Bribing away poverty

Guess I spoke too soon on the interesting news front:

You might remember Michael Laws, the Kiwi mayor I’ve previously mentioned when he –rather refreshingly- insulted some some school kids.  Well he’s being contentious again:

"That there is a group within our society who give their children no hope nor opportunity from the moment that they are born,"

"That these ‘parents’ are known to authorities ... and yet the authorities can only intervene after children have been harmed."

Mr Laws goes on to write: "it would be far better for this appalling underclass to be offered financial inducements not to have children, given the toxic environment that they would provide for any child in their care."

Right, so his logic goes: These people can’t/won’t look after their kids, so lets pay them to be voluntarily sterilised so that the problem never presents itself.  He argues that even paying parents $10,000, for example, would be a net gain on the public coffers and cause a large reduction in child abuse-related incidents (which New Zealand has a disproportionately high number of).

I’m somewhat sympathetic to his argument, I mean I would sooner pay people to not have kids than pay them to have them, and I imagine so would a fair proportion of you; especially after walking down the high street of any given town during working hours and seeing the phalanxes of pram-pushing teenagers and rat-boys hanging around Greggs.

But there are –shockingly enough- sceptics:

But his "solution'' has been branded "draconian'' and "totalitarian'' by the country's child health advocates who are calling for him to stand down as a city mayor.
"I just find it such a disgraceful attitude,'' Child Poverty Action Group director Janfrie Wakim said.

Indeed, how are you supposed to run a Child Poverty Action Group with no Children in Poverty? The bastard.  And ‘Draconian’ and ‘Totalitarian’ imply compulsion, and I don’t think he was suggesting Nazi-style mass sterilisation programs.  That said, as we’ve seen in the past, with many government schemes: the transition between voluntary and compulsory can be a swift one once you’ve acquired popular support.

So go on then, it’s Friday afternoon and I’m not talking to myself: what do you lot reckon?

Stifling Indifference

As there is not much going on that I care enough to write about, here is a selection of awesome trawled from the sewage outflow pipe of the intertubes.

Perspective: Cell Size and Scale

Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation. Yes, really.

A proper Hole in One. Still doesn't make golf worth watching, though.

This guy has a fucking leopard hanging out of his car window.

And finally, following on from my last Lamebook comment:

I swear to god, if I could create a keyboard which would punish idiots with pain.....

Not the Spoon!

10 minutes of brilliance  found via b3ta.

The horror is unrelenting.

Well that cheered me right up

On the back of suggestions that our troughers-in-chief were likely to have the publicly-funded rug pulled from beneath them, I read this most uplifting article by Andrew Gimson in the Torygraph:

Actually, I’m going to go and read it again, back in a tick……

Yep, it was just as good second time ‘round:

"It's a ----ing disgrace", one MP elected in 2005 said of this proposal, which leaves him uncertain of his own position, for while the train journey to his constituency takes under an hour, the time rises to over an hour if he adds the taxi journey to his house.

Oh dear, oh dear.  That sounds perilously close to the irritations suffered by the average working tax-payer, except for the taxi part- most people probably couldn’t afford that every day, so would probably have to take a bus to the station.  Oh my, imagine having to do that.

The same MP was outraged that his wife will be prevented from working for him and accused Sir Christopher of placating the mob by proposing such harsh restrictions.

Well it wouldn’t be an issue if you and your kind weren't relentlessly spending the “mob’s” hard earned on your pointless clan in order to increase your household’s overall take, and so that Tarquin needn’t get a real job during the summer holidays.

Many MPs claim that mean-spirited reporting of their expenses is destroying democracy. The crisis has produced a sense of victimhood which stretches across the House: one Labour MP spoke with deep sympathy of the way in which a Tory MP whose expenses have attracted wide publicity is now a pitifully diminished figure, his years of meritorious service counting for nothing compared to the manner in which he has enriched himself at taxpayers expense.

Take away lesson here: don’t enrich yourself at the taxpayers expense. And how the hell is it destroying democracy?  The pay is still far better than average, and they’ll pay your rent and travel if you’re not local.  If anything the reduced income will hopefully dissuade the typical troughing politico wannabe in favour of  men and women who actually wish to do the job.

Westminster is full of disappointed men and women who have made enormous efforts to get into Parliament, only to find themselves condemned on being elected to lives of almost total insignificance.

Surely the job is what you make it? If you’re sucking the party teat in the hope of some scraps from the table rather than doing and saying what is best for the bods who put you there, then maybe you deserve obscurity.  Look at Doug Carswell: arguably insignificant from the mainstream party point of view, but between him and DanHan they make enough racket to put half the party to shame.

For these disappointed MPs, the news that they can expect to lose many thousands of pounds in allowances comes as an especially bitter blow: the final sign that an ungrateful nation does not appreciate their spirit of self-sacrifice and that even such consolation prizes as a second home purchased at public expense are now to be snatched from them.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Self-sacrf.. AHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Stop it you’re killing me!

The Palace of Westminster feels a bit like Versailles just before the French Revolution. To walk round Westminster is to mingle with a political class which still cannot see why it is regarded by the public as remote, greedy and over-privileged.

The analogy is flawed by the much lamented absence of Madame Guillotine to  focus the minds of these modern day bourgeoisie as to their predicament and the frame of mind of those noisy peasants outside.

But if the new rules are irresistible, many MPs would at least like slower trains to their constituencies so that they will not be forced to share the wretched lives of ordinary commuters. One wonders whether the railway system will ever recover.

Oh my good lord: MPs forced to travel in the same manner they’re so keen for the rest of us to adopt; this will be interesting.  Wonder how keen on green they’ll be after spending the morning commute pressed against the armpit of an overweight, hung-over brickie? 

Of course none of this might happen, and they may well give the old ‘rules’ a lick of paint and return to thieving as usual,  but I’m enjoying the moment. 

Lamebook WTF

Was there a special “internet–club” decoder card you had to send some Frosties box-tops off for which I somehow missed?

We’ll be having that…

Echoing the sentiments of Al and Ian, what the fuck is this?

Alan Johnson, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that it would be a jolly caper to extend the scope of the already astonishingly illiberal Proceeds of Crime Act, enabling  public bodies and quangos to confiscate property and freeze assets.  An of course they get a share in whatever is reclaimed; no potential for abuse there.

Who’s going to get these expanded powers of arbitrary seizure?

