Category Archives: Mysteries

Mysteries of the world, or things I don’t understand and never will

M and S puking

A Nottingham lady, Fran Bailey, was driven to puking by a display in a Marks and Spencer window at Christmas, which included the words “must-have fancy little knickers”. She also termed it grotesque, and somehow managed to conflate the decision to display this with issues of human rights, migration, abject poverty, and of course the whole tedious litany of gender issues.

Some organisation called FiLiA ‘demanded’ (really ?? who are they to do so?) that M and S disclose who authorised the display, so that if it were a man they could presumably castrate him or (as is more likely) if it were a woman try and convert her to the sisterhood.

Ms Bailey is maybe not aware that Marks and Spencer have been the purveyors of “fancy little knickers’ to British women of all shapes, sizes and age for 90 years. Marks put this in the in the window because – especially at Christmas – women continue to buy such things because they like (and always have) ‘sexy’ underwear.

Ms Bailey continues “It’s pandering to notions of gender that are so outdated that it’s unbelievable”. This is pure piffle – the same factors drive sales of such garments today as they did 90 years ago. What sane woman would wear a thong for comfort? And if she feels that there is no demand for frilly panties amongst today’s women, let her go into business and try and sell grey flannel gym knickers to Marks and see how sales do.

Kylie Jenner (one of the ‘Kardashians’ clan, Grumpy is given to understand) has generated USD 800 million of wealth taking selfies of herself wearing fancy little knickers and such like and influencing her peers to do the same; she probably has a much better handle on what women want than Ms Bailey has.

And if the window display really did make her sick, Grumpy suggests that she should see her doctor, or more probably, her psychiatrist.

Postscript :

Ms Bailey should visit www.bouxavenue.com or www.annsummers.com/ both of which have prominent and rather more salacious displays in Grumpy’s local shopping centre, but with essentially the same theme. The Boux website describes some frillys as “these must-have pieces are just what you need for styling it your way! “. Anne Summers opines “Confidence comes from within, and we think having a hot pair of underwear is the best place to start. ” and “Explore and embrace your sexuality. ” and “Our knickers and seriously sexy thongs come in a range of styles …. maximum sex appeal. “

Grumpy has never noticed vomiting females outside, but the shops did seem to be doing a good trade at Christmas and they clearly remain solvent, so someone is buying. Time to connect with you peers, methinks, Ms Bailey.

Indian water mystery

Grumpy is often surprised by the frequency of news reports which appear to contain contradictory elements.

Reliable sources indicate that mobile phone penetration in India has reached over 85%, being some 1.1 billion users. Now smartphones contain a numbers of elements called ‘rare earths’, which are (as their name implies) scarce, and are also expensive and difficult to extract. For some of these elements, unless better recovery can be achieved by re-cycling, shortages might become critical in less than a decade.

The contradictory report in question was an article published by CNN which said that India was ‘on the brink of crisis’ because of ‘extreme water shortage’, which was affecting 600 million people, amounting to some 46% of the population. It claimed that up to 200,000 people a year died as a result of shortage or contamination of water. Let’s assume that this report is correct, and hold that thought for a moment.

One fact needs to be made clear first; unlike rare earths, there is no shortage of water in the world as a compound – it covers 2/3 of the surface of the earth to a depth which can often be measured in kilometres. Furthermore, compared with just about every other compound extracted and used by man, it is very pure – for example, over 96% of seawater is plain H2O; it’s hard to think of any other industrial process which is as simple as extracting pure water from it.

So why is Grumpy puzzled by these figures ?

Shimla, one the cities highlighted by CNN with a picture of the populace carrying buckets, has a significantly greater average annual rainfall then the UK. Many other cities and parts of India have vastly more rainfall. Overall, India has an average rainfall of 1168mm per year and 80% of the total area at least 740mm.
Nearly all major cities lie on the banks of rivers (which for the avoidance of doubt, have water in them) where ipso facto the majority of the population lives.
However, since 85% of the populace have mobile phones, and 46% are suffering ‘extreme shortage’, then people must be dying of thirst whilst clutching a mobile in their hand. One must conclude that this is not a finance issue, since if someone can afford a mobile, then they should be able to afford water, if available.

So the CNN article is a best misleading. There is patently no shortage of the compound water either globally or in India; however, there is a shortage of easily accessible potable water arising from lack of infrastructure, economic governmental stupidity in commodity pricing, and lack of political will (and maybe pork barrel corruption) to address the issue. This is not how CNN portrayed it; the reality is any water shortage exists with the connivance of man, rather than being some state of nature.

