Rebuttal of a rebuttal

I came across this article which tries to answer why the 'refugees' heading in Europe's direction are mostly men. What an absolutely terrible article, even from a left wing point of view, and I say this as a former leftwing Marxist,

• 'Women and children are often left in the refugee camps in neighboring countries while the men decide to leave the camps in order to take the risky and often deadly trip to Europe by boat. According to statistics, the split between men and women in refugee camps is almost fifty/fifty.'

In other words, the men, like the women and children, have already been granted refugee status in neighbouring countries. Whether neighbouring countries is good enough for them is another matter.  They should stay with their women, rather than come to Europe.  This means that there is a gender imbalance of those 'refugees' who come to Europe and these are men who come from a culture where women are seen as inferior.  There is evidence already of sexual assaults of women who try to make this journey.  Also women in Germany are asked to cover up in order not to provoke these male refugees into commiting rape.  In that case, why let these males in in the first place?

• 'Another reason is that a lot of women and children die on their way to Europe.'

Why can't these men do more to protect women on these voyages?

• 'Families that travel together in a big group have a harder time with the logistics, simply because it’s hard to look after multiple people. Often the groups get stuck in countries on the way, don’t have enough energy for everyone to continue.'

This completely destroys the argument about people fleeing war and persecution. If men are fleeing war and persecution, when why should women and children be forced to stay and continue facing this war and persecution, regardless of whether they have the 'energy' or not.

• 'don’t have enough energy for everyone to continue or decide to stay in the first place where they feel safe'.

 The authour already mentioned that the women and children have found refuge in neighbouring countries.  So why aren't neighbouring countries good enough for the men?

• 'Last but not least: No one would send their daughter to do this trip by herself. No one. The risks for a girl travelling by herself on a dangerous route such as from Syria to Europe, are too high. Along the coastline, criminal gangs are reportedly charging Syrian families tens of thousands of dollars to transport them to Greece. According to the UN, women and children are at an extremely high risk of sexual abuse, violence and exploitation on the route from a war zone to a safe zone. Much more so than men. Sending your young daughter instead of son is basically guaranteeing exploitation and abuse. No sane parent would do that.'

If women and children fleeing war are at risk of sexual abuse, what about women and children in Europe who are now at greater risk of sexual abuse due to the arrival of men who do not respect women's boundaries?

A complete nonsense of an article.

Pirates update - found all my lost relatives

I managed to find all 4 of my character's capture relatives on Sid Meier's pirates last night, so now I can concentrate for finding Montabalan and dealing with him. However time is running out as my character's age is now 37 years old and the adventure automatically stops when he reaches 47.  So far I have not found any clues as to Mr Montabalan's whereabouts as no CPU characters have been willing to sell me any clues.  I will keep you posted on the progress.

Finding lost treasure

I have restarted the adventure on Sid Meier's Pirates again, and this time I will make a concerted effort  to achieve the primary goals, that is to rescue all my character's relatives from captivity and take revenge on the real antagonist, Mr Montalbalan.  This meant I spent less time capturing ships and cities and more time searching for clues.  As a side goal, I have been looking for the lost treasure of the historical pirates which is a slightly easier task.  Early on, I went to the port of Trinidad and I was told I would not be welcome so I captured it by beating the local commander to a duel since there were less than 100 soldiers defending. Achieving the main goal is quite a challenge as the clues only come from mysterious stranger in the tavern and the evil Baron Raimundo.

Found an uncle and a lost inca city

Back to my pirates game and I managed to find a lost Inca city and freed my character's uncle, who looked a little worse for wear.

Dealing with the housing crisis the wrong way

I admit I used to be an avid Guardian reader and believer, but since 9/11 when the cultural Marxists have taken over, it has ceased to become a newspaper in the proper definition, rather it has because a loudspeaker for its hard left, eco-nonsense, anti-semitic views. One particular example is this. Yes, I know there is a housing problem in the UK and yes, there are people fleeing war, persecution etc from Syria, Afghanistan and so on.  In this article, Dawn Foster suggests that we should build on the green belt.  As someone who loves the outdoors, I say this is a crazy article even by Guardian standards. She goes on to mention that there are 635,000 empty homes in the UK.  Whether that is true or not, there are questions about this

• Are those homes in a habitable condition?
• Can they still be homes now? That is, have they been converted to industrial or commercial use?
• Where are those homes situated? Are they in areas of high or low employment?

She mentions that Oxford has problems recruiting teachers due to high rent?  Why are there high rents?  And why are so many teachers needed?  Its all to do with supply and demand.  Demand comes from population growth and the source of this population growth is migration.

Why stop at building on the green belt? Why not build on river meadows? Why not build on arable and pastoral land? Why not build on the renaming wild spaces in the UK.  The UK should be looking to control its population growth, not looking to keep building and letting people in.

Unreported effects of global warming

As mentioned in a previous post, activities on the Sun affect the Earth's climate, not only that but the Earth's orbit around the sun is actually more like an ellipse rather than a perfect circle.  This is because other planets (notably Jupiter and Saturn), comets and asteroids pull on the Earth with their own gravity.  This means that there are periods where the Earth gets closer or further away from the sun.  This too has an effect on climate.  We hear a lot of negative effects about climate change such as rising sea levels, loss of polar ice caps etc.  However, there are more positive effects as shown here.

Rising sea levels means more liquid water to evaporate and fall back down again as rain.  Also more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means more food for plants. This means higher crop yields.  I remember watching a natural history DVD which said that plants can lose 90% of its water through the sames pores in the leaves which it breathes the carbon dioxide.  More carbon dioxide means less pores need to be open and then less water will be lost. All this unfortunately is lost in the climate change debate.

Paperboy

Back in the mid-80's the Tories were in power, Labour was unelectable, Apple only made computers, you can only make calls at payphones while you were out and there was  one arcade game that everyone wanted to play at the amusement arcade - Paperboy. I remember many weekends at the amusements place next to Mumbles pier in Swansea spending my time and 10p pieces playing this and trying to make it to the end of the round. Now I play Paperboy on my PSP as part of the Midway Arcade Treasures game disk for the PSP.  It is a very true recreation of the 80s classic with the block pixel graphics and the old enemies are back, such as the drunk, the two men fighting, a swarm of bees, a breakdancer and a skateboarder. So far the longest I lasted was until Wednesday, one thing that mystified me was why the burglar kept trying to break in at the side window when it would be much more discreet trying it at the back.  Oh well.