Those who cannot remember the past...

Hey-ho, everyone.
It's been a while.
Did you miss me?

So what, I hear you ask, has so piqued my interest that I feel compelled to put digit to keyboard and compose my first blog for many a week?
Well, surprise surprise, it's this migrant/refugee thing.
I know, I know, you're probably stifling a yawn and wondering if there is anything more interesting on You Tube, but before you go, just take a moment to read on...it may be of interest.
And I've put in an image of some Jihadis to get you thinking...

We are, my friends, whether we like it or not, at war.
It's not a conventional war of course, state-vs-state, oh no, it's something significantly different. It's an ideological war. And although we ourselves may not have declared war, we've certainly had war declared upon us...not on the Britain as a country, but instead on the way-of-life which we, and countless millions in the West and in other similar countries around the world, live.
ISIS (or ISIL, or 'So-Called Islamic State'...which I'm surprised the BBC hasn't already shortened to SCIS) despise our way of life. That much is clear. They regard Western culture as decadent and immoral, and similarly regard anyone who is 'Western' to be of the same. So let us be under no illusions whatsoever - in the eyes of those in ISIS, we are all legitimate targets for their hatred. And that hatred manifests itself in acts of utter barbarism, such as those countless beheadings of kneeling men and women that ISIS then so proudly circulate on the internet.

But none of this, I hear you cry, is new. You know all this - and of that fact I am aware.
The reason for re-inforcing the ISIS backstory is to set the scene for what I believe may be the ISIS masterstroke, a new phase of their war of hatred that we in the West are walking...nay, running blindly into, a new chapter of an unconventional warfare where ISIS mount a significant and bloody  offensive.
Imagine, if you will, the following:
ISIS wish to strike a significant blow against the West, outside the boundaries of its so-called Caliphate. They already know that sporadic acts of individual, murderous violence are incredibly effective, such as the murder of Lee Rigby or the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo - they create real terror right in the 'ordinary' streets of the decadent West, and fear in the minds of 'ordinary' Westerners. Imagine then, ten thousand such instances, all taking place simultaneously across the towns and cities of Europe, with 'sleeper' ISIS fighters, armed with machetes and knives and guns and home-made explosives and even (heaven forbid) weapons such as mustard gas, attacking at random, in shops, on trains, outside schools in cinemas, anywhere, everywhere. Even if each attacker killed only five people, we would still be looking at a potential death toll of 50,000 - that's more than 16 times as many died on 9/11.
The only problem for this grand ISIS plan...? How to get 10,000 of its fighters into the West.
Hmmm.
Then someone in the ISIS high command has a brilliant idea.
Let's manufacture a refugee crisis.
Let's create the circumstances whereby hundreds of thousands of people move en masse from the Caliphate and the regions around it into the heartland of Europe; and if we can get a million people on the move, then we only need to make sure that one in a hundred of them, just 1%, is aligned to the ISIS cause and willing to do their bidding when the time comes...

Now I'm not for a moment suggesting that this is in fact the case.
I'm not even suggesting that the mass movement of Syrian refugees into Greece and then across the various European borders is being orchestrated by ISIS in the same way old WW1 generals used to move little models of soldiers over painted depictions of distant battlefields.
And I'm certainly not for a moment suggesting that ISIS could ever be so cynical and callous and well, downright evil to ensure that Western morals are sufficiently outraged by images of dead children on a Turkish beach to have politicians clamouring for doors to be flung open to thousands upon thousands of those hurrying (or perhaps, being herded) across the Continent...
What I am suggesting, though, is that simple common sense tells us that when we are at war (and we are, whether we say we are are not), the last thing you want to do is be stupid enough to drop your guard and allow into your midst something that looks pretty innocuous on the face of it but could, just possibly, contain something very, very dangerous.

As the philosopher and novelist, George Santayana once said:
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.
Now what was it I was trying to remember...?
Something about the Trojans?

Where there's a will...

Well, my friends, it's certainly been a while since I posted anything on The Universe According to Andy.
Why?
Well, a combination of things really - too much work, a sudden surge in my hillclimbing activities, absence of any writing activity...and, oh, did I mention I had too much work?

Anyway, I've found time and motivation to put fingers to keyboard once again and share with you fabulous people an opinion or two...and, by Jove, there's no shortage of things to have an opinion on, is there.
There's the unbelievable Lord Sewel and his cocaine-snorting-off-a-prostitute's-breasts escapades; then there's Walter Palmer who, for reasons which are utterly unfathomable, thought it would be a good idea to pay $50,000 dollars to go to Zimbabwe so he could shoot a local celebrity lion with a bow-and-arrow; and not forgetting the zillions of migrants trying to make their way into the UK through the Channel Tunnel - clearly, they haven't heard about the current round of austerity cuts introduced by Mr Osbourne.

