Just realised it was the Queens birthday a few days ago… lol. I don't care much for royals. They don't really do much apart from open things and read speaches written for them by other people. I guess they give the papers a bit to write about sometimes, but other than that they just waste states money. They get paid for doing pretty much nothing… We'd be much better without a royal family. Vive le Revolution!

–Jim– 

Ok, when I first heard about the bird flu cases in China, admittedly it did cause a slight bit ofworry, mainly because of the fact it was China, but I wasn’t massively bothered about it and I quickly forgot about it. However I am now fairly worried after reading the following news article: LINK The French have now found 2 cases of H5N1, the deadly bird flu. This is slightly closer to home and I’m thinking it won’t be too long before Britain has its first case. There is the channel which seems to serve a useful barrier but I’m sure infected birds will cross it sooner or later. Let’s just hope the WHO sorts this out as asap.

–Jim–

Having recently found out about the situation involving the printing of several (around 12 it seems to be) carttons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, I have to say I’m fairly annoyed.

Firstly, the cartoons did not just depict Islamic religious figures, there were figured from a wide variety of religions and it was in no way intended as an attack on any religion, let alone the Islamic faith.

Secondly, the printing of these cartoons abided by Danish law to the full extent and besides, there has to be freedom of speech and expression. You can’t take that away from people, or is that what has to happen?

Thirdly, now followers of this faith are running out into the streets and burning THEIR OWN NATIONAL FLAG I mean, you can’t sink much lower than that. Burning your own flag because of a cartoon. If you search for “cartoon prophet mohammad” in google image search, at the time of me writing this, you could still see one of the cartoons on there. However it does seem that all of the other cartoons have been removed from the net, which is a big shame.

Also, now there is a boycotting of Danish product, by the followers of this faith. Ok so I can understand being upset about it, to a certain extent, but burning their own national flag, boycotting their own national products and urging other followers of ther faith to boycott Danish products, trying to bring down a national economy (which frankly wont work) all over a stupid cartoon… doesn’t make sense to me personally. What’s worse, is that, apparently, the editor in chief of France-Soir, one of the papers which printed the cartoon, has been fired by its owner.

Unfortunately (in my view) the papers have apologised, but that aside, the boycotting and so on is still going on, I mean, what do these people want??? Personally I think the papers had every right to print the cartoons and freedom of speech is one of the most important rights we have. Personally I’m not overly religious, probably not at all but If we went to the middle east and started printing Christian papers and preaching Christian papers etc what do we think would happen then huh?

–Jim–

(also see Lizzies Blog for more info on this subject)