This is a selection of my own personal opinions. Some of these views are original and some are based on my own research. Some of my views are controversial and some will offend. If you are likely to be offended by opinions which are contrary your own personal beliefs, please do not read on.

Religion In the beginning was a darkness. An intellectual void. Then Man created God in his own likeness and all was well with the world. Throughout history Man has sought to explain his own existence and the splendour of the world around him. Without the benefit of scientific information amassed over recent years, Man made some naive and fanciful suggestions in an attempt to explain his origins, usually involving creation by a higher being or god. For instance: The Mesopotamians were a farming community and believed their gods were farmers who created the human race to till the land for them. The Vikings were a race of warriors whose gods were warriors. The Greeks and Romans were highly cultured societies, exalting the value of the arts, debate and philosophy. Their gods were members of a society that reflected the same values. Hinduism originated in India, and is thought to be over 5000 years old. Hindus believe that there is one true god, the supreme spirit, which can take many forms and most Hindus believe that this god, Brahman, is present in every person as the eternal soul. The original Hebrew religion started in Canaan around 4000 years ago involving polytheistic worship. According to religious texts, Abraham questioned this tradition and embarked on a crusade to persuade Hebrews to worship a single god, known as ‘The Creator’ who created the world and everything on it. Judaism and Islam both trace their origins back to Abraham. The principle dispute between Judaism and Islam is over the identity of the heir of Abraham and the ownership of Canaan. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that travellers between India and Canaan transferred the early ideas of these religions from one place to the other and that the roots of Hinduism and Judaism/Islam are connected. Christianity is merely an offshoot of Judaism. Christians revere Jesus as a messiah or saviour. Jewish citizens in Israel started to follow Jesus because they were desperate to be saved from the Romans and delivered from Roman rule. Early Christianity consisted of a large number of different sects, all following different versions of Jesus’ teachings or gospels. This group of sects became known as catholic, meaning ‘encompassing a wide variety of things’. Christianity grew in the Roman Empire until it became the official religion in the fourth century and became the Roman Catholic Church. Of all the numerous gospels which were written about the life of Jesus, only four are now recognised as ‘true’ accounts and have been canonised. These are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four gospels were adopted as the ‘true’ gospels because they most fervently affirmed the divinity of Jesus and marginalised his humanity. Other gospels were ignored because of their blasphemous content, which probably meant they were less enthusiastic in their proclamation of the divinity of Jesus. These four gospels were then ratified by the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century and became the official ‘true’ gospels. The prophet Muhammad reported seeing revelations from God, conveyed to him through the archangel Gabriel, which were recorded by his followers and became the Qur'an. In the same way, Joseph Smith reported seeing revelations from God, conveyed to him through an angel and from this formed what became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In many of these early societies religion was a rudimentary form of policing. In an age where moving from one town to another would be all that was required to evade capture and punishment for a serious crime, the threat of 'God is watching and will punish you' would be a sufficient deterrent if you really believed in the notion of 'hellfire and damnation' of christianity or an equivalent ‘carrot and stick’ of any other religion. The three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been fighting each other for centuries. Factions within the religions have also being fighting each other for centuries, Protestant against Catholic, Shia against Sunni, all trying to prove ‘my god’s bigger and stronger than your god’. The irony of this is that all three religions worship the same god and the only differences between these religions are the exaltation of a particular human individual. As God only exists in the minds of religious followers, it is impossible for blasphemy and apostasy to exist; let alone be a crime punishable by death. To exchange a belief in one set of fairy stories for a belief in a different but similar set of fairy stories is bordering on the comical but not criminal. Mary Magdalene has been portrayed by the Catholic Church to be a prostitute rather than the partner/wife/girlfriend of Jesus, trivialising their close relationship. This is another method of reinforcing the divinity of Jesus and marginalising his humanity. It is my conjecture that Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Until recent medical diagnosis, many people were pronounced dead, only to make a ‘miraculous recovery’ because of a diagnostic error. It would be commonplace to be wrongly pronounced deceased at that time. There is also the possibility that the official tasked with judging when death has occurred on the cross could be bribed to allow Jesus to be taken down before he died. This would explain the disappearance of Jesus’ body from the tomb. Jesus and Mary would then be free to escape and flee the country to allow the apostles to tell their own stories (gospels) about Jesus and thereby spread Christianity. Conservative muslims are, quite rightly, very protective towards their daughters. The reason for this is usually purported to be ‘to protect them from the promiscuity and depravity of western society’. Over the last hundred years, western society has gradually adopted a more mature attitude to women, no longer regarding women as goods and chattels of fathers and husbands, to be married off to the most ‘suitable’ suitor in order to improve business or family circumstances. Western society now provides women with the same freedom as men. This ‘protection’ means that muslim men control the women in their families, making sure they cover their bodies completely and never talk to a man without a family member present. In extreme examples, muslim girls have acid thrown in their faces by their parents for having the audacity to look at a boy. In other cases, muslim women who have married a man not arranged by their parents have been murdered by their parents, a so called ‘honour killing’. The whole of the western world is at a loss to understand what honour there is in murdering your own daughter. This is what conservative muslims consider to be ‘protecting’ their daughters. In recent years almost all of the cases concerning groups of men grooming young vulnerable girls and forcing them into prostitution and most cases of sexual assault have been carried out by groups of muslim men. Rather than protecting their daughters from the depravity of western society, conservative muslim families are actually protecting them from muslim men.

