fashion beach

A couple of weeks ago, ATV News unwittingly gave a perfect illustration of why users of English need to pay attention to syntax.

"Several men were arrested following an investigation into cigarette smuggling by Customs officers"

was their story. Unless Hong Kong's Customs officers are far more corrupt than I believe they are, I think what they really meant was:

"Several men were arrested following an investigation by Customs officers into cigarette smuggling".

Sexy Hot Arab Women - Amal Hijazi

Amal Hijazi is an extremely sexy Lebanese singer, model, and pop icon. Amal was born in Lebanon, but her family fled to France to escape political instabilities. She started her career as a fashion model and was extremely successful there. She soon grew restless and pursued an interest as a singer. That interest blossomed into a full-on new career. Her debut album, “Akher Gharam”, released in 2001, became one of the biggest selling albums of the year. She continued her success throughout the decade releasing a few more albums including: “Zaman”, “Bedawwar A Albi”, “Baya al Ward”, and “Nefsy Tefhamny”.

This picture comes from Amal’s modeling days. You can see why she had such a successful career. Her eyes, like many Arab women, are so amazingly sultry. They cut right through you. You combine those with her pouty lips and it makes you want to do just about anything for this girl. She has a very young look about her as well, which adds to the allure. You do get a good view of her nice sized breasts, although her clothes aren’t too revealing. Finding sexy pictures of Arab women is difficult due to the culture, but sometimes you get lucky. Hands down, this girl is an extremely beautiful Arab woman.

Sexy Hot Swedish Women - Victoria Silvstedt

Now, you cannot have a blog dedicated to hot Swedish women without talking about Victoria Silvstedt. She is notorious for being one of the most bodacious and beautiful Swedish women alive. Now, you may know her from her Playboy photo shoots (and what nice shoots they are), but Victoria did have a more wholesome start to her career. She actually ran for Miss Sweden and was chosen to represent Sweden in the 1993 Miss World Beauty pageant. Well, it wasn’t very long before Mr. Hefner came calling, and, the rest is Playboy history. In addition to modeling, Ms. Silvstedt has done some acting and singing as well.

This picture is a bit of a candid shot on the beach, but man it’s a good one. First, you see her gorgeous bleach blonde hair that she’s holding up. She’s not wearing any make-up which makes me think this picture is truly candid. The next thing you see in this skimpy bikini are her wonderfully large breasts. They are barely kept in and they are ready for action. Then you see her rock hard abs and long, slender legs. That is really what I love about Swedish women… blonde, big tits, and small waist.

Some LegCo members have recently been objecting to the government's policy of granting land for development by the MTR Corporation to fund the construction of the South Island Line. The problem with this is that they don't seem to be offering any alternative.

No one who observes the air pollution and traffic congestion in Hong Kong can doubt that the territory's railway network needs to be extended. And most would agree that it makes sense to integrate any extension with the existing network, which means putting it under the MTR rather than a new operator.

If we accept these assumptions, the several planned new lines will not build themselves. Given the vast sums of money required to construct them, what is the least painful way of financing these developments? The government could hand out cash to cover the cost, which means taxpayers would bear the burden directly. Or it could require the MTR to fund it out of its own revenues, which would almost certainly mean fares rising substantially to pay for it. With many already objecting to the recent modest fare increase at a time of inflationary pressure, this would be politically unacceptable and would probably drive many passengers back on to the overcrowded roads as a cheaper alternative.

Of course, the property method is also depriving the taxpayers of the potential revenue that would otherwise accrue to the government from the sale of these sites, but in the current circumstances it seems the least objectionable way of achieving the desired goal. The real objection in my view is that, since the MTR is partly privatized, some of the eventual return from this handout will go into the hands of private investors at the expense of the taxpayers. The MTR should have been left in full public ownership.

Being out of England for most of the time, I tend to notice small changes when I'm there that may be imperceptible to those who live there. One of these is the creeping Americanisation of the English language. Not only do we have a whole generation who use American spelling because they've never bothered to change the default spell checker in Word to British English, but American vocabulary is gradually replacing British usage.

One of the changes I observed on this year's visit is that the original British "railway station" has largely given way to "train stati0n", which in my childhood would have been understood but considered an Americanism. Now that usage makes sense, since "bus station" was already common British usage, but why don't we call an airport a "plane station" to be consistent?

Sepp Blatter's statement that FIFA - world football's governing body (that's soccer for American readers) - is "not in crisis" is about as credible as Muammar Gaddafi's claims that all the Libyan people love him. Nevertheless, Blatter's re-election as head of FIFA was entirely predictable - and not just because his only challenger was conveniently accused of corruption and sidelined before the vote.

In the welter of corruption allegations, firings and reinstatements, and general chaos it's hard to know the truth. But a look at most of the FIFA bigshots will tell you one sure thing - from the size of their waistlines, most of them have not actually played football for a long time - indeed, it's doubtful they would last more than 5 minutes on the pitch before collapsing.

The fact is that FIFA is an entrenched bureaucracy - and the first task of any bureaucracy is always to perpetuate itself. While Blatter likens his role to captaining a ship, what he is really doing is driving a gravy train. And as long as he keeps the gravy - free tickets to big games, lavish banquets, foreign trips, and perhaps additional benefits - flowing, most of its recipients will continue to support him. As the French say, the more things change the more they remain the same.

A "shock, horror!" headline on the website of British tabloid The Sun claims "Third of rapists and killers 'are foreign'". Except they're not. When you actually read the article, this figure is only true in a few police districts. The figure across the UK as a whole is 1 in 7, or less than half the quoted proportion.

Further evidence that The Sun is engaging in racial scaremongering is that in three successive paragraphs it refers to immigrants, foreign nationals, foreign-born suspects, and in a later paragraph to non-English speaking suspects, as if all these groups were synonymous. Furthermore, despite the fact that the majority of recent immigrants to the UK are white EU citizens, they chose to illustrate the piece with a photo of a black convicted murderer.

Apart from the article's obvious racial bias, the ill-defined 1 in 7 (14.3%) figure is even more meaningless unless we know how many foreigners are in Britain at any given time for comparison. A recent estimate suggests that the figure may be around 11.4% - so far from the shock picture of the headline, the reality is that foreigners account for these crimes in only a slightly higher proportion than their total numbers would lead us to expect. Furthermore, it would be helpful to separate rape and murder for comparison in analyzing the figures, since cultural misunderstandings can play a part in some rapes.

The Sun should be ashamed of itself for peddling racist propaganda.