Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

The Guardian ran a very funny story the other day which shared with the whole world some of the favourite jokes of UK scientists. Here are my two favourites, but isn't it great to know that Britain's brainiest boffins have such a ridiculous sense of humour. An electron and a positron go into a bar. Positron: "You're round." Electron: "Are you sure?" Positron: "I'm positive." I think I heard this on Radio 4 after the publication of a record (small) measurement of the electron electric dipole moment – often explained as the roundness of the electron – by  Jony Hudson et al in Nature 2011 . Joanna Haigh , professor of atmospheric physics, Imperial College, London What is a physicist's favourite food?  Fission chips. Callum Roberts , professor in marine conservation, University of York

Nicolas Anelka is a well travelled, highly paid, professional footballer and a recent convert to Islam apparently, so he has no excuses for making offensive anti-Semitic gestures. Yet in a televised football match the other day Anelka celebrated his team (West Brom) scoring a goal by making a salute known in France as a 'quenelle' - its inventor being a controversial French comedian called Dieudonne who has been fined six times for insulting behaviour towards Jews.  Despite the fact that more than 70,000 French Jews died during the Second World War and many more in the Nazi death camps, Dieudonne seems to think it's funny to describe the remembrance of Holocaust victims as 'memorial pornography' - an act of hateful stupidity for which he was fined 6,000 Euros in 2008. Maybe the French authorities should threaten to lock him up and take away his liberty for a while if he continues to behave in this way and while Dieudonne claims that his gesture is an...

I enjoyed this opinion piece by Oliver Kamm which appeared in the Times recently and it struck me that the same things is happening in Venezuela where the creation of a personality cult around the former President, Hugo Chavez, is in full swing.  But I suspect the Chavez cult will be less successful because, unlike North Korea, Venezuela is not shut off from the rest of the world. Nightmare of a necrocracy that refuses to die By  Oliver Kamm While other regimes fall, a nuclear North Korea survives with unrelenting tyranny Even experienced analysts of North Korea are confounded by the purging of Chang Sung Taek, the country’s second most powerful official. It may indicate instability in the regime or it may cement the monolith. Nobody knows, for the absoluteness of North Korea’s tyranny is its defining characteristic. It’s also the key to its survival long after other communist autocracies have collapsed. The tell-tale heart of the world’s most secretive state was exp...

I enjoyed this piece in the Private Eye which  drew the curtain on the sorry saga of Gordon Brown, the Labour Party and Damian 'Mad Dog' McBride. Literary Review In an effort to wring the last desperate drops of publicity out of his memoir, Damian McBride featured in the 16 October edition of The Week picking his six favourite books. Of particular note was what he described as his "desert-island book": Thomas Pynchon's 1997 epic Mason &  Dixon. For those unfamiliar with the work, its two main characters comprise a joyless man prone to suffering from paranoia and sudden rages, and his loyal, if boozy, assistant.  What could Mad Dog see in it? In fact, Pynchon's Mason is virtually a template for McBride's Brown. Upon discovering he has been passed over for the top job of Astronomer Royal, Mason's response is thus: "Ahrrhh! Ruin! He pulls his Hat over his Eyes, and begins to pound his Head slowly upon the Table." Compare and...

I would not wish to belong to any club or group where women friends and family members are not welcome - but that mind set is not shared by these ridiculous plonkers from Edinburgh who have voted that their little golfing society would remain a 'men only' affair. What an embarrassment to Scotland that such anti-women attitudes can still exist in this day and age - so well done to the Scotsman newspaper for highlighting the issue.  So, I hope the pressure grows for all such clubs to be named and shamed - and removed from consideration of holding prestigious golf events because that will get up the buggers noses.    Royal Burgess votes against allowing women members Royal Burgess Golf Club, Edinburgh. Picture: Ian Rutherford by MARTIN DEMPSTER and MARTYN McLAUGHLIN THE oldest golfing society in the world has scrapped proposals to admit women members after less than a third of its membership supported it in a referendum. Royal Burg...