Mick Rushton’s first observation: Life is a series of frustrations, disappointments, regrets and heartbreaks prior to death.

English language ‘The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language’ is a quote widely attributed to George Bernard Shaw. In 1906 the Simplified Spelling Board was an American organisation which was created to reform what it considered to be anomalies in the spelling of the English language. The Simplified Spelling Board considered that the American public were insufficiently intelligent to cope with the vagaries of the English language and decided to make ‘American’ English simpler and easier to learn. The preferred ‘improvements’ were then selected and implemented by President Theodore Roosevelt. Some of the ‘improvements’ which were recommended actually caused confusion, such as removing the final e in words like foe and toe to become fo and to and were not implemented. Other examples not implemented are: Remove the silent a so that head becomes hed Remove the silent e so that heart becomes hart Remove the last letter when a word ends with a double consonant so doll become dol and egg becomes eg. Some rules were partially implemented: Remove the silent e at the end of a word so axe becomes ax and are becomes ar. Ax was implemented but not ar. Some examples of the rules that were implemented are: Words ending with re after a consonant change to er so litre becomes liter and centre becomes center Remove the u in words ending our so humour becomes humor and valour becomes valor Change the c to an s in words ending ence so licence becomes license and defence becomes defense. In virtually all of the changes suggested by the Simplified Spelling Board the spelling is not simpler, just different. This has caused much confusion, numerous people not sure which spelling is correct. Of course, the original English spelling is the correct version. In recent years we have seen an increase in the adoption of incorrect ‘American english’ in the traditionally ‘English english’ speaking countries, both verbally and in the written word. Computer software is written in ‘American’ as the operating systems used in computers originate from America. To specify a colour in a web page, the parameter is ‘color’ and to place an object in the centre of the page the parameter is ‘center’, for instance. We now have a generation of young adults who watched dire American teenage television programmes in their formative years, resulting in an adoption of words, phrases and pronunciations gleaned from these television programmes instead of using the correct English words, phrases and pronunciations. Words such as ‘schedule’, which is now regularly incorrectly pronounced ‘skedule’ instead of the correct pronunciation of ‘shedule’.

Mick Rushton’s second observation: The second helping of anything is never as satisfying as the first.

Dark matter Dark matter is the god at the heart of a new religion. In common with all other religions this god has its acolytes, desperately concocting complicated and imaginative theories to justify its existence. Also in common with other religions, these theories are deemed to be necessary by those acolytes because the god, dark matter in this instance, does not exist. These acolytes, a group of astrophysicists, have observed what paltry section of the universe is visible to us from this tiny, insignificant rock we call Earth and made a number of calculations based on the limited knowledge of the universe afforded to them from here. From these calculations the astrophysicists have come to the conclusion that the visible universe is about a tenth the mass it ‘should’ be. If a schoolchild carried out an experiment and from his or her calculations was inaccurate by a factor of ten, the teacher would conclude that either the observational data was incorrect or they had made a mistake in their calculations. Not so our astrophysicists. Their arrogance dismisses the possibility that their calculations are erroneous or that it is impossible to see enough of the universe to accurately measure it and leads them to conclude that there must be a more respectable reason for the anomaly. Hence the invention of dark matter. These astrophysicists will now spend an inordinate amount of time and an obscene amount of money in an endeavour to catch a glimpse of a phenomenon that doesn’t exist purely to demonstrate to the world how intelligent they are in propounding this theory. The research which led astrophysicists to invent dark matter was predominantly concerned with the future of the universe. There are two primary schools of thought: 1 The universe will continue expanding as the momentum of the universe will always be greater than the gravity pulling it back. This will result in a black, dead universe with all the stars burnt out. 2 The universe will reach a point where the gravity will negate the momentum and the universe will collapse. My own personal opinion is that gravity will cause the universe to collapse until the centre of the universe is so dense it creates another ‘big bang’, restarting the universe cycle. This cycle of expansion and collapse would explain what happened before our ‘big bang’.