Councils in England and Wales Could seize assets from people in council tax arrears or parking fine defaulters

Gangmasters Licensing Authority Might seize property from someone profiting from underpaying wages

Counter Fraud and Security Management Service Investigating prescription fraud and theft by NHS staff

Gambling Commission Could seize assets from rigged betting rings

Rural Payments Agency Could confiscate money from farmers fraudulently claiming agricultural grants

Financial Services Authority City regulator could seize assets of those convicted of insider dealing

Vehicle and Operator Services Agency Could pursue profit made by haulier defrauding MoT or licensing laws

Transport for London Could go after assets of fare dodgers or ticket forgers

Royal Mail Might confiscate assets from a fraudulent postmaster or employee

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency Could recoup profits from sale of counterfeit medicines

Here’s Sir Ivan Lawrence, QC:

“Far worse is the encouragement being given to non-police bodies to search for what they think are proceeds of crime but may not be and subject the victim to the draconian and manifestly unjust processes of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Does anyone in Government understand that if you give prosecutors, who are supposed to be unbiased ministers of justice, the bribe of a proportion of the money they can find, you are actually poisoning the roots of justice in our society?”

What he said.  And whilst I appreciate the original structures for reclaiming unpaid monies and prosecuting the financial aspect of criminality are long, convoluted and inefficient; they are like that for a reason.  Within any group of people there will be an element who are pre-disposed towards corruption, laziness and just plain power-madness - especially in the bloated public sector.  That’s why we don’t let people, regardless of their position, just do as they feel is expedient.  The ends don’t always justify the means.

The issue with POCA is the same issue with other recent laws proscribing personal liberty for convenience(ostensibly to deal with terrorism): It makes the law-enforcers’ job far too easy.

And the only places where policing is easy are police states.

Ho Hum

As I’ve got literally nothing of worth to say today:

Visit trollcats.

Or laugh at Al Jahom being fucking useless.

Crying wolf

Apparently if you spend your working life hassling the population by lobbying for minimum alcohol prices and increased taxes on popular foods which have been deemed ‘unhealthy’, people tend to either stop listening or regard everything you say as suspect.

So when a real health concern pops along- like this years’ variation of seasonal flu and pushing the vaccine in order to mitigate the consequences- it’s hardly surprising when people assume the risk is overstated and that perhaps the vaccine is of dubious value.  The reality of which has fallen by the wayside as you have compromised yourself as a source of trusted medical advice.

Almost like you should stick to doing your fucking job (i.e, head doctor bloke) rather than appointing yourself  supreme arbiter of officially sanctioned lifestyles.

You utter winnet.

Hammer and Tickle

Whoring for Amazon (clicky)

A friend bought me this book for my birthday and I’ve been picking my way through it when I’ve got a minute.  As the cover says, it’s an history of communist jokes in the soviet states over the course of the twentieth century.  An example:

Stalin is in his limo, alone with his driver. ‘Let me ask you a question,’ he says to the chauffeur.’Tell me honesty, have you become more or less happy since the Revolution?’

‘In truth, less happy,’ says the driver. ‘Why is that?’ asks Stalin, his hackles raised.

‘Well, before the Revolution I had two suits.  Now I only have one.’ ‘You should be pleased,’ says Stalin. ‘Don’t you know that in Africa they run around completely naked?’

‘Really?’ the chauffeur replies. ‘So how long ago did they have their revolution?’

The author, Ben Lewis, chronicles his visits and investigations around Europe and Russia whilst trying to uncover evidence in support of his theory, to wit:  whether the jokes told by the citizenry of the soviet states had a greater significance as a form of rebellion, and were perhaps instrumental in the fall of communism.  Is an engaging read and I recommend it to you.

But something made me dog-ear a page for later recollection.  He talks occasionally of a relationship he had with an artist from the former DDR, who creates ironic artworks based on soviet propaganda.  Despite this, she has a certain fond nostalgia for communist east Germany as it was, and –being a socialist at heart-  disapproves of his criticisms of the communist system.  She is one of the ‘Well we just haven’t got socialism right yet’ crowd.  He details the conversation which pretty much signalled the end of their relationship –which mirrors countless conversations I've had with lefty friends:

‘What solutions do you propose?’ I asked.  Getting rid of armies and governments? Back to the land? The abolition of money?’

‘Yes, those ideas came up.  How would you improve the world , then? Ariane asked me.

‘Maybe not try to improve it,’ I asked ‘Stop having dreams of big solutions and try to make it work better with a few more little laws. I dunno.’

‘But how will you end exploitation, poverty, and environmental destruction?’

‘Maybe they can’t be ended.’

‘But doesn’t it matter to you that the gap between the poor and the rich has been getting wider,’ she asked, beginning to sound irritated.

‘Oh, inequality is not such a bad thing.  It doesn’t matter that the gap between the rich and the poor gets bigger, as long as he poor are getting richer, which they are.’

‘But don’t you feel a sense of outrage at the millions of impoverished migrant workers in China and Asia, filling up the slums of mega-cities and working in sweatshops to make toys for our children and shoes for our feet?’

‘Those people are playing catch-up after years of being held back by Communism.  Anyway the alternative is that they stay where they came from, trying to keep the family goat alive on a barren hillside.’  I enjoyed watching Ariane’s eyes opening wider and wider in astonishment, like a child in a Hollywood movie who opens her toy cupboard and sets eyes on an alien.  ‘It’s really okay, if there some incredibly rich people in the world’ –I was on a roll. ‘It’s not a big crime.  Anyway there’s a limit to what you can do with all that money.  Once you are flying first class and staying in big hotels and you’ve bought a yacht, there’s nothing to do with it except give it away.  Unless you want to buy art.’  I zapped her a meaningful look.  Her exhibition in New York was only a month away.

‘Communists like yourself have never lived so well as they do under capitalism.’  I concluded.

Amen brother.  Anyway, that’s quite enough plagiarism for one day. Buy the book. 

*Update* On a further discussion on twitter, I offered the following  joke:

“What stage comes between socialism and communism? Alcoholism.”

To which Oleunna came back with:

“So Libertarianism is rehab?”

Which I think is the most profound thing I‘ve heard in ages.

Tax us, we have too much money!

After polling the denizen of the recesses of the twitter-dungeon for ideas for blog-worthy content, I was directed to this specimen:

At first glance, that does seem like the wealthy citizens of Germany were saying “ We have more money than we can actually use, please take some of it off us and do something useful with it; the state being the best judge of how that money is spent and only has the best interests of the poor at heart”.

