few years ago an African runner named Maria Mutola was supreme in the middle distance races for women at the Olympic Games and World Championships. Mutola had a very muscular frame and was not a looker. She was however indisputable female and nobody questioned her.

There was nothing even remotely feminine looking about Caster Semenya

What was really gobsmacking about the comments of the people who attacked me was the stupidity these people were willing to display in trying to criticise mm article. One comment accused me of being so angry that a black woman had won rather than a white athlete that I was just trying to belittle the dark skinned races. The commenter them went on to say the runner, who has a broad powerful jaw and facial hair, to former champion Jackie Joyner Kersee, a stunningly beautiful African American wo had a career as a model after retiring from athletics. I don't know if the person who made the comment had defective vision or a defective brain

It’s OK, I’m thick skinned but it was amusing to see how many of the Politically Correct Thought Police decided my comments were inspired entirely by racial prejudice despite half the contestants disadvantaged by Caster Semenya’s presence being African, Asian or Hispanic. On Planet PC all people are equal but some are more equal than others. Self – righteousness and stupidity are always inseparable I find.

(For the record, I might ridicule the situation but have always felt Semenya was someone with a serious medical problem who needed help and instead of getting it she was being exploited by self serving South African Athletics Chiefs.)

I digress however, you want to know about schadenfreude and zeitgeist

It is very gratifying to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the misery of others) as the medical reports prove what we all knew from the start but today I have a double helping as a lifestyle columnist in The Guardian has walked into another trap. For Guardian Lifestyle writers of course, Jeremy Clarkson is Beelzebub, Darth Vader and Iggy The Barebum Fire-bobby all rolled into one. He is all pollutants to all men, the one who would turn baby kittens into subway sandwiches and put third world orphans on treadmills to generate electricity for his incandescent bulbs. Nuff said.

I was reading a lifestyle column in my Guardian today and the townie writer, a middle class woman who has embraced the ways of Waitrose shopping faux country folk was burbling on rapturously about her bumper crop of apples. Nice.

What does a green living Waitrose shopping faux country person do with their spare apples once they have eaten all they want to eat for a very long time. Freeze them? Dry them? Bottle them?

Recently we Boggart Bloggers, who are born with a cruel streak you know, were getting drunk on our favourite vintage Schadenfreude after it was revealed that the greenies de rigeur Aga cookers were ten times as polluting as our ordinary hobs and ovens. Drying the Apples was out for Apple woman then, to make dried apples you have to core, slice and bake them for six hours. Very environment hostile.

Freezing was a no-no too. Running a freezer takes energy and you have to cook your apples before freezing and then cook them again before you eat them.

Apple woman decided on the traditional way of storing apples when you haven’t a deep, cool cellar. Bottling, like me and fatsally’s Dear Old Mum used to do with damsons, gooseberries, apples and rhubarb when we were young.

Ms Guardian Apple Woman was so pleased with herself, she had found a method that did not use much energy, produced no non compostable waste and the basic kit, bottling jars could be used year after year.

Wonder how she will feel when someone reminds her the jars she will use were invented by an ancestor of …. cue opening chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in B minor) …. Jeremy Clarkson.

RELATED POSTS:
A Child Could Solve The Energy Crisis
Sir Hector Gobbett - Broadsides, MP for Rawtenborough since 1832 gives his ideas for sustainable clean energy.

When David Met Angie
Government By Fear And Panic
Let Down By Hope
Liberate Your Civil Liberties
The Seven Profitable Habits Of Self Help Gurus
Schadenfreude is the zeitgeist
Obama 'Conkers' The World
They Prayed Him Straight

Shock! Michael Jackson and Barack Obama Are The Same Person

INFORMATION & NAVIGATION

navigate

CATEGORIES

Fiction
Wide World - travel
Health / Wellbeing
Nature
Real Lives - biography
Past Perspectives
Philo & Sophia
Fools & Dreamers
Comment & Opinion Faith And Spirituality
Poetry Life And Times
Books
Entertainment
Music
Arts & Crafts
Environment
Food
Science & Tech.
Bog of Blogs