Mick Rushton’s third observation: Profanity is the penultimate refuge of the inarticulate. (The ultimate is, of course, violence).

Global warming The Earth has a cyclic temperature range of around 10° to 12° centigrade with a period of approximately 100,000 years. This can be seen in the graphs below. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record Source: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page3.php The increases in temperature seen prior to our present increase are parts of a natural cycle of temperatures which can owe absolutely nothing to human activity. Unfortunately, our governments see the present temperature increase as a timely excuse to impose huge taxes on the use of fossil fuels in an attempt to fool the public into believing the reason for these huge taxes is to ‘save the world’. The real reason for these tax hikes is to enable governments to give obscene tax reductions to those who need it the least, the wealthy and the highly paid. One of the ways governments have fooled the populace is in convincing them that the use of unleaded petrol and catalytic converters will reduce emissions and help to control climate change. This is a blatant lie. Catalytic converters were introduced successfully in California to reduce the severe problems they had with dense smog. Governments then jumped on the ‘green’ bandwagon and introduced legislation to make them mandatory on all new cars. Catalytic converters don’t start working until they reach a temperature of approximately 300° centigrade and the optimum operating temperature is in excess of 400° centigrade. Slung under a car in a metal tube which will act as a heatsink will reduce the time the catalytic converter is effective to virtually zero except on a long journey in hot weather or stationary with the engine running as in a traffic queue. As the average journey distance in the UK is approximately 7 miles (source: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/), this reduces the effective time for a catalytic converter to zero, especially in cold weather. The only way a car fitted with a catalytic converter passes the emissions tests for an MOT is for the MOT tester to run the engine indoors for long enough to get the catalytic converter up to temperature. Cheating in this way is the only method to ensure the car passes the emissions test. The catalytic converter is located in the exhaust pipe and as a result, inhibits the flow of exhaust gasses. This means the engine runs inefficiently and uses more fuel. This results in the car producing more emissions as a result of the catalytic converter being fitted. There is a debate as to whether the smaller amounts of hydrogen sulphide and ammonia emitted from a catalytic converter when it has reached its operating temperature are more damaging to the atmosphere than the carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons it removes. Catalytic converter production requires palladium or platinum which have limited natural resources and are expensive to produce. Norilsk in Russia, where a large percentage of these precious metals are produced is one of most polluted places on Earth. Catalytic converters will not continue to function for the extent of a modern car’s lifespan and are very expensive to replace. This means a substantial quantity of otherwise mechanically sound vehicles are scrapped each year purely because the catalytic converter is faulty and replacement is not economically viable. This is another example of how environmentally unfriendly catalytic converters are. Unleaded fuel was introduced because leaded fuel damaged catalytic converters, not because the lead was harmful. When unleaded fuel was introduced it was an era when a large proportion of houses still had lead pipes supplying their water and lead paint on their walls, this was a much bigger influence on the amount of lead assimilated by the general public than the lead in petrol. Unleaded petrol is the most poisonous vehicle fuel we have ever used. The removal of lead necessitated the inclusion of chemicals to reduce ‘knocking’, when the fuel ignites at the wrong time in the engine cycle. The chemicals added to unleaded petrol make up around half of the total volume and include naphthalene, toluene, trimethylbenzene and benzene, all of which are regarded to be carcinogenic. Benzene is so poisonous that if traces are found in fruit or fruit juices, they are immediately removed from the shelves and was the subject of a Cancer Research UK anti-smoking campaign, pointing out how poisonous it is. Click here to see the Cancer Research benzene advert How ironic that whilst Cancer Research UK are warning people of the dangers of inhaling benzene by smoking cigarettes, the government is simultaneously promoting the inhalation of benzene while filling a petrol tank with unleaded petrol. If you can smell petrol when you are putting unleaded petrol in your tank, you are inhaling carcinogens. The governments reinforced this confidence trick by supplying leaded petrol via a red petrol pump to imply danger and unleaded petrol via a green pump to imply that it is environmentally friendly.

