A troubling report finds that by 2040 every presidential candidate will be unelectable to political office due to their embarrassing Facebook posts.

Germans were busy recycling things back when most of us were still learning how to use our opposable thumbs. Hence their recycling infrastructure, refined over various millennia, has very strict rules involving colored bins for different forms of rubbish (plastic, tin, food etc.) and a veritable army of binmen rumbling about the place. As well as the recycling systems that are inherently part of each household, you'll also find large green, white and brown containers on the street, which are used for correspondingly colored glass bottles. To irk a decent segment of any local neighbourhood or town, simply rock up to these containers with a trolley full of bottles and start placing them in the wrong units. Even a quiet street on a Sunday morning will quickly witness scenes of mass outrage, as old men with sticks and pony-tailed schoolgirls alike sprint from their houses and hang from their windows to shake their fists at your stupidity and ignorance.

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-piss-off-a-german/#recent-popular

Some of you may remember my reports a couple of years back on political corruption in Finland, involving bribes ill-considered political donations intended to influence regional building development policy to favour large malls.

The affair helped push Matti Vanhanen (Centre) out of the PM spot before his time due to 'knee problems' (that's anew one), and that brought in Mari Kiviniemi, who didn't survive the election a few months later, and indeed will take a back seat in her Centre party. The sociopathic former Party Secretary Korhonen was also wounded and ousted. Even Pekkarinen might return, and hard to say it, he did a good job at Trade & Industry.

Now the trial is over and the judgements given today. Dandy Boy Ike Kanerva (Conservative) gets over a year suspended, the corporate Bagman gets 6 years starting tonight, his Torpedo got 3.5 and will also be sleeping in a cell tonight. 2 others got suspendeds, including our old friend the former pig farmer and peddler of the cheap and cheerful, Toivo Sukari (His slogan: "People - why pay more?").

There has been a poisson distribution of corruption revealed in the last few months in Finland.  We shall no longer be top of Transparency International's List, for sure, because public sentiment is turning a bit nasty. If another CEO is soon exposed for unusual business practices, with the media waking up to the feelings of its audience, then we might see a greater push against the Anglo-Saxon wannabes.

In my experience, Finns are not particularly jealous of money that appears to have been amassed fairly and honestly, or with obvious talent. However flashing it about is  frowned upon, and 'dishonest' wealth is held in contempt. Dishonesty is coming in new guises and the Finns are beginning to recognize them.

You can't be me, I'm taken

[Emphasis original]

Is this the future: will people no longer want to amass more and more possessions?

They just borrow them when they need them. They pay for the use of things, not for the ownership of them.

Or they use old-fashioned bartering, and get to use things by doing favours to others in return.

This is what collaborative consumption is all about. It will revolutionise our lives as fundamentally as the industrial revolution did in its time, so the researchers claim.

Worth reading.


Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Mmmm. How nice when a beer sees the light once again.

The monks of Ampleforth abbey, who are great gardeners with a particular name for making cider, are to brew a beer from an ancient recipe in their archive, which has not been tried for two centuries.

Chuffed by the success of their apple orchard, which has grown to more than 2,000 trees and 70 varieties of apple, the Benedictine community hopes to have £36 packs of 12 bottles of beer available by the end of June.

Known traditionally as 'la bière Anglaise', the brew is thought to date back to medieval times before the order was suppressed in England under Queen Elizabeth I, a time of repeated panics over potential invasion by Catholic powers supported by recusant English followers of the 'old religion.' It assumed its French name via the loyalty of exiled monks, who brewed it in France while their French colleagues made related experiments which led in due course to the 19th century's Benedictine liqueur.

Ironically, production stopped when they finally came back across the Channel, exiles again because of the anti-clerical French Revolution. No one knows why, but perhaps they were content with the thriving English beer and ale market which saw brewers, and their women counterparts brewsters, in pretty much every village.

Atkinson said: "For Chelsea's second basket, Cudicini was clearly lbw so I had no choice other than to award Spurs a ten-second time penalty and sin bin their cox for ten minutes.
...
Meanwhile, Chelsea will celebrate their victory by opening a lack-of-charm school for football fans hoping to brush up on the finer points of what the club have branded 'Twatiquette'.
 
Located in the grounds of their Cobham Arsehole Centre, students will be taught on the finer points of race relations, marriage vow loopholes and reasons for not keeping your fat, cretinous mouth shut for a single minute.

Ahh that feels better. I briefly lived in the neighbourhood (well OK, it was Earl's Court) in the 80s, and took care not to go outdoors on match days.

Have watched TWO Chelsea matches in recent days (due to an outbreak of visiting in-laws). Last night in the pub, there was a smattering of authentic-seeming Chelski fans. They were almost as entertaining as Chelsea's star, Diddler Drugbust, who spent most of the first half rolling around on the lawn in simulated agony after exaggerated or imaginary physical contact with Barça defenders... and then scored a brilliant goal. Bastard.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}