Visit The
BLOG INDEX
and keep up with our
comments around the
web

TAGS
Climate Change
BLOGS
Boggart Blog

Little Nicky Machiavelli

Boggart Network News

BOGGART BLOG ARCHIVES

BBselect001 BBselect002 BBselect003 BBselect004 BBselect005 BBselect006
MULTI MEDIA
Spoken Word
Video
Music
Graphic Art

LATEST POSTS & COMMENTS

BULLETIN
New Posts

September 2010 Uptight - The Blood Donor Experience
by fatsally
Once upon a time giving blood was easy, the atmosphere relaxed and people were encouraged to feel as is they were doing something good and worthwhile. Now, acording to fatsally's latest experience, a visit to the blood bank to offer a life saving armful is like The Prisoner meets Orwell's Big Brother. Bureaucracy has taken over and nobody is allowed to fel relaxed. Rules are rules.

August 2010

Uptight
by fatsally

Just been along to blood donors.
I've been going for years.
Loads of changes have occured over the time.

The first time I went, to a permanent centre in London, you could have a tin of Guinness as your post donating drink if you wished. A splendid idea but unfortunately it tended to attract the alcoholics, especially as ...

2010-09-01
Hello Saillor
by fatsally

The chattering classes are up in arms about the news that Britain and France are to pool their resources and share aircraft carriers.
The Mail today carries an excellent ...

Court Victory For Anti - MMR Campaigners.
It is the medical scandal that refuses to go away. Since its introduction controversy has surrounded the MMR vaccine because in a small number - and we must stress, a small number - of cases children develop serious and permanent side effects after reveiving the vaccine. Now at last, after following a tactic used successfully in the USA and keeping the word autism out of their case, lawyers working for the family of Robert Fletcher have won the first award of compensation for 'brain damage' reslting from the MMR vaccine.

Property Prices To Fall Again?Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.

Food Will Cost The Earth
A bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to buy Potash Corp of Canada draws attention to food price inflation, rising commodity prices in world markets and an impending global food supply crisis. It is not just potash, essential in food production, but other finite resources like oil that corporate giants are bidding to gain control of that should concern us. It's The Smell Of Alpha Males That Attracts Women
Women Can't Resist The Smell Of Alpha Males according to new research reported in today's Daily Mail science section. (If you think DSaily Mail and science should never appear in the same sentence just read on, this is good stuff.)
Alpha males have a smell all of their own, one that triggers certain hormonal reactions in women, the research paper reports ...

Last Of The Summer Whine
The zombie of British television will finally be decapitated and laid to rest this weekend, thirty years after the show was pronounced dead by everybody under ninety. The final episode of this ‘national institution’ will be shown sometime over the weekend but I don’t know when ...

... Conflicting Views On The Economic Recovery Little Nicky Machiavelli writes: Nobody seems to know what is going on in the global economy. Take these two articles on the state of the recovery ...
read full post Conflicting Views On Economic Recovery

Cameron in Babygate Puzzle
The birth of a healthy child is always a happy event but the birth of a child to the wife of a serving national leader is bound to attract close scrutiny. So do certain contradictions in reporting of circumstances surrounding the birth of David and Samantha Cameron's daughter mean the conspiracy theorists will soon be at work?

Do We Need GM Salmon
US authorities today began the process to approve the first GM animal for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a 60-day period of consultation and public meetings over whether to permit a GM strain of salmon to be eaten by humans, even though it has been called a "frankenfish" by critics. The approval process could take less than a year, and if it gets the green light the fish could be on the market in 18 months.
Environmentalists and scientists see the decision as marking a threshold. If it is approved it is likely to open the door to a large range of ...

GO TO Boggart Blog Back Catalogue for links to older posts...

COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDED READING AROUND THE WEB

Dumb Science Story Of The Week: Old People Forget Things
This week's bombshell from the world of science comes in a study of the behaviour of old people. One of the things the study looked as was the way old people repeat the same stories over and over. The scientists concluded this is because as people get older they become more inclined to forget things.

