thehammersmithsilverfox - Tumblr blog

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

The sheer joy of laughing at the butt hurt has been priceless. I’d like to give a special mention to those who (quite rightly) loved Missy Master, but are now throwing a shit-fit at the Doctor becoming a woman... ah, the cognitive dissonance.  

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

Thank you, God…

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

LINK has video of the moment when the Rimac Concept One lost traction on an unguarded corner of the Hemberg Hill Climb in Switzerland. 

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

standing ovation

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

Reblog if you agree it's possible to be a big fan of someone without wanting a romantic or sexual relationship with them

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

I’ve had Muslim neighbours and friends for over thirty years. Their children have grown up with mine. I know them. I like them. A couple of them I love like family. This death cult does not represent them and I’m not turning my back on them because people filled with hate and fear seek to divide us. It’s as simple as that.

The Morning After, Yet Again

It strikes me that peace and friendship is really just conflict plus time.  If people look at the big picture of what these idiots are doing, it’s clear that terrorists are waging war - not just against the West, but against anyone who doesn’t share their twisted world view wholesale.  We need to stop looking at is as something that is happening in isolated incidents in Westminster or Manchester or Southwark, or Paris, or Brussels or Kabul.  It’s not Muslims against Christians, it’s Islamist extremists against the rest of the world.  It’s not Mr Patel in the corner shop, or Aisha in your office, or Ali in Chicken Cottage against your family.  Mr Patel, and Aisha, and Ali are targets too.

I know it’s hard to remember that, especially if you’re a teenager and you don’t remember the Troubles, but we’ve been here before, and it’s crap.  When I was growing up, I heard all the same things we hear about Muslims now about Catholics in general and Republican Irish Catholics in particular.  I remember the car bombs, and the letter bombs, and the sniper attacks.  I remember the explosions in shopping centres and pubs, and the names and faces of children murdered by the IRA.  And I also remember that there were terrorists on the Protestant Northern Irish side of the conflict too.

And I remember the distrust, and the blind hate people in the UK expressed towards Irish people, the anti-Catholic rhetoric I heard every day.  I heard it not from people I would normally label as hateful or prejudiced, but ordinary people, my own family and friends. And yet despite that, some of my closest friends at school were Catholic (one to the extent that sometimes when you went to visit, her mum would be entertaining nuns for tea), and they weren’t terrorists, and they had no sympathy with terrorists, and they were just as afraid of the terrorists as everyone else - but this fear was wrapped in more wariness that people were going to hate them simply for who they were.  

So it hurts my heart to see that same old rhetoric being dusted off again.  If you’ve not lived in a diverse community, if you live on the Cornish coast, or a Welsh valley, or the heart of Norfolk - somewhere everyone you meet is more or less like you - of course you’re going to be wary of anyone different.  There are 2.8 million Muslims in the UK, and if the only ones you’ve ever seen are angry young men and women determined to attack our way of life, of course you’re going to be concerned.  But I went to university in Southwark, and I know the area that was attacked last night pretty well.  I live in a city that has a large and visible Muslim community and for three years I lived around the corner from a busy mosque.  And none of my neighbours ever - ever - treated me with anything other than respect and friendship.  I felt safe there, because I was surrounded by families who just wanted to get on with living their lives.  Some of them wore traditional dress, some of them didn’t.  Some of them covered their hair, some didn’t.  A few wore the niqab.  And absolutely none of them ever attacked anyone or tried to blow anyone (or themselves) up or drove a vehicle into anyone.  They were too busy living their lives like the normal people they are, through the same filter of wariness that their Catholic and Irish neighbours lived with for so long.

But here’s the thing.  Conflict plus time equals peace.  A few weeks ago, I, a British person, was in Germany with a friend from Poland.  Take a moment to think about that, because it’s not that many decades since that would have been unthinkable.  And we were there with people from all over the world.  A week later, I met up with a group of friends that included two British-German couples.  We move on, and we learn to love and to trust, because we know that not all Irish people or Catholics are terrorists, and that German people are not Nazis.  Eventually, we’ll reach a point where we understand that the people who claim to be Muslims we see on the news are not representative of their community as a whole either.  

And I’m seeing that community stand up and shout back, but you won’t see it on the mainstream news, because it doesn’t suit the simple ‘us and them’ narrative that our soundbite culture demands.  They’re feeding the displaced and the emergency services, they’re vocally condemning the attacks, they’re marching in Manchester and in London, but it’s going to take time to flush out this poison.  If it is a war, wars take time to win.  Let’s not waste any more of it on needless hate.

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

The only thing that comes to mind when Australians and their newspapers run their mouths about what Britain ‘should do’ about Islam. 

“I’m defending common sense. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world right now. 1.6 billion. As someone pointed out on twitter this week, if Islam really bred terror, we’d all be dead right now. The combined forces of Islamic State, Boko Haram and Al Qaeda makes up 0.003% of the global Muslim population. Less than 2% of all terror attacks are carried out in the name of Islam. You’ve got more of a chance of being killed by a bee sting, a peanut or the NHS. And I’m sure most Australians are lovely, but until we recognize the festering pus sore that is Rupert Murdoch maybe we need to be held accountable as well ‘cause having said all that, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should be congratulating Rupert Murdoch. Because in a sorely divided world, what we need right now is unity and whether you’re a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or a Jew, I think we can all agree that Rupert Murdoch is a massive fuck knuckle."

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

So the guy in this story, Marc Haynes, is doing something amazing with his anecdote... If he manages to raise over £1000 for UNICEF, in Sir Roger Moore’s honour, he will post the famous boarding pass online.

You can join in HERE.

A Sir Roger Moore story for @tonycvrtis

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

We won’t change.

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

if you hear about a bombing at a concert that’s left multiple injuries, fatalities, trauma and left people missing and separated from loved ones - a fair amount of these people being under 18, and your first thought is to mock them for seeing the artist they were seeing then you are absolutely fucking disgusting

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

A Sir Roger Moore story for @tonycvrtis

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

You’ve got till 11:59pm tomorrow night to register to vote.

If you’re not registered get registered now and vote on June 8th.

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.

“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” states the Tory manifesto. “We disagree.”

Senior Tories confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.

While much of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide what is and isn’t published, the manifesto suggests.

VOTE THE TORIES OUT. Register to vote here, and get your friends to do the same. Vote Labour, or vote tactically to make sure the Tories don’t win your constituency.

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

An everyday story of Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson...

[thehammersmithsilverfox]

Germany remembers the victims, has zero statues of the perpetrators of evil.

The South glorifies the losing evil side, viciously villifies the victims.

[thehammersmithsilverfox]