Mick Rushton’s fourth observation: Success is the only difference between bravery and foolhardiness.

Human behaviour I believe that all our behaviours, desires and involuntary compulsions were ingrained in the human race in the two or three million years since hominines developed from the great apes. It is likely that the early humans lived in small family groups, hunting and harvesting roots, berries and plants to feed themselves. They would live in rudimentary shelters and caves and wear animal skins to keep them warm. The young men would go out hunting while the women and older men would remain in the camp to look after children and make clothes and tools while others would forage for food. Due to natural selection, behaviours would have a profound effect on viability, eventually determining the behaviour of all the members of the family group and becoming what we now refer to as ‘instinctive behaviour’. This effect can be loosely described as being ‘designed by nature’. Women who were attracted to handsome, athletic men would choose a partner whose athleticism increased his ability to provide food for the family and who would sire offspring who were also attractive to the opposite sex, thus increasing their chances to procure a suitable mate and increasing their viability. Men who were less athletic would be less able to hunt effectively and provide food for the family and as a result, the family would be less viable. In modern times women have been attracted to wealthy men, subconsciously acknowledging the wealth would more than adequately provide for them. Men would be attracted to women with large breasts, a slim waist and wide hips, the classic hourglass figure. Large breasts meant a woman was better equipped to feed their offspring, a slim waist implied the woman was not already pregnant and wide hips would be an advantage during childbirth. Unfortunately, over the last hundred years or so, the fashion industry has distorted men’s idea of the ideal female figure. The fashion industry is predominantly influenced by women and homosexual men and their influence has culminated in a radical change in the male ideal of the perfect female form. The contemporary perception of the ideal female form is tall, with very small breasts and narrow hips. This is due to the principal figures in the fashion industry imposing their preferences on female imagery and employing models who conform to the figures they find attractive. Tall, no hips and no breasts is the figure that the fashion principals find attractive because it’s the characteristic figure of a teenage boy. The result of this influence is that modern man has been persuaded that the ideal female form is that of a teenage boy. Teenagers, especially teenage girls, experience deep rooted feelings of rebellion against their parents and the values, customs and rules associated with their parents. They feel they are old enough to be treated as adults and lead an adult life whereas their parents are still treating them as children. This often leads to teenage girls wanting to run away from their parents with a young man that enters their lives. They become romantically attached to the young man in the hope that they can elope and exchange their humdrum, childish, controlled lives for freedom and adulthood. This behaviour in early humans would mean young females moving from the family of their birth to a different family group and ensuring a variation in the gene pool of each family group. Female orgasm has to be elusive. If the female orgasms first and decides that copulation is thus concluded she will not be fertilised and her fecundity will be drastically reduced. Unlike other senses, we quickly become accustomed to an ambient smell. This allows us to detect new smells more easily without them being masked by ambient smells such as our own scent, natural or otherwise. This ability would be invaluable when hunting and important in alerting the individual to danger. Yawning is said to be contagious. Yawning is a signal for the family group to sleep at the same time to minimise the dangers of children not going to sleep at the same time as the adults. Stretching immediately after waking prepares the muscles for exercise, minimising the risk of muscle injury. It is claimed that women are able to multitask whereas men lack that ability. Women would need to be aware of danger and impending weather changes while monitoring the children, looking after the fire, foraging and fabricating garments. This would necessitate the ability to multitask. Men needed to devote the whole of their concentration to hunting, any distraction potentially affecting the success of the hunt, necessitating an inability to multitask. Over the last fifty years or so, homosexuals have ceased to be persecuted for their sexual orientation in western society. In some less tolerant regions, such as the middle east, homosexuality is still illegal and homosexuals are still sentenced to prison for ‘indecent behaviour’. Western society, desperate to be ‘politically correct’, has been persuaded by homosexual action groups that homosexuality is normal and just ‘a matter of choice’. Research into physical brain characteristics has shown that male and female brains are different in several ways. The male brain has a slightly larger right hemisphere whereas the hemispheres of the female brain are roughly the same. An area of the brain called the amygdala deals with fear and aggression and connects with other areas of the brain to trigger resulting behaviour. In the male brain the amygdala connects to areas of the brain that triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response which would be of paramount importance when hunting. In the female brain the amygdala connects to areas of the brain that manifest fear as intense anxiety. A part of the anterior hypothalamus has been observed to play a direct role in sexual behaviours and is stimulated by exposure to pheromones. The male hypothalamus responds to oestrogen-like pheromones and the female hypothalamus responds to testosterone-like pheromones. The hypothalamus triggers sexual excitement as a result of this stimulation by pheromones. These brain characteristics of heterosexuals are reversed in a homosexual brain, a homosexual male brain exhibits the same characteristics as a heterosexual female brain and the brain characteristics of a homosexual female are the same as in a heterosexual male. This brain deformity is thought to be caused by a foetus being subjected to abnormal hormones at a specific time during pregnancy. Homosexuals may like to regard their sexual orientation as ‘a matter of choice’ but this choice is determined by their physically abnormal brain. People with physical or mental deformities of any type should not be ridiculed, reviled or ostracised as a result of their deformity but neither should these deformities be regarded as normal. Although homosexuals and other sexually abnormal groups should be allowed to live as they wish, their orientation should not be allowed to influence young people into believing it is normal behaviour. Homosexuality is not normal.