In reality, it is only 44 self righteous idiots who have unilaterally decided on behalf of  2.2 million Germans that they should give away their collective cash. 

Every time I see a ‘progressive’ initiative like this, I’m reminded of the WSJ article from May:

Here's a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

History (and logic) has shown repeatedly that the more progressive you make your tax system, the less overall revenue you will inevitably take.  See   BOM article on the Laffer curve.

A prediction: if they bring in these measures, a sizable number of these wealthy Germans will hop, skip and jump Swiss-side, where some worthy, over-privileged cunt won’t volunteer their money away.  

FFS, it’s not hard:  if you start snatching someone's money, they are going to take it elsewhere. Back to the Beeb article:

Signatory Peter Vollmer told AFP news agency he was supporting the proposal because he had inherited "a lot of money I do not need".

Therefore so does everybody else.

He said the tax would be "a viable and socially acceptable way out of the flagrant budget crisis".

Socially acceptable = take from the most productive and give to the not so much.   Productivity generally thrives under such circumstances, dontchaknow.

The group held a demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday to draw attention to their plans, throwing fake banknotes into the air.

Mr Vollmer said it was "really strange that so few people came".

Yes, I wonder why.  Dumbkopf.

Fighting through the apathy.

Weekends are always the worst time to blog for me, despite having the most time to do it.  But those trusty twittery interweb folk have given me a couple of ideas, which I'm pursuing.

In the meantime, pop across to Al Jahom's place where he mixes sage economic analysis with images of lovecraftian horror.  Having seen that shit I'm off for a long hot shower in a futile attempt to feel unsoiled.

 

Yet more Pat

Pat Condell doing his thang:

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam

Don't know about you lot, but I've not heard much in the way of these provisions, exceptions and concessions being made to the Islamic states on the international stage. It is all a bit worrying.

Griffin on QT blah blah blah

*Update*  Go and read ConstantlyFurious’s ‘transcript’ of the thing, it’s fucking brilliant.

So like 8 million or so other viewers, I watched the trainwreck which was Question Time last night.  Christ, I was bored.  The BNP send in Griffin, everyone else sends in their most mediocre debaters, mix in some mooing “specially selected” audience members and what do you get: Cuntsoup.  How very predictable.

The only way they were ever going to cast the BNP into the harsh light of reality was to debate them properly on their proposed policies and beliefs, and show  them to be the vapid, superficial appeals to ignorance that they are.  Instead, what we got was a lynchmob haranguing Griffin from all corners which, as some commentators have noted, just makes him look like the victim and the outsider.  And when you are the outsider to a group as thoroughly distrusted as our present clutch of politicos, you attain a certain attraction.

Which isn’t to say he came across particularly well, despite adopting a more moderate, touchy-feely, fascism-lite  approach.  He was visibly shaking and rattled before the end, was tripped up several times –by Chris Huhne of all people- and showed that he really isn’t that much of a political front-man at all.   Not that any of the mainstream parties had anything of value to say about immigration- which the audience were noticeably angry about.

Overall,  it’s a hard to say whether or not this was a net-win for the BNP or not;  the publicity and the utter lack of objectivity work in their favour, Griffin opening his mouth worked against them.

Whatever. By the end of the programme I was so thoroughly indifferent to this theatrical facade of democracy –with it’s mob-handed fuckwits outside the building and cretinous blowhards within- that it was all I could do to keep watching.

Anyway, pop across to the other place I contribute to to see the footage Bob has put up.  Then read Bella Gerens’ bit on it from a foreigner's perspective.

I’m off to find something less dreary to think about.

Is it just me.....

...or does this do it for you?

Phwoar, look at that!

Indisposed

I’m in some bollocks management course all day, so the pickings will be slim.

Although I will leave you with this, the true horror of the LHC:

The truth is out there.

It’s cooled down and ready to rock

LHC reaches operation temps, collisions start in 5 weeks

The blue ring in the diagram is the 27km string of superconducting magnets which are cooled to 1.9 kelvin (-271°C) in order to reduce the resistance of the coils so they can produce the magnetic fields needed to guide and power the beams.  You can click on the picture and see the real-time status.

I’ve been putting off my next post on the LHC because I’ve just recently been getting an update from our resident particle physics chaps who work on CMS, ATLAS, and LHCb.  But it is coming. which is for the best as the Swiss one is chomping at the bit.

I’ma workin’ boss, I’ma workin’.

Left Vs Right

Once again from InformationIsBeautiful, Check this picture out(click for bigger):

As the creator says, it’s not necessarily how things are so much as how they appear to be from common preconceptions.

Interesting all the same.

Now apologise again, HARDER!

Apparently Stephen Fry caused a bit a stir with some comments about the Poles:

"Let's face it, there has been a history in Poland of right-wing Catholicism, which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history, and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on," he said.

Yeeeah, he might’ve wanted to think that one through a little.  Anyway, the usual furore arose, mainly among polish sources and he has detracted and apologised:

I mean, what was I thinking? Well, as I say, I wasn’t. The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will, and marched out of the mouth. I offer no excuse. I seemed to imply that the Polish people had been responsible for the most infamous of all the death factories of the Third Reich. I didn’t even really at the time notice the import of what I had said, so gave myself no opportunity instantly to retract the statement. It was a rubbishy, cheap and offensive remark that I have been regretting ever since.

And  he goes on.  Not  many people would doubt the sincerity of Steve’s apology but, like Leg-iron has mentioned time and again, once you apologise the righteous will have you self-flagellating forever more.  Enter Will Heaven from stage right:

But is there something missing? I think so: not once in his 3,625 essay does he mention the word “Catholic”. It’s no secret that Stephen Fry is not exactly keen on the Roman Catholic Church (unlike his idol Oscar Wilde, by the way).

Not keen on Catholicism eh? And Oscar Wilde wasn’t either? Shocking. Can’t imagine why that would be the case.

Yet his attack on the Poles was not racial, it was religious – he apparently blamed a Nazi death camp on “Right-wing Catholicism”. This despite the fact that, as Gerald Warner has written, 150,000 Catholic Poles were murdered at Auschwitz, including St Maximilian Kolbe.

And he said sorry. 

Stephen Fry’s apology does not go far enough. Poland is a Catholic country – and the courageous faith of its people helped to bring down the Soviet Union. But that does not make them “Right-wing” any more than it made them Nazis.