The family of British doctor, Dr Abbas Khan, blame the murderous Syrian regime for his untimely death which I can well understand because while people do sometimes die in custody - it is unusual for such a terrible thing to happen on the verge of a person's release. Dr Abbas Khan was not a combatant - the 32-year old orthopaedic surgeon went to Syria to help save not take lives, but he was captured last year in the city of Aleppo in November 2012 having travelled via Turkey to help victims of hospital bombings. The Syrian authorities say Dr Abbas took his own life - yet strangely he wrote to his family back in the UK only recently to say he was hoping to return home for Christmas to be reunited with his wife and two young children. Not the kind of behaviour you would expect from a suicidal prisoner - yet on 17 December the Syrian Government announced that Dr Abbas had died suddenly and unexpectedly in their custody.   Sometimes you d...

Andrew Neil, presenter of the BBC's Daily Politics programme, is fast turning into a national treasure with his tough, but fair-minded interviewing style - which seldom allows a slippery politician to wriggle off the hook. Not that long ago, in the 1980s, Neil - a fellow Scot - was pretty unpopular in certain circles for his decision to edit the Sunday Times back in the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch decided to relocate his News International titles from their traditional Fleet Street base to a new site in Wapping.      The move was highly controversial at the time and led to a trail of strength with the print trade unions - which the unions eventually lost, but the battle cemented Neil's reputation tough, no-holds barred operator who was seen to be in league with the devil - also known as Rupert Murdoch. Yet Neil proved himself subsequently to be no journalistic poodle because he famously fell out with the Wizard from Oz - criticising aspects o...

Here's another offering from the Guardian's comment editor, Seumas Milne, who continues his very one-sided writings which condemn America, Britain and other western countries at every opportunity - yet have nothing to say about the vile regimes which previously controlled Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.  I discovered only recently that privately educated Seumas was the former editor of the Straight Left magazine - the voice of a ridiculously pro-Soviet sect within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) during the 1980s.  So I wonder what Straight Left and/or Seumas had to say about the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1982 because I, for one, would find that very interesting - as background to his relentless criticism of the west.   In any event, I hardly agree with a word of what Seumas has to say - his reference to the 'justification' used by the killers of Drummer Lee Rigby seem ridiculous to me and no more justified than the reaso...

I read in one of the papers recently that the former Labour leader and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was prone to bouts of 'table top' rage.  An adviser to the current Conservative/Lib Dem Government, Oliver Letwin, explained how learned about the tale of the pockmarked desk from the Cabinet Secretary at Downing Street, which he recounted as follows:  “Danny Alexander and I moved into part of No 12 Downing Street, which Brown had turned into his horseshoe-shaped centre of command, behind which there was a little room called the snug, which looked out over Whitehall. "There was a little mahogany table [where] we sat down to begin work with some civil servants. "As we worked through the night, I became more and more interested in the fact that this rather beautifully laminated table had a very large number of tiny pock marks on it and I said to the cabinet secretary, 'What are these?' "He roared with laughter and said, 'Oh this was Mr Brown...

I hope Scotland's criminal justice system delivers a harsh sentence on Darren Murphy (25) who has been convicted of culpable homicide following his violent and unprovoked attacked on another man John Morrison (50) - who was enjoying a Christmas night out in Glasgow last year.  I'm not sure what the maximum sentence for culpable homicide is in Scotland, but the equivalent crime in England and Wales of 'manslaughter' can result in a life sentence - although this is rarely used.  But I struggle to understand why more crimes involving manslaughter or culpable homicide are not handed down life sentences - because the risk of killing someone from with 'sucker punch' is very high, particularly if the person doing the punching is much bigger and stronger than the victim, as explained in this new report from the BBC.  Not only was Mr Morrison walking away from   his attacker, Darren Murphy then left him lying in the street to go off to a nightclub a...

Apartheid is normally used in relation to racial segregation in South Africa, but gender apartheid seems like a perfectly fair description of the attempts being made to by religious fundamentalists to enforce a separation the sexes - at public events in the UK.  Apartheid supporters in South Africa made their case against different racial groups being allowed to associate and mix together freely which they said was part of their cultural tradition and belief system, but this was rejected as an apology for racial discrimination - and rightly too.  So, I agree with Janice Turner in this recent opinion piece from the Times - secular principles and gender equality needs to be defended. Female equality needs doughtier defenders By  Janice Turner Politicians and university authorities must find courage to resist radical Islam’s push for segregation What with funeral selfies and imperilling due legal process in the Grillo sisters’ trial, the Prime Minis...