But I'm going to ignore all that and concentrate instead on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-33684937

Now I don't know about you people out there in the big, bad world, but I think this sets an immensely worrying precedent. I'll be honest - I don't know the exact details of the relationship between Mrs Ilott and her mother, Mrs Jackson, but at the end of the day, the £486,000 estate of Mrs Jackson was hers and hers alone and she should be able to do with it as she damn well pleases.
The question is where will this end.
Is each individual, when deciding upon what they are going to do with their assets once they've pop their clogs, going to have to prepare in advance of their death a detailed dossier, complete with diary, photographs, e-mails and post-it notes, explaining the reasons behind each decision regarding the disposition of their assets? And even when there's a very detailed justification about why Child A got x% and Child B got y%, will Child B still be able to challenge that justification in court, putting forward alternative evidence to justify their claim on a larger proportion of the deceased's estate?
It's a very slippery slope indeed and one which this ruling certainly makes more likely.
As far as I'm concerned, a person's will is exactly that - their will, and however unpalatable an individual's decisions may be about what they want to do with their assets once they die, they should...nay, the MUST be sacrosanct and not subject to the decision of a judge who, however, well intentioned, cannot truly understand the dead individual's motivations.

Stop this football lunacy!!

As many of you who regularly read my blog will know, I'm not a big fan of modern football.
Too many primadonnas.
Too many dodgy characters running the game.
Too much cheating.
But just when you thought the 'beautiful game' had sunk as far as it could go, along comes something so utterly ludicrous that all you can do is simply shake your head in disbelief and remind yourself that however low football sinks, there's always another dark crevice somewhere for it to drop a little further into.

Take yesterday's bizarre decision by the Scottish FA to hand-out a one-match ban to Inverness Caledonian Thistle defender Josh Meekings as punishment for committing handball in the 3-2 victory over Celtic in the Scottish Cup semi-final. Nothing wrong with that, some people who do not know the details of the match may say...except, during the actual game, the handball wasn't spotted by the referee or the assistant referee or any other official and no action was taken against the Inverness defender.
The one-match ban (which will incidentally result in Josh Meekings missing the Scottish Cup Final) was handed out retrospectively and only after Celtic (whom one can only say are being monumentally bad losers) sent a letter to the Scottish FA to ask why the handball wasn't spotted and why Josh Meekings wasn't therefore sent off and why they weren't awarded a penalty and why they didn't win the semi-final and why they weren't being given the chance to win the Cup for themselves.
This sets an incredibly dangerous precedent.
Let us, for example, explore where this might lead. If a player 'wins' a penalty by diving and his team subsequently scores and wins, can the opposition now send a letter to their FA and ask why the referee didn't see it was a dive and can they have that player booked and can they have the goal that came from the penalty rescinded and can they have the point they would have got for a draw instead of a loss...
And where do you stop? What about the referee's assistant incorrectly awarding a throw-in from which a team goes on and scores, can the team conceding the goal now ask the FA to investigate why the official didn't spot the ball coming off the other player's knee and can the result be changed...?
You see where this is going?
You simply can't go down the road of retrospective action like this, because down that road lies chaos.
Football has to accept the simple truth that officials make mistakes (funnily enough, just like players and just like managers). On some occasions those mistakes don't have an impact on the result. In other cases, like this one, they do. That's just the way it is. Some you win, some you lose. That's footie!
If football isn't prepared to accept this fact, then the only other option is for it to embrace technology to the extent that other sports have e.g. rugby, cricket and tennis...which I wouldn't hold my breath for, considering how long it took them to introduce the simple technology needed to determine whether the ball has actually crossed the line!)
But let's just allow our imagination to run wild and little and think how the incident involving Josh Meekings would have played out if football had introduced an equivalent of cricket's review system. The ball is headed goalwards - it makes contact with some part of Meekings body - the officials don't see a problem - so the Celtic captain immediately signals to the fourth official that they want to use one of their three 'reviews'. The TMO is called into action. He reviews the video evidence. He concludes it was handball and instructs the referee to award a penalty and send Josh Meekings off. Play resumes.

Now, can anyone tell me why a system like that wouldn't work?
It would certainly save us from the madness and vindictiveness of post-match letters of complaint and retrospective bans, not to mention the ever-present moans of losing fans claiming 'We Woz Robbed!'