Following the entirely predictable South Staffs election result, are the UKIP going to follow their own advice and disband?

No, of course they aren’t. They’re far too vain to understand that The British Public find them embarrassing and wish they’d go away.

I designed this for altogether different purposes, but it occurs to me that it’s a good web quiz. Email the answers to here; don’t post them in the comments section or I’ll kill yer. The winner wins something, possibly a copy of Babylon Zoo’s second album. Questions below the fold.

Q1) With what water-resistant implement was Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov murdered in London in 1978?

Q2) Why would a team made up of either James Joyce and Franz Kafka; Samuel Beckett and Milan Kundera; or Oscar Wilde and Vaclav Havel, be likely to win any literary beer-drinking contest?

Q3) Which Orangeman stood in Erewash at the last general election, on a manifesto of defending the Union?

Q4) What, according to Frankie, A) should and B) shouldn’t you do when you want to come?

Q5) According to Douglas Adams, what do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Q6) In which country can you buy a whaleburger for £1.92?

Q7) Which English king allegedly died of rectal red-hot-poker insertion?

Q8) According to Esquire Magazine, which tattoed, self-harming gay icon is the Sexiest Woman Alive?

Q9) Name the English-born Sick Boy and Hacker who was briefly married to the anwer for Q8.

Q10) According to a recent poll, how many British adults believe in vampires? (to +/- 50%)

I wonder if the Islamoconservative elements of Respect know about this? (NSFW…) [*]

[*] ie "not safe for work", or "grossly unpleasant and horrible".

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that things are a bit messy in Iraq. However, the rocket scientists who are supplying the insurgency with armour-piercing charges are probably more aware of this than most.

The Yorkshire Ranter has a detailed summary of what’s going on. The insurgency now seems able to apply ruthless military discipline to the suicidal jihadi fanatics, as well as being endowed with hardcore military supplies.

Bugger.

The Pine Marten thinks we’re still living in the 20th century. The defining event that ties up the loose ends from the previous century (with WWI being the C19-C20 example) hasn’t yet happened.

This would also explain why all the hottest bands of the moment sound like either cut-price Simple Minds impersonators or cut-price Killing Joke impersonators.

Anyone who belives manufacturers should be allowed to ban grey importing (Sony and your lawyers, this means you) is a moron and a filthy scumbag.

Feel free to attempt to justify bans on grey importing in the comments, although if you do so attempt without succeeding then this will definitionally make you a moron and a filthy scumbag.

A thing which pisses me off about Americans, even liberal ones: whenever an impartial and respected organisation publishes a report which suggests the US may not be the leading global temple of human rights-y love, an awful lot of people (even the non-wingnuts) instantly dive in to slag off the report’s authors and criticise the countries ranked above the US.

There is no country on Earth I hate more than Singapore, and no people on Earth I hate more than Singapore’s western apologists. If you don’t think Singapore is a vile barbaric shithole, then I query your mental health.

Even if you think it’s OK to silence dissenters with lawsuits, deny state benefits to people who support your opponents, and rig courts in favour of the government, then I defy you to justify this. No, go on, fucking try and justify that. I fucking dare you.

The Japanese had the right idea regarding Singapore. It’s merely a shame that it didn’t get left in its post-1945 state (this rant was set off by Jarndyce‘s more reasoned and measured take on the same country. And yes, I know there are plenty of places that are worse than Singapore. However, nobody suggests the West has anything to learn from Zimbabwe or Somalia…)

Anthony Wells has some bad news and some good news. Bad news: 3% of Brits believe in vampires. 71% believe in ‘the soul’. And 40% of British women believe that one can contact the dead. Good news: at least only 29% of us believe in the Devil (I mean, fucking hell: even vampires are more plausible…)

Talk of ‘Englishness’ as a cultural identity annoys me, particularly when it’s used to justify strengthening ‘England’ as an administrative region, and even more particularly when it’s used to lobby for an English parliament. I’ve finally managed to put my finger on why.

Many bits of the administrative region called England – London, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Newcastle-and-surroundings, Manchester-and-surroundings, Scouseland-and-surroundings and Cumbria, for starters – all have regional identities that are far stronger than any ‘English’ identity.

Now, there *is* a common identity shared by people in rural areas in the southeastern, southcentral and midlandish bits of the administrative region of England. This is the one focused on killing foxes, hating the French, resenting clever people, drinking real ale, attending village fetes, ogling old maids on bicycles, etc.

This generally gets classed as ‘Englishness’, because it doesn’t have a real name – but it isn’t. There are far more people in the administrative region called England who loathe this concept of ‘Englishness’ than there are people who follow it. As a result, an English Parliament would be a pointless waste of time and money. It wouldn’t help the rural-southerners who want it, because they’re in a small-ish minority. And none of the other groups in it have any more in common with each other than they do with the Scots or the Welsh.

Instead, let’s set up proper regional parliaments, with serious powers on the level of the Scottish Executive. Let’s have a Cornish one, a Merseyside one, a Greater Manchester one, a Lancashire-and-Cumberland one and a Yorkshire one. Let’s give the Welsh a proper parliament rather than a rubber-stamping body. Let’s put the London Assembly properly in charge of Greater London. And let the industrial Midlands do whatever they like, too.

The Little Ing-er-lund-ers could have a Rural Southern Not London parliament of their own, too. For all I care, they can use it to bring back birching for anyone who measures things in centimetres, while abolishing public transport and speed cameras, and legalising hunting the French with hounds. As long as the fuckers don’t have any say in what happens in the administrative region called England’s civilised bits…