You see, I read his apology as an all-encompassing ‘sorry’ for the statement as a whole, i.e. “I’m sorry for alluding to Auschwitz being the fault of Poles”.  And I read our boy Will’s comment as discrimination against Poles who aren’t catholic (both of them).  Also, their faith is of no relevance to whether or not they helped bring down the Soviet Union. People are defined by their deeds, not which fairy they worship.

So what we have here is “That was a contrite and verbose apology Stephen, but now apologise again, specifically to the Catholics, because I like them best. They’re Ace, they are”. 

From the comments:

Mr Heaven,

Fry has called his remarks, cheap, rubbishy, offensive and graceless, and admitted that his failure to apologise sooner was cowardly.

I’m having trouble to see how he could abject himself much more than that, to be honest – or, as FrankFisher points out, quite why he should.

-Ross

Because Ross, when the righteous smell the potential for some mawkish, second-hand offense in the air, there is no stopping them until you supplicate yourself and beg for mercy.

 

*Update*  While we’re on the Stephen Fry thing:

 EVERYONE TO RUN EVERYTHING PAST STEPHEN FRY

Marvellous

The problem with libertarians

First off, read Obo, The Civil Libertarian and Al Jahom.  I’ll wait.

You back? OK, then.

An increasingly pointless and tiresome spat has been ongoing  for the last few months among some of our blogging crowd, the most recent example being here (which, I have to admit, I had a certain amount of adolescent amusement in reading).  It is all so reminiscent of a disagreement between a certain pair of popular libertarian bloggers earlier on in the year.  That little cat fight was equally retarded, and was (to quote my modest self): melodramatic masturbation writ large.

You’ll see arguments among our crowd all year round, though. Arguably more so than in other political circles.  Why is that? Because, whilst we will often find common ground, libertarianism isn’t a structured theory or a doctrine like, for example, Socialism.  Comparing libertarianism to the mainstream political  ideologies, is like comparing atheism to religion; it’s not so much a list of rules as an absence of them.  Not many of us are adherents of the absolute realisation of libertarianism: anarchy/anarcho-capitalism (no organised government at all), rather we  generally (and the official LPUK party line) prefer Minarchism –i.e. as small a government and as few laws as possible.

This is where things get interesting -or possibly incredibly dull as recent history would seem to indicate. Or start off interesting and then degenerate into facile name-calling.

Anyway back to minarchism: What bits of government do you keep?  The standard minarchist line is that government is there for laws ‘n’ war: police to stop us infringing each others’ liberty, and the armed forces to protect us from foreign aggressors.  What else?  Well we all have our sacred cows.  I for example, would argue against the deregulation of the testing of clinical medicine, even though it almost certainly impedes progress within that field. Why? Because litigious threat alone is not enough to halt the worst excesses of the big farmer(ooh arr) if there is nothing keeping tabs on the work that they are doing and the safety of their product.   That’s one example, others feel strongly about other issues.

So, if we were ever to have a libertarian-focussed government, it would be one of compromise. Much like socialist governments have been somewhere on the left of the sliding scale between communism and capitalism with concessions made to the latter; a Libertarian one would be somewhere far to the ‘right’ side of the scale between Authoritarianism and liberalism, with concessions made to the former.

So the argument is often one of how many concessions to state control do you make before you are no longer considered ‘libertarian’ anymore?  Well the thing about libertarianism is: it’s an ideal. A concept.  A prism to observe the situation through and ask yourself: Is this law necessary? Do I need these people having this amount of control over my destiny? Is this trade-off of security against liberty actually in my best interests? Am I free?

Maybe you don’t care.  Fair enough, but those of us who do care are a bit upset about the state of affairs, and –in our own argumentative and shambling way- are trying to make things just a little bit better.  Maybe even better for you.

This one will probably be continued.

Mr Civil Libertarian

Martin of Their Contempt For You Is Total has cast off the shackles of Blogger (and his unwieldy blog title) and done some kind of Dr Who metamorphosis to become Mr Civil Libertarian.
Re-link and bookmark my children of the night.

That is all.

Well actually there is this:

I’m so sorry.

Geeky Cern Coolness

Have just been to a talk  on the LHC, and will finish off my second post on that shortly.
One thing that I did find out is that you can download an app to watch –in realtime- all of the data transfers between Cern and it’s partner institutions around the world:

Click here and choose either Mac/windows/windows64.
That way you can see the whole  network light up next month, when they flick the switch.

Oh noes!

I’ll gloss over the fact that the scientist arrested at Cern was one of our mob from RAL, lest you think we’re a seething crowd of treacherous fifth-column, but:

Destroyed a city the size of London?

Now, oil refineries are noted for fires and explosions; kinda goes with the territory, however never has one taken out an entire city. Rarely, in fact, do they even total themselves. The continued non-destruction of the Cities of Houston and Rotterdam back this up.

A refinery fire is Bad News if you work there. Otherwise it's keep the windows closed and go back to what ever depraved acts the citizenry of those sorts of industrial areas engage in to pass their spare time between meals of microchips and miscellaneous meat pressed into a block.

I'm calling 'big hairy bollocks' to this inflammatory scaremongering.

*Update* Oh and from today’s xkcd:

Weapons-grade crazy

Look, I'm not one to cast aspersions about the mental health of a person/group of people from a brief glance at their website, but…..
Well, look for yourself.
Apparently the end is nigh. Maybe Gordon was right about that whole 50 days to save the world thing.  Or maybe he’s just a massive cleft. One or t'other.

H/T @mjrobbins from that there twatter.

STABs

Since I haven’t divulged my entire life on these pages yet, I thought I’d mention something else I’ve been involved with, namely the TA.  Tomorrow I’ll put up my mum’s maiden name and my PIN.

Yes, for ten years your slimy host spent his weekends running round fields, getting muddy and playing soldiers.  I left a couple of years ago when I moved over here, as I couldn’t spare the time anymore (I only saw the missus at weekends, so spending those same weekends shooting stuff was kind’ve out of the question).  So, whilst I was never deployed, I did go to some foreign places and do some interesting stuff.  Although you do spend more time in Brecon than is surely health for your sanity.  And your extremities for that matter.  

I was in the interesting position of being in the TA since a few years before 9/11 and during the subsequent interesting times.  As you might know, the TA’s role has changed a tad.  In the eighties, the TA was considered ‘third-line’ reserves, which meant their role was much more Dad’s Army in nature: the order of deployment in the event of war was to be the regular army, then the regular reserve (i.e regs who’ve left but are still on the call-up list) and then the TA.

