Category: Good Stuff

Yeah, About That

Good Stuff, Legal Stuff

I’m sick of people leaving their own shithole countries, then insisting that the new host country change to suit their stupid customs and ridiculous laws.  In a rare glimpse of reality, a British court actually agrees with me:

The Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in England and Wales after the Supreme Court, has ruled that the Islamic marriage contract, known as nikah in Arabic, is not valid under English law.

Needless to say, there’s handwringing because some women are now going to be denied protection under British bankruptcy laws because ta-dah! their nikah  marriages weren’t legal to begin with.

Under ancient laws, these women’s “husbands” could have been charged with fornication (which would have caused said Muslim assholes to head to the registry offices toot sweet, you bet), but of course those laws have been abolished in Britain (although it should be noted that such laws have not been abolished in Muslim countries).

This does not mean, of course, that I am advocating the return of puritannical laws — at least, not this specific one — but it does make one think of the rather novel concept of “unforeseen consequences”, does it not?

Anyway, there is of course a legal remedy to this situation:  make each taxpayer claiming a spouse as a dependent on their tax return furnish a certified copy of their marriage license as proof of legal marriage.  But that’s not gonna happen because some civil rights bullshit or other.

What a mess, and all so easily preventable.

More, Please

Education, Good Stuff

Finally, Florida Man does something right:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced Friday he is officially putting an end to the Common Core Standards in his state and replacing them with standards that “embrace common sense.”

Of all the (many) failures of government and the education establishment, Common Core ranks up there, probably in the top three.

Message to other governors:   keeping this appalling system in place means that you are willing to consign your states’ children to a future of permanent ignorance, and leave them both under-educated and unprepared to be productive members of society.

As an aside, Texas never adopted this stupid and malignant set of standards — thankee, former Gov. Rick Perry.

About Damn Time

Good Stuff, Men & Women

I have always pressed for a relationship where the men and women have clearly-defined roles — and preferably, one where the man is the earner and dominant partner, while the woman takes care of the home and children.  Needless to say, the feministicals come after men like me, spitting and clawing, and spouting bullshit about the “patriarchy” and (in times past) “male chauvinist” etc.

Now, after all the feministical nonsense, we finally seem to have something of a return to sanity:

Amid the Me Too movement and radical feminism, a new opposing trend has emerged across Britain – the ‘tradwife’ trend.
Harking back to 1950s Britain, and already established in the US, the trend sees women reverting to the traditional roles of housewives, practiced in the fifties and sixties.
The belief behind the movement is that wives should not work, and rather spend their days cooking, cleaning, wearing modest and feminine dress, and practice traditional etiquette, being submissive to their husbands and ‘always put them first’.

“Tradwife”… okay, I can live with the term.  I could (and do) happily live with someone who believes in it.  Even better is this perspective:

‘My view on feminism is that it’s about choices. To say you can go into the working world and compete with men and you’re not allowed to stay at home -to me is taking a choice away’.
Distancing herself from the movement’s right-wing links, she argued: ‘Being a tradwife is investing in your family and being selfless. So I would say the opposite of that is someone who is selfish and just takes’.

We need more of this, and more women like her.  Society will be all the better for it.

And my favorite line from the article:

‘We say to feminists: thanks for the trousers, but we see life a different way’.

Priceless.

Pub Culture

Culture, Good Stuff

Tom Utley (one of my all-time favorite columnists) waxes rhapsodical about the revival of pubs in Britishland:

This week’s cheering news is that after years of precipitous decline, the number of pubs and bars opening in the UK has outstripped closures by 320 in 2019. So says an analysis of labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics.
…
Indeed, as I may have written before, my idea of heaven on Earth is an English village pub — ideally at least a couple of centuries old, with a thatched roof and a low ceiling supported by gnarled oak beams. On winter evenings, there should be a blazing log fire to greet us (sorry, Greta Thunberg) and a labrador stretched out on the hearth (‘just taking the dog for a walk, dear’).
On summer afternoons, there will be trestle tables out at the front, from which customers can watch the cricket on the village green or just listen to the drone of the bees in the roses above the door.

Of all the things I miss about being in the UK (and one of the very  few things I miss about living in South Africa) would be the weekly evening visit to the pub and / or the daily lunchtime visit thereto during the work week.  Lest anyone has forgotten, this was my “local” when I was variously staying with Mr. Free Market and The Englishman:

I desperately want to have a “local” Over Here, but we don’t have a pub culture:  ours is more a “get wasted after work” culture (not that this is altogether a Bad Thing, of course, but people don’t generally cluster around the pub (okay, bar) around these parts as a social venue).  The closest I’ve found is the Londoner in Addison, and it’s not close at all — a 20-minute drive away, assuming no traffic.

There is the Holy Grail a few steps from my apartment, which has excellent food but a somewhat patchy collection of ales — from week to week, they’re likely to be out of whatever I had the previous  week, which gets old very quickly — and as the website pics will show, it’s too damn big and very noisy.  (Aside:  why are  Americans so loud?  Is it because they have to shout to be heard above the earsplitting music/game on the TV?  Never mind:  that’s a rant passim.)

One thing, though, about Utley’s article:

It is run not by an ever-changing cast of managers on their way up the career ladder but by permanent fixtures in the community — landlords and landladies who have lived on the premises for years, know all the local gossip and are ready with their regulars’ preferred tipples, without having to be told (‘The usual, Tom?’).

Yeah, but that’s also a double-edged sword.  While an independent innkeeper can occasionally be persuaded to whip up a makeshift plate of sandwiches outside regular food-service hours, he could also be a cantankerous old fart, as per this story of Mr. Free Market, who arrived at his local one afternoon with a crowd of business friends and associates, and begged that the pub be opened to accommodate over fifty thirsty customers, to be met with the withering response:  “Fuck off;  I’m watching Corrie!” (Coronation Street).  Not yer model of customer service, innit?  And as the owner, he wasn’t going to get fired, either.

So there ya go.

All that said, I miss having a real local — but a place “where everybody knows your name” seems to have become a figment of TV fiction, hasn’t it?

I envy Tom Utley.