PJ O'Rourke

You wish you were this awesome

H/T to Jackart

PJ writing about democracy for the Canberra Times:

When charming leftists stick their nose into things they don't understand they become ratchet-jawed purveyors of monkey-doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people's money. They are the lap dogs of the poly sci-class, returning to the vomit of collectivism. They are pig herders tending that sow-who-eats-her-young, the welfare state. They are muck-dwelling bottom-feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate. They are the ditch carp of democracy.

I've got nothing I could possibly add, nothing I tell you.

Pig flu? I shit 'em

The Daily Mash sums up my opinion on the matter:

TWO SCOTTISH PEOPLE FEELING A BIT RUN DOWN

I can be flippant because the odds are, if I were to catch it, I'd spend a couple of weeks off work and then I'd shake it off. Granted, I'd spend those weeks praying for death's sweet release, but by not being particularly old or young the odds are in my favour. Also, we don't seem to preoccupy ourselves unduly with the 2000-3000 odd deaths that occur yearly due to 'normal' flu; nor did society collapse during the last epidemic(1989-90) when there were 30000 excess deaths (mostly in the over 65s). Ref here.

So, I'm not panicking that much just yet.

And yes, I know that Lady Irony has just painted a virological bulleye on my arrogant twatty face.


UPDATE
Just noticed on Auntie Pravda:

The UK is one of the best prepared countries to deal with swine flu and "all action necessary" will be taken to stop its spread, Gordon Brown has said.

Ok, cancel my last; We're all dead.

Courtesy of Crank 2

This film just keeps on giving.

Check out the review by a like minded individual here

David Starkey Being Awesome

H/T to Snowolf for flagging it up.



This is so bang on. The message will be no doubt tempered by his reputation for sensationalist offensiveness and an obsession with the Tudors (But the guy's an historian, what can you do), but the truth of what he says should be obvious and self-evident to any intelligent observer of Government in modern Britain.

Banish the Goblin' King

Like everyone else who doesn't 'Do' petitions, I'm doing this one.
I suggest you might want to do likewise.
Tell him to fuck right off.

Go on, fuck off.

Picture nicked from EnjoyFrance.com of all places.

Who is John Galt?

Right, all sorts of stuff has been happening of late and I've not had time to write anything between work and ploughing through Atlas Shrugged. All hail Ayn Rand.

If you haven't read this book, it follows a world where the 'Looter' class have undermined society and have gone a long way towards collectivising and redistributing the worlds' assets in the name of the 'common good' (whilst making sure that they are insulated by the resultant hardships). The productive members of society -the industrialists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, artists – who no longer wish to see their hard work arbitrarily confiscated and abused by the state in order to support the lazy and stupid, go on a productivity ‘strike’ and disappear. I won’t spoil the story, but you can guess what might happen next.

I found myself gripped by this book, not because it’s spectacularly well written (the main characters are often crude stereotypes – either resourceful and strong ‘Strikers’ or weak-willed and pathetic ‘Looters’ & ‘Moochers’), but because of the timeless prescience of it. The actions and consequences I was reading (which were written in 1957) could just have easily been pulled off the cover of a modern broadsheet; it was both gripping and chilling. With this in mind I thought I’d put together a checklist of the dystopian horrors which Rand documented in her work of fiction, and then compare to recent tales of modern Britain.

1. A state-compliant media, slavishly toeing the party line whilst constantly berating big business and businessmen in favour of further state control – Check and Check.
2. The ‘looters’: men and women who use force to obtain value from those who produce it. They seek to destroy the producers despite the fact that they are dependent upon them.See also: the Righteous© leg_iron . Check and Check x 646
3. The ‘moochers’: parasites who use guilt as a weapon against those who produce value. They seek to destroy the producers despite the fact that they are dependent upon them. AKA pets of the Righteous. Check x a few million or so
4. A culture of Jobsworths; incompetent and initiativeless workers who are concerned only with following the rules so no one can blame them for anything. Check for every fucking council you care to think of.
5. Union leaders who ride the back of other people’s labour for their own gain and who then use their elevated position to dictate terms to the productive. Check
6. Government-run economies with too much power in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats who would never have positions of similar influence in a private sector business. Big fucking check.
7. Governance of the country by favour and backstabbing, by men who have no real talent or intelligence but who are masters of public relations and back-room deals. Check
8. The nationalisation of industries which were compromised by government interference or poor policy, whilst exacerbating rather than migrating the problem. Check, check and check.