Mick Rushton’s fifth observation: When a child plays in the garden and emerges covered in dirt, they are berated. When an adult plays in the garden and emerges covered in dirt, it is legitimised by calling it ‘gardening’.

Advertisements Over the last few decades, mainly due to pressure from feminist action groups, advertisers have ceased producing advertisements which demean women either verbally or by adverse, negative or semi-naked imagery. Such degradation is rightly acknowledged to be unacceptable. However, in recent years there has been a trend to demean men in advertisements in ways which would be deemed unacceptable to demean women. This demeaning of men in advertising takes three distinct forms. Firstly, there are the advertisements where a comment or action would be totally unacceptable were the roles reversed. Take the Wiltshire Farm Foods advertisement where the woman says “it’s so easy, even a man can do it”. A man saying “it’s so easy, even a woman can do it” would never be aired. Click here to see the Wiltshire Farm Foods advert The Diet Coke advertisements, particularly the one where a group of giggling women sit on the grass ogling the gardener, one rolls a can of Diet Coke down the hill to him and he then opens the can, sprays himself with Diet Coke and takes his shirt off. Can you imagine the outcry if the advertisement featured a group of laughing men who roll a can of Diet Coke down the hill and a young woman takes off her shirt? Click here to see the Diet Coke photobooth advert Click here to see the Diet Coke break advert Click here to see the Diet Coke gardener advert The second group of advertisements used to demean men will feature a man doing something mildly embarrassing, usually singing or dancing to themselves whilst occupied with some activity such as cooking or cleaning. They will then be ‘caught’ by members of the family to their amusement and the man’s embarrassment. The person ‘caught’ is never a woman, always a man. This reinforces the advertisers stereotype of the ‘clever’ woman and the ‘stupid’ man. Thirdly is the scenario where a man and a woman are in competition. In the St Agur advertisement, the ‘superior’ woman throws the ‘inferior’ man on his back when competing for a piece of bread and cheese. Click here to see the Saint Agur advert In the Karcher advertisements, the ‘stupid’ man uses old fashioned, traditional cleaning methods, while the ‘clever’ woman uses the vastly superior Karcher product. Click here to see the Karcher Steam Mop advert Click here to see the Karcher Window Vac advert Similarly, in the Dyson advertisement, the ‘clever’ woman neighbour lends the ‘stupid’ man a Dyson because the ‘stupid’ man has been trying to use an inferior product. Click here to see the Dyson advert In the Wickes advertisement, the ‘stupid’ man attempts to resurrect all his old decorating equipment while the ‘clever’ woman goes straight to Wickes to buy all new equipment. Click here to see the Wickes advert In the Voltarol advertisements, when the man has used Voltarol, he embarrasses himself and his wife/partner by dancing at a formal party. When the woman has used Voltarol, she is able to frighten her husband/partner by her vastly superior tennis ability, the ‘inferior’ man eventually exclaiming “new balls, please”. This is a very demeaning innuendo suggesting sexual impotency and insecurity. Click here to see the Volterol dancing advert Click here to see the Volterol tennis advert These advertisements are just a few examples which feature a situation which would be deemed to be unacceptable if the male and female roles were reversed. All these advertisements, taken individually, are not particularly offensive but the roles in these advertisements are never, ever reversed. That is what is offensive and unacceptable. In a similar vein, the television programme ‘8 out of 10 cats does countdown’ features demonstrations and appearances by young men with virtually no clothes on. This is deemed to be acceptable whereas it would be deemed to be unacceptable if the demonstrations were carried out by near naked young women.