These days things are different.  I believe (and someone pick me up on this in the comments if its untrue) that there is not a single full-strength infantry battalion in our Army.  This is after the amalgamations which saw the casting into history of the likes of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers(Formed: 1668) and the Black Watch(formed 1739) who are now part of the Royal Welsh (formally the RRW and the RWF) and The Royal Regiment of Scotland (comprised of all the jock regiments, FFS) respectively.  What this common shortfall means is that for every regular battalion deployed to Iraq(obv. not any more) or Afghanistan, a fair proportion of those troops will be from the reservists.  Stats are hard to come by as the MOD doesn’t like to show how short-handed we are, but figures of 10% of all deployed personnel get cast around over at ARRSE. 

Anecdotally, most  of the guys I know from my old battalion have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once.  But then, you should’ve seen some of their wives….

So, last week in a PMQs as fruitless as we come to expect, Gordon offered some non-answers to questions put to him by Dave the forehead about how the TA has called off training for the rest of the year.  The official line from the MOD is that:

The MoD accepted that some TA training had been cut, but insisted that pre-deployment training for reservists has not been affected.

What that refers to is the training the TA guys do with the reg unit they’re attached to for 6 weeks before they go to theatre.  Essentially they’re to be left with their thumbs up their collective arses, doing nothing and getting fat until the time they’re needed, at which point it falls to the regs to get them in some kind of fighting condition prior to joining the fray.  Not ideal is it?

We are all painfully aware that money needs to be saved, and you will find protests from all corners of the public sector about why their department is crucial and couldn’t possibly have it’s budget cut –and the MOD spending is one of the ‘big-ticket’ items on the bill- but not many of those departments have to weigh-up that money against people’s lives.

But I guess those indispensible legions of the MOD civilian staff at Whitehall, Abbeywood or wherever else they proliferate to, must be kept in jobs –even though their numbers are fast approaching that of our standing army- when money can be cut from the guys doing the actual fighting and coming back with the occasional missing limb or missing eyesight.  Or not at all.

Out of sight - out of mind, I guess.

*Update* checkout Jackart’s post on this from last week.

Elaborate Spam

As a brief aside, has anyone ever come across a 419-attempt as elaborately written as this one?

Christ, I wanted to give him money after I read that.

Oh please, please do

Some members are threatening to go to court to avoid repaying money demanded by Sir Thomas Legg, the independent auditor. Others are considering challenging their party leadership for banning them as candidates over their expenses.

So far, more than 100 MPs have said they will step down at the next election, including many who made questionable or controversial expenses claims.

I have to echo Tom Paine on this one:

If these aggrieved gentles act on their threats, the effects will be wonderful. Some lawyers will make an honest living. The corruption of our members of parliament will be kept in the public gaze throughout the next election campaign. Labour will have its resources sapped to deal with the litigation. Some might even win, forcing the worst enemy ever known to the British working class to divert money from its election war chest to the payment of their damages. Some of them will undoubtedly lose, to further humiliation. Best of all, I would not put it past a high quality civil court judge to berate the Crown Prosecution Service for not having brought them to justice.

It would all be just too delicious. Please do it guys. Pretty please.

What he said.

Do it, you unbelievably conceited and corrupt parasites.  Watching your smug, entitled and cosy little world collapse in on itself  when the public are finally woken up to the sheer scale of your rapacious greed will be  a wonder to behold.  I’m salivating here.

So by all means carry on as you are, ‘cause I’m buying fucking popcorn this time.

Power station protest idiocy

So swampy and his chums are still at it.
In my not-so-humble opinion, trying to shut down a power station is bordering on evil.  I can imagine that anyone with friends or family in a hospital local to that station, would be of the attitude that any protesters there deserve whatever beating they get.

These protesters, rather than showing up for a peaceful protest against something they disagree with – something I don't mind-  are there to "stop power production", which is vandalism on private property, with knock-on effects to the larger community- something I do mind.  So my sympathy for any injured protesters is tempered by the fact that these people turned up into order to deliberately cause an act of criminal sabotage.


Practically all the they can hope to achieve –aside from causing a violent scene and attracting media attention- is a short term cessation of operation, which I doubt would abate much in the way of CO2 production, compared with what they produced in getting there en masse.

Furthermore, the UK's overall power needs haven’t and won’t likely fall in the near future. If we intend to keep functioning as a country, the grid needs to be maintained somehow, and the likes of wind farms are not up to the task – they are inconsistent and require something in backup which can be ramped up and down quickly (like gas-powered plants) to maintain production.  Which in terms of reducing CO2, would probably only break even –especially when you take into account the manufacturing and maintenance requirements of wind turbines.   Also, as greater demand is placed on the existing stations, they will become less-efficient and produce more and more CO2.

Further again (whilst these planned protests can be allowed for, as I’ve been reminded in the comments) the disruption of power stations can have unforeseen consequences; concurrent unplanned anomalies within elsewhere on the network can compromise the integrity of the entire grid. These events are unlikely, but become decidedly less so when people take to purposefully disrupting the network.
To attack a power station shows criminal contempt for wider society and for human life; or it would if these idiots had thought that far ahead, which I suspect they didn't. Or worse they did, but didn’t care.
So, unlike some of the disproportionate use of force we’ve seen before now at peaceful protests, I’m with the plod on this one.  If these hairy idiots wish to force their brainless politics on the rest of us in this violent fashion; I have no problem with the police using more efficient violence to meet it.  Hard.

Posties

I’ll declare my interest:  My mother and my brother are in the employ of Royal Mail, and I too have also been a postie before now (last time was as a casual after the strikes in 2001).

So, apparently the turkeys have voted for Christmas, and Royal Mail can’t be long for this world.
I know I’m playing the world’s smallest violin over here, but your local delivery office is pretty much chaos right now, and has been for some time.  The faffing about with delivery schedules has meant that  more overtime needs to be done; some paid, some not.  The overtime that is paid, is being paid at a lesser rate, and if the permi staff won’t accept the lesser rate, managers get the part-time staff to do it instead –and they’ll be glad of the extra cash.  Some posties enjoyed the fact that they could knock-off as soon as their walk was done, but now managers are trying to get them to work a full day for their money.  (of course, some posties have a more demanding walk anyway and resent the ones who bunk off early)

Of course of  this would be par for the course if this were a private company in the same financial disarray as Royal Mail.  Thing is, RM staff have acquired all of the entitlement culture personality traits of the public sector.  They want a job for life; the same pay no matter how much work they do/ hours they work; they want their little comfortable niche and they don’t want to be budged from it.