64% of Women Would Release A Sex Tape To Get Ahead
According to a survey of Generation Y users of the dating website Can Do Better, 64 percent of women would release a sex tape if it would help advance their careers.
The survey found that 45 percent of women also answered that they would sleep with their professor to pass a

Ageing Star Wallows In Steam Bath Not a celebrity sex scandal but an astronomy story as the Herschel telescope reveals a cosmic mystery that challenges existing ideas about the Universe

Hawking Says God Not Needed The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed. Crisis Boosts London's Dominance In Currency Trading
London, the world's leading centre for foreign exchange, increased its dominance of currency trading during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression The average daily turnover in the City this year was $1.85 trillion (£1.2 trillion) - or 37pc of global turnover, according to a three-year report into currency dealing by the Bank of International Settlements.
Around $4 trillion changed hands around the world every day in April, up from $3.3 trillion in April 2007. ..

Brown Was Maddening Says Blair

Main talking point in today's news is the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs of his time as Prime Minister. Everybody in politics has been eager to find out what Blair would say about his successor Gordon Brown and their relationship during the ten years Brown served as DChancellor while Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

William Hague Denies Relationship with a man

Is There A Need For HD Audio
We wrote some time ago on the marketing of HD TV as the latest 'must have.' and on the great internet scam which involves development in internet technologies putting pressure on users to constantly upgrade hardware and software.

Darwin's Secret Experiment Acenscion Island is a lush tropical paradise 1000 miles from Africa and 2000 from South America. According to the laws of nature it should be barren and so it would be had the orginator of evolutionary science Charles Darwin not begun a great experiment there, one that is still running almost 200 years later...

The Frogs Are Starting To Simmer In The Land Of The Free
Savez Vous Que Vous Parlez Tres Mal Francais
Philip Salter at the Adam Smith Institute laments the lack of French taught in schools, and attributes this to schools preferring that children take easier subjects that will reflect well in the league tables.
There may be an element of truth in this, in that French or German at ‘O’ level is on a par with mathematics – there is either a right or a wrong answer. ‘Religious Studies’ on the other hand, require that you ...

A Solution To Company Pensions Crisis
The latest dismal news about company pensions should not obscure the simple fact that if you want to be sure something is done properly you should do it yourself. Saving for retirement is no exception to this rule. If you rely on your employer or pension scheme managers to do the job for you, the…

Obama Caves To UN Over Arizona Immigration Law
There can be few sights more humiliating for the American people than that of a US president kowtowing to a foreign leader or to supranational institutions. Continental Europeans are used to this sort of thing after decades of dominance by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and have grudgingly accepted over time the gradual and undemocratic erosion…

The BBC Pretended To Be Balanced On Climate Change
I have just been listening to Uncertain Climate, the first in BBC “Environment Analyst” Roger Harrabin’s two-part Radio 4 investigation into the politics of climate change. The announcer introduced it as a programme “on an unusual aspect of global warming that you won’t have heard in the news headlines”. This was touching, but would only… 31 August
Labour Leadership Soap Opera as Millibands Battle Each Other
As a major union hints that it may withdraw financial support for the party if either David Milliband or Ed Balls is elected as leader Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has criticised the "daily episodes" of the "soap opera" surrounding fellow contenders Ed and David Miliband.

House Owners In Negative Equity For Another Four Years
Homeowners who bought their houses at the top of the prtoperty boom could face face four more years of negative equity, a housing group said.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) said the average buyer in England paid £216,800 for a home in 2007. Those people may now have to wait until 2014 before prices recover enough to make their homes worth more than they paid the federation added.

Afghan Bomb Attack Kills Four US Soldiers A roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed four US soldiers, Nato sources revealed yesterday.AFP quoted spokesman James Judge as saying that a home-made bomb, one of the main weapons of the Taliban, was used in the attack.The attack comes a day after seven US soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.These deaths add to the rising trend of casualties for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). June and July were the worst months for foreign troop deaths since the

FOR OLDER COMMENTS from our blog index click here. MORE FAVOURITES

MAIN PAGES

Home
Top Of Page
Back Catalogue
Our Comments
JOURNALS/NAV GUIDES

The Daily Stirrer
Boggart Blog Central

More Comedy
Comic Verse
Cartoons
A Tale Told By An Idiot
MAIN MENUS

Fiction
Past Perspectives
Philo & Sophia
Fools & Dreamers (poetry)
ELSEWHERE

Boggart Blog Daily
Little Nicky Machiavelli
Boggart Network News
Ian Thorpe at Authorsden
Ian at Gather
Ian's Facebook
MySpace