4 years, 4 hours and 4 letters*

I actually don’t even have the energy to write a lengthy post about it all.

But having submitted my thesis I have now also successfully completed my viva which means (subject to making a few corrections to the thesis) I have done my PhD. And you can call me Doctor.

Not bad for 10 days in to the year, eh?

And for all the doubters, sod ya

* The work took 4 years, the viva was 4 hours and I gained a 2 D’s a P and an H. (Though of course technically I lost an M. Hmm.)

Proof that the French are stupid

I don’t know if this makes them more stupid than Americans, or about the same, or a bit less, but it does at least prove that they are suffering from the same idiotic political-correctness bug by which most Western nations are currently afflicted. That of “you can’t do that because it may or may not offend some other group of people”. But the reason I quote this as proof of them being stupid, is they actually choose to defend the “oppressed” group of people ahead of their “own” people first. Anyway, read the story here.

OK, I don’t know the full details of the story and I’m probably totally over simplifying this, but it seems to me this is what happened: a group of nationalists decide to hand out some free soup, a traditional French soup made with pork, to the poor / homeless people in France. The police objected to this because the poor / homeless Jews and Muslims couldn’t accept that soup (because they don’t eat pork) and therefore requested that the handouts be stopped.

This is wrong on so many grounds:

1) It was a charity type handout – free soup to people who need it / want it
2) If the Jewish / Muslim won’t eat it, that is their decision, but people who will eat it shouldn’t be made to suffer as a result
3) The Police actually requested that this free handout be stopped – “Stop giving free food to the needy people!” on account of political/religious correctness
4) The jury said it was discriminatory in that it discriminated against Jews/Muslims. Since the people handing out the food were a nationalist party, presumably the Jews/Muslims they were discriminating against were immigrants. Surely the Mayor of Paris should be more worried about the fact he has homeless / poor immigrants in need of help in the first place and be considering the provisions he should be making for this rather than actually cutting the support to people who will accept it?

It’s just ludicrous. I do my best to not be racist or discriminate against anyone, but sometimes it gets a little difficult. The place I grew up is now full of Polish people, the area of the UK I now live in is rapidly filling up with Latvians, and a gutless immigration policy by our government is doing nothing to manage this trend effectively, it’s stories like this that just make you wonder what the heck is going on and it comes as little surprise that net migration in the UK is evening out, since so many UK residents are moving out of the country.

Happy New Year

I don’t tend to make resolutions because they’re a bit pointless. I don’t think you should need a flimsy reason to make changes in your life. You should do that whenever it seems like a change needs to be made.

But 2007 is going to be different for me. I’m finally going to finish my PhD (one way or another) and following that, I’ll be free to start living my life. Exciting times.

Happy New Year all.