Media Survey

For the last week I have been doing the GFK Media online survey which expires tomorrow. From this daily survey of my media habits i shall receive a five pound voucher or E  voucher of my choice. It could be a Waterstones one, or an HMV one, or an E voucher at Amazon.

Hopefully, tomorrow i will receive my big wad from Market Force for the Fusion surveys i did bar one which will be on the next pay run.

On the first day of October (Tuesday) i will be doing a round robin trip to Maidstone, Rainham and then Whitstable. The latter town for a pub food shop at the Peter Cushing.

616 Not 666

The bus from Faversham to Ashford (the 666) which I have euphemistically called the Beastly bus is actually quite wrong. Reading  "The QI Book of General Ignorance" the "number of the beast" is not 666 as stated in the Book of Revelations in the Bible. In fact the six hundred threescore and six " is now thought to be 616 from a new translation in 2005 of the earliest known copy (a 1,700 year old papyrus)   of the Book Of Revelations.

Frederick Engels in his book "On Religion" (1883) studying the Bible calculated it to be 616 and not 666.In fact he arguesd that the book is a political  anti-Roman tract , and that the number of the Beast may refer to Caligua or Nero, the hated oppressors of the early Christians and not to some evil bogey-man.

So a film that suggests the idea of an Antichrist such as The Omen is a spurious misnomer. It is all hokum pokum in the end.

Badger The Tories!

My brother, whom is an ardent animal lover and like him totally against all cruelty to animals, wrote this on his Facebook page yesterday, Rather than link it, i found myslef in tatl agrrancem, and hence decided to paste the whole statement here , as i feel other LJ people will be in unison with the opinion expressed.

"David Cameron arrived today in Manchester for the Tory party conference. He is determined to roll out the badger cull despite the groundswell of public opinion against this move and despite the report from Lord Krebs advising that the cull is futile and ill-advised. Mr Cameron and his minister Owen Patterson throw insults at the anti-cull campaigners as being the unemployed, illiterate, lazy individuals that count for nothing. As a retired Managing Director I take the greatest affront from these comments. They illustrate the bully boy tactics of this coalition government and their toadying to the NFU and the Countryside Alliance. Your demeanour, Mr Cameron, is insulting to those of us who have presented your government with irrefutable scientific evidence that this cull is unfounded and represents a clear case of arrogance from you and your cabinet.

There are many of us who consider this issue as the single, most important indication of your complete disrespect for the concern of the vast majority of the UK population. You, Owen Paterson and Defra continue to ignore the volume of evidence that the cull is not only unsupported but a crime against an endangered species.
Despite your cosying up to married couples and tax breaks you will be remembered as the Prime Minister who ignored the popular vote on the badger cull. I suggest that this may well bring you down at the next general election. And I for one will welcome that...."

I cannot add anything that makes this argument more forceful.