All that said, mum tells me that work has gotten nuts of late.  They  are barely coping with the workload and getting paid less and less for it.  A cynical mind would think that someone was trying to cause a strike so as to facilitate the final wrapping up and privatisation of Royal Mail.  Especially when the postal regulator has pretty much removed any means for RM to make money.  They have to charge the same (tiny) amount to shift mail anywhere in the UK and the profitable business post was cherry-picked away by 3rd-parties.  Couple all this with the internet-driven fall in mail volumes and you end up with an unworkable business model.  Not that I have a problem with the abolition of another state-run monopoly, but could we not have just privatised it in a rational way, rather than throwing the country into chaos?

The whole thing has the stench of Mandlesnake about it, indeed check out Guthrum’s recent post over at OH’s:

It looks like the dark Lord of Industrial Death is being pilloried by the 'traditional' Labour Party, resorting to class war and everybody to the picket lines in support of the Post Office as it commits collective suicide.
Believe it or not there is a logical political theory behind this

nihilism (nī`əlĭzəm), theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the fall of the czarist government (1917); the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861). Nihilism stressed the need to destroy existing economic and social institutions, whatever the projected nature of the better order for which the destruction was to prepare. Nihilists were not without constructive programs, but agreement on these was not essential to the immediate objective, destruction.

These are suspicions which –as he mentions- apparently have traction on the other side of the fence at Labourhome;

Someone leaked a Post Office PowerPoint presentation to the BBC which tells of their plans to break the CWU.  It now becomes fairly obvious that the dispute is being encouraged by Crozier for his masters, referred to as stakeholders in the presentation. It looks like Crozier is playing the Ian MacGregor role to Mandelson’s Maggie Thatcher. Is this really what the Labour Party is all about now, appeal to the middle-class by beating up workers? How many pickets would you like killed in this one Peter?

We could’ve phased out Royal mail gradually, privatised it and still had a fully functioning privately-run postal system (like the Germans); what we are going to get is a poorly thought-out and badly implemented corporatist gang fuck, after a long running dispute where millions of pounds of revenue are going to be lost to businesses without means of postal communication. Which is exactly what the country needs right now, isn’t it?

Seriously, ZNL have ruined literally everything they have touched.  It’s quite astonishing really.

Depressing state of society

I’m not a fan of vigilante summary justice, but some things can turn a guy into a moral relativist:

Could you imagine kids treating a crippled veteran like this after either of the world wars, the Korean war or even the Falkland's?
More to the point, can you imagine this happening anywhere TODAY that wasn’t the UK?
What the hell happened?

More Pat

I watched the newest Pat Condell video the other week and forgot to put it up, so here you go:

Who do we like? We like Pat.

Disproportionate Sentencing

This guy is undoubtedly a piece of shit:

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the girl asked Graeme Conroy, 31, for a cigarette and when she started smoking it she was filmed on a mobile phone.

The court heard that the child had smoked three cigarettes before the filming took place.

Right, so not only is he reprehensible, he’s a fucking idiot for filming it. 
Anyway, what Mrs Slug has just pointed out to me is that he got 18 months for letting  his three year old smoke, but if he had been slapping her around he probably would’ve struggled to get a custodial sentence (Or as Al just pointed out in the comments, you could get 9 months for putting out fags on your toddler).
So am I bothered that this scrote is locked up? Not really.  Do I think his sentence is disproportionate given the standard we seem to apply to other crimes which most people would consider far worse?  Definitely.
That said, for his offense he managed to combine both the evil smoking and the Cheeeeeeldren; so I’m surprised they didn’t execute him on the spot.

More reasons to hate mankind

In case you haven't seen these glorious opportunities to mock the afflicted:

http://www.lamebook.com/

Which produced this erudite chap:

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

http://whythefuckdoyouhaveakid.com/

 

*Update* Actually, this one is just depressing. Like really fucking depressing. Jesus.

All safe for work, with the occasional exception of whythefuckdoyouhaveakid, which has the odd child-in-the-background-while-mum-camwhores snap.

And peopleofwalmart comes with the disclaimer that what has been seen cannot be unseen.  Otherwise known as 4chan’s law.

Magnetricity

The Emu Muon spectrometer at ISIS

Egads, my  workplace is in the news again, and also in NewScientist and Nature.

Right, most people are aware of electricity (although you can’t make any assumptions these days), and that it consists of negative or positive charges carried by electrons or ions moving from one place to another, but what these chaps have done is find an equivalent in magnetism.  Which is to say, they have found discrete atom-sized phenomena which have either ‘north’ or ‘south’ magnetic forces, rather than the larger ‘dipole’ (one of each) arrangements we normally see (like in a bar magnet).

In 1997 Prof. Bramwell discovered  Spin Ice; an unusual material because the magnetic interactions between it’s constituent atoms are consistently disordered –whereas normally we would expect them to form ordered arrangements of magnetic dipoles (i.e. North-South-North-South).  Since in water/ice we can split H2O molecules into ions of H+ and OH− which then carry electric current, Bramwell figured the equivalent defects in the magnetic structure of spin ice might also drift apart, creating ‘currents’ of magnetism.  

Now, in order to test this hypothesis he hooked up with Sean Giblin who works on the Muon instruments here at ISIS.  Existing theory suggested that a magnetic ‘charge’ would respond to a magnetic field in the same way that ions in water speed up when an electical field is applied across them.  This is where Sean comes in:

“A muon can be used as an atomic bar magnet,” Giblin says. “It is implanted into a sample, where it is incredibly sensitive to local magnetic fields and will give a distinct signal.”

They ran their experiments, extrapolated data and fed it into the relevant equations and the results they achieved did indeed suggest a new phenomenon: An elementary unit of magnetic charge. 

If his response doesn’t make you feel proud to be British, then there is no hope for you:

“It’s real. Let’s go to the pub. And then let’s measure some more.”

He had achieved what most scientists dream of: theorising the existence of something new and fundamental and living to see it demonstrated.