It looks grim.
Of course the book also has an organised group of rationalist free-thinkers who emerge to reconstruct a society which celebrates individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, and in looking for a real-life local analogue you might do worse than to pay a visit to LPUK.
I'm tending towards the hopelessly optimistic these days, but the web has changed the politcal dynamic; people are sick of professional politicans dictating every minutiae of their lives, regardless of the colour of their rosette. If ever there was a time to break out of this stagnant electoral lab-con-lab-con death dive, and take back our country from the Looters and Moochers, it's now.

Who is John Galt? - No-one I know, but I haven't given up looking.

John Galt oath borrowed from here

Jacqui Smith is a cunt

I could hardly turn down OH's polite request now, could I?

A cunt, yesterday

Anti-terrorism Billboard.

Late to the party as usual.
Here's my version of the billboard for Jacqui Klebb's new scaremongering campaign:

You can have a stab here, courtesy of James Holden; who is a legend.

Cassandra's Curse

You know how every big disaster film involves one rogue scientist trying in vain to warn the authorities about an impending calamity that only they have predicted, only to be rebuked and/or silenced by those same authorities? Well, it seems the recent events in Italy might have been a case of life imitating art writ large.
Apparently Gioacchino Giuliani, a researcher with the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, predicted the coming quake and had been very vocal in trying to warn the locals; putting warnings on the internet and organising vans with tannoys to go around warning people. His forecasts were based on the build-up of radon gas in seismically active areas, which he had been monitoring for several years.
Them there nasty authorities weren't too impressed however:

However the reaction of the mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente, was to accuse Giuliani of "spreading alarm". He was reported to the police for "scaremongering" and had to pull his warnings off the internet.

So it would seem that the single rational voice was silenced for political convienience with disasterous results - at least that's how it's generally been reported. Thing is, people (even supposed experts) predict earthquakes all the time, especially in areas where they are more common. Even a knackered clock is right twice a day, and there really isn't any reliable and consistant means of predicting earthquakes despite Mr Giuliani's particular obsession with Radon levels.

As the head geo-bod Enzo Boschi put it:

Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it," he said. "As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes."

And he then went on to mention the slightly more mundane and not at all surprising situation:

He said the real problem for Italy was a long-standing failure to take proper precautions despite a history of tragic quakes. "We have earthquakes, but then we forget and do nothing. It's not in our culture to take precautions or build in an appropriate way in areas where there could be strong earthquakes," he added.

Still, I wouldn't want to be Mayor Cialente today.

Make 'em work

Care of Failblog.org

Road Warrior Queef

The episode was toss, but this all but made me void myself:



Genius.

Update: will try and keep ahead of Viacom (who're removing these links about as fast as I find them).

The Vulcan vs Dolly

John Redwood and Dolly 'debating' at the University of Manchester.


Why must they insist on using Derek Draper as the left-wing counterpoint in all these discussions? The guy has nothing to say of any value, beyond regurgitating the party line like some freakish hairy automaton. I keep expecting to catch a glimpse of Mandleson hiding in the shadows behind him, an arm emerging occasionally to pull an Action Man style string in his back, prompting one of his six or seven pre-recorded soundbites.

John Redwood is one of the MPs who I (cautiously) have some time for, and who generally has a handle on all things economic. So, very predictably, he tore Dolly several new holes.
Is Dolly really the best Labour have as a mouthpiece? Or is he just rampaging around any and all available talking-shops, barking at anyone who'll listen, without any real party sanction, driven by the irresistible urge to feed his own bloated ego?

It's getting a bit pathetic, to be honest.

Let the Presses roll

Well that's that then.

G20 leaders seal $1.1tn global deal

You cannot just make a trillion (!) dollars appear, you can only dilute existing money to make it look like you have. They've just made all of us that much poorer.

This is so obviously bollocks, it barely warrants mentioning. And the proletariat are unconvinced.

FFS, let's take a look at it:

• Bankers' pay and bonuses will be subject to stricter controls -Private companies' pay and conditions are to be set by Government? How the blithering fuck does that work, then? Ah that's right, they work for the governent now anyway.
  
• A new Financial Stability Board will be set up to work with the IMF to ensure co-operation across borders and provide an early warning mechanism for the financial system -It was patently fucking obvious what was going to happen this time, you cocks.
  
• There will be greater regulation of hedge funds and credit ratings agencies -Oh good, I was really bored by the unregulated system we already had, this ought to sort that all right out.
  
• A common approach to cleaning up banks' toxic assets has been agreed -Load it all on to the tax-payer?
  
• The world's poorest countries will receive $100bn extra aid -Aid doesn't fucking work, they don't even want it, and it'll just get spunked up the wall of some twatty kleptocratic dictators' fifteenth house.
  
• G20 countries are already implementing the biggest economic stimulus "the world has ever seen" - an injection of $5tn by the end of next year. -So money in wheelbarrows then?
  

The Saltedslug's forecast:

Buy shotguns and tinned food.