This is not a technical challenge – you can distil water by boiling a kettle. India itself does not seem to be poor; it is a country which is the world’s sixth largest economy, has the world’s second largest military, has developed nuclear weapons and launched a satellite, and yet it allows 200,000 citizens to die each year of thirst or disease for lack of action on what surely should be one of the primary obligations of a government – providing potable water for its populace. The problem here is not resource, but politicians, and their unwillingness or incapability to solve (relatively simple) problems. It just takes will and money – which had they not spent on nuclear weapons, could have been directed to save the population from cholera.

As a footnote, dear taxpayer, the UK provided India with over £150m in ‘development aid’ in 2015, to a country with clearly distorted priorities and weak moral integrity.

F1 and grid girls

Nice butt …

F1’s managing director, in response to one of the many packs of baying feminist harridans, announced the end of motor racing’s Formula 1 ‘grid girls’ in May 18, saying

“While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula One Grands Prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.”

The is unadulterated piffle. ‘Societal norms’, far from shunning women in skimpy clothes, have resulted in a whole billion dollar industry based around selfies in underwear, ‘flaunting ample assets’ (see the ‘Daily Mail’), and carefully orchestrated ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ being depicted in social media and family newspapers.

Grunpy, who has oft voiced his frustration at this sort of nonsensical capitulation exhibited by F1, was pleased to see that the premier world motorbike race competition, MotoGP, decided to keep its ‘Paddock girls’, who hold up umbrellas over the riders on the grid, grace the winning ceremonies, and add charm to the otherwise oily rag proceedings.

Grunpy cannot help but feel that F1 was targeted because, as it has wide recognition as a sport, it hence brings maximum publicity to the self-seeking agendas of the objectors. Probably none of them have ever heard of MotoGP, and if they had, they would realise it wouldn’t get much PR coverage.

See an objection on moral grounds, and then look to see where the self-interest is, seems to be a good rule when assessing the objectivity and integrity of complainants who are not directly involved.

The mystery of the non-selfie selfie

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘selfie’ as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”. Although countless millions are taken every year, the ‘selfie’ is also a tool widely used by the internet self-publicists of the Kardashian variety.

The vast majority of these women (a significant proportion of which have what might be called a feminist bent) one imagines would typically empathise with #MeToo. However, the photographs invariably involve themselves in various states of undress, showing as much flesh as possible without showing anything which would otherwise require (in the US at least) a black blob of modesty.

This exhibitionist behaviour (can it be anything else??) is normally described by the actors as ’empowering’, whilst presumably they would simultaneously denounce any male slavering over them as the spawn of Weinstein. Anyhow, that inherent contradiction of the feminist agenda (about which Grumpy has previously pontificated) is not the purpose of this post.

Rather, the contradiction here is that these ‘selfies’ show the (invariably) woman holding the very device which – if it were truly a “selfie”- would be taking the picture. They thus cannot be selfies (as the camera would not be in shot), and rather than being the impromptu snap the taker wishes to convey, there is clearly a photographer invited into the lady’s bathroom (and it always seems to be bathroom or bedroom, possibly to rationalise the state of undress) to take the unashamedly self-promotion shot.

Although one has to admire the Kardashian women’s commercial acumen for making million of dollars for merely displaying their infeasibly large arses, it gives Grumpy some satisfaction to imagine the presence of the photographer is because these vacuous (and generally less than beautiful) women are too thick to operate the phone themselves.

Putin, Pussy and Western quirks

Grumpy is rather disinterested in punk band Pussy Riot, or their declared support by attention seekers like Madonna, who knows a good bandwagon when she sees one. One suspects that were it not for their performance (is that the right word?) in a Moscow church, their vocal and musical capabilities would have condemned them to sink without trace.

What caught his eye was a picture in the Huffington Post, about feminist supporters of the band.

The supporters were largely topless, and to avoid offending the sensibilities of their largely US readers, a black oblong had been edited across their breasts by the Huff Post editor. However, the sign being held up by one of them, which read ‘Fuck Putin’ was clearly visible. Now it may be that this language is part of daily conversation of Mid West ladies who lunch, whereas the sight of a nipple is greeted with outrage, but what passes for acceptable in US society has always eluded me.

A mystery indeed.

Pussy Riot Protest