Here is a diagram of the monopole concept taken from NS:

And another one from work, taken from the experiment process:

How magnetricity works in spin ice Dy2Ti2O7: (a) In zero field, magnetic charges occur as bound pairs, but some dissociate to give a fluctuating magnetic moment (green arrow). (b) The field energy competes with the Coulomb potential to lower the activation barrier to dissociation. (c) Applying a transverse field causes dissociation as charges are accelerated by the field. (d) In the applied field, these charges remain dissociated while more bound pairs form to restore equilibrium. Magnetic moment fluctuations due to free charges produce local fields that are detected by implanted muons (+).

Cool stuff.

Wednesday rambling frippery

"these images are not erotic in any way"

They should spend half-an-hour on the interwebs and expand their mind as to what does it for some people.

Which reminds me of a conversation I once had with some submariners when I was doing defence stuff in a previous life.  They were discussing their libidinous state of mind after a two month patrol. It was quite disturbing. That was before the conversation: 

'After a nuclear war the only people that will be left alive will be submariners - if there are no women it's not gay is it? Discuss'.

*shudder*

On that vaguely nautical note, an email from a colleague in that line of work informed me:

The successor SSBN is to be delivered by 2024 for c. £11-14bn.

Looks like someone beat us to it:

Ace.

And I’ll finish off with:

Quite.

Might write something real later.

Trafigura -> Streisand Effect

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."  - John Gilmore

I’m not even going to bother linking elsewhere, because every bugger you care to mention in on this case.

In the unlikely event you don’t know what I’m on about, yesterday the libel-tourists’ friend, Carter-Ruck and partners, placed an unprecedented gagging order on the Grauniad, banning them from reporting parliament.  For our foreign chums, that is a Big Deal.  It is also shockingly undemocratic and unheard of in modern times.

And it is –in this blessed internet age- utterly stupid.  Look up the The Streisand Effect.  If you try and censor it, every intermong and his  idiot cousin will scrawl said censored info over every bared white space on ‘tweb.

So it was always going to fail in an epic fashion, and those of us who might not have cared about the subject at hand, are now poring over the released details with fevered intensity.  Imagine me belming at the screen right now.  

Now to the meat of it.  The parliamentary question which is belived to have been at the heart of this gagging order is reckoned on being:

From Parliament.uk, “Questions for Oral or Written Answer beginning on Tuesday 13 October 2009?

(292409)
61
N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

The Minton report is available online here(pdf).

Quick summary for you:

Trafigura are a Swiss-based multinational oil trader, and with a turnover in the order of $70billion, are big players. They are physical traders, meaning they carry oil around the world, whilst processing and refining it for resale.

An opportunity arose for refining sulphur-contaminated gasoline from the Mexican state refinery, and processing it at sea using a process called "caustic washing", a cheap and decidedly nasty proceedure that generates waste so dangerous it is effectively banned in most parts of the world. The refined oil was sold on for several million dollars at a time, but their ships were left with a cargo of toxic waste.

E-mails obtained by the Guardian showed that in 2006, having failed to offload this waste in Europe, they took it to Ivory Coast, and disposed of it with whomever local would take it. It ended up in dumps around Abidjan, Ivory Coast's maritime capital.  

Thousands fell ill, with many burned by caustic soda, and there were also deaths caused by breathing in hydrogen sulphide fumes produced by the waste. The company were forced to settle a 9-figure lawsuit on top of compensation previously given to the country's government.

Pleasant stuff, I'm sure you’ll agree.  And if Carter-Ruck thought they were bullying a silence on this one as they have countless times before…well lets just say they’ve turned what would’ve been another twatty-big-business-causes-environmental-damage story into everyone's front-page reading. 

That’s some good work there, boys.

*Update* aaaand they’re ungagged again.  So not only is it now reported, but orders of magnitude more people are reading it.  Now imagining me belming with the hand gestures, noises and rolling around on the floor action.  Twats.

Gee, thanks

Apparently working parents now don’t have to be vetted, processed and have ‘Safe’ tattooed on their foreheads in order to look after each others’ kids:

So is that how legislation works these days is it?  You pass sweeping, clumsy, kneejerk laws and then just make exclusive provisions for the entirely predictable resultant awkwardness when the tabloids make enough fuss.

Ever thought about writing laws with a bit of applied common sense?

On second thoughts, try not passing laws every five fucking seconds, you shatteringly incompetent imbeciles.

Big slimy tip of the eye tentacle to Steve Shark for reminding me.

A lesser spotted bug-eyed Cunt,  yesterday

HPV Vaccine -Final word

 

From Information is Beautiful (Click for bigger):

Aren’t statistics wonderful?

Nightjack Recovered

Just so's you know,  I've managed to recover the entirety of Nightjack's blog, which I've put back up (in Wordpress because it was easier) here:


Still a bit rough around the edges as the pictures and theme are missing, but all posts (and comments) are present and correct.  Bear with me whilst I clean it up.

Why we get sick

From a link Ms Laudanum put up on Facebook:

From the Glenn Hoddle school of thought, I see.

In response, a couple of people put up two choice Jack Chick tracts, here and here.  If you’ve never encountered that particular purveyor of Christian fundamentalist literature before, a world of fun has just opened up to you. It is through-the-looking-glass stuff.

The Coryphaeus of Science summons you to the axe, Trotskyite!

Incredibly obscure title stolen from Яolcats.  Speaking of which:

-His lethargic display of apathy and lack of industry is shameful!

-It is a legitimate response to the harsh and inconsequential nature of being. I celebrate his tenacity!

Indeed.

One line Round-up

It’s 3:23AM, and I feel the need to write something, so here’s some sluggy summaries of what’s ‘appening.

'Al-Qaeda-link' Cern worker held  -  Dramatic sounding non-story. Guy who works at scary-sounding place with minimal dangerous material has ‘suspected’ link to ‘suspected’ terrorist.  What’s he going to do, break it?

Conservatives more trusted than Labour on economy – As is your next-door neighbour’s incontinent Yorkshire terrier.

Daughter defeats RSPCA ‘townies’ after inheritance battle over £2m farm –Good.  Bollocks to that self-aggrandising, police-impersonating, horse-worrying militia.

MPs call for urgent inquiry as thousands of students still  await loans – Too many pointless students; allocate money based on maths content of courses.  I expect philosophy students to be eating the media studies cretins by sundown.

Police 'should visit every victim' – Police presumably number in the millions.

Parents warned over drama schools – Indeed they are being warned that their child may in fact acquire negative value to productive society.

