Deputy headmaster lived in fairly nice house: shock

The Daily Mail, on top form:

* Martin Goldberg taught at Thorpe Hall School in Great Wakering, Essex
* Officers spoke to him at his home in Shoeburyness but he was not arrested
* Next day police were alerted over concerns for him and he was found dead
* Mr Goldberg, 46, was single and lived alone in a £360,000 detached house

Not sure if even his mother would have believed him...

From the Redbridge News/Guardian Series:

A COUNCILLOR has been cleared of exposing himself to a nine-year-old girl while cutting a hedge in his swimming trunks...

The schoolgirl, whose identity is protected, had told a court that Mr Goody pulled down the front of his blue trunks as she approached on a public path outside his home in Glengall Road, Woodford Green, on July 28 last year.

But during his trial at Waltham Forest Magistrates Court, which resumed today (Tuesday), Mr Goody, who is a naturist, said he had only a vague recollection of the girl walking past and did not intend to expose himself.

“I put swimming trunks on, simply because it seemed the sensible thing to do,” he said. “I was aware that they did have the tendency to slip. I decided that if they did slip down, I would hitch them up.”

Fun Online Polls: Paedophilia and The State

It appears that the Roman Catholic church's double strategy of openly attacking homosexuals while covering up for dozens or hundreds of paedophile priests has backfired on them most horribly.

88% of respondents to last week's Fun Online Poll though that a Roman Catholic priest was more likely to sexually molest a child than a gay adoptive couple.

Thanks to everybody who took the time to vote.
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This week's Fun Online Poll asks a more fundamental question: "Is land ownership possible in the absence of a 'state'"?.

The faux-libertarians like to rail against 'the State', and I'd agree that half of what most governments do is either a waste of money or economically or socially damaging. Some of them appear to think that 'the State' oppresses landowners or homeowners and that 'the State' can somehow be overthrown and landowners and homeowners can live freely.

This can't possibly be true - if the State shut itself down, sacked all the police, deleted all the records at HM Land Registry and shut down the court system, you'd find very quickly that land and houses would become nigh worthless. 'So what.', the faux-libertarians continue 'I'll buy myself a shotgun.' although they forget to add '...and remain physically present 24/7, thus reducing my earnings potential to subsistence farming'. So those who are most willing to use force and violence would end up in occupation of various plots of land.

We know that anarchy never prevails for long - neighbours would get together to form their own vigilante groups or share duties, so ultimately a new 'State' would emerge, and the first thing that neighbouring 'landowners' would do is to rewrite the Land Registry and agree, for the collective benefit of themselves and to the collective detriment of everybody else, that protecting their 'title' to their own plots would be paramount, which would enable them to abandon subsistence farming and pursue more profitable activities.

So it strikes me that 'landownership' and the existence of 'a State' are more or less inseparable, one is more or less impossible without the other.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: UKIP's new slogan and paedophiles

After two day's polling, that's a pretty conclusive response, 89% of us like UKIP's new slogan "Sod the lot" which doesn't appear to have done us any harm. Gawain has the round up of the press coverage.
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Right. The Roman Catholics have now had the temerity to link homosexuality and paedophilia. So my next Fun Online Poll is largely subjective (I don't think anybody has the worldwide statistics) and asks "Who is more likely to sexually molest a child: A Roman Catholic priest or an adoptive gay couple?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Hilariously Named Journalist Of The Week

Here

UPDATE

Blogpost Of The Year

With barely 360 days left to go before the closing date for submissions, Leg-Iron sets the bar high with his crash course in authoritarianism through the ages.

The whole thing is must-read and the highlight is this:

The real fear, the ultimately brilliant part of it, is that nobody is actually scared of the 'witch' [most] of the time. They are scared that they will be identified as that 'witch'. Once identified, you are marked forever as an outcast. The Righteous can silence any objection to their actions by a sidelong look and a quiet 'You know, you're starting to sound like a heretic'.

Nowadays, people are not afraid of racists. They are afraid of being labelled a racist. They are not afraid of paedophiles. They are afraid to go anywhere near children in case they are labelled paedophile*. It's not smoking they fear, it's the idea that if they let the smoker get tobacco scent on their clothes, others might think they smoke too. It's not alcoholism they fear but the perception of others that maybe they are drinking too much...

* As I said myself a couple of months ago: "I have spent my fair share of time in playgrounds with my kids, and never worried particularly that they'd be assaulted/kidnapped by paedo's, because I was there keeping my eagle eye on them. I did however often worry that somebody in 'authority' would question the reason for my presence and/or take me off for fingerprinting. That's how f***ing stupid things have got."

I blame the parents