22 Belgian schoolkids killed in Swiss coach crash.
Good job NATO wasn't in the area, or it might have been much worse.
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town.....
Killing and Maiming of children
In 2009, more than 1000 Afghani children were killed or injured in conflict-related violence.
128 children were killed by armed opposition groups; 55 killed and 199 injured in mine accidents and 131 children killed in aerial bombings by international military forces.
Bodies of children killed in an airstrike are seen on the back of a truck in the city of Kandahar August 5, 2009.
15 comments:
I was baffled at the amount of air time the BBC devoted to this. They weren't British, not even one of them, not even a little bit (reason enough normally for our broadcast media to send someone to transmit live from the scene). It didn't happen in Britain. What happened yesterday that needed to buried underneath the bodies of 22 Belgian children?
I was baffled at the amount of air time the BBC devoted to this.
Because the BBC identifies strongly with coach loads of kids coming back from ski trips to the Swiss Alps. All those BBC middle managers with their kids at the best London Prep Schools will have had a vicarious heart attack at the thought that it could just as easily have been them fielding a phone call from the Swiss police.
I suppose the Swiss must do something apart from being cowardly and guarding the stolen treasures of each new generation of Nazis. Oh, they make cheese, brilliant penknives and vulgar watches of course, but it's not much, really. maybe they depend, also, on rich visitors like Prince Brian and George Osbum and are thus worried about possible tourism fall-iff after this crash, although most of their clientele probably arrive by private jet or Bugatti Vayron - can you get skis in a Bugatti? Jeremy Klaxon forgot to tell us that, Doesn't matter, I suppose the servants can always bring them in the RangeRover.
What endeared me to the ever-neutral cheesy clockmakers was the fact that the first person they put up was a prosecutor. I guess there's no room for just accidents in such a well-run gangsters' haven as Switzerland.
Both right on this one, messrs, ptb & jgm. There's always some bad news to be buried and the obedientiaries at the Beeb will scour the workld for diversions and, yes, the kids are on a ski-ing trip must be one of the favourite phrases of the arrivistes.
I am sure twenty-two niggerkids will have died violently in the time that it took me to scribble this comment, but Hey, that's showbusiness.
and, yes, the kids are on a ski-ing trip must be one of the favourite phrases of the arrivistes.
Arriviste? That'll be me then. I avoided ski-ing for the first 40 years of my life on the grounds that it looked awfully elitist and brutally expensive. I thought it was just another one of those things rich people do to rub your nose in the fact that they're rich. Like going to opera.
But the kids were whining about all their pals going skiing whereas they had to slum it in Guadeloupe (the ungrateful bastards) so off we all went.
Skiing is fucking great. I'm rubbish but I'm sobered up by 40 plus years of living so I don't feel the need to bust my legs trying to keep up with Italian eight year olds. But the whole experience is beautiful. Beautiful mountains. Beautiful snow. Beautiful gravity. Beautiful ski-lifts. More gravity. Lots of food. Lots of booze. Great stuff.
Still brutally expensive though. So this year the kids are going with the school {St Cakes - Quis Paget Entrat). My wife doesn't watch the news so I've not given her a conniption by mentioning this accident. She's still maudlin from hearing that some girl died after being hit in the chest by a rugby ball a few days ago.
But that's why I know it's big news to the BBC-wallahs. That could be their kids. Could be mine too although they're flying. Don't know which is worse to be honest. At least some of these kids have survived. It's all a bit binary with air travel. Either everybody walks away or nobody does.
My missus has the right idea. Ignorance is bliss. And she's generally as blissful as you can get.
Yes, the thngs that rich folks do generally are enjoyable, they wouldn't do them else, would they?
I always fancied downhill racing and/or ski-jumping but by the time I could nearly afford it I was too old and infirm. Went up and down the Alps in a ski-lift once, though.
I was always a bit suspicious of some of the stuff rich people do. Owning horses for example. Could never be bothered with the fucking things myself. They're okay to sit up on when you're a kid but the thought of flogging some old knacker round a field now does nothing at all for me. They go to opera. WTF is that all about? Motor racing? Fucking hell. The only sensation is LOUD.
The Caribbean on the other hand - I 'get'. Monte Carlo - I 'get'. Since our Italian odyssey of last summer I now 'get' the whole Italy/Tuscany/Florence thing. And skiing I now 'get'.
Thing is Mr I. I was just as happy when I had very little relatively speaking. Happy with my missus. Happy with the kids. Happy with my house. Happy with my food. Happy with my booze.
So much so that a couple of years ago we stepped off the whole accumulating more money game and settled down to spending it. Sure we could have had a bigger house, bigger car, home in the Carib, spent increasing fabulous amounts of money on two week holidays.
But d'ya know what money really buys you? Not a bigger house (although you could). Not an even more expensive holiday (although you could). If time is money then money is most definitely time. Time. Time to do what the fuck you like instead of running around like a headless fucking chicken trying to accumulate more money. For what? So you can be the richest man in the graveyard?
In my case, lazy bastard that I am, time to do absolutely nothing. Well apart from try and fix the leak to the outside tap which is proving more difficult than it really should be. Time to give up on the solder and go to that epoxy cement shit.
I wish I felt any optimism over Afghanistan but AFAICS, it was a pit before and it hasn't changed.
Looking back to the pre-9/11 world, there were constant calls to intervene from groups such as RAWA.
Not that anybody could have done much, but then the rhetoric was all "How beastly to leave them to it".
There is some suggestion that things may have been a little better for women under Soviet rule, but only because they were happy to dispense with trivial things such as the Rule of Law. That is, women were required to go to school to learn Russian and anybody who interfered was shot.
IIRC, we taught, financed and armed the militia to overthrow the Soviets, claiming they were suppressing the natives. Which was true, but some of them need suppressing.
http://www.rawa.org/report.htm
It's surprising, really, that there are any women capable of breeding left. The wars should have petered out due to lack of new fighters.
I think you need to be bred to the horsey world, either that or be a Pikey, which is the same thing. Best thing, when you got a leak, is a plumber.
And I think you're right - health's all very well, but it can't buy you money.
Well, it's long been horses and opera for me, from that checklist of rich bastards' pleasures - other people's horses because I grew up in the country and helped out at the livery stables in return for rides. And watching great opera companies outside of London in this country and in Europe for a tenner or less a throw. But never the English National. Ugh. Not for the 'likes of you' was a clear enough message there.
I sat on the back of a horse, once, mr ptb. And then I realised that the fucking great thing was ALIVE and got off, sharpish.
As for opera, well, I've seen Gilbert & Sullivan at all points of the compass and enjoyed it hugely.
Such fucking heresy in Cheltenham week is beyond the pale. Look up "Big Buck's" on the Channel 4 replay thingy. A coronation is what it was.
Tune in tomorrow about 3:30 and see Kauto Star break everyone's heart (again) by losing to a horse half his age and with half his talent. I dare you to miss it because if you do and he wins, you'll never sleep again.
Fuck me - they're only rag-heads - they don't count.
Just in case your comment is not ironic, Anonymous, perhaps we might both consider the ambiguity in your sentence, as to whether or not "they count".
One would suspect "they" are counting - and remembering - their numbers, killed and maimed, rather more accurately than the airstrikers.
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I think mr anonymous is being ironic, mr anonymous, although you are woefully corrrect in your analysis - and he in his, if that is what he means. Even in the dreadful firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo the Allies hazarded a guess at and published the death tolls, Bush and Obama - and their stooges in MediamInster - refuse even to do that, they say it's because accurate figures are impossible to compile but that's not the reason, The reason is that they're cunts, all of them.
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