Czech leader wants treaty opt-out – Czech demi-god swings his massive brass balls. Dogs howled and angels cried.  It was beautiful.

Good night from all of us here in the studio.

Ofsted

Reading this, this morning, I got to thinking: “Hang on, didn’t you guys give Haringey good/excellent ratings for it’s  social services stuff before the Baby P furore?”

And this evening I read:

Jesus tapdancing Christ.  Is there anyone involved with this whole shower of shit who can actually do their job?

One of the departments Mrs Slug was involved with once got a ‘satisfactory’ rather than an ‘excellent’ rating.  They went back to Ofsted and said: “Fair enough, but can you tell us exactly how we can improve in order to get an Excellent rating?”  And the answer was that they didn’t know.  Presumably then, the judgment had been arbitrary and unquantifiable.

Ofsted are universally scorned and hated, even amongst decent councils, because they are not productive or helpful.  They are centralised, out-of-touch pen pushers who cannot perceive the quality of anything unless you can format it into tick-boxes.

This government in a nutshell.

Guardian TPA non-story

Bloody hell, the Grun is in all-out “smearing Tories with irrelevancies” mode today:

The Taxpayers' Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax.
The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.

FFS. The guy lives in France (and pays higher taxes because of it) but still has political interest in the UK. He's not even doing anything to avoid tax, just following the laws of where he is.
The tone of the article implies some kind of hypocrisy here , whereas I’m pretty sure that would only be valid if he was a left-winger advocating high taxes for the rich and then going out of his way to avoid them. Like the Guardian group for example.

"The least we can expect for an organisation that purports to represent the interests of British taxpayers is that it is run by people that pay British tax," said Jon Cruddas MP, who said he is one of many Labour MPs concerned about the TPA's growing influence.
"When it emerges that one of the directors doesn't [pay British tax], their motivations seem questionable and alarm bells should start ringing for anyone who comes across the TPA."

A campaign group/think tank is there to produce political ideas. Political parties can pick them up and dump them as they see fit. If a guy who lives in France (or anywhere in the world) has good ideas for British politics I would like to hear them.
Politicians are elected representatives being paid from public funds, and so their tax records are fair game for scrutiny.  Whereas think tanks are just idea merchants who don't have to claim moral superiority.
The TPA has a clear ideology, if Labour (or the grauniad) thinks it is wrong, then they should set out that case, not make vague insinuations about lack of patriotism.

The campaign group refuses to publish details of its income or a list of donors, but when pressed, Elliott said the biggest single donation was no higher than £100,000 and its annual income from donations was about £1m. It is a rapid rise for a group which filed accounts for 2005 that showed donations of just £67,547.

There is no contradiction in wanting transparent government whilst supporting privacy for private organisations. The obvious difference is that government is accountable to the public in a way that private organisations are not.

The TPA's links to the Conservatives include monthly meetings where speakers have included Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, and Daniel Hannan, the Tory Eurosceptic MEP who recently claimed the NHS was "a 60-year mistake"

Wow.  A right-wing campaign group that advocates low taxes, which has links with a right-wing party that advocates low taxes.  Hold the fucking front page.
In any case the whole article reeks of desperate smear-job.  TPA have plainly had some traction with the public and are doing more than most to illustrate how this government is pissing our wages up the wall.  And that is what worries them.
Good.

Liquids on Planes Embuggerance

Shock fucking horror:

The Government is to oppose plans to ease the 100 ml limit when European transport ministers meet in Luxembourg on Friday.

However, while Britain can object to the plans and opt out, the Government cannot block them outright.

As a result Britain could end up as the only major European country not to adopt the plans, inflicting confusion and chaos on holidaymakers and other travellers.

God I hate this place sometimes.  Once our own special breed of nannying, authoritarian jobsworths catch hold of another tool to interfere with other people’s business, they never want to let go.

And I find myself in the objectionable position of agreeing with one of the greenies:

Green MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg is among those MEPs who want the liquids ban scrapped. "There is currently no scientific proof whatsoever that the ban on liquids in the hand-luggage of air passengers contributes to the stated goal…The measure creates an appearance of security and is more aimed at putting passengers' minds at rest. But if you cannot explain properly why the rule is there, you just have to put an end to it." 

Well quite. Personally I’ve never understood how the ban on larger bottles works as a reduction in risk when there is no limit on the number of 100ml bottles you can bring on.   As the lady says, this -just like the ban on tweezers and the like- is symbolic of ‘something being done’ whilst being of no practical use at all.

Once again we see that when an ‘authority’ has come up with an overwrought, ham-fisted ‘solution’ to a problem -imagined or otherwise- and that solution turns out to be useless (or in this case useless and really fucking annoying), they will move heaven and earth to resist the removal of that ‘solution’ lest it reflect badly on them. 

But Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot defended the measure, saying that, while he was "aware of the inconvenience caused for passengers…events in recent months in the United Kingdom and in recent days in Denmark and Germany show that the terrorist threat in Europe remains real".

He stressed that the liquids-ban regulation is the only instrument that Europe has at present to respond to the new threat represented by liquid explosives.

Oh that’s right isn’t it? Stuff is exploding all over the place these days.  And there is no ‘new threat’ from liquid fucking explosives – they’ve been around for decades.  And I’m pretty sure planes weren’t falling out of the sky on a bi-weekly basis before the ban.  In fact, the only would-be terrorists who tried it got caught and jailed, so as far as I can see the existing system worked just peachy. He also said:

"A blunt repeal would be a risk that I am not prepared to make passengers carry," he said, adding: "Nor do I wish to take the risk of exposing the aviation sector to the economic consequences of an attack, which would bear no comparison with the costs of the procedures that have been implemented to avoid one."

Tell you what Jacques, how about you let us decide what kind of risks we’ll expose ourselves too, OK?  Further, how about you let the airlines look after their own economic situation?  In fact, how about you just fuck right off, you suffocatingly self-important little bastard.

British Socialist David Martin agreed he was "slightly surprised at the ferocity of the attacks by some of my colleagues on this system". His colleague, Socialist Group Transport Spokesman Brian Simpson said Labour MEPs were concerned that MEPs were "going soft on terrorism" and "failing to protect the travelling public".

I think “Do as we we tell you or the terrorists win” is a gambit your ilk has long since exhausted, you snivelling, collectivist cockweasels.

I’m off to kick something.

WTF of the Day

Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, Crappy Taxidermy:

and my personal favourite:

Fucking hell.